Sowing the Seeds of Sisterhood

Sowing the Seeds of Sisterhood is the beautiful collaboration between the talented Artist and Graphic Designer, Gina Benson and the gifted Healer and Transformation Life Coach, Misty Blakesley. 

As Gina and Misty traveled the path of Solopreneurship, they realized just how lonely and difficult starting a business can be. And as they worked together towards their individual goals, something amazing emerged as they realized that they were better together than alone.  

And that is how Sowing the Seeds of Sisterhood was born. Together Gina and Misty have launched a Podcast with the mission to encourage and support women as they strive to serve with greatness as entrepreneurs or employees, daughters, sisters, wives, mothers, friends, mentors and more. Gina and Misty also wanted to create an opportunity for everyone to access coaching regardless of where you may be in your journey, budget, or time zone. So Misty and Gina have also launched multiple ways for their audience to participate via the podcast and memberships which include digital library of courses, live groups, and 1:1 sessions.

Co-Founder

Lemonade with Love

I started coaching because I know we are all powerful enough to create the life we want. I am living my dream and now I help people like you find and live your dream as well. Sometimes we just need someone else to help break down the barriers.

Founder

relode

In my most recent position, I was tasked with developing and building processes and systems to support Relode’s first Customer Success Organization, hiring and developing a client success and delivery team. In more detail, I sourced and ramped up a team of 10 (4 Client Success Managers, 4 Job Managers, and 2 Candidate Success Associates) during a high growth year of 84% YOY revenue growth and 4X customer logo increase.  I also implemented and documented scalable processes for all roles including Customer Success Managers and Job Managers, rejuvenating client kick off and on-boarding. In addition, I performed monthly ROI calls, and QBR’s with client senior leaders and decision makers, tracking performance and coaching for improvement and career growth. I authored and executed upselling and cross-selling processes, increasing sales. Moreover, I created accountability for Customer Success Managers tied to net & gross logo and revenue retention. I also designed a job intake PowerPoint and process, optimizing the Job Manager process, slashing candidate wait time in funnel. In a few measurables, I skyrocketed the crowd client NPS score from -11 to +64 and improved crowd client engagement $2M to $3.1M, with a predicted $1.2M in Q3 of 2022.  I also created processes and procedures, leveraging Salesforce and Power BI, exceeding all objectives in less than 8 months. Finally, I created an inspirational culture with zero team turnover as well as phenomenal client experience leading to client retention.

VP of Client Success

Apex HCM

For these three years, I was charges with New Sales, Account Management, Implementation and Onboarding, and the Marketing departments. I managed and motivated a team with a $1.2M team quota. In more detail, I :
•	Achieved a $1M pipeline during the Pandemic while recovering from an extreme 2019 ransomware attack. 
•	Focused on retaining the $10.5M client base and converted 1300 EINS and 87,000 EEs to the Apex Platform.
•	Achieved $850K in new sales and retained a $11.5M client base while growing ancillary and partnership revenue $600K.
•	Rejuvenated processes, implemented a sales funnel, and redefined sales opportunities escalating closing ratios from 18% to 35%.
•	Developed the Client Success Program, expanding recognized revenue from 72% to 89%.
I also completed an in-depth analysis of the conversion back log and recurring revenue, partnering with the CFO. In addition, I analyzed TAM and determined the market, understanding the competitive landscape and refining the value proposition.  I also identified new product requirements and prioritization for quarterly planning for the development team (Agile). I carefully created a new Sales Playbook, reducing the sales process time by half. Finally, I improved cross functional communication and escalated the new client on-boarding experience.

VP of Sales

Heartland Payment Systems

Here, I lead the charge of increasing sales in payroll and HR services and referrals to merchant services, e-commerce, and lending. I recruited, hired, trained, and developed sales professionals and sales leaders, conducted weekly team calls, 1:1s, and team building events. I supported the team with on-going mentoring and coaching, leading to promotions. Behind the scenes, I inspected the pipeline, managed forecasting and division budgets and produced production and forecasting reports for the Regional VP. Finally, I created 55% of the Diamond level performers in the top 25% of revenue producers in the enterprise.

Payroll Division Manager

As the Global Ancillary Sales Manager, I managed a team charged with increasing sales in consumer health spending account services, absence management services, dependent verification audits, total reward statements and custom communications in a dual hunter and partnership role. I profiled, prospected, and executed marketing and sales campaigns gaining top prospects and accounts in GA, FL, SC and NC, creating 25 opportunities in 9 months. I also repaired cross functional upper manager relationships in 9 months’ time, leading to better collaboration and a positive impact on results.

