The Invisible Mentor » Self-improvement

The Invisible Mentor Week in Review

Avil Beckford — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 13:13:53 +0000

This is what we talked about on The Invisible Mentor Blog this week: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, Black History Month – Booker T Washington, Principal, Tuskegee Institute and Author of Up From Slavery and Nathon Gunn, CEO, Social Game Universe.

Adventures in Learning

How does a phenomenon get started? You’ve all heard the phrase six degrees of separation, which is the idea that any two people in the world can be connected through six steps or less, through a chain of intermediaries.

Adventures in Learning: Six Degrees of Separation

Booked for Mentoring

The Count of Monte Cristoby Alexandre Dumas (1802 – 1870) is one of the best books that I have read, and if you love a good story filled with drama, then this is the book for you. I was very captivated and wanted to find out how the story ended. I was a bit disappointed with the ending, but you do not always get what you want. With any good book, there are many life lessons embedded in the story, as well as big ideas.

Image via Wikipedia

Book Review: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Wisdom of Life Profile

Born into slavery, Booker T Washington was one of the leading African American figures in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In 1881, on the recommendation of his mentor Samuel Armstrong, a former Union Army general, Washington was placed in charge of the Tuskegee Negro Normal Institute. He received $2,000 from the government for salaries, but there was no campus, buildings, students or staff. When Washington died in 1915, Tuskegee Institute had 1,500 students enrolled, 250 faculty members and the largest endowment for any African American Institution, not bad for someone who was born a slave.

Black History Month – Booker T. Washington, Principal, Tuskegee Institute and Author of Up From Slavery

Interviews for Mentoring

This week we featured Nathon Gunn, CEO, Social Game Universe. A big message from Gunn is radical self-reliance – mentors are great, and having partners are great, however, there are times when you have to move forward even if it means going it alone. Here are Part One and Part Two of Nathon Gunn’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 Nathon Gunn, CEO, Social Game Universe Part II (theinvisiblementor.com)
Mentor Yourself With Nathon Gunn, CEO, Social Game Universe (theinvisiblementor.com)
Book Review: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (theinvisiblementor.com)
Adventures in Learning: Six Degrees of Separation (theinvisiblementor.com)

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Mentor Yourself With Nathon Gunn, CEO, Social Game Universe Part II

Avil Beckford — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:30:45 +0000

Interviewee Name: Nathon Gunn, CEO

Company Name: Social Game Universe

Website: http://www.socialgameuniverse.com

OMDC Digital Dialogue 22 of 24: Visioning the Digital Future

If you cannot view this YouTube video, please click here.

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Nathon Gunn: I am the CEO of a company called Social Game Universe and I also started another company called Bitcasters, which is still going. I’m an entrepreneur, and an innovator and I’m very passionate about creating new things. I work in new media and technology.

Image via CrunchBase

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

Nathon Gunn: I work with a lot of my friends and sometimes that’s a good thing and sometimes a bad thing but I certainly do socialize. I work with the people I love, and often these are the same folks I’m friends with. In that way my life is integrated. I try to have a balance, try to make sure I have time away from the office, but I also do enjoy, on a personal level, all the travel that work brings for me, so I often try to make work go in the direction of the personal side of my life. I will go to New York to do business because I like being in New York and seeing my friends there, so I do integrate in those ways. But I also try to keep some healthy distance because you can’t be at work all the time.

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

Nathon Gunn: You mean not at Birmingham? (he laughs). I’m not usually at Birmingham. I like to go to the movies because it’s kind of a nice way to relax. My best friend Duane and I play tennis, my friend Ian and I play tennis as well. I love going to the island here in Toronto and get away from the city a little bit, and occasionally I play computer games though making computer games sometimes you don’t want to play them after you get off work.

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

Nathon Gunn: I’m no guru so I guess I’ll just be parroting what other people have said because clichés are clichés for a reason.

You have to just do it to quote Nike. It’s the same thing I said about radical self-reliance, put one foot in front of the other or the old adage, every journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step.
Then you have to stick to it, putting one foot in front of the other doesn’t complete the journey, putting many feet in front of the other does complete the journey.
The journey is never really over. If you don’t enjoy the process then you’re doing the wrong thing. If you’re living for the destination then I know these are clichés but they are really true. I have noticed a whole year or months and months go by, and said to myself, “What was I doing?” and I said, “I was working on this thing to get to here.” And I realized that here never arrived, and it’s really killed me how I wasted three months, and in one case a year doing something that in the end I didn’t care about.
Happiness is an important part of everything. I read about happiness, I think in the Harvard Business Review, that there were a few key aspects to happiness. You have to feel like you’re making progress at something that’s a challenge and meaningful to you. Those things have to all go hand-in-hand because if you’re not making progress, and its’ challenging and meaningful, that doesn’t do it and if you are making progress but it’s not challenging, even though it’s meaningful then that isn’t good, and if it’s not meaningful, and you’re making progress, even though it’s challenging then that doesn’t do it. So there has to be all those things and I try to focus myself on that.
Remember that at the end of the day, all the work stuff is secondary to making sure that you leave the world a better place, and that you have friends that you can say at the end of the day that their lives are better because you were there.

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

Nathon Gunn: I steal them! Maybe that’s one of the few times you hear people say something like that but it’s an honest part of creating ideas. I don’t think many things come from absolutely nowhere. I think you have to be an absorber of great ideas to put things together in new ways. I work with a big team of creative, brilliant people so we get together as a group and generate great ideas together. We bounce ideas off each other. Moses Znaimer, my old boss, used to sign his name to various TV shows that he did, and that’s fine, but along with those signatures was a long list of credits for the other people who worked on those products. When you watch the end of a TV show you see those names and it’s a collaborative process. I think it’s a big part of generating great ideas, since you’ve asked, I have to tell you one of the funniest ways that I’ve generated great ideas – when we have creative brainstorming sessions, I notice I will hear a really good idea from somebody and I would repeat it back to the person I heard it from, and they will laugh and say, “You misheard me totally, that’s not the idea? It’s this other idea.” And often enough, the idea I misheard is a really good idea so sometimes bad hearing helps us to generate great ideas.

Avil Beckford: What’s your favourite quotation and why?

Nathon Gunn: “Do not squander time for that is the stuff life is made of,” Benjamin Franklin, or “I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things,” Benjamin Franklin.

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

Nathon Gunn: My definition of success is accomplishing our goals and we choose what our goals are. I have chosen goals that have to do with innovating and creating new products that hopefully will be delightful to people, but also make a difference and be positive in the world. I select those goals based on what is realistic, what’s going to be unique, not just copying other people but how we can take things a step further, but not reach so far that we automatically fail.

Some of those decisions in terms of choosing the goals and aiming for and working on them, is the formula for success. But if there is one thing that I have found, is the big part for the formula for success because you can pick the wrong goal, have the timing wrong, you can make mistakes along the way, and none of those have to necessarily fail if you persist, if you don’t give up. If you keep refactoring what you learn, and keep reapplying it to what you’re trying to do, and sometimes adjusting what you’re trying to do, that’s the formula for success.

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

Nathon Gunn: I made a point of working with the best people I could find. I made a point of conceptualizing the most interesting projects that I could imagine that were realistic opportunities that would be in demand by the customers and the audience. And I used those conceptual ideas for really exciting and interesting products to inspire the best people I could find, and then together we went and found support, and opened doors to the kinds of partners who we wanted to work with. I would say it requires reading about things, it requires meeting people to make sure you have access to talent requires understanding your industry, know which doors you want to open, and which people you need to talk to. It requires learning how to talk to those people, in their language, about the things that you want to do, and then it just requires work and persistence, – not to beat a dead horse – but that’s been my formula, and it seems to work.

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

Nathon Gunn: There are a lot of tactical things I talked about in the question above, but none of it would be possible if I wasn’t passionate about what I was doing. I’ve really been excited about the ideas in my head, the people around me, now I’ve designed it so that the people around me are exciting, and I’ve tried to focus my thoughts on exciting things. I’ve tried to find people and partners to work with who are exciting and interesting to me. But if I were to give a piece of advice that could work for anybody, I think it has to be that old saying that you have to love what you do. Because everything will follow from there if you love it, something will wake you up in the morning and ask you what you will do next and you will find an answer, if something wakes you up in the morning and says, I want to do this. And it has to come from inside you, so if you don’t have it you have to look for that. Before you can study the mechanical parts of making it work you have to find the fuel and the fire inside that going to make the mechanical parts do their job.

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?

Nathon Gunn:

Nelson Mandela is an incredible human being. I’ve always wanted to meet him and in fact I wrote a letter to his elders’ organization and was asked to do some work, but we haven’t had the right opportunity, but that would be one of the great heroes for me. There are obvious ones, people who have character and strength – Winston Churchill would be a fascinating guy to meet. He was a man who had his mistakes and foibles and maybe wouldn’t have been a great leader without the challenges at the time, but it was phenomenal. Gandhi of course – those are big names that anybody could easily cite but of course they are big names because they have done incredible things. I would of course be delighted to meet them. In terms of living people, I have met Richard Branson but we didn’t get to chat. He is a fascinating character because he did things through creative pursuit, passions but turned them into businesses and he’s also had a flair for making a big name for himself without coming across as a pompous jerk so I’ve always admired his ability to generate publicity for his companies without looking like a pompous jerk.

The fifth person should stand for all the people who I meet every day, to say that they are all famous isn’t fair. I think sometimes you meet a hero in a book shop. I was looking at antique furniture, I met the woman running the store, and she started telling me a story about how she escaped Berlin when she was a little girl. Moses Znaimer told me a story when I went into his office and said hey, “look at this photo of you and Jack Nicholson, what was it like to meet him?” And Moses said, “Well it wasn’t as interesting as the conversation that I had with the woman who has been working in my garden.” It turns out that she had escaped from Eastern Europe as well so we compared notes on that. And I had to say that’s an interesting point he made to me, so I’ll share that point. There are people who you cross paths with every day and they are heroes in their own way and that’s important.

