John: 0:00

I started always using the self checkout because one of the most humiliating moments in my life happened at the checkout counter of my grocery store. I'll never forget that night. I was a single parent, standing in line at Giant Eagle, the local grocery store. My preschool age daughters, watching over a cart full of food, excited because for the first time in six months, I let them pick out a couple of extra things. In the 18 months leading up to that night, money was growing increasingly tight, and the mere thought of adding a cookie or a stick of gum to the cart was strictly forbidden. As the cashier scanned our groceries, the horror that was about to unfold was the farthest thing from my mind. For the first time in months, I had a glimmer of hope. A small financial safety net that allowed me to breathe just slightly easier than I had been able to in months. I was hoping that it would give me the help that I needed to get my business back on track so that I could give my daughters the life that I had dreamt of instead of the one that they were living. To understand the true impact of what was about to happen, I need to stop and start over a few years earlier. I was raised by a very conservative entrepreneurial family. Our values were that every man should pull himself up by his bootstraps and people got out of life what they put in. My parents believed that people who were wealthy were wealthy because they worked harder than people who weren't. The people with money were the risk takers, the job creators, and the people who weren't successful were the ones who were living off the backs of those who had worked harder. That's right. I was raised to believe that anyone who accepted any form of help, unemployment, welfare, or charity was not only Lazy, but somehow fundamentally a flawed human, borderline criminal, and stealing from those who worked hard to get where they were in life. The role models that I had growing up live that example. Most of the people we knew worked hard, built businesses and employed people. The ones who weren't business owners were hardworking blue collar types that put in 12 hour days working in factories and in the trades. Hardworking American taxpayers each and every one. I was lucky because I was able to afford to go to a good college and graduate without a lifetime of student loan debt. I was able to start a career showing horses professionally at a very young age and this ability to know that I could safely pursue my dreams. I graduated college, got married and bootstrapped my first businesses. I bootstrapped successful tech companies through my twenties and thirties. And in 2008, shortly after my youngest daughter was born, it all came crashing down. I watched the businesses that I had spent over a decade building collapse. I had businesses that were tied to the banking, trucking, and auto industries, all of which were hit hard that year. I went from making insane amounts of money as the owner of a fast growing IT consulting and staffing company to working by myself in a dingy, often flooded basement as my new office while desperately trying to save it. My father's machine shop, which had survived over 40 years, closed shortly after. I watched everything that I had built in my life, my marriage, my business, my father's business, and my entire world view crumble within a year. Suddenly I found myself a single parent with two preschoolers, one still in diapers, with no income, no savings, and no idea how to dig myself out. The ironic thing about losing a business is I didn't just lose a job. I lost my heart, my soul, my family, my friends, my life savings trying to save it. I paid all the company's bills, contractors, employees, and if anything was left over, maybe myself when I could. And when the money ran out for the company, I still believed. I could, no I would turn this around. I had built it from nothing but an idea to a shining beacon of hope for my family's future once. And by God, I will do it again, I told myself. So I cashed out all of my investments, my savings, my 401k and sold off all the possessions that I could spare and put myself deep in debt to keep it going, growing increasingly desperate, increasingly destined to fail. For an entrepreneur, desperation doesn't defeat you, it fuels you. It enrages you and empowers you to work harder, and invest more, and risk more, and more, and more. But desperation's a double edged sword, for even though it gives you the purpose and drive, it also makes you take shortcuts. You begin to make decisions based on panic, not reason. You spend on things you need right now instead of investing in the business that will pay you back triple next month. Not because you want to, but because you have no other option. And eventually you will make choices, choices you don't want to make. Choices that you know are wrong. You eventually have to choose whether you will do what you need to do in the business to make money next month or buy food today. And when it comes to the end of the road for the business owner, there's no such thing as unemployment. There's no COBRA to keep your health insurance going. There's not even a clear path to a new job because every single job you apply for, you're overqualified for. I applied for hundreds of jobs and got dozens of interviews as my desperation increased over those months leading up to that humiliating night at the grocery store. And every time, I got the same reply. I can't hire you. Why? I asked. With everything you have accomplished already, there is no way you'll be satisfied just working here. You should be running a company like this, not working at one, they said. And they were right. I would never have been satisfied. I'm not wired to ever be satisfied. I am wired to build and grow and achieve. But, at that time, I was desperate. I had a home, a car payment, and electric bills, and daycare for two children, and diapers to buy. So while I agreed with them, I needed to work right then, and I wanted to work right then, or else. The week after my divorce was final, my fall from wealthy business owner who drove Porsches, Cadillacs, and Hummers. And who showed high priced horses all over the country to broke single parent struggling to put gas in a banged up minivan was complete. I was down to my last 200 in the