Jeff Burgess Motivational Business Manager
Author

After that not-so-subtle kick in the ass from my concerned father, I landed a warehouse job within a few days. It did not matter whether that company stored vacuum cleaner parts or automotive parts. That was the least of my concerns.

I was on a mission to make my dad proud of me again. I had desperately scanned the want-ads for any local job that I could parachute into.

It just so happened that I landed at a company that warehoused computers and associated computer parts. Little did I realize that randomness would turn into fate and destiny.

Starting in the Warehouse: The Value of Humble Beginnings

But there was nothing random about the mission before me. The warehouse was a mess, and the floor was even worse, cluttered with cigarette butts. This certainly made my first call of duty an obvious one.

Within a few hours, the floors were swept and wet-mopped, and I could finally get to the matter at hand, learning what the hell we were stocking. It was quite the mix, from computers and printers stacked on skids to hundreds of small parts, individually boxed and stacked on shelves.

In no time, my inherited OCD gene kicked in, and I was obsessed with finding out what went with what. Over the next three weeks, it became mission accomplished. During this process, Jud Beamsley, the company founder and CEO, would come back and see how things here looked. It sure seemed as if I had caught his attention.

Learning by Doing: Lessons You Can’t Get from a Textbook

Within a few weeks, it became clearer that I had. Jud began bringing guests through the warehouse, seemingly showing off the space.  Shortly afterward, Jud began introducing me to the guests during his tour of the warehouse.

That was pretty cool! It only served to motivate me even more. My juices were flowing.

That went to another level when, on future visits, Jud had these guests go to the warehouse without him. They were picking my brain on which items went with which, and who were the most frequent buyers of their products.

I found this most interesting, as surely that had sales data available with all that information. This only added to my confidence level. I was having these one-on-one conversations with regional sales managers from Okidata, Altos, and Wyse Technology.

Within a few more weeks, Jud asked me to participate in a meeting with him, along with Bernie and Grace Tse, the founders of Wyse.

They certainly did not talk down to me; in fact, they were just regular people who had important jobs within their company.  The conversations were more like a couple of guys and gals having some beers together. Just casual talk that happened to be all about business; two worlds colliding. This became my new norm in future meetings.

Building Trust as the Foundation of Success

And my brain was exploding. It was an education I could have never gotten from merely reading packing lists or looking at parts on shelves. I believe this way of learning kept me humble throughout my career.

I also think this lack of arrogance was among the reasons why I always connected later in my career with the manufacturer sales representatives at the various brands we covered. THEY were my best customers. I was unlike many of my peers, who shared a level of mistrust about working with them, fearful that they might share the information elsewhere.

Without trust, you have nothing. With trust, you have everything.

Over the course of my career, I built my reputation on introducing myself to those manufacturer sales reps within our assigned territories. I sold computer hardware to some of the largest companies in North America, yet my BEST customer was always the assigned manufacturer account manager assigned to that company.

They always considered me as an extension of THEIR sales force as well. The fact that they were getting revenue credit on everything I landed in their territory surely did not hurt!

From Warehouse Worker to Entrepreneur: Carrying the Lessons Forward

I brought all of this with me when I opened BCD in November 1999. My model for the new company was the exact same “build a business within the business” model that I had re-engineered five or seven times during my career path through the computer industry.

And this was the same with my employee team members after founding BCD. It was so easy for us to relate to each other, considering my roots. By making everyone feel they are an important part of the success, everyone gets a hop in step,

Taking that another step further, when I was at meetings at HP or in Dell’s Executive Briefing Center, my industry roots made me know that I belonged. Among the beauties of my background is that I had literally seen everything, pro or con, so nothing really fazed me.

It was safe to assume they never swept up cigarette butts on the warehouse floor before wet mopping it.

After the meeting, I would always beeline to the person taking the notes, asking if he had anything written that needed expansion. In many cases, they would hand me their notes and question their own accuracy.

This was a great way for me to learn what the customer considered most important out of all the things I discussed. Overall, it was a great way to tighten things up at future meetings elsewhere.

Granted, there were times during my career when I would need to momentarily absorb the blow, but I had so much history to fall back on that I was able to deflect anything, a gift that I inherited from my father, and was made into an art form by Kurt Russell in the 1980 movie Used Cars.

Leading Through Experience: Why Shared Work Builds Stronger Teams

Beginning in a warehouse, what turned out to be an incredible career that both grounded me and launched me. Learning from the bottom up is a much more hands-on career path than seeing things from the top down.

There was not a single role or job description at BCD that I asked someone to do that I had not done myself somewhere else.

After almost thirty years in the industry, when I opened my own company after working for a dozen companies and selling to hundreds of customers, I realized that no two are exactly alike.

Our combined effort to morph into whatever the customer needed us to morph into without negatively impacting our infrastructure was incredible, because we never changed ourselves; we merely gave them their desired look and outcome.

Because of the great infrastructure behind me, all I needed to do was realize it, then capitalize on opportunities by Knowing Thy Customer and Knowing Thy competition.

After all those years of building a “business within the business” for others, it was now my turn!

As the book title says, “It Worked For Me!”

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To learn about this entire journey, pick up a copy of 𝙄𝙩 𝙒𝙤𝙧𝙠𝙚𝙙 𝙁𝙤𝙧 𝙈𝙚: 𝙈𝙮 𝙇𝙞𝙛𝙚 𝙎𝙚𝙞𝙯𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙊𝙥𝙥𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙪𝙣𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝘽𝙪𝙞𝙡𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙎𝙪𝙘𝙘𝙚𝙨𝙨 today! Also available now in audiobook format!

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