Guest Expert

Guest Expert: Robert Hydrisko
Marketing Consultant and Executive from Easton, Maryland.

As the publisher, I want to provide a content-rich experience to our subscribers. One of the most effective ways to “Shorten Your Learning Curve™” is to learn from others’ experiences. That is why I have structured the Guest Expert column as a Q & A. The questions are listed first. The answers are in the Expert’s own words.

It is my pleasure to introduce you to Robert Hydrisko.
Robert Hydrisko is a marketing consultant and the national marketing director of Life 101, The Magazine for College-Bound Students. When he took over the entire marketing and sales functions of Life 101 in late 1998, he grew annual circulation of (1994 numbers) from 50,000 to 2,200,000 issues annually! Life 101 is the leading high school publication in the United States. The sponsor of Life 101 in Arizona is Bank One.

Robert Hydrisko was raised in northern Maine, majored in philosophy as an undergraduate at the University of Maine, and went on to study political philosophy at Harvard University and Worcester College, Oxford University. While at Harvard, Robert was an intern with a U.S. Senator. In addition, Robert has studied marketing strategy at an executive level at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

His consulting practice, Classic Marketing Services, LLC, is engaged to help grow computer-related technology and consulting companies, print publishing companies, health care companies, and capitalized startup ventures. As a national marketing consultant, he served companies in Boston, Silicon Valley, and Washington, D.C. Also, he was Director of Corporate Development for Cadex, a supercomputing firm affiliated with MIT, and, U.S. Marketing Director for Sotec, a Japanese company that designs notebook computers for Gateway and NEC.

We applaud Robert’s efforts and welcome him to Positive Potentials LLC family of Business Influences! Experts. Thank you for your candid answers, Robert.

Q & A—
What drew you to your industry?
1. My marketing career started out along a traditional line in retail, when I worked in management for the Woolworth Corporation in their Boston district after college. My district manager was earlier my store manager in northern Maine when I was 16. He assigned me to complete my management training work in Quincy and, later, Cohasset, MA, a picture-perfect New England town on Boston's south shore where I would go down to the beach during my lunch hour. That was a very choice assignment. It was this consumer-driven store training, coupled with very fast-track management training at the corporate headquarters in New York, that gave me a solid base on which to build a marketing career. In short, it taught me to put the customer first.

What are the personal traits that contribute to your success in your field?
2. I have a naturally positive personality, but in a kind of low-key, unhurried way. I've trained myself to listen well, and I try to respond in a consultative way. Being persistent, while trying to understand--and, when I can, anticipate--my clients' needs, has contributed to any so-called success I may have. But I've learned that nothing is more important than honesty. I'm honest with my clients and they're honest with me.

What are the specialty skills and traits necessary to be at the top of your industry?
3. In high-level marketing, whether its national/global program management or consulting for the highest levels of management in an organization, one has to be politically adroit and capable of learning entire industries, market drivers, external influences like competition, and industry-specific terminology very quickly. The ability to truly understand demographics-based convergences —today it might be high education/high income areas, for example—can be important as well. One needs to be able to "read" a market, the whole market, as if reading the morning paper.

What is a lesson you’ve learned from a mistake you’ve made?
4. When I started consulting at 26, I had a long discussion with a CEO from Canada, which resulted in his asking me for a proposal. I wrote the proposal, but made it to the attention of his first name and his mother's maiden name. He had been telling various personal stories and I wasn't listening well and got his name confused. I learned a very important lesson. And, by the way, I didn't get the contract.

How important has a mentor been to your career development?
5. A mentor has been very important to me. Actually, I've had a couple. One was my boss with the Defense Department in 1985, where I was trained in computer software design and development alongside government auditors who specialized in investigating large federal contracts. I won't mention his name, but before he was going on a business trip for two weeks, he gave me this huge manual and said, "Learn the software before I get back." So, for the next two weeks, after I asked someone how to turn the computer on, I read every page of that user manual and learned, albeit primitively, the software. It was an arduous experience, but one that taught me that I can learn something entirely new on my own.

