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Character Building in Fargo

Written by: Todd Vande Hei

Article Overview: Like many of you, I had some experiences, very early on in my career that I would file in the “character building” folder. These memories I would not want to relive, as they were, frankly, miserable.

Character Building in Fargo

Like many of you, I had some experiences, very early on in my career that I would file in the "character building" folder. These memories I would not want to relive, as they were, frankly, miserable. Shortly after graduating in 1990 from my Alma Mater, St. John's University (like a mother's womb-warm, peaceful, quiet, happy--compared to the "real world"), I moved to Hell (Fargo, North Dakota-Hell is cold, not hot). Hell was hiring; there were no jobs anywhere else. So, I packed up my basketball and ten speed and took a job as the "Production Manager" for a small wholesale tuxedo business. The business, as you can imagine, was highly seasonal. This resulted in periodically hiring full-time, temporary staff to handle the shipping/receiving, dry cleaning, and alterations, all managed under my youthful, inexperienced watch. Because I was so "green," I made many hiring mistakes; also in management; and in leadership. This resulted in an onslaught of misery with impeccable timing: when the work flow increased, the hours got long, the temps started resigning. My ultimate responsibility was to ensure that the Groom in Bizmark was wearing the white tuxedo ordered, and the prom date had a matching periwinkle bow tie to his girlfriend's gown. If I failed, those special moments would be tainted by my ineptitude. If the temps fled; I was the safety net. Following were the countless hours "pinch hitting" where needed (management was out the window-it was absolute chaos), begging the few dedicated workers I had to stay, racing up and down the 3 story building, pressing shirts in the basement (sometimes well over 100 degrees), learning how to blind-stitch a pair of pants, and making sure shipping labels were properly affixed. My longest day was 36 hours. I remember the feeling, as I peeled my suit off at the end of the day(s), eyes blood shot and swollen, and seeing the salt stains around my navy blue dress socks from the sweaty heat of that basement: nobody knew and nobody seemed to care. The job; the location, all irrelevant. I was the hardest working 22 year old in the state. It was a secret, so I left a year later with the opinion I didn't belong in management; it was miserable, and I wasn't any good at it. It was certainly character building.

Another experience, similar, was in working for a large, residential painting contractor in the Chicagoland Area. I was 24, and recruited by them to head up the North Shore operations, later to take over a major portion of the metro area. It was my first crack at managing the P & L: sales, marketing, operations. Although the company was very small at the start, I was in way over my head. Like always, I compensated with effort where my ability was lacking. In the beginning, I had only 12 employees and finished with over 100, and the company made a decent profit. This, like the tuxedo business, was highly seasonal. I moved from Minneapolis to Chicago, was alone, and worked every day for the first few months. I was so "challenged" (I was terrible at the job at first) I slept in my office from Monday through Thursday. My logic was that if I saved a half hour commuting to and from, I would be able to get an hour longer sleep. So, every night at about 10 PM in my little office suite, hearing through the thin walls a periodic car racing by, the air conditioner rattling in the window, I would unroll my sleeping bag, turn out the lights, set my watch and wallet on the oak-colored Formica desk, curl up on the musty old carpet, and sleep like a 25 year old (I was thankfully young). The hard work was starting to pay off as we grew.

One morning, we had an executive meeting at the headquarters of the company with the leaders of the Minnesota and Ohio operations getting together to discuss our respective performance. It was a Friday morning, the end of a work week with nights spent on the office floor, and while driving south for the meeting, I pulled out my electric razor to start shaving (I was one of those guys-saved about 5 minutes a day). The battery died. I couldn't shave. When I arrived, the owner of the company looked at me with disgust-tired looking and day-old stubble--and tossed me a rhetorical question like he was throwing a Frisbee: "You couldn't even shave, could you?" Now, he's not a mean-spirited guy and had every right to expect professionalism from me. However, it was out of character for me to look like that, and he knew I was working hard; I tried to explain I had been sleeping in the office to keep up, but he cut me off and we began the meeting.

Why is all of this pertinent? Well, as I progressed, those painful experiences I'll never forget. Not so much the hard work, but the combination of the hard work (and performance) and not feeling appreciated. At a very young age I held positions where I hired many, many people. It became clear to me through that process, that there weren't very many people willing to be dedicated and put forth the effort I thought was so common. I DID learn that it played a key role in my success as I started to develop in my career. So, through simple deduction, I realized that if I was able to identify similar effort, there was almost immeasurable value there; likewise, with the opposite. That epiphany shaped the way I recruited, managed and lead, looking specifically for signs of determination and effort--even above experience and a history of success--and created an environment where the great people surrounding me carried me to levels I hoped for but didn't expect. Although not always with perfect execution, those I inherited with that character, I spent the lion's share of my time with, mentoring them. To summarize my lesson learned the hard way, after identifying those characteristics, I made it my mission to ensure I would never allow an opportunity to pass in recognizing that level of determination and effort. These characteristics, once identified, are true "diamonds in the rough" and should be treated as such, with great care.

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Article Tags: absolute chaos, alma mater, blind stitch, blood shot, blue dress, bow tie, character building, countless hours, dress socks, fargo north dakota, impeccable timing, ineptitude, longest day, periwinkle, prom date, s university, safety net, shipping labels, temporary staff, work flow



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