Picture a twelve-year-old kid with a "Just Do It" shirt, tucked into a pair of mismatching Umbro shorts, coming at you on a Redline 360 (BMX) in the early '90s. If you need a touch of more detail picture that same kid with the cleanest pair of Deion's (Nike's), and a Sony Walkman tucked into his elastic waistline, and bumping LL Cool J. The only reason you know it's LL is because he's talking about some girl he met around the way and it's rhyming, but the hook is way off-key. FYI, that kid was me. Over 20 Nike shirts in the closet and who knows how many pairs of Umbros. What can I say, it was the early 90s and travel soccer was my life. I was the freshest kid on the block. Did I mention I was super cool yet? Looking back, I was about as old school as it gets. That is if we can all agree that being old school is relevant to a generation. In that case, you could call me Slobby Robby (Netflix).

Fast forward 27 years and I'm not nearly as cool, but still doing everything I can to stay fresh. If I could go back and give my younger self some advice, I would tell myself to save those T-SHIRTS but that's about it. Things change and that's ok, just roll with it. This entire idea of old school got me thinking about the new "skool" of thinking centered around what I do for a living and how things have changed.

Selling pest control right out of college not only was cold calling widely accepted, walking up to someone's door was as well. Now trying walking up to a stranger’s door to talk about anything. Good luck with that! Just like those Umbros, I was all in. I cold-called everything that moved and stopped at every door with sure optimism. I believed I could convince anyone that I had what they needed, or worse, that I could bring up something that's never occurred to them. Again, I was so fresh, and so old school. That was 2004. Fast forward 60,000 cold calls, who knows how many cold emails, and here is the advice I would give to anyone starting off in sales or wanting to take it to the next level. On a side note, I'm not here to argue over tactics. If you have time for that do it with someone else. Also, read some of my old blogs if you want to debate because, in 2019, there are two major things anyone in sales needs to be doing NOW...Because this is the New Skool of thought.