One Letter Can Go a Long Way

I have had an interesting and informative couple of months engaging different experts in conversations about our town’s school safety protocols and gun safety. For those interested in where my January letter to the Needham Times has taken me, I would like to describe my efforts here. I would guess that similar experiences are being logged around the country, so even if you are not from Needham, MA, you may be interested in this journey. 

My letter which was printed in the January 3rd edition of the Needham Times was shorter than, but similar in theme to, the post I included here on December 19, 2012. The letter included a link to an online survey to gauge the interest of readers. The response to that letter was overwhelmingly in favor of a discussion or coalition of related groups to discuss improvements in Needham's school safety protocols and access to/awareness of mental health support systems.

With collected survey responses as support, I contacted our School Committee members, our Youth Services Director, and our school Superintendent. I have had productive conversations with the principals of my local elementary and middle schools and I was invited to participate in their Health and Safety Committee meetings. I also met with our school superintendent and the director of our Youth Services organization who were both very welcoming of a dialogue and gave me confidence that our students' safety is of the utmost importance and that it is in good hands. Regular review of safety protocols and of mental health service offerings is invaluable and is occurring here.

The high school principal and I had a productive email conversation where we both learned from each other. Specifics shared with me by the principal may be of interest to readers: 

"...we work with the town on a regular basis to review our safety protocols and procedures. We routinely meet with the Public Facilities, Police, and Fire Departments to review and update our security procedures and protocols. For example, the building-based Health and Safety Committee meets to monitor and address emergent facilities and safety issues, and I meet with Local Emergency Planning Committee, which is made up of all town chiefs (police, fire, etc.) and department heads, to plan for different types of emergency situations that might involve the high school. 

"Earlier this year we began the process of updating our master key system to enhance our lock down protocols. Over the coming summer we will purchase and install a new digital radio system that will provide all offices, administrators, and department heads with campus-wide instant communication access in the event of an emergency. We have also planned to install a card/key fob access entry system for faculty and staff over the next 1-2 years which will further restrict access to the building during school hours. In addition, this will allow us to prevent doors from being propped open and to track more closely the comings and goings of individuals as they enter and exit the building."

I see three take-aways from my efforts:

1. My initial plan was to help bring together various expert groups to have a dialogue that would be beneficial to improving the safety of our town's children and all residents. I feel now that some of those conversations are already happening. Although the conversations are not taking place in one central forum, I understand that they are taking place through various committees and relationships. The tragedy in Newtown has heightened all related groups' interest in providing safe school environments for our students. I feel confident that the best people are staying tuned in to the problems and I will continue to offer my help as a liaison between parents and Health & Safety Committees.
2. The conversations I have had with two principals have resulted in improved guidelines and execution of safety protocols at those two schools. I understand the steps that have been taken at the High School in recent years to improve student safety and my concern about unlocked doors was listened to and will be addressed as soon as possible. None of the schools will ever have perfectly executed safety protocols, every minute of every day, but the plans and intentions are in place to make the schools secure. As visitors of our schools, we have a responsibility to adhere strictly to the security guidelines and to report security breaches when they happen. Our school superintendent is considering increasing the frequency and methods of communicating school safety protocols and improvements – look for his updates on his Needham Channel broadcasts, in the annual Needham Public Schools Performance Report, and possibly in other ways.
3. I have been invited to assist one of our ministers from the Congregational Church of Needham in organizing a public forum. The forum’s agenda is under development but it will aim to address gun safety as a matter of public health. It should be a very helpful event for our town and I hope to add some value to it and to others like it. The rough goals of the event are:

• To raise awareness in the community about the presence and reality of guns in our midst
• To educate ourselves about gun safety as a matter of public health

Lastly, over the past two months, I have come to understand the importance of speaking up for something, even if it seems as if one voice cannot make a difference. The letters I and many others have written in the wake of the Newtown, CT tragedy have started a chain of events in the right direction toward tightening of gun control, increasing gun safety and improving public health. Letters written for publications can inspire readers to act in unanticipated, helpful ways. The letters we write to elected officials do matter. Our government representatives are getting the message – from many. I encourage everyone who is concerned about assault weapons in our communities and loopholes in our gun laws to take the time to make your views known to your elected officials. Email makes it so easy to contact them. If you have already contacted one or more, do it again. Sincerity and frequency matters. Keep repeating the message in order to compete with those emailing and calling with an opposing message.

