I took today off thinking it’d be my last day at home for Christmas in North Carolina & that I’d be flying back to Denver tonight, but ended up staying in Colorado out of precaution after being closely exposed to Covid at work several times over the last two weeks. (Note: I ended up testing negative, so all is good #thankuModerna #thankuDolly)
As much as I wish I hadn’t been exposed and could’ve felt good about going home… the past few days (mostly) to myself have been absolutely wonderful and frankly, very needed & overdue. All I could think about over the last week of work was “I just need this year to be over… just need it to be 2022”. One of my teammates & best friends, Stephen, agreed. While we weren’t quite sure at the time as to why we felt like 2022 would feel tangibly different than 2021, we simultaneously agreed that we should & would never genuinely wish time away… a sentiment I’ll circle back to later. If I had to make an educated guess, though– what was really needed was a few slow, unstructured days with little to no external obligations.
I’ve spent the last few days cleaning; doing nothing; flicking hairbands for Ruby; playing with some block printing stuff I got at Hobby Lobby; doing Christmas with a few friends; trying to reintegrate some meditation into my life; observing all as many of the overarching thoughts than ran through my brain this past year, as possible; and, of course, thinking about 2022. I’m not big on having hard-set goals because let’s be real; life will laugh in your face about ~95% of goals or timelines that you set. That said, though; last Christmas Day, I spent a few leisurely hours writing out some goal I had in mind for 2021 in 4 categories; personal, professional, financial, and spiritual.
I didn’t look at these as “new years resolutions”, because personally I believe it’s more realistic to leave room for trying/failing/trying again when building new habits into your life, rather than starting “resolutions” on Day 1 and calling it quits 2 weeks in. I’ll leave it to the audience’s imagination as to which of these many bullet points came to fruition, haha, but– while happily admitting that much of this didn’t pan out entirely or at all– a lot of it actually did.
My favorite part, though, isn’t just the parts that “came true”. It’s those things + the idea that the December 2020 iteration of Lauren wrote them down, and then actually… made them happen over 12 months. If current me is *this shook* about the outcome, I can’t imagine how past Lauren would feel if I told her… there’d be a lot of “how??” questions & disbelief no doubt. Honestly, it makes me really proud of who I was back then, even though in the moment I didn’t feel like I’d done anything in particular to feel proud of/for. I’m proud of that young woman — still pretty fresh off a relocation to Colorado with no/few local friends, 5 months into her job with <$2K in sales at EOY20, 9 months into the pandemic-induced hell that was impacting all of us– because; not only did she dream up all of these ideas for her future self in 2021… but she dared to write them down in ink & hang it on her fridge; consciously choosing to admit & define these goals despite 1. knowing her discipline & track record of hitting yearly goals wasn’t the most impressive, and 2. knowing very well that the ones she outlined wouldn’t all be easy or (emotionally, mentally, literally?) realistic.
She knew several of these goals were lofty, and understood that several goals were interdependent on the successes of other goals coming first. As mentioned, not all of these came true and I’ll be the first to admit that the consistency was NOT always there– and hell, I didn’t look at these every day. They weren’t something I berated myself over– the sheet more served as a passive reminder on the evenings I happened to glance at it, or the times I was bored and thought “hm, what should I do with my day today”. There were plenty of weeks that did not feel majority happy, or good, or [insert another positive adjective here]— but hey! Our highs can only feel as high as our lowest lows, and we’re choosing to look at the wins, the losses lessons, & the big picture. In hindsight & all-in-all; the lessons I walked through (or in some cases, was dragged & shoved through) this year, in pursuance of each of these goals – whether they were “successful” or not – are the real outcomes & tokens of new-found perspective that I’m most proud to end the year with.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited to dive into plans & aspirations for 2022, because that’s just me– and I am excited. However, my astrology suggested not rushing into 2022 and taking time to reflect on 2021 (L O L), so… I suppose I agree that it’d be a great disservice to myself and to this year if I didn’t pump the brakes, slow down, & spend some time reflecting on everything 2021 was; the things learned & the patterns observed, the depths of excavation & highs of celebration, and just… take some time to sit in it all. Be present with it– admire it, revisit parts, and appreciate it as fully as one can.
