Ep. 32: Guest - Kimberly S. Arnold. Turn Stress Into Sales - Software Sales Simplified: MOVE to Success

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Welcome everyone to Software Sales Simplified Move to
Success, our weekly podcast for software sales professionals who
want to sell better. Whether you're a seasoned pro or
just starting out, make SoftwareSales Simplified your home.
For insight, spends and news from the world of enterprise
software sales, I'm Matt Long and I'm joined by my illustrious
colleague Kevin Donville. Together, we have over 50 years

(00:28):
of enterprise software selling experience, experience and
implementation as well. We're happy that you've joined
us today as we talk to industry experts, share opinions, and
learn from each other. Before we get started, though,
we'd like to remind you to like and subscribe to stay abreast of
our latest episodes. We really appreciate it.
Today we're talking with an old friend and colleague of ours,

(00:49):
Kimberly Arnold. Kimberly runs a organization
called Somatic Leadership, but she has a long career in
enterprise sales and delivery with stints both at Price
Waterhouse Coopers as well as Salesforce Blue Shield to name
others. So we're really happy to have
you on, Kimberly. Thanks for joining us.

(01:09):
Yeah, it's. Great to be with you.
You didn't name the infamous Introspect software where we all
met. Come on.
I was saving the best for last. But yes, our infamous
introspect, which was I, I got to say one of the most exciting
and fun times of my life and some of the friendships we
forged during that. That was in the height of
the.com boom, when we were all going to be millionaires in a

(01:32):
matter of a year or so. Fortune didn't quite work out
the way we had planned, but did lead to some very lasting
friendships as well as experiences that will take
forever. So that that's a that's a given
there. Anyway, why don't we go ahead
and just introduce yourself, Kim, Tell us a little bit about
yourself, kind of what you're doing now and then we'll get

(01:54):
into kind of your, your interesting journey to get here.
Yeah, Thank you. So Kimberly, this was a, this
was a big step when I turned 51,actually, I took on Kimberly.
People knew me as Kim prior to that.
So I'll say Kimberly. And what I'm what I'm doing now
is I'm teaching teams how to turn stress into strength and
they learn 62nd or less resets that they can use to really

(02:18):
build resilience into the work day and the impact.
The approach is learning how to interrupt your automatic stress
response and replace it with a way to be calm, confident,
connected, and collaborative with others, even in the heat of
the moment. This is, I mean, this is such a
fascinating thing for me becauseyou know, when I first got into

(02:40):
Enterprise Sales, 20, 2526, whatever was years ago and it
was the.com as well. And so the work ethic was like
80 hour weeks. Everyone like grinding it out,
right? Because, because the payoff was
this big carrot that we had, right?
Everyone was going to go public,everyone's going to get rich.
And so you're working there. I didn't have a family at the

(03:01):
time, but high intensity, lots of drinking of other things
going on. Freaking was a requirement.
But it almost seemed like it wasin the in, you know, in the
peninsula and Silicon Valley andall that kind of stuff in terms
of that culture. But never really thought about
what's the long term effects of this, not just physically from
everything, but just emotionallyand mentally, right.

(03:21):
Because I think it did take a toll and it's something that we
don't really talk about as salesprofessionals.
He kind of I think the, the, themantra is just suck it up.
You're just grinding it out. We got this, you know, it's very
alpha oriented. You know, we're going to do and
you don't talk about your shortcomings or feelings or
fears or things like that. Though I will say a lot of my

(03:45):
conversations with my AES was mebeing therapist to them for all
the neurosis that they're going through, right?
But you know, in this in that sales culture, especially male
dominated, especially at that time, you know, talking about
feelings or or failings or fearswas not part of that.
So I find it really interesting to find out, you know, you you

(04:08):
joined us at introspect as a very accomplished person at PwC.
In fact, I think you're up for partnership that you chose not
to go. And so maybe tell us a little
bit about how you got started inyour career and maybe that that
first stint at at PwC and what you learned there and what kind
of LED you to move on? Yeah, no, it was, it was a it

(04:29):
was an incredible time. I had just graduated from
Northwestern and I got a networking through an alum to
get this, you know, coveted consulting job at
Pricewaterhouse. And my first year was tough
because I lost my mom to leukemia.
And I was the, I was living the only one living at home with her

(04:51):
at the time. And that was that was its own
big wake up call of you get one life and you better live it full
out. And but I had a spectacular
group around me. I had amazing sponsorship,
mentorship. I was given opportunities way
before I thought it was ready for them.
I even got a scholarship for a full ride to the University of

(05:14):
Chicago for Business School, which was pretty incredible.
And I came out and I was workingwith a spectacular partner at
that time. His name was David Schneider.
And any of us who worked under Schneider, it was just like one
of those times where he saw you,he believed in you.
And he did that with like 1000 people.
I mean, it was just incredible how engaged everybody was.

(05:36):
And we were. I'll date myself.
You'll appreciate this. I was working at Intel on the
launch of the Pentium 3 and theyhad decided that they were going
to add a service to that chip, you know, trying to add a
service to increase the value ofthe product right.
And PW was PwC was in there helping make that happen.
And this was in the time that Andy Grove would run a parallel

(05:59):
team. If you remember, he would often
like run this stealth team internally to figure out the
best solution. And sure enough, a few months
before our go live, he took it off of our technology onto
theirs. And I was Co leading the program
office of a team of about 200 people.
We had to redirect them all. And I remember I went up to
Hillsboro for four days and I came back 28 days later.

