Last night, we attended the fundraiser for Oak Tree Montessori School sponsored by The Women's Circuit and other IT groups in Cincinnati. It was a great event, held at Bella's downtown. There were so many people there and the donations were pouring in! I hope they raised quite a bit of money and donations! It's a great cause, I urge you to donate!! Check out their wishlist and help make it come true! Thanks for a wonderful time!!
I attended with my european colleague. We had quite a bit of fun, talking to many people. Sue introduced us to more people and I ran into quite a few that I already knew. It was great to see everyone. Cincinnati has such a cool IT community. We may compete for business, but we also help each other in finding positions, resources, or help of any kind. It's the Mid-West way :)
The biggest surprise of the evening was running into Chad! I was so glad to see him. We used to work together at OneNet back in the "hey-day"! He was my account executive. He and I worked on multiple successful web projects. He would identify a need and had a good sense of estimations for the purposes of discussions with the client. Then he would bring me into the meetings and help define the project to bring it to fruition. We made a GREAT TEAM!! He and I were always #1 in sales/revenue for the year.
When OneNet started disbanding it's employees, he went to work with the original founders in a telecom company. Everything was going along at quite a good pace and two years ago, they contacted me to come to work with them. I ALMOST DID IT. I thought about it alot, I was really unhappy in my current position because we had no work, there was discussion of laying off my team or at least parts of it, and my hands were tied because I wasn't empowered to do more business development at the time. Things here were pretty dismal. So, their offer was quite entertaining and tempting.
Through a great deal of soul-searching and discussions with my management, I decided to stay here and with their blessings, really help build the business. For those of you that really know me, you know I don't do anything half-way! I shoot for the stars, I work really hard and I thrive on achievements. I felt my job here wasn't done and I hadn't proven my full potential at that point. Since then, I fulfilled my obligation and increased revenue in my group that first year by about 25% and then doubled it this year. It was a concerted team effort and I am very grateful to my team for working so hard and being so dedicated. If I moved on now, I would have no regrets. I feel that I have more than fulfilled my obligation and have built a wonderful business in my area.
Chad informed me that he has since left that company due to low revenues and loss/lack of business. I'm sorry to hear they are struggling, they are such a great group of guys. But I'm relieved to know I made the right choice. And believe me, the choice came at a cost! I've been through quite a lot over the last 2 years in my career. Nice to see you old friend!
Gotta get going to work. Hope everyone has a great day - it's Friday - TGIF!!
"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly."
- Robert F Kennedy
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