Ten-twelve years ago, I was working for an advertising agency in New York City. This was my first real “industry” job and my second real job since getting out of school a year or so earlier. I was working for a recently spun-off interactive arm from a very larger ad agency. I think I was the third person hired and I was told that we would be doing some very small projects while we ramped up with both people and procedures. I was totally green as the most I knew about the web was how to setup a table using HTML 1.0.

I think it was the third or fourth day there when the GM called the entire staff into his office. Since it was a total of six people, there was plenty of room…. He told us that there had been a change of plans and that our company had just signed a deal with a major computer company to do their web work.  And instead of easing into things as planned, we would be running at light speed working for this company named [tag]Dell{/tag} Computer Corporation.

I know most people equate Dell with the web, but at this time, Dell did not have a web site and was doing all their business through phone and fax just like everyone else. Our initial challenge was to build the front end static site while Dell began building a backend e-commerce system. Very quickly, I went from a coder position to a producer and ended up being the central point of contact for Dell. One of the first people I had met at Dell and who ended up being the man I was joined at the hip with for quite a while was a gentleman named Charlie Nichols.

Our relationship did not start well. Pretty much my daily routine was get work done, send it to Charlie and then have a follow up call with him so he could tell me all the things that we did wrong. There were many a time that I spent sitting on a conference call with Charlie listening to him tell me how much I sucked and daydreaming about a car losing control and running right through Charlie’s cube while I was on the phone with him.  Sorry Charlie….

It was difficult for me because of my youth and inexperience to continually get criticized day after day when I was working 20 hour days trying to keep up with a client who was light years ahead of us.

The reason I am bringing this up was because Charlie was truly the first person in my professional career who really taught me things. He was smarter, more experienced than I and even though at times I wanted him dead, he made me realize something very important – I would never be able to grow and learn in this or any business without people pushing me who were smarter and more experienced than I was. After a while, Charlie and I hit a groove and I had a great deal of respect and admiration for him which continues to this day.

After a couple of years working on the agency side with Charlie, I ended up heading down to Texas and had the opportunity to work with Charlie on the same team at Dell. After I left Dell, Charlie and I lost touch, but because of this great blogosphere, Charlie and I have been able to hook back up. Charlie has a great blog and company called Seven87 which I absolutely recommend.  He looks all nice and professional in his picture now, but I knew him when he had shoulder length grunge hair. 

Thank you Charlie for being the first person in my career to push me to be better than I was. I have throughout my whole career tried to find with each new position and company a new Charlie to kick my butt and force me to be a better me.

Technorati Tags: Charlie Nichols