{( speakerName('A') )}
I have only waited a year.
{( speakerName('B') )}
I was difficult. We had a lot going on, didn't we?
{( speakerName('A') )}
I just think it means that we're exceptionally popular ladies.
{( speakerName('B') )}
We do have busy, successful businesses.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Only gone and launched yourself a podcast in the meantime as well. How are you finding it?
{( speakerName('B') )}
So fun, Wendy! So I might evolve it. I picked a fairly broad topic by saying it's mostly about sales, but by saying conversations with good humans, I wanted to leave the door open for maybe being able to keep that with the next book, things like that. Sort of writing this good humans idea.
{( speakerName('A') )}
It's great because you can just share context, can't you? And it's always better when you hear it firsthand than a story retold. Whilst we all love stories, if you hear like a snippet of something and you go, yes. And sometimes it's just like lots of pennies from heaven, isn't it? It's just what you can do with it.
{( speakerName('B') )}
I think the other thing that might make it a little bit different than some sales podcast, I think you do this as well, because I listen to yours and I know different kinds of people you have on yours, thinking about other things that intersect with selling that make a person a better seller. There's a lot about marketing that ends up coming up in my coaching, because people self qualify even in complex B to B sales now, right? They're self qualifying online more and more that we want to have less division between sales and marketing. And so your personal brand and marketing tactics and LinkedIn strategies and all of those things, they still go with what we might consider traditional sales training. What do I do once I actually get someone on the call? So I want actually all of those in the conversation because I think that for too long we were siloed and what the Internet, the Pandemic technology, all these different things are doing, so they're bringing all of that together. And so I have a fairly broad set of things we're talking about on the podcast, but even for an individual seller contributor, I think they all matter. I think they need to think about all of that stuff. So I just bring it all to the podcast.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Niraj, right? Previous guest. We were talking about the sales toolkit when we started out. No phone, no laptop, no internet. It was literally pick up the phone or go and have lunch. So it's interesting that the tactics may have shifted, but the strategies and the psychology behind all of those things is the same. And I don't know about you, though, Catherine, but sales to me is everybody. And that's Niraj's strapline, isn't it? Everybody works in sales, and it doesn't matter what it is that you're doing, you're looking to influence at some point to make it go your way. And of course it's if it can go your way and their way, but now it's their way to make it go your way, isn't it? So the dynamics has just subtly shifted and I think our toolbox has just got bigger.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Certainly for me, I invested several years ago in going to the Story brand marketing training and I kept my guide certification for a couple of years. But they train you in the seven part framework so that you understand the hero's journey of your customer, et cetera, et cetera. It is going back to literally Greek storytelling principles, right? This idea of the hero's journey, I felt like I needed formal training to get my mind clear about how scripts and positioning and personal brand and all those things come together in a broader marketing context. It helped me so much. And what's funny is I stayed as a sales speaker and trainer, but I actually can write websites. I don't want to do that. It's not something that I'm excellent at, it's not as a genius sort of thing. But I did get great training and for some nonprofits and startup businesses and some friends, I mean, I'll take a look and I'll say your header could be a lot clearer. And some of that training came from me investing in those additional tools to be good at my niche. And I have been able to pull in those other things occasionally, which has been fun.
{( speakerName('A') )}
And that's what's so fascinating to me when it comes to conversations, is because it doesn't matter where those conversations start now, and you've just referenced it. It's not just a conversation face to face or on the telephone, or at a sales meeting or networking. It's the conversation that you put across when you're landing on somebody's website. I can build a website there too, although I do miss my Weebly account. That was so much easier. It is. It's one of those things, isn't it, that you've got to kind of be aware of all the other things that go on to be able to bring it together and to have that curiosity. It all comes back to curiosity, doesn't it?
