Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in business development but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Marisa Leigh Valente, founder of The Center for Modern Workforce Strategy, located in New York, NY, USA.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
The Center for Modern Workforce Strategy helps business leaders and innovators develop bespoke solutions that will become the gold standard of exceptional 21st-century workforce practice. Specializing in the future of work, we are a human-centered strategy consultancy supporting those who believe they have the power to reimagine today’s workforce models. The solutions we develop are typically bespoke leadership and organizational strategies born from in-depth executive coaching engagements.
For over one hundred fifty years, we have continued to ask leadership questions grounded in a single Industrial Revolution era question: "What is the role of the boss in a world of workers?". As we have experienced step function evolution in the domains of technology, economics, and social experience, a new question has evolved: "What is the role of the human mind in a world of technology?". The central focus has expanded away from the importance of expression, from a few to the importance of expression for all. This shift is the organizing framework we apply to "The Future of Work" and that around which we help leaders strategize.
Our clients fall into three categories:
- Other strategists, consultants, educators, and policymakers
- Leaders of businesses & institutions
- Private individuals
Tell us about yourself
I have deep expertise in traditional talent management/talent enablement strategies and where they intersect with innate human creative impulses. Understanding this intersection can redefine employee utilization practices and fundamentally change employee behavior. It is critically important to understand this in our age of rapid change and digitization.
When I was working in-house, I experienced many leaders working under old paradigms that were "tried and true." To me, this was more inertia than it was genuine forward momentum. I saw not only an opportunity, but an imperative to offer support to the kinds of leaders and institutions that were riding the wave of change and ready to shape a template for an entirely new world of work.
I love the intersection of problem-solving and human connection inherent in strategy and executive coaching. I advise from a deep well of experience as a senior business executive, entrepreneur, investor, and autodidact, which gives me credibility with my clients. But before anything else, I identify as a human being - and a sensitive one at that. I take great care to advise from this perspective first and foremost. My ability to bring a caring and humanized perspective to my work motivates me every day and gives my work a real sense of personal meaning.
For almost 20 years working as an in-house HR executive and now independently as a strategist and executive coach, I have lived and worked all over the world - in the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the South Pacific. My expertise spans Jungian psychology, catastrophic risk, philosophy, social systems, and group behavior. Being able to knit together a cross-section of experiences and offer them to my clients in ever more unique and specialized ways makes me feel like I'm not just going to work but rather that I am bringing the full scope of my life into service. It feels like a dream everyone strives for. I experience it as an honor, as a great gift.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
Becoming a business owner and honoring every day the opportunities and obligations inherent in being a leader and an advisor feels like an accomplishment. It is a great honor that I work every day to be worthy of. My clients' reflection of my work as being valuable and important to them feels like a tremendous accolade. However, I wake up every day feeling the need to earn it all over again. This keeps me feeling motivated and also humbled.
What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?
I find it hard to turn my work off as a business owner. Because I am working in an emergent practice area that I feel I have the opportunity to shape, and that is of great personal interest to me, sometimes I feel like I am working 24/7. However, it doesn't feel like the grueling kind of slog that people are burnt out by. It is very energizing for me!
With that being said, I think it's important for us all to have a balance of energy, experience, and expression in our lives to remain steady and feel whole. So, sometimes I need to remind myself (or give permission!) to take my nose out of a book and play. After working hard, the playtime is all sweeter! That feels like real balance, but something that does take my conscious, everyday effort.
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
- Do something that you really and truly love, ideally, something you are already spending your free time working on and on which you feel you are already a master.
- Get help. Being a business owner means you are focused on running an entire business. Unlike working at a company, you are no longer solely focused on your practice area with a huge infrastructure to support you behind the scenes. Identify the things you are weak on (i.e., accounting, marketing, etc.), learn what you need to know about them, and then outsource those things to experts so that your strengths can illuminate your brand. Your weakness is not neutral in this domain; however, neutralizing your weaknesses can become a key element of your success as a business owner.
- Organize your personal life such that it can support your sense of wholeness with as little extra effort as possible. Your experience of work/life balance will irrevocably shift when you become a business owner. The more you can allow yourself easy access to the joys of life - those things that are deeply nourishing, sustaining, and life-giving - the more you will serve yourself, and ultimately the more you will serve your work.
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://modernworkforcestrategy.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marisaleighvalente/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marisa-leigh-valente-9089981a/
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
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