Personal | Seattle Online Marketing, Communications, Strategy

Help her find me: Michele Wolf

October 25, 2008 By Joe Hage 2 Comments

Michele Wolf worked at Rutledge in Connecticut, Bear Stearns in New York, MBNA in Maine, STAR Telecom in Atlanta, and went to graduate school in California in 2003. Can you help her find me?

We met back in 1993. She came to my wedding and I last saw her seven years ago. She’s (obviously) terrible about keeping in touch. Her name is too common to find in a normal search. And I want to reconnect with a lost friend.

Can a blog, some SEO, and YOU help her find me?

If YOU link to this article (and so do many others), this will become the first result whenever Michele Wolf or Michelle Wolf or Michele Wolfe or Michelle Wolfe is Googled. At some point, she’ll see this blog and you will have helped me reunite with a friend.

A worthwhile experiment, don’t you think?!

Here’s all the relevant keywords I can remember about Michele:

* Michele Wolf lived in New York City in an apartment on 57th and 8th and worked at Bear Stearns as an equity analyst following long distance companies in the mid 1990′s.

* Michele Wolf lived in Stamford, CT in 1992-1993 and worked for John Rutledge in Greenwich, CT.

* Michele Wolf moved to Booth Bay, Maine for a while and worked for MBNA, I think, in the credit card division.

* Michele Wolf moved to Atlanta, Georgia. She was the Vice President of Investor Relations for STAR Telecom.

* I saw Michele last in 2003 in Atlanta. Sold her home, went to graduate school in California; can’t remember where.

* Michele makes awesome ginger snap cookies. She loves dogs and the outdoors.

* Michele has a sister named Mary Wolf. Her parents are retired teachers who live in Arizona. They had a second home in Booth Bay, Maine.

So, will you please link to http://blog.joehageonline.com/2008/10/25/find-a-friend-michele-wolf/?

Email at joe@joehageonline.com and I’ll let you know when we reconnect!

Let’s see what the Internet can do!

Life after Safeco

September 3, 2008 By Joe Hage 4 Comments

Safeco Friends,

It’s been 51 weeks since I last Safecoed with you. A lot can change in a year.

I work at Cardiac Science and really enjoy it.

(The Cardiac Science equivalent to the Safeco Playbook was my first assignment back in November.) We’re building the category and I can save a life through the sale of an AED (automated external defibrillator) or get someone back on his feet after a cardiac event.

The family is great.

Zachary started first grade and Lucas started full-day pre-kindergarten this week. They have their own blog (email me for a link). And with both kids in school Beth gets to resume her art (let us know if you have a special photo in mind).

I discovered [Read more...]

Dear employer: I’m not perfect

August 12, 2008 By Joe Hage 7 Comments

True story:

I once had an interviewer ask me a question so direct that I had two choices: lie, or tell her an unfiltered, embarrassing truth.

I told the truth.

And I got the job — not in spite of my embarrassing admission but because of it. “That must have been very hard for you,” the interviewer empathized.

“I now know that what I see is what I’m going to get with you,” she said.

Why I share the story

Being imperfect, I suspect, is hard for many of my readers. We didn’t learn imperfection at Wharton. And how can we achieve corporate super stardom if people knew the truth about us?

42 years later, I’m quite comfortable with my imperfections. In fact, I enjoy them. They make me human. Humanity comes in handy when I have an unpopular decision to make.

Dealing with imperfection

My boss Kathleen Horner, then president at StockPot (a Campbell Soup Company), gave me a gift. Before we parted, she gave me an honest assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. “You’re a fantastic individual [Read more...]

The Art of Living

August 9, 2008 By Joe Hage 4 Comments

Every once in a while, someone enters your life and alters your path.

Are you aware enough to know when it’s happening? (It might be happening right now, with this blog posting.)

Shyam Nair altered my path. We met at StockPot, Campbell’s fastest growing division at the time, when I was Director of Marketing there. We made the best soup I have ever tasted for foodservice and retail distribution.

Shyam and I became fast friends after he spoke at a leadership forum we had.

In a thick accent I hardly understood, he gushed about the potential he saw at the company. Then, slowing down, he apologized. “I know I’m hard to understand when I get so excited!” I laughed and sought him out after the meeting.

