VTG at Fujitsu

Traci DeWilde and I were at Fujitsu last Thursday afternoon at their beautiful engineering complex on their Richardson campus. We enjoyed meeting a number of Fujitsu people who visited with us.  A special thanks to Lisa Mcneil for her assitance and allowing us in to promote our services with Fujitsu’s engineering management teams. Fujitsu is a great customer of ours and we work quite close with them on a number of staffin and project services initiatives.  Thank you again Fujisu for having us over!!

 

StaffingIndustry.com

Our ValiantBridge program continues to gain momentum. The top staffing industry magazine “Staffing Industry” (www.staffingindustry.com) interviewed me last week.  Editor Craig Johnson and I had a great discussion about the whole program. They wanted to know details about where the idea came from, the ideal prospect and who is in the program now.  I provided him with a wealth of information about how it is ideal for staffing industry top achievers because they are the ones who when they have a large book of business, think about leaving their employer to start their own business. And no matter what company it is…. This rarely works and everyone looses – the person who leaves, their employer, the end client and the consultants. Why? Because in 99% of the cases their new venture is undercapitalized.  I explained to Craig how we are basically incubating those who meet the requirements of the program and helping them build a solid foundation for when they are ready to go on their own. And I told him from our end we remain a part of their new entity so rather than everyone failing when a star employee is ready to start their own company we all win by sharing through the lifecycle.

Lanny

Fujitsu Event-September 4th

We are excited to be hosting a meet-n-greet with Fujitsu this coming week:

What’s in a name?

If you are a fulltime recruiter, then this has to be stuff that your nightmares are made of:

 

Does anyone post their own resume on a job board anymore??!! We have a few business partners that assist us with our recruiting needs, so this may step on some toes. I hope not.

 

Sooo, here’s the scenario…You find a resource ( John Doe ) on Dice that looks like they could potentially be a fit for the job requirement you’re working on. You call the number listed, and a guy picks up and says…

 

” Thanks for calling Acme Technical Services, how can I help you?”

 

“Uhmm, may I speak with John Doe?”

 

“Sure, right after you review and sign our NDA, the ECO, and provide your completed company profile along with the D&B and Fed-ID#.”

 

“Uhmm, nevermind…bye.”

 

 

For the love of all that is sacred and pure, SERIOUSLY???!!!! Really???!!!

 

I know this isn’t a new issue, but it is out of hand. As with most things that become corrupted, I think there is a fix. It has to start with the Job boards. There has got to be a firm policy that the person posting the resume is representing themselves. While this is more common with resources that have a sponsored visa, this process cannot be beneficial to the end recipient looking for a job. I don’t know if this practice started as an objective to provide a better sale of the candidate, or if it’s a protection issue or what it is. Surely you fulltime recruiters have had enough of this…I feel for you.

 

Back to the policing…I think Ebay represents the best example of stepping up and taking control. There have been many scams that they have been struck with as a result of their growth and

the volume of buyers their website attracts. In each case, they have taken action to solve the problem. I believe in almost all of these situations, the objective has been to right the ship in the interest of what is fair, ethical and legal to the consumers> MOST of the time, if not all the time this change has not been financially beneficial to Ebay.

 

Monster, Dice, Computer Jobs, HotJobs, Careerbuilder…C’mon guys, help a recruiter out.

 

LM

Go DFW!!!

was recently interviewed by one of the editors of a technical magazine based in California (narrows It down, huh?) to discuss the logistical details of our Valiant Bridge program. Throughout the interview, I was continually asked how we were dealing with the downturn in hiring and if we had a plan to sustain. The first few times, I avoided giving a direct answer out of a fear of appearing ignorant to this industry crisis. After the third time I was asked, I turned right into this “”fastball” and said…”What downturn are you referring to?”. She told me that she has mutilple conversations with technical staffing executives each week across the US, and almost all were discussing how their business was slowing down this year. Sheeshhh…

Our company started in November, 2007. And while we weren’t starting from scratch from a knowledge standpoint, (I had a couple years experience, myself.) we didn’t have one requisition to start working on for a while. Here’s a quick report from our ATS that shows the volume of reqs that we have received thus far:

We currently have sales offices in Dallas, Sacramento and Chicago. And while all of our offices have had great activity, Dallas continues to grow dramatically.

Lanny

Everything I have learned in life, I got from…playing Poker.

Everything I have learned in life, I got from…playing Poker.

No, I didn’t really get everything from Poker, my parents taught me how to play Old Maid. Several years ago, some friends turned me onto this little phenomenon called Texas Hold’em. I jumped in head first playing in every game I could be a part of, home games, casinos, online, video…you get the picture. I loved this game for the pure essence of playing against people, and because I had a knack for it. Whether we were playing for nickels or hundreds, it made no difference to me. I played enough that I started winning something almost every time I sat down at a table.

