Today I am talking to Luisa Ferrario, who I’ve seen around on the internet for a while. I’m in her Facebook group, so I’m kind of familiar with her vibe already. She has a really amazing story that I think you guys will resonate with. She used kind of her past and her story to help her create really powerful small business marketing tips for herself and her clients from the inside out.
So I’m going to let her explain more about what that means.
Introduction: Luisa Ferrario
I help women entrepreneurs to accelerate their business growth to six figures and beyond. Sometimes it happens. Also, the beyond happens. This is my very, very short introduction, but I know that you are very curious about my story.
My father was an employee and my mother was a housewife, even if they were not entrepreneurs, my grandfather’s father was an entrepreneur. From my mother’s side, everyone has always been an entrepreneur. I grew up with the possibility to compare the two worlds. And I definitely felt that I was belonging more to the entrepreneurial one. I found myself being a very creative person, even if I was, and I still am an introvert, I was very happy to have conversations with people, to bring people together.
I know that not every entrepreneur needs or has to do that, but it helps for the networking. When I recognized that I had my seven years in the corporate world, and that was the confirmation that I was not meant for that. And so I started in the publishing, music publishing industry. Then I moved to something completely different That was, I was a vegan chef.
I had a restaurant. I have been vegan for 14 years. And because basically what happens with me is that when I find something that really works to fix something that was not working in my life, I can’t tell myself to tell everybody. So the best way to do that is to build a business. And that’s the reason why I so business.
Starting Businesses From Passion
So I started to create events and to create businesses around that. Then I found out that I was so passionate about buildings, construction, and I was passionate about refurbishing flats and then flipping them or selling them or using them as passive income and so on and so forth. So I had companies in the United States for the real estate market, and then also in Italy.
Originally I’m from Italy, so I still have one of those companies in Italy actually. I couldn’t stop myself. And when I found the coaching, coaching has always been, let’s say, the rad thread of everything in my life when I first met coaching.
And that’s the story that I would like to link. When I met coaching, it was because I was at the rock bottom in my life.
Discovering Coaching
I have always had health issues since I was born, and no one has been able to find out or to label what was happening with me because the symptoms were very different. Then when I found veganism and I also became microbiotic eater, and then I found about healing techniques, my whole situation went much better.
But before that, I could even, there were months where I was spending two weeks in bed because I was not able to get out of bed because of inflammation, a high fever and tiredness. That was impossible to explain.
So that was then the situation. So I come from this family where I experienced being abused, and I experienced having my father being alcoholic, and my mother having issues with betting and with eating disorders.
She probably also had something from the neurological point of view. I don’t know.
We never found out what she had. But the point is that the situation was threatening, and I grew up with the idea that I should be scared even from hearing my own name. And so someone was calling my name, I remember that I was freezing, and I was stopping talking because I was really the embodiment of, I’m wrong, I shouldn’t be here. I’m sorry, I’m guilty. I’m ashamed that that was me.
And also, I was having a lot of difficulties at school. I was one of the best students, but it took me a lot of my energy to get those kind of results. And I couldn’t do any different because otherwise, my mother was beating me and my sister. That was a very tough situation. And as a kid, as a teenager, I didn’t have any kind of tools to deal with it.
Losing Everything
When I was 32 years old, and I was already married for six, nine years, I married when I was, no 10 years. I married when I was 22, and was married for 10 years. At that time I already had my daughter, and she was almost six. All my life fell apart. And what happened was that I lost everything basically. So I lost my marriage, I lost my health another time. And that time I had no idea how to go back on track.
We had a lot of money, we lost everything. When I was on the verge of losing custody of my daughter, because I am a queer person, that was my rock bottom.
When you hit the bottom, it’s the best time to gather all your power and give yourself a very powerful push to come back to the surface. That’s what I did. And that happened in just one week from losing all the things. And because I found a book that you for sure already know about, from Jack Canfield, Chicken Soup for the Soul.
The Turning Point
I got this book and I couldn’t stop reading. I read the whole book in just one night, and that night I didn’t sleep. The morning after, I had all the power and the energy in the world that I have never had in whole my life. It was kind of such a transformational experience. Of course, I had to tell everyone what happened to me, and I tried to understand.
