Hurry Up and Smell the Flowers!

Since I sold my business in July of last year I've learned many things, but the hardest lesson is one I thought I had already mastered: patience.

It's hard to be patient when you have no income.  Even though I voluntarily put myself in this position, I see the proceeds from the sale of my business dwindling as the months fly past and I still haven't found the "perfect" job.  I know many people would say I was crazy to sell a profitable, established business and return to a job market that is difficult at best, but the decision just felt right and I still stand by it.  I just can't wait to move on to what's next though.  I feel like I've been in limbo long enough.

When I sold the business, I bought myself some time to go take some training classes, certify in ITIL, and do some networking while looking for that just right opportunity.  The problem is that I cannot just wait forever for that opportunity to appear.  What to do then?  Make a plan, act on it, follow through and... be patient.

"Hurry up and wait" is a phrase that is often used in the technology world.  When you have a computer system fail and you need help, your business may be losing money every minute you sit on hold with technical support.  You need to hurry up and get it working, but you have to wait for assistance.  A non-tech example is Walmart.  I hate shopping at Walmart, and as soon as I walk in I'm in a hurry to leave, but I have to shop and then wait in line to check out.  I would just as soon bypass the technical support call and the shopping in Walmart and just move straight to the result... a fixed computer or a full fridge!

The last five months have taught me again the lesson of patience.  I made a transition plan before I sold my business.  Yes, I had hoped to have a job before now, but everything is still okay, we're not broke... yet.  There are lots of good opportunities and especially now after the slowness at the end of the year things seem to be picking up in a VERY good way, but it takes time to go through the process of submitting resumes, going to interviews and waiting for decisions.  I enjoy interviewing (weird I know) but am really tired of all the waiting and paperwork.  Can't I just have the job of my dreams already?  Hurry up and wait.

I've now been on a couple of very promising interviews.  One in particular I'm very excited about and I really liked what I heard from the team that interviewed me.  It's a big company though and they can't just say the day of the interview, "you're hired!"  So, I continue to hurry up and wait.  Work hard, be patient, it will come.

My wife is due in February and we're getting the house ready for the new baby by moving my boys in to a new room and preparing the nursery.  I think we both want for the baby to hurry up and get here but we must wait.  In the meanwhile, my boys got a really cool new room with neat paint colors and a new play area.  They also had Christmas and are going back to school.  We're so focused on the baby coming though (and my job search) that it's hard to remember there's something going on right now I should pay attention to.  I really need to spend time with them now... while we're all together at home because they're out of school, I'm at home and there's no baby yet to distract us.

We tend to think that life is about getting somewhere and we want to get there as quickly as possible.  I know that I drive that way... go the speed limit, man!  I get frustrated by people tooling along like there's no hurry in the world.  I understand that maybe they have a reason for going slow, but still, get it moving!  In addition to contemplating "hurry up and wait" though there is another phrase I should consider, "stop and smell the flowers."

Yes, it's nice to get there... to accomplish something, to complete your trip, get the job, get the kids off to school - or off to college and out of the house!  Life, though, is really about the journey.  It's about the times in between.  It's about who we travel with and what we do on our long slog to the finish line.  You develop relationships, you don't complete or accomplish them, and you get to keep them for your entire life.  I'm trying not to spend so much time getting to the finish line that I fail to enjoy the trip.  I will accomplish lots of goals in my lifetime but I am allotted only so much time and if I don't stop to smell the flowers sometimes, I will definitely regret it later.  Life is one trip you don't get to take a second time, unfortunately.

I think you have to stop or just slow down every once in a while and since I'm in the "wait" part of "hurry up and wait," maybe now is a good time for me to look around and enjoy my extra time with family and friends and just be ON the journey for a while.

I still fail to find any redeeming value whatsoever in my time holding for technical support or in Walmart though!

What is "Customer Service?"

If you asked most businesses, great "Customer Service" would be one of their primary goals.  But what is "Customer Service" really?

Over the course of my 15 years in Information Technology my definition of customer service has changed and expanded, but really, I learned the basic concept well before I built, sold and repaired my first computers.  I learned customer service at Pizza Hut and K-Mart.

At Pizza Hut I was taught to take orders.  Someone wanted a pizza with mushrooms and pepperoni?  I delivered one... and quickly, while it was still hot.  I couldn't wait for my first customer to receive their pizza before going on to the next though, so I also learned to multi-task.  I needed ALL of my customers to be happy if I wanted to earn my tips.  Also, if I provided bad service, people would remember and ask for a different server next time.

At K-Mart, I learned to sell.  Once upon a time, when Best Buy wasn't around, people bought TVs and VCRs and stereos at K-Mart.  I was on commission and quickly learned that the more I sold, the more I made.  I became positively eager to help anyone that happened by.  I learned to talk to my customers and understand what their needs were so I could help them purchase the right thing.  If I sold them too much they would bring it back and be unhappy.  If I sold them something too cheap they would be unhappy with the quality.  It was my responsibility to ensure they left with the right product and ensure they realized all of the value it had to provide.

