Episode 98: Aspen Streety -From Service to Sales

From broadcast journalism to working in the service industry and even acting, Aspen’s journey into sales was anything but direct. However, now a senior IT Account Executive at Kelly, she reflects on how her previous experiences and skills have all aided in her major success in sales.

In this episode of Tech Sales is for Hustlers, Aspen discusses her entry into the world of sales, while highlighting the success you can achieve without having a sales background and the overall importance of the SDR role.

Guest-At-A-Glance

💡 Name: Aspen Streety

💡 What she does: Aspen is a senior IT account executive at Kelly.

💡 Company: Kelly

💡 Noteworthy: Aspen entered the staffing industry at the start of the pandemic. She had been out of work for three months, and Kelly took a chance on her. Aspen knew nothing about the staffing world, but being a great listener and someone who loves building relationships with people and soaking up technical training like a sponge helped her succeed in this industry. Aspen is also passionate about traveling. She has been to 20 countries and six continents so far.

💡 Where to find Aspen: LinkedIn | Website

Key Insights

⚡ You can be successful at sales even without a sales background. We all have some innate skills that help us be successful at sales. If you can communicate with different people, are good at managing different expectations, and are motivated and persistent, you could be a salesperson. “I talked with a lot of people that are good relationships to have. Because there are people who are higher up in companies, and I’ve used those relationships to leverage intros as I’ve progressed into my professional career. So, I worked at a ton of different places, and I feel the thing that I got out of that the most was the grit and determination to make it work.”

⚡ It is very important to attract the attention of customers. Aspen has worked at memoryBlue for several months and says that she learned many tactics and principles during her time at memoryBlue. She reveals some of her tips. “I failed a lot on the phone but learned how to handle rejection, and it was very much building that relationship with the client. People buy from who they like, and that first impression on the phone is super important, but once you’ve gotten their attention, it’s going to be like that relationship building over time that is ultimately going to get them to pull the trigger on you.”

⚡ The SDR role can be very useful. Working as an SDR can be stressful and challenging because it’s often the only role in most organizations where you have to be ready for anything at a moment’s notice. But according to Aspen, the SDR role will teach you a lot and give you the tenacity you need to get sales. “You’re going to get shut down a lot; you just gotta have thick skin. If you don’t have thick skin, then maybe sales is not for you, but you can also learn to get a thick skin. You have to not take things personally; you’ll learn different things about the way that people answer things. There’s a psychology to it, and just being able to read between the lines. But ultimately, people want to talk about their problems, and you’re there to solve their problems. So just lend a listening ear, and read between the lines and ask thoughtful and insightful questions that don’t make you sound like a robot.”

Episode Highlights

How an Acting Experience Can Be Used in Sales

“One of the cool things that I gained from some of my acting experiences is my ability to try new things, and maybe they fail, or maybe they work really well. And one of the things that has worked really well has been — a recruiter tried to recruit me to their company, but they did it very cleverly. […] They sent me this video and it basically can be any amount of time, but this was like a little one-minute video. And in the video, he had written my name on a whiteboard. It was like, ‘Hey, Aspen.’ And it has a little gif that almost shows you a little sample clip of it, and he sent it to me on LinkedIn. […]

This was in video format, and I was like, ‘This is a way to stand out. No one else is doing this.’ So I started paying for a license just for myself and using that to not only send to new LinkedIn prospects — because I send a few LinkedIn requests to everyone that I’m trying to target — then also, you can send the same one in an email link, and I’ll test it differently. It has tracking software attached to it, so you can see if they opened it or watched it or where they stopped watching it, and so you can test the engagement of everything. That thing works amazingly well. I even had somebody respond, ‘No one else is doing this. You stood out because no one else is doing this.’ And that was the same thing that I thought when the recruiter sent it to me. So I just felt very validated, and that’s an example, though, because a lot of people might be afraid to get on camera, but I love it.”

Aspen’s Entry Into Kelly

“The manager who’d reached out to me was like, ‘I’ll be honest, Aspen. You’re not the most qualified person that I’ve talked to’ — which is not the first time that I’ve heard this — but he said, ‘I like that you have a service industry background. That tells me that you have grit, that you have tenacity. Some of my best hires to date have been people who came from the service industry, and so I’m going to take a risk on you. I’m going to bat for you. And we’d like to extend you an offer.’ I was ecstatic because it was a higher base pay than like three of the other jobs that I was interviewing for, and I was just bound and determined to make it.”

Getting a Job During the Pandemic

“I started [at Kelly] in the first week of June in 2020, and everyone that I called was like, ‘Have you looked outside? Have you watched the news? We’re not hiring; no one is hiring.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I get that. Obviously, there’s a global pandemic happening. However, when you are hiring again, I just want to be a resource for you.’ And they were like, ‘Mm-hmm, sure. Call us back in six months.’ So I call again in a couple of weeks, and they don’t remember me.’ […] I did six months of that; I didn’t have a single job order; I didn’t get a single placement for the entire second half of 2020. From June to December, I saw nothing. I was making 50 phone calls a day, off lists that I had made myself, and every single time I was getting shut down. […]

A lot of those people came back and wanted to give me business because I had been so persistent, and we had genuine conversations on the phone at that point. Some people were like, ‘Okay, nothing new is happening, but how are you?'”

Transcript: 

[00:00:00] Aspen Streety: I think what was important in my time at memoryBlue is I got the SEALs Foundations that I needed in order to be successful in my next role and in my role now. I, you know, failed a lot on the phone, but learned how to handle rejection and it was very much a, you know, building that relationship with the client. People buy from who they like. Chris, we have an Austin unicorn with us today.

[00:00:50] Chris Corcoran: We do, indeed. Aspen Streety. Thank you for joining us. 

[00:00:53] Aspen Streety: Thank you. Thank you for having me. 

[00:00:56] Marc Gonyea: Speaking of Austin unicorns, let’s just start with that. 

[00:00:58] Aspen Streety: Oh, okay. Yeah. 

[00:00:59] Marc Gonyea: ‘Cause we want, we want to share with the audience, and Chris and I, the real deal, a little bit about yourself. And one it is, very few people are actually from Austin.

[00:01:07] Aspen Streety: That’s true. Yeah. I get told that all the time. Yeah.

[00:01:09] Marc Gonyea: Tell us about that. 

[00:01:10] Aspen Streety: So born and raised in Austin, like you said, um, specifically South Austin. That’s kind of where I’ve chosen to reside all throughout my life. And, I think like it does, it has become harder to find like more people that are from Austin, but secretly we all know one another.

[00:01:28] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:01:28] Aspen Streety: We all are just like in a, it’s kind of like a click, a secret click. But I guess, you know, growing up, I was initially very interested in acting and wanted to pursue that. So it kind of… 

[00:01:41] Marc Gonyea: Where do you think that came from? 

[00:01:42] Aspen Streety: Oh, I’m a performer at heart. 

[00:01:44] Marc Gonyea: Yeah? 

[00:01:44] Aspen Streety: Yeah. I, from like the time that I was like, you know, three or four years old, I’m, you know, dressed up in costume and stealing my mom’s heels and getting into the makeup and just wanted to take center stage all the time. 

[00:01:58] Marc Gonyea: Just born that way.

[00:01:59] Aspen Streety: Yeah. Born that way. 

[00:02:00] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:02:00] Aspen Streety: And then, you know, my sister came along when I was like five and almost six, and then it became about like, “Okay, I still need to maintain the spotlight here.” And then there was like a sibling rivalry of, you know, performance, but, yeah, so I wanted to pursue acting and decided to go to school for that, but ended up… 

[00:02:21] Marc Gonyea: Right. So, but growing up, you were doing, you were in plays? 

[00:02:24] Aspen Streety: Oh, for sure. 

[00:02:25] Marc Gonyea: Performing plays, be in. 

[00:02:27] Right? 

[00:02:27] Aspen Streety: Yes. Yeah. I don’t know if anyone is familiar, but I did Zachary Scott Theater here in town.

[00:02:31] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:02:32] Aspen Streety: Now is just ZACH Theatre. Yeah, and then I, I’ve taken like acting classes and stuff all throughout as an adult as well.

[00:02:38] So, when people who, who wanna do, do that line of work, does, does everyone go to college? Do they go to college? We’ll talk about that. So when you’re in high school, would you think you wanted to be when you’re like, when you’re growing up, so to speak? 

[00:02:52] Aspen Streety: Well, it was like, it was kind of a mix of things because I either wanted to be a Hollywood actress or I wanted to be a biochemist.

[00:03:00] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:03:00] Aspen Streety: Which is like completely polar opposites. And my parents really tried to push on me that like, “You need to choose a career path that’s gonna make you money. And you’re probably not gonna make it as an actress. So you should maybe choose, like choose one path or, you know, that’s really gonna lead you somewhere.”

[00:03:18] And I compromised, actually. And didn’t go either route and decided to do broadcast journalism, which I was like, “That’s the best of both worlds because I can make money and be on camera.” So that’s, that’s why I went to school for at Texas State. 

[00:03:32] Marc Gonyea: There are two questions. When you were in school before you went Texas State in broadcast journalism…

[00:03:37] Aspen Streety: Yeah. 

[00:03:38] Marc Gonyea: Did sales at all ever like…? 

[00:03:40] Aspen Streety: Never. 

[00:03:40] Marc Gonyea: No, no one in the family? No relatives? No, nothing?

[00:03:43] My dad is like, he started his own company and was so then was kind of in a sales role as he was like getting that started. 

[00:03:52] Aspen Streety: Yeah. And has like, since transitioned into a career where he’s a like a life coach and business coach for people.

[00:03:58] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:03:59] Aspen Streety: So in that sense, like he is his, ’cause he’s marketing himself, basically. So yeah. 

[00:04:05] Marc Gonyea: Of course, in sales. 

[00:04:06] Aspen Streety: Yeah. 

[00:04:06] Marc Gonyea: Right? Yeah. 

[00:04:07] Aspen Streety: But no, that was not on my radar whatsoever. 

[00:04:09] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:04:10] And this is one of my little side path I have to go down. So there’s no, you, do you detect an accent at all? Like the native-born, do people from Austin, South Austin, have accents, accents?

[00:04:20] Aspen Streety: I think it really depends on your parents. 

