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| Photo compliments of Shelly Oberman Photography |
All of this musing wasn’t simply for the sake of taking stock. I was revisiting my memories for a reason. A few months ago, I became a finalist for a business award specifically for Northwest women entrepreneurs. The nomination presented me with a privilege and a challenge: to craft an inspirational speech addressed to my fellow women entrepreneurs.
And so I was left to tackle the big question: What did I want to say?
I started by looking to my roots. I singled out the women
in my family who inspire me, and identified exactly what it is about their
characters and stories that I find so motivational.
Once I answered those questions, my speech wasn’t
difficult to compose. As the strength and clarity of the piece grew, so did my
sense of urgency regarding my message.
I want to empower women. It is as important today as it
was when I began my career. My goal was to remind the women I was addressing
what we are made of. Whether we are frontierswomen, CEOs, or steel magnolias,
all women have a special kind of strength that allows us to weather the storms
of life.
What follows is an excerpted version of my speech. If you
are a woman, I hope it prompts you to reflect on the unique strengths you
possess.
. . . . . .
My favorite word these days is GRIT. I keep the word as
my touchstone for whenever life’s challenges come knocking at my door.
I started Rosanna Inc. shortly after I finished graduate
school. I couldn’t find my dream
job, so I created it. With a
$15,000 home equity loan, I began my business in the small bungalow where I lived. I have done everything in my business
from washing my first shipment of 10,000 dishes by hand to hand-delivering
orders to sitting in factories and painting prototype designs myself. I have sold, shipped, packed, designed,
promoted, acted as foreign agent, and managed the finances during the early
years of the company.
The years since then have presented me with many
different kinds of challenges. Every time a new one occurs, I remind myself of
the resilience of women and of our amazing capacity for getting through
crisis. I say this because I know
all of you women here understand what it means to have your back against the
wall.
In times of crisis, I call upon the legacy of the women I
most admire, the tough and tenacious women of my family—my mother and
grandmother.
Their stories are timeless and enduring. They survived the Great Depression,
World War II, and the oppression of women in the 1950’s. Both went on to become
successful career women in the 1970’s.
I envisioned them during each period of history and what
they did to survive. My
grandmother plucked chickens for five cents a chicken during the Depression, and
worked as a Rosie the Riveter for Boeing building airplanes for combat.
In 1954, my grandmother was working at Fred Meyer when
she lost her son in the Korean War.
She suffered greatly and returned to work only after when Fred Meyer
himself came to her home pleading for her to return after a period of
grieving.
You see, in the 1950’s, there was no medicine for
depression. There was only one way
that women got through tragedy—that was with their grit and guts and old-fashioned
values of self-fortitude, ideals that have never been more relevant than today.
Both my mother and grandmother fought cancer. One survived, the other did not. Tenacity is the common character trait
that both possessed. I know this
trait is in all of you too. It is
why you are here tonight. It is
why you have accomplished what you have.
Don’t forget who you are and what you are made of.
The resources we hold as women are limitless. We can effect changes in the
world.
We are capable of moving, shifting, and creating new
models for old ideas because we put our egos aside, roll up our sleeves, and
get to work.
I call upon all of you to take what is innate in your
character and reinvent yourself. I
did it and so can you.
I went outside my comfort zone and decided to write a
lifestyle book, Coming Home: A Seasonal Guide to Creating Family Traditions.
The book represents the heart and soul of who I am and who we are as a
company. Our products are designed to be simple pleasures. They also serve as prescriptives
to help people get back to the traditions they crave. Authoring the book put this philosophy in writing.
The book further defined the lifestyle associated with
our products. No longer were our products just products; they became a way of
life.
I went out on a limb as an author. If you want to
reinvent yourself, go to a place you have never been before. Try on a new
hat. Don’t be afraid to fail. If you do nothing, nothing will happen.
So, treat your life like a start-up business. Dig deep. Look
to old-fashioned values and role models who give you the strength to move
mountains. Reinvent yourselves
daily and try a new way of doing things.
Effect change. The result will amaze you. You have it in
you.
You are women!
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