The Invisible Mentor

Archive for December, 2009

How many times have you put off doing things until someday? Recently I met an 84 year old man who told me that if he died the next day that would be okay because he had lived a good life. During the conversation, I realized that he had accomplished a lot and lived a very full life.

Have you lived your life to the fullest? Do you live each day as if it were your last? What are five things that you have been meaning to do but have been putting it off to someday for whatever reason? Let 2010 be the year you do those five things because someday is here. What are your thoughts? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please comment.

Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the left side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

I got the idea for this post after I read the headline “10 Reasons You Need a Mentor, Especially Mid-Career.” I decided to approach this post by presenting the responses to mentor questions that I ask accomplished people, and you get to decide if you need a mentor.

How did mentors influence your life?

Dennie Theodore

By believing in me. That’s the thing you need most when the world is feeling dark.

David Gray

Mentors have influenced my life more by their actions and their own ways of conducting themselves rather than by any specific mentoring per se.

Rodger Harding

Mentors have held up the mirror and shown me potential I did not know I had…Oftentimes I only realized the enormity of their contribution years later…

Deborah Koehler

They made all the difference in the world. They believed in me when I doubted myself.

Shannon Van Roekel

I never had a real mentor, unless I can count my mother, but I have had lots of examples of what not to do and a husband who is wise.

Brian Johnson

Interesting that I get to this question after describing the above. I have a complex relationship with mentors.

On the down side, had I followed a couple of “mentors’” advice early in my life, I never would have created my first business, eteamz. When I asked some pretty successful people what they thought of the idea, they thought it was a terrible idea and one actually told me “to take another hit on that pipe if you think you can pull that off.” They told me it would cost at least a million dollars to build the technology (we did it for less than $15,000 + 6 months of hard work and a lot of canned tuna) and reminded me I had no experience or contacts so who was I to get that money and build it (fair points as I had very little business experience and essentially no contacts). Oh, and they said I violated rule #1 of a business: the market has to “need” your product—which was a valid point because, at the time, there were only a few hundred teams and leagues in the world who were using the web so they didn’t think there was a need.

That was just the motivation I needed to rock it. I set the goal of getting 1 million teams in 5 years. (We got there in 4)

On the positive side, I’ve gotten amazing support and wisdom from some extraordinary human beings. Special thanks to Sam Wyly again, plus John Mackey (the CEO of Whole Foods) and Gay Hendricks (author of 30+ books including my favorites: “Five Wishes” and “The Big Leap”).

Being around these guys has totally changed my life. But, I’ve gotta say that it has been less what they *told* me (although they’ve each given me great practical advice) and much more about who they are and how they show up in the world and how that mojo has rubbed off.

For example, the scope of Sam Wyly’s vision is RIDICULOUSly big. He sees the world in terms of THE WORLD. So, when I’d tell him I wanted millions of people in our community at Zaadz, he’d nod his head and smile and say, “How can we do it and how much money do you need to do it?!?” (I remember one day when I met with him (a billionaire) and a nice, well-meaning potential investor (a millionaire) and the difference between how BIG they thought and the resulting advice they gave was *amazing.*)

Additional unsolicited advice: In addition to choosing your mentors wisely, I think the biggest thing to keep in mind is to trust yourself. Ultimately, a great mentor is someone who reflects back your highest potential and helps you tap into the wisdom you already have while sprinkling some tips they’ve picked up along the way. I’d personally run away from anyone who tells me I’m thinking too big or can’t do something or some such other nonsense.

As John Eliot says in his great book, Overachievement: “as soon as anyone starts telling you to be ‘realistic,’ cross that person off your invitation list.”

Steve Spalding

I like to believe that I learn something from everyone I talk to, that’s why I love chatting with different kinds of people.

As for my mentors, I think that all the people I would consider mentors had shared one thing in common — they have given me the opportunity to make mistakes.

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

Dennie Theodore

To be yourself, ask questions and be an advocate for yourself and others.

