00:00:04
Speaker 1: Rube. I have one loss that literally felt like, Oh my gosh, my career's over right AID Corporation. They were my client. I'd been selling for eighteen months trying to get IBM point of sale equipment and all their stores. We won the deal. This was like tens of millions of dollars multi year. My boss was a hero, His boss was a hero. It's all great until the CEO calls me into his office. They're canceling.
00:00:39
Speaker 2: What would you do if one of the biggest deals of your career fell apart at the very last second after months of hard work, momentum, and celebration. It's all too easy to retreat, to avoid the team, to sit in the loss. But real leadership is defined by what happens next.
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Speaker 1: One.
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Speaker 2: I'm Jessica Chen, An Emmy Award winning journalist, founder of Soulcast Media and author of Smart Not Loud, How to Get Noticed at Work For All the Right Reasons, and today on Leading by Example. We're diving into resilience, ambition, and intentional leadership with Shelley Arschambau, former tech executive and author of the book Unapologetically Ambitious. Shelley built her career with a level of clarity most people never reach. Starting in high school, she reverse engineered her path to become a CEO at the age of forty. Her journey is a masterclass in turning setbacks into momentum, making high stakes decisions quickly, and showing up for your team when it matters most. But for Shelley, leadership isn't just about personal success. It's about creating space for others to rise, and through her nonprofit Ignite Ambition, she supports early to mid career professionals as a grow and step into leadership roles of their own. In this episode, you'll learn how to find your own path to power and why failure only defines you if you let it. This conversation is about playing the long game, leading with intention, and building the kind of resilience that drives your own success and the success of those around you. I'm Jessica Chen and this is leading by example, Jelly. I'm so honored that you're here with us today. As I was doing the research for our interview, I was number one so impressed with the depth of work experience that you have. I mean, you've done so much, But starting from the very beginning, this ambition of yours, and I think that's really what your book is, unapologically ambitious, and I think I want our listeners to really understand how that even came to be, right, So it take me back to where did that seed of ambition come from.
00:02:57
Speaker 1: It really came from necessity. I was just trying to figure out, frankly, how to survive. I grew up in the sixties and my parents moved around a lot. I lived in seven states before I got to high school, which meant I was always that new kid, and the environments that we moved into weren't very diverse, and so being an only little black girl in a class, or in a grade, or in a school wasn't always comfortable. People let me know they didn't think I belonged. So I grew up realizing that the odds weren't in my favor. And when you go home and something happens to you, you didn't get picked, you got pushed down, right, something happened. You come home and say, mom, Mom, this happened. And my mother was always very clear. I said, you know, it's not fair, Mom, it's not fair. And you say, Shelley, life's not fair, But it doesn't mean you can't get what you want, you just have to be intentional about it. So I grew up young learning this overall message.
00:03:54
Speaker 2: So I was reading that you knew already from a very young age that you wanted to go into business and leadership. Was there anyone in your life at that time who inspired you to pursue this path towards leadership?
00:04:09
Speaker 1: Frankly, it was my high school guidance counselor. You know, you have that junior year conversation, what do you want to do after college? Well, I had no idea, I said, I don't know. All I know is I want to make enough money to keep my thermostat at seventy two degrees in the wintertime. I want to be able to eat out in restaurants, and I want to be able to travel. That's what I want. And she laughed, but I was dead serious. And then she said, well, what do you like to do? And I said, oh, that's easy. Clubs. I'm in everything, American Field Service and French Club, National Hogors Society. I'm even a girl Scout, but like, don't tell anybody because it's totally not cool. And she said, well, you know, to her credit, she said, you know, clubs are like business. You pull people together and you get things done. And I said, oh done. I love these clubs. I'm going into business. I like to run the clubs, always vice president of this and president of that. I said, all right, So I looked up and the people who ranusinesses were called CEOs. So at sixteen, I came home and told my parents I'm going to be a CEO.
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Speaker 2: Not necessarily knowing what that exactly meant. You just like it sounds great. I honestly had no clue. I just knew they run the businesses and I like running the clubs. And I was told the clubs are like business, so this is easy, right. I then spent all the rest of my time figuring out how do I improve my odds to make that happen.
00:05:24
Speaker 1: But that's why I got into tech because tech was growing, so there's more opportunities of growing industries. I started in sales because all the CEOs that IBM, which is a company I started in, started out in sales. So every decision was really like, okay, calculated, optimized, et cetera. And the good news is I managed to do it. By the time I was forty, I was indeed CEO of a company, and I was able to keep my thermos set at seventy two degrees and eat out in restaurants and travel.
00:05:50
Speaker 2: I love how that was the additial motivation and it makes total sense. I mean, I think a lot of us would love that. Right now, I want to talk about your leadership experience in a sales role, because I imagine it might be a little bit different depending on the function. So what did you learn when you were managing or in sales?
00:06:09
Speaker 1: I will tell you I still use more skills that I learned when I was a salesperson and sales manager than any other job I've held. Because when you're in sales, you learn I think the most important lesson, which is no. It doesn't mean no. No means something's not right. Price isn't right, the value proposition isn't right, the timing's not right, the resources aren't right. Something's not right. Well, once you understand that, then you can figure out what's not right and let's go fix it. The other thing you learn is how to ask for what you want, because you never meet with the customer and they just say, oh, you haven't asked for an order, but let me just offer to buy whatever you have to sell right. That doesn't happen. You have to actually ask for the order. Well, in learning how to ask for the order, you learn how to ask for anything right, which is something you need to do all the way through your career. You learn how to read a room and understand where the power lies. You learn how to create win win situations where everybody gets what they want after you negotiate. You learn how to communicate effectively and concisely. Because people don't have a whole lot of time for you, but what you learn in sales, frankly, can support you in anything you do. I tell people all the time, I think everyone should do a stint in sales, because you learn so much that you'll be able to leverage no matter what it is you want to do in your career.
00:07:38
Speaker 2: I want to double down on this sales experience that you had, which specifically you said that's where you really learned about how to get comfortable with the nose and the rejection, because I imagine that that is something that people feel very unhappy about, very uncomfortable, and most of all, very dejected when they're told. So I want to understand how did you get so comfortable with the no. Was it always like boom, I'm okay, or was it like a learning process?
00:08:05
Speaker 1: Totally learning process. I mean the first time you get to know, you think, oh, you're totally deflated. You feel like a failure, right, I mean the whole bit. But the key is you got to go find something else. You build a habit, you build the courage, because what you learn is yes, I got that no, but it didn't actually kill me, right, I didn't get fired. None of that happened. So therefore, okay, maybe it's not too bad. But I will tell you, even after years of experience being a salesperson, I did have one loss that literally felt like, oh my gosh, my career's over. Tell us about it. So Rite Aid Corporation, the big drug store chain. They were a lot bigger long time ago. They were my client at the time. They had man, i don't know, two thousand stores and I'd been selling for eighteen months trying to get IBM point of sale equipment and all those stores. And I'd be equipment in their store back office and then obviously corporate headquarters to support it. You know, the whole bit. We got in the back office now we're working at point of sale. We won the deal. I mean, Jessica, this was like tens of millions of dollars multi year. My boss was a hero. His boss was a hero. I was going to kill my number, He's going to kill as number. I mean, he's all great until the CEO calls me into his office. Everything's on order and says to me, Shelley, we've been thinking about this and given that we're going to spend so much money in point of sale, we decided we're just going to invest in a point of sale company. What there is like no comeback from that. I mean, I don't have a company to sell him, right, I mean, I'm just like, what, So now I have to go back and I have to tell everyone that this deal that everybody thinks is done, the equipment's on order, that they're canceling. It was awful. It's definitely one of the worst situations I faced in the first twenty years of my career.
