In this episode we explore how leaders create the conditions for high-performing sales teams. We talk with Susan Heiser, VP of Sales at MaryRuth Organics, about the habits that scaled a startup into a top retail brand: radical transparency from the top, empowering people to make decisions, and building a safe “try-and-learn” environment. Susan shares practical routines—brief daily check-ins, visible calendars, and public praise plus private correction—that keep teams aligned under pressure. She also describes how she turned a weakness (data fluency) into a strength by training and promoting from within, and why loyalty and willingness to learn often trump raw ability.

Susan Heiser brings 20+ years in food & beverage sales leadership to the conversation. As VP of Sales at MRO MaryRuth, LLC, she’s driven brand growth, managed national sales teams, and built strategic retail programs. With a law degree from Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, Susan combines legal rigor with commercial savvy and a people-first approach. Her track record shows how coaching leaders can develop talent, retain employees, and turn setbacks into new opportunities.

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Welcome to Lead with a Coaching Mindset, a podcast where every conversation sparks new ideas on how the best leaders unlock their followers potential. I am Dr Damian Goldvarg, and I am here to inspire you to become the best leader you can be, be sure you subscribe and rate us. Let's jump right in. Today. We have Susan Heiser. We know with Susan for many years. Susan currently the Vice President of Sales for Mary Ruth, and you may share a little more about your company and what you do so people get to know you.

I am the VP of Sales for a company that is dedicated to create vitamins and supplements called Mary Ruth organics. We are the leading vitamin company in the United States right now, and we have over 250 items. We have been in the retail business for about four years, so to have the number one position right now in terms of growth to the retailers that we work with, it is really a privilege, and it just takes a lot of work, but it is, at the same time, very, very exciting. So we're happy to be here,

and Susannah say, vice president of sales, you have a lot of responsibility of that amazing growth of the company, and I know that you cannot do that alone. So how you enroll people working collaborating with you, people that report to you, so you can have that amazing team that got these extraordinary results? What? What are you doing to work with them, coach them, share a little bit about what do you think is the secret of your success?

Well, I think that it comes from the top. So the founder of the company is somebody who is very caring, who really, really is interested in knowing people that work for her in a personal way, and she really takes the time to talk to the employees, to have a lot of transparency. And as a leader in the organization, you are also expected to behave in such a way. I think that the more information that you provide, the easier is for people to be able to make the decisions alone and to make the correct decisions alone, because it's not fun if they just come and ask you, oh, why do I do this? What do I do this? I think that the job of the leader is really to empower people to make those decisions when they are alone, and that they can say, Okay, well, this is how the company operates. This is what I am supposed to do. So it comes from the top, and you kind of tend to model that. So we're very lucky to have a founder that is very, very engaged with the company, and she sets the stage of how the leaders in the company would

have to be. So what I'm hearing is that, as a leader, you hold a space for people to make decisions and to do that. You provide information. What else do you do? So people can build that confidence and that trust to do that.

When as a leader, you come to the team with whatever situation you're going through, maybe you have too much inventory of an item and you need to get rid of it. Maybe you don't have enough sales that month. Maybe you have too much sales and not enough inventory to fill the order. But if you come and you give full transparency, understanding that there are going to be things that are might be confidential or that you don't share, but so long as you give the team enough information so they can go and be creative, you know, propose things to their to their contacts that are Going to help carry the objectives that you, that you want for the company, I think that you, you will be okay. But also give a fail safe environment if somebody makes a decision and it's not perfect or is not exactly what it is, I mean also understanding that trying is also part of growing, and when you have an employee that is trying to do something, you need to encourage that and guide them, and not just they're not you, so they're not going to make the same decision that you make. But they are also very smart, because if not, they wouldn't be working where they are, and you have to give them the space and the confidence that they are going to be supported by you. And if something doesn't go right, then you fix it. But it's not going to be the end of the world. People need to feel safe. To me, the number one thing is that people feel safe making a decision, you know, if it's a small mistake, or then you're going to fix it. The company is strong enough to be able to take that, but we are going to feel safe making those decisions.

