How to Land Your Dream Job, Build Your Network, & Lead with Impact with Meredith Chandler

This is She Means Biz, a place where we will provide a no BS road map on navigating a successful career and personal life, helping women build confidence and tap into their most authentic selves. Now, let's get down to Biz. Hey everyone, welcome back to She Means Biz. We have a very exciting surprise for you on today's episode. And if you are an audio listener, Kaylee and I are not alone. We are so excited to have our first ever guest on, Meredith Chandler. She is head of sales at a lined and top 100 women in sales. And we just knew that we had to have her on. So in this episode, we're going to learn about Meredith's secret sauce to success and advise she would give to someone first starting out in their career. So to start today's episode, Meredith, please tell us about you and what your favorite quote is. Yes, thank you for that wonderful introduction, Lauren. I'm thrilled to be here on She Means Biz. Long time listener, first time caller. So thank you for having me. And like Lauren stated, I currently am head of sales for a tech company called Align and I also do sales consulting and coaching for startups as well as individual coaching for people going through interviews and the interview process and just up leveling their career and sales as a whole. So with that, my favorite quote is take all the blame and give away all the praise. And that is from a book that I read that I refer to frequently called Extreme Ownership. Wow, that was a good quote. I want to hear maybe a little bit about why this is your favorite quote and why you feel so passionate about this. Yes, this is my favorite quote because I just feel like the best leaders take full responsibility when things go wrong and don't hoard credit when things go right. It's a lot easier said than done. And I can mostly just speak for sales, but in sales, it's very frequent and it's also very easy to blame bad leads or an undesirable territory or the market or another department when you're missing quota. But the only thing that we can control is ourselves. A sooner that you can learn to take accountability and put your own destiny into your own hands is the sooner that you can make a plan and set to action on achieving your own goals. And then giving away all the praise is also very difficult, especially in sales where we love praise. We love being on the top of the leaderboard. But when you get into leadership, you'll find that giving away the praise gets much better results, not only with team buy-in and team satisfaction, but just overall motivation from everybody around you. And it feels good too. I love that merit, especially what you said around controlling the controllables is all you can do with everything else. Sometimes you just have to take a step back. But with taking accountability, I know it can be quite hard for some people. So what would you say would be some tips are to make sure that you're really truly holding yourself accountable? Yes, you have to think about your end goal first and then work it backwards to create a system of accountability to get you to that goal. So for example, I coach a lot of job seekers and they might want X job at Y company, right? That is the goal. And again, it's very easy to blame the market of, gosh, there's just so many job seekers out there. Nobody's calling me back. Nobody's reading my resume. But we have to work backwards of, okay, this is the type of role that you want. Let's get very specific in the type of companies you want to apply to. Let's make a goal of how many companies you're going to apply to per week or per day and what we can expect to move you through the funnel from there. Once you get a call back, what are you going to do to prepare yourself to speak with that hiring manager? We can't just wait for them to reach out to you, right? Are you going to find them on LinkedIn? Are you going to send them a note before your call? You better send them a note after the call. You better watch or listen to a blog or a podcast for each in-person interview that you get. So taking that North Star goal and then breaking it down into daily and weekly activities to get you there. It's so important. It's taking this huge thing of getting a job and you're taking it into small bite-sized pieces so that way you can make it obtainable, which we talk a lot about goal setting on Jimmy's biz and that's the best way to achieve a goal is to break it down into digestible pieces that you can achieve as women. We can get ahead of ourselves and want to think 15 steps ahead but it's really starting with, what is the thing I need to work on right now to get us there? So if you're listening to this, write down all the tips from Meredith because I just saw on LinkedIn. How many people applied for your job role that you have now? 1,400 applied for the role that I have now. Yes. 1,400, that is insane. Yes, and you're right. I give it away on LinkedIn fo free. So please go check out the post, take those tips, tricks, make it your own success and Kaylee, you bring up such a good point about just taking it one step at a time. There's another wonderful book that I love called The One Thing. No pun intended, but one thing I love about Jimmy's biz is a lot of your real life examples so not just career and professional. A few years ago I really wanted to get into real estate. I wanted to buy a house and just like you said, I didn't know where to start. I didn't know the first thing about buying a home. I just knew that I had saved up a good