The Invisible Mentor

Archive for the ‘Writing Project’ Category

Estee Lauder was ahead of her time! She makes a great invisible mentor, a unique leader who we can learn things from. In my blog post If Estee Lauder Was a Blogger, What Would She Say? I identified 12 success tips that I gleaned while conducting research on her. This is my best 2009 post because we can learn so much from her. Back then, her Tell a Woman Campaign was simply brilliant, and is what we now call viral marketing. Customer service was very important to her, so she carefully recruited and trained her sales associates. Her persistence and determination helped her to achieve professional success.

Estee Lauder’s Success Tips

1. Pay close attention to the quality of your products
2. Offer a gift with purchase
3. Send samples by direct mail
4. Think creatively instead of thinking competition. Which non traditional market could benefit from your product or service (How about tapping hotels to purchase business books for their executive guests as a welcome)
5. Carefully recruit and train all sales representatives on how to give excellent customer service (Have product demos)
6. After you achieve success with your product, expand the product line and brand
7. Have raving fans: Give your friends who have influence samples of your products to carry around
8. Use viral marketing (Similar to “Tell a Woman” Campaign)
9. Trust yourself and your instincts
10. Focus, be aware of the world around
11. Know your customer, know your niche
12. Persist and have ambition

Looking at the success tips with today’s lens may not seem impressive, but over 40 years ago, now that’s a different story.

Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed. This is an entry for The Essential Lines from 2009 Group Writing Project.

American thanksgiving is coming so much attention is on gratitude, but gratitude should be an every day thing, not just a day or week. In Canada we celebrate Thanksgiving in October. In Jamaica where I was born, the church celebrates harvest and they have Harvest Supper, which happened this past weekend. I try to express my gratitude each day, sometimes I succeed and sometimes I fall short, so I try to do it as life unfolds and things happen and that works for me. Here are seven things that I am grateful for.

Family: I am grateful to my family for loving me, even when I screw up and screw up badly. They may lecture me, which I do not like, but I know their hearts are in the right place so I listen and don’t have to agree, but I know that all is well.

Good Friends: I am grateful to true friend who keep me grounded, who give me the space when I need to grow or figure out things for myself.

Health: I am grateful for my health because when I am in good health I can do many things.

Another Day: Each day when I awake I realize that I have been given another day on this wonderful day to do something remarkable and I am eternally grateful even when I do not live each day as if it was my last.

Opportunities: I am grateful for the opportunities that present themselves in my life because they allow me to be remarkable, as well as of service to others.

Freedom: This is something that many take for granted, including myself because we live in a free state. In Jamaica they have a saying that you never know the use of a half until you lose it. This should be a reminder to us that we shouldn’t take what we have for granted.

Adversity: I am grateful for adversity – it took me a long time to figure this one out – because it brings tremendous opportunities. The past five years have been challenging ones for me, but I have grown so much, that I would never trade thge darkest period of my life for promises of sunnier days. I know myself so much better and I am also a better person. It’s a humbling feeling when things fall apart and the good thing you get to put it together again and this time you can use a different template or pattern. My writing has more depth because I been to the School of Hard Knocks.

I am sharing a piece of me with you, what are you thankful for? This is my entry to the 7 Things You Are Thankful For Group Writing Project 2009. Let’s keep the conversation flowing like a river, please comment. Also consider contributing to this Writing Project, what are 7 things that you are thankful for?

Are we hardwired to automatically place limits on ourselves? We set limits on our earning potential, on how much we can accomplish in life. We are either too young or too old, have too much or too little education and the reasons go on and on about why we cannot do something. Many of us suffer from excusitis. And, I was no different until I started to pay close attention to the stories I tell myself about why I did not honor commitments to myself.

Setting limits have been around for a long time. Take the popular story Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, in recent versions of the story there are only three wishes granted, but in the original story of Aladdin, which is a Middle-Eastern folk tale (found in Arabian Nights: One Thousand and One Nights), there were no limitations on the number of wishes granted. Whose great idea was it to limit the number of wishes granted to three?

