Doreen Conrad – Your Invisible Mentor
Doreen Conrad has had a very successful career because someone believed in her. Someone saw her potential and took the time to let her know and offer her the encouragement she needed to change her career path? Have you had a similar experience? And, who in your life could you offer encouragement to? If you see potential in someone, it's your responsibility to do whatever you can to assist them in unleashing that potential. All of us will benefit from that gesture of goodwill.
Treat Doreen Conrad's interview, and all the interviews on The Invisible Mentor Blog like a workshop where you are there to learn. It doesn't matter which industry you are in, or what your job function is, you never know what ideas you can transport from one sector to another, or one job function to another.
Tell me a little bit about yourself.
Doreen Conrad: I’ve had quite a full career in the private sector, public sector and overseas in an international organization. I have learned very much, which I am now applying by working as a management consultant, having retired from the government and the United Nations.
What’s a typical day like for you?
Doreen Conrad: A typical day for me now, as of two years ago, is working in my home-based office as a sole practitioner getting up in the morning, responding to emails, preparing proposals, working on projects and perhaps preparing to travel to deliver a workshop. It’s the first time in my entire career that I don’t have a boss or staff members to work with me. I’m on my own except for my business partners.
How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?
Doreen Conrad: I’m always motivated because I have a positive attitude. Nothing is insurmountable. I have never stayed at a job where I was in the least bit unhappy. It was always about me enjoying what I was doing, and that’s a natural motivator.
If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?
Doreen Conrad: I definitely would have put more emphasis on education. I grew up in an environment where I was not encouraged to have a career. I was encouraged to be a mother and secretary. Those were some of the choices available at the time, and I would definitely have looked at an international career much sooner than I did.
What's the most important business or other discovery you've made in the past year?
Doreen Conrad: I’ve discovered that there are certain things that I really don’t want to work on anymore. I really don’t want to do in-depth market research studies. I’d rather get a business partner to do that part of the work. To be motivated and happy, I need to continue to focus on the things that I know I am good at, and I must find other people, other partners, to contract out the parts that I am not happy doing.
What’s one of the biggest advances in your industry over the past five years?
Doreen Conrad: Unquestionably it has to be the impact of information technology. Being in the service sector you are essentially selling a promise. You do not have anything tangible to show as a sample, and therefore technology has been incredible as its speed has increased and its cost has decreased, which now allows service providers to both market and deliver their services online without even needing to leave their home office. So definitely that has been a significant development in my industry.
What are the three threats to your business, your success, and how are you handling them?
Doreen Conrad:
- One of the big threats is I have to travel for my business and with the threats of terrorism and the increased security, increased cost of checking bags, environmental fees, it’s becoming more and more onerous and I think it can be a threat to international business as time goes on. I find myself saying no to international travel more than I’m saying yes just because some of the hassles that are only going to get worse as time goes by.
- The second threat is that, if we get another global recession donor funds may dry up. Most of the work I do is funded by international donors and I’m seeing a lot of agencies and governments cutting back on their international trade budgets.
- The necessity to continue to market my services and to prove my credibility.
I’m traveling and not enjoying the experience as much, especially when I’m traveling nine hours to another time zone and have to deliver a workshop the next morning, so it becomes less and less fun as the years go by. I had myself certified as an International Trade Professional, which gives me additional credibility, when I go out into the marketplace both here in Canada and abroad, so people see that I’m obviously qualified in the field. I’m working to ensure that my clients give me good word-of-mouth referrals because service business is garnered by word-of-mouth referrals so I’m asking all my clients if they are happy with service to tell others. I’m being more proactive with that.
What’s unique about the service that you provide?
Doreen Conrad: I don’t have that much competition particularly in my area which is the promotion of the export of services. No one is going around to other developing countries saying, “Okay accountants, lawyers, consultants, here is how you sell your intangible products. Here is how you market something people can’t see.” There are a lot of people in international trade and service but they are all working on policy, trade negotiation, free trade agreements and so on. But not too many people are looking at the business community to the specific challenges that they face. So that is definitely very unique for me, at the moment anyway.
What do you observe most people in your field doing badly that you think you do well?
Doreen Conrad: Without question it has to be public speaking. One of the best ways to market your service is to stand up in front of an audience and be perceived as an expert in your field, and that involves understanding the audience and what they would or would not be interested in hearing. I go to dozens of conferences – I was just at two in the last two weeks alone – and you continually see people stand up, and deliver facts and figures that’s of no use to the audience.
I have trained myself in public speaking. I do it a lot and I volunteer to do it a lot. I even have a couple of slides that I use in my workshops to tell people what to do and what not to do when they are asked to give a presentation. One of my favourite slogan is, “Marketing is everything that you do,” and if you are marketing yourself, you are standing up in front of people. You have to be an excellent public speaker. So I think that people need to take a close look at improving their public speaking skills.
Describe a major business or other challenge you had and how you resolved it.
Doreen Conrad: I would say that on a couple of occasions, I have developed materials that I have shared with others at workshops and people have asked for the slides with all the information, so there is an intellectual property issue because others can easily use my materials. Now what I do instead of handing out my PowerPoint, to overcome this issue, is to prepare a short summary, which is an expansion of each point on the slide, and hand that out to the audience so it’s not enough information for someone to teach it or copy it, but is a leave behind for them.
What lessons did you learn in the process?
