Anne Bibb
Welcome back to Unexpected Journey, and Happy International Women’s Day. Today we have Heidi who is the Senior Vice President at Arise. She’s also the founder and CEO of GirlzwhoSell and the Author of Heels to Deals (https://amzn.to/3yk5OuX) she is just all around women empowerment. Welcome, Heidi,

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
thank you so much into the audience. Woohoo, Happy Women’s International Women’s Day. This is Women’s Day. So I don’t know in my book. But

Anne Bibb
yeah, it is always Women’s Day. This is just the one day that we really actually get to kind of throw it all out there and say, you know, gay. So, Heidi, you have been an inspiration to so many women in the BPO. Industry. You’ve been in this industry for just a minute. Just a hot minute.

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
Yeah, showing my age. I think I’m going on just over 35 years, actually. So seeing a lot of change.

Anne Bibb
You’ve seen a lot of change. And not just in the BPO industry. But in sales in the BPO industry 100% which is not the easiest department to be in. What it’s like what, why? Why, why?

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
Why do I do what I do? Yeah, I mean, there’s been a real evolution. I mean, you know, it still continues, particularly in the sales area to be male dominated. But, you know, rewind 35 years ago, you know, I was deaf. Definitely, quite frequently, the only woman in the room, from my perspective, though, is, when you’re the only woman in the room, guess what, you’re the only woman in the room. And to me that was always my competitive differentiator was to actually leverage my femininity and, and, you know, to use that as a competitive advantage. Why I’m in sales? Well, you know, there’s, you know, there’s a lot of reasons. One, I love my job, I absolutely love working with the amazing clients and prospects that I get to work with. I really enjoy analyzing business challenges and coming up with solutions to those challenges. Over the years, I’ve seen the industry evolve from just, you know, US domestic support to moving to Canada, and then who would have even imagined that we would be doing business around the globe, like we are today. So I’ve been very blessed to have travelled all over the world, working with amazing individuals from different cultures. And I’ve really, really enjoyed that a lot. So and of course, you know, there is the fact that salespeople make a lot of money if you’re good at it. So, you know, gaining financial independence and being able to support my family, I vote I’ve, for the last 25 years, been the primary breadwinner for my, for my family, my husband was the stay at home, dad. So yeah, so those are just some of the reasons, but it’s always keeping me challenged. And, and always learning. So love it.

Anne Bibb
You know, that’s something you and I have in common is that we’ve both been the primary breadwinner or husbands were stay at home dads. And it’s interesting how this industry has allowed us to be able to do that. Yeah, I

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
think there, you know, there is a lot of flexibility, particularly when you’re in sales, right? I think operation, you’re tethered more, you know, particularly if you’re in brick and mortar center, to, you know, more of a of a single location. But in sales, you know, I’m, you know, traveling all over, I’m going to well, at least pre pandemic going, you know, and doing site visit at an individual locations or, you know, or, you know, going to client locations and having meetings. But what I think what I love about arise and sort of what they’ve done over the last 28 years is they have the vision that, you know, the gig economy is really the future of work, the foundation of the organization was built on remote and virtual support. And back 28 years ago, imagine that that was incredibly visited visionary, and with the, you know, a core pillar of, you know, diversity, equity and inclusion. So, you know, I think I, it’s interesting to see the evolution of the BPO industry over the last 35 years. But I do believe that, and I’ll just do the pitch, that gig CX is really the future of a BPO we’re not tethered by brick and mortar. You know, anymore, we’re just not.

Anne Bibb
So that actually leads me to one of the big questions that I wanted to ask you. And that is, you’ve worked for a lot about tortures that were w two based organizations. And now you work for a rise, which is a gig economy. Organization. It’s a it’s a 1099 organization. And it those are two very different types of outsourcing organizations. And I would love to hear your thoughts and you know, you just said it, gig CX it’s the future. Tell me why give me more I’d really want to understand because we all know about Uber, we know about Lyft we know about a lot of these gig organizations. And now we see a rise really rising up in that gig CX outsourcing world.

