The Invisible Mentor

Posts Tagged ‘Maya Angelou’

Wisdom of Life: “Pick the right people to surround yourself with, it will set the bar, encourage and support you. However, if you choose the wrong people, they will bring you down a different path,” Invisible Mentor, Jeanne-Marie Robillard tells her 12-year old son.

Interviews for Mentoring: Key Lessons from Jeanne-Marie Robillard

• Be grateful for what you have in life and count your blessings.
• Prepare for your day the night before, to help to decrease stress the following day.
• Network, network, then network some more, and never let little things such as shyness or “introvertedness” stop you. (Note to self)
• Allow people to get to know the real you.
• People rarely remember what you said to them, but they remember how you made them feel.
• Give a new job sufficient time – at least two years – before you decide if the fit is right

Invisible Mentor: Jeanne-Marie Robillard, Senior Account Executive

Company Name: National Speakers Bureau/Global Speakers Agency

Website: http://www.nsb.com 

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Jeanne-Marie Robillard: I am currently a senior account executive, which is an agent to public personalities and celebrities for their speaking engagements. I’ve been doing that for 11 years. Prior to that, I was an agent to the performing arts community – groups like the National Ballet, Canadian Opera Company, to helping place them into seated environments for audiences to enjoy.

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

Jeanne-Marie Robillard: It’s not always easy, is it? It’s hard when people are passionate about their work and passionate about their family. I would say that I’m trying as best as I can to compartmentalize tasks, responsibilities, chores, commitments and obligations, so setting time aside to do specific tasks as opposed to running around doing too many things for too many people.

I try to put my phone away at home in the evenings and try not to look at it as often even when I’m tempted to. I log on to the computer and try to get an hour or two later in the evening. I get so much done preparing for the following day that I go into the next day feeling confident to start the day in a safe place if you will.

It’s a constant challenge, and it’s one of the top topics we get asked for speakers, is work-life balance and it will continue to be so as we improve technology.

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

Jeanne-Marie Robillard: Entertaining absolutely! I love entertaining. I love to have people over. I love to cook. I love to shop for food. I love everything around food, going to the market etc. Planning a dinner party and setting the table, and picking which guests will love each other, another form of connections. As you can see, I apply that everywhere, and yes that would be my favourite thing and I’d like to record those times in a book as well.

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

Jeanne-Marie Robillard: It’s a little bit of what I’ve already said.

1. Be honest.
2. Approach life with intent, purpose and meaning.
3. Even if you’re shy or introverted, try your very best to get out and about. Take someone with you if it’s hard. Having another person with you will be the best thing you ever did. They can brag about you, you can’t really brag about yourself because that comes off a little odd. They can pull you away from someone who may not be the person you need to speak to all night if you’re trying to network. They can also be a great support if you’re feeling a little nervous about the experience. So get out and meet as many people as you can. People do want to help each other – inherently it’s human nature. It’s like so many things in life, the more you do, the more you try, the more chances you have on landing on what’s more meaningful for you.

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

Jeanne-Marie Robillard: I believe we come to better decisions and better results when we do things in a group. Pulling a team together and brainstorming, sending a mass email out to those in your network who have a common experience with what you’re struggling with, reaching out for ideas and bringing those ideas together. I also use the Internet quite extensively and subscribe to many different chats and blogs.

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

Jeanne-Marie Robillard: That’s hard for me because I live a life that’s filled with quotations because of the people I represent. But if I had to choose one it would be, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel,” Maya Angelou, American Poet.

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

Jeanne-Marie Robillard: Success is when you’re truly happy doing what you’re doing. When you’re happy with your life, you’re proud of your life. Proud in a good way, that you’re contributing. Contributions to your community, your workplace, your family and your friends are essential to defining success. The formula for success is trying as many things as you can in life. It’s trial and error.

