'Random Run In' : Margie McCartney From The Pedicure Chair Next To Me

Random Run In:

I met Margie McCartney in the pedicure chair next to me an hour before leaving on my road trip to Canada last week.

She was ‘back home’ in Pelham, NY visiting her sweet elderly mom and cracked me up with her story of how her mom had no full-length mirror to be able to check out her outfit, so she climbed up on ‘something’ in the bathroom to see if she looked OK…and then couldn’t get down. Lol. My kind of boomer humor! Anyway, I showed her all my bandaged boo boos, and we laughed about not getting younger, as we must try to, because as we all know if we don’t laugh about it, it’s not gonna to be that funny.

Meanwhile, I told Margie I was excited about going to Canada, and then she told me she just returned from an exciting Scavenger Hunt around the world and named all the countries.  I was like wow OK, that sounds cooler.

I told her she’s a perfect example of why I love talking to strangers and told her about my new upcoming book “How To Talk To Strangers: Advice From A Professional Stranger Talker”.

Then she told me about HER book “And Then…Networking Lessons from an Extraordinary Life Still In Progress” and her upcoming Ted Talk about "Bursting Your Own Bubble' and including more people in your life by expanding your connections.

Seriously? What are the chances she’s got a similar themed book too? Kindred Spirits for sure. 

Then I invited her on my show so you could meet my new stranger friend Margie McCartney from Chicago, and hear her stories, and so we could both share the encouragement for you to try and step up your conversations with 'new people' so you can learn new things and add more enjoyment to your life. 

BTW: Margie McCartney is an accomplished Sales Executive & Director Of Global Sales with over 20 years of experience delivering a proven best-in-class track record of driving record setting results for travel, hospitality and events. She’s looking for her next adventure. 

Enjoy this fun podcast of our live radio interview on The Debbie Nigro Show airing live weekdays in the NY/CT area 11-12 noon ET on WGCH Radio or listen live from anywhere on WGCH.com. Live Radio Interviews Become Podcast Interviews and appear after here.

If you’d rather read than listen,  below is the audio transcript.

 

Transcript 

0:00:00
And now, back to the Debbie Nigro Show.

1
0:00:03
Hey guys, I'm Debbie Nigro. Great to be back in town with you guys. I went on a big road trip to Canada and right before I left, I happened to be getting a pedicure manicure. You know a girl's got to get that done before the trip, right? And I meet this girl, Margie McCartney. She's in the pedicure chair next to me. I could tell she's talkative. I think she was talking more than me. Anyway, she's back home visiting her mom who lived in Pelham, New York where she grew up. Margie's from Chicago and she starts to tell me some crazy story about how she's gotta get dressed, but her mother doesn't have a full-length mirror, so to check out her outfit, somehow, she climbed up on something in the bathroom to see if she looked good, right, and then she couldn't get down, so I'm dying. I'm like, oh my God, this is my kind of humor, sounds like me. Anyway, I laughed a little bit about not getting younger. I told her I was excited to go to Canada, then she trumps me and tells me she just comes back from an exciting scavenger hunt around the world. I'm like, wow. Then I tell her she's a perfect example of why I love talking to strangers. And I tell her about my new book, “How to Talk to Strangers, Advice From a Professional Stranger Talker”. Then she tries to beat me again. She says, oh, I got a book called, and then, Networking Lessons from an Extraordinary Life Still in Progress. And I'm like, all right, look, look, look. There's kindred stuff going on here. You got to be on my show. So here she is, live from Chicago, Margie McCartney.

Hi, Debbie. Thanks for the warm introduction.

Margie, what's going on?

Well, I think I told you I spent about six and a half hours at LaGuardia yesterday trying to get back to Chicago, but I am here and excited to be on your show today. You didn't know. That was some wild weather. We had a lot of flooding here.

Was it just as bad in Chicago?

Well, I was on Long Island for the 4th of July and it was supposed to be kind of rainy but it actually turned out to be really nice. Yeah, it was just the flights when everybody was trying to get out of town.

I'm glad you got out but you look like you're having fun at LaGuardia. You sent me a picture with a bunch of people laughing.

Well you got to make a mistake in every situation as we know.

Yeah Margie were they all strangers those people in the picture from LaGuardia with you drinking the rosé?

Yes. I love you. Two were from Austin and two were from Los Angeles and they had their kids with them and yeah we just started chatting and one thing led to another. It was like let's do a Facebook picture and so we all took a picture and I had to share it with everybody. But hey we made it home and my husband picked me up and we grabbed a late dinner and got up early today and excited about having the chance to do a conversation with you and whoever is out there listening. Yeah,

Margie, I really wanted to invite you because I know that you know what I am passionate about and you are the same, which is communicating with people along life's path that you never would have met before, who you learn something from or spark something to and increase your connections in life, which is the meaning of a full life. So I know that you get that. I know that's what your book is about. I did read a little bit of it. I didn't have time to read the whole book, but somebody had said, Margie, you collect people like some people collect china, and I really understand that. So your book is meaningful to me, and I'm going to finish reading it, and hopefully you'll read mine. But let's talk about how that plays into your travels around the world and weigh in on why people should do more of what you and I do.

