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Are you ready to say yes to your financial uplevel without grinding or hustling your way there?
get instant accessOur guest today on She Sells Radio is AJ Vaden. She’s the CEO of Brand Builders Group and was instrumental in that company hitting multiple 7 figures in its first calendar year. AJ went from making $24k in a year, ready to quit because she felt so misaligned with other’s sales strategy to becoming a million-dollar producer, growing the company to 8 figures. She’s sharing with us how she found her groove and how she uses systems and structure to support her creativity and relationship building with her clients.
AJ started her sales journey in college where she changed her major from Art to Advertising. She dove into the creative aspects of the major but noticed she wasn’t happy with entry-level salaries. She asked, how can I make more money? The answer was sales. From there, AJ attributes her progress to divine intervention. She met her to-be husband after being asked to start a company across the country.
AJ has sold in a variety of ways and has pioneered just as many strategies in sales. The truth is, selling is not a universal world where there is one “correct” way. Times are changing and will continue to change. What has stayed true, though, is that AJ is not a transactional salesperson. It just doesn’t fit with who she is, but that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t be a successful saleswoman. The pressure and urgency that comes with transactional sales work can limit some women’s growth. When she decided to sell in a way that was aligned with her skills, she had to go back a few steps, but the growth she saw came this time in quantum leaps. AJ suggests trying a few versions of sales to find what your sweet spot is, and make it your own.
When those leaps happened, AJ was going for quality over quantity. She decided who her ideal client was and surrounded herself in those networks. She didn’t want the relationships she built to be flat–she found that her best clients were not one-off engagements, they were much more robust. When that happens, you find new opportunities with existing clients. Think about what you can provide of value to your customer. They can help find your uniqueness–sometimes they need something you’re good at, you’re just not selling it yet.
Relationship building is a superpower of AJ’s. Tactically, there are a few core beliefs: one is the choice to be niche. Find clients that you can go deep with. Once a client, always a client. A crucial part of relationship-building is responsiveness. By doing this, you stand out against the crowd. The customer shouldn’t have to chase you down to give you money. Balancing being present in what we’re doing and our inbox can be a challenging task. There are a few things you can do, and first, it’s not varying communication styles. Have an avenue for business communication–this will allow you to become more efficient. When you have checkpoints, you give yourself the opportunity to touch base. You don’t always need to solve a problem, just send a short, quick acknowledgment to let that person know you’re on it. Set expectations early!
Additionally, no matter the circumstances, no matter how bad it seems needed or how unnecessary it may seem, having a monthly check-in call is crucial. Even if it’s automatic, make sure you’re making that routine, proactive communication–it’ll save you potential problems. By doing this you can confront problems you might not even see.
Another tool AJ uses is her creativity, but it doesn’t come without structure. The small touches she gives her clients can be automated, it can be as easy as making a note and following through. There are a lot of great intentions, but the execution is what makes it real. Create intentional conversations that allow you to get to know your clients.
Learning to trust yourself is a difficult, albeit necessary part of the puzzle. For AJ, she had people in her life who encouraged her to trust herself with their actions and their receptiveness. It is validating! Find a point of reason and let them help you find your own way of doing things.
Tune in to hear AJ’s final thoughts on breaking through six figures in an authentic way!
LINKS
@aj_vaden on Instagram
brandbuildersgroup.com
elysearcher.com/training
elysearcher.com/sixfigures
elyse@elysearcher.com
Welcome to see sells radio today’s episode is a really, really special one for a number of reasons. But I’m going to tell you in a minute before I do, though, I want to just share with you, you know, if you’ve ever found yourself in a sales environment, that just doesn’t feel quite right for you. Whether that’s you see people around you selling in a way that just doesn’t feel right to you, or wouldn’t feel aligned with who you are and how you’re wired but you still have big goals and you want to be successful where you are. You’re going to want to listen in and hear from today’s guest. And, you know, as I thought about emphasis the gosh, the fourth time I’ve recorded this intro. Cause I keep trying to think about how I can best introduce this guest because she’s been so instrumental in my life.