(06:21):
Yes, I did have to go buy some clothes.
And that situation was the one that finally had them say, yes,
you've done all the things we can.
We can vote you in now. And I thought to myself, you
know, I have everything going for me here.
But the thing I don't have goingfor me here is work life balance
and taking care of my health. And really, because of what I'd

(06:42):
seen happen to my mom, it shocked the heck out of
everybody. You know, I'd gotten the golden
ticket. And I said, thank you very much.
I'm going to go do something else.
Well, that's a huge realization to come to, especially for
something like that. We're getting partnership.
You know, it's like in a law firm, like getting to that point

(07:03):
is really the goal. That's what everyone's focused
on. And to actually have that handed
to you and to turn it down for very valid reasons.
It's interesting though, becausewhen you're saying I left for,
you know, 3 days and I came back28 days later or whatever, that
doesn't surprise me at all. That was almost the expectation
that you did everything for workand for the success of the

(07:23):
company, right? And we're all kind of bought
into that for a while. I, I think that definitely
changed over time as we started realizing with the layoffs and
just the failed companies and everything, like, look, there's
no guarantee of anything and youdo have to look out for
yourself. I'm curious, So after you made
that decision, what led you to introspect?
Because introspect was the complete opposite of PwC, right?

(07:47):
Right. You know, together.
But tell me about that. Yeah, our, you may remember
David Ito and I was friends withhis wife Sonal.
And I don't know, he, you know, he and I had a conversation and
I was like, you know what? I knew that I really wanted to
go work on a product. That was the other thing.
I'd spent my whole career in service.

(08:08):
And I said, I really want to go have the experience of working
on a product. I was super excited of what we
were going to do with, you know,whatever we called it,
collaborative knowledge management.
I mean, we really, we really were the precursor to Facebook,
to chatter at Salesforce. I mean, you know, when you think
about the technology we were driving.
And of course, our lovely colleague Tom Gruber was the one

(08:29):
who did get the wild success with Siri.
But nonetheless, we were really on to something and I was really
excited about the possibility ofdriving that collaboration.
And and I will say one of the things that I do recall because
we were all together when 911 happened.
And I do specifically remember that day and I remember the

(08:49):
power of the technology that we could go into our internal view
of introspect and we could immediately find out that
everybody was OK. We hadn't lost anybody.
Jim, the CEO could immediately communicate and say, please go
home, be with your families, take care of what you need to.
When I think about the power of how we could collaborate and get
clarity quickly, it was it was potent.

(09:11):
Yeah. I mean, I look at it back, you
know, because Tom was like one of the forefronts of just, you
know, knowledge management and what that meant.
And that product was so incredible that you just put all
these inputs in, you know, to get things out.
It was there was not AI on it, but it felt very AI ish, right,
because the collective knowledgeof everyone who was working on

(09:33):
projects or sales campaigns, whatever was in that system and
you could ask it questions, it would spit out answers, right.
And that of course, you know, LED, you know, Tom Gruber to
found Siri, which we we should know well was sold to Apple and
is part of our lives today. That's right.
Brilliant man, by the way. I mean, I'd get in conversations
with him. I'd swear like about 30 seconds

(09:54):
in I'd be like, I have no idea. Exactly.
I'm just trying to keep up and say something kind of
intelligent at this point, but it it was a it was certainly a
fun time and but a very stressful driven time as well as
as. I know given, given that I
thought I was leaving to have work life balance and then I was

(10:16):
at introspect, I was like, but after that I made the choice
that was the work life balance because then I went to Blue
Shield of California and it was specifically Blue Shield of
California because that meant I traveled in California.
I wasn't getting on a plane, I wasn't flying across the
country. I wasn't doing, you know, I had
done all that for a long time inconsulting.

(10:38):
And when I really sat with if I want to take, I had left, had my
whole career leading large scalechange.
And I said if there was 1 industry I want to redesign and
help, it's healthcare. And that was coming from
everything I had gone through with my mother and her journey
with leukemia. Yeah.
So what are what are some of thethings that you learn, I guess
just very quickly, what are someof the things that you learned

(10:59):
at PwC beyond the, you know, thefact that you need to work life
balance? But were there actually
organizational things and learnings that you've carried on
to these different, very different types of companies
with very different focuses, even introspect and then to Blue
Shield, which I think Blue Shield is tightly A nonprofit,
right? But obviously in a space, it's

(11:20):
very important to a lot of people with complexities and
billing and all these types of things.
But what? What did you carry from those
different things that you're able to implement?
The theme that's been true for me my whole career is I've been
passionate about driving large scale change and really
understanding the dynamics of what does it take to take a big

(11:40):
group of people and have them adopt A new behavior.
So even back to the project at Intel, I was the one weaving
together the people, process andtechnology components to make
sure that when the new technology came, the people were
going to do the things you wanted them to do with it,
right? And we all know that.
What is it? 80% or whatever of those

(12:02):
implementations fail because youdon't get the people to make the
behavior change. So when I was at Blue Shield, I
was actually a part of a team that built out the what we
called the Change Lab. And we would take teams that
were going through big change and we would take them through a
2 1/2 day workshop to help them set the vision, determine the
stakeholders they had to engage,how they were going to do it.

