4 Pillars of Success to Boost Your Visibility with Marsha Guerrier

Christine Li  0:01  
Welcome back to the Make Time for Success podcast. This is episode 70. It is really important to know how to use your voice and your ideas in order to achieve success. But what happens when you feel or sense that your voice is not being heard or listened to? My special guest today, Marcia Guerrier, had that experience where she felt that she was being overlooked and that her talents were being passed by in the corporate space. And she's here today to describe the very powerful access she chose to take. In order to be heard. You will hear how she used her experiences her ambition, her know how and her community and the power for voice to open new pathways for women of color in the corporate and business spaces. 

Marsha Guerrier is a TEDx speaker four times bestselling author, trainer, business analyst and coach, founder and CEO of her sweet spot, a certified minority Women's Business Enterprise providing women of color with leadership and entrepreneurship development. Marsha has held a career in the financial services and financial tech industries spanning over 25 years working for Fortune 500 and startup firms working in areas of systems test engineer, business analysis and product management. She is a wealth of knowledge, wisdom and information and she's going to share with us her pillars for success on this episode today. And before we go listen to the episode together I want to give a big shout out and hello to Natasha Nurse who was featured in Episode 19 on this show, who introduced me to the wonderful Marsha Guerrier. Let's go listen to the episode.

Hi, I'm Dr. Christine Li and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped 1000s of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they could begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn a powerful strategies for getting your mind, body and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important and accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full power. You're going to see how being productive can be easy, and how you can create success on demand. Welcome to the make time for success podcast. 

Hello, my podcast friends. This is Dr. Christine Li. I'm very happy today to welcome my special guest Marcia Guerrier to the show. Today we're going to have a conversation about success. What does it take to get you from the vision or the wish to the actions that will get you there to that identity to that change to that sense of progress that you're wishing for Marsha is a leader in the business space and the marketing space. She is the founder and CEO of Her Suite Spot. Sweet spelled s u i t e and she mentors, women in leadership and entrepreneurship. And I'm so grateful to have her here with us today. Thank you, Marsha for being here.

Marsha Guerrier  3:33  
Thank you Dr. Li for having me. I'm really excited to get into this conversation with you today.

Christine Li  3:40  
Yes, thank you so much. Me too. Alright, so Marsha, you and I have done a few live streams together so we know each other a bit. I'm so grateful for that. Could you share a little bit more about your background with my audience who they don't know yet?

Marsha Guerrier  3:56  
Absolutely. So I'm, again Marsha Garry. I'm the founder of her sweet spot, a private network for women of color advancing in leadership and entrepreneurship. I am a four time best selling author. I have self published books to assist women to amplify their voices and share their stories. I am a business analyst by career trade, and have been working in the financial services and financial technology industries for over 25 years, although I don't look at working for Fortune 500 and startups. And that's really where my love affair with supporting entrepreneurs came from. I have a BS in business management and economics. I have won many awards and have been graciously featured in media across the nation and certainly here in New York.

Christine Li  4:53  
That is beautiful. And you're quite accomplished. You're right You do not look like you have extensive career as you have yours wise and you are a lovely woman to be with. So can you please share with me how you got interested in highlighting women's stories? Let's start there.

Marsha Guerrier  5:15  
Oh, I think for me, one of my pillars of success, and I know we didn't get there, I'm kind of jumping ahead. But inside her sweet spot, we have four pillars of success that I use to help women advance and that's mindset, money marketing and media. And I thought, in the media realm, women believe that that is solely either social media, and or traditional media, being mainstream television and radio and newspapers. And I wanted women to see themselves as author so that they could share and become an expert in their field, right. And I think that is such an important form of media for women to be seen, right and to be heard. And that idea came from me being a part of someone else's book, and wanting to share my story, and just really learning the power, that and how writing those chapters uplifts your own voice. And I wanted to amplify women's voices in that way, because most of my authors never saw themselves as authors never saw themselves as with with a story that someone else could relate to. And that would help someone else. And it truly has been life changing, not just for the readers, but for my authors as well. So it's one of the things that I use to help build up my clients.

