So what's happening right now we'll see if we can be even more helpful so just a bit of background so i currently work in consultancy like i've been working for the past few years and during my whole life i wanted to start my own business and even like all my friends always say oh you keep saying you want to start your business and so just do it but and i have so many Different ideas i've even when i travel to work i just keep like dreaming and having ideas how to improve people's lives but i
feel like something is holding me back and i'm scared that this is my anxiety and lack of confidence that just like um it's the reason why i'm keeps losing my dreams and um i feel like i'm not expert in Anything just because the consulting is a bit a broad term so you help with different projects and different stuff but i feel like i've learned a lot and i'm really keen to start something but i feel like my confidence and anxiety are the reasons why i'm not starting and my my question that i ask myself every
day is how can i build up my self-confidence and how can i get better taking risks because starting your business is a bit Like should i start or should i keep my full-time job that is giving me some sort of security or should i just go and see is what's going to happen and if it's not successful you know i'm always like trying to see the pros and cons and sometimes i feel like because i don't believe in myself enough to start something and say yeah i'm just i believe in my idea and i will
Do it even if if it fails at least i'm gonna learn something yeah so i hear you and i actually i think that focusing on your confidence and risk-taking is not going to be a fruitful path now i'm going to tell you what i think is a fruitful path i have an option but there are many many many options so here's my answer for you my love Since you've never started a business before but based on how you're talking about it and how excited you get and you oh my goodness you have so many ideas
and you've been talking about this for years part of what the challenge is for you i don't think you have a group of friends or any type of structure to help you actually start a business it's kind of like thinking oh my goodness i really want to learn how to dance or i really Want to play a particular sport but it feels so overwhelming if you've never actually done it before or if you don't have a bunch of people who are really experienced in that kind of dance or playing that particular sport it's just all
overwhelming and then so all you do is spend all day thinking like well why am i not confident enough to just start or how do i get started and obviously starting a business is a little different because there are financial Implications there are implications around scarcity and survival in your career and your identity and all these things so here's my recommendation girl you need some structure and you need a community so obviously i don't know how long you've been um kind of engaging with our work but we have a program called b-school that if it's
the right fit for you you should join the next time it comes around but even if that's not right for You we need to get you into an environment and get you some structure so that you can take all these beautiful ideas that you have and start putting them through some tests so that you can validate and understand well which of these ideas has the most highest chance for success and which doesn't how can i dip my toe in the water and start testing ideas even before i want to leave my job by the way
one of The things that you might have found out from watching some of our past shows with marietv i'm really not a huge fan for most people of just like quitting their full-time job and starting a business unless they are just so clear internally and externally that this is what they must do in fact there's some studies out there that say we're actually 33 percent less likely to fail if we keep our full-time job and we start a business on the side so there's Some research to back up the slow and steady approach but most
importantly i think you need structure and you need community it's so much easier to enter a new world when you have other people to talk to other people that are on the path that have either done it before or they're doing it now people that you can connect with and that can share the journey with you so again i'll invite you to take a look at b-school whenever that's available next But there could be local programs that you can find other opportunities to get yourself around an entrepreneurial environment and then some type of commitment where
you can put some skin in the game which is why i like b-school so that you've got a reason to show up so that you have something that can help you take these beautiful ideas that are in your mind and actually put them into practice and start actually seeing results clarity comes from engagement Not thought right like is this idea going to work well let's test it let's find out and if it doesn't work doesn't mean you're a failure you're not supposed to be an entrepreneur it just may mean you had the wrong idea or
the wrong market picked out all kinds of good stuff but that's my suggestion for you i i don't think you should focus on trying to build your confidence or trying to learn how to take better risks i think You need to get yourself some structure and a community and that'll handle 90 of it yeah i think that's very important and i've always thought that because i live in london and london is like really easy there are so many different events that yeah oh that are actually just much more like into entrepreneurship and business building and
i just i don't know if it's an Excuse or it's just i can't find time to get but yeah i think you're very right that i just need to start talking with different people and this will build a lot and make myself more clear about what's going on around and that's right and you know you mentioned something like i don't know if it's an excuse you know one of the ideas i live my life by if it's important to me i'll make the time if not i'll make an excuse and one of the ways that
we know what's Really important in our lives is actually how we're spending our time so without judgment or without self-beration you know you might want to just take a look at your calendar and say well how much time am i devoting to this entrepreneurship thing that i say is so important to me and if you find that it's little to none besides just talking to yourself about it in your mind you might want to take a step back and go huh is it really that important To me and if so i need to start aligning
what i say is important with my actions in the real world on a consistent basis and by the way if it's not what you want to do anymore that's cool too entrepreneurship is amazing but it's not for everyone what is important is that you know it's important to you and that you're spending your time and your energy every single day in alignment with your dreams yeah thank you very much that was so Helpful and completely changed the way i see things and i'm not just saying just because it's you it's honestly it's changing completely the
way i see things good thank you very much you're so welcome i'll keep us posted and we'll be here for you we'll be here to support you we'd love to hear how it's coming along on your journey thank you very much thank you and wish you all the best yes bye raleigh bye bye thank you bye So sweet i also agree with her because the first thing that when i heard that is i was like oh she needs to do some esteemable acts and build her confidence up so i love that you offered the exact
flip side to that because like when i struggle with that personally i'm like okay if i'm feeling lackluster my confidence has subsided or faded away maybe i need to be doing some things that are going to boost it a little bit but your take on That of surrounding yourself and establishing community and structure is something i've never thought about and i'm like wow imagine all these ideas floating in my head if i just had a friend or a community to just throw them out to and hear them back imagine what could be possible after that
well i think what's really cool and i always go back to fitness analogies because i feel like they're very applicable to almost every area of our Life you know like you can be like oh i'm gonna do a workout today and yeah you could do it from your house but the moment you put yourself in a group fitness class and there's all these other people around and there's an instructor that's taking you through specific steps you're like oh i can do this all of a sudden rather than doing like a 15-minute kind of shitty workout
you're doing this hour-long thing that yeah you might be out of breath but You're like oh my god i did it so the power of community and the power of surrounding ourselves and having some kind of structure again for raleigh if you're still listening or even for you it's like that's why i created b-school because people need something that's step-by-step again if you're not into b school cool but you can find another program that actually teaches you the baselines of business so you understand how to think about it What you need to test the things
you need to do first second third and fourth to give yourself the highest chances of success no one has a business crystal ball right no one can predict what's going to work and what's not going to work but there are timeless principles that if you follow them you're going to give yourself a much higher success rate than if you don't dear wonderful marie here's the sich i'm in my mid-30s god help me how did that happen and took a Huge risk in my mid-20s to pursue what i always wanted to live in europe and turn
