The Invisible Mentor

Posts Tagged ‘Lessons Learned’

Last week we talked about how to use The Invisible Mentor interviews to get the most from them. Please refer to How to Use Interviews for Self-Improvement and Another Way to Use Interviews for Self Improvement. As I was writing those blog posts, it suddenly occurred to me that the interviews I present here are really workshops that you attend nearly every week, for your professional development.

Christina Ioannidis – Your Invisible Mentor

Henry Ford once said, “Failure is the only opportunity to begin again more intelligently.”

Christina’s first business aqua failed and she had to start over from scratch. I’m very impressed with Christina because she spoke openly and candidly about what she went through when her first business failed. As a society, especially in the West, we are socialized not to talk about failure, but the biggest lessons and learnings come from failure as you will see in the interview. At the end of Part One of the interview (or workshop) you’ll:

• Get incredible insights into a passionate woman who failed forward to success
• Learn about what can happen when you have too much stress in your life
• See a linchpin in action. Remember a few of the characteristics of a linchpin are to be ahead of the curve and anticipate the needs of your clients and customers before they do, and give it to them. Please see Review of Linchpin by Seth Godin
• Learn that you have to be clear and honest with people when you ask them to mentor you. The same thing applies when you contact someone in your networks. Please refer to Review of The Skinny on Networking by Jim Randel

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Christina Ioannidis: I am a Greek-Venezuelan who lives in London. My passion in life is to support other people and inspire individuals to do what they are passionate about, and that’s what I do on a professional and daily basis. I am the founder and CEO of Aquitude.

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

Christina Ioannidis: I don’t really have a typical day. A typical day might look like, get up in the morning, go to the gym or run. Afterwards I have breakfast, then either I leave the house and go for meetings usually back-to-back, followed by my training courses, or I stay in the office and work around building or designing the courses that I deliver. In the evenings, practically 90 percent of the time I am networking or going out to networking events.

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

Christina Ioannidis: I think I motivate myself by thinking about how I’m going to break the market, or how I’m going to make something out of nothing. My motivation is knowing that I’ve started something completely new and that it’s going to be successful, so I motivate myself by having a goal and seeing whether or not I get there.

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

Christina Ioannidis: Henry Ford once said, “Failure is the only opportunity to begin again more intelligently.”

I started my life from scratch again when I lost my business. If I were to start again as a youngster in my career, what I would do very differently would be to not expect other people to recognize my achievements, but to always be positive about what I have done myself and tell others about it, and network like crazy. When I lost my jobs and my businesses, I naturally networked but I didn’t realize that I had to do it 10 times more than I had originally done it. If I were starting my professional life again or my companies again, I would probably have a little bit more cash in the bank. To start something it always takes a lot longer to make money out of it than one thinks.

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

Christina Ioannidis: Technology! For me, in the past year I’ve realized how important technology is for businesses. Even though I worked in technology 10 years ago I took it for granted how important it was to help people build connections. Social media and social networks have enabled people to get together via technology. The other product that we use, virtual conferencing is another piece of technology that is so powerful to bring people together. So for me, I think this has been the one single most powerful kind of enlightenment around how you can bring people globally together in one virtual physical space. And technology can do that.

Avil Beckford: What’s one of the biggest advances in your industry over the past five years?

Christina Ioannidis: The credit crunch. While the credit crunch has been a big crisis for everyone because everyone was affected in some way, the good thing is that it has brought questioning of everything, all the foundation of business. I actually think that this is going to help us advance faster to create better businesses even though we have taken a step back economically.

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

Christina Ioannidis: Self-doubt: I’m not a naturally doubtful person as you’ve probably gathered. I’m a high risk-taker, go crazy do kind of person. But my biggest risk would be falling prey to self-doubt, to start wondering if I can do things, which I have done in the past due to stress. Just before I lost my previous business, I suffered from depression quite badly because of stress. I don’t have any issues, but because of stress I was depressed, and what’s amazing is that I woke up one day and said, “Stop crying! You’re not going to achieve anything by crying. The only one who is going to get you out of the mess you’re in is yourself and that’s it.” My biggest threat would be if that happened again, which is not likely to.

To my business, as I’ve learned the biggest threat is doing stuff too quickly and spending too much money. My biggest mistake in a previous entrepreneurial endeavor was taking on too much financial risk. I don’t think that will happen again because I’m a little bit more intelligent now.

What’s unique about the service that you provide?

