If you don’t know Mark Horvath, you should. Mark’s done an incredible thing: he’s empowered the people who are often the most powerless in our communities — the homeless — via social media to tell their own stories, in their own voices. He founded InvisiblePeople.tv and every time I hear someone at a nonprofit make excuses about why they can’t do this or that thing, I think of Mark. He doesn’t make excuses, he just makes stuff happen.

In this video interview with Mark, he shares some of his experiences in making hundreds of videos, including

  • Why everything you do is part of telling your story
  • Why listening is more important than good interview questions and research
  • How important it is to be flexible, even when, for example, you are being heckled
  • The story behind his signature interview question: What are your three wishes?

Here’s a little more about InvisiblePeople.tv:

Since its launch in November 2008, InvisiblePeople.tv has leveraged the power of video and the massive reach of social media to share the compelling, gritty, and unfiltered stories of homeless people from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. The vlog (video blog) gets up close and personal with veterans, mothers, children, layoff victims and others who have been forced onto the streets by a variety of circumstances. Each week, they are on InvisiblePeople.tv, and high traffic sites such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, proving to a global audience that while they may often be ignored, they are far from invisible.