my scientific career into one focused on mainstream media and then what was wonderful became a nightmare which included the death of my boss and my work environment became extremely toxic i left encouraged by all to take a position back in north america for a prestigious government agency looking back i realized i never wanted this new job but now i'm here and hating It i should have listened to my heart and volunteered for habitat for humanity in malaysia instead i would have had no money but have been so happy if i leave now the people who
hired me have a lot of clout and can make sure i never work in this field again how can i reconcile my true calling and do what's right for me with possibly destroying some very influential connections thanks so much warmest mariah mariah this is an awesome Question something all of us can relate to i mean we'll all find ourselves at crossroads in our own life and we can often struggle with do we take the safe road or do we follow our heart which can often feel a lot riskier at least in our minds now there's
two important things i want to talk about today with you the first is about burning bridges and what i want to tell you is a tweetable what's highest and best for you is always what's highest and best for Everyone around you i guarantee that by hating your job you are not doing your influential connections any favors in fact you're probably doing more harm to your reputation than if you left telling the truth always wins now as it relates to leaving your job of course you got to do this in the right way and take full
responsibility for what you're about to do it's one thing to send your boss attacks like i'm going to malaysia To build houses peace in your crease it's another to set up a proper meeting and really co-create a game plan so you're not leaving everybody in a lurch but the second and more important thing i want to talk about today is a crucial test that'll help you make the right decisions every time especially when they're huge decisions just like this one mariah one of the first things you said is i'm in my mid-30s how did that
happen It happened because it happens the next thing you know you're going to be saying oh my god i'm in my 60s how did that happen you got to realize as you get older time goes by faster and faster and before you know it you're going to be 80 like that so here's what you got to do you got to sit yourself down right now and do the 10-year test ask yourself 10 years from now will you regret not doing this whether it's moving to malaysia or changing careers or starting your own Business really imagine
your future self you 10 years from now will you regret not following your heart i'll tell you one thing you will regret not moisturizing trust me you're welcome but back to the big things i did the 10-year test when i was 25 and trying to figure out if i should pursue dance as a profession now you got to realize i was broke i had hardly any dance training and sadly 25 is over the hill in the dance world so i sat myself Down and i said marie when you're 35 will you regret not having gone
for this whole hip-hop thing in a nano second my answer was hell yes i'll regret it in that moment all wishy-washy-ness went away i got focused and i kicked some serious dance ass best decision of my life and yet another opportunity to show you this [Music] but seriously for the love of all things holy trust me when i say life is short And it's getting shorter by the minute you must do the thing you're dreaming of and you must do it now i believe we all have a direct line to the divine and the call
comes through our heart i'm sorry i thought i'd put that thing on vibrate oh voicemail hey you guys can we hear that mariah you should follow your heart and ditch that poopy job Know this coming from someone who takes a lot of risks what you can produce in 10 years will absolutely astound you but you have to start now and the other thing is i have never ever ever met anyone who's regretted following their heart i don't dream really big about my company development i don't want to push or to hire people or to be
the chief general manager person i'm interested in the life with a really good steady Income bit of a paradox when having a company and doing what i like to do on my own while still having enough time for people i care about so in general is not having a plan for a big business with 20 plus workers a really bad thing regards from poland smiley face julia julia i absolutely love this question because it gives me a chance to talk about something i don't get a chance to talk about nearly enough not given a flying
fudge about what Other people think about how you should live your life or build your business nor should you be spending any of your precious life energy trying to conform to some made-up standard about how big you should dream now back in the day we were all taught that we should get a good job we should get a family a house you know have some security and play it safe that was the old american dream really the old should but these days it's really starting to feel like Dreaming big is the new should that somehow
if you're not dreaming big you probably have small dream shame that if you don't dream really really huge somehow you're not ambitious enough you're not smart enough and you're not valuable enough in this world this idea is totally and absolutely not true small dream shame is total bs and for so many people dreaming big is actually crushing their soul you want to know who's not a victim of small dream shame my parents My parents moved out to vegas from new jersey and i recently went out there for a weekend visit now their vegas is not
the vegas that most people think of so they're not living in some penthouse in the mandalay bay they would never ever want that they live in a quiet little residential neighborhood their house is so simple their life is so simple and they absolutely love it that way they have no desire to eat at fancy places like nobu you want to know their Favorite place in vegas it's a tiny little casino that has an amazing buffet and three people can eat for 20 bucks yes 20 bucks and they told me this probably about six times it
got them so excited and it got me excited for them now world travel traveling around the world no interest at all they do not want to be high rollers they don't even gamble you want to hear this one they got themselves their own slot machine and They filled it up with their own change so they can win what they already have now some people may say oh that sounds crazy i think it sounds amazing they are so happy they're not living small they're living large and it's so inspiring to me i'm also inspired by this
even if it sounds a little morbid in the top 5 regrets of the dying author ronnie ware discovered this the number one regret of the dying is wishing they had the courage to live the Life they wanted to live not the one others had expected of them the bottom line is that we have to think and dream independently each of us comes to earth with our own unique assignment and each of our dreams no matter the size or scope is valuable and perfect exactly as is so let's land this plane on a tweetable [Music] your
dream doesn't have to be big to be perfect hi marie i'm a 16 year old boy And though i know i'm not part of your typical demographic i absolutely love your advice and videos here's my problem i'm enthusiastic and ambitious but lately i've been stuck in this negative mindset due to the fact i never get anything done i love trying new things and going out of my comfort zone but i never follow through i get extremely motivated to start something as if my life is going to Change and i'm going to become a new person
but the excitement dies and eventually i lose interest this has become such a problem that it's affecting my confidence i've stopped feeling like i can accomplish anything and also stop trying new things how can i follow through with something i've started without losing interest thanks spencer great question spencer and by the way i am so honored that you love and that you watch marietv just so You know people of all age groups from 193 countries around the world watch marietv so you are in good company so here's the thing spence by the way can i
call you spence you don't have a problem young man you have a gift and you haven't been taught yet how to fully leverage it here's the thing you are creative you're a risk taker you love life you're ambitious those are all beautiful things i suspect you may be a little bit like me someone Who's multi-passionate so you get very excited about life and at times you can feel a little add now here's the thing the world's greatest artists and thinkers and entrepreneurs also share this gift so i want you to be grateful that you have
it now this gift you have which is really a strength also has its dark side too which you're experiencing right now and i can really relate to this because i've been frustrated in the same exact way the good news is i have a Lot to say on this topic and i really think we can help you so let's dive right in first thing i want to talk about is permission to dabble so wandering time play time just checking things out that's not always a bad thing you have to understand that dabbling around can fuel your
creativity can really feed your soul i understand that you want to learn how to follow through and we will get to that but i want to make sure that you don't lose this Miraculous sense of curiosity that you have because it's really important and to help you remember here's a little psa from the armed forces private do you like to try new things ma'am yes ma'am does everything you try have to change your life ma'am no ma'am what does clarity come from private engagement man doesn't come from thought ma'am no ma'am dabbling is a form
