What if your husband committed a sex crime, how would you react? Read Shannon Moroney’s story.

Invisible Mentor: Shannon Moroney, Author, Advocate & Speaker

Website: http://www.shannonmoroney.com/ 

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Shannon Moroney:  I’m the author of a book that just came out titled Through the Glass. It’s my memoir of a personal experience as a victim of crime but moreover of the spouse of an offender and the journey through the justice system. I’m based in Toronto, and I travel all over the place doing public speaking and putting some of my efforts into restorative justice.

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

Shannon Moroney: I’m afraid I don’t have very typical days. My days are often quite different from one another. At the moment, my husband and I are preparing to move and I’m supervising a big renovation project. When I’m not traveling with my book, I spend a significant amount of time each day responding to emails from readers, and groups that are interested in me coming to their community. I try to integrate a little bit of time for personal care, exercise, and so on. Right now I’m expecting twins in May, so I have lots of doctor’s appointments. But I don’t have a regular schedule.

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

Shannon Moroney:  That’s an interesting question for someone like myself who has just come through a very traumatic period. It’s easy to feel exhausted or drained because I tire more easily than I did because of the emotional demands of the work that I do. But what motivates me are usually letters from my readers who are identifying with my book, who are thanking me for having a voice for them and just knowing that the work I do is making a difference in other people’s lives is what keeps me motivated.

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

Shannon Moroney:  I think because I was put into a situation very suddenly for which there was no map or guidebook, no one to ask for advice, I had to forge my way forward. Maybe the only thing I would do, would be to take a little bit better care of myself if that had been possible. I did the very best that I could, and I didn’t have any easy decisions to make. To say I would do something differently might not respect myself the way that I was coming through a difficult time. I think at the end of every day I feel at peace with myself and the choices that I have made.

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

Shannon Moroney: It’s been an interesting . A couple of years ago, I had just been remarried, so it was a very happy time. I was going through the final editing stage of my book, and my book came out about eight or nine moths ago. One of the discoveries I have made was that the process of writing a book, which is long and hard, and thankless in many ways payless. When the book came out I thought I would feel a huge relief, or a huge sense of pride, or a big rush of satisfaction, and what’s been a challenge is discovering that putting my book out into the world doesn’t close up my own personal life and my challenges. I still have to live with taking care of myself post-trauma. It’s been a lot of hard work and I think I thought I would feel a little bit more free than I do.

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

Shannon Moroney:

1. In the field that I work in something that is difficult to cope with is the media. There is a lot of media attention around my book. Some of it comes to me and I experience it with a lot of integrity, and other times I’ve had to put up with very sensational reporting – headlines that really upset me and that has created a situation where I need to respond or not respond. I need to choose battles or not choose battles and that’s a big challenge. I’m still trying to figure out how to stand up for myself, how to trust the media.
2. The other would me making a living at all on the work that I do. I gave up my teaching job so that I could finish working on it full-time and so I could go on tour with my book. There is not a big financial success in the book publishing industry. Most of the work I do is with charitable organizations – wonderful community-based groups that want to bring me to speak with their groups but who are working with very small budgets. So I find it a challenge to negotiate the business side of my work. It’s not something I have experience in and to try to help others meet their needs while not sacrificing my own. That’s a challenge to say that the work I do has value. I have to pay my bills like everybody else, and I can’t always be expected to work for free or for charity. So that’s a big negotiation going on.

Avil Beckford: Describe a major business or other challenge you had and how you resolved it. What kind of lessons did you learn in the process?

Shannon Moroney: The nature of my book, and the experience I went through was enormous, and beyond a challenge to overcome, going from a happy, newlywed successful person working in education, to a homeowner, someone involved in the community I lived in, to suddenly overnight to become the wife of a sex offender. That brought with it a horrific stigma, such painful trauma, and a great deal of judgement by others on me. It took a long time to gain back my sense of who I am, to fight against that kind of stigma and prejudice and move forward with my life. One of the most important things that I learned is to know what your personal values are, who you are as an individual because that is what will help and heal you should you go through a significant loss or trauma like I did.

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

Shannon Moroney: My biggest break in life is having a supportive family – a family that stood by me and helped me through a situation, who gave me the love and support I needed to go each step of the way. In terms of publishing my book, it’s a different story, I had a few big breaks and they all came by happenstance connections. Talking to friends, being open with the work I was trying to do in terms of writing led to some conversations with people who had connections in the publishing industry. Very quickly I found myself in the hands of a lovely agent and a wonderful publisher. Had I not been open with what I was doing, had I not followed up on leads I was given, when someone said, “Hey do you want to meet my friend’s brother-in-law who published a book?” I always said yes to anything like that. Any type of connection, someone who could help me, show me some insights, I think I was very open to all of that advice and opportunity and that led to some incredibly big breaks and some wonderful relationships.

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

Shannon Moroney:  That’s a hard question for me. I never really think of the concept of failure in terms of my own experience because I had to survive so much that I also had to be kind to myself when things didn’t work out – when I took two steps forward, and then a step back in my recovery, and my efforts to move forward with my life. I couldn’t think of them as failures. I had to continue to move forward. A lesson I learned though is that nobody moves forward in their life on their own, and it’s a good idea to take up any offers of help that you get along the way. Not only did that lead to greater success, it also led to much greater happiness. Having people to share a success with at the end of a long road is a lot more beautiful than enjoying it alone.

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

Shannon Moroney:  One of the toughest decisions I had to make was to break my wedding vows. My first husband already broke them to me when he committed these horrific crimes, but ultimately I had to choose to break mine to him. They weren’t broken automatically. That was very painful for me to be forced to change the kind of love I have for him, to decide to leave him behind in prison while I move forward with my life. To hold him accountable for what he had done, but also hold myself accountable for making a better future for myself. These decisions came with a great amount of pain. They took time. They took a lot of courage in terms of me saying to myself, that I deserved to still live a full and wonderful life even after I had been so terribly betrayed and victimized. The impact has been incredibly positive. I don’t live a life without sadness when I remember that time. It will never stop being painful but deciding that I could have a life, I deserved a life, that I wasn’t going to let my life be controlled by someone else’s horrible action. I found happiness again. I found a purpose in the work that I do and I also found a way to trust again and a way to love again. Now I’ve arrived at a time where I feel a great deal of happiness with my new husband and as we expect our twins to be born very soon I feel proud about the decisions that I’ve made to move forward.

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

Shannon Moroney:

1. Obviously the one I write about the most – the great trauma involving my husband’s arrest and incarceration.
2. Before that, in the 30 years of life that I had before this horrible trauma, what shaped my character and gave me the skills to cope in a way that I did, or when this trauma happened. Major events involved travel, choosing to travel at an early age, as a teenager on my own, going to Indonesia to live three months, choosing to live a year abroad in South America with my university.
3. After everything happened with my husband, choosing to go back to school, get a Maters degree in England, and open doors for myself. All of those travel experiences were incredibly educational and opened my eyes to the way people live in other parts of the world, and gave me a perspective and a lot of gratefulness in life I had even when I had to go through a horribly, painful time, I still had the perspective of the suffering that other people have to go through, and I could still be grateful for what I did have instead of think that everything was over for me.

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

Shannon Moroney:  Deciding I would be able to find happiness again, and to come through a trauma that I think many people might not have made it through, or might still be suffering greatly from. I think the greatest accomplishment was deciding for myself that I deserved a wonderful life, and working every single day, every day, to get to a place where I could reach that point.

Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?

Shannon Moroney:  I’ve been so fortunate that I have had so many mentors, leaders in my life, at all different points, all different kinds of people, every age, that have given me perspective on things, have given me advice, who have modeled for me who I would like to be. I would be nowhere without all the people in my life who are champions of the human spirit who offer guidance directly or by the way they live.

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

Shannon Moroney: Overall, a message I picked up along the way is that we’re not in control of what happens to us, but we’re in control of how we respond, and who we are. That message of knowing who I am, knowing what my values are, is something that has fortified me through difficult times, and good times as well.

Avil Beckford: An invisible mentor is a unique leader you can learn things from by observing them from afar, in the capacity of an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?

Shannon Moroney:  My one piece of advice would be that every night when you go to bed and put your head on your own pillow, you have to feel at peace with yourself, what you’ve done during the day, how you’ve interacted with other people, how you’ve treated yourself and others. If you feel at peace with all those things then no naysayer, no critic can get in the way of who you are in accomplishing your goals and that’s the advice I would give.

Everybody has people in their life that will judge them, that will be critical, be negative but ultimately at the end of the day, what you think of yourself and how you are with other people is what you have to live with. You’re the only person that you have to live with for the rest of your life, the only person you’re guaranteed to know your whole life is you, and that’s not being self-centered, but its’ about making sure that who know who that is, and you’re at peace with that person. When you see shortcomings in yourself that you not beat yourself about them but you work toward improvements.

