Enough is plenty. This is what a friend’s dad told her while she was growing up. These three words have become my definition of success. Enough, for me, is success. When I feel stressed about doing more, I tell myself this. When I feel afraid to stop working because I might not have work to come back to, I tell myself this. For a workaholic achiever like me, this advice is golden.
As a part of our series about women who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Valerie Fischer.
Valerie Fischer is a Neuro Linguistic Programming practitioner with over 20 years of experience in advertising and marketing, and co-founded an e-commerce site for locally made products. This combination gave her a unique process that helps businesses transition and thrive online. In recent months, her Brain Science Selling framework has helped over 3500 online entrepreneurs increase their revenue by as much as 40%.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
“We need to talk”. Those four words make your heart skip a beat, doesn’t it? I received that message from my boss April 4, 2020. We were not seeing eye to eye on how the sales and marketing should be handled during the lockdown. I quit. She fired me. It was mutual. I wanted to hide from embarrassment. I mean, I was already the Chief Marketing Officer and then, I was jobless.
But I could not say no to requests of friends, family and former colleagues to help them with their businesses. They knew I had the experience and the background in digital sales. By April 23, I was already doing paid virtual trainings. My business was born out of a real insight, out of a real need of the market to understand buyer behavior in the digital space. In one year, I was able to do 190 paid virtual trainings. That’s how I got to be here, talking to you right now. That’s my backstory.
I realized that the same strategies I was offering my former boss and company were meant for a bigger audience. Those concepts were meant to be shared with a wider market. That incident where I lost my dream job was not a rejection. It was a redirection.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
I recently joined several Facebook groups of speakers, trainers and coaches. In those groups, you are asked to introduce yourself and share what you do. So, I shared “My name is Valerie Fischer and new online entrepreneurs hire me to increase revenue using Brain Science Selling”. One of the members commented that my work is BS. He said that he is a Clinical Psychologist, and his wife has a PhD in Neuroscience and Brain Science Selling is bollocks. I then explained that it is actually a combination of my Neuro Linguistic programming Certification, plus 20 years in corporate advertising and marketing, and my experience running an e-commerce site and digital sales. People are afraid of what they do not know. I realized through joining online conversations that this combination has never been used before.
NLP techniques and theories applied to digital sales and marketing strategies is how I am being disruptive. By embracing my authentic self and my distinct background, I stumbled into a very powerful combination. I have now made it my mission to get visibility and credibility around this topic. Entrepreneurs need to know how effective this process is. I mean if you are a real estate entrepreneur, wouldn’t you want to sell 10 houses in 3 days using this these techniques? That’s feedback straight from one of the sales directors I work with.
As of this month, I now own the trademark to Brain Science Selling. I am excited to see where this will take me.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Hahaha! I wasn’t expecting this question. When I was just starting to train on Zoom, I did not know about the Share Sound feature. I used to play videos on my screen and turn up the volume so my audience can hear it from my end, that is, until one of the participants pointed out that I can share sound. It was so embarrassing. I learned to explore more of the platform before actually using it again. I did my research, practiced many times, that I even created a module called Webinars that Work, teaching students how to use Zoom to make sales presentations more engaging, to build rapport, and convert leads to sales.
I learned that we can take even our most embarrassing situations to learning and earning experiences.
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
I have had a lot of mentors, especially in the marketing aspect of my career who have made an impact in my life. One of the country’s tycoons, Mr, Jorge Araneta, who owns the company I used to work at, once asked me to write a press release in 10 minutes. It was for one of the stores we were launching at the Gateway Mall. I set the alarm for 8 minutes and took 2 minutes to go back to him. He read it, and said “ok, this is good”.
It was a test. He wanted to know if I was going to do it or throw a tantrum, and if I can actually write a press release. He taught me grit and he made sure that I am well versed in the many disciplines surrounding marketing. There’s PR, Events, Trade, Local Store Marketing, Digital, etc.