It would be interesting to meet my grandparents. I had a grandfather who worked on the railroad and a grandmother who died before I could meet her, a great grandmother who died from leukemia, all of whom I’ve heard stories, who lived through such incredible times. They had such an impact on my parents, wouldn’t it be amazing to know them?

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

Nathon Gunn: It was Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence. He wasn’t a doctor but he spoke to many doctors who had been studying the idea of emotional intelligence. Many people will be taking this for granted at this stage in history because his book had such a big impact and changed so many people’s views about what smart really is. But before that book came out, the further back you go, generally the accepted view on intelligence was that it’s analytical skills, can you do the math, can you remember the answer to this question? I had a number of people around me in my life who had high IQ. They had numerous degrees, and they worked from 5 am in the morning to 5 at night, and to be very honest it kind of intimidated me. I thought, “God I’m not that smart, will I ever want to get up at 5 am and do what these people do?” I sure like sleeping in.

The first time I was exposed to that book was in the form of an article in Harvard Business Review and it was emotional intelligence applied to leadership, and it talked about the qualities of a good leader. And the qualities that were cited were things like empathy for people, the ability to understand the people you work with is a quality that makes you a good leader. You look at Warren Bennis and other books on leadership, and look at some of the older stuff and you see things important to be the head of General Motors, the head of General Electric, but really inspired leaders have empathy. Other qualities in the list include ability to be self-deprecating and look at your own self and laugh.

These were things I couldn’t believe were including in a list for a leader. I thought being a leader and being smart meant you could do the math puzzles, you could boss people around, you could get up at five in the morning, and you never showed any weakness, so that book changed my view of what being a good leader really meant, and what being a success in business really meant. And I have quoted that book many times to friends. I’ve had friends say, “I’m not smart,” and these are some of the smartest people I know. For people who are not familiar with the concept of emotional intelligence should take a look at it because it goes to the qualities that you need to have to make the brain do the things it needs to do to succeed in life.

They had one study in the book where they looked at all the smart people who worked at Bell Labs where PhD and Nobel Laureates worked and they found the guys who did very well were the one who walked around and talked to other guys. Because instead of sitting at their desks working on a puzzle for a month, they might find out it had already been solved just down the hall. So some of those social and emotional skills are part of intelligence and that book changed my life by showing me that.

[See article Read Study science and math to get ahead in the future of work, right? Gigaom.com]

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?

Nathon Gunn:

Two Years

I could build a boat out of the book and try to leave, books wouldn’t float, darn it. I think the thing that is most interesting to me about being on a deserted island for two years is the idea that for once I do not have to do some of the things that I do here in Toronto, so I would want to meditate, a lot. I wouldn’t have a lot of choice, would I? I would start by saying I would want to think deeply about things that I just don’t have time to think about. When my life is spent trying to accomplish goals, and move fast from thing to thing, the thing I don’t get to do enough of is to actually read philosophical books that deal with really deep issues and spend time meditating on it.

My first answer was going to be that I would bring all sorts of gadgets and digital goodies in my suitcase so I could keep inventing things, but maybe the best thing about being on your island, is I could stop inventing things and start meditating on things.

I would probably go stir crazy at some point and start trying to invent things with whatever else I had, but that’s about it.

Five Books

The five books would be nothing about accomplishing things. There would be a book on physics, literature, philosophy, politics and humanities. So books with big ideas that you can put in your head and let them jumble around.

Movie and Music CD

I love movies, you have taken all my fun away! I don’t think I could pick just one movie, I love so many movies. I would bring a movie that a friend had made because I have a number of friends who are film makers. I would bring one of their films so I could think about the process of creativity, and the process of my friends being artists, and participate in their art. And if it was only one music CD, I would burn it myself with mp3 so that I could fit 600 songs on there and it would be a mix of everything.

Avil Beckford: What excites you about life?

Nathon Gunn: I love life and I get excited everyday by new things. I love to discover new things. I’m addicted to new experiences and I like to travel and discover new things and I can do that inn my work. I like meeting new people and I like discovering new interactions with people and new things about myself through all of that.

In general, I like the wild, creative, exciting adventure that is life everyday when you go out and try new things.

Avil Beckford: How do you nurture your soul?

Nathon Gunn: I spend time with good friends, and on my own, and I think about the ways I can try to improve and the mistakes I’ve made and the ways I can correct them. I try to remind myself to think about other people, and put their needs and thoughts ahead of mine and then go back at life with that in mind. But I think I nurture my souls largely around people who I admire who have qualities that inspire me.

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

Nathon Gunn: I’ve been very lucky to have support from mentors, and the world, so I can’t say I haven’t had it, but the hardest things in life have been when the support has been inconsistent or when I couldn’t find the support to make progress through the difficult challenges. If the genie could give me one reasonable thing, it would be consistency and stability and support that you can always count on, that’s always there. I know a lot of people think that’s a bunch of money, but I think it takes different forms at different times so I would ask the genie in a very vague way so that I could have money one time, friends another, and just a nice place to sleep at night.

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

Nathon Gunn: I’m making progress in something I care about that is a challenge, especially when I’m doing it with friends.

Book links are affiliate links.

Video Credit: OMDC Digital Dialogue 22 of 24: Visioning the Digital Future Uploaded by OMDConline on Aug 3, 2010

Mentor Yourself With Nathon Gunn, CEO, Social Game Universe (theinvisiblementor.com)
The Chief Mentoring Officer Interviews Annemie Ress, Senior HRD eBay & Global Engagement Lead at eBay (theinvisiblementor.com)
The Chief Mentoring Officer Interviews Annemie Ress, Senior HRD eBay & Global Engagement Lead at eBay, Part Two (theinvisiblementor.com)
Mentor Yourself: Interview With Maggie Berry, Women in Technology Part II (theinvisiblementor.com)

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Mentor Yourself With Nathon Gunn, CEO, Social Game Universe

Avil Beckford — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:33:14 +0000

Interviewee Name: Nathon Gunn, CEO

Company Name: Social Game Universe

Website: http://www.socialgameuniverse.com

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Image via CrunchBase

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

Nathon Gunn: A typical day for me is spent answering a lot of emails. At the moment we’re producing a number of products, so I have creative teams who are constantly asking questions, so a big part of my day is just dealing with the constant traffic cropping of creative ideas, and moving the right pieces to the right people. But I also try to make sure that I exercise a little bit every day, see my friends and have a bit of social time.

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

Nathon Gunn: I’m motivated by innovation, and I’m very excited when I see opportunities to do new things, things that haven’t been done yet. That is something that gets me going naturally, I don’t have to think about it too much, but on days when I’m down, I’m often motivated by the idea that I have a whole bunch of people who have invested in me – their money, time and careers and that gets me motivated because I don’t want to let anybody down.

On other occasions I get motivated when I see other people in the market innovating or creating things that I think I should have thought of, or we are working on. So sometimes I’m motivated by competition.

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

Nathon Gunn: We work a lot in the internet industry, and one of the things I did in the nineties was I created a technology for uploading video to the web. I believed in the idea of users creating their own content, instead of big companies creating content and distributing it to users, and that’s what is now known as user-generated content. I worked for nearly four years trying to convince the big companies to get behind me, support me and build this. What I wish we had done differently was just built and launched the product.

We’re are living in an era with technology where you can, with a couple of people, build and launch things, and you find out very quickly if it works or doesn’t. I probably would have changed my need to be loved by the big companies, and my need to get the big companies to support me because of a psychological dependence on what I had grown up with – the idea that CBS and NBC and ABC were the big players and you had to be involved with them. So I was hampered by something that I don’t think the new generation of entrepreneurs really are as much, and I would change that.

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

Nathon Gunn: I discovered that I’m resilient. We survived quite a few ups and downs in the marketplace, and I really believe that one of the things that made it possible for us to succeed was the ability to weather the storm. I have discovered that I can weather the storm, and that’s something that I’ve done on a personal level, as well as a professional level. That gives me confidence for what’s coming up ahead, and we can’t expect calm skies forever, and at the moment things are going well for us, but I’m confident that I can get through any storms. So that is a discovery I made.

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

Nathon Gunn:

We had lots of opportunities, and in some cases we weren’t following up on them as well as we might have, and in some cases we weren’t prioritizing the right opportunities, so we were choosing to focus on things that seemed interesting but was draining our time, away from where it needed to go. One of the ways we are dealing with that is I’ve put a couple of people who I trust in charge of business development, and have given the control to them to decide what the priorities are so they can push back on me if I seem to be putting energy into the wrong things.
Another threat to our success is the fact that technology is always changing and the kinds of products we are making are changing, and people are making other products that do a better job, or can do a better job so we have to stay on top of the competition and have to keep innovating and we have to be fast. I would say that our biggest challenge is that things take longer than we want them to and the market is changing fast. We are a small company still but we’re getting to the size now that we can’t move like two people in a basement, and that’s something that we have to deal with.
The other threat is the great unknown. We work a lot with Facebook and every day it changes its rules, so we have to stay nimble and we also have to make sure that we diversify so we’re not just dependent on one partnership, such as we are right now with Facebook. We’re very excited that Google+ has been announced and we are looking forward to working with them, it gives us another avenue for our business.

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

Nathon Gunn: We haven’t talked too much about the services that we provide – what the company does. We create technology that supports social games on platforms like Facebook and Google+ as I mentioned before. And what’s unique about our products is that they interconnect games. So if you’re play My Farm, and I’m playing Hollywood Tycoon, which are two different games, I can see that you’re in My Farm while I’m playing Hollywood Tycoon and I can make it rain on you, and you can see that I’m in Hollywood Tycoon and you can set a zombie loose from my horror set, and the core innovation there for us is that I have made it possible for friends to see and play with each other, even when they like different kinds of games. That provides for a lot of interesting things like being able to discover another person’s game and be able to buy things for your friends in those games. And we are actually moving that out of games. So if I were to sum that up – we silo and reconnect friends in the different experiences that they care about and we let them do meaningful things to each other wherever they are.

