Carlo gets into the office the first day of training, which happens to already be the next full weekend.
He’s shown to the back room where several others are already seated and ready to take notes, to learn how to work the job.
“Ok, everyone get your pens ready. Take your notebooks out. If you don’t have one then get used to always bringing one to our weekly team meetings. And go ahead and grab a pen, notebook paper up here at the front.”
He wrote down some words on the dry-erase board as he backed up from it (he was a big dude, and covered most if not all the board).
Everyone saw and proceeded to write.
THE ROOT OF EVERYTHING STARTS WITH A WHY
“First things first, you gotta figure out your why, why you do the things you do, what you want out of your life, and why you want it. Unless you do that, you’ll always be a crumby salesman.”
He looked around and saw a young woman with flowy blonde hair looking up at him, eyes intent on asking, “what about me?”
“Or woman.”
She smiled.
“And if our whys don’t relate.” He took a pause, put his thumbs on his suspenders, and said, “Then, quite frankly I’m not sure we should be doing business together.”
Carlo put his head down.
What is my why?
He was baffled by the question. He’d never been asked something like that before.
It baffled his head enough to the point of stretching his mind.
“What is your why,” the man, who would be Carlo’s district manager for the foreseeable months’ question rang in his head all night and even as he fell asleep early in his bed, asking himself “what is my why?”
Wondering if he would get an answer before the next day of training.
The second day of training, Carlo arrived at the office ready and more excited than ever.
There’s something that happens whenever a young man decides his destiny and sets a goal.
It seemed as if Carlo was starting to experience the full effects of these phenomena.
He thrusted himself out of bed, this time with power enough to move a stationary jet an initial inch or two.
He got everything ready and situated at his desk in his room, the same one he had never really used for school work, and would occasionally sit in when playing video games.
He took out a blank sheet of paper and at the top wrote.
MY WHY
When he arrived at the office, suited, ready to recite his “why”, as Mr. Foresman, the boss had beckoned everyone to do before the following day, he saw many cars already in the parking lot, which was odd because he thought he was the first one. He walked in and realized he was late. Not only was he late, but Mr. Foresman was already instructing on something he hadn’t heard before.
“Good, young man. Glad you could join us this morning. Do you have the sheet of paper with your why?”
“I.. I do.”
“Ok, well, take a seat. Right before our next break, we’ll have you recite your why in front of the whole training group, which we did first thing when we came in.”
Carlo looked around. He felt embarrassed, like something so simple, which he thought he was doing right, was not only not right, but he must’ve been well over an hour late!
What could’ve made him be so late?
“What’s your reason, Carlo?”
He stood up, took several pages of notebook paper out from his jacket pocket, and proceeded to read.
“My reason is to build a house, not just a house, but a home. One where my wife.. and kids, which I don’t have yet. But I want! So we can freely adventure and grow in.”
Carlo looked around. People were smiling at him.
Apparently they liked what he was saying.
“I want to build businesses, I don’t know how, but–” Mr. Foresman put up his finger to tell him to pause.
“That’s OK, young man. You don’t have to know how right now. That’ll come in the future. For now, all you have to have is a strong enough why, articulated. And that will bring you to the moment where your why, not only your why, but all your how’s, everything you need along the way, will be granted for you, all because you were bold enough. Clever enough, really, to ask the universe for your why and go forit, as you’re starting to do right now.”
Carlo continued speaking in public for three full pages of notes, front and back.
He shared how he was to accomplish some amazing things in life, all for the sake of helping others and living life with purpose.
His main purpose?
“And I want to do all these things by X date in the realization of my goals and dreams, so that I can retire early and live a happy life under an umbrella, and at the beach, drinking out of a coconut with a straw coming out of it on some beautiful island. My tropical island.”
And with that, he was finished.
As he dropped the sheet of paper from before his face, a cheesy grin emerged.
The same cheesy grin that always emerged when Carlo was both satisfied with himself and champing at the bit.
Everyone clapped, stood up, and with that went on break.
But Mr. Foreman stood at the front of the classroom looking at Carlo.
Everyone walked out from the room until it was only the two of them left.
“You know that’s bad. That last part,” Mr. Foreman said.
It was as Carlo’s balloon popped right before him, one he had spent the past moments pumping up for the world to see, but the boss came over and popped it.
“Don’t get me wrong, it was a noble try, a valiant effort.”
Carlo was confused. He thought he had written a masterpiece, and that everyone approved of him.
Now the boss, who he was trying most to impress, disregarded the writing as “bad”.
“What makes it bad?”
Mr. Foreman pulled up a chair before him, turned it back to Carlo, and sat down to explain this.
“Everyone who has ever wanted to achieve something great, which you detailed, which was awesome, had some greater force driving them to do it. It was ingrained into them. A can-do attitude simply brought it out.”
They made a connection, talking eyeball to eyeball.
Carlo had never had a man speak to him this way before about his dream.
“But if all you want it for is to live a life of leisure, to retire when you’re 35 and live life mediocre afterwards, well then, the universe will not give it to you.”
Carlo automatically disheartened.
“For that purpose. You need to work, and to work harder as the time goes by, not work less.”
Carlo was beginning to understand, yet still struggling to fully comprehend what Mr. Foresman was saying. It would take his whole life to figure out what the man had so patiently and carefully instructed him to do.
This morning, though, he walked in late.
It was some of the most important information he would ever hear.
Carlo was grateful to hear it, much more actually getting an opportunity to apply the information in his daily life, “I guess.. you’re right.”