00:10:05
Speaker 2: I can't even imagine the magnitude of that call from the CEO. Where to your point, time, resources, investments, even excitement, probably like we got this deal and suddenly it just pulled away. I'm curious. What was the reaction like from your team after this happened.
00:10:25
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, it was like somebody had literally died. Oh, Shelley, I heard right. People would say, oh, you know, they're whispering. I'm getting calls. Everybody wants lost reviews at all the levels, and I want this and that. I come home from work three days after all this happened and my late husband says to me, so, how was your day? And I'm like, how do you think my day was? And he looks at me and he says, Shelley, the morning period is over. He said, you are the same person you were four days ago before you got this news. This doesn't define you. Go find something else to sell. And you know what, he was right. It was the kick in the pants that I needed to realize that a failure only defines you if you let it. If you learn from it and move on, it just becomes a learning experience.
00:11:12
Speaker 2: So then the question is, because doing a deal like this is never something that only one person does, how did you then communicate this to your team right? Because I'm imagining you felt so terrible and now leading them through this process of Okay, this deal didn't come through. Now we have to think about what's next. How did you communicate that part?
00:11:31
Speaker 1: The first was to come in and tell them and tell them honestly, there was nothing we could have done differently, and there wasn't. It wasn't like we lost to a competitor. It wasn't like they were going to go build it themselves. We didn't have what they needed to buy, which they decided they wanted to buy a company. We didn't have that. So the first thing is letting them off the hook in terms of your fault. But you have to spend time and actually wallow and how you feel initially in order to get through it, because if you just suppress it, it's going to come out later anyway. But then it's you know, as my thing husband says that it's all right. Now, we got to find something else to sell. We still have a quota to make, We've still got numbers to go after, right, and we've got to go do this. And even if I didn't feel positive and motivated, I needed to demonstrate that anyway, because everybody was going to take their cue based upon how I behaved.
00:12:26
Speaker 2: So what were the cues that you had to give your team, Like how did you show up in that way to make them feel like it's okay, we got this. When everyone's feeling demoralized, you have.
00:12:35
Speaker 1: To give them another thing to focus on. So it was okay, pull out there. We always did these planning sessions the beginning over a year of all the different kinds of opportunities and what we're going after. So it's pulling it out again to say, okay, now we've got to basically double down on numbers two, four, five kind of thing and go after that. And also being active and busy really helps. So it was all right, here are the other opportunities. Let's build the game plan, our strategy for how we're going to go after the sales campaign. Let's figure out who we're talking to. It's getting people active again and focused on something new. Those are ways to help shift the overall narrative. I love it.
00:13:16
Speaker 2: I think I read a quote here and I have it pulled up. You only become a failure if you don't learn and.
00:13:21
Speaker 1: Move on, absolutely right, Absolutely right.
00:13:25
Speaker 2: So let's move over to you been working in sales, then how do you get into a CEO role?
00:13:31
Speaker 1: Eventually? Oh? I just notped my fingers, of course, right. So then it was working to get more and more responsibility. It was paying attention to what others ahead of me did, what experiences people had, so that I knew which ones to go after. So I'll give you an example. I'm at IBM still and I am now just on the cusp of the executive role. But I'm listening and I'm watching, and I did the research. And the people who directly report to the CEO, everyone in a line job had international experience, but more than that, most of them had spent time in Japan. Japan was the headquarters for Asia Pacific. So I just started incorporating as kind of an oh, by the way, when things would come up or things would happen with people, I would just mention that, you know, one day I'd love an opportunity in Japan. Well fast forward, I'm now an executive and it's probably about two and a half years later, and I get a call Tim, a Christian. Tim says, Shelley, I remember once you said you were interested in going to Japan. Are you still interested? I said absolutely. He goes, I've got a job that I think he could do. He put my name forward. I got the job and moved to Japan. I was super intentional about trying to understand what jobs, what experiences, what skills were valued and required every step of the way as I moved up, so that by the time I was ready to compete, I had what was necessary.
00:14:58
Speaker 2: What I find so interesting about even just your description of this is like you were so clear minded in your approach. You kind of looked at where you wanted to go, and then you kind of moved backwards in terms of how can I get there? And for you, it was the apac experience that you realize, oh, I probably need something like that under my belt for me to be qualified for that next big jump.
00:15:20
Speaker 1: Right.
00:15:20
Speaker 2: But the second point that you said was making sure people knew this was something that you wanted. I think there's a study that says like someone needs to hear something seven times for them to remembering. And you were like, I'm gonna make darn sure people know I want to go to Japan.
00:15:35
Speaker 1: That's right. And it worked. I mean it happened. Yeah. I didn't know who that I told rite that woever effect or impact or anything. I had no idea. So you got to cast a wide knit.
00:15:45
Speaker 2: Okay, so you did your stit in Japan. You got the experience and then what happened?
00:15:50
Speaker 1: So here I meant Japan and my boss is John Joyce. He reports directly to the CEO, lu Gerstar. So I'm two stepped. I've done well. There wasn't anyone hiring the company that looks like me, and I should have felt great, but I didn't. I'll just give you one example. I just felt it kept getting little slights. So Lugershna came to Asia Pacific and I found out afterwards that he met with a few of my peers one on one, but not me. Now I was upset. I thought about it. I'm like, you know what, if I were really on the track to compete for the CEO job here, would that really have happened? Probably not. So maybe I'm not really on track to be considered for CEO. Wow, That'd been my goal since I joined IBM. This was like fourteen years of working kind of up through the ranks. I still want to be CEO, but maybe it's not here. So that's when I decided I was going to leave IBM and look for a path to CEO outside of IBM. And that was probably the hardest professional decision I ever made because I had moved around. Oh my gosh, I move probably I don't know five six times at least with IBM. My friends therefore were mainly IBMS and my late husband I met him at IBM. I mean, if you cut me, I bled IBM blue. But my goal and my intention was stronger than that. I'm like, nope, I want to be CEO. So that's when I decided to leave and pay attention to opportunities that were coming my way. And I did the research. It turns out, Jessica, a lot of people who go from big companies to small companies, they stumble a time or two because it's so different. And as a minority female, I don't get that many strikes at bad. So again, how do you improve your odds? So I said, let me go get seat at the table jobs, meaning I report to the CEO, I present to the board, understand what's so different, and then go after the CEO job. And so that's what I did. And so where did you land from IBM? I was hired by Blockbuster. You might be too young to remember Blockbuster, but blockbusterever.
00:17:53
Speaker 2: Blockbuster that was always like our Saturday there you go, there you go.
