Author: Abe Darais

Today was a very special day for me on the career front. It was the special dinner with my team that I promised them for billing over $1 Million in sales this quarter on a $454,000 quota.  But it was actually far more significant to me than just that. It marked the closing of a chapter, a chapter in which my team, and everyone on it, faced a mighty mountain, and overcame the mountain, both individually, and collectively. I will elaborate on this when I recreate the speech I gave at dinner, and more about this journey can also be found on my December 12 blog entry, 2019.

The day started with me feeling out-of-my-mind depleted. So depleted, that I did not roll into work until 9:40, and when I did finally make it, I felt so wiped out, and unable to face the work in front of my, that I called my dad, who talked to me for an hour about the panic attack I was still having about the worry that I didn’t go through my promotion process with perfect legitimacy (I really think I did, but panic attacks are fear-based and not rational, and require time and outside rational perspectives to help heal). I did almost nothing for the two hours I was at work, but I did spend some time with the team, process some e-mail, answer some questions and submit my forecast. I have to admit, this was a scary-level bad mental health day. I am still in recovery from how all of the stresses of December broke me.

But then at noon, we started our team ski activity. I skied on my own for the first hour or so. It was a miracle. Elixir to my bones and mind to be out in nature, competing with the terrain to master the hills around me. I eventually met up with the guys and skied with them for the next two hours or so. I skied Bishop’s bowl 3 times. It is a black diamond and by far my favorite run at Sundance. I’m actually getting to be a decent skier. I started out painfully bad and it was hard for my team to ski with me, although they did, just to be nice. Now, I’m still not as good with them, but I can run with them for the most part.

By then of skiing, I was feeling more like myself, which was good, because I had a very important dinner to attend, and I wanted people to have a great time, and I wanted to do my part to make sure people felt loved, valued, and appreciated for all the amazing work they did. I had told the team, that I would treat everyone including spouses to the Foundry, or if people wanted to eat at the Tree Room, I would pay for all the team members, and they could pay for their plus ones. The team opted for the Tree Room.

It was a very fancy and delicious meal. The ambiance was perfect. As comes so easily with my team, conversation, and gut busting laughs flowed freely. Stories were shared like the time that Max, Paul, and Jake hiked King’s Peak starting at 11PM at night and finishing at 11PM the following night and only getting four hours of sleep. They also saw a bear.

I wanted to say some words, but for whatever reason, I felt a bit shy to take the spotlight. I almost didn’t say anything, but then Joe, who has such good emotional intelligence, and new that some words would be appropriate for the occasion, asked me if I was going to say anything. That was just what I needed to get the courage to stand up and take some things. Below is my best effort at a recreation of what I said to the team (from memory). I’ve added a few things here and there to better articulate things not quite fully expressed in my impromptu speech, but this is very close in sentiment to what was shared:

“I want to thank everyone for coming out tonight. I want everyone to know that this story that this team has written, this is exactly why I am in management. It has been an incredible journey to be a part of. We were in such a different spot 2 years ago and even one year ago. In 2018, we billed 80% of our annual number. I started this year, truly wondering how things were going to go and fearing the worst a little bit. I don’t know for sure, but I strongly suspect that everyone in this room, considered quitting at some point on this journey.  Everyone on this team has faced your own individual dark moment. And everyone on this team has chosen to believe in yourself. To bet on yourself. To bet on the team. To bet on Qualtrics, to bet on me. I’ve tried very hard as a manager to allow my reps space and time to develop into what you can become.  But the other side of that is that you chose to give me time to develop and get better, and you bet on me as your manager, and stuck with me. We had zero percent attrition, which is absolutely unheard of. But that’s who we are. It has become our identity. We don’t quit. We climb the mountain. And we do it together.

I’m so amazed at the culture on this team. The way everyone works, together, laughs together, and has bonded. It’s been very hard being a Team Lead 2. Sometimes I’m out on business, sometimes I’m on vacation, and sometimes I’m just completely worn out. But this year this team has really stepped up and clicked on all cylinders even when I wasn’t able to give as much as I wanted. I cannot believe how this team has bonded and executed.

