Adam Torres and Marley Majcher discuss crafting a life of purpose.
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Show Notes:
What does it mean to craft a life of purpose? In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Marley Majcher, Founder at ThePartyGoddess! Explore Marley’s journey as an entrepreneur and ThePartyGoddess!
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About Marley Majcher
Marley Majcher is the CEO of “The Party Goddess!”, a nationally acclaimed full service event planning and catering company and author of “But Are You Making Any Money?”, a witty and lauded business guide for entrepreneurs. She is known for creating the most talked about parties of the year. Since the launch of The Party Goddess! Marley’s client list has included Earthlink, Cedars-Sinai, Georgetown University, Art Center College of Design, San Diego Polo Club, See’s Candies, CalTech and Whole Foods Market. Majcher has also produced notable events for the Hollywood Bowl, the Critics’ Choice Awards, luxury car manufacturers Porsche and Rolls Royce’s Bentley brand, as well as celebrations for Sofia Vergara, Gwyneth Paltrow, Pierce Brosnan, Kelly Preston, Jenna Elfman, Britney Spears, Laila Ali, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Katherine Heigl, Snoop Dogg, and Vanessa and Nick Lachey. Heralded as a must-read for any entrepreneur, Marley’’s book, “But Are You Making Any Money?”, simplifies the complicated aspects of running a lucrative business. Her profit technique and conversational style is what Forbes Magazine says “makes you want to keep reading more.”
Marley is the party planning and entrepreneurial expert people turn to for all things entertaining. Her popularity for her savvy style and business sense has earned her appearances on Fox and Friends, Fox Business, MSNBC, Extra, Entertainment Tonight, CBS Morning News in Los Angeles, Good Day LA, Bravo, E!, MTV, HGTV, FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC, and The Wedding Channel. Marley is a current member of the Forbes Los Angeles Business Council, as well as the North American Academy of Wedding & Event Planning Advisory Board.
About ThePartyGoddess!
The Party Goddess! is a high-end, full service catering and event planning company that helps crazy-busy people (from A-list celebrities to hip, regular joes) execute rockstar fabulous events from concept to completion.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today’s guest is Marley Majcher and she’s founder at The Party Goddess.
Marley, welcome to the show. Thank you. How are you? Oh my gosh. So we’re, we’re live right after a labor day. I’m looking forward to catching up with you and looking forward to getting into today’s topic. So we’re going to talk about some of your, some of your journey going from really covering Hollywood, glamor to homesteading, and really more importantly, what I want to get into is unpacking this ideology.
You have a really crafting a life of purpose. So I think it’s super interesting. But just to get us started here, Marley. We’re going to start this episode the way that we start them all with what we like to call our mission matters minute. So Marley at mission matters, our aim and our goal is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts.
That’s what we do. Marley, what mission matters to you? Mine is it’s clunky, but you’re going to get the point, which is. No matter what capacity someone encounters me slash or my entities, they’re better off than they were before. So even if it’s just like, Oh, you’re having a bad day and you’re walking your dog and I’m like, Oh, you know, being cheerful to cheer up myself.
And you’re like, okay, like, she’s weird, but I feel better. Or you come in contact with my party goddess company and we plan an event. And you’re like, Oh, you know, I feel better and not so overwhelmed. So no matter what capacity, I feel like that touches all the spokes. So just if you’re a little bit better than how can you not have succeeded with somebody.
I love it. You want to leave, you want to make people better than where you found them. Amen. And it, and sometimes that’s like, maybe after listening to this podcast, it’s going to be hugely better, but maybe sometimes it’s just like, Oh, that person was cheerful and I feel a little better. So now I amazing.
I see the word founder, of course. And whenever I see this, I want to know, like, were you always an entrepreneur? Like, where’d all that begin for you? A hundred percent. I always was. I mean, much to my parents, probably dismay for business, first business, little kid business. I started selling Shrinky Dinks door to door at four years old.
So a hundred percent. And so Shrinky Dinks for those who don’t have a clue, although I understand they’re making a revival, it’s like when you took these little plastic sheets and you wrote on them with permanent marker, and then you cut them out and you put them in the toaster oven. And they’d go like, to me, just the whole thing of watching it.
