Marisa Meddin shares her experiences as a brand marketer at Pepsi for 6 years, and describes what life was like throwing celebrity parties for influencers, walking red carpets at the Grammys, Clios and Golden Globes, and regularly interacting with her A-list clients. She distills down the business lessons learned from managing the $1.5 Billion Diet Pepsi brand, and breaks out the core principles of Pepsi’s brand-building strategy that are applicable to businesses of all sizes. Marisa then explains why she left Pepsi in her late 20s and walked away from what everyone saw as “the good life” and the “dream job”. She takes us through her career and life transition, why she decided to start over and how she taught herself to build location-independent businesses from scratch. She takes us through her journey of becoming a real estate professional and then building a completely automated business that now generate her enough passive residual income to cover her lifestyle expenses while she travels the world as a full-time digital nomad. Marisa emphasizes the tenacious work ethic required to learn, build, and automate successful businesses, and then breaks down the specific tactics for how she executed her product development, focus grouping of her target market, copywriting and marketing, and building effective sales funnels. She also goes deep into tactics for creating the right mindset and how to surround yourself with the right stimulation and create powerful incentives to succeed. She then talks about her move into the life/career coaching space and her love of working with people to help them create lives they truly love. And finally, she shares some of her top travel experiences and conveys the crucially important role of ‘community’ for long term world travelers. Full Show Notes for this episode available at www.TheMaverickShow.com
Episode #31: From Walking Red Carpets to Building Location-Independent Businesses: Creating a Life You Truly Love with Marisa Meddin.
Episode Summary
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About the Guest
Marisa Meddin
Marisa Meddin is a Serial Entrepreneur, Real Estate Professional, Clarity Advisor & Career Coach, who helps individuals identify, pursue and achieve careers and lifestyles that they truly love. Out of college, Marisa worked for Pepsi in brand marketing, moving up the ranks in New York and LA over six years, and was part of a team of 3 who managed the $1.5 Billion dollar Diet Pepsi brand. Marisa also managed all music events and music partnerships and worked directly with celebrities such as Sofia Vergara, Beyonce, and Snoop Dogg, and attended red carpet events such as The Grammys, The Golden Globes, and The Clio Awards. In 2016, Marisa left her corporate job and started an e-commerce business selling desserts. Less than two years later, she launched her second company called “Talk College To Me”, where she built an online course that helps families in the US navigate the college admissions process. That course now generates her enough passive income to cover her lifestyle expenses. Marisa is also a certified life coach and in her 3rd business, she works with clients from around the world as a Clarity Advisor and Career Coach. Marisa donates 10% of all her profits from all her businesses to Pencils for Promise which works on poverty reduction through education and builds schools and support teachers in low income areas of Guatemala, Ghana and Laos. And Marisa is a full time digital nomad who runs all of her businesses remotely while traveling the world and has now been to over 45 countries.
What You'll Learn
- Specific tactics for building and automating a successful online business
- Mindset exercises for achieving big goals and making major life transitions
- The #1 key to traveling the world long term without being lonely
Links From the Episode
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GET MARISA’s BUNDLE OF 3 FREE RESOURCES:
1) Questions: to help you figure out your passion & career
2) Guide: 5 steps to create an awesome vision board
3) Worksheet: to overcome your limiting beliefs & move forward
MARISA’S ONLINE COURSE ON NAVIGATING U.S. COLLEGE ADMISSIONS
WINE SHARED ON THIS EPISODE
WORK-TRAVEL PROGRAMS IN WHICH MATT AND/OR MARISA PARTICIPATED
- Remote Year (Get a $100 Discount for Using this Link)
