Week One Stateside - Timm's Report & Photos from StorMan USA
About the Author
Timm has worked in Self Storage for over 10 years... so it's only fitting that he came to work for StorMan when he was looking for a bit of a change. Timm currently resides in the United States and is our Sales Manager for this region.
You can get in touch with Timm via our Contact page.
Links of interest
Hi all ...and thank you all for the awesome well wishing and great send off.
I arrived early one Sunday morning Los Angeles time and what a day to start off a whirlwind first week! My first stop was Union station and whilst waiting around for the train to my new home the LA marathon ran past. Far too energetic for me as I had just got off a 14 hour flight so I settled for a coffee and a relax then grabbed some lunch at Olvera Street markets (world famous in LA) which was phenomenal to say the least after 3 meals of airline food, and the fact that it was the longest day of my life.
I left early Sunday morning, travelled for 14 hours and arrived... lo and behold... early Sunday morning! But I digress. If you ever get here and find this I definitely recommend this little cafe at the end that had people queuing all morning. Add a raspberry iced tea to wash down your tasty meal. I knew it would be good when I saw the locals eating there.
From here it was onto Riverside on the Amtrak train and for those of you unfamiliar with this mode of transport (especially Victorians) just imagine a cheap public transport that was on time, not full of Looney's and had comfy seats, didn’t break down half way to be replaced by buses and was staffed by courteous people who actually cared how your trip was and cared that you arrived alive.
For those of you in Queensland reading this just pretend I got a limo as none of those qualities pertain to QR. Imagine how good the Reds would be if they were sponsored by Amtrak not QR (rant over, I promise). Anyway I had hit Riverside on time and a day ahead of Wayne so had a site seeing half day all to myself. After a few hours I had seen all of Riverside and had read all the plaques and was ready for a well earned nap.
The next few days were a whirlwind but the highlight was the CSSA (Californian Self Storage Association) networking dinner. We arrived early to set and young Erin and the glowing Brenda soon had us stretching our legs after the 2.5hr drive. It wasn’t actually that far but the traffic in L.A is as bad as they say.
They made us stretch our legs by promising us the best cupcakes in all of L.A. Luckily we made the trip which seemed only slightly shorter than the marathon a few days earlier (full credit to Erin who continually repeated “Only 2 more time over the horizon and we will be there”), but we were more worried about Brenda given her advance pregnancy status however the lure of the famous cupcake was too much.
After much moaning and complaining we did get to enjoy the cupcakes and I can safely say Erin didn’t lie (having said that I don’t eat a lot of cupcakes so I don’t have a great deal to go on in a comparison but sense take my word for it), next time you're in LA, be sure to head over to Famous Cupcakes (my vote is for the mocha latte!). I have included a photo that proves you can’t look manly holding a cupcake (from left to right is Brenda, Wayne and Erin).
Wayne delivered a great presentation on behalf of StorMan and gave all a few tips on the challenges ahead for all storage operators. The challenge was accepted by one of StorMan USA’s new friends, Alice, who did a fantastic job with the Haka (available as a video clip upon request but only for blackmail purposes).
The dinner was well received and more of a networking session which ended up with Wayne and myself getting invited to the home of James and his awesome wife Abby (I hope that's spelt correctly). James has built himself an oasis in the backyard and is a magnificent home for him, his wife and 2 girls. The crowning jewel as any decent Kiwi / Aussie knows is the BBQ area and given that it was a Friday and as is customary at StorMan we bought the meat and James supplied the BBQ.
A great weekend followed, with Wayne and Timm starting a new Kiwi / Oz tradition called the “Bled-i-slow”, which involved a few cleansing ales and a few games of pool to determine the best country. Unfortunately we weren’t fast enough to get 5 games in so the score is currently 2-2. I will update everyone as we get through more games but rest assured the backgammon will be won by an Aussie.
The following week we attended a few meetings and demonstrated StorMan to some more potential customers and then StorMan USA entertained a visitor from Texas and attended another function. Kevin Schor from Cheq Services International was our guest for a few days and offered a great service to all California storage operators and further across the U.S to anyone reading this, and gave us all a great insight into automating many business practises that now consume so much time.
Kevin took some time out of his busy schedule to treat Wayne and I and the A-American team to a few hours of awesome looking golf skills. In return, Wayne and I treated the boys to a few hours of watching Kiwi’s and Aussie’s slicing and hooking golf balls, searching through bushes, looking in lakes, hitting paths and roads as well as breaking who knows how many tee’s in the process.
Wayne did redeem all of us from down under by hitting one magnificent shot on the 15th that landed 15m from the hole and would surely have been shot of the day had Mark from A-American not stepped up and put his shot 3m from the hole. Talk about having your thunder stolen! Mark (Left) and Kevin (right) won the day convincingly but then they did have gloves so we called it even in the end...
There will be a re-match surely and I will let you all know how we do representing “Down Under” next time. Anyway - enough from me for my first blog 'from across the big ditch' and there will certainly be more fun times I am sure as we make many new friends here in the States. Thanks all and watch this space for much, much more!
Regards,
Timm (International Sales Representative, StorMan).
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