of engagement private permission to dabble ma'am permission granted you little Maggot thank you ma'am yes i had onions for lunch i could tell ma'am you heard private jams clarity comes from engagement not thought and you do have permission to dabble so here's the thing spence you just got to set up some clear dabble time meaning you get to try out all kinds of things and you're not going to pressure yourself to follow through so remember this if it's dabble time you have permission to dabble Next i want you to crank your cog con which is
not to be confused with shake your bon-bon cog-con is just a marified way of saying your cognitive control your ability to manage your attention now researchers have found that this singular mental ability predicts success and happiness in school work and life now here's the thing spence at 16 years old it's probably true that your cognitive control is not as strong as it's gonna Be in a few years but here's the thing you do not have to wait around for this thing to naturally get better there are three steps that you can take that'll not only
crank your cog con but it'll help you build focus habits that'll serve you for life step one is meditate on the daily so dr adam gazelli from the university of california calls meditation a cognitive control exercise that enhances our ability to self-regulate internal Distractions while you're free to find your own practice 10 minutes a day for me works miracles step number two is define completion so spencer once you've had dabble time and you figure out you really want to move to completion on a project you have to define exactly what that looks like so for
example let's say you want to learn how to animate so would completion be being able to animate a full length feature for pixar films probably not you might want to set Completion as something like being able to animate a one minute video that you can upload and show your friends when you define what completion looks like in advance you make following through a lot more attainable step number three you want to practice wearing blinders so they often put blinders on race horses to help them stay focused and not get distracted and we human beings can
do the same thing for ourselves you have to train yourself to have a one track mind And it's easier said than done but here's the thing if you find yourself getting distracted and wanting to jump over to another project i want you to let this question be your guide and your blinders is what i'm doing right now moving me towards completion finally a little bonus on follow-through now if you haven't seen our other episode all about following through you should really watch it because it's awesome okay spence let's wrap this up With a tweetable creative
success means balancing your love of starting things with a habit of finishing them i want to start off with something that you shared in the introduction to your book which is amazing you shared i come from a long line of women who were forced into a life they never defined for themselves take us back to those early days in your village in zimbabwe i want folks to Understand the picture of what life was like for you as a 14 year old you know i always talk about um coming from this long line of generations of
women women who had been denied the right to their dreams the right to their education i always visualized my great-grandmother when she was born she was born into this race that she never defined And she was born holding the baton the baton of poverty early marriage illiteracy a colonial system that never respected here and she's running into this race with this paton she runs so fast she hands over this baton to my grandmother my grandmother grabs that pattern of poverty illiteracy she runs she hands over that baton to my mother my mother grabs that patone
in a rest that she never defined because of the Circumstances and she runs runs and she hands over that pattern to me i never wanted to be part of that baton i found myself getting married at a very early age and having babies before i was even 18 i was a mother of four children without a high school education with nothing but all i wanted Was an education and when i talk about this baton of poverty that's being passed on i also talk about the wisdom that is also passed on from generations before me so
in our lives my grandmother used to say that you have the power to decide whether you keep on running with that baton of poverty the pattern of illiteracy or you run with the baton of wisdom to re-change and reshift this pattern so that you become the one who Breaks the cycle of poverty early marriage lack of education abuse and all the ugly things in our lives so when i was hardly 22 years of age my country we had just gained our independence because all along we had been colonized by the british and here i was
a mother of four in my country had gained that independence and strangers started Coming in americans australians and these were women would come to the community and there was this particular woman she sat with me and with other women and she asked me one question that i'll never forget in my life What are your dreams i never knew i'm supposed to have dreams because i was an abused woman a silenced woman remember i had four children and actually one of the babies died as an infant because i failed to produce enough milk i was a
child myself and i'm sitting there and i'm thinking am i supposed to have dreams in my life and other women started sharing their own dreams and i was quiet She looked at me and she said young woman you haven't said anything tell me what are your dreams i couldn't bring my dreams i knew i had these dreams in me but for some reasons i couldn't because there was so much noise in my mind i had been shaped to believe that i was nothing and maybe it was the Way she kept on looking at me the
way she nudged me to say something and when i opened my mouth i became a chatterbox and i said i want to go to america i want to have an undergraduate degree i want to have a master's and i want to have a phd there was silence the other women looked at me and i could feel they were saying are you crazy how can that be you don't even have a High school education and i guess there was something about these american women when they were coming to my village there was this sense of empowerment
sense of loving thyself and i wanted that i would see them getting into their backpacks and removing books or papers and they would Look at those books and open and they would put on their glasses spectacles and they would talk to each other and put back their spectacles back into their bags and i thought wearing glasses was a sign of education and i wanted that so when i talked about these degrees i had had these women talking about these degrees and i wanted to have an education to change my life And she looked at me
and she said yes it is achievable if you desire those dreams if you desire to change your life yes tinogona tinogona in my culture in my language it means it is achievable i'd never heard of a woman declaring herself to believe they can achieve their own dreams and when i left that place i ran to my mother and i said my mother i have Met someone who made me believe in my dreams my mother looked at me and she said terrorize if you believe in what this stranger has said to you and you work hard
and you achieve your dreams not only are you defining who you are as a woman you are defining every life and generations to come and i knew at that moment that my mother was handing me an inheritance my mother knew that i Needed to be the one to break this vicious cycle of poverty that runs so deep in my family and in the community i needed to redefine the baton so that i would never pass on this baton to my own girls i needed to get this education so my mother said tererai write down your
dreams the same way and bury them the same way we bury the umbilical cord the birth cord i come from a culture that believes So much in indigenous knowledge ancient wisdom when a child is born the female elders of the community they take that infant they snip the umbilical cord bury that umbilical cord deep down under the ground with the belief that when this child goes grows wherever they go whatever happens in their life the umbilical cord will always remind them Of their birthplace so my mother said if you write down your dreams and you
bury those dreams your dreams will always remind you of their importance that you need to redefine your life that you need to break this cycle that you need never to pass on this baton this ugly baton of poverty illiteracy early marriage so i wrote down my dreams four i want to go to america i want to have an undergraduate i want to have a master's In a phd and i was ready to bury those dreams deep down under the ground when my mother said something so profound which really has changed my life she said tererai
i see you only have four dreams personal dreams but i want you to remember this your dreams in life will have greater meaning when they are tied to the betterment Of your community and i looked at my mother and i'm thinking what does that even mean my mother repeated your dreams in this life will have greater meaning when they are tied to the betterment of your community i would end up writing down my fifth dream number five when i come back i want to improve the lives of Women and girls in my community so they
don't have to go through what i had gone through in my life i want to come back create employment platforms for women i want to come back build schools so that girls they won't be magnetized and i buried my dreams and it will take me eight years and i call those eight freaking years yes mama to gain my high school diploma because i was going Through correspondence i was an adult i couldn't fit into a classroom so i would do correspondence and my mother was very poor i i didn't get enough money to pay for
