Stacey shares not only what she learned from those that lead but how she enjoys lifting up and helping others launch their dreams. She was taught early from her parents to always keep an eye on the details, learning how to become a problem solver and promoting those solutions, while understanding the need of others. She has learned the best lessons from her girlfriends, those who others call consumers, by asking them what they want and building a community that knows no one can do anything on their own. She then applied those gifts from so many to create two of the largest TV shopping’s top beauty companies while marketing and branding herself and now more joyously other entrepreneurs and their dreams. But, it has not all been easy, married three times, with two companies that didn’t make it in the tech bubble and having shared her wealth of knowledge and her family’s money with others that didn’t always pay off or pay back her good will! She has had business partnerships that have dissolved, and her business (and livelihood) came crashing down from being on the top.
In these life and business lessons, Stacey opens up and shares for the first time how she transformed some of these heartbreaking failures into her greatest successes. She now accesses her unparalleled insight and exciting new and trustworthy business partners to help others build stronger partnerships, thriving businesses, and high-profile relationships while developing mentors and brand ambassadors that learn firsthand that it’s always important to lead by example.
I started my life as a young entrepreneur while growing up in Florida building fences, helping birth animals, branding cattle and driving 18-wheelers as the eldest daughter of my cattle ranching family. I learned the value of a day’s hard work and the sense of accomplishment enjoyed when tasks are completed. As much as I loved working with my hardworking parents and sister, my encounter with fashion and beauty stemmed from a dare and stubbornness. It was a world I certainly wasn’t destined to enter, but with God’s grace and a little luck, I found the path that worked for me. It was the work ethic I learned at an early age that helped me to excel. I have always enjoyed the beginning of a process as much as the end. I love the progression of a concept, what you can envision, build with your hands and appreciate with your heart. All these things need to be in harmony to create a formula for success.
Photography by Annie Marie Photography
My dream career started from a chance meeting with Eileen and Jerry Ford at a fundraiser in Florida. I was representing Shriner’s Hospital for Children, as Miss Polk County. A short discussion with Eileen led to a representation contract that let me tour the world as a cover, catalog and runway model for over 20 years. I was very honored, as a NYC based model, to be with FORD, Wilhelmina, and IMG for over two decades with 15 other agencies around the world. It was an amazing journey, and I am forever appreciative for the people I met and their world they shared with me.
What most people don’t understand about modeling is that it is a 24/7 sales and marketing job where “you” are the product, a commodity. A busy model interviews for a job five to ten times a day and each “go see” (i.e. casting) the agency sends you on is an opportunity for success and, of course, rejection. The difference between yes and no might be as simple as the length of your hair or the color of your eyes, your height, your book or card, but you never hear why you didn’t get the job. I learned that people saying “no” is just part of business, and it was nothing personal. I loved being challenged and found that most no’s are actually maybe’s or just…not this job—some days it just isn’t your turn.
Our dreams are our personal realities in an excuse-free world…dream BIG!
I took everything in; asking questions and studying the designers that I worked with, learning what made them successful. It was a time when women, fashion, and glamour were significant, in my opinion even more so than our modern era today — it was in the mid-1980s that we associated a distinct cultural icon: the supermodel. Every moment of those two decades traveling the world and working with such amazing models, designers and their teams was truly a dream. I built relationships, even with the clients who said no, because I knew, even back then, that how you treat people or customers would come back to you.
That relationship-critical, “customer first” understanding has been the fundamental driver of our cosmetics companies and how we address issues every day. Our first company, Models Prefer, was simply an extension of my years as a model and meeting others who were gracious enough to share their treasures, talent and time and me being willing to learn, and then years later, being able to translate what I was taught into products I knew would work for all women, no matter age, ethnicity or budget. Many of the items, like our Universal Eyebrow pencil (proudly sharing with you…over 13 million sold to trusting and loyal girlfriends) is still being sold 23 years later—an amazing product launched during my first show on QVC. I believe that our companies, Models Prefer and ybf beauty, have thrived on TV because we stick to the “customer first” standard that got us started.
Photography by Carlos Velez
Combined with this, I ensure to communicate beauty from the inside out—it’s not about vanity; it comes from a place of self-respect, and we, as women, putting our best face forward each and every day, not just for others but most importantly for ourselves. Sharing products on TV around the globe with my hair in rollers and no makeup and showing women how they can enhance their beauty is what makes the brand approachable, informative and I hope fun. This two-way communication has created a community. I am grateful to all our networks for allowing me their platform to make amazing friendships; my biggest accomplishment in business.
My life today has been touched by many remarkable people who have trusted me with their purpose. At Women’s Leadership LIVE (WLL), we work with women to reveal their secrets, their successes and failures: embracing all it takes to birth a brand, an identity, a product that is worthy to take to market; it is our diversity, willingness to make change, learning from our mistakes and owning up to the ones we have made that makes us all stronger entrepreneurs. Until we do that, we are not open to appreciate the journey of turning lemons into lemonade; using concepts that can repurpose an idea or product that makes it into our world and beyond and into a lifestyle that others desire. The women on our WLL entrepreneurial team and our cherished enlightened men share their fierce and fabulous hard working efforts with the next generation of business owners so they can see what happens when we lead! You will meet some of these women in this issue, plus many others’ journeys we can’t wait to share and their appreciation for being hardworking Entrepreneurs.
