The Old Woman and the B-tch in the Jag

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Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

I will never forget that seemingly ordinary spring day in 1992 that changed the course of my life forever. I was walking to work along the brick sidewalks through Boston’s South End, immersed in thoughts about the upcoming big pitch of a new ad campaign that day. As always, the creatives were pushing a pretty edgy campaign that I knew the client would be resistant to… and I was feeling a combination of stress and malaise at how unimportant an ad campaign is anyway….

I had no idea that my routine walk to work through the South End to my office on the 42nd floor of the John Hancock Tower, would be one of what would prove to be several powerful inciting incidents (I call them aha moments) that changed my life’s trajectory forever.

I was 32 years old – ten years in on what I had believed would be my "dream career, " working in a prestigious, award-winning ad agency in Boston. Don’t get me wrong, those ten years were some of the most important, eye-opening and rewarding years of my life. I learned and grew a lot both professionally and personally and

worked with truly creative, passionate people there.

(clearer and shorter) As you'll see in this story - the messages I received that morning, from both inside and outside me, may not have been noticed – but I attached deep meaning – my memory of those incidences are as clear as any much more…..got me in touch with my intuition, an inner “knowing” … opened up by coinciding incident It brought into sharp, undeniable view that what I was doing was NOT what I wanted to continue to do.. what I felt called to do in this life. This synchronous experience fueled my decision to make a big shift in my life's path.

I see it now as my first of many important leaps of faith.

and the miracles that exist in present as possibilities in front of us every day it was a spring morning and

