Stephanie: Hi, Francesca. Welcome

Francesca: Thank you so much for having me here, Stephanie. It's a pleasure to be here.

Stephanie: It's a pleasure to have you for a couple of reasons. One, because we're going to talk about a dream life that most people would love to have. Two, because you're a fellow East Coaster. You and I are local. You're right in the Boston

Francesca: area.

Yes, we're practically neighbors.

Stephanie: Like I said, we're going to talk about a lifestyle that most of us dream of and you were able to make happen. But let's get to that in a couple of minutes and start at the beginning. Tell me a little bit about your early life and about the forces that shaped you into the person you were when you opened the door to midlife.

She, after, around the age of 22, 23, went back to Italy, met my dad, moved back here, had my sister, but then they did a lot of back and forth. We finally came back, in 88. I feel like my life has really been shaped by having had an Italian upbringing, by having been, transported from a small town in Italy to Boston.

I mean, can you imagine going from a town of a thousand people to a city as big as Boston? It really, I feel like, shaped, who I was and who I am now and what I do. I,

Stephanie: Because so many of those, those early years before we have speech, before we were in school, like are so formative for us. And you spent them in, in Italy. That's amazing.

Francesca: It's funny. I find that with, with, expats, you have to, you have the ones that move from another part of the world to the U. S. and pretty much forget where they come from. They just blend themselves into the U. S. lifestyle.Or the ones who have one foot here and one foot where they come from. And that's, that's really more me. Even after we moved, we traveled every summer. We went back to Calabria. We still have a family property there. It was like, we were living 2 different lives in a sense, because we always went back every summer. But after that, you know, growing up here in Boston, I followed a pretty traditional path. I went to college. I got my bachelor's and my master's degree. I had a very successful career in healthcare. I worked in the healthcare field for 20, probably about 25 years before starting to transition into my life now.

Stephanie: Yeah,

Francesca: I had always had this idea for this business. I would say probably came to me when I was about 19 or 20, but it just seemed like you said, like, too impossible.

It's like a permanent vacation. You can't make a living off of that. You can't do that. So I kind of brushed it off, you know, and I just did the traditional route. And I kind of fell into health care. My bachelor's is actually in criminology. I wanted to work in law enforcement, so I had a very small, short lived stint in law enforcement, and working in the field before realizing that that wasn't for me. So I immediately transitioned to health care and being in Boston, as you know, there's a hospital at every corner. It wasn't too difficult to to transition to healthcare and I eventually ended up getting a master's in healthcare administration. But it was never, you know, my passion. It was never really what I wanted to do. it was a good field to be in.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Francesca: No lack for work, no lack for advancement, but, my dad passed away when I was 30, he was 58 and just spending a lot of time in hospitals and doctors. And it's like, and then I had that as my career too.

I know it was like, this is not what I want to do. This is not my life's calling.

Stephanie: You told me, when we first spoke that you had a yearning to be your own boss as long as you could remember. Were there entrepreneurs in your family?

Francesca: From my dad's side, all of his brothers were entrepreneurs in Italy. They all owned restaurants or my dad was a green grocer in Italy. They all pretty much had their own. Because in Southern Italy, there wasn't a lot of work. So you create your work. But I knew from the get go from the beginning that I was not going to be a good employee in the sense that I like freedom.

I don't like to ask, have to ask permission. If I have a doctor's appointment one day, I don't want to have to be like, Hey, can I take tomorrow off to go to the doctor? So I knew it was like, this is not, and you know, even growing up, my mother would tell me, she goes, you're going to have a hard time having a boss over you because you're too free spirited. You don't like getting up early in the morning. So I knew. It just took me longer to finally get the courage to, to do it and to jump in.

Stephanie: Well, I find that I find you saying that so ironic because you said in your thirties, you had this great job with this great boss and you kept getting promoted and more responsibility and more money. So tell me about that. Cause it does not compute with what you're saying.

Francesca: Yeah. And that's exactly like the, the part that was difficult about going to be an entrepreneur. Cause sometimes I think it's easier if you hate your day job, right? Cause it's like you, you know, you hate your day job. You're not making good money. You have a difficult boss. Then you just want to jump into being your own boss because you have nothing to lose.

