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Pam Sanders is an Owner and Mechanical Systems Engineer at TSA Sales Associates. Her firm designs the supply systems for manufacturers, which includes solids handling, storage, air pollution control, air movement, conveying, and other processes.
She talks to Cynthia about the early stages of her career, being the rare female engineer at Proctor and Gamble before spending years doing missionary work in Mexico. Ultimately she returned to St. Louis, where she and her sister now run the firm their father started. She wears many hats and shares wisdom from the perspective of an entrepreneur, sales leader, and engineer.
1 – Introduction 00:23
2 – Tell us what you do 01:54
3 – Air pollution element of Pam’s business 03:27
4 – Understanding what Pam’s company offers 04:05
5 – What do you calculate in your business? 04:45
6 – What is required to be passionate about what you do? 05:27
7 – Decision to go to Georgia Tech for Engineering 06:23
8 – You bonded with a lot of women from GA Tech, why do you think that is? 08:04
9 – What was it like walking into first engineering class? 08:55
10 – Were you used to large ratios male to female? 10:00
11 – Challenges faces as a female in engineering major? 10:42
12 – Length of the program 12:21
13 – Challenge of engineering and project managing 13:33
14 – What helped you be most successful in that role? 14:33
15 – Importance of Project Management Skill 15:49
16 – How did you lead fresh out of college 16:44
17 – How did you know a company had few women? 18:23
18 – Feeling being the only woman 20:02
19 – Was it hard to ask for help as the young female? 21:21
20 – How long did it take to find the right role? 23:07
21 – Knowing the role is right 24:15
22 – How long at Proctor and Gamble? 25:27
23 – Why did P&G want to keep you? 26:18
24 – How did you build relationships in the office 27:20
25 – Building relationships in post-Covid world 29:14
26 – Want to hear from team on how to improve 31:23
27 – How did Mexico non-profit come up? 32:16
28 – What was the group doing in Mexico? 33:33
29 – Similar to Summer Program? 34:40
30 – What’s it like to live in a real Mexican city? 35:39
31 – Relationships in Mexico 36:48
32 – Kids open minded 37:45
33 – Value of being open 38:28
34 – Why did you end up leaving Mexico? 39:41
35 – You intended to go back to Mexico? 41:07
36 – What did you do next? 42:18
37 – Why did you want to own you own business? 44:57
38 – What parameters in place to see how it goes? 45:45
39 – Was there a moment when you knew it would work? 48:19
40 – A lot of pressure to get it right 49:38
41 – Additional layers of challenges with family and female component? 51:07
42 – Did clients see you differently? 53:32
43 – Was it helpful not to lead with relationship to your father? 54:28
44 – Worried about not being taken seriously because of family connection. 54:44
45 – Did your sister have similar challenges in taking over? 55:06
46 – How did you get comfortable with sales? 56:10
47 – What do you do to build relationships? 57:23
48 – Any challenge to being a female salesperson in your industry? 59:00
49 – Helpful to have teammate redirect questions to the expert. 1:01:49
50 – How do you demonstrate credibility without bragging. 1:03:46
51 – Any other business owner tips or tricks? 1:04:57
52 – How do you stay in your zone of genius? 1:07:09
53 – Summary of Pam’s approach 1:08:53
Content Notice
This podcast and all She Lift Project content represents the opinions of Cynthia Kirkpatrick and her guests. The content here is for informational purposes only, and should not be taken as professional advice – financial, legal, medical, or otherwise.
Views and opinions expressed in the podcast and across all She Lift Project media channels are our own and do not represent that of our places of work. While we make every effort to ensure that the information we are sharing is accurate, we welcome any comments, suggestions, or correction of errors.
“Everybody has a light inside of them, and you have a choice. You can either use lighter fluid or an extinguisher. Same thing goes with everything. Same with people’s talents. You can either light it up or you can extinguish it.”
“If you follow this methodology, if you follow the pattern, the outcome is inevitable. You cannot mess it up because it’s just calculated moves that are in writing.”
One of the things I love to do if the opportunity presents itself as coach people, because I feel like that is the most, wow, fun, enriching thing that you can do for people. Because what happens is I believe that people behave for reasons, and you got to figure out what’s the root cause. So if someone reacts in a certain way, whether it’s anger, emotion, or whatever, there’s a reason why they’re reacting that way. And so I don’t think that people really want to react that way. They want to be their best self.
“I didn’t go into business from a business school background, and so I discounted a lot of my intuition and what I thought was right and what I should be doing and took other people’s advice sort of over my own thinking and eventually I always would wind up back to sort of what felt right to me was very different from the advice that I had been given in the business community.”
“The experience of going through the legal process is supposed to be about seeking justice. More often than not, people go through it and they’re just as scared and almost re-traumatized as they were when the injustice happened.”
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