Impossible Foods – Apprenticeship Weeks 8 & 9

Every week through (at least) April 2020, I will be outlining my apprenticeship experience as an Inside Sales Rep for Impossible Foods. Each week’s post will recap what I’m learning, what I’ve accomplished, and overall how I am growing and progressing as both a professional, and as an individual. Writing these posts is not only a great way for me to document my experience to look back on in the future, it also allows me to publicly share my successes and failures during my first venture into the professional tech world. Let’s do this.

The end of every year brings with it reflection. As the chapter that we call 2019 closes, we all turn the page to another blank canvas, ready to write a new story. 

Without going into too much detail, my 2019 was incredible in every sense of the word. It featured many intoxicating highs, alongside some painful lows. It wasn’t until I actually took some time to ponder what I’ve experienced this year that I realized how crazy it actually was, and I’ll do my best to briefly summarize. 

This year I moved away from the city and all of my friends to live with my parents in my rural hometown. 

I decided against going back to college and instead began Praxis. 

In 2019, I fell in love.

I became an uncle for the first time.

I lost my grandma – one of the first times in my life where I’ve had to deal with real grief.

I accepted a position in an industry/department where I never thought I could find success.

I moved across the country to a place I’d never even visited.

I was thrust into this new world of tech and business, feeling completely in over my head basically the entire time.

There’s so much more that happened that I could get into, but simply put: 2019 stretched me. I’ve made new friends, strengthened old relationships, and grown closer to my family. I’ve made significant progress as a professional, and more importantly as an individual – but there’s work yet to be done.

With the valuable reflection that comes with the end of the year, it’s just as important to look forward towards the challenges that lie ahead of me. I have many goals for the upcoming year, a few of which I will touch on after I recap how I wrapped up the last two weeks (and 2019) with Impossible Foods.

As predicted, the holiday season definitely affected our process these last couple weeks. I’m certainly learning the importance of efficient communication and trust between myself and both clients and internal team members. When everyone is on the same page things and things are clicking, we are at our best.

One of the fun parts about my job is the fact that because we are so new and fairly experimental, I have the freedom to try different things and document the success of those to test the quality of our process. While it’s frustrating at times to not have a plan ready for every situation, it’s absolutely valuable to learn how things will go in the holiday seasons to come. All I can do is go about my work as intelligently as possible, keep track of what works and what doesn’t, and power through to the new year. 

If things weren’t already out of the ordinary, next week we are moving across campus to a new office. It will take some time to get used to the new arrangements, but I think long term it is a great choice for us – we will be surrounded by other teams that are relevant to the work we are doing, and our company gets a lot more space for production and R & D. Even if it’s not my direct team, growth is super exciting! It’s not everyday you get to work for a company that can rightfully claim to be one of the top 5 fastest growing brands in the country (humble brag, sorry). 

I’m incredibly excited for the opportunity that the new year presents. Although you can argue it’s arbitrary (although we did make it around the sun one more time, go us), there’s something about a new beginning that is inspiring. I have a lot of goals for this upcoming year, some lofty and some less so. Looking ahead, here’s some of what I hope to accomplish:

I think I can safely make the assumption that our team will be adding more members in the next few months, which is always really awesome. I’m excited to be able to brandish myself as a veteran, and help our team expand successfully.

I hope to receive an offer letter from Impossible Foods and continue to work towards creating a sustainable food source for people, whether it be in office or remote (although I know quite a few people who would like me to at least move closer to home, myself (sometimes) included). Did I just use a parentheses within a parentheses? Remind me not to do that in 2020.

I also want to expand my technical skills. I don’t know if coding is within the realm of possibility for me quite yet, but there are a handful of tools that if I were to become proficient in would benefit me considerably as I venture further into the tech/startup world. 

Most importantly in my book, I hope to continue cultivating new relationships and gaining as much knowledge/wisdom from those around me. It’s so galvanizing talking with likeminded people who know so much more than I do and have such a wide variety of experience to learn from. I think one of the best realizations I had this year was that I can learn something from literally every person I talk to. Every once in a while it’s learning what not to do, but hey, still valuable.

I don’t know exactly what’s to come in the next year (insert cliche “2020 vision” here), but I know that I’m ready to face the unknown. I can’t always have the answer, but if I know what questions to ask or where to look, then that’s all I need.

Until next week!