John Smallmtn

Welcome to another episode of The Adapt to Grow Show, where we talk to people in performance roles to see how they have gotten to high levels of performance, what has worked for them, and what has not—because we all have to adapt to grow in certain roles. Today we have Amelia Taylor. Amelia is the founder of The Revenue Table, and she works with people who are trying to do revenue and relationships, and is also looking to support other teams that have that as a focus: community, revenue, and relationships. I’m so glad you’re here, Amelia. We were talking before I hit record, and I think we’re going to get into some really cool stuff. But please, is there anything else you want to add to that as far as clarity on who you work with, or even who is not a great fit? Because this is one of the things that you have to uncover on this path as well.

Amelia Taylor

Oh my gosh. Well, one, I’m super excited to be here. I remember when you and I met at SaaStr two years ago, and it was like, we should be friends right off the bat. It was like, we’ve got things to say, we’ve got stories to tell. To find ourselves back two and a half years later now, talking about things that—then I didn’t know were such learning years for me. Looking back now, saying, “Whoa, I did not realize that.”

John Smallmtn

Yeah.

Amelia Taylor

Those were just straight-up learning years of what not to do. Knowing what not to do, what doesn’t work, and knowing who you are not goes hand in hand with knowing what works, what doesn’t work, and who you are. Knowing those two things—you have to know, and that’s the awareness part.

Looking back and realizing I didn’t know then what I know now, this made me who I am today—venturing out, creating something on my own, working with companies within communities where profits come the most through specific communities, and saying, “How can I help serve you best based off of what you’re saying?”

It looks as though being able to talk to executives in a way—that was something I didn’t realize I was doing flawlessly that I learned about myself. I could do that because I didn’t know what I was doing. You know when it’s like you don’t know enough about what you’re doing sometimes? Sometimes you’re really great at it because you’re like, “Meh, I’m just going to lead with EQ.” It’s like, wow, we’ve gone full circle. That’s how things should be today with everyone. I’m such a firm believer in that, and I stick with that.

So knowing that my IQ—yeah, is it fine? Sure. I’m not going to say it’s not there. It’s there. But am I tech-savvy? Am I this SE? Am I this product expert? No. So do I know the right people to pull in for things? That’s the EQ line, right? It’s being able to know when to pull certain people in, and knowing through different companies I’ve been a part of that I’ve gotten to know certain people who I’m like, “You are an expert in this.”

If I’m working with specific companies, here’s kind of a powerhouse of people that I could recommend. Specifically for RevOps, right? Here are three people that I would say I trust totally to help you with this.

Knowing that you can’t help everyone is something I’ve learned over the years. If you don’t get granular with what it is that you’re doing and what you help solve, thinking, “I can do this, this, this, this, this,” you’re literally helping no one. That’s been said a million times over again. But when you look at things and think, “Okay, but I have to get things done. I don’t have a choice.” Certain people don’t have a choice but to do. They didn’t have daddy’s money. They didn’t get their trust fund. They had kids. There are things like that.

As a single mommy, I had two little girls, seven and nine. My seven-year-old is literally giving me hell and then some every single day. I love her more than anything, but the kid is such a little hustler. She’s been slinging snacks on the playground. Storytime real quick: 74 bucks was found shoved in the back of her desk the other day. School calls, and I’m like, “Okay, here we go.” I always worry like, what brand was broken? What happened? No, they’re just saying $74 was found. So I’m like, “Hey, Rowan, come here.”

John Smallmtn

Mm-hmm.

Amelia Taylor

I’m like, “Kiddo, what’s up with the 74 bucks?” She goes, “Don’t worry about it, Mama. I got it under control.” I said, “Hold on. You got what under control?” She goes, “Everything,” and walks away.

I wish I felt that way in life! I was like, “Hold on. Wait. Humble yourself first. Sit your butt down second. Third, where did it come from?”

She goes, “Well, you know, there’s some kids who…” and she’s going into this whole pitch to me. I’m like, “Get to the point. Tell me where it came from.”

“I was slinging snacks.”

It was amazing the way that she was trying to tell me how it was helping other kids who did not have snacks. I’m like, “No, you’re just getting their money.” So she’s trying to do this whole thing, and I’m like, “You don’t know enough to be telling me these things, but you are learning sales, one.”

John Smallmtn

Hahaha!

Amelia Taylor

Because your margins are great and you’re getting people to give you stuff. Also, it’s two to five bucks depending on if it’s gummies or a granola bar. So she’s telling me this whole method behind her madness. I tell the school, “Can’t be mad at the entrepreneurship spirit. Also, she doesn’t know what she doesn’t know, and in her mind, this is a really great thing. So I don’t want to discount this creativity. Also, I’d love the money back.”

That’s her pioneering and forging her own path in second grade, for example. But for me, this goes into having my first SDR gig. It’s me like, “Whoa, I’ve got two kids to feed and I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m going to just figure out how to lead with what I think makes the most sense—the EQ of things—and look at what other people are doing, maybe not do what they’re doing, and try something that works best for me.”

Not everyone thinks that way, though, right? Not everyone’s going to think the same way that you think when it comes to, “I’m going to go do my own thing, forge my own path, and pioneer this.” I do that naturally, and I’ve always challenged everything that has shown up. I’m like, “No, what about this?” Even if I shouldn’t, why? I don’t know, sometimes it’s just a power move of mine, I suppose.

It’s showing up in my kid now, too. But I know that there are people who are very much, “I follow the leaders that are telling me what to do. I am a rule follower; rules are not meant to be broken.” Whereas I’m like, break them all and see what happens. Who’s going to stop you? Let’s see.

Going to my first SDR gig, I’m looking at whether there’s a roof over my kids’ heads—that’s an action I’ve got to take, right? I’m choosing all day not to be under a bridge with two little girls, and they’re going to know what hard work looks like. Come hell or high water, I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m going to figure it out.

I didn’t know what the acronym SDR meant when I joined this first company. I didn’t know. I’m interviewing, and they keep saying SDR. No one said “Sales Development Representative” one time. So I had no idea.

John Smallmtn

Mm-hmm.

Amelia Taylor

I’m a hired SDR, and I don’t know what the hell I’m about to do. I’m looking at everyone and what they’re doing. I’m listening to certain things, thinking, “Why is someone asking for feedback when they’re not getting these meetings booked?” I’m like, “Huh, I’m going to start doing math.” I started working in a heartbeat, and I didn’t have anything to lose but to try.

When you look at it, what do you have to lose? A lot, when you’ve got more responsibility on your plate. Also a lot when you simply need to live, have a job, and have a good pedigree that shows that you are a capable, working human—like you can keep a job, you’re a capable human being able to do simple or hard things, and you’re competent. So it doesn’t matter, parent or not, you need to prove that you can do things whether you know what an SDR means or not.

