Three Hundred Thirty-Six Hours

One trip, two weeks, fourteen days, three hundred and thirty-six hours. It was all one particular event but as you break it down it seems even more intimidating. When you talk about two weeks, it doesn’t seem that long. Then you start thinking about packing for 14 days of travel, and after you are done packing you actually have to spend the next 336 hours away from home and working 12+ hour days. Checking a bag is a necessity and factoring a day/night to do laundry accompanies that necessity. A two-week vacation sounds like a dream come true, a two-week business trip sounds like the exact opposite. It is not, however, as bad as it sounds.

Taking on a business trip that is this long takes some research to prepare for, especially if it is your first time travelling for more than a long weekend. The first place I found to be helpful was this article. The author does a great job of highlighting a lot of small tricks that can really prove useful. One that I took advantage of was contacting your hotel about laundering services. I was going to be staying in two different hotels, moving about halfway through the trip. I was able to have the second hotel launder some of my more important items for less than the first hotel wanted. I also found great help in packing multipurpose shirts that can be worn alone in a casual setting but also look nice and formal when you put a blazer on top of it.

A trip of this length takes a lot of flexibility and the expectation that things are not all going to go according to plan. We left a lot of times as flexible within a 15-minute period so that we had some leeway once we were on site. Communicating properly with suppliers (especially restaurants) was key so that they knew if our group was running late or if our attendance number changed. On this particular trip we had 4 planned dinners that were plated and served 25+ guests. The rest of the dinners we spent on our own as workers but offered options and reservations at local establishments to our guests. This trip was a little bit of a booze and schmooze event as we were hosting guests that could greatly influence the ROI of new products based on resale predictions and pricing. This meant that you were always walking a fine line when you were with them because you were expected to converse and mingle but making sure not to offend or give the wrong impression to the guests was imperative.

When it is all said and done I was able to get paid for spending two weeks in California. No matter how many hours I worked, it is hard to complain about that. I checked my timesheet and I showed a total of just less than 120 hours, which is an average of 8.5 hours a day and that includes the weekends.

Preparing for Take-Off

Four seconds is all it takes to travel a quarter of a mile at approximately 300 miles per hour. No this is not in an airplane, this is in a Nitro Funny car driven by a professional NHRA driver. For work I attended my first ever professional drag race. This was the NHRA event in Charlotte, North Carolina. Our work involved student recruiting for Ford Motor Company, in the pursuit to bring back the popularity of vocational schools and fill the empty field of service technicians. We spent the weekend communicating with high school aged students regarding career paths in the automotive technician field. This is a program we have spent the whole year working on, but only activated twice so far. This was my first time being at an activation, which includes plenty of logistical hurdles including contacting and meeting with dealerships local to the race track to obtain employees who want to positively impact our youth. Below is a photo I took of our professional driver Bob Tasca III addressing a group of students in his pit area. He spent a lot of time talking about the opportunities that exist within the industry beyond working at a Belle Tire or other shop. Motorsports is where the fun is at, that is for sure.

There is a lot of on the job learning that occurs on a trip like this. Sitting in an office in meetings can’t ever teach you how to interact with student’s or how they may interact with you. It also could never prepare you for what could or does go wrong that requires an immediate judgement call to be made. On site at an event like this we do not have an hour to email with a supervisor regarding how to solve an issue, we all have an understanding of what the overarching goal is and on site you do whatever it takes to achieve that.

When you are learning on the job and working events it seems like the days last forever. Time just crawls as you try to process everything that is happening and it feels like the weekend will never end. Going forward it always feels like the next event approaches so slowly. There was a study done regarding our perception of time. Burkhard Bilger found that the more familiar our world becomes, the less information our brains hold on to. When your brain is not writing down as much information, time seems to pass by faster.

Once you make it back to the office, you get to apply all of what you have learned on site to the programs you work on for the rest of the year. I have to mention again that you will never be fully prepared to host an event in another state, because of all the logistics behind making it all possible, but in time you learn how to adjust on the fly.

Earning My Stripes

We are quickly approaching my one year anniversary with my current employer. Over the last year there has been an assortment of lessons I have learned, not only about the company I work for, but about myself as well. There is so much in this world that we are oblivious to because of our lack of perception in the moment, but if you continue to analyze what you have done and how you can improve, you will continue to grow better every day. We often forget that nothing good happens fast, it takes time and effort to grow ourselves and what we do.

