One of the challenges that I encountered when recruiting college students for the Southwestern Company summer program, was conveying to a non-business major how sales experience would benefit them.  Most of us quickly learn once we leave academia that everything is some form of sales.  That statement has been validated every time I talk to a Southwestern alumnus that is not in sales. 

This year at the Southwestern Great Recruiters Seminar (GRS), Whitney Ferré spoke about how valuable her Southwestern experience has been in her everyday life. 

“In my current roles as author, artist, restaurateur, and mother, not a day goes by that I do not draw on the skills I learned both selling books and recruiting a team.  I am constantly having to convince someone about something.  It is ALL sales and it is ALL about how well I can communicate with people.”

Whitney sold books with Southwestern for four summers (1992-95).  She was a top salesman, top recruiter, and a top manager–a triple threat.  Fourteen years after leaving the bookfield, Whitney came back to share how tapping into your right brain can positively impact your success.

“The right brain voice is completely present, while the left brain is thinking past or future. The left brain gets frustrated with specific details, while the right brain looks at the big picture. I think you have to be in your right brain to be open to ‘coincidences’ or trusting that even though you’re not in your comfort zone, that things will be provided for you.”

After leaving Southwestern, Whitney began helping hundreds of people find their creativity as founder of the Creative Fitness Center. The Center first gained national recognition on HGTV.  Today she continues her outreach leading corporate seminars, teaching art classes, and as a creativity expert on television & radio.  Whitney is also an artist, a wife, a mother, and a co-owner of Rumours Wine Bar that builds communities around food, wine, and art.  Whitney recently published her first book, The Artist Within: A Guide to Becoming Creatively Fit (Turner).  In Whitney’s book she discusses the principle of tapping into your right brain in order to use all of your resources in everyday decision-making.

“I had a blast speaking at GRS because I know what it takes to be successful as a recruiter and I have had 14 years since my Southwestern career to gain valuable hindsight that I was excited to share.  I feel all of my experience has led to this moment when I am busy selling and promoting my book.  The message in my book is so important because it proves that our right brains have a powerful voice that we are not hearing, a powerful perspective that we are not seeing and that it has access to valuable mental skills that we are simply not using if we do not access this voice!  My last summer on the bookfield was my “right brain summer”.  I went from 5000 units to 8900 units and from a 35 person team that sold ZILCH to a #3 team.  How?  I accessed the RIGHT side of my mind that did not get caught up in the details or frustrated at individual results.  I was completely tapped in to my vision of selling a TON of books and having a top team.  Because of the strength of my vision and the right brain voice inside my head, I trained my team more effectively and I hit steak EVERY single day on the field.  It did not matter what temporary circumstances tried to trip me up, I knew it was all going to work out and it did!  That is a ‘right brain performance’.”

It seems that the sales experience can benefit the artist and the artist can also positively impact the sales experience. 

Learn more about tapping in to your right brain at creativelyfit.com. 

Whitney was also featured in Her Nashville.  Click here to read the online exclusive. ]]> http://www.southwesternalumniblog.com/southwestern_company/find-your-artist-within-and-find-success/feed/ 2 http://www.southwesternalumniblog.com/southwestern_company/dortch-oldham-1919-2009/ http://www.southwesternalumniblog.com/southwestern_company/dortch-oldham-1919-2009/#comments Fri, 27 Feb 2009 03:03:34 +0000 Becky Sudman http://www.southwesternalumniblog.com/?p=66 On Thursday morning, February 26, 2009, one of the greatest pillars in the history of Southwestern, Dortch Oldham, passed away. He was 89 years old.

Dortch grew up on a farm north of Nashville, and heard about selling books from a friend. As he said in an interview here several years ago, “He told me you could make as much as $200. That was during the Depression, and I was on the farm – that was real money to me.” He began selling while still a teenager. At the recommendation of J.B. and W.E. Henderson, his sales managers, he attended the University of Richmond, graduating in 1941. Dortch and his wife, Sis, later endowed Richmond with scholarships for deserving young people, who became known as Oldham Scholars. They did the same for U.T. Knoxville in 1999.

 

Dortch influenced thousands of young people, and through them, thousands more. He believed strongly in advising students to do what was in their best interest, and was a living example of the truth behind Edwin Markham’s great quotation that what we put into the lives of others comes back into our own. One of the young people he mentored throughout his early career later donated $500,000 to the University of Tennessee-Martin to help establish the Dortch Oldham Center for Economic Education and Entrepreneurial Studies. Dortch’s influence, represented by countless acts of generosity and kindness, will continue to multiply to the benefit of all society. 

 Click here to view Dortch’s obituary.