1/25/20

Today, a day off one could say or see, but me wanting to further push into the AE story… starting with getting up earlier, the god hour of 4am, every day.  Abraham telling me yesterday that he wakes all seven day at 4-something and works out.   Last night, me staying up late, posting some story but mostly relaxing after a long day, or not so much a long one but one of production in many arenas and atmospheres.  Today’s aims, only production… a run at some point after Jack’s baseball tryouts which are in three hours.  Think I’ll launch after that… or, run on treadmill. Yes, the latter for speedwork intentions.  Feel stuck in these types and not sure why.  I’m thinking excessively.  No more writing aims, find that’s a curse.  When you put it there, it’s there to look you back in the face and taunt you, somewhat agitate you that you haven’t done it till now.  Only option is to plainly do, just do what you need do.

Will hit that study/course guide for the certification, for connectivity and telecom work.  Not that I want to be a Sales Engineer, but I want to get as close as I can.  Associating it with winemaking, oddly.  How I know enough to make win, e but not enough to be a professional winemaker.  Some won’t get this analogy or association.  A sensible note or corollary to me nonetheless.  Maybe I do want to be a Sales Engineer, but without the title.  An AE that’s more SE than AE.  Thinking…..

Need to get a run in at some point.  I’m anxious, not having woke when I wanted, not racking 8 or nine miles like I have a couple mornings in the past.  Production, the word dominating the semester for me at the JC, and here I am grappling with it.  A new blog project, ‘a productivity practice’, revolving in my thoughts driving back from San Rafael yesterday, methods of intensifying and amplifying, diversifying production and principle productivity.  One, don’t let anxiety envelop you.  If you can’t do something RIGHT NOW, because you have family to-do’s or some other appointment, push to side in your head knowing it’ll be later appeased.  Second, bed early wake early.  More and more I’m thinking this is the most obvious realization of production.  IF I’d shot from the sheets at 4, I’d have a sizeable run in by now as well as a thousand or so words.  And that’s my third point, no shoulds or woulds… only dids, or doing.

Studying production this morning in my own thinking and with my own narration…. Oh, another staple ideology is to travel light.  Always.  No heavy bag or collection of something under your arm.  Be FREE, and free of things.  Free of clutter and ancillary anything.  Production so often is impeded by what we collect, and in my study there should be less of the study itself and more of a directedness of the productive pulse.  Knowing all of this, in expanding and heightening production, your work accrual, is autodidact.

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Embracing Whim.

Spontaneity, everything in the in-the-moment complexion and consistency of my moments.  Meeting at ten, and until then collecting here at desk, combing through leads, and building conversations.  Today, this morning, right when I woke, I thought of having an amazing day… getting to my office and travels, and seeing what I can do as an AE.  Tell this Sonic story better than anyone in the company.  Certainly write it better, or I hope I can, do, will, am…. 

Essays, stories, building from what I have.  The morning, clear and perfect and beaming.  There’s a music to me that I’ve never heard or felt before.  More than just wanting to work, or be productive, but speak to as many people as I can.  Only 8:19 but I’ve produced more than many would in the first hour or even 1.5 hours of day.  Not bragging and not elevating, just enjoying the ride.  Why not, the ride isn’t forever.  And with the promise to my little boy that one day he and I will have our own office and create together, I have to keep this beat and have it more mobile and hungry, a uniquely ravenous angle and gallimaufry of words and thoughts… no editing, no corrections.  As much as I can and as quick as I’m able, not concerned with sense.

Whim, being and creating in the moment, true FREEwriting is the creative code of my P-O-Z Agency, how I speak the Sonic tongue.  Why not be more free, dash toward, SPRINT for, more liberty, liberation.  Work should always be not just a source of happiness but defining definition of….  Work, why do something you hate?  Why resist spontaneity and chance, writing from where you are and who you are.  MY kids do it all the time and the sense of content about them is something more than just worthy of study but a championing understanding and caress of life.

FREEwriting.  Ideas, more of them….. not trying to inventory them, yet.  Or even at all.  Just touching and working from the ones I can catch, write, do something with and for.