Go And then of course I would make necklaces and bracelets and things and literally Those are the days like you can tell how old I am because you could walk safely a four year old could walk safely around the neighborhood and I knew my customers like who had big families who somebody would always answer the door like And I just I can feel it see it everything in my hands right now.
Wow The nickels and quarters Like in my little paws. And I was like, there is no greater feeling. And then it went from there. I’ve had every kind of business, I think, under the sun when I was young. Wow. That wasn’t amazing story. And what do you think, what do you think kind of drove that? Like, what do you think drove that?
Was it curiosity? Was it like, what drove that in you? So my dad is a physician, but he’s always, he does all workers comp. So he’s like, he’s for a long time. Really? I kind of say it’s like. the business of medicine more, right? But he would always invest in real estate with his friends, et cetera. And, you know, they would have this poker night where they’d come over or, and, and I just always wanted to be listening to these guys talking about business.
And it just was like kind of playing business. Yeah. It was like, I can be a, you know, I’m a business person. I was, so I guess the shrinky dinks were the closest thing I had, you know, to businessing anything. And, but then it’s, it’s like any, it’s like anything else, right? It’s like, to me, it’s a drug. So it’s like, I’m sure the first time people try cocaine or something bad, they just are consumed by it.
And I’m fortunate in most ways that. It’s, it is really the thrill of the transaction. Like, I mean, when I, when I watched some of these like movies, like Boiler Room or like Glen, Gary, Glen Ross, and like always be closing, you know, some people that would be completely overwhelming, like, Oh my gosh. And I was thinking I should really just do like a, make myself do a stint, like at a call center for a week, you know, just to fricking a show how easy my life is compared to theirs.
I think I would love it. Even if you get hung up on your like, I don’t care. Here’s my goal. I just love that. Here’s my goal. I’m going to do it. Bam. Yeah. I think it’s interesting that that you, you started so young in that you felt the transaction and the money in your, you said the word. So I’m going to say it again, cause it’s hilarious.
You said, I felt the money in my paw and that kind of, That kind of drove it. What was your first, like your first for a way for ran to like a serious business? Like, was that like, obviously it wasn’t, it wasn’t at four, but like, what was the first one that you were like, okay, you know, I’m pretty good at this.
Well, you know, I really want to go back and not saying you didn’t clean up on the shrinking. I’m just saying, cause you didn’t have to pay for any inventory. I’m sure your parents were paying for it. Like, but you know, I do have to tell you that I still consider that my problem when I was 13 I wrote, wrote my first book on creative gift wrapping.
Whoa. And a woman but babysit, well actually probably then, just as I’m answering, it’d probably be my babysitting business was the next business, because I crushed it at that because I realized these freaking girls, all they wanna do is go out on the weekends, you know, once you get to a certain age.
And I was like, oh man, if I can, if I can make this much babysitting, this is awesome. The one of the women I babysat for, she was like a hardcore business woman. And I always was just. enamored with her. So I had this idea like for our Christmas boutique or whatever at school, sell stuff. And so I was like, okay, I’m going to write this book on creative gift wrapping.
And then, cause she, she could print it for me. She’s like, I’ll print it for you. And I mean, that was a real thing. I mean, I obviously babysitting money and then I would have to write her the check because I had a check account. But, and then I graduated from that to like painting t shirts and sweatshirts and stuff.
Cause I, I always loved to shop. So it was, see these like really super expensive shirts at like Neiman Marcus. I mean, I’m that young. And I was like, Rick, I can do this. And so I was just in class, I finished class and I was outside like dying my t shirts and selling them. And then it was like one of those things.
Once somebody else sees it, they’re like, oh, I want one of those. Oh, I want one of those. And I just remember thinking I’m barely staying in school now because I had undiagnosed ADHD. I was like, nothing like. Let’s go start dying some shirts.
Oh my gosh, i’m laughing over here because i’m thinking about some of the businesses you had I had too I did some things with shirts in middle school and I did some like airbrushing and just all kinds of random stuff So it’s funny that you say this So that’s why i’m laughing. I didn’t know we were like kindred entrepreneurial spirits over here You do I mean, here’s the thing, you know, and by the way, i’m not trying to say that an entrepreneur is only You Born and stuff like that.
