Flipping the Coin for Female Football
Thursday Thoughts, Inspiration, Wisdom for Women Entrepreneurs, Women in Sports
The call came in on a random business afternoon by a female leader of a new women’s semi-pro football team called the Syracuse Sting. I met her at one of the business networking events I was leading as she promoted her new team, looking for sponsors and supporters to fill the stands. There hadn’t been a woman’s football team in CNY at that point so promoting it was essential for its success.
Always willing to help another woman out, especially a woman who owned her own football team, I embraced Cabrina Gilbert with open arms willing to help in anyway promote the team for her. Memories of watching my father play football and coach football resonated in my memory. Only a powder-puff football player for one game in Highschool, but an avid watcher of my favorite team the Denver Broncos because of John Elway, made me an instant fan of the Syracuse Sting.
With a promise to host a women’s business night out at the football game – played at our AAA baseball field of the Syracuse Chiefs – we promoted one of the Sting’s games. Along with the promotion came a really cool request. “Tracy, would you honor us by flipping the game coin at the start of the game?” Cabrina asked. “YES! I would love to,” I replied. How cool was this going to be, I thought to myself.
The night of the game I bought a Syracuse Sting sweatshirt to wear onto the field to look the part. Merchandise for an entity like a women’s semi-pro football team was an important revenue stream and promotional tool. When I was called, I walked onto the field with Cabrina and three other very tall, big, cool female football players to the middle where we met the official. The lights of the stadium glowed as the sun was setting and what felt like my “Superbowl moment” minus a million fans occurred. I don’t remember what I called – heads or tails – but the flip worked and our team got the option to choose if they wanted to receive or play.
Sadly, as I walked back to the sideline; I noticed how few spectators were in the stands. Why wouldn’t our community support a woman’s football team? Where were the young girls to inspire? Or more business women to financially support this feminine corporation? Well, the game happened in the late 1990s when even the NFL wouldn’t support the Syracuse Sting, as Cabrina explained to me when I asked her. Sometimes a novel idea, is too novel for most people. But hopefully the world will keep changing for women interested in the sport.
The team didn’t last long mostly due to lack of an audience and financial support but I will never forget being impressed enough that there as a women’s football team in Syracuse and walking out under the summer lights sandwiched between tall football players. I still have my Syracuse Sting sweatshirt and wear it once in awhile to remind myself that women in all aspects of sports, business, and life still need my support…..and yours too.
Wednesday Wisdom: Cycles of Life & Business
Wednesday Wisdom, Inspiration, Motivation for Women Entrepreneurs, Female Business Owners, Small Businesses
As predictable as Upstate New York’s four seasons, is the same cycle in entrepreneurship. Seasons of budding, sustaining, turning golden, and finally buried under layers of cold are similar to the life cycle of any business. We plant the seed of our entrepreneurial idea, fertilize it through sales and networking, watch it prosper achieving its financial goals, and then witness its end. Then we have a chance like nature to start all over again with a new business seed or off-ramp into retirement or some other career goal.
Biking under the brilliant green canopy of full-blown August trees, with the ever-so-humid breeze blowing on my face in the very quiet trail typically busy when summer begins, reminded me that its past visitors might be taking their college-aged kids to far away institutions or soaking in the last few weeks of a summer vacation at the seashore, or school shopping with beaming grandchildren eager to get back in the saddle of their education. Cycles, it is all about cycles.
Seasons come. Seasons go. Time flies by just like everyone notices. A once-new- business suddenly turns a decade old and its owner a once 30-year-old turns 60 realizing how fast a 3-decade business dream has sprung, grown, and aged. Cycles.
The question becomes do we just keep on going from one season to another without stopping to pause, or do we stop after each season to analyze the lessons learned – both good and bad – so we can prepare for the next one. Just like Spring is as opposite as Fall, and Summer contrary to Winter so can our own entrepreneurial seasons be to us as leaders of our company and brand.
Today’s Wednesday Wisdom is to ask you to pause sometime this week to consider the difference in your own business’ seasons. What has happened since January 1st to now? What was unexpected or predicted? Did something happen that alters the way you need to move your company forward? Do different marketplace factors need to be addressed in an updated business plan? Are you more tired or happier since the year began? What are you inspired to do for the rest of the year?
Sometimes planning an entire year out can be difficult, but doing smaller seasonal planning for your company and yourself might be the perfect way to address the cycles of life and business that are everchanging. Try it out and welcome the next cycle of your company’s life.
