From Omaha to Paris to Omaha, with Love, Anne-Marie Kenny’s Journey in Song and Spirit

I am drawn to stories of people whose lives are clearly journeys of transformation and discovery and stepping outside comfort zones in pursuit of dreams.  Anne-Marie Kenny’s life story is one such journey.  I tell it here in short form but you can find on this blog a much more extensive profile of her I did.  She’s a cabaret singer and an entrepreneur and a generous soul.

Anne-Marie Kenny

 

 

From Omaha to Paris to Omaha, with Love, Anne-Marie Kenny’s Journey in Song and Spirit

©by Leo Adam Biga

Originally appeared in Omaha Magazine

 

Before becoming a world citizen, Anne-Marie Kenny made a coming of age trip to Paris, alone, at 21.

“I just knew I needed to spread my wings,” said Kenny, a native Omahan who eventually made her second homes in Paris and Prague. where she forged careers as a cabaret singer and entrepreneur. After years away this once expatriate returned to Omaha in 2001. Her hometown’s now the base of her performing, vocal instruction and corporate consulting work.

She became a Francophile studying French at Mercy High. The City of Lights symbolized romantic possibilities. She recalled, “I was on the train from Marseilles to Paris when an elderly woman asked, ‘What will you do in Paris?’ and for some reason I said, ‘I’m a singer, I’m going to sing.’ That’s the first time I admitted that to myself.”

She and her three older sisters had performed locally as a four-part harmony group. They studied piano. Not all was idyllic,. Their attorney-father drowned when they were young, leaving their mother to raise and support them. To help make ends meet the girls took jobs. Anne-Marie worked at St. James Orphanage.

“I think life might have been a little bit harder had we not had music,” said Kenny. “Music was our outlet.”

Once in Paris she found work as an au pair. Her pluck led her to an Argentine guitarist and the two became street performers on the Champs Elysees.

“I was determined,” she said.

The duo was quickly discovered, landing a gig on a popular radio variety show.

Returning to Omaha, she studied voice and honed her chops at M’s Pub and V Mertz. She then met her late husband, Bozell & Jacobs ad man John Bull. All the while she pined for Paris. Bull did, too, and the couple moved there. She studied voice with Janine Reiss and at the Juilliard and Peabody conservatories and Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris. Kenny soon made a name for herself as a cabaret artist at posh spots in Paris and the South of France.

Her repertoire includes American, French and Italian tunes. She’s done some recording. She’s also worked in musical theater and has appeared in three feature films shot on the Riviera. She and John shared an apartment on the Seine’s Ile Saint-Louis. She appreciates France’s “very high regard for artists.”

Life took a turn when a poem-song she wrote for newly elected Czech president Vaclav Havel earned an invitation to perform it at Praugue’s famed Reduta Jazz Club. Caught up in the new free market opportunities there, she put her music career aside to form an employment agency serving international companies. The same engaging presence that works a room wins over clients as well.

Just as business boomed John fell ill and died in 1998. She’s since sold the business and made Omaha home again. She operates her vocal performance studio at her brick ranch dwelling, aka, cultural salon. She said, “I am as passionate about teaching as I am about performing now. It’s so much fun seeing people go from having a good natural voice to being able to technically do things they never thought they could do.” She teaches the Bel Canto method.

Her community work includes leading the Siena Francis House Singers, whose ranks are composed of the homeless and in-treatment residents.

Europe is still her playground. She was back last October. Recent U.S. performing gigs included the Sarasota Yacht Club in Florida and the Omaha Community Playhouse. This summer she’s doing a concert for Alliance Francaise d’Omaha.

On the entrepreneurial side. she’s an intercultural relations consultant. “To put kind of a credential on my experience,” she earned a master’s degree in organizational leadership, with a concentration on cultural studies, from the College of St. Mary. She led the start-up of the college’s Center for Transcultural Leaning.

Whether doing art or business, she said, “I’m being creative in both. “They’re both very risk taking and they’re not marching to the conventional beat.” For her, home is where the heart is. “I am so glad now to be back in Omaha. I’m here because I want to be here. I think Omaha has so much going for it. I feel I can flourish here.”

