Zach Selch started selling at a flea market at 11, joined the Army to fund his education, then deliberately rotated through six continents in his 20s and 30s while studying export documentation and international payments. That combination of sales experience across cultures plus operational expertise landed him a director-level global sales role 15 years ago.
Chapters
So I tell a lot of stories, and people have asked me recently— I've said I've asked people what they want to hear, and they say, why don't you talk about your origin story? Why don't you talk about how this started? And here I am in an Egyptian temple, and a lot of Egyptian mythology is really about how things started, and I thought this was a great place to talk origin story. Oh my. So how did I get started in this? Well, I started off— first of all, I started off really poor. And for me, I always wanted to travel. And it seemed pretty unrealistic for me as a little boy for me to be able to travel. But when I was 11, I lived in a trailer next to a Next to a flea market. And I got a job selling in the flea market. I was really good at selling. And I realized that if I sold, I could do pretty much anything in the world I wanted as a salesman. And I could travel, I could live well. And I decided at 11 that I was going to be a salesman. But then I also realized that to be a good salesman, to get paid well, I really needed an education. And I couldn't afford that. My family split up when I was 15, and I basically lived alone after I was 15, working and supporting myself. But I went into the Army with the idea that I could leverage that to get an education. So I went through the Army, got an education, got my first job. And here's where it becomes a little interesting, I think. I figured that the people I knew who were VPs of international sales or VPs of sales had focused on one territory. And I thought, The best way I can differentiate myself and learn a lot, get a lot of knowledge, is to cover a lot of different territories. So what I did was I actually moved around a lot in my 20s and 30s. So I was a regional sales manager in Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South America, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa. And by doing that, I picked up a lot of market knowledge that a lot of people don't have. In parallel, I did something else. I realized that a lot of sales managers don't quite understand the administrative part— shipping, paperwork, payments, that kind of thing. So aside from going to college, I also went to community college, and I spent a lot of time taking courses that typically executives don't take on shipping documentation, on export documentation, on international payments, on shipping, those type of things. And getting that knowledge really, really helped me as I developed in my career. Hello. When I got my first job with global responsibility as a director of global sales for a company, ah, about 15 years ago, by that time I had already really covered all the different territories that you'd find And I was able— I had a good solid understanding of how to sell and how to manage people from all those territories, which was really helpful. On top of that, I understood shipping, understood payments and all of these things. So really that investment that I made in my 20s, that investment that I made in my 20s, and it was an investment because you got to keep in mind when you shift horizontally from territory to territory, typically you're going to lose money on that. And I understood that, but it was a worthwhile investment and risk to take because I also knew that by the time I got to my 40s and 50s, this was probably going to pay off in the— in allowing me to really understand the various markets around the world. So this is never a path for everybody, but when people ask me how I got to where I am, That's typically what I say is my origin story. Remember, when you're ready to grow your international sales, reach out to us. We can help. When you decide it's time to grow your international sales, call us.
