Supplemental

Since I can't sleep, it's my Friday night, and I need to take a break, albeit a short one, from playing C&C Generals (think Real-Time Strategy game), I decided to write a little bit. Get this blog back onto a happier note.

Dark times, too, shall pass. On the other side we are stronger and more elastic to the demands that life places upon us. This has been something I have developed since being ripped out of the "bubble" that I grew up in.

Miles City, MT in the late 1980's. I had lived there for 9 years and had finally established the roots that a child should be allowed to establish. After moving to Wolf Point, MT, it only took a couple of years to do the same thing.

Then Bowman, ND happened. I started growing less as the "popular kid" and more as the outcast. In retrospect I know that I tried too hard. I tried too hard to make friends, make people laugh, and answer the questions. A cocktail for social disaster.

As the years passed, I became more reclusive and studied schoolwork and beyond. I became extremely interested in the television show Quantum Leap which led me to being engrossed in teaching myself physics: Light on the classical mechanics, heavy on the relativity, high energy/particle physics, and cosmology. By the 9th grade I could recite any number of physical principles and describe them to the layperson as well as discuss them intelligently. I could recite anything from the textbook definition of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to the 4 Fundamental Forces of Interactions in Quantum Physics.

My love for knowledge grew, fueled by my bouts of self-examination and deep reflection. I realized that my love for knowledge and the ability to soak it up like a sponge had existed since several years earlier, but the drive to expand on that through personal development was just budding. I delved into computer science, anatomy & physiology, basic pharmacology (I was wanting to develop a pre-medical background), neurology, chemistry, basic linguistics, and anything else that I could get my hands on. It was a golden age of sorts.

Around the same time I started developing several different ideas for research projects and the need to be able to bring more minds into the mix. My first R&D organization was formed as a non-profit in the mid 1990's. Over the course of the next 5 years we considered hundreds of project concepts and developed a good third of them. A handful of them became my pet project. At it's height this organization spanned 5 states and 50 people with positions in 50 different departments representing a different area of science or technology. Each department was then broken down into relevant areas. The Physics Department, for instance, was broken down into 11 different parts ranging from low temperature/solid state physics to relativity.

Wanting to develop the business entity more, a for-profit entity was formed in the late 1990's to capitalize and develop several business concepts we had been playing with, conceptually, for several years. At first a former Vice President of mine took the helm. I eventually took the helm in 1999 and held the post until we dissolved the entity in 2001 to focus our efforts toward a more succinct project.

From 2001-2003 South Dakota Technologies operated as a general partnership with myself acting as managing parter/chief executive officer. We had a total of about 12 people led by 4 executives being directed by myself. We did well until I learned the ultimate rule of business partnerships: If you get a bad feeling in your gut about one of your business parters...listen to it. Thus, due to a technicality the partnership was dissolved. I was able to walk away with my dignity, some developed projects in my hip pocket, and a couple of very good executives and friends that will hold places in any future entities that I lead if they want the jobs.

By this time I had graduated with the Associates in Business Management and Marketing. I developed keen interests in corporate strategy development based on strategies and tactics that I had learned in the Army in both "grunt" and headquarters positions. I also delved into history sometime around this time.

All my life I have been seeking wisdom; a prolific writing stint in journals since my youth had, by this time, blessed me with a striking level of awareness both of myself and of my surroundings. Multiple opportunities for leadership training had gone a long way to help with this journey.

So, after positions in sales and marketing for a high-tech defense contractor, a concierge at a well-known resort, a general manager for a pizzeria, and a cook back at the same resort I decided I needed to settle down somewhere and start a life. By this time my only association with the Army as sitting on the inactive ready reserve roles in St. Louis, MO, so I decided that I would move to the state that I have always dreamed that I would flourish in since my youth: Colorado.

Now, for those of you that have not been to Grand Junction, CO, before...let me tell you: This place is one of the most beautiful places on earth. I have been halfways across the world: Seen the waterfalls of Central America, the Swiss Alps from Bavaria, the Black Hills of South Dakota, and one of the largest lakes in North America, just to name a few: And I was at a loss for words and breath when I first saw the scenes around this great city.

I applied for this and that upon moving to Junction. My first time here was when I actually moved here: I was quick to be able to produce enough satellite imagery of the area to familiarize myself with it. When it came down to it I ended up with a job--a job that I considered to be only filling a gap at the time--with a contractor for a major wireless service provider.

In my training class I didn't finish my test first; I was close, however. I wasn't the first one to take the first receivables management call, either. I was the guy that had a firm knowledge of business and leadership principles and had learned how to adapt quickly to any given situation. This was new for me, however: Taking money and solving basic billing problems for people calling into me.
For what it's worth: I'm not much of a person for talking on the phone. I call my family about once a week, but that's it. I owned a cell phone once upon a time, but that's ancient history.

However, I attribute my quick rise in success to a number of factors: I had what many people considered the best trainer in the company; I had a first-rate mentor my first two weeks taking calls, but not yet on the floor; and I came into the company at a time when a person could ride a wave of change to the next level.

My first few months on the floor were the stuff that legends are made of. $80K collections my first two weeks, nearly $180K my first full month (second-highest grossing in the call center, in fact.) I began to memorize and learn to adapt rote policy and procedure after being told that I should push for the next level in the hierarchy. I was then selected to go on an away mission to assist in training half of a call center of new RM agents in systems at another call center.

Upon coming back to my site, I was on an interim basis in my current position. Within about 4 months of being in that position I, and several of my colleagues, were made permanent.

My progression in this position was made possible by the friendship and help of many people in my department. S.J. helped get me started and into a position that I could actually compete with her metrics and other abilities; Cliff with his experienced words of wisdom and soft-spoken way of pointing you in the right direction; Joy for "keeping me motivated;" and Rick to teach me the ropes that only a person of his tenure could.

During this time I rode the wave of change: Developing many of the call center standards for how we deal with our new line of business. Training aids. Applications (with my good friend and colleague, Rick (The Wonderful Richard of PAR).

So, that's the short version of the road that got me here, sans the military stuff.

Questions, comments, and bad jokes are always welcome.