Do what you love and it doesn’t feel like work.

The last two weeks have felt like exactly like that.  Ideally, for all of us, we have or will have jobs that don’t serve as an annoyance to us. They should be something that we should enjoy doing. I’m blessed to feel this way about my first full-time job.

To give a short breakdown of the last two weeks, here’s what they have looked like:

First week:

Monday/Tuesday- Went to Birmingham for the first periodic meeting of the year.

Wednesday/Thursday- Marketing retreat back in Nashville with the team.

Friday- Worked from home.

Second week:

Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday: Went to Charlotte for a marketing blitz (tons of fun, and a great learning opportunity).

Thursday/Friday: Worked from home.

Overall I met a lot of people and started to develop key relationships with people involved in Taziki’s. Besides those crucial relationship building experiences, the learning curve seemed to get steeper and steeper. I can go on and list 50 things I feel I learned, but breaking them down into a handful of lessons seems to be most beneficial. Here’s what I took out of the experience most.

Don’t Hold Back With Any Concerns You May Have

New job anxiety was much higher than I thought it would be. I honestly didn’t really expect to have any heading into this job with all of my past work experience but being in an actual full-time position brought out different emotions.

With me being the type of person who always needs to be actively doing something, it became tricky since I still have a lot to learn. I’ll be honest, I rang home at least twice a day, sometimes three to talk to my family who of course were a big help.

This brings me to the point of developing the skills to become honest and transparent with everyone I work with. Holding back something that is a concern to me obviously doesn’t provide me with a solution.

What does though is actually by expressing what I was thinking. This comes from having trust and respect for everyone.

Listen.

Everyone I am surrounded by on a daily basis has been with Taziki’s much longer than I have, which means they have much more knowledge about everything than I do. My plan is to go in and hear from different people and ultimately learn something from each conversation.

I’ve realized that everyone takes each and every conversation like it’s their last. There sure were a lot of passionate and meaningful conversations that popped up (mostly unexpectedly). Something I need to work on here is learning different ways to become a better listener since every conversation holds so much weight.

Ask Questions.

This is something I have done every day so far and I plan on continuing to do this for who knows how long. By asking simple questions like “How does ordering online work?” or “How did we do this in the past?” I have been able to learn a lot more about just that one single question and engage more in the past conversations.

Our team is, and every team should be made to work effectively together and support one another. The people I’ve been working with have put out their hand and offered it to me to be able to reach out about whatever and whenever.

Actively Learn.

At first, I wrote learn^^, but that didn’t settle well with me. Learning is something that goes on every day no matter what we do. For me, my focus will be on learning and retaining as much as possible in the upcoming months, whether it’s about the industry I work in or about digital/social media marketing.

The Takeaway

I still have a whole of time before everything settles in, and I’m alright with that. Starting something new has and always will be a hurdle for myself and I recognize that.

Stay tuned for more work related stories and marketing tips.