Shownotes
If you're leading a team, closing deals, or just trying to connect in a world that feels more transactional every day - this one's for you.
Maria Boulden spent 40+ years building world-class sales organizations at DuPont and Gartner. But her real superpower? Leading with ruthless clarity *and* deep humanity - at the same time.
She's the sales leader who thinks in spreadsheets but leads with her heart. The engineer who became a storyteller. The woman who walked away from a C-suite track to care for her premature son - only to come back stronger, sharper, and more human than ever.
In this conversation, Maria unpacks:
- Why the number is your biggest distraction
- How to build trust without faking empathy
- What it really takes to motivate people to achieve more than they thought possible
- The pivotal moment that shifted her from corporate climber to human-first leader
- And yes - what selling jam taught her about B2C vs. B2B (spoiler: it's all still about people)
This isn't a masterclass in tactics. It's a story about choosing joy, leading with consistency, and making people feel seen - whether you're coaching a CRO or partnering with a pepper farmer.
Because behind every sales story is a human story.
👤 Connect with Maria Boulden:
✅ Website:https://www.jsjrehoboth.com
✅ Phone: 484-614-5354
✅ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maria-boulden-8a778b11
✅ Email: jammin@jsjrehoboth.com
👤 Connect with Selling Isn’t Everything:
✅ Official: https://SellingIsntEverything.com
✅ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SellingIsntEverything
✅ LinkedIn (Shari): https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharilevitin
✅ LinkedIn (Brent): https://www.linkedin.com/in/brentadamson
✅ Brent’s Latest Book, The Framemaking Sale: https://www.theframemakingsale.com/
Selling Isn’t Everything is produced by Chris Stone at Cast Ahead: https://CastAhead.net
Transcripts
Our guest today on Selling Isn't Everything is Maria Bolden, a powerhouse executive with over 40 years of building and leading world class sales organizations all over the world. But more importantly to me, she's also just a really great friend. Maria spent decades at dupont, shaping incredibly iconic brands that we all know and we all love before moving on to Gartner, where she became effectively their CRO whisper, coaching heads of sales all over the world. But far more importantly for all of us today, over all of those years, the story of Maria really is a story of her personal and professional impact on thousands and thousands of people all over the world. An impact that was both deep and broad, motivating and leading everyone around her to ever higher levels of professional excellence and human connection. In fact, what you'll find is that everyone who's connected with Maria leaves that interaction feeling lucky to have met her. And I'm hoping you feel that same way today. Because today what you're going to learn and what you're going to hear is not only how she made all that happen, but maybe even more importantly, how maybe you could do some of the same things.
Brent Adamson [:Enjoy the conversation.
Shari Levitin [:Better people make better salespeople, not the other way around.
Brent Adamson [:What's hard about selling is it's selling, it's interacting with other people.
Shari Levitin [:We can't take the glory for being great if we won't take the responsibility. Responsibility when we're not, what could we have done better?
Brent Adamson [:Human connection can be the greatest source of strength and I think that's pretty powerful.
Shari Levitin [:So, Maria, I want to start with this one question for you. Chemical engineering, this wasn't a normal profession. It's not a normal track that leads to sales and sales leadership. And I want to go all the way back to at what point in your childhood in your life were you maybe sitting on your grandfather's lap and you said, yeah, I want to be a chemical engineer when I grow up. Like, can you share that with us a little bit?
Maria Boulden [:Sure, I'd be glad to. Well, first of all, I've been blessed with an amazing family. And even though the majority of the young women in our family were not afforded the opportunity to go to college because their Italian fathers did not believe that women should go to college because they're just going to have babies anyway, I was fortunate enough to be born to parents who had a strong conviction that all four of their children, three girls, one boy, should all go to college and have the same opportunity that anyone should have and that they didn't have. And they faced a lot of issues because of that. So my father fiercely defended my right to go to college to my very Italian uncles, and I ended up going. He always emphasized math and science to me. I was the last of four. My sister, older sisters were more liberal arts majors.
Maria Boulden [:My brother was an engineer. And my brother, I looked up to all of them. But my. My brother went through engineering school and I felt this affinity. I speak better in numbers than I do in words anyway. And it just felt like my father's wish, but something I was really fascinated into. So. And I did well in high school just to punctuate the point with my reading and speaking versus numbers.
Maria Boulden [:I was tremendously shy, believe it or not, and I placed out of three terms of calculus and three terms of chemistry. But the university I attended wanted me to take remedial reading because my comprehension was so bad. And that's not changed.
Shari Levitin [:So you were always a numbers person. You had a proclivity for math, for numbers. And you said something that I need to unpack a little bit. You said, you speak better in numbers than you do in words. Can you share with me a little bit more about that and how you came to understand that at a young age?