John Smallmtn

Yes. Yeah. So there’s a lot in there that I want to crack into and hopefully we can dive into, right? Because you said some things in there that if you’re new to these roles, some of this stuff might be new to you. You mentioned EQ, and that’s different than IQ. When you were new and leaning into your natural personality—because you’re warm and obviously have higher EQ—did you know you were leaning into that, or was it just, “This is the thing that makes sense for me”? Did you have a label for it, or was it just try and figure it out?

Amelia Taylor

No, it was just trying to fall down and figure out what works and what doesn’t. I’m a big-time writer—I love to write. I’ve got notebooks full from eighth grade on, just writing about how life is, what things are going on in my world, and all that. So I would write the things that were working and not working, because I wanted to be the best at what I was doing.

I’m so competitive, too. If you’re in sales to some degree, you’ve got to have a competitive nature or a chip on your shoulder—one of the two.

John Smallmtn

Yeah, one of the two is the important thing to put there, because some people think it’s the same, and it’s not the same thing.

Amelia Taylor

And I had both! So I was like, “Okay, I’ve got too many chips on my shoulders, I’m not happy with the world right now, and I’m going to prove to all of y’all that I can do better than you because I am way more savvy.” I thought all these things, and I wrote, “I’m this, this, this.” Then I come to learn, no, I’m not—like, this person’s doing really great, so I’m going to try what they were doing.

This one guy would always say, “May I make a suggestion?” I tried it, and I couldn’t even come out with the word. “Suggestion” was not a word that flowed naturally. So I was like, “Yeah, we’re going to nix that.”

Things like that—when you try, you’re just learning what works and what doesn’t work. But if you don’t try, literally, you’re looking at the face of action and saying, “I’m going to choose an action,” and that’s an action in and of itself. Choosing inaction is an action. What is the action that you’re going to take? Do you want a better life? Do you want to be mediocre? That’s a choice. Do you want to be stagnant? Cool, that’s your choice. That’s a choice to make, because you’re choosing not to take action by being better.

I would ask for feedback, like I said, to some of these VPs of Sales that I was calling on behalf of T-Mobile Enterprise for business. Fast forward a bit: I ended up winning this massive TV at one point, where I had to crawl out of the window in my apartment because I could not get around it. The Amazon man put it right up and outwards outside of my door, and I could not get around it because I was in this tiny apartment when I first moved to Tampa with my two little girls. We had to crawl out the window so I could get this TV inside.

I went overboard from all of the regional directors for T-Mobile Enterprise because I did so well by not knowing everything that I needed to know, and then getting really close to AEs by saying, “I don’t know this. How do I address this?” Then I asked them, “Can I jump on calls with you to learn how to…?”

I was challenging myself to learn subconsciously because I knew there was a goal that had to be met, and a goal against myself that I wanted to exceed. There were, by circumstance and happenstance, kids to be fed, too, right? So I had to do certain things. I didn’t have a choice.

John Smallmtn

Can you think of anything in those early days…? Because I think it’s sometimes hard to put your hand up and ask these questions, right? Ask for help, ask for feedback. I’m curious: do you think that it was easier for you because of the culture that you were in, or is that just something like, “Amelia’s going to ask for help, ask questions, and try to figure it out”? Do you think it was you, or do you think it was the culture that you were working in in those early days?

Amelia Taylor

Pride and ego have never been a thing in my world. At that point in life, too, those were so far and detached from anything. It was like, I am everything but prideful and egotistical—everything but that. It was, “I’ve got to take action.” That’s where my mind was. It was more of a humble place in life of like, “I’m pretty low on the ground right now. I can’t go much lower. I’ve got to go up from here. What does up look like?”

Raising my hand wasn’t natural to me, even though I’m a people person—that’s who I am—but also I’m one that’s like, “I’ll figure it out on my own, too.” So it was a little bit strange how I innately just did that. Normally, throughout my life, I’m like, “I got it, I’ll figure it out on my own.”

But I think it was just this time in my life where it was, “I have got to learn from people who are doing things right, well, and best if I even want to do anything good at all.”

Moving forward, I put a cap on everyone’s commission. During my ramp, they called me in and said, “We’ve got to either keep the lights on, pay you, or put a cap on everyone’s commission.”

I was like, “Okay, let’s do all three.”

People were like, “Great, Amelia.” That was something I had to prove to myself: that I was worth something. Worth is a big thing. That becomes a big factor in this whole sales world, and I think in this life in general: “What is my worth? What am I worth to these people?”

When you fail or fall down, I am crazy hard on myself—way too hard on myself. I think that comes from childhood on. A lot of things come from childhood on, right? Everything’s a choice in life. When you think of life as such, everything is a choice, and betterment is a choice.

If I looked at things and said, “If I don’t try and do everything and then some past these people, then what did I prove to myself that I was doing really good?” I needed to prove to myself, “No, you’re worth something. You made it. You did something. You don’t know what SDR means, but you did it. You did the SDR thing.” That was something I needed to feel in order to feel like I accomplished what I didn’t know I could do.

Knowing, “Hey, let me push the boundaries a bit of what I don’t know. Let me go outside of my box of knowledge. Let me lead with EQ,” subconsciously doing so, and just communicating with people to see what happens from there—it was like Pandora’s box opened in a sense of, “Hey, here are some really great relationships that you can build from this.”

Then I learned from there, “Whoa, it’s people. It is all about people.” First SDR gig, it’s like: people first. That’s what matters—putting people in the forefront because you’re helping them. I didn’t realize I was doing all that. But when I started really focusing on that, people noticed it and said, “Thank you for asking that question.”

I’m writing that question down really quickly, thinking, “What did I even write? I don’t know if that’s what I asked! You’re so welcome. I just want to help.”

You just learn by doing it. It’s hard to do when you don’t know what to do. What do you do when you don’t know?

John Smallmtn

The reason why this show exists is because none of these roles are as deterministic as people want to make them out to be—especially if they have not done it, but they’re hiring you to do it. It’s never A plus B equals 100% of C, right? It’s like a percentage of A plus a percentage of B equals a very small percentage of C. Now go do it a lot until you can figure out how to improve those percentages. But there’s no one there telling you really what to do or how to do it, because most training is like checking a box.

I remember—I’m not naturally a strategic person in terms of room for empathy, slowing down, and paying attention to small details, right? I’m always like, “Let’s get it done and let’s find some improvement.” Very early on, I was doing websites, and I had one question that more or less got everyone moving in my direction. So I’m doing the other stuff—the things my coaches and mentors are telling me to do—and I know that I’ve got this question in my back pocket that works the majority of the time: “How hard is it for you to add content to your website?”

