My First Business Management Experience

My First Business Management Experience

Before I get into my first management experience, there is a life experience that was both an important lesson and helped me put a better perspective on family verses career.

It was the event of the birth of our first child. Janet was two months early and gave birth to twins. Mark and Michelle. Mark only lived for 4 days. Michelle was in an incubator for 40 days. Needless to say this was a difficult time for us. Not only was it a sad and very tense, it presented us with a huge financial obligation.

To this day I do not know how Mr. Lazarus learned about our situation, but one day, I was summoned to his office. He asked me about my family and how we were doing. By then we had Michelle home and were learning to become parents and getting past the tragedy of losing a son. So, I said we were doing fine. He told me he knew all about the situation and understood our stress and wanted to help. He told me the Lazarus Employee Trust Fund was paying all my hospital bills and I would have no further obligation to the company or the hospital. Please just go home and take care of your family was his parting comment. I am tearing up a bit just writing about this meeting. What a blessing!

Not long after that meeting, I was promoted to Department Manager of the Fashion Fabrics Department. Wow, at the ripe age of 23, I was responsible for managing a $1.3 million a year business producing a net profit of about $150,000. Over the next four years we were able to grow it to almost $2 million and over $300,000 in net profit. In addition, I after the first year, I was given responsibility for the management of the 5 “Trim – A –Tree” shops in our store. This was a seasonal business that operated from October through December with clearance sales in January. My responsibility in both of these departments was merchandising, display, advertising, buying, sales management, hiring & firing, inventory control and the bottom line.

Thankfully, I inherited a very experienced staff of sales clerks and a very capable assistant manager, Barry. He went on to become the CEO of a national chain of Fabric Stores.

There were three women who were very helpful to me. One was an elderly lady, who was a holocaust survivor. Sophie taught me how to deal with the private seamstresses who came in looking for fabrics for their clients. She often called in sick because of the aftereffects of experimental surgeries performed on her in the concentration camps. She was 70 plus years old and we were just grateful to have her when we could. She was also not afraid to tell me when I was making mistakes.

The second woman was the most experienced salesperson in our department and became a very valuable advisor to me in the area of customer service, basic fabric selections and seemed to know what our customers wanted.

Finally there was our seamstress. She made clothes for our mannequins and live models. She also helped our live models dress and prepare for shows.

Lessons learned:

1. The importance of family.

2. The value of taking care of your employees.

3. The value of listening to the experience of fellow workers.

4. How to have the courage to tell the boss he or she is wrong.

5. The value of listening to customers.

6. How to manage a business to achieve real financial results.