Meet Mark Reynolds, aka @Ren0vator. Wondering who Mark is? Mark is the owner of Southern Cross Wealth in Australia. On my personal Twitter account, you’ll see that he’s an active member in my community.
This week, we’re launching a new weekly blog: Featured Follower Friday. I love hearing stories and tips from people in the real world, and this is a way that we can together create an online community of sharing insight and experience. Every week, I will pick an engaged Twitter follower and send them a brief interview. I’ll then feature them on our Friday blog! So come back next week to meet a new follower!
What does a day in your life look like?
I have a full time job with a large company that trains apprentices for the automotive industry. I am privileged in this role to help young people transition from school to full time employment and meet all of those unexpected challenges schools can’t teach. Out of hours I am in the process of learning strategies to develop an income from home and transition to the digital economy. This requires learning a lot of new knowledge and skills, as well as sharing through my blog and networking via social media. These activities fill five, sometimes six, days a week. So Sunday we pack up the 4WD and get away.
What are you passionate about and how do you live that out in your life?
My passion? That’s not a word I particularly like. It seems like every contestant on those XFactor shows has a passion for singing and some quite ghastly singers +lol. What drives me? What inspires me to do great things? What enlivens my soul is seeing God’s redemptive and restorative work being done through me. Sure setting and achieving goals bolsters our egos. Making money is a necessity in today’s capitalist centered culture and too many men focus entirely in this realm. But these are nothing compared to another human being reaching their spiritual potential. The requirement then is to know the still, small voice that knocks on my heart and to act. Daily morning and evening prayer and worship helps immensely. Would the real men please stand up!
If you could share one tip or wisdom that you’ve learned in your lifetime what would it be? What’s the story behind that?
Get around good people. People who encourage you, who can buy into your dreams. Believe in yourself enough to walk away from people who drag you down and fill your life with negativity. Great people are easy to spot and Eleanor Roosevelt said it best: Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
After leaving school I went straight into an apprenticeship as a motor mechanic. For the next 16 years I thought everyone was negative and self centered and so I became that way too. I was the proverbial glass half empty. A chance meeting with a former schoolmates father changed my way of seeing the world. He had aligned his vocation with his occupation, a real teacher.
So many tradesman have that poverty mentality, they won’t even share knowledge with colleagues for fear of losing some perceived competitive edge. Anyway, today I am in the training industry too sharing my knowledge, skills and life with young people. My glass is not half empty anymore it is overflowing.
Bonus Question: What’s a way in which you’ve aligned your vision with your values?
Recently I completed a copywriting course which is helping me to develop online advertising skills and is part of my vision to become self employed by leveraging the Internet. It soon became apparent to me that many copywriters leverage negative emotions to trigger buying responses. Fear of loss (that tricky countdown timer), fear of social isolation (the everyone else is doing it line), fear of rejection (what if ‘they’ don’t approve), even fear of staying the same (where will you be in 10 years if nothing changes). Their pens inflict pain and the pill they offer is, of course, their product. So I choose to offer hope and encourage dreams, provide answers to real needs and make people feel significant by laying out the buying decision in easy to understand terms. I spent too many years trying to crawl out of a negative mindset to push that burden onto people I don’t even know. My reward for this isn’t financial, but it feeds me nonetheless.
Thanks for following, Mark!
Check Mark’s website out at: http://ren0vator.blogspot.com/
You can also follow him on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ren0vator
