Building A Solid Business With Jennifer Morilla

You are successful, profitable, and have it all when you do what you love. In this episode, business and marketing strategist Jennifer Morilla shares her passion with us today. She discusses how you can build a solid business and how pitching your brand and sharing your story benefits it. Jen also shares the foundation of what she wants to create that caused a ripple effect on her and her clients. Learn how you can get six figures now by getting more insights from Jen. Tune in to the Masters in Clarity Podcast today!

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Building A Solid Business With Jennifer Morilla

I am so excited to have this conversation with Jen Morilla, someone I’ve known for a few years now. I love her energy, creativity, and how committed she is to solving big world problems. Let me tell you a little bit about Jen. Jen is an impact travel influencer and clean water initiator. She uses her influence for good. Her mission is to create incredible possibilities of transformation for humankind to live lives of impact, purpose, and courage. Her purpose is to discover humanity, understand a culture, and connect emotionally with people.

As she does that, she’s driven to leave a little something behind that can change a life. After starting her career in the New York City agency world, she decided to turn what she learned in her Master’s and undergrad into social entrepreneurship and action. She has now traveled to over 44 countries, impacted an estimated 13,600 people in 7 countries, and continues to grow as an ambassador to young professionals, coaches, young women, and women in getting their businesses up and running and thriving. Let me introduce you to Jen, and help me welcome Jen Morilla to the show.

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I’m so excited, Jen, to finally nail you down for this convo. I know you’ve been traveling all over, and that’s your signature thing. You’re a free lady. Let’s start with that. How do we get to this day when you do what you love? You don’t work because when we do what we love, we don’t wake up and have a job. When you do what you love, you are successful, profitable, young, and have it all. You have beauty. How do we get to this moment?

I love the flattery. Thank you. I’m excited to be here. It’s so funny. I was on the phone with my parents. They have a house in Upstate New York and were like, “We want to go away with the whole family. This weekend doesn’t work for your sister. How about next weekend?” I’m like, “I’m not here. I’m in Montana.” They’re like, “You just got back from Europe?” I was like, “Yes.” My dad’s like, “I want your life.”

He screams out of nowhere from the other side of the room. He’s like, “What’s in Montana?” I was like, “I’m going for a workshop, and I’m going to take a day before and a day after.” They’re like, “Who do you think you are?” I was like, “What do you mean? I don’t understand. What’s a big deal?” I never travel to the US. If I have a conference in Italy, then I’d be like, “I get it.” I recognized that the older I get, the harder it is for people to be like, “How do you move so much?”

You did the thing of going to college and getting a job from 9:00 to 5:00 with a boss where you had to sign in and sign out, and let someone know that you were not coming in. All the way fast forward to now, what was the journey like? I know there were some bumps in the road. There always are. What does it look like? It’s because one day you said, “I will be free.” Whether or not you were aware of it, you made an internal decision to never live in someone else’s schedule. Talk to me.

It all started when I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree. What kick-started the whole thing was essentially the loss of my brother. I had a younger brother, and he passed away. It was very traumatic. That was in my early twenties. It was my senior year of college. My entire life flipped upside down. I come from a Cuban family, second generation. My parents were born in Cuba and immigrated here. I was born here. I was raised by them and my grandparents. My parents are also entrepreneurs. I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I didn’t know what I was going to do. If you would have told me in high school and college, I’d have been like, “I’ll run my own business one day,” but who knows?

My brother and I were close. I was 21 and thought I had it all figured out. I was going to get married, have babies, buy a house, and everything was going to work accordingly, and then it didn’t. I graduated from university. It was the year my brother died. I almost didn’t graduate, to be honest. I started working for two years and then went back and did my Master’s. After I did my Master’s, I came back to the US and worked again in corporate for three years. I was pretty miserable from the inside. From the outside, everything looked great. I was living in New York. I was working in New York City for a marketing agency. I was an account manager. I was making good money. I was living life.

For me, it was a constant routine, and I didn’t like to be told what to do. I should have known that my dad had said it to me when I was a kid. I don’t like to be told what to do. All my ex-boyfriends learned that. My current boyfriend now gets it. He’s like, “I’ll let you do whatever you want.” He’s like, “I’ll suggest, but you’re a woman of your own.” He’s a very smart man. My dad says that. He’s like, “Good man.” When I was working at corporate, I loved my boss and my team. I had my come to Jesus moment when I recognized I was not happy. I believe we are the co-creators of our reality. We co-create every single day.