entire world. That was the day that I told my father, a man that I idolized, and wanted to be proud of me more than anything, that I was going down to the county JFS and apply for welfare. I didn't get the reaction from him that I expected. No, I expected, maybe even wanted his outrage and condemnation. I deserved for him to be as angry with me as I was with myself in that moment. Instead, my father said, you made so much money when you were doing well and paid so much in taxes. You're not lazy, John. You just need help. You've earned the right to ask for help to get back on your feet. I will never forget that. He gave me the strength that I needed that day. To close the door on my past and start a new chapter. A chapter where I was on my own, blindly raising two little girls with no idea what I was going to do. And go down to the county and apply for assistance. I left the job in family Services office, a broken man. I drove home in silence, parked in my driveway and cried for an hour in my car. Too ashamed to face anyone, but for the first time in months, I could afford to pay for groceries. So I dried the tears and we all went shopping. So, as the last of our groceries scanned, the cashier looked at me and as I handed her that inconspicuous card, I mean, it looked exactly like a debit card, so nobody's ever gonna notice, right? She looked at it and said, Paying with food stamps today? She didn't just whisper it. She proclaimed it loudly in that crowded grocery store in the town that I grew up in, went to school in, and intended to raise my children in. Suddenly I looked around and it felt like every single person in every single line in that store was looking directly at me. Everyone knew that I was a failure. Everyone knew that I was the welfare person feeding my kids with their tax dollars. My shame and failure was on display for everyone's entertainment that evening. Thankfully my daughters We're too young to understand. All they knew is they got some snacks that were normally forbidden. We checked out, got out of the store as fast as we could, and when we got home, and I got my kids to bed that night, I took a shower and cried alone where nobody could see the pain that I was in that horrible, horrible night. It was a long time before I ever showed my face in that store again. I started shopping farther from home across town at Walmart, always using self checkout, careful to hide the card as I swiped it, always afraid somebody was paying close enough attention to how I intended to pay and would judge me for it as harshly as I judged myself. I could never risk being so publicly humiliated again. As humiliating as it was to rely on food stamps, I had two children to feed and that was the only way that I could do it until I could find a way out of that situation. I would like to say that it was a quick rebound. But the truth is, poverty as a single parent is a hell of a lot harder to escape than people tell you. Simple things like hiring a babysitter so that you can go to a job interview, or losing a job because nobody will be able to pick up your kids before your daycare closes, and you can never work a full 8 hour day because there's a 25 fine for every 15 minutes late you are picking up your kids at the daycare, so you can't afford to take the chance that your 55 minute commute turns into an hour. And the longer that you're struggling, the harder it is to find a good job. And the stronger those shackles of poverty and relying on the system becomes, the poorer you are, the more expensive everything becomes simply to live. Gas, insurance, heat, water, clothes, literally everything that you need to live becomes almost unobtainable. It took years of struggle to escape. That trap and rebuild my life without sacrificing the time and attention my children needed. I was able to get myself back on solid ground in large part because of being a salesperson. When you have sales skills, you are uniquely capable of producing large amounts of income in short periods of time. I've worked in recruiting, real estate, car sales, alarm sales, even insurance. I've gone from borderline homelessness on welfare, filing for bankruptcy while selling off furniture to put gas in my car, to six figure earning salesman, homeowner, and real estate investor within just a few years. And as for that food stamps card that brought me such humiliation so many years ago, I I carry it in my wallet with me every single day right next to my American Express as a reminder to myself that no matter where I am in life, I will always remember the time that I handed it to that cashier and I will never let myself be in that position again. Instead of being ashamed or bitter, I am thankful that I went through that phase of life. It gave me the opportunity to look in the mirror and decide exactly what kind of person I am. What kind of father, son, friend, and human being that I was going to be. When I couldn't spend money on my daughters, I spent time with them instead. We exercised together, hiked, played games, biked, sang, and danced. We entertained ourselves and each other, and I gained experiences and perspective that No amount of money could have ever bought. I learned that I could find true happiness in life. Not through things that I could buy, but through memories I could create with the people I cared about. And finally, I learned to be a better salesman because of this experience. I get a perspective on life I never would have had previously. A perspective that truly allows me to genuinely empathize with customers of many backgrounds, from wealthy to welfare. and truly put myself in their shoes and do my best to help them. Anyways, this is the part where I tell you to like and subscribe if you like this channel, and share the video if you know anyone that might appreciate it. And if you are in a funk yourself and need to dig yourself out, remember sales careers are a great way to do it. To learn to become the best salesperson you can be, whether you're digging yourself out of poverty or are just trying to hit the next tier of success in your sales career, you can learn the skills that have worked for me. In my book Stop Selling, Start Believing, available at stopsellingstartbelieving.com, and most places books are sold. Until next time, thank you for listening and see you soon.