Mike’s First Blog Post

Since I’m new to the industry, I’d like to begin our relationship with a nice, honest start: This blog is going to be awesome. So awesome, that every Tuesday afternoon, you all are going run to your computers, yelling something like, “Oh man, Mike’s blog is up RIGHT NOW. WHOOO!”

And while I’m indulging in truth-time, and clearly I must be since there is no lying allowed in blogs, or the Internet in general, I should say that one of my primary goals with this blog is to make it so amazing that Charles straight-up quits writing his. You can read it here, if you like, but I don’t know why you would want to, since I’m going to write a poem in like three lines that is pretty much better than anything he is putting up today. Here is my poem:

Hey Charles, watch out
Now I am writing online
Things that people like

Fun Fact: Charles could tell you that my poem is a haiku, since he was a poetry major in college. How that translates to managing online editor, I’ll never know except that my copy of ‘The Complete Charles Plyter” is missing a few pages.

Introductions and silliness aside, I do have an interesting story that I wanted to post today. Earlier this morning, one of my coworkers dropped off a thank-you card from a supplier expressing gratitude for being included in one of my first stories with Promo Marketing. A small, handwritten card, the gesture struck me as very sincere and basically made my morning.

Even though I love my job, and wake up every morning looking forward to work (I know, I’m that dork, but cut me some slack and focus on how wonderful this blog is instead), it was still really cool to get a handwritten note like that. So much of my job revolves around hounding suppliers for product images and quotes, it’s nice to know there is at least one supplier out there who doesn’t want to disconnect his/her phone, then mail me a package full of venomous snakes or angry bees. I am very happy someone took the time to send a thank you, though I must admit I find the gesture completely unnecessary. If anything, I should be thanking them again. My job would be impossible without all the patient suppliers out there who take the time to e-mail me product images, e-mail me again when I think they’re broken but they’re actually fine, those who are kind enough to sit through an interview with me, happily answering my many, many questions and explaining even the simplest things that I don’t know yet about the industry, and those who answer my follow-up calls when I need one or two more quotes for my piece. I guess what I’m getting at is, I’d like to thank all the suppliers who have helped me out so far, and to the distributors reading, I hope I can help you all as much as they’ve helped me.

See you next Tuesday,

Mike