Travel

Some people, I’m convinced, have a gene for exploration and discovery. What else could explain why one person spends his life striving to stand on the peak of Mt. Everest while another is happy to sit in a hammock or lounge chair in their backyard?

When I was a young girl, my family couldn’t afford to travel but that didn’t stop me from becoming a world traveler in any possible way I could. I travelled through the eyes of beautiful glossy brochures to many countries. I wrote to every consulate of practically every country I could think of for information. I’d open our mailbox and that’s when the adventure would begin. Through the most amazing photos in those glossy publications I walked the Great Wall of China, trekked the Himalayas and tracked lions, wildebeest and elephants on the Serengeti.

Since then I’ve been blessed to travel the world and visit the Serengeti as well as many, but not yet all, of the other places that were once simple childhood fantasies. My real traveling didn’t start until I started working in the hospital as an RN. A colleague and I often chose our nursing continuing education based on location rather than the educational offerings. Critical care nursing principles suddenly became much more compelling in places like Hawaii, Puerto Rico and London than they ever would have been in Houston. We’d scrimp and save our pennies to make those trips. Later my legal nurse consulting education business took me to 49 states, enjoying the endless bounty and diversity the United States offers along the way. Tom went to most of those states with me, which made the experience all the better. Today our personal adventures have taken us to both polar regions as well as places like Cambodia, Morocco, Patagonia, Bhutan and Tanzania.

Throughout my travels, I’ve visited countries where people enjoy freedom and, sadly, countries where freedom is denied. I’ve visited Communist countries where the “state” discourages regular people from talking to foreigners, countries where children are conscripted against their will into the military and countries where armed rebels roam free. I’ve been to so-called democracies where the governing party enforces its rule through killings, violence and other strong-arm tactics. Some of my favorite trips have been to countries where even the poorest farmers were some of the happiest people I’ve met, simply happy for their mud hut, cattle and the open spaces around them and a life without boundaries (or too many belongings).

Whenever I travel, no matter where I go, what I see or how much fun I have, I am extremely grateful and proud to be a citizen of my beloved United States of America. I’m proud to have the freedom that we so often take for granted and I’m especially glad to hear the U.S. Customs official tell me “welcome home” because I know I am back in the land of the free, and not just the land of big salads and iced tea.

Let’s face it though, freedom for most of us goes way beyond our ability to live where we choose, work a job we select, be able to vote and trust the government not to unjustly imprison or prosecute us. With that in mind, I invite you to join me in celebrating the freedom we all enjoy as Americans and especially as Certified Legal Nurse Consultants.

I’ll get the list started and invite all of you to go ahead and add to it.

Freedom to:

• Say “no” – I was fired once for justifiably saying no. That was one of the best days of my life because it was on that day that I vowed no boss would ever get that chance again. Now I’m the boss and I’m the only one that can fire me.
• Change directions – I’m a Pisces so I thrive on change. I like to navigate all types of waters which I’ve been challenged to do owning my own business. When I do, it’s often my choice and my responsibility – that makes the change so much sweeter.
• Express opinions without fear of recrimination – I was always the nurse at the hospital getting in trouble for saying what every other nurse was thinking (and wouldn’t say at a staff meeting even though they all promised to stand up too). One of my favorite staffers at Vickie Milazzo Institute is just like I was. I call her the “other voice” and value her courage to tell me what I might not want to hear (and sometimes I don’t want to hear it – but I still listen).

Now, it’s your turn to share your stories regarding the CLNC^® freedoms below:

• Live a life of unlimited possibilities –
• Be creative –
• Enjoy confidence and self-respect –
• Define your own happiness –
• Explore passions –
• Spend time with family, or not –
• Dare to believe and achieve –

Success Is Inside!

I love to travel to remote places. I’ve been deep inside the Arctic Circle, the Antarctic, the high Himalayas and the plains of the Serengeti. The farther I am from home the clearer my mind becomes. All of my energies (physical, emotional, spiritual, mental) realign and I’m renewed again. But only if I’m careful to leave my American comforts at home.

