Episode 86 | Proven Sales Strategies Behind $105M Revenue - Celeste Berke Knisely

In this episode of Uncopyable Women in Business, I have the pleasure of interviewing Celeste Berke Knisely, an award-winning sales growth consultant. We discussed the unique challenges women face in corporate environments, the power of supporting one another, and overcoming self-doubt. Celeste opens up about her journey from traditional sales roles to entrepreneurship, stressing the importance of authenticity and truly understanding customer needs. This episode is all about encouraging women to embrace their individuality and build powerful personal brands.

About Celeste:

Celeste is an award-winning Sales Growth Consultant with over 23 years of experience. She has led more than 50 sales teams and generated $105M in sales. A Certified Gap Selling Partner, she specializes in helping teams build pipelines, conduct discovery calls, and close deals. Celeste's background includes roles in both non-profit and for-profit sectors, and she is known for her collaborative approach, humor, and strategic insights. Based in Colorado, she launched her consulting business in 2020 and continues to drive sales success. 

Contact Celeste:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/celesteberke/
celestegapselling.com

Resources: 
Youtube channel
https://www.youtube.com/@celesteberkesales
Sales Edge Podcast
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/celeste-berke/id1702757889
Newsletter
https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7095524107026386944/

Kay Miller interviews women in sales with proven track records, as they share their experiences, success strategies and tools you can use to crush your sales goals. Kay has a history of sales success, earning the nickname “Muffler Mama” when she sold more automotive mufflers than anyone in the world. Kay and her guests deliver actionable insights and real-world tools that will help you overcome obstacles, adopt a winning mindset, and maximize your sales results.

Kay is the author of the book, Uncopyable Sales Secrets – How to Create an Unfair Advantage and Outsell the Competition. Go to Amazon.com and search “Uncopyable Sales Secrets” to order the book, or click the link below.

Contact:
kay@uncopyablesales.com
linkedin.com/in/millerkay
Order Uncopyable Sales Secrets: amzn.to/35dGlYZ

Transcript

Speaker 1 00:00:00  Welcome to UN Copyable Women in Business. I'm your host, Kay Miller. Also known as Muffler Mama. Now, I don't know if you're an entrepreneur, business owner, sales professional, or part of an organization, but I do know that you want to be more successful, earn more money, and make a bigger impact. How do you do that? Stay tuned as I, along with my guests, give you marketing, sales, and personal branding strategies that will give you an unstoppable advantage. Today I'm joined by Celeste Burke nicely. Celeste is an award winning sales growth consultant and trainer. Celeste has led over 50 sales teams, generating over $105 million in sales. Celeste is a certified GAAP selling partner and help sales teams build pipelines, conduct discovery calls and close deals. Celeste, Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2 00:01:01  Thank you so much for having me, kid.
Speaker 1 00:01:03  You were highly recommended by a mutual contact of ours. Lauren Gibson and I interviewed Lauren a few episodes ago. I don't remember the episode number, but it was fascinating.
Speaker 1 00:01:14  And she has a very eclectic background, including a ton of travel and Celeste. You also have an eclectic background. In fact, we were trying to put your intro together and it was like, you've done so many things. Where do we even start?
Speaker 2 00:01:29  Make myself unstoppable. So much unstoppable. So much so that it's hard to introduce a bio or to synthesize. How do you synthesize your whole life's work?
Speaker 1 00:01:37  That's right. I know it's a lot. And it's funny too, because my. I'm older than you, but my parents, in their generation, they had one job and they stuck with it their whole entire career. And now we are constantly reinventing ourselves, adding to our skillset. And that's definitely what you've done. Celeste, why don't you? I'll put it on you. Why don't you give a little background on where you've been and how you got to where you are now? Absolutely.
Speaker 2 00:02:02  Hello, everybody. I would say the major throughline is I am a sales person through and through without believing that I am a salesperson.