David Gray

Establish trust by being principled and doing what you say you will do.

Rodger Harding

That I am a gifted person who has loads of untapped potential…Using this potential will benefit myself and others.

Deborah Koehler

You know what you need to do within yourself, trust yourself and move toward where you are pulled.

Shannon Van Roekel

The best thing I can do to market my book is to learn to write well.

Brian Johnson

Trust yourself.

(I vividly remember a chat with Steve Wynne (the former CEO of Adidas who we brought on as our CEO at eteamz), when he told me the two most important things about business: 1. Trust yourself. 2. Business is simple, keep it that way.)

Steve Spalding

I think that is the core message. To grow as an entrepreneur, you need to have the freedom to make mistakes. If you don’t, you can’t expect to do anything interesting.

People grossly underestimate how complex business can be, they assume that everything will work out exactly as planned. What I will say is that in all cases that I’ve seen, it never does.

One of the few good things a mentor can give you is the room to breathe that you need to learn this for yourself, find a solution (or not) and fail with your head held high.

They need to teach but only after they’ve let you do it yourself for a while.

What are your thoughts after you have read the responses to the two questions? Do you need a mentor?

Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over here The Invisible Mentor (top on the left side) and subscribe by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here. Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please comment.

Today we present Steve Spalding. This is a detailed interview that you can learn much from. You will learn about a difficult challenge he faced, how mentors influenced him and an underlying message and much more. Steve firmly believes that when things go wrong in our lives, we should extract the lessons. Great advice! We conduct these interviews so that you can learn from the experiences of others. That is part of what mentoring is about.

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

What I’ll tell you is that I find questions like that to be hard, on principle. The problem, I guess, is that I never know what it is that you want to hear.

The easiest thing to say is what I do. I run a small firm called Crossing Gaps LLC. We help big brands and small creatives tell their stories using the web, which really is a fancy way of saying that we do strategy design and consulting.

On top of this I write. I write for my blog, howtosplitanatom.com and I write for our stable of side projects.

When I’m not doing that I spend the rest of my time waxing poetic on Social Media channels. Right now I’m pretty deeply interested in psychology, behavioral finance and how all of that ties back into the ways we use the web for business.

What’s a typical day like for you?

It starts off with a lot of email. In general, the first hour of my day is spent catching up on the emails that I neglected to answer the night before.

The rest is split between working on client deadlines and taking chunks out of internal projects. I try to focus on one thing in a day. I’m finding that I get a lot more accomplished that way. It used to be that I would flit between whatever project caught my fancy and load the rest of the day down with client work. By focusing my energy on accomplishing one thing, I’ve found that I burn out a lot less frequently and it frees my mind to think creatively again instead of just moving along the treadmill.

How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

I stay motivated by splitting my time across multiple projects. I know common wisdom holds that you should dive into one thing and work on that until you’ve made your millions, but this always struck me as the wrong idea.

When you keep your head buried in anything for too long you start losing perspective, and when you lose enough perspective you start making mistakes. Doing work on different things that require different parts of my brain, makes all the projects seem more fun (because I know I have a limited time to do them) and I’ve found it makes them more successful because I’m happier.

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

I’d be more patient.

Every mistake I have ever made in business has been because I have tried to rush things along when what I really needed to do was look at them critically. Great businesses aren’t built in a week, they aren’t even built in a month or a year — if you can’t be patient and work slowly towards a real, manageable goal you are going to find yourself in a lot of holes you might have otherwise avoided.

That being said, I really don’t feel like I would have done anything differently. Every mistake I have ever made has been a teaching experience. I’ve always felt that people underestimate the value of really screwing up.

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

My most important business discovery has been that working more does not mean working better. In the last few months I’ve realized that you need to take some time out for yourself and do things completely different than what you spend 50-60 hours a week doing or you’ll start to stagnate.

