Profile

I work as a motivational speaker and PR consultant.

After twenty years as a rock radio personality, I wrote a book called “Rock to the Top: What I Learned about Success from the World’s Greatest Rock Stars.” Some of my speeches are based on the book.

I also do voiceovers for commercials and other types of corporate videos.

Writing skills. It doesn’t matter what you do, how old you are, or what industry you’re in, know how to write. Even if it’s a 140 characters on Twitter, check your spelling, please, unless your abbreviations are intentional.

Organization.

A positive attitude.

In my case, because I’m traveling and keeping crazy hours, it is important to take good care of myself. I exercise. I eat right. I don’t smoke.

A sense of humor. You have got to be able to laugh and say that’s crazy.

Communication skills. You must be able to speak to people without grunting, mumbling, saying the word “like” or saying “you know what I’m saying.”

I’m fortunate. I work at home when I’m not traveling. One of the bedrooms is my office. I have on blue jeans and flip flops and a black Labrador at my feet.

I love to work with crazy, creative, wonderful, interesting, and outspoken people. I don’t hang around with people who say, “What if? or I wish I had or It’s someone else’s fault.” I’m not one to surround myself with whiners and complainers and naysayers. I like people who when they hit a wall they don’t fall down, complain, or cry. They find a way to go around it or over it.

Yes. Some days I’m driving around Texas. Some days I’m flying around giving speeches. I was in Miami last week and then I came home and got in my car and drove three hours to San Marcos, Texas, which is an amazing little town. I trained 27 of their city department heads on how to talk to the media. Next week I’m flying to Minnesota for a three-hour meeting and flying back. Then I have three days of speeches in Minnesota.

A typical day is not a typical day. First and foremost I’m a mom. I have a ten-year-old and a thirteen-year-old and a stepson in college. Ultimately, my day revolves around whether everyone is where they are supposed to be at the time they are supposed to be with clean clothes, their teeth brushed, their hair done, and their homework ready.

Today, I answered emails for two hours. I have a contract for a speech for the Healthy Women Conference in May of next year. I have to put together an invoice and some contract changes.

I had several books ordered on my website. If you order my book through me they come autographed. I help the PR firm that I work with in Houston with their newsletter. I have to send everyone the writing assignments.

My husband has also written three science-based thrillers. I’m working with a publisher on getting those out. He is also a corporate aviation consultant. I need to get some billing out.

I have press kits for 32 Hard Rock Hotels that need to go out.

24/7. mommy, mommy, mommy.

The problem when you work from home is that you have to force yourself to stop, especially if you are a success, goal oriented person like I am. At first it was hard for me to walk away. I had to teach myself that when the kids get home for school, I stop. I make sure everyone has their snack and then I work until 5:30 at the latest. I shut the office down. And then I’m done. At 5:30 the office door closes. I chose to have a family and so we need to be a family. That’s one of my priorities. There aren’t a lot of motivational speaker emergencies.

I take them with me during the summer when I travel for speeches. They love hotels and room service. I involve them when I’m working on a speech. My thirteen-year-old was born forty-years-old. I’ve been able to bounce ideas off him since he was four.

We try to sit down to a family dinner every single night no matter how crazy things are. Everybody has to go around the table and do their three good things – the three highlights of their day. No matter how bad your day is you can always find three good things.

Everybody also has their responsibilities in the house. One loads the dishwasher. One unloads the dishwasher. One sets the table. One clears. Everyone works together as a team like in any office.

Freedom. The fact there is not a typical day.

Billing. It’s the only thing I don’t like about working for myself.

Laughter. My husband. My kids. Having a cup of coffee in the morning on the porch looking at the lake we live on. Hearing stories that make me feel good about people doing good in the world.

My mom. She taught me to say yes, please. and thank you. She taught me to write thank you notes. She’s always been open to new ideas.

Always fight naked.

All you have is your reputation. Protect it and I don’t mean just in a sexual way. I mean in the way you treat others, do for others, and the way you take care of you and yours. Be a good person all the way around. Do good in the world. I really believe that when you do good for others and work hard, you will make your own success and be happy.

I would have spent the money to fly to Berlin when the wall came down. It was a big part of history in my life.

I don’t have any real regrets. Everything single thing that has happened in my life, whether good or bad, including things that I thought were sad or devastating and that I would never recover from, have gotten me exactly where I am at this moment today.

I went off to college at a really young age. I had barely turned 17. I had no clue what I wanted to do. I ended up at a party one night with a DJ from the college town I was in. He was the biggest star I had every met. He was daring people to audition for the student radio station. I really wanted to go out with this guy. I thought, “If I audition, he will ask me out.” He never asked me out. Until Facebook three months ago, I never knew what happened to him. I don’t care if you are 80, your second grade boyfriend will find you on Facebook.

I went on to do rock radio for the next twenty years. It was just one of those things. The minute I put on the headphones, I felt perfectly at ease. I was home. It was where I wanted to be.

Radio was very stressful. It was a lot of hours. Rock radio can really be a younger person’s game but it was fun. It was exciting. I got to hang out with all of the rock stars and go to all of the shows. I was a local celebrity in my own right. There was lots of free food and concert tickets. It was like getting to be a local star. It was just fun.

I really loved music. I played a new song and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I knew it was going to be a big hit.