Speaker 2 00:02:10  I remember when I first thought about getting into sales. I come up through a traditional college education, had no clue what I wanted to do upon graduation, went to work in nonprofits and association management, and happened upon hotels. And by meeting so many entrepreneurs, I thought, I have to get some experience in sales, or by the time I'm 30, nobody will take me seriously. That is a story I told myself. So seven interviews later, I landed not only a sales job, but managing five people in an industry I had never sold in and I knew nothing about. And it really goes to show the listeners, you know, what we put our minds to, we can achieve when we have a plan and we set out to do it. The rest you can learn. And so that really has set that kind of throughline through my life of continuing to push myself and grow and learn and become a sponge. And I slowly worked up through sales positions and was at the corporate level, managing multiple properties, 19 of them from coast to coast.
Speaker 2 00:03:13  And due to a Covid relief, my position was eliminated. And there I was, 40 years old with an 11 month old thinking, I have to pass. And this is for everybody out there who is facing that fork in the road. I can choose the path that I have always known, which is the stable W-2 career job, or I could go all in and bet on myself and become an entrepreneur. I'd heard time and time again, you were such a great trainer. You have such a passion for helping other people. And so I doubled down. And here we are four and a half years later, and my business keeps iterating and having different iteration. So that has been a storied. And for all of you out there, I'm an older mom. I was married at just shy of my 30th birthday and had a child at 40. Some huge advocate for women being able to have both a life with a family and a career.
Speaker 1 00:04:01  Yet when I had my daughter, which is 30 years ago, I was 33 and it was a geriatric pregnancy.
Speaker 1 00:04:08  Like what? And it's just changing so rapidly. And yes, having a baby in your early 40s is just people do it and it works out fine. So yeah, you obviously wanted to have a family. I was interested in what you said about being in sales. First of all, you went out on your own, which is great. It's very bold. One of the guests I interviewed was Diane de Resta, and she talks about communication, and she said, you don't have to be confident to appear confident. And I've always heard you don't have to be confident to act confident. But I liked that little twist. And so you just bit the bullet and went out there and did it. And we were just talking before we started recording about how a lot of people don't. Hardly anyone says, I want to go into sales, Especially women. But then again, everything is sales. If you aren't selling a product or service, you have a hobby and hobbies are fine. But that's not why you or I are here.
Speaker 1 00:05:05  And the listener's not here for that either. But you do now as a consultant. Help sales teams. And I know you've got your gap selling partner. You've got some other signature methodologies you use. So why don't you tell us about what you do and what those things mean?
Speaker 2 00:05:22  Sure. So I read a book called Gap Sell Aims written by Keenan. This his name, and I thought, I'm now starting to question my 20 years of selling experience. I always sold to the product to the future using budget timeline. And I realized our buyers do not like to be sold to you that way. That is not how we as individuals by buying is a change management process. We're changing from something to something we are either forced to change. If it's like a doctor, you have a diagnosis, or when someone helps us see that a change has to be made because we can't stay where we are. So I decided to go all in. At that time, I was scaling my business solely based on LinkedIn coaching and consulting to companies to become a student here I was like, I don't even know.
Speaker 2 00:06:11  242 42.5 speaking of these students of gap selling and to become in a license agreement. So I had to go through testing, months of study, practice, role play, what salespeople hate, role play to hone the skills. And here I am, a year and a half later as a seller for the program. But I also build my own pipeline. And truly, it's about helping teams hone the business problems they solve, which most businesses can't tell you what that is. They talk about the technical, the broken process, the broken problem or tool that's broken. Nobody has my product. They don't have a process for this. A lot of us live with broken processes every single day, Like my calendar being example. It is a mess. I could fix it, but the time to do it, I don't want to. It's a broken process. Now, if someone shows me the way that I'm not able to scale my business because that's holding me back, that's a whole other conversation. So I teach and train on that, mostly focused in and around teams that have are selling it, you know, in an MRR, R model.
Speaker 2 00:07:12  So SaaS companies, tech companies, services who have a fairly decent team, anywhere from ten sellers and above. So that's the majority of what I do. But to your point, I also have this brand because they come up through 20 years of hospitality experience. So I leverage that in what I call the hospitality sales edge and work with teams who are a little bit in the dark ages on how to show up online, build a brand for themselves and start the sales process in a digital space, which is very scary for most people. When we talk about selling online and how to have a digital footprint, but we're so used to old school sales methodologies and ways that we approach buyers. So that's the two horses I ride. probably more.