Go for a hike, learn about Jazz, take a trip to New Zealand, do something entirely different and see how it ties back into your day job. You might not think that your career has anything at all to do with the plot of Pulp Fiction, but the lesson that most entrepreneurs really need to learn is to take lessons from everything they do.

It’s a badge of honor among entrepreneurs to brag about how many hours you work on your business, that’s great and I do it all the time myself but the truth is that success is much more a function of efficient time use rather than raw volume.

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

In the realm of Social Media (where I work most often), the biggest advances are coming as large companies start to care less about the number of people coming to their sites and start to care more about the quality of those people.

Almost every client meeting I have starts with the person wanting to get millions and millions of hits, as if traffic alone was somehow going to drive their business forward. I have to tell them that if that is all they want, that’s not too hard but no matter how many million people show up to see whatever stunt we devise to attract them, none of it matters at all unless those people eventually turn into customers.

I think companies are getting a more sophisticated understanding of how to read their own analytics and this understanding is translating into making discussions about “quality over quantity” a lot easier.

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

Unfortunately, when you are in an information or knowledge based business like mine you only really have one threat — obsolescence.

Every day you wake up and your industry has moved forward a step, if you aren’t keeping up then it won’t be long until you have nothing to offer your clients that they can’t just read on the Internet.

I think the hardest thing about working in this field is the fact that not a day goes by where you can be complacent. If you are not constantly improving then you’re dying, and that death will come suddenly and without warning if you aren’t paying attention.

How do I handle that?

Well, mostly, I use the Internet a lot. I also try to avoid the trend lines. I am more apt to observe early adopters rather than be one myself, if you spend your time too deeply tied to the hot new trends you start to lose the forest for the trees and when you make your living off of the trees, that can be a serious problem.

What’s unique about the service that you provide?

I think the most unique thing we provide is that we try to avoid stunts. A lot of Social Media tactics can devolve into pet projects that look great in a case study but don’t provide real client value.

At our core, we are educators, I want our clients to leave us, not only able to use the infrastructure we’ve built up for them effectively, but to also use some of the intuition that’s necessary to grow.

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

I think a lot of consultants spend a great deal of time making their jobs look as complicated as they can. It serves a purpose, I know, if it looks like you’re doing magic then you can charge an astounding rate as long as you don’t give away your trick but I think it does a disservice to the client.

I have always been of the opinion that when the client is doing well, we do well, and the best way to help that along is to make it easy for the client to understand what it is that we are doing.

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

We started working on this project when the economy was starting to nose dive. The golden age of Venture Capital investment and million dollar valuations was dying down and everyone, in every sector that mattered to us, was tightening their belts.

What’s even funnier is that when budgets get cut, the first thing to go is — you guessed it — marketing.

We had fewer clients, willing to spend less who always wanted more work done.

The way we dealt with it is, I think, the way entrepreneurs deal with any problem — persistence. We took our licks, did some work for way less than it was worth, got some experience under our belts and eventually we started filling out our client list.

After six or seven months of grinding, we got to the point where it was easier to say “no” to things that we didn’t want to do. In consulting, I think the ability to say “no” is the truest measure of your overall success.

Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

I think we had a number of big breaks.

On a personal level, my big break into entrepreneurship came from a local VC — Dan Rua — who many years ago was kind enough to listen to me ramble about one bad business idea after another until I finally figured it out.

Professionally, I consider every one of our clients a “break.” When you are working through a terrifyingly bad economy, anyone who decides to open up their checkbook to you is fantastic. Sometimes the “biggest” clients end up saving you but more often it’s the little guys who stick around month after month that get you through the toughest times.

I can’t say enough how much I appreciate our clients big and small and the dozens of “breaks” they have given us.

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

The “failure” question is always hard. As I said before, I see all of the things that have exploded on me as being a natural and necessary part of my growth as an entrepreneur.

