Women are better at Sales - Nikki Ivey

Today's guest is Nikki Ivey. Besides being a top salesperson, LinkedIn top sales star for a few years now, Nikki has built her reputation and brand around culture, diversity and inclusion. Nikki and I think alike when it comes to the fact that women are better at sales because there's data and science behind it. Today she brings immense passion to the fact how do we bring more women to sales? Let's discuss, let's welcome Nikki Ivey on the show. Thank you so much again, Nikki, for coming on the show. Truly appreciate it, Truly honored. I think I'll start with that. You've been the LinkedIn top star featured on Sales Hacker tons of other blogs where I saw that you constantly talk about inclusion, diversity, women and today. Exactly. That is exactly what we're going to talk about, the women in sales. And I did some more research. I found the data from the various sites which kind of show that, you know, women are actually better at sales and individual contributor roles or leadership. I read one of the blog from Harvard Business Review and they said, you know, why women are the future of B2B sales. Very specific. Now we've seen women like Whitney Walls, right? CEO of Bumblebee, who the company catering to women and led by women, made her 31 year old female founder billionaire. Now I want to talk about three things, like what is the problem? Like why. Why aren't there enough women in sales? Why does that problem exist in the first place and how do we solve for it?

Okay, I'm prepared to talk about all of this.

I know, I know. I remember reading Your post from 11 months ago where you talk about the same thing. I do have the code handy with me where you said, you're enough. The professional needs you. Depends on your participation and success. I really love that quote.

Thank you.

Yeah. So happy to have you. The floor is totally yours. I would want you to drive this. I mean, of course I would be driving it, but of course, you know, since you know more about the topic, you have been a strong endorser of this particular topic. I think this is totally your game.

All right, so let's start then. Let's start with the what's the problem? Right? The sort of how, how did we get here? And I'd like to remind folks when we start to have this conversation that, you know, the purpose is not to point fingers. The purpose is not to find out who's to blame, but more what's to blame.

Right?

Because these things tend to be, you know, before they even make it to the, to the office.

Right?

To the workplace, you know, they tend to already be part of an existing culture. So to a great extent, Right. To endeavor to fix this is to endeavor to change the world, really. And so when we think about this how did we get here Piece, we have to make sure that we're talking about the bigger picture and not narrowing it down to this company or that region that's excluding people. But when we talk about women being out of the workplace, we know that historically it's been a matter of being marginalized in large part to do with our role in raising children. This won't be news to anyone, but I think we have to start there. The institutional causes for why there are fewer women. I'll use myself as an example. Many folks who follow my content know that I was a teen mother. And in my category of folks, right, folks who find themselves parents as teenagers, less than 1% of those women graduates from a four year institution before the age of 30. I was 28.

Right.

So there was already a time in my life where my counterparts, male and female. Right. Would have been in a pipeline for a certain profession where I was not in that pipeline.

Right, right.

And so what I might tell someone who was looking to recruit women is that step one, you're going to have to let go of some of your more rigid ideas of what a professional saleswoman is, where a professional salesperson can come from, you know, because once you make that adjustment, that will dictate where you look for talent, right? It's just like when we're, when we're prospecting, right? You got a bad list, you're not going to get things into your pipeline. So if you want more women, more people of color in the pipeline, then you have to target them just the way that you would a target prospect list. So what's happening now is a lot of folks throwing their hands up like, hey, there just aren't any women in the pipeline. And it's like, well, that's saying, you know, I sell to CMOs and heads of revenue growth, but I'm only doing outreach to heads of revenue growth. They'd be like, why aren't there any CMOs in my pipeline? So it's actually not, I think, not as complicated a problem as it feels like sometimes because there is, I would say, so much at stake.

Right?

But so the reason why I mentioned myself becoming a young mother and the effect that that has on whether or not I even show up in the pipeline is because Covid rolled us back even further when it comes to that. I mean, we had women, you know, hemorrhaging from the workforce due, again, to how our roles as caretakers often snatch us out of that. Out of that pipeline. So that's the problem. And to your point, we were speaking about this offline. The reason that's a problem, it isn't just a problem for women, which I think is good enough for it to warrant examination, but it's a problem for businesses.

