The o-so-familiar feeling of, “Yes, let me roll up my sleeves. It’s time to sell some stuff!”
Yesterday during the Live Podcast, (which was almost two hours long! – pretty amazing that DJ Eshelman, https://twitter.com/TheCitrixCoach, has found an audience for that extensive of a show – and he has!) we talked about memories and how your mind and body sooo easily falls back into familiar patterns. Most noticeable is probably the patterns following stress. If you’ve been exposed to massive amounts of stress, which most of us have, and not only the extreme stress triggers, like death, divorse, moving etc., but the grinding stress over extended periods of time (you know the kind that doesn’t let us go until we figure out a way to deal with it), then you have also noticed how it affects you. It could be destructive behavior, or panic, or simply shutting down like a depression, which can be interpreted as the mind/body’s way of saying, “That’s enough, you need to stop/change/rethink how you are dealing with stuff.”
And then, there is the positive stress, the one that motivates us, that encourages us, that triggers us to do more, better, faster. To win our own race. That’s what I’m reminded of today, when I finally have something to sell again (yes link of course 🙂 https://eqinspiration.com/product/women-in-tech-a-book-for-guys/. For years, I woke up with the thought, “Let’s see what we can accomplish today!” and today, my entire mind and being, is back there. It feels amazingly good!
When we were done with Sanbolic, the enterprise software company, where I’d been a co-founder (i.e. sales person), I found myself at a loss. Of course because of lost identity, as the company and business was such a big part of me, but also at a loss because during my entire career, I had had something to sell. And then, I didn’t . After sharing my story and speaking at many many events, I knew that “selling” my success story to women (esp.) who wanted to hear it and maybe needed to hear that it was possible to succeed, I wanted something else to sell. It had to be a product/solution/service that people could really benefit from, something with a huge TAM (total available market), and something that customers would understand the benefits of. I didn’t want to come up with a product for the sake of selling, so I did research. Lots of it. Then I made up my mind of who my customer would be, what I wanted to do for them, and how I might be able to do it. Giving people with power (in this case men in tech) the opportunity to better themselves and their business, by providing them tangible tips and tools.
Of course, as anyone in sales or entrepreneurship will tell you, it comes with extreme ups and downs, which in themselves come with that stress triggering other reactions, but to be it’s always worth it.
From now on, I will wake up every morning, thinking not only, “Let’s see what I can accomplish today” but also, “Let’s see who I can encourage and motivate to feel better about themselves today.” I love the beginning of this new chapter, and I will still love it even when I get a 100 no’s, because the next one might say yes, and that’s the joy of selling! With true dedication, on a mission to improve equality in tech.
Yours, Eva