I hope your biggest take away from all of this is that you are capable of anything. You are all young, and as you go farther down in life, you will find that life can through crazy things at you. But I hope that you will use this time in your career, the time on Team Spartacus, the time when both you and the team climbed the mountain, overcame and did what seemed in possible, as a reminder to yourself that you are capable to succeed and overcome in the face of anything. I how you derive strength from your experience on this team, that will propel you forward in the future, both in your career and in your personal life.

I also want to say that it is very stressful to be a salesperson. It is also very stressful to be married to a salesperson. The job comes with a lot of ups and downs. I’m so glad the spouses came tonight, because this victory we are all sharing was a team effort for each of you, and is completely a joint success. Thank all of you for your support and efforts to make your spouse’s and this team successful.

Each of you have chosen a career in sales.  I hope that you always stay in it.  It is my favorite profession. My brother codes for Tableau, and makes more money than I do, and that is an amazing career. But the reason I love sales is because when I improve myself at my job, I am also improving myself as a human. Communication, character, improving at relationships, and negotiation, these things building me in my career also build me in my life.  And when I become an amazing salesperson, it’s impossible to do that without also becoming an amazing human. To me sales is the most rewarding career.

But as you’ve all experienced, it comes with great difficulty. I’ve learned that so much of what we are paid for is simply to own our number. We might get lucky and bill more than we deserved, or we might get unlucky and bill less than we deserved, and there will always be things outside of our control, but we get our big paychecks by letting the business pin full ownership of our number on us as though it is completely in our control. And I hope what you’ve learned from this chapter in our history is that in sales, there will be ups, and there will be downs, but when the down hits, as longs as you work hard, keep believing in yourself and don’t give up, you will always, always always find your way to success, you can always climb that mountain. I hope you’ve learned that you can always weather the storm.

Thank you everyone again for coming out.”

I kept making mental notes to get a picture of everyone after the dinner, but then I completely forgot (dang it!). But here are a couple pictures of food as well as a picture of all the guys that went skiing (just missing Shane):

In the Spring when I wrote out my top ten values and started planning goals around them, I decided one of my values was health (even though I’m so bad at taking good care of myself), and I decided to start having a self-care day just for me at the end of every sales quarter. Because Lily works just as hard, if not harder than me on the home-front, I decided that for me to feel good about such an indulgence, I would insist that Lily take a self care day each quarter as well.

Today was Lily’s self care day.  Her last self-care day was at Ojo Caliente in New Mexico soaking in the world famous mineral pools and we just decided to take advantage of the opportunity while we were there. Today’s self-care day for her was more simple, but still, from her report, extremely nourishing for her.

She started the day with a work-out on the exercise bike, and then showered and went to Barnes and Noble, where she said she was over the moon with joy leisurely browsing for books. Lily is obsessed with books, and she absolutely loves to read. In her life she has found great joy working at the library as well as boarders. She just loves to be around books, and being able to browse on her own, without kids in tow, was luxurious for her. She found a number of books to buy that she was very excited about.

Then she came home and ate Sushi burrito. While she was at Barnes and Noble, I had the kids with me running errands. One of the errands brought me over to our old home, where I found my fancy razor Lily gave me as a gift. Feeling somewhat tired and perhaps pressed for time, I put it in my back pocket to transport it to the new how. Unfortunately, while I was waiting for food in at Sushi burrito, I moved my hand in such a way that I grazed my razor which was sticking out of my back pocket, and sliced the dickens out of my right index finger. It bled for most of the rest of the day whenever I wasn’t putting direct pressure on it. It even continued bleeding lightly the following day. It did complicate the matter of me taking care of the kids a little bit, but not too bad, and I was very grateful for the supplies from Georgia’s first aid kit that I used to patch myself up.

After sushi burrito, Lily read her new book, The Dutch House, which she finished in one day (She reads so fast!). I took the kids outside to play in the snow. I wasn’t much fun because I was feeling tired, and I only had one functioning hand, but I hope the kids had some fun exploring and playing in our new yard.

Around 5:00, babysitters came over and Lily and I went out to dinner at Bloch. It was a super lovely restaurant, I thought Lily looked particularly gorgeous. We had a wonderful time connecting over dinner. I ordered their trout and Lily got their lemon pomegranate chicken dish which she said was the best chicken she’d ever had.

