Alana Winter of Stiletto Spy School teaches you how to get in touch with your inner Bond Girl. Through her classes you will learn Navy Seal hand to hand combat, gaming lessons, mixology lessons, martial arts, sword fighting and just about everything else and have a glamorous makeover. In Stiletto Spy School the mission is to empower women by introducing women to situations and circumstances that take them out of their comfort zones. www.stilettospyschool.com
Pictures provided on Diva Maverick Mavens are provided courtesy of Alana Winter.
Angelia Miller is the founder of Diva Maverick Mavens www.divamaverickmavens.com a new bread of feisty, non-conformist adventure loving adrenaline-high entrepreneur. The tag-line is: Empowering Women by Interviewing Empowered Women...Inspiring "You" to Take Action! Casting exceptional dynamic talent for fresh content is the mission of Diva Maverick Mavens. The interview is in the original transcript form with minimal editing to preserve the integrity of the content.
Tell me about yourself and how did you get interested this type of business?
Alana Winter
I have always been an entrepreneur and have always had varied interests. Stiletto Spy School was about a fantasy I had as a child watching the Bond movies, Emma Peale in The Avengers, and Charlies Angels. I saw all these really cool women up on the screen. The typical women icons was the homemaker or business woman but there was this subset of really sexy, tough kind of bad-ass but very feminine very glamorous women in these movies and it was something that I thought was really, really cool. In my spare time I started investigating some of the skills that these women had and thinking about it and that's where it came from. That's how I was able to get into it; it was really pure imagination.
You've traveled to 40 countries by yourself tell me about those experiences?
Alana Winter
Even when I was little I was fascinated by the concept of the whole world being out there and I always wanted to see it. I would joke with people I just wanted to take a walk in life to all these different countries and different parts of the world. The first time I traveled by myself was right out of college. I had traveled some with my family but graduating from college I was talking to one of my girl friends and she said hey do you like the Rolling Stones. I said yes. She said great I've got a ticket for you for this concert and I said wait your in Paris and I'm in Connecticut where is the concert? She said oh it's in Paris and you've got 10 days to get here so I called my parents and told them I figured out what I wanted for graduation a plane ticket to Paris. The next thing I knew I was off on a plane flying off the Paris by myself. I got off the plane and discovered her Dad was there to pick me up because she had gone off traveling so I was literally alone. I took a deep breath and knew I had to figure out the language and where I needed to go. It was really quite an experience because I was nervous and anxious but tested. I had to learn to adapt and get by in situations and I discovered that I just loved doing that.
You make an important point, you feel those impulses of nervousness but yet you were able to conquer that love enough to pursue your desire to go to Paris. What kind of advice can you give to women who feel the nervousness but will not "Act" on what it is they want.
Alana Winter
I think that, that happens to all of us all the time. I think what is important is looking inside and knowing what your core values are and what you want rather than getting caught up in a specific role or circumstance. It's actually much easier to "Act" when you are tied into your core values. My values at that time was curiosity and wanting to understand the world around me and all the different cultures that make up the world. Knowing how much I wanted to achieve my core values it helped me to get over the nervousness and be in that situation and achieve the goals I had for myself. I think that, that applies to everything whether you are running a business or going for a job interview or traveling off to Europe by yourself.
What was your second trip that you took alone?
Alana Winter
I was with my friend in Paris and I had another friend who was in Amsterdam and I was going to be traveling up to Amsterdam to see her and I was also going to spending a day alone. My friend in Paris put me on the train in Paris and again I was kind of nervous. She told the conductor, like I was a little to kid, to make sure I got off the train at the right stop.
During your solo travels abroad how did you contend with the issue of safety? Was there ever a situation where you were concerned?
Alana Winter
I think it's about listening and following your instincts. I think it's very important to be very aware of the surrounding your in and the culture your in and to fit in with that culture. I mean if you are going off to Morocco by yourself yes, you can wear a mini skirt in Marrakesh but come on the local women aren't so why would you do that, come on. You can were your mini skirt at home or is San Tropez. You don't need to wear it in Marrakesh. I think it's important to fit in with the local culture in terms of dress and in terms of behavior. It's very easy to say I'm an American woman and I can look men in the eye and I can be aggressive but maybe that's not the way women act in different cultures so I think that is a hugh part of keeping safe. If I'm in a foreign country I don't go out to a bar by myself. I really conscious and I follow what the locals say are the neighborhoods that are safe to walk through. I'm looking around at people. Looking to the eyes of people around you and gaging what's going on and taking in the action, the atmosphere and all the clues that are there that we sometimes don't pay as much attention too. Did I ever have a concern for safety only once. I was in a taxi in Bangkok and the taxi driver started to get a little bit crazy and started driving in the wrong direction. One other tip actually is really know where you are going. Make sure you find out so if you get into a taxi you know if they are going in the wrong direction or not. Get a map and study it and have the hotel or the local people really give you an explanation. Once I realized we were going in wrong direction, I hung out the window screaming at the top of my lungs and he finally pulled over and got out of the car. He pulled a crowbar out and I saw it out of the corner of my eye and ducked. I got the license plate and called the police; they were amazing and in Bangkok which is a crazy city. They tracked the guy and he was arrested they called me back to go to court and they really took care of it; they don't stand for foreigners being messed with. That was the only time I had any safety issues when I was traveling.
