The Invisible Mentor

Archive for the ‘Interviews With Successful People’ Category

“No matter how much it rains, or how much it pours, the sun will always shine again. It may not be today or it may not be tomorrow, but it will shine.” Joann Lim

Invisible Mentor: Joann Lim, Making It Happen Specialist & Professional Coach

Company Name: Big Picture Fine Focus

Website: http://www.bigpicturefinefocus.com/ 

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Joann Lim:  I’m a connoisseur of life and a make-it-happen specialist. I’m a lover of all things food and world travel.

Avil Beckford: What’s a typical day like for you?

Joann Lim: It varies which I’m very blessed about. Usually the consistent things are I wake up between 6:30 and 7:30 am. I have an hour of me-time which could be anything from reading, workout, and breakfast with champions. The day is filled with meetings of greatness, conversations with clients, creative and sometimes a lot of prep for workshops and keynotes.

Avil Beckford: How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

Joann Lim:  Between every 30 and 90 days, I create inspiration boards with pictures, sayings, anything that will pull my vision forward to help me focus on my big picture. To stay motivated, I surround myself with amazing people. I have an amazing dream team, whose expertise elevate and enhance what I do. I read a lot, and I do a lot of what I call exploration walks where I go to a different city, and kind of wander around and see what happens. It’s usually when we are in a free space that the most inspirational things come to us.

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

Joann Lim:  The beauty is everything happens in its place and in its time, so I wouldn’t necessarily change anything. But I think what I would definitely go back into is being less afraid. What I would do is come at my dreams and come at my days with more fervor, more passion, more courage, and identify my fears and let them go more quickly.

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

Joann Lim: The biggest discovery I have made is what faith actually is. Growing up as a Christian, you are told so much about having faith in a Higher Being and faith in God, and so the word just seems to become a regular thing. But I don’t think it was until the last year or so that I actually understood what that meant. Trusting in something you don’t see is using the invisible to make sense of the visible, and talking about things that are not tangible – what courage is, what love is, what belief is. Those are things that are internal yet they help us make sense of everything that goes on around us, to bring meaning to our relationships, our work and our lives. And those are the things that inspire and help me to move forward. So that’s the greatest gift I have learned over the last year.

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

Joann Lim: The biggest threats to my business and my success would be from myself – my fears, self-doubt, and complacency. I call them the happiness robbers that I write about on my blog. Usually these things, these voices, these powers within us that try to rob us of our own potential and our own happiness, and I think it’s about being aware, that’s what it is to identify them, to ask ourselves why, and then ask how it’s benefitting me by listening to my fear, by listening to that voice that tells you you’re not good enough, will it allow me to move forward and live the life I was created to live. I think that’s one of the biggest things I have taken from this fear, and it’s something that I constantly work on. It doesn’t leave you, if anything you become a master of overcoming these happiness robbers.

Avil Beckford: What’s unique about the service that you provide?

Joann Lim: I help people live rock star lives. By rock “starness” I mean the life they want to live, the life they would love to live, something they envision for themselves. There are so many people out there that are living the same old, same old, just cause. I help people in organizations live because, to live with intention, to have impact, to have inspiration and influence and to know at the end of the day when they are taking their last breath, they can be okay, they have no regrets, and they say, “It was a life well-lived.”

Avil Beckford: Describe a major business or other challenge you had and how you resolved it. What kind of lessons did you learn in the process?

Joann Lim: The biggest challenge I have ever faced happened in my third year of university. It was exam time around November, December. I was faced with the third death in three consecutive years, and what I realized at that point, was that I hadn’t gotten over the first one. My life spiralled. My grandmother passed away and she was in Singapore at the time. I had to make a choice, would I go to see her the days leading up to her death, or would I continue schooling. It played big on me because I always said that I would put family first. People come before anything else. In that moment in time, I chose to continue my education. I battled with that, and I think it was one of those moments when I realized that that was what she wanted for me. No matter how hard it was not to see this person, that’s what she wanted, and it was a matter of what I wanted to do or honouring the wishes of somebody else.

In this time in my life, my life spiralled, and my family was out of the country. I was kind of alone, and I really went to a rough place. I felt like I lost control of my whole life, but what I realize was that no matter how much it rains, or how much it pours, the sun will always shine again. It may not be today or it may not be tomorrow, but it will shine. Holding up the hope that the sun will shine metaphorically was something that pulled me forward, and it was about taking one day at a time, focusing on the things that I could do, and making those things happen. What I learned is the resilience of human beings, what it meant to ask for help, what it meant to feel vulnerable, and it showed me that there may be darkness in our lives, but it’s the light that pulls us forward. Sometimes we need that little glimmer of hope that will allow us to come through our darkest days.