When a mentally unstable gunman decides to enter a building – whether it be a school, a movie theater, a mall, or a workplace - he will most likely succeed. The best way to minimize those occurrences and the number of resulting casualties is to decrease the accessibility of guns, ban assault weapons and their large-capacity magazines, and strengthen our mental health support systems. The forum I describe above is a small step toward raising the public's consciousness of the prevalence of guns in our community. I hope that from it will come further action by individuals to prevent gun violence. This is a complicated problem that needs to be addressed from many angles. A simple, sincere letter can make a difference, even from one person.

p.s. Please do not comment if your comment includes an unrelated link. I review all comments before they are posted and do not post ones containing unrelated links. Thank you!

Best Birthday Ever

A number of amazing things have happened to me as a direct result of publishing Preacher Kid. The one that will stick with me the longest happened on my birthday. I have a Christmas season birthday so it generally gets absorbed into the holiday and is only acknowledged by a small but crucial few. This past birthday was the first time in 10 years I have not spent my birthday in a mini-van speeding across I-90 from Boston to Cleveland.

I had a real birthday: I woke up in the house of my destination, surrounded by people I love. And there was cake. But this year, I learned that my sister had given my book not just as a gift to her three children, but to my cousin, Jamie, whose name she had in our gift exchange. Our annual cousin Christmas party was on my birthday, so the “surrounded by people I love” element expanded exponentially.

I grew up in an environment where my cousins were my first friends. For as long as I can remember, but with a blur as to how frequently, we met at my paternal grandparents’ house on Sunday afternoons for dinner with our cousins. The house was about a mile away from my house, even closer to one set of cousins, and my East Side cousins made the much farther trek. There was KFC and Jell-O on the outside tables for the kids and the adults ate inside (brilliant!). We played simple games that always developed a distinct element of daredevil or insanity. We loved and tormented each other, depending on the personalities, and we always looked forward to the event, even though it carried with it a small edge of danger and unpredictability.

All these years later, I look over our group and realize how close we have all fallen from the tree that sprouted us. It is no wonder most of my sisters and cousins are in medical, education or counseling professions – coming from my grandfather (the doctor), from my aunts who were extraordinary nurses and teachers, and from my dad and his brother who were exceptional teachers. We represent an extremely wide array of personalities and those differences are noticeable in everyone’s approach to their own lives and loves. But there is a strong underlying current that is the same. Somewhere in the craziness of those Sunday afternoons, grew love and compassion, toward each other and aimed at the world around us. Now as adults, we celebrate each other’s achievements, small and large, we counsel and console each other about life's daily grind, and we catch each other when we fall. We know each other better than many others do, even though we only see each other twice a year. We understand our inner core and know we will always be accepted and loved in this mix. That is surely why we work so hard to get together – an extraordinary objective we gladly relish at Christmas and during the last week of every July.

So this past December, I found myself in my cousin, Anne’s, amazing century-old house with my family of 5, my three sisters and their families, spending the afternoon with many of my McCarthy cousins - bringing our total to 31. My cousin, Jamie, had started reading my book and gave it a glowing review, demanding an autograph of his copy when I see him this summer. Kelly (lover of all things vintage) admired the pictures and I could have talked to her all day about Esther's story. Jamie made a toast to me and of course there was cake. Dan, nearing 20, sweetly reminded me of our bond as December babies and I could so easily picture him making someone feel grounded and safe as the firefighter he is training to be. I could not have been in a better place. And the whole reason I began my grandma’s story was so that her story would not fade away. Here it was, being shared and gaining a following.

These are the kids I grew up with. They knew Esther, my maternal grandmother, but not the way I did. And they were genuinely excited to learn about the life of the woman they had known. They made me feel great about myself and my self-publishing. It now stands as the best birthday of my life – beating out my 16th when my parents threw a surprise party for me - where my mom watched guiltily as I almost had a heart attack in my own basement. That was a rather longstanding benchmark for birthdays. Who knows what else this book will bring.

One other amazing thing I want to share is that my son, Liam, converted the book to an iBook and it is now available from the iTunes Store. The iBook version is the best version, for the clearer, bigger pictures and a little 1970 video!

Happy 1st Anniversary Red Cupboard Solutions!

