The Invisible Mentor

Posts Tagged ‘John Kremer’

Big Breaks + Mentoring + Hard Work = Success? 

I am reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success and it got me thinking about interviews that I have conducted, so I decided to explore an idea. I still haven’t gotten further than a third of the book so far, but when you ask most people about Outliers, they’ll mention 10,000 hours to become an expert at a craft. But from what I have read so far, hard work doesn’t equal success, you also need opportunities and talent.

I have taken five of The Invisible Mentor interviews that I have published on the blog, and extracted the responses to big breaks, mentor influence, and steps to success. Today, I’m focusing on five men, yesterday were five women. As you read the responses, what ideas and thoughts come to mind? Are there ways you can create your own opportunities if you haven’t had your big break as yet?

Name:  Michael Hewitt-Gleeson

Big Break:  One big break was from a famous man in America, Professor George Gallup who started the Gallup Poll and invented market research. He is the fellow who discovered the statistical sample. If you measure a population you can get their point of view and of course that is difficult and expensive to do. If you measure a statistical random sample of 1,200 people, you get the same point of view as if you measured the population. And of course it’s possible to measure a sample and get a small deviation plus or minus. The Gallup Poll has predicted the outcome of every US Presidential Elections since the mid 1930s.

At a time when we needed some help and advice in getting The School of Thinking going, in breaking through the education system, someone of that stature as Professor George Gallup lent his name to it, and he said that what we were doing was possibly one of the greatest things in the world. He in a sense became my mentor, the supervisor for my PhD. He wrote the foreword for one of my books. He was a very nice and encouraging gentleman. He was in his 80s at the time, and I was a much younger man and he extended a hand. I was very gracious with his hospitality and would visit him at his farm up at Princeton. Looking back, this was a huge break and very practical one, and I’m very grateful because it led to a cover story on Readers Digest in 1993. It was an international edition with over 70 million readers which put the school of Thinking on the map. At that time, it was like being on Oprah today.

Mentor Influence: There are people who come along, and sometimes they encourage you, or tell you what you do not want to hear. So one category are people who are wiser, often older and in a different circumstance, who are able to give you good advice, direction or point things out if you are willing to listen. Professor George Gallup and Edward de Bono were great mentors for me. Edward de Bono was my tutor for my PhD, he had one student, me. I am the only one in the world who has a PhD in lateral Thinking, and Edward de Bono and George Gallup were my examiners. They were two extraordinary individuals who spent a lot of time with me, and I have built a whole career around that.

Steps to Success:  I make sure that I do something that I enjoy doing. And I do them every day. In other words, from the point of view of virtuosity, it takes a long while, you cannot just pick up a book or video on something and become an expert. Some people think you can, but you can’t. It may take 10 years, and you can do 10 years if you love what you are doing so it’s a combination of loving what you are doing, and doing it every day. Enjoy success as you go and do the 10,000 hours it requires to achieve virtuosity, and then enjoy that kind of success as well.

Name:  Steve Kayser

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

Steve Kayser: Just one? I have had big breaks all my life. Every day. Every month. Every year.

Tom Nies gave me my latest big break. He asked me to run PR for Cincom Systems North America. When I told him I didn’t know anything about PR he said, “Read this book – you’ll be fine.” The book he gave me was “The Death of Advertising & The Rise of PR,” by Al Ries. I read it. Then called Al Ries. Explained my situation and asked his advice and also asked him to contribute to a fledgling online E-Zine I was developing called Expert Access. He did become a contributor and we went from 5,000 subscribers to 25,000 in about 1 month because of it. Al Ries (and his daughter Laura Riesnow) have done several interviews and articles with me … And,  Al Ries was also one of the first guests we had on Expert Access Radio — http://radio.cincom.com.

One of the lessons I took from that — People at the top value great thinking. They pass it on. If you take advantage of their thinking (in this instance Al Ries’ book) it can change everything for you. But you have to teach yourself – learn yourself. No handholding allowed.

It’s the biggest thing I would look for in new employees or partners now. Are they autodidacts? Can they teach themselves new things – continuously?

Mentor Influence:  Wow – where to start. See above. Some of those guys were. But I also read 3 to 5 books a week and find great mentoring there.

Steps to Success:  Stumbled. Staggered. Fell.  Those are kinda the steps.

No failures = no success

To succeed you have to fail at some time. No way around that I think.

Since I’ve literally reinvented myself 5 times during my life and am in the process of doing it again – I can only say what steps seem to be common in all of those endeavors:

A Joie de vivre  – a joy for living & loving life, learning, re-learning. I need to throw a quote in here.

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

Name:  John Kremer

Big Break:  Probably the thing that had the biggest impact for me is that Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen loved my book and recommended it to everybody. I was successful before but I sold a ton of books based on their recommendation. They took my book 1001 Ways to Market Your Book and basically put it up on a wall and did the things that they wanted to do. The Rule of Five is one of the strategies that they took from my book, which says that you should do at least five things every day to market your book, any book that you still love and want to have sold and that helps you to be successful marketing your book.

