The Sheila Botelho Show: Business Strategy and the Inner Work of Leadership
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The Sheila Botelho Show: Business Strategy and the Inner Work of Leadership
The Sales Job That Became My Actual Work | EP 611
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Years before this business had its current shape, I took a sales job and was handed a script. The first time I used it, I felt the wall it put between me and the person I was talking to. I realized pretty quickly that running someone else's version of the work was costing me the thing I was actually best at. What I built instead changed the direction of my entire career. This episode is about the decision I made against expectation, and what it ended up returning that I never planned for.
Full show notes, transcript, and chapters at sheilabotelho.com/611
✍️ Sheila's Notes - The reflections I write only here. For your Expansion Season.
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When The Plan Quietly Changes
SheilaPeople talk all about pivots, but nobody preps you for the version where you think you're building one thing and discover you're actually building something else. I want to give you a way to catch that shift while it's happening, not years later. I lived this exact reversal in a season that looked like sales on paper and became the foundation of my work. I'm walking you through it today and what it revealed about how I sell, how I coach, and where the two meet. By the end, you'll have a clearer read on what your own results might already be trying to tell you. Hi, welcome to the podcast. I'm Sheila Botelho, and I believe true success is built from the inside out. So this is all about me looking back to share an insight that I didn't realize was a thing until recently. It's a season before this business existed in the form that it does now, long before all of my different ways of working with people, long before expansion season had a name.
Falling In Love With Sales
SheilaI walked into a sales role and I was fully certain that that was going to be my focus. That was a plan. Get really good at this, build a life around it. And that was the whole picture, as far as I could see at the time, anyway. And I loved it. I still do love sales. Honestly, when it's done a certain way, though, there's something I've always found meaningful in that exchange, in helping someone move toward a decision that's actually theirs to make. And the way I did it was heart-centered from the very start, before I even had language for what that meant. Truly, I'd think about how did I like to be sold to? And I would only ever sell someone something if I believed it was actually a fit for them, not a maybe, and not a stretch far, far, far beyond their comfort zone. An actual fit. And I got good at spotting when it wasn't a fit. And when that happened, I'd say so out loud. I'd point people toward other options that made more sense for where they actually were. Even when that meant walking away from the sale completely. I mean, sometimes people were ready to hand me their credit card. And I just knew it wasn't the right fit for them. And I said, no, there's something better for you elsewhere. That mattered more to me than any number I was supposed to hit. And it still does to this day. I think that's the ultimate respect that you can offer someone, letting them make their own choice with the clearest possible picture in front of them, instead of the picture that's most convenient for you. And obviously, at the end of the day, it's up to them what they choose. My job was never to choose for them. My role was to make sure they were choosing from a place of actually seeing themselves clearly. So
The Script That Felt Wrong
Sheilahere's where it gets interesting. I was handed a script, the standard one everyone in that role used, word for word. And it felt robotic the second I tried it. And I remember running it and feeling this wall go up between me and the person on the other end. My conversions were nowhere near what I knew I was capable of. And I could actually feel why. I was treating people like numbers. That's what the organization did. And I have never, ever been able to do that. People are people. They are not numbers. They were never numbers to me, even inside a role that was structurally built around counting them. So
Choosing Alignment Over Approval
SheilaI made a decision that wasn't required of me and probably at first, maybe not the desirable thing for me to do in this organization. I threw the script out and I wrote my own. And truly, in that moment, that decision did not feel like a casual decision. I told myself this. I said, if this doesn't work out to the company's advantage or to mine, I'll step aside and do something else entirely. I would rather do that. I would rather walk away than operate out of alignment with who I am. That is absolutely not an easy call to make when you're inside a role with expectations attached to it, when there's a whole system already built and you're the one choosing to go off script. I was going against what I was being guided to do. And I knew that clearly in the moment, but I also knew in my heart of hearts, I write my own rules and I was going to write them here too. And that's been true of me at every level I've ever built to, long before this podcast, long before this business even had a name. If it doesn't feel aligned, I will not force myself to keep doing it just because it's expected of me. I'll find the version or build the version that does feel aligned and trust that it's going to work out the way it's supposed to. I need to say that again because I think it matters. I trust that it's going to work out the way it's supposed to. Not the way I originally drew it up, but the way it's supposed to.
Turning A Pitch Into Questions
SheilaSo what I built instead of the script was a conversation. It wasn't a pitch. I asked enough questions that people could look deeply at what they actually needed in their own words, not in the words the script had handed me to feed them. And through that, they'd begin to see something they hadn't named out loud before: a pattern, a loop they kept landing in without realizing it was a loop at all. The same decisions over and over, taking them away from what they wanted truly instead of toward it. I watched people meet that recognition in real time, sitting right there across from me in the conversation. And once someone could see that clearly, once they'd actually named the gap themselves instead of having it named for them, something shifted in the room truly energetically. They'd say, wow, you helped me see this. And if what I'm offering is the thing that helps close that gap, imagine what's possible if I can actually go deeper here. And that's the exact moment they were selling themselves. I never had to convince a single person of anything. I was just holding the space long enough for them to arrive at their own answer on their own timeline, in their own words. And truly, if I had to convince them in that moment, I would have to keep convincing them. That had been my history.