Christina Ioannidis: Precisely because it’s a service and it’s all about how you make people feel. The uniqueness is the delivery. I tend to deliver most of the content, and the associates that I have, are chosen on how good they are at making people feel positive about themselves. Whatever I do with either of my businesses, whether it’s consulting to a company, or coaching someone, they have to leave in a better condition than when they came in contact with us. The way the service is delivered, we are always making sure that our clients are happy and feel good about themselves.

The use of technology: We are always using cutting edge technology to deliver something that no one else has done.

Ideas: One thing I do quite naturally now is to always think about what could be a commercial proposition that would be beneficial for our customers. A lot of companies become complacent and they don’t do that. Once they have got a client, they just deliver the same-old, same-old. For me it’s always about being ahead of the curve and thinking ahead about what that client might need.

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

Christina Ioannidis: A lot of people in my field go in and talk using very big words, make big presentations, charge a lot of money, but ultimately the business doesn’t actually change, it’s fundamentally the same. The client has just paid them loads of money for a big presentation and long words. What we do, and what I like doing, is talking through the “crap” and saying it as it is, and being effective in that way. The way we work is about being realistic and always measuring what we do with concrete feedback and adapting the product or service to the strategy based on that feedback. A lot of companies don`t necessarily do that.

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

Christina Ioannidis: There is no bigger challenge than what I went through with aqua. (This will make an interesting story for you and your readers. The day I setup my first entrepreneurial venture, the exact date, was the date I met my future husband, so there was an omen there, and we got married this year, on exactly the same date by chance, so some things are meant to happen.)

When I setup aqua in 2003, I was venturing into something completely unknown to me, and I was following my heart, blindly following my heart. And, I wasn’t listening to anyone, and I thought anyone who had any criticisms to what I was offering, just didn’t understand me, and didn’t understand the business, so I pursued creating it, growing it, going crazy taking out a retail outlet in Mayfair, taking out the risk which I personally signed for. Anyone in business will tell you that’s a no-no. But I was also convinced that it was going to work, I didn’t see any stumbling blocks, I just went for it.

After we had been trading in the premises for a year I was consequently told that the business was trading insolvently. Basically I couldn’t afford to pay all the suppliers that I had, and I was forced to close it, and consequently lose the business. I started to realize the big mistakes that I made along the way.

My big mistake was that I was too confident and thought the people who weren’t understanding the service, and were criticizing me, simply didn’t understand what I was trying to do. But they were giving me hints of what I was doing wrong, but I refused to listen to them.

Avil Beckford: What lessons did you learn in the process?

Christina Ioannidis: Lesson number one: Listen, you have two ears and one mouth, and that’s for a reason. Try and read between the lines even if you do not like what people are telling you.

Lesson number two: Beware of very extreme risks because there are other implications that come with it. When your business is declared insolvent, the directors of the business are automatically – because that’s the way the rules are in the UK – investigated for fraud, which makes sense, and I understand it from the England Revenue perspective. But when you’ve just lost everything, and then you are investigated personally, all your bank statements for the past three years, and you have to say where monies came from and where they went, and you are so emotionally destroyed, let’s say it’s just very difficult to manage that. So be aware of the implications of what you are getting yourself into. This is one of the romances of entrepreneurship, people think it’s so romantic being the director of a business, but you have legal responsibilities. I could have gone to jail if I had been told that I was trading insolvently and carried on trading. I didn’t know that.

These have been my biggest failures and my biggest learnings.

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

Christina Ioannidis: I’ve worked very hard to get to where I’ve wanted to be, but I think my biggest break came from someone I met while I had my previous business. We met me at a networking event, and we really liked each other. She was another professional woman and was inspired by what I was doing. She entrusted me to do a program for women around impact and gravitas (about being feminine but also professional) in business. I did a course for her female staff and it was a life line for me because I still had that retail outlet at the time, and that was significant amount of money that helped the business for a long time. She gave me a major break! She became a stakeholder to the business and was always coming to events and supporting me in any way that she could – as a customer and client.

When I lost that business, she became the first client of acquitude, so she brought me into Accenture, the company she was working for, to do some training. She is one of the most important people on the planet to me because she gave me those breaks.

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

Christina Ioannidis: See answer above about losing my business.

