La Verne Lewis: Business woman
escaping the rules
A management theory, herbal recipes, Tarot-reading talent and
accounting skills aim for a larger kind of balance
BY
ANNDEE
H O C H M A N
La Verne Lewis became a business woman
so she could escape the rules. A fter punching
someone else’s time clock fo r nine years, she
began to buy real estate in San Francisco. She
learned accounting and did books fo r her
friends. She moved to Portland in 1985,
joined the board o f A W oman’s Place
Bookstore and began to think about what
kind o f business this community needed . *
Those thoughts led eventually to Crone
Magic, the shop Lewis opened nearly three
years ago on Northeast Broadway. The
enterprise, like her second Portland business,
Cafe Mocha, is crafted in the LaVerne Lewis
image o f the world — a world in which the
things that are meant to happen, do happen,
in which signals and signs come to those who
keep their eyes open.
Lewis discusses her businesses and never
mentions profit margins or first-quarter
earnings. When she says, "bottom line,” she’s
talking philosophy, not dollars. M ost people
in business want to balance the books; Lewis
aims fo r a larger kind o f balance — the
delicate blend o f her grandm other's herbal
recipes, her m other's Tarot-reading talents,
her own accounting skills, her calm
friendliness with customers.
The sense o f order that fu els Lew is’s
approach to business extends beyond neat
columns o f figures ascending into black ink.
In her management theory, a business is one
piece o f a universe that answers need with
opportunity and sends up obstacles to guide
people away from fruitless paths.
What all this means is that, on a typical
weekday morning, La Verne Lewis, 38, shop
owner and mother o f a 17-year-old son, can
be found at her desk (actually, a table) at
Crone Magic, dressed in jeans and a
sweatshirt, surrounded by goddess statues,
moon calendars and Tarot decks. The shop is
smoky-sweet with incense. The
businesswoman bends over her books, in this
store she has crafted after her own vision, and
the magenta top o f her hair catches the thin
spring light.
y first business was real estate —
owning and managing four Victorian
houses in San Francisco, collecting rent,
dealing with tenants. Then I went back to
school at the age of 28 to go into computers,
and found that I liked accounting. I started
helping other friends I knew in San Francisco,
doing their bookkeeping.
“I decided, after all my life living in San
Francisco, that it was time for a change, a
slower pace, semi-retirement. The cost of
living here was a lot cheaper. Being a baby-
boomer, I had kind of moved out of the
consumer bracket. I ’d already bought the
color TV; I already had the Mercedes. I
already owned the real estate. I decided to
move someplace where I didn’t have to work
as hard.
“About two weeks after I was here I saw
this little ad: Wanted, board members for A
Woman’s Place Bookstore. I volunteered at
the bookstore and that spun off into being a
board member. I was still working, still going
to school. Being a board member gave me a
desire to focus on the businesses I wanted to
open and on what was needed in the
community.
M
“Crone Magic came about because one of
my good friends and I were going to school.
To help with tuition we thought it would be a
great idea to do a lot of the craft fairs and sell
minerals and stones. I’d been collecting rocks
for a long time. Our Fust festival was
International Women’s Day; we did a couple
of goddess gatherings. But we got tired of
lugging the rocks around.
“One day we were outside the bookstore,
about 11:00 at night, and this truck pulled up
and all these people got out. They were
packing up in here and moving. Site unseen,
we talked to the landlord, put a deposit down
and we had the keys. It was like: ‘Oh, shit.
W e’re in business.’
“I started reclaiming a lot of things I ’d
picked up from my mother and grandmother.
My grandmothers and mother, because there
were not wealthy, did not use a lot of Western
medicine. I remember helping my mother put
mustard plasters on my brother when he was
sick. We wore medicine bags in grammar
school, but we hid them, because they had
smelly herbs in them. We hated getting sick,
because it meant my mother would give us
something that was cooked in the kitchen.
“My mother always made bulk incense.
She took one of our closets and converted it
into a room where she did Tarot readings.
People would come to our house; there were
always men who were looking to be in love.
She would make potions. Her form of
smudging was salt in every comer. A lot of it
was traditional New Orleans style, things
from Santeria voodoo. She did make lots of
little dolls for people who needed dolls for
healing, dolls for hexing.
“Full moons were always intense around
our house. New moon was kind of a light
time. Usually she would get most of her
customers between new moon and full moon.
