IAM1314 – CEO Boosts Brands and Builds Relationships

Melissa Rodriguez is a Marketing and Advertising Specialist and the Founder of Social Media Relations out of Los Angeles, California. With over 10 years of experience, she specializes in branding, content production, social media marketing, and public relations. Melissa holds a BS degree in Global Perspectives and Corporate Finance and Accounting from Bentley University. Melissa’s contributions to Social Media Relations have contributed to their 5-star rating across multiple platforms including Google, Yelp, and Facebook. A visionary at heart, it is Melissa's mission to take your brand online and create relationships that matter.

• CEO Story: Spent five years in public accounting and then shifted to Marketing world. Leaving the cozy six-figure job and diving into her calling.
• Business Service: Full-service agency, that helps build brands and social media campaigns and bring them to life. Building a custom plan that aligns with the client’s goal.
• Secret Sauce: Intentional about building community by building relationships.
• CEO Hack: Meditation – it gives insight into the next step and it also connects you so that you can make clearer decisions that you need to make.
• CEO Nugget: “Understanding successful people’s mindset is far more important than understanding what they did to get there.”
• CEO Defined: A servant leader serves and supports the team. Empowers and educates the future.

Website: www.smrelations.com

Tiktok: @socialmediarelations

Instagram: @smrelationsdotcom

Facebook: @socialmediarelations

Linkedin: @social-media-relations/mycompany

Youtube: channel/UCV-nkywYEeQ9_aAvZ4ceHbg

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Transcription

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00:23 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, And CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Freshmarkers values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:51 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Melissa Rodriguez of social media relations. Melissa, super excited to have you on the show.

01:01 – Melissa Rodriguez

Thank you, Gresh. I'm excited to be here.

01:03 – Gresham Harkless

Yes. Excited to hear about all the awesome things that you're doing. And before we jump into that, I want to read a little bit more about Melissa so you'd hear about some of those awesome things. Melissa is a marketing and advertising specialist and the founder of social media relations out of Los Angeles, California. With over ten years of experience, she specializes in branding, Content production, social media marketing, and public relations. Melissa holds a BS degree in global perspective in corporate finance and accounting from Bentley University.

Melissa's contribution to social media relations has contributed to their five-star rating across multiple platforms, including Google, Yelp, and Facebook. A visionary at heart, it is Melissa's mission to take your brand online and create relationships that matter. Super excited again to have you on, Melissa. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:49 – Melissa Rodriguez

I am pumped and ready to go. Let's do this.

01:52 – Gresham Harkless

Let's make it happen then. So kinda to kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit and hear a little bit more about how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

02:01 – Melissa Rodriguez

Amazing. So I have a little bit of an unconventional story, in terms of becoming a CEO entrepreneur because I actually went to school for accounting and finance, and as a result, I went into public accounting, right out of school, and I spent about five or six years there in public accounting, and then one day I woke up and decided to quit my job and start a marketing agency. So you can imagine, the faces on my LinkedIn, they were like, what are you doing? It's one thing to it's one thing to become an entrepreneur out of the blue or that's something that's, in a related field. It's another thing to go from an accounting world into a marketing world, so that was a very big, drastic leap.

02:51 – Gresham Harkless

Oh, yeah. Talk about a leap of faith, right?

02:53 – Gresham Harkless

Exactly.

02:54 – Melissa Rodriguez

From a comfy, cozy, six-figure job, that I had already figured out to say to myself, okay, let's start over. Let's lose all the safety net that you've got. Let's cash out your 04:01 k, which I did, and let's just dive into this new field that you know nothing about, but that's what's calling you.

03:15 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. That and so so it was definitely the calling that really spoke to you to kinda take that leap?

03:20 – Melissa Rodriguez

Without a doubt, it was like this, like, one, and I remember the moment too when it came to me. It was like, it was like, hey Melissa, you figured out accounting, which you needed for your experience, now we want you to figure out marketing. And I remember being like, marketing really? Like really? And, and it was just like my, my gut feeling, my intuition is like learn more about marketing, learn more about, and so it just kept nagging at me and I was like well I guess that makes sense.