{( speakerName('B') )}
To be a lifelong learner. And I think you probably picked us up from other podcasts or my book or things like that, but I just have my wedding anniversary. I've been married for many years now, 28 years, to a psychologist. And so I joke that I have in house counsel about this. But one of the things I learned years ago from him is that there's this research on personality which people call the Big Five, and it's known by the Ocean acronym, so Openness, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness OCE Extraversion Introversion Agreeableness and Neuroticism. One thing I've realised about myself, Wendy, is that openness, which I think is about openness to ideas as well as learning, not insisting on being right and being open to literally discoveries that are being made, is really high value of mine. It's a really high value. And I'm attracted to people who I perceive are that way. And I don't want to work with people who are not open because you're just beating your head against the wall. But I would say, of course, no consultant really wants to do that, right? No one wants to step into working with someone who doesn't really want to change. But I think it's a particular high value. Like, it really gets under my skin when I find out that someone actually is quite fixed and is perfectly content with where they are, and is not on a journey in every respect to get better and keep learning. I don't understand that. It's a value of mine.
{( speakerName('A') )}
I understand 150% where you're coming from, Catherine, because for me, life is experiential. So if you're not here to make every day count like a conversation, then what are we doing?
{( speakerName('A') )}
What's the point? What is the point? And like you, I invested a long time ago, I think 2018, and because I fell into sales and I've been trained as I've gone, corporate training schemes and this sort of thing. So no real formal education, just the Sandler way or a bit of this way, and a bit of whoever owed the director a favor. And I went back to school. I did open classes to get myself NVQ three in customer service and did it. And the tutor said, well, you've done it in record time. You've got a distinction. What's next? And I was like, oh, no, I've now realised I didn't need to do it. But it was that self doubt, because you compare yourself with other people and what they're doing, and you think, probably if I was to get that, then that would be better. It didn't really make any difference other than to sort of tell myself, you're as good as you think you are.
{( speakerName('B') )}
And I would say that it did make a difference and it was valuable because it was valuable to you. It reminds me of I have a friend who has a coaching business, and she would say the same thing. She would say, in retrospect, she probably didn't need to do... she didn't learn that many more skills by going and getting this official coaching certification that she got. Not to say that coaching certifications are not a good thing. I think they are. In her case, she'd probably say she could have read two or three books, gotten some of those great questions I use all the time, and nobody's hiring her in her particular field she knows because of that particular certification and was very important to her to do it, because there was something about getting that addressed, that impostor syndrome, and helped her fully step into her business. And so she would say it was worth it, but not for the reason she got it.
{( speakerName('A') )}
That's always the interesting part, isn't it? The beliefs that we have of ourselves as to why we go about doing certain things.
{( speakerName('A') )}
So, Catherine, I know that the company name is "Extra Bold". And I love that because we've had Fred Joyal on who is super bold. So there's some alignment there, I'm sure, in terms of techniques. And the way that I describe how I help people is traditional framework with intuition and it's fairly holistic. And yet you say the psychology really must be thanks to living and breathing it all the time as well at home must really help.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Yes.
{( speakerName('A') )}
We are dealing with people, aren't we? Always.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Yeah. I'd like to say for your listeners, when I'm saying talk about the psychology of selling, I mean mostly for you as the seller. And there's a lot of wonderful people that talk about how people receive information and how to position yourself for optimal receptivity on their part, how to name your price, how to negotiate, things like that. Those are all important other things. What I realised a few years ago is I kept saying, I teach the psychology of selling. I teach the psychology of selling. And it was a client who had already bought a number of things from me who came to me and said, you remember in the Princess Bride movie when they said, I do not think that this means what you think it means.
{( speakerName('B') )}
When you say psychology of selling, Catherine, you mean to the seller. And I was like, of course. That's what I mean. He said, you need to say that because that is a differentiation. Because most of my work, training, coaching, speaking, is about beliefs about sales. This is going to sound funny, I have a little bit of mixed feelings about my own company name because I think if a person is a gridded out sort of kind of person, they could hear 'extra bold sales' and they could think, she's going to tell me to power through. And that's actually not what I say. I believe we look first at what we think selling is by definition and what we think we deserve to enjoy as a person. And when we get those things aligned, then we are able to take steps which previously felt too scary, but we have to do that belief work and that's where the psychology part comes in. Does that make sense?