I mean, we absolutely, but I do believe that there is a big group of us who cannot do anything else. Like, like I, I mean, I thought I was crazy when I was, you know, in high school and stuff, because I just could not understand how my friends. We’re not, it was like this undiscovered secret. Like, how are you not like obsessed with writing your own creative gift wrapping?
But the coaches were like, whatever, like they wanted to go out. And I was just like, okay, I want to, how much can I make? And, and my parents, as I say, my, it’s not like they were sitting there going, you need to work for a living. They wanted me to focus on school. And I just was like, no, I can do both. And I just had to.
That was the only way to look at it. So when, let’s fast forwarding a bit here. So when did this when did the, when did Hollywood start to play a role? Like how did all this other piece of your life and party planning otherwise, like how did Hollywood kind of make its way into your world? So a long story short, but I married a chef when I was very young, right?
When I right out of college, which was not the path I thought I was going to take by any stretch. But then I went into the restaurant business and then, you know, started a catering company and all these things. Well, one of the things I realized fairly early on was how, if you, If your business had a celebrity clientele or celebrity following of any kind, and this goes back to the days when you were like, we all read magazines, right?
And I remember being on spring break with all the girls and, you know, we’re all lying out and then you have, You know, and everybody’s got the magazines, whatever. And it would be, let’s say Us Weekly or something, or, you know, and it would talk about this celebrity has this lip gloss, or this celebrity is wearing these jeans or something.
And these girls, by the way, who, who could clean these celebrities clocks in terms of net worth. I mean, I’m not even exaggerating. Yeah. And it was still, they were like, Like, look at this. That looks really cool. And I thought when I was young, I remember thinking like, just cause there’s celebrities. It wasn’t like I didn’t do it too.
I did. Then I started thinking when I started just doing the event planning, just doing the party goddess and you run the statistics. And at the time it was like, there are 456, 000 event planners or something in the English speaking world. I was like, There is no, how am I going to stand out? There’s no way.
I mean, I’m good at what I do, but so are a lot of people. But then I just went back to that whole thing of here, I need a strategy, you know, and I need these celebrities. And so I said, how do I get these celebrities? Well, once I like write a goal or have something in my brain, It’s like the shrinky dinks.
And I was like, okay. So I started telling everybody that this was my goal. Like, Hey, listen, I need some celebrity clients, no clue how that world worked. My friend was a publicist for fashion stuff. And she said, well, this is how kind of they do the gifting, right? We, we send these fashion things and they’re full of brands and stuff to these celebrities.
And if you want to include something in there, but I’m telling you right now, it’s going to have to be significant to get their attention. And I was like, okay. And freaking men, one day, lo and behold, like My office is like Jamie Spears is on the phone for you. And I was like, I think I’m a sitting on the floor, like sorting papers.
There’s, I mean, it was, I was like, Britney’s like, really? And then that’s really how it started. I just started doing these celebrity events and started looking at it as it’s a transaction, you know, and how did I make it win? How would I make it win, win. And then I wrote a book and all this stuff. The book was to solve my own problems, but it was in a business space.
Right. And. It just was amazing to me that my publicist could pitch TV shows, all this stuff about the book, about this, about event planning tips. My Lord, the minute. I got a celebrity client. It was like, when can she come? When is she? How’s, how’s this week? We had a cancellation for tomorrow. It was just like, wow.
Sometimes you have to just realize that that is how the world works. Right? So how, so I took a, it was, it was the longest shortcut anyone on the planet has ever taken. Cause it took me a long time to just be like, fine, that’s what I’m going to do. But then the dividends that it pays off, pays are just.
Enormous. And I think that’s kind of the business lesson is yes. Have a great product and yes, have fabulous customer service, but you have to look at it as what is making everyone else by your competitor? What is make, or is it because social media influencers are saying it’s amazing? Is it because you have a brand, what is that?
