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".

Batch 4: Interview

Though, for the most part, I am everyone's assistant, Eily the Director of Client Services is my manager for all rights and purposes. That, in combination with her unusual path to get where she is today is why I chose to interview her rather than someone else in the office or even someone in another field. 

What are their main job responsibilities?
In almost everything she does in the Office, Eily is the middle man. When Cara, the director of sales, books a client, it is Eily's job to make sure the contract is signed and everything agreed upon in it is done. This usually includes, buying materials , flights, hotels, the time of the conference, when during the conference materials are handed out, etc. She is also the unofficial office manager. She orders supplies, contacts clients on behalf of Cara, Bobette, or Dr. Cialdini, found (and hired) me, Fixes things, calls It, and so much more. 

How did they choose this career?
Eily started working at INFLUENCE AT WORK when she was still at ASU perusing a degree in Archaeology. Her position was very similar to mine. After she graduated, she went on to work in Archaeology for several years before becoming dissatisfied. She called Bobette, who was happy to take her back, and hasn't looked back since. She often says that she could work in a higher up position or make more money elsewhere, but she is so happy working here that she would never leave. 

What type of education or training is needed for this position? 
Everybody in the office has a different degree and set of skills to the table. Though Eily's formal degree is in Archaeology, she calls on the general critial thinking and writing skills she learned while earning her degree. She uses those skills to enhance her natural leadership abilities and in the role she often takes as moderator. 

What advice would they give to someone interested in this field? 
Eily simply recommends doing everything you can to stay with this company and never burn bridges. 

Do they notice any new trends in the field? 
As with anything, being honest and ethical in business with return tenfold. At INFLUENCE AT WORK, everyone has always focused on ethical business practices, and has seen a return in clients because of it. 

Why would you be interested in this career or position?
My initial interest in staying with this company is the focus on ethical business and Dr. Cialdini's continued interest in political and community involvement. Often I handle working with Dr. Cialdini or his wife to make sure they can be the best citizens they can be. My secondary interest in staying with the company is the stress free, and drama-less environment. My last several jobs were high stress, political, and had very little satisfaction or appreciation. The rational behavior I see here still catches me off guard, and is definitely appreciated.  

Batch 4: Leadership

Working in a teeny four person office has given me the opportunity to really understand leadership in several different areas. Aside from me, everybody's title includes "Director of...".
Though I help out everyone in the office, I work most closely with Eily, The Director of Client Services. Her job is to take care of clients needs and coordinate between the Client and Dr. Cialdini or the CMCT's. As a result of this, almost everything goes through her. The most obvious way she exemplifies leadership is keeping problems from happening and quickly solving them when they do. For example, when there is a miscommunication about a specific piece of business in the office, Eily will jump in with a solution, while everyone else is focusing on the problem
I also work commonly with Cara, the Director of Sales. She takes care of contracting clients, working with them to decide what service would be best for them and helps them plan their event. Cara shows great leadership in that she always goes above and beyond to make sure the client gets the Keynote or meeting they are hoping to have. Also, she is an amazing networker. I would have no idea how to even begin some of the networking tactics she uses.

Lastly, Bobette is the Vice President and handles marketing. She is constantly calling around, going to events, and making friends wherever she goes. As I understand it, around the holidays, she has a Christmas list 300 people long of all potential clients to pass along to Cara. Beyond that, I think the most impressive thing about her leadership style in the office is her interpersonal abilities. I have never worked somewhere that the second most powerful person in the company knows the name of my dog, boyfriend, parents, likes and interests. She works very hard to not be a faceless corporate entity with everyone she works with.
Personally, whenever I start a new job, position, even take a new class; I like to take the role of student. I want to observe what everyone else does, ask questions about why they do it, and then apply it to my position. Everybody here is an expert at what they do, so for the most part, I am still asking for instructions


and waiting to be told to do things. That being said, I have several projects that I am "point person" on and look forward to showing off all the great leadership techniques I've learned so far!