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it is about the mindset and setting yourself up for why am I doing this? And if I'm going to do this, how am I going to do it so that I actually feel good about myself?
{( speakerName('B') )}
Yes, because my research shows that both business owners as well as the full time sales professionals they hire all, when polled anonymously, all will reveal that they feel that the sales profession is pushy and a little bit embarrassing and they are concerned about how they will be perceived in the sales process. And I knew that would be true of the owner seller because entrepreneurs don't start businesses to be the seller. They can't wait till they can hire a seller. But the part that was very surprising to me and to me, important work as a contribution in the body of kind of what we know about sales now is that you can't build a team where you don't have some of this reluctance inside the team of people who volunteered and took this job of fulltime sales because there's bad actors out there. We all know that stereotype. We all want to be perceived as a good human. And so that disconnect between, gosh, I really think my product helps people, but I don't want them to think I'm being too pushy. That dissonance. I believe almost everyone struggles with it. The question is, does it rear its head at your outreach, number one, number two, number three, number four, or number eight? Most people, even that reluctant owner seller who is selling for their own product or service, for their own small, medium sized business, they'll send an email, make a call, and then they'll stop. And for sales professionals, they might be able to do three or four times. But I know you teach telemarketing. And I think people who really don't experience dissonance and who can do the seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve times stretched out, that's actually a very rare person because of those beliefs and that dissonance that comes up in their own brain.
{( speakerName('A') )}
It's vital for me at the very onset of anybody that I'm working with is to say to them, look, out of one hundred calls you're going to make in a day, it's highly likely you're only going to speak to five of them. And what I'm telling you is when you do get that first conversation, I do not expect you to sell them anything. And that's the point, is that everybody is going on about the sales and the close. And yet it's more important to me to make a great first impression, to build on that relationship and timing. Because as we know, when we're dealing with projects, things change, stuff happens. Real life gets in the way. The boss goes on holiday and hasn't signed off the purchase order. Any number of things can happen. So it's about setting out the expectation that you have first and foremost to be able to manage that.
{( speakerName('B') )}
And I think because I ran a telemarketing cold calling company for a long time, these words were clear in my mind. But again, sort of like when you say psychology of sales, what do you mean? One of the things I've come to realise is that for that small business sales team, let's say there's five reps and they sell consulting services of some kind. So that company might be doing $20 million in revenue. They're not huge and it's not a worldwide salesforce, something like that. One of the things that I find interesting with you is that because of that cold calling background in my mind, there's a differentiation between what I call revenue generating activities, which is making the hundred calls for the purpose of setting up another meeting, versus the holding of those calls. So that's what I do, is I differentiate on my calendar. We might have a podcast time interview scheduled. I might have call number two or three scheduled with a corporate client where I'm hoping to work with their sales team and we're having our next conversation. Or we're going to review the two proposal options I gave him or her. That's a sales call, but that's not the time in my calendar. I have a separate time that I call my RGA time, which is my outreach. And this differentiation helps me so much because where most people struggle is not the holding of the call, it's to do enough to keep their pipeline full. So if you can get some self mastery over, what am I believing, what story am I making up here? Why am I not doing this work? If you can master that part, that's where I think small, medium sized business, that's where it thrives or dies. Because people's businesses don't typically shut down because they didn't have a good idea. It's because they didn't have the sales.
