[Editor’s note: the first line of the second paragraph “I’ll come clean up front” is an all timer]

Allow me to introduce myself:

My name is C.C. Baxter. I’ve never written a blog piece before, and to be honest I’ve never really written anything that wasn’t a graded assignment before. I tried journaling once because Matthew McConaughey said it was a good thing to look back on when you’re in search of inward motivation. However, whenever I went back to read what I had written I just thought “wow this sucks and I was so fucking lame for that”. Probably didn’t help that I tried to journal after 6 hour long work happy hours. I think I genuinely thought I was Jack Kerouac with my musings – except, newsflash, he sucks too. So really the only writing I do now is in email format to coworkers, vendors, clients and the occasional news article sent to friends about happenings that we think are funny. I can’t tell you what I plan to write about because I’m not sure yet, but I can tell you that the writing style will be unvarnished, the grammar will be bad, I will probably try to make myself sound smarter than I am which the discerning reading will see through and judge me for. My only hope with this spewing stream of consciousness is that they read better than my journal entries of my early career.

I’ll come clean up front that I am a failed commercial insurance sales rep. I am probably the only person that describes it as failing because it was a bit of a fail upwards but I don’t mind telling all of you fine people that I consider it a personal failure. I wouldn’t go back and change a thing about my career path because it given me a unique view on sales and sales reps, one that Sales Cental and I argue about on a weekly basis. I have worked on so many failed sales opportunities and have lost deals in ways that would make the guy on Shark Tank that Kevin O’leary told to go fuck himself blush. I can smell a bad deal from a mile away, usually long before the sales rep has even entered it in Sales Force. I track my notes on these things, I’ve only been wrong once in 2.5 years.

That’s easy for me to say though, I’m no longer the Man in the Arena. Now I’m just a late 20s/early 30s middle manager. I still work in commercial insurance – for a large brokerage in a mid-major city that you’ve may have visited and probably are indifferent to. If you ask any one in my company, they will tell you that I am good at my job, drink too much, am a spy for our corporate office, and can be an asshole. If you ask me though, they’re right, and fuck them for saying all that.

When it comes to sales and corporate America, I have a plethora of opinions, and I plan to make them known. Unfortunately, my newly formed opinion after our last summer internship is that we are doomed with the incoming graduating work force. More on that later, but it’s bleak.

Can you tell that I thinking of this as I go? I am. I really didn’t think it necessary to outline this before I started. It’ll probably get better.

That feels like a good enough background to keep us going here. I have a list on my phone about what I might write about. Topics include “In defense of reading”, a series titles “The art of work dinner”, how to relocate for a job, when it’s appropriate to do cocaine around your coworkers, investing in your 401k, nodding when your coworker talks about their kids, And I’m sure a whole bunch of shit about AI and when you should actually use it versus using your brain.

Keep showing up to the office, keep going the extra mile, keep doing your job.

C.C. Baxter