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?

Nathon Gunn: I’ve had lots of major challenges. I would say the dotcom crash when we went through that in 2000, 2001 was the most significant moment in my career, and the biggest thing that I have recovered from professionally. Most of my competitors in the new media space went bankrupt. We were probably one or two percent of the companies that survived. Nearly all the people who I knew in the business were wiped out. They are still in business in some capacity, some are working for people, some have started other companies. But we were brought down from a point where we had 30 staff to me being half-a-million in debt and two staff, and I had a choice of walking away or trying to dig my way back out of a hole and I chose to dig our way out the hole, paid all our bills and we built our staff back up. We raised some money and I’m really proud of that. I certainly learned that having 30 staff in the early days of the dotcom phenomenon was a measure of success, and the lesson I learned is that lean and mean is the measure of success. The true measure of success is having revenue, your products are selling, and people are using them.

You have to focus on the right things, not growing and trying to be impressive. When you go to a dinner party and people say, “How much staff do you have?” I often want to say to them that that’s the wrong question to ask, the better question to ask is, “How many people love what you do? How many people are willing to pay to have your product? How engaged are they with you and how much do they love being engaged with you?” So I learned to focus on the right things and that’s been the biggest challenge in my career so far.

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

Nathon Gunn: Life has been a series of little, big breaks. I have struggled at every stage to bust through to the next. So you could say that I have had a number along the way. I snuck off the CityTV tour they used to give at the broadcast station, and I got my first job by begging this lady who worked in the graphics department to let me come in. She was sick the next day, and Steve Hurlbut who was running the newsroom thought that I had been working there and hired so he put me to work, and only discovered a few days later that I had not been hire by anyone, so that was one big break.

A few years later when I was getting involved in new media, Dr. Tom Axworthy – former Chief of Staff for Pierre Trudeau – who was running Charles Bronfman Family Foundation, was looking for someone young who knew about new media, took an interest in my career, my business partner, Duane Wall’s career and made a real effort to help us learn about business and also to give us opportunities, and I would say, in that way Tom really became a mentor.

In addition, the opportunities that Moses Znaimer gave me at CityTV were a form of mentorship. We’ve had many little, big breaks. And if you want the biggest one, it’s the support, the continuous support of Tom Axworthy throughout the years.

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

Nathon Gunn: In many ways I have already talked about that. One of the things I did which I mentioned before is that we created a tool for uploading video to the web, that’s the user-generated content that I was trying to get all the big broadcast companies to support. We pitched Barry Diller who runs IAC/InterActiveCorp, we presented it to the Weinsteins (Harry and Bob) who ran Miramax, we presented it to the Bronfmans, to the head of Canwest, and nobody would support it.

I think the biggest mistake I made, my biggest failure, was talking to them, instead of building it. I would say that that exercise has taught me that I need to focus on building and executing and launching, not on getting people to buy into an idea, but rather showing people that the idea makes money and succeeds.

The biggest failure was in the nineties when it was possible to raise $10 million and launch what became YouTube, and I didn’t do it. I will never forget that lesson, and I will always work to build and launch as opposed to raise money and talk people into things.

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

Nathon Gunn: Perhaps the toughest decision has been over the last few years to let go of many of the things my company Bitcasters was doing. Bitcasters was the company for 15 years that I ran, that was the first company that I started, and we realized along the way that we had an opportunity in social games, and although Bitcasters was making TV commercials, animated kids’ shows, we were working with Paul Martin (former Canadian Prime Minister) on his election campaign, we were doing very exciting work, it was very clear to me that if we didn’t focus my energy on one opportunity, we were always going to be proud of our work, working with great people, but we might not have that home run that would define us as winners and “succeeders” in the market, that would then open doors to us for doing the other things we wanted.

I decided to do one thing well for a little while to give us the credibility and the success in the market, which will hopefully open the door for us to do the things we love in the other areas, but to do one at a time. That’s been a hard decision to be honest, because we had some amazing people and projects that I’ve had to let go of, and it’s impacted me because I’ve lost some friends who I worked with because of that. They had invested in that direction and I had to change directions. It’s impacted me, and it has also impacted me positively as well, and I’m confident that in the long run that many of those relationships will be revived by going back with the success we realized here and revisiting the projects we want to do.

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

Nathon Gunn:

Travel: My family moved to India when I was about 11 years old, and we were there for a few years and then we moved to Malaysia for a couple of years, and then Australia. The travel really shaped my life. From an early age I saw myself as a global citizen, and I saw the world as my oyster, rather than thinking about an opportunity in Saskatoon, Victoria or Toronto, I thought about an opportunity In New York and Paris and Tokyo. And I don’t think you have to travel to do that, but it made it really easy for me to see that the world is a global economy, a global village that we all participate in and anybody in Canada, through technology can actually compete in that global market. So that was one thing that shaped my life.
On a smaller level, my dad brought home a Commodore 64 when we were living in India and I programmed my first games, and did my first animations on those computers – we had an Apple II E at school, so certainly the arrival of the computer into my house, and the ability to play games and my desire to tinker with those games and figure out how you change them made a big impact on my lifelong journey of working in new media and digital technology.
And I think mentorship, since it’s the topic of some of your work here. I think it’s important to recognize that it’s a major thing that happened in my life, and I sought this out. It didn’t just happened to me, but I have made a point of being aligned with, and involved with people that I admired and respected, and out of that has grown various kinds of mentorship and I would say that has shaped my life on a personal and professional level.

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

Nathon Gunn: I’m really proud that after the dotcom crash, even though a lot of the problems that I had, were created by me, making some of the mistakes I made, I’m very proud that I didn’t close down Bitcasters. I’m very proud that we spent the next few years building that company back up. We survived the hardest business challenge you could expect, which is a recession and a complete dissolution of a market and we survived it. We realigned ourselves and we survived it. I would say that’s one of my proudest because it meant that I was able to employ people, and it meant that I was able to continue the work that I love, and we were able to pay back the people who invested in us.

Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?

Nathon Gunn: It’s funny how mentors can influence your life. Certainly one of the most important things has been support. When things are tough, you need people who you can talk to about the challenges, and you need people who support you even when you make mistakes. Mentors have been there and they know what you’re going through, so they can lend a kind of empathy, as well as intelligent advice that you can’t get from friends necessarily. I have been influenced to be a good person, to be ethical, by some of my mentors who have made it a point of living their lives in a wonderful way by giving back to people even in their mentorship. And so by example they have led the way. I have done my best, and will continue to try to do my best and follow in their examples. I think they have influenced my life to remember to be generous to other people, and to be ethical in dealings, to take the high road whenever you can.

In some cases, I’ve had mentors who I’ve seen do things, and they’ve even talked about some of the things they’ve done wrong, and I’ve learned from negative examples or what not to do. And a good mentor will be quite candid about that, and I think in another way my life’s been influenced by mentors was simply through generosity. Sometimes a door needs to be opened and you just can’t open it yourself so I think that’s another way they have influenced my life.

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

Nathon Gunn: I received a lot, but if there was one core message, is to stick to it. There have been many lessons that have been important to me because of my specific strengths and weaknesses. But if there is one thing that a mentor has shared, and the mentors have brought to the table in their message is to stick to it, because these are all people who have made it through thick and thin, and we are all people who go through thick and thin, and one of the few things that you can’t get from anybody else, that you can get from mentors is the reminder that you can make it if you stick with it.

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?

Nathon Gunn: I have to speak from my own experiences and my own thoughts. I went to Burning Man festival – camping in the desert, with 60,000 other crazy people, and you have to bring your own water, food, your own tent, and everything you have to bring in. There is no way to buy anything and it’s hours away from any hospitals. It’s what they call radical self-reliance. As I told you the story about how I tried to get my company supported by the big broadcast companies even though what I was trying to do was reinvent broadcast, I can see a parallel between going to Burning Man and needing to bring everything of your own and my problem trying to get everybody to support me in the early days and I would say perhaps the best lesson is radical self-reliance.

It’s good to know that you have mentors to support you, and it’s good to know I have friends at Burning Man, but the reality is that you have to be prepared to build these things on your own, you have to be willing to step one foot in front of the other and head out on your own, and amazingly people will come in behind you and support you but you can’t wait for somebody else to do it for you. You can’t expect to be reliant on anybody else.

Waldo Emerson Self-Reliance

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Video Credit: Waldo Emerson Self-Reliance - Uploaded by ajhande on Dec 29, 2009

Interviews for Mentoring: Invisible Mentor, Maggie Berry, Women in Technology (theinvisiblementor.com)
Mentor Yourself: Interview With Maggie Berry, Women in Technology Part II (theinvisiblementor.com)
Interview With Invisible Mentor Carol McManus, America’s LinkedIn Lady (theinvisiblementor.com)
Interview With Invisible Mentor Carol McManus, America’s LinkedIn Lady Part II (theinvisiblementor.com)
The Chief Mentoring Officer Interviews Annemie Ress, Senior HRD eBay & Global Engagement Lead at eBay (theinvisiblementor.com)
The Chief Mentoring Officer Interviews Annemie Ress, Senior HRD eBay & Global Engagement Lead at eBay, Part Two (theinvisiblementor.com)

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Black History Month – Booker T. Washington, Principal, Tuskegee Institute and Author of Up From Slavery

Avil Beckford — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:30:49 +0000

This month is Black History Month and today we profile Booker T Washington, and follow up with other profiles of people who contributed to black history.

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Name: Booker T. Washington

Birth Date: April 1856 – November 1915

Job Functions: American Educator, Author, Speaker, Leader

Fields: Education

Known For: The first African American to dine at the White House, Up From Slavery, and the first teacher at Tuskegee Institute

Booker T. Washington was born into slavery, his mother was a slave and his father was a white man whose identity he never knew. Washington always had a hunger for learning. While he was a houseboy for Mrs. Ruffner – wife of a mine owner where Washington used to work in – he was fascinated by all the books he saw in the house. She taught him how to read and constantly encouraged him. Washington was determined to get a higher education.

