04-05-2002, 03:38 PM
Right now, I have no job, as I just wait to hear from Grad schools so I can enter a concentrated 1-year MBA program at either Babson College in Boston (where I've been accepted) or Northwestern's Kellogg School in Chicago (where I haven't heard yet). If I get into Kellogg, I move out there in July and start school.
I haven't worked since September (my leaving had nothing to do with 9/11) which coincides with my joining messageboards.
Before then, I started working at a small company in '97 as a salesperson selling Cisco, EMC, and AT&T circuits to business. We were a tiny 30 person company with very little technical staff, and no sales support, so I had to find my own prospects, cold call them, make all buddy buddy with the various manufacturers, meet with the customers (and as the projects got bigger, I was meeting with CEOs, Founders, and VC companies), propose and explain our technical solution, and monitor the accounts afterward to make sure they were all happy. Since I was 22, when I started no one would give me the time of day, so I migrated towards startups where all the management of the company was my age, and sold the infrastructure gear that built up enormous networks in the Internet Economy.
My company won all sorts of awards: Top 100 in INC500 Fastest Growing Companies two years in a row, my owners won Earnst & Young Enrepreneurs of the Year in 200, and Entrepreneur Magazine's Small Business Owner's of the Year in '99. Our company was jamming. I was the #2 rep out of like 25 in '99 and the #1 in the country out of over 150 in 2000. Late in '99 we got bought by this enormous Tech Services company based out of South Africa. They didn't change anything the first year, and everyone was doing great. I sold over $15 million, and made over $2.5 million in profit for the company. Then in 2001 they started getting worried about the economy and started fucking everyone over, making promises that never kept "due to budget constraints" of $10 billion company.
The atmosphere started to really suck, and all the joy was taken out of work. I used to LOVE work. I'd work at least 12 hour days, was best friends with all the people I worked with, all my customers, manufacturers. Then everyone just started leaving, moving, retiring (I knew sooooo many Internet millionares), a lot of my top customers got bought, and changed purchasing locations, so my numbers really started to slip. Then I just left.
But going into Sales was the best decision I ever made. Before that, I was a little introverted, but being in sales forced me out of that or not eat (since when I started my base (before commissions) was $320 a week, and only went up to $500 a week). It completely changed my personality to be a lot more outgoing, assertive, and confident. And to think the only reason I took the job was because I saw that "would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that...." speech in Braveheart, and I figured, "What the fuck, I'm 22, if I fail so what, I'll still be young, but if I don't try it, will I look back at this as a missed opportunity?"
Good times. Good times. 97-2001 was the best time of my life.
I haven't worked since September (my leaving had nothing to do with 9/11) which coincides with my joining messageboards.
Before then, I started working at a small company in '97 as a salesperson selling Cisco, EMC, and AT&T circuits to business. We were a tiny 30 person company with very little technical staff, and no sales support, so I had to find my own prospects, cold call them, make all buddy buddy with the various manufacturers, meet with the customers (and as the projects got bigger, I was meeting with CEOs, Founders, and VC companies), propose and explain our technical solution, and monitor the accounts afterward to make sure they were all happy. Since I was 22, when I started no one would give me the time of day, so I migrated towards startups where all the management of the company was my age, and sold the infrastructure gear that built up enormous networks in the Internet Economy.
My company won all sorts of awards: Top 100 in INC500 Fastest Growing Companies two years in a row, my owners won Earnst & Young Enrepreneurs of the Year in 200, and Entrepreneur Magazine's Small Business Owner's of the Year in '99. Our company was jamming. I was the #2 rep out of like 25 in '99 and the #1 in the country out of over 150 in 2000. Late in '99 we got bought by this enormous Tech Services company based out of South Africa. They didn't change anything the first year, and everyone was doing great. I sold over $15 million, and made over $2.5 million in profit for the company. Then in 2001 they started getting worried about the economy and started fucking everyone over, making promises that never kept "due to budget constraints" of $10 billion company.
The atmosphere started to really suck, and all the joy was taken out of work. I used to LOVE work. I'd work at least 12 hour days, was best friends with all the people I worked with, all my customers, manufacturers. Then everyone just started leaving, moving, retiring (I knew sooooo many Internet millionares), a lot of my top customers got bought, and changed purchasing locations, so my numbers really started to slip. Then I just left.
But going into Sales was the best decision I ever made. Before that, I was a little introverted, but being in sales forced me out of that or not eat (since when I started my base (before commissions) was $320 a week, and only went up to $500 a week). It completely changed my personality to be a lot more outgoing, assertive, and confident. And to think the only reason I took the job was because I saw that "would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that...." speech in Braveheart, and I figured, "What the fuck, I'm 22, if I fail so what, I'll still be young, but if I don't try it, will I look back at this as a missed opportunity?"
Good times. Good times. 97-2001 was the best time of my life.