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

Christina Ioannidis: My biggest disappointment in life has come from other people. I have fallen out a number of times with individuals in business because I’m the type of person who will take risks, and there is so much glamour associated with what I tend to get involved in, that other people love to come on board. However, when push comes to shove, if I’ve taken all the risks, it means that I’m also the one who is going to lose everything. In the past, what I’ve found is that, what a lot of people happen to do – and I’ve lost friends over this – is to come in and say they’ll do something. I pay them and then I don’t get what is expected, and this has been true on a number of occasions. My learning has been – and that’s why I do what I do now in terms of communications with other people, and helping them to build good relationships with their colleagues and teams – is to always make sure you have an agreement up front with your expectations and their expectations. And a lot of it has to do with personality type because we project our personalities on to other people, and we expect other people to behave as we would. Everyone does that so we need to understand them even more than we understand ourselves, so we know how they are thinking. I think that this is my biggest learning.

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

Christina Ioannidis: My toughest decision is what I am going through now, and it’s a personal decision. I find business decisions are easier to make than my personal ones. My toughest decision is where to live because my parents are live in Greece, I live in London, but I am married to an Australian man, so we have three very distinct geographies that we could be in but I don’t want to be too far from my parents because they are now at an elderly age. This is my hardest decision at the moment. I probably spend more time thinking about this than anything else.

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

Christina Ioannidis: My grandmother and in knowing her. My grandmother was the epitome of femininity and intelligence. She was a poor Venezuelan woman, absolutely beautiful who brought up magnificent daughters on her own. And that’s why I admired her! She did some things that most would not be able to do. And not only that, she was very advanced for her time. She grew up at the beginning of the 20^th century and did a lot of cutting edge things. Women were not liberated then, and even though her social environment was restricted, she did so much, and both of her daughters became internationally renowned in their fields. My mother became an international pianist, performing globally, and my aunt won the national award for microbiology for science in Venezuela. So both of them became eminencies in their fields, and they are women. That’s why I feel so much passion about supporting women, and I think it comes from her. She fed this to my mother who is my second biggest inspiration. My mother travelled the whole world in the sixties. At 16 she went to live in New York for five years in a row, then she went to Vienna and to Italy where she met a Greek man, my father. She lived in Greece and was practically the first Venezuelan living in Greece, so she was always living in very different environments, but adapting to them.

It was a momentous time when my grandmother passed away in 2003. And the way she passed away, I’m convinced it was her wish for me to start aqua. I’m convinced it was her wish that I would do jewelry because she passionately loved jewelry. I think that’s what got me into my entrepreneurial journey. Her death shocked me so much, that if my career was going straight, it bounced me to the right.

The name of my businesses aquitude (present) and aqua, which I lost is significant. My grandmother’s initials were AQ. If you ever saw the logo of the first company, the a and the q were very pronounced and the u and a were much smaller. I always keep a and q in my company names. Now it’s aquitude and I want people to have her attitude in life.

I couldn’t have done what I’m doing if I hadn’t been made redundant. The first I was made redundant, I managed better than I did the second time because Nortel Networks was a fabulous company to work for, they were very good. The person who made me redundant told me in very nice terms in a very nice way. I felt bad that the company was suffering, but I knew that I would find something else. But the second redundancy was bad because they treated us very badly. I left feeling bitter and I hated that, which was worse for me because I was in a bad state of mind.

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

Christina Ioannidis: I’m very proud of what I did with aqua. I still have people who were clients say to me, “You should do it again,” and my response, “Yes, but not with my money.” It was a beautiful shop and the service was great, the designers were fantastic. Yes there were a lot of challenges, but I am very proud of how I created that experience out of nothing.

Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?

Christina Ioannidis: Big time. First of all, going back to your question about my biggest break, I didn’t know about mentors in the formal sense when I was starting my career. When I started my first job, I was in a very high profile international graduate program for a company called Allied Domecq Spirits. Only Mexicans or Spanish people know about this brand Domecq. Domecq was the biggest spirits company that came out of Mexico, and they had all the sherries in Spain as well. It was owned by a very prominent Latin family, and a British Distillery bought the business and it became Allied Domecq.

I worked for them in a fantastic graduate training program, where they spent millions of dollars on us. They took us on helicopter rides to Wales and to meetings in Hungary and just traveling the planet as graduates.

One of the stakeholders in the graduate program, who was a European president, asked to meet with everyone of the graduates, and I was the last one to meet with him because I was living in Spain at the time and I had to go to the UK to meet him. When I met him,  I asked if he would be my mentor. I was 25 at the time. This guy is at the top of the business, so it takes a little bit of guts, and I am that way. I was thinking that the worse thing that could happen is that he would say no. He was delighted, he smiled and said, “I’m so happy that you asked me, of course I would be delighted.”

