Mike Mongo

Wodu partner and brand strategist Mike Mongo
shares thoughts from a single node of the hive mind.
Define Wodu.
An impassioned dedication to doing it better, every time, and all the way through.

What is a great day for you?
Our employees worldwide are healthy happy and paid, my business partner is rested and busy but not over-worked or over-wrought, and someone with an inexhaustible budget calls us about helping to work on something that is a cross between twitter and anti-gravity that they want us to partner on. And it’s only Tuesday.

What are your plans for Wodu?
When I was growing up, my answer would have been world domination. As an adult, my viewpoint has altered. Indeed, it is my hope and dream to affect world change but as a servant rather than a dominator. For me, as a person and as a professional, I live to serve. My dedication to excellence in branding is an expression of this. People know me for my deep-rooted belief system, which I can sum up by saying everything always works out, and the truth makes me laugh. But when I was younger, writing a marketing plan for BC Ethic, one of the owners of the company, who had fought and won over cancer, said to me that his secret is remembering to feel the force, don’t force the feel. When I think of Wodu, I am feeling the force. Our goal at Wodu as I see it is to enable this opportunity for as many others who are in the pursuit of excellence to feel that force, as well.

What’s your favorite movie? Describe your favorite scene.
Two different things. My favorite scene is in a deeply regrettable Hollywood film from several years back called What Dreams May Come, starring Robin Williams and Cuba Gooding Jr. To cut to the chase, Williams’ character’s wife, whom he very deeply loves, has lost her mind after the loss of their son in a tragic car accident. He “goes in” after her and has a guide of some kind, who escorts him to the center of her dementia. When they get there and it is obvious the wife is not going to come around, the guide says to Williams that it is time to go back. Williams’ character, who is fully committed to the one he loves, intones back, “I’m afraid you don’t understand. I never intended to return. I’m staying with her.” Gratefully, I related to that sort of commitment.

My favorite movie alternates. It goes between Contact, Lawrence of Arabia, and Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension. I constantly live elements of all three.