Pink Technology: Staci and Larry Wallace launch online community to empower women.
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rebecca@hotsprings.net
Nationally acclaimed motivational speaker, author and life coach Staci Wallace, 38, admits people don’t easily relate to a perfect Barbie-type role model.
“They can, however, identify with someone who has overcome a difficult situation,” she says, relating her personal victories over depression and thoughts of suicide. “The rodeo cowboy I had idolized in my early twenties left me after only seven months of marriage,” she confesses. “Until then, I had always been able to fix everything. In spite of my previous successes, the divorce left me broken and empty.”
The longer we talked, the less Wallace fit the “perky pageant girl with a platform” profile I had mistakenly categorized her before our interview.
“During those days, I withdrew from the public spotlight of the country music world, cocooning myself from the risk of being hurt again,” she explains. “In desperation, I made a deal with God that if he would heal my heart, I would use no longer use my voice just to make money. I vowed instead to use my life to empower others.”
Staci survived her dark season. Shortly afterward, she wrote the lyrics to “It’s Not Over,” a song confirming her will to live and a desire to make her life count for more than material success.
Eventually, this song became the title track of a CD that catapulted her to new heights as an inspirational speaker and recording artist. During the next 12 years, Wallace shared the stage with five U.S. presidents, assorted military generals, international heads of state and motivational icons like Zig Ziglar and Peter Lowe.
“Four years after my divorce,” she recalls, “I was content with myself and my career. But one night on stage in Trinidad, everything changed. During my concert, nobody responded. Ordinarily, I might have panicked, but instead, I took a deep breath and decided to share my personal story.”
For the next 90 minutes, Staci poured out her heart through tears– sharing how the frustration of failure and the desperation of depression had crushed her spirit and nearly cost her life.
“To my amazement, women of all ages from all sorts of backgrounds streamed forward, telling tragic tales of their own sufferings. One precious 6-year-old girl admitted she was enduring daily rape. At that moment, I realized I no longer wanted to be a fame-hungry recording artist as much as I wanted to be a clear voice of hope in a hurting world.”
Staci and her husband – a four-year Texas A&M football letterman – moved to Hot Springs from North Carolina’s Research Triangle, where Larry and his brother-in-law had birthed a technology company in an upstairs game room. Under their leadership, Motricity eventually exploded into a global provider of mobile content services and solutions for the wireless telecommunications industry.
“Staci and I share similar paths of career success,” Larry says, “but our backgrounds are totally different. She’s from a closely knitfamily of missionaries and ministers who trained her to believe anything is possible. In contrast, I was reared by a courageous single mother who worked multiple jobs to support us.”
The Wallaces believe their biggest challenges have now become their strongest motivation to help others.
“Two years ago, one of the first people I hired at Motricity told me it was time for him to leave the company. A very close friend, he chose to move on because our firm had grown beyond being a relationship-based operation to an international corporate machine,” Larry explains.
“That event sparked my own epiphany – that as a relationship leader and a technology geek, my strongest gifts could be used either to build my own empire or to empower the lives of others. Based on that revelation, I chose to craft my own six-month exit strategy in preparation for our move to Hot Springs – home to friends, and centrally located between Staci’s parents in Oklahoma and my mom in Texas.”
The couple’s new venture, EMwomen.com, makes full use of Staci’s charismatic personality and passion to empower women as well as Larry’s entrepreneurial business acumen and savvy technological expertise. Their goal is to equip a million women to make positive life changes in the areas of faith, family, finances, fitness and philanthropy. The result, they believe, will be stronger families, communities and nations.
“The experience of watching my mother struggle gave me a heart to help other struggling women, no matter what the circumstances,” Larry adds.
“The good news is this: A woman empowered with strength, confidence and skill will positively benefit her entire family – especially her husband!”
The Wallaces say their formula for change women’s lives is rooted in the following statistics and will be delivered through EMuniversity, an online educational resource:
· Over 60 percent of American homes struggle with excessive debt. EMuniversity helps women learn to prioritize their spending.
· Over 66 percent of the U.S. population is either overweight or obese. EMuniversity teaches women to make more nutritional food purchases.
· Single-parent homes outnumber two-parent families in America. EMuniversity is a resource for the wisdom, encouragement and practical life skills necessary to establish peaceful and healthy families.
“I am convinced that women are our world’s greatest and most underdeveloped natural resource,” Staci adds. “Once a woman recognizes her potential and puts the principles we teach into action, she becomes a better employee, spouse, mother, sister, friend and community leader.”
To complement EMwomen’s global campaign to empower women, the Wallaces are launching the first annual EMerge National Conference and Expo. The event is scheduled Saturday, August 23, in Horner Hall at the Hot Springs Convention Center.
“We will feature national speakers with life-changing messages, state-of-the art media, dancers, laughter therapy and a live concert,” says Staci. “All-day passes include admission to the morning conference session as well as to the afternoon expo and the main event that evening.”
For more information about EMwomen and the 2008 EMerge Conference and Expo, see http://www.emwomen.com.
To read the heartwarming story of how Larry, 38, was recently reunited with his father, see http://www.larrywallace.com.