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Interviewee Name: Mireille Landry, President & Managing Director

Company Name: Solution ML Limited

Website: http://www.solutionml.ca

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Mireille Landry: I was born in Quebec City, moved a couple of times – Montreal, New Brunswick, and Toronto. I married my high school sweetheart and we have one daughter who is 21 years old. I had 21 years of successful corporate leadership career and became a new entrepreneur last year.

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

Mireille Landry: I don’t have a typical day, at least not yet. I did in my previous roles. The kind of day that I’d like to see typical is that I get up a little bit later than when I was in corporate because I’m not an early riser. I enjoy a bit of reading and reflection time in the morning before it gets crazy. A perfect day for me would be when I have client assignments so I am with clients in the mornings and then have time to do business development later in the day.

Because my business is very new it really is dependent on the type of project I’m working on, so that’s why I say there isn’t any typical day yet.

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

Mireille Landry: There are a couple of things that I do. I am a very positive person so I surround myself with positive messages. I say my motto, “Believe, believe, believe,” so I keep that close to me. In my office I have pictures of great events, great moments, whether it me family moments or travel, or certificates of accomplishment, and I keep those around me. The visuals are really important and “Believe, believe, believe,” make a big difference to keep me motivated, particularly when the times are tougher.

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

Mireille Landry: There are a couple of things I would do differently. They are not major but they would be impactful. I would start networking or paying attention to networking much earlier in my life, and nurture that network throughout my life. I also include in that networking with friends and business professionals and all the people in my life. I would also get involved in volunteering earlier. I find it’s great now that in high school they are encouraging kids to do volunteer work to graduate. I think that’s a great thing. That’s one thing I would have liked to do differently, and sooner. And I would have taken a more active role in women and leadership.

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

I discovered that I can be a really good business advisor, and I’m absolutely able to be a business owner/entrepreneur. That’s always something that has been in the back of my mind that maybe one day I would do it, perhaps when I’m a little older. As I’ve told you, I launched my business last year and that’s a great discovery to realize that I can be successful doing that and that I love it.

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

Mireille Landry: It’s a big advance but it’s not big enough, it’s not good enough yet but it would be women in leadership positions. It’s getting attention so we are starting to see more women in leadership positions, more women on boards, but the percentages are so low and the growth is not in double digits. So we don’t see gender balance on executive teams, in boardrooms, and I think one of the reasons why we’re seeing some advances, some improvement is that there is more focus on developing talent, both genders, not just women. It’s good to see more focus put on developing talent, but it just needs to be done a lot more.

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

Mireille Landry:

1. There are many players. There are many consulting firms, large and small. So being a small player is even more difficult. I am often up against bigger firms that have great reputation or have been in business for a lot longer. For that particular threat, my perspective is to differentiate myself and work on the relationship, and it’s the personal approach that I can offer that perhaps different firms cannot offer.
2. Another threat is the patience and persistence doing the business development, although you expect results quickly, and it doesn’t happen like that. We need to persevere and persist so from that perspective the threat is really to lose that vision and not hang on.
3. As my business is growing, and customers really enjoy working with us, how fast can I grow, and how quickly can I ramp up to handle higher demands? It’s a threat, but it’s a great problem to have. What I am doing to handle that – I like to say I am proactive and forward thinking – I already have some thoughts on who I would hire in each of the areas of my business practice so that when I am challenged with a fast growth, I’m able to reach out into my network and I already have people who could jump on board and work with me.

Avil Beckford: What’s unique about the service that you provide?

Mireille Landry: What we provide is business consulting, but with a people angle. When you look at our website, we say trusted business advisors with a people focus. I like to be able to say to business leaders that we will help them to optimize their business results by leveraging their most important resource which is their people. So if they have challenges and problems, it really is about deconstructing those problems and always taking care and understanding the people impact and how to get the best out of their people. I personally found that that was a huge contributor to my success in my career, expecting a lot but giving back a lot to the people surrounding you. I think that’s very unique because in both streams of business in my firm we focus on the people aspect to make sure that companies and business leaders are successful.

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

Mireille Landry: Follow-up! I think a lot of people don’t follow up or say something. They don’t deliver. They don’t do what they committed to do. I am strong at the follow-up and delivering on my commitments.

Avil Beckford: Describe a major business or other challenge you had and how you resolved it. What kind of lessons did you learn in the process?

Mireille Landry: I’d like to give an example when I became a manager for the first time. I was passionate and motivated. I had the right intent but I was a little bit rough around the edges, a bit abrasive perhaps in my management style. I was young, and I appreciate the leader who saw in me the future qualities of a leader but I certainly was not a well-rounded leader at the time. Some people on the team had a nickname that was not quite nice for me. I was their Godzilla so I had to really soften my approach. I had to resolve it obviously, and I did. I had some extremely successful years after that. That team that had me that first year in management lived through the process of grooming a new manager. I had to get into mentoring and I was being coached to be better in what I did.

The biggest learning for me is that you can’t force people to do things, you need to coach them and help them to understand the goals and support them. A title is a title. Leadership is not about the title. It’s about helping people do, take action or execute or deliver on the business commitments that you need them to do without them feeling that they are forced to do it. For sure you team has a job, but the best testament is to see people who want to really work with you again – they are lining up to take the opportunity to be led by you one more time. So the biggest lesson for me was that it’s not about saying, “I’m the boss and I expect you to do,” and being short and abrasive like I was in that very first year. I grew and learned a lot that year, and I’m glad that the nickname disappeared.

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

Mireille Landry: I had many. I talked to you about this first management job, so we’ll use this big break. This was back in New Brunswick and I took on my first management job. As I said, from the outside I looked more like a chunk of coal than I did a diamond. It took lots of massaging and coaching and guidance so I could become a really strong, remarkable leader. That business unit executive who gave me than chance, who not only hired me as the manager of that group but also took on the leadership and responsibility to help me become a good leader and teach me the way. It required a lot of his time, it was a hands-on for him, he needed to coach me closer, and he made a big difference in my career in having a long career in leadership.

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

Mireille Landry: I’ll fast forward a few years after that, this would have been in 2001. I wanted to complete my MBA. I had decided that I wanted to take my MBA at Queens University, and there was a sponsorship case that I was putting together to present to my company for financial sponsorship. When a business leader makes the commitment to complete an Executive MBA there is a time commitment that is expected of the leader.

And of course your employer needs to support you in that. I built my sponsorship case. I put a lot of work into it. The university helped and coached me in making sure that my sponsorship case was the best or was very strong and compelling. I knew I had the support from a time away perspective. I was looking for financial support, and it was a big failure.

I assumed that the sponsorship case would speak of itself, and the lesson I learned was, you can’t assume that that proposal, that document will do the work. I had not navigated the political web. I had not talked about it off-the-record, offline. I had not done my networking, my due diligence, sure that this was taking no one by surprise. I simply built a big sponsorship case and presented it to my senior leader at the time who sent it up the line. But when it was received by the Canadian CEO at the time, this kind of came out of the blue.

So I had really done a poor job of communicating and navigating. I didn’t have any political savvy for sure. How did it contribute to a greater success? Trust me, I learned. I learned – no surprises. Always have a strategy of no surprises, making sure that you understand who the stakeholders are in any kind of decisions, and being able to read and expect and plan for the outcome and play all the scenarios: the best case, the worst case. The learning from that failure, it was a failure because I was not sponsored, and it was a huge failure for me because I had to delay my entry to Queens University by one year because now I didn’t have a Plan B to pay for myself. It was very emotional for me to postpone for another year. It was frustrating and I was ready to go to university, but I didn’t have the money.

The learning came in handy as I occupied more senior leadership positions within different corporations. It came in handy as well in sales. When you have a business meeting or make a proposal to senior leaders within your company or with clients, you need to look at all angles and always plan what different stakeholders position may be so that you are fully prepared.

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

Mireille Landry: From a business standpoint I would say the biggest disappointment I faced was the one described above. From a personal standpoint I would say it was not having a larger family. We have one daughter and we were certainly hoping for more.

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

Mireille Landry: I worked for IBM for 18 years and I decided to leave for another great opportunity. From a professional standpoint that has been one of the toughest decisions I have had to make. From a career standpoint it did impact my life because obviously after that I took on another position with a different company, grew and developed my leadership skills and abilities. I was entrusted with greater responsibilities, large revenue commitments, and that was the beginning of a series of different steps that brought me to where I am today. Had I not made that decision to leave the company although a great company, I would probably still be there because it was difficult to leave something that was secure, good, where I felt fulfilled.

