#16: Believe Bigger with Marshawn Evans Daniels, Reinvention Strategist
Have you ever had to start again from scratch?
Maybe something didn’t work out the exact way you were planning, and it rocked your world, shook your confidence, and tempted you to play small as a result.
Today, Marshawn Evans Daniels, Reinvention Strategist and Founder of SHE Profits, shares how she grew a successful sports agency business and let it all go for love.
Marshawn speaks about how she:
Was able to heal from her then-partner’s infidelity and rebuild her business.
Helps women of faith find their voice and increase their income.
Prioritized her joy before scaling her business
Discovered how to overcome the expectations of what being a woman of color and a woman of faith looked like in the business world.
Learned to trust that God is cheering her on, guiding her and protecting her on her entrepreneurial journey.
So if you've also been through difficult times and you've finally decided to make joy your priority, learn exactly how to Believe Bigger in what is possible for you in this episode!
Check out Marshawn’s book here or follow her on Instagram @marshawnevans.
Are you ready to up level in your business? If you've already had massive success in your company and you're just ready for that next iteration, check out my free masterclass at www.scalewithjoy.com or head to the link in the show notes. In this short but very powerful training, I share exactly how to break through to that next level of exponential growth in your business and spoiler alert, it is not another program or formula. It is a custom approach for you based on your business and the very same strategies that I've used over and over with my own private consulting clients and national brands.
Listen to the Show:
Laura (00:00):
This is the Scale with Joy show, episode number 16: Believe Bigger with Marshawn Evans Daniels.
(00:09):
Welcome to the Scale with Joy show, a podcast about scaling your company while living your most purposeful life. Because here's the thing: there are no rules to say you can't grow a massively profitable empire and have joy in the everyday. My name is Laura Meyer and let's get started.
(00:35):
Have you ever had to start again completely from scratch? Maybe things just didn't work out the way you were thinking and it totally rocked your world, shook your confidence and after that, you were really tempted to play small as a result. Well, you're going to love this guest. Marshawn Evans Daniels grew a successful sports agency business, and then let it all go for love. And then the week before she was about to get married, she found out her fiancé was cheating on her. In today's interview, Marshawn tells us how she was able to heal from her partner's infidelity and rebuild her business from scratch. And today, Marshawn is a well-known Reinvention Strategist, helping women of faith, find their voice and increase their income. So if you've been through difficult times and you finally decided to make joy your priority, learn exactly how in this interview with Marshawn Evans Daniels.
(01:26):
Hey everybody and welcome back. I am so grateful that you have the opportunity to hear from Marshawn Evans Daniels today. Her message has meant so much to me in my own life. I know it will in yours as well. So thank you Marshawn for being here today.
Marshawn (01:44):
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be a part of this dynamic lineup of power women. I don't know how you pulled it off.
Laura (01:53):
God. That's pretty much how so we'll just put that out there right there. If you wouldn't mind, just sharing a little bit about your background with these listeners and what brought you to today?
Marshawn (02:04):
Well, today I'm known as a Reinvention Strategist and founder of the Godfidence Movement, which is all designed to help women of faith increase their income, their influence, but also their walk with God all at the same time. And I, you know, that's where I am today. I kind of in my journey here, I started out as an attorney, by trade. And I went to Georgetown for law school. I went to this high power, big law firm, and I was sitting at the top of the 21st floor and just feeling completely unsatisfied with my life. And I didn't know why, because this is what I should have wanted. And even prior to that, I had been in the Miss America pageant. I had been on the show called The Apprentice, where there used to be a day in time where people used to clap for that. Now it's kind of like, ooh, what do I say? I don't know.
Laura (02:51):
It was a big accomplishment. We'll just say that.
Marshawn (02:54):
It was. Because a million people apply, 18 people get on, usually one African American woman. So I had a lot of really early successes as a teenager. I was an overachiever. And so I find myself sitting in this law firm and feeling like this is what I work for. I'm the real-life Clair Huxtable that I wanted to be when I was 12 years old and all of these accomplishments and following the rules of where I thought I should be put me in this place. That seemed like I was at the top, but I felt like I was spiritually, emotionally and relationally at kind of a rock bottom here. I'm 20 something years old, and I can't even have a real life because I'm in the office from sunup to sundown. And so I made the transition. I made the leap into entrepreneurship about a year and a half after being at my law firm.