[00:04:22] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:04:22] Aspen Streety: And my parents don’t. So yeah, I didn’t. 

[00:04:25] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, I agree. 

[00:04:26] Aspen Streety: I didn’t inherit it at all. 

[00:04:27] Marc Gonyea: Were 

[00:04:27] your parents from..? 

[00:04:29] Aspen Streety: So, my dad is technically born in California, but keep being here when he was like two, so. 

[00:04:34] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:04:34] Aspen Streety: He’s pretty much. My mom is from Illinois and she came down here with my grandparents when she was like eight.

[00:04:42] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:04:42] Aspen Streety: So for most of their lives. 

[00:04:44] Marc Gonyea: And what was it like growing up in Austin? ‘Cause it’s such a different city now than it was when you were growing up. 

[00:04:49] Aspen Streety: Oh my gosh. 

[00:04:50] Marc Gonyea: Or not city… 

[00:04:51] Aspen Streety: So, okay. I’m about to out myself, but I was homeschooled, so I had a different upbringing than I guess most people did.

[00:05:01] So like, I don’t have the same, like, social things to draw on that other people do about like going to school and maybe seeing different parts of the city transform. I feel like I came, kind of came into the city as almost an adult because, yeah, we lived in Austin, but like, I basically did stuff at my church.

[00:05:19] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:05:20] Aspen Streety: Or at my house. 

[00:05:21] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:05:21] Okay. 

[00:05:21] Aspen Streety: And, so then, you know, a lot of the transformation that I’ve seen has been over the, like, the last 10 to 15 years as I’ve been an adult in Austin. 

[00:05:30] Marc Gonyea: I’m going to come back to that. 

[00:05:31] Chris Corcoran: That’s still been a lot of transformation already. 

[00:05:33] Aspen Streety: Oh yeah. I would actually say, I would argue that the majority of it has happened. 

[00:05:37] Chris Corcoran: All the Californians following your dad here.

[00:05:38] Aspen Streety: I know, I know. It’s terrible. Well, you know, there’s, there’s a few good ones. 

[00:05:46] Marc Gonyea: Where as presenting air force. Trouble of that was getting off the plane. We’re here. 

[00:05:51] Chris Corcoran: Excuse 

[00:05:51] me. 

[00:05:51] Aspen Streety: I, I have oftentimes said this, though. I would rather be in a boom town than a ghost town. So, it’s, as much as the transformation has maybe taken out some of the things that I really like about Austin,

[00:06:05] I do think that the, it has afforded a lot of people, a lot more opportunity than if that hadn’t happened. 

[00:06:11] Chris Corcoran: Mm-hmm. 

[00:06:12] Marc Gonyea: Well said. Right? That’s something definitely Chris and I would agree with, but most people… 

[00:06:17] Aspen Streety: Yeah. And you know, we’re all profiting off of the tech drops and the tech from here. So 

[00:06:23] Marc Gonyea: Look at Elon Musk. It is Gigafactory.

[00:06:26] Right? All right. So you’re in school. Where’d you end up going to 

[00:06:30] school? 

[00:06:30] Aspen Streety: Uh, I ended up going to Texas State. 

[00:06:32] Marc Gonyea: And what was it?

[00:06:33] Aspen Streety: Broadcast journalism degree. 

[00:06:35] Marc Gonyea: What, what’s the 

[00:06:36] mascot there, Chris? 

[00:06:37] Chris Corcoran: Oh man. 

[00:06:38] Marc Gonyea: Oh, no way. 

[00:06:39] Chris Corcoran: That’s not the 

[00:06:40] road actually. 

[00:06:40] Marc Gonyea: Bobcat?

[00:06:41] Aspen Streety: Bobcat. There you go. 

[00:06:44] Marc Gonyea: So, Chris, are you trying to stop me?

[00:06:46] Chris Corcoran: Well, you usually on top of that, and she refers go Bobcats on, good? Yeah. That’s why. 

[00:06:52] Marc Gonyea: So you were in the school, major in, what? 

[00:06:54] Aspen Streety: In broadcast journalism. 

[00:06:56] Marc Gonyea: And what was that like? 

[00:06:58] Aspen Streety: I, honestly, I had an amazing time. The professors at Texas State were absolutely incredible. In fact, I’m still like friends with them.

[00:07:06] They allow you to friend them on Facebook after you’ve completed your, you know, after you’ve graduated. 

[00:07:10] Marc Gonyea: Yep. 

[00:07:10] Aspen Streety: And I still keep up with all three of like my, um, once you get to like your upper-level classes, all three of those professors I keep up with on Facebook, and like follow them with their families and stuff.

[00:07:22] They just were probably real, they were really good mentors for me. And I just really learned a lot through that program. Unfortunately, like, some stuff happened in my personal life to where I ended up having to take a completely different path in life. And that’s really ultimately what led me to being in sales.

[00:07:41] Marc Gonyea: Okay, good. Yeah. Keep going. 

[00:07:43] Aspen Streety: Yeah. So, well, I don’t know how personal can 

[00:07:45] I get. 

[00:07:46] Marc Gonyea: As, as you want. 

[00:07:47] Aspen Streety: Okay. 

[00:07:47] Marc Gonyea: And what if we, again, go back? We can chop shit out. 

[00:07:51] Aspen Streety: Okay. 

[00:07:52] Marc Gonyea: Whatever. But I think it’s…

[00:07:54] Aspen Streety: Well, okay. So I’m pretty like, I’m a pretty open book, so I free with this information, but, right before I graduated, I got a DUI. And I didn’t understand at the time how much that one moment was going to change the trajectory of my life.

[00:08:13] I thought, “Okay,” like, as it was happening and then the first few months afterward, I thought this is like, “I’m gonna be in trouble, but, you know, I can just like pay my fines and kind of, it’ll be done.” That’s not how that works. Let that be a lesson to everyone who thinks that drinking and driving is gonna work out

[00:08:32] okay. But I was like, I got it in July of 2011. In December of 2011, I graduated and started interviewing for different TV positions. And I had an offer or I, I was made an offer to go to Cheyenne, Wyoming and be their like morning news anchor right out of school, was the greatest thing ever. They offered me like three days before I was supposed to walk across the stage.

[00:08:57] And then they went to run a background check on me and saw that my DUI was pending. And they were like, “Well, we can’t. We can’t ensure you to drive a news vehicle with this pending. Also, it looks like you’re probably gonna be on probation. You can’t even leave the state.” And I just didn’t, it had not occurred to me.

[00:09:13] Like, I didn’t even understand that at all. So they rescinded their offer. And so the story went like, if, I sent my application out to like 50 different news stations in Texas, like small towns. ‘Cause that’s where you have to start. And, either didn’t get a reply or just didn’t make it through the process, all because of my DUI.

[00:09:34] Marc Gonyea: Wow. Wow. 

[00:09:35] Aspen Streety: And you, that is on your record for seven years. And like, I kept just hearing the same thing, “Well, we can’t insure you. We can’t insure you.” And when you are just starting out, you are, I mean, you are the whole crew. Like, you’re shooting, you’re editing. 

[00:09:52] Chris Corcoran: Mm-hmm. 

[00:09:52] Aspen Streety: You’re putting together the entire package yourself.

[00:09:55] They don’t have, you know, like they don’t have a whole staff. You are the staff.

[00:09:59] Chris Corcoran: Mm-hmm. 

[00:09:59] Aspen Streety: And so in order for me to be able to move into a larger market where I would have that support staff, I have to work in a smaller market first. And I got shut down in all of the smaller markets. And it wasn’t for lack of talent,

[00:10:13] it was all because I couldn’t be insured. And that wasn’t gonna go away for like seven years, unless you have the governor get you like sign off on basically expunging it, which that isn’t gonna happen. So. 

[00:10:28] Chris Corcoran: No, it’s heartbreaking. Yeah. 

[00:10:30] Aspen Streety: Yeah. It was, it destroyed me for a long time. I was, first I went, I mean, I kind of like went through all the phases of grief, right?

[00:10:36] Like I was really angry about it. And then I came to a place of acceptance and just like slowly processing started going to like therapy to kind of work through all of that. And in that transition time is when I actually became, I started dating somebody who encouraged me to look into tech sales.

[00:10:56] That’s really where that whole segue happened. He was a developer, and pushed me to be like, “Hey, you’re, you’ve got all the innate skills to be successful at this. You love talking, you won’t shut up. And you’re really good at, you know, being able to communicate with people of different backgrounds.” I get that from my service industry experience.

[00:11:19] And, “You’re good at managing different expectations, and you’re also really driven and tenacious. Like you just have all of the qualities. Now you just need somebody to kind of shape and mold you in order to be able to be successful.” 

[00:11:34] Marc Gonyea: Let’s talk about that service industry background. 

[00:11:36] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:11:36] Aspen Streety: Okay. 

[00:11:36] Marc Gonyea: ‘Cause that that’s, a lot of people in school coming out of school, post-school, full time.

[00:11:41] That’s a, an, an industry that we like to pull from. 

[00:11:43] Aspen Streety: Yeah. 

[00:11:44] Marc Gonyea: And people start, and sometimes those folks don’t think they can get into sales, but also they don’t recognize how important the skills are that they learn in that role. 

[00:11:50] Chris Corcoran: What did you do? 

[00:11:51] Aspen Streety: Yeah. So 

[00:11:52] I had to pay my way through school. So I actually worked the entire time that I was going to school.

[00:11:58] And, you know, lived on my own. I didn’t even have roommates. I was, so I was paying for my own apartment and going to school full time, both of it. Like minimum 12 to 15 hours a semester, and then working like 35 to 40 hours a week. 

[00:12:11] Aspen Streety: Wow. And I feel like that experience alone, I had drive to begin with.

[00:12:19] I’ve always been somebody who likes to achieve, but that experience of like you have, you have to figure out how to pay rent. You have to figure out how to get your groceries. 

[00:12:29] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:12:29] Aspen Streety: Um, when you’re learning that at like 18, 19 years old, and there’s nothing else to fall back on, except for yourself, that just really gave me the, the boost that I needed coming into the real world out of college.

[00:12:45] And so I was working in that, that timeframe after getting my DUI and like needing to pay for that ’cause those are really expensive. I was working two to three service industry jobs at a time. One would be like my main gig, and then I would have one or two part-time jobs on top of that. So I averaged between 50 to 80 hours a week working.