And then do more of it. Period. Because. Otherwise, to me, you’re just shouting. You’re just shouting in the wind, right? I mean, you’re just boiling the ocean. Nobody knows. You have to have that, that megaphone, especially these days, because there’s just so much noise out there. And so if the answer is, you know, Wow.
Everybody buys stuff because of Instagram or like, if I were marketing to teenagers, my daughter’s 16 and Lord in heaven, I would just do nothing. I swear to you, but sit and make fricking Tik TOK videos that appeal to 16 year olds, because it is whoever the PR team is behind Brazilian bum bum and all that is Lord.
My hat is off to you. My, I’m not going to pay my mortgage this month cause it went to Brazilian bum bum, but in Seoul, De Janeiro and all these companies that these girls are just like bronzed and ding, ding, ding. And then all of them, but like she was in Cambridge this summer for a program and it’s like.
Oh, my little friend from Athens who blah, blah, blah. Oh, and she has the sole de Janeiro. And like, it’s just, how are you guys all on the same train? That’s social media. So pick wherever everybody is, wherever those fish are biting and you just go. And I’m not saying just do what they’re doing. You amp it up somehow.
And it’s, it’s just magic. Like I just read this thing. This is way too long an answer, but this is, you said free flowing, but this is the whole thing about this fricking TikToker to put all this, these cucumber recipes. And I just ran, read yesterday that they ran out of cucumbers in Iceland. Cause this clown is wasted to this.
And the Icelandic said they had no idea this information was coming out and they went accordingly. And so there are no cucumbers. All this old population of, of Icelandics who are like, Oh, I need me some cucumbers. Cucumbers are relatively quickly growing thing. But I thought who thought this one dude with a mandolin and how he’s like, just sell out cucumbers.
And I said, come on. And I’m thinking to myself, damn, how fast can I grow them here in California? You’re going to ship me some in a suitcase, right? That’s the lesson. The dude have some, some cute, he’s cute. I mean, I was like, I should have put it in front of my 16 year old and said, would you buy a cucumber salad from this gentleman?
That’s the thing. So do what’s simple, do what’s going to go viral or do what’s, you don’t, you know, you don’t have to take out the, the cucumber out at the Superbowl. Right. This kid just, Find this kid or the other ones who are in the mango business or the equivalent of something else and go down that path.
So, so speaking of a new path, like this concept of homesteading, where did, where did this come about? Where did this come for you? Well, so just like I was selling shrinky dinks at four years old, I was, we had a big backyard growing up and we had this like bamboo at the way back part of our yard. And it was the bane of my mom’s existence.
My dad could have cared less, but it was the bane of her existence because anybody who’s had bamboo, it grows and grows and grows. And you can’t, I mean, Total sustainability situation for sure. So she tried to cut it down. They tried to do everything in this bamboo. Well, to me, I was like, this is great.
Cause I just had my whole little world in this bamboo, right? I would kind of carve it and bend it, these little shoots and stuff. And I had my. Kind of little thing there. And then I would pretend it was an Indian, right? I wasn’t, didn’t take the cowboy path. And I was like, pretend I would run the hose and like wash my laundry.
Right. Which were like rags or something. So I just always remember wanting to be outside and like wanting to pitch a tent. No, it just was obsessed with it. And then, you know, you read how Martha Stewart had chickens. So the second I had my own place, I was like, I’m going to have the chickens that aren’t kind of chickens that have the blue and green eggs.
And then I did. And then I had all the other kinds of chickens and I still have chickens. And that was my gut 30 something years ago. And. I’ve always loved animals. I had ducks growing up. And so I don’t know, I guess I just thought of myself as a little farmer. My grandfather was kind of like a farmer in his own way in his own small thing, and so then, you know, life, you get busy and you start making money and have mortgages, and then you go, my gosh, how did I get here?
Right. And. Like I didn’t have time for my garden. I didn’t have time for this. I didn’t have time for, and then I went through a really rough patch because my mom was dying of cancer and I was totally focused on that. And I just was like, this, I am done with this. So I decided I was going to be a rancher.
I was like, my second half is going to be fricking, I’m going to do what I want to do. Wow. So of course I tell my real estate agent friend, let’s go to Santa Ynez. Now I had not been to San Ynez. It turns out I think I had been there to get gas one time on the way up north, but I was like San Ynez it is and so We went up there.
