Day 64: Richard O’Connell

December 3, 2009 at 12:01 am, Category: Inspiration

“I think many times people face challenges in their lives, and there are different paths that you can take and you can allow that adversity to kind of wash over you and defeat you, or you can use that adversity as somewhat of an inner strength to kind of go, ‘Okay, I’m going to pick myself up and move forward.’ ”

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Richard, for agreeing to be part of this Project today, and before we go into the questions, can you please take a moment to introduce yourself?

Richard O’Connell: Certainly.  My name is Richard O’Connell.  I live in Los Angeles.  I work for the Walt Disney Company.  I do marketing for the Disney/ABC TV group, basically working creating marketing programs for their different TV-associated websites like abc.com, ABC News, ABC Family, SoapNet, and do a little bit of work on the Disney Channel website.

Toni: Wow, there’s a lot going on there!  Well, let me just jump right into that first question, and when you think about in your professional life, let alone all the work that you do and personally as well, and you think about inspiration, who do you think you inspire and how might you go about that?

Richard: I’d like to think that I inspire people hopefully every day, meaning in the way that I try to live my life.   I think among my close friends — and I feel like I’ve done a very good job over the years — I commit a lot to staying in touch with people and trying to be a good friend.  I’ve actually lived the majority of my adult life in New York and then San Francisco and the last three years in LA.

And for the people who know me very well, they know that my parents had passed away.  My dad passed away when I was 14, and my mother passed away right after I graduated from college.  So I think I’ve kind of experienced loss at an early part of my life, and I’ve tried to use the lessons I’ve learned from that in how I live my life.  And I think for a lot of my friends and the people that I work with, they see in my behavior how much I care about things, how committed I am, my integrity, and I feel like those things on a daily basis hopefully inspire people even if they don’t know where it came from; even if they don’t know how I grew up.  I try to think of it as adversity, in a weird way, has inspired me.

I think many times people face challenges in their lives, and there are different paths that you can take and you can allow that adversity to kind of wash over you and defeat you, or you can use that adversity as somewhat of an inner strength to kind of go, “Okay, I’m going to pick myself up and move forward.”  And I feel like, for me, choosing that path has been the way that I’ve gotten over my adversity and hopefully has been part of a linchpin of my success professionally and personally.

Toni: When you are thinking about inspiration and how you so eloquently put this … I tend to write words down that come to me when I’m listening to these interviews, and I wrote care and commitment and integrity and character – those are what I was writing down as you were speaking — and the way that you set an example professionally and personally, how do you think that might help someone else explore their potential by learning from you?  Do you think that ever translates into someone else’s potential?

Richard: I’m not sure that I understand that question, can you ask it to me again?

Toni: Absolutely.  A lot of times when we are setting an example — like the way you live your life and the way that carries over into your professional life and personal life and dealing with people, coworkers and other people — do you ever … The example that you set might put in motion another behavior that someone would exhibit; another way that they would look at their own potential, the way that they behave.  Do you ever get a sense of that?

Richard: I think I would say throughout my career there are people that you work with, whether they report directly to you or they are just simply colleagues, and I do find it — especially as a manager — I find it very fulfilling when I’m able to help somebody develop their potential.  And sometimes I’ve had experiences where I’ve actually helped and developed their potential which has resulted in them leaving, for example, the position they were in or the company that they were in.  And I think sometimes that can be, on a short term, frustrating for me as the manager or the supervisor; but long term it can’t help but make me feel better knowing that you helped somebody get to their next place from a hiring standpoint.

And not to make this go off in the direction of professional development, but I mean I’m a big believer in that you — when you’re interviewing someone — you always think about is this somebody who I could potentially work for one day.  I’m always looking to fill a position with somebody who could be my boss someday.  I just think that’s a better way to hire from a standpoint of just getting somebody in and sliding them into a role, I think, at the end of the day is not great for them; and it’s certainly not great for the organization that you’re with.

Toni: Well, that’s a great way to think about that when you’re interviewing someone, “Is this someone that I can work for?”  I haven’t heard that before, and I think that’s really interesting.  And the legacy that people take with them who’ve worked for you that you’ve kind of developed and then kind of let them go on their own, there’s a little bit of a piece of you that goes with them in that legacy.  When you think about inspiration from a personal perspective, what inspires you, Richard?  Where do you seek inspiration?

