‘Trust yourself’: How an ABQ business owner is helping others succeed

Molly Moran was a winning entrepreneur whose Albuquerque cleaning business was rapidly growing.

But Moran was not. She was burned out, stressed and grieving the loss of both her parents after they were killed by a drugged driver on their way home from church.

“I spent a couple of years in deep grief, deep pain, anger,” Moran said. “It changed me for awhile, and not for the better.”

Struggling to find a way back, Moran came up with some practices that she is now sharing with other entrepreneurs through her business coaching program, Live Bright.

“I looked around, and I see all these entrepreneurs and business owners … just working their faces off, and they’re not that happy,” she said. “So I decided I wanted to do something about it.”

Moran’s approach involves teaching people how to “grow a business in a happy, joyful way rather than in a disconnected way.” Some of the elements involve short, daily practices such as setting intentions, taking a step toward a stated goal and taking even just a short amount of time each day to do something fun.

Over the past year, Moran has worked with 38 clients, many of whom are in service industries such as house cleaning or construction. She had started her own business, Green Sweep, 16 years ago as an eco-friendly cleaning company that has grown to serve about 600 regular customers.

The entrepreneurial bug, she said, came from working in her parents’ country store at the northern edge of Vermont. Her business consulting skills are reminiscent of her time coaching field hockey in college.

“Nothing makes me feel better than being able to teach people and give them tools that they can take and improve in very specific ways,” Moran said.

What’s the hardest thing to teach business owners?

Enjoyment and fun is what people struggle with the most. I think life gets really serious. And it is serious, but people forget that it’s also supposed to be fun and enjoyable. That’s a hard thing for people to understand, that actually the more fun you have, probably the more successful you’re going to be. That’s been the case for me.

How do you teach that?

I encourage them to start out really simply. What did you like to do as a kid? Did you like to play with dolls? Did you like to play with Play-Doh? There’s a silliness to it, often. It does make a difference.

Is there a client you’re particularly proud of?

I’m making up a fictitious name, so I’ll talk about Jen. Jen has a cleaning company and is in the Midwest. We dug in and fixed a whole bunch of things from a profitability standpoint. That’s one of my favorite things to do because there’s so much waste in business. People think they need 50 offices and 50 callers. I used to think that, too. But you don’t actually need all these things to run a successful business.

She’s worked really hard on her leadership and on her relationships with her staff and had some big struggles, which a lot of us do because we’re learning as we grow. She’s taking space every day for herself and is expanding in so many ways as a human and as a leader. She’s more connected with her spouse than she’s been. And she’s making money, has dug herself out of debt. That’s a success story, I would say.

Tell me about a mistake that you’ve made.

I’ve made so many. This might sound cheesy, but I’ll just go with it: not trusting myself, especially when I’ve made a bad hire. It’s probably cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars. I’ve made leadership-level hires, and then I know pretty quickly if it’s going to work or not. But then I’m like, ‘Well, you haven’t really given it a chance.’ Or, ‘Did you really train him on that? Are your expectations too high?’ I go through all of these steps and then six months later, it (falls apart) and I’m paying severance and doing all this other stuff. But I have graduated from making that mistake.

What do you do for fun?

I run. I spend time with family and friends. I do play with Play-Doh. Truly. I do ridiculous things. We don’t have any pets right now, but we have been fostering dogs. That’s been really fun. I like really dumb jokes.

Why did you get burned out?

My parents dying is very personal but also very much a part of my story. For many years, it’s not a story I told. I’ve always been a pretty happy person. I’m lucky. I had so much love. And then I went through this massive transformation when my parents got killed. I became angry and reactive and disconnected. I was like, what happened to me? This just can’t be who I am for the rest of my life. It was definitely a very intentional journey that I went on to figure out how to get back to me. I needed a simple tool … so I created what I call the Live Bright movement. It’s not toxic positivity. The real and authentic is a big part of it.

Can you give me some examples?

Every single day, I take space for myself. It could be journaling or meditating or doing breathing exercises or whatever. None of these has to take more than five minutes. I’m setting intentions every single day. And every day, I’m going to do something that supports the new version of who Molly Moran is becoming. It could be doing some public speaking, it could be hopping onto Facebook and doing some Facebook Live to some people I’m coaching. Something that makes me slightly uncomfortable that supports where I’m going.

What’s some valuable advice you have received?

Trust yourself.

What are your goals?

My goal is to empower a million entrepreneurs to live bright. That is through coaching and my podcast. It’s just a really big goal. And of course I have goals for Green Sweep, too. We want to be the best place to work. It’s not more money that I want. Money is fantastic, I can do so much good stuff for myself, for my family and for other people. But it’s more about impact. That’s kind of where I am right now. It’s been a mission for me, really. The more clear people are in what they want out of life and how to get that out of life, the more clear they can be in what they’re doing in their business.