Old Fashion Marketing Tips in a Modern Business Climate
Wednesday Wisdom, Inspiration, Success Strategies for Women Entrepreneurs, Women in Business
Burnt orange-colored walls with brilliant floral wall hangings and tables topped with opaque lime green tablecloths welcomed the audience on a rather warm winter day. To make the surroundings even more colorful pink, orange, and yellow roses within fuchsia vases sat at each table along with a sales contact list, sponsor marketing materials, and the speaker’s marketing materials. Harp music played in the corner and delicious luncheon aromas circulated in the air. It was a perfect setting for a “good old fashion” business luncheon.
The speaker started by sharing wisdom accumulated over ten years of running her acupuncture business in a non-holistic societal culture. Growing her unique business took hard work, but more importantly, consistent old fashion marketing efforts that gave her the opportunity to educate the community about her holistic practices of Chinese medicine, herbal remedies, and acupuncture. After sitting at her office, alone as soon as she opened shop hoping clients would clamor through her glass doors, she realized she needed to do more to invite people to experience her services.
Hosting open houses, cultivating a relationship with traditional health care providers, delivering printed (not online) educational materials door-to-door, and face-to-face appointments gave her the chances she needed to become successful in business. It took hard work and old-fashion methods of relationship-growing to expand her enterprise. Her success was not based in online appointments, online marketing, or social media – it was done like old-time salespeople did it by knocking on doors, delivering products to customers, and attending social meetings at local gathering spots to gain new clientele.
We all know it would be difficult to conduct business in 2020 without technology but Renee Nearpass of Perinton Family Acupuncture explained to our audience yesterday that good old fashion advertising modes are as valuable as shiny, new computer programs to launch a business further.
Today’s Wednesday Wisdom is to remind you to stop using only technical methods, computer-only relationships, and anti-social business practices to grow your business. You must leave the comforts of your own office space to get out more, knock on some doors, ask others face-to-face to connect you with potential customers, create marketing materials you can hand to another human across a coffee table, and ask others to make formal introductions for you to potential clients. There comes a time when easy emails, text messages, and social media marketing browsing doesn’t work anymore.
Consider trying the “old fashion” way of marketing to educate your customer base, create new vendor relationships, and gain publicity to grow your company because it works.
Note: The event wouldn’t be possible without the sponsorship support of TechCreative Web Design and Consulting and Angela LaVecchia of Frannet.
What Are You Doing on Day 51?
Thursday Thoughts, Inspiration, Wisdom for Women, Women Entrepreneurs, Women in Sports
As I trudged through knee-high snow to get to my pool house which houses my treadmill in the winter, I relish my commitment to start running again this winter after a nine-month hiatus due to a hip tear injury. Fearful to slip on ice or slushy roads and re-injure myself, I am hitting the treadmill until winter goes back asleep. The fresh air hits my face making me smile for re-establishing a habit I have loved for twenty-five years.
Although the calendar says it is the 51st day of 2020, it feels like the 1st day when I set a goal to re-engage in fitness after taking a rest to possibly give my immune system time to calm down and grow hair again after losing it all to alopecia. “Rest is what you need, Tracy,” a few of my doctors said knowing I have run half and full marathons in the past. So I listened and followed their directions adding on pounds along the way.
“Small daily positive changes, lead to large changes,” Deepak Chopra says on a healing meditation listened to before traipsing down to the pool house. My scale doesn’t seem to agree quite yet with Deepak’s philosophy but I’m determined to start running again knowing my daily fitness routine is not causing my hair loss or I’d have a full head of hair by now. Once you try something for a long enough period of time, you can move on knowing a return to normal also helps.
Today, if you are feeling like your New Year’s Resolutions, are far gone, think again. Every day you have the ability to start again, setting small daily positive changes to accomplish that big goal. Just because we haven’t been on track for the first 50 days doesn’t mean you can’t get back to where you started and try again.
Set a series of small goals with realistic dates. Establish a system to track your progress even if its two steps forward and one step back. Announce your goal and keep it close where you can see it. Sign up for an event that will inspire you to hit the goal. Then get up every day and take those small changes necessary to move down the calendar days until you arrive right where you envision yourself to be. For me, it will be running in the beautiful spring air on a nature path outside enveloped in green spring buds. It is right around the corner and so is your big goal, let’s run forward together.
