Episode 57: Ceilidh Kurkoski – The Growth Mindset
She may have started out cleaning up messes, but now she’s just cleaning up. Ceilidh initiated her career as a janitor in an Austin (TX) gym, but her exceptional work ethic quickly moved her into management and ultimately jumpstarted her career in sales.
Ceilidh thrived in the cold-calling trenches for 2.5-years here at memoryBlue. From SDR to Senior SDR to recruiting, Ceilidh ran the gamut of the sales development obstacle course, gaining invaluable skills and insights that still serve her today as the Senior Digital Marketing Consultant at Apogee Results.
In this episode of Tech Sales is for Hustlers, Ceilidh shares her real-life underdog story with our listeners. Hear her perspective on the pros and cons of taking a unique career path, fresh insight on how being grounded in sales helps her as a “swiss army knife” team player today, and why the growth mindset she honed at memoryBlue helps her unlock a career full of possibilities.
Guest-At-A-Glance
Name: Ceilidh Kurkoski
Position: Senior Digital Marketing Consultant
Company: Apogee Results: Online Marketing
Noteworthy: A memoryBlue alumna who served as an SDR, a Senior SDR, and ultimately a Talent Sourcer and Recruiter.
Connect with Ceilidh: LinkedIn
Key Insights
⚡A sales career is more fun, but more challenging than working in operations.
Ceilidh started out in the fitness industry, where she began as a housekeeper but was promoted quickly to operations. A few short years later, she was doing a different—and inarguably preferable— kind of sweeping house as an SDR at memoryBlue. Now, a Digital Marketing Specialist at Apogee Results, Ceilidh gives us the inside scoop on working in sales vs. working in operations.
⚡ Your strategy is only as effective as your execution.
Ah yes, good old fashion cold calling, a dreaded pastime of sales that has rightly earned its fear-inducing reputation. Is it even an effective strategy? Ceilidh says yes. If done correctly, cold calling can connect you with your prospects and drive sales. Once you’re able to accept the fact that it’s just a person on the other end of the line and not the proverbial “big bad wolf” you’ll be able to relax and find your groove.
⚡Being an SDR can jumpstart a lucrative career.
Ceilidh is no stranger to conquering whatever she sets her mind to achieve. After spending time at memoryBlue developing and honing her skills in sales and recruiting, she pursued her passion for marketing. But the skills she gained as an SDR have been essential to her current role and have expedited her upward professional trajectory.
Episode Highlights
Navigating hard times to get closer to your goal
“So I started off as a housekeeper doing pretty much all the duties you would think of: housekeeping, cleaning, toilets, cleaning the floor, gym equipment underneath treadmills, all that fun stuff. But I knew there was an opportunity for growth. […]
There’s a light at the end of the tunnel. And every day that you go through literal shit is going to get you closer to the end goal. So that’s what I was striving for.”
Differentiate yourself and demonstrate your value
“There’s a lot of competition within pretty much any space, even the fitness space, especially in Austin; we have a ton of little CrossFit boxes, all the normal LA lifetime, all those types of fitness. So you can’t just have people come into the gym and be like, ‘Our membership is $1799 biweekly with a $40 enrollment fee. You have to give them a different experience. And that’s one thing I learned about when I was working at Gold’s Gym. Minori and a few of my other leaders really taught me about figuring out what they need, their pain points, and focus on if this person was your mom coming into the gym, what kind of experience would you want her to have? And that gave me a different outlook and looking at it versus I’m just trying to sell something. It was more I’m trying to help somebody.”
Cold calling is not easy for anyone
“If anyone tells you cold calling is easy, they’re lying. There’s a lot of ‘No’s,’ and it’s very scary at first. You’re calling somebody out of the blue that you have no idea who they are. And then their title says something like chief marketing officer, chief operating officer. You’re like, ‘But I’m just an SDR, so I’m not able to speak at your level, especially in the tech space.’ So it was scary, actually.”
Harnessing the power of the Blitz mindset
“We called it Blitz time. So two hours for a cold calling, but another good thing to relate it to, it’s the same thing as time blocking. So you focus 30 minutes an hour of your day. You have certain tasks you need to do. So if I need to do an expense report for one of the clients or sit down for 30 minutes, knock it out, send it to the client, it’s done. But if I’m having emails come in, maybe other things coming in, I’m pinging other people back. I start like, ‘Oh, maybe I need to work on this blog post.’ You just get nothing done. It’s not efficient. Your brain takes like five minutes or so to rethink about what it’s supposed to be doing.”
Focus on your professional growth
“One of the things I feel always resonates with me is, ‘Have a growth mindset.’ So whatever your new role is or wherever your new company is, just focus on growing in that role, learning, developing. Don’t have a fixed mindset where you’re stuck in your ways, and this is the way things need to be. Learn from your peers, learn from the company and just grow and develop that way.”
Transcript:
[00:00:06] Marc Gonyea: Ceilidh Kurkoski
[00:00:09] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yes.
[00:00:10] Marc Gonyea: in the house. I got it right. Welcome to the podcast, Ceilidh.
[00:00:15] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Thanks, Marc.
[00:00:16] Chris Corcoran: Ceilidh, great seeing you again.
[00:00:18] Ceilidh Kurkoski: You too, Chris.
[00:00:21] Marc Gonyea: Everyone’s a favorite, but you’re one of the all-time favorites.
[00:00:24] Ceilidh Kurkoski: I appreciate that.
[00:00:27] Marc Gonyea: For a million reasons. But let’s get into it.
[00:00:31] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Sounds good.
[00:00:32] Marc Gonyea: Let’s get into it. Chris, I have looked forward to this. The people who are listening don’t know you, a lot of them, although some of the alums would probably join in and listen in. Let’s get going with this. Tell us about yourself. And, you’ve got a very great story from where you are now and how you got there, but tell us a little bit about where you’re from, where you grew up, kind of, what you were like as a, as a mini Ceilidh, growing up.
