gratitude – MsBizWiz

Lifelong Learning is for Life!

I don’t know about you but my parents taught me anything worth having requires hard work.

Hard work may mean a lot of hours which doesn’t fit neatly into this world of fast > faster > fastest.

With no formal #marketing background and the infinite support and encouragement from all my instructors, friends, family, and colleagues University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies, I owe a huge debt of #gratitude. It’s no small feat to earn this certificate over four years.

Squinting at tiny source code through my reading glasses, scratching my head at search engines and landing pages, sweating at the possibility of simply not “getting it”, these are the benefits of being a lifelong learner.

I also have the privilege of teaching “Fearless Networking: Connecting Creatively and Confidently” at the School of Continuing Studies and with our learners, my learning has compounded like interest earned.

Our School is not only a place where you can build skills and learn more but it’s also a community and network where we help one another and stay connected. Why not join us as a lifelong learner? It’s hard work but it’s definitely worth it!

Abundance … and more

When working with groups as a speaker-facilitator, what’s important is making a meaningful and authentic connection with your audience.

Last week my audience was an exceptional and talented group of sixty internationally-educated professionals in Business and Technology at York University at the beautiful New Students Centre.

As newcomers, our parents’ arrived in Canada 70 years ago. And yes, it’s a new world now but courage is courage. And at times, it must seem as if there just isn’t enough courage to go around. So my final remarks of the evening are a tribute to our parents:

“Like our parents who came to Canada in 1949 from China and Hong Kong, you have come a long way from home. Our parents came with very little and still managed somehow to put a roof over our heads, gave us a safe place to sleep, books to read, clothes that kept us nice and warm, and fed us well, always too well.

What our parents accomplished was truly remarkable. Our parents gave my siblings and me their entire lives. We can’t come even close to giving back to them anything that resembles what they gave us – extreme selflessness. Holding them in high regard and respect are all we have for them.

You, too, have something unique to give to your children. And when you’re frustrated in your job search and you can’t find the right word to say, remember all that you have.

You have:

the ability to give more.
the agility to bend more.
the capability to build more.
the knowledge to create more
the experience to understand and see more.
the best of many worlds to dream more.
more than you know.

Your Bridging Program’s motto is “Make More.” You have abundance and I wish you success, health, and happiness.

Small Business, Big Dreams

Her first flight took her 13,400 kilometres away from her home in Chennai ten months after her wedding day. Selvi Thambimuthu landed at Lester B. Pearson International Airport, Toronto on December 4, 2004.

“I felt really happy to see my new husband and new country but also a little bit sad leaving my family back in Chennai. I was also very curious about snow,” she recalls.

Now thirteen+ years later, Selvi and Siva, her husband, and their three handsome sons Pragadheesh (12), Harshan (10), and Vadhanan (8), are busy getting ready to open their second restaurant franchise next week in Toronto – “Starving Artist”!

Stars Align – A Love Story

A match made by both our parents and confirmed by 4 different astrologists, Selvi and Siva were married within eighteen days of meeting one another in person for the first time in 2004. They came to know one another long distance by phone and her first thought was “he looks just like his photograph”. Strong faith in family and even stronger faith in dreams bridged the distance then and now.

Living the Dream

“Work for your dreams. It will happen whatever you dream. It will come true. You need to believe.” she repeats to her sons. “I want my sons to have their own dreams and I will support them as my parents always supported me. Education is important, first and foremost!”

She remembers how her parents set her up for success, always reading, exploring, and fuelling her curiosity about the world. At age 12, her father gave her a black radio and brought the world inside their home each night at dinnertime.

Her earliest memory of Toronto was “Everyone on the subway was reading!” She used to buy “packages of books” for her sons and read Dr. Seuss’ favourites including “Cat in the Hat” twenty to thirty times a day.

Entrepreneurship & Education in Progress

It’s not clear if “Green Eggs and Ham” set the tone as Selvi and Siva bought their first waffle restaurant franchise in 2016 and opened “Starving Artist” in Midtown Toronto. It was also the year Selvi started (and now graduated!) George Brown College’s Office Administration – Health Services two-year diploma program. And 2016 was the year Selvi’s Mom came from Chennai to help them realize their dreams.

The entrepreneurial spirit thrives in their family. Her father once owned a machine shop in Chennai. And as all entrepreneurs know, you do what it takes to make things work so they live above their restaurant which makes a whole lot of logistical sense.

Soccer Dreams

Listening to Pragadheesh talk about his passion, soccer, with his eyes shining brightly, he is like most young first generation Canadians. They are strivers, strong-willed with extraordinary grit and determination.

