Wednesday Wisdom – Thanksgiving Business Blessings
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-uk3jw-f2a67c
A 5-minute inspirational podcast related to business blessings.
Tracy Chamberlain Higginbotham
Women TIES, LLC
Wednesday Wisdom: Thanksgiving Business Blessings
Wednesday Wisdom, Business Advice for Women Entrepreneurs, Female Business Owners, Small Businesses
Just as I received a notice from Facebook that my annual birthday fundraiser for the National Alopecia Areata Foundation raised $500 this year, I noticed more white hair sprouting on my two-year totally bald head. The previous year my friends on Facebook raised $800 on my birthday and my son’s gracious 25-year old barber friend raised $5,000 because community members showed up to get their hair cut for free and four young adult men donated six hours of their own time and wages to cut hair. When the headlines highlight what’s wrong with our country, remember it isn’t the entire story, especially as we head into the Thanksgiving holiday.
There is always two ways to look at life – through negative grey, fogged up lenses or positive clear lenses. Any day now you can choose to focus on the “dark winter” ahead as the news media spotlights potential devastation from Covid-19 or you can choose to look at the faces of scientists with bright lights shining down on potential new vaccines with hope. As cold days stretch on before us, will you choose to complain about the cold or rejoice in the snowflakes falling miraculously from the sky as if you sit in a Hallmark Christmas movie?
Yes, business sales have been sharply reduced for many women-owned companies, but at the core of the enterprises are a certain amount of loyal customers supporting you because they believe in you and you in them, or why would you still keep going on? Losing 70% of my corporate revenue since live events have been halted and members can’t pay their dues, only makes me appreciate the ones that remain and join me on Zoom calls that much more. If they want to be a part of me and my company, I will certainly remain for them and do all I can to support them.
Corny as it sounds, the heartbeat of any enterprise is the leader’s intentions to provide consistent, excellent services and products to people who desire them. As long as our hearts and our client’s hearts keeping beating and their wallets keep opening to pay for what we offer, we are fortunate and blessed with the motivation to “keep on, keeping on.”
Today’s Wednesday Wisdom, a week before you greet perhaps a smaller than normal family group or less items on your table, is to remind you to count every single blessing you have before you – the people around your table, the money collected by customers to pay for the meal, the grocers working during Covid-19 to stock shelves and the warmth of your house from a glow of love with whoever could be there to join you.
Remember there are people like me, who are thankful for you being a part of their lives in big or small ways, wishing you health, happiness, and above all else an eye for the gifts before you even if it isn’t as exciting as a few grey hairs sprouting on top a bald head as if snowflakes dropped from the sky to give a new fancy look for the holiday. Blessings are blessings – it is as simple as that – don’t let them go unnoticed.
Monday Motivation: The Gift
Monday Motivation, Inspiration, Wisdom for Women Entrepreneurs, Female Business Owners, Small Businesses
Stationed at the wooden kitchen table, with a hot cup of coffee at my side still dressed in nightwear, bells jingle through my phone not because someone is calling but to announce the catholic priest who is starting the processional for daily mass which makes me sit up straighter like I’d do in the front church pew. Raised Catholic due to my Italian upbringing, Sunday mass was something never missed, in fact with a mother who liked to show up a half-hour early, we prayed longer than most. Even if it was Saturday night mass and we just came from a full day of downhill skiing with rosy cheeks and tired eyes, we showed up at mass sometimes with our ski boots on jingling down the aisle ourselves.
Faith has always been an essential part of my life but not appreciated as much as now during this pandemic when the daily worry of loved ones, clients, and even global citizens around the world, fill my mind. Always armed with rosary beads around my wrist as a reminder of my faith, I listen more intently every morning to daily mass, not just Sunday mornings, for words of peace, guidance, perspective and love.
This weekend’s homily given by the presiding priest ushered in a reminder to give to others. The month of Thanksgiving isn’t just about being grateful for our own bountiful lives but to share abundance with others. During the Pandemic when thousands of people have lost jobs or their businesses, can’t pay rent or taxes, and struggle to get food on the table, I wondered what I could do with my limited financial supply, because I’ve lost 40% of my revenue not having live events. “What can I give that doesn’t cost anything and yet offers something valuable,” I pondered at 4 a.m. this Monday morning.
The idea came to me like a flash of lighting, a simple gesture, to help other women entrepreneurs strengthen their own self-care and resilience as loved ones cancel holiday plans, customers retract from contracts, and employees contract Covid-19 putting the business owner in tight work environments. “I’ll offer this week’s self-care program, a one-of-a-kind event being given by a member, as a free event. I won’t collect any money and just offer it,” I said to myself and by 6 a.m. an email was delivered to the masses with the offer. I wasn’t concerned about my bottom line but about giving a gift.