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
Yeah, I think you know, we already had we had already had the vision, you know, many years ago, but I think that it was amplified with the pandemic because all companies were forced to pivot and transition there were back into a virtual environment. And whether they were doing it in outsourcing and doing it in a traditional BPO, or whether they had, whether they were doing internal support, you know, companies found out very quickly that they were not set up to deliver adequate customer experience and support in a virtual environment. And so, while we were already successful, our business exploded, you know, a lot of companies felt as though they could just lift and shift their traditional brick and mortar business, particularly around training and delivery, and then just move that into a virtual environment and quickly found out that that was just an absolute epic fail. So, you know, a lot of organizations came to us as they were trying to reinvent themselves. And, and, you know, I think really put us on on the map. The other thing is, is that, you know, as an outcome of the pandemic, and as you know, a lot of women were forced to leave the work the workplace, right, um, because of having to be at home, literally millions, I don’t know, the exact number. But I know, the last number I saw was over 2 million women were, you know, had moved out of the workforce. And these are incredibly talented, successful, professional women who have so much to offer. And so, you know, our business, as we look to, you know, grow and expand, we wanted to capitalize on this workforce that was now available, but still provide them with the level of flexibility that they needed in their lives, to be able to, you know, have, you know, work their, their lives and their overall responsibilities around, you know, around their personal life, right. And so our goal was to, and is to continue to put people into business, and to create workforce flexibility, so that they work when they want, how they want, where they want, on the accounts that they choose to work for. And I think that’s really why, you know, we are an incredible, you know, differentiated organization. The other thing is, is that, you know, we’re doing, you know, we were a virtual first company, I mean, the, our platform, our organization was built on the foundation of virtual support. So I think we do better. Even, you know, as other brick and mortar companies are beginning to augment their brick and mortar up operations with some remote support, I think, because we’ve done it for so many years, that we do do some really unique things, particularly around training and sourcing, and operationalizing our clients business, so and because of that, I mean, if you look at our, our support professionals, we have about 70,000 to 75,000 support professionals now, in the US, Canada and UK. We’re expanding into Jamaica, with the acquisition of our gaming group, we’re in India and South Africa, and we’re going to expand continue to expand into other nearshore and offshore locations with the gig gig CX business model. And I think the world is our oyster, right? Like there’s no I mean, we have no boundaries, so that we can go and hire the best talent wherever the best talent is. People love it. You know, a huge 83% of our support professionals are women. 53% are minority owned businesses. And what we’re doing is really good for the planet. So I don’t know why not arise.

Anne Bibb
You. You’ve said something a few times that I want to get a little clarity on and that is women owned businesses. Yeah. Helping them start businesses. But arises a business.

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
Yeah, but what we do is when someone comes in and demonstrate interest in becoming a support professional for ride, we actually put them in business. So we actually help them set up their LLC is there’s a lot I won’t get into all the complexities but there’s a lot of different ways that they can actually set up business set up their own businesses either is independent contractors, or they can set themselves up as a A LLC and then hire support professionals to work underneath them. But at the end of the day, that’s what we’re doing is, is we’re, you know, building entrepreneurs and giving people the opportunity to, to own their own business.

Anne Bibb
I was about to say, you’re, you’re helping people become entrepreneurs. That’s right. That’s right. God is something that I never knew about arise. Yeah,

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
I mean, that’s, that’s exactly how the business model works. And what’s what’s cool about it is that once they get their business set up, then they that we have, you know, we we, you know, basically let them know, what kind of client programs that we have available that we need support on. And then they set self select, based on what their interests are based, and, and really become brand ambassadors and evangelists of the brands that they that they support. So, you know, for example, you know, if we have a health care company, and you happen to be a nurse, that, but you don’t want to work the hours, you know, overnight shift, I’m just making this up, but just as an example, you know, you can come and work for us and pick to work for healthcare brands, right, that we support. And so there’s this immediate, you know, relationship between the support professional and the brand that they that they choose to work for, which ends up resulting in, you know, higher levels of retention, that are, you know, overall performance moving through learning curve more quickly, and those kinds of things versus a brick and mortar environment, you know, you may come in and, and you don’t necessarily have as a as an agent coming in, and interviewing, you don’t necessarily have the ability to pick which program you want to work for, it’d be like, we’re hiring for program X, you seem to fit the profile. Great. When can you start training.