When his father suggested they should book their tickets for the World Cup 2026 (Canada, U.S. and Mexico will be hosting), Pragadheesh reassured his father, “Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll be playing so I’ll have tickets for everyone.”

The Next Big Dream

And what’s next you might wonder from the lady who once pushed a stroller dubbed “The Rocket” by her co-workers to get her son to school on time?

Selvi now dreams about how she will furnish their next house, a much bigger house as their home as she remembers fondly her childhood home in Chennai, 10’ x 50’, where her dreams began. And now 13,400 kms away, I have no doubt this dream will also come true. Small business, big dreams!

The Power of Politeness

“No thank you” or “No, thank you”? Have you heard the one about the panda who walks into a cafe with a gun, orders a sandwich, fires the gun, and leaves? Ask British author, Lynn Truss. Her 2003 bestseller “Eats, shoots and leaves” bemoans the lost art of punctuation.

But what might be a case of “syntactic ambiguity” – when a reader/listener can reasonably interpret one sentence as having more than one possible structure – is actually me bemoaning the lost art of politeness.

On certain, not all, occasions lately, what’s been heard is silence, i.e. no thank you’s. Does the receiver of an act of kindness assume the giver has somehow understood “thank you” through telepathy? Or perhaps such an acknowledgement is passé or is rejected because it’s too de rigueur?

Look, I’m not from the #smartgen nor the #nextgen but from the #othergen. And I’m old school so that my favourite pastime is writing and sending notes of thanks, yes, paper and yes, snail mail. I purchase “thank you” cards so often that my friends have started gifting them to me and you can guess who receives the first one out of the pack.

Our lives are fast and fleeting. Has “thank you” disappeared along with “please, may I, pardon me”? Please say it isn’t so. The foundation of relationships is built on gratitude. When you experience loss in life and need help, what will ground you is gratitude. Wharton Professor Adam Grant says it best in his 2013 best-selling book, “Give and Take” and his 2016 TED talk , He describes how people are givers, takers, and matchers and how most effective leaders are givers.

When someone gives, offers, surrenders, volunteers, sacrifices their time to help you, will you remember to say those famous almost-forgotten last yet powerful words, “THANK YOU”? Because if you don’t, you might not get another chance to say these words again. Ever.

The Power of Dad

I’m one of the lucky ones. Although I seldom see my Dad (too late to teach him Skype. He’s 88 and lives 4 hours away by plane), I can often summon up and savour moments of his love instantly.

Oh how he longs for my safety, health, and happiness as I do for him. He expresses his love simply, clearly, and often, regardless if we’re on the phone or face to face.

He catches me off guard sometimes because his timing is not during those special celebrations anniversaries, birthdays, Christmas, but when we are alone together, just the two of us. I’d like to think my siblings also have this special time with him, too.

He tells me he counts the days before I visit them in Calgary. And once I’m there, we would go for our morning walks on our regular route and stop in for our senior’s coffee at the Golden Arches. We always take a selfie before heading home.

Sometimes after a drive and I’ve dropped him off at their condo, spend 5 minutes checking my phone for messages, and about to drive off again to meet a friend. I would see him standing still in the front lobby waiting to wave and see me off.

In the morning, I would ask him how was his sleep and he would tell me how well he sleeps when I’m there.

We share the same love for and watch the Raptors on TV while yelling, laughing, and cheering so loudly that my Mom would say, ‘they can’t hear you!” which makes us laugh even harder.

I’ll be calling him today and we’ll have “our talk” which is a bit of a guessing game because he dislikes wearing his hearing aid at home. Nonetheless to hear his voice makes me happy and when I call today, I’ll hear him loud and clear this Father’s Day and also the next.

The Power of Hope

One of my favorite things to do is write “thank you” notes, not virtual but paper notes you post by tossing them in one of those big boxes on your street corner. They’re still there. You could say I start each day grateful for being grateful. Another is when I talk to people, I love to look and listen for positivity. So you could say I hope for Hope. And my final confession is I can easily spend an hour or two listening to convocation addresses. This “secret” pleasure helps me aspire to inspire.

Yes, I’m the annoying person who jumps out of bed every morning, not with a partner (happily single) but with hope. When all you have is hope, you jump … you jump for joy, for love, for the next big idea, for whatever the new day brings!

However, for some and understandably so, loss and suffering make it difficult to get out of bed. Some fear having expectations because the disappointments are too big to bear. Some are grateful just ‘having a cup” because asking if your cup is half empty or half full would hurt too much to even ponder. And some start their sentences with “But the problem is ….”

We all have and will continue to experience loss – large losses like losing your identity, your job, your love, your business, your purpose in life and small losses like losing your car keys, forgetting a name, sometimes your smartphone (maybe that’s a large loss). This is what we call living.