One day we went for a walk during lunch and I was grousing about some such thing. Shyam put up his hand and said, “Joe, I’m not going to listen to one more complaint until you take a course with The Art of Living.” (Watch this MSNBC video.) He explained it would bring me some peace and help me meditate through my dissatisfaction.

Hey, I’m from Brooklyn. There’s no way I’m taking that class, I thought. I like to sleep. There’s no way I can close my eyes and not sleep. I don’t have the patience to meditate. I’m not sitting in the lotus position and I don’t believe any of that stuff. If it works for you, great, but it’s not for me.

“You will take this class,” he said, undeterred.

“Even if I have to pay the $350 myself.”

[Read more...]

Tae Andrews, Rest in Peace

June 8, 2008 By Joe Hage 17 Comments

Tae Wan Andrews died on March 30. He was 45. I just heard about it today.

Tae was my boss at Kraft Foods when I worked on the Lender’s Bagel business. I liked him, and I’m moved by his death.

Working on Lender’s in 1996 was neither easy nor enviable. Bagel shops were sprouting all over the country: Manhattan Bagel, Einstein’s, Noah’s, and Bruegger’s, among them. I’d tell people what I did for a living and earn a snarlish, “Who eats frozen bagels anymore when you can just walk down the street and get a fresh one?”

Talk about a marketing challenge! We worked with J. Walter Thompson on the account and focus groups basically said that Lender’s was “nuclear fallout food.” That is, they were good to have in the freezer just in case. Just in case there was, say, nothing else to eat in the house. Just in case the lights went out. In case we were in a state of emergency. Mmm, Mmmm! Don’t you just want one right now?!

I lived in Manhattan at the time. A homeless person I routinely passed between my garage and Upper West Side apartment accosted me for change one day. Feeling magnanimous, I offered her a coupon for a free bag of Lender’s Bagels (retail value: $2.79 ~ far more than would ever come out of my pocket in the form of change!).

She took the coupon — looked at it — looked at me — and handed the coupon back to me. “I don’t have a toaster!” she said.

We didn’t have a lot of good market research when I first arrived, but Tae persevered. He asked for my feedback for his leadership training. This is what I wrote.

Leadership characteristic: Motivating. 4 (out of 5). Tae has a spirited “we can make this happen” attitude. Making the team greater than the sum of its parts. 4 (out of 5). Tae has an ability to add insight to others’ work and bring it to a higher level. Developing subordinates. 4 (out of 5). Tae repeatedly invites me to work on projects that further my development. Basically, Tae was there when I needed him, and gave me the latitude to work and grow at my own pace. I appreciated that about him.

Lender’s hemorrhaged volume that year, but we pulled it out. Bob Gamgort, now North American President of Masterfoods, was our General Manager. He’s one of a handful of marketers I truly admire. He sold Lender’s for $440 million onto an unwitting Kellogg’s. Kraft was downright giddy having unloaded this albatross onto our biggest competitor! (Kellogg’s sold Lender’s at a $220-million loss two years later.)

Top left: Me, Mike Havard, Peter Wilson, Lonnie Robinson, Steve. Bottom left: Sue Adams-Grant, Ken Ehrlickman, Bob Gamgort, Nancy Campbell. Not pictured: Tae, Jan Bottcher, Ron Lloyd, Matt Shapiro.

Lender’s sponsored the NYC Marathon in 1995. Wasn’t a good spend for us, but I enjoyed a fantastic view of the event — at the starting line and at the finish. Here’s a picture of Murray and me and one of Murray with Mayor Guiliani.

And the highlight of my Lender’s experience was flying to Mattoon, Illinois on the Philip Morris Corporate Jet with Murray Lender for the annual Bagelfest. Just me ‘n Mur. Mattoon is home to the bagel plant and employed half the town, I think. Murray was royalty there. It was quite a kick following him around: watching him get interviewed, watching people sidle up for a photograph, watching him sign autographs. You can see the joy in the photos below.

You look back and think: Those were good times, Tae. May you rest in peace.

Did you know Tae? Leave a comment for his family below.

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