The Invisible Mentor

Archive for the ‘Interview’ Category

After I digested the entire interview, it dawned on me that the problem solving and creativity technique that we have presented on this blog is basically the same technique that Sean MacDonald uses when he starts a new case.

• Read through the information to have a thorough understanding
• Gather information
• Integrates the new information into the old information
• Analyzes the information
• Let it percolate
• Develop a defense strategy

This is my interpretation, what’s yours? What can you learn from this interview? Here is Part Two of the interview

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

I practice law in Toronto and my focus right now is wrongful convictions and basically that means getting innocent people out of jail.

How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

The important thing for me is the quality of life and no matter what I do, whether I’m working or at home, I think it’s really important to have a quality of life. So in terms of integration, I think they are both the same thing. For me I live each day as if it’s the last day that I’m going to live, and no matter what I’m doing I appreciate it, I put it into perspective and embrace it.

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

I don’t think I’d do anything differently, although one regret is that after I completed high school I had the opportunity to go to a prep school in the eastern United States. At the time I didn’t understand how important that was, or could have been, so I decided not to go. Now looking back, I understand that Phillips Exeter Academy, Andover Phillips Academy, Worcester Academy were schools that could have opened up other avenues for me today. I regret that, I wouldn’t change the decisions that I made, but I probably would have put more thought into that decision, but I was only 16 at the time.

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

1. Put things into perspective
2. Always look at the bright side
3. Appreciate life
4. Believe in yourself
5. Never put limitations on your dreams

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

I spend my down time in different ways: relax, roller blade, go for walks. I think it’s important to do nothing for a lot of reasons. It’s good for your soul to relax, and I also think that it’s good for you creatively to let your mind and body relax because it gives you ideas that may have been percolating the opportunity to bubble up. So during my down time I often shut it off, and whatever I do during that time is healthy and positive.

What process do you use to generate great ideas?

I think great ideas come when you are centered and when you have a sense of balance. I think you limit yourself when you allow stress to impact your life, and when you do that you’re not able to let your creative process work. So my greatest ideas, if I have any great ideas, whether they are in my practice, or other things come at their own pace, when I’m relaxed, centered and have a sense of self.

What’s your favourite quotation and why?

There is a quote that my grandfather had on a beer mug that he got in Germany in the 40s or 50s. It said “You get too soon old and too late smart.” There is a Thoreau quote about when he was in Walden that means a lot more to me but I cannot remember it. It’s about your dreams.

How do you define success?

Success for me is waking up happy.

In your opinion what’s the formula for success?

It’s putting life in perspective, living every day like it’s your last, and no matter what the challenges are, truly believe in yourself.

What are the steps you took to succeed in your field?

To begin with, I think that I have a genetic predisposition toward, and a passion for justice, that’s why I do what I do. I don’t know if I’m successful, but I can tell you that every day that I wake up I try to do the best that I can do. All you can do is believe in what you do and work with a high degree of passion.

What advice do you have for someone just starting out in your field?

In any field it’s important to believe in yourself and don’t be scared. If you believe in yourself you can do anything, don’t pay too much attention to negativity because it’s always going to be there.

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?

1. The first would be Mohammad Ali and I would say, “Thanks.” I think that his strength and ability to stick to his beliefs has transcended time, culture and race. He is one of my heroes. He gave up everything for what he believed in and I think that is a rare quality.

1. I’d like to meet Gandhi and I don’t know what I’d say to him. I think I’d be speechless, but he is certainly somebody that I’d like to meet.

1. I think I’d want to meet Einstein because he is also someone that I think refused to allow limitations to stop him, and I also think he lived life like every day was his last day. I don’t know what I could contribute to the conversation with all these people, I’d be more interested in listening to them. They are great human beings and they have far more to offer me than I could offer them.

1. I’d like to meet Benazir Bhutto because she was a shining light, and it would be interesting to meet her. I think her contribution to the world was cut short and I’d like to listen to her.

1. I’d like to meet President Obama because I think he’ll be a center piece in human history as we move forward, and I’d like to sit down and listen to him too. And I think he is an unbelievably amazing human being and has achieved things that most people could only dream about.

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?

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It taught me to embrace life, and no matter what to always appreciate the moment, live your life in the moment and not to let the other things get in your way. It’s an amazing book.

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’m a geek so the books I’d like to have would be about the practice of law. I’d like The Little Prince because it’s about the practice of life. I am inspired by people like John Sopinka, he is former Supreme Court of Canada justice. He has books on the trial practice of evidence, that for me, allows me to absorb their wisdom. Most of the books that I would like to have wouldn’t be interesting to other people. The other books I read are about Middle Eastern politics, the authors are professors and foreign policy experts. One is Steve Coll. I read a book called Ghost Wars and it’s about Afghanistan and the foreign interest that was at play there from the time the Russians were in Afghanistan up to the point 2001. I am interested in Middle Eastern politics mostly because I’m interested in the people and I want to have a better understanding of where they come from and what their experience have been so I read a lot. There is another book called The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future written by Vali Nasr that I’d like to have with me.

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

I don’t read your cookie cutter how-to books, like how to become a millionaire, but I spend a lot of time thinking about various business ideas in addition to what I do. And I try to find people who have been very successful, and try to do my own reconnaissance to see who they are, where they come from, what they’ve done, what they are doing, but I try to do it from different sources. I find that if you take it from one source there is only one perspective. I try to learn from them.

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

The movie would be Unusual Suspects. The CD is a hard one because I like so many different types of music. It could be way back to someone like Curtis Blow, I love Kurtis Blow. It could be Sting, it could be Bach. There is a Bach CD that I really like.

What excites you about life?

Life! I wake up excited and I think life is a gift.

How do you nurture your soul?

I nurture my soul by trying to empathize with people who aren’t as fortunate as I am. There are a couple of things: most importantly it helps them, I try to do a lot of charity work and I think everyone should help others who are less fortunate. And the second thing is when I help, it nurtures my soul. I represent a bunch of homeless people around my building, and I have a lot of new friends, significant friends, that are a lot less fortunate, many of whom are homeless… that fills me up.

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?

It’s hokey, but it’s what I would wish for, I would wish for world peace. The second wish would be that every animal on the planet lives a happy life. I’m a dog lover, I’m crazy about them.

Complete the following, I am happy when…..

I’m breathing, I’m happy when I’m with my little pug and I give her belly rubs.

What are your thoughts on this interview? What was expected and what was unexpected? Do you capitalize on the opportunities that come your way? What are 10 takeaways? How can you apply this information? 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 side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

A friend suggested that I interview Sean MacDonald and I’m glad that I listened. Sean’s honesty, passion and humility shines through his interview. I think that it takes a certain type of individual to take the time to defend the wrongfully convicted because in many instances the accused cannot pay the legal fees. Sean’s focus is not about money, and after you have read his entire interview you discover his love for life. He lives every day as if it’s his last, how about you? What lessons can you learn from him?

YouTube Video of David Moran Speaking About Wrongful Convictions in the US. If you cannot view the video click here.

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

I practice law in Toronto and my focus right now is wrongful convictions and basically that means getting innocent people out of jail.

What’s a typical day like for you?

My days are never typical and they depend on what’s going on and what my case load is. It can range from a day where I review transcripts, prepare submissions for cases that I am working on, or I can be on the phone with forensic investigators, or with private investigators and different lawyers across the country and around the world. It really varies. But typically my day comes back to people who are wrongfully convicted.

How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

I think life is a gift, I’m always motivated. I don’t have a problem being motivated. I love life and every day brings a new challenge and I like that.

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

I don’t think that I’d do anything differently. I’ve been pretty fortunate so far, I don’t think that I’d change anything.

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

My focus is really on social justice and the criminal justice system, so in terms of business I know that comes along with it but I do not focus on that. I’ve had many learning experiences over the last 10 years that relate to my work and my ability to get people who are innocent out of jail, for me that’s more important than the business aspect of.

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

I think the biggest advance is the general public awareness that there are times when the justice system doesn’t work and the ability to accept that as an inevitable consequence of the way things work and to recognize that the wrongfully convicted deserve justice.

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

1. If I were to pick three threats, the first one would be the lack of resources for people who find themselves victims of the miscarriage of justice.
2. The second would be the reluctance of governments to address these issues.
3. The third threat would be the reluctance of governments across Canada and the United States to provide remedies for people who are innocent and locked in jail.

What’s unique about the service that you provide?

It’s a unique area because it combines legal theory with investigation and forensic technology. I think for me it’s unique because it’s unlike any other area. You are a fact finder and at the same time you are a lawyer.

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

There are a small group of people in Canada who do what I do and to be honest I do not observe any of them doing anything badly. They are highly dedicated and skilled, and if anything I learn from them.

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

I think every time I take a case is a major challenge. You have someone who has been investigated, charged, gone to trial and been convicted and sentenced, and winds up in a federal maximum security penitentiary. Every case is a challenge because you are working to reverse that, so I think that every case that I take is a major challenge because you are trying to swim upstream.

Every case is different, but if there was a commonality it would be the fact I roll up my sleeve and start with the first piece of paper and I begin to read to get an understanding of the facts, then I read it again and again. Once I have read every thing a few times I start to get my own facts, I hire my own investigators and forensic experts, pathologist, wound pathologist, maybe fire arms experts, ballistics experts, and stuff like that then I begin to create my own investigation, then I fold that into the original investigation and see where that takes me.

What lessons did you learn in the process?

1. You have to be patient and these things never come easy
2. Have faith and keep that faith

I’ve been lucky to reverse almost sixty years of wrongful incarceration or wrongful conviction time and I know on the other end how gratifying it is, and that helps me to stay patient and keep the faith.

Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

I don’t think that there was ever any one big break for me. I think it was a series of small accomplishments that came as a result of extremely hard work and having the good fortune of being around some of best in the business. I try to work very hard, to keep making gains and get better at what I do.

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

One of my biggest failures if I can characterize it that way, was not being smart enough to begin practicing law with my father, instead of staying in Nova Scotia, I moved to Toronto and articled on Bay Street. When I think back, I lost the opportunity to learn from the smartest person I know, and moved here instead. As a result, that was a failure in a broad sense. From this experience, I’ve learned to appreciate how brilliant my father was and how much he has impacted my life.

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

My biggest heart break was losing my father, and there is nothing that I can do to prevent that.

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

I think it goes back to moving to Toronto. I think that was the toughest decision that I had to make. I had an articling job on Bay Street, and I also had an opportunity to practice with my father, and I chose Toronto. If I had the opportunity to make this decision again, I probably would have stayed with my father.

What are three events that helped to shape your life?

1. When I was a teenager I worked as a processor or bailiff serving court documents for a variety of lawyers including my father basically providing litigation support, and that impacted my life because I got the chance to be exposed to a court house at a young age and I got to work with different lawyers during the trial process.
2. I started a private investigating company soon after. That impacted my life because it got me more involved in the trial process, and I had the ability to inject myself even deeper into the preparation of cases that go to trial, and it gave me the opportunity to be around the trial when it was happening, take statements from witnesses, go to crime scenes and take pictures, and gather evidence to assist lawyers who were conducting trials and that really impacted my life.
3. The above events led to my further development, which was going to law school and getting more involved in the trial process.

These three things have shaped the way I look at my profession. I had the opportunity to have the slow and steady evolution from the time I was about 16 years old.

What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

The accomplishment that I’m proudest of was walking out of the courtroom with a client in 2008, who was dying of cancer, who was exonerated from murder after 30 years.

How did mentors influence your life?

Mentors influenced my life in many different ways. I am lucky enough to work with many of the greats, and I’m lucky enough from the time I was probably eight years old to have my father as my biggest mentor. He was the most brilliant trial strategist that I have ever seen, so I had an opportunity to learn from him every single day. We talked about his cases, his theories about the cases and what he was doing, what he thought, what I thought, so I learned from him. There wasn’t a day when he was alive that I didn’t call him three or four times and talk to him about different things that related to what I was doing. I have other greats like Phil Campbell who is the best wrongful dismissal lawyer in Canada and probably in the world. I’ve worked with him, I’ve worked with James Locklear, who again is one of the best in the world at what he does so I’m very, very lucky to be exposed to some of the best wrongful dismissal lawyers in the world.

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

I can’t say there is a core message. The way I approach it is to keep my eyes and ears wide open. I mean they have wisdom, and every time I speak to them I learn something. I guess the core message would be to listen.

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

My father recommended a book called The Art of Advocacy written by John Monkman. It’s an old English book written by an English barrister, and it sets out the fundamentals of being a lawyer, it’s not complicated, and it’s laid out to teach lawyers the basics. My father read that book every two to three years, and he practiced for thirty-plus years.

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

The world is filled with infinite opportunities. If you believe in yourself, whatever goals you set for yourself you can achieve them. That’s the single most important piece of advice that I could give to anybody.

What are your thoughts on this interview? What was expected and what was unexpected? Do you capitalize on the opportunities that come your way? What are 10 takeaways? How can you apply this information? 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 Mentorand subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

“I say that presidents of companies should be kicked out every five years or changed because we are only good in one or two areas not five or six or the full breadth of what a CEO does and I continue to believe that. There should be far more turnover of leadership in companies than there are today because people get stale,” says Kevin Shea. Part Two of this interview is packed with advice based on years of experience in the communications sector. After reading Kevin’s interview here are of few of my takeaways, what are your?

1. Listen and hear
2. Find and work with others who complement your skills
3. Going against the grain can have huge payoffs
4. Don’t give up on your dreams just because others tell you that you’ll fail
5. Interact with people from all age groups

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

I was born in Montreal, and my family moved to Los Angeles when I was nine months old, and I’d like to say it was because I was having difficulty with two languages. My parents moved back to Canada, to Toronto when I was about 10. I grew up in Toronto and was involved as an actor when I was a kid and was always connected to the broadcasting television business. I knew that was the business that I wanted to get into. I went to York University and studied history, I’m not sure why I did that. After university I started my career in the cable industry.

Many years later I am now running my own company SheaChez Inc., have been for the past five years. I get involved in various start-up companies where I assist them with CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) licensing applications, which is a role I did with Sirius Satellite Radio. And I sit on a variety of different boards of private companies and I am chairman of what’s called the Ontario Media Development Corporation (OMDC).

What’s a typical day like for you?

There is no typical day, because I’m self-employed, and as I said I do a lot of board work, my days are a mix of visiting companies I am involved with trying to set up strategic partnerships between companies that I know and companies that I’m involved with, lobbying government on various things and then working on a host of different projects. Quite honestly the overall content of what I do is somewhat similar but my days are dramatically different.

How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

Because there is so much diversity in what I do, what I mean by that is, I’m on the board of Cookie Jar Entertainment for example, which is an animation company and they are involved in what I call the conventional broadcast production business, but I’m also involved in a lot of new media companies and just diversity alone keeps me very interested. I work with entrepreneurs from the age of 20 to 70. In the old broadcasting business there are still a lot of legends and in the new media business there a lot of young, smart people.

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

I’ve thought of that before, and in many respects I’ve been very lucky. I’ve had some fabulous jobs and I’ve had the privilege of starting and running YTV the kid’s network for seven or eight years. I was at GlobalTV in its best years, Atlantis before it was Alliance Atlantis where we launched Life Network. That was great grounding for me, but there was always a bit of entrepreneur in me that wanted me to do my own thing. Having the benefit of working in large corporations most of my career has now allowed me to take that and help companies along the way, which has been a real benefit.

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

I think the most profound discovery is how dramatically changed the broadcasting and communications sector is becoming. It is literally changing every day, and for many it’s very difficult to keep up with. It’s dramatically altered almost every aspect of the broad communications sector whether that’s newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. I mean it’s in a real state of flux. Even advertising is going through its own dramatic changes as it tries to keep up and understand all the change, and in the mean time consumers are very quick adapters, particularly Canadian consumers and they just want more, more, more. I guess the other profound discovery is that we’ve almost moved back 40 years sort of pre-cable and pre-online where the expectation is you buy the device, for example a TV, you put up an antenna and everything is free, and today’s consumer is also expecting everything online to be free and we both know that free isn’t going to pay for it, so that’s a discovery. It’s the reality of today.

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

I don’t know if there has been a single advance, but I think that for all of us, and when I say us I mean those who grew up in the traditional, conventional broadcasting business, understanding the impact that these new distribution technology advances are like night and day and is still very much a struggle for a lot of executives to figure out where this business is going. Today I spend the bulk of my time and effort in the new media business not the old media business and it’s been a dramatic shift. It’s not well understood and we don’t know with certainty where it’s going.

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

1. Keeping current, particularly as someone who is a consultant and advisor you have to know what’s going on, so I find myself spending more time with younger people because they have a better handle on where things are going
2. We saw last year what impact the economy had on investments and in Canada the sources of investments in new start-ups in the communications business is difficult, there aren’t a lot of people investing in that.

Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

My big break came when Phil Lind at Rogers hired me to come in and run Cable Satellite Network way back when, and put me into Rogers a much bigger company than I was with in a leadership role. He remains both a close business associate and key mentor of mine. When I moved around in Rogers, Colin Watson who was my boss was an incredibly supportive and smart guy, so I would say it was a big break getting into Rogers at that time

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

In my early days at Rogers when I was running this organization called Cable Satellite Network, and this was before we had specialty networks in Canada, the only thing we had was live coverage of the House of Commons, no Toronto Sports Network (TSN) or Newsworld. I had worked on a couple of applications for TV Ontario (TVO), one was called Galaxy to start a national children’s channel. This was before YTV and we kept being turned down by the CRTC and it was very disheartening because it seemed like such an obvious thing because we had TV Ontario that was a core strategic partner which was the first time that a broadcast and cable company had come together, which was my doing because I was the one who put that partnership together. I learned that we were before our time. The CRTC had no policies, they have never licensed a specialty channel, and the moment they licensed TSN and MuchMusic, which were the first two and they weren’t specialty channels back then, they were paid TV channels that almost went bankrupt and changed to specialty. It was when we all realized that it was time to put together a kid’s specialty channel and YTV was born. Now YTV was a controversial license because it had cable companies as shareholders and producers as shareholders, we didn’t have a broadcaster. TVO didn’t participate this time. I learned that you have to wait in this country [Canada] until they are ready, and secondly you have to be patient, and don’t stop because someone says no doesn’t mean that you go away forever. It took us six years to get an YTV license. It was called something different in different applications but in the end it was worth it.

The failure was Galaxy and the lesson is, do not give up and sometimes you are a bit premature.

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

Maybe not going out on my own earlier and starting my own cable networks. There is nothing that I can really point to be honest.

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

I was at Global TV and had been there for six or seven years as president, they had just bought the newspapers, whether I had a premonition, I realized that this acquisition of the newspaper was going to dramatically change how the company was going to be in the future. I thought about this for a few weeks, talked to a few friends and associates, and to resign from a big job at that point to go and do my own thing was one of the biggest decisions that I`d ever made. And you leave from having assistants, flying all over, all sorts of expenses being covered, stock options, to do your own thing is a big decision. I look back and say thank God I did it for a lot of reasons, given unfortunately what has happened to CanWest today, and I’m not saying that I predicted it. I look back and say I did the right thing even though I didn’t have all that information at the time.

What are three events that helped to shape your life?