Anne Bibb
So help me understand just a little bit more, if I am an individual who wants to start my own business. And even going a little bit further, I’ve got three kids, they’ve been unemployed since the pandemic, I know that they could help, you know, maybe work at home because they boomerang back. So, essentially, I could potentially have a four person company right here,

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
right off the bat,

Anne Bibb
you right off the bat,

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
we would set you up, you know what,

Anne Bibb
so what happens? You know, for somebody who’s watching this, this episode, right now, what happens is that individual, go to arise.com. Right, and then, and then what happens, and then there’s a, you

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
know, there’s a whole process that you that you go through, but essentially, the bottom line is, is that we help you through setting up your business. In that case, you know, you would have three employees, your kids that would work for you. We would we would say, all right. And there’s a series of gates that you need to go through which, you know, to get there. But once you get through all of that, and we we say okay, you know, here are, you know, five or 10 programs that we happen to be sourcing for right now. You know, which program would you be interested in, you go through and you’re like, Oh man, I really love Home Depot, right? Like I shop there all the time. It’s one of my favorite places. I would love you know, to support you know, Home Home Depot is an example. Then absolutely Select Home Depot, we we go through a series of qualifying qualifications, and then we execute a statement of work for you to for you or your employees to to provide support for Home Depot. Then what happens is we align 100% of our business model in our staffing with the with our client called distribution curve and we are unique versus a brick and mortar company, because brick and mortar company will do block shifts right you may

Anne Bibb
work eight to five Monday through Friday, right? Why Monday

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
through Friday. They may stagger some shifts, but they’re Are times throughout the day because volumes fluctuate on an intervallic basis, where there’s a huge amount of inefficiency built into the operation? Well, we don’t manage our business that way. Our have to,

Anne Bibb
like you’re really good at seasonal?

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
Well, we’re good at products. Yeah, I mean, we’re good at seasonal, but we’re good at businesses that do have a lot of a monthly or intraday volume. Volatility, right. And our so you come in, and we say, all right. And we actually shifted on half hour interval basis. So our platform, we open that up to all of the individuals that have statements that have statement of work with a particular account, and then you go in, and you pick your hours by half hour level. So if you want to work from, you know, six to, to eight, um, and, and then you want to, you know, you know, see your do breakfast with your children, and then see them off to school, and then go to the gym, and then come back and you have noon to three, and you want to work, then you do Shift bid on that. And then your kids come home from school, and you want to help them with their homework, and then you want to hang out with your husband while he’s making dinner. And then you want to, you know, hang out with the family until the kids go to bed. And then you want to work from, you know, nine to midnight, guess what? No problem.

Anne Bibb
That sounds almost too good to be true for me, somebody that likes that flexibility of being able to work when I want to work and not work when I don’t want to work.

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
And it changes every week, you don’t have any kind of, you know, set schedule so that they’re shifting that’s happening. And we open up shifts. Now there’s is a performance overlay. So

Anne Bibb
that’s what I was with my next question is like, if I bid what’s how do I, what do I need to do in order to get the shifts that I want? Do I need to be the thing?

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
Well, you need to be performing, you need to shut be compliant, right, you need to show up for your shift, because if you bid on shifts, we’re counting on you showing up for those shifts, although we know life does happen, and sometimes it gets in the way. And so we have a contingency plan for that. But if we find that this is a pattern, then that’s a little problematic, right? I mean, that goes through a brick and mortar center or anything, you know, you count up people showing up for work, when they say they’re going to show up for work, right. And then, you know, there is some performance overlay. So if you’re a we have a star program, if you’re a star performer, based on the criteria that is set forth for the client, whether it’s you know, NPS scores or, you know, whatever the key criteria is, and that are important to our customers that we’re supporting. If you’re you know, meeting or exceeding goal, then you also get access to priority chips, right? You also make more money on an hourly basis depending on how you’re driving.

Anne Bibb
Maybe I can get a discount on My Home Depot products, I’ve been like,

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
well, you know, those that’s a lot of what we’re looking at right now is in terms of creating, you know, partnerships and things because, you know, our it’s really important even though they’re not technically employees, for us to have a really strong relationship with our service partners, because the end of the day, they are our business right now to be able to support our customers. So

Anne Bibb
what about if I do what am I tied in? I love that we’re just continuing to use Home Depot Home Depot, we love you. Don’t get it. I am a huge fan of Home Depot, by the way. So you know, my husband lives there. I think I even have a selfie of us at Home Depot on our Instagram.

