It was the summer of my sophomore year in college when I cut the strings from my parents and became independent. That was the summer when I signed up to sell books door-to-door for Southwestern Publishing out of Nashville.
My mother was worried. It was one thing for your teenager to be 90 miles away, attending college at Mizzou. It was completely different to hug your son goodbye for the summer as he headed off to an unknown state to sell books.
I ended up in the states of West Virginia and Virginia. That was on purpose. The company did not want you selling close to your home state. The long distance made it harder for you to quit and head back home.
The company gained a little credibility when mother realized that a couple of books we had in our home were from Southwestern Publishing.
I was not a green hand as I had some previous experience selling door-to-door. I started out as a youngster selling Christmas cards to our neighbors. Later when I was a Cub Scout we sold peanut brittle to family, friends and neighbors.
My favorite place to sell peanut brittle was at Brown Shoe Factory in Owensville. I would load my little red wagon after school and pull approximately six blocks to the factory before they let out at 4:00 p.m.
It was an easy sell.
Admittedly, it’s easier to sell as a little kid. That is why there are probably hundreds of companies providing products for fundraisers for the youth.
It is hard to turn them down. The best excuse is “I already bought from someone else.”
When our group from Mizzou left that summer our first stop was Nashville, Tenn. to spend a week in training. We learned about the different books we would be selling, how to handle objections and the importance of a positive attitude.
I will always remember one of my favorite stories from that week of training. A researcher hears about 4-year-old identical twin boys. The first twin is a reported pessimist. He is never happy and always complaining. His brother is the complete opposite. He is the world’s greatest optimist, always happy.
The researcher can hardly believe this, so he designs a test. The pessimistic boy is locked in a room full of toys. His brother is locked in a room with a large pile of horse manure.
After leaving them alone for an hour the professor enters the room of the pessimist. Sure enough the young boy is sitting in the corner of the room pouting. He complains that there is no one to play with.
Entering the room of the optimist the researcher is surprised to see the boy in the middle of the manure, throwing it everywhere.
He has to yell at the boy to get him to stop. His question is, “What are you doing?” The 4-year-old optimist replies, “With all this horse manure there must be a pony in here somewhere.”
That summer was the start of my career as a salesman and it was the start of my positive attitude.
I always had a good attitude up to that point but that summer I learned the importance of working at keeping a positive attitude. That was accomplished by reading good books like The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale and See You At The Top by Zig Ziglar.
As we sold books that summer I also listened to motivational cassette tapes from Zig.
That experience did a lot to help me become the person I am.
The world’s most popular question is “How are you doing?” Ask me that and nine times out of ten you will hear me say great, fantastic, or marvelous. I don’t like to be just fine. It’s doesn’t matter what day of the week it is. Monday to me is just as great as Friday.
A wonderful quote from Zig is “You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”
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