An Interview With Sara Connell
Morning routines help you balance your day and contribute to more successful outcomes personally and professionally. After completing my morning routine, I am able to fire on all cylinders professionally, knocking tasks out in a timely fashion. Without it, I’ll bounce from one idea to the next without ever really completing any of them to the best of my ability.
As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Marcus Knight, Founder of Cultured Perspective, the world’s first known Black-owned revenue go-to-market consultancy.
Knight is also the VP Go-To-Market for Shipium, a revolutionary e-commerce supply chain platform founded by two original Amazon executives that provide service to some of the world’s biggest retailers.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, a middle child to a mom who was an entrepreneur and worked in social services, and a dad who worked in military intelligence. I was deep into sports (basketball, soccer, track, etc.) and making money — in elementary school I ran lemonade and produce stands, sold candy in schools, you name it. So basically, I found my knack for sales early. After leaving Carthage College in 2006, I went to sell copier machines for Canon where I learned the foundations of being a great seller. This eventually led to me working as head of sales for global companies as well as launching my own businesses.
What or who inspired you to pursue your career? We’d love to hear the story.
My parents. My father taught me to work ethic from his days in the military, while my mother taught me to be entrepreneurial — for more than 25 years she has owned a successful construction business as well as a consultancy that helps set non-profits up for success.
None of us can achieve success without some help along the way. Was there a particular person who you feel gave you the most help or encouragement to be who you are today? Can you share a story about that?
My wife Mia has been that encouragement for me. She has always supported everything I do — even when it came to leaving my stable, full-time job to pursue launching my revenue growth consultancy, Cultured Perspective (CP), in 2020. A program manager in the tech space herself, Mia has not only supported my dreams, she’s rolled up her sleeves at times to help me get there, whether it was helping to develop the CP website, or assisting with the launch of our clothing line, KidKulture.
Can you share the funniest or most interesting mistake that occurred to you in the course of your career? What lesson or takeaway did you learn from that?
Early in my career, through salary discussions with colleagues, I learned that I was being severely underpaid. Bothered by this information, I decided to bring this up to my manager and advocate for myself. My manager brushed it off; he implied that I should’ve negotiated better, and nothing changed. This led to me working to better understand my worth (I didn’t have a college degree and didn’t realize at the time that this wasn’t necessarily an impediment in sales), and more confidently navigating salary negotiations in the future.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
I am:
- Personable — I make it a point to get to know the people I work with and what is important to them. This is something that I happen to do naturally as I am a curious person. Being that it is authentic, people tend to relate and open up more to me and that is something I don’t take for granted. I can remember attempting to sell to a Fortune 100 company and genuinely speaking to the executive on a personal level instead of trying to close the business. This allowed us to have an open, genuine conversation which led to us getting to know each other more. We ended up having to schedule a follow-up meeting to actually get through the business portion. By that time, the decision-maker had made up his mind to buy our software.
- Coachable — Some call it humility; I call it being coachable. I don’t know everything and am always happy to be exposed to better ways of doing things. For example, one time I had a sales rep that I had instructed to pitch a potential client a certain way. When he told me he didn’t think it was the right approach, instead of arguing (as I could have as his boss), I asked him what he thought the best way would be. Turns out he was right — we followed my rep’s lead and wound up closing the deal faster than we had previous deals.
- Lifelong learner — Whether it’s a new industry, software product, or cultural norms, I challenge myself to continuously learn. I feel that it makes me a well-rounded human. Owning my own business, I have had to learn how to properly onboard and support my staff to make sure that things were well-documented. This has helped the consultants with a shorter onboarding process, creating our ability to service clients faster.
I’m an author and I believe that books have the power to change lives. Do you have a book in your life that impacted you and inspired you to be an effective leader? Can you share a story?
A stand-out book for me was “The Goal” by Eliyahu Goldratt. Reading it I felt like I was getting a crash course on how to think more strategically and solve larger problems. As a result, I stopped focusing on the “right now” and started to focus more on the future. As a sales rep, early in my career, I could only focus on the deals I was working on at that time. I didn’t have the foresight to think of the larger picture regarding relationship building. After reading this book, I looked at sales and revenue strategy completely differently. Now, we solve for bottlenecks. We solve complex problems. Therefore, there’s an excerpt that I often reference: “The entire bottleneck concept is not geared to decrease operating expense, it’s focused on increasing throughput.” This excerpt can be related to internal bottlenecks or external, customer-facing bottlenecks. Whenever I need a reminder of what my goal is, this is what I think of.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?