(12:24):
And really face this is actuallyimportant for the work I do now
really face the reality of wheream I in the course of this
change? Am I ready to accept it?
Am I resisting it? Do I view it as positive?
Do I view it as negative? Because honestly, all of those
components are showing up all the time in my body.
And as soon as I have awareness of that, that can make a

(12:47):
difference. But back in the day, we were
only, frankly, mostly dealing with the mind.
Yeah, I think one of the things you mentioned, but the change
management component is true foranything really.
I mean if we when it comes down to it, you know, anything that
involves people, which everything does, what you're
really tasked with is helping them with this transition,

(13:08):
moving from a current state to adifferent state, right.
And as a seller, I think that's something that donned up be more
in the beginning of my career, it was all about winning the
deal, everything to win the deal, get the deal in, get the
contract signed and then move on.
But then further my career, I realized the really important
thing was ensuring to the executive who's ever sponsoring

(13:29):
this, that you are successfully going to take their organization
and move it to this new area, right?
That is going to benefit from the solution you're providing
and get and they're going to actually achieve those benefits.
And that is no small task. And that involves people from
the from the delivery side, but it starts with the sale side and
support all the different components coming together.

(13:50):
I'm going to, I want to, I want to dip under that one for a
minute because when you think now about communication that's
happening, there are three main components of communication.
There's the words that I say, there is the physical
positioning of my body when I say it, and there's the tone of
voice that I use. Now some people may question

(14:10):
this research, but if you were to say which of those three
things is speaking the loudest when someone is talking to you?
So my physical body position or facial expression, my tone of
voice and the words which is speaking the loudest to you.
I would say the physical component, right, but that it
goes unnoticed because you're sofocused on your words and

(14:32):
keeping a poker face, but you don't really notice that your
chest or your stomach is like all tensed up or like, you know,
all these things that for me, I think that's it.
Yeah, the research absolutely says the facial expression body
position is speaking the loudesttone of voices next, which
leaves a whopping 7% for the words that you say there's been.

(14:55):
Anything for comedians that havepicked up on that before and
incorporated that into some pretty startling observations
inside of their platform. One of them being Eddie Izzard,
who does this wonderful routine about the speech that Kennedy
gave in Germany about where he turns to the audience goes, he's
banging Berliner. Of course what he actually said

(15:15):
was I am a donut, but the audience just goes bananas
because they know what he was trying to say.
Right. It's been held up as this iconic
example of motivational speakingand whipping up a support out of
the crowd. What he actually said was
actually pretty foolish. But to your point, it was how he

(15:38):
said it. His positioning, his confidence,
his his collection of himself ashe said it.
That's what communicated with people rather than the actual
words in in the delivery. Right.
And, and, and that's a part of why I say that because now if
we're talking to sellers, the reality of how I'm actually
managing my body and the responses in my body.

(16:01):
So to your point, if I showed upto sell to you and I was like
this, how would that go over? Not terribly well.
I could say all the perfect words, this is not going to go
well, right? Or I could show up like this.
How does that fit? Right?
So I, I didn't get up from my chair.
I didn't move very much, right. But what I can promise you, I
mean, it's referred to as your mirror neurons, but what's true

(16:22):
is they're always tracking. Your mirror neurons are always
tracking kind of like they're trying to gauge sort of the
emotional content of what's going on in front of you.
And so to your point, Matt, about, you know, you're talking
to someone and you're trying to figure out the thing to say, you
know, and at that moment, you know, the body starts to tense

(16:42):
up and the rest of it, as soon as your body starts to tense up,
it's now queuing your brain thatyou're not safe and now you're
not going to have access to yourstrategic thinking anyway.
So this is really this is this is the nature of what what there
is to start to unpack and be aware of, particularly in a
selling situation because all ofthose dynamics are at play.

(17:03):
One more question I have, I, I want to start drilling down into
this because this is the thing that's really interesting about
where you are currently. But you know, after Blue Shield,
then you went to Salesforce. I did indeed.
I would think is not the opposite, but Salesforce is
known for a very driven culture,right?
Yeah, so again, so much for thatwork life balance game, but.

(17:24):
I was going to say, what were you thinking?
I want Salesforce that they are known to drive you pretty hard.
Yeah, what I had, I had also a phenomenal time at Blue Shield.
I'll say I worked with fabulous people.
It was great to share that mission of healthcare and the
rest of it. And when I was there, we
automated the quote to card process on the Salesforce
platform. And it happened at a time that

(17:46):
Blue Shield was replacing its back end core system.
And so all of the attention of the organization was going
towards that, rightfully so in many, in many respects.
But I knew what we had just done.
We did it on the Salesforce platform about five years ahead
of the industry and being somebody who was driving change
throughout her whole career. And I was like, oh, I could go,

(18:10):
you know, and really what I was standing for at Salesforce was
transforming the member experience.
I worked with over 70 health plans across the globe to create
their vision to create a better experience for members.
And after again, what my mother had been through with her
leukemia journey, I felt really passionate about doing that.

