Boy, has it been a long time or what?!?
The perfect storm of productively un-productiveness that has been my life for the last 3 months has died down just long enough for me to get a blog post out.
Between my new job, full-time school, and wedding planning, I’ve barely found any time to breath. I’m just lucky that my beautiful fiance has taken on most of the burden of planning the wedding or else it may have stifled my productivity altogether. Thanks honey!
That being said, my fiance Gina hasn’t been afraid to crack the wedding planning whip on me over the last several months. Between designing invitations & save the dates, coming up with table theme blurbs, venue selection, vendor selection, music and ceremony planning, taste-testing, and all the rest, it has become clear that we’re getting right down to crunch time before our October 15th nuptials.
And you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way!
How’s the new job you ask?
I’m finally starting to get into a semi-normal routine after a whirlwind beginning.
So far, it’s been both challenging and rewarding. It has afforded me opportunities to develop my skill sets in areas that I hadn’t previously been accustom to managing. On the flip side, there have been many things that have thrown me for a loop.
Here are some of the things I’ve learned:
- Moving to the client-side from the agency-side is a little strange. AGENCY WORLD and DEALER WORLD are two totally different beasts. Likewise, my agency-related automotive experience is much different than being immersed in DEALER WORLD every single day.
- Getting cold-calls from prospective vendors is pretty annoying. Now I know how clients felt when we called them as an agency.
- Only having 5 clients to focus on is much better than 400+ clients.
- Focusing on a holistic marketing strategy rather than just the SEO end of things is kind of cool, but comes with it’s own challenges. It can be more difficult to tie things together than I’d originally anticipated.
- Although it’s true that I DO work with computers, I’m definitely not an IT guy. Some people think I am.
- I hate having to deal with website vendors, and I miss being the website vendor. In the old days, all I had to do to change a site is walk over the the developer’s office. These days, I have to make phone calls, service tickets, most of which end up with vendors telling me they can’t do what I ask and me being frustrated.
- I like having a call-center at my disposal to help me verify local business listings. However, when/if Google decides to randomly merge your local business listing with the store next door, their customer service team WILL NOT help you fix the issue in any short amont of time UNLESS you are paying them for something.
- People hate car dealers. In fact, they hate them so much that when I followed some of the people from my personal Columbus Twitter list with the dealership Twitter accounts, a few of them pretty much lambasted me (I won’t mention names but some of it wasn’t all that nice). Sure I understand that dealers have sketchy reputations and maybe I shouldn’t have had the audacity to follow people (how dare I?), but the venom in some cases surprised me. If worst comes to worst, at least you’re getting 4 more followers to bulk up your follower-count (if you care about that)? Oh well, lesson learned, water under the bridge.
- I either really enjoy challenging myself or I’m a glutton for punishment.
- I am a jack-of-all-trades if I do say so myself, but I absolutely love design, and don’t do it nearly enough! It’s probably why I scratch my design-itch every 6-months or so and change my own website’s design. Guess I just need to start scratching that itch elsewhere for the pure sake of maintaining my own brand’s integrity? Please help me cure my sickness before I kill my brand for good (wink).
I’m sure I’ll learn many more things in my new role, but these were a few that have stuck out in my mind. But I digress.
If you could please help me out by following our Germain Twitter accounts, I would be very grateful to you. And please don’t be afraid if I engage you through these accounts.
In the long-run, would I hate it if you bought a car from us? Not at all. In the short-run, I’m just trying to engage and get to know my community of followers and that starts with talking to people. Again, please don’t be scared off.
Here they are:
Thanks in advance, and here’s to some great content coming your way soon – and with less than 3 months in between this time, I promise.