With full faith that there will be more great years ahead, I can’t help but get full-body goosebumps (like, seriously, right now as I’m typing) from just thinking about how 2021 will forever be an… irreplaceable, un-duplicate-able, chaotic, humbling, powerful, educational, clarifying, and dare I say magical 12-month phase of this life’s path.
I might (or might not!) take another post to delve into 3/4 of the more intimate categories I set aspirations for in 2021. I say “might not” because to be honest, sharing my spiritual/personal/financial successes & failures seems like they’d be pretty “boring” and irrelevant to read about, and although this blog is “for me”, I do get a little self-conscious speaking so freely sometimes… but also, who doesn’t love feeling seen?
Any-who lol, I digress.
For this post: while I know that work is *not life* — damn. Work in 2021 was real as fuck, was exhausting at times and wildly exhilarating at others, and surely was one hell of an experience. The reason it was most exciting and is something I want to shout about, though, is because work was the 1 core area of my life this year that was shared the most with others… and was made better a hundredfold by that aspect alone. While obviously I played an important individual role, because duh — it’s sales — we all had a job to do & had to do it whether we liked it or not, haha – the efforts & relationships it entailed made the entire year all the more exciting and satisfying. All that said– whether anyone reads this or not, I need to write this shit down so I can relive it for years and years. If you’d like to join me, please see my recount below of what I’d like to call:
2021: The Year of The Goonies, an informal, non-poetic Epic
No, I don’t think or feel that the title of this is overly dramatic, haha.
Setting the proverbial stage: The team I joined at Datadog was formed 18 months ago in June of 2020, when my manager started as an external hire building out an entirely net-new team of sellers based in Denver. Since all of our teams are named after “famous fictional teams”, our manager, Shaun, chose to honor his favorite coming-of-age movie by naming us The Goonies (full disclosure: I had never seen The Goonies before… and got away with it for about 5 months until I got caught not catching a reference during a team meeting.. and thus, was then obligated to watch it– hahaha. 8/10). Between July-November, he hired most of the folks who make up our team today, and of today’s team of 8 sellers; 7 of us onboarded remotely and 1 worked on another team in our Boston office before moving out here and joining our team in January.
Setting the proverbial scene: Datadog, as a company, 5x’d in employee count between 2017 & 2020 while going Public in the fall of 2019. The company has continued to focus on rapid growth post-IPO, so– safe to say that speed, innovation, and high standards are all names of the game. Our software & target customer market is slightly notorious (at least internally, if not externally) for being a challenging product to learn as a non-technical person– and I’ll personally attest to this, hahah. The onboarding “ramp time” we’re given of 3-4 months to build up our pipelines and actually start selling could (read: is) more realistically described as 9-12 months. New hires are told that while ramp is 3-4 months, it’ll actually take about a year to to start consistently hitting quota (i.e. to finally start catching a consistent commission check– tough pill to swallow for people in sales, even with a salary).
Not saying we have a seller retention problem, but… let’s just say it’s not a surprise when you see someone go find a new job before they’ve made it a year. Judging by the (limited) datasets I’m privy to, it’s probably generous to say that at most; less than half, if not a third of Datadog reps in a given year hit their annual quota. But; being mindful of the company’s growth rates & ramp time, it’s also very safe to say that success trends along the line of tenure– meaning that the reps who stick it out longer than a year do significantly better, consistently, as time goes on. It’s not an easy job and I don’t think anyone on our team would say they’ve mastered even 80%(?) of the role… but, at least we’ve all more-so accepted the struggle as “part of the fun”.
