For Sylvia Allen The Time Is Always Right!

There is never a “right” time to start a business. So if you are thinking of doing it, just do it. That’s how I got started.

I started Allen Consulting Jan. 1, 1980, and have ridden the most wonderful roller coaster for the last 33 years. Much of what I have done has been intuitive and the company has been reinvented five times.

I started out doing straight public relations and technical documentation. I previously had worked for AT&T, so I knew how to write manuals, which made it easy to start the business. As the business grew, so did the number of employees and so did the focus as we began to do advertising and marketing campaigns.

Now there was more work and more employees until, at one point, we had four locations and 34 employees. This meant more traveling, more administrative tasks for me and no time for creative work, which I really loved. One day I decided to stop and go back to what I liked to do, which was to help make clients successful through quality writing and business planning and to produce live events.

Jan. 1, 1990, was a major turning point because I made a conscious decision to do what I liked to do, never go beyond six employees and to work with clients that I liked and that needed the talents I had to offer. We focused on producing and selling sponsorships for successful events, which was fun. We have followed this formula 90 percent of the time and we are still having fun.

Of course, I get easily bored, so in June 2003, I was adopted by a primary school in the African country of Uganda and started a nonprofit called Sylvia’s Children. We have raised over $850,000 for the school, changing the lives of over 2,000 students. The joy of seeing these children get a decent education and learning a profession or trade so they no longer live in poverty is beyond description.

In November 2011, I bought a 1903-04 building in Aitkin, Minn., that features an opera house where Judy Garland, as one of the Gumm Sisters, got her start in 1925. I had all renovations on the first floor done and two tenants in by the following November. The Aitkin Opera House renovation is now complete and we are beginning to book special events.

During this same period I wrote two books – “How To Be Successful at Sponsorship Sales” and “A Woman’s Guide to Sales Success” – both of which are both festival and event industry standards. I taught as an adjunct at New York University for 20 years in the School of Continuing and Professional Studies and the Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising.

I continue to be a featured speaker at conferences, conventions and association meetings around the world, speaking on the topics of sponsorship sales, public relations, event marketing and management, and nonprofit fundraising. And I raised two beautiful, successful children.

I feel so lucky to be a woman in business today where the only barriers are self-inflicted. Bored? Not yet! Retire? Can’t even think of it!