Don't Overthink It

Don't Overthink It

Emily Dessingue

Devin Miller

The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs

The Inventive Journey

Starting and growing a business is a journey. On The Inventive Journey, your host, Devin Miller walks with startups along their different journeys startups take to success (or failure). You also get to hear from featured guests, such as venture firms and angel investors, that provide insight on the paths to a successful inventive journey.

ai-generated transcription

don't overthink it um i think you know this kind of ties in with the first one but i think we can get really in our heads and we can we can overthink things and uh i like to think as myself as like a perfectionist and i've learned that in one of the books that i've read it's it's actually bad to be looked at to be a perfectionist and it's because we're constantly chasing after something that's not real perfect isn't real right so we're we're driving ourselves crazy like we're constantly you know and actually people who are looked at to feed perfectionists we actually have a higher rate of like anxiety depression eating disorders and all these things because we're driving ourselves nuts so there's never there's never really like a perfect time some people say i gotta learn more before i get started nope just go for it you'll learn along the way the only way you're gonna learn is by doing it um and you can do it you're a big deal you're a big deal 

hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host evan miller the serial entrepreneur that's grown several startups in the seven and eight figure businesses as well as the ceo and founder of miller ip law we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks and if you ever need help with yours just go to strategymeeting.com and grab some time with us to chat now today we have another great guest on the podcast emily and is it desingwa i'm not sure i i didn't ask you how to pronounce the last name before we started 

it's okay it happens all the time it's designed you all right i probably still get the best i just gotta go by emily 

but uh emily so um she uh graduated from college moved to florida and i think said that lived out of a trailer for a little while went around you know the the people you often see at uh costco or sam's coming others that are selling products basically she signed up to do that but so go to these places so much so so much per day and then you will pay a type of a thing um but it became i think if i remember right the number one tupperware sales person in the nation if that's correct which is a great honor so that's the to sell tupperware and be the number one is pretty impressive so um then woke up one day and decided she didn't want to do that anymore 

so i moved back to new york looked a little bit at business development for a rent company always wanted to get into the real estate market but was a bit worried about it being a crowded market 

whether or not you could compete whether or not it would be a good decision and decided to take a try at it spend some time and see if you could actually make a go of it and then that brings you to where you're at today so with that much as an introduction welcome on the podcast emily 

yeah i'm excited to be here thanks for having me so i gave everybody kind of the 30 second run through or the quick overview but let's take a bit back in time so graduated from college move to florida and kind of pick up from there and tell us a little bit about your journey cool yeah i've always wanted to live in florida it's some people hate the hot muggy weather i love it so one of my roommates in college their father had a trailer around tampa so i ended up living in there and i loved it i didn't care where i lived i was in florida i was on cloud nine so i ended up working for this company and people always find this job to be interesting it's um this company would give me a new product every month so i had hair straighteners weight loss tea skin care i even had like heating pads try selling a heating pad in florida does it get cold enough in florida that you need a heating pad ever it's it's like you it's no basically utah where i'm at sure you could sell those and it's winter right now and in fact it's snowing outside and so you can i'm sure sell heating pads in utah it just seems like florida that would be a hard sale it was tough and uh but so that the company they would give me the product and i would have to set up a table in big box stores so like you said sam's club and costco's and they would say all right you know make at least you know 800 a day worth of product and go and that was it so you know i it was easily my worst job but in the hindsight of things it was probably one of the best things i've ever could have done is especially now that i'm in real estate and i say that because that job had like a 98 uh rejection rate so every everyone's seen someone like that at the mall or you know in the sam's club they start approaching you the product and you kind of give them the help you run away as quick as you can because you don't want to have to talk i'll usually talk to him or i'll say no thank you i appreciate the offer but not interested so i try and be slightly nicer but it you know give you the 30 second aside so i served a a religious mission for my church and it was in taiwan so talking about hot muggy like florida like taiwan it was hot and muggy all the time i used to joke and this is a complete aside we'd ride bikes for a lot of the time and you'd wear a rain jacket when it rains and it wasn't because it was it would keep the you soaked because you would sit there and sweat on the inside out in the rain jacket the only reason you wear a rain jacket was because you wanted to keep the dirt off of you from flipping up on it my whole aside was is that 

