How long have you worked in Sales?

When I stretch back through my career, I feel like I have been in Sales all my working life, starting as a paperboy on my bike!

Real sales work started as a travel agent in my twenties, selling trips to Europe in the early 1990s. The internet was in its infancy at the time, and I became a pioneer in B2C online travel sales when no one else was doing it yet. I dove into technology, self-taught myself web design and coding, and used the internet as “social media” long before the term was in common currency. I then worked for a few years in a successful start-up before branching off into e-commerce.

How long have you worked in the death care sector?

I started in death care in 2019 as Location Manager for a beautiful Catholic Cemetery in California called Queen of Heaven; I love that place.

Prior to that, I wanted a change that was meaningful and spiritual but that also utilized my business and people skills. It was a great move. I worked for the Catholic Church and CFCS and experienced firsthand the death care industry and its struggles with legacy business processes and digitization. That is when I decided to jump back into a tech firm and help other businesses with my experience in digitization, workflow tools, and e-commerce.

Why did you join OpusXenta?

I chose OpusXenta out of a field of opportunities after being impressed with how fast the company has gained traction in the United States and Europe, the kinds of customers we have, and, more importantly, the expanse of solutions we offer the marketplace.

No one else is doing a good job of really tying it all together in a working solution that lives up to its promises for large enterprises. That is very important in this space.

How do you achieve success in your role?

I call it “the art of selling without selling,” which, in all honesty, I stole from Bruce Lee’s saying regarding his martial arts: “the art of fighting without fighting” in the movie Enter the Dragon.

No one likes to be “sold,” but you can’t just tell someone you’re not trying to sell them while you are. You have to be there for them, develop a relationship, show up, keep showing up, and then try to help them make a decision when they have come to a conclusion on their own that they need your product.

What is the best advice you’ve ever received?

Be Yourself.

Tell us about your career path.

Who knows where this journey will take me? I am enjoying every bit of the ride, and I take every day one step at a time, always with a newbie’s perspective about everything. My main goal is to enjoy my work, solve problems and fix things while keeping a decent work-life balance.

Some days I wake up and fantasize that I am a barista in a sleepy cafe in some beach town that serves exotic drip coffees to regulars, so we’ll have to see how this plays out!

What do you love most about what you do?

We are all in death care for different but similar reasons, and that is this big fat problem called death that we all get to experience personally once in life but that we also get to experience many times through our family members and friends. It’s a heavy problem to solve, so it really grabs my attention!

Tell us a surprising or fun fact about you.

I lived part-time on a sailboat in San Francisco Bay a few years ago. It was fantastic being rocked to sleep by the gentle waves, and seagull sounds each night and waking up to absolutely heavenly early morning sunrises with the sky lit up like fire.

I also taught myself to sail the 30-foot Catalina on the bay, dodging container ships and fighting crazy winds and currents. It is said that if you can sail a boat in San Francisco Bay, you can sail anywhere.