Becoming independent

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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 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 entirely 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. The long-distance made it harder for you to quit and head return home.

The company gained a little credibility when mother realized that a couple of books we had on our bookshelves were from Southwestern Publishing.

I was not a green hand as I had some previous experience selling door-to-door. I started 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 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 hundreds of companies providing products for youth fundraisers.

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 remember one of my favorite stories from that week of training. A researcher hears about 4-year old identical twins — on optimistic and the other pessimistic. The pessimist is never happy,  always complaining. His brother is the complete opposite — the world’s greatest optimist. 

The researcher could barely believe this, so he designed 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 pessimist’s room. Sure enough, the young boy is sitting in the corner of the room pouting. He complains that there is no one to play with him. 

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 significance of 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.

I also listened to motivational cassette tapes from Ziglar.

We knocked on doors six days a week, Monday through Saturday, stopping on Sunday for motivational meetings. This left little time to get in trouble.

But, it didn’t stop us. 

One Sunday after our meeting, a small group of us felt the urge to play golf. There were just two problems; no one belonged to any of the country clubs in the area, and we didn’t have any golf clubs.

The first thing we had to do was locate some clubs. This was accomplished by knocking on doors. “We are college students from Missouri selling books door to door wanting to play a little golf. Do you have any clubs we could borrow?”

Believe it or not, it worked. Unfortunately, we were not able to use the clubs for very long. It only took four holes — after sneaking in on the middle of a course — before the groundskeeper kicked us off.

On another weekend, two of us played hooky and drove to Washington, D.C., to visit our nation’s capital. After spending Saturday at our favorite Smithsonian museums, we found a nice place to sleep. It wasn’t the Hilton, Ramada or Holiday Inn. We found a place to sleep that fit our budget — FREE. 

We slept in my 1972 Chevy Nova at the parking lot of the Lincoln Memorial.

That summer did a lot to help me become the person I am. It gave me confidence to set out and accomplish my goals as a young man.