When I began working in the customer service industry in 2012 I immediately felt at home. I have been involved in leading customer service teams since 2013 and have learned a lot. I’ve come to enjoy hiring and training people, formulating and executing detailed plans, working busy shifts, communicating with co-workers and customers alike, and producing products and implementing services that make people’s lives better. At Papa Johns I learned how to manage busy shifts and lead a team to serve customers consistent products in a timely manner. I began to develop a vision for training and a love for systems. At Five80 Coffeehouse the General Manager and I acted as operators, implementing our vision for the shop. This was the first time I became involved in the human resources side of the customer service business. I wore many hats at Five80 Coffeehouse and I learned first and foremost how to run a business and take care of customers and employees longer term. At Da Vinci’s Coffeehouse and Gelateria I made a game plan to improve the shop. In June 2018 we implemented the plan. We fired some team members, hired some new team members, retrained the whole team, raised employee wages, updated our recipes and upgraded our equipment. I was so thankful for the help of my assistant manager and Da Vinci’s team. In the first three months we cut nearly $5K in costs and raised sales by over $10K (compared to the same quarter in previous year). We raised profits by nearly 25%. I really enjoyed working so purposefully for the long term improvement of the business. I find most of the details of running a business to be really invigoratingOver the summer of 2018 Ben Kreis, then general manager at Fastsigns, persuaded me to move to Topeka and work as a salesman. There was a lot to learn moving from retail to a more complex and mostly custom business to business oriented company. After a year we’d gotten to a point where I was handling about 60% of sales volume and almost 75% of all orders. I loved interacting with so many different businesses and facing the ongoing challenge of understanding such a complex business. Since Ben’s exit in Spring of 2020 I’ve taken on more responsibility and helped train another sales person. I now handle complex orders and large clients. I also order materials, schedule installations, oversee the other sales personnel, deal with accounts receivable and manage the point of sales system. I want to work on a happy team to serve people and create positive culture that improves business and makes life better.