Avil Beckford: Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

Joann Lim: My biggest break came in 2007, and it happened on April 4^th. It was the death of probably the most important person in my life, my hero, my inspiration – my everything. She is my aunt, my closest friend. She had the mentality of a five year old, she had breast cancer, lost her sight, was hard of hearing, and for the years before that, my life was about her. I didn’t travel long distances because I was afraid of being apart from her. I didn’t pursue the things I wanted because I wanted to be close to her. And the minute she passed away, no matter how sad and devastated I was, it was like she said, “For a time that you took care of me, now let me take care of you.” In that moment, I was free to pursue the life that I truly wanted. Within months, I packed my bags and I was off to Europe on my own adventure. Ever since then it has been one blessing after another of seeing, embracing and experiencing the true beauty of life. It is in her that I am in great gratitude for her life, for her inspiration, and for giving me this greatest gift.

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

Joann Lim:  One of my biggest failures was not being able to take a project that I was deeply passionate about to the next level. I was given a great gift of becoming a Director of Events for a large conference event. As we progressed, I started to see the challenges of being a part of a large organization, and building it from the ground up. Despite the many successes to it, it was at that moment when I realized it was more than me. I realized that I wasn’t the person for it, as much as I loved the potential for where it’s going, I’m not that person for it. It taught me to let go, it challenged me to say, “How much do you believe in it, and does it matter who gets the credit?” And I think it was at the point when I asked does it matter who gets the credit, and when my answer was “No,” I realized that whatever happens in my life, I’m not attached to it, it’s okay. And when you truly believe in something, you want the best for it, and that sometimes mean letting go.

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

Joann Lim:  It happened in my third year at university, and it was forfeiting my third year to go to see my grandmother around the world, or to staying where I was. That brought into play my values, what I believed in, what I believed was right and wrong, the character of who I was and who I am. The impact is that (a) I didn’t get to say a formal goodbye to my grandmother and (b) honouring a wish that she wanted for me, even though it may have gone against what I would have chosen for myself. Knowing what someone wants for you is something that I hold sacred. The impact is that I wouldn’t be where I am today if that choice was different. Who knows where I would be? Everything happens for a reason, and there is a place and time for everything. For her and for her wishes, I’m grateful.

Avil Beckford: What are three events that helped to shape your life?

Joann Lim:

1. Being on the many farm vacations that I did as a child. By age six I had gone on three farm vacations, so my parents instilling at a young age the value and power of meaningful experiences – the value of curiosity, imagination and the willingness to try something new.
2. My aunt’s life and legacy. Spending the last couple of years with her so intimately, and even those quiet moments in her room holding her hand, even though she couldn’t see me, I know that she could see me with her heart. That was really powerful. Her death for me was one of the most inspiring, devastating, but empowering event in my life.
3. When I came to know love. I went through a life wondering if I would ever fall in love, will I ever meet that person that I can share my life with, who I could bring out the best in, and who could bring out the best in me, in every element in life. For many years, it looked like that was never going to happen, I dated Mr Wrong to Mr Wrong, and it was okay, but I always wondered until that day, when I met that man who really transformed me. He showed me the true meaning of unconditional love. He showed me what it means to let somebody else take care of you, and what true partnership is. I learn from him every day and he inspires me. And I know that this is an event that has transformed me, and had a significant impact on my life – is finding true love.

Avil Beckford: What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

Joann Lim:  Going to Europe. I think that was the kick starter to me living a life that I truly loved. I made a choice that if my aunt was here in July 2007 I wouldn’t travel, but if she wasn’t here, I would let no one and nothing stop me from doing something that I love. She passed away on April 4, 2007, one month before my 25^th birthday. And it was a month later that I booked my trip to travel solo to Europe.  That was a transformation in my life because it showed to me and others that I was serious about it, that I could take the risk. I was risking not having a job, not having an income, not having anyone to travel with, but doing it on my own. I think that’s something that’s so powerful when we take a vision and transform it into reality – anything is possible.

Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?