1. Being born since it wouldn’t matter otherwise
2. Having four great sisters who are my best friends and I mean that, and they have been very influential in my life
3. Having two wonderful children

What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

Starting YTV. I look back at my career and it took a long time to get the license, everybody said it would be a failure and would be off the air and bankrupt in six months and when I left after seven years it was probably one of the most progressive cable networks in the country.

How did mentors influence your life?

In many ways, and I seek out mentors and they continue to advise me. Somebody told me when I was young that you cannot be an expert in everything, you just can’t, and to concentrate more on your strength than your weaknesses and fill the gaps with people around you that actually complement your areas of weakness. I know where I am good and not so good so I’m always conscious of this advice. I say that presidents of companies should be kicked out every five years or changed because we are only good in one or two areas not five or six or the full breadth of what a CEO does and I continue to believe that. There should be far more turnover of leadership in companies than there are today because people get stale.

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

Make sure that one of your capacity is the capacity to listen because most times people do not listen to what you’re trying to advance because the only thing they have on their mind is what they are trying to advance, and you can tell that there are certain people who are not listening. And it’s almost as if you have to say, ‘hang on a second, I want to make sure that it’s not that you just understand this, but I want to make sure that you are hearing it.’ That’s been valuable personal advice in terms of dealing with people because at the end of the day a company is only as good as the people are.

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

Everybody has their latest favourite book. It provides them with intelligence or a clue from an operating standpoint that they didn’t have before to see the world in a different way so if I read everyone of those books I`d never be able to leave the house, so I do a lot of scan reading.

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

Keep an eye out for, and try to follow the capacity in which the individual has been able to implement change. I come back to where we started this conversation, and that is unless you can adapt really quickly in this day and age to change, and fully understand that change is happening all around you, so today’s best leaders are those who can actually implement change and that’s not easy because to implement change you have to have buy in, understanding and a collective will and good folks are the ones that today have that capacity and that`s something we all need.

What are your thoughts on this interview? What was expected and what was unexpected?  What are 10 takeaways? How can you apply this information? 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 Mentorand subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

Kevin Shea is the kind of guy you would want to be your mentor. Not only would he give you great advice, but he is also the connector, he’d know exactly who to connect you to, to help you get to where you’d like to go. To succeed in today’s environment Kevin advocates learning and networking. And he recommends that you share information when you attend conferences. While you are reading the interview, think of ways that you can use he information.

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

I was born in Montreal, and my family moved to Los Angeles when I was nine months old, and I’d like to say it was because I was having difficulty with two languages. My parents moved back to Canada, to Toronto when I was about 10. I grew up in Toronto and was involved as an actor when I was a kid and was always connected to the broadcasting television business. I knew that was the business that I wanted to get into. I went to York University and studied history, I’m not sure why I did that. After university I started my career in the cable industry.

Many years later I am now running my own company SheaChez Inc., have been for the past five years. I get involved in various start-up companies where I assist them with CRTC licensing applications, which is a role I did with Sirius Satellite Radio. And I sit on a variety of different boards of private companies and I am chairman of what’s called the Ontario Media Development Corporation (OMDC).

How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

On a personal note, the most important thing to me outside of the obvious is my children. I am a big cottager and I love to get away, and nowadays I can work anywhere so that`s a big part of me. I have a wide, wide group of colleagues and I am a connector so I stay in touch with a lot of people, and a lot of people stay in touch with me. In many instances within the era I grew up in, I’m probably one of the first people who gets a call from someone who has either just been laid off, or their company has been closed down. I do a lot of coaching, providing advice and direction to people who have hit a rocky road in their career. And I think I can say this to you because I have four sisters, women are far more willing and probably able to have difficult emotional discussions more quickly, and want to get to the issues quickly, and men are very proud, I see it so often trying to get them to open up and settle down on the anxiety, and get a plan.

In this day and age, they are saying that kids entering the workforce will probably have between 16 and 20 different jobs.  And in our era you had maybe three. There is no such thing as a full-time job anymore, it doesn’t exist, we are all contract employees, sometimes the contract is six months, sometimes it’s a year, sometimes it might be 10, but at the end of the day, companies can get rid of us so we are all contractors.

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

Maybe not travelling as much, I sort of got to that late in life.

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

1. Patience is huge
2. Work with great teams
3. Respect your work mates
4. Make change quickly

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

I spend it in cottage country – reading, gardening, fixing and building.

What process do you use to generate great ideas?

I don’t think that I have a specific process. Ideas come to me then I bounce them off people. I mean ideas can land at any time, it’s more what you are doing with your ideas opposed to having them. How can you move on them? I just joined the Idea Council for a major ad agency that I can’t name. Big ad agencies are struggling today and they are trying to figure out how to respond to the market. The ad agency has brought together five of us from completely different walks of life. We meet once a month for three hours with the entire management, and we are basically charged with coming up with ideas. Ideas in terms of new kinds of partnerships, things they should be looking at, these are the emerging technologies, how to win particular clients, and it’s kind of fun. We are given nothing in advance, they make a presentation as soon as we get there, and it creates a very interesting environment because the single purpose is to share ideas.

What’s your favourite quotation and why?

“If you sit by the river long enough you will see the body of your enemy float by.” Japanese Proverb

How do you define success?

Success is so different for different people. It’s meeting your objectives, life and corporate. I see it at companies where they won a big deal, a big award and you look around the room and it’s a bunch of long faces, so clearly that wasn’t success for them. It’s also who owns that success, who is really responsible, so I think it’s different for so many people.

In your opinion what’s the formula for success?

Setting reasonable, attainable objectives with the capacity to change those benchmarks as you go along. If your goals are way too lofty you’ll never attain success in your own mind.

What are the steps you took to succeed in your field?

I think one thing is to network and make sure that you are out there and know people and not just specific to your sector. I got involved in all sorts of different things, charitable organization work to other boards of directors, even way back just to broaden my network. It’s really funny because at some point in time you may need someone or need an affiliation, so building a series of contacts that are real is necessary.

What advice do you have for someone just starting out in your field?

I talk to a lot of graduates and so on, and there are a couple of things that are critical in my view: read everything about your industry so that you are totally fluent and current in what’s going on, attend conferences even if you have to pay for them yourself because you’re going to learn more by listening to others, and by meeting others you are going to broaden your network, so constantly ask your boss if you can go to this, or go to that. And more importantly, bring that learning back, share it, don’t just hold on to it. Even at a young age network and don’t be just 9 to 5, and read as much as you can.

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?

1. I’ve always wanted to meet the president of Ireland and I think I’d say, “Thank God you’ve found a way to begin to stop the internal strife between the Catholics and Protestants in Ireland because it’s a ridiculous altercation in this day and age, and I hope and pray that it never surfaces again because it’s an awful, ridiculous conflict in such a modern society.”
2. I’d probably want to me meet more world leaders and ask them to try to build better bridges of communication within their own ranks and the world. We are at a time and place when we are really lacking, and I really understand why we are lacking in really strong political leadership because no one wants to run anymore because they are paranoid about what may be in their background and so on and so forth. They are judged on all the wrong things and we are not getting good people to run, even for members of parliament and it’s showing. That’s what I think I’d want to do. And I don’t know who those five world leaders would be.

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?

Maybe I haven’t read it yet. There are so many because you pick snippets of things and not the entire book may be relevant, only sections.

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.

1. I’d want to have The Hunt for Red October, I just love that book
2. I’d want a bunch of books written about people stuck on deserted islands to give me some clues about what I would be encountering
3. I’d want a couple of survival books

I’d want advice and guidance because we’re not good being caught in nature.

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

For the music CD I’d probably want the Beatles. I know most of their songs, they are comforting and I’d like a little bit of Aretha Franklin mixed with that, I love rhythm and blues. For the movie, The Hunt for Red October and all the movies I haven’t seen.

The Beatles YouTube “Get Back” Video. If you cannot view this video click here.

Aretha Franklin YouTube Video “I Say a Little Prayer for You”. If you cannot view the video, click here.

YouTube Video The Hunt for Red October Movie Trailer. If you cannot view this video click here.

What excites you about life?

Change, I’m so happy that I’m in the communications sector, as opposed to insurance or banking, or hospital work. I love the communications sector, I really do, and it is a very key cultural instrument for our country, and you know how diverse our country is and I think it has been so adept, more so than any other nation in advancing multicultural and multi-language content. We are quite unique and we are quite diverse, and that’s kind of cool.

How do you nurture your soul?

Through family, my mom and pa are still alive, they’re 90 and fabulous. Family is very fundamental and important to me and they are my friends.

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?

World peace.

Complete the following, I am happy when…..

I’m busy. I like being busy doing a lot of different things, that’s why I love what I’m doing. I don’t think I’ll ever stop working because that’s when I’m the happiest.

What are your thoughts on this interview? What was expected and what was unexpected?  How can you apply this information? 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 Mentorand subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

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Here is Part Two of Donna Whitney’s interview and I hope that you’ve had the time to digest Part One. I know that it’s a lot of content but it’s loaded with solid information that you can use. After I transcribed Donna’s interview, I realized that it was the first time that anyone had really mapped out their career path for all to see. The “Tell me a little bit about yourself” is very detailed and has a lot of depth. It was interesting to see how someone moved from one role to the next and sometimes the reasons for the decision. Instead of trying to summarize it and taking out germane information, I have included it at the end and called it Anatomy of  a Career. You get a glimpse of Donna the pioneer, who gets a sense that something is going to take off so she positions herself to take advantage of the the upcoming change. After you’ve read her interview, and especially the Anatomy of a Career you will feel as if you know her. And that’s what I am trying to do with the Invisible Mentor, I want you to get to know the interviewees, and learn from them.

