[E164] Always Make It Personal with Roxana Radulescu – Part 1 of 4

Jason: Welcome to the sales experience podcast. My name is Jason Cutter, and in today’s episode I have Roxanna Radulesco. Did I say that right? Alright, perfect. Now her company is called all personal and as the founder, she is a consultant, trainer, master coach. You know somebody at the gym would help someone to get in shape and meet their goals. She works with companies to help with everything from feedback and communication and coaching, mentoring managers, executives, Roxanna officially, welcome to the sales experience podcast.

Roxana: Thank you so much for having me and for this introduction.

Jason: Yeah, and all the way from Canada, my second Canadian guest on season two, which I’m super excited. I had one on season one and now I have two on season two so far and I’m super excited and I believe you have the title of being the first Ted X speaker I’ve ever heard on the podcast. So tell me a little bit about that experience as a total side note and if anyone wants to fast forward to the sales stuff you can, but I’m super curious like how did that go? As you know for the Ted talk, the prep and then doing it.

Roxana: Yeah. Well it’s actually now that you’re saying that it’s actually a little bit connected to selling because you have to fill in a form and let people know where you want to talk about before they accept you to speak for any TEDx events. So, and it has to be inline with their theme, with what other speakers want to talk about. So you have to be a good fit for their team. Right. So there’s a lot, there is a selling element in that as well. You have to be really clear of what you’re offering and what you can help them with and what your big idea is and how you’re or your big idea is going to help them have a great event. So that I, and the rest is just you. I what I did is just search for TEDx events and I started applying as a speaker and then these guys got back to me and then we had a conversation about more in depth of what I wanted to talk about and then they said, yeah, okay. It would be happy to have you be a part of our sneaker team. So that’s how it went for me. And then going there, it was here in Canada, in Chatham, Kent. We went there and evening before the actual event and had a little prep,

Roxana: uh, before the event. So for me it was the lights coming into my eyes. Oh my God. And that they made me forget what I was supposed to say in the evening before I was like, Oh my God, if this is going to happen to me tomorrow, I will blank out and I will not say a word. So I went back to the hotel and I rehearsed with a lamb. I didn’t just turn it, I was just put it in my, the light in my eyes. And that’s how I rehearsed that whole evening so that I get more comfortable with the light being in my eyes. And that’s how I did it. The next day. It went well

Jason: Like being interrogated in the movies where they’re interrogating a witness or somebody that’s been, yeah.

Roxana: this is, I mean, you know what, and it’s putting that kind of pressure and stress on yourself before you actually go there and experience the pressure and the stress of the actual events. So you have to get comfortable a little bit with the uncomfortable before it starts being more uncomfortable cause that’s when you can manage it properly. Otherwise it’s going to be overwhelming.

Jason: Which I think, you know, like anything in life, right? This is a sales podcast helping sales people and sales leaders, but it’s like that with anything, whether it’s a TEDx talk or a sales presentation or anything else that you’re doing for the first time, there’s kind of the practice, the preseason, there’s what you think will happen in your mind. There’s all of your prep and then there’s once it actually happens, in my experience, a lot of that goes out the window, especially the first time you really do it. And so yeah, it’s about, I’m glad they got to put you on the stage and put you under that and then basically show you what it’s really going to be like instead of that being the first time. A lot of people do something for the first time they jump into it and then it’s terrible that first time.

Roxana: Yeah, I, I’m happy this happened. And because I do believe preparation goes a long way. It’s everything in life and everything you do it the, the prep is crucial. So for me that was very important to know what it feels like.

Jason: Yeah. Well, and that’s what’s interesting too, and a lot of salespeople don’t realize this as, and I make the correlation with a sports is that what you see on the field, what you see on the Ted talk stage, what you see from a true professional salesperson is only a small percentage of what went into that. Right? Like a, you know, a sports team playing on the field or on a court may, that might be five or 10% of their week or of their time spent and crap. And then that’s what you see and everyone thinks, okay, you just show up and do it. But there’s some prep and uh, and getting ready for it.

Roxana: Yeah, for sure. A lot of friends, three minutes of performance, that’s not, that’s not going to give you the amount of preparation that comes with it.