“Oh, it’s so hard.”

“Oh, okay, cool.” Right? Then I’ve got them after that.

So I asked this question, and the person was like, “You know, it’s not great, but it’s really just not our focus.” The way that they answered that question just blew me out of my body for a moment because I was like, “Oh my God, I’m only really excited about these conversations when they need my help. And if they don’t need my help, I kind of just opt out almost, you know?”

I was like, “Whoa, I don’t want to spend the rest of my professional career only getting excited whenever someone is in a bad, rough spot and needing help—because that means everyone who is fine, I can’t generate any kind of positive feeling for.”

So then I go back to my coach the next week in a group class, and I was like, “Guys, what if we care?”

The entire class snaps their heads back to look at me! I’m like, “No, but seriously, what if it’s okay if they don’t need our help?”

Everyone’s like, “You don’t like money anymore?”

My coach up in the front of the room is giving me the eye that I get in lots of situations—the “don’t talk about that here, talk later” kind of look.

Class ends, and I’m so confused, scratching my head. This feels good. This doesn’t feel like turning ourselves dense and stupid to try to force deals. This feels better.

He goes, “They’re not ready to hear that stuff, man. You weren’t even ready to hear this stuff for the entire two years that I’ve been coaching you up until this point. But welcome to the party.”

And I was like…

Amelia Taylor

Well, your initiation—you’re in now. You understand that caring and helping means sales. You’re in!

It’s wild how few sellers understand that. If you see someone looking for help and you don’t have the solution, tag two or three experts in and say, “I totally trust these people. Here are a few people I would recommend.”

Recommendations—those are referrals that come your way. That is revenue in some way, shape, or form that’ll probably be passed in relationships that are evolving right there, because people go to you and say, “Thanks so much for thinking of me.”

It’s like, cool. There’s something to be said for that, because the people who are in that top 20%—the experts in this—have really good relationships. They’re like, “I know a guy. I know a girl.” You know the people who you want to know, and you’re like, “I want to be in on that.”

Cool. Become an expert at what you do. I don’t care if it’s being an SDR learning how to drive inbound or outbound. You’re doing so by creating demand because you’re going where your buyers live, having conversations as a human, being a peer, and creating this bridge to get them over to your AE—instead of it being this, “Hey, do you have 27 seconds?”

Y’all, stop it. I am so done with that. I cannot stand that with all my heart and soul. I don’t care what anyone says. People can hate me all they want for saying that, but things change. The buyer’s journey is not a buyer’s journey—it’s an experience now. Everything is such an experience that you’re having. If it’s a shitty experience, they’re not going to buy from you. They’re going to someone else, saying, “Who else do you got?”

Because if they didn’t like this, guess what? You’re going to lose. You’re going to have customer churn because that person’s not going to stick with you, and their friend didn’t like you either. So it’s relationships.

I didn’t know that until my epiphany after a little bit of time, being like, “Oh, it’s people that matter.” I can also help them in ways that I don’t really help in this realm.

Wait, let me back up, though: Don’t BS if you can’t help in a realm and say that you can. Please, for the love of all things holy, do not go and say you can help when you are shooting from the hip through and through. I have done this. I have said, “Yes, I can do this,” and I could not do it.

If anyone knows Nate Nasralla, he is a brilliant human being. He was one of the first people I pitched RevOps services to. I’m going on and on, rambling completely, because he’s got this smile like, “This sweet child… this girl.”

He goes, “Is it my turn?”

I said, “Mm-hmm.”

So he started to pitch me. He goes, “So, do you want to try again?”

I was like, “Uh-huh.”

We ended up closing this deal, whatever. I was like, “This is amazing.” But we became buddies just from that alone. And I’m not saying this works on anyone—this is very much read the room, read the individual and their need. But this was a cold, “Let’s see if this makes sense. I think I can help.”

I could not really help with what I said. My rambling showed I didn’t know what I was talking about—I was just new into this RevOps world. So I called Roslyn Santelana, who had just joined the company I was with, and I was like, “She is one of the experts I know.” Great. Let’s get Roslyn and Nate talking. Cool.

That built something massive because I knew when to bring in the right person. Lean on other people, but knowing who to lean on is so vital. If you’re getting vague feedback from people, or people are acting like you are a nuisance or a problem in the workspace, you are in the wrong place. It’s true.

John Smallmtn

A thousand percent. Like, that’s my biggest pet peeve, right? Because I’m a very curious person. In the military, I would ask my questions, and it would get me in trouble—I’d have to do lots of pushups and everything. But then, coming back home, it’s like, “Okay, great. I’m back in the civilian sector. I can ask my questions. I’m going to be able to get help.”

The most frustrating thing was realizing that most people don’t have anything to teach in sales, right? So instead, they’re either just like, “Just go do a lot,” which is not enough for someone like me. I need more connective tissue. Go ahead.

Amelia Taylor

And people—I mean, you join in a role, say it’s one where you’re trying to move up the ladder, right? Frontline management needs to change and shift altogether. Frontline, second line—frontline management, I can go on and on and on for days about this one, because do not promote your reps based off of forecasted numbers. Salespeople—maybe one of them throughout the years—we can lie with the best of them on what it is because we didn’t work for two days and said we did, and it’s fine. So we’re like, “Oh, I think this one will go through,” and it’s like, “I haven’t touched them in three months. I have no idea, but I need this to look good.”

Okay, if anyone’s shaking their head listening to this, thinking, “No, I would never”—bullshit. Yes, you have. We all have at some point.

John Smallmtn

Well, let’s be honest about it, right? Some cultures actually want hope in the pipeline, right? Because those managers who don’t really have a connection to the work aren’t actually doing anything themselves. Their entire livelihood is based on the ability to print reports and talk with some intelligence about the role. But I know people on sales teams who won’t mark a deal as dead, even though it’s dead.

Amelia Taylor

Oh, it’s been dead. Yeah.

John Smallmtn

It’s been dead. Yeah, the whole thing is there on hope, right? It’s never been qualified. It’s never been a good deal. It’s just there.

Amelia Taylor

Right. They talked to the decision maker, but they just own that contact, right?

John Smallmtn

Oh yeah, they do. It’s so much more about owning the contact and having something to point to. Because I’m a very no-nonsense salesperson, I’m like, “Hey, if you don’t have a follow-up point, that thing’s probably dead. Get it out of your pipeline so that way you’re focused on actual opportunities with momentum.” Hope is not going to save you.

Amelia Taylor

It can’t be your strategy. You lean on hope as a strategy, and you lean on what is not in reach—and you know it. If you as a salesperson know deep down that this is not going anywhere, you’re probably going to get fired that next quarter or that next month, because everything does in some way. If you’re just getting by, one, you’re doing yourself a disservice.