I have been spending this last year earning my stripes, working hard and analyzing every mistake I have made so that I can continue to grow as a human and as an employee. If you ever stop growing in your position, it is time to look for a new one. This not only helps you, but the company as well. As we grow complacent in our jobs we slowly stop growing and learning, what we do instead is remain stuck in our ways and lose the ability to function in a highly efficient manner. When I have a tough day at work I like to listen to podcasts or videos of speakers like Simon Sinek and Gary Vaynerchuck. They like to give a lot of insight into how they became successful and what they attribute it to, which allows me a place to start. This link is attached to a video I watched about a month ago. It is Gary Veynerchuck talking about his experience as a child and as a successful businessman. He makes a point to talk about how he did not do well in school, but he did not let that define him. He continues to work hard and had patience. He eventually grew his company from $3 million in sales to $60 million.

Over the last few months we have been designing a new program to attract technicians to want to work at certain dealerships, and this last weekend we finally accepted that what we designed needs to be thrown out and we have to start over. What we created was like a beautiful machine that just had a few too many pieces, like Ikea furniture, it was too difficult to put together. We are now working on making it more efficient and effective as a recruiting tool so that its implementation is more practical. The best part about this project at work is it is living proof that what I am doing and learning at Walsh College is relevant. Unfortunately for my high school teachers, I still haven't used the Pythagorean theorem. 

The Stress and Anxiety of House Shopping

Have you ever had a moment where you realized you weren't stressed? Anytime when you can remember not having a care in the world? If so I would bet you haven't bought a house recently. My Fiancee and I just finalized our purchase agreement this weekend and are moving into the closing stages of house buying. You would think finding a house was easy, I mean really, how hard can it be? When you are making an investment of this magnitude and are going to be paying for it for the next 20-30 years, you want to make sure it is perfect. Not only do I have to love the house, but she does too, and if that doesn't complicate things enough, we are in a sellers market, which means houses are not posted for sale for long before there are pending offers on them.

There is a long list of things that a buyer has to do in order to complete the process of buying a house. These typically happen in a similar order, but some things can vary based on the scenario. This article helped us figure out a few things to consider while shopping. I wish we would have found it sooner since we made the second mistake on the list "looking for a home first and a loan later." Typically you would start with establishing your budget and finding a lender. Once you have a lender they will pre-approve you for a loan amount. Then you would want to find a real estate agent, if you don't have one already. Try and find one you trust, I know we will be sticking with ours as long as we can. It helps if you nail down an area or two that you want to live in or can afford to live in and then it's a waiting game. You will know when the perfect house comes around, because it hits you like a brick wall. We knew because as we were touring houses we would spend somewhere between five and ten minutes in a house, but when we found ours we didn't want to leave. We kept talking about what we liked about it and started imagining what we would do to make it ours before we even put an offer on it. Once we put an offer in writing we had the inspection which prompted some negotiation. After the final purchase price and terms are agreed upon it is time to go back to the bank for the appraisal and to finalize the mortgage. Then comes closing, where everything comes together and the title swap happens.

If that doesn't have your heart racing and palms sweating, living through it sure will. When it is all said and done, you are not completely signing your life away, you can always go through the whole process again and sell your house if your heart desires.

Relentless Forward Progress

I have competed in two 70.3 Ironman triathlon races. Each of these took more than 6 hours for me to complete. If they were easy, they wouldn't be fun. Some of the key mentalities to keep is a lot of optimism and perseverance. I remember in my first race, about 2.5 hours in seeing a spectator with a sign that read "Relentless Forward Progress". This relates a lot to every day life, as well as the working life. There are a lot of people who have a hard time going to work in the morning because they hate it, or are tired of it. This is why I try to never look back at my bad days, and only reflect on my positive opportunities, and always learn something from every situation.

There have been a lot of long days at work. These are inevitable for anyone over the age of 15, where you actually stop working when you get home. These days can be difficult to make it through and stressful on everyone involved, but they are always worth it. Little do we know there is always a prize at the end of a long day, it all just depends on how you interpret it. Optimism is important in every day life, and like Simon Sinek posted, the right perception is what creates optimism. This allows us to continue to improve our mood as we watch our hard work pay off.