Realizing It Was Coaching
SheilaAnd that's the moment I understood what I'd actually walked into. This was not sales in the way I'd planned it when I first took the role. It was coaching. I'd been coaching this entire time, wearing the coat of a sales job because that happened to be the container I was standing in when it found me. I think it's something we can all fall into. And I want to name something here because this sales season was an early version of that exact same loop. It was just wearing a different outfit. The pull to just run the script, I was handed because it was proven, because it was expected, because that's simply how it's done. Well, that pull was the loop talking. It would have been so easy to tell myself I needed to fix myself to fit the script, instead of trusting that the script I needed to fit me was the thing that was really on the table. Choosing to write my own version instead of listening to someone else's was me being the director of that moment long before I had the language for it. The tools, the script, the training, all of those were context. They were never supposed to be the direction. I actually already had the direction. I just had to trust it enough to act on it before it was polished. And I talked also a couple of episodes back about what changes between the decision and the result. And this story really is the clearest example of that that I can give you. The decision to rewrite the script happened before I had any proof that it would work. There was no result yet to point to. This was an experiment. There was just a conviction that this was the only way I could do this and still feel like myself at the end of the day. And the result happened to turn out better than anything I'd mapped out going in. And this tends to happen for me. I have plans, and then the actual experience takes a shape. I didn't draft on paper. See, I thought I was going to sell something good to some people and they'd get some benefit from it. That was the whole ambition going in. And what actually happened went so much deeper than that because they had so much clarity before they ever even purchased anything. They got so much more value out of what they bought because of our sales conversation. They were that invested before they even started because they'd already done the internal work of naming what they wanted and why out loud in their own voice. I wasn't handing them a product and hoping that it landed. I was handing them a product they had already convinced themselves that they needed for their own reasons, that they'd arrived at themselves. And it uncovered something bigger than the role itself for me. It showed me the actual body of work I was meant to be doing in this world. Not a side skill that I happened to be good at inside someone else's framework, but it was the center of it. The sales job was never the destination. I think I knew that, but it was so cool to see that in action. It was actually the door, the doorway into something new. And I wouldn't have found that door if I'd kept running the script that I was handed instead of writing the one that was actually mine.
Measuring Returns Beyond Money
SheilaThis is exactly the kind of shift that I track through what I call the returns, which I talked through with Carrie Kugler recently on this show. Not just what a decision returns to you financially, but what it returns to your identity and what it returns to your energy, for instance. And that season returned very little to me on paper at first, if I'm honest with you. Hello, salespeople, raise your hands. Your commissions don't always start off really, really high. What it returned to who I was becoming and to the energy I got to build from after is still paying out today, years later, in ways that I couldn't have predicted from inside that sales role at the time. So here's what I want for you to sit with. Operating with integrity, valuing people over the numbers gives you the advantage every single time. Not eventually, not if you're patient enough and wait it out, truly every time. It builds trust that a script never will because people can feel the difference between being processed and being genuinely met. It gave that company a better reputation. It gave the people I worked with better outcomes that actually held over time. And it gave me a way to feel good about the work I was doing, which is so important to me. And it's worth more to me than any single result ever could be on its own. This holds whether you're closing your first sale, running a team of 50, holding a fractional contract, growing a service business, or writing a book, which I happen to be doing myself right now. The loop doesn't check what stage you're at. And neither does this. Success rarely moves in a straight line. Sometimes what unfolds ends up being so much bigger than the plan that you started with, precisely because you stayed aligned with yourself inside it, instead of forcing the plan to stay exactly as drawn on paper. If you're someone who inherited a process from somewhere else in your business, whether it's an industry standard, a mentor's framework, a script that's technically working, if you're a leader inside an organization that you don't own, following a playbook that isn't yours, because it's simply how things are done there. If you're moving from years of employment into something more that is your own, and you're not sure yet which parts of what you've learned are actually you and which parts were just the role talking, this applies to you too, all of you. Every single version of the person who is listening right now.
Spotting Where You Run Scripts
SheilaSo here's what I invite you to take into your week. Think about where you might be running someone else's script right now. My goodness, this could be in your personal life, whether it's a framework, a process, a way of doing things that isn't actually yours, even if it's technically working, even if nobody around you would blink if you kept using it exactly as it's given to you. Ask yourself, what would it look like to write your own version instead? The one that's actually aligned with how you operate, with what you value, with the person you actually are underneath the role you're currently playing. You don't have to overhaul everything all at once. Start with the one conversation, the one process, the one part of your business that feels the most like someone else's script sitting in your mouth. Rewrite that one first and see what it returns to you, not just on paper, but in how it feels to actually be the one saying it.
Ways To Work With Me
SheilaIf this landed for you, I want you to know there are a few different ways to work with me, and they all lead to the same place. The vision map gives you the starting clarity, the piece where you begin to name what you actually want in your own words. Expansion season walks you through the fuller version of that work, self-guided at your own pace, with the tools to keep going once the clarity arrives. Breakthrough day. Well, whether it's virtual or in person, this is what gives you a full day of that work directly with me, focused entirely on where you are right now. And seasoned circle, what I'm currently building, brings you into ongoing proximity in a room with a select group of other founders doing this exact work alongside of you, with me right there in it, too. Different tiers, different pacing, different levels of proximity to me directly, but the same through line underneath every single one of them. Go check the show notes for the one that fits how you actually work best. And a
Book Progress And Four Returns
Sheilaquick update while I have you. The book is coming along. I'm about halfway through writing it, and I'm aiming to have the first draft done by my 30th wedding anniversary, which is in a couple of weeks. I'm close, a couple of weeks out from now. And oh my goodness, it's the kind of timeline that stretches me in the best way, but I feel so good about it. It talks all about the different kinds of ROI, the four returns, the exact things this episode touched on today. And so, more on that soon. Stay tuned. And I just want to share that sometimes you think you're walking into one thing and you end up building something else entirely. Something
Closing Reflection And Thanks
Sheilabetter than you could have planned for on your own. Thank you for being here. I hope you have a beautiful rest of your week, and I will see you on the next episode.