Wednesday Wisdom: Chart Your Next Adventure
Crossing the brown metal Queensboro Bridge, as the very spark of light crested the horizon, the dark-blueish black sky appeared the perfect backdrop for the tall, slender buildings that shone like polished silver as that first shimmer of light hit them. It was stunning, simply stunning.
As my car wound its way, with different colors, makes, and models of cars, buses, vans, and taxies from Long Island City onto the FDR Highway to take me home via the George Washington Bridge, the dark blue sky dissipated to a pastel blue one with wisps of golden-pinkish-orange clouds dotting the horizon. It was hard to keep my eye on the road because the painted sky evolved so beautifully.
It seemed in a blink of an eye, the colorful atmosphere became white, crystal clear light now helping thousands of commuters manage their way out of the dark down the bustling highway. Red tail lights dotted the cars ahead of me and bright white headlights in single file, four lanes wide, standing still in typical Monday Morning traffic fashion, reminded me how lucky I was leaving the city in the right direction.
Before my 60-hour New York City trip to visit my sons, a florist vendor heard me tell the cashier I was driving into the Big Apple, he said, “You don’t drive in there yourself, do you?” With a grin on my face, I replied, “I certainly do. I’m a risk taker and honestly the drivers in NYC are really calm compared to Boston drivers.” He shook his said and said, “I would never do that!” I shrugged my shoulders, took my flowers and gleefully bounced to my car ready for a NYC adventure.
What I’ve learned navigating my way from Syracuse, through the picturesque Delaware Gap in New Jersey, and over the George Washington Bridge to either the West Village, where one of my sons lives, or to Long Island City, where the other one resides, is the fact there are so many misconceptions about New York City, and difficult driving into it is one of them.
Sure, I’ve ended up at times in Harlem after a wrong turn, but no one cares if you keep to yourself. I’ve also ended up in the middle of Times Square crosswalk at rush hour with people giving me the finger at times. I just sweat and apologize. And one time I ended up at the base of the Freedom Tower after never wanting to see it after losing a friend in a plane that hit a Twin Tower. But there I was facing my fear, staring right into the new shimmering blue structure, awed by its beauty.
Today’s blog post is to remind you that if you want to focus on life being dark and scary, it will be. If instead you want to look at life as an adventure with colorful experiences, happy endings, and periodic wrong way turns that we learn from, then that’s another thing.
I can tell you with all certainty as I left Ellis Island this weekend, after seeing my Southern Italian grandfather’s name on the registration records on November 14, 1911, after he arrived in America at the age of 3, with his older brother, mother and father after traveling weeks across the wide-open dark sea to America for a better life, is that you must lay fear aside and realize fear mustn’t stop you from living your own life of dreams.
If you want to look back on your life, as I witnessed it this morning, with pockets of dark and pastel colors, simmering landscapes, diverse colors and sounds, at times secure and sometimes not, then don’t be afraid. Venture on, my friend. Live and chart your own adventures, big or small.
Wednesday Wisdom: Training, Funding & Teamwork
Wednesday Wisdom, Business Advice for Women Entrepreneurs, Female Business Owners, Small Businesses
Another historic Boston Marathon occurred Monday, six months after being postponed due to the Pandemic, but that didn’t stop runners on Boston streets and virtually everywhere running 26.2 miles for a charity team or their own pride. As Facebook flashed memories from my 2017 Boston Marathon accomplishment and friends I ran with tagged me in photos, it showed that a combination of hard work, enthusiasm, and self-confidence can get you anywhere your heart desires.
Underneath the glossy photos were the golden nuggets of that running success – training, fundraising, and teamwork. I couldn’t have crossed that blue and yellow line in downtown Boston without these three pivotal elements. When I come to think about them, I realize just like crossing marathon finish lines, owning a company requires similar components.
Most of us couldn’t have started our companies without some type of entrepreneurial training from an organization, course, or book. Jumping into business ownership is something you have to know something about in addition to having a “road map” aka business plan. Once we took the risk to create our companies, we also learned training continues to be an important part of succeeding especially in new fields, like technology, that are introduced along the way.
