We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sandy Geroux, M.S.. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sandy below.

Sandy, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

One thing you need to know about me is that I love the concept of WOW! I say it (a lot!), I think of ways to create it, and brainstorm ways others can deliver it, as well. I am also very enthusiastic; in fact, it’s one of the things that people comment on after every program I deliver, and I am focused on creating WOW experiences for everyone I meet.

My company name started out as Geroux Performance Group (boring!), and when one of my clients noted that I talked a lot about taking risks (reasonable and appropriate ones, but risks nonetheless), I tried to create an “umbrella” for my company name and base it around taking risk. But trying to “force” my programs all under that umbrella wasn’t working well.

One day, I was talking about this struggle during one of my Mastermind meetings, and I mentioned one of my programs called “Creating WOW Experiences for Internal and External Clients,” in addition to other programs on leadership, goal-setting and achievement, and more.

When they heard that program name, they said, “Sandy, the word “WOW” fits you so well! And no one wants to take risks, but we all want to be better leaders and achieve our dreams. And we all want to create WOWs – so why don’t you flip it?! Make “WOW” the umbrella and put everything else under that.

Duh! I could’ve had a V-8! (which is a fun reference to an OLD commercial… LOL!)

So, I flipped it. I also hired a branding expert and the WOWplace was born – because I help you turn your Workplace into a WOWplace! And since I am an international speaker, my company is called WOWplace International, LLC.

Sandy, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I took a very circuitous route to my current company and career. I began as an administrative professional, then became a research analyst, a Business Systems Consultant, then owned my own Desktop Publishing Company. At one point, I became a top-producing REALTOR, which led to my current career of speaking, training and consulting internationally on the topics of leadership, customer service and administrative staff motivation and training. My mission is to help everyone work together to turn their workplace into a WOWplace!

After almost 20 years in the corporate environment and 20+ more in my own business, I have seen and experienced what great leaders do that makes people want to follow them… as well as the blind spots some possess that unintentionally cause their teams to disengage and eventually leave.

One of the biggest problems I help my clients solve is the issue of employee engagement. It is a true moment of joy when I can help team members re-connect with their personal values and desires, and re-engage in their work. One of the nicest compliments I have ever received from a team member client is, “I was ready to leave because I was bored and felt like I had nothing of value to contribute, but you have helped me get excited again about the possibilities of what I can do in my current job. Thank you!” Other times, they have only a year or two left before retirement and are just “coasting” through those last years or months. After my program, they are rejuvenated and ready to go back and contribute from their vast pool of institutional, career and life knowledge.

As a side note, many of my leader clients have told me that they’re worried about their long-term employees who are planning to retire soon and refuse to share their knowledge with the rest of the team. These employees subscribe to the old “Knowledge Is Power” philosophy and refuse to allow others learn it, for fear that they will become obsolete or irrelevant. I help them see that the true power is in sharing that knowledge and helping everyone use it, rather than hoarding it in the mistaken belief that it somehow makes them more valuable.

On the other side, leaders know I can help them work through their employee engagement and customer service issues. One client came to me after having lost their largest client due to customer service issues; they were anticipating losing their second largest, which was worth $2 million per year.

I met with leadership to discuss the challenges, interviewed the entire customer service staff, then designed a program of six 2-hour sessions, one each week for 6 weeks, to teach customer service concepts and work through the specific challenges they were experiencing. One week at a time, we worked together to design the curriculum for that week, then deliver it.

The result was that they saved their $2 million client! Not only that, their service improved so such that they entered “Bonus” territory with that client and earned even more. Over the next year, for the first time ever, they became the #1 branch (of 16 branches across the U.S.) for their company! They repeated it the next year and won their “Company Cup”!

All of this success starts with one crucial question that leaders must ask their team members and company representatives must ask each other and their external clients: “What can I do to serve you better?” So, the focus is on WOWing the people.

Due to my Systems Analysis/Business Systems Consulting background, I know that the numbers (metrics) are important and we must keep an eye on them; however, what I’ve realized over many years of working with and serving clients is that when you take care of your people, you can attract and engage them more easily (and hold onto them longer), which saves money, time and effort in turnover and training costs, while increasing sales and improving profits.

So, the thing I am most proud of with my brand and my services is that I help my clients focus on what’s important – their people (internal and external)… and when we get that right, everything else follows and the numbers take care of themselves.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

At one point in my career, I decided to become a REALTOR. My husband wasn’t sure this was a good thing because family has always been very important to me, and our big Italian family had always gotten together on Sundays to share a meal and spend the afternoon together. My job as a REALTOR would probably entail working on weekends – not all weekends, but probably a good number of them.

But I was ready for a change. At that point, I was working for a company owner who was an absolute monster who believed that Management by Intimidation was the way to go… and his wife (who didn’t even work for the company) believed it even more than he did! And at that point, one woman changed my life with one sentence. She said, “You know you’d be a good REALTOR!”

