The Invisible Mentor

Archive for the ‘Interviews With Successful People’ Category

Interviewee Name: Diane Craig, President

Company Name: Corporate Class Inc.

Website: http://www.corporateclassinc.com/ 

To get the most from The Invisible Mentor Interview with Diane Craig, while you are reading it, answer the following questions:

1. Are their similarities between Diane Craig and yourself?
2. In what ways can you use the information?
3. In what ways would you respond differently from the interviewee?
4. What are your five takeaways from the interview?
5. After reading the interview, what is one concrete action you can take?

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Diane Craig:  I’m an entrepreneur. I’ve had my business for many years now. I love my work and I love life, I love my family and I enjoy people.

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

Diane Craig: When I get up I like some quiet time for meditation and prayer. I shower, have breakfast then go off to work. In the evenings I’m often out, whether with clients, attending events, having dinner with friends, or spending time with my husband. I’m quite active.

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

Diane Craig:  For me, the most important thing is to surround myself with motivated people, people who have high energy who I can feed on and not be dragged down.

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

Diane Craig:  There are many things that I could do differently, there is no question about that, but in the end what would I do differently, I’m not sure because who I am today is shaped by what I’ve done before, and all of those mistakes that I have learned from. I would not have gotten to the next step had I not made those mistakes. So what would I so differently? I might have spent more time studying when I was younger. I have a college degree. I didn’t finish university, that’s something I would have done differently. I studied fashion design which was a 3-year college degree, but I started a communications degree in university and never finished it.

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

Diane Craig: The biggest discovery is that I’m at a point in my life and business that I have the capability to produce passive income. There have been a lot of preparation, a lot of work has been done, and I have an arsenal of tools that could easily be turned into products, and I want to focus on that for the next couple of years.

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

Diane Craig:

1. The biggest one is the economy. Our business is very affected by the economy because our clients are mainly corporate. The economy has been so unstable so I fear for that. I always worry about that although I’ve been in business so long that that there have been ups and down. The way I handle that is that when times are slow, I don’t get discouraged, I take advantage of the time to build new programs, expand on programs, do research that I didn’t have time to do, and continue to do business development. Even though it’s not the right time, you still have to connect with clients and prospects, so when times are good you do not have to chase anyone, and at the same time, they will remember you. I get calls from the people I kept in touch with when times were slow and they didn’t need my services then.
2. My health would definitely be a threat to my business. I don’t anticipate anything but you never know.
3. Another threat for anyone in business is if you stop being current in what you do and take things for granted.

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

Diane Craig: I’m in an industry where many people provide the same services that I do. What’s unique is that many image consultants have not had the kinds of opportunities that I’ve had over the years. I didn’t take an image consultant course as such, although at one point I took a week of training with Color Me Beautiful, but I was an instructor at a fashion designing school and from teaching full and part-time students for over five years, I got to do thousands of sittings. I learned about different body shapes, body proportions, and I had the opportunity to work with fabrics, and build garments where you could see that certain fabrics were not appropriate for a particular style, so I’ve had experience in that. When it comes to the image consulting part of the business it’s very natural for me. I also studied men’s tailoring and very few image consultants have such a strong background as I do in that area.

The other thing in Canada that has been very helpful is that I’m fully bilingual and can deliver in both French and English. For some companies that is a real plus because they do not have to hire two service providers for the same service.

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?

Diane Craig: There were challenges at a personal level that affected my business as well. The first one is my husband died when my children were seven and 12 and I had started my business the year before. All of a sudden I was faced with being a single mom with a brand new business, so that was very challenging. I had good staff, thank goodness for that because they were able to support me through the changes that were occurring in my business. The second big challenge occurred shortly after the passing of my husband. The business was back on its feet and my 11 year old daughter passed away in a school bus accident, so again that took a lot of wind out of my sail. What I learned – this is the second time I had a major event in my life – I grew from it, and the second time around I was able to turn it into a positive thing for other people. Many people who are touched by a special event will volunteer and put a lot of effort into special causes, which I did and turned out to be beneficial for other people. And of course it was therapy for me. But the biggest message for me was that the big plan I do not have it, and every day you just do the best that you can and be the best that you can be and know that ultimately it doesn’t all rest in your hands.

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

Diane Craig: My big break was back in 1995, 1996, and the person who gave it to me was me. I had my business and we had an overrun of newsletters and in those days we mailed our newsletters. In my office late one night, I was sitting looking at these 300 extra copies that had been printed. I didn’t want to throw them out, and didn’t even know if I could afford to put the stamps on them, and then I started to think about what I could do, where could I send them, and I remember thinking, “Oh my gosh, you know what, there are about 300 Members of Parliament.” It costs nothing to mail things to Members of Parliament, so I sent my newsletters there.

Before you know it, I became one of the favourite image consultants on Parliament Hill and I worked with several leaders of our country. That was an opportunity that was tremendous, and I started traveling across Canada meeting a lot of people and developed business at the corporate level as well because of all the connections I was able to make. I think that was my big break, and it came in the name of Preston Manning.

