What a weird, weird year.
Last August I was working as a Sales Rep at Varsity Tutors. It was my first job outside of a church since 2001, so I don’t think it had a chance. The hours were like 10-7 or 11-8 some days, which would be cool if I was in college, but there were some days I didn’t even see my kids.
When I got the call from Isos Technology that they wanted to offer me a job, I literally shouted for joy in the parking lot… of Varsity Tutors. A group of people standing about 50 yards away looked at me like, “Who’s this lunatic?”
I quit on the spot.
Then I jumped into my role at Isos thinking I would do it for the next 20 years. The interview process was great, the team was great, the pay was good and gonna be great. Here we go!
The training was weighty. It felt like learning a new language. It really did. Everyone on the team was fluent, and here I come with my AOL dial-up technological expertise…
A few months in, or six, I have no idea… Nope. It was three weeks in… I just checked my email. I’m so terrible with timelines. Anyways, a few WEEKS in, I was asked to follow up with a lead, set an appointment for him to talk to my boss, and that’s it.
I called him, and made my first sale.
I was gonna be VP in no time, or… whenever our ridiculously qualified and effective VP decided he was done. One of those.
But man… a few months later… I started to hate it.
The company: amazing
The people: amazing
The potential: amazing
The actual job itself: Dear God is it 5:00 yet?
It’s the kind of job that I could clearly see someone loving- just not me. I could totally understand why people would want to do it, and do it for 20 years… but I couldn’t imagine it.
So I gave myself a pep talk… I was gonna need to really, REALLY dig in, because I could learn to love it, right?? And who was I to expect my job to be everything I want it to be, right? That’s a luxury. Stop being spoiled, Ryan. Do the hard work. Nothing worth doing is ever easy at first. And so on…
My pep talks suck.
Candidly- I want to be the best at what I’m doing, and it would take me 50 years to be the best at Isos, assuming nobody else at Isos learns anything else over the next 50 years. I hate being confused. I hate needing help. I hate when people are looking at me and I have no idea what to say or do, even when those people are fantastic people, and even when those fantastic people don’t even expect me to know what I’m doing yet. I’m too competitive for that.
But I was in the wrong competition. I was in the wrong role. So… last week I gave my resignation.
I have spent the past 18 years building teams. My favorite vocational memories are the ones when I was a part of team doing something great together, or even when we were just doing everyday life together. My job was always to be the one that drew everyone together around a common vision and a common goal. It didn’t matter what the vision or the goal was though- if the team didn’t love each other, nothing was gonna happen.
Which is why I freaked out when I saw a job posting from TeamBuilding.com. First of all, what a snag on the URL. Second of all, what the crap?? Who the heck is TeamBuilding.com?! Where were you for the 18 years I was searching the Universe for team building ideas?! Oh, you didn’t exist yet. You were just an idea.
But now you exist, and you have a job opening on the sales team?!
I love sales!
I love teams!
I love Chipotle!!
Which is why I celebrated by going to Chipotle after they offered me a job at TeamBuilding.com.
I start next week 🙂
So much love to the team at Isos Technology. That job came at the perfect time, and it was the perfect bridge for our family to get where we are.
So HEY, people on teams. How YOU doin? 😉
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