Why would you sit there and do that to yourself? Because you’re choosing to be mediocre. You’re choosing not to grow. You’re choosing not to be honest, and you’re choosing to stay at a company that allows you to do that. Don’t choose any of those if you want to be in that top 20% expert level at what you do.

I was at a company before where you become a team leader based off of pipeline, forecasted revenue, and booked meetings. However many booked meetings could be pet salons, could be hair salons, could be God knows what—nothing to do with ICP. A farmer in Idaho, I don’t know. So I was like, “All right, I’m not going to be an AE at this company, and I’m going to do the bare minimum things I’m told I’m supposed to do, but I’m going to manage my time.”

Time management’s not my strong suit, but what’s the first step? Awareness. I’m aware of the fact that it’s not. I’m not great with color-coding my calendar—it’s really pretty, but that means nothing. I realized my awareness of time management, so my day is going to consist of focusing on community growth. I’m going to go into these specific communities where I know buyers are living and talking, and I’m going to join these conversations.

That’s the thing that I will preach to this day on how to do that best, because it’s where the most revenue’s been driven in my whole career: through Slack communities. That’s unorthodox and that’s not normal, but I learned how to do things that people were not doing by being a peer to the buyer opposed to a seller. The bridge of trust is all it is.

How I failed miserably in doing that—oh, yeah. There’s also the fall. If you don’t fall down… I think about the bike scenario. When you’re riding a bike, if you don’t fall and get back up, then how do you know how to ride better? How do you know, “Oh, I actually have to pedal like this. Okay, cool. I’ve got to put my kickstand up.”

It’s the little things, too, and the big things: “Oh, this is not the street I want to go down on this bike that I’m riding.” You’ve got to learn how to navigate where you’re going when you learn how to ride, too. Once you know how to ride, that’s the foundation, right? Then it’s, “Okay, here are the rules of the road. Also, don’t go in front of cars. That’s how you get hurt, so don’t do that.”

If you can go and look at where there’s a much prettier road that you want to go to—there’s water right here, or whatever, you want to go ride your bike by the water, and this side is like, “We don’t want to go there”—if you can navigate how to get to the other side seamlessly, ride there, and it’s profitable and way prettier on that side, do so.

If it challenges what leadership says and they want you to stick to where it’s not pretty—let’s say your territory sucks, let’s say that the leadership sucks, all the above—but you know there’s fruition and a whole lot better version of you on the other side, I would challenge any salesperson to do the basics that you need to do, the things that they look at day in and day out so you’re not getting in trouble. Go and do the extra little things that you can do by managing your time. Manage your time by saying, “Here’s my blocker of time where I’m going to go ask the people that I’ve either sold to before or people who fit our ICP within communities: ‘Hey, does this resonate? I’m just trying to learn.'”

Go to thought leaders that are speaking to your ICP. Go look at who the advisors are within your company and look at the top 10, and think, “Okay, do they speak to my ICP? Who was it?”

Leslie Venetz is a great example of someone who I’ve become super close with. When I was at Regie.ai, she was on our advisory board. I kind of activated the advisory board, so I picked the top 10 who talk to our ICP. She’s great on TikTok. I don’t even know how to do anything there by any stretch of the imagination—it’s a failed attempt every time—but she’s done it. She’s got a ton of followers. I’m like, “Great, she speaks to the ICP.” Also, she can speak about the company, so she can be an external evangelist spreading the word while she’s got equity in the company. Build trust with the people who have a voice.

It’s hard to navigate how to cross the street into this prettier view and know there’s fruition when people are saying no, no, no. There are blockers from leadership in the way, and there are people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing who are telling you no. That’s the part that really gets me.

John Smallmtn

Oh my gosh, yeah. There’s so much in there to talk about. The first thing I would like to dive into is: what have you been told, trained, coached, or taught that didn’t work for you specifically? Has there been any bad mindset or bad advice that you tried, couldn’t get behind, or didn’t work for you? Do you have any advice like that—stuff that sounds good, but doesn’t actually lead you to where you want to go?

Amelia Taylor

This might ruffle a few feathers, but: “More dials, more dials, more dials.” Right? And the whole, “We need revenue yesterday. We can’t play the long game right now.” Because you’ve got VCs pushing on you, you have people who are saying, “Where’s our money?”

That’s not a seller’s fault if you’re not coaching and teaching them how to actually do their job, or enabling them. That’s tech enablement and people enablement. Why aren’t those two different roles within a company? How do you enable people to know how to actually sell well? That should just be a sales leader’s job. But unfortunately, a lot of sales leaders are just promoted because they’re a bro and it’s for culture, or they were one of the first few people there, or they got promoted based on vanity metrics that don’t matter at all. It’s all in vain, and it doesn’t show when you look at the end numbers. You look at things and you’re like, “What is going on?”

I generated revenue by not doing things in an orthodox way, because orthodox isn’t what works today. The unorthodox things, in my mind, should just become the norm today: just being human.

John Smallmtn

Well, I think you kind of hit the nail on the head, and I want to go back to this to make sure that anyone listening to this is paying attention. Before you go off and try to blaze your own path finding your own way to revenue or finding some new way, you have got to be able to hit the metrics on the KPIs and the goals that you’re being told, right? If you’re not getting any guidance there, that’s a whole other problem. But if anything, most people have a path of touches. As long as you can put your head down, keep working, and fold into that routine of being able to do that work and show that work, then you can be taken seriously when you show up and say, “Hey, I have kind of a crazy idea.”

If you’re the person who’s not hitting dials and touches, and you show up with, “Hey, I want to try a crazy idea,” you’re just broadcasting to everyone that you’re the problem, right?

Amelia Taylor

You’re almost acting as though, “I’m holier than thou. I’ve got better ideas than what you’re saying.” It’s a bad look. Don’t do that.

You’ve got to fit into the box if you want to get outside of it. If you want to gray out the lines in this bold box that you’re in based off your role, you’ve got to stay in the box in order to branch out a little. If you want fluidity, you need to stay in that box until one of those walls can break down a bit, and then you can verge this way.

Until you can prove with documentation, “This is the method to the madness and the methodology behind why I’m saying this crazy idea makes sense,” what are you doing? You’re just proving you could go into a psych ward! You might be crazy, we don’t know. So don’t show up crazy. Come with something that challenges the status quo of what they say to do. But if you don’t have things you can show you’re doing today that fit in that box, and that you’re outside of that box doing things that move things forward and are revenue-generating…

Revenue is revenue. So if it’s generating, and if they say no, then they don’t like money, right? But here’s the thing: without experience, how do you gain experience? That’s the catch.

