Noob School - Global Ambition, Sales Mindset: Monica Seitz’s Path to Sales Success

Episode Date: May 2, 2025

On this episode of Noob School, I sit down with Monica Seitz—a sharp young professional who’s already packing a lot of experience and perspective into the early stages of her sales career. Monica grew up on a farm in Kentucky, where she spent her early years showing horses and getting her first hands-on experience with sales at horse auctions. That kind of upbringing tends to shape a person—teaching responsibility, communication, and the art of the deal long before any formal training. Monica took those early lessons with her to Furman University, where she studied Sales and got involved with the Hill Institute. Along the way, she also ran track, spent a semester abroad in Barcelona, and started carving out her path in the medical and health sales space. We talk about how shadowing her uncle—a surgeon—opened her eyes to the world of medical device sales, and why she’s now setting her sights on Australia to launch the next chapter of her career. Monica also shares some of the small but meaningful moments that helped shape her direction—including a few pieces of advice I gave her early on. She’s thoughtful, driven, and not afraid to take big swings. Whether you’re exploring a future in sales or just like hearing how real careers get built, Monica’s story is a great example of how early experiences, global exposure, and curiosity can combine into something exciting.Get your sales in rhythm with The Sterling Method: https://SterlingSales.co I'm going to be sharing my secrets on all my social channels, but if you want them all at your fingertips, start with my book, Sales for Noobs: https://amzn.to/3tiaxsL Subscribe to our newsletter today: https://bit.ly/3Ned5kL #SalesTraining #B2BSales #SalesExcellence #SalesStrategy #BusinessGrowth #SalesLeadership #SalesSuccess #SalesCoaching #SalesSkills #SalesInnovation #SalesTips #SalesPerformance #SalesTransformation #SalesTeamDevelopment #SalesMotivation #SalesEnablement #SalesGoals #SalesExpertise #SalesInsights #SalesTrends#salestrends

Today we're at podcast. I think it's 145 or so. Right around, it's 140-something. But I've got a relatively new friend, Monica Sites. Welcome, Monica. Thank you. So glad you're here. Monica, I work with a lot of different young people in training, sales training, mostly. And right across Monica, she's a senior at Furman. majored in business and marketing and wants to go into sales. And we not only working with her sales training, but also she ended up interning for us, which has been great. And I thought her story was so interesting, you know, what she's doing and kind of how she decided to do what she's doing, that it might be helpful for other people that are, you know, in college, starting to think about what they might want to do to consider her path, which was just heavy with, you know, the right courses, leadership on campus, internships, multiple internships.

You've got two right now. And then a real specific target for something that you want to do afterwards. And so we'll get into all that today, but I thought it was very impressive, and you should share that with them. So congratulations on your plan. Thank you. Thank you. So let's start with this. Where did you grow up? I grew up in a little town in Kentucky. I always say I'm from Lexington, but I'm in a little county called Woodford County. I grew up on a horse farm, so my family is really involved with the racing business with thoroughbreds. Neat, cool.

And did they make you work on the farm? Yes, definitely. So I guess not too hard at times. We all grew up riding horses and we're always helping take care of various animals we had. And then I actually started, I guess my first work experience, funny enough, would have been sales because I would go out with my dad to the horse sales. And when I was really young and couldn't, you know, kind of wasn't big enough to lead, you know, the sprightly young thoroughbreds, I would do the little cards for people that came and they'd write what horse they wanted to see

and I'd help put it into the system or when I was really little helped clean up. And then as I got older, I'd actually show the horses at the horse sales. Nice. So you'd lead them around? Lead them around and you show them in front of the people interested in. They look at their confirmation and their pedigree and if they want to buy them. Well, that's amazing. That's amazing. What's a good horse sell for? It can go up into the millions.

Really? Yeah, it depends. But you think a good horse. And then sometimes all the time, especially recently, we're seeing horses that sold for 1,000 when they were young, go up and win the derby. So it just depends, but they'll go up into the millions easily. Well, so that's interesting.

