After living in an unfurnished apartment for the past two weeks we’ve finally received some furniture! Although my roommate, Blaire and I had the right idea when we stole the manager’s air mattress about a week ago, it will be nice to sleep in an actual bed.

A couch. love seat. living room table. lamps. dressers. beds. It’s starting to feel like we actually live here. Which is hard to say considering all we ever do here is sleep. We put in about 10-11 hour days during the week and a 12 hour day on Saturday. That being said I worked over 60 hours this week at absolutely no pay. Not fun, but I’m finding my groove and should be back on the horse next week.

Saturday we celebrated a co-worker’s birthday. Also, it was the day that everyone hit their first sale. The two people left to ride the horse threw down their deals before 5pm Saturday, one of which was the birthday girl. That coupled with our furniture meant a good day for everyone.

Today was our only day off this week. For some reason I was nominated to be the non-manager driver, so we drove the 15 passenger van into San Diego and spent the day walking around and window shopping, everyone made a small list of things to pick up once we start rolling 5 deals a week (which is the 100k per year mark).

This week should be an exciting week as more reps are making their way into the scene. I will update when possible.

I’m guessing if you’re reading my blog, you likely know my brother Colin. Well, it’s his birthday today, so, Happy Birthday Colin!

Is always a good thing to do when you get paid on commission only. It doesn’t take long before you catch yourself thinking twice about things you used to just do. Hey, try to do a back flip from this ledge into the shallow end of the pool! Sounds really tempting. But now I catch myself worrying, what if I get hurt? Maybe I shouldn’t.

This is just a simple example, but a lot of decisions get reconsidered under this new logic.

On another note, we had our first day off since we’ve been here this past Sunday. We went to the pacific beach, and although it was by no way considered warm from California standards, we didn’t waste anytime hitting the water. $20 later and we’re out catching (or at least trying to catch) waves on our rented surf boards. Then after a sandy, sun-burnt sleep we have another week of selling ahead. Long days. Minimal blogging. I’ll try to update with whatever I can.

We all woke up this morning without needing the alarm. You could tell everyone had that mixture of excitement and nervousness, similar to what you feel before exams, excited to write and get it finished but at the same time nervous about writing. That same feeling was felt amongst all of the reps today as we were being thrown to the sharks. Today was the first day that everyone knocked on the doors.

It started with our correlation where we went over a series of door pitches, home walk-throughs, and closings - similar to what we’ve been doing since we started training - to wrap up any last questions before we were sent off. Then, equipped with our clipboards and smiles we were each assigned an area, about 5 square blocks in a community right outside of San Diego, still within city limits.

Myself, along with two others were the first to be dropped off. I had from Hydra to Capricorn between Sagittarius and Virgo. It felt like a nice spot when I reached it. It was about 3pm and I took a walk around my area before I knocked on a single door, letting anyone I saw outside know who I was and what I was doing, and that I might be popping in. It was very overwhelming at first but after my first couple of doors I was a lot more relaxed.

My first door was answered by an older lady, likely mid 80s, that opened the door just enough to poke her head out and rudely say “You’re bothering me” and slammed the door in my face. Could have been worse, I thought. Throughout the day I encountered a lot of houses with no one home, and plenty of ones where they were just pretending no one was home. Many dogs, most of which were extremely intimidating. There is no question I am going to be bitten by a dog this summer, I was already threatened with one today. Many rude encounters but also some pleasant people that allowed me to force myself into their home. But all the crazy stuff aside, the highlight of my day was definitely getting my first sale!

It was around 4pm when I decided to start at one of the corners and knock down and up another complete street. First door on this block I knocked and Mike came to the door. Picture Mike. About 230 lbs, solid muscle, tattoos all over his body, and topped off with a tongue ring. A little intimidating, but without hesitation, my pitch was text book. I was a junior advertising director with General Electric building some brand name recognition in the area before our sales teams came through. Clearly this house was a great candidate for an advertising home and after asking a couple qualifying questions I pulled the look-up side step approach into the door and managed to get the door closed behind me without objection from Mike.

Holy shit. I can’t believe that worked. I was standing in the first house I had been in that day. Wasting no time I quickly explained how the wireless door sensors protected his house like no other. Already having a Brinks system installed, he was on a month to month contract already. Not only did I manage to convince Mike to leave Brinks, but was able to do so at a higher monthly cost. Matching his basic system of door sensors and motion detectors, I added a glass break sensor and new G.E. panel with the two-way voice feature. I could feel him start to actually want this new system. I played the Canadian card and was awed by his huge collection of assortment of guns, noting the differences in gun laws between Canada and the US.

After wrapping up the walk through and overview, we easily transitioned into the paper work and the close. My palms were getting sweaty. The paperwork was an area we didn’t really cover in detail, since we assumed we likely wouldn’t hit it today. Getting him talking about his huge obsession for dune buggies was an easy way to break the silence while I fumbled with the paper work. I found out that Mike has in fact seen “In the Army Now” - my only real knowledge of dune buggies.

Signed sealed and delivered. The technician was scheduled to arrive about an hour after we received the final “herbie” handcock on the contract. So after about 10 minutes of him showing me all his cool stuff around the house and sharing a cold drink I decided I best be getting back to work. I walked out of the house, and not wanting to knock directly next door I went around the corner and took a deep breath. That was probably the easiest $325 I’ve ever made. Not bad for 45 minutes in a crazy guy’s house.

That was my first day in a nutshell. Tomorrow will be lots of training and questions from today, coupled hopefully with some more time on the doors. As the days get longer my opportunity to blog will become smaller, so bear with me if I go days without appearing online.