Maria Boulden [:I guess it all started in college pretty, pretty vividly when they told me remedial reading versus you can skip basically a year and a half of calculus and chemistry. I always had issues reading for as long as I can remember. And I process in spreadsheet. I process in not visual but numeric terms. I don't know how to describe it, but math is kind of in my head all the time.
Shari Levitin [:That's how you see the world. That's how you frame things.
Maria Boulden [:I do.
Shari Levitin [:Yeah. And we'll get into that a little bit later with your success at dupont and then Gartner.
Maria Boulden [:Well, and just to answer a quick question on your pivot. So I go to college for chemical engineering, and I had all these uncles saying, are you sure you can handle that? College is hard enough and you're going for engineering. I don't know if you're smart enough for that Verbatim comment. So, fortunately, I graduated summa cum laude and got snapped up by dupont pretty quickly after graduation. And in dupont, it's very common to have an engineer morphed into whatever profession dupont wants to mold you into. In fact, that's almost exclusively who they hired. So having an engineer go into marketing, sales, hr, basically anything but finance or legal was pretty commonplace in dupont. So I was very fortunate that the great equalizer in DuPont was your technical proficiency.
Maria Boulden [:Not Your gender or your race or your creed or anything. And they were one of the first to show that kind of anyone can excel here.
Brent Adamson [:Maria, I've known you for a long time. We've never talked about this, but in that kind of context, I would imagine a lot of people would kind of go in with a chip on their shoulder. Right. I'm going to prove you wrong. I'm going to show you who I am. I'm going to, you know. But you don't strike me as that kind of person. Was that part of the DNA that motivated you? It's like, I'm going to prove to y' all that I can do this and I'll show you or not.
Maria Boulden [:It's a big part of me. I mean, I heard you might have heard it at one of our guru meetings. One of the guaranteed ways to get me to do something is to tell me I can't. My parents and my siblings and my husband have found that out many, many different ways. And I do use that in my personal life. Dupont only gave me a handful of times where I needed to, and one of them actually got me into sales. So when I was a young engineer, I did what you would expect a young engineer to do in a chemical company. I was in R and D, I was in operations, I was in manufacturing, and I took a job in tech service.
Maria Boulden [:And it was the first time I was at the customer interface. So this nerdy engineer who had only slight degrees of communication skills, became fascinated with world class sales. Why are some better than others? How come some nail their target and make it look effortless? Some work really, really hard and never do. What differentiates them? How do they get there? So it was like that scene in the wizard of Oz that goes from black and white to color. I was fascinated by it. And I actually had a number of different people say, maria, this isn't the job for you. This isn't the profession for you. Eye contact, communication, not your strengths.
Maria Boulden [:Which was my defining moment to say, watch me.
Shari Levitin [:I was going to say, it's all you needed to hear. Yeah, this isn't your strength.
Maria Boulden [:Exactly. So I signed up for Toastmasters. I forced myself into what was incredibly uncomfortable situations for me and kind of willed myself to overcome my own introvert to do this.
Shari Levitin [:What's interesting about that is that you did not have a proclivity for it at all. They told you couldn't do it, you did it anyway. But it all started with your fascination with what makes a great salesperson great. And it almost look seems like you were looking at that from a mathematical stance. Were, were you? I mean, what were you using mathematical and analytical skills when you asked that question?
Maria Boulden [:Absolutely. And, and it's a great pickup, Sherry. Thank you. I. I mean, sales is all about the number in some ways because it's the only function where we are exclusively judged by a number everyone sees. And that's from an SDR all the way up to a CRO. Everybody in the C suite thinks they can do our job. Anybody else in any other function thinks it's all about charming communication skills.
Maria Boulden [:I would like to think as someone who thinks in numbers and studies processes, I, along with anyone who's actually had the privilege to do this type of function, know it's so much more. So early in my career it was a fascination with what are the behaviors learned and innate, what are the processes, you know, engineering, especially chemical engineering input, process output. So I studied those and actually I had a time kind of as a tragic result, I had a child born severely prematurely. So I pulled myself out of the field. I had a really Great job at DuPont Global role, global Team. One of my early leadership roles that I had to step away from because I had a child that weighed a pound 14 and about a 50% probability of surviving. So I took a six sigma rule, one that could let me control my schedule a little bit more and still contribute. Happy ending to the story is he's okay, he's the most stubborn.
Maria Boulden [:26 year old university is a cyber engineer, but tremendously healthy. But that, that birth that came right after my father's passing was both a personal pivot for me and a professional one. Professionally, nothing mattered anymore. Yes, I needed to provide for my family, but more importantly, I had to be there for my family. I had so many DuPont leaders saying, we're gonna have to redline you if you pull yourself off this leadership track. And I said, give me the pen, I need to go take care of my family right now. But it's interesting because that six sigma role was focusing on profitable revenue growth and leakage and sales execution. So I had the opportunity to think in numbers for my job.