Right, right.

Women are producing outcomes at a higher rate than our male counterparts. There's no two ways about it. You add that with the fact that more diverse work environments, again, they are producing an average of 30% more revenue than teams that are not diverse. And so we've sort of beat that awareness on horse to death, I think. Right. It feels like that. But then we do end up still having some of the same kinds of, you know, conversations over and over again.

Right.

I think once we've identified the problem.

Right.

Which is that they're. We're not targeting folks to an extent that we could get them into the pipeline. And then we've looked at the. The other pieces of this like it's the implications of that problem are, you know, women out of the workforce and businesses not being able to be the best that they can. Once we figure that out, we're all aware now it has to come to action and accountability. Right, yeah, that action part again.

Right.

It comes down to. All right, so we know that we have to target the right folks. If we're talking about diversity in terms of racial background in the US somewhere between 60 to 80% of the black workforce is concentrated in like 11 Southern states.

Right.

So if you were in Silicon Valley and you don't allow remote work and further, you know, you recruit basically folks who are within driving distance of your Office, you're missing 60 to 80% of the black workforce. It's just the way it is.

Right.

And it doesn't mean that you didn't want those folks to work for you again. It just means that you didn't understand who to target to get them into your pipeline. So that's the activity. I feel like I've just been.

No, no, totally, totally. I think that that totally makes sense. I'm not sure if, you know. So my CEO is actually a women, and I'm very proud to actually work with the women. In fact, if I were to say, all my best hires in my past three and four years have been women. And I'm not trying to put them into a bucket. Okay, let's say without, without. Without a Lot of context or background. If I say this, it might feel like I'm trying to favor women. That is not the case. I'm just going by what you said, like, you know, that. That this has been scientifically proven, proven by data that men. Women are actually better listeners than men, and hence goes in, you know, talks about sales. Right. Sales is all about listening. So you have. You have somebody who has actually the innate trait of listening. Right. Why would you not leverage that? I kind of find it hard, especially even in India, for example, to hire a lot of women. Because if you ask me, I think the problem kind of starts at the beginning when they're in schools. Right. The exposure at that time is not huge. And by the time they kind of already have picked up a career, and now you try to expose them to a career in sales, it's a battle you were going to lose, because all the conditioning has already happened for those 12, 15 years. And now you're trying to make them unlearn something which they grew up maybe by believing in what the family said or maybe by looking at the environment. So that is where I'm coming from. But you have a totally different perspective, which also makes sense.

No, I think you're absolutely right. What a great point. That a lot of it does have to do with what opportunities that we even know exist. Again, really resonate with my story. I didn't know that, you know, there was a place where a person could use communication skills effectively and have that make you money. I had no idea. So it literally took someone. I told the story a lot of times, but I was selling cars. I wanted a test drive with a gentleman. And we were just. My style of giving a test drive, right. When I was selling cars was never about the car. I don't know anything about cars. So I would leave if I. If I were talking about that. It was more about we get in the car. And I'm, you know, I say to the person, all right, there's two types of people. There's people who, you know, when they get in the car, they got to turn on the AC first. Then there's the folks. They got to get their music right before they, you know, take off. Which one are you? So I understood then that we were to focus on the conversation and to focus on the person was how to engage them. And this person I was giving a test drive to was like, again, did you know that this is a skill people are using to sell software? And I was like, no. So anyway, they're having this big Interview at my job, they had like a big group interview. And you just go in there and try to, I don't know, stand out, whatever, and I show up and I can't say that the rest is history, right? Because I think that I'm still learning so much every day. I'd say the rest is the present and the rest of that is the future. But what happened is I did meet his boss. His boss ended up being a guy named Scott Leese. That was my first interview, my first job in B2B tech sales. But none of that happens if this gentleman who worked there already doesn't come and tell me, you know, what you are doing is or what you are demonstrating is a skill that's valuable in this profession. And further to your point, just as how we're conditioned as women, Right. And I mentioned before that I was teen mom. I really want to drill in. Here's part of. I take a lot of responsibility for it, but here's part of that mindset for me. For me, that mindset did come from that kind of conditioning. From not thinking about my future, future as an individual, from not thinking about my future in terms of my own accomplishments as a woman. I was always thinking about it in terms of, you know, my success is wrapped up in, you know, what kind of mother I will be, which I think is important. My success is wrapped up in at least how I felt about my success. Right. My actualization was wrapped up in who I found as a partner and how pleased that partner was with me. Make no mistake, those things are also very important. I'm actually celebrating my 16th wedding anniversary this month on the 10th.