As I sit down to write this post, I am one part surprised that it has been a whole year since I launched this blog and one part baffled that it has only been one year since I launched this blog! As with almost any annual review, some things seem to have gone by at rocket speed while others … not so much. In celebration of the year gone by, here are a few of the things I have learned along the way:
 

Sole-Proprietorship is a 24/7 Commitment

I learned this as a novice sole-proprietor myself, but mostly from the small business owners I have had the pleasure to meet. Their drive is relentless and every free minute seems to fill with mental exercises of strategy design, idea formulation, finding new angles on engaging new customers, and identifying talents, contacts, and trends to leverage. I watched and learned as even a glass of wine at the bar turned into a business promotion with the bar staff. I found that every newspaper or magazine article had some implication for what I was working on – a testament to how prolific social media is in our society and globally. My kids became tuned in to my search for blog topics resulting in their recommendations to me of blog post topics. My own radar developed for environmental issues to blog about as my oldest son volunteered to tweet for an architect friend with a commitment to the environment. And I watch as a small business husband/wife team with social media savvy, multiplies the success of their new restaurant with a solid social media strategy. 

 

Social Media Accelerates the Discovery or Creation of Market Opportunities

When I started Red Cupboard, I had already gained respect for the power of social media to level the playing field for small businesses. I continue to see examples of that in every small business. Those who embrace it, get the boost. Those who push it off, for lack of time or courage, miss opportunities. The wonderful “ah ha” moment that comes when the redesigned website goes live or the Facebook account gets some traction or the Twitter feed springs to life is such a great experience. I feel lucky to get to piggy-back on others’ successes and feel that great moment over and over. It is especially sweet for owners who haven’t grown up on social media and who find the de-mystification such a great source of professional growth. With that new social media tool in the belt, that business owner feels (rightly so) much better equipped to meet the ever-changing future.

The Dynamics of a Household of 5, Ebbing and Flowing Wildly Over the Course of a Year, Impact the Output of this Small Business

Probably as an offshoot of my first observation, there is nothing easy about running a household and a business out of your home at the same time. Except the commute and the wardrobe! The research for lead generation or industry trends is intertwined with homework oversight, carpools, meal prep, sporting events, and flat-out desire to maintain face-time with teens and snuggle time with 10 year olds. And at any given time, one of the five members of the household has an objective or crisis that sidetracks all else. As my sister in law said as she held her third child (two years before I held my first), “Five is a lot of people!”  And we want each of the three to be their own, individual person, with unique interests and needs. So there is no pattern to follow. Layered with working parents (and I’ll throw in authoring a book just to make sure I’m making my point!) a small business can sometimes reflect what is happening on the home front. But from my perspective, there is no aspect of parenting that cannot be translated to running a business: time management, people skills, diplomacy, goals, prioritizing, picking battles, rewards, punishment, mistakes, learning, achievements, taking turns, showing/fostering respect, asking for help, saying no, pooling resources, and on it goes. At the end of the day, if I have to pick one, I hope I’m a better parent than a businesswoman. But my business skills have improved because I’m a parent.

What If We Could Do Something That Helped?

As I dropped my 10 year-old off at school Monday morning, I hoped he couldn’t hear how hollow my words sounded to me when I said “Don’t worry. You go to a very safe school.” I imagine others had similar experiences.
 
My town, Needham, MA, is so much like Newtown, CT in so many ways: affluent New England suburb with close proximity to a major city; many of the working population commute to that nearby city; people move to the town because of the school system; gun owners and enthusiasts are welcome and abide by the laws. When I first wrote this post in December, I thought the one now-glaring difference between the towns was that Newtown is located in a state without a ban on assault weapons and Needham is located in a state with such a ban. Well, Massachusetts does have a ban on assault weapons. But what I have now learned is that there are many qualifiers in that ban, leaving room for residents to legally own certain assault weapons, including the gun used in Newtown.
 
Originally having felt fortunate to live under that ban, I now see with new clarity the need to strengthen our gun control laws at the state or town level to make an assault weapons ban truly a ban. I wonder if we, as a community, are doing all we can to protect our children while they are in school. Having made that statement to my child on Monday, I know for a fact that a gunman could force his way into any Needham school, public or private, and inflict great harm – with one of the approved assault weapons or any weapon designed to kill.
 