Connected with someone at a business that interests me.  The business is creative, digital, story-oriented….  San plan or method I follow my curiosity.  No blueprint, for now.  Just my hunger, just my assurance and knowledge this will more than merely “work out”.

Wrote letter to lead.  Patience, something I’m still learning.  Need to wake earlier.  This morning up at 6-something which is far too late.  Alarm set, AGAIN, for the god hour of 4am.  When home from class tonight, eat and sleep.  Earlier to bed, earlier to wake.  Just talking to myself at this point but that’s a given in narrative.  Sales… more inward jots.  Do I write about knowing now, work, sales, or nothing, or everything?  Love time to collect.  Know precisely how I’m approaching the day, this AE life…. Maybe not so much spontaneously but with expanded eagerness and love.  Yes, that.  The latter.  To be successful in sales, “SUCCESSFUL”, quotes needed, you ought love your way, your methods, your practice… and before loving it you have to know what it is. MINE, jazz.  Music.  Feel music and beat, riffs in all steps.

Off to walk, offer hellos and good-mornings to partners in other departments.  More than visibility, but connectivity.  Same as the internet, what I “sell”.  Today, assuring a historic and mammoth print in my narration.  Hope the same for anyone reading this note, anyone wanting to know how to be “more productive”.  Start with blind and unplanned movement, love of the movement, then walk toward a destination or block and know it’s only one of hundreds if not thousands if not MORE.

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1/21/20

One of those days that I like.  That starts a bit rough for whatever reason then evens, rights itself, or I right IT.  With intense work and focus, containment and creativity.  Visited an Architecture firm today with one of the Sales Engineers, the one devoted to me I’m just reluctant to call him MY SE.  Anyway, the office was on the backside of a building, and up a small flight.  Building used to be resi’, the Engineer thought.  While up there and looking around, the arrangement and décor of the office was all creative, all visually intoned and inclined, inspired and intentioned.  We met in an equally-sightly conference room off to the side where the owner and his IT or tech guy said they were interested in Sonic’s services.  Couldn’t wait to get back to the office to work up proposal and send, but I had a lunch I had to get to, with an IT consultant.

Again, go-go-GO today.  This is what will get me the office, the travel… everything.  Paid off credit card earlier, and now with quite the thing budget.  Not that thin, just mindful of where pennies and all go.  When do I fit in a run?  Could go now, as lunch has settled.  Don’t want to break this momentum, though.  Go tonight, I tell myself.  When everything is quiet.  If I don’t go tomorrow morning, then I’d have to go in afternoon, after speakers meeting. Maybe that makes more sense.  I’ll figure it out.

Back at desk, writing emails…. Looking for more businesses around the area I today hit.  Have my geographies fixed, which helps.  Simplicity is radiant, both conceptually and with visible possibility, seeing that if I get out there and TRAVEL LIGHT, just say hi, not give any amount of fucks, the office will arrive.

Want a bubbly water.  Thirsty.  More than likely from all the coffee I’ve had, which isn’t a dastardly amount but apparently enough to dry-mouth the mouth.  Different narrative, dodge approaches and words obvious… surprise prospects, and yourself, and the story itself.  So much the day today to me saying, even with how some want their pessimism and low measure of everything around them and in their story to tilt and tarnish my forward.  Not today, not ever.

Business, in business, for business… monitor disposition, not just mood and mode, but the ME that’s seen.  When in the Architecture office this morning, the rooms were shoving me toward them, toward such-rooms and walls of my own.  That I’m on the Road I need be, finally.

Closer to day’s close and I don’t want to leave.  I have my routine, I’m hungry, I want more conversations.  Tomorrow will be on phone more.  Didn’t do much calling, today.  Other than the one visit after the Arch’ office.  Just keep talking, keep putting out story, not just content for the sake of content.

Glass of wine, somewhere… where.  Wherever there could be leads.  Starks?  That happy hour they do?  Parking’s always an issue.  Don’t care.  I’ll give stop by, see what occurs.  The AE in me will NOT turn off.  Going to stop by to see if I can connect with whatever, or not even to connect but contribute to visibility.  This week is about just that.. marketing self and concurrently telling and re-telling MY story.  Get out of this office, every chance I get.  Literally just walking around has value.  IS the loudest of embodiments of visibility.

