Breakfast? Check. Coffee? Check. Praxis alumni official zip-up hoodie? Big ‘ole check. Yes, I totally stole the title of this blog from Lord of the Rings…let me have this.
As for my personal website here goes, I’ve given fairly meager updates, so I wanted to detail what happened in my final moments in San Francisco. In the 4th month of my apprenticeship at Yoshi, my manager, David decided to put in his two weeks notice as he had recently secured a new position with Outreach. This left me, the now senior SDR, to take over the functions that David had been doing. Thankfully, I could absorb enough information from him to continue moving the sales team in the desired directions set by our CEO. Now, I wasn’t the senior sales associate by “rank”, as above me was Ryan, our head of sales and corporate partnerships.
Shortly after David left, month 5, Ryan issued me the task of training and then managing a team of offshore SDR’s in the Philippines. These three sales representatives each made about 80 calls per day and were able to process the follow-up steps at a very basic level. Without getting into the weeds too much I’ll just say the warm leads we were generating were barely qualifying. This whole experiment ran for two weeks and was a tremendous amount of work on my end and it taught me a lot about communication and management.
After seeing the data this test yielded, we decided against using the Filipino representatives from then on. Before we chose representatives in the Philippines, I strongly encouraged that we used representatives based in the United States and it was only after this two-week test that higher-ups decided to use representatives in the U.S. This was also the time that I was told I wouldn’t be needed to manage these new U.S. based SDR’s and that following week would be the end of my apprenticeship, month 6.
I was disappointed to hear that I wouldn’t get to see my original idea play out, but I had grown incredibly tired over the last 6 months and this was the sign that I needed to finally put a bow on my apprenticeship. Mission accomplished: I learned about sales processes, how to use CRM and other sales tools, and all about the inner workings of a series A level startup. I was pleased with my experience overall and it was just time to go home.
6 months, 1 week, and 1 day later…
Grand Rapids, Michigan. I’m home, finally home. I’ve spent the last week unpacking: suitcases, past friendships, moments missed with my family. It should go without saying that there’s a lot for me to do/catch up on. I feel extremely grateful to be able to return home and even got teary-eyed seeing lake Michigan after months of staring at the seemingly endless Pacific ocean.
I was never a huge fan of big cities unless I was visiting them for a short time, and now I know what it’s really like to be fully involved in one of the most fast-paced tech-influenced areas in the U.S. I’m a much more resilient person for having this whole experience but as I mentioned above, it took a lot out of me in every way. I’ll be spending the next two months documenting my experiences and restrategizing, updating all my profiles in order to pick up another full-time career come 2019.
It all worked out in the end; I’ll be working for my brother-in-law and sister in their Amazon vendor business. I have a car, it’s the family beater but it gets the job done. Most importantly, I’m available to support my friends, family, and business back home, all of which I missed immensely.
My faith in Praxis as a career-launching program has been strengthed as well, advisors were helpful all six months and continue to be even after the program has “ended”. On top of this, I still get access to the amazing community and the content it processes and creates. If you’re looking for a college alternative I would highly recommend Praxis.