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Brandon Held - Life is Crazy
I Host 2 Podcasts. Life Is Crazy and The Buckeye Battle Cry Show. The Life Is Crazy podcast is designed to help with suicide prevention. That is the #1 goal! This is also a Podcast of perseverance, self-help, self-Improvement, becoming a better person, making it through struggles and not only surviving, but thriving! In this Podcast the first 25 episodes detail my life's downs and ups. A story that shows you can overcome poverty, abusive environments, drug and alcoholic environments, difficult bosses, being laid-off from work, losing your family, and being on the brink of suicide. Listen and find a place to share life stories and experiences. Allow everyone to learn from each other to reinforce our place in this world. To grow and be better people and help build a better more understanding society.
The early podcast episodes are a story of the journey of my life. The start from poor, drug and alcohol stricken life, to choices that lead to success. Discusses my own suicide ideations and attempt that I struggled with for most of my life. Being raised by essentially only my mother with good intentions, but didn't know how to teach me to be a man. About learning life's lessons and how to become a man on this journey and sharing those lessons and experiences with others whom hopefully can benefit from my successes and failures.
Hosting guests who have overcome suicide attempts/suicide ideations/trauma/hardships/difficult situations to fight through it, rise up, and live their best life. Real life stories to help others that are going through difficult times or stuck without a path forward, understand and learn there is a path forward.
The Buckeye Battle Cry Show is a weekly show about the greatest sport in the world, college football, and specializing in discussing the greatest team in the world, THE Ohio State Buckeyes,
Want to be a guest on Brandon Held - Life is Crazy? Send Brandon Held a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/brandonheld
Brandon Held - Life is Crazy
Episode 11: What They Don't Teach You: Navigating the Murky Waters of Early Employment
After graduating college, I navigated a series of unexpected career turns that took me from a lucrative accountant sales representative role to multiple jobs with broken promises and ethical challenges. This journey highlights how early career paths often involve setbacks, difficult choices, and learning experiences that shape your professional future.
Please start with Episode 1. Go to my site BrandonHeld.com
• Landed a job selling accounting services with $500 weekly base plus 50% commission on first-year client payments
• Earned approximately $70,000 in six months before working myself out of the position by reaching client capacity
• Took an assistant manager position at Finish Line with promises of promotion to general manager
• Successfully improved store performance and reduced theft at a struggling location, but promotion never materialized
• Moved to Circuit City road shop management with more promises that weren't fulfilled
• Briefly worked in insurance sales until discovering my trainer was defrauding elderly clients
• Reported unethical practices to my boss who showed indifference to the situation
• Found myself unemployed at 29, still searching for the right career path
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Welcome back to Brandon Held, 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 was, believe it or not, a job where I saw an ad in a newspaper. Because 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 job. And it was$500 a week plus commission. And I was like, oh, that's pretty good money. You already get the base of$500 a week plus the commission. So I wanted to give that a try. And 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, 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 did was an older gentleman and he had sold his accounting firm he had built up a big firm and he had sold it and 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 the finances to retire but for whatever reason he didn't want to and he wanted to start his own business. Now he was a grumpy little old man. And I say little cause I'm six foot one and he was probably like maybe five foot six chubby older. Oh, 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. And 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 taxes if they needed his time. If they didn't, then he would just go pick up any tax papers and call it a day. And so that was, that was a pretty easy pitch to sell. They never met the accountant. They didn't know anything about him. I was the face. I was the person that they knew. And so I was friendly, easygoing, easy to get along with, could really talk to anybody, just put anyone in front of me, grumpy old man to 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 how much their business did annually. And then they would get charged a percentage of that for the accountant's business and annually. And for the first year, I would get 50%. My commission would be, let's just say, for example, I went out to a business and I sold the accountant to them. They, let's just say their cost was$10,000 a year to have the accountant's services. 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 fun. signing up that sale, right? After that, 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, this guy is He's a single man accountant. He's not planning on hiring any other accountants. And 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 was like, he could take this many clients and that's it. Once he gets to this amount with the travel and tax season and everything else, he can't take anymore. So. I agreed I could use the experience. It sure beat the heck out of working at a 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 rewarding and upsetting at the same time because in six months I probably made, I don't know, 65, 70 grand straight out of college. Someone who was used to barely scraping by off bartending money on the weekends and just getting the bare minimum to get by to now all of a sudden have all this money. And I felt rich at the time. 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 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. We all need a job. We can't just live off of other people or we shouldn't. 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 job was like a training program. A management and training role where the point was to eventually become a general manager of the finish line. And then they said, oh, you would get paid 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, and so I signed on with 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 I was doing really well. And I started at one place, the Park Place Mall in Beaver Creek, Ohio. And then the Regional manager came to me one day and she said, hey, I really need help down at the Dayton Mall location. We sell a lot more in volume, but we also have a theft problem. 