I've, I think one of the traits that, we see in people that become really successful in sales and business is that they worked, you know, when they were younger. Oddly enough, I didn't have to work too much, you know. I played basketball a lot, but I didn't do much work, but a lot of the people that we've hired over the years, you know, had the paper routes and the landscaping services and the farm, you know, you guess you get the habit of working. So, did you ever wish you didn't have to work on the farm?

No. Well, I'm sure when I was younger, getting dirty, or even having my own riding horse, I'd be like, goodness, it's just so much work. But I think it really gave me so many tools and shaped me into a lot of the person I am. And half the time, it was fun. I mean, who doesn't want to live on a farm when they're younger? So it was great. Yeah. A lot of people don't want to go But, I mean, I think I would. I think that would be pretty cool. And so while you were in high school, you were doing the horse showing, racing, horse racing. We're showing.

What do you call that? Yeah, when I, for me competing personally, yeah, horse showing. Showing. Okay. You'd ride the horse and jump over things. Yes. Do you ever have any spills? Yes, definitely.

I mean, and that is the worst kind of, not failure, but it's so embarrassing when you just, it doesn't hurt usually. I mean, it can be dangerous, but the hard thing about showing is you get out there. You, again, do all that work. You get your horse ready. You've put all this time into practicing for this one event. And if you get up and they refuse, which we had a lot of project horses too, because we weren't spending, you know, thousands and thousands of dollars on our horses.

And my parents liked for us to, you know, have some projects to work with. So I had my fair share. of work with horses. And sometimes they would just want to stop at a fence, whether it was you or them. And sometimes you were going over and sometimes you weren't. But yeah, it just was sometimes really unfortunate to be on there. And once you're off, you can't, you're eliminated. So it was frustrating. You're a walk off. Yeah. You got to just take your horse. Sometimes you're hurt. It could be super dangerous. But it was, it was okay. I learned a lot from those things. You just hope that the times of that happened is very minuscule. Right. Right. And you ran track. Yes. For your high school

team? Yeah, so I rode up until my junior year of high school, and all through high school, I was doing track as well. As COVID came, you know, and balancing that with track, I realized I could do a lot better when I was running rather than riding a horse because it was just me, competing against other people, and so I ended up transitioning to track more and finished out college with that, or sorry, high school with that. Yeah. And so you finished high school. Tell us how you picked Furman. Yeah. So my, I'll talk about. about my dad, I feel like a few times because he's just raised us a lot. He's come from a bigger family. He has a lot of good values and he's promoted a lot of ideas into his kids. So one of those things

is he said when we go to college that he encourages out of state. And then once we're in college, he encourages studying abroad, which is both what he did. He went on to be a Marine and lots of other things. So when I was looking at colleges, it was out of state. And it was also during COVID again, that junior year when we're starting to look at colleges. So it made it a little tougher. The out-of-state search, a lot of these schools, instead of, you know, finding some places I was interested in, and then you go visit them, and then you apply,

it was like I was just applying to schools that I found were cool, and then maybe we would see them when tours opened back up. So he went to school in Marquette, and he really liked the Midwest, so I applied to a bunch of random schools kind of around Kentucky. And then our family would always vacation in South Carolina, So I really liked that state and it was a good not too far away from Kentucky. So I applied a lot of schools through here, but I ended applying to over 13 schools just out of state. And then we ended up visiting second semester, senior year, whatever, first and second semester, whatever I could see.

And then as I would visit every school, I realized it definitely like the South more than I liked some of the northern cities. I love the greenery. I love just more space in the southern culture. so that eliminated most of my list that I had applied to once I went in person and experienced the school. And so a lot of, yeah, South Carolina schools, North Carolina was my list. And then I actually wanted to go, thought I wanted to go to Clemson and ended up getting waitlisted and then rejected from them. And Furman was also a really close number second and ended up getting a lot of scholarship from them. So it was an easy answer.