Richard: I find that inspiration can really, you know, it truly is one of those things … for me, it happens in almost small little doses.  I mean, I can turn on the news, and I get teary-eyed like many people when there’s an amazing story about something a child’s done.  I remember — I guess it was a couple weeks ago, I think I saw it on – and yes it was probably ABC news, not to applaud there – but I think it was some boy, I think he was 8 or 9 and he was missing a limb, ended up starting some type of foundation.  I think he was 12.  And of course, those stories are always inspiring, and I get inspired by them because it reminds you that you can make a difference.

But I also find inspiration, as I mentioned, in small places and this is a completely true story that just happened to me a couple of weeks ago.  I recently moved — and I live by myself — and I had to move a couple pieces of furniture and I couldn’t do it by myself.  And I’m in a new neighborhood, so I don’t really know anybody.  So I went next door, and there is a Domino’s Pizza, and I asked one of the drivers who was kind of waiting for the next order, would he mind helping me and I would pay him for his time; and it was going to take literally 10 minutes.  So, the guy said “Sure”, comes over; we moved like a bookcase, and we moved a little armoire.

And I went to give him money, and he just looked at me and said, “No, no, we’re neighbors.  You don’t have to pay me.”  And I thought to myself, “Wow.”  I totally went into the mindset with this is a transaction.  I’m asking him to do something, and I’m going to pay him, and he’s going to help me out.

First of all, the fact that he actually used the word “neighbor”, I just thought, “Wow.”  I just kind of walked away from it going, “You know something?  I just felt inspired by the whole thing.”  Because, you know, the next time somebody asks me for something like that — I love that concept — you’re just going to help them even though you don’t know who they are, just because you’re neighbors.  And I just thought, for me, that’s an example of where — if you’re open to it and you can hear it — I think inspiration really comes … I think it’s probably happening all around us.

Toni: What a great story, and the Get Inspired! Project really has been revealing a lot of people saying the same thing, that you must be open to it, and so many times a lot of us aren’t.  What a great story.  Are there tools or any type of resources that you reach for when you feel that it’s time, you know, “I have to fill it up a little bit, I’m looking for little inspiration.”  Is there anything that you consciously seek?

Richard: I don’t think there’s anything that I consciously seek, but I also think that it’s not necessary for me.  And once again, I think everybody approaches things differently.  But you know, I’m somebody who … I allow myself to feel bad for a certain amount of time.

Based on the beginning of this conversation, Toni, I think a lot of people may listen to this and go “Well, you know, that’s nice that Richard is open to hearing about inspiration in all the small ways”, but look, I have crappy days and to me it’s okay.  There are days, by the time I leave work and I’ve had a series of awful meetings, unsuccessful meetings, haven’t gotten stuff done that I need to do, going home, facing all the problems that everybody faces, yeah … I think there’s something in the wallowing of it.

And then my remedy — and I don’t recommend this for everybody — is I make myself a big box of Kraft macaroni and cheese and if it’s a really bad day – totally true story – I don’t even put it in a bowl.  I eat it right out the pan with a glass of white wine and probably finish it up with a chocolate chip cookie and a glass of milk and go to bed and wake up the next day and just go, “Okay, time to start again!”

So to me, it’s not that I reach out; but call it a security blanket or whatever, but there are those things that bring me comfort; but I’m also okay in the fact that to get inspired again or to get over that hump, you kind of have to be okay to be sitting at the bottom of the hill a little bit.  I’m okay with that.

Toni: I think that’s amazing because those who are listening or reading your interview, to know that the way that you position … You do work for Disney, you work across all platforms of Disney, but you know at the end of the day when you’re having a bad day, nothing beats a box of macaroni and cheese!

Richard: You know it’s funny.  I think a lot of people kind of go back to their childhood, like what was a comfort food.  I never grew up with it, and I think it was probably one of those things maybe like in college.  But it’s funny, and I find it really interesting when you ask people about what’s that comfort food, regardless of what it is, makes them feel … and for some reason I’m just attracted to the blue box.  No substitutions for me.

Toni: That’s fantastic.  The final question in the project is, when you are looking to continuously explore your own potential, what do you do?  What do you do to keep yourself fresh, to keep exploring your own potential?

