Me'Shel Riedel
Me’Shel Riedel is a performance consultant, executive coach, and sales development leader with over 20 years of experience in consulting and business performance strategy. She serves as a Consultant with Mark Kamin & Associates, where she partners with organizations to strengthen leadership effectiveness, improve execution, and drive measurable business results. She is known for her ability to develop and execute effective sales, marketing, business development, and retention strategies that produce tangible outcomes. Her work emphasizes prospecting, lead generation, and closing performance while maintaining a strong focus on customer satisfaction, trust, and long-term relationship building.
Across her consulting career, Me’Shel has specialized in improving company culture and translating leadership behavior into measurable business impact. What distinguishes her approach is her ability to make outcomes concrete and trackable, including reducing turnover, increasing net profit, and improving overall sales performance. She works with clients internationally, both virtually and in person, engaging in focused, results-driven conversations that connect communication, integrity, and leadership development directly to organizational commitments. Her focus extends beyond surface-level goals, working instead to uncover the deeper commitments that drive sustainable results.
Her work spans a wide range of industries, including solar, finance, healthcare, health insurance, HVAC, and other service-driven sectors, with an emphasis on organizations committed to meaningful growth and execution. She specializes in how people show up in business relationships, particularly the perspectives and mindsets that shape performance and outcomes. Me’Shel is especially drawn to clients who are committed to something larger than themselves—organizations that seek to make a meaningful impact on their employees, customers, and communities. Through this lens, she supports leaders in aligning business success with purpose, integrity, and contribution.
• LGBTQ Certified Business Owner
• Southern Illinois University Edwardsville - BS, Mass Communications
• Queer Professional Alliance (St. Louis)
• National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC)
• Gateway Business Guild
• Brentwood Chamber of Commerce
• St. Louis Association of Health Underwriters
• NAHU
• National LGBT Chamber of Commerce
• APA Animal Protective Association
What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to the listening of very powerful coaches, and the listening of my partner and my family. The work that I'm now a consultant inside of has made the biggest difference - I've been involved in that for about 20 years. It's shifted my perspective on what is and isn't possible. As a queer woman, I've really had a commitment that people can be in their roles, in their company, and be who they are. I've been drawn to other women leaders, or leaders who were very about equity, not just equality. That's one of the things I loved about Influential Woman - there was a commitment to women and what's possible.
What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I've ever received is that they're not reacting to you. We are meaning-making machines, human beings. You know, you raise your eyebrow, and I've decided something. But most of the time, when we're interacting with folks, they're not even hearing what we're saying, so they're not reacting to me. And it gives me an opportunity to step back and actually ask. You know, notice you did that - what are your thoughts? Or what do you feel? And let them actually say what's going on, instead of me pretending to know something. It's just not possible. Human beings are complicated and they're simple, and we're all exactly alike.
What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Get a good coach. We are so hard on ourselves, and I've yet to find someone who could actually disprove this, but when we talk to ourselves, you know, the voice in our head is not kind. Never go there alone. And I'm not talking mental health, I'm just talking self-talk, and how we think of ourselves, and you know, and then we have so much bombarded at us - oh, it should be this, or you shouldn't that. It's useful to get someone who can actually hear what you... who gets the direction you're going, can point you in that direction, and can hear - it's not gonna align with the self-doubt, or the whatever you have going on. They're gonna have you be the best you, even when you can't.
What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The thing I've been standing on the mountain is that if you're not preparing for the current economics, you're in trouble. Right now, we're in unprecedented times - we really haven't seen anything like this before, good and bad. We've got, between technology and what's going on globally and in the United States, so you want to be... doing business as usual is risky. We tend to - human beings tend to think it's going to keep going like it's going. We forget that eventually we're even going to die, so let alone have business. It will, if you don't tend to it, it will decline. It's statistically proven. So that's the first one, is tending to your business, and right now, I wouldn't normally be - this wouldn't necessarily always be my top priority, but right now, looking at your economics immediately and making sure you're addressing what's going on. There are people, there are companies and people that thrive in this time because they know how to prepare for it, and how to utilize it. For my industry, working with consulting, working with people with their performance, one of the first things people often move away from, or think they can't afford, is an outside resource to come in and work with them on what's going on. And sometimes you're severing the one thing - I'm not in the day-to-day, I can step outside and ask the questions. Have you looked at this? Have you done that? Or the hard conversations - you have a habit of doing this, are we going back to that habit? I will get into the routine of something and not realize, you know, two weeks have gone by, and I'm doing something actually detrimental. So it's like you stop and interrupt it.
What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
I value integrity. And the meaning I value with integrity is not the moral - not that moral methods aren't important, but the workability. Like, people say what they mean and mean what they say, as the saying goes, and actually, honoring performance. A lot of people walk that - because when you say integrity, people go straight to morality, and I'm talking about workability, you know, like, honoring your word. And not like you're a bad human, we make mistakes, but, you know, just saying, I made a mistake, and then the person listening giving grace for that, because you've made one too somewhere, I promise.