Elevating Individuals Through Mentorship
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If you are a university student, make sure to spend time on network building. It may be overwhelming and challenging, but its payoff is certainly worth it. In this live discussion, sales and entrepreneurship veterans Rick Bernstein and Tina Fox share the most valuable lessons they have learned in their own career journeys with College of Business students of their alma mater, James Madison University. They discuss how to leverage your network in advancing your professional life, from finding the right mentors to befriending the right colleagues. Rick and Tina also explain why mastering your own identity map can be your most valuable asset and what is the best question to ask someone instead of “What do you do?” This is a must-listen on building confidence, taking initiative, and mastering the art of failing forward in college and beyond.
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These curriculums and classes are very buttoned up and very formalized. To invite something that’s a little bit outside the box and curriculum, this is really real-world talk right here. This is where we have a chance to not only share our stories and how we got here and what we made of our time here and afterwards, but also to take questions, get a gauge of where you guys are.
Most are sophomores here. Is that right? We’ll get into this thing about this two-year rule, which to me, I’ve always applied in my life. I give that first year, that freshman year, a time to actually get to know where I’m at, right where I’m living, my suite mates, my roommates, new friends. After that first year, and you might find this as the case, you come back sophomore year, it’s a warm reception back. You already have buddies that you can pick and choose who your roommates are and then really reap what you’ve sown that first year. Just being comfortable on campus, knowing the schedules, how things work, and then also getting to know what you want to major in and possibly have a career in.
I’d say sophomore year is like the best year because you’ve already figured it out after freshman year. You don’t have the stress of junior year and internships and you certainly don’t have the sense of urgency quite yet in senior year like, “I’ve got to get a job.” Sophomore year is the best year.
It is great. Does everyone have a major declared? Is everybody within this school of business? Everyone’s declared. Is anyone undeclared? You guys are further along than I was when I was a sophomore. I didn’t actually declare. I declared coming in as a freshman, as pre-med. I took zoology and botany and I said, “I’m out.” I didn’t have the constitution to really dig into the sciences. I was trying to please my mom and dad and grandma to be a doctor, possibly.
What’s interesting with my career is it led into business, which I declared the beginning of my junior year, actually Computer Information Systems. Back then, that was like a programming degree. That was where you were very technical and I was programming these languages, which are barely used anymore. What I found was, was that I just wasn’t good at it and I didn’t enjoy it, but it was a ticket to a job.
We’ll talk a little bit about how we got into our majors and whatnot. My connection to campus really began with my brother who was a JMU grad. He was five years older. As he was leaving, I was just coming in. What he told me more than anything, and of course he was a Business major, I became a Business major. He said, “Get involved. Just do the activities.”
What he did, he was a student ambassador. Is anybody a student ambassador in the room, give tours of the campus? No? He was an orientation assistant. Is anybody an orientation assistant in the summertime where you’re getting to know incoming freshmen and then and showing them the school and then fraternity life? I did all three of those when I came in. I was a tour guide, I was an orientation person and I also pledged a fraternity the spring semester of my sophomore year. That is really how my network really grew. I found those activities here on campus and really dove headfirst into it.
I did not leverage my networks in school as well as I should have. I didn’t leverage the connections that I had with my friends in school, my peers, male or female. I certainly had not leveraged any alumni. There wasn’t LinkedIn, there wasn’t any of that stuff. Alumni to me was this foreign concept. It was just people who were here before and now they’re out there. I never really connected the dots on that.
While you all are here, you have a great opportunity to network with each other, not just socially, but I would stress professionally too. You all are in Cobb. You’re looking for jobs in the business world at some point. Whether or not you’re going to be in your major, it doesn’t matter. You’re going to be in business somewhere. Many of you’ll probably stay in the Mid-Atlantic area is my guess.
This is where a lot of jobs are. A lot of people are coming from Virginia. This is a Virginia State School. If you end up in this area, there’s 160,000 living alumni and many of us are in the DC Metro, Richmond, Virginia Beach area. We stayed in the state. I know both of us are in Northern Virginia. I would say leverage your networks here and leverage your alumni networks as well because Rick did that a lot better than me. It took me many years to figure that out. That was one of my key mistakes in life.
It was really through my peers. When I think about it, I didn’t have like an elder statesman person or someone above other than my brother who really was a source of major advice and inspiration to me to do the things I do. Think about your immediate networks, your networks at home. You probably still keep in touch with some of your high school buddies. Maybe they’re off doing their thing in different universities. Thank you so much.
Keep leveraging that. Keep those contacts warm, whether it be online when you go home over Thanksgiving or over the holidays and go visit find out what people are doing and siblings of those friends or friends of friends. I didn’t seek that out and I didn’t think to even connect with the alumni board, fraternity during homecoming. In the fraternity, some of the guys who have graduated would come back. I didn’t do enough to ask them questions about where they are and what companies they were gravitating towards and what was working for them. That was something that in your shoes, I would’ve done differently now, knowing that.
You also have tremendous resources here in your professor. Professor Hamilton has lived a full life. She’s been teaching here for over twenty years and really been a pioneer in a lot of ways in this school. How about staying after class and asking her a little bit about not only the assignments, but a little bit about her experiences and how she got here. You can do that with every single one of your professors. I even see that in my kids’ report. I have teenagers now, but it says in their progress report if they have any questions on their grades, which I do, because some of those grades aren’t what I was hoping they would be, but it says, “Please have your child ask me a question after school. Come up to me and ask me why their grade is what it is.”
