If you're a avid follower of my blog (and you know you are) you're thinking that I must have had a wonderful week at home after my trip to India. False. I actually spent a few days sequestered in a five star resort in Carmel California for a Google Sr. leadership offsite. The fact was that I was just too darn tired to blog. Sad life I know.
But it's a new week and I'm back on the road with a new attitude. Well, it's the same old bad attitude that I've always had but with a new found interest in posting on my travels. This week finds me high in the rocky mountains in Utah. I'm here for a couple of days of meeting with my HP counterparts as well as for some lectures at the Marriott School of Management. I am invited to come speak to marketing students a couple of times a year and share with them the wonderful world of sales and marketing through the Google lens. But I'm getting ahead of myself (which is easy to do as I'm often behind). Let's start on Monday morning.
5:00 am
BAM! The alarm goes off like the pistol at a track race you didn't even know you were in. I stumble out of bed trying to be as quite as I can. I throw myself into the shower and dress as quickly as I can. The race is on! And a race it is. The first part of the race is just getting to the airport. Living in the bay area traffic can be bad on any given day and just because I'm leaving at 5:30 am there are no promises that I'll get to the airport on time.
I do well, and get to the Oakland airport at 6:00 am (please don't do the math to determine my average speed required to get there in 30 min). I park, already forgetting which isle I was in, and run into the airport to find this:
My second race of the day. Being in the security line at 6:00 am is the best reality TV show EVER! People are who they really are. All facades are down as are patience levels and friendliness levels. I couldn't help smiling at people just to get a reaction. Most people viewed me with cautious concern. Turns out that I'm just a morning person so deal with it.
The flight was easy and quick and I soon found myself in Salt Lake City. Ugh. Where was the sun?
I'm beginning to feel my seasonal affective disorder coming on.
I spent most of the day with HP going through our launch plans and our go to market strategy. Things are good. It looks like I'll be able to show some results to Google this year which is always a good thing.
I agreed to meet my buddy Scott at his offices at his new company Needle. It's a really cool new way to get fans of a company to sell for that company online. He's the President (I'm quite proud that I'm friends with the President) and we were going to meet to do a quick errand and then work on our presentation for the Marriott school.
Turns out that his errand was quite interesting. We had to go to a local warehouse to collect some promotional materials from a company that Needle's founder has invested in. When we got there, we were handed boxes and told to go pick out some merchandise. In this instance, this was socks.
These socks here are off the hook cool:
So we collect a few (hundred) pairs:
I take the least amount as I'm really only there for a ride along and it's all kind of strange for me but I keep picking socks and smiling. Today I'm wearing my LA Lakers socks. :)
This also turns out that this is the warehouse where Becky Higgins stores and ships her Project Life stuff:
Stephanie is into this stuff so I was really tempted to grab her some stuff for her but was assured that to do so was stealing. So in summary, socks = good, scrapbooking = bad.
That night, the Pulsipher family spent the evening sorting through their sock stash:
After a good nights sleep it was off to the main show. Scott and I arrived on campus at 11:00 am and began to roam campus. First to the Tanner building to find a bite to eat and go over our slides. As it turns out, it was a devotional day so all the food places were closed. Bummer. Maybe, just maybe, there would be food available in the student union which is called the Wilkinson Center. We hike across campus and out of the corner of my eye I see something falling. Wait, was that snow?!? Where am I and why am I here? I like warm weather. I was raised in a desert for Pete's sake!
Lucky for me, it was just some flurries and nothing too bad. Upon entering the student Union I felt like I was being taken back in time. Back in the 80's, or the good old days as they are known to my kids, I was a student here and the building looks pretty much the same now as it did then. Not such a big deal you might think but the problem is that even back then, I remember thinking that it looked like it was 30 years past due for a major remodel. At this point, my advice to the school is to just hang on. At some point it will become retro, vintage or whatever euphemism you want to use to indicated that it's finally back in style.
We get there just as they are opening the food court. I grab a table while Scott heads over to grab us some burritos (courtesy of Taco Bell). I'm now head's down in my Chromebook working on some slides and I hear the tones of various BYU acapella groups performing in the nearby atrium. Why is it that college students think that they can harmonize without music? This urge has been scientifically proven to leave the human body in the late 20's. If you are in your 30's and still think you're a candidate for Pitch Perfect II, seek help.