Understanding all of those segments gives me the inspiration to then apply Neuro Linguistic Programming techniques to various marketing aspects, with the objective of course to bring in sales.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
I always say that my Why is to Inspire Courage to Create Changes Together. I am a huge fan of reinvention, of change, and of disruption. This question got me thinking. When does disruption then become a negative? Disruption becomes “not so positive” when it is done just because of a trend or pressure to be disruptive. Abrupt change isn’t always the answer. Sometimes, progress is not achieved through big changes, but tiny adjustments executed over time.
Disruption is not good when people are not ready. Brain Science Selling is a good disruption because that was created out of the market’s need to understand their customers’ brains and sell to them digitally in a way that will serve them. This pandemic is not a positive disruption. The world wasn’t ready, and millions of people were caught off guard.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
Thoughts become things is one of favorite bosses’ mantra. It has stuck to me ever since she mentioned that and became more special when I became a certified Neuro Linguistic Programming practitioner. Visioning your best self and planning around that is one of the most powerful things you can do to become successful.
Enough is plenty. This is what a friend’s dad told her while she was growing up. These three words have become my definition of success. Enough, for me, is success. When I feel stressed about doing more, I tell myself this. When I feel afraid to stop working because I might not have work to come back to, I tell myself this. For a workaholic achiever like me, this advice is golden.
Competition is like a forest. A forest consists of many trees, shrubs, grass, plants and they all thrive. They feed off each other’s resources and nutrients. The same goes for competition. We are all unique. We each have a story and a purpose. We can feed off of each other’s energy so we can, not just survive, but thrive.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
I barely just started. My training, coaching and consulting business is just a year old and started in the Philippines. My goal this year is to take this to the international level. Platforms and opportunities like this help me bring this disruption to the global scene.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by ‘women disruptors’ that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?
A challenge that I see women face, is the issue of money.
When we take a look at female six-figure salary earners in America, we see that fewer than one in every eight female workers earn that much money. We also see that more than twice as many men earn a six-figure salary as women — just 6% of women say they earn $100,000 or more, compared to 13% of men, according to a YouGov survey. This is an article from hermoney.com published March 2021. Aside from the gender pay gap, there is also a struggle with women to share their income as part of their client attraction strategy. While men are not afraid to flaunt their fancy cars and expensive suits, women tend to shy away from those tactics. Customers, clients, and prospects are attracted to winners. I believe that women should also start showing off their success as much as men do. And this is me talking to myself.
Do you have a book/podcast/talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us?
The book Start with Why by Simon Sinek changed my life. I read that book in 2015 and it opened my mind to going deep within myself and find my Why. I was already an Assistant Vice President in a large corporation in the country. I was earning good money, I had power, I was traveling the world, I had authority, and even the chance to get another promotion when I decided to quit.
Even despite all of that, I knew there was something else I was meant to do. I also knew that I will not be able to accomplish it in the corporate world. That book gave me the courage to get clarity on that purpose.
I co-founded an e-commerce site after I quit. And the experiences I learned there helped me create Brain Science Selling which is how I am disrupting digital marketing now. All because of the book that pushed me to find my purpose.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Our brain is lazy. It loves patterns, regularity and predictability. The moment we lose this, we start feeling afraid. We fear the unknown, we fear failure.
I would like to start a movement where people will start to feel more courageous. I want them to know that some of our greatest breakthroughs come from our biggest failures. I want people to know that change is the only way to grow.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
My mom died when I was 15. I wish we had more time together so I can learn more from her. But there was one thing she taught me that I bring with me until now. “We all have our own stories”. She worked in the Parole and Probation of the Department of Justice here in the Philippines and heard a lot of stories from prisoners and their families. She would always tell us that we do not always have the full truths about people. It’s not fair to judge when we do not know the whole story.
These stories are also relevant in how we relate with people. These stories are what make people come together. These stories are what gets tribes working together.
How can our readers follow you online?
Please check out my website www.valeriefischer.net. I am also on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/valeriepfischer/ and Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valeriepfischer
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Female Disruptors: Valerie Fischer On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.