Photography by Fadil Berisha
And, in reference to the next generation, one of my most treasured relationships is that of being a mother to my two daughters, Knox and Lou. People say, “I admire the way you approach motherhood, with courage and that you have passed that onto your daughters, Knox & Lou.” When I have seen them interact with my friends who ask where they are going next my thoughts are, “yes, they are travelers too, models, entrepreneurs, brilliant, bright, bold students and career women, more importantly, they have never met a stranger”. My sweet David and I respect and love our daughters; we like the people they have become. They have daddy’s Harvard brains and his never give up attitude, and opposites do attract, as he operates in a very relaxed, deliberate way, which is a great balance for all of us!
Your attitude is your currency — own it! It’s your best quality, never give away that power. You can always bring something of value to our world and that is exhilarating!
As you can likely see, I am regularly inspired by people, and also, natural beauty—the resourcefulness and where life intersects the two to create beautiful and useful things. As an intense consumer of information, I find ideas for products and business concepts through “curated observation”. For example, I enjoyed taking a few college courses studying architecture and how structures affect their environments—when you see a beautiful building, your depth of understanding is just what you see—not what you know is the process to create that beauty and how others will be affected by it. The same holds true for products, ideas, businesses and, of course, people. The more you know about a topic, the greater your appreciation of the result. Inspiration comes to me when I see how to enhance a result or a process.
STACY’S 10 PIECES OF ADVICE FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS
1. Passion is important—execution and preparation will be the reasons why you are successful.
2. Business cannot be passive—you need to be full-on in the “strategy department”—just like an athlete going every day to the Olympics!
3. Tell (or show) consumers about your idea (or product)—understand that nobody cares unless they see how it positively affects their life.
4. Be prepared with three features and three benefits to the consumer about your product (or service). And, accept that features and benefits are not the same thing…they are very different!
5. Prioritize decisions and tasks based on how they will make your company money.
6. In order to make money, know your costs first.
7. Spend as much time as you can with your customers—ask questions and learn about their needs.
8. Remember Entrepreneurship is 24/7. Any “wantrepreneur” who says they want to start a business to earn passive income, to have more time to themselves and family should stop and stay at their J…O…B. Starting and running a business correctly is hard and all-consuming. Personal life is often sacrificed for the good of the business. It is, however, well worth it once you move from survival to sustainable (sustainable meaning that others—employees, customers and partners—support and participate in the value you have created).
9. Be “boundaryless”—For entrepreneurs, we see no limits; everything is possible, even more so at a young age, with parents, loved ones, friends and educators who inspire and are brilliant in common sense, as well as, book knowledge, with their warmth and love. You are taught to see all the possibilities others don’t, you learn not to be afraid to take chances or risks for the dreams you want and need to achieve. You learn that your imagination is fed by stories of others that have come before us and what they have experienced, to be present and to observe the interests of others; through life lessons, we find solutions, which teach us to dream without limitations—we soon find out we are able to solve a situation or problem. Out of problem-solving is how we all make a good life, and entrepreneurs make products and services that serve a purpose.
10. Teamwork works when we collaborate and understand nothing great was ever built alone; this is when we truly begin to strategize about ourselves, our businesses, our brands and our consumers for growth so we can achieve long-term success.
Stacey’s Experience to Build Excellence
A STRONG STRATEGY is EVERYTHING in BUSINESS!
Yes, there’s the basics: marketing, financial, tech, growth, brand, sales, your exit and so on.
Yet most of us never think what about our strategy with our people.
This is by far THE most important part of any business, and the part we sometimes miss.
LESSON LEARNED: This quickly can become chaotic and costly. In fact, it can cost us our business.
Answering the following questions can help us determine where we are as either:
A start-up
An established business
A family business
A partnership
A stalemated business
First, we have to know about ourselves. If you are in a partnership—how well do you know your partner(s)? Do your dreams and goals align? Do you and your partner(s) talk about the difficult issues? Is anyone listening? Are there issues unresolved? Are you scalable, is your business growing or going off the rails?
HINT: IF YOU’RE NOT GROWING, YOU’RE NOSE-DIVING
You already know how much we appreciate and respect you—the hard-working entrepreneurs. So at Women’s Leadership LIVE, as you can imagine, we start with PEOPLE—your leadership and partnerships, which can be the most ignored and the most overlooked because we are all so very busy just running the day to day business—and these two things should be considered and reviewed often—they are our assets!
STRATEGY ALWAYS BEGINS AND ENDS WITH PEOPLE—Let’s talk partnerships
Whether you have been in your partnership for one day or for years, sometimes partnerships can cause some chaos that can affect your business. The best entrepreneurs understand this and are continually focused on each other. But sadly, most are not. The biggest mistake is to treat your partnerships as a given and pay it little to no attention.
Paying attention to your partnership is the one element that we have to be aware of; it can be where all your opportunity sits; if left to work things out on its own, it can break your business. If you have not been paying attention, now is the time, before it’s too late, like it was for me.
SO BEEN THERE…Done That
I never will admit I am a partnership expert, but I do have some light to shed on the subject! I gained knowledge on the subject because I messed it all up. I am a person who worked hard for decades, created a great business with my husband and a great team, and then we thought we needed a partner and then lost it all. So, I went to work to find out why it all happened. Eventually, I got to a place where I needed to know where it all went wrong. It is important to learn from our mistakes, they are our best lessons. So if you are having issues with a relationship, business or partnership, ask yourself two simple questions:
1. What didn’t I know about the person I am with? 2. What didn’t I know about myself?
It was remarkable that starting from such a simple positioning it opened up a world of clarifying and revealing information and the lines of communication about what it takes for all of us to be a better business owner.
