27 November 2013

This is Almost Better Than Goats (or Time Management 101)

For the first time since milking goats in the freezing cold at 6 a.m. for free, I can honestly say that I love my job.
I am not quire sure how I landed my position, except that maybe I showed up to the interviews and am not a blithering idiot (all the time). My job is twofold and insane. Fifty-percent of the time, I'm the company's marketing manager, coordinating everything from participation in trade shows, to event sponsorships, to the company's website(s) redesign. I've got a plate so full of marketing demands that it would keep a 40 hr/week marketing manager hopping.

The remaining 11 working days per month, I'm on the road or working from home as a salesperson, knocking on doors and hocking my wares the old fashioned way: one product at a time. I never, ever in a million years considered going into sales. For one thing, everyone I've ever met has expounded on what horrible work sales is. Keep in mind, very few of these people have ever been in actual sales, but they also don't realize that most people spend a lot of their time selling themselves in one way or another. The only lifelong salesman I know is Adam's dad. I sat down with him before my first day of sales and interrogated the man until I thought I felt comfortable enough to march into a vendor and ask them to BUY MY STUFF.

I wasn't as prepared as I thought for the first go-round, but regardless, I was successful. Of all the new sales hires, I made the first  sales, and while I'm starting slowly, I am hitting some high notes.

Seriously, I sell wine for a living. What's not to like?

I'm tremendously scattered and nervous all the time, but it's an energizing sort of nervous energy. I want my company to succeed, which is a new feeling. In the past, with the exception of my internship on the goat farm, I've been largely indifferent towards my employer at best, and often outwardly spiteful towards them in my darkest days. The company I work for is small. Tiny, even. We have 14 whole employees currently, and sell wine from the delightfully affordable to the "this wine is worth more than my life" variety. The truth is, I like what I sell. This is not to say I'm a wino (I am a lush, but that's irrelevant. Mostly), but rather, I have zero qualms about promoting our wines. There is no mysterious bookkeeping on the sly to keep the organization afloat and keep donations rolling in. There's no racism preventing students from excelling. There is no remedial repetition that makes me feel brain dead. There's no high school style fuckery. I sell an unobjectionable product I truly enjoy. Really, it's an ideal position.

My only complaint is that I'm technically a perpetual contractor. That's a deep pile of tax crap that I'm just not impressed by, and it means I will not have any health insurance through my employer - ever - but I can deal with all of that. I am left largely to my own devices. On the days I drive into the office (which is over an hour away), I share light conversation with my boss who sits across the room, a good-natured South African ex-pat who has so many irons in the fire he routinely burns himself. Otherwise, I work on the road or from my home office, which I am in the process of transforming into an oasis of awesome, complete with spots for our animals and plenty of me-ness.

Before (a color I can only call "anemic sage country green"):


 After: deep teal walls, brand new Ikea desk, places for kitties:



I grabbed an iPad from the office on my way out last week because the Samsung Galaxy 4 they gave us to manage invoicing was making me insane. When I opened Pandora today to get to work, New Order Radio started playing, a set-up whoever had this iPad before me had left intact. Good omens abound.

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