It’s a great time, a very fertile time for you guys to really start asking those questions. There’s so much runway ahead of you to go that this is the time to start laying that groundwork early. Don’t wait, don’t put off, don’t procrastinate. Start it now, this weekend, homecoming weekend. There’s a ton of activities going on where you’re going to maybe meet alumni through your different clubs and connections and really just start introducing yourself to people. It doesn’t mean you have to get a job offer or you’re not looking for anything, but just get to know people where they’re from, what they do.
Your time at the university should be spent laying your groundwork. Do not procrastinate in starting it. Share on XSomething practical, we told the other two classes, is that being homecoming week, a lot of alumni are coming back, not just for the game for Saturday, but Friday. If you’re running around Cobb, you’re going to see a lot of people wearing a lot of purple. If they look a little older than you, they’re probably like us. There are alumni that have come back to serve.
Every single department has a board, whether you’re finance, accounting, management, marketing, everybody has a board. There is a larger college of business board. We all come back and we spend the morning here in meetings working with our faculty liaisons to help identify where are the holes in the curriculum, what should be preparing students for in the future with how the current job market is. We’ve got hybrid, we’ve got remote, we’ve got AI, we’ve got all this stuff.
We want to better prepare you, so we bring our talents and our skills from outside the university back to the university in these couple of days. Friday’s that day. We all get together for lunch upstairs at the commons area. If you want to come by about 1:30, 2:00, that’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Every single alumni that serves is going to be coming out those doors. Just start introducing yourself. We want to meet you.
It’s not weird that you’re going to be there, you’re students we’re coming to your home turf. We want to get connected with you. Just start asking, “I see you’re here for the board. How did it go inside that room? What did you learn? I’m a student here. Do you want to hear my perspective on some things? What board do you serve on? I’d love to get connected with you on LinkedIn.”
Just start making those connections early and often because this is what it’s all about. You’re here for an education, in my opinion. You’re here for an education, you’re paying for that, at least. You’re here in order to establish your independence in what I call the perfect snow globe, that being James Madison University. We’ve got this safety net of services offered to you in a university setting with peers that are going through the exact same thing as you, however you get to establish your independence away from home.
Finally, and maybe arguably, one of the most important things that you’re doing here at university is you are establishing your network and you’re going to work that network because who gets a job by applying 100 times online through Indeed? Nobody. If you want a job, you’re going to have to connect with people, they want to know who you are.
Why should they look at you versus the other 100 resumes that you’re getting? That’s some of the things that are going on. Of course, we’re all going to be here for Saturday too because we wouldn’t just come in for the board meeting and head out. We want to see the Dukes beat ODU this weekend. We’ll be here for the beautiful 72-degree weekend. Come on out and see us at tailgate. My tailgate is across from King Hall. If you want to come, I’ll be there. I’m with lots of people. It’s that grassy knoll just across from King Hall at the top of the bridge. Can’t wait to see this.
Just tremendous opportunity. Don’t let it go by without getting something out of it. Just set one goal for yourself, possibly this weekend, to talk to one person, maybe one alumni or one friend of a friend or someone who’s graduated or someone who’s even at another university. People come from other schools and come here, just finding out a little bit about their program.
Asking those questions, ultimately, that’s going to unlock your opportunity because with every job is going to come some face to face, some kind of interview process, whether it’s fully remote and it’s on Zoom and you’re just looking at each other or you’re physically in front of that interviewer, you want to get these reps in. This is the time to practice. It doesn’t have to be perfect.
Starting with what we found when we got in the working world was a very common thing to do or be asked or ask someone after you graduate and now you’re in the real world is asking someone, “What do you do?” What do you do, it’s a little cold. It’s not as warm as it could be. What do you do? You’re assuming that what you do is who you are, but there’s an entire person underneath whatever that job title is that has hobbies, interests, families, things that drive them every day.
Think about an elevated question, something a little bit more. Let’s say they’re from another school. “What drew you to University of Richmond? When you graduated, what was the first thing that really surprised you when you started working in the real world? What was it like to go from being in a place where you could wake up with dozens of your friends around and hit D-Hall and have a meal together to then maybe just having 1 roommate or 2 roommates and it’s a smaller group of people that you’re actually starting to do?
These are elevated questions. These are going to make you stand out and they’re better questions. In the interviewer’s mind, or even the person who is looking at you as a possible prospect for a job, that’s going to stick out because it’s not just the what do you do and even where you’re from. It’s even more than that. Start thinking about how to formulate those questions with the people that you meet this weekend and throughout the year and the next two years.
I got a question that you can use anytime as opposed to, “What do you do,” or, “What’s your major?” We talked about this in a couple other classes. It’s, “What do you like to do?” We just changed one thing. We added one word. What do you like to do? What do you like to do? Might not necessarily be your major, it might not necessarily be your job, but it opens up this whole other identity map of who that person is and where you might be able to connect with them on. It’s more exciting to talk about what you like to do sometimes than what it is that you do. If you can just remember that question, “What do you like to do?” That’s a very easy question. You can remember that question and you can probably have lots of different paths to go down.
Professor Hamilton had me work on identity maps in previous classes that I’ve come to support her in. I put my identity map up there because even though she did an introduction, I wanted to showcase a few other things about myself so that maybe we could have some connection. You all can connect with me on LinkedIn. You can come up after class, we can have a conversation. I’d love to get to know you all a little bit better. This identity map, the reason I put it up there is because you all did one. I want you to go back to that identity map and don’t just tuck it away and be like, “Here’s my name and here are all the nouns and adjectives that I used to describe myself.”
