Becoming Mr. Naz

Normally they call me on the radio, but this request came from overhead, an announcement to the entire school. Everyone heard the panicked broadcast, “Mr. Naz, please report to Kindergarten… immediately!” Without hesitation, I dropped what I was doing and headed downstairs.

This cry for help came almost exactly seven years to the day we moved our entire family from my hometown of Rochester NY to Charlotte NC. The move was anchored in an amazing professional opportunity for my wife. So, we packed up four teenagers, one dog, three cars, and (according to the moving company) 62,000 pounds of stuff, and headed 750 miles south.

We settled into a big old house on a large, wooded lot and began to make a life in “The Queen City.”

Since the move revolved around my wife’s job, I left my position doing sales and marketing for a Western NY video company, confident I could easily find suitable employment; after all the Charlotte NC was a growing, thriving, city with a bustling economy – something that hasn’t been said about Western NY for decades. I had more than a quarter-century of marketing, sales and communications experience across a variety industries. I’d done multi-million dollar deals, launched complex products, managed large teams, and produced meaningful results where the odds were stacked against me. Everything up to now was leading to this moment of opportunity. This new city was my oyster.

On our fourth day in town, my wife Emily went to work, the kids went to school, and I began my new job of settling all the details. Looking for meaningful job was also on the list. The family details took a couple of months, the meaningful job would take considerably longer.

I quickly found some freelance work for some local agencies, but it wasn’t a lot, and as much as I was capable, it felt like ditch digging.

Before I continue, let me simply state… before moving to Charlotte I had the benefit of many amazing, and a few awful jobs. When I care about the company/product/service/customer I am never bored, and I dedicate whatever time and energy it takes to succeed. If I’m convinced I’m adding value, you’ll never find a better employee than me. However, if I feel like anybody else could do what I’m doing, I’ve been known to settle into a pretty intractable malaise.

So, there I was, applying to dozens of jobs each week, but making little headway because… it turns out 125 people a day move to Charlotte, and I believe most of them were applying to all the same jobs as me.

Some of my wife’s coworkers asked me to do some small construction tasks, and after a couple of successful projects, I decided to get into the handyman business. With a bit of self-promotion the work started to flow. I was plenty busy, but starting a new physical career at age forty-eight is a tough way to live. So, a year later when a friend suggested I’d be a great candidate for Content Strategy position at a large bank, I said, “yes please!”

I have worked for mostly small and medium sized businesses, so I am accustomed to working hard, and accomplishing a lot with limited resources. Large banks to not share this philosophy.

You know when you open a banking app and you’re presented with some new product or service? Well, my first assignment was to write the headline and sub-headline for one of those screens. I was given a budget of thirty-eight hours.

One morning I sat down to write, I composed my first draft. I stood up and stretched. Sitting back down I took a critical look at what I’d done and made a few tweaks. I walked to the kitchen, made a fresh cup of coffee, and returned to the task. I made one more pass and decided it was ready for submission. Total elapsed time: thirty-four minutes. When the time came to present my, um, deliverable, I started freaking out. (internal monologue) “There is NO WAY this is all they are expecting. I must have missed something, I am so getting fired.”

The meeting started, and I presented the seventeen words. Did I mention I only turned in seventeen words? I spoke, there was a little silence, and then my team leader said, “Steve, dude, you nailed it!”

I’ve characterized my time at the bank like this: “they paid me very well to do very little.” While it was financially good, it was intellectually vapid, and it was the ultimate manifestation of my “anybody else could do this job” test. It was a two-year contract, which when it ended, I had zero interest in any more of the same. When asked, I often refer to this time as the “Two-year sentence” I did with the banking industry.

With the banking world behind me, I dove headlong back into freelance work again. I was busy, and getting paid well enough, but like my previous solo stints, I didn’t feel like I was bringing anything unique to the table. Furthermore, the isolation of working alone in my home was draining.

The entire time all this was going on, I kept applying to more jobs. I’m a social person. I get energy from working alongside other people. Even the bank job was functionally remote since the everyone else on my team was based in California. I never once met any of them in person.

I reached a frustration point and hired a professional resume writer and job coach to revamp, and rebrand what was becoming an increasingly difficult professional story to tell.

After the new and improved me was available publicly, I was approached by a recruiter about a new position with an educational technology company. They were looking for a “Chief Storytelller.” At first, I thought I was being punked because it sounded way too good to be true. It was in fact for real, and after a fourteen-week (not a typo) interview process I was hired. Finally, something I believed in, plus an area of responsibility well aligned to my skills, talents, and passions.

The company was private equity owned and I was given a meaningful stake in what they (now we) were building. From the outset, I was very clear that what they were asking me to do was a paradigm shift and it would take time. Meaningful results would take at least a year. Specifically, I said, “storytelling is not a spice you sprinkle on top of what you’ve already cooked, it is a fundamentally different way of preparing a meal.”

Less than a year later, the company had a down-quarter, and looking to quickly slash costs. The Chief Storyteller was an expensive line item not directly tied to revenue, so with no warning I was told, “the storytelling experiment is over.” The position was defunded just eight months after it began. It was working, but they never gave it the time to bear fruit.

