Aug. 4, 2026

How to Rise Through the Ranks in Sales and Leadership

Show Notes
Transcript

Former corporate executive Holly Parsons shares her journey through sales, leadership, and professional reinvention. Discover how to build credibility and trust, grow from strong performance into leadership, communicate with confidence, navigate workplace dynamics, and develop resilience and adaptability. Holly also explores when it’s time to reinvent your career and pursue a new direction, offering practical lessons for professionals seeking lasting success and growth.

Beyond Confidence is broadcast live Tuesdays at 10AM ET on W4WN Radio - Women 4 Women Network (www.w4wn.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). Beyond Confidence TV Show is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).

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The topics and opinions expressed on the following show are

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solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not

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This is Beyond Confidence with your host w Park. Do

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you want to live a more fulfilling life? Do you

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want to live your legacy and achieve your personal, professional,

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and financial goals?

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Well?

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Coming up on dvoparks Beyond Confidence, you will hear real

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stories of leaders, entrepreneurs, and achievers who have stepped into discomfort,

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shattered their status quo, and are living the life they want.

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You will learn how relationships are the key to achieving

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your aspirations and financial goals. Moving your career business forward

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does not have to happen at the expense of your

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personal or family life or vice versa. Learn more at WWWA.

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You don't divpark dot com and you can connect with

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div ats contact dants divpark dot com. This is beyond

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confidence and now here's your host, div Park.

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Good morning listeners. Of course it's Tuesday, and I love

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being here, so I want to ask you a question.

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You may be thinking, I'm too late in joining the

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AI bandwagon, and here's what I'll tell you. It's never

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too late. So if you're thinking about that, and if

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you have that fear, it is super important that you

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take that fear and just let it out because yeah

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is still not very supposed to be. Yes, it is

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a nowaday today lives and if you have any qualms

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or any questions about it, I invite you to get

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my book, The AI Agency, and it will help you

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get situated in a way which is grounding and getting

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you ahead of the game. So thank you, thank you,

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Thank you to each and every one of you who

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have got our box and supported us in our venture

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of supporting other entrepreneurs through keywo dot org. We appreciate you,

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and if you have not got, we'll appreciate if you

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can get one of our books and support us. So

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let's bring in our guests. Good morning, Welcome, Holly Oh

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it's a pleasure to have you. And here's a question,

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what would you say one or two are remarkable moments

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of your life where either it was someone or a

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situation or an insight that left a positive mark on you.

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I would say that I have a couple.

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But once you know what I did with my life,

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it makes a little more sense why they're meaningful. But

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at the age of three, I established a core competency,

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actually because I witnessed my mother in a transaction with

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a couple of girl Scouts at the front door when

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I was three, and proceeded to go next door the

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next day in my pajamas with no product, ring the

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doorbell and proceed to try and sell girl Scout cookies

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and get paid. So nobody noticed that what that really meant.

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But I have to laugh now. Another thing that occurred

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was my family drove across country like four times in

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four years, and my mother sat in the back seat

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with a toddler and a new baby, and I sat

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in the front seat and I navigated.

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So from the age of ten.

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I was reading the map and telling my dad what

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highway to take next, and eating all the signs going

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across country, And it really established a sense of how

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big the US is and how to map out a journey,

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also formative. And just one more thing was we visited

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the World's Fair when I was twelve and he was

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an executive.

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My dad was an executive with.

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General Electric's computer division, and they had a profound pavilion

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at the World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York. So

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it was, you know, this geodesic dome that showed the

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kitchen of the past from eighteen ninety to the present

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with all the ge equipment, and there was sixty cultural

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pavilions from sixty different countries, and it just blew my mind.

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And I even saw the Michelangelo's the Pieda, and the

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Vatican brought oodles of Renaissance paintings.

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I mean, it was mind boggling.

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So my world went from the US is big to

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the world is big and interesting, and a great verb

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for and joy for cultural anthropology formed in me.

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So those were the three things that I could say

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were really helpful.

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Yeah, it sounds like you've had as very, very remarkable

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moments that shaped your life. And even to the extent

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I love the story, of course about a girl scout.

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It is so cute. I can imagine seeing that little

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one going and just knocking on the door and shipping

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her career.

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Yeah, so would you like me to just go on?

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Well, so as you continued, pardon me, as you continued

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in your life journey.