Also, here is a quote that was hanging up at Bloch that I really enjoyed:

After dinner, we came home and I found Clarissa in her room asleep on a chair.

After tucking Clarissa in properly, I gave Lily a massage and she finished reading her book, The Dutch House.  I’m so glad Lily could have such a nourishing day. She pours so much of her heart, soul, and health into this family!

I have been so excited for this day! I have had it on my calendar for weeks that today Lily and I would sit down, snuggled cozy on the couch and write all our back blogs that we have been too busy to write for the past 2+ months. It’s only 12:30, and we are just getting started, but I’m sure that will consume the rest of our day. Also, Lily is finishing her book, In Sacred Loneliness before she jumps into the blogging, so she will be joining me soon!

While we read and write, the kids are watching TV, and having a cozy day around the house. It is snowing like crazy outside! Here is a picture of Mary and Clarissa in mine and Lily’s (temporary while our bedroom is being constructed) bed:

I also want to briefly mention that as I shoveled snow this morning, my neighbor told me to leave my walks because he would use his snowblower on them. He then disappeared for 20 minutes snow blowing what seemed like half the neighborhood before returning to my sidewalk and snow blowing that too. What a sweet neighbor to have!!

I played in the snow with the kids around 3:30. We had an awesome time. I shoveled snow and delivered it to Lydia who was using it to build a snow fort. Clarissa, Mary and Ammon all attacked me with snow each time I made a trip to deliver snow to Lydia. It was a lot of fun for all. Lydia stayed outside after everyone else went in to keep working on her fort:

Also, here is Clarissa who apparently fell asleep mid stool ascension or descencion around 4:30 after playing in the snow.

The other things I want to report on are some spiritual things that have happened with respect to New Years.

Last year, right before New Years, I felt a spiritual impression tell me, “The most important developments in your life this year will be outside of work.”

Perhaps that is always true actually, but it was an important thing for me to process because work felt extremely consuming at the time. I was struggling in my role as a Team Lead II, which is a an extremely difficult dual role requiring me to manage people  and sell my own deals and I was even concerned about keeping my job or having things go reasonably will given the results of the previous year, and given how hard it was to manage all I was trying to juggle without losing my health. I have the late nights working until 2AM or later still burned into my memory and bones.

Amazingly, this year has tuned out to be one of massive success. My team billed about 120% of our annual number, billed 255% of our Q4 number, and landed me a spot on the Bora Bora sales incentive trip. Also, there were many many promotions on my team, including my own promotion to become a Sales Manager, meaning I no longer have to manage a dual role.

Yet, with all that amazing and blessed success, it is amazing to me to report, all of the other much more important things that happened in our lives this year:

• Lily, through her research, integrity and values, decided to leave the LDS church.
• I, through my desire to still have the church in my live and children’s lives decided to stay, but morphed from an orthodox believer to a nuanced believer through the things I learned this year.
• Lily, through her beautiful collaborative spirit and tolerance has been agreeable to me and the children continuing to worship at the LDS church even though she is very opposed to much of what it declares and stands for. To balance out the LDS upbringing for the kids, we attend a different church the first Sunday of every month and have open family discussions so Lily and I have ample opportunity to make sure each of our personal beliefs are transmitted to the children.
• Lily obtained a new beautiful network of friends through the Thrive conference she and I attended.
• We found an eye-doctor therapist for Mary that can help finally heal her cross-eye and depth perception.
• Lydia got into the gifted program at Foothill elementary and started attending there.
• Lily found the home of her dreams, that was also a perfect long-term solution for everyone in the family, and we used my dad as our realtor to purchase the home.
• We had beautiful family trips to the Pacific North West and New Mexico, trips that produced amazing memories and a lot of family bonding.

So, it was an extremely big year.  A year that will go down in the books as a very momentous year for our family.  To me, the thing I am most grateful for, and most happy about, is that Lily and I have never been in a happier place or more in love even though our approaches to faith are now different.  It is deeply meaningful to me that we are modeling to our children that two people who love each other profoundly can stick closely together, actually even closer together, when they have different ways of approaching aspects of life. I want to model that diversity of thought, belief, opinion can be a healthy thing in a marriage, and not a wedge.

