Q&A WITH DANIELLE POSA

Q: Tell us a little bit about your personal background.

• I’m from New York. I have 2 young kids
• I’m a cancer survivor. I had cancer as a kid when I was 5 years old. That’s part of where my interest in wellbeing stems from.
• I went to school at University of Maryland. I studied business and always took an interest in entrepreneurship. That helped me gravitate to Cutco and the Cutco experience.

Q: How did you hear about Cutco?

• I was 19 and had just finished my 1^st semester in college.
• Up until that point, I was working as a lifeguard and a babysitter. I wanted to make more money.
• Sales appealed to me because you had to learn about yourself and develop good business sense.
• I saw an ad online. I was googling sales jobs. The ad said make a minimum of $15 – $20 per appointment. I thought that was a good starting point and the sky was the limit.
• I reached out and set up an interview.

Q: This was with Joe Giannelli, right?

• Yes, it was.
• Joe told me he couldn’t believe I’d responded to that ad. I was one of only two people who responded to it. It was one of his most expensive ads, but it paid off and I went on to sell some Cutco.

Q: You started right after Christmas in our January program. I heard you had an amazing and outstanding first sales month. Tell us about that start to your career.

• When I got the job, we had 3 days of training. It was very interesting to me. I’d never had in-depth training. I remember just trying to soak it all up.
• After training, we were encouraged to do demos. I sold a homemaker in those first couple of demos.
• Joe said you’re off to a great start. Keep the national record in mind. I thought he was crazy for saying something like that. Little by little, I started to see the national record was feasible.
• So I went for it and broke it and set the record for a new rep in January. I sold between $27,000 – $28,000.
• I made $8,000 in a month. As a college student that was a decent sum.

Q: What were some of your most memorable experiences and lessons with your time with Vector?

• As a manager, I couldn’t believe how we were thrown into things in a good way.
• I learned the ins and outs of advertising, what it takes to interview and train people.
• One of my favorite things was running a sales meeting.
• Understanding the elements of a sales in the context of selling knives. It’s a very simple product, but the elements of sales can be applied to anything.
• I haven’t forgotten my Cutco sales training and I’ve taken it with me.

Q: Share with us a little bit of how your career evolved after you graduated from the University of Maryland.

• Cutco heightened my interest in running my own business. But there was one company I decided to interview for; Gallup.
• They had a really interesting mission. The major part of what they do is management consulting. Their fundamental belief is that people are a company’s greatest asset. I loved they had all this research on human behavior and people.
• I met Deepak Chopra who was then a Senior Scientist at Gallop. I worked there for 4 years. I was exposed to their research on wellbeing. It was the first study on wellbeing that has ever been conducted.

Q: I’d like to hear any more transformational experiences along the way in your career.

• I truly love my work. A big part of that I owe to a lot of the self-development work I did at Cutco.
• Joe introduced me to Landmark Education. I did a lot of different courses. It helped me figure out what was important in my life from a work standpoint.
• I was obsessed with figuring out my life purpose. I wanted to do something that would make a difference.
• I worked with Deepak after Gallop. He became a mentor, a friend and business partner.
• The 3^rd thing was my travels. I spend a significant amount of my time traveling to crazy places on my own. I spent a month in India and a week in Haiti.

Q: Let’s get to what you’re doing now. Explain what’s happening now in your world.

• I do a combination of workplace wellbeing consulting and coaching for the most part. Now thanks to COVID-19, the world is finally ready for workplace wellbeing.
• I also have a coaching program called the Legacy Building Program. It’s all about helping people understand their purpose in life and identifying a career that nurtures that purpose to build a life they love.

Q: I read on your website that wellbeing isn’t a program, it should be part of the leadership mindset. Can you share a little bit more of what the difference is?

• First and foremost, it needs to be a mindset that stems from leadership. Leaders have to make their own wellbeing a priority and be vocal about it. They’re actually creating permission amongst the organization to make their wellbeing a priority.
• The next thing is integrating that into the organizational culture. This takes shape in terms of how you design your policies, the training you offer to managers, the development you offer to your leaders and the resources you make available to all your employees.

Q: You also talked about shifting work-life balance to life-work balance. Could you unpack that for me?

• I wrote an article on chopra.com called shifting from work-life balance to life-work balance. The whole idea is how do you get life back into the equation?
• It actually needs to start with a mental shift of prioritizing life and figure out how work fits into that.
• I’m not saying work should take a back seat. But you should honor and respect all areas of your life and realize that your time with your kids gives you the energy you need to go to work. If you don’t have kids, that exercise routine, being able to sleep well and eat healthy. That gives you the ability to focus on your work, do a good job and be productive.
• The next part is the implication for employers for their employees. Companies have to develop this mindset too. You don’t just have workers. These are human being with lives they’re struggling with.
• Every organization should be thinking not just how do we get our workers to be more productive. They should take an interest in their lives and understand they have a life and shouldn’t be expected to answer emails past work hours.

Q: I’d like to hear about your process for working with clients and helping them establish a wellbeing strategy.

• The clients I work with do have to be a type that’s committed to this work. I usually work with more senior level leaders who have an interest in taking care of their employees long-term and making wellbeing a part of their culture.
• The process involves 4 core steps.
• First, I work with them to build a case internally for a wellbeing strategy.
• The 2^nd is conducting a series of interviews to get a sense of what the current state of wellbeing is.
• The 3^rd is launching a measurement to get a score of wellbeing.
• Lastly, is the training and education around wellbeing and engagement.

Q: What is your vision for the future of workplace? What would you want workplaces to be in the next 10 years or more through the influence you’re exerting upon them?

• I would like to see wellbeing been the core measurement of success.
• My dream for workplaces is they commit to measure it first and foremost.
• That will create accountability to follow through on that.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• I love how when Danielle got to Gallup, one of the things they’d determined was people are a company’s greatest asset.
• Therefore, a company should be a vehicle for its employees to be able to live the life they want.
• All employees have a past, present and future. We as leaders should take an interest in not only what people are producing, but the vision they have for themselves.
• I loved the distinction leaders need to make workplace wellbeing a part of their mindset and a priority for themselves and to be vocal about it.
• That’s how we set the ultimate example for people around us.
• Making workplace wellbeing a core measurement of success. That to me really resonates.

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