Joann Lim:  Mentors influenced my life heavily. They inspire me, empower me, they raise me up when I feel weak, they give me courage in times of fear, and they pave a pathway. They help elevate who I am, and believe in me when I don’t believe in myself as much as I should.

One of my mentors, he says that, “For any successful person that you value, they started somewhere, and to remember this, everyone starts somewhere.” We all choose where we’re going to start. That was very powerful for me to know that no matter what, no matter where people are in their life, no matter what they’re doing, no matter so amazing they seem, how brilliant their lives appear to be, it’s a matter that they chose to start.

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

Joann Lim: One message is the power of starting, and I think one of the other messages is don’t give up. One of my mentors drills that into me all the time when I see her. It’s the idea that when people believe in you and believe in what you’re capable of doing, there is a power in saying, “don’t give up, keep going, keep persisting, keep believing and incredibleness will happen.”

Avil Beckford: An invisible mentor is a unique leader you can learn things from by observing them from afar, in the capacity of an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?

Joann Lim:  What I’d invite them to think about is, “You matter!” You matter, your life matters, your choices matter, your actions matter, your attitude matters, and it’s in that capacity that we embrace the idea that we matter. The things we do in life become more intentional, have more meaning, they’re more inspiring, more empowering. It’s in the roles that we matter that we can transform the lives we are living into the lives we love, and in turn become a community of dream makers, not only for ourselves but for others.

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This is what we talked about on The Invisible Mentor Blog this week: Divergent by Veronica Roth, John Stuart Mill, Philosopher and Economist, and Miranda Vande Kuyt, career development professional.

John-stuart-mill 1 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Adventures in Learning

Have you ever been at a cocktail party and didn’t have much to contribute to the conversation? If you read broadly, and not only just books, you will always have something to talk about and contribute to the conversation.

Why You Must Read Broadly – Tip 1 

Booked for Mentoring

Divergent by Veronica Roth is set in Dystopian Chicago where the residents are from five factions – Abnegation, Candor, Erudite, Amity and Dauntless – which are the traits that best describe and embody them. Residents have to conform to the norms of their factions.

Book Review – Divergent by Veronica Roth 

Wisdom of Life Profile

Take John Stuart Mill, he was the most influential British philosopher of the nineteenth century, his books, A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive and Principles of Political Economy became textbooks in their fields. Mill made significant contributions to philosophy, economics, political theory and women’s liberation. While Mill was a Member of Parliament, he was the first representative in Parliament to request the right for women to vote.

Success Lessons from John Stuart Mill, English Philosopher and Economist 

Interviews for Mentoring

This week we featured career development professional Miranda Vande Kuyt. Miranda got to where she is now because she capitalized on the opportunities that came her way. Here are Part I and Part II of Miranda Vande Kuyt’s interview.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Book links are affiliate links.

Invisible Mentor: Miranda Vande Kuyt

Website: http://mirandavandekuyt.wordpress.com

Avil Beckford: In a couple of sentences, tell me a little bit about yourself.

Miranda Vande Kuyt: I am a mother of three kids, married to a youth pastor, and have been working in the career development field for the past 10 years. I am an eager overachiever person, and I consider myself a renaissance personality – I do a little bit of everything and whenever I need to learn something new, I go and learn it. Right now, since 2006, I coordinate a lot of blogs for different companies. Most of them are in the career development field so I write, but I also take people who don’t know how to write, and coach them on how to become better writers. I spend a lot of time doing that and I also facilitate an e-course on self-employment for a company, and I’m a student advisor for a career development company, Life Strategies.  I just finished editing a suite of curriculum for another company, and they are all in career development. I’m working in the field but I’m not necessarily a career coach right now, I’m in the middle of branding and figuring out what I want my business to be.

Part Three: Life

Avil Beckford: Describe a major challenge that you have had in life and how you resolved it. What lessons did you learn in the process?

Miranda Vande Kuyt: When I decided to have kids, I had to figure out a way to make an income. My supervisor at the company I was working for gave me a big break because he suggested that I take part of my job, which was running a little youth employment website. I took that part of my job with me and did it by contract from home and I quickly realized that I couldn’t do everything myself so I got other staff members involved. That was my major challenge, how to raise a family and still stay connected to the field that I enjoy working in so much. I look at life as seasons then figure out how I am going to solve a problem. I love to solve problems and since then I have been self-employed meaning and work has always found me. I have never gone out and looked for contract work, work has always found me. This year I have decided that I want to be more intentional about my business so I’m trying to figure out what my business is going to be about, what I’m going to do and what I’m not going to do, who I’m going to do it for and who I’m not going to do it for.

