In 1982 I finished my four-year stint in the United States Navy.  I had an honorable discharge, a wife and a child.  What I didn’t have was a job or a college degree.

My Uncle Tom was a big executive in Western Union Telegraph.  He saw something in me and despite my not having the required bachelors (or perhaps because of it since he went from HS dropout to the Marine Corp and then on to a successful career at WU) he got me an interview. 

The job was to sell telex machines to businesses in a forgotten territory in the east end of Long Island.  I got the gig and went at it with greater zeal than a pack of greyhounds chasing a mechanical rabbit.  Why?  Because I was amazed and grateful.  I came from a neighborhood where a suit and tie fit in about as well as Trump at a monastic retreat in Tibet.  I could not believe that someone was giving me a company car and paying me to get dressed cleanly and drive around to talk to business professionals.  And on top of that, the more I produced, the more they’d pay me!  This was truly surreal to me.

I wasn’t cutting pipe in a moldy, spider infested, basement like my friend Tommy.  I wasn’t raking topsoil and laying sod like my cousin Stevie.  I wasn’t scraping and painting houses like my uncle Sammy.  I was in a suit and tie selling people equipment they needed to run their businesses…TFW?

I could not believe my fortune!  I was carrying a briefcase! I had business cards with my name on them and a Cross pen in my inside jacket pocket!

I broke my ass every day with a smile on my face.  Gratitude was gushing from my very pores along with the sweat that came from happily doing four or five times what my manager asked of me.

Do you feel this way about your sales opportunity today?  Do you realize the blessing of GET TO DO versus GOT TO DO? 

So many around you are toiling for a static wage and waiting for someone to give them a raise.  Not you.  Your raise is effective the moment you are.

Own your sales gene…