Mr. Foresman stood up and slid the chair out from under him.
“Think about all these things, revise your why,” he said. “It has to be for a bigger purpose, one that helps the whole world, then you’ll never lack the ambition or motivation to go after it.”
The information that Carlo received that day was great – he had never thought about things quite like how Mr. Foreman had juxta-positioned to him.
He was grateful, and wondered inside of himself if some higher power, a divine force, was looking out for him, keeping him from going the wrong way, and helping him to go the right way.
Rolling out of bed, Carlo flips the covers off himself and gets to his feet immediately.
This was a trick he used to do back in high school.
Whenever he could muster the strength to, first thing.
He immediately looked at his sales gear there on the floor.
It was the first day he would go sales canvassing.
If you don’t know what canvassing is, it’s a procedure done in door-to-door sales that has the salesman check out an area, look at the homes, typically talk to a few people in their homes, purely with the intent to collect information and see if that area, that sales territory, is a right fit for them to devote more of their time.
Carlo got out of his room, suit on, a sales satchel hooked over his shoulder, and walked towards the restroom.
There was only one problem.
Claudia was in there, and when she was using the bathroom, there was no telling when she would come out.
Carlo sat in his living room and reviewed his pages of binder-covered notes and pages upon pages of pots, pans, and kitchen utensils.
This was his assigned task.
To sell as much kitchen supply as possible.
“Carlo,” Paula said.
Carlo lifted his head, looked at his mother, and there she was, hands on her hip, smiling at him.
“Look at my little salesman. You look so handsome.”
Carlo didn’t like that his mother often spoke to him like he was still a little baby.
But hey, he thought, it’s better to have a mom that cares too much than to have one that doesn’t care at all.
“And what are you going to do today? Where are you going?”
“I think I’ll go to the next neighborhood, to begin with. What I’m supposed to do is time it so that both decision makers can be there, so I can present to them all at once.”
Paula smiled all the more. “Well, how come you’re waiting, then?”
“Victoria’s in the bathroom.”
“Aye, Padre Celestial. How about you sell to me first?”
With his first sale already under his belt, albeit to his mom, his hair slicked back, cologne applied, he proceeded to the neighborhood conjoined to his.
He didn’t want to start in his own neighborhood because he wanted to save it for when he was a little bit more experienced at sales.
In that case, he would probably sell a lot more and make a lot less of a fool out of himself.
He had trained the prior week in the office, rotating through the group in their practice presentations, but he had yet to do it for a prospective customer other than his mother.
Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock.
Many people didn’t answer their door. Some, because they weren’t home. Others, because they saw a salesperson at their door and didn’t want to take time out of their busy schedule.
Carlo needed to keep a good attitude.
All I need is one sale in order to make this whole day worth it, he thought.
He pressed on with a smile on his face. That was another tool of the trade that he learned in the sales orientation.. smiling is the universal language.
Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock.
“Hello?”
“Hi. This is Carlo… with Channel Marketing. How are you doing today?”
“Not… bad… Are you trying to sell me something?”
Carlo stared at him blankly for an approximate two seconds that seemed like an eternity.
“No. Well, yes. But you don’t need to buy it.”
The man kept the door open just barely, then peaked his head and torso out.
“What are you selling?”
“Anything your kitchen needs.”
The man opened the door for Carlo.
“Come on in.”
“Where do I sign?”
“Just right here.”
The man took the pen from Carlo’s hand, signed and said, “Thank you. I hope all of this works out. You gave a pretty good presentation, consider doing sales or being in business for yourself as a career. It seems like you have a knack for it already.”
Carlo was surprised the man said so. All he did was read off a script, and he figured the man wanted to support him because of his “why”.
Carlo had to admit, he had articulated his goal very well, “I want to travel to remote areas, to where locals live, I want to live with them for a time. To learn, so I can tell their story to the world.”
“Whoa,” the man said, and behaved in a manner of great respect for the young man thereafter.
It was like Carlo had him eating out of his palm after that.
I guess that’s the power of why, Carlo thought.
Carlo left the customer’s house not only victorious, but rearing to get his next sale for the day.
It was 5 PM, meaning people were now coming back from their daily hustle.
Those same houses that he had knocked, where no one came to the door – those same houses he could knock again.
I had no clue I would like this job so much.
Little did he know the difficulties of the sales journey cycle, much less the up-and-down sort of adventure that he was about to embark on.
Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock.
A beautiful young woman with flowing brownish-black hair opened the door.
She was dressed simply in loungewear. A tank top with sweatpants. But Carlo’s heart seemed to stop for a moment, maybe two, as he witnessed destiny open the door.
“Hello?”
“You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life.”
He didn’t know what made him so bold to say such a thing. It naturally spilled out of his mouth, like a rhyme or another breath.
She looked down, checking him out, smiled, then looked back up.
“Is that what you came here for, to say that? Do I even know you?”
Carlo realized how it was going to be. A game of cat and mouse. He would have to chase.
But he was down for it, anyway. That would make life a lot more interesting.
Just then, a middle-aged latino man with a solid and defined moustache came to the door.
Crap, the father, Carlo thought.
“Hello, how can we help you?”
He stepped in front of the young lady as if he were the gatekeeper to both the house and his daughter.
Carlo didn’t know what to say.
Should I try to sell to him?
Or should I just get his daughter’s number?
Could I try to do both?
Would you like to buy Carlo’s Gap Year on Amazon?
MARK SOTOMAYOR 