[00:00:56] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Sounds good. Well, mini Ceilidh, that’s pretty far back, so we won’t go that, that far back. Quick brief background though. Went to school, actually, for teaching. Education is a very hard career, so I have a lot of respect for teachers. Middle school science was a no-joke, so ended up shortly moving to Austin.
[00:01:14] Decided that I really liked the city and I needed a job there, and unfortunately I graduated around the time of the 2008, economy crash. It was still, kind of, there around 2012 as well, so I had a hard time getting a job. So, I walked into a Gold’s Gym and said, “Hey, what are you hiring for?
[00:01:33] “Housekeeping. Perfect. I’ll take it.” I’m still actually friends with that manager. He thought I was kidding. So, I ended up cleaning toilets.
[00:01:40] Marc Gonyea: Hold on. Hold on, hold on, hold on, a couple of things. So, where’d you go to school?
[00:01:44] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Stephen F. Austin, Axe’em, Jacks!
[00:01:47] Marc Gonyea: There you go. What’d you major in?
[00:01:50] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Education with a minor in geology.
[00:01:52] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Wow. The study of rocks.
[00:01:54] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yeah.
[00:01:56] Marc Gonyea: So, you had a cup of coffee in the teaching business for lack of a profession, right?
[00:02:01] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yeah.
[00:02:02] Marc Gonyea: And, and, and you said you did it. How long did you do it for, and why did you change your mind? Which is there’s no shame in that game at all, right?
[00:02:09] Ceilidh Kurkoski: So, I did all of my student teaching and then I did a six months long-term sub assignment and was offered a job to come the fall school year. It’s just, the teaching is an animal all itself. It really is.
[00:02:22] Marc Gonyea: So, you said, “Not for me. I’m moving.” What inspired you to move to Austin?”
[00:02:26] Ceilidh Kurkoski: My stepdad actually has his family here, so I’d been out and visited a few times and always liked the city. So, I just might as well, don’t have a job, don’t have any ties, so now’s a good time to move to Austin.
[00:02:37] Marc Gonyea: And, it was a tougher time, tougher economic climate back then.
[00:02:41] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yes. Yeah.
[00:02:42] Marc Gonyea: And you ended up at Gold’s and then let’s talk about this. I know Chris likes talking about this.
[00:02:47] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.
[00:02:47] For sure. So, talk to us a little bit about, so then you got hired as a housekeeper, talk a little bit about what you did, what you learned and, kind of, how you took that
[00:02:56] as a jumping off point and where it took you within the Gold organization.
[00:03:00] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yeah, so I started off as a housekeeper doing pretty much all the duties you would think of housekeeping, cleaning toilets, cleaning the floor, gym equipment underneath treadmills, all that fun stuff, but I knew that there was opportunity for growth so I ended up also working front desk, kids clubs.
[00:03:18] So, I worked every single department that was required for operations. I wanted to be an operations manager. So, I did that for quite a few months. I think I did all three departments for about eight, nine months, so, almost a year. And then, when they opened up a facility out in Westlake, I was hired to help open that facility as the operations manager
[00:03:38] and actually that’s how I ended up doing sales too because we opened during January, which is fitness resolutions. So, I was doing operations management and selling gym memberships and personal training packages, and then continue doing that since I really had a knack for it. It wasn’t until a few months of being an operations manager that I actually switched fully over into sales for the company.
[00:04:00] Marc Gonyea: Corcoran, she’s so self-effacing, right? She doesn’t want to talk about the part that you and I want to talk about, which is the part when most people quit.
[00:04:10] Chris Corcoran: The hard work.
[00:04:11] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yeah. the cleaning toilets part.
[00:04:15] Marc Gonyea: Most people aren’t going to ever do that. They think they’re above that.
[00:04:17] Ceilidh Kurkoski: It was rough sometimes. I cleaned up some pretty nasty messes. But you always just have to know that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and every day that you go through, literally shit, is going to get you closer to the end-all goal, so that’s what I was striving for, so.
[00:04:34] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. You said you pushed through because you knew that you could do something better and bigger.
[00:04:39] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yeah.
[00:04:41] Marc Gonyea: And that, I think it was analogous to the SDR roles we’ll get to.
[00:04:44] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yes, definitely.
[00:04:47] Chris Corcoran: So, you started out in housekeeping, quickly move up into operations, just through hard work and discipline you do well, you showcase what you’re capable of and then there’s a new Gold’s opening up in Westlake and you’re part of the team that’s going to go and open it. And then, you get exposed to sales.
[00:05:03] Talk, talk to us a little bit about your first experiences in sales and how it compared to a role in operations.
[00:05:11] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yeah, so sales is definitely different. So, operations is a lot more high level making sure the facility is running and unfortunately dealing with angry customers. Sales is very much more exciting, I would say, and a happier place because people are coming to the gym, they’re so excited about achieving their goals,
[00:05:29] you get to talk and learn about what they’re looking for, and you just really feel like you’ve helped them on that journey. So, sales is a lot more fun, also quite a bit more challenging too.
[00:05:38] Chris Corcoran: In what way? In what way?
[00:05:40] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yeah. So, there’s a lot of competition within pretty much any space, even the fitness space, especially in Austin. We have a ton of little CrossFit boxes, all the normal LA, Lifetime, all those types of fitness centers, so you have to really prove value and what makes you different. So, you can’t just have people come into the gym and be like, “Our membership is $17.99 bi-weekly with a $40 enrollment fee.” You have to give them a different experience and that’s one thing I actually really learned about when I was working at Gold’s. Minori and a few of my other leaders really taught me about figuring out what they need, what their pain points are and focus on,
[00:06:20] “If this person was your mom coming into the gym, what kind of experience would you want her to have?” And, that gave me a different outlook and looking at it versus, “I’m just trying to sell something,” it was more, “I’m trying to help somebody.” And, I think I’ve always, kind of, had that throughout my sales career because of working at Gold’s.