Also, from a business leader standpoint, not from my own personal career, I had to ramp down a team and that was very difficult because I was dealing with the business decisions, and also the human drama and tragedy of people losing their employment. It was because we needed to close down a division, and that was a tough decision to make to decide who could be deployed and who could not be redeployed.

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

Mireille Landry:

1. This was a really long time ago. When I was a little bit of a crazy teenager, grandfather passed away and it sent me an interesting reflection about how life is priceless. And suddenly the thought that my grandpa could now see the things that I was doing that was not always of good judgement. I certainly think that that made me make better decisions after his passing.
2. When I left IBM for Bell Canada to lead one of their largest enterprise accounts, that ended up being very impactful and shaping my life by making me redefine what success was all about. From a financial standpoint, it was a very good opportunity. But the job ended up being in Montreal and I had to commute back and forth every week and that was very difficult and taking a toll from a family perspective. I ended up coming back to Toronto and leaving that job opportunity. I realized that living in Montreal during the week, and living in Toronto during the weekends was not the kind of life I was looking for even though the dollars and cents were good and the professional role was excellent. It was not the type of life from a personal standpoint that I was looking for. So that was a big event.
3. Becoming a mom shaped my life in big ways. Certainly in growing myself and developing. The way you negotiate with teenagers you need a better approach sometimes. You need to develop additional sets of skills, and you see life differently through the eyes of a child.

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

Mireille Landry: Going back to school and completing my MBA. As a working mom, I’m really proud of that, and as much as that was for me personally, my daughter when she graduated referred back to that and stated before her peers that I had been such a great role model for her in showing that it was important to have goals  and dreams.

Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?

Mireille Landry: In plenty of ways. They’ve been supporters. They have allowed me to walk a mile in their shoes. At times some of my mentors were saying things that I didn’t see just yet, and I believed enough in them. It was easier to believe in them than myself at times, so I would trust them. I think it made me wiser. It was different views and opinions. They were great advisors to me.

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

Mireille Landry: I would say it was believe in yourself, your clients do.

Avil Beckford: An invisible mentor is a unique leader you can learn things from by observing them from afar, in the capacity of an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?

Mireille Landry: I would like to say, “Great leaders serve. They give back.” If you take the serving leadership attitude, as leaders we get in different ways. Great leaders serve and there is a great book on that.

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.

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5. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Kevin Popović, Communications Director, Ideahaus Part Two

Interviewee Name: Kevin Popović, Communications Director

Company Name: Ideahaus

Website: http://www.ideahaus.com

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Kevin Popović: My job has evolved. I call myself a communications director so I help my clients direct all their communications – marketing, strategy, corporate identity and branding, advertising, design issues, public relations and quite a lot of social media these days. Quite simply, I help my clients figure out what to say and how to say it to their target markets.

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

Kevin Popović: If I had two days in a row that were the same I would be so surprised. Some days I work out of my beach studio in Delmar here in San Diego. Some days I’m at a comic convention interviewing different people in the comic, television and movie business. Some days I may be in New York working with a CEO client. Other days I may be in Hollywood at a celebrity awards gifts suite, some days I am in our Pittsburgh studio. Sunday I’ll be on stage at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. So my typical day is an adventure – every day is an adventure, and it’s a new adventure.

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

Kevin Popović: I look at the pile of bills that I have to pay this month. The challenge as an entrepreneur is that there is no one telling you what time you have to be at work, and there is no one telling you what has to get done today, and if your intent is being self-employed and an entrepreneur, that is one of the first things that you have to overcome is being able to motivate yourself and stay motivated.

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

Kevin Popović: Not a damn thing! And I say that in all sincerity. I had a path earlier in my career to go and work for somebody or to not go and work for somebody, and I worked for some people, and then I decided that that wasn’t for me. But the things that I got involved in throughout my life have all been different types of communications, whether it was video production or event production, or design, or advertising, or website development, all of those things that I have done have gotten me to where I am today and I’m very happy where I am today.

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

Kevin Popović: I’m realizing the opportunity in social media, and I have been involved in social media for six years. And every week I learn something new, but it has been over the last year that clients are realizing success as we are doing some very innovative things, realizing how many people are connecting and what that means. That’s my greatest observation.

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

Kevin Popović:

1. The economy which I can do nothing about.
2. My competitors which I can do nothing about.
3. Me and my company which I can do everything about. So that’s where I’m focusing on, me, my company, and my team.

Avil Beckford: What’s unique about the service that you provide?

Kevin Popović: Me! I do not mean that in an arrogant way. But every ship has a captain, someone who tells you to steer left, steer right, watch out for that iceberg. I’m the captain of our ship Ideahaus, and there are lots of different ships and lots of good captains. But what’s different about us is me.

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

Kevin Popović: I think most people do what’s expected. I think most people don’t pay attention to the compulsories  because they are expected, and there isn’t a lot of innovation. I think we do innovation very well.

Avil Beckford: Describe a major business or other challenge you had and how you resolved it. What kind of lessons did you learn in the process?

Kevin Popović: One of our clients is a retailer of pop culture apparel and that includes t-shirts, hoodies, belt buckles, patches, hats and things like Superman t-shirts. The challenge is that you can get Superman t-shirts anywhere, so why get it from my guy?

We focused on making it a priority for people to understand why you got it from our client, and we focused on their branding, and we focused on listening, and communicating back with the customers, and we came to what you call an understanding, a quid pro quo with our customers. They can pay attention to us, if we give them something to pay attention to, so we developed an online show that provide subject matter that we are both interested in, for instance superheroes. We give them entertainment, 5-minute daily shows about superheroes, or movies, television, or the things they are interested in, and in return they watch their show, and our commercials are placed within that show, and they buy t-shirts. That’s how we took a client with a commodity product, turn them into a premium, and developed a communications channel with his target audience.

I learned that you have to have an objective understanding of who you are in the marketplace, and where you fit in. I think we helped our client do that. I think this is something that is hard for businesses to do, and I think it’s hard for communications professionals to do that with their clients. But when we both do that, I think it’s when we are able to make much more informed and effective decisions.

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

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

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

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

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

evin Popović: One of my biggest failures was a very early entrepreneurial effort I had called Fairytales Productions. We were going to do event marketing for skateboard manufacturers. On the west coast we were going to do events on the east coast where they didn’t have that great of a presence. I put together a very large contest, and Wendy’s was going to be a sponsor and give us $5,000 toward the promotion. Everything got booked and three days beforehand, I find out that Wendy’s has changed their mind, they are not going to give me $5,000 in money, they are going to give me $5,000 in sandwich coupons. Vendors did not want to be paid in sandwich coupons. So it was a disaster and I ended up closing the company, and what I learned is to get everything in writing no matter who the relationship is with.

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

Kevin Popović: I don’t think there is a biggest, there is a bunch of little ones and I think you learn from each one. You get your hands slapped, or your fingers burnt and you pay attention and try not to do what you did to get your hands slapped or to burn your fingers. Eyes wide open going into situations and no excuses coming out of them. You make constant decisions and you have to live with the consequences.

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

Kevin Popović: I worked with one of my best friends to start a business. I learned that this best friend had embezzled money from the company, and I gave him the chance to fix what he had broken. He didn’t take me up on the opportunity so I had him arrested and pressed charges. It reminded me that there is a difference between personal relationships and business relationships, and that when you mix the two, and you will, each has their own responsibilities. That’s what I learned.

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

Kevin Popović:

1. Getting beat up at the age of 15 for shooting my mouth off to somebody I had no business shooting my mouth off to. This taught me to watch what you say to people and who you say it to.
2. The birth of my two daughters.

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

Kevin Popović: Ideahaus! My company is my proudest professional accomplishment and it continues to be a source of adventure, personal inspiration and a platform to explore and help others.

Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?

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

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

Kevin Popović: Know what you are doing before you go into it.

Avil Beckford: An invisible mentor is a unique leader you can learn things from by observing them from afar, in the capacity of an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?

Kevin Popović: Don’t believe your own bullshit. I select that word purposely. I find that a lot of entrepreneurs, and a lot of young people, particularly when they have some raw skills, and some raw talent, think very highly of themselves, and you need to have confidence, and then with some initial success and one or two people telling you that you did a great job, many of these people get inflated egos and start believing these things and let it distract them from learning and being better, and creating better opportunities. That’s what I think they should pay attention to.

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.

