This episode of The Jake Dunlap Show features Samantha Ettus, Founder and CEO at Park Place Payments. Sam grew up in New York and studied at the Dalton School her entire life. She opens up about her upbringing and how an unhealthy amount of pressure was placed on her to win at competitive tennis.
She recalls getting special permissions from Dalton to leave school early everyday to travel to Long Island and play tennis. The pressures of Sam's tennis career revealed to her that life is organized according to 7 slices: family, health, career, hobbies, community, friends, and relationship.
Incidentally, it is this same structure that she uses today when she advises women on how to manage their professional and personal lives.
Her extraordinary drive to excel at tennis was motivated by the desire to get into the best school for college. As it turns out, she was accepted into Harvard. She remembers a pivotal moment when she actually had to choose between tennis and writing, and decided to quit what had been her lifelong identity as a tennis player.
Upon graduation, Samantha pursued a career in Hollywood and shares the colorful personalities she met there working as a Hollywood assistant. Missing the creative side, she moved back to New York to work at Nickelodeon for Blue's Clues.
Samantha would move on and go back to school at Harvard Business School, the only entrepreneur in her class, with the world's first personal branding firm. Next, she would go on to start her book series The Expert's Guide and share how a majority of her guests were results of cold calls and the creative ways she got them to say yes.
She also talks about writing The Pie Life which is based on her 7 slices structure of work-life balance. Finally, Samantha shares how she founded Park Place Payments with the intention of empowering small businesses with financial freedom and growing it to a billion dollar company.
QUOTES:
04:50 "I think it's so important that we raise financially independent children so that they have the choices to live the life they want and I've always been passionate about equal rights."
11:39 "We all have seven slices which are our family, our health, our careers, our hobbies, our community, our friends, and our relationship. And every single activity you have is organized into one of those slices."
22:09 "It was really difficult decision... And honestly, I don't think I was actually ready to quit when I did, because it was mentally which showed me I wasn't ready to quit, is that I couldn't handle having all of this free time."
35:55 "I had a lot of experience winning and losing as a child even when the stakes seemed really high... I think you have to go out there and try 20 times before you're going to get your yes."
45:24 "I've tried, as we grow, to place myself where my strengths are and then also to help identify where people in our team are strong and weak and make sure that they're in a position where they can be successful."
More about Samantha
Samantha Ettus, Founder and CEO of Park Place Payments, has made it her mission to empower small businesses owners and help them achieve their financial independence. She is a five-time national bestselling author of books including her The Experts Guide book series and her latest hit, The Pie Life.
She is also a highly-sought after keynote speaker and TEDx speaker who inspires her listeners to thrive and grow. Samantha also co-hosts her own podcast called What's Her Story With Sam & Amy which celebrates other women who are at the top of their game.
She is a media personality who has appeared on TV more than 400 times and has been featured on Good Morning America, TODAY, NBC Nightly News, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Inc., Success, and Marie Claire.
She has worked with some of the biggest names in business such as Google, Target, General Mills, Yahoo, and Twitter, to name just a few.
Find out more about Samantha and connect with her in the following links:
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