So it sounds that for people to feel safe, you need to trust them first. So. Safe trust. And we have in the book I live with the coaching mindset, the whole chapter about building trust as a way to create that safety is interesting that you said they are not you. So that is a good reminder, because I think that many leaders expect people that they would think like them.

Yeah, it is a good reminder. But I also think that the other thing is that constant communication is important. When you talk to people, even if it's a five minute, check in, Hey, how are you today? I'm just checking in to see if you need anything from me today. Then people know that you're available. People feel that you're working with them, an employee that is engaged, that feels that has access to their leaders, that their leaders are not just all the way on the top and they're too busy. For me, when you have that type of relationship with your employees like you're I mean, people talk about the open door policy, but even though we are a completely remote company, I would say I'm a Open Meeting company, just because people can just see if I'm busy or not. I make my calendar visible for everybody, so they can see if I have space in the calendar or not. And if not, they can just text me and say, Hey, I need five minutes, and I can cut a meeting short, and then like, Okay, what is it that we need? But understanding that how you are making people feel and the access that you provide to your time, which is probably the most important resource that you have, it is critical for people to feel empowered. It's

interesting. I was wondering about the leader in the organization as a role model, and it's a woman. And I wonder in your experiences in leadership, if you have seen any differences how women live compared to men?

Yes, I think that they're very, very clear differences. I think that women are more intuitive in terms of what their words mean to a person. I think that men are a lot more pragmatic. And they might say, well, this is not a plan that is going to work, and that's it. It's just a statement. And when a woman might approach that a little bit differently, I said, You know what? This is really good first step, but we are going to explore adding some other options over here. I just think that the approaches is different. I also think that understanding passion in business is very important, especially when you are faced with difficulties in the business, whether it is not having enough inventory, whether is not being able to supply the product for a specific promotion, no or maybe not selling as well as you had, but when you love what you're doing, you will be able to use your passion, your love, your personality, to overcome that. I think that women are better at that than men. There are some things that men might be a little bit more, the bit quicker or faster to make a decision. But in our case, having Mary Ruth over there, being at times vulnerable with the decisions that that she makes, and sharing that with the entire team has been pivotal for the team to come together and say, Okay, we're gonna make it. Oh, we're gonna somehow show them that we can make it. And the whole team really, really pulls together for her, whatever it is. I mean, right now, she has a big project for a new item, and against all odds, and it's something that we're importing, and we have tariffs to deal with, and we have costing, and we have ingredients. I mean, they just keep throwing this the retailers, these difficulties, and I say, Okay, we're gonna do this. Okay, we're gonna do this and we're gonna make it work. I need about six more months, and we're

gonna make it Susanna, have seen that a lot. When the leaders care about their people and genuinely care about them, then they also care about the leaders and about their work and about the results?

Yes, exactly. The other thing is that sometimes the result is that you didn't get it done. You know that you tried and you tried and it didn't happen. I remember, for about a year, I worked in a project and it failed. And I remember that I was affected by. It's like all the stuff that we did and but my job was to go on because it was not just me, but it was my team. And the job was, you know what? I summoned the team and kind of meeting in Texas, and I said, we're here to celebrate that we came together as a team and that we try and it didn't work, but now we're going to come up with three more ideas of what the next project is going to be. And it was really successful because people were able to share their feelings, were able to share their frustrations with the fact that it hadn't worked, but they were also in. Able to have hope and to come up with other things, and we gained a lot from that. So honestly, the best thing that could happen to us was that it didn't

happen. You leverage that experience of failure so people could learn from that and then have success in the future. That's a really great story. Yeah,

we modified it, and now we're making it happen in a different way, and we're having great success with that, but it was really a good experience for us, so I'm very glad that it did not

happen. So for ladies who are listening to us, Susan, what strategies or suggestions you may have to create this safe environment that you were able to create in part is because you have that leadership on the top down that really makes a huge difference. But from your perspective, what have you been able to create to build that safety and that commitment in your team?

