Profits & Passions
Valerie Maitland-Smith
The constant gardener
By BOB ROZYCKI

No need for a spa with aromatherapy when you can just step out your door and take in the real thing. Stress melts for Valerie Maitland-Smith as she takes in the smells, colors and shapes, which spell natural tranquility for the president of SCI Business Consulting. Sure there was some three years' worth of work to get her home garden in the shape she wanted it in, but it was all well worth the dirt under the fingernails and even the Lyme disease. She cut her teeth early at the knees of her mother and grandmother as they tended to their respective gardens in Africa and England. At her grandmother's garden in England it was the typical flowers of delphiniums, ivy and foxgloves that she learned about. When her father took a

job as a director of education in Ghana ­ Kofi Annan, the former U.N. secretary general, was a pupil ­ the young Valerie learned a whole new range of plants that grew just 100 miles north of the equator, from hibiscus to lemons and bananas.

And if it wasn’t flowers in the garden, it was flowers in vases throughout the house. “It’s a British thing,” she says.

Maybe it was the shuttling back and forth from England to Ghana when she attended boarding school that attracted her to the airline industry, but after earning a liberal arts degree, she was an “air hostess” for British Airways. She got to meet dozens of British dignitaries and actors such as the young members of The Beatles, character actor Robert Morley, actress Julie Christie and talk-show host David Frost. The turnarounds were not so wicked as they are today, she said. Flights to say Egypt or Australia would involve three-day stopovers. “It was the life of Riley.”

After four years in the skies, it was marriage that got her back on the ground and a change of scenery ­ a move to Manhattan. A move to Pound Ridge and then Yorktown Heights enabled Maitland-Smith to resume her gardening expertise. She also grew businesses as well. She owned a travel agency in Yorktown and bought a series across the nation. She eventually sold them as a block to Liberty Travel.

Tending to a garden is similar to growing a business, she says. Both need to have a plan, a focus point, the ability to adapt to the environment and the investment of time and money. Then you can get a return on your investment, she says.

Not one to rest on her (mountain) laurels, after selling the agencies she moved on to another entrepreneur-based endeavor. Twenty years later, SCI Business Consulting (www.sciny.com) is operating with two offices, one in downtown White Plains and the other in Brookfield, Conn. She works with businesses that “want to go to the next level.”

From Realtors that want to expand to the artistic, such as architects, that need some coaching and strategizing, she said, her work has helped clients increase profits an average of 50 percent.

Like her gardening, “It’s so rewarding and great fun,” said Maitland-Smith, who is a past president of the Westchester Association of Women Business Owners. Last year, WAWBO became The Alliance of Hudson Valley Women Business Owners and is affiliated with the Women’s Enterprise Development Center.

As far as giving out any gardening secrets, Maitland-Smith she really has none other than hard work, especially with her roses. She does confess to one though. Playing off the old adage that “you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar,” do the opposite with slugs.

A saucer of vinegar will do the trick, she says.

 

 

 

 

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