The Invisible Mentor

Posts Tagged ‘Warren Buffett’

Interviewee Name: Carol Roberts, Professional Speaker & Marketing Communications Consultant

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Carol Roberts:  I am a marketing and business development professional. I’ve enjoyed making contributions in community development and international development and that has been my passion and it’s really been a humbling and phenomenal experience to make a difference in my community and in the business world. That’s my endeavour, my initiative in life, is to make a difference using the gifts that I’ve been given.

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

Carol Roberts: I’m very intentional about doing what I love for a living. If I’m doing what I love, and it’s meaningful, giving back to the community, it’s all encompassing. So I really make sure they are in better alignment with my value system and what I do for work and for my personal life as well. And I try to spend quality time with family and friends, quality time on the job, quality time having fun. I like to salsa dance so I make sure that I can carve time out to do those things, and actually what they end up doing is recharging your fuel to do meaningful work by taking that time out to have fun.

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

Carol Roberts:

1. God and I are a majority.
2. Be true to yourself. You can lie to people, but you cannot lie to yourself. You shouldn’t like to people but you should be honest with yourself.
3. Embrace reality.
4. Leaders are learners.
5. Look for the lessons in everything – good, bad, indifferent, disappointing, exceptional. Look for the lessons and always try to understand people and draw wisdom.

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

Carol Roberts: I spend it reading, I love reading, I love learning, I love discovery. I love salsa dancing – that sense of freedom. I love visiting museums, anything beholding beauty, traveling, just taking a walk down the street, sitting in a cafe in the summer taking in the sounds and the people around me.

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

Carol Roberts: Some of the times you have a thought that pops into your head so I always carry a notebook, so whenever something creative comes into my mind I have a catchall that I can go back and read on Saturday mornings so I use a little notebook to capture creative ideas. I also go to someplace beautiful like a nice park, museum, a garden to inspire me to generate great ideas. I look for things of beauty, I buy flowers, and again I do my morning dump of things in my brain so I can clear the mental clutter so the creativity can come forth.

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

Carol Roberts: “The soul never thinks without a picture,” by Aristotle and I think we owe it to ourselves to be visionary, to think of things that are not and bring them into existence and that’s the core of creativity. I like that quote and it’s one that is a personal mantra with me.

Avil Beckford: How do you define success?

Carol Roberts: Success for me is being the best version of myself, taking all that I’ve been given and using it to an optimal degree. It is also being in the centre of God’s will for my life, at one with the Spirit, prayerful, and having a peace of mind. I think anybody can tell you they know when they were not in alignment with their true self when they don’t have peace about things. When you have utter peace, and you know that you are doing things for the right reason, for the right person, for the right situation, and you are doing your best, I think that’s the best form of success that you can experience. And also to know that you are making progress in everything, whether it’s in your character, on the material plane, but just to know that you are improving along the way.

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

Carol Roberts: My formula is simple, love God, seek His pleasure, use my gifts to serve others, have fun along the way and be grateful.

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

Carol Roberts: It’s called pure grit – hard work, tenacity, patience, asking a lot of questions, being committed to learning, having a sense of wonder and awe, and just get in there and do it like Nike says, don’t hesitate, get in there.

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

Carol Roberts: You have to have a strong sense that you love what you are doing for a living. I think you do yourself a disservice when you do things half-heartedly. Passion is the fuel for just about everything. Loving what you do, being passionate, tenacious and patient. And also people don’t mention this in the business world but being loving and respectful. I think you have to bring love into the workplace, it’s an organic word and it’s kind of touchy-feely, but to value your employees or value your peers, colleagues, you need a full measure of love that you bring to the table.

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

Carol Roberts:

1. I’d like to meet Jesus, and I know that’s very spiritual and I would say to him, “I love You. Thank You for keeping me all this time and giving me all the things You have given me.”
2. I’d like to meet Oprah because I think she is a remarkable woman. And I would say to her, “Who are you?” because people can best tell you who they are. I would also ask her what drives and motivates her. It’s really lovely to seek to understand people because you honour them by trying to understand the core of who they are.
3. The other person is the Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
4. Nelson Mandela because I like his grace under fire.
5. I like Warren Buffett because he is a simple, smart man. He uses practical principles to optimize his knowledge on investments, and he doesn’t buy anything he doesn’t know. He lives in the same house and doesn’t live above his means. I like his sense of principles and I like the way he lives his life, married to the same woman, loves the same woman.
6. I like Tyler Perry another person who is an “overcomer”, who has built an empire, but much more than that, held on to his faith and has a moral compass, and has a strong sense of integrity.

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

Carol Roberts: It’s the Bible. It’s complete, it’s inspiring, inexhaustible, encouraging. Every time I read it I get something new. I love the allegory, I love the wisdom. It’s my guiding principles for living my life and I like its teaching, message for God’s love for us and the fact that reading the Bible gives us a glimpse of the God that we serve. There is no other book that has impacted me like the Bible.

