462 - Rejection Made Her Rich — The BILLIONAIRE Mindset You Need to Hear

0:00I train her how to do her eyebrows. She's like, you, that was fantastic. But you know what? You should do this. You should have this kit for people that are everywhere because you are only in Beverly Hills. Then I thought, wow, that's a, yeah, you're right. That's a good idea. Good idea.

0:18Marie Forleo:You said, don't let anyone with bad eyebrows tell you how to live your life. And I was like, yes. So the fact that you have this sense of humor in all of this business wisdom, it's just, I adore you. Well, you have to have a sense of humor now. Yes. To go through everything. To go through life, right? Yes. And business. So you grew up in communist Romania. Take us back to that time. Tell us what living with restriction and fear taught you about freedom. And I want to say freedom is my number one value in life. So the emphasis that you put on this throughout the book, again, made my heart sing.

0:54Well, living in Romania and in the communist regime, late 70s, early 80s was very difficult. It was harder and harder every year. And to the point where people didn't have food, they would wait for a chicken like for hours and hours, all night long until the next day, and maybe they would get the chicken. No electricity. We had to do our homework at the candlelight. It was very difficult, very, very difficult. And besides that was the freedom of speech. You couldn't say anything. You had to be worried about everything. At six o 'clock in the morning, you will have the police coming and raid your house.

1:41You lived in a constant fear. This is what it was, Romania in the 80s.

1:46Marie Forleo:And when you dreamed of America back then, what did that dream feel like to you? Like, did you have an idea in your heart? Was it an emotion? Everything. You know what? I was watching, I had bootleg Pretty Woman in Beverly Hills Cups and the color purple. And watching that, I could see myself walking on Rodeo Drive and going through all the shops. And I remember Beverly Hills Cup, I was dreaming of the city hall, that beautiful building. And that was the dream. I couldn't even think past that. And when I came to United States, then was I wake up. Good morning, Anastasia. You don't speak the language.

2:31You don't know anyone. Your entire family and communities in Romania, it's quite difficult.

2:38Marie Forleo:One of the stories I loved, you shared about listening to a little radio, Voice of America with your grandfather. Yes. Tell me about some of the mindset lessons that you learned from him. The one line I wrote down, which I loved, is that your mind, your heart and spirit are your fortress and no one has access to that. Correct. I think my grandfather that was an emigrant himself in Romania went through so much in his life. so much. I mean, I need to write another book to just walk you through that. He was such a strong person that nothing could break him down. Not the communists, not the taking.

3:20The communist regime took two properties from him, all the land, all the animals, everything that he had. And he ended up at 80 in a two-bedroom apartment in the fourth floor with no elevator. So he used to chime. I will never forget. He will have breakfast and with convoy beats, he will hum and he will chant. And he used to tell me after we'll listen in a corner to Voice of America, you are a fortress. You should not let anyone break that. Your mind controls everything. And I think I, but watching him, forget about what he told me, watching him was the biggest lesson of my life.

4:07Marie Forleo:Isn't that interesting how it's, you know, right before we started rolling the cameras, we were talking about my book and everything is figureoutable, which actually comes from a notion from my mom. And it was a conversation, but similarly, I learned by watching her and seeing how she moved in the world and seeing how she behaved in the face of little and big obstacles. Right. So powerful. I believe that people misunderstand, they misunderstood when I always said, you have to have a mentor. A mentor means you have a person that you watch every move they make, everything they talk, and then they should be the people that you want to follow them.

4:54and not, oh, okay, let's sit down and I'm going to do your homework. Let me take you step by step. That's not going to happen.

5:01Marie Forleo:No, it's not going to happen. And I love to, you know, your mom also had such a huge influence on you. She was an entrepreneur in a time and a place when, first of all, many women were not entrepreneurs and it wasn't permitted in Romania. I loved this line again. Whenever I'm reading and prepping for a conversation like this, I have out my highlighter and my gel pens, and I underlined this one hard about work hard, not complain, and figure it out. And I think there was this great scene that you described in the book about when your mom, who was making these beautiful custom dresses, when they would come in, the women would come in and they tried on the dress for the first time and you and your mom would watch these women's faces light up.