If you are like me, you will find out that your mess could have been resolved, had I just been more aware and talked more about what was really important and revealed my gut feelings about what was really happening. After, you think about the many years of support, collaboration, fun and success that decayed into friction, factions, gossip, disconnection, secrecy and sadness over everyday sh*t that turns a partnership into partnersh*t.
We all are successful when we understand that business is about the people and how we treat one another— we all win when we lead, lift and launch one another’s dreams!
When we are in the thick of it, we have no idea of the destruction we are creating for ourselves, and in the end, we lost not just the partnership but also our beloved business and all our loyal and talented employees.
Are you suffering from this same thing? If so, NOW is the time to stop it before it robs you of everything you have worked so hard to create.
What To Do, OH WHAT TO DO
This was not my first business, but it was our first partnership. When it all turned to sh*t, I was so emotionally, physically and financially devastated that I committed the next two years of my life to a mission to figuring out what went wrong and how I failed. No rest for the weary, I studied, looked at other leaders, meditated a lot, took a long needed rest, apologized to so many people, manufacturers, resources and family, listened to my gut and cried many days until I was able to reach a resolving turning point in my career and life. Yes, there are so many lessons to be learned in our failures after all the self-pity, remember there is hope in the future. But, if I wanted to move ahead with clarity, I had to face facts:
WHAT I HAVE LEARNED IN ALL THIS:
1. Asking myself what was my part in the breakdown and breakup:
My Part: I am an accountable adult who takes responsibility for the actions of my life and business.
Partnerships are just that—everyone carries their load and that of others too—people in our life are there because we all make the choice. Who and what we allow into our lives becomes the whole team’s responsibility. Even for the parts of running a business we don’t love or have much knowledge of we have to be aware of its procedures, operations and strategy.
2. What lesson was I meant to go through, and did I learn what I needed to move on:
My Lesson: I needed to become more self-aware of what I don’t know and not be afraid to learn it—be accountable—for me it was the finance structure. So, I learned how to read a P&L and financial decks. The fear of not knowing gave me a lot of freedom in so many ways, but it costs us dearly.
Photography by Fadil Berisha
Bad Partnering Happens BECAUSE WE CREATE IT.
In the end, our partnership turned bad not because my partner or I were evil people—far from it. I believe we were good people and accommodating business people. It failed because we stopped taking care of the partnership and let employees have too much responsibility they were not grown up enough to appreciate and handle.
Entrepreneurs and partners in life and business that usually have failure stem from a lack of these primary principles in 5 key areas:
1. Shortage of Self-Awareness 2. Absence of Accountability 3. Rarity of Clarity 4. Drought of Defined Development 5. Control in Coping with Change
It was important for our team to realize that our business was 100% a partnership failure and had nothing to do with the actual business failing that changed my life. This experience radically alters how I now view other business owners, co-owners and partnerships today.
From this experience came our mission at Women’s Leadership LIVE to assist, inspire and empower entrepreneurs on a strong human base from the beginning so each can avoid making the same malfunctions in building their businesses. Our team takes an intensive look at you and your business, management of your finances and resources, funding, manufacturing and supplier relationships, costs of goods and your partnerships so we can help you and your team shape something strong enough to bear and sustain the inevitable bumps in the road that come with owning a business. Most importantly, that we all understand that business is all about the people and how we are all able to lift up others to launch their business and lead!
It’s never impossible to start over!
And lastly, learn to listen to others and your gut (women’s intuition)! Learn that a great business and partnerships take time, work and commitment, and it will all be so worth it!
Feel free to check out our website www.WomensLeadershipLIVE.com. It’s full of rich information that is there for one purpose: to help YOU!
From Fashion Model to Marketing Mogul
Stacey shares not only what she learned from those that lead but how she enjoys lifting up and helping others launch their dreams. She was taught early from her parents to always keep an eye on the details, learning how to become a problem solver and promoting those solutions, while understanding the need of others. She has learned the best lessons from her girlfriends, those who others call consumers, by asking them what they want and building a community that knows no one can do anything on their own. She then applied those gifts from so many to create two of the largest TV shopping’s top beauty companies while marketing and branding herself and now more joyously other entrepreneurs and their dreams. But, it has not all been easy, married three times, with two companies that didn’t make it in the tech bubble and having shared her wealth of knowledge and her family’s money with others that didn’t always pay off or pay back her good will! She has had business partnerships that have dissolved, and her business (and livelihood) came crashing down from being on the top.
In these life and business lessons, Stacey opens up and shares for the first time how she transformed some of these heartbreaking failures into her greatest successes. She now accesses her unparalleled insight and exciting new and trustworthy business partners to help others build stronger partnerships, thriving businesses, and high-profile relationships while developing mentors and brand ambassadors that learn firsthand that it’s always important to lead by example.
I started my life as a young entrepreneur while growing up in Florida building fences, helping birth animals, branding cattle and driving 18-wheelers as the eldest daughter of my cattle ranching family. I learned the value of a day’s hard work and the sense of accomplishment enjoyed when tasks are completed. As much as I loved working with my hardworking parents and sister, my encounter with fashion and beauty stemmed from a dare and stubbornness. It was a world I certainly wasn’t destined to enter, but with God’s grace and a little luck, I found the path that worked for me. It was the work ethic I learned at an early age that helped me to excel. I have always enjoyed the beginning of a process as much as the end. I love the progression of a concept, what you can envision, build with your hands and appreciate with your heart. All these things need to be in harmony to create a formula for success.
