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CEO Daily Update – 8.17.2020

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Clorox Wipes Update | GLC-SX-MM | Gunshots at Walmart | My Continued RV Adventures 

Happy Monday!  

Welcome to the CablesAndKits CEO daily email. Read more about this email by scrolling to the very bottom. 

The RV adventure continues …. We left my wife’s hometown (Mimi and G’s) Sunday morning and headed to Tybee Island (GA). There is a campground here and we rented a spot. We also rented a golf cart but showed up too late so we have to get it this morning. The beach is a few blocks away and the golf cart will prove to be very convenient I’m sure. We plan to drive it to eat as well which seems fun.    

We stopped at Walmart on the way and as we approached the building I heard gunshots. Uhh… stop. Dial 91. Think. People keep walking toward the place …. Open Google Maps. “Gun range”. Enter. Yep, not too far behind the Walmart. Ok, keep walking.  

Sunday was also my wife’s birthday (happy birthday! Yes, we are just 5 days apart, both Leo’s and are always bickering about something. It must be fun to watch. Haha). She had to have a chocolate something so we stopped at a Cupcakery in Savannah on the way in. I wheeled the big RoadHome in the parking lot like I’d just robbed a bank, we grabbed the goods, and were off. After just a few days with this thing I’m (overly) confident enough to take it through a Checkers Drive Thru.  

Christin (wife) complained about the toilet at one point. It’s jammed up against the cabinet with the TP holder hanging out. I told her you have to do your business with a gangsta lean. Or ride it side saddle. She just looked at me. Maybe she was thinking about it.  

Today, we go to the beach and bake. Who in the world goes to the beach in GA in August? It’s a good thing I’ve been anemic and am cold all the time. Maybe I’ll be nice and comfy while the wife and girls soak up the sun. I’ll be in a chair under the umbrella where I belong.  

I’m sitting here writing this Sunday night. It’s 10:30pm and I’ve got a camp fire going. Why? It’s 82 degrees in August. Cause that’s part of the experience right? Plus, the smoke seems to run the skeeters off. Good times so far.  

Today’s Product Spotlight from Rerun (AKA Rebecca):

GLC-SX-MM 

Today we are featuring a CLASSIC! The GLC-SX-MM transceiver is one of those core, tried and true products that we all know and love! These 1G SFP transceiver modules offer tons of flexibility as they support 50/125, 62.5/125, and laser optimized 50/125 (OM3) fiber! They are an ideal solution for providing gigabit uplink capabilities in many Cisco switches, routers, and firewalls. In addition, they are hot-swappable so they are super easy to install – just plug-and-play (with your config cause it’s never right the first time haha)!  

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Update – 8.17.2020

CEO Daily Update – 7.22.2020

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Product Managers…Change Shortage…and a Missing Joe…
Oh My!

Happy HUUUUUMMMMPPP DAAAAAAAAAYYY!

I can’t believe it is the middle of the week already. The first two days of my work week went by in a flash. Lots of fun though …. We are working on SO many cool new products. So much fun. Child face masks, washable fabric face masks in child, kid, and adult sizes, UV light wands, hand sanitizer advertising kiosks, and sock puppets (just making sure you’re listening), among other things. I am having so much fun being involved in product development, and I hope you are enjoying / finding value in the things we work on / launch. More to come soon as we get closer to launching some of these new products.

As a leadership team, one of the main strategic things we have been working on over the last several months is building what we call product management and specifically product marketing disciplines and roles. The idea of product management is having someone focused on understanding our customers and their needs, our competitors, and what the market is saying we need to work on including new products and new channels to market. Depending on how many total product lines we have at the time we will have several product managers focused on different customer segments and product groups. Within each product group will be product marketers, who own lists of products and are responsible for the overall sales, profit, and inventory health of that list of products.

In the past we have had exactly zero product managers or product marketers. Now that we have made this a focus we have someone leading the charge of building the team (Rebecca, nicknamed Rerun), and one dedicated product marketer (Joe), who oversees safety supplies. We have been working together weekly to figure out our reporting and the rhythms of the role, and are already working on hiring our next product marketer who will be over fiber cabling. From there we will hire others for Ethernet, Transceivers, Switches, etc. What that means is that as we hire new people to focus on these areas, the products will begin to receive the day to day attention they deserve – and that you deserve as a customer!

I just thought I would share a little about our strategy while it was on my mind. Maybe you find it interesting or useful!

So apparently, we have a change shortage. A CHANGE shortage. Due to a variety of proverbial trains going off the tracks, we are struggling to have enough change … (CHANGE!) to do business. https://www.forbes.com/sites/advisor/2020/07/20/is-there-really-a-coin-shortage/#4dd4f3e1f0a3

I cannot decide how to feel.

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Update – 7.22.2020

CEO Daily Update – 6.8.2020

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Pricing Feedback, the Sabbath, Todo Lists & a CEO Coupon

Howdy!

Welcome to a whole new week!

I hope you had a great weekend. I sure did. We saw lots of friends, spent time relaxing and watching some TV, hanging out by the pool with friends, and I was even able to go to a friend’s house from 4pm till Midnight on Sat and hang out, go to dinner, and watch a movie in his theater room. That may not sound like a big deal but as hard as I have been going lately it absolutely was. And I needed it! I feel more rested than I have felt in quite a while. Hopefully I am ready for what will come this week!

There’s a vendor I have been working closely with over the past few weeks that lives/works in New York and is Jewish. He is such a hustler during the week but on Friday night he disappears until Sat night. He pointed out that it’s the Sabbath which is why, and I told him I was a Christian and loved the Jewish faith; it’s the origin of Christianity after all. Jesus was a Jew. The difference between a practicing Jew and a Christian is the belief that Jesus was who he said He was – the son of God who came to bring a new covenant. But that’s another email for another day.

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Update – 6.8.2020

Our AWESOME Week in Review! – 1.18.2013

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It was a very eventful week here at the CK office! Lots of hype, lots of work and lots of weather…

On Wednesday, we had our first Quarterly meeting of 2013! It was an absolute blast!  As you can see from the picture, our theme for this year is a “building/construction” theme – we are looking to build CablesAndKits into the best it can be and truly become ‘Experts in Awesome” in every way possible to better support and take care of our customers! This quarter we are starting it off right by laying the foundation and “Doing the Right Things”. It is going to be an exciting year here at CK.

Our “rock star” Sales Director celebrated his 40th birthday this week!  He is getting a little slow in his old age, so we had to put up a [Read more…] about Our AWESOME Week in Review! – 1.18.2013