Related posts:

1. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Carol Roberts, Professional Speaker & Marketing Communications Consultant, Part Two
2. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Carol Roberts, Professional Speaker & Marketing Communications Consultant
3. Interview With Invisible Mentor Kamel Hothi, Director, Lloyds Banking Group
4. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Kevin Shea Part Two
5. Interview: Invisible Mentor, Kamel Hothi, Director, LLoyds Banking Group, Part Two

Interviewee Name: John Fink, Chief Financial Officer

Company Name: Dinosaur Restaurants

Website: http://www.dinosaurbarbque.com

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

John Fink: I was raised in a small town in Wisconsin, kind of a company town. My dad was my hero and is to this day even though he’s passed on. My life has generally been about adventure and achievement and I guess that may sound kind of strange, but that’s the way I like to position it. I was the valedictorian of my high school class and a letterman athlete, graduated college with high honors, was the President of my college fraternity, passed the CPA exam on the first shot, was a VP for a company by the age of 28 and became a CFO at 35.  I moved from Wisconsin to Florida to Missouri back to Florida to New York City back to Florida to Wisconsin to New York State. I have an amazing wife who shares my love of adventure, we have a couple of kids who give me the gift of love and laughter every day, and I’m really looking forward to the future.

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

John Fink: I get up at about 6:30 am and I do what I need to do to get ready for the day.   Then, I like to make breakfast for my little girl. I make her pancakes or biscuits, or scrambled eggs.  I have some sort of focus on making breakfast for her. She is in kindergarten and I like to get her off well fed. I usually drive to work after that, work hard all day and typically have lunch at my desk.  After work, I head home and we have supper together because that’s a big thing in our family. We focus on that and I really enjoy it, and that’s how I learn about everybody else’s day. Then it’s my job after supper to walk the dog. I typically play with the kids and we put them to bed. I spend an hour or an hour and a half to make coffee and my lunch for the next day, catch up on the news, do any emails I need to do, have a period of reflection then go to bed.

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

John Fink: Quite a few years ago I came across Steven Covey’s book and I internalized the saying to begin with the end in mind. I stay motivated because I want to look back on my life some day and I want to be able to have the satisfaction that I pushed as hard as I could and did as much as I could, and went as far as I could and I didn’t create my own barriers.   I also tend to be in an environment where others are counting on me, so I guess I don’t have to motivate myself.    If others are counting on me, I don’t want to let them down.

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

John Fink: As a younger person, I would have a hobby or some sort of avocation to pursue rather than casting around as kids do. Perhaps playing a musical instrument,  a sport,  or learn a language or something. Certainly, by the time I reached high school, I would focus hard on learning another language and would continue with it to college. I believe that’s critical in today’s world, people being as mobile as they are. I would certainly shoot for the stars as far as college selection, I would work harder at that. Kids at 17, 18 have a tough situation in that they have to make decisions that will impact them significantly throughout the remainder of their lives and they have to do it in a very short period of time without a lot of life experience.   I’d certainly work harder at choosing a college that gave me every opportunity.   Then I’d get an advanced degree immediately.  Sometimes people think they’ll leave college and enter the workforce and go back later, but it doesn’t happen, so I’d continue on and get the advanced degree immediately. I’d network or pay attention to networking much earlier in my career, and I’d try harder for a non-US job assignment early in my career.

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

John Fink: My wife and I adopted a son from Russia and we brought him home in June, and we also adopted our daughter from Russia and brought her home just after Christmas 2008.   As a result, one of the things I’ve learned in the last year is that kids don’t make linear progress when they are learning.   Time goes by when you think they are not picking up much of anything, and then all of a sudden they make a big jump in their abilities. It turns out that kids are always observing, but don’t always let you know when they pick something up. They choose the time and place and the way they let you know that they’ve learned something.

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

John Fink: It would be the concept of the fast-casual restaurant. I find it fascinating that there is a new genre of restaurant or type of customer intervention that makes people somehow feel special while being processed through a cafeteria line, carrying their food to a seat, dispensing their own drink and bussing their own table. It’s definitely a  new sector of our industry that came up over the past five years and it’s really quite interesting.

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

John Fink:

Avil Beckford: What’s unique about the service that you provide?

John Fink: I think it’s a combination. I think it’s the cuisine we provide which is legitimate, genuine cuisine that cannot be shortcut. It’s also the environment, which is authentic in terms of its decor. It’s a rough, roadhouse feel that is legitimate in the fact that we locate our restaurants in non-traditional areas, we outfit our restaurants in such a fashion that it gives the customer a feeling of possibility along the lines of a roadhouse type environment, but at the same time it’s safe. And last but not least, it’s the guest experience. We treat customers like adults. We don’t bring cheerleaders or kindergarten teachers to their tables and tell them the latest gimmick on the menu to get a free appetizer if you order just the right entree. You tell the server what you’d like and he or she gets it. It’s not a sanitized version of some other great experience, it IS the great experience.

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

John Fink: I’d say keeping the overall goal in mind and not getting caught up in the process. We desire at Dinosaur to create a customer environment and experience that brings them back, and  we understand it’s a combination of the food, which we’re unapologetic about. We are not going to get caught up in the process of becoming a sort of trendy, green, health conscious, all-things-to-all-people sort of deliverable. We are a legitimate barbecue place, and that keeps us relevant.    We are going to do the best we can to execute against that. We are not going to try to broaden our demographic by watering down our product.   We deliver the finest barbecue that we can, and continue to do that every day.   As long as customers like barbeque, we are set.

Avil Beckford: Describe a major business or other challenge you had and how you resolved it. What kind of lessons did you learn in the process?

John Fink: The most recent challenge would be a year and a half ago, I found myself in  a position professionally that was too comfortable. I was not challenged. I had limited prospects for growth and I had a high level of risk of going soft. As a result, I opened my mind to consider other opportunities, and an opportunity presented itself.  There was risk, because the opportunity  happened to be halfway across the country from where we lived.    I discussed the opportunity with my family, we agreed, and we moved and I took the new job.

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

John Fink: It would be Tom Silveri. Tom was the CFO of Drake Beam Morin, and I worked for him. Tom gave me more responsibility at a relatively early age than my credentials and age warranted.  He put me in front of heavyweight individuals, decision-makers, and learned professionals, and to some degree he let me swim or sink. He didn’t bury me in the engine room or make me wait my turn or otherwise keep me away from the action, and I thank him for that.    That allowed me to see and be around individuals at senior positions and watch them and see what made them tick, and how they thought. It advanced my career significantly.

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

John Fink: I had to fire a friend of mine.  I was working in an organization for a long time and I had a co-worker, a peer, and we developed a strong friendship. At one point I was promoted and  took charge of a group of individuals, and he was one of the individuals. Things changed within the organization, the structure changed, the ownership changed, the capitalization changed, the very mission of the organization changed. My friend was a good guy, a good performer, a valuable individual, but the organization had changed and didn’t need his particular skill set at his location anymore. I had to make the tough decision, I had to let him go and it was very difficult, and it hurt him.   While this friend of mine was an outstanding guy, I couldn’t put his feelings, his well-being, ahead of all others.   He’s since gone on and done extremely well.

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

John Fink:

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

John Fink: I believe I am a decent father, a good dad. My kids are why I do what I do.    I want them to be safe and happy and loved.   I put a priority on that.   I can’t claim it necessarily, because my kids will judge many years from now, but I believe that I’m a decent dad.   Beyond that, I’ve had a good academic record and I’ve had a great career so far, so I’m proud of those as well

Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?

John Fink: When I was young, early in my career, I was a very intense individual. I had a very strong view of how I felt things should be, and mentors softened me at points when I needed to take a different perspective. They prevented me from making some rash decisions or perhaps being too blunt or too fixed in my views. They helped me keep my eye on long-term goals and not let either my ego or my view of the world get in the way.

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

John Fink: I think the most valuable message that I’ve ever received, is to be slow to bruise and quick to heal, and not hold grudges.   You simply must work with others to accomplish objectives. You can be idealistic about the ultimate goal, whether that’s a business or personal success, however you define it, but not the steps or the process or the people involved in getting there.

Avil Beckford: An invisible mentor is a unique leader you can learn things from by observing them from afar, in the capacity of an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?

John Fink: It’s not anything new or groundbreaking, but it’s the old axiom that you have two eyes, two ears, and one mouth. People pay big money for training seminars, executive coaches, and other types of interventions, when in fact there is a live training session happening in front of you every day. Wherever you are, whatever business you are in, watch the successful people, the heavy-hitters. Take the good from them. Accept the fact that most times the heavy-hitters got there by earning it. They are not there because of a lucky break that you didn’t get. You can’t always do it better than they can.   Don’t co-exist with these people, watch them, observe them, figure out what’s important to them, what they focus on every day, how they react to certain situations, and take that in.   Make your own judgment about whether you are going to use it or not, but observe it and take it in.

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.