Another mentor was Dr. James Young, a theoretical physicist at MIT, whom hired me as his company's Director of Corporate Development. Though I had studied with exceptional people at Havard and Oxford, Dr. Young introduced me to a style of intellectual rigor that was put forth in a practical, but not necessarily a scientific, way. Even though the company was a supercomputing-related business, he didn't get bogged down in extraneous debate that often stalls the development of good technology. He was a big picture person, and he taught me to think about the big picture. A book, Thinking in Time, was recommended in the early 90's to then President-elect Clinton as an important reference to prepare him for the presidency. Big picture is always thinking about time, and about how your goals and strategies for reaching them are structured and, at the same time, limited by time.

Where did you find your mentor?
6. Through my friend's Dad whom was also a physicist.

What do you know now that would’ve helped you 10 years ago?
9. Like everything else, that success is a relative term and that it is ever-changing. My definition of success has changed quite drastically over the last ten years. Ten years ago, I didn't have children; now I have two sons.

What is your philosophy on lifelong learning?
10. My father taught me to pursue formal and informal learning over my lifetime. To stay competitive in any field, I believe it is imperative that one remain in a learning/student mode throughout his or her career. I went back to school and studied marketing strategy at Wharton in my late twenties.

What benefits have you or would you derive from working with an executive coach?
11. Executive coaches are most effective, I think, when a person needs to become motivated again, or if they simply need to enhance their focus in a particular area. I think an effective executive coach can be instrumental in helping a person achieve these outcomes, and in a relatively short amount of time.

Have you published any of your work?
12. If so, please indicate titles. Yes. I wrote the book, Early College Programs, which is the first book to define pre-college and college enrichment programs for high school students, or, summer college courses and programs especially designed for this age group. It was published in late 2002.

If published, what did you want others to know or learn?
13. I wanted students, parents and counselors to know that these programs existed. There is a separate section on early college programs for disadvantaged youth. The word's got to get out that disadvantaged youth can often attend these programs on partial and even full scholarships. There's a great medical sciences program at Stanford, fully scholarshipped I might add, and Bill Cosby has established a filmmaking program for disadvantage students at NYU.

What are the qualities you look for when contracting or hiring people?
14. Honesty, experience, and integrity.

What is your strategy for work-life balance? Have you always adhered to it?
15. I have trained myself to not think about work when I'm not working. I'm pretty good about adhering to it. After all, I think life is about seeking balance.

What is your litmus test for aligning your values with your work?
16. I don't have one. My values are inextricably tied to my work.

If you overheard a conversation of peers, what would you like them to say about you?
17. I would like to hear them say that they respect my work.

What one aspect of yourself would you like others to know about you?
18. That I'm classically educated, and that I know about things like philosophy and literature and politics. But at the same time, I've tried to learn the function of marketing, the subtleties of image management, and the value of branding. When one combines the two, the traditional with the modern if you will, interesting concepts begin to emerge, such as my belief that national politics has become the highest form of modern marketing.

What single event had a life-changing impact on you?
19. Becoming a father.

How have you used your life-changing in your professional growth?
20. Yes, I don't work as much, which has made me more efficient when I do work.

What is your philosophy on the role luck has played in your life?
21. Excellent question. While many will tell you that one has to be ready for luck, prepared if you will, and I think that's true, luck is still a mysterious phenomenon. There's a lot of research and writing on the preparation part, but there is little understanding of what luck is in and of itself. From my experience, I have seen luck change my life in very meaningful ways, twice professionally and several times on a personal level. Luck is powerful, everyone knows it, but it's still a mystery. Insofar as luck cannot be measured or quantified or counted, many, I believe, are hesitant to attempt to explain it. I find it interesting, however, that luck oftentimes preempts the individual of taking credit for something.

What are key words you would offer to a graduating high school senior?
22. If you apply yourself to your fullest capabilities, you can become anything you want to be in this country, no matter what your background may or may not be, what disadvantages you may or may not have, or what your daily horizon may or may not show.

PERMISSION TO USE ABOVE ANSWERS/CONTENT IN BUSINESS INFLUENCES! E-ZINE.