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Wine and its industry and starting to annoy me.

Wine as well.  Not sure what happened, but yesterday when I told a guy that the Hillside Cuvee is my favorite and he asked me to explain myself, I just felt annoyed, and disconnected, curious, and again annoyed.  Annoyed as fuck.  WHY is it my favorite?…. Okay let’s stop at that question.  Once I tell this dick my reasoning, then what happens?  Does that affect his conception and opinion of the wine?  Does it make his life better?  Will I seem more credible as a wine person?  Why is it my favorite? 

Mostly because go fuck yourself.

The entire rest of the day I felt free, unrestricted, with new sight.  Wine anymore is confusing me… why am I doing it?  Why was I there in that fucking cave rather than writing, prepping a talk in one of my English 1B sections, or enjoying some coffee at the Vine Street Starbucks and taking notes.  What am I still doing in the wine business grip?  I should only be writing wine, not pouring it…  Today could be that day, the one where I give notice and never come back.  Well, to write about wine yes and all the weird shit people say at a tasting, but not to pour, not to do anything serious.  Not anymore.

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7:07. Second day of the event, and I’m committed to learn more about the people coming, more than I did yesterday.

Didn’t really learn anything from yesterday’s sippers.  This morning I’m moving slow, from standing behind that table for as long as I was, and saying the same thing about the cuvee, for which I accept fault.  Found myself struggling with the words, MY words, what to say about the wine.  One couple and their daughter knowing my sister, longtime members of St. Francis Winery, excited to meet me and asking me how long I’d been associated with St. Francis.  Can’t remember where else the conversation went, but we were centered in wine, and how they have as longtime St. Francis members a plaque in the vineyard blocks, one of them… the Syrah patch.  After they left all I could think about was getting out of the cave, walking around, smelling the air above and around the Cabernet block just outside the cave door.

Want to re-read Coelho’s Alchemist.  Write something on it.  Why, I don’t know.  Want to be a student again.  Of literature, or writing, reading, all of it.  How to be a student again…. Notes.  Notes on everything.  Studying everything, seeing literary value in business, in the characters at Sonic and Sonic’s individual voice.  Then I lose myself in thoughts of Personal Legend, more than Alchemist work and thought, but me and however many days of life I have left.  What I want people to see and know about me.  Legend seems a but hyperbolic and exaggerative, and it might be to an extent.  But, where my thinking is.  I need to get away from wine’s industry, submerge and immerse self utterly in story.  Stories…. They’ll lead me to my office, I know, I’ve read that before in walks and talks among characters on the property.  That book and some of its passages to me speak this morning, on travel, on sovereign thought, on speaking to students at campuses all over the county.  More than a believe in self but a constant examination of character composition and the how-to-why it develops as it does.  Why did I not write last night, why did I relax rather than sitting here at this counter and typing as I now am to coffee?

What am I after, I start to think.  Convinced I know then I see another scene…. Me in my marketing shop’s office talking to someone I work with about a new direction for some campaign or assignment we were hired to do.  For a winery.  I call upon all memories and experiences in the tasting room, share a slew of them, and one connects.  Not a marketing firm, or shop, but a creative kitchen, corner, or loft.  If I can market myself then how could I EVER others, I remember noting to self sans paper or even phone while closing the cave just after 5pm last night after the last guests departed property.  My Personal Legend, or ‘Self Story’, entails consistency of motion and exploration, and knowing when certain associations need be liquidated.  I’m after what I see, and what I see is a return and permanent residency in student symmetry, presence and tangibility.

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On a quick lunch break, even though I just had lunch.  But that was a working lunch.  This too is a working, but writing atop, within, all about.  Day more productive than I thought, and still gathering new and more diverse approaches to AE life.  Making the language more tangible, and more connective.  The business of this, Sonic and Self, is very much akin to education.  Educating, but more so showing.  Just showing.  All businesses and writing, or anything, needs to show SOMETHING.

Need to load car.  Get these two boxes out of here.  If I’m to be the top producer in this department, at this company, then I need be lighter, quicker.  If I can, do everything on phone.  But the phone they issued me isn’t always working as best as it could.  May take it by IT….  I will.  Quick walk to other building then back here.  To keys.  Meeting in less than two hours… what do I want to have come to life in two hours.  Boxes away… same with business cards…. Get the fuck out of this office.