Speaker 1 00:07:58  Than one, because you also have a five year old, among other stepchildren. So yeah, you're a busy working mom and you have built. Speaking of LinkedIn, 10,000 over 10,000 followers. So you've obviously mastered the branding and attracting your, as we call them, moose, the people, your target market, who you would best serve and who would really want to work with you the best.
Speaker 1 00:08:24  Honing in on that, I loved one thing that you said that I talk about a lot, and that is how do you buy talking about features and benefits, even features and benefits? That was what I learned in the old school. Don't talk about the features, talk about the benefits. But now you need to go way beyond that. And as you said, the experience. So what kind of experience? What kind of transformation, what difference will that make in your business or your life? And I was talking some about someone or talking to someone about the fact that I now take piano lessons. I just started a year ago. I'm having a blast. My piano teacher is looking to brand herself, and I said, I'm not paying you to teach me to push the keys, and sound comes out. I'm paying you because of the way I feel. I'm just empowered. I'm learning new things. I'm making music. I'm creating music. So many things that cause me to want to do business with her, keep me loyal to her are not about, like you said, the technical part.
Speaker 2 00:09:26  So great and I love that story. I have one recently added a little ding in my car a couple of years ago actually I slid. I was at a full stop, but I was on ice so I slid into a delivery truck. The delivery truck waved me off. There was no damage to the delivery truck. I had a big dent. I don't really drive anywhere. My daughter goes was going to preschool. It's was a mile and a half away, very low mileage. So I had a ten year old car. And this past March, my husband said, you know what? Why don't you get your car under the insurance, will pay the deductible and get that front bumper fixed? I get a call and they say your car has been deemed it's a salvage title, and I had no clue what that meant. So I had to go down a rabbit hole figuring out I can't drive a car that has a salvage title. The amount of money to that would have had to be spent to fix it was more than 65% of the worth of the car.
Speaker 2 00:10:20  Now this car only had 80,000 miles on it. It was like pristine condition. I was baffled, my state changed. It was no longer like I had to get a different car. Because what? You can't drive a salvage title, you can't get insurance on, etc. so we went to the car buying experience and it was awful. And they just started immediately with what car do you want to buy? Do you want a sunroof? What about these tires? What do you need? And I realized this person didn't even ask me questions about what's bringing you in today. Why do you need a car? Yeah. How many now?
Speaker 1 00:10:51  Use the car. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 00:10:52  How do you drive it? We had our five year old with us. Talk to me about how often she's in the car. Like it's safe. How important safety was to me. None of that. It's just all about the features of the car. And it was unsettling because we see this so often in sellers these days, and even entrepreneurs that are solopreneurs that go right to the product and skip all of the meaty reasons why someone should or should not buy.
Speaker 1 00:11:18  You know, I feel bad for car salespeople because there are good ones, but they have such a bad rep because we've all dealt with that. We've all purchased cars, we've all gone into showrooms, and we feel like the piranhas are approaching. And right away, yeah. One thing I always think they say, what are you looking for? And then here's, here's what we've got. This is the one, right? Without really we might not know what we're looking for, like you said. Oh, yeah. I need something that's really safe. This is the way I drive. I'm on ice and whatever. And finding out really your situation and how they can give you the experience you want. Not just this type of car, this brand, this price, this color. So, yeah, it's interesting how you want to buy. The way you want to buy is how other people want to buy. And so I think that is such a simple concept. And whether salespeople are pressured to make a sale or they just want to make a sale, or sometimes they're just that excited about their product or service.
Speaker 1 00:12:16  And of course, everyone needs what we sell, but maybe not in our mind.
Speaker 2 00:12:21  So yeah, and teaching salespeople to unattached from the outcome and something I've had to do myself where when I go through discovery with a client potential customer, I'm completely unattached from the outcome. I'm in the moment trying to figure out, can I help them? Can they leave this call with a diagnosis or some value, whether they ever do business with me or not. And I just reported this to statistics today. We pulled it for another company. I have a 75% retention rate from discovery one to the next stage, which is huge because a lot of my customers have a 10% retention rate, and I'm able to identify the root cause of why they can't get people to have another conversation with them. And again, it's we like to say one of my mentors was like, yeah, sales people. We lose our human very quickly. Like all of a sudden we're like, oh, let's attach to the outcome versus the journey.