Mentor Influence:  I haven’t had any real mentors who sat with me that much, but I’ve had many mentors through books. I have been mentored by people who I have read like Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and people like Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen through their books, and also by marketing people like Jay Conrad Levinson.

Steps to Success: The main thing that I did was study and learn and keep observing what other people were doing that was working and follow what I noted when I watched people. I have a lot of people that I learned from and not just the gurus but my customers who tell me what works and doesn’t work for them. Much of what I know about book marketing comes from people sharing with me what works for them, and all I do is essentially pass on that information.

Name:  Kevin Popović

Big Break:  There is a gentleman named Bob Friday, and he had a company called TGIF Productions that did video and event production. While I was a struggling entrepreneur, and trying to figure out where I was going to fit in this communications business, I had to take a part-time job in retail. Every so often Bob would come in to the store and buy something new for his office, and he’d share a story and I would chime in about what I thought about his story. We started communicating back and forth.

I ended up offering to help him with these projects on the side to gain experience, and after four or five months of this he started paying me to freelance and after six months of that he brought me on in a full-time position as assistant producer. For four years I traveled all over the country learning about video and event production and how to deal with clients.

I saw how he ran his business and I also saw what I did not like about how he ran his business. So I attribute one of my big breaks to Bob Friday, and thank him for the opportunities he provided and the lessons that he taught me. Many of which are things that I knew that I did not want to do. My father taught me a long time ago to learn from my mistakes and I’ve tried to apply that to everybody I’ve worked with. As much as I have learned from them about what to do, I’ve also learned what not to do.

Mentor Influence: I’ve had a couple of mentors. My father has been a good mentor to me as a professor of marketing. My grandmother has been a mentor to me. She sold shoes for 30 years. Michael Bosworth, sales legend and author of Solutions Selling, Customer Centric Selling and Story Leaders has been a mentor to me in the way that I approach sales and how I present myself, or professional opportunities.

Steps to Success:  I’ve always tried to keep moving forward, lateral at worst, never backwards.

Name:  Andrew Warner

Big Break:  There were lots of big breaks, but here is one. I went to downtown New York, not too far from my office to talk to a customer of mine. On my way out of there, I heard this guy say, “I’m sorry guys I have to run, I don’t have the time. I have to go and look at an apartment uptown. I can’t help you guys today, maybe tomorrow.” So I recognized the guy and said, “Mike, I’ve got a car downstairs, my brother and I will give you a ride up to your apartment and you can get there on time.”

So we’re driving up to the apartment and the whole time I’m thinking, “I should be at my desk, I should be working, what am I doing, just kind of hanging out, what’s wrong with me here, I’ve got to be more efficient,” but I’m enjoying the conversation so I continue, and Mike and I are having a great conversation with my brother, and it’s terrific. I pull over and let Mike out in front of his place and he says, “Thank you! By the way I know that you’re trying to build up your business Andrew we have this customer called Life Minders, they have been buying lots of advertising from us, if you email or contact them and mention my name they’ll buy from you. Alright, goodbye!”

He leaves and I’m sitting there stunned, the guy just handed me a customer, one of his best customers he just introduced me to. That would never have happened if I was just sitting at my desk. It would never have happened if I didn’t get to know him, if I didn’t have this conversation. I called up that Life Minders, and they ended up buying from me. The very first cheque to me was for over $300,000. I looked at it with my brother. We had never seen that much money in the business. I don’t think either of us has seen that big a cheque ever in our lives. It turned around our whole business. We were deep in debt at the time. We could barely pay the bills at the time. That cheque turned things around.

The next cheque from them was for I think $1 million, the next one was for $2 million in advertising and it turned around our business. And what I learned from that was to just go out and have conversations with people and get to know them and really learn from them. That kind of information would never have been on a blog, would never just be on the internet somewhere, and would never have been advertised. I had to get to know Mike to get that kind of information.

Mentor Influence:  I didn’t have enough of them unfortunately and I wish that I had more along the way. I know that there were times when I couldn’t see that having four or five big clients was dangerous for my business. I had them, I was doing well, I turned away other customers because I couldn’t fit them all in. That was a big mistake, then a few of them went out of business, and if three of them went out of business, 60 percent of my revenue was shot.

If I had a mentor, he would have looked at it and said, “Look Andrew, I know you are doing well but you’d be better off with less money but securing your future by locking in multiple sponsors,” or they would have said, “Andrew, you should diversify away from this business and have other product lines,” and I just didn’t have that. That was a big mistake.

Steps to Success: Showing up every day. Even when I started out as an entrepreneur earlier on, my friends who didn’t have jobs, or happen to have a day off would ask me to go and hang out, and I remember saying, “I’m working, why are you even asking,” and they’d say, “Because you’re not really working, you’re working for yourself, you don’t have a boss. There is no reason for you to show up today, you can show up tomorrow. You can always make up for it the next day. Or do work on the weekends or in the evenings.” And if you start doing that you never really catch up. But if you show up for every single day, and you think about your job as a mission then you do grow every day. And everyone around you starts to respect what you’re doing, as you respect it yourself.

