We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Marquita Gipson . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Marquita below.
Marquita, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?
When I think about success, what comes to mind is hard work, consistency and overcoming challenges. With success comes failures. You have to be committed to learning and growing. Success takes time to build. Within Girls that Glitter Inc, we’ve had to do things by trial and error, learning from our mistakes and seeking mentorship. To be successful, you’ve got to have a personal commitment to the cause.
Marquita, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Girls that Glitter Inc. was founded in 2018. GTG for short is a mentoring organization whose mission is to, to Encourage, Empower and Motivate young ladies in boosting their confidence, self-esteem and self-love. Within GTG, we have two programming options. Girls Ages 7-17 and Young Ladies transitioning into adulthood from ages 18-21.
Girls that Glitter will be the preeminent organization that assist young ladies in growing confidence, self-esteem and leadership among themselves. Girls that Glitter will empower young ladies to create their own opportunities for life success, through contributing to the community as young leaders guided by mentors, dedicated to expanding their horizons.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
This question is kind of tricky to answer. If there’s a lesson that I’ve had to unlearn it would be networking. Just as in any industry, you have to learn who you can and cannot do business with. Very early on, I was excited to learn and build relationships with other likeminded women and organizations. There were some experiences or relationships that were not fitting for GTG or the brand. There has been some instances where these possible connections have left my mentees and mentors in uncomfortable settings. Due to this, I started shying away from networking and building a community. No one wants to talk about the partnerships that probably shouldn’t have been partnering from the beginning. I have since, have been very careful in my selection, conversations and relationship building when it comes to networking. Everyone doesn’t have the same heart to impact the way that you do!
How did you build your audience on social media?
Social media is a scary world. Once you’ve put it out there, it’s out there. We’ve been on social media since about 2019. The key is operating in your area of expertise. The nonprofit space can be intimidating, especially when you are just starting from the bottom. We started on Instagram first as that is where a lot of our mentees used at the time. We’d spotlight the girls for their achievements, promoted confidence and awareness to self-esteem. Looking back over our page, we started with no Logo! Yeap, no Logo! We had the free version of Canva and had to start somewhere. We began to follow other nonprofit organizations, research material and engaging in master classes. This helped with understanding the target audience and how to engage the audience. We wanted our mission and vision to stand out. We later moved on to Facebook to target our parents, supporters and increase our networking. Networking on social media takes time. You may not have a large following base but, starting small and having a clear message matters. You always want to make your message is clear, is it important to your followers, is it engaging and is the timing right! On social media, we are all aiming at the same audience.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Www.GirlsthatGlitterInc.com
- Instagram: GirlsthatGlitterInc
- Facebook: GirlsthatGlitterInc
