It’s Time Again for Me to Move On
We were still living in our first house, so I could not have been older than seven. My mother, who was usually a pushover, simply would not accept my refusal to eat peas during this one memorable dinner. She asked, she reasoned, she insisted, she pleaded, she (just barely) yelled, and finally, when all else failed, she resorted to the nuclear option.
“Billy, if you don’t eat your peas, you can’t take piano lessons any longer.”
I was stunned, simply shattered. I had taken piano lessons since kindergarten. OK, that was only two years before, but my ability to deftly work my way through “Itsy-Bitsy Spider” and “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” as my legs dangled from our long wooden piano bench seemed an important part of my identity. I ran to my room, slammed the door and sulked. Until it hit me:
“I don’t like piano lessons any more than I like peas.”
I stopped taking piano lessons a short time later.
* * *
Roughly twenty-five years after that, I found myself seated at the annual dinner of the Philadelphia Chapter of the National Frozen Food Association.
That dinner was the annual celebration of National Frozen Food Month, which civilians know simply as “March.” I don’t remember what I ate (although I know it wasn’t peas), but one moment is indelibly etched in my mind. The event’s keynote speaker exhorted us to promote additional consumption of our companies’ frozen offerings. He lamented the average household’s consumption of frozen food - just 1.1 times per week, and he laid down this challenge: let’s work tirelessly to increase that to 1.2 times per week!
At that time, I had been working in the marketing department at Mrs. Paul’s Kitchens for nine years. It was the perfect first job, and decades later, many of my fondest work memories are those that include my MPK cronies. However, I clearly remember thinking at that precise moment in time: “I’m sorry, but I just could not care less if anyone ever eats one more fish stick or onion ring.” I realized – at that very instant – that it was time to move on.
* * *
To my surprise and good fortune, I received a blind letter from a recruiter several months later. The moon, the stars and my resume collided, and I moved on to a new job – director of marketing at a dairy - an ice cream factory - in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Yes, I know … ice cream is frozen food; but who doesn’t want to eat more ice cream? It was a pretty good job, and I started off with an interesting challenge. The company had an unfortunate knack for running out of ice cream every summer. It was my job to reverse that.
The first step was to improve our sales forecasts, so I bought version one-point-something of Demand Solutions. The software – and, more importantly, the forecasting and planning process that we built around the software – made a quick and significant impact on our business. We didn’t run of ice cream that summer and we enjoyed a $500,000 revenue boost for the year.
I liked the software and, more importantly, I really liked the company, especially its founder, Steve Johnston. DS was small at the time, with no sales force. After three years as one of Steve’s customers, I made the ultimate product endorsement by quitting my job at the dairy to start a business to sell and support Demand Solutions in the Northeast U.S. … more or less for free.
That is, I left a job with a good salary and great benefits for a venture in which my income was solely reliant on commissions from my sales of the software along with fees for any training that I provided. It was a risky proposition … but I had a business of my own, I got to work from home, and I was selling a product that I was unreservedly passionate about. I could not have been more excited or more highly motivated.
When I left the dairy, it wasn’t to get away. (Hey, who doesn’t want to eat more ice cream)? Instead, I found a challenge and an adventure that I just had to take on. If I had passed on that dream, I would have forever wondered what might have been.
* * *
That was 30 years ago. I’ve had an incredible run of good fortune in the ensuing years. I’ll admit … I got to be pretty good at this. Companies of all sizes and flavors bought our forecasting software in the belief that they could save money as the result of better forecasts and tighter inventory planning. And they did. We grew together.
I’ve been fortunate to work with thousands of great individual clients across hundreds of companies. Even better, at various times over the past three decades, I’ve had the great privilege to work with incredibly talented and supportive colleagues on our DS Northeast team including: John Koroluk, Kristi Gieseke, Katie Ward, John Richard, Dan Doran, Noah Sferra, Paul Secraw, Rhonda Roos. Keith McAlpine, Dan Kroft, Joe Cunningham, Matt Hoffman, Nancy Pastore, Mark Lania, and Peter Day.
I would be happy selling software with my current crew for many years to come. So, why have I decided to move on again? This time it’s not so much that I want to get away. Instead, I’m incredibly energized by another new adventure.
I’ve been writing a book – a true story about an event from early in World War II - and I want to devote myself full time to the research, writing and marketing of that book. I am stepping away from software business. I am not retiring. I have a new full-time job. I’m a writer.
This is not just a crazy whim. My project grew from an interest in Winston Churchill, and then fascination with a little-known catastrophic incident from early in Churchill’ s first term as Great Britain’s Prime Minister. Along the way, while working full time and traveling, I’ve worked in a few detours to deeply research that story. I’ve enriched my life – and the story – with time spent immersed in the Churchill Archives at the University of Cambridge, at a remote historic site outside of Paris, at the FDR Library, the Army War College and at other sources of information and inspiration. And now I want to put all my time into pulling it all together.
OK … Who am I kidding? This is a completely crazy dream! I’ve already enjoyed countless twists, wrinkles, revelations and moments of astonishment as I’ve tried to transform myself into a writer. I hope you will keep an eye on this space as this whole wild story continues to unfold.
Originally posted to LinkedIn on November 13, 2019