My first post.

This post is a basic post about me for the marketing class I'm taking at my local community college.  I'm going to be answering a set of unseen questions in a narrative form, hopefully, you learn a bit about me and why I am doing what I am doing.

What keyed me into enrolling goes back well before I actually got here.  In 2015 I earned a leadership position at a national luxury goods store. This store specialized in games and general "nerd stuff".

While I was there I found a growing passion for that kind of leadership position.  There I trained associates in customer service skills and leadership skills.  This training allowed the store to grow steadily against the predictions of the company.  We pushed a sub-million dollar store to be, literally, number 1 in the company in customer service (Oct 2015) out of 4400 stores.  We even broke the million dollars in sales wall that was believed impossible with the location.  Watching the store and the crew grow beyond expectations under my leadership was a great feeling.

This situation could have turned me into a bad boss.  The company kept recognizing my efforts in the store's growth.  But truthfully this recognition of efforts was not mine alone and the success generated was a group effort.  I would push my recognition onto the team, share the 'perks' that were offered to me.  I helped guide the store, keep things on track and follow-up on goals, but the crew kept the boat afloat.  This was "leadership" to me that was where I wanted to be.

From there I learned that I enjoy building things up for success, both in business and in people.  I started reading, heavily, into what defines good leadership.  I found myself nearly giddy in watching the numbers change with behaviors.  It showed me how powerful the associates are in selling your brand, beyond selling your product. Since then I've chosen to increase my formal education in business development and leadership.

I'm currently working on my associates in business management, working for the event certificate and retail management certificate.  I want to add a level of credit-ability to my portfolio that doesn't always come with work experience.  My career goal is to help small businesses build and develop themselves and their staffs into something sustainable and successful.

Marketing will be a fundamental part of helping me build up those businesses.  I understand a lot of consumer psychology and the basic principles of marketing, but I need more to have the full box of tools in this field.  That's what I'm hoping to learn with this class.

Outside of school, I'm very passionate about games.  This isn't just about playing video games (which I'm not necessarily good at) but more about what games bring to human existence.  The act of play and the art of games has fundamentally shaped the course of human history.  I could engage in the topic of play and what games have done for us for hours, but I'll digress and leave this at that.

Thank you for your time in reading about me.