Although the fundraising part of my Boston dream was raising $8,000 from 120 people to give to my charity, 261Fearless.org so I could earn a bib to run in it, female business owners have to muster money from somewhere to start their enterprises or grow them. Money doesn’t fall from trees so creative funding is another component of necessity for starting a firm.
Finally, although many women entrepreneurs are solo entities, we all know there is a low percentage of success if we don’t have some type of team around us to provide advice, physical help, knowledge, or even pep talks. Many of us end up with staff or interns or partners so teamwork becomes a part of our business lives. When running the marathon, knowing I had 100 other fearless sisters on the road with me that day for our team, fueled my energy to finish.
Today’s Wednesday Wisdom is not to inspire you to train for a marathon, unless it is a dream or bucket list of yours and then give me a call, but rather to remind you that ongoing training, funding, and team support goes along way in adding to business success. Make sure you have all three at your disposal before you start or grow your company. By having all three, you have greater odds of crossing the finish line of your own race.
Celebrate Your Big and Small Entrepreneurial Moments
Thursday Thoughts for Women Entrepreneurs, Female Business Owners
It was September 1996 on the aqua shore of Skaneateles Lake under a white tent rented to shade guests from rain or sunshine earlier in the day. Music spilled out of the big glass windows above the tent’s ceiling and laughter intermixed with the band adding its own chorus lines. The moon was out, sparkling on the water now, as I paused to catch a few silent moments of success before returning to check on my first big official client for my new event planning company.
I heard myself say, “You deserve it, Tracy. You did a wonderful job today. Take it in. Don’t rush away quite yet. This moment will soon be replaced.” So, I stood there allowing all five senses to enjoy the moment of success. This particular success was extremely important because the client was my husband’s boss and the wedding of his only daughter. If I failed at this very first event as a woman entrepreneur, not only would my new career be over, but perhaps my husbands too.
At the end of the night, the bride and groom rode off after watching brilliant fireworks display and the bride’s parents thanked me for a job well done. I rode off into the moonlight with wisdom that accompanied me from that starlit night until today, 27 years later. The lesson…..always relish your successes, no matter how big or small, especially if you are a solo entrepreneur, because it is up to you, and only you sometimes, to realize and acknowledge what you’ve accomplished.
Unlike a wedding crowd throwing birdseed or toasting to you with champagne, often entrepreneurship can be a lonely, hard-fought experience if no one is watching or there to cheer you on. Women don’t go into business for themselves for heaps of praise, but once in a while, they need it to sustain a rough period, after accomplishing a large risk, or if staff or advisors are lacking in quantity to notice.
Just like selfies are okay to take and post, so is patting yourself on the back, buying your own champagne, and toasting to yourself periodically for a job well done. If it is a really big success, don’t be afraid to throw yourself a party complete with fireworks with favorite customers, associates, and staff around to celebrate all you have done, and still plan on doing in the future; but don’t let those really special moments or milestones go by without noticing them.
Whether you want to admit it or not, most of us are addicted to social media mostly because it has developed as a free promotional, messaging, marketing, and communication tool for small woman-owned companies who tend to lack funds and staff. If you are like me, you use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn as often as you use Kleenex, and Xerox. Brands whether good for us or not creep and then seep into our normal routine making them hard to break.
We have become so dependent on these business and personal mediums that when an unexpected outage occurs, we think we are the ones to blame. Yesterday, I must have tried 10 or more times to check into my social media accounts blaming the impossibility as my own fault, the wireless in my house, my oldish-new computer, and just having a bad tech day; never did it occur to me there was a massive outage. If that’s not the sign of overdependence and hyper-regularity of a product or service, nothing is.