00:17:56
Speaker 1: I was hired to build out Blockbuster dot com. Because this is now the late nineties, Blockbuster didn't really have a dot com presence, they knew they needed one. I got to know Reid hay stinks because at the time Netflix was a fledgling startup trying to get built. So he came out pitched a Blockbuster. My boss, well, why don't we take the two, combine them, spit it out, and go conquer the world. But my boss passed said no, if that ever turns into ay thing, we'll just buy it. It's like okay. So I came home I told my husband, I know, we just moved to Dallas from Japan for this job like seven months ago, but I don't think this is the right long term fit. So anyway, after exactly a year, I took an opportunity to get to Silicon Valley and there I was achieved marketing officer and EVP of sales for two newly public companies, and then got the opportunity to get my CEO job.
00:18:53
Speaker 2: We have to take a short break, but when we come back, our guest and former Tech CEO, Shelley Arshamba opens up about one of the toughest leadership challenges she ever faced, one that put the survival of her company at stake. Stay with us, Welcome back to leading by example. Our guest is former tech exec and author Shelley Orshambeau. Okay, Shelly, as you're describing your career, one of the words that came to mind is intentional. I think some people say they spend more time planning a vacation than really planning the trajectory of their career.
00:19:36
Speaker 1: I say that all the time. I say that all the time, and it's true.
00:19:40
Speaker 2: So how do you feel like planning your career like this helps you develop yourself as a leader.
00:19:46
Speaker 1: So a couple things. By being intentional means you always have a vision for where you're going. Well, in business, every company, every division, every team needs to have a vision for where they're going. So the way I handle this personally is the same way I handle it in business. So therefore people view me as of being an inspirational leader because I always paint here is where we're going, and then we work on how we're going to get there, because we've got to have the plan. To me, you set a goal. Once we know the goal, we ask ourselves. What has to be true for me to achieve the goal, because that's what I ask personally. But it has to be true. Well, you have to do some research to figure that out. But once you do the research and you figure it out, you say, great, now how do we make it true? And making it true is the plan, and then you go execute the plan. So with teams, people line up with that. It's like, Oh, I get it. Here's what we're trying to do. Here's what we have to do because that's what the research says we need to go do. Here's the plan. Everybody's got a role, and then we celebrate and acknowledge every step of the way. But we're all part of a team moving in the same direction. I love that.
00:20:48
Speaker 2: So that philosophy and that approach is both personal and the way you lead others as well.
00:20:54
Speaker 1: Absolutely, you know, people talk about work life balance like it's two separate things, and honestly, I hate the term because I don't think they're two separate things. And I also don't think you should keep things quote even all the time, which is what Balin says. And the reason is I leverage skills that I've learned as a mom in business, and I leverage skills that I learned in business at home. I mean, the whole notion of delegation, that's something you kind of learn at work. Well, it works great at home. You know, five year olds can separate laundry, they know their colors. Okay, everybody can participate. So anyway, that's why I think this whole concept of having two lives it's crazy. No, no, no, have one way to approach life and just bring it to work and bring it home.
00:21:39
Speaker 2: All right, So let's now talk about your time at Metric Stream. You did a lot of amazing work there, so tell us about your time there, but particularly the moment when the recession hits.
00:21:49
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, because when the.
00:21:50
Speaker 2: Two thousand and eight recession hit, I can't even imagine how challenging that was.
00:21:54
Speaker 1: Yeah. So first of all, just a bit of backdrop. When I was hired to be CEO of the company, I knew it was a broken company. This was a company that definitely needed to turn around. Many of the investors had given up on the company. I knew that. Now when I got in, it was even worse than I thought. But that's the way it goes. But the good news is after years of work doing a merger, doing the whole bit. In the beginning of two thousand and eight, we had defined a category that we called comprehensive compliance and Risk. Then Gartner comes out and says, there's a brand new category and it's called governance, risk and compliance software and metric Stream is a leader. So first half of two thousand and eight it came out like it really first quarter, right, We're like, great, now's the time. Now we can invest in sales, we can invest in delivery, and on our growth trajectory, we will raise money in two thousand and nine. That was the plan. So we're feeling great, We're going to the races, and then September comes and everything stops. The financial crisis hits. Oh my gosh, Well, now we've spent our money. Remember I said we invested for the growth. So now we squeak into two thousand and nine and not only is it a terrible recession, but we don't have many money. So the question was do we fold where do we fight? And that's the question we had as the leadership team. If we fight, it's going to be hard. And to the credit of my team, we all said, you know what we're going to fight, and literally it was the hardest probably eighteen months of my life. There were many a Thursday that I went to bed not sure that we were going to make Friday payroll. But you know what, we grew in two thousand and nine, and we grew in twenty ten, and we grew in twenty eleven, and we ended up building a global market leader in governance, risk and compliance. It was an incredible, incredible journey with an amazing team.
00:23:49
Speaker 2: That story tells me so much about the leadership decision and as a leadership team, you guys were like, no, we're going to fight this and we're going to try to make it through.
00:23:58
Speaker 1: So then my question is, during time like.
00:24:00
Speaker 2: This where you have no idea how you're going to make payroll, how important is being present and showing up for your team?
00:24:09
Speaker 1: It's huge And I learned that first. Dan and I had a boss once that anytime anything was going off the rails, you couldn't find her. It was like, okay, So being present is super important because your team gets their courage from you, and they also have to see what you're willing to do.
00:24:30
Speaker 2: How do you know when you just have to make a decision, or do we just kind of figure it out, like waiting for more information before we make such a big decision. How do you make that judgment call?
00:24:42
Speaker 1: This is another one that I've learned, which is eighty percent good and fast beats one hundred percent perfect and slow. Every day of the week. You can always course correct. But when you delay and delay a decision, you are freezing the entire higher organization that's waiting to figure out which direction you're going in. And even though you don't realize you're freezing the organization, you are so especially when you have a small, young business, everybody is working so hard that if you do anything that slows or stalls, you basically risk your steals getting done, You risk investments being made, You risk all kinds of things. So my whole thing was always trying to get not perfect information, but enough where I'm like, am I capable of taking the risk? And can we at least set some metrics or some data points that tell us if we're on track off tracks so we can pivot. Much better to make the wrong decision fast and then pivot than it is to make the right decision two months later, because the world could have changed, anything could have happened. And I learned this early. Again, what do you learn in sales at a senior sales position? And I'd moved, so this is a new location, new customer set. With the customer uncovered an opportunity. I wanted to make sure, since I was making a first impression, that this proposal was perfect perfect, So I did the work, figured out what we should recommend. I then put prosal together. I then had my boss look at it, right, I tweaked it some more. I'm feeling really good. I finally call him up to make the appointment to come back and meet him. I go and meet him, give him the pitch, and he's like, oh, Shelly, this is great chost justification, the whole bit. I just wish I had this two days earlier because I just got a budget cut. Yesterday, I got no sale. Now two days earlier. Was it good enough? Yeah? It was good enough. So I learned that early eighty percent good and fast. It's one hundred percent slow every day of the week.