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

Miranda Vande Kuyt: My biggest failure is that back when we first got married – I finished college and then I got married – we moved and I had to start a career, all within a couple of months. I couldn’t do it and I struggled with depression for a number of years. That consumed me that I was really lost for a number of years and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I had the mindset that the world was against me. One day, that supervisor that I have mentioned a few times now, that believed so much in me, gave me an opportunity to go to a conference. Someone else was supposed to go but she got pregnant and couldn’t go, so he asked me if I wanted to go and it was presenting at Cannexus about the websites that I had been working on. It was a good idea but technically I wasn’t employed there anymore because I was home as a subcontractor for them.

When I went to the conference, I attended a session on positivity, and I learned some strategies on how to be a more positive person and probably a year or so before, I had woken up and decided that I was tired of feeling sorry for myself. I wanted a different life, so I made some choices on how I went about living my life. So I would say one of my biggest challenges, I wouldn’t say failure, was depression because I had to see that the world was more than just me. I had to see that true joy comes from investing in and helping other people succeed in life using the experiences I’ve had to help other people to find their life purpose and live it out daily.

I don’t necessarily look at things as failures because I’m always trying new things and there are lots of stuff that do not work, but this is the biggest challenge because at the time it didn’t feel like a choice. It didn’t feel like something I had caused, but overcoming it was mind over matter. It got to the point where I had to choose to live, and now I take all those lessons and help other people to also find success.

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

Miranda Vande Kuyt: It was following my husband across the country several times. I had to decide to make his career more important than mine. We moved from British Columbia to Ontario, to British Columbia to Ontario, to British Columbia and now we live in Alberta and that led to the depression.

Avil Beckford: What are three events that helped to shape your life?

Miranda Vande Kuyt:

1. When I was 15, I went to a leadership summer camp and that’s where I started to make some choices about what I was going to do with life and what I valued.
2. Having kids, once I had kids, I didn’t have time to be depressed anymore because they needed me and I didn’t have time to sit down and worry about myself. I had to put myself aside and realize that they needed me more.
3. Taking the job as an admin assistant, even though it was a low paying position and it wasn’t what I wanted to do, but that’s where I met that supervisor, and his belief in me empowered me to believe in myself.

Avil Beckford: What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

Miranda Vande Kuyt: This one is exciting. A couple years ago I won a national contest. I had to do a write-up of what my biggest “fit” challenge was in dressing myself. I had to send a full body picture of myself. I did that and forgot about it. A couple months later, I got an email that I had been chosen as a finalist for this contest. They gave each of the 12 finalists, four in each category – four petite, four regular, and four plus sizes, so I was one in four in the regular category – $200 to go to Reitman’s. The contest was between Reitman’s and Canadian Living. I had to go to Reitman’s and use the $200 to purchase three outfits, and then I had to do a write-up for three outfits and take a picture of me in those outfits and send them in.

Each week they posted the picture and the write-up then the public had to vote on who they liked the best out of those four contestants. At the end of the first week, one person was eliminated, and then they put up the second outfit and at the end of the second week another person was eliminated. In the third week there were only two people left. When I found out that I was a finalist I started researching voting campaigns to find out how I was going to win the contest. I’ve always been involved in social media, so I created a very detailed, elaborate strategy on how I was going to win this contest.

The original reason I entered, I had just started to get excited about writing and I was looking for a contest that I could write, and I came across this contest in either an email or Facebook. I wrote and I was very intentional about what I wrote in my write-ups. I wrote to the audience, and thought about how I was going to connect to the most amount of people in my write-ups. Of course my friends are going to vote for me, but I want to get other people to vote for me, so after three weeks, with a very strategic voting campaign, I won this contest.

Eighteen hundred people entered, they chose 12 finalists and I won in my category of regular size. I got a trip to Toronto, over $1,500 in clothes, accommodation at the Royal York in a suite bigger than my house, and a camera. They took us shopping and we did a photo shoot for Canadian Living magazine. I am in the November 2010 issue. I blogged about the experience on http://mirandavandekuyt.wordpress.com, so the article is also there. It was a life highlight and I did it by myself, yes I needed to get people to vote for me, but it was very cool.

