I’m a big fan of idyllic life styles. I grew up the daughter of a Pennsylvania State Park Superintendent, later the COO, and a mother who was either home with her children or working at the school we attended. We moved frequently from one glorious park to another. I spent most of my childhood in the woods or on a beach. I started playing the flute as a young girl, developing a deep love and appreciation for music, and still play weekly and perform often with a large symphonic concert band. I have loved learning, and have learned easily, my entire life. I am a Phi Beta Kappa graduate with distinction in Linguistics from Penn State University. Within a month of graduating, I became the Director of the Office of Theses and Dissertations at Penn State. I’m still learning every single day. While conducting consultations, I was a stay-at-home, home-schooling mom of seven for more than 20 years. When my children started leaving home, I started my first business as an image and brand consultant.
Within a few years, I was running a growing business, strategizing with and for high profile politicians, executives, athletes, and media personalities. I loved what I was doing, and I was very good at it. The business and my vision continued to change. I leveraged highly talented professionals to build a dream-team of experts, strategists, and advisors. The company morphed from helping individuals maximize their characteristic assets to providing reputation management and branding for mid-size companies to multi-billion dollar corporations and high-profile, high-powered individuals. Suddenly we were “blowing it out of the water” when I realized that I had become a CEO instead of doing what had gotten me there in the first place, which was being a strategist, consultant, and advisor. At that point, I was seldom working hands on with individual clients; instead, I was managing projects and employees, and I wasn’t as happy and satisfied as I imagined I would be.
I realized at that point that scaling meant scaling back. I sold the company and started a search for a career that would bring me satisfaction and happiness. My first three work-for-the-man positions were in sales – I was very good at influencing people but I found myself wanting to provide performance strategy for the people for whom I was working. I yearned for that deep sense of doing something meaningful. I didn’t want to sell people things; I wanted to make a difference in their lives. Wasn’t that where I started so many years ago?
So here I am—an Elite Performance Strategist, helping people live their exponentially idyllic lives.
Am I living the dream? You bet I am. I’m driving a high-performance car, enjoying weekends on the family’s yacht, and cherishing my husband, our seven children, and seven grandchildren. I recently bought and am renovating a beautiful little house, which is a three-minute walk from my gym, from my office, and from shopping and restaurants. Because I learned many years ago to step beyond my comfort zone, discipline my actions, maximize my capabilities, and manage obstacles and distractions, I continue to become the person I want to be, doing what I love to do, having the abundantly idyllic life I always wanted.