welcome to daring to dream i'm through these five e and i want to inspire you to live the life of your dreams as a life coach an inspirational speaker i help people take action on their dreams to make them happen and do you have a dream that you aren't living could you use an inspiration our guest today is living proof that you can do anything you set your mind to do she managed to pull herself out of poverty to become a successful restaurant owner and social activist she turned her situation around and now help others to do the same and if she can do it you can too whatever your dream maybe you can make it happen but you have to take action one small step at a time stay focused on what you want and continue to take the next step and before you know it you can be living the life of your dreams to a our guest today is kathy minder owner of bellona restaurant in jamaica plain and the hip and funky milky way lounge in lanes bella luna celebrated its fourteenth year in business last november and received the best of boston award for the fifth time in two thousand and seven not only is cathy a successful restaurant owner but she's devoted a considerable amount of her time to social issues and causes kathy knows what it takes to overcoming obstacles to achieving success welcome cathy welcome says and thank you for joining us today for having me you know your story is so inspirational i was just blown away when i first read about your successes in your achievements and not only from the aspect of what you've done but the why behind what you've done and i first read about you in an article from the boston globe that i think was published in two thousand and four and i want to do is read the beginning of that article kathy mines are jokes that she's a welfare mother made good make that real good she pulled herself out of poverty to become executive director the massachusetts coalition for the homeless and went on to earn a degree from harvard kennedy school of government so you have quite a list of achievements under your belt before you even got into the restaurant business you've worked tire lessly on social issues and really trying to turn your neighborhood around and do things for your community and an example of that is the gun buyback program that you helped start over a decade but before we talk about your many achievements i want to set the stage for where you come from and how you started out because you had you had a rough beginning and at the age of seventeen you married right out of high school and for your late four years later you found yourself pregnant afraid and in a marriage that wasn't working out and felt like you needed to move on and start over so take us back to that time and give us some insight people that are watching who may be dealing with similar situations give us some insight into how you moved forward and how you overcame those those challenges sure well first just a quick word on sort of the journey that you described in the different organizations i've been in with i mean they really all relate to it takes a village to raise a child or to be a community and it really all is united in a theme in tapestry of community building and i think when i found myself twenty one years old leaving an alcoholic husband and coming to boston on my own while i was seven months pregnant you know i was overwhelmed with with some year and a sense of challenge but also with a sense of i'm in control of my own life and i reached out to a friend of mine who i been to first grade with first grade through high school and she really said i was feeling very has a ten because i hadn't gone to college and what can i do with just dies and a diploma on how my up are going to support myself and my daughter and she said you know kathy you're smart and you're willing to work hard you can do anything wow and it was such great advice and inspiration for me to you know start over in a new city and really from the day i came to boston i felt excited about the opportunity here and i felt a lot of support from my friends and family as i went on to raise my daughter by myself well it's incredible so that that encouragement from your friends and i mean is that what really helped you to kind of take the plunge and decide i'm going to change my life i'm going to do something with my life well i had made the decision to leave my marriage on my own because i found myself so depressed and felt it was not a situation to bring a child into so i had once i made that decision i just reached out for advice and support from my friends and family and my friend gene was such a great champion and during that relationship my self esteem had to really fall into a very low point and which is so typical of anyone in a situation like that absolutely you know someone sort of hammering away negatively like you can't doing the thing because you haven't been to college and what kind of job are you going to be able to get and you know jean just really said you're smart and you're willing to work hard and that's going to put you in the top ten percent wherever you go and i hadn't really thought about it that way yeah words that that can voice anyone to to move forward and she really sort of a mentor for you in that way she really did really did words that can help anyone yes who is going through a struggle and not believing in themselves exactly so i was really really lucky and i think that's one technique i've tried to use throughout different crossroads in my life is to reach out to other people for advice and support on the big book reader you know if i met a a crossroads like i said where i don't know which way to turn right feel overwhelmed i always have found that there is advice out there if you keep looking that's great you know get another book from the library go to another website talk to another you know person who's walked down that path before and that can really help you so you moved to boston you're pregnant and you have a new job what would you do would you do next will for the time that i was pregnant i got a job working at herman guys clothing in their stock room doing computer shipping and receiving and i was very intimidated by the computer i had never had