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

Miranda Vande Kuyt:

1. Take care of yourself because it’s no one else’s job to take care of you. Make sure that you’re doing well.
2. Know your life purpose and live it out daily.
3. Say no to things that do not support you, taking care of yourself and living out your life purpose.
4. Make a plan to do the important things otherwise they won’t get done.
5. Love people because the “stuff” doesn’t really matter. Having people around you matters.

Avil Beckford: If trusted friends could introduce you to five people (living or dead) that you’ve always wanted to meet, who would you choose? And what would you say to them?

Miranda Vande Kuyt:

1. Jesus Christ because that’s a huge part of my life.
2. Sheryl Sandberg the COO of Facebook.
3. Billy Graham
4. Catherine Marshall who is one of my favourite authors and I read a lot of her books when I was in high school. She was married to the Chaplain to the President back in the early 1900s. She writes about her journey and I really connected with it when I was in high school because she had kids, her husband died, she struggled with depression and she got very sick and through it all she kept her faith and still knew what her life purpose was.
5. Arlene Dickinson

The question I would ask is how do you balance it all? How do you have a life, a business and a family?

Avil Beckford: Which one book had a profound impact on your life? What was it about this book that impacted you so deeply?

Miranda Vande Kuyt: On a regular day I would say the Bible because I read that one the most out of everything, but when I was thinking about this, I was thinking about career development, and I wrote down Happenstance (Luck is No Accident: Making the Most of Happenstance in Your Life and Career), (Planned Happenstance: Making the Most of Chance Events in Your Life and Your Career) by John Krumboltz because that when I realized that I don’t have to have all the answers of how I’m getting there. He suggests that you don’t even need to know where you’re going, but you need to be moving, and you need to capitalize on opportunities. That’s what I have been doing for the past several years is to follow the opportunities, and this year I’ve decided to figure out what it is that I want from life so I’ll know what opportunities to accept.

Avil Beckford: You are one of the 10 finalists on the reality show, So, How Would You Spend Your Time? Each finalist is placed on different deserted islands for two years. You have a basic hut on the island and all the tools for survival; you just have to be imaginative and inventive when using them. You are allowed to take five books, one movie and one music CD, and whatever else you take has to fit in one suitcase and a travel on case. What would you take with you and how would you spend the time? The prize is worth your while and at this stage in the game there really aren’t any losers among the 10 finalists, since each are guaranteed at least $2 million.

Miranda Vande Kuyt: The first thing I wrote is that since I have young kids I would never consider it.

Two Years

If I could, I would bring a laptop because I would spend that two years writing my story. If I ran out of things to write, I would scrapbook or if there was internet I would take courses. I would spend that time putting into that area of my life.

Five Books

1. The Bible
2. Dictionary
3. Something More by Catherine Marshall
4. The Love Dare Day by Day: Wedding Edition (The Love Dare) by Stephen Kendrick
5. Practical Grammar: A Canadian Writer’s Resource
   by Maxine Ruvinsky

Music CD & Movie

My favourite movie of all time is Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables: The Collection) because she had a challenging life and overcame it and kept her spunk. I would want to take a music CD of my dad playing guitar and singing. My dad plays and sings, and he is great. I love him.

Avil Beckford: What excites you about life?

Miranda Vande Kuyt: My kids. I love to see my kids grow, learn and become the people that they are meant to become. That’s the most exciting thing and the reason I’m doing it all is so I can spend more time with my kids.

Avil Beckford: When you have some down time, how do you spend it? How do you nurture your soul?

Miranda Vande Kuyt: I journal. I don’t get to do it as much as I used to, when I was younger. I hang out with my friends and I take my kids to the park.

Avil Beckford: Complete the following, I am happy when…..

Miranda Vande Kuyt: I’m helping somebody else succeed.

Anne of Green Gables (Official HD Trailer)

Cannot view the video? Click here. Uploaded by sullivanmovies on Jan 12, 2011

Happenstance

Cannot review this video? Click here. Uploaded by MSUiMovie on Apr 14, 2008

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Book links are affiliate links.