Many people are asking today, “What did you do yesterday when you didn’t have access to your social media accounts,” my response, “After taking a biking lunch break to destress from it assuming it was my computer’s fault, I thought about what I would do if these marketing tools didn’t exist anymore.” Human nature likes familiarity and busy woman entrepreneurs really do as they strive to complete multiple tasks on a daily basis with less or no staff and limited technology education. We don’t have time to work at a snail’s pace.
It is not that we can’t live without tweeting, posting, or blogging, but for many of us it is the best, cheapest and easiest way to communicate with our friends, customers, and potential clients about our companies, products and services. It is for me at least, and I think I represent many women in business. So today we should at least contemplate ways to substitute these platforms if they get too regulated, start costing money, or go away all together. Do we have a plan for that in our business plan?
Maybe 2022 will be the year of good ole marketing flyers, knocking on doors, face-to-face coffee meetings, old fashion letters, paid print advertising, or big billboards instead of online promotion. Now is the time to think about what you left by the wayside when social media became the major way to appeal to others. Let’s not wait until the next social media blackout to realize we are in the dark and at the hands of multimillion dollar companies.
Wednesday Wisdom: Be the Light
Wednesday Wisdom, Inspiration, Business Advice for Women Entrepreneurs and Female Business Owners
Taking a detour from a previously planned trip, my husband and I ended up in the quaint seaside community of Chatham, Massachusetts on beautiful Cape Cod for our week vacation. There was something magical in the air and water as this brand-new destination unfolded its glorious early morning sunrises, sparkling waves, and perfect, and I mean perfect, 72-degree, sunny weather every day. After four days there we traveled via ferry to Martha’s Vineyard to a place we never been before which is where an adventure began with lessons in humanity spilling out on the roads.
Eager to make the most of this new destination and fueling an adventurous spirit, we decided to rent e-bikes to take us from the old whaling city of Edgartown, on the eastern edge of the island, to Aquinnah, the western bluffly edge of the island. With bike helmets on, $10 in our pocket, and 2 water bottles between us off we went.
10 miles into the trip on roads much hillier than we imagined, we stopped to get more water and a cookie to split when we realized we didn’t have enough money for the fare. The female cash register attendant grabbed a dollar from her tip basket so we could afford the cookie, even though I had put it back. “No, you must have it. I don’t mind sharing my tips with you,” as I glanced down at my bright pink Women TIES shirt that said, “Women Supporting Women.” We had enough water to continue until we could refill our water bottles at the lighthouse tourist area ten more miles ahead and then let a bus take us and our bikes back to our hotel.
As the old brick lighthouse appeared at the end of the road, we realized all the places to buy water were closed due to labor shortages. We realized we had no way to get drinkable water again with 20 miles to bike back since we found out we had missed the bus. Striking up a conversation with a couple biking with a group called VBT (Vineyard Bike Tours), the woman offered me her bottle of water and said, “Take it, I can share my husband’s water.” Once again, I said, “Oh gosh, no thank you, you’ll need it.”
“Follow us,” she said as they biked us towards a VBT van. There a man filled our water bottles, gave us some snacks for the trip back after we told them how far we were going, and wished us luck. As we biked hard up and down the same hilly roads to get back to our hotel, now making it a 40-mile unplanned trip, we smiled and waved to some of the generous people who helped us as they passed by. I instantly feel in love with these giving strangers who made sure we had a safe trip back.
Today’s Wednesday Wisdom is really very simple – it is to remind you in business and life, we have the ability to make a stranger’s day or a customer’s day with simple acts of kindness and generosity. A dollar here, free water there, helpful tips off our lips, and sincere community spirit, is so easy to give to those we know and don’t know.
As a woman entrepreneur, I’ll never forget the relief I felt from VBT for helping us out and sending us on our way with confidence and resources. What can you do today as a woman business owner to make the same lasting business impression on a stranger that happens along your way?
Business Advice to Chew On
Tuesday Thoughts, Business Advice, Wisdom for Women Entrepreneurs, Female Business Owners
Sitting across the table from me during lunch was an amazing woman who is a principal of a major engineering company with 4 branches and millions of dollars in contracts. I’ve always been fascinated by women who run extremely successful companies hoping their wisdom will rub off on me and motivate me to higher goals.
