One Red Hot Country Mama!

I was at the Indigo bookstore at the Manulife Center the other night watching an interview Heather Reisman, CEO of Chapters/Indigo interview Gerald Schwartz, Chairman and CEO of Onex Corporation. The talk was about entrepreneuralism, and I found both of them very inspiring. Heather talked about how life is long, so even if you can’t "have it all" right now, you can have it all in your lifetime – citing that she started her company, Indigo, when she was 48.

Gerry was a realist – admitting that he worried about the risks that took and about the mistakes that he made. He also mentioned that when assessing a risk, he spent much more of his time weighing the potential pitfalls in the risk, rather than the potential upside, which I found to be very good advice for an entrepreneur.

Perhaps since Heather and Gerry are married, a questioner at the end of the interview said something to the effect that "behind every great man is a great woman", to which Gerry replied:

I don’t think that is true. Some entrepreneurs are single. Some are homosexual. Some are women themselves. But, I will tell you about how great it is to have a partner.

I thought this was a wonderful response, because Gerry as an older, straight man could have taken the traditional route and waxed poetic about his wife and her supporting role in his life. Although his statement did not reflect the reality and questioning the fairness that a woman is ‘behind’ a man, I thought that his answer was a great step in the right direction.

I was recently in a very embarrassing situation which totally threw me off. I couldn’t help replaying and replaying the incident in my mind – it was the worst! Embarrassment is one of the most difficult emotions to overcome – when I get embarrassed it sticks all over me like some disgusting ooze… and the only thing that cures it is time. Sometimes lots of time.

I remember one of my very well-spoken and confident friends from University saying that sometimes a wave of embarrassment would pass over him after while driving, and he would hold onto the steering wheel so tight until his knuckles turned while and it passed. I couldn’t believe even HE could be embarrassed – since he was so cavalier about things… but it seems like everyone has an area of their lives where embarrassment strikes.

To help cure me of my situation, I turned to the Internet… and found that admitting that you are embarrassed is one of the best ways to diffuse the situation for everyone. In: Caught With Your Pants Down? The Psychology of Embarrassment it says:

And, if there’s any doubt that 99.9% of embarrassment is in your own mind, consider the example of British actor Richard Harris who sang the role of King Arthur in Camelot twice a day for seven months. One evening, Harris forgot the words to a song. He stopped in mid-stride, halted the orchestra and went to the edge of the stage where he said in his lilting British accent: "Four hundred and twenty eight performances, and I have forgotten the lyrics! Would you believe it?"

Because people feel sympathetic towards others caught in the throes of embarrassment, Harris received a standing ovation. Somebody then cued him on the words, the orchestra started again and he finished the musical in high style and grace.

"Research shows that people who are embarrassed, and simply admit to it and then stalwartly carry on, are tremendously well liked," Dr. Gross says. It seems to make them more human. "When you admit to embarrassment, you show the incident is not shameful. Nor does it show any defect in your character. "It only shows the embarrassing incident was nothing more than a brief lapse," he says.

Wow – so I guess I will stop being so embarrassed about being embarrassed.

I did a Google search last night on Positive Affirmations because I didn’t really know what they were… and I found a social marketing site all about them. Geez – social marketing is everywhere! The site has some pretty good features: including the ability to create an RSS with your affirmations. Here is the link:

bmindful

I just finished the excellent book A Race Against Time by Stephen Lewis. Lewis was an envoy for the UN for HIV/AIDS in Africa and became an outspoken advocate for reform of the UN in light of the pandemic.

One thing he was particularly focused on was the UN’s failure to act in the face of AIDS. Instead, they studied and talked:

I make this point because all of us, myself included, who moved too slowly in the face of the viral contagion, who fiddled while Africa burned, who have spent days upon days in incestuous discussions, meetings, conferences, seminars, roundtables, with their reports, proceedings, documents, monographs, statistical compilations ad nauseam, all repeating what has been said before, all pretending to transform the obvious into revelation, all of us spending huge amounts of money on travel and accommodation, money that could have been used to save lives… all of us have a lot to atone for. And there’s nothing quite so unseemly as the refusal to admit we were wrong, we delayed, we conducted business as usual when we were in the midst of the most appalling emergency in the history of humankind.

I find this common in well-meaning people and organizations. There becomes a bias towards inaction, where people with some skin in the game or who can get some personal gain from something DO act. In some organizations, acting on something is almost shunned – as if it is dirty, common work where the thinking and talking is higher. I think these people are also somewhat afraid of acting because every time you act, you can be critisized. I’ve really appreciated working with entrepreneurs and start-ups lately because they know they HAVE to act or die. It deeply saddens me that even in the face of AIDS, an organization like the UN couldn’t even muster up the courage to be more responsive.

So – I have been in business for a month now and one thing I have noticed is the lack of detachment because it is mine. Running a budget for a large corporation is very different from running your own budget from your own pocket. Doing a project on behalf of someone else’s brand is different from doing it in your own name. Your heart is more in it.

I read this great story in the book How She Does It and thought it was inspirational for entrepreneurs. It is a story about entrepreneur Andre Guglielmo who was raised by deaf-mute grandparents and upon seeing the high unemployment rate in the deaf community (80%) she decided to start the marketing company Diversity Partners. It ended up to be the first for-profit corporation in America for people with disabilities. Here is the story* of  her first deal:

In 1996, I got a meeting with American Express, and I knew nothing about walking into corporate America. And I went into my closet: No business clothes. And I had a babysitter coming and you know what that’s like – of course, the babysitter never showed up. So I got myself together in a mismatching outfit with a two-year-old in tow. It was the most embarrassing moment of my life. Ten men, with a two-year-old, wearing not exactly a New York City business outfit.

My two-year-old was going in and out of the table until this one man put the two-year-old in his lap and gave him a yellow pad; the kid scribbled through the rest of my presentation. If I met that man today, I’d buy him a steak dinner. I was able to get the first big sale for my company. It was for $20,000 worth of mouse pads. I didn’t even know what a mouse pad was and kept wondering why Amex had such trouble with mice. But I just said yes. I’d figure it out. Nowadays we get sales of $2 million, but that one was so important.

*P 134-135 How She Does it | Margaret Heffernan