Interviews You Might Have Missed

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The Invisible Mentor Interviews Mike DeSousa Part Two
The Invisible Mentor Interviews Chris Kulbaba, Career and Employment Counsellor, Resume Writer, Facilitator, Public Speaker & LinkedIn Entrepreneur
The Invisible Mentor Interviews Chris Kulbaba, Career and Employment Counsellor, Resume Writer, Facilitator, Public Speaker & LinkedIn Entrepreneur Part Two
The Invisible Mentor Interviews Karen Parsons, Human Excellence Coach
The Invisible Mentor Interviews Karen Parsons, Human Excellence Coach Part Two

Invisible Mentor: Miranda Vande Kuyt

Website: http://mirandavandekuyt.wordpress.com 

Part One: Introduction

Avil Beckford: In a couple of sentences, tell me a little bit about yourself.

Miranda Vande Kuyt: I am a mother of three kids, married to a youth pastor, and have been working in the career development field for the past 10 years. I am an eager overachiever person, and I consider myself a renaissance personality – I do a little bit of everything and whenever I need to learn something new, I go and learn it. Right now, since 2006, I coordinate a lot of blogs for different companies. Most of them are in the career development field so I write, but I also take people who don’t know how to write, and coach them on how to become better writers. I spend a lot of time doing that and I also facilitate an e-course on self-employment for a company, and I’m a student advisor for a career development company, Life Strategies.  I just finished editing a suite of curriculum for another company, and they are all in career development. I’m working in the field but I’m not necessarily a career coach right now, I’m in the middle of branding and figuring out what I want my business to be.

Avil Beckford: What’s a typical day like for you?

Miranda Vande Kuyt: A typical day would be to get up and get all the kids ready for school. When I get home I get daycare kids, I run a home daycare during the day, then I go back to school to pick up the kids, go to the park and make supper. So during the days I’m a typical mother and when I put the kids to bed that’s when I sit at the computer and work till at least 11 o’clock at night. It’s go, go, go at my house!

Avil Beckford: How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

Miranda Vande Kuyt: I have quite an internal drive to achieve things, to cross things off the list. I also have a lot of expectations for myself so I have to go, go, go to make it through the day. It helps to talk and stay connected to people and it gives me energy. I’m outgoing and extroverted in that way. I talk on the phone a lot.

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

Miranda Vande Kuyt: I would be more intentional about some of the choices I’ve made and I’d leave more white space for people. Sometimes I can get too driven and I forget about the other people in life.

Avil Beckford: What’s the most important discovery you’ve made in the past year? It could be a discovery about yourself or a business one.

Miranda Vande Kuyt: The most important discovery is that I can’t do it by myself. People need to be in community. You can’t get to the top by yourself, people have to be there along the way. In the last 12 months, I’ve been working with a coach, and talking to people specifically about goals, my business and things like that. I’m realizing how important it is to be intentional about those things.

Avil Beckford: Tell me about your big break and who gave you. 

Miranda Vande Kuyt: I would definitely say my big break was given to me by my mentor. At the time I didn’t know he was going to be my mentor. In 2006 I got a job as an administrative assistant, and it was at entry level, way below what I wanted, but it was the field that I wanted, and at the company I wanted to work at so I took a job working there. Part of the job was supporting career development programs, but they wanted me to give support to the manager of all the employment programs. The first day I met him, I sat down in his office, and he asked me to tell him a little bit about myself, so I did. I was asked to be part of a conference planning committee for our industry in British Columbia, and I asked if that was okay to get a couple days in the middle of the year to do that. That was a pivotal moment, he clapped his hand and said, “That’s the kind of initiative we need around here.” From that moment on, things in my life changed because I started to believe in myself. That was part of my big break – working for someone who believed in me.

Part Two: Career

Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?

Miranda Vande Kuyt: The person I just talked about influenced me and we chat from time to time. I now work for a different company, but my supervisor at that company, before I ever started to work for her we used to go out for coffee and chat. I don’t necessarily have official mentors, as much as I have people that I admire how they’re living their life and I try to emulate that. Mentors have influenced me by modeling the life I would like to have.

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

Miranda Vande Kuyt: They are very focused and strategic about where they’re going. I learned, especially in the last year, that I need to figure out where I’m going. They know where they are going and they have a plan how to get there.

Avil Beckford: An invisible mentor is a unique leader you can learn from by observing them from a distance. In that capacity, what is one piece of advice that you would give to others?

Miranda Vande Kuyt: Never stop learning. That has been one of my biggest strengths. I’m continually learning from everything. I make lots of mistakes, and I recently had this conversation with my seven year old that unless you try you’ll never learn. It’s okay to make mistakes because that means you’re trying and you’re learning something. Read books, read articles, take courses and look for opportunities to learn new things.