any experience with that but once again james like you can do it you know and so i gave that a try and that was great because it gave me some money until my daughter was born and once she was born i went on welfare for a period of four years i felt it was important to be with her and i during the four years i started working part time i started volunteering and i joined a organization for other families on welfare called the coalition for basic human needs wow and where did that desire come from to to reach out and help other people will part it was was it first to help myself because i was confused i was confused about the whole welfare system i was really really poor and i reached out for other mothers that were in the same situation that i was and found a wonderful community of advocates and i think like many people growing up i always thought poor people are taken care of you know they have social security or welfare and they're taking care of there's a safety net and i quickly and rudely found out there is no sa joined that organization and really started to learn about about what's really happening for poor families and how we could lift our voices together at the state house and you know get more resources get job training get childcare wall we were working because there's a single parent every time my daughter was sick you know i wouldn't be able to go to work right sure so you know how do you how do you get support here exactly get some hordes to move off of welfare into i i didn't have any college education and i didn't have any job training whatsoever so that really you know i ended up getting hired as a vista volunteer and pursued work along those lines  this is this to volunteer what were your what was your role with a full time position as a vista volunteer i worked about thirty hours a week and i got hired by the  as opposed to volunteer and so that enabled me to be with my daughter a lot and then she started the only day care and so i was able to work part time and learn job skills wonderfalls so that i was then asked to service the legislative coordinator for the massachusetts coalition for the homeless and eventually was asked to become the executive director now where ok so we're talking you know a huge jump from being a single mom on welfare to working your way up in an organization like that what drove you anywhere where did that will to to succeed to do more come from well i think i really believed in the work and the mission of the  groups and the work that we were doing on behalf of homeless families and homeless people and i think any time that you're that you're without a job we're looking for a job or looking for a mission and purpose in life think about something that you really believe in and volunteer there and that really led me to a job that led me to learn those skills and then be eligible for that job right that's wonderful advice that's wonderful advice ok so you went on to become the director at the coalition for the homo's correct yeah yeah so amazing well i was working with a great team of people i would always go down and sit down with people who were in senior positions to myself and ask them how they had found their way and what advice they had for me and any supports they could provide people really want to help other people yeah that's so true another friend of mine told me this quote from norman vincent peale who wrote how to win friends friends and influence others and he said if you want to gain influence with someone and ask them for their help because people love to help them often we feel afraid to ask for help exactly but i really found people want to help you say can i take you out for a cup of coffee can i ask you for some advice people love to give advice it's so true and and i think so many people who feel insecure or feel like they don't have the the education or the training to do a particular job they often just kind of sit in that and they're free to reach out to other people it's almost like an embarrassment you know to write out and say i i don't have the skills or i don't know exactly what i'm doing but you know can you can you give me some advice sure and we can all a least learn you know and if you look at the most successful people out there they're always challenging themselves and learning putting themselves in situations where they don't know a lot absolutely and many of the most successful c e o s in the world never went to college anybody right right and the other thing is most successful people surround themselves with with other successful people yes yes are people who are going to support them and encourage them and well what i would call them is positive people their ego right you know if you're around people who are very negative and critical is there like an energy suck you know and so i really try to seek out positive people and people who want to work together to reach a goal and you're always mutually supporting each other you know it's i can help you on a day you're having a hard time you know you can help me on a day that i'm having a hard time but we both are seeing a positive future other those are the people i want to be around absolutely absolutely so then you decided you wanted to go back to school yes so how did that all come about well during the networking of building the coalition for the homeless and fundraising for that someone mentioned to me that there was a great program at the kennedy school that i should consider harvard no less at harvard it was very scary very intimidating and especially because i had never gone to college but this was a career program it's a one year master's program and they said you know you've had so much life experience and experience at the state house lobbying and developing public policy this would be a great program for you and so i don't offer your perspective and so it was very scary but i studied for the g math i asked my friends to tutor me in mammoth and you know i had to really learn the high school algebra and all those things i like to skip over absolutely and took the g math and did ok and they accepted me in the kennett at the kennedy school as a special student and i had to take a risk because it could be