The Invisible Mentor

Archive for November, 2009

George Eliot an English novelist said, “It’s never too late to be who you might have been.” As you do your planning for  2010 remember that quote, and make sure that you’re living the life you were meant to live, and not the life that others expect you to live. NO EXCUSES, you’re not too old, or too young, or under-qualified, or over-qualified and so on and so on. This is your life, not a dress rehearsal.

Interesting Tidbit

George Eliot is the pen name for Mary Anne Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880).

This is Part Two of Don’s interview. Please click here for Part One. In this content rich interview, you learn how he stays motivated, what are the threats to his business, advances in the industry, how he defines success, generates ideas and much more.

How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

I love technology and being the director of Digital Communications, it’s my job to stay on top of the trends and keep our clients and staff up to date with the latest info in social media. I help our account teams weave social media into their traditional PR programs so I need to be right on the cutting edge. Due to my love of technology and social media, motivation is never an issue for me.

If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?

I’d create Twitter and be a millionaire.

What’s the most important business (or other) discovery you’ve made in the past year?

The most important discovery I’ve made is pretty simple — social media is great, but it doesn’t replace the human aspect that’s needed to close business deals. Yes, clients like the fact that we are on the cutting edge of social media, but if we don’t vibe well with the client, we won’t win the business. Relationships and personal, face-to-face interaction is key to bringing in new business and keeping current clients happy.

What’s one of the biggest advances in your industry over the past five years?

That’s simple — social media. It has greatly impacted the way we think about our business and our client’s business. Every program we develop is run through a digital prism. The lines of advertising, marketing, journalism and PR are blurred because of social media.

What are the three threats to your business, your success, and how are you handling them?

There really isn’t three threats. It’s just one — social media. However, it’s also an opportunity. Social media has all but leveled the playing field for agencies. We are all “experts.” We are all going after the same budgets. It’s created a very intense and competitive environment, even more so than it was before. So the key is to stay on top of the trends and develop programs that are so forward thinking that the work you do speaks for itself. Clients hire on experience.

What’s unique about the service that you provide?

Our unique perspective on this business stems from the mashup of the PR world before the web and since eruption of the web 2.0. We have experience that runs the gamut and fusing that experience with the knowledge of the digital space, truly gives our clients a 360 view of their brand and how we can help them move the needle.

What do you observe most people in your field doing badly that you think you do well?

There’s too much “me-me,” i.e. self promoters. Let your work speak for your company and your services. Yes, you should market, but don’t go overboard with how “great” you are. Writing a book about social media doesn’t make you an expert. Implementing a program that generates an additional 500 sales leads makes you not only an expert, but valuable to your client.

How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

I just do it. There’s no formula. There’s no “balance.” You do what you have to do to the best of your ability and you make the time for family. It’s not brain surgery. You have to make ample time to do both well.

What’s a major regret that you’ve had in life?

Zero regrets. Regrets are just heavy pieces of baggage that add no value to your life.

What are five life lessons that you have learned so far?

Be yourself. Be honest. Help people. Take care of your family. Own up to mistakes.

When you have some down time, how do you spend it?

With my kids or learning new things as it relates to social media.

What process do you use to generate great ideas?

Talking to my kids. Playing catch. Walking or listening to music. My creativity is fostered when I’m not thinking about something specific.

What’s your favourite quotation and why?

“You don’t ask to take a photograph. You ask quietly, to borrow it.” I’m a photographer on the side and saw that anonymous quote once and thought how smart it was, because it’s true.

How do you define success?

Healthy and happy home life.

In your opinion what’s the formula for success?

Healthy and happy home life.

If trusted friends could introduce you to five people that you’ve always wanted to meet, who would you choose? And what would you say to them?

I’d meet my two great grandfathers (for family reasons), president Obama (for his vision), Steven King (for his creativity) and Nelson Mandella (for his life’s lessons).

Which one book had a profound impact on your life? What was it about this book that impacted you so deeply? Did you have an emotional or intellectual attachment to this book? Why?