Take that identity map and when I look at my own, so what does it mean that I did studies abroad in Salamanca? That’s nice to know. That’s a thing. For me, what it did was it took me completely outside of my comfort zone. This is a far more interesting story than those three words, which is, I didn’t know Spanish when I went to Salamanca and I didn’t have Google Translate because it didn’t exist. We didn’t have cell phones because they didn’t exist.
I got dropped off in a country where they didn’t speak a lick of English and I didn’t speak a lick of Spanish, but a lot of hand signals and figuring things out. I was horribly uncomfortable. At the same time, I learned how to assimilate into another culture. I learned how to communicate in ways that got me to where I needed to be. I ultimately learned another language. That has helped me as far as tolerance, understanding different perspectives.
If I were to go into an interview now, I might take part of that identity map. You might take part of your identity map and you might open that up a little bit more as to what does that mean that you did studies abroad? What does that mean that you were first generation? How, as an interviewer, should I be interested in that story of yours? How is that going to affect me as your future boss as to what you’re going to bring into the culture of my company?
These are just some of the things that I wanted to leave with you, knowing that you’ve done your identity map is to really know yourself because Rick had said in a previous conversation that if you know yourself really well and you can go into a conversation knowing yourself really well, you’re going to be more confident to be able to not only stand there and have that conversation, but you’re probably also going to explore certain areas of other people too, because you’ve done the work on yourself, so now you can ask the curious questions of the other people. Always know yourself first and then start adding on different people into your network.
I’m a visual learner. I’ve always needed to see something and experiential as well. Getting hands on, even setting up this equipment. I’m not trained in AV stuff. I plug things in until I hear them. I youtube it and figure out, “This wasn’t working for our very first session. I forgot a little button in the back,” and we got it working just fine. What jumps out here in your story and your identity map, visually, what I’m learning here is that if I were to say, “What do you do, Tina,” I would see, okay, there’s an entrepreneur here. There’s an accidental entrepreneur. I’m missing over a dozen different things that are a part of your story in a part of what she is bringing into entrepreneurship and into who she is.
Really mastering yourself and mastering your own story. I tell people I produce podcasts and I help fundraise, and I’ve been in sales for over twenty years. Every one of those tells a story. If I’m selling a product, “Here’s the widget and it costs $200.” Boring. What about, “This product right here has transformed lives for 25 years. It actually makes patient recoveries up to a week less than traditional surgery with the other tool.”
How about telling a story, adding some texture to it? It’s all about storytelling. When I book a guest for podcasts and I interview authors, philanthropists, Olympic athletes, influencers, they’ve all been on my show. What is it that we talk about? I’m not a master at being an Olympian. I’m not a master at writing a book. I’ve never written a book, but I know myself and I can relate to, “I have a life story.”
What brought you author, Tina? What jumped out to you about your own life to make you sit down and actually document your own memoir and write your story? What was that process like? How long did it take you? What kind of discipline did you need to sit there and write 500 words a day, 1,000 words a day? All of this is storytelling. Ultimately, also doing fundraising.
These are heartwarming heart wrenching missions that is making a difference, whether it’s food insecurity, it’s cancer research. These are missions and stories. It’s not just, “We do cancer research.” No, we are trying to pave the way so that future generations do not have to be afflicted with cancer for the rest of their life. Doesn’t that sound more interesting, framing it in that way? I gave myself goosebumps.
That’s something that actually stands out and it moves you in telling the story. At the end of the day, when you have an identity map and you write it all down, don’t just discard it as something that is like, if I were to ask you something really quick about yourself, “I’ve done this and I traveled to Spain and I started a company and I’m second generation Chinese American, military dependent,” that sort of thing. All these things matter. What’s great is when you know your story, you can tailor it to who is asking the questions.
Network Building: When you know your own story, you can tailor it to whoever is asking the questions.
There’s a lot of things here on Tina’s profile that are applicable probably and some not. The more that you’ve aced your story, then you know and you can apply that and you become more nimble to that and you can apply it for those jobs. If it’s a job overseas, “Yeah, I did a semester abroad in Salamanca.” You can pull from that. At the end of the day, starting a podcast, doing all this, you don’t have to be the expert at anything but yourself and knowing your story and relating that back to your guests, to your mission, to the product that you sell.
I’m just curious, what’s front of mind for you all? What are some of the things that we can answer? Normally, we wait till the end for Q&A, but I thought I would tee up Q&A now because we’re here, we’re alumni. We want to help support you the best we can. What kind of questions do you have as sophomores? What can we help you personally, professionally? What are you thinking about right now? Anybody? By the way, there are t-shirts on the line, so if we get some answers, you get a t-shirt or we get some questions, you get a t-shirt. Don’t be nervous because I’m telling you right now, you have a question, somebody else is thinking that question, they’re just not going to say that question.
We want to be impressed with your questions. I highly recommend getting out of your comfort zone so you can pretty much pick anything. If you’re in a business program here at university, you should look into what kind of business studies abroad. The only one that I think is fun, but I don’t think it’s immersive enough, is the three week, “Let’s go hit it for the summertime thing. Let’s hang out in a big group of Americans as we go tour this other country together.”
I’m not as excited about that. I know I’m on a podcast and every other person’s going to be like, “No, but that’s my tour.” It’s fine. You can do that. I think it’s fine, but if you really want to be immersive, then going abroad and living with a family abroad, not living with a bunch of Americans is the most immersive experience. I think it will build tolerance, it will build understanding, it will build perspective. All of that is amazing when you’re trying to bring that into a company, putting yourself in an unbelievably uncomfortable position to have to assimilate to something that is brand new to you. I highly recommend it if you can do it. It’s one semester. I know it’s extra moola, but they might have scholarships for it.