Here’s how hope transcends loss. Listen to Sheryl Sandberg’s recent convocation address to the grads at Virginia Tech. Listen with or without judgement. Given Ms. Sandberg’s position of privilege and working as the COO at Facebook, some cynics refuse to acknowledge and sympathize. But we’re all human and when you suddenly lose your life partner, well, I feel very sad and sorry for her loss.

In her convocation address, Ms. Sandberg’s voice quivered and cracked slightly as she gave us a glimpse of her heart still raw and reeling from her loss – tender, emotional, and vulnerable. She continues boldly and brightly, wishing the graduates hope. She showed them the way to find hope:

“Seek shared experiences with all kinds of people. Write shared narratives that create the world you want to live in. Build shared hope in the communities you join and the communities you form. And above all, find gratitude for the gift of life itself and the opportunities it provides for meaning, for joy, and for love.”

The power of hope is about setting expectations and intentions, building dreams, big dreams, and believing you can make and leave the world a better place. “Resilience is a muscle. which we need to build.” says Ms. Sandberg. Why not exercise our resilience muscle first thing in the morning by jumping out of bed? Jump because you’ve been given another day. Jump because you are alive and kicking. And jump because together, we can make a big leap forward.

Hashtag Talk #8 – The Greatness of Canada

#OCanada #freedom #safety #friendship #peace #home #community #gratitude #givingback #volunteer #NewCanadianCitizens #Canada #Canadian

Today I had the honour and privilege of facilitating one of 14 round tables for 55 about-to-be #NewCanadianCitizens at the Ontario Science Centre as part of an initiative called #BuildingCitizenship for The Institute For Canadian Citizenship. The citizenship ceremony which followed was presided by the very warm and welcoming Justice Albert Wong. What a judge! Justice Wong came via #Malaysia and landed in #Sudbury (as I aspire to earn more medals)!

As a co-facilitator, my role was to ensure everyone at our table had a chance to share stories on why they chose to become a #Canadian citizen. We had such diversity in age, culture, and profession – a father who became a citizen 4 years ago came to witness his identical twin 20+ something year olds from Lahore, Pakistan; a smiling Dutchman who has been here for 14 years with his Montreal-born spouse; a lovely Colombian fellow who also married a Canadian and has been living in Canada for 8 years; and my co-facilitator, a distinguished retiree who came to Canada in early 70’s with $200 in his pocket from Zanzibar, Tanzania and now has a daughter and two grandchildren in Canada.

We were tasked to complete the sentence “I became a Canadian when ….” So at the end of our hour, we presented in 6 words our collective thoughts. It made us pause to think and reflect. The sports enthusiasts immediately shouted @BlueJays #ourmoment @Raptors #wethenorth . Sports always unite and binds community… immediately! No language needed. The more “seasoned” generation spoke about Canada as a land of “peace and heaven on earth” and “the beginning of new beginnings”. The creatives focused on the scale and scope of the beauty and vastness of Toronto and the distinctive four seasons in all their colour and glory.

However, the one person who I believe said it best was “when I am at the end of my travels, I am looking forward to coming home. Canada is “home” to me.”

Having worked and lived in faraway countries and in cultures so different from where I was born and brought up, a small Prairie town, I know this feeling all too well – “coming home”. Canada is home. Is it this feeling of comfort, joy, and love with undeniable certainty? Without a doubt, I couldn’t feel prouder to hear voices, young and old, from many different countries calling Canada “home” , “OUR home and native land”! #OCanada!

HashTagTalks for Small Biz

Kicking off with February #s:

TheFWords: #failure #fortune #fun #fear #FailureFollowedByFortune

TheGwords: #grit #gratitude

#superpowerskill

From A Micro Entrepreneur THEN &

A Small Entrepreneur NOW

After 10 years #grit in audit #superpowerskill and armed with an accounting diploma #grit and an incomplete final CPA #failure , I left my hometown, Moose Jaw, then Regina and Saskatoon for Zambia #fortune #fun!

Lessons learned from those Audit Years: a) how to count cattle #fun ; b) how to count drums of yellow cake #fear #fun; c) how to count my lucky stars to be paid handsomely #fortune for an African adventure #fun.

I was a Project Accountant, an aid worker, for 2 years on a wheat research project (how to count seeds, just kidding) and competed as a member of the Zambian Women’s Squash Team #grit #superpowerskills #fun. “Where are you from?” came up often in Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and on the Zambian Copperbelt: Kitwe, Ndola, and Lusaka. I learned it was much easier to say “Konichiwa” which made everyone was happy.

