Marie Forleo is passionate about helping women recognise and achieve their worth.

Their self-worth, their financial worth, the worth of their business – you name it, Marie is dedicated to helping women see worth in themselves and act on it.

If you’ve missed the Marie Forleo phenomenon (trust us – it’s well-worth catching up on on!), Marie is an entrepreneur, author and philanthropist, who first started out as a life coach at 23 years old.

Since taking that risk, she has created one of the most successful and reputable brands for future or existing entrepreneurs to seek out and reach their business dreams. Now going into its 11th year, Marie is the Founder of B-School, which helps people make the business of their dreams their reality. B-School has had 55,000 entrepreneurs graduate and go onto lead their businesses. Oh, and we should mention Oprah Winfrey has named her as a “thought leader for the next generation” – no biggie!

In 2019, Business Chicks toured Marie and she brought more energy and inspiration to the stage than we thought possible. Since then, we have been inundated with requests for more Marie and so joined by Business Chicks’ Founder and Global CEO, Emma Isaacs, we sat down with the two entrepreneurs to unpack their combined 40+ years of business experience. During their Masterclass Online, they tackled the big topics like how fear can cloud our judgement, honing in on our strengths and how we can bring a little bit more joy into our lives.

Here’s some of Marie’s best tools:

It’s okay to love money (and you should treat money like something you love)

Marie isn’t afraid to say, in all capital letters, “I LOVE MONEY”. She doesn’t love money more than the people around her or her values but she is steadfast on having a positive money story and maintaining financial freedom.

It was her parents’ divorce at eight years old, and watching her mum experience the fallout of losing her financial independence, that Marie first began her journey to understanding and controlling her money. While it hasn’t always been smooth sailing, Marie wants all women to not feel shame or greed about money, and also be educated on it.

“One of the most satisfying things about what I do is help other women create financial freedom,” she says. “I will make sure women own their worth, charge what they’re worth and pay attention to their margins in their business.”

A common theme she identifies is fear getting in the way of people taking back control of their money. Her first step to overcoming that is to treat money like someone or something you love. When you love something, you pay attention to it, nurture it and listen to it. Unlike we commonly do with money, you don’t ignore something you love, fight with it, pretend it’s not there or call it dirty.

Get to know your money and take care of it as if you love it (and that’s not a shameful thing to do).

Have a business idea? Find the sweet spot

If you’re an aspiring business owner and either wanting to try an idea or come up with a business idea, Marie recommends finding your ‘sweet spot’.

The sweet spot is, “What you’re amazing at [think your skills, talents, what is valuable to you] and looking at the marketplace – where is the need for this product or service, or the problem to be solved. Provide the sweet spot between what brings you the most joy and plays to your strengths and where other people need this.”

After becoming clear on your business idea, the next step is testing it in the marketplace. And, this doesn’t have to be hugely expensive but it must be genuine.

The first thing to test is if you actually like doing and working on your idea. “Get every idea down on paper – what would this career actually look like, do I look doing this or am I willing to spend 12 to 14 hours a day on this? ”

After that, test the marketplace. And, this doesn’t mean asking your friends and family if they would buy your product or services. As Marie says, “There’s a big difference between people who say, ‘Yes I would buy that’ and people putting their credit card down.”

Fear should act as your guide, not a warning sign

First thing to clear up: we’re not talking about that fear you feel when you’re walking across the road and a car is flying towards you and your instinct is to … run. That fear keeps us alive! Marie speaks to the fear that “keeps us small and stuck”.

“Fear is actually a GPS for where your soul most wants to go,” Marie says. “99% of the time, the fear that we feel when we’re changing career, making a new business hire or starting something new is directive. It is part of your inner intelligence that is going to guide you towards what is going to provide you with maximum soul growth.”

That doesn’t mean what you choose to pursue will be “rainbows and unicorns” but as Marie adds, “For most of us, the growth that comes from fear is absolutely worth it.”

There’s founded fear and you can tell by your intuition

Something that Marie is super open about is that she has a heightened level of aversion to financial risks. Anytime she’s dived into the deep end financially, she’s had a few jobs on the side so that if it didn’t go to plan, she had back-ups.

While we can use fear as a GPS for where our soul wants to go, we still need to be careful in the fear that we follow.

In Marie’s words, “How do you tell the difference between normal fear and our intuition telling us, ‘HELL NO … move away'”.

To work out that difference, Marie recommends having a moment to yourself, taking a deep breath and asking yourself this, “Does the idea of saying yes to this opportunity make me feel expansive or contracted?”

“In the nanosecond after that, your body will either feel a sense of lightness or joy, even if it’s scary… on the other hand, if something in your body feels heavy or full of dread, that’s your intuition telling you to walk away.”

Simplify to amplify

Little mantras and mottos is what Marie lives by and simplify to amplify is a BIG one.

One of the most common trends Marie observes in business owners is them spreading themselves too thin across their business.

“People will often try and do too much and they’re not really anywhere making any significant progress,” she says.

Marie lives by her own motto after investing so much of her effort and time into B-School, which people initially mocked. Why wouldn’t she expand, offer more services and products a.k.a. do more? But, every year, Marie has adapted, refined and improved B-School so that after 11 years, it a tried and tested product that has served thousands of people across the world.

Like her, she suggests for business owners to focus intensively on a couple parts of their business and do it the best you possibly can. Does that mean delivering an outstanding customer service experience for your clients? Nurture your team? Get clear on your brand identity and messaging?

When you identify the metrics that matter to you as a business owner and you pay attention to that, your business will move ahead in the direction you genuinely want it to.

This is just a taster of the hour we got to pick the brains of Marie Forleo after her decades of business experiences (trust us, there was tonnes more packed in). If you think you could benefit from more of this, then you should know that Marie is about to open her only intake for her 2020 B-School. Over eight weeks, she’ll teach you how to build a meaningful and profitable business. You can find out more direct from Marie, here.

In full transparency, all of us here at Business Chicks are passionate about Marie’s work and the B-School program (it’s the reason we say yes to anything she does!) and that means we may earn a referral fee if you sign up through the links above.