And I was like, I’ve just got to do it. I’m just going to go out here and just tell you from the heart how incredible I think this woman is my guest today is AIG Vaden and she’s the co-founder and CEO of brand builders group, which if you have been following me for some time, you will know, I am also a part of that company. I’m a founding team member of the company, a personal brand strategy firm that works with everyone, from people who are just starting off and building their side hustle to some of the biggest entrepreneurs in the world, celebrities, billionaires, you name it. We’re working with a lot of really influential people right now, which is exciting. But prior to starting this company, H and I worked together in a sales organization, and that’s how we first met about five years ago.
And part of why this is a fun, full circle moment is we had a brief stint as podcast co-hosts and had a lot of fun doing that. So it’s cool to bring her back on the show, but she’ll share this with you in the interview today, but part of what, so I think just inspiring about her journey is that when she first started off in sales, she really wasn’t comfortable with the methods that she saw being taught, just because they didn’t feel aligned with who she was and how she would naturally relate to people. And she’ll talk about going from being in a very transactional sales environment and feeling like she couldn’t cut it there because it just wasn’t how she was wired to really paving her own way. And along the way, she went from making $24,000 a year to becoming a million dollar producer.
And she’s going to tell you that story and how she really found her groove. And part of what I love about her story is it shows you that even if you don’t see the way you want to sell modeled in the environment you’re in, you can still chart your own path. And if the numbers speak that well, I’ll just say the numbers speak for themselves. If you’re hitting the numbers, no, one’s going to question you my friend. And so she found a way to hit her numbers and exceed her numbers and really create a new way of selling within the organization. And part of my favorite part of what Aja teaches and what she’s going to share with us today is how she uses these really Ninja structures and systems to be able to be super relational, to be able to free her up, to be super creative, to surprise and delight her clients into land and expand really big accounts.
She gives some incredible like email management tactics that I personally am going to start implementing right away, because that’s an area for me that I’m always looking to get better in is how in the world do we manage the email beast and be responsive to clients and service them well, while also not getting so distracted by everything else that’s going on there in our inbox. So you’re going to hear from her really, really incredible tips, both on how she builds relationships and creates client relationships that lasts years, as well as how she sets up systems and structures in her business that really support her to be able to unleash that creativity and build those incredible relationships. So you are going to adore AIJ and you’re going to want to follow her on social and learn from her. So we’ll get into the interview before we do.
I want to just remind you, our weekly sales accelerator is live and we are having so much fun over there. It’s a weekly on demand sales, training service, super affordable. You can basically come in and pick whatever topics you need. Join us for what makes sense, leave the rest, but you can find out more at Elise archer.com/training. And it’s all about just helping you learn to sell in a way that feels authentic to you as a woman and breakthrough your revenue targets. Whether you’re looking to break through six figures for the first time or beyond, I’m here to help support you in doing that. So go check that out, get registered for our next training@elisearcher.com slash training. And with that, let’s get ready to bring on and invite Aja Baden to the show. Aja, welcome to she sells radio. This is such a like fun, full circle moment show. So welcome. Super excited to have you here.
I’m so excited and you’re right. This is such a fault full circle moment for everyone that listening at. And I used to host a projects together, which feels like a century ago.
It feels so long ago. It feels like so long. I know, I feel like we’ve lived many times a very short cause. That was what three years. It wasn’t that long.
It was like almost four years, three and a half years. Okay.
Oh my gosh. Yeah, it’s been a hot minute. It’s been, it feels like 10 years. It does. And I think we have both become a wiser in that wiser instead of older, but I I’m so excited you’re here because like I was saying, you know, in the introduction, it’s just, it is a very cool opportunity to get to bring you on because you’ve been so influential in my own sales journey and entrepreneurial journey. And part of what I’m so passionate about with this show is highlighting women who are just like sales, ninjas, and rockstars, but who do it maybe a little differently than what we’ve been in our, you know, corporate sales training or wherever we learned to sell. And, you know, you were, I think you’re always someone I looked up to for the way that you sold it. Not only because it felt very authentic to step into selling that same way, but also because it produced some pretty darn good results, like million dollar producer, right. Need I say anymore. So I’m really curious. I, you know, I think most people probably don’t start off with a vision of like getting into sales when they’re little girls for most of us, unless we’re weirdos. That was not, I think I actually was one of them. But that’s not our vision. How did you kind of start your sales journey? How did you get started and then take us actually up to what you do today because you’re doing something really incredible in your career now.
