Caleb Rutledge 4/26/2024
The years I have spent at HydraTech have been an absolute adventure. I’m closing in on 5 years with the company, and my responsibilities have evolved a lot. I have done a bit of everything; a trademark of working for a small business. My story reminds me of the book I read to my son, “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie”, one experience leading to another and another haphazardly. Because of the people here, I have enjoyed the ride.
When I started at HydraTech, I was tasked to answer calls and manage some administrative office work. I always want to be busy and this drove me to look for supplemental tasks to fill down time. Soon enough I added cleaning to my list of to-dos. Not long after I got involved with updating our website and all the other parts of our online presence. I helped package and label our products. I started attending tradeshows with the company’s president, Peter, and our estimator, Jennifer. Our company president is keen on having everyone understand the ins and outs of all our products and so, we all eventually go through training demos. Armed with this new knowledge, I volunteered to assist on a job. This gave me real-world experience beyond the training demos. Soon enough I felt confident to give demos myself. Knowing that I could train others on installation, I knew that I could manage a job myself and I ended up managing several. This, coupled with attending the tradeshows, helped me know the clients and I was sure I could gather more clients through sales calls and emails, which then I started. Well, I soon discovered perspective clients should get quality promotional materials and that customized promotional material tends to be very costly. That led to the eventual purchase of an embroidery machine. Now I’ve taken classes to embroider our promotional materials.
That leads us to now. I do a bit of everything as needed. Looking back at how odd my career path has been I can’t imagine what the next chapter of “If You Give Caleb A Job” will be. Whatever happens, I’m sure it will be a good time.