Episode 123: Be Yourself And Become More Of Yourself With Karine Elsen
Succeeding in the corporate world is not about letting go of your passions or completely changing your personality. To enjoy genuine success, you must be able to be yourself and become something even bigger than that. In this interview with Karine Elsen, VP of Partner Marketing for Avalara, she discusses her journey from growing up in Belgium to coming to the US as an adult. Listen as she talks about unleashing her inner soul of breaking the rules, coping with massive cultural shifts, and going beyond expectations while keeping her authenticity. Karine also explains how her life stories have helped her lead people through change and feel safe in this complicated process.
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Be Yourself And Become More Of Yourself With Karine Elsen
I'm with Karine Elsen from Avalara. Karine, do you want to give a little background on what you do at Avalara before we begin?
I am the VP of Partner Marketing at Avalara. What it means is that Avalara is a partner-led company. The role of partner marketing is to work with our partners and build and execute co-marketing plans. That is what my team's responsible for and I'm very pleased to lead that team here.
I’m glad to have you on the show. This show is about your life story. Let's start from the beginning, where you grew up and what your parents did for a living.
I grew up in Belgium. This sheer coincidence, my first job out of college was at a tech company and it was a very interesting experience. I worked for a software distributor at the time. It was a small European company but we had Microsoft's big contract for Europe and it was attractive for US companies to break into the European market.
Early on, we were bought by Ingram Micro and they expanded the company into many countries. I got to experience working in France and Italy and opening offices all over Europe. I very much enjoyed that. In terms of my parents and my background, my father was a real outdoorsman. My grandfather was a farmer. I enjoyed that a lot. In the summer, we hung out on the farm and played in the barn. It was a great experience as a child and my mother was a bookkeeper. They were quite different, as you can imagine, a farmer and a bookkeeper, although my father himself never worked as a farmer but at heart, he was.
What did he do?
He was an engineer and I have three siblings. It's hard for me to say that because I had a sister who passed away so I had two sisters and a brother. I had a great childhood.
When you talk about your parents, they were in Belgium so for how long were you in Belgium?
I moved to the US in my late twenties. I was about 27 when I moved. It's funny, though, because when I was sixteen, I still remember the day, at one point, I came home from school and I said to my mom, “Mom, you should know that I'm never going to marry a Belgian man because they're boring. I'm not going to stay here because this country's too small for me.” I knew at that time already that I was going to spread my wings and go somewhere else.
I had a plan because I was like, “I'm going to date different nationalities and see what I like.” I had a Spanish boyfriend. I had an Italian boyfriend. I ended up almost being engaged to a German and then went to complete opposite and ended up marrying an Irishman. I know there are stereotypes so I have to be careful not to generalize but Irish people love breaking the rules. German people love following rules so it's quite extreme but it was the right choice.
Does your family still live in Belgium?
Yes, everyone still lives in Belgium and there's an expression, let's see if this translates into English. They have a brick in their stomach. They're very homey. They stay close to their family and all my cousins, uncles and aunts live within 5 miles of where they were born. All the families are close together and I am truly the exception. It's close-knit and like, “How can you do that? You're leaving your family.”
You started at sixteen but at what point did you feel different or what hit you that you knew you wanted to go beyond living in Belgium? Was there a moment or something you saw?
It was when I had my first job, we were acquired by Ingram Micro and I thought, “I want to go to the US.” I was talking to them and they had an exchange program where you could go for one year and live in Santa Ana. I was already talking to them about doing that and we were starting the process of how that work. One night by sheer coincidence, I met my now husband in a bar. Belgian and Irishman, the chance that they meet in a bar is probably higher. He started to talk about how he was applying for a job in Washington, DC. We started dating but I always had this in the back of my head that he was going to move soon.
It took a while. The organization where he applied had a very long process. We started to see each other more and then after a couple of months, when he got the job, he said, “Why wouldn't you come with me?” I said to myself, “Why not? If it doesn't work, it's not like I can't go back. It's worth trying.” That's when I made the decision to say, “I'm selling my car. I'm giving up my job.” It was a big leap of faith.