Maria Boulden [:And understanding what part of the process, both sales and, and supply, are we losing money? Who are the sellers who are driving disproportionate profitability growth and what are the things they're doing or not doing that are driving it? Long before Gartner researched it or anybody else researched it, I had the opportunity to see that firsthand and we turned that into millions of dollars for DuPont from a profitability standpoint, which thankfully for me, put me back on the dupont radar map, but bent my career trajectory in two ways. Thankfully, it steepened it a bit, but it also allowed me and introduced to Dupont, I guess you could say, the concept of a profession that is quantitatively driven based on statistical best practices. And we drove that in dupont at a time where it was unheard of. And establish the fact that it's more than just charm and communication skills. And it became my brand, thankfully.
Brent Adamson [:You know, it's funny, Maria, because when I think of. Because I've known you for all these years and I knew you at dupont, and when I think of your time at dupont, I don't think of you as the spreadsheet leader. I think of you as the human leader. Right. And so I knew all this, but I don't know that that's what I would have led with. Of course, it's your life, so you lead with it. But, you know, when I think of you, what I lead with is it's like your ability, something we just are so interested in exploring in this podcast of this human connection. So you go from engineering and, you know, there's this great story of you, like climbing through tubes to clean them, and when you're a beginning engineer and all the crazy stuff that you've done and at some point you take on bigger responsibility, eventually you become a leader, then you move to sales or, you know, one of those two things happens first.
Brent Adamson [:But at some point you find yourself leading large. Something's very large and ultimately global sales teams, many different cultures, many different people, many different perspectives, many different skill levels. And no doubt your ability to use spreadsheets and math and data driven science is critical, but that's not going to help you build the kind of relationships that I saw you build. To some degree, I shouldn't say not, but.
Maria Boulden [:No, you're right.
Brent Adamson [:But tell me about building that muscle. How did that happen?
Maria Boulden [:You know, Brent, it. It does go back to that same one seismic event in my life where within a few months I lost my dad and had Dave so early I had to step away. And not only did dupont afford me the grace and space to do that, I had team members bringing us dinner, cutting our grass, offering to, you know, take care of our son or our other kids just to enable us to get to the hospital and feel loved and supported. And I. That was a real watershed moment for me that this team around me pulled together so well and supported. I would have done anything for dupont at that point because I felt so wrapped in their, in their care for me as a, as a person, not just as a number. Now, you know, I'm, I'm not naive. Every company, when your number's up, your number's up and you'll be replaced in about five minutes.
Maria Boulden [:But when I felt the, the power of that feeling and that motivation, it really clicked something in me that made me want to overlay achievement and hitting quotas and goals and targets and things like that with getting more into the human aspects of the people around me. Not, not just our customers, but our people too. It was important to me to get to know them, to get to know their life. The good news and bad news of the privilege of leadership. I always quote Marvel and Star Trek movies. If you have the privilege of leadership, you are burdened with glorious purpose. You have to lift your team. You have to motivate your team to be more than the sum of their parts to achieve something beyond what they thought they could achieve.
Maria Boulden [:The year my son was born and the years that followed, I achieved more than I ever dreamed I could because I was motivated, I was compelled, I was energized by what was around me and supporting me. I wanted to be that ignition source just like other people had been the ignition source for me. And to do that, you have to understand your customer, your colleagues and the people who are part of your team driving what you're trying to achieve. There's a double edged sword to that. Yes. You're going to hopefully inspire people. When you do it right, you're going to motivate them to be more than what they think they can be and achieve as a team more than what they ever thought they could do. But you're also going to feel everything.
Maria Boulden [:It's like Spock when he does the voc in mind. You're going to feel sadness, you're going to feel anger, you're going to feel people. Divorce, death, birth, weddings, you name it, you're going to feel it. I can't tell you how many times I sat with one, you know, I driving with one of the guy, one of many guys who are breaking down in front of me because they have an alcohol problem or, you know, they lost someone. And just as you feel jubilant when there's a birth of a child or somebody proposes and says, yes, I don't know how to lead without that transference of feeling.
Brent Adamson [:It's so interesting you went there. The Spock analogy is perfect because every time Spock does one of those freaking mind melds like he goes in like Pain. So much pain, right? It's like, like, it's. It's. It's actually hurtful for him. So how do you. Particularly today, now, you're not in that role today. And today is just.
Brent Adamson [:The complexity of the world we live in today is just. It's a little overwhelming. But even then, right. So there had to be days where you'd wake up and think to yourself, I'm just exhausted.
Maria Boulden [:Oh, God. I mean, people doubt, right?
Brent Adamson [:The amount of energy that you have to pour into that to do what you just described, right, is admirable. It's productive, it's powerful. I, you know, it's aligned certainly with the way I'd like to go into the world. But there are times where you just want to, like, crawl into the fetal position in the corner, rock back and forth, say, not today, right? I mean, how do you just. But you kept freaking showing up day after day, year after year, doing that again and again. And I said, where'd you find that? What is that energy? That motivation? How do you do that?
