Right About Now with Ryan Alford - You Only Get One Shot: Confidence, Discipline, and Building Real Success with Mara Dorn

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

Confidence isn’t something you’re born with — it’s something you build. In this episode of Right About Now, Ryan Alford sits down with Mara Dorn, a leader who has helped build billion-dollar sales organizations and mentor hundreds of young professionals. Mara shares the lessons she learned early: you only get one shot, first impressions matter, and how you show up physically affects how you perform mentally. Drawing from decades of experience, she explains why discipline, posture, energy, and personal standards still matter — even in a world driven by convenience, shortcuts, and AI. This isn’t about appearances for appearance’s sake. It’s about understanding how confidence, credibility, and work ethic are deeply connected to results. In this episode, we cover: Why first impressions are psychological, not superficial How posture and presence affect performance The difference between confidence and ego Why discipline outperforms talent The generational shift in work ethic How to build real confidence without pretending to be perfect Why authenticity still requires standards Mara also opens up about anxiety, imperfection, and how embracing flaws — instead of hiding them — can become a competitive advantage. Listen & Watch Full episodes, video, and show updates: 👉 https://ryanisright.com Check out the BILF Podcast: 👉 https://bilfpodcast.com Follow on Socials  Ryan Alford Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanalford LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanalford Mara Dorn Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maradorn Website: https://maradorn.com

Another important lesson that I learned growing up is that you only got one shot at this. You have one shot. This ain't no dress rehearsal. My grandma used to tell me this. Got one shot at this lifetime. And my mom always said, the way you look the first time somebody sees you is a lasting impression. You got one shot. And it holds true because people judge you from the way that you look.

It's not vanity. It's truth. It's 100% true. There's many studies that have been done that show that the way that you look govern the way that you act, a way that you perform, and the way that people judge you. This is right about now with Ryan Alford. Radcast Network Production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over one million downloads a month.

Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping next and cash in checks? Well, it starts right about now. What's up guys? Welcome to Write About Now. We are your number one marketing and business show on Apple Podcasts three years running. Not that anyone's counting. I am.

We appreciate it. We can't buy it. those rankings. So we want to thank you for putting us there. And it's been a while. We're getting back into our live, i.e. new episodes. We've been repurposing a few. But now we're getting back into new recordings here in 2026. It's about legendary business advice from legendary people doing amazing things. And look, sometimes we don't always do it alone. We do it with a team. And sometimes that team goes over one billion. And that's why we got Mara Dorn. What's up, Mara? What's up? How are you? Hey, I'm back in the saddle, baby.

We've taken a little hiatus, moving our studio and stuff. I'm getting my sea legs back and getting all the energy and feeling good. How about yourself? I feel good. Today's been a little crazy, but overall, I feel good, ready to go. It's 2026, new goals, new plans, new years. It's good. Your team's over $1 billion in sales.

That's a big number. And again, it takes a village to hit those kind of numbers. I'd love to know, like, at 2026, for someone listening, what's a misconception of sales? That all salespeople are sleazy. I would say a lot, but not all. There are tons of people that really want to do the right thing. In fact, when I hire people, I always say we're not salespeople, but our job really is to advise people.

That is what we do. We advise people to put them in a better position than when we find them. How does Mara Dorn sell insurance? How did you sell? I was pretty upfront all the time. It's just the way that I speak. What you see is what you get. It wasn't for everybody because people, they want to hear what they want to hear.

I was honest. I said what it did. I said what it didn't do. I wasn't afraid to really talk about the plan. I had no qualms about saying all the things that it wasn't. wasn't covering. And it worked in my favor, not to mention I was female, and I probably worked that in my favor too. And then at one point, I was a pregnant female, so that worked out really well for me, too. I was upfront and honest. That's really what it was. Why should you not use whatever your