That was me. I not only, at the time, had connections outside of my brother really have a lot of elevated connections, but I didn’t have any opportunities per my matching process. I was 0 for 5. Actually, digging into what you’re doing now, what’s your major now? Finance. What avenues to finance, what have you found right now? Where would you see yourself in practicing finance or having some form of elevated degree or a Master’s or something like that? A lot of things you can’t replace. You can’t have an education for timing. The timing is right or you just happen to coincide serendipity. You just happen to be in the room at the right time with the right people. I would say surround yourself with more people who are finance majors.
Raise your hand if you’re a finance major. Immediately, your network is nine. Amongst the nine in this room, do you think you guys know somebody who else is in finance or has a family member or a friend back at home at another school that’s majoring in finance? How about you guys get together for a coffee before this class and just say, “Let’s huddle as Finance majors. Let’s get together and say, ‘What’s going on? What are you struggling with? What are you finding an easy time with?’”
Why not network with the people right here? We’ve got 9 to 10 people right here in this room. You think about it and you’re like, “I don’t really know anybody,” but I bet nine other people know somebody. This is your first step here. How about Marketing majors? How many marketing majors? Have you guys ever sat down, just you Marketing majors and talked about things about how it’s going in marketing? No. How about five minutes before class, you guys just sit in the back over there and just talk about how it’s going so far. Marketing, I’m telling you, if there’s anything that’s forward facing and out there and salesy and pulling people in, it’s marketing.
I got to ask because I see faces and I see like smirks and I can see there’s something going on in the ticker upstairs. When he’s saying, “Why don’t you guys get together for five minutes before class and talk either as finance group or marketing,” what are you all thinking? What’s the first thing comes to mind? What’s the smirk about? Come on, share. He’s still laughing about it. What do you guys think?
What sounds crazy?
I appreciate the honesty. Why?
You know how that plays. You fast forward this and now, you’re graduated. Who’s going to take that initiative now to really find something? I understand there’s dynamics, maybe people don’t get along, different circles and all that, but we’re just trying to get you guys to start spinning the wheels and think about what’s available to you right here in this class. If it’s not this class, it could be another class where you are closer with people, know people better.
The best way that you can accelerate and exponentially grow that network is here in class. Now, if you feel more comfortable connecting online, which I totally understand, back in the day we didn’t have an option, we probably would’ve done more of that if we could connect online. You still might know each other. Maybe it’s a LinkedIn connection. Some of you reached out, I know I got some LinkedIn requests, you guys in this room. That’s a great first step. I accepted it immediately because we can be that resource.
Look us up, Tina Fox, Rick Bernstein on LinkedIn, if you feel more comfortable again doing that. At some point in time, you’re going to work with people that maybe you don’t get along with or want to take the initiative with, but you’ve got to make it happen. You’ve got to continue to move forward. If it’s not in this classroom, then just consider it because you’re all here together. There’s not another time in your life that you’ll experience like college where you are just waking up and you roll out of bed and you’ve got friends all around and things to do all around and meal plans and all that stuff. Take advantage of it.
Let me ask you something. You don’t have to answer this. Just think about it in your head. When you think of somebody who is super inspiring to you, whether it’s your mom, maybe, maybe it’s a celebrity, maybe it’s a professor, I don’t care, whoever. Think of who you think is super inspiring. Does that person also take initiative, yes or no? How many yeses of the people you’re thinking. Those are inspiring people to you.
If they’re inspiring to you, you can also be inspiring by taking initiative. Even though it might seem very uncool, my kids say the same thing. I’ve got a 15-year-old, a 17-year-old, and 26-year-old, and they’re always saying, “Mom, that’s not so cool.” I’m like, “I know it’s not so cool, but what’s going to happen? Are you going to die by asking somebody, ‘Do you want to have a cup of coffee or can you answer a few questions for me? I’ve got some curiosities about internships or whatever.’” No.
Why not just take the initiative and do it? If you don’t try it, you’re never going to be able to build the love of confidence or courage, which I think we all want. We’ll get into this in a second, but we talked about in previous classes this concept of Imposter Syndrome, which at TERN Mentoring, we study. We study Imposter Syndrome as it pertains to students, because we know that when you’re at university, but you’re getting ready to cross this bridge into life that there is a lot of Imposter Syndrome of, “What am I supposed to take with this $150,000, $250,000 degree? Sometimes more. Everything that I learned in four plus years, and what am I supposed to do with that now?”
You’re feeling like, “I don’t know. This is scary.” In order to build that level of courage and confidence, you’ve got to try things that are maybe out of your comfort zone, like studies abroad or maybe it’s getting some finance people together or some marketing folks together to have a conversation. Start with something small. The more you build up your confidence in starting with something small, that muscle is going to build up in you. Just like when you work out. The next time you decide to do something, you might take a step to move it to another level. If I got that to work and that wasn’t so bad and I didn’t die in the process, then I’m going to try something else.
Every day, if you go to bed at night and you think to yourself, “I did something that was different today and it got me out of my comfort zone,” that’s called growth. If you did the exact same thing that you did yesterday and there was no development of self, you’ve just wasted the day, in my opinion. You are way too young to waste the day. You’ve got so much opportunity. You have so much potential inside you, constantly push yourself to doing something. One more rep in the gym. One more conversation with somebody in class. One more minute of studying. Constantly push yourself. It doesn’t have to be huge. It needs to be very small increments in order to create that.