John Smallmtn

Exactly, right? Being willing to fail at a sample size that means that you’ve actually done the work is it. I am one of these people who wants to sit, think, and figure it out before I take any action. When I was younger as a salesperson and not aware of myself, I would see these people taking massive action that didn’t make any sense to me, because it wasn’t really leading consistently towards the outcomes that we were all going after. So it just felt like busywork, you know? Sometimes you’ve got to do some busywork so you can figure out how to do smart work and not just have to do the busywork. You said something else earlier—go ahead.

Amelia Taylor

Totally. You learn. You’ve just got to do you. Even if it’s a small task, just try. If you don’t have that within your company, there are people out there who do. Kevin Dorsey told me one time when he was teaching a course with people in the building—he said to me, “Amelia, guess how many people reached out to me after I taught this course?”

I said, “I don’t know, 100?”

He goes, “Five.”

I said, “No way.”

He goes, “Five people reached out to me when they could actively see that I was still online. No one asked for further information, guidance, or questions. I shared curiosity to learn more, and I left a few things open-ended for that to happen. It didn’t.” He goes, “It was bizarre how few people were genuinely curious to really learn how to color outside the lines while staying in the box that you’re supposed to be in.” Which I think is a good term, but still, it is what it is.

John Smallmtn

Zooming in on something you said a second ago: you were talking about how you have to do unique things that stand out and get viewed as a human, and not just get the regular sales response. Then you said that you wish more people were looking for these kind of outliers. Do you think community is still an outlier for most companies? Do you see more people leaning into it now, or is it still this kind of, “Why would we build a community?” attitude?

How is that shifting for you in your conversations? Because I know you put a lot of focus on community building, hanging out, and learning from people in communities. Do you think that’s going to continue to swell and go in the direction that we’re seeing it currently?

Amelia Taylor

I hope so. I think it should, because community is human-focused—good community, at least. I’ve joined and left communities probably more than I’ve stayed a part of them, because you learn what’s give-give-give versus what’s take-take-take. You learn that there are certain ones where it’s like, “I’m going to take anything I can get from these people.”

Then there are communities where you join and you’re like, “Wow, this is actually serving me, and I’m able to help people within it, too.” I’m valued, and it goes back to value and worth. It’s like, “I’m worth something within here.” Maybe that’s a personal thing for me, to feel as though what I’m doing is making an impact and that my worth is not seen as something that can fall by the wayside, and my value is not something that you push away.

Again, that’s the funnel focus of: how do I help people best? Everyone shows up saying, “I do this, this, this, this, this,” which I have fallen down a million times doing, where people are like, “I don’t understand what you do.” Even to this day, I’m going to have to call someone recently who said, “I’m looking at your LinkedIn now, and I don’t understand who you are.” I’m like, “Thank you for saying that, because I need that kind of feedback.”

If you don’t take things so damn personally and realize this is your job and your means to an end… All advice can be heard; it doesn’t have to be taken. So when you hear certain things from people whose opinion you value, take that to heart and do what you feel is right.

Certain things I took off my LinkedIn just because of that feedback. Right now, I am searching for my next landing spot as I build, but finding great leadership with a great company is real hard to come by—especially roles where it’s not boxed in to the point where community is not a focus.

Also, activating an advisory board, like I said, or co-selling through your partners is going to be something huge that people are not focusing on enough. Partner alliances—that’s where the big cash money comes in. I want to learn a lot of those things. That goes into: how do you get experience without having it? How do you take a chance on yourself? Either they like you, you get lucky, or it’s a no—so you start from here, fit in the box, get in through the back door, the side door, wherever the FedEx dude drops the box off at.

Get in through that, then gray out the lines, right? That’s kind of where I’m looking at things now. Maybe I go in through the back door or side door through this box. You’ve heard what you can do, but you’ve got to do it in the box first to show that you’re valued enough.

Whether you like him or not, Elon Musk does not color inside any kind of lines. He creates his own crayon colors! He doesn’t follow rules, nor does he care. He’s going to do what he wants when he wants because he has all the money in the world to do so. But take that away—I still believe he would not be someone who follows rules. Not everyone in this world feels that way, but what if people thought a little bit more in the sense of, “What if this could be something I can go and do outside the lines? What if I just do it a tiny bit and see what happens?”

Great, you get a slap on the wrist. So what? At the end of the day, it’s HR giving you a slap on the wrist. You’re not fired; you still have your day job. Just don’t go to an extreme without having knowledge of what you’re doing.

Going back to your question about community: I think micro, rather than macro, should be the focus. There are these large communities out there, and there are different levels of where you’re at and different people that you can talk to. There are also communities that are like WhatsApp groups, where I’ve got it muted because it’s so noisy and drives me insane. But I know where certain people are that I can go talk to directly. That’s dark social, if you will—not the dark web, let’s not get it confused!

So, knowing where to go—that’s the EQ-led approach. Knowing how to color outside the lines by saying, “Let me do my day job, but I can also jump into a WhatsApp group and message someone because it shows that they’re online. Let me go into a community and see if they’re there.”

If I don’t know where I’m going, I’m just doing everything and calling “rogue” a strategy. Rogue is promised as the Promised Land, and it’s like, “Whoa, that’s not a Promised Land to be sitting at.” Hope and rogue cannot be where your destination lies. Those aren’t destinations.

So, what is the destination? That’s the big question now: what is the destination?

John Smallmtn

Agreed. Yeah, absolutely. Well, so I think that brings up a very interesting conversation, right? Because you need a long enough leash so that way you can have some room to figure it out on your own. But I think the hard part of that is people don’t goal set very well. So it’s just easier to say, “Okay, you’re going to come in, you’ve got to make this many touches, this many dials, you’ve got to follow this process,” and everything else like that.

I know people who don’t even really understand the goals that they’re being managed on or chased after for. They don’t even understand how those inputs, even as an SDR, lead the entire company and organization to where they need to go. I feel like to be given that room, you need a leader who’s going to be able to give you that kind of contextual information, like, “Okay, here’s where we need to go.” Otherwise, anything you try to do on your own is probably going to be viewed as, “Well, that’s not really the direction that we’re going in,” and they’ll move the goal line on you sometimes, shift things around, and everything. So then it feels like anything you’re doing is probably not going to lead you to where you need to be, which is kind of crazy.

Amelia Taylor

It is crazy, and it is wild to think about. If leaders aren’t looking at the behaviors of their reps—like, what are the actions that they’re doing as to why they are either hitting or missing? Looking at the behaviors, like, what is it? And then also doing an assessment: “How are you mentally? Are you okay?”

At the end of the day, people are not their title. It’s not an SDR manager’s job, per se, in this big organization to be like, “Let’s evaluate your health.” Nobody wants that. They’re like, “I already said we’re in sales, we all talk.” Really great leaders look at the behaviors of what their reps are doing. Then, if there’s a rep who’s exceeding and then some, if they can’t tell you what it is that’s repeatable, or a methodology that could be put into play with each of these other reps, that’s where you’ve got to dig a little bit deeper.

