Preparing to leave high school, I began to consider my career path. Going to college without at least some sort of specific goal was uncomfortable for me. My first thought was law. I liked to argue and did spend some time on my high school debate team. I had also competed in several speaking contests and had won a few of those.
There were two problems with a law degree, however. I knew that I would chafe if I chose an aspect of law that would require me to represent those who I either did not like or who I knew that were guilty. More importantly, while I was good in school, those extra years of college and all that study, and I was fond of neither, killed that idea.
I had been accepted at USC but, having my parents spend all of that money with me being undecided … I couldn’t do it. Instead, I enrolled at Pasadena City College (PCC or, as we liked to call it … The University of Colorado Boulevard) to at least get my required courses out of the way. I graduated with an AA in History.
Why history? Well, I liked history and I still do. My grandfather was a university history professor so that also carried some weight. With those things in mind, I elected to work during the day and take night classes at Cal State L.A. with the goal of achieving a Bachelor’s Degree in History. I’m still not sure why.
That plan didn’t work out so well. I hated the school, I hated the classes, and it suddenly struck me that my career choices would be severely limited with a degree in that line of study. So, I did the obvious. One night, I got up in the middle of a class and I walked out. I never even went back to cancel my classes. I was done.
I think that I took about six months off to collect my thoughts and to consider my next move. During all of this time, I had been working at a local department store as the assistant manager of the men’s trend clothing department. I did like selling and merchandising. It was back to PCC where, in one year, I secured another AA in Retail Merchandise Management.
I was hired by Montgomery Wards, right out of school, to be a Regional Management Trainee. This included managing the men’s clothing department in one store and then transferring to another new store to run their fine jewelry department. After spending most of my working life in retail, it finally hit me. I hated retail. Yeah, I’m a slow learner. The year was 1977.
I still liked selling and thus I began my pursuit of an outside sales opportunity. After numerous rejections, I took my first offer which was with a national company selling calculators, very expensive calculators, directly to businesses. This company had been nationally recognized as having the best sales training in the industry, and they did.
I was fortunate to work my way up to being a fully fledged sales rep, then a sales manager, and then to becoming the youngest branch manager out of their 365+ branch offices. They got me out of Los Angeles and up here to Boise. I’ve been lucky to have stayed in some aspect of B2B selling/management/ownership ever since.
Being in sales has allowed me to experience all of my previous career options and that’s pretty awesome!
Law – Selling is the science of communication and persuasion and is there any difference in law? I don’t think so. Even better, when I was in the electric sign business, I spent a lot of time representing my clients in public hearings whenever their project required a variance or exception. I thrived in that environment.
Politics – I probably would have made a good politician but, I would have also likely ended up in jail for choking the shit out of my fellow legislators. Still … see law. Same skills. Being a Canadian citizen living in the U.S. probably saved me from that fate.
Teaching – Ironically, while I never received a Bachelor’s Degree, I did teach a few classes at the university level. Good experience but, not for me. However, I have trained hundreds of salespeople and maybe even thousands of others and I love doing it!
Selling – Back full circle. I can’t imagine doing anything, full-time, other than selling and note that I consider everything that I do to be rooted in this profession. I spent most of my career in some aspect of sales management but, most often (not always) I was still allowed to do a little selling. Those times when I was not … miserable.
Selling satisfies my highly competitive streak while at the same time it has afforded me a very nice and stable living. Selling has allowed me to live my Walter Mitty life and, for that, I will always be extremely grateful!
Craig M. Jamieson
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