[00:06:38] Chris Corcoran: Wow. That’s great, great advice. I’m sure it’s still, how did you do selling memberships and personal training packages?
[00:06:46] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Good. I did really good. I actually also got my personal training certificate, so I was very well-versed in a training and everything as well, which I think helped a lot. So, no, I did very well. I think my biggest package was a 36- session training package. So, yeah, very, very large.
[00:07:03] Chris Corcoran: And, and so you were bought in to the whole Gold’s movement, right? I mean, you started up in housekeeping, moved through operations, got into sales, got into personal training, opened up a place. You were all, all-lean on Gold’s.
[00:07:14] Ceilidh Kurkoski: I was, I love the gym. I still go to the gym.
[00:07:18] Chris Corcoran: So, how, how did, how did you get off of that? Like, what, what happened?
[00:07:21] Ceilidh Kurkoski: So, I became older and realized that unfortunately, as much as I would love to say that I’m going to be in spit-spot shape and on my feet all day and racking weights and doing all these types of things and not having that good of work-life balance, I knew that wasn’t something I wanted. I needed, like, the basics, like, really good health insurance, two weeks PTO,
[00:07:47] I wanted a job where if something bad happened to my health, that I would still have a job. So, it really was more the, “I need something more long-term and where I can grow a lot more professionally.” I’d really hit a cap at a Gold’s gym. There’s only so high you can move up within the fitness industry.
[00:08:04] Chris Corcoran: Okay. And, you talked a little bit about, really, an issue that’s really important, work life balance, and, and that means different things to different people, right? And so, it’d be helpful if you could share with the listeners just a little bit more about, kind of, what your, what was your life like when you were working there and how many hours were you working at the gym and paint us a picture of, of what life was like for you back then?
[00:08:26] Ceilidh Kurkoski: So, I would get up at, like, 4, in the 4, 4:40 in the morning, and then I would go to the gym to get my workout in before I got busy with, like, all the members around 7, 7:30, and then I would, honestly, I would pretty much start work. I would make sure the gym was ready to go, picked up, and then you have to be at the gym for people before work, lunch time and after work because that is when people buy memberships.
[00:08:51] So, I mean, I was at the gym most time until, like, seven o’clock. So, I get there super early and then I would leave at, like, seven or later. And, not all that time I was on the clock, but I was always available and that was the hard thing about being in the fitness industry.
[00:09:07] Chris Corcoran: And, was this like a Monday through Friday thing or were you working weekends or what did that look like?
[00:09:11] Ceilidh Kurkoski: So, pretty much all the time, especially in operations, if your front desk associate, or even when you’re in the sales team, if someone calls in, then you need to go and make sure the gym’s open and the members can come work out. So, you’re always on call in certain roles, so.
[00:09:30] Chris Corcoran: And so, you wanted something more, more corporate, more nine to five, more benefits, more, kind of, career-trajectory and all of those things?
[00:09:37] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yeah.
[00:09:38] Chris Corcoran: And, so, how did you find out about us or how did we find out about you?
[00:09:41] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yeah. So, lots of searching into what I wanted to do. So, I knew I wanted to stay in sales ’cause I feel like there’s not really a cap on your earning potential, so the amount of work you put in is the, what you get out of it. So, I always liked that about sales. It was more about what type of sales and then also getting somewhere that would actually give me an opportunity because my entire background was in fitness,
[00:10:06] like, six years of fitness, how, how do you portray that on a resume? Like, “Hey, I want to be in sales but my whole background is in fitness.” So, that’s, kind of, how memoryBlue came about, just because obviously entry-level, sales, training, so, really, that’s how I ended up finding memoryBlue. I did apply to a few other locations and I had another offer from other locations as well, but
[00:10:31] the training and coaching and just the experience I got during my interview process really was what made me choose memoryBlue.
[00:10:38] Marc Gonyea: Who did you interview with back in the day at memoryBlue?
[00:10:40] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Ah, I also interviewed with ADP, that’s a big one. Yeah.
[00:10:45] I realized that was going to be a lot more outside sales though, so, didn’t think that was something I wanted to get into, especially in the Texas heat,
[00:10:53] then I also interviewed with a lead generation, all Web Leads. They focused on, like, more health insurance, car insurance, those types of providers. I had a lot better experience through my interview process with memoryBlue though, and it would have been more of an account management role, like, growing into internal, like, versus generating, learning how to generate new opportunities, and that’s really what I wanted to focus on more.
[00:11:17] Marc Gonyea: So, you came in at memoryBlue and who did you interview with at memoryBlue, with Mr. Bhatt, with Nimit?
[00:11:23] Ceilidh Kurkoski: No, I interviewed with Dot and Todd.
[00:11:26] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.
[00:11:27] Ceilidh Kurkoski: And Joey, Joey.
[00:11:29] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Mr. Sorenson.
[00:11:30] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Joey Sorenson, I liked to ring the bell.
[00:11:34] Marc Gonyea: There we go. We’ve got to give those guys shout-out, shout-outs.
[00:11:36] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. Yeah. You, shout-outs.
[00:11:37] Marc Gonyea: We also, I have to give Ceilidh a little shout-out because when I’d come to Austin, I’d make the people come to exercise with me, and no matter what we did, Ceilidh wasn’t really sweating as much or breathing as heavy as an in everyone else was.
[00:11:48] Ceilidh Kurkoski: I still can remember competing with you on a jumping lunges at OrangeTheory.
[00:11:52] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, I can’t do those. Can’t do them. I can’t do any of that stuff really. So, I was, I would look over there and I’d be sweating and then Ceilidh’s like, “Yeah. Okay. This is, like, not really workout.”