This morning I woke up, and I felt another spiritual impression. The impression was, “This will be a year of healing.”

That impression made complete sense to me.  All of the new things in our lives this year for me was like giving birth (not that I actually know what that is like, but I can’t think of a better analogy). So many new and beautiful things emerged, but it was not without intense pain, exertion, stress, anxiety, adjustment and discomfort.

Lily’s faith transition started out very rocky with me in the beginning. My own changing faith continues to be excruciatingly difficult as so much that felt certain before now feels to be in question or false.  Lily too is searching and questioning in places where she used to find comfort and certainty.  Financing and closing on the new home was quite a to-do and certainly the move was a stressful process, especially for Lily who bore the brunt of it. She was moving things over frantically for the week leading up to the move, so it would be reasonably set up the first night we stayed there. She managed that process largely without me because I was so focused on my promotion interview that required a 15 point rubric evaluation that I needed to present a slide deck for and have everything incredibly buttoned up for. All of this was on top of the normal stressed of having 4 kids, dealing with night wakings, normal management, sales and end of quarter stress etc etc etc. I am exhausted.

In fact, I feel broken.  I’m still reeling from a panic attack I had after my interview process that resulted from all the stress. I bumped up my next therapist visit to be sooner just to help with this. I feel deeply tired and ragged, but I feel so so so so grateful for the developments in my family this year, for Lily’s collaborative attitude and the way we are working together despite changing attitudes towards the church, and all of the many beautiful things happening in our lives.  Being a Team Lead 2 and all of the other things on top of it this year were very hard on my health. I’m truly hoping for, and looking forward to a year of healing in 2020, not just for me, but for everyone in my household. Lily, the kids and Georgia have dealt with a lot of change. I also hope for healing in 2020, for anyone anywhere who needs it. May this be a year of healing.

I worked on New Year’s Eve. It was nice because there were very few people in the office and the two deals we were chasing both came in to cap off an incredibly good quarter. Max on my team had a deal push which means that he will get a single promotion, not a double promotion, but I think he’ll get the next promotion by April because he performed so strongly this quarter.

While I was at work, Lydia and Mary wanted to make a tea party. Lily told them that if they were going to do that, they would need to clean up after themselves 100%. And amazingly, after their tea party, they spent the next hour responsibly cleaning up and doing dishes. What great girls!

It was so nice to get home a bit early and spend the evening with the family. I was so wiped out so I spent the first hour or so on the couch resting. Around 6:00 we had a wonderful meal that Lily prepared. Amazing crab from Harmon’s, mussels, roasted potatoes and broccoli, and chocolate chip cookies for desert.

We passed the evening by playing games as a family (race to the treasure), resting (me), reading (Lily and Georgia) and just being together.

I’ll make a brief note that Lily has been sharing a lot with me about what she is learning In Sacred Loneliness. It is actually super sad and depressing. Polygamy ruined so many lives, especially when it was practiced in its worst form, where the man did not take care of some or most of his wives at all or where very young women were thrown into marriage and sexual relations far before they would have elected to on their own without pressure or threat of damnation.  Unfortunately, some of the worst examples of how polygamy was practiced came right from Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Such messes in the LDS history. Very sad.

Mary lasted until 11:40 PM. When I woke her up at 11:55 to bang the pots for New Years, she seemingly almost rallied and then said sleepily, “no, I don’t want to do that.”

Ammon and Lydia, on the other hand, were still going strong. At mignight we went to the front porch and bang butter knives on pot lids and pans to ring in the New Year.  For a moment I thought someone other family also had this tradition (which I think we picked up from the Barlow’s in our old coldesac), but then I realized I was just hearing the ehcos of our own pots and pans, haha. Anyway, it’s a fun tradition.

Happy New Year!

On Monday, I finally scratched the itch I’d been having to start exercising again. It has been weeks since I’ve been in an exercise routine. I ran West at first, but then started to feel like if there was anywhere to get shot in Orem, it would likely be West of the Freeway on 400S in Orem. Ok, I don’t think it is actually that dangerous, but it was an industrial area that just had a super different vibe than the beautiful residential area we live in. So I turned around, headed East, and found a good route to a nearby running track it was a glorious run.

