Some days, she admits, Tera Carissa Hodges says she feels like ‘every woman’. While this rings true given her ability to wear many hats and fill every role, from an outsider perspective, Tera really does make her achievements uniquely her own.
From a business perspective, Tera is known internationally as a women’s empowerment coach, faith based speaker, and entrepreneur. Starting off in media, an industry she still has many roots in, Tera began to grow her faith based empowerment business alongside her career in media, as well as other entrepreneurial ventures as they arose. Now, Tera is best known for running her media business, LR Global Media Group, where she has the opportunity to work with corporations, personalities, celebrities, small businesses, and non for profits on how to best get their messaging and branding out into the world.
“I am a lover of life, and I intentionally allow that to spill over into my businesses. I absolutely love what I do,” Tera says.
Getting to the point where she absolutely loves what she does started early for Tera. She started in her teen years, writing for her high school newspaper, working on the yearbook staff, and expanding her skills into the community, writing a news article that landed the front page of her local newspaper at only 16 years old. With the skills needed in her foundation, Tera found her calling to use them to benefit others that needed it.
“I’ve always been a media head. But beyond that, I was inspired to enter this industry from seeing people, brands, and companies, go through storms and lose their influence and credibility. With truth as your foundation and the right strategy, you can tell your story brilliantly while gaining influence instead of losing it,” Tera says.
Always one to encourage the importance of a good foundation, Tera likes to teach her clients about the aptly named: The Beyonce Formula.
“Beyonce’s foundation is singing. Once she made it big, she got off into acting, clothing designs, photography, her own perfume line, and more. But her foundation stabilized her, which in turn gave her a platform to branch off into other areas besides singing. I tell my clients to commit to a foundation and grow from there,” Tera outlines.
The Beyonce formula allows Tera and her clients to focus, admittedly one of the biggest challenges when it comes to starting a business, trying to accomplish a goal, or working towards a personal change.
“Focus is a big challenge. If you have a million and one ideas, narrowing it down can feel like you’re losing out on working on another great idea. But you’re not! I remind my clients about the Beyonce formula to encourage this mindset. After all, your mindset is an extremely important part of the journey. Your mind guides your footsteps,” Tera says.
Although this is something Tera believes wholeheartedly, she admits it was a journey herself to get there. Looking back, Tera reflects that her biggest obstacle in her career was likely second guessing herself and giving people the benefit of the doubt – two decisions that occur when you do not trust your own mindset.
“Now, I know how important it is to trust your instinct. It’s vital to avoid giving a second voice from others, as it gives them the opportunity to explain away what you intuitively sense to be true,” Tera says.
Looking forward to 2021, Tera has just one word in mind: peace. After a year of pause, which gave her the ability to focus on research and realignment, Tera is ready to move ahead at full steam with two new projects: www.successbullying.us, a website dedicated to normalizing seeing women as successful, and www.ilovemytestimony.com, a website dedicated to helping people own their story, so their story can never own them.
Be sure to follow Tera’s new ventures, as well as her established media business, for all the exciting things to come in the new year.
