Natalie’s Story, Month 14

July was another great month for me here at my new profit center. My mentor and the employees here started a new weekly counter promotional event for our customers. We have it once a week on Wednesdays and we call it “Hughes Hump Day”. Each week it has grown in popularity and I think the word has gotten out to quite a bit of our regular customers. We try to have a vendor or sales rep agency come into the store and conduct product specific hands-on training with us and our customers. This definitely adds a ton of value and makes our customers feel appreciated. Oh, and did I mention we also provide BBQ?

This month we also had a mid-year performance meeting with the entire profit center. My mentor, Joe Davenport, has been with the company for over 40 years and has a ton of leadership experience. I don’t think there’s a single situation or problem he hasn’t been faced with. Our meeting was very relaxed and provided an open forum for employees to discuss any concerns/issues. It was a very productive meeting and we really are a small, close knit team here.

Joe went over how we’re servicing some of our key customer accounts and also asked for feedback on how we can improve and better align with these customers. We also covered our financials for the month and Joe definitely has us on the right track and everyone here is working very hard to make profit sharing again this year!

I also took some vacation time this month and was able to attend the US Youth Soccer National Tournament as a referee. This was a huge honor considering there were only 96 referees in the entire country that were selected to attend. I was able to meet and get Mia Hamm’s autograph, which was life changing! I also had the opportunity to meet FIFA and MLS referees and pick their brains on how they achieved so much success. My referee career has been moving pretty quickly and I’m loving every minute of it. Now, it’s back to real life…