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

Diane Craig:  I’ve had many failures. The biggest one would be going into a partnership. The partnership was a failure, but what was good about it was the reason why today I have an office downtown Toronto at Bay-Bloor. The failure in fact was a client who decided to go into business. The person was based in Toronto, and my base was in Ottawa even though I had clients in Toronto. After spending two-and-a-half with that person, I got to know Toronto and it gave me the opportunity to develop new connections and extend my business. I learned many things from that partner. In the end the partnership failed, but I had been able to sell 50 percent of my company and when we decided to end the relationship, I was able to keep my company because all we did was share the copyright of our training materials. That was a great learning experience – the partnership didn’t work but it was a stepping stone to me becoming a lot more successful.

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

Diane Craig:  That was a very big decision for me to move to Toronto because my roots were not here. I didn’t have the network that I had in Ottawa, and it was a little scary so it was definitely a really big decision and it changed my life. Another big decision I had to make was when my daughter died I was asked to donate her organs and that decision unknown to me, within half an hour after I had made that decision, I was still in the hospital receiving calls from the media because I had a lot of friends in the media, and they wanted to help and start a campaign on organ donation and from there we built a foundation. It was a tough decision at the beginning, but it impacted my life because today, 12 years later, I’m still very involved with organ donation. Today, I sit on the board of Children Gift of Life Network, which is the organization that looks after all organ donations for Ontario.

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

Diane Craig:  I learned a lot from my husband when we were first married because he was an entrepreneur and I learned about business from him. I’m not sure if I would have had the entrepreneurial mind that I have today had it not been for what I learned from him. Just a year before he passed away, I had gone into business for myself and he is the one who pushed it. I was not totally sold on the idea, so his encouragement in doing this prepared me for what I didn’t know was going to happen a year later. So the three events that shaped my life would be:

1. The passing of my husband.
2. The passing of my daughter.
3. Opening a new office in Toronto.

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

Diane Craig:  I think I have been able to make a lot of difference in people’s lives at many levels, and certainly organ donation is a big one. We talk about working with people from inside out, I really did that. When my daughter died I started to think that executive image was so superficial and yet I was reminded by a therapist that I was actually helping a lot of people. I started to think that I have always worked on the outside, and now I’ve able to help people on the inside if not spiritually, emotionally. I was able to meet the woman who received my daughter’s heart and lungs. She was dying and only had about a week left to live, and 12 years later she is still living.

The accomplishment was to start a foundation, create awareness about organ donation, and being able to keep it going. I received the Meritorious Service Medal by the Governor General Adrienne Clarkson in 2004 for those efforts.

Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?

Diane Craig:  The mentor I had, my husband, was a brilliant man. He influenced my life in the sense that I may not have gone into my own business if it had not been for his advice, counselling and support. I probably would still be a teacher at a fashion designing school. We have different mentors who come into our lives, and they are at many levels. One mentor convinced me to triple my prices, and I was in shock, and I realized it didn’t make any difference to people because I was undervalued. That was a big stepping stone. The other one was a business coach I had who helped me to work on my business, instead of in my business, so after working with him, and following his suggestions, I was able to not only sell 50 percent of my company, I also sold the franchise, another part of my business to someone else. I basically took one business and sell three businesses out it. That was pretty exciting, so had it not been for that business coach, it might have happened at some point but certainly not as early or as fast.

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

Diane Craig: The biggest message is that you need to have a vision. You need to look at the top of the business and see what’s going on. Just going in every day and being busy, and not taking the time to step back and see what’s happening and where you want to see it in five years from now. Unless you can do that, you’re going to be stuck because time is going to pass you by and you’re just going to be busy. I remember the saying, “You’re busy, but are you making money?” I think being busy all the time, yes you’re going to be making a little bit of money, but you have to look at yourself and look at the focus and where you are taking your business, what’s going to generate larger revenues.

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?

Diane Craig:  It doesn’t matter which business you’re in, in many ways, people are fooled because they have the technical skills, they think that they’re going to be able to make it to the top. They have to nurture the interpersonal skills as well as their technical skills because in the end, we all compete with people who have similar experiences, similar backgrounds and products so why would they choose you. Why would they choose to do business with you? Why would they choose to have a relationship with you, whether it’s at the personal or professional level? Your interpersonal skills are really important, and you have to own them because I have this saying that, “You can fake it until you make but know that you’ll soon be discovered.” You can look at Conrad Black, all those guys who have taken a fall from very high. If you are not sincere, honest and have integrity, you will be discovered. As much as I’m in the image business, I can tell you that image is not a substitute for your credentials, which is the price to entry for so many things, and after that you have to be consistent and measure up to the image that you project.

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.

The Invisible Mentor Week in Review

This is what we talked about on The Invisible Mentor Blog this week: The Invisible Man by H G Wells and The Whip by Karen Kondazian, Wisdom of Life Profile: Isaac Newton, Physicist, Mathematician, and Sandra Ann Baptiste, Consultant, and Trainer.

