Introduction: Where I'm at in this journey, and where I'd like to go. Part I: My Background

I guess since this is a blog post, and not me reaching out via social media, I can be as long and verbose as I need to be (but no more than). For most of my adult life I've felt lost, professionally I mean. A small list of things I'm good at, and a reasonable (by my measurement at least) level of intelligence, but no idea how to channel that into a good career. When I started college my hope was to go into public policy or work for the federal government on some level, an idea that I find completely repulsive now. 

I have no real love or passion for math, or hard science, outside of high level concepts and understanding the value of certain things. I understand math, and use it regularly for personal finance, or for critiquing things, looking at evidence for certain arguments or positions. But I'm not real into combing through obscure numbers or spreadsheets, or anything like that. I barely passed my required IT class in college, and my subsequent attempts at learning to code have been unsuccessful (by which I mean I didn't actually learn), so I knew IT wasn't for me. For a long time I felt these things were a personal failure of mine. In some ways I still do. Like, if I was really as smart as I'd like to think I am, and as other people have told me they think I am, surely I could have figured this out by now. 

In any case, by stroke of luck, or providence, when I was 26 (three years removed from college) I found myself hired by a local insurance agent. I knew only the basics about insurance, and my only real sales experience was in retail. Retail is much different than consultative or professional sales; it's very transactional, often about putting out fires and making sure the store has enough staffing for the posted business hours. Even as a shift supervisor, I wasn't really privy (or even interested in) the nitty gritty on revenue, costs, profit margins, engagement metrics, etc. Not that I didn't understand why these were important, I just didn't think about them and wasn't ever asked to. 

But when I moved into insurance that was completely different. Even as the lowest ranking member of the 4 person team, I was expected to know how many policies we had sold, how many we had lost, what our renewal rate was, how many leads we were converting into sales, what our saturation was in the households we had, etc. It was a totally different environment. While I learned a lot in the job, I ultimately view it as a failure. I was fired less than a year into it. The agent I worked for had little interest in teaching me the business (despite his assurances early in my time there), but to be honest I probably had little interest in learning it. In addition, I had made some mistakes that might have been smoothed over in a financially thriving insurance agency, but in our sputtering one were essentially nails in my coffin. 

One of the things that I learned from the job though was that I liked banking. The insurance company the agency represented had a banking arm that offered deposit and savings products, credit cards, home and auto loans. One of my best friends was working for a bank at the time and referred me over to try my hand at a traditional brick and mortar financial institution. After a couple of attempts I ended up taking a teller position. Pay was worse, and I felt a little bit like I was starting over, but the environment was much healthier. My manager was great and really took an interest in teaching me and giving me the tools and the opportunities to advance, there was insurance and a 401k, vacation time, great coworkers, paid holidays. 

Four months into the teller job I ended up being promoted to banker at another location. A little further away from my home, but the pay was better and the opportunities to grow were much greater. There was a lot more exposure to business clients due to the branch being located in a commercial-heavy area. I developed a great relationship with the business banker and ended up referring him a great number of very lucrative deals. I learned that sales wasn't that bad and that B2B sales was actually quite fun. I was the top performer at my branch, and one of the top performers in the region. A year into the job my manager left and ended up referring me to the bank he had moved to (though not at his branch). 

This job was probably where I reached the zenith of my sales career. In terms of my achievements, my comfort level, where I felt I was at professionally, etc. I was put in charge of the valued households for the branch. 400+ relationships, comprised of mostly retail consumer accounts, and a small (20%) amount of business relationships. In addition, they paid for me to get a life insurance license (when I worked for the insurance agent, I was only licensed for property and casualty) and gave me a more senior title. I was one of two sales reps at this branch, and the other rep had almost zero sales ambition. He was a great coworker, and an enormous resource for me to draw off of, but he had been working for the bank 15 years and never advanced beyond his position. Clients adored him and he could ask for whatever business he wanted from them, yet never really did. Most quarters he was under quota, but still kept plugging along. My manager essentially appointed me as second in command, assigning me tasks to do in his stead if he was ever out of the branch for an extended period of time, or if there was a task that needed to be done that he had neither the time nor the inclination to do. To his credit, I think he really wanted to prepare me to advance in my career. To the company's discredit, advancement was a complicated thing.

If you really pay attention (and most people don't, or don't even go to physical banks anymore), banks have a high turnover rate. Especially for tellers and retail bankers. I tell people this all the time, but people working in banks want to move: move up (be promoted), move on (to another bank), or move out (of banking altogether). The reason for this is mostly financial. Raises (if you even get one) are no more than 1-2%, and while bankers do get sales commissions, the fact that you are responsible for both sales and service, and your hours are almost always capped at a hard 40 (without access to leads and sales systems from outside of the office) your capacity to really make money is limited. The best bankers, if they really bust their ass and are really good at sales, might break $60k. Reality is $50k is probably pushing it. So the way you deal with this is you use the position as a spring board. Maybe you move into management, maybe you jump to another bank for a bump in base pay, or you use the bank's resources (tuition reimbursement, stable work hours, etc.) to better yourself for a jump to another career. The thing about this bank though, the turnover wasn't really there. Bankers were in their position for years without leaving or advancing. Same thing with management. Now there's nothing wrong with staying in a position and perfecting your craft, but when you're ambitious you don't want to spend years doing something at essentially the same pay. I certainly didn't want to stay in my position. The problem was what to move to. 

The obvious choices were manager or financial advisor. I wasn't enthusiastic about either one. I knew I wanted to do B2B sales, which management would allow me to do, but that job also came with it the responsibility of having to hire, coach, and develop team members, which didn't sound so fun to me. Especially not when it came with longer work hours, likely a longer commute (depending on what branch I was hired for), and only a small pay bump. Financial advising might be a little better, but it still came with a worse commute, longer work hours, and probably the worst combination of sales factors. B2C sales aren't very fun, and even less fun if you're selling something consumers very rarely understand very well and are often scared of (investment products). I thought about moving to mortgage lending but going to a commission only role when I had maybe 1-2 months of emergency funds saved up (I know I should have more) was a scary prospect. So, frozen by an inability to choose a direction, I stayed. I did apply for positions at other companies in other industries, but never received an offer. 

I ended up being fired earlier this year. Not for a lack of performance, but because the bank felt I had violated a particular policy. I disagree, and took the opportunity to defend myself, but to no avail. My manager expressed his sympathy, but did not offer to be a reference, or put in a good work for me should I apply for work at other banks (many of which he had worked for or had contacts in). In fact, when my current employer called him to verify that he had been my manager as part of a work history check, he refused to speak with the HR lady who called, and instead referred her to the main HR number. I'm baffled honestly. Someone I had such a great working relationship and who had given me such glowing reviews while I worked there, suddenly treating me like persona non grata. 

Now I'm working in IT. My official title might say otherwise, but I'm essentially a help desk guy. The same friend who referred me to the bank suggested I try to make a transition into IT, as he had done. My pay is better than what it was in banking, but to be honest I'm not enjoying it. I'm not sure if it's because of the nature of help desk work, or if it's because I just don't have the technical aptitude needed to thrive in this environment, but I find myself dreading going into work every day, and honestly terrified that I did something wrong and will be reprimanded and/or fired for it. Thus far, six months into the job that hasn't happened yet. I'll get into further detail in the next post, but for now this is kind of a brief synopsis of my career so far. I'm sure I've missed something or left something out, but this is where I am as of the date of this posting. 

My next post will be where I want to go and what I've done so far.