Setting the challenge: As individuals & as teams, we’re graded on our performance in two key areas; 1. how many “Opportunities” we open, and 2. how much New Business we close– of which, we’re only paid on the latter. (Note to non-sales people: think of “Opportunities” as literal opportunities to possibly close new business. After I meet with a prospective customer who is interested in formally exploring & buying Datadog, I create an “opportunity” in our sales system and attach an initial, monetary quote to the opportunity. From there, the sales system is where I track the “opportunity”, add notes, & is visible to all my leadership. If all goes well, the opportunity results in the customer buying, and then I mark the opportunity as “Closed Won” for New Business.) On a monthly basis, each seller wants to generate $15K “Monthly Recurring Revenue” in opportunity pipeline– while also closing $5K MRR in actual sales.
Working backwards with some quick math; to hit our individual goals and account for the fact that some deals won’t end up working out, each seller ideally needs to generate $180K MRR in opportunities each year– y’know, to give us good odds at hitting $60K closed won by December with an extra $120K as cushion. To give you an idea in terms of what that equates to in annual revenue for the business– a full team of 8 sellers together is responsible for generating $17.28M in business opportunities, and successfully closing $5.76M (of that $17.28M) as new customers. If I had to guess, I’d say the Average Sale Price per new customer is $2.5K/mo or $30K/year… so I’ll let y’all do the math on how many deals a team of 8 needs to close to hit their $5.76M/year quota. Historically, the top performing teams have reps & managers who’ve been around 2-4 years.
Now– Putting the stage/scene/challenge all together: lengthy average ramp time, the technical product (that’s doubled in feature size since my start date, no less), aggressive sales goals, and being an all but brand new team with very limited Datadog experience… in January, it felt apparent that we had our work cut out for us. Almost all of us were off the official 3-month ramp period, but we were still very, very green in dog-years. Personally, I’d just come out of a 3 month panic/can-I-do-this?/work-related-ego-death/acceptance phase in my own ramp period, and despite putting “close 60K+ MRR” on my dream board… I didn’t know if or how I was gunna do that, haha. If I had to speak for most of my teammates, I’d say they all probably felt similarly.
Fast forward 4 quarters & 12 more months of Work From Home to last Thursday morning, December 23rd, which was our last selling day of the year. We all joined our 8:30am “stand up” on zoom, and after some casual banter, Shaun pulls up a google doc containing his agenda for the call. Here, we all see some screenshots showing The Goonies ranked against all the other Commercial teams in North America; I’d say 2/3rds sit in Boston (NA East) & the remainder sits in Denver (NA West).
Boston’s office has been established for ~7 years, give or take; and Denver started building teams <2.5 years ago, with The Goonies being arguably the “most senior” team in Denver these days (the “senior” reference by our manager and other leadership always gets a chuckle out of us, or at least… me).
Shaun proceeds to go over the illustrated graphs comprised of the top 10 (of 20 or so?) Commercial teams in North America. Based on the occasional “state of the org” meetings with our VP, there’d been whispers here and there amongst a few us about how we were ranking as a team in the second half of the year… and/but, the screen confirmed what every single sales team hopes to see at the end of Q4– which is when the numbers really count. We’ve ended the year ranked #1 in Pipeline Generation (i.e. total monetary value of new “opportunities” created) & quite possibly, pending final tallies… might have just finished our first calendar year as a team as #1 for New Business Sales in all of Commercial North America.
On mute, I slacked Stephen “holy shit”.
Stephen and I have been pondering a wide, WIDE variety of topics all year– which understandably has made us into dear friends. If we’re ever able to quit our day jobs, I’ll go out on a limb and say that I think we’d make very good philosophical podcast co-hosts, hahah. More recently, though, our recurring themes of conversation revolve around the year we’ve had, and the resulting hypotheses around what 2022 will look like for all of us– and for The Goonies as a whole.