Related posts:

1. The Invisible Mentor Interviews John Klotz, President Northwood Mortgage Life Insurance Corporation
2. The Invisible Mentor Interviews John Klotz Part Two
3. The Invisible Mentor Interviews John Kremer, The Bookmarketing Go-to-It Guy
4. The Invisible Mentor Interviews John Kremer Part II
5. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Gina McAdam

Interviewee Name: Delane Cooper, Goldsmith

Company Name: Delane

Website: http://www.delane.ca

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Delane Cooper: I am a goldsmith and jewellery designer. I used to be in technology for a couple of decades helping build datacentres. I started off in California, lived in New York, got married and moved here to Toronto.

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

Delane Cooper: Workout, meditate when I can, have a great breakfast, then prepare for client meetings or work at my jewellery bench.

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

Delane Cooper: I have a dream of being a philanthropist and in doing so it drives me to do well at my business so I may be able to contribute to society and help other children. That keeps me motivated.

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

Delane Cooper: I’m going to interpret this question regarding my career change. So it would be having the courage to do it sooner.

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

Delane Cooper: It is a discovery about myself. There used to be a disconnect between my age and the sound of my voice. I sounded like I was 16 years old apparently, and what it took was going on a climb on Mt. Kilimanjaro, and at the top, one of the ladies I climbed with said, “Delane, why is it that you’re 39 years old, but you sound like a little girl?” And that gave me pause to reflect. So when I returned home to Toronto, I sought out a voice coach, and as a result, my life has changed immensely. There is a better connection between my voice and my age, which has resulted in acceptance and the development of new friends.

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

Delane Cooper: I would have to say the use of computers especially with computer aided design, being able to take away some of the design aspect from drawing on paper to putting it on to computers.

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

Delane Cooper:

1. Being boring: It’s about making time to be creative.
2. Complacency: Making sure that every day is a new day and reinterpreting myself and asking myself every day, “What will I do to reinvent Delane today?”
3. Paying attention to running my business: I sought out a business coach that I meet with once a month and we discuss all facets of my business – from financial to marketing, and she keeps me on track and makes sure that I am running my business and not forgetting that this is a business and not just a creative venture.

Avil Beckford: What’s unique about the service that you provide?

Delane Cooper: Listening to a client’s dream or aspiration, and sometimes the symbolism of what a piece of jewellery is supposed to mean to them, and then taking that story and interpreting it into a visual piece of wearable art.

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

Delane Cooper: Listen….Listen…..and…Listen!

Avil Beckford: Describe a major business or other challenge you had and how you resolved it. What kind of lessons did you learn in the process?

Delane Cooper: Financing my business without a full-time job, which meant that I had to find clients. And fortunately, finding clients I did. What was holding me back was my fear, and it was taking that leap in believing in myself and being able to say, “I’m going to take on this career as being a jewellery designer and goldsmith full-time, accepting it and owning it.

My fear was holding me back, and that was the lesson, knowing everybody has fear, but being able to face it, say it’s okay and moving forward with it.

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

Delane Cooper: A friend’s husband commissioned me to make their 42^nd wedding anniversary ring and this was the biggest compliment, especially since this gentleman is known amongst a group of friends to have excellent taste in jewellery. This to me was the ultimate compliment to be asked to make a ring for his wife. His name is Bruce Vachon and I will always be eternally grateful for the opportunity, and Mary wears this ring every day. It’s such a joy to know that friends wanted me to make something to be part of their lives for the rest of their lives.

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

Delane Cooper: I will go back to the fear of being an entrepreneur. The lesson is that everyone who is an entrepreneur experiences fear. It’s about how one deals with it. Feeling the fear is acceptable, and living behind it is not acceptable. I feel the fear every day, but it’s that joy of waking up and saying, “Hey, it’s okay. I’m doing what I love though.”

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

Delane Cooper: Letting the fear of being an entrepreneur hold me back, recognizing that failure is possible but it’s not inevitable. What I do is have a lot of positive quotations in my designing journal, and my studio that remind me that fear is okay, failure is okay because sometime in order to get the design I was looking for it’s failing many times at the same design to have the right design.

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

Delane Cooper: Letting go of the full-time job which had the full-time paycheque, and how it impacted me is that I was not able to go out and buy the cute shoes that I wanted. There is something to be said about drive and being driven to be in a position to get back to what a paycheque could have been like. But this time it is a business that I am running and I can make those types of purchases because I earned it and did it on my own.

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

Delane Cooper:

Delane Cooper:

1. Being adopted when I was 15 ½ years old.
2. Getting married
3. Being a jewellery designer/goldsmith.

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

Delane Cooper: Running my business Delane.

Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?

Delane Cooper: There are so many mentors. I would say there are two key lessons. One is listen, listen and listen again, and the second is always to ask both of these questions – ask why and why not?

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

Delane Cooper: Teach yourself to see what others do not see so you will know what others do not know.

Avil Beckford: An invisible mentor is a unique leader you can learn things from by observing them from afar, in the capacity of an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?

Delane Cooper: Everyone experiences fear, just go out and live your passion, just do it.

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.

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1. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Sunniva Heggertveit Aoudia
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4. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Kathy Kastner Part II
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Interviewee Name: Sunniva Heggertveit Aoudia, Founder

Company Name: NORSUN Diversity and Cross-Culture Consulting

Website: http://diversity-and-cross-culture.com/

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Sunniva Heggertveit Aoudia: I am Norwegian, I have lived in Switzerland, Cyprus and the US, now I’m living in France. I am a consultant, trainer and coach – and also mentor on a voluntary basis for the European Professional Women’s Network (EPWN). And I recently started up my company NORSUN Diversity and Cross-Culture Consulting.

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

Sunniva Heggertveit Aoudia: Not sure I have a typical day yet, as my company is still in the making. But the day always include morning, afternoon and evening walks with my Golden Retriever. The last few months I have been working on three trainings, and recently I have been busy setting up a blog and using Twitter.

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

Sunniva Heggertveit Aoudia: It is rather easy, as my work is something I feel passionately for. Otherwise it is important for me to keep a balance between work and leisure, and this balance keeps me motivated.

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

Sunniva Heggertveit Aoudia: Concerning my business, I would have contacted more large consulting companies to freelance at an earlier stage. The financial market is still tough in the consulting business and if I had more freelancing contacts I think that would have been better.

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

Sunniva Heggertveit Aoudia: It has been a pleasure to discover that the consulting business is very supportive. I had expected fierce competition, whereas what I find is that my “competitors” if you like are very willing to share information and be supportive

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

Sunniva Heggertveit Aoudia: I would say that it’s E-learning, blended learning, more structure – and demand for certification – around what it means to be a coach and mentor

Avil Beckford: When you say blended learning, what do you msn by that?

Sunniva Heggertveit Aoudia: I mean training that has many different elements so that could mean an e-learning element within the blended learning. It could be that you have to do exercises, or group training combined with more traditional face-to-face training.

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

Sunniva Heggertveit Aoudia:

1. The financial market and competition.
   1. It is all about networking and creating trust so that customers choose me despite the above.
2. Gender discussion “fatigue”. By that I mean I have noticed that some people feel tired of the subject “women on boards, leadership.” I think that communication that focuses on a better future for men and women in business and at home is the way to go forward.

Avil Beckford: What’s unique about the service that you provide?

Sunniva Heggertveit Aoudia: To do that I have to go back a little. It is proven that a diverse company with an inclusive environment produces better bottom line results. I help businesses increase organisational performance through focus on inclusion, a diverse workforce and a better understanding of working across national cultures.

As a consultant, coach, mentor and trainer, my strength lies in my combination of strategic and operational experience, as well as having worked internationally cross-border and living in different countries. I am a good listener and have a solution-minded attitude.

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

Sunniva Heggertveit Aoudia: I don’t like to focus on what others do badly. But I see a danger in cross-cultural trainers getting too hung up on the theories of intercultural specialists like Trompenaars and Hofstede. Their tools are helpful, as long as one does not forget about individual differences and taking the time to get to know people.

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

Sunniva Heggertveit Aoudia: It was actually to get all the paper work done to set up my business. With my cultural background (Norwegian) it is not natural for me to chase people, it is considered rude in my culture. But here in France it is more common to chase people to get things done. I learnt it by doing, and I got it done, but it was hard for me.

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

Sunniva Heggertveit Aoudia: Listen to the people who have “inside information” and follow their advice, even if it is difficult to do.

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

Sunniva Heggertveit Aoudia: It wasn’t a big break, but I would like to mention the story. In high school I had a gym teacher that had the ability to “see” people. One time I was going through a difficult time, she saw it without me having to say a word. She asked me if I wanted to talk and I said yes. It was a relief to talk with an adult that showed so much understanding. It is something I have carried with me, the importance of “seeing” people and reaching out a hand. Sometimes I fail, but I try the best I can.