Speaker 2 00:13:09  Should that by or by, how can you help them unattached to the sale.
Speaker 1 00:13:14  And if you sell anything on an ongoing basis, which is always the kind of sales I've been in, you've been in, you might be able to tell to sell solar door to door one time, but if you want to sell people on an ongoing basis, like you said, you have to pull back. You know, don't be attached to the fact that you want them to say yes. And to me, the worst word you can hear is maybe I want them. If you don't like what I've got, if it's not a fit, say no. Okay? Because you could waste a lot of time on the maybes. But, yes, if you look at the big picture, pull yourself back. And again, if you have sales goals or sales quota, you feel the pressure, but it's really not going to help you out, especially in the long run.
Speaker 2 00:13:57  Definitely not. And we're seeing a lot of quota misses.
Speaker 2 00:13:59  I wrote an article about this today. Three reasons that you can, three reasons your team is missing quota and what you can do to fix it. And I do hear from reps all the time individuals about just how much pressure they're getting. And it's unfortunate that some leadership isn't taking a step back to say the team is moving through things very quickly, very attached to the outcome. Because we have this end of month, we have quota hanging over their head. And oftentimes as business owners, we feel that too, right? There's pressure. We have fixed expenses that are going out. But one of the worst things that you can do is try to rush the sales process. You'll turn a buyer off and they'll either go someplace else or you'll get in that hole of the ghost. You you never hear from them.
Speaker 1 00:14:41  This podcast is sponsored by my latest book, which I co-authored with my husband, Steve. It's part of the UN Copyable series, and this one is called UN Copyable. You create a personal brand that gets people to know you, like you, trust you, and remember you.
Speaker 1 00:14:58  Order it now on Amazon, Barnes and Noble or your favorite independent bookstore.
Speaker 2 00:15:06  Which doesn't feel very good.
Speaker 1 00:15:08  It doesn't feel very good on either end. And I think I just interviewed somebody that talked about stress. And stress affects us all. And if we're feeling that from management, one thing I've noticed is that management might tell you, go out and do all the things that you just talked about, right, Celeste? But then the management doesn't that doesn't treat their salespeople like that. So they're putting all this pressure on and saying, go out and don't pressure the customer. Find out what works for them. Find out the fit. There's a disconnect and I actually isn't that huge. The whole sales process.
Speaker 2 00:15:44  And there was something the other day last week that circulated on LinkedIn, a VP at Oracle who bashed cold calling and said it was spamming. Now he's in it. And then LinkedIn blew up. About how disconnected is he from the sales process that Oracle's 10,000 salespeople are actually doing that exact same thing in order to, like, have him have a job like you? Don't spam me.
Speaker 2 00:16:13  But yes, sales team, you need to go out and make calls to people I hear I heard it at a trade show this summer that I went to high tech and VP of sales said. I said, you know, I got your series of emails coming here, and he's oh, yeah, those are just automated emails that we send because they're so yucky. When people send them to me, I don't pay any attention. He's my team, does it? You just said the thing that you don't want. You actually do so right. There's a big disconnect.
Speaker 1 00:16:38  There is one of the concepts that we have and we talked about in our business is two hat marketing. And yet you wear your person hat when you're not working and then you get into your sales or marketing role. And you like you said, you're a totally different person. And people can sense that. We're not stupid, are we? And especially I just heard that I often starts out with with the when the AI email is generated.
Speaker 1 00:17:07  I hope this email finds you. Well, yeah. So that's another challenge that we have now. Or maybe opportunity is that so much of this is cookie cutter. And I generated we just talked about branding and our most recent book is UN Copyable U which is about personal branding. And we talked about something interesting helped me remember the color thing. Oh yeah. And so I just I was going to say that products and services are copyable, and what isn't copyable is you and what makes you unique.
Speaker 2 00:17:45  Or what your.
