MEET MEMBER: Marcy stahl

Can you give us a brief introduction of who you are and your current business?

I’m Marcy Stahl, I’m a business coach for women entrepreneurs and women in direct sales. 

Why did you join BPW and what positions have you held during your tenure with BPW? 

I moved from the DC area five years ago, and I was doing a lot of women’s networking up there, and as soon as I got here I was like, “Where are my people? I need to Google ‘women’s networking groups Raleigh.’” I found BPW and from the first meeting, I was just like, okay, this is my tribe, these are my people, I’m in the right place. So I joined actually pretty quickly after the state conference that year, which was fascinating hearing more of the history of the organization which has been such an advocate for women’s rights. We sometimes take our rights for granted but it’s very recent that we got those rights. So I’m a big fan of that.

I was the Membership chair for a while and then I think right into the Co-Presidency. I think I skipped the Co-President Elect. Now I am the chair of the Scholarship committee.

What hobbies/interests do you have outside of work?

Yeah, that’s something I’m looking to fertilize and grow this year. Outside work, I definitely do a ton of reading, I have two rescue cats that take up a fair chunk of time, time with friends, and I’m a big lover of film and live music - and that’s something I want to be doing more of. Those are probably my main things.

If you could sit on a bench in a beautiful woods, who would you like sitting next to you on the bench and why?

What an open ended question with so many different options. So what about family? No. Friends? Maybe. Boyfriend? I’m not dating. So I circled back around to friends. One of my friends who lives in Montana and is a nature guide would be the perfect person to be sitting with because he and I love being together and he could tell me about everything around us in the forest.

What was your favorite TV show when growing up and why? 

The “why” part may be harder to reflect back on and figure out. When I was young, I was super intrigued by the first Batman show. And then when I was a teenager, I would say Saturday Night Live.

What has been your most interesting job and why?  

Define interesting. For sure it’s been being self-employed. I feel like that is the biggest personal growth journey you can pick. From the outside, it looks like, “Oh! You get to have control over your own schedule! Blah blah blah.” But it’s really an inner journey because it forces you out of your comfort zone every day of the week. So being an entrepreneur, for me, is my favorite job.

What’s your favorite place of all the places you’ve travelled?

Tasmania! Probably Australia overall is my favorite place and being on this little island off of Australia with amazing scenery and incredible food, it was so fantastic!

And the thing that cracked me up is that Australians love meeting Americans and asking you where you’re from and what places in Australia you’re going to visit. And every time I said, “I’m going to Tasmania”, they were like, “Oh, that’s where senior citizens go.” So it was dorky at the time, but I loved it.

What book, movie read/seen recently you would recommend and why?

I am having a great time recommending this book, “In the Company of Women” by Grace Bonney. The author, who is a photographer, interviewed 100 different women who are all creative types. They’re everything from interior designers to writers to visual artists. She has beautiful photographs of them in their studio, in their space. Just to be able to see what they’ve got—the odds and ends, the pictures, everything—is fantastic. And she asks them great questions like, “the best lesson you’ve learned in your business”, “the mistake that you learned the most from.” And she asked something about advice, like good advice that you got or good advice that you ignored. She’s super inclusive in terms of the kind of women that she profiles so I highly recommend this book, and I highly recommend it in hardback and in full color.

What’s your favorite tradition or holiday?

Probably Thanksgiving. You know, just the 100% focus on food.

What can BPW do to support you in your career?

Probably the easiest thing is if you know of other women’s networking groups that use outside speakers, that is a great thing for me to be connected to. It’s always harder I think to talk to people about who is my ideal client and how do you know that they’re my ideal client. So speaking engagements, that’s the easiest thing.