Interviewee Name: Heather White, Director Membership – Large & Mid Markets
Company Name: Board of Trade
Website: http://www.bot.com
Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.
Heather White: I’m a wife, mother, volunteer and a hardworking professional doing a job that I really like. I am married to a guy I really love and have two kids that I really love.
Avil Beckford: What’s a typical day like for you?
Heather White: Typically my day starts with family stuff. My kids are young so it’s combing hair, getting breakfast, packing lunches and going to work. My job involves a lot of phone time, meetings, and emails. My day ends with family. The last part of my day involves me-time – meditation, reviewing my day and reading.
Avil Beckford: How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?
Heather White: My biggest motivation comes from my values as a Christian. I must say that that’s what drives me each day. I start my day with devotional time, which is getting into the scriptures; I’m very big on that and it sets the tone for my day and I spend some time in prayer. I review what I need to do for the day, what are some of the challenges I perceive, or that are real and how I’m going to work through them, and what it is that I am doing that I need to stay focused on. My motivation comes from that aspect of my day because it helps me to focus on the main things.
Avil Beckford: If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?
Heather White: It’s good that you asked this question because for a career, I think I would have been an engineer, if I had to do it over again, that’s a profession that I would have pursued. I could have invested more time into some relationships.
Avil Beckford: What's the most important business or other discovery you've made in the past year?
Heather White: The biggest thing I discovered about myself in the past year is that some people you just cannot change. Though you think it’s important for your own personal development and growth in life, and you want things to be different, you can’t change some people and you have to move on, you cannot allow them to stop you from pursuing your own development and growth, or other things that you need to do.
Avil Beckford: What are the three threats to your business, your success, and how are you handling them?
Heather White:
- Lack of time: It seems as if I do not have enough time in the day to do what I think is important.
- Too many interests: I think I have too many interests.
- Leadership: To survive in our business you need to be in the top three as leaders. That is a challenge in our business and we are working hard at establishing ourselves as the fore runner.
What I am doing about these three threats is that I am trying to be more organized. I am organizing my time better. I am also working on narrowing my interests. As a leader I am part of the process and I need to spend time looking at the winning ways.
Avil Beckford: What’s unique about the service that you provide?
Heather White: I am a relationship builder. I am very good at it and I am very big on people, listening to them and making connections. I’m very good at floating between the very senior crowd, to a blue collar like a dry cleaner. This is something that I’m extremely good at. I’m passionate about people, but I’m also able to relate very well with them and it’s because I have a wide range of interests and I read about a wide range of subject matter so it’s easy for me to relate to people on an individual basis.
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?
Heather White: The biggest challenge I had in life had to do with an aging parent – my mom. She was getting older, weaker, and Alzheimer was creeping in. You grew up seeing your mom beautiful. She was so amazing doing so many things, and then the roles reversed. Instead of us depending on her as children, she was dependent on us. It was challenging because I made the decision against my husband’s better judgment to move my mom to live with us because she was living by herself. You think you don’t have enough time in the day, but you find the time. My mom became my me-time at the end of the day so when she became hospitalized, I would visit the hospital after I put the kids to bed. That was a major challenge because I had to work and sometimes I was at the hospital all night.
The challenge resolved itself because my mom died, but the lessons I learned from that, is that people in general have an amazing capacity to do more than they think they can. I faced decisions about pulling the plug, and people have different opinions about some of these things, but you have to do what you believe in and what you can live with. And I didn’t have to do that because I do not believe in pulling the plug on a life, so for me that was pretty amazing that it resolved itself so I didn’t have to face that decision. I also had some very amazing friends that in that difficult time of my life people who I don’t even do anything for were able to rise to the occasion and assisted in some pretty amazing ways. Financially as well it was a challenge but my faith helped me each day. A lot of people at work did not even know that I was going through that difficult circumstance but it was major and lasted for more than a year. It took a lot out of me but I’m really glad that I had the opportunity to do it.
Avil Beckford: Tell me about your big break and who gave you.
