2010 was a great year for Team TAG.
I feel very lucky to be working with a dynamic group of young professionals. Here’s to a terrific 2011!
Below are some highlights of 2010.
Another year for our annual Org event. 10+ years of a weekend peppered with great business knowledge combined with crazy, childlike competitions and relationship building.
This year was different though…
Things started off great. 125 of our best and brightest ready and motivated for a great day of teaching and learning. The events team was on point. The teachers were on point. What could possibly go wrong?
The night before our event began, we had news of a 100 acre fire that started near Ventura. This was a concern considering we were planning on staying in Malibu – potentially being in harm’s way. As the day went on, we heard news of the fires growing. As I write this right now, this 100 acre fire has grown to 132,000+ acres. Wow!
As we were preparing to wrap things up during the “business portion” of our meeting, the group came together and discussed the concerns. All of the cards were put on the table about the fire, the smoke, and the 50/50 chance of an evacuation happening in Malibu. This was the critical moment.
None of us are smarter than all of us. I believe this to be true.
Everyone was asked to get back in to their small groups and come up with some solutions to some of our challenges (regarding physical and emotional safety, evacuation if this was required, drinking and driving, finding alternative places for 125 people to sleep, etc). Everyone’s voices were heard. Everyone’s concerns were heard. Everyone’s opinions counted.
When we all returned to talk things through, it became clear that we were not going to have our event in Malibu.
Now what?
A small group of leaders assembled to get in to problem solving mode. A clear challenge was in front of us as most hotels and airbnb’s couldn’t accommodate 125 people. 3 hours of internet searches, phone calls, negotiating…
We finally settled on going to hotel near Disneyland. Why not venture out to the happiest place on earth, right?
Once we solved the problem of a good night’s sleep, we had our next big challenge…
What are we going to do to save our classic weekend?
Once again – a team of brains got together and talked…. and talked… and talked some more.
Huntington Beach – here we come!
First event – “The Skit”.
Second event – “Dizzy Bat”.
Third event – “Bocce Ball”.
Fourth and final premier event – “Volleyball”.
The spirit of our classic weekend was in full force as everyone acted silly and enjoyed themselves.
I was in awe of the great people that we work with. I didn’t hear one complaint from anyone. I heard laughter all weekend. Everyone brought their A game to the event and everyone had a great time. This is a group of leaders and winners. The futures look bright for this squad.
We saved the notorious Big Bear Classic.
Check out my YouTube video: Self Motivation tips
Choose a destiny, then. Define your purpose. Chart your course. Once you answer the why, you will have unlocked the first door on the path to constant motivation.
If you have several big rocks staring you in the face each week, then your goal each day is to chip away at them. Knowing that they are there and knowing you must conquer them creates a sense of motivation that won’t quit all day long.
-Music is going to be the quickest way to snap your mind into a powerful state.
-On your phone you can create an album of the things you want in life.
-I look at my goals that are next to my bed straight away.
-Plenty of great motivational material is on YouTube.
Self-discipline, moreover, is limited. Benjamin Franklin was famous for his pursuit of moral perfection. At the conclusion of his perfection experiment, he wrote this: “I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it.”
Another way of saying this is that self-motivated people set their own standards. And, invariably, these standards are high:
High standards can be hard to maintain. Yet they produce massive amounts of motivation, which in turn helps to fuel high achievement.
The science of setting goals basically says that the simple act of creating the goal helps to drive the accomplishment.
Every day. Stuck on the mirror. Dinging on your phone. Taped to your computer. Hanging on the wall. Running through your mind. Everywhere. Always.
Keep your goals at the forefront of your mind, and you’ll never lose motivation.
Best,
Jaime
Is there a world outside the Monday morning blues and hump day celebrations – Friday night happy hours’ to cheers to the end of a business week? What makes a corporation, business, or simply an office set the pace for personal growth and professional success? I did some digging of myself to really dissect the happiness factor of offices around the area; finding a void in the employee mentality that it seems so many professionals have become immune towards. Working for a paycheck, content with the daily lull, and many times pumping the breaks at individual and specialized growth. My search led me to a glass corner office off Bake Parkway in Irvine, California. Los Angeles Business Journal’s ranking for number 7 “Best Places to Work” in 2015, Tag Energy seems to have the right idea – more specifically – the right management.
