The Remote Show · Tyler Sellhorn, Matthew Hollingsworth

Amanda Nielsen, Partner Manager at Formstack

·28 min·2 clips

Amanda secretly submitted a conference pitch and got selected over her CEO, transforming her confidence.

Tyler opens in community mode, introducing Amanda Nielsen as Formstack's partner manager, plus her work as a speaker and advocate for diversity and inclusion. The strongest part is the speaker story. A partner spots HubSpot's Inbound speaker call and asks Amanda to help him and a few older employees with their video pitches, scripts, and applications. She helps first. At the same time, she starts wondering whether she has something worth saying on that stage too. The doubt is plain. She is about 20, not yet out of college, and sure that saying the ambition aloud would make her look foolish. So she submits anyway, quietly. The image sticks: a phone-recorded pitch filmed in an office closet, sent mostly as practice. Then comes the turn. Her CEO thanks her after his own pitch is rejected, and only then does she check her email and learn she was selected. Amanda reads the moment as proof that people might want to hear from her even if she is not a 35 year old male CEO. The next step is harder. A 45-minute talk for roughly 400 people brings excitement, nerves, and the fear that she may not be able to hold the room. She says it went well, led to an encore session, and showed her that people cared about what she had to say. Tyler lets the story breathe, then wraps with links to Amanda's work and a final WeWorkRemotely mention.

As heard by us

A remote-work story about learning to back your own ideas before you feel ready.

Amanda Nielsen’s conversation with Tyler Selhorn follows a remote worker learning to trust her own judgment. The strongest stretch comes when she helps other employees shape conference pitches, then records her own application in an office closet and later learns she had been…

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you need a confidence boost before making your own pitch.

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