Spark Stories Episode 15

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: Welcome to spark stories like business radio brought to you by the Atlanta Business Radio Network. Every week, entrepreneurs and experts share the stories behind the brand who they are, what they do, and why their brands matter. I’m your host, Clarissa de Sparks. In our own series, we dive into the everyday operations of inspiring small business owners in our community. You can listen live on Saturdays at 10 a.m. or the rebroadcast at WW dot Business RadioX dot com. Today we’re going to talk about what brands need to know about mental health. Please allow me to introduce you to one of our amazing community leaders who owns it, Marissa Jones. Marissa is a teacher, community builder and mindset coach. After leading a successful career as an architect and strategic advisor, leading global multimillion dollar technology projects, she published her memoir, The Lotus Tattoo One Woman’s Grit From Bully to Redemption and 2019 and Now focuses on helping women balance mental health challenges with career success. Marissa signature program is for those seeking to find their purpose and authentic authenticity in life. She offers a six month intensive boot camp mindset warrior, The Art of Intentional Thinking, which focuses on healing, the long term effects of trauma and the behaviors, patterns and decisions we make stemming from our childhood imprint. Marissa is taking the step to launch your company, your brave in the world of entrepreneurship. I have three questions. Please tell our listeners who you are, what you do, and why your brand matters. So please introduce yourself.

Marisa Jones: Hi, Clarissa. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I’m so excited. So I am Rhys-jones and I am a mindset coach. I’m an author and I’m a community builder where I love to build communities around mental health and just having discussions around the topic of mental health, depression, suicidal ideation, PTSD, any, any individual who’s gone through or whether it’s high school kids, because I used to be a bully myself when I was a child, whether it’s veterans, because the impacts of trauma are the same no matter who you are, right? If you’ve experienced trauma, the impacts might be more extreme in one individual or another, but most of the impacts are the same. And it’s the depression, it’s the mental illness, it’s the the PTSD and suicidal ideations and so forth. And so I help women. I focus on women because I have a professional corporate background, 30 years in corporate I.T. and I love to focus on women because I found that in my career and my industry, there were very few women that I had as mentors, and there was very few women that I could look up to. And the higher I got up in the corporate ladder, the harder it was for me to find someone that was like minded that I can go to for support. And especially when I was going through my own mental health issues during my career, I didn’t feel like I had anyone to reach out to. So that’s who I am and my brand matters because mental health is really, really important to me. And I want to make sure that my branding comes across as very caring.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: Right.

Marisa Jones: And someone who brings people together to have discussions around the importance of talking about mental health.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: Yeah, mental health is a big topic and focus in conversation nationally and at the local level. What advice would you share with women who are just starting out on the journey of entrepreneurship or even are in the early stages? How does mental health impact? Building a brand.

Marisa Jones: Well, you have to be strong. You have to have a strong mental health support system. And so that includes so when you’re building a brand and you’re building a business, you’re working 24 seven, you’re trying to figure out who you are, what your values are, mission is who you’re trying to help. And there’s so many aspects to it. On top of not only deciding what services you need to provide, but how you’re going to show yourself to the world, right? So that you can attract people to you. And, and then you have to learn marketing on top of that. So all of that is really, really stressful. And so trying to trying to maintain good mental health is really important while you’re trying to build your business. If you don’t have that, the self doubt kicks in the the talking of telling yourself that you’re never going to make it. Telling yourself there’s thousands of coaches out there. What makes me so special? Why would someone want to hire me? And so you don’t have to be always on top of your game, right? There’s days that I get depressed. There’s days that life hits me hard. And and I just. I don’t want to do anything. I’m not motivated or I’m sulking or, you know, outside triggers impact me. But I have the resources to go to that I’ve created for myself, whether they’re journaling, whether it’s journaling, meditation, going for a walk or reaching out to my therapist or a friend or, you know, just knowing that you have resources and having a good support system around you is really, really important when you’re trying to build a business and a brand.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: Now, you just mentioned something that I think still has a stigma in the particularly the African American community. Seeking out therapy, seeing a therapist. What point in your life did you say, I need professional help?