Richard: I think it’s not something that I have a regimen about.  I’m definitely someone who is very career-focused and maybe sometimes to a fault.  But for me, I think about trying to have a balance in my life where if I know that work is taking up a majority of my time, I also want to make sure that I am doing some sort of non-profit work.  There’s also kind of a selfish point in that, which is for me, the couple times I’ve moved in life, I’ve also found by volunteering at an organization or something also kind of helps me meet new people.

For me, it’s been kind of a dual thing, whereas I get that good feeling of giving back and feeling fortunate about the things that have been given to me.  And at the same point, selfishly I’ve moved to a new city, and now I need to go out and meet some friends, and that for me has been kind of a good thing to do; and I’m kind of in that phase here in LA.  I’ve been here about 3 years.  I feel settled.  This is now the place that I feel comfortable, wanting to call it home and having just recently bought a small house.  So it’s all of a sudden going, “Okay, what’s the community that I want to be part of?”

I find, for me, looking for an organization that is outside of what I do on a day-to-day basis kind of activates a different part of my brain, allows me to do some things that I may not be doing, and at the same point hopefully opens a door for me to be thinking about some other things.

I’m probably somebody who has bought over the years various inspirational books, and I’m pretty sure that most of them have been left on the shelf unread.  The intent is always good, but I think for me, that’s not where I find it.  I don’t find it … And for anybody that does get their inspiration from that, I think that’s great; it’s just for me it doesn’t work that way.  I think how I keep challenging myself, I think, is through new experiences.

Also, on the flip side of that, I think sometimes I beat myself up because I think I should be doing more.  I should be learning how to do this thing or taking a class in that.  And I try to temper beating myself up with focusing on what are the things that I am doing.  What are the things that, based on what am doing, how can I kind of dial it up a little bit more without going so far that it feels impossible; and I think that’s kind of how you take impossible and just kind of break it into smaller bits.

Toni: And so, the way that you stay inspired and looking for the small doses of inspiration — looking for the stories of people that are making a difference, that sense of community, and also how you explore your own potential which is, again, looking for that sense of community — that seems to be the theme that part of it has come out of here in thinking about other things.  Do you think that the way you come at inspiration and how you continuously push yourself transfers into what you do for living?

Richard: I don’t think I’ve ever made that connection in that way.  I really like what I do.  I’ve been doing marketing for a long time now and, for me, it fulfills a bunch of different needs.  I love working in marketing because things are always changing.  Working now kind of in digital marketing, I mean every day there’s some new different Twitter, Facebook, MySpace marketing outlets.  So I love the fact that it kind of keeps me always fresh.

I think it’s also I like change, and I find change inspiring.  I think a lot of times people are resistant to change.  So I think I’ve chosen a career that forces me — if I want to be successful at it — it forces me to acknowledge that change is part of what I have to do, and I think it’s kind of like part of who I am.  So when I look at that, I think I get very engaged.

I’ve always said that I would be somebody who … you know, I would not be a good person to work in a bank.  I think for me, I like the idea of every day I kind of almost don’t know what my day is going to look like.  I have a sense of it, but there’s always going to be something that is unexpected; and for me, that’s inspiring because I get very inspired by just how do I … just all this input coming in.  How do I process it?  What do I do with it?  And that for me is also something that I find extremely inspiring.

Toni: Well, Richard, I have to tell you, listening to your interview, you have given some great nuggets of information on how you come at inspiration, how that translates based on your background and to your friends and your coworkers as far as how you approach inspiration, but also your needs.

And I have to tell you though, that one thing that you did say as far as what you need for inspiration and what inspires you is the story you told about your neighbor, and that a simple transaction that you thought was a transaction of giving this person a couple of bucks to help you move turned into a human experience, and that moved you.  And I would imagine that that’s what you do every day.  So I do see how it correlates on what you seek for inspiration to what you do; that’s what I heard, and I think that’s awesome.

Richard: Well, thank you very much.

Toni: I appreciate so very, very much you being part of this project, and people will learn and benefit from what you’ve had to say, and for that we’re grateful.

Richard: Thank you for inviting me.

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For more information about Richard O’Connell:  rso10011@aol.com

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