increase your sales, productivity and joy
Delivering a high-energy experience that teaches cutting-edge sales methodologies, workshops, and keynotes that will impact the performance, growth, and profitability of your business.
hi there,
I'm Michelle!
I love building wildly profitable businesses by activating modern sales strategies that consistently outperform competitors and crush growth targets.
Your audience will leave my events and engagements having experienced transformation, renewed belief, and motivation in a way they will never forget.
Speaking Topics
When to Hire a CRO
(and Why Every Business Should Think Like One From Day One)
Most Chief Revenue Officers (CROs) are hired when a company reaches $10M–$20M in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR). This stage—often post–Series B—marks an inflection point where the go-to-market (GTM) motion becomes too complex for siloed leaders to manage and founder-led sales begins to break.
In this session, Michelle Terpstra breaks down when a CRO hire actually makes sense, what this role is responsible for, and why timing—and perspective—matter more than most founders realize.
Hiring a CRO too early can be a costly mistake. A CRO cannot manufacture traction without a repeatable sales process. But building without a CRO lens from dollar zero is an even bigger one.
While full-time CROs typically come later, every business should be built with a CRO lens from day one. When your GTM strategy is designed this way, growth is cleaner, faster, and far less painful. You avoid rebuilding, reduce wasted effort, and stop optimizing operations that were never tied to revenue in the first place.
What You’ll Learn
When hiring a full-time CRO actually makes sense—and when it doesn’t
The key indicators you’re ready for a CRO:
Sales, marketing, and customer success need alignment
Forecasting is breaking down
Founder-led sales is limiting growth
Why every founder should build from $0 with a CRO lens—and how this shapes GTM strategy
How high-growth companies (300%+ annually) may bring in CRO leadership earlier to build infrastructure
Why many companies use a VP of Sales or fractional CRO before committing to a full-time executive
What CROs are truly responsible for: aligning revenue functions, increasing velocity, and managing the complexity of scale
Closing Thought
A CRO isn’t a fix for broken fundamentals. They are a force multiplier once the engine exists.
But businesses that think like CROs from the beginning build better engines, sooner. They grow with less friction, fewer rebuilds, and far more confidence—because revenue was designed, not bolted on.
RECOMMENDED FORMAT: Small to Large Group Facilitated Workshop with Breakout Time
DELIVERED: Virtually or Live In-Person, Podcast
IDEAL AUDIENCE: CEOs, Sales Leaders, Entrepreneurs, Business Owners, Sales Professionals
The Performance Myth
That’s Quietly Breaking High Achievers (And Why It’s a Revenue Risk)
Scaling companies are built on high performers.
And right now, the way we ask them to perform is quietly breaking them.
In this conversation, Michelle Terpstra—CRO and performance strategist—explains why discipline, pressure, and resilience stop working as companies scale, and how startups unintentionally create environments that destroy their most capable people.
This isn’t about burnout as a personal failure.
It’s about a systemic performance flaw that shows up as missed quotas, stalled momentum, leadership fatigue, and unexpected attrition.
Michelle breaks down:
Why high performers collapse long before leaders notice
How scaling environments reward over-functioning and create dependency
The hidden connection between autonomy, decision-making, and revenue outcomes
Why Gen Z will not stay in performance systems built on pressure and sacrifice
What founders and executives must rethink if they want sustainable growth, not short-term heroics
This discussion reframes performance as a business risk, not a mindset issue—and challenges leaders to redesign how success is produced inside modern organizations.
If you care about building a profitable, durable company that can scale people as well as numbers, this is a conversation you can’t afford to ignore.
RECOMMENDED FORMAT: Small to Large Group Facilitated Workshop with Breakout Time, Podcast
DELIVERED: Virtually or Live In-Person
IDEAL AUDIENCE: CEOs, Sales Leaders, Entrepreneurs, Business Owners, Sales Professionals
Unshakeable You
sticking with the hard things that matter
As Michelle was fondly nicknamed the “hype woman you want in your back pocket, “ this discussion is designed to inspire others to take bold action to get the things they really want in life. You get to choose your hard, and so you better love it.
High performers don’t struggle because they can’t handle hard things.
They struggle because they were taught to do hard things in the wrong order.
The hustle cycle—push, exhaust, recover, repeat—has been normalized as “discipline.”
But for high performers, that loop doesn’t create strength. It creates volatility, resentment, and eventual collapse.
In this keynote, Michelle Terpstra reframes what it actually means to be unshakeable. Not tougher. Not louder. Not endlessly resilient. But anchored.
She introduces a counterintuitive truth:
High performers don’t earn pleasure and autonomy after the work is done.
They establish pleasure and autonomy first—so they can sustain focus, discipline, and follow-through when the work gets hard.
This session is designed for people who are reliable, driven, and often the one others depend on—and who are tired of treating exhaustion as the cost of excellence.