Photography by Annie Marie Photography
My dream career started from a chance meeting with Eileen and Jerry Ford at a fundraiser in Florida. I was representing Shriner’s Hospital for Children, as Miss Polk County. A short discussion with Eileen led to a representation contract that let me tour the world as a cover, catalog and runway model for over 20 years. I was very honored, as a NYC based model, to be with FORD, Wilhelmina, and IMG for over two decades with 15 other agencies around the world. It was an amazing journey, and I am forever appreciative for the people I met and their world they shared with me.
What most people don’t understand about modeling is that it is a 24/7 sales and marketing job where “you” are the product, a commodity. A busy model interviews for a job five to ten times a day and each “go see” (i.e. casting) the agency sends you on is an opportunity for success and, of course, rejection. The difference between yes and no might be as simple as the length of your hair or the color of your eyes, your height, your book or card, but you never hear why you didn’t get the job. I learned that people saying “no” is just part of business, and it was nothing personal. I loved being challenged and found that most no’s are actually maybe’s or just…not this job—some days it just isn’t your turn.
Our dreams are our personal realities in an excuse-free world…dream BIG!
I took everything in; asking questions and studying the designers that I worked with, learning what made them successful. It was a time when women, fashion, and glamour were significant, in my opinion even more so than our modern era today — it was in the mid-1980s that we associated a distinct cultural icon: the supermodel. Every moment of those two decades traveling the world and working with such amazing models, designers and their teams was truly a dream. I built relationships, even with the clients who said no, because I knew, even back then, that how you treat people or customers would come back to you.
That relationship-critical, “customer first” understanding has been the fundamental driver of our cosmetics companies and how we address issues every day. Our first company, Models Prefer, was simply an extension of my years as a model and meeting others who were gracious enough to share their treasures, talent and time and me being willing to learn, and then years later, being able to translate what I was taught into products I knew would work for all women, no matter age, ethnicity or budget. Many of the items, like our Universal Eyebrow pencil (proudly sharing with you…over 13 million sold to trusting and loyal girlfriends) is still being sold 23 years later—an amazing product launched during my first show on QVC. I believe that our companies, Models Prefer and ybf beauty, have thrived on TV because we stick to the “customer first” standard that got us started.
Photography by Carlos Velez
Combined with this, I ensure to communicate beauty from the inside out—it’s not about vanity; it comes from a place of self-respect, and we, as women, putting our best face forward each and every day, not just for others but most importantly for ourselves. Sharing products on TV around the globe with my hair in rollers and no makeup and showing women how they can enhance their beauty is what makes the brand approachable, informative and I hope fun. This two-way communication has created a community. I am grateful to all our networks for allowing me their platform to make amazing friendships; my biggest accomplishment in business.
My life today has been touched by many remarkable people who have trusted me with their purpose. At Women’s Leadership LIVE (WLL), we work with women to reveal their secrets, their successes and failures: embracing all it takes to birth a brand, an identity, a product that is worthy to take to market; it is our diversity, willingness to make change, learning from our mistakes and owning up to the ones we have made that makes us all stronger entrepreneurs. Until we do that, we are not open to appreciate the journey of turning lemons into lemonade; using concepts that can repurpose an idea or product that makes it into our world and beyond and into a lifestyle that others desire. The women on our WLL entrepreneurial team and our cherished enlightened men share their fierce and fabulous hard working efforts with the next generation of business owners so they can see what happens when we lead! You will meet some of these women in this issue, plus many others’ journeys we can’t wait to share and their appreciation for being hardworking Entrepreneurs.
Photography by Fadil Berisha
And, in reference to the next generation, one of my most treasured relationships is that of being a mother to my two daughters, Knox and Lou. People say, “I admire the way you approach motherhood, with courage and that you have passed that onto your daughters, Knox & Lou.” When I have seen them interact with my friends who ask where they are going next my thoughts are, “yes, they are travelers too, models, entrepreneurs, brilliant, bright, bold students and career women, more importantly, they have never met a stranger”. My sweet David and I respect and love our daughters; we like the people they have become. They have daddy’s Harvard brains and his never give up attitude, and opposites do attract, as he operates in a very relaxed, deliberate way, which is a great balance for all of us!
Your attitude is your currency — own it! It’s your best quality, never give away that power. You can always bring something of value to our world and that is exhilarating!
As you can likely see, I am regularly inspired by people, and also, natural beauty—the resourcefulness and where life intersects the two to create beautiful and useful things. As an intense consumer of information, I find ideas for products and business concepts through “curated observation”. For example, I enjoyed taking a few college courses studying architecture and how structures affect their environments—when you see a beautiful building, your depth of understanding is just what you see—not what you know is the process to create that beauty and how others will be affected by it. The same holds true for products, ideas, businesses and, of course, people. The more you know about a topic, the greater your appreciation of the result. Inspiration comes to me when I see how to enhance a result or a process.
STACY’S 10 PIECES OF ADVICE FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS
1. Passion is important—execution and preparation will be the reasons why you are successful.
2. Business cannot be passive—you need to be full-on in the “strategy department”—just like an athlete going every day to the Olympics!
3. Tell (or show) consumers about your idea (or product)—understand that nobody cares unless they see how it positively affects their life.
4. Be prepared with three features and three benefits to the consumer about your product (or service). And, accept that features and benefits are not the same thing…they are very different!