Related articles

• Kat Moser of Nouvelle Eve, A Life by Her Own Design (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• Jane Fonda Takes Center Stage at Film Streams, Where Her Life in Film is Celebrated this Summer (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• Litniks Unite! The Downtown Omaha Lit Fest Brings Writers, Artists and Readers Together in Celebration of the Written Word (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• Generosity at Core of Anne Thorne Weaver’s Life, Giving Back to the Community Comes Second Nature to Omaha Woman Whose Live-out-loud Personality is Tempered by Compassion and Service (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• Eddith Buis, A Life Immersed in Art (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• Movie Maven Crawford Celebrates 20 Years of Classic Film Revivals that Bring Hollywood to Omaha, Special Guest Pat Boone to Appear at Screening of ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth’ (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)

Omaha’s Pitch Man: Entrepreneur Extraordinaire Willy Theisen is Back with His Next Big Business Venture

Willy Theisen’s self-made success story is an American classic.  I have known of him since the breakout success of his Godfather’s Pizza chain in the 1970s but it wasn’t until I was assigned the following profile that I finally met him.  I interviewed him for the piece in early March and the story will appear in an upcoming issue of Omaha Magazine.  It all started for him in his adopted hometown of Omaha, which happens to be my hometown as well.  Omaha has been the launching pad and testing ground for some of his original ideas, most notably Godfather’s but he’s also gone far afield to follow his passion for the restaurant business.  He is an entrepreneur through and through. When he fixes on an opportunity, whether a concept he’s created himself or an existing one he sees he can take to the next level, he appies his high energy,  long vision, laser focus, risk tolerance, and indefatigable hunger to realize his ideas into reality.

 

 

 

 

Omaha’s Pitch Man: Entrepreneur Extraordinaire Willy Theisen is Back with His Next Big Business Venture

©by Leo Adam Biga

Appearing in the May/June 2012 issue of Omaha Magazine

 

Willy Theisen has done it all in the restaurant business. He founded a national name brand in Godfather’s Pizza that became the fastest growing pizza chain in America. He’s been a successful innovator, franchisor and franchisee. He’s opened thousands of restaurants across the country. He’s a millionaire many times over.

He’s far from done, too, as he’s about to replicate his latest concept, the popular Pitch Coal-Fire Pizzeria in Dundee. Always hungry for “the next thing,” you can bet Pitch won’t be his last hurrah either.

Part of his wheeler-dealer’s genius is selling others on his ideas.

“You’re only as good as the product you’re selling, and that could be yourself, too. You’ve got to be confident in yourself and then you have to share that confidence and knowledge base with others,” he says. “I take it as a compliment when someone says, ‘You’re a great salesman, you’re a good pitchman.’”

His entrepreneurial bent showed early growing up in Clinton, Iowa. He liked earning his own money delivering papers, stenciling addresses on curbs and flipping burgers. While attending Northern Iowa University in Cedar Falls he became a top door-to-door salesman of cookware. Before starting Godfathers he leased commercial real estate.

Appearing fit, energetic and jaunty in an all-black ensemble and looking several years younger than his age (66), he’s still the driven dynamo who hit the ground running in his late 20s to make himself an overnight Player in the fast-food industry.

Just as he still retains his knack for recognizing opportunities, he still possesses the initiative for seizing the day and staying out front of the competition.

“My idea of an entrepreneur is having the ability to see things possibly other people don’t see. Having an eye for opportunity I think is key to my success. I don’t know that you train for it or study for it. Either you have it or you don’t have it. You can see a location, you can see the potential for a business in there, you can see potential in people and bring the best out in them or make them better than they are.

“That’s what makes someone successful – the ability to perceive and receive what people want.”

Identifying a good idea is one thing. Making it profitable is another.

“Recognizing and then doing something with it,” he says, “is a trait you gotta have.”

Being a successful entrepreneur, he says, means taking calculated risks. “It’s making a commitment and pulling the trigger on an idea or a concept or any opportunity that is there. I can identify it as one word, and that’s timing.” It’s knowing when to get in and when to get out.

“With businesses exit strategies are always important,” says Theisen, who sold Godfather’s in 1983 for hundreds of millions of dollars and saw it enjoy continued success. “Anybody can find the front door but once you go in, what’s your exit strategy? What is the life span of a concept, of an investment? Things come in and go out. How long is this going to be good?

“And when you go onto another business, you have to leave some meat on the bone for the next operator. There has to be some future for it.”

If not Godfather’s, would he have still made a killing in some other business?