From what you have read today and yesterday, do Big Breaks + Mentoring + Hard Work = Success?

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? 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.

Further Reading

Michael Hewitt-Gleeson Interview (Part I), (Part II)

Steve Kayser Interview (Part I), (Part II)

John Kremer Interview (Part I), (Part II)

Kevin Popović Interview (Part I), (Part II)

Andrew Warner Interview (Part I), (Part II) (Part III), (Part IV)

Book link is affiliate link.

Interviewee Name: Paulette Ensign

Company Name: TipsBooklets.com

Website: http://www.tipsbooklets.com, http://www.CollectionOfExperts.com

Paulette Ensign – Your Invisible Mentor & Workshop Leader

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Paulette Ensign: Fourteen years ago I got smart and made a cross-country move from Northeast America where I had lived all my life to sunny San Diego and I did it without missing a beat in my business because of the flexibility of Tips Booklet, which is what my business is all about. My cat and I got on a plane and I have never looked back. People have asked me why I moved to San Diego, and it’s simple, it doesn’t snow here (she laughs). I live a mile from the Pacific Ocean and I refer to that beach as my office annex. It’s one of the most beautiful experiences plus it does really allow me the kind of life that I want. I think it is important for anyone listening to or reading about our interview, to understand that’s what I promote. I promote people creating the life they want by taking their knowledge and putting it into information products and getting their message out worldwide and making good money from it.

Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?

Paulette Ensign: Mostly in good ways. The president of the music college that I attended for my undergraduate work said, “You go to a concert for two reasons: to find out what you like and to find out what you don’t like.” My mentors helped with that regardless of what profession I was in. And I had mentors in each of my three careers. They helped me to see what I liked that I wanted to emulate, expand and expound on, and they helped me see and sift through the things that really were not a match for me.

My mentors helped me to see who I am, respect it and build on it. For instance, they taught me to honour what my gift, personality and approach was all about. I am a go-getter kind of a person and for me to be a soft spoken person, is not the primary nature of who I am.

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

Paulette Ensign: The old Nike slogan to “Just Do It.” The core message is that I do not need approval from other people to do and be who I am, and that who I am really is something that needs to be shared with people who are open to receiving that. I am not everybody’s cup of tea, and that’s the good news.

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?

Paulette Ensign: One of the things that have been very consistently voiced over the year that I have been involved with Tips Booklets specifically is the concern of people already knowing what the booklet author is thinking about putting in the booklet, or the question, “Gee, doesn’t everyone know this already and why should I bother to do this?” And I see and hear this so often that I continue to encourage people to think in terms of the fact that each of us has lived with, breathed with and slept with our own expertise, so we know it very differently than people who are coming to us for the first time. So that the folks who are coming to us, whether invisible, or visible, interactive or passive.

Think in terms of the fact that some people know some of what you know, some know a lot of what you know, and some don’t know any of what you know. It is really valuable to put your knowledge out there because if they don’t know anything at all about your expertise, that’s great; if they know some of what you know, you can definitely function as a good reminder to them and if they know a lot of what you know, confirmation is certainly valuable to people so do yours anyway. That’s what I think can be of great value to readers about what they can do to move forward in only the best way.

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

Paulette Ensign: The thing that I want to impress upon our listeners and readers is the notion of course correction. Most of us to go from Point A to Point B, but rarely even with the best map in the world do we do that without a little bit of “zigging” and “zagging”.

Throughout my life in integrating my personal and professional life, some days it’s just been really too much of one thing. Too much of my professional life or on a rare occasion I’ve been out of the office for longer than I’m comfortable with. I have confidence in the knowledge that I can always fix that, I can always shift that. If I’m in the office too long it’s just a question of saying to myself, “Get up, get out of your chair, go and either walk or get in the car, do something or pick the phone up, and make a plan to get together with someone.” And I think that realization and autonomy, and also the notion of self-determination, and the fact that I live alone with my cat is a different situation than folks who are in a relationship with another human being, or where they’ve got families that are really pulling more on their schedule, time and attention, but it’s a different reality than what my life happens to be at this moment.

I don’t want to overlook or disrespect that as a single person whose sole responsibility is to her cat, yes, I’ve got huge autonomy, and I can make those choices differently without consideration of anybody else. Do what you can do, my personal opinion about all of that even when you have people around you, because of that it is even more important to determine what it is you need to feed yourself and fuel your own good movement forward and your own satisfaction. Take a breath, it may not be some huge change to make, it may be something small that will satisfy that need. Regardless of what size it is, think about what you need and get that done.

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

Paulette Ensign: I don’t know that I’ve got any regrets at all. I don’t mean that to sound Pollyannish. Based on what you have heard me express as my philosophy, I believe that everything have happened the way that they were supposed to, and some things have turned out differently than I would have preferred, there are other things that I am sure had I had more information I would have done them differently. At this point I’m really reluctant to identify anything as a regret. I think it’s just a matter of saying, “What can I learn from this? or this wasn’t my journey to have that experience and what’s next?”

