Over the years, people have come to me and asked how I got into the special events industry or how I started my special event location and production company and became an “expert” so quickly. I thought that one day I would put the story down for the curious and decided that day had come. It seems quite timely, since I recently made the decision to completely free up my corporate business to dedicate myself exclusively to teaching my feel free to prosper program to help others align with universal laws to overcome adversity and achieve what I have done.
The only customer I’ve kept in the past two years has been Campbell Soup, which spent more than $450 million creating promotions geared toward kids. That client came to me literally “out of the blue” right after I started teaching my program. I played a key role in these promotions, securing spectacular locations: the Hollywood mansions, the English castle, and the private Caribbean island that the lucky kids would win to spend a week with their friends and family as a jackpot. This August was the month of fulfillment of promotions #4, 5 and 6 that were booked at the beginning of the year. I realized last August that it was time to “cut the cord” after two decades of being a business owner providing services to the largest corporations in the world.
So how did this two-decade career start? What was my training and experience? How did I start? Did he have any material or financial advantage? Were prosperity principles involved?
The answer…
o How did this career start? unexpectedly
or What was my experience? None
or How did I start? Pure synchronicity and intuitive guidance
o Did I have any material or financial advantage? Absolutely not
o Were prosperity principles involved? Absolutely
The history…
Be prepared for a detailed description of synchronicity and universal guidance that comes from my application of prosperity principles – this will be a free flowing story as I remember the details. It may not inspire me to tell it again, so I will offer it in full. But I’ll present it in sections, so it’s not overwhelming and so you can absorb the full impact of the synchronicity and prosperity lessons learned along the way. You’ll discover how the beginning of this story flows into the connected experiences that follow and intertwines with the creation of my company and the business that lasted more than 20 years, despite some very intense moments. This installment contains Part I and a link to take you to the rest of the evolving story…
It starts in the early 80s and at a time in my life where I was in limbo and in debt. I had made my first attempt at an independent business which gave me some experience but didn’t go very far. He was at a crossroads and in debt and didn’t know which direction to take. I was in various stages of studying metaphysics and learning about the mind and mental and spiritual laws. I knew I had to do something about my situation and do it fast. I have always been intrigued by the metaphysical and psychic world, parapsychology and the whole idea of being “guided” by our intuition. So I made the decision that my immediate “job” would be to seriously apply what I had been learning from the prosperity teachers and literature. And I did exactly that. I took what I was learning and put my heart into applying it.
PART I: BRANCUSI WHO?
It was a very, very hot summer day in Los Angeles: a heat wave. The last thing she would have thought to do was go shopping for clothes or run through the city in the heat. Hey, I loved fashion, but there was certainly no funding for new wardrobe items. I had to find a way to get out of thousands of dollars of debt that I had somehow incurred while “freelancing” in the business.
I suddenly had a spontaneous impulse to go to the upscale Bonwit Teller department store on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. I didn’t know why. Well, I reasoned, at least I’d have air conditioning. I drove to the store and went to the design department.
There I immediately ran into a saleswoman I hadn’t seen since working at Neiman Marcus and she had sold me a few items maybe a year or two before. Imagine my surprise when she said that she had been thinking about me that very morning and she said to herself, I bet Marilyn would know what to make of this situation. I knew of a woman living in Palm Springs who was trying to sell a sculpture by the sculptor Brancusi and the owner was offering a finder’s fee to someone who could find a buyer for it.
Brancusi? I never heard of him. In fact, he knew nothing about the art business and certainly wouldn’t know how to find a buyer for any type of art or sculpture. But he was intrigued. Why, out of 14 million people in this city, was I intuitively drawn to this opportunity, and why was this saleswoman thinking of me for homework that morning even though she hadn’t seen me in over a year and didn’t know much? about my commercial capacity? Why did I feel compelled to go to the store? My intuition told me that this was a response from my prosperity work and that I should go ahead even though I had no idea what to do at the time.