{( speakerName('A') )}
No, I'm with you 100%, Catherine. And when you're talking about a team, you've likely got different people with subtle differences in role as well. You've got those that are heavily making the calls, and then you've got the salesman that's going or woman that's going out to do the meetings that will still have to make a certain amount of calls for their KPIs. But where I see a disconnect sometimes because I'm dealing with the high volumes is when the results are not coming from who they're sending. So they then don't perform quite as well as they should be because they don't put as much effort in, because they've already decided that they're not going to get anything back for it. And then the salesperson is going out and going, well, I haven't really had as many good meetings, so I'm not going to sell as much. And then they sell less. And that's where the discord can really set in. And like you say, how many of us sat at school with a career's advisor? And when I'm going to go into sales, when I leave.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Doesn't every guest you have say they fell into it? I think we all feel like we fell into it. I've asked people in workshops before. The only people who will say that they chose sales voluntarily, typically among my clientele are people who were second generation in a family business. Like they grew up with entrepreneurs, and they realised they were going to take that on and that selling was going to be part of the job. Having a few of my clients that pop in my brain, as I say that.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yeah that sort of mirroring, isn't it?
{( speakerName('B') )}
Most of the time, most of the time they fell into it in some way. I came by way of recruiting because when I graduated university, I had been studying to be a professional musician, and I realised I didn't want to do that professionally. And I was taking all these temporary jobs. And I watched people who I now understand are corporate recruiters, I watched these people who were doing interviews with me, and I thought, someone's job to interview people. That's so interesting, I could do that. And so I took an entry level recruiting position. And when I got in with a bigger consulting firm, I was able to migrate from recruiting to having a sales territory to sell consulting services. That's how I came in, because I was able to make the argument, well, I know you've never promoted a recruiter into selling, but I have exceeded my numbers and I think there are a lot of the same principles and I'd like to learn this job. So I was able to make that transition. I did not start out looking for it because I know going all the way back to my childhood, my parents had a low view of sellers. They would joke about it. They didn't even want me selling my candy for a fundraiser, for my extracurricular activities for school, because it's embarrassing to bother the neighbors. So I definitely would not have pursued sales on purpose with their blessing, because I grew up thinking that was a dishonorable and embarrassing profession.
{( speakerName('A') )}
So what would your opinion be? Because I know this divides people sometimes, Catherine, to my mind, because there are so many different personality types, there are some that just seem to have this natural ability, don't they? And then others need to learn it or hone skills and perhaps just be a bit more conscious about certain things. In your observations, because I'm not sure if there is really any study on this. So you can perhaps enlighten me. Who makes for the better sales people? Those with the natural ability that kind of fly by the seat of their pants, or those that really hone the skill and really have to... not try hard... because I don't believe in trying as such. I think you've got to do or not. What's your thoughts?
{( speakerName('B') )}
I haven't actually been asked that question in exactly that way before. So I think it's a very interesting question. If I'm understanding what you're saying, I think I'll fall on the line of saying..
{( speakerName('A') )}
it depends.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Well, I think I'll take aside I think I'm going to say anyone who wants to become great at a craft and a profession needs to practice. So it goes back to that earlier point we're making about being open, constantly refining and testing ideas. So I don't think winging it. Although there might be some aspects of developing relationships that are easier for some people than others. I don't think when it gets down to how many calls to make and understanding my KPIs and managing myself and running a call so that my prospect talks most of the time and I don't do most of the talking because we need them to talk so we understand whether we can be helpful and they feel connected to us. Those things take practice and so I'm going to fall on the practice side. The question that often comes up in conversations that is similar to what you're saying but not exactly what you're saying that might still be interesting to your listeners is that sort of introversion extroversion question. And I think people who are more extroverted are attracted to it but don't necessarily make the best sellers because they talk too much. And I am definitely let's say you have the introversion extraversion scale. I think I was born quite far over on the extroverted scale and by having a family of introverts and learning to be a better seller, I've moved over. So if your listeners can't see us, I'm moving my hands together to the middle. I moved over so I'm definitely right of centre, but not as much as I probably was when I was born. And I have to practice on every single call not to dominate the sales call, to have questions that are thoughtful, thought provoking and just shut my mouth because I wake up with a lot of words and I get excited and I want to jump in and add to what they're saying, which is why conversations like this are so fun. That is not appropriate in my opinion. That is not appropriate on a sales call. That is selfish and it doesn't get you even what you want as a seller, which is information. You need information to understand if you can actually be of help. And I think the introverts have the advantage in this way because if they can learn to manage their own nerves and to have some good go back to questions in a framework, they are not anxious to fill in the gaps and they're more comfortable with silence and they can draw people out. And I think that's an interesting advantage that people don't often associate with sellers.
