“The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it Intuition or what you will, the solution comes to you, and you don’t know how or why.”
~ Albert Einstein ~
For a long time, I had a vision board that sat on a ledge in my office with a picture of the cover of the first edition of my book Selling with Intention on it. Under the picture was the word ‘bestseller.’
Yes, I had a deep desire to have Selling with Intention become a bestseller because I knew that would mean that the book has impacted a lot of people. No, I didn’t know if or how it could even happen.
However, by putting it on the vision board, there was a small part of me that held onto the belief that it was possible.
Over the months and years, I felt pretty hopeless because my little red copy of Selling with Intention was not moving very quickly toward becoming a bestseller. Or that’s what it felt like.
And then a shift happened – and it happened at light speed.
The Synchronistic Journey Begins
When I was five years old, an angel appeared next to my bed at the top of my Sesame Street curtains. She looked like a doll-sized human with wings, perched on the top of my curtains, sort of like the angel that goes on top of the Christmas tree. I remember thinking that I was dreaming, or hoping that I was dreaming, and I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, the angel was still there. I told my mom about it the next day, and I was so convincing that she actually became worried about me and thought I might be hallucinating or something. If I hadn’t shared with her, I am sure I would have eventually believed that it never happened, that it was just a dream. But to this day, she still emphasizes how convinced I was, and I can still picture the angel so clearly.
At the time, my parents were going through a divorce, and I believe the angel was sent to let me know that I was not alone. We are never alone, and we are always being looked after. Since that day, angels have held a special place in my heart, and now I can feel their presence when something difficult is happening in my life, and especially when I am in the flow of synchronicity.
Most faiths embrace angels. They are found throughout the Christian Bible as well as other religious traditions. According to a 2011 Associated Press-GfK poll, 77 percent of adults believe that angels are real. I grew up in a wonderful Lutheran church in Minnesota, and I remember staring with wonder at the angels on the stained glass windows in church. I believed in angels, and my desire was that they would appear to me like they did to others in the Bible. But after seeing the one as a child, I never saw angels again, and yet I have often felt their presence when I have needed them the most.
So, why am I talking about angels in a book about selling? I am beginning there because my journey into the magical world of quantum physics began there. In my experience, synchronicity gets a lot of help from the quantum realm that is all around us, all of the time. This is the realm where the unseen universal laws are always at play – like gravity. We can’t see gravity, but we know it is operating, even when we are not conscious of it.
If you are reading this book, you probably already know about synchronicity and have experienced it at some level. You probably also know that it isn’t by coincidence that you are reading this book.
As I have grown my sales coaching and training business, I have witnessed the power of synchronicity over and over again in my own business as well as in my clients’ businesses. What I’ve noticed is that when my clients have complete clarity and faith in their mission and goals, miracles begin to happen. Synchronistic events unfold easily and without a lot of effort. Many of my clients have moved from working extra hard to a place of ease, grace, and flow.
My mission is to help entrepreneurs and sales professionals like you understand the power of quantum physics and step into the flow of synchronicity that will allow your business to flourish and grow with less stress and no forced effort. Just inspired action. By doing that, you will be selling with synchronicity, and clients will just seem to show up out of thin air.
What I know is that when entrepreneurs and sales professionals experience prosperity, they share it with others and the world experiences a giant domino effect. I dream of a world that holds prosperity for all – whatever that means for them.
You are an important part of my plan. Are you ready to take this journey with me?
Farm Life
I grew up on a small family farm in Minnesota. We farmed sixty acres that my grandparents had passed down to my dad. Later, my dad purchased another twenty acres down by the lake, where he lives with my stepmother to this day.
Growing up on the farm was hard work, and still I enjoyed the daily commitments and chores. Well, most of the time! There’s something special about a working farm. From the animals’ expectations of care in the morning to the solitude of walking the farm at night, it was a pretty magical experience. I was also lucky enough to have ponies that I trained and rode. Some of my fondest memories from my childhood include riding my ponies through wheat fields after they’d just been cut and cornfields right after harvest. Fall was my favorite time of year.
I grew up in the eighties, and it wasn’t the best time to be farming. During that time, many of the small family farms went by the wayside because they simply could no longer compete with the big corporate farmers. Today, the family farm seems to be experiencing a resurgence as we embrace the new era of organic farming and working more closely with the earth.
Because of their struggles, my parents, who hadn’t gone to college, told my older brothers and me that we would get a good education and good jobs. There was a part of me that realized I probably wouldn’t be farming, and my heart broke a little bit because I knew that I would miss this way of life. Yet I am so grateful that my parents engrained that in me at such a young age.
Knowing that I was expected to continue my education, I did well in elementary school and high school, enjoying most aspects of school. As I began to think about what I’d like to do with my future, I considered becoming a veterinarian so I could stay close to the farm. Unfortunately, I came to realize pretty quickly that being a veterinarian would require me to handle seeing blood, and that wasn’t going to happen. I’m pretty squeamish! So I started investigating other jobs.