I got photos of the sculpture from the owner and did some research by calling galleries and such. I found out that the owner had already been buying it for a couple of years. Also, Constantin Brancusi is a famous sculptor whose modern abstract works sell for tens of millions, but this was one of his first pieces: a plaster head of a child, not his abstract style at all, not even a bronze, and apparently it had no value in the art world. The sculpture had been a wedding gift to this woman decades earlier in Romania. When the Nazis came in and confiscated the valuables, she managed to smuggle the piece through Italy, taking it to the United States with her years later. Now, as an older woman, she was no longer attached to work and preferred income. Everywhere I called or visited, gallery owners and art professionals told me to forget it, nobody would want it. The piece is too early, it is not Brancusi’s distinctive style, it is just plaster, not even a complete sculpture. (However, I will say that based on the photos she had, it was a sensitive and charming version of this child’s head.)
But all I could feel inside was that this was MY demonstration of prosperity and it was given to me for a reason. I would not give up…
Around this time, I was attending a Wednesday night healing class led by Janet Levy, a metaphysical teacher who called her class wait for a miracle. In fact, she would give us all little affirmation cards. On one side was printed “Wait for a miracle” and on the blank side we had to write our own affirmation or what we wanted to “prove”, another metaphysical term for manifest.
After several months of getting nowhere with calls about a source to buy this Brancusi, I made up my mind. I sat quietly and very simply said to Infinite Intelligence, the Universe… “Find me a buyer for the Brancusi.” That was it. Simple. Clear. Effortless. There would be no more external action on my part. I had done everything I could do myself to no avail.
Intuitively I must have known it was time to let go and let the Universe take over. As you will see, this was one of my greatest lessons in spiritual law, as I learned from this experience that we don’t have to exhaust ourselves trying to force things to happen and THEN decide to go to our Source. We can go to our Source right from the start and save a lot of time and trouble. As the saying goes, we can go straight and cut out the middleman. 🙂
I continued to sit quietly, and suddenly I heard an inaudible whisper coming from somewhere in my consciousness. My inner voice whispered “Guggenheim Museum”. That’s all. Guggenheim museum. I had lived in Manhattan a couple of times, so I knew the Guggenheim Museum was there, but I had never been there because I wasn’t a fan of modern art. (He had often visited the Metropolitan Museum.) But the voice said Guggenheim Museum. It was clear.
I picked up the phone, called the Guggenheim in New York, and spoke to the curator. He knew about the sculpture because he said the owner had kept it with them years before, when he first came to the United States and settled in Palm Springs, out west. But she said they would have no interest in it. However, she could give me the name of an art dealer who could point me somewhere. I called the art dealer, Harold Diamond.
The art dealer did not refer me to anyone. Instead, he told me that if he was willing to take the plaster head to New York, he HE would buy it himself! He offered $50,000.
Now imagine this scenario…
I had been living in Los Angeles for about 8 years. She had come to Los Angeles after spending a year in New York City. He was no longer used to cold weather (except for an occasional trip to the snow here at Lake Arrowhead). I bundled up while the owner of the Brancusi met, having accepted the dealer’s offer, paid for my plane ticket and prepared me for my trip to make the sale. This was the first time I had seen the actual plaster head, as it had been stored in a vault in Palm Springs. It was now in a duffel bag with little wheels on the bottom and it was solely my responsibility to get it safely to its destination.
It was January 5th. There was a mass exodus at both LAX and JFK airports, with people returning from their vacation trips. And here I was rolling this plaster head in a duffel bag through a crowd of travelers, being very careful not to let anyone or anything come in contact with that bag (remember, the sculpture was just plaster). If anything had happened to this piece of art on the way to its intended new home, I would have had to leave the country and go into hiding 🙂
On the plane, when all the carry-on luggage had to be placed under the seat for takeoff, I refused to let go of the Brancusi. I held him like a live baby. I argued with the assistant until she realized how important this was to me. He wasn’t about to let a $50,000 plaster head roll down the aisle of an airplane! I held him close to my heart for much of the trip…
The story continues here…
© Copyright 2006-2007 Marilyn Jenett
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