He learned about Hampton Agricultural Institute – an institute focused on industrial and agricultural training as well as teaching – which was founded in 1868 by Samuel Armstrong, a former Union Army general. Armstrong believed that freed slaves were entitled to an education in manual skills, to allow them to take care of themselves. The school allowed African Americans to finance their education by working at the school. In 1872, Washington walked a great distance to attend Hampton Agricultural Institute in Virginia from where he was living in West Virginia.

When he arrived at Hampton Agricultural Institute, Washington begged to attend the school and offered to work to pay his way. They asked him to do some cleaning to examine the quality of his work, and he was given the position of janitor. Armstrong believed in good hygiene, strong morals and self-discipline and became a mentor to Washington.

After Washington graduated in 1875, he taught in Madden, West Virginia, and later taught at Hampton Institute. In 1881, Washington was at the right place at the right time. A new school, Tuskegee Negro Normal Institute was opened in Alabama, and Samuel Armstrong recommended that Washington be placed in charge as principal of the new school. He followed the model of Hampton Agricultural Institute and placed an emphasis on learning practical skills, and manual trades such as farming, carpentry, brick-making, shoemaking, printing, mechanics, cooking and teaching. He also espoused discipline, cleanliness and thrift among his students. Female students learned arts such as sewing and canning.

Booker T. Washington

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Since all that Washington was given was $2,000 from the government to pay salaries, he had to find students, teachers, and build a school. Not daunted by this challenge, Washington traveled across the United States speaking to both blacks and whites to raise funds for building and equipment. During his travels, he emphasized the importance and need for African Americans to become economically self sufficient before they seek political rights. He was very well received especially by those who were for segregation. The first students of Tuskegee Institute attended classes at the nearby African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and when classes were dismissed, they made bricks, which they used to build the school themselves. They grew their own produce to feed themselves.

Washington gained prominence as a speaker and was often invited to give speeches. In 1895, he addressed an all-white audience at the Cotton States and the International Exposition in Atlanta and gave a speech that is now dubbed the “Atlanta Compromise” (http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/39/). In this infamous speech, Washington told his audience that if African Americans improved themselves in economic and educational matters, they would me more law abiding citizens and be less resentful of whites. He denounced political protests by blacks, and recommended economic advancement as a more effective solution than political demonstrations to racial discord.

Not everyone was pleased with Washington’s conservative views. Some African Americans, whites, as well as leaders, felt that civil rights should not be compromised, and did not agree with Washington’s emphasis on the trades – some African Americans wanted to become professionals. This opposition led to the creation of the Niagara Movement in 1905, which was the precursor to the National Association for the advancement of Colored People in 1910.

Despite the criticisms, Washington continued on his path, preaching his message of accommodation. He gained power and prominence and was an advisor to Presidents William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft on political appointments of African Americans and race relations. Washington urged his students to become capitalists, and he put his teachings to practice by establishing the National Negro Business League. It was at one of the National Negro Business League’s Conventions that Madam C J Walker spoke up from the floor about her journey to becoming a business woman after Booker T. Washington ignored her attempts to meet with him. The next year, he allowed Madam Walker to speak at his convention.

Business Philosophy

Booker T. Washington advocated for moral development and economic self-sufficiency for African Americans who now had to take care of themselves after being freed from slavery. He wanted African Americans to become capitalists, to own their own homes and businesses, to be apolitical and create self-sufficient communities.

Booker T. Washington’s Steps to Success

Washington worked hard all his life to attain success – he worked at the salt furnaces, the coal mines while he pursued his education (this was before he attended Hampton Institute). He was also a house servant which was less gruelling than the other jobs.
He traveled the country to raise funds for Tuskegee Institute, speaking to both blacks and whites.
Students and faculty of Tuskegee Institute worked together to plant crops and make bricks for the new buildings.
Washington was skilled at fundraising and possessed business savvy. He developed strong relationships with philanthropists: Andrew Carnegie, George Eastman, Henry H. Rogers and Julius Rosenwald.
He built a network of social and financial relationships that eventually took him to the pinnacle of national and international recognition.
He used the “Tuskegee Machine” a network of connections to media, business, and politics to increase his power and to discredit and weaken his black opponents and white supporters who were for civil rights.
He secured funds for African American institutions from Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.
He wrote his autobiography, Up From Slavery, which was a groundbreaking and inspiring book that allowed him to raise funds for Tuskegee.
After a bad experience with his ghostwriter for his first autobiography, The Story of My Life, Washington hired white Boston journalist, Max Bennett Thrasher with whom he worked closely with and even wrote several section himself.
Max Bennett Thrasher also became head of publicity for Tuskegee.
By 1888, that’s seven years later, Tuskegee expanded to cover 549 acres and have over 400 students. By 1915, the year Washington died, the school had 1500 students and the largest endowment of any black institution.

Many may not have liked Booker T. Washington’s business philosophy, and his “politics of accommodation.” However, they cannot deny the positive impact he had on the lives of African Americans. He used the money from his biography Up From Slavery to fund Tuskegee Institute to ensure that it had a solid financial base. Up From Slavery was first serialized in the periodical, Outlook, which had over 100,000 readers, from November 3, 1900 to February 23, 1901 and was published into book form in March 1901 by Doubleday.

In some accounts of Booker T. Washington’s life, they report that he later realized that accommodation wasn’t enough for African Americans to attain their proper place in society. Instead of speaking out about the change in his beliefs, he instead quietly gave money to support the causes that were against “accommodationism.”

Further Reading

Booker T. Washington National Monument (http://www.nps.gov/bowa/index.htm)
Booker T. Washington (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_people_booker.html)
Booker T. Washington – YouTube video (http://youtu.be/_Hsd55AK53U)
Black History Month – Madam C J Walker, Operated the Largest Black-Owned Business in the Early Twentieth Century
Wisdom of Life: Abraham Lincoln, 16th President, Led America through the Civil War
Women of Wisdom: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abolitionist and Author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Wise Women: Jane Addams, Pioneer in Social Reform, Founder of Hull House and First American Woman to be Awarded a Nobel Peace Prize
Booked for Mentoring: Book Review – Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Works Cited/Referenced

American History Through Literature, 1870 – 1920

American Decades

UXL Encyclopedia of World Biography

Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History, Second Edition

American Decades Primary Sources, 1900 – 1909

Encyclopedia of Education

Gale Encyclopedia of US Economic History

Development of the Industrial US Reference Library

West’s Encyclopedia of American Law

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Video Credit: Booker T. Washington Uploaded by joroarkenglish on Oct 28, 2008

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Book Review: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Avil Beckford — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:30:18 +0000

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (1802 – 1870) is one of the best books that I have read, and if you love a good story filled with drama, then this is the book for you. I was very captivated and wanted to find out how the story ended. I was a bit disappointed with the ending, but you do not always get what you want. With any good book, there are many life lessons embedded in the story, as well as big ideas.

At over 500 pages, the Penguin, Signet Classic version of The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas is an abridged version, so the original must have been very long. While reading the book, I didn’t feel as if I missed anything. The book was first published in a serialized format from 1844-1845.

The Count Of Monte Cristo Theatrical Trailer HD

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In the story, 19 year old Edmond Dantès, a sailor, has just returned from a voyage. Dantès has a very happy personality and is very grateful for life. After being away for a few months, he goes to visit his father and then on to see his beloved Mercedes. While on the voyage, Captain Leclère dies from brain fever, but before this happens, he givse Dantès two envelops to deliver. Though Dantes is quite young he captains the Pharaon to their final destination – Marseilles. Before he docks the ship, Dantès takes the time to deliver one of the letters.

Dantès and Mercédès are deeply in love and plan to get married. Monsieur Fernand Mondego is also in love with Mercédès and is jealous of Dantès. Monsieur Danglars, the purser of the Pharaon, is envious of Dantès because the owner of the Pharaon, M. Morrel makes him the new ship captain. During the bethrothal feast, Dantès is arrested for being a Bonapartist faction, but is not told anything about the charges.

During Dantès’ examination by M. de Villefort, the Deputy Procureur Du Roi, believes what he is hearing, but when he reads the second letter that Dantès is supposed to deliver, he is quite frightened and burns the letter, telling the young man not to ever tell anyone about the letter suggesting that the contents would harm him. The letter that Dantès is supposed to deliver is addressed to M. de Villefort’s father, who is a Bonapartist. If anyone sees the letter it would be damaging to M. de Villefort’s career. Dantès is very naive and believes that he will be freed, but that wasn’t to be the case. He is imprisoned at the Château d’If for 14 years.

While in the prison dungeon, Dantès is quite distraught and thinks of ways to kill himself. He also thinks of ways to escape his prison, and tries to dig his way out. One day he hears a sound and realizes that there is another prisoner as well in the dungeon of the prison. He calls out to the prisoner, and after a short time they are able to meet each other face-to-face via a tunnel they dig.

The next part of the story is critical to the plot because it’s the point in Dantès’ life when he becomes awakened. His fellow inmate is a learned priest, Abbé Faria, who is also condemned to lifelong imprisonment. Abbé Faria also has an escape plan. Both can relate to each other because they are wrongfully accused. Abbé Faria asks Dantès to relate everything that happened to him prior to imprisonment and they would figure out what really happened. The important thing that Faria wants to know is who stood to gain the most from Dantès imprisonment – surprise, surprise, Fernand and Danglars.

The priest was regretful that he helped Dantès to figure out the people who did him wrong, because he loses his innocence and now wants revenge. Abbé Faria becomes a mentor to Dantès, and he is a worthy one. At the time, Dantès had been in prison four or five years. The priest commits to teaching Dantès all he knows during the next two years and they draw up a plan to do so. He teaches Dantès history, mathematics, physics and the three or four languages he knew. Dantès’ mind was like a sponge, “Dantès had a prodigious memory and a great facility for assimilation. The mathematical turn of his mind gave him aptitude for all kinds of calculation, while the sense of poetry that is in every sailor gave life to dryness of figures and severity of lines.