that i was paying for the se mester without ever getting credit for it but i decided to take the chance and i felt that if i was able to do the course work and i was able to show them i could they would give me retroactive credit for that semester and so i took a loan and i think at that time it was thirteen thousand dollars it was another scary step surely i just felt it was worth it so worthwhile investment in my future and my ability to raise money you know raise breadwinner for my family like daughter and so it worked out i also had you know a party and my friends and family helped me and so went to the kennedy school was very intimidating but once i got there once again i remembered my friend jean's advice that if you're willing to work hard and you're you know you have half a brain you're going to be ok you can do anything if that in the same thing was true at the kennedy school there was also a great community of people there who we supported each other we helped each other and pruitt that's that's incredible inspiration you go from no college education whatsoever to getting accepted into one of the best probably the best  school and a master's program for public affairs well i was really really lucky and i had the support of a lot of people and got great letters of recommendation and met with the dean and you know really had to  start on a conditional basis writing really go in improving myself what i did and worth it in order to do that you had to believe in yourself i did and believed that it was possible to take out a loan to take out a loan yeah for f yeah you know risky thing to but it was it was worth it and i just felt like it was worth a try and i'm just going to study hard and i'll get a tutor if i needed tutor and sometimes they did  microeconomics very scary but you know i learned so much at the kennedy school it really broadened my perspective and i had always thought that business was big and bad and i realized at the kennedy school that business could be small and good and so i think it planted the future seeds for the restaurant right that's great so let's move on you graduate from the kennedy school and what do you do next i don't like a new world has opened up for you yes but you know you've been here you've taken on all this debt you don't have a job so you committed the kennedy school with all your debt what are you going to do when i so i went to work for a friend of mine who was at harvard real estate doing some consulting and i had a bit of a culture shock there because i was coming from the homelessness world shore and public policy and you know harvard real estate is a large corporation but i was able to help do a few things there and in the meantime the homicide rate in the city of boston was dramatically escalating and one morning i was reading the newspaper and saw that a twelve year old had been shot in the playground of my daughter's school my gosh and you were living in jamaica plain i was living in jamaica plain yes and my daughter was going to school in ro ury and i just felt like wow all these guns how are they getting into our neighborhoods and what can we do to try to stop this violence and all these young people being killed so i just went back and reached out to some of the community groups that i had known in the homelessness world and you know just other people who were involved in working with teenagers and said is there something we can do to come together as a city and try to stop crime guns or illegal guns from killing our young people and so through that we started a community kolisch called citizens for safety excellent excellent and through that you started the gun buyback program yes we did the gun buyback program which took three thousand guns out of circulation and off the streets while that's really impressive we took we did the twenty four hour soccer marathon for peace to raise money for youth programs we got the city of boston to adopt community policing which was a very new idea at that time we published the citizen's handbook a community guide for the legal system so did it we did it piece league for gangs along the orange line to hook them up with street workers and so how long were you involved with that group that was about four years ok so if the overlapping with that i i and some friends of mine from citizens for safety charlie rose and carol downs decided to open up a little side project we thought which luna restaurant in jamaica plain and we saw it as a community building project so rather than saying oh geez i think i would like to open a restaurant or get into the restaurant business it was more your decision was more motivated around bettering the community yes yes we just thought it would be well we thought you know it would be fun i also thought it would be a great place for my daughter to work as she was heading into the teenage years and i always admired the immigrant families who all work together and you know sometimes together and see the multi generations working together but we saw it as a community building project and so here you have  no restaurant experience no no business experience in terms of starting your own business you've been exposed to corporate america but opening a small business is a whole nother story and opening a restaurant is even again you know another world and there are a lot of challenges involved and that there are so tell us how you went about doing that how you managed to to start their restaurant well i realized that a lot of the skills were transferable transferable from the nonprofit community raising capital is the same as fundraising a proposal to a foundation is very similar to a business plan when we were really able to transfer a lot of those skills but again what we started with was going around and talking to people we talk to other business owners what do you wish you knew at the beginning when you first started what are your biggest regrets you know how you know what's your best piece of advice for us and so you know that sort of refined our concept and help us put together some ideas and then we didn't have any money so artist friend of ours our wainwright had i remember her saying to me if you ever want to start