“It just happened that way,” he says. “I don’t know if it would have happened if I was in the car business or if I sold life insurance. I was confident but I wasn’t to the point of being blind to the fact things don’t always work.”

This self-described “food maven” would likely have found a niche in some food business segment. He gets too much satisfaction watching people enjoy themselves dining and drinking not to. Then there’s the gratification of conceiving winning venues.

“The toughest job of what I do is to try to figure out what everybody’s going to like. Ultimately I’ve got to figure out what tastes good to people, where they like to go, where they like to park, how long they want to stay, what they want to happen while they’re there. It takes time to do it. You just don’t wake up one morning and go, ‘I’ve got it all figured out.’ There’s a process and there’s a lot that goes into that.”

Before opening Pitch he did his due diligence. 

“I wanted to go into a neighborhood, I wanted trees, I wanted people walking dogs, I wanted slow moving traffic, I wanted soul, nurturing families, a university, light retail. That’s the ingredient for the location. The ingredient for the food is separate. First I had to figure out where I was going to do what I was going to do.

“I spent a lot of time looking around. Of course, I wanted to do it in Omaha. There’s such a thing as a home court advantage when you’re first starting, and my knowledge base was the best here because I’ve been here the longest. So I ended up in the Dundee area. I sat across the street on this bench by myself for several afternoons, with a pad of paper and a cell phone. After several days and discussion with some others I decided that was where I was going to do it.”

Pitch is Theisen’s most refined dining model yet. He says it’s intended to be the kind of “special place” – from decor to food to vibe –  “you discover when you’re out of town and say, ‘I wish we had one of those here.’ That’s what I’ve built. I wanted to give it a pedigree. I think it’s so much different than a lot of things I’ve done but it’s also an accumulation of a lot of things I’ve done. It’s on the progressive side. The foods are more broad-based. It’s current, it’s going after a lot of different demographics..”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If his instincts are right, then Pitch will soon be a household name all over.

“We don’t want it to be one and done. It’s got a future life in other locations out of the city,” says Theisen, who adds he has lined up people “very much interested in taking this brand and developing it. My plan is by year’s end to open company-owned restaurants in six other cities throughout the Midwest and then simultaneously open it up to franchising joint ventures.”

Theisen’s been down this road before.  He conceived Godfather’s while working for Omaha developer Tom Fellman, who had a planned unit development in a southwest suburb. Theisen leased all the available commercial space save a 5,000 square foot bay he saw opportunity in. Apartments with single adults and young families surrounded the heavily trafficked spot.

In 1973, with help from an uncle and a Small Business Association bank loan, he opened the combined Wild Willy’s beer garden and Godfather’s Pizza, brazenly capitalizing on the popular The Godfather. Wild Willy’s faded away but Godfathers took off.

Within a year Theisen began franchising, first in Columbus, Neb., then expanding across the state, the Midwest and nationwide.

“It seems like the success kind of fed itself,” he says. “We hit the ground running with these things. There were many people at our doors wanting franchises. We built by the model, and we managed by the model, and we kept it very simple because we were opening many locations simultaneously.”

At its peak Godfather’s had nearly 1,000 locations in 40-plus states. He revolutionized the industry by using conveyor ovens and introducing free, refillable Coke containers.

After selling Godfather’s he took time off to focus on himself. He worked his magic again buying and selling GB Foods (Green Burrito). Hebecame Famous Dave’s first pure franchisee, winning operator awards and guiding it in new directions. Then he developed Pitch.

 

 

 

 

Willy with “Famous” Dave Anderson

 

 

 

 

 

Through it all, he’s gained local icon status as one of Omaha’s favorite self-made success stories, yet he’s a Chicagoan by birth and was raised in Iowa. He only ended up here when his Ford Falcon broke down on his way to California in 1969.

Omaha long ago became home. His deep affection for where his success began is expressed in many ways. He’s served on the Omaha Airport Authority and Creighton University boards. Mayor Jim Suttle just appointed him to the Metropolitan Entertainment and Convention Authority (MECA) board. Theisen’s helped make the fortunes of Nebraskans who’ve become owner-operators of his ventures. He also encourages emerging entrepreneurs who seek his advice.

“I’m so blessed. I’m really at peace with what I’m doing, giving back, the things I’m involved in, the people that come to me for assistance or questions or what-ifs.

