Polina Solda: Da!

Interviewer: Yes, in her Russian lingo. Polina is a dating expert, professional certified coach and founder of Find Love and Keep It. Her passion for helping people led her to work around the Sub-Saharan Africa in her 20’s and building coaching businesses in her 30’s. Polina helps women entrepreneurs uncover and resolve their love blocks so they can find and create a loving and lasting relationship with the right man. Polina, take a minute, fill in some gaps from that intro and give us a little glimpse of your personal life.

Polina Solda: Sure. I’m super excited to be here today because it’s my birthday!

Interviewer: Wow! Happy birthday!

Polina Solda: Thank you.

Interviewer: 29 years old. You’re amazing.

Polina Solda: Forever 21, and there’s no better place to be on my birthday than EOFire, in addition to going to Beyoncé’s concert tonight with my husband and my friends.

Interviewer: Wow and wow!

Polina Solda: Yeah. So, a little glimpse into my life. Well, immediate future is that we are leaving from a port in Manhattan this week to go on a cruise to Nova Scotia. So, that’s very exciting. And, a little bit of a background. I was born in Moscow in the Soviet Union where the entrepreneur is a concept; entrepreneurship did not exist. Yet I had my very first entrepreneurial experience at the age of 12 when my single mother lost two jobs that she had working for the government and then started her own retail business where I worked at all of my free time outside of school. So, and that’s where I am today. I’m an entrepreneur.

Interviewer: Well, I love that story and you are on the right podcast, Polina, if you’re an entrepreneur. So, welcome and let’s kind of talk about the present before we get into journey, your past. And what I want to really focus in on for Fire Nation is how you specifically generate revenue in your business setting. I mean, Beyoncé ain’t free, Nova Scotia cruises ain’t free. How are the dollars coming into the doors?

Polina Solda: Right. So, for a while, my primary source of revenue was coaching clients one on one. So, I started as a life coach, but then I realized that for me to grow a sustainable, profitable business I had to leverage. I had to scale it up and bring more ways to bring in the dollar. So, in addition to one on one coaching, first thing I did is I developed a signature, private coaching program where now I leverage it by having an associate coach who works with my clients. So, the second thing I started doing is I started hosting virtual summits where I would bring together top experts in my field and generate income from packaging that summit into an all access, different level programs, and also getting sponsorship. So, online dating sites. And, do these events still. I do a couple every year, and I also referred sources. I developed great relationships with recognized experts in the field, and I generate revenue from the affiliate marketing. And, I also do live workshops. I have my own meetup group. I love to be with people face to face, and facilitate my own workshops. And finally, I’m now creating a brand new coaching program that I will turn into a self-study course to generate that passive income. So, that will be launched in the fall.

Interviewer: Fire Nation, the one thing that I want to make sure that you’re pulling out of this is the passion in Polina’s voice. I mean, you can hear her talking about what she’s doing. She’s excited. She’s fired up. She loves doing what she’s doing. She’s following her bliss to this stuff. And so, when you do that, things really become a little bit easier because it’s not a grind. It’s not the work anymore. It’s what you want to do. And Polina’s found her calling and it’s out there for you, too. Just make sure you are just continuing to swing the bat until you connect with your bliss. Now, Polina, I do want to go back and kind of pop this bliss bubble for a second here, and talk about what you consider your worst entrepreneurial moment. So, take us to that story, to that moment in time, and tell us that story.

Polina Solda: Sure. So, it was about just a year ago. It was August 2015 and I was sitting at my desk after midnight staring at my computer and feeling like a complete failure. I was so devastated by what I saw in terms of the results that I was looking at, that I felt like I started questioning myself and really questioning my ability. Like, do I have what it takes to be a successful online marketer? And to just give you a little background, at that time, I worked on my very first launch for this group coaching program that I created. And prior to that, in Spring, I hosted a virtual summit. I got over 2,000 leads in just the first two dates. So, my list has grown and I thought, “Okay now, I’m going to offer something to these new people. It would be a great opportunity. So, I invested into working with a mentor coach who was really great at coaching, but he wasn’t that masterful at marketing. But, I also enrolled into a program of Jeff Walker on how to launch my program, and was really focused and I poured all of the revenue that was coming in into this project building a beautiful website, buying video equipment, shooting all of the videos, bringing a lot of people in to help me create this program. And, the thing about that was that I kind of neglected my family even though it’s summer, it’s a very short period of time in New York. You really want to enjoy it. But, I would leave my two-year-old with a nanny and paying for her as well, or leave my child in front of a TV and tell my husband, “No, I can’t go out. I have to finish this; I have to do that.”