Maria Boulden [:So a couple things, those running metals behind me didn't happen because I felt like taking up a hobby. It was a stress relief because I had a lot of stress. And, you know, energy begets energy. I would. I would run every morning in a new city and wake up with it, and. And I would get my energy from that and the endorphins from it to get me through the day. If I could get through that workout, I could get through the day. And I don't wish this on anybody, but when you have, you know, fed your dad with a syringe or held your kid in the palms of your hands, or you've shut down a major highway because there's a hazard, or.
Maria Boulden [:Or you've climbed into a tank to pull somebody out. Not that losing a big customer isn't important. It is. And we all have to rise to the occasion, but relatively speaking, I used to tell myself, nobody got hurt. And, you know, nobody got hurt. It's just, basically, we're okay, we can fix this as long as everybody's healthy and, you know, nothing tragic happened like somebody got arrested or whatever. So, yeah, I always had that litmus test of what life is like when it's hard. And it would make big corporate events pale by comparison.
Shari Levitin [:We have such a commonality here. And I could feel what you said. Brent knows my story, which I'm not going to go into in detail, but When I was 50 years old, my husband's ex wife was in a fatal accident. And I became a mom to his then 8 year old boy. And I literally shut down an office of 40 people, a training company of 40 people to raise this little boy who was in shock. And if I never went back to work, I never went back to work. And the interesting thing was I very quickly realized that I was that woman that was just hard, driving hard this, hard that. And then I had this whole rebirth and realization about human connection and about.
Shari Levitin [:Because you can't fake it with a kid. You can't do the five steps of building empathy, right? Like it just doesn't work, right. They'll call you out on it. You have to feel it. So I just wanted to go back to that moment for, for one moment because it sounds like that pivotal moment of having the strength to say I'm leaving, of being a mom and not. You probably knew it through your spreadsheet mind, but it almost feels like there was this pivot where now you were whole bodied of emotion and intellect and that caused you to be the leader that you are today is that I believe it did.
Maria Boulden [:And I think that transcends whether you're speaking to a customer, like I said, or a colleague or someone on your team or an influencer or whatever. No, I'm not going to waste somebody's time by making the first 15 minutes. How was your weekend? You can read people who want to do that and you can read people who don't. But you can adapt to someone's personal style and still make sure they're okay and still make sure that they understand you see them as a professional and as a human. And when you can do those two things, I don't think there's a customer in the world that's going to shut you down.
Shari Levitin [:That's beautiful. That's beautiful.
Maria Boulden [:So that's important to me. And I think again, if you have the privilege of leading anyone in the revenue engine, I think one of the biggest pieces of advice I can give, especially as someone who's lost sight of this before, some of the things that happened in my life, yes, we are the number and the number will always be our target. But it's the biggest distraction we face. Whether you're carrying the bag as a frontline sales manager or whether you're a Croat, it's distraction. Yes, you have to lead and yes, you have to keep people focused. But my role in dupont was usually the fixer of broken sales organizations. One of the things they all had in common was a fixation on the number and they couldn't look away. And it blinded them to what the customer actually needed and wanted us to do.
Maria Boulden [:And when you have that revelation, it changes your approach and it changes your trajectory from a sales and profitability standpoint.
Shari Levitin [:I was just going to say this feels like a great transition into something we were talking about before we met. You told me about a story of Maria, and I just think it was beautiful and something that transitions right into that.
Brent Adamson [:There's so many stories about Maria that are beautiful. That's theme. That's just. Look at that in her eye. Come on now. I mean, this is an amazing human being. So, Maria, there was a moment, and I was truly privileged to have been there to see it. When you departed dupont, we were in Scottsdale, I believe, or Tempe.
Brent Adamson [:We were in Tempe. We were there with your entire sales team and leadership team in a big ballroom. I'm times a couple 250, 300 people in that room at least. Right. And five higher. How many were in that room actually?
Maria Boulden [:Because close to a thousand, actually.
Brent Adamson [:Yeah, it was a big room. There's a lot of people there. And I was there and I did a little keynote. Thank you for the invite. But more importantly, by far more importantly, was this was the moment, your opportunity in person with all those thousand people to say thank you and goodbye. Because this is the last time you were going to be in front of them, as you know, all collectively as a team, as you were retiring from DuPont. And I sat in the back of the room and watched you get up in front of them and tell them what your time at dupont meant to you and what that team meant to you. And then I watched a thousand people stand up on their feet and give you a five minute standing ovation.
Brent Adamson [:And I'm kind of getting goosebumps just thinking about it. Tell me what's going through your head at that moment, standing in front of that groom like that.
