Brandon Held - Life Is Crazy - Episode 11

After college, the speaker applied for a job as an accountant sales representative and got hired. The job involved cold-calling businesses and setting up appointments for the speaker to sell the accountant's services. The speaker was successful and earned a commission for each signed client. After reaching the maximum number of clients, the job ended, and the speaker took a job as an assistant manager at a shoe store. The speaker was eventually offered the opportunity to become a general manager at another store and worked to improve the store's performance by implementing new rules and firing employees who didn't follow them. Welcome back to Brandon Health Life is Crazy. We're on episode 11 and this episode I plan on picking up where I left off at the end of the last episode which is life after college essentially. I was trying to get out of the restaurant business and like I said I was applying for different things and one of the things that I applied for was believe it or not a job where I saw an ad in the newspaper because you know still back in the early 2000s job postings on the internet were not exactly a thing quite just yet so I looked in the newspaper and one of the jobs that I applied to was to be an accountant sales representative and it was $500 a week plus Commission and I was like oh that's pretty good money you know you you already get the base of $500 a week plus the Commission so I wanted to give that a try and so I spoke to my boss and he set up an interview with me and I went to the interview and we hit it off and he offered me the job I guess he just liked my personality believed in me I had no experience in this arena I mean but really nobody did and I had to learn the job I had to learn the role and so basically what it was is he hired me out of Florida to work for an accountant in Cincinnati Ohio who was an older gentleman and he had sold his accounting firm he had built up a big firm and he had sold it in one of the provisions when he sold it was he could not take any clients with him so he had to start from scratch now he was old enough to retire and I'm sure he had finances to retire but for whatever reason he didn't want to and he wanted to start his own business and he's a grumpy little old man and I say little cuz I'm 6 foot 1 and he was probably like maybe 5 foot 6 chubby older you know it wasn't the easiest person to get along with in the world and here I had to go sell this guy to customers specifically to businesses so what the job entailed was they had hired an appointment setter for me which frankly I felt like she had the hardest job of all and she got paid like 10 bucks an hour I would say and she would cold-call businesses in the Cincinnati area and see if they were happy with their accountant and if they were not and they wanted to look elsewhere she would set an appointment for them to talk to me so she did all the happy heavy upfront lifting and then all I had to do was you know call them at the appointed time and sell the idea of what the accountant has to offer and the opportunity to meet with them because that's where the real sale took place this was just preliminary the phone call and and set up an appointment so I would set up an appointment I would go out and see the business owner and one thing my accountant offered that made him really easy to sell because I believe without this feature I wouldn't have been able to sell him and this wasn't his idea it was my boss's idea and I know this grumpy little old man he didn't care for this part of the agreement but he knew he had to grow his business and he had to do what he had to do so one of the things that he offered was going to the business once a month to pick up their tax records and just get face-to-face with them for up to an hour and discuss you know taxes if they needed his time if they didn't then you know he would just go pick up any tax papers and call it a day and so that was a that was a pretty easy pitch to sell they never met the accountant they didn't know anything about him I was the face you know I was the person that they knew and so I was friendly easygoing easy to get along with to really talk to anybody just put anyone in front of me you know grumpy old man to you know the happiest hippie in the world it didn't matter I could talk to anyone and that really worked well for me it was a calculation on you know how much the business did annually and then they would get charged a percentage of that for the accountants business annually and for the first year I would get 50% so my commission would be let's just say for example I went out to a business and I sold the accountant to them they you know let's just say their their cost was $10,000 a year to have the accountant services well my upfront Commission immediately was going to be $5,000 so they had to write the first year's check to me $10,000 mind you they never met the accountant don't know anything about him I'm completely selling him and I walk out of there with the check of $10,000 and when the check clears in my next check I get $5,000 of that $10,000 now that was just for signing up that sale right after that you know for however many years the accountant had them as a client he was able to get the full $10,000 after that it was just the first year and this proved to be a very lucrative job for me I did really well and my boss told me straight up when he hired me like this guy he's a single man accountant he's not planning on hiring any other accountants and you know he may you may only be doing this for a year because he can only take so many clients and there was a number I don't remember the number now but we had a number at the time where it's like he could take this many clients and that's it you know once he gets to this amount with the travel and tax season and everything else he can't take anymore so I agreed I mean I could use the experience it sure beat the heck out of working at a you know restaurant and so I did it and in within six months I reached that number I worked myself out of a job and I was doing so well I'd gotten the projected amount of clients needed that I did that within six months and it was you know rewarding and upsetting at the same time right because in six months I probably made I don't know 65 70 grand straight out of college you know someone who was used to barely scraping by off bartending money on the weekends and you know just getting the bare minimum to get by to now all of a sudden have all this money and you know I felt rich at the time so so I did that and once the job ended I now found myself looking for a new position in a new role and so I was out there for a little while and I couldn't get anything going so I had to you know basically lower my standards right so I had to start applying for things I didn't really want to do but I needed a job you know we all need a job we can't just live off of other people or we shouldn't and so I ended up getting this job as an assistant manager at a finish line shoe store and the reason that I took the job was because the the job was like a training a management in training role where the you know point was to eventually become a general manager of the