(03:40):
And I started a sports agency representing NFL and NBA players. And I started it with my first client. He had just signed a $62 million seven-year contract. And the interesting thing was that I tried to bring these athletes to my law firm and they told me I was too young. That it's not what a first-year loss student or associate should be doing. And so I'm kind of have that. And if you're born in the ninth or eighties, nineties kid, you know this reference, but I kind of have that "nobody puts baby in the corner" type of thing.
(04:14):
So I left, I started my own agency. I signed the highest paid defensive in the NFL. They said I couldn't do it and grew to be the fastest growing women owned sports agency in less than a year of my first corporate client was Rolls Royce and Tiffany and Company, and that all grew to a really great place. And then life kind of happened. And I fell in love and thought that that was more significant to me than everything that I had come to know as a woman, because a lot of times, for us as ambitious women, we find our identity in what we do. And I know that that was definitely me. I was overachiever. I was also competitive Baton twirler, my talent at Miss America was Baton twirling. I competed internationally. So winning, achieving, checking the boxes off, doing high profile things was how I knew myself.
(05:01):
And there was a difference though when I met this man fell in love and when I fell also in love with his three kids and when the baby girl called me Mimi, or I had to put her to bed and give her a bath, or when the eight year old would say, you know, I don't know what I want to wear tomorrow. My mom picks out my clothes. That's what you're supposed to do. Like for me, that was so much more significant and important then growing the sports agency. So I let it all go. I closed it down for love and I transitioned all my athlete clients out. And I'm in this place where I'm looking to get married and start this new life, move from Atlanta to Chicago, and so I closed my entire life down for love. And so just kind of wanted to give that background because today I help women to grow and scale companies to start six and seven figure businesses as women of faith, you are playing unapologetically at the biggest levels, not just, you know, a lot of times when you're a believer in God, you feel like you've got to tiptoe when it comes to success in business, I believe in huge mega ocean splashes and, you know, being in mass market and mainstream, working with big companies, how I got where I am today really came through this relationship. So I just kind of wanted to give that, that kind of background and set up.
Laura (06:17):
Yes. So if you have the pleasure of reading Marshawn's book and if you have not, I would encourage you to pick it up today. You'll find out in that first chapter that that first go at love was not the end of the story for her. It ended in a way that required her to reinvent herself. And now she has a wonderful husband. So that's not the end of that story, but the middle of a beautiful love journey. So the first question I have here is it's so interesting how you say in the book, why did I have to go through hell just to help other women? Did I really have to go through that to get here? And I'll say that I experienced something similar but on the business side, right? And so as you're growing and you're scaling, one of the things I saw on your Instagram is like, as you fly at higher altitudes, you're going to get more turbulence. If somebody is in that place right now where they're like, I am going through something I did not plan on and I cannot see how this is going to help other people. What would you say to inspire them?
Marshawn (07:16):
Let me kind of bring a couple of these pieces together because Laura and I know what happened and we want to make sure you got a little bit as to what happened. I'm in this relationship, things are going wonderfully or so I think, and I feel like because I've made all these right decisions and now I'm, you know, I feel almost like God's rewarding me with this great relationship and this ready-made family that I can walk into. And it's six days before my wedding and mind you, that means the dresses paid for the catering was taken care of, the cake picked out. I've got more than one dress. Cause I'm a, I'm a girly girly girl. We got to have a wardrobe change.
(07:58):
And it's Monday morning before Saturday wedding and my fiancé is on a plane on his way to Atlanta for wedding weekend. I find out that he's been cheating on me. And so that's what Laura's talking about in the first chapter of the book. And so I won't go through all of those details, but what I will say is that infidelity brings you to your knees in a way that not many things can, other than maybe loss or death and the loss and death of a relationship that you thought was great. It's like, literally you look up to the sky. You're like, is anything really what I thought is the sky really blue is water really blue is grass really green because I thought this person was my forever. And what it does to your confidence as a woman is really detrimental because it causes you to doubt your worth, your intelligence, your intuition, it really misaligns and takes us out of our dreams.