- Hacker Paradise (Get a $100 Discount For Using this Link)
- WiFi Tribe
BOOKS MARISA RECOMMENDS
WATCH MATT’S FREE VIDEO TRAINING ON MINIMALIST PACKING STRATEGIES
GET MATT’S FREE REPORT ON REAL ESTATE INVESTING FOR DIGITAL NOMADS
LEARN HOW REAL ESTATE AGENTS CAN REFER CLIENTS TO MAVERICK INVESTOR GROUP TO BUY TURNKEY RENTAL PROPERTIES
SCHEDULE A CONSULT TO DISCUSSS BUYING TURNKEY RENTAL PROPERTIES THROUGH MAVERICK INVESTOR GROUP
PODCAST MARISA RECOMMENDS:
EVENT IN WHICH MATT AND MARISA PARTICIPATED
MARISA’S TOP 5 HIP HOP ARTISTS OF ALL TIME
PUBLIC FIGURE WITH WHOM MARISA WOULD MOST LIKE TO HAVE DINNER
OTHER PEOPLE AND MUSIC GROUPS MENTIONED
- Asher Roth
- Ashton Kutcher
- Beyoncé
- Dierks Bentley
- Florida Georgia Lines
- Mark Cuban
- Pharell Williams
- Prince Royce
- Robin Thicke
- Snoop Dogg
- Sofia Vergara
OTHER MAVERICK SHOW INTERVIEW MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
LOCATION WHERE THE INTERVIEW TOOK PLACE
CITY WHERE MARISA IS FROM
MARISA’S TOP 3 TRAVEL DESTINATIONS
MARISA’S TOP 3 BUCKET LIST TRAVEL DESTINATIONS
OTHER PLACES MENTIONED
- Los Angeles, California
- Hawaii
- Indonesia
- Kyoto, Japan
- Nairobi, Kenya
- Casablanca, Morocco
- New York City
- Canary Islands, Spain
- Austin, Texas
- Thailand
- Uganda
Check Flight Prices to Any of These Destinations
FOLLOW MARISA ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Time Stamped Show Notes
[03:09] MARISA AND MATT’S SHARED TRAVEL EXPERIENCES
- Lisbon, Portugal
- Casablanca, Morocco
[05:13] MARISA AND MATT’S EXPERIENCES AT THE SXSW CONFERENCE IN AUSTIN, TEXAS
- Matt’s Experience Speaking at SXSW on Remote Entrepreneurship
- Marisa’s Experience Attending SXSW on Behalf of Pepsi
- Marisa Challenges Mark Cuban to a Salsa Dancing Contest at 1am
[08:01] MARISA’S 6-YEAR EXPERIENCE AS A BRAND MARKETER FOR PEPSI
- Managing the $1.5 billion dollar Diet Pepsi brand
- Throwing “influencer” parties in New York City
- Attending Red Carpet Award Shows
- Managing Pepsi’s music partnerships and working with A-list musicians
[12:53] BRANDING LESSONS FROM PEPSI FOR BUSINESSES OF ALL SIZES
- Doing meticulous customer research
- Building a brand identity and having a consistent brand personality
- Determining your highly-specific customer avatar
[16:47] MARISA’S CHOICE TO LEAVE PEPSI AND BECOME AN ENTREPRENEUR
- Her desire to build businesses, have no boss, and travel the world
- Walking away from red carpets, celebrities and a good salary to pursue her dreams
- Making a total life pivot, re-inventing herself and starting from scratch in her late 20s.
- Starting an e-commerce business selling desserts
[22:10] BECOMING A REAL ESTATE PROFESSIONAL AND MAKING MONEY REFERRING BUYERS
- Marisa’s choice to get her real estate license
- Generating passive income by referring buyers to other agents
- How the Maverick Referral Network works for real estate agents
[27:39] MARISA’S PATH TO LEARNING TO BUILD AND SELL INFORMATION PRODUCTS
- Learning by binge-listening to podcasts, watching webinars, and consuming courses
- Spending a year and a half researching and building her first online course
- Working 16-hour days for 18 months to get her business launched
- Incentivizing herself with deadlines to embark on her digital nomad lifestyle
- Mastering all the difference aspects of running a successful online course business
[37:09] HOW TO BUILD A SUCCESSFUL ONLINE COURSE (PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT)
- Speak to a former version of yourself who didn’t know how to do these things
- Write bullets focusing on the pain points as the course module outline
- Write sub-bullets about how to overcome each pain point as the videos in each module
[39:09] HOW TO EFFECTIVELY SELL AND MARKET ANYTHING
- Humanize yourself so people know, like and trust you
- Why building an email list is your single most important business asset
- Create a valuable lead magnet to capture prospective customers
- Create an email nurture sequence to build a relationship with your email list, provide value and move them through your sales funnel
[41:07] HOW TO IDENTIFY YOUR TARGET MARKET AND OPTIMIZE YOUR MARKETING COPY
- Use Facebook Groups as Free Focus Groups
- Ask Questions, Listen to the Customer’s Pain Points and Questions and Desires
- Use the Customer’s Specific Language in Your Marketing Copy When Selling to Them
[43:50] HOW TO GENERATE LEADS USING PARTNERSHIPS