00:26:40
Speaker 2: That is so good. I feel like so many people overthink it has to be perfection before they deliver, but actually it's better you go now and then you can course correct as you go. Just like you said, I want to talk about now what you do you serve on multiple boards at Fortune five, at your companies, what an experience? And of course now you have this nonprofit, what do you see are some gaps in corporate leadership that made you actually want to start your nonprofit? Ignite ambition?
00:27:09
Speaker 1: Well, a unite ambition is really focused on what I call the mighty middle. Companies these days tend to start focusing on developing, I mean truly developing their people when they think they have executive leadership potential. Right, Well, there's a lot of people and there's a lot of time before that that if they had development and growth, could probably then do better. So there is so much to being successful and at getting to achieve your aspirations that have nothing to do with delivering on your objectives, that have nothing to do with do you actually make and keep your commitments, but have everything to do with things like executive presence, ability to communicate, ability to network effectively. You know, there's all these other skills that are just as important to build the roundedness that there's not a lot of places within companies that they actually teach these things and I personally feel there is so much wasted talent out there because what happens is people hit a roadblock or a hurdle, they're not sure how to deal with it, they may not deal with it properly, whatever, and it either derails them or slows them down or they get stuck. Well, I'm trying to help those people because frankly, those things that happen, there are ways to get through them, waste to get over them, waste to work around it, and so through ignite ambition, I'm trying to share in a scaled way all these tips and techniques to help you actually go after your ambitions and make things happen by learning how. So we provide cohorts that actually train on some of these things. We just had one how to tell your story right. People do a terrible job of introducing themselves, so it's a wasted opportunity every time. Learn how to tell your story so when you say who you are in a very period. Tip people to actually know what your skill sets are, which're capable of all those things. We've done one on, like I said, improving executive presence. We've done one even on fiscal how to manage your money, so you have flexibility. So we have those, but then we also have sessions where we bring in senior executives and I make them available. Everything's virtual, make them available for Q and A. You know, ask a few questions to get it going, but give people a chance to actually ask CFOs questions, CEOs questions that they wouldn't normally have a chance. And then I personally don't ask me anything where once a month, anything that you're dealing with, you know, work at home, whatever, you can come and get my perspective. I may not always have the answer, but I'm happy to share a perspective. So those are some of the things that we do, and then we encourage the community to support each other. So that's what I'm trying to do with Ignite Ambition. I want more people to be able to achieve their aspirations, no matter what they're pursuing, whether they're going nonprofit or their startups, or they're in corporate America.
00:29:53
Speaker 2: This really hits home because we also do a lot of leadership development training and I often feel like, you know, when you look at people or in this mid level manager, it's not that they lack ambition. I think a lot of people naturally are very ambitious. But why do people burn out? They burn out because they're working so hard, but they're not getting that recognition correct and then so they go why even bother right? And then they stop. And So to the point of this training you know that you now do with your nonprofit. I think it's so important because you're letting them know you have the technical know how. But let's think about sharpening it a little bit by adding the executive presence, the storytelling, the how do you introduce yourself? Because that's how you can really package yourself to your point of showing up right, because impressions really are so important. Absolutely, So as we close here, we always like to ask our guests this one question. What does leading by example mean to you?
00:30:45
Speaker 1: Leading by example means being authentic. It is walking the talk, whatever your beliefs are, whatever your core meaning is that you're consistent with it when you lead.
00:30:58
Speaker 2: So, Shelley, I'd love for people to be able to find you and get in contact with you. What's the best way for them to learn more about you and get access to your.
00:31:06
Speaker 1: Book Shelley dot com And it is literally sach l l Ye dot com. You can find Ignite Ambition. You can find information about my book and Apologetically Ambitious, which is available on Amazon or any place that you like to shop, and you can also follow me on LinkedIn. I'm very active. I always try to share inspirational leadership messages because I'm just trying to help others achieve their overall ambitions. I love that.
00:31:31
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Shelley, Thank you. Wasn't that such a great interview with Shelley? I walked away with so much great insight, And after our conversation, I started reflecting on what really stood out to me, and this was the first one. No doesn't mean no, It just means something isn't right. A lot of times, when we put ourselves out there and we ask for what we want and we get told to no, we have to think about it as maybe it was the timing. Maybe the value we're proposing just isn't landing the way it should, and here's something important. A lot of times we might not even get that explicit no. Instead we might get ignored. People don't respond to us, and honestly, that can sting equally as much now for a lot of us, hardworking, ambitious professionals when we put ourselves out there. It's because we care deeply about it and it is easy to take it personally. But the one reframe I learned here is no is never a reflection of our ideas. It just means that you might need to redirect your ask, so it lands differently. In my book, Smart Not Loud, I talk about how getting comfortable with following up is actually part of the process of getting what you want, and the simplest way to follow this is to go about it by offering something new in your follow up. And it's as simple as saying, since my last email, I found some new data I'd love to share with you. Just even that one shift suddenly makes your follow up feel less pushy, and it actually re engages the conversation. Here's a second tip. She said, eighty percent good and fast beats one hundred percent perfect and slow every time. This one really landed for me because Shelley also backed it up with this real story of how she was working on this project and she was spending a lot of time doing it to really just perfect it, and suddenly she turned it in and her boss comes back by saying, gosh, I wish you brought this to me two days earlier, because now we don't have the budget. Can't you just imagine that conversation vividly in your own mind, like I certainly can, and I think for a lot of us we might struggle with this sense of it has to be perfect, and we do it as a way to almost protect ourselves because we do want to give the best work and you know, going back to the no, we don't want to get rejected. But what I think is really important here is sometimes that perfectionism can actually be a risk. It can be a risk because what we are actually doing is not allowing ourselves the opportunity to actually capture the timing, to capture the moment where we can get that yes and truth. Is a lot of times things don't even have to be one hundred percent perfect. You hit that send, you hit that publish, and it's when things are live then you can start to reiterate on it and perfect it. The third point was your team gets their courage from you. This basically means in times of uncertainty and a lot of anxiety, the way you, as a leader carry yourself has a lot of sway in the world your team is going to handle themselves in that moment. Science actually backs us up. Research from more in business school studied what they call emotional contagion, and it's the phenomenon where emotions spread from one person to another, often completely unconsciously. Now this is important because in times of uncertainty, people are looking to their leaders. They're gauging their emotions, and leaders have a strong influence on the mood and the attitudes and the performance of their team in times of uncertainty. As a leader, your ability to just step up becomes even more important. And making sure all the cues you're giving to your team and how they should be thinking about their work. You, as a leader, actually have a lot of influence in what that looks like. So want to give Shelley a big thank you for joining us. I really enjoy this conversation. And to all of you who are listening. If you enjoyed this episode, or you have feedback on what you want to hear and guests you'd like to hear from, please rate and review leading by example. Every review, every rating really does help us reach more people and make this show the best it can be. I'm Jessica Chen, the author of Smart Not Loud. How to get noticed at work for all the right reasons. The CEO of Soulcast Media, a communications training company, and for more information about me and what I do, head over to our website Soulcastmedia dot com or add me on LinkedIn and Instagram. A huge thank you to our production team at Ruby Studio, especially Kelly, Kyle, Matt Stillo and Sierra Spring. We'll be back in two weeks with another episode of Leading by Example. I'll see you then,
Speaker 1: Rube. I have one loss that literally felt like, Oh my gosh, my career's over right AID Corporation. They were my client. I'd been selling for eighteen months trying to get IBM point of sale equipment and all their stores. We won the deal. This was like tens of millions of dollars multi year. My boss was a hero, His boss was a hero. It's all great until the CEO calls me into his office. They're canceling.
