Batch 6 - Freewrite: Holidays!

The lineup...

One of Dr. Cialdini's 6 principles of influence is the idea of reciprocity. In the most basic of terms, the means doing a something nice for someone will make them more willing to do something nice for you. From a business as well as interpersonal perspective, this largely means simply being nice. Dr. Cialdni recommends simply telling other people what you like about them (if they wore a nice shirt, tell them so!) as well as buying them a T-Shirt if it has their favorite sports team on it.

One of the nice things about working in such close quarters with Dr. Cialdini and his wife is seeing them practice what they preach (in every aspect, even though we are focusing on the reciprocity one at the moment). During the holidays, there are about 50 people to get gifts for. The last 6 months of developing my spreadsheet and shipping skills have all come to this. 

They bought me a special gift wrapping hat!

Initially, I was given 3 lists of people to buy for and what was given to them last year: a personal list, a inter company list, and a client list. The first thing I had to do was combine them into one file (still three spreadsheets, but I combined the documents so I can flip through them rapidly) and match formatting. Some people call it "neurotic", I call it "organized". In the end, there were several columns: Name, Address (international limited what we gave), 2014 gift, interests, 2015 gift, and "done?". Two of us teamed up to Facebook stalk anyone we didn't know well and added our findings to the "interests" column. 

About 1/3 of the gifts going out for
delivery!

One of my low priority tasks throughout the year is browsing Amazon deals for things that would be good general holiday gifts as well as holding on to any promising catalogs. A few weeks ago, we got an ad in the mail for a website called "giftbasketsoverseas.com". Normally, even for a small item, shipping internationally is over $100, plus the cost of the gift. Though this website didn't have the best deals on the gift baskets themselves, the amount we save on shipping was well worth it. Needless to say, all our international recipients received something from this website. 

They never end!

One of the more frequent Amazon "Deals of the Day" is portable power packs. We have a closet full of solar chargers, cell phone chargers, and Car jump-starters (I got one of these about 6 months ago and am very pleased!). We gave the outdoorsy clients solar chargers to use while backpacking, and several of them got the car jump-starters.  We've also included a few makeup brushes and flame-less candles. 

This is a huge undertaking, and I'm looking forward to combining my love for spreadsheets with my love for the Holidays!

Batch 6 - Freewrite: Amazon

The Tip Card Mug

When you go onto Amazon, you may notice that some of the products are "Fulfilled
by Amazon". When a company does a significant amount of online sales, they may choose to become an Amazon Advantage customer.  Before I started at INFLUENCE AT WORK, they did all the grunt work to get our products on Amazon. Once every couple weeks, I need to send in a bulk order of a product directly to Amazon. Recently, we started doing more frequent orders of our Tip Card Mugs.  Though doing more business is always great, we had to send them directly from our office via FedEx. This was tedious for me (trying to package them so they do not break), and for the customer who had to pay a higher shipping and handling fee - especially if they were international.

What our UPC code looks like

We decided it was time to get them onto Amazon with our other two higher selling products. To do this, My first step was to get them a UPC code. This was exceptionally easy as we already had an account with the official distributor of the codes. Surprisingly the most difficult part of the whole process was getting the tiny image of the code onto labels that were fulfillment customized to that shape. I finally fit about 36 on a sheet of label paper and printed them out. I then had to package the mugs in our special order Styrofoam, stick the new UPC sticker on them and tape them shut - all very time consuming.
Moral of the story, we were able to send 100 cups to 3 different Amazon  warehouses and have already sold a couple!

Batch 6: Strengths, and Weaknesses

Everyone and everything has strengths and weaknesses. INFLUENCE AT WORK is no different. That being said, this is my first job outside the Animal Welfare industry and have a ton to learn in terms of my professional development as well as Dr. Cialdini's 40 years of research to catch up on. This learning curve has definitely allowed me to see the many strengths of the group rather than the weaknesses. 
One of my favorite thing about working at IAW is the environment. My last job was all backstabbing and drama. At IAW everybody gets along. It helps that there are only 4 of us in the office, but it is nice to work in such a relaxed welcoming environment. Further, they also do a good job of not over extending themselves. There is only 3 people in the office because they have streamlined their process, and minimized costs. They also have been doing this work for years and years, so they have perfected their art through trial and error. 
Like I said before, I think it is too soon for me to say one way or another how I would run the company differently. It is especially difficult as the purpose of the company is to assist Dr. Cialdini and market his research. That aspect is going to have to be left unanswered for now!

P.S, I apologize for the short, picture-less post! I have been so busy during work, and with other assignments in the evenings that I haven't had the chance to do much else!