We are the co-creators of our reality. We co-create every single day. Share on X

That’s what being a human is. The privilege of being born into this world is that you get to do that. I started off as a travel blogger. I was always the kind of person who always wanted to do something that would help other people. In return, I didn’t realize that it would heal me. At that point, it had been about five years since my brother had passed, and I didn’t grieve my brother’s loss. I was healing a lot that I went through with that process because it happened so suddenly. The family got sick. It was a lot within those five years. I didn’t grieve his loss. I said, “I’m going to quit my job. I’m going to leave and travel the world with clean water filters. I’m going to become a travel blogger.”

If there’s anything I know, it’s marketing. I know that if you’re going to do something, you’ve got to find a niche, stand out, and be different. I don’t have to stand with a neon sign or anything, but you yourself have to tell your story. That is the most important thing when you’re building any business. It doesn’t matter what it is. I started pitching to brands and telling them a story, and it worked. Lo and behold, I did that for about three and a half years. It was a good run. I learned a lot about the influencer industry, marketing industry, and all this stuff. I don’t regret it because I got to travel the world. Essentially, I got paid to do it. I never made as much money as I make now, which means I never hit six figures.

The most I ever made in my business was about $80,000, which is almost close enough. Towards the end of 2018, I started to get asked to speak on stages about building a purposeful brand, influencer marketing, and all those things. I’ve always loved to public speak. For me, I was like, “This is so fun.” I then started to get people reaching out to me, asking me how to build a brand online. I recognized that I was coaching people, people were getting results, and I was doing it for free. I was like, “There’s something wrong here. I’m spending half my day on the phone and not getting paid for it.” I was like, “Wait a minute.”

I created my very first online course. It was how to build an online brand. That was my first $11,000 launch. I did a Facebook Live and then pitched at the end of the hour in the Facebook Live about the program that I created. Within the last fifteen minutes, I had two people buy right away. It was a five-hour course. As soon as the live was finished and I closed my laptop, the tears were running down my face. I was so happy because I couldn’t believe it. It’s somebody within fifteen minutes, and I made $1,000. I was like, “What is this?” As the days went on, it kept going and going. I was like, “There’s something here.” I began to pivot from September to December of 2018.

It was so funny because they were like, “What have you been doing?” From September to December, I went from making peanuts to $50,000 right away in those three months. In 2019, I took it off. I relaunched my YouTube channel and began to pivot, and we all know what happened in 2020. Everyone got stuck at home, and that was it. The biggest thing for me, and it’s always been the foundation of what I wanted to create, was it’s the ripple effect. I don’t believe in doing it for someone. I believe in teaching someone the tools that they can go out and do it. I believe we live in an infinite universe, and everything comes around and goes around. There is enough for everyone if you believe there’s enough for you.

That’s something that you have to internalize and recognize if you actually believe that there’s enough for you. I give my clients the tools to be able to grow, monetize, and create the lives they want to have to travel, make money, and be with their families. It doesn’t have to be building an online course or being a coach. It’s just doing the things that they love. I work with women who want to make enough money to be able to support their families and not have to travel the world and do other things. They just want to spend time with their kids. That’s beautiful. To me, the biggest thing is to be able to create a life that you’re happy and proud of. If you came to me and you were like, “I want to make donuts,” let’s make the best freaking donuts in the world. Let’s do it. That’s essentially how it all started and how it kicked off.

 

I love that. Most people say, “I want to start a business and charge $10,000 for an hour with me.” I love how the business led you. There were no second thoughts or self-doubt in the sense that you were already creating an impact. You were just not aware of it or hadn’t structured it as a business yet. There’s always the first sale and the first moment, but it was seamless. You knew you were adding value.

You put value first over making money, so the making money just followed. I know you are very specific in who you work with because I know you work mostly with women. You get them to the first three numbers on the other side of the coma, like the $100,000 mark. For any business owner, they say that only 1% or 5% of business owners reach the six figures in the first three years or some statistic like that. You are committed to making these women not start a business but stay in business.

That’s the hardest thing. I’ve worked with so many people over the years. The moment I get on a call with someone, I know who’s going to stick around and who’s not. It’s like dating. You go on a date with someone, and for the first 5 to 10 minutes, I could tell this could continue, or this is going to end here. It’s the same thing with business. It’s the passion and the drive that people have. The biggest thing is the why. That’s the why.

 

Let’s dig into this. In my experience with the six figures, it took me three years to go from $0 to $100,000. It took me one year to go from $100,000 to $200,000. What is it? Let’s talk about it in monthly numbers.

