Welcome to time to press pause, a podcast for CEOs by CEOs. I'm your host, Ellen Williams, CEO of The Salient Strategist and today I'm speaking with Beth Meixner. Her distinctive branding, broad networking expanse and high energy have established her as one of Long Island's most respected and dynamic business leaders. Beth is the Founder and CEO of Moxxie Network LLC and Founder and Executive Director of Moxxie Mentoring Foundation, Inc. Together, these two organizations have made Moxxie the most comprehensive women's business community, serving women ages 18 to 80. Welcome to Time To Press Pause, Beth, it's so great to see you.
Beth: Yes, Ellen, it's been quite a while since the the pandemic put a pause on. Everything.
Ellen: It certainly did. So, I'm happy to have you here today. First, I want to thank you for all the great work you've done in helping women in business, not just entrepreneurs, but women who are launching careers and looking to better understand what that means and what the the business world is all about. So, thank you for all the great work you've done and how many women have gone through your mentoring program?
Beth: 650 since 2010.
Ellen: That's incredible. So, kudos to you for the concept and for. The great success.
Beth: Thank you. It takes a village, that's for sure.
Ellen: I'm really happy you're here today and I can't wait to hear your Time To Press Pause story.
Beth: Right. So, when I turn 50. I guess I was going through some kind of, crisis, midlife crisis, and I said to myself, “You know, I'm not a golfer, but I think I'm on the back fifty of my life. What am I going to do to change my life? What am I going to do to make a difference?” I've done a lot in my career. I've had many, many different careers. I was a branch manager of a national company. I was a salesperson. I was even a kitchen designer for a few years. I sold insurance. I had a lot of different careers, and I just thought when I had 50, it's time for a change. I was at a point in my life where - if not now, when? My husband and I were in a good financial position, so I was able to kind of just like. Quit. I was working for a small graphic design company doing sales and marketing for them. Through my years of working there and doing a lot of networking, I love networking. I'm a social person so it's easy for me. Some people hate it, I love it. I feed off other people. So, I was doing a lot of networking and I just wasn't really meeting the people that I felt with the ones I wanted to meet. I wanted to meet senior level businesspeople, women who were decision makers, not necessarily the CEO's, but just nice people. Normal, smart, savvy down to earth women. And I was meeting too many people trying to sell their services, things like that. So, while I was still this director of marketing for our company, I started doing some trial events. I thought let me start my own women's group and of course people thought I was crazy because like another woman's group? Because back then, a lot of women's groups were around and a lot have come and gone. It's not easy to sustain a women's networking group by itself. So, I had a few trial events and there seemed to be a need a little niche. So, in 2008, the fall 2008, just when the market fell, I quit my job and I started Moxxie Network LLC, which is a member-based networking group for senior level women. And after about a year 12/13/14 months I started developing a small membership base. We would have events with guest speakers and things like that. And then during the course of my networking, I would see young people. Young men and women, you don't really often see young men and women at networking events because they're not senior level enough. They can't be out of the office for three or four hours at a networking event, and especially for young women. You know, I gravitate cause for women because I am a woman. And I also have one child and she's a young woman too. So, I always gravitated and I would feel so bad when I see these young women, they're just, like, lost in this sea of seasoned business professionals. I would be like I got to help them. I would take them under my wing and introduce myself. I'd bring them around to different people and. I said to myself, “You know, we have got to do something about shepherding women, young women into leadership positions.” I'm dating myself, but. Well, I guess I already did when I said I turned 50. Yes, I think you're passionate. I grew up in the era of Gloria Steinem, Miss magazine. Bra burning on the streets of New York City. My mother was a very strong woman who worked. She was the youngest of four children and the only one who went to college. Women did not go to college back then, but my mother did very strong role model. So, I said she, you know, there's a need for these young women in their 20s. They need to be helped. I'm going to reach into my membership base of Moxxie Network. I'm going to try to start getting some mentors because I felt my personal answer to the lack of women's leadership was through mentoring. And I'm going to get some of the members of Moxxie network too, become the the mentors. I was going to start with the women in their 20S and I said to myself, “I think that's too late. Let's start with the college girls.” So, if they go through one or two years of this program. Mentored by a seasoned businesswoman and going to networking and business events, they'll have a leg up on the competition. They'll know how to act at interviews. They'll be poised. They'll know how to act in general, they'll start having more confidence in learning basic business skills, and they really will be one step ahead of their competition in college when they're going to interviews. So, in 2010, we went launched our first college mentoring program called Junior Moxxie. It exists today. It's a very, very big program. We pair up one college student with one seasoned businesswoman for the Fall and Spring semester. They meet each other in person now it's online of course. They meet each other twice a month, and then Moxxie wants to take some of the burden off the mentors because they're busy women themselves. So, we take the students on field trips or we have webinars, so fantastic trips, LinkedIn, Google, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Eyewitness News, CBS News Radio. I mean, you named, we've been there. New York Yankees. So they're really great experiences and it teaches the young students that well, if you want to work at LinkedIn or Google, you don't really have to be a coder. They need English majors. They need mathematicians. They need HR people. They need people like you, right? Every business. So. And I think college doesn't really prepare them for that. So, we kind of fill in the gap from college to career. And then that program very, very well. So, I thought, “Well, now we've got a real big gap between the college students and the women of Moxxie Network. How are we going to fill in that gap?” So, in 2011 I created another mentoring program for women in their 20s and 30s called Ms. Moxxie, M S, Ms. Moxxie. And it's a group professional development program we'll have up to 10 young women in each group. Overseen by two co-mentors, and they meet every two weeks and discuss a specific topic in business. So those two programs have really been carrying us for many years. And then when the pandemic hit in 2020, I was hearing about all these women being outsourced from the workforce or voluntarily opting out because of family obligations. And we had a board meeting and I said, “You know, we are, we've got to do something. We are perfectly situated to help these women.” So, in two weeks I put together a brand new program called Moving On with Moxxie, and opened it up to any woman in job transition. It's a free 10-week online program. We bring in guest speakers each week and we get them ready to reenter the workforce. The network was doing the mentoring in the beginning, but the the mentoring became so vast and took in 2012 we actually split them and created a nonprofit called Moxxie Mentoring Foundation, which is a 501C3. So, I'm the founder of both Moxxie Network and Moxxie Mentoring Foundation. 95% of my time is spent on the foundation. It's a passion and there's a lot to do, but it's extremely rewarding. All of our volunteers are women. And they are all so rewarded by the experience. I've had mentors that have been with me 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 years.
