Lena McGuire: Making wise decisions on the road to success
By Kate Hanzalik
If there is a theme to Lena McGuire’s life, it would be about making good decisions. “You can have anything you want, but you can’t have everything. So, choose wisely,” she said.
As the owner of Spóca Kitchen and Bath LLC, Lena is all about choices. She helps homeowners create new spaces by giving them options for anything they would want, whether that be refreshing, replacing, reconfiguring, or remodeling their homes.
“Most of my clients are empty nesters and they just want to have a good lifestyle. It doesn’t mean that they have a luxury budget. It just means that they want to have nice things in their home. We prioritize what they need, what’s going to allow them to stay there, how they’re best going to function and have their aesthetics met.”
She also leads workshops for people looking to improve their homes. “I teach a lot of classes at local libraries. I’ve taught six in the past three months. I try to do 10 or 12 seminars a year so that people are educated, so they learn about what the remodeling process entails, how much it costs, what to budget, where to splurge, where to save.”
Spóca Kitchen and Bath is thriving. In fact, she’s in the process of starting a satellite location in Nashville, which is a good decision for her both professionally and personally. Now she can reach more customers, she is expanding her network, she is able to see her son regularly, and, as someone who loves to travel, she is expanding her horizons, all at the same time. “I find it very invigorating to fly every two or three weeks to go down there and meet with the business group that I’m involved with.”
Lena is from Syracuse. She moved away for 21 years, but when her mother became terminally ill, she and her husband and their young children moved back home. “We found that the lifestyle here in the Syracuse area is very nice. I live in Camillus. It’s a super walkable community. The schools are great.” They wanted to be a part of a community that cared more about people and less about money. She said that Onondaga County fit the description. “I enjoy the family attitudes here. It’s a little bit laid back . . . I feel like I have a better work-life balance here. I don’t have to keep up with the Joneses.”
The way to choose wisely
Lena makes good decisions by being intentional about planning, which involves prioritizing, calendaring, time blocking, and routine.
“Traveling and seeing my family is the most important thing. So that’s the first thing I put on my calendar and then my business stuff, and then the extra stuff that’s going to help my business. It also helps with budgeting so that I can afford to do what I want to do.”
At 64, Lena is finally prioritizing herself. “Until I started blocking the travel and putting things to do on my calendar, I wouldn’t do them. So now I prioritize the things that are important to me. I get to be a person, part of a couple, a mom, a family member, a member of my community, and a businessperson. I have all these different things, and I need to be able to do all of them, and now I do them all without any guilt or regret because everything fits into my schedule.”
She already knows exactly what she will be doing in 2025, such as traveling with her sisters to Music Row in Nashville, going on a Caribbean cruise, spending quality time with her children, traveling with her husband and making an impact in Nashville. Planning helps her lead an adventurous life, something she encourages women entrepreneurs to prioritize.
“You’re widening your horizons. You’re seeing things from a different perspective, and it improves your vision [for life] and it improves your world, it gives you a new perspective. If you’re just staying home and not doing anything, you’re going to get the same old, same old all the time. You’re not going to be inspired. You’re not going to feel good about yourself. You’re not going to feel good about the world. You need to get out there and experience different things.”
Lena has a network of friends throughout the United States, which has helped her to grow. She’s in a coaching group, she has an accountability buddy in Florida, friends in Rochester, and she is part of a group of women business owners in Nashville. “I’m seeing stronger women that are making the same mistakes that I’ve made. And they’ll tell me that they’ve made those mistakes. So you can learn from them and grow. They call it growing pains for a reason. It hurts, but it doesn’t have to kill you. It just is uncomfortable. If you feel like you’re out of your comfort zone, you’re where you need to be. That’s where you grow.”
Giving Women the Dignity of Life
Lena does not want to be a solopreneur anymore, so one of her priorities is to hire women. Her plan is to pay them living wages – but not the all too familiar kind where they are working in poverty, living paycheck to paycheck. She wants to give her employees living wages that actually give them a good life and most importantly, dignity.
“I really feel for single moms, people who are divorced, people who were never married and have children. You don’t have that second income and you can’t afford a decent house. If you had a good, decent income, you would have the dignity of life. That’s so important to me.” Through her research, she found that dignity of life in Syracuse means making at least $58,000.
Lena wants women to have the power to make good decisions. “When you don’t have control over your life, and you have to rely on somebody other than yourself, I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think you should have to marry someone because you need their paycheck. I don’t think you should have a roommate that has different ideas of how you want to run your household. They might be a slob, or they might not want to have home-cooked meals. You’re compromising your life because you can’t afford it. So money is a huge thing.” Lena serves as a shining example for all business owners.
“We grew up very poor. My mom was a single mom with four kids. And I had the best childhood. I never felt like I was poor. I always felt like we had everything we wanted. On Christmas, we always got that one thing that we really hoped would be there. She always found a way to make sure that we felt like life was great,” she said.
Lena and most of her family grew up working in the retail business. “When you work in retail, you feel like they own you. You don’t have a consistent schedule. You’re not in charge of how much money you earn. You don’t know if you can take a vacation or if you can sit beside your mother when she’s dying because you have to ask for time off. Drives me crazy. I would like to be the kind of boss that says, ‘This is what needs to be accomplished. This is what you’re accountable for. I don’t care when you work . . . if you want to work at three in the morning, I don’t care. If you want to work two hours today and ten hours tomorrow, I don’t care. Just get the work done.”
Lena has gotten a lot of work done in her life, and this Syracuse woman does not plan to retire anytime soon.
To learn more about Lena and Spóca Kitchen and Bath, visit www.spocakitchenandbath.com
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