But I was working for the Harvard Medical School Hospital. I had a great boss. We're still in contact years later. I had, you know, great benefits, great salary. But all those things were great for somebody else. That's what I always said there was somebody would have loved to have been in my position, but it wasn't me.

Especially towards the end. I was just like, I felt like a fraud. I was walking in every day. I'm like, what am I doing here? Like, I don't want to be here. And, and, and, you know, I jumped into my business at 39 and I did it very carefully. I did it very quietly and, I didn't just walk into my boss and be like, hey, thanks. It's been real. I'm out of here. I transitioned very slowly. I did it very safely.

Stephanie: You said you had the kernel of the idea for your business when you were like 19 or 20 and then you didn't really act on it for almost, is that right, 20 years?

Francesca: Yeah, almost 20 years. Yeah.

Stephanie: So, tell me how you went from the dutiful worker bee, to finally trying something. Like, what did you try? Where did you get the courage? Where did the gumption come from? Where did the, what was the inspiration to say, now is the time?

Francesca: Now is the time

Stephanie: Tell me a little about those early days.

Francesca: I think it was definitely, the thought of turning 40. It was always in the back of my mind. And the issue too was that I've never felt my age. I'm 47 now and I still don't feel my age. I look it, but I don't feel it. Right. So I think I just woke up one day and be like, am I really turning 40?

How did that happen? Like, I still feel 21. There's no way I could be 40. So when it finally got real, I was like, okay, how can I do this without being too risky at it? Right? I was earning a fair amount of good vacation time by that point because I had been, at the hospital for 10 years.

So I was earning about four to five weeks of vacation time a year, which is a lot, as you know. The average is two weeks. So I said, okay, well, I could take some of that vacation time to run a few trips.

Stephanie: Tell me, we

Francesca: That was,

Stephanie: haven't actually unveiled what it was that your business idea was, so explain what it was you thought you wanted to do.

Francesca: I wanted to lead food and wine based trips to Italy. So I wanted to essentially go to Italy, bring people with me to eat and drink and learn about food.

Stephanie: Francesca.

Francesca: Right? And the reason was because all this, every summer growing up, we would go back to Italy and we would do just that. But how do you make a living off of that? Right. You know, it seems too good to be true. Of course, it was more than eating and drinking. It was learning about the Italian cuisine and vacationing, sightseeing. It was the whole package. So I figured I would use some of my vacation time to run the trips.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Francesca: I didn't have much to lose. I didn't tell my boss anything because I figured, even though we had a good rapport, this is my vacation time. This is, you know, time for me to do what I want. So, I didn't like promote it at my day job, at all.

Stephanie: Mm hmm

Francesca: Except that I was lucky enough that the Boston Globe did a nice marketing piece on me and I didn't really account for the fact that my boss reads the Boston Globe.

You know, that was not profitable. It essentially was a paid vacation for me. But I needed, I needed to prove that this business had legs to stand on. I couldn't just quit a 20 plus year career. on this idea.

Stephanie: Yeah, and I'll bet it was a benefit to go with a smaller group the first time and kind of prove out all of the things and work out all the kinks and figure out all

Francesca: Yeah.

Stephanie: the things that went well and didn't go well before you had a full group with you.

Francesca: Exactly. And also too, I needed to make sure that I actually liked doing it, because a lot of things, as, you know, we like in theory, but in practice are a lot different. So I needed to make sure that I actually liked it. I liked traveling to Italy, but that had always been with friends or family. That had never been with paying clients.

So, the first trip, I think my legs didn't stop shaking for the whole week, you know. And we had a great week. And then the Monday after I went back to work. So I was kind of living the double life. And, after that first week's like, I got this. Yeah. I, I need to figure out now how to make this a full-time position.

Francesca: Yeah,

Stephanie: Yeah.

Francesca: Yeah, so that was a shock, definitely.

Stephanie: the wonderful part there was he allowed you to rescind your resignation.

Francesca: I pretty much did that. We started working from home. Everybody at the hospital started working from home. He knew I wouldn't be traveling. So I hadn't yet hired my replacement. So I ended up, keeping my day job and not traveling in '20 and '21.Yeah, it was quite brutal. It was quite painful because, you know, having to issue all these refunds for people, thankfully, a lot of people actually just selected to keep a credit with me and said, when we were able to travel, we will travel.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Francesca: Slowly, but surely, by the middle of '21, I had sold out all of my '22 trips, even though we still weren't traveling.

