Today we’d like to introduce you to Marsha Archer.
Marsha, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
August 2008 is when I took the leap of faith and branched out on my own. I had been blessed with the opportunity to work for Fortune 500 companies, like Four Seasons Hotel Atlanta and The Home Depot, and I truly loved the work I was doing. The tipping point of my career happened when my oldest, Trey (14), was going off to kindergarten and I was yearning for a desire to have a healthy balance of being a mom and having a career.
Honestly, it’s the mom guilt that tugs at most of us — my nanny I felt was becoming a mom; I wasn’t getting enough time with Trey and Olivia (11) but yet I still wanted a rewarding career.
My work with Four Seasons was really what gave me the ability to take that leap. With one exciting challenge after another at the hotel, all the pieces of my career crystalized with my hospitality “education.” I then brought the philosophy and high standards of Four Seasons to M-Squared Public Relations — and after 10 years, I truly believe it’s why the firm has been so successful. We have high standards.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Anytime you’re juggling life and career, it’s never a smooth road; however, it’s how you navigate the bumps in the road that determines how you move forward. First, I realized how resourceful I was. In the corporate world, it’s easy to get comfortable with the people and departments around you— Just put in a request and it’s done. Suddenly as an entrepreneur, I’m price searching for the best deals and being forced to think outside of the box on expert matters such as accounting, tech support and human resources/benefits.
Please tell us about M-Squared Public Relations.
At M-Squared Public Relations, we specialize in making news across the hotel, restaurant, tourism, hotel management and other hospitality-related industries. To make that happen, we have an energetic team across two offices–Atlanta and Charlotte–where we take a small idea and make it big. We take a big idea and make it huge. Our highly skilled and energetic team leaps out of the box to create industry buzz around a brand.
New business or established concept, we secure your spot in the marketplace to help you grow.
Over the past decade, there have been moments of pride as a business owner. I’ll go back to Four Seasons Atlanta again. As a client, there are definitely my labor of love. Going from a former employee to now working with them on a contract basis, we’ve been in the trenches with them for 17 years. It shows how much they trust us as an outside company and how committed we are to their brand.
We build relationships and become brand ambassadors for our clients — all of them! We want them to succeed as much as they do. We are 100% in from day one and it shows as many of our contracts are long-term or come from referrals.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
Defined my work-life balance ahead of time, instead of trying to do it while the business was growing. Every entrepreneur wants their business to grow and creating that personal time for oneself becomes more difficult if you don’t know what that looks like (or how to carve it out) ahead of time.
Nowadays, I simply just book the trip ahead of time and then create my schedule around my ‘out of office’ dates, as opposed to trying to squeeze my personal time in.
Contact Info:
- Address: 241 W. Wieuca Rd. NE Suite 260 Atlanta, GA 30342
- Website: msquaredpr.com
- Phone: 404-303-7797
- Email: info@msquaredpr.com
Image Credit:
JANET HOWARD STUDIOS
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