If I understand marketing and accounting, then I cover two out of the three essential aspects of building my business. So I dove into marketing while working in corporate, I started to, like, really, you know, brush up on those skills and learn everything I could learn and then started to get some clients while working a full-time job, which was pretty long days.

04:12 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to share a little bit more about what you knew about, and what you decided to build and grow. Could you take us through a little bit more about your agency, and how you're making that impact in serving clients?

04:22 – Melissa Rodriguez

Yes, this is another moment that occurred a few years after I left my corporate job. It made me realize the importance of integrating my past experiences into my present. I appreciate your question because it highlights the understanding that there is an integration period. For a long time, I rejected my past experience, thinking that it was no longer serving me and that I needed to acquire new skills. However, I eventually recognized the immense value of the experience I gained during my early years in the corporate world.

I received exceptional training and learned how to work in a team, lead a team, and build a team. I also had the opportunity to work with incredibly smart individuals, including executives and board members of Fortune 500 companies, which allowed me to understand their language, demeanor, and professionalism. Initially, I was hesitant to acknowledge my corporate background, but once I began to embrace it, I experienced significant personal and professional growth. There, because I saw how much everything was actually connecting.

05:51 – Gresham Harkless

Yes. Everything is for a reason, and we have to make sure that we appreciate that and, of course, You know, lean more into that. So I wanted to hear more about your, social media relations. Could you take us through a little bit more on how you serve your clients and what you do there?

06:04 – Melissa Rodriguez

Absolutely. We are a full stack service agency, so basically we help brands who are usually already established offline, introduce their brand, and establish them online. We help them from, you know, building their brand, messaging, visuals, aesthetics for their social presence and then building campaigns that really speak with the audience they're trying to reach and amplify those campaigns through mediums of PR, social media ads, radio, television, commercials, you know, you name it, whatever aligns most to their target client and their goals, we help them bring to life.

What I realized, was that I was from brands who would come to me afterward saying we tried this Facebook ad agency, and my comment was, well, Facebook ads aren't meant for your type of business. And so what I saw was a very big disservice happening to a lot of brands, and I, and it wasn't about it. I was like, no, like, one size does not fit all, and if we just try to pigeonhole you into this one service technically we we might accept almost anybody even if it's not for them and so because I was really much more in a place of service, I wanted to go the extra mile and figure out what made sense for that brand and their audience and build a custom plan for them that really aligned with their goals.

07:30 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. Set up that win-win opportunity, so that's absolutely, phenomenal. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce. This could be for yourself, the business, or a combination of Both. But what do you feel kinda sets you apart and makes you unique?

07:44 – Melissa Rodriguez

I think that this past year, we actually really, tapped into this and uncovered it a little bit more. But I think that what makes us different is the understanding that we are building relationships. And you said it in my bio, and that was extremely intentional as well. I think as you said, we get caught up in the medium, we get caught up in the channels of digital marketing, we get digital marketing, we get channels of digital marketing, we get digital marketing, we get caught up in these fancy little words that we have learned, but we get caught up in these fancy little words that we have learned, but we forget the intention behind everything we're doing.

And we forget that the whole idea is to build a community and the only way you can build a community is by building relationships. Gone are the days when like it's cool to post and not reply to comments. That's not cool anymore, like who who are you fooling? You're not building a community if you're just talking to your customers and you're not engaging with them. Our secret sauce is understanding that we're not just in the business of selling or creating content for the sake of it.

We're in the business of building communities and relationships in a new digital forum. While this concept may be challenging for some to grasp, it's entirely possible and exists. However, many brands have yet to figure it out. Some have, but not all of them. You're talking a lot about the customer journey and getting in tune with the customer journey, caring about that customer journey, and being intentional about their journey before they become your customer when they're your customer, and after they're your customer. Because there's a whole, like, a whole trail of this.

09:27 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I wanted to, switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

09:39 – Melissa Rodriguez

My personal hack is really meditation. I'm sure a lot of ceos you've had on this podcast have shared that at one point or another and I was trying to go away from it and share another one but I just couldn't because I know if anyone who's listening to this podcast, you're probably already an overachiever, you're already doing the right things, you're working hard, and so often we're not told to actually unplug, and ground and connect with ourselves.