Maria Boulden [:That was. Boy, that was a real culmination for me. I was ready to leave dupont, and there was no question in me that it was my time. I mean, we were merging with Dow. I felt like I left it all on the court. I felt like I was going to be having Groundhog Day every day as you go into six quarters of a new publicly traded company. So I just felt like it was my time, and I never had a doubt that it was my time, but that was a very emotional time for me. I.
Maria Boulden [:I never expected that. I mean, I expected not golf claps, but I didn't expect them to stand out that long. And that wonderfully, the love in that.
Brent Adamson [:Room, Maria, that love was not the love of our sales leader. That was love for Maria Bolton.
Maria Boulden [:And I felt that and I still feel it. That moment was so powerful for me to just stand up. It's almost like out of body. I could see myself on stage looking out at them, and I saw every single one of those faces all at once. And I. It was just. I can't put it into words how much that meant to me and the days that followed and the notes, somebody collected notes that people took the time to write to me. And I still read them.
Maria Boulden [:I just thought it was so beautiful. I should be so blessed that I had a fraction to do with the humanity that team showed me that night.
Brent Adamson [:I've watched similar situations before and, you know, sometimes there's applause, but for different reasons, like, oh, thank God, he's going, right? But the. But the. But this was. Again. So why, why do you think a thousand people stood up and cheered and gave you standing ovation for five minutes and sent you those notes?
Maria Boulden [:Why this coming from the man who also called me ruthless? So I. I think there's a common thread in there, too.
Brent Adamson [:There. I. There is truth to that. Y.
Maria Boulden [:As a leader, it was not only important to me to. To be human and to. To talk, to help to make sure that team, no matter how many people, how big my team was, they had to know I cared about them as a professional and as a human. We talked about that already. But one of the thing they also. One other thing that they also knew they could expect from me is I only know how to speak directly. I don't use a lot of big words, I don't think.
Brent Adamson [:Well, you can't remember, we talked about that earlier.
Maria Boulden [:Right, Exactly. If I'm going to speak to someone, I'll be kind, but I'm going to be direct and they're going to know exactly where they stand with me. Whether something was done well or whether something was done poorly, they're going to. And like I said, I won't deliver it with venom, but they will know. And I always felt like transparency and congruency and consistency were some of the things that in addition to humanity, I brought to the table. I mean, I remember I called on 3M for a long, long time. And when I didn't call on them, people on my team called on them. And I remember a purchasing v, our procurement VP from 3M said something when he was retiring.
Maria Boulden [:He invited me to his event and he said he was roasting people and he roasted me. He said, maria's the only executive I know who can hug you and cut your throat at the same time. Which sounds awful. But what he followed up with is that I speak very directly. And so I think part of it from those reps is I never would lie to them. I would never misrepresent to them. And when people have clarity, it takes some of the fear out of, are we going in the right direction? Like, there's times I tell them, I don't know. Here's.
Maria Boulden [:Here's our number. Here's how we know we're tracking with our number. Here's what I'm worried about. And they knew that.
Brent Adamson [:I'd imagine the consistency, the expectations, the clarity, the. The room was filled with love. It absolutely was. It's full stop. But. But I think what also was, you know, if I now they kind of go back and parse that moment in my head, is it was equal parts love and respect, and it was respect that you had for them, which they were returning to you. Is that. Is that how you read it too?
Maria Boulden [:I do. And I also think everybody in that room, I hope if they were in my line and at some point, even though they all were, I'd like to think I helped them achieve, each one of them, individually and collectively achieve something they didn't know they could. So I. I walked away from that feeling like, hopefully it's not just, you know, my imagination, but feeling like I helped them achieve more. I always told the team when I joined them as a leader, it is not my aspiration to exceed our goals and make you world class. It is my expectation. And that's something both of us have to work towards.
Brent Adamson [:You know, it's something I think about a lot now, is this is that I write about, talk about is this idea of that one of the best ways to get someone to like you, love you, respect you, connect with you, connect with you, is to help them connect with themselves, to like themselves, love themselves. Just to bring out that. It's like. It's like I love working for Maria Bolden because I love me a little bit better when I work for Maria Bolden. So you became essentially a CSO whisperer. You became the advisor or the coach to other. It's like it became very meta where you now you were not just head of sales, you were the coach to the heads of sales. I love talking about, but let's fast forward for now.
Brent Adamson [:You sell jam now for a living, Maria, because Sherry's really anxious, as I am too, to dig into like what are the tactics, the lessons, the things that you know, like what are, what are the things I do? But can we just take up just a brief minute to talk about what you're doing now and what lessons you've pulled out of this career that we just described into the selling of making of jams? How's that work?