If I had to pick one, it would be a project called Orangeply. It’s not terribly important what it was supposed to do (it had nothing at all to do with citrus fruit) but it is a classic example of paralysis by analysis, our team spent so much time putzing around deliberating about server capacity and where we should put UI elements that we never even started on the code. It was a project that generated a spectacular amount of paper while managing to accomplish nothing at all except teaching us all a lesson about the value of iterative building.

I think that project, along with the half-dozen other failed enterprises and hundreds of conversations with other entrepreneurs has given me a keen insight into what works and what doesn’t in web-based business. It has also given me the ability to help guide other entrepreneurs away from problems that might otherwise capsize their projects.

What are three events that helped to shape your life?

1. I wouldn’t call it an “event” but I would say my parents, they instilled in me a few things that I think have served me spectacularly — a love of knowledge and a strong work ethic. Without both I don’t think I would be where I am today.
2. Deciding to go to school at UF. As weird as it might sound, I think my life would have been entirely different if I had gone to college in the northeast as I had originally planned. There is something about seeing technology from outside of the big hubs that gives you a unique perspective. I think all good business is based on unique perspective.
3. Deciding to leave the company I was working at to start my own business. That one seems pretty self explanatory, if I hadn’t done that I wouldn’t be here answering questions for you among other things.

What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

Survival. Considering the economy that I started working for myself in, survival is easily my greatest accomplishment. It would have been so easy to fail and we definitely had more than our share of opportunities to fail but somehow we managed to pull through and I couldn’t be more proud.

How did mentors influence your life?

I like to believe that I learn something from everyone I talk to, that’s why I love chatting with different kinds of people.

As for my mentors, I think that all the people I would consider mentors had shared one thing in common — they have given me the opportunity to make mistakes.

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

I think that is the core message. To grow as an entrepreneur, you need to have the freedom to make mistakes. If you don’t, you can’t expect to do anything interesting.

People grossly underestimate how complex business can be, they assume that everything will work out exactly as planned. What I will say is that in all cases that I’ve seen, it never does.

One of the few good things a mentor can give you is the room to breathe that you need to learn this for yourself, find a solution (or not) and fail with your head held high.

They need to teach but only after they’ve let you do it yourself for a while.

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

I get book recommendations from all over. I think my favorites right now are:

1. 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
2. A Random Walk on Wall Street
3. Freakonomics
4. Outliers

What are five ways that you can apply Steve Spalding’s wisdom, knowledge and experience to your life? Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over here The Invisible Mentor (top on the right side)and subscribe by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here. Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please comment.

About Steve Spalding

Steve Spalding, Electrical Engineer, Editor of the critically acclaimed technology/business blog How To Split An Atom and marketer who specializes in using the Internet as a distribution channel to increase the overall effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

He has had experience building start-ups, working at them, and speaking to dozens of Founders and CEOs during his years as a blogger in the space. His work has been cited by numerous sources including the LA Times, Forbes and Geoff Livingstone’s marketing and new media book, Now Is Gone.

All book links are affiliate links.

In Mashable’s blog post (WordPress 2.9 Now Available for Download) they mentioned the new WordPress was now available. I went to my blog and chose automatic download, something I’d done a few times before. The message said upgrade was successful so I felt pretty good.

A few hours later I tried to log on to my blog and got a strange error message. I contacted the firm which hosts my blog, and I sent an SOS message to Cathy Tibbles from Desperately Seeking WordPress to fix my blog. I felt helpless and stressed because I didn’t know what was wrong and I didn’t know how to fix the problem. I knew that I had not done anything wrong.

It took a while for Cathy to diagnose the problem, and for my blog to be working again – over two days. I lost all my comments and had to recreate all my categories. But, I am grateful because my blog is working properly again. While my blog was down, I typed in the URL for my blog and got the message This Account Has Been Suspending, not the kind of message one expects to see. Since I could fix the problem with my blog, I simple let it go and I felt the tightness in my chest go away.