Christine Li  6:49  
Okay, could you explain to us the history of that awareness within you for you? How did you get to be the person who could open up this space for other women? How did you give yourself permission to be the bold speaker in your own life, to be the author of your own story, and to promote yourself

Marsha Guerrier  7:15  
through pain through through the trauma and the pain of recognizing after a while, you know, as a black woman in corporate America, you kind of sit there and you hope they see you and you hope that you don't have to toot your own horn, which is one of my favorite books, you know, the the self promotion, the things that you're you learn growing up in a cultural family, no matter what culture you're from, I know, every culture has those, you know, same things that they teach women, right. And, for me, I knew I had a voice, I had things to say. And I knew if I was struggling that way, other other women were struggling too. And as a reader, and as a person that studies entrepreneurship. And that has kind of wanted to model most successful people I saw that they were all offers, right? Everyone was coming out with a book. While we can't reach the traditional publishing avenues, I studied the self publishing arena, and decided that that was the best way to help, especially service based providers not only share their voice, but also have a product as we go out into the speaking platforms and have a place to reach more people. Why not have a tool that can leave them with learning even more about to

Christine Li  8:46  
beautiful. And I agree with you about how you started this part of the conversation when you said pain, pain is so much an instructor of one of our greatest teachers is that struggle to get what we need to be expressed in our environment and and to have our communities understand who we are as people, and what we're wanting and what we don't want. So thank you for being a powerful voice for women in the corporate and business space. I think that's so important. Could you if you don't mind, share with us some issues that you might have had when you were writing when you were on that self publishing journey, because as an author myself, I know, I had support but there are so many different emotional roadblocks along the way for me, could you share some of those stories and how you got over them?

Marsha Guerrier  9:45  
Yeah, it is the same things that I have to teach some of my authors too, and it's how much do we share? I can't talk about that. I don't want to let it all out and really talk about my pain, but in I realized through the exercising and my own mentorships mentors that have helped me in my writing, that releasing is therapeutic in one way, right? And then learn that you are helping the next generation or the next woman or man that's reading your story. And so for me, one of my biggest struggles was, Do I tell the truth. And in writing, you know, there are many styles of writing, right. And in the stories that we do tell, there are personal journeys that we share in our anthologies, and they all come from a place of, and I don't like to, I usually don't like to have to come from a place of despair or a negative space, because I want to live in a positive moment, I want people to see that. But they can't relate to my success, unless they hear about my challenges. And so I had to let go, if I knew I wanted to be the change agent, and that motivating factor in other people's lives, I knew I had to release some of the things that were painful for me. In my journey in corporate America, as I, you know, I've been like I said, I've been in the industry for for 25 years, I was in the industry where women were not getting any positions of leadership, certainly not African American women. And so as we became to be noticed, as a group, it was one position. And then all of you had to fight for it. And so there was so much trauma for me at work with that, and things that I just had to work through. And just be honest about realizing, I think a lot of times, as we climb through success, we tend to forget and regress some of the challenges, right? And when you get to a point of reflection, and someone asked you, how did you get here? You kind of go, oh, wow, I've been through a lot, right? And I find that writing that story down, helps you achieve it even more.

Christine Li  12:13  
So do you have a daily writing process for your own future progress? Do you make that a part of your current process?

Marsha Guerrier  12:21  
Yes, but not in the form because I'm working on a project but just because I am by nature, a goal setter and a reflector, I it is a huge part of achieving milestones that I believe in taking better action towards my success. Right. And so I do like to document and journal, the things that I am working on the things that I'm that I'm trying to achieve, and what set me back, right, what helped me propel so that I can use those tools and I'm a big SWOT analysis fan on my personal self. And it's not just for a business tool. So I use all of these things and do self discovery a lot through my journaling.

Christine Li  13:04  
For those people who are listening who don't know what a SWOT analysis is, could you explain, please? Absolutely.

Marsha Guerrier  13:09  
So the SWOT analysis is a tool that most is it started out as a business tool where you can take a hard look at what your strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats are for your business. But we have found throughout the years that the SWOT analysis is such a good tool for people to use to springton their own personal drive for success and their own personal kind of having that overview of your life. We in this new world of personal branding and YouTube stars and individual life success. It's important to know what you're good at what you're not so great at where you can offload things. We're not great editors, we offload our editing for our, for our podcasts, those are those are things that are important to identify. And I feel like daily journaling and daily goal planning, right is important to you understanding how to constructively write out your SWOT analysis because it's not it's not a thing that you're going to like sit there and say, Oh, what are all the negatives? Let me get the negatives. It's not about identifying and holding on to limiting beliefs, but it is a way for you to identify things that are roadblocks for you to advance. Yes,

Christine Li  14:39  
okay, lovely. And I like that it's a positive exercise that you're doing the review so that you know how you can proceed. Well, okay, great. Should we return now to the pillars because I'm curious to hear more about the pillars again their mindset money, marketing and media. Could you say a bit about each piece. Yeah.