You started a business in Australia, tell us about your experiences in Australia?
Alana Winter
That was really a funny story about the accidental business. I had gone to Southeast Asia and I was going to go for just 6 weeks. I was going to visit some friends in the Philippines and then I decided I wanted to travel around noticing all these other amazing countries. I went to buy my ticket from the travel agent who said yeah, 6 weeks. I selling you this ticket that's open for a year of travel and it was a couple of hundred dollars more. I said yeah but I don't want to go want to spend a couple of hundred dollars more. I don't need a ticket that's good for a year of travel and the travel agent looked at me and said your not coming back in 6 weeks and I'm not going to sell you a ticket that's good for 6 weeks. I bought the ticket because I wanted to leave the next day and I wasn't that happy about it so "p.s." I start traveling and I get on a plane and I land in Denpasar, Bali at midnight by myself. There are only a few other people on the plane. I start talking to this other woman on this plane and she asks me where am I going I tell her I don't know and she says well who are you staying with and I say well I don't know. Your landing at midnight and you don't have a plan and I'm like not really. She says, "Oh my God. Stay with me and I'll introduce you to everybody here and it turns out that she went to Bali regularly and knew all the ex-pat business owners. We stayed up all night long. It was amazing and I met all these incredible creative people from all over who were doing amazing businesses in Bali so instead of staying for a couple of days I wound up staying for weeks because it's such an amazing culture and people were doing incredible things. I realized that you could only stay in Indonesia for 2 months and I wanted to come back. What was I going to do? There's all this cool stuff so I work with this and I'll sell it some place and I'll make some stuff and sell it some place. I looked on the map and Australia was the closest place I could go to and sell stuff. I worked on designing a line of costume jewelry and beautiful belts with hand crafted belt buckles etcetera. I mailed samples and then flew off to Australia. I met some people the night before that gave me some addresses of their friends and I went and rang the doorbell and they took me in and suddenly I was in Perth, Australia. I rented a car and was driving around taking orders for the stuff I had created. It was great. It was challenging. It was amazing in every way seeing a culture from the aspect of not being a tourist but working within the culture was absolutely fascinating. I had to learn business over there. Why people would want to buy things? What approach works best there? You know you can't go in with the same approach on selling you would use at home. It was a great learning experience and it was really fun. I went to Sydney and sold to some shops and even the difference between Sydney and Perth was enormous.
What was the biggest difference between Australian and American business?
Alana Winter
Australia is so much more laid back. I from New York and everything is boom boom get to the point. In Australia, people really wanted to hear the back story. I realized that people were fascinated when I told them I was from New York so that added to the cache of the designs and they wanted to talk about that. I guess slowing down some was the biggest difference.
You've had many different kinds of businesses. What type of personality does it take to make it as an entrepreneur?
Alana Winter
I think that the general personality of being an entrepreneur is a lot of determination, preservation and mixed with a bit of insanity, ADD and openness to change. Being able to run a lot of different businesses it's about being able to see opportunities but listen to what people are saying or wanting and understanding how markets function. Even as I said in the business in Australia learning to be adaptable which is a skill we need even if we are not in business. It's a skill that you use in many areas of your life. Adaptability is crucial to run any business let alone many types of businesses.
How many of your businesses have had a creative vent to them?
Alana Winter
I think that all business is creative. I don't care if you are making paper clips. You've got to be creative in your marketing approach. You got to be creative in why you make it a great place to work for your staff. You know there is the creativity that we see where somebody is artistic or as I was working with people on the jewelry design or even creating the Stiletto Spy School which is really outwardly creative but I think all business is creative or it doesn't survive.
There are some businesses that are traditional and some businesses that are non-traditional. Tell me more the Spy School.
Alana Winter
We have so many different components to the spy school. I'm always working with developing new course work and creating new things for the school to do. I spent the morning with a woman who works with breath control and hypnosis and figuring how we could tie that into the spy school. If we think about any of the Icons or say James Bond...you know it's about knowing just enough about everything to be able to handle just about anything. Everything is fair game for spy school. I try to focus on what skills we can narrow in a 2 or 3 hour segment that we can give you a real taste of that skill. We can give you a take away value, a since of accomplishment and achievement that has greater life lessons. I think that all of these things are about pushing our limits and doing something that is outside the limits that we ordinarily do. They are really cool skills to learn. As one of the girls said, "Some of which you hope you'll never have to use and some of which you will be very happy to use. Whether it's a McGuyver survival skill of learning to live out of your purse or mixing a Martini or Swat team training. We work with Israeli Special Ops and we get into the full gear and we do Swat team training and we learn trip wires, lasers, night vision goggles, how to clear a room, how to rescue a hostage, poker lesson and Navy Seals close quarters hand to hand training.