Monday Motivation: Picking Up Speed
Monday Motivation, Inspiration for Women, Female Athletes, Women Entrepreneurs
When you are greeted by a 3-year-old boy who is jumping up and down in his motorcycle clothing because he’s been waiting for you all day to try his grandmother’s backyard motorcross field, you know the experience will be energetic, enthusiastic, and perfectly safe. If my buddy Alden can jump on his motorcycle without fear and zoom off confidently, you can too.
Inspiration comes in different sizes and my experience riding a motorcycle for the first time, be it a small motorcycle, in the ten-acre backyard of the Quigleys in Macedon, was thrilling. Motorcross was on my list of sports to try and simply posting a question on Facebook as to where I could try it, garnered the chance to do it with my husband’s cousin an hour from our house. They had diverse sizes of bikes, helmets, and clothes for me to wear, just not a pink helmet to fit my head.
I’ve biked 15 miles a day down and up hills by my own power, driven my powered-lawn mower down our back steep hill, and started going up and down ski bumps under the age of ten, so I was pretty confident I could get on a motorcycle and not crash but there is always that apprehension when you try anything new for the first time, especially something that has a motor, that semi-controls your speed and direction.
The Quigley family was waiting for me including four females and four males all zooming around on their own bikes as I arrived. Showing off their talents going up and down big and small dirt jumps built into their property, was thrilling to watch. Making sure I looked the part, I was soon outfitted in blue (sorry Tracy we don’t have pink) pants, top, helmet, and bike. They wanted me to experience it all. Just learning how to put a tight helmet on and off my bald head was a trick.
Safely taking me out on a Kubota to show me the course first and places I shouldn’t go, I returned to motorcycle instructions, which weren’t that hard to follow, and off I went following the women in the family on their bikes. Alden, the 3-year-old hotshot, speed past us with no fear. The thrill of the bike taking off made me say “Yahoo!” as soon as the bike advanced. Oh, it was fun!
I was trying not to go too fast, as an 85-mph regular driver on the highway, until I truly got the hang of the bike, and then asked them if I could try to go up and down a jump. I was ready! They were a wee bit surprised by my attitude and skills and off we went off one smaller jump and then bigger ones. No fear of jumps or hills came from learning to ski when I was 5-years-old and eventually doing the moguls on ski days. Bring it on, I said to myself in the quietness of my blue helmet.
Like all fun things in life, the ride came to an end too short for me, signifying this was another sport I wanted to try again after trying it once. My love for speed made motorcrossing my kind of sport. Am I willing to buy a $7,000 motorcycle to keep doing it? I’m not sure of that. Will I do it again if I have the opportunity given to me, yes! And that’s what trying a new sport brings to the table for anyone daring enough to try a new one.
Motorcross Take-aways:
* In life or business, you have to speed up if you want to accomplish bigger tasks or goals. You can’t stay in neutral too long.
* The harder you push yourself in unknown territories of life, the more resilient you become.
* Life and business aren’t for the faint of heart, so realize you need to push beyond your traditional limits.
* Experiences are more fun when you do it with other people, especially women. Get involved, ask, say yes, and join other women in any life or business adventures.
You can’t assume you know the pleasure a new sport or experience can bring you if you don’t give it a try. Onto the next adventure…
P.S. If you have a sport you want me to try that you do, let me know!
Thursday Thoughts: The Best Of
Thursday thoughts, Thursday vibes, Inspiration for Women Entrepreneurs, Female Business Owners, Small Businesses
A warm, humid summer air breezes in my office door as I wonder what I’ll experience at tonight’s outside concert at the beautiful Syracuse St. Joe’s Amphitheater. Gifted by my husband’s generous company, a corporate evening of bonding and music is the happening place featuring music by country star Kenny Chesney. As an avid Dave Matthews Band fan since 1999, I haven’t listened too much to country music.
Besides wondering what I’ll cover my alopecia head with since I don’t own a cowgirl hat, I turned to YouTube to listen to Kenny Chesney’s Greatest Hits, hoping I recognize some of them. Country music used to stream through our house when my youngest son was turned onto this genre of tunes his senior year in high school. As he went off to Syracuse University any time I heard country music, I thought of him.
As I listened to some of Chesney’s music, I thought about women entrepreneurs, like I always do, wondering how to convert “best songs” of music stars or “best plays” of athletes into “best of” for women owned companies? Where can our current or potential new fans find out more about us? Do we have a “Best of” events, services, testimonials, or product photos displayed somewhere for them to find? Would it be on our own websites, social media pages, own YouTube channel or where else?