I ended up just going to Furman. Wow. Well, I'm glad you did. It's amazing, though. I mean, Clemson historically has not been near as hard to get into his Furman. Yeah, it's been tougher. The big state schools, out of state just gets tougher every year I've noticed. But at the same time, I'm so grateful that it happened because I've been a tour guide at

Furman during my time here. And we always give like our testament as to why we chose the school or why we stayed. And a big thing I would say at the end is, yeah, I wasn't sure about like the smaller school size in the south because you either have really big schools or a little more on the smaller side. And I have never regretted going here because of the things that I've done at Furman that I never would have done at a bigger school like Comson have been awesome. Two good choices. That's the thing about life. I didn't understand until I was much older is sometimes you have three things to choose from and all of them are good. Yeah. It's like, well, it's no big deal, you know, this one's good, this one's good,

this one's good. So that's good. And then while you were there, you studied business. Were there any sales classes? So not entirely. Up until a few years ago, they just had general business administration majors. So it was just a general track until they kind of came out with a few more narrow tracks. And the closest thing to more sales or management was the marketing track. And so that's what I've been on. And since Furman is a liberal art school and has kind of broad majors with classes you can take specific to what you want to do, there's no sales classes, but they have things like strategic communication, which is more of a con class or business management and things like that, which have helped me in that sector. So how many people will graduate here a couple of weeks? Well, there's about 2,600 students. It's more of a smaller school.

So maybe like 600. And do you have any idea? How many will go into sales? No idea. But I don't think it's a large amount just because at our school, it's just not, we don't have a sales club, which we're interested in maybe starting after I'm gone. Ran out of time here. But they don't have a lot of more sales or entrepreneurship or innovation or management programs within Furman. It's so interesting because you have the Hill Institute there, which is all about entrepreneurship.

and you're going to need some selling if you're going to be starting any business. I wonder why. Because are you interned there, right? Yes. What was that like? It was good. So it was when I did it two summers ago, it was like the guinea pig program. They had never done the program before.

And it was three weeks of like business innovation classes. And then seven weeks of consulting with startup companies. So it was kind of salesy in a way, but it was a little more innovation strategy, you know, like fostering the development of a company. And it was very good. I learned a lot, to be honest, like going from the small stages of companies and them relying on us who were, you know, like 18, 19 year old kids helping them start up their company. And I feel like there was a lot of sales or, I don't know, soft skills and business that we learned. I wouldn't say, yeah, it was sales particularly. But I learned a lot from that experience, just, yeah, going from the ground

up with companies. Yeah. The Hill Institute. They do a good job with entrepreneurs, right? Yes, they do. That's great. We have a lot of that going on in Greenville. It's great. So how did you know the importance of doing multiple internships for businesses while you were in school? I think it came a lot from, we were talking about in my childhood.

I was always working. And I think even into high school, I'd work for my dad like at the sales on the weekends. but when we were younger, he, you know, once we hit 15, 16, it was like, if you want stuff, you're going to need a buy on your own. So, and they, and he always thought, yeah, working alongside of things was the greatest way that you would just learn a lot of skills. And so, again, when COVID kind of started when I was 16, it's like a sophomore in high school, I ended up working for like a deli and grill.

And so it was doing kind of, we had all different roles there. So part of us, we would do register. We'd even make sandwiches. we would deliver food, we'd help in the kitchen, all different types of roles that I learned so much. And then I feel like I always kind of stayed in food service even into the end of my high school career and into college. It just worked out like that. So I transitioned to later in high school becoming a server. I did some more restaurant work even into college. And then as I kind of went to internship experience, I just, I've told you before, I've just always like treated and

valued work different than school. And I think school is so great and it's taught me so much, but I've just learned me as a person that I do like learning and education, but I just love getting to use it when it feels like it's in a real world sense. And I feel like I've grown the most and, you know, use the best of my abilities and tried my hardest when I'm in more of a workspace. And so as I went into college, I realized that the classroom could teach me so much and teachers could teach me so much. But what I wanted to do, more sales or management or business-related things weren't going to be quite learned in the classroom and I had to try it out.