Yeah, no, I definitely did not have a vision of being sales as a little kid, but I’ll tell you when it clicked for me is I was in college and the first half of my college career, I was an art major. And I mean, like painting and art, then about halfway through my college career through parental advising or pressuring, whatever you want to call it. I realized, okay, maybe I need a real major. So I don’t necessarily want to be supported by my parents. And they definitely did not want to be supporting me. And so I changed it to advertising. And so my junior and senior year, I had just enough credits to swap it and still graduate some actually a semester early, which was my plan. And I started taking these advertising classes and learning the creative parts and, and all of that.
And then as I got into my four Oh four classes, I just remember one of our professors were talking about all the different types of jobs in the marketing and advertising world and you know, comparative salaries. And none of them sounded really appealing. And I’m like, you’re saying that I’m going to do all of this. And then basically be making 35 to $40,000 for an entry level position in the first two years. And that’s in a bigger market. Well, how do you make more money? And I remember so precisely that one of my professors said, well, if you want to be the one driving the Porsche, then you need to be in sales. I said, okay, that was it. That was such a turning moment for me. And I didn’t really know what that meant. And I remember my very first sales job. I think it only lasted three weeks. And then I quit. What was horrible. It was for a yellow book.
You and I didn’t even realize that you and I have such a similar journey in the college. Like all of it that’s keep, keep going, but I have
It was really, honestly from that, it was such a God placing thing. It really was, it was divine intervention in my life. There was nothing that I did that proactively put me in the place and the opportunity to start doing what I was doing other than just divine intervention in my life. But one of my childhood friends was starting a company and asked me to start the company with him. And two other, which one of them is Rory Vaden, who later became my husband and business partner. But that’s where it started. It was somebody saying, Hey, I’m going to do this thing. And I was in a really terrible job. So I quit it to start. This company moved across the country to San Jose, California on a very, I would say uninformed decision making process where basically the sales pitch was, Hey, we can make phone calls by the pool all day. We’ll eat sushi every day. It’s going to be awesome. I’d love that. I was like, yeah, I sounds good. That was not what happened. That’s not what it was. But again, I really just believe it was divine intervention that put me in the right place at the right time start doing something that I probably, if I had known all of the details would have never said yes, but it has most definitely led to where I am today. So I’m so super grateful.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, and from there, you know, obviously knowing some of your background since we worked together at that company, you, you helped build that company to eight figures. And I really want to hear about some of your experience just in terms of the sales process, because I know you’ve probably, you’ve done it all right from cold calling and outreach to try. I mean, I’ll let you share a little bit about like the different ways you’ve sold. And I also think you’ve pioneered some ways of selling that a lot of us, myself included really admired in terms of relationship building and followup. So, so kind of give us a, I’d say an overview of the different ways in which you ended up like selling and working with glass
All the way. Yeah. We may need longer than we do. I didn’t realize my story a little bit, but it’s like for anyone out there selling, you know, there are, there’s several different ways to sell selling is not this universal world. And this is what you do. You’ve got door to door sales, right then you’ve got inside sales, you have inside phone sales, you have outbound phone sells. You have like outbound sales where you’re knocking on doors, going B2B, you’ve got one-on-one sales. You have one to many sales where you’re selling to a group of people. Now you’ve got the digital landscape where you’re selling online and you’re attracting people they’re calling in and you’re doing a call and uniquely I’ve done all of those. Right. And I think the thing that I had learned is very early on is that I’m not a great transactional sales person.
And at the time I was in a very, very transactional sales role. And I knew I am a great sales person, but this concept of a meet you and I present you and I collect your money and an hour timeframe that did not fit with who I am that does not mean that I was not going to be a spectacular sales woman. Because I already knew, I was like, I guess there’s, there has to be a better way. That’s more aligned with who I am. And I think for anyone who is out there trying to figure out like, what is my sales journey, you just have to realize there are lots of different ways to be successful when it comes to selling. And I found out very early on this transactional, and I would say to some degree, a little bit high pressure doesn’t have to be, but there’s definitely a sense of urgency to, it was not my cup of tea I wasn’t doing well and wasn’t feeling good.