How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

Every step of the way. Every single aspect of my professional life is my personal life, and every single aspect of my personal life is my professional life. I think leaders, their values and what they stand for, who they are from 5:00 pm to 9:00 am the next day matters. Who I am in my personal life ought to be the same, and my values ought to be consistent with my professional life.

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

I wouldn’t say that I’ve had many major regrets, but there are an awful lot of things that I regret. I would have loved my husband to be the only man that I ever dated. And, I think it would have been good if I hadn’t spent so much time on the music side, and invested a lot more time in technology sooner. I don’t know if I could call these regrets, but if I could then that would be it.

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

1. Speak less listen more
2. Be gracious, turn the other cheek
3. It’s okay to be last, there is no shame in being last
4. If you can be a light for someone be that light
5. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes

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

I love baking bread from scratch, not a bread machine. The stuff that takes 1 ½ weeks to make, I love doing that.

What process do you use to generate great ideas?

I don’t ever do it alone, I always include people.

What’s your favourite quotation and why?

“What if you believe that what you really believe is real, what difference would it make?” Dr. Del Tackett

How do you define success?

Being in adherence to the value system and the truth that you know and believe. It’s living your life in accordance with what you know to be true.

In your opinion what’s the formula for success?

Serving.

What are the steps you took to succeed in your field?

I took risks and I wasn’t afraid to say what I knew to be true, and I wasn’t afraid to give over the spotlight when appropriate.

What advice do you have for someone just starting out in your field?

Experiment, try different things, see where things go because it will never go the way you expect it to, and be true to yourself.

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?

1. Jesus Christ and I would say thank you
2. Apostle Paul and I would want to be instructed by him. He was a profound writer and a huge hero of the faith, and I would love to hear and understand, and ask him to explain some of the things he said in the scriptures
3. John Calvin
4. Mother Teresa and I would love to listen and hear what she had to say
5. Helen Keller and I would not have much to say to her, I would just want to listen. Her wisdom and perspective on things would be profound

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?

I would say that it’s the Bible because it’s a pretty impactful book.

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.

1. The Bible
2. A book with a rubber dingy
3. The Iliad
4. War and Peace
5. A book by Ray Bradbury, something I haven’t read yet by him

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

The Bible changed my heart, there are certain parts that really moved me.

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

The movie would be The Gospel According to John and the music CD, I would take my iPod with stuff that I liked and stuff that I had never listened to.

What excites you about life?

The prospect of what comes after.

How do you nurture your soul?

Keep myself in proper perspective, that it’s not about me.

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?

That every wish that I wish would come true.

Complete the following, I am happy when…..

I’m serving.

Anatomy of a Career

When I was a little girl I wanted to be either a singer or a nun. I opted for the singing since that was easier to do than try to be perfect. I started singing when I was six or seven years old. I was a pretty rebellious kid and I was out of control. I started smoking when I was 11 years old and started going to bars when I was 12.

I started off my career in rock bands back in the 80s when I was 16 singing in bars. I found out quickly that being five feet three inches and 110 pounds, blond hair, blue eyes did not fit the profile of somebody who would be hugely successful with her talents alone. In that industry in the 80s was pretty nasty actually, the whole agent scene, bar scene was not a welcoming or supportive environment.

I met my first agent when I was 16 and taking vocal training. I walked into his office, and this was well before there were personal computers. In his office, he had this massive wooden desk with a telephone and a photocopy joke with a baby and a smelly diaper, which said, “Agents are like diapers, they’re always on your ass and usually full of shit.” Pardon my language, this was my introduction to the music industry, this was what the music scene was going to be like.

He had told me to bring in my demo tape, which I did, and I sat down and he put it into the tape player and walked out of the room. I sat there and listened to my own demo tape, when he came back into the room he sat down and looked to see if the tape was finished.

He said, “That was great”

I said, “Okay,”

“Let’s talk business. How short will you wear your skirt?”

I replied, “I’m16 years old, I’m selling my voice not my body.”

“You’re a smart girl, that’s a good answer. Have you thought about modeling?”

I’m five feet three inches, I’m not a model so I was taken aback, but I wasn’t stupid either so I said, “Well, I’m only going to model for the right bathing suit at the worst, you understand that, right?”

“Oh you’re such a smart girl, such a smart girl. Have you ever thought of doing European pictures, no one here will ever see them? $1,500 a picture.”

That’s a lot of money now, mind back in the 80s when I’m 16 years old, and my idea of full-time work is McDonald’s. I realized what he was saying so I thanked him for his time and got up and walked out of his office. I left music, and after that it was really hard for me. When you have no life experience and you’ve lived on the planet for only 16 years your own context of who you are is bound up on what little life experience you have, so walking away from music, for me was hugely tragic, because it was all I ever understood. I was never a really good student, so that whole experience really threw me for a loop and I decided then that I didn’t want to be what the pop culture would have me be. I didn’t want to be stupid, and I didn’t want to be a dumb girl, and I didn’t want to be a sex object.

That was all I ever wanted was to be in music, and all they ever wanted from me was to be something that I wasn’t. So when I quit music, my whole little world view was shaken, I mean it seems so silly now, because it was so many years ago but it was a really tragic event for me. A couple of years passed and I found myself moving away from the music side, and I found myself working behind the bar.

I bar tended for about eight years, and the bar life is entirely different when you are behind the bar than when you’re in front, and bar tending terrified me. It terrified me because I would see the same people coming in every weekend doing the same thing, beating themselves up, destroying their lives, and for some reason they seemed to think that this was appealing, and being a bar tender you learned to say the right things to earn tips. I never learned anybody’s name, I certainly learned what they drank and I probably still know what they drink to this very day. And bar tending convinced me to not drink. I completely avoided the night scene during the years when most people were discovering it.

Through the bar tending experience I also learned that I wanted to be more than that. So I started studying, pulled my grades up, and graduated with honours. After high school, I took a year off and saved some money, then went to university. I was in Winnipeg at the time, and went to University of Winnipeg, and then I went to Red River College, and I graduated with both a marketing and administration major.

Immediately after school, and while I was still bar tending, I got the sense that this Internet thing was going to take off, and I had no idea what it was about, and a girl friend of mine that came to the pub that I worked at was running a wild bird feed and specialty store so I offered to create a website when one of the first websites were coming out. It had one picture and took half an hour to download. I convinced her to hire me, so I started working at this wild bird feed and specialty shop designing websites and doing the newsletter, and that job launched my career.

As soon as I graduated, I ended up at Rogers Wireless in Winnipeg, and my job there was marketing collateral design, and it had everything to do with the fact that I had designed websites and the newsletter for this small wild bird feed and specialty shop. I did that as a term position while someone was on maternity leave. Also, while I was in college, I took advantage of a mentoring program, and had gotten to know a couple of business leaders in the Winnipeg market. And at the end of the maternity leave position at Rogers, I walked into one of those mentors, and at one of his workplaces he was running a multi-platform service provider called Tronica so they did Sun Microsystems, IBM, Mac. They were one of the few systems integration businesses back in Winnipeg so he took me on as a program manager, whatever that meant, and still to this day I don’t understand what the role was, but I think he saw that I was really ambitious and wanted to help me out so he gave me a job.

I worked there for about six months then Rogers took me back, so I left Tronica. I went into business and corporate so I was supporting major corporate clients such as the provincial government. I did that for about eight months then they stuck me back into the vortex that’s  marketing and I was doing event management, and I would probably still be doing event management to this day because I loved it.

My husband Clinton had always wanted to be a police officer. When I worked in the bar he was a bouncer and we had hooked up and been together for many years. He’d applied to the Winnipeg police at least eight times, and it’s an eight month process to find out that you hadn’t been accepted. He kept applying, and he kept on getting rejected. He decided that he would apply one last time, and this time he decided not to limit himself so he applied to Winnipeg, Calgary, Toronto and also applied to the RCMP. It was so close to it being the end of his dream, I’ll never forget it.

The AT&T Senior Opens where I was coordinating the Senior Opens for Rogers in Winnipeg, it was absolutely nuts. We couldn’t get anybody to drive people around. There were no limos available because of a premier’s convention so I had to go to Ford and get seven Chevy Blazers. I hired all my dad’s friends to drive all these people around because we couldn’t get any chauffeurs. I was short one chauffeur so I was driving people around. This was my job for the week and during the week, my husband Clinton got a call, and he heard that he was hired in Toronto.

So as I’m driving people around, I get word that my life in Winnipeg is now over and we had to move to Toronto. We got married on August 26, 2000 and he left for Toronto August 27^th. He moved early because he had to get sworn in, and he went to the OPC for four months. So for the first four months of my married life, I was apart from my husband. He was here in Toronto and I was in Winnipeg trying to wrap things up for my move to Toronto.

So we moved to Toronto, and Rogers offered me a job but it wasn’t ideal so I ended up moving to another company called Watts, which was in the fulfillment, logistics and distribution business. I knew nothing about fulfillment, logistics and distribution. Watts no longer exists, but while I was there I was doing program development and management, and my client was Rogers. I was at Watts for 18 months then someone from Rogers who had gotten to know me through that work, brought me back to Rogers in 2001.

I joined the business marketing team at One Mount Pleasant. I never really fit into the large corporate organization, and I still don’t fit in. It’s just that I love it here, they treat me good, and I don’t know why they keep me here. I didn’t fit into the corporate marketing niche and I ended up doing new product development stuff, and was really very comfortable with the unknown, the strange, the sort of gray area. They knew it was an interesting skill set but it didn’t really fit anywhere so I got promoted out of marketing into Office of the CTO (Chief Technology Officer), where I worked for David Robinson. So I moved from marketing to engineering.

