Her Story
About Alejandra
My career began at Southwestern Advantage in 2015 as a freshman at UTSA, where I took on what they call their toughest internship - selling educational learning systems, books, and apps door-to-door. At 19 years old with zero sales experience, I spent my first summer in California working 80-hour weeks on straight commission, knocking on doors and talking to families. It was like a business boot camp, with 30% of students quitting within the first three weeks, but I saw it as an opportunity to sharpen my communication skills and learn about integrity, resilience, work ethic, and commitment. After finishing my first summer with average sales results but having talked to 3,000 families, I knew I had so much more to learn. I continued for a second and third summer, eventually achieving President's Club every single year after my first summer and bringing out top sales teams. As I grew, I learned to coach my peers in selling and recruit teams, building really great sales teams throughout college. In 2020 during COVID, I brought the number one team in the company and helped 10 students I personally coached each make over $20K in profit in 12 weeks their first summer. I developed a sales organization of about 90 students that I was coaching and training. After 8 years, I felt I had learned everything I needed to learn there and reached the leadership lid, so I transitioned to working with a startup in AI software doing B2B sales as an account executive. Now I'm building pipelines from scratch in a totally new industry, learning tech language and how to connect with C-suite leaders and different stakeholders. It's been really awesome to see how all the skills I learned in that door-to-door program directly transferred, even though I didn't have SaaS software sales experience in my interview process.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Alejandra
01What do you attribute your success to?
I learned from my mentors that being a person of principle first is essential. If you want to do good in business and sales, your values and principles have to be anchored in every decision you make. Your integrity, the way you operate with your family, your habits, the things you do behind closed doors matter more, because that is what shows up and causes you to excel in the outside world. When I was younger trying to get advice on how to achieve the next level, my mentors would always come back to my personal habits, and I'd think it wasn't that big a deal if I slept in or went out late. But they showed me that if there's an unalignment between what you're preaching and how you're living, that's where you need to grow yourself first, and you're going to see the dividends on the business side later. The next big lesson I learned was redefining my version of success. Success is not about the amount of money you make or how many sales you make - it's about your attitude and your effort. If you can go to sleep at peace knowing that you gave it your best and had a good attitude, it doesn't matter if that day you didn't see the results, because you know the results will come.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The greatest advice I got from my mentors was really just being a person of principle first. Your values and principles have to be anchored in every decision you make. Your integrity, the way you operate with your family, your habits, the things you do behind closed doors matter more, because that is what shows up and causes you to excel in the outside world. I was always trying to get advice from my mentors on how to achieve the next level, and they would always come back to my personal habits. They helped me understand that when there's an unalignment between what you're preaching and how you're living, that's where you can grow yourself first, and you're going to see the dividends on the business side later. They also taught me to redefine my version of success - that success is not about the amount of money you make or how many sales you make, it's about your attitude and your effort. If you can go to sleep at peace knowing that you gave it your best and had a good attitude, it doesn't matter if that day you didn't see the results, because you know the results will come.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Action cures fear. I think everyone has the same reaction with any big goal that we want to do - you know, I'm just kind of nervous, or I should try later. Somewhere behind any obstacle that we put in front of us, it's the butterflies in our stomach that's stopping us, and we think with more time we'll gain more courage, but the reality is, with more time, we actually gain more fear. So the only way to conquer the fear is really to just go knock on the door, just rip the band-aid, and even if you mess it up, good for you, because most people don't even try. Every rep, every rejection is amazing - pat yourself on the back, like wow, okay, at least I did it, at least I didn't let fear stop me, because that 100% is the number one thing that stops any entrepreneur in their tracks. And what's powerful is when you start classifying fear as an emotion, you can have so much control, because then you understand, wow, I'm not going to let my emotions dictate my actions today. Okay, I'm scared, that's okay, let's just do it anyways. We can do it with our knees shaking, we can go knock on this door, it's going to be okay. And then you realize it's not that bad, and then maybe someone buys or something, you're like, oh, what was I so afraid of? Like, that was fun.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Being a person of principle is most important to me. My values and principles have to be anchored in every decision I make. My integrity, the way I operate with my family, my habits, the things I do behind closed doors matter more, because that is what shows up and causes me to excel in the outside world. I've learned that there needs to be alignment between what I'm preaching and how I'm living - that's where real growth happens. I've also redefined my version of success to focus on attitude and effort rather than just money or sales numbers. If I can go to sleep at peace knowing that I gave it my best and had a good attitude, it doesn't matter if that day I didn't see the results, because I know the results will come. But if I go to bed knowing I had a bad attitude or didn't give it my best, then I don't know what's going to come.
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