The Inside Press

Magazines serving the communities of Northern Westchester

real estate

“New Era of Expanded Services” at the Renamed Hollis Laidlaw & Simon P.C.

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HLS Group, (L-R): David Simon, Moira Laidlaw and Dan Hollis.

Shamberg Marwell Hollis Andreycak & Laidlaw, P.C. has changed its name to Hollis Laidlaw & Simon P.C., ushering in a new era with new leadership, a growing team, and expanded services.

Thirty-year partner Dan Hollis, managing partner Moira Laidlaw and partner David Simon comprise the new leadership team. Mr. Simon, who joined the firm in 2018, has bolstered the litigation and land use practices, expanded the corporate practice, and added an employment practice. “I am honored to take a leadership role at such an exceptional firm,” said Mr. Simon. “I was drawn to the firm because of the collaborative nature of our attorneys and the obvious benefit to the client when we put our minds together.”

Hollis Laidlaw & Simon has recently welcomed new hires, expanding the team to 15 attorneys. “We’ve been fortunate to attract incredible talent over the years,” said Ms. Laidlaw, who has overseen the growth in her own trusts and estates practice and across the firm. She appreciates the strength that a larger team affords. “We love the challenge of working with any client who walks in our door,” she said. “With a deeper bench, we are positioned to provide a broader range of legal services to our existing clients and cater to an even wider clientele as we move into the future.”

Mr. Hollis appreciates that while the firm has evolved, it still honors the values of the past. “Our concentration has always been on providing excellent service and surrounding ourselves with the smartest people with the highest ethical standards,” he said. “With our new leadership team, this will still be our theme, and we will continue to thrive.”

Hollis Laidlaw & Simon looks forward to continuing to provide their clients with the highest level of excellence and personalized counsel in their core areas of practice: litigation & dispute resolution, land use & zoning, corporate, employment, real estate, trusts & estates, guardianship, specials needs planning, and elder law and Medicaid planning.

Enjoy Our Debut Edition

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Grace’s cut and blow dry by Lisa Koebbe Bevan, owner and Master colorist at BELIEVE Beauty Lounge, a full service salon on 95 Manville Road in Pleasantville, believebeautysalon.com Makeup (and photo!) by Kara Delfino, karadelfino.com.

Please know that a lot of heart and soul went into producing this first issue of Inside Pleasantville! If you have lived in the area long enough, many of you may already have seen an Inside Press publication in a neighbor’s home, or perhaps at a real estate office–where the magazines make a giant impression (I’m told!) with area visitors considering a move here.

I’ve been publishing for 16 years after launching the first edition of Inside Chappaqua, The Magazine for New Castle and Beyond in April 2003. Five years ago, following that success, I decided to get two Castle pubs underway and produced our first Inside Armonk. And now here we are delighted to be covering your vibrant Mount Pleasant communities too with this first edition of an Inside Pleasantville!

I’m always grateful to my Inside Press team, including Caroline Rosengarden who lives ‘Inside Pleasantville’ with her beautiful family. She is positively a most enthusiastic proponent for the community.

Also, enjoy the work here by Lisa Samkoff, our consummate professional designer who brings a special flair to every page. Wonderful Stacey Pfeffer edits our Chappaqua and Armonk editions from which you may see some relevant articles appearing here too. First and foremost, as a publisher, I understand no community’s residents live in a bubble, so I do share from other communities, and will continue to as much as I can.

I also so appreciate Ryan Smith and Rick Waters, who designed and maintain our site theinsidepress.com. You can find all the stories here online too, a downloadable edition, along with other ‘in between postings,’ all as much as time and energy permit! Behind the scenes, we have Analia Boltuch, our invaluable account manager, and always a rotating group of talented ‘regular’ freelance writers and photographers. This issue’s cover work plus the photos for the Pleasantville Music Festival, for example, are from Pleasantville’s very own Lynda Shenkman, who shot many of my first Inside editions too.