Since my parents had always told me I’d be a great lawyer, it was the first possibility I considered. I wasn’t really sure why they thought I would be good at it, but maybe it’s because I was good at arguing! It sounded like a noble profession, and I thought it would provide me with a stable future, so the thought started to grow.
Colorado
After high school, I had the opportunity to attend St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. St. Olaf is a lovely liberal arts college, and I enjoyed my time there, learning and meeting life-long friends. Yet when I finished college, I felt really lost, not knowing what was the next best step to take, even after taking every career test possible in St. Olaf’s career development center. My plan was to still go to law school. However, whenever I tried studying for the LSAT, I felt empty. A part of me knew that it wasn’t the right path, but I didn’t listen.
About that same time, I picked up a book called The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield. The premise of the book is that an ancient manuscript is found that contains nine powerful insights about life. The book emphasizes making connections between events, using your intuition, and more, while following a fictional fast-paced story of what happens once this manuscript is discovered. Redfield’s thoughts on synchronicity still echo in my mind, “Mysterious coincidences cause the reconsideration of the inherent mystery that surrounds our individual lives on this planet.”After I read Redfield’s book, I started to recognize the coincidences that showed up, and I no longer took them for granted. I started to watch for signposts along my journey, and yet I still felt pretty lost.
One night, I was eating dinner with two of my girlfriends. We were enjoying our meals and a couple of drinks when out of the blue, we decided to write down the top three places we would all want to move if there were no obstacles.
We wrote in silence for a few minutes and then set our lists in the middle of the table. We all laughed out loud when we saw that Colorado was on all of our lists. California was also on my list, but I didn’t put too much thought into it. Staring at Colorado on all of our lists, I felt my heart soar. I didn’t want to move away from my family, but there was something inside me that said, “Go.” I knew that I had to move.
Was it just a coincidence that we all wrote Colorado on our napkins that night? Or, was synchronicity at play—outside forces helping us to get on our paths?
A month later, my friend Jana and I packed our belongings in a truck and drove to Boulder, Colorado. We were lucky enough to be invited to live with Jana’s aunt and uncle in their beautiful home in the mountains of Boulder. They told us we could live there for a month or longer for free. Can you imagine? What a gift!
Jana and I had both been transferred from our jobs at Pier One Imports in Burnsville, Minnesota, to our new jobs at the Pier One in Boulder, Colorado. We were making $6.25 per hour, which felt like a lot to me after working in cafés and doing odd jobs at small farms back in Minnesota.
Still focused on going to law school, I knew that if I was going to be able to afford it, I needed to get a job that paid me more! Thinking back to the results of the career development tests I had taken – “you would be ‘good’ in sales and marketing” – I wondered if I might be able to get a job in outside sales that would then pay my way through law school. The light bulb went on, and I committed to get a job in outside sales.
In the moment I made the decision, something shifted inside of me, and I felt a strong energy surge through my tailbone. I didn’t understand it at the time, but when I look back, I believe that the decision allowed my vibration to shift, and I had complete faith that a job in outside sales was going to show up. A deep knowing and a new confidence about what was going to unfold washed over me.
A few weeks later, I was helping a woman through the checkout line at Pier One Imports, and we started chatting. She told me that she worked for an international computer training and consulting company and asked about me. I told her I had just moved to Colorado and was headed to Law School, as soon as I could figure out how to pay for it. When I mentioned that I was looking for a job in outside sales to help, she said, “You know, we are hiring new sales people in our Denver office. You should interview.”
What? Did I hear her correctly? Yes, I had. I quickly grabbed a pen and a piece of paper, and wrote down all of the details. Within a few days, I interviewed and was hired immediately – the last sales person they hired during that time. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
The first eight months were painful! I was terrible at selling, and I dreaded going to work every day. I hated filling out the tic sheets of all of the calls that I’d made. I felt depressed because I had taken this journey with the idea that it would help me pay for law school, but I wasn’t passionate about selling or technology. Being honest with my feelings about the new job forced me to be really truthful with myself with regards to my plan, and I realized that law school probably wasn’t my dream either. I felt lost and dreamless.
At the time, I was selling into the government territory in Denver. Each day was a huge struggle, and I couldn’t seem to get any traction. I dreamed of doing something else, yet I couldn’t fathom what it would be.
There was a part of me that wanted to be an author “someday,” but that seemed so far from my reality that I would immediately dismiss it. Where did that idea even come from? I mean, I loved reading books, but who was I to write my own book?
