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Sales Success Magazine | Sales Training | Success StoriesHow I Went From a Shoe Shine Boy to a Millionaire and Found Passion for Life
A Series Written to Inspire Those Who Want Passion for LifeChapter:12 My Corporate Experience, Starting Over AGAIN!! Click here for "Millionaire" directory. Timothy L. Drobnick Sr. SALES SUCCESS MAGAZINE ©2001,2002,2003 Published 7/20/2003 
I went to work for Ser-vice-Mas-ter which was a national cleaning franchise. ServiceMaster offered me 200 dollars per week salary, against 20% commission. The commission seemed more exciting to me than the 200 dollars per week salary.
After I was there for about 2 weeks, I noticed a man working in the warehouse. He labored with little excitement. I went out to talk to him to see what he was doing. This man and I was the only two workers besides, the owner, his wife, and the secretary. He explained to me he was doing a smoke job. I looked in the box, and there were items from a house that had smoke damage. He seemed very depressed. "I wish I had your job, he said. At least you get to drive around and see people and listen to the radio. I am stuck in this warehouse." This man was a great artist, and his main work was marble sculptures. The city of Denver had purchased one of his sculptures for downtown, and paid him $30,000.00 for it. I don't remember this person's name, but I felt sorry for him. For most of his life, he was about 50 years old at the time, people had always purchased enough sculptures from him to provide him a good living. He told me that always he had sold about $30,000.00 to $50,000.00 worth of sculptures in a year. But people just came to him and purchased them. He was not a salesperson. The previous year he did not sell any sculptures and he ran out of money. He was like a fish out of water, and had to come down from his mountain home to the city to find work. I did not know what to do for him, but he said he would be happier doing my job, and I was willing to switch with him. I did enjoy cleaning carpets, but I decided I saw more potential in what he was doing. The owner agreed to let us switch jobs, but he explained that I would no longer have a salary guarantee, only a commission. I asked how much the commission would be, and he told me 50%. That sounded fine to me. I started my own system in the warehouse, to see how fast I could get all the items cleaned. I categorized each item by the type of cleaning it needed, and the types of chemicals I had to use to clean them. This worked quite well, and using the factory type system I cleaned all the items quickly. This pleased my boss, and the job received no complaints from the customers. The quickness of the job, and the satisfaction of the customer caused the insurance company to offer my boss other jobs. After a while I decided that since I had a system down, I could hire people to help me do this job. So I called a local temporary job agency, and asked for a couple workers. I gave them a brush, or towel, or tool they needed, and showed them how to do one technique. Using this method, I was able to get a job done in 2-3 days that used to take 2 weeks or more. I would spend a couple days after each job just looking busy in the home we were working on, to make sure the home owners were happy with the job. I felt it was better to be there when something unsatisfactory was discovered by the homeowners, and take care of it then. This helped to keep the insurance company pleased also. This resulted with even more work, and I hired even more temporary workers. I remember one morning I was at work in the warehouse and had 6 temp workers busy on my production lines. The owner of the business walked in the door and gasped! "Where did these people come from?" he almost screamed. I told them I had hired them. "You can't hire this many people!" He exclaimed. I could see that this many people was stretching the size of the business he was willing to build. "Don't worry" I told him, "Their pay comes out of my 50%". He stopped, turned around, looked at me, smiled, and said, "OK". That was the last I heard of that. There were some days that even after paying the workers salary out of my commission, I would make as much as $1000.00 for one days work. I knew this would scare my boss, as he was not used to seeing big ideas like this. So the extra days of follow up with the homeowners would help make it seem that I did not make so much. These days I did not accomplish anything except to make myself look busy, and to be there to take care of any complaints the homeowners might have. This did help stop any complaints from going to the insurance company. However, even with this procedure, after about 8 months, my boss called me into work and told me that we had a problem. I asked him what the problem was. He told me that I was now making more money than him and his wife combined, and that did not seem right, as he was the owner of the company. I asked him how that could possibly be, as he was paying me 50% commission, and all the labor was coming out of my commission. I told him his 50% had almost no costs coming out of it except the financing. He had to be making more than me. He said that yes this was true, but he and his wife's salary were set to be the same every month, and since mine wasn't, my salary had grown to be more than their salaries. Now keep in mind this man was the owner of the company, and could decide to give himself a raise if he wanted to. So I asked him, "Then why don't you give yourself a raise?" This comment did not set too well with him, and our conversation ended up with me asking if he wanted 2 weeks notice, or should I just leave now. He told me he did not need 2 weeks notice, so I said goodbye, and proceeded to leave. On the way out the door he asked me, "where are you going to go? There are no jobs out there?" He was shocked that I was leaving. I said, "I don't know, I guess I will sell something". However, this time I had decided I was going to do something BIG. I was excited to get out there and find out what it was going to be. Click here to go to chapter 13. This article is copyrighted by Timothy L. Drobnick Sr. and no one has permission to copy or reproduce any part without written notarized permission from Timothy L. Drobnick Sr. ©2001,2002,2003 |
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