Ancillary Sales Manager

Becker Professional Education

SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER, 2014 – 2015

For this fast-paced year, I mentored and coached 55, with clients including Price Waterhouse, KPMG, Deloitte, Ernst & Young (EY), and Grant Thornton, underpinning company growth of 12-14% YOY.

ACCOUNT MANAGER, ATLANTA METRO, 2010 – 2014

I managed 70+ accounts producing $3.5M+ in revenue.  I was honored as a member of the Growth Initiative Counsel propelling new growth by developing targeted tools for online classes.

Sr. Account Manager

Helping people transform their life through healing | Intuitive | CPO | CHO (Chief Happiness Officer) | Boy Mom | My Husband's Biggest Fan

I work with individuals by leveraging my passion to help people transform their lives by guiding them to self-healing of their trauma and wounds allowing happiness, abundance, and love to flow. I am passionate about the potential living within each of us and activating that potential so every person can the life they dream of!  

I also partner with Founders and CEOs to support his or her vision by optimizing individuals and teams through coaching, providing valuable insights and best practices to create a culture of highly engaged and energized employees . I lead through example and inspire through my passion. 

Lemonade with Love: As I received my calling to transform people and businesses through healing, I founded Lemonade with Love. I merged my spiritual gifts with the science of meta cognitive programming to help people transform their lives through consulting, group/community sessions, and one-on-one sessions. I would love to help you unleash your potential and find happiness today. Message me to get started. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

CLIENT TESTIMONIALS

LEADERSHIP WITH LOVE
"Misty was a spark of courage that I needed personally. Having a leader that pours into you and points out your strengths while acknowledging the weakness is what I needed. Most leadership I have experienced were not so uplifting, they only pointed out the bad and basically stated "Do better". You made me feel like I could definitely do well and go far in this position and any position I set my mind to. You have provided me vision. I greatly appreciate that."  - Joseph Smith

FINDING YOUR WAY THROUGH TRAUMA 
"Misty is without a doubt one of the most gifted souls that I have had the luck to encounter and know in my life. Her counseling and guidance have been vital to my personal healing from childhood trauma and relationship trauma. She is patient, nonjudgmental and genuine. She has a unique ability to give the right messages at the right time, and coupled with that she suggests practices for everyday life that further you along your path. I can honestly say, that I would not be the same person, mother, parter, friend and employee without the divine guidance I have received through Misty." -Dara Vaughan Peck

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Find out more at www.lemonadewithlove.com. 

For daily personal development tips and motivational guidance, FOLLOW ME on LinkedIn.

Misty Blakesley

Parikh Ventures LLC

Aligned and improved clients' (ranging from Amazon, Walmart, Chewy) day to day operational effectiveness to achieve their long term strategic goals. Analyzed current challenges at hand, identified trends & opportunities for growth, and designed strategies that aligned with and ensured operations are optimized to meet strategic objectives.

●	Implemented operational improvements for 50+ managers with strategies that ranged in best practices for frontline leadership to up C-Suite leadership.

●      Improved team engagement by over 50% in 1 month through insights gained from implementing and monitoring weekly data that drove strategic approaches.

●      Drove cross functional alignment across departments and operational improvements that led to the business being top 1% in their district.

●	Turned around an org that was missing SLAs to achieving 100% of KPI metrics.

Strategy & Operations Consultant

XPO Logistics, Inc.

Directly managed a team of 40+ employee, 6 exempt managers, and 6 nonexempt leaders. Collaborated with global cross functional teams to design and execute a strategy to implement a new Warehouse Management System across the entire Healthcare enterprise. Tracked and presented weekly progress to the President of Supply Chain and conducted quarterly business reviews with executive leadership and client. Drove process improvement for day to day operational excellence in order to achieve long term strategic objectives.

●	Efficiently developed and managed operations, policies, and processes to optimize and improve KPIs by 50%. 

●	Effectively reorganized segmentation strategy for facility with 78,000 SKUs and record count strategy to achieve 100% cycle count completion in 3 months to pass 2 audits.

●	Designed and implemented customized reports to monitor KPIs for feedback and analysis for the newly implemented WMS.

●	Led the process mapping, documentation, creation of SOPs, and training for implementation of new WMS.

●	Scheduled and rolled out hardware deployment and training for 250+ employees on new WMS and processes.