He became my mentor, and we agreed that it was going to be an informal conversation, an email here and there, nothing too formal, no hours spent because the guy was busy. He was very instructive in me moving from Spain from sales, then financial and then move me into marketing in Greece. Now there is one thing that Greeks do beautifully, and that’s to have fun. I worked in Athens as a result of him proposing it.

This is a great example of what a mentor can do, and even though we think they won’t have the time, they make the time because they are people and they want to help people. They will help you if you are honest about what you want from them. I had told him I would like him to be there for me as a sounding board, and if there was anything interesting happening in the company that he thought I could embrace I would be happy to consider it. I was very keen.

He was a very important mentor, and ever since I have had my career, I have always had individuals, and they may not have known this, but they were actually my mentor without the formal M. They are the people who I would call up and say I’m doing this, what do you think? and most of the time I didn’t listen, and that’s why the first business didn’t quite work out. They’ve been there, and now I have a range of people who I call my Board of Directors, or my mentoring mesh of individuals, and each one plays an instructive role. I have been quite strategic in who I choose because I know they could be sponsors in those areas I’m interested in and likely to be critical to shape my advancement either for the business or for myself.

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

Christina Ioannidis: I tend to be someone who is very spontaneous. I am Greek-Venezuelan and I love life. A consistent message was the need to question a bit more, to analyze a bit more before acting. I’m the kind of person who will come up with a brilliant idea, I’m convinced it’s going to work, I go out and start working and I don’t stop talking to people about it without actually having dotted the “i’s” and cross the “t’s”. So if someone asked me a question that I didn’t know the answer to, obviously I haven’t thought things through, so that’s something that came out consistently. So now I’m a little bit more focused on how I put stuff on the table, or actually tell people about it.

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

Christina Ioannidis: Be strategic! Always think through what you want, and how you want others to help you, so they don’t become your crutch. A lot of people think that a mentor is a crutch, is someone they can call up twice a month and run all their problems and let them make a decision. A mentor is not that. A mentor is someone who will enlighten you with a perspective to your problem, but you ultimately have to be the person who makes the decision. And that’s why being strategic is important because if you think about what they can offer you in terms of advice, and it’s targeted, then they will definitely help you to make a better decision.

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.

About Christina Ioannidis:

Christina Ioannidis (www.christinaioannidis.com) is an international speaker, consultant and seasoned entrepreneur.

A Venezuelan – Greek, she is the founder and CEO of Aquitude (www.aquitude.com) , a leading Organizational, People and Market Development consultancy. Aquitude’s client list include FTSE 100 companies such as Shell, Barclays, Accenture, Mercer, Detica , PA Consulting, among others.

Christina is also sought-after speaker and she delivers interactive and engaging keynotes at conferences worldwide. She is a thought leader in the subjects of gender-savvy leadership and talent management, employee and customer engagement, effective product development and marketing, as well as innovation and intrapreneurship. She has been invited to comment on Sky News, The Sunday Times, The Observer, The Evening Standard, The Guardian, among others.

Christina is the author of “Your Loss: How to Win Back Your Female Talent” (www.yourlossbook.com).

I conducted this interviewed in 2008 but didn’t transcribe the interview. I had a short post and included the audio. I decided to transcribe the interview for you because I promised to do so, but also because I wanted to give you the option of either written or audio. As you will notice, the interview is different because at the time I interviewed Leslie Householder, the focus of the interview was more on the challenge and resolution. I have grown since then. As usual, I will present Leslie’s interview in two parts.

Leslie Householder – Your Invisible Mentor

Leslie Householder is the best-selling author of the Jackrabbit Factor.  Listen to her talk about a challenge she faced and how she resolved it. How did she transform a failure into a greater success?  To find out the answers to these questions and much more, listen to, or read the transcript of  her audio interview. Click here now to listen to Leslie’s interview. After you have listened to her interview, what are five takeaways? What are five things that you will now do differently? What ideas can you implement? What do you have in common with Leslie? When you have some time, answer the questions and then compare your answers to Leslie’s . How do they differ?

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

My biggest challenge besides the typical restraints on time and capital of course was exposure. I was empowered by the principles that I learned from Bob Proctor, so much so that we were able to triple our income in just a few months after going through one of his weekend programs. I was compelled to teach what I learned, and although I was a stay at home mom, with four children at the time and one on the way, I trained to teach his program and have done so ever since 2001. But the challenge I face however was that he didn’t supply me with an audience. It was my job to generate my own leads. So getting enough exposure to be profitable was probably the biggest challenge I faced. Without a marketing budget of any kind, I learned to round up exposure on the internet through websites that allowed you to post articles (IdeaMarketers.com and EzineArticles.com) and create a name for yourself on the web.

