Building a Business with Intention // How Marie Poulin Went from Experimenting to Designing Her Life [Podcast]

Marie Poulin is a successful strategist and designer who joins us today in a special episode where we do a “movie style” presentation of She Means Business starring: Marie Poulin’s life. Join us today for an exciting adventure and a chance to win two amazing giveaways!

(Don’t miss this amazing giveaway below!)

The Story Begins

Like any great movie, we start in the beginning where Marie was working at a studio for about 4 years when she realized she was working a ton with really nowhere else to go. Feeling she needed a creative outlet as well as an uptick in revenue, she started looking at what else was out there. Telling her boss that she wanted to possibly go out on her own, she was terrified what the reaction would be. Her boss allowed her to keep working and allowed her a few days to freelance per week and mentioned that he kind of always knew the day would come (even before she did).

Marie hit the ground hustling and began reaching out to people to let them know that she was available and trying to find clients. She took to social media and ended up landing two of her major clients from Twitter from a chance encounters, one of which was Marie Forleo. Marie credits this to really just putting it out there, doing whatever she could to make sure people knew who she was and what she had to offer. Her only plan initially was to see if she could survive working on her own and make the same amount of money that she had made while employed full time. Mostly experimenting early on, you just have to do the work and honor the process in order to get your business figured out.

The Pinnacle of the Movie (Key Breakthrough Moments)

Working on your business and working on yourself really go hand in hand. Marie credits business besties, hiring coaches and being willing to bring in the right people to make it a success. After one project really backfired and went poorly, she realized that there were things that needed to be put in place such as systems and processes to prevent ever feeling that way again. She wanted to focus on building relationships and back end setup and worked with Natasha from Systems Rock. Helping her with rebuilding her processes, Natasha became Marie’s next inspiration for moving into teaching. After getting comfortable with her own processes (and with Natasha’s help) she nailed down her ideas and was able to later sell her processes to other designers down the road as a course.

Marie credits building a community of like-minded people to get her through the rough spots in her business. Rather than pinpointing one major thing, she recommends hiring people that know more than you do – joining masterminds, asking for help or finding business besties. Working in a bubble is your enemy.

Tactics you can learn are great but working on yourself as a human being can be the most important key. “If you don’t understand people, you don’t understand business” states Marie.

The other 5% should be a willingness to speak to customers – you must make sure that people actually need your idea. Be willing to be challenged on your assumptions.

The Happy Ending

Marie has a lot of creativity and freedom in how she spends her time. She was lucky enough to buy a house in a place where most people vacation. She and her partner have completely designed their business to fit their needs and not the other way around and were intentional in creating their dream life.

The biggest takeaway for Marie is that if you want something bad enough there is a way to make it happen. You can design a business that supports your life and it is essential to do so. If you want to live your life in the woods from a laptop it’s doable but you must design your business intentionally to fit that. Life is too short and it’s better not to view things as impossible. Marie warns that it doesn’t mean that it is necessarily easy but it is possible and worth it in the end.

the giveaway

Leave a comment below and share your biggest takeaway from today’s episode below for your chance to win:

Think Like a Strategist E Book by Marie Poulin

Design your Business: a course geared at creatives and designers where Marie’s system will help you build (or rebuild) your business from the ground up.

outlineof this episode

[1:13] Intro to this episode: Marie Poulin’s entrepreneurial journey: How we get intentional about living our dream lives.
[2:03] Marie Poulin’s story about why she decided to become an entrepreneur.
[5:45] Marie’s first steps — Willingness to put yourself out there.
[7:48] The “Internship phase” – just seeing what you can do and what your processes are like.
[9:13] Marie Poulin talks about what kept her going through the massive journey of personal growth.
[11:25] How the weight lifted when systems were in place, and how Marie was then able to sell her process to others.
[13:58] Minimize time spent, by improving processes.
[15:15] The factor that gave Marie key breakthroughs.
[16:25] Building a business is 95% mindset and who we are.
[18:05] The other 5%. Marie Poulin’s top tips for anyone who is launching a business.
[18:51] Be intentional: Design life and business around what you value.
[21:19] The biggest lesson Marie has learned along her journey.
[22:57] Leave a comment on the blog for a chance of winning Marie’s ebook or course.

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