I had an opportunity to play in a tournament in Binion’s a couple of years ago, before every casino had daily tournaments. Now, for you non-poker playing readers, “Binion’s’ is slang for Binion’s Horseshoe Casino, or simply The Horseshoe. It is a hotel and casino located in downtown Las Vegas, Nevada on what is now the Fremont Street Experience. It was the birth place of the WSOP (World Series of Poker) in 1970. It will forever be known as the Mecca of Texas Hold’em.

This was the first time I had played in a tournament this large and I was severely intimidated by the locals, the sharks and the whales. In this arena, I believed I had a better chance of winning the lottery than beating anyone in this tournament. I had been playing for about 6 hours when I started to look around and realize that there were a lot of players that had been eliminated and that there were very few tables left. About that time, a player sitting next to me looked at my chip count, and said “you have enough to sit through five more tables and just blind out.” I hadn’t really taken the time to look around and compare my chip count to the others. When I did, I was by far the chip leader in the room. That lump in my throat came back.

A couple hours later, the Casino Boss made an announcement that we would be taking a 10 min break and would come back to one final table. When we returned, we were all ushered to the Main Event table. These tables have mounted cameras above, around, and underneath. This is the table you now see on TV in various Poker tournaments. As the action started back up, it was clear that most of the players seated at the table had been there many times before. There was a lot of trash talking and a lot of harsh words being traded between players. I sat that quietly, dumping every hand that I was given in the hopes that the others would knock each other off and my large chip count in front of me could somehow become transparent.

As I watched tempers flair, chairs being thrown and players leave in disgust, my solitary thought was…I hope I don’t make a stupid move and show the 200 people watching that I am an…AMATUER. My hands were shaking so bad I had to force them flat against the table so it wouldn’t be so obvious that I was out of my element.

Finally…it was just me and “MING, the Merciless. That’s right, the evil emperor from Flash Gordon (see pic).

We went head to head for the next hour, him trying to not to give me any advantage and me hoping I could summons the spirits of the great legends and they would guide me. I got dealt a pair of queens, and decided to make a move. He placed a 3x bet, I responded by rising. He re-raised. I went ALL IN. He called.

I was delighted with my queens when he revealed his pair of 10’s.

The Flop: 7 10 K

I died inside.

The Turn: 4

The River: Q

I leaped 40 stories inside and about 1ft in front of everyone. lol

Now, this was one of those days I will always remember and look upon as if I won a gold medal in the Olympics. I didn’t, but with the exception of the Wheaties contract, I felt the same joy.

My life lesson?

Keep your head down and stay focused on your game. Let your competition take each other out. When you look around, you’ll have a nice chip count and a shot at something even bigger. In this case, the winning was the grand prize, the prize money…it was nice too.

Grateful

Grateful

I once heard someone say that you could never truly be successful until you learned to be grateful. When you think you have learned to be grateful, you would realize you were already successful.

I think about this often as our company continues to grow.

To our clients, partners, and employees…thank you for all that you do and will do for our company.

Lanny

ValiantBridge™

ValiantBridge™

Ok, just bear with me…and here is the disclosure: This is a paid advertisement blog.

No, not really, but this is a little self-promotion for our company. I promise there won’t be a …”if you act now, we’ll throw in a second set of steak knives.” But I had to talk about Valiant Bridge because it’s about so much more than another branded program.

It’s about people, their careers, their efforts, their relationships, what they give to their employers, and what they get in return for all of that. I realize that as I write about this topic, I could have picked a topic a little volatile, like religion for instance.

The people that have known me the longest will tell you that I was always destined to be in this role. I had a gift as a child for talking to people and convincing them to buy, sell, trade or give something to me. It just came easy. So when I became an adult (at least chronologically) and needed to get one of those…jobs, sales was an easy target. I mentioned before that I spent several years in the Apple Computer environment, and it was here where I started learning what commissions, sales goals, benchmarks, quotas, daytimer, collateral, contracts, RFP’s, RFQ’s, RFI’s and all of those other wonderful terms sales people are surrounded with everyday. For the last 15 years, I have been in some sort of sales capacity.

While there may be other tougher positions within every company, I think sales people get beat up worse than anyone else on a consistent basis. That’s because everything starts and ends with Sales. I won’t burden you down with my “poor me” stories of how many times I have received a verbal beating, because I’m sure there are plenty of people that had it worse than I. I will say that I had enough to last me several lifetimes. I also know that whoever handed out my tongue lashing, probably came straight from a lashing they received from the guy above them.

