|
A Declining Economy Tastes Better with a Little Gravy |
|
|
|
Written by Carrie Pepper
|
When
I launched my business, I was at that point where I knew I needed a
challenge. I needed something to put all my energies into. This
wasn’t all that clear to me when I began. I just knew I wanted more; I
wanted to be busier; I wanted to help more people. Had it not been for
SalesGravy.com I would not have come to this realization.
Sales Gravy. Now that’s a name that sticks with you, almost like those mashed potatoes and gravy stick to your waistline. As a kid, I’d forgo the potatoes altogether, sneaking into the kitchen with a spoon to scrape some of my father’s tasty fried chicken gravy from the black iron skillet. Ok, so what’s all this gravy talk anyway? Let me tell you.
In March of this year, with my unemployment benefits running out like sands through an hourglass, I began to get a little nervous. Doing my best to ignore looming headlines and statistics regarding our recession, I scoured the Internet with a vengeance. All I wanted was what I’d had: a steady job in outside sales with all the bennies – salary, bonus, company car. I thought my 15 years of experience would have been a slam-dunk but after months of searching, all I found were companies who were cutting back, laying off and imposing hiring freezes.
Nine months ticked by without any solid leads. During this time, my sister was laid off, then, my brother. The economy was getting harder to ignore. Then, a good friend stopped by. He works as a painter for my husband’s construction company. I asked him how things were going and he told me. His neighbor was losing his house; he was worried. “My phone is quiet,” he said. I stood there in the calmness of an early spring afternoon, imagining houses on other streets - with foreclosure signs. Now, a friend, one who had always been jovial and in demand, had just opened his heart. Right then, something clicked. Up until now, I’d focused on myself and my dwindling resources. It was time to find a way to help others, to offer hope on a much broader scale. I said a prayer but had no idea what would come of it. Two days later, I found Sales Gravy.
Now ranked as the #1 sales website in the world, SalesGravy.com turned my life around and got me back on course with a business I now own and operate. In addition, it is a constant source of relevant, upbeat information and articles that continue to help me hone my sales and leadership skills. When I first discovered Sales Gravy, I knew it was different from other sales websites. I found out why – Jeb Blount.
CEO and founder, Jeb has not only managed to reach the #1 slot in just a little over three years, with nearly double the traffic of the previous leader, but he has assembled a rich blend of resources that give sales professionals plenty of meat and potatoes to go under the gravy! Just the “Free Resources” section alone can fortify anyone’s arsenal. How has all this happened so quickly? Jeb is driven. He’s also a real guy with a heart. You can call and talk to him. I did. This is what I found out.
SalesGravy was quite a departure from his previous career as the regional VP of a $13 billion business services group. Jeb had his hands full with 180 sales people and 18 sales managers. He was a busy, successful guy. So why did he leave all that behind?
"I was constantly on the road. I remember looking at my son and thinking how, just two days after he was born, I was on a plane for Chicago. I was gone for the first 3 months of his life, traveling. It was just one of those moments. I don’t want to call it a midlife crisis because it certainly wasn’t that. I missed eight years of his life. I was getting on an airplane on Monday and coming back on Friday. I did that for ten years. At the time, I really felt that I liked it; traveling was fun, but it was after I quit traveling and started running my own business that I realized how much it wore me down. I had lost life’s simple joys. It wasn’t that I didn’t like my job because I did. I liked what I was doing, but it was time to reinvent."
During my nine months of searching, I continued to look for what I knew: educational publishing sales. Like Jeb, I thought I liked it. It was flexible; I made good money. There was always an open territory somewhere.
A few months into the job search, my phone rang. I’d inquired about a position months before and they were finally getting back to me. As the interviewer droned on with her standard line of questioning, I started to recall things I’d conveniently forgotten: the continual pain in my shoulder from loading and unloading textbooks; the $30k bonus check my boss yanked without cause or warning; those stress filled ride-alongs with managers who cared nothing about me but only the bottom line. Then, came the clincher, the reason I knew I had to step out and look at other options. Travel would be heavy, up to a month on the road. The job, they said, would “require a large portion of my life.” Gulp. More gravy, please!
I really believe that in everybody’s life, there comes a point when it’s time to do something different with your life and I’m not talking about doing something stupid and chasing wild dreams. If you watch really smart people, you’ll notice a lot of them who, in the middle of their life will say, I’m going in a different direction. They get more joy and passion from what they’re doing; they have more belief in themselves. It’s not easy to strike off on your own.
Starting my own business was the only way out of the worry. Instead of constantly dwelling on how I was going to pay the bills and where my next paycheck was coming from, I took a leap of faith. Start up costs were minimal and I turned a profit within the first week. There aren’t many businesses you can start on a shoestring. Just ask Jeb.
"I haven’t dropped my entire life savings on it, but I’ve invested a huge amount of my own money. I think as you grow older, you start looking at the world more philosophically. I tell people find something you really like and do it well. Quit worrying about the money and focus on whether you’re happy or not. I can tell you that in the last 3 or 4 years of my job, I was making more money than I ever made and I wasn’t nearly as happy as I was early in my (Sales Gravy) career where I was challenged and I was learning and being pushed. I think human beings need to be challenged. We need to have something in front of us to chase."
When I launched my business, I was at that point where I knew I needed a challenge. I needed something to put all my energies into. This wasn’t all that clear to me when I began. I just knew I wanted more; I wanted to be busier; I wanted to help more people. Had it not been for SalesGravy.com I would not have come to this realization.
Granted, it’s not easy; it’s a lot of hard work, but I’m starting to see the pay off and I have hope for the future. That’s the best part.
“Chasing your passion isn’t easy; you have to work hard, suffer for it. People want it to be easy and it’s not. You have to go through those times when you’re not making any money. When you do the things you love to do and have faith, the world comes along and rewards you – gravy falls from the sky.”
I remembered someone telling me once that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. I’d had my share of jobs – and of lay-offs. I’d had the crème-de-la-crème position with a company car, gas card, expense account, but I had never really put my innate skills to the test. I had never given myself the opportunity to make what I was worth. I’d always been building someone else’s company. I put on my dream hat, rubbed the magic lamp and out sprung my genie. We all have amazing talents we can tap into – if we have faith. And, as Jeb says, that faith needs to be laced with a lot of action, a lot of work.
Now, I get up earlier and work longer than I ever have, but there is magic in knowing you are building something of your own, something that’s salable, willable and no one can take it away.
| |
Carrie Pepper |
| About the author: |
|
Let me introduce myself and tell you how I've come to form letters into words and words into stories. I was born in Salzburg, Austria. My father moved us across the ocean to Virginia when I was just “dem jungen USA-Bűrger” (a young American citizen). I grew up without any close friends or neighbors, in a big, white house surrounded by hardwood forests. Memories created in that time and space have been simmering and directing the course of my writing life for as long as I can remember.
| |
|
Sales Gravy FEED