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

Sunniva Heggertveit Aoudia: One time I did not work well with a superior. I learnt that there may be greater cultural differences than one would expect between neighbouring countries. It forced me to flex my style, it wasn’t comfortable, but it gave better results.

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

Sunniva Heggertveit Aoudia: I rather tend to have many small disappointments, and they come in squadrons, as they say in French. When these periods arrive, I focus on “what happened instead?” “What positive outcome has there been from this disappointment?”

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

Sunniva Heggertveit Aoudia: Well, I think the toughest decisions in life are most likely to be very personal ones. One that I can share was the decision to settle in France with my French husband. I knew that it would be a long process to integrate, as I had to learn the language (which isn’t easy!) and get used to yet another culture. The result is that I have indeed learnt the language, although it took longer than I liked, and I live in a very beautiful country with a wonderful climate – and we live a blessed life.

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

Sunniva Heggertveit Aoudia:

1. The fact that I decided to take an education abroad set the scene for my intercultural experience. I had traveled over longer periods of time before that, but actually spending years abroad gives a stronger impact.
2. My husband. He provides a balance to my life that is amazing.
3. It is rather a personality trait than an event, but it does shape my life; I tend to take calculated risks (e.g. quitting my job before having another one, starting my own business). These risks have brought me exciting challenges (e.g. international job in a large petroleum company).

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

Sunniva Heggertveit Aoudia: I am very proud of a blended learning on working across cultures that I produced (main designer and team leader) in 2009 for a large petroleum company.

Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?

Sunniva Heggertveit Aoudia: I have had many invisible mentors, and some formal ones. They help me to trigger off new ideas or push me to get done things I already have in mind.

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

Sunniva Heggertveit Aoudia: That they believe in me

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

Sunniva Heggertveit Aoudia: Follow your interests and don’t give up.

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.

Related posts:

1. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Gina McAdam
2. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Rodger Harding, Life Coach & Artist
3. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Artist Patty Zuver
4. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Business Coach David Gray Part Two
5. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Susan Murphy, a Creative Genius

I have known Patty Zuver for over 12 years, and during that time we have sat on committees, Co-Chaired committees, had lunch several times, and attended yoga classes together, but I find that even for people who I have known for a long time, whenever I interview them I learn so much more. I think it has to do with the questions that I ask, which really get to the heart of the matter. You get to see the whole person, and they are much more than what they do.

I have always viewed Patty as a very successful, talented artist, and I have attended some of her shows. In this interview which follows, get a notepad and pencil because it’s a workshop, another lesson in work and life from our network of mentors. You see real people living real lives that you can relate to.

Lessons from the interview

• You do not need external validation before you can move to the next level. As Patty says, “Take the bull by the horn.”
• Be confident and take risks.
• When things do not go quite the way you expected, look back and see what lessons you can learn.
• Stand up for, and stick to what you believe in.
• Failure is feedback, learn from it, and move on.

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Patty Zuver: I hate to say that I’m primarily a mother of three, but that’s what I am these days. I’m also an artist and a teacher. I teach art and English as a Second Language (ESL). I like art, movies and I like to travel.

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

Patty Zuver: When I saw that question (I usually send the questions to the interviewees before the interview) I had to laugh because there is no such thing in my life as a typical day. I am a mother of three, and married to a musician, so both of us have very erratic schedules, and it’s not a typical Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 thing. So everyday before the two of us head out the door we sit down and say, “Okay what are you doing today? Who is going to pick up the kids? Who is going to make them lunch?” So a typical day for me involves a lot of childcare, a lot of packing lunches, a lot of making breakfasts, a lot of picking people up, and on a good day, it will include some studio time.

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

Patty Zuver: This is a tough one, especially with the art, it is easy to get unmotivated when I have only short periods of time to work. I motivate myself by going out and looking at art, seeing what others are doing, whether it’s contemporary art or a trip to the AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario). Going to see a movie is always good, and so is exercise such as yoga and swimming.

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

Patty Zuver: If I could talk to my 20 year old self now, I would give myself the confidence that I was good at what I did, that I was a decent artist and that I should have tried a bit harder or stuck to it longer. I have never given up art, but before getting a traditional teaching job I should have taken advantage of my youth a bit more. Everyone says that, “Youth is wasted on the young.” In general there isn’t a lot that I would have done differently, I’m pretty happy with where I am right now. While I would love my work to be hanging on some museum wall, like a lot of other 47 year olds, I’m not, but I’m pretty okay with that. So there isn’t a ton I would do differently, just be more confident when I was younger.

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

Patty Zuver: About a year ago I had one of those sit downs and asked myself, “What are you going to do with your life?” kind of thing. As you know, a couple of years ago we went to China for three months, so when I came home I had the opportunity to regroup and figure out how I wanted to live the next couple of years. I decided that I really enjoyed teaching and that I am a good teacher so I decided to explore what was available in teaching. I got my ESL teaching degree, so I’m trying to work on that a little bit.

As far as my art is concerned, every now and again, about every five years or so I think I should be applying to galleries to have shows because that’s what you do as a mature artist. And once again I made the discovery that it’s much easier, and just as valid to rent a space at the Gladstone Hotel (Small, trendy hotel in Toronto) and pay your $200 for the night and put up your own art, invite your friends and have a good night, and hope you sell some art in the process. I have made that discovery again that you don’t need other people’s approval to do what you want to do.

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

Patty Zuver: Like most businesses, it’s probably the digital world. For instance, going back to applying for shows in a gallery, or for grants, or any of that kind of thing, so much of it is done digitally now. You have to submit all of your images on a CD and it has to be x number of pixels, and they are never consistent. The industry has changed tremendously where you would physically submit slides, and someone would put them in a slide projector and look at them, now everything is done digitally but it’s not standardized. So to apply for a grant you might have to submit images, say 2500 pixels by 2300 pixels, then you apply to a gallery and the digital images that you have from a grant that you applied for, you cannot use because they need either smaller or larger pixels.

I don’t know anything about digital photography, or how to make a CD, so every time I’m applying for a grant, I have to take it to Mr. Computer Guy, and tell him specifically what sizes my images need to be. I now have to bring another person into the process which I never used to have to do. Like any other business out there, the whole art world has changed dramatically because of digital images, even if you are not a digital artist you have to deal with it. I am in that cohort who missed the boat on learning how to use the computer.

Avil Beckford: The answer you just gave could apply to the next question, but what are the three threats to your business, your success, and how are you handling them?

Patty Zuver: Threat is such a strong word. Anyway, it costs a ton of money if I want someone to do a DVD or CD that I have to submit to people. Every step of the way it costs a little bit more money if you bring another person into your circle, into the process to help you do something. This chips away at your very small profit margin, so I guess the digital thing is a challenge, but I don’t know if I would consider it to be a threat.

It could very well be a threat to my “success” because every time I look at a call for artist, and you know the deadline is two weeks from now, you go, “I can’t get this together in two weeks because I have to take pictures of the images with a digital camera, which I don’t know how to do to begin with, and then I have to take them to some guy to put it on a CD.” And so I don’t apply because I don’t know how to get it all done within the two weeks and so I won’t get that show.

Threat is such a strong word that I don’t really see any to the art world.

Avil Beckford: What’s unique about the service that you provide?

Patty Zuver: As far as my art is concerned I don’t know because every artist is going to provide a unique perspective. For the past couple of years I’ve been dealing with scenes of grief and loss of what could be considered a home or home base. There are lots of artists who have dealt with those subjects, but I offer my personal perspective.

In terms of my teaching style, I think that I’m very personable. I’m creative and very open to my students, and not like the “queen” at the front of the classroom telling them all what to do.

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

Patty Zuver: I’ll go back to trying to get a show in a gallery a few years ago. I was thinking that I should become a “real artist” and have a show at a “real gallery” and da-da-da. I applications to galleries and got a bunch of rejections, and of course whenever you get rejected from anything, you take it personally, and you think, “Maybe I suck, maybe I am a crappy artist because no one likes what I’m doing.” So there is that period where you go home and lick your wounds.

After that I came to the conclusion that so what? I can rent a space, show my work and I know that my work is good. I know a lot of people who think the same thing and I know a lot of people who buy my work, so again you have to try to not get discouraged, especially in the art world because so much is based on fashion – and by fashion I don’t mean what people are wearing – and taste. If what you are doing is not considered cool right now, like if someone is doing figurative art and that’s not cool anymore, a gallery is not going to show them.

So just because what you are doing is not popular right now doesn’t mean you should stop doing it, and produce work that’s going to get you in the gallery. You have to stick to what you believe in, and do what you are going to do, regardless of fashions and popularity, and hopefully some day people will come around.