Marsha Guerrier  15:01  
So when I started off as a coach, I started out with the idea that I knew people needed to learn about branding, how to brand their business, how to increase revenue. So marketing and money are always like a no brainer when you're trying to build a brand and a business. And the more I or the longer I worked with my clients, I realize that let's say I did a 1212 week coaching session with a client. And we're here to talk about branding. They've been in business, five to 10 years. So they clearly know their business, but they wanted to get into the digital landscape a little better, right. And learn more about the ins and outs of that that digital digitizing and monetizing. And the more we talked, the more we get into the work is when I realized their mindsets weren't in the proper mindset to achieve the level of success that they dreamed about. While their dreams were big and positive, their mindsets were still limiting and small. That's what mindset is the first of the pillars, right? I realized that mindset was so important to achieving the revenue that you want to achieve for your life, whether it's through your career, or through your business, and then how to properly market yourself and your business to earn that revenue. And then how to properly use all forms of media, which includes self publishing, podcasting, mainstream media, wouldn't we all have liked have been on the Oprah show at one point with our books that, you know, we all dream of that mainstream media, but in today's digital world, there are just so many new forms and new ways to become that micro, influencer or macro? Should that be your journey?

Christine Li  17:01  
Beautiful, I like how you weave them all together. And I do agree with you that without the mindset, things don't really fly like they're supposed to. They can look nice and shiny, but they don't really go the distance for you. Because you're not you're not with the dream, you're not attached to the dream completely.

Marsha Guerrier  17:19  
I say that all the time. That's really the shiny object syndrome. I have clients that come to me and they have worked previously with a coach that promised them a seven figure business, and they had the shiny object marketing, but they don't. They're like, Well, I didn't make it to my seven figures. I didn't I barely didn't get to my five or six figure in my business. What went wrong, right? My, what they taught me was not right. And I said, don't blame it on the coach. You weren't ready, you weren't in the proper mindset. You didn't adjust the world around you to receive and accept you and yourself to accept that you are about to break through and achieve that level of success.

Christine Li  18:03  
Yes, beautifully said. So we're on the same page with these concepts, I think yeah. All right now can we shift to her sweet spot, your membership and community that you have established? Could you tell us the idea and how you've got the idea to create a community like this and what you've learned along the way, and some takeaways that you can share with our audience of what you've learned from your audience. Members.

Marsha Guerrier  18:33  
It didn't start out this way. It started out as just you know what, me being angry me being angry at corporate America and needing to fill my wage gap and my promotion gap. And I've always had those small businesses throughout my upbringing. And I wanted to be a caterer, I wanted to be an event planner, and all these ideas. But one day, I sat around talking to friends who also felt the same pain and trauma from their from their jobs, and needed to fill their wage gap. So they too had side hustles no one talked about, we didn't talk about it with one another as friends, right? And so we finally started talking and I said, You know what, we need to get together more frequently. We need to give each other the information that we're all finding in our own journeys and bring that collectively together. I am a networker by nature. I enjoy the social life of networking, but I do it strategically. I do it with intention and purpose. And I bring people together. I've always done that. And about eight years ago, I didn't start out with what it looks like today. I just threw out my first conference. And then my first conference 25 women in the room. We had eight vendors so we could talk about everybody He was talking about their products and services. And we bought leaders from our community together to motivate us to succeed, right. And from there, I just slowly began to implement new aspects and new elements of what I felt women were looking for, and I just listened. You know, it, there was no major plan, I just leap right into it. And until it kind of formed itself.

Christine Li  20:30  
I love it. So you saw the need, you felt the need yourself, you saw that there were people who are on board with creating a collective voice, perhaps in a collective space. So I love this. What have been the major takeaways? Since it's been many years that you've run this? That her sweet spot as well? How many years has it been?

Marsha Guerrier  20:55  
lose count, I think, eight years since we started the conferences, and I would say maybe seven or six since we have been doing the masterminds and in the group coaching sessions, and I've been working one on one for that long.

Christine Li  21:11  
And what would be the biggest takeaways for you from doing this enterprise,

Marsha Guerrier  21:16  
the biggest takeaway is the wellness of how many people need what you and I are doing, right. And I often get to a place where I want to just go back to your regular life, you know, I have a son, I have a single mom, I have a seven year old and you know, the pandemic has affected me greatly. And sometimes I just want to as a coach, although I'm not a licensed therapist whatsoever, but because I listen to the pain that women are going through, does affect me. And so I often get, oh, I'm not cut out for this. But then when I see the transformation that my clients get, you know, when I see and I hear the testimonials, or just you know, the highs that they get, that makes me want to stay with it, that makes me excited about what I'm doing, and want to continue to grow. Women. I've never more surprised every time I hear a client say I needed that. Or I didn't know that there were communities and spaces where I can talk to people that look and sound like me are going through the same things to me because I'm such an avid networker, and I seek these type of communities everywhere and all the time. To me, it's I'm like I'm over. It's oversaturated it's no one wants this anymore. And then I need a new group of women. And they're like, Where have you been? I've never, I didn't know this exists. And I'm just like, amazed by how many women are still searching.