my tuitions i needed five subjects classes english math biology history and bible knowledge or something and we were still under the british system of education so i'll do my Correspondence two subjects at a time whenever my mother was able to sell ground nuts or any produce she would give me twenty dollars forty dollars to register for my classes and i would write my exams and send these papers to a place called cambridge i had no idea where cambridge is and i would wait three to six months for that brown envelope from cambridge to come and
i Would open that ember envelope and i would realize i have a u ungraded i have an f failure and i'll go back to my mother she would give me more money and i would write again and wait another six months i opened that brown envelope either you ungraded i have a failure and i would go back And i would wait and write and wait and finally i opened that brown envelope from cambridge i had a b and i had an a i never gave up eight years i never gave up because i knew i
was on a journey to redefine my life i knew i had What it takes to achieve my own dreams in this life and then after eight years i would find myself at oklahoma state university and i did my undergraduate in agriculture i mean even just pausing there for a moment there's so many things to underscore and highlight but i am so moved by your spirit and your vision and your heart and your tenacity i mean when You buried those beautiful dreams in the can and you put them under the rock you were still in poverty
oh yeah you were uh a mom with an abusive husband yes yes and you did those correspondence courses for those eight freaking years and then to get yourself over to university here in the states as you wrote you came over with money strapped to your waist exactly yes yes and that wasn't even It was still a long journey after that it was so before we go on to that piece of the journey i just want to highlight your incredible precious mom i feel like you and i share something you know my mom was the one
that taught me everything is figure out about yes and your mom was that touchstone that said you deserve to dream yeah the wisdom that she had in terms of your fifth dream it feels Like that was really that changed everything it does and i think in many ways um she was pointing to the secret to our success that is not about the education it's not about the personal goals neither is it about the personal financial goals but it is about how our education and how our Personal goals are connected to the greater good yes that's
what makes humanity that what makes who we are as a people yes and so my my grandmother would always say to me and my mother you have the power within it's not your past that's going to define who you are but it's what you believe about yourself it's what you believe about your own expectations what is it that you expect from yourself and she would tell me my mother that You go to that place where you buried your dreams you visualize the life as you think it should be so i would spend hours and hours
sitting in that same place visualizing myself getting into an aeroplane i'd never been in an airplane in my life and i'd never seen one the only aeroplane that i knew were the Helicopters that would fly during the war because i was born and raised in a war-torn country and i would visualize myself sitting into that helicopter imagining myself flying to this place called america and i would see these tall buildings and my grandmother would say feel those mental images See those buildings and i would and i would see them and i would even smell the
the life that i wanted and so when i got onto that aeroplane there was this deja vu i think i've been here before even when i arrived on campus i felt i've been in this place before because i had spent so much of my time wanting to change my life and so much of My time visualizing this life that i wanted visualizing this life that i was not going to pass on this baton to my to my girls and i and i wanted to to change it all so when i started my classes i i
found pure joy i was always the oldest student in any class that i've taken and sometimes older than the professor herself or himself yes but i never cared Because i knew i had the power yes to change my life yes and your life when you got here was still wrought with so much challenge you i remember when i first learned about your story in half the sky yeah from nicholas kristoff and cheryl wudon where you were feeding yourself out of oh yeah trash cans oh yeah your children were cold oh yeah the husband that was
abusive for a period of time he was still here yeah you know Because uh zimbabwe where i was coming from the weather is different yes and there's always this community cohesion you can have your kids you know you can leave your kids with your neighbors and whatever you and now i'm in a different country and um i didn't have a scholarship yes i would work three jobs to feed the children and still taking classes and i remember when my kids when they arrived in the u.s Three months down the road as they were brushing their
teeth i saw their gums were bleeding and i knew they were missing fruits and vegetables back home you can grow your fruits and vegetables and they grow because it is the the tropics i mean and in america fruits and vegetables are a little bit expensive so i would many many times would go to Bed hungry and i went back to the university and i said you know i have a dream but i'm about to give up i can't see my children suffering it's one thing for me to have this great dream but it's another to
see my kids suffering and fortunately enough the university said they there are local stores here i hope they don't mind or you don't mind If they give you leftover fruits and vegetables i said no i don't mind so we went to this local store the manager looks at me and said oh no no in this country if we give you these leftover fruits and vegetables and if anything happens to your kids after they have consumed them you'll end up suing us and i said i have no dime to sue anyone please please i need to
feed the children and the soul manager says okay here's a deal You make sure that i'm not going to hand over the fruits to you i'm going to put them pack them in a cardboard box and i'm going to place the cardboard box outside the straw near the trash can make sure that at four o'clock every day you come and pick that box if you're late we are going to throw the box into the trash can 99 percent i was late to that cardboard box because i had to work three jobs take care of five
kids and i would find the box straight dumped into the trash can some of the fruits have already spilled over and i would collect everything Wash and go and feed my children and ask myself who am i to even complain that i live in a trailer house in oklahoma it's a dilapidated trailer house there is no no air conditioning everything is just falling apart who am i to complain when i know there are thousands of women And individuals that i see every day on the streets in western countries who am i to complain and who
am i even to say i'm feeding my children from trash cans when i know where i'm coming from in sub-saharan africa millions of homeless kids are feeding from trash cans that no one is washing at least the american trash can someone washes it those thoughts grounded me Because i knew at the end of the tunnel despite its darkness there was light yes and i knew i had the solutions in me so i graduated my master's in plant pathology and told myself i wasn't going for my phd i needed to work [Music] it was too much
i needed to work i i needed to give a better life for my children and i applied for a job uh got accepted uh at some place in arkansas little rock and i went for the interview and um one day i'm i'm walking in the in the Corridor and i meet this woman and she looks at me and she said i think i know you and i am thinking i've met me i've met many americans and many white women i don't know she said i really think i know you and i am thinking Gosh who
is this woman and then it dawned on me that oh my gosh that's the very woman that i had met some 14 years back in my village the one who had inspired me to believe in my dreams the one who had never seen the povertness in me the smallness in me my giant my champion the one who said yes tino gonna you can achieve your dreams if you believe in your dreams and That was jolak and now she is the ceo and president of haifa international this organization that is just that had just employed me
and i am thinking the universe the universe has a way to honor our dreams if only we believe and we become determined And work hard towards our own goals so my first trip home i went to that place where i had buried my dreams dug them up and i could see that list and check going to america check undergraduate check masters and i could see two dreams still looking at me yeah and saying so what And i said i have the solution for you and i re-buried those dreams and came back to the united states
of america and enrolled myself at western michigan university for my phd and i i remember the day that i graduated and i was walking that podium to receive my phd that paper that now says you are a Phd holder you are now dr trent and and i realized it had taken me 20 years from the day that i buried my dreams to the day that i was now going to receive my phd and i as i was walking that podium to receive that paper i really felt like a lawyer who had rested her case to
the world to say if we believe in our dreams yes we can achieve but Also to say if we believe in the dreams of others and create platforms for their opportunities yes they can achieve their dreams because as i reflect back it wasn't because of my intelligence but it was more because of the opportunities that i had been given in life and i think that drives everything that I do today to realize that i stand on the shoulders of fathers i stand on the shoulders of giants of champions and i have a moral obligation a
