Photo courtesy of Therese Kay Photography

No matter who you are, it’s hard not to feel a personal transition each time you witness summer fade away and start preparing for the impending cold weather. I remember sitting on my front stoop in Florida in the middle of October and having a “whoa” moment as I realized that it was autumn. My favorite season had become unrecognizable to me, drenched in the persistent heat and humidity of the south.

Experiencing the seasons was something that our family was looking forward to coming home to when we moved back to Massachusetts, and every year I find myself appreciating the opportunity it gives me to note the passing of time, thinking about where the last three months have taken us and contemplating what the next few (or six, in the case of winter) months will bring. With winter staring us down after our Halloween Nor’easter, I’m already finding myself anxious about Christmas plans, New Year’s Resolutions (both business and personal), and strategies to survive the long winter.

How does one prepare for the holiday hubbub, the usual business that needs to be taken care of, and also grow and elevate life beyond the daily grind? This has been my new challenge. Now that I have mastered the highest levels of spirit-crushing productivity, I have resolved to take advantage of some of the results of that productivity–extra free time and a finished basement–and create a space separate from my office and every other place in our house that is overrun with toys and within reach of grabby toddlers. In this space I would really love to get back into some actual hands-on artwork.

Before I became a business owner and a mother, art played a huge role in my life. Watercolor, oils, pastels, collages and sculpture, all relics of my past life. As spread thin as I felt in my college days, I always made time for art in some capacity. Eventually that manifested its way to graphic design, and ever since then I’ve had a monogamous art relationship with Photoshop. Well, I’m sorry, Photoshop, it’s me, not you. I want to see other peop–um, media. Very simply, I need to explore other outlets. I’ve had a slab of wax in my basement for five years and it’s begging for some molding.

Right now my five-year-old has more focused artistic time than I do, and that realization, among others, has pushed me to get back to the basics of who I am (or once was) as a creative person. So on that note, I’m going to get off of my computer and get to it.

Enjoy these last moments of fall, friends!

As the blur of summer comes to a close, I have been getting ready for the fourth quarter rush. This is typically our busiest time of the year. New business is steady, but we are under pressure to launch most of our in-development projects by the end of the year. As a result I’ve reinserted myself more heavily into our processes, which I periodically do to see how we can optimize what we do and how we do it.

With my summer commitments safely in the past, this seemed like a great time to jump back into the thick of things. Then I got sick for a month. After a few weeks of feeling horrible, I did some WebMD’ing and decided to go to the doctor with my findings. I met with him and his army of medical interns to discuss my symptoms, and following a barrage of tests, my findings were confirmed, mostly. I had started to suspect that I had a stomach ulcer, when in fact it is only inflammation. It is what I refer to as a “baby ulcer” because telling people you have duodenitis sounds scary. (more…)

This week my husband decided to take me on one of his annual hiking trips to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I will preface this entire story by saying that I am not really a very physical or outdoorsy person. The office is my natural habitat, and while Jonathan did not drag me there kicking and screaming, I was definitely apprehensive about the whole thing.

Within the first hour of the 5,367 feet climb to the top of Mount Madison, I was silently cursing myself, my husband and everything holy as the terrain became increasingly difficult to negotiate. My feet hurt, then my neck, then my thighs, rounding up with my hips feeling like they may simply disconnect from my body. Annoyance turned to exhaustion, then to pure frustration, then to anger. It’s amazing how many phases and emotions are experienced on a journey like this, resulting in my absolute determination to reach the treeline in as short a time as possible.

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Ah, the age of microblogging. As much as I enjoy sharing snippets of my day, a sentence or two, lately I have found it really irritating to be limited to a finite number of characters. On Sprouter.com today I was challenged to keep my biography to 140 characters. Really? Have you read my bio? It’s a novella. Not long after, on Meetup.com, I was restricted to 250 characters when introducing or “applying” join a new group. Then there is the mother of the microblog, Twitter, with 140 characters, which is easy enough when you are reporting what you had for lunch.

So, here we are. The BLOG. That’s right, I can write as much as I want to! I might post a poem by Walt Whitman below, just because I can. I suppose there are pros and cons to the microblog challenge.

Pro: Short and Simple

There is absolutely no room for unnecessary adjectives, adverbs or run-on sentences. As an English major, I spent four years jamming sentences full of so many fancy words to meet a word count. In fairness, whittling your thought down to the essential points can be really beneficial. As a CEO, if more than three sentences come out of your mouth without a “point” to them, I’m already annoyed. Skip the fluff, spit it out and let’s move on! (more…)

This is the second installment of the series, and I’m determined to see this one through! A little known fact about me is that I grew up in Illinois! Chicago? Not even close. I grew up in a riverside town, population less than 4,000, about two and a half hours west of the city of Chicago.

As you can guess from the accompanying photo, I grew up on a farm of sorts. My parents had 25 acres of land, most of which were rented to nearby farmers for various crops, usually soy beans or corn. We had a barn and 5 acres fenced in to contain our menagerie of farm animals. We had everything  from sheep to ducks to pot belly pigs and always a mess of cats, all of whom I tended to with daily chores. I had sleepovers with friends in forts made of hay bales, I had my very own John Deere riding mower and the nearest mall was an hour away. (more…)

Raising three small children and running a business 5+ days a week is taxing, no doubt about it. I vacillate between enjoying the triumphs of entrepreneurship and the rewards of motherhood, to dreading the work day… and dreading the rest of the day. As with anything there are highs and lows, but rarely do I enjoy actual, legitimate, 100% downtime. Last week my sister-in-law sent me a link to a vacation package on Living Social. 58% off a trip to the Dominican! How could I refuse? We could make this work! This was the universe telling me that I need a vacation, surely.