I just think where I am and what I’m doing gives me great pleasure. Of course, I like my cars and certain other items. Those are my hobbies. I like working out. I try to go to the gym regularly to keep my body in pace with my mind because sometimes my mind runs a little quicker than my body can run at my age.

“I don’t deny I’m getting a little bit older but there’s never a bad time for a good idea and that’s what I’m striving to do with Pitch.”

The man who built a 20,000 square foot Regency mansion has moved beyond conspicuous consumption. He doesn’t need to prove anything to anybody.

“I think I’ve evolved, not only as a businessperson but as a person. You change as you grow older, at least I do. Things may have been important to me early in life and now its not about having things, it’s about giving back, it’s about my community and what I can impact in a positive way.

“I’ve just been very fortunate. My dad said the harder you work the luckier you’ll get, and maybe those are hand in hand. I’m not so sure though that if I’d gone to Calif. that would have been a smart move. Maybe I was fortunate my car broke down and I was forced to stay here. Omaha is the key to what I’ve been, what I’ve done.”

 

 

 

 

The single Theisen also enjoys quality time with his family.

Though he’s hands-on and nothing escapes his scrutiny, he’s more the big picture- strategy guy today with his business pursuits.

“I make sure the day to day stuff is done, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t do it myself. I’ve got to stay a little ahead of that. I cant personally worry about a burned-out light bulb. That gets me off track. Don’t you think I don’t look at those light bulbs, and don’t you think I don’t go in our bathrooms, like I’ve done for years. They’ve got to be right, the kitchens have to be clean, everything’s got to be in order.”

It’s not like he has some Midas touch either. It’s more that he pays attention to details and doggedly stays after it.

“I’ve struggled like everybody else. I tried some things that didn’t work. But I always had a couple things going. I didn’t bank on one thing. I hate losing more than I like winning. I just don’t like to lose, and I don’t give up. I’m not known to throw in the towel too often or too quick.”

He admits he can reach too far too fast. Then again, that’s his nature as a risk-taker. He likes the action. He also has the power of his convictions. “People around me make suggestions and then I have to make decisions. It’s a big responsibility and it all comes down to being able and willing with good information to make that decision, whatever it may be, and so I try to attract the best people possible.”

Never one to rest on his laurels, he’s determined to make Pitch his next legacy.  Beside, he couldn’t slow down if he wanted. He’s tried retiring and it didn’t take.

“I think that’s possibly the true definition of an entrepreneur – they really can’t stop. They continue to try to think ahead. Yeah, you’ve got to have that fire in your belly, and you either have it or you don’t, and I have it. I’ve always got something cooking.”

 

Related articles

• How to Be a Successful Entrepreneur with the Right Mindset (gabrielcatalano.com)
• Why Entrepreneur Communities Matter (markpeterdavis.com)

Related articles

• Amazing Entrepreneurs I’ve Met At Big Omaha: Dan Martell (entrepreneursunpluggd.com)
• Nick and Brook Hudson, Their YP Match Made in Heaven Yields a Bevy of Creative-Cultural-Style Results – from Omaha Fashion Week to La Fleur Academy to Masstige Beauty and Beyond (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• The Oracle of Omaha (managementpocketbooks.wordpress.com)

Linda Lovgren’s Sterling Career Earns Her Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce Business Hall of Fame Induction

Wherever one lives there are those high achievers whose professional work and community service connote on them the epitome of respect, and that’s certainly the case with the subject of this profile, Linda Lovgren, a marketing-public relations expert known for her keen strategic thinking and execution.  I can attest to her not only being extremely professional but eminently approachable as well.   She’s just what you’d expect from a Midwest entrepreneur, too, with her legendary work ethic and unassilable integrity combined with that down-to-earth humility that makes her rather uncomfortable talking about herself.  Of course, she makes her living polishing the image of others and so naturally she prefers deflecting attention away from herself to her clients.  But it’s easy to see why clients would develop an easy rapport with her and place their trust in her.  Yes, she’s as salt-of-the-earth as they come.  But don’t assume that means she’s unsophisticated.  Her blue plate client roster is proof she’s fully engaged in 21st century   marketing-public relations techniques.

