During holiday parties when people used to ask me what I did for a living, I would tell them I sold resort timeshares. That was an effective conversational nonstarter, until I met someone that actually did sell resort timeshares.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
At one point my dad called me and said, 'You have always been a great salesman. I think it's time you come home and sell swimming pools.'
Offers for me to play dances, society parties, even churches, were now coming in regularly. For most dates I was paid the sum of one dollar per hour, and they always tipped me at the end of the night.
At 25, I was in the audience of my first professional speaker, Bob Bales. His presentation got my attention. I had never seen anyone having so much fun 'at work' and getting paid for it!
I could've always worked shows, clubs, Las Vegas and Atlantic City, but I was successful in business ventures, and things weren't happening in show business, so I said, 'Let me see what I can do.'
One summer vacation, I carried water to the town market to sell it, and I used some of the money I made to help a neighbour.
I am a travelling salesman. I deal in ideas.
My father worked two jobs. He assembled speakers during the day, and then he sold real estate at night and on weekends. And then he eventually, when he was in his mid-50s, became a full-time real estate salesman.
I talk to bankers, distributors, marketing people. I used to sit at home in my tracksuit bottoms, and the real excitement of my day would be going out to get a copy of 'Private Eye' and a latte.
I was an accountant in Chicago, and a friend of mine, Ed Gallagher, was in advertising. At 4:30 every day I'd be bored, and I would call him. He'd interview me.
I used to do promo work, where you would be paid not very much to stand in the street for a very long time endorsing a product that you'd either A, never heard of, or B, didn't like.