How to be the person people remember

My husband and I have a favorite local restaurant that we regularly dine at. Tuscarora Mill — a former mill that kept all its original character inside. Incredible food. Really charming space.

And we usually sit in the bar area, where there are two servers we’ve come to know over the years. 

One of them is Drick.

Drick is one of those people you don’t forget. The moment you walk in, he sees you — not in the glancing, distracted way of someone running through a shift, but actually sees you. He’s vivacious. Warm. Genuinely delighted to have you there. He remembers things. He makes you feel like the most important people in the room, even when the room is full.

He’s not following a script. He’s not executing a technique. He’s just fully, completely present — and that presence creates an experience that makes you want to come back, tell your friends, and tip generously without a second thought.

Last Friday my husband and I went to a different restaurant down the street. The server was perfectly nice. But she was distracted. Inattentive. Going through the motions. I couldn’t tell you her name today.

What makes Drick remarkable isn’t that he works in a quiet, low-pressure environment. Tuscarora Mill is always bustling — full tables, a lively bar, a constant flow of people. So was the restaurant we went to on Friday. The difference is that Drick doesn’t let the noise of the room show up in how he engages with the people in front of him. He’s centered in a way that’s almost remarkable to watch. The other server was visibly stressed and overwhelmed — and every interaction she had carried that weight whether she intended it to or not. The room felt both of them. And so did we.

The other restaurant won’t get another chance. Not because anything went terribly wrong — but because Leesburg has no shortage of great options, and nothing about that experience gave us a reason to choose it again over all of them. Tuscarora Mill gets our loyalty. And a meaningful part of that loyalty lives in what Drick creates every time we walk in.

That’s not a small thing. That’s the difference between a transaction and a relationship. And it came entirely from how he shows up — not from anything he was trained to say.

What influence actually is

Influence is the capacity to affect someone’s thinking, feeling, or behavior — without pressure, without force, without needing it to go a particular way.

Most people in sales confuse influence with persuasion tactics. The right script. The perfect follow-up. The objection handler they memorized. Those things have their place. But they are not influence.

It’s what people feel when you walk in the room, before you’ve said a word. It’s whether your questions feel like genuine curiosity or a checklist. It’s whether you’re actually, fully there — or whether part of you is already thinking about the next call.

People don’t experience your talking points. They experience your presence. And presence — real, grounded, other-focused presence — is the foundation that everything else rests on.

The skill nobody is teaching

Here’s what I want you to understand — and I mean really understand, your energy transfers. In every single interaction. Whether you’re aware of it or not.

This is not abstract. This is not feel-good language. This is one of the most practical and learnable skills in sales — and almost nobody is developing it deliberately.

When you walk into a conversation carrying anxiety, frustration from the last call, or the quiet desperation of needing this one to go your way — that energy transfers. The other person feels it before you’ve said a word. They may not be able to name it, but they feel it. And it shapes everything that follows.

When you walk in grounded, genuinely curious, focused entirely on what this person needs — that transfers too. It creates safety. It creates openness. It creates the conditions where real conversations happen and real decisions get made.

What to do with this

The most successful salespeople in history didn’t win because they had the best product or the sharpest pitch. They won because people wanted to be in their presence. Because something about them made others feel better, clearer, more certain — just by being in the same room.

That’s not charisma. That’s not personality. That’s energy — managed deliberately, offered generously, and transferred in every single interaction whether you realize it or not.

Drick isn’t the most technically skilled server in Leesburg. He’s the one we keep going back to. And he’s the one we talk about. 

The work starts before the conversation. And it starts with questions worth actually sitting with:

What emotion is currently driving how I’m showing up today — and if I could choose a more intentional one, what would serve the people I interact with better?

If I shifted from fear to curiosity, or from doubt to genuine service — what would open up in this conversation?

What’s the more empowering story I could tell myself about what’s possible here?

Your emotional state is not just something that happens to you. It’s something you can become aware of, work with, and ultimately choose — and that choice determines the energy you carry into every room, every call, every conversation that matters. 

That’s the skill. That’s what separates the people who create loyalty from the ones who just create transactions. And it’s available to anyone willing to do the work.