(18:30):
That part I don't regret and I don't regret any of it.
But there there was a big lessonin there for me because I did
have at Salesforce, I had the perfect storm moment.
I had a shift. I had frankly had a new leader
every year. It was, it was kind of a wild
ride, but at one point I had a particularly challenging
relationship with my direct manager.
And that happened at the same time that I was grieving the
death of my uncle, who was my close relative here locally, who

(18:53):
I've moved moved here to be near, you know, decades before I
was caregiving my father and hispartner in another state.
I was going through menopause. I mean, if you wanted to line up
all the high stress moments together at one time, I got
them. And that sent me into a stress
induced 15 week medical leave. And the reality was I literally

(19:16):
had 15 symptoms at that time. And I knew it was severe enough.
It actually took a colleague saying to me, you need to take a
medical leave because I've been so good at surviving so much for
so long. Honestly, until she said that, I
wasn't even thinking that I was still in the OK.
What can I do to get this back under control?

(19:36):
You know, I was going to the acupuncturist and osteopathic,
you know, all these people. And she's like, you got to take
a leave. And I was like, you're right.
And so I took that leave. I, I did go through a creative
alternative healing journey, which is a topic for another
day. But what I will say is during
that time, I just kept hearing the words of my teacher, Wendy

(19:58):
Palmer, who's in Aikido Sensei, saying under pressure you don't
rise to your expectations, you fall to your habits.
And I had to own that. I stopped doing, even though I
mean for 15 years everybody knewEvery vacation I took, I was
off, you know, at a conscious dance workshop or a retreat or I
was doing Tai chi or Qigong or Feldenkreis or you name it.

(20:20):
I was. I did a nine month training with
Wendy on how to take aikido off the mat and work with leaders
and teams. I got certified in all these
practices. But what I realized was when I
was in the Super high stress environment, it's like the
salmon going up the stream. It's really hard to be the one.
Even if I know how to make a shift, my mere neurons are

(20:42):
pinging off of all the stressed people around me.
And it was too much. I, I can understand that.
I mean, people talk about how when you're in that environment,
it's hard for you to reflect upon what's happening to
yourself because your state of agitation is the norm.

(21:02):
That's right. You're, you're speaking, you're
speaking to a really important point, Kevin, because our
systems feel a little bit safer to stay with what's familiar.
And if what's familiar is being in hustle running and doing the
next thing and doing the next thing and checking this thing
every 30 seconds, you know, likethat's what's, if that's what's
happening, it's easy to become that.

(21:24):
And the reality is, you become what you practice.
Remember, when we were working together, you always were
cognizant of other people's state.
You were very, you know, carefulto make sure that people like me
were taking care of ourselves. And you were often very
observant about the state that we were in and, and provided a

(21:46):
lot of good guidance and, and cautionary advice relative to
where we are. So it's not surprising to me
that it eventually you came to this realization that that
needed to be part of your own journey, which which you just
described so eloquently there, which I was not aware of all
those different steps. And we need to have a

(22:07):
conversation because I studied Aikido for a number of years as
well. So I'd love to have a
conversation offline with you about that.
But then you kind of went, OK, this works for me and then you
can see the benefit to yourself.But then you made this leap
about taking it to the next stepforward with somatic leadership.
Walk me through the thought process because I can only

(22:27):
imagine that there must have been a little bit of anxiety
relative to that decision. What?
What got you to that point to make that leap?
Salesforce made it easy. They showed me the door in
August of 2020. There you go.
They made that easy. The middle of the pandemic, no
less. Middle of the pandemic and I did
some consulting with some other friends for a few years, which I

(22:50):
was super grateful for, but they're really, it really felt
like the universe was knocking on my you know, sort of like
tapping on your shoulder going it's time you've been thinking
about this forever. It started with started with,
you know, I'm active on LinkedIn.
That's that's my jam, the place that I hang out.
And in July of 2023, I started aweekly series called Micro Shift

(23:12):
Monday. And what inspired that was
because I also had just read James Clear's book, Atomic
Habits. I don't know if you know that
book or not, but the idea of like, you can make a tiny change
that has a remarkable result. And I look to my own situation
at Salesforce, everywhere I'd been, everybody I talked to, Oh,
I didn't work out today. Oh, I didn't have time to
stretch. Oh, I forgot to meditate this

(23:33):
morning. You know, all all the things
that they didn't do. And what I knew from the work
with Wendy Palmer, the Aikido sensei, was you can make a
slight shift in your attention, in your body position, and you
will shift your hormones, which will shift your nervous system.
It'll shift what you think, whatyou feel, what you say, how you
respond, and you can do it in aninstant.
And I knew that. And So what I did was I started

(23:55):
breaking down sort of curating all these practices that I
learned. And I started curating them down
into little shifts that you could make in less than a minute
because I knew that was both A, the attention span and B, the
amount of time that people had. Now, what I didn't know, but I
learned when I dove into it further was that, and we can

(24:15):
break this down, but there, there literally is a moment
where you can shift your stress cycle and you can prevent the
cortisol from coming. And who doesn't want to do that?
And we can unpack more of that. Yeah, I love that.
I think, you know, being able totake these moments and pause is
really important. And I'll tell you a little
story. I visited Russia with an old

(24:37):
girlfriend. This is years ago.
She was from remote Siberia though, right?
Not Moscow in that area. And it's a fascinating trip.
One of the biggest things I tookaway was her family.
Every time before they would leave the house, they would stop
and sit in the foyer. There's no benches there.
And just in silence for two minutes.

