Selling NCBR involved learning curves, great people

There’s no such thing as a perfect job. Even the most glamorous ones take on that pesky quality of “something you have to do” from time to time. I think of my five years at the Business Report, like all of the jobs I’ve had, as the best possible place for me to be at the time, and I remember some great things about it.

The people

Unless you’re a solopreneur, your work environment will always be created by the people you work with. When you’re in sales, that means not only your co-workers, but also your customers. When I started selling for the Business Report in 2001 I was given the Health Care category, which meant that my customers were folks like Pam Brock (then at Orthopedic Center of the Rockies), Armi Hall (Poudre Valley Health System), Gene Haffner (North Colorado Medical Center) and others.

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I learned quickly that these customers held the Business Report in high regard. The openness they showed was truly appreciated as I began to build my relationships within the health-care community. Their help was invaluable in putting together the first Health and Wellness Summit, modeled after my very first NCBR event, the I-25 Corridor Summit.

My first step was to set up a taskforce charged with developing topics for the Health Summit. Yvonne Myers (Columbine Health), Kent Madsen (then with United Medical Alliance, now KDM Benefits), and Evan Hyatt (Pathways Hospice) and many others participated and their input was fabulous. I was on a steep learning curve and I had wonderful teachers.

Later, I took on the Commercial Real Estate category as well. What fun to work with crazy professionals like Dan Eckles and Mark Bradley at Realtec, and Tom Livingston of Everitt Commercial (now Livingston Commercial). I negotiated another learning curve when I was enlisted to help with the Real Estate Roundtable with Nick Christiansen (now Chrisland Inc.) and Kerrilyn O’Rourke, then at McWhinney.

Does Northern Colorado sound like a small town? Yes, in many ways the business community here is a tight-knit club that has changed a lot but still has many of the same players.

The help and moral support I got from my colleagues at the Business Report also helped me immensely. Chris Wood and Jeff Nuttall provided steady leadership in a business that felt like a family. Well, it actually was a collection of families. My husband Steve Porter was the editor of Poudre Magazine and managing editor of NCBR when I started. Kathy Nuttall pitched in administratively, and Carol Wood held almost all the jobs at the paper at one time or another, culminating as a sales rep for Poudre Magazine and the Business Report in Greeley. When Bob Baun became editor, his wife Mishelle worked in our research department.

Nancy Glenn and Lindsay Gilliland were also very important to making the Business Report successful in those years, and Sandy Powell, who I hired in 2004, is now managing the sales department. De Dahlgren, now NCBR’s event manager, still holds the record for shortest-lived employment as a sales rep – two hours in 2005.

The product

Let me start by saying I’m biased. I come from a newspaper family. My father and my grandfather both were newspapermen. Heck, I met my husband in a journalism class. My first job was on the circulation complaint desk at the Des Moines Register.

I have an idea of what a great newspaper can mean to a community. For everyday joes and josephines, it means staying on top of what’s happening in the neighborhood and the world. For businesses, it means staying on top of issues and happenings that can change the course of their business plans and their futures. My soapbox? We need newspapers, because without them we can’t be good citizens.

Well, the Business Report (I include sister publications in Boulder County and Wyoming in this bold assertion as well) is a great newspaper – rare in these days of bias and opinion-based reporting. Widely respected, dynamic and proactive, willing to take risks and to make a difference, their solid reporting and editing have won a massive number of awards. These high standards are a result of great editorial leadership from folks like Tom Hacker, Bob Baun, Steve Porter and Kate Hawthorne, as well as unwavering guidance from publishers Wood and Nuttall.

For me, being a part of the Business Report‘s history was a privilege I’ll always be proud of.

Just sayin’.

Lee Porter has now added blogging to her list of journalistic experiences. Follow her “Everybody Sells” at www.ncbr.com.