Steven King’s The Stand, mostly because of the creative writing and the descriptions he used to set scenes, describe characters and make you, as the reader, feel like you were in their world.

If you were stranded on a deserted island, what are five books that you would like to have with you and why? Summarize the book in two sentences.

I’d honestly take any of Steven King’s novels because of their creativity and the fact that they would take me to a world that I’d never see. I don’t need any self-help books or any books about people’s lives, Shakespeare, etc. I’d want simple, yet descriptively satisfying books.

Have you read any books that inspired you to start a business, service or invent “something”? If yes, which book?

Nope, not yet. But I’ve read a lot of books that have inspired me to do better at my job, better as a person and better as a dad/father.

What one music CD and movie would you like to have with you (on the deserted island) and why?

Way too much to list. I couldn’t decide out of the slew of music I own.

What excites you about life?

My kids.

How do you nurture your soul?

My kids.

If you had a personal genie and she gave you one wish, what would you wish for? Or, if I gave you a magic wand, what would you use it for?

Honestly, I’d eliminate homelessness. It’s a sad thing to see and I see it too, too often.

Complete the following, I am happy when…

I get home and I see my kids after a long day at the office. It’s food for the soul.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab your personal copy by clicking here.

In August my friend Lauren Huffman Morris posted on Facebook 15 Favourite Books Share. I posted the following books that I read, and really enjoyed, and some of them influenced my life. I am forever growing and changing and as I evolve so the books, I like change. For today, here are 15 books I’d like to share in no special order of influence:

1. How to Read a Book, Mortimer Adler & Charles Van Doren
2. The Art of Thought, Graham Wallas
3. Key to Yourself, Venice Bloodworth
4. The Magic of Thinking Big, David Schwartz… Read More
5. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
6. New Psycho-Cybernetics, Maxwell Maltz
7. Best-Loved Folktales of the World, Joanna Cole
8. Gilgamesh: A New English Version, ed Stephen Mitchell
9. The Tenderness of Wolves, Stef Penney
10. The Outcast: A Novel (P.S.), Sadie Jones
11. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
12. The Richest Man In Babylon, George Clason
13. The Greatest Salesman in the World, Og Mandino
14. Animal Farm and 1984, George Orwell
15. How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling, Frank Bettger

What would your list of 15 books look like? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please comment. If you found this blog post through a search engine, please consider subscribing.

I like Chris Brogan who has helped me a lot indirectly. I subscribe to his blog and I learn a tremendous amount from him, and I often become aware of what I don’t know that I didn’t know that I didn’t know (wrap your head around that). I like his helpful and caring style.

What I want for The Invisible Mentor Blog is to build a community of people who share with each other. I am very passionate about reading and learning, and books have been great mentors to me. There are many lessons inside great books that we can apply to our lives. Sadly, most people do not read as much as they should.

My intent is to provide book summaries of books that impact, as well as interviews of successful people who we can learn things from. Use the information from the book summaries and interviews and find ways to integrate them into your life. Spend some time going through old posts to see what you have missed.

Older Posts Worth Reading

Want a Mentor? Be a Mentor
Summary of Technique for Producing Ideas
Could You Swear to It?
How to Analyze Information
Timeless Ideas Worth Exploring
Stepping Into Your Greatness, Are You a Leader or Follower?
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, What’s Your Story?
The Way of Strategy – A Review of he Book of Five Rings
If Estee Lauder Were a Blogger, What Would She Say?
Thinking Without Borders

And, I would greatly appreciate it if you helped me to spread the word about The Invisible Mentor Blog. Please comment and also let me know what are some of the things that you’d like to see.

Back to Chris Brogan, I watched a 10 minute presentation by him “Why Serendipity is Underrated” and in it he asks us five questions to ponder, which are timely for thanksgiving:

How do we share?

How do we extend experiences and relationships?

How do we collaborate?