[00:12:02] Chris Corcoran: Wait, so hold on. I want to take a, take a pause here for a minute. So, Ceilidh, before you started at Gold’s, you had a non-traditional upbringing.
[00:12:12] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yeah.
[00:12:12] Chris Corcoran: You lived in Congo,
[00:12:15] London, Houston, Austin, and now, and now Atlanta. So, what was it, what was it like? That’s not how most people grow up. What was that experience like and what did you learn from it?
[00:12:29] Ceilidh Kurkoski: That’s a good question. So, I think the experience teaches you more about just how good you have it, honestly. When you travel to different countries and you live in different areas, like, the Congo is a really good example, I mean, my school system there was like a shack with no windows and we’d all get sent home at lunch to go eat lunch because there wasn’t, like, a, like, a cafeteria, that wasn’t a thing.
[00:12:54] Everyone spoke French, dirt roads, like, if you want to talk growing up at a different place, that’s different. We have it very, very good here.
[00:13:03] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, how long did you live there in Congo?
[00:13:05] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Two years.
[00:13:06] Chris Corcoran: You were how old?
[00:13:06] Ceilidh Kurkoski: That would have been when I was younger about, like, probably till six to eight.
[00:13:10] Chris Corcoran: So, like, kindergarten, first grade, second grade, that, that time period. Okay.
[00:13:13] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yeah. So, lived there for a bit. My presence were animals.
[00:13:17] I had chickens, cats ’cause there wasn’t, like, it’s not like my mom could run to the toy store. So, she bought me, like, a pet. So, I had a quite a few animals. And then, we ended up in London. We actually ended up in London because we were evacuated. The structure, like, the government is not very safe, safe and sound there,
[00:13:35] and it just so happened. We were there when one of the uprisings was happening, so we got evacuated to the Bon and then move, when we were in Switzerland, we were, kind of, jumped around a little bit, and then we ended up settling in London, where my dad was working for Slumber J again, and then that’s a totally different experience.
[00:13:53] You go from dirt roads to a busy city and trains and subway systems and everything along those lines, and then ended up back in Houston because of a job change. So, oil industry, Houston. That’s exactly why we ended up back there.
[00:14:09] Chris Corcoran: Wow, but it certainly gave you a perspective.
[00:14:12] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yes. And I always traveled too, when I got older I did multiple backpacking trips. I did a South America, I did Argentina, and then I also did Southeast Asia. I did Thailand, Cambodia and Malaysia. I’ve always, kind of, had the travel bug because of it. I like to experience all the different cultures.
[00:14:32] Chris Corcoran: That’s great. That’s great. All right. Well, let’s, let’s bring it back to being an SDR and kind of what your experiences growing up internationally, as well as what you learned at Gold’s, what was it like being an SDR? It sounds like a piece of cake compared to some of the stuff, some of the other stuff you’d seen up to that point in your life.
[00:14:49] Ceilidh Kurkoski: You would think so, but I don’t think cold calling is easy for anybody. If anyone tells you cold calling is easy, they’re lying. There’s a lot of no’s and it’s very scary at first. You’re calling somebody out of the blue that you have no idea who they are, and then their title says something like chief marketing officer, chief operating officer,
[00:15:08] you’re like, “Well, I, but I’m just an SDR. So, I’m not able to speak at your level, especially in the tech space.” So, it was very, very scary actually.
[00:15:19] Chris Corcoran: And so, what, what type of solutions did you support your clients? What were you, what were you doing?
[00:15:25] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Oh goodness. That’s a fully loaded question. I think I did, like, 12, 13 different clients.
[00:15:31] Chris Corcoran: Okay. Wow.
[00:15:34] Marc Gonyea: You were so good. That’s because you were so good.
[00:15:35] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yeah. I remember getting put on a few different campaigns. I did a gamification software. I did a, like, telephone-type software, CRM-type software. Pretty much the entire gambit when it came to different tech platforms, which has been good though because my current company, we mostly work within the B2B space, so, a lot of my clients are in computers.
[00:16:01] Chris Corcoran: So, it gave you again, it gave you some perspective and gave you some, some experiences that you were able to use, kind of, in your current role.
[00:16:07] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yeah. Definitely.
[00:16:09] Marc Gonyea: I was going to say what stands out from those early days about learning how to do it. So, you’re working, going from Gold’s where people were coming in and maybe you’re doing some outbound work from time to time, I’m not sure, but you’re most of nearly all the work we do is outbound work. So, how was that learning curve like?
[00:16:23] Ceilidh Kurkoski: That was a pretty hard learning curve because I’d done some cold outreach, but everyone knows Gold’s Gym. So, it’s a lot different doing cold outreach for companies that are, a lot of companies that are, like, startups and people don’t have the awareness of them yet, so to, getting them to stop and talk to you, so, it was a lot of reworking scripts, learning
[00:16:43] what would work, “Should I follow this script to a T? Should I be more personable?” Really finding out what works for you is, honestly, was the hard part.
[00:16:54] Marc Gonyea: And who, who, who did you work with? Like, who were some of your colleagues at the time and it, kind of, brought, brought you along or you learned from them, they learn from you?
[00:17:01] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yes. So, the main colleagues I worked with first starting was Deionte. He’s a baller.
[00:17:08] Yes, I, I’ve, I’ve contacted him a few times, post-memoryBlue days. Tina, she’s also a baller.
[00:17:14] Marc Gonyea: Yes. Christina is strong.
[00:17:15] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Brusa, Allison Brusa.
[00:17:18] Yeah, those are probably the big, big threes that I learned a lot from in my time. And of course, Dot, I mean, my mentor.
[00:17:26] So, I learned directly from him. But I feel like I learned so many different from all of them. So, Tina is a beast on the phones and about figuring out what’s going to resonate with people, so talking to her about script and what I should be putting in my, like, lemonade and my messaging, just really to, like, spark people’s interest in one sentence, which is very hard to do.
