Junior Achievement, Leadership, and Sales: Life lessons with Dannielle Sakher

Dannielle Sakher shared lots of cool stories and lessons she learned on her journey to where she currently works at Zapier (an automation company). She told us about her beginnings as a high school student running a Junior Achievement business. That experience helped her so much with lessons and mentors. Here are my key takeaways and life lessons.

Danielle’s Top 5 Leadership Lessons’

1. Ask for help

Put your ego aside and reach out when you need guidance or assistance. This will allow you to move forward by getting things done that you couldn’t have done all by yourself.

2. Make the most out of Mentorships

You’ll be surprised about how eager people above you are to share their knowledge. Keep in touch with mentors because they are such a valuable asset.

3. Be ready to enter an open door

When an opportunity presents itself, seize it. If you don’t take these opportunities how will you achieve your dreams?

4. You will not know what to do until you try

Get out there and taste the different flavors of jobs available to find out what you like. Also figure out where you can leverage your strengths to your advantage.

PS: Eating ice cream will not make you strong.

5. Sales is a highly transferable skill

You can sell yourself to an employer to get a job. You can push for your idea to be used in a team project. You can persuade your brother that you deserve the last cookie.

The CAR method:

Context

Action

Result

Use this method when writing resume points or explaining the effect of a decision.

Dannielle had a lot of cool lessons to share with us. I loved the sales pitch activity she facilitated. We all had some time to make a sales pitch on a random object in our room, then practise with others and get feedback, and finally present to everyone. I saw a lot of creative pitches from Vaseline to binoculars and even a foam roller. We had to give positive feedback and constructive criticism to the presenters. I learned about the importance of feedback and humour while having plenty of fun.