There was so much pressure. I was putting on myself to make this happen and that was coming across. And, and to be honest, like when I was in a strictly transactional sales role for those first three years, I think that was the least amount of growth that I had, like my first full year and starting our first company and be $24,000. And I was hustling and that’s what I made year two, I made 45. But even, even though that was pretty substantial growth, it’s not a, an enormous amount of money to live off of and today’s time and prices. And I was living in California. And then from there I went to $90,000 and then that’s when I realized, okay, I can’t keep doing this because it’s like really disrupting my soul. Like this doesn’t feel aligned with who I am. And so there came an opportunity and the company that we had started to really branch out into a new division, I can new department and I was going to lead that.
And I also knew doing that probably meant I was going to take myself back probably to the very beginning. And it was almost that. So I went from 90 all the way back to 50, but I was willing to do that because I just, I knew there was a better way for me, so that wasn’t a quick decision. Didn’t happen in a week. It took months and months of planning and saving to be able to make this decision for myself. But, but then from there, you know, I was at 19, I went back to 50. The following year, I went to one 50, then to 400, then to eight 50 and beyond. And so you have to just, I think one of the most important things that I discovered early on in my sales careers, there’s many different ways of selling. You know, there’s one on one-to-one one too many, you’ve got the digital landscape, you’ve got door to door, you’ve got B2B, you’ve got B2B to C and there’s all these different ways of doing it.
And I would just encourage anyone to, you have to do several of them to figure out what your sweet spot is. And I would say that, and that goes to the same for any industry. Does it matter what industry you’re in? There’s an opportunity to present to one or present to many online or offline. And somewhere in there, there is your sweet spot, but if you don’t experiment with a few of them, you’re not going to find that what it is. And I was lucky enough to be forced to do all of them early on in my career. So I was really able to figure out like this, this resonates with me. This is my style. And as soon as I settled into this is how I sell it. Just a really, quite honestly the cap just blew off of it. So the question on everybody’s mind is
How did you end up selling? What were some of the things for you because you did go on and I love that you shared those numbers. Thank you. Because I think when we look at women who have accomplished a certain revenue amount or income amount, we think, well, they’ve always been there and to say, no, like I started off at 25 grand my first year. It’s really helpful to have that context. So when things started clicking and you started having those, you know, one 50, four, 15 beyond what was working for you, what were you doing differently in your selling process that you hadn’t been doing before?
Yes, I went straight for quality over quantity, and that was a really big deciding moment for me of just deciding who is my ideal client and really surrounding myself in those networks and being very specific about the types of clients I could work with that I could go deep and wide with. And so that was a part of my ideal avatar, right? My ideal client was it. I don’t want it to be someone where it’s a very flat relationship. I wanted to find clients that I had an opportunity to do lots of different things with over the course of time. And what I had found is that, you know, my best clients were not one-year contracts or our one-off engagements. They were people I was with for three, four, five years. And you ask yourself a, in a somewhat linear business, how is that possible?
And it’s that you start finding new opportunities. And I was, I was able to expand my business by going, I don’t want to lose you as a client. So what else can I start to offer that you’re looking for, that I can do for you and I can provide for you. And that’s what really started to allow me to expand in some of my offerings. And, you know, for any of you who are out there, doesn’t matter if you’re a financial advisor or you’re an attorney, or you’re in corporate sales, there are services that you will find it. I found that a lot of the things that my clients really needed were actually things I was really good at. I just wasn’t selling them. And that was a huge part of really finding my uniqueness. It was my clients, they were the ones who were helping me find my uniqueness.
I just didn’t know it was there. And I had to go out and have other people help me discover it unintentionally until I found like, well, this is the true gift that I have. Like, this is an actual superpower of mine. And I would just say for anyone, it’s like, you have one and you have to believe that you have one because you do. And then you just have to figure out how do you unleash it and really start using it and the benefit of other people around you, but you’ve got it. You just may not have tapped into it yet. And I was just very, very fortunate that my clients were, they were tapping into it without knowing I was unaware of it. They were asking for it. And so I started creating additional service opportunities to give more and more of the thing that I was already naturally good at. And I think all of happened because there was a lot of alignment with who I wanted to work with and who I was actually working with.
I want to pause on what you said there, because I think that Aja is the, at least for me in my sales journey too. I think when I was able to step into that alignment with myself and who I was working with and how I was selling, that’s when things started clicking and it can be challenging to do, depending on what leadership, like how I speak with a lot of women who say, my leadership wants me to sell this way. It doesn’t feel right. Kind of like you’ve shared in your experience that I’ve had a lot of experiences like that too. Or even maybe it’s something in yourself, like you’re not fully in alignment yet with what your super power is or believing in yourself. So there’s this misalignment can it can really throw us off course from my goals. So I love that you shared that.
