First day working from home.

Or out of office.  Indie AE, I’m thinking of myself being.  Meeting a little over an hour ago, then back home to go for run.  Suited in running visual, form, but was caught up in calls, emails.  This makes it now even more known to self that I need wake at 4 and run.  No wine last night, set alarm for 4.  Woke, but no run.  Right back to sleep.  FUCK.  So here I am in running shirt and shorts, even shoes on, eating a turkey and Monterey Jack sand’ in kitchen.  Typing.  Meeting at 3 with wine industry influencer friend. 

Day began with trip to Office Depot for files, and small file cabinet.  Brought far too much shit home with me—papers, even two fucking staplers.  For my AE life… NO PAPER.  Or, as little as possible.  Threw what remained in the boxed I used to transport all the shit home, and put in dark corner of garage.  Now in backpack, nearly nothing.  Just some cords, pens, and this laptop if needed.  To the event I’m attending tonight in Novato, after meeting with wine friend, I’ll only have phone.  Telling self that I need operate from phone.  And only one of them… the Sonic silver one.  Sonic Silver, I’m calling it.  That’s all I’ll bring. Need to charge it.  What a day… frantic and moving and filing and organizing, de-cluttering and more organizing, calling and driving to Rohnert Park to meet with someone who won’t buy anytime soon.  Wants our services, but I need to get more in the building to sign, elect us over the incumbents..

Received email from prospect.  Meeting scheduled.  That makes two appointments made for day, and another with a potential IT partner.  For some reason I feel under-accomplished for day.  More than likely from not making calls.  Will be made up, tomorrow.  In field the entire day with new AE.  We’ll be in the East Bay, Berkeley and Albany.  Will have lunch down there as well.  Packing light, again.  Only biz card and cell phones.

90 minutes till meeting, and quite a bit of time left in lunch.  Would have gone for a run but found self thinking too much about it.  Just got an email from someone requesting a quote.  May end lunch sooner and not near the hour marker.

Quiet in the house.  No music, just keys being pushed.  Much better than the office I must say, with all the chatter and coughing, people walking by and other distractions.  Day after tomorrow—

Just found a scheduling conflict.  For Friday.  Shit… our quarterly meeting, company-wide.  Guess I’ll have to re-schedule.  Will call tomorrow morning to do.  Other AE is driving to East Bay. I offered to get lunch later in day for us.  Need to work on calendar management… crucial, I’m finding, and potentially embarrassing.  Schedule less, and appointments further distanced, rather than respective antitheses.  Taking a breath.  This is just Day 1.  Learning curve, learning Road, all in learning to re-learn certain basic habits and basics in business practice.

1/28/20

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1/7/20

Test

Testing self today with how much I can get done.  Planning to leave in a bit for my coLAB office.  Moving stuff out of 2260 Apollo Way.  Here I go, I say to myself.  Prospect harder.  Be realistic.  Find businesses that are new, that not only need service but have a dimension with which you identify.

Settling into the morning, still feeling a bit sick, or maybe just stuffed up, stuffy… get out of the office, I say to self, but I can’t go far with an appointment at 11.  Can’t think… can’t think of anything.  Just keep moving, I tell myself again and again……

Get out of the office.

Not yet.

Settle into day a little more.  You’re still sick, technically, so don’t move too fast.  Where am I going to put all this stuff… papers and paperwork, files and business cards. Not enough room in house.   Feeling cold symptoms, and not liking what I’m writing.  Not one bit.  And…. I keep doing it.  Why.  How do I change the morning’s beat and general shape.

This certainly is a test.  Self and sight, conviction, do I really want what I say I do and if so how badly.

FORGETTING EVERYTHING I WROTE ABOVE.

Re-starting.  Starting a business, entails all this.  Days you don’t feel the best, mornings where you feel a bit panicked about attracting new clients and starting new conversations.  Just making calls, sending emails.  All I’m going to do, today.  As with any day.  So do it differently, I tell myself.

Funny how much clutter, shit, I’ve gathered in the six months at this desk, and the incubator right next to me.  Rolling cabinet empty.  Throw away as much as I can.  Minimalism, and even a step past.  The more you have, the slower you move.

Woke up late again this morning but left home with impressive inertia.  No distractions, no Starbucks.  Just moved out the door after I finally found my fucking keys.