Right.

Congrats.

Thank you. So all of that is important, but it's true. The decisions you make have everything to do with how you view yourself in relation to the world and how you view opportunities in relation to yourself. Right. Whether or not you have access to them. So I'm so glad that, that you raised that point because that is another huge contributor to why folks don't find themselves in the pipeline. And then where businesses lose out there as well is a person who has, whether they were a teen mom or not.

Right.

But a person who's had the kinds of life experiences that sometimes just existing as a woman in a male dominated society lends itself to. There is an amount of resilience must develop just to survive under those circumstances. And it's the exact kind of resilience that's required to be a successful salesperson. And so when I think about organizations missing out on that or not, you know, saying, hey, there's. You mean to tell me there's a whole population of people who are resilient, who have this grit and they're, you know, good listeners and all and the science backs it up. Let's go find those people again. I think that's kind of where we hopefully are headed to. Thank you. That's such a compelling point you made.

Awesome. Yeah, thank you. So I think you talked about another good point which I want, which, and this is something which you kind of are kind of endorsing everywhere, which is about the diversity, about the inclusion. Right. So for example, right now I have like a all male team. I mean, I have few female members who'll be joining me soon. But right now if I talk about it's all a male, male team member, male team now. And I think that that is what I know is situation of ton of other companies, especially startups, I am not sure of the reason, so I don't want to pinpoint fingers either. But this is what I've seen, for example, when founders, you know, leaders who are building their first team, their first five members are always male. Right. And like I said, I'm telling you this from my experience, from what I've seen, from what I've heard, this could be untrue for maybe other parts of the world. But this is what I've seen, especially in the startup world. Now this is a problem, right? We've discussed this. This is actually a problem. Now one of the things like you said is maybe acknowledging the problem, then taking a step towards it, like what are the steps I can even take is what my question is. So I acknowledge that there's a problem we are acknowledging, no doubt about it.

I think it says so I kind of already like spilled one of those beans, right? I think again, it's paying close. Being more intentional about how you target and how you target is probably not the best word to use, but I mean, that's exactly what it is if we're speaking in terms of, you know, skills B2B salespeople already have or B2B revenue leaders are already familiar with.

Right.

Sort of speaking their language. And I mean, listen, there are. So I'll take Austin, Texas for example, because that is where I started my B2B tech sales career. It's becoming a little hub of its own. So in Austin, right, All of the tech companies that are there and you have some big names, right? You've got Google, you know. Indeed. I believe Apple's got a campus out There. So some of everybody. And they have these recruiting events at UT and a lot of the other schools, right. Which I think is great. But if you are specifically looking for women and you see that they don't surface themselves, when you look in sort of general pools, you may consider going to a place that. Where women are.

Right.

