Dr. Anita Sanchez (consultant of 38 years) narrates a career mistake from ~10 years prior: she refused a partial sale of a process to an international corporation that offered 20% of the price to take it to China. She reflects that saying "no" closed other possibilities — instead she could have negotiated participation in the China deployment and research benefits. The talk closes by linking this business lesson to cultural lessons: reclaiming common-sense knowledge from her Mexican American and Native American (Aztec, Osage) background and integrating it with formal education to be of sustainable service.
Hi, I'm Dr. Anita Sanchez, and for 38 years I've been a consultant mainly to large global corporations and large nonprofits. And what I want to say is that you can always learn. I have many mistakes in my career, but one of the ones that just sort of popped out for me happened about 10 years ago. Which tells you you can be in the game a long time of business and still be making mistakes. It was a time when I had developed this process for this international corporation, and it was a part of a process I already had. And they decided that they wanted to buy just a part of it and take it to China, which was a new market, and they wanted to offer me 20% of the price. And sometimes people use a gun to shoot themselves in the fur. Sometimes you use a machine gun. Now, I wanted to stay in value for my product and all the energy and time I put into it. Yet at the same time, it's moving out of this either or to this day, I regret telling them no. Instead, what I should have said is, yes, and you bring me along to China, I also get some research out of this, and then that product could have become more alive to not only within China, but in other places. So I think the biggest gift of that was to always keep open the possibility that there are other alternatives than the ones you just see in front of you. Even if just asking myself the question, is it this or that or something else? And that something else has always reminded me, you know, put down the machine gun. Don't use it on yourself. Don't use it on anybody. There are ways to be successful and to be of service so that it's flowing from both your client and yourself. Now, a lot of these things I wasn't taught when I was young. I'm Mexican American and Native American. My tribes are Aztec and Osage. And none of my family worked in large corporations. They all did manual labor. None of them had a PhD. I was the first. And at the same time, what they did teach me was common sense. And I feel like in part of my formal education and my process, I began to lose the common sense, that kind of knowledge that my people gave me. And so now I'm just so happy because I can honor both. Everyone has knowledge, no matter what your status is in class, education, work you do, and just really bring that in so that I can be of the biggest impact of greatest service and be sustainable at the same time, to take care of my family and all that needs to happen. So I really appreciate you allowing me to share with you one of the biggest mistakes, but also one that I would never take away. It was a great learning for me. Thank you.
