Karla Umpierrez

I attribute my success to being personable and building real relationships with my clients. It's not just about selling to them - I wish them a happy Mother's Day or Merry Christmas, just being a little bit more personable. When you build relationships, they come back and consistently buy with you. I've been really good at retaining clients and having that repeat clientele. My biggest accomplishment is really just being me, personable, and focusing on what my clients want versus what I want to sell them. I find out about their daily routine and complement that in their life. If you have a working mommy running around going to Walmart every other day, she's going to want a low heel or a sandal - we're not going to Chuck E. Cheese with 4-inch stilettos. It's really about understanding what they're about and making them feel great, comfortable, and excited to wear the shoe.

I'm a big believer of I work to live, I don't live to work. I work and I give it my all, yes, but when I'm home, I disconnect. It's very important to disconnect sometimes. With 16 years in this business, there have been a lot of obstacles and people you're competing with on selling, but I just feel like if you do your work and do what you need to do, you can go home and rest easy because you knew you did everything you had to do. I take work very serious and give it my all when I'm there, and that's really what kept me so many years in the field - having that passion for work, but not taking it too extreme when outside of work. You can't take it home because that causes relationship problems with your kids and affects your mood. Do what you need to do, and that way you go home and you know, hey, I gave it my all, and this is what it is.

You really gotta love and want to do it. Retail is not a simple career because of the ups and downs of selling - one week you sell, one week you don't. If the young person really wants to go with it, they're gonna struggle at first with different personalities on the floor. But you still stay true to yourself, you do what you need to do, you do your goal, you have your mindset on what you have to sell. And that's it. You just gotta worry about you. Don't worry about who's number one, who's outselling you - it's just worrying about you and doing your job. If you're gonna be in the work, you gotta put your all. Punctuality's everything, consistency's everything, and showing up. If you're ready, then be ready, because then you can move up. The youngsters need that big push because they like that easy money, but that doesn't work. You need to be serious about it.

The opportunity right now is to move up as a manager, which would be my only move up in my field. The challenge is really boosting the business in a lot of categories. Networking is a big challenge for this position - I've built relationships outside of work where I can host events or work with other clothing lines together on appointments, going hand-in-hand where they have their fitting and then the ladies come over to buy the shoes. I need to show how I'm going to build the business through a business plan - what more events can I do, what incentives can I give the store to help with our Google reviews or more client captures. My plan is to do incentives and give the team a real visual of where they're at, what they need to do to make goal on a monthly, weekly, and daily basis. Breaking it down like that, they get a good visual and work hard to achieve it. It's really about getting all the personalities in line and being a leader to actually have them work for me and want to work for me. You have to have your people really respect you and want to work for you, or else it's not gonna work. I'm very personable, I have a great heart, I'm very understanding - if my people are good and I'm good, then we all succeed. It's as a whole, as a store.

Being consistent, passionate about what I'm doing, and caring about what I'm doing - those three things really make it happen for me. It's about focusing on what's really important in your life and giving it your all. Life is just gonna throw some hardballs, but you just gotta keep through it. I was just told we don't know if you're ready to be a manager - I went from a hard no to actually convincing the CEO to give me a shot in an interview for manager. I took that negative feedback, grasped myself, and said okay, let me prove to her why I should get this role. When I did, she liked what she heard. So never stop. You believe in yourself, you can do it. That's the confidence. Confidence is big-time when it comes to work. You have that confidence, you go a long way.