So, the whole summer kind of didn’t exist for me. I didn’t really enjoy it. And so, what happened is that the open shopping cart period ended. I look at my results in my sales, and literally, no one has bought the program. Yeah. What happened is I also – lesson learned there – I was comparing myself to other people in the program that I did where people launched $10,000, $100,000 in their first launch. So, I had all of these goals. I told my husband, “You know what, to make up, I’m going to take you to Hawaii for your birthday in the fall. So you’ve got to see. This is going to be amazing.” So, was projecting this result and it was priced pretty high and it was capturing a lot of things. I wanted to share everything I knew and I put in it just maybe too much, and one person who actually bought it, she requested a refund because she said it wasn’t narrow, it wasn’t focused. It wasn’t exactly what she was looking for. And, that was the moment, then. I was like, “I just put all this time, all this energy, all of my resources, and in addition to that, all the opportunities that I missed to just have a balanced life, enjoy the summer, be with my family. And it was really a good lesson learned.

Interviewer: Well, let’s kind of talk about those lessons, because you put in so much effort, Polina. You put in so much time. So, you obviously learned a lot about yourself, about what your clients want, or even more importantly, didn’t want. So, you know it’s kind of easy to say, like, “Oh, my God, I wasted the summer.” But at the same time, you never would have learned these incredibly important things that you learned that have gone forward and allowed you to now enjoy future summers, and Beyoncé concerts and trips to Nova Scotia, etcetera. I mean, you’ve learned so much by doing it. So, what do you want to make sure Fire Nation gets from your story, from the struggles that you went through?

Polina Solda: Sell it first and then create it. So, find out what people want, what they’re willing to invest into and then you go and offer it. So, it could be just at concept stage, and if you see the hard proof if people are willing to invest before it even exists, then go ahead and create the actual product. And this is exactly what I’m doing this time around.

Interviewer: Absolutely. Fire Nation, one of my favorite phrases is, “People vote with their wallets, period.” Until you have somebody that is pre-validating your product, your service, your idea with real money, it’s not validated. Because, everybody’s going to say, “Oh, yeah. That’s a great idea. Yeah, that’s exactly what I want,” or X, Y, Z. Then when it comes up, they’re saying, “Oh, well, that’s what I thought other people might want,” or, “Yeah, I want that but now is not the right time.” You know when you have the right product when people are so hungry for it that they will pre-buy it. They will pre-validate it for you. People vote with their wallets. Now, Polina, you have a lot of great stories over your career, but what do you think is one of your greatest aha moment stories? What’s one of those epiphany moments that you had that you turned into success?

Polina Solda: So, I was coaching for about two years and I became really good at coaching. So, I did my Coach You programs and I got certified through the International Coach Federation. And, I was taught in the school that you’ve just got to really focus on your coaching skills and then offer free coaching to anyone on anything, and then people will see how awesome you are and basically hire you. But, it was not happening. People didn’t line up and call me day and night begging me to coach them. So, in fact, what was happening is when I offered free sample sessions on anything, people didn’t take them seriously. People wouldn’t show up for appointments. So, it really was a moment when I doubt myself like can I really run a business, or is it just going to be a hobby and I’m just coaching people for free. And at that time, I decided that if I really want to grow my business, then I have to invest into a business coach. So, I actually started working with Christian Michaelson. I enrolled into his Mastermind for a year. And the first thing I realized when I saw how people charge incredible amounts of money, that it wasn’t about me.

So, people didn’t choose invest into working with me because I had all these letters behind my name, I was this level certified, and also, the amount that they were willing to pay did not reflect my own value. So, I was actually charging very little because I thought, “Well, I’m not that skilled enough, I don’t have this, I don’t have that,” and the reality is that people base their decision on the perceived value of the result that I can help them get. So, if they actually didn’t invest anything, speaking about free services –oh, and that’s very illegal, like I was charging – then, they actually didn’t value it. They were not committed; they didn’t have skin in the game. And, of course, people, when I tripled the rates that I was charging my clients, I started attracting very committed high-end clients who were willing to do what it takes. They took it very seriously, they showed up for every call prepared, and they invested not in me, but in the result that I was helping them provide. So, for a single woman who is 40 years old, she wants to find a man, fall in love and have a child, what is she willing to do? How much is she willing to invest? So, that was a big aha. It wasn’t about me; it was about the perceived value for your client.

Interviewer: One phrase that I love, Fire Nation, that I really think that you need to take to the max, is if you can define the problem better than your client can, or future/potential clients, then they’re just going to assume that you can solve it. So, if you know what their problems are, if you know what their struggles, or obstacles or challenges are, if you are able to coherently describe and create the solution for that problem that they don’t even really know how they have or how they can put words to it, then guess what? You win. So, you really have to get to know what are those real pain points, what are the specific results that my clients, that my future customers want and how can I craft copy, how can I craft words in a way that’s going to make them say, “Wow. Polina knows exactly what I’m looking for. She’s saying it right here. This is basically in my own words. I want this result. These are the results that I want.”

Now, Polina, I kind of want to shift a little bit because I want to turn this back on you as an entrepreneur because you’ve done a lot of great things recently. What would you consider your biggest weaknesses as an entrepreneur?

Polina Solda: Wow. My biggest weakness comes from my enthusiasm and passion because I am so excited about so many things that I tend to multitask and get distracted because I’m working on multiple projects at the same time. So, what happens is I slow myself down or some things just never get done. So, it’s multitasking.