We were not married and it's not that easy to work in the US when you don't have a green card and permit. I had to get very creative around that. In the beginning, what I did was I set myself up as a consultant in Europe and I found companies in the US that needed help with doing business in Europe. I knew a lot about distribution because I worked for a tech distributor.
Be Yourself: It's not that easy to work in the US when you don't have a green card and permit. You need to be very creative about that.
I found this one company that was about to launch its product in Europe. I was interviewed by them and explained my situation. They said, “That's fine. We can pay you in Belgium.” We set that up and then I was very lucky. That year was the first year that the US did a lottery program for certain countries and the way it worked was that you could apply. You needed to send in a letter. You needed to show proof of residents. You couldn't have a criminal record.
There were some key requirements but they picked the first 60,000 people and then you had to go through a process and could get a green card. The first year was easier than the following years because anyone could send as many letters as they wanted them. I sent 250 copies and mailed them from different locations to increase my chances of winning and that's how I got the green card.
There were 17 million letters and I was 1 of those 60,000s that they picked. That was the start of what I would call a great ride here in the US. I was hired by the company and then I became responsible for international marketing. That was important because I needed to be working and I certainly wasn't going to get married to get work or a visa. I worked out and it's been great since then.
With your family being very much about the community that they lived in and their way of life when you were a child, was there anything that didn't resonate with you or did you feel different?
I went to a strict Catholic school and my sisters were good students. They worked hard. They were always doing their homework, keeping their heads down and doing what they were supposed to do and I wasn't. I remember the nuns would always say to me, “We can't believe that you are Annie and Macata's sister.” They struggled with me because I wasn't making my homework and not following the rules.
Why is that?
I don't know. I was wired that way. I was the youngest. My parents had 4 kids in 5 years. By the fourth, they were like, “We're a little done here.” I did my thing but as a child, I thought school was pretty boring. I didn't like the fact that they told us exactly what we should be thinking and it was not working very well for me.
What did your parents say about it?
I remember in high school when my mom came back from a parent-teacher conference and she was in tears because they said I was a bad spirit. That's when I realized. By that time, I was seventeen and felt bad about it. When I went to college, my father was very smart. He took me aside and said, “You'll never run to anything. You are never going to be able to succeed in college. You don't know how to work. It's not going to work.” I was so mad that he said that. I left and thought, “I am going to show you what I can do.” That first year, I worked hard. I was always studying and had the best grades. He knew what he had to say to motivate me. I remember that.
Did you ever talk about it?
Yeah, because when my mother was working, he was home earlier. When I was in high school, I would be studying. I would be lying on my bed and have the book on the bed. He's like, “You can't study like that. You got to sit at the desk and write things down.” I'm like, “I know it.” I remember that. Two days later, I came home and was like, “I flunked.” He knew very well how to handle me.
You got better grades for that but did you also resonate with being in college differently than you did in high school?
I certainly had fun but I do think something clicked then. I was a lot more about, “These matters now because this is going to determine my future.” It was, at that time, that I started to think, “I have to get this together. I have to get a degree. I have to start thinking about what I want to do.” I became very focused on that. My first degree was in languages, Interpretation and Translation. I came out of that and thought, “What am I going to do with these translations?”
I realized that with my temperament, that's a very lonely job because you take a book and have to translate it. I thought, “I want to be doing things where I can interact with people.” I set myself up as a Language teacher because Belgium has three official languages and you need to make sure that you are well-versed in all three or at least French and Dutch.
Belgium is very much split. Half of the country speaks Dutch and half of the country speaks French or they have to learn the other language. A lot of companies would do training for their employees to get better in the other language at lunchtime and executives. I set up my little business and started to teach executives. I had customers like insurance companies where I would go at lunchtime and teach their employees.
I did that and it worked well because I was making good money for someone a year out of college. I then thought, “This is all great but there's no career progression. I can't be asking for more money because I've been doing it.” That's when I went back to school and learned Marketing and got an MBA in Marketing in Brussels in French because I'm Flemish. I went to high school in Flemish. I said, “If I can get this MBA in French, that's going to set me up to be able to get a job in marketing.” That's how I ended up in a technology company as a Product Marketing Manager.
What was it like when you came over to the US from living where you lived?