 

 

Linda Lovgren

 

 

Linda Lovgren’s Sterling Career Earns Her Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce Business Hall of Fame Induction

©by Leo Adam Biga

Soon to appear in the New Horizons

“I’ve kind of always been a carpe diem or seize the day sort of person,” says new Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce Business Hall of Fame inductee Linda Lovgren.

The highly respected public relations maven began her Lovgren Marketing Group in 1978 at the age of 30. It was an era when relatively few women, especially women that young, went in business for themselves. Growing up and working on her family’s far northwest Iowa farm taught the former Linda Hoeppner the independence and conviction necessary for being an entrepreneur. Her parents were both teachers but they left that field to run a farm and later formed another business. With that enterprising model as an example, Lovgren made the leap from working for others to working for herself only eight years after graduating college.

“It never occurred to me I could fail,” she says.

She’s keenly aware of the glass ceiling many women report encountering in the corporate world, then and now, but she didn’t experience it herself.

“I felt like when I started my business I had an equal opportunity to go after new business or to make people aware of what I was doing and to integrate into the community,” she says. “Now those aren’t things you do overnight, it takes time to grow a business, to grow relationships, and one connection leads to another connection. It’s this large linkage you begin to build.”

 

 

 

 

With businesswomen scarce then, her mentors were the opposite sex.

“As I discovered there weren’t very many women in business and so that made it a little bit tougher, and so a lot of my business mentors have been men.”

She says former Chamber president Bob Bell was a big help at the start.

“I went down to get a Chamber membership and I met Bob and told him what I was going to do and he said, ‘Well. let’s see what we can get you involved in that would be good.’ He kind of started to help connect me in various ways.”

Those connections not only aided her in getting established but forged a strong relationship with the Chamber that culminated in her serving as its first female chairman in 2003.

Several other prominent men have taken her under their wing.

“Hal Daub was clearly one of them,” says Lovgren, who’s been active in Republican party politics. “I got to know Hal when he was running for Congress and he hired me to do marketing work with him and we became very good, lifelong friends. In fact, when he was running for reelection in 1980 I had young children at home and one night we needed to have a meeting but I couldn’t leave because my husband had some obligation and I had kids to put to bed. So the meeting came to my house and Hal put my kids to bed. He read them the stories while his staff and I worked on the campaign. We always chuckle about that a little bit.

“Roy Smith, another Omaha icon, was a great mentor. I met him through the Chamber and Hal. Mike McCarthy of the McCarthy Group has been a great business advisor to me over the years.”

The late Bob Reilly, an Omaha PR-advertising legend, proved an invaluable resource as well.

“When I first started in business I realized I knew a lot about advertising and public relations but I didn’t know a lot about running the business. I didn’t know the business management practices for billing and managing. I called up Bob, who had been a partner in Holland, Dreves, Reilly and was teaching at UNO at the time, and I said, ‘Can I hire you to consult with me and help me through this startup phase?’ We talked things over at what turned out to be a long lunch and we developed a long friendship and great relationship.”

For someone as forward-thinking and confident as Lovgren, making a go of it on her own was a strategic move to advance her career. She entered the adventure with a come-what-may attitude that prepared her for whatever happened.

“As I look back on it now I just kind of looked at it as this is the next step in what I’m going to do, and if it works out that is spectacular, and it has been, and if it doesn’t work out, there will be another door opening.

Besides, when she and her husband moved to Omaha after college she tasted the disappointment of not finding the dream job she had her sights set on, yet she landed on her feet anyway and soon found the pathway to her career.

“I really had wanted a job in an advertising agency,” she says. “I had gone around and knocked on all the doors and dropped off my resume and nothing happened.”

She considered working in television, whether in front of or behind the camera. She acted in theater productions and did public speaking throughout high school and college. She studied broadcast journalism as part of her communications program at Indiana University, where she interned at the school’s TV station.

“I really wanted to work in that creative field of writing and production.”

Among other things, she was the IU station’s weather girl. “I knew nothing about the weather,” she admits. “It was all about the performance,” And about a pretty face and nice figure. Thus, she says, “my first job interview in Omaha was to do the weather on KMTV. But Carol Scott got the job.” With her TV and advertising aspirations foiled, Lovgren moved onto the next best thing.

“I went to work for KRCB Radio in Council Bluffs. I was doing the writing for all the direct accounts and doing a lot of voice-over production. If the news person got sick I did the news. It was a small family station at the time. This was before it was acquired by the Mitchell Broadcasting Company.”