best attributes are? Some people, it's their personality. Some people, it's their humor. Some people, it's their looks. Use what God gave you. It's so true. There are some people that they excel as far as, you know, the way that they speak or you're right, the way that they look. So why not use it to your advantage. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. As long as you're not doing it in like a deceiving type of way. We need some insurance. I got insurance on everything. You have to buy it from someone. Why not use the attributes that you have to help push a sale along or whatever it takes that people relate to? Yeah. As long as you know what you're doing, you're selling a service. The power of peace is hilarious, though. When I first started in the career, I think that's all people saw was the exterior. So it was really

hard for people to take me seriously. I was young at the time. Here I was. I was highly edict. educated as well. And then at that time, it was older white men. So there was a huge stigma. Oh, you're cute, but you're not going to do much. And then I had to show my worth by speaking and understanding and talking like I knew what I was talking about. It wasn't always in my favor. In fact, it was kind of the latter that it wasn't always in my favor. So then when I really understood the psychology of sales and how it worked, of course I used it in my favor. It only works. That only made sense. Well, I mean, looks get you in the door, but your brains keep you in the house. Literally, it might get the door open, but it doesn't make shit happen. You got to have the brains and the looks

to make it happen. I know that's a big part of how you coach and mentor people is the importance of that and leaning into it and that we've lost that a little bit in today's generation. Talk a little bit about that, Mara. A lot of my content right now talks and it all goes back to the power of the P. But another important lesson that I learned growing up is that you only got one shot at this. You have one shot. This ain't no dress rehearsal. My grandma used to tell me this. Got one shot at this lifetime. And my mom always said, the way you look, the first time somebody sees you is a lasting impression. You got one shot. And it holds true because people judge you from the way that you look. It's not vanity. It's truth. That's 100% true. There's many studies that have been done that show that the way that you look govern the way that you act, the way that you perform, and the way that people judge you. The biggest lesson that I tried to teach all the new generation that's coming in is you have to look good. And I'm not talking about the Armani suits. Like they look. love the name brand bullshit. I'm not talking about that. Go to Marshalls. I don't care where you go, but you got to come dress for success. You have to. The way that you look is going to dictate your overall performance. If you're coming with a sweatshirt on your head and you're like slumped over and

you're dialing, like that's how people are going to hear you, hello. But if you're upright and you look good, you're going to feel good, you know, shoulders back. I always tell them, say it with your chest. You feel it. And that's what sales is about is synergy and energy. And if you have no synergy and energy, you got no sale. That is a big thing that I talk to all my kids about that come in. And even in Zoom and stuff, like if you're on the call with a client or in person, it does matter. And getting one that says it doesn't sort of lying a little bit. It doesn't mean it's not about necessarily the brand, but it's about you just can't look disheveled. You know, like that's...

You know, like, what thing in life is the way that you do everything in life. If you show up, like I do recruiting pitches online and this lady came literally with her shower cap on. You can see the rollers in there. Am I hiring? There's no way. No way that I'm hiring somebody. You got to show up. At least put on, like, faking, you know, business on the front, like, party on the body.

Right? You can't. You just can't show up looking like shit. It just doesn't work. And it dictates your performance. We're talking with Mara Dorn. I do love B-I-L-F, BILF. Talk to me about BILF.

BILF actually started, honestly, my girlfriends, we were all sitting around a table, and everybody makes fun of me because about the vanity and I hate getting older. My girlfriends from New York, they call me Mara. So they're like, Mara, you're like a milf. And then my other girlfriend was like, she's not a milf. She's a Bilt. You know, first it was. like boss I'd like to, you know, and then my other, like, you've got to be more PC.

And that's how the whole thing came about. Mara is an attractive woman. And she's practicing what she breaches. She looks fabulous. She couldn't look cooler on her little couch with her fluffy pillows and everything. And she's got it styled up. She is totally practicing what she preaches, but that's hilarious. I figured that's like something, that's started with something else.

Also, I'd like to follow us. So I might clean that up. Yeah. Yeah. We've been on her great and then we cleaned it up. Yeah. We said if you made for TV, you got to clean it up a little bit. So you're not selling necessarily day to day now.

