If You Have to Cry, GO OUTSIDE

Wait, no, I’m not saying that to you, but fashion public relations mogul Kelly Cutrone is. Her book fully titled If You Have to Cry, Go Outside and Other Things Your Mother Never Told You has been out in hard cover and e-reader format (I have it on my NOOK) for almost a year, and now it’s finally in paperback so let’s celebrate with a book review!

Kelly Cutrone is the head of fashion PR company People’s Revolution which is based nationally in New York City and Los Angeles. She is tough as nails and unapologetic for any toes she steps on while she tells you what she thinks. And that’s why she’s successful. Her book If You Have to Cry, Go Outside chronicles her journey from upstate New York high school girl with no specific goals or asperations to fashion world icon after one sweet sixteen birthday trip to New York City lit her dreams on fire. (New York City will do that to a young woman.)

Cutrone goes into detail of how she clawed her way from not even knowing what the word “publicist” really meant in the business world to being world renowned for her ability to turn someone’s small fashion idea into huge success. In her book she speaks of how her spirituality helped lead her to her successes. She tells how she lives her life as a warrior and does not indulge in complaining or worry about winning or losing each individual struggle, she simply does her job as the warrior she is to experience the struggle. She describes her experiences with fear as she grew her company and worried that she wasn’t the reason why she was experiencing her success, but rather it was the individual big name clients she worked with who might eventually leave her for a variety of reasons and then OMG the company is going to FAIL because that one client was the REASON I EXIST! She felt that familiar feeling so many women in the business world, and even in everyday life, feel: I’m a faker, I’m going to lose everything when they find out I don’t know what I’m doing. She consulted her spiritual advisor who told her to to replace the O in Worrier with an A (which would spell Warrier, but… let’s give the spellcheck to it and we get Warrior) and then Cutrone‘s entire mental process shifted from being scared of her success to being a master of it. I’m sure it wasn’t quite as easy as all that, but I have no doubt that really was the catalyst to her success.

And since it’s the title of the book, I’ll spill the beans on the crying outside chapter. Cutrone explains that crying in front of your co-workers ruins their focused work energy. Work is for work. And if you make a mistake, just handle it. If you’re not emotionally ready to handle mistakes or perceived mistakes without crying, just take it outside and handle your mini breakdown there away from all the others who are trying their hardest to stay focused on the game. If we took a break from work to handle everyone’s emotional crises our productivity would be… nonexistent, and that’s Cutrone‘s overall point. Cry outside, focus on kicking warrior butt inside. It’s a harsh concept to some people, but once it settles in you’ll realize you’ve never seen the UPS worker crying on your shoes for having to carry that same 50 lb package you had to box and tape up, put a label on, and drag over to the package pick-up area. It’s a bit of a light bulb moment to step outside of yourself and enter the head space of the next person in your path, and Cutrone does a brilliant job of bringing you there with this chapter.

Empowering women is the name of this book’s game, and I heart being empowered. It doesn’t matter if you like Kelly Cutrone as a person or care about the fashion world. If you need to know that you are worth it, that you are an awesome woman and deserve to have goals and aspirations to achieve all of your successes then give this book a quick read. When you’re done with scanning through it for the parts that call to you then savor the parts that resonate most with you, let them sink in, figure out how they work into your life or how you want them to work into your life. Those parts will likely help you get through some very tough times. (I know they have for me.)

Purchase the hardcover, Kindle, or new paperback version of If You Have to Cry, Go Outside and Other Things Your Mother Never Told You from Amazon. If you want to own the same NOOK version I do visit Barnes & Noble and log into your NOOKbook library.

Feature photo: Mel Rowling

A Book For Wounded Souls

My friend Deanna sent me an instant message last week to see how I was doing.  I assured her that I was, still, doing fantastically awful.

And then she did the most annoying thing that people always do when they know you are feeling awful.

She recommended a book to me.

I don’t know why I didn’t punch Deanna.  Maybe because she was instant messaging me from Canada, and I have yet to figure out the emoticon for “punch in face through computer”.  Maybe because I really kind of love her.  Or maybe because, for some odd reason, my mental response was actually something along the lines of “I think you need this right now.”

Don’t ask me why.

I don’t know why I didn’t roll my eyes or immediately forget the name of that book.

What I do know is that I had $200 in my checking account, 24 hours until pay day, and a weekend conference I was leaving for that was going to require me to feed myself using a good chunk of that $200.

I stopped at Barnes & Noble on my way to the hotel and bought that damn book anyway.

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