Adventures in Learning

Last week in the post Self-Mentoring – an Idea for the Twenty-First Century, we delved into the idea of mentoring yourself. We mentioned briefly how to become a self-mentor and how to use The Invisible Mentor blog to mentor yourself. But how do you really mentor yourself, and how can you use resources other than those found on this blog?

How to Self-Mentor 

Booked for Mentoring

The Invisible Man by H G Wells and The Whipby Karen Kondazian are two stories about people altering their appearance, but for very different reasons. I read both stories right after each other and that’s one of the reasons that I noticed the connection between them and thought it would be interesting to review them together. In The Invisible Man, the protagonist altered his appearance because he wanted power and accolades. Charley, in The Whip, altered her appearance to take care of and support herself.

first edition cover of The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Book Reviews – The Invisible Man by H G Wells vs. The Whip by Karen Kondazian 

Wisdom of Life Profile

Isaac Newton was born on Christmas day in 1642 in Lincolnshire, England as a premature baby who was not expected to live. His father had died three months before he was born, and when Newton was three, his mother remarried and left him with his grandfather. While he attended King’s School, a grammar school, he lived in the house of an apothecary. As a young lad, Newton had an interest in mechanical things and made windmills, water clocks, kites and sundials.

Mentor Yourself With Isaac Newton, English Physicist, Mathematician 

Interviews for Mentoring

This week we featured Sandra Ann Baptiste, consultant and trainer who has met all the key people that she has ever wanted to meet. Here are Part I and Part II of Sandra Ann Baptiste’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.

Mentor Yourself With Sandra Ann Baptiste, Consultant and Trainer

Interviewee Name: Sandra Ann Baptiste, Consultant and Trainer

Company Name: Carigold Associates 

To get the most from The Invisible Mentor Interview, while you are reading it, answer the following questions:

1. Are their similarities between Sandra Ann Baptiste and yourself?
2. In what ways can you use the information?
3. In what ways would you respond differently from the interviewee?
4. What are your five takeaways from the interview?
5. After reading the interview, what is one concrete action you can take?

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Sandra Ann Baptiste:  I’m a veteran communicator. I’m a former journalist with many years experience working internationally, including with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in Toronto and the Caribbean News Agency based in Barbados. I’m currently a business and communications consultant trainer, and I specialize in business skills training. I’m also still involved in writing. I have a monthly column in Caribbean Perspectives that focuses on issues affecting CARICOM (Caribbean Community and Common Market). I spend a lot of my time working on projects for the Caribbean.

Avil Beckford: How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

Sandra Ann Baptiste: For the 22 years that I was in media, I had no personal life. It was all about researching. When you’re covering CARICOM, you’re going to a meeting, you’re sent to Jamaica one day for an election, and Trinidad the next day for a Trade Ministers’ meeting, and then Antigua for something else, on a daily basis I had files in my bed reading the Caribbean Development Bank reports, reading national statistics, all that stuff so my whole life was focused around my career. There wasn’t much of a personal life. I had a little bit of that when I came to Canada, but don’t forget that I returned to Guyana to do consulting on investments.

My personal life is very difficult to integrate because I’m always on the computer researching, always in the newspaper checking something. So I’ve not had much of a personal life, which I’m trying to change. 

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

Sandra Ann Baptiste: Movies and cooking are my two big things. I love to cook, but I’m a fanatic for movies. While the movies are going on, I’m reading a report or on the computer.

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

Sandra Ann Baptiste:

1. The biggest thing for me is do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
2. Be kind and giving so if I have extra food I’ll give it to someone who needs it. If I have extra clothes or books, I believe in giving. I always believe it will come back, not necessarily to you, but to your children and family.
3. Never give up on your dreams. When I was a young girl in high school in Guyana, I thought I’d like to be covering the Caribbean as a journalist. I was at the Guyana Broadcasting Service, and who would ever have thought that I would be in Barbados, being a global journalist, and being someone who is writing on the Caribbean and having the exposure to every single CARICOM country and having lived and worked in all of them, from Surinam to the Bahamas.
4. You should be qualified in whatever field you want to be in. I went to university in my thirties. That was fine but I wasn’t going to give up on getting my credentials in journalism and international relations which was also my area of expertise.
5. Always give back. I believe in life when you’re blessed you should always want to give back.

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

Sandra Ann Baptiste: I don’t have a process. I think about stuff and I write it down then I prioritize. In the middle of the night if I have an idea there is a book next to my bed and I write it down. The next day I put it on my computer. I may not go back to it for a month or even six months, but when I go back, I shape it and put in into a priority sequence on what I need to do to do this and what sequence do I need to do it.

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

Sandra Ann Baptiste: Success is very personal in terms of you achieving your goals and having whatever you achieve have an impact on others. So it’s not only about you achieving your goals. I would say the formula for success is to never give up on your dreams and have faith. I believe faith is instrumental, and I have said before I had a lot of challenges when I had to leave Guyana in the middle of the night and didn’t know where I was going because of journalists being threatened. I had faith that God was going to guide me and take me somewhere. I never thought I would end up in Barbados. You need to have faith and confidence, and try to achieve your goals and seek to be qualified in whatever you do because education is the key to people’s dreams. I truly believe that and I do not only mean formal education. You can self-educate, do stuff online, and be mentored by people. There are many ways to learn, but you have to have an interest in being educated to achieve your goals.

