Some people are lucky enough to know early in their lives what they want to be when they grow up. I was never that lucky. You may have noticed that although I have done some pretty cool stuff, nothing lines up. It’s true: all my life, when an opportunity has come up, my response has been, “That looks interesting, I think I’ll give it a try.”
That worked when I became a pilot, and it worked when I went on the road with EVS, and it worked when I headed North American Air Charter, and it worked when I became a loan officer at First National Bank of Borger. But when I got into sales as an investment advisor and when banking became sales-oriented, I failed miserably.
When I trained to be an investment advisor (stockbroker) with Edward D. Jones company in St. Louis, I took some kind of exam that developed a profile to predict my success. When the results came in, the profiler called me in for a consultation and he showed me the results. In a nutshell, he said no one who had as many red flags as I had, had ever become a successful IA. According to the profile, I wouldn’t approach friends or relatives to do business with me and when he asked why, I said that seemed like I was taking advantage of their friendship or relationship. He said that a salesman HAS to do business with their friends because their enemies wouldn’t. That’s a sales approach, all right, but I just couldn’t do it. But I laughed and just said I had never failed at anything I’d tried and didn’t plan on starting now. Several months later, as I sat in a state of depression on the banks of the McKenzie River in Springfield, Oregon and watched the leaves float by, I knew the profile was accurate: I was not cut out to be a salesman. In fact, I hated it.
I participated in organizations that sponsored fundraising events and I hated it. I hated asking people to buy raffle tickets. I hated asking for contributions of either money or goods. At the root of it all, I think, is that — harking back to my growing-up days — I wanted everyone to like me, and I took a “no” as a personal rejection. All the training said things like “A no is just one step closer to a yes” and I hated it. I swore that when I retired, I would never ask for a contribution or sell a raffle ticket again.