(08:51):
I think sometimes not necessarily weak, but we're just broken. A lot of times in business. We don't talk about these stories, but I think these are the things that are really designed to align us on a higher path. Of course, I didn't know that at the time, because I found myself broke and heartbroken broken. Broke in the sense that I closed my sports business down is huge sports agency with these high-profile clients and these huge blue chip, not just athletes, but also corporate clients. And I'm like, how am I going to pay my bills? And one of the things that really did help me, which I do think is a good principle for every woman to take away is that when you're in a rough season or in a season where you just need a break or rest and you need to be able to have time to heal, I knew I needed that.
(09:38):
I had been through kind of a bad breakup, not as bad or public, or as devastating as this one, but a regular relationship that didn't work out a year or two prior. And at that time I didn't stop. I just moved right into working harder and building this sports agency and throwing myself into it. And what you do not heal, you will repeat. And now I couldn't work. I didn't have the emotional capacity. And I felt, God's saying, it's time for you to take a break. And I'm like, you know what, Lord, I don't think the mortgage company is going to understand that or the light bill company. They're not really gonna understand that. And so I'm wrestling with, I've got to take care of myself as a woman, as a human, as a person, as a believer, my mind, my spirit, I'm dealing with depression.
(10:19):
I put myself in counseling and went to counseling, initially it took me a couple of times to find the right counselor. And I want to say this to women, because if we're talking about scaling with joy, your joy has gotta be a priority first, before the scale, before the business, before everything, you cannot grow beyond your capacity. And if your container is broken and you cannot conquer the world, it's going to just be, you're running on fumes and the world's going, think you look great. Your audience is gonna think that you're amazing, but inside you're falling apart. That means you're no good for yourself and you're not going to have longevity. So I went to counseling, we got gotta make that not taboo. We've got to make that a part of natural self-care. And through that, I still felt, God's saying pause and rest.
(11:01):
And I'm like, how are we going to make money, Lord? Okay. But whenever God speaks, I may not know what he means, but I know he means it. And so what started happening is all of these speaking engagements started coming in. And when I tell people that it's not that they magically appeared or even supernaturally, well, I will say they supernaturally appeared, but I think that God can bless the things that you've already put in place. This is why structure and infrastructure is so important. And why it's important for you to put things in place now for a storm that you don't know is coming. I always say, build your arc before the rain. So the speaking engagements that came in were byproducts of me getting started as a speaker at 16, 17, 18, 19 20,21, 22, 23, 24, 25 years old. I'll tell people I was speaking for 10 years by the time that this had happened for me, at the time of being a teenager and or longer than that, actually.
(11:52):
And so professional speaking, I think, is something that every woman should have in place in her business. It's another revenue stream for sure. It's something that scales and elevates your profile. I was able, I believe to get better clients because I had the profile of a speaker. You know, I hadn't represented an athlete before I represented an athlete. Everyone has to have their first client, but I had spoken on stages and it had elevated my profile. And it put me in position with companies and corporations and nonprofits and governments and media. And it gave me a knowledge and understanding that helped me to become better at my client base. And back then, I wasn't interested or there was no, there was no online business. Boss, lady, lady, boss, boss, chick, girl, boss, none of that, none of that happening at the time, I was like a unicorn.
(12:38):
And people were like, why are you, especially other believers, why are you so interested in business? Well, all of that to say for me, I wholeheartedly believe in helping women to find their voice. And no matter what industry you're in, no matter what you sell, whether it's a product or service, whether you're retail or online, the thing that helps us to heal and to help other people to elevate as we also operate in our companies, I believe is our voice. And so that was the thing though that while I couldn't start my sports agency again, because it wasn't time to do that. And when I tried it, wasn't working like here, I'm signing all these clients and it's going easily. And now nothing's clicking. Like, we've like literally, like, could it be any worse?
(13:25):
I don't have money to pay my bills. I can't get these clients back. Nothing is working. And that was the whisper to really be still into trust. But sometimes it's trusting what you've already built, but it's difficult to trust what you've never built. Right? So again, my point is I think that we are heading into another recession and I've been very adamant about telling women how important it is to build now, to get the infrastructure now, because you don't know what is coming. And then you don't want to be in a position where you're building from a place of lack and desperation.