Wednesday Wisdom: Curiosity vs. Passion in Entrepreneurship
Wednesday Wisdom, Inspiration and Success Strategies for Women Entrepreneurs, Women in Business, Small Business
Notorious for turning on Dave Matthews Band music when I drive anywhere, especially long distances, on a recent drive my mind didn’t need Dave’s beautiful sounds but rather wisdom from a feminine voice. Searching quickly through my iPod, I landed on one of Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday podcasts featuring Elizabeth Gilbert, a New York Times best-selling author of Eat Pray Love. Liz, as she called herself over the airwaves, was sharing a public speaking engagement about passion that turned into a depressing experience for one attendee who posted a long letter on Liz’s Facebook wall.
Although Liz had been living her self-identified passion for years as a writer and author, trying to inspire everyone else to identify their one true calling, the attendee shared how she couldn’t identify a passion and felt hopeless after thinking everyone, including Liz, could and carried on their destiny every day. The critique made Liz pause, creating a reflective glance inward to evaluate if other people she loved and admired were successful because they chose only one passion to pursue in life.
Liz contemplated the life of her best friend and husband, both of whom did not have one passion they pursued; instead, they were like hummingbirds flitting in and out of new vistas, surroundings, and flowers that called their attention at the moment. Every dip, dive, and turn in their course led them to new, unique discoveries that colored their world in new depth and width opening the door to new experiences. Some “human hummingbirds” she knew actually found their true calling towards the end of their life journey after taking the roads less traveled.
Realizing she was wrong to motivate people to recognize the “one” thing that drove them forward in life, Liz now inspires others to be curious, taking the pressure out of not knowing what moves them instead of suggesting people add curiosity to their journey to enlighten their path. This made me think of women entrepreneurs some who start businesses built on a long time deep passion while others take the curious route dipping in and out of entrepreneurial experiences like hummingbirds gathering delicious nectar as they travel.
Today’s Wednesday Wisdom might make you analyze your own perspective on passion and curiosity as it relates to yourself as an entrepreneur. Are you more like Liz, someone focused on making the world a better place because of one strong passion or like a hummingbird where diverse experiences have opened more vistas for you in business life? There isn’t a right or wrong answer, just a unique perspective to view your own world.
I hope as this winter month winds down and a greener view comes into sight, perhaps even filled with hummingbirds, you stop to appreciate the type of woman entrepreneur you are and be content with your personal journey.
NOTE: I loved becoming a first-time author in 2019 with my book “Under the Rose-Colored Hat” – it is an inspirational story on kindness, love, and acceptance.
Wednesday Wisdom: For the Love of Clients
Wednesday Wisdom, Inspiration, Success Strategies for Women Entrepreneurs, Women in Business
With Valentine’s Day approaching this week, I wanted to make sure women entrepreneurs remembered to share their expression of “love” with their clients and customers.
By the middle of the 18th century, Valentine’s Day was a customary day for friends and lovers of all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes. Handwritten notes and sentimental thoughts were converted over time to a billion-dollar industry. According to today’s statistics, an estimated 1 billion Valentine’s Day cards are sent each year, making Valentine’s Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year.
As I review these statistics, I wonder how a simple idea like creating Valentine’s Day cards could translate over time to a billion-dollar industry. Is love what really fuels business success?
It’s hard to be innovative in a world of a billion business success stories. I’m sure most women entrepreneurs wish they were creating the next best concept to launch them into the ultimate success stratosphere. But original ideas are hard to come by. If you just figure we are living in the 21st century and it took 3 centuries for the Valentine’s Day card industry to become a billion-dollar enterprise, you’ll see how challenging it can be for an idea to really take hold.
So the lesson today isn’t so much about what it takes to create the next best ground-breaking concept because honestly, the fruition time for success could outlast an entrepreneur’s lifetime. The lesson is about love. Yes, love.
People love to know other people care. Customers in particular love to know their vendors care about them. In the automated, super technical world we live in, a simple gesture of affection – a card, a flower, a gift, a thank you note can have more impact on your current customer base than a new splashy ad campaign can do to attract new clients. Business is about love, isn’t it?
Today’s Wednesday Wisdom is meant to have you stop and think about the most important people who make your business successful. Who are they – vendors, partners, sponsors, advisors or friends? Have you taken time lately to tell them they matter? Can you find 30 minutes this week to send a few handwritten “love letters,” like they used to pen in the 18th century, to a few really important people connected with your business?