5. Prioritize decisions and tasks based on how they will make your company money.
6. In order to make money, know your costs first.
7. Spend as much time as you can with your customers—ask questions and learn about their needs.
8. Remember Entrepreneurship is 24/7. Any “wantrepreneur” who says they want to start a business to earn passive income, to have more time to themselves and family should stop and stay at their J…O…B. Starting and running a business correctly is hard and all-consuming. Personal life is often sacrificed for the good of the business. It is, however, well worth it once you move from survival to sustainable (sustainable meaning that others—employees, customers and partners—support and participate in the value you have created).
9. Be “boundaryless”—For entrepreneurs, we see no limits; everything is possible, even more so at a young age, with parents, loved ones, friends and educators who inspire and are brilliant in common sense, as well as, book knowledge, with their warmth and love. You are taught to see all the possibilities others don’t, you learn not to be afraid to take chances or risks for the dreams you want and need to achieve. You learn that your imagination is fed by stories of others that have come before us and what they have experienced, to be present and to observe the interests of others; through life lessons, we find solutions, which teach us to dream without limitations—we soon find out we are able to solve a situation or problem. Out of problem-solving is how we all make a good life, and entrepreneurs make products and services that serve a purpose.
10. Teamwork works when we collaborate and understand nothing great was ever built alone; this is when we truly begin to strategize about ourselves, our businesses, our brands and our consumers for growth so we can achieve long-term success.
Stacey’s Experience to Build Excellence
A STRONG STRATEGY is EVERYTHING in BUSINESS!
Yes, there’s the basics: marketing, financial, tech, growth, brand, sales, your exit and so on.
Yet most of us never think what about our strategy with our people.
This is by far THE most important part of any business, and the part we sometimes miss.
LESSON LEARNED: This quickly can become chaotic and costly. In fact, it can cost us our business.
Answering the following questions can help us determine where we are as either:
A start-up
An established business
A family business
A partnership
A stalemated business
First, we have to know about ourselves. If you are in a partnership—how well do you know your partner(s)? Do your dreams and goals align? Do you and your partner(s) talk about the difficult issues? Is anyone listening? Are there issues unresolved? Are you scalable, is your business growing or going off the rails?
HINT: IF YOU’RE NOT GROWING, YOU’RE NOSE-DIVING
You already know how much we appreciate and respect you—the hard-working entrepreneurs. So at Women’s Leadership LIVE, as you can imagine, we start with PEOPLE—your leadership and partnerships, which can be the most ignored and the most overlooked because we are all so very busy just running the day to day business—and these two things should be considered and reviewed often—they are our assets!
STRATEGY ALWAYS BEGINS AND ENDS WITH PEOPLE—Let’s talk partnerships
Whether you have been in your partnership for one day or for years, sometimes partnerships can cause some chaos that can affect your business. The best entrepreneurs understand this and are continually focused on each other. But sadly, most are not. The biggest mistake is to treat your partnerships as a given and pay it little to no attention.
Paying attention to your partnership is the one element that we have to be aware of; it can be where all your opportunity sits; if left to work things out on its own, it can break your business. If you have not been paying attention, now is the time, before it’s too late, like it was for me.
SO BEEN THERE…Done That
I never will admit I am a partnership expert, but I do have some light to shed on the subject! I gained knowledge on the subject because I messed it all up. I am a person who worked hard for decades, created a great business with my husband and a great team, and then we thought we needed a partner and then lost it all. So, I went to work to find out why it all happened. Eventually, I got to a place where I needed to know where it all went wrong. It is important to learn from our mistakes, they are our best lessons. So if you are having issues with a relationship, business or partnership, ask yourself two simple questions:
1. What didn’t I know about the person I am with? 2. What didn’t I know about myself?
It was remarkable that starting from such a simple positioning it opened up a world of clarifying and revealing information and the lines of communication about what it takes for all of us to be a better business owner.
If you are like me, you will find out that your mess could have been resolved, had I just been more aware and talked more about what was really important and revealed my gut feelings about what was really happening. After, you think about the many years of support, collaboration, fun and success that decayed into friction, factions, gossip, disconnection, secrecy and sadness over everyday sh*t that turns a partnership into partnersh*t.
We all are successful when we understand that business is about the people and how we treat one another— we all win when we lead, lift and launch one another’s dreams!
When we are in the thick of it, we have no idea of the destruction we are creating for ourselves, and in the end, we lost not just the partnership but also our beloved business and all our loyal and talented employees.
Are you suffering from this same thing? If so, NOW is the time to stop it before it robs you of everything you have worked so hard to create.
What To Do, OH WHAT TO DO
This was not my first business, but it was our first partnership. When it all turned to sh*t, I was so emotionally, physically and financially devastated that I committed the next two years of my life to a mission to figuring out what went wrong and how I failed. No rest for the weary, I studied, looked at other leaders, meditated a lot, took a long needed rest, apologized to so many people, manufacturers, resources and family, listened to my gut and cried many days until I was able to reach a resolving turning point in my career and life. Yes, there are so many lessons to be learned in our failures after all the self-pity, remember there is hope in the future. But, if I wanted to move ahead with clarity, I had to face facts:
WHAT I HAVE LEARNED IN ALL THIS:
1. Asking myself what was my part in the breakdown and breakup:
My Part: I am an accountable adult who takes responsibility for the actions of my life and business.
Partnerships are just that—everyone carries their load and that of others too—people in our life are there because we all make the choice. Who and what we allow into our lives becomes the whole team’s responsibility. Even for the parts of running a business we don’t love or have much knowledge of we have to be aware of its procedures, operations and strategy.