In the office of the CTO which is an engineering division, I was in a newly created office so I had done Wi-Fi development, I had created the Canadian Hotspot Roaming Alliance with my counterparts from Bell, Telus and Fido which was separate at the time (Rogers now owns Fido) and we started working on a global commerce initiative as well, which was a lot of fun and exciting, but I came to realize very quickly that if Wi-Fi was going to make any sense at all there needed to be some sort of presence within cable because cable was the back of the Internet which would feed all the Internet connections, so I parachuted out of the Office of the CTO into cable marketing and proceeded to work on product management for Wi-Fi within cable marketing.

Being a square peg in a round hole I got motivated out of cable marketing and into sales so I figure I’ve got IT and Finance left, so I’ll probably cover all of Rogers before I am done here.

Now I run a sales engineering team within Rogers Cable selling things like voice and data services into personal properties, so by commercial I mean hotels, student residences, large sports and entertainment facilities. I’m allowed to play where consumer cable products won’t do the trick because they don’t want me competing against the large machines. And that’s sort of what I do now.

What are your thoughts on this interview? What was expected and what was unexpected? What did you learn from Anatomy of a Career? Do you capitalize on the opportunities that come your way? What are 10 takeaways? How can you apply this information? 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 Mentorand subscribe (top on the right side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

Today I present Donna Whitney, and as usual there are many lessons to learn. Her response to the question, “Tell me a bit about yourself” was quite long, but weaves a very interesting tale that we can all learn from. One potent lesson for me after reading it was, if it doesn’t feel right, walk away, don’t compromise your values. I have to think about how to present it so I’ll do that for tomorrow. From the information presented in this interview, what are five takeaways? How can you use the information in your situation?

What’s a typical day like for you?

There is no such thing as a typical day for me, I wish there was. Because our business is very much an entrepreneurial start-up within a really large organization, we are everything. I am sales and marketing and distribution, and finance. Of course I do not do all those things without the support of the right parts of the organization, but really, we do most of the heavy lifting ourselves.

How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

I don’t know that it’s a conscious thing for me. I absolutely love what I do, and when I don’t love what I do, I end up changing what I do so that I love it. It’s never been the same thing one day to the next. I seem to change my job title every 18 months.

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

I think that I would be kinder. I think there are a lot of people in my working experience that I could have shown a lot more grace to, especially in the early years when you are struggling to make your mark you get a sense that everything matters so much. In the grand scheme of things, 10 years from now you aren’t going to remember the offences you had to bear. I would have turned my cheek a lot more and be a lot more forgiving.

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

I’ve discovered Grooveshark and I really quite enjoy it. It’s an online radio that allows you to stream music for free.

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

Probably IPTV and the introduction of new entrants that make it possible for people to do things in a different way. That helps my team because that is the niche in which we play in. So every part of the traditional Rogers business is being assaulted by new competitors and new ways for people to do the same things.

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

1. The first threat would be the larger organization taking over our entrepreneurial start-up because then it wouldn’t be a start-up. If we were to be ingested by the larger organization then it would be much more difficult for us to do things the way we now do them.
2. The inability to deliver on all the opportunities that we have, and this threat has to be managed by making sure that we have the appropriate processes and people in place to do what needs to get done.
3. The third threat would be taking on too much all at once because there is an awful lot that can be done and ought to be done so it’s a question of timing.

What’s unique about the service that you provide?

Everything! I think what’s truly unique about what we do is that we do it within such a large organization in such a small way. It really is the best place to be in the company.

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

If you say that my field is large telecom, one of the things that large telecoms do incredibly poorly is being responsive and flexible to customers. If you’re saying that it’s people who do the things we do and are doing them poorly, it’s that we capitalize on the fact that we have a huge brand, and it really helps to open doors when you are carrying a Rogers business card. And a lot of those smaller companies don’t have that advantage.

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

There are always technology challenges. There is always a problem that needs to be solved, and I have been blessed with an amazing team that looks at issues as opportunities. And I don’t say that to be cliché in any way, shape or form, they truly do see things that way. I think another major challenge that any group faces is to maintain a healthy culture, and that has a lot to do with establishing boundaries up front and we’ve done that, we’ve sat down as a team and talked about our personal values and our values as a team.

What lessons did you learn in the process?

1. From a technology standpoint, one thing that we’ve learned is that it needs testing before you sell it. We’ve had a few hiccups where things seemed to make sense and not defy the laws of physics in principle, but in practice things never go as they appear. So rigorous testing and making sure that you build a demo lab is a must. It’s also important to have your customers as partners so that you can do that learning together. There should be a degree of agility and responsiveness by both partners to adjust to the things that happen along the way.
2. The more important one is establishing that team trust and integrity, and that’s been key for our overall success.

Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

My big break came from David Robinson for sure. And that was the break from marketing traditional “I’m going to create this piece of collateral or view this marketing brief” to the switch to technology, to engineering. And really David Robinson was a huge proponent, advocate and supporter of me in those early years, especially when I don’t have an engineering ring, and I certainly don’t intend to. My guys are engineers and I think there has to be a bridge with those with marketing and that kind of skill set meshing with the people with technology because there is such value in marrying those two things together. I would have been a propeller head by interest but not by design, and Robinson took me under his wings and knew that about me but brought me in anyway, and gave me the biggest opportunity of my career so far.

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

The biggest failure that I’ve ever had and it wasn’t a monumental thing, had a lot to do with being more gracious in certain circumstances. I remember this one time I had a client that just drove me over a fence, this person was like nails on a chalk board and I could have been a lot more professional, but I let it get to me one day and I lost my temper. For the long-term repercussion I’m sure that no one remembers it but me, but it left such a profound impact on me to realize that, it was just work and I should let it go. I think what I took away from that is the ability to take myself a lot less seriously.

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

It would probably be how the music industry treated people back in the eighties. The experience has made me more sensitive to the diversity of people coming into circumstances and trying to appreciate where they are coming from.

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

I think it is having to let someone go, pulling the trigger when you have to fire them. I’ve had to do that now on a couple of occasions and I think one thing I’ve learned from those decisions is to make them slowly, cautiously and transparently so that when you are approaching that time in someone’s career, you let them know what’s coming down the pipe as soon as you can.

What are three events that helped to shape your life?

1. My experience in the music industry
2. Moving to Toronto
3. The move from marketing to engineering

What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

My ability to make sour dough bread, it’s kind of an art form.

How did mentors influence your life?

During different parts of your life you have different mentors for different purposes. I think that I’ve learned a lot of grace and maturity from the spiritual leaders and giants in my life. I am a huge fan of John MacArthur, and R C Sproul. From a work perspective, I think some of the giants in the company, the women that I have the pleasure and honour of working with really teach me a lot about the strength of women within this corporate environment because there are so few at the upper echelon levels.

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

Speak less and listen more.

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

The Tipping Point was a very good book. I had a mentor Maxine Armstrong – who I still consider to be a mentor – who was a great wealth of reading resources, so I’d have to say that that was a big one. In Moments of Magic the message was consistent and my mentor at Tronica referred that book to me. One of the members of my team recommended that I read Hoops which was by Greg Jackson the basketball coach. That was a really good book.

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

Be patient with yourself and listen to really hear, not just to absorb the information, but to understand it. It’s an entirely different thing from hearing a message and understanding the message. I think that too often people rush past the information so that they can contribute their own thoughts. It’s not about being heard, it rarely is about people hearing you, it’s what you hear from others that matters.

What are your thoughts on this interview? What was expected and what was unexpected? 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 side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

Here is Part Two of Mary Lou’s interview. You can read Part One and refresh your memory. How similar is her interview to her mother’s, Lois Fallis?

How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

I wrote my personal life for the stage. I can’t separate my personal and professional life. I am old enough, confident and experienced enough that I can negotiate a fee. The way that I make a separation is that I have an office outside my home which is very important for me because our house is very small. My husband, Peter and I don’t do stuff that involves musicians together. He has his own friends in the Symphony, and I have my own friends and we don’t often socialize with people in the business together. We socialize together with family, but we are not a power couple.

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

Sometimes I wish that I had traveled more earlier in my life because I don’t know if it’s going to happen much now. Not studying more languages is also a major regret. But I have also had some very wonderful life experiences. I feel like I have been given an awful lot in my life and I am very grateful, so if something were to happen I’d be sad, but it would be okay. I would be okay.

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

1. Be kind to yourself because things are unfolding as they should. I sound a little philosophical, but there is a process and you cannot rush it. The important processes in life take time, and that’s a big thing.
2. Don’t hang around people who are not interested in you, and don’t bring people into your circle who are undermining you.
3. Get help during major periods of feeling down and depressed. Don’t shut yourself off.
4. Don’t ignore your body, although I do sometimes, but when I get back into swimming and working out, I realize how important the physical activity is for your body and I don’t do it as often as I should.
5. I don’t believe in strictness and that there are rules, but there is the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. I think the letter is important because people have taken the time to study and write it down, and often the letter is a good guideline but it’s the spirit of the law that’s more important.
6. It also important to find a community that you can find a place in. It could be a church, a professional organization, volunteer or library. It’s a place where you have someone to corroborate your beliefs, a place where you’ll find people who you respect.

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

I read, watch TV, walk, have a bath and have lunch. I like to visit old bookstores. I do not consider physical exercise downtime, to me that’s work. So, if I go swimming or something like that, I consider that to be work. Downtime is when I do not have anything pressing to do.

What process do you use to generate great ideas?

Usually my ideas come to me when I take a shower, have a bath or go for a walk. They may also come while I’m reading some textbooks. Some ideas are deep inside your unconscious so you have to dig around and do other things to distract yourself.

What’s your favourite quotation and why?

“I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music,” by George Eliot because I think that it’s true.

How do you define success?

I don’t know, but I think it has something to do with balance I’m sure. It’s a feeling that you’re able to accomplish some of the goals that you’ve set for yourself. It makes it easier when you set one goal, achieve it and go on to another.

