"A leader takes people where they want
to go. A great leader takes people where
they don't necessarily want to go but
ought to be."
Rosalyn Smith Carter

Why Taylor?

My Experience

Family Life

Availability to Customers

What I Offer

Account Executives

marcia@marciameskielmacy.com

National Event Photos

Many of you are looking for professional photos of national events. Over the last few days, questions have been coming in about downloading pictures from the internet.

To clarify:

A. This is copyright infringement

B. These images are very low res and will reproduce terribly in a yearbook.

Here is the web site and phone number for MCT Campus. They do provide photo packages to publications and these photos will include all national and world events.

MCT Campus: 800-245-6536 ext 6698

Why Taylor?
In an age of fast-moving technology, a personal approach to service makes Taylor your ideal publishing partner. This is reflected both in our publishing plant and in my approach to the yearbook business.

First here’s why I selected Taylor for my yearbook rep career back in the early 80’s: they offered a professional approach to real world printing with educationally oriented materials. It was a good fit. During the first 14 years I worked with and for Ron Binns (who retired in 1992) and then Ken Thornberry (who became a vice president of Taylor in 1999). In 1993, Ken and I won Office of the Year Honors, the most prestigious sales and service award Taylor gives. In 1999 I became owner/manager of the South Florida Office with two associates working with me. I decided to “go it alone” in 2002 after I found that my travel schedule made staff management more time-consuming that I liked. Managing just me my way became my full-time job. That way is based on my journalism education, my teaching experience and my 25+ years of working with schools in South Florida.

My Experience
I conduct journalism labs, leadership breakout sessions and professional etiquette interactive workshops at journalism conferences nationwide. The college, high school and middle school yearbook programs with which I have had the pleasure to work have consistently met their goals; whether it has been to earn top journalism awards or to sell more books or to meet all deadlines, the yearlong experience became one to be enjoyed.

I seek constantly to grow my knowledgebase:

• my own high school experiences in yearbook, newspaper and literary magazine at Duxbury High School in Massachusetts
• my college publication and classroom “learning” from both the University of Miami and University of Iowa where I won Outstanding Journalism Graduate of the Year honors

My teaching, advising and coaching experiences at

• Washington, (Iowa) High School, where I taught Independent Reading, Mass Media, Journalism, and advised the newspaper
• Attucks Middle School in Hollywood, FL where I taught 8th grade language arts and reading, coached swimming
• Nova High School in Davie, FL, where I taught 9th grade English, advised the Literary Magazine and the yearbook
• Boyd Anderson High School in Fort Lauderdale, FL where I taught 9th grade English, advised at various times the yearbook and always the newsmagazine which I founded, coached swimming

Family Life
In the interim I have “worked” as both a mom and a wife. John, Jason (JT) and Amy are "of course" now all grown up and married, but their formative years were spent while I taught and then rep’d for Taylor. All three have taken their goal-setting skills and value system from competitive swimming into the real world.

John, now married to Mary, lives in Lake Park, FL and works for both the city of West Palm as a paramedic/firefighter at Station #1 downtown and still continues his lifeguard career part time for Palm Beach County. Mary has just retired after years in store management with Pier 1 and runs her vintage clothing business on eBay from their home while they work on their adoption process.

JT and his wife Natalie reside in Malibu, CA, where he owns a recording studio. Natalie continues her career as a producer for the Style Network. Last July 25, JT and Nat presented us with our first grandchild, Strider Keiley Meskiel. I just call him the Wonder Child for short as he gave us quite a scare with a difficult birth and 15 days of hospitalization!

Amy and her partner Inge live in Berkeley where she currently works as a mortgage broker while attending seminary at Berkeley to become ordained in yet-another church. She is filling in at First Congregational Church of Oakland while the reverend there is on maternity leave. Inge is a clinical psychologist working as Director in Intake and Psychological Services for the State of California judicial services.

And my beloved Jim Macy has “retired” and moved us up to Melbourne Beach where he still manages condominium complexes, plays golf twice a week and helps me with my little antiques and collectible business at Finders Keepers Antique Mall in Melbourne’s Historic Village.