[00:17:48] Deionte, he just really, you watch him and you learn work capacity. Yes.
[00:17:55] Oh, yeah. You think that you push hard and then you look over at him and you’re like, “Well, I need to, I need to step up and push more too.” And then, Bruce does great with messaging when it comes to, like, email outreach and those types of things.
[00:18:09] And then, other people are good with more technical things like Excel and everything. So, that’s really a great thing about memoryBlue. So yes, we learn how to cold call, but then you have all these people that have all these skillsets that you can learn from outside of blitz time, of course.
[00:18:24] Marc Gonyea: I love that. Her memory is sharp in the fact that she’s even saying outside of blitz time is, this is really important.
[00:18:33] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Okay. So no, I definitely, got a lot from the experience and I still do, I do even, kind of, like a blitz drain my workday. There’s, like, two hours in the morning, in the afternoon, where maybe I’m not, like, calling, but maybe I’m following up with people via email and I’m not responding to emails that are coming in.
[00:18:51] I’m not responding to them, slacks, unless it’s 91 emergency. I’m fully focused on prospecting and following up with current people in my pipeline, it’s just, it makes a big difference to really focus on something and not let your mind wander to different tasks ’cause then you really don’t get anything done.
[00:19:08] So, definitely took that with me.
[00:19:10] Chris Corcoran: Look at that discipline, I’ll give Gold’s the credit for that, or you the credit for actually following a discipline. But, but being in the fitness industry, that’s all about discipline.
[00:19:20] Marc Gonyea: I think, I think you needed to go a little deeper for us on that, so….yeah. So, walk us through that again. So, you, how you focus on what you, when you’re doing this particular function of your job, walk us through and why, why is it important not to get distracted by those things.
[00:19:37] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yeah, so, it’s like another, I mean, we called it blitz time, so, like, two hours, two hours for a cold calling, but another good thing to relate it to, it’s the same thing as time-blocking. So, you focus, like, 30 minutes, an hour your day. You have certain tasks you need to do, whether it’s, like, reporting, so, if I need to do an expense report for one of the clients or an invoice, if I sit down for 30 minutes, knock it out, send it to the client, it’s done. But if I’m having, like, emails come in, maybe other things coming in, I’m pinging other people back, I start, like, “Oh, maybe I need to work on this blog post,” you just get nothing done. It’s not efficient. Your brain takes, like, five minutes or so to, like, rethink about what it’s supposed to be doing, so I’ve just always used the blitz mindset for my job now. It really makes a big difference.
[00:20:26] Marc Gonyea: That’s, that’s, that’s critical. That’s, that’s a life lesson for everyone. It’s a good reminder too, for me. So, as you’re growing into this SDR role, you’re working with these people who are all really good at certain things or certain components of their game. What did you get good at, at your game? What was, kind of, your, the Ceilidh signature?
[00:20:43] Ceilidh Kurkoski: So, I would say probably the best was just learning that these are people on the phone, and yes, some of them might hang up on you, but most of them were actually pretty nice, and they’ll be willing to talk to you. You just have to find what, like, you can find as a common interest. These people have their LinkedIns, there’s things you can identify on their LinkedIn that maybe you can bring up on the call. One time, one of my highlights of a call recording was a lady answered the phone and I could tell she was not from the U.S., she had a very strong, it sounded French, French accent, so I asked her where she was from and she told me France.
[00:21:18] So, I told her on the cold call, “Parlez-vous Francais?” from that I had, I had the meeting booked, it was in the, she loved me. So, yeah, even in my email calendar invite I put “Bonjour” and then I looked up, I don’t remember how to say it, but I looked up “looking forward to connecting next week” in French, and I put that in the calendar invite.
[00:21:36] So, you just even realize these are people, so that was very important for my success.
[00:21:41] Chris Corcoran: Ceilidh is just steeling candy from babies, man. I mean, that’s just so smooth.
[00:21:51] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Okay.
[00:21:51] Marc Gonyea: So, so you’re at memoryBlue, you’re doing your thing, and all these multiple clients, it sounds like for you unlocking or realizing that these folks are people that maybe helped to get over the call avoidance or get, get over, like, the fear of the negative interaction.
[00:22:06] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yeah.
[00:22:07] Marc Gonyea: Well, how did things progress? ‘Cause you were doing well, right? We talked about, we talked about some of these things on the, on the, on the prep call, particularly the bonus system and, like, did you like how things were set up that way? I mean, know.
[00:22:20] Ceilidh Kurkoski: It’s kinda, like, what I said earlier in this call, that the work you put in is the, the amount of money you can get. So, obviously the more dials, if I was willing to put in extra work, I had opportunity for, like, things like champions pool, when I was at memoryBlue. Yeah. And I, even one of my months I got a, I think it was, my bonus was almost $5,000.
[00:22:41] So it, yeah, it definitely motivates you to want to keep pushing and putting in those extra hours.
[00:22:47] Chris Corcoran: One of the things you said about is that you started just to understand that these people are just people. I think that’s a good mentality to have, but I think you took it to the next level and that you were yourself. You’ve broke into French. You were just, you were just a person and that is engaging and that’s what helps you build rapport.
[00:23:08] And, once you have the rapport the likelihood that you can book a meeting goes up a lot. So, talk about how you, it sounds like you were very comfortable being your own person and you were not robotic because I get calls all the time from SDRs and salespeople, and I like people, I don’t like robots, or, or, or robotic people, you know what I mean?
[00:23:27] So, talk a little bit about how you were so comfortable just being Ceilidh.
[00:23:32] Ceilidh Kurkoski: That’s a good question. I think, it probably comes partially from my upbringing to living in all these different places and having to, like, mesh with a bunch of different personalities, so I was just kinda, ended up being myself, so it was too hard to try to match with every single person’s personality that we’re meeting.
[00:23:52] So, I think that probably just ended up coming into my, my adult hood too a little bit. It’s probably how that happened.