What are the steps you took to succeed in your field?

Education, education, education! My field requires a lot of training and education so you have to stay in school. If I had to do it again I probably would have gone to Europe rather than stay in one place to be educated. I also took in as much cultural events that I could.

What advice do you have for someone just starting out in your field?

Know your stuff, know as much as you can. You’ll never know everything but choose an area of study, and learn everything you can about it from people, books, YouTube, travel, whatever it is.

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?

1. I would choose Jesus and I would ask him many things and find out if he really said and meant certain things. I would also want to talk to him about the modern era and the Christian ethic. Of course he didn’t know that he was a Christian, which I think is quite funny.
2. I would have loved to have met Emma Albani a Canadian opera singer who died about 1909. She was the first Canadian singer to perform at the Metropolitan Opera. She was also an amazing singer.
3. I would like to meet Madonna and talk to her about her work ethic and artistic trajectory and how she feels about aging.
4. Pope John XXIII, the guy who started the Vatican is someone that I’d also like to meet
5. I’d like to meet Christian Amanpour a French journalist for CNN who does a lot of reporting, and has written a lot of books. She’s a very interesting and thoughtful woman.

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.

1. I would take the Art of Loving by Erich Fromm
2. Collective Works of Freud
3. Twelfth Night by Shakespeare
4. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
5. Too Much Happiness, Alice Munro

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

I would probably like to have a CD like Bach Magnificat, and Supreme Order. I would like to fit as much Bach as I could on a CD because when I listen to Bach I feel very grounded and like the world is right.

The Best Feast, which is a movie about a woman who was a major chef. It’s about 1850s and she had to leave Paris because her husband was in a military coup. She ended up in Denmark in this little village that was filled with a lot of dark Christian people, Lutheran reformed types. She had always lived a beautiful life and these people lived a spiritual life, but was so closed. She transformed the whole village eventually by cooking for them.

What excites you about life?

Life itself

How do you nurture your soul?

Through music, my church and my community.

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?

I have no idea. Superficially I would wish that everyone has sufficient monetary resources to live a satisfying life.

Complete the following, I am happy when…..

When the weather is nice and I can go walking with my dog in the mornings, when my family is not in crisis, when I have some very interesting engagements coming up and when I’m able to read a good book.

What did you find surprising? Which part of the interview moved you deeply? 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 side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

There is a certain amount of raw honesty that comes out in the interviews, which allows you to understand people and put yourself in their shoes. When I asked Lois Fallis to name five people that she’d like to meet, two of the five people were family members who have died, that’s not so strange because other interviewees have done that. It made me think how important it is for us, not to wait, but to let the people in our lives whom we love and appreciate know how we feel. Here’s what Lois said:

“I think that I’d like to meet my mom again to tell her that I appreciated what she did in her music world and how she encouraged us. I’d tell her she was a wonderful woman. She lived until she was 96 years old and was still driving her car at 93. She was full of life and many people loved her.

I would like to talk to my brother who was killed in the Second World War. He was a spitfire pilot and the sad part is that he went missing the day before the war was over. He wasn’t found until five years later in a graveyard in Hamburg, and that’s when we learned what had happened to him. His remains were buried in a British cemetery in Germany. I would like to talk to him because he left when I was sixteen and I never saw him again, and I’d like to tell him that I was sorry that he didn’t make it because it would have made a big difference. He had a girlfriend, who was a good friend of mine and I’m sure they would have married, and there would have been a family that we’d have enjoyed so I’m sorry about that.”

Before I publish part two of Lois Fallis’ interview, here are my takeaways now that I’ve digested the entire interview:

1. Make it work by moving toward a win/win outcome
2. Experiencing failure makes you more compassionate
3. Be active and get involved
4. It’s never too late to be who you want to be
5. Embrace change
6. Take risks and do not worry about what others think
7. Go for what you want in life even if the odds are against you. You may possess what’s needed, even without your knowledge, to give you the edge that’s needed
8. Pay it forward
9. Assess the people who are in your sphere of influence
10. Read, Read, Read, Learn, Learn, Learn

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

We had quite a large family, and this was after the Second World War (World War II), and many people were having large families at that point. I was one of two children, and my brother was killed in the Second World War so I became an only child in a way. I had a great deal of music instruction in my life because my mom was an organist and choir leader, and I had singing and piano lessons from her. As I became older I developed that, and one of my major jobs in life was being a musician. I have six children, three boys and three girls.

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

Now looking back, my community is too large. I have a son who lives in Aurelia, Ontario and I often go up there because I love their farm, I love their children, but I also love their church, and there are so many courses, and interesting things that are going on, so I go up there. And I’m at my own place in Bond Head and I have a book club, and I walk, and one of my daughters is there, and that’s also where I taught school so I have that. And then I go to Toronto, and I have my church which is very important to me, that was our local church, mom and dad were married at Trinity and my husband’s father was the minister there, so that’s how I met Fred, way back when I was seven years old.

I think that I would suggest to people that it would be good to concentrate on one place, and I know a lot of people do what I do, and I’m okay as long as I can drive, but the time will come when I cannot do this flitting about, and it’s getting to that time when I’m going to have to think about that.  I also think it is really important to make a contribution in your community.

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

1. Make it work, that is a phrase that we had in our family. If things weren’t going right you negotiated or talked it through. No one walked away not speaking to each other. I think that’s so important, you don’t walk away from the problem, we faced it with whomever we had to.
2. Take risks and do not worry about what other people think. Try to make decisions on your own, and do not have everybody try to tell you what to do. For instance, I just bought a new computer, a Mac, and two of the sons have Microsoft and the others have Mac and when I was deciding, everyone was telling me “oh you should get that one,” and finally I made my own decision, and somehow you have to make your own decision rather that ask everybody around what they think. It’s alright to decide and not be swayed.
3. Listening is very important and I wish I would have listened more and I would have loved to have spent more time with friends. As I’ve said, I’m all over the place.
4. I have always been interested in the church, religion and spirituality and have taken many courses in that, and I have continued because it’s important and it is not necessarily any one religion, it’s what you believe in, and try to figure that out. It doesn’t matter how old you are, you are always questioning, and you should, because for each generation you change and you aren’t the same.
5. Tell people that you love and care for them, and don’t be afraid to do that. Don’t be afraid to phone somebody, and don’t wait for someone to say, “I haven’t heard from….” I always think that’s a two-way street. You should telephone people and you should be interested in them and don’t be afraid to show love and affection.

What process do you use to generate great ideas?

I have written a couple of children’s song books and they were published and were great successes and are still out in the market. They are called Seasons and Themes, and A Glass Slipper, and I wrote all these songs myself, and it was partly because of teaching. I found that it was so easy as a teacher, the songs kept coming out of my head. I’d come out of the classroom, and I’d have so many wonderful ideas because I was where the children were, and I’d write songs about whatever, the spring, whatever they were doing I would write a song. I wrote a dinosaur song, and the songs came to me quite easily. I got ideas from being around the children. I always have ideas, if someone says something I would say why don’t you think about this, it just seems to flow.

How do you define success?

I don’t know that I would define success. I think it’s an inner thing. Success is when you feel good about yourself, your environment, and the world. I guess at my age I’m not striving anymore, I’m not pushing for some tremendous results, I’ve done it and now I’m enjoying life.

In your opinion what’s the formula for success?

You need to be challenged, but don’t do things so other people think you are wonderful, it’s more important that you feel that you are wonderful. And this idea of performance is great, and people have to be entertainers and performers, but you also have to have the audience and the listeners too, and I think that success is always inward.

What are the steps you took to succeed in your field?

As a teacher, to succeed I always seemed to take a lot of courses. I was teaching in Toronto schools before I went to Teachers’ College so I had a lot of music experience, which was what they wanted. I had been married and had all these children and grandchildren, so I was part of the scene and really enjoyed that type of scene. So part of it was being prepared. I did a lot of work reading books about children, studied children and sang in the schools. I used to go to the schools and tell stories, and sing songs even before I became a teacher. I was really well prepared to be a teacher because of my experience, and because of the fact that when I started teaching at fifty years old, I was a grandmother, and in fact some of the kids used to call me grandma.

What advice do you have for someone just starting out in your field?

You have to look at the skills you need to become a teacher. You have to have good listening skills and be patient, and you have to enjoy children, and it’s very important that you like to be with them and that you can just not only be an adult, but be a part of their lives as well. I would encourage them to work in the Arts and make sure that they know something about music and drama, and history, be worldly, read the newspaper and do not have a narrow mind.

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?

1. I’d love to meet Lucy Maud Montgomery who wrote Anne of Green Gables because I just loved her stories and she was a great stimulus for children to read her stories and she often made orphans feel that it was okay to be an orphan because somebody would love you down the line. Montgomery didn’t have a happy life, and I would tell her that I loved her books. I’d also love to meet the character Anne of Green Gables. I read the books by Montgomery when I go to the cottage. They are just lovely, and the nice thing is that you know the ending.
2. It would be fun to meet Queen Elizabeth II because she is my age, and I am not particularly an imperialist but I loved what she did, the way she carried on with her life, and I do not think that that would be easy what she has gone through. I would tell her that I admired her and watched her life because we are both exactly the same age.
3. I think that I’d like to meet my mom again to tell her that I appreciated what she did in her music world and how she encouraged us. I’d tell her she was a wonderful woman. She lived until she was 96 years old and was still driving her car at 93. She was full of life and many people loved her.
4. I would love to meet Johann Sebastian Bach, and it must have been amazing what his mind was like. His works are so intricate and amazing to listen to, and there were so many of them. I would say, “Thank you for writing the songs and they have come down through the centuries and we’re still singing them. Thank you very much for your contribution to music. ”
5. I would like to talk to my brother who was killed in the Second World War. He was a spitfire pilot and the sad part is that he went missing the day before the war was over. He wasn’t found until five years later in a graveyard in Hamburg, and that’s when we learned what had happened to him. His remains were buried in a British cemetery in Germany. I would like to talk to him because he left when I was sixteen and I never saw him again, and I’d like to tell him that I was sorry that he didn’t make it because it would have made a big difference. He had a girlfriend, who was a good friend of mine and I’m sure they would have married, and there would have been a family that we’d have enjoyed so I’m sorry about that.