I said i’m not coming home till I put an offer on a property which I did Which is 20 acres talk about getting your I mean, talk about a dose of humble pie. Lord have mercy. Because I was like, Oh, I’ve done so many real estate projects and flips and rehabs. You try to do something from the fricking ground up on the top of the hill with a concrete house.
Concrete and steel house. And it’s just mind blowing how many times my rump gets handed to me on a daily basis. But I was committed to it. And I, a couple, a few years ago, I went to the Faroe Islands and I in search of these certain sheep. And then I found out they burn the wool because they don’t have a market for it.
Cause the world wool market is tanking. And that really put both pieces together. I was like, okay, I want to be a rancher, but at the same time, Like I need to do something. So now I’m working on these patents for wool in the fire prevention for in the fire prevention space and Yeah, I mean it’s it’s nuts.
But even when I get frustrated, I’m like, okay, are you gonna let the sheep down and I’m just like Nope, I’m not. So here I am doing podcasts about parties and then I will go back to my National Science Foundation grant and turn it in. And one of the things that, I mean, we’ve talked about in the past, just in general, was the long game, like the long game and figuring out your purpose and just kind of being on that wavelength of where you want to be.
Like what, what does the long game mean for you? The long game for me, and I’m going to start I want to just make sure in case somebody didn’t hear it before is that you realize I have ADHD So for me the long game It’s almost like you might as well just kill me. Right. Because everything is like about spontaneity and how you feel in the moment and stuff like that.
So it’s significant for me to say, the long game is from a lot of perspectives. One, my overarching business principle for myself is that my, my passive income is a minimum of double my expenses. Okay. No matter what business I’m in, even if I’m paid very well as an event planner, you’re still dollars for hours at a certain point, right?
So that can’t be my long game unless I wanted to license a product or do. And so I looked at all those things. And so then anyway, you then, you know, I’m passionate about. The environment. I’m not in any way. I mean, people can just go ahead and out me that I would still fry fly private tonight if I could.
Okay. So please do not be like an activist, but she’s no, I’m 100 percent flying private. But the thing is, I want to do what I can do right and use the natural resources. And I do believe we have to plan for the future. And, and, That fit in really well. I love animals. I’m obsessed with animals. I hate waste of any kind except for private jet fuel and I was like this is my potential end game, right?
Because if I can get the patents for this This line of products that i’m doing Not only will the sheep be happy and farmers in america, which is its own sad tale And then living in southern california where we have fires You It’s just like, you know, crazy. And if, so if I can kind of kill a lot of birds with one stone and accomplish my own overarching passive income, twice the expenses component, and then you think if the going back to the beginning where we started, right.
My goal in life is so that each person that comes in contact with me is a little bit better off than when they started. So if I look at that from, Hey, listen, the sheep farmer is a hundred percent better because this sheer bull is a burden. And if I look at the fire people, I mean, if you could say one person’s house, right, and your whole life, or you just say one person’s house from fire or one person’s business, all the ripple effect.
So for me. It starts with the very, very, very basics of goal setting and, you know, doing those exercises you do when you’re in these like CEO groups, which are like, if you had your funeral, what, you know, what would they say? And man, I took that to another level. I was like, this is what they are going to wear to my funeral.
And this is what they were going to have a mandatory dress code. You are not, Oh my gosh. Spoken like a true party planning goddess, right? And I was like, and they’re going to say, man, okay, we had to dress up and I had to have a hat and a veil, but that was some damn funeral, you know, like that was worth it.
And then it also boiled down to, you know, like what kind of a boss do you want to be? What kind of project do you want to, you know, cause they say you’re like, as if you read this, this thing at your eulogy, you know, would it be, Oh, she only worked and didn’t spend time with their kids or didn’t do those exercises.
I think where you begin with the end in mind, thank you, Stephen Covey, back us into our 10 year, five year, one year, one month, one week, one day goals. Becomes very clear to me what I should do after this podcast. My goals, right? So that to me is what the long game is about is you set that and then have it affect the other components of your life so that they all, they all feed into that.