Building business…  Like Kerouac’s Sal, with Dean, zooming to one part of the country and then to the other. I of course now speak from literature, where I’m from, and remember I have to call someone to set up a meeting.  Need to make these meetings work more.  What does that mean, just translate to sales?  Not necessarily, but contribute to my story.  The writer in the tech office, professor, writer…  Reading as I go and completely taken with the idea of a page.  What the page can do.  What it WILL do.  What it’s doing, what my pages have done.

In today’s test, or lab, exam, midterm or final or whatever in seeing how much I can get done, I seek to redefine business and the operations of a business.  More utilization of what’s not directly connected to this office, what my role entails, how it’s described.  But still, very much adept and kept in the AE form and narrative.  The story of an AE.  Not as stoic and clinical as it might sound.  Today’s test is gifting me much more than I hoped for, or forecasted.  And now that I think more closely and intimately, anatomically at the canvas, this is not test.  But a Road, a sequence of songs, a storm of joy.  All written, and narrated in everything I do.  Everything we do, in whatever we do.

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Last day of year, and getting here later than I wanted to from waking early this morning with Jack.

Poor chap having difficulty sleeping.  Checked on him and Emmie before leaving, both not awake or interested in the world.  But just in their respective dreams.  And me eager to get to the office and tackle these labs, the hypothetical scenes and circumstances where I would offer services to clients with certain setups.  Meant to test me, somewhat, but as well meant to see how I’d react, see where my familiarity with the tech of this AE act is.  And I see it developing, getting stronger, becoming more fluid and fluent in my words and language.  Of course I’m not a Sales Engineer, and I’ve actually been told don’t get too hooked on the tech side of things, go up to the cliff but don’t jump off. But, what if I were to be a mock-SE?  An AE that’s as equal parts SE as he is AE?  My mind goes in a million different hurdles and poses, mold and directions with this story, the one I’m writing… the acronyms used to scare the shit out of me, but now…. No.  Not at all.  I’m excited and delighted and feel divinely and highly invited.

Two more labs to go.  With these last two I’m going to get a bit more creative, less focused on beating whatever price tag is on the current service of the hypothetical client and focusing on the value of what we do here at Sonic with our consultancy approach.  I remember Field Sales, all those days in the field walking up and down the Avenues and Streets of SF wit the team, and hearing all the conversations at the door.  This is still very much that face to face interaction… Field Sales and that tell as Supervisor outlined all this understanding of AE life and the overlap with SE practice.  All it is, really, at least in my application, is product familiarity.  And there’s a diversity to our menu that enlivens my steps.

New Year’s Eve, eve of what.  I’m already quite deep into my plan, into my principle motion and mode.  9:20 in the morning but I de-emphasize time, and what it does to me, how I see it.  The Mike Madigan character re-written, and put to page differently.  Thinking of going out, working offsite, mimicking the setup I’ll have when I leave the office.  With the other AAE leaving, there’s more focus on me.  Which I am only pleasurably and lovingly shoved by.  Write more like Kerouac I tell myself, bottomless from the bottom of my mind, my character and immediate form.

Get grades turned in, soon.  Maybe even tonight.  Start drawing next semester’s outline.  And rubric—or no, don’t use any rubric.  Why did I think I would?  Have everything be truly about READING and writing.  Expression and narrative, have that bleed into this AE role more, and wine as well.  This new year so much to happen and within the first half.  Like what I ask myself.  I know what.  I know precisely WHAT.

Logging every thought in the moment as it presents itself to me and not doing anymore doubletakes.  Everythought, one word as I disregard every grammatical and syntactic inhibition and rule.  Would get on the phone now, but I need to follow these ideas and thoughts, musings and notes, wherever they go…. The location, this office and what I do in it… Sonic, a character that’s like some character blend idealism.  I mean, here I am, being the most ME that I’ve ever been and….  Should get on phone, call at least ten businesses, just wish them a happy new year or something, just check in.  It’s not cold-calling if you don’t sound that way—but this is boring, writing about that.  What should I do… starting to get bored and tired and frustrated with my sentences.

Get out of the office, a voice says.  Go somewhere.

Where.

I have no idea.  Just keep writing, keep thinking… telecom, being a Sales Engineer, and learning more of the tech, what used to scare me to death’s door and table but now realizes me and convinces my character of more action, more pursuit of curiosity.  I was told recently to stop doubting myself when it comes to tech, and certain corners of my AE story.  So I see the unlock-er as movement itself.  That is what will make anything and everything happen.