sacred obligation to allow young women to allow girls to allow individuals to stand on my shoulders because if it wasn't for the shoulders of others i wouldn't even be sitting here with marie folia i can't even mama i'm going to run over And hug you right now you this you talk about that great hunger and i know there are so many people watching right now i was talking with a woman earlier today who i was thinking about the beauty of your book where the global silencing of women's voices where they don't feel they have that
permission to dream and whether it is from familial trauma Sexual trauma cultural trauma of not knowing that they have a right to dream yeah and that that hunger inside of them is so healing like when i look at you you have been an inspiration to me for so long thank you and just the beauty of your words and what you bring to people what do you have to say to anyone watching right now if they are first of all i know they're going to be Deeply moved and inspired by your story but if they themselves
are having trouble identifying that great hunger in their hearts what would you say you know we all have hunger some they call it passion but i prefer hunger because i realize there are two kinds of hungers in our lives there is the little hunger the luhanga is all about i want it now Immediate gratification but the great hunger the greatest of all hungers which is the hunger that we all have is hunger for a meaningful life yes how do you then tap into that hunger because it is within us you ask yourself what breaks my
heart what breaks my heart because it is in those moments of our brokenness In those moments that we re we realize that it's not our past it's not the challenges in front of us once we realize that we have the power to find that solution within us we begin to hear the stirring in our own heart pointing us to something greater than who we are and we Find the answer to that great hunger yes but we have to be more intentional yes hey there real quick if you're loving these tips then you are gonna love
my free audio coaching program even more it's called how to get anything you want and inside you're going to learn three proven steps to turn any dream into reality i am not kidding you need to go download it now at marieforleo.com slash subscribe that's marieforleo.com Subscribe i'll see you there you know one of your favorite quotes um again when we were talking before the cameras went on was about and from amelia earhart do you want to tell us that story yeah so there's the movie amelia by amelia earhart and um at the end of the
quote like she's flying off into her death and this like beautiful sunset for sunrise and this was right around the time i was about and i this was the quote that Inspired me to have the conversation with my mom it was um as she's flying off in the sunset it says uh you know everyone has oceans to fly if they have the heart is it reckless yes but what do dreams know of boundaries and it was just like i still just get chills like hearing that because like that that sums up the whole journey yeah
like we all have it we all can embrace it and it's completely Counterintuitive to everything that we've learned for our survival and you know yes and you know a lot of people will email me and when i write about that and go well master but she died right and my response to them has always been i would rather die living my dream than die a coward and you know because no moment's guaranteed you know but for me if if Living my dream and have wanting to add steve jobs like a dent in the universe like
it requires you to face your death metaphorically and literally absolutely you know and so i think that's the number one thing that holds people back is this like if you can transcend your fear of death you can accomplish a lot it's awesome so our marietv audience is incredibly interactive and they love to have great discussions so i think that we should Challenge everybody who's watching home um what is holding you back like do you have this big dream if you think about that quote that beautiful amelia earhart quote what's the dream that you want so
bad you know and what could possibly be holding you back from it you know do you want any to share anything to challenge them to we want you to put your comments below this video by the way because we want to have a discussion about this Because i think it'll actually be really rich because i know when people start to think about this they're like i've coached many people and they're like i buried that dream long ago i didn't think that that was possible i'm like that's the thing that you need to go for that's
the thing you need to live for that's the thing that'll bring your life absolutely i i think that you know i mean we talked about this but it's really just about you know if if you Knew you were already dead and if you knew you had nothing to lose and if you knew anything was possible what would you do chapter 14 talks about the right and wrong way to manifest and i thought it was really awesome because again for folks like you and i who tend to then attract folks like you and i meaning very
hard workers people who put their nose to the grindstone we Get it done no matter what right even if you don't like the word manifesting just this notion of having more ease in your life of bringing things into your life that you don't necessarily pound your face against the ground for every single day until your eyeballs fall out so talk to me about a little bit of the the wrong way and the right way to manifest for those who may want a little more ease yeah great question so let me um Draw a distinction between
the importance of dreaming and the power of manifesting so dreaming in terms of not what you're doing at night but dreaming and giving yourself permission to desire things to have incredible magical things occur in your life giving yourself permission to let your mind body and spirit wander into the Future and to imagine a life that really lights you up that's so important because those dreams are deeply connected to your soul like you you won't dream about something that's not meant for you i'm not dreaming right now about a uh penthouse apartment in new york city
i don't want to live there right now so that's not going to come to me but you know when you allow yourself and your mind and spirit to wander forward And just allow yourself and give yourself permission to imagine what's amazing is you plant a beacon out into the future and that beacon whether it's a beach house or it's a loving relationship or it's uh healing past trauma or it's launching your dream business or it's just waking up and being happier and healthier and surrounded by all these amazing people whatever that dream is you gotta
allow yourself to dream it Because it acts as a mechanism that starts to pull you toward it and it it will pull you through your fear it will create tension in your life because it's going to make you start to wake up and pay attention to it that's where a vision board comes in and a vision board yeah most of us make a vision board and we put up the beach house or the range rover or the amazing log cabin or the trip to disney world or The dream business that we want whatever it is
the things are that we want the loving relationship but then this is where we make the biggest mistake because manifesting isn't the dream manifesting is the bridge between where you are and where you want to go manifesting is the bricks that form the pathway that connect you There and most of us have been led to believe that we need to sit quietly and with vibrational force feel ourselves sitting on the deck of that beach house and how it's going to feel when the wind is in our hair and what happens when you do it that
way is that you socialize your mind and body to the end when the fact is it's going to be a bazillion little irritating steps that get you there yes i skipped that part so I love this i i just want to underscore this because when we were doing the everything is figure outable book tour and i did this event and i had people close their eyes and visualize themselves figuring it out whatever their their dream was we actually did that i was like i want to see i want you to see yourself taking those steps
and i loved how you broke this down in the book i thought it was so great because yeah it's one thing to go yay we cross The finish line and there's the house or the relationship or the health or the trip or whatever right but to rehearse in your mind's eye emotionally visually intellectually seeing yourself doing the steps so if it's writing a book you know sitting at your table and maybe sweating a little because you don't think you're a very good writer but showing up anyway or getting up when the alarm goes off and
putting your sneakers on and all of Those different little micro actions even if it's a healthy relationship for me there's been times where if what i want to shift and change is a reaction that i've had to something seeing myself with the same situation that could trigger me in the past and visualizing myself behaving differently feeling differently watching it those are the steps that help me create that shift where it actually happens so i just wanted to praise you acknowledge You and underscore how awesome this is because your mind is so powerful our brains are
so incredibly miraculous but we're not given the instruction kits on how to use them yes exactly so you know you want to launch a business visualize yourself telling your friends you can't come out tonight because you're going to work on something visualize yourself hitting that post and then Feeling the fear that people are going to judge you when you start posting about something different than your kids or your dream vacations and you start posting about your business visualize yourself spending a saturday while the kids are playing soccer working on something visualize yourself hearing no and