One of the groups starts to canvas the food court passing out flyers. As they approach my table I can hear them talking to the other students. "Like us on Facebook and come see us tonight!" This pitch goes from table to table until they get to me. Without looking up I can see that they notice me, quickly assess that I'm well beyond the natural limit for what can be acceptable as cool, and they make a wide arc around my table and pick up their campaign on the other side of me. Whatever. Like I wanted to 'Like' you on Facebook anyway. (sniff)
In the end, all problems are solved with a Taco Bell bean and cheese burrito. I consume the warm goodness of my lunch as Scott and I make our way to our lecture hall. The conversation along the way goes something like this:
Me: Dude, hand me my soft taco
Scott: What soft taco.
Me: The one I asked you to buy me
Scott: I just ate it
Not the end of the world but I really wanted that taco.
I had to push that pain way down and gear up for the lectures. 750 kids sitting on the edge of their seats waiting to hear what we had to say:
Well, maybe that's not exactly what happened. There were that many students but if you factor out the ones that weren't face down in a laptop or smartphone or asleep, we have like 50 students looking at us. (well, maybe a few more than that were paying attention).
My favorite part of the fist lecture was at the end I was swarmed by students wanting to get more information from me. Questions ranged from have I used the new Nexus 5 to the standard question of how do I get a job at Google? My thrill came from looking up into the crowd around me and seeing the familiar face of Tanner Skousen. Tanner is like my second cousin twice removed cubed or something like that. He's the son of Stephanie's cousin Julie and her husband Rick. We love Julie and Rick and by the transitive properties of logic, we love Tanner. It made me smile to see that he was in the class and that he made time to say hi. Such a thrill. As a side note, Stephanie and I were entrusted to baby sit Tanner when he was 5 months old. Steph and I were just dating at the time and found the activity of making out quite thrilling and spent our time 'baby sitting' smooching and generally leaving baby Tanner to his own devices. It was then that we learned that babies are capable of rolling off the bed. Man, babies are resilient! I insist that Tanner is the man that he is today BECAUSE and not in spite of the fact that we let him roll off the bed. (Your welcome Tanner)
The second lecture was much like the first. The only different was that instead of having Tanner surprise me with a visit, I was surprised with a question I didn't expect. I called on one guy during the Q&A time and his question was, "So Hank, you look pretty ripped. Do you use the Google gym?" Yes, I am a TOTAL narcissist but it's still kind of freaky to have another guy call me ripped in front of a crowd of strangers. Thankfully, since I was speechless, Scott was there to save me with the quick response of, "If you want I can take a picture with his shirt off later tonight."
It was fun to present and to get to spend time with Scott. He ended up following me home as he has meetings in San Francisco tomorrow so he's asleep downstairs as I type. It's fun to get to spend time with him. This should become a habit.
But it's a new week and I'm back on the road with a new attitude. Well, it's the same old bad attitude that I've always had but with a new found interest in posting on my travels. This week finds me high in the rocky mountains in Utah. I'm here for a couple of days of meeting with my HP counterparts as well as for some lectures at the Marriott School of Management. I am invited to come speak to marketing students a couple of times a year and share with them the wonderful world of sales and marketing through the Google lens. But I'm getting ahead of myself (which is easy to do as I'm often behind). Let's start on Monday morning.
5:00 am
BAM! The alarm goes off like the pistol at a track race you didn't even know you were in. I stumble out of bed trying to be as quite as I can. I throw myself into the shower and dress as quickly as I can. The race is on! And a race it is. The first part of the race is just getting to the airport. Living in the bay area traffic can be bad on any given day and just because I'm leaving at 5:30 am there are no promises that I'll get to the airport on time.
I do well, and get to the Oakland airport at 6:00 am (please don't do the math to determine my average speed required to get there in 30 min). I park, already forgetting which isle I was in, and run into the airport to find this:
My second race of the day. Being in the security line at 6:00 am is the best reality TV show EVER! People are who they really are. All facades are down as are patience levels and friendliness levels. I couldn't help smiling at people just to get a reaction. Most people viewed me with cautious concern. Turns out that I'm just a morning person so deal with it.
The flight was easy and quick and I soon found myself in Salt Lake City. Ugh. Where was the sun?
I'm beginning to feel my seasonal affective disorder coming on.
I spent most of the day with HP going through our launch plans and our go to market strategy. Things are good. It looks like I'll be able to show some results to Google this year which is always a good thing.
I agreed to meet my buddy Scott at his offices at his new company Needle. It's a really cool new way to get fans of a company to sell for that company online. He's the President (I'm quite proud that I'm friends with the President) and we were going to meet to do a quick errand and then work on our presentation for the Marriott school.
Turns out that his errand was quite interesting. We had to go to a local warehouse to collect some promotional materials from a company that Needle's founder has invested in. When we got there, we were handed boxes and told to go pick out some merchandise. In this instance, this was socks.