We don’t have to be mega stars worth millions of dollars or followed by millions of fans to showcase our own “best of” items. So, today I hope you write down your best of moments, items, services, etc. and then figure out where to post them so people can find out more about your hits. You deserve to highlight your own success stories just like Kenny Chesney.
Do yourself a favor today and look up your favorite artist on YouTube or another social site and be inspired to create a place for your current and future fans to learn more about you! One of Kenny’s songs is called “Knowing You” so do something today to let the world know more about you.
Wednesday Wisdom: Creating “Joy” Funds
Wednesday Wisdom, Inspiration, Motivation for Women Entrepreneurs, Female Business Owners, Small Businesses
On one cold winter day, my friend Teresa said to me, “I created a JOY fund where I have money set aside to use the fund for myself or someone else. The only stipulation is the money be used to bring joy to my life or others.” Coming from a background in Higher Education, this idea seemed like another scholarship fund but with an even cooler personal twist to it.
Teresa was a seasoned woman entrepreneur who taught leadership programs for teens and peaceful Adirondack Mountain retreats for other females so it made sense to me this kind-hearted spirit would create such a wonderful idea to help others or to bring pleasure to her life.
“I accept your invitation, only if it truly brings you joy Teresa,” I said. Her invitation was to a Woman’s Retreat she was hosting at Minnowbrook Conference Center in Blue Mountain Lake where she ‘felt I had to be’ to help me cope with the loss of all my hair to alopecia. I wasn’t sure I was ready to reveal myself to complete strangers yet, so I wore my real hair wig the first two days of the weekend. But slowly the magic of Teresa’s work and the kindness of the women encircling me, throughout the transformative experience, led me to showing up the final morning with only a hat on and sharing the fact I had been wearing a wig to hide my bald head.
Looking over at one point, I saw Teresa smile, her beaming joyful smile, knowing her joy fund, which paid for my lodging at the event, had worked its miracle. I left the beautiful event transformed, more confident, and ready to slowly ‘come out’ to other people. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, I took the concept of Teresa’s JOY fund and used my entire first government check of $1,200 buying from as many woman owned businesses as I could in my membership until it was all gone, to support any loss of sales and show them some type of support. It honestly brought me joy to use it all on them.
Today’s Wednesday Wisdom, in honor of my friend Teresa, who joyfully left this world last Thursday, is to inspire you to contemplate creating some sort of fund of your own to help others. What is life without sharing your money or experiences with people who matter to you? Does excess money in your business account truly bring you joy or just security? Could someone else use it more than you when you are asked to give or feel you should help someone out? Teresa didn’t bring her bank account to heaven, but she brought priceless, joyful memories of helping others with her.
Teresa touched my life over our twelve year friendship, in many more ways than her JOY Fund, but the essence of her love for life and giving to others is an indelible mark on my soul. I hope the next time you feel something tugging at your heart strings, you do something positive about it bringing you and others the type of joy that only selfless giving brings to life
Monday Thoughts: Rebloom
Monday Motivation, Inspiration for Women Entrepreneurs, Female Business Owners, Small Businesses
My son and future daughter-in-law carried a rose plant in a light green pot to my side kitchen door, a gift to me on the passing of a dear friend two days before. There were only a few flowers on the green leaves but my son said the lady at the nursery said there would be up to 10 more blooms and to wait to see them pop. How sweet I thought, not sure he knew roses typically bloomed at their height in June, but loving his intentions.
The bright pink roses, my favorite colors and what I typically give to those women in my lives I love, made my heart sing with their compassionate act. Sure enough as the following two days passed, more rose buds appeared and bloomed or rebloomed. Sometimes when we don’t believe something will come to pass it does, reminding us to trust more often.
The thought of “reblooming” reminds me that in many areas of our lives, we rebloom. Think back to growing up and moving from childhood to teenager, when blooming really happens, or moving yourself up the corporate ladder to new positions of responsibility when you might have to “grow” into a new version of yourself to succeed. Even in death, we have a chance to rebloom into a stronger, better, more vibrant version of ourselves especially if we passed on with an illness taking away our physical strength.
As a woman entrepreneur, I have “rebloomed” many times over 30 years. Starting out as an event planner for other companies, to creating my own event planning company with a larger purpose of helping connect women entrepreneurs, to moving onto bringing the idea of trying more sports into other people’s lives, I have blossomed, grown, faded, and rebloomed again in my interests. It is one big cycle of birth, growth and death with always a chance to be reborn again.
Today’s Monday Motivation is to inspire you to look and see where you are in your life right now. Are you birthing something or someone into existence? Are you simply growing stronger at what you are doing or running? Has the light or passion started to fade knowing and end is near in something you’ve loved for awhile? Or are you excited to let go of something and start anew, fresh, vibrant, and reborn into a new passion?