That's been a very interesting journey. I felt like you go through three distinct stages when you make such a move because you're giving up your job. For me, it was all at once because it’s a new continent, not even a new country. You're going across the ocean and with someone that I barely knew. We were together for six months. I had to build a new relationship and work-wise, I had to do all of it like a new job.
In the beginning, you feel very uprooted and it certainly impacts your confidence because people behave differently. You're not sure what's up or down. I tell you a funny story that exemplifies it a bit. One of my first weeks in this new company in the US, I came back from work. My boyfriend at the time says, “How's it going?” I'm like, “It's going fine but it's exhausting. Everyone's asking how I'm doing.” He goes, “What do you mean?” “I walked down the hall in the kitchen and everyone is like, ‘How are you doing?’”
I'm starting to explain and he's laughing and goes, “You're not supposed to answer that.” I'm like, “What do you mean?” He goes, “It's not. They don't want to know how you're doing. You just have to say good.” Those are the little things that you're like, “I'm starting to talk about. I’m doing this. I'm doing that. I'm not doing well.” He's like, “Don't answer that.” In the first stage, you feel uprooted. You're learning everything. Everything's new and you're an outsider. You feel like, “I do not belong in this group.” You don't pick up subtleties or idiosyncrasies. You miss cues. I remember that very vividly.
The second stage of that is you're in between two chairs. You're not quite like, “This is my home,” but then when you go back to Belgium, you also say, “This is no longer my home either.” You feel like you're in between the two and then I feel like, “I am very fond of Belgium. I love to go back but this is my home. My kids are born here. I have my life here for almost 30 years and this is now my home.” It takes time. Especially also with language, even though my English was good, you think in your own language and you translate. It takes a while before you start thinking and dreaming in English. All that takes time.
I learned through that. One of the big takeaways that I've learned is that you have to stay true to who you are. I am different. In conversations, when they ask where you're from, I will immediately say, “I'm Belgian. I'm still Belgian.” I have a US passport. I'm a US citizen and consider myself Belgian. I've learned you have to stay who you are. You don't have to fit into a different mold and what you believe needs to be here.
It's taken me time to have that level of confidence. There was one time when a manager I was asking about promotion and she said to me, “Karine, I need you to be more like,” and she named one of my peers who had been promoted. That was so hurtful because you never want to hear someone says to you, “You need to be someone else to get to the next level.” These moments have made me much stronger in who I am and what I want to be.
Be Yourself: You never want to hear someone tell you to become someone else to get to the next level.
Your inner soul is about breaking the rules. How did you then navigate that in the corporate world? The corporate world does have a culture that they expect people to fall in line with and those comments can be soul-crushing. How do you still succeed and be who you are?
You probably can tell I'm very straightforward. I'm outspoken. I’m often the person who says what other people are thinking but they're not saying it and I will say it. I've had to work on that because sometimes that is not always the smartest thing to do. It's also appreciated that there are people like me who are not afraid to say what they think.
I've had that feedback when it came to performance reviews that I needed to make sure that my message was adapted to my audience. Especially when you're dealing with higher-level executives, you have to be thoughtful about how you deliver what you want to say. Certainly, that is something that I've learned over time to be a bit more political about certain things as well. That's the nature of the beast.
Maybe you can talk about that process. What do you think you do to remain yourself but make sure the message is heard by your audience, whether that be staff that works for you or people above you?
I’m working on listening more. If you have thoughts and feel passionate about something, be smart about when you insert yourself and when you don't. Maybe when I was younger and more inexperienced, I would say a lot more. I'm much more careful about when to insert myself and what statement to make so that you balance your listening better because sometimes, you're so keen on, “I need to say this. They need to hear this.” That you're not following the conversation. I focus more on listening now and certainly, I still state what I want to say but I am much more thoughtful about it than I used to be. That has more impact.
Be Yourself: Listening is much more impactful than talking a lot.
I have found that getting older and it's good for young professionals to hear too, is that you can be passionate about what you do. You have all these goals of what you want to accomplish but you can get in your way as well. It's harder when you're younger because you so badly want the next thing or feel a certain way. It's a hard thing.
