I’ve had many conversations with parents who were about to send their last kid off to college – there’s usually a combination of emotions coursing through the conversation.  On the one hand, happy dancing! Finally free to go back to having time to themselves!  But, inevitably, there is also a thread of sadness in the conversation… the house is going to feel so empty without him, etc. I am pretty sure they call it the empty nest syndrome and I imagine it is quite the adjustment to transition from being full time parents with a house full of children to being alone.

Of course, I will never have this experience being the quintessential bachelor with no children.  I am spared this particular experience – or am I?

While it’s true that I am not raising children or living a few decades with a house full of kids only to send them out into the world 20 something years later, I do consider the work I do at 270inc very much my “family” and it seems I have taken to adopting my interns as the “kids” of this house.  They come to me with little experience looking to learn and grow in business. They want to stretch their potential and explore the possibilities of their skills. They come here hoping to be a better person for the experience and I spend 12 weeks doing everything in my power to get them to that goal.  These people, (and yea, I call them the “kids” around the office if you must know) are an intricate part of this “family”.  From the moment they arrived, they jumped in and said, “let’s go!”  They challenged every boundary they thought they had, they took on projects they didn’t know they could handle with courage and conviction. They weren’t afraid to ask questions and they remained passionate as they accomplished their goals with a commitment to their work that is no less than excellent.

It amazes me how much courage it takes to face the unknown.  Each of these kids came here not knowing what to expect. For all they knew I would be the real world equivalent of Meryl Streep’s character in the Devil Wears Prada.  Or perhaps they would simply be stuck in a room filing mindlessly.  They didn’t know – but they came anyway, and they committed anyway.  Now, while I doubt I could be called a shrew, I am not the easiest person to work for.  I made them work hard and I pushed every envelope they had – I challenged them to believe in themselves because I believed in them and I knew they could handle the jobs they didn’t know they could handle.

Each of these interns is leaving here better than they were when they walked through the doors 12 weeks ago. They are amazing people with incredible skills and potential. Their confidence has grown tenfold – their abilities have increased exponentially and most importantly, when they go out into the world after they graduate college, I believe to my core that these 3 people will make a difference in the world. What I do know is that they made a difference in this publisher/editor’s life for the past 12 weeks. They weren’t the only ones learning and growing. I am as affected by them as they are by me.

So, while I know it’s not quite the same… I feel like I am getting a taste of what it’s like to send a house full of kids off to school and facing an empty nest.  I am admittedly doing a little happy dance as it is EXHAUSTING to work with 3 students all summer while juggling 5 jobs… but mostly,  I have a thread of sadness because this place is going to feel empty without them asking me every ten minutes if I need anything or reminding me when I have appointments or running to get me a soda cause I am so slammed I can’t even leave my desk.

Either way… I feel good about one thing – 270inc is better for having them be a part of our family – and for that, we are truly grateful.

When I decided to go into business with Harby Tran and started this magazine, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. It’s not as if I was a publisher of a magazine before. It’s not as if I was an executive editor either.  Don’t get me wrong, I have done a lot of things in my lifetime, but starting and building a magazine didn’t happen to be one of them.

Well, I can’t say that I am disappointed, because in fact, I’m not. I am thrilled that every day is a new adventure and every challenge is met with enthusiasm. Although, truth be told, most challenges are met with some severe language and then enthusiasm.  But my point is, sometimes you have to do the things you have never done before to find out you can do them. What if I had said… oh, thanks Harby, but I have never published a magazine before, so no thanks, I won’t do this project with you?  Or if I had said, gee, we need an editor for the magazine, but since I have never done that before I won’t take it on.

So often we fear challenging ourselves because we don’t believe we can rise to the occasion. We don’t believe we can accomplish something we haven’t tried to do. That fear of the unknown still penetrates our lives – just like the monster in the dark when we were kids.

I remember being afraid to go down the hill when I was learning how to ride my bike. My dad positioned me at the top of the hill and said, okay, put your feet on the pedals and go… I will be at the bottom to catch you… 3 times he said that, 3 times he walked to the bottom of the hill and 3 times he returned to tell me not to be afraid… the worst that would happen is that I would fall and hurt myself. “All wounds heal kid. The trick is to know they heal so you’re not afraid to fall.”

He went back down the hill and let me know we weren’t leaving till I tried it…

So there I was, 5 years old, petrified to the point of being paralyzed like late at night in the dark… and suddenly, and without reason, I put my little feet on the pedals, pointed straight forward and said to myself,  F-it!  And down I rolled… landed flat on my face a few seconds later when I lost control of the bike, and cut my face and leg pretty badly. My Mom was furious… but my Dad… he said – “see, you survived TC. And those cuts will heal. Don’t be afraid of what you Don’t Know… find out what’s out there so you can decide for yourself what you can and can’t do”.