You know what, I am going to go for a drive.  Work from a Starbucks or something.  Practice doing it now otherwise when I’m forced offsite it’ll be too much of a shock.  It’ll be like me working for my blog, for me, my company… finally.  The P-O-Z Agency.  Everything that’s embodied and entailed in its composition.  Produce On Zoom…. Or ‘Passion Only Zeal’.  Something like that, or maybe not make it an acronym.  Have enough of those in my life already, in this AE put.

Made a call, going to make another….  And, look for a certain type of company, find a way in… test my “networking” aptness and acuity, movement and versatility.  Found a lead, in a certain industry. Researching now… I should have research done by the time I get to office, but I won’t be having to ‘get to office’, before too long.  Going to go offsite in a bit, to coLAB.  Try and negotiate a rate, some deal, some something.  Use that as my base….  More ideas.  Maybe they need connectivity.  Getting ahead of myself, and distracted.  Get your office, and motion and speak from there.

Day, off the ground. The new year, already here.  I’m not waiting.  For anything.  Intensifying, Amplifying, and Diversifying my prospecting, business, principle approach in the AE life and everything.  No editing, only writing… only lines, only composition, only positive pulse and progression.  Looking for new projects, new approaches in every turn and every inquiry.  So now, more.  More of everything.  Need a break, but a break to produce, not stop in production.  EVER.  Engineering self to a new self maybe but one more with altitude and vocal, hunger, an utter absence of apprehension.

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Just realized something…. Everyone’s an Account Executive.  For themselves, for their passions, convictions, for their projects.  What they want, where they are and what they’re doing with that precise heartbeat.  THAT pulse.

This blog, about work, but as well about using all realities and connectivity in your story.  Sending emails to prospects and reading about businesses, and how they came to be… this one guy, I think younger than me, having his own real estate firm on RR Square, here in Sant Rosa. I have NOT forgotten the

P-O-Z Agency.  Starting to take more shape, with this morning.  Lunch with prospect soon, and I know exactly what I want from the meeting… find ways to send him business, to speak his brand, his expertise.  Not so much the giver’s gain like BNI, but collective narration and sight, narration.

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Now familiarizing self with products again, and promotions for sakes of matching whatever the prospect is paying.  Some you’ll win, some you’ll lose.  Just keep quoting, I’ve learned.

Slowing pace.  Taking a breath, or dozen.  Not allowing too much elevation too quick and conversely not permitting drastic descent.

Readying to leave.  But then I’m hit with an idea… again, going outside the box, and maybe not a box but just the immediate expectancy of things.

More than a funnel I’m thinking of, but….. something. Geographies, business types, unexpected harmonies of businesses, collaborations but even more than that.

Slowing down, but only before I make another move…

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Literary lunch in breakroom.  Little bit of a lesson with me and receipts… keep them all, organize.  Don’t throw away a single thing.  There’s only clutter is there’s no organization, no system for processing.  Expenses today, only the latte.  Eating raisin bran in baggie I packed.  Seeing new things to try with my work, with speaking, with how I market myself and Sonic.  Just remembered, today is Day 1 of Month 4.  Am I content with where I am, progress-wise?  More or less.  Need to keep taking notes, keep learning.  Test self and abilities with prospecting, and investigation of new clients and new client-rich areas.

Need this break, honestly.  Regroup and assemble before heading to Montgomery Drive in Santa Rosa.  Bring some of the privacy protectors, something to give prospects so they don’t see me as someone in their office just selling something.

Class tonight.  What’s my plan.  None.  Same as my approach to this… don’t do your job so much.  Focus on self, what you want, what you see in the company, how you translate the message and reality of Sonic.

Make this all literary, and it is.  Doesn’t need be made so.  Every character, every department, every role in the department.  Learn from every word, every walk.  This never happened at the winery, any of them.  No bets, no hedging bets.  This is where I need to write, and write about.  Eager for day of no more winery and teaching, and I keep saying that but I need to remind self, re-staple and cement the sense of a business bloke.

Someone behind me getting coffee.  Only had the latte and I need a boost or bump in my propeller.  One cup won’t hurt.  Thought about getting a sparkling water, but no…. no spending from debit, nor cash.  Only use change from drawer.

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10/1/19

My favorite month starts with me riding the forward and creative storm of ideas from mixer last night in SF.  Writing my AE story, not so much a how-to but maybe inadvertently so. Meeting in Rohnert Park at 11.  Won’t make workout class, and I’m not sullen in such.

