Breaking your unhealthy relationship with sales, with Ryann Dowdy

What’s the first thought that comes to mind when you hear the word “sales”?  Is it an awful car-buying experience? Maybe all the times you answer the phone because it could be a client…but it’s someone trying to sell you an extended warranty?  Maybe all the MLMs you’ve been asked to join? So many of us have been sold things we just don’t need, so there’s no wonder why we have a negative relationship with sales.

Ryann Dowdy is the co-founder of the Social Sellers Academy, and co-host of the Daily Sales on Demand for CEOs Podcast.

Transcript

Ryann Dowdy: My most successful launch of that coaching program at the time, I was literally wearing Georgia, because she was like six weeks old. I didn’t do it to be inspirational. I was doing it for survival, but it wound up inspiring a lot of people. Like if this woman can do this, so can I?

Courtney Hopper: Welcome to Hustle and Gather a podcast about inspiring the everyday entrepreneur to take the leap. I’m Dana. And I’m Courtney. And we are two sisters who have started multiple businesses together. And yes, it is as messy as you think. We know that starting a business isn’t easy.

Dana Kadwell: We’ve done it four times. And on this show, we talked about the ups and downs of the hustle and the reward at the end of the journey. 

Courtney Hopper: And we love helping small businesses succeed whether that is through our venue consulting, speaking or team training, we love to motivate others to take that big leap.

Dana Kadwell: Or you could just use our misadventures to normalize the crazy that is being an entrepreneur because every entrepreneur makes mistakes. 

Courtney Hopper: But we like to call those unsuccessful attempts around here. 

Dana Kadwell: And as we know, it’s just part of the process. And today we’re learning from sales expert Ryann Dowdy. Ryann is the owner of Social Sellers Academy where she helped seven and eight figure CEOs generate daily sales on demand without more of their time by building and training high performing sales teams. Ryann is passionate about helping successful business owners take back control of the revenue in their business, their time and their freedom. She’s on a mission to change the lives of CEOs by giving them back their time, financial peace and the ability to multiply their revenue. Ryann, welcome to Hustle and Gather.

Ryann Dowdy: Hello, hello. I’m excited to be here.

Dana Kadwell: We’re excited to have you.

Courtney Hopper: I know Courtney said we were reading it. She’s like we need to hire this. 

Dana Kadwell: We need to hire, Ryann.

Courtney Hopper: We need our time back.

Dana Kadwell: We’re there. We’re in the seven to eight figure CEO that doesn’t have time. 

Courtney Hopper: We have no time.

Ryann Dowdy: Yeah, I don’t know a lot of them that do if I’m on it.

Dana Kadwell: Okay, man. 

Courtney Hopper: Wow, we are so excited to have you and we just saw yesterday for your podcast. So we’re excited to continue the conversation. But we’d love to hear a little bit about your background and kind of where like, what led you to start your own business?

Ryann Dowdy: Yeah. So if you take it all the way back, I should never intended to be an entrepreneur. I started in sales right out of college, which was actually an accident as well. I studied PR in college, and I interned in a PR firm in Manhattan. And I was like, this is amazing. This is what I’m going to do. And then I moved to Orlando, Florida. And there’s not nearly as many PR firms in Orlando, Florida as there is in New York City. So as you can imagine, I struggled to find a job. And but I landed a sales job because those were plenty. And I kind of learned that sales and PR were extremely similar except for when somebody said yes, in sales, you got paid commission, and I was like, Oh, this is fun. So I was off to the races. I started selling radio advertising at the age of 21 and stayed there for a long time basically have sold any form of marketing that has ever existed. I believe that to be true to date today. I’m sure at some point, something’s going to happen that I haven’t done yet.

Full Episode Transcript

Hustle and Gather is hosted by Courtney Hopper and Dana Kadwell, and is produced by Earfluence.  Courtney and Dana’s hustles include C&D Events, Hustle and Gather, and The Bradford Wedding Venue.

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