I was going to say real quick, there has been nothing professionally for me that I got right the first time. I graduated with a Computer Information Systems degree and I got a job, like I said, through Sprint. I was gone basically 24 months later and I was on my way to probably getting fired. My job performance wasn’t good. There was an older guy who was a senior programmer guy and without me prompting or asking, he pulled me aside, pulled me into a boardroom and said, “How are you doing? Are you okay?”
There is nothing professionally that you can get right the first time. Share on XI’m 22 years old, he’s probably mid-50s. He’s seen all this before and he could probably tell by my body language I wasn’t really loving what I was doing and I wasn’t happy and I lost it. I just broke down and started crying in the boardroom. I said, “I’m not good at this. I don’t love this. This is just not my passion.” He said, “You have a lot of gifts and talents. Find that thing that really drives you.”
I got it totally wrong. It took two years. As we said, I planted the seed the first year, got to know things, was doing my thing. By that second year, it was confirmed I was not good at my job. How did I fail forward? Any success is about failing to me. That iceberg that sticks above the water is just reaching feet and feet below the surface of failures. In one of the sessions, one of the students asked me, “How do you define success?” I said, “It’s failing over and over, but failing in a way that is forward moving.”
How did I fail forward? I went and took my technical aptitude, which wasn’t really great, and I moved into more of a consultative role, functional role at a big firm for IT consulting. Now I was working with the programmers. I knew their language and then I was talking to the client and I knew their language. I’m dating a girl whose sister was in healthcare. I asked some questions about healthcare. Next thing I know, I’m assigned or a matched up with a recruiter who then gets me into an opportunity in healthcare. I was a pre-med major, didn’t work out. As we said, failing the first time on all this, but fell back into it and showed that passion to learn and to really attack that new opportunity.
There’s nothing that I have approached that has been a home run the first run out. In my podcast, you can check it out, it’s on Spotify and Apple, you can hear my very first episode. It’s very spotty. The sound isn’t real good, the editing isn’t real good. I left it up there as a reminder to me so that now I can see 70 episodes later and a couple of years later where I’ve become. Do I sound better as an interviewer? Do I ask better questions? I have that evidence and I leave it out there. It’s very vulnerable. People could just pull up that first episode and be like, “I don’t know about him.” I want that to be a reminder to myself that this is where I started and now this is where I am, which I think is better.
I just kept doing the things that I wasn’t either that great at or I wasn’t that passionate about. It’s aptitude and it’s passion to me. I just kept giving myself those chances for an opportunity. It wasn’t a failure, it was just a new opportunity. It was more of a lesson learned. I think having that mindset and approaching it that way, that’s how I kept. I kept networking. That’s how Tina and I got here. We graduated a couple of years apart, so we didn’t know each other. A neighbor invited me to a networking event. I went, I met who was Tina’s husband.
Network Building: Treat failures as new opportunities.
Still is.
Did I say was? For the record, very happily still is. He said, “My wife went to JMU. You guys would be two peas in a pod. You guys should really meet up.” Six months later, I booked her on the podcast and here we are. She’s well connected at JMU. We had an opportunity where we could do this in front of class. I’ve never done this before. I’ve never set this up here at JMU before. This could have gone totally sideways. I got here at 6:00 in the morning to get all of this set up, lugging all this equipment up the stairs, setting it up. It could have been a total fail and it might’ve been, I feel like it’s been a success. Just put yourself out there and continuing to seek those opportunities.
I did not plan for my career. I did what was necessary. I knew that I enjoyed being around people. I enjoyed connecting with people. I did not want to be on a project in a cubicle. That was not my idea of a good time. I had worked a summer hire job in the federal government where I was in that cubicle. Ugh, it was absolutely horrible. They paid better than my other part-time jobs, but I just didn’t like anything about it.
I also had worked behind the jewelry counter at best products, and I got a chance to connect with customers and I was selling watches. If you sold watches, they let you sell silver. If you sold silver, they let you sell gold and then semi-precious stones, and then the coup de gras diamonds where you can make big time commissions. I learned in both of those processes, what I didn’t like and what I did like.
In the sales capacity, when I came here to JMU, I was like, “I’m going to get into business,” because I just figured if you’re going to be in sales, you’re going to be in business. I ended up declaring my major into Marketing, and I had to take Dr. Gavin’s accounting class, which is a weeder outer class. I promptly failed that class. When I failed that class, I was like, “Now what I’m going to be when I grow up? This is awful.” I talked to my advisor, Dr. Rex Fuller, who said, “You might find your people in the College of Arts and Letters. What do you think about Communications as a degree?”
I was like, “Really? Is that such a thing?” He was like, “Yeah.” He got me involved in different classes, impromptu speaking, public speaking, debate, interpersonal. I loved it. I thought it was so different. It wasn’t the numbers on a sheet and the spreadsheet. It was more about the connection between people. I thrived in that and I really loved it.
When I got out of school, I decided, even though I’m a Comm major, we communicate in sales. One of the big reasons I chose sales as a woman, and I’m talking to the women in the audience now, is because we’re really good at sales. If you don’t consider sales, you should consider it. Why? It’s because we have this gene called empathy. We love to solve problems, and we take a lot of care and measure in how we do things. I always say, “Women, look for a job in sales.”
One of the other things that I looked for in sales is I needed to level the playing field. Don’t hate the player, change the game. That’s my mantra in a lot of things. At the time, men were earning $1.20 to every $1 that a woman earned. I don’t think it’s changed very much for doing the same job for getting the same title. It’s just women were not negotiating and they were getting in at lower rates. The way I felt was sales is the all-time equalizer because he’s going to get a territory and I’m going to get a territory and we’re going to both get a number and we’re both going to have customers and we’re both going to have competitors. May the best person win.