Reminding self to just speak, get to know the person and forget about the product and service.  Speaking from Sonic’s convictions and theses, yes, but from my own as well.  Aiming for today to be one of the best of the year so far, if not the single distinguishing and beaming, definitive, luminary print on my page.  Will be taking a break in a minute to write in other room, with people around me talking I’m trying to focus and shove self further into thought and I notice self straining excessively.  Not much, but not much IS excessive.

Everyone I met last night has their distinct thesis and aim, business and place, identity.  One of them complimenting me on my energy and Sonic-speak… reminded again I need to accelerate and amplify my act in the AE track.

Looking around desk, see Happiness Project Journal.  Write sentence, but not yes… don’t slow.  P-O-Z, Profuse Outlaw Zone.  YES!  Why didn’t I think of that yesterday.  What was yesterday’s acro’?  Can’t remember.  Don’t need to.   Said to Olivia last night that the aim of POZ is to do what Sonic is already doing but differently and with more amplification… using my background in wine and education.  So… what next.  Happiness sentence.  Done.

Not much till appt at 11.  Send emails, I tell self.  Hunt contacts.  I don’t necessarily agree with the intonation of “hunter mentality” but that’s what I’m putting myself in.  The model of POZ is very much centered around the real estate agent model and character, but minus certain specificities.  Nevermind that for now, I tell myself.  Aims for day…. 1, set one appointment, vendor or prospect.  2, Don’t leave office till SIX.  3, takeover bottledaux, turn it into more of a voice, more of a thing, a presence, a life, a climate…..  POST TEN TIMES.

Need to narrate more, get up earlier…. I know I know, how many times do I note that.  Last night over my quick dinner, and glass of AV Cabernet, reciting words to self on my business, an “elevator pitch” on ME.  Sales is part of it, but knowledge is as well.  What do you write, I asked self.  BUSINESS, I offered, declared, affirmed and re-affirmed.  That’s going to be the answer for the remainder of my narrative, and yes I’m thinking in those definite and finality, some would say grim terms.

First thing to being an AE, know YOU.  What you want for the client, their business.  What they want for themselves and their business.  Consultancy, hospitality….  So very Zen in this wee workspace of mine.  Heard one of the trainers mention writing a book, or list of “pro tips” as they described it for future hires.  I think.  Was listening in, but that’s how I interpreted it right or wrong, accurate or in’, and thought was a frenetic jolt of kind counsel.  Have my waterfall of suggestive jots in big journal, the Apache pages.  Warrior for this AE story and education.  First thing…. Keep conversations moving, write more letters, listen, ask the person about their life, their business, their visions.

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Saturday morning. No winery, no winery event to work.

Just time with the babies, my latte.  May go for a run later, but legs are still sore from the workout Thursday.  Headed to winery for sure, Katie’s, in a few hours.  Thinking, what can I do for the agency, my P-O-Z project.  Can I prospect today, at all?  Thinking yes, in Kenwood, and…. Downtown a couple places, just stop in and say hi.  That’s it.  So not really prospecting, but building that community.  Writing more this morning and telling self not to obsess over any to-do’s.  Should have woke earlier.  Can do tomorrow, I tell myself but then wonder if that’ll happen.  Making today about wine, the world of wineries I’m from, having that part of the P-O-Z.

This past week actually writing and outline a definition for the Agency.  Recruitment, conversation, creativity of course, blogging, a real estate/real estate agent approach (which also demands definition).  This coming week, need follow up on appointment invitations.  Have to call Berkeley prospect today at some point, may do from St. Francis.  May do some POZ work there.  No more hyphenating, I just decided.  If you know me you know I hate punctuation.  Punctuation is all about rules, and POZ is about whim and kindness and communicative impulse.

Kids asking me to bring them water, I do, and without any forecast or sight I have a business hot–  Just get people what they want.  Never say no, offer alternative.  I’ve thought that before, so nothing terribly significant, but I had to write it.  My AE story separates from the AE insinuation and progression, and even Sonic, and wheels a proliferation of sovereignty.  I remember one day in the morning, 2008 at Sonoma State before one of my morning Composition.  All stemming from my observations at Sonic which constitute a certain hegemony, steering my ideas and lens perceptively in the business world and beat of things.