General Manager

Iron Mountain

Directly managed a team of 80+ employees, 3 exempt managers, and 5 nonexempt leaders. Drove cross functional initiatives and operational alignment at an organizational level. Partnered with Product, Marketing, Strategy, Sales, and CX to grow from 4 markets to 31 markets post joint venture. Partnered with Product and IT to develop a knowledge database for all teams. 

●	Partnered with Director of Quality to develop 12 new KPIs, design and monitor dashboards to monitor performance, capture feedback, and personalize KPIs based on market specific relevance. 

●	Drove significant annual savings (over $300K or 85% YoY) in concessions from quality defects through improved handling processes, successful delivery, and inventory accuracy all within 98-99%. 

●	Established inventory categorization strategy for oversized freight and loose stowing items which helped increase storage utilization by 36%.

●	Mentored and developed 2 direct reports into leadership and management level roles.

Senior Operations Manager

MakeSpace

Directly managed a team of 60+ employees, 2 exempt managers, and 4 nonexempt leaders. Led programs with cross functional teams to improve processes, products, and strategy. Collaborated with executive leadership to develop documentation, training, implementation, and standardization for all aspects of Operations. Oversaw $12MM P&L for NY and NJ markets. 

●	Partnered with the Product team to develop 2 apps and a WMS website that played a key role in joint venture.

●	Increased productivity 400% (from 30 UPH to 120 UPH) and drove significant annual savings (over $500K YoY) to come ahead of target goal through headcount restructuring, streamlining processes and improving quality defects.

●	Oversaw and executed project to insource operations and eliminate 3PL inefficiencies. Expanded 75k sq ft to over 500k sq ft. This added 2MM cu ft of physical storage space and increased daily capacity by 50%. 

●	Saved company $600k through the implementation of a zoning strategy for field team that improved lean practices by eliminating travel time, idle labor, and disruptive delinquencies.

●	Created and implemented a demand planning product to assist in forecasting workload and headcount scheduling.

●	Mentored and developed 3 direct reports into leadership and management level roles.

Amazon

Directly managed a team of 500+ employees, 3 exempt managers, and 10 nonexempt leaders in a 1.1MM sq ft facility. Drove operational efficiencies through optimizing processes, systems, and cross functional collaboration with teams in order to achieve long term strategic goals. .

●	Drove initiative for defect injection reduction that collaborated with UI/UX teams, product teams, and senior leadership which led to process improvements and reducing quality defect by 73% year over year.

●	Designed project to reconfigure 6 floors of 1.1 sq ft facility for 8000+ associates which led to an increased 23,000 cu ft of storage, 80% productivity YoY, 66% safety incidents YoY, and 70% quality YoY.

●	Designed, documented, and implemented onboarding and training program for new hires reducing learning curve by 75%, from 4 weeks to 1 week to hit KPI goal. Program was adopted region wide.

●	Mentored and developed 12 direct reports into leadership and management level roles

Operations Manager

Area Manager II

Area Manager

I help first time managers in Ops 🦺 close the gap from a lack of training and support.

Professionally:

10 years of experience leading teams to drive operational improvements by designing and implementing frameworks, processes, and systems at startups and enterprise companies like Amazon, XPO Logistics, and Iron Mountain. Skilled in collaborating with cross functional teams to drive alignment, coordination, and execution on initiatives with stakeholders. Proven track record of designing data-driven and scalable processes, streamlining bottlenecks, and developing KPIs to monitor data for actionable insights. Drove efficiencies that led to operational increases of over 80%, proprietary product development, WMS implementation, 7x market growth to scale nationwide, and a successful joint venture.

𝐒𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐬: Operations Management, Operational Excellence, E-commerce, Management, Leadership, Coaching & Mentoring, Cross-functional Leadership, Collaboration & Coordination, Interpersonal Skills, Stakeholder Management, Process Improvement, Continuous Improvement, Strategic Planning, Program/Project Management, Product Operations, Communications, Data Analysis, OKRs / KPIs, Problem Solving, P&L Management

𝐓𝐨𝐨𝐥𝐬: MS Office Suite, Google Suite, Looker, Asana, Slack, MS Teams, Trello, Sharepoint, Notion, Canva, Calendly, Zoom, Active Campaign, Dropbox

----------------------------------------------------------

Personally: 

I've been lucky enough to live on both coasts (NJ and Cali) but I'll always be a Jersey guy at heart. I enjoy photography (have even done friends' weddings) and video games (huge Zelda fan). Oh and I'm a foodie - I can out eat my wallet which can be a problem.

Let's connect!

taplio

The Battle

Misty Blakesley

Pathik Parikh

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?