What if we came together as a community and enhanced our current school safety protocol to be the best it could be? What if other cities and towns could look to us as a blueprint when they try to do what they can on gun control and mental health on the Town/City and State levels? What if we filled the holes in our gun control laws at the Town level, rather than wait for the State to act? What if other states looked at Massachusetts and realized they could outlaw assault weapons at the State level and not have to wait for the NRA lobby to soften? What if we started a formal dialog or coalition with Public Safety, Public Health, Mental Health experts, School Administration, Youth Services, Town Government, Clergy, and private citizens to enhance our school safety protocol and to address mental health issues as they relate to gun control? The goal would not be to make a foolproof plan, but to make, implement and enforce a plan that gives our children the safest school environment we can create without sacrificing their quality of life.
 
Needham is a special place to live because of the intelligent and talented people who live here who are willing to give their time and talents to further an important cause. I know there are many more towns and cities like Needham. With our talent pool, we could make a difference locally, and perhaps more broadly – so that a tragedy like the one at Sandy Hook Elementary School never happens again, here or elsewhere.

I know the problem is not just about gun laws. I know it is complex and involves a long hard look at mental health issues. But I believe it is something that cannot wait to be addressed. Mental health issues have, for too long, not received the attention they deserve. And you may be surprised to discover how many households contain guns in your neighborhood. As an example, there are three household on my street of 30 houses that own guns – and those are just the ones I know about. There must be a way to ensure that those guns never fall into the wrong hands. 

As gun stores in New Hampshire (less than 45 miles away from me) post record sales of assault weapons over the last 5 days, it is a sickening feeling to recognize that whatever can be done, can't be done fast enough.

If you live in Needham, watch for an email and a letter to the editor in our town paper from me in early January with a similar note, with a call to action. We have all had enough.

p.s. Please do not comment if your comment includes an unrelated link. I review all comments before they are posted and do not post ones containing unrelated links. Thank you!

Publishing Preacher Kid

Front cover - More on back!

I took a month off from blogging to finally push my big writing project over the waterfall. So here I am, back again, ready to apply and expand my social media skills in the effort of marketing a self-published book. I fully expect that everything I learn about marketing a book via social media will have relevancy in the world of small business marketing. So I hope my followers will continue with me on this journey of developing social media skills! It should be interesting!

I’ve been writing this book for six years – ever since my parents sat in my family room six autumns ago and I commented to my mom that she should write a story about her mom. Her response was “Oh no. You should write it.” So I did. I had been wanting to try my hand at writing a book for some time but knew I really didn’t have the motivation to write a novel. My favorite genre is historical fiction. And I’m a research geek. My mom and her sister knew the story they lived with my grandma and there was the 12-page, handwritten account she wrote one year for my sister’s school project. But there were many holes in her childhood story and in her known ancestry. All of her descendants recognized the amazing qualities of her life and no one wanted the story to fade away over time. Writing the story of my maternal grandmother’s life was the perfect fit for me.

So the research and the writing was a long journey which I won’t go into here. The last piece, the publishing piece, was a learning experience all along the way. I wanted to, and was encouraged by some people “in the know,” to find a commercial publisher for the book. That is a very single-threaded task and covered the good part of a year and a half before I finally realized my book has very little mass appeal (now that admission is not good marketing!), but tremendous value to a certain audience. Although, honestly, I think a screenwriter could take the basics and make a terrific movie out of it! Hmmm. Project 342?!

I self-published with CreateSpace which is owned or partnered with Amazon.com. It was a great experience until it came to the formatting. But I’m going to throw Microsoft under the bus on that one. Translating it to Kindle is turning into another headache. But I will get it there eventually.
 
The best part about the self-publishing process was the cover design. The end product I designed is one I love. I spread a map of Ohio on my dining room table (a table which just so happens to have belonged to my grandma), put an old photo of my grandma on it, and walked around my house gathering an armful of items that once belonged to her. The end result is my cover: an antiqued photo of a framed St. Francis of Assisi prayer, a ring she wore, a sweater she knitted and wore, a fine bone china teacup and saucer from her collection, decorated with her favorite flower, violets, and a photograph of Esther Miller.

It made me wonder: After I’m gone, what armful of treasures will my granddaughter collect on a table to visualize her ties to me? Well, maybe the book, Preacher Kid: A Story from the Heartland, will be one of them. And probably the ring. And on it goes. Keep the connections. Preserve the stories.

