We decided to use 12 fun, themed days to celebrate Christmas with our work family. Above, in this blog post’s featured image, you can take in the glory that is BrandCo’s 2015 Christmas tree. The whole team contributed and came together to decorate the tree with things that are important to us and our work life. You can find everything from desk knick-knacks to post-it notes. It really is a sight to behold.

Greeting Cards

Greeting Cards day was celebrated by all of our team members bringing in random Christmas cards. The cards were put into a bag and we all randomly drew our own. Three cards are passed around all of the days following for us all to say something nice to each other. (Yes, that one card does say Granddaughter on it lol)

Santa and His Reinbeer Day

What’s a Christmas celebration without Santa Hats? Well, definitely not one without a couple beers either. Reinbeer day was added in conjunction with Lager Day. Employees were allowed to kick back with a couple of cold ones while working and enjoying the festivities as they donned their Santa gear. Of course, this proved to be a day filled with extreme nerf gun battles, too!

Candy Cane Day

Candy canes are synonymous with Christmas and everyone has to favorite flavor. We purchased an assortment of canes for our team, including Starburst, Sour Patch Kids, traditional red & white peppermint, and Hershey Chocolate Mint.

Ginger Bread House Day

Team building was strong at BrandCo for Ginger Bread house day. Each side of the office got their own to decorate. Putting the main pieces together even proved difficult for us amateurs, but once we were past that hump, the creativity took over.

Christmas Telephone and Baby Photos

To say that BrandCo’s team were adorable babies, would be an understatement. We were all given a sheet with the baby photos shown here. Can you guess which of us are shown? Curious enough, we all had a lot of trouble picking each other out.

This day we also passed around two games of telephone, leading to some completely hilarious stories to read through.

Chocolate Covered Christmas

Chocolate day was soooo Rich. We had everything from marshmallows to Rice Krispy treats to dip in either our choice of milk or dark melted chocolate. Needless to say, our sweet-tooth were fully satisfied.

Winter Wonderland

Penguin stress balls and snowflakes were the focus on the Winter Wonderland day. Members of the team cut out and adorned our Christmas tree with themed snowflakes from Star Wars and Game of Thrones (yes, we’re quite nerdy around here).

Christmas Ornaments

More arts and crafts! As if we didn’t have enough on our office Christmas tree, we added more on! Each member was given two christmas ornaments to decorate by scratching. You can make a christmas tree or reindeer ornament.

Bah Humbug

Earlier in the month we were asked what our least favorite things about the holiday season were…and they ended up in a cross word puzzle. We were all given Bah Humbug pencils to fill it out with, topped with our very own lump of coal.

Reindeer Games

After some bad Oriental Trading reviews, this day didn’t quite go as planned. While we were looking to order a really cool antler game that you could throw rings at, we decided to go with these super cute reindeer beach balls to add to the festivities of the day. However, like most days, the office ended up breaking out their nerf guns. So, that counts, right?

Milk, Cookies, Nog, and Ugly Sweaters

Christmas eve eve was a hodge-podge of yummy goodies, interesting drinks, and bad fashion choices. Gesenia mixed the team up a batch of a Puerto Rican drink called Coquito, which I found delicious. Cookies that we all dug into early in the morning were brought in by Bianca. The four of us left at the end of the day made sure to get a photo of our tacky get-ups in front of our randomly decorated Christmas tree.

Secret Santa in our PJs

At the end of November, the team picked names out of a hat to get their Secret Santa assignment. Throughout the month of December, we all learned more about our assigned co-worker and tried to purchase them something they would love. This day we also came into work as comfortable as possible by donning our favorite pajamas. It was a great way to finish the work week before the holiday, by celebrating each other with gifts and comfort.

Thus ending another fabulous BrandCo Christmas filled with fun and time spent together.

Happy Holidays from us to you.

Recently I have been reading The Dream Manager, and both thinking and speaking a lot about my dreams and goals. As part of our culture here at BrandCo, growth through reading and learning from the experience of others is encouraged greatly. This is how I came across The Dream Manager.

This book hosts a story set in a janitorial company that is trying to get a handle on their out-of-control employment turn-over rates. The company, Admiral, decides to turn things around by focusing on the dreams of their employees.  They start by creating a new position called the Dream Manager.

A dream manager was put into place to discover the dreams of the employees and to, in turn, assist them in devising plans and strategies to accomplish them. Through learning more about the desires and struggles of the people that work for them, Admiral’s leadership was able to better serve them, building a much more loyal, hardworking team.

The lessons learned in The Dream Manager have become a big part of how BrandCo functions. We recently had Don Hobbs come in and speak to us about The One Thing so we can begin following our dreams and building realistic plans to achieve them. Our CEO, Ken, has also helped us greatly in identifying our goals, putting a price point on them, and helping us create a real trajectory to them.

In all honesty, it’s hard to keep dreaming once you become an adult. Life becomes more about survival than dreaming big. Removing life’s every day restrictions and opening your mind to big possibilities is extremely powerful and can provide a newly energized purpose to your life.

I definitely recommend that you purchase The Dream Manager and start dreaming for yourself. It may just change your world.

At BrandCo, we consider every team member and client as family. So, it is only customary that we wanted to spend a Thanksgiving with our work family, too. Yesterday, we enjoyed a delicious pot luck with Turkeys prepared by our fearless leader, Ken. We had everything from green bean casserole to pecan pie to accompany. During the holidays, and throughout the year, it is important to slow down and appreciate being able to surround yourself with such amazing people.

The day before Thanksgiving was a very big day for us.