Ellen: Wow.
Beth: That's how rewarding the program is. So, it's been quite a journey. I'm still learning. But it's rewarding to see how some of these young women have blossomed, particularly in some of our programs. We've had young women in the programs for up to five or six years. And when we look at them, myself and our mentors, we are we are just beaming with pride of how they have blossomed into such successful, compassionate, effective, motivated professionals and future leaders. So, we're very, very happy about that.
Ellen: Oh, you should be. I had no idea how many people that you had been able to mentor. I remember I was a Moxxie member back in the beginning and you know, obviously, we've known each other for a long time. But what was interesting about the story you just told was I heard several different pauses. So, you had that, that big pause. OK, what am I going to do? I want to do more than what I'm doing now? You found. Well, I would say you found your calling and then each new chapter of Moxxie, it felt to me like you took that pause again. You stepped back and said, OK, I'm doing A, but I could be doing B
Beth: Right
Ellen: And develop that and then you're like, OK, I'm doing A&B, I could be doing C and you develop that. So, I think that's an amazing progression, right? So, it's not necessarily a single time that you pressed pause where you have the opportunity to grow in multiple different directions when you identify that “I can do more than what I'm doing and I see the opportunity I'm going to evaluate it and see how I can step into that.”
Beth: Right. I guess I'm never satisfied. I always feel that. No matter how good it can always be improved, right? Always. I've had many people over the years say to me something like, “Oh, it must be so rewarding. Now you know, you finally you know you did it. You can sit back and relax.” And I said, “What?” The women are, you know, the world is constantly changing. You've got to keep up. I'm aging, but yet the women we mentor are still the same age. So, I've got to stay relevant to these 18/19/20-year-olds, even though I'm getting much older.
Ellen: Yeah, yeah.
Beth: So, it's really important to think of it that way. You know, you don't want to appear as if you know you're somebody's grandmother. But it's funny. We've talked about a lot of the women in Moxxie and the mentors and we always say, “You know, your kids never listen to you.” Although my daughter for the last 10 years has been listening to me before that, you know, we I've mentored 650 young women, every single one of them would hang on my guidance and advice, but not my own daughter. And that's the difference between being a mother and being a mentor.
Ellen: Yeah. I hear you. I have two daughters. To your point. Any advice I have about entering the workforce in your 20s now I can age myself too, as you know, many years ago
Beth: Right.
Ellen: And it's not the year 2020 or 2024, right? So. What is happening in the world today, You have to stay relevant to be able to give any kind of advice on how to manage that.
Beth: Right, right. Yeah. And that's sometimes I struggle. You know, I'm not that tech-savvy. But I don’t really have to be as long as I have people around me that are tech-savvy. I don't have to do it all, I just have to have the right people around me that can fill in the blanks. That's kind of what I'm working on now is now I'm going to be starting another chapter. As I transition into my retirement years, I'll give it another 2 1/2, three years not going anywhere. But now it's time for me to start to start thinking about succession planning. Who will be the new me? Who will be the leader of Moxxie? It will take several years of transitioning and succession planning to get it done. I have begun the board has and I have been working on it for I would say a good year and we will be in good shape. In the next two and a half three years.
Ellen: I have no doubt. So, you had this press pause at 50 and now you're you had a second press pause. Where OK, I can't do this forever. And I love that you said I can't do everything
Beth: Right.
Ellen: Because so many of us try. So, you can't do it forever. You’re preparing for even another pause, right? So then now, once you do succeed, and someone else is running Moxie, you're going to have an opportunity to create another chapter.
Beth: That's what my husband's afraid of. He's like, “I'm so afraid you're finally going to back off, Moxxie, and then you're going to start something else. You're never gonna be done.” I'm like, “Well, I love working. What can I say?” I mean, do I want to work this hard as I get into my older year? No. But it's still rewarding. And I'm always going to do something. I don't play golf, I don't play pickleball, yet. Maybe I will, but I'm just not. I love working women.
Ellen: Congratulations on your planned exit and continued growth.
Beth: I've never really gone. Yeah, I'll probably be some kind of consultative role, I imagine.
Ellen: Sure.
Beth: In years to come.
Ellen: I could imagine as well. Beth, this was really wonderful. I appreciate you taking the time to speak with me and sharing your story. I'm sure that the listeners learned a lot about not just Moxxie, but having a little moxie too.
Beth: Thank you for the invitation. It's great to see you again.
Ellen: Thank you for listening to this episode of Time To Press Pause. To learn more about Beth Meixner go to moxxienetwork.com. To learn more about me, go to thesalientstrategist.com. And be sure to join. Us again, wherever you listen to your podcasts.