Je me demande

Starting a new company is an exciting and stressful venture. Having been involved in a myriad of start-ups and restarts I can easily say if it was easy, everyone would be doing it. That said, there are so many seminars and programs for people to get involved with that all tout easy money and success beyond belief. They promise the good life and provide distinguished speakers that have attained great success and notoriety to tell you how in three or some number of simple lessons you can be riding on easy street – Exactly.

When I was going to college I was looking for some part-time work so that I could purchase some nice things like food. An ad on the student union bulletin board caught my attention. It read “FULL TIME PAY PART TIME WORK”. I couldn’t believe it. How lucky could I get? Flexible hours, unlimited income, great working conditions, free training, yes it was the perfect job. They immediately accepted my application and said that they would provide expert training and that I’d be ready to start earning “big bucks” in no time. I was very excited and was already spending the money in my head. The potential they told me was enormous. I couldn’t wait to get home to tell my girlfriend the good news.

The job was selling subscriptions for cable TV, door to door on straight commission. To put this in perspective, at the time I was in Toledo, it was a cold November and they gave me 100 leads in a neighborhood that nobody ever walked in, even in the summer. But still there I was, getting ready to go and my girlfriend giving me encouragement and telling me not to worry that we can’t pay the rent, just go out there and sell!

I knocked on about 80 doors, made about 50 presentations and netted zero sales. That simple experience taught me a very important lesson: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. When I arrived home that evening, my roommate, with eyes wide and an expectant look of excitement on her face, asked an obvious and life defining question: “How did it go?” My response was thoughtful and simple: “we’re gonna die”.
Of course we didn’t die. We spent the night discussing survival options and the need to get a job and yet it bothered me that I had not been successful, especially when the product seemed to be so right at the time. I was driven to find an answer and decided for my own illumination I would return to the same street and houses the next day to find out what went wrong. As I knocked on each door the response was typically “what are you doing back here?” My answer was that I needed to be sure “why” they had not bought this product when it seemed so right. The answers varied and everyone was happy to tell me why they didn’t buy from me. The good news is that their reasons were unfounded. They cited price and installation complications and lack of programming etc. As I answered each objection they would change their mind and elect to buy. It seems that my well-crafted boiler plate presentation was a bit off the mark and to make a long story a bit longer, I became the number one salesman. After a short time at that company I became Director of Marketing and we became one of the fastest growing cable companies in the country.

Years later when I co-founded a new company, we had similar moments of self reflection and doubt but believed in ourselves and stayed true to our vision. That venture has allowed me to meet an extraordinary number of entrepreneurs and business professionals that intuitively know what their destiny is and those very special relationships underscore what I learned selling door-to-door and that is if you believe it, you can be it.

I had lunch recently with two people that have a clear vision of their future and by sharing it with me, I saw it too. When you know what you want, the drive and energy you need to get there will appear. What sets success in motion is an appreciation and understanding of the relationship between simply having dreams and also having the drive to achieve them – you need both. As it turns out, one can have dreams without the drive, but no one can have the drive without the dreams. It’s what keeps me knocking on doors.

Gary
From the Book of Szen