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

Sandra Ann Baptiste: There are two careers, one in media and the other in consulting. In the media, the steps I took were to be attached to the newspaper when I was in high school so I would get exposure. Once I left high school and I was hired, I tried to learn from the senior journalists that were there. When I was at Guyana Broadcasting I went to Barbados to take a six-month communications course. When I got into Barbados I went to the University of the West Indies because I was covering international affairs so I did international relations. I also gave back in Barbados because I was Chairman of the Education Committee of the Barbados Association of Journalism. I designed a certificate program in journalism, and coordinated it at the University of the West Indies. After that I did my Diploma in Journalism in the UK, and my Masters, and I also did many different courses on business and finance. I also had a lot of practical exposure that helped me.

In my consulting career, when I realized that I was going to GO-Invest, I did a lot of training in the UK in investment promotion. I did business management and international trade in Canada, and in the late 1990s once I realized that my passion was training, I decided to stay in Guyana and I did training for a year for a lot of the private sector companies. I set up my own training company, which I have now resuscitated because I haven’t done training for about 10 years. I have resuscitated my company Carigold Associates that does training – business skills training, leadership, trade show management, business communication, project management,  performance management, tourism management and inventory management – specifically targeted at the Caribbean and a little bit here in Canada. In 2010 I completed my teacher training certificate for adults at Centennial College with honours. My goal has always been that whatever you do be qualified in it.

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

Sandra Ann Baptiste: Get qualified! Even when I had part-time contracts in Canada, many of those companies I worked for offered online training, and I did many courses, and I also went to Ryerson University to do project management and human resources management. When I’m doing consulting and training now, I am trained in the areas that I’m training people. It’s not just my own experience, I also have the credentials and I think that is important to have both the practical experience and the credentials to be respected and recognized in whatever field you’re in.

Avil Beckford: 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?

Sandra Ann Baptiste: That’s an interesting question because the people that I wanted to meet are people that I did meet.  When I was a young journalist, the people I wanted to meet were Margaret Thatcher in the UK, India Gandhi, Eugenia Charles in Dominica, Fidel Castro and Pierre Trudeau, and I have met all those people.

I became very close to Eugenia Charles. She was someone I admired and I met her through my meetings covering Caribbean Heads of Government and became very good friends with her and used to visit her at her home in Dominica. When she came to Barbados to visit her brother, I would go there. I had a very high regard for this first female prime minister of the Caribbean who did a lot to enhance the economic development in Dominica. She was one of the outspoken people in CARICOM who tried to take it in a direction where it needed to re-examine itself, and she was one of those people who recognized what the weaknesses were and was never afraid to speak it.

She was also a very compassionate person, and I remember this because one of her biggest opponent in politics, Michael Douglas, was in hospital dying from cancer, and when I went to Dominica to visit her once, she said to me, “Are you going to visit Michael in hospital?” And I said, “Okay, sure,” because I knew him and felt bad. Here was a woman telling me to visit her biggest political opponent. She was a decent person and I really admired her.

The second person was Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi were not people whose policies I necessarily liked, but they were such dominant political figures. They are people who had guts to get to where they wanted to go politically, that I wanted to know if I would ever meet them. I met Mrs Thatcher twice. I met her in Zambia at a Heads of Government conference. Another mentor who I did not mention, Hubert Williams, who was another famous Caribbean journalist at the Guyana Graphic, and also in Barbados at the Caribbean News Agency, was present in Zambia when Mrs Thatcher and I at a commonwealth summit exchanged words because we were talking about apartheid and sanctions against the regime in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa, and the whole Commonwealth was in favour and she was against. We had discussions at a press conference where I asked her several times and didn’t allow her to get off the hook as to why she was fundamentally opposing what everyone else in the Commonwealth wanted. We had that exchange and years later I met her at another Commonwealth Conference in India, and we talked again and she was so nice and charming that I reminded her of our exchange at the press conference.

Indira Gandhi had such an effect globally and on the people of India and a big effect on the Commonwealth. I met her at the Commonwealth Prime Minister’s conference in India. At Commonwealth Summits, the press is allowed to meet Heads of Government without interviewing them – just chatting at special receptions they have for this purpose so I met Mrs Gandhi there.

Fidel Castro I met in Guyana when he came down for an official visit to see Forbes Burnham. We exchanged only a few words and I got to shake his hands. He is not someone whose policies I agree with because I’m very anti-communist so I do not appreciate Fidel Castro’s policies. However he is a dominant figure who shaped world politics and had a tremendous influence on the people of Cuba, so I had always wanted to meet this individual. He was so tall and I had on a white sari that got mud on it at the Prime Minister’s residence in Guyana. I am shaking Fidel Castro’s hand and he was towering over me because I am pretty short, only 5 feet 4 inches and so that was it.

