My Own Intern

Today I was given the final go-ahead to hire my very own little intern. To get the process rolling my co-worker Hinz and I called the local college in Menifee that offers a degree focus in visual communications.

I'm pretty much swamped here at work. You could say the boat is taking on water and my pail to bail it out has a hole in it. Or, I'm neck deep and the waves are splashing up over my nose. Or, I'm the lone horse and I have no time to drink. Enough with the analogies. What it all really means is between product management and graphic design, there's no time in the day to breathe. So, I pitched the idea of an intern a month or so ago and everybody has finally warmed to the idea.

Apparently my design skills have been ramped up about 50 notches the last few months as I'm now responsible for all of the product brochures (Three total at 28 pages each). It's a huge undertaking because I'm not just responsible for design. That's right ... I'm technically a "Marketing Product Manager", so that means I have to write the copy and headlines too! We run a small marketing department here that's for sure. The other two people in my department, Christy and Hinz, help with the copy during the rough draft stages and usually a few things get changed.

Along with the model line brochures, I'm responsible for all of our magazine ads, any promo flyers, modifying and creating Flash ads, creating dealer ads upon request (which average about 4 a week) and any POP (Point of Purchase) material for our dealers. It can get pretty overwhelming at times because that's just the graphic design aspect. This is where the intern comes in. If we can land somebody who can take just the dealer ads, flyers and a few Flash ads off my plate I might be able to come up for air again.

The sad part of the whole graphic design angle is I'm partly if not majority responsible for crushing an entire company that was once at 70 people in that of Arras Group ... our previous marketing / communications agency. The Arras Group had a head count of 70 when I started and is now at 5 or 6 people strong. I guess that's what happens when you become difficult to work with at times and you don't cut your rates in a down market. I estimate I've taken over $600k of business from them this year. I truly wish I was joking, but I'm not and it's probably even higher than that. From what I know we were their largest account. But we haven't passed so much as a dime on to them in the last six months. On the back end of the whole Arras Group collapse is me feeling guilty for people suddenly landing in the proverbial unemployment line. I guess I did what I had to do to keep myself valuable in a rough economy.

Lest we not forget, graphic design is only a portion of my job duties. In three weekends I'll be presenting all the new KTM offroad and Husaberg dirt bikes to the media in Washington. This obviously requires presentations and prep. After that it's our dealer meeting in Indy in late August. More presentations and a lot of front end grunt work for that one.

Needless to say, an intern can't come knocking soon enough. Who knows, doors might open for said intern if this market ever turns around.

Here Comes the Twins!

We just purchased our first set of tickets from Stub Hub for the Twins vs. Angels game this Friday. Terrace box on the visitors first base side Row A. Tracy is all about a Circle Me Bert sign, so we'll try our arts and craft skills Thursday night. We also plan on going to the Saturday night game, but we aren't so sure about a Sunday day game.

It's been super hot here lately. Here's what the last five days looked like: Friday: 98, Saturday: 101, Sunday: 103, Monday: 106, Tuesday: 102. Sadly, we're starting to get used to it. I'm still biking about 25 miles five times a week, but I have to be really selective on what time I go!

On a different yet related note ... we are planning on going to the Angels vs. Twins game at the Metrodome Saturday Aug. 1. Right now it's Jason & Carrie, Paul & Kristine, Brad & Kristi and the two of us. It's not a couples thing. Anybody who is interested in going to the game should let me know by Tuesday of next week at the latest. I plan on ordering a group of General Admission tickets in the upper deck.

We can't wait to see everybody. And we actually wouldn't mind seeing a thunderstorm or two. You start to miss those after a while.