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Name: Kim Orlesky
Business: KimOrlesky.com
Location: Calgary, Canada
Industry: Education & Training
Reason for starting? After working in corporate sales for 9 years, something inside of me knew I needed a change. After a breakup changed the way I understood my life, I decided to do something entirely for myself. I sold my house, quit my job and backpacked the world solo for 6 months. Upon my return, I knew I wanted to use my mastery in sales, but not in a sales capacity. Instead, I wanted to teach women how to do what I did so well: create higher value conversations with clients.
Related: Read about another women working in Education & Training here.
How do you define success? I define success by being able to spend more time with family while creating a scalable business that helps thousands of entrepreneurs across North America. My success comes from continuing a work/life balance, working 4 days per week and no more than 35 hours. Success comes from helping people build better sales conversations with their clients. I love focusing on what I want to do, which is creating content. My content is created in a way that is easily delivered by my dedicated sales trainers and used by my hundreds of students to generate higher-dollar service contracts from clients.
Biggest success: My biggest success to date was winning the Woman Entrepreneur of the Year from Startup Canada. I absolutely love helping people build their business and give sales education to teach skill sets needed to have high-value conversations. It is an honour to be standing in the shadows of so many people taking sales skills and developing them to build their business. Knowing accomplishments others have achieved, it was overwhelming to be nominated as Woman Entrepreneur of the Year. And what is even more satisfying is having won this title. It is great to see the impact I am having is now being recognized by a national organization.
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What is your top challenge and how you have addressed it? I was growing, but the biggest limitation to my growth was myself. I needed to replicate what I do. Since then, I’ve hired my first employee to help me deliver even more education to entrepreneurs. When I first started building my business, I was working with individuals on a one-on-one basis. This basis gave me the opportunity to build business fast and generate revenue, however I realized I created a job for myself. If I was not physically present and delivering on my promises to clients, nobody else was able to do it. I was unable to download what I had in my head to create value for my clients. I then needed to create a scalable model that worked. I created content to deliver to clients by me or someone else. I hired my first employees to assist in doing amazing work to help others.
Who is your most important role model? Marie Forleo, Grant Cardone and the many entrepreneurs I meet who are building up amazing businesses. I love following Brendon Burchard’s work because I joke that he went from 0 to Oprah in 6 years. He has a passion for marketing, conversations and builds a knowledge base that empowers more individuals to learn from his mastery. His online courses allow him to reach far geographies, while his events provide closer access to him directly. I believe the best entrepreneurs show themselves as being human, and Brendon is authentic, genuine and someone I truly admire.
[box_light]Website KimOrlesky.com
Twitter @kimorlesky
Facebook www.facebook.com/Kim.orlesky
Other www.youtube.com/channel[/box_light]
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Edited by The Story Exchange