We are fortunate to have a bunch of “veteran” Small Dog Employees who have been with the company for some time. This week I want to call out Emily Dolloff (pictured on the right). Art, Rob, and Tony have been here longer but Emily is quietly the heart of Small Dog, pumping up the team to give their best every day. A lifelong Vermonter, Emily first came to Small Dog as a shipper. She would lug heavy Apple eMacs up and down the warehouse stairs, sometimes carrying them to the store to deliver to a customer. She was a great shipper but we recognized that perhaps she had some other talents. We brought her up the the office to handle telephone sales back when the company’s sales were primarily on the internet. Again, Emily excelled and soon had customers requesting her to handle their orders because they knew she would do it right.
Emily became the Waitsfield store manager and then took what she and I call her sabbatical. Basically, she quit and went to work for someone else for a couple years. She must have missed us though because we were fortunate enough to bring her back on board. She is now managing our retail, service and marketing efforts and has a bunch of other responsibilities, too. We never have come up with an appropriate title for Emily but she is definitely my partner and someone I can count on for brutal honesty, responsibility, focus, and hard work.
Every company needs people that think and fret about the details and the everyday issues of running a company. Emily and I spend a lot of time on the phone or texting about little details and emerging issues. She does it without drama and always with a professional approach. When I needed someone to take the reins of our weekly radio show (Thursdays at 1PM on WDEV) it was obvious that Emily was the one. She is now a radio personality with people stopping her in the grocery store to tell her they listened to Small Dog Speaks. I can’t wait to join her on the show again when I get back to Vermont.
Emily does all this and has a family too! Olivia and Anna look and act like their mom although Olivia seems to be Emily’s husband Luke’s shadow. Oh yeah, she has some horses, too, and drives a big truck! It is simply amazing that she works as hard as she does at Small Dog and still knows to have that important separation of work and family that is essential. So hats off to Emily! I am sure many of you have talked to Emily over the years and if you are on the Small Dog team, you probably talk to her daily!