Day: August 26, 2025

• Sara Uy, 28, launched SellingSara, a sales-training program after gaining popularity on TikTok.
• She said Gen Z salespeople struggle most with facing repeated rejection.
• Uy recommends having a routine, creating separation from the job, and leaning on others.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sara Uy, a 28-year-old founder of sales-training program SellingSara who is based in New York. Her identification and employment has been verified by Business Insider. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I got recruited right out of college to work at a sales company called Pareto USA. I started on the recruitment team and seven months later I got promoted to the sales team. Then I took the traditional sales path from senior all the way to manager and then sales director five years later.

COVID hit nine months into my role and I was cold calling in my childhood bedroom all alone without any support. That’s when I started sharing sales tips and videos of me live cold calling on TikTok. Very quickly, I realized there was a whole lot of other people in the same boat as me.

By the end of my time at Pareto, I had clients who were asking, “Can you train my sales team? We love your videos. Can we have you in as a guest speaker or motivational speaker or to do a little bit of a sales training on cold calling?”

So, I launched SellingSara about 11 months ago. My company is focused on providing practical tips to reps across industries.

The majority of my clients are C-suite executives who hire me to train their sales teams. Within those teams, there’s a ton of Gen Zs because sales reps are typically entry-level positions. Usually, sales companies hire straight out of college or five years out of college.

My workshops are 60 minutes and they’re less methodology, more of ‘this is what works; go and do it.’ Sometimes all it takes is for you to tell someone, especially Gen Z, “Hey, pick up that phone that you’re scrolling on, and just type a phone number in to that C-suite level executive that you’ve been trying to get a hold of.” Chances are if you get them on the phone, you can book the meeting.

As someone who’s on the cusp of Gen Z, I feel like our generation can be a little soft when it comes to facing rejection — and in sales you could face rejection day-in and day-out for three weeks in a row. Even if you’re the best salesperson in the world, you are bound to have weeks like that.

That’s how sales is. It’s an emotional roller coaster. I see a lot of Gen Z salespeople quit when they’re in that low period — and they’re missing out on an opportunity to make probably triple what they were making if they were to stay in the role and give it another six months.

So, I think the fear of rejection over and over again is probably the biggest challenge that they face. These are my suggestions for overcoming that.

Have a routine

Last week, I was just sitting, doomscrolling, and I was like “how am I going to get back into the right mindset of doing really well?”

When I have these moments, I try to stick to a routine and a structure. For me, that’s my morning workout and making coffee at home or going to get a coffee. That gets me out of bed and automatically makes me feel like the daunting tasks that I had when I first woke up aren’t as daunting anymore.

So, I recommend finding a really good morning routine.

Create separation from your job

Recently I’ve been getting into reading on my Kindle. That may sound very basic to a lot of people who read, but as someone who has never been a huge reader, it’s been amazing because I can’t go to social media from my Kindle.

Being able to clear my mind off work and social media has been a really good brain relaxation strategy for me. So, I would recommend finding something that can absolutely completely separate you from the thought of work.

Find a mentor

You’ll be able to determine if you’re not doing well real quick because everything in sales is so based on numbers. There are sales offices that literally have a leaderboard live on a TV screen in the office. So if you’re walking in every day and seeing yourself at the bottom, that can suck.

My biggest tip to anyone going through something like that is find the top sales rep that month, that quarter, or that year, and just ask them for advice and listen to them on the phone.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Go to the top salesperson, put your ego aside and say, “Hey, I’m sucking this month. “What are you doing that I’m not?” Go to your VP of sales and ask for training. There are also so many sales books out there. There are LinkedIn influencers out there now — and I’m one of them where I constantly put out sales tips and advice on how to get out of these ruts. There are so many resources out there.

Although sales teams sound really cutthroat, when you’re on the right sales team, they want to support you. It’s an individual game, but you have a team target, so everyone wants to win. Because when everyone wins, everyone takes home a fat commission check. So it’s competitive, but it’s a team sport at the end of the day.

The Kyrgyz startup ecosystem is still in its nascent stages and can’t boast an endless number of founders pursuing their dreams. But those focused on building hardware startups, which is generally significantly more challenging, are even a rarer breed. Despite all of that, there is an ambitious attempt to build artificial skin for prosthetics. Meet ArtSkin.

Not like a human hand

“Since childhood, I was mad about science and tech, and the first big thing that I made was a prototype of the first airplane by the Wright brothers. I dropped it from the second floor, and it was crushed after flying four meters. Later, when I was twelve, I saw a TV program about robot battles, and it was crazy! Since then, I have wanted to be able to make any kind of robots, and my dream has come true,” says Iliias Dzheentaev’s biography on LinkedIn. Dzheentaev is the CEO and Founder of ArtSkin. 