All of this to say…Valiant Bridge was created with the idea that there’s got to be a better way of motivating, encouraging and partnering with salespeople in the pursuit of building a successful business. I believe that this program has the ability to catapult our company in every way possible simply by changing the relationships we have with our salespeople. Take a minute to look at the overview of this program, I think you’ll agree.

www.valianttechnologygroup.com

http://www.valianttechnologygroup.com/PDF/2008%200603%20ValiantBridge%20One-Pager%20REV%203.pdf

Lanny

Tell everyone about the Ebay story!

Tell everyone about the Ebay story!

After my first post about creating ideas, I had someone I have known for years respond back with…Tell everyone the Ebay Story. Soo…here you go:

In the early days of the internet, before everyone had a connection in their homes, I was working for an Apple third-party company that provided sales, and support for Apple products and third-party peripherals (a 24mb video card was $2500…seriously, lol). The company was using a commercial online auction site that was primarily targeted towards dealers buying surplus. Sales from this auction were surpassing 100k each month, and the company wanted more.

The owner of company approached me with a “special” project: Go out and see if you can find another online auction site that can duplicate the activity that we already have. So, I did…I spent a month looking at about 6-8 different sites that had the word “auction” in them and dealt with computer hardware. I liked this special project because I had just recently found this website called “Ebay”, that had a variety of products, trinkets, gadgets, and it was all very cheap. While Ebay was an online auction site, they were unique in the fact that ANYONE could bid on their items, while the others were targeting commercial dealers. Ebay had at that time….(wait for it)…172 items in their Computers & Networking section. In other words, I could browse that entire section within 10-15 mins!

So I contacted the President of Ebay, and discussed our company, our needs and potential opportunities. After a few discussions, he had proposed to a) build us our own page for free, b) build a unique section for us for free or c) ANYTHING we wanted in order to gain our business. So I set up a meeting to report my findings and recommendations back to the owner of the company.

I remember that meeting like yesterday. After an initial discussion of what sites I had reviewed and their associated services, I simply said…”My recommendation is that we form an alliance with Ebay.com”

“E-what??!! What does that mean?”

E—B—A—Y….com

I stepped behind his large executive leather chair, and provided the url to him as he pulled up the website.

After 5 secs of staring at the screen…He lost it. He proceeded to tell me what a terrible job I had done, that I didn’t take him seriously, that he should have given the project to someone else, and that he wouldn’t make that mistake again.

I walked out of his office depressed, rejected, embarrassed and feeling like I should probably start looking for a new job. But…I had a duty to call each one of the auction sites back and relay the decision of the owner. No, No, No, No…etc. I don’t remember any of the calls except to call the president of Ebay (by then a friend) and say…

“I’m sorry…but our owner feels like you guys just simply aren’t qualified or big enough to handle a company like ours.”

He, of course, said that it was no big deal and that he understood. He said that they were a young company, but they felt like they had potential to be big someday. I told him to keep in touch and that I would continue to visit their site on a personal level. I did continue to visit their site…as did a few million other people every day for the last several years.

Wish I knew now, what I…it doesn’t matter. I don’t know where that owner is anymore or what ever happened to that company, but what I did learn is the value of trusting your instincts and acting on them. I wasn’t in a place to make decisions that day, but I am now.

Lanny

Why a blog for VTG?

Why a blog for VTG?

We are inundated each day with press releases, newswire, AP, local media, etc. which are all providing the same static information. I wanted to provide our readers with an opportunity to go “out back”, out to the VTG workshop. In this workshop, there is a flurry of activity everywhere (think NY Stock Exchange)

machines are churning, bells are ringing, a pallet is lowered… and most important, people are focused on making VTG exceptional.

This of course, is my dream.

I am Lanny Morrow, President and Co-Owner of Valiant Technology Group. Our company provides technical consultants to companies around the country providing a variety of services such as software development, network administration, wireless optimization, training, project management, etc.  I have been doing this type of work since the mid-90’s.

But back to the workshop…

I like creating, and then solving…that’s what I do. I love to be presented with challenges. I have done this over and over and over in my career. There is something deeply rooted within me that is passionate about providing “that” solution where one previously didn’t exist. It is rewarding and satisfying. You know that room in each company with no windows, lots of whiteboards, where they schedule 3-4-8 hour meetings? I love that place. It holds brainpower, the walls absorb the past energy of frustration, yelling, (no hair pulling please) and SOLUTIONS derived through the yearning of people working together to “get it right this time”.

From this dream, I awake each day in hopes that VTG provides that type of delivery to each of our customers. I hope that the leadership of our company empowers others to share this vision. I hope that the employees of our company absorb this desire and in-turn provides a rewarding experience to for all those who they interact with.

Lanny