So there is an all female college, right. Sort of right up the street from where folks would be recruiting, you know, in general terms. And I'm just saying a way to sort of really zero in on the folks that you really want. Not that you only want those folks, right? But like we've talked about, the folks that are underrepresented at your company, if they are overrepresented in a given environment, you should probably go to the environment where they are overrepresented and recruit them. Again, I think sometimes people overcomplicate it or they just get frustrated, which I empathize with, with the fact that they're like, we're going to ut. UT is. And I don't actually know the demographics, but let's say UT is 50% women. How did we not get any, you know, women, maybe they just don't want to be in sales, which is a pretty popular conclusion that people, you know, come to. But the truth is, like I said, there are so many other factors you must consider that have to do with whether or not women actually make it to you, that if you're past this awareness part, you're past this acknowledgement part, you do want to take action. That's the kind of action you're going to have to take. You're just going to have to go to where the women are. And I don't think anybody, again, really objects to that. I just don't know that it occurs to folks right away because we're so used to what works here, working over there. But again, we know that this skill set that I'm talking about and the reason why I keep speaking about it and tying it back to the way that we talk about finding who we're looking for in a B2B sales process is because again, we don't have to look far to find those skills. We know how to do it. It sometimes is just really intimidating because of the things we talked about before. There's so much on the line, there's so much at stake. There are the lives of women at stake. There are the lives that the children those women are raising at stake. The example that those women set for their communities is at stake. And like we discussed because of you know the outcomes women produce. The bottom line is at stake. So I understand people, you know, I understand being overwhelmed with this. But what we're going to have to do is abate that knee jerk reaction to go back and do what's easy. That's the inflection point that we're at right now in culture all over the world, right. Is we are negotiating our identity. We are trying to figure out not just who's going to participate in the future of what work looks like, but who's going to be successful. Who. Right now is it difficult to be able to get access to, you know, into these environments and how can we make it easier? And so you see things like, you know, a lot of B2B tech companies, and I think it's a great idea in terms of an action, a step you can take beyond, you know, recruiting at, you know, places where women are. So I mentioned having been a young mother and it having taken a long time before I went to college, I did that. I was going to go to college either way. But in part of my motivation for that was understanding that on the wrong side of a college degree, there are opportunities that are not afforded to you. So now that a lot of those, you know, companies have taken away the college degree requirement specifically for sales roles, I think that's another way to get more, particularly those women who, for whom motherhood or, you know, a lack of a degree might have been the mitigating factor in why they didn't make it to the interview even.

Right.

I think that when we take that away, we lower even further the barrier for entry into sales, which it makes sense to me and it'll probably make sense to a lot of folks listening because as we were talking about before, as long as you understand how to have respect for a process and you have the discipline to adhere to that process in order to get a result and do that over and over again, you can be a salesperson. So the less exclusive we are when it comes to sort of those types of requirements, I think the, you know, the wider the pool of folks we're going to be able to attract.

Yeah, Nikki, while we're talking about this, and anybody who's probably, will be probably watching this or listening to this, I also want to put a disclaimer. You know, while we want to include women at the same time, that's not going to be the only criteria. Okay. And so of course, any company who would probably be, let's say, getting inspired from this and, you know, trying to have more women in the workplace, I'm sure they will still be going through the same process. And they're not just going to have them in the office, you know, just because they want to have this inclusion and diversity. Right, right. Okay, I know, I know that that's pretty simple. But I just want to go out that loud just in case.

Yeah, no, I think, I do think it's important to say all of these things. It's important ultimately that everyone can see themselves in that future that I was talking about. That everyone can see themselves in the story.

Right.

If folks can see themselves in the story as the hero, again, just exactly the same types of things that we apply when we're selling to folks.

Right.

Getting folks to see themselves in the story. Because I get asked this question a lot, actually. I work with diversity leaders. I work with folks whose job it is in the C suite to do two things. To hold corporate executives accountable for diversity and inclusion and to be a part of attracting more folks. And what a lot of those people run into, those professionals run into, is they have an action plan for how to make their, their business more inclusive and more diverse. They have the drive, it means something to them. But they are more connected to that problem and to that cause than other. Their counterparts in the C suite.

Right.