Which one book had a profound impact on your life?

I keep reading so many books, and I told you I’m part of a book club, so I have read all different kinds. It’s very difficult to come up with one book because I have read and enjoyed so many books, but one book that I just read, that I really liked is called The Help. And it was set in Mississippi, Alabama and it’s a story about white families and their maids and it was very moving. And now that I think about it, the other book would be The Book of Negroes. I really liked that book and some of the other books that Lawrence Hill wrote.

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.

1. I’d take an inspirational book that said read one every day. I love to read those kinds of books.
2. I would want to read a book about Christianity or spirituality. I would want to read a book that would give some sort of support because I think that if you are on a deserted island you’d be thinking about things like creation.
3. I like some favourite classics like Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice. I have read all of those and they are books that I’d definitely want to have with me. There is a set of Jane Austen Books, I think six of them and they are wonderful to read.
4. I like history and I took a couple of history courses up in Aurelia. One of my sons work at Laurentian University. I took Canadian history, I love reading about that, and I’ll go to the Discovery Channel and I’m interested in anything related to Canadian history.
5. I love to play the piano and though I wouldn’t have a piano on the deserted island, I’d still like to take some music books with me.

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

I love to listen to choral music so anything to do with that. I love Symphonies so I’d take one with me and anyone would do. I’m not a movie person but I’d like one that was based on one of the classics. I’d like Pride and Prejudice and I think I’d like some of the old movies.

Bach, Air on the G string (Air on a G string, string orchestra)

If you cannot view this YouTube video please click here.

What excites you about life?

You can always learn. I’m excited about taking courses or attending some meeting, or going to my book club meeting because I’m always learning something new. It’s so exciting when someone tells you something that never occurred to you.

How do you nurture your soul?

I nurture my soul by reading inspirational books, and I love the ones written by Joyce Rupp, a Catholic author. I nurture my soul by attending Trinity St Paul’s United Church, and I talk to my friends about Christianity and spirituality, and it’s important to be able to talk about it.

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?

Although my health is pretty good, I’d wish for continued health. I had a heart attack about four years ago, I had a triple bypass. I’m okay now but it would have been nice if I could have looked back and avoided that. I think it was probably in my genes because I walk a lot, I am a vegetarian and I exercise and I do all the things required to stay healthy. I’m over eighty so things are going to happen.

Complete the following, I am happy when…..

I am with my family. I love to be around my grandchildren. I’m happy if I have something that I’m planning to do. I love routine and I love visiting friends. I love being around people who are not judgmental.

Now that you have read the complete interview, what are 10 key takeaways?

Action Steps

1. How can you use entertainer, performer, audience and listening as metaphors for what you do?
2. Get in there and get your hands dirty, make your mind a fertile ground for great ideas. What ideas emerge?
3. Have you read the key books in your field? If  you’re in an emerging field, how about you take a risk and create the resources, write the book?
4. Preparation + Opportunity = Luck. Be prepared!
5. Who haven’t you called in a while, who really matters to you?

What did you find surprising? Which part of the interview moved you deeply? 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 side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

YouTube Video Credit: via Stephen Malinowski http://www.musanim.com

“Make it work,” is a phrase that was used in the Fallis’ household. If there was a problem, people talked it through and negotiated. People didn’t leave the table upset and not speaking to each other. If each of us lived that phrase, we would have less problems in our world today. When Lois Fallis said those words, I really heard what she had to say because I often get upset because I feel like I am not being heard, and I am referring to professional situations as well. It’s my responsibility to make sure that I have a voice at the table. How about you, do you make it work?

Lois Fallis is over 80 years old, so there is much that we can learn from her. After you have read her interview, what are some things that you found surprising? And what can you learn from her experiences? I will publish Part II of the interview tomorrow.

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

We had quite a large family, and this was after the Second World War (World War II), and many people were having large families at that point. I was one of two children, and my brother was killed in the Second World War so I became an only child in a way. I had a great deal of music instruction in my life because my mom was an organist and choir leader, and I had singing and piano lessons from her. As I became older I developed that, and one of my major jobs in life was being a musician. I have six children, three boys and three girls.

Now that you are retired, what’s a typical day like for you?

I spend more time reading The Globe and Mail (Canada’s National Newspaper) than I used to. I sleep in a little longer, I used to get up at 6:00 am, now it’s more like 8:00 am. My typical day is a little difficult because I live outside of the Greater Toronto Area, in a little place called Bond Head so I’m often driving to Bond Head from Toronto because I have a lot of friends there, and four of my children live there. It’s a lot of driving back and forth, and I have been doing that for quite a few years because I have been living in Bond Head for thirty-something years. My community is quite large.

How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

I have always loved taking courses. I’ve always sung in choirs, I was a soprano soloist. I love books and book clubs and now I’m in a seniors walking club and we are all getting a bit older now. I notice that some of the members in the walking club are using walkers, and we never did that before.

Reflecting back on your life, if you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?

I guess looking back I don’t know if I would have married quite so soon after I finished university. Again it had a lot to do with the war and my husband was in the Air Force, came home and started his medical training. And I think there were many pressures that would come to one then, and now I think it would have been better if I had a job and did something else rather than go from university into marriage, and having all those children right away, which really was a wonderful experience too.

Tell me about a challenge you had in life.

This was kind of a silly challenge when I think of it, but long after we were married, Fred wanted to move to the farm which is about 45 miles north of Toronto and I didn’t particularly want to, so it took quite a long time for me to make up my mind that we could do that. I actually started teaching school out there and it made the move alright, and I embraced the community out there.

Most of my children had grown up by then, and being a teacher and having a job, a routine, was helpful for me and made the transition easier.

What lessons did you learn?

It isn’t so bad to make changes, and it’s okay to take risks and try something different because I found that I liked it, and I made so many teacher friends in the music field. I had a new community, and I kept the old one.

Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

The big break is probably in the musical world. I decided that I wanted to do something different so I joined the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir led by conductor Elmer Iseler. By then I had done a lot of singing, and I was asked to be a part of a small professional group that Elmer had that was called the Festival Singers so I was with them for four or five years, then I went into teaching. I had an opportunity to teach Orff music in Toronto schools and I did that half time. I had some help come into the home at that point.

Note: Orff music is a type of music with xylophones and glockenspiels. It was started in Europe and then we brought it to Canada. Orff is named after Carl Orff and is sometimes called Music for Young Children.

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

It’s kind of funny now, but I went to audition at the Royal Alex for a musical play and I didn’t get it. At the time, I found that awful and the other big failure was when Elmer Iseler wrote me a letter informing me that I wasn’t a part of the choir the following year. He often did this to change the people who were in the choir. That’s when I went off on another tangent. From these failures I learned that life goes on and it’s okay. Failures are a part of life and if you are always rising to the top, you do not learn how to be compassionate. And these experiences made me a better mother, and teacher, especially when I was talking to my students’ parents.

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

The very year that I was supposed to go into university, I was going to take another Masters, in Music, and at the same time I had my name in for Teachers’ College and there was no hope that I was going to get into Teachers’ College because apparently there was a long, long list. And, one day before Labour Day, I got a call saying I was able to go to Teachers’ College. So I had this terrible dilemma between taking music and teaching in the schools. I chose teaching in schools because someone told me that I wouldn’t get another chance to teach in schools but I would always have the opportunity to go back to university. That decision made a big change in my life, and of course, at that point we had just moved to the farm and so I had the opportunity to teach in a rural area. I had already taught in Toronto and now I had the opportunity to be a part of the rural scene, which was good.

What are three events that helped to shape your life?

1. Getting married to Fred was important and a wonderful experience. He was a young doctor starting out and hadn’t even finished his medical studies, so I was able to help type his medical notes. Two years after we married, our first child Mary Lou came along. He graduated when we had four children, which was quite something and then we added two more children after that.
2. My mother was a musician and I’m sure that’s why I became so skilled in music because I had that in my home all the time. I was encouraged to take music and singing.
3. The third event was moving to the farm in Bond Head, which opened up another community for me.

What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

My six children, they are all wonderful and they are all very different, and it keeps me busy going around to whatever they are doing. And now with the grandchildren I’m going to plays, concerts, and driving them here and there, so I’m busy.

How did mentors influence your life?

I guess a lot. I remember some of the teachers in high school that I just loved. I was in the Glee Club, and the teacher encouraged me to focus on music. Aunt Lily, a relative of Fred’s who was a missionary in China, was one of those people who was absolutely wonderful and did not judge anyone. She accepted you just as you were. I always appreciated that. She was just a wonderful woman.

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

That I was okay and a good person. I was encouraged to go on and develop confidence in myself.

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

Be yourself, develop your skills and do not take no for an answer. There is always a way. I have had quite a privileged life and I realize that some people don’t, so it’s important to embrace others and encourage them. I have always been supportive of my children and grandchildren and encouraged them in what they did and I believe that I still do that.

Further Reading

What is Orff?