I traveled around the country. I hung out back stage. I did television. It was fun and exciting.

After twenty years, radio started changing. It was not fun anymore. It was becoming very corporate. There wasn’t room for any creativity, which was one of the things I had really enjoyed about it. I had gotten married and hanging out with rock stars all night wasn’t fun anymore. I wanted to hang out with my husband Charlie.

Ultimately it came down to maternity leave. I had my first child and we couldn’t agree on maternity leave. We parted ways. I was a couple of years short of when it became cool to be pregnant.

After I left radio, I went into local television. I thought I wanted to do TV. I discovered I hated it. People were more concerned with what your bangs looked like than what you said. Adlibbing on TV will also send a producer over the edge. I came from twenty years of adlibbing. I was very constrained. I did not like that.

I went back into radio. Somebody talked me into doing talk radio, which I thought was crazy. I’d never been a fan. I’d never done it. It was towards the beginning of the whole talk radio craze. The first six months I was awful. I finally just thought, “I just need to be myself and stop being what other people think I should be or how I think a talk show host should be.” I decided to be just my goofy self. It took off and I had a ball. But after a year, they decided to sell the radio station. We were locally owned. The new owners were going to change the format. I thought, “I’m too old to keep reinventing myself as a DJ.” So I started looking around.

I’m a firm believer that when you need something, let people know. For the most part people want to help you but they don’t read your mind. You have to speak up. I went to an acquaintance of mine who owned a PR company. I said, “Listen, I’ve been the Queen of self promotion for the last twenty years. I’m trying to figure out could I do this for other people, products or businesses. Would people take me seriously?” She looked at me and said, “When can you start?” It gave me a big boost in confidence. I was fortunate enough that I had a mentor in this person.

But again. You have to speak up. I’ve had so many people tell me that I’m so lucky. But you make your own luck. You have to let people know what you want.

I still do some PR. I’m on retainer to one of the largest PR companies in the southwest. I actually do PR for them because they are so busy doing PR for their clients. My husband says that I sell refrigerators to Eskimos. I love it. They are an amazing group of creative people. I still have to do PR and promotion for myself. I love working with other firms.

I also started a Space Store. Charlie the wonder husband is a research pilot for NASA. He trains the astronauts on how to land the shuttle. He flies the weightless plane. He is the pilot who recently flew the 747 with the shuttle on top. He transports the Shuttle from Edwards to Florida.

We would send gifts like astronaut patches and little onsies for babies. It got to the point where I got tired of people asking me where they could get those things. You couldn’t. There was no mail order or websites. The only place you could get these gifts was at Johnson Space Center or the Kennedy Space Center. I thought about it for about two years. I finally, without any ecommerce or computer knowledge, just decided to give it a try. I had to find someone to write the code and create the online presence. We grew from nine products to over a thousand products: All of the official astronaut passes, flight suits from newborns to adults. At one point we were marketing a used Russian Soyuz spacecraft for the Russians. We never really expected to sell it but it was a hoot getting the publicity and dealing with the Russians. I sold the Space Store to a NASA contractor. I ran it for five years for the new owners.

I moved on. I went back into radio. I did a syndicated radio show for about a year. I got tired of talking about business and other people’s creativity. I wanted to give it a shot again.

I got back into PR and formed my own company, Steel Media Services. I did promotions, marketing and voiceovers. People asked me to write articles.

I was still getting asked to speak a lot after I left radio. I remember one speech in particular. I spoke to about 300 middle school girls and their parents, who had grown up listening to me. It clicked. It was fabulous. Everyone got something from it. I thought I needed to write down some of the stories. It was also capitalistic. I thought, “If I’d had a book, I could have sold a few hundred books today.”

I went home and wrote the outline for my book, “Rock to the Top: What I Learned about Success from the Worlds’ Greatest Rock Stars.” I started writing in February 2007, I turned it into a publisher in October. It came out in March of 2008 and it has been going great. It came from my speaking engagements for business groups. I would talk to them about my philosophy about business. The crowd would be bored. I would be bored and it was excruciating. Everyone would have their misery and I would end the speech early and ask if there were any questions. It never failed that the sternest businessman in the crowd would ask, “Did you ever meet Van Halen?” I realized those were the stories people wanted to hear. I wanted to talk about business success and passion, the things I loved. People just wanted to hear stories about rock stars. I found a way to combine the two and get my point across. I told true real stories about hanging out with ACDC, Bon Jovi, the Rolling Stones and Van Halen.

Someone said to me once, “I wish I was famous so I didn’t have to work.” I went off on a tirade. That is my book -- a 200 page tirade. Rock stars work harder than anyone I’ve met in my life. They are phenomenal business people. They have a true passion. They keep up with the industry and the world around them. They are very sharp and well read. They network like crazy and they are very good about showing appreciation to both fans and people who have helped them along the way.

I’ve never looked at anything as challenges. I’ve just looked at it as something new to try.

Radio. I guess I could look at it as a challenge when there was no contract renewal but I just looked at it as a reason to go out and try something new. I don’t look at things as negative challenges.

It’s that brick wall. I just see it as something that I have to figure out how to go around or how to go over. And I will. It may take me awhile and I might hit my head against the brick wall a few times but I’ll figure it out. I’ll figure out if there is something I did wrong and I won’t do it wrong again.