I was on the way to my ad agency job that I had been working at in growling in for 10 years. I had been hired as a secretary, thank you very much. That's the best it could be for. Many women are actually most women at that age. In fact, this is a sidebar the woman that was the receptionist there at the agency went on to be the president and grew it significantly many years later. So that's another story. So okay, so I'm walking. I live in the south end of Boston and I'm walking down one of the beautiful little side streets and in front of me saw a very elderly Asian woman digging through bags of trash even as I say it now, it hit me so hard in my heart, in my gut, that I had tears in my eyes knowing that she was grabbing each can for a mere five cents that she could use toward feeding her part of her family or some other need. As I passed by was lost in thoughts about how much challenge for the actual and other challenges many people in the world faced while I sat on the 42nd floor of Boston's most gorgeous skyscraper spending millions of dollars of my clients money on ads. Oh my god. I was at once struck with what seemed like the meaninglessness of it all before that I had justified and rightly so, the economic contribution that doing good advertising built strong companies which employed people which gave stockholders money and kept the economy And then, oh my god, lost in these thoughts. I was sort of oblivious to the rest of the world. I was almost struck by a Jaguar that was zooming out of an underground garage. And I will always remember as I stopped abruptly, the woman didn't see me thank God I heard her. She would have hit me if I kept walking well. Needless to say, that served as a remarkable coincidence and reminder of how oblivious people can be as they distance themselves from the pain and realities around them and live in their little bubbles and Okay, so that's a coincidence and a message but what was even more powerful is the woman behind the wheel gripping it with a grimace, and I hate hate to say a entitle look. On her face was a woman who owned a local competing advertising agency in that flash in that moment, my gut, my intuition, plus this powerful message, Miracle coincidence, whatever you want to call it. Synchronicity, defined my desire to leave my cushy well paid job at 32 to do something more meaningful, with more impact. Okay, so the coincidences or the messages in miracles from the universe continued that day to define my path and open up a world that now flashing back over years before I could never imagine not having experienced, oh my god, what would have happened if I didn't have that message that day. And what would have happened if that later that week the President of my agency offered a seemingly incomprehensible offer for people who had been employed there for 10 years to take a six month sabbatical to work with the nonprofit, do service work etc. Needless to say, I jumped at the opportunity in this confluence of my internal emotional intuition. Plus, outside miracle miracles opened up new possibilities for me. And I took a leap of faith and jumped right in within a month or so I started working. Well, I started considering a number of possibilities for what I might do. One was a Peace Corps. Opportunity working in Manila with female entrepreneurs. When women that made ice, women that made lace living in the slums, that I still think about where my life could have gone if I if I followed that path. I didn't. But it certainly intrigued me from time to time. The next opportunity that I explored, was working in a refugee camp. Vietnamese War Refugee Camp, still existing in Northern Thailand. And oh, my god, on a trip. There was a man I met on the airplane, who looked at me and said, Sure, go help 40 people. What you need to do is help more people. So use your intelligence user experience to do that. I tucked away that memory from just the past year. And now it presented as discerning that that was not the right route. The second the third, and what they did pursue was to start a professional Volunteering arm of a volunteer network That was like a dating service to pair people with service opportunities. I worked with the founder and we cultivated. And I worked on for six months. But I called a professional network so accountants could help nonprofits with their, their books. or marketing people like myself could help with their marketing on a volunteer basis instead of ladling soup in the soup kitchen for a homeless shelter. They could actually work with the director or others. Well, I won't get into details. This then launched me to develop a cause marketing business that go on hold right now. Hey, bear bugs are coming out in force launching this business was yet another step on my path, led by Synchro mysteries and little miracles along the way. I want to happen million dollar grant to do a program with a battered women's organization, building off of a desire to help the Massachusetts Coalition for breast cancer. I connected with a museum in DC that had an exhibition of a walk from a woman who had breast cancer. Coincidentally, the same date as the breast cancer walk March there to the Oval. I was able to connect with these people individually and put them together with a corporate sponsor. I worked on an AIDS awareness program among other initiatives. Sadly, I was very struck still by my guilt around the money part of life that I refuse to take fees from nonprofits and instead became a full time volunteer for many organizations. For instance, the $500,000 grant I got I took very little instead choosing to use it for assets and creating materials for the campaign. Suffice it to say though, and this is a true 1992 was early for companies to invest in believing the power of a cause related marketing program. Though I would meet with CEOs regularly, who were turned on by the vision, they'd pass me along to their marketing person who would quite abruptly look at me and say, We don't need you we do a walkathon that that that should be a bumper sticker of the time, which is That's enough. We cross off all of the boxes in terms of contributing to the community in which we operate. The employees who keep us alive, so I literally lost everything. I I actually lost and was in debt over $40,000, which for a 32 year old was huge. When just two years prior I had a very healthy income was I but I was not upset. Instead, I felt free. I felt free to once again pursue a profit of a line of business which could blend meaning purpose and provide me an income. Flash forward I ended up getting this job offer from a company called America Online. Before the offer, all I knew about the internet was that it was called the information superhighway. And was this mysterious thing that I had no idea of how to navigate and didn't have an account. I knew America Online was sending discs to everybody and but more and more people were going online and when I finally tried it, it was painfully slow. And a little frightening. But something about it sparked me. I saw in here we go again, I saw with