I just needed to exceed my number. If I exceeded my number, I made as much, if not more than he did. That was me not hating the player. He was a great guy. He’s just doing his thing. That was me changing the game. My career path was really more about that at first. As I enjoyed that for 22 years, things in life changed for me and I needed to get out of Corporate America.
I ended up becoming an entrepreneur. That has served me tremendously. I’ve absolutely loved being an entrepreneur. I had never planned on being an entrepreneur. It’s not like there was this direct path of, “You get your diploma, it’s in Communications, and you’re going to go into public relations in a New York firm, and that’s what you’re going to do for the next 40 years.”
No, it’s not that. It’s trial and error. I love what Rick said about the fact that you have to fail. If I told you all the times I failed, I told you I failed early. I failed Dr. Gavin’s class here. That was first and foremost, but I failed so many other times. It makes the successes that much sweeter, but it also helps you on your path to who you’re going to become.
The fact of the matter is, is that of everybody who’s declared a major, less than 27% of you will actually be doing that job later in life. We all just change. We grow up, we change, we find out things we like, we don’t like, and then we adapt to the things that we want to do. Don’t be hard and fast on, “I have a plan today and that plan is going to be the exact same plan in twenty years,” because it’s probably not.
Another thing about sales, being in sales myself for a long time is you’re betting on yourself. Depending on the compensation structure, it can be you only get paid on what you close. Anything that you sell, you get paid on. Other than that, that’s it. There are other comp plans that set up where you keep getting paid on the stuff you’ve already sold, plus you get paid on the new stuff. At the end of the day, you’re betting on yourself.
I cannot get out of bed every morning and I can just draw on the sales that I’ve done. That’s nice for a little bit, but at some point, that creeps up. You’re putting it off. You really have to bet on yourself. Sales, again, I would agree, is great in so many ways because you are, again, flexing your interpersonal skills and you’re learning how to navigate a process and no two customers are going to be the same.
You have to bet on yourself in sales. Flex your interpersonal skills because no two customers are the same. Share on XWhat might be important to one might not be important to another. I think Mark Cuban said one time, he said, “If I had to do it all over again, I would recommend coming out of college, have a sales job during the day and I would tend bar at night.” Why? Sales has very high earning potential. Most sales jobs do. Why the bar at night? You are in an atmosphere of just being present and getting to know people around you. You’re of service, but you’ve also got a lot of power behind the taps. If any of you guys in frat life or working the taps, there’s some power there. Who gets a beer? That’s what his recommendation was as well, was sales and then tending bar night.
Now that’s a long day, but at the end of the day, what he was trying to stress is just that constant relationship development in different ways. Different places. I do that now. I get to be both. I am employed by an employer during the day, and then I’m an entrepreneur, and I have my own business and fundraising and in podcast producing at night. I just have a lot of things I’m interested in.
When I was getting into podcasting, I was asked, “What’s your expertise? What are you going to talk about all day, all night?” There are these podcasts that are business focused, sports focused, entertainment focused. I said, “I don’t know. I just like people. I’m curious about people’s stories.” What’s my little tagline? It’s basically we create media that inspires and entertains. Who are the guests on my show? People who inspire and entertain.
I created something that I can focus on in my guests. If you are inspiring, you’re doing good work, it’s nonprofit work, or you’re making a difference out in the world, I want you on my show. If you’re entertaining, you’ve done something cool, you’ve competed in Olympic Games or something like that, or written a screenplay for a movie, I want to know about that. I’m not just going to pigeonhole myself to being an expert on one thing. I enjoy learning about people’s stories and journeys.
In a nutshell, I did not plan on becoming an entrepreneur. In my previous to 40 year life, I was in Corporate America in both fortune 100 and Silicon Valley startups. I absolutely loved it. I was traveling all the time. I was lucky enough to have a family. This was in my 40-plus years. In having a family, 90% travel was no longer conducive to being a present parent.
My husband had said to me, “You’ve got skills and talents in BD and I have skills and talents and operations as a real estate attorney. Why don’t we combine those talents and create our own company?” I thought, “What a terrible idea that is,” because I loved him, but I didn’t know if I wanted to work with him necessarily. It took me about two years to really think about that concept and do a lot of vetting of what does this look like?
We’re going to quit healthcare, we’re going to quit all these benis. There’s a lot of weighing of the pros and cons. It was a tough time because my youngest son was in and out of hospital for the first five years of his life. Healthcare to me was a big deal. I wasn’t sure it was Obamacare, what was going on with the private market. I was a little nervous about what that meant if I left that corporate job. There was like some golden handcuffs there.
In considering all these things, I decided. At the time I was 41 and I was like, “I think it’s time. If I’m going to make the leap, I should make it now. I’m not getting any younger.” I said, “Yeah, let’s go do this.” We built Cobalt Settlements, which is a title and settlement company in Northern Virginia, in Arlington. We’ve been around since 2015. We’ve got a team that works for us. About halfway through working at Cobalt, I had an opportunity to exit the day-to-day operations because we did build a team.
That gave me this, “What am I going to be when I grow up,” thought. I really didn’t know, to be honest with you. I’d been dabbling with consulting. I was CEO of another company at the time that, had me out networking and was really wonderful. It was me coming back here to JMU and serving you all as students. I was really seeing a reflection of my younger self. I saw that I was in their position twenty years ago at the time. I was thinking to myself, “I remember being first of my generation and freaking out about how I was going to get a job and what I was going to do for the long haul.” I really needed to set an example.