How do we wire new networks people wise?

How do we develop relationships that yield?

and I would like to add another question that I think is important

1. How do we give thanks, or let people know that we appreciate all that they do?

I will think about these questions and I hope you will too. Here is Chris’ presentation.

This is an interview with Don Martelli, VP, MS&L. He makes a fine invisible mentor (unique leader who you can learn things from) and you’ll agree when you read Part One of his interview. It’s very gratifying to see senior level professionals who understand that life is more than them. In the interview Don shares with you how he succeeded in his field and what someone starting out should do. He talks about the three events that shaped his life and you may be surprised by his answers. In his interview, you’ll also learn about his biggest challenge and how he resolved it, how mentors have helped him and a whole lot more.  I will post the second part of the interview on Friday, where you’ll discover the books that influenced him and the ones he would like to have on a deserted island.

Tell me a little bit about yourself

I am a 14 year-veteran of the communications business. I started out as a reporter for the Boston Globe and worked for six years in the education space in PR and marketing roles. I’ve worked for three top PR agencies, working on technology, corporate, healthcare and consumer accounts. Currently, I’m a VP and Director of Digital Communications with MS&L Boston (www.mslworldwide.com). You can find out more about me at www.donmartelli.com.

What’s a typical day like for you?

A typical day for me is one where I’m writing blog posts for our agency and some of our clients. I’m living in Twitter and other social media services all day. I’ll happen to design a piece or two for our new business process. I’ll also have a couple of client calls, media stories to pitch, bloggers to interact with and account management issues to deal with as well. To put it simply, I never have a typical day. The only thing that’s typical about my day is that whatever it is I’m doing, it’s typically done online and via some social/web 2.0 channel.

Describe a major business (or other) challenge you had and how you resolved it.

One great program we’ve developed and are still working on is one with Best Doctors (www.bestdoctors.com). They are an expert medical consultation service for large US employers. They work with employees to ensure that they are getting the right diagnosis and the right treatment. Basically, they help employees make better healthcare decisions. We wanted to inject the company’s point of view on healthcare reform into the online conversation, which is a very crowded one. Our first step was to launch a blog — www.seefirstblog.com. We then worked with the president and COO on messaging and tone as it related to the company’s POV on reform. Once we started to generate content, we connected the main author — Evan Falchuk, president and COO — to other online influencers in the healthcare space. We knew that making the right connections via services like Twitter, would get the blog’s content read and discussed in the space. Since April, we’ve had major news outlets like Wired, Atlantic Magazine and the Wall Street Journal, pick up See First Blog content online. Additionally, we’ve been linked to from Instapundit and have hosted the very popular healthcare blog carnival Grand Rounds. All of this work has resulted in over 2,000 unique visitors a month. We’ve topped off at nearly 4,000 due to trackbacks from Instapundit, Wall Street Journal, etc.

What lessons did you learn in the process?

The biggest lesson was that social media is not about volume. It’s about connecting with the right people that can help you move the needle.

How did mentors influence your life?

Guidance, education and common sense.

What’s one core message you received from your mentors?

Be smart. Think things through. Be yourself.

Which resources (books, movies, training etc.) did your mentors recommend to you?

Too many to mention. However, that’s the great thing about learning. There’s so much content in this world to digest. The key is discovering what your passions are and running with it.

As an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?

Read, read, read and read some more. You can never read enough.

Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

My big break was when I was hired as a writer for the Boston Globe. I got the job through my cooperative education program at Northeastern University. Without the Globe experience, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

Describe one of your biggest failures. What lessons did you learn, and how did it contribute to a greater success?

I honestly don’t consider anything in my life to be a failure. I am where I want to be because this is the path I have chosen.

What has been your biggest disappointment in your life – and what are you doing to prevent its re-occurrence?

Again, no big disappointments for me. Everything happens for a reason. You need to learn from everything in life and determine how you can benefit from that experience in the future — negative or positive.

What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?

