Dare to make it on brand - Marissa Garcia
Daring Forever (Find your Extraordinary)
Marissa Garcia, a brand designer and strategist from Fresno, California, shares her journey of personal branding rooted in childhood experiences with the Spice Girls and
Key takeaways
- If you don't control your narrative, someone else will—this early lesson shaped Marissa's understanding of personal branding.
- Personal branding is built on three pillars: clarity, consistency, and connection.
Main topics
- Personal branding and narrative control
- Athletic identity and self-perception
Notable quotes
"If you don't control your narrative, someone else will."
"Opportunity isn't found—it's built."
Conclusion
Marissa Garcia's journey exemplifies how personal branding is not just a professional
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:00) So, while you have no control of your personal branding and it's absolutely impossible to control the narrative in a really large-scale good way, but I'm more concerned with where I want to build opportunity, going back to that opportunity is a talented build. And so, I'm not going to waste my energy of worrying about spaces that I'm not even in. And there's going to be people that misunderstand me and that's okay too. I'm focusing on where I'm trying to go, what rooms I'm trying to enter. And I'm talking rooms as in like opportunities and how am I going to show up there. Speaker 2 (0:56) Welcome to Daring Forever, a podcast about being human, why for wonder, capable of courage, perpetually becoming. It's about the waves that look us under and the strange, stubborn grace with which we surface. My name is Rade Malinic. I'm an author, creative and an eternally curious human being on a mission to speak to incredible people whom I call Forever Daring Humans. Those in pursuit of an extraordinary life. Every week I share an interview that is packed with amazing stories, value, and I can only ask you, how will you dare forever? This podcast is inspired by my upcoming book titled Daring Forever, which is now available for pre-order Speaker 1 (1:37) out in October. Speaker 2 (1:41) Day on Daring Forever, I'm joined by Marisa Garcia, brand strategist, designer, and self-proclaimed multi-hyphenate living and building a creative business in Fresno, California. Marisa's story starts with the Spice Girls. Cast as a scary spice as a kid, she spent her life proving she was a sporty spice all along. A runner, an athlete, and eventually a scholarship winner who carried the same unshakable belief into branding. We talked about her three pillars of personal brand. Clarity, consistency, connection, what it means to be delusional on purpose and how she cold pitched her way onto the stage in Cannes Lion and funded the whole entire trip. This is a conversation about building opportunity instead of waiting for it. Here's my conversation with Marisa Garcia. Speaker 2 (2:30) Hey Marisa, welcome to Daring Forever. How are you doing today? Speaker 1 (2:33) I'm doing good. Thank you so much for having me. Speaker 2 (2:37) Yeah, it's excellent stuff to have you here because I have just finished watching your TEDx talk, which is all about personal branding and personal brand. And it's a story close to my heart because there's always a story for personal branding and against personal branding. I think there's never going to be a subject matter that's always going to be closed and decided. And I think this is a space that you work in quite prominently. Really want to sort of dig in onto what it's like to be a brand or should personal branding exist or should it not? We'll get to it. But for those who may have not heard of Marisa Garcia, who are you? What do you do? Where do we find you? Speaker 1 (3:12) Okay. Yes. My name is Marisa Garcia. Marisa on brand as referred to on Instagram and on LinkedIn. And I am a brand designer and strategist currently going through my own personal. revolution because we are slowly transitioning and growing the business side of things and expanding what it actually means to be a brand designer and strategist in 2026. I've been an entrepreneur for the past five years. And before then, I was in corporate, hired on for communications and branding specifically, very in alignment with your podcast title. Daring Creative, every position I've held has been something that was not really developed with an actual title, but they knew they wanted me on the team. So I've had to create my own job title, if you will. So I feel like I'm still doing that today. But it all centers around branding. I live, breathe branding. I love it. It's in every industry and every day is different. And I get to flex my creativity in more ways than I ever imagined. Today, I am a mompreneur. I have two kids. And I serve some really amazing clients doing amazing work, building amazing things. Yeah, that's me in a nutshell. But every day is going to be different. That's just my creative brain. Yeah, I pinpointing one specific thing. I'm definitely a multi-hype in it. So today I could be doing one thing, tomorrow I could be doing another thing, but it all centers around creativity and branding. Speaker 2 (4:57) There is something about multi-hyphenates where they usually say what they do with a smile on their face and you're no different because there's something about a variety that if you can do so many different things, it might make sometimes the predictability of the future potentially be more complicated for some people who do the same thing over and over again. You know, they're setting their ways. They might have more predictable pipeline and runway, but I think for doing what you do, you've said everything that you do with a smile on your face. And I think that's the best part of it because you mentioned you're going through personal revolution, trying to grow the business. How would you define personal revolution and why did you use those words? Speaker 1 (5:33) Yeah, I feel like, especially for creatives, there will be moments in your life where you're like, what am I doing? I know I'm meant for more. And I know I'm meant to have an even greater impact. And the current. path that I'm going on has got me here, which has been amazing. And I love the work that I'm doing, but also I want to keep challenging myself. I want to keep evolving into something. I don't know what it's going to be, but something that continues to build. I started out just with