As I was meeting you, many of you wanted to be mentored. I was taking my personal time to mentor a few of you and there just got to be too many of you. I started calling my LinkedIn network and saying, “Would you all mind helping me out with some students? These are really amazing JMU students, they’re super curious. They just want to get connected,” and they did. They answered my calling.
Professor Hamilton actually challenged me on doing more in her classes. I said, “You’ve been running mentorship programs. I’m now starting to mentor some of these students. Maybe I can build a better program for your class.” She said, “Yes, that’d be great. What’s that going to look like?” We talked about it and I built my very first program here at JMU. From JMU, I was like, “This is going crazy.” We ended up serving hundreds of students here at JMU. I started recruiting in hundreds of alumni, not just of JMU, but of UBA, Penn State, Harvard, Clemson.
I had a pretty thick network and they did not have this opportunity. They’re alma mater. I started bringing them here to JMU. By the way, they think you’re super cool. They’re like, “JMU students rock. They are so well put together. They’re so even keeled. They’re so friendly, they’re hardworking.” You all have a good reputation out in the world. I just want you to know that, even from the Harvards of the world.
With that being said, I decided in COVID, when we had to take a break from the classwork because everybody wasn’t here, I looked at my husband and I said, “I think I need to build a company.” He’s like, “What are you going to build it in?” I said, “I think I’m going to build an ed tech company in mentorship. There’s nothing like this that’s being offered and they don’t do it the way that I do it. There’s so many alumni that want to serve their younger selves. They want to live their legacy through mentorship.”
He was like, “Okay, I guess we’re building another company.” I said, “Yeah.” I’m not a coder, I’m a Comm major. What did I know about coding? I didn’t. I just took my ideas. I put them on paper. I started asking for help. Pro tip of the day, if you think you can do it alone and you’re just going to suck it up and figure it out and you’re going to YouTube your way out of things, forget about it. It’s not the way of the world. You have got to swallow the ego and you have got to ask for help all the time. Early and often.
I asked for the help and I got help and I started building this company and we ended up going outside of JMU down the street to Mary Baldwin. We’re now at Texas Tech. I launched 1,000 people in the program. It just started building. It was just on accident. I looked at a problem and I wanted to fix it. I looked at your faces and I said, “I want to help them.” That’s how TERN came about.
Do you guys find an opportunity out there now that you feel is there’s something missing, there’s a problem that you really want to solve that’s just burning? I don’t know if it’s keeping you up at night, but something in the back of your mind. Anything experiential, you go somewhere and it’s like, “The service isn’t great. We could improve that.” Do you guys ever get your wheels spinning that way? Think about a problem to solve.
Is there one you’d want to share or talk about? Have you ever made notes on some of these things? It doesn’t have to be an accusatory way. Being diplomatic about things when you have a problem, I report also to a boss and I’m my own boss. I frankly like reporting to myself more than you know someone else. Have you ever just jotted down a couple suggestions? It doesn’t have to be mean-spirited or confrontational.
You like the paycheck. That’s how I felt in my first job. I was not good at it and I didn’t enjoy it, but it afforded me a chance to live with friends, rent a place, go out on the weekends, do those things and be independent. It’s great that you have something that’s helping pay the bills. Don’t just necessarily give up and cut bait and then try to find somewhere else. Maybe just jot that down and see how that’s received.
It’s a chance you could open their mind to something and say, “I didn’t know you felt that way about it. Maybe we would change something like that.” If they’re just insufferable and they’re just terrible, then maybe you could think about, “Now I have something to put on a resume.” You’ve done this work and now I’m going to move that over into maybe another theater or something else. There’s opportunity there. If you look at it, anything you’re dissatisfied with make notes of it. Suggest it to whoever you’re reporting to or whatever job you’re in. It’s all about how you go about it.
If you are dissatisfied with something, make notes of it. Share on XYou’re in interpersonal skills. You’ve obviously got an issue at work where the interpersonal skills are lacking because by the time you get to evaluation, you’re like, “What are you evaluating me on? You don’t even connect with me at this point.” I love what Rick said, taking that opportunity. This is hard because this could be confrontational and this is somebody who’s your superior and you’re offering some feedback.
How many people in here routinely offer feedback to other people? Not online, face to face. I don’t care about the muscles behind the keyboard. I want to know that you’re eyeball to eyeball. We don’t do a lot of feedback these days. We do a lot of it online. The muscles get super big. People just start going off online. When you have to come face to face with someone, that is a totally different monster right there.
Nobody in the class raised their hand when I asked the question, “Do you routinely give face-to-face feedback?” Nobody raised their hand. Anything, any constructive criticism, any compliment, any like, “That wasn’t very nice. I didn’t really appreciate that.” Any sort of feedback in the moment? You’ve done that? We want to change our hands. Has anybody ever given those feedback? We’ve got a few more.
Something you change, do different. It could even be to a professor and just say, “Okay.” Understanding the work, the coursework and what’s behind it. It’s in the attitude that you bring towards it. It doesn’t, again, have to be confrontational, but the more diplomatic you are and the more understanding you are, but you’re there to listen and get information.
Different show of hands. How many of you have asked for feedback on a routine basis? Are you asking from your professor? I know you get grades and stuff, but are you asking about like, “How am I doing as far as participation in class?” Are you asking your peers, “How am I doing as far as showing up for you as a friend?” Are you asking your family? Who are you asking feedback from? Just your boss? Who are you asking feedback from? I love the fact that you are a hockey ref and you’re asking for feedback because I would assume as a hockey ref, you get a lot of feedback, especially from the audience. “That was a terrible call.”