Our luncheon conversation lasted an hour but what an hour it was! As I hung on every detail of their latest client portfolio which includes ESPN, a movie set in Hollywood and some recognizable government buildings, I envisioned my company having the same clientele one day! I was thrilled listening to how they land bigger contracts, solicit for new clients and hired a 40th employee, I knew I would have to share the advice I picked up over lunch with others. Her advice made me dig deeper and push farther for my own company’s future. I hope it does the same for you.
* Her company was tired of having old leads – the business cards left in tradeshow bowls, names given at business luncheons and casual acquaintances – not turn into customers. So the company hired a sales person to follow-up on all their “warm” leads and it turned into a handful of very financial rewarding new contracts. If they never made the follow-up calls, they would not have landed the new business. Tip: If you aren’t following up on warm leads because you don’t have the time or staff, consider hiring a temporary sales person just to handle this duty. It will pay tenfold more in contracts then you’ll pay the staff person making the calls.
* Once a month, plan a strategic sales trip where you schedule business appointments from day to night in regions you already have existing customers. Ask for a 15 minute appointment to get in the door. Share your company’s information with the leader of the company you are prospecting. Typically my friend’s 15 minute appointments turned into one hour appointments and landed her a new client. Tip: Be more strategic by scheduling a day a month to be on the road, making new client appointments and walking away with new customers.
* Take a risk to grow your company now and stop waiting to make the move. This woman has decided that in the next ten years she will work day and night to secure a strong financial income for herself and her company knowing after that time period she can walk away from the business tired but with enough money to retire and live really well. Tip: If you are starting to reach the middle or end of your entrepreneurial career, make sure you are doing all you can to utilize every piece of energy you have to push beyond your limits now in order to reap financial rewards in the future to live on.
My final piece of advice is to make sure you find time to have lunch with business owners who are more accomplished than you are and take in their valuable tips and wisdom over a hot lunch. They mirror what you still want to do with your company and make you realize there is still plenty of time to achieve more success!
Throwback Thursday: Red Pepper Pricing & Making More Money
This popular blog post from 2016 is today’s “Throwback Thursday” blog post for all my female business friends and small business owners struggling with setting pricing after the pandemic. I hope it inspires you today.
The phone rings again. It is a call from my son heading to a job interview. Every time he has an interview he calls to rehearse his background, experiences and references. Always at the end of the call I say to him, “Make sure you ask about the salary and ensure you get the pay you deserve and if not ask for more.” The answer is always the same, “I know, I know, Mom.”
I’m sure I am not the only woman who gives advice and shares mistakes with others, especially life lessons like landing a first job or first client as a fresh entrepreneur. I am also positive I’m not the only person who didn’t get a larger salary in the beginning of her professional career because I didn’t ask for more. I recall my first job living in Philadelphia as an Assistant to the Corporate Vice President of an Investment Banking Firm as my “red pepper experience,” because I was only making $12,000 a year (with a $3,000 bonus promised at Christmas) and cried in a neighborhood market one day when I couldn’t afford to buy a fresh red pepper. It might be a silly story but I wanted that red pepper and I couldn’t afford it.
Honestly as a three-decade entrepreneur, I still sometimes struggle with the amount I list on a contract for business services, always going back to thinking I’m asking too much. When I do, I drift back to the big red pepper sitting in the palm of my hand wishing I had more money to buy it. The vision triggers me to implore my son to make sure he gets paid well for his first job. It also forces me to make sure I am asking the right price for my services because my experience says I deserve it.
Today blog post is to invite you to think of the meaning of the red pepper when you are in the middle of pricing your services or products, preparing a proposal, asking for a raise or accepting a new job. Make sure you are getting the price you deserve for the amount of education, experience and wisdom you have to share with your customer or employer. We are responsible for what we get paid, no one else is. We must be stronger, wiser and more confident when it comes to asking for our fair wage.
