A business coach with an online empire says there was a clear sign every job she tried wasn't meant to be her career
- Marie Forleo is a business and life coach; more than 40,000 members pay for her "B-School" class.
- Before becoming a life coach, Forleo worked on the New York Stock Exchange, was a bartender, dance class instructor, and had a brief stint in ad sales.
- Forleo realized being her own boss made her more successful than having a boss.
Trying out several career paths helped Marie Forleo, a life and business coach, realize she was meant to help others through her work, not have others tell her what to do at work.
Forleo calls herself a multi-passionate entrepreneur and said she was built to pursue multiple interests. Before becoming a life coach, Forleo worked on the New York Stock Exchange, was a bartender, dance class instructor, and had a brief stint in ad sales, she said on an episode of Business Insider's podcast "This is Success."
Each time she started a new job, Forleo said there were clear signs why those careers weren't right for her.
"I was always the kid where adults would ask me, 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' I had 17 answers," Forleo said. "I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to be a fashion designer. I wanted to be an animator for Disney. I mean, you just run the gamut."
Forleo said her craving for multiple careers was confusing as a kid. She would ask herself: "Doesn't everybody want to do 17 different things?"
When Forleo graduated from college, she thought working on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange was the right opportunity for her because she had a lot of energy. While working on Wall Street, Forleo said that her days became repetitive. "When I was there, it felt very narrow and very limited, and I was like: 'Oh, gosh. This isn't it.'"
Forleo then tried her luck with magazines working on both the ad and editorial sides of the business. Forleo said she enjoyed the people she worked with, but "as the days would go on I would look ahead and see my bosses and know intuitively I didn't want to become them."
Forleo said she started to doubt herself after leaving every job she had. "So I just remember going through this panic of, 'Oh, my goodness. Am I just terminally unemployable because I want to quit every job I have?' And it wasn't until I discovered, at that time, this new profession called coaching that something just lit up," Forleo said.
When Forleo started pursuing her coaching career, she realized why her previous career aspirations weren't right for her. "One of the things that's very different that I realized is I am allergic to going to an office every day. I literally cannot do that. It's not how I'm built. I'm also not very good at having people tell me what to do. Like having a boss. So those are two things that are very different."
Instead of having other people tell her what to do at work, she works for herself and helps others live healthy and successful lives. More than 40,000 members pay for Forleo's "B-School" class.
"When I see that I can play such a small part in having someone go from that point A to point B, I want to spend my whole life doing that, and that's what I get to do every single day," Forleo said. "So that's how it was very different than what I did before."