How The Wrong Job Taught Me Four Valuable Lessons- Part 1
Careers, blogs, comedies and television series’ have been carved out of plots surrounding odd jobs, with lively personalities and stories. You need not look any further than shows like, Dirty Jobs featuring Mike Rowe and classic comedies such as, Office Space, that still capture our imagination and bring to life funny, all-too real situations.
My first stint in a sales job was not exactly fodder for comedy. It was simply the wrong fit. I wasn’t cut out for tele-sales but I learned the craft long enough to discover a lot about myself.
I moved to Boston in early September of 2004 looking for a new adventure… and a job. I left my first job out of college on Long Island a few weeks earlier, largely because it was a road to nowhere. But mostly because my heart was leading me to a new challenge out on my own.
I graduated college in May of 2003 and moved in with Mom and Dad, like many other newly minted college graduates. It was a fantastic experience being back home with my parents, who I love dearly. But it was also tough at times, particularly after living on my own for four years.
I craved more personal freedom and time to explore, so off I went, my future unclear, but quite a bit of hope in my heart. Yes, that’s right, this dyed in the wool Yankees fan arrived in, “The Hub” just one month before the beloved Red Sox would mount their historic run to, “Reverse the Curse” and win the World Series for the first time in 400 years.
All right, I’m kidding, it was only 86 years.
Shipping Up to Boston
Before I go on I must tell a quick story- You have to take yourself back nearly 12 years ago to a time where the rivalry between the Yankees and Red Sox was so fierce, people legitimately harbored hatred toward each other. You could cut the tension at Yankees-Sox games with a knife. I went to many of these games. Fights, verbal jabs and insults were just part of the experience.
Sometimes baseball seemed like the side story.
I pulled into Boston just before Labor Day of 2004. My Mom drove up with me from Long Island and we were right about to get off Interstate-90 or in the Bay State, the Mass Pike. Right when we were pulling off exit 17, I noticed a car parallel to us on the exit ramp. The car honked frantically, so I turned over to look.
As soon as my Mom and I turned, the person in the back seat quickly flashed a t-shirt in the rear window that read, “Yankees Suck!” For a Yankees fan, that part of living in Boston was torture!
Welcome to New England, I thought. And, welcome to the rivalry on the other side!
I had ups and downs during those two years in Boston, both personally and professionally, and yet I made friends, began my first journey on my own after college and found a sales job that I hoped would put me on track toward a great career. It simply wasn’t the right job fit. It didn’t take long to figure out that I had not yet found my life’s work.
Instead, what I found was a stepping stone that enabled me to meet some great people, learn what it meant to sell and a host of other things. Allow me to explain…
Rejection
Working in sales means that you need to be wise and centered in order to better handle the extreme highs and lows. Winning clients, driving new business and building relationships are key. But there’s a lot of rejection in between. I started at a small software company that was in major-growth mode.
The story of many millennials and several of my peers who have gone to work all throughout the country in Silicon Valley and various tech hubs. At the time, I was only 23 years old and still very much trying to figure out, “what I wanted to be when I grew up.”
Many of us still try putting those pieces together every day. And there’s nothing wrong with that!
I found that it was very hard to take being rejected as just part of the job. As much as I realized it was “business and not personal,” at times it could feel personal- even though I was selling a software product. That was the emotion talking.
I learned how to handle rejection by being resolute in my mind and separating the, “No’s” and the lack of responses from being a reflection on me as an individual. In sales, rejection could be due to the product but, I took it to mean that I could always improve my sales pitch. I could always learn more about the product, the potential customer and their business.
This drive to get better kept me going and served as inspiration that has stuck with me. Every rejection brings an opportunity to open a new door and to uncover new possibilities.
Courage to Sell Myself and a Product
Selling means believing in a product (or an idea) and yourself enough to have the conviction to speak, describe and pitch it to another individual. For many of us, our first couple jobs in the workplace are confusing, and chock full of uncomfortable moments filled with change.
Speaking on behalf of the millions who don’t know what they want to do right after college — and often end up in jobs that are light years from what their passions are — I can tell you that it’s 100 times easier to want to hide in a cubicle and surf the Internet all day; as opposed to putting yourself out there on the front lines and risk being turned down.
It takes courage to learn how to market yourself and to learn enough about a particular company, product and individual to be able to communicate effectively enough to win new business. I learned that I needed to be on my game during these calls and meetings and that if I didn’t believe in myself, I had already lost.
Preparation, as they say, is the mother of victory. It takes courage and smarts to prepare yourself for victory, eliminating any doubt in your mind of failure.
Part 2 will follow tomorrow with the rest of my journey and lessons! As always, thank you for reading! Please share your thoughts in the comments section, below and please feel free to share this article with others!
Visit: chrisdconnors.com for more information. Send me an email, chris@chrisdconnors.com, if you think I can help you!