I had a good job with a local college preparatory school and decided to leave it to come to MS&L. It was tough because I loved the mission of the school and I loved where it was headed. However, the opportunity to be part of a top, global PR agency with the reputation that MS&L had was one I couldn’t ignore.

What are three events that helped to shape your life?

Getting married, having kids and going to Northeastern University. Marriage and kids keep me grounded. That’s what is important in life. Knowing that I have a family to provide for is all the motivation I need. As for the NU experience, as I said, without it, I wouldn’t be where I am today professionally.

What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

Raising two beautiful and healthy daughters.

What did you learn from this interview and how might you use some of the information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab your personal copy by clicking here.

You may be wondering, what does enjoying the splendor and beauty around you have to do with mentoring? A mentor provides a guiding hand to help you to be the best you. Part of being the best you is to be aware of the simple things around you. When your senses are heightened, you’ll be able to spot the many opportunities around you that you often miss because of busyness.

When was the last time you went on a hike, or to the park and just BE so that you can connect to nature? There are a lot of wonders around us. Take a break and see what’s right under your nose and express gratitude for life’s simple pleasures.

Nearly every day I go for a walk for about an hour, and while walking I often get the most amazing ideas. And I often notice many things that humble me and make me want to be a better person.

What are some tips you can share with us to spot the many little wonders around us. Let’s keep the conversation going, please comment.

Please watch the video below with the astounding imagery. It’s a small step to appreciating the splendor and beauty around us.

A few years ago I came across the Rule of Five outlined in 1001 Ways to Market Your Books by John Kremer, a book marketing expert . Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen have also used the Rule of Five to take their books to bestseller status.

The Rule of Five simply means that each and every day you perform five activities that will assist you in achieving your core goals. So in their case they were trying to sell their book, Chicken Soup for the Soul, so one day they would send out five copies of books to be reviewed, another day would be calling five radio stations to get interviews and another day they would be sending out five press releases.

The Rule of Five can be applied to any goal you are trying to achieve. If you are trying to get a promotion:

• Who are five people who you could call for an information interview, who have already traveled the path you are on?
• What are five things you can do to get noticed in your company?
• What are five ways you can improve the way your work gets done?
• What are five things that you could do to make yourself more valuable in your company and industry?
• Who are five invisible mentors (unique leaders) you could study to model their behaviour?

What would your Rule of Five look like? Please keep the conversation flowing, please comment.

I saw the quote, “The best way to predict the future is to create it,”  by Abraham Lincoln. Isn’t it a beautiful quote? I think so, so I decided to write a blog post. Here  is what I think will help you to create your future and they are not in any order of priority.

1. Internalize the idea of excellence, mediocrity just won’t do
2. What is your goal, where would you like to end up?
3. Take your idea and run with it
4. Have confidence in yourself and your abilities
5. Adapt a self-motivated attitude, accomplished individuals are self-motivated
6. Create your success team with people who have done what you are trying to do, and who you can call on when necessary
7. Have stick-to-itiveness
8. Have singular focus
9. Blaze your own trail
10. Have fun

What would you add to the above list? Let’s keep the conversation going, please comment.

Photo Credit: via Apture

Recently I received a course catalog from The Teaching Company in the mail and I took my time going through it. Anyone who knows me knows that I am big on continuous learning. I particularly like this catalog because they didn’t have the regular run-of-the-mill courses, and many of them fascinated me — Change and Motion: Calculus Made Clear, Understanding the Brain, How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, Games People Play: Game Theory in Life, Business, and Beyond, Understanding Complexity, Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer’s Craft. Aren’t these fantastic names for courses?

I was interested in nearly all the courses listed, but that’s not practical. One course which fascinated me was Life Lessons from the Great Books. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful course to take? And the amazing thing is that the catalog has courses on DVD, with each lecture 30 minutes long. Most people can sit down for 30 minutes, couldn’t you dedicate 30 minutes each day for a course, if you could apply the concepts?

