The Invisible Mentor

Posts Tagged ‘Steve Jobs’

Where has the 2010 gone? As subscribers to this blog already know, reading is one of life’s simple joy for me. I love to snuggle up with a good book. Science fiction is not a genre that I really like so I have been forcing myself to read more because I think it’s important to stretch myself. I ask you all the time to do so, so it’s important for me to follow the advice that I dispense. Next on my science fiction reading list is the Foundation Trilogy: Foundation, Second Foundation and Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov.

Here are 10 book reviews that I did this year:

1. Innovate The Steve Jobs Way
2. Review: Briefcase Essentials by Susan T. Spenser
3. Have You Found Your Acres of Diamonds?
4. Review of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
5. Review of Linchpin – Are You Indispensable by Seth Godin
6. How to Build a Successful Business by Doing These 10 Things?
7. Want Presentations That Rock? Joey Asher’s 15 Minutes Including Q & A Delivers
8. Review of the Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
9. Review of the Skinny on Networking: Maximizing the Power of Number by Jim Randel
10. Review of Books That Changed the World by Andrew Taylor

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.

Book links are affiliate links.

I wanted to learn more about Nordstrom, the company I knew in name only, after participating in the webinar “Innovate the Steve JobsWay: 7 Insanely Different Principles for Breakthrough Success,” and reading and reviewing The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs: Insanely Different Principles for Breakthrough Success byCarmine Gallo so I purchased The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence: A Handbook for Implementing Great Service in Your Organization by Robert Spector and Patrick McCarthy.

Steve Jobs, Co-founder and head honcho at Apple studies companies like The Four Seasons, Nordstrom and Mercedes Benz to deliver impeccable customer service. I wanted to learn for myself what made these companies so special so I started with The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence: A Handbook for Implementing Great Service in Your Organization.

The co-author Robert Spector has written several books about Nordstrom, and you can see that he is an expert in the ways of all things Nordstrom. Like Carmine Gallo in his book The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs, Robert Speck has spoken to many Nordstrom employees, present and past. In addition, he has also spoken to many of the Nordstrom clan.

The book is divided into three sections:

1. Part I: What Managers Can Do to Create Nordstrom-Style Service
2. Part II: What Supervisors Can Do to Create Nordstrom-Style Service
3. Part III: What Employees Can Do to Create Nordstrom-Style Service

It is truly a handbook because at the end of each chapter there are exercises for the readers to do and keys to success nuggets. The book is splattered with mini case studies on other companies that have introduced Nordstrom-like service.

The book is a very practical guide because while you are reading you get a sense of how things are done at Nordstrom, and you could easily replicate it. Robert Speck and Patrick McCarthy even include a section on compensation at Nordstrom. What I also appreciated, was that they included some negative information as well. There are about five Nordstrom store that were unionized, and there was a class action suit against the company for not paying employees for their time when delivering impeccable service such as dropping off a product for a customer after work or writing Thank-you notes to customers while at home. As a result of the lawsuit Nordstrom made changes.

For anyone who wants to up the level of customer service they deliver in their business, this is one book that they should read. But, I’m never for copying everything that one company does, but instead look at other companies, and introduce the elements that make sense for your kind of business, that’s what Steve Jobs did.

So what makes Nordstrom so special?

• The company is decentralized
• One of the company’s mantra is to “Use sound judgment”
• The customer is king and queen
• The company cuts down on the number of rules for employees to follow
• Employees have a lot of power to make decisions on their own
• Employees are allowed to take care of the complete needs of the customer. For instance, a customer initially wants a dress for a party, she finds the perfect dress but doesn’t have a purse or shoes that matches the dress. The employee can take the customer to the shoe department and service her there as well. So employees can work in other departments when serving customers, which allows them to earn more commissions
• The company makes it possible for an employee to say yes to a customer by giving them the authority, as well as stocking merchandise in a variety of colours and sizes
• The company hires people who are nice, knowing that they can train them on the technical aspects of the job
• They promote from within
• All the Nordstrom clan who work within the company started off sweeping the floors and working their way up
• Employees work on commissions, so they set the amount they can earn
• The company has a profit sharing plan

The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence: A Handbook for Implementing Great Service in Your Organization is a good book if you to want to learn about how to deliver Nordstrom-like service, but I recommend that you also read about The Four Seasons (Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy) and Mercedes Benz who also deliver impeccable service. You can also read up on companies on BusinessWeek’s Customer Service Champs to identify other companies that are doing customer service right.