5:45Marie Forleo:What do you think was happening there about this feeling beautiful and us feeling beautiful and it makes us feel powerful. Well, remember in Romania at that time, you couldn't walk like right now. You walk across the street and you have access to so many dresses, so many outfits. We didn't have any. So my mother was one of the very few that could make custom everything. So she would bring a shoemaker that would do custom because you couldn't go in a store to buy shoes at that time. Later on, of course, but when I was 12, you couldn't. She would bring somebody to make shoes or evening pocket. I mean, evening, no pocket, evening bag.

6:34Yes, purse. Everything was custom. The dresses were custom. So it was so special. Right now we are inundated. Like, I look at myself, I have so many clothes. At that time, you had one dress, oh my my God, you felt like you were the Cinderella.

6:52Marie Forleo:Yeah. Okay. Do you feel like it was that seed that was planted though, where you began to witness again, it was less about the words, but more about the witnessing where you would see a woman come in and have this gorgeous custom dress on and went from maybe having a doomy gloomy or just a bad day to feeling so powerful. That was another line in your book that I love because I've always, I've loved beautiful things. And I think beauty is amazing. I wouldn't consider myself like any kind of beauty fashion queen. However, when you started talking about feeling, when we feel beautiful, we feel powerful.

7:25And I was like, yes, because nothing makes you as a woman, nothing makes you more powerful that when you feel like I am in power, I look good. I feel good. I have my high heels. I'm ready to conquer the world. Yes. Yes. I totally agree that it's all a feeling. all the feeling the way we feel if we we it's our mind that is going to help us to go through life yeah it's your mind that is going to help you to conquer everything you want a friend of mine the

8:02Marie Forleo:other day we were talking and uh she was having a rough time they were like you know all of us we go through that where there's challenges in business challenges at home challenges then they all, I call it a tiramisu of stress because I'm Italian American. And I said to her, she's like, Marie, what are we going to do? And she's like, can we just see each other for dinner? And I was like, absolutely. And I was like, she's like, what are you wearing? And I told her, I said, oh, I'd have to film something. So I've, you know, got it all done. And she's like, well, I'm just in my yoga clothes. And I said, nope.

8:29Marie Forleo:I was like, you are going to go take a shower before I meet you. I said, promise me, just trust me. I know you feel like crap. You're going to feel so much better if you just shower, get dressed, put on something that feels good. And she's like, do you know what? That was the best advice I got all day. Cause she showed up at that restaurant and her entire demeanor was different just from taking a shower. She didn't do anything special. Holy and get dressed. I mean, every day I will show up at work for 30 years. Yeah. I will get dressed. I will put my makeup. I will do my hair. I will never go to work just looking like I was ready to take a shower.

9:03Yes.

9:04Marie Forleo:It's just, I will, I will never do that. Makes a difference. Take us back to when you decided to leave Romania. What was your life like? Was that notion of leaving the only country that you had ever known terrifying? And what do you think it takes for someone to walk away from everything they know towards a dream that isn't even real yet? It was very, very good. But remember my parents, my grandparents emigrated from Macedonia to Romania. So I heard their story was hard. They will always talk about back home. When we left, we had a huge community. But because I didn't go through that, I really didn't realize how important that was.

9:50And I wanted so bad to leave and to come to America that I didn't process that much. And the harder it was in Romania in the communist regime, the more ambitious I was to leave the country. So I came here though, and I realized what I left. I left my home. I left the community. I left my family. I have a huge family. I didn't know anyone here. It was the most traumatic experience of my life. When you first arrived in the U.S., you didn't speak hardly any English. No, nothing. Not hardly.

10:28Marie Forleo:Okay, so nothing. You spoke zero English. So I know that there was a certain TV show, however, that not only helped you begin to learn the language, but also find a sense from my interpretation of comfort and began to relieve at least the tiniest bit of that loneliness. And of course, planted a seed that would come together years later. What was that show and how did it support you? So in Romania, I used to have four bootleg tapes, VCR tapes, and I watched including the color purple. I came to United States, and the first six months, I think I cried every single day. And flipping the channel, we had the tiny little TV because we didn't have enough money to buy more.