00:00:39
Speaker 2: What would you do if one of the biggest deals of your career fell apart at the very last second after months of hard work, momentum, and celebration. It's all too easy to retreat, to avoid the team, to sit in the loss. But real leadership is defined by what happens next.
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Speaker 1: One.
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Speaker 2: I'm Jessica Chen, An Emmy Award winning journalist, founder of Soulcast Media and author of Smart Not Loud, How to Get Noticed at Work For All the Right Reasons, and today on Leading by Example. We're diving into resilience, ambition, and intentional leadership with Shelley Arschambau, former tech executive and author of the book Unapologetically Ambitious. Shelley built her career with a level of clarity most people never reach. Starting in high school, she reverse engineered her path to become a CEO at the age of forty. Her journey is a masterclass in turning setbacks into momentum, making high stakes decisions quickly, and showing up for your team when it matters most. But for Shelley, leadership isn't just about personal success. It's about creating space for others to rise, and through her nonprofit Ignite Ambition, she supports early to mid career professionals as a grow and step into leadership roles of their own. In this episode, you'll learn how to find your own path to power and why failure only defines you if you let it. This conversation is about playing the long game, leading with intention, and building the kind of resilience that drives your own success and the success of those around you. I'm Jessica Chen and this is leading by example, Jelly. I'm so honored that you're here with us today. As I was doing the research for our interview, I was number one so impressed with the depth of work experience that you have. I mean, you've done so much, But starting from the very beginning, this ambition of yours, and I think that's really what your book is, unapologically ambitious, and I think I want our listeners to really understand how that even came to be, right, So it take me back to where did that seed of ambition come from.
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Speaker 1: It really came from necessity. I was just trying to figure out, frankly, how to survive. I grew up in the sixties and my parents moved around a lot. I lived in seven states before I got to high school, which meant I was always that new kid, and the environments that we moved into weren't very diverse, and so being an only little black girl in a class, or in a grade, or in a school wasn't always comfortable. People let me know they didn't think I belonged. So I grew up realizing that the odds weren't in my favor. And when you go home and something happens to you, you didn't get picked, you got pushed down, right, something happened. You come home and say, mom, Mom, this happened. And my mother was always very clear. I said, you know, it's not fair, Mom, it's not fair. And you say, Shelley, life's not fair, But it doesn't mean you can't get what you want, you just have to be intentional about it. So I grew up young learning this overall message.
00:03:54
Speaker 2: So I was reading that you knew already from a very young age that you wanted to go into business and leadership. Was there anyone in your life at that time who inspired you to pursue this path towards leadership?
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Speaker 1: Frankly, it was my high school guidance counselor. You know, you have that junior year conversation, what do you want to do after college? Well, I had no idea, I said, I don't know. All I know is I want to make enough money to keep my thermostat at seventy two degrees in the wintertime. I want to be able to eat out in restaurants, and I want to be able to travel. That's what I want. And she laughed, but I was dead serious. And then she said, well, what do you like to do? And I said, oh, that's easy. Clubs. I'm in everything, American Field Service and French Club, National Hogors Society. I'm even a girl Scout, but like, don't tell anybody because it's totally not cool. And she said, well, you know, to her credit, she said, you know, clubs are like business. You pull people together and you get things done. And I said, oh done. I love these clubs. I'm going into business. I like to run the clubs, always vice president of this and president of that. I said, all right, So I looked up and the people who ranusinesses were called CEOs. So at sixteen, I came home and told my parents I'm going to be a CEO.
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Speaker 2: Not necessarily knowing what that exactly meant. You just like it sounds great. I honestly had no clue. I just knew they run the businesses and I like running the clubs. And I was told the clubs are like business, so this is easy, right. I then spent all the rest of my time figuring out how do I improve my odds to make that happen.
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Speaker 1: But that's why I got into tech because tech was growing, so there's more opportunities of growing industries. I started in sales because all the CEOs that IBM, which is a company I started in, started out in sales. So every decision was really like, okay, calculated, optimized, et cetera. And the good news is I managed to do it. By the time I was forty, I was indeed CEO of a company, and I was able to keep my thermos set at seventy two degrees and eat out in restaurants and travel.
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Speaker 2: I love how that was the additial motivation and it makes total sense. I mean, I think a lot of us would love that. Right now, I want to talk about your leadership experience in a sales role, because I imagine it might be a little bit different depending on the function. So what did you learn when you were managing or in sales?
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Speaker 1: I will tell you I still use more skills that I learned when I was a salesperson and sales manager than any other job I've held. Because when you're in sales, you learn I think the most important lesson, which is no. It doesn't mean no. No means something's not right. Price isn't right, the value proposition isn't right, the timing's not right, the resources aren't right. Something's not right. Well, once you understand that, then you can figure out what's not right and let's go fix it. The other thing you learn is how to ask for what you want, because you never meet with the customer and they just say, oh, you haven't asked for an order, but let me just offer to buy whatever you have to sell right. That doesn't happen. You have to actually ask for the order. Well, in learning how to ask for the order, you learn how to ask for anything right, which is something you need to do all the way through your career. You learn how to read a room and understand where the power lies. You learn how to create win win situations where everybody gets what they want after you negotiate. You learn how to communicate effectively and concisely. Because people don't have a whole lot of time for you, but what you learn in sales, frankly, can support you in anything you do. I tell people all the time, I think everyone should do a stint in sales, because you learn so much that you'll be able to leverage no matter what it is you want to do in your career.
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Speaker 2: I want to double down on this sales experience that you had, which specifically you said that's where you really learned about how to get comfortable with the nose and the rejection, because I imagine that that is something that people feel very unhappy about, very uncomfortable, and most of all, very dejected when they're told. So I want to understand how did you get so comfortable with the no. Was it always like boom, I'm okay, or was it like a learning process?
00:08:05
Speaker 1: Totally learning process. I mean the first time you get to know, you think, oh, you're totally deflated. You feel like a failure, right, I mean the whole bit. But the key is you got to go find something else. You build a habit, you build the courage, because what you learn is yes, I got that no, but it didn't actually kill me, right, I didn't get fired. None of that happened. So therefore, okay, maybe it's not too bad. But I will tell you, even after years of experience being a salesperson, I did have one loss that literally felt like, oh my gosh, my career's over. Tell us about it. So Rite Aid Corporation, the big drug store chain. They were a lot bigger long time ago. They were my client at the time. They had man, i don't know, two thousand stores and I'd been selling for eighteen months trying to get IBM point of sale equipment and all those stores. And I'd be equipment in their store back office and then obviously corporate headquarters to support it. You know, the whole bit. We got in the back office now we're working at point of sale. We won the deal. I mean, Jessica, this was like tens of millions of dollars multi year. My boss was a hero. His boss was a hero. I was going to kill my number, He's going to kill as number. I mean, he's all great until the CEO calls me into his office. Everything's on order and says to me, Shelley, we've been thinking about this and given that we're going to spend so much money in point of sale, we decided we're just going to invest in a point of sale company. What there is like no comeback from that. I mean, I don't have a company to sell him, right, I mean, I'm just like, what, So now I have to go back and I have to tell everyone that this deal that everybody thinks is done, the equipment's on order, that they're canceling. It was awful. It's definitely one of the worst situations I faced in the first twenty years of my career.