Marisa Jones: So I’ve been to a therapist a couple of times in the past. One time, the first time I had gone to a therapist, it was I was having some infertility issues. And and I, you know, I had lost some pregnancies. And I was and I got really depressed. And I went to a therapist and I never thought I would go to a therapist because we didn’t talk about going to therapy. And it was like, you got to be really crazy to go through a therapist. I had an aunt growing up who she was, you know, she had depression and she was always in and out of what they call the sanatorium in New York because of her depression. So I didn’t want to be labeled, but then I didn’t really think it helped me at the time. So then the second time was when I was going through a divorce. And again, I didn’t feel like the therapist really understood me at the time. But then. I found out, you know, just during the pandemic, I was going through some workplace bullying. Ironically, because I was publishing my memoir about being a bully, but I was being harassed and discriminated at at my work environment. And I fell into a depression. I hadn’t had depression in about ten years. And so I fell into a depression. I started getting suicidal ideation began. And I realized because I had spent the past traumas, I knew I needed to jump on it. I knew I needed to get a head start so that it didn’t catch up to me like it did.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: The lazy.

Marisa Jones: Therapist. So we have to really we have to trust someone to be able to do that, to go through the process. But I would have to say the biggest thing is you have to be honest, because if you’re not honest with your therapist, you’re not going to get the help that you that you need.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: Okay. Now, in your case, you are a life coach. So can you tell us the difference between a life coach and a therapist?

Marisa Jones: So I actually call myself a mindset coach. So life coach is very different because a life coach will help someone. A life coach will help someone kind of make decisions about what they want to do with their life. Right. And it’s more of a they’re not they’re guiding someone through questions to help them make their own decisions to move forward. A therapist is someone who focuses on one issue. So if you go to a therapist like I went to a therapist for my infertility issues. So the whole time I was going to my therapist, it was to talk about my infertility issues and the depression I had around that. When I was going through a divorce, I was focused strictly on the divorce. So they’re usually there to solve one problem. A mindset coach is something that I developed my own program for Mindset Coach. So when I looked at certifications for coaching, there was nothing that fit my style of what I was teaching. And so what I do is I literally help women go through and pretty much dissect their entire life and and I help them define their life story, timeline and every single life impact that’s impacted them to this day. So usually I pick the top ten and then we dissect it further and we go to the next level and we say, okay, well, what, what patterns and behaviors do you carry today because of this impact, you know, when you were younger? And then I continue doing that.

Marisa Jones: And what I do is I dissect it where I identify expectations they have from those imprints, values they have discovered through those imprints. And once I help them uncover that who they are, they start to have this awareness of what what makes them tick, what makes them move, why they make decisions the way they do. And so from a mindset perspective, everything is about awareness of who you are, right? So every decision I make, every move I make, everything that I do, all my emotions, all my my thinking is because of what’s been imprinted on me when I was a child. And so all I’m doing is uncovering that because you don’t realize why you do things sometimes. And so I might make decisions that don’t serve me because I don’t really know what the hidden expectations or values are underneath it. But when I really what I really do is I bring awareness to somebody’s full being so that they can start moving forward based on who they really are authentically and how they move through the world. So I try to just change their perspective from who they are and how they interact with the world.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: So it is a visual thinking.

Marisa Jones: It’s very intentional thinking because I have them think very mindfully everything that they do. And it’s so funny because my clients tell me all the time, I never used the word intentional thinking, but they start telling me usually by month two or three, they start telling me I was very intentional in how I was doing this. But these are their own words. I was very you would have been proud of me. I spent quality time. I was very mindful. I was spending time with my kids. I didn’t have my phone with me. I wasn’t multitasking. I was enjoying the moment. It was very intentional, right? So that’s what their behaviors are changing because they’re literally interacting with the world and the people around them very differently just by changing their mindset because of that awareness. Okay.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: So when starting your business or writing your book. What has been the greatest learning from all from those two major accomplishments?

Marisa Jones: Oh, boy. Good question. I would say for my book, the biggest thing I learned was I was already healed when I wrote my book. So it wasn’t like a cathartic thing that a lot of people go through. What I did learn was how much my life paralleled my mom’s life. So there were so many things that I realized when I was writing my story. My mom and I are very, very different people and I love my mom. But she’s a Sicilian immigrant. She’s shorter than me, right? She’s from Italy, from Sicily, you know, speaks broken English, very, very eighth grade education, very different. And yet we lived parallel lives when I think about her journey from moving to America and what happened, and then she was in an abusive marriage and her whole journey, it was it was really surprising that I really followed her journey very similarly, even though I lived a completely different life. So that was an eye opener to me for my book. The second thing was how many people came to me and started telling me their deepest, darkest skeletons in their closet. I did not expect the box. Open up the box. And that’s actually what led me to start my business, because I wasn’t thinking of starting a business when I was publishing my book.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: So the book business came after the book.