One year I was packing for a trip to Morocco and I noticed that even though I had invested a lot of time and money in the adventure of exploring an exotic new destination, I was trying to bring my American comforts with me. Tom says that I travel like those old British explorers with teapot, table and tent. He lovingly told me I didn’t need my hair dryer unless I was planning on blowdrying a camel.

It got me thinking, “If I’m going to bring the U.S. and all my comforts with me, I might as well stay home and watch it on the Discovery Channel from the comfort of my couch while enjoying a cup of healthy green tea.” In other words, if I replicated the comforts of home, I would actually miss what I was going in search of – an exciting, unexpected experience. The only way to spark my senses and stimulate my creative juices is to move me out of my comfort zone and clear my mind so I can return home ready to deal with all the challenges of life and my business.

I quickly decided Tom was right. I didn’t need my blow dryer to ride a camel into the desert to camp out. By leaving some of those unnecessary comforts behind, I not only packed lighter (Tom said “hooray”) but I was able to fully immerse myself in the Moroccan culture. The result was a more complete sense of adventure and some slightly wilder hair for both me, and the camel.

Does the same thing that almost happened to me getting ready to embark to Morocco and the Sahara Desert happen to you as you embark on your legal nurse consulting adventure? Are you packing all your old “nursing career comforts” as you pursue your new CLNC^® career?

To experience all that legal nurse consulting has to offer, you must be willing to shed your old ways and habits. You’ll need to step out of your nursing comfort zone and let go of old beliefs that no longer serve you and may only hold you back. As a RN, you may have that steady paycheck, but as a CLNC^® consultant, you’ll have more fun and the potential for greater financial prosperity as soon as you open up to the possibilities within you. You’ll develop a new support group of other CLNC^® consultants through the National Alliance of Certified Legal Nurse Consultants association while abandoning the nursing station and cafeteria clique that may be dragging you down. Beliefs in administration, policy and procedures, red tape and “that’s not the way we do things here,” will be tossed overboard as you prepare for the faster moving world of business where your “life and death” decisions are made not for patients but for your business.

Start packing your bags today. One warning though, the wardrobe and accessories you take on your CLNC^® career are not the same as what you needed in your old life as a RN.

If you pack even one familiar “career comfort,” you might learn painfully that you could have stayed “home” and saved yourself a lot of time and money.

Success Is Inside!

Saturday night I attended the 2009 Pink Tie Gala, and was honored with the Hope Award for Ambassadorship as a corporate sponsor for the 2008 Komen Houston Race for the Cure^®.

Judge Ed Emmett, Vickie Milazzo, Marjorie Landry

Over 27 years certifying legal nurse consultants and operating a woman-owned business, I’ve been graced with many honors and awards. This one is very personal and special to me because of my Mom.

My Mom, Marise

Many of the women I mentor won’t “go for it” because of their fears. One thing that helps me go for it is perspective. My mom, Marise, gave me that. She came from Tickfaw, a small town in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana, and she always dreamed of traveling. She read books that took her to the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, the Sistine Chapel and she planned on visiting all of them. Then she met Sal, my dad, and they married and lived in the big city – New Orleans.

My Mom and Dad, Marise and Sal

During those early, struggling years she still dreamed but often said, “When we have enough money, we’ll travel.” But then she had three children, and she said, “When the kids are grown and out of the house, then we’ll travel.”

My Family – I’m the shy one sitting on Mom’s lap

Finally, the kids were out of the house – and my mom died – at age 48 from breast cancer. Her travel dreams never came true.

Are you waiting to live your dreams? And if yes, what are you waiting for? When you get enough money? When you lose enough weight? When your business is perfect? When your spouse is perfect? Don’t wait. My mom’s death taught me that the time is now. When I’m afraid to take a risk, which is quite often, I honor my mom by asking myself, “What’s the worst thing that can happen?” The perspective of knowing it’s not cancer or death helps me to do the thing I fear.

