5:03

Final ten or so minutes in day, I see the next day.  The aim, more movement.  More writing, more moments of education and sight.  How to build, and further narrate my story at this company, starting my own agency solely build around positivity, storytelling, connectedness.  Tomorrow I’ll stay on the phone, go through leads, and think of creative ways to attract business.  And just like that, I have another illustrate hop into my head.

300 words a day, on the company.  On what I do, on what Sonic does for businesses… 300 words, and first thing.  Get here early, every day.  Can’t tomorrow as I have the Leads Group meeting at 7, but right after than, come here… voice, presence, genuine world composed from the two.  That’s all this is, anything in business, not so much what you “make it”, but what you saw before your movement.

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7/15/19

When prospecting I notice myself saying too much.  The same way people talk too much about wine, on both sides of the bar.  Less… it’s not only more it’s what’s appropriate, it’s what works.  Let the other person talk.  Ask them questions.  This isn’t sales device, it’s sales reality, sales remedy.

Today has been educating, on a number of notes, and all yay-saying.  It’s not selling yourself, or even Sonic, it’s showing eagerness to learn about the other person.  More than rapport, but CONNECTION.

Tomorrow’s new, another tablet.  So that’s where my focus is.  My sales notes compiling.  What do I do with them.  Have no idea right now.  They’re doing something to me, for me, with me.  Sell whatever it is you’re selling like you’re talking about whatever your most elevated interest is.  For me, of course, it’s wine and literature.  So… speak of Sonic as it’s a character, one that’s colorful and fun, educating and remedying.

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Today, calendar spots.  Setting appointments.  That’s the aim.  No selling, just setting up meetings.  And tell the people, the prospects, that’s what you’re there to do.  Don’t sell, don’t try too hard, just communicate.  Be out there in front of people, speaking…. Obvious notes to self but I had to note them. Hoping anyone in the like-position or role, whether sales or marketing or something mirroring can benefit and if not learn then be provoked to think of a new approach to their day, their work.  Van Gogh said he dreams his paintings and paints his dreams.  That’s what we all are, as business people.  Painters.  We draw and color our desired reality and stage as we wish it played.

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Time passes us far faster than we estimate or can appreciate, so just draw.  Be wild, mad, free in your productivity.

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6:14.  9.5 miles later and I’m

a leg up on the day, maybe more with the thousand or so words I earlier wrote.  I do feel tired still, a bit, but the run woke me.  Going down to Novato, hopefully get some appointments set for businesses and executives to me.  Need to shave, wear clothes bought last night.  Hopefully that shirt fits.  After work, home.  Wine and laundry.  Bed early more or less, again.  And if not, then I run in the heat.  OR at night.  At some point.  No more excuses, no more anything that… well, can’t run tomorrow night.  Have a Pinot tasting at Mom and Dad’s, and I need to get a couple Pinots for that.  I’ll hit Oliver’s tonight, get a burrito or something.

I now feel the tired wings wrap me in its intentions.  Just have to keep moving.  Dinner, laundry, just realized this is not a fun topic to write, and I bet even more painful to read.  I need to travel.  Even my kids are in DC now after spending a couple nights in NYC, seeing a Broadway show.  That’s it.  Travel.  And a weekend day in Napa doesn’t count, fun as it was.

Pinot Noir… tonight.  Budget is…. What.  Maybe get dinner at Oliver’s then head to Bottle Barn.  I don’t know.  I overthink.  And I’ve noticed myself doing it A LOT, lately.

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7/8/19

Busy day.  Caught self overthinking a bit ago.  But resolved.  Don’t think.  Just move, act, create.

Going shopping for some new work articles, then home for dinner, little writing and bed early.  Tomorrow a 4am-er. Told Abraham I’d be there, and more than that I WANT to be there.  For me.  Try for 9 miles.  Then the next day, the next, and all remaining.

Rest of day planned to not any kind of boring degree.  Hear people around me in leave mode, but I’m still in the propelled personification I had this morning. Work, as an idea, and one stretching from wine.  I think about all the work that involves in winemaking, how strenuous it is, the early rises but even more than that, the containment, more than focus or fixation, but IT.  The IT to it all.  All this.

Setting out running uniform, or not uniform but you know what I mean, tonight.  Shoes out, untied, phone charged, headphones, everything.  If I can, leave before 4 like I did that one time.

Phone at desk set up, voice message and my name for in-office comm.  Only minutes from leave.  Day for tomorrow more or less planned.  Meeting in morning, out in Field later in day and for most of the day’s remainder.