I think you’ll find as corny as it sounds, displaying love and affection in your entrepreneurial life will reap you a billion seconds of clients remembering who you are.
The Role of a Female Entrepreneur Matchmaker
Wednesday Wisdom and Inspiration for Women, Women Entrepreneurs, Females in Sports
I’ve been called many things in my career, most of them good, maybe a few of them critical, but the one the stands out best in my mind is “female entrepreneur matchmaker.” This nickname didn’t require me to don red, wear angel wings, or shoot an arrow, even though I did have cupid’s curly hair for a while, but I can see why my reputation as a matcher of women developed.
According to Google, “Matchmaking is the process of matching two or more people together, usually for the purpose of marriage, but the word is also used in the context of sporting events such as boxing, in business, in online video games, and in pairing organ donors.” The truth is I love women especially women entrepreneurs and matching them together for economic gains, business partnerships, sporting thrills, and equality marches. I want to be where they are.
If you were a Parks and Recreation fan, you might remember Leslie Knope inventing a way to do something American culture hadn’t traditionally been too good at doing: celebrating, in an official capacity, the joys of female friendship. Leslie set Galentine’s Day as a festival that would fall, each year, on February 13: Valentine’s Day-eve. And she decided that the festivities-though the real point of it all are simply to celebrate the platonic love that exists among lady friends.
In society, businesswomen are supposed to be serious, professional, and almost male-like in their will to achieve success. In the mid-1980s, I was one of those young women trying to climb the corporate ladder in an investment banking firm to prove myself and make good money. It wasn’t long that I realized, a male dominant work environment did not suit or inspire me. I left it and never looked back understanding being around businesswomen was where I wanted to be and eventually who I wanted to help.
If I truly was a “women matchmaker,” you might be able to identify me with an all raspberry pink outfit, rose-colored hat, a “tie” to connect women together across New York State, and a briefcase full of wisdom to share. Perhaps near me would be a bowl full of female business cards, women’s published books, sporty gals running bibs, and a huge pay equality sign to keep the money fight going. What would your “matchmaker image” look like?
Today’s Wednesday Wisdom is to remind you as you look forward to Valentine’s Day with your loved ones and partners you consider for a moment your gal pals – personally or professionally – who have loved you through good and bad times always having your wings and knowing your flight pattern. Jump on Leslie Knope’s fictional holiday and spend time on February 13th celebrating your girlfriends or joining me at our Syracuse Galentine’s Book Event.
As you proceed through 2020, become the best “female entrepreneur matchmaker” you can be too. Join me in a sisterhood of buying from and supporting women in business first, sitting in the stands cheering on female athletes, supporting female politicans, and sharing the mission of women supporting women period.
Happy February Galentines!
Monday Motivation, Inspiration and Wisdom for Women Entrepreneurs, Women in Business, and Females
February is the perfect month for education, inspiration, and time with your “galentines” – a name given to celebrate girlfriends on February 13th. Mid-winter means longer light in our days, more renewal time before spring arrives, and tools and inspiration to keep advancing our 2020 goals.
This month, I will be hosting a couple inspirational book events at two fantastic women’s businesses (one a coffee house and one a book shop) and an interesting program about using education to market a business (at a woman-owned catering company). The event details are on my website.
Since February is the month of love, I will be sharing a positive message on how kindness, compassion, and love for customers, vendors, associates, and the community can make you feel better and draw positiveness into your business life – which is the main theme in my book “Under the Rose-Colored Hat.”
Please share this thought with your female friends because you know the more women who gather together in economic sisterhood means, a stronger economic community for women. We need to support our galentines this month….and always. Women will change the world for other women.
Friendship, Football, and a Patrick Mahomes Fan
Inspiration for women who love football, women in sports, SuperBowl Sunday
Every Saturday my two closest friends, one living in Utah, one in Dallas, and I in Syracuse would watch specific college football games, texting back and forth on scores, misses, and congratulations on wins. Although we were 50-year-old women, we grew up school mates who played and loved sports. One of us was a Division 1 gymnast, the other a high school field hockey star, and one of us the daughter of two Physical Education teachers and coaches. We were girls and we loved our sports.
When the annual Powder Puff Football game happened at our High School, we tried out of the team. One of us was a fantastic receiver, the other a running back, and the last one a safety. We choose our numbers, practiced with coaches, and played a great game as some of our male friends dressed as cheerleaders with pom-poms on the sidelines. I remember the day like it was yesterday because it was so fun to play football which talented girls couldn’t play even if they were athletes.