“In the business world its hard to find true mentorship; someone that cares about your growth personally and professionally” says Tag Energy’s Assistant Manager Ryan from the Irvine, CA office.
And he’s right. We can all agree that in a general office setting you can be a bit hard-pressed to find someone who is both inspiring and enabling towards your own unlimited growth. It seems that the sweet spot where the two overlap comes with an innate characteristic of leadership, a personal self-motivation that exceeds any glass ceilings, and a keen sense of business and determination.
Yet still I wondered, is it the person or the business that allows for such particular development within an office? In some regard, it must be a company recipe including interaction exceeding the walls of a cubicle.
So, I asked Jaime Hepps’ office operations manager, Manilynn, for her opinion.
“I have to say we have hired hundreds of people since I stepped into the HR role. I’ve seen people build their business with us, grow an entire campaign from an idea, and others that have taken the skills they’ve learned here to grow into other careers. I think what helps set us apart is that we genuinely care about the development of our team.”
As it appears, this kind of upward momentum comes from a strong recruiting team, the infusion of transferable skills, and as its been told, leadership.
Finally, I was able to sit down with Jaime Hepp – Owner of Tag Energy and senior national consultant to nearly 45 outside offices. At home, a husband and father of two, and in the office – from what I can tell – an owner, a manager, but a mentor first. Across many nations generations are struggling daily climbing the stairway of making dreams a reality; finding vision in anything from a graffiti quote on the subway stop to an entrepreneurial novel. So we figured why not find insight, inspiration, or even relate ability, from the leading source. We gathered a few questions to discover the ins of the office and Jaime Hepp himself. Enjoy –
Can you give a bit of a backstory about your path leading to where you are now?
Im from Saskatchewan, Canada, Moved to the United States at 25. From restaurants, sports teams, golf courses, AT&T, I had an itch to get into green energy space really because this is the industry that I felt millennials would be passionate about. Today’s people coming out of college want to do something meaningful and full of passion and I thought the solar industry would be great for that.
Some of my struggles…well, I lacked confidence; being an introvert. I was not the best with dealing with people. Certainly the quiet and not very outgoing type – so I found that to be challenging in the world of sales.
For me, significance comes with success. Success is easier to measure- you know, more money, promotions, growth, hiring more people, its just size. Addition and multiplication. To me the significance part is attached to success. If you’re really not making a difference in the quality of life in the rep, the quality of life of the customer, or the quality of life of anyone associated with the business- then you’re really not that successful. If you have all the numbers of success on paper and everyone’s growing but it’s meaningless, well I don’t find that successful.
Jaime Hepp
Be patient. In your twenties you want everything to happen now. You want everything to be quick. Nobody likes to wait for anything, but enjoy the journey and the process because you’re going to be different in your 30s and 40s. In your twenties just be relentless and be patient, you will see the result happening down the road.
I wanted to see the fruits of my labor happen faster and that can cause a lot of stress. And for a lot of people I think that makes them job hop and go allover the place because they don’t see success quickly and then they miss the whole point.”
This whole green energy play has a lot to do with energy independence – where we don’t rely on foreign oil. That’s probably the biggest piece, even more than the environment. If we can sustain our own energy and we don’t need anyone’s help, how different would the world be? Most of the wars revolve around energy and oil.
The entire environment and planet is obviously just as urgent. I think we should all be a little worried about future generations if we don’t clean up the planet. I think todays’ millenials care about that because they will see it play out their lives and their children lives. I think the reason why millennials are so passionate about it is because they’re inheriting a broken planet and there is no logical explanation to continue on the ignorant path of burning fossil fuels. Energy independence and planetary responsibility are at the forefront of the millenials.
A couple from Chicago was planning a vacation to a warmer climate, but the wife couldn’t join her husband until the next day, because she was on a business trip. Her husband scribbled down her e-mail address on a little scrap of paper, but upon his arrival, he discovered that he had lost it. He wanted to send off a quick e-mail to let her know he had arrived safely. So trying his best to remember her e-mail address, he composed a brief message and sent it off.
Unfortunately, his e-mail did not reach his wife. Instead, it went to a grieving widow who had just lost her husband, a preacher, the day before. She had gone to her computer and was checking her e-mail when she let out a loud shriek and fainted on the spot. Her family came rushing in to see what was on the screen: “Dearest wife, I just checked in. Everything is prepared for your arrival tomorrow. P. S.: It sure is hot down here!”
Jaime Hepp's Blog 