Interviewer: What would you consider your biggest strength?

Polina Solda: I’m an action taker. So, when I decide to do something that I’m really excited about and passionate about, I get fired up, I go for it. And just to give you an example, I was in [inaudible] [00:14:25] program, and I won a brand new Mac [inaudible] for the speed of implementation. So, I was the winner of his contest.

Interviewer: Well, congratulations. And action, speed of implementation, Fire Nation. Huge. Important. Get yourself out there. Find out sooner than later if it works or if it doesn’t work, or what pivots you need to make, and you’ll never know until it’s out there. That’s just the reality. Now, Polina, you have a lot of things that you’re excited about. What’s the one thing you’re most fired up about today besides your birthday, Beyoncé and Nova Scotia?

Polina Solda: Well, I’m super excited about my upcoming free online course where I brought the world’s leading dating and relationship experts like John Gray, Arielle Ford, Dr. Pat Allen, you name them. And they will share the best secrets for single women and walk them through the step-by-step process of how to meet and marry Mr. Right. And that’s the name of my free course that is starting on September 19. So, you can find it at meetandmarrymrright.com.

Interviewer: Meetandmarrymrright.com. Loving it, Polina. And Fire Nation, I know what you’re going to love. This is the lightning round. You’re going to fall in love with the lightning round. You’re going to want to marry the lightning round, so don’t you go anywhere. We’re going to take a quick second to thank our sponsors.

Polina, are you prepared for the lightning rounds?

Polina Solda: Da!

Interviewer: What was holding you back from becoming an entrepreneur?

Polina Solda: It was a belief that I had to continue in the path that I was because if I didn’t, I would somehow let myself and others down. So, I built my career in international development, I moved to New York to pursue my Master’s degree at NYU and I got a scholarship for that, and then I got the job at the United Nations. So, it was really, for me, a big shift to start all over as a life coach. So, a pretty good successful path.

Interviewer: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Polina Solda: Don’t try to be better than others. Become really awesome at being you. So, find your voice, get on your own path, because no one else can be you and that’s the only way to become the best at whatever you do.

Interviewer: What’s a personal habit that contributes to your success?

Polina Solda: Being the student of a course in miracles, doing those daily lessons and I also attend Marianne Williamson’s weekly lectures on being a miracle worker.

Interviewer: Can you share an internet resource like Evernotes with Fire Nation?

Polina Solda: Vortex-success.com. It’s an audio library of subliminal messages that transform your subconscious beliefs. So, I listen to them as background music. It’s sort of like a passive stream of personal growth work.

Interviewer: I love that. If you could recommend just one book, what would it be and why?

Polina Solda: Reality Transurfing by Vadim Zeland because he teaches how to create your own reality and shift from being a consumer, a passive receiver, to being a generator and creator of ideas, content, product services, you name it. And his latest books on living foods provide incredible strategies on how to dramatically increase your levels of energy and creativity, which, of course, every entrepreneur wants. So, a must read.

Interviewer: Polina, this is the last question of the lightning round, but it’s a doozy. Imagine you woke up tomorrow morning in a brand new world identical to Earth, but you knew no one. You still have all the experience and knowledge you currently have, your food and shelter taken care of. But all you have is a laptop and $500. What would you do in the next seven days?

Polina Solda: I would, first of all, hire a virtual team. I would get somebody to help me design my website and get my presence on social media. And also, because I love meeting people face to face, I would go to some events where amazing women entrepreneurs who are successful; who there’s one missing area in their lives that is their love life is not there. But, just have a conversation, meet them, offer them a free strategy session where I would help them uncover what’s holding them back and help them create that crystal vision for what they want, and then offer enroll into my signature coaching program.

Interviewer: Fire Nation, the blueprint lays before you. Just take those ingredients, stir them into the recipe of success. Polina, lets end today on fire, girl, with a parting piece of guidance. The best way we can connect with you, then we’ll say goodbye.

Polina Solda: The best way to connect with me is to go to my website findloveandkeepit.com where you can instantly download a free guidebook where I share the biggest lessons I learned that enabled me to create an amazing love life and help my clients do the same. And advice is to take it one step at a time. It’s about baby steps. As long as you’re making progress every day, you’re on the right track. And find the way to notice that, to really acknowledge that and get evidence from that. And I use a freedom journal for that.

Interviewer: Oh, my God, Polina. You are a woman after my own heart. And Fire Nation, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And you’ve been hanging out with PS and JLD today. So, keep up the heat and head over to EOFire.com. Just type Polina, and that’s P-O-L-I-N-A in the search bar. Her show notes page will pop up with everything that we’ve been talking about today – the resources that she recommended, the way you can get to her website. It’s time-stamped, links galore, but of course, you can go straight to findloveandkeepit.com and of course, that free workshop that she’s offering out for you as well is linked up. And Polina, I just want to thank you for sharing your journey with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we’ll catch you on the flip side.

Polina Solda: Yay!