Blog #160  I talked about a welcomed break from some stressful days. In this blog I want to talk about our Valley Fair support team.

Behind any successful leader is a support team that is top notch. By support I mean from the stock person to the clerical and all the Assts.

Allison

Lucky is a good thing. I have been fortunate to have had really great clericals in my time with Nordstrom. Ginger, Jamie, Stacey and Allison were all amazing. Allison was so good she could read my mind. It was almost like Radar in the series MASH. She kept me super organized which I appreciated. Somehow I nicknamed her “Sparky.” She was definitely the spark that kept things moving, similar to a spark plug so pretty sure that was the origin. I appreciated her so much.

Douglas

In Arden Fair I had Aaron as a stock guy. He was amazing and over qualified for the position. He eventually got into sales, then management and we worked again together at Zappos. But you have to wait for that story. The Palo Alto store we had Neil and some others but he was the work horse. He helped get our stockroom together for all my big events. Now I’m in Valley Fair. I finally realized some of the best stock guys are potential salespeople. Douglas was great in the stockroom and he eventually went out to the floor and was great at that too. He had a lot of great qualities, very personable, great manners and a hard worker. Just an all-around good guy.

Chris

Chris too was an amazing person. Hard worker, funny, ambitious and really smart. He had no problem handling all the strong personalities we had on the floor. He did it in such a way that made everyone happy too. Just amazing. We had our share of good business but when the remodel hurt business you really see what you are made of. He did a great job of looking for solutions rather than focusing on the problem. It would have been easy just to blame it on the remodel but him and I worked hard at figuring out what we could control. He was great to work with. He had a great wife who was super nice and a growing family. Plus he had the biggest dog I think I’ve ever seen. A Mastiff. Beautiful dog.

Our 2^nd Asst.

She was very ambitious and had a lot of good qualities to her. She was personable, dressed very fashionable and was a sponge taking it all in. She would let her position sometimes go to her head though and especially with the top salespeople. Looking back It was probably her way of keeping them in check. I felt she had a bright future ahead of her though as her good qualities outweighed the bad.

Paolo

He was one of the brothers team we hired and both of them turned out great. His brother Luca was a little more intense, whereas Paolo was more easy going. For a 3^rd Asst. He was perfect. You have to be the sponge as a third, taking it all in. It can be overwhelming starting out as an asst. watching the floor, balancing your selling time, hold people to the high expectations and try to maintain friendships you once had as a salesperson. Paolo was great though and just an overall good person.

Groundhog Day?

Here we go again, building a great team on an already good foundation. I felt this team was getting stronger every day.  Problem for me was the stress of the job and my RMM was getting the best of me and it was carrying to my personal life. I felt I needed a change. I loved Nordstrom with all my heart but couldn’t handle the balance. It was starting to wear on me.

Here I had another great team, store manager was awesome to work with and I loved the store. I felt I had  a pretty successful career and needed to figure out how I could be happy again. In hindsight I should have reached out to Rob or Blake or Jack. Instead I kept it inside. The bad feelings were festering inside me. I had no place to release my feelings. I should have joined a gym or did something like that and that’s where I failed.

Dad

I did call my dad and he talked me down from the ledge a few times. He always had a way of making me feel better. He also had another side of him I thought of too. I asked him once why he got married three times. He told me “Life is too short to be unhappy…” That stuck with me for some reason. I guess the next few weeks would tell me what to do. My gut said leave but my heart said stay. Here we go again…