i used to when we did that if people would see the missionaries coming down the street you would see them cross the road go to the other side just so they wouldn't have to walk by you because they were worried you're gonna have to talk to you or you'd go knock on their door and they'd yell out to you nobody is home and then you say but i'm talking to someone like nope nobody's home so i completely relate with you with uh having to deal with the rejection 

oh yeah people avoid eye contact to your point they immediately turn into this random aisle that you know they actually have nothing to get down there so it was just like so that was tough and so you had to constantly um talk to everyone so you had to talk to at least 100 people a day it's like say this is a numbers game so it's you had at least talked to 100 people every day and that would at least help you hit your quota so i had to talk to anyone that would come near me and that just taught me so much how to quick you know think quickly on my feet how to talk to people how to get their attention how to get them to like me in five seconds uh because you know everyone wants to buy but no one wants to be sold to right so it's how do you be fun charismatic and make the people want to talk to you because everyone has also gone to like a mattress store and the mattress guy was so salesy that you just wanted to scream and run out so you don't want that guy either so it's that balance and i managed to find it and i think one thing is just humor is my comfort zone so i just laughed at myself before they could even start laughing at me and like i just like i had fun with it sometimes i talked with accents just to kill time and just whatever i could do and then yes i started doing tupperware and for some reason i was really good at it and i was number one in the nation so they're like you know what like we're gonna like really amp this up so they got me like the headset with like the speakers and i had like a kitchen backdrop and i had to get crowds of people around my booth at least like 20 people rip and get them amped to talk about tupperware so yeah but one day you wake up and you're like i can't i can't do this forever there's no way there are a lot of 

no offense and not aegis by any means but there are a lot of older people in costco and sam's club that i still see selling so maybe it would have been your perfect career you never know no i'm just kidding i wouldn't want it 

i would wake up and have the same realization that while it may be fun or maybe a way to pass a time it's probably not the long-term career path that you're wanting so you you woke up and you decided okay while i can sell tupperware better than anybody else it's probably not what i want to do for the rest of my life and so then how did you kind of decide what do you want to do from there you have that realization you say okay what i want to do something else how did you kind of land on what that something else was yeah so after being a tupperware celebrity and all that fame i decided to uh move back to new york i was just like i need to like reevaluate some things figure some stuff out so i moved back up to new york and then i started to work for this global tenant representation firm called cressa it was out of uh albany and originally they had me i was hired i did i had no idea what i was doing they hired me to be like an account manager which was like sit at a computer all day and do like little tedious like work and just like type stuff and stare at a screen and i was going nuts i was like i hate this and the business development person there at the time was not working out because she wasn't talking to people and when i learned about the role i'm like wait a minute like she just has to cold call people and go to events and talk to strangers all day like sign me up i said i'll talk to anyone you want me to just get me out of this cubicle and they're like yeah okay we'll give you a shot and i i did it for four years and i i did pretty well 

um so so you did that for a period of time and and it did well got it better change up and i think that you know the interesting thing is while you've done it it's always been a bit of more in sales and which is i think every every business you have to learn how to sell especially if your founder co-founder regardless of it is i'm in in legal you have to know how to sell your product because you're trying to convince people that they need your legal services if you're in tupperware whether you're in real estate everything there's always a reason why you need automobiles travel anything you're always having to figure out how to sell so it seems like it's a skill that you developed and continued to kind of do in different or different avenues throughout your you know your journey so now you said okay i did this for four i think you said four years or so then you know what was a cause or what was the reason to decide to make a shift or a transition 