Abbé Faria and Dantès develop a true friendship, one of give and take, and they develop a great trust between each other. The priest however suffers from cataleptic fits and has one. He had the opportunity to tell Dantes what to do and the young man gives him the medicine and brings him back from the brink.

Abbé Faria discloses the whereabouts of a treasure that he will seek when he escapes from prison and offers Dantès half when they escape. These two men demonstrate patience while they execute their escape plan. Though Dantès wants revenge against those who did him wrong, there is much goodness within him, and even when freedom is close by, he decides to stay with the priest. The priest tells him when he dies, Dantès should execute the escape plan and all the treasure is his. When Abbé Faria has the third attack, it’s fatal.

When the gaolers do their daily check on the prisoners in the dungeon they realize that Abbé Faria is dead. The priest is placed in a death sack for burial. Dantès gets the idea to swap the priests body and lie in the death sack, so he makes the switch. He makes sure that he has an implement to dig himself out of the grave. Dantès does not realize that inmates have a watery grave because they are thrown into the sea. They weight him down so the body will sink when thrown into the sea, and fortunately for him he has a knife and uses it to free himself, and his ability as a strong swimmer saves him.

Dantès is picked up by pirates and has a prepared story about who he is. Even though he is free, he doesn’t seek the treasure immediately, instead he spends months working as a sailor for the pirates until the time is right, timing is always everything. The treasure is exactly where Abbé Faria figured out where it would be and it is vast. Dantès becomes the Count of Monte Cristo, and because so many years has elapsed since he was imprisoned, his features have changed, so his old “friends” are not able to recognize him. However, he is able to recognize all of them.

Abbé Faria trained and mentored Dantès well, so he knows what it is like to be patient, and one of the things that I admire about him is that he also uses some of the treasure to do good. The story really takes off from here as he investigates and learns how his father died and what became of his love, Mercédès. Fernand has married Mercédès and is now known as Count de Morcerf.

The story is actually quite gripping, and Dantès masterfully executes his plan of revenge against those who harmed him. Mercédès discovers that Dantès is the Count of Monte Cristo and appeals to him to spare her son’s life, when the two are supposed to fight a duel. He listens to her, which says that he has not lost all his compassion and goodness. The key players who had a hand in his imprisonment suffer terribly.

Maybe I expect too much, but I didn’t find the end of the story gratify, it feels unfinished to me.

Lessons from The Count of Monte Cristo

Having mentors in life is so important.
Money should not be hoarded but used to help others to do good.
Revenge is never a good thing.
Feed your mind and master the fundamental knowledge in your field.
Be compassionate.
Forgive, forgive, and forgive.

People who read The Invisible Mentor regularly know that I am trying to read the classics, and have been struggling because they move so slowly. The Count of Monte Cristo is gripping and has so much to offer, especially when you read actively. The book is not among the must read classic literature, but I highly recommend The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. If you want to to purchase The Count of Monte Cristo movie (Click the link. I recommend that you read the book, but I recognize that not everyone enjoys reading as much as I do).

Adventures in Learning: Six Degrees of Separation

Avil Beckford — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:13:18 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

But where did the idea of six degrees of separation come from?

What you may not know, or have ever heard of is Chain-Links, which is a short story written in 1929 by Frigyes Karinthy. Frigyes Karinthy (June 25, 1887 – August 29, 1938), a Hungarian author, playwright, poet, journalist, and translator, was the first proponent of six degrees of separation. Here is an excerpt from the story:

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“…One of us suggested performing the following experiment to prove that the population of the Earth is closer together than they have ever been before. We should select any person from the 1.5 billion inhabitants of the Earth – anyone, anywhere at all… He bet us that, using no more than five individuals, one of whom is a personal acquaintance, he could contact the select individual using nothing except the network of personal acquaintances…Our friend was absolutely correct: nobody from the group needed more than five links in the chain to reach, just by using the method of your acquaintance, any inhabitant of our planet.”

The idea of six degree of separation was popularized decades later when John Guare wrote a play about it. The play was later released as a film. Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is a spin off from the concept, where any actor can be linked to Kevin Bacon through no more that six connections. According to Wikipedia, “This idea [six degrees of separation] both directly and indirectly influenced a great deal of early thought on social networks.” Kevin Bacon also started SixDegrees.org.

So the big questions are:

Who is in your network?
Do you take the time to work on building your relationships?
Can you be connected to the people you need to be connected to through six degrees of separation or less?
Where is your Chain-Links? Where will you find that one big idea that will spread like wild fire?
Where do your great ideas come from?

You can find a copy of the short story Chain-Links in The Structure and Dynamics of Networks By Mark E. J. Newman, Albert-László Barabási, Duncan J. Watts. I read the short story at Google Books, but you have to read it online, no printing or downloading unless you purchases a copy.

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon: Inside the Game

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Video Credit: Uploaded by DaveOfTheRose on Jan 9, 2010

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The Invisible Mentor Week in Review

Avil Beckford — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 10:30:00 +0000

This is what we talked about on The Invisible Mentor Blog this week: Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwel, Black History Month – Madam C J Walker, Operated the Largest Black-Owned Business in the Early Twentieth Century, and Carol McManus, America’s LinkedIn Lady.

Adventures in Learning

I frequently talk about mentoring occurring in moments, and this was evident at mediabistro’s Socialize Toronto conference last Friday. Profound conversations can take place over seconds and minutes. By watching conference attendees you could tell by the look on their faces that it was worth their time to attend the conference.

Mentoring in Moments at Socialize Toronto

Booked for Mentoring

I have been reading Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell for over two months, and it’s the first time I have ever taken so long to read a book that I actually enjoyed. I have read at least 20 other books during the two months, but I needed a lot of time to digest and process what I was reading in Outliers. When you hear about Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, the first thing that often comes to mind is that it takes 10,000 to master a subject. However the book is so much more than that.

Booked for Mentoring: Review – Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

Wisdom of Life Profile

This month is Black History Month and we will start off with Madam C J Walker, and follow up with other profiles of people who contributed to black history. Madam C J Walker took her $1.50 in savings and turned it into a $117,000 business in eight short years – the next year she was a featured speaker at the National Negro Business League Conference. It is worthy to note that Madam Walker was able to send her daughter to college from the money she made as a laundress.

Black History Month – Madam C J Walker, Operated the Largest Black-Owned Business in the Early Twentieth Century

Interviews for Mentoring

This week we featured Carol McManus, America’s LinkedIn Lady. Some of the biggest messages from the interview are the importance of having sponsors, mentors, and being open to opportunities. Here are Part One and Part Two of Carol McManus’ interview.

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Interview With Invisible Mentor Carol McManus, America’s LinkedIn Lady Part II

Avil Beckford — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:30:57 +0000

“You want to align yourself with people who believe in you and can see things in you that you don’t see in yourself.” Carol McManus, America’s LinkedIn Lady

Invisible Mentor: Carol McManus, America’s LinkedIn Lady

Company Name: LinkedIn Lady

Website: http://www.linkedinlady.com, http://ywait4success.com/

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Carol McManus: I’m an entrepreneur. I left the corporate world in 2007 to start a coaching, consulting and leadership development company. I built that company to six figures using social media. My business has moved over to social media expertise and I’m now known as America’s LinkedIn Lady.

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

Carol McManus: It’s easy especially now. I have always been a balanced person. I learned many years ago that you have to turn it off. Whatever you choose to do, whether it’s family or friends or personal activities, or the pets or the children, you have to separate that from business. In my case, there comes a certain point in the day, and it’s toward the end of the normal business day, sometimes it’s 5:30, sometimes it’s 6:30, or 7:00 pm, but when I turn off business, I’m done for the day and the rest of the evening is devoted to me and my husband. We don’t have children at home so it’s really about us, our time together. That’s my world and it doesn’t necessarily apply to other people.

My advice from my own integration, you want your business to support your personal life and your personal life to support your business. At the end of the day you have to set the rules on how you balance them because if you let either one get out of balance, the other one is going to suffer.

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

Carol McManus: My down time is creative time for me. I have a couple of hobbies. I like to write so I often write. I love to read, but my physical creative activity is I love to do flower arranging with silk and artificial flowers and make different types of decorations. I find that very therapeutic so it doesn’t involve other people. It’s time for me to go into myself and be creative and do things which in my world brings beauty and satisfaction for me, but it has nothing to do with anything else that’s going on around me.

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

Carol McManus:

Always be true to yourself. I remember my daddy telling me when I was a little girl that at the end of the day, the only person you have to sleep with is yourself. What he meant by that is you always have to be responsible for yourself.
My father was very passionate about me being able to be independent, not that he didn’t wish for me to be married, and have children, and a wonderful life, and someone to share my life with, but because he grew up in the Depression he was passionate about wanting me to stand on my own two feet. That’s a second lesson I learned and it goes hand-in-hand with being true to yourself.
Don’t take yourself too seriously and always be able to laugh at yourself.
You have to have humour in your life. Without humour a life can be pretty dismal and boring, and it makes you a dismal and boring person to be around so find ways to bring laughter into your life. And if it doesn’t come naturally to you then seek people who are fun to be around and share that joy. Go buy a video of I love Lucy TV series, which will make you laugh.
We only have one life, and the richness, satisfaction and depth that you get from life – and we don’t know when that life is going to end, life is very precious and for some it ends far too soon, and for some who live healthy lives it goes on forever. You only have one life and you are the only one who can ultimately control that, so having goals and knowing what it is you want to accomplish and what you can give back to the world, what is your legacy going to be, and I don’t mean legacy etched on Mt Rushmore with the presidents’ profiles because for most of us it’s nothing nearly that dramatic. But for all of us, leave a legacy, even if it’s only with your own family, or your neighbours or the people you interact with. But being conscious of that, and taking ownership for what you leave behind is the other big life lesson for me. And it’s something that I try to work on a little bit every day.