Maria Boulden [:Absolutely. And my days are very eclectic. I could go from making jam in the morning to I do have advisory clients, so I still do some of this work to, you know, delivering my products to other people to, you know, small businesses and mid sized businesses throughout Delaware and board meetings at night. So the days are very varied. I've only done B2B and one of my other hobbies besides running was, is, is cooking and jam making. And a lot of people encouraged me to develop it into a business because thankfully they were enjoying what I made. And I had never done B2C. And it's amazing to me how some things are like B2B and some things are so wildly different.
Maria Boulden [:And if you're not learning every day, what are you doing?
Shari Levitin [:I want to go there because I actually came from B2C and there was a huge shift for me in going B2B. Multiple stakeholders, you know, huge long sales cycles, not as emotional as a sale. It's all about the KPI. And I'm curious. So you did an exact opposite of, you know, this heavy B2B world and then going into B2C. And I love how you were saying that, you know, you love to continually learn. And that is a theme in all of the successful people that I've interviewed in any walk of life is this quest for learning. And I think our audience would be curious because we do have not only a B2B but a B2C audience as well.
Shari Levitin [:And they're very different and sometimes it's hard to describe. And I'd love to know what are some of the insights that you gained on wow, selling to a CRO, a cio, a cgo, a cmo, I call it cgo, a Chief Glum Officer. Like the procurement. But how is that different from selling to Marge and Joel who want to buy jam? Like what are some of the differences?
Maria Boulden [:So some of the differences are it's their livelihood versus their profession and there's family rooted behind it. So the depth of their success and your impact on it is beyond just I'll hit my number or what I'm, I'll, I'll get something I need for, for supplying. And, and I think that's where this humanity comes into play again because it's at even deeper level. These are family businesses, most of them.
Brent Adamson [:You talk about your suppliers, your vendors, or you talk about your customers. Oh yeah. Oh. Because the re the retailers you sell through. Is that what you're.
Maria Boulden [:Exactly. So there's the, there's farms in Delaware that come to me and say I just had my biggest customer back out and I'm about to plow a crop under and lose a lot of money. Can you do anything with X? So in one example is hot peppers. Guy lost his hot pepper customer and was about to lose lose his shirt on this hot pepper crop. And I did a few things, but I might use three a week, not a crop full. So I developed a product based on his peppers and I named it for him and thankfully it really took off and it's got this little cult following and he's a little local celebrity with T shirts and things like that now and that catches on. Well, could you do something with my tomatoes? I've got persimmons and what about my pears? And that story means something to the downstream local businesses who like to carry local. So lo and behold, the humanity of this work and caring enough not to say, oh, he's in trouble, let me go get a sweet deal on peppers.
Maria Boulden [:The humanity of okay, I'm going to partner with this guy. Let's see if we can create something together. And I didn't leverage it to the local businesses to say, hey, this is local. They pick up on that. They see the humanity of it. That's a harder slob. Often in the corporate world where we almost train ourselves to harden and not let people in. And I think as leaders, whether you're buying something or selling something, the relationships need to be there and they're better when you have a genuine care and people can tell if it's genuine in small business, it's a little more obvious and maybe a click easier in that regard because you do know their family well.
Shari Levitin [:What I also heard that's so great, Brett and I talk about this a lot, is that you not only sold his product, you made him a story. And people want to identify, especially in a small community, in a small rural community, that this is a story of the human. It's not just big corporate jam and then they all rally for that human. But you knew how to tell the story.
Maria Boulden [:Yeah, I mean I, I supply small and mid sized grocery stores throughout Delaware and a little bit on the outskirts. And thank. I've, I've had a few great Opportunities to get bigger. That's not who I am when it comes to jam.
Brent Adamson [:You won't be Big Jam.
Maria Boulden [:I'm not. Smuckers makes a fine product.
Shari Levitin [:It's amazing, but it's not local.
Maria Boulden [:It's not local. And Tommy Hots is a thing.
Brent Adamson [:Is that the brand do the plug?
Shari Levitin [:That's my buddy, the former.
Brent Adamson [:Yeah, Tommy Hots. All right.
Shari Levitin [:Anyway, so I'm curious. Probably a lot of people are listening that are at a similar point in their career that are at a similar point in their career where maybe they've left big corporate or they want something else and they want to do something really from the heart. What advice do you have for people? Because I also read something about you that you talked about following your joy. And I talk to a lot of people in the C suite that are, you know, maybe in their 50s, maybe even in their 40s, who've just lost their joy in corporate America. What would you say to them?
Maria Boulden [:I would say, not that I'm the best example, but I started to, you know, I had my watershed moment, as you heard, but I really started to. To find my joy and I think be better at what I did both professionally and personally. When I entered what. What Brent knows I call effort mode, you can fill in the blanks. I stopped caring about what people thought of me and started focusing on doing right by people. Doing the right thing might not be the corporate thing. And I would have to explain my way of why did I go this way or why did I help these people, but drive in this direction. Let go of the number.