2. What lesson was I meant to go through, and did I learn what I needed to move on:
My Lesson: I needed to become more self-aware of what I don’t know and not be afraid to learn it—be accountable—for me it was the finance structure. So, I learned how to read a P&L and financial decks. The fear of not knowing gave me a lot of freedom in so many ways, but it costs us dearly.
Photography by Fadil Berisha
Bad Partnering Happens BECAUSE WE CREATE IT.
In the end, our partnership turned bad not because my partner or I were evil people—far from it. I believe we were good people and accommodating business people. It failed because we stopped taking care of the partnership and let employees have too much responsibility they were not grown up enough to appreciate and handle.
Entrepreneurs and partners in life and business that usually have failure stem from a lack of these primary principles in 5 key areas:
1. Shortage of Self-Awareness 2. Absence of Accountability 3. Rarity of Clarity 4. Drought of Defined Development 5. Control in Coping with Change
It was important for our team to realize that our business was 100% a partnership failure and had nothing to do with the actual business failing that changed my life. This experience radically alters how I now view other business owners, co-owners and partnerships today.
From this experience came our mission at Women’s Leadership LIVE to assist, inspire and empower entrepreneurs on a strong human base from the beginning so each can avoid making the same malfunctions in building their businesses. Our team takes an intensive look at you and your business, management of your finances and resources, funding, manufacturing and supplier relationships, costs of goods and your partnerships so we can help you and your team shape something strong enough to bear and sustain the inevitable bumps in the road that come with owning a business. Most importantly, that we all understand that business is all about the people and how we are all able to lift up others to launch their business and lead!
It’s never impossible to start over!
And lastly, learn to listen to others and your gut (women’s intuition)! Learn that a great business and partnerships take time, work and commitment, and it will all be so worth it!
Feel free to check out our website www.WomensLeadershipLIVE.com. It’s full of rich information that is there for one purpose: to help YOU!
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From Fashion Model to Marketing Mogul
Stacey shares not only what she learned from those that lead but how she enjoys lifting up and helping others launch their dreams. She was taught early from her parents to always keep an eye on the details, learning how to become a problem solver and promoting those solutions, while understanding the need of others. She has learned the best lessons from her girlfriends, those who others call consumers, by asking them what they want and building a community that knows no one can do anything on their own. She then applied those gifts from so many to create two of the largest TV shopping’s top beauty companies while marketing and branding herself and now more joyously other entrepreneurs and their dreams. But, it has not all been easy, married three times, with two companies that didn’t make it in the tech bubble and having shared her wealth of knowledge and her family’s money with others that didn’t always pay off or pay back her good will! She has had business partnerships that have dissolved, and her business (and livelihood) came crashing down from being on the top.
In these life and business lessons, Stacey opens up and shares for the first time how she transformed some of these heartbreaking failures into her greatest successes. She now accesses her unparalleled insight and exciting new and trustworthy business partners to help others build stronger partnerships, thriving businesses, and high-profile relationships while developing mentors and brand ambassadors that learn firsthand that it’s always important to lead by example.
I started my life as a young entrepreneur while growing up in Florida building fences, helping birth animals, branding cattle and driving 18-wheelers as the eldest daughter of my cattle ranching family. I learned the value of a day’s hard work and the sense of accomplishment enjoyed when tasks are completed. As much as I loved working with my hardworking parents and sister, my encounter with fashion and beauty stemmed from a dare and stubbornness. It was a world I certainly wasn’t destined to enter, but with God’s grace and a little luck, I found the path that worked for me. It was the work ethic I learned at an early age that helped me to excel. I have always enjoyed the beginning of a process as much as the end. I love the progression of a concept, what you can envision, build with your hands and appreciate with your heart. All these things need to be in harmony to create a formula for success.
Photography by Annie Marie Photography
My dream career started from a chance meeting with Eileen and Jerry Ford at a fundraiser in Florida. I was representing Shriner’s Hospital for Children, as Miss Polk County. A short discussion with Eileen led to a representation contract that let me tour the world as a cover, catalog and runway model for over 20 years. I was very honored, as a NYC based model, to be with FORD, Wilhelmina, and IMG for over two decades with 15 other agencies around the world. It was an amazing journey, and I am forever appreciative for the people I met and their world they shared with me.
What most people don’t understand about modeling is that it is a 24/7 sales and marketing job where “you” are the product, a commodity. A busy model interviews for a job five to ten times a day and each “go see” (i.e. casting) the agency sends you on is an opportunity for success and, of course, rejection. The difference between yes and no might be as simple as the length of your hair or the color of your eyes, your height, your book or card, but you never hear why you didn’t get the job. I learned that people saying “no” is just part of business, and it was nothing personal. I loved being challenged and found that most no’s are actually maybe’s or just…not this job—some days it just isn’t your turn.
Our dreams are our personal realities in an excuse-free world…dream BIG!
I took everything in; asking questions and studying the designers that I worked with, learning what made them successful. It was a time when women, fashion, and glamour were significant, in my opinion even more so than our modern era today — it was in the mid-1980s that we associated a distinct cultural icon: the supermodel. Every moment of those two decades traveling the world and working with such amazing models, designers and their teams was truly a dream. I built relationships, even with the clients who said no, because I knew, even back then, that how you treat people or customers would come back to you.
That relationship-critical, “customer first” understanding has been the fundamental driver of our cosmetics companies and how we address issues every day. Our first company, Models Prefer, was simply an extension of my years as a model and meeting others who were gracious enough to share their treasures, talent and time and me being willing to learn, and then years later, being able to translate what I was taught into products I knew would work for all women, no matter age, ethnicity or budget. Many of the items, like our Universal Eyebrow pencil (proudly sharing with you…over 13 million sold to trusting and loyal girlfriends) is still being sold 23 years later—an amazing product launched during my first show on QVC. I believe that our companies, Models Prefer and ybf beauty, have thrived on TV because we stick to the “customer first” standard that got us started.