ArtSkin is a hardware startup from Kyrgyzstan that develops artificial skin for prosthetic limbs. It was launched by Dzheentaev in 2024. Before that, he spent three years studying how human skin, the nervous system, and receptors work to understand how to design a device allowing proper touch sensations. The process was time-consuming and challenging due to the lack of relevant information.

“My initial prototype was a robotic arm manipulator. I encountered a challenge with grasping flexible objects – figuring out how to make the robot recognize when its claw had squeezed tightly enough to hold the object securely. To solve this, I developed a mechanism that overcomes the resistance of different materials, enabling the robot to firmly grasp objects of various shapes, textures, and densities. Although the mechanism was simple, it made me realize how important this problem is for robotics. This insight then led me to thinking about people who use prosthetics and whether they actually feel anything when wearing them”, Dzheentaev tells The Times of Central Asia.

He was not happy with the contemporary prosthetic solutions – basic body-powered mechanical prosthetics rely on physical motions, and more advanced bionic prosthetics translate electrical signals generated by muscle activity into movements, both of which lack feedback. And without the latter, control is incomplete, while with a human hand, one can easily understand its position as well as feel touch and pressure. With this in mind, Dzheentaev built his prototype with a single sensor to test the device on himself.

First steps

Things got serious when Dzheentaev visited the High Technology Park of the Kyrgyz Republic (HTP), where he was inspired by other founders pitching and raising funds for their startups. At the time, unfamiliar with this environment, Dzheentaev was using his salary to buy electronic components, order materials, and do designs.

Not long after, Dzheentaev took part in HTP’s two programs: Dive into Silicon Valley and Unicorn from KG. The finalists for the first one were selected in February 2024. Dive into Silicon Valley in an entry-level incubation program, which sends founders to spend two weeks in Silicon Valley during which they meet founders, venture capitalists, prospective customers, take part in hackathons and pitch sessions, and visit the headquarters of leading tech companies and top universities. Dhzeentaev had quality networking during this visit, meeting Stanford professors and fellow founders from the region, like Doszhan Zhussupov, CEO of the leading Kazakh AI-medtech startup, which creates AI solutions that are essential in emergency medicine.

Later the same year, Dzheentaev was admitted to a more advanced program, Unicorn from KG, which runs in partnership with Draper University’s Hero Training Program. The program is an intensive five-week pre-accelerator based in Silicon Valley. In April 2025, Dzheentaev won a $10,000 equity-free cash prize at the largest local tech conference, Central Asia Startup Cup.

Apart from taking part in various programs, Dzheentaev found himself a Co-Founder. Sultan Tukeshov, the President of the Association of Surgeons of the Kyrgyz Republic, with 20 years of experience in surgery, joined Dzheentaev on his journey to build ArtSkin. The partner was a good fit as he and his team were the first in the country to start fitting patients with bionic prostheses.

Global ambitions

In March 2025, Dzheentaev was admitted to Stanford’s Summer Session. Last month, ArtSkin was selected for the MIT DeepTech Program, a joint program of the High Technology Park and Kuo-Sharper Center for Prosperity and Entrepreneurship at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Last week, ArtSkin was named fourth out of 400 startups in the Road to Battlefield Regional Final regional pitching round of the TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 selection by Silkroad Innovation Hub. Now he will pitch in the global lineup during TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, where he plans to present the prototype – a unified solution that can be adapted to different types of prostheses and integrated with VR – to show how the same technology can be applied in different areas. TechCrunch Disrupt is one of the largest global tech conferences and is held annually in Silicon Valley.

Dzheentaev has also received a grant of $50,000 from the High Technology Park to build a technical laboratory for developing an advanced version, testing, and preparing for clinical trials. By January 2026, Dzheentaev plans to develop a flexible prototype, which will have 16 sensors and operate similarly to human skin, including object temperature transmission, with a target to obtain a patent in the summer of 2026. Dzheentaev also plans to take part in accelerators and raise investments to cover the operating expenses since the team is working on enthusiasm alone.

“The biggest goal for us is to give people with prosthetic limbs back their natural touch sensations, because through them we feel the world around us. We also plan to integrate with virtual reality technologies, where people can not only see digital objects, but also feel and interact with them. I see great potential in our project, and who knows where this journey will take us?” Dzheentaev told The Times of Central Asia.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jesse Itzler, a 56-year-old entrepreneur based in Atlanta. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

We’re a house of six people, and with four kids, I don’t need an alarm. My daughter wakes me up every morning.

I started out in the music business as a recording artist and manager. Then, in 2001, I co-founded a private jet card company, which we sold to Warren Buffett’s NetJets.

I also owned a stake in Zico coconut water, which was sold to Coca-Cola in 2012. I’ve written two books: “Living with a SEAL” and “Living with the Monks.”