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.

Book links are affiliate links.

In the recent webinar, “Innovate the Steve Jobs Way: 7 Insanely Different Principles for Breakthrough Success,” Carmine Gallo shared seven principles for innovation which he learned from studying Steve Jobs for many years. The webinar was a prelude to his book The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs: Insanely Different Principles for Breakthrough Success. I found it extremely useful to attend the webinar before reading the book and I combined what I learned in the webinar with what I learned from the book. I have also expanded what I wrote in a previous blog post. The book provides concrete examples of how Steve Jobs innovates and the author conducted several interviews with former Apple employees.

To support what he says in the book, Carmine Gallo also looked at what other innovators were successfully doing.  He defines innovation as, “A new way of doing things that result in positive change.” How can you innovate the way you do your job? What innovations are occurring in other industries that you can transfer to yours?

Carmine Gallo has identified seven principles to guide innovation based on what he has learned from studying Steve Jobs, the Co-founder and CEO of Apple. The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs has 15 chapters, an introductory one and two chapters devoted to each principle. Though the book presents a lot of information on the way Steve Jobs approaches innovation, there are many examples of others who are innovating in similar ways and achieving success.

Principle One: Do What You Love

Passion is everything, and it keeps you going when you face inevitable setbacks. Be obsessed and improve the areas that you love. To achieve success, passion is not enough – follow your obsessions, tailor them to your skills, and focus on what you can make money from. What is your calling and your destiny? How can you change the world?

A simple formula is Success = Passion + Skills + Market Demand

Principle Two: Put a Dent in the Universe

Innovation doesn’t take place in a vacuum. Have a vision, because innovation cannot occur without one. What’s the bigger picture and how can you share your vision with enthusiasts who will make your vision a reality. How is your product or service going to change the world? How can you leave the world a better place than you found it?  How can you make your customers’ lives better?

Margaret Mead’s quote, “A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has,” encapsulates this principle.

Principle Three: Kick Start Your Brain

Seek our new and novel experiences, and bombard your brain with them. Who is doing something remarkable that you can learn from? Steve Jobs studied the Four Seasons Hotel and Mercedes Benz because they are aces when it comes to remarkable customer experiences. Jobs introduced a Concierge Service in the Apple Store based on what he learned from observing the Four Seasons Hotel.

A critical part of this principle is to make connections among disparate things and force yourself outside of your physical and mental comfort zone. To live a vision requires creative thinking which requires immersion in novel experiences.

New experiences expand the way you think. Surround yourself with people from different cultures. Experiment, and try new things. What are two things that you can do differently to improve the way in which you deliver your product or service?

Principle Four: Sell Dreams Not Products

Understand your customers, and help them to fulfill their dreams. Get to know them better than they know themselves. How can you change your customers’ worlds? Create remarkable customer experiences and market that.

Your customers often do not know what they want, so be a linchpin as marketing guru Seth Godin says and anticipate what they need before they do. It’s a twist to the concept of build it and they will come, to build it and convince them that they should come.

Principle 5: Say No to 1,000 Things

Take the road less traveled. Remove distractions so you can focus on the core product. Eliminate distractions from the customer experience. Don’t spread yourself too thin, and go for simplicity. Steve Job told Nike’s CEO  Mark Parker, ”Get rid of the crappy stuff and focus on the good stuff.” Go for simplicity and elegance.

Simplify and focus on your product and service offerings. What are you best at? What is one thing that you do extremely well? Focus on it and simplify.

Principle Six: Create Insanely Great Experiences

Create emotional connections with your customers. What are five ways you can enrich the lives of your customers? What relationships are you forming with your customers? Look outside your industry for examples. Create memorable experiences so you have rabid fans. Before you innovate, hold your customer in your mind’s eye, and proceed from there.

Principle: Master the Message

Effectively communicate your vision. Innovate around the way you communicate the vision. What are master presenters and communicators doing? Emulate them. Be a great storyteller, and be consistent in your messaging.

I enjoyed reading The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs: Insanely Different Principles for Breakthrough Success because I had to stop several times and think about what I was reading. The many examples demonstrated how others were using these seven principles with great success, and I understood how I could use them as well. I also learned about innovative products that others were delivering.