What were some things you did specifically? Because I think you’ve been clear here. And I think a lot of women can relate to this, like relationship building was, and still is one of your real, super powers with this like land and expand approach. What were some of the specifics that you’ve done to build relationships with clients, whether it’s like regular touch points, just getting to know their family. I’m really curious to hear from you because there’s so many different ways we can do it. But what were some of the key things that were helpful for you?
Yes. And I promise I will get there, but you said something if I can touch on really quickly, I think it’s really important. The way that I was selling was not a supported way by my partners. I think that’s really important for everyone who’s out there listening where it’s like, Oh, that was easy for you to do because you were in this company where you were a founding member. And I, I work in an environment where that’s not possible. That’s not true. I was very much the black sheep. I was not following the system or the process that was wished to be followed, but I just knew I wasn’t going to succeed that way. And here’s what I would tell all of you who feel like you’re kind of trapped into why in this job, I have to do it this way at the numbers will speak for themselves.
And if you start getting the results, nobody will question how you’re doing it. And I think that was really important. And I think part of why I was able to continue to Excel in that area is the results were undeniable, right? Maybe they weren’t being shared or taught to the masses that they were undeniable. So I got to kep, I got to keep doing what I was doing that works so well for me and was, you know, in line with who I am, because it was getting such amazing results. So I just wanted to touch on that really quickly is that the numbers will allow you to do what you do as long as you’re doing it really well.
I love that you shared that and, and too, in in so many of these conversations with women, I’m even thinking about an interview. I had recently with Shereen Washington, who was one of the top, top sales producers for I believe it was Invisalign sharing, correct me if I’m wrong. I believe it was Invisalign if I’m thinking right. But she did the same thing. It was the whole sales process and training in the company was so different from what felt right to her. So she kind of went off and chartered her own path and do her own thing. And in a very short amount of time, she was outperforming everybody else. And leadership just didn’t question it. So I love that you say that because I think we can have internal conflict about like, this is what I’m being told to do. People in leadership clearly know what they’re doing, so I must be wrong. And what I’m hearing you say is like, trust yourself, which is actually the core message. I mean, this podcast is about sales, but really it’s, I want to inspire women to trust themselves, to follow their gut on things. So I love that you shared that.
I think that, I think that kind of comes back. There’s not one way to do it. I do believe there are wrong ways to do it. [inaudible] But there’s not one right way. I think there is your right way and there’s lots of wrong ways. But yeah, so, okay. So back to your question, before I forget and totally get us off track. So yeah, some of the things here are just some core, some of the core beliefs that I discovered about myself and my own sales path over the years. And I think one of that was a decision to be decidedly small to be decidedly niche and my client base. I, and that kind of comes back to, I really wanted to have clients like I go deep and wide with, and that took sometimes additional prospecting, additional relationship building. It was a longer sales cycle, but that was really important to me because I just, I really strongly believed and believe today that once a client always a client, and that is just a foundational truth that I believe in is that if you do a really good job, once a client, always a client, and here’s what I would say.
And these are probably not things that many of you would expect for me to say in terms of what did I do to really build strong relationships. The number one thing was responsiveness. It was just one of it’s. It still is. One of my personal core values is I believe that if I am just more responsive than the next person, I will naturally stand above the crowd because so many people do not get back to you. And as a consumer, as a paying customer, this is my single biggest frustration with sales organizations. It’s like, why am I chasing you down to give you my money? And so I had just found it’s like, and still today, clients are just like, Oh my gosh, thank you for being so responsive. And I just found like that was like my gateway and to building really strong relationships is that my clients and my prospects knew I was going to be there. Yeah. And I was going to it and I was going to do it quickly.