Ultimately, this pub comes to you after 22 years of happy Westchester living, having raised two terrific children: my daughter, Anna, 26, and son Ari, 22, both living in the city. I also visit my dad a lot in Yonkers. He’s going on 97 and still in good health at a senior residence. Being empty nest, and having this amazing Inside Press team in place, I’m expanding our publishing efforts.

Chappaqua’s also is just a hop, skip and jump to Pleasantville. In fact, when I think of ‘fun times’ in Westchester, Pleasantville elicits those feelings enormously, whether it’s at gorgeous Rockefeller Preserve, or enjoying countless movies at the incomparable Jacob Burns Film Center, or even acting classes I discovered with Rachel Jones at the Howard Meyer Acting Studio/Axial Theater! In the meantime I can live vicariously enjoying others performing in stellar shows such as those at Arc Stages, or setting aside a day to dance or sing along with the mega talented musicians at the Pleasantville Music Festival.

All these places and institutions and more – don’t miss a terrific story on Cycle for Survival! – are covered in this debut edition, which I hope you will treasure and keep as a collector’s item. We will be ‘back again’ with a back to school September/October 2019 edition arriving in your home by late August too. Remember, you can read us online too at theinsidepress.com and follow our assorted musings primarily on Facebook and Instagram.

I am aiming for at least four editions in 2020, so stay tuned for more fun and meaningful coverage in which we will keep on ‘Sharing the Heart of Your Community.” And I’d be remiss if I didn’t also communicate a resounding THANK YOU to all the generous sponsors and contributors who made this edition and future ones possible. ENJOY!


Grace Bennett
Inside Press Publisher & Editor-in-Chief

Welcome to Platinum Drive Realty

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Editor’s Note: Platinum Drive Realty introduced residents to its new Northern Westchester office at 27 South Greeley Avenue in Chappaqua during a February Open House/Ribbon Cutting and a Family Day that featured a visit by Frosty the Snowman. Both events drew dozens of residents to our downtown.

New Castle Town Supervisor Robert Greenstein leads a ribbon cutting during Platinum Drive Realty’s First Open House celebration in early February.
New Castle Town Supervisor Robert Greenstein leads a ribbon cutting during Platinum Drive Realty’s First Open House celebration in early February.

“We have brought together a team of talented and energetic Northern Westchester real estate professionals,” said Platinum Drive President Zachary Harrison, who together with his wife Heather, founded Platinum in 2006 with offices located in Westchester county, Connecticut and New York City. “This area has spectacular scenic beauty and provides wonderful value to buyers seeking a great lifestyle and beautiful properties.”

Seth Keslow, Platinum Drive’s first agent when the company was founded and a top producing broker featured on HGTV, and Northern Westchester resident Dana Goldman–another long time, top performing Platinum Drive agent–are managing the office. Keslow said Platinum agents are trained to make real estate “an enjoyable, rewarding and first rate experience …

“The new office will give our clients an opportunity to sell and search for properties in a comfortable atmosphere with the latest technology.” Agent Dana Goldman said Platinum chose the location for “its amazing community involvement” and “as an area boasting some of the best restaurants and shopping in the suburbs.”

Agent Sari Shaw Chappaqua, in her blog, “Living Chappy Happy,” explains why her own family chose and loves Chappaqua:

“We are not in some remote area, cut off from amazing restaurants, lively nightlife and stores that carry every brand and every color within a three to four town radius! We have the trees, the backyard, an easy express train to Manhattan, amazing preschools, exemplary schools, and a community which is so globally conscious and active.”

For more information, please visit platinumdr.com

From the intro to Bill Ravies’ new book: “The Way of the Entrepreneur”

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Bill Raveis Book Cover“I was having breakfast with a friend one winter day earlier this year at Jane’s, an outdoor café in Naples, Florida, a few blocks from my winter house in Port Royal. This enclave of 600 estates–ten and 20, 30, even 40,000-square-foot temples to capitalism at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico–is a tropical Newport, Rhode Island, and the only place of its kind on the continent. It also happens to be home to some of the wealthiest individuals and families on the planet. Many come from the world of finance and big business–investment bankers, retired corporate CEOS and CFOs, hedge fund guys–but as many are entrepreneurs, men and a few women who have built business empires (as I have) and made their fortunes in highly individual, innovative ways. They’ve all hit it out of the park.