This comes after back-to-back employee vacations. In a small business, whenever someone leaves for any significant length of time, it is stressful. We all work hard and contribute a solid 8 hours to projects every day, so losing even 5 days can really throw a wrench in things. As much as we prepare in advance, it never fails that suddenly everything that person was working on becomes urgent, clients get grumpy, we have to reassign work, make other clients grumpy, fun fun. Unfortunately for me, nearly everyone in the office took their vacations this fall, so as soon as someone came back (sigh), someone else left (grr), and naturally I am the wizard–in front of the curtain usually–trying to keep it all together, short staffed and increasingly short on patience. (more…)

In the past I have always sort of scoffed at those little motivational messages, like “Set a timer for 5 minutes and finish your task!” Pffft. Whatever, I’ll get it done in my own time, my own way. Well, now I realize that this is actually a very effective way to get a lot done in a short period of time. But because very little on my task list can be done in 5 minutes, my timer is set at around 3 hours. This happens to coincide with how long little Eva sleeps! After I get her comfortably and 100% sleeping, the timer begins.

My typical day involves checking email, updating the project schedule, making sure all our employees have questions answered and a work agenda for the day, lunch, more emails, maybe some design and/or brainstorming, and if I absolutely have nothing else to do, dreaded paperwork. Paperwork includes payroll, retirement contributions, organizing papers for filing, budgeting, taxes, bills (ick!) and anything that requires a call to customer service (double ick!). This is usually the very last thing on my agenda. Of all the hats I wear in the office, the finance manager role is my least favorite. But alas, the work still needs to be done and as much as I may dread it or procrastinate, typically it’s just faster if I do it instead of delegating. If we hit it big, this will likely be the first position I hire for! (more…)

Have you ever realized how a little bit of quiet time can result in some really great ideas? I think this is why people have revelations in the shower. It’s the 15 minutes in your day when you aren’t being distracted or stimulated by email, co-workers, kids or the general buzz of daily life.

A couple weeks ago I took the afternoon to enjoy the rare window of warm weather and sunshine that we were having here. I sat outside for about an hour eating cheesecake and doing nothing. Some might argue that I should have also been thinking about nothing, but achieving the “doing” nothing part is momentous enough for me, and the result was that I ended up having a really important idea for the business. After I finished my cheesecake (of course) I spent the next two days mapping out and implementing this new idea and service plan. Already it has made a significant difference in our ability to appeal to a broader range of clients and budgets. (more…)

It’s official, we’re in business kindergarten! Hmm, maybe business years are like dog years, because it definitely feels more like 40 than 5. In any case, I registered www.pearsestreet.com on March 8th, 2005, marking the birth of a new chapter in my life, and a whirlwind roller coaster ride into entrepreneurship. Five years feels like a short period of time, but it has been so full of activity, growth and learning. Here’s a retropective!

2005.

Pearse Street's First Logo Design, May 2005

As I was wrapping up the writing for my last issue at Destin Magazine, the idea of establishing Pearse Street as my first entrepreneurial endeavor took shape. I had spent the past year profiling local businesses for their features in the magazine, and in the process I could not help but feel that the potential for starting up my own business was well within reach. Thanks to the support of my husband, a military firefighter at the time, I designed our first logo after hours, and first website design came to life in March. Voila, we were in business! My first client was a local author and Hollywood actor, Thom Gossom, Jr. who I met while heading up the Emerald Coast Writers group. We ended up developing a number of websites for Gossom’s various projects, and maximized our circle of friends, cow0rkers and author connections to keep Pearse Street profitable for our first year in business. (more…)

Valentine’s Day conjures a lot of different feelings for different people, from love to resentment to indifference. This year, happily married, I find that it means more to me than simply having a significant other versus being alone, or even getting the usual trinkets, chocolates, flowers, etc. This year Valentine’s day is a celebration of the many amazing relationships that I have in my life. I am partial to my husband of course… I did get some beautiful flowers and a brand new kitchen after all! I’m sure I get some points from him too, for bearing his children and what not.

We spent this weekend with our family, as we often do. Today I was again reminded of how lucky I am to be a part of my husband’s especially large and welcoming family, who I hope I will never take for granted. We spent the morning with “Mamama & Papapa,” my husband’s grandparents. Even at their advanced age, you can find moments of intimacy between them. A hug they thought we didn’t see, or the silent understanding between them as they go about their morning. This all exists between the hearing-challenged bickering of course, which I cannot help but find cute. As we left, both gave me a big hug and kiss and told me that they loved me. I know they say it not out of habit or obligation, but because they mean it.

And of course there are our parents, cousins and siblings, who since our move from Florida have become so integral to our daily lives. I’ve maintained friendships from across the globe, having moved so frequently, but having a tight-knit community and our best friends essentially in our backyard is priceless. They care about our children, our successes and supporting each other when we need it most. You know you’re in the “crew” if you have low ball glasses dedicated to you in our liquor cabinet. (more…)