The other person I wanted to meet, and it wasn’t the best circumstances, was Pierre Trudeau. Pierre Trudeau was someone I admired because he did so much for the Caribbean and I covered a lot of Canada-Caribbean relations as a journalist and knew how much aid the Caribbean had received from Pierre Trudeau. He built our schools, and airports. He was a very pro-Caribbean guy. I met him in St. Lucia for a meeting between Caribbean leaders and himself, and I went to St. Lucia to cover it. He was having a hard time with the Canadian press because he was breaking up from his wife Margaret Trudeau and he was very bitter with the press so when we approached him in St. Lucia he was not very accommodating I would say. That was very disappointing, but I still have the highest regard, and was very happy to come face-to-face with him.

Those are people I wanted to meet that I have met, and a sixth person would be Jimmy Carter who I met at the Guyana elections. He is another person who I had a tremendous respect for and wanted to meet. I met him in 1992 when I was at the BBC covering the Guyana elections.

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

Sandra Ann Baptiste: The book is called Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential by Joel Osteen. It gives you seven steps to live at your full potential, but the whole book is about having faith and a relationship with God to live your dreams and how to overcome negativity and have confidence in yourself. Every couple of years when I go through a difficult spell, I will go back to that book and it’s such an amazing book.

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 separate 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 two years? T he 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?

Sandra Ann Baptiste: If I’m on an island I must have my music. I come from a background of family that has the oldest record store in the Caribbean for nearly 40 years so I’ve grown up in music. My mother used to bring a lot of the major artists in the Caribbean to Guyana, and we have DJs that still play out so I have always been involved in music. I’m a DJ so I play at family functions. Music is the biggest thing that I would have to have with me. I’m into the Bee Gees (The Ultimate Bee Gees), Michael Jackson (Michael Jackson Greatest Hits HIStory Volume I), and a lot of seventies and eighties music.

I would take lots of movies. My favourite movie is Cleopatra and I love to death Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. And for the books, three authors I’d like to have are James Patterson (Women’s Murder Club Box Set, Volume 1 (The Women’s Murder Club)), Mary Higgins Clark (Anastasia Syndrome Gift Set Prepack) and Jeffrey Deaver (Carte Blanche (007 James Bond)) because I’m into thrillers.

Two Years

I would spend the time writing a book on my life experiences and do some introspection and meditation.

Avil Beckford: What excites you about life?

Sandra Ann Baptiste: That my life has so much variety to it. On a day-to-day basis it’s so interesting because I’m dealing with so many different things. Take today for example, I dealing with preparing for the Canada-Caribbean Business so I ‘m research Canada-Caribbean trade, I’m writing a training program for trade show management for teaching online, and I’m also working on a training package for training in Guyana and I’m also working on my column in Caribbean Perspectives. So my day is doing a variety of things so it’s never boring.

Avil Beckford: How do you nurture your soul?

Sandra Ann Baptiste: I’m a very spiritual person so I pray a lot. I meditate. I nurture my soul by reminding myself how blessed I am, why I am here and why I have the skills that I have. I try to be thankful all the time and ask for guidance. I’m a staunched Catholic.

Avil Beckford: If you had a personal genie and she gave you one wish, what would you wish for?

Sandra Ann Baptiste: The only wish I have is to always be living in a warm climate.

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

Sandra Ann Baptiste: I can make others happy. If I can put a smile on somebody’s face it’s a big thing for me. Little things mean a lot to me. For example if I go to the supermarket and I put 25 cents in the cart, I never ever retrieve it, I always wait until someone else is coming in the supermarket and I give it to them and say “Would you like a free cart.” The little things that you do for people are the things I count.

Cleopatra (1963) trailer Elizabeth Taylor

Cannot view this video? Click here. Uploaded by dameelizabethtaylor on May 28, 2009

Bee Gees – Too Much Heaven (Video)

Cannot view this video? Click here. Uploaded by beegeestv on Oct 26, 2009

Michael Jackson – The Way You Make Me Feel

Cannot view this video? Click here. Uploaded by michaeljacksonVEVO on Oct 2, 2009

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.

Other Interviews You Might Have Missed

• Mentor Yourself With Sandra Ann Baptiste (theinvisiblementor.com)
• Interview With Invisible Mentor Stefan Meister, Director, intercultures (theinvisiblementor.com)
• Mentor Yourself: Interview With Invisible Mentor Jo Ann Langer, Senior Level Retail Executive (theinvisiblementor.com)
• Mentor Yourself: Interview With Invisible Mentor Julie Daniluk, TV Host, Nutritionist, Motivational Speaker, Writer (theinvisiblementor.com)
• Mentor Yourself: Interview With Maggie Berry, Women in Technology Part II (theinvisiblementor.com)
• Mentor Yourself – Interview With Invisible Mentor Luba Rusyn (theinvisiblementor.com)
• Mentor Yourself: Interview With Invisible Mentor Julie Daniluk, TV Host Part II (theinvisiblementor.com)
• Mentor Yourself – Interview With Invisible Mentor Jo Ann Langer, Senior Retail Executive Part II (theinvisiblementor.com)
• Mentor Yourself: Interview With Pauline Crawford, Founder and Chief Executive at Corporate Heart Part II (theinvisiblementor.com)
• Mentor Yourself: Interview With Invisible Mentor Gary Vurnum, Author (theinvisiblementor.com)

Mentor Yourself With Sandra Ann Baptiste

Interviewee Name: Sandra Ann Baptiste, Consultant and Trainer 

To get the most from The Invisible Mentor Interview, while you are reading it, answer the following questions:

1. Are their similarities between Sandra Ann Baptiste and yourself?
2. In what ways can you use the information?
3. In what ways would you respond differently from the interviewee?
4. What are your five takeaways from the interview?
5. After reading the interview, what is one concrete action you can take?