She would get a lot of strange customers after
full moon.
‘T o this day my mother reads the Ouija
board and says, ‘You’re going to get married
and have kids.’ She has one of those old Ouija
boards with the scary pictures on it. She did
have a crystal ball. She had a lot of jars with
bat wings and stuff that she kept in the
kitchen. There was food in one section and
weird stuff in the other.
“I wasn’t paying that much attention, but
apparently I picked up a lot. The more I
worked in the store, the more I realized. A
customer would ask me something and I ’d
give them an answer and think, ‘Where did
that come from?’ I automatically knew what
herbs were supposed to go in pouches.
“I like the fact that it doesn’t feel like
work. When I come to Crone Magic, it feels
like a natural part of what I’m supposed to do
in this life cycle. I enjoy meeting the different
people who come to the store. Someone will
walk in the door and say, ‘I don’t know why
I’m here, but I ’m supposed to be here for a
reason.’ Or people will say, ‘I ’ve lived in this
neighborhood for five years and I never saw
your shop. For some reason, today I saw it
and came in.’ A lot of times they’ve
discovered that they have things happening in
their lives pointing them in the direction of
working with earth magic.
“Or they’ve discovered that, working in
the mainstream of life, they need to balance
that by doing something in a natural sense.
I’ve found that doing accounting and doing
Crone Magic gives me that balance.
Something with the hands, something with the
heart, with the earth. Taking the natural ability
that I think women have and balancing that
with our learned traits, like typing.
accounting, being in business.
“Cafe Mocha came from Renee
[LaChance] and I sitting in the hot tubs one
day. We like to sit around and think o f ways
to make a million dollars. We were saying,
wouldn’t it be great to have a place where you
could go and dance and have all the elements
except the alcohol. We were talking about the
trend of people discovering there is life after
drugs and alcohol.
“One day we stumbled upon this place that
had been abandoned for three years. We
talked to the landlord, who gave us seven
months free rent and the key. We put an ad in
the paper for women to come out and help
paint. We cleaned out our bank accounts and
went for it.
“The emphasis was on a place for gay and
lesbian people to go and have fun, and the
other purpose was a place where they could
go to perform that would be a lot cheaper,
especially for local artists. A place where
people could enjoy their talent and not pay an
arm and a leg. A quaint atmosphere. A safe
place.
“Crone Magic, after three years, finally
supports itself. When that happened, about a
year ago, it was time for Cafe Mocha. With
that, like any new business, w e’re still putting
money into it to keep it afloat.
“When things get low, for some
miraculous reason, new artisans come in here
with artwork that will boost sales, or a large
incense order will come in. Each time I reach
a crisis, I know that because the universe
takes care of what is healthy and needed,
something occurs in the cycle.
“In business. I ’ve learned that when
something’s working, you have to detach
from it and not worry. When there’s a signal
that you need to watch something, it will let
you know. I ’ve learned to focus on the healthy
parts of the business.
“I pass that on a lot o f times to other
women. The law of prosperity is to
concentrate on the doing and the thought, to
put the money aside for the time being. If it’s
supposed to happen, then it will. When you
start hitting obstacles, it means you’re on the
wrong path, that you should switch and try a
different approach.
“My working mode at Cafe Mocha and at
Crone Magic is that the entire group
participates. You have to have the entire
energy o f the whole to be successful. It’s very
important that you participate with your staff
as opposed to separating yourself and saying,
‘I am the boss.’
“I also believe that when you have a crisis
in a business, you share. Often the ideas you
can’t even think of come from someone else. I
have found that’s one of the predominant
reasons why both places have been successful.
Being a sole proprietor with a consensus
attitude. Looking at the whole. That theory
comes from the planet. There’s no one here by
themselves sitting on earth; w e’re all heTe
collectively.”
▼
Winner of three Grammy Awards in three
years, Diane Schuur is one of the greatest
new stars in the jazz world. Once you've
heard her glorious voice, you'll never
forget it.
In Concert With The
PORTLAND
GAYMEN'S CHORUS
David York, Conductor
★
April 14th,
1990
Saturday, 8 p.m.
Arlene Schnitzer
Concert Hall
V Interpreted for the hearing impaired
Tickets: $12, $15, $19
at the box office 248-4496
M ail orders to: PGMC, P.O. Box 3223,
Portland, OR 97208
just out T 13 ▼ April 1990