Doreen Conrad: I have learned not to rush into things. Decide if something is right for you and is going to make you happy. Don’t take something on because you think you should or you want the work. Think about who is going to see what you are presenting. The competition is everywhere and so you need to think about your intellectual property, and how you can keep your specific material yours.
Tell me about your big break and who gave you.
Doreen Conrad: My big break came when I was working in the private sector for several years mostly as a support person helping marketing managers at trade shows and things like that. The president of the company who was located many miles from the plant where I worked, noticed me. He said, “You know you’ve got great potential.”
No one ever told me that before. That was the hugest break that I got because he thought I could do more.
I said, “Do you think I could do more?” and he said, “I think you could do a marketing manager’s job, why don’t you go for it?”
I never ever would have thought about that unless someone had stepped up to the plate and said, “You’ve got that potential, I know you can do it.” He being the CEO of the company, the Chairman of the Board, aged seventy-something, telling me that, he must see something in me so I need to go after this and I think it changed my entire career.
Describe one of your biggest failures. What lessons did you learn, and how did it contribute to a greater success?
Doreen Conrad: I think one of the biggest mistakes I made was in hiring an employee. It became obvious in a few weeks that it was mistake. Regrettably the interview process was not exhaustive because we were in a foreign country, and they didn’t fly people in for three or four day so you could get to know them in a work setting. But I think that was a mistake I made, I chose the wrong person. And I learned that you probably have to do more than the interviews and looking at the references because that doesn’t always show the true person. I was much more cautious after that, so I think that contributed to better recruiting and HR processes throughout.
What has been your biggest disappointment in your life – and what are you doing to prevent its reoccurrence?
Doreen Conrad: The one time in my life when I was bitterly disappointed was when there was a re-organization where I worked, and years of work had been decided by new management to be changed and moved into somewhere else. I didn’t understand the changes and was quite disappointed. So, if you don’t want to experience change you need to work in an environment where you are not going to be facing major change.
As soon as you work in any large organization, the management team is going to change, the shareholders are going to change, the directors are going to change so there is always going to be change. If you are averse to change and want to stay on one path and not participate in change then you should put yourself in an environment where there is not going to be changes.
Now that I’m my own boss there isn’t going to be a lot of change. I put myself in a position where I’m a sole practitioner and very few environmental factors are going to change the way that I work now.
What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?
Doreen Conrad: I had to make the decision twice to move away from my home town and family for work. Fortunately, my husband was extremely supportive and able to move with me on both occasions, one not so far away, and the other overseas. They were major decisions which involved giving up jobs, material things including a house. It impacted my life but it was the best decision I made on both occasions. I think I had some gut feeling that it was the best thing to do and why not, why stay at the same thing. Part of me was saying why upset the apple cart, everything is fine and we are happy. The other side was pulling at me for the adventure and the change, and the new challenges that would come my way.
Those two decisions to move away from family were difficult ones, but in the end were positively the right thing to do.
What are three events that helped to shape your life?
Doreen Conrad:
- I would be remiss if I didn’t say my husband of 37 years because he was always supportive. When I was 27 years old and hardly ever been outside of Canada, I said, “My company has asked me to deliver a tender to Finland, what do you think?” And instead of balking at the idea, he said, “You might as well go. I’ll probably never take you to Finland.” From that day forward he has been very supportive of me building my career, so that was a major influence and he is such an enabler for making it happen for me.
- The business travel to Finland showed me that someone entrusted me with a very important document, and I do believe that that was an event which helped to shape my life because it gave me confidence in myself and I knew that I could do much more.
- That mentor I mentioned before that told me thought I had more potential and could do much more. He gave me the impetus to push and do more, to train myself more. One of the things I’d like to share is that I started to work for people who I thought could teach me. When I went for a job interview, I was in essence interviewing them to see if I could learn from them and whenever I heard them express things in a really unique and professional way I made notes. I copied them and their mannerisms, and I learned so much from mentors and bosses.
What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?
Doreen Conrad: I believe it’s the two jobs I had where I was asked to set something up from nothing. I was given some resources and people to get started, but all the strategic planning, the implementation, the execution, the impact these had on thousands of people around the world really gave me great satisfaction. Those two accomplishments told me that I had a skill and could go in and set things up from nothing and make them work. I felt that was a real accomplishment in my work.
How did mentors influence your life?
Doreen Conrad: They encouraged me. If I took mentors out of my life, the people who continually told me that I could do more and I should, in the absence of that I would have stayed where I was. I sensed I would have if there wasn’t any push, so that was key.
What’s one core message you received from your mentors?
You can do it! I’d go home and think about it and think, “Really?” In my disbelief the Chairman of the Board said, “You could be president of this company some day.” And that was pretty heavy for me in my twenties. I went home and thought about that which opened all kinds of doors in my mind.
As an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?
Doreen Conrad: Through referrals from contacts, I mentor many young women who are recent university graduates. People say to me, “Just sit and talk to them because you’ve had a fulsome career in three unique areas and maybe you could give them advice on how to get started.” I think the core message that I would pass on to your readers is to: think things through, don’t rush into things and really look at what can be done instead of what cannot be done and believe that anything is possible, take risks, because there is always a way.
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Author Bio: Avil Beckford, an expert interviewer, entrepreneur and published author is passionate about books and professional development, and that's why she founded The Invisible Mentor and the Virtual Literary World Tour to give you your ideal mentors virtually in the palm of your hands by offering book reviews and book summaries, biographies of wise people and interviews of successful people.
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