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Sandra Ann Baptiste:  I’m a veteran communicator. I’m a former journalist with many years experience working internationally, including with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in Toronto and the Caribbean News Agency based in Barbados. I’m currently a business and communications consultant trainer, and I specialize in business skills training. I’m also still involved in writing. I have a monthly column in Caribbean Perspectives that focuses on issues affecting CARICOM (Caribbean Community and Common Market). I spend a lot of my time working on projects for the Caribbean.

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

Sandra Ann Baptiste: Living on my computer and my phone. I spend a lot of time on the phone doing marketing calls and following up with clients. I spend a lot of time reading and researching because I have to be up-to-date on a lot of topics, and so a lot of time on the research side on reading. I also do a lot of research for my writing for my column, for training programs that I write, for marketing purposes.

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

Sandra Ann Baptiste:  I always focus on my goals and remind myself that I have a purpose in life. I believe my purpose is to use the skills that God gave me to enrich the lives of people educationally, socially, and economically. I want to give back the skills I have been given to others, so I motivate myself by knowing that whatever I’m focusing on there is a greater good involved in it.

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

Sandra Ann Baptiste:  I’m not sure if I would change anything because I believe that God puts you on a path so that you can learn. Some of the painful or negative experiences were learning experiences. However, I would say that maybe one of things I would change is to not be so much of a perfectionist when I was younger. I was critical of a lot of stuff, and beat myself up too much because I didn’t meet up to certain standards at the time. That I would change!

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

Sandra Ann Baptiste: I would say that in the last 12 months I have been focusing a lot on the impact of social media on marketing and business. It’s something that I was not that familiar with, and I have been discovering how important it is to use social media to market, develop and enhance your business.

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

Sandra Ann Baptiste:

1. Threats to the business would be the economy that everybody is facing globally because training is something that gets put on the back burner when people have limited budgets
2. Political stability in terms of the Caribbean: When you have situations where there may be public demonstrations or fallouts after elections. Things like those could be a threat to your business if you have a contract at the time and you have to shift them. That has happened in the past with Guyana.

I have to take on limited projects so I don’t advertise – I do a lot of word-of-mouth. I am always booked up six months ahead with projects so that’s why I don’t put myself out there because I wouldn’t be able to handle the volume of business. It’s important to service the clientele that you currently have in the best way you can rather than overstretch yourself.

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

Sandra Ann Baptiste: A lot of the training I do is tailored to the specific needs of the company so it’s not generic. It always focuses on what the challenges the businesses are going through. I always do training needs assessments discussing some of the practical day-to-day issues involved in the business and design the training around that. After, I do a feedback report on training recommending what came out of the training in terms of issues that affect the company, the individuals, and further training or coaching that might be necessary. The training that I do has a lot of practical examples because I’ve had a variety of experiences both as a communicator and consultant, and I’ve worked in many industries – manufacturing, tourism, and services. I use practical examples that people can use to improve and enhance on the job.

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?

Sandra Ann Baptiste: I think the biggest challenge I ever had in my life was setting up the Guyana Office for Investment when the President of Guyana Dr Cheddi Jagan invited me to come back in 1994 in March. I didn’t open the doors to GO-Invest – which is similar to JAMPRO in Jamaica – right away. I got a building, had to paint it, fix it up, hire the staff, train them, and set all the policies in motion. The biggest problem was working with all the agencies that would affect foreign investments -customs people who give permits for land, Tourism, Manufacturing, Mining and Forestry, and getting those people to understand what was needed to attract investors in terms of the timeline to delivering permits and explaining procedures, and then training my staff to deal with all of that, and also sitting down with all the Ministers to ensure that their people were on board. There were a lot of challenges in getting all of that done in an environment were people were not accustomed to working at a pace where the business community expects business to be done.

That was a very big challenge, and in the end we managed to exceed the expectations of World Bank, which had hired me for that project. I was able to get quite a bit done in terms of turning things around, shaping the policies and getting people to respond to the needs of investors and working with all the agencies. What I learned from that is that I took the right approach in asking to be attached to JAMPRO in Jamaica because although I had been trained in investment, I did international relations. I had a grasp of all the issues that were involved by dealing with the business community throughout the Caribbean for years, working with the Chambers of Commerce and the manufacturing association as a writer, and also working with the Caribbean Export in Barbados as a consultant, I felt I needed that extra mentoring and exposure so I went to JAMPRO in Jamaica, which was a tremendous help to me, and eventually went to the Invest in Britain in the UK.