A common story that I would tell myself is that I am tired and it is late so I cannot perform a critical task. But when I reframe the story and instead tell myself, yes it is late but the task is important, I find that I get a sudden burst of energy and I am able to perform the task. As soon as I remove the self-imposed limit on how much I can do, my productivity soars and I also accomplish so much more in any given day. The truth is that we can do and be much more than we tell ourselves.

So the next time when you perceive barriers that prevent you from going where you need to go, pause and evaluate the situation to determine if the barrier is a true one, or one you imposed on yourself. You will be surprised how many of the barriers are self-imposed and can be easily removed.

What are your thoughts? Let us keep the conversation going, please leave a comment.

This is a contribution to the Group Writing Project What I Learned from Limits and an entry to contest on Whitney Hoffman’s blog post The Difference Between Listening and Hearing.

Photo credit: Public domain via Wikipedia, Image of Aladdin in the Magic Garden.

Barbados

As a writer and researcher, industrial and graphic design are not my areas of expertise, therefore I don’t know what I don’t know so I defer to the designers, and place the onus on them to deliver what I need. I am on about the fifth iteration of my website. I had a website before most large companies had websites, over 10 years ago. The last two graphic designers I worked with had two very different approaches which impacted the customer service experience for me.

One graphic designer followed the route that most graphic designers take. They meet with you, ask some preliminary questions, go away and work, then they return with a few designs, and you choose one,  or elements of a few to create a new design then they finalize it for you.

The other designer involved me a lot more in the project, yet did not place too much demand on my time. Yes she did all the typical things that the other graphic designer did. But she asked me about my colour preferences, the image I wanted to present on the website, and delved into the psychology of colour. She showed me the colours that were “hot.” She also took the time to get to know me as a person not just a client. She cared about my likes and dislikes. She built a relationship with me. With each encounter, I felt like she truly valued my business, and valued me as a person. At the end of the project I was a much more informed consumer.

The designer who took the route most traveled was also unwilling to learn about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) so I had to hire another person to search engine optimize my site after he built it. It is my belief, that it is an expectation that graphic designers today are knowledgeable about SEO. And I also got the sense that he had no intention of taking a course, even though he recognized the benefits to his clients.

I am grateful for $1000+ Industrial Design Group Writing Project, the group writing project that I am writing this post for, because it forced me to make a connection that I hadn’t made before. I had to compare two experiences that I had not thought of before, even though they are related. And, as I write this blog post, I realize that there are some potent lessons here for my readers, graphic and industrial designers and for myself:

1. To be remarkable you have to travel the path of least resistance
2. Because everyone does it a certain way, does not mean it is the only way, or even the best way
3. Keep up-to-date on what’s going on in your field because expectations changes and customers are demanding more
4. Update your skills to better serve your clients
5. Your clients are people and not companies, it is a person who authorizes payment, so treat your “clients” well
6. Your experiences shape who you are, whenever you see someone doing something badly, take note and use the information to improve yourself, your product and your service

How might you use this experience to give your clients a better customer service experience? Do you take the time to build relationships with your clients? What other tips do you have that you can share with us? Let’s keep the conversation going, please leave your comments.

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Liz Strauss issued a call to bloggers to put 25 Words of Social Media Wisdom into a blog post. I am an introvert who has often had problems contributing to meetings and conversations because others were more skilled at transitioning into conversations, more forceful or simply masters at taking over conversations to present their points and ideas. Though I often had important things  to say, I became frustrated by my inability to say my two cents worth, and simply kept quiet and became withdrawn. Others often thought that I didn’t have great ideas. Has this ever happened to you? How do you successfully deal with such situations? The invitation from Liz prompted me to write the following:

Ever find yourself in situations where you’d like to contribute, but others monopolized the conversation? Social media levels the field giving voice to the voiceless.

Do you use social media, and what would be your 25 words of wisdom? The ability to let others hear what we have to say is a part of our evolution and growth process. And, contributing our voices to conversations benefits everyone since we are all connected.

Photo credit: Photo of Liz Strauss (Left) by Shashi Bellamkonda vis Flickr