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
Everything we bleed orange.

Anne Bibb
That said, You know what, if you can have more on more than one program, or am I just like tethered to Home Depot, like can I also work at I don’t know. What’s a walmart or amazon or like I’m just like regular clients, like places that I go to on a regular basis. Yeah,

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
I mean, unless a client has a very, you know, specific requirement that you need to be dedicated to a certain program. Yeah, you can work multiple statements of work, but you won’t do it. Is be handling a Home Depot call during your shift, right? If you ship it to one client, and you know, you might want to work the afternoon for one client in the evening for another, just so that you can get maybe the number of hours that you want for a particular week, What you won’t do, it’s not a shared operator type of environment where you’re handling call for one client and the next call another client, right, like you are dedicated to that account. And you have to be able to, you know, pass certification and meet performance objectives. So, it’s up to you if you know the, if you think you can, but a lot of times, our, our service partners are like, I just love working for this account, I just want to be completely dedicated. And, and that’s good, but we don’t, it’s, we don’t limit it. The other thing that we do is, is you mentioned where, you know, seasonal support. You know, we do do quite a lot of seasons support. So for, you know, travel and hospitality clients, obviously there’s, you know, during, you know, summer, summer holidays, summer peak and holidays, right, if you look at our tax client, you know, obviously tax season is a huge, huge jump, if you look at our retail customers, obviously holidays, you know, from Black Friday, you know, maybe even sooner, but through, you know, through the holidays is an N We’re really good at that we were we have the ability to be able to, to flex to provide that kind of support, because we’re not only under percent gig, but we’re 100% Part time model. Yeah, so now so that, but what that gives us the ability to do is really flex on an intraday basis, up to close to 200% you can you can’t deliver that kind of flexibility in a brick and mortar type of center. So I lost my train of thought but what but basically, you know, yeah, I mean, you have that flexibility, oh, I know where I was going seasonal was that we do have a lot of people that come back and then work cross seasonal programs. So they may work you know, a tax client just during tax season and then we transition them because they fit the profile you know of the type of person that we want on the phone to work a travel client you know over the holidays because that tax clients ramping down but travels ramping up and then by the way when travel starts to ramp down they can move to a retail client so we can we have that kind of flexibility to be able to move them around and do some cross seasonal support as well.

Anne Bibb 28:04
Amazing.

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
So I did like a whole sales pitch I didn’t

Anne Bibb
it didn’t sound like a sales pitch what it sounded like was an amazing opportunity for individuals to become business owners and grow their own business that’s what it sounded like to me. So I want

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
the kind of flexibility in their life to have work work around their life not the other way around.

Anne Bibb
And what I didn’t know like I said was that arise actually helps that individual to get all of their paperwork in order and I just found that very impressive.

So let’s talk about girls who sell you know, you there was a reason that you were selected to be here today, specifically on International Women’s Day. And that is specifically because you’re such an advocate for women, women in the beauty industry, women in the BPO industry. And tell us about girls who sell

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
Yeah, so GirlzWhoSell is my, my passion project, but it came out of it was born out of a really, really hard time in my life. Actually. In 2019, both my parents passed away within 10 days of each other after 64 years of marriage, and it was a really, really difficult time for me. And out of that, though, came a sort of rebirth in that I also turned 60 That team here and it really caused me to take pause and to take a look at my life and and think about you know what, what did I want my legacy to be? What kind of impact did I want to have in the world and I knew that in the BPO and CX industry. that I, at least I felt as though I had a big impact, not only positive impact, not only working to help clients and prospects, but in closing business and, and, you know, creating job opportunities for people all over the world, which when you think about, you know, what we do isn’t brain surgery. But when you think about, you know, the amount of business, billions of dollars of business that I’ve closed over, over the 35 years that I’ve been in the 1000s, and 1000s of jobs all over the world that we’ve created out of closing that business. And the downstream of that effect of that I was like, okay, you know, that’s good. That’s good, right? Like, that’s an impact. But when I went through this, I really sat that back. And I was thinking about the future, and what, you know, what did i i Would I had been successful, you know, how do I get back and my, my whole life today, I think, is about giving back. So anyway, that’s just some context of, of where, where I was at. So fast forward, was a Sunday in the middle of the pandemic. And I came across a Harvard Business Review article that was talking about how women are the future of business to business sales. And I found that really strange considering I had already been in business to business sales for for a lot of years. And it’s like, Why are women the future? Right? And so