The sweet spot is between $80,000 and $100,000. It’s that little hump.

We need to make $8,333 a month to get to $100,000. I was in a program that if I made $100,000, I could advance to the next level. I wanted to be with the cool kids. Unfortunately, I can’t make things up or lie. I just can’t. I had to do it for real. I made $101,000, so now I qualify. An average from the range of $4,000 to $5,000 a month to $8,300 is the biggest step. What is it?

It’s not that somebody can do it. You can do it one time. Usually, people who come to me will be like, “I hit $8,000 last month, but now I’m at $3,000 or $2,000. How do I do it consistently?” Honestly, I think it hits two things. Number one, recognizing that you have a business. What I mean is that you’re so wired to work for other people that when you become an entrepreneur, it is all on you. I know you’re like, “You’re everything.” If somebody’s reading this, they’re like, “That’s logical.” No, take a second. The way your brain is actually wired is that you’re always asking for permission to do the next thing. When you’re building a business, the person you have to ask permission from is you.

What happens if you don’t trust yourself? What happens if you don’t think you’re worthy of receiving money? What happens if you don’t think you’re capable of helping other people? You stay stuck where you are. You’re not going to grow. You do the dance where you have a 9:00 to 5:00, and you have a passion, or you’ve quit your 9:00 to 5:00 and you’re struggling hard to make ends meet, so you’re still doing the little here and there, but you won’t commit to building that business. That is the difference. That’s 80% of what happens when people come to me. Most of the time, someone else is running their business.

What I mean by someone else is it’s their clients. It’s the fear of failure. It’s their family and friends and what they’re saying behind the scenes because they quit their job and all the things when if people could recognize they own a business. If you had an actual brick and mortar, if you’ve paid to rent a spot, you would not be second guessing yourself whatsoever because you have rent to pay versus when you are a service provider, and you’re in the online space, you’re working from home. That is the biggest thing that stops people. The second thing is when you see the numbers.

By the numbers, I mean get crystal clear on how much you’re making, how much you’re spending, and how much you actually need to make. Work backward in order to reach that $8,000 or $10,000 a month mark. How many packages do you need? How many clients do you need? How many do you need to sell? Freaking sell it. If you need to sell five spots to hit $5,000 to meet that $10,000 mark, don’t post a post or get one story and then be like, “Nobody listened.” You posted one time. Keep going. It’s a full circle. People don’t show up because they get scared or get nervous about what people are going to think.

I love that. There is a where you can call it a vortex or a Bermuda Triangle of people getting lost in that $3,000 to $5,000 a month all the way to the $8,000. For most of us, it felt like a brick wall, and we went at it in a tactical way like, “I need to fix my website. I need to post some more. I need to hire an expert who tells me this and that.” What you’re saying is that all could work, but if foundationally you are in a hobby business, don’t take yourself seriously, don’t have boundaries with your family, and are not really committed, you can throw money at the problem with experts and you’re not going to do it.

It’s this game. It’s your brain. It’s so much of you that keeps you stuck in your way. When you recognize that, that’s when you’re able to make that change.

It's so much of you that keeps you stuck in your way, and when you recognize that, you can make that change. That's the game changer. Share on X

If you’re reading this and are in that range of not yet at the six-figure a year, ask yourself. What is getting in your own way? I know the answer. It’s you, but what are you telling yourself in your head that is getting in the way? If we unlock that, we unlock anything.

That’s what it is. Once that shift happens, it literally is like a switch. At least for me, that’s what it was. I knew it was in my own way. I didn’t know what I was doing. When I recognized that I was like, “It’s been me this whole time,” I got it. Like you said, you can have the website, business coach, and do the thing, but if you don’t have the foundational piece of selling a product and doing it, most people quit. They’re like, “This is too hard. Nobody’s buying.” You only talked about it once a week. Nobody’s going to buy. There’s so much noise on social media. You have to talk about it consistently.

I love that. What is the future look like? What will the next twelve months bring for Jen?

In the next twelve months, it’s TED Talk. This time in 2023, we’ll hit the seven-figure mark. I’m excited. I’m very happy and proud. I can’t believe I’m actually saying that. It will be a bigger team, more expansion, more help, and serving more people. I’d love to start to dip more into my passions. What I mean by that is I had somebody in my DMs reach out to me and are like, “I want to work with you, but I have a 9:00 to 5:00 and this side hustle. I can’t commit to it because it’s not making me money yet. Until it makes me money, I’m not going to commit to another mastermind or another program.”