I laughed the first time she said it because I’d never sold a thing in my life up to that point! But about 3 months later, she cared enough about me to repeat it… and this time I was ready to hear it. Besides, she was a REALTOR (actually owned her own real estate agency) and I figured she probably saw something in me that I didn’t even see in myself. And I thought, “I have nowhere to go from here but UP!”

So, I leaped – and promptly found out how WRONG that thought was. I had a lot further down to go because I had never sold a thing in my life! I had left a good-paying job with benefits, making about $45K per year and working 40-45 hours per week… and began working 60-65 hours per week and making only $13K my entire first year in sales.

My husband asked, “Honey, what did you do?” I said, “I don’t know – but I’ll fix it!”

So, I got some more education, more training and got myself a coach. I began prospecting (something I knew nothing about at that time). I learned scripts and discovered that they’re not the slick tools of oily salespeople, but the actual true answers to common questions and objections. And even though I didn’t enjoy prospecting (especially at first), every time my hand would go to the phone and I would pull it back because I didn’t want to do it, I thought about my family and how I needed to help support them – and my hand went right back to the phone!

By applying myself diligently and by doing the proper activities every day, finding more clients and serving them to the absolute best of my abilities, within 2 years I broke my first 6-figure income ever! That changed everything!

Everything I ever believed about myself about my income potential vanished as I realized something crucial about myself – actually I realized 2 things:

1) Contrary to my lifelong belief, I was not just a “background/support” income earner… I could be a big breadwinner
2) I had been the problem all along, simply because I didn’t believe it was possible for me!

You see, I had always believed that big incomes were possible for other people… just not for me. I always had an excuse as to why “that won’t work for me.” Every time I heard someone else talk about succeeding in their market, I thought “My market is different!” I now cringe at the memory of the plethora of excuses I came up with to justify not succeeding at the highest levels.

But something inside kept me pushing for my dreams. Maybe it was a subconscious belief that I was good at what I did and knew there MUST be a way to prove it.

It may have been a stubborn refusal to accept that I was going to fail at that job if I didn’t do something different.

Or perhaps it was that I finally believed that I deserved to succeed at that level – and that if other people could do it, I could certainly do it, too.

Whatever it was, I thank my lucky stars that I snapped out of my own “stinking thinking” quickly enough to put my huge work ethic to work for myself.

And when I hear some of my audience members saying the same things, I recognize them and know I am in the absolute best position to help them because I’ve “been there and done (and thought) that myself!

So, I always say that whenever you start asking the question of yourself when it comes to deserving success, “Why me?” – FLIP IT – and ask yourself, instead, “Why NOT me?” And then go for it with all you’ve got!

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

Dale Carnegie’s book, “How To Win Friends And Influence People” has had a great impact on me. This is probably due to my consistent focus on people and relationships, which have served me well throughout my life and my careers.

I always subscribed to the philosophy of making people feel good about themselves, and about being with me. I love people and want to see them succeed.

But Carnegie’s book pointed out all the little ways we can all accomplish that goal every day, with everyone we meet.

Several of his points stuck with me, most notably a story of learning and pronouncing someone’s name properly. Many of us seem to be of the mindset that it’s OK to butcher other people’s names – especially foreign names. And we expect those with difficult names to “forgive” us – or give us an easy-to-say nickname – simply because we’re too lazy/rushed/tired/(insert excuse here) to try!

First of all, have you noticed how many people have foreign names?? Myself included! My maiden name is Petorelli – not an easy Italian name to pronounce, but not ridiculously difficult, either, if you just look at it for more than half-a-second and try to sound it out. Same with my married name: Geroux… a pretty common French-Canadian name (although there are also many Cajuns with this name, with alternate spellings).

Too often, when people ask new acquaintances how to pronounce their name, they are only paying lip service to the desire to pronounce it properly, seemingly only asking because they know they should want to pronounce it properly, but deep down they really don’t. Many times, people don’t even seem to listen and just ignore what is said, pronouncing the name any way they wish.

If someone legitimately seems interested in pronouncing my name properly, and tries to do so, I’m perfectly fine with that because at least they tried. But when they won’t even give it a real try, it’s perturbing to me.

Even more perturbing is the fact that so many people have such low expectations of others (Americans, in particular) to be able to say their name properly that they say, “My last name is too hard to pronounce, so just call me ‘XXX’.”

I always ask people not to let me (or anyone else) off the hook with regard to their name. I want to show them respect by trying to pronounce it properly… and I will try several times to do so. Sometimes I still butcher it, but most often I can get it with a couple of tries. I know I feel better when I do, and they seem to feel the respect that I wish to give them, as well.

Carnegie has many other life lessons for treating others well… and I encourage everyone to check it out at their earliest opportunity.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thewowplace.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sandygeroux/
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/wowplace
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandygeroux
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/Sandygeroux
• Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/sandygeroux
• Other: Blog: http://wowplace.com