(13:56):
What I would say is that that split rock, what I call a split rock moment in Believe Bigger was my infidelity. And we all have a split rock moment that separates us from what seems awesome, what seems disappointing, unfair, maybe even evil. And it doesn't matter. You know, your story might be different than mine. Yours might be worse than you might say, Marshawn, you don't understand, but. I've heard a lot of "buts". I've heard a lot of big booties we got as women and there's a lot of butts, but the reality is it's not about comparing whose story is the worst. And I used to think that I didn't have a traumatic enough story to be relevant. I was even nervous about writing Believe Bigger because I didn't know that my story was as important with all the women that I've heard.
(14:38):
I'm like, you know, everyone gets cheated on not everyone, but a lot of women. I hadn't before. At least I didn't know. And then I found out in front of the world. And so, but all of us have something. The question, if we all have something that comes at us, is it an attack against us, or is it something that's really happening to realign us? Not everything is an attack. Not everything is the world, or women or people are against us holding us back. Sometimes I believe these split rock moments are invitations for you to step into your ultimate purpose. And with that, you will find a higher level of operating with business. And I believe it's a more joyous place because it's aligned with who you really are. And maybe that split rock came in to break you up with who you were never meant to be. I had to break up with my success addiction to step into a place of real significance.
Laura (15:30):
Yeah. I have a feeling that most listeners who subscribe to scale with the joy may have a little bit of a success addiction. So I can totally see how that message helps so many of you. And many of you might be going through split rock moments now. And one thing that you write is that when you were building again, like these requests would come in these TV requests and they were speaking requests, and that showed up to provide you direction. I know a lot of people who resist that, right. Who feel like, Oh, that comes easy for me or why, you know, that isn't something like I could just do that. I don't need to charge for it. Was that something that you have found in your own coaching that women tend to dismiss, the thing that comes so easy to them?
Marshawn (16:15):
Yeah, absolutely. So part of what is the challenge is we learn about talent, but we don't learn about gifts. We have been taught to build resume filled lives or approve life safe, live successful lives, but we've never been taught to focus on our actual core identity, unless you're a singer or a painter or artists. And we can naturally see your gift like really clearly. But when I was a kid, one of my early manifestations of my gift is when my dad had a computer company and I immediately drew a logo for him at nine. It was like 1989 or 1990. So there was no understanding of branding. But it was my natural inclination was to take out a pen, to draw a diamond and to draw CEP DC inside of, inside of something. And say, dad, you can put this on the pins and this could be your logo.
(17:10):
That was a gift. Now my talent, well, I think I had the gift of gab, but I ended up being steered and directed, even not just pushed, but even my own desire because I could see Clair Huxtable on TV. I decided that's what I wanted to be. But what came easy to me was ideas. And I was always trying to start businesses for people. I started my own lemonade stands and I sold candy and I was teaching and coaching in the sixth grade. I was in sixth grade, I was teaching, I put up these flyers to coach fifth graders on how to be cheerleaders. I was doing coaching in 1989 because it was natural.
(17:50):
Now I wouldn't have known that to be a career path because it isn't valued by others. But when you look at certain things over time, we don't understand our gifts are designed to really be the path towards the goal, if you will, our gifts are. But, and then the things, again that come easy, we don't charge for it because we've been taught struggle is what is valued. It makes us feel more worthy as women because if we have to work for it, that means we earned it as opposed to it being grace. It says in Matthew 11, verse 30, that God's yoke is easy and his burden is light. And I love this one because a lot of times my clients, they try to overcomplicate. I'm like the path to seven figures, it doesn't have to be hard. Right? And I think we overcomplicate.
(18:34):
What if, what you're resisting, if it is speaking is a thing that's going to just make it easier for you to meet one client that is a seven figure client versus you trying to get a hundred clients to be able to reach your income goal or a thousand clients or ten thousand clients. And so we resist certain things that we have judgments around about what's worthy. I actually, even as a lawyer used to have trouble calling myself a speaker when I was making this transition, because I thought speaking wasn't as prominent enough, I had a little bit arrogant. Lawyer is better. I don't have Esq on my first book. I put Esq at the end of it. It took a lot for me to stop calling myself a lawyer, even though I hadn't been practicing for years. And what we feel is worthy or good, sometimes we're going to have resistance around the very thing it is that we're supposed to do.