So it just transitioned to even more internship experience. It's smart. It's rare, but very smart. I think it probably comes partly from the experience on the farm, just kind of always expect to be working. Yeah. You know, the horse has to be taken care of on the weekends too, right? It's not like a weekday job, seven days a week.

Okay, so you had an internship at Hill Institute. Where else have you had them? So I guess not as quite as internship, but my freshman year just going in, it was more of like a work experience because half of the time it'd be like half internship, but also once again, if we wanted, if I need to, I need to support myself and my parents have always fostered that in me. So half of it's like making money too. But learning as well as I do it. So my freshman year as well as, yeah, that internship was later on. But my second semester, I was talking to people about being a tour ride and looked up to a lot of those people and ended up just applying and training to do that. And so I did, I've done Benad admissions ambassador for Furman all my four years, have just stepped back just this semester.

But I learned so much about honestly sales and hospitality and promoting a school in my own experience from being an ambassador at Furman. And we've done so many different networking events with students. We follow up with them. It very is heavily sales-related. And I think that influenced a lot of my business-related, just aspirations and my personality and has just supported that a lot. And then along with admissions, I ended up taking another route to and two years ago, did more of a social media internship with them along with being a tour guide.

So that was promoting the school through more of digital platforms. You do takeovers. you write blogs. You strategize how to promote the school virtually. So that's been cool too. And then last summer I ended up interning with a big tech company, TD Cinex. Yeah. Yeah, which is over on Pelham Road here in Greenville.

And I found them. I just knew a lot of some Furman graduates who had worked with them. I knew I wanted to do after working with the Hill Institute, after doing the firm and stuff, realized I like the people side of business a lot. and wanted to get maybe some sales or business development experience and just heard the company was very good with their internships and applied to them and ended up doing kind of business development internship with them and did two campaigns for just some tech vendors that they used. Okay.

And that was another good experience. And now we're here. Yeah, now we're here. That's right. Well, that's fantastic. Again, I think for young people watching or parents with young people getting ready to go to college, this is a path that is much, the work part, I would say is more important than the school part. If you're thinking about going into sales or business, you know, there aren't any undergrad

programs out there. They're going to teach you as much as you're going to learn working for, you know, a company, an entrepreneurial company or working in sales, like some of the citadel guys that I know, they go to Memphis every year and work for this pest control company. they go door to door all summer long working on straight commission. Like, you're going to learn a lot about sales. Yes. I mean, how to very quickly, you know, bond with the other person. I mean, real quick, because otherwise you're going to say, get out of here.

So anyway, all that stuff's important. I highly recommend it. And I think it's worked real well for you. So you're going to do great, I'm sure, sure of it in business. Unfortunately, you don't want to do it here. You want to do it somewhere else, apparently. So you have decided that you want your first sales job to be where? I've decided I want my first sales job to be in Australia.

Australia. Okay. You couldn't get any further away. Couldn't get any further. All right. And so tell me why. Tell us why you picked that country. So another experience, like I said, my dad told us the B part of what we had to do in

college was to study abroad like he had done. He went to Italy during his experience. and said it was life-changing. And so he encouraged us to do the same. When I was trying to pick a place to study abroad, for some reason, I don't know what I think it was through high school and college and looking back on pictures. It's always been a thing.

In the back of my mind, I've always looked at the country of Australia and just wanted to live there, wanted to visit. It's too far to do so on a regular day. I've just always been kind of enamored with the country. And so when I wanted to study abroad my first ask, him was like, oh, what about Australia? And he had a good answer to this. He turned it down, but for good reason is because he, again, yeah, it studied in Europe and Italy, and he was like, there's so many more countries in Europe to travel to. You'll learn a lot. I'm not a double major.

