From High School Senior Selling $63,000 to Corporate Management at Vector Marketing

Shelby Wildgust Brandt (00:00) Vector comes into your life at a young, formidable age, like 18, 19, 20, and teaches you so many skills and you can really sense and feel like you're growing at an exponential rate. My name is Shelby Wildgust Brandt. I live in Haddon Township, New Jersey. I started with Cutco back in 2012 and when I started out I was a high school senior and that summer I sold about $63,000. I then went on to run two branch offices. I actually don't sell currently. I work in our corporate office so now I oversee functions of our management program, and a lot of strategic opportunities that we identify in the field. one of my friends went in for an interview and during the interview the manager asked him, "Hey, do you have any other friends that you think would be a good fit for this?" And what he told me was immediately my face popped into his head and he was like, "you have to interview Shelby. She would be great at I was always entrepreneurial. Like, I was the girl running lemonade stands on the corner So for me it was like a no-brainer to jump into this When I decided to move on from Vector, I was still in college. So I wanted to explore other internship opportunities. So when I graduated from University of Delaware, I got a job in an IT recruiting firm firm, which aligned very well with some of the work that I was doing with Vector as a branch manager in recruiting students. It wasn't that wasn't enjoying what I was doing with the recruiting firm, but there is truly something special about Vector. And so I felt this like urge to get back into an environment that really prioritized personal growth, prioritized supporting one another. And so I felt this urge to come back to... probably the culture, first and foremost. But beyond that, you know, having been in Vector for 3 years, having had a multitude of experiences both in the field, selling and in management running a branch office, I felt this urge to come back and try to make a difference in a positive way. And I got really lucky that I was given the opportunity to do just that. My first day back was at one of our signature events called SLC. I was fortunate enough to land a job in the Vector East headquarters. So my first day back, was just thrown into this conference with 350 managers - some of which I knew from my experience in the field, but a lot were totally new faces to me. And I was all of a sudden thrust into this world of vector that I had not known previously. I all of sudden saw, wow, this company is way bigger and there's so many people to learn from and to grow alongside, And so was very exciting. I never want to leave, which is a very rare thing to say at my age. I'm 31 now. I would be the luckiest girl in the world to, like, live out my career here. again, going back to what pulled me back into Vector initially, that growth, I feel that still today. The same feeling that I was seeking when I came back at 23, I still feel at 31. there's so much opportunity for challenge and also opportunity. And I feel like Vector is the perfect place to take on challenges and to grow through those challenges, And there's just so many smart, well-meaning, kind people that I get to work with on a daily basis that I know if there's ever a challenge that's too big for just me to solve, like, I have a whole team I can go to to work with together to solve it. What I have noticed in the last... 13 years is how much the opportunity has shifted and has changed. And there is so much opportunity to be had. I think that as a manager, we're entering into a new phase of Vector that for somebody who's entrepreneurial, who likes to be on a wild ride and an exciting ride, like, this is the time to be on that ride.