Put trash cans out.  Can’t forget to do that… not that exciting a detail but one with which everyone is familiar.  In bed before ten, the aim.  Going over to-do plate, not so much a list just a bunch of slop on a plate.

4:50, been chewing this gum since before the meeting we just had, which started at 3 and Shannon and myself nearly missed having lunch out right before.  Work versus time.  How to approach, how to consider, how to be place and put-together as character, for character and story.

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Trellis Step Travel

And ’11 white, and ’16 red.  From Spain, bot.  In the quiet kitchen consistent with my vinified vision, speaking in poetic tongues and abetted stuns.  Character compiled in this sole presence and thought lot, caught in wine’s promise and spell, she tells me to stay, be still but keep in my truest move.

Haven’t touched the red.  Letting her wake as she wishes.  Shouldn’t say let, rather inviting her, hoping she wants to me as I her, after the week, this day, the introduction to a new story at work, learning a new style of business in a new way.  All narrated and keeping self in that vineyard block, the one I now see, the 337 Lancaster block right by the parking lot.  As the clock moves in its knotted ticks and tocks, me here with more sight.  Tomorrow in Napa which I haven’t done in too long.  On drive, notes hopes, talk to friend Chris while he kindly drives.  Expect nothing.  Plan nothing.  Write little Paginate the experience and story when it’s done.  Feel the early wake, just before 4 technically, speak to me.  Urging bed, urging rest, urging early wake for a run prior to drive over the mountain.

This could be one of the more agreeable and interesting, seductive and capturing white wines I’ve had in some time.  Why am I just writing about her, why am I not penning, noting the notes.  Don’t want to be like Parker and whatever that one guy’s name is, and then the other twit I always see posting about his attendance at events hoping to be taking seriously or as something of a wine something.  I don’t want to be a clown.  Am I calling them clowns, no.  Or maybe.  I just don’t want to resemble anything they do.  I’m present for the pages in the puddle, what’s transposed from and to the character by the alchemical atmosphere, right here, what I just sipped.

See clusters in a bin, in Spain in certain corners of this contemplative vein.  A light, airy beat of sea and cliff, some sort of sand and trees by a boulder.  Never seen it, but it’s on my out-of-body shoulder.  Letting the glass be, the wine, she, with a freeing frolic of echoing chords and singular notes.  Each, its own anecdote.  I’m not the writer du vin I was when I started.  I know that.  I’m older.  Shit, some days I just feel old.  But she assures me I’m fine, encourages more recital, more music… Only write music, musically, she pleas.  This ’16.

Now for the ’11, reckon.  Last couple sips of the Albarino.   Technically misspelled but this goddamn laptop won’t let me insert the symbol.  Fighting the tired, telling it to be gone or face a fight.  Nearly done, the red over there looking at me and reciting poetry I can’t hear till I sip, fully engage and stay embraced.  Wine, educating me as she knows I need new Newness in this Now.  8:44, just minutes before bed possibly.  No way to know.  And that’s what wine is, not knowing.  Letting time find you, and you drawing from the confines of the presented page.  Sip, scribble, learn, live.

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wine page

7/5/19

8:29 and back at desk.  How do I attack day.  Telling self to deconstruct what I do in this position, this new position, down to its most essential and basic composition.  Contacts, meetings, put indirection of other meetings and eventually signings.  Feel like a real estate agent, or talent agent, or consultant.  I am a consultant, aren’t I?  Time to organize.  Time to search for more connections.  Just left a voicemail for a contact that was given to me by a co-worker.  Need to organize workspace.  Small, already crowded, and me feeling a little dizzied, but I’m allowing that to happen.

Asked ami Chris to bring contact information tomorrow that could help me, or contribute to what I do.  Just had another idea…

Followed through with.  Building contacts base, and not just for sakes of collecting names, but for connectedness. This new position is very much running a business of my own. And broken down to its most one-dimensional anatomy, it’s people.  That’s it.  People and communication.  Creative communication.

Feeling you might experience when new at a position, and you’re eager, nearly over-eager, that you want to do everything and you’re thinking Fuck the learning curve!  You just want to do.  You don’t want to wait.  But you have to.  That’s part of it.  So in that time, in that lag or learning-holding pattern, you take notes.  On everything.

Learning wine.  How did I do that.  Taste everything, and use what I know, writing, to better understand it till I more or less hopefully more understand it and can be formidable in conversations.  Can convince.  What wine taught me.  Don’t focus on the technical, the words even, the definitions and the this and that of your product or service.  You sell you and the atmosphere between you and the prospective.