It marked David’s last day with us. We’re very proud of our boy and his new opportunity at US Today and his big move to New York. We’re happy to have been part of your journey, David!

We also celebrated the day that Eric was born with a Birthday cake…on top of the pecan pies, pumpkin cheese cakes, and pumpkin pie.

 

We asked the team what their favorite part of Thanksgiving is:

James E: “I love Thanksgiving! Its that time of the year that you realize how blessed you are to have your family and friends.”
Jessica: “Spending time with my family 🙂 ”
Bianca: “Food…Oh and I like the Macy’s parade”
Trey: “Grandma’s pecan pie”
Emily: “My favorite thing about Thanksgiving is getting to see family and eating yummy foods that I don’t get any other time of the year.”
Denika: “Cooking for a crowd.”
Trevor: “Over the last few years Thanksgiving has been getting to know my girlfriends family better and shown me how great it is to have a close family and to stay in touch often. I hope to bring the same traditions and family values to own one day”
Max: “pumpkin pie”
Mackenzie: “Hmm It’s hard to pick just one thing. I like that Thanksgiving reminds everyone what they are most Thankful for. For one day we are grateful for the people we are spending Thanksgiving with and the things we take for granted on a daily basis.”
Zenadia: “Family.”
Marc: “My favorite thing is sharing your hard work and culture through a feast”
Vincenzo: “Postdinner coma”
Hector: “My favorite thing about Thanksgiving is….being with family and people I love (and the fact that most people have better attitudes)”
Jake: “Post-dinner naps”
Gesenia: “Having a day to gather with family and reflect on the good things in our lives. And of course, getting to eat delicious food and drink some wine.”
Eric: “My birthday is near it, so I almost always am off work”
Tracy: “Getting to visit my family. When it comes to food, my mom is amazing and her dressing is to die for! Im usually already full from snacking on everything while she’s cooking before we even make it dinner with the rest of the family”
Phil: “Drinking at 10am on a Thursday”
Juan: “My favorite thing has to be the food… definitely! and of course sharing with your family and friends…but the food… I’m telling you xD”
Jonathan: “Hmmmmm… being about 5.000 miles away from them, I’m gonna go with spending time with the family…”
Tony: “Taking time at the beginning of the meal to remember all of the positive things that happened that year”
Amie: “The drinking, the laughing and the story telling with family 🙂 And pie. I love pie.”
West: “Helping others”

Hope your Thanksgiving is just a GREAT!

Have you every thought about what your definition of Success is? Here at BrandCo, Ken is constantly trying to strive to create happy and secure employees. Part of this is the reason why we had a special guest speaker join us last Friday here at Headquarters. You may be familiar with Don Hobbs, he is the co-founder of MAPS Business Training, which focuses on success through business models and systems. Along with many other accomplishments, Don is also the 1986 co-founder of Hobbs/Herder Advertising, which is a $20+ million powerhouse in the real estate marketing and training space.

“Success is getting what you want.”

 

We all have the same 1,440 minutes in a day, some just spend them a lot more efficiently. We learned that due to us having the most energy at the beginning of the day, that this is when we should focus the most on our “One Thing.” But what is my “One Thing”? I think this is the biggest question that most of my fellow employees walked away from the talk with. Another question that I have been plagued with recently is to try to discover what I actually want for my future. The BOLD laws laid out by Don is a great stepping stone system get us all to the same place in order to plan our futures and set our goals.

“Change how you look at things and the things you look at change.”

 

When discussing the items covered with my significant other the night after, we argued over the “Lies” that Don busted for us. As a self-labeled EXCELLENT Multi-tasker, I still find it quite difficult to believe that multitasking is a figment. Essentially, Hobbs allowed that it order to multitask, we are training our brains to de-focus. We all engaged in an activity where we wrote down 1-10, then wrote down a-j, and then attempted to write down 1, a, 2, b, 3, c….While looking up and making eye contact with out partner after each alphabet letter. Needless to say, we were much slower at the tasks at hand when it required us to rewire our brains to put letters and numbers together rather than separate.

“Money is not a cause, it is an effect”

 

I love the quote above because it brings home everything that BrandCo teaches its’ employees. Do what you love and everything else falls into place over time. The issue with most of modern society is that we are working in order to make money, not doing what we love and just happening to make a living at it. This is something that has resonated with me since starting here and being first given the book The Go-Giver. If you haven’t had the pleasure to read this book by Bob Burg and John David Mann, I definitely recommend that you make it a mission. By giving, you gain more, essentially. Just as similar as working for your cause, your going to gain success.

The end of the talk brought up the information that the team asked for at the end of our company-wide meeting earlier this morning: time management. To begin, we were asked to explore what our GPS would be.

G – Goal    P – Priority     S – Strategy

 

What do you want to accomplish? What do you need to do to make that goal happen? And a strategy to make it all come together. Once you have your GPS set, then your next plan of action would be to create your 4-1-1, which then leads to time-blocking. Time blocking was one of the largest take-aways for managing our time at work to accomplish the most in the least amount of time.

I will definitely have to say that the talk was enlightening and motiving for the whole team. I, personally, came back to my desk and began planning out my day thanks to the power of post-it notes. However, defining my goals and my “one thing” by the end of this year, will be my main mission moving forward.

Here’s what our team had to say about The ONE Thing:

James Estebanez “That presentation was amazing! How planning can influence the outcome so much. Aligning actions with your goals and what you want to achieve.”

Amie Sanders “I’m feeling the same way…sooooo good! I took away so much from that. Ready to start time blocking and setting goals!”