Avil Beckford: So coming to the realization that you can rent your own space and have your own shows, what kinds of lessons did you learn in the process?

Patty Zuver: If you think you are good, and enjoy what you are doing, then you are good, and there is going to be at least one other person out there who appreciates what you are doing

You don’t need the approval of the “cool” crowd. A lot of times when you face a challenge, you go right back to high school, where when you walked into the cafeteria and felt like no one wanted to sit at the table with you. A lot of times when you get rejected, you go right back to that space, “Oh my God I’m not the cool kid.”

Do what you know is right, and forge ahead with what you know is right, and what you know is good.

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

Patty Zuver: Oh God, I don’t think I have ever had a big break (she laughs). In teaching, I guess it would have been way back. When I finished university I was working in a health food store and I worked with a guy who also worked at a Montessori school. He was talking about it one day and I thought, “Wow, that sounds really interesting, I’d like to learn more about that.” The following week he told me that they had an assistant who quit so they needed to hire an assistant. I worked at that Montessori school for a couple of years, and when I moved to Toronto I continued to work in Montessori schools, and did so for about 10 years. So I guess I can consider that a break.

In the art world I have to say that I haven’t been given any huge breaks. In high school there were two teachers – an art teacher and a photography one – who made me feel like I could have a career in art, that I should go and do it, that it wasn’t a fun thing to do in my spare time, that I was good at it, and should continue doing it. When I went to university, they encouraged me to study art instead of doing something like business.

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

Patty Zuver: Failure is an odd word, and at this point in life I never look back and say, “Oh my God, that was a failure.” I do honestly look at anything that didn’t go as right as it could have, as a learning lesson. And maybe I didn’t look at it like that as it was happening, but very soon after I go okay, “What was learned from that?” and they say what doesn’t kill you make you stronger and I do believe that.  I’ve had a lot of challenges along the way, both personally and professionally, but I think I’ve learned from every one of them.

Had I not have any challenges up to now I would be very boring, and not very empathetic. Anything that goes slightly wrong you learn from it, and you learn that people are human and you are human too.

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

Patty Zuver: One of my biggest disappointments would be that I hoped that I would have been further, and more recognized in the “art world,” whatever that means. “Success” for artists comes earlier these days. People are getting huge exhibits directly out of grad school and that kind of thing. I’m 47 now, and in some ways, it’s viewed that if I’m not big yet that’s it, it’s over and I’ll never be a “famous” artist. I thought I would have been further ahead down that road than I am.

Now I am taking the bull by the horn and doing my own thing. I’m renting my own space and putting my work up, and not thinking that I have to rely on galleries to come and recognize me, or waiting for an art critic to come to one of my shows, and declare me to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. I go out and do it myself and be happy with what I have gotten done.

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

Patty Zuver: I scanned the questions when you emailed them to me and I saw that one. My son Joe is a challenge of a kid, so he falls into one of those tough decisions. Right now my husband and I are trying to decide whether or not we should home school him. I would have to say that is what I am going through right now. This is one of the toughest decisions that I’ve had to make.

Joe has ADHD, and he has also been diagnosed with a form of Asperger Syndrome and all that stuff. But then again you may ask me the same question next week and I would respond with the tough decision that I am going through then.

Business decisions are tough, but they are not life altering tough, where I think personal decisions can alter your day-to-day existence.

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

Patty Zuver: The type of parents I had shaped my like – good, bad or indifferent. My parents did the best they could with what they were given, which was not very much. I had a pretty abusive dad, and my mom was a great woman but not a great mother. I wouldn’t say that I had a tough upbringing, but it was not loving or supportive. It toughened me up a bit to be raised by those two, which was not a bad thing because that influenced me greatly.

My art and photography teachers in high school pushed me to go to art school.

The third event was when I married Mike and moved to Canada. That impacted my life hugely, on a bunch of different levels.

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

Patty Zuver: Getting to this point in my life, and having three children is an accomplishment that I am proud of. One of those kids is a big challenge and just the fact that I have kept level headed about it is a big accomplishment. It’s a lot of work to have other people see him in an empathetic light. Another accomplishment I am proud of, is when we went to China a few years ago, to take that big risk and take my entire family to China was a pretty big accomplishment.

Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?

Patty Zuver: It’s hard to say if I have had Mentors with a capital M, but if I look back at people who influenced my life it would be the two teachers who pushed me to believe that I could do something with art. They influenced me by giving me direction at a point in my life when I was floundering.

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

Patty Zuver: I would say it’s confidence, the message would me you can do it kind of thing. This is very important especially in high school when you are at that vulnerable stage and think you suck at everything. So it’s great when someone comes along and says that you are a talented artist.

Avil Beckford: An Invisible Mentor is a unique leader you can learn things from by observing them from afar, in the capacity, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?

Patty Zuver: Have confidence and believe in what you do, and take risks with that level of confidence. There are very few things that can be considered Failure. A failure is a challenge; you learn from it and move on.

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.

Related posts:

1. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Gina McAdam
2. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Rodger Harding
3. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Steve Spalding Part Two
4. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Lynn Kahle
5. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Gina McAdam Part 2

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.

Related posts:

1. Interview With Best-Selling Author Leslie Householder
2. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Shannon Van Roekel, Author of Desert Fire
3. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Shannon Van Roekel, Author of Desert Fire Part Two
4. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Gina McAdam
5. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Gina McAdam Part 2

Today I present Donna Whitney, and as usual there are many lessons to learn. Her response to the question, “Tell me a bit about yourself” was quite long, but weaves a very interesting tale that we can all learn from. One potent lesson for me after reading it was, if it doesn’t feel right, walk away, don’t compromise your values. I have to think about how to present it so I’ll do that for tomorrow. From the information presented in this interview, what are five takeaways? How can you use the information in your situation?

What’s a typical day like for you?

There is no such thing as a typical day for me, I wish there was. Because our business is very much an entrepreneurial start-up within a really large organization, we are everything. I am sales and marketing and distribution, and finance. Of course I do not do all those things without the support of the right parts of the organization, but really, we do most of the heavy lifting ourselves.

How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

I don’t know that it’s a conscious thing for me. I absolutely love what I do, and when I don’t love what I do, I end up changing what I do so that I love it. It’s never been the same thing one day to the next. I seem to change my job title every 18 months.

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

I think that I would be kinder. I think there are a lot of people in my working experience that I could have shown a lot more grace to, especially in the early years when you are struggling to make your mark you get a sense that everything matters so much. In the grand scheme of things, 10 years from now you aren’t going to remember the offences you had to bear. I would have turned my cheek a lot more and be a lot more forgiving.

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

I’ve discovered Grooveshark and I really quite enjoy it. It’s an online radio that allows you to stream music for free.

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

Probably IPTV and the introduction of new entrants that make it possible for people to do things in a different way. That helps my team because that is the niche in which we play in. So every part of the traditional Rogers business is being assaulted by new competitors and new ways for people to do the same things.

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

1. The first threat would be the larger organization taking over our entrepreneurial start-up because then it wouldn’t be a start-up. If we were to be ingested by the larger organization then it would be much more difficult for us to do things the way we now do them.
2. The inability to deliver on all the opportunities that we have, and this threat has to be managed by making sure that we have the appropriate processes and people in place to do what needs to get done.
3. The third threat would be taking on too much all at once because there is an awful lot that can be done and ought to be done so it’s a question of timing.

What’s unique about the service that you provide?

Everything! I think what’s truly unique about what we do is that we do it within such a large organization in such a small way. It really is the best place to be in the company.

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

If you say that my field is large telecom, one of the things that large telecoms do incredibly poorly is being responsive and flexible to customers. If you’re saying that it’s people who do the things we do and are doing them poorly, it’s that we capitalize on the fact that we have a huge brand, and it really helps to open doors when you are carrying a Rogers business card. And a lot of those smaller companies don’t have that advantage.

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

There are always technology challenges. There is always a problem that needs to be solved, and I have been blessed with an amazing team that looks at issues as opportunities. And I don’t say that to be cliché in any way, shape or form, they truly do see things that way. I think another major challenge that any group faces is to maintain a healthy culture, and that has a lot to do with establishing boundaries up front and we’ve done that, we’ve sat down as a team and talked about our personal values and our values as a team.

What lessons did you learn in the process?

1. From a technology standpoint, one thing that we’ve learned is that it needs testing before you sell it. We’ve had a few hiccups where things seemed to make sense and not defy the laws of physics in principle, but in practice things never go as they appear. So rigorous testing and making sure that you build a demo lab is a must. It’s also important to have your customers as partners so that you can do that learning together. There should be a degree of agility and responsiveness by both partners to adjust to the things that happen along the way.
2. The more important one is establishing that team trust and integrity, and that’s been key for our overall success.

Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

My big break came from David Robinson for sure. And that was the break from marketing traditional “I’m going to create this piece of collateral or view this marketing brief” to the switch to technology, to engineering. And really David Robinson was a huge proponent, advocate and supporter of me in those early years, especially when I don’t have an engineering ring, and I certainly don’t intend to. My guys are engineers and I think there has to be a bridge with those with marketing and that kind of skill set meshing with the people with technology because there is such value in marrying those two things together. I would have been a propeller head by interest but not by design, and Robinson took me under his wings and knew that about me but brought me in anyway, and gave me the biggest opportunity of my career so far.

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

The biggest failure that I’ve ever had and it wasn’t a monumental thing, had a lot to do with being more gracious in certain circumstances. I remember this one time I had a client that just drove me over a fence, this person was like nails on a chalk board and I could have been a lot more professional, but I let it get to me one day and I lost my temper. For the long-term repercussion I’m sure that no one remembers it but me, but it left such a profound impact on me to realize that, it was just work and I should let it go. I think what I took away from that is the ability to take myself a lot less seriously.

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

It would probably be how the music industry treated people back in the eighties. The experience has made me more sensitive to the diversity of people coming into circumstances and trying to appreciate where they are coming from.

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

I think it is having to let someone go, pulling the trigger when you have to fire them. I’ve had to do that now on a couple of occasions and I think one thing I’ve learned from those decisions is to make them slowly, cautiously and transparently so that when you are approaching that time in someone’s career, you let them know what’s coming down the pipe as soon as you can.

What are three events that helped to shape your life?

1. My experience in the music industry
2. Moving to Toronto
3. The move from marketing to engineering

What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?

My ability to make sour dough bread, it’s kind of an art form.

How did mentors influence your life?

During different parts of your life you have different mentors for different purposes. I think that I’ve learned a lot of grace and maturity from the spiritual leaders and giants in my life. I am a huge fan of John MacArthur, and R C Sproul. From a work perspective, I think some of the giants in the company, the women that I have the pleasure and honour of working with really teach me a lot about the strength of women within this corporate environment because there are so few at the upper echelon levels.

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

Speak less and listen more.

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

The Tipping Point was a very good book. I had a mentor Maxine Armstrong – who I still consider to be a mentor – who was a great wealth of reading resources, so I’d have to say that that was a big one. In Moments of Magic the message was consistent and my mentor at Tronica referred that book to me. One of the members of my team recommended that I read Hoops which was by Greg Jackson the basketball coach. That was a really good book.

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

Be patient with yourself and listen to really hear, not just to absorb the information, but to understand it. It’s an entirely different thing from hearing a message and understanding the message. I think that too often people rush past the information so that they can contribute their own thoughts. It’s not about being heard, it rarely is about people hearing you, it’s what you hear from others that matters.

What are your thoughts on this interview? What was expected and what was unexpected? 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.

Related posts:

1. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Ron LeBlanc, CEO of Madacana
2. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Rodger Harding
3. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Gina McAdam
4. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Ron LeBlanc, Chairman of Madacana, Part Two
5. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Diane Danielson Part II

On Wednesday and Thursday we present an interview with Duke Redbird, First Nations Ojibwe Elder. It is my intention to bring to you a diversity of interviews so that we may all learn and grow. It’s amazing how much we can learn from others if we are open. Interviewees who are different from us can direct our thinking in new directions. For example, when talking about disappointments in life, Duke says that if the glass is half-full he simply gets a smaller glass, so now that glass is full. I wouldn’t have thought of that. We are socialized to choose between half-full and half-empty so it doesn’t occur to us that we can add another choice and that is to get a smaller vessel. What are your thoughts?

Tell me a little bit about yourself. Tell me a little bit about your company and where the idea for your business came from?

I am a First Nations Ojibwe Elder from Saugeen, a small reserve located in Ontario. I was born in 1939 so I’m 70 years old and will be 71 in March. I lived my entire life between the sacred and the profane, and I see the sacred as anything that has been created by the creator and nature, and the profane as anything that has been created by human beings. So when I am in the sacred I try not to profane it, and when I am in the profane, like I am today, I try to bring something sacred to it, so that’s my rule and prime directive.

What’s a typical day like for you?

I mentor faculty and students at the Ontario College of Art and Design, I am also a mentor for students at the University of Toronto, I am doing a totem impact project at York University, and I work on my film and television projects.

How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?

Motivation is just waking up in the morning and realizing that you are alive and have things to do. We are here for a purpose and we have to fulfill that function whatever we find it to be. It is sort of like Joseph Campbell says about following your bliss.

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

I would never have touched alcohol or cigarettes in my youth. In my youth, holding your liquor and smoking appeared to be social badges of maturity. Though I quit drinking 25 years ago, and I no longer smoke, those were very poor choices. I wish I had had a mentor to steer me in another direction.

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

The most important discovery that I made was to recognize the shift of consciousness that’s taking place around the planet, and it’s taking place with all the discourse that’s going on about developing more spiritual context to engage the world that we live in. It’s like a quantum leap has taken place in a new kind of reality. It’s no longer about money and power, it’s about self preservation, and romance is becoming integrated into those ideas.

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

Technologies are constantly improving. We are on the cusp of a whole new technological society, and it has to do with things like making a movie on your cell phone and being able to project in on a screen, 3-D on your laptop. Now we have floating keyboards and you don’t even need a keyboard in front of you, just a little projector projecting one on your table, or some empty space, and it works on your computer. Whenever we come up with a new technology we have no idea how it will affect us as human beings.

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

Can’t think of any.

What’s unique about the service that you provide?

There is nothing particularly unique about the service that I provide, except that I am engaged in broadcasting as an Arts and Entertainment reporter, and I act as a mentor elder and advisor to students.

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

I think the fact that television is becoming planned and not as creative as it once was. I look at old programs, what we called the Golden Age of television and classical TV and things have gone downhill in terms of what we call infotainment, it’s information and entertainment combined, but it’s not real news.

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

Every decision that one makes is a challenge to get it right, and I saw most of the challenges that I faced on the basis of discovering whether they were wise decisions. I realize that the past is over, it’s gone and so one shouldn’t dwell on the past. You face a challenge based on the information you have at the moment, and then you try to solve it on the basis of wisdom, and how they might affect  your condition, your health, your attitude and personality, all those things.

What lessons did you learn in the process?

Most of what we consider to be civilized activities are nonsense, and so we have to make our way through a maze of bad decisions that people are making on our behalf.

Tell me about your big break and who gave you.

Moses Znaimer gave me the opportunity to work in television, and York University gave me a lot of help when I went to university. I have had so many it’s from a series of people.

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

To tell you the truth I cannot think of a big failure, nothing comes to mind.

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

I cannot think of a disappointment. I would view something as a disappointment if I wanted to do something and was stopped. That hasn’t happened to me. I was having a discussion with Ron LeBlanc and he asked me if the glass was half full or half empty. When a glass is half full, I simply reduce the size of the glass, and it becomes  full so you do not become disappointed if you have that approach to life.

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

A few years ago I decided to go and live in the North, and I actually bought a business in the Algonquin Park area. For all intents and purposes I made up my mind to live up there permanently, and one of the hardest decisions I had to make was when I realized that it was impossible, and that I would have to come back to the city [Toronto] to fulfill the obligations that I had, my art and my career, and so that was difficult.

What are three events that helped to shape your life?

Being born, being orphaned at nine months, and going through non-Native American foster homes as a child. These people were taking in orphaned children as a business and not for compassionate reasons. Going through that experience as a child, I realized that I was a commodity and not a person, and that I represented an income. These things defined my personality, character and how I approach life. Another event is when I chose to celebrate my culture and also get involved on social and political levels to establish a more equitable life for First Nations people.

What nuggets of wisdom have you gleaned from Duke’s interview? How might you apply his responses to your situation.

Keep the conversation flowing. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the left side) by email or RSS Feed. I created a Mini Learning Toolkit and you can grab a copy by clicking here.

For your research and writing needs, consider my firm Ambeck Enterprise for white papers, articles, fact sheets, anniversary booklets, you name it. Since I am the best kept secret you may not know this, but I have over 15 years research and writing experience. I KNOW content. And if you cannot figure out which books to read for professional development, I am your WOMAN, I can assist you with that too.

Related posts:

1. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Gina McAdam
2. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Deborah Koehler, CEO SEHBO Pvt. Ltd
3. Mentor Yourself With Michael McCleary, Live Unconditional
4. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Lynn Kahle Part Two
5. The Invisible Mentor Interviews Ron LeBlanc, Chairman of Madacana, Part Two