For instance, DNA 11 creates art with their customer’s DNA and became a multi-million dollar business in five years. The owners Adrian Salamunovic and Nazim Ahmed didn’t conduct focus group interviews to decide if there was a need for their product, they created the product then created the demand for it. They also noticed that some of their customers were asking for art with their pets’ DNA, so they offered that to other customers who might not have thought of that.

What Carmine Gallo has shown in his book is that innovation does not necessarily mean crating something radically new. Sometimes it is simply doing something in an entirely new way. This is a practical book written in a clear manner. I recommend The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs: Insanely Different Principles for Breakthrough Success.

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.

Book links are affiliate links.

Further Reading

Review: The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence

How to Build a Business by Doing These 10 Things

Review of How to Build an Empire on an Orange Crate by Honest Ed Mirvish

Review: Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy by Isadore Sharp

In Part One of Diane Danielson‘s interview, the three words that I used to describe her are Brave, Bold and Pioneer. And, after processing the interview, here are the steps that I think are required to be a trailblazer:

• Take risks
• Have a support network
• Think big and be bold
• Jump in and try things, fail fast if you have to
• Embrace change
• Say yes to opportunities

Of course there are other requirements but I think the ones I listed are pretty important, what are your thoughts? Part Two of Danielson’s interview is just as powerful as the first, and is also filled with lessons and ideas that you can use immediately.

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

I am the founder of the Downtown Women’s Club, which is a women’s business network and career website. I’m also Vice President of Business Development for a social media consulting firm called Convengine. I try to combine the two because a lot of what I do at the Downtown Women’s Club is the social media strategy and a lot of our online networking program. I’m also recently remarried, I have four kids and a huge dog and I live outside the Boston area.

How did mentors influence your life?

Hugely! And I don’t look at mentors as the traditional more senior person who helped me, even though I had a couple of those who would help me with specific situations, but because some of the fields that I’m in such as social media and creating a networking group that was mostly online, there weren’t a lot of people who had done this who were ahead of me so I really depended on peer mentors. I have a group of peers that depending on the situation I will call them and they have the most wonderful advice and input, and I think that’s a huge thing and I probably would have given up on a lot of things if I didn’t have them sit there and keep me accountable and say, “look how far you’ve come and we are proud of what you are doing.” But they also gave me advice and would say, “you know what, you should focus on this.”  They have been there and helped me to make decisions. I rarely make decisions in isolation, I usually have someone who is impartial enough, and cares about me enough to help me make the right decisions, so mentors are enormous.

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

Trust my gut and take risks because most of the times, by the time I come to them they are able to say to trust your gut and take risks.

As an Invisible Mentor, what advice would you like to give to readers?

Go for the grande, especially if your readers are women because a lot of us don’t think big enough. They may think let’s open up a coffee shop, let’s not create another Starbucks. Think bigger even if you don’t create another Starbucks, what if you end up with a chain of three or four coffee shops? Women need to think better and bigger, and I think that’s one piece of advice that I’d give to almost any woman that I meet.

For everyone else, I would say know your network, and know who you can turn to for really good advice. I think sometimes we build close networks of people who are vested in the outcomes of whatever we do, and we surround ourselves with people. So if your best friend doesn’t want you to get, or take that promotion, that’s not necessarily helpful information, you need to find people who will be able to give you good advice that’s in your best interest and not theirs.

Build a network of core people you can trust to help you build your business life and it turns out that they generally help you with your personal life as well.

Which resources (books, movies, training etc.) did your mentors recommend to you?

Usually I’m the one recommending all the books. Early on someone encouraged me to get sales training, even though I was coming from law with an analytical background, it was great advice and I would recommend to anyone to take sales training because it affects everything that you do.

How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

It seems that because I’m a working mom I tend to be friends with women who work. A lot of my best friends are women from the working world who do not have kids, so that’s my social life. For me, my personal and professional life is seamless, it just flows, I don’t keep the two separate. To know me is to know what I do.

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

I’m going to go back to not having more kids of my own. My major regret is not to give my son as he is growing up a typical situation. I think sometimes it was hard on him, hard on me and probably hard on my ex-husband because we didn’t have the normal nuclear family. But what is normal anymore.

