Monday – New Guy – always a daunting prospect!

I arrived at the the fabl offices – which are set in the beautiful surroundings of Broughton Hall- at 8.30am, ready and eager to get cracking in my new job.

I was quickly ushered into the office, did the “meet and greet” and was shown how to test the fire alarm. Turns out this is to be my new job first thing every Monday morning. Let’s hope I remember how to turn it off next Monday!

After being set the all important coffee making task I quickly got familiarised with the kettle and how the very particular members of the team like theirs.

Shown to my desk our technical whizz Martin sorted out my email. ‘Linked in’, I was ready to go!

The weekly Monday meeting with the fabl team was next on the agenda. I didn’t realise just how much information I was about to receive. I concentrated hard, trying 100% to take it all in and note down what I could, but I just couldn’t scribble quickly enough. My writing quickly turned into what only could be described as something a spider would understand….

The rest of the day flew by, phones ringing, errands run, calls for assistance, getting familiarised with the company and all the ongoing projects.

Tuesday- Time to get on with it!!

Today after forgetting my lunch and flying home to get it, I managed to swerve my way like Michael Schumacher and still get to the office on time! Not a very good start to the day!

I spent time in the morning researching potential clients to advertise in the exciting new magazine that the fabl are launching for one of their clients.

Then, I got down to it, and started making the necessary phone calls!

Wow! Who would have thought speaking down the phone trying to get responses could be so difficult! Especially with the pros I can hear around me, with Mags and David truly showing me how it’s done……

After spending the majority of the day ploughing through magazines and racking my brains as to who might be interested in advertising in our new magazine, whilst all the time fielding and making phone calls, it was quickly 6pm and time to go home.

Wednesday- blog time

Today I spent some time sourcing something vaguely interesting to write in my blog. The prospect of writing something from scratch is still quite intimidating to a ‘newbie’, but practice makes perfect!

I then filed some documents for Mags, surely an easy task. No. I quickly learnt just how atrocious my spelling is, so if you find a mistake please understand that most of my time is spent typing on keyboards, with the privilege of spell check! I’m sure most of the younger generation would agree.

After grabbing a dictionary, which I am clearly going to have to tie around my neck! I had a short lesson in the basics of using excel, which I found to be highly informative and I feel I am now a lot more ‘clued up’.

These excel skills quickly came in handy and I spent the majority of the afternoon constructing a table with businesses contact details in. Remembering my morning lessons, I was soon flying along with it.

Thursday- Hazel arrives: no longer the ‘newbie’

What a beautiful day! Very sunny but a bit cold. I can be a bit picky at times but as long as it’s not raining, on the whole I’m happy!

I arrived bright as a daisy, feeling very refreshed from an early night. I was then informed that we were to have a busy office today, with most members of the team coming in at some point. Sure enough it was a massive contrast to the day before with just Mags, David and me.

Hazel, the newest member of the team arrived, shortly after me. This tipped the average age in the office almost in favour of Jack and me and made David, the self-confessed ‘dinosaur’ ,even more prehistoric.

There was a new vibe buzzing about the place with immaculate telephone voices and discussion to be heard all around. This, I thought, is something I could definitely get used to.

David, who may I add constantly receives an awful lot of ‘stick’ (some deserved, some not), saved me as I was struggling getting information out of most of the restaurants I was speaking to. A quick tweak to the questions I was asking and I was back in business and getting some excellent feedback.

Friday- my big break

Last night I was absolutely shattered and after my meal decided to have a stiff Gin and Tonic and go to bed. It’s probably the earliest I have ever ‘nodded off’ in a long time, 9.30pm.

After arriving stupidly early due to waking up at the ridiculous time of 6am, I drove into the car park at Nesfield House and had a little read of my Marketing book. David arrived shortly afterwards and it was back to my normal early morning tasks in the office, coffee etc. I got back to the phones and I don’t quite know exactly what happened but I was actually able to speak to people and extract some very interesting information out of them. People actually wanted to speak to me and were being extremely helpful. With one particular lady expressing an interest in possibly advertising, I’ll wait for the promised call back first before celebrating. I’m making progress! Good start to the day.

Lunchtime, the coffee hunt begins. Where is it? After trotting down to the Broughton Park offices to pick up what I’d been told was our coffee I had to come all the way back, empty handed. Another call came in saying it had now definitely arrived, so another trip down to the estate office was in order.

Then came my big break! My canvassing calls led to us capturing a new client to advertise in the magazine, hopefully one of many more to come. As you can imagine, it made my afternoon.
A busy afternoon again on the phones with me writing up findings from my research and also finishing off this blog.

After an extremely busy week I have learnt an awful lot and hope to build on my new found skills from the unbelievably knowledgeable people around me. I would hope also to develop these skills over the next few weeks into starting to become a true content marketing professional.

Overall, a fine day to end a fantastic week….