Maria Boulden [:Let go of the constraints that numbers put on you. Focus on the people you're trying to support, whether it's a customer or your team or whomever. Focus on helping them achieve something that you enable better than anybody else and that they achieve better than they thought they could. And again, when. When you liberate yourself from. But this is my qu. You know that spreadsheet coaching. Yes, I think in.
Maria Boulden [:In spreadsheet, but I don't lead that way. And I think when you think in spreadsheet, but lead with humanity, it creates something that in my case, I was grateful to look back on and say that that worked for me.
Shari Levitin [:That is a meme. That is a meme. Think with spreadsheets, lead with humanity. It is a meme. A bumper sticker.
Brent Adamson [:Put it on a T shirt. It's so interesting, Maria, that the story arc starts with embracing numbers, and where you just ended was letting the numbers go.
Shari Levitin [:Exactly.
Brent Adamson [:Yeah.
Maria Boulden [:I don't know how To. It's a juxtaposition I can't explain. But I have so much joy in my life, both in what I'm doing now and thankfully reflecting back. I mean, life's too short to be unhappy, too, too short to be unhappy, but it's too long to have regrets.
Brent Adamson [:In a time where I think all of us are struggling to build deeper, better, closer human connection to one another, whether it's professionally or personally, with our neighbors, with our colleagues, where are you? Are you an optimist? Are you pessimist? You speak with such hope, at least with positivity, which I just, I think we all should appreciate, right? What's one thing that we can all do to just bring a little of that hope of better human connection into our worlds?
Maria Boulden [:I think the one thing I've done, and I hope it helps others do the same thing. No matter how bad things get with the world, with where you sit, with your profession, with your family, I've always challenged myself. You've got two options and they're your options alone. You can be miserable and wallow in your own self pity, or you can say, I'm going to make this the best I can possibly make it and it's not going to beat me. Some things are going to be out of my control, but everything I can control, damn it, I'm getting it done. And I think that was always my approach, whether it was raising my family or doing my job. And I choose, I chose to be happy. Now, some people, you know, I'm not trying to make light of people who have struggle with things like that, but from a, from the standpoint of people who can.
Maria Boulden [:I'm not going to wallow in bad news. I'm going to make the best of what I've got. And it's a choice. You got two streets, you're sitting in Shanghai on a Saturday morning while the rest of your family is celebrating Christmas parties and things like that. What are you going to do?
Brent Adamson [:What did you do?
Maria Boulden [:I got a foot massage and.
Shari Levitin [:I.
Maria Boulden [:Ate at my favorite restaurant in Pudong.
Brent Adamson [:And then went for a run. Right, that's because. Because you're more different. Yeah, that's exactly.
Maria Boulden [:I love it, can't change it.
Brent Adamson [:This is why I love calling you a friend and just being lucky enough to watch you from a professional perspective. Just do what you do. Because it's. You're just such a stellar and incredible and wonderful example, Marie, of just what we all need to think about a little bit more. Maybe just how do we build closer connections to each other.
Maria Boulden [:Brent, you know, the feeling is mutual. I met you for the first time back in, what, 2010, 2011.
Brent Adamson [:A long time ago, maybe. Yeah.
Maria Boulden [:And. And what you created with Matt and others to. To define Challenger and the methodology that it involved changed Dupont. It changed me. And I've. I've already read the Framemaking sale, and I, I. As being someone with learning issues, I've read it a couple times, and I'm on number three. But I'm excited for what this is going to do for commercial professionals in the future and the humanity it will give them the courage to have.
Brent Adamson [:And that, Sherry, is my friend, Maria Bolden.
Maria Boulden [:Wow.
Shari Levitin [:Wow. No wonder you wanted her up first. He said, you have to be in the top 10. No, I said. I said to Brent, I said, okay, the first five episodes gotta be banger. I mean, they just gotta be great. Who are the people? You know, you give me your top people that you know, and we went through all these, like, you know, the VP of this, the number one, this, the that, you know, it's briable.
Maria Boulden [:Oh, I did that justice. Thank you for that, Faith. Wow.
Shari Levitin [:My heart is full. Brent, after talking to Maria. Thank you for bringing such a great podcast guest, but sounds like a new friend. We have been invited to Rehoboth to have jam on a bagel, so I don't know how I can not do that. But I'm curious. What are your three biggest takeaways? Having known her so well and now having done this podcast with her, I think.
Brent Adamson [:Well, you know, I think my first takeaway, Sherry, honestly, is I'm just lucky. And I know that sounds maybe over the top, but I'm just lucky to have a friend like Maria, honestly. And I think anyone who knows Maria feels the same way, whether you know her as a friend, as a. As a former boss, a colleague, just as a person in your life. And. And, you know, it's every time I. I talk to Maria, and there's many, you know, if you're lucky, you have people like this in your life. And I'm.
