Category: regular

(Want to skip to the punch line? Part 5 outlines how I can help you.)

I earned my undergraduate degree in Pre-Unemployment (with a focus in early 21st century barista trends).

Actually, make that degree “Religious Studies” and the focus “Early American Religious History” and you’ve got a better idea of why I just skip straight to prepping for unemployment. In its defense, my degree is highly regarded among graduate school applicants and admissions agents across a broad spectrum of fields.

Immediately following my undergrad career I spent 8 years in vocational Christian college ministry. Before you write off that time as “non-profit” for the rest of my employment life, keep in mind that over that time I personally developed more than $400,000 using an interactive sales presentation, complete with cold call, referral ask and financial close. Also thrown in the experience bucket:

• delegation
• time management
• volunteer coordination
• public speaking
• personal coaching
• grief counseling
• web content development
• viral marketing experience
• social media pioneering
• ultimate frisbee domination. (perhaps a bit of revisionist history in this bullet point)

In the summer of 2010, owing to a number of factors both beyond and within my control I started using that “Pre-Unemployment” degree. Two small children, a wife, and a strong aversion to taking money from the government led me to the doors of Starbucks Coffee Company, where I started in October(ish) of 2010.

My first “real job” as Barista was exhilarating (minus the 4:00 AM wake-up time) and I found a lot of joy in knowing people’s drinks, making it my personal mission to elicit smiles first thing in the morning. It’s also where I continued honing my sales technique, quickly becoming our store’s leading seller of VIA—Starbucks instant coffee (where a sizable chunk of revenue margin lives for the company) selling it out of the drive-through window.

While there were many things I loved about SBUX, the pay was not enough to cover the needs of my family of 4, which led me to the most physically excruciating 6 months of my life. Read all about it in the next chapter in this tale.

(This is part 2. You should start the story here if you haven’t already.)

My first 8 years out of college were spent like most in my generation: finding out how I fit into the universe, followed by haircuts and real jobs at drive through windows.

From there, it was on to AT&T, where I got a job “connecting people to their world” selling communications solutions at a retail store. I overlapped this job with my stint as a drive-through wizard, making for frequent days where I started at 5:00 AM hawking coffee in one store and ended at 8:30 PM selling phones in the other, standing the entire time.

From day one at AT&T, I was a top performer, not only in my store, but in the entire sales region. In Q4 2011 (my second full quarter selling) I was distinguished with a Silver Award placing me in the top 20% of the region’s leader board; two quarters later I received the Gold Award—that’s for the top 4% in a metric that combines sales numbers and customer satisfaction.

Our store (in which I finished 3rd that month) was ranked in the top 15 stores in the nation (a pool of more than 2,000 stores) for May of 2012.

Additionally, I was one of the first 3 reps in my store to achieve “Small Business Certification” for closing high-revenue business deals. I once activated 60 iPads in one day, cursing the Apple engineer who designed the difficult-to-access SIM tray.

The short version of my time at Ma Bell: I am really good at selling things.

What can’t be quantified with my sales numbers is something about which all of my superiors (not just those at AT&T) would agree: I come to work on time, ready to work, and with a positive attitude. Among my pet peeves is an entitlement attitude that would permit employees to rationalize stealing company time and resources for personal use, or worse, having a bad attitude at work like some sort of cancerous tumor spreading negativity.

My deepest vocational passion is that people be delighted to deal with me. It’s how I convinced thousands of people to gladly purchase a case for their mobile phone from me that they could order on that mobile phone from Amazon.com for 30% less. My customer service and expertise sets me apart.

I’m worth a 30% mark-up.

My career at AT&T was scratching the most fundamental of itches (feeding my family) but left one significant itch thoroughly untouched: my desire to create.

On April 1st of 2012 (no foolin!) that itch received it’s first finger-full of salve. You can read about it in the next chapter.

(This is part 3. You should start the story here if you haven’t already.)

I had commenced the butt-kicking and name-taking in my career at AT&T a year earlier. But as a creative dude, I salivated at the thought of a career (or side gig) making something.

In April of 2012, that opportunity arose at my church. I took a part-time job as the director of worship, but balked at that title in favor of “music guy and lead geek.”

I lead the music on Sunday mornings (selecting the songs and training/rehearsing with a band of musicians each week). If you are looking to put that into a business experience category, I’d file it somewhere in between delegation, project management, hitting a recurring hard deadline, working as a part of a team (and over a team), public speaking, live audiovisual setup and management, recruiting, and (borderline extreme) multitasking.

Another significant role I’ve undertaken for the church is web-mastery. I manage the content for our website, functioning as an editor for blog content and a writer for much of that content. I’ve also committed to sending out a weekly “News and Events” email, and haven’t missed a week!

In 2012, that email list averaged over a 35% open rate (approximately 200% of the non-profit industry average) and a 9% click rate (450% of the industry average). I think the related business “file” for that is apparent. I can (and do) write engaging content. Regularly.

My work for the church has been a fantastic creative outlet, but side gigs are side gigs, right? The only catch in the story is that my side gig required me to have Sunday mornings free. With the holiday season approaching, working in retail made for a Thanksgiving horizon line. Something would have to give.

So, in November of 2012, I went “all in” on a career change, and it didn’t go at all like I’d planned. You can read about that in the next chapter.

(This is part 4. You should start the story here if you haven’t already.)

In November of 2012 I went “all in” on a cold-call sales job at a great little company named Wingswept in Garner, NC, which would give me more predictable hours and room for my side gig through the holiday season.

I was tasked with selling website solutions to auto mechanics, over the phone. Having never sold over the phone, I jumped in with both feet. Pro tip for southerners selling stuff to people in New Jersey: speak quickly.

Just 53 working days later, on February 18th of 2013, something unprecedented (and relatively unexpected) happened.

I was let go. Canned. Told to clean out my desk.

You can cue the red flags that I am not supposed to talk about, because they will hurt my chances for future employment, but the real story is that I was let go mercifully.

Telesales is a strange beast, and while I am very good at selling things when I am looking at the customer, I simply did not have what it took to get up to speed on hitting my sales numbers in the timeframe they were looking for.

Those who still might be looking for a red flag, hear what my supervisor said about me just days after letting me go:

He is an enthusiastic, intelligent, witty, tenacious, dependable, hard working individual with a great sense of humor and a high degree of integrity. If you would like more information, I will be happy to speak with you personally.

Seriously though, you can call and I’ll give you his cell phone number to hear more. And if you are a mechanic, you should probably consider their websites. I still think they are the best deal around.

Being let go from a sales job helped me to see something crucial: I like selling things (I like the persuasion, and correctly matching up a product with a customer’s needs). But liking something is not enough. I discovered that I love something else. Cleaning out a desk and choking back tears walking out of the building helped start me down the path toward pursuing that love.

And yeah, you can read about it (and perhaps even write yourself into the story) in the next chapter.