The Heart of Business
Inspiration for women entrepreneurs, female business owners and small businesses
The peaceful Adirondack lodge, with its tall floor to treetop windows with streaming light shining on wooden floors, with a grand fireplace, expansive book shelf and old wooden ship upon the fireplace mantle, was nestled in a hillside. Comfortable couches and recliner chairs formed in group settings with a window seat and cushions in a bow window with pillows ready to provide comfort. The setting was simply tranquil.
A kitchen fully stocked for patients and families was open around the clock and a private bathroom with towels and lotions helped families who stayed overnight freshen up in the morning. You would think I was describing a spa if you didn’t know this lodge was a Hospice House donated in the name of a woman whose family wanted to provide peace to other patients and families of terminal ill patients. What a gift. What a sweet gift.
The environment was exactly what my 6 younger siblings needed to ‘rest’ in to accept the final days of their beloved mother. The sterile environment of a nursing home just made the situation worse. They needed to be comforted in a beautiful, peaceful, respectful place for their mother and themselves.
As I left to come home after three days to do some work and wash some clothes, I hugged the young woman who had been the night nurse checking in on my stepmother and I as we softly slept because of course this lodge had a reclining chair for family members to sleep in the room with their loved ones. I said to the nurse, “Thank you so much for taking care of my stepmother and being so kind to me and my siblings. It means the world.” She said, “Of course, that’s why I am a hospice nurse.”
Throughout my 23 years of entrepreneurship I have not saved lives, but I would like to believe I have brought the same care, tenderness, listening abilities and support to women entrepreneurs who seek my support or share their stories of tough business times with me. I am not trained like a hospice nurse but my heart feels similar to one. I truly care about my members and women who walk through my event doors.
Today’s blog post might just inspire you to contemplate the same question. Do you perform your entrepreneurial work with a generous, caring heart? Do you put your customer’s needs in line with your own? How would your customers describe your business in writing one day, as I write about this “hospice business?” Do they “love” what you provide and help them solve?
Wall Street doesn’t talk about love, it talks about profits and wealth and its clients want those; but for the millions of other businesses we should give what most humans want a caring, mindful company who values them with our heart.
Women TIES 