What lessons did you learn in the process?

• I learned to be patient, everything I did seemed to me that it should take only a couple of weeks, or a few months tops, but in reality, the exposure I was after took a few years to develop, and I had to come to terms with the fact that I was in this for the long haul. I was creating a future for me and my family. I was driven to put in the long hours for many months just for the hope that I would create something that would supply passive income.
• I was easily overwhelmed by all that needed doing, so I learned to put all my thoughts, all the things that were swimming around in my mind on to paper and just handle them one at a time. I learned to trust that time wouldn’t run out for me. If all I did was keep moving my feet everything would come together in the right time, and it has.

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

I don’t want this to sound wrong, but it’s hard for me to call anything I’ve done a failure even though I’ve make plenty of mistakes because I have always done the best I could with what I had to work with, my mindset, my resources, my stresses my understanding of things. So what may look like a failure to someone may in reality be a great lesson for me. Every mistake I made has shaped me and made me wiser so I’m grateful for all of it.

But if you want to know something about them, the toughest one we faced happened after my husband and I became actively engaged in helping others achieve prosperity, and so for us to have a major setback in non-prosperity was very difficult. We found a couple of investment properties that promised to yield us more than $200,000 in a couple of months, and at the very end of the process of obtaining them it looked as if we weren’t going to be able to pull it off at all.

We needed to float the properties until they were sold. The investors who provided us with funds, wanted us to prove more solidly our ability to pay them back in case the properties didn’t flip as soon as we expected. Seeing this obstacle, we had learned over the years how to overcome obstacles. So we saw this as an obstacle and decided to apply the principles of success to make sure that these things happened. We used visualization to get the deals to close, which ended up happening in a pretty miraculous way, but in the end however, we would have been better off had they not closed because these investment properties turned into the biggest money pit we have ever seen, and we ended up losing a lot of money at that time.

What lessons did you learn in the process?

What did we learn from that? We learned on a whole new level that you get what you ask for. We wanted it very badly and we got it. We have learned to be more careful, to consult God who we believe in to guide us in choosing worldly desires. Sometimes when we have a desire we’ll check to see if it’s the right thing to do before we move forward to make it happen because we know that we can get what we ask for and have learned to be more careful.

It left us with the feeling that if we have a goal or desire for our family, and we check our conscience, or pray, or however people consult God in their own way, when we do that and feel the peace of confirmation that this is a worthy and right desire then there is a feeling of being unstoppable because you know that God’s on your side then the obstacles are just obstacles and we know that we can get through this because it is a good and worthy desire. It’s really hard to go for a goal when you have this underlying question about whether this is the right thing to be asking for. Once you get that settled it makes future successes sweeter.

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

Every time we’ve set a major goal, instead of having the goal fall into our laps, the success or whatever, instead we’ve always been faced with an opportunity that took us out of our comfort zone. Every time it has been to the point the hardest thing we’ve had to do to take advantage of the opportunity that was presented to us in response to setting a goal. When you say which one was the biggest one, each one was the biggest one until the next one came along. I’m starting to see a pattern, that’s just the way it works. They all felt big, and we recognized them for what they were and saw them as the opportunities that are brought to us as a result of our asking.

These challenges have stretched us, and honestly, nothing feels better in hindsight, it feels really good, it’s scary but it’s an illusion.

How did mentors influence your life?

Mentors have always given me a model of life to aspire toward, a standard to strive for. They keep me reaching higher and stretching farther. They have given me an example. I feel very differently when I spend too much time watching television shows with people living lives that I don’t aspire to. I feel differently, and it drains me a little bit, so I’m inspired when I read about, watch programs about, hear audios about people who have achieved great things, and have become great people through overcoming obstacles and what-not, and so it keeps me motivated to look to them as mentors.

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

That the law of attraction brings opportunities, and that doesn’t always show up in the form of something blissful. And it goes back to if a person is going to ask for courage, they are not going to be given courage, they are going to be given an opportunity to be courageous. Now I’ve noticed that when we set a goal, sometimes instead of attracting piles of money, or great wonderful things, or whatever people expect to attract when they start to live by these principles, instead a challenge shows up, and what that challenge is, is the very experience needed to groom us to prepare us for the blessing that we are asking for on the other side. The problem is that by the time we see the obstacles, the natural thing to do is turnaround and say, “This isn’t what I asked for, the law of attraction doesn’t work,” and that’s not the case, it absolutely works, it brings you opportunities to grow you to eventually achieve and receive the thing that you are asking for.