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

Jeanne-Marie Robillard:

1. Asking a lot of questions to the right people, that means asking questions to a lot of people until you figure out the right people.
2. Taking chances.
3. Staying in a job and seeing it through for at least a good two-year period. I think that’s very important that full cycles be lived. A calendar year is a full cycle, rarely do we start in January so you are landing in the middle somewhere in that second year, so give it the time it deserves, unless it’s clearly for some interpersonal reasons. Give it the time it deserves and give yourself the chance you deserve.

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

Jeanne-Marie Robillard: I would give the same advice to someone just starting out. I would say, ask around, you can make an educated decision, but once you’ve made that commitment to something, commit to it and give it your best shot. And it also looks a lot better on a resume quite frankly.

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?

Jeanne-Marie Robillard:

1. Maya Angelou
2. Oprah Winfrey
3. Nelson Mandela
4. Madam Michaëlle Jean (I represent her and have met her a handful of times but would love to get to know her better)

They are truly good people making a difference in the world, and I would tell them “Thanks!” I would thank them for their great contributions to bettering the world.

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

Jeanne-Marie Robillard:  One of our current speaker on the roster is Izzeldin Abuelaish who wrote I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey. It’s a bestseller and an unbelievable book that I highly recommend to anybody and everybody.

Avil Beckford: You are one of the 10 finalists on the reality show, So, How Would You Spend Your Time? Each finalist is placed on separate deserted islands for two years. You have a basic hut on the island and all the tools for survival; you just have to be imaginative and inventive when using them. You are allowed to take five books, one movie and one music CD, and whatever else you take has to fit in one suitcase and a travel on case. What would you take with you and how would you spend the two years? T he prize is worth your while and at this stage in the game there really aren’t any losers among the 10 finalists, since each are guaranteed at least $2 million?

Jeanne-Marie Robillard:

Five Books

1. I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity
   
2. The Five People You Meet in Heaven
3. Maybe I’d like to learn more about the Bible.
4. Ulysses
5. Jane Eyre

One Movie and Music CD

Big Night for Big Night movie and Big Night: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack.

Big Night – Trailer

If you cannot view the movie trailer for Big Night click here.

How I Will Spend Two Years

I would spend the two years learning, reading all the classics if I could. I would like to learn more about classic literature, religion, and learn to meditate.

Avil Beckford: What excites you about life?

Jeanne-Marie Robillard: People, I love that everybody has a story. My current husband is an architect, and he laughs when I say that I love looking at office towers or high-rise office buildings, or condos. I think, “All those stories in there, that’s so cool.” So people for sure.

Avil Beckford: How do you nurture your soul?

Jeanne-Marie Robillard: By surrounding myself with positive people, and finding the time to be alone to refuel when I need that time. I go to bed quite early by most people’s standard. I try to head to bed by 9:30 pm on weeknights, and I read. So that’s how I nurture my soul.

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

Jeanne-Marie Robillard: To help the disadvantaged, to make less suffering in this world.

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

Jeanne-Marie Robillard: I’m helping others.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Other articles you may enjoy

• The Chief Mentoring Officer Interviews Annemie Ress, Senior HRD eBay & Global Engagement Lead at eBay, Part Two (theinvisiblementor.com)
• Chief Mentoring Officer Interviews: Do Big Breaks, Mentoring, and Hard Work Equate to Success? Part Two (theinvisiblementor.com)
• Adventures in Learning: DIY Mentoring Program, Episode Two (theinvisiblementor.com)
• The Chief Mentoring Officer Interviews Annemie Ress, Senior HRD eBay & Global Engagement Lead at eBay (theinvisiblementor.com)

Book links are affiliate links.
Video Credit: Uploaded by MahatmaCartman on Dec 2, 2010

Interviewee Name: Nadja Piatka

Company Name: Nadja Foods, Owner

Website: http://nadjafoods.com, http://www.ultimategirlsgetaway.com

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Nadja Piatka: I’m a food entrepreneur. My company is called Nadja Foods and I also do the women’s event called Ultimate Girls Getaway where I raise funds for women survivors of war. That’s what I call my hobby business but it keeps me a lot busier than a hobby should. I also do consulting for women who are starting or trying to get into the food business, or growing their food business from kitchen to retail and I also do motivational speaking. So that’s it in a nutshell.