[00:13:07] And that, any, it was all kinds of different stuff. So I was either waiting tables or I was bartending. I worked at a country club for a long time as their like bev cart girl and then like lead bartender. And I think the country club is a good example too because you’re talking with, I mean, I talked with a lot of people that are good relationships to have, even still.

[00:13:28] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:13:28] Aspen Streety: Because there are people who are higher-up in companies. And I’ve used the, I’ve used those relationships to leverage intros as I’ve, you know, progressed into my professional career. So I, yeah, I worked at a ton of different places, and I feel like the thing that I got out of that the most was just the grit and determination to, to make it work.

[00:13:51] Chris Corcoran: So I just wanna make sure I understand this whole thing. You, you went from one day homeschooled to the next day living on your own college student? 

[00:14:00] Aspen Streety: Yeah. 

[00:14:02] Chris Corcoran: Wow. That’s a big 

[00:14:04] difference. 

[00:14:04] Aspen Streety: Yeah. I, my parents actually encouraged me, I started working when I was 12. So I…

[00:14:10] Chris Corcoran: Can you talk to my kids? 

[00:14:12] Aspen Streety: I went to the local hospital and got certified to do like CPR and everything so that I could start babysitting, uh,for baby, like for babies in our church. But like a lot of our families had multiple kids, but they also had babies and not many

[00:14:31] kids in our church could be able to watch them. So I took the initiative to go get CPR certified so that I could start hustling those families. And I like made my own business cards and everything and handed them out at church. So I was working in…

[00:14:44] Marc Gonyea: Between 

[00:14:45] performances, right? I mean, not ..?

[00:14:46] Aspen Streety: Oh yeah. 

[00:14:47] Marc Gonyea: People, your background in church, so always through that 

[00:14:49] stuff? 

[00:14:50] Aspen Streety: Yeah. I was in church plays and all that. Yeah, for sure. And then I was in youth group and a youth, I was a youth group leader for the smaller kids, and yeah, I was, and then I was taking like AP classes and stuff when I was in high school.

[00:15:02] So, and I was on swim team full time. So I was…

[00:15:05] Marc Gonyea: You’re hustler. 

[00:15:06] Aspen Streety: juggling a lot. I guess I, that’s, that’s my personality, though. I’ve always, I’m just wired that way. So the transition wasn’t too tough because I’d already been working. Like I had, in high school I had, I was working minimum 20 hours a week

[00:15:21] while doing all of that, and other 

[00:15:23] stuff as well. 

[00:15:25] Chris Corcoran: Very good. So you were telling us about what kind of ultimately got you into tech sales. So, someone you were dating was a developer, said you have all the kind of intangibles, and then, so what did you do from there? 

[00:15:34] Aspen Streety: Yeah. 

[00:15:35] Actually, I will say like to his credit, he gave me this space to be able to pursue that because I was going to be taking a massive pay cut in order to get started, and he gave me the freedom of being able to do that by saying like, “Hey, I’ll cover rent

[00:15:54] and some of the other expenses, and you just worry about your like own personal expenses.” And that was so helpful because I took more than a 50% pay cut to get started. The very first job that I was offered was, I mean, not even, would not even be considered a livable wage right now. 

[00:16:13] Chris Corcoran: Oh, wow.

[00:16:13] Aspen Streety: I was $25,000 as a like, base pay. 

[00:16:16] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:17] Aspen Streety: And I sold a CRM tool for small businesses. 

[00:16:22] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:16:23] Aspen Streety: It was very much like a one-call close kind of culture. Just not my style at all. No. And I was not successful in it. That’s, one of my like greatest sales failures is just I…

[00:16:34] Marc Gonyea: Not really. I mean…

[00:16:35] Aspen Streety: Yeah, kind of. It just, I was not good at high pressure,

[00:16:41] like I like building relationships over time. And I’m not good at the, “I’m just calling you out of the blue, walk to your computer so I can show you a demo, and then you’re gonna buy this at the end of this phone call.” I like, people want, people want, wanted time to think about it. I was like, “Yeah, sure.” My managers were like, “No, don’t let them get off the phone.

[00:17:00] Oh, if you, if they get off the phone, they’re not coming back.” So, I just, it was just too much. And, that time, like, right after I left that company, I was like, kind of in a state of transition. And Luke, my cousin, reached out to me. 

[00:17:15] Luke Ward. 

[00:17:16] Marc Gonyea: We’ll have him 

[00:17:17] Aspen Streety: on tomorrow. Luke reached out to me and was like, “Hey, I started working at this really cool company called memoryBlue.

[00:17:22] I think you would be great at it. They’re looking to hire additional people, like you should come interview.” So that’s how I ended up here. 

[00:17:29] Chris Corcoran: Wow. 

[00:17:29] Aspen Streety: And so how long were you selling the, the CRM thing? About four and a half months. 

[00:17:34] Chris Corcoran: Okay. 

[00:17:34] Aspen Streety: So I had almost no experience coming to memoryBlue. 

[00:17:38] Chris Corcoran: But so, given that experience, I’m so, did you consider like not, no longer pursuing careers in tech sales? 

[00:17:45] Aspen Streety: Did, for a minute.

[00:17:45] Yeah, for sure. 

[00:17:46] Chris Corcoran: But, it was Luke who said, “Hey…”

[00:17:47] Aspen Streety: Luke…

[00:17:48] Chris Corcoran: Check this out.”

[00:17:48] Aspen Streety: Yeah. Yeah. He did. 

[00:17:49] Marc Gonyea: Luke. Yes. 

[00:17:51] Let’s talk about something else too and parallel of this, as we, you know, we’re continuing down this path. Travel. 

[00:17:58] Aspen Streety: Oh yeah. 

[00:17:59] Marc Gonyea: So you did that after memoryBlue.

[00:18:01] Aspen Streety: I, I did. Yeah. 

[00:18:01] Marc Gonyea: Let’s talk about when did that start. And then, and then let everyone know about your, your travel.

[00:18:06] I say travel. You and I know what we’re talking about, and Chris does. 

[00:18:09] Aspen Streety: Yeah. 

[00:18:09] Marc Gonyea: But people listening don’t know. 

[00:18:11] Aspen Streety: So I would say my passion for travel came out of relatively early age. My grandpa, I, I think I get my adventurous spirit for my grandpa. He traveled a lot and he was in the air force. He was stationed over in Thailand during the Vietnam War.

[00:18:29] And so like, I would hear his stories, obviously growing up and became curious, but it actually wasn’t until I met someone at the country club who had taken a sabbatical to go travel and was telling me about his trip and how he had like traveled for 11 months overseas. 

[00:18:47] Marc Gonyea: Wow. 

[00:18:48] Aspen Streety: And ma, mainly in Southeast Asia.

[00:18:50] And he just was showing me pictures on his phone of this amazing trip. And I was like, “I can do that. I, I need to figure out how to do that.” So I started looking into like, “What would it look like to get a work and holiday visa and maybe go work in Australia for a year?”

[00:19:09] Marc Gonyea: How old were you when this was going on?

[00:19:11] Aspen Streety: 26. 

[00:19:11] Okay. Okay. And what would it look like to like work in, live in Australia for a year? And I could use that as like a, kind of a home base and travel Southeast Asia from there. And that I idea kind of got put on hold for a little bit, because I met and fell in love with somebody. 

[00:19:30] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm. It happens.

[00:19:31] Aspen Streety: It does. Yeah. And when we, you know, when it looks like that was gonna be more of a long-term thing, he suggested to me like, “Hey, we should do this together.” And so then we started saving up to do that together. 

[00:19:44] Marc Gonyea: All right. 

[00:19:45] Aspen Streety: And so I had it in the back of my mind that that trip was gonna happen at some point while, even while I was building my sales or starting to build my sales career.

[00:19:54] But the, I think the catalyst was like, “I really wanted to do something big before I turned 30, and before I like have kids or anything like that.”

[00:20:03] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm. 

[00:20:03] Aspen Streety: So I just decided, “You know what? It’s a big risk to leave after I’ve already started to build this career. But I feel like the greater risk is me potentially missing out on this at some point in the future.

[00:20:18] And so the time is now.” So we left and spent 14 months in 14 different countries, and it was absolutely incredible. I highly recommend a sabbatical for anyone who is thinking of it. Doesn’t matter when you need to take it. Maybe it’s a gap year after high school. Maybe you wanna do a gap, you know, some type of gap year after college, but there are ways to travel cheap and, and you can also look into the programs that I was looking into.

[00:20:47] You know, you can work and live in other countries anytime before you’re 30. And you can be on a long extended, you know, year-long visa and use that as like a, a base camp for you to travel other parts of that region. But I think that it has really expanded my worldview, given me the opportunity to be able to communicate more clearly and effectively with so many different people.

[00:21:12] And I think the greatest thing that I learned from that trip was that no matter where you are in the world, like all humans have the same base wants, needs and desires. And we are just trying to do our very best to make the happiest life that we can for ourselves. And that, that realization just, I don’t know, it’s sometimes I feel like there’s an other mentality that can happen.

[00:21:42] And that, that trip really made things like harmonious for me of like, “Nope, doesn’t matter what background you come from, like, you’re the same as me. And so I’m going to treat you like you’re the same as me, and that’s with, you know, integrity and respect.” And I, you know, that’s really transcended my business relationships as well. 

[00:22:03] Marc Gonyea: And we’ll get back to that part.

[00:22:05] That’s fascinating. 

[00:22:06] Chris Corcoran: So during these 14 months, were you working or you were not working?

[00:22:10] Aspen Streety: I was not working. 

[00:22:11] Chris Corcoran: Okay. 

[00:22:11] Aspen Streety: I had saved up money, and I sold ev, like pretty much everything that I owned. We had, I had converted down to a five by five storage unit that just had like keepsakes basically. Got rid of all my clothes.

[00:22:26] I was down to a single 48-liter backpack. I had seven day’s worth of clothes and a couple pairs of shoes, like tennis shoes, hikers and a pair of like flip-flops. And then, like I said, I had keepsakes in the storage unit, sold my car, everything. 

[00:22:43] Marc Gonyea: Have you thought or talk a little bit about this, or you heard about it when you were working at memoryBlue?

