Invisible Mentor: Mark Prasuhn, President
Company Name: Vantage Media Inc.
Part One: Introduction
Avil Beckford: In a couple of sentences, tell me a little bit about yourself.
Mark Prasuhn: I’ve been an executive in media and television and film for 25 years. I’m married and have three kids and do not have enough time.
Avil Beckford: What’s a typical day like for you?
Mark Prasuhn: A week day would involve getting up around 6:00 am. If I’m going to get any exercise I have to squeeze it in then. I get some breakfast, leave the house – I have about an hour-and-a-half to two hours commute. When I get downtown I go to the office and spend the day there until 6:00 to 7:00 pm depending on the day and then head home. Once I get home there is not much left to the day.
Avil Beckford: How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?
Mark Prasuhn: I really enjoy the work I do because there is endless variety so motivation isn’t a problem. Sometimes focus is a problem but I don’t have much trouble staying motivated.
Avil Beckford: If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you now know, what would you do differently?
Mark Prasuhn: I’d take more chances and be less risk averse. If I could be in my twenties again I would definitely try things on and not worry too much about the longer term path or the money and try to do things that I thought were interesting and fit with where I wanted to go.
Avil Beckford: What's the most important discovery you've made in the past year? It could be a discovery about yourself or a business one.
Mark Prasuhn: Because I left a job in the past year that I had for a long time, and I’m now doing something quite different, I think the adjustment and learning curve process in mid-career is definitely different and in some ways more challenging than in early career.
Avil Beckford: Tell me about your big break and who gave you.
Mark Prasuhn: I’ve had a few medium-sized breaks but my first big one came from my boss in the media industry when I graduated from school and got hired at TV Ontario. I took a job that was administrative and operational and I’d told him when he hired me that I wanted to work in production, and he said, “I’ll help you with that if you see this through for a couple of years!” I did that and kept my word and he kept his and he used considerable influence against some resistance to get me into a different job in the same company that was production related.
That was the beginning of my path and was an important break. I was fortunate to be working for someone who was willing to do that for me.
Part Two: Career
Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?
Mark Prasuhn: Quite a bit in different ways – career, values, interests. I think I’m the kind of person who learns and grows in an environment of dialogue and ideas opposed to a solitary thing. I tend to want to bounce ideas off people and pick up more learning that way, and mentors are an important part of that.
Avil Beckford: What’s one core message you received from your mentors?
Mark Prasuhn: Be humble and don’t assume you know everything.
Avil Beckford: An invisible mentor is a unique leader you can learn from by observing them from a distance. In that capacity, what is one piece of advice that you would give to others?
Mark Prasuhn: Always try to find the good in people. It’s not always easy, but try to find the good qualities in people and work with those.
Avil Beckford: What kind of leader are you? What’s your leadership philosophy?
Mark Prasuhn: I lead by example. I’m fairly detail-oriented though I’m not a micromanager. I see leadership as coaching in many ways.
Avil Beckford: How do you define success? And in your opinion what’s the formula for success?
Mark Prasuhn: Success is achieving happiness in what you do. I’m a believer in the saying that if your work is what you love, no day will ever feel like you are just going to work. Success is finding a way to live your values and your passions in whatever fields you pursue.
Avil Beckford: What big steps did you take to succeed in your field? What is one step or action you have consistently taken that has contributed the most to your success?
Mark Prasuhn: I would say learning and always trying to find out how things work in the media sector. I’ve always had that approach. As a big step, I went back to school. I tried to get into it one way by getting a producing role and it was a slow go and it didn’t work so I went back and got a business degree and tried to go another route and that worked so that was a step I had to take and an opportunity to do so. Combining my film and television production degree with a business one was a better way for me to get to where I wanted to go.
Another step that’s often difficult but necessary to success is to know when to leave a role and move on, and sometimes that feels very risky, and not necessarily wise but sometimes you have to take a step back to move forward.
Avil Beckford: How do you integrate your personal and other aspects of your life?
Mark Prasuhn: Usually the personal part suffers. It’s a never ending struggle for me and I think in an executive role there is no longer a wall there and you have to try and get the personal and family time whenever you can grab it, but the demands and the technology are always intruding into it and that’s just the way it is.