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Speaker 2: I can't even imagine the magnitude of that call from the CEO. Where to your point, time, resources, investments, even excitement, probably like we got this deal and suddenly it just pulled away. I'm curious. What was the reaction like from your team after this happened.
00:10:25
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, it was like somebody had literally died. Oh, Shelley, I heard right. People would say, oh, you know, they're whispering. I'm getting calls. Everybody wants lost reviews at all the levels, and I want this and that. I come home from work three days after all this happened and my late husband says to me, so, how was your day? And I'm like, how do you think my day was? And he looks at me and he says, Shelley, the morning period is over. He said, you are the same person you were four days ago before you got this news. This doesn't define you. Go find something else to sell. And you know what, he was right. It was the kick in the pants that I needed to realize that a failure only defines you if you let it. If you learn from it and move on, it just becomes a learning experience.
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Speaker 2: So then the question is, because doing a deal like this is never something that only one person does, how did you then communicate this to your team right? Because I'm imagining you felt so terrible and now leading them through this process of Okay, this deal didn't come through. Now we have to think about what's next. How did you communicate that part?
00:11:31
Speaker 1: The first was to come in and tell them and tell them honestly, there was nothing we could have done differently, and there wasn't. It wasn't like we lost to a competitor. It wasn't like they were going to go build it themselves. We didn't have what they needed to buy, which they decided they wanted to buy a company. We didn't have that. So the first thing is letting them off the hook in terms of your fault. But you have to spend time and actually wallow and how you feel initially in order to get through it, because if you just suppress it, it's going to come out later anyway. But then it's you know, as my thing husband says that it's all right. Now, we got to find something else to sell. We still have a quota to make, We've still got numbers to go after, right, and we've got to go do this. And even if I didn't feel positive and motivated, I needed to demonstrate that anyway, because everybody was going to take their cue based upon how I behaved.
00:12:26
Speaker 2: So what were the cues that you had to give your team, Like how did you show up in that way to make them feel like it's okay, we got this. When everyone's feeling demoralized, you have.
00:12:35
Speaker 1: To give them another thing to focus on. So it was okay, pull out there. We always did these planning sessions the beginning over a year of all the different kinds of opportunities and what we're going after. So it's pulling it out again to say, okay, now we've got to basically double down on numbers two, four, five kind of thing and go after that. And also being active and busy really helps. So it was all right, here are the other opportunities. Let's build the game plan, our strategy for how we're going to go after the sales campaign. Let's figure out who we're talking to. It's getting people active again and focused on something new. Those are ways to help shift the overall narrative. I love it.
00:13:16
Speaker 2: I think I read a quote here and I have it pulled up. You only become a failure if you don't learn and.
00:13:21
Speaker 1: Move on, absolutely right, Absolutely right.
00:13:25
Speaker 2: So let's move over to you been working in sales, then how do you get into a CEO role?
00:13:31
Speaker 1: Eventually? Oh? I just notped my fingers, of course, right. So then it was working to get more and more responsibility. It was paying attention to what others ahead of me did, what experiences people had, so that I knew which ones to go after. So I'll give you an example. I'm at IBM still and I am now just on the cusp of the executive role. But I'm listening and I'm watching, and I did the research. And the people who directly report to the CEO, everyone in a line job had international experience, but more than that, most of them had spent time in Japan. Japan was the headquarters for Asia Pacific. So I just started incorporating as kind of an oh, by the way, when things would come up or things would happen with people, I would just mention that, you know, one day I'd love an opportunity in Japan. Well fast forward, I'm now an executive and it's probably about two and a half years later, and I get a call Tim, a Christian. Tim says, Shelley, I remember once you said you were interested in going to Japan. Are you still interested? I said absolutely. He goes, I've got a job that I think he could do. He put my name forward. I got the job and moved to Japan. I was super intentional about trying to understand what jobs, what experiences, what skills were valued and required every step of the way as I moved up, so that by the time I was ready to compete, I had what was necessary.
00:14:58
Speaker 2: What I find so interesting about even just your description of this is like you were so clear minded in your approach. You kind of looked at where you wanted to go, and then you kind of moved backwards in terms of how can I get there? And for you, it was the apac experience that you realize, oh, I probably need something like that under my belt for me to be qualified for that next big jump.
00:15:20
Speaker 1: Right.
00:15:20
Speaker 2: But the second point that you said was making sure people knew this was something that you wanted. I think there's a study that says like someone needs to hear something seven times for them to remembering. And you were like, I'm gonna make darn sure people know I want to go to Japan.
00:15:35
Speaker 1: That's right. And it worked. I mean it happened. Yeah. I didn't know who that I told rite that woever effect or impact or anything. I had no idea. So you got to cast a wide knit.
00:15:45
Speaker 2: Okay, so you did your stit in Japan. You got the experience and then what happened?
00:15:50
Speaker 1: So here I meant Japan and my boss is John Joyce. He reports directly to the CEO, lu Gerstar. So I'm two stepped. I've done well. There wasn't anyone hiring the company that looks like me, and I should have felt great, but I didn't. I'll just give you one example. I just felt it kept getting little slights. So Lugershna came to Asia Pacific and I found out afterwards that he met with a few of my peers one on one, but not me. Now I was upset. I thought about it. I'm like, you know what, if I were really on the track to compete for the CEO job here, would that really have happened? Probably not. So maybe I'm not really on track to be considered for CEO. Wow, That'd been my goal since I joined IBM. This was like fourteen years of working kind of up through the ranks. I still want to be CEO, but maybe it's not here. So that's when I decided I was going to leave IBM and look for a path to CEO outside of IBM. And that was probably the hardest professional decision I ever made because I had moved around. Oh my gosh, I move probably I don't know five six times at least with IBM. My friends therefore were mainly IBMS and my late husband I met him at IBM. I mean, if you cut me, I bled IBM blue. But my goal and my intention was stronger than that. I'm like, nope, I want to be CEO. So that's when I decided to leave and pay attention to opportunities that were coming my way. And I did the research. It turns out, Jessica, a lot of people who go from big companies to small companies, they stumble a time or two because it's so different. And as a minority female, I don't get that many strikes at bad. So again, how do you improve your odds? So I said, let me go get seat at the table jobs, meaning I report to the CEO, I present to the board, understand what's so different, and then go after the CEO job. And so that's what I did. And so where did you land from IBM? I was hired by Blockbuster. You might be too young to remember Blockbuster, but blockbusterever.
00:17:53
Speaker 2: Blockbuster that was always like our Saturday there you go, there you go.