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

Paulette Ensign:

1. I need to keep going even on those days that don’t look the way I’d like them to look; tomorrow is going to look different. It just simply will. I can have a momentary pity party, can feel bad about it and tomorrow is going to look different.
2. I have the ability to make changes, and if I don’t make changes, then that’s a choice I’ve made. If something is different from the way that I’d like it to be, the lesson there is to ask myself, “What can I do so that it’s different?” For instance, if my cash flow isn’t what I’d like it to be in a particular week or month or year, it’s up to me to take a look to see what I can do to make it different because playing the blame game doesn’t get us anywhere so what can I do to make it different?
3. My happiness depends on me, which is a spinoff of what I mentioned a moment ago about what I can do to change what is happening. Happiness specifically is something that is really up to me.
4. Listening to other people’s opinions is something that needs to be filtered out and filtered in, in ways that really work best for all concerned, so when someone is unabashedly giving me their opinion and it has tinges of negativity attached to in, what I’ve learned over the years is to say, “Thank you so much for your thoughts,” and then filter it out. After selling about 50,000 copies of my booklets – and by the way, I’ve sold over 1 million copies, without spending a penny on advertising – my younger sister said to me, “How is that stupid booklet doing?” She didn’t mean it in a mean way, even though those words could sound like it, it was in a kind of offhanded way, and I’ve now had the last laugh about that because I had sold 50,000 copies at that point. There will be dream killers in the lives of many people. I’ve learn that while some folks around any of us may mean well, they are not walking in our moccasins, so I thank them and realize that is their agenda, their issues, not mine, and I do what I’m going to do anyway.
5. Honour who I am, and when I think about the fact that I enjoy starting things and being a trailblazer. There are a lot of examples in the world right now, of people who have done things, and the people in their lives thought they were totally out of their minds. When I think about the inventor of things like the hula hoop, or the pet rock or the chia pet, who had the last laugh on those? The chia pet now every year during the Holiday Season, the silly thing that you add water to and it grows a goofy kind of plant, is around decades later and they just continue to change what the actual form of it is. The lesson is to honour myself and do what I think the best thing is for me to be doing, as long as it is legal, moral and ethical and is not hurtful to other people. That’s a crucial lesson to learn, and I continue to support and encourage other people to get beyond their own self doubts, and concerns about what the people in their lives are saying to them, and that’s a big thing for me.

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

Paulette Ensign: I live a mile from the beach and that’s no accident or coincidence so that’s a magnet for me immediately. I also enjoy eating sushi, which I know some people have never acquired the taste for but that’s something that I never have to be asked twice to go out to enjoy. I enjoy traveling though I never like to be a road warrior, just enough and I think it is important and it is a necessity not a luxury to change environment by traveling. There is always so much to experience, learn and enjoy by traveling. I have gone to Europe several times and I’ve experienced traveling around the United States and Canada a bit, so those are the things that come to mind most readily that I think people can enjoy. I’m not particularly a big reader per se although that’s not to say that I don’t read a book now and then, but as far as folks who enjoy reading as one of their top fie great hobbies, that wouldn’t be mine. I enjoy getting together with friends too.

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

Paulette Ensign: Some of it is talking it out with respected colleagues, family and friends. Some of it is just to get a yellow pad and start scratching it out. I am somebody who enjoys crunching numbers so I will go that route first; and the combination of all those things plus I’ll use a mind mapping process to get the components out and that’s the short answer for how I generally like to generate ideas. I also like to get it out there and see what’s working, what isn’t working and make changes and then proceed.

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

Paulette Ensign: My favourite quotation is one I created a while back and I would admit to it being a spinoff to one of the big credit card company’s. My quote is, “Are you open to the possibilities?” because it’s so open ended and gets people thinking and moving beyond those limitations.

Avil Beckford: How do you define success?

Paulette Ensign: Being happy!

Avil Beckford: In your opinion what’s the formula for success?

Paulette Ensign: Taking a look at what I’ve got, accomplished and feel great about. If it’s not something I feel great about, what can I do to make it different? If I’ve got things, experiences that are making me almost happy, what can I do to make it so that I am completely happy about it? Sometimes it’s not possible in that moment, sometimes it’s going to be delayed, and sometimes it’s not going to be possible at all. However to look at what it is that I have, and am, and experience and express real sincere gratitude for it, is my formula for success.

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

Paulette Ensign: This is going to sound glib and I don’t mean it to be, but the steps that I’ve taken to succeed have been literally to keep going. I know that may sound like an amazing grasp of the obvious, but when things have not worked, where either the quantity of the sales hasn’t been what I would like or where the prices just weren’t lining up, with what my market said was a good idea, or where I’ve created a product that nobody wanted, I have kept going, either I’ve said, “This isn’t a match at all,” “Let’s just put it off to the side,” or I’ve taken a look to see what I can change to test to see how this will work.