11:13And there were many daytime TV shows, if you remember. I mean, you are very young, but there were many. Yeah, Phil. And for some reason, no, even before that, Sarah, Jessica, Raphael, and many, many, many, there were a lot. For some reason, I stopped watching this woman called Oprah Winfrey Show. And her voice and everything was so, so comforting for me. And I would watch the show, and I felt like I was home. When I started writing the book, I realized why. Because I didn't recognize her because Oprah in color purple looks totally different. It was her voice because I watched that movie a hundred times with my family, my girlfriends, my cousins.

12:04And it was a voice of comfort, of being home. And that's why I was watching. It was so amazing to kind of discover right now, 35 years later. And it was something that was holding me. It was like a thread that I will like hold, just will keep me going. And I will say, no, I have, she's helping me. You, you are helping me. I felt like I was home among all the, my cousins and my family. And her audience was always like, she was so cheerful and, and making everybody feel like you're her best friend. Yes. And, and full circle in 1998, I'm on, on her show doing her eyebrows. And you know what was the funniest thing was that my husband wanted to watch, um, uh, Lakers, the basketball and the news, cause he was in, wanted to watch the politics.

13:01He was speaking perfect English. And I told him like, we make a deal. I want one, only one hour to watch the Oprah Winfrey show and you could watch anything else for some reason, sometimes will be, uh, something that he wanted to watch. And like now, this is my time. You can't wait. It's only one hour. And he used to say, I don't understand why you want to watch this woman. You don't understand anything, what she's saying. What do you want to, why you want to do this? And as a joke, I used to say, you know what? I need to understand how she, and learn how she asks questions because the day I'm going to be on her show, I need to know how to answer.

13:43It was a joke. Imagine it was a joke. But you know what? just watch what you put in the universe because it's going to happen.

13:51Marie Forleo:I was going to say, it was like, it feels to me like those seeds were planted in your heart and in the universe way back, even in Romania, just what you realized writing and putting the book together, that that voice and that sense of coming home, it's almost like coming home to your destiny. So let's talk about when Victor, your husband at the time lost his job and you refused to give up. Let's talk about the resourcefulness, how that played a part. And especially this moment where something in you said, I need to make a call to another immigrant to have a conversation that would put you on the path to your dreams.

14:27So he lost his job and we had a very interesting conversation. And I told him like, Victor, we need to forget who we were in Romania. Because he, you know, he had a job. He was high rank. His family was very high up. we both had very comfortable life other than what was around us and I said we need to forget who we were and let's start from nothing let's see you speak English I will get a job and you could go and start computers because I thought from that time that that was the future I think he had an ego fear he couldn't get any job. He didn't want to do anything anymore. I think his ego was crushed and he didn't want, he couldn't do it.

15:22I totally understood later. And even then I said, you know what? I don't think he's going to be able to. I faced the fact after a few months and I met Mihaela, another immigrant that was working in a salon. She was pregnant and she needed to take three months off and she helped me to get that job with the idea that I will go, she's going to come back and I will leave the place. But it was still incredible for me because I will have three months of an experience for my first time working in America. So I got the job and it was an incredible experience, I have to say. Very interesting. Like just walking into that salon,

16:09Marie Forleo:I loved how you painted the picture where it was just mirror and glass and sunlight and just a completely different environment. That sounds like anything you had experienced in person before. Yes. And the owners were really amazing. Two ladies, one German, one Italian. Very stylish, very chic. And I really wanted to learn from them. And I did. I learned a lot from them. Giovanna in Utah. Never forget. I also loved how you said, and I think that this is really, really important. So I've run my business now for 25 years and we've had many incredible people that I've worked with and for, and I also am in touch with so many other fellow business owners.

16:49Marie Forleo:And I loved in the story where you said there was a colleague of yours that when you would stay behind and clean your boss's stations, because you wanted to be in their orbit, you wanted to learn from them. You wanted to go above and beyond. And a colleague had said to you, well, you know, that's not in your job description. And you made a very clear line. And again, it was another moment in your book where I cheered because anyone who says that's not in my job description and just stops at what's required, you were like, you're probably going to be in the same role 25 years later. And now with AI and how everything is changing, you won't have a job in like a week.