00:17:56
Speaker 1: I was hired to build out Blockbuster dot com. Because this is now the late nineties, Blockbuster didn't really have a dot com presence, they knew they needed one. I got to know Reid hay stinks because at the time Netflix was a fledgling startup trying to get built. So he came out pitched a Blockbuster. My boss, well, why don't we take the two, combine them, spit it out, and go conquer the world. But my boss passed said no, if that ever turns into ay thing, we'll just buy it. It's like okay. So I came home I told my husband, I know, we just moved to Dallas from Japan for this job like seven months ago, but I don't think this is the right long term fit. So anyway, after exactly a year, I took an opportunity to get to Silicon Valley and there I was achieved marketing officer and EVP of sales for two newly public companies, and then got the opportunity to get my CEO job.
00:18:53
Speaker 2: We have to take a short break, but when we come back, our guest and former Tech CEO, Shelley Arshamba opens up about one of the toughest leadership challenges she ever faced, one that put the survival of her company at stake. Stay with us, Welcome back to leading by example. Our guest is former tech exec and author Shelley Orshambeau. Okay, Shelly, as you're describing your career, one of the words that came to mind is intentional. I think some people say they spend more time planning a vacation than really planning the trajectory of their career.
00:19:36
Speaker 1: I say that all the time. I say that all the time, and it's true.
00:19:40
Speaker 2: So how do you feel like planning your career like this helps you develop yourself as a leader.
00:19:46
Speaker 1: So a couple things. By being intentional means you always have a vision for where you're going. Well, in business, every company, every division, every team needs to have a vision for where they're going. So the way I handle this personally is the same way I handle it in business. So therefore people view me as of being an inspirational leader because I always paint here is where we're going, and then we work on how we're going to get there, because we've got to have the plan. To me, you set a goal. Once we know the goal, we ask ourselves. What has to be true for me to achieve the goal, because that's what I ask personally. But it has to be true. Well, you have to do some research to figure that out. But once you do the research and you figure it out, you say, great, now how do we make it true? And making it true is the plan, and then you go execute the plan. So with teams, people line up with that. It's like, Oh, I get it. Here's what we're trying to do. Here's what we have to do because that's what the research says we need to go do. Here's the plan. Everybody's got a role, and then we celebrate and acknowledge every step of the way. But we're all part of a team moving in the same direction. I love that.
00:20:48
Speaker 2: So that philosophy and that approach is both personal and the way you lead others as well.
00:20:54
Speaker 1: Absolutely, you know, people talk about work life balance like it's two separate things, and honestly, I hate the term because I don't think they're two separate things. And I also don't think you should keep things quote even all the time, which is what Balin says. And the reason is I leverage skills that I've learned as a mom in business, and I leverage skills that I learned in business at home. I mean, the whole notion of delegation, that's something you kind of learn at work. Well, it works great at home. You know, five year olds can separate laundry, they know their colors. Okay, everybody can participate. So anyway, that's why I think this whole concept of having two lives it's crazy. No, no, no, have one way to approach life and just bring it to work and bring it home.
00:21:39
Speaker 2: All right, So let's now talk about your time at Metric Stream. You did a lot of amazing work there, so tell us about your time there, but particularly the moment when the recession hits.
00:21:49
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, because when the.
00:21:50
Speaker 2: Two thousand and eight recession hit, I can't even imagine how challenging that was.
00:21:54
Speaker 1: Yeah. So first of all, just a bit of backdrop. When I was hired to be CEO of the company, I knew it was a broken company. This was a company that definitely needed to turn around. Many of the investors had given up on the company. I knew that. Now when I got in, it was even worse than I thought. But that's the way it goes. But the good news is after years of work doing a merger, doing the whole bit. In the beginning of two thousand and eight, we had defined a category that we called comprehensive compliance and Risk. Then Gartner comes out and says, there's a brand new category and it's called governance, risk and compliance software and metric Stream is a leader. So first half of two thousand and eight it came out like it really first quarter, right, We're like, great, now's the time. Now we can invest in sales, we can invest in delivery, and on our growth trajectory, we will raise money in two thousand and nine. That was the plan. So we're feeling great, We're going to the races, and then September comes and everything stops. The financial crisis hits. Oh my gosh, Well, now we've spent our money. Remember I said we invested for the growth. So now we squeak into two thousand and nine and not only is it a terrible recession, but we don't have many money. So the question was do we fold where do we fight? And that's the question we had as the leadership team. If we fight, it's going to be hard. And to the credit of my team, we all said, you know what we're going to fight, and literally it was the hardest probably eighteen months of my life. There were many a Thursday that I went to bed not sure that we were going to make Friday payroll. But you know what, we grew in two thousand and nine, and we grew in twenty ten, and we grew in twenty eleven, and we ended up building a global market leader in governance, risk and compliance. It was an incredible, incredible journey with an amazing team.
00:23:49
Speaker 2: That story tells me so much about the leadership decision and as a leadership team, you guys were like, no, we're going to fight this and we're going to try to make it through.
00:23:58
Speaker 1: So then my question is, during time like.
00:24:00
Speaker 2: This where you have no idea how you're going to make payroll, how important is being present and showing up for your team?
00:24:09
Speaker 1: It's huge And I learned that first. Dan and I had a boss once that anytime anything was going off the rails, you couldn't find her. It was like, okay, So being present is super important because your team gets their courage from you, and they also have to see what you're willing to do.
00:24:30
Speaker 2: How do you know when you just have to make a decision, or do we just kind of figure it out, like waiting for more information before we make such a big decision. How do you make that judgment call?
00:24:42
Speaker 1: This is another one that I've learned, which is eighty percent good and fast beats one hundred percent perfect and slow. Every day of the week. You can always course correct. But when you delay and delay a decision, you are freezing the entire higher organization that's waiting to figure out which direction you're going in. And even though you don't realize you're freezing the organization, you are so especially when you have a small, young business, everybody is working so hard that if you do anything that slows or stalls, you basically risk your steals getting done, You risk investments being made, You risk all kinds of things. So my whole thing was always trying to get not perfect information, but enough where I'm like, am I capable of taking the risk? And can we at least set some metrics or some data points that tell us if we're on track off tracks so we can pivot. Much better to make the wrong decision fast and then pivot than it is to make the right decision two months later, because the world could have changed, anything could have happened. And I learned this early. Again, what do you learn in sales at a senior sales position? And I'd moved, so this is a new location, new customer set. With the customer uncovered an opportunity. I wanted to make sure, since I was making a first impression, that this proposal was perfect perfect, So I did the work, figured out what we should recommend. I then put prosal together. I then had my boss look at it, right, I tweaked it some more. I'm feeling really good. I finally call him up to make the appointment to come back and meet him. I go and meet him, give him the pitch, and he's like, oh, Shelly, this is great chost justification, the whole bit. I just wish I had this two days earlier because I just got a budget cut. Yesterday, I got no sale. Now two days earlier. Was it good enough? Yeah? It was good enough. So I learned that early eighty percent good and fast. It's one hundred percent slow every day of the week.