[00:23:59] Chris Corcoran: Great.
[00:24:00] Ceilidh Kurkoski: I don’t know if that answers your question.
[00:24:01] Chris Corcoran: It does. No, absolutely.
[00:24:04] Marc Gonyea: So, you’re doing your thing, you know, champions, pool winner, making some good bonuses, and you’re progressing. And you know, at memoryBlue is a, it’s kind of a compressed timeline in a sense of the matter, you make it client by client if you want to, if you choose to do so, you may stick around and go do something else,
[00:24:21] you may leave in rising stars. You, you were doing the gig, helping people around you do the gig, and I know you’re important to the office culturally, just ’cause, you know, you, everybody knows you’re kicking ass and taking names. What did you do after the SDR role and how did you come to that decision? ‘Cause you did, you tried someone else with us.
[00:24:40] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yes. I ended up in a recruiting.
[00:24:43] That was, that was actually a courtesy of Chris. Why is that funny? Why is that funny?
[00:24:49] Well, I just remember good experience. Chris flew down and talked to me about the recruiting role in direct placement and how exciting it was that memoryBlue was expanding and starting this, this new venture.
[00:25:01] And, I just remember it’s, I could have gone with a client, but such a good experience, and then it seemed like a new, like, thing to conquer and learn and everything. I had no experience in recruiting really, other than hiring a few trainers. And then, it was, I felt like an honor because it was a whole new department of memoryBlue and I was being entrusted with the chance to, like, help it be successful, so it ,was like, a new challenge. I was like, “Yes, let’s, let’s do it.”
[00:25:33] Marc Gonyea: I like how you’re laughing as you’re describing it.
[00:25:35] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yeah, let’s do it. I mean, I, direct placement had it, had a, had a fun beginning. It was, I mean, like, anything it’s hard to start in the beginning.
[00:25:45] Marc Gonyea: What’d you learn doing that?
[00:25:48] Ceilidh Kurkoski: I learned, so being a sales development rep, it was very much top. I mean, you can dig down into what their pains are, but you really are only getting, like, a five-minute-tops conversation with these people, and then they’re being handed off to an account executive to really dig into, like, pain or what their needs are.
[00:26:09] With recruiting, you have, have to be able to read people, and you have to be able to dig into what their background is, so I think that’s where recruiting really helped me was asking why or what, or, like, expanding, like, it was never enough the answer they gave. I needed them to expand upon it more. I needed to learn more.
[00:26:28] So, that definitely, actually, funny enough, actually helped me being in, like, full-cycle sales in my current role.
[00:26:36] Chris Corcoran: Marc calls that “slow jamming.”
[00:26:38] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Slow jamming.
[00:26:39] Marc Gonyea: Slow jamming, lets you find out what’s going on.
[00:26:42] Ceilidh Kurkoski: I like it. I’ve never heard that before.
[00:26:44] Marc Gonyea: Oh yeah, all sorts of slow jams. But let’s go back to the SDR rule real quick, because we’re going to get the way, you know, why you transition out of recruiting and what you’re doing now, who you’re working for and how we love him. We’re not upset at him at all for approaching you.
[00:27:01] I wish he would not, there’s no sarcasm there, I believe it, but let’s go back to what you learned in the SDR role because you are no longer doing that now, but we talked about, kind of, some of these intangibles that benefit you as you move through your career. What, what are they?
[00:27:18] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yeah, so, obviously building a list of prospects to reach out to. And, I know you say you don’t do it now, but I think every sales person should be doing, I still do SDR work. There’s like, that, it’s not a thing to just stop doing it just because you’re in a closing. So, prospecting, looking at companies, you can look at sites like Crunchbase.
[00:27:42] I learned all that from memoryBlue, Owl and those things to find competitors, make your messaging resonate more, just, you just learn
[00:27:50] so much about those aspects, and then also with the tools you have, you have Zoom Info, you have, like, Sales Navigator, Salesforce, which is probably still used. I mean, that’s such a big CRM tool.
[00:28:05] Part off, like, all these things that you would you use in your day-to-day job, even if you don’t end up in sales, most companies do use some type of CRM or platform.
[00:28:16] They use some type of, like, lead generation or messaging or email marketing. There’s so many things that you use that translate to different roles.
[00:28:27] Marc Gonyea: Yep. And then, we talked about the professionalism and the messaging, right?
[00:28:31] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Oh, my goodness. Yes. You obviously are speaking one-on-one to all these different clients and you can’t just show up to a call or say the wrong thing or email somebody in an unprofessional way. You learn all those professionals skill sets for your long-term career as well.
[00:28:47] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, I think that’s, like, an underrated part of the job because it’s particularly, this, the finer details of how you communicate, but also the interaction from talking to people, talking to the prospects and talking to the clients, I mean, you’re doing that every single day. People don’t realize how strong of a skill that is in other professions.
[00:29:07] Right? ‘Cause you don’t, in a lot of jobs starting off, like, in business accounting, market marketing, probably not marketing, the engineering side of the house, like, this, you don’t build up the human, human interaction as much as we do these little ninja, judo contest you have with prospects on the phone, and then communicating this to the prospect every week
[00:29:29] who’s, who’s looking for results, right? And, sometimes you got to do little judo with the client because the client’s expectations might be unrealistic or, you know, or, you know, maybe their, their back is against the wall internally there, so they’re putting the heat on us. And, meanwhile, they got an all-stars SDR like you, like, they don’t even know that because they’re, they’re so limited.
[00:29:48] So, so you’re going to do recruiting, making that happen and then something catches your eye.
[00:29:58] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yeah, it wasn’t fully something catches my eyes. It’s so funny how things come about. I, I remember when I made the switch, it was crazy times in the world, COVID and everything was going on, just so happened because of updating my profile that my, one of my first clients, Apogee Results, Chris Glazer reached out to me ’cause he saw the,
[00:30:21] Marc Gonyea: Glazer.