Their counterparts in the C suite are hyper focused on that bottom line number. And often that's where the bottleneck comes in is the diversity professional not being able to get the budget for the things that they need to recruit and actively reach out to folks who are underrepresented. And so a lot of my job, a lot of the time ends up being coaching those folks who work in diversity on how to sell this to their executives. And it's unfortunate. I wish it didn't have to be that way, especially because of how readily available the information that you and I were just talking about is. But at the same time, if it's been somebody's job for their entire 10, 20 year career to watch the bottom line and you're asking them for money. Yeah. There's going to be pushback. And the way that you overcome that again is to help them find themselves in the story. And particularly when it comes women in a male dominated field.

Right.

What I found on my favorite devices to show folks themselves in the story. I worked for a company called M Train and we produced these video lessons to help folks do just that.

Right.

It's not a plug for them. They don't pay me. I don't work three anymore. But I do believe in this approach. To helping folks get more diverse and inclusive teams. So the one of the videos would be something like, right, we were following a family, right? But from two different angles. So say that the male in the family, right? If we're following him, we're seeing him, you know, kiss his daughter on the forehead. She's got like a soccer uniform on. So we understand, okay, you know, this is a person who is raising a daughter, so who presumably has a vested interest in the outcomes that women have access to, right? And then we show him at work interacting with his team, right? And he's talking to his male counterparts about things that they have in common, Right?

Right.

I've been there, right? Like, sometimes it's stereotypical stuff, but it's been true to my experience a lot of the time, right? They're talking about sports or they're talking about something that they have in common that just is totally disconnected from what this woman might have in common with this man. And then that ends up having, at times, a disproportional influence on just who gets attention and guidance from leaders. And then it starts to further narrow that pipeline into leadership. And so then now we're talking about why is the C Suite doesn't have enough women and why do executives have enough women? So we show folks that disconnect, right? This person clearly cares about the outcomes of women, but doesn't understand how his behavior is affecting the outcomes of women. And so we have that conversation, right? There's like a pause and we ask folks questions like, what are you seeing? And then the second half of the video, right, is him at home again, talking to his daughter, and she's talking about what she wants to be when she grows up and talking about what she's experiencing at school, again in terms of who's getting attention, how they're talking to boys about their future versus how they're talking about girls about their future. And this person undoubtedly wants to be a hero for his daughter. Once you help him understand that being a hero for his daughter and affecting her outcomes includes overcoming the instinctive, natural, knee jerk, you know, impulse to just connect with what's easy, what's like us, right? What's familiar to us. Helping this person understand that overcoming that means something very powerful for the future of his daughter and for the future of this business and for the future of the world. That's how we get there, right? We'll never get there just pointing fingers, and we'll never get there trying to, you know, argue or tug of war our way into this. Because I truly believe that everybody does want, most of us, want everybody to be part of that future again. It's just overwhelming. We just don't know how. So it's empowering folks whose job it is to do just that. And you have this skill set with internal allies. And that's one of the more recent conversations I've been having, particularly with sales folks, about what they can do to help their companies become more diverse and become more inclusive. And that is identifying who the diversity or HR professional is at your organization. And I understand that oftentimes if we're talking about, you know, an early stage startup, maybe that rule doesn't exist. But your CEO knows, I mean, they're hiring people, right? So it's just a matter of having a conversation and asking, just asking, you know, something like, you know, I've been in this situation. If you've read my LinkedIn bio, you know this, right? I am the only black woman here. How do we, like, what does, what do you think about that? That's the first question I think a lot of people skip. They don't give the person that they're asking a chance to say, I noticed that too. And it means something to me as well. I just haven't known what to do about it. I think it's critically important to give folks a chance to say that before assuming that it's not something that they care about. So that that one simple question, right? I noticed this. You don't have to be the only black woman to ask this question. You could ask like, hey, I noticed we don't have a lot of women here. What do you think about that? And then that leader will tell you. And typically they'll surface, not their objections, but they'll surface what they're, what's in their way.

Right.

What are the obstacles?

They'll say, yeah, I'll tell you what, I'm sorry to cut too short.

No, it's okay.

So I think I've had this conversation long ago with one of my manager, one of my leader and his response was, I'm not sure that was like the idle response. His response was, first, you know, let us hire people, let us reach a number which we want to reach. For example, 10, 10, 10 member team. And after this is when we will worry about the diversity. And this was like two, three years ago.

