The Climb Begins

Hi everyone, I'm Kyle. I started at Summit Sales & Equipment just last week as a marketing specialist, a role that includes a wide range of tasks. I'm working on our website a lot right now, but I'll also have a hand in creation of marketing materials, our social media, writing blog posts (oh, hi there), promotions and sponsorships, as well as whatever other tasks come up - we're a small company which, of course, means that doing things not listed on the Indeed posting are normal. A very nice girl here insists that I'm in charge of ordering company-branded apparel as well, and that the next batch had better include women's stuff.

A little bit of my life story: once upon a time, I graduated from Penn State with a degree in Crime, Law and Justice. Then, I lasted about two months in law school, so Plan A was rather decisively over. I took a telemarketing job because I needed the money, and even though I was pretty much always the second-worst salesperson on my team (thanks for keeping most of the heat off of me Joanne), eventually I found a niche in regulatory compliance and getting the people who actually could sell in trouble. As you may have guessed, I was extremely popular there (in all seriousness, it was an important role and I took great pride in it, as I was helping to make sure that our salespeople were being honest and giving all legally-required information to our customers). I was promoted a couple times, recruited to a different company...then laid off when the large campaign I was brought in to work on bombed.

Throughout most of this time, I had remained involved with the hockey teams at my alma mater, and through that, discovered a passion for graphic design, communications and marketing as I developed materials for them. So I used the abrupt stop to my first (well, second if you count law) career path to make a change and begin pursuing that. As anyone who's rebooted things in their 30s can attest, it's been a little rough at times, minimum wage positions have been involved as I've tried to get established, but I've landed on my feet at Summit, and am really excited for the journey at what's been a fantastic place to work so far.

I'm also a little nervous. You may have noticed something that wasn't in those previous two paragraphs: any mention whatsoever of the oil and gas industry. My entire exposure to it, as of this point, has more or less been that an oil billionaire paid for the ice arena at Penn State. So part of the purpose of this blog will be to chronicle my knowledge growth, mostly so that those of you reading who have been involved in this space for years or even decades can laugh at me. We all need laughter in our lives, right? I'll also be posting some photos of what our amazing crew over in the fab shop is working on, relevant company updates, and whatever else comes to mind about the goings-on here.

Speaking of the fab shop, I went over there yesterday, and took these of what I believe are shiny, new chemical pump skids that they were getting ready to throw on a truck. I'll give you a heads up when I know anything about them besides "they pump chemicals and look stellar while doing it." But I was impressed enough to use one of these photos in the header for this blog.

Until next time,