I'm a Mother First...

It seems like only yesterday that my partner was born. My partner being my 23 year old daughter Suzannah. Suzannah is my business partner in the WECAI Network™ and for the past several years the manager of my retail florist. She has been one of the most important elements of my success – in more ways than one. She is one of those exceptional young women – self-confident, intelligent, extroverted, engaging and about 100 other adjectives one would use to describe an incredible human being.

I am going to miss her. Why, you ask? Because she just graduated from college and started working for someone else. That someone else is Jay Berkowitz, President of Ten Golden Rules – a “B2B internet marketing agency with a wide array of internet advertising and marketing consulting services to help small, medium and large businesses get qualified traffic to their websites.” Jay is also a friend and colleague. He is one of the smartest men I know and what I most appreciate about him is his willingness to share his knowledge with others – including the competition. You will read more about Jay in future posts.

A few months ago, as Suzannah’s graduation was approaching, I started to think about her future. She has a Bachelor’s in Business and Marketing and her Master’s is going to be in eCommerce. She loves the Internet even more than I do. I value Suzannah – her knowledge and her viewpoint about business and life. She has wisdom far beyond her years and I appreciate her opinions and advice. She has taught me so much I could write books about the subject (maybe I will).

Back to her future – I realized that Suzannah had a choice to make. She has all this newly acquired education that she really needed to do something with or she could continue to work with me running my flower shop. To me this is a no-brainer. You don’t spend thousands of dollars and years in college to be a manager in retail unless you hope to one day own your own. And I knew Suzannah wanted to do something with the Internet, that retail, as much as she loves the people, she prefers the unlimited opportunities the Web offers. She needed a challenge – to get out in the world and learn new things, be exposed to new people.

And although there is comfort in knowing what to expect every day when you go to work – there is little challenge. Women like Suzannah need a challenge. They need to be intellectually stimulated and feel a strong passion for what they do.

Suzannah has never really worked for anyone else (unless you count the year she spent in Orlando when she was a mattress tester or when she sold a water solution system by appointment). I don’t count that because she was only gone a year and when she returned, it was as though she never really left.

She’s not here every day anymore. Jay was so impressed with her experience and skills, he asked me if I would consider letting her go. Letting her go? I would never let her go – but I do know she has to spread her wings. So I encouraged her to apply for the job at Ten Golden Rules – and she started last Monday.

You might ask, "why?" Well, I’m a mother first. I want what is best for my children. And she isn’t the first one to go out on her own … my oldest daughter Jennifer left a couple of years ago to run her father’s roofing company. He made her an offer she “couldn’t refuse.”

Suzannah still “works” for me one day a week, but it’s not the same. I am trying really hard to adjust, and I miss her. It isn’t always easy because I can’t just pick up the phone and intercom her … of course there’s always email. And I’ll always be her mother.

PS. We are still partners in the WECAI Network™ and she still maintains our websites – this is something we are both passionate about – and we are building a company that has great potential and promise.