brand design in my entrepreneurship career. Actually before then it was in corporate communications, marketing. That wasn't enough for me. Went into entrepreneurship. I started out in brand design. That wasn't enough for me. I wanted more. I wanted to support my clients more. So then I added in brand strategy and now I call myself a brand strategist and brand designer. And now I am hitting this point in my life and it's indicative of my personal life and my professional life coming together. where I am feeling that itch to continue to keep growing. I hate being satisfied with just being where I'm at. I always want to keep growing. And so now, after serving my clients for the past three or four years, I have realized that my clients are needing even more support that they're needing other than just brand design and brand strategy. And when I work closely with my clients, I see that and I want to help them. I don't want to be just limited to them hiring me for just brand design and brand strategy. And so that is the personal evolution that I'm entering. And now I'm pursuing a creative co-working studio here in Fresno, California, where I can support clients, business owners, entrepreneurs, founders in an even bigger way. Maybe it's this fear of... being average. I'm an overachiever. I've always been that way. And that kind of comes from my athletic background. And so it is no different within my career. And I love it. It's been great. I love the personal evolution. So that's what I consider it. Speaker 2 (8:05) You've said so many interesting things that I had to write down. And I will start with the one that says fear of being average, because you mentioned your athletics background. I know your athletics background because I watched your TEDx talk. But let's put more color on this story because it's an unusual one where it kind of led you to the world of brand and being brand casted in a way by being perceived as a particular type of person in a way. So let's go to the origin story, which is, it starts with five girls from England. I Speaker 1 (8:35) grew up in Fresno, California. And just for a little bit of context, I... was always the token Black girl that grew up in a predominantly white community. And the story that I give that kind of kicks off how my understanding of personal branding was with the Spice Girls. And I think everyone that has grown up with the Spice Girls know exactly Scary Spice, What's Her Brand, Sporty Spice, What's Her Brand, Ginger Spice, Baby Spice. They all have these identities. And growing up, I was the token black girl. I was always casted as Gary's spy. And that didn't sit well with me because I always identified myself, not because of physical appearance, but because I always identified myself as sporty spies and wanted to be sporty spies because I was heavily involved in sports growing up. I did soccer, basketball, gymnastics, dance, club sports. I was a runner. I did it all. And I really prided myself in that. And so when I do pretend with my friends or we dress up for Halloween, Marissa, you got to be scary as spice. And early on, I understood the notion that if we don't control our narrative, someone else will. And at the time, I didn't have the language to really speak up for myself. and tell people, no, this is who I want to be. This is who I am. And I kind of just went with it and led into my identity as sports. And my personal branding was sports from childhood all the way through college. And that's where the start of personal branding came from. I was known as the girl who runs really fast and far. Eventually running was my sport and went to college for it. So that became my personal identity for a good majority of my life. When Speaker 2 (10:41) you talked about your branding work, you said, I'm meant for more. And when you just now talked about your childhood and your early years, you mentioned how many different sports activities that you do. So there was always meant for more. You were always going for something that's just beyond the regular. Speaker 2 (10:58) Reflecting on your words, if you don't look after your narrative, someone else will make it for you. Meaning that we didn't have the words earlier on, like how to be assertive about what other people say about us. And we said we didn't have the language for it. I think we've only just gained language for some of the things. I think we're enabling our children or the children of this generation have the language, have the more of the awareness. Because the things that you're describing when it comes to, let's say, branding, et cetera, how many people even... At the time of Sporty and Ginger and Scary running around the wannabe video set, there was very little language. No one was seeing them as a personal brand. It was more about how you saw the person, never carrying that meaning of themselves. But we've invented, I would say invented more language around all of these topics to actually make sense of this. Because I've had clients, children sometimes call in, they're like, hey, look, we need some more brand equity into what we do. I'm like, you are 17. Like, how do you know all of this? Because when I was 17, this didn't exist. Yeah, Speaker 1 (11:57) no, not at all. Yeah, I don't think I called it branding at the time, but I understood that you can create what people perceive of you and you can help shape that narrative or shape that perception. We don't own our personal brand. I truly believe that. I believe the people outside of us own our personal brand. Whereas. We, though, have the opportunity to influence our personal brand. So when people were seeing me as only as a scary spice or what have you, I felt a personal responsibility to, okay, they're not understanding who I am. And I'm not fully communicating who I am. And so I'm going to do my damnedest. to make sure that I am influencing how they see me. And so that's when I got into sports. And blessings to my mom and dad for believing in my athleticism and really fostering because I went out in any sport that I did, I was going to be great at it so that then people can start seeing me as, oh, she's the sport girl. She's Sporty Spice. That's how really I got into running. And that's why running got me a scholarship to go to school because I was going to be great and prove people wrong. And looking back over my life, I think the biggest motivator for me is proving people wrong. That