Anne Bibb
you’re already here? Why are we the future? Like, why are we

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
the future and then I started doing some research and realize that women were still today, significantly underrepresented. In professional sales today, women represent only about 35% of the total individuals that are in professional sales. If you look at, you know, women in sales, leadership, it drops to 19%. If you look in tech sales dropped 12%. And now with all the tech layoffs, I gotta tell you, that number is going to significantly declined, they’re already projecting a real reduction in diversity. Because of the amount of layoffs that happened, all these tech companies, and then you will relay any kind of diversity statistic, like women of color, or women in the LGBTQ plus community. And the numbers are just dismal. I mean, they’re in some cases are not even measurable. But for women of color, as an example, they’re definitely in the low single digit. And that was my aha moment. And I realized that was my life’s mission was to try to help solve for that, for that problem. And so by the end of the day, girls who sell was born with the mission to not only democratize sales, but to build the largest pipeline of diverse early stage female sales talent, and I say early stage because there’s a lot of organizations like hashtag Girls Club and the National Association for Women sales professionals, and you know, a lot of a lot of company and great companies that are focused on women who are already in sales may want to take their careers to the next level, but where I realized that there was a true gap, and where companies were struggling, was in building pipeline. And, and to me positioning getting in earlier and positioning sales as a viable career option and educating women about the opportunities in sales at a younger age is where I wanted to focus because frankly, I think the youth are future so so what we do is we work with high school and college aged students right now and teach them about sales and why they should consider a career and

Anne Bibb
that is, I love that you just kind of came to it and by the end of the day

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
I LLC setup. I was just like, Okay, here we go. This was it right? And then it was like okay, where do I go from here? So we created girls who sell Academy, I put together a phenomenal board of directors and advisors who have been You know, who have helped me and been really passionate. And, you know, we’ve we’ve had, you know, we’re still in the early stages that the business is only two years old. But you know, we’re already having a big impact. We’ve had over 100 students go through our academy, a lot of the women who did go through our academy now have sales jobs, right, they’re SDRs, or BDMS. They’ve had internships. So I love the fact that we’re having impact. And the other thing that we’re doing is not only offering the course directly, but the program that we do is 100% subsidized by corporate sponsorship. So there’s no cost. We provide scholarships to individuals either apply for scholarships and get accepted into the program. And, or we partner with universities to bring the curriculum and content to their school, because there’s so many universities, colleges and universities, and especially high schools that don’t have any kind of formal sales program, or even if they do, this is something that could potentially augment what they’re already what they’re already doing. So. So we’re doing that. And that might take us to why heels to deals and how women are dominating in business to business sales. So

Anne Bibb
really quick, before we go into Heels to Deals, if somebody as an individual wants to go through girls who sell too, they just go to the website. And is it something they have to apply for? Or how do they go through and actually go through this process?

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
Yeah, so we’ll be opening up our next cohort coming up soon. But they can go to www girls who sell.com And girls with the Z G IRL Z, look at that below, girlzwhosell.com And they’ll see a pop up, it’ll say, you know, talk about the cohort, and they can go ahead and apply. They fill out the application. And then I actually still today, I’m personally interested, you know, interviewing and having conversations with everyone, and they get accepted. And we offer the scholarship and Yeah, and so that, but what also happens like we partnered as an example with Oregon State University, Kate Caitlin Gil’s running their sales program, last year, she’s since left the company which broke my heart, left the university. But she, she, she’s a true visionary. And so she brought us into the university and had all of her sales, students go through our explore sales program. And we did some really cool stuff, specific for the university. So students that were enrolled in the professional sales program got to go through girls to sell Academy. So that was awesome. That was cool, too. So I want to see, even though I love individuals coming directly, what I really want is more University. So if you’re, if you’re at a university, and you’re listening to this, we really want to partner with as many high schools and universities as possible so that we can bring the program to as many people in sales as possible.