for sure so you know to your point i think in any type of entrepreneurship that you want to take on whether you're selling a service a product you know whatever it is you have to be willing to get out of your comfort zone and talk to people like you have to you have to have that confidence in you that you can approach anyone and that you believe in that product so much that they're crazy to not listen to you or to not hear about your service and what you can do for them so that job was really great in that i was no longer talking to customers and sam's clubs now i was trying to get meetings with exec like ceos ceos of huge companies i have all those you know gatekeepers i tried to keep you out i loved the challenge i did some crazy things that worked i did some crazy things that failed but it taught me again how to talk to a different group of people and get them to listen to me when everyone's trying to to sell them their service or product so what was just out of curiosity what were some of the things that did work not having to go through all of them what was what maybe the best one that did work and the worst one that failed yes so the best one that worked so when pre-covered um they're you know networking events are really big around the capital region and i love networking events i thrived at them because it was just like my sam's club days just talk to everyone so i so i loved panel discussions and the reason why i love panel discussions because i told you all these big names are going to be there and they took time out of their calendar to be there and talk to you so there was this huge exact like this huge ceo that was going to be there this like multi-million dollar company i can't say who it is but it was huge especially for around here for him to talk and he was the only he was the keynote speaker so i'm like i'm going to get in front of him i'm going to do it i'm going to get him to talk to me after this event so i go to the event he does an incredible job he tells a story how he started from the bottom to the top and it's awesome so at the end of the talk he's like all right i only have time for like a few questions a few q a then i got to get out of here so he does a few q a and i'm like oh my gosh i have like five seconds to get this guy's attention so after the q and a's are done i ran i just bee lined it to the front and i just said hi i said i know you have no time i said but this is what i do and you know i know you're a growing company and i said you know it was still real estate that i was selling but i was like who handles your real estate because blah blah you know i just quickly just blurted out at him and he was like oh i i don't handle the real estate i said oh i said well who does and he said the guy's name john i'll say john smith john smith handles the real estate i said oh i didn't know that goes yeah so i mean that would be the guy you want to talk to so what i did is that i ran in my car i wrote down the name i drove right back to my office i practiced in my car what i was going to say to john smith i called him and i said hey you know john this is emily um you know your ceo told me to give you all about your real estate and i got him and he listened and he took a meeting with me and he ended up being they ended up being one of our clients 

huh so not knowing that i think that's first of all that's a good way it takes an initiative hey i'll get the number and then i'm going to reach out to him and i'm going to leverage the you know they say hey call this person the funny thing is is how many people never actually call that person they never actually follow through and reach out which is crazy especially when somebody says hey i'm happy to help you out this person's the one to do it it's crazy 

it's crazy and that but you know that's just like what goes on in mind like oh they'll never want to talk to me they're going to hang up on me they're not even going to answer their phone what am i going to say to them and it's like you got to ignore all that you have to just ignore it and just go for it and you know even though the ceo didn't tell me to tell him that i told him to talk that you know that we talked i'm like hey i spoke with frank and you know frank john told me to give you a call and got your real estate and 

um no i have to laugh because again not to intrude into your journey but legal industry everybody is horrible about follow-ups and this crazy thing so there's a i love it and i'll i'll give the plug form i don't get any money and i don't get the referral but i love their services called bombbomb which is a new way to do emails where you can do it it does a little gift or a little snippet and then you can basically embed video in your email so you can actually have a more personal a personal interaction super simple easy way to follow up 