I love red peppers. I love making money. I sometimes don’t like asking for money but the only way to be a truly successful entrepreneur is to ensure getting paid the right amount the first time so we can pay the bills, pay ourselves and pay for those “red pepper” items we deserve.
Raindrops Keep Falling on My Bald Head
Inspiration, Humor, Perspective on Alopecia, Beauty, and Self Image
“Rain drops are falling on my head
and just like the guy (or gal) whose feet are too big for the bed
nothing seems to fit,
those raindrops are falling on my head, they keep falling.
So I did me some talking to the sun,
said I didn’t like the way he got things done,
sleeping on the job, those raindrops are falling on my head
they keep falling.
But there’s one thing I know
the blues they sent to meet me, won’t defeat me
It won’t be long until happiness steps up to greet me.”
Lyrics to a popular 1970s song by B.J. Thomas, part of the sound track for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid movie, a favorite of my father who often wore a hat like the Sundance Kid, rang through my ears as I biked in unexpected rainfall. I used to get so uptight about my washed and styled hair getting wet, now I shrug off the rain from a shiny, bald head due to alopecia. “What do I have to worry about?” I ponder biking on emptying bike trails, “I have my health, just not my hair.”
When you lose your perceived commercial beauty to alopecia, an autoimmune disease that effects over 6 million people, you eventually turn to discovering other parts of yourself as beautiful. For me it’s my undying sense of humor to look at life they way my dad did with a smile on his face and a happy tune on his lips when times were bad. You couldn’t bring the man down no matter what he faced until a stroke got him when he was 66 years old.
I adapted his sense of humor and sunny outlook into my life as I missed him. I can only imagine what he would have said to me to make me laugh after seeing his oldest daughter at the age of 56 without any hair. He’d make a simple joke, giggle a little, give me a hug, tell me he loved me, kiss my bald head, and mostly hum the lyrics to this song in my ears as he took me into his arms for a quick dance.
Life doesn’t have to be as serious as it appears if we have a way to see what has been handed to us differently. I’ve had a lot of loss in my life and losing my hair was just another one. Over the years I’ve learned to accept the fact unexpected bad things happen to good people and to give yourself time to look at what happened positively or negatively.
“Raindrops keep falling on my head” reminds me to bike on, shine on, and live on no matter how rough it gets. Ode to my own ‘Sundance Kid’ – my dad – for teaching me that lesson.
Wednesday Wisdom: Financing Dreams
Wednesday Wisdom, Inspiration, Business Advice for Women Entrepreneurs, Female Business Owners, Small Businesses
Lights, Camera, Action! These familiar words might transport you onto a sound stage or into a film studio ready to perform. If you didn’t grow up with theater, dance or musical performances in your teenage days, today’s average selfie might have you hearing these words as you prime yourself to be seen.
Going from performing in the little leagues to the big times, only happens to a few people lucky enough to survive living paycheck to paycheck, serving dinners, bartending, or mopping floors, unless you are a talented woman with a dream of creating your own television show, like a couple of our members have done. New to the production side of the screen is Laura Thorne along with a partner Aldea hoping to creating the next best television show called “Off the Wall & Up Close,” the arts and culture travel show. Laura is raising funds through a crowdfunding effort similar to how I raised $8,000 to run with non-for-profit organization 261Fearless in the 2017 Boston Marathon.
Not long ago, Deborah Cabral, created and produced her own show “Organization Motivation” in the Mohawk Valley to shine a light on the popular trend in home and business organization. Deb was so good at what she did she had sponsors, advertisers, and took her television show nationally. Wanting to support her, I advertised on her show when it first came out. Why not be on television in my hometown region, market Women TIES plus financially support another women in business? And yes, I have financially contributed to Laura’s show too.
When women entrepreneurs are faced with the need for financial funding, take these examples to heart and consider crowdfunding, sponsorship solicitation, advertising, credit lines, and even traditional loans if you can’t swing your new creative endeavors another way.