As someone with far greater sales experience than I, Herb has told me time and time again how uniquely special this year has been for him in his ~20 year sales career. Even without the same years of experience under my own belt, I wholeheartedly agree with what he’s shared. With all due respect to all the other managers, I’ve got to give it to Shaun, who clearly came in knowing how to put together & empower a team comprised of stellar reps, who are not only driven & competent in taking responsibility their individual roles but are all… truly intelligent, cool, kind, funny, resourceful, humble, and all-around really, really good people. As a result, we all work well together & genuinely enjoy each other. Evidence of this can be found in:
- all the days & weeks we fumbled, together, through our shared lack of knowledge & processes
- the competencies we gained from one another & the “aha” moments we shared
- the ways we spoke up to share our wins & own our losses for the sake of bettering the team
- the tight camaraderie built via slack, zoom, and virtual happy hours while working from home
- the frequent, friendly 1:1 “race you to 3 meetings booked” with loser buying coffee, just to make things fun
- the times one of us accidentally grinned or stifled a laugh while reading a message in our manager-less slack group during a team meeting; most often resulting in Shaun calling out the perpetrator & making them share “what’s so funny” out loud
- … speaking of; the creation of “Nuunsquad” in the first place so we’d have a safe space for sharing funny TikToks, music videos, low-key investigative work, and asking dumb questions “so Shaun doesn’t think we’re idiots”
- the (eventual) in-person team outings that never failed to result in late nights out on the town, with the occasional over-sleeping standup (oops), hangovers, and car/backpack/wallet retrievals the next day… and the point where Shaun decided to start writing-off productivity the days following team dinners & accept that we just have too much fun together
- the examples, time & time again, of how we’ve leaned on & supported each other to levels above & beyond what I (or maybe any of us) would’ve ever imagined– honorable mentions to the calls, “just checkin’ in” & “is your deal in yet??” texts, & drinks outside of 8-5
- the many days where we found open ears & hearts in one another when our personal lives, fears, frustrations, sadness, and anxieties needed a safe & trusted outlet
- the impressive retention of 7/9 of the original team members
- the ways we’ve celebrated, reassured, grieved with, & lifted each other up — and can’t forget the laughs & roasts, of course
- the individual senses of accountability to ourselves and to one another — for owning our personal success as a contributing factor to the team’s success
- the measurable leveling up, and leveling each other up
Personally; my most impactful memory this year, without a doubt, is from the last day of Q2. We’d all come into the WeWork to do EOQ– making it the 2nd or 3rd time ever that the team had been all in one place, together, in-person. We were well into the final hours of the work day and I had one outstanding deal to close that night– it was 6 months in the making, worth $31K, and had been fraught with several unforeseen wrenches such as my Champion being laid off 2 weeks prior and Google Cloud trying twice to kill our deal… going as far as to call the company’s CFO, who was supposed to be my signer, and threaten their partnership if they signed with Datadog. Safe to say that hours of emotional energy and tears had gone into this final day. To top off all that chaos; me, Shaun, and our Director had been in a conference room for over 90 minutes trying to figure out how to make our sales system do what we needed it to do so we could send the freakin’ Docusign out to the signer who was located on the East Coast. Given she was two hours ahead of us and the day was waning, it basically meant that our already-small window for getting the signature by end-of-day was cut down by 2 hours, lol.
A little after 6pm, we walk out of the conference room to a mostly deserted office space; mostly deserted, aside from all of my teammates. There they were– bumpin’ throwback hits on a bluetooth speaker, laughing & imbibing together with an open case of white claws on one of the desks. I remember walking out, laptop in hand & eyes wide, proclaiming something like “Oh my gosh, it’s past 6! What are you guys still doing here?!” prompting them to all turned towards us. Wish I remembered who, but someone emphatically replied “Are you kidding? We’re not going anywhere until you close EZ Texting!”
Y’all… I could’ve cried! I could cry right now just thinking about how much this meant to me. They – a group of people who, up until this point, had basically 98% existed in my life only on the computer, and I in theirs’; of their own volition – had decided that they were going to stick it out with me until the end of this long, arduous, individual deal.
