Five years ago on Thanksgiving weekend Heather and I moved our family from a two bedroom apartment in San Antonio to a three bedroom apartment in Cedar Park (Austin) to start a new job with a dental marketing company called Practice Cafe. Due to a series of unfortunate events I had been laid off from my job in October (2006) and on a whim (errr desperation) decided to extend my job search to the Austin area via Craigslist. Practice Cafe’s job listing actually really intimidated me at the time. I really felt like I had no real chance at getting the job. My thought process was, “what would it hurt to at least try.” So I sent over my resume along with a link to a REALLY bad portfolio website. I had never actually done any real “billable” design work up to that point. My entire website consisted of school projects. I think my confidence was also pretty low since a month or two earlier I had tried to get a job with a local digital creative agency in San Antonio where they told me that they couldn’t hire me because I wasn’t “billable.”
I was pretty shocked when after 1-2 days I was contacted by Practice Cafe and invited to drive to Austin for an interview. I wanted to be memorable so I came up with a quick idea to create a small logo book (that I think Joel still has on his book shelf in his office) and got it printed at Kinkos. The funny thing was that it cost like $12.00 to make the book. This was a lot of money (to us) at the time, and Heather gave me a lot of grief for spending the money to have it printed. She thought it was a silly idea and a waste of money. Regardless, I took my lil’ book of logos, my portfolio of student work, drove up to Cedar Park in north Austin, and had my interview. My mom was actually working near by in Round Rock so I went and visited her after my interview and we both drove back to San Antonio together. I had a really good feeling when I left the interview, and I really felt it went well (read my thoughts on the actual date).
A very grueling three weeks later they finally called just when Heather and I were both losing all hope and on the brink of complete despair. I had been out of work that entire time and we had Hannah who was roughly 18 months old at the time. I was so desperate for a job I went to a USAA job fair to try and get a job as a customer service rep. I stood in a really long line for a few hours in the parking garage. As I finally arrived at the door they told me that the interviews were over with and we’d all need to come back tomorrow. At the end of the next day was when I finally received the phone call from Practice Cafe offering me the position.
I am so grateful that Brian, Angie, and Joel were willing to take a chance on me. I seriously had no real experience or much of anything to really prove to them that I would actually help their business. I have no real clue why they hired me.
When I started working there I was the 7th employee and the company was only a year old as an actual “LLC.” I was so thrilled and excited to be working for Practice Cafe. After only a few months the company hit a really rough transition period and it was looking like there was a pretty good chance the company wouldn’t make it. We all pulled together and pushed our way through it. That experience in the first year helped me feel less like an employee and more like I was actually a part of the company or rather that the company was a family and I was a part of that family.
Now Practice Cafe has 13 employees. I am truly grateful for the opportunity to be a part of it all. Practice Cafe cultivates a creative work environment which encourages growth. They financially encouraged me to continue learning through the purchase of many books as well as 3 consecutive years of SXSW Interactive badges. I was also in an environment which provided me the freedom to learn, grow, and progress as a designer and a person. I was able to freely share my opinions, beliefs, philosophies, random ramblings. Collectively over the past five years I feel we all worked together to make each other better which resulted in the business as a whole becoming more successful and better. Practice Cafe is now one of the leaders in the dental marketing community. I’m proud to of been a part of it all.
What’s Next
For four years I worked in a sales position as a telemarketer. I spent time doing both in bound and outbound work. I hated my job and constantly dreaded going to work. While I was at work I spent most of my time trying not to stare at the clock. I decided then that as soon as I was through with school I would never have a job where I dreaded/hated going to work. I can honestly say that I have never dreaded going to work for the past 5 years with Practice Cafe. I loved my job and I loved the people I worked with and for. So back in August when I got a random phone call during the day from an 801 phone number. I actually only answered the call because I thought that it might be one of my long lost companions from my mission. Instead it was John Dilworth, he told me he was with Family Search and that they wanted to fly me out to Utah so they could get to know me better and I could also meet all of them. Initially I told him I wasn’t really looking for another job. He assured me that there was no obligation, just that they’d really love for me to come out so I could learn more about the opportunity and they could see if I was a good fit for them.
Well, I took him up on his offer. I flew up and I went through all the intense interviews. I returned home and within a week they had extended an offer to me. Heather and I both spent a good deal of time really pondering over and praying about this opportunity. This was a huge decision for us. We are both from Texas. We both have a great deal of Texas pride. My children are still young and quite frankly I didn’t like the thought of my two youngest children being so young that they would never actually remember anything about Texas. This could potentially make them not Texan. Beyond this we had just recently purchased our first house less than two years ago. The majority of our family lives in Texas. Another personal goal of mine is that I really want my children to grow up actually knowing their cousins, uncles, aunts, and grand parents. That was something I never had growing up and I’ve always wanted. Thus far we’ve actually been able to do a reasonably good job at this. Then there was also the fact that I really loved where I worked and the work I was doing. In fact I still feel as though I am abandoning Practice Cafe and letting each and everyone of the employees down to some degree by leaving.
The interesting aspect of all of this is when I finally stopped being selfish, and I stopped thinking about what I wanted was when it was completely clear what I needed to do. You see if you read the paragraph above all of my hesitations are fairly selfish and are all about what I “want.” So when I stopped focussing on all of that and really listened to my Heavenly Father, I could feel that this was something I needed to do. I still have no real clue why I’m supposed to do this. All I am doing is just trying to put my complete trust in God. They extended the final offer to me on September 9, 2011. The past two months have been a long and bumpy road. We have continued to push ourselves forward and now the day is finally upon us.
Well… Goodbye
Today was my last day of working at Practice Cafe. Friday the movers are coming to pack up all of our things. Monday they are loading everything into a truck. We are piling our three kids into our Mazda 5 and heading out on our 20 hour voyage to the rocky mountains of Utah.
“God gives us hope but we still fear what we don’t know.”
Although I am very sad to leave, I’m also excited for what the future holds. I’m excited to start working for Family Search. I’m excited for the opportunity to be a part of it all. I’m excited to work with all of the smart and amazingly talented folks at Family Search. Not to mention I’m giddy as a school girl to work on a Macbook Air.