I always think about wrapping my head around it because I'm watching my son in college. He is so passionate about what he is doing. He formed this club and he's an environmental engineer but found business people. They formed this whole club to spread the message and make an impact in corporations about sustainability. I went and worked with these kids because they needed help with putting a strategy together.
I told my son, “I go help.” I have to tell you. I left there feeling so energized because of their passion. I consult all the time but all the people that get in their way too, being older where they're like, “I've done that before. I've tried this or that doesn't work.” Having all these preconceived notions and then you're with younger people that are trying to be a sponge and take it all in. You see them do it and if only you could cut through this. There's something between the two sides of it because you get beaten down as you go up the ranks.
They have no baggage.
They're still excited about the opportunity, not knowing all the things that are going to get in their way of doing that. It's an interesting thing. I've been thinking about it since being with them about how you don't say as much anymore because you're like, “Is it worth the energy?”
You still have to do it. You can't lose. I can't stand when people say, “We've done this before. It doesn't work.” That doesn't fly. If you lose the passion, you can't think outside the box or figure things out. That's something that I struggle with. I'm all about problem-solving, optimism and positivity. You need that in Corporate America because there are a lot of headwinds and things that we've had to deal with. You have to maintain positivity. We all have our days where we want to, “Why am I doing this?” I get over that very quickly.
How do you go about getting over that because some people hold onto it? What's your process?
It’s a very simple mantra that I have. I hate being miserable. I like being in a happy state. If you start going down the path of, “This doesn't work and this and that,” you become miserable and I don't want to be miserable. Ultimately, I'm responsible for my mental state and happiness. I'm like, “Get up the next day and be a happy person. Move forward.” That's how I am. I can't be sitting in a corner and being miserable.
What is the mantra that you go to on that? You said, “I have a mantra.”
I say to myself, “Don't be miserable. Move on.” I'm very much a driver. I have a lot of energy. This is one thing we haven't talked about. I was a gymnast when I was a kid. My father was a gymnast and took me to gymnastics when I was six. I started getting into it to the point where I was doing it ten hours a week and doing a competition. That was my life. From the age of 6 to 16, I was doing gymnastics. I always liked doing cartwheels. My mother said, “You spend more time upside down on the sofa,” because I was always doing headstands. My body is used to that. When you instill that early on, your body craves it.
I've always done a lot of working out, dancing and gymnastics. Now I play a lot of tennis. I do Lagree, which is a harder form of Pilates. It's with a lot of resistance. I do a lot of yoga. I love yoga. I discovered yoga many years ago. I go on yoga retreats. Yoga is important because as you get older and you build strength, you have the flexibility and it does wonders for me. That's also what I do. When I have a bad day, I sign up for an early morning yoga class and it makes a big difference. I'm very active physically and it gives me a lot of energy. I bring that energy into my work.
I also interviewed Melissa Pritchard from Avalara. She was at the Olympic training for gymnastics. We'll have to talk about that.
I wasn't that good.
She lived there. She went to college on a full scholarship with it. It’s funny how lives intersect.
I believe that physical energy and activity are so good for your mental state. It makes a big difference.
I was thinking that when you were going through those stages, you went through being an immigrant and moving here. It's similar to grieving anything. I run these courses to help accounting firms transform their client advisory practice. One of them sold their tax practice and as excited as they are that they did it, there’s the next day of like, “Who am I without my practice?”
I was talking to her about that because when I sold mine, you think you're going to be so happy. You're sad and grieving. It's something you created and how you defined yourself and where you lived. You had confidence living there and then there's this whole transition of whom you become. If you never leave one thing, there's no way to create the next great thing.
You make incremental changes but there are real crossroads in your life where you're called to make a bigger change and reinvent yourself. We did that right before the pandemic. We lived in Washington, DC and said, “We've been here long enough and seen everything there is to see.” A lot of Washington, DC, is very transient. There are a lot of international people coming and going. A lot of our friends had left.
My kids were on their own so we said, “Let's move.” We moved to Austin and joined the country club. We start playing tennis and it was reinvigorating. I got a new job and new people. I need that. I need these moments in my life where you're like, “Things have to change. Not something small.” I don't think everyone's wired that way but that's what I did in my twenties and I'm like, “It seems to be every 25 years that I need to make a major change.”