Speaker 1 00:17:46  Branding promise is to the customer. And you say, you know what, nobody will work harder than me to to help you. And so it's a whole different sales process than spamming people. And you know what? Cold calling. I've done cold calling. And if it didn't ever work, it wouldn't happen. But of course, now it's become so automated that it's dialing you up, dialing this fat, and occasionally you'll hit something.
Speaker 2 00:18:10  But there's still a lot of stats out there that say cold calling carries a lot more rate weights.
Speaker 2 00:18:17  Email reply rates are down 2 to 3%, if you're lucky, 1 to 2%. So it is finding a method. Now, what is happening in the branding space is that those who have doubled down on building a personal brand and keep feeding into it become recognizable. It's something marketing 101. Someone has to see you 10 to 12 times or see something before they take action. It's the same thing with your own personal brand. I doubled down on that on LinkedIn whenever I'm on video, except for one time, which is recent. It caught.
Speaker 1 00:18:51  Me off. Don't look at that one.
Speaker 2 00:18:52  I know I wasn't wearing red, but I wear red. It is. My color is my branding color. But every video. An example I was doing a training with JC resorts to in June and someone said to me, do you always you wear red, right? And I went to a trade show and someone said, oh yeah, you're the girl that always wears red. Someone recognized me from LinkedIn at a trade show across the room.
Speaker 2 00:19:18  3000 people. They're saying you're Celeste from LinkedIn. So all of those little deposits that we're able to make. And this I want to say, is where women really struggle. I read something a couple of years ago. I actually made a video about it that like. 40% of women surveyed would rather scrub the toilet and talk about themselves. And women have a really hard time with talking about our personal accomplishments, the things because we don't want to be viewed as bragging or boasting or calling attention to ourselves. Nobody is going to call attention to yourself unless you're willing to call attention to your own self, branding yourself that nobody.
Speaker 1 00:19:54  Else is going to sell you for.
Speaker 2 00:19:55  Yourself. Branding is. So much of it goes into just what do you want to be known for? What are you putting out there on repeat over and over again? So for me it is the color red. That's what I wear. Most days I'm in red. If I'm presenting or on stage it's red. And if I'm on video, it's red.
Speaker 1 00:20:15  You know the title of our UN copyable? You know the subtitle. I should say it's long, but create a personal brand that gets people to know you, like you, trust you, and remember you. So we added the remember you because if you're not remembered, if you're forgettable, or who was it that said that if they don't have the oh, the woman that wore red? And of course our color is orange and we everything we do is orange. And one of my girlfriends said, you don't really look that great in orange. And I'm like, Julie, no, but we use that also as an anchor and a trigger so that if people see something red or something branded red, they think of you. And so the color isn't your brand, but it stands for your brand. And it's I just was consulting with someone. We talked to so many people and say, you can do this with color, and I'm impressed that you've done that because most people won't. Most women ideal a lot with women now.
Speaker 1 00:21:14  And this gal I was talking to, she I said, was there something that you like to wear? And she said, I like sparkly things. And one time I went to a meeting and I had something sparkly on and people were commenting. I said, if you have the guts to wear something sparkly all the time. Consistently, you will be the one who wears the sparkly stuff. Yeah, and that's something they'll say about you that they can't say about anyone else.
Speaker 2 00:21:38  Yeah. And I will say I will. Credit to there's two camps on LinkedIn if you're Camp Luke Matthews or if your camp not Matthews. He pushes the envelope. He's been banned like 8 or 9 times from LinkedIn. But the one thing I did learn from him is I met him in person here in Denver at a speaking engagement by over a year ago, and he whispered in my ear, like, something I can do is you have to be memorable for your hair a certain way, have a prop or wear color. And a light bulb went off for me a year ago.
Speaker 2 00:22:11  I'm gonna wear red and I'm going to wear red every single time. And even if I film a video, like, I'll go put a red shirt on. And so that goes to him giving me that little. And he has over 100,000 followers on there. Definitely pushes the envelope. But I took that away as something I'm going to commit to to be memorable. So that that would be my advice paper to anybody. Just like you said, pick something that is you that people remember.
Speaker 1 00:22:40  And I'm so impressed. Literally, we've told that my husband and I consulting training everything. We've said that so many times and I don't can't remember anyone else besides you that really has done that and said, I wear this color every time, or I wear sparkles or stripes or whatever. There is a speaker that we know. Her name is Patricia Barrett. She's a great student, a great she's a great speaker, and she always wears.