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

Nadja Piatka:  When you have your own business or businesses, if you are not doing it you are thinking about it. And I do try to have some “me” time, but I also like to talk to my husband about my business though we sort of have a casual conversation about it. I do try to turn it off and do other things that take me away from it. But I’m very lucky because my husband is very supportive of my business so when I do have to vent, or I have a question here and there, he is willing to share in it, so there is an integration, especially when your business is such an important part of what you do.

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

Nadja Piatka:

1. I wish I had visited my parents more often. When I moved away, my parents lived in another city. A life lesson is that you get very busy and do not stop to visit your parents, and I would have liked to have visited them more.
2. As much as I love to take time for myself, I try to do more if I can. I am not very good at trying to get off the treadmill, and that’s something I’m trying very hard to do.
3. Forgiveness – because the alternative takes too much energy.
4. Aging, it’s inevitable so try and do it gracefully.
5. Don’t love anything that can’t love you back. I learned this when I lost my beautiful home and Mercedes Benz.

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

Nadja Piatka:  My favourite way is to cook because you cannot cook and worry at the same time.

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

Nadja Piatka:  I find that I get the best ideas when I’m exercising. If I’m on a treadmill or I’m walking or on the stair-master, my mind kind of zones out and those are the times I end up with some good ideas, or ideas that I’m going to use.

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

Nadja Piatka:  My favourite quote is by Thomas Edison and I love this quote. He said, “If you did all the things in life that you were truly capable of ,you would literally astound yourself.” And I really believe in that because sometimes people just don’t do everything they’re capable of. I think we have so much potential and there is so much that we are capable of. There is so much talent and there are so many people who have not realized their potential yet, and sometimes adversity brings that out. I think that for me that’s how I learned more about my potential was through adversity.

Avil Beckford: How do you define success?

Nadja Piatka:  Freedom!

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

Nadja Piatka:  One of my favourite philosophers is Goethe, and he has great clarity about success. “Just make that decision to go with your idea, define clearly what it is you’re going to do and the universe will follow through,” and it’s such an interesting thing that when you have this unshakeable belief, and you’re going to do what it is you have planned or destined to do. When you make that decision, this sense of urgency that you’re going to follow through on it, it’s almost like the universe falls into place. People come into your life, opportunities present themselves, that otherwise would not have been possible, and I really think that is truly the formula for success.

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

Nadja Piatka:  Because I didn’t have the resources to go the easier route, the first step was to start small in my kitchen. I would get up in the morning 4 o’clock and start baking and I would sell to little coffee shops in the city I lived in.

After I was on the Oprah show people contacted me because they had this product, this idea, and they would give it to friends and family for free and everybody loved it. But when you are giving things away for free you don’t have a neutral or unbiased focus group. You have to test the market with your product, and have people who are willing to buy it, and buying it more than once then you have a product that the market will sustain.

If you’re just depending on friends and family, if they like it, it really isn’t a true sense of what the market will do in this very competitive business that we’re in. And every business has to have the ability to rise above everyone else’s, so what I did was tested it in the field with smaller shops, and then grew from there. That is one of the ways that I would recommend to people is to find out if the market will sustain their products.

A lot of people have an idea, they have a product that they want to get out to the market and they spend an awful amount of money on the packaging. By the time you have something that you haven’t even sold, I see people have put hundreds of thousand of dollars into a product before they have even sold one dollar of it. There are ways to do that without such a huge investment with your product and I try to advise people that there are ways to do that. There are many steps to be successful in your field and one of the biggest steps is controlling and having a handle on how much money you’re spending. I’ve seen people run out of money before they made one sale.