Participants will learn:
Why the hustle → rest → hustle loop is breaking high performers
How pleasure and autonomy stabilize performance instead of weakening it
The difference between discipline and self-violence
How to stay with hard things longer without emotional burnout
What it means to choose hard things from self-trust, not pressure
This is not a talk about slowing down or opting out of ambition.
It’s about doing hard things from a place that can last.
Because real resilience isn’t built by collapsing and recovering.
It’s built by choosing the work—and choosing how you meet it.
RECOMMENDED FORMAT: Small to Large Group Facilitated Keynote, Podcast
DELIVERED: Virtually or Live In-Person
IDEAL AUDIENCE: Entrepreneurs, Business Owners, High-Performers
The Confident Closer
Why Leverage and Thought Leadership Decide Who Wins in Sales
Sales doesn’t break down because people lack confidence.
It breaks down because too many capable sellers are still relying on effort instead of leverage.
In this keynote, Michelle Terpstra reframes what it actually means to be a “confident closer” in modern sales. Confidence isn’t volume, pressure, or perfect scripts. It’s the ability to lead decisions, shape how buyers think, and move conversations forward without force.
Drawing from her work with over 1,000 sellers, founders, and revenue leaders, Michelle shows why tactics stop working once buyers are informed, skeptical, and overloaded—and why leverage and thought leadership are now the deciding factors in who wins deals.
This session pulls back the curtain on the real side of high-level sales:
the side where clarity beats persuasion, authority beats urgency, and confidence comes from knowing how to guide a decision—not chase it.
Participants will learn:
Why leverage, not hustle, creates consistent sales performance
How thought leadership shows up inside live sales conversations—not just content
The difference between persuading buyers and guiding decisions
How to sell ideas, solutions, and change without over-explaining or pushing
Why the most trusted sellers talk less—and influence more
This is not a motivational sales talk.
It’s a strategic reframing of how modern deals actually get done.
Because in today’s market, the best closers aren’t the loudest or the most relentless.
They’re the ones who create clarity—and let decisions move themselves forward.
RECOMMENDED FORMAT: Small to Large Group Facilitated Keynote, Podcast
DELIVERED: Virtually or Live In-Person
IDEAL AUDIENCE: CEOs, Sales Leaders, Entrepreneurs, Business Owners, Sales Professionals
High Performance Sales Habits
90-days to crush your goals and redefine your reality
Time is the most valuable resource we have. If you want to generate more revenue in less time—without burnout, chaos, or wasted motion—this workshop is built for you.
In this session, Michelle Terpstra teaches a proven 90-day performance methodology designed for sales professionals and business owners who want real results, not motivation theater. This framework helps high performers focus on the right actions, eliminate distraction, and create consistent sales momentum.
This is about discipline, clarity, and execution—applied in a way that actually holds up in real life.
What You’ll Learn
How to set 90-day sales goals that are aggressive and achievable
How to identify the few actions that actually drive revenue—and cut the rest
How to structure daily and weekly rhythms for sustained high performance
How to eliminate distraction, decision fatigue, and reactive selling
How to track progress in a way that creates momentum, not pressure
How to maintain intensity without burnout over a full quarter
Michelle’s High Performance Sales Habits Workbook is highly recommended as a companion to this session to support execution and implementation beyond the workshop.
RECOMMENDED FORMAT: Small to Large Group Facilitated Workshop with Breakout Sessions, Podcast
DELIVERED: Virtually or Live In-Person
IDEAL AUDIENCE: Entrepreneurs, Business Owners, Sales Teams, Sales Professionals
Hiring Your First A-Team Seller
(Without Guesswork or Regret)
Hiring your first sales hire can feel like a make-or-break moment—and honestly, it is. Do it wrong and you burn cash, confidence, and momentum. Do it right and you unlock scale.
In this session, Michelle Terpstra breaks down a proven, step-by-step system to hire, onboard, and activate your first A-player sales professional in as little as five weeks. No fluff. No outdated sales theory. Just a clear, founder-friendly process that actually works.
Built from years of helping top online brands hire and scale sales teams, this training pulls back the curtain on what it really takes to build a sales function that performs—without chaos, micromanagement, or crossed fingers.
What You’ll Learn
How to know when you’re actually ready to hire (and when you’re not)
How to pay your first sales hire properly and know if you can truly afford them
How to attract A-players instead of settling for “available” talent
A simple interview process that reveals skill, coachability, and fit
How to onboard and train your first rep so they produce—fast
The biggest mistakes founders make when hiring sales (and how to avoid them)
If you feel the pull to hire but aren’t sure how to do it right, this session gives you clarity, confidence, and a repeatable plan. Hiring your first sales professional doesn’t have to be overwhelming. With the right system, it becomes one of the most powerful growth moves you’ll ever make.
RECOMMENDED FORMAT: Small to Large Group Facilitated Keynote, Podcast
DELIVERED: Virtually or Live In-Person
IDEAL AUDIENCE: CEOs, Entrepreneurs, Business Owners, Personal Brands