‘Surely you should start local before you go global’, suggested a well meaning friend as I set up my first proper business – a Nanny Agency. I was living in a small village in the south of England at the time. But I didn’t see the point in starting small as I was pretty sure it was just as much work to go big and anyway going big meant we’d have access to a wider client base. Within three short years we were No 2 in the UK sending staff all around the world to European royalty and a great smattering of well known people as far away as Australia. It was our service ethos which worked and created the PR – far better that advertising.
‘You shouldn’t try to run before you can walk’, scolded my Dad when I was putting together a big entertainment proposal for British Airways many years ago when I ran a team of psychic entertainers for corporate events. I was offering to take on the whole caboodle for an event they were putting on to thank the PA’s of their biggest clients. The proposal got accepted and the evening went extremely well. In fact we ended up creating four amazing events for them until they opted for an in-house entertainment officer.
‘You can’t set up a magazine if you’ve never been in the publishing industry!’ was a common remark when I set up a free magazine on conscious living for the Greater London area. But I could. I had a partner who was so brilliant at art and design he put together the most yummy looking magazine. As neither of us had been in the publishing business we broke every design and editorial rule there was…the result being a delightfully quirky publication. So we could set it up and we ran it for about 7 copies. Then we crashed. We simply didn’t have the financial structure in place.
Did I start any of these with any financial resources? None whatsoever.
Did I always know how I was going to achieve my vision? Usually not at all.
But once I was committed, support came out of the blue.
So my point is why start small when it’s often just as much work as going big…. and why wait till you have the money if you want to do it now?
If you believe in something with a passion don’t you want to soar rather than stumble along?
So we get to this point in time….
Here I am in a caravan on a wild Welsh hillside where my mobile phone and internet connections are appallingly poor and I’m launching an online global community…. started from nothing.
Since the vision of The Silver Tent emerged last September I have fully committed mind, body and soul to the development of a beautiful organisation which serves everyone who connects with it… from the members who choose to join, to the tiny team developing it, to the wider community. It is built on the feminine principles of intuitive creativity, collaboration and co-operation. It’s core idea is to bring the over 50’s women of the world together so we can all recognise and develop our innate wisdom, re-ignite the passions and dreams we may have hidden away along our adult journey, support each other to bring them back out of the closet, dust them off and have the help to make them shine again, then take them out to the wider world, sharing these projects and newly fledged businesses and being the wise elder women we really are.
The grand vision is to attract at least one million women to join, and if at least half of these women become paying members we can create the most phenomenal philanthropic engine, driven and steered by the entire community to serve the world. We help each other do what we’re destined to do by being who we truly are. As we tap into our true selves, our silver sisters support us and we all become forces of nature.
Am I mad? Maybe.
Am I inspired? Most definitely.
Am I on a mission? No question about it!
As I look out of my triple aspect sitting room over the glorious Welsh hills like giant rumpled bedclothes I soar with the buzzards and red kites as they wheel and play on the windy canvas in front of me. And I’m reminded of a question posed by Soleira Green yesterday in her interview for The Silver Tent Launch Summit…. imagine two paths… the one you’re on now and the one you’d love to be on…imagine a year on each path… which do you prefer….?
I make this my own and think of soaring or stumbling…
Do I choose the path of the chicken pecking at what’s available on the ground underneath its beak, seeing only the few square yards around me or do I choose the wild, high soaring path supported by the awesome power of the wind and its updrafts launched off the curved bosom of the land below?
Erm…..no contest.
What dreams have you put on hold in your life – you know those ones which filled your heart and soul when you thought about them?
Would you love to see what it feels like to throw your arms wide open, let the wind lift you, and experience the thrill of soaring, following your heart come what may?
If your answer is yes…
Would you love to be part of a global community where you’re helped to bring these dreams back to life – where you can access those much needed cheer leaders so you don’t have to listen to the naysayers… where you can access coaches and mentors for your mindset… coaches and mentors to develop the business…creative website designers and reach a great global market place of women who would love what you’re doing? Or alternatively become part of a global community where you can be one of these supporters?