Stephanie: Mm hmm.

Francesca: So it looked like things were picking up and finally at the end of '21, I gave my absolute notice. I said, this is it. It's now or never. COVID, be damned. We're going to be traveling in '22. And, that's what we did.

Stephanie: And you did. Wow. And so how many, tours, do you do a year now?

So nowbetween 7 and 8, group tours. So these are tours that anybody can sign up for from the website and a couple of, private tours. So these are families, they want to travel on their own, on their own timeframe with their own travel companions about 1 or 2, depending on the year. This year, I had 2 private tours. So, You're only traveling like, 10 weeks a year.

Francesca: About 10 weeks a year. And the rest of the year I spend on the planning. It takes hundreds of hours to plan the trips, make sure that things go as planned. I spend on blogging, which is not paid. Nobody's paying me to blog as you know. But I put out an article every week that goes out to my newsletter subscribers. I do occasional Zoom cooking classes. I do consulting for people who are traveling to Italy on their own, but need some help with a way to go, where to stay, where to eat, what to do. So I do some travel consulting as well. But the actual traveling right now is about 10 weeks out of the year, but I would you know would love to do potentially more.

Francesca: Yeah

Stephanie: and you know, your boss and this job kind of saved you. And

Francesca: Yeah.

Stephanie: here you are, you're like walking out of the nest. Just walking, you know, no,no net, right?

Francesca: No net to fall on. I mean, I have to admit, I like taking risks. And I always try to look at the best and worst case scenario. What could happen? And I, and the best case scenario is that I would have a successful business that would support me. That would replace my salary from the hospital, that I would have fun doing, that I would enjoy traveling, meet new people. That's the absolute best, best case scenario. The worst case scenario is the opposite. That's not going to work. That it's going to go belly up. That we're going to have another COVID. There's not going to be any traveling.

Well, if that's the case, well, I still have my master's degree in healthcare. I still have 25 years of experience in healthcare. I'll just go back to healthcare. I may not go back to where I left. I think that door was probably closed after having given my notice a few times.

Stephanie: Right.

Francesca: There's no lack of healthcare jobs in Boston. So the best case scenario, this works. The worst, it doesn't. But even if it doesn't, no one's going to take away my background, and I'm highly employable. So,you don't know what you don't know, until you try.

Stephanie: Yeah. That's great. My dad always used to say, think of the best case scenario and the worst case scenario and then throw both of those out because the reality is probably going to be somewhere in between.

Francesca: Somewhere in the middle. Exactly. Yeah,

Stephanie: You know, all of a sudden you become, a gazillionaire and perfectly successful or, everything goes belly up and you're homeless. Neither of those things are going to happen.

Francesca: Exactly. Exactly. And I think, you know, it helped that I, I didn't have kids. I don't have kids. So I don't have to worry about saving for anybody's education or putting anybody through school. I mean, of course, I still have a mortgage on this property, but I have, I had always been a good saver. So I had, years of savings to live off of if it came to. You don't know, unless you try and as you get older, you realize that you have less time to take those risks, so.

Stephanie: Let's go back a little bit. Tell me a little bit about, you said that one of the things that inspired you to make this leap was your impending 40th birthday. I know you said you didn't feel your age. Is there anything different culturally from your Italian culture versus your American slash Boston culture that 40 means something different in either one or is it pretty consistent?

Stephanie: Yeah. That does make complete sense to me because I also don't have any kids and I refer to my business by the milestones it would have if it were a kid. So,

Francesca: right,

Stephanie: My marketing business will be 18 in February, which it blows my mind. Right. Just like it blows anybody's, any mom's mind that, you know, their kid's going to be 18.

Francesca: right,

Stephanie: My baby's going to be 18 soon. And then, two and a half years ago, I decided to start this podcast. And so I feel like I have an 18 year old and a two and a half year old.

Francesca: Quite an age in between the kids. Yeah,

Stephanie: I have two families.

