Abby and Eason –
I am not going to write about all of my jobs at Dell because, well, the job series is already so LONG! I don’t want you guys to get too bored reading about all of my jobs.
But, working at Dell was an amazing experience. As you know, I still didn’t know Jesus at that point of my life, but it is super clear that He led me to Dell. During the 7 years I was there, I was promoted at least once a year. I had amazing opportunities to lead businesses inside of Dell, develop training programs, and sell to some of the largest corporations in the world. I also got to travel to other countries for work assignments. Overall, it was just great.
So, instead of telling you about each job, I am just going to tell you a couple of cool stories that shaped my career.
During one of my early management jobs, I had an amazing boss/mentor. I was still young in my career and was in my first couple of years managing people. My boss noticed that I was willing to commit myself to being successful, and he decided to start “manager education” on Fridays. You guessed it – numbers!
While I had achieved good grades in school, I would not have classified myself as smart – AT ALL! As my boss opened profit and loss statements, I became overwhelmed. Not only were there numbers, but also acronyms. And, each acronym seemed to have a formula associated with it.
Early in life, I had made myself a promise to never give up. So, I didn’t. I studied the acronyms, formulas, and numbers between sessions. I loved the information that he was teaching and wanted to learn more. For the first time in my career, the business metrics seemed to be coming together and making sense!
My boss noticed how much I loved what I was learning. He also noticed that I understood what I was learning. And, I understood the needs of the people I was managing. And, he made a bold recommendation to the HR group. He recommended that I be marked as a key talent at Dell. This opened many doors.
It was hard for me to believe what was happening, but I loved learning about business. My first key talent assignment was a project to improve sales, margin, and customer knowledge inside of a $800 million business unit. The group functioned as a digital and human sales group with about 95% of revenue transacting digitally and 5% of revenue transacting through humans.
The assignment couldn’t have been any more perfect for me. I was able to continue investing in humans. (I loved managing people. Seeing them grow and succeed was incredibly exciting for me). And, I got to learn how technology worked in the ecommerce space. But, finally, I had to solve an unknown problem. How do you get customers who no one has ever spoken with to buy more than they intended to buy? Today, we have plans for those questions. Back then, we didn’t.
Over the next year, I had the opportunity to work with software developers and create the first technology offering Dell had for chatting with customers online. We developed forms for customers to identify themselves. (Yes, that was new back then). We learned to associate certain products with others to drive more sales. We learned to identify buying patterns of high spending customers so that we could talk to them in real life.
I learned a lot about project management, people management, and marketing. I began to understand differences in the people that were drawn to each type of role. And, I began to appreciate the talents that motivated people to pursue different career paths.
At the end of the year, we had grown the department from 8 to over 40 people. Increased sales were covering the cost of their jobs. And, the online sales were still more profitable than when we began. Additionally, we were understanding our customers better and learning how to serve them when they bought off our website.
That job was risky. There wasn’t a script for how to do it. In fact, the job was more like a puzzle than a plan. I loved it. I loved it so much that I made a career out of it. After that role, I habitually took high risk jobs. I loved going into departments that were not performing as high as they should (or were even failing) and finding out what levers to pull to help things improve. I loved watching people begin to believe in themselves and their department again. I learned I loved the opportunity, and I taught people to learn from their past but to look to their future.
That was a lesson I taught myself also. We have incredible opportunities to learn from our past, and instead of beating ourselves up over the mistakes we have made, we can move forward. We can look at what is ahead and learn from what is behind us.
That is a lesson I hope you remember. No one is perfect. Just learn from the past and move forward. Reconcile the things you need to from the past (seek forgiveness, especially from Jesus) and press forward.
I love you both very much!
Mom