Sonic instructs much more than wine’s flimsy industry ever did or could do, and instills an echoing reiteration of simplicity, spontaneity, to be a dumbsaint and constant scribbler, seer, poetic architecture and holy contour of business.. This AE act, which isn’t an act I use that word with literary purposing and intonation, shows me business is not business as people estimate and define.  IT’s more connotative and deno’.  Think about it, they hired a wine writer and blogger for a supervisory position.  In Field Sales, no less.  This not only edifies and adduces their business philosophy and welcoming consistencies with everything.  Sonic teaches me about business, not the wine industry. And writing, how to write with more precision and moment-to-moment beat-like beat and likeness.

Was told ten years ago that I should blog about wine, and I have been since then on and off and then again loudly on, you could say.  But now, I write and blog about work.  About business, and how NO ONE should have to hold a job they don’t LOVE.  Yes, love.  There will be projects you are less excited about, but the character you are, and the story you’re in where you work was decided by you.  SO, there should only be love.

9:15am, and the babies continue to enjoy a lazy Saturday morning of cartoons while I let the caffeine in these 4 shots of espresso type away.  The contour of my AE spree, where is it taking me.  To my own office, yes, but to more realizations of life and business, the desk I sit at everyday, the meetings like yesterday.

Making the Sonic calendar my master and only calendar.  For everything.  Putting winery visit and light canvassing on today’s square, for noon.  Two other spots I want to visit, say hi.  Palooza, maybe Ty Caton, and then …. OH, a couple breweries.  One spot downtown.  If anything else, more community assembly. 

Why does one want their own business.  Somewhat a question that answers itself, with the words THEIR OWN.  It’s theirs.  This morning, feeling’s though I’m at Sonic, at my desk, walking around my building and the other like yesterday saying hello to friends in other departments.

Kids’ cartoon starting to distract me.  Can only write in short paragraph, quasi-HST form. With attention wandering.  Caffeine starts to control and fly me like a barely-built vessel.  In my office, like the office I’ve studied and seen online, with a tech/startup/chic library/wine bar feel.  Will there be wine in the office, yes.  No drinking during creating hours.  Not “work” hours, crEATive.  Hours are 7-5.  For me of course much longer, as with my partners in the same suite as me.  Not a “C suite”, or management cove.  Just my fellow or other deciders.  Like the coLAB downtown, I want colors and shine, encouragement to create, isolation rooms and studios.  Everything to elevate moods and impetus to ink a story.

Message from my real estate friend of 20+ years, suggesting I use social media more.  Funny, thought the same while driving to Danville yesterday, taking a picture of the cover of the Sonic folder I gave the IT consultant focusing on Sonic logo and font.  Will post when done with this… this morning entry supplementing and augmenting, further facilitating my definition and defining of business.

All in the office should be not only kind and inviting, but tireless curious, suggestive and workshop-like.  Share entries and ideas, blend them together.  Have to snicker while typing this, recollecting moments years ago, right around ’08 when in my car jotting those musings on autonomy and sovereignty, where I wished for a great consolidation.  And I don’t think I’ll have it considered an office, but a colony, a creative colony, island, like Sonic.  Somewhere that values whim, privacy and openness, conversation, enjoyment and love of life like no other workplace.  Where you’re told you’re a genius of your own genius and genus.  You are the only you, this morning and all–  Where you’re not excited to be at work but dreading leaving at day’s close even before you sit down and start typing to your coffee or latte, mocha or chai.  My office, room, space will continue to explore business and define and redefine it—deconstruct and further construct agreeable and embracing edges of its drive.  Of its Road.

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Forgot running shoes at home. Broke fast.  Two losses for day but small losses.  Not even losses.  Will take lunch in break room and write and create, blog the shit out of everything.  Still have to grade papers for 1B class.  Interesting day where I felt tired then now after a small coffee dose I’m moving everywhere and with everything.

Aims for lunch…. 5 posts, over multiple blogs and other channels.  Then re-post on other what I posted on others.  Getting more mad with my methods, while driving back from meeting thinking I need sell both self and Sonic, in tandem.  Take more time with emails.  Today, a lesson.  A bright and bravado-told lesson.

Put Cheerios away, now just coffee.  Deciding to write a book on prospecting for new business, and not just new business but connections, alliances, new people in your business sight.  Have it be more than a funnel.  Just had another idea…. Bless this coffee, I’ll just say.  Still a bit bitter about forgetting running sneaks at home, but I have to move past it. 

Note on prospecting, ‘Keep talking with kindness and honesty.  Have it all feel heartfelt.  Don’t force the topic of your product.’

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