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I remember, just over 10 years ago, age 17, fresh, shinny faced, innocent. I bought a pair of decent pants, put on my only “clean†shirt and borrowed an awful brown and orange tie from a friend.
That sunny morning, I followed a tall gangly woman with an attitude of steel as she knocked on doors and pitched restaurant discount certificates.
She was selling one in ten people and I thought wow, this is great.
Not so when it came my turn to give it a spin. 6 hours later and I had a long face and nothing to show for my efforts but my first setback on the way to becoming an independent business person.
A couple of days later, I had a few sales to my name, barely enough to cover lunch and bus fare. Already I’d had enough and I gave up for the first time. I found a regular student job, but something had changed in me for ever.
When the next year came around, I heard the call of the selling life once again. This time it was door to door long distance carriers. I put on the same pants, shirt and tie and got going. But this time it was different. I was going to prove something.
And I did. Within one week I was the top sales person in the office and a short while later was in charge of recruiting the sales force and training them. Every morning I gesticulated and drew diagrams on the dry board with ultimate confidence. Sales are sales and if you apply what works, you get results. Period.
I was going to be rich – making more than both my parents put together. I couldn’t sleep at night as I recounted the commissions I had earned and those I would earn.
And then it crashed again. Kaput.
I came to the office one morning, mentally rehearsing my pep talk of the day and the door was locked. I waited and waited as the sales force accumulated on the doorstep, trying to smile as the unease grew.
That door never opened again. The long distance carrier had pulled the contract and the owner of the office had made out like a robber in the night, leaving with hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid commissions, including $15,000 or so of my own.
And so it was the end of that summer. I had little to show for my accomplishment. A couple of new shirts and ties, no money and a level of disgust seldom achieved by 19 year old men.
I lost something more important than money that day. I lost faith.
The next few years were a silent hell. I continued my life as a young man getting an education, having fun with his friends. But the most important part of me was missing. My heart, my drive and that part of you where dreams are born had shriveled up and died.
I was depressed.
If there is one thing I learned from all the psychology books I read back then, it is that you cannot wait for a change in your attitude and outlook to take action. You must take action to change your attitude and outlook.
At 24, I planted my feet back on the road to success from which I had so sharply veered and took my first step.
One year later, I started selling furniture in a large chain and was the top salesman in the country by the end of the second month. This time I had Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy, Robert Cialdini, Conrad Levinson and many others helping me on my way.
Shortly after that, the director suggested I start working on marketing and that’s when the breakthrough happened.
We ordered a quarter page “business feature†in the Sunday edition of the biggest daily newspaper in the city. When the editors sent me the text, I thought it was just plain awful. Trite, boring, stiff necked corporate mumbo jumbo.
This turned out to be one of the greatest blessings of my young career.
I chucked out what had been written and re-did the whole thing from scratch. “Show don’t tell†was what I had in mind. So I told a story, and a very good one at that.
That Sunday, sales volume was more than triple what it usually was. For three weeks we did great business. All from a silly article.
That was the final indication of freedom.
Freedom from a constrictive environment, from bosses I could never stand, schedules, stupid rules, the whole lot…
Finally, it was a mere 2 years ago that I left the regular life behind and started working on the internet. I wrote my first email and lived a couple of months on my meager savings while things fell into place and my “real world†income was gradually replaced and then surpassed by Adsense™ clicks, affiliate commissions, and ebook and software sales.
And this is just the beginning.
If you’ve read all this, thank you. It feels good to share. I look forward to sharing a lot more with you in the years to come.
Why not leave me a note and tell me a bit about you and what you are working on? links accepted:)
Cheers,
Alex
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