Whether the exercise was just too much for my body, or whether I was still recovering from the late night puzzling on Saturday, or whether I was just breaking down from cumulative stresses through-out the year, the fact is, I felt awful on Monday, barely functional.

Still, I managed my way through work, had a wonderful lunch with Daniel Olsen, my new friend and Mary’s piano teacher, and enjoyed my evening with the family. I put together our new shoe rack while we watched the 2019 version of Lady and the Tramp which we all loved.

While I was at work, Lydia made a treasure hunt for Ammon and Mary. She hid blue stars around the house for them to find. Mary got a “1st Place” gold star because she won the treasure hunt. They also enjoyed caramel apples which Nelly sent to us.

Saturday was a bit of a rocky day at first, but I did have one of the nicest morning prayers I’d had in a while. Ammon has been acting insanely difficult. Perhaps it is due to all of the neglect because of my intense focus at work to get promoted and Lily’s intense focus on the move and getting the house set up. He whines, all the time, about everything it seems. When we tell him to stop whining, he says (in a whiny voice), “I’m a bad boy” so then we have to deal with both trying to get him to stop whining and helping to have some sort of positive self concept about himself. “Ammon, you are not a bad boy, you are a wonderful boy that needs to stop whining….” etc.  He’s also been getting into a lot of trouble. He had an epic meltdown at Trader Joes, he has not been listening to instructions, and it has just been really really hard.

Lily an I were both tired, and not only got upset with the kids, but even got a little upset with each other. I think we were all tired and cranky from all the exertion we’d recently had. Lily and I made up very quickly and I got to spend a lot of time with the kids, which meant a lot to me because I’d been wanting to give them more attention.

I had the kids Saturday from about noon to 4:00. We got a lot done! I did a run to the dump to get rid of tons of trash from our garage, cleaned the rugs of lentil soup at the car wash, vacuumed the car, went to Trader Joes (where Ammon completely tantrumed) and went to Harmon’s for fondue ingredients.

So, it was a bit of a long day (though still meaningful and productive) to that point, but then everything changed when I got home.  First, I moved the downstairs couch all around and vacuumed it and under it (under the couch was crazy! We found so much stuff, including a sandal from the previous house owners).

So the couch cleaning was actually super satisfying, but the main thing that was so happy was my brother Jere came over and we did a 1,000 piece Harry Potter puzzle together.

It wasn’t just that we did a puzzle together. We had Harry Potter playing in the background, number 5 (that the puzzle scene was from) and number 6 afterwords. Lydia was also helping with the puzzle and its so fun hanging out with her. We also had the most amazing fondue of my life. The cheese was unbelievably good. With the cheese we had pickles, jalapeno stuffed pickled onions, sourdough bread, apples, grapes, and bbq smoked turkey. I had been trying to focus on eating healthy (which may have also played into my grumpiness earlier in the day), but I cast off all restraint with this fondue. It was honestly one of the most enjoyable meals I’ve ever had, and it was so fun to enjoy it with everyone.  I also used canned heat for the first time, and that was a great discovery although I was a bit worried about the leftover can and lid spontaneously combusting in the trash I threw it in.

Puzzling was so fun.  Lily later reported she was giving me lovey signals, like touching my arm, or playing footsie, and she said I didn’t notice or reciprocate and that made her sad. I feel bad, but the truth is, I must have been so engrossed in the puzzle. I was super committed and kindof obsessed. Lily wanted to turn in, but I was addicted and announced I’d finish all thousand pieces even if I had to do it alone. Well, Jere and Lily hung with me until it was done. Conversation was great, and the puzzling was just so fun, and we finished around 2:40 AM.  Man what a good time. And Lily, I will try to be more aware of your sweet gestures next time!!! Also, I learned for future reference, that to get the number of pieces right for a puzzling evening, it is wise to only have about 200 pieces for every adult helping.

Today was my first round interview for my promotion. I didn’t know there was more than one round until the end of the interview when they told me I passed, but that I still had to meet with Dan.