When we made that move six years ago, first to Merritt Island and then to the Beach, I set up a residence/office first on Fort Lauderdale Beach then further south in the Pinecrest area just south of Coral Gables in Miami-Dade County (it's where the stock shots for "The Golden Girls" were made.) I realigned my territory to focus on two basic geographies: Miami south of downtown to 180th and Palm Beach County and areas north starting at Okeechobee Boulevard and traveling up to Titusville. That keeps me “local” on a regularly-scheduled basis for all of my yearbook staffs and potential schools.

Availability to Customers
When we made that move four years ago, first to Merritt Island and then to the Beach, I set up a residence/office on Fort Lauderdale Beach which I just closed. Having lived in Fort Lauderdale nearly all of my adult life, this decision was heart-rending. But in July, I was able to realign my territory to focus on two basic geographies: Miami south of downtown to 180th and a northern area that starts at Okeechobee Boulevard in Palm Beach County and goes north to Titusville. I then moved my southern residence/office to the Pinecrest area just south of Coral Gables. That keeps me “local” on a regularly scheduled basis for all of my customers and potential schools.

Basically I work one week in the north and the next in the south, working with schools all along the drives back and forth. As this geography has been the bookends to the areas in which I have always worked, the driving is not a big deal. And the fact that I now have succinctly defined areas in which to function makes it even easier for scheduling my so-called life.

You can depend on me to make the next appointment with you as part of each work session; I design this schedule with specific tasks in mind that we will each have accomplished by the next work session together. I count on my advisers and my editors to keep me informed of their needs and their concerns. In that way we can work together to smooth out the process.

What I Offer
For each of my yearbook staffs, I am committed to providing:
• Production, design and computer workshops on an individualized basis
• Layout, copywriting suggestions based on the most current design trends
• Photography expertise, including basic shooting and digital technology
• All production and teaching materials necessary to complete your yearbook
• A comprehensive marketing, advertising and merchandising strategy to increase your yearbook and ad revenues
• Regular budget reviews to keep yearbook financing on track
• Personal inspection of each copy shipment before it is sent to our publishing plant either by FedEx or online

In each of our publishing plants, a manufacturing team will handle your publication’s pages from beginning to end. Each team has a close working relationship, ensuring your pages are handled with the highest care for quality and consistency, allowing for quick turnaround of proofs.

Account Executives
Assisting you from within the plant is a personal Account Executive; I am very fortunate to work with the best team of AE’s: Robert Porter in Dallas, Ana Solis in El Paso and Sally Voss in San Angelo. They each oversee trouble-free production of each page of every yearbook. Assisting them is a service team. Like our manufacturing teams, a customer service team means better communication and allows the plant to respond quickly to questions and needs. Our entire customer service staff receives extensive training in all aspects of yearbook production and each member is ready to respond whenever we need them.

Robert Porter Dallas Plant 1550 West Mockingbird Lane Dallas, TX 75235 direct line: (800) 708-6641 fax: (800) 563-9908 voice mail: 800-677-2810 ext. 8278 rporter@taylorpub.com	Ana Solis El Paso Plant 10365 Railroad Drive El Paso, TX 79924 direct line:(800) 945-2097 fax:(800) 203-9764 voice mail:800-677-2810 ext. 7110 asolis@taylorpub.com

Associate Rep covering Palm Beach County

Ashley Duchesneau has just finished a three-hour credit internship as she simultaneously completes her work at Brevard Community College prior to transferring down to PBA.  Ashley brought her hands-on knowledge to yearbook staffs this fall covering better business management practices specifically.  This spring she is working part-time for me assisting staffs with portrait page flowing and index set ups. Ashley will also travel with Abby to CMA and possibly to NSPA in California. As an incoming staffer for the Mast, she will travel to YearbookComp in New Orleans and YWIF in St. Louis.  She will work closely with Abby again as she assumes her responsibilities as Director of My*SEMINAR.

Claudia Balinet, Adviser
Osceola Magnet Elementary School (Vero Beach)
"Marcia has been an incredible cheerleader and motivator.
She understands the pressures that teachers are under
in addition to putting out a yearbook and she takes that into account when working with us. If we need her,
she’s there to hold our hands and soothe us. Marcia has a fabulous wit and easy way of letting you know it’s all going to be “OK.”