Brent Adamson [:I'm a pretty lucky guy in that sense, because she's one of these people you. You. You talk to, you engage with, you have a conversation with, and you walk away thinking one. Like, I just feel a little happier, a little better. You know, maybe it's subconsciously what you think that. But the second thing is, you think I seem to be a little bit more like that. You know, how do I show up? How do I show up in the world and bring that kind of energy, I think. So that's.
Brent Adamson [:That's one. I think the thing that she just so powerfully tells us is just her journey of connecting her personal life and her professional life and really becoming very aware of how the two really are just two lenses to the exact same story. Right? Which is the way that we show up at work, the way that we show up at home is the way we show up in the world. And what. What matters to us can create these deep, meaningful connections. And I guess the other thing that I take away that's just really, really powerful was you can build those human connections. Remember, she talked about discipline and she talked about. And she talked about respect and she talked about expectations and she talked about setting a high bar.
Brent Adamson [:It wasn't in the words, I get people to love me by just being lovey or loving or. It's like, no, you. You set expectations, you show up with consistency. Was the things you really hit. Just being who you are and being consistent and respecting those around you. But she's absolutely right when she said she is ruthless. She's one of the most ruthless sales leaders I've ever met. Because she's like, this is the highway we're going and we're going hard, and she doesn't mess around, but everyone in the room knows exactly where they're going and they know why they're going there and they want to go there with her, but she's freaking going, do you know what I mean? And so all of that stuff can coexist.
Brent Adamson [:And I think that's. That's a. There's this, you know, like, to the degree that, like, making human connections is seen as almost like a sign of weakness. It's like, this is. She's the perfect example of, like, human connection can be the greatest source of strength. And I think that's pretty powerful. Yeah, no, what jumps out at you.
Shari Levitin [:She'S really connected to her core. And that's what I got, is a woman, a female role model, who really has a lot of self awareness and knows who she is and knows what makes her tick. From the time she was younger, you know, she knew who she was. And she has a beautiful way of expressing that. Of course, what affected me the most was this pivotal moment that she had. And it wasn't even a decision to go home and take care of her son. It wasn't like, well, should I, shouldn't I? Like, she had the internal fortitude, the values, the virtues. There was no question that that's what she had to do.
Shari Levitin [:And I think Particularly for a lot of women who are in this impossible situation of how do I balance all of this? She had this compassionate prioritization where she knew that she was going to put her family and her child first. And then of course, it blossomed into being the best thing for her career because it actually made her more human. And she probably started interacting with people differently and people interacted differently with her. She had a different level of tolerance. And it actually not only made her a better person, but a better leader. And so that really resonated with me. She made another statement that really hit me, something about looking good to feeling good. It was this idea that we spend too much time trying to look good.
Shari Levitin [:She said, I got to a point where I didn't care what people thought of me anymore. And that is a level of maturity that's very hard to teach to a 25 or a 30 year old that's on social media all day because we all wanna look good on Instagram or whatever. But I think the life lesson there, and I think of this a lot, but she was just so eloquent about it. It's this idea of, did you make that decision to look good or to do good? To look good or to do good? And she has made the choice to do good. And then I think, but just for she.
Brent Adamson [:She looks pretty darn good, though. But, you know.
Shari Levitin [:Well, I, I, Yes. And I don't mean like looking good physically.
Brent Adamson [:So I'm sorry, I thought that was actually gonna land. I thought that was gonna land funnier than it did. It didn't land.
Shari Levitin [:Okay. I mean, just so many people are virtue signaling today and trying to look a certain way. And then of course, the other thing that you're right, this juxtaposition that I think is really important for leaders and I would have loved to have gotten to. Did she take this over into Gartner? So we definitely need to have her back. But it's this idea of the juxtaposition between empathy and competency, or empathy and courage.
Maria Boulden [:And that.
Shari Levitin [:Yes. And there's a whole Harvard Business Review article about this, that great leaders have two traits. Empathy and competency, or warmth and strength. But you need to lead with warmth. But you have to have both. Because if you just have warmth and empathy and you're a nice human, nobody's gonna respect you. And if you're just, you know, really strong, but you don't care, they're not gonna trust you. And she is the embodiment of both.
Shari Levitin [:And it's hard to find today.
Brent Adamson [:It's pretty cool. It's just neat. When you meet people, you think, I just like to be around you. You know, I just like to spend time with you. And she's a she's a great example. So the, you know, the. This is the idea that selling isn't everything. And she's had incredibly successful careers in sales and sales leadership.
Brent Adamson [:But the. But I think hopefully one can think back on that conversation and sort of get where you and I are coming from when we say selling isn't everything. It's. Selling is absolutely something, as you like to say. But this is the kind of sales and the kind of selling and the kind of humanity that really matters, I.
Maria Boulden [:Think isn't really is.