When my friends and I entered middle-age, we didn’t stop loving, playing, and watching sports. I ran the Boston Marathon, one skies and golfs regularly, and the other one watched one son play college soccer and the other son Ian play football at Texas Tech. Ian was a Texas High-school football star and ended up rooming with Patrick Mahomes as well as starting with him and receiving his passes on the field as a starting receiver. This is where my interest in watching weekly college football became real!
My other friend and I didn’t have sons that played football – they were basketball and lacrosse players so we lived vicariously through Geselle’s son Ian. Watching the weekly game made me a big fan of both of them. My husband wanted me to watch our hometown Syracuse University Football and my son wanted me to watch his college’s team Boston College, but I only had an interest in watching Texas Tech from far away Syracuse, New York.
Eventually, when Patrick entered the NFL lottery, the football coach’s daughter came out of me when I told my husband a Buffalo Bills fan, and my son a New York Jets fan, their teams should draft Mahomes since they had early first-round drafts; they shrugged not believing I KNEW what I was talking about. I had been an active ‘scout’ for three years. As soon as he went to the Kansas City Chiefs, I became a Kansas City Chiefs fan so I could continue to cheer him on from afar.
Today as I watch the Superbowl, I will remind my husband and son, I was so right knowing Patrick was an excellent player way back in his early college days. I don’t own any red in the land of Syracuse orange and blue, but I will be rooting for Kansas City and Patrick Mahomes, and most likely texting with my two girlfriends like we used to do cheering him on in this the biggest game of his career. You can’t take the football out of these mid-life women – or the love of sports! Go Chiefs! Go, Patrick!
Wednesday Wisdom, Inspiration for Women in Business, Women Entrepreneurs, Female Athletes
The press release went like this:
Attending her fourth Women’s March, as a proponent of women’s pay equality, Tracy Chamberlain Higginbotham, Founder of Women TIES, serendipitously met five New York City anchorwomen who are suing the cable giant Charter Communications over age and gender discrimination.
Chamberlain Higginbotham was in front of a New York City Women’s March stage on January 18, 2020, where five women Kristen Shaughnessy, Roma Torre, Amanda Farinacci, Vivian Lee, and Jeanine Ramirez of Spectrum News NY1 were speaking. Ranging from the age of 40 to 61 years old, the women shared their professional roadblocks by their employer to replace them with younger women with less experience in the news industry. Unlike these women, their male counterparts at the station thrived and maintained their positions.
“I’m not against the young women in our organization at all, many of them have been supportive; but nobody gets younger so it isn’t fair as aging professional female reporters, we are disregarded or replaced while aging men in our industry are not,” Shaughnessy stated in a phone interview. ‘The New York 5’, as they are known, filed a lawsuit in 2019 claiming Charter Communications reduced their airtime and anchoring slots, excluded them from promotional campaigns and disregarded their concerns. A June 19, 2019 article in the New York Times featuring the women states the anchorwomen felt their career trajectories were altered so they seek damages through the lawsuit.
Shaughnessy stated, “Television news is a system, like so many others, designed by men in positions of power who cannot see beyond a woman’s aging face. The double standard that allows male anchors and reporters to go grey with gravitas while sidelining its veteran women has to stop.”
Chamberlain Higginbotham provided testimony to the New York State Labor Commissioner in 2017 about the need for a pay equality law for women and has represented women in the #MeToo movement after a sexual harassment incident in the workplace in her early 20s in Philadelphia. “I immediately bonded with Kristen and her co-anchors about their plight in the workplace and wanted to share their story in Central and Upstate New York because gender and pay discrimination still exists for women of all ages,” Chamberlain Higginbotham explains.
Shaughnessy further stated, “We have to keep this story alive because change won’t happen for us or other women unless we do.” By the reaction of the crowds at the 2020 Women’s March, The New York 5’s story won’t diminish as long as they and other women keep sharing their personal experiences about pay and gender discrimination so one day women can achieve justice in the workplace.
NY5 Photo by Jeenah Moon The New York Times
Ode to Kobe: From Daughters Whose Fathers Taught Them to Love Sports
Monday Motivation, Inspiration, Wisdom and Thoughts for Fathers of Daughters, Women, Female Athletes
My father was my sports idol for most of my life. Standing 6’1” tall with broad shoulders, long legs, and wide hands to palm a basketball, I adored his athletic ability. As an outstanding basketball and football player in high school wearing the colors of gold and purple, he continued his passion for sports becoming a physical education teacher and coach in college while playing his beloved game of basketball and adding the game of lacrosse. Some of my fondest memories of him include teaching me and my sister to throw the perfect foul shot, football spiral, and cheering him on from the sidelines as we grew.