and yeah i can't i can't or count the number of times people say oh that is a great way to connect and make it more personable and thanks for the message and it's those little things that if you would just follow through and do that aren't hard but just so many people don't do this sets you apart it really does and you just you just gotta go for it what's the worst is gonna happen he says no like okay like he could easily said no emily i'm good okay no problem can i follow up with you in three months um so but one of the worst things that i've done or one of one of the biggest fails that i did um there was a huge healthcare provider around here and they have multiple locations and since we handled leasing multiple locations is like the ideal client because that's multiple leases to work on in a year or over years so uh there was this exam there's a ceo that got promoted from ceo to ceo and i i ran into them at an event quickly introduced myself she had no time for me but i'm like you know i'd love to talk to you about your real estate she's like yeah give me a call sometime so i took that to heart i immediately went back to my office i called her emails i wasn't getting anything and i'm like i need to get in the door with this person they need our service so i came up with this idea i got this gift card from starbucks and it was like a 15 gift card so that buys you like one coffee and i was like i'm just gonna show up i'm gonna show up and just hand them this like card this starbucks gift card with like congratulations card saying you know congrats from being promoted to ceo so admittedly i didn't really think this was going to work out so when i got there you know first gatekeeper this woman at this desk and like hi you know so-and-so got promoted i got him this card i just want to congratulate them person at the front desk that's the sweetest thing go upstairs you know i'm like what you know like that worked like i'm going upstairs here's gatekeeper number two it's like this huge tall like typical like executive building i go up to the next floor i'd say the same thing hey you know this person got promoted i just want to congratulate them i got them this card that's so nice of you go up to like the top floor you know and you know talk to so and so and i'm like this is this is working this they're just letting me go up and talk to this executive so i go all the way to the top floor there's like big last building and i'm like there's no way this is going to work so this is like the final gatekeeper it was like the the ceos like admin like her like uh her assistant and i was just like hi i'm emily and this person got promoted i got this card from i just want to congratulate them yeah she's actually in her office right now if you want to stop in and like my heart like my heart was racing i was sweating i was like i did not prepare for this i did not think she was gonna let me in like so now i just like and the biggest fail was i wasn't prepared because i go in this woman's office and i just blacked out i don't even know what i said i was just like a rambling mess the person was just as shocked to see me as i was to see them and i just didn't take control of any of the situation i gave her the card she was confused i was confused and i left and needless to say she never called me for a meeting and when i went back and i told my boss he's like you just went there and you just went in her office i said yeah i don't know how but it worked so 

hey but it had a lot of potential if you'd if you hadn't blacked out and you hadn't gotten nervous then it would have been a great opportunity 

and that's what you know i took it over because in the media i'm like what am i going to say she's going to think i'm crazy i can't believe this work this is only 15 i should have won 20 dollars like so but i i went for it and it's a good story to tell so 

so now is so now let's now circling back so moving kind of forward so now and i think it now you decided you wanted to get into kind of real estate do you do that on your own and kind of take that as the next step on your journey is that kind of right but you also had a bit of hesitation or nervousness about whether or not it would be a good fit 

correct so because i worked for a tenant rep firm they said hey you can't do residential for somebody else so i actually had to leave that company and i worked for another company and i'm like i'm just gonna see if i can get this business off the ground my real estate business so i work two jobs and typically they say it takes like two years to get your real estate business off the ground and there was there's always going to be like the negative nancy's whenever you want to try to pursue something that's a little bit uncomfortable to them uh and you know there was even agents in the office or not even in my office just agents who maybe tried real estate and didn't didn't succeed and like ah good luck and two years maybe like four years you know just like negative just like negative energy and i'm like goodbye like i'm gonna and uh you know then the pandemic hit and i kind of you know first i think everyone was scared and then when i realized real estate was still going to happen i kind of sat there and i'm like all right i have i have two options either like sink or swim either i'm going to make up an excuse and say that i can't i can't develop business because i can't go to events and i can't see people and i i can't go door-to-door or i just i go full force and i do everything virtually everything virtually possibly that i can like of course everyone i can talk to and i managed to become a full-time real estate agent in six months 

that's awesome so now you mentioned so what or what was the date that you really started or got going with it uh january so basically you had two months before covert really really cracked down and really hit hard so i it sounds like you started out going the door to door you started doing that as a way to engage people because you know and that works well for a lot of times and then you had to make your pivot and you're saying hey i got it first of all you had the nervousness you heard a lot of people say that they failed and so you know when now when covet hits and you're having to say i can't do the big events i can't go door to door did you take that as a opportunity and something that you could you know use as a way to set yourself apart was it a setback or kind of how did you deal with that and how did you make that pivot 