Speaker 2 00:23:05  Hats.
Speaker 1 00:23:06  And big hats that she's older, probably more of the hat generation.
Speaker 1 00:23:11  I wouldn't wear hats like that. But I'll tell you what, everyone remembers her. She's the one that was out.
Speaker 2 00:23:16  What about the ladies that are in that organization? That the Red hat ladies, right? Yes. Wear the purple. And on the red hat like that is memorable. You associate them with the organization that does work out in the community. It's those types of small associations that people often overlook. And you don't have to be this really great marketer because you can learn. I'm learning. I know how to market and put myself out there in new video and new tools, but you just have to start and like you said, anchor yourself to something that people remember you by because nobody remembers names, but they will remember if you wear something, if you do something like your signature, something.
Speaker 1 00:23:57  Exactly so good on you because you are definitely staying consistent with that. So let's talk about something that we touched on earlier before the call about working for and with men in the corporate environment. You mentioned that women think about themselves in a certain way.
Speaker 1 00:24:15  I will include myself. We think of ourselves in a certain way. We feel like selling yourself is being pushy or it's wrong. I heard something about that. I think it was from Laurie Richardson. I think Laurie is a mutual contact. Yep. That if someone is applying for a job, if a woman is applying for a job, she won't apply if she doesn't check every single box, whereas a man like I'll figure that out. So not that you're manly. You said, I'll figure this out. Why don't you talk about what you've observed?
Speaker 2 00:24:46  Definitely. It was difficult for me in the corporate landscape looking. I worked for a female who was I directly reported to a female, but she was the only female on 19 19 inch males who were VP's are in the C-suite. And that's really difficult when we're underrepresented in the C-suite on boards. So I felt that I would often go into meetings, and especially when I was pumping, where I'm one of the only female, and there's 8 or 9 men sitting there, and it's very uncomfortable to not feel like you're in an environment where people understand what's happening.
Speaker 2 00:25:22  You're just back from maternity leave to be able to speak up and that you feel like you're going to be heard or not shushed. So I felt that for. At least ten ish years. Always working for men. But I'm not trying to lump every male mentor that I've had. But I will say women were always underrepresented at the leadership level and definitely in the C-suite. And what's interesting is I've been on a hunt to find female crows who have sales teams of over 25 people, because we were starting a new feature where we're actually just spotlighting crows. Except I have to have the women.
Speaker 1 00:26:10  Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:26:11  And I found two. It is very difficult. And I think as women continue, we have to support them. We have to be a cheerleader and a champion and not bring other women down and take them down in a public setting like that just continues to devalue all the work that's being done. But personally, it was rough and I didn't want to go back to another corporate environment that was I'm going to use this phrase.
Speaker 2 00:26:40  I think Jen Allen says it pale, stale and male.
Speaker 1 00:26:44  Yeah, I like that because we talk about we have so many. There's old white men running our world. Yeah. And and you touched on something that is really important to me also and you and that is supporting women. When I started out in my outside sales career many years ago, the women, I was shocked. The women were the ones who were really catty and pulling me down. And the men, to this day, I've got a lot of guys that support me, and I think it's changing as far as women supporting women. And the more that each of us does that. Mentoring. I'm at the later in my career, and I really enjoy working with women younger than their careers earlier, and it's going to get all of us. It's going to. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 00:27:31  I will say a plug for a slack channel that has over 5000 women in it is called Women in Sales. It's a free slack channel. So it is a great open community where people can come for knowledge, share.
Speaker 2 00:27:44  And there's like chapters all over the US. But I think those types of micro communities that are out there supporting women, anytime I see a job that's posted on LinkedIn, that's in and around the sales, tag women and sales because we have to band together in order to change that status quo, which has always been male in the leadership. But it doesn't need to be. So I think all of us coming together and not tearing each other down publicly is even if we disagree, disagree offline versus putting it out there. And unfortunately, some social media channels are just rampant with women attacking other women, especially for like weight and how we look. And if we're different.
Speaker 1 00:28:26  Yeah. What the heck? Fighting the.