Growing up on the farm gave me strong values and a level of persistence that most of my peers didn’t have. Even though I dreaded picking up the phone and calling prospects, I did it anyway. I persevered. After all, throwing hay bales under a hot tin roof was hard work. Picking up the phone wasn’t hard, just uncomfortable. I was starting to accept that this sales job was really all about living outside my comfort zone, and there was a part of me that believed that there must be a better way…an easier way to sell.
Since I had no idea what else I would do, I decided to make the best of the situation. I knew that if I did well in sales, I could make a lot of money, and money would at least give me options, whether or not I went to law school. I recommitted to my sales goals and started working hard every day. Within a few months I had grown my sales to a steady $40,000.00 per month. I thought it was okay, but felt like I still had a long ways to go. Over time, though, selling was starting to get easier.
My confidence was growing along with my commission checks. As my confidence grew, I began to approach my clients in a new way. Although we were required to make 100 phone calls every day before we could leave, I began to see how making fewer calls of higher quality (more time on the phone) was actually more effective.
I had read every sales book that I could get my hands on. They all taught structured ways of selling that just didn’t resonate with me. It seemed to me that someone had to lose (the client) so that I would win (and get the commission). That felt “off” to me. Inside I was screaming, “There must be a better way!”
At that time, Wayne Dyer’s book The Power of Intention found its way into my life. Synchronicity was at work! I started to apply the idea of intention to the sales process, and things suddenly started to flow. My intention shifted from selling to serving and solving problems for my prospects. When I called them, they felt my positive intention. When I met with them, I knew they would become my client if I could solve their problem. Brian Tracy’s book The Psychology of Selling gave me extra insight into how people think and how to help them overcome their pain and problems. Little did I know that my first book Selling with Intention was being born, although I wouldn’t write it until years later.
Eight months into my new outside sales job, my manager asked to meet with me. He asked me how I thought I was doing. I said, “Okay,” thinking that I was in trouble.
“You did much better than we thought you were going to do, so much so that we were wondering if you would be interested in taking on a new territory in Colorado Springs? We just opened a new office down there, and we need someone to run it.”
After saying “no” a couple of times because I didn’t want to move, I finally said “yes” because I believed it was my next step. In some ways, I felt like I had outgrown that office, and I wanted to take the next step. I wanted to have the opportunity to grow something “on my own,” without anyone looking over my shoulder. My fierce independence and desire to “be the best” made me want to expand. My entrepreneurial spirit had been born.
Colorado Springs
For an entire year, I drove from Denver to Colorado Springs every day because I was too stubborn to move. Through snow and fog, over black ice, and through the woods, I drove myself down to an empty office, got on the phone, and made calls. Cold calls. I remember a lot of long, lonely, dark days when I first arrived.
If you’ve ever made cold calls, then you will understand the depths of my pain for the first six months! Since I was my own boss in the office at that time, it was up to me to set my own calling goals and to achieve those goals on a daily basis. My managers didn’t seem as interested in the number of calls I was making anymore. They knew I made the calls. Now they were more interested in my results and my profit and loss statements.
My results just kept getting better and better because I was selling with intention and using the power synchronicity. Before I picked up the phone I set my intention to get the appointment. Before the appointment, I set my intention that I would close the sale. And so I did. In one year, we grew that office to a million dollars in annual revenue. Not bad for a farm girl from Minnesota.
At the end of that year, my manager met with me in my office and asked me how I thought I was doing. As usual, I thought I was in trouble. Turns out, I wasn’t. They wanted to offer me a promotion.
“You did so much better than we thought you were going to do. We have an opportunity for you to take on a failing branch in Southern California. Want to go?”
My initial reaction was “No!” I didn’t want to leave my friends in Colorado. Then I thought about it and saw what an incredible opportunity it really was. There was something about California that really pulled me. I flashed back to the time in Minnesota when my girlfriends and I all wrote Colorado on our napkins, and I had also written California. This really intrigued me. Without thinking about it too much more, I was on a flight with my boyfriend Tim (my husband today) to California. Before I knew it, I was being introduced as the new branch manager.
California
There is something magical about California that makes me feel like I can breathe. Perhaps it is the peaceful mountains that I can see in nearly every direction or the expansiveness of the Pacific Ocean with a turn of my head to the West. Whatever it is, exhaling is easy. When I finally started to get settled in California, I wondered if I would ever leave.
So far, I haven’t.
Taking over a failing branch in Santa Ana, California wasn’t easy, but I took my intention with me. In fact, I set my intention to become the President of the company shortly after arriving. (I wrote about this more extensively in One Great Goal.) Over the course of three years, we grew that office from about $200,000 per month to over $3,000,000 in one month with only five sales people. It was an amazing ride, and it was possible because we were practicing the principles of Selling with Intention, even though I didn’t know that yet.
When I look back, we were also deep into the seven synchronistic shifts. I just didn’t understand those yet either. We were clear on what we wanted. I was open to the idea that more powerful forces were at play. I knew how much money I wanted to show up (and it did!). I believed in myself. I surrounded myself with a strong team. I stepped up to be the leader of the company. And I kept the faith. Every day. And it worked.