(24:58):
And then they get up and go out,right?
And you think about it in our lives with the kids and
everything, you know, it's just like, grab your stuff, we're
going to go out the door, you know, all these things, right?
Same thing. It's like what?
OK, So doing that, it made like this transition like this very
conscious, you know, effort to like, OK, let's pause and think

(25:19):
about what we're doing. And I've actually incorporated
that in our family, right? Where, you know, we, we don't
pray before we eat, but before we have a meal and we have a
dinner every night, right that Icook, we just we pause and take
a breath, right? Because same thing people are
coming in from all different areas, all this different energy
and things going on your head. And it's like, you know, before
we start eating just voraciously, not even thinking

(25:42):
about what we're doing. Let's go ahead.
Let's just pause, take one big breath, let it out and then
Kevin don't appreciate it. We say eat the documas, right?
So you know, let's start eating it.
It just makes a huge difference.And so being able to one
identify that and then being able to start incorporating that
into a business context. I think it's just incredible.

(26:02):
And I want to hear more about how I guess Azure's kind of
learning how to do these little micro practices and things.
How, How did that eventually evolve into what you're starting
to deliver now? Yeah, no, thank you.
Let's take a step back and let'sstart by unpacking what happens
when we get hit with stress. So you could take a moment,

(26:23):
something that didn't go the wayyou wanted.
Somebody made a comment. You know, I think we're going
to, I think we're going to dive into, I asked you guys to come
with your toughest sales moment,So we'll dive into that.
Before we go there, just recognize so you can even think
back to that moment. What happens is there's
something that's the trigger, right?
And it could be the comment, theaction, whatever it is, there's

(26:43):
a trigger. And as soon as the trigger
happens, your body's going to give you a shot of adrenaline.
And what the adrenaline does is it says take the blood from the
brain, put it into the large muscles, the arms and legs,
prepare this body to fight, fight, freeze, appease, like
prepare it to react. Now it's creating a sense of
urgency. And the amount of adrenaline

(27:04):
that you get and how quickly it comes is dependent upon how big
the threat appears to you, right?
So we make a comment that's a little or like, you know,
there's really somebody coming for you.
So you get the shot of adrenaline.
But then there's a gap and the research goes anywhere from 3 to
20 minutes, there's a gap beforethe cortisol comes.

(27:25):
The cortisol comes to help sustain your strength for the
response, for the reactivity, for what you're trying to do,
right? So if what I want to do is
sustain the cortisol because I'm, you know, in some high
intense athletic game, cool. I should have it because I need
it and I need to keep. But like in the working world,

(27:46):
that cortisol shows up because somebody made a comment and then
it collectively over time, if you don't do something to
dissipate both the adrenaline and the cortisol, it gets stuck
in your body. And the cortisol itself is
really the number one driver of inflammation that's driving
chronic disease, everything fromcardiovascular disease,

(28:09):
diabetes, neurodegenerative conditions like ALS,
Alzheimer's, rheumatoid arthritis.
Like there's, there's a never ending list of what the
cortisol, you know, excess cortisol is driving
inflammation, driving chronic disease.
And when you look at that from abusiness perspective, So when
you say, well, what's the cost to the business of stress?

(28:31):
Because a lot, I think particularly it's really tricky
in sales because I think often in sales, they kind of want you
to be under pressure and they want you to have the, you know,
like, and they're really, if youlook at the research around
stress, there really is what's recalled your, your use stress,
which is the positive stress. But then when it goes too far,
you end up in distress, which isthe negative stress.
And I think often I would watch people say you need to have the

(28:53):
stress, but I'd watch it go, youknow, kind of past the middle
right. And you know, you can say the
cost to the business pretty clear.
High stress, more sick days. Look at me leave of absence
attrition. I was definitely regrettable
attrition when I left PwC and and now people are managing
chronic disease. So, you know, I look back to my

(29:14):
consulting days. I just took a walk with a dear
friend from 30 years ago who is having open heart surgery in
September. And it really hit me because he
said I needed you 20 years ago. And I was like, Yep.
And I want to reach all those people in their career to help
them because they don't have to carry the stress that we've
carried. Yeah, I mean, I think about
times, you know, stressful times, you know, we asked about

(29:36):
when you had a bad experience from a demo or presentation.
I really discovered this very, very poignantly when I actually
was having some nerve issues personally brought on by both
environmental and other things that a neuropathy where, you
know, my, my fingers were numb, my, my legs and things were

(29:57):
numb. Hard to think.
I found that it was a combination of headed metal
poisoning as well as AB12 deficiency.
But it was my spinal column. You know, the sheathing was
unraveling, right? It was like, but when I would
get hit, I'd be in a demo, you know, trying to do something and
I get hit with a question and that that instant like, you
know, fear or stress or whateverabout that question.

(30:17):
Normally I could be able to manage right?
I mean, maybe you're tighten up a little bit, right or
something. But in this state, it actually
paralyzed me. I've been physically paralyzed
me and I just remember just likejust freezing up and it was such
a such a departure from what I was able to.
I was always able to like come power through and do this and
come up with the right answer and all these types of things.