It was such a relief to pass the interview though. I had done so much to prepare, and God had done so much to clear the path for this to promotion to even be possible. I’d like to recount a few of the miracles that made this possible:

• One of the requirements to promotion (non-negotiable) was that I needed to get a 80% or higher on the survey that is sent to my team asking how often I do one-on-ones, forecast reviews, coaching sessions, quadrant reviews, career planning etc etc with them.  I need to average 80% or higher across 2 surveys, and I was getting mid-70s. I had too many people on my team and it was hard to juggle everything, but there was no allowance in the survey for that fact. But, the survey broke, so they were temporarily not going to use it for promotion purposes.  That created a narrow window for me to interview without using results from that survey. The survey was re-instated two days after my final interview with Dan Watkins.
• For 5 years at Qualtrics, I had never hired anyone into Qualtrics. But amazingly, I hired 2 people within the last 12 months. I’m graded on how many people I hire, so it’s a major gift that I had recent success right before my performance interview.
• Two months ago it was announced that for people in the role 2 years and longer, one could pass the interview with a 3.6 instead of a 3.8. As of Jan 1, I would be in the team lead II role for two years, so that now applied to me.
• One month ago, it was announced that because they are needing to promote people so desperately into leadership positions, anyone interviewing for promotion would now only be graded against their peers, not their peers plus the level above them, as it had been in the past.
• All of these things happened at the exact time that my team was having the best billing quarter we had ever had. I had already blown past my quota when I interviewed today and that made me look very very good.
• Lucas (my boss two levels up) apparently had a need to promote me, and had put me as a sales manager in his organizational plan, and said we would need to go through the interview process, but that it should be fine and he was planning on having me as a sales manager. In other words, he wanted to promote me. Perhaps he got to that point of expecting to promote me after my boss, Andrew, did a practice interview with me, and said I was lined up to pass. He probably told Lucas I was looking good to pass, so that helped shape expectations for the interview.

It is hard to express how much these conditions and miracles mean to me.  At the beginning of the year, I called a dear friend Dean Richardson to tell him that I was afraid of the year ahead at work.  My job as a player coach was so demanding, and I was worried that the wheels would come off the cart in terms of my performance, or my health (from exertion) or perhaps both. The most important thing Dean said to me is something I hope to never forget. He told me that if everything went to pot, and I didn’t perform well and I had to find another job, that I could survive that.

I internalized that very deeply, and used his words to help me get to a point of not being afraid. The year ahead was uncertain. The mountain looked impossible, but largely thanks to his words, I was able to approach the year knowing that I could endure anything, come what may. The year before was rough, and I didn’t know how much longer the business would keep me in that role if things didn’t turn around.  I’m not exaggerating when I say things had been rough in 2018. That year I did a practice interview for promotion, and I got the lowest score across all team lead 2’s, meaning I was the lowest performing team lead 2 in Dan’s org. We had one quarter that year of billing under 50% of our team quota. I remember very difficult and stressful days. One day, I went on a walk, and the spirit of God whispered to me, “in you are fear and entitlement.” I was having my greatest experience with failure, and it forced me to confront and face how much fear and entitlement were in me. Then, at the beginning of 2019, I demonstrated just a little bit of growth. I wasn’t quite as fearful as I was in 2018.  After talking to Dean, I felt a little bit more able to confront whatever came. And I did my best to not spin narratives about how I deserved more or about how others had it better. I made big strides in both my fear and my entitlement, things which I was so blessed to discover about myself during my failure.

Still though, this seemed like it had two possible paths. Either I could destroy my health trying to be perfect at everything, trying to line everything up for my 15 point interview, or I could just say, “to heck with the promotion” and cut the corners I needed to cut in order to stay happy and balanced.

I’d tried the route where I focused doggedly on success at the expense of almost all else, and I ended up, tired, stressed, checked out and not as connected with my family and friends. So, in 2019, I essentially made the decision to live in a way that would be balanced and happy and if it wasn’t good enough for promotion, that was ok, I could find a way to be happy as a team lead 2, even if I had to be a team lead 2 forever (while all my peers promoted around me) or I could just eventually leave Qualtrics. But it just wasn’t worth my health to obsess on promotion any more.

