Cleveland OH, Christian Aaron sitting behind a desk for over 17 years trying to make a difference….

My career in Sales & Marketing spans 17 years. The past seven have taught me so much – I’ve gained invaluable insight into the publishing industry at the corporate level.  These past three years introduced me to the Digital Media arena: running the sales & marketing for 9 websites. With this recent restructuring, I was left with two ( in addition to my promotion to Corporate Network Sales and Custom Media.) They wanted to keep me on the sites that saw a 102% increase in ad revenue over the course of 9 months. The duties of the sales reps for the two sites I sell for are quite simple; they toss me a lead and I close the business. Once I close it, they enter the order in our tracking system – which takes maybe 5 minutes. Not too difficult, right? Well, it’s apparently too difficult for one of them.

I found out yesterday that we missed $13K of revenue because he didn’t fulfill his responsibilities. Perhaps that $13K would have worked its way towards our bottom line!!! This was on top of the news I received earlier this week from our CEO – we’re not quite done with this restructuring – it’s moved to our paychecks. The silver lining:  a 4-day work week in the summer (Mon – Thursday), but with no pay. At first I didn’t think it was a big deal, but when Corporate sent out a memo with the actual percentage to reduce from our gross,  it’s much higher than I thought. I do have to thank you though Marc, for bringing something so obvious to my attention – using this extra day to finish my book. You even mentioned the big picture – - it made me smile and I felt so much better.

After I heard the sales rep fucked up, my heart started pounding its way through my chest (that damn xian anxiety I often speak of.)  I take serious pride in my work; it’s how I approach every aspect of my life. I throw serious passion behind what I do. I’ll be the first to admit that I can get crackie about it, but I look at my career as I do my spiritual life; what am I contributing to the bigger picture? I don’t just sit at my desk to collect a paycheck – it’s also a hope that what I achieve/sell, will push our company back into the spotlight. It’s making business spiritual. I’m not suggesting sitting in a circle linking pinks and singing Kumbaya, it’s more of an Awareness; that we are each responsible for the success of the company: from the mail room to the swank CEO office. But we’re all too busy running around panicking these days, that we forget to STOP & THINK. It’s time to sharpen our focus and work towards a better & more stable future. We ALL play a part.

Wow – that felt good! It’s the beauty of blogging – a release. Everybody say Ahhhhhhhh….! Thank you for obliging me and I hope your eyes didn’t dry out from reading it all. I think you know me by now – I don’t care for long posts. May I ask a favor though – make me laugh?? A  joke, a funny story… somethin? I need a BIG laugh.