Day 120: Sally Handlon
“… in my backyard, I have this beautiful garden that I will work at periodically in the summer and in the spring during my business day. So if I’m stuck, I’ll go out and I’ll work in the garden for a little bit and get connected with the earth, get connected with the plants and talk to the trees. It gets me focused and inspired to go to the next step. Sometimes by taking that break in that environment, the answers come.”
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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Sally, for agreeing to be part of the Project today, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?
Sally Handlon: Sure. My name is Sally Handlon. I have a business called Handlon Business Resources which is about four years old. I’m in the Lehigh Valley area of Pennsylvania.
Toni: Well thank you. Sally, when you think of that word inspiration, who do you inspire and how do you do that?
Sally: Well, I’m hoping that through the efforts that I do each day I’m inspiring other small business owners to do their thing. Sometimes it’s very hard in this environment, and I try to always provide an ear and always provide counsel to small business owners throughout the Valley.
Toni: Okay. Can you give us an example of what someone might need for inspiration from you that you then give them?
Sally: A lot of it is people just need an ear to express an idea or a concern, and if they have a willing ear that’s not going to judge what they’re having to say or what their concerns are or put them down for not being able to accomplish what they like to. If they get a supporting ear, which is what I try to do because everybody has a great idea and everybody will approach it differently, and sometimes all they need is just to say it out loud and have that support help them.
I can think of a number of businesses where I’ll just have a conversation and coffee with them, and we’ll talk through something and they’ll figure out what they want to do for their next step. I don’t have to tell them, but they figure it out.
Toni: Well, that’s a great lead-in to the second question of the Project which is, what do you do to help explore the potential in others, not just maybe their … or in addition to the potential of their business, but themselves as business owners?
Sally: Since day one, I’ve probably always been there to try and help people be open and reach the goals that they want to reach. I’ve always believed that our path here on earth is so that we leave it a better place as we go on to our next life. And just to have someone that’s willing to take the time and listen, I think, is all that a lot of people are asking for. They just are … we’re so time-crazed today, and we don’t have any time. And if you find someone that’s willing to help slow down and walk with you versus run, I think it just helps all aspects.
Toni: Yes. It provides them a little bit of focus?
Sally: Absolutely. Provides focus, provides some feedback from sometimes a different perspective. “Have you thought about this? Have you asked this person? Have you looked at this resource?” It gives them … it expands their world.
Too often because we’re running fast and we’re sort of caught in our own circular thought, that until someone helps us break them we can’t get beyond. We can’t think beyond the box.
Toni: I wrote down that it seems to me that you give voice to the small business owner.
Sally: I try to, always. I do a lot of work with startups from a perspective of sort of coaching them, mentoring them. I don’t usually have them as clients, because they can’t afford me, but I will always, always give them my time to help them work through, think through, ask questions.
Toni: Oh, wow. So when you think of inspiration yourself, what do you need to be inspired?
Sally: I just need to look out the window and see nature. Nature has always been … I think since I was a little girl, the thing that always rejuvenates me and brings me sort of back to a sense of calm and a sense of being able to move forward in areas that I might consider to be somewhat blocked if I don’t have my view of nature.
Toni: Are there other tools that you reach for when you go “Oh boy, I could use a little inspiration today?”
Sally: Quite obviously the major tool is just the environment that I surround myself with. There are sometimes when physically I need to work through it, so that takes me to the gym versus looking out at nature or being a part of nature. I started to study herbs and their medicinal properties as a way to balance my business life.
Toni: Can you give me an example of that?
Sally: Well, in my backyard, I have this beautiful garden that I will work at periodically in the summer and in the spring during my business day. So if I’m stuck, I’ll go out and I’ll work in the garden for a little bit and get connected with the earth, get connected with the plants and talk to the trees. It gets me focused and inspired to go to the next step. Sometimes by taking that break in that environment, the answers come.
Toni: It’s actually … it sounds to me that what nature does for you or what your garden does for you, allowing you to sort through your thoughts and to focus has really been what you do for others.
Sally: I’ve not looked at it that way but probably, that’s the way it works. My decision to formally study herbs as medicine came from the idea that there’s so much there that I don’t know that I really want to understand the gifts that are out there in nature. And there are truly … even the plantain weeds in our grass are wonderful gifts.