Marisa Jones: Yeah. So I published my book and as I was going through the process of publishing my book, I started having now I knew I was going to work with domestic violence centers and trauma centers for mental health. So I talk about branding. I hired professional branding companies to help me come up with my logo, the colors, everything about it. You know, you see the logo on the on where it says everyday being and the first it’s because I’m always doing this like I just loved it. I’m always like, Yeah, let’s do it. Like that’s just who I am. So it was really important that I that the colors were important. My editing, I went through a total of three paid editors for my book Buy whole process for my book cost me $12,000. It was, it was. It wasn’t. I wanted it to be professional because I knew who I wanted to serve with my book. So I donate my book often to like domestic violence shelters for like fundraisers, organizations that that help women survivors and stuff like that. So I knew I wanted it to be professional in that aspect. But, you know, when I started to publish my book, something completely different came out of it. And that was that all my colleagues, all of my girlfriends who are doctors and lawyers and professional career women and even men started coming to me and telling me their stories because, you know, my life has been very colorful.

Marisa Jones: Like, you know, I did a lot of drugs and I went to infertility and I’ve been through two divorces and, you know, I was abused and I was a bully. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. Right? But the whole time I hid it and I was very professional and I had a career, a very successful career in technology because that was the survivor in me trying to make something happen. And so people resonated with different parts of my book. And I had male colleagues telling me, you know, I’m in AA. No one here knows about it. Right? I had women telling me that they had several miscarriages and they’re depressed. And I’ve had other like all these stories start coming out and I thought, wow, this is really powerful. And I found myself just coaching them like just, you know, just talking to them. And I was always a corporate mentor, but I started getting more personal in how I was responding and telling, you know, they were asking me for advice and that’s what led me to start my business. And I decided I need to put together a coaching program. I need to help others experience healing because there’s a lot of hurt people out there.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: There’s a lot of listeners out there who are often in transition and they think about the pivot. So it’s interesting how you pivot it from that corporate space into the entrepreneur space. Now, are you doing are you still doing the best, the best of both worlds, or have you made a full leap into entrepreneurship?

Marisa Jones: So it’s a little bit of both. So right now, so I did I’ve taken time off. So when COVID hit, I left a toxic work environment and then I took a year off and I focused on my business. And then I picked up a. Another so so I can do it pretty much any time. So I picked up a project last year that I worked on for about eight months. Then I took a couple of months off. I just picked up another I.T. project, so I get to do it at my leisure. I wouldn’t say leisure, but I get to do it when I when I need to to bring in extra income until, you know, because my business is new. I only started in October of 2019. I published my memoir and then COVID hit. So I had all these speaking engagements online. I was going to do live workshops and talk about I had talks about mental health, I had talked about being a bully and then COVID hit. So I did have to pivot and I thought, What am I going to do now? And so I thought about, you know, in it my skill sets were teaching workshops and, you know, speaking at conferences. And I thought, well, I’m just going to go online. I didn’t want to stop, you know, I, I thought about stopping, but then it started dragging on and I thought, I can’t sit around, I have to do something. And so that’s when I went online.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: I think that’s so important to know that you have to keep moving. You have to. It’s even when you’re in transition, still doing something to focus because, you know, if you stop, it’s hard to restart.

Marisa Jones: Yes. It’s like going to the gym, right. You stopped going for a week and then you never go again.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: And then you never go again. So you have to use those self motivating to keep you going, to keep that spark, to keep you ignited and going, going after your passion because everyone has a story to tell. And if you’re willing and vulnerable enough to share your story, it’s amazing how many lives you can impact. Like you said, you have people coming to you and sharing their darkest secrets, and that’s just a part of the reward that you get for following your purpose.