From that day on, my life has been a series of F-it’s.  I couldn’t be happier that during an economic downturn in the most challenging time publishing has ever faced, when Harby asked me to start a magazine with him,  my inner child simply said – “sure – F-it!”

Members of the Frederick Key Note Speaker series: Ed Robinson, Heather Gramm, Bill Boggs, Pattee Brown, Richard Griffin, and Harby Tran

Putting together large events with important people, such as the keynote address by Bill Boggs on June 10, can be really stressful. Sometimes if feels like nothing is going to go according to plan … but I gotta tell you, when I got to the FCC Jack Kussmaul Theater and I saw Richard and Heather, our event partners …  my stress melted away into excitement. Everything was going exactly as planned; they were ready for anything and so was my crew. I was lucky enough to have my partner Harby Tran and three really great interns working with us that day. This project, which is produced by the folks from the City of Frederick’s Department of Economic Development, our company 270inc, and Ed Robinson of Vistage International, is a brainchild we are all so very proud of. Together we all did a fantastic job setting up the reception area outside the theater while we waited for Ed Robinson who was a rock star with Bill Boggs! Somehow he managed to get our star speaker to the theater, refreshed and ready on time, despite a train delay.

Our event sponsors, Key Financial Group and CorpOHS, were set up in the front area with the reception table. As I walked into the open area outside the theater, I started greeting our many guests. The food, set up against a back wall, drew our guests into a lounge area, and a cash bar encouraged them to mix and mingle.

When I saw who was arriving at the event, I was even more excited. Three city council members were in attendance and

Members of Key Financial Group with Bill Boggs, middle

Helen Riddle from Economic Development was there. Performance RX President Catherine Mock was charming as ever chatting up Moore Wealth owner Shabri Moore and Jasmine Sneed of Jasmine Sneed Promotions. Bill and Adam Swaney, owners of NEXimage, came out for the show as did Frederick County Bank President and CEO Marty Lapera and Paul Frey from Frederick County Chamber of Commerce. I got to chat up Pat Haley of BridgePath Scientific and Nick Damoulakis of Orases … well, you get the picture—there were more than 100 people there, I couldn’t possibly name all of them, but I think I spoke to almost everyone at some point. The place was chock full of the who’s who of Frederick.

Success tends to rub off on the people around you; hang out with someone who has a positive attitude, a strong work ethic and a little bit of luck, and you’ll start to see that success is entirely dependent on driving yourself forward. Bill Boggs is that kind of person. He’s interviewed more than 6,000 celebrities and power players in multiple fields, like music, business and entertainment. You name it, and he’s talked to the leader of it. He studied what made their careers soar, and from that he wrote Got What It Takes? - A book about the characteristics of success.

Bill Boggs inspires local business leaders

At the beginning of his keynote, he asked the audience a series of questions he wanted us to ask ourselves … and one really stuck with me. Are you doing what you really want to do or are you settling? The rest of the talk was about reinforcing the importance of that question and understanding how all these incredibly successful people got where they are because they didn’t settle. I wish I could recap in detail what he said, but I can’t. I do have an autographed copy of his book, though, so I will go back a thousand times and read and re-read his lessons. If you weren’t there, I wish you had been because it was such an inspiring evening … intimate, enlightening and entertaining.

Keynote speakers like Bill Boggs do more than just talk at an audience; they inspire ideas in us that lead to tangible results. Bill motivated me to do better than my best, and he gave me a reality check. While people can sometimes get lost in their day-to-day routine, he reminded me that the keys to success are hard work, confidence, following your passion and not being afraid to take risks. By the way, the answer to his question for me was… I absolutely LOVE what I do.

And according Bill Boggs … I definitely “GOT WHAT IT TAKES.”

PHOTOS BY BILL MILLIOS

You know, I have spent most of my adult life learning how to hide my “feelings” in a professional environment in order to ensure that I am perceived as “strong” or  “together” or “well adjusted” etc.   Insecurities are the devil’s work, no doubt.  But the thing about being human is that insecurities are part and parcel of the entire package.  And frankly,  if I am working with people who I hope will respect and even admire me, don’t I owe them  authenticity?  And doesn’t authenticity speak to revealing our flaws and confronting our “demons” honestly without pretense?

Personally, I don’t like dealing with  “posers”.   When I can choose,  I won’t choose the inauthentic.  So this begs the question… isn’t hiding my own insecurities inauthentic?  I’m going out on a limb here and saying… yeah, it is.   And yeah, I don’t want to do that anymore.

So, the other day I took a leap of faith and shared an insecure moment with my business partner. Instead of holding in my feelings and pretending to be “okay” with the situation,  I told him in detail about the emotional spiral into the shame-filled world of insecurity  I was experiencing at that moment.   I admitted these thoughts and feelings were completely irrational, and I detested admitting to having them.  What is most interesting is how little weight these feelings had when I said them out loud. They were FAR bigger in my head!  Frankly, as soon as I said them out loud they started sounding absurd to me.