It’s perfectly okay to admit that a commitment is not right for you and to reject it outright. After all, this is your life, not someone else’s.

What’s not okay is to hold back and put less than everything into a commitment that is your passion. If you want something, go for it all the way and go for it now. When you do, you’ll wake up every day to a life and a legal nurse consulting business you love. This is the message I’ve been sharing for 27 years with Certified Legal Nurse Consultants and women everywhere.

All of you know my business mission is to certify legal nurse consultants as not just the best, but the only, solution for attorneys who litigate medical-related cases. My personal mission is to see deaths from breast cancer eradicated in my lifetime. To this end I actively sponsor Susan G. Komen and support their mission to do the same. Each year an Institute team has walked (and occasionally run) the Race for the Cure^®. I’ve sponsored booths, donated time, money and my book Inside Every Woman: Using the 10 Strengths You Didn’t Know You Had to Get the Career and Life You Want Now – all of it for my mother and other women who needlessly lose their lives, body parts and confidence to breast cancer.

Mom, over the years I have felt you watching out for me. Often you were laughing and smiling. I felt your tears mingle with mine. And yes, I’m ashamed to say, I’ve felt the occasional frown of disapproval.

Saturday night was for you. Thank you for the beautiful legacy you give to my life and taught me to share with others.

Success Is Inside!

According to the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) U.S. citizens traveling by land or sea to Canada, Mexico, Bermuda or parts of the Caribbean must show proof of citizenship in the form of either a passport, passport card or WHTI-compliant document (government-issued photo ID and birth certificate) to get back into the good ole’ USofA. So, if you’re a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant who is considering a future NACLNC^® Conference cruise, you’ll need to have one of the above to get back to your home office once your ship comes in.

The easiest form of proof of citizenship is the government-issued photo ID and birth certificate copy. Just make sure you have a readable, notarized copy of your birth certificate. Next easiest might be the so-called U.S. Passport Card (good only for land/sea travel – not international air travel). This is handy if you live near a border crossing and travel on a regular basis to meet your attorney-clients in such exotic locales as Tijuana or Montreal.

If you’re getting a new passport for traveling overseas as part of your CLNC^® business, or just for fun, you might be surprised to know that you’ll get one of the new e-passports. That’s right, an e-passport. Beginning in August of 2007 the Department of State has issued only the new RFID chip-enabled e-passports.

What’s the buzz about RFID? RFID chips are radio frequency identification devices that are really tiny microchips you can implant in an item of inventory, a pet or just about anything. Depending upon the strength of the chip, you can use it to identify and track inventory in and out of a building, the movement of chips around a casino (and betting patterns), the location of your French Poodle (not husbands yet – sorry Vickie) and today – an e-passport.

According to the U.S. Department of State, RFID chips in e-passports make them easier to scan and less prone to counterfeiting. Assuming (correctly) that even paranoids have real enemies, it is theoretically possible for the proverbial bad guy to walk through a crowd with a cell-phone-sized receiver and pick out the passport-carrying American citizens by the signals their passports give off (and not by their “I’m with Stupid” t-shirts and sneakers).

This frightened me until I learned of a solution – MobileEdge makes an ID Sentry Wallet that surrounds your passport in a cool-looking leather case that contains an imbedded shield that blocks the RFID signals from escaping. This turns you into just another face in the crowd. It does not interfere with the passport and so, is completely legal. By the way, the U.S. Passport Card also has an RFID chip embedded in it, but it comes with a shielded sleeve when you receive it from the government.

Paranoid? Maybe I should be. Safe? You bet I am. This ID Sentry Wallet is the best $30 travel accessory you can buy if you plan on going anywhere your passport can take you. Now, when you’re cruising the markets in Bariloche, Bangkok or Bumthang you can stop walking backwards in fear someone will sneak up behind you.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

I just got home from the Great Christmas Migration of 2008. Tom and I are bicoastal. His family is in Pennsylvania and mine is in San Diego. Both demand our presence (and presents) at Christmas. This gives us plenty of chances to enjoy the fun of air travel and to meet interesting and helpful people along the way. This year instead of emulating the executives from the auto industry we decided to forgo taking the VMI company jet (Southwest, in our case), and instead flew our various journeys on a mainstream airline.

