A Hiring Mistake, Busting in to Meet Hugo Chavez, Learning What Love Is: Kim Sorrelle

Author of Love Is.

⁠Episode page with video, links, and transcript⁠

My guest for Episode #205 of the My Favorite Mistake podcast is Kim Sorrelle. Kim is the director of a humanitarian organization, a popular speaker, and the author of two books. Her first, Cry Until You Laugh, is about her and her husband's battle with cancer after being diagnosed just four months apart. Her second, Love Is, chronicles her year-long quest to figure out the true meaning of love, a sometimes funny, sometimes scary, always enlightening journey that led to life-changing discoveries found mostly on the streets of Haiti.

In this episode, Kim shares her favorite mistake story about buying a grocery store in St. Croix (she lives in Michigan) and hiring the wrong manager to run that business. How long did it take her to discover the mistake? Did she try to coach him up? When did she decide to make a change, and how did she avoid repeating the mistake based on what she learned the first time?

Oh, and she slips in a story about the time she “busted in” to meet Hugo Chavez, the president / dictator of Venezuela. How did she build rapport and trust and for what purpose?

Questions and Topics:

• Learned: need to hire slow…
• You were new to this type of business though…
• How did this even come to be?
• Do you fire or try to coach him up??
• Tell us about the 2nd hiring… what you learned, adjustments you made?
• Tell us about your non-profit — Rays of Hope
• Avoiding mistakes about cultural assumptions going into other countries?
• Just busted in to meet with Hugo Chavez
• 45 minutes — had to build rapport and trust
• Tell us about your book “Love Is”.
• What is the meaning of love, what is love?
• “Love keeps no record of wrongs” — does loving ourselves mean being able to put our wrongs (our mistakes) behind us?
• Loving yourself when you make mistakes?
• Stephen Covey episode
• How does understanding love help us in the workplace?
• 14 day love challenge – not a year
• What your next book? – on grief