For instance, a couple of year ago I created a membership program, and I took what my people had been doing with Tips Booklets and went beyond that into a bigger realm regarding publishing. It really did not get to the point where I would like for it to have gotten to on two levels. One, I never really got the number of people to make it financially at the level that I was planning for it to be. And I got feedback that was extremely helpful from people who had been traveling with me for a while on this booklet journey. They said that even though the people that I interviewed, other experts in the field of publishing, while they were good, they felt that the general publishing information was not as powerful, and didn’t have as much of a punch as the information I was personally putting out about booklets.

In the process of doing that I risked diluting what my brand was with booklets and I risked alienating people who had been very keen on knowing more about booklets. However, you asked the question earlier about regret, and I don’t regret having done that, because had I not done that I wouldn’t have known that that was a path that was not for me to go down. It took a year of experimenting on that to see that part of it worked, part of it didn’t. Some of that is important to be aware of and acknowledge.

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

Paulette Ensign: I’m someone who enjoys instant gratification, and I would be lying to say otherwise. However, a lot of what I say defies that, and when someone comes to me and wants to know how they can make lots and lots of money in 30 days, I say to them, “I’m the wrong person for you to ask.” Spend time exploring, and finding nooks and crannies and who your people are, and I’m not going to say who your market is. You may find certain people in a variety of markets who resonate with who you are and what you are about. I advise people to keep going and that 99 times out of a hundred you are going to find that where your starting point is as logical as it may have seemed, is rarely your finish line.

Let me give you an example that’s very easy to understand. When I wrote my booklet, 110 Ideas for Organizing Your Business Life, I was in a very senior leadership position in the profession of professional organizing. I was the National President of the Association of Professional Organizers when I wrote my booklet and when I made the cross-country move.

I had access to the major office supply manufactures worldwide at that point because of my involvement in that association, and it was very appropriate access that I had. I was not usurping my position in anyway. It was typical interaction that we had within the association. So I thought this was going to be a really easy thing to have office supply manufacturers clamouring for my booklet, well, it wasn’t the case. As it turned out, there were others entities that ended up buying many copies of my booklets. Financial planners for instance, found that it was a great thing to send as that year’s holiday gift to their list of people, and other industries viewed it similarly. That’s the kind of thing which reinforces the issue of to keep going.

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?

Paulette Ensign: I don’t have an answer to that question because I don’t know who I want to meet because people show up that I couldn’t have imagined who would have been so wonderful to connect with. Because celebrity does not appeal to me per se in and of itself, there are not people that come to my mind. I had dinner one time in Washington DC because I was doing a speaking event there, and my hosts happen to take me to a restaurant, that at the next table Maya Angelou happened to be sitting, and I was so thrilled to get a sense of what her physical essence was about and that she carried with her an aura about her that was so basic and down-to-earth that was so regal.

It was just one of those things you know, and it was like a cat walking in front of me and I don’t mean that in any kind of a negative way. As far as five people that I’d want to meet, I don’t know who they are, and I have a feeling that I’ve met some of them already, and the rest of them are going to appear as appropriate. As far as what I would say to them I would ask them some questions. I would ask them about their lives, much in the way you are asking me today and see what would surface as important to them and learn from that and enjoy the experience. That’s how I would answer that question for you today.

Avil Beckford: You say that you do not read a lot but was there one book that had a profound impact on your life? What was it about this book that impacted you so deeply?

Paulette Ensign: Yes, there was one book and I was really impressed that it had an impact on the lives of people I wouldn’t have anticipated, and that book was the Celestine Prophecy. I remember reading it probably 20 years ago, or close to it. And what I became aware of is that people across socio-economic identifications were finding this book to be very helpful. I have one foot in the metaphysical , new age, holistic world and one foot in mainstream, so for me that book resonated because of the kinds of life lessons that were in it, that I found were so applicable to so much of what I was about.

I had to laugh at the folks who I knew were highly educated – not that I do not have my fair share of formal education in my two degrees – who I viewed as snobs thought the book wasn’t well written and missed the whole point. I was not there to analyze the calibre of the writing style as much as what was the message of the book, and there were life lesson throughout that book. Even though I can’t cite them in this moment, I know that it was a book that I was unusually recommending to other people and buying them copies so thank you for asking that question.

Avil Beckford: If you were stranded on a deserted island, what are five books that you would like to have with you and why? Summarize the book in two sentences.

Paulette Ensign: The Celestine Prophecy would be one. Because of the fact that I am fairly spiritually-based, I would be inclined to have some self-help books, a copy of the Torah because of my Jewish background. I have also found some great value in some of the books about human behaviour and self-help. One book that I have also found very helpful in my business life is 1001 Ways to Market Your Book by John Kremer. I have three consecutive editions of it on my bookshelf, and it has prompted so many ideas. There is no way any one person could do everything in that book in one lifetime. However it certainly has generated lots and lots of ideas for me in my booklet business, and things that I teach others and share. There is a book by the futurist Faith Popcorn, The Popcorn Report – she thinks very much like me although she goes into much greater depth, and her background is such that she has predicted lots of trends – that I get excited about.