Anne Bibb
So who at the university, are we targeting?

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
So generally, it depends if the school has a sales program or not. If it is, you know, somebody does if a if an organization or school has a sales program, then we’d like to partner with them. And I don’t, you know, they shouldn’t think of it as competitive to what they’re teaching, you know, in in their classroom. It’s really just to subsidize and augment what they’re teaching in their classroom because that is the pushback that I sometimes get is we already have a sales program, why do we need you know, girls who sell Academy so the way that we structured it with Oregon State was she shared her curriculum and then we figured out exactly which components of our training program fit in and then how we could also reinforce what she was teaching in the classroom. So but if there’s not a formal sales program or degree, you know, a lot of times, individuals that are leading the Business Pro rounds, right sales is life skill, right? If you’re in business, or if you have an entrepreneurship program, or if you’re even if you have, if you have a marketing program within your school, you know, this is something that you may want to come in and be able to provide to your students, where they can get extra credit course credit, you could use it for, you know, homework, right, like homework assignments, and all those kinds of things. So that’s it at the high school, a lot of times it’s more working primarily with guidance, guidance counselors, or, you know, because they’re working with these, with these, you know, juniors and seniors is they’re trying to decide what the next stage stage of their life is post high school, right? So do I go to college? Do I not good thing about sales, you don’t necessarily need a college degree. It’s not a litmus test to be successful in sales. So anyway, that’s, that’s it or principles, right, like some within light schools as well, but a lot of guidance counselor’s.

Anne Bibb
So that’s a great segue into the book that you have just written. And I would love to hear more about that. Now, when is it that just recently came out? Correct?

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
No, it was released on International, which actually, today is our one year anniversary of the release of heels to do so it was a year. Yeah, so it was released on International Women’s Day last year. And, and, and actually, I did not, quote, write the book, I actually. You know, I sort of edited but facilitated and brought everyone together in the book. And let me explain that. So, you know, one of the components, or part of the grocery sell mission is to increase diversity in sales. Because even if you look at the 35%, of women who are in professional sales today, is still predominantly white women. And so that’s something that I really wanted to solve for. Because I’m a big believer of diversity in the workplace. I think it makes companies better drives innovation, thought leadership. And so it’s absolutely key for organizations to add diversity into their sales team. But how do you go out and talk to the, you know, people about, you know, young women about considering a career in sales when they don’t see a lot of women that look like them? And so, and I believe representation matters, right? It’s

Anne Bibb
absolutely, I can say that louder for the people in the back, please.

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
representation matters as, as Lori Richardson would say, see it be it right. That’s her hashtag, you can’t be what you can’t see. And so I was thinking about how do I go and, and, and, you know, effectively communicate with these women? And I thought, Well, why don’t? Why don’t we create a book that amplifies the voices of the, you know, diverse women from around the world that are successful in sales. And so that’s, that was the germ of the idea. I took it to Bridgette McGowan, who’s an independent, she’s a woman owned business woman of color. She’s a genius. She’s an indie publisher. And she focused says primarily on publishing books that she believes needs to be in the market, but also really focused on women, you know, because that’s another area where there’s not as many women authors, which is a whole other topic for a whole other day. But I approached her with the idea and because I had worked on another book project with her, and I said, Hey, what do you think about this? And she was, Oh, my God, that’s brilliant. And so I was really intentional. I did all of the research. I was on LinkedIn, I looked at who the top voices were, who were the women that were, you know, really thought leaders in the business who were successful professionals across a very wide you know, diverse group of women from all different backgrounds and all different stages of their careers and I’m hand selected, basically 33 women and had them share their stories about, you know, how they got into sales and some of the challenges and some of their successes and what kind of guidance and what started out as giving, you know, providing this sort of vehicle for them to share their stories became so much more. First of all, we created this incredible community of women who some knew each other, some didn’t. But now we just are like, sisters, because we all support each other in our professional journey now, so that was kind of a unplanned unexpected benefit of bringing these women together. But the other thing is, is that the stories, like one of the things I was concerned about is, if you go and ask, you know, all these women about their stories about getting into sales, are you just gonna get 33 of pretty much the same story. And just see some of the, you know, women who, you know, you know, got into sales to basically for lack of a better word, you know, sort of escape or generational poverty, or, you know, women who were got pregnant in high school and, and had to, you know, support, figure out and, and had had a child and had to figure out how to, how to support that child in themselves, right, escaped abusive relationships, you know, story after story. So, when you read the book, it is just, it’s not only incredible guidance and advice, but but the stories are just like, amazing. They’re amazing. This group of women is just unbelievable.