 

Well, I just think and the whole reason I wrote the book was because my friends kept telling me my whole life, you've got to write a book, you've got to write a book. And one of my best friends from Bethany College, Alan Tate said, when you write that book Margie and this is like over 30 years ago, he said, you got to call it and then because when you tell a story, it's never just how you jumped in a taxi. It's always how you jumped in a taxi and then and when you think about it, the end then is really the meat of any story.

 

You're making me laugh with that one. It's really funny because that's actually amongst my college girlfriends. That's a really loud two words because I told them the story about romance a million years ago with this one particular guy I was crazy about and then I started to tell him the story I go and then we left …and they're like well where was the rest of the story? So yeah you're out in Chicago smart girl I am sales executive director I'm sorry I'm talking over your excuse me I'm just giving you a professional introduction now for what you really do to earn a living which is Margie is an amazing sales executive, director of global sales, 20 years of experience, best in class track record, record setting results for the travel hospitality and event business but kind of looking for the next adventure.

2
0:05:05
Do you want to speak to that?

1
0:05:06
Well, just the lead into that with the writing of the book, I was with the same firm, a destination management company, for 15 years, and then like so many other people, lost my job during COVID, and that's when I pivoted and wrote the book. And then right now I think I mentioned to you that I am in a thought leadership program and working on a TEDx speech about bursting your own bubble, which means going out there and meeting new people and making your circle bigger and that's what I really love about anything in life with jobs. I mean when you're in sales in the hospitality industry to make your client shine in front of their boss is always a gift. I love that in hotels when a client would come up at the end of a program and say, hey you know my boss just came up to me and said that everything was perfect. That's our reward in our industry. It's just making people happy and that's why I think I always knew that the hospitality industry was made for me because I always like bringing people together. I've planned lots of trips both personally and professionally all over the world and some of the people that I've met in my life have become family to me in random places like I've got a Ethiopian cab driver who basically saved my life coming home from O'Hare in 2017 whose kids now call me Aunt Margie. I mean you just you just never know where that next great connection is gonna come from sort of Like, you know meeting you Yeah, and meeting you I should do a segment on my show. I do it on occasion it's called random run-ins and people love it and they love the the stories that come from you know, Accidental or maybe who knows meant to be connections. I loved your story about the scavenger hunt I'm not sure I understand exactly what it was. I know you traveled around the world on a scavenger hunt What was that about? Yeah about ten years ago, I got an email from the founder of the global scavenger hunt and Inviting me to participate in this event and it was three weeks so I had to figure out how to get three weeks off of work and it wasn't cheap, but it was worth every penny and And it started in San Francisco in April and we got back to Montreal after going to 15 countries in three weeks and averaging 25,000 steps a day. Plus, I tore the ligaments in my foot. And we ended up winning the bronze medal, which was a huge, huge thrill for all of us. And we had no idea where we were going and, in each destination, we'd get a book and it would say, you know, you can take a train two hours to such and such a place, and they would give you activities to do there, but you're only in this city for two days. So, you have to, it was very strategic about where you were gonna go, what you were gonna do, how many points everything was worth. So, in Istanbul, I jumped into the Black Sea at 5.30 in the morning for 250 team points. And that was our last destination before we got back to North America. I was very proud of that.

9
0:08:01
I had to go on.

1
0:08:02
Yeah, my teammate was Kathleen Wood who's my old boss from the National Restaurant Association back in the 90s. We've been friends ever since. You know and the same thing about bursting your own bubble and reaching out to people that are different ages than you. There was a young waiter at a restaurant in Tbilisi, Georgia which was my favorite city, that and Istanbul, who once we found somebody who spoke English we're like, okay, we need to find this, we need to find this, we need to find this, we need to find this, and he was like, okay, you need to go to this park for that, you need to go there, so he was really, really helpful. And I'll never forget, Kathleen gave this 20-year-old kid a crisp 100 US dollar bill as a gratuity at the end, and he's like, I think you've made a mistake, and she's like, no, I didn't, and he cried. It was something. And then so the opposite side. Sorry, go ahead.

2
0:09:09
Amazing, you know, currency, of course,

1
0:09:11
American currency has much bigger value in places. I mean, I just went to Canada and obviously the dollar is worth like 25% more there, which is, you know, I don't know the Russian or the Georgian value, but I get the meaning of an American dollar in some places. But you know, language and documenting, I mean, what you just did is out of control, fabulous. Do you speak any other languages?

That's about it. That's all I got. But a big smile and a firm handshake goes a long way. I learned that very early on in my life from my father. And I listened to some of your shows last week, and I noticed that you are a big fan of your Dad too. Aren't we lucky?

