The same company has been my employer for 16 years. In that time I always had decent or good managers, great colleagues and interesting work. I have worked in 3 different countries. And I visited 41 countries in those 16 years (including Albania, Singapore, China, America and most European countries). Wow! What a life. How could I feel sour about that?
In the first phase of my life with the company, I was lucky enough to be in a 'pioneering' part of it, making and selling loudspeakers when the rest of the business was doing something completely different. We had around 50 people working there, and I learned so much - especially about how a small group of highly motivated people can work as a team and almost achieve the impossible.
It laid out a part of my future. The job was advertised in a local paper, and I saw the headline "Today Woking, Tomorrow the World". Woking was the town the office was based on, and the world part was because we were about to start selling in other countries. The headline has been a true description of my life in the company.
I also had the pleasure (and sometimes pain) to work with Lance Miller, then Marketing Director, who had spent 20 years in Advertising. When I joined the company, I had no idea which end of a mouse was which. Lance changed that - he decided that, in the face of Marketing budget cuts, we would design our own advertising and brochures ourselves. He ordered a colour copier and a high-powered Mac and said "Let's get bloody creative! You do the desktop publishing, I do the art direction". In a few months I learned a skill which has stood with me ever since, and sat for long hours listening to Lance explain the basics - not only about desktop publishing but about how to live your working life.
My Christmas Cd's are always a re-visit of those times and I hear Lance over my shoulder as I sit at home designing the things, as if he were saying again as he did in those days "don't knock it out on a piece of A4 - make it a document! Present it. If they expect it on A4, make it A3. If they want A3, make it A0. It'll do won't do! Presentation is 9 points of the law!!! Get bloody creative, Beckett!!!!!!" Yes, Lance, it has been ringing in my ears for 16 years, and all of those guiding principles are with me today, every day.
I also had the luck to work with Glen Harris. He was the best sales manager I ever met in my 16 years in this company. He could tell you the names of the wife, kids, hobbies and interests of all key customers. He defied logic, because he was a genuine and nice person, with real interest in people - yet he was a salesman. Sometimes Sales has a negative image, but the way Glen did it, he made it a noble pursuit. He did it by being a good, honest, interested person who connected with his customers like a friend, yet he knew the moment for "Business is Business".
Unfortunately we never sold enough. And despite rumours of TV products coming out (yes, even in the mid-90's...) we were so different to the rest of the company, there was no hope that we would have a future. In early '97 as it was announced the company would close, I was made redundant (so I am one of the very few people in our company to experience this twice) and I had to make my plan for the next part of my life.
Lasting memories of that time - working every day, 7 days a week, 6 weeks in a row before 2 back-to-back exhibitions. I left the office one afternoon on a Saturday and sat in the garden of a friend who was a nanny. Her 3-year old charge was running around screaming and yelling in the garden and I just sat against a wall and snored, exhausted.
But at the end of the triumphant PLAZA event - where we shared a Best Stand award with a company who spent 10 times the money on their stand - and the amazing Live 93 event with 150,000 visitors, Lance said to me "what's it like to be a f§$%ing star?" And I knew it was a standard quote, but I loved it. That feeling of total commitment, and getting the recognition for a job extraordinarily well-done, has been something I have wanted to give and get over the years.
Other memorable experiences include travelling the length and breadth of Sweden, visiting dealers and selling like hell with a salesman called Tommy Johansson. He and I made the story of the products and brand a great thing to buy into. I learned a lot about sales that week, but also a key thing about Marketing too - 6 months later, most of the dealers had most of the stock still sitting in their shop. They bought our story, but couldn't sell it to their customers!
Another memorable experience was driving across Europe to the MusikMesse fair in Frankfurt with a van full of exhibition kit. My colleague Budgie took a look at the map and said "sod driving North then South on the motorway - we'll cut across country and take that little road direct to Koblenz". It turned out to a be a near-disastrous choice, as the snow poured down, and we drove at 30km/h for 5 hours along a tiny road with no lights, seeing car after car slide into the ditch at the side of the road and wondering what the hell we would do if that happened to us. Completely terrifying, but we made it.
It all came to an end, and as it did, we were treated with dignity and respect. One example of that - I was looking into buying a house 3 months before the company went under. Glen took me aside and suggested I should wait a bit and see how the company is doing. He saved from making a possibly disastrous investment. I wish some people in my company now could have had the same integrity.
The first chapter in my real working life had come to a close and I look back on it as some of the most exciting and forming years of my life. Lance brought things out of me that I didn't know existed - like the skill of presentation which has been a great advantage ever since, or the ability/need to think creatively. Glen showed me how sales can really be done. And I loved working for my company.
And the next part follows later...