We ended up drinking around the office until we ran out of claws, and opted to walk the party to Oskar Blues Brewing down the street. Once seated at a patio table, Shaun ordered a round of tequila shots to have on-hand for when the agreement came back signed. Low & behold, hahaha– those shots (and my teammates) ended up sitting there very patiently for ~3 hours waiting for the completed Docusign to come through to my laptop, which stayed out, open, and on Oskar Blues’ wifi for the entire duration. Shaun graciously filled the space with dinner & a plethora of beverages in the meantime… hopefully on Datadog’s dime, now that I think about it… and everyone together filled the air with bubbling conversation, jokes, and the occasional “have you refreshed your computer?! has she opened the Docusign yet??”.
By 10pm we’d FINALLY received the signed agreement (yay!), wrapped everything & the bar tab up, cheers were made, and shots were finally taken; and we headed to Red Bar– an appropriately named Russian vodka bar that I’m not not convinced is actually a front for some sort of local mafia chapter considering 1. how much we estimate the rent is, based on it’s prime location, and 2. how absolutely DEAD it is every single time we go in there.
While many-a-topic was discussed around the bar that evening, there was one point where Stephen, who was sitting on the barstool next to me, looked at me and said something like this (paraphrased) with a tone of seriousness; “Lauren, sit in this. Feel how this feels. Seeing you in the office today was incredible… the focus you had & how you carried yourself was something I haven’t had the chance to see before in person. We were all out on the floor, talking and in conversation, and you just went in and out of conference rooms with Jake & Shaun all day, cool-calm-and-collected almost like you had blinders on, all while this was on the line. I know you said you were freaking out, but you didn’t look like it. I’m telling you very seriously; these deals, and what you’ve just done, is something that many seasoned reps dream of doing once in their entire careers. I know you’re trying to be humble but seriously, it’s been amazing to watch your confidence grow since December, or even March, and see how you’ve grown as a leader on the team. I feel like in 10-15 years, you’ll be running the show and I’ll get to be the one who’s able to say ‘Yeah, I was there when Lauren blew her number out in the first half of the year, in less than 12 months in the role’. I’m very proud of you. Take the compliment, and… please enjoy this, because you did this.”
This day/night, and this particular conversation, is undoubtedly one that I’ll always hold close to me– partially because yes, I am proud of how a lot of my work stuff turned out (that said, what I haven’t written about are the parts that didn’t go well, but that will be best addressed in a “personal” reflection post due to what I learned about myself personally via my work shortcomings… and there were plenty, hahah).
I share this memory though, not only because of what it meant to me on a personal level. This day & night – these memories, from these hours, and the spoken words like these – are the best attempt I can make at depicting my perspective of the depth of support, friendship, and belief granted to me by the people I feel so genuinely blessed to have met and worked alongside this year. I’ve said it in a prior post and I’ll say it again; the relationships I hold close to me are largely what makes my life beautiful and worth living.
Thinking about it now, for majority of my life… my mom was my singular, most potent source of love, support, reassurance, and guidance. This carried into my first years out of college, where she’d answer my phone calls during the work day and on every single hour-long commute home. As a sensitive, strong, maternal, & career-focused woman herself– it probably didn’t even occur to her just how selflessly loving it was to provide me an outlet for gushing about my day-to-day, wins, and losses; and in turn, offering genuine words of affirmation, care, pride, and wisdom. Ah… funny how so many roads lead back to her.
The absence of a sounding board as sure as hers’ is one I had/have definitely noticed in every corner of my life over the last few years. There’ve been many days I called my best friend Anna, or my sister Taylor, and cried that “no ones words, no matter how genuine & well intentioned I know they are, ring in my ears and heart with the same undeniable truth that her’s did” — and, I felt like an asshole for feeling this way, but how could they? When needed, there were few words Mom could say that didn’t immediately instill a sense of calm, faithful truth in my heart– no matter how distraught or chaotic I felt inside. Her physical departure has and will always been felt. Even my happiest, most celebratory moments this year served as reminders of the tremendous pain her absence has created; pain in times of celebration that – prior to 2021 – I’d only read about in grief books. Pain I thought I could put off until I got married, or had a baby — not pain brought up by big, happy moments in my career. Pain of having to learn & deal with the deeper reality of the matter, too; that for better & worse, my emotional assurances had always come from the outside, and never from the inside… but, that’s another topic best suited for a different category, haha.