The Orff Approach

In Part One of Diane Danielson‘s interview, the three words that I used to describe her are Brave, Bold and Pioneer. And, after processing the interview, here are the steps that I think are required to be a trailblazer:

• Take risks
• Have a support network
• Think big and be bold
• Jump in and try things, fail fast if you have to
• Embrace change
• Say yes to opportunities

Of course there are other requirements but I think the ones I listed are pretty important, what are your thoughts? Part Two of Danielson’s interview is just as powerful as the first, and is also filled with lessons and ideas that you can use immediately.

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

I am the founder of the Downtown Women’s Club, which is a women’s business network and career website. I’m also Vice President of Business Development for a social media consulting firm called Convengine. I try to combine the two because a lot of what I do at the Downtown Women’s Club is the social media strategy and a lot of our online networking program. I’m also recently remarried, I have four kids and a huge dog and I live outside the Boston area.

How did mentors influence your life?

Hugely! And I don’t look at mentors as the traditional more senior person who helped me, even though I had a couple of those who would help me with specific situations, but because some of the fields that I’m in such as social media and creating a networking group that was mostly online, there weren’t a lot of people who had done this who were ahead of me so I really depended on peer mentors. I have a group of peers that depending on the situation I will call them and they have the most wonderful advice and input, and I think that’s a huge thing and I probably would have given up on a lot of things if I didn’t have them sit there and keep me accountable and say, “look how far you’ve come and we are proud of what you are doing.” But they also gave me advice and would say, “you know what, you should focus on this.”  They have been there and helped me to make decisions. I rarely make decisions in isolation, I usually have someone who is impartial enough, and cares about me enough to help me make the right decisions, so mentors are enormous.

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

Trust my gut and take risks because most of the times, by the time I come to them they are able to say to trust your gut and take risks.

As an Invisible Mentor, what advice would you like to give to readers?

Go for the grande, especially if your readers are women because a lot of us don’t think big enough. They may think let’s open up a coffee shop, let’s not create another Starbucks. Think bigger even if you don’t create another Starbucks, what if you end up with a chain of three or four coffee shops? Women need to think better and bigger, and I think that’s one piece of advice that I’d give to almost any woman that I meet.

For everyone else, I would say know your network, and know who you can turn to for really good advice. I think sometimes we build close networks of people who are vested in the outcomes of whatever we do, and we surround ourselves with people. So if your best friend doesn’t want you to get, or take that promotion, that’s not necessarily helpful information, you need to find people who will be able to give you good advice that’s in your best interest and not theirs.

Build a network of core people you can trust to help you build your business life and it turns out that they generally help you with your personal life as well.

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

Usually I’m the one recommending all the books. Early on someone encouraged me to get sales training, even though I was coming from law with an analytical background, it was great advice and I would recommend to anyone to take sales training because it affects everything that you do.

How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

It seems that because I’m a working mom I tend to be friends with women who work. A lot of my best friends are women from the working world who do not have kids, so that’s my social life. For me, my personal and professional life is seamless, it just flows, I don’t keep the two separate. To know me is to know what I do.

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

I’m going to go back to not having more kids of my own. My major regret is not to give my son as he is growing up a typical situation. I think sometimes it was hard on him, hard on me and probably hard on my ex-husband because we didn’t have the normal nuclear family. But what is normal anymore.

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

1. Have a network of people who you can call on. Having friends and family to support you is huge and you shouldn’t do anything in isolation.
2. Think bigger on everything. I was single for eight years and at times I said that I wouldn’t get married again, but when the opportunity came I took it and I said that I could still do this.
3. Take risks. Every time I’ve taken big risks they tended to have worked out, and whenever I took the safe route I wasn’t happy and it didn’t work out for other people either. So it’s like going for the job of your dreams instead of settling for a job. Every time I’ve settled for a job, it has never been great.
4. Take the high road at all times. I know that it sounds trite but sometimes I’ve wanted to retaliate and then thought just let it go and take the high road because I would sleep better at nights and people start to realize that. And putting yourself in other people’s shoes, giving them second chances helps you to understand and be empathetic. I think we live in a society where people are not empathetic to others.

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

Generally I’m playing sports with my kid or reading.

What process do you use to generate great ideas?

I brainstorm with people. I belong to an international women’s networking group (The Belizean Grove) and going away with them to meetings I always walk out with big thoughts, because I have these thoughts and I bring them there and have other people synthesize them and chime in with their background, and definitely my great ideas come from there. I can come up with some good ones but I need the input of my team there to come up with great ones.

What’s your favourite quotation and why?

“Just say no to status quo,” because when you accept the way things are when they are not working you need to change them because change isn’t scary and often a good thing. You don’t change for the sake of changing. So when the status quo is no longer working you need to think creatively and change it.

How do you define success?

Success for me is a mix. It’s being content with having a good mix of my family is happy, and work is going well, and I think for me, that is success when everything seems to be flowing. Work and family have to be flowing, one or the other won’t work.

In your opinion what’s the formula for success?

First you have to define what you think success is, and a lot of us define success based on what others think. Contentment and happiness is the formula for success, so it’s going to be unique to everybody. For me personally, work has to be a part of it. I couldn’t be just happy with work, and I couldn’t be just happy being a mom, I actually need both.

What are the steps you took to succeed in your field?

Let’s take social media as an example. I became knowledgeable by just jumping in and trying it. I didn’t hesitate when someone asked me to give a speech, I just jumped in, did it and figured it out later. I think a lot of steps to my success were trying new things and not being scared to do so. It’s also a lot of finding out what works and doesn’t work, and sometimes it’s easier to figure out what doesn’t work then focus and build on what’s working, and I think those are the steps. When I found out that writing didn’t pay well enough, but speaking did, I jumped right in and started speaking. And by being out there, and speaking about social media while doing it, I can show the success of the Downtown Women’s Club, and other clients.

What advice do you have for someone just starting out in your field?

If we are looking at someone who wants to start a network and website, they have to realize that it’s a lot of work. I see new women’s group starting every day claiming to be the first this or the first that, and they generally disappear within three months when they realize that it’s not easy to get 12,000 people on a list and keep them there. That took 10 years to build that up so I think the thing is to have patience, have a good plan and partner with people because you cannot do it alone. I don’t do anything alone. I have a lot of partners. You have to persevere and have patience, there are no overnight successes.

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?

1. Obviously I would like to meet Barack Obama. I would just ask him to reassure me that he knows what he is doing, and that he is way smarter than me, and that this is all going to work out. And of course I would congratulate him on hanging in there and doing what he believes in.
2. Another person that I’d like to meet is Steve Jobs and I’d like to find out about his creative process. It’s impressive how he keeps on coming up with new things.
3. I’ve always wanted to meet George Clooney, not because he’s cute, but because I like that he has understated a lot of his humanitarian work and he has a good sense of humor and I think he is truly a good person.
4. I would say Stephen Colbert because he is actually a very bright person and bright people fascinate me. He is very talented and I think he would be a fascinating person to meet. With him you wouldn’t be able to control the conversation. I really liked that he sponsored the speed skating team. He seems like a really incredible and interesting human being.
5. I would like to meet Margaret Thatcher. She was one of the first woman leaders and I would like to know what her experiences were, just hearing behind the scenes what it was really like running a country during tough times.

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?

Looking at the way I run the business it would be the two books by Chip and Dan Heath – Made to Stick and Switch. They make things so simple and clear that I find myself referring to both books a lot in business conversations. I would say those two and The Tipping Point, the concepts constantly come up in conversations and in thoughts on how I’m running the business.

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.

1. Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice. I’m a big Jane Austen fan and that’s a classic, the love story, the wittiness. She is a sharp observer of society and the book transcends time.
2. Les Miserables has been one of my favourite books of all times. It’s nice and long and the characters are so many and so varied and I think it covers so much.
3. I do like the writing of War and Peace and it’s also long and that’s important if I can only take five books with me on the deserted island.
4. I haven’t read John Adams so I’d take that one with me, I would need something I haven’t read before. He was one of our founding fathers and I think in today’s society looking back at what the founding fathers thought we really misinterpreted things and I think that I should go back and read that book that I haven’t read to clarify for myself what they were really thinking.
5. For the last one I’m going to go classic and say To Kill a Mockingbird. It was about someone standing up to society. It’s a classic case of overlooking prejudice and I just hate people who are prejudiced. It’s a well told story and it has a great message.

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

Most of the books have just clarified the direction I was going.

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

The movie, and I would take the book too is Breakfast at Tiffany’s, that was a favourite movie. I think I would have to go with Garth Brooks Greatest Hits for the music CD.

If you cannot view Garth Brooks YouTube video The Thunder Rolls click here.

If you cannot view Breakfast at Tiffany’s Trailer on YouTube please click here.

What excites you about life?

Learning new things everyday.

How do you nurture your soul?

I spend time with my 10 year old who tells me what life is really about.

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?

I know that I sound like a Miss America but I have to say world peace. I think I would also wish that our country was not so divided and dysfunctional at this point, and it’s really upsetting to me. I wish that we’d be more rational because we are a world leader and we need to play well with others and amongst ourselves.

Complete the following, I am happy when…..

I’m with my family and friends

What can you learn from Diane’s experiences? 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 side) by email or RSS Feed.

About Diane Danielson

Diane K. Danielson is the founder and chief social media strategist for the Downtown Women’s Club, a professional network and career website.  She is the author of The Downtown Women’s Club Beginners Guide to Facebook ebook (2009), the co-author of The Savvy Gal’s Guide to Online Networking (or What Would Jane Austen Do?) (2007) and Table Talk: The Savvy Gal’s Alternative to Networking (2003).  Diane blogs for www.womensDISH.com, and Entrepreneur magazine and serves as a workshop leader and social media coach for companies, non-profits and individuals.

She is a former vice president of business development for Spaulding & Slye Colliers, a vice president of marketing for Meredith & Grew, Inc./ONCOR International, and an environmental attorney.   Diane is a graduate of Colgate University and Boston College Law School.

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