Yeah. So in that case, you might have to make a suggestion.

No, like I said, this was three years ago and I don't think so. I was like mature enough to have those sort of conversation or Smart enough to do that. And you know what happens at work in these situation, right. You kind of have to keep mom because I don't know, I mean, I was kind of scared that time, to be honest, to kind of bring that sort of suggestion and you know, say, no, you know, I'm putting my foot down. I won't like more diversity right now versus and I think again, I've changed so many companies, nobody can suspect, you know, which company I'm talking about. Even the CEO was kind of agreeing to my leader know, let's do that. Let's. Let's not worry about having women. Let's worry about having people.

Yeah, well, women are people.

Yeah, exactly.

Here's the thing, right? You're out of your time. You're ahead of your time. When you were having that conversation three years ago, most folks weren't, let's be real, right? A lot of folks just started having this conversation after we saw the alarming rate at which women were leaving, particularly the sales profession, but were leaving the workforce in general. And then they're like, oh, now we're really going to have. There's a hole in the bucket. Used to be there just wasn't enough water in the bucket, but now there's a hole in it, too. So if we don't act now. Right. It can have these sort of catastrophic implications. But, yes, I mean, you also raise a good point here, though. You. When we think about what it means to be an ally, there is this element that involves putting something on the line yourself. I'm not saying go out, grab your boss by the collar, better hire some women today. But I'm saying I recognize that even asking the questions the way that I just talked about, yeah, you can be putting yourself at risk, maybe not at risk of losing your job, but at risk of being seen as a troublemaker. So again, for me, the way I've been overcoming that is to again, apply a sales skill set. Most of the time, when you call cold call into a business, the way that those conversations go down, the person's treating you like a troublemaker because they don't know yet. They don't know yet that you can be helpful in a meaningful way. They don't know yet that what you're going to introduce to them is actually going to have a positive effect on goals that you probably have in common. So again, when we get there and we get, you know, we understand, like you talked about, right. We push back here, and then this person is gonna hang up the phone, right. Or you're gonna have one of those conversations like I used to have early in my career, like, I didn't get right. That getting it right in a conversation was not the same as being right in a conversation, particularly with the prospect.

Right.

So I would find myself in these situations where I just knew I was right, and I just knew that what I was saying was going to be the best thing for their business. And rather than listen to them, I bulldozed them with that.

Right.

And again, like, we want to avoid that happening in this context. And so if we take a few steps back and think, how would we avoid that if we were salespeople? Is we would approach it with curiosity.

Right.

Which is why that, you know, what do you think about that question comes into play. Again, this sort of finding. The pain of finding what part of this problem affects this person the most.

Right.

So there's. There's this sort of. If we're talking in terms of B2B sales, what's their use case? And once we've found out what their use case is, how the thing that we're talking about makes them the hero for their use case.

Right, Right.

Then the conversation is happening in a way that they're familiar with, and it's happening in a way where there isn't all of this pressure or this sort of adversarial energy. It's just two folks trying to solve a problem coming from, you know, each of them actually having insights that the other can use.

Right.

To make things better.

Right. No, no. I think the last point you raised toward the last 15 minutes were all, like, amazing. I think I've never thought about it that way. And I am sure there are tons of other leaders who have probably not thought of it that way because, like, like you said, it's a male dominant society. If I'm a male, I would probably not realize it unless I look at the other side. Most of the people I kind of trust, they are women. And I think because. Because they're better listeners, maybe. And unless I think, you don't have that sort of exposure, maybe through your family, through your friends, or through your colleagues. I think, yeah, that's not the society, you know, which. Which we want to promote or which we want to build eventually.

Yeah.

And it's like some folks we may have to drag kicking and screaming into that future, and that's okay. They're still welcome.

Yeah.