My partner, Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx, and I have a fitness company called 29029. I also have a calendar company and a running festival called Runningman. My schedule is constantly changing depending on my environment, finances, personal life, and commitments. But there are a few things about my routine that never change.

6:30 a.m. — I don’t use an alarm to wake up

I plan out my day the night before, so I’m not winging it when I wake up. It’s pretty mapped out hour by hour. During the school year, I wake up, get my kids breakfast, get them ready, and take them to school. I’m home around 8 a.m.

8 to 10 a.m. — My workouts start early

From around 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., I get my workout in. I either run, bike, or swim. I get my workouts in early because if everything else fails, I accomplished something for the day.

I try to do both the sauna and cold plunge every day and swear by them for their recovery benefits.

Morning to 12 p.m. — I don’t drink caffeine in the morning, and before noon, I only eat fruit

I’ve never had a full cup of coffee in my life. I’ve tasted it, but I just didn’t like it. Before noon, I only eat fruit and nothing else. I eat as much as I want in any variety, as long as it’s fresh.

I read a book called “Fit for Life” when I was 21 and about to run my first marathon. The book challenged the reader to try fruit only until noon for 10 days. I felt so much better, so I never went back.

10 a.m. to 4 p.m. — I work six hours a day, and what I do changes every week

Every Sunday night, I look at what I need to accomplish for work and then map it out by importance for the week. It changes a lot, and sometimes I’m prioritizing only one company all week. I work from home now and have a six-hour workday. If I’m writing, that six-hour window might be spent working on the book.

I have Runningman coming up, a three-day wellness festival in Georgia, so I’m prioritizing that right now. This year, I’m trying to run 30 miles at the festival, so I’ve been training for that. I plan by the week because I might not be able to run on a certain day, but I can space out the extra mileage over the rest of the week. I prefer this over a day-by-day perspective, where you tell yourself you have to run seven miles every day.

I’m also not a huge lunch person, and I don’t usually break to eat lunch during my workday.

4 p.m. — When my kids come home from school, my worktime stops

If I need to finish something, it continues at night after my kids go to bed, but I have a hard stop at 4 p.m. My favorite time of the day is when they come home from school.

Years ago, when I was asking for career advice, one woman told me that she takes the last week of every month and every Friday off. I thought it would be insane if I could ever do that. I was working 18-hour days when I was in my 20s, and it was a completely different schedule.

I can’t really take a whole week off. Every Friday feels like a lot, but I can realistically stop at 4 or 4:30 p.m. every day.

The evening is always different, but if I’m not traveling, we have family dinner

Once I’m done with work, I’m taking my kids to practices or hanging out with them. There’s usually something they have going on after school or at night, but we always try to have a family dinner.

We try to have dinner at home as much as possible. We all eat very differently. I’m not a meat eater, and they’re big meat eaters, so often, we order from separate places if we’re ordering in. I was a vegetarian for 35 years, and that has pretty much carried over. I eat a lot of pasta, salads, and veggies.

After dinner — There’s no routine; everybody goes their own way

At this stage in our lives, we’re just trying to survive to make sure that everybody has clothing to wear to school in the morning.

If there’s a show everyone’s into and my wife and I get recommendations, we’ll watch it. We watch 60 Minutes a lot, but we’re trying to cut down on TV and do more reading.

Right now, I’m reading “The First 20 Hours: How to learn anything…Fast!” by Josh Kaufman. It’s about mastering things in 20 hours or less.

I eat healthy during the day, but I eat all my calories back in chocolate at night. I like those Hu chocolate bars a lot for dessert, but I’m not picky about my chocolate. Just give me chocolate, and I’m happy.

10 p.m. — I try to get into bed

I’m trying to maximize my nighttime routine and fall asleep at 11 p.m., but it doesn’t always work that way. I’ve just started working on getting better sleep, which means shutting the TV off earlier, not eating late at night, and all that stuff.

I don’t have a wind-down routine. I’m like an 8-year-old; I try to just exhaust myself throughout the day. I’m the opposite of my wife. She likes to take a bath, and then she goes through a whole wind-down routine before she goes to bed. I usually have chocolate on my face, and I’m still sweaty from running around when the day ends.

• Sylvania Harrod transitioned from Big Tech to private equity by leveraging his tech experience.
• Harrod’s career spanned roles at Amazon, Cisco, Dell, and others, and each had both pros and cons.
• Amazon’s culture and entrepreneurial spirit were career highlights, despite some lacking benefits.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sylvania Harrod, a 39-year-old former Big Tech employee who now works in private equity in Virginia. This story has been edited for length and clarity.

I didn’t go to college. I joined the Army at 18 and served for nearly five years.

After I got out, I worked the front desk at a gym. I kept seeing a group of guys who wore nice clothes and drove nice cars. I asked them what they did for work, and they told me they worked for CDW.