There is no one telling these leaders how to dig. How do you dig? You don’t dig with a fork; you dig with a shovel. You don’t know that, so you’re digging with a baby spoon. It’s like, no, no, no. How do you actually dig to the root to get there to understand? Are you cheating the system—because that’s happening left and right—or are you taking people’s opportunities? What are you doing? Is it because you just outsmarted people, or is it that you’re actually really good with the conversational side, you’re genuinely curious, and you ask really awesome questions?

Analyzing what it is that people do, and then having that rep teach other reps what it is that they’re doing, is huge. Companies aren’t doing that. Name one! I don’t know.

John Smallmtn

I know. It’s weird how… because I talk about building a culture of coachability on the sales team, right? If you’re bringing people on and getting them so wound up that they’re foaming at the mouth around the idea that they’ve got to be at the top of the leaderboard because “second place is the first loser,” why would you then expect everyone to get together and share what is working for them? You’ve built a culture where that’s putting them on a road to ruin. It just doesn’t get you to where you want to go.

To me, all those people who are like, “Just be a sales savage and don’t take no for an answer,” and they’re pushing that all the time—it drives me crazy because those are the same people who have these high churn rates. It’s a revolving door on their sales team with all their people, and they’re like, “Man, why don’t people stay?” It’s like, you’re not making an environment that people want to stay in! Why are they going to come in here and slog for you? This doesn’t make any sense.

Amelia Taylor

No. Why are they going to go? Exactly.

I’ll never forget a leader of a company I was with one time. A bunch of reps just joined because, guess what? The name of the game in this company was “growth equals more bodies.” So more bodies join, and it’s a company-wide meeting. The leader says, “Jump signs if you were not Googling the top 10 billionaires every morning when you wake up. It is time to see your way out.”

I was like, “Whoa, wait a second!” These kids just got out of school, and they’re literally deer in headlights! I’m confused. Am I in the right place? Is this the right room? I was floored because I thought, “This is not how you coach. This is not how you train.” Even from top management down, it was C-suite telling these brand-new reps that. They’re not even thinking of that. They’re like, “Cool, that guy’s got cool shoes. I want to get cool Nike kicks. Awesome, let me go make…” What are they thinking about? Not being a top billionaire, sure. There are outliers, or people saying, “I have my set goals.”

Why aren’t we asking: Do people know how to set goals well? That’s something I learned over time, too: I was not setting goals well at all because there were no goals. It was literally survival mode to get to where I needed to go. I think a lot of people are there, too, right now. I’d love to know a statistic of, “Are you happy in your job? Are you happy right now?”

John Smallmtn

The hard part about a question like that is: Are people going to be honest? You put that poll up on LinkedIn, and you’re going to have some flawed, biased data that you’re collecting.

Amelia Taylor

Oh, my God, yeah! They’re scared that I’ll take that data and be like, “Here are the people who are not happy.”

John Smallmtn

Oh, yeah, absolutely, for sure. When you’re in survival mode—trying to keep the lights on, in a panic, not sure if you’re on a path to success or not because it’s not as clean as anyone else ever wants to lay it out for you—you’re going to do whatever it takes to keep those lights on.

I know lots of people who are still going around with the idea that every top-tier salesperson would rather be commission-only. What that means is that any salesperson who wants a base isn’t a “real” salesperson. I talk to founders all day long who are like, “Well, John, real salespeople will show up and do this for absolutely free.” It’s like, no, that’s not how it works at all. No one is going to come in and work as hard as you are.

Amelia Taylor

What? Who’s saying that? Let’s call them out! Who’s saying that?

John Smallmtn

It’s more small business, but it happens even in some of these bigger teams, some of these bigger cultures that we see on LinkedIn that are getting a bunch of focus.

Amelia Taylor

It’s like their baby, but it is not the rep’s baby. Sellers did not build the company. It’s not their baby. They are not trying to keep the baby alive like the founder is. You pay them basically to keep your baby alive—they’re babysitters in a sense. That really discounts all people within a company 100%.

It is true. You’ve got to pay people. People aren’t working for free for fun. You don’t work for fun time.

Are you satisfied with the role responsibilities that you have? Do they fulfill you in some way? Does just a third of them fulfill you? Do you feel as though you’re helping? How are you best fulfilled? Or are you in a role where you’re literally like, “I hate my life, and this is everything”? There are more people than not who I guarantee are thinking that, and there are more people than not who are scared of losing their job.

When I was at Regie.ai, I joined Solace the Seller. A weekend in, it was a respectful, “No, I will not learn a 16-page script in order to go talk to a bunch of people on my LinkedIn who I had previously sold to, who were thought leaders, who were people that…” It was everything under the sun, so you had a script out in order to get a pitch. I respectfully said no because I challenged them.

I went to one of the founders—he sent me a message the other day like, “How are you? Cheering for you!” It’s just good people. I learned more from him in a little over a year about sales being under a marketing umbrella. I never had a process that was instilled in me ever. It was me trying to lead by EQ and then follow back up, which got me to where I needed to go.

But then it was: if you want to play in the big leagues, you can’t sit in the minors in the dugout because you only know so much, because you can’t speak that document, and you sound like an idiot when you try to talk to those who have been there, done that. They look at you like Nate looked at me, like, “My turn. Should I pitch you now?”

It was very clear. He was talking in threes. He’s like, “Give me three points. That’s it. Then shut up. You don’t need to say everything.”

I’m like, “But that’s what I do and who I am.”

He’s like, “Right.”

It was very much a “come to Jesus” moment of: How do we work together in the sense of how do I be me, while also learning to unlearn some of these bad habits that I created of over-talking? It’s a process, and it’s a shitty one, and it sucks, and I hate it, but I had to do it and I still am doing it. I do talk—clearly, I’m a talker. I’m a people person, and I’m like, “Yeah, let’s talk about all the things!” All the things don’t need to be talked about. It was funnel-focused.

There’s a book my girls read that Reese Witherspoon wrote called Busy Betty. She says in it, “Focus to finish. Rome wasn’t built in a day.” That quote has stuck with me: focus to finish. Literally, I have it posted on my desk right now: Focus to finish. If I don’t focus on what is on this one stair that I’m on right now, I’m not going to get to the top of the staircase I’m trying to reach.

Those are your goals, right? You can have long-term goals, but you can’t say, “I’m going to go from the bottom to the top” without having all these other goals in between, because you’re going to fall down. I say it because I’ve done it far too many times.