Anne Bibb
So when you were getting those stories, did you just, like, open up a zoom and record a session and have

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
an aisle we had, we it was, you know, we had a format that we had them follow? And, you know, there’s a whole process that Bridgette, you know, goes through so we had them all asked, we asked them all for, you know, four different four questions, that thing goes for questions, and then they submitted their stories. bridgid provides all the editing provided all the graphics provided, you know, does all the magic behind how you get a book published, which I don’t, you know, thank God for her because I wouldn’t even know where to begin. You know, she works with the Amazons and all the Barnes and Noble gets everything done. Right, like start to finish is absolutely. And my, you know, so I selected everyone. And, and then Bridget and I worked on sort of editing, we would go back and forth on different iterations until we came up with the, with the final, final product.

Anne Bibb
Amazing. Yeah, it was,

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
it was really a cool product, project. But the thing is, is we only were able to do 33 women. So everybody’s coming to me now and saying, Well, when does, you know, for two to come out? Because that’s only a handful of the absolutely incredible women are out there. So I wish I could have highlighted everybody. So who knows, maybe there’ll be a girl to sell to?

Anne Bibb
Maybe that’s your 2020 for Women’s Day launch?

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
You never know.

Anne Bibb
Never know. So never know. Well, Heidi, you know, why would like you. You’ve been in this industry for a long time. You’ve been in sales for a long time. What advice do you have for people that if you were talking to somebody right now, directly in front of you, for somebody that is just starting out? In the BPO industry?

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
Yeah, I just I just be your authentic self, and find a company that will allow you to be you.

Anne Bibb
That is hard to do these days.

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
It is but it’s possible and you don’t need to compromise because you’re in the driver’s seat. And particularly as women, and it’s, you know, diverse women. You are in incredible demand right now. So there’s no reason to compromise. If you have the power. You absolutely have the power to negotiate for equity.

Anne Bibb
Absolutely.

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
Today, just one more thing, and I know we probably should end And on that, but the International Women’s Day theme today is embrace equity. And so that message, it’s in there, it’s hashtag embrace equity. So I do believe, and I’m super passionate about negotiating for equity in the workplace. I think it’s absolutely critical for the future of work.

Anne Bibb
100%. And I’m so glad we’re going to be putting that in our and everything we do today. So I’m so glad you pointed that out. Heidi, why would anyone be reaching out to you? And how would they reach out to you?

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
Oh, probably probably three different reasons they might reach out to me one because they were so intrigued with what they learned about arise virtual solutions that they would want us as their business partner for CX and PBO. Sports. So that would be one reason. The other is if they’re interested in learning more becoming a sponsor of girls who sell corporate sponsor, or integrating, you know, our curriculum into their university or whatever, they certainly they should reach out to me through LinkedIn, both places, that’s probably the best way to reach me to learn more about girls, girls who sell and then I am all about supporting and mentoring and sponsoring other women. So if it’s not those two things, and you just want to chat or you need some support, or guidance or advice, feel free to reach out

Anne Bibb
to us LinkedIn the best place to reach you,

Heidi Solomon-Orlick 56:44
100%. Absolutely. We’ll

Anne Bibb
have that linked down below. I have never not heard back from Heidi on LinkedIn.

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
Yeah, just reach out and connect. I, I’ll definitely connect with you. And if you if you mentioned, you know that you learned about me or girls or seller rise on this episode, who knows, maybe there’ll be a signed copy of a book or something in you.

Anne Bibb
How special is that? I don’t even have a signed copy of the book

Heidi Solomon-Orlick
yet to make that happen.

Anne Bibb
All right. Well, thanks, Heidi. I so I’m so grateful that we were able to do this. I’m sure that you know what, when that second book comes out, we’ll definitely be doing this again. We might make this an annual International Women’s Day thing. Who knows?