17:23Marie Forleo:Yes. And I just so admire, appreciate, respect. And I want to be a voice that brings back traditional work ethic values because they shape you into the most incredible person in the world. You become a survivor. You will figure out doesn't matter what is throwing through you, AI, you will find a way. You will. Anything, you will find a way to survive. And people want that person around. Absolutely. Like anyone who's creating something, when you see someone who goes above and beyond and who has humility and is an open mind, open heart wants to serve, work and learn. It's like, I want them. Yeah.

18:06Every boss wants people like that. They want to surround themselves with people like that. You will never lose your job if you act like that.

18:14Marie Forleo:There will always be some kind of other opportunity. And then the relationships that you form, because you never know where people wind up evolving to, what their new projects or ventures are. And I always think back to the people that show up in that way. And they're the first people I pick up the phone and go, Oh, I've got this new opportunity. So, um, there was a moment when you were working in the salon, you're doing facials, you're busting your buns and you started to see something that no one else did. Take us back to the moment that you realized eyebrows could change everything. What were you seeing that other people missed?

18:49I, I took a picture. I bought a disposable camera and I started taking picture of us, the family. And I realized that I looked surprised in picture because my eyebrows was pencil thin. I was the victim of overtwee's eyebrow, pencil thin and round. And I thought, wow, I look surprised because of my eyebrows. I remember my art teacher talking about the importance of eyebrows and study that we had around the proportion of the face and the Leonardo da Vinci using golden ratio. And I fix my own eyebrows. I start mixing some Vaseline with aloe vera and eyeshadow. And I bought a brush from an art store and I cut it angle.

19:37And I start filling in my eyebrow according to my bone structure. And the clients will look at me and they will say, wow, you look rested. What did you change? Did you change your hair? What? what they didn't know was eyebrows. So I start sharing with them because I was so excited to share that with my clients. Well, I went to Giovanna and I told them that I want to do eyebrows. And at that time, it used to take me half an hour to do an eyebrow. Long time because I was trying to figure out. And it didn't make sense, financial sense for them. And I understood it didn't make sense because how much you could charge,$10?

20:19Yeah. And for half an hour and a facial or a body waxing, you will charge much more for the half an hour with a client. So, of course, they decide not to let me do the eyebrows. And one Sunday I opened, I went home. I mean, I was home breakfast. I bought LA Times and I told my husband, I'm going to open my own business. Oof. Did you know it in your heart?

20:45Marie Forleo:Or was it clear for you, like, this will happen? Do you remember my husband didn't work at that time? We had the kid. We didn't have money. I mean, I was the brand winner. And he said to me, like, do you understand that I don't have a job? And there are American people that live and are born in this country and they don't own a business. And I said, Victor, what do I have to lose? I left Romania. We made so many sacrifices. I need to try the craziness. I need to try the, no, I have to try this. And what do I have to lose? I could get another job after that. Yes. An institution. Yes. No? So Victor wasn't the only one, right, who thought that idea was kind of crazy.

21:32As a matter of fact, excuse me, I interrupt you. Michaela, I went to Michaela. I said, Michaela, let's open together a business. I think we get so long. and I want kind of to give back what gesture she, she introduced me to that place. And she, she was afraid. So she couldn't, she, she had two kids. She, she was afraid. She didn't want it to leave.

21:56Marie Forleo:When you were facing all of those rejections from the outside, was there something like a deeper lesson about your own conviction? And what would you say to people? because I, again, I'm in touch with hundreds of thousands of people who have an idea or something they want to do. And the world exterior wise is saying, oh, that's crazy or that won't work. I went through that in my own journey. What do you think about believing in your vision when the world tells you it's nuts? I believe in that. I knew that it's science combined with beauty. This is, I didn't invent golden ratio. This is applying.

22:33You look at the building that is on golden ratio proportion and you love it. The eye is encoded to recognize that. So I knew that eyebrows, it's going to be amazing. And I believe it. I loved it. I loved everything about it. So I will not take no as an answer. Even if nobody around me believed, I believed. And I think that was enough for me.