So I want to, I want to pause and ask you about that. And I love that you shared that because literally right now, one of my affirmations is responsiveness is one of my strengths, as you can extrapolate. It’s one of my affirmations because it’s, we’ll call it a growth opportunity for me. So, so I, I want to ask this, it’s partly selfish because I really want to get your coaching on it. And I would imagine I’m not the only one who sometimes questions, how do we balance, like being present in what we’re doing and not being so sucked into our inbox, our text messages that we’re like constantly distracted, right? Cause I think that’s the, maybe the balance is this, when you, for me, I found that when I try to go hyper responsive, I end up feeling distracted by like, Oh, I’m in this inbox. This person needs that. Versus like actually getting some of my own core work done. How do you do that? How do you balance that? How do you think about it?
Yeah. Well, I wouldn’t, I’m not going to tell you it’s easy, but there are some simple things that you can do. And the first and foremost thing is I tell my clients, there’s one way to reach me at email. I don’t vary the communication styles. I even tell our own team today. Like, don’t text me that you will not hear back from me. I can only do something really well in one area. And I have chosen email. Text is not my game when it comes to business communication, I know what it is and it’s email. And so that allows me to create some really amazing systems that allow me to work really efficiently. And so I have an enormous amount of rules set up. I use outlook. So I don’t know about people who use G suite or the other things, but I use outlook.
So I’m on the office suite and the rules functioning really, really helps me keep my inbox very clean. And then I have certain folders that I can go to that allow me to be searched so super responsive. And I know that if I had a client folder, I’m going to check that probably two or three times a day, right? I’m not just scrolling through my emails all the time. It’s like, no, I’m going to a folder in my email. And that, I just say, as soon as it’s there a new client, I pop them in there. Now every email that comes from this client goes to my client folder. So I’m checking one folder. That’s not cluttered with all of this other nonsense so that I have some focus and intention when it comes to that, I also have a folder that’s called prospects.
So those would be like my key prospects that I’m in conversations with, right? This is not every single person I’m reaching out to, but these are the people that were in conversation. And they’re, they’re just as important as my client folder, right? It’s like, I’m trying to earn their business. So I need to show them what it’s going to be like to be my client on this. This is it’s again, it’s like the sale does not end when you get the client. The selling has just begun. And to me, selling is relationship. It is community. It is showing that you’re going to be there. And that does not end when you sell a client that just begins when you sell a client. So I have these rules set up in these folders, in my inbox that allow me to be super communicative and super responsive without being overly obsessive in my inbox, because I’m not, I’m really not.
But there are certain checkpoints throughout the day where I know in the morning and around midday and at the end of the day, I’m going to check these and, and I’ll tell you like of my responses are not very long. It’s like, yeah, Hey, I got this. I just want you to know that I’m on it. It’s, I’m not going to solve the problem. I’m going to see what do you need. Or, and a lot of times I’ll just get somebody that’s from my FYI. And I’m like, thanks for sending. Right? And then I save it and put it in my to-do list. I’m not stopping to take care of every request, every question on a whim. But what I am doing is letting them know I got this, I’m on it. I’ll get back to you, you know, X, Y, Z, and then I’ll give them an expectation.
Right? And I think that’s a huge part of it too, is expectations is, you know, I tell our team members, I tell our clients, I tell them, this is how to communicate with me. I will give you timeframes. I will tell you how to reach me. I will set proper expectations. That I’m just a strong believers that you, you treat people or you train people how to treat you, right. You you’re the one who does that. So if you’re not liking it, retrain them, right. I use email do not text me. Right. And, and then it’s like, Hey, you’re going to hear from me in 24 hours. That does not mean I’m going to have an answer, a solution or a presentation for you. That means you will hear from me. And then I will put it in my to-do list, plotted in my schedule, schedule a follow-up call with them and then take care of it.
I will also say that with that is through the course of my career. The number one thing that has saved me, hundreds of customer service issues is that I don’t care if I need them or not. I always have a routine monthly check-in call with my clients, period. Right. It might be five minutes one month, and it might take 30 minutes the next month, many months it’s my clients are the one who cancels it. Like, no, we’re good, whatever. I don’t need anything. That’s fine. I just have it on the schedule. And that just helps prevent potential customer service issues. But just as much as that, it also helps you discover new opportunities of ways that you could be working with your clients. So I know some of you may have a business where maybe you have hundreds or thousands of clients may be in a call.
