Going for the Gold in Gold Sneakers!

“All your marketing should be designed to attract the people you want . . . and repel the people you don’t want!”

                           — Gene Call  

If there’s one thing I’ve learned traveling along this life’s highways and byways, is that in all things it is best to completely be yourself. Take a stand for yourself, choose your likes and dislikes, and stand proudly in them. When you are clearly you, other people will see it and know you for who you are. This simplifies life immeasurably. Your people will be drawn to you more quickly, and the other people will pass you by.

I was thinking about this as I drove to the Jonathan Club downtown Los Angeles, to speak to the Los Angeles Chapter of NAWBO (National Association of Women Business Owners). I was dressed in my usual “Give-a-speech-costume”—blouse, blazer, pants and gold tennis shoes.

Mind you, I wear gold tennis shoes all the time. I have casual gold tennies that have a quilted pattern and gold beads for everyday wear, but for speeches, I wear my dressy gold tennis shoes that have rhinestones all over them. I had thought briefly of wearing “real shoes” to this event, since this was a rather corporate environment, but then I decided just to stick with my usual style.

Wouldn’t you know, my momentary hesitation manifested itself in a challenge issued to me by one of the Jonathan Club employees in the lobby. “Excuse me, miss,” he said frowning disapprovingly at my feet, “but we don’t allow tennis shoes in our club.”

Oops! Caught already. I grinned up at him and said, “I’m terribly sorry, but I am the speaker this evening and this is my costume!”

He wasn’t buying it. “Don’t you have any other shoes?” he inquired.

“No,” I shrugged, “not with me.” Oh, dear, I thought, am I going to be thrown out? Barred from the club? My eyes widened and I said, “You know, I’m sure your dress code means tennis shoes as in gym shoes. These are clearly not gym shoes—they are gold mesh, dressy shoes with diamonds on them!”

He paused for a long moment as he thought this over. It must have made sense to him, because he said, “Okay…but hurry!” He wanted me out of his jurisdiction as soon as possible, and I was happy to oblige him as I scurried upstairs to the meeting room.

The meeting was fabulous with lots of great people—no one else in tennis shoes, I noted. (They must have been tipped off to the dress code.) The reactions to my gold shoes are always very interesting. Lots of people smile and comment how they just love my shoes, how comfortable they look, etc. I know these are “my people.” And of course, some people don’t like them—one woman told me after the talk that I should look more professional if I was going to talk about a serious subject like money. I just smiled, because I think that’s one of the problems I’m trying to solve—that people are too serious about money.

So don’t judge me until you walk a mile in my gold tennis shoes.

Chellie Campbell, Financial Stress Reduction Expert, is the author of bestselling books The Wealthy Spirit, Zero to Zillionaire, and From Worry to Wealthy: A Woman’s Guide to Financial Success Without the Stress. She has been treating Money Disorders like Spending Bulimia and Income Anorexia in her Financial Stress Reduction® Workshops for over 25 years and is still speaking, writing, and teaching workshops—now as Zoom classes and The Wealthy Spirit Group on Facebook—with participants from all over the world. Website: www.chellie.com.