All the time I was in Guyana working on this project, I had to remember why I was there and push on even though there were many times when we were short on budget for basic stuff. And when we were having foreign investment missions coming we had challenges with budgets but we managed to surmount all the difficulties. I also learned that one has to be extremely patient and tolerant in developing countries when you are trying to implement these kinds of changes because the level of skills is not what you’d like it to be, but in the circumstances what I did was beef up the skills by providing training for the staff and getting them upgraded.

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

Sandra Ann Baptiste: My biggest break was when I joined the Guyana Broadcasting Service (GBS) in 1974. While I was there, I was given the opportunity to cover parliament and CARICOM which are things that women never did in the seventies. I blazed the trail in that regard in Guyana. I went on to become a specialist in Caribbean Affairs. I covered CARICOM from its inception and I got to interview all the Ministers at the CARICOM meetings and that’s how I got my foot into the door in terms of Caribbean Affairs. When I ended up in Barbados, I had that edge as a journalist because I knew all the key players in the Caribbean and in CARICOM.

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

Sandra Ann Baptiste:  I don’t know that I have any major failures that I can put my hands on because the only thing that I wanted to be when I was a young teenager was to become a journalist. I ended up winning all the Caribbean media awards and being at the top of my game in the Caribbean, and becoming a well-recognized specialist at CARICOM, so I don’t have any big failures because that was my major goal.

The only thing I could mention is that I have an interest in starting a Caribbean business magazine, which I looked at over a year ago with a colleague, and we wanted to get it off the ground year before last, but we decided not to go with it because of the economy. We’re going to be relooking at it in terms of launching it in 2012. That was a disappointment. I learned that one has to go with business ventures that make economic sense. Although we were very gung ho about doing this for the Caribbean because there isn’t a proper Caribbean journal out there, the economy at the time would not have supported it.

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

Sandra Ann Baptiste:  It was going back to Guyana to accept the offer from the World Bank to start the Guyana Office for Investment. I had just come to Canada. I had been here less than six months. I came here in 1993 from Barbados where I had lived for 13 years. And you can imagine packing up all your stuff and coming to Toronto and having a very senior and secure position at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, to have to give that up out of the blue and go all the way back to the Caribbean was a big decision for me because I had come to Canada to start a new life, settle down and find someone to share my life with.

I had to give that up because I had a commitment to the President of Guyana, Dr Cheddi Jagan, who I had known since a teenager, his wife who is like a mother figure to me. When they asked me to come back and be a part of that new adventure of having a country that was now going to start out on free and fair elections, it was wonderful opportunity and an honour for me. That was a very big decision to make, and I had to decide whether I wanted to have a new life in Canada or go back to Guyana. I have never regretted it because that was such a major learning experience for me that when I left GO-Invest and returned to Canada, I was asked by the current President of Guyana, Bharrat Jagdeo (at the time he was the senior Minister of Finance) to go back and work with him for two years. I worked very closely with him as an advisor on investment and private sector development, which also had a major impact on my life and allowed me to work with the business community in Guyana to help shape government policy on business development and also to work with the business community to advance their economic interest.

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

Sandra Ann Baptiste:

1. My exposure at an early age to media and being allowed to cover CARICOM. Having senior journalists around like Rickey Singh, who I consider to be a mentor, and a senior journalist at the Guyana Graphic when I joined the newspaper at 17 years old.
2. Leaving Guyana unexpectedly in the middle of the night – because of threats from a dictator, Mr Forbes Burnham – to flee to Barbados, and this was after the assassination of Walter Rodney, when many of us were threatened about covering the funeral and so forth. Those of us who did the right thing to make sure the funeral was covered were subject to threats. I ended up in Barbados and never expected to be there to stay. I was on my way to Canada and would have had to claim political asylum, but I ended up being offered the job of senior reporter at the brand new first privately owned radio station in Barbados called the Voice of Barbados in July 1980. That shaped my life because I took a new direction, and it ended up being a turning point in me becoming a recognized specialist on Caribbean Affairs and working with the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation as an assistant news editor, working as a senior Journalist for a Caribbean news agency and ultimately for five years as a specialist in the Caribbean for the BBC. During that time, I ended up going to the University of the West Indies in Trinidad to do a Diploma in International Relations. I did a diploma and Masters in the UK. That stint in Barbados shaped my life, and allowed me to become a well-recognized specialist in Caribbean Affairs. I have covered every Heads of Government for over 20 years, and every Trade and Finance Minister meetings of CARICOM.

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

Sandra Ann Baptiste:  Setting up the investment agency for Guyana. It’s not something you would have expected a woman to be doing at that time, and therefore to have that, and working with the entire Cabinet of Guyana, and being asked by the President of Guyana to come back to do that I think was the biggest honour I ever had. I ended up working with three presidents of Guyana – Dr Cheddi Jagan, his wife Janet Jagan when she took over, and Bharrat Jagdeo who is now the president but I worked with him when he was Minister of Finance.

Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?

