A little about my career journey…
From the start
I began my career in 2014 as an Ad Sales Rep at the Herald Times newspaper in my college town of Bloomington, IN. I was pretty good at it, selling out all the open spaces we had on the front page. A year later, I graduated from Indiana University Bloomington with a BA in Communications as well as minors in both Marketing (Kelley School of Business) and Psychology. My focus areas of study were in writing, public relations, and advertising. I always dreamed about working in a large advertising firm like Leo Burnette or Saatchi & Saatchi.
Chicago, here I come
My first job out of school as a Media Associate for Starcom Mediavest Group (Spark Foundry) was a great starting point to my career. I met so many great people at the agency and managed several accounts from Art Institute of Chicago to White Wave Foods (Silk Almond Milk). I even got to sit in on a meeting or two with the creative team at Leo Burnette to brainstorm one of our activation events for the Art Institute’s Van Gogh exhibit. However, my journey with media planning came to a close just shy of my one year work anniversary with Starcom. I was not happy with my day to day tasks and my team saw it too. It was time to find something new.
Here comes Cubii
After taking a couple months off to figure out my next career move, I found one of the coolest companies I still rave about to this day. Cubii created the first connected (Bluetooth) compact seated elliptical trainer. When I joined the team as PR Manager in 2016, we marketed Cubii for the busy office professional who couldn’t get their steps in during the work day. Remember, this was pre-pandemic when almost everyone still went into an office 9-5, 5 days a week. I have always been a health nut and loved this concept (new to me at the time) of “deskercising”. My role as PR Manager was to share the founder’s story and pitch it to major media. I successfully got articles published by local news (right) and national publications such as New York Mag, InStyle, Huffington Post and Business Insider.
From Kickstarter to QVC
After the founder story grew stale in the eyes of the big media, my role in the company transitioned from PR to Business Development. In this role, I was able to continue pitching the Cubii story, but also learned more about what it took to get Cubii into major sales channels. I pitched to every channel I could think of including ecommerce, local brick & mortar stores, and big box retailers like BestBuy and Costco. This lead me to my most memorable moment at the company, which was getting Cubii in with Costco. To this day, I still see it as one of my biggest career successes.
Costco wants Cubii
As PR & BD Manager, one of my projects was attending local corporate health and wellness fairs to show employers and employees how they can implement Cubii as part of their overall employee wellness initiatives. During one of these corporate wellness fairs, I spoke with some people representing Costco, selling their wholesale memberships. Long story short, they told me who to connect with once I was back at the office and if we ever wanted to get Cubii into Costco stores. I dropped everything when I got back to the office, called the Midwest Region Costco buyer, pitched to them, and sent a sample. We started our in-store rollout through Roadshows (right) where I would travel with the Cubii team 12 days at a time to demo Cubii to Costco members. A couple years later and with much effort and persistence, we made it online and inline with Costco.
featured on Strahan & Sara, Live with kelly & ryan, and the talk with sharon osbourne
These were all once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. We were invited to showcase Cubii live on GMA where Strahan and Sara demonstrated the product in front of a live audience (you see me in the front!). We got invited back by GMA to do LIVE with Kelly and Ryan a few months later. I flew out to California to do an entire live studio audience giveaway with Sharon Osbourne and her co-hosts.
Pandemic sales skyrocket
Okay so yes, we were one of the several companies that actually benefited from COVID ever happening. Why? Because there was no vaccine for COVID early during the pandemic and people were afraid to venture from their homes to even take a walk. Gyms were closed and nobody felt safe. Sound familiar? People also had a little extra cash to spend (thanks, Trump check). Cubii, like other fitness companies such as Peloton, saw sales go way up. Working out from your sofa or bedroom with a stationary bike was the new cool thing while under quarantine. To keep an even longer story short, Private Equity took notice at our success, bought us, and the OGs (Original Gangsters) such as myself, made our exit.
Hello, myAir Smart Wellness
Not only did I know for sure that I wanted to work for another startup, but I wanted to continue growing startups in the health & wellness vertical. Something amazing happened to me one day. I was on LinkedIn and I saw a random message from a recruiter saying their is a new startup that specializes in personalized nutrition + AI to help consumers curb stress. OMG! I had to check this out. Never heard of anything like it. I searched the web for a company name and there it was: myAir Smart Wellness. I had to be a part of this movement. Nothing else like it out there. Long story short, I got the job as Head of Business Development North America after some intense interviewing.
Confirming my passion for growing startups
Of course I took a little time to myself (4 months) after my exit at Cubii to bask in the fruits of my labor. I just spent the last 5.5 years helping take a startup company from break even to multi-millions in half a decade’s time. It was a lot of work! But, I knew I couldn’t just sit around. I have some talent and skills I need to take from my time and experience at Cubii and apply it to other startups and help them grow. Got to keep that good ball rolling, am I right?
Startup Sales Shop is born
I accomplished a ton with myAir, helping them gain awareness and traction in the states. We focused primarily on introducing the smart nutrition system to HR and corporate wellness decision makers. As I pitched myAir to decision makers, I started to realize that what I did for them and Cubii, I could do for many startups all at once. But, how? By starting my own lead gen agency! Thus, Startup Sales Shop LLC was born. I focus on growing startups and small businesses through Startup Sales Shop full-time and absolutely love what I do each day.