finish line you know and then they said oh you would get paid you know this much a year plus we offer bonuses and incentives for however well your store does but all you have to do is get through this training period and you have an opportunity to get the store get a store and I you know and so I signed off that wasn't exactly what I wanted to do for a living but it was something to do at the time and so I worked there learning the management and training role and you know I was doing really well and I started at you know one place the Park Place Mall in Beaver Creek Ohio and then you know the the regional manager came to me one day and she said hey I really need help down at the Dayton Mall location we have a you know it's we sell a lot more in volume but we also have a theft problem you know we believe our employees are stealing and our general manager isn't doing anything to stop it and if you can go there and turn it around you know we'd like to give you the general manager role there and I thought perfect you know I didn't want to move anywhere at that time I had a son in Dayton Ohio I wanted to stay there with him and you know the other management trainee that I had been working with he had to move to like New England Massachusetts somewhere over there to get a store so he had to move pretty far away and I wasn't willing to do that yet at this point in my life I still had my relationship I had my son and I wanted to stay there so I thought all right perfect situation so I go down to the Dayton Mall and I start working there and you know I get with the general manager to let him know like hey I want to help you know make this store better I want to help with a theft problem and he's not having it he like immediately feels threatened by me and you know he was just difficult to get along with but I still tried to bypass him because there were many times I was there and in charge and he wasn't you know I told all the employees that you know there was going to be a you know like a bag check or whatever you bring in to the office to work is subject to being checked on your way out the door right and they didn't like that of course who does right so some people quit and you know some people I just I don't know maybe stop stealing or whatever so what happened was I had the authority to hire and fire even though I wasn't the general manager I was in a high enough position to do that so I would interview people and I would fire people if they didn't follow the rules you know finish line had a standard of how they wanted their employees to behave they wanted people greeted within 30 seconds of entering the store for example and I noticed when I first arrived none of this was happening people weren't getting greeted when they walked in people were on the floor just standing around watching people while no one was being helped I mean it was just really poorly run and so I did everything I could to turn this around which included letting people go I hired a bunch of new people you know and it's just kind of easier sometimes to just start people off on the right foot because they just get there and they know the rules and they know the standards and they know what's expected right away what's really hard is for people to have been doing things one way and for you to come in this new guy and try to get them to change how they were doing business how they were working and so some of them just flat-out just didn't want to do it so they either left on their own or I let them go and so what happened was is I ended up successfully making this happen the regional manager would come to me of course only see me in a one-on-one situation and she would acknowledge that the employee turnover was great now that you know I was apparently letting the right people go and bringing in the right people sales were up and theft was down and you know everything was on the right path that she was hoping but now she wanted to renege on her agreement to make me the general manager and I you know I didn't understand why she didn't have a good excuse and so I felt used and so one day I was just there working you know normal day working and all the sudden this guy comes in to me he introduces himself and he says hey you know I see the stores run really well I'm the general manager at Circuit City I'm looking to hire man a new general manager for the road shop which is our radio sales and installation department and you know I'd love to interview you for it and so I took his card and I thought what the heck why not you know nothing to lose I can talk to him if it works out great if it doesn't you know nothing lost I'll just end up still being here so I meet with him and he also you know sells me a very similar related dream you know hey I got a road shop manager here he's not getting the job done sales aren't great he's too friendly with the staff you know I don't I don't really care for the way he's doing business and I want to replace him and I said oh you know that's great that sounds good but kind of just got promised the same thing and at the end of the day it didn't happen and I said I don't want to go through that again and he said look you know here's the salary for you to come train this will be the salary will you when you become the general manager he's like you know guaranteed this is gonna happen I want to get rid of this guy you know you're you're the guy you're my next guy and so I agreed I took the job so I left finish line and I went to Circuit City to be the road shop manager I was excited it was a new adventure you know something new to learn selling radio selling speakers you know selling everything involved back then DVDs in the car screens for the car amplifiers and then also I got to learn how to install all those things and so the reason behind me learning was not that I needed to do it as the manager but it was that in case my technicians weren't there to do it and I needed to fill in I could do it right but it wasn't going to be my day-to-day job and day-to-day role and so I didn't think about this you know but you could probably hear hindsight being 2020 some issues with what was just pitched to me right he wants me to replace a general manager that he's not happy with production of sales and also he is too close with his employees now that sentence right there should have been a huge red flag for me should have just completely threw me off right but I didn't think anything of that at the time because I kind of thought the same thing I thought about finish line well if it doesn't work out I'll replace them I'll get new people except we're talking about people with experience in installation in stereos and speakers and you know amplifiers and DVD players and TV screens and you know taking apart different types of cars and SUVs and minivans and you know and some of these installers are just had a wealth of experience and so you know they were pretty well grounded in being there and what they were doing because you know they were hard to replace you can't replace those years and years of experience that easily and then oh by the way they happen to be really good friends with this general manager they all hang out together they go out drinking together like they