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

Carol McManus: I will give two answers to that because it comes up in two forms. I come up with a lot of ideas just when I’m in my own head. That could be when I’m listening to music, taking a walk or driving in the car. I let my mind wander, go, and think creatively. When I’m doing some of these crafty things I find I’m also creative and come up with great ideas. But having said that, the development and the richness of those ideas, come to fruition when I bring people into the conversation. I love to brainstorm and debate with people. I want them to challenge me and take the seed of an idea and help me improve it because I know I can’t do it all by myself. I’m very much an open book, so it’s letting me be creative in my own head, and then testing the market, but really using other people’s attitudes and experiences and impressions so that you can improve on what you thought was a really good idea to begin with. It always gets better.

Avil Beckford: What’s your favourite quotation and why?

Carol McManus: It’s a quote from Henry Ford, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, either way you’re right.” I’m paraphrasing a little bit but it’s so absolutely, 1,000 percent true. If you think you can do something, you’re going to put yourself subconsciously on a path to make it happen. If you think you can’t do it, you’re going to subconsciously put yourself on a path that it will never happen. Based on everything you’ve heard so far, you always try to put yourself on a path that you really have to believe in it and the tools and resources will come into your life to help you let things become real. If on the other hand you think you can’t, guess what, that’s going to be the reality.

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

Carol McManus: I define success as happiness. I think success is whatever ultimately makes people happy. And it’s defined differently for different people. For me, it’s the joy of being able to sleep peaceably at nights, that I’m able to provide for myself and the family, that I’m getting personal and professional satisfaction out of what I’m doing, that I’m influencing and impacting other people’s lives, and that I’m having fun doing it. So it’s all packaged together, it’s not just monetary, or about specific accomplishments, and it’s not just about joy, it’s all of that wrapped together. And I think every person needs to define what that is for themselves, and I don’t think anyone can say, “This is the formula for success.” If there is a formula, you need to define the pieces of what success is for you.

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

Carol McManus: Because I have a training background, I have always been the best student. I’m a teacher’s dream if you will because throughout my entire adult life, long since I left the college classroom, I’ve always taken courses or programs or conferences to be around people, and I think that has contributed to my success. My field has changed, my specialty has changed, it’s gone from sales to operations to executive to entrepreneur or to coaching to consulting to social media, so my career has had many dimensions to it. But at each level, I think my success came because I was first and foremost a good student, and invested the time, effort and energy through reading, listening to others, observing or mentoring under others, how they did what they did, that I could become the best at it that I could.

And if I found that I was on a path that didn’t feel comfortable, it didn’t feel right, or it was taking me off track, then I would stop and take another direction.

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

Carol McManus: Invest in yourself and continue to learn whatever you are learning. But in today’s world, I’m going to add something else to that answer, is that you always want to keep your eyes and ears open to the possibilities. We’re in a very different world today than the world I grew up in. When I grew up, there was an expectation that you got an education, you chose a career, and that sort of became your life path. And I was fortunate in that, that was the direction my life took, and it was only at the later stage of my life that it took a new direction. And what I mean by that is social media because when I left the corporate world four years ago, if someone told me that I was going to be a social media expert, I would have laughed. It wasn’t on my radar screen, but the world we’re in today, we have to be nimble and flexible, times are changing, things are happening at a rapid rate, technology has dramatically changed. The speed at which things happen, the speed at which we communicate, I think anyone, regardless of age, if you’re starting out today you certainly want to be goal oriented, but at the same time you want to know that those goals are not etched in stone, that other doors and opportunities may open, and you want to be open to those possibilities. So don’t get too locked in, that you miss the acres of diamonds that are right under your feet.

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?

Carol McManus: I love this question because I could come up with 50 people that I’d love to meet.

Abraham Lincoln: He was not a popular man, he was not a popular president, but he had leadership qualities that were so critical, and a true turning point in this country’s history. I would love to sit and chat with him about what he thought were the solutions to the country’s problems at the time, what were the key decisions and how did he make those decisions to lead the country in a more positive direction.
Jack Welch: He is an extraordinary story, and there are many well-documented corporate executives in America, but Jack Welch because of his history of being able to do turnaround situations and to turn lemons into lemonades. I read his book, but beyond the heart and soul of what made him tick, and the kinds of things that kept him up at night that allowed him to accomplish what he accomplished.
Martha Stewart: I would love to sit and have a conversation with her. Martha is a lightening rod. I find as I talk with people, people either love her or hate her, but what you cannot deny about Martha Stewart is that she is an extraordinary self-made woman with self-made success. She is focused and very successful and continues to reinvent herself. She is a model for always seeing the next opportunity. Again, I want to know what makers her tick, how does she think, what kinds of people does she surround herself with, what are her tolerances and intolerances. The other thing I admire about her, and it may be because of the space that she’s in, but she seems to be someone who has this balance of what’s important to her in her personal life and what gives her joy, and her dog comes to mind. She is famous for her chow chow dogs, her home and farm, but at the same time, she is passionate about her business and what drives her business and her brand.
Lou Holtz: Because coaching is part of my repertoire, I heard Lou speak on multiple occasions. I’ve listened to his videos, he to me is the epitome of an inspirational coach and someone who in multiple challenges, not just Notre Dame but University of South Carolina and other places he was over his career, he has great quotes and great inspiration, and I would like to sit and talk to him about the lessons he had learned as a coach. I would actually ask him some of the questions that you asked me.
From a more introspective level and understanding beyond the surface and the obvious. I tend to be focused on the now, but I’m a reader and follower of Deepak Chopra’s teachings and if I could ever have an hour to sit and talk to him, to really understand at a deeper level how I can understand myself, and take myself to a deeper level, that would be joyous.

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

Carol McManus: That’s easy for me because the answer is the The Art of War by Sun Tzu. It’s not a new book by any stretch of the imagination. It’s been out there for a very long time. To me, the BI is the guiding light, the “bible” for business, life, for how to communicate , negotiate, strategize, for all of the things we are talking about, that are a part of my business and personal repertoire – it’s all right there in that book and I’ve referred to it, reread it many times. I try to read it once a year.

Carol McManus:

Two Years

Survival would be first and foremost because you have to have shelter and you have to feed yourself. For me personally, having a creative soul, I would write, write, write because I think if you have two years to spend with yourself everything that’s inside of you, and everything that you can imagine needs to come out and needs to be shared. That’s how I would spend the majority of my time when I wasn’t in survival mode.

Five Books

The Art of War, Sun Tzu
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials) – It’s a marvellous book because you have to have that expectation that you are in fact going to get off this island. That might take some negotiation and persuasion, skills that have served me well. It’s a book that I read regularly because as human beings that’s all we do is communicate and negotiate with people.
Animal Farm by George Orwell: There are lots of good lessons there on how to survive.
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman: Or something similar to that. It’s a compilation of poems. It’s very inspirational and I think if you were on a deserted island you would have those moments where you needed to reflect and see the joy and beauty in life.
Milton Berle’s Private Joke File: Over 10,000 of His Best Gags, Anecdotes, and One-Liners: It’s the greatest book ever. He is a renowned stand up comic.

Movie and Music CD

My all time favourite music CD is Tapestry-Legacy Edition (2-CD) by Carol King. I find all of the music she has written over the years, she didn’t sing, she wrote more than she actually sang, but that was such an influential, and remains an influential CD to me because there is so much inspiration and hidden messages in the music. I have listened to it over and over again and never get tired.

The movie is a tough one because there are so many to choose from. The one I choose would be the absolutely most outrageous, that would cause me to laugh and that would be Blazing Saddles (30th Anniversary Special Edition) because it is truly one of the most ridiculous movies ever made but every time I see it I never cease to laugh. I never cease to see new nuances and I think that’s something I would want to spend my time with.

Blazing Saddles – Movie Trailer

If you cannot view the YouTube video, please click here.

Carole King – Tapestry

If you cannot view the YouTube video, please click here.

Avil Beckford: What excites you about life?

Carol McManus: Life and people. I love being around people. If there is a challenge that I had, going from the corporate world to being a solopreneur, and commuting versus working out of a home office it was separation from every day having the interface with people. So I have crafted my business so that is part of my day now because I think the opportunities in life are endless. We don’t happily live in this world on a deserted island by ourselves and if you don’t take joy in the people who are around you and appreciate something about everybody regardless of who they are, where they came from, what they do, we are all a unique special person. I just love to talk to people, find out what’s of interest to them and it’s part of that expanded life – our universal life together. That’s what gives me joy and what I try to bring to the people around me.

Avil Beckford: How do you nurture your soul?

Carol McManus: Reflection and meditation. It’s supplemented by everything we talked about – the reading and the music and the creative outlets. The real nurturing comes from the downtime, the quiet time, the reflective time. It’s a learned skill that has served me well. I wish I had learned to meditate much earlier in life because it does really amazing things to center you and recharge your batteries so you can continue to move forward.

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

Carol McManus: Good health for me and mankind. And where that comes from, it starts from a very personal place as I watched my father’s declining health. I had my mother come live with us in her later years with her declining health, her sister also because my aunt didn’t have children. As a young child, I went through health issues with my grandparents on both sides of the family. As I get older and the bones start to creak, things start to go wrong, you realize that the joy of life and the ability to do the things you want to do is all grounded in good health. I do believe that all the health issues we’re facing today, whether it’s cancer, heart disease on one end of the spectrum and things that alarm me are autism and ADHD at the other end of the spectrum, I personally have a strong belief that a lot of this is environmentally influenced. If I had one wish for the genie, it would be to wave her magic wand or whatever she uses to give good health to everyone because once you have health then there are no boundaries to what we can do.

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

Carol McManus: I’m talking to people like you because you stimulate me and I’m absolutely being sincere about that. This has been a delightful experience and what I mean by that is that interaction with other really smart, savvy people, that stimulate me, that cause me not to not only give and share my thoughts, but forces me to go in, think about and test myself and my own boundaries.