I'm not a Spanish major, but I've worked on my Spanish additionally in college and taken extra classes along with like the prerequisites. And so he's like, I think you should work on your language a little bit more and you'd be able to travel a lot. And he was right. I got to, I studied abroad in Barcelona last spring and had an incredible time. I went by myself, so I knew I wanted to take some business classes and a little bit of Spanish, and they just didn't offer that through Furman. So they had used this program before during COVID for other college students, and so I just signed up to do it. I ended up going by myself, and I met so many people from other schools, and I had great classes, got to travel, amazing places with people, came back pretty broke,

but it was an amazing experience, and I feel like I just grew so much as a person. So when coming back, I just was realizing more with my internships what I wanted to do career-wise. And then I just had this nagging pull that I had no desire to, at least now, to stay in the States after I graduated. I had grown so much and I feel like meeting all these new people and new experiences, it was the one time to try it again. And so it started out as a joke, the Australia thing. When thinking about places to go, it was just like what else.

I probably should, although I'm working on the Spanish, I probably should go somewhere that I can speak a little English. Yeah, it started out kind of as a joke. I love the culture. I love the area. I started doing more research and realized they had great visa and work opportunities for people my age, especially. And then the joke kind of turned into a real thing. And I started, I met you and met some contacts with you in Australia. I started talking to other people. And now I'm in the works of making it a real thing. Good, good. Well, I'm glad. I'm proud of you. I think it's great. Get out there and do something different. And I told you before, and this goes for anyone listening, you know, the thing about getting a job overseas.

You know, when we were hiring a lot of people at our company, if somebody came to us and said, I'm from France, but I'd like to work for you in America. I would work real hard to try to get them because I wanted to sell in France one day. And I could send this person back. And so we did that in several countries where we find people that came. to adhere to the states. They're from a certain area. We'd bring them in for a few years. Send them back home is our person.

Also, in Australia, they should be interested in knowing what's going on in America. What's the American market like? And who could you introduce them to? Because many of them just feel like they're kind of handcuffed. You know, they don't quite know how to break into this market. So it should be a hot commodity over there. I hope so. Yeah.

And why did you choose? I mean, we've talked a lot and worked together, and we've also done psychological profile testing on you. And you could probably, you could go into marketing, going to sales, you go into management, a lot of things you could do. Why don't you choose sales? So I think you helped some with the sales for sure. I sell you? You sold me on the sales. So you're doing your job perfectly.

But I think even before that a little bit, even when looking at internships for this summer, I think, like I said, with some of the admission stuff, some of my other work experience. It started with, okay, I like business, but I like the people side of business. I don't, you know, I'm not the big data person. I'm not the big, even though I did the social media internship, I'm not a big digital person, just always growing up, going out to, yeah, the horse sales of my dad, or being a server at a restaurant, it was always the people side. And then I'm going to promoter school. It's, it's me talking to people. So I realized that I just needed to stay in that sector. And so there's a few, like you said, avenues you can go. Marketing is kind of people facing, but it can be very heavily digital.

And then business development is what I kind of did this summer, which I enjoyed a lot. And then there's sales, which is everybody's a little bit unfamiliar with. It's in everything, but cold, cold sales is something that you just got to work at. So although the route was a little uncomfortable for me, I think talking to you and realizing with me wanting to tap into international, with me wanting to tap into some of these health and health care settings, which is where my industry interests are, it's going to be a little harder with, not harder, but slightly harder with me coming out as an undergrad. Like you said in your book, like you've said to me, getting into a lot of that is starting with sales. And it's going to be in everything.

And I think with my personality already liking it, I love meeting new people every day. I love new experiences. I love being on my feet, working to achieve something. And I think that's all in sales. And so that's why I'm wondering. Plus you can just, you know, You can make, I don't know, you like to make money. Yeah. You can make a lot of money. This is true. You know, if you go into marketing, you're kind of stymied.

You're going to make this much money, then this much money, than this much money, and your target, as I recall, is medical, right? Medical-related? Yeah, I've grown up, obviously, with the track and just kind of growing up in general, health and wellness itself has been a big part of me. I wasn't a health sciences major just because I liked the business too much, but I always said if I could have done both, I would have. Yeah.