00:26:40
Speaker 2: That is so good. I feel like so many people overthink it has to be perfection before they deliver, but actually it's better you go now and then you can course correct as you go. Just like you said, I want to talk about now what you do you serve on multiple boards at Fortune five, at your companies, what an experience? And of course now you have this nonprofit, what do you see are some gaps in corporate leadership that made you actually want to start your nonprofit? Ignite ambition?
00:27:09
Speaker 1: Well, a unite ambition is really focused on what I call the mighty middle. Companies these days tend to start focusing on developing, I mean truly developing their people when they think they have executive leadership potential. Right, Well, there's a lot of people and there's a lot of time before that that if they had development and growth, could probably then do better. So there is so much to being successful and at getting to achieve your aspirations that have nothing to do with delivering on your objectives, that have nothing to do with do you actually make and keep your commitments, but have everything to do with things like executive presence, ability to communicate, ability to network effectively. You know, there's all these other skills that are just as important to build the roundedness that there's not a lot of places within companies that they actually teach these things and I personally feel there is so much wasted talent out there because what happens is people hit a roadblock or a hurdle, they're not sure how to deal with it, they may not deal with it properly, whatever, and it either derails them or slows them down or they get stuck. Well, I'm trying to help those people because frankly, those things that happen, there are ways to get through them, waste to get over them, waste to work around it, and so through ignite ambition, I'm trying to share in a scaled way all these tips and techniques to help you actually go after your ambitions and make things happen by learning how. So we provide cohorts that actually train on some of these things. We just had one how to tell your story right. People do a terrible job of introducing themselves, so it's a wasted opportunity every time. Learn how to tell your story so when you say who you are in a very period. Tip people to actually know what your skill sets are, which're capable of all those things. We've done one on, like I said, improving executive presence. We've done one even on fiscal how to manage your money, so you have flexibility. So we have those, but then we also have sessions where we bring in senior executives and I make them available. Everything's virtual, make them available for Q and A. You know, ask a few questions to get it going, but give people a chance to actually ask CFOs questions, CEOs questions that they wouldn't normally have a chance. And then I personally don't ask me anything where once a month, anything that you're dealing with, you know, work at home, whatever, you can come and get my perspective. I may not always have the answer, but I'm happy to share a perspective. So those are some of the things that we do, and then we encourage the community to support each other. So that's what I'm trying to do with Ignite Ambition. I want more people to be able to achieve their aspirations, no matter what they're pursuing, whether they're going nonprofit or their startups, or they're in corporate America.
00:29:53
Speaker 2: This really hits home because we also do a lot of leadership development training and I often feel like, you know, when you look at people or in this mid level manager, it's not that they lack ambition. I think a lot of people naturally are very ambitious. But why do people burn out? They burn out because they're working so hard, but they're not getting that recognition correct and then so they go why even bother right? And then they stop. And So to the point of this training you know that you now do with your nonprofit. I think it's so important because you're letting them know you have the technical know how. But let's think about sharpening it a little bit by adding the executive presence, the storytelling, the how do you introduce yourself? Because that's how you can really package yourself to your point of showing up right, because impressions really are so important. Absolutely, So as we close here, we always like to ask our guests this one question. What does leading by example mean to you?
00:30:45
Speaker 1: Leading by example means being authentic. It is walking the talk, whatever your beliefs are, whatever your core meaning is that you're consistent with it when you lead.
00:30:58
Speaker 2: So, Shelley, I'd love for people to be able to find you and get in contact with you. What's the best way for them to learn more about you and get access to your.
00:31:06
Speaker 1: Book Shelley dot com And it is literally sach l l Ye dot com. You can find Ignite Ambition. You can find information about my book and Apologetically Ambitious, which is available on Amazon or any place that you like to shop, and you can also follow me on LinkedIn. I'm very active. I always try to share inspirational leadership messages because I'm just trying to help others achieve their overall ambitions. I love that.
00:31:31
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Shelley, Thank you. Wasn't that such a great interview with Shelley? I walked away with so much great insight, And after our conversation, I started reflecting on what really stood out to me, and this was the first one. No doesn't mean no, It just means something isn't right. A lot of times, when we put ourselves out there and we ask for what we want and we get told to no, we have to think about it as maybe it was the timing. Maybe the value we're proposing just isn't landing the way it should, and here's something important. A lot of times we might not even get that explicit no. Instead we might get ignored. People don't respond to us, and honestly, that can sting equally as much now for a lot of us, hardworking, ambitious professionals when we put ourselves out there. It's because we care deeply about it and it is easy to take it personally. But the one reframe I learned here is no is never a reflection of our ideas. It just means that you might need to redirect your ask, so it lands differently. In my book, Smart Not Loud, I talk about how getting comfortable with following up is actually part of the process of getting what you want, and the simplest way to follow this is to go about it by offering something new in your follow up. And it's as simple as saying, since my last email, I found some new data I'd love to share with you. Just even that one shift suddenly makes your follow up feel less pushy, and it actually re engages the conversation. Here's a second tip. She said, eighty percent good and fast beats one hundred percent perfect and slow every time. This one really landed for me because Shelley also backed it up with this real story of how she was working on this project and she was spending a lot of time doing it to really just perfect it, and suddenly she turned it in and her boss comes back by saying, gosh, I wish you brought this to me two days earlier, because now we don't have the budget. Can't you just imagine that conversation vividly in your own mind, like I certainly can, and I think for a lot of us we might struggle with this sense of it has to be perfect, and we do it as a way to almost protect ourselves because we do want to give the best work and you know, going back to the no, we don't want to get rejected. But what I think is really important here is sometimes that perfectionism can actually be a risk. It can be a risk because what we are actually doing is not allowing ourselves the opportunity to actually capture the timing, to capture the moment where we can get that yes and truth. Is a lot of times things don't even have to be one hundred percent perfect. You hit that send, you hit that publish, and it's when things are live then you can start to reiterate on it and perfect it. The third point was your team gets their courage from you. This basically means in times of uncertainty and a lot of anxiety, the way you, as a leader carry yourself has a lot of sway in the world your team is going to handle themselves in that moment. Science actually backs us up. Research from more in business school studied what they call emotional contagion, and it's the phenomenon where emotions spread from one person to another, often completely unconsciously. Now this is important because in times of uncertainty, people are looking to their leaders. They're gauging their emotions, and leaders have a strong influence on the mood and the attitudes and the performance of their team in times of uncertainty. As a leader, your ability to just step up becomes even more important. And making sure all the cues you're giving to your team and how they should be thinking about their work. You, as a leader, actually have a lot of influence in what that looks like. So want to give Shelley a big thank you for joining us. I really enjoy this conversation. And to all of you who are listening. If you enjoyed this episode, or you have feedback on what you want to hear and guests you'd like to hear from, please rate and review leading by example. Every review, every rating really does help us reach more people and make this show the best it can be. I'm Jessica Chen, the author of Smart Not Loud. How to get noticed at work for all the right reasons. The CEO of Soulcast Media, a communications training company, and for more information about me and what I do, head over to our website Soulcastmedia dot com or add me on LinkedIn and Instagram. A huge thank you to our production team at Ruby Studio, especially Kelly, Kyle, Matt Stillo and Sierra Spring. We'll be back in two weeks with another episode of Leading by Example. I'll see you then,