So the power of meditation is that it gives you insight into the next step and it also connects you so that you can make decisions on the fly at the moment that you're much clearer about the decisions that need to be made so you gifting yourself ten minutes fifteen minutes twenty minutes whatever fits for you you gifting yourself those twenty minutes a day allows you to be a hundred percent better leader throughout the day.

10:38 – Gresham Harkless

I love that. And I really love how you said gifting yourself.

10:41 – Melissa Rodriguez

Gifting yourself and using the give-and-take idea and concept is crucial. It's absolutely crucial. If all you're doing is giving and not receiving, you are not gonna be able to receive that incredible contract that you're waiting or you're not going to be in this place of receiving the opportunities of a podcast or new project you have to practice receiving and giving yourself.

11:09 – Gresham Harkless

I absolutely love that. And so I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is a little bit more of a word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell a client, or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

11:23 – Melissa Rodriguez

This is a good one so a lot of times we're looking for we're looking for the techniques we're looking for the steps to success. We're looking for how did you it, how many people you called, how many emails did you send, what we're not looking at is a mindset and so it's funny to think about how quickly somebody will take notes when they try to tell you the steps to success but how about how fast they are also to stop taking notes the moment you start telling them about your mindset. But the reality is understanding successful people's mindset is far more important than understanding what they did to get there.

The mindset that drives people towards success can change and evolve over time. Understanding their thoughts, motivations, perceptions, and awareness is the real key to achieving abundance, wealth, and success. Once you tap into this mindset, you'll be driven to do whatever it takes to reach your goals because you'll already be aligned with the energy and frequency of success. Everything else will seem easy once you have the right mindset. And I wish someone had told me that. I wish someone had said, Melissa, it's more important to understand the mindset of a successful person, than it is to understand the five different careers they had before they got there. Because those things didn't matter. It was how they were thinking along the way that mattered.

13:03 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. Appreciate that. And, I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we might have touched on this, but this is basically a definition and perspective of what you think being a CEO means to you. So, Melissa, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:18 – Melissa Rodriguez

So interesting because I always like, manifested being a CEO. I wrote it down. I was like, one day, I'm gonna be a CEO. And I used to think of a CEO of like this person sitting in a big company and like having a nice like corner office with glass and a big view and a lot of power and a really good bank account and then and it's and it's what I think a lot of us think when we're starting the journey like that's what's going to be like when we're MCEO. My gosh I couldn't be more wrong I mean there are aspects for real right there are aspects like you can have a nice office you can have a good bank account but it's not that's not what a CEO is at all.

A CEO is a servant leader in my perspective. Actually, a person a leader who serves services their team is supportive of their team and removes any barrier that they possibly can, any obstacle that is in the way of their team doing the best possible job. And so we're no longer the leaders that are setting like this is how it's going to be done it's this way the highway we're no longer those type of leaders or that's not what we're being called to be anymore we're being called to be servant leaders that empower that coach that educates is our future and I encourage everyone that works for me, I encourage them all to be their own version of entrepreneurs.

Whether it's within the company or one day they go out, I really encourage it. I say you're the entrepreneur of your role. You're the leader of whatever project you're doing, you're the entrepreneur of that project. Now I'm teaching them how to think, how to think critically about their work, but also how to develop the mindset that it takes to be an entrepreneur. So that I don't leave them hanging if they go out into the real world and start trying to do their own business one day.

15:11 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely appreciate that, Melissa. And I, of course, appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and, of course, how best people could get a hold of you and find about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

15:26 – Melissa Rodriguez

The most important thing that you can do is to seek and to be in alignment with yourself and your calling and your purpose and your business's mission and to really stay true to that alignment they can add me on LinkedIn Melissa Rodriguez or they can find me on Instagram @melissarinc and then I have a couple of other channels but if you find me there you'll find the other channels oh and our website I guess smrelations.com or melrodriguezandco.com.

16:00 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And to make it even easier, we'll have the links and information in the show notes as well. Appreciate that last reminder and, of course, all the awesome things that you're doing that you shared with us today, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of it.

16:10 – Melissa Rodriguez

Thank you, Gresh. Thank you for having me on this call, and I'm so excited to have connected with you today.

16:16 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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