Avil Beckford: How do you define success? And in your opinion what’s the formula for success?

Miranda Vande Kuyt: I believe success is achieving your purpose. Figure out your purpose in life and then and once you know that, figure out how you’re going to live out your purpose every day.

Avil Beckford: What big steps did you take to succeed in your field? What is one step or action you have consistently taken that has contributed the most to your success?

Miranda Vande Kuyt: Most of my success in my field has been that I am not afraid to try new things. I may be concerned but I do it. In my field, career development, there are – especially in the workplaces that I worked with – a lot of front line workers that were happy to just do things the way they have always been done, but I’m always looking for new ways to do things more effectively and efficiently. One of the first steps is to always be on the lookout for what’s new, and the way I stay on top of what’s new is that I’m always reading and learning about new things. Once I learn them, I write about them. I write articles, blog posts, tweets, Facebook messages, and I talk to people. So figure out what you don’t know, learn it and then teach it to other people. That’s the success model that I’ve been using ever since I got into the field.

Avil Beckford: What process do you use to generate great ideas?

Miranda Vande Kuyt: I do lots of mind mapping. I have notebooks upon notebooks of things. Ideas pop into my head and I have to write them down otherwise I’ll forget them because I’m so busy and have so many things going on with the kids that if I don’t write them down I’ll forget them. I keep pen and paper beside my bed because some of my best ideas come in the middle of the night. Quite often I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and come up with the best line for an article and I have to write it down. I have lots of articles that are started in notebooks and never made it out there for anybody else.

When I get an idea and want to know more, I research it, but this year I took a course on plagiarism because I teach e-courses and part of being a teacher or facilitator is being able to spot plagiarism. When I took that course, they said the number one advice you can give to students is to start with your own ideas. Before you research something, write down everything you know about that topic already, and then look for research to back-up what you already know. Because then your ideas are essential to your writing. When I started doing that, my writing became more interesting because it was flowing from me, and not flowing from everybody else.

Avil Beckford: How do you integrate your personal and other aspects of your life?

Miranda Vande Kuyt: It’s very hard to separate them because being a pastor’s wife there are a lot of different expectations on who I am supposed to be and it took years for me to take those expectations off myself and figure out what my real purpose was in life and it’s not to please everybody else. Because I work from home with small kids, it’s impossible to separate being a mom from me professionally.

Who I am comes out in my writing, and in everything I do and I’m very authentic that way, I don’t hold a lot back. The only way I do separate it is by chunking my time during the day. I focus on the kids and give them my attention so that at nights when they are in bed I can work. It’s hard for me because I love to work and I love to help people so I would love to work all day, but in this season of life, I only have this much time to work. I had to learn what works for me, and it’s different for every person, but once you figure out what works then that’s what you do.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Book links are affiliate links.

This is what we talked about on The Invisible Mentor Blog this week: By a Thread by Jennifer Estep, Mother Teresa, CEO of the Missionaries of Charity, and Diane Craig, President, Corporate Class Inc.

Adventures in Learning

Self-confidence is an excellent leadership trait. Overconfidence is a dangerous quality to have, which could result in serious repercussions. It’s important to build and protect your reputation. And it’s great to be known for something, but don’t ever let it get to your head and affect your performance.

The Dangers of Believing Your Reputation 

Booked for Mentoring

By a Threadby Jennifer Estep is one of the books in the Elemental Assassin Series. Gin Blanco, an assassin whose moniker is Spider has finally found a way to kill Mab

Mother Teresa (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Monroe, Queen of the Underworld. However, things have not gotten better in Ashland because now all the factions in the underworld are jockeying for power to take over Mab’s place. Each day, Gin is fighting off the bad guys as they try to eliminate her since they know they can only rule effectively if the Spider is out of the way.

Book Review – By a Thread by Jennifer Estep 

Wisdom of Life Profile

Mother Teresa was CEO of the Missionaries of Charity, a large and growing organization in India. She dedicated most of her life to working with the poorest of the poor, and was practical in that she catered to both their spiritual and physical needs.

Mother Teresa, Founder of Missionaries of Charity and Nobel Prize Peace Winner 

Interviews for Mentoring

This week we featured Diane Craig, President of Corporate Class Inc. How does someone recover first from the death of her husband and then the death of a child? Here are Part I and Part II of Diane Craig’s interview.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.