[00:22:49] Aspen Streety: Yeah. I was, yeah, I had it in the, in my mind at that point. 

[00:22:52] Marc Gonyea: Which is amazing. And I was just curious where it stemmed from. 

[00:22:55] Aspen Streety: Yeah. 

[00:22:56] Marc Gonyea: But that sounds like you answered that question, right? 

[00:22:59] Aspen Streety: Yeah. So yeah, it came from, you know, two different places, just my grandpa’s stories growing up, and then all it took was meeting that one person of like,

[00:23:08] “Okay. That can happen. I can do that.” 

[00:23:10] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Good for you. 

[00:23:11] Aspen Streety: Like, if you can do that, I can do that, for sure. And we might not like, not everyone comes from the same background or maybe has the same resources, but there are like, if you take the time to research it, there are ways to do things cheap. You don’t have to have a ton of money to be able to do it.

[00:23:27] I met a girl while I was traveling that was able to live in Southeast Asia for more than a year on less than $10,000. 

[00:23:34] Marc Gonyea: Wow. 

[00:23:35] Aspen Streety: And like…

[00:23:36] Chris Corcoran: Wow. 

[00:23:37] Aspen Streety: You can save that up. 

[00:23:38] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.

[00:23:39] Aspen Streety: For sure. 

[00:23:40] Marc Gonyea: That is awesome. So, alright, so we’re not there. We’re we? Jump, I’m jumping around.

[00:23:45] Aspen Streety: No, that’s okay. 

[00:23:45] Marc Gonyea: That’s not what I want to do. You have memoryBlue, right?

[00:23:48] Just talk a little bit about that. What was that like? 

[00:23:51] Aspen Streety: Yeah. So, um…

[00:23:52] Marc Gonyea: So, people listening, a lot of people, we have over 500 SDRs now, right? 

[00:23:57] Aspen Streety: I know. That’s wild to me.

[00:23:59] Marc Gonyea: It is as it. It’s wild to us too. 

[00:24:01] Aspen Streety: ‘Cause I, there for a minute, I think I, I was the only girl SDR in the Austin office.

[00:24:07] Marc Gonyea: You probably were. 

[00:24:08] Aspen Streety: Because one of them got hired out and one left. There were three of us.

[00:24:11] And then I was the only one. 

[00:24:13] Yeah. So, that was, that was… 

[00:24:16] Chris Corcoran: Now we have…

[00:24:16] Aspen Streety: Different times. 

[00:24:16] Chris Corcoran: Run the company. 

[00:24:17] Aspen Streety: Say what?

[00:24:18] Chris Corcoran: Now we have women who run the company. 

[00:24:20] Aspen Streety: That’s amazing. I love that. 

[00:24:21] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.

[00:24:21] Yeah, so, I obviously, you know, heard about it from Luke, decided to put in my application. Nimit interviewed me, and I came in with three different hair colors.

[00:24:34] Marc Gonyea: I remember the blue. That was pretty blue. 

[00:24:36] Aspen Streety: Yeah. He, I don’t know if he knew what to do, to do or think about me, but I came in with like, what I called galaxy hair. So it was like, it was like pink and purple and blue. And definitely did not look like the stereotypical person that you would hire. 

[00:24:54] Marc Gonyea: Sure.

[00:24:54] Aspen Streety: I have tattoos, and like I just, you know, not what you would think of as a normal salesperson. 

[00:24:59] Chris Corcoran: Austin vibes, Austin. 

[00:25:01] Marc Gonyea: That’s Austin. 

[00:25:01] Aspen Streety: Definitely Austin vibes, for sure. Yeah. Keep Austin weird. 

[00:25:05] Yeah. And that’s not the first time that I’ve been told something along the lines of, “You’re probably not the most qualified person on paper, but I’m gonna like take a risk on you ’cause I feel like,

[00:25:19] you know, I’m getting a good vibe from this interview. And I feel like we would, it would be a smart hire if we decided to extend you an offer.” That’s, like I said, not the first time that I’ve been told that. I’ve been told that in my most recent role as well. And really just, I don’t know, really just took a liking to it.

[00:25:36] I think what was important in my time at memoryBlue is I got the SEALs Foundations that I needed in order to be successful in my next role. And in my role now. I, you know, failed a lot on the phone but learned how to handle rejection. And it was, it was very much a, you know, building that relationship with the client. People buy from who they like.

[00:26:04] And, yes, you know, that first impression on the phone is super important. But once you’ve gotten their attention, it’s gonna be like that relationship building over time that is ultimately gonna get them to pull the trigger on you. So I feel like I got to learn a lot of those tactics and principles in my time at memoryBlue before I was hired out.

[00:26:28] Marc Gonyea: It’s interesting ’cause you mentioned this two or three times before. And I’m sure we’ll talk about it when you talk what you’re doing at Kelly, but you’re, you, you’re relationship formation person. 

[00:26:36] Aspen Streety: Yes. Very much so. 

[00:26:38] Marc Gonyea: But then besides people think that they can’t get the sales, that sales is not for them because they have to go through like the hurdle of the previous job, which is, you know, we’re not like that. But it’s a 

[00:26:46] very difficult job, an SDR at memoryBlue.

[00:26:49] Aspen Streety: Oh yes. 

[00:26:49] Marc Gonyea: And I worry that sometimes people get into it and they can’t get past ’cause you’ve got all these powerful skills that, you deploy them. Right? In that role, here in memoryBlue, but not the way you deploy them now. 

[00:27:00] Aspen Streety: Right. Yeah. 

[00:27:00] Marc Gonyea: But, but, but you have to get that foundation.

[00:27:02] Aspen Streety: Yes. 

[00:27:03] Marc Gonyea: Why is that foundation important though to the relationship builder? 

[00:27:06] Aspen Streety: Because like, there’s obviously… Hold on. Let me think about my answer. 

[00:27:13] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:27:13] No, it’s, it’s a good one to ask because some people will come up to me while you’re thinking, and they’ll say things like, “Oh man, I don’t know if sales is for me. It’s not for me because this SDR thing.” It’s not like, not, that’s your thing is just one step on the long path.

[00:27:27] Aspen Streety: I think the SDR role really teaches you about, like, it really gives you that tenacity that you need. You’re gonna get shut down a lot. That’s, you just got to have thick skin. If you don’t have thick skin, then maybe sales is not for you, but you can also learn to get thick skin, and you just have to not take things personally.

[00:27:49] Um, you also have to just, like, you’ll learn different, I guess things about the way that people answer things. You know, it’s all like, like I mentioned earlier, there’s a psychology to it, and just being able to read between the lines. But ultimately, people want to talk about their problems and you’re there to solve their problems.

[00:28:10] Aspen Streety: So just lend a listening ear and read between the lines and ask thoughtful and insightful questions that don’t make you sound like a robot. Um, and you’re ultimately just trying to like, there, of course, there’s gonna be people that don’t wanna share, but you are gonna find that one person that does wanna share, and that’s the person whose life you’re gonna impact.

[00:28:29] And you just need to keep calling until you get to that person. 

[00:28:33] Marc Gonyea: Right. 

[00:28:34] Chris Corcoran: Keep calling. That’s well said, man. 

[00:28:37] Marc Gonyea: That’s well said.

[00:28:38] Aspen Streety: And that person’s gonna make your day too, because you, you’ve probably had like 40 or 50 people before that be like, “Nope, not a good time.” Or, “Yeah, send me an email.” My favorite one to use for that,

[00:28:51] I literally just used it on somebody like a couple weeks ago. This guy was trying to rush me off the phone and was like, “Yeah, just send me an email.” I was like, “Let’s be honest. Are you gonna read that email? No, you’re not.” 

[00:29:02] Marc Gonyea: That’s, that’s a memoryBlue. That’s a memoryBlue move, or did you learn that? 

[00:29:05] Aspen Streety: I think I learned it at memoryBlue. Yeah. 

[00:29:06] Marc Gonyea: You probably did. Yeah.

[00:29:07] Chris Corcoran: But I like the delivery. 

[00:29:09] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:29:10] Aspen Streety: Well, you just have to be confident about what you’re saying. Like, “Well, I’m not gonna call you on your bullshit.”

[00:29:13] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:29:14] Aspen Streety: And like, that’s just, yeah. 

[00:29:15] Chris Corcoran: The delivery is all. It’s not like the phrase, it’s the, you know, it’s amazing delivery. 

[00:29:19] Aspen Streety: Yeah.

[00:29:20] Because it’s true. And he laughed. He even laughed when I said it, and he was like, “Yeah, you’re right.” I was like, “Yeah, I know. So, let me just tell you why I’m calling.” And then he gave me the time. 

[00:29:29] Chris Corcoran: That’s great. 

[00:29:30] Marc Gonyea: See, the thing is that’s a learned behavior. Like your response. 

[00:29:33] Aspen Streety: Yes. You just have to have the guts. 

[00:29:35] Marc Gonyea: And then you have to learn to condition yourself to, to, “Oh man, they’re calling.”

[00:29:38] And then, “So I don’t wanna send them an email.” And maybe you agree to send an email at first, but people have to learn the moves. And then you learn what you should have said. Then you have to learn how to say it. 

[00:29:47] Chris Corcoran: And then you have to use it. 

[00:29:48] Marc Gonyea: Then you have to use it. 

[00:29:48] Chris Corcoran: Frequency and how to develop fluency. 

[00:29:51] Aspen Streety: Yes.

[00:29:51] Marc Gonyea: And make it your own. 

[00:29:53] Like, it’s like, “I always quit that commodity routine,” or right? And this is, this is, this is take, take a little pause. This is we, I know you have better examples, but this is where I want you to just ex, just expound a little bit on the performing arts. 

[00:30:06] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:30:06] Marc Gonyea: And sales. 

[00:30:07] Aspen Streety: Okay. 

[00:30:07] Marc Gonyea: Because, so you got travel, you’re obviously a hustler, but then, you know, anybody who knows anything about you, knows like, you know, you have a flare for, now flare, you have a, an attraction to the perform 

[00:30:16] Marc Gonyea: arts, right? 

[00:30:17] Aspen Streety: Oh yeah. I use it on. 

[00:30:18] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:30:18] Aspen Streety: And I actually incorporate that in one of my sales tactics.

[00:30:22] Marc Gonyea: Go. 