amount of money and I was ready for that. And so this book talks about exactly what you're saying. What is the one thing you can do now to get you closer to that goal? So I identified that one thing as finding a realtor. So I went through my network. I called about 10 different people. Maybe half of them were able to give me referrals, right? So then I have five realtor's that I can call. Three of them called me back. I interviewed all three. I selected one. I went out to lunch with her that week and then the rest is history. So you nailed it. You really just need that one step to get you going and momentum will carry you the rest of the way. That's incredible. And I think it's so important to show that you can have these lessons that work really nicely within the business world. But you can then truly incorporate it into your personal life. Like when you're looking to do things like buy a house or invest and treat it like a sales process as well, it can all work out really nicely together. So I love that point, Marida. Also, speaking of your house, it's so cute. You're just admiring your ceiling. I feel like you should show the whoever's watching on Spotify with you a little video. I mean, look at that ceiling. It's amazing. Oh, wow. The ceiling is really fun. It's an older home. It's historic. So 1909. But I was also showing Kayleigh. Because it's a Bachelorette pad. So I've got my pink couch right there and got a little fireplace, a little bar car. So it's a femden. What do they call it? Like a man cave. It's a femden. A femden. I've never had that before. I'm getting on it. Did you make it up? I would say your real estate, your journey was a success if that's the house that you landed on. And I'm really excited, Marida, to dive into a couple of things. And one, I just want to say I've been following on LinkedIn for a while. And I feel like you just bring such a good energy to what you're sharing. And you clearly have had so much success in what you're doing. So I would love to hear what is your secret sauce? If I were to label my secret sauce, I would probably combine both radical curiosity backed by structured accountability. Great business people don't just ask questions. They truly care about the answers. So if I think about when I approach coaching or selling, I really am trying to understand what's driving somebody. What is their underlying motivation? What are their fears? What are their challenges? For example, I just went through a ton of hiring for my team. And I'll ask very typical questions. Why this company? Why tech sales? And since we're in sales, I'll ask, you know, what do you like to spend your money on? We're here for commissions. But the undertone is like, who are you? What do you really value? I have one rep and he's getting married in the fall. And so he's saving up for everything for his wedding. So when we're talking about deals, it's not just a deal. I'm saying, you know, superstar rep, this deal could be the difference between family style or individual plates at your wedding. Or this could be the difference between adding five more people off of your guest list. So it goes so much deeper. Again, whether it's in business or personal life, just really understanding somebody's personal motivations and challenges so that you can kind of work with them towards that throughout your whole relationship. There are so many managers out there that I don't think really understand what intrinsically drives their team members and what that leads to is them not hitting their goals because they're not tailoring the messaging, the coaching, and putting the right carrots in front of their team. So I really like that you've applied that as a leader to a way that you have coached and managed people. Yeah, I think I picked it up because I've been on the receiving end to your point, Kaley, of the failed carrot dangle. I have one very specific leader who always used to walk by my desk and he would dangle promotions. And I'm just like my guy. I'm not here for a promotion. I don't care if my title is dog walker or trash scooper. Like I am here for the monies because your girl likes to travel and I like to take weekend trips and I like fine dining. Like I don't care what title that is. So absolutely to your point when you're not aligned, you're not going to be moving towards the same goal. Can I just say I can already tell you all the most perfect guess for us to have on our first episode because all of the things that you've said are all the things that me and Kaley care about, the traveling, fine dining. Like that's the kind of life that we want with that piece that you've mentioned about trying to find out what people's motivations are and like what gets them out of bed in the morning is just so important in business but also in life as well to make true genuine connections. So the fact that you've touched upon that I think is just like so helpful for us. He means business listeners to think more about, yeah, being curious. I want to know Meredith, when you look back at your career where there's like a maybe a specific moment where you were extra curious and that helped you when your own personal development and finding your way to the head of sales that aligned. Ooh, that's a great question. I have a good friend, now Kaley Business Partner, who says we want to be around people who are interested and interesting. Shout out Miles Patterson. And so you want to be around people that have things to talk about but also show an interest in you. Especially your listeners are dynamic and they have a lot to