Christine Li  23:01  
I love it. Thank you for sharing that. And I'm glad you're at the point where you're like I've, I've had so much experience of seeing women do the aha moments. But that's also a very great place to arrive at. Yeah, I would say from my own experience, too. Could you give us some words for the woman who might be listening, who has an idea, who has a little dream, or a big dream, but doesn't quite know how to mobilize the resources, the environment, the energy, the mindset to get it all together to make a substantial movement forward? What would you say to her?

Marsha Guerrier  23:43  
surround yourself by people doing it, right? Look for a coach and invest in yourself. It's a big component to what your return will be your return is a direct reflection of your investment. Right? If you have that big dream and you truly believe in yourself, and that is again, mindset. It starts with your belief. If you believe in yourself, believe enough to invest in yourself to get support and training from a person that has not only been Where you've been has a track record of success. It's important that you listen to him as many podcast as you can that will inspire you with great information such as this one. It's important that you read as many books, get connected with your industry and just talk to one person, tell somebody what you do. Even if you don't do it yet. Don't wait for perfection. If you're at the supermarket, what do you do I help women start and grow businesses you didn't have One client yet, but it's okay. Just start leap. The more you speak it into existence, the closer it'll get to happening.

Christine Li  25:12  
Yeah, I love it. The grocery store is the original marketplace, by the way, when listening. And I would add to that keep the belief really strong, very. So the belief is the thing that is intangible, but is really the guiding picture for everything, the picture, the energy, the vision, it's all of those things, and we can't write it down, really. And we tried. But it's really keeping that vision inside yourself strong, no matter what you're going through there matter where

Marsha Guerrier  25:46  
you're safe. Actually, there are two things I say. I always say what will bill do? Bill is the most energetic person who believes in himself beyond belief, right? Always what will bill do, and to there's a difference between a small business owner and an entrepreneur, that CEO mindset, think about some of the jobs that you have, and maybe at work, I work for startups. So I'm always working with Dreamers. And I work in a product environment where we're trying to develop products, and we're thinking of the customer's needs. And our CEOs are always coming or your stakeholders, they're always coming up with these dreams that you're like, you and everybody else are like, Listen, he's crazy. We can't get this done. There's no way he could happen. But you have that entrepreneur, that CEO stakeholder that is like, we are going to fly off the moon and I love it. Dream big and believe in your dreams. And guess what? We may fail. But we tried, we learned something and we pivoted and had to, you know, do something different. But sometimes it actually works. So you have to dream big and believe without a shadow of a doubt. Even if it sounds impossible. Believe in yourself and your dream. And what will build do I always say at the end? What will bill do ladies? He would he would move forward?

Christine Li  27:20  
Man I ask his bill because everybody's probably curious as Bill an actual person.

Marsha Guerrier  27:26  
It's bill from accounting. I don't know there's always a bill from accounting. Who's like getting all the promotion and advancement in your life what I didn't build from accounting get

Christine Li  27:42  
I laughed so hard, my ear buds popped out of my ears. Um, Marsha, thank you so much for sharing your heart here with us today. I think you certainly have the endurance record, and the leadership record and you also have your heart clearly in the work that you do. So thank you for being the leader and woman that you are and thank you for being on the show today. Do you have a way for our listeners to get into your community to stay in touch with you please let us know.

Unknown Speaker  28:14  
Absolutely. You can go to our website, hersuitespot.com check out our different membership packages, we have membership levels for women at every stage, whether you are just starting out and really don't have much to invest or really want to take your coaching seriously, we have packages for everyone, you can find me on all social media platforms at her sweet spot. And it's really just been a pleasure talking with you and sharing a little bit more about me. Dr. Li.

Christine Li  28:45  
Thank you again so much. The pleasure has been mine. I appreciate your time and your work and go forward with success. Marsha, and all of our listeners, I wish the same for you make time for success. Make time for your belief and all the self care that you need to get yourself moving forward in the direction of your biggest dreams. I will see you next week. Thanks for being here. Bye. 

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time for Success podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also visit our website maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com for past episodes, show notes and all the resources we mentioned on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too. You can find me there under the name procrastination coach. Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to. And let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success. Talk to you soon.

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