Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
When Jill Johnson saw a job candidate in a client’s lobby, “this gorgeous young woman chomping gum, I said, ‘lose the gum,’” and the woman did and was hired.
When a mentee got into Sandra Day O’Conner College of Law but called to say he was struggling, “I said ‘get back on the horse. You know what you need to do.’ He ended up with the second highest score.”
And in the airport when she spied a young woman who said she was nervous for a job interview, “for what, becoming a stripper?” Johnson asked, advising a change of clothes and also confidence. “Oh, for God’s sake. When you walk in the room, shake hands. Of course, she got the job.”
The spicy advice is vintage Johnson, who started Johnson Consulting Services in 1987 with clients including Mayo Clinic, Salvation Army and Fairview. Last year she added a Minnesota Icon award from Finance & Commerce to a long list of accolades, in large part because of her mentorship to young professionals.
She figures she’s advised at least 100 people in formal and informal relationships that often last for years. In the beginning of each, “I would test them” to see how much they wanted to work with her. “I need you to like Sammy the Rottweiler on Facebook and connect on LinkedIn,” she would say, referring to one of her beloved dogs.
“I have the ability to see the success of their future when they can’t,” she said. “I’m pretty good at seeing people. It’s part of the skill I have in consulting. And I’m an old broad now, been to the rodeo a few times.”
In an article called “Beyond Mentoring: Coaches, Champions and Cardinals,” she debunks the idea that everybody needs only one mentor. You need many, she believes. “The cardinal is the person who flies into your life, sings you a pretty song you’ve never heard before and flies away,” she said. “For me that man was Bob Cardinal,” SVP for a large management consulting firm who spoke at a Junior Achievement event in Chicago, right after Johnson graduated from high school. “I walked out of that luncheon and I said, ‘that’s me.’ I do a lot of Bob Cardinals.”
Johnson’s father didn’t graduate from high school and owned a small auto body shop in Hudson, Wisconsin. Her mother was an executive secretary at 3M. “She ran the division. She was the spitfire,” Johnson said about her late parents. “I have my dad’s sense of humor, which is disarming. She was the cattle prod of expecting more.”
Her books and workbooks include “Compounding Your Confidence,” which she summed up in three parts. “Those are what I call progressions. You progress a skill through small, incremental improvements,” she said. “The second part of that is practice. I tell people, ‘Get involved in trade associations. You can do different things’ and if you mess up you can recover.”
“And the third thing is how you present yourself. Do you walk in and own it?”
Anyone can mentor others, she believes. “I call it throwing pixie dust. There are random opportunities that the universe creates for us. I find that it’s really invigorating.”