They still get the invitation. Right. Like, I'm gonna set a place for everybody here. Some folks will show up or some won't. But as Sort of stewards, you know, of culture or of progress. I think it's incumbent on us to leave that door open and as frustrated as we get to try and, you know, rise above those front frustrations and keep our focus on that outcome, that future. Because I'll be honest with you, I mean, when I can't access that, when I can't envision that in my day to day, those are the roughest days, the days when I feel the least hopeful about that future. But that typically happens when I have sort of, you know, spiraled back down into the. It's this person's fault, it's that group's fault. You know, the more frustrated I get, the tougher it is to see that future. But if I know that, then it means I just have to again, keep outlets like this, keep finding ways to reach out to people who likely want the same future that I'm talking about. And when I say that, all I'm talking about is one that includes as many of us as possible. So you found me likely through the content that I post on LinkedIn that is intentional. I am looking to attract people who think similarly about these problems or who care even a little bit about these problems because I do believe that the more of us that get together and want to apply a sales skill set to this problem or want to make sure that we're holding each other and ourselves accountable, we will get there. We will. I have super cynical days, but I have to believe that as long as everybody is allowed to see themselves as part of the solution, that's how we get there.

No, no, this is. Whatever you said, I think that that totally makes sense. And yeah, and you're right. I actually found you. I think we've been connected for a while, but I think I kind of, you know, found you when I was looking to have somebody who can talk more about this. And I, I think reaching out to you was a no brainer. I don't see a lot of women actually talking about more about, you know, bringing more women in sales. So yeah, you were the clear winner.

There is. There are more of us now than. It's encouraging, I should say. You're right. There's not enough. In fact, there's actually some science behind that. It's called critical mass.

Right.

So any given demographic or group, there need to be, they need to be 30% of the entire population to constitute what's called critical mass in order for their voice as a group to be heard. Meaning if you have less than 30% of women right less than 30% of your population is women, then they don't have a unified voice that speaks to their experience. They're still just disparate individual women.

Right?

So there is a case, right, to starting with, like just upping the sheer volume of women in a given environment. And what I'm seeing now is there is, there's. There's Gabrielle and Alexine. They have women in sales club, right. There's Cynthia Barnes, who is the CEO of National association of Women Sales Pros. There is Chantel George, who is a CEO of a company called Sisters in Sales. So there are a lot of these communities and organizations out there, thankfully, who are all. Also, those are all stateside. Please let me know if there are others out there. I want to meet those women. There are. There are folks who are all, thankfully, you know, we're not doing this on our own is what I'm saying.

Right.

If you're a person and you are, who cares about this? And you are, you know, you think you are on in your own, you know, sales floor, in your own job, maybe you think that you. It would be too risky, right? And you'd end up being the troublemaker or you don't want to be on thin ice. I think that one of the things you can do is find one of these organizations like what I just talked about, and you can still participate, right? You can still be a resource to these groups. And then you don't have to hold all of that, you know, that desire to affect change inside. You don't have to feel like you're doing nothing. And I would actually say that to a lot of leaders of organizations as well, right. While you are, you know, because it takes time and it takes resources to put into that first piece we talked about in terms of figuring out even, like, where there are concentrations or pools of women that we can pull from to get here or where we need to invest to get women here. In the meantime, there. There are these organizations that you can support, right? You have folks like, you know, Salesforce and SAP that consistently are sponsoring hiring events with assistance in sales and those organizations. And so these may be organizations where, like I said, they don't necessarily have access right now or they don't have everything stake stood up in this perfect world version of their diversity and inclusion program. But they're looking to take action. I would say start there. Start with these. Start with supporting these organizations that many women have already started who likely need that support, need those resources in order to make their efforts go even further.

Now that Is an excellent point. I'm going to reach out to you after a session and you can probably know, send me the whole list at the same time. What I'm can think of now is because you gave me that idea, I can probably start finding these companies, these sort of organization, maybe across the world, hey, maybe, maybe publish a whole list and maybe, you know, like you said, still be part of it, still, you know, feel that you're doing something and you never know how, where this might take you.