(19:21):
The last thing I'll say about charging. A lot of times, the reason we don't charge is because we don't find worth there. We don't find worth in ourselves. And the simplest, most elegant. And the easiest thing that we don't have to earn is our voice. And some, we have the most resistance around charging for what is most naturally us. We can charge for a product; we can charge and we can do great at building somebody else's company or something at somebody else's job and no problem with pricing. But when it comes to us, it's a question of true self-worth and identity. So, a lot of times we don't charge for something because we don't understand the value we resist, actually, what would help us go to another place. And then it ultimately is a reflection of our own self-worth. Wealth is usually a reflection of our own self-worth.
Laura (20:03):
Absolutely. And there's so much to dig into there, but I want to go in the direction of the big me and the little me. And I think this is such a great topic to start on based on where you left off, because you say the future me always tells the truth about your worth, right? So how is it if somebody is in this moment right now and all they can hear us, the little me, what would you say to them to kind of help them push through that?
Marshawn (20:30):
So there's this battle that's always going on for our destiny, our attention, our possibility, and I believe also our prosperity. And I call it the battle between little me, and future, me and little me is the voice you have, the obnoxious little hater in your head, the roommate that lives in your head, but also in your heart that says, who do you think you are? Who would listen to you? It's too late. You're too. This you're too, that you don't have what it takes. This is not what you're supposed to do. Little me sheds on us. And we hear little me, not only in our head, but in the voices of other people who also tell us who we're not, what we're not what we shouldn't and what we couldn't ever possibly conceive of doing. It's also rooted in this place of appropriateness and protocol of feeling like, wow, these are the rules we're supposed to follow as women.
(21:14):
Nice girls don't do that, women of faith don't do that. Like for me, one of the big ones, you know, being a woman, being a woman of color and being a woman of faith and being ambitious, right? It's a lot of different things going on here of rules and expectations and what is appropriate. What is lady like? And so little me latches on to protocol and uses it to keep us in a place where we settle. Yes. Future me, on the other hand is the voice of faith. It's the voice of futurism that is solely and future me solely obsessed with you moving forward into your potential, because future me knows that you matter that your life is not your own, that you have a specific intention of changing more lives. Future me is not scared of prosperity and is not scared of your growth and thinks is whispering constantly yes to you. Why not? You, we need you that asks for that race charge more, go in and pitch that client.
(22:10):
Future me is the voice that says go for it. And so I would feel like you can discern a difference between little me and future me simply by turning cans versus cants. I think that God speaks in cans and not cants. And so if something in my head is telling me I can't do it. And I feel defeated. That is like a condemning voice that little me has. And it's designed to keep me small. And this is how you can check yourself. But this is also how you can encourage other women in your circle. Your employees, your family, your kids is by saying, hey, hey, hey, that's not how future me sounds. I think sometimes also we can feel like, I work with a lot of women. And a lot of times I hear them say, I feel like I don't want to disappoint God as you're trying to grow your business. And these are these two things we want to grow. So we've got one foot on the gas, but then we, like, I don't want to disappoint God, I don't want to make too much. I don't want to be too... I don't want to be perceived as selfish and self-absorbed and self-centered.
(23:09):
And I'm like, look, maybe God wants what you want. Maybe that's why you want it. You know, maybe being successful, being the first millionaire in your family and learning to say, maybe he's a cheerleader for me and rooting for me, he's going to guide and protect me. And for me, this is what helps me to grow in my business. I get goosebumps when I think about it because I've had great mentors, but the best mentors have taught me to listen to my future me, who have taught me to trust my intuition, which for me comes from heaven. And that has taken me to places like CNN and ESPN to be a commentator and working with clients like Office Depot, Home Depot, Delta Airlines, Toyota, Ford, Morgan Stanley. And so it comes down to understanding like, what is the voice that is telling you yes versus the voice that is the little inner critic and learning how to silence. That is how you really, truly, I believe that's how you scale.
Laura (24:03):
So good. And I'll just share for anybody that this helps. My little me always says, they won't like you. They won't like you, like, they won't be happy with you. And as you scale, the bigger the company, like you're just not going to make everybody happy. You just have to make that leadership direction and go with that.
