In this day and age, it is so common to see tons of social media profiles labeled with titles like “Entrepreneur” or “CEO”. How many of these individuals truly understand the sacrifices and stresses that running a company actually entails? The answer most likely is not too many.
Being an entrepreneur is far more glamorous a title now than it was 10+ years ago, whereas being a door to door sales representative is still just as looked down upon as it always has been. What many people don't realize is how many entrepreneurs or CEOs attribute a lot of their success to the door to door sales industry.
When starting a new business rejection is going to come in massive waves. It takes an enormous amount of grit to deal with the stresses of pulling all of your funds together each week to make payroll, and pay off vendors. Having your ideas be rejected by investors, companies, prospective employees and consumers while you’re broke and fighting to survive. I can attribute my experience from door to door sales directly to my resiliency to deal with rejections and stresses of starting a company from nothing and within a few years building it to a multi-million dollar brand.
John Paul Deloria one of the co-founders of Paul Mitchell sold hair products door to door right out of college stated “I don’t care how good your idea is, no matter how unique it is, you’re going to get a lot of rejection. You have to be able to knock on door number 100 and be just as enthusiastic at that door as you were on the first 100 doors that were slammed in your face.” If you think owning your own business will be all glory, and not getting hypothetical doors slammed in your face you’d be kidding yourself.
The more that we as individuals can get accustomed to dealing with rejection and failure our chances of success in future endeavors will greatly increase. This is why a lot of college students or future entrepreneurs are looking to get experience in door to door sales. They understand that if they can build a character that can persevere rejection and failures they will eventually find a win. It doesn’t matter how many times they may fall because they have developed a thick skin to keep getting up.
How many great ideas or businesses never saw the light of day because their creators didn't persevere just enough to achieve success?
In the 100’s of interviews I have done with college students who are trying to figure out what it is they really want to do with their lives you will hear commonality in that most want to own their own business. Of course, most don't have any idea as to what kind of business they would actually want to own yet. At that moment they become face to face with one of the greatest opportunities of their life if they would be so inclined to take it. Go do a summer of door to door sales and immerse yourself into a program of exponential growth and experience.
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