The following are the Course Lecture Titles. I must admit that most of those books I have never read, but after reading the copy in the catalog I wanted to take the course and I wanted to read the books. Has that ever happened to you?

1. “On Providence”, Seneca
2. The Gospel of John
3. Conscience, Boethius, Martin Luther King
4. The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky
5. Night, Elie Wiesel
6. Schweitzer—Out of My Life and Thought
7. The Sufferings of Young Werther, Goethe
8. Hamlet, Shakespeare
9. Ajax, Sophocles
10. Epistle VII, Plato
11. “On Old Age”, Cicero
12. The Penitent, Isaac Bashevis Singer
13. Alcestis, Euripides
14. Medea, Euripides
15. Tristan and Isolde, Von Strasburg
16. Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare
17. Macbeth, Shakespeare
18. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
19. Odyssey, Homer
20. Philoctetes, Sophocles
21. Chivalric Adventure, The Song of Roland
22. Chivalric Romance, Nibelungenlied
23. Journals, Lewis and Clark
24. Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T. E. Lawrence
25. Comedies, Aristophanes
26. The Grouch, Menander
27. La Mandragola, Machiavelli
28. In Praise of Folly, Erasmus
29. Utopia, Thomas More
30. Animal Farm, George Orwell
31. History of the Jewish War, Josephus
32. Cato, Joseph Addison
33. Farewell Address, George Washington
34. Abraham Lincoln, George Patton—War
35. An Autobiography, Theodore Roosevelt
36. The Wisdom of Great Books

Professor J Rufus Fears from the University of Oklahoma teaches the DVD course Life Lessons from the Great Books. According to the website of The Teaching Company which sells the courses:

“What Makes a Book “Great”?

According to Professor Fears, four characteristics define a Great Book:

• Its focus on great themes such as love, courage, and patriotism
• Its composition in a noble language
• Its ability to speak to readers across the ages
• Its ability to speak to readers not as groups, but as individuals”

How many of the books above have you read? Would you willingly want to read them? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please comment.

American thanksgiving is coming so much attention is on gratitude, but gratitude should be an every day thing, not just a day or week. In Canada we celebrate Thanksgiving in October. In Jamaica where I was born, the church celebrates harvest and they have Harvest Supper, which happened this past weekend. I try to express my gratitude each day, sometimes I succeed and sometimes I fall short, so I try to do it as life unfolds and things happen and that works for me. Here are seven things that I am grateful for.

Family: I am grateful to my family for loving me, even when I screw up and screw up badly. They may lecture me, which I do not like, but I know their hearts are in the right place so I listen and don’t have to agree, but I know that all is well.

Good Friends: I am grateful to true friend who keep me grounded, who give me the space when I need to grow or figure out things for myself.

Health: I am grateful for my health because when I am in good health I can do many things.

Another Day: Each day when I awake I realize that I have been given another day on this wonderful day to do something remarkable and I am eternally grateful even when I do not live each day as if it was my last.

Opportunities: I am grateful for the opportunities that present themselves in my life because they allow me to be remarkable, as well as of service to others.

Freedom: This is something that many take for granted, including myself because we live in a free state. In Jamaica they have a saying that you never know the use of a half until you lose it. This should be a reminder to us that we shouldn’t take what we have for granted.

Adversity: I am grateful for adversity – it took me a long time to figure this one out – because it brings tremendous opportunities. The past five years have been challenging ones for me, but I have grown so much, that I would never trade thge darkest period of my life for promises of sunnier days. I know myself so much better and I am also a better person. It’s a humbling feeling when things fall apart and the good thing you get to put it together again and this time you can use a different template or pattern. My writing has more depth because I been to the School of Hard Knocks.

I am sharing a piece of me with you, what are you thankful for? This is my entry to the 7 Things You Are Thankful For Group Writing Project 2009. Let’s keep the conversation flowing like a river, please comment. Also consider contributing to this Writing Project, what are 7 things that you are thankful for?