There are no small decisions to be made when you're looking at graduating from college and entering the real world. However, I decided I should aim high and try to build my own tower of profit. I didn't want to bum around with lower level jobs that only brought in 30k a year. I felt like I could do better than that. So I really started to consider some of these sales jobs with promising commission percentages. I looked into the different products to see what I could easily sell. I felt like I had a knack for approaching people—I've always had good people skills and could converse freely with strangers. I never needed alcohol to loosen up at parties—I was fine with approaching and talking with strangers without any kind of substance to weaken my inner inhibitions. I don't really have any strong inhibitions that I know of. So I thought I'd give it a shot.
There were so many products to choose from and so many companies that wanted to bring me on board. And why not—they will be paying me because I will be making them money. So there's no limit to how many job openings they'll have. I figured I could try out a few of them and experiment with different ideas for the different products. This sounded like a safer bet to start out with. If I spread myself out a little, I'll find out what works and what doesn't work so well. I'll be able to learn so much about the sales market in general and how I fit into it. It'll also help me find out about the products that I can sell better and I may also figure out which companies work better with their employees and their customers. I wouldn't want to put all my time and effort into a company, only to find out that all its customers hate dealing with it. Or what if the company decided to treat me poorly? I'd want to have options and keep those options open until I knew for sure which company was the best for me.
So I allotted time to three different products each day. The first 3 hours for one, the next 3 hours for the second, and, well, you get the idea. I was working 9-hour workdays, which were pretty grueling at first. It was a pretty rough transition from my class schedules. I'm glad I didn't have to do homework anymore, but 9 hours of sales wasn't exactly a picnic. And it was a little stressful, at first. I wasn't sure if I had what it takes to make even one sale, so I couldn't know for sure if I'd make any money at all. It was a huge gamble on my part and most of my friends and family thought I was a little crazy for turning down other job offers. They wanted me to go with a nice safe, 9-5 job that had benefits, etc. But I wanted to build my own tower of wealth and be in control of my own career.
The first week was the most difficult. I was off to a slow start and I could picture in my head all my family and friends telling me, “I told you so!” I was beginning to panic a little and decided to try a few different tactics to sell these products. On Friday, I had a little luck and made a couple of sales. They were my first sales of the week, and I was greatly relieved to get something. It took a lot of time and convincing before they decided to give this product a try. We closed the deal and I finally earned my first paycheck.
A few months later, and I was making a decent amount of money that might actually amount to 100k by the end of the year. I might have found my 100k job right out of college. How many people can say that? 100k plus jobs are attainable, even straight out of college. I have the potential to earn even more next year, learning from my experiences this year. Each week, or actually, every day, I'm learning new tactics that work better than the previous ones. I'm trying out different kinds of options to see what works and what doesn't, and there have been a few weeks when my tactics didn't turn out so well. So it's a job with ups and downs, but on the whole, it was a great decision for me. Now, I'll begin to build my own tower of profit and wealth and will forever be in control of my career. It's very liberating to say that my family and friends are all relieved. I know they just wanted me to succeed, so I didn't care to rub it in their faces or anything. They were just concerned about me. But now that I have established myself and am seeing the monthly paychecks roll in, they're all very supportive of my career.