Even though I had no experience working in tech, they helped me get hired in tech sales. I went to work for CDW in 2008.

I would continue my career at companies like Amazon, HPE, Cisco, and Dell. Each had pros and cons.

I left CDW to work for SHI International Corp., and then Dell

I worked for SHI International Corp. for one year. As a result of my experience in the roles at CDW and SHI, I was hired as a sales manager at Dell.

Dell supported going back and getting your degree. It also had different mentorship groups to learn about public speaking and leadership development, especially for veterans.

The headquarters in Round Rock, Texas, had all the major perks, such as lunches, snacks, and great offices, but I worked in one of their ancillary offices outside Washington, D.C., so I didn’t get to experience those perks. I worked for Dell until 2016.

After Dell, I went to work for a company called Nimble Storage

A week after I started, HPE acquired Nimble. HPE gave me a car perk, great lunches, and tuition reimbursement.

After HPE, I went to work for Cisco in 2018. The best benefit at Cisco was our global sales kickoff every year in Las Vegas, during which our company shut down most of Vegas for our 20,000 staff members.

The cool perks were things like the ability to get more technical certifications — Cisco has a very extensive training curriculum. They also had sales trainers come in and train us.

Although Cisco didn’t have the typical perks of other Big Tech companies, it had an amazing paternity and adoption program. Cisco gave you three weeks (outside your normal leave) to bond with your child.

Cisco also had the best performance incentives for sales reps’ compensation I’ve ever seen.

I worked for Cisco until January 2019 and left to work for Commvault

I moved to Denver with my family and went to one of Cisco’s partners, Commvault, a backup data protection company. While living in Denver, I contracted Lyme disease, and we moved back to the D.C. area in 2020.

I needed a year to recover, and Commvault was very gracious, allowing me to have all the medical recovery time I needed.

Amazon announced it was building a second HQ in the D.C. area

I was talking to colleagues I worked with at Cisco and Dell, and they suggested I apply to work at Amazon. Once I healed enough to work again, I went through the long, strenuous interview process.

The first step is to talk to a recruiter. The second stage is to speak to somebody in sales. Every interviewer asks questions associated with Amazon’s 16 leadership principles.

After you go through that phase, you go through a process called a loop — a series of six interviews that you do on the same day. You have to tell a unique story for each leadership principle.

One of the individuals in the loop is called a bar raiser. Their job is to ensure there are no unconscious biases in the interview process. The bar raiser comes from a completely different department — my bar raiser was one of the project managers for the Amazon recycling program.

If one person finds anything challenging, they can put their thumbs down and say they don’t vote for you joining the Amazon culture.

I was hired at Amazon in November 2021

I became an account manager at Amazon. This was the first time in my career that I didn’t sell technology — I sold a vision. I understood a client’s vision, and then I would bring product market experts to help them define it, figure out how to build it, and ensure that it would hit their destinations.

30% of my time was spent working with partners, preparing for different customer meetings, and having internal calls. Another 20% was spent bettering the AWS organization through mentorship programs.

I worked in person in Arlington, Virginia, or on a customer site, but I could also work from home.

Amazon’s second headquarters in Arlington is beautiful

There are multiple cuisine styles and restaurants with vegetarian, meat, and clean food options. There was also a game room, walkable gardens, quiet rooms, and a painting studio. I did cool arts and crafts with customers.

The building features solar panels on the rooftop and has gyms, bicycle parking, bicycle repair shops, and EV parking spaces with free charging.

Amazon is a dog-first culture — they have a dog run inside the building that’s open to the public. There’s just an aura when you’re there, and it made me more productive.

Some benefits at Amazon were lacking

Things like 401(k) matching and health insurance were not as great as at other companies I worked for. One of the leadership principles is frugality. However, they did have the best employee resource groups.

If you can prove with data that something is true, they will implement a program for you. They allocated $1M to a program that gives free certifications to students at HBCUs and from marginalized areas.

They also give you credits of up to $20,000, are willing to pay to help you through the adoption process, and give you paid leave.

I stayed at Amazon until 2024, when I decided to go into private equity

Working in Big Tech is great if you have the personality fit, and I definitely have that personality. It also depends on which team you work on. I suggest working on growing teams.

While there, I realized that 90% of my customers were served by private equity. This realization made me realize my true desire was to work in PE. I drive most portfolio companies to work with the Amazon team, so I still work with the same teams on a different side of the fence.

Amazon has been my favorite place to work

My least favorite place to work was Dell, because it felt like a churn-and-burn factory.

The best place I worked was Amazon AWS because it was the most entrepreneurial place I’d ever worked. Every day, you were presented with unorthodox challenges internally and externally.

I wouldn’t be able to do the things I do now at the level I’m at without AWS.