It took me a while to understand what that was. And then the week after, I found another book that changed my life again, and this time it gave more structure, and so I could understand better what was going on when I was reading Chicken Soup for the Soul. That other book is Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
A Note On Radical Responsibility
I want to highlight something you’re saying. I think it’s really current for me, which is that I think when people talk about mindset and manifesting, one of the sticking points that people have is in law of attraction, they talk about radical responsibility.
Your current reality is a manifestation of what was in your mind and the energy that you had. But that’s not to say that the world is fair. That’s not to say that everything bad is your fault.
That’s just to say that for everything that happens, you get to view how you leverage it moving forward. And you can look at the fact that you had a lot of money and a marriage and a kid, and you lost everything – you could have looked at that and decided, this is my life now. And kept going down this path.
It’s not easy when things are really, really bad to say, there’s something good here for me, but I love that you were able to find that resource. And so reading that book and okay, I’m getting all this great energy and then leveraging that right away, but that’s such a powerful example of the world is not fair.
Not everything is our fault, but everything that comes into our life, we get to choose how we’re going to emotionally respond to and leverage it. I love that.
Energetic approach to small Business Marketing tips
Choose, Not Decide
That’s the word: “choose,” not “decide.” We do not have time today to cover “choose” vs. “decide,” but “choose” is the word. The reason why I could recover in just one week from all that mess? Is because I told the universe, I surrender, do whatever you have to do. I surrender.
So I gave total trust to life or whatever we want to call the universe. Some people call it God, some other people call it Allah, whatever it is. And okay, white flag, come in peace, do whatever you want, do whatever it takes. I don’t mind. It’s okay, it’s fine. Couldn’t get worse than that.
The Difference Between Choosing and Deciding
When we say, “I decided that next month I will fly to New York”, this means that there is a plan. I decide means that there is a plan. Otherwise, you didn’t decide anything. You are choosing the possibility to go to New York next month, but when you decide something, it means that you have a plan.
So when people say, “okay, I decide now that I will hit the six figure by the end of next year,” I am thinking, “no, you will tell me that you have decided once I see your plan for the whole year, and then we break that down month for month, and when we break that down week by week. Otherwise, that’s not a decision. Otherwise, this is a wish, not a hundred percent commitment.”
Making a Plan
Now when it comes to small business marketing tips, we have to make a plan. Let’s say that the con of deciding is that when you make a plan, you have to stick to it because otherwise it doesn’t work.
Making a plan means that you are committed a hundred percent. If you’re not committed, there’s not a plan. If there is not a plan, that’s not a decision. So the other option is that you choose, but the point is that when you choose that, this is something that you can do 30 seconds by 30 seconds, so for the next 30 seconds, I’ll be the most fun person.
Then in 30 seconds I can choose something else. I can choose to keep being that kind of person, or I can choose to be mad, I can choose to be sad. Or I can choose to be over the moon. The bottom line is that I can choose to be everything, and I can always keep choosing to be something different. So I suggest people to use those two words with awareness and with intention. When you decide something, remember that you are putting your head there and it’ll fall if you do not stick to the plan.
Your Feet Have to Follow the Action
Now your feet have to follow the action. I love that. And that’s so important from a practical perspective. If we say, I’m deciding that I want to do a hundred K or seven figures next year, you can say that and you can work on energetically, but it has to have action for two reasons. Number one, the action shows the university, you’re deciding, but number two, having that consistent action. When it comes to manifesting, things don’t happen immediately.
Give the universe time to rearrange
Very often things have to rearrange.
And so by deciding and creating the action plan and sticking with the action plan, you give the universe time to rearrange to the desire that you’re aiming for.
So I see success in whatever area of our life we wanted to look at it. That comes up with three different layers. And this is something that I was writing about that the other day. I started a six week course to massively grow your Facebook group, sorry. And I was writing one of the parts of this because one of my bonus was something that I call the man’s world that is an energetic exercise.
And I was making very, very clear that every millionaire, multimillionaire, or billionaire know, as a matter of fact, that success comes with three different layers.
The first one is the physical layer. That is action strategy.
It’s beautiful, it’s amazing. Then I have to take action, otherwise it doesn’t happen by itself.