- Selling to Other People’s Existing Audiences
- Getting a Warm Lead Introductions for Higher Conversion Potential
[46:12] HOW TO CONVERT LEADS INTO A PAID SALE USING WEBINARS
- Nurturing leads and then driving them to a webinar for the sales presentation
- Deliver an enormous amount of free, up-front value
- Be completely confident in the value of your product and your price point
- Present the sales opportunity with so much value that it’s impossible to say ‘no’
- Structuring and formatting webinars to optimize sales conversions
- Get micro-commitments along the way
- Create the perception of scarcity to encourage people to buy in the moment
- Stack on the value with free bonuses
[52:34] BECOMING A CLARITY ADVISOR AND BUSINESS/CAREER/LIFE COACH
- Paying attention to what truly brings her joy and the value other people see in her
- Marisa’s passion for helping people transition, succeed and become happier in life
- Helping people determine next steps towards their dream life
[55:00] OVERCOMING OBSTACLES TO ACHIEVING YOUR DREAM LIFE
- How fear functions as an impediment to pursuing true happiness
- Asking yourself the right questions
- Overcoming mental barriers to take big leaps
- Specific exercises for transcending limiting beliefs
[1:02:14] THE IMPORTANCE OF MINDSET AND VISION FOR ACHIEVING BIG GOALS
- Why internal mindset work is the most important factor for taking a major leap or achieving a big goal.
- Starting with the end vision in mind and working backwards
- The real reasons to create a vision board, and how to do it correctly
- The importance of curating and pumping the right sensory stimulation into your brain
- Surrounding yourself with people and content geared towards exactly what you want to achieve
[1:09:02] IDENTITY-ADJUSTMENTS WHEN RE-INVENTING YOURSELF IN A MAJOR TRANSITION
- The transition from a prestigious job to ground zero and starting from scratch
- Similarities with the transition into retirement
- The importance of defining yourself outside of your source of income generation
- Overcoming the “sunk-cost fallacy”
- Leveraging your personality and experience and passion to pursue your dreams
- Matt’s identity transition from non-profit advocacy work to entrepreneurship
- Anchoring your values at the core of everything you do as a moral compass
- How Maverick Investor Group’s business model benefits the founders, the customers, and also affects positive change in the world.
- How being happy and fulfilled enables you to better help others, bring joy to more people and positively impact the world
[01:22:21] TRAVELING THE WORLD AND BEING A FULL-TIME DIGITAL NOMAD
- Why Marisa travels the world and what it means to her
- How her travel priorities shifted significantly when she became a digital nomad
- Why people and community are so much more important than places when traveling long term.
- The work-travel companies that cater to digital nomads and curate communities of working professionals to travel the world together
- Matt’s experience on Remote Year and Hacker Paradise and Wanderist Life
- Marisa’s experience on WiFi Tribe
- The acceleration of relationship depth and community cohesion that forms on long-term work-travel programs
- The overlapping and intertwining of the nomad social eco-system
- Matt’s minimalist packing workshop on Nomad Cruise featuring their mutual friend Leah
- The crucial importance of social sustainability in long-term world travel
- The value of the alumni networks of work-travel programs and the ability to have community all over the world.
- Marisa’s experience at the Tomatina Festival in Spain (The world’s largest food fight).
[1:41:42] THE LIGHTNING ROUND
- The Top 2 books that Marisa recommends
- The #1 App that Marisa recommends
- The #1 Podcast that Marisa Recommends
- The public figure with whom Marisa would most like to have dinner
- The advice Marisa would give to her 18-year-old self
- Marisa’s top 5 hip hop artists of all time
- Marisa’s top 3 favorite travel destinations
- Marisa’s top 3 bucket list destinations
[1:51:22] CONTACT MARISA AND GET A BUNDLE OF FREE STUFF
- Get Marisa’s Free Bundle including:
Questions: to help you figure out your passion & career
Guide: 5 steps to create an awesome vision board
Worksheet: to overcome your limiting beliefs & move forward - Follow Marisa on Instagram