In addition to my work as VP Go To Market for Shipium and CEO of Cultured Perspective, I consult for the organization Sales for the Culture, which is a peer-to-peer mentoring program for Black folks who are looking to get into software sales or are currently in software sales. The roles range from entry-level up to executive level. What is great about this group is we have created a safe space for individuals to talk about their experiences and are helping them break into more inclusive companies.
I am also an advisor for an organization called Us In Technology (UIT). This organization helps individuals from marginalized communities get into software sales roles, which can help with propelling generational wealth. Later this year UIT will launch an app that will make it much easier for members of marginalized communities to not only access life-changing tech positions but the skills and resources to cultivate long careers in the industry.
OK, thank you for all of that. Let’s now shift to the core focus of our interview. This will be intuitive to you but it will be helpful to spell this out directly. Can you help explain to our readers why it is important to have a consistent morning routine?
Morning routines help you balance your day and contribute to more successful outcomes personally and professionally. After completing my morning routine, I am able to fire on all cylinders professionally, knocking tasks out in a timely fashion. Without it, I’ll bounce from one idea to the next without ever really completing any of them to the best of my ability.
Can you please share your optimal morning routine that can create a positive trajectory for a successful, effective, productive, and efficient day? If you can, please share some stories or examples.
I start with a calming practice (meditation), followed by reading a few chapters of whatever book that is top of mind. Right now, I am reading The Color of Money by Mehrsa Baradaran. Then, I look at my to-do list to make sure I am getting through the top items by mid-morning. I turn my cell phone off during this time.
Speaking in general, what is the best way to develop good habits? Conversely, how can one stop bad habits?
Repetition, repetition, repetition, in order to create good habits. Falling down but always getting back up, until you no longer need to. When I think of bad habits, I try to understand what the goal of the habit was, to begin with. Once you look closer at solving the overall goal, bad habits begin to lose their appeal. This doesn’t mean it’s easy to break them — it just means you’ll need to continually come back to your “why” and remember that this habit no longer serves you. If you merely focus on eliminating bad habits, and not looking at the larger picture, you are missing out on the opportunity to not only break the habit but grow.
Doing something consistently “day in and day out” can be hard. Where did you get your motivation from? What do you use to motivate you now?
Earlier in my career, I was motivated by money. Realizing that I could make more if I sold more (or hustled more) was an interesting concept that I could get behind. Now I am not as motivated by money as I am by my family. My family for sure is where I get my motivation now! They give me so much grace to continue to build something meaningful for me. Working with my six-year-old son on his own clothing line to draw creative inspiration as well as giving him some insight into what ‘Daddy’ does have been very rewarding.
What other resources would you suggest to our readers?
I recommend Saasy Sales Leadership (https://saasysalesleadership.com/) for sales and customer success professionals looking to progress in their careers. It’s a great training program. For revenue leaders like myself, I recommend Modern Sales Pros (https://modernsaleshq.com/). This platform presents them with an opportunity to learn from a large community of their peers.
Ok, we are nearly done. You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
If I had the ability, I would lead a movement to create more economic empowerment for marginalized communities, the goal being to remove barriers that prevent wealth building at lower socioeconomic levels. Who knows what benefits to society, new inventions or creative works would come about when people are free from worrying about meeting basic needs such as food, shelter, etc.?
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we both tag them 🙂
Jay-Z. He’s one of my favorite artists, who has had such a profound impact on our community. I am in awe of his business acumen and would love to see how we could partner on a passion project to help level the playing field in the tech community.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
You can learn more about me here:
Cultured Perspective: https://culturedperspective.com/
My LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcus-knight-4b07b04/
Shipium: https://www.shipium.com/
Thank you for these really excellent insights, and we greatly appreciate the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success.
Marcus Knight of Shipium On The Morning Routines and Habits Of Highly Successful People was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.