It's true and good to know that about yourself. It's true of personalities and business or whatever you do, being honest with yourself, “Am I the visionary person? Am I the person that likes change versus the people that like the maintenance of the things that are the same every dependable day?” Change is very disruptive. As a leader, I would ask you because I'm sure some people who work for you aren't like you. How do you handle someone that doesn't like to be shaken up or have change happen and bring them on the journey with you?
I've learned that you must figure out what is holding them back. What I've learned is that sometimes people are afraid of making mistakes. “What if I do something different and am making a mistake?” The first thing I try to say is that mistakes are okay. I always say, “There's no mistake we can't fix. We’re not surgeons operating on someone who might die.” Let's put it in perspective here. If you're going to make a mistake, I'm sure it's something we can easily recover from or we can recover from together.
That's one barrier that I try to remove. It’s okay to make mistakes. I always say too in my mind, “Failure is not trying something and it doesn't work. Failure is doing the same thing and hoping for a better outcome.” I try to encourage people who are not changing in the environment that we're in as a company or as a person that is not going to work anymore.
Look at what's happening in the industry in the world. Change is a constant. If there's one constant right now, it is change. It makes them feel safe in trying new things in making these. Some people are bolder than others. Some people are going to do it in small increments, in small steps but I sent a message saying, “Doing the same thing that's not going to get you anywhere anymore.”
Many great tidbits that we've talked about. I'd like to end with some rapid-fire questions. I'd like you to pick a category, family and friends, money, spiritual or health.
I'll pick family and friends.
Things or actions that I don't have that I want to have.
It is hard to be so far away from family and my best friends too because we moved. I've got three good friends. One is in Florida, one is in New York and one is in Belgium. They're all over the place and I wish they were closer.
Things or actions I do have that I want to keep.
My family, we have great relationships. We have no family drama. I don't need more friends. I'm good with the friends that I have. I make an investment. I travel to them. I make sure that we keep these friendships going because if you don't invest, then that can change quickly.
Things or actions that I don't have that I don't want with my family and friends.
There's no drama. I can't stand any drama or situations that I get pulled into. There's very little, thank God but more on my husband's side. You shouldn't hear that. His family is a bit more dramas. We have no drama. We have great relationships because we're so straightforward. No one talks behind anyone's back. It's all out in the open what I want to keep.
Last one, things or actions that I do have that I don't want.
I have a lot of guilt about being far away. Especially when you have something dramatic happening in your family or your parents are getting older and you have to rely on your siblings to take care of them. I feel a lot of guilt about leaving in this kind of situation.
I'm sure with the loss of your sister, which I'm sorry about. Is there anything from this conversation that you'd like to end with? Some message that you wanted to emphasize or anything we didn't talk about that you want to make sure people take away?
I have a great sense of fun and we shouldn't take ourselves too seriously. I also communicate that with my team or my family. You got to have fun doing what you're doing. I don't take myself not too seriously. What I mean is that I have a perspective on things. Staying true to yourself and not trying to be anything else or figure out what people want you to be. Just be yourself and be more of yourself. Become more of it. I don't know if you know Marcus Buckingham. I always tell my team to read his books. He's all about your strengths. The old belief was like, “I got to work on your weaknesses.” No, you have to build on your strengths.
Find the other people that fill your gaps. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this. I appreciate you.
It was a lot of fun. Thank you so much for the opportunity.
Important Links
Melissa Pritchard - Past episode
About Karine Elsen
Karine oversees all aspects of partner marketing at Avalara, her team works with a diverse ecosystem of partners including ERP vendors, ecomm partners, accountants and system integrators. The partner marketing charter spans all motions including marketing to, with, through and about partners.
Before Avalara, Karine was at Cisco for about 17 years. She held multiple leadership roles in both the Americas field and global partner marketing organization Whether alliance, distribution, reseller, ISV or partner programs, Karine touched nearly every aspect of partnering.
Karine started her career in Belgium working for Ingram Micro, one of the largest distributors in the IT industry. That’s where she developed a true passion for partners, and she spent the majority of her career in some area of partner marketing as a result.
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