We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Marla A. Matime a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Marla A., so happy to have you with us today and there is so much we want to ask you about. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others developed certain skills or qualities that we are struggling with can be helpful. Along those lines, we’d love to hear from you about how you developed your ability to take risk?
Life is risky! I believe that every day I have an opportunity to make a great life and sometimes, oftentimes, it involves a risk. When I started my consulting practice, I was coming off of being a stay at home mom and really just wanted to be a freelance writer, covering local news and updates from my community. Over time, I had been asked to do things that were outside of that scope and ultimately, I honed in on skills that I otherwise, would not have thought to work on. This was risky for me because I didn’t have the qualifications or the skills to deliver what was being asked of me. When things worked out for me, I gained handsome compensation for my work and when things didn’t work out for me, I took it as a lesson to take into the next task. My journey has been scary and even now, I’ve been working with some challenges that are only stretching me to show up as my greatest and highest self for my family and for my business.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I am an artist that understands that you can continue to follow your passion no matter where you are in life. I had been a part of an R&B group in my early 20s, thinking that I was going to be a superstar on the global stage, singing to masses of people. My life took a turn when that deal went sour; however, I continued to stay connected with musicians and other artists to continue to follow my dream.
I got married in my late 20s and began building my family in California working in banking and home lending, until the department that I worked in had closed, so I then became a stay at home mom. I knew that I wanted to do more and have more flexibility with my career, so I decided to begin freelance writing, as I had already been volunteering at my church.
I quickly excelled in writing then managing a team, then became director of communications and operations for a local news office. While doing this work, my team landed its largest contract in 2019 and we embarked upon a year long project. Toward the end of the year, I found out that I was pregnant with my third child and I questioned how I was going to manage it all with my business and three children with my husband who had also started his own company.
During the onset of COVID, I was seven months pregnant when the mandatory lockdown took place. I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl in May 2020, and while in labor had been working on paying invoices out to local media outlets that I was running an advertising buy with. There were several other projects that I was leading during that time as well. I decided to establish my agency officially in November 2020, and that is where the fun began.
I’ve launched a spiritual podcast called The MetaSpiritualist. This is my 4 year in production with the podcast. I’m in the process of launching a new podcast network that speaks for and to the African American community at large on the political stage.
I’ve built the tenacity to continue forward is because I refuse to fail.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Soft Skills: You have to be personable and inviting; always working towards solutions and team cohesiveness when working within a team setting. I love the phrase, “you can catch more bees with honey than with vinegar,” because having a pleasant attitude and demonstrating positivity, you create more opportunities and get to work with more influential people.
Consistency: Sometimes it’s not always the BIG leaps that creates the opportunity for the BIG break. More times than not, it is consistency with the small and somewhat menial tasks done over and over again really well, that has more of an impact. This is an area that I’m currently working to refine within my process because I wear many hats and sometimes unable to give undivided attention to one particular project for multiple days in a row. Practicing being consistency is actually one of my new year’s resolutions this year.
Documenting the process: Social media has made it easy for us to pull out our phones and other recording devices to share what we’re doing in real time. Being in media production, a good documentary that is engaging and captivating that paints the picture of a story clearly, is one that would never be forgotten. Regardless of how you choose to do so, documenting your journey provides a way to look back and see in real time all of the accomplishments, failures, detours, etc., so that you can really be proud of how far you’ve come.
We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?
This is a great question! I think it is equally important to go all in on our strengths and to work on areas of growth opportunities. I also believe that it is even better to go all in on your strengths, identify others who are strong in areas that you may not be strong in, and form a solid team that can can all benefit from the opportunities that are presented to you and others on the team. This will help everyone become well rounded because it allows for people to see greatness in each other.
I recently was referred to a potential client/partner. This individual is responding to an RFP and they are looking for someone who may be able to fulfill the points needed for international public affairs. In speaking with this person, there are a lot of parallels; however, there are quite a few areas that we can support one another on future projects, thus forging new opportunities that will benefit the both of us and our individual circles of influence. This excited me because I know how I can best support this the project and I also was humble enough to share where I did not have the experience that they may need for this particular project. Needless to say, it has lead to an appointment on calendar to meet and strategize.
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