 

 

 

 

Her big break finally came when veteran ad man Howard Winslow offered her a position with his Winslow Advertising agency.

“His clients included Sears, McDonalds, Shavers Food Marts and a number of retail stores. As creative director I was the writer-producer of all the spots we did. I really was well-suited for that. I enjoyed working with the clients.”

In seven years with Winslow she says “I got a broad education from him. That was a good foundation.” He was the first in that string of male mentors who aided her professional development.

Branching out on her own after working for Winslow was “a defining moment” in her personal and professional life, she says. Making it an even greater challenge was the fact she had a 16-month old child at home, with her second child on the way. Going it alone while pregnant was a big decision. She knew being a mother, wife and owner-operator would severely test her and the family.

She got the idea to go in business for herself when, she says, “some of the clients I had been working with came to me and said, ‘We know in a few months you’re going to take some time off but we would really like to continue to work with you.’

So I thought about that for awhile and decided I was going to start the company.”

She says she and her husband, Robert W. Lovgren, then a fresh from college Mutual of Omaha manager and now longtime executive with the company, discussed the pros and cons. “We talked about all of this and he said, “I know you really well and I know you’re not going to be happy unless you try because you’ll always look back and say, Should I have done this?’ So I had great support from him to start with.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She concedes there were sacrifices and struggles being a working mom but she wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.

“I know I was a happier person because I was working, which means my children were probably happier kids. It meant that when we spent family time together we spent very focused, productive family time together, and so that’s a positive. It was just a matter of figuring out how to make all the pieces fit.”

Finding the right balance, she says, was key. That was no easy thing either for this self-described “workaholic.” Having a driven nature is characteristic of virtually every successful entrepreneur and she’s no different. Her hectic schedule as a new business owner and mother was all she could handle.

“I had childcare in the mornings, so that”s when I’d see my clients and do my work  outside of the house. Then I’d come home in the afternoons and do naps and activities with the kids, fix dinner at night and put the kids to bed. We would do that as a family. And then I’d resume work again.

“I’ve always been a late night person which probably was a good thing in this case.

I would always enjoy that peaceful time in the evening to work and think about the strategies for my clients and do creative things.

She says young entrepreneurs need “to think about how they want to use their time and what kind of balance do they want in their life. As their business grows and if they have a family then the pressures on priorities start to grow as well. There were times when I don’t think I did the best of job balancing those priorities but now when I talk to my kids who are adults and have children of their own they say, ‘Boy, Mom, we didn’t realize it then, but we’re kind of wondering how that all worked out.’ And it did, too, because they both have great families.”

A favorite way she maintains balance is by enjoying the great outdoors, particularly her sport of choice, fly fishing.

“I grew up on the Minnesota-Iowa border and my mom and my dad and my brother and my grandmother loved to fish. I learned to spin fish for bullheads and crappies and bass when I was growing up.”

She says she hadn’t fished for maybe 20 years when she and her husband were off on one of their backpacking, hiking, camping trips in Estes Park, Colorado and she noticed a promotion for a fly fishing instructional.

“I thought, That looks really interesting, I’m going to go do that, so I went on this Sunday night four-hour excursion to learn how to fly fish and that was it. I have taken to it you might say like a fish to water. I love it. Part of the reason I love it is it’s physical and what I do day to day isn’t very physical.

“I also enjoy the peace and quiet and just the serene atmosphere. It’s just you and the fish. It’s an opportunity to think about things that aren’t day to day work. It’s just kind of that emotional release and, of course, catching a fish is a lot of fun. It has skill and it has art. But most of all it has an emotional attachment with the people I’m around when I fly fish.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sport took on deeper meaning for her when it became part of her own and other women’s ongoing healing as breast cancer survivors.

“About three years ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer and I was home recovering from a minor surgery reading a fly fishing magazine and there was  something about an organization called Casting for Recovery. It’s a program that does fly fishing retreats for breast cancer survivors because the therapy of the fly fishing is good for the muscles in the arms and chest area. I contacted them and got together a group of friends and we had our first retreat in Nebraska last September.

Fourteen women. We went out to Valentine and fished on the Snake River.”

She emphasizes she was “very lucky” in her own bout with cancer because the doctors caught it early.”

Life throws curves at her like it does at everyone else sand she says it helps to cultivate positive attitudes and friends.