Photography by Carlos Velez
Combined with this, I ensure to communicate beauty from the inside out—it’s not about vanity; it comes from a place of self-respect, and we, as women, putting our best face forward each and every day, not just for others but most importantly for ourselves. Sharing products on TV around the globe with my hair in rollers and no makeup and showing women how they can enhance their beauty is what makes the brand approachable, informative and I hope fun. This two-way communication has created a community. I am grateful to all our networks for allowing me their platform to make amazing friendships; my biggest accomplishment in business.
My life today has been touched by many remarkable people who have trusted me with their purpose. At Women’s Leadership LIVE (WLL), we work with women to reveal their secrets, their successes and failures: embracing all it takes to birth a brand, an identity, a product that is worthy to take to market; it is our diversity, willingness to make change, learning from our mistakes and owning up to the ones we have made that makes us all stronger entrepreneurs. Until we do that, we are not open to appreciate the journey of turning lemons into lemonade; using concepts that can repurpose an idea or product that makes it into our world and beyond and into a lifestyle that others desire. The women on our WLL entrepreneurial team and our cherished enlightened men share their fierce and fabulous hard working efforts with the next generation of business owners so they can see what happens when we lead! You will meet some of these women in this issue, plus many others’ journeys we can’t wait to share and their appreciation for being hardworking Entrepreneurs.
Photography by Fadil Berisha
And, in reference to the next generation, one of my most treasured relationships is that of being a mother to my two daughters, Knox and Lou. People say, “I admire the way you approach motherhood, with courage and that you have passed that onto your daughters, Knox & Lou.” When I have seen them interact with my friends who ask where they are going next my thoughts are, “yes, they are travelers too, models, entrepreneurs, brilliant, bright, bold students and career women, more importantly, they have never met a stranger”. My sweet David and I respect and love our daughters; we like the people they have become. They have daddy’s Harvard brains and his never give up attitude, and opposites do attract, as he operates in a very relaxed, deliberate way, which is a great balance for all of us!
Your attitude is your currency — own it! It’s your best quality, never give away that power. You can always bring something of value to our world and that is exhilarating!
As you can likely see, I am regularly inspired by people, and also, natural beauty—the resourcefulness and where life intersects the two to create beautiful and useful things. As an intense consumer of information, I find ideas for products and business concepts through “curated observation”. For example, I enjoyed taking a few college courses studying architecture and how structures affect their environments—when you see a beautiful building, your depth of understanding is just what you see—not what you know is the process to create that beauty and how others will be affected by it. The same holds true for products, ideas, businesses and, of course, people. The more you know about a topic, the greater your appreciation of the result. Inspiration comes to me when I see how to enhance a result or a process.
STACY’S 10 PIECES OF ADVICE FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS
1. Passion is important—execution and preparation will be the reasons why you are successful.
2. Business cannot be passive—you need to be full-on in the “strategy department”—just like an athlete going every day to the Olympics!
3. Tell (or show) consumers about your idea (or product)—understand that nobody cares unless they see how it positively affects their life.
4. Be prepared with three features and three benefits to the consumer about your product (or service). And, accept that features and benefits are not the same thing…they are very different!
5. Prioritize decisions and tasks based on how they will make your company money.
6. In order to make money, know your costs first.
7. Spend as much time as you can with your customers—ask questions and learn about their needs.
8. Remember Entrepreneurship is 24/7. Any “wantrepreneur” who says they want to start a business to earn passive income, to have more time to themselves and family should stop and stay at their J…O…B. Starting and running a business correctly is hard and all-consuming. Personal life is often sacrificed for the good of the business. It is, however, well worth it once you move from survival to sustainable (sustainable meaning that others—employees, customers and partners—support and participate in the value you have created).
9. Be “boundaryless”—For entrepreneurs, we see no limits; everything is possible, even more so at a young age, with parents, loved ones, friends and educators who inspire and are brilliant in common sense, as well as, book knowledge, with their warmth and love. You are taught to see all the possibilities others don’t, you learn not to be afraid to take chances or risks for the dreams you want and need to achieve. You learn that your imagination is fed by stories of others that have come before us and what they have experienced, to be present and to observe the interests of others; through life lessons, we find solutions, which teach us to dream without limitations—we soon find out we are able to solve a situation or problem. Out of problem-solving is how we all make a good life, and entrepreneurs make products and services that serve a purpose.
10. Teamwork works when we collaborate and understand nothing great was ever built alone; this is when we truly begin to strategize about ourselves, our businesses, our brands and our consumers for growth so we can achieve long-term success.
Stacey’s Experience to Build Excellence
A STRONG STRATEGY is EVERYTHING in BUSINESS!
Yes, there’s the basics: marketing, financial, tech, growth, brand, sales, your exit and so on.
Yet most of us never think what about our strategy with our people.
This is by far THE most important part of any business, and the part we sometimes miss.
LESSON LEARNED: This quickly can become chaotic and costly. In fact, it can cost us our business.
Answering the following questions can help us determine where we are as either:
A start-up
An established business
A family business
A partnership
A stalemated business
First, we have to know about ourselves. If you are in a partnership—how well do you know your partner(s)? Do your dreams and goals align? Do you and your partner(s) talk about the difficult issues? Is anyone listening? Are there issues unresolved? Are you scalable, is your business growing or going off the rails?
