andrea moulton

I attribute my success to just not letting life get you down and just doing what you think you should do. You just do it, and you do it well. It doesn't mean you have to be a victim. I've been through a lot - raising a child on my own completely without the father involved, working my butt off, but I'm completely grateful for the opportunities that have been in front of me and for the down times that have happened that have taught me to build a business. It's just pivoting and knowing how to keep going. One of those things is just trying to stay positive and knowing that another day is coming, and making the best of it the best you can. It's about keeping your skill set sharp and staying ahead of the curve. As a female, and as you get aged out, you're up against a lot, I feel, being female, if you're a mom, if you're a single mom, if you're a certain age, if you're over 40. So it's just keeping yourself relevant and on top of the game. We're smart women. We can multitask, we can create things out of nothing, and that's what makes women pretty damn successful.

Be strong in your beliefs and work hard. It still is a man-dominated world out there, like it or not, but don't let it get you down. You will have some people that will try to pull you down and destroy your self-confidence. You have to work through it. There's days that you can't, but you just have to put yourself back together and move forward. Because at the end of the day, you're building your life and what your dreams are gonna look like, and don't let anyone step on that and destroy it. Look at Barbara Corcoran, for instance - she started off, her boyfriend cheated on her, and look what she did. She built an empire. You need to surround yourself with true women that rise you up, not ones that try to tear you down because they don't like that you're strong. Your mentors should be people like Amal Clooney - those should be the people that you lean on and give you personal strength to keep building your personal brand and who you are and where you want to be.

The biggest challenge right now is the massive layoffs happening across the industry. Oracle just laid off 30,000 people, Amazon's laying off more, and there's another company laying off about 20,000. Sometimes we go through this periodically - this is basically similar to 2008. It'll get better again, we just have to make it through this and just be positive. A lot of companies are downsizing, but there's also a lot of small startups that do need some sales help. The opportunity is having an enterprise person with years of sales experience that can bring it to a small SMB company and have that experience to help them, and not just somebody straight out of school. As for AI, it's not taking over the jobs. The people who are going to have the jobs are the ones who understand what generative AI is, how to function with it, and how to be cohesive and learn how to utilize it as a sales tool. AI is a fantastic tool, but you still need the human element into managing. You still need that human contact.