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, we'd like to give you the general manager role there. And I thought, perfect. 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 the other management trainee that I had been working with, he had to move to 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 I get with the general manager to let him know, Hey, I want to help get, 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 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 there was going to be a, like a bag check or whatever you bring in to the off to work is subject to being checked on your way out the door. And. They didn't like that, of course. Who does? So some people quit. And some people, I just, I don't know, maybe stopped stealing or whatever. So what happened was, is 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. 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. 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. And it's just 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 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 that I was apparently letting the right people go and bringing in the right people. Sales were up and theft was down and 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, 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, normal day working. And all of a sudden this guy comes in to me, he introduces himself and he says, Hey, I see the stores run really well. I'm the general manager at Circuit City. I'm looking to hire a new general manager for the road shop, which is our radio sales and installation department. And I'd love to interview you for it. And so I took his card and I thought, what the heck, why not? Nothing to lose. I can talk to him if it works out great. If it doesn't, nothing lost. I'll just end up still being here. So I meet with him and he also sells me a very similar related dream. 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. I don't really care for the way he's doing business and I want to replace him. And I said, oh, that's great. That sounds good. But 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, here's the salary for you to come train. This will be the salary when you become the general manager. He's guaranteed this is going to happen. I want to get rid of this guy. 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. It was something new to learn, selling radios, selling speakers, 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, 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 happened. completely threw me off. But I didn't think anything of that at the time because I thought the same thing I thought about finish line. 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 amplifiers and DVD players and TV screens and Taking apart different types of cars and SUVs and minivans and some of these installers there just had a wealth of experience. And they were pretty well grounded in being there and what they were doing because 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. They are all buddies outside of work. And here comes this new guy. I don't drink. I don't smoke. I'm like the complete opposite of them. I'm college educated. I'm squeaky clean. Someone who's trying to do the right thing and do things by the book and by the rules, whereas the other general manager was more lenient. And they didn't want to help me or support me. They didn't want to teach me the ropes or get me to learn. They understood that I was cool and everything was cool, but they also, it seemed like they knew that I would replace me. their general manager that they liked and they enjoyed. And it was very much clearly of they were a group and then I was one. And so it was a struggle and they were instigating 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 look at me and say, 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 one day I got in an argument with one of the employees there. And 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. I left. 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. 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 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 I passed it. And then I went to go work for this insurance company. Pennsylvania Life was the subsidiary of the company, but I, you know, they were, I don't know if subsidiary is the right word. I don't think that's the word I look up. They were the parents of this company and the company I was working for was a subsidiary. They weren't called Pennsylvania Life. It was just who they ended up getting their insurance from ultimately. And it was annuities and it was term life insurance. And they had a huge list of potential clients. And that wasn't the hard part. There was a lot of driving. 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. I was still myself. Like, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to give it 110% and I want to be successful. I want to be the best I can be. And 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 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 he asked me how I wanted to do it. And I said, I want to be the best. Whoever is your best right now, I want to be paired up with them. I want to train from them. I want to learn from them. And I want to be the best. And he's okay. I got my guy. 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, little small guy, claimed to be super religious. Bishop in his church, went to church three or four times a week. Was a wrestler at Iowa, like on paper, just sold himself as this golden choir boy. But he was older, he was in his fifties. And so we went out together and I would see at every visit, I was learning the ropes and seeing what, how to do this job. But 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. 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 we're not going to upgrade your insurance. He would try to sell them the upgrade while he was there, and 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 religion, and maybe just a few minutes talking about the actual insurance sales. We went to one of those places and the person had said, Hey, I noticed last time you came to visit me and then left, like my premium went up. I ended up paying a little bit more and I didn't really understand why. And he said, Oh, that was just, that was a price increase that everyone got it. It's just inflation. That 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 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 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, I was working with so, and I saw this situation. I explained the situation to him and I said, 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, I don't care. He's getting the job done and 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, this is, this isn't the business for me. I'm not here to scam people. I don't want to scam people. That's not what I'm trying to do. And so I had to also quit that job. And so now here I was, 29 years old, 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 12.