Christmas and the holidays are supposed to be the merriest time of year – so why is airline customer service the gloomiest? It starts with the smiling (not) faces at the airport check-in. The check-in staff is the frontline of the airline. They’re the first impression you get of the service you’re about to receive (or not). I’m sure that everyone has some part of their job they don’t like, but excuse me, sir, your job is to help me check in, tag my bags for the right airport, get them on the belt and tell me my gate number. If you don’t like that portion of your job, rotate to something else. Don’t make a face because my bag looks heavy or because I have two of them. Yes, I know you’re going to charge me to check them, but you don’t have to be so stern about it. I’m a customer not a prisoner (at least not until I board).

I think that being a nurse makes it difficult to sympathize with someone who’s upset about the fact that you asked for a second 4-ounce glass of lukewarm water. Look at what nurses do every day – change catheters, clean suppurating wounds and get sprayed by bodily fluids we shouldn’t discuss in mixed company (but still do). Some flight attendants really make me want to take their blood or at least stick them with an oversized needle. I feel like saying “Look lady, I asked you for a napkin – not to wipe my ass. Don’t act like you’re doing me a favor after taking 20 minutes to bring it. Yes, I know there are other passengers onboard, but right now you’re standing in the back of the plane kvetching about your upcoming layover in Poughkeepsie.”

It’s not just airlines that have bad service. Retail sales are down everywhere you go. ‘Blame the economy,’ you may say. If these retail employees keep it up, there won’t be any retail economy. I don’t know about you but I’m sick and tired of trying to give my hard-earned money to the lethargic, tattooed, multi-pierced cashier who’s on her cell phone. Or, the two salespeople talking to each other who act put out when you ask one of them to look in the back for a size 4. Try getting away with that type of behavior as a nurse. Can you imagine a patient saying, “Excuse me ma’am, I’m truly sorry to bother you, but I’m in desperate need of defibrillation. Would you please stop chatting about your ex and shock me back to life?”

In contrast, here I am at the Mecca of customer service – the Apple store on 5^th Avenue in New York City. Like an airline, this store is open 24 hours a day and there’s usually a line to get inside. Unlike an airline, people wait patiently, even expectantly, because they know that once they get inside, the experience will be extraordinary. When’s the last time you heard someone say their flight or shopping experience was extraordinary unless they were talking about the extraordinary prices?

Apple sets the highest bar for customer service (plus the store is mad cool inside). Sales staff help you with your purchase and stay with you until you’re done shopping. They accompany you to the checkout line or point out one of the roaming check-out staffers who comes conveniently equipped with a wireless credit card machine. You walk up to any one with your purchase, joyfully swipe your credit card and get on your way without a hassle. My receipt is emailed to my BlackBerry^® before I’m out the door!

Even if you don’t buy anything, staffers will patiently answer any question about all the cool stuff on display (and you get to play with it as long as you want). You can even make an appointment to bring in your computer, iPod or iPhone that you already paid for to get whatever service or training you need, including how to turn it on. The entire experience is exhilarating from the time you walk in until you leave. It makes me want to turn my whole office into Mac users. (Just kidding, Tom.)

I live by my rule, “do what’s right, not what’s easy.” A legal nurse consultant was complaining to me about something her attorney-client wanted her to research. He was off-base but demanding about it. She got angry with him and it may have cost her the relationship. I wanted to support her, but I couldn’t agree with her and said, “Remember, the attorney-client isn’t always right, but he’s still the attorney-client. Just be grateful he didn’t ask you to wipe his butt. If he’s paying you to do a job, it’s your job to do it and your duty to do it with a smile on your face (if not in your soul).”

Certified Legal Nurse Consultants exist because of our customers, attorneys. Aim to be more like an Apple store than a lemon airline.

Success Is Inside!