Toni: Well that would be awesome for people to learn from you what you’ve learned about that. I would imagine that there are a lot of people that would want to know what now you know about that.
Sally: There either is and there isn’t. I think sometimes people get, especially when it comes to the medicine part of this, a little sort of concerned because it’s not what we’ve … at least the last 100 years it’s not necessarily what we’ve practiced. But for thousands of years prior, we did. I’m trying to just help people understand that there’s alternatives out there that we need to think about as we go forward.
Just like with business. There are alternative ways to do business. There’s alternative ways to think about our health, and it’s not all just stuff that we have to go to the store and get off the shelf. A lot of it is right here for us.
Toni: And whether … there are options, that’s what I’m hearing you say, that there’s always options, there’s different paths that you can take whether it is in medicine or whether it is in a business. That’s pretty cool to have those two tied together.
When you’re exploring your own potential, what do you do? What do you need to keep learning and growing and moving so that you can continue to do this amazing work that you do with small businesses?
Sally: I think probably, Toni, the biggest thing that I have to do is continue to challenge myself, continue to learn. I’m always reading several books at a time. I’m taking online seminars. I’m challenging myself to do things that I don’t normally do in my business so that I’m stretching, I’m reaching, I’m learning more so that I can share more.
Toni: So does that then help you when you go through these things to learn different things? How does that then … do you have a specific example of how you might have challenged yourself that you were able to use that experience with another small business owner?
Sally: I believe what I just did this past week is probably something. Although I can do strategic planning, it’s not something that I … it’s not a passion for myself. I enjoy it, and I enjoy the exercise, but I don’t often lead it. I usually refer that to other folks. Well, there happened to be an opportunity that came up that sort of pulled together my love of nature and my love of business in doing some strategic planning and so I thought “Okay, I’ll bite this one and take off.”
It was a real challenge for me. And for about the past two weeks, I’ve been wondering why I decided to do it. I’ve been there. I kept saying “Sally, you really should not,” but some wonderful things came out of it as I did the session last Friday. I met people that are going to be very important to some of the things I’m doing. I provided some insight, some business insight, into an organization that’s been pretty much not-profit, community.
All in all, I was extremely glad I did it. I was exhausted all weekend, but there are several things that are going to come out of it. There are a couple of relationships that have already started, so there’s going to be future opportunities for me to share the business perspective with this particular organization on different levels, and there’s been some networks established that I wouldn’t have established had I not done it.
Toni: So by questioning the challenge that you were going to go through and going “Do I really want to do that?” but then going through it anyway and taking that chance opened up several doors for you.
Sally: Absolutely, and it always does. Every once in a while, I kick myself and I say “Why did I agree to do that?” But in the long run, it’s always been of benefit to me and to those that I have had the opportunity to come into contact with because we’ve learned from each other a great deal.
Toni: And so I imagine that moment, that critical decision moment when you said “All right, I’m gonna do this”, is the learning then that you give away to those small business owners to push through that. “Okay, come on, let’s do this.”
Sally: Yeah, you can do it. If you don’t challenge yourself, you’re stagnant, and you might as well close your doors because everything changes. It doesn’t mean that you have to alter 100% of everything, but if you aren’t aware and you don’t move with it, your business, your life gets impacted by it.
Toni: Well thank you very much, Sally, for everything that you’ve given today for the Get Inspired! Project to how you … it almost sounds, in a gentle way, that you give voice to the small business owner about their business, but then also what you do personally to balance your own small business with your personal life and learning about those alternative ways and then also challenging your own potential so you can challenge others. It’s really interesting how it just all fits together, and you did that beautifully. People will learn from that today, so thank you so very much.
Sally: I hope that someone is able to use it and learn from it, because life is too exciting to not take those challenges.
Toni: Thank you, Sally. Hopefully we’ll talk again soon, and thank you so very much for coming to the Project.
Sally: Thank you, Toni. I really appreciate it, and good luck with the Project.
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For more information about Sally Handlon: www.HandlonBusinessResources.com, blog.lehighvalleylive.com/coffee-conversations/
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