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.