The Silver Tent is a safe and glorious space to be you in all your true wise elder glory….
Anne
Very inspiring Francesca Cassini 🙂
Francesca
Thanks Anne 🙂
Kay Shelto
Loved reading this about you Francesca. I excited for your dream and your potential. So much pleasure in having worked with you to see the depth of you and your vision. I also love how you are bringing it together so fast and so powerfully. You are an amazing inspiration. I dream big and I just love the encouragement I receive from your words here.
Francesca
Bless you Kay!
Thea Allison
Great post Francesca. Thanks for sharing your experience and your vision so generously. Bring on the Million.
Eva Wharehoka
Reading this I have tears and magic in my eyes, Francesca. I have today witnessed you in action in The Silver Tent, responding to various discussions and questions that had arisen on one of those peak energy days that come along unexpectedly, from time to time. Your warmth, patience, clarity, graciousness, integrity and passion are those of a lion-hearted woman, indeed. As for the support, wisdom, vibrant curiosity and the humour that warm weary old crone bones; extraordinary! The Silver Tent is a truly special place, a meeting of loving women, celebrating life and hope and one another. If my words sound, to some, a little fulsome – all I can say is, come on in… Come visit The Silver Tent; if you have ever felt that weary sense of post-fifty defeat, that the world really just left you behind and there is little to be done other than trudge on and try and grin and bear it – I say to heck with that! As for me – I have felt broken, in my life – utterly broken and not so long ago, either. The love and encouragement I have received in this fabulous tribe of women has re-awakened hope, dreams, sense of kinship; more than that, has shown me, once again, that I have much to contribute; and so do we all. The Silver Tent is a place of soul refreshment – I come and rest, play, be restored discover, connect – come on in every day, of you want. And emerge, renewed, blessed – ready to let the world know, “this is me, this is how I roll… we are Silver Sisters, and this is how we rock.” (Last phrase inspired by the title of Francesca’s book, “Together We Rock.” with deep gratitude to Francesca and all the women of The Silver Tent. e.w.
Eva Wharehoka
The Silver Tent is a truly special place, a meeting of loving women, celebrating life and hope and one another. Come on in – visit The Silver Tent; if you have ever felt that weary sense of post-fifty defeat, that the world really just left you behind and there is little to be done other than trudge on and try and grin and bear it – I say to heck with that! The love and encouragement I have received in this fabulous tribe of women has re-awakened hope, dreams, sense of kinship. The Silver Tent is a place of soul refreshment – come and rest, play, be restored discover, connect – come on in every day, of you want. Emerge, renewed, blessed – ready to let the world know, “this is me, this is how I roll… we are Silver Sisters, and this is how we rock.” (Last phrase inspired by the title of Francesca’s book, “Together We Rock.” with deep gratitude to Francesca and all the women of The Silver Tent. I thank Francesca for her heart and vision. e.w.
Francesca
You make it all worthwhile! Love reading your experience and knowing how valuable this is to you – and of course how valuable you are to The Silver Tent!
Eva Wharehoka
you should have seen the long version! almost eulogised you! but – you deserve it! xx
Trish Brennan
Oooh Golly! What an inspiring post Francesca! There was I, thinking I could change the world – charging headlong into B.I.G. ideas while nearly everyone I knew looked on in bemusement – like I was just having an attack of grandeur to think anyone would be interested in my ideas because we weren’t people who did big stuff, or questioned things, or rocked the proverbial boat.
We knew our place. We went along with the defined order. We didn’t put up a struggle against the old paradigms we were moulded to fit into with barely a squeak. And besides which, pipe down because you’re shaking someone else’s perch when you talk like that. We must tread lightly around them, and if they behave all mean, it’s not really their fault.