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

Paulette Ensign: Any CD that is Brahms. Brahms is my absolutely favourite composer so any of the symphonies and chamber music by Brahms would be great. As far as the movie, there is a movie many years ago that George Burns did called “Oh God,” and I think that represents my statement about spirituality, and that I believe that it’s a joint venture, that I can’t do it all and that it’s not my nature to hand over the responsibility of my life to some higher being and give up any part that I can contribute.

If you cannot view this YouTube video of Brahms, click here.

Avil Beckford: What excites you about life?

Paulette Ensign: Brainstorming and I do not care about what topic it is. Of getting involved, of interacting with other people and getting ideas going because they always contribute to what I have got and I am comfortable enough, and confident that I do contribute to the thought process and lives of other people.

Avil Beckford: How do you nurture your soul?

Paulette Ensign: I think that we’ve hit on a lot of ways that I’ve done that in the time that we’ve talked today – dealing with other people’s ideas, and being with people who get me and who I get, where we resonate. That adds so much to my world both in receiving and giving the gifts of who each of us is all about.

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

Paulette Ensign: I’m not going to tell you world peace because that’s so obvious, however I am going to say the one wish of having people around me who we can interact and receive, that’s probably the one wish that I would have.

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

Paulette Ensign: I am able to share the best of who I am with other people where they are equally willing to share the best of who they are with me.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? 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.

All book links are affiliate links.

Which book has had the most profound impact on your life, and why? If you asked successful leaders which one book had the most impact on their lives, it’s highly unlikely that they would name a business book. Most would name a book that provokes thought. Is your one book thought provoking? I have culled from the interviews, seven books that have influenced the successful leaders which I have presented to you on this blog.

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron with its stepwise approach, and again it’s about honoring the childish side of yourself, to play, to have time that’s just for you, that’s not trying to be better, or doing your duties was a huge revelation for me when I saw how difficult that was to do. Carolyn Barber

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

Steven King’s The Stand, mostly because of the creative writing and the descriptions he used to set scenes, describe characters and make you, as the reader, feel like you were in this world. Don Martelli

Walden by Henry David Thoreau. I love that book and it’s probably the one that I have read more than any other book. I’ve read it about a dozen times. It really speaks to me in terms of living your true life and stepping to your own drum. It’s very emotional and if reincarnation is true I feel like Henry David Thoreau was one of my past lives. John Kremer

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by the great mythologist, Joseph Campbell.  He taught me to ‘follow my bliss.’ David Gray

David Copperfield, (Charles Dickens) – I first heard this book serialized on the radio aged 9. I read the book aged 10 and still find it an inspiration. The exploration of family life, friendship, love, hardship, death, human greatness/imperfection, as well as personal evolution encompasses just about every human emotion … Rodger Harding

Tom Peters – Brand You 50. This was one of the very first books on personal branding and started my journey. As soon as I read it I realized what he was talking about was what I had done in my career and explained a lot. It was probably more emotional because it spoke to my belief that you can do what you want to do if you put your mind and efforts to it. Paul Copcutt

How many of these seven books have you read? 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.

As with all the interviews that I have conducted, there are parts of John Kremer’s that resonated with me. Are you happy with the life you’re living? John  structured his life so that he could do the things that matter to him? Do you ever stop to smell the roses as he does, or are you always rushing from here to there? Are you fearless? One of the five life lessons that John Kremer has learned so far is that you have to be open, “You have to be so open that you’re willing to bleed and be cut. There is a saying that the best writers sort of open a wound and let it bleed. You have to be open and not be afraid of anything.” It this a good way to be? What are the advantages and disadvantages of being too open? Enough said, read his interview.

Tell me a little bit about yourself

I am 61 years old and I live in Taos, New Mexico. My passion is publishing, marketing, walking my dog and spending time with my wife.

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

There are a lot of ways to answer this question, but I go back to not knowing my place in the universe and I think when I was younger I should have spent a year or two focusing on that and not doing things that distracted me from that.

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

1. Always give. You have to give if you expect to receive. This is important not just in marketing but in life as a whole and you have to be open to giving and sharing.
2. You have to be so open that you’re willing to bleed and be cut. There is a saying that the best writers sort of open a wound and let it bleed. You have to be open and not be afraid of anything.
3. The best things come when people are free to do what they can do without being regulated by government, religion or even friends and family that can point them in the wrong direction.
4. Relationships are the basis for success in business and in marketing and I think that’s a really important life lesson.
5. Have fun!

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

Reading, walking my dog and spending time with my wife.

What process do you use to generate great ideas?

I don’t really have to use a process because I have ideas coming to me all the time. My problem is figuring out which ideas to act on. I have 200 books that I want to write but I will never get them all done, so I always have these ideas coming to me. I don’t think I use a process but if you if you had a process it would be to let yourself be open to what is coming your way.

What’s your favourite quotation and why?

My favourite quote is “All that is real and true is simple, natural and life supporting,” by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. This quote has stuck with me.

How do you define success?

Being able to do what you want to do, and whatever that means in terms of what you are doing. But it can’t be just selfish because then you are not doing what you want to do.  I think people who follow what they want to do are among the most generous in the world. And, that’s when success really falls into place.