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.

About Leslie Householder: Leslie is an international best selling, award winning author of Hidden Treasures and The Jackrabbit Factor.  Wife to Trevan and mother of seven, she is also the president and co-founder of Thoughts Alive International and School of Life Mastery – helping people everywhere reach their highest potential.  She is a contributing author to multiple Chicken Soup for the Soul books, and her articles online and in print publications have reached hundreds of thousands of people across the globe.  She will help you enjoy peace of mind in ANY economy and discover how to tap into a hidden source of genius, for overcoming obstacles and thriving in spite of life’s most difficult challenges.

C. Hope Clark – Your Invisible Mentor This Week

As usual, the interview is packed with lots of solid information for you to use. Hope is a writer and has an ezine, FundsforWriters, which she distributes weekly. For Part One of the interview, there are five great ideas that I have pulled out, after you have read the interview, what are your five great ideas?

5 Great Ideas from C. Hope Clark’s Interview

1. The more consistent and productive you are, the more motivated you get
2. Rushing anything before it’s ready is fool’s folly
3. With a serious well thought out plan and mindset, you can stop the train wreck you’re on and head in a different direction
4. Do the best you can at the job you are given and people will respect you
5. Stay hungry, to improve all aspects of your life

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

I write nonfiction for others and fiction for me. I hope one day to cross the bridge where each works for the other side. I adore the outdoors. When I lived three years in Phoenix, one of the first things I did upon returning to my beloved South was to hug a tree. Seriously. I’m married to a retired federal agent, and security/safety is huge in my house. I have two sons, two stepsons, a grandson and granddaughter (Yea, tell me I look too young. I love hearing that – that’s just the photography, trust me. You should see me in person. The years have left their mark here and there.) When I built my house, I told the contractor he had two main goals – place my writing room so it had the best view of the lake . . . and build my husband’s walk-in-safe exactly as he wanted. I said safety was key already, didn’t I? We live on the banks of Lake Murray in South Carolina.

What’s a typical day like for you?

Sleep until 9-10 AM. I’m a night person. Hubby fixes my breakfast. A few chores, maybe emails for an hour or two (I receive 300-400 per day), then something outdoors, if possible, especially if the day is nice. I have to get my daily dose of Vitamin D. I at least feed and greet my chickens – one rooster, 14 hens and a couple of babies. By 5-6 pm, I’m back at the computer working on FundsforWriters. Break for dinner, maybe a mystery/cop show or two with hubby (I adore mysteries), then back to the computer – by then writing on the novel until 2 AM. I love writing in the middle of the night, when no one is looking and I can think with the world silent, leaving me to my thoughts.

How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

I don’t get caught up in this “muse” business. Neither do I believe in writer’s block. Motivation, to me, is nothing more than being consistent. The more consistent and productive I am, the more motivated I get. So on those days when I’m dragging, I continue to drag my behind to the computer and work. The results are just as satisfying as when I’m positive and perky. Frankly, once you write something to completion, you really can’t tell what you wrote on a good day and what you wrote on a sluggish day. So the point it to just show up.

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

Not marry my first husband? LOL. Seriously. I would take my efforts at writing more seriously. It’s probably normal for younger people to second guess their abilities, but I would have written more, sooner, and younger. I would have traveled this writing road harder with more purpose, because only after you’ve traveled it long and hard do you improve. It’s not a skill set you’re born with, regardless of what people think. All the great writers spent their lives putting words on paper in quiet rooms for years before anyone knew their names. And they took their writing seriously early in their lives.

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

That self-publishing is a serious option with the explosion of ebooks. I’m normally NOT an advocate of self-publishing. I still tell new writers to avoid it until they’ve walked that long road I mentioned earlier . . . until they understand the publishing business. If they haven’t done either, then they need to leave the publishing business to the professionals and stick to traditional publishing. On a personal note, I’ve discovered/decided that my children need to struggle and fall on their knees so they can learn how to pick themselves up and become stronger people. I think every parent makes that discovery . . . or else they spend their lives in misery watching what they can’t control.

What’s one of the biggest advances in your industry over the past five years?

I’d like to say print-on-demand, but I think that predates five years. It was the first step in shaking the foundations of the big publishing houses because it put smaller presses on a more equal standing. But recently it’s been Amazon. I’ve learned you either hate or love Amazon, but you can’t deny that they stay on point in developing the reading world. They have single-handedly, in my opinion, thrust ebooks into the forefront of the writing business. Yes, there are others who followed, but if Amazon hadn’t jumped in in a big way, the others wouldn’t have done as much. Amazon gave ebooks dignity.

