Insight Without Action is Worthless.

As an entrepreneur it can feel like an incredibly lonely journey. Friends and family can think you're barking up the wrong tree and it can feel like the problems you face are yours to face alone. Doubts and fears creep up and you begin to wonder if your big, beautiful dream is all worth it. When I discovered Marie's work (especially MarieTV), I began to discover that what I was going through on my entrepreneurial path was, well, normal! I didn't have a big neon sign on my head that said 'Entrepreneurial Weirdo' and that the work I do really does matter. Since discovering MarieTV, I have been unafraid to put my work proudly out into the world. I love what I do and I know that the service I provide really does make a difference to the filmmakers I work with. Marie's sense of humor and her undeniable sassiness is fun and inspiring, so I never fail to tune into MarieTV. I always have a bit more of a skip in my step for the day when I finish watching. Running a business should be fun and not a bore, and Marie's advice always steers you towards seeking the joy in your business and valuing what you do, no matter what niche you are in.

Have you ever been to a really nice boutique and the staff hands you clothes you would never have thought to try on? Then you try them on and BAM! You look amazing. That's what B-School and MarieTV did for me. I'm 55 years old. I had assumed the rest of my life would be about becoming a grandma, holding the wrinkles at bay, blah, blah, blah. Now I have a whole new vision for my future. The best is yet to come! The doors have been kicked wide open and what I now see are endless opportunities - writing, teaching, traveling, loving and encouraging a whole lot of folks who are struggling through what we were struggling through. That's what it's all about!

Thanks to Marie, and her team, I now believe in a different type of future than my parents taught me. I now believe that entrepreneurship is not only possible, it is natural to the spirit. One thing that has stuck with me for several years is a saying that Marie said in an episode sometime ago, "Don't let anybody stop you, not even yourself".... This wisdom has never left me, and it has given me the courage to at least try to create a lasting vision out of my passion even when my fears try to talk me out of it. I come from an average middle class life, and had been convinced that there was no other way to live than working for little pay and struggling doing something I don't love. I didn't know there were other options, I didn't know that there was a practical way to turn my passion into profit or Money Tickets as Marie calls them. I have been very quiet about how Marie and what she does has touched me, as I am sure she has done so for many others, and I have always assumed that my opinion wasn't so important. But now I want to thank you, I want thank her for facing her fears first, so that she could show me how to face mine.

Prior to MarieTV I was an assistant at an insurance brokerage firm. I struggled to climb the corporate ladder for 18 years. November 2014 I completed my bachelors degree in marketing and had been listening to Marie Forleo. Her words of wisdom made me realize there was something more for me out there. The burning inside said I was bigger than this. I needed to find something else to fulfill me, as commercial insurance was not doing this for me anymore. In May 2015 I decided I wanted to reinvent myself and create a painting party venue. My loving husband supported this idea 100%, and there was born the Art Cellar Houston. I can't thank you enough for your encouragement from afar!!! Every week there is a different inspirational video that helps me to feel comforted in the fact that I made the right decision. I am a success! I had not felt this before in my commercial insurance life. We have been open nearly two months and already are close to covering rent. This is huge for me. Many people offered discouraging words of, "It will take 3 years to cover your bills". We just may prove them wrong in two months. Yay!

I found Marie TV at a point in my life when I needed you the most! Divine intervention perhaps? I was staying in the hospital by my husband's side night after night, week after week, surgery after surgery following a tragic injury. Five surgeries in 14 months. I went from a Newlywed wife to a 24 hr nurse overnight prior to our honeymoon. I was in the hospital chapel praying and getting some much needed solitude and change of scenery, seeking strength and hope when I came across a Marie TV episode on YouTube. I became immediately addicted to your uplifting messages teaching me exactly what I needed! Strength and hope. I could not have gotten through those dark times without you Marie! You empowered me to be the best wife/nurse/woman I could be. My thoughts changed from despair and victimization to being as positive and strong as I could be for both my husband's sake and my own. It's been 22 months since I found you and let me tell ya girl I can't live without you! You constantly remind me to never give up and teach me how to look at life with a new perspective of strength, love and hope. Even in my deepest despair your positive energy and love were contagious and helped me to be able to smile and spread the love and cheer to my husband, his medical team of doctors and surgeons and the hospital staff. Everyone commended me for my strength through this time and I owe it ALL to you my dear Marie! You played an integral part in making me who I am today. Thank you for being YOU and sharing your wealth of knowledge and compassion with us all. With the knowledge, strength, hope and encouragement you have given and continue to give to me I now have what it takes to rise from the ashes of a horrific event in my life. I am going to write a memoir of our story for our children and grandchildren using everything you have taught me which I am hoping will inspire them to live life to the fullest in ANY situation, ALWAYS have hope, and NEVER give up. Who knows, perhaps it will be published and empower other women too. Whenever I am low on energy, feeling overwhelmed by life, I turn to MarieTV to lift me up and motivate me to LIVE and have a positive impact on as many people in life as I can.

Even though I may not be fully employed and raking in the big bucks, Marie has helped me realize the importance of putting in effort each day. Sure, occasionally, we deserve a day off. But in general, make an effort to make each day better than before. I actively keep myself from laziness and Marie helps keep me from sliding into a slump. Her wise words and rocking wardrobe inspire me to be the best person I can - with or without full time work.