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

1. Have a network of people who you can call on. Having friends and family to support you is huge and you shouldn’t do anything in isolation.
2. Think bigger on everything. I was single for eight years and at times I said that I wouldn’t get married again, but when the opportunity came I took it and I said that I could still do this.
3. Take risks. Every time I’ve taken big risks they tended to have worked out, and whenever I took the safe route I wasn’t happy and it didn’t work out for other people either. So it’s like going for the job of your dreams instead of settling for a job. Every time I’ve settled for a job, it has never been great.
4. Take the high road at all times. I know that it sounds trite but sometimes I’ve wanted to retaliate and then thought just let it go and take the high road because I would sleep better at nights and people start to realize that. And putting yourself in other people’s shoes, giving them second chances helps you to understand and be empathetic. I think we live in a society where people are not empathetic to others.

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

Generally I’m playing sports with my kid or reading.

What process do you use to generate great ideas?

I brainstorm with people. I belong to an international women’s networking group (The Belizean Grove) and going away with them to meetings I always walk out with big thoughts, because I have these thoughts and I bring them there and have other people synthesize them and chime in with their background, and definitely my great ideas come from there. I can come up with some good ones but I need the input of my team there to come up with great ones.

What’s your favourite quotation and why?

“Just say no to status quo,” because when you accept the way things are when they are not working you need to change them because change isn’t scary and often a good thing. You don’t change for the sake of changing. So when the status quo is no longer working you need to think creatively and change it.

How do you define success?

Success for me is a mix. It’s being content with having a good mix of my family is happy, and work is going well, and I think for me, that is success when everything seems to be flowing. Work and family have to be flowing, one or the other won’t work.

In your opinion what’s the formula for success?

First you have to define what you think success is, and a lot of us define success based on what others think. Contentment and happiness is the formula for success, so it’s going to be unique to everybody. For me personally, work has to be a part of it. I couldn’t be just happy with work, and I couldn’t be just happy being a mom, I actually need both.

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

Let’s take social media as an example. I became knowledgeable by just jumping in and trying it. I didn’t hesitate when someone asked me to give a speech, I just jumped in, did it and figured it out later. I think a lot of steps to my success were trying new things and not being scared to do so. It’s also a lot of finding out what works and doesn’t work, and sometimes it’s easier to figure out what doesn’t work then focus and build on what’s working, and I think those are the steps. When I found out that writing didn’t pay well enough, but speaking did, I jumped right in and started speaking. And by being out there, and speaking about social media while doing it, I can show the success of the Downtown Women’s Club, and other clients.

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

If we are looking at someone who wants to start a network and website, they have to realize that it’s a lot of work. I see new women’s group starting every day claiming to be the first this or the first that, and they generally disappear within three months when they realize that it’s not easy to get 12,000 people on a list and keep them there. That took 10 years to build that up so I think the thing is to have patience, have a good plan and partner with people because you cannot do it alone. I don’t do anything alone. I have a lot of partners. You have to persevere and have patience, there are no overnight successes.

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. Obviously I would like to meet Barack Obama. I would just ask him to reassure me that he knows what he is doing, and that he is way smarter than me, and that this is all going to work out. And of course I would congratulate him on hanging in there and doing what he believes in.
2. Another person that I’d like to meet is Steve Jobs and I’d like to find out about his creative process. It’s impressive how he keeps on coming up with new things.
3. I’ve always wanted to meet George Clooney, not because he’s cute, but because I like that he has understated a lot of his humanitarian work and he has a good sense of humor and I think he is truly a good person.
4. I would say Stephen Colbert because he is actually a very bright person and bright people fascinate me. He is very talented and I think he would be a fascinating person to meet. With him you wouldn’t be able to control the conversation. I really liked that he sponsored the speed skating team. He seems like a really incredible and interesting human being.
5. I would like to meet Margaret Thatcher. She was one of the first woman leaders and I would like to know what her experiences were, just hearing behind the scenes what it was really like running a country during tough times.

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?

Looking at the way I run the business it would be the two books by Chip and Dan Heath – Made to Stick and Switch. They make things so simple and clear that I find myself referring to both books a lot in business conversations. I would say those two and The Tipping Point, the concepts constantly come up in conversations and in thoughts on how I’m running the business.

