From Ukraine to Tech Sales Consultant with Vika Nevmyvakova | Ep048

Episode Information Show Notes Episode Summary: Vika Nevmyvakova’s career path looks nothing like she planned. She arrived in the US from Ukraine at 20 with law school dreams. No resources to make it happen. No network. No connections. She took whatever jobs paid bills. Call centers. Customer service. The work most people see as stepping stones, she turned into skill-building. That’s where she discovered she loved talking to people and solving problems. More importantly, she was good at it. Today she consults with pre-funding stage startups on sales operations. She helps technical founders who built genius products but struggle to sell them. Her career philosophy is simple: take shots you’re not ready for. Apply when you meet 60% of requirements. Ask questions that might sound stupid. Build expertise through curiosity. This conversation unpacks her immigration journey, multiple career pivots, working through language barriers, and why she tells everyone to stop waiting until they feel prepared. What You’ll Discover: Her path from Ukraine to US tech sales consulting Why call center work taught skills law school wouldn’t Sales consulting for early-stage startups and what founders actually need How curiosity became her biggest competitive advantage The confidence gap: men apply at 60%, women wait for 100% Real talk about working with an accent and language barriers Her interview preparation tactics using YouTube How to articulate value versus just listing product features Why following through on commitments builds credibility faster than anything else The “what’s the worst that can happen” mindset that changed her career Key Takeaways: Your career doesn’t need to follow the plan you made at 20. Vika’s path from law school aspirations to tech sales happened through a series of sideways moves. Customer service work taught communication skills and problem-solving under pressure that translated directly to sales. Curiosity beats credentials. She built her expertise by sitting through engineering demos, joining product calls, and asking endless questions. When she talks to customers, she can articulate value in ways others can’t because she did the work to deeply understand the business. The confidence gap is real and costly. Men typically apply when they meet 60% of job requirements. Women wait for 100%. The difference? Men who apply get hired. If you don’t take the shot, you already have a no. Following through separates average from excellent. Tell someone you’ll look something up and actually do it. Your credibility lives or dies on this one habit. Guest Bio: Vika Nevmyvakova is a Sales Consultant working with pre-funding stage startups. She helps technical founders develop sales strategies, implement CRM systems, and translate complex features into clear customer value. Born in Ukraine, she moved to the US at 20, pivoted from law aspirations to technology, and built her career by staying relentlessly curious and taking shots before feeling ready. Resources Mentioned: YouTube for interview preparation and skill development Mock interview practice CRM systems for startups Prospecting platforms for early-stage companies Listen to the full episode to hear Vika’s complete story and get her unfiltered advice on making career moves before you feel prepared. Subscribe to Career Downloads: New episodes every week featuring technology leaders sharing real career lessons. #CareerDownloads #SalesConsulting #CareerChange #TechCareers #StartupLife #ImmigrantStory TranscriptionManuel Martinez: Welcome everyone, my name is Manuel Martinez, and again, this is another episode of Career Downloads. Where each episode I basically hit the refresh button, bring on a different guest to learn more about their background and their experiences, to help you uncover any actionable advice that you can use as you’re managing your own career. So I’m excited for today’s guests. So today I have with me Vika Nevmevakova, and we met at a networking event. We got to talking, I learned a little bit more about kind of what she’s currently doing, some of the things that she’s done in the past, found it very interesting and intriguing. So looking forward to learning more about, you know, some of those experiences. So with that, I’ll go ahead and introduce Vika. Vika: Thank you for having me, I’m so excited to be here. Manuel Martinez: I appreciate you coming on and, you know, being willing to kind of share your experiences. I know we kind of had a little touch point ahead of time. So really looking forward to learning more about it. Vika: Me too, let’s do it. Manuel Martinez: So if you don’t mind to start off, can you tell us what your current role is and just a summary of some of the roles and responsibilities? Vika: Sure, so currently I’m doing consulting, mostly around sales, sales operations, for smaller startups, usually pre-funding stage startups, because that’s where they need help most and aren’t at the stage yet where they can hire a big team or set up processes or even platforms and applications, because a lot of times they’re costly. So I try to come in and help them first of all, develop a strategy, understand what their selling goal is, what they’re trying to get to that year, that month, that quarter, and then provide them with the tools, do the research based on what budget they have available and set them up with prospecting platforms, CRM systems, and something to track revenue once it starts coming in, help with just looking over their webpage to see how a customer might perceive it. A lot of times, software is built by, you know, a super technical person, usually genius, that developed something from a good idea and they’re very technical and they, not necessarily, are very good at perception in terms of how the market might see it. Obviously their product is great. They may have sold it already, maybe like to smaller customers, maybe individual licenses, but a lot of times I just wanna come in and see what a potential prospect would see when they look at the page, like pricing, features, what the value is, are they communicating the value? Because a lot of times they’ll list all the features, but not necessarily connecting the whole picture so that the prospect might look at it and be like, okay, well, that looks cool, but like what problem does it solve for me? So I usually try to come in and say, we need to articulate it for them so that it’s easy. Once they get on the website, they’re like, ah, okay, that’s gonna help me fix XYZ. And that’s how you generate sales. Manuel Martinez: And I’m excited to kind of dig into your journey and understand how you were able to kind of develop those skills to be able to now put those into practice to help these businesses. Vika: Yeah. Manuel Martinez: So now if you don’t mind, tell me a little bit more about kind of where you grew up and then eventually kind of what led you into eventually getting into technology. Vika: So I was born and raised in Ukraine, moved to the States when I was almost 20 years old, just a few months shy of that. And been plotting that move since I was 12. When you’re 12, people just look at you like, yeah, okay, right. You don’t have the knowledge about the country, you don’t have much money, how are you gonna make it happen? And I began working in high school, the last few years of high school, and then I actually started at a telemarketing role. In its unmarketing role. At a company that was founded by a Dutch businessman and they sold security systems for homes. Now in Kharkiv, which is the city I grew up in, a lot of people live in apartment buildings or condos, and there’s not much single family homes, so it’s a lot of apartments, right? And we had to set appointments for field reps to go out and sell them the systems in their home. The trick to that, or I guess the fun fact, was that back then, and it’s hard to imagine living in the States of course, Ukraine or in general was not, telemarketing in general was not popular in Ukraine just yet. I think in my city at least, and this is the second largest city in Ukraine, they, I think they might have been the first ones to do that. So imagine you’re trying to do your job and call these people, and they’re not familiar with the concept of telemarketing. So they answer their phone and there was a stranger on the phone, and you try to tell them about this security system, how great it is, and then you’re like, okay, so what is a good time for us to come out to your home and provide you with an estimate and hear about your needs to make sure that your apartment is covered? They’re like, wait, what? You’re not coming tomorrow. How do you know my address? Where’d you get my name? So even though in the States some people ask that, right? But people usually know, like there’s lists and all that stuff. But we were pretty much the first ones in the city to try to educate the public on this is the thing. We get your information from some sort of a list and we’re not the bad guys, we just wanna actually help you out. It was a legitimate company for sure. And as we try to sell that, I would get a paper list. Go down the list, name, phone number, all that, and set appointments. So that was pretty much my first, very first introduction into sales. And I never thought I was gonna end up in sales after that. It was a difficult, very difficult job. Lots of rejection, lots of screaming on the phone at me. But yeah, then I moved to the US and started going to community college at night. Manuel Martinez: So I did...