But so I thought maybe working for more of a health or fitness-related company, which is what I'm currently doing. I'm doing sales with a company in Greenville called Iron Tribe Fitness. And that has been a great experience to just really learn sales from that angle. But I have some family that are involved in more of the healthcare sector. So when looking into like health-related sales, a lot of it started pointing to more medical device, which I never thought I would do anything medical, just because I was so business-minded. Yeah. But when I actually got to shadow my uncle who is a doctor, operates, yeah, on people every day is very involved in spine in Florida.

He was like, why don't you just come shadow me in the OR and you can meet some of the medical device reps that I work with every day and see how you like it? Just come. So why would I not do that? So I came in. Yeah, some experience I've never tried. I had never tried before into the office, seeing them all suit up. and I got to see the reps that actually, yeah, travel to every office.

They basically know more about the device and could quite literally put it into the patient. It would know more than the doctor itself because they've done it thousands of times, walking them through it. And they still have that sales aspect. So actually getting to hands on see the effect that I'm having in somebody and help change their lives without having, you know, more of a doctor background seemed pretty incredible. So that especially internationally too with how strong America is. and health care in Australia and how translated it could be internationally. It was like, why not try this cool sector? That's cool.

I know you have some jobs already that you'll be doing when you're in Australia as you line up this job. And we've talked about this too, and this is again for the audience. But, you know, you've got a bunch of people you're talking to over there and you already have work. You have work that you're doing. But when you show up over there, everything's going to change. because they hear from people in the States all the time

it's just so far away. Most people don't show up, right? I think you'll get a job what you want pretty quickly once you get there. Medical devices is great. I think you talked to our friend Jenny Shaw. I did, yes. So Jenny's a good role model too.

I mean, she started in tech sales. She went to Furman, athlete, you know, started in tech sales, did very well and got into medical. And now she's a VP of sales at a good company. So, yeah, she's a good one to stand touch with over there, for sure. And you're targeting going like midsummer? Yeah, kind of mid and summer.

The seasons are opposite over there. And I think it's the same for kind of the job market too. So I think it'll work perfectly with finishing up, graduating at Furman, taking a few months to definitely sort out what I'm doing and the travel and coordinating, kind of migrating over there in a way. And then hopefully go and kind of, yeah, end of July to September period. So when you travel to Australia, I suggest you go through Europe. I can stop in Barcelona for a little while and see your old friends.

And if you were going, if we take America out of play and Australia out of play, what's your next favorite country? Well, of course, Spain. Spain? Okay. All right. I'm very biased. Okay.

in the right way. Barcelona is the best. But Italy is close, is close second. Okay. And on this first job here in Australia, let's say it's like three years from now, what do you hope to have gotten out of that first job? I really think that, especially for me who can only, we figured it out when it came to touring schools, when it came to work experience, I only realized, you know, how good I was at something or how good of a fit something was until I tried it out. So I really think that figuring out, because I still haven't, although I've had some sales experience and realize sales might be a good route or transition more into business development or maybe work up to management is my goal, I really want to figure out if those sectors feel right for me, which is why I hope to try to get into that industry, even though it's a little tough. But yeah, within that three years, try to get into it to try it out, see what's the best fit, what feels right, it aligns with my passions. and then also internationally, I always say while I can do it.

I feel like graduating, the time to do it is now. So many people say that, like you said, they're going to go. And then you just get stuck working here and never do it. So I think the biggest thing for me is doing it and not regretting, yeah, not being able to regret not going. Right. Experiencing it. And I know I'm going to meet so many people and learn a lot about myself, especially internationally. So that's the biggest takeaway.

Yeah, that's great. And you never know what bonus you might get on top of them. that, but I think all those things, just going will be a big win for you. What did you learn from your Iron Tribe internship? I've learned a lot, especially this internship too. And I feel like I'm so glad to be looking into sales. And like you said, what piqued your interest? Because it's taught me so much just about, yeah, businesses as a whole, because selling is involved in everything. But specifically with Iron Tribe, I feel like fitness sales is a very niche sales. sector when it comes selling. So with them, I've learned a lot about different avenues to tap into.