Putting aside these self-assurance issues; none of us, no matter how much we try, can do things alone. Especially when it comes to the “big things”, no one can tell me that they don’t all need a strong, supportive, genuine community to make the real magic happen– even if just 2-3 people, or in my case — 8 people, 9 including me. Don’t get me wrong, one person can do a LOT on their own — and we all usually must and do accomplish a lot on our own. But, when it’s multiple people supporting each other as individuals, and/or working towards a shared, common goal… idk, to me it makes room and alignment for “big” magic. Connecting some dots now, while putting fingers to the keyboard… the void that her death left in my life feels connected to why this year at work, with this team, has grown to hold so much value to me… why I felt so compelled to write all this down even if it’s just for my future, possibly-dementia’d self to remember it by. I’m absolutely not saying I’m the only one on my team who feels this year was special, or that we didn’t all work hard & bust our asses to stay on top of our respective responsibilities, because yeah — every single person on this team did, and it’s something I hope everyone is incredibly proud of themselves for. In addition though, for me… I feel like my coworkers-turned-friends sincerely.. filled at least part of the void that I’d been missing, this year?
I wonder doubt that they realize this personal impact on me, because here I am myself — just now finally putting 2:2 together. Seriously; these genuine relationships, the listening to understand, to truly see; the shared struggle, and, the holding-up-the-mirror with their words when it was needed, critique or otherwise; and the sticking it out together as a group… The Goonies have really help me to see parts of myself, my ambition, & my contributions in a light similar to the light that we so often shine on others… but are rarely able and/or willing to shine on ourselves. That, coming from people you respect, care for, trust, feel safe with, and love… dang. By far, this group of people – whether they know it or not – have fostered an energy & core environment that’s not only unbelievably amazing to work/live/play in, but also has come closer to filling this absence in my life than anyone person (or anything else), to-date. Considering that the idea of “filling” this void seems like no easy feat, and one I certainly wouldn’t have expected this year, or maybe even ever… hm. Kinda feels like a real-life example of big magic?
The second reason I wrote this out, though, is because it feels like a beautiful reminder of a larger lesson that I’ll always associate with this team and this year– and will take with me going forward. Soak it in, appreciate it, and enjoy the moments while they’re here.
And that’s a perfect segue into wrapping this novella up, if I do say so myself. After reviewing our near-final rankings as a team, Shaun shared a few word of praise & thanks & cheers, and asked if anyone had anything they wanted to comment on the year. A short silence followed… surprise, haha. I assumed that no one, myself included, wanted to jump in & answer a question that we all took so very much to-heart. Considering all the thinking I’d been doing, though (what’s new)– I spoke up:
“I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been thinking a lot about this year in general, and… I think if someone had told me, or any of us, back in January that this was the year this team would’ve ended up having, I probably wouldn’t have believed you… and it just makes me really grateful.”
As a person who’s almost always nervous when sharing vulnerable thoughts out loud, I was too busy looking at everything but the screen to catch most of the reactions… but, I’m pretty sure that nods of agreement were had all around. Cooper added that “without a doubt this has been the best year” in his professional career, “100% because of this team”.
All in all, by end of 2021: 3 of us have hit our annual quotas from straight bookings, and a few more of us – pending final counts – very well may hit quotas from “growth” in various customers’ accounts (basically, we get credit for any growth usage a customer has in the first 3 months after we get them to sign… and luckily Datadog’s product is so great that a lot of companies grow their usage pretty fast.) A few other teammates are poised to absolutely blow their Q1 ’22 numbers out of the water, which I’m so excited to see come to fruition for them. The 2 newer folks who started this spring/summer are both rockstars in the making, so there’s no doubt in my mind that they’ll be leading the team – both literally and in bookings – by this time next year. Not quite sure where we stand in regards to the $17M and $5M team quota numbers I mentioned at the outset of this long-ass post, but considering we collectively opened $3M+ (out of $17M total) opportunities in the last 3 months alone… can’t imagine the totals are all that shabby. 🙂
I’ve said the following to folks on our leadership team, to Shaun, to various friends at work, and I’ll mean it forever; the fun is in the winning, but it is so much more fun when everyone is winning together. We’re all proud, but this is my blog, so if it wasn’t already obvious I’ll say it out-right; I am so, so incredibly proud of what we were each able to do this year for ourselves and for the team– and couldn’t have dreamed a better, more amazing group of people to do it with when I moved here 15 months ago.
