Heather Goring

I attribute a lot of my success to Paul, my mentor and the owner of Blue Water Systems. He didn't teach me how to sell or manage teams through traditional business school means, but more of what works, and how to relate to engineers, and how to listen to people, and look at things from different perspectives to try and see how products that are put in traditional markets could be used differently. I really appreciate the time that I had with him. Beyond that, I think it's two-fold. Part of it is building relationships with customers that are decades old. Having that kind of rapport with folks and trust is something that you can't just get walking out the front door and calling people. Those relationships are really important to me. The other part is working with salespeople and mentoring them and watching them grow and flourish. I'm a firm believer that people buy from people, and relationships is what drives businesses. When you really get to know people, they end up staying in your lives for a long time, whether they still work for you or they've outgrown the role that you helped them build into, and that's been really rewarding.

The best career advice I ever received came from an early mentor who taught me how to relate to engineers, truly listen, and view products and markets from multiple perspectives—skills that went far beyond any formal business training.

I think there's a couple of things. One, be true to yourself and your morals. There is so much in business where people try and push you out of comfort zones, so always be true to yourself. The other thing is, don't let the person above you stop you from growing. I actually have a mentee that I've worked with for years, and she had a boss that wasn't allowing her to flourish. I said, well, make an appointment with the CEO and say that you have some ideas. She ended up working directly for the CEO on a couple of special projects, and if she would have just continued to go down the path of the box that she was put in, she wouldn't have flourished and grown to that executive level. Especially as women, we're taught from the time that we're little, you know, this is the box that you're in, and these are the rules, and you have to work twice as hard, and you can't make any mistakes. The reality is, we're all humans. We all make mistakes. It's what you do with those mistakes and how you navigate what's in front of you that's going to define whether you're successful or whether you're just another person at the office. To be extraordinary, you have to push against norms. You have to not always follow the rules.

I think we're at another precipice right now, especially with AI. Not being afraid to try things that are new is so important. Especially in the embedded industry, we have a lot of folks that are not as open. They don't trust it. The reality is that this is a wave that's not going away, and it really needs to be explored to see how it can help companies, and not necessarily look at it as, oh, this is going to take over the world and it's going to be horrible. AI is just one example. Through COVID, people had to change how they did business altogether because you couldn't get in front of people. I think always evolving, always learning, always looking at new ways of doing things and embracing whether it's new technology or new methodologies is critical. So much is changing in the software world right now.

Being true to yourself and your morals is fundamental to me. There is so much in business where people try and push you out of comfort zones, so always be true to yourself. I'm a firm believer that people buy from people, and relationships is what drives businesses. Building relationships with customers that are decades old, having that kind of rapport with folks and trust, is something that's really important to me. That bleeds over into working with salespeople and mentoring them and watching them grow and flourish. A lot of sales leaders are focused on what have you done for me lately, where are the numbers, what's the forecast. But when you really get to know people, they end up staying in your lives for a long time. I never stop learning, and I'm always continuing to be curious, continuing to want to learn, and always looking at what else can I do better, where can I stretch myself, where can I look at things from a different perspective.