Emotions and Mindset
The second layer is the emotional slash mindset ones, because they are so interconnected that I do not want to separate the two of them. So this means that you have to enhance your mindset and take it to the level of abundance, because we have scarcity, we have growth, and then we have abundance.
And once you do that, then you have to grab the strategy and take action. And at the same time, you have to work on the energy level and bring the energy level at the level of the abundance. So then you have an abundance in your energy level so that you become a magnet of the kind of abundance you are looking for. And then at the same time, you have an abundance mindset as emotional set, and that is connected to the strategy, and then you take action. So it’s impossible to escape from action. I mean, it could be that you have a team,
It could be that you have a team and someone else will take action, but you have to lead the team unless you know how to communicate with your mind. So please teach me, because I really would like to be at that level yet
I studied quantum physics, but I didn’t master the transmission.
The whole idea that there are an infinite number of realities at any one time, and that by focusing our attention and energy on what we want to bring in, we can enter into that alternate reality. Interesting concept.
How This Process Looks With Clients
So first, I make sure that the person in front of me is telling the truth.
Most of the time we lie and we don’t know that we’re lying. We’re lying to ourselves. I mean, this is totally normal. I want to normalize that it’s absolutely normal to lie to ourselves. This is what we have been taught to do our whole life. So I just want to scratch the surface and to offer questions. Yo offer deep dive questions that can bring the truth to the surface. Then the person can embrace this truth with their full awareness. They can acknowledge what is true for them in terms of who they really wanted to work with and what kind of niche they want to serve.
To be very, very, I would say really crystal clear regarding the kind of, I mean, we always talk about the ideal client. When we think about the ideal client avatar, it could be an existing person or someone that we can make up from scratch. We are talking about someone who has also the emotional characteristics, who likes to taste pizza instead of a fresh juice, who likes to play golf, who likes to just work three hours from seven in the morning till 10 in the morning, whatever it is.
And it takes courage to say out loud, this kind of truth, this is the truth that I’m talking about. So I make sure that people do not lose time in going in circles and just thinking that they are wrong, they’re not enough.
Controlling Your Environment
We often feel we do not deserve to have a certain kind of success. This is just a projection of the way we have been brought up. And not just from our parents, because our parents could have been the best in town. But the point is that, for instance, I stopped watching TV and listening to the radio 15 years ago.
I have never had a television. The house I’m in now came fully furnished. But I never switch on the television. I do not want to be influenced by things that I, I’m not interested. I watch Netflix, a lot of other things, and I love to go to the theater. And I love to read books.
But I want to be the one who chooses the sources of my nourishment.
Creating a VIP Experience
That will be the result of what I’m taking in right now. So with every program I create, I make sure I am very clear from the very beginning. I want people V I P experience in working with me. Not just because of the kind of results that they can have. But because of the human relationship that let those results happen.
And I really love my clients deep, deep, deep down. I really, really love my clients, and I also love all the people who are in my community. I created this community is because I just wanted to have a safe place for everybody to express themselves.
And you have no idea how many people write me emails or write me dms just to thank me for the vibe. I mean, I do so small things, but it’s the community that came together. And of course, the choice that I made in letting in this or that. And for instance, we had in just six months, we had more than 8,000 requests to join to the community, but we declined two thousands of them.
So we could be much further than where we are. We are at 6,000. But I said, no, no, because I could not serve this kind of people. They will bring a vibe, but that it’s not the one that I want to give to people who are around me.
Connecting with Luisa’s Community
So the best way I think it is to come to the community, because I’m always there. The community is called wealthier women. Entrepreneurs wealthier with IR because there are a lot of wealthy, but this is wealthier. Or you look at my profile, Louisa, and you can find the link to go there. And the other thing is, so in September there is something big that is going to start. And for the time being, I can’t say anything, but for everyone who really wants to have a wonderful experience with their businesses wherever they are, I work mainly with people who go from 50 K a year to over the million.
So I can absolutely, I am creating something that is absolutely amazing. And I think that I will talk more about that in a couple of weeks. So stay tuned. And yeah, I also publish every day a reel on Facebook on my personal account. It also goes on my poor Instagram account that I never did almost anything.
Free: Mindful Marketing Newsletter
Join 6,500 others on our newsletter.