The Importance of Being Earnest

What it means to be a resource and mentor for the emerging workforce

By LAUREN MOORMAN1851 Franchise Contributor

SPONSOREDUpdated 12:12PM • 05/18/16

Last week, my colleague Lauren and I made the trek to Lansing, Michigan for a meeting with TWO MEN AND A TRUCK*® called “Maximize Your Marketing,” a two-day educational event with marketing representatives from locations across the U.S. learning from TWO MEN AND A TRUCK® staff and relevant vendors (including us!).

Lauren and I prepared a presentation that was focused on nailing a media interview. Topics ranged from interview tips and tricks to how to be asked back to handling the toughest questions and turning your answer into a win for the brand. We often do presentations like these for our clients, but we usually do so for an audience of franchisees, who are typically focused on running their business from A to Z, not specifically on marketing or PR. Of course they care about PR and marketing but with managing the P&L, scheduling, inventory, hiring, employee training and more, they can’t be as zoned in on it as they, or we, would like them to be.

We love working with franchisees but I have to admit, it was very refreshing to present to a group of fresh-faced, young marketers eager to do a good job on behalf of the TWO MEN AND A TRUCK® brand and for their individual locations. These folks enjoyed our presentation on media prep but they wanted us to take it a step further – what angles / info / data / stories should they be pulling at the local level to feed to us to pitch to the media? They had specific questions for us (prepared in advance), and it seemed like they were hanging on our every word.

Ego strokes aside, it reminded me how great it feels to be a resource or mentor for younger workers. In the day-to-day grind, it’s easy to forget that what might feel like second nature to me can be groundbreaking information to someone just starting out in his or her career. It feels good to teach, but it felt great to dig into the material and to see the impact of our work through their eyes and learn from their excellent questions and insight.

This experience also reminded me that while I often write about what not to do during interviews in this column, a lot of what people do that might be perceived as annoying is just out of eagerness to make a good impression and learn.

Thank you to TWO MEN AND A TRUCK® for being an innovative, appreciative and an awesome client – and for letting us come to the Maximize Your Marketing meeting. Clearly, the learning went both ways!

*This brand is a paid partner of 1851 Franchise. For more information on paid partnerships please click here.