feeling discouraged and then picking up the phone and making the next phone call there's something called the zygarnic effect in your brain it's Like a little to-do list a checklist that your brain keeps intact in your mind and your brain once you start to socialize your mind body and spirit all these little irritating steps like you want to run a marathon don't visualize a finish visualize yourself at mile 11 on a training run and it starts to rain and your earbud batteries die and you keep going yes when you do that what you're doing is
you're smoothing out your resistance To all this work that it's going to require to make this stuff happen because you are capable you can figure it out and you can use uh simple tools backed by science to lower the resistance in your body and mind to actually doing the things that you've never done before i mean when we when i read this chapter in the audiobook i was literally almost as i read it and i said to my team Afterwards we need to re-record that they were like are you kidding me so let's see if
i can get through this dreams don't disappear you were born with them and they are i could say i can't even get through this dreams don't disappear you were born with them and they are meant for you that means you take them with you wherever you go in whatever version of yourself you create So you might as well stop running and start leaning into them you might as well see and hear and feel all the clues of your life that it's trying to give you about who you're destined to be we are called in different
ways to be the best and highest versions of ourself we want to high-five marriage we want to be high-fived parents we want high-five friendships and a high-five career wherever there is a dream in your life Trust that you can high-five your way to it and know that i'm still right here beside you and so is marie raising our hand in celebration with you high five my friend we see you we believe in you now it's your turn to believe in yourself and go make your dreams come true [Laughter] hi marie i'm just about to turn
19 even Though i'm young i have big dreams problem is people keep telling me my dreams are not realistic and that i'm letting myself down i was going to be a doctor and then decided that wasn't really what i wanted now i want to be a professional event and party planner and grow my business into something huge that i can be proud of how can i get past caring so much about what others think should i play it safe And get a degree in something that has a secure job at the end of it what's
your advice for young people just starting out in the business world there's so much i don't know in your youtube channel is really helping me thank you paige these are awesome questions and i think it's something that all of us can relate to no matter what age we are so the first thing i want to talk about is what you shared should i get a degree with a secure job at the end of it so Little reality check for you my love those days are over there's really no such thing as a secure job anymore
i think if you take a look around at what's happening in the world you go into any starbucks and you'll see some lawyers and some stock brokers networking out of there who would totally back me up on this paige i know you said you want to start your own business and that's awesome but for everyone else even if you don't want to Start your own business hear me on this entrepreneurship is a mindset that everyone on the planet needs if you want to thrive now and in the future the only people that are going to
really make it in this world are people that'll take initiative that'll take action and that think and behave like entrepreneurs and one of the first and most important things about that is getting real comfortable with not giving a flying fudge what other people think about you Let me take you back in my own life i was only a few years older than you when i decided that i wanted to be a life coach now you got to get this this was back when no one even heard of a life coach those words life coach made
as much sense to people as dream farmer or potato doctor and exhale you still getting baked turn your head and cough for me plus i was 23 years old i mean who in Their right mind would hire a 23 year old life coach even i was rolling my eyes at myself the point is don't let anyone's opinions or judgments about what you can't do especially your own stop you from following your dreams you will never do anything great in your life if you've got this song stuck in your head [Music] [Music] page you say you
want to plan parties And events so get to it woman don't wait for people to give you permission or until you have some degree just find somebody who needs a party plan and plan the confetti out of it and then you do another and then another and then another and then all of a sudden mazeltov you are a party planner now in terms of education i am a hundred percent for education in fact i always advocate for people to be lifelong learners but don't limit your education To only what you can learn in the classroom
you should consider getting a job or two with more established event planners so you can really learn about the industry from the inside out and then there's one more thing and this is my final and perhaps more important piece of advice you've got to be really conscious of who you surround yourself with you got to get rid of everybody who's negative and all the naysayers so if that means getting some new friends Definitely do it and you also want to feed yourself some really positive things to your mind and your body and your soul day
after day so i know you love marietv because it's a positive wholesome family kind of show and of course it's gluten-free so remember keep surrounding yourself with positive people in fact you should find some people your age and get inspired by them everybody knows i'm a huge fan of malala yousafzai who is your Age paige and there's also another incredibly inspiring young woman her name is tabi gebinson you can find entrepreneur groups in your area you can find them online the bottom line here is that with the right support and the right attitude and a
ton of action you can create anything you desire if you've ever lost motivation because you're afraid your dreams are just too unrealistic this one is for you today's question Comes from bree who writes hey marie you're such an inspiration i so respect your advice thank you here's my situation my whole life i've had big dreams and lots of ambition then this little word started to pop up from people around me unrealistic for example i wanted to work in publishing i was told that was unrealistic there were so many obstacles and so few jobs however i
now work for the second largest publishing company in The world but there's a new dream i want to pursue and i can already hear the cacophony of voices in my head insisting this dream is unrealistic a certain level of realism is necessary but too much can create self-doubt so marie how do i handle not only hearing from others how unrealistic my dream is but also not let myself drown out my own desires thank you so much free i love this question so much bree every single one of us who both dreams and Creates things faces
voices of dissent both from people that we know from people that we don't know and very often the most deadly comes from within and if we don't take a thoughtful conscious approach to taking on our unrealistic dreams they just ain't gonna happen but if you are up for the challenge and i think you are here are five steps that can help step number one is frame your dream and here's what this means we can't become What we can't envision so when i say frame your dream what i mean is i want you to take a
picture of it in your mind's eye in vivid specific detail and then what i want you to do is translate that picture into words meaning write down that big unrealistic dream and i know that you may have heard about the power of writing things down before but the truth is most people just don't do it which is so crazy because the research is Conclusive on this there was a study done by dr gail matthews that shows that you are 42 more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down so what i want you
to do is whip out your journal or hop on that keyboard and get writing step number two is filter opinions and fend off negativity you've got to take responsibility for the energy that you allow in your life i want you to fend off negativity as much as humanly Possible you know we know so much more about the brain than we did just 20 years ago neuroscience has taught us incredible things like that our brains are continuously shaped by our thoughts and our experiences and you know this to be true i mean negativity is one of
the most toxic forces on the planet it's toxic for your brain for your nervous system and for your ability to stay motivated so do me this favor okay do not solicit Or listen to the opinions of people who are notorious for just being debbie downers the one mistake that i've seen people make consistently is they almost habitually talk to the exact person who is the most likely to shoot them down and make them feel like crap so don't do that and here's another key i want you to always always always consider the source meaning don't
put a lot of stock into other people's opinions unless they're actually out there consistently Taking risks and being brave and actually making things happen i mean if you think about it let's say i don't know you wanted to climb mount everest would you ever take advice from someone who's never even attempted the summit no of course not that would be crazy so don't take advice from anyone unless you really think it through and i want you to ask has this person achieved an unrealistic or impossible dream Are they taking meaningful risks on a consistent basis