you know so it's in my apologies actually started in december because i got my first and only sale before the pandomic by the end of january so i went door-to-door and like introduced myself but then when the pandemic hit um gosh i mean it was everything was so uncertain and but i just like some people would say like oh it's a sign i'm not meant to do that some people take like obstacles as signs if you will that they shouldn't pursue it but i i mean anything that you try to go after there's going to be walls that you're going to hit and things that come your fight that's unexpected uh so you know i didn't take that as like a sign to slow down so what i did is that i sat down and i wrote down like different strategies and talking to people and one is this is like i looked at the positive of quarantine everyone's in front of their computers right now everyone's on their phones everyone's on their computers and you know linkedin alone i have over a thousand connections that's over a thousand people i can talk to and people are lonely like we just want to connect and so i'm like what if i just i'm just gonna start talking everyone that i possibly can virtually you know not be salesy and be like hey i do real estate you want to talk but just hey how are you doing you know how are things you know and starting up that conversation and then bringing up listen i do real estate and you know i'd love to talk with you more about it over a virtual coffee if you're open and i just i just started to do that i started going to virtual networking events which immediately took me some time to adjust because it's just not the same you know but going to that constantly telling people who you are what you do getting like your little elevator pitch down definitely making yourself sound different because everyone knows a real estate agent we're saturated here uh so what makes you sound different and you know real estate also has an eighty percent like 80 of realtors don't renew their license after two years you know so it's it's not easy it's it's it's getting things rocking and rolling that are difficult and i just i just literally it's like you just have to talk to people and the power of networking and also i will say and i heard this really really early on in my career business is people helping people you have good intentions so if you if i want to help you you are naturally going to want to help me it's just like it's just what happened so if i'm constantly thinking of how i can help other people if i can help them grow in some way then they'll remember that and they'll want to help me grow in some way so maybe they don't have a house that needs to they want to put on the market but they might know someone else so it's that too because people remember i don't you know it's one of the things that like irks me and i don't know if you've had this happen to you someone says hey i would love to meet with you and learn more about you so you're like okay yeah i'd love to tell you more about what i do then you meet with them all they do is talk about themselves yeah i and you're like well that was a nice conversation i learned a lot about you but uh i don't think you know a thing about me and i don't know why we met because there really wasn't any benefit 

no i completely get that yeah so people remember that and that's what they check off as salesy and so my goal is every time i meet with someone is i don't want them to go and lose a real estate agent she's super salesy i just want to be like yeah emily's a really good person and i would love to help her any way that i can and i feel the same way about anyone else that i meet so now let me now taking it so that brings us all the way up until today and now you're still so you're coming up it sounds like you just across the year line of doing real estate being in the the game is it looking at looking towards the future what's the next six to 12 months look for and i know things are a bit chaotic it's a bit unknown but you know kind of looking at kind of what the goals are where you see the next six to 12 months going for it where do you think that's headed 

yeah so you know i had a really good first year i i had a above average here um and i'm super excited about it but i'm always i don't something that really helped me so i'm a huge reader huge reader i believe in reading books especially like you can read about success with people in all different types of industries because you can take away something from anyone's journey it doesn't have to be just like real estate you know and something that i read in this little tie in together i swear um i read this book called boss up and it was a good book and she talked about how we view success as like uh like a pie and when we see someone doing good we take a piece out of that pie right so we're like oh my god there's only four pieces left for me and then someone else does really good and then they take another piece and so we become nervous and we become salesy and we our work becomes uh not as great because we're stressed and we're trying to like beat everyone else and it's just it just doesn't work and so you know in this industry i try to i view as everyone can be successful if they want to be successful there's enough business around for everyone and so i had a really great year but you know i'm constantly trying to do better i'm trying to constantly outbeat myself no one else i'm not looking at anyone else's competition and i want to at least double my sales i want to be uh top 200 realtors into my second year and then i want to be top 100 next year and you know i want to you know but i'm close to the top 300 but that's not good enough for me i you know i want to i want to despite the tupperware you got to be number one right it got to be number one right exactly and so and even if you never hit number one shooting for number why shoot for number 100 or number two or number whatever always i think shooting for being the best you can and whether or not you hit it it gives you a great goal to work towards and it gives you something to reach out to yeah absolutely so if you just constantly try to be the best version of you don't compare yourself to other people's success don't compare yourself to who else is doing good like focus on you like what can you do to make yourself better you get results 