“I guess you could say I always had confidence but it didn’t mean I always got what I wanted and I think that’s really an important lesson to learn, too – that sometimes even though you think you’re the best or you’ve done it the best you aren’t going to win all the time, and in a way those are good growing experiences, too. I’ve never regretted and I’ve never looked back.

“I surround myself with a very eclectic group of people that I like to be around. They’re all energetic, they’re all achievers in their own way. Some are professionals, some are stay-at-home moms. Some of them are my fly fish pals. They all like to get out and do things. They’re all looking forward to what’s the next adventure we can have. They’re also people that are very loyal to each other. If you need help and you call them, they’re there.”

It helped that she knew what she wanted when she launched Lovgren Marketing. Thirty four years later she still looks forward to coming to the office every day. Her hunger has never left and it’s reflected in the can-do attitude she brings to the image enhancement, branding, message control and media liaison work she does.

“Get there, do what you can, do it with enthusiasm, and if things don’t go the way you want, pick up the pieces and find out how to put them back on track. That’s what I love about it, and no two days are ever the same.

“What keeps me going every day is that I really love what I do and I enjoy the  relationships I build with clients.”

One of her firm’s big ongoing projects is the Clean Solutions for Omaha or CSO Program that includes sewer separation in northeast Omaha. Lovgren Marketing has been recognized for its work on the project with multiple awards from the Public Relations Society of America – Nebraska Chapter.

“When the city’s CSO project came along we were selected to do the public involvement work on it, so for the last six-plus years we’ve been doing public education in all sorts of fashions: marketing materials, media management and training, speaking to civic groups, working with schools and doing presentations to students about the environmental reasons for the project and how it will affect them into the future.

“It will be 15 years before the project’s implementation is finished and many years beyond that before we finish paying for it. I’ve gotten to meet people from literally every corner of this city, from the Mormon Bridge to Bellevue, from the Missouri River to Elkhorn, and I really get energized by talking to other people and finding out what they’re thinking and why they’re thinking it.”

She says public involvement projects like this are a new niche for her firm.

“When we started out we were primarily a retail advertising organization. We worked for restaurants, a clothing store, an appliance store, a car dealer, a bank and for Countryside village shopping center. Krug’s Men’s and Boys Clothing was our original client. We were very active in political campaigns for two and a half decades. About seven years ago we started doing a lot of work with municipal organizations.”

Lovgren Marketing Group led the advocacy campaign for the Omaha Convention Center and Arena bond issue.

Her company also does its share of earned media and event marketing. “We’ve done things like the ground breaking and ribbon cutting for Pay Pal and Gallup and the CenturyLink Center.”

As communications has evolved so has her business.

“The public relations field today is not just about news conferences and news releases,” she says. “It involves Facebook and Twitter and all the social media activities that are available now to help people get their messages out and to help manage messages. So staying up with technology, understanding how that technology can impact a client, those are all important.

“As time has gone on our business has changed dramatically. Twenty years ago we didn’t have personal computers. We do probably three times as much business with one person because of the computers and the Internet and the ability to communicate and get more information quickly. We can design more quickly and certainly make design changes more efficiently, and that’s good for the client.”

Technology can only take you so far though. Her profession, she says, is still about

“thinking and strategy to come up with the best product you can.” She feels her staff of five have some built-in advantages, including “the ability to connect our clients to the right people to get their business done. Because we are experienced and mature we have a lot of network and connection throughout the community, so we’re able to help people find the right places to get information effectively to market their products or services.”

She brings a wealth of experience and a considerable tool box to the table.

“I think I’m really good at sitting down with a client and saying, ‘What do you want to achieve?’ and then figuring out very useful strategic ways for them to meet their goals through marketing and public relations. And obviously one of the skill sets in that industry is having some creativity, being able to brainstorm with the client what creative ideas might help get that message to the public, what’s going to connect their product or service to their target audience.

“Over the years I think I’ve really honed a skill set that helps me get through all of the discussion and figure out what really is the underlying strategy for doing that.”

She’s quick to add, “i don’t do this on my own. In fact, sometimes I look at the organizational chart and I think I’m on the bottom of it. There are very talented people on our staff who do design and writing and PR and keep the organization functioning as a whole. We’ve had amazing talented people work here who I have enjoyed a lot. It’s a very collaborative kind of business. It’s like a family. Everyone has a task to do but as a whole we are so much better doing it together.”