Found a coffee shop, downtown Novato.  “Dr. Insomniac’s”…. How appropriate.  And, in territory.  Lovely.  Okay… walking over to IT…  Or not.  Something I want to research and investigate.  Businesses in a specific part of SF…  Where the story can most visibly and immediately connect.  Found one target, then another.  Always moving, NEVER in office.  What I offer is not just the services of the company but myself… SELF.  Accessibility, more than authority…. My communication IS my credibility.

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New Port

New voyage, new journey in new day.  Going out on a site inspection at noon, leaving at 11.  Want to see more sites and more technical setups.  Staring day with specific aims…. Calls, some writing and blogging and budgeting in one of those thinking or blogging pods in the other building, then when back in office go for a run.  OR, not.  Have a lunch with a Senior AE at noon.  Set to talk prospecting and lead generation.  Want this to now REALLY ignite.  I’m not waiting till the end of the month when I’m an AE, officially.

This weekend working a wine event, both Saturday and Sunday.  Will meet as many people as I can.  Not passing out cards, or I will (the winery cards), and write number and other contact info on them.  Other aims for day, come back after meeting at 4, at Jacksons with a leads group member, and plan all of next week.  Specific destinations and businesses.  Going to start another blog, solely about building business and lead generation, expanding not so much customer base but visibility and narrative.  Woke late again this morning but disallowed and avowed and attitude and any nay-saying texture others might want to apply.  I’m moving this morning, to start calling at 9:30.  All East Bay.  Or, mostly.  Architects, medical tech companies, lawyers and CPAs.  Any startups I can find over there.

My calendar needs a makeover.  From here forward, something I learned from my Sales Engineer, all appointments before noon, 1pm latest.  Spend remainder of day connecting and researching.  A storm of consideration and contemplation this morning taking kids to school, my son sharing all his new knowledge with me about plants and stickers he earns from being helpful.  All they want to do is play, my babies.  I have to enact that more, and I’ve noted that before but I never bring myself to doing it, really implementing this methodology and sight.

The office feels like Friday, with all the laughs and tangential conversation, all the plans being voices and moves around the office for next week (saw someone moving her cube from one side of the building to the other).  There’s movement today, a flurry of it.  My madness abetted by my own bones, me here alone at this corner desk, afraid to get out of the office but exhilarated uniquely, concurrently.

Sent contract out yesterday, not the biggest or most impressive deal but a deal nonetheless.  Just called and made sure they received the Docusign agreement I sent.  She did.  Not rushing her, just making sure she received it okay.  And that’s one of the potentially volatile or sensitive parcels of the sales “process”.  The follow-up.  Honestly, I hate it, but I WILL do it.  Sales, sales…. What I do, I guess, but not wanting it to feel like sales.  How do you do that.. by talking.  Not doing your job so fucking much.  Talk about what you love about your company, or brand.  I would stay away from too much product talk.  Again, this is a new port, a new ship and sea you’re sailing.  If you do sales like this, that is….

My home office, to be minimalist.  I don’t want to be in house at all, if ever.  It’s just a dock, a station to port if I need, to do touch and go’s, to collect.  My Marin station will be… hmmmm… a Starbucks?  Or, Novato?  Yes, downtown Novato.  Or, San Rafael, since I met with the chamber bloke yesterday.  Today is not strategy-based.  It’s sowing, moving, getting.  Business and sales I’m finding take on more encouraging and self-fulfilling forms when you just move and think less.

My Agency, focused on the conversation.  Principle connection, connectedness.  More blog-based and media-driven actualities.  I’m not just feeling creative this morning, I’m hungry.  I want to work.  I will.  And in the way I wish, how I see fit.  Pulling up Berkeley on a map….

