Lessons Learned from Duplication

During my life and career, I find that I have carried lessons with me from my experiences that have been carried through my career and businesses. There are 3 lessons that I learned through my life from duplication. I learned about sales, social skills in the workplace and the value of teaching other people what I know from duplicating other people or risking duplicating myself.

I learned sales from my father. My father was a good listener. I was raised in a family landscape business. We would sell trees, bushes, and other landscape supplies to people that wanted to beautify their homes. I started my education in business and sales at 7 years old. Anytime a customer would come to talk with my father. I would be within earshot of my father to listen to how he would listen to people and ask the right questions to help them buy the right plants and landscape materials to beautify their homes. By about age 10, I was selling to customers on my own. My father and I have the same first name. People would come to the garage where our landscape nursery offices were based. They would ask for my father. I would tell them that my father is with another customer. He would be busy for a couple of hours. I could help them. I was relentless. I was confident in my ability to do the same job my dad did in sales. I would tell customers that I am the son of the owner. I can help them. I would ask them what they needed. I would draw out the plans for their landscaping in the dirt as my father did. I would place the plants in positions where the customer could imagine them in their yard. I would get the sale. I listened. I asked them the right questions. I helped them visualize what the plants would look like in their yard to solve a pain they were having with beautifying their yards. As I learned more, I got fancier. I moved from drawing plans in the dirt to drawing plans on graph paper. I learned sales from my father.

I talked about this in my previous article. I started working on computers at age 12. I was a huge gamer for over 30 years. I played Ultima Online, Scepter, Worlds of Warcraft, Horizons, and every other MMO I could get my hands on for years. One of my “problems” being a computer person is that I was used to pushing buttons and getting instant reactions. This behavior often got me into trouble. I wasn’t always nice to people because I always thought I was smarter than they were. After working in the restaurant industry for 9 years, I got my first job working doing phone support for a PC company called Zeos International. I had an aptitude for computers and solving problems quickly. I moved into the operating systems group supporting OS/2. SCO Xenix/Unix and Linux.

My supervisor and I had frequent discussions about how I needed to learn to interact with people without putting them down or feeling less intelligent than I was. I developed social skills in the workplace as a result of my experiences working as a PC Support Technician. I didn't want to alienate myself from my coworkers. Jealously and animosity in the workplace is never a good thing. This leads me to the next big lesson that I carried with me throughout my life and career for the past 41 years.

When I was working at Zeos International in the operating systems support group, I was given the opportunity to do a lot of cool projects. One of those projects was implemented the ability to be able to email support@zeos.com for people to be able to email anywhere in the world for technical support on their ZEOS PCs. My technical prowess caught the attention of my supervisor, manager, and director. On one Friday, I was called into the office of the director of technical support at ZEOS international. Friday’s were paydays. The office was set up so there was a door from the tech area where our desks were and a door that went downstairs to the parking lot. My supervisor called me into the office for a quick meeting. My manager was in the office. The director was in the office. I walked into the office. I sat down. Both doors shut. The director asked, “Do you know why you are here?”. I said “No. Not exactly.” I was thinking I was going to get fired. The director said to me “Ken, I have a problem. I need to be able to train the other technicians, so they are able to help more of our customers. I have two super-geniuses that work for me. One works on the night shift, and one works on the day shift.” The director was staring at me. You didn’t like the director staring at you. He was a former army drill instructor. For a shorter guy, he had no problems getting his point across. The director continued to explain, “I need the super-geniuses to be able to teach other people what they know to the other technicians that work for me.” He said “Ken do you know the value you have to a company?” He pulled out an envelope. He said “This is your last paycheck. You as a genius have no value to me or this company as long as you are not willing to teach other people what you know. You can be the janitor that keeps cleaning the classrooms for 30 years or you can be the person that manages the janitors. I am giving you a choice. You can take this envelope and leave this office out that door.” He pointed to the door that went to the parking lot. “Or you can start teaching other people what you know by documenting and teaching. The value you could have to this company is risking duplicating yourself.” I didn’t have to think very long. I took my paycheck. I smiled. “I said when do I start teaching other people”. The director said “Good decision. You can start right now.” I have carried this lesson with me in every job and business I have worked. We need to risk duplicating ourselves in order to advance in life and our careers. If we don’t we’ll be stuck doing the same job for the rest of our lives. #leadership #business