no and i i definitely agree so so now as we wrap up towards the end of the podcast and i always ask two questions at the end we'll jump to those now so the first question i always ask is so along your journey what was the worst business decision you ever made and what did you learn from it uh you said the the best decision i've ever made worse worse okay the worst decision is i should have started real estate sooner and i i you know i'm 28 years old and i'm like man what if i actually started when i was thinking about it and that was years ago but i talked myself out of it because we're so good at coming we can come up with an excuse for anything we really can't humans like when i had to do cardio i thought of every reason not to do cardio i could come up with any excuse and it became valid because i'm like no that's a good excuse um but i talked myself out of it especially because i'm i'm so young and i was like no one's gonna take me seriously um i'm too young to start i was coming up with all these crazy things i'm i'm not ready but you're never gonna be ready for that type of stuff you just gotta go and head on uh so i wish i wish i didn't listen to myself so much a few years ago because i think about where i could be now and i think it would have been light years ahead but i mean it's cool i got time 

no i and you know it's interesting i think we're coming up we've done over 150 episodes now and i would say that's probably as many different journeys as people take as many different paths to take it's probably the number one answer is that i should have i wish i would got started earlier my biggest mistake is i didn't do what i thought or whatever my passion was for any number of reasons kind of as you mentioned you can always come up with you know excuses or reasons or rationalizations as to why you shouldn't do it and yet everybody once they dive into it they love it even if you don't make as much money even if you're not as successful you love it you enjoy it and it's a much you know much more enjoyable path forward because you're excited about what you do so i i definitely think that that's a good lesson to reinforce with people because it's certainly a common theme i think between a lot of people that are entrepreneurs startup love small businesses and those type of things so as we now jump to the second question which is if you're talking to somebody that's just getting to a startup or small business what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them 

oh man uh don't don't overthink it um i think you know this kind of ties in with the first one but i think we can get really in our heads and we can we can overthink things and uh i like to think as myself as like a perfectionist and i've learned that in one of the books that i've read it's it's actually bad to be looked at to be a perfectionist and it's because we're constantly chasing after something that's not real perfect isn't real right so we're we're driving ourselves crazy like we're constantly you know and actually people who are looked at to feed perfectionists we actually have a higher rate of like anxiety depression eating disorders and all these things because we're driving ourselves nuts so there's never there's never really like a perfect time some people say i gotta learn more before i get started nope just go for it you'll learn along the way the only way you're gonna learn is by doing it um and you can do it you're a big deal you're a big deal no and i and i i get the the perfectionist i mean the in the way i use it to my advantages so my way it drives me nuts if by the end of the day if i don't have all my emails responded to because it feels like there's something hanging out there and so my rule is in order to make sure that i if i want to drive myself nuts to get something done i just leave it in my inbox because it'll drive me nuts and say okay that's a high priority i have to get it done so i but i completely agree on the perfectionist it's so easy just to you you're always looking for to be perfect and then it creates more issues or drawbacks and if you just do go for good go for being great but not having to be perfect so 

i think that that's a great piece of advice well as we wrap up if people want to buy real estate from you they want to work for you they want to be your next client they want to be your next best friend any role of the above what's the best way to reach out to you connect up to or find out more 

uh probably email for sure and do i have to like should are you going to put it in the link or should i ever remember so why don't you give people if they're listening or otherwise not in front of it that they can get it or write it down and then we'll also include in the show notes sure it's uh it's e and then it's my last name so d e s s i n g u e at b h h s b l a k e dot com it is all right that's a slight bit of a mouthful but hey that way very long but that way people will it's basically or they'll they'll be able to if they hear it or otherwise watching it they can write it down and otherwise we'll have it in the show notes 

well thank you again for coming on it's been a pleasure now for all of you that are listeners uh make sure if you have your own journey to tell we'd love to have you on feel free to apply to be a guest by just going to inventiveguest.com also make sure to click subscribe subscribe on wherever you listen the podcast so you get notifications all the awesome episodes come out and leave us a review so new people can find us and last but not least if you ever have any um any need for patents trademarks or if we can ever help you out just feel free to go to strategymeeting.com we're always happy to to talk patents trademarks anything else thank you again emily it's been a pleasure it's been fun to have you on and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last 

thanks so much