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I really felt like I was an emotional emotionally abused

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it by the time I was seventeen.

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And I.

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Left home and leapt off a cliff of sheltered privilege

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and landed straight in the ocean of patriarchy, you know,

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which was pretty eating. But I studied for a year

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with a zen master and it has been the formative

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foundation for my life ever since. That studying was you know, irreplaceable.

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And because I became pregnant, I had to leave college,

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but that was freeing because I was intolerant of structured

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curriculums and linear learning models.

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I just didn't like it.

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So I traveled the South Pacific with my son for

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seven years and ended up in New Zealand and in

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Fiji and worked in journalism there and managed merchandise manager

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for a chain of bookstores, and finally came and married

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there and had a beautiful daughter, and then moved back

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to the States, where ironically I took a position as

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an administrator for a chain, a brand new chain of

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computer stores that were opening the month the IBM PC

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hit the market, and that company was called business Land,

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you may remember.

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They went national.

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Eventually they had one hundred and three stores coast to coast,

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and I moved from ad as administrator for one of

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the branches to into sales fairly quickly, and then into

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executive account and corporate account management and what was the

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silicone desert h So that launched me on a journey

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in a business that I profoundly sort of understood because

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of my father's profession. Although it was you know, osmosis.

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I guess, so I.

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My stock, you know.

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Two years later there was a management malfeasance that occurred

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where IBM had released the Seagate drives as moving from

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two floppy drives doing it hard drives, and they all

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failed nationwide. They withdrew the product. I had three hundred

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thousand dollars in pos for Motorola and they couldn't deliver product.

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But the manager wanted to take the account direct and

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not pay any commission to me and began harassing me.

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So I left and.

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I went over to Computer Lands, major account division, and

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I moved all my business with me to Computer Lands.

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Major account division continued to you know.

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Excel and became sort of head hunted out by nine

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X Business Information Systems Group, and moved my business book

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of business again to nine X, where I continue.

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To fulfill on Motorola Dial Corp. Codex.

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And so this is tech to tech sales. Okay, my

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clients are all tech and.

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And sales is sales doesn't matter true, And it's here's

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the thing that you are in a very competitive environment

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because sales even today have got several clients from the

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sales like you know, the leadership executives and all that.

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But it is very competitive, especially if you're trying to

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get on the leaderboard and all that. So even in

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that competitive environment, what are some of the ways if

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our listeners are thinking, what is the way to like

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build that credibility and trust?

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Well, I the actually the only advantage I had was

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that women are trusted more than men in business, so

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I leveraged that. I also threw away the corporate playbook

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that was fostered down my throat at sales meetings every week,

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including the quota. I just I didn't allow it to

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you know, we know, we live in a world that

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teaches women and men that they're not entitled to creative agency,

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and yet I was would not be stopped, and I

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applied my own creative agency to the to the relationship

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building with corporate executives and the delivery. So one of

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the things I did was I would assess their divisional

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five year goals with my clients and design a staged approach.

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No this, this strategy.

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Inevitably would lead to five years of sales because I

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would write the map for them to attain their goals,

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and then I would fulfill on delivering and training, equipment, hardware, software,

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maintenance agreements, everything to grow the business to support it

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because you know, in my view, it's always an intangible

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You may think you're selling a widget or a thing,

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but what we're really offering is an intangible solution, an

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intangible feeling and experience, and using hardware and in this

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case software to offer intelligence in ways corporations were not

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able to to search and report. Get it coming off

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a main screen, a main you know, a mini or

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a mainframe computer that this distributed networking that I installed

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gave them software that they just never saw before. So

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they could use dBase three, they could use it Excel

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Lotus one, two three. In the early days, they had

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word processing and they and I had to know more

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than the engineers that I that were my clients. I'd

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be smarter than they were. And I had and I studied.

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I loved the business, so I read, I read everything,

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and I had to establish my position as knowing more

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than they did early on, or they were just oh

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it's a woman, and so I did that really good.

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I got really good at doing that right away.

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So what's standing out for me, Holly, is that how

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you asked them for what was their five year plan.

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You invested in the client's vision, you invested in what

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were their means, and you sat down and created that

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roadmap that would help them be successful over those five years.