[00:31:25] Aspen Streety: So… 

[00:31:25] Marc Gonyea: And then we’ll get, then we’ll move on from memoryBlue and kinda get to what you’re doing now. ‘Cause people wanna know what you’re doing now.

[00:31:30] Aspen Streety: Yeah. So I would say like one of the cool things that I guess I gained from some of my acting experiences is my, I guess my ability to try new things, and maybe they fail, or maybe they work really well. And one of the things that has worked really well has been, I found this, so actually, I, I won’t even say that I found, I won’t take credit for it.

[00:31:54] A recruiter tried to recruit me to their, you know, their company. They did it very cleverly. I almost never respond to recruiter email, but this person I felt compelled to reply because I was like, “That was good.” And… 

[00:32:07] Chris Corcoran: That’s why I read every, everything. 

[00:32:09] Marc Gonyea: Hear this. 

[00:32:10] Aspen Streety: So, they sent me this thing called a BombBomb. And it’s basically like, oh little one, like can be any amount of time.

[00:32:18] But this was like a little one-minute video. And in the video, he had written my name on a whiteboard. It was like, “Hey, Aspen.” And it has a little like gift that almost shows you a little clip, little sample clip of it. And he sent it to me in LinkedIn. And so I was like, “Okay, this is cool.

[00:32:39] This has my name on it. I’m gonna watch it. Obviously, this is generated just for me.” So I watched the video, and he basically just gave me a pitch of why I should join their company. I was like, “That was very clever.” I really liked that because no one else had done that right yet, and made him stand out. 

[00:32:56] And I was like, “If you took the time,” and it was like, he took the time to include some things about me that he had noticed from my LinkedIn page or whatever. Usually, I will like tack on a, you know, a PS to my email for something like that. But this was in video format, and I was like, “This is a way to stand out.

[00:33:14] No one else is doing this.” So I started paying for a license just for myself and using that to not only send to new LinkedIn prospects, ’cause I send a little LinkedIn request to everyone that I’m trying to target. 

[00:33:30] Marc Gonyea: Of course. 

[00:33:31] Aspen Streety: Um, and then also you can send the same one in an email link, and I’ll test different.

[00:33:37] Like, you know, if it has tracking software attached to it, so you can see if they opened it or watched it or where they stopped watching it. And so you can test like the engagement of everything. That thing works amazingly well. I even had somebody respond back and was like, “No one else is doing this.

[00:33:52] Like you stood out because no one else is doing this.” And that was the same thing that I thought when the recruiter sent it to me. So I just felt very validated. And that’s, that’s an example, though. Because a lot of people might be afraid to get on camera, but I, that… 

[00:34:07] Marc Gonyea: Love it. 

[00:34:08] Aspen Streety: I love it. I bought a little, like one of those like makeup lights.

[00:34:13] Chris Corcoran: Yep. 

[00:34:13] Aspen Streety: So that I can look good when I’m on the camera. And I got a whiteboard and I, you know, I did all the things. And I made sure that I included things in my videos that made it personal, personal. So it’s not, it does not sound robotic. And I try and trim it down to one minute and almost every time these prospects will watch this video.

[00:34:36] Chris Corcoran: Of course.

[00:34:37] Aspen Streety: And they’ll watch it again and again. I can see it every time the email gets opened or played, and if they don’t respond, I can at least follow up and be like, “Hey, I saw you watch my video. So let’s talk”. But that’s…

[00:34:50] Marc Gonyea: There’s 

[00:34:50] so many places to go. Can I, can I jump on one thing real quick?

[00:34:53] Aspen Streety: Yeah. 

[00:34:53] Marc Gonyea: You wanna go, Chris?

[00:34:53] Chris Corcoran: You got it.

[00:34:54] Marc Gonyea: So, what do you mean you paid for it yourself? 

[00:34:57] Aspen Streety: Well, because I was piloting, like I was test pilot. 

[00:35:00] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. But you paid for it out of your own money.

[00:35:01] Aspen Streety: Yeah. It was worth it to me. 

[00:35:03] Marc Gonyea: Right. And, and why was that? Why was it worth it to you? 

[00:35:06] Aspen Streety: Because honestly…

[00:35:07] Marc Gonyea: Won’t do that. 

[00:35:08] Chris Corcoran: Aspen. 

[00:35:09] Aspen Streety: Yeah. 

[00:35:09] Marc Gonyea: My boss is not gonna pay for it. I’m not gonna no, no… the company.

[00:35:14] Aspen Streety: It’s only like the software is only 50 bucks a month, but if I get one lead from that, that I close, that could be, you know, in commission to me, like that could be like two, three, sometimes four, $5,000. 

[00:35:28] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:35:28] Aspen Streety: So, that just pays for a whole year of itself. 

[00:35:31] Marc Gonyea: Right. 

[00:35:31] Aspen Streety: Just off of one.

[00:35:33] Chris Corcoran: Seems like that’s a simple concept, but it’s, it’s not.

[00:35:35] Aspen Streety: But then I can, but then I can take that data back. So if I do close somebody, I can take that data back and be like, “Hey, this paid for itself. Now, will you reimburse me?” 

[00:35:44] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Maybe they’ll get a, well…

[00:35:46] Aspen Streety: And they did. 

[00:35:46] Marc Gonyea: Reimbursement. Buy it for, for the rest of the year.

[00:35:48] Aspen Streety: Yeah, exactly. But you just have to prove it’s worth. 

[00:35:52] Marc Gonyea: That’s right. That’s right. So, okay. So thank you for that sidebar. So we’re, you’re at memoryBlue, you’re doing your thing. So you learned the foundation, anything else? And do you remember anybody there you worked with? Any shoutouts?

[00:36:02] Aspen Streety: Oh, for sure.

[00:36:03] Marc Gonyea: People in the office.

[00:36:04] Aspen Streety: Well, obviously I’m gonna shout out my cousin ’cause he… 

[00:36:06] Marc Gonyea: Mr. Ward. Yes. 

[00:36:08] Aspen Streety: Yes. I would say I really enjoyed working, well, Ruben Rosado was one of my mentee. 

[00:36:17] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Oh, wow. You had three of those, right?

[00:36:18] Aspen Streety: Yes, I did. 

[00:36:20] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:36:20] Aspen Streety: Yes. And, I don’t know. He, he was just always really, really great.

[00:36:24] Blake was one of my other ones. 

[00:36:27] Chris Corcoran: These are all really…

[00:36:29] Marc Gonyea: Catch base crew. 

[00:36:30] Chris Corcoran: Yeah.

[00:36:30] Aspen Streety: I know. We were, it was the three, the three amigos. 

[00:36:33] Chris Corcoran: Wow. 

[00:36:34] Marc Gonyea: Yep. 

[00:36:34] Aspen Streety: Yeah. And it’s so interesting, ’cause they were gonna actually hire me out as well. And then I did best and went with Luke to SupportNinja, Which is a wild ride. As I’m sure, you’ll probably get into that with him.

[00:36:45] Marc Gonyea: We probably will. 

[00:36:46] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:36:48] Aspen Streety: That was, that was a fun learning experience, but…

[00:36:51] Marc Gonyea: So, Ruben, Blake, anyone else? Do you remember anybody being really good in the office or like, “Man, this person’s got this pretty good on the phones,” or you..? 

[00:36:58] Aspen Streety: Yeah. Andrew was really good too. 

[00:37:00] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:37:01] Aspen Streety: I, I got, I’m blanking on his last, last name, though.

[00:37:03] That’s right. That’s right. Will Vining, obviously. 

[00:37:05] Marc Gonyea: Mr. Vining. 

[00:37:06] Aspen Streety: Yeah. I didn’t know he’d come back now too?

[00:37:08] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:37:09] Aspen Streety: I saw him at a conference back in April, and I was like, “What, what are doing here?” And he was like, “Oh yeah, you know, I’m just hanging out for the day.” And then he told me that he’d come back to memoryBlue. Oh, ah.

[00:37:22] And Joey Sorenson. 

[00:37:24] Marc Gonyea: Yes. 

[00:37:24] Aspen Streety: And Dotun. 

[00:37:25] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. That’s right. Did you see Dot is here? 

[00:37:28] Aspen Streety: Oh, did he? 

[00:37:28] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. At boomerang. He’s right, he’s like sitting four cubes down booking meetings. 

[00:37:33] Aspen Streety: Heck, yeah. 

[00:37:33] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:37:35] Aspen Streety: Yeah. So those are, those are probably the ones that I’ve kept up with. 

[00:37:37] Marc Gonyea: Excellent. All right. So then you’re at memoryBlue, you’re doing your thing.

[00:37:40] What did you kind of think you wanted to do next? ‘Cause, you know, Couchbase would’ve converted you.

[00:37:44] Aspen Streety: Yeah. 

[00:37:44] Marc Gonyea: Think you decided to go a different path, which is great. 

[00:37:47] Aspen Streety: I did decide to go a different path. And the only reason was because with Couchbase, I was gonna be in an SDR role probably minimum another a year. And with SupportNinja, they were offering me an account executive position, and I was like, “Well, that’s a step up.

[00:38:04] I’m gonna take that.” And I got to work with Luke. And what’s really awesome and I, I actually… When somebody, somebody asked me recently, like what one of my greatest sales accomplishments was today. So when Luke and I started at memoryBlue, they were actually losing money. Like they were in the red. And in the first six months that I was there, I personally brought in 1.6 million in revenue,

[00:38:31] which took them from red to black. So then they started making money. And one of the biggest clients that I closed while I was there was Coinbase. 

[00:38:41] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm. 

[00:38:42] Aspen Streety: Wow.Yeah. And they are now like one of the top 100 companies in Austin. And I’m like, “I kind of attribute that too.” 

[00:38:51] Marc Gonyea: Absolutely. 

[00:38:51] Aspen Streety: My early success. 

[00:38:53] Chris Corcoran: Wow.

[00:38:53] Marc Gonyea: Well, that’s why…

[00:38:53] Aspen Streety: Like, a little bit. 

[00:38:55] Marc Gonyea: I think people, ’cause they, there, you, you’re doing everything? 

[00:38:58] Aspen Streety: Yeah. Well, some of the, no, a lot of the leads were coming in inbound at first, and then we were starting to go to an outbound strategy. 

[00:39:05] Marc Gonyea: Okay. So you had to do some outbound work?