In your opinion what’s the formula for success?

Just do what you want to do because that’s the definition of success and that’s exactly what you have to do to have success. You really have to enjoy what you are doing, you do it with your whole heart and at all times keep the generous spirit of sharing.

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

The main thing that I did was study and learn and keep observing what other people were doing that was working and follow what I noted when I watched people. I have a lot of people that I learned from and not just the gurus but my customers who tell me what works and doesn’t work for them. Much of what I know about book marketing comes from people sharing with me what works for them, and all I do is essentially pass on that information.

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

The key thing is that you have to do some amount of study. Study the successful people in your field by reading their books, and if you can, spend time with them. One of the other things that I do in terms of being mentored is spending time with people at conferences and conventions where you can actually sit down with them and talk. With me I’m not afraid to ask any questions, no matter how personal it might be. I mean it’s amazing, I sometimes scare my wife when I ask people some personal questions even if we are in the grocery line. I’m curious and I always want to know things. I am not afraid to ask personal questions because it’s the person’s right not to answer any question that I ask.

If trusted friends could introduce you to five people that you’ve always wanted to meet, who would you choose? And what would you say to them?

1. Dalai Lama
2. Pope Benedict XVI
3. President Barack Obama
4. Carl Rogers
5. Abraham Maslow

I would just want to sit with them and not necessarily say anything to them. I would just want to spend time with them and be in their atmosphere and figure out what makes them tick and how they think. You can just sit with someone and talk about anything and it doesn’t matter what it is and you’ll learn from them.

Which one book had a profound impact on your life? What was it about this book that impacted you so deeply? Did you have an emotional or intellectual attachment to this book? Why?

Walden by Henry David Thoreau. I love that book and it’s probably the one that I have read more than any other book. I’ve read it about a dozen times. It really speaks to me in terms of living your true life and stepping to your own drum. It’s very emotional and if reincarnation is true I feel like Henry David Thoreau was one of my past lives.

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

Oh yeah, I always get that with any book. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t have to generate ideas because every book I read stimulates me to think of something new or something that I could be doing. I am always being thrown into all kinds of directions and my biggest challenge would be maintaining one direction very strongly.

If you were stranded on a deserted island, what are five books that you would like to have with you and why? Summarize the book in two sentences.

1. Walden
2. I’d take the Bible. It would take a while to read it. I have never read it all the way through so that would be a great time to do it
3. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on the Bhagavad-Gita
4. I’d take a couple of really good mystery novels that were worth reading over and over again

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

The music CD would be one that I put together with some of my favourite songs. My favourite song is Brown Eyed Girl and I don’t know why, but every time I hear it I get happy. I would take that along with other songs from the late sixties and early seventies. I was at that age where music really impacts your life, and those songs still have a great calling to me.

If you cannot view the YouTube Video, please click here to view Brown Eyed Girl.

For a movie I might take Amadeus. Amadeus is such a well directed and acted movie and the passion for music came through in such a strong way. The guy that sort of killed Mozart or drove him to death loved his music so much that he was probably the only one who truly appreciated what Mozart was doing.

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

What excites you about life?

Every day

How do you nurture your soul?

I really try to take time every day to pray, meditate, read things that help me, journal and think about the deep questions of life. I have structured my life and I have been doing independent business for over 25 years. I did this so that whenever I wanted to take time out to walk or just smell the roses I could do it.

If you had a personal genie and she gave you one wish, what would you wish for? Or, if I gave you a magic wand, what would you use it for?

I would wish that all people have true freedom.

Complete the following, I am happy when…..

I’m writing, when I’m with my wife, walking and playing with my dog.

What are five takeaways from John Kremer’s interview? Review the first part of this interview and think about how you can apply the information to you situation. What nuggets of wisdom can you glean?

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 left side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

The book and CD links are Amazon Affiliate links.

Have a book you’d like to market? John Kremer is the guy to turn to. In fact, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen the masterminds behind the “Chicken Book” series used several of Kremer’s ideas from his hugely popular book, 1001 Ways to Market Your Books. When I interviewed John Kremer he indicated that Canfield and Hansen gave him his big break. Who gave you your big break, or are you still waiting for your big break?

Tell me a little bit about yourself

I am 61 years old and I live in Taos, New Mexico. My passion is publishing, marketing, walking my dog and spending time with my wife.

What’s a typical day like for you?

When I get up, one of the first things that I try to do is to check my email. I spend most of my workday on the computer, but I take time out of the day to walk with my wife and dog. I also work at nights because it’s very quiet.

How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

I have to pay the bills so that’s a motivating factor and that keeps me motivated. But I enjoy what I do so it’s very easy to stay motivated.

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

If I had to start over from scratch back in 1980, I would try to sell my books to some of the bigger publishers more aggressively. I would learn how to do that right. But nowadays, I wouldn’t do that because the big publishers are dying. In today’s world it’s very practical to self-publish or publish through a Print on Demand company like Lulu or Infinity Publishing. In today’s world I would focus a lot on ebooks, and especially with the iPad, the ways it has been showcasing books you can do a lot more with it than with a Kindle book reader, which is only in black and white and fairly static. You cannot include audio or video, and I believe with the iPad you can include audio and video.

