One week down

I've finished my first week of school er... work. The timing of this job felt a lot like school, and since the dress code is different (Snowbound was business casual, Bulldog is "No Swimsuits") I had to do some back-to-work clothes shopping. We did this as a family last week, just cruised up to the Round Rock Outlets. Mia and I were both in need of some new athletic and everyday shoes (and have been for a while) and I needed more than one pair of jeans that really fit.
We ended up getting new shoes, some Nike's for both of us -- which we are breaking in now for our trip to Disney -- and some everyday work shoes (that aren't athletic shoes) for me. Mia and I both got some pants as well, and Ethan got a Buzz Lightyear costume for Halloween.

In the end, shopping for clothes is always expensive but we did better at the outlets than we would have anywhere else so we can't complain. They are all things we've been putting off buying for a while, it's our own fault for not spreading out the purchases.

But, enough of the boring stuff. Let's talk about my job.

While my official title is Campaign Manager, that's a fancy title for Project Manager. I keep the pieces moving, preparing for the inevitable launch and trying to make sure that we have as much done as possible before our clients open them up to the world. This is a role I've had before. The daily insanity is similar to what I remember. However, I do have two distinct advantages coming into this role.

1. I understand the marketing. I get what we do, the messaging, the landing pages, the automation, the emails, the marketing side of things I've been doing at Snowbound for 3.5 years. (Also, I really enjoy this kind of stuff.)

2. I understand the chaos. I'm not trying to figure out what Bulldog does while also trying to learn how to juggle projects and keep clients happy. I have a foundation for both of these as well.

But, like I said, this is just a foundation. I still have to learn the intracacies of how Bulldog goes about their process. I still have to learn how to handle my particular clients, and I have plenty to learn about Webinars.

Actually, part of why I took this job (besides not getting an offer for the other one :p ) was so that I could learn more about Webinars. Video is exploding as an online medium and I want to try and get ahead of that wave. This knowledge will definitely be useful to me in future positions.

Bulldog is still a small company. Which means they face an interesting challenge. Any loss of staff makes a big impact on the allocation of resources and work. But, they are also growing so hiring new people means getting them up to speed. Typically for a Campaign Manager they spend a month in training/shadowing on the accounts that will become their clients before getting introduced and taking over the work.

On my first day I was introduced to a client that I'll be taking from one of the CMs that is leaving (I'm pretty much replacing her spot, though they have hired 1 more CM so net gain of 1). In the first week, I have been introduced to 2 more clients, and will be in the kick-off meeting for a brand-spanking-new client next week.  In other words, my training period has been cut a little short. While that makes me a bit nervous, I'm also glad they have confidence that I am able to jump right in and start contributing. This is smart because asking the experienced campaign managers to shoulder too much work will only serve to burn them out, leaving more holes.  (Which no one wants.)

I'll keep you posted on how things progress at Bulldog. But, at the moment, I'm confident that I've found a good place for me to be here in Austin.

Ike-Caramba

Well, this post is a little late, but I came up with that great title so what the heck.

We didn't get hit by Hurricane Ike. Austin was fortunate that way, and from what we've heard while Houston was hit hard most of the people from the area were safe. A lot of people left for places like Austin and San Antonio. We had some friends from Boston come out after the worst day to buy a generator since their power went out and they were told it could be 2 weeks before getting it back.

Up here in Austin we got an afternoon of wind. Not even any rain. So, we've survived our first hurricane in Texas and it wasn't so bad. ;-)

William Tell Had a Poker Face

And, in case you want to read the text, I'm providing it below too.

William Tell had a poker face. 

I never looked into his eyes. 

You could get lost in his eyes.

"Fold," I said and laid my cards on the table. 

William smiled, halfway, or rather with only

one side of his mouth. I looked down at his

hands. He flipped over his cards. Two of diamonds

and ace of hearts. He had a pair,

on the the River,

on the two.

"Poker is like love," he said flipping $100 chips

at each of us. "You play the player, not the game."

I smiled, halfway, or rather I felt smug inside

without moving my mouth. "Tell us," I said,

"about love."

William Tell looked at his cards then flipped the dealer $100.

"Deal," he said.