Sandra Ann Baptiste:  William Demas who was the first CARICOM Secretary General and the President of the Caribbean Development Bank was my mentor. For most of my career, he was the one who encouraged me from the time I was a teenager to get involved in covering CARICOM. He used to send me books and talk to me at length when he became President of the Caribbean Development Bank. And when I moved to Barbados, the mentorship continued and he was one of the people who guided me and had a big effect on my life.

The other person is Dr. Vishnu Persaud who is based in the UK and is with the Commonwealth Secretariat. He was a senior economic advisor at the Commonwealth Secretariat and he also helped to shape my life and interest in global affairs because I covered a lot of international meetings affecting the Caribbean and covered many Commonwealth Heads of Government and Commonwealth Finance Ministers’ meetings so in terms of understanding the global issues, Vishnu Persaud and William Demas are the two people who helped as mentors throughout my career.

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

Sandra Ann Baptiste: The core message was that I should continue to do the kind of detailed research that I was doing, and focus my interest on global affairs as they affect the Caribbean because there weren’t many people doing it. Most journalists in the Caribbean were national journalists covering their own national events. Even when they went to international meetings they covered their own prime ministers. My focus was always on covering the Caribbean and their message to me was to continue to focus on the Caribbean – continue when you go to the global meetings to speak to the Prime Minister of Jamaica, Trinidad and Barbados and cover the regional perspective as opposed to a national perspective. The work I was doing by focusing on CARICOM and not on any individual country was the message that I got, that’s why I have continued to be a specialist in Caribbean Affairs.

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?

Sandra Ann Baptiste:  Have integrity and be qualified in what you do because you can’t shape people’s lives, you can’t be respected if you don’t have integrity. And if you’re mentoring people, you have to be an expert in the area. Although I had so much experience as a journalist, I eventually made sure that I went and studied international relations. I went and got my Masters with distinction from the UK because I wanted to have the professional experience and qualification so that if I’m mentoring anybody it’s not just me having experience, I know what the standards are globally.

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.

Other Interviews

• Interview With Invisible Mentor Carol McManus, America’s LinkedIn Lady (theinvisiblementor.com)
• Interview With Invisible Mentor Jeanne-Marie Robillard, Senior Account Executive, National Speakers Bureau (theinvisiblementor.com)
• Mentor Yourself – Interview With Invisible Mentor Dan Elash, Principal, Syntient, Part II (theinvisiblementor.com)
• Mentor Yourself: Interview With Invisible Mentor Julie Daniluk, TV Host Part II (theinvisiblementor.com)
• Mentor Yourself – Interview With Invisible Mentor Jo Ann Langer, Senior Retail Executive Part II (theinvisiblementor.com)
• Mentor Yourself: Interview With Invisible Mentor Gary Vurnum, Author (theinvisiblementor.com)
• Mentor Yourself – Interview With Invisible Mentor Dan Elash, Principal, Syntient (theinvisiblementor.com)
• Mentor Yourself: Interview With Invisible Mentor Jo Ann Langer, Senior Level Retail Executive (theinvisiblementor.com)
• Mentor Yourself: Interview With Invisible Mentor Julie Daniluk, TV Host, Nutritionist, Motivational Speaker, Writer (theinvisiblementor.com)
• Interview With Invisible Mentor Stefan Meister, Director, intercultures (theinvisiblementor.com)

This is what we talked about on The Invisible Mentor Blog this week: Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville, Wisdom of Life Profile: Thomas Carlyle, British Historian, Essayist and Leading Social Critic, and Julie Daniluk, TV Show Host, Author, and Nutritionist.

Adventures in Learning

Self-mentoring is not a new concept, and according to Dr. Marsha L. Carr from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, “Self-mentoring occurs when the achiever (mentee) is willing to take the initiative while accepting responsibility for his/her own development by devoting time to navigate within the culture of his/her environment in order to make the most of opportunity to strengthen competencies needed to enhance job performance and career progression.”

Self-Mentoring – an Idea for the Twenty-First Century 

Booked for Mentoring

Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street is a short story by Herman Melville and is one of the oddest stories I have ever read. You are not given sufficient details in the story, and at the end you are left with many questions that you cannot really answer. Despite that, it’s a fascinating story.

Book Review – Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street by Herman Melville 

Wisdom of Life Profile

British Historian, Essayist and Leading Social Critic of Victorian England, Thomas Carlyle was born close to the end of the 18th century in Scotland. His father was a staunch Calvinist. Thomas attended Annan Grammar school and later Edinburgh University in 1809 where he distinguished himself in mathematics. He was also a voracious reader. It was Thomas’ intention to enter ministry, but he changed his mind because he lost his faith while attending university.

Profile of Wisdom – Thomas Carlyle, British Historian, Essayist and Leading Social Critic of Victorian England 

Quarter-plate daguerreotype of Thomas Carlyle (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Interviews for Mentoring

This week we featured Julie Daniluk, Nutritionist, Motivational Speaker, Writer, and TV Host. Daniluk contributes her success to her team, and she is right because no one succeeds alone. Here are Part I and Part II of Julie Daniluk’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.

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