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

Three threats, in my opinion:

1. My age. Some may say I’m still young, others not so much, but I constantly feel I’m in a race with time to publish. That said, however, I clash with myself about the concern, because rushing anything before it’s ready is a fool’s folly.
2. The phenomenal changes occurring with social media. I study the changes and do lots of reading in attempt to keep up.
3. Peace of mind. I’ve worked hard to become very happy with my lot in life. At the same time I am competitive. So I have this constant struggle to live a simple life without overindulging in my career. I love my life, and I don’t want to sabotage it with the extreme busy-ness so many others seem to get lost in.

What’s unique about the service that you provide?

Frankly, I not so sure. LOL What I do know is that when I’m honest with my readers, they respond positively. They also like my conversational tone. I like to write in first-person, as if having coffee with a friend. But as with a close friend, I also speak frankly with a bit of a scolding edge, just enough so that the person realizes I’m saying this in a constructive manner. Readers adore that tone even more! But something else that makes a difference is the fact I am consistent. Every Friday, the newsletters go out. I meet deadlines. I try to research the material used, and keep it fresh. For ten years I’ve missed two deadlines: one when traveling in Europe, the other when moving my household cross-country. I believe readers appreciate it when I keep their interests first.

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

Respect others. Respect their interest, their level in their own professional (whether newbie or seasoned), their questions, their efforts, even their time. I respond to all emails . . . all.

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

I worked 25 years with a federal agency, ultimately reaching the rank of second in the state. However, I had the challenge of being the only woman amongst my peers most of the time. I hated the animosity, the vying for power. While I was good at it, it took a toll on me. So I created a three-year plan to get my finances in order and request an early retirement (dropping my income about sixty percent) so I could write for a living. I’d already been writing part-time and earning a few dollars at it. FundsforWriters was only a couple years old, but Writer’s Digest had already recognized it in its 101 Best Websites for Writers. That recognition was jaw-dropping to me and served as a tremendous catalyst. With a family on board with my decision to leave the bureaucracy, I leaped into writing and FundsforWriters. Even told the kids that I’d fund their college as long as I could, but if things got tight, they had to find ways to take up the slack. I’m proud to say that FundsforWriters covered both sons’ college tuition.

What lessons did you learn in the process?

With a serious, well-thought out plan and mindset, you can stop the train wreck you’re on and head in a different direction.

Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

That’s hard. I’ve never relied upon others and rarely sought advice. I’m a believer in doing lots of research and making informed decisions, rather than relying upon someone else. I will say that my current husband taught me to take chances and added a whole new dimension to my world.

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

Being a fairly competitive individual, in my old life (pre-writing) I dared to step too far in my efforts to make a name for myself. I had to step-back (reassigned to another office) and analyze myself. I sought to identify the mistakes while holding onto the standards I believed in. A peer taught me this: Do the best you can at the job you are given and people will respect you – even in the midst of controversy. Best advice I ever received. I not only weathered that point in my life, but I also rose above it, achieving a promotion I never expected. We have to be honest with ourselves in order to improve.

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

Divorce. The second time around, my husband (also divorced) and I entered into our relationship with plans on how to avoid repeating history. Respect is huge in this house, as it should be.

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

Again, the divorce. It kicked me on my butt even though I initiated it. Suddenly life was so far off-track I never thought it’d return to any sense of normalcy. But I told myself to take it one day at a time and that a year from now life would be better. And it was. I know today not to panic when life takes a negative detour.

What are three events that helped to shape your life?

1. Meeting my husband…shaped me on so many levels.
2. Becoming a mother…made me think outside of myself.
3. Daring to leave the nine-to-five to court my own self-employment.

What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

Outside of family, reaching ten years of history with FundsforWriters, each year being recognized by Writer’s Digest Magazine. I flaunt that everywhere.

How did mentors influence your life?

Mentors gave me self-esteem, made me study my own strengths and capitalize on them.

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

Be true to yourself and respect others. Stay hungry to improve in all aspects of your life.

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

Be true to yourself and respect others. How could I give any other advice when it’s been so good for me? When it isn’t all about you, you touch more people, make more sales, become more successful, fill-in-the-blank. It’s just a potent formula.

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.