If you are interested enough in my book to read it, I hope you will let me know how you like it! Here is where you can find it: 

• You can purchase the paperback version on Amazon.
• Preacher Kid is available as an iBook from the iTunes Store. This version includes a small video from 1970! 
• A Kindle version is also available from Amazon.

Unity

Whether you are happy or sad about last week’s elections, one of the big challenges ahead of us as a country is preserving or refurbishing our sense of unity. If you were happy at last week’s presidential election outcome, you were probably disappointed with the outcome eight years ago. And vice versa. Over time, all of us have to deal with election outcomes we do not embrace. We are a diverse country made up of many different desires and values. I would venture to say that we have more in common that keeps us together than differences that pull us apart. That togetherness is often hard to see in action with the vitriol on display in Washington DC and in our local election campaigns. It would be great if the new act of heroism became that of compromise for the common good. Do you think our leaders in Washington and at the state levels understand how many of us want a united nation?

I read a very interesting blog post today that I thought worth sharing. Aside from this creative post on the subject of unity, both of the Bates Communication blogs (Power Speaker blog or the Bates Communication blog) are ones I recommend for business leaders seeking to improve or capitalize on their communication skills. These blogs have a number of contributors, each with insightful points that are easy to read in a collective style I enjoy. I wanted to pass it along in case you find value in them too.

Inching Ever Forward

An interesting article in yesterday’s NY Times and the announcement today that HubSpot has raised $350 million in capital seems like a combination of events heading in the right direction. The NY Times article, “A Capitalist’s Dilemma, Whoever Wins on Tuesday,” raises some very interesting points on what may be the reasons for our stalled economy. With companies holding on to capital, it is no wonder we have been slow to grow and slow to add jobs. The author, Harvard Business School Professor Clayton M. Christensen, recommends that companies holding the capital should do things differently, not use the old formulae for channeling their investments.

Christensen makes the distinction between three different types of innovation: empowering, sustaining and efficiency. “Ideally, the three innovations operate in a recurring circle. Empowering innovations are essential for growth because they create new consumption. As long as empowering innovations create more jobs than efficiency innovations eliminate, and as long as the capital that efficiency innovations liberate is invested back into empowering innovations, we keep recessions at bay. The dials on these three innovations are sensitive. But when they are set correctly, the economy is a magnificent machine.”

Unfortunately, we have been experiencing an imbalance of efficiency innovations – innovations that reduce the cost of making and distributing existing products and services - thus the lack of growth. Although this type of innovation is essential, efficiency innovations streamline processes and, therefore, reduce jobs at the same time.

What encourages me is that HubSpot, the Cambridge marketing firm focused on social media, received funding not only from some private equity investors, but also from Boston mutual fund giant, Fidelity. The funding enables HubSpot to add 400 jobs in Cambridge and open an office in Ireland. All good. Living in Boston, Fidelity is a bit of a barometer of how our city is doing. It employs about 38,000, the majority in Boston and New England. If Fidelity is growing, Boston is growing. If Boston is growing, Massachusetts is growing. Last year, Fidelity cut jobs in Massachusetts after having held on to their employees as long as they could during the recession. So I am happy to see them as an investor in a social media company: a statement about social media’s role in our economy and a statement about Fidelity’s willingness to spend capital. Growth is happening. And the election tomorrow is all about growth.

It will be interesting to see how social media is used during tomorrow’s election. I have noticed that social media has not helped us keep issues in the forefront of our minds. Social media helps broaden reach but often doesn’t have the depth to make a lasting impact on the recipient. Even though we may get more information about candidates, it doesn’t mean that we retain it. Getting so much information dilutes the importance of any single piece of information. For some, the issues from the conventions and the debates are hard to recall. It is all about what has been said in the last 5 days. We, as a culture, have a miniscule attention span. The information flying at us doesn’t seem to have time to make its mark. Or maybe just the catchy stuff sticks. 

Tuesday will be quite a day. For anyone who needs a last-minute review of Mitt Romney’s record as governor of Massachusetts, I am happy to assist with this link. Full disclosure on what many MA residents think of their former governor: one analyst on NPR today referred to Romney not as Massachusetts’ “favorite son” but as our “ex-son-in-law.”