It’s my daughter’s birthday today. She just turned 18. It doesn’t mean much to anyone but me, my family and her friends but it also means that HJMT is also 18.
You see, I started the business a few months before she was born. After I gave birth, I went into full gear and worked diligently to start a firm up out of my one bedroom beach front apartment in Long Beach. Within a year or so, my business expanded and my husband and I had to get a bigger apartment. We lived in a two bedroom apartment facing the beach for nearly two years. I hired staff immediately, because at that time, publicity and PR was very labor intensive.
My first employee was a young man who lasted about a week. I had given him keys to my apartment and when he quit, he left the keys on my computer with the door wide open. I had several more of those unpleasant experiences where some of my employees actually used petty cash for lunch at McDonald’s and then put the receipt in the petty cash drawer as if it was “cool” to do so!
After that incident, I had enough and my husband and I decided to buy a high ranch home. We figured that my business would be in the garage and I would stay there for many years while the kids grew up. We finished the garage, put heat and air in it and it really looked like a real office. I hired a bunch of mother’s who were in the PR field and left to raise their families. Within a year, I had more than seven people working for me. People had keys to my house and would come in and out as they pleased. One time I hired a woman and she actually had the “chutzpah” to come upstairs and knock on my bedroom door!
In any event, the garage lasted not as long as I hoped and I decided to rent an office in Long Beach to be close to the family. After five years, across the street from the Long Island Rail Road station, we decided to move to Westbury.
As soon as we moved, we tripled in staff and in income. Today, we had three offices — Manhattan, Rochester and Long Island. I have the most incredible staff who work so hard to make sure that they do right by our clients and I have the most amazing clients who hire us year after year because they respect our work and know that we do a great job for them!
So in retrospect, here’s to my daughter and here’s to her twin, HJMT!