How did you actually get the idea and the impulse that maybe this might actually work?
Alana Winter
I was sitting with a friend of mine and we had just finished watching a Bond movie. I turned to her and said it's too bad there isn't a place where we could go for the weekend and learn all these cool things like a little boot camp. She turned to me and said, "Wow that's a really cool idea. I'd like to go to that." I thought that, that was just my thing. She said, "No. no. I'd love to do that." She actually called me really early the next day and she said, "I was serious. I would really, really like to do that." I thought that was interesting and I started asking every woman I know and basically they said yeah I'd wanna go sign up for that. From my 10 year old niece to my friends eighty year old Mom whose eyes lit up and she said can I go too. I thought maybe there really is something here so that was the flash.
What types of women actually sign up for your classes?
Alana Winter
It's really mixed and that's what I love most about it. It would have been easy to only make this for girls in their 20's and in amazing shape but what really drives me is that it should be for every woman. Every woman has an inner Bond Girl. Every woman can be strong and sexy and I don't care whether your 18 or 80 so women that come to our classes are women in their twenties through sixties. Half of them are married and half of them are single. Some of them tend to be adventurous. I've also had women who come to the class because their husbands or boyfriends bought the class as a gift and these women aren't terribly adventurous and this is really pushing into challenging territory for them. I love it when they come in and go through the day and really emerged transformed knowing that they've done all these things thinking never in a million years could they do all these things. And that's really cool to see. What's really neat also is that women of such different backgrounds, such different age ranges, some that are housewives and some that are major entrepreneurs that run large companies, that they can bond together at the end of the day and find similarities and share a common language together. It's a great mix of women.
What types of relationships are they forming at the end of this experience?
Alana Winter
Just a few days ago I was with a woman from Albany who had been in a program that I had in September and she mentioned that next week she a meeting former graduates from Dallas and Arizona in San Francisco. I was really surprised. She said, "You didn't realize that we all keep in touch?" I said I had no idea these women were traveling around and meeting in different cities every couple of months as a result of meeting at Stiletto Spy School. It's really, really cool the bonds that are formed. At the end of every class I send something around to all the women so that they have the contact information of all the women that were in the class. One of the women wrote and this is on my website, " I now have friends that can cover my back all over the country." I love that quote and I love the idea that they are the Stiletto Sisters from all around the country. You never know and it's like the secret handshake. The women who have been trained in hand-to-hand combat, who has been trained in poker a woman that could take down the house and you'd never know as she sits their elegantly in her black dress sipping a cappuccino but they know who they are.
With a business that is unconventional, what has been your biggest obstacle?
Alana Winter
As with all of my businesses, my biggest obstacle has been in finding the right people and building a team.
How do you alleviate stress?
Alana Winter
It's always about stress and the balance in our lives and ideally we would find that balance on a daily basis. I do my stretching and my breathing techniques that I have learned through some of these classes which are incredibly helpful. I go and spend some time with friends and make a Martini before I go to spy school classes. Some of the stuff we do like practicing some of the fighting techniques that we tie into breathing are great stress relievers. I power walk and try to remember why I doing it all.
What advice would you give to women who want to open a business as unusual as yours?
Alana Winter
It's really, really important to follow your dreams. It's important to have your dream thought out. You need to have an idea that is really grounded and do your homework to know where you are going and why. And that is important for so many reasons. You are going to have people tell you that you are crazy and that it can't work. You have to have a back up to know why it can work. You have to know when your fighting windmills and when you have an idea that's so unusual that will work. Sometimes people just can't see it and you have to have this homework to draw on when other people tell you, your crazy. Have a network of people that you can count on. People have the idea that networking is connecting with all these random people on Link-din that they don't even know and so there in there quote unquote network or they go to some networking event and it's a shower of business cards. I've got your business cards and your in my rolodex. That's not a network; that's the yellow pages. A network is a group of people that you really have a connection with. It's so important to have fewer people in that network but deeper connections to really reach out and help those people and that's how you build your network. Have a network of people who are bold and courageous and doing interesting things. I've had really cool women find me on facebook and write to me and I solute these women. They tell me I'm doing something that's really unusual or I'm writing these books, or I'm giving these seminars and I see what your doing can we meet for a cup of coffee. I'll go and we'll meet and their bold and dynamic also and that's fabulous to have that network of other women you believe in each other and can offer support to each other.
Is there any other advice you would like to share?
Alana Winter
We can all take ourselves just a little too seriously. We have to put things in perspective. I was a very serious child and I was about 10 or 11 and I went to my Dad. I asked him what is the meaning of life? Why are we here? What's this all about? What am I supposed to do in life? I just remember he looked down at me and said oh, honey that's simple. There's a simple answer to all of this. I was having an existential crisis at 10 or 11. He said there is one reason for all of life there is only one thing you've got to remember and only one thing you have to do. He looked at me and said just remember you only here to have a good time and that's it.
Anything else you want to share about the Stiletto Spy School?
Alana Winter
It's fricking fabulous. Come and sign up. It's just so much fun.
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