What's the day? day job for Marr right now. Well, I have 10 offices throughout the U.S. So part of that is traveling and now I build. So basically I duplicate the system that I developed not just by myself. I was very fortunate to have worked with a great group of leaders and taking that blueprint and that concept and duplicating it throughout the U.S. in different offices. So my job now is I recruit, I build my show teams how to instill culture, a working culture that people want to be in there because they're 1099. So they don't have to come to work. You want people to want to come to work. And that's, primarily what I do. I study KPIs. I do not the cool stuff anymore. I try to be as active as I possibly can in the field because that's where I excel, honestly. I really don't like the position I'm in. I like to be in roll my sleeves up with the agents and have a good time.

The new generation wanting to work from home. Our team works hybrid. I think it can be hybrid, especially if you have the right people. I think it's mainly people driven. I think you need some office time. And there's just stuff even with ours that you've got to be physically together on some level. But in building this culture and doing the things that you're talking about, Where's the middle ground or where are we going or how do we get the generation that's coming up now to understand the importance of that? But then maybe how do we meet them where they are if things are a little different? I don't know the balance of those two things. We're still trying to figure it out. There's a few parts of that question. This generation now I see it with my kids. They're the YouTubers and they want to get the coins and they want to get rich quick because they see it all over the internet.

So there's like a huge false perception that can become really famous, Insta-Famous. And that's not really true at all because the concept still applies. Everything in life worth having, you have to work hard for you. You have to. I don't care what you say. And hard work is going to beat out talent every single time. But I think within there, they've also lost somewhere along the way that you have to put in the work on the front end.

It just doesn't magically appear. This is the biggest battle that I face right now with my new guys that come in because they're young. They're typically anywhere from 18 to 20 something years old. They come in. And you're right. They want that balance. And I feel like you can get that balance or that, you know, that first.

free time or that me time, you can, but you have to work hard in order to achieve that. And if you can't work hard, and with insurance, I think pretty much any business that you're an entrepreneur, you've got to put in the work. And there's no business in the world that you're all of a sudden going to be super profitable your first year. At least I don't know of one. You got to put in the time. It doesn't come overnight. There's very few overnight successes, but I do think you can buy back your time. I think you can and meet them in the middle as long as they understand that it's your long term game. It's like your long game, not your short game. You've got to put in the work on the front end.

You have to. And then, sure, we'll meet you in the middle. You can start pulling back. Because my agents, listen, these guys grind. They're in the offices at 8 a.m. whether they're in Florida or 5 a.m. in Vegas, they are grinding from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. But I also have tons of them that are making six-figure incomes by the time they're 21 years old.

You know, you've got to put in the work. You have to. Bottom line. I've owned my agency now for 10 years. Over 100 young people from 20 to 30 years old. And I don't know that there's like a single common denominator, but I will say it's, it's not that they don't care as much, but the prioritization of work and what truly hard work looks like is different. And I'm not saying it's right or wrong because I've tried to be progressive in different strokes for different folks because, look, if you don't want that and you aren't willing to work for it and you can accept less money so you can hire more people, then I guess that's okay.

But that's been the different rewiring that I see. Our generation wasn't all the way maybe you and I are wired, but it seems like that. like it was more of the percentage, at least my peers. The expectation growing up in my house was you go to college. I didn't know that people didn't go to college. I had no idea. That was kind of the expectation that I put on to my kids. I have one that's 15 and he does not want to go to college. That's not an option for you. But then on the flip side of that, right, it's kind of contradictory. I don't know that him going to college would be the best thing for him, honestly. Like if he's just going to go to college and sit around and bullshit all day, I don't know that that's really the route.

and I don't need college to do what I do. I think in that sense, I've become more progressive. The only problem is that I think that the work ethic has completely gone down the toilet with this generation. We don't see them working as hard. I mean, there was a point how it worked for you, but there was a point. I was working all this. I didn't care. I would have sacrificed anything to work to have a better life.

There's a lot of conveniences. Technology and convenience and even AI and all this stuff is great. I love it. In some ways, it's made me more money with more efficiency because I can apply. my own driving initiative with these tools today and I get a lot more powerful. The generations now, they have more conveniences and more things. And so they don't get the calluses that maybe we did because they don't have to. And so you almost have to generate false hardships to sort of challenge them.