Today is the day to remember the rose bush that looked like it was dormant, never to produce new life (aka buds) again, and within two short days, produced 10 buds to fancy someone’s eye, proving it was still alive after all and ready to keep on thriving.
Hot Summer Business Marketing Tips
Thursday Thoughts, Marketing Tips for Women Entrepreneurs, Female Business Owners, Small Businesses
August hits in the Northeast and the weather is blazing. Potential customers are either on vacation with their families, basking by their pools sipping cool drinks, or working in air conditioning try to pretend it isn’t too nice out to be working. What is the average small business owner to do if their business is not a “hot” industry in the summertime but rather cool due to sales?
As a four-seasoned, three-decade business owner, I can attest to being thrown off when I first began my companies not knowing how to attract consumers to my business when the world seemed to be on vacation and no one thought too seriously about business before Labor Day Weekend came. As summer flew by for customers, sales weren’t only dripping cold water, but dipping below projections.
The first thing an entrepreneur shouldn’t do if it is their first summer sales experience is panic. Take it from me, as soon as Labor Day comes and goes, school begins, vacations end, life returns to normal and so will your business. If you can’t wait until then to feel productive, here are a few tips from me and a few other women entrepreneurs I spoke with via Zoom yesterday about the subject.
* Get Creative – Creativity in terms of fun summer contests that draw consumers to your business website or social media pages to participate. One person gave away corporate bandanas made for dogs and held a pet contest. Another raffled off a painting from their coffee shop donated by a local artist. You get the idea, think about an event and promote it.
* Cross Promote – Partner with neighboring businesses or industry vendors on summer-styled events like a community baseball night, block party, summer soiree, or ice cream social. You can share email lists or gain new followers by gathering emails at the events themselves. These emails can be used for fall and winter sales campaigns.
* Thank Repeat Customers – Current and past customers know other potential future customers for your business. By creating a fun event or contest for current customers might inspire them to share where they are going or what they won from your business with others. You can also invite your customers to bring a guest with them to an affair you are planning to let them see and taste your business style.
The last month of the summer is the perfect time to keep promoting if you can’t get someone on the phone or in your store. Remember if you host a contest or have an event take photos and share all your winners on your social media accounts because they will share them too and that will get your business in front of their circle of friends – hopefully making them remember your name the next time they need what you are selling.
Wednesday Wisdom: Kismet Business Connections
Wednesday Wisdom, Inspiration, Motivation for Women Entrepreneurs, Female Business Owners, Small Businesses
In early June, I had my last visit with a best friend who I met through Women TIES twelve years ago. She was just a woman entrepreneur whose name was repeated often to me. Although our paths hadn’t crossed, I asked her to be one of the speakers at my company’s annual “Inspiring Success: The Women TIES Retreat.” In only her positive way she replied, “I had a feeling I was supposed to speak in Skaneateles and here you are giving me the opportunity.”
Call it kismet, fate or destiny but that ask was the beginning of a unique and beautiful kinship that outgrew the traditional business sphere into deep friendship. She had something ethereal about her that drew me to her spirit. One day I requested she give me a special healing session in exchange for me giving her a marketing session. From those bonding experiences forward, we were part of each other’s lives in only the way that God plans.
Eight years after the Retreat speaking engagement, we met over lunch and discussed serious health issues facing both of us. Together we shared hope, compassion, and joyful solutions to our problems. Often, when I was anxious she would say to me, “Tracy, where is all that worrying getting you?” The answer was always the same, “No where, you are right!”
Never one to waiver in belief, she was certain of receiving a miracle to restore her to full health until yesterday. We often used our senses of humor to keep things light and upbeat while still diving deep into life’s issues. One day, she visited me poolside for some relaxation where I showed her my bald head emerging out of the water and asked her if I looked like a buoy. We laughed. What else can you do but choose joy and humor when all else is failing?
Today’s Wednesday Wisdom is to remind you that you don’t know when a simple business networking event, client agreement, or first-time purchase will be the start of something beyond an average entrepreneurial meeting and blossom into a unique friendship. We aren’t looking for friends when we are selling or buying, but sometimes emotional connections last beyond transactions. Have you counted how many meaningful bonds have occurred through your own business connections?
My heart is both heavy and light for the beauty of a lasting friendship whose brilliant light enriched and encircled my life for more than a decade. So, today of all days, make sure you count your blessings for all the people who come in and out of your life and business. I, for one, am eternally grateful for her.