As I watched the grim news of the helicopter crash in California yesterday, after watching parts of the Pro Football Game, my heart sank, like so many others, for the loss of lives including Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gigi. As I learned about their special father-daughter basketball bond, my heart was warmed by the knowledge they were at least together on the fateful flight. If I had to be anywhere in a scary situation like that one, I would want my father by my side. This perspective inspired me to write today’s blog post.
Today’s society still believes athletic men need sons to carry on their sports legacy by walking in their shoes, but that’s false. Two years ago I interviewed highly successful female athletes asking them who inspired them most to get into sports, 90% of them said their fathers. Even if they had older brothers who played sports, fathers were still instrumental in teaching the love of the game to their daughters. This was true in my life and that of Gigi’s life too. We were blessed to have fathers who believe girls and women had a place on the court and not only in the stands.
It wasn’t until later in my father’s life that he had two sons. His masculine pride bumped up to new heights envisioning his sons with his athletic passion but my brothers chose music over sports. My Dad and I would talk about the NFL, NBA, and especially Syracuse University Basketball when we threw the football back and forth in the yard or a lacrosse ball between sticks on the beach in Maine where he retired. The Superbowl wasn’t a celebration for me unless I spoke to my Dad about the teams, players, and the outcome of the game. I was his “sports girl” for life and he knew it.
I have fought for 25 years for women’s equality in business adding a new desire to fight for women’s equality in sports the past 7 years by creating a Women’s Athletic Network to put more women and men in the seats of women’s sports. Like Kobe Bryant, I believe a girl can and should play sports if she wants. I seriously hope with Kobe and his beautiful daughter’s passing, more fathers will be inspired to instruct their own daughters, nieces or granddaughters in the love of the game of basketball – or any game they have a passion to play….together.
Adam, Tracy and Thomas Higginbotham
Then someday when daughters become grown women, they can pass their love of sports down to their daughters or in some cases their sons as I did with mine.
Wednesday Wisdom: Business Lessons From a Hermit Crab
Wednesday Wisdom, Inspiration for Women Entrepreneurs, Women in Business, Entrepreneurs
Standing shoulder to shoulder alongside my young, blonde friend, who was wearing a pink sweater under her jacket to support the cause as a first time rally-goer, we weaved in and out of line until we ended up unexpectedly, and by fate, in the very front of line behind the most energetic 30 piece drum group.
“Yahoo! Let’s go! Do you feel the energy when so many women gather for the women’s causes?” I shouted at my 24-year-old companion over the drumbeat. As we marched from 72nd to 54th Street, winding around Columbus Circle, where we were only going to stand to watch but decided to be bold which led us to the front of the pack leading the way. Loving how fate plays a part in event planning, we marched, bounced, yelled, held up our signs, and walked in peaceful unison with our sisters down the typically bustling streets of New York City with my favorite feminine piece flowing in the wind. It has been with me on every feminist march to date.
Although I could paint you an even longer and deeper vision of what it felt like to take my son’s girlfriend with me to her first Women’s March, I am stopping at the second paragraph to point out something new I learned as a woman entrepreneur. It is a new way of creative writing called a “Hermit Crab Essay” taught by Linda Lowen of Always Wanted to Write. This type of writing takes a simple item like a report card, pill directions, a hermit crab shell or even a pink scarf (my example), and turns into the subject of a creative writing piece without naming it. This style of writing allows the writer to use expression and perspective in a different way.
So today’s blog post is not to relive one more Women’s March through my eyes but to remind you no one ever perfects a craft like writing, painting, singing, and leading, without education along the way. Just like the drum beats that led the marchers forward down the streets to Times Square, where two different Women’s March groups became one, developing new skills helps women entrepreneurs advance down their own road of expertise and knowledge. Could your business be better if you were a student again tuning your skills like a drummer might?
I gained boatloads of wisdom at this year’s historic Women’s March that will boil over into next week’s editorial. Remember when you open yourself to traveling out of your comfort zone to a new exploratory place with vibrant sounds, sights, and people; you enrich not only your life experiences but your business as well.
Women TIES 