do you admire who they are how they live and what they contribute if not do not use them as a sounding board for your idea step number three is flood yourself with positive examples so once you've removed the negative outputs as best as you can step number three is all about feeding your mind and surrounding yourself with Positive stories on a consistent basis of other people who have achieved unrealistic dreams so think about helen keller for example who was blind and deaf by the age of two yet with the help of teachers she created this
extraordinary literary career writing hundreds of speeches and essays and books and there are thousands of biographies at the library or even on netflix and the great thing that i love about biographies is you also get a Chance to witness other people's stumbles and their falls and all the failures that they experience along the way which of course stumbles and falls and failures those are inevitable for all of us and you know it's worth noting that just about anyone whose achievements are worthy of a biography or a documentary probably had an unrealistic dream so do this
for me feed your mind examples of people who speak out and Stand up for what they believe in and make change happen step number four is fast forward so if you've watched the show for any amount of time you know this i love end of life studies and here's what we know for a fact when you're on your deathbed you couldn't care less about what anybody who says your dreams are unrealistic says i mean brawny ware's research tells us this very very clearly that the single biggest regret people have when They're about to pass is
this i wish i had the courage to live a life true to myself not the life others expected of me so brie my friend stop worrying about what other people might think or say about how unrealistic your dream is it really does not matter the only thing that matters is what you do about it now step number five is focus on action so this my friend is the most important step of all action is the antidote to Fear and you don't have to take perfect action you just need to take any action brick by brick
inch by inch step by step that is how all great things are achieved and you know my mantra i believe everything is figure outable and the best way to figure anything out is through action-based learning so one more thing before we wrap up brie unrealistic dreams are totally where it's at that's where all the growth and the excitement in life comes from after All what other kind of dreams are there dreams like this marie you will not believe the dream i had last night so reasonable i'm shopping i'm getting all my normal vegetables but they
didn't have avocados i asked the manager he brought me some from the back so realistic so inspiring wow that uh sounds inspiring i mean you can do that i think i think you can make that happen So bree there you have it five steps to help you bring your unrealistic dreams to life and if you ever start to waiver remember this tweetable [Music] if someone tells you your big dream is unrealistic that's a sure sign you should go for it i'm a mom of a four-year-old and i'm expecting my second child later this year god
bless i'm a fan of your blog it's been very helpful in the process of adjusting my Thinking toward business does being ambitious or wanting more success mean you are ungrateful for the current gifts in your life is it possible to be fully grateful for the current blessings you have and still pursue the six figure income the fame the entrepreneurship etc with abandon want to know my answer do you yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes [Music] wait you know who else says yes [Applause] yes [Music] here's the reason why i love
this question i'm so happy that it came up one of the biggest challenges that most of us go through when we're starting to explore spirituality and discovering the whole idea of being super grateful for what You have is we can feel guilty about wanting more it's almost as if oh i really have to just you know be okay with everything i have now which is great but it's human to want to create it's human to want to grow to want to explore to expand and take in more and i just want to make a little
note here you know wanting more doesn't always equate to materialism it doesn't always mean toys you could want to touch more lives you Could want to expand your ability to love so wanting more in and of itself is nothing that you should shy away from and i absolutely believe with my heart and soul that you can be extremely grateful for what you have and go balls to the wall with your dreams so i have a few strategies to share with you that will help you accomplish this in my lovely book called make every man want
you how to be so irresistible you'll barely keep from dating yourself Which by the way we're going to give you a free audio download missy just because you asked such a great question i talk about a concept called this is it this is it really means that you treat this moment like it's the most amazing moment of your life you look around in your world and you just make it the best it can possibly be so in short wherever you're at that's where the party is so if you find yourself standing in line at a
bank and there's a really long line And everyone else is cranky this is it this is your moment so you're gonna party with it you're gonna hang out you're gonna have a great time talk to people on the line really appreciate where you're at but that doesn't stop you the whole this is it mentality doesn't stop you from having big dreams that you're also going to pursue so it's a matter of just finding that balance but you can absolutely do it and don't let anyone tell you that uh you're Ungrateful for what you have if
you have big dreams and ambitions so one more little note and it's about complaining this is a great way to just basically check yourself before you wreck yourself chickadee chickadee check yourself before you wreck yourself if you catch yourself complaining you've slipped out of the modality of being grateful for what you have and it's going to be really hard to really attract great things or be really ambitious or have The energy you need to achieve those big dreams so use complaining as a bit of a barometer if you find yourself saying oh this sucks my
current client sucks my boyfriend sucks not so good stop it don't beat yourself up but just get back into the grateful mode and keep kicking ass towards your dreams you know the marietv audience has been growing it's not just the ladies that love us i love my ladies but there's also some fellas out there i Know you won't admit it but you love us too and more exciting than that there's a lot of moms who are starting watch marietv with their kids so i've been hearing about that a lot and then i got this email
hi i'm olivia i'm 12 years old and i live in new zealand and i'm just getting to create my own digital publishing company as an author and illustrator i've just signed up for your best school free videos i don't need to have a Facebook page so i can't post that way yet i may start one when i know what to do with it i think your videos are very inspiring i've started to learn marketing now your videos are very helpful in this area and also how to get the right audience to notice and buy my
products i would love my books to touch people's hearts and really inspire them like these videos inspired me a few seconds ago thank you olivia smiley face When that email came in it absolutely filled my heart and i knew i needed to know more about who this amazing young viewer was turns out she made a video for us take a look hi i'm olivia lee it is blowing a gale outside but you know what rainy days are good for drawing my other favorite thing about a windy and rainy day is that it's perfect for writing
Welcome to my room this is my office that's my bed and if you ask me every single office should have a bed all right so hard after a hot day's typing the best thing is grabbing a good book and popping back on your office bits and beatings now if you'll excuse me i have stuff to catch up on So miss olivia has quite a few things to say about creativity about writing and about following your dreams so we're gonna talk with her right now via skype alright everyone so i am here with the amazing olivia
and i am so grateful it's afternoon here in new york city and olivia i know it's the morning for you right yeah it is actually about 8 30 8 30. awesome so um tell us a little bit more about Your inspiration to create books and to write stories and to just start your own business well ever since i was little i it was as i could hold a pin i've been drawing out my own stories like i had like i get a piece of paper and a pen and i'd have an idea for a story
and instead of like writing it with words i draw the pictures for each scene sometimes i'd have entire chapters just with just drawings in them with little Speech bubbles and a little later i was encouraged to maybe write down the words and then put the pictures with it so it sort of it grew from that in a way and then uh once i figured out how to get past the where's the letters on the keyboard stage it got a lot easier to type and i was able to uh do stories a little bit more properly
And add the pictures with them and it grew from there so yeah that's pretty much how it happened that's awesome and so did you start drawing just on pencil and paper or were you drawing on the computer well i do like to draw on computer programs but when when i started i was always it was always had a pencil and a paper and i found it really difficult to draw the pen but now i really like drawing with Pens and you know it's just stuff like that but i yeah i did a lot of pencil