Heather White: I’ve had two really big breaks in life that I’m very appreciative for. I consider myself blessed. I sit on a board for a university that’s new in Ontario. The break came through someone I had met through work who believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. She saw the opportunity and advised me to apply for it, and she wrote a recommendation for me. I can’t imagine not having this wonderful experience on this board. It’s my second time on a board but it’s a really amazing experience. This was a big break because it affirmed what I thought. Sometimes you do not get a chance to connect to some of these things during your normal work day.
The second break was a really good opportunity I got at work for a promotion that was against the odds. I had a boss who I am eternally grateful for because he made a recommendation for me in a pretty tough situation that has now put me in a different spot in a progressive position.
Avil Beckford: Describe one of your biggest failures. What lessons did you learn, and how did it contribute to a greater success?
Heather White: One of the biggest failures I’ve had was I used to sell paper bags – cement bags in South America. The company I was working for in the scheme of things would fit better as a second supplier, not the main supplier for a large company. I went to a large cement manufacturer in a Spanish speaking country – I’m fluent in Spanish – but I was new to this kind of thing so I went in, there was some likability factor with me coming into that country, and getting the chance to meet with some of these senior guys.
I met with them and they gave me the opportunity to become a second supplier, so they said, “Let’s test your product.” We went for a trial and the bags failed, they didn’t conform to specs. Of course that was a huge loss for me, anyway I was persistent and they gave me a second chance because they really wanted me to be a second supplier. The first time why it failed is that I didn’t do a proper quality control check before the bags were shipped to this company.
The second time around I did the check, I asked the guys if the bags conformed to specs, and there was no way of me necessarily checking, but the quality control guys had the reports that said the bags conformed to specs. The bags failed again on the second trial. That was such an embarrassment! It was also a lost opportunity, and I wasn’t able to explain myself to a very senior audience. That was one of the most embarrassing and biggest challenges I had.
If I were to do it all over again, and I’ve done that ever since because of the lesson I learned is that if something is that important to you, you need to get independent check points in place for situations that you cannot check. It would have been pretty easy for me to go somewhere else and get the specs on the bags checked before they were sent off, just for my own comfort. That lesson has stuck with me in life, so now I don’t leave things to chance. I’m always questioning to make sure that things are in order, especially if it’s important to me.
Avil Beckford: What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?
Heather White: I used to work with Ontario Hydro, and it was one of the best places I had ever worked. There were lots of resources at your disposal, lots of challenges happening and I was secretary for their review board where the public complained about issues to do with hydro plants in their area, or electricity issues. I really loved that job but they were downsizing, and it was one of the largest downsizings in the company’s history, and probably one of the largest in Canada. I was afraid of being cut and they were giving a really attractive package, so I took the package. It worked out to be a good decision because I started schools doing a Masters so the package helped me to pay for my education, which was a positive thing, but it was very difficult to cut loose from an organization that I loved and a job that I was enjoying.
Avil Beckford: What are three events that helped to shape your life?
Heather White:
- Having children.
- Becoming a Christian at a young age put me on the path I’m on right now.
- The board I currently sit on and the church I attend are neck-and-neck in terms of the impact that they are having on my life and my future.
Avil Beckford: What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?
Heather White: My kids. They are well balanced and have a wide range of interests. They are very social and I really like that.
Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?
Heather White: They were very affirming and honest and gave me a sense of direction. I didn’t have mentors until fairly late in my life because I never thought about it. You have people who you admire and respect but I really never thought about mentors per se. It’s later on that I found people who were really honest with me about stuff, you respect them and they bring real life situations to bear based on their own experiences. I really encourage people to have mentors and I am one myself.
Avil Beckford: What’s one core message you received from your mentors?
Heather White: Focus on the main thing. Keep the main thing the main thing is the core message I have received from my mentors.
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?
Heather White: Spend some time to set your goals that you want for yourself, work on them and keep referring back to them. Some of them can be personal goals because I think that there are personal goals that can impact your entire life.
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