are all buddies outside of work and here comes this new guy you know I don't drink I don't smoke I don't you know I'm like the complete opposite of them right I'm college educated you know I'm squeaky clean someone who's trying to do the right thing and you know do things by the book and by the rules whereas the other general manager was more lenient you know and they they didn't want to help me or support me they didn't they didn't want to teach me the ropes or get me to learn and that like they understood that you know I was cool and everything was cool but they also it seemed like they knew that I would replace their general manager that they liked and they enjoyed and it was a very much clearly of they were a group and then I was one and so it was a struggle and they were instigating you know being difficult with me and not training me and telling me to figure things out and I would go back to the regional manager and I would tell him this stuff was happening and he would just kind of look at me and say you know all right I'll talk to him but you got to figure it out you got to make it work putting all the onus back on me and it was just an unwinnable situation and then you know one day I got in an argument with one of the employees there and you know I didn't feel like the general manager supported me in that argument like he should have and so that's when I left Circuit City right I left you know so I went from potentially having careers as a general manager both at finish line and at Circuit City to now being unemployed again and I was trying to figure out where do I go next what do I do next and so just out of I just really couldn't find anything for me in Dayton Ohio at that time I tried to get into insurance sales you know I thought what the heck why not sales did well for me before so why don't I give insurance sales a try and so I went through the week of school and training and you know it was a 40-hour class that you had to pass the end to become certified to sell insurance in the state of Ohio and you know I I passed it and then I went to go work for this insurance company Pennsylvania Life was the subsidiary of the company but I was you know they were I don't know subsidiary is the right word I don't think that's where I look they were the parents of this company and the company I was working for was a subsidiary they they weren't called Pennsylvania Life it was just who they ended up you know getting their insurance from ultimately and it was annuities and it was you know term life insurance and you know they had a huge list of potential clients and that wasn't the hard part there was a lot of driving you know we went to people's houses and met them face-to-face in their home you know which again was okay when you're young right you don't really care about that but I was still me you know I was still like well if I'm going to do this I'm going to give it a hundred and ten percent and I want to be successful I want to be the best I can be and you know the boss happened to be a graduate of Ohio State and so we had that connection I was an Ohio State fan he was an Ohio State fan he had gone to the you know 2002 national championship game against Miami and said I don't need to ever go to another Ohio State game again because that'll be the greatest Ohio State game I ever saw and we just really connected on all those levels and and he asked me you know how I wanted to do it and I said I want to be the best you know whoever whoever is your best right now I want to be paired up with them you know I want to train from them I want to learn from them and I want to be the best and he's like okay I got my guy you know so he sets me up with this guy who was doing the most sales with the company on a regular basis and this dude he was like five foot five you know little small guy claimed to be super religious you know Bishop in his church went to church three or four times a week you know was a wrestler at Iowa like on paper just sold himself as this golden choir boy right but he was older he was in his 50s and so we went out together and I would see you know at every visit I was learning the ropes and and and seeing what you know how to do this job but you know I was also I had some intelligence to me I had some street smarts to me and I would notice that every place we were going he was getting the people to sign a piece of paper you know just sign this piece of paper and he was selling it to them as if hey we just had this conversation and okay you don't want to upgrade your insurance so just sign this piece of paper that you're happy where you are and you know we're not going to upgrade your insurance he would try to sell them to upgrade while he was there and you know most of the people would turn it down and most of these people were also elderly by the way and he would spend a lot of time building a relationship talking about Jesus Christ and God and you know religion and you know maybe just a few minutes talking about the actual insurance sales and so you know we went to one of those places and the person had said hey I noticed last time you came to visit me and then last like my premium went up I ended up paying a little bit more and you know I didn't really understand why and he said oh you know that was just that was a price increase that everyone got it you know it's just inflation I was just standard that's the way it goes and I knew that wasn't true so I heard that and then I started really paying attention to what he was doing and what I realized he was doing was he was trying to sell these elderly people mostly I would say 90 plus percent upgraded annuities and you know where they would commit more money to the annuity and then they would get more money back and most of them are on fixed income or whatever whatever their situation was and they would say no they didn't want to do it they couldn't afford it whatever so I realized he was scamming these people he was having them sign a piece of paper at the end upgrading their insurance even though he was just telling them that they were just signing that they didn't want to upgrade that they just had a conversation about it and they said no and so I figured out this was going on and I went back to my boss and I said hey boss you know I was working with so and so and I saw this situation I explained the situation to him and I said you know he's scamming people he's stealing money from people and my boss either knew what was happening or just wanted to turn a blind eye and he was just basically like I don't care he's getting the job done and you know he's making great sales and he's making good money I'm making good money basically I don't care he didn't use those exact words I'm paraphrasing but that's pretty much what happened and right then and there I was like well this is you know this isn't the business for me I'm not I'm not here to scam people I don't want to scam people that's not what I'm trying to do so I had to also quit that job and so now here I was 29 years old a couple years out of college no career going and I was lost I didn't know what to do and so I will pick up from there on my next episode so thank you again for joining me and I'll see you next episode episode 12