Does it make sense? Well, have an automated email. Check-In right. So don’t take what I’m saying and be, Oh, well, I, it doesn’t work for me. It’s thinking, how could this work for me? How could I take this concept of routine check-ins and implement it into my business with email automation or text automation or a scheduled phone call, and maybe some clients get a phone call, some, get a email reminder, whatever it is it’s having that routine proactive communication that has saved. I’m not exaggerating thousands of customer service issues, and probably a lot of potential clients that would have just bailed. If I wasn’t able to confront address and fix some real issues that were happening that I didn’t see. So it was just that proactive, preemptive communication. This is, this is so good. And what I love about this, cause talk on this podcast
About leveraging masculine versus feminine energy when selling and masculine is very structured. It’s actually designed to be in support of the feminine. And masculine is like linear structure calender to dues. Feminine is more of the creativity there, the relationship building kind of outside of the box thinking, but what we talk about is you have to have both. And like I said, the job of the masculine is to support the feminine. So what I’m hearing you say is that structure and setting up those processes in your business helps support you to build relationships too, to think creatively, think outside the box, come up with new ideas and solutions. So I like, I love this because I love a good tactical. Like how do we get it done? And I think it’s just a really good example of how you can, as a woman in sales, we can have such like a masterful blend of both feminine, helping support us in our goals.
It’s really interesting that you say that because I feel like if you would ask my husband what, what’s my true sales super power he would probably say doing the unexpected and I would never be able to use the creative components of what I do for the people that are important to me without structure such as sending a birthday card or an anniversary gift or a baby package when somebody has a baby. And I can’t tell you how often they’re like, Oh my gosh, I had no idea. You even knew that we adopted. And it’s like, it’s because I saw one post on social media because I follow everyone on social. And I put it in my calendar, like, Hey, I have this preset baby package on Amazon. And I just do an auto-ship. There are so many things that I’ve been able to automate my business to allow me to have these personal touches, but that is because of a lot of organization and a lot of structure.
None of that, none of my creativity happens on a whim because there’s just too much chaos for that to actually it’s like the difference between good intentions and great execution. I feel like creativity is a lot of great intentions, but not always really awesome execution and the structure and the organization really is that beautiful blend of when I see someone who just had a baby or adopted a baby, it’s like, I know what I’m going to do that because I’ve already pre-planned that it’s already saved as a baby gift list and Amazon, and then it’s like, just drop ship it. And then part of the too, it’s just like being in tune with what your clients say and, and creating intentional conversations that I get, that, that allow you to get to know your clients. I just remember this one client that we had several, several years ago, but it was two gentlemen and one was the CEO and the other one was the VP of sales.
And they were in Nashville for this big training that we were doing. And we took them out to dinner that evening. And I don’t even know how this came up, but one of the conversation topics came up around life versus like, what is your life first in a biblical sense? And I just remember that you Forrest had shared his, and then Jim had shared his and, and then I had shared mine and it was this conversation. And then, and then we just moved on. We carried on, but I jotted those Bible verses down and had these posters printed with their names on them. And I still like, to this day, I get comments about how they still have that hanging up somewhere and just it’s those little intentional things. But without that structure of write this down, do this, put it in the calendar. Those things would never happen. Awesome ideas that never comes to fruition. That is the structure. And the organization allows the creativity to really bloom and to something that matters.
Yeah. I love that. You said that that’s such a good example of, of what my hope is for the show is we can really teach women to be in alignment, right? It comes back to that alignment conversation. If it’s both, it’s not wildly into your masculine and being like, you know, all structure, I’ll follow the script to the word don’t deviate at all. Like, you know, cut off your intuition or swinging wildly into your feminine, which can be without the support of that structure kind of all over the place. So it’s really that alignment of both, which I love tell us about. So I’m curious here, and this is so good. So thank you two final questions for you. And then I want I want you to tell everyone where they can connect with you. My first question for you is how did you learn to trust yourself? And I know this may be a big question to throw in towards the end of the conversation, but you know, when you’ve found yourself in situations, whether the situation you were talking about earlier, where you see people selling in a way it’s like that just didn’t work for you and you had to pave a new path or in other situations in your life, how did you learn to start to trust your own intuition and instincts when you weren’t necessarily seeing what you wanted to do modeled elsewhere?
Gosh, that is such a really good question. And I don’t know if my answer is really good, but this is what I would say. It’s true for you. This is what’s true for me is I had people in my life who were encouraging me to trust myself and not so verbally. Wasn’t like they were intentionally saying, Hey, you have to trust yourself. It was.