Being The Door-2-Door Salesman Who Never Sold Anything (Part 1)

The Introduction

It's May 2020... the end of my sophomore year of college. I'm not doing particularly well, and I don't really enjoy the general education classes at this large research university. These circumstances put me in a headspace where I'm thinking, “This just isn't for me—I need to do something else…” I thought, “School doesn't define whether you'll be successful or not; you have to go out and try something new. That's the way.” 

Then, this recurring thought starts playing in my head, “Drop out and buy a bitcoin with your school money. That’ll be your saving grace.”

This might make you laugh, but from the beginning to the end of college, my mother growled at me over it. She knew I was serious, and crazy enough to actually do it. Had I actually gone through with it… she probably would've strangled me with her bare hands, even if I successfully cashed out & made millions of dollars. Needless to say, I didn't go through with it.

My mother has her JD & me obtaining a degree was very important to her, and I’m thankful I listened. Albeit, I gave her a run for her money almost everyday until I graduated.

So instead, I looked for other things to do while continuing school, and, luckily, I had a friend named Demitrus Jones. Like me, he was in the Entrepreneurship program at WVU. Our manager at the time incentivized him to recruit people, and Demitrus told me I should try out this new job he was starting. It sounded great to me. When they showed me the commission structure, that was all I needed to see—I was in.

What can I say? I was dead broke (shoulder shrugs).

So now it’s May 15th, 2020… I’m 20 years old, have about $400 to my name, and I just packed my bags & bought a $40 plane ticket to Austin, Texas for a job that I didn’t even know existed. I had no idea what I was going to be doing either.

When I land, it’s Saturday night. I take an Uber to my AirBNB, set up by the company I was working for. It was a nice duplex with a courtyard and a hot tub, almost 20 minutes away from downtown Austin. I was amazed.

Notice how I haven't explicitly mentioned what the job is yet… That’s because, at this point in time, it wasn't mentioned to me either. The most detailed explanation I received was, “You'll be cold calling.” That was it. So I’m telling this story through my perspective at that time.

I didn’t realize this, nor was it explained to me beforehand… but despite my living quarters being as glamorous as they were, I found out I was sharing a house with 27 other people as soon as I got there. To be fair, I say it wasn't clearly explained to me—borderline begrudgingly—but I didn't ask any questions either. You might think this is silly, but I was excited to be traveling and trying something new. Plus, it was a point in time when the world was uncertain about what was going to happen next with Covid looming on the horizon. I’ve never been someone not willing to take the chance, if it could be a step towards greatness.

Also at that age… asking questions is not common practice. For example, if your friends say, “Hey man, let’s go to the bar!” You just respond with, “Let’s do it!” There’s no other acceptable answer. The two are very similar. You don’t ask where, when, how, what, or who you’re going with. You’re just happy to go to the bar with your buddies. And that was me… I was just happy to be going in what I thought was the right direction.

Now, remember I said it’s Saturday night. Sunday is everyone's one day off before it’s back to the grind at 9AM on Monday. So when everyone gets home after work for the day, their true personalities really come out because they have such little free time to be themselves. I may be getting ahead of myself, but the hours that D2D reps work are grueling. I usually tell people the hours are from 9AM until you make a sale. That sale happens at 11PM most of the time… but this is important context here.

It also happens to be one of our manager's birthdays the night of my arrival, so everyone is immediately in play mode. It was a great “welcome to the team” moment and a fantastic opportunity to meet everyone, but it wasn’t the best time to talk about work or do any due diligence. I understand this should’ve been done a long time ago, but I’m 20 years old… I’m figuring it out as I go.

The team I met was made up of people from all over the country. There were other kids in college, like me, wanting to give sales a go and have something flashy to throw on their resumes. Then you had the middle-aged adults, trying something new because they were craving a career change. There were also those who'd been doing it for over a decade. They'd made D2D sales their careers, and they were doing quite well at it—pulling in six figures annually.

So, I had a buffer between my arrival and my first day of work to get a sense of what was going on & the type of people I had around me. From my perspective, things are still great if not even better than before I showed up.

Fast forward to Monday. I get to shadow someone for one full work day, then I’m on my own. It’s sink or swim, so they say, and I’d be thrown to the wolves. This is when I learned, what turned out to be so much more than “just a job,” actually was. This is when I became a door-to-door sales representative.

Monday was my official first day. Yep that’s right, this is when I started knocking on doors for a living.

P.S.

It was the most challenging time of my life. I’ve never experienced more adversity, but it was the start of everything for me. It was the best thing that ever happened to me for reasons that you hopefully find value in. As we progress I’ll continue to drop those bread crumbs throughout this series.

This was Part 1, & an introduction. If you made it this far… Thank you! I’m absolutely honored you read my work.

If you enjoyed the read & it grabbed your attention: I have good news—>

Part 2 will drop next Tuesday and we’ll continue to go down the rabbit hole together, so stay tuned!