The fact that I was deeply intuitive and aware of the truth behind the bravado of certain males in my life made me something of a threat – to be squashed back down at every opportunity – by ‘God’, as it happens, as was the nick-name popular among his buds, and to a less overt degree, by the ‘normal’ dynamic: to conform; to not question; to toe the appointed line and not make a noise unless it was to reaffirm that you were no real threat to the status quo; to not dare to show that I understood stuff they didn’t even understand themselves.
Almost no one I knew got what had burst through the constricting walls of the chrysalis I’d been living in for so long. And in later years, more careworn by the choices I’d made, but more intellectually and passionately alive than ever, when I was steaming ahead, so full of the intense excitement for the creation that had been birthed from my experience as a daughter, sister, mother, wife of men that I couldn’t register the words of the nay-sayers – I was unafraid. ‘I’ didn’t matter. ‘I’ was almost irrelevant. My vision had become my mission.
I had dared to speak about my thoughts – to a coach/friend (a stroke of pure divine ‘luck’) and it was like someone kicked a big rock off the head of a geyser and all of a sudden, all this ‘stuff’ began gushing out all over the place! I became like a woman possessed. Because it all felt so much bigger than me, I wasn’t in my own way. Words flew out of my mouth in all the right ways and in all the right places and I would wonder – where the hell did that come from? I PR’d up a storm because my idea was attracting a fair amount of interest. Things just flowed like magic. An inspired mission statement just appeared in my mind like a fully formed glittering diamond hewn from a dirty old piece of coal I hadn’t even touched – one that still awes me today. I felt plugged in; like some unbelievable energy was flowing through me.
Then I lost confidence. I let the things I was trying to change and the people clinging onto the old way like to question it meant you deserved to be vilified and made into a laughing stock of the highest order. I was bruised, scared, I felt foolish – and I scuttled under my rock to lick my wounds and talk myself back down to earth. Who are you? You’re just an (ex)wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister who thought too much. OK, so you got an NLP Master Practitioner qualification – doesn’t mean anything much. I mean, who do you think you are – ‘some kind of amateur psychologist’ God said to me in a sneering put down? And I carried the put downs on. ‘You have no string of successes; no long list of companies you turned around; no professional credibility to speak of ..’, and on it went.
After years of struggle trying to get things off the ground with no money, no support, and a few bad choices of ‘advisors’; going from all-in, to part-time shitty job so I could stay afloat, to all-in again – always broke, always trying to push water up hill, always hearing the same old ‘why don’t you just get a normal job like everyone else?’ (and implicitly, give up this crazy stupid idea you dreamed up)! Hearing someone I loved almost more than anyone else – the very person who began this ball rolling say those words too – that was crushing. There was no concept of the love and compassion that had given birth to this thing. That stung! Feeling like an idiot because maybe they were right and I should just do what everyone else does and get my head out of the clouds – go get a ‘real’ job!
And so I closed down the charitable company I had set up. I packed away my dreams. And I wandered, lonely as a cloud ..
Until I dared to start sharing a bit again, feeling a little ashamed at first – like I lurking on shady street corners wearing a dirty old mac and drinking from a brown paper bag as I tried to hide this thing that won’t be silenced. I opened up again – in your divine creation – The Silver Tent. And I heard words of encouragement. And I shared some more. And I felt the warmth of acceptance among my peers that I never felt before – of this divinity within myself. And I began to grow courageous again; to feel that it wasn’t ‘dirty’ at all – but the highest potential of my being.
And then this – the words of a courageous woman who saw what was needed in the world of the repressed feminine. Finally, I stand up in my power. Unashamed of it. No longer feeling I must ‘contain’.
Thank you Francesca Cassini. I am newly alive!
Francesca
I am awe-struck, blown away and bawling my eyes out Trish! Apart from your relationships this could have been me speaking those words and I so understand. I have been scared witless, cowering away not daring to speak my truth except to those who already believed it too. I have been mad at myself for being weak, for allowing others demeaning unkind words dampen my passion to silence. But I can’t do that anymore and I am so thrilled you can’t either.