Book links are affiliate links.

Video Credits: Blazing Saddles – Movie Trailer Uploaded by zuguidemovietrailers on Apr 15, 2010, Carole King – Tapestry Uploaded by raymaclean on Dec 29, 2008

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Interview With Invisible Mentor Carol McManus, America’s LinkedIn Lady

Avil Beckford — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:38:27 +0000

“You want to align yourself with people who believe in you and can see things in you that you don’t see in yourself.” Carol McManus, America’s LinkedIn Lady

Invisible Mentor: Carol McManus, America’s LinkedIn Lady

Company Name: LinkedIn Lady

Website: http://www.linkedinlady.com, http://ywait4success.com/

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

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

Carol McManus: I’m like most entrepreneurs, I don’t know if there is a typical day, but I do have a routine that I try to follow so I can stay on top of things. My day starts early and I try to deal with paper, emails and even the social media. I try to get all of those things out of the way so I can focus the rest of the day on existing business, networking and developing new businesses, and how that’s split up on any given day depends on the schedule and the calendar. At the end of the week I want to make sure that I’ve allocated enough time for each of those three things.

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

Carol McManus: I motivate myself because I’m a goal-driven person, so my motivation is driven by my goals. I stay focused on what I’m trying to achieve, not just monetary goals, but what the income and achievement of those goals is going to do for my life and family. To stay motivated is to keep reminding yourself of why you get up everyday and go to work. My goal summary is on my bulleting board, right in front of my face, I look at it every day. When I achieve a goal I get great satisfaction of being able to cross it off the list, or change the number, or raise the bar a bit. I think it’s that visual reinforcement that keeps me motivated and plus I have my husband who is my biggest supporter and champion and also my nudge. What I mean by that he is also the person who motivates me and if he thinks I’m straying or need a pep talk, then he is right there for me.

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

Carol McManus: That’s a very hard question because I am not a person who lives with regret. The challenge as a coach, one of the things that I see with people, is that they invest a lot of time and energy trying to reset the clock and change things. And the fact of the matter is you can’t. I’ve had good experiences, bad experiences, challenging experiences, and extraordinary experiences, and all of those led to the totality of who I am now. The honest truth is that I’m not sure I would do anything differently because it wouldn’t have gotten me to where I am now – it would have led me on a different path.

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

Carol McManus: I think the most important discovery for me is the fact that in spite of what’s going on in the world, and that’s more economically driven, that statement, than anything else, we as individuals and business people can own and take control of it, and the people who are succeeding, and in fact thriving in this environment are the people who have the right attitude. I always thought I was a positive person and had a good attitude but I never really focused on how much that has served me. I think for me the discovery was how important that was and it caused me to reinforce the need to keep a positive attitude. And I’m not talking Pollyanna with rose-coloured glasses. I’m talking about knowing that in every opportunity there is possibility. If you focus on the possibility, you’re going to end up with a better solution than if you focus on the challenges and the obstacles.

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

I think a potential threat to any business is competition so I keep an eye on the competition, but I don’t focus on it. I think it’s more of a peripheral awareness of what other people are doing, how can I learn from that, how can I reposition my business to either respond to it or counter it. So that’s definitely number one.
I’d be foolish to say that the economy is not a potential threat because we are still in unstable times economically and there are simply things you cannot control. So a potential threat is if it spirals out of control then I would definitely have to retool and adjust.
I would potentially be the third threat to myself, and I think that’s true for all business people, is that if you take your eye off the ball, you take your eyes off the goals and become complacent, that can be the worst possible thing for your business. You always have to be checking yourself and reinvesting in yourself and recharging your own batteries so you’re always operating at an optimal level.

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

Carol McManus: There are a lot of people in the social media space, and there are two things that make me unique. Number One I’m a baby boomer so I’m not of the generation that grew up with electronic in the crib so to speak. They came into my business world and my life much later. It’s a learned skill for me and because it’s a learned skill I think I have a different perspective and appreciation of the technologies that are available to us today. The second piece going back to social media I think what makes me unique against my competitors is that I don’t consider myself to be a point and click approach to social media, I don’t worry about the technology and the tools and the mechanics. There are lots of people who do that better than I do. In fact, I outsource most of that for myself, what I focus on is my business experience. I focus on social media from a strategic standpoint, and when I sit with a client we talk about business goals and marketing message, ideal target client and then talk about how social media can serve that. I don’t recommend for example, that people jump in and start tweeting all day long because if there isn’t a real business objective, and a real direction as to where you want to go, it’s not going to serve your business. I think that’s a different approach than a lot of people in the social media space take.

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?

Carol McManus: My major challenge in life is to stay focused in the moment. I have been very blessed in my career to have new opportunities offered to me, and I can think of one specific example where I was more focused on something else that was going on, another opportunity, than focusing on the job that was in the moment. This is not only a reflection for myself but also advice for everyone, that whatever your current responsibilities are whether you’re working for yourself or you’re working for somebody else you want to focus on what your responsibility is and do that to your very best ability because it’s through that accomplishment that you will get noticed and promoted, advanced or have new opportunities open up for you. You can’t always be looking at the horizon and at the next shiny object that dangles itself in front of you. You really have to stay focused on the now – the present.

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

Carol McManus: My big break came from one of my mentors. I was with one company for 27 years, and again I had a very blessed career, which I’m very grateful for, but this person at an early time in my career really took me under his wings and gave me reflective feedback that I needed to help shape my career, was able to point out skills and possibilities that I didn’t necessarily see in myself, and then became my champion in the organization to open up that door to new opportunities. That was huge for me, so it’s definitely tied to a mentor. At the time he was not my direct line supervisor, but he became my direct line supervisor later on, but we were at different places in the organization but he took an interest in my career and then opened those doors so again, the side piece of advice there is you want to align yourself with people who believe in you and can see things in you that you don’t see in yourself and obviously help to open those doors.

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

Carol McManus: One of my biggest failures, you’re only giving me one! I can think of many things that I started and for whatever reason didn’t get to the finish line. And again, there is a bigger lesson here, when I have failed, it was when I failed to follow-through. I am an idea person. I’m a strategist, so I do come up with a lot of cool ideas, some of which in retrospect I should have followed through on, so it’s a general answer to a question. But for the first 10 or 15 years of my career, it was a pattern where I would start something and not get it to the finish line, start something and not get it to the finish line. From that, I consider it to be a collective failure and the lesson is, and this is where goals come in, if you have clear goals and a vision, and you’re laser focused on what it’s going to take to get there, then you’re more likely to put yourself on a path to accomplish it, and take it all the way to the finish line.

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

Carol McManus: That’s a personal answer and it’s walking away from my first marriage. It was at a time where there was an age difference between us and we were at different points in our lives, there was nothing horrible, no big custody battles, there was no fighting or bickering like a lot of people go through in a divorce. But it was simply a decision that if we continued on the path that we were on, it was going to end badly, so making that decision in a timely fashion, that this was not going to serve either of us, and walking away from it. It was a very tough decision, but for both of us the best decision that I ever made. Both of us went on to live very happy lives, and we both found new spouses and it ended up having a happy ending. I don’t care what the circumstances are, whether volatile or not volatile, ending a marriage that you made a commitment and went into thinking you were going to live with this person for the rest of your life is not an easy thing, or should be an easy thing to walk away from.

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

Carol McManus:

Where I went to college and what I studied because I went to America University and studied political science which gave me an opportunity throughout college to work on Capitol Hill. It shaped my perspective about the country and politics in general, but it gave me a greater appreciation of not just the fundamentals of democracy, but honestly and truly, how to get things done, and it was a great foundation for my business experience.
Around that same time, I had the opportunity to go to Woodstock in New York back when the real Woodstock happened, and while I was not of the hippie generation, it was a fluke that I was even there it shaped my life because it was the antithesis of the environment that I had been living in on Capitol Hill with the free form and the music – a total different appreciation for seeing the world on a bigger platform and everything that was tied to it, not just the event Woodstock, but everything that was tied to the movement in the sixties having to do with social consciousness and the protest about the war, really gave me a life path to be able to separate what’s important and what’s really important or what you think is important versus what is important.
The third would be to sell a small boutique company I had back in the seventies and go into a bigger environment, working in a corporate environment. It was a big departure for me because I grew up in an entrepreneurial family. My early career was very much as an entrepreneur and going into the corporate world totally changed me and shaped my perspective on how I did and saw things, helped me to develop my leadership skills, helped me to see things through various different lenses – through the human resources lens, the financial lens. Now that I have come full circle back to being an entrepreneur again, there is absolutely no question that, that experience makes me a better business person, a better service provider, a better strategist, all of those skills have served me very well.

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

Carol McManus: The accomplishment I am proudest of is my most recent venture of claiming that title of America’s LinkedIn Lady. It’s the first time in my adult career, and in my life really, that I have had true personal brand identity, something that I feel I won, that I’m comfortable in, that I feel competent in and that has given me a personal brand. When you spend 27 years in a corporate environment, the identity is not about you, but the company and what’s good for the company. I was very comfortable with that, and it wasn’t that I wasn’t recognized or didn’t have name recognition within the organization, I did. But a very different thing happened when I went out on my own. When people meet me and say, “Oh, you’re America’s LinkedIn Lady.” I have been to events and have people say to me that they came to the event because they heard about me and wanted to hear what I had to say. That is not only flattering but it’s also daunting because it puts a big responsibility on your shoulder. It is definitely something I’m proud of, and it’s something I didn’t plan and aspire to, but the fact that it has happened, I can really enjoy it now.

Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?

