The Path

A wise woman once said to me, “A person’s career is made up of a series of stepping stones. Only by looking back can you see how each step has created a path to where you are today.” The image of the stone path winding its way up hills, around unexpected bends, in the sunshine, through the rain and where it ends today is a great illustration how each step we’ve taken has guided us to where we are this moment. Small steps, big steps, small decisions and big decisions created our unique career path. Each footstep has counted.

For Theresa Slater, a woman who now runs a multi-million dollar company called Empire Interpreting Service; it took million dollar stepping stones to get her where she is in 2012. Small risks, small decisions, big risks and big decisions created her extremely successful Central New York corporation. Although Theresa has achieved great success, she understands the importance of sharing the milestones – the steps – along the way with other women entrepreneurs. It’s the reason I have asked her to speak at our regional Women TIES Rochester luncheon during Women’s History Month.

I am sure we wish our entrepreneurial path was always a sunny, straight and flat one, but it isn’t and won’t be. Understanding our journey to corporate success will be full of good and bad days, poor financial periods and richly deserved rewards, helps us march forward. Only by looking over our shoulder can we truly see the positive progress we’ve made. Even though looking onward is important, so is looking backward.

Today’s post is meant to encourage you to keep taking the next progressive steps in your journey – whatever those steps are for you. It could be adding staff, taking bigger financial risks, recreating your brand, marketing more extensively or simply going in a different direction. Today you are taking a step that someday, when you look back, will make perfect sense.

I hope to see you, and other women entrepreneurs like you, throughout my business travels always moving forward on the challenging turf that will eventually lead us to our own golden monetary horizon. Onward we go together.