Am I there yet??

Day 4- (kind of) Up at 2am with a lot on my mind and could not wait to get into the office today. I was out, however, most of the morning participating in community outreach in the elementary schools in Ogden (near our HQ). Once back in the office, I met with Scott Sessions, VP of Sales for Mountain Alarm and www.safelife.com, for about an hour. Scott is a salesman's salesman--high energy, very focused, passionate, etc, etc. I was excited to hear about his book list recommendations and realize that at this pace, I'll need to buy an eReader so I don't have to rent a storage unit. Scott consumes books.

Afternoon brought a vendor contact in to talk. He's a local I met through the Rotary Club of Ogden. Dan walked me through his world as a manufacturer, how they interface with other manufacturer's products and what they do for us. My previous experience has been primarily channel sales and marketing, so a lot of it made sense. I guess I was hoping for more marketing dollars in the industry. My world was MDF. Here they call it Co-op dollars. Not much of a difference between the programs, but it's good to start drawing the comparisons and learning the new jargon. I did a little better with the names, but still didn't venture back down with the "bear claws", so I didn't embarrass myself too badly. It's a balance right now between just going in and talking to people in the office to the point of annoyance or simply walking quickly past their offices to get back into the groove.

Thanks to Chris and Clint at MarketStar for the Logitech wireless mouse and keyboard. I'm sure it will drastically improve my blogging skills. I was also surprised today with my new monitor. Randy said if I needed help "setting up my new television" I could ask him and wondered when I'd be showing the football games in my office. Once I set it up (25 inches of Hanns-G beauty), I completely lost my view of the other side of my desk. Hmm. I'm going to have to get creative. It sure did help as pulled up some of the graphics to edit though! Thanks to Mike and Aaron, the designated tightwads in the company, for letting this one through.