Monday Motivation: Pierce Your Fear, Experience Awe
Monday Motivation, Inspiration, Wisdom for Women, Women in Sports, Women Entrepreneurs
Like Katniss Everdeen in Hunger Games, my arrow sprung forward from the bow hitting the target on the first shot. Not quite as fast as her in reloading the second arrow by a long shot, the next one was carefully placed in the notch of the arrow rest, used to launch the projectile. Pulling back the mechanical release, I leaned my cheek into the peep sight looking at the green, yellow, and red pinpoints to line up my shot with the target circle. Release! A distant soft boom could be heard. Bullseye again.
One of the fascinating parts of trying new sports is not only the thrill of the experience of learning something novel, but also the new terminology of the techniques, equipment, and sport itself. I never knew what a “nock” was until I had to put the arrow’s nock (a plastic piece at the end of it) into the bow to help it attach to the bow string. Go figure, I only knew the word “knock” before yesterday.
Knowing most women have weaker back and arm muscles than men, I also assumed pulling back bow strings would be either difficult or painful, but thanks to the fact I was using my son’s compound bow, that consists of a levering system using cables and cams to bend the bow limbs and transfer the energy during the shot, it was easier to pull and hold. Like anything new, you needed to try it a few times to understand the mechanics.
Thrilled with my ability to shoot and hit the target spot from 25’, I climbed a tall ladder to a platform to attempt a 50’ shot. If I was to join my husband deer hunting this year again, I’ve heard bow hunting season is much warmer and beautiful, a girl hunter’s dream. Honestly, he didn’t think I could hit the spot, but again like Katniss, my arrow shot through the air perfectly hitting the bullseye. I might have found my new sport, I announced.
If I could impart any wisdom from my archery experience with you, it’s that trying anything new is exhilarating, slightly intimidating, and educational. Not all sports are alike so trying different ones has taught me instantly what I would try again once, or in the case of archery, try more often, adding it to my sports regimen. Biking doesn’t tone upper arm and back strength but archery does and it puts you in the beautiful elements of nature.
Second, pushing past intimidation at any level of life, business, and sports, makes us more courageous in some small way. Intimidation is both fear and awe so you must pierce the fear to experience the awe, just like an arrow leaving the comfort of its nock resting place to fly through the air into an unknown area feet away. I can’t tell you what an arrow experiences in its flight, but I can attest to the thrill of letting one go now and I highly recommend the precision, strength, and excitement surrounding it.
Friday Vibes: Taking Big Risks
Motivation, Inspiration, Risk Taking, Friday Vibes
For some of us risk is assumed as we slowly ride up a steep roller coaster at a theme park because we fear heights. Other times, risk is equivalent to signing a lease on a new office building for our rising company. And sometimes risk is about starting radiation or chemo treatments for a cancer diagnosis. Risk comes in and out of our lives on a daily, yearly and decade basis depending on what type it is.
After writing yesterday’s blog post about being turned down for a new medicine that has an 80% efficacy rate for people like me with alopecia universalis, I felt in some control having stated my mind about the subject. Pulling my bike on my car, I figured I would work out the rest of my disappointment on a favorite bike path. As I entered the park to bike, my dermatologist called me to tell me they had a 30-day sample of the drug if I wanted to get it. “YES,” I said immediately.
The white bottle with orange cap felt like a gift from above, an answer to my prayers. As I biked through the happy emotions having received it (because I bike to let out bad and good emotions), I felt nothing but blessed. Would I begin taking it immediately, wait until tomorrow, or talk to my medical son first? The last time I took a JAK inhibitor I developed severe shingles in and around my right eye, with some cornea scars still on them, was getting hair worth risking my eyesight? Bald vs. blind is an interesting scenario.
If you are like me, you become less risky at night perhaps from tiredness or because you’ve taken risks all day long. So, first thing this morning, the white bottle stared at me daring me to open it while I listened to online mass and my quiet soul’s message. At ten a.m. I took the first pill. Who was I to turn down something the day before I believed I couldn’t get?
Today I ask you, what are you willing to risk for the betterment of yourself, your business, and even your health? Do you take risks after quietly listening to your internal wisdom or after you talk to someone? Do you follow your gut or your head more often in making risky decisions or is it a combination of both? Do you try something in order to help show others it can be done successfully helping to squelch their fears? Trust that whatever your decision-making process is work to your highest benefit.
Stay tuned and I’ll let you know if I grow hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, or just an Italian mustache and sideburns or if the medicine doesn’t work for me and I’m meant to be a permanently bald woman just trying to live her best life.
Women TIES 