So I think that the one thing that I have been able to do with my team is to embrace what they are not good at. And it's also for me, we're not good at everything. So we need to embrace what we are not good at, and once we embrace that and we accept it, then we can tackle it, and we can go and say, How am I going to get better at that? So I'll give you an example. Data, sales data, for us, is pivotal, and it moves our business in one direction or another. My team was not very good at it, and I said, we are going to get better at this. So I started offering some training. In the beginning, it was like, Okay, let's do it together. Then they were facing difficulties, and say, Okay, maybe we need to get somebody in here. So we got somebody who taught us a lot of tricks and a lot of things. And then slowly it started getting better. Now I have a person in my team that is putting these presentations together that are like, top of the class is, like, it's incredible. She's been here with us three years, and she tells me, data is the most fascinating thing. Now she's in love with that so well. Now I want you to give a class. We're hiring three more people, so I said, now you're going to be in charge of these three people and make them fall in love with the data the way you are now. And she's super excited because, you know, she was able to really do something, and you could tell it was a hard, hard thing for her to do, but she's, like, really happy about that now, and she's the one who has advanced the most, but the other two team members, also in that same team, are very happy where they are as well. And I can see it. I can see it in their presentations and how they talk to the customers, in understanding strategies and what we bring to our customer. So that's really satisfying for me, because that's not something that is only going to benefit them. Here, they're young the I'm at the end of my career. They're starting their careers, but having learned that, they will take that to any job, any position, and they will be two times more valuable than the person who doesn't know that, that's a hard thing to master, so you're good at now.

So it's interesting that it sounds you inspire them to do something that they were not, in this case, this colleague of yours, that she was not as effective. And so when you inspire them, and you're explaining them that by developing the skill they may have a competitive advantage in the future too, by managing this data. She

was a little shy in the beginning, and then about a month ago, she came to me and said, I just want to tell you. And she showed me they were recruiting her, like very, very heavily from another company to go and work for them. And it's like, I'm not going anywhere. But it's just pretty it's a trip that this is happening. Because I never thought so.

That's a good story about loyalty. Like she shows you that that mean that, yeah.

She's like, No, it's here. Yeah. It is just nice to see how people, like, really move up and they continue there. And look, I'm also of the opinion, if somebody were to say, you know, I need to leave because of whatever reason, hey, that's okay. That's okay. You can only be as good as you are if you are happy where you are. So that's the other thing, understanding that people, that we're humans, that we are going to need sometimes, to move on from where we are. When you are a founder and you found a company, the same thing that takes you to develop an item is probably not the same team that takes you to make that item a national item. It's a different team, different set of skills. You also have to let them go. When they are ready to go. I'm not ready for this person to leave, but I understand that that also happens. Yeah,

so we need to start wrapping up any last comment idea that you would like to share before we go for other leaders listening to us.

So I think that the key is constant communication. I do believe in like, quick touch points doesn't have to be like a 30 minute meeting every day or anything like that, but just a constant call once in a while. You know, praise publicly, but reprimand privately. It's really important to not think that because you all are the boss, that you can not be kind to that person. And then I think that the last thing that I would say is always remember that loyalty and willingness to learn trumps any kind of ability. So you can have somebody who is very smart and maybe knows how to do stuff, but if they are not nice, I would rather not have them on my team. I rather have a person that really wants to try, even if they are not totally perfect, but loyalty Trumps ability, to me, that person that tells you the truth will always be a better team member than one that is about themselves. So those are my three things.

Thank you, Susan. I really appreciate your time and your support in our podcast today. I hope you come back in the future to continue the conversation.

Thank you so much again. Good luck,

and that's a wrap up for today's LEAD with a coaching mindset. I am Damien Goldwater, thrilled to have shared this time with you. Don't forget to subscribe and give us a rating. Stay excited for more episodes. Take care and keep living with the coaching mindset. You.