In the end, after allowing me to vent, my partner did what any good partner would do under such circumstances… he asked me if I was done and then told me to snap out of it. He told me I am the smartest person in the universe; which under the circumstances was the exact right thing to say to me.  He reminded me that I walk on water and that everything about me is perfect.   In other words, he helped me laugh at myself and gave me some clarity during a very human moment of  insecurity.

The thing about being human is that we are ALL human, and we all have these feelings sometimes and we all get stuck in a spiral of shame or insecurities sometimes.   And don’t we owe it to ourselves to be human with each other?  Isn’t it better business to work with someone you feel is authentic?  I mean, come on… don’t you know when someone is SO perfect and SO poised, that they aren’t being authentic?

I think we have to embrace our humanity and allow each other to BE human.  Think about it… what could have resulted in hours and days of angst and unfocused wasted time, where I  would have marinated  in horrible feelings of inadequacy and paranoia,  was instead a minor blip in my day only lasting about 20 mins.  I expressed my insecurity,  saw how absurd I was being and moved on with the rest of my day without a hitch.

I try to count my blessings everyday, especially when it comes to the amazing adventure I am currently on with this new Magazine. I have so many reasons to be grateful… and so many reasons to be scared!  So when I am having one of those crazy human moments where I begin to think I don’t know anything and begin to wonder what made me think I could DO this… I opt to embrace my humanity and trust that my authentic self is far more interesting than the “Poser” I used to be.  I am not the strongest person in the room at ever moment. Shocking? Uh, no.

Wanna exorcise YOUR poser?  Lets start a revolution!

I was fortunate enough to attend a leadership retreat last week up in Gettysburg. The course uses the battle of Gettysburg and the men who led those troops into battle as a metaphor for leadership lessons.

Now, I should point out,   I am a huge advocate for leadership skills and I have prided myself on a certain propencity for leadership throughout my life. Even as a kid, without knowing it, I was a leader.  I have friends to this day remind me how I was the one everyone turned to for “where to go next”  or “what to do next” or “what should we say” etc.   I can’t say I ever realized I was a leader, I simply saw a hole and knew how to fill it.  That was my skill.   It wasn’t that I was always able to fill all the holes, but somehow I did know how to bring out the skills in those around me and encourage/enable them to fill the holes with their skills.  My leadership skills as a kid was all about knowing what to do when something needed to be done and knowing how to motivate those around me to get it done.

In present day I am always flattered to be referred to as a leader.  It’s an honor to be perceived by my peers as someone with leadership skills and over the past 20 years I certainly have made it my business to learn everything I can about leadership… which, I have learned, is a never ending quest.   Hence my excitement about the seminar I attended last week. (and yes, I just used hence in a sentence with a straight face)

Now,  if you get me in the right mood, you can find me standing on my favorite  soap box preaching about the lack of leadership we have in our current management culture and that that lack of leadership has resulted in hundreds of thousands of displaced and unengaged employees who have no allegiance to their employers. This particular problem is rampant in our society and explains the incredible dysfunction we see everyday in the work place. Did I mention INCREDIBLE dysfunction?  Ugh… seriously it makes me crazy!

But I digress… my point is, I learned something really helpful at this seminar that I thought I should share with anyone interested in leadership.   At the seminar, Steve Wiley points out that there are really two very simple styles with which people lead… and that style can be identified with 4 simple questions…

Answer these questions, choose one.

1.How do you get your way -  Are you Direct or Indirect?

2. How do you respond to people – Are you Reserved or Outgoing?

3. How do you pace yourself – Are you Urgent or Steady

4. How do you deal with details. – Are you Unstructured or Precise.

Now, here is what was wonderful to me… Wiley explained that neither “style” is good or bad, right or wrong.   On the contrary, 50% of the population is either one or the other.  When you answered these 4 basic questions,  you either were Indirect,  Reserved, Steady and Precise or you were Direct, Outgoing,  Urgent and Unstructured.

I always thought my “style” of leadership was Too strong or Too direct or something TOO…  but what I learned that day is that these are styles that can be stretched without needing to be changed.   I struggled with feeling inauthentic when I tried to be indirect or reserved. Those of you reading this who know me understand my point… those of you who don’t know me, trust me, being indirect or reserved is a serious stretch for me. But to stretch my style in order to deal with someone who is more indirect or reserved doesn’t mean I have to change  my style or be inauthentic, it simply means I have the capacity to dial it back or take into consideration the person I am speaking with will hear me a little better if I am a little less direct or a little more reserved.

So, I am sharing this because I think it’s important to realize we can stretch our style without compromising our authenticity. We can be ourselves and know that 50% of the population is just like us and the other 50% is the opposite of us.  When having trouble dealing with someone you realize is the opposite of your style… take a deep breath and try to STRETCH…