Edit: My wife thinks I'm boring, so I cut out the bit of me talking and just jumped right to the point of the video. ;-)

Job Description

I'm finishing up my full-time work at Snowbound and realized that my job title shouldn't be "Internet Marketer" but instead should be "Problem Solver." We are implementing a new marketing system and as Mia pointed out, pretty much my last 2 weeks have been dealing with getting it set up.

I've figured out a lot of issues, done a lot of back-end work, and started looking into what we need to do from a process standpoint to keep moving forward. As I was telling Mia, this isn't just a Snowbound skill. Even back at Protocol I was a problem solver. Keeping direct mail going is a huge juggling act and if any of the balls stop moving, it all comes crashing down.

With my experience on the back-end of Websites, front end of writing copy, project management in direct mail, and constant problem-solving throughout, I think I'm going to handle my new job just fine. (For those that aren't as familiar with the role as I am, it involves all those things I just listed.)

Real Haircut, Real Job

Ok, I admit that I got the haircut after the job but I don't think the order is important in this case. Let me tell you a little about my new job. I'm going to be a Campaign Manager at a company called Bulldog Solutions. They are a Lead Generation service company. Which means that I'll be managing marketing campaigns that Bulldog executes for our clients to generate more leads.  

This is similar to what I'm doing now at Snowbound. I'm responsible for a lot of our lead generation and do all the execution for them.  So this is going to be a change of pace for me since I'll be doing it for multiple clients instead of just one company.

But, it's also a small company so I will hopefully continue to have opportunities to expand my skills and experiment with other things.

I start on Monday. It's getting exciting to think about but also makes me a bit apprehensive about going back to an office job. Fortunately, I've been down to the office a few times and the people are great. I think that I'm going to fit in well.  I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

Reading (People)

I have done some reading recently (YAY!) but this post isn't about books. It's about reading people. I have been doing some interviews recently.

In one of them, I got a skills test. Analyze a 14,000 record data set and do an hour-long presentation about the results. Well, this was a little outside the realm of what I've been doing with our Web Analytics and search analytics at Snowbound. But, it was an interesting experiment to see what I could do.

The presentation went well, but when it was over I came home and told Mia that if I didn't get the job it wouldn't be because I wasn't competent but because they needed someone with more experience than I had.

I got a call from the HR person I'd been working with later that afternoon telling me almost that exact thing. I have to admit being a little disappointed but also grateful for the chance to expand my horizons and give me something to work on personally.

Fortunately, one of my other interviews that also went extremely well ended in a job offer. More on that soon. ;)

Full On Tantrum

Ethan doesn't throw tantrums. He gets upset about things (and hits us sometimes, we're working on that) and will show his anger but doesn't take it to the point of being irrational.

Except for yesterday. Ethan hasn't been napping since we left Boston and it finally started catching up with him.

Now, I have to pause here and recognize some culpability because we have been keeping him up late sometimes as we meet new friends and go over to their houses or take him out to something new down here.

But back to the point, last night Ethan was miserable. He wouldn't stop crying about everything. I couldn't do anything without him screaming. He was hitting, screaming, crying, repeat. This was the worst that I've ever seen. Finally I wrestled him into pajamas and got him into bed.

At which point he promptly fell asleep.

Skinny

Have we mentioned that Ethan is skinny? Well he is.

In fact, the other day he wore a pair of Edwards (6 mo) shorts around all day. They fit around his waist a little snugly, and looked a bit short, but they fit and since he always wants to be dressed before we get breakfast, I wasn't looking too closely.

When we finally checked at the end of the day, Mia and I had a good laugh.

Dinner!

I made dinner tonight. No, that's not a reason to post to my blog. Though, since we moved here we've been making menus. Our deal is that if I help make the menu (Mia hates thinking about what to make) she'll cook the dinner. I've been very impressed with her on what she's cooked for us.

But, the reason that I'm posting tonight is because I made stuffed peppers. With ground sausage, rice, chunky tomato sauce, Worcestershire and some spices. I just cut off the tops and dumped the filling in then covered them in sauce and baked for about an hour.

They were so good!

The Olympics!

We are watching the opening ceremony of the Bejing Olympics and it's making me realize that Ethan only has 12 years until he could be competing in the Olympics himself.

Time to start pushing him. Any suggestions on sport?

Maybe trampoline, or kayak, or shooting?