“What Ants Can Teach You” was inspired by Jim Rohn‘s Ant Philosophy, which he sums up at the end of the article, “Never give up, look ahead, stay positive and do all you can,” but I would like to add to the conversation and deepen it somewhat. Ants are from the Formicidae family, and with wasps and bees belong to the Hymenoptera order.

Ants Facts

• There are about 10,000 species of ants
• Ants can lift up to 50 times their weight
• There are three classes of ants: queen ants, worker ants and male ants
  • Queen ants lay eggs and live five to 30 years
  • Worker ants are female, do most of the work, rarely become queens, or reproduce and live one to three years. They may keep the same job all their lives or job hop a few times. The colony cannot survive without worker ants
  • Male ants do not work. They mate with young queens and die shortly after. They live a few weeks to months.
• Ant nests can reach 20 feet below the ground
• Ants suppress pest population and aerate the soil

What Ants Can Teach You

1. Social insects: They live and work in communities, and members rely on each other. They feed and protect each other
2. Successful survivors: Able to survive and adapt to many different habitats
3. Robust: Can recover from setbacks. When one or more ants fail, the group can still perform all the tasks
4. Self-organized: Activities are decentralized and they get the job done without supervision. Members have specific functions to perform such as lay eggs, gather food, protect the colony and so on, depending on their size
5. Well developed senses, especially smell. They use scent trails to find their way back home after traveling great distances, up to 700 feet from their nests, and they communicate with each other using pheromones

In summary, ants: understand the importance of community building, able to pick themselves up when adversity comes knocking, resilient and can work in many environments, does what needs to be done without supervision, and use their senses to spot opportunities. Aren’t these great lessons to learn?

YouTube video of Ants!

If you cannot view the YouTube video of Ants! compliments of the Science Channel, click here.

Ants create a lifeboat in the Amazon jungle – BBC wildlife

If you cannot view the YouTube video of Ants create a lifeboat in the Amazon jungle – BBC wildlife, click here.

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.

Further Reading

The Ant Philosophy by Jim Rohn

Sources Referenced

AskNature.org

How Stuff Works

Wikipedia

Photo Credit: Yahoo via Apture

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 – 1821), envisioned a European Union. However, he tried to realize this dream by using force and domination, which aren’t sustainable strategies. Napoleon was very ambitious and loved power. Throughout his military career, he suffered many defeats and enjoyed many victories. He knew how to get up each time he fell until he was exiled to Saint Helena where he died in 1821. During his life, he rose from obscurity to Emperor of France. While Napoleon was in exile he wrote his memoir.

7 Lessons You Can Learn From Napoleon a Despot

1. Persist: For most of Napoleon’s career, whenever he failed, he always managed to rise again.
2. Form alliances: Napoleon formed alliances that suited his causes, but when you form these alliances make sure that every member is benefiting from the deal.
3. Stand firm with those who have always supported you: This is opposite of what Napoleon did, he deserted those who stood by him when the going got tough. He divorced Josephine when she couldn’t have his children. And he deserted his troops on several occasions to save himself.
4. Stand out from the crowd: What are you really good at? In what area do excel? Napoleon distinguished himself as an artillery officer, and continued to distinguish himself in the military until he was a general.
5. Leave a legacy: Though Napoleon performed a lot of evil acts such as firing a canon into the crowds who opposed him, kept control by using a secret police and a network of spies, no one is ever all bad or all good. He “improved education, encouraged industry, reduced the national debt, and codified the law”, even if it was the Code Napoleon.” What’s your legacy? Have you ever thought about it?
6. Go for what you want: Napoleon knew how to go for, or should I say take what he wanted. Accomplished people do not wait to be given what they want, instead they negotiate, and develop strategies to get what they want and need. Being proactive also allow them to recognize opportunities. Napoleon wanted to unify Europe so he worked at getting what he wanted. He didn’t succeed, and his methods are questionable, but he tried, he didn’t sit back passively and wait for things to come to him.
7. It doesn’t matter where you start in life: Napoleon rose from obscurity to become the Emperor of France. And there are countless others who started with little, yet attained spectacular success, and didn’t do so by trampling others. What’s your excuse?

Episode 1, PBS YouTube Video of Napoleon Bonaparte. If you cannot view the video, click here.

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

For more PBS YouTube videos about Napoleon, click here.

Other interesting Napoleon YouTube Videos

If you cannot View YouTube, Napoleon Engineering an Empire (1 of 5) click here.

Part Two Napoleon Engineering an Empire

Part Three Napoleon Engineering an Empire

Part Four Napoleon Engineering an Empire

Part Five Napoleon Engineering an Empire