Francesca: Yeah, exactly. I had told myself if I don't have kids by the time I'm 40 I'm probably. This is was just a decision I had made years and years ago that, if I didn't have any kids by the time was 40 I didn't want any kids after that, for a number of reasons that's probably beyond the scope of the podcast. But I just it was a personal decision I had made that it's 40 or bust. And if I don't have them by then I don't want them, quite honestly. And You know, I was 39. I was like, the kids aren't coming. The relationships aren't there to bring a kid, now. You know, I, it's now or never, you know. Just go for it.

Stephanie: Yeah. And so is this business you've built, which is really as much a lifestyle as a business, is it as magical as you had hoped? Is it as magical as those of us listening sort of envision it to be?

Francesca: It's pretty good. But it's, it's, it's also a lot of work, right? It's a lot of work. I, I was, I was having dinner with somebody recently and he said to me, he goes, you have the best lifestyle because you work 10 weeks out of the year. And I was like, yeah, yeah, that's not true. Exactly. I'm on the road 10 weeks out of the year. But to get to that point,I work full time. I work every day in some capacity or another. It's just, you know, that people will say when you do something you love, you never work. That's I'm calling BS on that because it's still work. It just happens to be work that you love. That you love doing and that you get to do perhaps from the comfort of your own home rather than having to drive into an office.

Stephanie: Right.

Francesca: Don't get me wrong. I love what I do. I, There isn't a day that goes by, there isn't somebody who signs up for my trip that I don't want to get excited about. But it still is work to get to those. It's work finding the clients. It's work promoting it. The planning. Italians, you know, I think I can say being an Italian myself, they kind of work on their own time frame. You schedule a bus to come and pick up your group at 9 and they'll show up at 9 20 and think nothing of it. So, it's a lot of,planning work that goes into it.

Stephanie: That makes perfect sense to me as somebody who's planned events and even my own vacations before. I mean, if, if I were to think about it, I'd say, for every one week in Italy, it could be three to four weeks of planning time.

So now you're at 40 weeks, plus your 10 weeks training. There's a year.

Francesca: Yeah, plus there's a lot, I have, my clients is a lot of experienced travelers, but there's a lot of first time travelers too. So they kind of need a little bit more hand holding. What it means to, to even travel, how to get their connections, how to secure their private transfers to the hotel. It depends on who your travelers are. Some of them who have never traveled outside of the U. S. need, you know, you kind of have to work with them as well to reassure them. And, there's a lot of back and forth.

Stephanie: One of the things that is so common about this transition period for most of us in our mid 30s to mid 40s is we stopped putting so much weight in other people's opinions. There's this, transition from doing all the things that we should be doing

Francesca: Yeah.

Stephanie: to doing the things that we feel are best for us and, and relying on our own expertise and knowledge of what we think we want for ourselves versus what everybody else tells us we should have.

Francesca: Right.

Stephanie: I'm very curious, coming from such a traditional cultural background, was there a lot of, pushback to you for leaving this steady, solid, stable job and going off on your

Francesca: Yeah,

Stephanie: own. Did people try to talk you out of it?

Francesca: I think what happened was I had a successful career. I had a master's degree that I was still paying for. My family moved from a small town in Italy to come to Boston, right, where they felt like my sister and I could have become literally anything in the world. We could have been the next US president if we, set our mind to it, there's nothing you can't do. I was set to go into law. I was set to have a successful career that was not about Italian food or wine or, anything but. Because you could do anything else. So even for me, it was a little bit like, I could do and be anything. Am I betraying the sacrifice that my parents made to bring my sister and I to the U. S. to be successful, whatever you might want to call it. And now to only quote unquote, do food travel, I felt guilty. I felt, like I was, my education was going in vain. The sacrifice they made wasn't being, I wasn't respecting that for them. But I think, again, my father died long before my business started. My mother was just happy to see me happy.

Stephanie: Good.

Francesca: So, and that's where she is today. If this is what makes you happy, then, you know, by all means, you're successful at it and, take me with you, if you can, but, I think that's, if you love somebody, once you see them, successful and happy, that's all that should matter and, nothing else.

Stephanie: Right. But it sounds like you did go through that process of, of really having to detach from those external expectations,

Francesca: Right.

Stephanie: even if they were in your own head of the things that you quote unquote should be doing.