These socks here are off the hook cool:
So we collect a few (hundred) pairs:
I take the least amount as I'm really only there for a ride along and it's all kind of strange for me but I keep picking socks and smiling. Today I'm wearing my LA Lakers socks. :)
This also turns out that this is the warehouse where Becky Higgins stores and ships her Project Life stuff:
Stephanie is into this stuff so I was really tempted to grab her some stuff for her but was assured that to do so was stealing. So in summary, socks = good, scrapbooking = bad.
That night, the Pulsipher family spent the evening sorting through their sock stash:
After a good nights sleep it was off to the main show. Scott and I arrived on campus at 11:00 am and began to roam campus. First to the Tanner building to find a bite to eat and go over our slides. As it turns out, it was a devotional day so all the food places were closed. Bummer. Maybe, just maybe, there would be food available in the student union which is called the Wilkinson Center. We hike across campus and out of the corner of my eye I see something falling. Wait, was that snow?!? Where am I and why am I here? I like warm weather. I was raised in a desert for Pete's sake!
Lucky for me, it was just some flurries and nothing too bad. Upon entering the student Union I felt like I was being taken back in time. Back in the 80's, or the good old days as they are known to my kids, I was a student here and the building looks pretty much the same now as it did then. Not such a big deal you might think but the problem is that even back then, I remember thinking that it looked like it was 30 years past due for a major remodel. At this point, my advice to the school is to just hang on. At some point it will become retro, vintage or whatever euphemism you want to use to indicated that it's finally back in style.
We get there just as they are opening the food court. I grab a table while Scott heads over to grab us some burritos (courtesy of Taco Bell). I'm now head's down in my Chromebook working on some slides and I hear the tones of various BYU acapella groups performing in the nearby atrium. Why is it that college students think that they can harmonize without music? This urge has been scientifically proven to leave the human body in the late 20's. If you are in your 30's and still think you're a candidate for Pitch Perfect II, seek help.
One of the groups starts to canvas the food court passing out flyers. As they approach my table I can hear them talking to the other students. "Like us on Facebook and come see us tonight!" This pitch goes from table to table until they get to me. Without looking up I can see that they notice me, quickly assess that I'm well beyond the natural limit for what can be acceptable as cool, and they make a wide arc around my table and pick up their campaign on the other side of me. Whatever. Like I wanted to 'Like' you on Facebook anyway. (sniff)
In the end, all problems are solved with a Taco Bell bean and cheese burrito. I consume the warm goodness of my lunch as Scott and I make our way to our lecture hall. The conversation along the way goes something like this:
Me: Dude, hand me my soft taco
Scott: What soft taco.
Me: The one I asked you to buy me
Scott: I just ate it
Not the end of the world but I really wanted that taco.
I had to push that pain way down and gear up for the lectures. 750 kids sitting on the edge of their seats waiting to hear what we had to say:
Well, maybe that's not exactly what happened. There were that many students but if you factor out the ones that weren't face down in a laptop or smartphone or asleep, we have like 50 students looking at us. (well, maybe a few more than that were paying attention).
My favorite part of the fist lecture was at the end I was swarmed by students wanting to get more information from me. Questions ranged from have I used the new Nexus 5 to the standard question of how do I get a job at Google? My thrill came from looking up into the crowd around me and seeing the familiar face of Tanner Skousen. Tanner is like my second cousin twice removed cubed or something like that. He's the son of Stephanie's cousin Julie and her husband Rick. We love Julie and Rick and by the transitive properties of logic, we love Tanner. It made me smile to see that he was in the class and that he made time to say hi. Such a thrill. As a side note, Stephanie and I were entrusted to baby sit Tanner when he was 5 months old. Steph and I were just dating at the time and found the activity of making out quite thrilling and spent our time 'baby sitting' smooching and generally leaving baby Tanner to his own devices. It was then that we learned that babies are capable of rolling off the bed. Man, babies are resilient! I insist that Tanner is the man that he is today BECAUSE and not in spite of the fact that we let him roll off the bed. (Your welcome Tanner)
The second lecture was much like the first. The only different was that instead of having Tanner surprise me with a visit, I was surprised with a question I didn't expect. I called on one guy during the Q&A time and his question was, "So Hank, you look pretty ripped. Do you use the Google gym?" Yes, I am a TOTAL narcissist but it's still kind of freaky to have another guy call me ripped in front of a crowd of strangers. Thankfully, since I was speechless, Scott was there to save me with the quick response of, "If you want I can take a picture with his shirt off later tonight."
It was fun to present and to get to spend time with Scott. He ended up following me home as he has meetings in San Francisco tomorrow so he's asleep downstairs as I type. It's fun to get to spend time with him. This should become a habit.
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