{( speakerName('A') )}
I think the same. That introversion. I've got this self opinion on introversion and extroversion and for me it's about energy. You're either all in or not. You're more withdrawn. But I do think that when you reserve those energy tanks that it becomes a more measured approach. And that, I think, is where it leans into the active listening that maybe the people that they're in conversation with won't realise. That is a natural selling trap. The extroverts, they're just too quick to pull the trigger on, aren't they?
{( speakerName('B') )}
Because we can't wait to have the next thing we're going to say.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yeah, it's that enthusiasm of finishing sentences because your anticipation levels are high and you know exactly what's going to come next. But it can give the impression of being too hurried and aggressive, can't it? So you do have to temper your approach.
{( speakerName('B') )}
During Covid, I started hosting rooms and following different people around. Social Audio apps. I don't even know all the names anymore, but Social Audio, when I say that, I mean there's a face and some of the apps have a group chat where people type, but there's no video. You don't see anyone. And so the way you run a room when you only have audio felt to me like, this must be what it's like to run a radio talk show where someone calls in and you don't know what they're going to say. You give them a chance to speak and then you have to decide how to manage it. But what I observed and learned that I brought to my zoom calls, I brought to sales calls, I brought to speaking on stages, things like that, is that the best people who run rooms are measured and their use of silence is strategic. And I literally found people to follow whom I thought were amazing facilitators so I could listen and watch what are they doing? What are they doing that makes them so good? And it made me talk more slowly, made me let there be more space between people. Clarifying, constantly clarifying. Are we going in order or is anyone free to unmute at this point? Just jump in, staying ahead and being clear with those directions. I have learned a ton. It has been a great experience for me because it was a different kind of facilitation than sales calls or what you have in person when you have those visual cues. And I loved it. It was a wonderful learning opportunity for me, that was an unexpected pleasure that came out of a difficult time because it was just kind of such a time as this kind of experience. Like, who knew that tech would come out at that time and emerge and then it would help connect people and feel so timely in such an interesting way to learn during a time when we were stuck at home.
{( speakerName('A') )}
The acceleration of connectiveness has been phenomenal, hasn't it? And what I love about audio only is I think that we only have our ears as that tool for a filter. You really can tell whether somebody is genuine, sincere, authentic, all of those things. So you know, you can spot a red herring a mile off. It's what you get when you listen and you want good quality to listen to. You can forgive it if you can hear a richness of character that comes through in somebody's tone of voice.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Like. you can sense motives sometimes with audio in a way that the multisensory visual of video... it's in your way because someone might look when someone.. they might be nodding or doing some of the right things that act like they're with you but they're not really with you. But audio is a unique thing. I agree.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yeah, I was talking about this the other day when you're on stage and you're speaking and you see this vast sea of faces and there's kind of deadpan looks, because you're delivering something that's thought provoking. You're getting them to really sort of cast their own minds back into their own experiences and draw on what they know themselves. And it's just nothing like stand up comedy where people are interacting physically by laughing or hands moving, nodding heads or whatever. So when you're educating and truly educating, all you see as the speaker are these really stony faced expressions and you go, oh, my goodness, is this going well or not? I can't tell. And it's a good sign, let's just tell you now, if you get that sea of faces that you can't read their expressions, they're thinking. They're seriously doing what you've asked them to do. But it's right. Having to just interpret cues can be really difficult. So if you can cut the noise in lots of ways, that's where I think learning by podcast, having conversations by telephone without the distraction can really work to your advantage.