Yes. Can I say one more thing about that? As far as where to, you know, where to reach out to. So I just talked about professional organizations, but if you are looking at the, the local level, which is where I started, right. As far as looking for places to impact, I was living in Austin. There is an organization called the Jeremiah, I believe it's project. I always get it mixed up with this project or program. They are a resource center for young and single moms and there's a childcare co op. So when some of the women who are a part of this co op are at work and those who are not are caring for the children part of it.

Right.

In their endeavor to again, mitigate these factors that pull women out of the workforce, that marginalize us, one of the number one of those things is the crippling cost of childcare. That's pretty much been a stronghold for most of my lifetime.

Right.

It's a pretty obvious thing, I think, that keeps women out of the general workforce. But I think women do such a good job of appearing that it's not an issue.

Right.

We're sort of got all the plates spinning all the time that I think, you know, it's easy to overlook again, this rather obvious thing that's keeping us out of the workforce. But for this organization that I'm talking about, the co op is just where, you know, where I first engaged with it. I was like, wow, I wish I'd had something like that when I was coming up. But one of the coolest things they did and the opportunity that I'm talking about for organizations is, you know, they have folks who are career coaches and they have volunteers come in and speak. So if I am, you know, a recruiter for tech sales at name one of these, you know, tech places there in Austin, and I'm like, where can I find a group of people who are good listeners, maybe have had some experiences that have helped them become gritty, helped them develop resilience.

Right.

And who are hungry for an opportunity to crush something.

Right.

And change their Futures and change the lives of their families. Where can I find those people? Right, you can find those people at places like I just talked about. And so you can, you know, go in donating your time as just career coaching these folks or you can actively recruit from places like that. And so like I said, that's Jeremiah program is in Austin. I know that there's one in Chicago. I don't remember which other states they're in, but I'm sure if you google it, you'll find out. But whatever those types of organizations are that are local to you, don't overthink it, don't overlook it. Everything counts. If you went in and donated an hour of your time every Saturday morning, you're teaching a clinic in resume writing or a clinic in interviewing.

Right.

And so you gave four hours over this month and it made one woman be able to stop working two part time jobs, not having any access to health insurance and barely ever seeing her children. And you took that one woman and put her in an environment where now, right, she's making a 65k base and has access to six figure income.

Right.

You made a difference. Even if it's just one woman, you made a difference. So I think that that's what I would like to leave folks with is that no matter how small, you may think some action you're taking toward this problem is the implications can be detrimental and in the lives of women, in the lives of children and to the bottom line. Do not underestimate the power of one person endeavoring to change the world.

That is beautiful. I mean it. That was beautiful.

Thank you.

I do have a small portion where I cover like sort of a rapid fire, if that's okay with you.

I'm ready.

Okay. You had a chance to get reborn today. What would you want to be?

I would be a guitarist in a rock band.

Awesome. And that's. That's a good one. Your dream vacation. You can't think a lot. Okay.

Okay.

That's so okay. Wine or margarita?

Oh, Margarita. Easy.

All right. Your mentor. Who's your mentor?

Besides my mother, which everybody says, a man named Marcus Knight. He is. He was VP of sales at Textio and caused them to be very successful. He's had a habit of that. He's done that with a couple of startups at this point. And he is the first CEO of a consultancy who I met that was black. And for me that's important because again, if diversity and inclusion are important to me, then seeing folks show up in places where we're underrepresented this is supposed to be rapid fire, wasn't it? Everyone did.

It's all right. Your two favorite people in sales, other than your mentor.

My two favorite Galen, Jermaine, and. You're going to get me in trouble.

You can't think. You can't think.

Okay. Galen, Jermaine and James Bodden.

All right. Awesome. All right, the last one. Who would you want to bring us next? Who would you want to see on the Salesman show next?

Galem. Jose.

All right.

No, but seriously, Galem's amazing. And you'll know, you probably have met her, seen her, she's amazing. And Gabrielle Blackwell. Same reason.

All right. Awesome. Thank you so much, Nikki, for coming on the show.

Come on.