Batch 4: Freewrite - Russia and working with international clientel

Recently, Dr. Cialdini was asked to speak to 3,000 students at the Synergy Business School in Moscow. Though international travel is common for him, this is the first international client I have been able to observe from start to finish. Lucky for me, Everything that could go wrong did so I was able to learn how to overcome problems on a deadline.
The number one problem we encountered was the language barrier. The woman organizing the event did not speak great English, and our office collectively speaks no Russian. Many of the back and forth emails were difficult to understand, and we had to clarify crucial information several times. Recently, I got a call from the organizer's assistant who attempted to speak to me in Russian, got frustrated when I did not understand, and hung up on me. When the organizer herself called back a few minutes later, she very loudly, asked for my manager. When I told her she was on the phone, and asked for a call back number, she said "Yes!" and hung up the phone.

No, this is not Dr. Cialdini's passport. 

Our second major hurtle was trying to get a Visa. To travel to Russia on Business, one must have a formal letter of invitation from the hiring Russian company and you can't apply until 25 days before your tip, AND you have to send in your passport for processing. In our case, Dr. Cialdini was traveling in the Netherlands until 15 days before he needed to travel to Russia, so we could not start the process on his Visa until he returned with his passport. Once we were able to start the request process, we discovered that our formal letter of invitation from Synergy Business School had been denied by the visa office. Luckily, we made a contact at the office who pushed it through.
Our last hurtle is the wait- that we are still in. The Russian embassy said they would send the passport and visa documentation back on the 16th, to be received on the 19th for his flight on the 21st. At this point we have done all we can and just hope that nothing goes wrong: The documents will arrive in time, they are correct, and Dr. Cialdini will not get stuck at customs for too long.

Batch 4: Freewrite - Flier Making!

Before...

Though we didn't hand out fliers for this POP, I updated an old flier for use in the future. If we are being totally honest, I had some free time and wanted to hone my skills in this area. We only had one physical copy of the old flier, and it was so old, that any remnant of it on the computer was long gone. So I started from scratch.

All of the verbiage on this flier was taken from the old flier - I just changed the design. My first step was going through Microsoft Word Templates until I found what I needed: a Template that was already built and I could modify to my needs in less than two hours. 

What a difference! After considering my options, I decided my first steps should be changing the colors and the picture. I wanted to do this first as I have a history of loosing a lot of work because the text doesn't work with formatting. Our logo colors are red, grey, and white, I focused on those colors instead of the cute pink and green. Once I didn't break the formatting by changing this, I replaced the cute (but unrelated) photo of the little girls and their ice cream with two photos of Dr. Cialdini Speaking. Miraculously, all the formatting was still stable so I moved on to the next step.

I added in the pertinent information, like when, where, what and who we are. When everything still looked ok, I saved the document and started playing with additional formatting and style changes. I was able to change some font and add text over the photos. The finished product turned out well for my fist try, if I do say so myself! Take a look:

After...

Batch 3: Freewrite- Shipping!

My day to day number one priority is handling all of the outgoing shipping. There are several reasons I may need to ship something out, and typically send out 4 or 5 packages every day.

From left: CDs, DVDs, Audio Books. We keep overflow all
over the place, but I always have the most common things
where I can reach them quickly. 

Most commonly, I handle shipping from orders placed on our website. As soon as an order is paid, I get an email from the processing program (ECWID) with a link to start processing. I print out a packing slip, package up the item and use FedEx to print a label for it. I always try to hand write a "Thank you" to include in the package.

We also sell our merchandise through Amazon Advantage. This means, we send our merchandise to Amazon and they process orders directly for us. When they are running low on the product, we get an email to send them more. 

Organized, as always!

Lastly, the Vice President and the Director of Sales like to send stuff out to their clients, or potential clients. They will usually leave a note with instructions on my desk to package up whatever gift they want to send to them. 

The most difficult aspect of this is international shipping. Every country has slightly different laws regarding
the correct way to get things into the country. We have a worldwide presence, so it is not uncommon for me to spend 20 minutes making sure I can get a book into the Netherlands, Hong Kong, or even Toronto.
At my last job, I managed a small pet boutique inside the shelter. Learning how to manage the virtual ways we get our merchandise out there has been an interesting change. I had never considered selling Boutique products online as I assumed the cost (all the work that would go into it) would not be worth the sales. Doing this through IAW has given me a much different perspective!