I left Zambia and saw more of this wide world #fortune #fun : Down Under, Thailand, France, England, France, then landed in Ottawa. It was time to replenish my “inventory”. After 18 months of financial analyzing, I could see a new business language emerging. So I quit #fortune , loaded up my Honda Civic, and drove across Canada #grit #fun to study Mandarin #superpowerskill in Vancouver, a winter with a lot of rain. #grit

Another irresistible offer came along to work overseas, this time across the Pacific in Ujung Pandang, Sulawesi, Indonesia. Not such a tough choice – starving, not-so-mature student versus handsomely paid adventurer #FailureFollowedByFortune #fun

More lessons learned: Losing is winning #FailureFollowedByFortune like losing my toughest squash match in Harare #grit but leaving it my all on the court; losing is winning after marrying someone you’ve outgrown and divorcing quickly, painfully, wisely #FailureFollowedByFortune; losing is winning after left holding the bag as a whistle blower, knowing right from wrong #superpowerskill having to walk away from my home in Indonesia and personal belongings #grit and then being saved one year later by good friends, friends for life #FailureFollowedByFortune

Enter my sweet spot decade – happy days back in Canada and after a short stint as a Director of Finance , I quit to be a – wait for it – Food Entrepreneur #fun #superpowerskill #grit Talk about making something from scratch. No cakes, no boeuf bourguignon for me. I wanted the REAL DEAL. I wanted to do what I love! #fun I loved to eat great food #fun so why not make a business from scratch? Did it matter that I was not a chef, never sold a thing in my life, no contacts in the food industry? No! “Know no #fear” became my mantra.

I designed #superpowerskill, developed #superpowerskill, and physically delivered (for a little while) #superpowerskill “Asian Kraft Dinner” as Asian DIY dinner kits (Thai, Indonesian, Japanese, South Asian) which sold across Canada, U.S. and Bermuda for 12 (10 wonderful) years! #FUN #GRIT All caps, definitely ALL CAPS!

Loads of lessons learned: I lived in my factory for 4 out of 12 years #grit ; wrestled with uncertainty 24/7 for the entire 12 years #superpowerskill ; received recognition by the big ones: Bon Appetit and CBS FoodNetwork NYC #superpowerskill #fortune; blind passion can and will kill you… well, almost; unexpectedly we lost 2 major clients so cash flow stopped flowing. At the same time we had to automate production , “go big or go home” so I lost it all and went “home” #FailureFollowedByFear I lived with my friends and family in 5 homes for 6 months in 2 different cities, 3,415 km apart; I lived with #humility and #gratitude ; I lived with zero assets+zero liabilities = ZERO for what seemed like a very long time #FailureWithNoFortune #JustPlainFailure

So “now is the time” to adapt, to pivot, to change, to endure, to survive #grit For the next 10 years, I worked in big corporate led by small people who MUST hit their “numbers”, I worked in small business led by big people (read “big egos”) who went mad not knowing their “numbers”; I worked in NFPs (aka not-for-profits aka “not for me”) with dedicated people who waste time wrestling with bureaucracy and not having any “numbers”.

Lessons Learned From Lowlights to Highlights: Nothing can defeat you when you have nowhere to go but up #GRIT; nothing can defeat you when you set aside your pride, learn to lean, and ask (sometimes yell) for help #humility ; nothing can defeat you when you can still give a lot with very little because #gratitude is still gratitude #superpowerskill; nothing can defeat you when you can make a life a “something” out of “nothing” #superpowerskill , when you “treat every day like pay day” with curiosity and wonder #fun #fortune, and when you strive to be kinder each and every day. “My heart has spoken.” #superpowerskill

What’s next? March #Talk. Stay tuned!

A Superhero for the Underdog Entrepreneur!

Pat McNamara @patapex is a PR dynamo who has found a way to give back! She’s the poster girl of huge heart, self-effacing and ever so humble. She is the super-hero for the underdog entrepreneur!

#Entrepreneurs sometimes fall and fall hard for different reasons and need a second chance. Doesn’t everyone? Pat mentions ever so briefly that she had a second chance and her gratitude jumps out when you see her smile.

As volunteer business judges, we spent the day listening and assessing the top 9 pitches in 3 categories – youth, women, and immigrant – and are at varying stages of start-up. By the end of the day, @IgniteCapital will have awarded $20k to each of the three category winners! Where does this money come from? From Pat’s 3 pockets for 3 entrepreneurs, $60K, to help move an entrepreneur’s dream forward.

This is no Dragon’s Den! Pat and her team have designed a process for cash-strapped, low credit score entrepreneurs (yep, you have to have a credit score LESS THAN 650) to be eligible. 2015 is Year 3 of Pat’s generosity and now is the time for other successful entrepreneurs to step up. Join Pat in helping those who deserve a second chance!