Which is one of the main threads that run through this book: The way entrepreneurs determine their success by virtue of individualism and an unwavering belief in themselves and their passions.

The subject appears to be timely. More than ever, America is a land of limitless entrepreneurial opportunity. At the same time, it remains the immigrant’s dream, a country in which you can do anything and be anyone you want. All you have to do–aside from working really, really hard–is embrace the immigrant-like ideals of belief in oneself and one’s vision and be embraced, in turn, by family and extended family and friends.

In the end, in fact, it is that community of believers and supporters who help make American entrepreneurs what they are, not only business schools or MBA programs or investors.

It also helps, by the way, to reside outside the corporate mindset. As you’ll see, the distinction between entrepreneurs and corporate executives matters. A lot.

I’ve been out to breakfast and lunch with other business people, some of whom never make eye contact with the servers, much less engage them in conversation. But like entrepreneurs in general, I seem perpetually interested in learning about other people (and, if I’m reading Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath accurately, which admittedly may be iffy, the majority of entrepreneurs are like me in another respect: We tend to be dyslexic).

So I view encounters with a waiter or waitress as an opportunity to connect not just with another human but, more often than not, with a young person who has his or her own passion, vision and dream.

Our waiter at Jane’s that sparkling, sunshiny morning was a young man in his early-to mid-20s with Slavic features and a strong Eastern European accent. His name was Piotyr–Peter, for convenience in America, he told my breakfast companion and me–and had come from Moldavia three years earlier. After hearing from a Ukrainian friend about life in Naples, he had driven 1,000 miles from Maine with his girlfriend on the dream of one day opening a restaurant of his own, and he had stayed.

“Why leave?” Peter told us. “Is so beautiful!” Then–perhaps taking in our clothes, or the Bentley parked in front, or the fact that we were free to take a late breakfast in the middle of the workweek–he voiced a sentiment that either hasn’t been uttered, or I haven’t heard, in a very long time: “Thank you,” he said, “for building this country!” He was speaking to us but he might as well have been talking to the founders of the nation and the heroes of the American Revolution, who were entrepreneurs in the truest, fiercest sense of the word.

My entrepreneurial journey happens to have been mapped through real estate and a family-owned company, but it could just as easily have been in any industry and any entity. What counts is what you bring to a business–vision, passion, imagination, determination, sheer courage–not what it brings to you.

Our young waiter is on his journey, as I was 40 years ago, practically to the day. Although I live the rest of the year in an equally exclusive community in Fairfield County, Connecticut (one of the richest communities in the United States), I grew up a town away in one of the poorest and roughest sections of one of the poorest and roughest cities in the Northeast…”

Bill Raveis’ The Way of the Entrepreneur is distributed by National Book Network (NBN) and available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble in-stores and online, and independent book stores nationally.

In 1974, Bill Raveis opened the first William Raveis Real Estate office in a room above a grocery store. Today, William Raveis Real Estate, Mortgage & Insurance is one of the top companies in the nation and a full service real estate, mortgage and insurance brokerage with over 3,600 sales associates and 114 offices throughout the Northeast, annual real estate sales of nearly $8.1 billion, 3,000 corporate relocation transferees a year and a total mortgage volume of $10 billion.

Barbara Corcoran’s Secrets to Business Success

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Corcoran’s talk for The Business Council of Westchester’s KeyBank Speaker Series, kicked off the second-annual GROW 2.0 Conference. GROW 2.0 is the largest gathering in the region for business owners, entrepreneurs and professionals to attend networking, training and workshops centered on business development and strategy. (L-R): Barbara Corcoran, Marsha Gordon, Ruth Mahoney
Corcoran’s talk for The Business Council of Westchester’s KeyBank Speaker Series, kicked off the second-annual GROW 2.0 Conference. GROW 2.0 is the largest gathering in the region for business owners, entrepreneurs and professionals to attend networking, training and workshops centered on business development and strategy. (L-R): Barbara Corcoran, Marsha Gordon, Ruth Mahoney

Or…How a Waitress from Joisey Found her Power—and USED IT!