I learned so much by publishing this yearbook, and not just about yearbooks, but about maintaining my patience, poise and sense of humor under pressure."

Personal Development with a Purpose

By Paul Chek
Selfgrowth.com

There's an old saying that goes, "If you don't know where you're going, any path will take you there." The same is true of personal development. Everyone who starts down the path of personal development wants to grow -- to evolve into something more than when they began their journey. But figuring out just what path to take when you set out is a major challenge in and of itself.

As a holistic health practitioner, I'm a big fan of getting right to the heart of the matter. So the first thing I do when I meet with a new client who is ready to begin their quest for personal development is to ask them if they have a legacy.

What exactly does that mean?

Most of us have some sense of the meaning of the term "legacy." The common use of this word is backward looking.

Take this question: "What kind of legacy do you want to leave behind?" In this case, a legacy is something like the achievements we're known for when we're gone. But this backward looking sense of a legacy is just a small part of what I'm after when I talk to clients about their legacy. After all, we're not planning for their funeral here!

The reason why I use the word "legacy" is that it focuses our attention on the whole picture and purpose of our lives. It's fantastic to have career goals, financial goals, or relationship goals, but oftentimes we tend to ignore the other aspects of our lives in favor of pursuing those particular achievements. This imbalance inevitably slows down our growth and frequently results in all sorts of health problems.

True personal development requires a holistic approach, one in which you've set out the ideal picture of your life and developed a goal structure that supports the achievement of that total life goal. Because a legacy just is your complete life's goal, having one is a crucial step in taking a holistic approach to personal development.

So one fantastic benefit to having a legacy is that it can help you to create and organize goals. It provides you with the ideal toward which all your efforts in life are directed. But having a well thought-out legacy offers so much more. As with any other project, there will always be distractions while you are working on yourself. We have habits to overcome, patterns of procrastination, people who need our time and energy, and so forth. The power of a legacy is that it can provide a very powerful tool to conquer those habits, steer clear of the procrastination, and to meet the needs of those around us without getting diverted.

In fact, the reason why these diversions can have such a pull on us is that we don't have any particular force guiding us in a direction that we truly want to go. But when your day is built around your legacy, those distractions become impotent. The short-term pleasures that procrastination offers pale in comparison to the potential of your legacy, and as long as you stick to your goals, you're always one day closer to realizing that dream.

Of course, the extent to which your legacy will help you to create and organize your goals and boost your motivation is going to depend upon how much detail you give to the picture of your ideal life. This picture of your legacy often develops over a long period of time, but you can get a decent handle on it by thinking about the following lifestyle components:

1) People. What kind of people do you value, feel comfortable with, get excited about spending time with?
2) Passion. What is it about life that enlivens you and fills you with energy?
3) Purpose. What is it that brings meaning to your life or gives you a sense of fulfillment?
4) Responsibilities. What kinds of responsibilities are you comfortable handling in your life, whether they be personal, professional, or spiritual?
5) Career. What manifestation of your abilities, purpose, and passion would best fulfill your career needs?
6) Values. Your values are your needs and desires, ranging from your most basic physical needs to those that dictate your relationships with your friends, loved ones, co-workers, and the environment at large. What are your values?

This list here certainly isn't exhaustive, but it's a good start. Not only will it help you to fill out the picture of your career, but the relationships you develop with yourself and your loved ones. At the C.H.E.K Institute and in my PPS Success Mastery Program we get into much greater detail as we help our clients find and create their legacies on a daily basis.

Because this picture you're developing is your life's goal, I recommend, just as with any goal, that you write it down. Or, if you are artistically driven, you can draw it, paint it, sculpt it, or make it physical in whatever way works best for you. However you do it, don't allow your legacy to remain just an idea! Your legacy will be much more motivating when you can look it in the face each and every day.

Knowing that you have a purpose and that you are living your purpose every day is a wonderful thing. It makes me spring out of bed each morning, energized and excited! How many people do you know that look forward to their day, every day, in that way? So take the time to map out your legacy today. You'll be giving yourself a path to personal development with a purpose, and that's a path to success!