We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Mollie Marrocco. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Mollie below.

Alright, Mollie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

To be successful you have to be willing to fail. And you have to reframe failure as a lesson or an experience that taught you something. My mentor always used to say, “It’s only failure if you give up, otherwise it’s just a lesson.” And I think this is something you have to be ok with as a business owner. You can’t personalize failure and make it mean something about you. If you do, it will take you down. If you can separate yourself and an action that you took that didn’t go according to plan as just that, rather than a reflection of you and you can tolerate that uncomfortability, you will be successful. The amount of success you will create is directly proportionate to the level of discomfort you’re willing to tolerate.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a marketing strategist and business coach, and I specialize in messaging and content. I help people figure out what to say and do online in terms of their overall marketing strategy and brand presence–without sounding like everyone else.

Most of my clients say to me, “I know what I want to say. I just don’t know how to say it!” So I help entrepreneurs get the thoughts in their heads out onto the page to bring their brand to life in words. Once we nail down their message, I help them infuse it into their copy and social media content to help their brand stand out so they can scale their income and impact. I also support them in prioritizing their to-do’s and giving them the accountability and guidance to get stuff done!

I work with my clients via group and individual coaching to help them figure out what to say and do in their marketing so they can have more time, bandwidth, and money to spend doing the things they love.

Before I started coaching I was a high school teacher and a wedding planner. Until one day, I fell out of love with both…

I was exhausted, burnt out, and creatively tapped. I was also scared because I didn’t know what would come next. So I took my love of the wedding industry and my gift for teaching, and started coaching other entrepreneurs because I wanted to help the past version of me who struggled to set herself apart in a crowded industry.

When I started wedding planning, I knew what my message was and how I wanted to position my brand. But at that time, I didn’t have the marketing expertise and know-how to make sure it got heard by the right people.

After I left wedding planning, I started teaching myself everything I could when it came to business, marketing, and branding, and I sought out opportunities to learn from the best in my industry to hone my skills.

I continue to push myself to get better every day because I know the better I get, the better the results I can get for my clients. That, and my passion for what I do, keeps me motivated to learn, do, and be more for my clients and myself.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

When I walked away from wedding planning (which actually happened twice in my life) I felt incredibly lost. My identity had always been someone who wanted to be a wedding planner.

At that time I was also faced with decisions that needed to be made in my personal life as well. So I did what any sane person would do when they realized they had created a life that just didn’t feel “right,” and I burned it all to the ground. Although this was absolutely terrifying at the end of the day, I could not be more grateful for the decision to go all in on myself.

It’s interesting when you look back at the way that you used to live and wonder how you ended up there. Walking away from what’s comfortable, and what you know feels almost impossible at times. I honestly don’t know where I found the strength to do that. But when you feel the light inside you going out because of a job or a relationship, you have to choose yourself.

Even though there are still aspects of my life that are a work in progress now, I could never go back to my old life. Every day I’m happy and peaceful and I feel so much gratitude that I at the end of the day I chose myself.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn all of the unconscious lessons that I was playing out in my life that were ultimately getting me things I didn’t want.

I needed to own that I was not playing full out in my business (or my life) and I didn’t even realize it. Up until a year ago I had settled or held back in every single area of my life. I chose partners that weren’t exactly what I wanted because if it didn’t work out I could say, well they weren’t really my type anyways. I struggled to lose weight and ate to sabotage my health so I wouldn’t feel comfortable enough to date and put myself out there. I took my foot off the gas in my business when things started going well because I was afraid I might lose everything.

You might be doing the same thing.
You may stop prospecting for new clients when things start to pick up.
Or you don’t create content when you know that’s the one thing that’ll move the needle.
Or maybe it’s in other areas of your life like it was for me.

So why do we do this? Why do we knowingly or unknowingly pull the plug on our own success? For me, it was self-protection. I had this view of myself and it was if I played full out and really put myself out there and lost the weight, or built the business, or chose someone I actually liked, and if I still didn’t succeed, or I wasn’t chosen, phew that might mean that my worst fear, that I was always going to be rejected.

So my brain did the things brains do and tried to protect me from slamming into that wall of realization and caused me to self-sabotage. But over the last year of my life, I slowly started pushing past those boundaries. And you know what sometimes it sucked. But you know what it also did, it opened me up to so many possibilities and opportunities that I never would have had otherwise.

And when it didn’t go my way it built this strength, wisdom, and resilience that I could get through anything–even being faced with my worst fear and core wound. But the really cool result of that is that I have become pretty unstoppable in my business and my life. So if this is you, and you’re stuck and you’re repeating the same patterns over and over again, Try something different. Trying leaning into it. Push past the uncomfortable self-imposed limits and fall on your face. I promise you will come out better on the other side of it and you will be so glad you did.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.brandedwithapurpose.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/brandedwithapurpose AND www.instagram.com/ditchyouroverwhelm
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BrandedwithaPurpose
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/molliemarrocco/
• Other: Tiktok: www.tiktok.com/@brandedwithapurpose

Image Credits
Arielle Doneson Photography Parlr Brand Photography