By Grace Bennett

Real estate mogul and ‘Shark Tank’ celebrity Barbara Corcoran opened a talk at Westchester Community College in May opining about the one person who may have figured as her most prominent influence: Her mother.

“My mother ran our household like a boot camp. You didn’t dare cross her,” Barbara said, also pointing out her “phenomenal organizational abilities” managing a family of ten children in a modest, two bedroom apartment in New Jersey.

Barbara also related that her mom was uncanny at “nailing” each of her kid’s “gifts,” including dubbing her brother as “the kid who could dance.” Noted Barbara: “Tom is now a ballet dancer for Alvin Ailey.” As for Barbara herself, her mom aptly declared her daughter’s gift: “a wonderful imagination.”

Another pivotal figure was an older (by ten years) and charming fellow named Ramon Simon who showed up at a Jersey diner one day where Barbara was waitressing (after receiving straight Ds in high school!) Apparently girlfriend hunting, “Ramon chose me over another waitress, ‘Gloria,’ a stacked dead ringer for Dolly Parton,” said Barbara. “Men would line up to catch a glimpse of her.” The experience taught Barbara early on that “men are just as attracted to the great white virgin as they are to the bombshell.”

Barbara Corcoran with the co-communications team.
Barbara Corcoran with the co-communications team.

Ramon and she ran off to the city–causing a major rift with mom…“She hated him; it broke my mother’s heart,” she said. For seven years, Ramon and she worked building up a business until mom’s intuition bore fruit. Barbara said Ramon announced he was leaving Barbara for their secretary. Barbara was devastated. The breakup, she said, and Ramon’s own cruel declaration, “You know, you will never survive without me,” steeled Barbara to prove him wrong and employ the imagination her mom was so clear about. “One day, I found my power,” she said, and set up an office with a meager $1,000, calling it, simply, “The Corcoran Group.”

Through the ups and downs of the market, Barbara would adapt accordingly. “I would just think of Ramon laughing at me.” She proved him dead wrong when she sold the company for a whopping $66 million.

A key wisdom gleaned from years of successful real estate selling and marketing: “Perception creates reality.” On a hunch, in the Corcoran Group’s early days, Barbara sent her now landmark “The Madonna Report,” to media outlets, hungry, she said, for facts and figures in a record low NYC market.

“I knew nothing about Madonna,” she laughed. Still, a producer invited her to appear on TV as an expert right away. From that point on, Barbara’s name, as she put it, “rose to the top of the food chain…If you can be the person churning out the numbers on a constant basis, they will call you their drug supplier!” Another secret to Barbara’s success was differentiating between “expanders” and “containers” at work. She looked for the ying to her yang, and found it in a woman named Esther, a clear “container,” who kept Barbara on task 
and organized.

Barbara Corcoran and Grace Bennett
Barbara Corcoran and Grace Bennett

She advised attendees to also get better, not just at hiring, but also at firing, and warned about the dangers of “dead wood” to any company’s bottom line. But showing a softer edge too, Barbara added that she also prided herself on personally coaching fired individuals on careers they were perhaps better suited for.

Finally, she described a culture of sheer fun in her company “that made us the company you wanted to be in.”

“Fun is the most underutilized tool in business,” she said, and builds camaraderie “even amongst the most competitive real estate agents.” To that end, she would routinely organize outings, “the wackier and more shocking, the better,” she said.

Barbara’s final pointer was encouraging hiring persons who are “great at failure. I look for the people who can take a hit and get up again. They don’t spend time feeling sorry for themselves.” And there you have it…a condensed version of Barbara’s secrets to success. The gathering ended with many hungry for more, and lining up to purchase a copy of her hot, new book, Shark Tales.

Grace Bennett is Publisher and Editor of The Inside Press, Inc., dba Inside Chappaqua and Inside Armonk 
magazines since 2003. She has spent the last four years successfully publishing in a down print market.