Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Relaxing at the lake house

For the next three days our VP's and I are hunkered down out at our Cultus Lake house to hold our quarterly retreat.
Along with the usual strategic planning, we are preparing for our first meeting in May with "Coach Ron," our new business coach. Having a business coach is like a pro golfer having a swing coach. They are not there to tell you how to hit the ball, but they could help to correct and make small adjustments that can send the ball that much farther. As Costless continues to grow, we feel every small adjustment can pay big dividends later. Ron has helped hundreds of companies and came highly recommended from my friend Ken Sims, the founder of Nurse Next Door.
Outside of the hard work and exhausting days of mind melting 14 hour strategy sessions, we sometimes have time to break for ordered-in pizza. What we were just laughing about is how the remaining Costless team who stay back at head office seem to think our "retreats" are actual relaxing retreats and not so much about work. We're going to try and squeeze in some relaxing things for this rainy April "retreat" like water slides, water skiing and sun tanning if we can pull off the time.
Nice to know our team thinks being an executive is all champagne and caviar. :-) I think we'll invite a few of our team next time.
Cheers,
Calvin

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Caught another Dragon

Tonight was the season finale of Dragons Den for 2012, and I attended the live Vancouver feed at the Vogue Theatre.
Some VIPs were in attendance for the show including Bruce Croxon, the newest Dragon. He is the last of the Dragons for me to meet and we had a nice chat about how he became an "overnight success" after 10 years of adapting and changing his Lavalife business model. Great insight!
Thanks Bruce and good luck to David Chilton, author of the book The Wealthy Barber, who is replacing Robert Herjavec.
And the VIP after party at Republic Nightclub was fantastic to boot!
Cheers,
Calvin

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Gumby, Pokey and St. Patty's Day

Today we surprised 5 of our Facebook friends with a St Patty's Day Balloon Bouquet. And in our usual Costless style, we had to make it just a bit more remarkable, so we invited Gumby and Pokey to help make the deliveries.
Customers were totally surprised and loved the impromptu visit from our bendable friends. The best highlight was seeing these life-size orange and green characters running down the sidewalks of downtown Vancouver with cars honking and people giving high fives. A close second was delivering the balloons to an office that had their St Patty's Day office party in full swing with green beer, smelly blue cheese and crackers!
Cheers,
Calvin

Monday, March 12, 2012

Necessity is the mother of invention

Gord, rocking the Viking horns

Necessity is the mother of invention

Meaning: Difficult situations inspire ingenious solutions.

Each Monday at exactly 10:07am, we hold our company-wide huddle for all the Costless team. Well, almost all. Since we run our warehouse 24/7, there are team members who are working different shifts and miss out on all the juicy details announced during the huddle.
So... we video each huddle and post it internally on our company intranet for easy watching later. Gord, our warehouse manager (he's the one in the viking horns) was wondering if the other team members at night were watching the videos so he came up with a GREAT IDEA!
Gord places the horns on one random person at the huddle and then asks the night team to email him "who was wearing the horns".
Gord, you have a great way of adding a bit of wacky fun into an every day task. Kudos Gord the Great!
Cheers,
Calvin

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Desk included.

We're always looking for great people to join Costless - but how often does anyone get praised for their job postings? We just got some kudos for this job posting on our website:

Re

Sales, Customer Service, Account Penetration, Prospecting, All Around Wonderful Someone.
Fantastic ACCOUNT MANAGER
& Great Person
Includes Desk.
Office Supplies, Food, Beverages and Jan/San. Find that and you'll find us. There are over 20 of us caring for thousands of Vancouver’s best businesses, delivering supplies and offering fanatical customer service. We're connected to the consumable business products industry, and recently became a carbon neutral company. We’d like the environment to be here for a while.
We're held together by five different corporate departments and each one is worried about how much you sold today and are the customers you deal with happy. Collectively, we do about $7 to $10 million a year.
Good Morning!
Get your coffee, say good morning. You review the morning reports and data about your customers, are they healthy and happy? You monitor, check, make sure everything to do with your customers is taken care of and is bullet proof. You put on your wireless head set and talk to your customers all day, you ask for orders, quote items, win new business, up sell, you remember all the little details about fanatical customer service and offer it consistently. This is why you love the career you have chosen and your customers love you.
You fire up your Goldmine CRM and make some magic, you send emails, fax specials, follow up, search new opportunities and find ways to sell more. You write great emails, speak and deal well with other humans easily and professionally.
Although you don't manage any direct reports you do coach, train and support everybody on the team. People count on you and your in the trenches leadership. You get your hands dirty and do whatever needs to be done.
Your Past Life.
Let's look at your experience and work history. Your designation is not important to us but your 3 to 5 years doing the work, are. We use in house software and Goldmine but I'm sure you know many different programs and MS products are second nature to you.
Oh, one more thing, no prima donnas, no fancy people need apply. We all do the work in this business, from the president on down and we like it that way. The pace is fast and the atmosphere is fun and relaxed. If you're willing to get involved, please contact us.
The Money.
This is a career position within a fast growing company. Salary is mid career range for now but the opportunity is there for more. Exact salary and bonus will be determined by who you are and what you bring to the position.
Good benefits, nice holidays, start date, yesterday.
Data Capture Time.
We're in Coquitlam, we're ready to hire. Send us something, there's work to be done. Send a resume. You've read between the lines, you understand what we're asking for. Send to jobs2008@costlessexpress.com.

As an employment counsellor, I read a lot (a LOT!) of job postings. Just wanted to let you know this is one of the best and most interesting postings I’ve read in a long time. If your work atmosphere is as great as your job posting – WOW!
Isabella Mori
Career Coach
Employment Essentials - Richmond

Thanks Isabella!