Speaker 2 00:28:28  Good fight.
Speaker 1 00:28:30  I know social media, I can't remember. There was some somebody famous who was talking about really dealing with body image issues, and she looks perfect. So that's something again, women we have to get over. being too critical of ourselves. Right. It's. Sometimes we're our own worst enemy, obviously, and we're running out of time, unfortunately.
Speaker 1 00:28:53  Because I know that you talked about overcoming self-doubt is one of the things that you're really passionate about. You work with clients on. So do you have a couple things before we go to close out with it? Yes.
Speaker 2 00:29:06  I will say don't judge a book by its cover, people. When I start opening up about my own challenges with body image issues and my whole life have been fighting against who is this person you're looking at in the mirror And why do you speak so negatively to her and attaching my self-worth to the money I've made or how I've looked? It's been a constant struggle. And then not paying that forward to my daughter. And then there are so many times in my life where I had the doubt, like you were talking about, I didn't apply for a job. I didn't reach out and build my network because they didn't feel worthy enough. The stories I made up in my head and I've overcome that self-talk for the most part, in overcoming the depression and anxiety that is catapulted me forward this past year.
Speaker 2 00:29:52  And I would say the advice to others is you have to start saying these things out loud about yourself. I will constantly tell Kenan, who I'm in this licensing agreement with. I actually just called me right now. We talk all the time and other women like, I am so awesome. This is what I did and I celebrate me and I never used to do that before. So any of you that are overcoming the doubts, even if it's the small win of I took a shower and I reached out to one person I got to know. Those things all help overcome a negative record, and I'm sitting here on the crest of being 45 years old, and it has taken me 30 years of having to work on that, to finally be at this place where every day I'm on my own bully, you know what?
Speaker 1 00:30:41  And we're laughing about this. This is such a common theme and including very successful and powerful women. Yes. And I don't hear that as much from very successful and powerful men. I know it actually changes your brain to your neural pathways, all those things.
Speaker 1 00:30:58  And you're hearing those positive messages from yourself. How would you treat if you weren't you? How would you treat you? You would be respectful and build that person up. And and yet there's that negative negativity we have to fight. But like you said, fighting the good fight. We can't stop because we're all vulnerable. We're all facing a lot of challenges, especially through Covid. Just being a person, being a mother.
Speaker 2 00:31:24  I want to tie back to the title of your book is we're all trying so Hard to fit in, but yet everybody's trying so hard to be so different. But just try work towards not being copyable right? The UN copyable you like you you are. You celebrate that and all of its weirdness and whatever it brings. Unfortunately, social media and some of these social platforms just strip that away from everybody. And it is sad to see that everybody's trying so hard to fit in, yet also be so different, instead of just being accepting of and this is me in the skin I was born in.
Speaker 1 00:32:02  You have a podcast of your own, so give yourself a shout out about your LinkedIn, your podcast, how people should contact you, and then we'll close that out.
Speaker 2 00:32:13  Absolutely. So I am on LinkedIn. Celeste Burke nicely, always open to chatting with individuals. I share a lot of value and video because that is the future and where we're going. So get on video, ladies. Also, I have the Sales Edge podcast. You can find it on Spotify as well as Apple and a budding YouTube channel. Actually just starting Celeste Burke Sales. So hit me up on LinkedIn. I'm always open to chat with other women and help to build you up when you need that, or share something about you. And I'm a huge connector. I believe in connecting other people together and I'm great at you. Tell me something, I will. I have someone in my network I can connect you with, whether that's for business, personal, or to help build your community.
Speaker 1 00:33:04  So I will put all those links in the show notes if you didn't catch them.
Speaker 1 00:33:09  I love your point about video because video is the thing and it's hard to do. It's scary. But if you want to stand out from the crowd, video is a huge advantage. And for salespeople, for everyone eyeball to eyeball, it's just good for you. So Celeste, thank you so much for being Thank You podcast. It's been great. So thank you so much.
Speaker 2 00:33:30  Likewise.
Speaker 1 00:33:33  Thanks for listening to this episode. And by the way, I invite you to join my Facebook group, Unstoppable Women in Business the next time. And always remember to be UN copyable.