So, that's Pizza Hut and K-Mart. But what do fast pizza and a discount department store have to offer an IT Professional?

Long-term customers are more profitable than short-term customers.

Good customer service is really that easy.  If you keep that one idea in mind all the rest will follow!  So how do you create long-term customers?  Don't over think it, it's simple:

1. Be genuinely interested in their success... yours will follow naturally.
2. Don't give them any reason to go somewhere else.

Is that it?  Really?  Yes.  If you can put your customer's success, happiness, and profitability ahead of your own and really help them achieve their goals their company will grow and require more and more of your products and services.  Don't go for the quick buck!  It just doesn't pay off.  When customers know that you enabled their success or helped them make more money or made their lives easier, they will think of you next time and look for you to do the same over and over again.  When you take them for a quick buck they WILL realize it sooner or later and they'll never be back.  That's part 1.

Part 2: Don't mess it up!  Once you have a good thing going with a customer, don't give them any reason to look elsewhere.  Make sure you have the products and services they want when they want them.  Know them well enough so that nobody else can provide the same value that you do.  And, don't ever, EVER, take them for granted.  It's as easy to lose a customer due to inattention as it is through competition.

I built a successful IT consulting business over the course of 7 years using the two rules above.  I built long-term customers that came back month after month and year after year.  They didn't use my services just because they had before; they came back because we had a relationship that they valued.  It wasn't quite personal but it wasn't just business either.  I really enjoyed working with them and helping them achieve their goals.  Both they and I knew that if they were successful they would require more of my help and I could ride their coat tails all the way to the bank.  Our goals were aligned and as long as I did my job and didn't mess it up I had guaranteed happy customers for as long as I wanted them.

I wasn't always perfect, and I became complacent and took a couple customers for granted.  I lost them.  It was, perhaps, the most painful lesson I learned during that 7 years and I learned it VERY quickly.  I built processes and procedures to ensure that even when customers were at a maintenance level for a long time I continued to actively add value to their business.  I learned to not mess it up.

So, it turns out that Pizza Hut and K-Mart really do have something to teach us about customer service in IT after all.  How did you learn customer service?  What does it mean to you?

Certs, Degrees, Experience. How do I Get Hired?!?

Technology changes so rapidly that anything you learn in college or are tested on in a cert exam is almost certainly out of date within 3 years.  That doesn't mean they are worthless, but it DOES mean that the longer you've been certified or had your degree the less meaningful it is.

There is no substitute for experience.  Degrees and certifications are used by recruiters and hiring managers to do an initial sort of job applicants and after that they mean little or nothing.  Once you sit down in an interview you've exhausted the usefulness of qualifications and must prove your suitability through your capability to communicate how your past experience would add value to the position you are applying for.

Also, recruiters are making the mistake of asking for the moon on job postings, incorrectly thinking that it is an employers' market.  In reality, Information Technology is one of the few growing sectors of the economy and it is much more difficult to find well qualified candidates than they think.  They would do much better to just ask for the most critical skills and educate their clients (the businesses they hire for) on some more realistic expectations on what they can get and how much it might cost.

Adding to the problem, many companies continue to refuse to train new staff, thinking that there are so many candidates on the market that they can afford to be picky and choose only the best qualified candidates with all of the required skills.  In reality they are only hurting themselves.  By ignoring the benefits of doing their own training they are losing an opportunity to build leaders for their organization, train people to do business THEIR way, and are leaving positions unfilled due to a lack of overqualified candidates.

So, how do you get hired in an upside-down technology employment market?  You get noticed.  If you can get recruiters and hiring managers to come to you instead of sending resumes out to them and posting yourself on Dice or Monster or Careerbuilder then you've won the game without even playing it.  Getting noticed requires you to build a reputation, prove you have skills by participating in social networking and local events, and network with people in your industry.

When more people know you are well qualified more people will ask, "why isn't he/she working for us?"  And they *WILL* come.  I've spent the last couple months on this strategy and I can tell you without reservation that it does work.  For two months after I sold my business in June I had no interviews and had been struggling to make anything happen.  At the beginning of October I began a social media marketing campaign that included making blog posts, networking on LinkedIn and Tweeting significant online activities.  I've had a couple job interviews now and I have recruiters calling me daily.  I could have taken several of the jobs I was called about, but when you're getting this kind of attention you can afford to be choosy.

You can prove you are well qualified without any letters behind your name.  You can do it without a degree.  All you need is a computer, some internet, something you know that other people want to learn about and to tell your story.  I'm confident now that my career will continue with a job I love, and soon.  You can do it too.  You can get hired.