Francesca: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Even my family in Italy, like, they didn't get the concept. Like, you want to bring people here to, to do what? Don't you work for Harvard? Like, why, you know, why would you want to do this? But now that they see that I'm, successful and that I can make quite a good business at it, then, like, okay, well, that's what makes you happy. So, so be it. And we also too, like, we have to reach a point in our life where we can't let the expectations of other people, dictate what we do or don't do. And that was hard for me too, because I'm a reasonably private person. I don't like to expose myself a lot. But when you have a business, you kind of have to.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Francesca: Be on social media. You have to go to networking events. You have to write these newsletters to people. And I'm one that likes to be in the background. But, my business certainly has taken me out of my shell a lot.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. All your new skills as a mom,

Francesca: Yeah, exactly, right? As a business mom.

Stephanie: Right?

Francesca: It's like you do what you have to for your baby, right? And this is the same thing. Like, I wouldn't do it for myself, but you do it for your baby, and it's the same way for the business.

Stephanie: Yeah, that's great. I just love the way that you started this. You just tried it. Just went ahead and tried it. You didn't put a ton of pressure on yourself to say this has got to be, a fully baked, experience, not experience. That's not the right word. This doesn't have to be a fully baked idea for me to at least try it.

Stephanie: Yeah. Before you make, big decisions,

Francesca: exactly.

Stephanie: yeah. Yeah. Doing it on the side is a, I like to think of it as sort of training wheels.

Francesca: When I started, you know, my investment was very small. Now, of course, I pay for somebody to do my website. I have a mailing list that's very expensive every month. You know, there's a lot more expenses, but until I knew that I even liked running these tours, and until I knew that I could make a business out of it, my investment was very, very small.

Stephanie: Yeah, wow. Francesca, this is just such a wonderful story. I hear so often people starting their own businesses around , this midlife period, because when we get to this point, we realize that the thing that we've worked so hard for, you know, the position on the corporate ladder that we've, fought so hard for, turns out it's not as fulfilling or satisfying, as, as we had hoped it would be. Or it doesn't allow us the flexibility to do the things that are fulfilling or satisfying. For you, you knew for a long time that that wasn't the end game.

Francesca: yeah,

Stephanie: But it's, I love to hear these stories of how people started their businesses, in, in midlife. Because I think so many people are, sitting in, jobs they don't want to be in thinking if, if only I could. And, I think you're saying you can.

Francesca: You can, right. And that's exactly it. I had worked, at the hospital for 10 years, really hard, to advance myself and had devoted myself, every week. And I felt like, and again, I loved my bosses. Actually one of my bosses mom came on one of my tours. But I felt like I was working really, really hard to make somebody else's dream come true.

I felt like I was devoting my time, my energy, my mental health, to make their dreams, become a reality. And I'd like to think that I really helped them. And, I worked in a research group, so I like to think that I really did help them in making their dreams come true. But when we get to that age, it's like, okay, well, now is the time to make my own dreams come true. That's what it comes to.

Stephanie: So well said. So well said. What a, what a wonderful way I think to end this conversation, and just remind everybody that, it's time to make your own dreams come true.

Francesca: Yeah. And start where you are. That's what I always tell people, start where you are. Then there's no limit where you can go, but start with what feels comfortable and where you are and go from there.

Stephanie: Francesca. I love that. Before, before I let you go though, I have to, have you share the name of your company because I'm guessing that you don't need to be in or around Boston to travel with you. So tell us where we can find you.

Francesca: Sure, so I named my business Lazy Italian Culinary Adventures. Then it was just a little tongue in cheek name. It means, really doesn't mean much, but people always ask me where did that come from? So I think people remember it. My website is thelazyitalian. com So easy to remember. I am on social media. I've always leaned more towards Facebook. I'm trying to make more of a push for Instagram. But, they can find me there. And, they can find my cookbooks on Amazon. so I have three cookbooks out and they can always, you know, reach out if they have any questions or,if they want to travel to Italy.

Stephanie: That's great. Well, I don't know, Patrick and I have been talking about going to Italy. It's on, it's, it's on our list. So you may have just, greased the wheels for that, for that destination. So

Francesca: I hope so. I'm obviously biased, but I think Italy is probably something everybody should experience at least once in their life. I really do. I believe that wholeheartedly.

Stephanie: I agree. Oh, Francesca. Thank you so much for spending time with me today.

Francesca: Thank you again for having me, Stephanie. Take care.

Stephanie: You too.