drawings and uh i would just draw and draw and draw and eventually i had huge piles of just paper with lots of drawings on them and you can see you can still find boxes in our house with just these big boxes full of paper with drawings on them from however however old i was that's awesome i actually started um that was one of the first things that i learned how to Do when i was little and it was one of my favorite activities and for a while i thought i was going to be a fine
artist so i loved drawing just as much it sounds like as you do so curious do any of your friends have their own business and what do they think about you starting your own publishing company well none of my friends my age currently have their own businesses but they are really supportive when i tell them about it like i'll tell them That i did something new on my website or that i've done up a new set of tweets or something like that and they are so supportive they'll go oh wow i can't wait to see
it and or something like that and they're really encouraging really supportive they're great friends and i do have some adult friends though who do run their own businesses and the ones I've told are also really supportive so everyone rocks i love it and so have you met your adult friends through your parents or through friends of your parents is that how you got in touch well yeah pretty much i mean um we we're around the same area and so we uh we know them from around here and we meet them we catch up quite a
lot so yeah we spend a lot of time around each other so we do get to talk about that Sort of stuff actually quite a lot that's so great i love hearing that um so next thing i want to ask you because i think it's true for any entrepreneur when you run into challenges whether it's creative challenges and you're working on a story or it comes more to the technical side of your business how do you handle those challenges who do you go to to ask for for help well there's definitely mom and dad they
are Really helpful with business lots of stuff like my dad might help me with the texts and things because that's always fun yes um but there's this auntie google and cousin youtube they're my favorites my favorites they're really they're really helpful it's um with google because i might be needing to do some research On a time period and a book i'm working on and i'll go to google and i had a really weird thing i needed to look up and actually it's surprisingly helpful you know and with youtube i might have a book that needs
a certain style of drawing yeah and it's really hard to do that particular style or maybe i just don't know it or i've never even heard of it Or something like that yes so i'll look it up on youtube or or i'll get help to find it and i'll just watch um an artist who knows how to do it and practice and it's really really helpful yeah isn't it just amazing the time that we live in that you can just go online and whether you want information education or inspiration it's just all at your fingertips
and the thing i love about you olivia is that you get this on such a level it's like this is just how you Think and i can't tell you how excited i am for you because at 12 years old right you're almost 13. what you're going to be able to create in your life is just so miraculous and you're such an inspiration to me the fact that you're getting started this young i just think it's fantastic so thanks for sharing with us a little bit of how you overcome your challenges with uh what do you
call them is it uncle google and auntie youtube or did i get That switched up it's on youtube love it love it love it love it so um next thing i want to ask you as we're kind of wrapping this up one of the reasons i wanted to interview you was because i so admire your ambition and the fact that you had dreams and you had dreams around creating stories and creating books and you just take action and as i always say Everything is figureoutable so i know so many people in our audience of all
ages have a dream of having their own book and putting their ideas out into the world so what would you say to someone who's just starting out any tips for them well i do have a few tips that i would definitely give to a person like that i i've got well i know fine actually five tips love it my first one is that You should just start and write regularly because if you if you have a schedule and you just continue to you know jump through it then you'll get through it you know you'll finish
it if you don't then well you won't yes let me ask you before you go on to your next tip do you have a regular writing schedule for yourself well i do tr i had a little period where i was writing and writing and writing it Was going really well then i finished the first draft of the book and i took a break and i found that now i've got a great drawing spirit so i'm going for that yes so sometimes it's just i'm taking trends with it writing drawing writing drawing so it's that's sort
of how it works personally for me i love that and i actually find that to be very true as well like when you get those creative bursts as long as you're consistent with whatever it is that you Want to create it works well so yeah let's go on to your second tip all right well my second one is it's really easy to publish your own book online in today's world i mean because on amazon apple kobo and all of the other ones have free guides that you can just follow the instructions of and you'll find
it really easy to just you know get it up there it's really great yes my third one is that make sure your cover is actually it looks really cool Make sure it looks really good and that your title is really importantly really easy to read when it's the size of the thumbnail online yeah it's really small so this is big olivia i think that this is such a huge tip and i'm so glad that you brought it up so the idea of not only having your cover be really good but having your title be really
good and most importantly that when it's that Tiny as a thumbnail that it's still attractive and it still connects um i was reading this article about a woman in i believe it was forbes she started selling vintage clothing online um using ebay and one of the things that she discovered by the way she started off doing this like just in her house and now her company i think is doing about 129 million a year in revenue all from one of her biggest things was making sure that the pictures look Really good when they're tiny and
she said that's one of the tips that most people don't get so i just love how wicked smart you are that you got that already so that's huge thanks for that thank you very much uh my fourth one is that publishing is really easy but you still need a really good book because if you if you skip on the quality what happens if someone picks up that book and goes Oh interesting reads it and they go uh they don't really like it if it's really bad right then um well then any other books that that
you know that your name is associated with or that you've written they'll probably assume that they're really bad as well so you shouldn't really skimp on the quality of the book give it your best and the cover and everything just yeah I'll tell you you know you're talking about something that we talk about in our b-school program and it's this strategy i talk about i call it the happy meal mistake where people will put out kind of crap stuff on their website and then expect people to want to pay them really good money for some
of their other training or their programs and it's kind of like you know if someone took you on a date to mcdonald's and got you a happy meal Would you ever really expect them to go flying you off to paris for some romantic weekend probably not so it's like you're talking about in the book world right not wanting to make the happy meal mistake do you like this tip i really like it so you're like in your what you're saying is with your book it's like you don't want to put out a happy meal book
right that's like kind of low quality And no one's going to want to come back for a gourmet dinner oh that's really funny uh my fifth tip is that you should celebrate every milestone when you finish your first draft because that's a really big accomplishment i mean you've gotten to the end of something relatively so um you should celebrate just whatever tickles your fancy just celebrate in a way and when you finish your edit edit You should celebrate that and when you finally publish it you should also celebrate like my family when we uh finish
the first edit of the book we'll we'll often go to a beach and we have this little little uh we a recently made tradition that we have where we go to a beach we just get something yummy to eat and then we do a dance for some reason We do a dance i don't know why it does it's fun that's right because it makes you feel alive and that's like what better way to hang out and celebrate with your family then to dance around and be goofy and enjoy each other's company i think that's awesome
yeah it's a lot of fun that's really cool olivia i just think you are fantastic and i Want to first of all thank you for writing us that email months ago letting us know what a difference our videos make and i just adore you i think you're fantastic your parents are great so please send them my best and yeah you got to keep us up to date and i know right now everyone watching this marietv episode they'll be very very inspired and a lot of moms also watch with their daughters and i'm sure they're sons
too so you're providing a Great example to many many many folks in our audience so thank you for that oh my goodness i hope this got you so excited to go after that big dream but if fear is still holding you back fear not you got to watch this episode right now it's all about how to find the courage to do anything and i'm going to teach you the question that you must ask and answer to find that courage you need to move ahead anything that you might consider a Failure is really just a necessary
step on your journey to success