[00:30:21] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yeah, one of, like, the first probably. He reached out to me and said that they were looking to, start doing a, more of an outreach-type sales function versus just living off of referrals because that was mostly their business, but
[00:30:36] COVID-19 kind of slowed that down and they needed an actual sales funnel.
[00:30:39] So, that’s how that came about. So, and now here I am, still with the company, what, over a year later.
[00:30:47] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, it’s great. Oh, year and a half almost.
[00:30:48] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yeah, it’s crazy.
[00:30:50] Marc Gonyea: So, so what are you doing? Because I know you’re doing you doing a bunch of different things now, right?
[00:30:56] Ceilidh Kurkoski: I do, do a lot of different things. So, when I came on, I really had to focus on building a pipeline. There was no, no prospects, really, they had a CRM that hadn’t been used since 20, 2018, 2019, so, going through and figuring out all of that, creating, like, a, like, Zoom Info, they didn’t have any type of lead generation, no Sales Navigator.
[00:31:20] So, I built it from the ground up using the skill sets that I gained from memoryBlue. So, really starting out, I really was focusing purely on sales operations, and then built, like, being an SDR because I had to build, generate a pipeline. And then, over the time it grew once I was doing, figuring out how to do the sales cycle,
[00:31:42] so, luckily I’d sat on so many sales, presentations and demos, so I took bits and pieces of what I used from other clients to come up with a sales presentation, created the sales presentation, worked on the sales proposal, updated that, all that started closing deals. And then, now I also do account management on top of it for some of the clients that have been brought on. And, very low level, my SEO team and paid search team is, they are geniuses, they are so smart. They’re like an A team, but for very low level, like, Excel, medial looking at website type authority, I’ll do those little SEO projects that don’t require their skillset. So, I had a prospect call me a Swiss Army knife the other day, so I think I’m going to point that name.
[00:32:30] I really like it.
[00:32:32] Chris Corcoran: That’s great, and that kind of speaks to joining a smaller firm where you get to do a lot. It sounds like you just took the bull by the horns and kind of put everything that you thought that they needed in place and have been able to get exposed to all these different areas versus if you would have joined a large company, you, you’re told to stay in your lane.
[00:32:52] And, so, it sounds like you liked the versatility of, of the small company and being able to be a Swiss Army knife.
[00:32:58] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Oh yeah. I love it because then you never stop learning and you have so much say, like, you can see what impacts, like, I can do AB tests and those types of things, I have full authority to do those and really find out what works, I’m in the space. So, I, I, it’s very empowering. I really enjoy it.
[00:33:18] Chris Corcoran: And, so, for the listeners, what, what does your company do?
[00:33:21] Ceilidh Kurkoski: We sell digital marketing services, but we purely focus on SEO and paid search. We don’t try to be everything to everyone. There’s so many aspects to marketing, but we really like to focus on them, really our bread and butter, what we’re very, very good at. So, that’s purely what we focus on. Those two.
[00:33:38] Chris Corcoran: And what types of companies utilize your services?
[00:33:41] Ceilidh Kurkoski: So, like, E-com, type PR companies utilize our services, but a lot of the companies we work with actually are in the B2B computer software
[00:33:49] and they really focus on that. Can’t say company names most of the time, like, I can’t drop any of our client names we work with, but, yeah, most of our companies are in the computer software space, so I’m sure you’ve seen their ads on LinkedIn because since memoryBlue’s in the tech space, I’m sure they’ve popped up a few times.
[00:34:07] Chris Corcoran: Very good, and, so, you find these clients and then you bring them in, you close them, then you manage them.
[00:34:13] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yes. Only a few though. Only, I only have four.
[00:34:16] I really need to focus on sales too, so we can’t have me doing too much account management.
[00:34:22] Chris Corcoran: Very good.
[00:34:23] Marc Gonyea: What muscles did you have to develop that you didn’t have coming out of memoryBlue as it relates to some of these other things, because you speak very highly of the SDR role in this value, but, like anything, there’s some things you have to, like, kind of little Dawn and I just copying, you know, I mean, you said that you talked about presentations, but what else did you have to learn and develop?
[00:34:44] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yeah. I had to learn at a high level, really, what goes into search engine, marketing and paid ads, like, there’s, in any industry there’s so many, what are they called? Like, like, MQL, marketing qualified lead, what are the, what are those called? Like, the, the shorts for things? Yes, there’s so many acronyms.
[00:35:03] So, I had to learn all the acronyms that went into the marketing space, and then being able to talk at a high level what we’re doing when we’re helping them with, like, technical SEO, content-based SEO, link-building, like, all those things that I did not learn at memoryBlue I had to learn in this space.
[00:35:21] So, I wasn’t just a fish out of water when the prospect asked me a question.
[00:35:28] Marc Gonyea: What about the closing muscles?
[00:35:31] Ceilidh Kurkoski: So, I feel like I already had that skill set, even though I didn’t use it at memoryBlue, I sat on so many, like, sales-type presentations and I had really good, like, mentors that were some of my clients, like, David Cherrie at Arcade, like, he was, he was the owner of that company, but he had me, like, fully watch the sales process
[00:35:59] and I always knew what was going on within the sales process. If I asked him about one of the prospects, he would tell me, give me updates. So, that, that helped.
[00:36:14] Chris Corcoran: So, Ceilidh, looking back the night before your first day at memoryBlue, what would, what would you tell yourself if you could, before you, before you started at memoryBlue as an SDR, what would you tell yourself?
[00:36:28] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Be afraid of failure.
[00:36:31] Chris Corcoran: That’s great.
[00:36:31] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yeah.
[00:36:34] Chris Corcoran: That’s great.
[00:36:38] Marc Gonyea: My only regret in this podcast is we’re not doing it in person,
[00:36:42] Ceilidh Kurkoski: I know.