share and they have a lot of going on and they have ambitious goals. And so we want to be interesting but also show interest in others and to answer the second part of your question, Kaley, what's an example of things that I've done in my career that have panned out? One thing that a lot of people overlook and I've been guilty of this myself. In fact, I'm probably still guilty of it 'cause it's so easy to get caught up in our own little world is asking your boss about them, right? You know, stepping into your one-on-one and saying, "How are you doing?" You know, what's something that I can take off your plate this week? What's been most challenging with the business this month? Like how can I help? And something that's so small but shows that you actually have the wherewithal to think outside of your bubble will go a really long way. I had a rep once since Lauren, you mentioned we're all foodies here. This moment lives rent-free in my mind because this was my favorite team ever. Shout out to my reps, I captivate IQ, but I didn't take a lot of time off in that role. It's difficult in my position in startups to take a lot of time off. And so a leader that I respect very much gave me a staycation one day for a very high-end hotel up in Park City, the Montage. I try to be very open with my calendar because I don't get a ton of face time with my reps. So whether it's do not book over, customer call, or can book over, it's a workout, et cetera. I'm very transparent. I said, okay, staycation, do not bother me. Fend for yourselves, figure it out. 24 hours, don't burn the place down. I'm at this hotel. Here's where I want to go for breakfast. So I put the breakfast place on. And in the morning, one of my reps had planned out what I should order from the restaurant in detail. He said, hey Meredith, hope you're enjoying your staycation. You might not read this, but in case you do, saw that you're going here. This smoothie looks amazing. If you want something a little bit lighter, maybe you could go for the cucumber cooler, but you have to eat this banana coffee crumble cake. If you're feeling savory, I recommend the shikshuka. It has wild reviews and the most pictured plate from the restaurant, but it was such a small gesture. It probably took him 10 to 15 minutes, but again, it lives completely rent free in my mind 'cause it was like, that's one thing I don't have to think about is what I want to eat today. - Wow, that is the best story ever. I bet your rep gives the best recommendations for restaurants as well. I really wanted to touch on Meredith. We've spoken a lot about your career and where you're at today, but I think you took a lot to get to where you are today, head of sales, and I really would love to know, and our she means business owners would be great advice for them is, what advice would you give to yourself in your 20s when you were first starting out in your career? - Yes, I think early in my career, I made a big mistake of being hyper focused on proving myself within my current company, which is super important, right? Especially early on, there's a big learning curve. You want to absorb all of the learnings. You also need to prove yourself, but over the years, my biggest career growth has really come from relationships outside of my immediate circle. In today's world, with LinkedIn, with Slack groups, with communities, with so much more social media access and access to these networks, there's really no excuse to not be more involved because your next job, your next mentor, your next business opportunity is way more likely to come from, they call them weaker ties than your day-to-day colleagues. You're really limiting yourself if you only talk within your company. You want those second and third degree connections. - So important, and I'm curious, what is the best thing that you've done to make those connections? Like someone says, yes, I wanna get involved. How do they start knowing where to and how to connect people in the spaces that they're in? - Yep, great question going back to kind of what we touched on earlier, right? How do we take this big goal and make it systematized with accountability on daily and weekly goals? So it could be as simple as adding five new connections per week on LinkedIn with a personal note. I cannot stress this enough. It can be as simple as, hi, Kaylee, we haven't met, but I love your podcast, Big Fan. Open to Connecting or, hey Lauren, I saw that you liked this post that really reminded me of a time XYZ. Open to Connecting, just make them very small and then from there you can branch out of, okay, one networking event per month and then just kind of see where it evolves from there. - I think that's so important having that ability to create and engage in like genuine connections 'cause sometimes on LinkedIn, you can feel like if you're popping someone a message, you're trying to sell something to them or the pitch slap which we all know about. Marriage if I think something that you do so well, you are so heavily involved in women in sales communities like women in sales and Wednesday women. Could you tell us more about how you got involved in both of those communities and the great things that have come out from being part of those networks? - I'd be happy to, yes. Both of those are very amazing women-led organizations that host events but also are just online platform. I encourage you to follow them on LinkedIn, join the Slack groups, sign up for newsletters, et cetera. I will say the in-person events have been very, very helpful for me in my career. I think back to