They kind of gave me freedom to try different strategies of my own ideas. I came in, kind of expecting them to sometimes check on every idea I had. And my manager would be like, just, yeah, go for it. He wanted me to have basically more confidence and just go for the strategies I had. And for me, I kind of, which we've realized is sometimes not a beneficial mentality, you, but going into things and just being confident in the things you bring to the table, I tried to tap into that a little bit more. And so, yeah, I've tried so many different things, whether it's a lot of more social media outreach with the fitness sales or doing kind of email out or targeting big groups of people,

hosting like events in downtown, just like it's very different sales than you would think, yeah, for other companies, very different messaging and just how to like really find the right people and then communicate right to them because not everybody wants fitness, but they want, like they call it the dream vacation. They want that end goal. So kind of learning how to communicate that has been very interesting and how every person has a different way that they want to be communicated to, especially fitness. And you basically helped me build the Sterling Sales coaching group.

And since you took over, we have added a lot of process to what we do, marketing-wise, and we've also added customers. So it's been successful. Did you learn anything in particular working with our group? Yeah. I mean, I've learned a lot too about, I guess, more organization when it comes to yours. Like you said, this has been a little different because I know you have a lot of the knowledge when it comes to actual sales training that I've been able to learn from.

But learning how, I mean, kind of crash course walking through your process of training sales teams has been super interesting and how you've got to get to the foundation of what is the ideal sales profile, what builds the team, what are who are we currently working with, and is there gaps? Do we need a hire before we start training? And like seeking the source first and evaluating and then moving forward has been super interesting rather than just going straight into training. Just kind of like the selling for the fitness industry, it's kind of like you've got to know who you're working with and the person you're talking with before you just go into the pitch. And so that's been super cool. And that's,

And then just like, yeah, learning how to, again, find the right leads. And so when we're looking to sell sterling sales to other companies, what kind of company is looking for us and how do we communicate what we can bring them. Right. Interesting you say that, because that is something that surprises almost every, you know, owner that hires us on is they kind of think, you know, John's going to come in and train our sales team and make them better, right? And we could do that. But there might be something we need to do to the hiring profile of who we're looking for or to the comp plan. or to how we organize the team who's doing what territory, to the pricing, you know, that will affect the number far greater than me teaching them how to negotiate or whatever the thing is.

So, yeah, but you did a great job this summer. I hope you can keep giving us some time until you, until you toast a pound's hand. No. Okay, let me cover a few more things and then we'll finish up here. Let's talk about social media for a second. If you were looking to one social media platform to find out, you know, what's the best way to find my sales job coming out of Furman? What would you go to first? Well, how social are we looking?

Are you wanting me, like, because we talk a lot about AI, but I don't know how social that might be. We can call that social. You're saying you would go to chat GPT or grok of those and ask that question. Well, yeah, sometimes, at least for me, and I know for you, sometimes we can have a lot of thoughts and things and routes want to pursue, and especially for industries that I don't exactly know, like pursuing sales in Australia. I feel like, yeah, GROC and AI and the exploration of those has helped me kind of navigate all my thoughts into one, like, specific question and realize or figure out how to search for the exact right thing I'm looking for. Because if I were to just type in stuff like that in Google, sometimes. it just takes you different places. But I've just learned a lot from when it comes to, like, blogs or people writing about

their own experiences or even sometimes on, like, Instagram or TikTok, people do reviews or day in the lives of their careers. So I've kind of tapped into all of it, I feel like different newsletters that I'm a part of, Facebook groups. You even have some websites, nomads.com, where you can kind of learn about people's experiences. I think it's trying it all out a little bit. but knowing what you want at the end of the day, which is what I feel like AI has helped me a little bit, is like kind of throwing in what my thoughts are and what I want and them helping me figure out what I want to.