Marshawn (24:22):
Why won't they like you? I'm curious, so when we do these sessions in our, in our masterminds and we say, well, what is a little ME say? And then they say it. And I was like, okay, well, why won't they like me then? Yeah. You know? It's like, why won't they? Why? Because I actually asked for what I wanted. So I have to compromise to be liked. One of my colleagues. He always says that likability is a liability. Oh, that's so good. It's a guy who, I feel like we came off the same assembly line in heaven, but he is, he scales companies. He sells companies. And he's, he's learned that as a CEO, we want to build these communities in our company sometimes you want culture and for women, it's difficult for us to figure out how to lead and be liked and be respected. Yes. And they may not always go together. I know I had a huge Noah's Ark flood that came through my company and we had to start from scratch and start over team wise. And it was good because I had a lot of toxicity around me. It was bad because it was hard to start, you know, it's hard to replace talent.
(25:28):
But what I also recognize is that I wasn't creating the right boundaries because I wanted everyone to like where they came to work. I wanted likeability so much so that people could, people actually know that and they take advantage of it. Yes. And so the, the thing for me now is, is being respected. I have a mentor group called SHE profits, and it's helping women to make more. It's a very simple, simple mission. And we often talk about pricing and that your pricing should make you proud, not liked. I always tell people when they come in to do coaching with me, because when, when women who've never invested in themselves before, and you see a coaching program that's 10,000 to $50,000.
(26:12):
And I believe that's where your shift starts is from the moment of pricing. If I go to a company I'd rather not get the contract, knowing that I'm opening up doors for a lot of women, who've never walked into some of these corporate spaces and I can't compromise. So I put together a proposal, recently that's a three quarters of a million-dollar project for a company on consulting. And I know what I make in my coaching practice. So I wasn't willing to offer less in a space that seems more prestigious because I value my time, my freedom and my income. And also, I don't want to, I don't want to downgrade myself. I'm just in a season of life as a woman where I want to be proud of my pricing. I want to be proud of what I'm creating as an example. And you may not like it, but guess what? We will respect.
(27:00):
And you know, I think it comes down to, because we all, I think, I think every time a woman shares her little me, the reality is we all have that same whisper even if it's sometimes it's smaller or louder, but we all have had it or have it. And I think it's so important for us to say, I like me. Yes, love me. And that's a battle too sometimes. But in that it's like, I love myself enough to price myself in a way that I will respect myself and others will respect me. And they probably will like you, they just may or may not be willing to invest with you, but some of them will. And you can, in that sense, I do believe you can have it all. You will have team. You will have clients, you will have a circle that loves you, likes you and respects you, not all of them, but the ones that you can go with to the next level.
Laura (27:49):
Absolutely. It's about time that we end. But I want to let people know about the amazing offer that you are providing from a generous place so that they can connect with you more and learn from you more.
Marshawn (28:00):
This book is, is out. It's been a number one new release in women in business, but it's coming back out because it did so well in paperback. So I'd love for you to scoop this up. It's in paperback, you can get it at believebigger.com. There's even a sample chapter that you can listen to, if you need to test the waters a little bit more. But I think it will really bless you. If you're audio book reader, an eBook reader, or you want hardback or paperback, it is available pretty much everywhere. Books are sold, but you could probably have it on Amazon prime within 24 to 48 hours.
Laura (28:32):
And I just want to say, thank you Marshawn for being here and sharing your message with our listeners.
Marshawn (28:38):
Thank you. And I just want to tell any woman who's listening, who's going through a difficult time. It will get better, but as you get better, your life is going to get bigger. And I just speak blessings over you over your business, over your family, and also over your future. Thanks for having me Laura.
Laura (28:52):
It is your gift. Thank you, Marshawn. We really appreciate it.
(28:59):
Make sure to visit our website, joybrandcreative.com/podcast, where you can subscribe to the show in iTunes, Stitcher, or RSS so that you'll never miss an episode. While you're at, if you find value in this show, we'd appreciate a rating on iTunes. Or if you just simply tell a friend about it, that would help us out a lot too. Thanks so much for listening.
The Scale with Joy podcast dives into the mindset and strategies of scaling your company to the million dollar mark and beyond. Each week, we follow the journeys of innovators, disruptors, experts and leaders - sharing behind the scenes stories of their most challenging moments and greatest lessons learned-all while building their multi-million dollar empires.