Dvance p raise for minding Their Own Business

party in the bookstore for her” and these high-quality actions represent 
the time that the bookseller gave “the community.”
Maria, the public relations professional, described a situation where 
she had to support a young employee under extreme pressure from a 
client to change her plan of action at a site:
So I got a call one day [from a client who] said you know, this young lady is 
not working out. She is not working out at all. She doesn’t know what she’s 
doing and you know, you need to come and take charge of this thing because 
all hell is breaking loose around here, it is falling apart. So I immediately left 
what I was doing and literally ran over there, only to find that the poor child 
was doing precisely what I had told her in the way that I had instructed her, 
but because they kept questioning her and challenging her, she lost her confi-
dence level and she didn’t have the years of experience that I would have to 
challenge right back, although she knew what she should say.
It turned out that the veteran’s employee was “beaten … into a state 
of submission” because she would not succumb to the suggestions for 
changes that the client was offering. Maria “pulled it back together” 
and made sure that the young woman in question stayed on the job 
because she “thought to send her back to the office would almost be 
sending her back in disgrace.” It was clear to the public relations pro-
fessional that the young woman “had done nothing wrong really” and 
that “she was a little young to withstand the kind of pressure that they 
were putting on her.” Maria was happy to report that things worked 
out to everyone’s satisfaction and that they “still have the contract.”
Finally, persistence is a sign of character. It embodies the belief 
that hard work pays off and that commitment to serving clients at the 
highest possible level is a mark of the quality of the person providing 

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that service. The results that come from doing a job well is the reward 
for the determination to do one’s very best. In their own words, the 
business leaders tell of their hard headedness and the returns that they 
have enjoyed as a result of their effort to be the best at what they do.
In this reflection, Gee talked about the preparation for an interna-
tional competition and the attention to detail that is required of her 
when she had to prepare the flowers:
Well, you take in all of these tropicals [local flowers], you can’t get them to 
buy up there [in the country where the team is competing] …. You usually 
get people that bring it up [to the competition] for you, it might cost more. 
But you don’t have this [huge] set of boxes to tote with you. Take these boxes 
when you get them cleared [at customs]. I have to mark them, put, … shred 
paper into the box. You have to line the boxes in plastic, that’s number one. 
Then you have to put shredded paper, damp it and lay these things one by 
one by one …. So they don’t get [knocked] because if it’s this bruise on it, you 
can’t use it. If it has the slightest blemish. So that’s the whole story, and that’s 
usually the middle of May. All the week from the fifteenth to the twentieth is 
packing, five days of packing.
Miss Nadine, the book publisher, described her efforts to make a book 
meet her exacting criteria:
I mean I read everything in the book, I don’t know how many times, I’ve lost 
count of how many times, I probably could rattle off verse by verse now, but 
each time I read it I was like “oh yeah, yeah I knew that person, I’ve heard of 
that or I’m familiar with where it is coming from even if I don’t know who 
she met along the way and who was in that photograph, I still recognized the 
person.” There was a common ground even though the paths were different 
and quite different in many, many ways. I was still able to connect …. I would 
like to be able to connect with the products that I work on, with the projects 
that I have. If I don’t connect I can’t do it, I can’t do it justice and the end prod-
uct has nothing of me, and that just would never work. So the pleasant part 
of it was in the connection, was in finding out that I knew, I knew where the 
path was going, where it came from, I understood it … just a knowing. And 
that is always a good thing. To know, know where the project is coming from 
and know where it’s going.
The character that a persistent person embodies says a lot about 
their values and the lengths to which they will go in order to make 

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practical the philosophy that inspires their work ethic. In this regard, 
Fona’s reflections say a lot about her determination. When she talks 
about working to train young people so that they might prosper in 
their lives, she shares the insight that “you know that the path you’re 
on sooner or later is going to reap the benefits [for the people in 
your business].” She questions the way in which people have been 
encouraged to take it easy rather than to strive for their best possible 
level of productivity when she asks the question “Is it a skill level 
that exists in our community and are people relegated to menial jobs 
to the point they can’t even think or function without being given 
tasks that say, you know, you move this and you put it here, so every 
day they come to work and they move it and put it there?”
This means that this boss has to accept “a sad reality” but it does 
not discourage her from believing that “when you think you can, you 
know, create an opportunity for people and they can with your guid-
ance, can figure out how to make this opportunity beneficial for them 
in their own minds.” Both Marcus and Fona are committed to the phi-
losophy that they must “keep digging until you find the right people 
because they have to be out there in our community, and we don’t have 
to hire a Mexican, we don’t have to hire an Indian, we … have to be 
able to get the people in [our] community to operate at a higher [level] 
right now, that’s the challenge” and they are determined to meet that 
goal.
The Five Themes That Reappear Across the Interviews
Across all of the interviews, the women leaders shared similar attitudes 
to their journey in businessownership. These entrepreneurs, together, 
had been in business over seventy-five years at the time that the inter-
views were conducted. Each of them has a story that impresses the 
listener for their creativity, determination, business acumen, and vision 
for their future. Following are selected quotes from their interviews 
that represent the five themes of philosophy, family, business, literacy 
rituals, and coming events.

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