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. Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice. I’m a big Jane Austen fan and that’s a classic, the love story, the wittiness. She is a sharp observer of society and the book transcends time.
2. Les Miserables has been one of my favourite books of all times. It’s nice and long and the characters are so many and so varied and I think it covers so much.
3. I do like the writing of War and Peace and it’s also long and that’s important if I can only take five books with me on the deserted island.
4. I haven’t read John Adams so I’d take that one with me, I would need something I haven’t read before. He was one of our founding fathers and I think in today’s society looking back at what the founding fathers thought we really misinterpreted things and I think that I should go back and read that book that I haven’t read to clarify for myself what they were really thinking.
5. For the last one I’m going to go classic and say To Kill a Mockingbird. It was about someone standing up to society. It’s a classic case of overlooking prejudice and I just hate people who are prejudiced. It’s a well told story and it has a great message.

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

Most of the books have just clarified the direction I was going.

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

The movie, and I would take the book too is Breakfast at Tiffany’s, that was a favourite movie. I think I would have to go with Garth Brooks Greatest Hits for the music CD.

If you cannot view Garth Brooks YouTube video The Thunder Rolls click here.

If you cannot view Breakfast at Tiffany’s Trailer on YouTube please click here.

What excites you about life?

Learning new things everyday.

How do you nurture your soul?

I spend time with my 10 year old who tells me what life is really about.

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 know that I sound like a Miss America but I have to say world peace. I think I would also wish that our country was not so divided and dysfunctional at this point, and it’s really upsetting to me. I wish that we’d be more rational because we are a world leader and we need to play well with others and amongst ourselves.

Complete the following, I am happy when…..

I’m with my family and friends

What can you learn from Diane’s experiences? 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.

About Diane Danielson

Diane K. Danielson is the founder and chief social media strategist for the Downtown Women’s Club, a professional network and career website.  She is the author of The Downtown Women’s Club Beginners Guide to Facebook ebook (2009), the co-author of The Savvy Gal’s Guide to Online Networking (or What Would Jane Austen Do?) (2007) and Table Talk: The Savvy Gal’s Alternative to Networking (2003).  Diane blogs for www.womensDISH.com, and Entrepreneur magazine and serves as a workshop leader and social media coach for companies, non-profits and individuals.

She is a former vice president of business development for Spaulding & Slye Colliers, a vice president of marketing for Meredith & Grew, Inc./ONCOR International, and an environmental attorney.   Diane is a graduate of Colgate University and Boston College Law School.

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This is the second part of Nathalie’s interview and there are quite a few nuggets that will resonate with each of us. One of her five life lessons that she has already learned at the tender age of 24 is to learn to accept feedback and not take things  personally. This reminded me of the Four Agreements: Don’t take things personally, be impeccable with your word, always do your best, and never make assumptions.

Tell me a little bit about yourself.

I am known as the raw foods witch, and I help people to eat more fruits and vegetables. I have a background in software engineering and all of my nutritional knowledge is self taught based on the experience of the results that I have had eating this way.

How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

I do not see a big difference between my personal and professional life. I try to live by my values. I am very environmentally friendly and it’s important for me to believe in what I’m doing.  I like to support certain types of organizations, restaurants, where I buy my groceries. I like to have a good balance where I spend time with my family, boyfriend, friends and a good amount of time on my business. In my mind it’s all the same because anywhere that I am, I am going to be thinking about my business, ways to help others, and things to recommend. If someone recommends a book to me and I read it and enjoy it, I am going to recommend it to my clients. My personal and professional lives blend together.

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

I think it’s only a half regret, but I think I regret going into computers instead of business school, but at the same time I think that I would have ended up in the same place. But a part of me regrets having that kind of background. I would have liked to know about building a business, marketing and about the legal aspects of a business instead of the technical background that I have. I think in the end I would have been able to learn both things so it isn’t the biggest regret ever.

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

1. To not second guess myself. There were many times when I made a decision and wondered if the other way would have been better. Now I am a lot more comfortable with the decisions that I make.
2. Life is short. There is a lot of heart disease in my family, and that in part brought me to discover raw foods and adapt to this lifestyle and realizing that we are here for a certain amount of time and have to make the most of it, and we also have to take care of our health.
3. My third life lesson is to follow your passion and doing things that you think really matter in the world. So I was working in a very corporate environment, and it was really good money, but it wasn’t what I thought the world needed in terms of what I could offer it.
4. Learn to accept feedback and go with the flow. I am a perfectionist so when someone criticizes my work, my website, I have to look at it and take what’s useful and make the change. I am learning not to take things so personally.
5. I am very focused whenever I have something to do, but I have to tone it down because for a whole week I could be working on my website at the exclusion of everything else or I could be exercising and doing nothing else so I have to balance all of this. I am working on this because I have a Type A go-for-it personality.