That mindset turned out to be critical, especially because of all the other stressors, events and changes 2019 brought to me, but right around early October, I realized that my team was poised to double our quota or more, and that things were starting to align for me to make another promotion run. Then I heard about the dropping the bar from 3.8 to 3.6 for me since I was going to be a Team Lead for two years and I started to get very encouraged. So starting about mid-October, I got focused on promotion again. But it was a very targeted purposeful focus, because I felt like I really had a shot. I was extremely nervous about it, both because of how much I wanted it and because of how hard it was to get. Even with the bar dropping to 3.6 average out of 5, if you get a 2 in any category it is very hard to overcome. There seemed like there were so many landmines. My forecasting wasn’t great lately and that was an area that I might get a 2.  I also had a lot of work to do to prepare my deck presentation and make sure all of my metrics were perfectly presentable on the day of the interview. I drove my team to move right on the quadrant, button up their SNE rate, key in all their meddiccc notes, fix their flagged opportunities, be fully salesforce compliant, etc etc etc.  There were so many land-mines.  But as I focused on it, and spent about one evening per week as I got close to the interview to stay late and prepare my deck, things truly started to come together. When I then learned I would be graded against only my peers and not the level above me, I got even more courage. Then I hung out with Lucas when our families watched Frozen 2 together and he basically said he was planning on my being a Sales Manager before I even interviewed, so it all started to feel real even before the interview today, but I was still super nervous about it.

I got a 90 minute massage the day before the interview, and did multiple practice run-throughs. I was so prepared that my interview was like complete clockwork. I even scored a 3.8 with Lucas, which was .2 higher than what I needed. Still if I got even 2 points lower on any one of the 15 categories, that would be enough to knock me out, so it’s actually still a very narrow victory. Lucas was very complimentary in the interview and was especially impressed when I showed my last slide about the fact that after this quarter, I will have personally overseen 16 promotions as a team lead 2, which is an average of almost annual promotions for any rep who is on my team.

Just for the purpose of memory and a memorial to the body of work from when I was a team lead 2, I’m posting the slides to my interview here. These are actually the version that I used in Dan Watkin’s interview the following week, but they are only updated by a few business days:

A major tender mercy from God was that we had already scheduled a team ski day for the afternoon today. So after my interview with Lucas (and George, Andrew and Preston), I got to go blow off some steam while skiing. It was honestly a really great day.

 

 

Today my mom came over to do some tax planning with Georgia, and so we took the opportunity to have her over for dinner as well. Lily made stuffed pumpkins, so yummy!! Also, Lydia built a fun wall out of blocks.

Lily has been craving Thanksgiving food lately,  and even though we did a Trader Joe’s Thanks giving dinner just recently, we repeated tonight. It was soooo yummy! I love the Thanksgiving flavors!

Also, I spent time today working on the financing for the new home that we are now under contract for.

Today was a super fun Saturday. Early in the day, Clarissa was posing adorably on the counter so I took several pictures, and am just posting my favorite. I love her!

In the afternoon, we all drove to Anthony’s antique shop because they were displaying wonderful art from our beloved friend Paige Anderson and also because Lily wanted to see what they would give her for an antique vase and our secretary cabinet.  Lily was so sweet. She wanted to use the money to buy my a road bike so I wouldn’t have to borrow my friend’s bike when I go bike-riding with him.

Here is are some of Paige’s beautiful pieces:

Anthony’s Fine Arts and Antique shop was a major discovery for us. It is an awesome two story old building with giant columns in the front. It is a very majestic building on the outside and on the inside it is packed to the gills with beautiful art and cool antiques. Unfortunately, the antique market is in decline so there was very little that we could get (if anything) for our items, but browsing the shop and seeing Paige’s art was a wonderful experience.

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After that we went up Emigration Canyon and went to Ruth’s diner. There is such a cool story behind the diner.  Ruth was at one point a cabaret dancer and then she flipped burgers across the street from an establishment of ill-repute and kept an eye on all the local gossip.  She then opened a restaurant and when the building was demolished, she moved her restaurant up the canyon. She was a high-spirited woman who knew how to take care of her self and cared very little for the law. She died at age 94 in the 80’s, but her restaurant lives on and is now the second oldest restaurant in Salt Lake. Here is the full history of her restaurant. I thought the food was a bit rich, but I think that is to be expected for a diner. All in all it was very very delicious.

Back at home, Lily read to Ammon and Clarissa before we put the kids to bed.