Yeah. It's an amazing tool. I'm happy that we have it and we can learn from it because it'll get you the answer pretty quickly. Yeah. All right. And then really important question. What's your favorite book? My favorite book. I've been reading a really good one these days. It's called Sales for Noobs.

Whoa. We happen to have a copy right here. That is a good salesperson there. All right, sales for news. Good answer. All right. Favorite Band? Oh, no. You can't do that to me. Well, I have a pretty embarrassing favorite band that I've told you. I say embarrassing. It's not embarrassing to me, but I've been teased about it before because it's apparently popular amongst 12-year-olds and the younger generation. But it's a band called A.J.R., and it's three brothers, and they're known for more pop-related music. Okay. Well, I've tried to listen to it.

It's an interesting taste. Required taste. Yeah. The music taste is all across the board, though. All kinds. And favorite word. Favorite word? Oh, my goodness.

I can't say Australia Probably I don't know We've talked a lot about Like growth I think that's one of my favorite words right now Because that's the theme It's a little cheesy

But it's the theme of right now Growth is a great word Adventure is a great word Adventure is another good word Adventure yeah Growth adventure Two words And then

What advice Would you give to other folks That we haven't covered already That are going into college And starting to think about what they want to do when they get out. Yeah, I feel like especially this year, and I think doing a lot of not soul searching, but I mean, not even inherently trying, just kind of figuring out a lot about myself with the, yeah, the international travel, some of the internship

experience, meeting you and talking a lot about like, okay, well, this is who I am as a person. What is your personality? What are you, what do you feel like you're in, like your deepest self in? and you feel like you're in the right place in. And searching for that rather than like what a lot of other people might be telling you to do or in higher education what people might be telling you to do, which again is a little bit of a cliche thing to say for some people like us. But I feel like, and a lot of people will say this, but it's very true, especially in college years and getting out of colleges,

really staying true to yourself and finding what fuels you as a person, what drives you, what you're passionate about, And that's obviously it's, yeah, again, cliche and can be very simple. And sometimes you don't know what that might be. And I feel like in the beginning of college, I had personality traits and things I liked. But when it came to like work, I was like, well, nobody really is maybe passionate about what they want to work. I feel like everybody, if they could choose, wouldn't work, you know, or find other things to fill up their time. But trying to really bridge that and go from like, what do you like and what makes you as a person and how can you involve that in your work?

And for me, it's been a lot of this stuff with more of the innovation, with the sales, bridging it with more like health-related things that I'm actually passionate about. For me, and I've noticed this from other people, like I really like to be enthusiastic about things when I'm talking about them. I love it to kind of light up like my eyes, my life. And so finding ways that I could find that adventure and that enthusiasm. And that's what makes me, I've realized that trying to stay in one place or keep kept up in a box or let other people who I don't find, you know, who maybe I don't want to be myself telling me

what to do is just not what is meant for me. Right. So that's what I would recommend definitely for people. It's just really trying to soul search, try out things that you think you might like, and you're going to try out things that you won't like, and it's going to help you even more, just kind of create that path that's meant for you. You know, that's perfect. I think I write about that in here somewhere, if not, we talk about a lot, but, you know,

the cop out to that would be someone who says, well, I just don't know what I want to do, right? So I'm going to go to the bar and drink beer, you know, and pretty soon, you know, you're 30. And you really, you're still, you still don't know who you are, what you want to do, but you're doing something. Yeah. And you're just kind of stuck. You just kind of write it out, right? I mean, that happens. And so if someone doesn't know what it is, what they want to do, who they are, all that kind of stuff, that's your job.

if you want to have a growth life, an adventurous life, that's your job is to figure it out talking to people, interning, taking tests, you know, trying different things. If you figure it out, I want to do an adventure, I want to do medical, I want to do sales. Right? So you've got three big things checked off. And then see how that goes? And then change again, if you want to. Yeah.

So I'm proud of you. You're going to be off to a great start. and glad you're able to intern. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks, Monica. Yeah.

All right.