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

I don’t know about the last year, but the most important discovery that I’ve made in the past 15 years is understanding that ultimately all marketing is creating relationships, and I think it is the most important discovery that I’ve made and continue to make. You have to create relationships and that’s how you market successfully: you create relationships with booksellers, distributors, media, and bloggers. Also, the ultimate reader and customer do a lot of word of mouth marketing for you, so I think the key is creating those relationships.

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

Probably the ebook revolution. The Kindle and the iPad are going to be the biggest things, and of course the iPhone apps that are being translated to the iPad, those are really crucial I think in terms of delivering content to people. So I would say that’s the biggest revolution. There were ebook before that time but they weren’t a mass market item as they are now.

What’s unique about the service that you provide?

I’m the best book marketing consultant that you can find. I know more about marketing books than any three people combined.

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

I drill down to the five best things that people have to do to market their books, so I focus on that and I don’t get distracted. I really want people to be focused and not be driven by the winds of “oh here is a new hot thing”. Sometimes I do tell people that here is a new thing you need to do and it’s hot now, but I really want to focus on the key thing which is building relationships. For example, in internet marketing there are new things coming up over and over again, but the most fundamental and important thing you can do marketing online is to create relationships with the top websites that have the audience that you are trying to reach, and people still keep hoping that there is a magic button that you can push and everything will be taken care of for you and the reality is that magic button is simple, you create relationships.

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

I don’t know what that would be. I just go day-by-day and do the work so I don’t think in terms of challenges, or things like that, that I have to resolve. Every day is a minor challenge. There are things that you have to do, probably my main challenge is time management because there are things that I like to do and there are things that I don’t like to do and I tend not to manage well the things that I don’t like to do. I think that this describes most people.

What lessons did you learn in the process?

This means that there are days when I have to sit down and do the things that I don’t want to do, and I know that I have to do that so I set aside a certain amount of time every week.

Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

Probably the thing that had the biggest impact for me is that Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen loved my book and recommended it to everybody. I was successful before but I sold a ton of books based on their recommendation. They took my book 1001 Ways to Market Your Books and basically put it up on a wall and did the things that they wanted to do. The Rule of Five is one of the strategies that they took from my book, which says that you should do at least five things every day to market your book, any book that you still love and want to have sold and that helps you to be successful marketing your book.

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

Again you want me to focus on things that I do not want to focus on. The biggest failure is probably a trivia book that I wrote when trivia books were going out of style and I printed 10,000 copies and shouldn’t have printed that many, even though everyone was telling me that I should. I eventually end up burying 5,000 copies and that hurts when you have to do that.

I learned that you have to be conservative with your print runs and do not listen to people because you can always go back to press.

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

The biggest disappointment in my life is that I still haven’t learned every thing in terms of who I am in the context of the universe, and that is an ongoing disappointment so I haven’t prevented its reoccurrence. I would still like to know where my place is in the universe and how I fit and know it not just on the level of intellect but know it on the level of visceral experiences.

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

The reality is that every day you are making little decisions about a lot of what goes on in your life, and the little decisions are as important as the big decisions in my experience because one decision after another can lead you into an entirely new direction you wouldn’t have gone had you not made those little decisions.

What are three events that helped to shape your life?

One was something that happened when I was in 10^th Grade High School English class. It’s when I learned to love to write and it certainly impacted my life because before then I didn’t like to write. After that class I learned that I liked to write and wanted to write and that was going to be my life.

The second thing is something that I learned in college, and it was discovering a man named Carl Rogers who talked about how people can change their lives, and the most important thing that you can do to support someone is simply to give them unconditional love, and I think that’s really important because it’s not only about how you treat others but how you treat yourself.

The third thing that shaped my life the most is starting to meditate.

What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

1001 Ways to Market Your Books.

How did mentors influence your life?

I haven’t had any real mentors who sat with me that much, but I’ve had many mentors through books. I have been mentored by people who I have read like Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and people like Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen through their books, and also by marketing people like Jay Conrad Levinson.

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

Have fun! The most important thing is that you need to enjoy what you are doing, and if you are doing something that you don’t really enjoy, figure out (1) do you need to do it, (2) if you need to do it can you find someone to do it for you, (3) if you can’t find someone to do it, is there some way to minimize how much you have to do it, so that most of your life you can be happy and have fun.

How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

I don’t bring my personal into my professional life because my wife does not want be bringing business into our relationship. On the other had I do bring my personal life into my business life because I don’t think of business as just business. What I am doing I enjoy doing so it’s fun and it’s part of what I am and who I am and it’s always going to be that way. I won’t do something for very long that I do not enjoy, except for accounting and taxes which I have to do. And even though I hire people to perform those functions, I still have to do a certain amount to help them do their job.

What are five takeaways from John Kremer’s interview? If you have a book that you’d like to market, would you be willing to give the Rule of Five a try?

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 left side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.