my gut. And my intuition that this thing called the internet would possibly change the world providing public access to information from prenatal care to stock information that had traditionally been behind the walls of a doctor or medical called team or a stockbroker. I also saw that people would be able to connect with each other across the world in different ways. So I jumped in. I took a 50% pay cut from a temporary job I had with another ad agency and moved to Virginia. Coincidentally, I remember the coincidence around this is that the person that offered me this job was my first boss at my ad agency. All those years before she reached out to me I said Yes, I came for the interview and was offered the job on the spot and I said yes, on the spot. leaps of faith, coincidence? The universe, providing possibilities for me and my intuition, leading me in that direction. Now I will also add not to puff up myself too much, but I will also add that about 90% of my friends thought I was insane. I went from a pretty healthy salary to 50% less for this, this company that could easily go under. I think all of us know history of America Online. So I'll leave the story here. Because this confluence of coincidence and intuition and leaps of faith became a routine for me and has guided me since 1996. And I started at AOL in all sorts of miraculous and beautiful ways. Sure. I've had challenges. And no I will continue to share I've had amazing miracles including having a child at 41 thought my last imperfect egg haha. But it's those early leaps of faith and trust. In my gut, and and in the system so important. Being open to the messages of miracles. The coincidences that some people shirk off and making meaning and making meaning to those miracles and threading them together with my intuition and just going for it. leaps of faith as I call them. What was absent in this time and that remains absent in me. Much of the time, including my night, my 2019 my 2018 cancer journey was an absence of fear. Well, yeah, sure it came and spoke to me occasionally. But I was able always able to put it in the backseat and trust instead my energy PS and my faith impossibility impossibilities. As they say. The only thing that is certain is what's right now. The past is unchangeable. The future is unpredictable. But the possibilities are infinite. And by believing in miracles and believing in message and believing in what my heart tells me, has allowed me to reinvent and reinvent my life several times. So I'll leave this post with a final thought. So many people think coincidences are just coincidences and yeah, I know you can think that way but like Deepak Chopra said, you know when you see at night you see a meteor or comet stream across the sky feels like a miracle. It feels rare. But in fact, it's happening all the time. You just can't see it because of the glare of the sun or you haven't looked up at the right moment. Coincidences message and miracles are happening to us. Each and every day. The people we run into the articles we read the books, we just randomly pick up the phone call that comes from out of the blue from an old colleague or friend. These are all messages meant to be listened to. And possibilities that are meant to be considered. And along with your gut feel, and these possibilities Oh my God, who knows what could happen? drown out the fear drown out the self doubt. And just listen to your heart. And pay attention to the little tiny coincidences, the miracles and possibilities that get presented to you every day. They are there for the for the taking. If you ignore them, they go away. Consider the many possible paths your life can go from here. emotionally, financially, health wise, business wise career, all sorts of experiences that are there for you that are possible. That thought that another post will be about the coincidences of a year ago. After returning from the monarch sanctuary in San Miguel, and declaring that art must be the center of my life creating must be more at the center of my life. And then receiving the very next day and invitation shared by dear friend Sally Fox to attend a transformative art program in Italy that summer. Suffice it to say for the rest of my story, but I took this coincidence as a message there are no coincidences it is and is still unfolding as my secret destiny. I went I loved it. I opened up I shifted and released as I call it unleashed, dreams I've had for many, many years to express myself through art, visual storytelling and using the power of creating to help others unleash and crack open and understand who they truly are. And so as the mystery continues to unveil itself, what happened that day, last January has sent my life on a new trajectory that has included incorporating a tiny watercolor painting in every entry in my morning journal in the mornings during a meditative time. It's also included finishing paintings that I started and gotten 90% through 10 years ago. It is also included jumping in saying yes and going to a cinematography workshop this summer, and writing finally starting to write a book that's been bubbling in my mind for years that will be peppered with my photographs, and my art. Don't get me wrong. I'm not the kind of artists that would have a gallery show. I'm the kind of artist that loves to paint and feels like my art can be beautiful to me and may be inspiring to someone else. Okay, this has been a lot of fun. I'm gonna turn this into a post, maybe two posts, and it definitely is a chapter. I have a new routine. Morning, dogs coffee, walk, talk, record stories for posts and chapters in my book. This is how I'm going to write. This is how I'm going to finally write that book. And I'm also going to market my services because everything I'm going to share is inspiring to the women that come to 333 and that will be a part of quest year. Quest year is launching in September, and I see 13 Women in it. Several of them are there on barter, which is beautiful to me because they otherwise wouldn't be able to afford it and they bring so much to the process. That's the vision of a collective. It also brings in a significant amount of revenue for me on a monthly basis. Starting in September and oh my god, it's gonna change these women's lives. And it will clearly clearly defined the importance of the 333 Collective and attract more like minded fiercely curious women over 50 quest 2025 is brewing in my head and I see that these posts will also attract potential sponsors. My book will actually validate me for speaking engagements. Okay, so I'm excited about these possibilities. And fear is sitting in the backseat. And actually if I've given fear a little bit of mouth cover so I can't really speak all right

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.

(Side bar: What are “aha moments?” They are seemingly simple, everyday moments that end up being momentous. They are magical messages that bring important insights, realizations and can be the impetus for personal growth and positive change.

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