After calls, and setting one appointment with an Architect firm, a big one I think, I go to the other building, to sit and collect self in the Zen Den, a room named by myself and the GM when they just finished building and decorating it.  Rest of day, open… lunch, then more building leads and searching for businesses and business types.  The P-O-Z Agency that I’m assembling, not sure its precise mission.  Something connected to my belief in writing, and the code valuing Creativity and Conversation solving everything.  In this quiet room with the heater on, I speak with Self… I collect, see only volume and color and music in the day. Each movement with a beat, a certain feel and track to it.  Not sure how to explain it.  And maybe I don’t have to.  Maybe that’s what holds me up, and in place sometimes when spelling or presenting, be it Sonic of Self….  I think I need to explain, extensively.  Just speak, explain as you go.  Concentrate on your place, my agency values and speaks.  Haven’t written in this room in a while, I think since joining the Enterprise Office at Sonic.  Well here I am… and I will be out of office by EOD.

Downtown Novato, my office.  Just the laptop, backpack, a couple notebooks and a Starbucks.  Should download the app, and actually use it if I’m going to be there frequently.  In Santa Rosa now, and knowing I need to search for leads anywhere but here, like Gabe the other day advised (the Senior AE with whom I had lunch and canvassed around Alabama and York Street, SF.

10:48.  The day just zooming past me but the writer keeping an impressive pace.  What am I having for lunch?  What do I want?  Looking forward to hearing this Senior AE’s thoughts on prospecting and new business generation.  Leads are everywhere, I’m finding.  In rooms and conversations you would NEVER expect.  They are EVERYWHERE.  Don’t think so hard when prospecting.  Don’t prospect.  Say hi.  Have lunch.  Smile.  Enjoy your day and the people and the words you exchange.  Look to land and dock at a new port, each time.

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Prospect Differently, and with more echoing exploration.

No more businesses of a certain size, I’m seeing.  For viability’s sake, and also creativity’s.

The AE life, today reiterating the value of certain practices.  Taking the Sonic laptop home with….  Sales is not sales, but evidence of useful connection.  Haven’t had much time to write.  Or, I have, just haven’t seized properly, or at all.  Now, finally, typing.  Only to have to leave in a bit.  Get a beer somewhere before event.  Don’t forget to bring cards.  Again, evidence of connection… or maybe not even that, just not giving as many fucks, keeping self moving, and writing and speaking.  Make it about YOU, you… the brand of you.

Sales is funny, and infuriating.  You get a sale, or sign someone, and the business isn’t of a certain desired size, and you think to yourself, “Did I just waste my time?” Write it out, write more, plan more, and change the plan day to day.  To be stoic and set is to be set to death.  Business death.  Out of business.  That won’t happen to me, but I know I need set sights not just higher but with more demanding stance.

Office quieting down, and I’m in a mode of sight, seeing things for me this semester and with my business forward.  Revolving around sales that is not sales.  I keep saying connection but maybe it’s more than that.  I’m doing this differently, celebrating what I’ve done so far and amplifying it in different angularity.

Thinking about my life selling, starting really with treadmills at Sears, when I was in high school and then a bit when in college.  I didn’t know that much about the machines, I just talked about them as much as I could then switched the stitch of the interaction to the person, and myself. What we had in common, or didn’t.  That’s as easy and eased as it should be, should remain.  Knowing my Now in this sales dimension as a more interconnected and self-abetted provision.

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4:42pm

In SF today for lunch with a Senior AE.  First lunch then visiting businesses around us.  Have more leads than I know what to do with.  Just the feeling I want.  And, the revelation now a true revelation to focus on Novato and south…. San Rafael, SF, and back in my neighborhood of the Peninsula.

Taking laptop home and looking for businesses on map file.  Entirely instructional, this entire day.  From when I woke, to kissing kids goodbye, then driving to work and later struggling for a parking spot.

Now, ZEN.  I know what the focus on this writing AE need be.  Not just geographically, but how I speak the narration of this company.  “Selling”.  Don’t sell.  As I was advised today, “Give less fucks.” Noted.  SO. Noted.

Running tonight at gym, on tread.  No more coffee, and no wine tonight.  Well, not before working out.  I laugh to self as I want to open one of those White Oak bottles, more than likely the Merlot.  OR, no wine and wake early like I did the other day.

Listening to the veteran AE speak at these businesses, how relaxed and comical he was… what I need do.  More comedy, more ease, less fucks.

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