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So it sounds like very much that it was a

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win win situation because you mapped out the charter for them,

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they could see, oh, yeah, you know here, we can

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be here in five years. But then I need Holly structure,

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I need Holly software, maintenance, whatever is needed. So that's

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marrying the two in a beautiful way where both are

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complementing each other.

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I think my peers were basically in it for themselves.

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Mostly they were solving the immediate problem and not looking beyond.

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And that's where I lived.

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I lived in the beyond, and the clients came to

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know that, so you know, it was heady. And I

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for ten years did that for nine X Business Information

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Systems Group, and I actually penetrated IBM's stranglehold on academic

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sales two universities and the huge Maricopa County Community college

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district I penetrated. I took all the business from IBM

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in two universities and one community college district with ten campuses.

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So then I was really more or less viewed as

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a technology executive and enterprise account operator with an incredible

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amount of channel growth. And because the clients moved with

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me from business land to computer land to nine X,

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and then I expanded the territory with higher education, IBM

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came to me and said offered me a job as

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a marketing consultant, which is the highest position they offer

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to anybody, to help them recapture a market I had

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taken from them because of their arrogance. Now granted, they

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were endowing these colleges with money with grants to buy

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and place place, you know, these enormous networks into computer

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labs for staff as well as you know the sixty

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thousand students at ASU.

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So that was gratifying.

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I was kind of a ninja in this field, quite frankly,

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and that I was kind of exhausted to.

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So let's talk about that exhaustion, because so many times

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what happens is that, as you mentioned, you looked beyond

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and the immediate problems. What were some of the areas

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that you know that you were pushing yourself that created

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that exhaustion.

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Well, I was the only woman I knew in Phoenix

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that was working at this level that had children. Everyone

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else was either single or married, so I was trying

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to manage a family at the same time. That was

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exhausting and overcoming. Some of the bullying also became exhausting,

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and I was really really tired. I actually developed epstein

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bar virus, where once it was identified, I think I

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slept for three months and just let it go.

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Just I just let it go basically for.

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About a year, and then I went back in as

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director of sales and marketing for a boutique small company

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that you know, installed the brand new Cisco routers that

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really expanded enterprise processing. I managed their warehouse where they

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did cabling and large accounts like Franklin Covey. I brought

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in and sports division, and you know, I worked again,

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and then I was also headhunted out by ess Connect

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after nine to eleven was developing a software language that

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married the silos between emergency services, police courts. Everything that

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nine to eleven revealed in terms of an inability for

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you know, cities and towns and states.

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To communicate between one another. So that was.

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Very rewarding time for me, and you know, here to

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myself about how I did that. You know, I really

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just kept moving forward. So it's it's been an exciting time.

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I have to say, I don't think we we really

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know how difficult things are to we get the other

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side of it and look back and go how did

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I do that? Do you know? So I probably had

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a lifetime career for a litt of one hundred and

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fifty six million been estimated. I was definitely one of

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the leaders in tech in Arizona, so very gratifying, very exhausting,

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huge amount of skills involved, and so I inevitably started

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a little marketing company where I wrote website content for

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small businesses and collected a bunch of designers and programmers

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and you know, we acted as a collaborative group and

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went into companies and and I just project managed it.

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And that was rewarding too. But finally I became really

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frustrated with my life and bored and too domestic. And

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I was about fifty six, and I'm like, what is

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mine to do? You know, I've been putting everybody else's

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world first and creating all this opportunity out there wherever

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I could, And what is mine to do? And that's

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when I had an epiphany that led me to start

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writing poetry m HM. And I learned the poetry was

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pretty much around the circumstances women experience societally.

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So that was your let out. And while during the years,

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if you were to rewind it back, how would you say,

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did you do you feel that you had lost your

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sense of self during those years?

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No, I would say that.

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My sense of self was defined by a channel management.

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Process where.

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You know, I was just way out front in my

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thinking all the time, and I was way you know,

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I was just not like I.

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Had lived in Fiji. It's peaceful. I loved it.

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It's so.

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Humanly, you know, it supports human development to be in

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a peaceful setting. I came back to the States, I

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was like, oh, this is like anti human this lifestyle,

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and I dove right into it. So I've had to

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sort of unravel a personality that drove that that developed

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along the lines that.

