Life is Good

A former manager of mine once told me that sometimes it’s better to be lucky than it is to be good. If my current situation isn’t evidence supporting that truism, I don’t know what is.

Six months ago I was struggling along in my current role. I loved my work, but I just wasn’t bringing in the sales at an acceptable clip. Then my mentor got promoted out of town, my boss quit, and in addition to struggling in sales I had to manage 5 other people who were also struggling without a reduction in my quota. Things looked bleak. I gained a new appreciation for the Simonator (he’s the inspiration for this weblog – see my earliest posts), I found myself saying the same things he said to my team – in short, I was a major stressed-out jerk in fear of losing his job.

Then, in May, I popped a huge sale that erased my year-to-date deficit. Things looked like they were turning around. Then this week I popped two more huge sales that will more than double my year-to-date numbers, which should qualify me for the big President’s Club all-expenses-paid week in Maui. The beautiful thing is that I’m on vacation in Lake Tahoe this week – my team did all the work for me – sizing over 1,000 people for new clothes, writing up paperwork for nearly 200 locations, ordering up all the garments, setting times with each location for the installation, and on, and on, and on. I haven’t had to lift a finger! Seriously, the hardest thing I’ve had to do is answer all the congratulatory e-mails from the corporate big-wigs.

On top of all that these two big sales will count towards the big contest coming up in a few weeks, so I’ll be getting paid on them 4 times – the standard commission, the quarterly bonus, the annual bonus, and the contest cash! I feel like I won the lottery!

Of course, the spoils that come with bringing in over $3,000,000 in new business is nothing to sneeze at, but the timing couldn’t be better. You see the Fishpimps are expecting! The little Fish-imp is due October 18^th and now I don’t have to worry about where the maternity-leave cash shortfall will be made up. Praise the Lord!

Now all I have to do is complete the mile-long task list the nesting Mrs. Fishpimp has put together for me in the next 6 weeks!

People keep telling me that I’m a good salesman, but in this case I’m more than happy just being lucky.

Life in the Village

I was walking out of the QFC at University Village when I witnessed a time-honored tradition updated for these modern times. An elderly man in a light-blue suit & fedora flirting with a table full of college girls sipping on iced lattes:

"You all are so pretty - why, you all must be younger than your sunscreen S.P.F. number!"

Oof.