End Scene.
Looking ahead to 2022, several of us are – or will be – up for promotions shortly. In all scenarios; my close confidants and I feel fairly confident that our team will be passing 4-5 people along to their next in-house venture sometime between January and June of 2022. Previously mentioned, a few other teammates are posed to have phenomenal Q1s – which is so, so exciting – and (not jinxing it!!!) if I had to guess, would more than likely set them up for promotions well before the end of next year.
Afterword: It’s all incredibly exciting, of course. Pretty sure everyone who starts as a Commercial rep with Datadog has one of two end goals in mind; either get promoted into Mid Market, or Management. It’s genuinely amazing (and kind of unheard of, or at least very unexpected) that so many of us have found enough individual success this year – this short in our tenures – to be in talks with various leaders about our near-future advancement opportunities. Again, what a testament to Shaun. While a lot of individual work went into these wins, respectively; and without discrediting my personal effort, I’ve gotta say– I’m not quite sure it would’ve panned out this way were it not for having such an amazing village to rely on — and when I say that, I mean a village of these people specifically. That said– it’s simultaneously just so bittersweet. A very surreal feeling accompanies the hush-hush knowledge that the group dynamic we have today will be in – what one can only assume – far different form by this time next year, let alone in 6 months.
Looking back on my & Stephen’s shared desire to get done with 2021 and onto 2022; I think most of this actually stems from the discomfort he and I have both been feeling given the uncertain, looming timelines for individual transitions, and hence– transitions for the group. Things feel happy, and maybe even a lil’ peacefully triumphant– but also up-in-the-air. As people whose entire job revolves around controlling attempting to control scenarios that are rarely, if ever, really in our control #lol #sales– I’m thinking that the whole scenario feels a little too “unknown” for our liking. At the end of the day, it’s all above our pay-grade anyway, so we really have no say or consistent, updated intel on what’s to come. Then, there’s also the nostalgia we sense is coming… nostalgia for a time that we don’t really want to say goodbye to quite yet, and the team dynamic we’ve come to know and love. It’s all just happening way faster than I think any of us saw, or anticipated… but I guess life does it’s thang and gives us what we need to grow, whether we see it that way or not. While half of me is excited for the future, the other half just wants to scream “time, slow down”
If there’s one thing anyone can deduce with any amount of reasoning; things will always change. Change is hard, wonderful, frightening, beneficial, and needed; not to mention– it sometimes serves as a welcome relief, and in these cases of promotion– even as a reward for a job well done, for both rep and manager. In many ways, I’m looking forward to it. But for now, that’s about it. No more, no less. Brain-do-no-more-thinking. Brain-just-sitting-soaking-and-appreciating. Trying to remember that these are the good ol’ days of the future, so for now– I’m going to be here.
While work is just one area of our lives, and is certainly not the most important… it hopefully goes without further saying that this has been a year full of moments, connections, mentorship, friendship, and… small shifts & changes, all of which I’m tremendously grateful for. From both a professional & personal perspective – it’s a year I fully appreciate will never be replaceable in my life. There’ll never be adequate enough words… but here’s to trying 🙂
Cheers to a happy, healthy, & prosperous new year– whenever it comes, & whatever it holds.
Always, all my love,
LP
**Update from the day after I wrote this: teammate number 1 has announced his promotion to Mid Market starting next week. Nope, I definitely didn’t shed a tear when we got off the zoom… okay yes I did. But only happy ones. 🙂
It’s already upon us, and with that– xx ❤
Through Lauren's Lens 