When we hit $3,000,000 in one month, it was unheard of at that time. An average branch in a large market was selling about $300,000 per month. Why and how were we able to sell ten times that?
I believe it was through the power of intention and synchronicity.
Every time I set a new sales goal for the team, they rose to the occasion, and amazing events and synchronicities would unfold to allow that to happen. They met the right people. We created new classes. It just kept flowing.
Guard Your “Qwiffs”
My journey only got easier over the years because I read books with powerful information that showed me what was really possible. Catherine Ponder shared in Secret of Unlimited Prosperity: “Begin now to open your mind to the unlimited supply of the universe that is yours by Divine right…” When I first read her book, I read and reread that sentence many times. I wrote it down so I could look at it every day. I read it again and again until it stuck in my subconscious. As my income increased substantially, I started to really believe it. The truth is that unlimited prosperity is available for you, too!
Napoleon Hill, in his famous bestseller Think and Grow Rich, shared the importance of focused thought, “First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.” Reading this sentence was another “aha moment” for me. Again, I read it over and over until I started to get it at a deep level. My thoughts were created in my imagination, and the more creative I was, the easier it was to create my reality. Desire and imagination led to inspired action. As long as I took inspired action based on what I wanted to create, things started to happen—quickly.
Then another powerful book showed up. The Intention Experiment by Lynne McTaggart captured the results of her work with visionary scientists who have studied the power of intention. As I read her book, I was literally jumping up and down screaming because everything she talked about confirmed what I had written about in Selling with Intention: When you choose the result ahead of time, it happens! McTaggart shared that whether it was through prayer, meditation, or simply thought, intention works.
We’ve heard a lot about the Law of Attraction over the past few years, especially because of the hit movie The Secret. In spite of its title, we discovered that people have known about the Law of Attraction for centuries, so I guess it wasn’t really a big secret. However, for modern folks like us, it was kind of a secret. Well, at least it wasn’t talked about in most of the business circles I was in or even personal circles. I was taught that “hard work leads to results,” not thoughts, and that if I worked hard, eventually I would be successful; and yet that belief had been shattered over the years by the books I read and the powerful experiences I’d had.
One of my favorite new books The Science Behind the Secret: Decoding the Law of Attraction by Dr. Travis S. Taylor shows us how The Secret actually confirms what the world of quantum physics tells us. When a well-known scientist confirms that there is scientific proof that the Universe is really taking us on a wild ride, I pay attention.
Specifically, Dr. Taylor says that “qwiffs” are quantum particles pregnant with possibility, which changes based on your observation. What?!? Yes, I know. Here’s his explanation:
“But no matter what the reality is at any given instant, when you have a new thought, you are setting up a new quantum state. With each thought, a new qwiff is generated that begins interacting throughout the universe. Your new thought continues to interact with the universe and with other qwiffs in the universe that are similar to it until a new entangled and common qwiff ‘coheres’ and becomes the next instant’s reality. This is the essence and the heart of The Secret.”
So what does that mean for you and me? It means that we need to guard our thoughts, carefully, which I’ve been teaching for years. I just didn’t realize how scientific it was! I always tell my clients to be careful what they are thinking about their prospects just in case they can “hear” your fears or doubts because, at some level, I believe they can. Taylor confirmed this inkling as well:
“What you have to do is learn to train your thoughts so that you don’t send out qwiffs through the universe that cohere with other qwiffs that in turn generate the next reality that might be undesirable.”
Guard your qwiffs.
Synchronicity Shuts the Door
On September 11, 2001, everything changed for our world, our country, and our company. Sales dropped overnight, and we started to struggle—as did just about every other computer training and consulting company. Companies no longer wanted to send their employees to training, they didn’t want them to fly, or they just wanted to buckle down because of the changes in business. People were running on fear, sitting on their dollars, wondering what tragedy would happen next.
In 2003, the company was sold off. I was deeply saddened by how quickly it all ended. I started interviewing for other positions, but no one seemed to believe that I could run another company. Something about my youth and lack of twenty years of experience. The recruiters suggested that I look into taking on running divisions in large corporations, but that didn’t sound interesting to me.
My season with this company was over, and I was about to embark on a new season. There was a deep desire that was burning in my belly. I was in the “In Between” (more on that later), having finished with the company. I was in the often-painful place of wondering what was coming up next. Instead of fighting it, I leaned into the “In Between,” I’m not saying it wasn’t painful, but I leaned into it. Soon, the next season started, when one of the recruiters sarcastically said, “Why don’t you just start your own company?”
I could have taken that comment the wrong way. I didn’t. I was simply being redirected on my journey. Remember? Signposts.
So I did. With as much intention as I could muster and synchronicity on my side, I launched that new company.
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