(30:38):
And the fact I couldn't do that,I think just really illuminated
just how big of an issue this was, but also the effects that
it was having on me. So for me that it wasn't a wake
up experience, but it made it very evident to me that these
pressures and things, I have to learn how to deal with them
another way. For sure, for sure.
And I don't know which one of you is going to be our, which

(30:59):
one of you is going to be our volunteer today with a specific
scenario. OK, Mr. Kevin, you're going to
do it. No.
OK. I have two so if you don't like
the first one I can switch over to something else.
No, no, you, you. I want you to pick the one that
has the most juice for you because that's what we're going
to work with. Stressed I've ever been in my
professional career. OK, so before you do that, just

(31:20):
take a moment because we don't need to like totally get you
super amped. Don't go crazy on me.
Just take a take a moment, feel your feet, OK?
Yeah. OK now, now you can tell me.
It's funny, it's true. I was starting to relive that
state of anxiety just to try. No, I could feel it.
That's why I was like, let's give you a moment, OK?
Go for it. So it trying to keep the name

(31:46):
those parties shall be remain nameless to protect.
That's right. We had just been acquired.
I had been named the global leadof a team and was having my
first one-on-one with the CRO, the global CRO and reported
directly to this person and walked into the meeting.
I had my presentation ready to give and talked about my plan

(32:07):
for the team and the meeting started out with I need you to
fire all your people. I I thought he was kidding and I
ended up having to squelch the moment of absolute panic and
rage that both welled up in me at the same time.

(32:30):
Yeah, I can. I'm going to pause.
I'm going to pause you for a moment and say when you said
that, I will tell you I literally felt like a
contraction like this in the middle of my chest.
As soon as you said I have to fire all my people, my body
went. So we don't need to go further

(32:52):
into the story necessary unless there's some other part of that
you want to share at this. Moment.
I mean, that's that you can imagine.
Enough. That was not a.
That was not a fun day. So yeah.
Right. OK, so I was sharing to you what
I noticed in my body, but I'm curious for you, even as you
reflect back on that thing and you said I could start to feel

(33:13):
it. So I'm going to walk through a
list of different things and youcan just notice for yourself and
then you can tell me what was true, what's true.
I will say what's true for everybody.
When you have that trigger of stress is some muscles get tight
somewhere. It could be in your jaw, it
could be a knot in your stomach,in your throat, in your chest,
shoulders, anywhere. So do you have some place where

(33:36):
something gets tight and what doyou notice gets tight?
Upper back. Upper back, so like between your
shoulder blades. Up into your neck, everything
from like right below the shoulders all the way.
Their whole traps, like they all.
Just the traps just lock up. OK, so the traps lock up.
Great. Then the next thing is do you
notice any change in temperature?
So I know from Yeah. OK, what do you notice that

(33:57):
changes in temperature? You get hot And where do you
notice heat? A couple of different places, my
palms, the my cheeks, OK and andalso that same area that's
getting tight, it gets hot, right?
So you get, so you get like a big heat wave.
Yeah. And what happens to your
breathing? Well, I actually, I'm very

(34:19):
careful to regulate it, OK, because I know it's my instinct
is for me to start taking biggerdeeper breaths.
Oh, nice. OK.
Well, that's unusual. Yeah, well, it's the fight or
flight response. No, no, no, I think.
Well, but what I'm going to say is if you start taking bigger,
deeper breaths, that's actually helpful practice that your body

(34:41):
has, because most people don't do that.
Yeah. You most people in that moment
actually will stop breathing. Yeah, hold their breath and I
probably would have. No, but I'm just saying so, so
good for you. You actually, you're actually
demonstrating the power of the muscle memory because your body
knows to start taking deep breaths when that happens.
Beautiful. So change in your breathing.

(35:02):
How about perspiration? Yeah, the pits go.
The pits go for sure. And my my hands sweat.
And your hands sweat, right? Right.
That's right. Great.
And how about your heart rate? It can start to go up, but I
again, I kind of built in this in moments to slow down.

(35:22):
That's right. So because actually the deep
breath and a long hexale will actually lower the heart rate.
So so you've got some you've gotsome built in compensation,
which is fabulous. The reason why you want to know
all these things is because the reality is that your brain
registers that body sensation before the thought and emotion.

(35:44):
When your body is doing all the things to prepare you to, you
know, to get the adrenaline and cortisol pumping, preparing you
for something, your brain is mean.
Like we are not safe here. We are not safe here.
And where it goes is it goes to all I can see is the stress.
I now have tunnel vision and because I'm not safe, this is

(36:04):
now me against you. It's US against, it's black
versus white. We go into this absolute
negative thinking, right? Let's take a breath.
And from that place, really all you see is the stress and the
reactivity. Now we've already been
demonstrating this. So the first truth is brain

(36:25):
registers body sensation before thought and emotion.
The second truth is if I shift my body, I will shift the cue to
my brain and I can actually reclaim my calm, my confidence,
my connection collaboration in an instant.
So back to the the trigger adrenaline gap before the

(36:47):
cortisol. The way that I work with people
in making the shift is the moment you start to notice, oh,
that heat is going on between mytraps.
You would pause. I describe it as pacing
yourself. You would pee pause.
You would go, oh, I feel the heat in my traps.
That's my A. I'm going to acknowledge what's

(37:08):
happening. My C is then I'm going to center
and we're going to talk about a different acronym for centering.
And after I do that is when I would engage.
Now people would go, I don't have time to do that.
I go, you don't have time to go like this because you do and it
gets that fast when you practiceit.
Like you've already got the muscle memory to slow down your

(37:28):
breathing, right? You tracking with me totally
pace yourself. Great.
So where we're going to go in the centering is we're going to
use another acronym, which I really love to use working with
sellers because there's a lot ofback and forth going on in the
sales process. And I describe this to engage
with guts. Going to walk through guts.
Take a moment. G stands for ground.

