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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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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Broken from work, distracted by two, actually three, really four, people I met while in wine’s full wheel.  The first person walking up to me, gently interrupting my types, a girl who worked with me while I was full-time at FFW, then a club member of Dutcher Crossing and his friend, then my really good friend JK.  They all arrived at the same time, and I could only talk to them, hear what was new in their story.  And that’s what wine is, the connectedness, you’ll see them again and again, over years after the last time you see them.  Wine and its industry, especially here in Sonoma County, can do that.

Heading back home in a second, rest of day with family, and maybe a nap at some point.  No time soon after this small latte I ordered.  My own wine business world, thing, character and perpetuation… so, start with the day.  With the wineries I visited today, the people with whom I spoke and tasted.  Writing wine is putting on page the life and lives you experience in its world.

Was told that I need focus and self-contain and be singular in my written reason and narration.  So now, 17 days and 4 months before turning fucking 41, I decide to be attached wine’s ideas, her forms and stories, geographies and travel.  Writing only wine and the reactions to it.. my wishlist of travel spots, starting in the state just above me, the across however many miles to Spain, Bordeaux, Austria, Hungary…..  The people that “interrupted” my pages actually strangely centered me, putting my figure and fixation further into a firm singularity. 

Not in the tasting room, but my head doesn’t leave, my pages only speak in a wined and time-aligned way…. Vines right now in dormancy, and me unable to walk the rows from all the mud.  Well, I could, but I don’t.  Tomorrow back in office and I carry this with me in a peripatetic insatiability.  So, then, before I leave write it again… WINE.

And more…

WINE WINE WINE.

The only thing I’m to write.  Book done before month’s end.  Gives me 19 days.  Doable.  Ray Bradbury wrote ‘451’ in 9 days I think, in the basement of a library.  This current beat I’m listening to tells me to remember wine’s music…. Write more music into wine, and write the music in wine, be it jazz or hip-hop, rock, ambient, whatever else.  Wine… start with her, then fly, come back, transcend the possibilities with writing and what’s looked at as unattainable.  That’s what you should reach for, what you should write.

Two of the Chardonnays I tasted earlier, not my style.  So whose are they?  What is the audience, what is the music in that bottle, and the other one?  What does it say, emancipate?  Either way, me of wild weal today.  And from Mom’s instruction to contain and singularize the pages, to a book, to a one-voice shape and shake, to convoke my composition. 

I want to take on the industry, if you must know.  Challenge it, have it answer to and for certain specific transactions and occurrences.  Friend that came in earlier, years ago fired from a winery with no cause, no explanation or compensation adequate, or anything said.  He wrote the then-CEO, and all the ivory tower sog-slouch could say is “I wish you the best…” or some bullshit.

I’ll start with pay.  Why don’t they fucking pay?

Why don’t they encourage you go after what you want, rather than tell you you’re better for this, or that, or some other thing.

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Vine Street Starbucks, where I’ve written and worked several times, but not in some time.  Thought about stopping at a third winery for tasting, but no.  Was feeling a bit famished and needing more coffee.  Hannah the first stop, White Oak the second.  And from both stops, seeing that wine should be that ever-amplifying anchor and angle in my writing.  And a tasting room of my own, yes.  One day.  But by invitation only.  Don’t want those event crowds, and those passport sippers that only want to keep sipping, and not stop until they have some escalated effect and then keep sipping wherever they can.

                White Oak as a winery up for sale.  Had no idea.  Guy behind the bar, Jeff, selling me six bottles at half off, and giving me a Merlot at nothing.  Felt sad, as that winery years ago I visited during barrel tasting weekend and had fun yes but tried bottles I’ve still never the like experienced.  Can’t remember what it was, but the Cabernet of which I bought 3 bottles today had to be similar.  I mean, I bought three bottles.  That has to mean something, right?

                Listening to Lo Fi beats and typing.  Don’t want to taste anymore wine, if you can believe it.  Know there’s someone in some other state probably reading this and thinking “What the fuck?  How could you not want to taste more wine?” I just don’t.  I don’t want to sip anything else.  I’m wined out.  Want to be full of caffeine, and write about wine, people in the wine world, behind the bar listening to people tell their stories of how they got there, and what wine is to them.

                At Hannah, talked to some young girl.  Been at winery for about two years she said.  Asked her what she wanted to do in the industry, what the apex of her aims was, is.  She said she didn’t know, but wanted to continue with DTC operations, dealing more closely with the people that visit the winery, wine club members… what I took, that she wants to have more close and involved dealings and conversations with people rather than the big crowd surges, the cattle flows a tasting room can sometimes have.  Good for her, I thought.  The wine industry shows you one directions, then another, then tries to herd you a certain straight.  She, though, knows what she wants and Hanna Winery appears to encourage her consistency of pursuit.

                I will write wine, this morning telling self again.  From when I woke this morning and could barely concentrate with the skirmishing of Jack and Emma, to now on Vine Street, just a couple blocks away from another winery to write.  Part of me wants to go find more to write about.  Some new tasting room but I feel like I’ve been to all of them on the square.  And, I’m not wanting to taste anymore.  A wine writer not wanting to taste any more wine… so write about it.  Write what… what wine should do.  What I want from wine.  What I don’t want.  Don’t in anyway seek to be full-time at a winery again, ever.  Ever.  Never again in this life.

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