a few years ago when I was starting my consulting business, I sat at a table with Wednesday women at their inaugural event and you had to share something that you can bring to the table and help people with and what something you're working on right now. And I just didn't know how to start, right? It's okay, they kinda what you brought up earlier. I didn't know that one thing and I thought maybe it was a website and so I said I just really need help getting going on a website. The end of the dinner, I had five website designer referrals and then once I had the website up and running, I sent it to everybody at my table. They gave me feedback, we iterated. It was just really, really helpful. So if you can get in person more intimate events, those I've found to be the most impactful. - I'm so glad in-person events are back. I don't know, there was a time after COVID. I was like, what are we gonna do if we can't get together? I love that story and just that it went not just from the original website design, but getting feedback from the group and that we're in a time where women really do sport women and it's a little bit less of, I had to call my way to the top so I'm not gonna help you. I think there's a little bit less of that, which is really nice. I was curious also Meredith, if someone wants to message someone on LinkedIn, I get hit up all the time by SDRs who wanna be AE's and they're like, can I grab 15 minutes really quick? And I'm reading that as I barely have time to eat lunch so I don't have 15 minutes. What's a better way that someone could reach out to someone who's in the field that they're interested in with something of value via LinkedIn, also aware of the fact that people have lives and jobs. - Yeah, that's a very fair ask 'cause you wanna help them but you need to put your own oxygen mask on first, right? You need to protect your time. And so I think you nailed it just a more specific ask instead of 15 minutes. Hi, Kately, I'm interviewing Thursday. I'm prepping and I love your content and I saw that you posted this very specific thing. I was thinking of incorporating it this way. Know you're really busy but curious if you have just 30 seconds to review what I'm gonna send and tell me if I'm on the right track. Just very specific, a simple ask because, and I'm sure you've been here, you get on the call with them for 15 minutes and then there's no agenda. It's just, hey, you wanted to meet you and that's kind of burning the bridge or giving us our taste in your mouth versus, saw you did this, thinking of implementing it this way. Do you have 30 seconds? Yeah, I have 30 seconds when I'm looking at something specific. - Those are such good points. When we're talking about LinkedIn, it can be quite easy with being able to research someone's profile and then pop them a message. But you mentioned about being in real life, Meredith recently and going to networking events. How would you approach going up to someone that you might not know anything about and create a genuine connection there? 'Cause I've had lots of people say to me before, like, I'm going to a networking event. I don't know what I'm doing or how to speak to someone. So how do you create that genuine connection there when you've not done the proper research behind it, maybe first? - Yes, I think the great thing about these events, especially if you can go to an intimate one, is everybody's there to learn and to help others learn and grow as well. So that definitely helps break down the barrier versus when you're at a conference. So it's a different dynamic to begin with, but I think you can just go up to somebody, anybody, and you don't have to know their background. It certainly helps if you're going to a 10 person, 15 person event if you spend some time familiarizing with the faces before. But if you can't just go up to somebody and say, what have you thought of the event so far? Or curious what has been your intention for this event? Or what brings you here? What have you gotten out so far? What are you still looking to get out of it? Some simple ask like that. That is not, where do you work? What do you do? Like just go straight for the second or third layer question. 'Cause that's ultimately what you want to know, right? Like you don't really care where they work, do you? - No. (laughing) - I went to a networking event recently and I don't even know what I was thinking. I went up to somebody and asked them what they did for work and then I said, do you like it? They were like, yes. (laughing) I do. And I asked them in front of their work colleagues as well. So I was like, okay. (laughing) I'm gonna walk away now and get another drink. (laughing) - That happens too. - I like having the three questions. Also, so you're not going around asking the same person every single question. But keeping it a little bit more open-ended and trying to be creative there. One thing I wanted to circle back on is the LinkedIn thing. Something that's been really helpful for me, I live in New York City, I walk everywhere. So when I get those messages, being able to voice note someone my quick thoughts while I'm on a walk, that's a good use of my time if someone wants help and is reaching out in a genuine way. So I just wanted to circle back to that 'cause I've been loving the voice notes on LinkedIn 'cause I use them all the time with my girlfriends and my personal life. LinkedIn limits you to 60 seconds, which I'm also obsessed with because me and my friends will send long voice notes and my husband's like, "Why don't you just get on the phone?" This