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There are a lot of people. You know, there are

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times when you can reinvent your career, and at times

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you have to stay in the corporate or wherever in

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the situation where you're at. I mean, of course there's

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always a choice, but sometimes the choice a dictated by

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family and circumstances. So what would you say to our

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audience how to preserve their sense of self during those years?

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More personal time, more downtime, meditation, turning everything off, stopping, deconstructing.

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I believe that our creativity really flows in, and that's

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what happened. I deconstructed when I was so frustrated. I

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deconstructed my life radically, and then waited with that question,

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what is mine to do? If anyone's listening? As I

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spoke to the ceiling of my office, I need you

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to bring it now, and I won't be moving till

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you do. So I employed the spirit world if.

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You like the universe too.

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Because I had witnessed this industry grow, at least from

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the PC side, from the beginning, and I was very

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aware that we were connecting humanity together by wiring before

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we got our sense of.

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Sort of intuitive.

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Knowing working better, and that all of these engineers I

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worked with were born in with this capacity to do

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this work, to program drips and drops of data in

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the form of you know, zeros and ones electronically from

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machine language up into software into cobol into you know,

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what we have today is what we have today in

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AI is simply a sophisticated database with a lot of

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algorithms buried in it. Yeah, it's no different than dBase

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was thirty years ago.

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What I'm hearing is like unplugging and deconstructing while you're

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in the pick and pin of it. So it's not

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that like, you know, I'll go and relax somewhere in

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the future in my life. It could be like vacation.

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It has to be built every day in and day out.

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And you mentioned that you had several successes in your

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executive life, So what can people do to move into

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leadership while building those relationships that are meaningful and creating influence.

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Of you know, the most important thing is to operate

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from the golden rule. You will never step out of

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your integrity. You will never offer something to someone knowing

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that you would not offer it to yourself. You will

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not hide bury revenue streams one inside another. You will

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everything is transparent. I worked at that level. There was

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no there was just nothing that was out of integrity

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in the work that I did and the men that

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I worked with.

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For them, it was just a game.

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And it was constantly, you know, watching them step on

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their own foot all the time because they were manipulative.

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And so my word to my clients was my bond.

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They knew it, I knew it. Everything was you know,

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clear commitment to excellence and communication, communicating. Everything was was

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these these are essential. And when my father gave me

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a bunch of stuff from General Electric that he had

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been given in the early years of his career, Generally

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Electrics ethos and mission statement was exactly this same kind

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of That's what they were training their their people to

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operate from. I worked outside the model every and and

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I beat the system. You know, I ignored driving aggression.

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I would absolutely not exercise driving aggression. But I could

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and I have capacity to have like a invisible force

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field around me so that when I would be challenged,

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which happened all the time regularly, at least the way

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I think. Again, I think, you know, I just wasn't

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going to have it. So I think that's really important

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to have that strong boundary of you know who you

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are and how you operate, and that no one can

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challenge and if they do, you'll leave or you'll fight it.

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I fought it at business Land when that situation occurred.

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I wrote to the corporate director, but he didn't care.

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He didn't care that.

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He had a salesperson whose manager wanted to take a

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huge account direct He didn't care.

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So I left.

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And sometimes we have to make these very hard decisions,

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but I think it pays off.

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In the end.

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I believe there is a huge bank account of positive

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energy that we deposit into and that we can draw from.

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Yeah, and I really love what you said about that transparency.

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So two things are aligning with me. One is you

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maintained who you are, the core integrity of who Holly is,

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and if it came to challenging situations that your values

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were not aligned in the direction of your job, your career.

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You left, and it's a hard decision to make, and

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at the same time, it builds the person you are,

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It builds towards creating that regret free life as you

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look back upon it once sometimes, you know, sometimes people

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look back at their decisions quite often. And then also

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selling was not selling for you. It was like I

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00:27:01.079 --> 00:27:04.200
wouldn't offer to anyone else that I would not offer

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to myself. That is so powerful, Holly. So now coming

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back to how you re invented, you said like, okay,

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I'm going to go write poetry. So tell us about

390
00:27:14.119 --> 00:27:18.640
your transition from the corporate world into being a poet.

391
00:27:18.920 --> 00:27:21.519
I actually, well, I had been a writer in Fiji

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and to some extent in Phoenix as well, and an editor,

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and you know, I worked in that realm, but I

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never so I never had a thought about poetry in

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my mind at all.

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How to Rise Through the Ranks in Sales and Leadership

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