Carol McManus: I worked for a company that was owned by an even larger company, a male dominated company, and I was young coming up the corporate ladder, and I had a female mentor who was one of the only women who held senior positions in the company. I sought her out in terms of guiding me about how you compete, get noticed and recognized as a professional when you’re in a male-dominated company. Her advice to this day has served me well. There were several legs to it but basically it was be true to yourself first and foremost, be who you are – don’t try to be overly feminine and don’t try to be overly masculine, just focus on the job at hand and do it to the best of your ability. Unfortunately at the time, because this goes back a few years, women have come a long way, which I’m happy about, and in my small way I was a contributor to move it along this path. But at the time, women had to be better than men at what they did. So if men operated at a 100 percent, we needed to operate at 110 or 120 percent, and do it without malice or feeling guilty, or bitter that people aren’t recognizing you or you’re not getting paid. You just do it and that advice and the guidance she gave me is what opened more doors for me and helped to shape my career because I didn’t try to play the game that other women played in the workplace.

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

Carol McManus: The one core message was not to take yourself so damn seriously. And I say that with a big smile on my face because it’s advice that we can all take. Another way to phrase that is don’t believe your own press. What I mean by that is not to be cynical or sceptical about people, you should be proud of your successes, but I think when people let their ego get in the way, when you do get compliments, when you do get awards, when you get promotions, it’s very easy to slip into that pattern in thinking you’re great and have all the answers. None of us do and you can’t operate in the world today, in a family, a business unit, in a company, in a church or any other organization without the support of other people. I have had more than one person share that advice with me, which helped to keep me focused and keep each others focused. You are one person making a contribution and it’s always part of a bigger picture.

Carol McManus: Always act as though someone is watching. In other words, whatever you’re doing, pretend that you’re on stage and there is an audience in front of you, even surrounding you, who is not necessarily judging, just observing what’s going on. So if you’re always doing your best, being your best, putting your best foot forward, magical things will happen. You don’t have to go out and campaign for them, you don’t have to politic for them, you don’t have to beg for them, and you don’t have to demand them. They will happen, because when people notice you, when you’re at your best is when good things happen.

Interview With Invisible Mentor Stefan Meister, Director, intercultures (theinvisiblementor.com)
Interview With Invisible Mentor Stefan Meister, Director, intercultures, Part Two (theinvisiblementor.com)
Interviews for Mentoring: Invisible Mentor, Maggie Berry, Women in Technology (theinvisiblementor.com)
Interview With Invisible Mentor Jeanne-Marie Robillard, Senior Account Executive, National Speakers Bureau (theinvisiblementor.com)
Mentor Yourself: Interview With Maggie Berry, Women in Technology Part II (theinvisiblementor.com)
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

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Black History Month – Madam C J Walker, Operated the Largest Black-Owned Business in the Early Twentieth Century

Avil Beckford — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:30:15 +0000

This month is Black History Month and we will start off with Madam C J Walker, and follow up with other profiles of people who contributed to black history.

Image via Wikipedia

“Surely you are not going to shut the door in my face. I have been trying to tell you what I am doing. I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. I was promoted from there to the washtub. Then I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations. I know how to grow hair as well as I know how to grow cotton. I have built my own factory on my own ground.” Madam C J Walker at Booker T Washington’s National Negro Business League Conference (1912)

At that time, Black men discounted Black women’s entrepreneurial ventures even when they were successful. Madam CJ Walker had been trying to get the attention of Booker T Washington at his convention for three days and he ignored her efforts. She was forced to stand during the event and say what she had to say. As quoted above, immediately after she explained how she took her $1.50 in savings and turned it into a $117,000 business in eight short years – the next year she was a featured speaker at the National Negro Business League Conference. It is worthy to note that Madam Walker was able to send her daughter to college from the money she made as a laundress.

Name: Madam C J Walker (Sarah Breedlove McWilliams Walker)

Birth Date: December 1867 – May 1919

Job Functions: Entrepreneur, Hair-care Industry Pioneer, Philanthropist and Political Activist

Fields: Hair care

Known For: First female self-made millionaire in the United States

Born Sarah Breedlove to freed slaves on a cotton plantation, Madam CJ Walker was orphaned at age seven. She and her older sister survived by working in the cotton fields of Delta and Vicksburg, Mississippi. At age 14 Madam Walker married Moses McWilliams, and in 1887, at age 20 she was widowed with a 2-year old daughter. It is believed that her husband was lynched during a race riot. With an infant, little formal education and unskilled, Madam Walker had to find a way to take care of herself and her child.

That same year, she left the Mississippi for St. Louis where her four brothers were and established herself as a laundress. She did this for the next 18 years. Every day while she laundered her customers’ clothes, hands immersed in steaming water in the wash tub, her hands, face, and hair experienced the full impact of the steaming vapors of the chemicals and fumes from the strong detergents.

At the time, a common health problem among African American women was baldness, which was caused by poor diet, stressful working condition, illness, damaging hair care products and scalp disease. With all the difficulties in her life, and the rigors of her work, Madam Walker started to lose her hair – she had split ends and patches of bald spots. She used various beauty products that were touted to promote hair growth. She experimented with various chemicals to find the correct formulation that would aid in the care and grooming of the hair and skin of African American women.

To promote her laundry business, Madam Walker always wore freshly laundered, starched, and pressed clothes to highlight her skills. Immaculately dressed, in 1904, she attended an event hosted by the National Association of Colored Women at the St. Louis World’s Fair, where Booker T. Washington’s wife, Margaret Murray Washington was speaking.

Margaret Murray Washington was also elegantly dressed in silk with her hair pulled back from her face. This inspired Madam Walker to work harder to improve her looks because she was very conscious of the bald spots and broken hair. To supplement her income, Madam Walker registered as a sales agent for Annie M. Turnbo Malone’s Poro Company which sold hair mixes door-to-door. Walker was disappointed with the products and experimented with them in an effort to improve them.

She came up with a formula which she says she received in a dream. Madam Walker had some success selling her products in St. Louis, but she decided to move to Denver. Shortly after moving there, she met Charles J. Walker, who was a skilled publicist and newspaperman. He gave her tips on how to market and advertise her products. It is suggested that he told her to use the name Madam CJ Walker. The Walker business took off in Denver and the two married shortly after (1906).

Madam Walker created the Walker system which comprised of a broad offering of cosmetics, hair care products that removed the curls from African American women; licensed Walker Agents; and Walker Schools offered meaningful employment and personal growth to thousands of Black women.

Madam C J Walker in the National Archives

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Madam C. J. Walker’s Journey to Success

She targeted an untapped base of American consumers and workers – African American women.
Mobilized a network of African American women as sales agents for her line of hair care products.
She developed the system, which comprised of Madam C J Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower.
Her husband Charles Walker handled promotions and other administrative functions at the home office while Madam Walker went door-to-door marketing her hair care products. In their ads, they used before and after shots which are now common today.
From 1906 to 1916, Madam Walker traveled throughout the United States, West Indies and Central America to promote her business.
As sales increased, Walker began training “agent-operators.”
Gave lectures and demonstrations at black clubs, homes, and churches in the Southern and Eastern states.
Established a training centre for her salespeople, along with research and production laboratories and another beauty school.
Organized agents into a series of “Walker Clubs” that gave cash prizes to the clubs doing the largest amount of philanthropic work.
Had annual national convention to bring together the agents to learn new techniques, share business experiences and to talk about personal success stories.
Became a member of associations: National Association of Colored Women.
Gave financial support to organizations in the community like the YMCA, NACCP, Bethune-Cookman College in Florida.
In 1910, she built manufacturing facilities in Indianapolis, a city with multiple train lines to facilitate a streamlined mail order business.

Business Philosophy

Madam Walker’s business philosophy stressed economic independence for the 20,000 former maids, farm labourers, housewives, and schoolteachers she employed as agents, factory and office workers.

Philanthropy

In 1911, she contributed $1,000 to the building fund of the Indianapolis YMCA.
Made donations to homes for the aged and the needy.
Donated money to Palmer Memorial Institute.
Maintained scholarships for young women at Tuskegee
She became a benefactor of Bethune-Cookman College in Florida leaving it $5,000 in her will.
In 1919, in her will, she left $5,000 to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Political Activism/Advocacy

During World War I, Madam Walker was among the people who supported the government’s black recruitment efforts and war bond drives.
After the bloody 1917 East St. Louis riot, she joined the Negro Silent Protest Parade planning committee to petition President Woodrow to support legislation to make lynching a federal crime.
She joined a group of blacks who advocated an alternative peace conference at Versailles after the war to monitor proceedings affecting the world’s people of color.
Madam Walker advocated for black women’s economic independence and she did her part by hiring and training them to work for her company. This is significant because many of these women had worked as maids and sharecroppers.

Madam C J Walker worked incredibly hard, and the demands she placed on herself ultimately undermined her health. On May 25, 1919, at age fifty-one, Madam C J Walker died. At the time, she was considered the wealthiest black woman in America, and is said to have been the first African American woman millionaire.

Why Madam C J Walker’s Contribution Matters

Madam C J Walker’s contribution matters because she had a significant impact on the lives of many. She advocated for black women’s economic empowerment, creating business opportunities for them at a time when most black women worked as servants and sharecroppers. Madam C J Walker was a trailblazer, and used her business acumen to propel her to affluence.

Further Reading

Timeline: The Life of Madam C. J. Walker (http://www.madamcjwalker.com/)
Madam C.J. Walker: “I got my start by giving myself a start.”
Happy 144th Birthday, Madam C. J. Walker!
Black History: Madam C.J. Walker, America’s First Female Millionaire. What is Black Beauty?
Madam C. J. Walker
Madam C. J. Walker – A Pioneering Black American Woman

Sources Cited/Referenced

Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History, p 2259 -2260

Inc. Magazine, The Great Leaders Series: Madam CJ Walker, Founder of Madame CJ Walker Enterprises

About.com Inventors: Madame C. J. Walker, http://inventors.about.com/od/wstartinventors/a/MadameWalker.htm

Women in History, Volume Sixteen, p134-p138

Video Credit: Madam C J Walker in the National Archives Uploaded by usnationalarchives on Feb 18, 2011

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