HINT: IF YOU’RE NOT GROWING, YOU’RE NOSE-DIVING
You already know how much we appreciate and respect you—the hard-working entrepreneurs. So at Women’s Leadership LIVE, as you can imagine, we start with PEOPLE—your leadership and partnerships, which can be the most ignored and the most overlooked because we are all so very busy just running the day to day business—and these two things should be considered and reviewed often—they are our assets!
STRATEGY ALWAYS BEGINS AND ENDS WITH PEOPLE—Let’s talk partnerships
Whether you have been in your partnership for one day or for years, sometimes partnerships can cause some chaos that can affect your business. The best entrepreneurs understand this and are continually focused on each other. But sadly, most are not. The biggest mistake is to treat your partnerships as a given and pay it little to no attention.
Paying attention to your partnership is the one element that we have to be aware of; it can be where all your opportunity sits; if left to work things out on its own, it can break your business. If you have not been paying attention, now is the time, before it’s too late, like it was for me.
SO BEEN THERE…Done That
I never will admit I am a partnership expert, but I do have some light to shed on the subject! I gained knowledge on the subject because I messed it all up. I am a person who worked hard for decades, created a great business with my husband and a great team, and then we thought we needed a partner and then lost it all. So, I went to work to find out why it all happened. Eventually, I got to a place where I needed to know where it all went wrong. It is important to learn from our mistakes, they are our best lessons. So if you are having issues with a relationship, business or partnership, ask yourself two simple questions:
1. What didn’t I know about the person I am with? 2. What didn’t I know about myself?
It was remarkable that starting from such a simple positioning it opened up a world of clarifying and revealing information and the lines of communication about what it takes for all of us to be a better business owner.
If you are like me, you will find out that your mess could have been resolved, had I just been more aware and talked more about what was really important and revealed my gut feelings about what was really happening. After, you think about the many years of support, collaboration, fun and success that decayed into friction, factions, gossip, disconnection, secrecy and sadness over everyday sh*t that turns a partnership into partnersh*t.
We all are successful when we understand that business is about the people and how we treat one another— we all win when we lead, lift and launch one another’s dreams!
When we are in the thick of it, we have no idea of the destruction we are creating for ourselves, and in the end, we lost not just the partnership but also our beloved business and all our loyal and talented employees.
Are you suffering from this same thing? If so, NOW is the time to stop it before it robs you of everything you have worked so hard to create.
What To Do, OH WHAT TO DO
This was not my first business, but it was our first partnership. When it all turned to sh*t, I was so emotionally, physically and financially devastated that I committed the next two years of my life to a mission to figuring out what went wrong and how I failed. No rest for the weary, I studied, looked at other leaders, meditated a lot, took a long needed rest, apologized to so many people, manufacturers, resources and family, listened to my gut and cried many days until I was able to reach a resolving turning point in my career and life. Yes, there are so many lessons to be learned in our failures after all the self-pity, remember there is hope in the future. But, if I wanted to move ahead with clarity, I had to face facts:
WHAT I HAVE LEARNED IN ALL THIS:
1. Asking myself what was my part in the breakdown and breakup:
My Part: I am an accountable adult who takes responsibility for the actions of my life and business.
Partnerships are just that—everyone carries their load and that of others too—people in our life are there because we all make the choice. Who and what we allow into our lives becomes the whole team’s responsibility. Even for the parts of running a business we don’t love or have much knowledge of we have to be aware of its procedures, operations and strategy.
2. What lesson was I meant to go through, and did I learn what I needed to move on:
My Lesson: I needed to become more self-aware of what I don’t know and not be afraid to learn it—be accountable—for me it was the finance structure. So, I learned how to read a P&L and financial decks. The fear of not knowing gave me a lot of freedom in so many ways, but it costs us dearly.
Photography by Fadil Berisha
Bad Partnering Happens BECAUSE WE CREATE IT.
In the end, our partnership turned bad not because my partner or I were evil people—far from it. I believe we were good people and accommodating business people. It failed because we stopped taking care of the partnership and let employees have too much responsibility they were not grown up enough to appreciate and handle.
Entrepreneurs and partners in life and business that usually have failure stem from a lack of these primary principles in 5 key areas:
1. Shortage of Self-Awareness 2. Absence of Accountability 3. Rarity of Clarity 4. Drought of Defined Development 5. Control in Coping with Change
It was important for our team to realize that our business was 100% a partnership failure and had nothing to do with the actual business failing that changed my life. This experience radically alters how I now view other business owners, co-owners and partnerships today.
From this experience came our mission at Women’s Leadership LIVE to assist, inspire and empower entrepreneurs on a strong human base from the beginning so each can avoid making the same malfunctions in building their businesses. Our team takes an intensive look at you and your business, management of your finances and resources, funding, manufacturing and supplier relationships, costs of goods and your partnerships so we can help you and your team shape something strong enough to bear and sustain the inevitable bumps in the road that come with owning a business. Most importantly, that we all understand that business is all about the people and how we are all able to lift up others to launch their business and lead!
It’s never impossible to start over!
And lastly, learn to listen to others and your gut (women’s intuition)! Learn that a great business and partnerships take time, work and commitment, and it will all be so worth it!
Feel free to check out our website www.WomensLeadershipLIVE.com. It’s full of rich information that is there for one purpose: to help YOU!
The Women Create Foundation is a catalyst for small but significant strides to empower women creators through grants that help bring projects to life and foster innovation.
