New Year, New Job

At the beginning of the year I moved into a new apartment which I described in my blog “New Year, New Home”. Soon after that though, I also took a new job, so now it’s a New Year with a New Home and a New Job! I think that’s enough big changes for now, and so far the year has started off with some welcome changes.

The Dental Industry

I’ve spend the last 5 ½ years as a Product Manager in the dental industry. I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve done and have enjoyed my job, believed in the products I’ve worked on, and I am very appreciative of the great friends I made along the way. I’ve made some good friends not only at the companies I’ve worked at, but at other dental companies in the industry whom I’ve met at the various tradeshows over the years. Being a Product Manager usually involves a good amount of travel, and my past 5 ½ years have not been short of that.

Jenna - My 1st Travel Partner in Crime
(A fellow half-Swede & Firefighter wife)

Devika - My 2nd Travel Partner in Crime

(Another fellow half-Swede & Firefighter wife!)

Business travel has been a lot of fun, but I have to admit that after about 4 yeas of it I’m a little tired of being on the road. Sure its fun to be in new cities and to get to meet a lot of new people, go out to nice restaurants, and do things that you wouldn’t normally do in your regular life, but the days are long, the travel most often occurs over the weekend, and in the end its your personal time that gets eaten up the most.

Teresa - Fellow Dental Friend & Blogger

Tradeshows & Travel

I read in a magazine once that there are more dollars spent on dental tradeshows than tradeshows for any other industry. Its not surprising, there is a large, national tradeshow for dentists almost every months. They range from shows targeting all general dentists, to specialty shows focused on the various dental specialties such as Oral Surgery, Periodontology, Implantology, etc,. I’ve been to just about all of these good sized shows all over the country over the years. The scene is kind of odd at first, same companies, same people, same booth, different city. After a while you start to recognize faces wherever you go, and start to realize that if your company is Marriott loyal for example, you’ll bump into the other dental industry Marriott loyals city after city. Its fun, and its been kind of like a little industry family for me over the years. The time came for me professionally though to move on.

Working the Tradeshow Booth

Group Dinner After a Long Tradeshow Day

During my term in the dental industry, I traveled to all of these cities at least once, if not multiple times:

• Batesville, AR
• Boston, MA
• Chicago, IL
• Denver, CO
• Fort Myers, FL
• Las Vegas, NV
• Little Rock, AR
• Maui, HI
• Memphis, TN
• New Orleans, LA
• New York, NY
• Orlando, FL
• Philadelphia, PA
• Pittsburgh, PA
• Providence, RI
• San Antonio, TX
• Seattle, WA
• St. Petersburg, FL
• Toronto, Canada
• Vancouver, Canada
• Washington DC

  

A New Venture

Three weeks ago I started a new job at a startup medical company with one main product, an injectible wrinkle filler. The product is up against some big products in the market owned by huge pharma companies with deep pockets. Its going to be a challenge to grow this product with a limited budget and small staff, but I’m excited to jump right into things and see what I can do. I worked at a startup once before, and sadly it didn’t end successfully. The company struggled, the product didn’t meet expectations, and when the company filed for Chapter 11 I was let go. I still keep in touch with a number of people from that company thanks to Facebook, and I’m amusingly proud to tell people that in my prior career I worked on a MMORPG. That’s a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game for you non-geeks reading this. Oh yeah! And you thought that being on the Robot Wars team in college was the nerdiest thing I ever did! Nope, trumped that!

Anyways, I’m just about a month into my new job and I’m really enjoying it. It’s been a challenge and I have a lot more responsibility than I’ve had in the past, and its fun to be working on a small team with so much control. You know me, I’m a control freak. I believe that I’m working on a great product as well and I appreciate the tight-knit team that I’m a part of that is all working so hard to make the company and product a success.

I spent my last several years helping people improve their smiles, now I’m moving on to another part of the face, the skin! Well smiles lines to be exact. I guess in simple terms, my life’s focus since entering Marketing has been making the world a prettier place when it smiles. :o)