Washington Business Spring 2017 | Washington Business | Page 33

washington business
strived to never be that guy and to always be the
hardest working person out there.
wayne j. martin: My brother and I started
a lawn-cutting business. I’m an Army brat. I
remember my father saying when we lived on
posts, ‘You know, everybody living on post has
these little yards.’ The fathers were all military
guys like him, working all the time. ‘You should
go and check and see if you can cut yards.’ It was a
good idea. My brother and I went down the street
and it wasn’t long before we had more lawns to cut
than we could do. I was around 13.
The first job I had where taxes were taken out
of my paycheck was in high school. I was an usher
in a movie theater. Minimum wage was $1.65 an
hour.
The lessons? The first thing is being on time
Austin Neilson, government and economic affairs director for the Tri-City Regional
and then getting the job done. You always were
Chamber of Commerce, at a 2016 meeting of the AWB Grassroots Alliance in Spokane.
focused on it.
I’m originally from. I happened to get placed at a lobbying firm in The two things I derived from those jobs — being on time, getting
the capitol and I really enjoyed it. They had me stay throughout the the job done — that’s been a consistent goal for me throughout my
summer and then it just kind of worked out where the offered me working life.
a job — I worked there for about seven years in total. I found that
through that hands-on internship experience that this was a field
that I really enjoyed and was passionate about. To this day one of
the luckiest breaks I’ve had was to get that internship opportunity.
barry hullett: I’m second generation in the aluminum business.
My dad was in the purchasing area at a smelter. When I graduated
from high school, I went to work directly in the smelter a week
later. I needed to do that to get funds for college. I worked there
summers on the shop floor then as an intern in subsequent years.
After I graduated, I went back to work as an engineer at the facility.
I certainly got a good appreciation for the hard work the shop
floor workers have to do. The money was pretty good, especially at
that time. But I wanted to go to college. I think my job today gives
me a better perspective of the impact at all levels of the organization.
When I make business decisions, I try to put myself in the shoes of
the workforce. It helps with my evaluation.
brian forth: I don’t know if it’s even legal now, but I delivered
prescription drugs to people who needed them but couldn’t get out
and about. It taught me a lot of sympathy for the folks that were
home bound, but it also taught me responsibility because getting
prescriptions to them on time was important to peoples’ health. It
also taught me that you don’t get to start the job as the pharmacist,
you have to work your way up within an organization.
jack lamb: When it came to my first job, flipping burgers when I
was 15 in Seattle, I learned that sometimes you have some workers
that are more responsible than their managers. I became a key holder
like two or three weeks into working there, it was crazy. It made me
realize that there are such things as terrible bosses. Ever since, I’ve
cynthia leon: The way I got started in my career is I started
interning for free. My first internship was with the speaker of the
California Assembly. Being able to expose myself to that environment
and understand what the perimeters were, was something I was
willing to do for free. If you take my first paid job at the YMCA,
it was really my opportunity to understand time management,
professionalism and the basic things you need to know when you
acquire any job.
virginia valdez: My first professional job was working for a non-
profit Skill Force. I was a trainer, it was my first “official job” after I
graduated with my bachelor’s degree. Up until then, I kind of built
experience in customer service over time as I was getting my degree.
I learned pretty quickly from my first job, Woody’s Drive-in here in
Moses Lake, how a business operates. I learned how important the
customer is to the overall operations of the business. I learned a lot
of fundamental workforce skills like being on time, being reliable,
a hard-worker and going above and beyond what my typical job
description was.
what motivates you?
rosemary brester: Everything. I am a very curious person and
people have told me I have a restless mind. I think it’s been to my
benefit because I can retain a lot of information. I can go from one
task to another and back again. Curiosity. I love to learn. I’m an avid
reader. I think part of it is a desire to learn. Another part of it is I
never went to college until I was in my 40s.
I went back because one of my customers told me at the time
that we didn’t have anyone on staff that had a degree. I took it to
spring 2017 33