[00:39:06] Aspen Streety: Yeah. 

[00:39:06] Marc Gonyea: But people underestimate whether you’re doing an SDR role, you’re an AE in this company.

[00:39:12] One deal, one lead on vehicle can change the trajectory, the trajectory of the whole company. 

[00:39:17] Aspen Streety: Oh, for sure. 

[00:39:18] Marc Gonyea: Like Coinbase?

[00:39:19] Aspen Streety: Yeah. 

[00:39:21] Marc Gonyea: Right? I mean, wow. 

[00:39:23] Aspen Streety: Yeah. It was fun. That was, it was good. 

[00:39:26] Marc Gonyea: So, you did that for a while. 

[00:39:29] Aspen Streety: Yes.

[00:39:29] Marc Gonyea: And then, and then you went on your trip. 

[00:39:31] Aspen Streety: Then I went on my trip, yes.

[00:39:32] Marc Gonyea: How, how did you get into what you’re doing now?

[00:39:36] And so what, Chris… 

[00:39:37] Aspen Streety: Fascinating. Yes. I, I, I keep saying, like, I took a very non-linear path to, and pretty much my whole life has been that way. But I came back from a trip and just fell back on what I knew, which was the service industry, as I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do next. Because that trip require, or that trip had me do a lot of like soul searching about what makes me happy.

[00:40:04] What is my purpose? What do I want to do in this next decade of my life? I turned 30 on the trip. So I just really came back wanting to, knowing that whatever I did next, I wanted to be sure about it because I was probably gonna pour my heart and soul into it. And so I, you know, continued to work some restaurant gigs and stuff while I was figuring out what I wanted to do.

[00:40:30] And then the pandemic happened, and literally everything dried up. I was working like three different events, companies’ jobs at that time. All of them, you know, obviously everything was canceled. So I was like, “Okay, well, it’s now or never.” ‘Cause I’m now I’m having to go on government assistance for the first time in my life, which I, as somebody who takes a lot of pride in the output of their work, having to be on a like government assistance was a very humbling experience for me.

[00:41:05] And I knew that I wanted to not be doing that as quickly as I possibly could. So I started. I was like, “Okay. Well, I have done sales. So, you know, maybe I wanna get back into that.” So I started putting out applications and, of course, everyone was looking for a job at that time. So I put out a lot of applications and did not get a lot of responses back.

[00:41:30] It had also been a while since I had, you know, been in any type of professional work. So I think I was feeling like that was gonna count against me and it was looking like it was. And then one of the managers that Kelly actually reached out to me over LinkedIn, shortly after I updated my LinkedIn profile and was like, “Hey, I’m hiring for an account executive in Austin.

[00:41:53] Looks like you might have the background that we’re looking for. Would love to talk and see if this is something that you could do.” So we set up a call and as he’s explaining the job, like, it is very much a, “You, you do everything. You were the SDR, you were the account executive, you were the account manager.” You know, once you see everything from sourcing the, the clients to, you know, making sure that they close with getting, you know, getting the talent that they need,

[00:42:26] Aspen Streety: and then once they have that talent in place and you’re the account manager as well. And you manage that account for the life cycle that it’s with Kelly. So I guess I should explain that Kelly services is a staffing company. And we started off specializing in, like, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Kelly girls.

[00:42:46] But, that’s, that was like our niche. We were very much like the office clerical kind of staffing agency for a long time. And then they’ve really started to pour into what we call set, which is like our science, engineering, and technology divisions over the last like 20 plus years. But really, especially in the last five years, with just like strategic hires in our upper-level leadership.

[00:43:11] And, so I worked specifically in the technology division of Kelly. And that was the background that they were talking about. Like I worked in tech sales, so they said, “Okay, well, you can at least talk to IT directors who you have before, you know, like the people that we’re trying to sell to, and maybe you can speak with them in the language that they talk in.”

[00:43:32] So…

[00:43:33] Marc Gonyea: And you can go outbound.

[00:43:34] Aspen Streety: Yes. Yes. And I go and meet on-site with people as well. Yes. And, so they, they also saw my, going back, I guess, back to why they hired me. The manager who’d reached out to me, was like, “I’ll be honest, Aspen. You’re not the most qualified person that I’ve talked to,” which is the nah, like I said earlier, is not the first time that I’ve heard this, but he, he said, you know, “I like that you have service industry in your background

[00:44:01] that tells me that you have grit, that you have tenacity. Some of my best hires to date have been people who came from the service industry. And so I’m, I’m gonna take a risk on you. I’m going to bat for you. And, you know, we’re, we’d like to extend you an offer.” I was ecstatic because it was a higher base pay than like three of the other jobs that I was interviewing for.

[00:44:24] And I was just bound and determined to make it work. I knew, had no staffing experience whatsoever, had not worked in a professional setting in more than two years. And, was like, “Oh my gosh.” You know, kind of nervous to get back on the phones again a little bit. I was like, ’cause I kinda like starting over. 

[00:44:44] Chris Corcoran: It’s like riding the bike.

[00:44:45] Aspen Streety: And what was interesting about the, like when I started, I, I started the first week of June in 2020. And uh,everyone that I called was like, “Have you looked outside? Have you watched the news? We’re not hiring. Like no one is hiring.” And I was like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, you know, I get that. I totally get that.

[00:45:07] Obviously, there’s a global pandemic happening. However, you know, when you are hiring again, I just, you know, we like, I just want to be a resource for you.” And they were like, “Mm-hmm, sure. Yeah. Call us back in six months.” So I call again in a couple weeks, and they’re like, you know, don’t remember me,

[00:45:25] Aspen Streety: of course. And they’re like, again, it’s like, we’re having, you know, it’s like a person with Alzheimer’s like, are we having the same, we’re just having the same conversation over and over again, “Have you looked outside? No, we’re not hiring. This is a global pandemic. I don’t know if you’re aware, but we don’t have a budget.

[00:45:41] We don’t have anything. We, in fact, we’re letting people go.” “Okay. Yeah. But you’re gonna need to hire people back again at some point. So when that happens, I want you to like, think of me.” So I tried to just build relationships with people by persistence and like straddling that line between being annoying and being a, you know, like a, a friendly resource.

[00:46:06] And eventually that, you know, I did six months of that, of, I didn’t have a single, I didn’t have a single job order. I didn’t get a single placement for the entire second half of 2020. From June to December, I saw nothing. It was, I was making 50 phone calls a day and, and you know, that was all lists that I had made myself.

[00:46:31] And every single time I was getting shut down. I had six straight months of nos. 

[00:46:36] Chris Corcoran: Wow. 

[00:46:36] Aspen Streety: Not one meeting. Like, well, some people agreed to a meeting, but they were like, “Okay. Yeah, but we’re not gonna be hiring until, you know, the springtime.” However, all of that groundwork that got laid in 2020 or in that second half paid off in dividends last year.

[00:46:53] Because when people did start to open back up again, I had called enough times to where they, I was a top-of-mind resource for them. And they reached back out, or I would call them again, and they’re like, “Actually, yes. Now we are in a position where we could be hiring.” And I got those job orders, and that just was a snowball effect all year. 

[00:47:15] Chris Corcoran: Wow. 

[00:47:15] Aspen Streety: And I just collected all of that. 

[00:47:17] Chris Corcoran: So during that time from, from June to December of 20, were you worried? 

[00:47:22] Aspen Streety: I was, I definitely was like, “What am I doing?” Uh, I definitely questioned if I had made the right decision about going back into sales again. I was concerned that maybe, you know, things weren’t going to pick back up again, or if they did, it was gonna be very slow.

[00:47:42] Yeah, I was…

[00:47:44] Aspen Streety: How’d you get through it? A lot of bubble baths and, you know, long walks outside. No, but in all seriousness, some of that, but I have a really great manager. Steve is the best. And he just…

[00:48:00] Marc Gonyea: His name? Mr. McCarthy. 

[00:48:01] Aspen Streety: McCarthy, yes. Steve McCarthy. I, for real, if Kelly, if Steve ever leaves Kelly, I’m going with him.

[00:48:09] I have already told him that. 

[00:48:10] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:48:10] Marc Gonyea: He’s got a loyal, a loyal soldier in me for forever. Tell us why. 

[00:48:17] Aspen Streety: Where do I begin? He’s just, first, Steve is somebody who you can just tell within like 10 seconds of talking to him that he genuinely cares about you as a person and just wants to pour into you.

[00:48:32] And as many ways as he possibly can, whether that’s, you know, extra training, you know, extra one on ones to talk about different strategies. I mean, he would practice with me, you know, role, you know, role-playing with me, getting my confidence up, be like, “Yeah, you’re staying all the right things.

[00:48:50] You, it’s gonna happen. You just have to, like, wait it out.” And really just encouraged me to st, you know, stick with it, “You’re doing all of the right things. You’re doing the groundwork that needs to happen. We’re just in a weird time. Trust me, it’s gonna pay off. Trust me, it’s gonna pay off.” And I think I listened to him because he’s been in the staffing industry for like 20 years.

[00:49:11] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:49:11] Aspen Streety: And so he’s seen a lot of the ups and downs and ebbs and flows of this particular market. So I was like, “Okay, okay. Well, I hope you’re right. “And he, man, he was definitely right. And then I would also say too, to speak to one of Steve’s best qualities is he’s not a micromanager. He treats you like an adult and trusts that if you say, you’re gonna do this work, then you’re gonna do it.

[00:49:38] And I don’t need to check in on you every second. And like that, I don’t know that freedom to just, a lot of, I think a lot of sales environments are like very just heavily metric focused. And Steve cares about like his metrics are, “What kind of conversations did you have today?” Or like, you know, it could be, you know, “You had like a really great, you had a really great meeting,” but that was the only thing that happened today.

[00:50:03] But just finding those, like those wins and celebrating those. And it’s more about like things that are gonna lead to actual opportunities rather than like, “Okay, you made $50 today, but like, what were, what were the results of that?” And I, I just, I really succeeded that type of environment. So.

[00:50:23] Chris Corcoran: Very good. So, you’re finding searches, job orders?

[00:50:28] Aspen Streety: Yeah.

[00:50:29] Chris Corcoran: For technology, is it in, is it just companies in Austin or is it in the state of Texas or what, like what, what do you focus your efforts on? 

