5 Things / The Year in Good Vibes
Some of you may know that I spent years as a wedding planner with an LGBTQ+ specialty and a speaker on inclusion in that industry. I started that business in 2004. I was so young! It's been nearly 19 years since the first legal same-sex marriage licenses were issued in Massachusetts -- and only NOW are those marriages — and interracial marriages – codified into federal law, thanks to the Respect for Marriage Act. Those marriages were allowed due to Supreme Court decisions, which could have potentially been challenged.
5 Things / Community
Last week, I spent a few days at my mastermind retreat with a group of other business owners. I enjoy my mastermind so much because, honestly, being a founder can be lonely and I need all the support I can get to achieve my BIG vision for equality. I need community.
5 Things / Benefits Edition
This week I made some new friends, including a man who went undercover with Al Qaeda and wrote a book to tell the story. He’s a great guy, and like my other new friends, is very different from me. But one thing we all have in common is that we’re speakers. During the pandemic, I enrolled in Heroic Public Speaking (HPS) to level up my speaking game, and one of the unexpected benefits was meeting a bunch of new people with completely different lived experiences, stories, and perspectives than me. I loved it.
5 Things / lessons
Sometimes I feel like being a leader means I’m in a near-constant state of asking myself, “OK, so what can I learn from this?”
I often look at work (and sometimes life) as an experiment. I’ve been a business owner for over 17 years now and it’s impossible to get it right all the time. And it’s certainly impossible to be all things to all people. My work, whether it’s writing, or speaking, or building and leading a team, is constantly being evaluated, tweaked, and adjusted along the way. But one thing being a business owner has taught me is to focus on progress over perfection.