What keeps her hungry for more after all these years is essentially the same thing that’s always motivated her.

“I think the thing I love the most is getting to the end of the day and knowing we helped a client or clients take one more step toward their success. You got the meeting you needed or got the ad finished and it looks great. Whatever that is it just makes you feel good when you go home.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An indication of the mark she’s made locally is that she’s among very few women in the Omaha Chamber Business Hall of Fame. This year’s unusual in that she’s one of three women inductees, along with Ree Kaneko (Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and KANEKO) and Lori Hogan (Home Instead Senior Care). The other 2012 inductees are Land Title Company founder and former Omaha Mayor Mike Fahey, Midlands Business Journal founder and publisher Bob Hoig and the late co-founder of Pamida, D.J. “Tex” Witherspoon.

Lovgren feels Omaha abounds with many “capable” women professionals and that it’s only a matter of time before more of them fill top management and executive roles in corporations and other organizations. She points out that many of the most accomplished women are, like her, Kaneko and Hogan, owners of their own businesses. Women CEOs are harder to find.

“It will come,” she says.

A chapter in her life that once again found her in a male-dominated field was her involvement with the GOP. “I worked very hard in party politics from 1976 to 1980.”

She was state party vice chairman before becoming interim chair. “It’s a huge responsibility. I enjoyed it tremendously, and I learned a lot. I certainly met people all over the state. It was a great time.”

While working on the state committee to elect Ronald Reagan she went on a campaign junket the then-candidate made across Nebraska.  She flew on the press plane and then got to sit next to Reagan in his limo on the way to a speech he was making in Grand Island. “

“I spent 15 minutes talking to him. That was very exciting.”

At the 1980 national GOP convention in Detroit she was part of a team that put together a daily newspaper delivered to delegates. She was on the convention floor and attended various parties. “It was a lot of fun,” she says.

“I did stay involved in party politics for a long time after that in other ways,” she adds, but today she’s more calculated in her political deliberations.

“I’m very interested in politics and where it leads because it has an impact on us every day in terms of the policy that’s made. I think it’s very important for people to pay attention to the candidates and the issues surrounding us.”

Just as politics can be topsy turvy, her life and career have had ups and downs but she tries keeping an even keel through it all. She buys into the conventional wisdom that one learns more from failures than successes.

“I do agree with that, and sometimes they aren’t big failures either. You know, in our business we have great clients but sometimes they merge with someone else or they sell their company or the relationship just doesn’t work and you move on and they move on. I never look at those as failures in the sense that a lot of people might. I look at them and say, What opportunity does that present for me to build a better company and to build better relationships with the clients we do have? So I think you learn from everything you do.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As a matriarch in her field, she feels she has something to offer young people coming into the profession and embraces sharing her knowledge base with them.

“I take every meeting that I can get with them. Not only young women but young men, too. I enjoy talking with them because they come with new ideas and fresh perspectives. I think it’s important for them to understand what they want to do, what they want to be, and if I can help them sort that out I’m happy to do it. I haven’t done it all right but I’ve done enough things right.”

She says part of the satisfaction she takes from her career is when a former employee goes on to success of their own and tells her they couldn’t have done it without her. “That tells me I made a difference for somebody,” she says, “and that’s what we all hope to do in our life.”

For Lovgren, whose give back has included volunteering with the State Fair Board, Nebraska Kidney Foundation, Mid-America Boy Scouts of America and Habitat for Humanity, “the prize in the end is not one thing,” adding, “The prize is – Did I accomplish what I wanted to accomplish for the people who surround me and work hard for the company, for my family who have come along for this whole effort, for the clients we work for? It’s really more about knowing you have accomplished something that has made a difference for all of those people.”

Related articles

• Entrepreneur Extraordinaire Willy Theisen is Back, Not that He Was Ever Really Gone (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• Grassroots Leadership Development Program Provides Opportunities for Students (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• North Omaha Champion Frank Brown Fights the Good Fight (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• Nick and Brook Hudson, Their YP Match Made in Heaven Yields a Bevy of Creative-Cultural-Style Results – from Omaha Fashion Week to La Fleur Academy to Masstige Beauty and Beyond (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)
• Entrepreneur, Strategist and Nation Builder Taylor Keen (leoadambiga.wordpress.com)