[00:36:43] Marc Gonyea: ’cause you’re in Austin. ‘Cause, and I also.
[00:36:44] Chris Corcoran: She’s in Atlanta.
[00:36:46] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Atlanta, come on, starts with A.
[00:36:48] Marc Gonyea: No, it would be cool because we’re going to Austin, but you moved to Atlanta, and I wanna, I wanna jumping-lunges rematch.
[00:36:56] Ceilidh Kurkoski: I will be in Austin November and December. I’m spending both months there for the holidays, ’cause my mom is gonna fly out. So, I’m really excited.
[00:37:04] Marc Gonyea: All right. All right, man, if I’m there, I’ll look you up and, but before we do, before we do, you know, you’ve, you’ve, working in the fitness industry before memoryBlue, you weren’t at memoryBlue for awhile, and now you’ve been in Apogee, what are some, you know, you, you, you’re very deliberate, I think, in a good way,
[00:37:23] and you’re, you think these things through, what are some words of advice you have for people around when they make a move?
[00:37:31] Ceilidh Kurkoski: To another company?
[00:37:33] Marc Gonyea: Or another role or company.
[00:37:35] Ceilidh Kurkoski: So, I did a training at memoryBlue, and one of the things I feel like, that always resonates with me is, have a growth mindset. So, whatever your new role is or wherever your new company, just focus on, like, growing in that role, learning, developing. Don’t have a fixed mindset where you’re stuck in your ways, and, “This is the way things need to be,” like, learn from your peers, learn from the company and just grow and develop that way.
[00:38:02] Marc Gonyea: What stops people from doing that? So, when you see people who are making moves, w, you know, w, why are they maybe moving from one company to another? And, you’re kind of, like, scratching your head on, “Man, why are they going to that firm? Or, like, what, like, ’cause it happens a lot in, with memoryBlue alums and, and we have Mary L. Who work here now,
[00:38:20] they’re like, “Well, what should I be looking at when I go to my next thing?” So, growth mindset is good, but what they should be looking at in a role and in a company?
[00:38:28] Ceilidh Kurkoski: So, they’re, they’re jumping ’cause the grass is greener on the other side, and they’re looking for what’s easier. I mean that in the nicest way possible.
[00:38:34] Chris Corcoran: Wow.
[00:38:36] Marc Gonyea: Speaking truth, truth.
[00:38:39] Ceilidh Kurkoski: I don’t mean that in a bad way, but a lot of times, if
[00:38:43] your role gets hard, the first thing is, you just, like, you’re like, “I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m going to find it out,” instead of sticking it out and, like, really trying to, like,
[00:38:54] grow within that role, become really good at that role, and then opportunities will come your way.
[00:38:59] Within memoryBlue, maybe you’ll be hired out ’cause you stuck in that role, maybe you’ll move up within memoryBlue, and my role, it was, I wanted to, I told Chris when I’d been doing the sales for awhile, I need to learn more about marketing. I want to learn more about marketing. I want to become an account manager.
[00:39:16] I want to learn how to manage accounts, because it will make me better at the sales process. So, you just have to say, like, what you want instead of being, like, scared and then thinking that if you just jump to another role, it’ll just be easier to get. No, it doesn’t work that way. Have to put in the work.
[00:39:33] Marc Gonyea: Excellent. And what, what’s the future hold for you? Where do you want to go at this point?
[00:39:38] Ceilidh Kurkoski: So, obviously keep this company growing. I mean, we’re still, definitely, like most companies that are small pulling out of COVID. So, still bringing on more clients and growing that way, I’m hoping to grow our paid search, our team, and then, for me, professionally, I’m really looking forward to conferences starting back up.
[00:39:57] I’ve already been told that I will get to go to the conferences, so I’m super excited about having, like, that skill set a lot more. I did, like, two when I was at Gold’s, but very small, like, wellness fairs, so, I’d love to actually get to go to, like, big conferences, tons of people at a booth, maybe be a speaker one day,
[00:40:16] that’d be amazing. So, yeah, so, long-term, that’s, that’s what my next goals are. I just need conferences to come back up again.
[00:40:26] Chris Corcoran: That’s good. That’s good. Well, Ceiliidh, this was amazing. Lots of wisdom and it was great catching up with you.
[00:40:34] Ceilidh Kurkoski: You guys too, and if you’re ever in Atlanta, they do have a lot of tech conferences here too, you know?
[00:40:40] Chris Corcoran: They do.
[00:40:41] Marc Gonyea: Oh, we’re coming into Atlanta, eventually, Ceilidh. You can run. Then I want us, then we’re going to steal you back from Apogee.
[00:40:48] Chris Corcoran: Okay.
[00:40:50] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Chris has got to be a pot, Chris has gotta be a guest on the podcast.
[00:40:54] Ceilidh Kurkoski: See what he’ll do it.
[00:40:55] Marc Gonyea: Right? I know he will. I know. And, and shout-out to Danny, of course, Tory, gotta just give him, give him a shout-out. I miss, I miss seeing you guys at Tops in the morning when the only people at the breakfast buffet are you and Danny and me and my family.
[00:41:07] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Yeah. Just got to work out, ready to eat breakfast in the restaurant, kinda waggling in a little, not hungover.
[00:41:14] Marc Gonyea: Right. Well, I know Chris and I miss you at the firm. It was a tough day, but we’re very, very happy for you, and, and for, you know, your firm should be, you know, thankfully they got such a great person working for them.
[00:41:25] Ceilidh Kurkoski: I appreciate that. Thank you.
[00:41:28] Marc Gonyea: Right.
[00:41:29] Chris Corcoran: Good, Ceilidh, thank you so much.
[00:41:30] Ceilidh Kurkoski: Thank you.
[00:41:31] Chris Corcoran: Yep.
[00:41:32] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.