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

Carol Roberts: That is a hard one because I love books.

1. Definitely the Bible.
2. I like the 48 Laws of Power because it’s a dense book.
3. The Opposable Mind by Roger L. Martin is probably one of my most delicious reads.
4. I probably would read some poetry, maybe the Complete Works of Shakespeare.
5. I would also read a biography like Mother Teresa.
6. I would also read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

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

Carol Roberts: There are so many movies that I love. I really love the movie Gone With the Wind because there are so many characters, situations in that movie that you can study character development, and score. It’s a fascinating movie about the self and change and revolution. The CD would have to be a gospel CD, anything by Marvin Sapp.

Avil Beckford: What excites you about life?

Carol Roberts: Everything, everything – children, dogs, animals, change, absolutely everything about life fascinates me. The speed of change, I came from an era that had typewriters, now we’ve got iPads. The stretch and speed of change is just fascinating.

Avil Beckford: How do you nurture your soul?

Carol Roberts: I nurture my soul through prayer and meditation – reading scripture and meditating on God’s word is the only thing that can really fill me up. I love spending time in the Word and I get profound knowledge of not only myself but a profound knowledge of God. I feel the closest when I am reading the scripture. And I love nature. When I go places where there is a lot of trees and greenery, or the fall when you see the changing colours of the leaves, to me all of that is awe-inspiring. That really nurtures my soul. I don’t have to say a word, I can just look at a vista, see a picture, and it connects to my spirit.

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

Carol Roberts: I would definitely wish for world peace because it’s needed. I would wish for a world where [people] could get along with one another and celebrate our differences because how different would it be to be in a world where we are not at war with one another. I think it’s a lot of people’s wish that we could have world peace but I would really like to know in this lifetime what this would be like and feel like. I would like to delight my creator with my excellence.

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

Carol Roberts: I’m happy when I’m connecting with people, and it’s meaningful dialogue in terms of when it’s helping them to achieve something, building capacity. I’m happiest when I’m serving. I’m happiest when I’m reading. I’m happiest when I’m sharing fellowship with my fellow Christians.

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.

It’s been one year since I’ve been blogging so I thought I’d grade myself on my blogging report card. I started to blog March 2009, and though it’s been a year, I didn’t let anyone know that I was blogging for about eight months because I wanted to build up content for the website as well as develop discipline and a comfort level around blogging. Like anything in life, the more I blogged, the better I became at it. I still have a long way to go, and there are a lot of things that I still need to learn. How do you prepare for your biggest projects?

I have honored the commitment that I made in terms of the frequency of the blog, but I am not doing as many book reviews as I committed to do. I wanted to do one each week. And, I am not reading as many of the older books that I committed to read. This is something that’s important to me and ultimately to you. Wouldn’t it be great if I  reviewed a long lost book that provided information that you could immediately use at work, and even give you that competitive edge? I firmly believe that we can use some of yesterday’s ideas to solve some of today’s problems.

I would like to interview more accomplished people from other countries to have a diversity of perspectives for a richer experience. Are there folks that you can suggest, and be a bridge in the introduction? I would also like to pull out more of the information on mentoring and career.

There is a lot of rich content on The Invisible Mentor, but I have to segment, and analyze the information to enhance the user experience. I learned about a software program Concordance, that may be able to do that for me, and there is a 30-day trial so I can test it. Wouldn’t it be great if there was enough information that we could build the perfect mentor, what would a perfect mentor look like?

How important is it to honor commitments that you make to yourself? Do you take the time to grade yourself?

As I move forward, what are some things that you’d like to see in this space?

A friend suggested that I hold a contest where my readers would choose their invisible mentor, and in this instance, they would have to choose people who are living because the prize would be mentoring sessions with the “invisible mentor” that they chose. I would need your assistance to make something like this work. If for instance someone chose, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, George Soros, Seth Godin or say a Rupert Murdoch, how would we get access to them? Is this something that you’d be interested in? Because if you were, I’d find a way to make it work.

Looking back at what I have achieved with the invisible mentor, I would grade myself a B+ on my blogging report card. I will work harder at the book reviews and strive to find books that have changed the world, and rare books that will inspire us to take action. For the past year, how would you grade yourself for your most important goals? Why did you give yourself that grade? What can you do better in the upcoming months? A B+ is on my Report Card, what’s on yours?

Let’s continue the conversation, please comment by clicking on the comment link below and let me know if (1) you’d be interested in having your invisible mentor mentor you? and (2) what you’d like to see on this blog? (3) how I can enhance the user experience for you (4) and finally, is a B+ a fair grade, why, why not?

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.

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