And if you spend some time proactively thinking about that, you would really realize that this is completely mutually exclusive with this goal. So, but with little tweaks, you can, you know, you can get there, but it is about all these little activities that we do every day to, you know, to build on it, like you didn’t get to 5 billion, you know, five star reviews and all this stuff.
I mean, it was one podcast, one review at a time. And that’s. And then you build this quality body of work and then that opens these doors. And so for me, that’s the long game, but I would just like to underscore that makes it look like everything’s been a very smooth sailing upward trajectory. And. It has not.
And nobody’s journey is going to be a smooth sailing upward trajectory. And if it appears to be that way, they are lying or you don’t know them long enough. Yeah. I like that. You say that, that it appears to be like, we never know what’s really going on. But what we do know what’s going on is that everybody has a bucket.
And in that bucket is all kinds of different. baloney, right? For sure. And might be able to eat cheeseburgers, which would be my goal and never gain, you know, an ounce. That’s my goal. How did you know? Like we’re psychic twins and the just, I just in and out, if I could just eat that and not gain it, like it’s fine, it’s fine.
So Marley, I have a, just something that I was been curious about, about you specifically, the party goddess, where’d that name come from? Have to ask that one. I was like, I can’t let her off this. Where’d the name come from? That is the perfect question because that dovetails with what we were just talking about.
It was one of the lowest points in my entire life. If not the lowest, I was segwaying from the restaurant business. And thank God we own the land. And my, my dad was like, listen, you want to plan events. We keep getting offers to partner up with people. You, you can then just do events. You don’t have to do these other components.
Like, and. And so, but I, in my mind, I was a failure, even though it was a choice. And even though the restaurant is still my greatest investment. And I was like, At this, like, what kind of a name can I come up with? And I was like, the party goddess. And, and let me tell you, I was barely getting out of bed in the morning.
So you weren’t quite feeling like the goddess at that moment. I was feeling like the dishwater back. Oh, come on. It’s breaking my heart. Seriously. And I remember in LA, somebody introduced me. This is the, you know, and my boyfriend at the time, cause by then I’d gotten divorced, it was a hot mess. And it was like, Oh, she’s an event planner.
And she has a company called the party goddess. And I remember these people like. The party got us like, but that was enough. That’s what you needed. You needed some haters. I was like, ma’am, I will bury you and you and you and you, you know, and I ended up doing that 10 times over, but the message is. That sometimes the greatest things literally it’s like a lotus flower, you know They say grows out of the muck and all that and sometimes that’s really true you have but but I was like listen I’m gonna go big or go home.
I I I feel like garbage anyway So what does it matter if some other ding a ling thinks i’m garbage, you know, just go for it. And then it was like Damn, that’s a good I know that now I pay a lot of legal bills to defend it. So it’s a great name. Well, Marley, this has been so much fun having you on the show today.
And I knew we’d have a ball and I’m glad to find, I waited to ask you that question and I have that for the audience as well, cause I was so curious about where that name came from. That being said, if somebody is watching this or listening to this and they want to follow your journey, whether it’s with the party goddess or the homesteading side of things you’re doing, or just your journey in general, How do people connect?
Well, the easiest way is they can find us on Instagram, which is at the party goddess. Now we are building up our at the profit goddess one. So I would like them to go to at the profit God. I mean, I love them to go to book. Let’s just say they go to add the profit goddess because That is where you’re going to find out some very cool stuff.
Like I have a new book coming out the beginning of the, of next year. We’re about to launch a new digital product, which I haven’t done in years and years and years, so I’m super excited. So that’s the space that the party got a space is where you’re going to find all the latest. But otherwise, if I can just get them to buy the book.
But are you making any money on Amazon? I’ll be like, bless you. My children can go to college. Yeah. Oh, you’re so good. I for everybody watching we’ll put all those links in the show notes Just so you know so you can just click on them and head right on over And speaking of the audience if this is your first time with mission matters and you haven’t hit The subscribe or follow button yet.
We welcome you to do so. This is a daily show each and every day. We’re bringing you new content, new interviews, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button and Marley again, thank you so much for coming on. This has been so much fun.
Thank you for having me.