From Restaurant Host to Successful Branch Manager Through Personal Growth and Sales

Speaker 0: Alright. My name is Steph Helgeson, and I am from Woodbury, Minnesota. Yeah, absolutely. So before starting with Vector, I worked at just a restaurant that was down the street from my house. And I was not making great money as you can assume. Was just hosting people to their tables. But then I heard about the job from an Instagram story and decided I wanted to give it a try, try something new, get out of my comfort zone. And so I really was just making, you know, okay money hosting a couple nights a week at this restaurant and didn't really do anything super crazy. I would say there's always some negativity that goes understand what it is that we do here and what our mission is. And when you come from an outside perspective, people often don't have the understanding. Whereas if you actually try it out for yourself, can actually gain a better understanding of know, what the job actually is and how it works and how the systems work. But of course, there was some negativity of people saying, you're selling knives. What are you doing? Right? And people just not understanding a ton, but I just kinda stuck with what I knew was going well for me. And now people these days congratulate me in my success and are always asking how, you know, how can I get started or how can I get in on what you're doing too? So that's a great question. I would say my favorite story. Oh, that's a really good question. I think that actually, I'll just tell you a recent one here. I had messaged a woman about doing a presentation with me two years ago. It was a month after I first started with the team and the company. And she's, at the time, was really busy. So she said, I can't do a presentation, but let me mail you a check because I know you're working really hard and I admire it. I'm in entrepreneurship and business too. And so I was like, really? You don't have to do that. But she mailed me a check and she also had sent me, you know, like a little bible verse and something. And I always kinda kept her in the back of my mind. And I checked it in with her every now and then. She would check-in with me and always supported me. And then last week, she messaged me on Facebook Messenger and said, hey, I think, you know, we need some new knives. And I remembered you and I wanna buy through you. And it was one of our bigger sets. And so obviously, I made a decent amount of money from that connection that I made two years ago when I first started the job and fostered that connection over the years, which was really cool to then finally get her into my customer base and being able to support her and help her get what she needs is really cool, really cool for me. Yeah. What's really surprised me the most was the amount of personal growth focus that Vector has. I think going into it, I just expected it to be a sales job doing business, and I didn't really expect anything special out of it. I was just looking for a way to earn some extra money. But as I really grew into our team, I I got invested in the team and the company and just our division, I realized how the community that we have is really personal growth oriented, and we're all really striving to be our best selves. And so I learned a lot more about, obviously, sales and business. But what really stuck out to me was how I was changing as a person through my sales rep experience, through my assistant manager experience, through my branch manager experiences that have shaped me into the person that I am today And that the job really wasn't about making money and doing the sales like most people would assume, but it really is about growing you into the person that you want to be and using vector as a vehicle to become that person. Yeah. I think one of the favorite things from a lot of students is the flexibility because we can really pick when we work. And that does come with some difficulty. College students having to schedule themselves can often be a discipline thing. And that can be slightly difficult. But when you overcome that and realize, you know, I'm gonna work at this time and and that's when I'm gonna work, it really allows you to cater your schedule to your needs versus working at another job where they say you have to come in at 8AM and you can't leave until 5PM. And I think one of the things I like about the flexibility with Vector as well is that you can make a bunch of money in a little amount of time just in a couple hours. On an hour doing a presentation or going to the team meetings. There's always learning that's happening. And it's nice, especially as a college student, I can always shift around my meetings or decide when I'm gonna make phone calls. And that has been really helpful for when my weeks a little bit busier or maybe I have a more free week where I'm able to do a little bit more. And I can always make more money through putting in more effort. And I like that correlation a lot. Yeah. I would say if somebody's on the fence, I would say just give it a shot. There's no harm in just trying it out and really seeing for yourself what it's all about. There was a story of a girl who was on our team a couple years ago. She said, I don't really know if it's the right fit for me, but I'm gonna do it for two weeks and just at least say that I did it and put it on my resume. She she, you know, had a lot of success with it. And she did end up leaving after the two weeks, but she got to put it on her resume. She got to have the experience, make some extra income. So it's not about am I committing to staying at the company for five years? But it's just about giving it a shot because you never know the growth or the financial growth, the personal growth, the people that you'll meet. You just never know what can come out of it and how it can change your life. And so I would say just take that chance, take that bet on yourself to really open your perspective to trying something new and really just seeing where it takes you. Yep. 100%.