[00:50:37] Aspen Streety: Yeah. 

[00:50:37] Good question. So I was hired just to focus on the Austin market.

[00:50:40] Chris Corcoran: Okay.

[00:50:41] Aspen Streety: And then shortly after I was hired, the only other person that was sitting in Texas left.

[00:50:46] So then I had Texas to myself for like six months. 

[00:50:50] Chris Corcoran: Wow. 

[00:50:51] Aspen Streety: And then, we hired another person, and then that person also left, like after about nine months. And then I had Texas to myself again. So I have clients kind of spread out all over. We have since hired two more AEs, one in Dallas, one in Houston.

[00:51:07] So I’m back to focusing on Austin again, but I’ve retained the clients that I have throughout the state. And I do cover a little bit of San Antonio as well, but I like only if something pop, like pops up, I don’t actually focus on that territory specifically. There’s too much in Austin. 

[00:51:26] Marc Gonyea: What types of comp..? 

[00:51:27] So let’s talk about what types of companies. 

[00:51:29] I mean, really anything that could be hiring for IT, but…

[00:51:33] Chris Corcoran: Wow.

[00:51:33] It’s a lot. 

[00:51:33] Aspen Streety: I, yeah, it’s a lot. 

[00:51:35] Chris Corcoran: For staying in Austin.

[00:51:36] Aspen Streety: But I like, they are trying to have a specialized in particular area. So I would say, I feel really comfortable working with anything in application development. I just work on a lot of software developer jobs, so I can speak that lingo very easily with customers and clients.

[00:51:54] And I also trust that our recruiting team has the skills necessary to be able to execute on those jobs. So that’s a, that’s an area of expertise for me. And then our other buckets that we try to focus on are like Data and Analytics, Cloud and Mobility, Digital Transformation, the ERP space, Cybersecurity.

[00:52:15] So those are like big, I guess, technology buckets. And then you’re gonna have like your infrastructure stuff. So like your network engineers and your systems engineers. And, some of those, like, I don’t wanna say they’re lower level, but like, those are, they’re not, they’re in a different structure than your like software developers and stuff like that.

[00:52:36] Marc Gonyea: So how does someone who was out of the professional workforce for two years, right…? 

[00:52:41] Aspen Streety: Over 

[00:52:41] two. 

[00:52:41] Marc Gonyea: Over two years. Who’s got a, a broadcast journalism background who… You, you were in tech, but not for 15, 10 years, like 5 years, really. You were in tech for a little bit of time. How, how, how do you become fluent?

[00:52:57] And this is that learning mindset. 

[00:52:58] Aspen Streety: Yeah. 

[00:52:58] Marc Gonyea: ‘Cause, so if anybody follows you on LinkedIn, you’re like, “I just completed this course. “

[00:53:02] Aspen Streety: Yeah. 

[00:53:02] Marc Gonyea: “Completed this course on virtual machines. I just come with this course on Ruby on Rails,” or like, so how do you learn that and why is learning so important to being a successful salesperson? 

[00:53:11] Aspen Streety: For this particular job,

[00:53:13] like, well, I guess for any job, but for my job, in particular, being able to ha like speak the lingo with the managers that you’re talking to and have, like, that comes from understanding what are their pain points. So, you know, something that is in it director’s pain point is gonna be different than something that’s a software development manager’s pain point.

[00:53:35] Like there are just different things that those people manage. And so they have different problems. And being able to understand like what they oversee so that you can speak to, you can ask questions that would speak to whatever they’re going through is really important. I, one of the things that Kelly is really big on is any type of, you know, external learning that we want to do.

[00:54:04] They are getting ready to pay for me to become AWS certified, which is awesome. We’ve even looked at like becoming having AEs that are CompTIA A+ certified, you can do an SAP course. Like there’s so many, like whatever you wanna specialize in is kind of like the world is your oyster sort of thing.

[00:54:25] So that’s why you see me taking those LinkedIn learning courses because I really would like to increase the breadth of knowledge that I have, so that I can have more targets to focus on. And ultimately, that’s what’s gonna help me bring in more business. 

[00:54:42] Marc Gonyea: Nice. 

[00:54:44] Chris Corcoran: So you said something earlier that if Steve were, Steve was to leave, you’d follow him.

[00:54:47] Aspen Streety: Absolutely. 

[00:54:48] Chris Corcoran: And so I think I want you to speak towards something about like the staff, the staffing industry is incredibly difficult because there’s really not a lot of differentiation between firms. 

[00:54:58] Aspen Streety: Yeah. 

[00:54:59] Chris Corcoran: Instead your clients work with Kelly ’cause they wanna work with you. 

[00:55:03] Aspen Streety: A hundred percent. 

[00:55:03] Chris Corcoran: So talk a little bit about how that can be

[00:55:05] an opportunity. 

[00:55:07] Aspen Streety: Yeah. That’s a great question. Because it’s true. Like, I, I’m pretty straightforward on all of my calls that I have, like any intro calls that I have with managers and like, yeah. You know, when we go through, like prices might be different, but other than that, like we’re offering the same thing.

[00:55:22] Chris Corcoran: Mm-hmm. 

[00:55:23] Aspen Streety: The difference is gonna be working with me versus working with somebody else. What I can offer you is my unrelenting nature. 

[00:55:32] Mm-hmm. I’m so passionate about like, it is, it’s easy for me to become passionate about what you’re doing because I have empathy. And so like what, whatever you’re experiencing, I can take that on.

[00:55:46] And because I’m able to take that on, I can bring a different energy to your needs than somebody else can. And I will be able to sell this opportunity to candidates on your behalf and like, get them excited about coming to your organization. And I work tirelessly. Like, I’m your, I’ll be your champion.

[00:56:08] It’s like kind of having like an extension of yourself to go out there. And I’m leaning on my recruiting team a lot to be able to do like the technical screening. 

[00:56:17] Chris Corcoran: Yep. 

[00:56:17] Aspen Streety: But, you know, a lot of the nuance between like the account management and all of that, I’m just, I don’t know.

[00:56:25] That’s how I set myself apart from the other people who are doing the same thing as me. It’s just, I think it really just comes down to passion, working tirelessly and having an, an enthusiasm for, for the work that I’m doing. 

[00:56:43] Chris Corcoran: Mm-hmm. And you said to differentiate yourself against the other recruiters?

[00:56:47] Aspen Streety: Yes.

[00:56:48] Chris Corcoran: Very good. And then what about a manager as a differentiator? Right? How, that’s pretty important. 

[00:56:55] Aspen Streety: You mean…

[00:56:55] Chris Corcoran: Because you, you, yourself said if Steve went to a different firm, like your loyalty is to him more so than Kelly. 

[00:57:01] Aspen Streety: Yeah, I would, I mean, yeah. 

[00:57:04] Marc Gonyea: We don’t wanna get in trouble with Kelly. 

[00:57:06] Aspen Streety: They know that, though.

[00:57:07] I’ve said, I’ve said that too. 

[00:57:09] Marc Gonyea: People who 

[00:57:09] manage him, they know that. They know 

[00:57:11] that, so everybody…

[00:57:12] Aspen Streety: Yeah. I was like, don’t, don’t ever let go Steve. No, they, they, I’ve, I’ve said that jokingly to, to many people before. I just, yeah, I, you know what’s, what’s great? Another thing that’s great about Steve is like, he’ll come on any of your calls. And that guy knows Kelly, like inside and out, so he’s able to, I would say even be an even bigger differentiator because

[00:57:35] when you’re able to see the entire team that you’re working with, not just me as a single spokesperson of Kelly, but like when I bring the recruiting team on the call, and they ask intelligent questions when I bring, you know, sometimes I bring Steve on the call, and it’s just, I call it the Kelly army sometimes of like, we’ll have like seven or eight people show up on this call.

[00:57:56] And they’re like, “Wow. How, you know, you brought so many people to this call.” I’m like, “Yeah, ’cause it’s important to us.” And Steve is like one of the biggest proponents of that. And I learned that early on in the organization, just watching him like we’re on calls. And I think that that has really helped us to have some great wins.

[00:58:17] Marc Gonyea: Well, speaking of that, we got to kind of move to closer ’cause you gotta Kelly technology event to get too soon. 

[00:58:24] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. But we, we can’t usher her out here without having, without having an opportunity for her to flex down on all of her success.

[00:58:32] Marc Gonyea: This go..

[00:58:32] Aspen Streety: Oh gosh. 

[00:58:33] Marc Gonyea: No. So talk about. 

[00:58:35] Chris Corcoran: You said that 2020, second half of 2020 was like nonexistent almost.

[00:58:40] Aspen Streety: Nonexistent. 

[00:58:41] Marc Gonyea: Not single job order?

[00:58:43] Aspen Streety: Not a single job order, not a single placement, nothing.

[00:58:47] Chris Corcoran: But tell us, talk, talk about, share with the listeners kind of what’s happened since then and some of the successes and, and some of the 

[00:58:52] accomplishments. 

[00:58:53] Aspen Streety: Yeah. So I think I ended 2020, they had given me a goal of like bringing in $10,000 in gross profit. I didn’t even come close. I think I brought in like $2,000. ‘Cause like I had one, I had like a couple contractors to start that were very low paying, and they like, they were billing like the last couple of weeks of 2020. It was abysmal. And then the, for all of 2021, I brought in almost half a million dollars.

[00:59:21] Chris Corcoran: Wow. 

[00:59:23] Aspen Streety: Yeah, so it was close to 500,000 in gross profit. So it was a tremendous glow-up. 

[00:59:29] Yeah, of course. But it, again, it goes back to all the groundwork that I laid in those six months where I was just getting shut down. A lot of those people came back and wanted to give me business because I had been so persistent. And we had like genuine, real conversations on the phone at that point. You know, some people were like, “Okay, Aspen, you know, nothing new is happening, but how are you?”

[00:59:53] Marc Gonyea: We know you’re gonna call them back. But let’s just start to now a little 

[00:59:56] bit. 

[00:59:56] Aspen Streety: Um, and then like one of the biggest customers that I brought in for last year, I actually brought in from a LinkedIn Poll. So I just like put a question up on LinkedIn, created a poll, and anybody, and I did this a couple weeks ago, too.