your own business school your friends and family for a thousand dollars wow and that way you spread out the risk you bundle up everybody's contributions together and you've built a community around that business before it even starts it's fascinating and so that's how we started we went around we raised twenty five thousand dollars that way and then just from a thousand dollars from friends and family yes and then slowly built it up to fifty five thousand we of course any anytime you're doing construction it costs twice as much as i think you're right so we ended up needing fifty five so we got two larger investors that we met along the way by talking to people and you know we just did up a small business plan and a draft menu and came up with the luna with where did that name come from well we went through a lot of different names and carole downs my business partner was watching the movie moonstruck and just thought of the name bella luna and we loved it because we're  in the latin quarter of boston and make a plain so in spanish it's in italian it's bella luna and most english speakers can figure out what it means beautiful moon right right and we started out really focused as a pizzeria and so when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie it just seemed to be perfect excellent excellent so you open the restaurant and ninety three yes right yes and what were some of your early challenges in getting the restaurant going i'm sure there are you know you don't have a successful business without a few challenges along the way well we were very under capitalized we bought all equipment second we did all the painting ourselves we had to just sort of set a deadline to open and we were still installing the hot water heater that morning so that's a real challenge just getting i but we just kept plugging away and continue to put a lot of elbow grease into it and i think once you open a business then you have some cash flow and so you can pay as you go biggest piece of advice to people opening any business is not to invest too much capital or start with too much debt from from everything that i've read and bella luna has gotten a lot of reading reviews it was a success out of the door right on opening it was it was a great success we had a lot of neighborhood support we were really blessed with that and our neighbors have just continued to come and support us and then they asked us you know they said hey we need a place for live music you know so we started we started trying to squeeze bands into the milky way into bela lugosi and it was just a little too crowded  we realised there was a bowling alley it closed up bowling alley downstairs and we thought wouldn't it be fun to have a space for live music and offer bowling and be able to have a bar which we didn't have of the people who is waiting out in the street in the winter to get a  and in such a draw for people and tell me again where you found the name the milky way with the name came from well that we wanted a name that was compatible with the loan that would sort of go together and it's ha to celestial themes and it was really one day looking at the new york times astrology you know they have always had a picture of the night sky and it said milky way and we just thought that it's perfect and there's a famous club in amsterdam called the milky way so we thought it had good karma yeah or a club exactly that's great so you think going along you celebrated your fourteenth year yes in november yes and so tell us about some of the excitement in pleasure or in joy rewards that you've gotten from having a successful neighborhood restaurant i think our greatest feeling of accomplishment is that it's a self funding community center so we can highlight artists there are we can host events and fundraisers for non profits we can bring in different political candidates we can host neighborhood forums and it's all self funded we don't have not going to foundation or ask for donations it's all paid for by selling food and beer and bowling wonderful and so we're really happy we feel it's the heartbeat of the community and people can celebrate you know the our tagline for bella luna is where every meal is a celebration and love and for the milky way it's a galaxy of food and entertainment so it's great seeing people's rehearsal dinner is served the parties bachelor parties organizations having their annual meetings their company outings right i think the biggest thing we've learned is that people don't want to just you know stand around and drink they want to do something interactive exactly play with each other yeah so that's been really fun great great so if you could give some key advice to anyone who's watching who may have a dream or may feel stuck in their lives from your successes what would your what would your advice be to them go out and talk to people talk to people that you would minor talk to people who are doing something that you want to do and find out how they got there ask for their advice and you'll learn so much and then just make your own plan and a i heard this great story on n p r once called ten minutes a day and it said if you have a large goal just devote ten minutes a day to that goal make one phone call read one book you know or one page of a book i have one meeting in that ten minutes a day and that has been a great piece of advice for me it's really helped because we have you know you're never you're never too busy for ten minutes yeah exactly and it really forces you to do it because you can't excuse yourself you can't let yourself off the hook for ten minutes well kathy thank you so much for joining us today thank you for having me so inspirational and i know what they want to inspire a lot of people who are watching today thank you suzy so we've heard some wonderful advice here reach out to other people surround yourself with positive people and take small steps devote ten minutes a day to your dream and before you know it it could happen if you are someone you know has a story that could inspire others please let us now with love to share it you can contact me at suzy at susie's fyvie dot com or contact the 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