{( speakerName('B') )}
And good for us that we're encouraging people to go back and use the phone because we have a whole nother generation that that novel approach, which is really an old approach, could give them this competitive advantage. I have some good friends from university and all of our children are graduation age now, coming out of university, taking their first or second job out of college. And these friends were telling me about their daughter, who has her first job in sales for a tech company here in Texas, and her ability to relationship build and just chat on the phone. As a 22 year old. She's working for a large tech company whose name you would recognise and they track everything. So they know that her actual number of calls a day are lower than her colleagues, but her sales are significantly higher and she seems to be able to be building real rapport, go deeper and sell more in each transaction, in each conversation, I should say. And I think, knowing what I know about her parents, she was a child who was made to answer the phone, speak to people she didn't know, practice getting comfortable, and so she is using what we grew up with as our norm. This is her competitive advantage now. Her comfort level coming back full circle, which I think is cool.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Yeah, it only goes out of fashion for so long, doesn't it, Catherine?
{( speakerName('B') )}
Just like everything. Exactly.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Kind of brings us to the part of the show where I always ask every guest about that one conversation that changed your life either personally or in business. So. Over to you, Catherine.
{( speakerName('B') )}
There's so many that you could choose from. I have one that was a conversation of rejection and what I made that rejection mean and what it means to me now. So quick background on it. When I had my business to business telemarketing firm, which I had for 17 years, I developed strategic partnership relationships with a number of other kinds of firms. So if you were a management consulting firm, you would get in there and see when people needed sales calling help, so they would send me business. Or if you were a PR firm, people who might come to you for PR, you would say, you know, I'd love to sell your public relations help, but really you need more sales people. So I was constantly getting referrals, which was part of my strategy for my own selling right, was that people would make warm introductions for me and say, you can trust her and her team of sales callers, because that's a real as you know, it's a real thing to trust someone to sell for you. Well, there was a partner that I had who gave me so many referrals, and we did so much work together, back and forth of helping one another that we began to have conversations about actually merging our businesses. Or probably she was bigger than I was. Probably my vision was that she would buy me out in some way and that we would come together. And we had several conversations about this, and this was years ago, and I was really excited about that direction. And I got as far as getting a consultant to help me to put my books together, to really look at what evaluation would look like, and started going down this conversation path. And she ended up bringing in some advisors on her side who looked at my books, who looked at what they offered, what I offered, what I said I wanted, what she said she wanted. And in the end, this partner decided not to go forward. And I don't want the partner to be embarrassed if they hear the podcast. So I'm going to be a little bit vague about it out of respect for them. But there was a conversation that really stands out in my mind. The way I remember it. That really felt very painful because I came away from that conversation feeling like they just didn't perceive there'd be enough value to them by going forward. And that might not be what they said at all. I think what we've all learned with relationships, with people is what sticks with us sometimes has to do with us.
{( speakerName('A') )}
The story we tell ourselves.
{( speakerName('B') )}
That's right. It's not what they say, it's what we think they said based on the filter that comes in. So truly, Wendy, I don't know anymore because it was so many years ago, I don't know what was really said because I cannot possibly remember it objectively, but what I took from it was, we don't want to go forward. This isn't a good fit for us and this isn't valuable enough to us. And so I was just really crushed. And I look back now, I think probably disproportionately crushed. It was fine. I ended up regrouping and looking at what I really wanted and deciding what the next evolution of my business would look like. And it worked out great. It worked out fine. It was very painful at the time because that conversation and the way I received the words felt like a rejection. And I look back now and I think I did not trust myself and my own intuition and I was really kind of looking for a rescue of what my next version of my business would look like. I kind of created a story like if I go this direction, it will look like I've had a successful exit and then I'll have a partner and then it'll all turn out right. And really under a lot of it. I was a little bit unsure about what to do next. I felt insecure as a leader, so I was particularly crushed when it didn't work out because it forced me to have this land in my lap and say, you have a business with people reporting to you. What are you going to do? Do you want to keep it? Do you not want to keep it? What is the next iteration look like? That was a painful business conversation to be rejected, to get pretty far down a possible merger acquisition conversation and then have them say that they didn't want to go forward. It really stung at the time. But the lessons I took from that were that I learned for myself that I will often go look for a partner or look for someone that way because I feel scared. Because I feel nervous and so for me to invest in myself. To be a leader. To trust my own intuition. To get coaching. To get help. To ask for what I need to grow in the direction I need. I was forced to do that in that moment and I look back now and think I don't think I was crazy for thinking we would be good partners. We shared a lot of the same clients so I know it was not a bad idea, it just wasn't the right thing for them at that time and so for me to reframe that story and say what can I take from that? And recognize that that was really a gift because it revealed some things in my own personal professional development that I needed to work on. That's what I take from it now and I don't have any hard feelings and I see these great lessons that came from it even though it was somewhat painful.