is ridiculous. I'm like cleaning the house. There's these TikToks that are like, when you get a long voice note and you're just doing random things, like that is me in my living room or kitchen. So good thing LinkedIn limits it to 60 seconds. - I love that. I didn't know that. I'm gonna have to switch my personal conversations to LinkedIn now because I'm also like a big voice note girly, but I don't love when people send me like a three or four minute one. - Now me and my friends always joke to each other. Like you've literally sent me a podcast. Like it's gonna take me time. I'm gonna have to 1.5 you or 2x you so I can listen to this properly. (laughs) - Meredith, before we wrap, I have one question that I was curious about. So when you were think about where you were in your 20s, like where compared to where you are now, like how does that compare to what you thought was gonna play out with your life? - Ooh, that's a very interesting question. I will say I was one of those that didn't know exactly where I wanted to go. So I always am very impressed when I interview people and they say point blank, like I wanna be a CRO by this age or I wanna be a VP at this age. Mine was more nebulous in that I grew up in kind of a shaky household. And so I really just wanted to be financially independent by myself 110% if I got hit by a bus. I wanted to be able like worst case scenario to be able to provide for myself. And so that was always my goal, which is interesting because I spent my first few years in my 20s as a teacher in Europe, just kind of galavanting around, not chasing the money train, but then decided if I really want to pursue this overall goal of being hyper financially independent, I need to pick a career that will allow me to do so. And so from there, I just kind of took it one step at a time. Where can I get hired as a full cycle AE where I don't need sales experience? That was Yelp. Yelp at the time was hiring by the droves. From there, I got to be an AE somewhere else and moved up into management more so over the years. So I hope that answers your question. Definitely. And I hope that gives listeners freedom 'cause I think sometimes when I was in my early career, I thought I had to have the perfect roadmap to exactly what I wanted in terms of the actual job. And we actually just talked about this on an episode when you're trying to pick your partner, thinking about why you're looking for a specific trait, go back to like the actual route. Why am I, why is this actually important to me? And I love that you just knew to do that. And you instead of focusing on a specific title or job you focused on, what is really important for me to accomplish and that's that financial security? And then letting that guide your path to whatever job fit that lifestyle that you desired most closely. I wish there was a class in college that said, what is the actual desired lifestyle you want? Is money important, is flexibility important? Do you want to do the same thing every day and took that and then gave recommended jobs? 'Cause I think it's really hard to figure that out until you're in the job and then you're like, I don't want to do this and you have to find another job. - I think you have a wonderful business idea and I think you should make that course because I completely agree with you and I even still see it now as I'm interviewing. Again, I have people that come and they say, I really just want to be a career I see because I like the paychecks, but I want to be in the beaches in Mexico one day and then I want to be in the jungle and Costa Rica on the next and that's great. And it goes back to what we were talking about earlier to that curiosity and I have people that I interview and they're starting to family plan or they have multiple kids and it's like, why are you thinking about a startup? Like that might not be the best place if you want something more stable. So I love your idea of a college course and just using that curiosity we talked about to really help people find their own way. - Yeah, it's important to work out what that North star is and then to get yourself there rather than everyone feeling like you've got to have a house and be married and have kids by 25. Like we're all taught when we're younger. It's like you can strive for something completely different and you've just got to find the right path to get there. So I love that, Marge. - And we always talk about main character energy and sort of going back to full circle moment Meredith to what you were saying. You have to own your own destiny but the best part of life is all the twists and turns you don't see coming and that is the beautiful thing about what we get to do in life we get to live. So you can't plan it out too much or you don't leave any room for life to show up in beautiful ways and bring you fun surprises and twists along the way. - Absolutely. - Amazing, well thanks everyone for listening. We are so grateful Meredith for you joining of being our very first guest. This was an amazing episode. I think everyone is gonna take away a lot from it. So thank you so much and we'll see you next time. - Thank you for having me if anyone would like to connect on LinkedIn, it's Meredith Chandler or you can find me on MeredithTheSalesCoach.com. - Amazing and we will link all of Meredith's info in the show notes. Thank you, ladies. - Thank you so much. - Thank you for listening to She Means Biz. If you enjoyed the episode, please don't forget to subscribe. Leave us a review and let us know what topics you want us to explore next. See you soon.