TJ Walker shares his first speaking job in 1981: selling timeshares in a Charlotte boiler room at 18, cold calling from affluent zip codes with cheap prizes as bait. He learned cold calling works through volume but feels obnoxious, and that finding audiences who actually want to hear you beats chasing reluctant ones.
Questions this video answers
1981
18 years old
Charlotte, North Carolina
Timeshare condominiums
A quarter-carat diamond (described as costing about $0.50–$1.00)
Chapters
Wow, this is really embarrassing.
This is a story just for you.
I don't tell my live audiences this.
I'm not sure I've ever told anyone.
Other than a close friend this, but.
My first professional speaking job of sorts was in a boiler room operation. I was 18 years old, had just graduated from high school. I was in Charlotte, North Carolina, and.
This was a summer job before I went into college.
It was a boiler room selling timeshare condominiums.
So my job was to call people.
Up and say, congratulations, you may have won either a brand new television, a vacation to some exotic place, or a quarter carat diamond. Now, as far as I know, I didn't break any laws, and if I did, the statute of limitations is long past. Since this was 1981 when this occurred. The I guess scammy part of it was everyone got the quarter carat diamond.
And a quarter carat diamond of this.
Quality cost about 50 cents or a dollar. The whole idea was to get people to come pick up their prize and.
Hear a sales pitch.
Go buy a timeshare.
A couple of lessons I learned from this.
Number one, cold calling can work. If you just make enough calls, a certain percentage of people will say yes. And it may be far less than 1% if you keep your cost low enough. It doesn't matter of those people who show up for a sales pitch, certain percentage will buy.
So that is one lesson.
Just cold calling does work.
We were going through the phone book.
For certain affluent zip codes.
That was it.
The second big lesson is cold calling is a horrible existence. It's so boring. It's so you feel dirty, almost interrupting people dinner time.
It's obnoxious.
Feels obnoxious. So if you're going to be giving presentations for a living, I do not.
Recommend giving presentations over the phone.
Pitching.
It's simply not enjoyable. I understand some people have to do it. It's the only job they can get. But it shouldn't be anyone's first choice. It's simply not fun. And the final big lesson is it's.
So much easier to give presentations to people who actually want to hear your presentation.
This is easy for me right now.
Because you wouldn't be here if you hadn't actively typed in presentation skills and.
Found this course and then actively clicked.
To enroll and then actively pulled out your credit card or some other form of payment and bought the course. So you want to be here. So that's much easier for me to do this.
I know I have kind of a warm, friendly audience and in fact, your comments are overwhelmingly positive and effusive, and I appreciate that. So that's the real lesson. Don't be knocking heads and butting and trying to push messages these days. Have good messages. Give your presentation and try to do it in a way where people want your messages. You'll be much more effective. You'll enjoy it a lot more, too.