On literally the same day my job evaporated, something else happened. The details aren’t important, but the result was my wife and I saying yes to being Foster parents to an eleven-year-old boy with nowhere else to go. Had my job not gone “poof,” saying yes to expanding our family would have been impossible. I continued to pick up freelance work, but primary job was looking after kid number five.

With the new household dynamic, I stopped looking for the job I thought I wanted, and widened my search to just about anything. I set aside the persistent definition of what I did, or who I was, and instead let opportunities find me. I interviewed with some non-profits, looked at interesting jobs that paid a fraction of what I was accustomed to making, and I even auditioned to be the head chef at the café in our local Nordstrom (I am 100% self-taught but accomplished chef.) Nothing was off the table, and I started to feel like maybe this journey was finally going to find a destination, albeit one I could have never imagined.

In December 2022, we were able to adopt our Foster son, making him an official Nazarian. In early 2023, after seeing the Charlotte real-estate frenzy not slowing down, my wife and I decided to investigate downsizing. With the four oldest either finished with, or still in college, the big old house with the large, wooded lot was more than we needed. The yardwork and upkeep were a constant struggle and we figured we just might be able to get nice new digs with our equity alone.

In July we made a deal to sell our house, and in August we found a new one, well within our profit budget. New home, simpler life, no mortgage.

One August afternoon I was sitting on a moving box having lunch in our old house when my phone rang. It was the priest from our church. He said he was trying to solve a problem and the holy spirit had told him to call me. When a conversation opens like that… you listen.

The Catholic Elementary school tied to our parish was in need of a new facilities manager, and he felt I could be they guy they were looking for. Four days later, I met with the principal and the deal was done.

The job pays almost exactly what my first job out of college paid, over thirty years ago… and I don’t care. Every morning my son and I drive five miles to my school, where he gets on a bus to his school. Eight hours later he is returned to the same place.

While he is at his school, I am Mr. Naz, the Facilities Manager for St. Gabriel Catholic Elementary School.

While this might sound like a giant step backward, given my career of more than three decades, I love every minute of it. On average I clean up vomit 1.25 times a day. I make sure the school is clean, and I refill soaps and paper towels in all the bathrooms. I fix things when they are broken, and I massage the thirty-year-old HVAC system through the ups and downs of the flaky Charlotte NC climate.

While what I’ve just described may sound a lot like the aforementioned ditch digging, these mundane tasks occupy only a quarter of my time. With nearly 700 students and more than 50 faculty and staff, I am here to facilitate learning, not just take care of a building, and every day I am reminded of the value I bring; solving an endless stream of problems and helping lay the groundwork for the future.

So, there I was, performing a typical task on the last day before Christmas break when the, overhead page rang out: “Mr. Naz, please report to Kindergarten… immediately!”

As I rounded the corner, I could see dread in the teacher’s eyes. You see, on the last day of school before Christmas, the kindergarteners perform a kind of Polar Express parade. They decorate “train cars” made out of carboard boxes they then wear over their shoulders via attached straps. With more than 100 kindergarten students, it is quite a sight to see.

I walked up to the panic-stricken teacher, she quickly explained there was one student who’s parents neglected to prepare a train car. I glanced across the room, and the puffy-faced, sobbing five-year-old was easy to spot. The teacher continued, “can you make a train car for her?” With a smile on my face I said, “Of course! When do you need it by?”

With furrowed brow she gulped and said, “The parade starts in five minutes."

Without delay I shot up the stairs to my office/workshop. On my floor was a suitable box. I dumped its contents on the floor, grabbed a utility knife and headed to the teacher prep room, where rolls of 4 foot wide colored paper hang above a giant industrial laminator. I peeled off a huge piece of red paper and proceeded to wrap the box, leaving the top and bottom open for kindergartener insertion. While this was going on, I was paged again no fewer than three times. Word had gotten out there was a train car emergency, but not everyone knew I was already on the case.

I flew back downstairs, red box in hand and was flagged down by the front office who gave me a large holiday shopping bag, complete with wide, fabric straps. I grabbed it and headed straight to the art room.

With the help of a few others, I sliced the bottom of the bag and slid it over the outside of the box, securing it halfway down the side with a ring of packing tape. Picking the creation up by the straps, it was clear we would be doing no better within the time constraint. The mission was as accomplished as it could be.

This all took place in four minutes.

I carried my creation down the hall and presented the previously distraught student with her new “train car.” She beamed with a look that can only be described as joyful gratitude, mixed with great relief.

I walked away with the strongest feeling of job satisfaction I’d felt in more than a decade, and possibly ever.

• Problem solving skills utilized? Check.
• Grace under pressure? Check.
• Availing myself of all available resources? Check.
• Knowing the line where done beats prefect? Check.
• Focusing on meeting the customer’s needs? Check.
• Ontime delivery? Just barely, but yes.

While on the surface, what I did that morning may look like just another hastily assembled, construction paper project to be discarded, I know it was so much more.

So in 2024 and beyond, I will rise at 5:40 am, drive to school, and do the things that need to be done. However, I know at any moment I could be called upon to do something nobody else but me could pull off. It is this possibility which makes my job the greatest I’ve ever had.

Mr. Naz has arrived, and he’s here to stay.