(37:50):
So anybody listening, if you've got your legs crossed or you
don't have your feet on the floor, I'm going to invite you
right now to put both feet flat on the floor below you.
Take a moment and literally press your weight into each heel
so you feel that support coming from below.
And then yes, this may sound a little woo, but it really does
help. Imagine you have roots growing

(38:13):
out of your heels and those heel, those roots are going as
deep into the ground as you are tall.
And then just notice what happens in your body when you
feel that ground, that support. Gravity is actually always
telling us you belong right here, right now.
What do you notice just from grounding?
Feel more stable? Aside from when there's an

(38:33):
earthquake, the ground is usually a pretty stable place to
hang out. I am in California.
So am I, yes. Therefore we start with ground.
Now EU is what I refer to as an uphill.
And imagine as you inhale that you have breath coming almost
like from your tailbone up your spine, almost like a fountain
out of the top of your head on your on your inhale.

(38:55):
We call that an uphill. So I'm taking an inhale.
It's coming up my back, up the top of my head and on the Exxon
relaxing down the front. So I'm relaxing my jaw,
shoulders, chest and belly. G ground U uphill.
What do you notice from your uphill?
That everything sort of becomes a more homogeneous level of

(39:15):
readiness and tension. So the tension goes away where
it's building up and it's more stable and supportive in places
that maybe we're a little not. Great, beautiful.
So ground uphill. The tea part is a little bit
more intention than it is body based, but play this game with
me for a minute. Even when you walked into that

(39:38):
room with that leader, if you could have filled the space
around you with a shared qualitythat you both would have wanted
out of that interaction, what might have been a shared quality
that you could have brought? Can you elaborate?
I'm not sure. What you mean?
So what I mean by that is so forexample, if I were in a selling

(39:59):
situation, I might say, wow, I Iwant to show up with clarity.
I want to show up with understanding.
Maybe I want to show up with compassion for what's happening
for them. Maybe I want to show up with.
Some openness and curiosity. So any quality that you might

(40:20):
say, oh, this is the quality that I really, and literally the
way I think about this is if we were standing in a room, we
would be doing this in a way that like if I could put my arms
around and we were both standingin the circle together, you've
done Aikido. So you get what I mean by that.
So what would be the quality that you would want to bring to

(40:41):
that and a pardon? Trust, trust, yes, and trust
would create a sense of tea togetherness.
So I'm going to ground, I'm going to uphill.
I'm going to imagine that I'm filling the space around me,
including the other person with trust.
Now the S stands for space. And let's talk about this one.

(41:03):
This one's a little bit different, but wow, in the
selling, this is so critical because I can imagine the moment
actually you, you tell me, the moment that this leader said you
got to fire your whole team, what impact did that have on
you? Well, to say that the stress
level went through the roof and I also knew it was a very bad

(41:26):
and potentially damaging decision for the company and it
was going to harm these people that I cared about.
So that's a lot of negative. A lot, a lot of appropriate
negative, a lot of appropriate negative.
And. And was there anything that you
made it mean about you personally?
No. OK.

(41:47):
So in that case, because you were coming in as a leader and
it was really about your team, Ican imagine that wouldn't be
true. But how often have you been in a
selling situation where somebodymade some negative comment that
was hard to not take personally?Yeah.
That is definitely happened, youknow, in the non leadership when
I'm was an IC or when I was a player coach, you know, those
have those have shown up and then there's there's a personal

(42:09):
pride and an element that you feel.
Totally. Like I want to show up as my
best self and that's not Yeah, right.
The S stands for space. And the point is when somebody
makes the comment, you want to actually see it landing in the
space in front of you. You might imagine that it's
landing in a basket if there wasa table in front of you that
lands on the table. And when you see it landing in

(42:32):
the space in front of you, what I like to do is immediately
ground uplift. Remember, oh, I'm here creating
a sense of trust. And then I look to what was
said. And then I can have the
perspective to say, was there some merit here?
You know, even if it's constructive feedback, there
could be merit in what was spoken.
Or I could say, well, this comment wasn't even meant for me

(42:53):
and I'm not even, I'm just goingto say thank you and move on,
right? But when you can take the moment
to let it land in the space, do your ground uplift.
Remember trust, it can really change the game.
No, I could totally. I can totally appreciate that.
Oddly enough, I think, you know,I also do theater on the side of

(43:13):
the side, hot hobby. And there's this concept of
notes you get afterwards. And in acting you can be quite
vulnerable. It's a moment of extreme
vulnerability. And sometimes notes can be very
harsh. And it can be very easy to take
that personally and, and to feelthat that's an attack on you as

(43:37):
as a person and as a professional.
So I can totally appreciate whatyou're saying about giving it,
it gives it a moment to land andnot be reactive, be something
you can contemplate and truly appreciate what it means both
constructively and not necessarily so constructively.

(43:57):
Well, I completely appreciate what you're saying there.
I I think it's brilliant. Yeah, Matt, I'm curious as I
walk through these steps, how does how does this land for you
and you know, whatever stressfulmoments you've had?
It's very relevant. I'm having a stressful moment
now because my yard guy just showed up early and I don't know
if you can hear the background noise or not.