I have had a lot of trouble in my life with social anxiety for as long as I can remember. My anxiety led to having focusing problems in school, sleeping problems and I always thought something was seriously wrong with me. It breaks my heart that I never got any help then, I went through my whole childhood without someone seeing me and my desperate need for help. All of this led to a lot of troubles with alcohol and negative self talk in my teenage years and early adult life. But about three years ago I had enough! So I decided to change my life. Moved away from my hometown to study. And then the new me, or the real me, started to grow and I became a strong independent young lady! I started watching your videos on YouTube about 2 to 3 years ago when I was trying to find videos about self development, and just seeing your positive energy makes me feel stronger and I can say for sure that all your videos helped me in some way. It is much thanks to you that I am the person that I am today. Today I am happy and proud of who I am thanks to all hard work. And my biggest dream is to help people in some way, I have a huge interest in natural healing such as meditation, yoga, healthy lifestyle and massage therapy.

I can say that before I had no courage to do anything on my own. But now I travel to different countries on my own. I have learned that I can do anything I set my mind to. Three years ago I could not speak English, I actually failed my English class in school. But now I write and speak fluently! And I just moved to America to live with my best friend and love of my life. I learned to stay focused and motivated on my goals thanks to your videos. You have inspired me to do something good with my life, like helping other people, and to make a career out of it!

As someone who has struggled for YEARS with how to actually know how to move forward and then do it, one thing Marie said ... well, actually her mom said, changed my life. I tell people about it all the time and that is: EVERYTHING IS FIGUREOUTABLE. I think it's easy for those of us who come from modest background or have generational histories of social trauma and disenfranchisement to be bogged down by the weight of despair. As the daughter of my once impoverished African American dad, I definitely inherited the hopelessness that comes from a legacy of being beaten down, having rights removed, fighting and then having one's land, home, family wrenched away no matter what you do. So, in tiny ways, that mentality would defeat my efforts. I'd start something, come upon an obstacle and grow sad, not realizing that I *could* figure it out, that I DO have the resources to make something happen. Marie - you taught me this!

I was born in poverty, and for much of my adult life, I continued to live in poverty. I was frequently bullied as one of the only poor kids in an upper-middle-class town, and my teenage years were as miserable as my childhood. I finally "got out" by moving across the country for college. Shortly after I graduated, the economy tanked. Like many millennials, I made $10-12/hr occasionally (whenever there were any temporary, part-time jobs available). I struggled to pay my student loans and had to go on Income-Based Repayment. I attempted to go to graduate school a couple of times in a more marketable field, but kept getting discouraged by the length of time it would require and dropped out. I gained over 40 pounds and looked terrible -- I didn't take care of myself and just didn't think there was anything I could do about it. In my darkest days, I would obsess over my former classmates' success (while at the same time hating them for being more privileged than me, chalking everything up to my poor upbringing).

I did volunteer for random groups in an attempt to make myself feel better, but that would only give me a temporary high -- as soon as it was over, I would return to my run-down apartment and remember how bad my life was. I did attempt to apply to higher-paying jobs, but nothing ever panned out. Some employers actually scolded my unsteady and unimpressive work history to my face; others told me that I was shady for job-hopping. When I posted on an unemployment message board, people immediately jumped on me, called me a liar/bum/idiot and expressed disbelief that I was unable to find work (given where I had gone to school). I began to think of myself as a shady, worthless person as well. When I found Marie's video randomly on YouTube one day, I couldn't believe how gently and yet poignantly she helped those who were very lost. This was not something I'd ever seen before, in real life or on the web.

Her no-excuses attitude and building a life step-by-step strategies have helped me get off my a** and start doing the little things that led to the big things. I turned those part-time, temporary jobs into real references (using Marie's advice of asking for testimonials). I volunteered in a very targeted manner (in the industry I wanted to work in), not just for random organizations like I did in the past. I listened to Marie's advice on not having the "scarcity mindset" and forced myself to be generous, despite being worried about my income. I produced samples of my work in my own time, even when my actual jobs didn't create them, as Marie suggested in her videos. Within a few years, I had turned those low-paying jobs into $20/hr jobs. Soon, the $20/hr jobs became $25/hr jobs. One day, an opportunity to take a small, part-time position for $38/hr came up. I immediately jumped on the opportunity, used the higher wage as leverage at my next job, and then broke into the low six figures by the time I turned 30. Without Marie's extreme honesty about the LENGTH of time and the million pieces it takes to build something whole, I would have just continued staying in poverty, felt that having money was for those lucky people who could just get everything at once, and gave up. Although I am not an entrepreneur, Marie's advice applies to EVERYTHING in life. No one (other than the very fortunate/blessed) just wakes up just wakes up and gets everything all at once. I was so entranced by her story -- her willingness to work all sorts of low-standing jobs in order to build something great someday. And, whenever I wanted to give up because something bad happened or things didn't work out, I would just tune in to another episode of MarieTV and feel the courage to try again. Advice from her video has helped me face down many of my life's harshest problems, from learning to forgive to pulling myself up from poverty to not being angry at skeptics. She truly is a life coach. I am *not* an aspiring life/health coach, entrepreneur, SAHM, or charismatic blogger -- basically, I am not the typical consumer of Marie's products. I am just a normal person who grew up in poverty and continued to live in poverty until a few years ago. Because of her unique blend of practical advice and inspiration, I was finally able to break my family's cycle of poverty.