Goal setting is so huge. Talking to Matt Millen—that’s his name, I’ll just say he’s great people through and through—you know they care.

John Smallmtn

Nice. Should he come on the show? Do you think he would come on the show?

Amelia Taylor

Backable is a book that he told me, “You have got to read this. It’s the surprising truth behind what makes people take a chance on you.” That’s why, yes! I was like, “Huh.” It’s all about how no one makes it alone, how to actually get to where you want to go without knowing all the things, and the key to success and how to get there.

I ended up being let go from Regie.ai, right? But there are still people inside of the company who were cheering for me and want me to be as successful as possible, because they saw who I was as a human being, not just like, “Amelia is just another body filling up the space.” That was one of the biggest things for me: being there. Pitching to him as to why I was not going to be in sales was a whole other thing, but he ended up taking a chance on me. I learned more about myself than I ever have in any company.

John Smallmtn

Jumping ahead a little bit: I think one of the most interesting things is when someone goes out fully on their own. I had Tom Slocum on the show recently. He’s a friend of yours as well, and he’s out doing his own thing. We had an amazing conversation about how you can be good at sales, you can have a good network, you can have some community, and you can have some people around you, but you’re still not ready for all the suck and all the whole new things that you’re going to have to figure out under the sun of being a founder.

How does that show up for you? Do you have any tidbits, nuggets, or tips about how to shortcut some of that if you’re going to go out completely on your own?

Amelia Taylor

The thing that I learned real quickly is that people will look at a follower count and think that you’ve got all this experience under the sun because people follow you. I don’t know why people follow me half the time. I do some of the dumbest posts sometimes. Maybe that’s why, because it’s not the norm! But a follower count does not equal experience. That is so insane because I look at it and I’m like, “No.”

I’ve had a few companies that I’ve talked to where I tried to say, “No, I want to grow horizontally with the right people.” I want to grow this way, not up and to the right right now. I want to continue building this, but learning how to build it best by growing under a company with the right leaders who have been there, done that.

I took steps forward in order to take steps back to learn that I didn’t know everything I was doing. Now I’m taking a few steps back again by saying, “Hold up, maybe I’m not ready. Also, maybe this time in my life is not the time for me to do so due to external means.”

John Smallmtn

Understanding your season is super important, for sure. We have all these people on LinkedIn who are just sharing the highlight reel, and not a whole lot of people are showing the downside of it. It’s too easy to play the comparison game, and you’re not even getting a fair view of the comparison because most of these people aren’t sharing any of the downside. You’re going to have some rough days.

Tom and I were talking about how you’re going to have to maroon yourself almost to cultivate the focus you need to get to where you want to go. If you do that badly, you won’t find any success at all; and if you put yourself in too many of the wrong circles, you’re not going to make any progress either. You kind of have to be able to cultivate that focus and also put yourself in the right spots so that way you don’t take bad advice that slows you down, or take the “try hard” medicine that some of these people are out here handing out to everybody.

Have you found anything specific that you’ve picked up so far where you’re like, “Ooh, yeah, I tried that and it didn’t work,” or, “I did this thing that everyone told me not to do, and it was actually really successful”?

Amelia Taylor

I asked too many people for advice. That was rule number one: do not do that. Just because someone looks, talks, and quacks like a duck doesn’t mean… Just because someone can do a really great 30-second video on some subject does not make them an expert. Knowing who’s an expert and who’s not comes from having conversations, and there’s a discernment piece to that, too. You know who really wants to help you because they reach out to you out of nowhere, like, “Hey, my friend, how are you? How are you doing? What’s life like?”

Robbie Crabtree—he is an amazing storyteller through and through. He has an awesome podcast called Performative, or something like that. You would love it because it is very much people-focused. It’s how to storytell, how to put your story into action, and how you position that: “Here’s my story, I’m going to own it, and then what do I do with it?” You can write it, but is this something I can actually leverage by being me and the best me I can be? Is this the career I want to take? Everything leads back to the story. He’s written a few things, and I have learned a lot from him.

When I left Regie.ai, he was one of the first people I called. We were supposed to jump on this podcast that morning, and I was like, “I don’t really know what’s going on,” kind of halfway crying.

He was like, “Do you want advice, or do you want me to listen?”

I was like, “I don’t know.”

He was like, “Okay, you are off your rocker.”

I was like, “I don’t know, I’m tired. My kids are driving me nuts.”

He was like, “Okay, too much, too much, too much.”

He’s one of those people who I know, through and through, genuinely cares about my well-being. Also, if people ask you, “Do you want advice or do you want me to just listen?” those are people that you should probably keep in your corner when they give you sound, solid advice if they’ve been there, done that.

The same goes for sales leaders: if they’ve never sold a thing in their life, run for the hills. Those are not the leaders you want—people who just know how to preach and don’t know how to act. They cannot perform miracles. Do not go to someone thinking they’re a god. They’re not. They cannot do what you think they can do.

When you do an interview, ask them what they’ve done in their career. That is not a bad thing to ask. It shows that you care so much about your career to know that you’re going to work for the right people.

John Smallmtn

For sure. I love that line. You’ve got to be able to ask the questions, right? Because you don’t know what you’re getting into with these roles. Everyone is going to tell you that it’s going to be easy and you’re going to make a million dollars.

What does Amelia look for that indicates a role is worth pursuing, sweating for, and figuring out—versus red flags that indicate there is no probability of success, it’s not even worth trying, and the opportunity cost isn’t there?

Amelia Taylor

One: talk to people who have been there and left. Understand why. People are willing to talk, and not just talk trash about things. Just say, “Hey, I’m curious, do you have 10 minutes?” Gift them something. Literally send them $5 for Starbucks. Be kind to people who give you their time freely. I’m a big believer in that. Even a handwritten note—I don’t care, do something! Show that you’re genuinely thankful for that time, because otherwise it looks like you’re a taker and not a giver. Give where you can back, even if you feel like you’re just taking at the time.

Then, don’t just rely on reviews, because that could just be people who were in an organization, got fired, felt like they shouldn’t have been, and are trying to bury the company’s name in the grave. Can you rely on those sometimes? Not always.

Look at the leader’s pedigree: where they’ve been, how long they’ve been at specific organizations, and what their titles were. If you see that someone was a founding AE and now they’re CEO, and they’re 19 years old, there are questions to ask! Don’t join there, that’s what I’ve got to say.

Look at the leaders of the company, because ultimately they’re going to be the ones calling the shots. Look at the VP level or director level, because those are the ones being delegated to call shots, too. Who do you know that knows them? Go to those people. Say, “Hey, I don’t know this person personally, but if I get this role, I think I’m going to be working with them. Is this a good fit, knowing me and knowing them?” Just casually ask like a human; don’t be weird about it. “Would we play nicely together?”