[01:00:12] Anybody who answers the poll, I follow up with them separately. If they look like they’re the right person to talk to, I follow up with them separately in their messenger. And just talk about like, “Hey, what’s going on with you?” Like, “Hey, I, I saw you responded to my poll. It’s curious what prompted you to answer that way,” and turn it into a conversation.

[01:00:30] Aspen Streety: And from one single customer last year of doing that, I brought in $150,000 in gross profit from one LinkedIn poll. 

[01:00:41] Chris Corcoran: So, that’s the other thing I was gonna talk to you about was, was gonna comment on that now because I see what you’re doing, your social selling. 

[01:00:46] Aspen Streety: Yeah. 

[01:00:46] Chris Corcoran: So you’re, it’s obviously strategic in terms of what you’re doing.

[01:00:49] How often do you post? What do you post about? What was the poll about? Talk, share with listeners a little bit 

[01:00:53] about that strategy.

[01:00:54] Aspen Streety: Yeah, so that poll was pretty simple. I just was, so actually very similar to the one I did a couple weeks ago. I just ask people like, “What, you know, what method of hiring are you guys doing right now?

[01:01:06] Is it contract contract to hire direct hire or you’re on a hiring freeze?” And it gives me insight into like that simple question gives me insight into their organization and how they might be working right now. Other examples are, you know, “Do you use agencies? Yes or no?” That tells me if somebody responds

[01:01:23] “yes,” that’s competition I can sell against. Or somebody says “no,” that’s even a, a window of like, “Oh, okay. Tell me why.” And like, just get them talking. But yeah, the, the poll I had last year and the year, and then this couple weeks ago, was just asking about what type of hiring they’re doing. I, this person said direct hire.

[01:01:44] So I followed up with them, turns out they had seven roles that they just opened, and they were looking to work with an agency for the first time. I said, “Great. Love to talk to you.” And then I, they’ve been a customer of mine for over a year, and now they’ve hired like 10 people from me. And so that has resulted in a, a great relationship for me.

[01:02:07] But then, and I, like, I was just up there visiting them in Dallas last week, resulted in a great relationship for me, but also obviously, you know, pays me well in commission too. 

[01:02:17] Chris Corcoran: So, how, how frequently are you doing 

[01:02:18] Aspen Streety: these things? I would say, well, I, I was being very consistent. I was posting like probably two to three times a week.

[01:02:25] Chris Corcoran: Mm-hmm. 

[01:02:26] Aspen Streety: I fell off the wagon a little bit this year ’cause I’ve had a, a lot going. Like I’m planning a wedding at the moment. So I’ve had a lot going on in my personal life, but I try to do like a poll a week, a video a week and then maybe some other like insightful news article or something that relates to the industry.

[01:02:43] So those are like the three things that I try to hit on. And I actually have had several people message me and be like, “You need to get back to doing your videos ’cause I, I actually watched them and…” I, and I, you know, I, I can share my…

[01:02:55] Marc Gonyea: Broadcast journalism.

[01:02:57] Aspen Streety: Yeah. My video content is usually, I might be skill marketing, a particular candidate that, um… 

[01:03:02] Chris Corcoran: For the listeners’ sake, explain what skill marketing is.

[01:03:04] Aspen Streety: Yeah. It’s basically just like, putting on blast a candidate that you thought was really good, that maybe you don’t have an open role for at the moment. 

[01:03:14] Chris Corcoran: Mid-level one? 

[01:03:15] Aspen Streety: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So I might not have an open job for them, but this is a great candidate that I wanna get in front of hiring managers, and they should speak with them.

[01:03:25] And then, I’ll like, go through a bullet points of, “This is why I think they’re a good candidate. And you know, if you wanna talk to them, reach out to me.” Their videos I do, I talk about like just different stuff that’s, you know, staffing trends in the industry, what we’re seeing. I just try to be a, a knowledgeable resource and an industry expert.

[01:03:44] Marc Gonyea: This is you’re just the perfect, 

[01:03:46] example, who’s someone who’s like, “How can I be of value 

[01:03:49] to the people 

[01:03:50] that I’m selling to? How can I be looked at as, as a resource?”

[01:03:53] Aspen Streety: Yeah. 

[01:03:54] Marc Gonyea: That’s incredible. And, and you’re, and you’re taking what’s going on in the industry and going on in their world. And you’re like, you can, I dunno what the word is, but bring it all together.

[01:04:04] Chris Corcoran: Harness. 

[01:04:04] Marc Gonyea: Harness it. ‘Cause you’re talking to so many people from so many different companies, you see what Kelly’s seeing. 

[01:04:08] Aspen Streety: Yeah. 

[01:04:09] Marc Gonyea: And then you can bring the skills and specialization of Kelly, but also the industry. And then you start talking about it. People are like, “Oh yeah, should, shouldn’t me find a job, but she kind knows what’s going on in the industry.”

[01:04:18] Chris Corcoran: An aggregator. 

[01:04:18] Marc Gonyea: An aggregator. Yeah. It’s just like the big melting pot of, of what’s going on. And if salespeople take that approach, you’re not looked at as a salesperson. You still are. You looked at as a resource. 

[01:04:31] Aspen Streety: Yep, exactly. 

[01:04:32] Marc Gonyea: And like you said, someone who cares about their problems, that’s where the empathy… 

[01:04:35] Aspen Streety: Yes.

[01:04:36] Marc Gonyea: Comes from.

[01:04:37] Aspen Streety: A hundred percent. 

[01:04:37] Marc Gonyea: Let’s close with a couple things, but one thing, so you, you made some jokes about how you like to talk. You talk, or they’ll go. But you, you know, you have to be a good listener too. Let’s, let’s talk about that. 

[01:04:49] Aspen Streety: Yeah. Oh, go ahead. 

[01:04:50] Marc Gonyea: No, ’cause I read that you, you consider yourself a good listener. So you don’t hear many people who say, “I’m a great talker, and I’m a great listener.” But why is the listening part

[01:04:57] so important? 

[01:04:59] Aspen Streety: Well, I mean, if you’re not actively listening, then you’re on, like a lot of people who don’t actively listen, are just thinking about what they wanna say next. And if you’re having that mentality, then you’re not able to like, receive or retain the information that people are giving to you. And if it’s over the phone, why, that’s, I mean, that’s super critical, ’cause you’re not able to read anybody’s body cues, like any body language that they might be giving you.

[01:05:25] But, I think I try whenever I’m on the phone to repeat back something that somebody says to me. So if they give me some information where they’re like, you know, “Yeah. We’ve been really struggling to find,you know, .NET Developer at the moment, and here’s why.” I will say, “Okay. So I think what I heard was you’re struggling to find .NET Developer because of X, Y, Z.

[01:05:51] Is that correct?” And they’re like, “Yeah, exactly.” And then I will go into, “Okay.” I’ll follow up with some questions or something like that. But I want that person to know that I like being able to demonstrate that you listen, shows that you care and that you’re engaged in what they’re saying. And that’s really important for the relationship building aspect that I’ve been talking about this whole time is like, you’re not gonna build a relationship with somebody

[01:06:21] if they think that you are only care about yourself. They want to know that you care about them. And you have to show that you care about them by actively listening to what they’re saying.

[01:06:31] Marc Gonyea: Well said. 

[01:06:32] Chris Corcoran: Very well said. 

[01:06:34] Marc Gonyea: Man, I’m so happy didn’t hire you. And then, you took, and you took the job, and Luke recommended you to work here. 

[01:06:40] Aspen Streety: Ah, yeah. 

[01:06:41] Marc Gonyea: Right?

[01:06:41] Chris Corcoran: Why is like? 

[01:06:42] Aspen Streety: What a journey. 

[01:06:44] Chris Corcoran: What I like 

[01:06:45] is how you take a little bit of this from every work or your experiences, from acting, from broadcast journalism, from travel, from CRM, from here, all of these things and you, from the country club and, and you’ve put it all together.

[01:06:59] You put it to use on the, on a daily, which is cool to see.

[01:07:03] Marc Gonyea: It sounds like Kelly nominated you for leadership program. 

[01:07:06] Aspen Streety: I actually just had my first interview for that today. 

[01:07:09] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[01:07:09] Aspen Streety: Yeah. 

[01:07:10] Marc Gonyea: So is that where you want to go with this? 

[01:07:12] Aspen Streety: I think so. Yeah. I’ve I told them, you know, I’ll say the same thing that I said to them today on the interview, which is that I feel like my life experience and even just in my, my own Kelly experience has given me a lot of perspective that I can pass along to people who are looking to develop their sales career or their staffing career.

[01:07:36] I have a lot of things that I’ve learned over the last couple of years at Kelly and then just in my whole career itself, where like, you know, the analogy that we like to use is that when you’re in sales, especially in a long term relationship selling role, you want to, you want to build a house basically.

[01:07:57] Aspen Streety: And the only way that your house is gonna be structurally sound is if you lay a good foundation. And I have the tools to be able to pass along to other people so that they can build a really good foundation for their house. Because when you get, you know, to the point where you’re two, three years into your role in, you know, this organization or another, if you don’t have a good house built, then it’s, you’re going to kind of struggle along.

[01:08:25] But if you have a really good foundation and you really put in the time and the effort in the beginning, then things will come a lot easier to you. And I feel like I have a lot of those little nuggets that I can pass along to people ’cause I failed a lot and I learned the hard way. And I don’t want people to necessarily have to do it the same way that I did.

[01:08:45] I would like to be able to, to pass, you know, to give that instruction. And I also have a passion for developing people too. Like I just like seeing people become really successful and I, I, you know, I think that I can, I think I can bring that to Kelly as well. 

[01:09:04] Marc Gonyea: Thank you for joining us.

[01:09:07] Aspen Streety: Yeah. You’re welcome. We’ll land on, on that. They’ll track you. 

[01:09:10] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. We’ll keep track of you as you, as you progress down the leadership path. 

[01:09:13] Aspen Streety: Yeah. Maybe I’ll make it on 

[01:09:14] the, what is that thing that you guys do?

[01:09:16] Marc Gonyea: Alumni of the Year? 

[01:09:17] Aspen Streety: Yeah, yeah. 

[01:09:18] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. Why not? We’d love to see you winning. 

[01:09:21] Aspen Streety: That’d be cool.

[01:09:22] Chris Corcoran: Very good.