Hi and welcome!

I’m Vie (pronounced Vee). I chose this name over 20 years ago to represent the idealized self that I wished to grow into.  Vie means life in French, and as someone who spent a lot of time questioning whether life was worth living, this word and its energy represented my wish to say Yes to that question. 

 That yes led me into a 20 year long love affair with selling, something I never in my wildest dreams would have expected. Born from this love came my personal mission to help transform the way that business and selling is done in our world, to help people understand that it is actually connection that is the true currency and bottom line within all selling exchanges.

Starting out at 19, fundraising for environmental and women’s organizations, knees shaking, I knocked on my 1st door in efforts to raise money for these causes. Standing in that terror, I found my voice and the freedom that came from sharing with conviction what was in my heart and asking for the support that I wished for. I discovered here, for the first time, the power and potential I had to connect with anyone when I did so from my heart. 

I had a deep motivation to try to change the things that I felt and still feel, are so unjust in our society. At the same time, I was faced with the huge divide between ’causes.’  As well as the questionable ways in which the people gathering around a cause treated each other.  Disillusioned, I had no idea how or where to find the meaning that I longed for.

Eventually,  I moved into a very idealistic community that focused on new visions of interpersonal relationships and responsibility. It was within this environment where I had no personal money that I became someone who was heavily leaned to ensure that our income needs were met.  Selling became part of my daily life, the fabric of everything I did.  It was in this role that I truly fell in love with business and with selling. 

Our community was infamous for our unique means of supporting ourselves. I helped lead and organize street teams where we sold our own magazine, music, and T-shirts directly to strangers in cities across the US, at concerts and at festivals. These products were just a vehicle to ask for support for the communities commitment to creating a way of life we believed in. What we were ultimately selling was hope and the possibility of a more beautiful way of living together. The articulation of this more beautiful way resonated with many. Our sales supported a 200 acre farm, the care of rescue and farm animals, art, music and dance activities, welding studios, as well upwards of 60 people and all their basic needs.  

By putting into practice the spiritual and philosophical principles that our community was built upon, selling became my ultimate testing ground. I learned that the face of god was right there to be found in another, right within a selling exchange.  I saw that among any kind of person, from bankers, to students or tourists, from conservatives to liberals, there was always a way to connect to the heart of another person. 

Practicing this connection is exactly what I have dedicated myself to, I have had over half a million one on one selling interactions throughout the course of my life so far.

In addition to street selling, I helped lead a team which placed an eco jewelery line made at the farm in over 2,000 stores, all via cold calling. I procured over a million dollars of product donations (everything from flooring for our dance studio, to welding machinery, to organic food… you name it) from businesses and manufacturers. I helped organize and book college speaking tours, plan all facets of a yearly music festival, and a whole lot more.

My yes was big and I thrived under the pressure of meeting very specific income goals for our community, week after week, year after year.

Heartbroken by our communities ending in 2012 (a story for another day), I found myself 35, with small child in tow and faced re-building my life on all levels, including a deep re-evaluation of everything that I had come to believe and live by. In the community all my basic needs were filled and the realization that these very things would now need to be gotten through impersonal monetary transactions felt soul-crushing.  All the calculations that flooded in on monitoring how and where I could now “afford” to give my energy.  At the community I had loved business in service of what I felt was beautiful, but I had no idea how to find that in the world that I was coming back to. 

Alongside continuing to sell a self produced jewelry line to meet basic needs, I tried a string of various sales positions in efforts to utilize my skills and make a better income to provide for my son and I. What I found is that my selling skills translated directly into conventional settings. I tried stints in truck brokering, real estate and LED lighting sales. Those I worked for were in awe of my abilities to connect with people and make things happen. However, despite the promise of making large sums of money I kept bumping up against a discrepancy in ethics in the companies I worked for. To the dismay of those who hired me and saw my skill and success, I kept walking away.

Knowing I was rich in a lot of life experience I felt desperate for work born of my own creation. I found myself on the receiving end of a lot of online marketing messages promising a possibility that tugged at this longing, promises of creating meaningful work based off my life experience, while having big impact, both in terms of money and change to peoples lives. While something in this spoke to me, I felt confused and suspicious at the massive promises being offered, the apparent focus on creating change in the world, and the hefty price tag. I felt a sadness at this obvious commodification of change and transformation.

At a standstill with my work and purpose I eventually did decide to sign up for one such online business training (sold with a spiritual bent to heart centered folks). My one goal in joining was to come out on the other end knowing what specifically my calling with work was, and that goal I achieved! While I met some incredible humans within this training program, I also learned firsthand how these flashy online marketing pitches are taught and created.

I started to speak up about what I saw as being a massive discrepancy between how I experienced being upsold at the end of that course, versus the reality of what I knew about real heart centered connection and selling. I found incredible resonance from the people around me for what I had to share, I put words to what others were feeling and started to talk more about the energetic alignment of true heart centered selling.

Through my winding journey I have finally realized that who I fundamentally am and what I believe in have not changed in these 20 years. It is my hope and belief in the essential benevolence and creativity of human beings that I have been selling my whole life. It has never been specific to a place or cause or dependent on what I physically had to sell. In this spirit my work continues on.

My mission is to inspire people to take a stand for what they believe in and most care about. To share from their heart. To understand that if we are to transform our world, it starts with each of us and how we sell our vision of the world that we want to live in.