Jason: Nope. Nope. You just got to do it. Now let’s get to a different topic. Something I want to really start our conversation off is with talking about your podcast. So it’s called all personal, just like your brand and your business. And I love your focus and this is something I want to talk about where generally the old mantra is it’s not personal, it’s business, right? And then you take a different approach, which it’s basically all personal and nothing is just, isn’t this? Which I think is a huge thing anywhere within the org chart within the chain with for salespeople, business owners, managers, whatever. And so I love that. That’s your focus about it being all personal.

Roxana: Yeah, it is because, and for me it’s, and again, talking about preparation. So I’ve been doing learning and development for the past. I don’t know more than 10 years now and I’ve seen people who had this learning focus. You have this growth focus and who really what. They were very good at what their passion was and what they wanted to improve and what they needed to improve to get them to the next level. These are the kinds of people that grew so much either as part of the same company or going out and becoming business owners or working for somebody else. But this is the kind of personal skills muscles that they worked on and that kind of work that they did on themselves was immediately visible in their professional environment in how they grew as professionals. You’ll never grow just as a professional. You also need to grow personally and you never grow just personally. That will take you to the next level in your professional life as well. 

Roxana: That’s what bothered me a lot where yeah, you just leave your personal sales at home while you’re at work and then coming back from work, you leave work behind and then you’re at home. It doesn’t work because it takes a lot of energy and a lot of feelings and a lot of emotions and all of the thought processes, they do not stop the moment that we just come in, uh, back home or are we just entered the office environment, they are our thoughts, everything. We are, all of our belief systems, all of our values, everything we are just goes with us everywhere we go. So it cannot work that way on the longterm, right. This is why I say it’s all personal and nothing is just business because it’s all about we are and what we want from us and where we want to go.

Jason: And I think one of the keys that I’ve seen, and I, I know I stick with this for myself and I try to encourage other people to do this as well, is that you’re also not two different people, right? Like you’re talking about, you know when you leave work, all of that stuff is still in your head and it’s still going with you. Obviously when things are going great, it’s easier to compartmentalize because they’re like, work was great. Now I’m going to go with my personal life. My personal life is great. It’s not going to carry over into work just because I clocked in or I showed up for work. When things are going bad or negative, then it’s hard to separate and leave it. I know from my own experience like that can be really hard, but then there’s also the fact that everyone, you are who you are.

Jason: Some people try to pretend and be something different, act a different way, and truly come from a different place when they’re at work versus when they’re in their personal life versus when they’re at a club or a sport or activity, whatever that might be like. And so I think I firmly believe that you are who you are and when you try to pretend to be two different people, it doesn’t work because you can’t maintain that longterm. Versus if you just are who you are and you’re authentic and you’re being the person that you want to be and you like being, it will work or it won’t work in whatever relationships and career you have. And you know you’ve got to find the right place.

Roxana: Exactly. And you know what? It’s different. Yeah, it’s true. You have different kinds of relationships with people that you interact with. The relationship is not, it’s not going to work in the same way with everybody. Right. Because we all have different personalities. We interact differently with one another. And basically I’m going to be maybe speaking with you, we even right now as we speak, maybe differently than I would be speaking when I am a coach and I’m just coaching one of my clients for instance. Right? But that doesn’t mean that I forget everything I am in between right now when we speak, I will still keep my beliefs and my values in place and talk to you coming from that place, right? I’m not gonna try to be somebody that I’m not because it does take and honestly I do appreciate people who can do it because it does take a lot of effort to do that. It’s just that on the long run it doesn’t work because it’s, it just gets you exhausted.

Jason: All right. That’s it for part one of my conversation with Roxana. Please make sure to go to cutterconsultinggroup.com/podcast where you can find this episode with the transcripts and all of Roxana’s links for where you can find her. So for her website, for LinkedIn, for the Ted talk that she did, all of that is amazing. And please make sure to support her, check out her information, especially if you need anything for your business or your team regarding communication, especially if you’re in Canada, which is where she’s at. But she is amazing and we had a lot of fun on this conversation. So make sure to check out part two tomorrow. And as always, keep in mind that everything in life is sales and people remember the experience you gave them.