First day in the tasting room, at St. Francis, I didn’t know the wines.  I mean, I knew I liked them and I may have had a couple favorites, but I wasn’t what I’d say versed in them.  Not at all.  What I “sold” was me, my love of the winery, the people with whom I was behind the bar, my excitement in meeting someone new, someone else who loved wine and the vineyard, the view outside the doors like myself.

The other day someone working with me messaged me somewhere “We got this.” She’s also relatively new, approaching her 6th month in this functionality.  She was, and is, encouraging.  But I more than “got this”.  I see that now, this morning.  It’s me, my love of the company and its pervading ideology.  New and re-enlivened coherence in my character and stage.

Sales.  I’m not in sales.  I’m not in marketing, or PR.  I’m a storyteller, which isn’t that much a revelation being a writer, but a business narration technician.  Huh… interesting title.

 

Been back from meeting for a bit.  Planning rest of day, the next week.  Want to get in front of people and present what this is, this company. So do that.  Where can I go locally, now.  Eventually want to get down to the Peninsula, but our infrastructure hasn’t been completed, there.  Getting a little hungry.  Not going where I did the other day, took too much time.  Chinese?  Mexican?  Chinese. Should have gone there last time.

Only plan for tonight, writing.  Taste a couple wines and write.  Early tomorrow morning up.

Back from lunch, just a couple minutes after 2.  Project outlined, for the next couple hours, but I’m sluggish, slow and struggled.  Need coffee.  I do.  Chewing gum currently, the expected after-lunch cleaning of teeth and of course no brush so, gum.  Coffee soon.

Officially back on the clock, and will be on the phone in a bit, reaching out to businesses in my old neighborhood, San Carlos.  Thinking about tonight’s wines.  Had to be imported, one red and one white.  Put a baseball game on, work on my book between innings or something.  Wine at the center of the evening.  Putting something together to sell, and the night’s wines begin everything I’ve vowed to self.

Pizza day today.  And I went to get Chinese, and it was average if I’m being too kind.  All honesty, it was averagely average, I mean the truest embodiment of plain.  And I could have had pizza.  FREE, pizza.  Ugh… dismissing my folly, forgetting it.  Get on the phone.  Okay.

Made three calls.  First was pretty smooth, was able to get an email for their IT person.  The second was incredibly awkward, me saying “It’s Friday!” after she asked me how I am after I asked how she was doing, and then she saying “Well some of us have to work tomorrow.  IT person not there, onto next call, where the person was more or less pleasant but IT person, again, not there.  Call four, coming up.  Putting self in the head of a small winery owner/winemaker, and if not winemaker then just owner and general wine and brand educator, or something like that (You know what I mean, the VOICE of the winery).  Will go into this next call as such, though that’s not entirely appropriate as analogy, as the winery owner would be calling people he knows.  Club members, big buyers.

3:14, will have to make a call from home.  I don’t mind.  This is MY business, and that’s the only way I’m willing to see this.  Wine antagonizing every thought, every intention and bit of movement.  Everything is clearer, today.  Not going to go one about it, but I’m finally me, the me I need be for the writing and my kids and everything, and….  I’ll stop there.  Need a drink now, I feel. Celebrate.  And if not celebrate then certainly calibrate.  That’s the thing about wine writers, we’re always developing and digging for some new suggestion, some new note, or “nuance” as wanna-be somms and critics utter.  Setting up home office tonight and will keep it as I set it up—placement of books and chairs, so everything where it need be.  And wine, with me the whole time.

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wine page

7/3/19

Went out on my own, “Feet on the Street” as they say in this part of the company.  Just introducing myself, as I knew there was a chance of running into current clients.  And I did.  No deterrence.  This whole day thinking about selling and why some get anxiety when it comes to selling, and the possibility of conversion, that you might or might not sell.  Again, I learn on wine ideology and methodology.  Everything is from wine, for me.  Talk to people as you would if you were having a glass of SB with them on a desk in some warm weather, or sipping a stainless Chard on a dock somewhere in the San Juan Islands, or on a boat around the islands.  Do your job less, I said to myself walking up to that first corporate building in on of the Fountain Grove business building spots.