(44:18):
A little bit, yeah. But it's not for like if the end
it's not bad. OK, great.
But no, it, it resonates a wholelot.
I mean, a lot of it remind me ofTai Chi, right?
And energy flow and things like that through your body,
etcetera. So these are all things that
definitely resonate. This has been a great session.

(44:40):
I just for the sake of time, I do want to make sure that we can
kind of wrap it up here. And I, I do think maybe a follow
on session where we're just doing this would be a great
exercise. I think it has a ton of value
and I think it's something that's really neglected in the
enterprise sales and world as a whole, despite all the, you

(45:00):
know, free yoga classes and massage you get at your that
used to get right at your at your company.
To your point, though, those aremoments where I can take a
break. Yes, it can help me lower the
cumulative adrenaline, cortisol that's in my body.
What it doesn't do is it doesn'tactually help position me in the
moment to show up skillfully. And that's really the value of

(45:23):
recognizing that we become what we practice, right?
We've practiced that reactive response our whole lives.
We're really good at it, super efficient at it.
It's not so effective. You know, Kevin's got some
muscle memory that says, oh, when this happens, I'm going to
take long, deep breaths. That's fantastic.
And that's what you want to do, is you want to take this other
stuff and start integrating it into your day because then under

(45:45):
pressure you have access to it. And because your brain will not
remember, but your body will. Yeah.
And I know that you've now takenthis, you know, kind of
individualized practice, but nowhave developed a, a workshop or
a program for whole teams peopleas well.
Can you talk about that just very quickly, just about what
that's like. And then we could also, you

(46:07):
know, provide some links and other things for people that
want to find out more. But what?
What can you say about that? Yeah, no, that my focus I mean,
I love working with one-on-one with people and my focus is
really working with large scale teams because now you're
changing the environment for everybody.
Now when the pressure filled moment happens, they can all
say, ooh that thing was a big thing okay, put it in something

(46:30):
heavy near you. Everybody holding the heavy
thing, we're going to put it down now.
You know, they so they do workshops around navigating sort
of everyday stress around reallyupgrading the feedback
experience, because that's highly stressful for people.
We also do programs around managing and leading through
large scale change because that's really stressful for

(46:53):
people. And there's also a program
around presenting to any size audience.
So there, there there are techniques and practices and,
and the way that I've done this with large teams is we do a
program with the lead first, they start to adopt the
practices they learn. I start with actually a
diagnostic to hear about what some of the key challenges are

(47:13):
so we can set a vision. We create an identity for them
to be living into, to be resilient.
Then we start doing the practices with leaders and then
we roll it out to the team. So it's all done in the context
of large scale change. How do you make the behavior
change happen? With my largest client, the
survey says 94% of the leaders are using the practices

(47:34):
regularly. The rollout we just did with the
whole big team, it was mid 90s for.
It was relevant, it was valuable, it was engaging.
We want more. So people are really
appreciative that they can take their stress and turn it into a
strength. OK, I can't begin to express
just how spot on I find this stuff because I've watched so

(47:56):
many salespeople get spun aroundthe axle and talk themselves
into a state where they can't beeffective, they can't think
clearly, they can't plan clearly, they can't act clear
with any kind of rationality to where they're going.
I think what you're, what you'retalking about doing here is so
important for people because toomany, you see them just

(48:19):
overwhelmed and you can see whatthe overall impact of that is.
Generally, if someone wanted to start following you and Start
learning a little bit more aboutthe services you offer and about
this space in general because ofjust how beneficial it can be to
sellers, what would be a good way for them to either get in
touch with you or to found out about other resources?

(48:40):
Yeah. So thanks for that.
I, I'm very active on LinkedIn. I post there, you know, usually
four to five times a week. So you can find Kimberly S
Arnold on LinkedIn. I also have sample practices on
my somatic leadership YouTube channel and you can reach how to
meet with me and all kinds of things through link tree.
So I'll give you all the all thelinks for those places.

(49:03):
And we'll put them all in the inthe description.
The diddly do as they like to call it for the episode, but as
Matt said, it's unfortunate, butwe do need to bring this
particular episode to a close. I want to thank you from the
bottom of my heart for coming on.
Kimberly. It was so great to talk to you.
It's always wonderful. I do follow you on LinkedIn, as
you know you see me and they're lurking on your channel all the

(49:25):
time. But it was wonderful for you to
come on board and I know Matt feels the same.
But ladies and gentlemen. Actually, I could actually talk
now. OK, Yeah, but not too stressed
about it at all. It's all good.
Yeah. We try to keep this casual and
light and informative, so. But yes, he did turn off the

(49:46):
lawn mower that that was right outside my window a few seconds
ago. But anyway, Kimberly, it's been
a pleasure as always. I look forward to maybe doing a
follow up session with you as well.
This has been a great conversation, something I think
it's definitely lacking of this sort of dialogue, but I think
really incredibly important as we're all trying to learn how to
take care of ourselves and just have a more balanced approach to

(50:09):
everything in our life. So thanks again.
And for those listeners, please continue to like, subscribe and
follow our channel. If you have comments about what
you've heard or other things you'd like to hear, please reach
out. We do listen to them.
But for now, thanks so much and have a great week.

All Episodes

Ep. 32: Guest - Kimberly S. Arnold. Turn Stress Into Sales

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Cardiac Cowboys

Crime Junkie

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 32: Guest - Kimberly S. Arnold. Turn Stress Into Sales