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

Nadja Piatka:  Test out your products in the marketplace and don’t just rely on friends and family.

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?

Nadja Piatka:

1. I would love to meet the Pope. I think it would be amazing to talk to him.
2. In the entertainment world, I wanted to meet Oprah Winfrey and I have met her so I’m very privileged to have done that. It was a great experience.
3. I would love to meet my grandparents. I have heard wonderful stories about them, so they are people who I’d love to meet.
4. I would also love to meet Maya Angelou, Warren Buffet, and Matt Lauer.

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

Nadja Piatka:  The book that really impacted my life was Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. That’s a book that was written decades ago, an old, old book. The theories, the stories, the philosophies, the lessons in there work today just as they did many years ago. It’s not a very big book, but it was a great book to read, and it is one of favourites.

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.

Nadja Piatka:

1. The Bible.
2. The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra.
3. The Book of Poems by Taras Shevchenko.
4. A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle.
5. The Great Gatsby by Scott F Fitzgerald.

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

Nadja Piatka: The movie would be a comedy, okay. If I’m going to be on a deserted island by myself I would like to laugh, and it would probably be a Lucille Ball movie because I think she was hysterical, especially the one where she is eating chocolate in the chocolate factory. It’s food related, she is on an assembly line making chocolate and she ends up having to eat most of them. For the music CD, It would be any romantic CD, by Steve Tyrell, a romantic singer, great voice and since it’s a romantic CD I hope that my husband would be with me on this deserted island, but since I’m stranded I would have to be thinking about him I guess.

I Love Lucy – The Candy Wrapping Job

If you cannot view I Love Lucy – The Candy Wrapping Job YouTube video, please click here.

If you cannot view Steve Tyrell’s YouTube video, please click here.

Avil Beckford: What excites you about life?

Nadja Piatka: There are so many things that it is so hard to put my finger on any one thing. And I thought about this and it was funny it was almost like a flood of thoughts. What excites me is the possibility of being a grandparent. I can’t wait for that to happen. I don’t thing it’s going to happen soon. What excites me is we adopted a rescue kitten from the SPCA at Christmas, and I love animals, and the thought of having one purring in my lap now is such a comfort that I would hate to miss out on having that privilege. What excites me is a good meal and a bottle of wine. What excites me is a beautiful, sunny day where I can be outside. So there are just so many things. I think after being diagnosed with leukemia and thinking about our mortality, it gave me such an appreciation that I get excited easily about everything.

Avil Beckford: How do you nurture your soul?

Nadja Piatka:  Prayer.

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

Nadja Piatka:  I would hate to waste it on one wish. And this is going to be one of those conventional, traditional answer, but it would be I would wish for good health for myself and my family.

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

Nadja Piatka:  I’m happy when my kids are happy!

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

Think and Grow Rich

The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success

A New Earth

The Great Gatsby

I am interested in books that influence successful people so I am always on the lookout for great books. I also conduct many interviews and one of the questions that I ask is, “Which book had a profound impact on your life?” And most often, it isn’t business books that have had an impact on successful people. The books listed were culled from interviews that I conducted as well as from a New York Times article “C.E.O. Libraries Reveal Keys to Success.”  I have read some of the books on the list and will get to the rest.

The Girls’ Guide to Building a Million-Dollar Business, Susan Wilson Solovic

Influence: Science and Practice, Robert Cialdini

How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling, Frank Bettger

Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior, David R. Hawkins

The Magic of Thinking Big, David J. Schwartz

New Psycho-Cybernetics, Maxwell Maltz

All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes, Maya Angelou

Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph, Thomas Edward Lawrence

The New Penguin History of the World, J. M. Roberts

The Grapes of Wrath (Penguin Classics), John Steinbeck

Dante’s Divine Comedy: Hell, Purgatory, Paradise, Dante Alighieri