Part 4: The New York Years (30-40)

In 1993, at 30 years old, I moved to New York City to pursue my love of writing fiction. I had a whopping $400, no job, and a bedroom in a tiny East Village apartment with an ex-theater owner friend from South Beach, Florida. I didn’t really have a plan but had always wanted to live in New York. My family was from the city - right off the boat at Ellis Island at the turn of the 20th century. My grandfather had so many stories about being a young man, hanging out in the West Village at the various speakeasies. Or playing golf on the island (Long Island). He was an awesome scratch golfer and would caddy in the summers when he was a kid.

I’d left sunny Miami - just six months back from San Francisco - for Gotham in the middle of a snowy January, and the first job I was able to secure was working for an artist (cataloging his paintings and organizing dinner parties) with a loft studio on Houston Street in Soho that he shared with 100 parrots and a hedgehog. He’s subsequently become quite famous - for painting parrots!

My second position was as a receptionist for an Upper East Side fashion PR agency, representing a hefty dose of bold-face names. That was an interesting juxtaposition - heading off to work from my tiny East Village apartment to their glitzy office. I couldn’t afford a gym, so I walked to work for the exercise.

It was all hands-on deck for events, so I took the then dodgy L train and scoured Domsey's (a vintage clothing shop in Brooklyn) for fashion I could remake into something I could wear to the high society shindigs they created - there was no such thing as affordable fast-fashion back then.

When the owners (legendary figures in the business) figured out that I could write they had me doing press releases and helping organize their various high-profile society events and fashion shows. They also found out that I had a bit of a name back in Miami producing events, working with a handful of rising artists and basically operating as a society girl in the burgeoning South Beach scene. No one understood why I had decamped for New York when I clearly had a lot going on in that community, but I knew I needed a change of scenery and was more than willing to start all over again, at the bottom - which I did.

After three years at the PR firm, I went to work for a rather famous book publicist who had recently started her own agency. It wasn’t a good fit (my fault!) and she fired me within six months, which is probably what launched my career. I was getting tired of writing and getting agents - good literary agents, who believed in my work - but couldn’t land a deal. 

Also at that time, something seminal happened in my life that would add an unshakable layer of wellbeing and purpose to everything I did. At a terrible low, broke, struggling with an illness and dealing with the death of a mentor, I made the decision to return to my Christian roots. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.” I read that scripture in Hebrews, and it all came together for me. If I trusted God with my life and believed in Him to be there for me, I had a deep conviction that no matter what things looked like, or even if things turned south, all would be well.

That faith has underpinned every yes that I have considered or pursued, in and out of business. My world was remade then, and it was the best decision of my life.

I also decided it was time to buckle down and do a career that would pay the bills. My first “real” job, after my unemployment checks ran out, was working for a lifestyle PR firm where I learned about branding. I went in as a freelancer to help secure media coverage for an event in Las Vegas featuring Isaac Hayes. I failed miserably, but my work ethic (I did not give up!) impressed the owner and she offered me a job. Oh my, that was a journey of seven years. It was an education in the Hollywood X Factor, we helped consumer brands (first time we started using this word broadly - I hated it!) connect with celebrities, we launched fashion brands and retail stores, worked on some of the first big film/brand integrations (Men in Black and Ray-Ban). And we started supporting some of the biggest advertising agencies to help strengthen their name as thought leaders in the field. That’s where I met legendary fashion brand master Mike Toth (Tommy Hilfiger, Wrangler, Nautica). He basically coined the term "Brand DNA”. As a client of the agency, I learned so much from him about the art of building brands. When the owner of the lifestyle firm decided to retire after 9/11, I asked Mike if he wanted to start a PR division. And that’s how Brand Building Communications was born.