Whistles and all that kind of thing.
As a hockey mom, I hear the feedback coming at you guys on the rink. Thank you for asking for feedback.
You didn’t take anything that could be perceived as somewhat negative or you missed a call or this as, “You’re worthless. You can’t do your job,” that kind of thing. You said, “I could do better next time.” It’s not personal. That’s exactly it. These things aren’t personal. I would say if I was in a job interview, Tina’s like, “I see you want, you’re interested in a sales position. What do you think is your biggest weakness?” I would say this in any interview that I would go on now. I would say, “I tend to take things professionally just a little too personally.” When someone doesn’t buy my product or turns down an opportunity to be on a podcast or I don’t get the fundraising gig that I really wanted. I do, “What did I do wrong? Was there something about what I did, how I carried myself?”
I’ve gone so far as to ask, “Tell me a little bit about your decision. I understand we’re not a fit. Could you just elaborate on that and tell me a little bit about why we’re not a fit?” I have to, now at almost 50 years old, still remind myself not to take things too personally and you’re already ahead of the game in that. That’s the thing. Okay, you messed something up the first time. Does that mean the rest of your career’s done? Of course not. Just let it roll. Let it roll off your back, take it duly noted, put that to the side now moving forward. That’s what does that go back to? Knowing yourself.
This Imposter Syndrome and those things, the more you know about yourself, that’s breeding that confidence. What I shared before and taking action to do those kinds of things, to me, I had heard it, it’s not my words, but someone had said action absorbs anxiety. I was anxious coming in here. This is a new format for me. I’ve done live events in other different ways, but setting all this equipment up and coordinating with Tina and all these things, I was constantly moving and doing and it was absorbing my anxiety. I was anxious about it.
At the end of the day, just keeping yourself moving, keeping yourself engaged will take some of that anxiety that you’re feeling going into a test. Go for a run. Get some exercise, take a break, do something, whatever it is, but keep yourself active and moving when you’re starting to feel a little overwhelmed from the situation or a little nervous. You’re about to go into a job interview. Can you do some deep breaths? Can you do something that will relieve that? Keep moving. I think you’ll find that a lot of that anxiety is going to knowing yourself and also just giving yourself that time to absorb some of that anxiousness that you’re feeling.
That’s a great tip. I’m curious, since we’re talking about difficult conversations, feedback, this is a great exchange, what would you say is the hardest thing you’ve done in life?
You kept going. You showed resiliency, you didn’t get knocked down, you’ve got back up. Get knocked down, get back up. You keep going, keep moving forward.
Is there something that you all are dealing with right now that’s super hard that either Rick or I could help you with? Connect you with someone?
Sound it out, whiteboard it.
Anything? That’s your chance. You get help, you get free help. Help can be expensive. I know.
Network Building: You will enjoy the moment if you treat the practice like the real thing.
I would treat practice like the actual game. Any opportunities, the more chances right now that we have that I’m getting to talk to you guys, this is sharpening my ability and skill to communicate for my next podcast and the next guest and learning about what you are. I think treating practice, like let’s say homework as practice, to actually treat that like the quiz, like the test, and treat it all with the same respect.
I think what you’re going to find is that ultimately, for me, feeds into the confidence. I get nervous about things I don’t feel prepared for. If I’m going into a fundraiser, my role with fundraising is advising these nonprofits on how to raise money in an event live event way. How to sell tickets, the order of events that what we call the run of show the timeline.
I’m a licensed auctioneer. I do that as well. If I don’t know that mission inside and out and I don’t know the purpose of where those dollars are going and how they’re benefiting, I get anxious, I get nervous. What if someone asks me, “What does this money go towards? Why should I give?” Treat the practice, the homework, like the performance, like the actual test or like the quiz because you’re going to find that you’re could not only be able to relax and settle in, but you’re going to be able to enjoy the time. I’m going to be able to enjoy these events and network and socialize hands in the pockets. I’m not like on my phone with crib notes like, “What do they do and how much money were we trying to raise?”
I really treat my preparation like the actual performance itself. Don’t take these things. For my kids’ school, they have summative, informative and homework and it’s weighted differently, 70% and 20% or 25% and 5%. What I notice with her work is her worst grades are in the homework because it’s only 5% of the grade. What about the other 25% and the 70%? She rises above and I think that’s great, but that’s bringing her down. That 5% homework grade is bringing down that overall grade for her.
She’s not practicing like she’s performing for the test and getting herself ready and her confidence gets hit because I have to sit down, “Susanna, come here. I know you’re better than this. I’ve seen you, you’re smart.” All straight A’s in seventh grade and she’s in eighth now. Didn’t get a B, all a’s. Now I’m starting to see grades that are starting to slip. “Dad, I can turn it in later. It’s not that important,” and that’s not the point. I think you’ll find yourself enjoying the moment and being a better executor of that performance if you treat that practice like the real thing.
All right, we are coming up on time. I know you have busy lives. Connect with both Rick Bernstein and myself, Tina Fox on LinkedIn. Every class I ask, I only get 10% of those at LinkedIn. LinkedIn with us. Be one of the ones that do it because you never know where your connections will land you. I wish you the best of luck here at JMU. I’m sure I will see you in the hallways at Cobb and do great things out there.
These experiences, combined with a diverse skill set honed on stage, in the recording booth, and consulting alongside hundreds of organizations, have distinguished Rick as a unique entertainment and fundraising service provider.
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