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

I like to read and I read quite a bit. I also like martial arts, swimming, playing games with my boyfriend and friends, card games, board games, that kind of stuff.

What process do you use to generate great ideas?

Most of my ideas come to me right before I fall asleep, go for a walk and when I shower because I am relaxed then. When I take a break from work I get ideas, all my ideas come to me at once and I have to write them down immediately or I might lose them.

What’s your favourite quotation and why?

“Well-behaved women never make history” by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and the reason why I like that quote is because society has a lot of expectations when it comes to gender, and as female entrepreneurs, we have to be bold and be who we want to be and not shy away from our potential and what we can do in the world. For me, well-behaved is bucking convention and going against the norm.

How do you define success?

I define success by the way you feel, and I know that some people define it by money, your house and by more tangible stuff. But I think that success is more about the inside and how you feel on a day-to-day basis. If you feel like you are contributing and being rewarded for what you are doing and feeling comfortable in your space in the world, then you are a success.

In your opinion what’s the formula for success?

The formula for success will depend on the person. For entrepreneurs it’s putting yourself out there and deciding what you want to do, how you’re going to help people and going forward and creating great information and being there for people, but also taking a look at all the things that contribute to success, such as are you sleeping enough, are you eating well, are you exercising and creating a legacy, which is one of the things that will be there for generations to come.

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

Start local if you can and one of the things that has been useful for me is doing talks, and demonstrations, and connecting with people in person. Beyond that is building your website and creating your marketing. Having a website has been great for me because people have been able to go there and get information. From there keep building your offerings.

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?

The number one person would be Steve Jobs and I’d like to know how he keeps his drive and doesn’t get distracted from all the rumors. It would be interesting to learn how he keeps level headed.

Another person, who I have met (she was filming a movie in my small home town and I waited around until I got to meet her. It was a very short meeting) who I would like to meet again is Angelina Jolie and I would ask about her work with the United Nations and all the volunteer work that she does.

I would also like to meet Bill Gates and ask him how he manages his foundation and find out where he is going with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I would like to also find out what motivated him to start the foundation.

The fourth person that I’d like to meet is Gary Vaynerchuk. I feel like I know him already because of all his videos but I would like to ask him how he manages his time. He used to answer all his emails and now he doesn’t anymore, but he does everything himself and I’d love to know how he does that.

I would love to meet Hillary Clinton and find out how she ran her campaign.

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?

It would have to be Wishcraft by Barbara Sher. It took me out of the way I used to think about life, doing things and achieving goals. I like the way she describes how to get other people to help you to reach your goals. It was very step-by-step which was awesome. One exercise I liked was designing five or six lives and see how they each did and it was really interesting to see how you could have different options and you didn’t have to have one you and you could take different aspects of all those selves and incorporate them into your life right now.

One of the things I wanted is to have clients and do more one-on-one coaching and consulting and the other part was writing so it was really interesting to see how one of the mes would be a writer and the other a coach and I thought to myself that well I could do both, so I did.

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.

I would take Tribes by Seth Godin which is about leading people where there was no leader before

I would also bring The Purple Cow by Seth Godin as well, which is about how to make your business and your offering different.

The End of Overeating by David Kessler is about how the commercialization of food has made it easier to eat a lot more of it

Nine Lives That Are Holding Your Business Back And The Truth That Will Set You Free by Steve Chandler. And that book is basically just taking away all those things that you tell yourself to keep you from doing things that you really have to do in your business. That book has changed the way that I think about business.

Another book that I really liked is Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robins. I read that one quite a while ago but I think that I could read that one over and over again. That book has everything to keep you going.

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

I like the movie Hook and it’s about Peter Pan and I also liked A League of Their Own, which was about women playing baseball during the war.

I really like Sarah McLaughlin and I could listen to her over and over again.

What excites you about life?

There are really very few limits and that excites me, and more people are living an alternate lifestyle eating more raw foods.

How do you nurture your soul?

I meditate a little bit and I love going out into nature, sitting under a tree or by the water and connecting. I find that great for my spiritual side.

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 for a solution to our overpopulation, and not a gruesome solution but one that would take into account everything that the planet needs, that people need. The solution could be really simple like people cutting back on certain things that they considered necessities. I want to heal the planet.

Complete the following, I am happy when…..

There is sunshine and I am with people that I love.

What nuggets can you take away from Nathalie’s interview?

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