In order to adopt this mentality you also have to account for the small wins. Sure I didn't finish in the top ten of the race, or even in the top thousand, but I finished. A small win could be anything from making your bed in the morning to cleaning paper work off your desk. There is a short video about small wins that sparked interest in the scientific community that was recognized while Nobel Prize winners were working on their DNA model. They discovered that completing parts of their project were almost as rewarding as completing the entire thing. So remember, never stop progressing, and always stay optimistic.

Effort, Perseverance and Creating Opportunity

Nothing feels better than positive recognition in the workplace. When you complete a project, or even just have a performance review, there is nothing more satisfying or rewarding than your boss telling you that you are doing a great job.

It may be because as social creatures humans strive for recognition from our peers. It may be because we work so hard at what we do to better ourselves the recognition is a sign that we are making tangible progress. It may even be because no matter how hard we try we know there is always a way to improve or operate better.

Impressing your boss is something that you can do any day of the week. There is such an intimidation factor that is common between employee and employer, but usually the employer wants you to shine. In a video here you can find some advice from the psychologist Sam Owen about how to impress your boss. There are only a few things that are guaranteed to impress, but I will get to that later.

First we need to cover the basics of what every employer wants. They want to impress their boss, they want to achieve their goals, and they want to make the company successful.  Do these sound familiar? Is that what you are striving for as well? This is something that we all have in common at work that so many of us lose sight on. Even your boss is trying to impress their boss, and their boss is doing the same. This is why it is important to first understand that working together is the only way to achieve anything. If you carry on only looking out for yourself in an attempt to make yourself look better than everyone else you are limiting yourself by turning away and intimidating your co workers who could help you.

Cue the climbing the corporate ladder idioms. There is nothing that will take you farther than hard work. That is why work ethic tops my list of ways to impress your boss. Perseverance comes in a close second. Perseverance is important because you have to realize everyone has failures and everyone has hard times in their life. What matters is how you deal with those situations. I find that the harder you work and the more effort you put into something the more likely you are to find or create yourself an opportunity.

How and When I Got Hired

The quote "If you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life." from Mark Anthony has been very meaningful to my young career. Even before I had a career, I was not interested in any job that would pay me to work, I was somewhat selective. Now this may have been for better or worse, but that is still to be seen.

When I was hired as an Intern I knew that my time was limited and that I had to make a long lasting impression, whether or not I wanted to remain at the company. While I have thought my work ethic has always been one of my strengths, I wanted my coworkers to realize this on their own.  This went along well with my goal of self promotion, even if it did not lead to a career with the company. Self promotion is a big part of networking. There is only one reason someone will truly remember your name, and that is if you made a lasting impression. Here is where it gets difficult. That may have been a bad impression. Showing up to an interview in cargo shorts, bad impression. Being able to comfortably address someone and relate to them on a personal level, good impression. If I could pick one outfit to wear for the rest of my life, most of my family and friends would be able to recognize that I would be in slippers, gym shorts and a t-shirt. However, when I am at work, you would never know.

I was hired as an Intern in May and accepted a full time position in August. Once again an opportunity presented itself and I capitalized on it. This was not handed to me, nor was it expected, but it was earned. There was an employee in an entry level position that decided it was in his best interest to leave the company, thus opening an entry level position for me to pursue. I slept on the idea of applying for the position since I am still in school I wasn't sure that I would even qualify for it. After a quick discussion with my boss the next day it was clear that they wanted me to stay with the company. That night I submitted my application on the companies website, and the nerves came flooding in. I cannot remember what I did the rest of the night, but I remember the next day couldn't come soon enough. I did not hear anything at all during the next business day, so the nerves continued to build. This was when I realized I had just watched a video that related to this.

I am a big fan of the author and motivational speaker, Simon Sinek. He has talked on a lot of large stages and brought to attention a lot of curious things that as humans I believe we are quick to overlook. The video I watched was a little over an hour long, but here is a clip describing how he feels about being nervous. There wasn't much time between applying for the position and hearing back from my company, but because I interpreted it as being nervous, it felt like decades. It took them 3 business days to offer me the job, of which I excitedly accepted.