Holly Hamilton

I attribute my success to my faith and my daily spiritual practice. Every morning when I wake up, I quote Psalm 23, and I also recite the fruits of the Spirit from Galatians 5:22: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such, there is no law. Galatians 6:9 is especially important to me - 'I shall not grow weary of doing good.' When I'm getting ready in my makeup room, I'm not just physically preparing for the day, I'm mentally and spiritually preparing too. I have these posters up that remind me of how I need to live. When you're dealing with such a diverse group of people over the telephone, across all ages and backgrounds, you have to have a guide. If you handle every situation with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, you are going to be great because it causes no offense. The truth doesn't have to cause offense. It's not just about getting to heaven - it's a guide to how to live and how to act today. The Bible teaches me how I'm supposed to act, and that didn't come naturally. It gives me that temperament, it helps with my self-control. Self-control is the last one of those fruits, and it's the hardest - I haven't mastered that one yet. But this daily ritual, this is what keeps me grounded and successful.

I've received two pieces of career advice that have really shaped my life. The first came when I was in my 20s, working for an insurance company. A young lady pulled me aside and told me I was incredible at what I did, and that she had an opening she'd like to put me in, but she couldn't because I didn't have a college degree. She said my life would be limitless if I just got a degree. I didn't take that advice at the time, but 40 years later, I finally got my bachelor's degree. So I think my story falls under tenacity - I'm old now, but I'm just now living my best life. The second piece of advice came about 7 years ago from a supervisor. I was frustrated with her one day and being very quiet and sulky. The next day, she left a post-it note on my computer that said, 'I'm joyful, and I try to bring joy to others in my day.' That one post-it note made me start looking at her differently and at myself differently. It taught me that if this is how you want to be perceived, then this is how you have to act. I told that story in my panel interview in front of her and four other supervisors, and I still have that post-it note. It's about JOY - that positive approach to how to take on the day has stayed with me ever since.

Be hungry. When I came to this company, I had just come from a very difficult situation where I'd been making a lot of money at a software company, helping to build a support center that generated 15% of their income. But six weeks before they went public, when my shares would have been honored, they let several of us managers go because they didn't want to honor the shares. That hurt me deeply. I thought I'd just go to the next job and make close to that same amount of money, but nobody was answering my resume. Nobody. By the time I came to Spectrum, I was hungry, and I had to make it work. There's something valuable in that hunger. I know the difference between being poor and being broke, and if you're hungry, you will listen to what we tell you to do, and you will do it. When I interviewed for this job, I told them I'd never sold cable or internet before, so I was just relying on them - I'd just do whatever they told me to do. And that's how they hired me. That's what I tell everybody in training classes: if you're hungry and you come in here and just do what we tell you to do, you're going to succeed and you can change your life. Go into any job and put all you have into it, as if this is your last shot. Accept feedback, give it your all, stay hungry, and you will succeed.

The biggest challenge in my field right now is pushback when coaching the staff. People want to do what they want to do, and it's like, that's not working for you. I know you think that's working for you, but it isn't. The challenge is how do you kindly tell somebody that they're not winning? When you're scheduling these meetings with supervisors and agents who have a thousand other things they're responsible for, mine is just another checkbox. You have to make these meetings as interesting as possible, and you have to have thick skin - you can't take it personally. I've been around long enough to know that if you just smile and keep being kind, and you just keep being kind, you almost say 'trust me,' but you don't. You just say, this is what we're going to do, and this is how we're going to do it. You can tell when they don't care, so you have to find out how to engage them. They have to be engaged, they have to participate. I use a lot of quizzes in my training - the last one I did was actually designed for them to fail. These are highly professional people who thought they knew everything, so when they started looking up their answers and saying 'what?', I asked them: do you think you learn more from winning, or do you think you learn more when you fail? They said failure. So I told them this test was never for them to pass - now I have your attention. You have to show people what they don't know in a way that isn't threatening. But you have to be patient, you have to tell people hard things in the kindest way possible, and then you have to let them figure it out. And it's worth it, because eventually they start sending chats bragging about their sales numbers.

Honesty is huge with me. Authenticity is the reason people buy from me. I will start very professional, no question about that, but very quickly I will make you laugh, and you will see that I say what I mean and mean what I say. Sometimes you have to find that person that will say the things out loud that nobody's saying - I'm that person. I had to find kinder ways to say it as I got older, because when you're young and you say those things, they go 'oh, she just doesn't know,' but in your late 40s throughout the 50s is where you start to realize you have to prove yourself an asset now. So you learn how to say things, but I won't compromise authenticity. I just don't. Kindness is also essential. I am going to make you accountable, I'm going to do it the kindest way possible, but I'm going to say hard things, and we're going to fix it together. But I'm not going to lie to you, because that doesn't help you. Accountability is critical too - I'm the end of the boomer generation, and I believe in responsibility and accountability. You have to be accountable, and I'm going to hold you to that, but I'll do it in the kindest way possible.