The most upsetting thing about this generation is that they have the ability. We had to really learn. We had to go to, I was just talking about this with my son. We literally had to go to the library to learn about something. They can go on to chat, CPT. If they want to be the best in anything, they'll have a blueprint written out for them with an entire plan, five-year plan to show you how to achieve it. Everything's at their fingertips, yet they don't want to do it. That's where I go back and forth, being progressive and wanting the kids to work for what they have.

Because this generation is so spoiled that they really can utilize every possible tool within seconds that's at their fingertips. You could literally become just about anything in a week. And not because you're going to have the experience, but you'll have. the knowledge, knowledge has gotten so cheap. It's like it's more now the experience and the creativity of applying it. You have to have desire to apply it. It's so true. And I see it with the COVID kids. They're just like, it's just like whenever. Or it also could be a personality thing. Like my daughter's very driven. I have a daughter that's extremely driven. She looks like me. She talks like me. Like this bitch is bad. Then my son is just like, oh, whatever, you know.

So I don't know me. We'll see what happens with the smallest one. What he does. It has been a huge shift, a cultural shift for me at the beginning of my career, we were slinging that insurance and driving around. We went door to door. Mind you, I live in Florida, so you have to drive 30 minutes minimum. And I was slinging insurance all over the state. I would drive and I live in Orlando. So I would drive, if it meant going to Fort Lauderdale, which was three and a half hours, I was doing that with Map West. I didn't have maps on my phone. Here's the deal. Like, if I had a stop in West Palm and that person wasn't at their house, I'd still have to go because I couldn't get from point A to point B without going to be to get to see it was a whole generational shift when all of a sudden we went from selling

face to face to selling online and now all of a sudden these guys and girls have become so much more spoiled they want the incentives they want to do this i was just happy to get the sale these guys now they need an incentive to work the hunger isn't there like it used to be as we close out i do want to hit on your book businesses with perfect imperfections what is that i wanted to go into public speaking this is the honest-to-god truth and one of my mentor said to me you can get you can get into public speaking, but you need a book. You got to write a book. All right.

You wrote a book about you. You wrote this one. So I wrote a book and I didn't want it to just be like any kind of book. So it really talks about my backstory, my not that interesting, but really all the different insecurities and my battle with anxiety and all the different things that have really paved the way. And instead of looking at as setbacks, they really were used as comebacks to kind of shape where I'm at today and still.

That's good. We need more of that transparency and reality of it's not. not all glitz and glam and all perfect. And we all have to make up for our own vaults sometimes, our own mistakes, our own imperfections. I trip three times over my imperfections every day. I'm successful in spite of them. It's all about the authenticity and really living your truth. And I think for a lot of young people, especially in this day and age, the societal norms and everything that's going on,

we have this like false reality of what it takes. But being authentic and recognizing that you are flawed, I think helps a lot gear you towards the path that you want to get on. Mara, where can everybody keep up with what you got going on? Learn more about just looking at your content, anything else, and social web, anything. You can find me on Instagram at Mara Dorn. I mean, you type my name and you can find my website, Mara Dorn. I'm on, where am I right now? I'm on threads.

I'm on Instagram. I'm on Facebook. I mean, we're just doing big things. I have a YouTube channel. I've built podcasts. So there's tons of things. I'm always on there. Check my stories out.

They're always kind of entertaining. I have something crazy going on in my life. We appreciate you for coming on, Mara. Thank you. I appreciate you. Thank you for having me. Hey, guys, you know where to find us, Ryanisright.com. You'll find the full length of this episode.

You want to watch it. You've got to see these pillows in the background. I'm saying this is the swankiest little setup I've ever seen at home. Marlis saying it is, yes, she looks great. She's comfortable. She's smart as hell. She's knocking down doors. You know where to find her.

We'll have those links to her content. We'll see you next time right about now. This has been right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. Visit Ryaniswright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.