You don’t want to go somewhere where you’re butting heads and defending what you’re doing more than being able to prove your value and show it with numbers. Defending your role sucks. I’ve been there, saying, “But I did this and this and this!” and they’re like, “Well, we don’t know what you’re doing because we can’t attribute it to this.” That’s the hard thing with these new roles that are showing up.

If you want to be in a bigger organization versus a smaller one, if they don’t believe or see the value you can provide when you’re doing things in these grayed-out areas… In enterprise, it’s cool: boom, boom, boom, boom—these are the things that you do, and you know that. But if you’re a community builder, a social seller, or whatever, it’s like: What do you do?

I saw this video recently where a guy called himself a strategist. He was like, “I’m a business strategist.”

Someone asked, “But what does that mean?”

He was like, “Oh, you know, I do the ideas.”

Someone said, “So you do the work?”

He’s like, “Oh, no, no, just the ideas!”

It was so funny because I thought, “Is this me?” I don’t want to be that girl who doesn’t do the hands-on-keyboard work. Like I said in the beginning, knowing who you aren’t is even more important than knowing who you are. But you’ve got to figure it out by doing. You’ve got to do to know.

Someone told me one time, “Draw a big V on a sheet of paper right now.”

I was like, “Why?”

They were like, “Just do it.” (Because I had to challenge them, of course: “No, tell me why! Give me three reasons!”) They said, “Write down at the top everything that you believe you are the best at.” Then they said, “On the next line, eliminate something, eliminate something, and mingle some things together that make sense.”

It was a visual, funneled focus of what I do. That’s how I came to the concept: I help companies drive revenue through relationships. I’m revenue-focused, but it’s also relationship-focused, and helping is what I feel most passionate about doing.

Passion doesn’t pay the bills, but revenue does. Sitting at the table with the people who pass revenue—partners or customers, whatever it may be—sit at that table. Knowing who to sit with is the big thing. It’s hard, it’s not easy.

John Smallmtn

Not at all. This podcast wouldn’t be needed if people were coming locked and loaded with this stuff.

Some rapid-fire questions before I let you go, because I’m trying to do some standardization here so we get some tips and nuggets out to people. What is a book—other than the ones you talked about a second ago, which I appreciate and am going to go look up—that has helped you significantly on your path from the founder’s perspective?

Amelia Taylor

From the founder’s perspective? Thinking about Annie Duke—Thinking in Bets. That was a great book. I don’t reread books a lot, but this one’s been a re-reader for sure. So, Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke, for sure.

John Smallmtn

Phenomenal book, yeah. I used to be a professional poker player. When that book hit the scene a long time ago, I dismissed it because I was making a bunch of assumptions about what the context of the book was about. Then someone challenged me on it. They were like, “John, you like to read.”

I’m like, “Yeah, I read a lot, I just think I already know what that book is about.”

They were like, “Doesn’t that seem a little bit weird?”

I was like, “Okay.” Then I went and listened to it on Audible. Then I dove into her next book, Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away. Phenomenal books!

Your decision-making process is not the same thing as being results-oriented, right? You can do everything right and not win the deal. You can do everything wrong and luck your way into a deal or a position. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you got it right; sometimes luck and variance play a bigger factor than people want to take into account. I love that.

Amelia Taylor

You just summarized it perfectly! Exactly, right there. That’s why you should read it, people.

John Smallmtn

Yeah, it’s a phenomenal book. I recommend it to everybody.

On the SDR side, is there a different book you would recommend if someone is trying to move into sales, or if they’re in that SDR seat and they’re struggling?

Amelia Taylor

I would recommend They Ask, You Answer—that one’s a really great one. And then also Human-Centered Communication.

John Smallmtn

Ooh, I’m writing that one down. Hold on a second. I love a good book recommendation: Human-Centered Communication. Appreciate that.

Amelia Taylor

Great book! There are a ton of people featured in it that we both know. You’ll like that one.

John Smallmtn

I love that, cool. Next question: What is something unique or individual that Amelia does to work on her craft, on her superpowers—on the greatness that makes Amelia, Amelia? What do you do that’s weird or unique?

Amelia Taylor

A lot of me is weird and out there! I will purposefully take an idea that I see someone else push out content-wise—I’m a big writer, like I said—and write it out. That’s how I put everything on paper. If everything’s stuck up in here, nobody wants to go up there because we don’t know what’s going on!

John Smallmtn

Same! I tell everyone I would not have a job as a coach or a trainer if everyone had a really great journaling habit. You wouldn’t need me at all! Until you define and create a journaling habit for yourself, you’re not even aware of how the words you use when you talk to yourself are trapping you into certain realities that you can’t seem to get your way out of. It’s a superpower in and of itself.

Amelia Taylor

Totally. I look back on things I wrote in ninth or tenth grade and I’m like, “Whoa, that’s profound,” or, “That’s ridiculous.” I can see these transitional times in life that were so pivotal that I didn’t realize were beautiful epiphanies I had—they were just words I wrote down. I still remember those words today; those were powerful to me.

Writing is how I master my craft. If I don’t write it all down and then eliminate what shouldn’t be there—like, “This isn’t me, and this is not who I want to become”—then I know I’m not mastering my craft. I’ve got to get out of my head and put pen to paper.

I will challenge people’s posts—without them knowing! I’ll see something, and maybe I agree, maybe I don’t. But I’ll think, “What if you thought about it this way?” Let me go share something that’s totally not what other people are talking about, or a random thought that I had—like lyrics from a song—and think, “How is this applicable to this?”

Thought-provoking things have got to happen. My brain is going all the time. If I’m not producing thought-provoking things, I’m seeking them. I want to be someone known for provoking thought and offering a different way of viewing how the industry and market are today.

John Smallmtn

I love that. Amelia, I want to thank you for coming on and keeping it so face-up, because that’s what the show is meant to be about. I’m going after people who I know can bring an authentic voice to the struggles of these roles. I really thank you for coming in and being very open and honest.

Where should people go if they want to hang out with you, learn more about what you’re working on, and see where you put your focus? Where’s the best place for them to seek you out?

Amelia Taylor

First, thank you for having me. I am honored, for sure! I will make sure that this goes out to all the people listening, and all of your parents and grandparents, and all the above.

LinkedIn, for sure—that’s where I live and breathe the most. In Pavilion, I’m there a bunch within that community. Also, I’m trying to build my Instagram presence, because if LinkedIn dies tomorrow, I want to make sure I have another place where people are making an impact. @Amelia.A.Taylor—that’s where you can find me there, so go connect there. I would love to be able to learn from others who are doing the same.

John Smallmtn

Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on, I really appreciate it.

Amelia Taylor

Thank you! Bye.

John Smallmtn

Bye.