This Monday Motivation is to remind you that we can all give something to others during this extraordinary time in our history, year, and life. What do you have that doesn’t cost you anything but could benefit someone else in your business community? Is it a free service or extra products from a sales project? How about gently used business books or manuals, inspirational CDs, or past event recordings? How about gift certificates to a future program or a one-hour strategy session? What is lying around your office you don’t need any more that someone just starting off in business could use – an older desk, chair, file cabinet, novels, etc.? Create a list and push it out through social media or your mailing list. 
Don’t forget as you head into the most important giving time of the year, no matter what your circumstances, to try to offer something to someone because perhaps they’ll be moved to do the same to someone else. This act is just one simple way to change the world for the positive in a time when so much negativity and worry abounds. Be generous in spirit and actions and you’ll change the world around you.
P.S. If you are a woman entrepreneur or female reading this, you CAN join our special Zoom program on 11/18/20 at Noon (EST) – 1:45 p.m. called “Self-Care to Sustain You in These Times” by clicking on this link and registering. In the “Comment” Section, put “Thanksgiving Gift” and you don’t have to pay.
A Taste of Collaboration
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-i5psq-f201dc
A 5-minute inspirational business podcast about getting creative and collaborating for the upcoming holiday season to gain more success.
Tracy Chamberlain Higginbotham
Women TIES, LLC
Wednesday Wisdom: A Taste of Collaboration
Wednesday Wisdom, Inspiration, Success Strategies for Women Entrepreneurs, Female Business Owners, Small Businesses
River stones laying in a peaceful stream reminded me of the green stones in the handcrafted ring displayed on the third finger of a woman I was speaking with. The silver metal contained the small pieces of rocks supplied by a female lapidary in our organization who custom cuts and makes her own jewelry as well as supplying unique stones to others. It was the prettiest expression of collaboration between two women I have witnessed.
A few days earlier a new self-care program hosted by a woman with years of experience in the field was supported financially in part due to a sponsorship by another female entrepreneur with a complimentary business. If pretty rings can express collaboration, I know for sure women with similar businesses on wellness and serenity coming together to help other women take care in the time of the Coronavirus and political unrest, is equally beautiful. 
Sometimes the meaning of collaboration can be as simple as enjoying one’s favorite orange and vanilla swirl ice cream cone on a 80 degree November day. The frozen delight wouldn’t be nearly as enjoyable if it didn’t have a combination of both flavors enticing the palette.
As the holidays approach and advertisements bombard your senses, there is certainly going to be innovative collaborative products and services to entice you to buy and give as gifts. Just as sure as you sip your peppermint latte at your favorite café or drive through “Lights on the Lake” witnessing clever partnership holiday advertising with recognizable brand names, someone is already dreaming up a new concoction with another business in 2021.
Today’s Wednesday Wisdom is meant to intensify your creative and collaborative nature and ideas as you plan your holiday sales projects. Are you already working with another business on a holiday event, sale or product? Have you considered placing display advertising at a popular Thanksgiving or Christmas community event? Could you and a partner create one-of-a-kind holiday baskets to sell together promoting each other’s items? Could you dream up a cool (or hot) menu item and name it after someone popular in your community who gives a lot to others? How about donating a certain percentage of December sales to your favorite non-profit where they promote your sales event and you promote them?
You don’t have to reinvent the red and white candy cane with new flavors every year to make collaboration a creative outlet for your business – unless you are a caterer with a twist of her own.
Monday Motivation – A Brand New Pink Dawn for Women
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-58cpc-f1c561
A 5-minute inspirational podcast about being in New York City on November 7, 2020 when the exciting news broke about the first Vice President Elect being a woman.
Tracy Chamberlain Higginbotham
Women TIES, LLC
A New Pink Dawn For Women
Inspiration for Women, Women Entrepreneurs, Female Business Owners
As the New York City skyline crested over the hill, as our car took its familiar trip to spend 24 hours with our sons to celebrate my 56th birthday, the temperature gauge hit 73 degrees, one of my favorite numbers. Windows cracked the air entered deliciously warm and refreshing as it swirled in the car windows as we listened to MSNBC on Sirius XM. It was four days since the Presidential Election with the country waiting patiently for the results.