Batch 5: Freewrite - Research

For the sake of Consistency (one of the principles in addition to handy verbiage), all of our trainers use the same power point presentation when conducting a workshop. Though we have made small changes over the years, many of the examples are a bit outdated.  With Dr. Cialdini's new book set to come out soon, we decided it was time for a modernization. 

Our Vice President has been working with a graphic designer to give the power point and matching workshop a total overhaul. This has been difficult as she has had to make the designer an expert in our content for him to be able to design what we need. 

We have also been on the prowl for new examples for the content. I have spent the last several days on the QVC, HSN and EVINE websites to try to find a video (or videos) that exemplify a specific concept. This has been difficult as the hosts of the shows often use several of the principles in one sentence rather than focusing on using one to sell the product.  Once I found a few videos that would suit our needs, we had to gain rights to them. I had to do some investigating to find the contact person for each of those websites, then email them asking for permission to use the videos. We had to include what, when, where, why, and inquire as to the cost. 

Overall, A lot of work went into legally showing a video as an example in a classroom setting. 

Batch 5: How my work demonstrates Public Service or Urban Governance

When I first considered jobs outside the public or non profit sector, I was pretty sure I would find something to teach me skills I could then apply to a public sector job after graduation. I ended up here at INFLUENCE AT WORK and I am very lucky to have landed here versus another private sector company.
One of the major focuses of the workshops and training we provide other private sector companies is ethics. We stress in every step of the process why ethical marketing tactics and large scale corporate

social responsibility is important. It is not only important to your bottom line (bringing in new customers, and influencing brand loyalty), but it is important to overall efficacy. We discuss how a company cannot be perceived by consumers to be an untrustworthy, sketchy company if they genuinely are not. For example, the Monsanto corporation has many questionable ethical business practices, so no amount of charitable donation and positive PR will help that. When you look at Costco, however, you see that ethical business practices go much farther.
Currently, our workshops and keynotes are very expensive and out of the range for most non profits and public organizations to be able to afford. We are currently working on plans to help reduce the cost to be able to bring valuable training to organizations that would benefit from them. Once this is achieved, we are also hoping to custom tailor workshops to fundraising, grant writing, working with public funding, etc, as to better help the organizations that do so much for the community.
Overall, when working for INFLUENCE AT WORK, I feel almost
as if I am working for a non profit.

Batch 5: Free write - Stretching!

I work in a very small office (there are four of us total here on a day to day basis), and all of us work on a computer all day, as most office people do. If you have ever worked in this kind of environment, you know the kind of aches and pains that come along with it: neck aches, stiffness, carpel tunnel, etc. As someone who has spent my entire working life at a job where I am on my feet and moving at least 50% of the day, this was new to me.
After working here for a couple of weeks, I was starting to feel some of the negative effects of having such a comfortable office chair. To focus better, I got up and did some basic stretches to loosen my muscles up. Our Director of Sales, Cara, noticed me doing this and loved the idea. after a bit of chatting about it, we decided to do 2 o'clock stretch breaks every day.
Luckily,  Cara takes several yoga classes a week and knows lots of stretches to keep things interesting. Several months later, we all still stop what we are doing at 2 o'clock to stretch together for 15 minutes.
We have found that it keeps us from feeling lazy after lunch, and gives us the boost (and mental break) we need to finish the day strong. It has gotten to the point where I feel stiff and sore if we skip it for the day.
Plus, even beyond making everyone feel better, it is something we can all do together to make our working relationships that much better, and thus the office a much nicer place to work everyday!

Batch 5: Free write - Five years from now

With 38 days left until graduation (I'm not counting or anything), I have been thinking a lot about where I want to be in the future, whether that be 2 months, 1 year, or five years from now.
I have always been a planner and always have some sort of a plan for my life. When I look at the last 5 years, however, I have always found myself fumbling to come up with a new plan as my life is drastically changed. I decided to move to Arizona within 3 months of considering the idea after never considering moving out of state for school. I thought I would work in animal welfare forever, until I found myself miserable at my job.
So when I'm asked "What do you want to do with your degree?" or "Where do you see yourself in 5 years" I have started giving the response "I don't know, in the best possible way.". Typically, I don't have to follow that statement with a lecture on the complexities of life keeping people from really knowing exactly what life will be like.
I do know what I want at the time being, though. If I keep on the path I'm projecting towards at the time being, In five years I see myself
1. Working at a job a care about
2. Working to benefit the community in some way
3. Making enough money to get by (an optimistic idea in public service)
4. and, lastly, still understanding that I don't have to feel like I am stuck in one job or place because it fits the "five year plan".