{( speakerName('A') )}
No similar situation has arisen for me in the past where it's those growing pains, isn't it, that you have, and it can feel quite crushing but actually what you do take away is I am enough whilst I need to be bigger, bolder, stronger, whatever that adjective is the root cause of all of those things is you, isn't it?
{( speakerName('B') )}
Yes and that you realise that everyone that you perceive who is so successful you realise they have advisors, they have strengths and weaknesses, they have things they do that scare them, they have things that are hard for them, they have ways, they need help, it's just so easy and we can blame social media if we want, right? People put their best foot forward, they put themselves out there. I certainly try to put a good face out there that's attractive. That will make people want to work with me and the reality is that everybody are people who have these issues and insecurities and these painful experiences will show you what's really there and if you can learn from them then it was not a failure and you can grow and that kind of comes full circle to our earlier part of our conversation is that what can I take from it so that I go forward in my life and work on the areas that need attention to be the leader I want to be. And it was a little bit embarrassing and painful at the time and I really can think of them so fondly and say thank you for that experience now because enough time has passed.
{( speakerName('A') )}
That's the benefit of hindsight, isn't it? Looking back and going if that hadn't happened, this wouldn't have happened.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Because it really came out of my continuance of that was fairly early in my telemarketing business life and so I invested a number of more years in that business and it was actually the repeat things I learned from the clients that made me realise there is a gap in sales training material out there. No one is talking about beliefs as much as I think they should. Every client says, I just need more leads. If you get me in front of more people, I'll be fine. It's not true. And I needed more time to become convinced of those things. So that when I decided that I wanted to take a pivot in a different direction and focus more on training. I had such rich experiences that led to that. That built my confidence for me to say, there is an opportunity here. I can run a study, I can do the research, I can write the book, and I can show that this is a gap. And I probably needed, whatever it was another eight or ten years. I needed that for me to be where I am now. And I could never have foreseen that. I literally live in a different city. I love speaking at conferences. I've never done those things before. Those things all came later.
{( speakerName('A') )}
It's the different opportunities that spur off one idea, isn't it? And the seeds that you sow. I mean, I don't know about you, Catherine, but I just see that we're exactly where we're meant to be right now. And I always say this to listeners is that if something just feels off, take a good look and see what that is. See if you can identify it. Because change is really in your control and nobody else's.
{( speakerName('B') )}
Yes. And you can be 100% responsible and accountable for yourself. And learning to do that and learning how to listen and when to listen, I think that's part of the journey. Some people weren't trained to do that and were told they couldn't trust themselves and so they have to learn to do that. I love to talk about all of these things, so I really particularly, Wendy, appreciate that question you ask at the end. It was a fun reflection to think what have been significant conversations that were a turning point for me. And so I really love how you run the podcast and I'm so glad that you asked me to be a guest. Thank you.
{( speakerName('A') )}
Thank you, Catherine. You're just giving me goosebumps.
{( speakerName('B') )}
It's really cool. I think your whole structure and energy for it is really cool. Thank you.
{( speakerName('A') )}
It's been my pleasure, honestly, because I do watch what you're doing and I just think that it's fantastic. So when you reach out, listeners, please say Wendywoo sent you.