Born on 11/7, which are lucky numbers in most gambling facilities and in the bible, my Scorpio intuition was bubbling up inside knowing today might be the day my very pink feminist heart could finally celebrate women rising in the image of Kamala Harris. Only seeing women, where others see men, I was focused on her win – our win as women – as I reminisced about finding suffragist’s grave sites in Syracuse on Election Day just four days ago and celebrating New York State’s women’s suffrage high in the sky in Hudson Yards with my sons and New York State Lt. Governor Kathy Hochul three years ago. The photo of my sons bathed in pink and purple light from the symbolic lights is one of my favorite images.
Just as we entered our oldest son’s apartment, his girlfriend received a text message from a girlfriend announcing the Biden/Harris win. She and I jumped up and down and hugged immediately in jubilance of the news. My son and husband high-fived each other and within a half hour we were sipping white and pink champagne accompanied by hoots, hollers, and horns outside their apartment. The air was lighter than I ever remember and my heart fuller than I thought it could be in the moment of pure relief and exhilaration.
Our youngest son traveled from this East Village apartment via Washington Square delivering us raw video footage of people responding to the news. The large, joyous crowds made me reflect on day after the 2016 Presidential Inauguration where a million people gathered for the Women’s March on DC. With 120 CNY women on two buses I hosted to take us there, we got lost in the hope that someday women would rise higher than before if we stood shoulder to shoulder reminding the new administration women make up 52% of the population.
It may have taken four years of protesting, believing, hoping against hope, supporting, discussing, meeting, and voting to get us to November 7, 2020 but it worked and victory never felt so wonderful. Celebrating my #56 year on President-Elect #46 Joe Biden’s win reminded me that deep belief, activism, and unity can make anything happen.
Today’s Monday Motivation is to remind you to set your ambitions high and celebrate your small and big victories whenever they arrive because they will if you keep up the fight to win.
Wednesday Wisdom – Fuel Your Fire
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-gfyvx-f15696
A 5-minute podcast to inspire you to make a significant difference in your life and business.
Tracy Chamberlain Higginbotham
Women TIES
Wednesday Wisdom: Fuel Your Fire
Wednesday Wisdom, Inspiration, Post-Election Thoughts for Women Entrepreneurs, Women, Female Business Owners
Instead of penning this weekly blog post the morning after the 2020 Election, it is written the day before – more like Tuesday Thoughts – than a Wednesday Wisdom. Like 2016, I might just keep my head under the pillow a bit longer than normal for the reasons you can imagine. But on pre-election eve, inspired by three hours searching up and down craggy hills, trudging upon muddy ancient driveways, and past tombstones so old their writing had disintegrated, I felt like writing what resonated with me in the hallows of the graveyard.
Armed in my pink and black mud boots, “I Voted” sticker attached gently to my see-through pink and white striped scarf, and designations of section and plot numbers of eleven feminists from the late 1800s and early 1900s on a paper in my cold hands, I bent over trying to find their names. Destined for Section 27 where a suffragist mother and daughter both lay in rest in a family plot, I kept getting turned around in the wild and vast grounds of Oakwood Cemetery, never finding them.
“Oh come on, it can’t be this hard to find heroines of the past or can it be?” I muttered to myself tripping over fallen limbs from ancient oak trees. Slightly exasperated I stopped, looked around and then up at the blue sky peeking through russet oak leaves, asking the souls of those I was searching for to direct me to their final destination. Maybe if it was Halloween, it would have worked, but only silence settled around me so I thought about all the people buried in the cemetery wondering if they felt their lives mattered when they died. Would the suffragists know women one hundred years later would be searching for them? Did they wish their work for women’s equality would be carried on by others? How is it that one’s work gets carried on anyways?
The months leading up to the election give us a hint to the answer. When significant ideals and missions catch fire with thousands of different individuals, it naturally fuels the energy of other people in the present and future and the work gets carried on. Simply put, it takes more than one person to make significant change.
Today’s Wednesday Wisdom, whether you wake up today happy or disappointed with the outcome of the Presidential election, is meant to make you realize it isn’t the end but just the beginning of something to be continued forth just like your entrepreneurial work and personal mission for your unique life. There is no rest for the weary if we want to make a noteworthy contribution in our lifetime.
Rise up. Rise up again and shine on until one day when you realize you’ve done enough and then you can rest like those I visited today. But until then, carry on and pass on your fuel to fire up others for your future work.
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-gv44n-f11dbe
A 5-minute podcast to remind women we will rise after this election too like we did after the 2016 Presidential Election.
Tracy Chamberlain Higginbotham
Women TIES, LLC
Women TIES 