It was a difficult process, but I am very proud of the way I responded. There were times when I was frustrated, but most of the time I was very calm. During the process,  because my blog is working properly again. I was reminded of the Mark Twain quote, “Worrying about something is like paying interest on a debt you don’t even know if you owe,” and the Serenity Prayer.

The Serenity Prayer

By Reinhold Niebuhr

God grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change;

courage to change the things I can;

and wisdom to know the difference.

The Serenity Prayer has been adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous and some of the other twelve-step programs. The words of the prayer and the Mark Twain quote are very true. What are your thoughts? What are five things that you are stressed out about that you have no control over?

Too much stress prevents you from showing up as your authentic self, can you afford that? I would be eternally grateful if you would comment on blog posts that you have enjoyed so that I do not feel as if I am whistling in the dark. Let’s keep the conversation flowing.

Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over here (top on the left side) The Invisible Mentor and subscribe by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

I have been looking back and reflecting on 2009 to determine how far I have traveled. And, I wanted to check in to see if I have accomplished my goals for the Invisible Mentor Blog.

I started blogging in March 2009, so I have been blogging for nine months. I am amazed at how much content I have produced. I promised  my readers that I would blog at least four times each week and I have honored that commitment. Other promises include interviewing highly successful people and reviewing books off the beaten track. I have been pretty good with the interviews, but I have to develop a plan to review books off the beaten track. I have to create a reading plan.

So for the next year, I will do a better job of bringing books that you wouldn’t think of reading, but need to know about. This is an education blog, so it has to be content rich. I am also testing my belief that there is nothing new under the sun, and we can use some of yesterday’s ideas to solve today’s problems. What are your thoughts?

If there is specific content that you’d like to see, please leave a comment for me in the comment box. As I started to write this post I had the epiphany that this year was a year of planting seeds. Because of the law of nature, I have to plant the seeds, water and nurture them before I can harvest. I hope that you will continue on this journey with me.

Based on the interviews I have conducted and books I have read, here are some lessons learned and some great ideas.

15 Great Ideas

Know thyself!

Trust yourself!

When undertaking any endeavour, act as if it were impossible to fail

Those who reach success are likely to be constant workers

When you are participating in a conversation, you need to understand not only what is said, but also what is not said. You also need to understand what the people involved are thinking and feeling but not saying to each other

In the end, our lives will be judged not by the things that we began, but by the things that our effort and resolve brought to a successful conclusion

Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event – it is nothing more than a few errors in judgment repeated everyday

The past is a learning memory. The future is a yearning goal. The present is the only moment that exists. You can stretch that moment out forever if you are constantly aware of every now

Anything can be practiced. A guitar piece to a positive way of life. Practice is simply concentrating on a single action or idea until it no longer exists in your conscious mind

Make life meaningful by doing work that you are passionate about. Live each day as if it were your last

Everyone wants to be liked, appreciated and wanted. People also want to feel like they are a part of something bigger than themselves

We are our brother’s keeper

What would happen if we let others know that we believed in them?

Each of us is right in the middle of our own Acres of Diamonds, if only we would realize it and develop the ground we are standing on before charging off in search of greener pastures

Opportunity does not just come along – it is there all the time – we just have to see it

15 Life Lessons Learned

Be yourself!

Always listen

Forgiveness is always easier than resentment—and healthier

Nobody is free from insecurity or dysfunctions. Some are just better at hiding it.

Life doesn’t last forever so speak the truth

Feel the fear and do it anyway

Help people

Take care of your family

It is possible to find solutions for even the most intractable problems–by listening, by leading with a fair and transparent approach, by being open to new ideas and ways of handling situations, and by affirming people as often as possible

Always do what needs to be done

Be likable

Be understanding toward others

It’s about people and relationships

Success is never about money

Persistence pays!

What are some great ideas that you have discovered and what are some life lessons that you have learned so far?

Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over here (top on the left side)  The Invisible Mentor and subscribe by email or RSS Feed and I would love it if you left a comment for me in the box below.