I was like, “How many side hustles do you have?” She is a travel blogger. She also does social media management, and the social media business makes her money. She’s also in finance. She has a 9:00 to 5:00 and has these two jobs. The social media management company makes her money. I’m like, “You’re making money for your business.” She’s like, “No, it’s from the other business.” I was like, “Hold on one second. You’re telling me that you have this side hustle. First of all, you have a 9:00 to 5:00 that funds both the side hustle, and the one side hustle that’s successful isn’t the side hustle that you want to do. You’re still doing the passion project, but you’re complaining about not being able to pay bills.”

She just looked at me. When you start a business, you either start a business and have a lot of money saved up, or you have an investment company that has invested in your company and money to be able to fund it and start, or like most people, you have a 9:00 to 5:00, and that 9:00 to 5:00 is your Angel investor for that passion project that you have, or you don’t have a 9:00 to 5:00, and you have one business that makes you the money that funds your passion. At some point, you have to put on your big girl pants, especially if you have a family and have to pay bills. You have to do the thing that brings in the money to then potentially be able to do the passion project.

I’m like, “It’s never going to be this is never going to happen. This is just going to be on hold now until you build the revenue and get it to a place that you’re comfortable with so that you can do what you want to do.” She had like a light bulb moment and was like, “My God.” For me, it’s going to be able to start doing what I started, going back in a full circle, doing more of the water initiatives, giving back, the impact, the social enterprise, and all that stuff. I would probably start doing that this time in 2023.

I love that. The truth is that, “When I get this, I’ll do this,” but when we have a passion, we also have permission to bring in, at least in conversation, our passion into your business, which is not always the case in a 9:00 to 5:00 because you have to work within a box of what is acceptable in that environment. I know you are already talking about your passion in your 9:00 to 5:00 where you are the boss. There’s some weight, but at the same time, you’re just one person. I love that you’re going to be buying yourself time. That’s what scaling means.

It happened to me. My show runs without me. As far as the running of the company, I put in one hour a week, and then I serve my clients. That’s what it buys you. It buys you the time to open a new business, start a new project, or for some of our readers, have that baby and spend most of the time with a baby knowing you have a solid business that you’ve built that is running, and you are the chairwoman of the business instead of the jack of all trades. Miss Jen, where can people find you?

My new website is launching. I’m so excited, but now you can find me on Instagram, @Jennifer.Morilla. You can reach out to me there. I’m always hanging out there. You can find me on YouTube. You put me on Google at Jennifer Morilla, and it will all come up.

Google and stalk Jen Morilla on Google. Thank you so much for bringing your wisdom and hanging out with us.

Thank you for having me. This was awesome.

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How do you get to six figures? What is it in the journey to six figures that got in the way? If you think it’s something you don’t know, read the interview with Jen Morilla, and you’ll discover that what you’re missing, the one thing you need to do to go to your six figures in your business, is actually easy to find, and you have it right under your nose. Check it out.

 

Important Links

• Jennifer Morilla
• @Jennifer.Morilla – Instagram
• https://www.YouTube.com/channel/UC-JeIvuQm_bGMlnaqsxji2g
• https://www.Facebook.com/thesocialgirltraveler
• https://www.TikTok.com/@jennifer.morilla

 

About Jennifer Morilla

Jennifer Morilla started her business as The Social Girl Traveler back in February of 2015 when she traveled the world as an impact travel blogger.

After experiencing over 44 countries and carrying clean water filters to developing countries, Jennifer discovered her passion for teaching others to grow profitable and impactful businesses with a real purpose online with her new brand, Jennifer Morilla, in 2018.

Since then, she’s built a successful six-figure mentoring business, and she’s worked with brands like Microsoft, Skype, Google, Aruba Tourism, and Waves for Water.

She’s also been featured in some pretty epic publications such as Forbes, Huffington Post, CNBC, Oprah Magazine and Thrive Global.

Through her courses and coaching programs, She’s helped hundreds of women (and counting!) start their own businesses while teaching them how to build a business that supports their desired lifestyle- while creating the results they dream of too.

Her clients vary from coaches, creative entrepreneurs to service providers who skyrocket from $60K to $100K+ a year and taking many people from 4-figure to 5-figure months… and even $50K launches.

Jennifer Morilla has now scaled her online coaching business to a multi-six-figure online business and continues to impact the online space with her business-building expertise.