Today’s Wednesday Wisdom is to remind you there are plenty of online resources, websites, and ideas (make sure they are credible) to help you fund your next book, division, staff hire, or even television show. Get creative. Ask for money. Finance your dreams one way of the other. Make sure you don’t borrow too much and you work out a mini-business plan to ensure you can handle the financials and repayment amounts, but don’t let traditional financing methods stop you from your dreams. We all need some new positive, female produced shows to support and lift us up!
What 9/11 Means to Me
Inspiration on the 20th Anniversary of 9/11
Sitting next to the crystal blue pool with an equally similar colored sky above me, I gaze down into the water as if it is one of the 9/11 reflection pools. Missing from the edge of my pool is the name of my friend Daniel R. Brandhorst, a seven-year colleague from Le Moyne College who changed his flight that morning to catch an earlier flight back to the west coast from Boston with his family in tow. Somehow the image of the second plane piercing a twin tower also pierced my heart and I knew something was terribly wrong and would impact my life forever.
Not only did I lose a friend, I lost the bravery to fly even though I grew up in an air force base town and my stepfather flew a small Tiger Drummond plane. We flew that plane often to local places like Saranac Lake instead of driving. I loved being in the air. I had no fear then. But over the course of having a next door neighbors’ son die piloting a small plane near Lake Placid, a friend who was supposed to be on the Pan Am plane that went down in Lockerbie, Scotland, and then Dan dying in the 9/11 attack, a fear of flying grew inside my heart, spirit and brain. It wasn’t so much I feared flying, but feared someone I loved dying on a plane.
Two years after 9/11 my husband said, “The boys and I are going on a trip and we want you to come with us; you have to stop being scared to fly.” I tried to explain I couldn’t do it but eventually decided do go. Our first flight from Syracuse to Baltimore was uneventful. The second flight from DC to Cancun, Mexico, ended shortly with our pilot having an emergency medical issue that caused flight attendants to run up the aisles as I noticed feet moving under the cockpit. My youngest son was asleep on my lap but my legs were bouncing up and down so much with anxiety, I woke him up. I looked at my other son and said, “start praying Thomas, there’s something wrong.” My husband looked at me a bit crazy, but soon realized as they made the announcement we had to turn around came over the loud speakers.
Landing back in Baltimore, there were tons of emergency vehicles waiting for us, again totally panicked, I assumed we would crash and explode with a full tank of gas in the plane not knowing who was landing the plane. As we landed safely, I ran off the plane into the bathroom and sobbed for 30 minutes in a bathroom stall emptying out my fear. I knew I had to get back on a plane to finish our trip and I didn’t know how I was going to do it. My husband decided to order me a 3-shot vodka tonic to get me back on board. After safely landing in Cancun, we unpacked and I headed to the fitness room and ran 2 hours straight on a treadmill to dump out the rest of the fear inside me.
I know my friend Dan traveled first class and know without a doubt he would have tried to stop an emergency with his partner and 2-year-old son on board. So sitting on the plane to Cancun wondering what was happening and how Dan must have felt witnessing the high jacking of the plane, put me in his shoes. I always wondered what it felt like for him, and there I was feeling the experience although our trip ended differently. Our pilot had a heart attack flying and thus the need to turn back to Baltimore. I felt sorry for the pilot whose career probably ended that day and sorry my friend Dan had to die in an epic plane crash.
Eventually I was able to fly again but never without thinking about Dan or our trip to Cancun. God taught me that our fates are already written in the heavens. My son who is in the medical profession said to me once, “Mom, we all have a death story. We just don’t think about it or know what it is.” I jokingly said back to him, “I hope my death story is getting hit by a coconut on my head while I’m sitting under a tree on Sanibel Island.” Time will tell.
So today as we celebrate the 20th anniversary of 9/11, I think of my friend flying high in the blue sky above with his angel wings, brave, fearless, knowing his death story is written into history forever. He was such a wonderful person who didn’t deserve that kind of death, but he’ll always be memorialized on this day, and for that I’m eternally grateful.
Women TIES 