Department head sent out an email saying, basically telling us, that early departure at 3 is fine.  Told us to get the heck out of here and enjoy our weekend.  Which I more than appreciate as in the wine industry that rarely happens.  Every last dollar, every last dollar the mentality rather than making sure your sales force is satisfied with everything from day-to-day to how they see themselves in their role.  I’ll leave in a bit, I guess.  Go write somewhere maybe for a bit before meeting family in Windsor for the baseball game and whatever else is planned.  Looking around my new desk, and my place has already been punctuated.  Wine… wine… don’t fixate on the overwhelming population and propulsion of new terms and products and surrounding language.  Just see the person in front of you, I tell myself and offer to anyone reading this in any kind of sales post.  Just talk to as many people as you can, record everything, follow up, and don’t stop moving.  Not sure what else to say other than that, and I don’t want to talk about sales for this whole piece but narrating who you are and what you’re doing is nearly the entirety of what we think of as “sales”.

Wine taught me all this.  And the industry having forced me into disgust with it instructed me to gut-trust and find something else.  I did, and here I am, but still with wine-wound principles and sight, the Road to my Equilibrium purveying all the poetry and prose but more so poetry and music this writer ever need.  What will I have to do when with my own wines, but go door to door, just handing them out not really selling or even narrating anything, just saying hi and saying my name a couple times and handing a bottle of wine to whomever’s in front of me.

Office getting quiet.  I can tell people have left.  Think I’ll send my EOD in a minute then depart, myself.  Get a glass of something, somewhere.  Why does Sauvignon Blanc always sound good, and always sound like the most optimal and appropriate, optimally appropriate varietal and style, feel and song and vinified ride?  Don’t know, but I can see the glass in front of me, and by some odd extension see myself rising in this department far faster than anyone before me, and even faster than I now see myself ascending.  Why?  I’m not selling.  I refuse to sell.  I’ll only connect, talk, educate, create.  So many overthink sales and talk themselves out of it and into some undeserved low self-estimation.  The creativity and conversations will illuminate opportunity, and renewing zenith.

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wine page

7/2/19

EOD, and Zinfandel.  Something I don’t often do. Usually a Cab, or Pinot, or some red blend.  But no, I’m drinking Zin.  One my sister made, a 2016 from three separate vineyard blocks.  Glass next to me, not yet tasted or even nosed.  Had past vintages, but not this one.  Day 2 of new post at Sonic, fin.  Today was information, products and definitions, certain services and approaches.  I’m not overwhelmed so much as I am in acknowledgement of what I’m doing, what this new character entails.  Not thinking about it now, and not ‘cause I don’t want to, I want this wine to speak to me, tell me something about me and my wined self that I don’t know.  That I’ve never thought of before.  Like what.  I don’t know, clown.  I haven’t tasted her yet.  What does she want, what did she see in ’16 at those 3 vineyard sites, sights.  MY sight now looking at her in the glass, or stemless plastic glass, cup, goblet, bowl.  I’m overthinking, something I’ve been trying to combat quite viciously of late, but how can I when thinking is my opiate.  Not making me smarter or any more complicated than the next human but certain one of developing activity.  Who knows if I’ll ever jettison this trait of mine, this me of me.

 

Tiring but I can’t halt in my page assault. Need visit pages from vault.  Haven’t written in days like this, seems like months, like I’ve let my writing life just fly away like some pet bird I don’t love any more.  No, No, I tell the page.  Wine still there not being touched.  I’m too into the room, its quiet, the kids upstairs asleep already (already, they did go to bed rather late but it didn’t take them long to drop into dreams), and me here, with these keys, the next day ahead of me and the Napa trip literally hours away as I see it.  First touch of Zin’s figure and she voices her voice with stern step.  There is no waver in her writing.  She urges I the like profess and practice and perpetuate.  Near one minute after sip 1 I still hear her sing, feel that echo and octave.  There’s something more to this tenor and talk that I can ever measure.  So….  I’m here, in the Room, writing to a Zin. I refrain from fixating on the Zin and my usual turn away from Zin as this is different—or not different but some how a varied climate from composition usual.

I can already see myself walking into the office tomorrow, having pages written from waking more than early.  4am, god hour, where the room is my deity and me but a follower and proselytizer, not so much spreading the word but speaking about the hour, what I did.  The office noticing something about me, my pages on my sleeves and skin, jabbing from my smile.  The office, Sonic, teaching me sight, how to confront the page void, that I don’t need fear it nor feel shamed for not touching it in a couple days.  Feel self closer to the Zin, and he smile, her movement which is more than just simple left-right, side to side, circular or triangulated shifts arbitrary.  More than a stroll or sway, it’s a month massaged inside of a day.

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