Marisa Jones: It definitely feels like it’s my purpose.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: Yeah. And, you know, and having, you know, we learn from our past experiences and that’s what shapes us and creates us and who we are and who we’re becoming and giving ourselves that permission. And I know sometimes it’s entrepreneurs. We don’t give ourselves that permission. So what advice would you give someone who’s just starting out or who has an idea and possibly they’ve already stopped?

Marisa Jones: I keep going, I’ll tell you. So there are days that I’ve had where it was really difficult because I had outside impacts, personal stuff that was going on that didn’t I didn’t want to I wasn’t motivated. Right. And it’s like, I don’t want to go, I don’t want to do this. But I always say to myself, Just do 5 minutes. Just do 5 minutes. Because once you it might take 3 hours to get to the 5 minutes. But if you can get to that 5 minutes before the day is over, that 5 minutes will turn into an hour or maybe 2 hours and you’ll have gotten something done. Yes. And so for me, that’s my challenge all the time. If I don’t feel up to it, I say just get 5 minutes. But I would say the second most important thing is you don’t have to know everything in.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: What you’re doing. That’s good advice.

Marisa Jones: You just you just have to be one step ahead of the person who needs your help. That’s all right. You just have to be one step ahead of the person who’s looking for your help.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: When they’re looking for that help, what what challenges have surprised you the most in your in these last since 2019?

Marisa Jones: Oh, boy. It seems like it’s longer. I would say the challenge is the marketing. I’m just I do not like marketing. So I count on people who really know branding and marketing and all of that. The biggest challenge is doing things that I don’t want to do, you know, as part of the business, like, you know, doing, doing the minutia, stuff like doing the administrative stuff because I just want to do what I love. I love coaching, I love coaching, I love being with clients, you know, the business stuff. I just want to take my brain and dump it and give it to somebody else. I’ve had to hire people, you know, to help out, even when I couldn’t afford it because I didn’t have the time. So I hire people and in spurts, you know, I hire coaches, I hire Vas. You know, I don’t keep them on staff all the time. You know, that’s one thing that people think that they have to do. They have to have a full team around them all the time. You just hire people when you need them, right? And that’s it. Because there’s always somebody out there. And just think about you’re helping somebody who’s trying to run their business that may need your help. Right? If you call a VA and say, I need you for three weeks, maybe they’ve been begging for somebody, maybe they’ve been praying for you or for a new client. You just never know is going to help them, right? So we’re all just helping each other out, right? It’s just energy flow. And so, you know, it’s really important when when you come across those challenges to think about what really you can let go of and get some people to help you out.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: That’s really good. Marisa How I’m all about community and main community focus. How can my community help support your community?

Marisa Jones: Oh, boy, that’s a great question. You know, just just sharing sharing the discussions on mental health. Talking about mental health, you know, just this, you know, I just started a podcast, Women SEO and Reflection. So you’re women entrepreneurs. There’s a lot of great women such as yourself who who are guests and talking about their their journeys with personal growth and mental health. So I think, you know, sharing that it’s hearing other women, I think is really important, hearing other women’s stories and hearing other women, you know, what their challenge is and running businesses and and just just the challenges of life. Right. And so anything that you can do to share what I’m doing would be really helpful. I love I love building communities. As you can see, it’s in my I definitely put that in there. I love connecting people. I love, you know, introducing people who can help each other out because it’s a big world. And we say it’s a small world, but it’s a big world, so let’s help connect each other.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: So that leads into the last question. How can we learn more about you and your journey?

Marisa Jones: All right. So I have a website and it’s called My Every Day Being Bianca, my everyday being dot com, every day being. It’s about getting up every day and defining who you want to be and every day you get to choose. So my website is all about just resources. There’s blogs, there’s recipes, healthy recipes, because what you eat healthy mind equals healthy food equals healthy mind. So my everyday being dot com on LinkedIn under Marissa Jones and I have a Facebook as well every day my every day being so find me and yeah and look for my podcast women CEO and Reflection which launches in two weeks.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: All right. Sounds good. Well, thank you for sharing who you are, what you do, and why your brand matters. Here on Spark Stories, we celebrate business owners today and every day. So listeners, please remember to support your local businesses and express your support by liking their social media platforms. So I want everyone to create a great day. Thank you.

Marisa Jones: Thank you. Thanks, Clarissa.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: Thanks.