Yeah, we were very, very lucky. It's funny, along my travels to Canada I met three young girls, lovely, two of whom were foster kids and who grew up, their friendship started when they went back later in life to volunteer at a foster home so the kids would know that their lives were going to turn out okay. They didn't have proper fathers to guide them. You just never know what someone's experience is going to be but what comes of the experience they do have; you learn a little something at each juncture. I'm sure you learned a lot from traveling around the world. Was there one general theme from traveling so much around the world about connecting with new people that you picked up on?

I would say from this most recent trip when we were in Uzbekistan, there were women my age and older, though kind of hard to tell over there, and they found out we were Americans and they were running over to get their picture taken with us, like the Americans, the Americans. And then when Kathleen and I were leaving a tower in Istanbul, this fourth-grade school bus was there and they heard us speaking, they were like Americans, Americans, and they were literally running after us like we were Elvis to get selfies taken with me in the cab window. It was insane. I wish I had thought to take a picture of them, but I was so sort of taken back, but it was really like, you know, the Americans, the Americans, and not everybody feels that way, I know, but it was pretty cool to have those two experiences back-to-back while I was on the global scavenger hunt. That's crazy. I'm really enlightening.

 

Was there any place around the world where you felt uncomfortable being American?

 

Well, I, my girlfriend Susan Keary, who I actually met in a taxi in New York in 1984, she and I went to the Olympics in Sydney, Australia and we were the minority and I always wanted to go to the Olympics, but I wanted to go somewhere where we were not the majority of the people. And so we went to Sydney, Australia, which I love Australia, they love Americans, they speak English, and they like to have a good time. That's like the trifecta for me. And anyway, we got these great seats through a client of Susan's. We were like in the second row of the opening ceremonies, and we were wrapped in our American flags. And Susan went to get us a couple beers and when she came back, I could tell she was upset. I said, Susan, what happened? She goes, the guy at the end of the row told me to take my flag off. And I was like, I got really upset. And we were sort of like halfway between going to the right or the left so instead of going to the right by the jerk I decided to go to the left but I went to the ladies room and while I was in the ladies room I'm thinking to myself who does that guy think he is like this is the Olympics so I very deliberately on my way back made sure I went past this guy who was sitting with his eight-year- old son I think and I said excuse me sir could you move your feet so I can get to my chair and he said only if you take your flag off, which I was expecting. So, I went into my little speech, and I said, I just want you to know that my father fought with Patton against Hitler so that I had the honor of wearing this flag and I have flown halfway around the world for this international celebration of humanity. So, with no disrespect intended, please move your feet so I can get to my chair. I got a standing ovation, but my favorite part was his eight-year-old son looked at him like, you're such a loser dad.

Oh no, not... that was bad for the kid and the father to have to have that moment. Anyway, great story. I'm sure you're full of stories. In this book that I'm holding here that you've written, “Networking Lessons from Extraordinary Life Still in Progress”, and good for you, the still in progress part, me too. It's good to get up in the morning, right, and get another shot.

Yep. Yep.

Margie McCartney, in this book, what is somebody going to get out of it when they read it? Because I'm happy to promote it for you.

Oh, you're so kind. I've had several people come up to me and tell me, like, I carry a book around me, I've referred to it, it's really helped me in many ways, which if everybody else comes up and says, we hated your book, like, that was enough to make me feel great. A couple of people have told me that they've read it twice. At the end of each chapter, there's a little sort of questionnaire about like if there's a story at the end of the story like what can you do in your life to to change things around and make them better based on the story that was in that chapter. There's a variety of chapters everything from it starts off 10803 which is Pelham zip code, golf and the people you meet on the course of life, all sorts of examples of reaching out to strangers and how that's blessed me tenfold across my life.

Unbelievable connection you and I had in that pedicure chair side by side.

8
0:14:08
I know.

1
0:14:08
Now you're on the show and yeah, happy to be a new stranger friend to you and vice versa. Grateful to have met you.

7
0:14:15
Yeah, me too.

1
0:14:16
Thank you so much Margie.

6
0:14:17
We're out of time.

2
0:14:18
You did good though.

1
0:14:18
You talked just as much as me. Margie McCartney wrote the book “And Then, Networking Lessons from an Extraordinary Life Still in Progress. She's a superstar, a global sales superstar in the travel and hospitality industry. On to her next adventure. You might want to check in with her if there's something that she can help you with at mccartneypartners at gmail.com. You have a stellar day, Margie.

 

Thanks, dear. You too.

5
0:14:43
Bye bye.

4
0:14:43
Bye bye.

3
0:14:43
That was fun.

1
0:14:44
OK, guys, come on back. We'll talk about why you should get your passport sooner than later if you're going to travel.

2
0:14:53
There's a backup. A huge, huge backup.