The moment I realized I would be great at sales

Almost 20 years ago I was a young Greek immigrant kid living in the South of Germany. Earrings, lots of gel in my hair, driving a 300 Euro Volkswagen with a silly rainbow steering wheel. I had taught myself the basics of financial markets and stock trading, and believed I'd figured it all out.

And now I was selling financial services.

Because of my background, I believed I would sell my services to other immigrants, because which proper, conservative German (there were lots of them in the area I grew up in) would take advice from some Greek kid?

But then I got this one appointment that I drove to, and it was exactly the kind of person I thought I'd never be able to sell to:

Typical German. Farmer. Very, very, very conservative.

I parked a bit away from their house, hoping they wouldn't see what kind of car I was driving.

And I remember looking in the rear view mirror and saying to myself. This is going to suck. This isn't going to go well. Like in my mind, I imagined this hyper conservative, older German family that would open their door and then see this jelled up to earrings, 18 year old child. And they would laugh at me and they would tell me to F off (in a very German way) and they wouldn't want to hear any of my ideas about investments and money management.

But. For whatever reason, I took a deep breath and I was like, well, this is going to suck. But I just surrendered. I said to myself: I'm going to go through this, but I just know this isn't going to go well.

And I remember knocking at that door and them opening up, and at first they were a little surprised and taken aback at who was at their doorstep.

They welcomed me in, and I remember walking around their house. Lots of pictures of horses, which is something I knew nothing about. And farming, which is another thing I had no clue about. And I remember us just getting into this super interesting conversation about their life, about what life is like when you live in a farm and you operate a farm about animals, especially horses.

And I was just genuinely curious and was asking them questions and they were very honestly passionate about all of that. So they were just sharing, sharing more and more about their life with me. Eventually they offered me some coffee with coffee and we continued to talk and I don't remember the details anymore.

We had a really kind of deep, instant connection and they invited me to dinner. And so I stayed for dinner and I just got to know them.

These people were were super nice. They didn't judge me.

And at the end of the dinner, the husband and wife looked at me and they said:

"You know what? We trust you. Why don't you just take all our financial documents with you." They handed me folders with kind of all our insurances, their stock investments, everything that they had. "Why don't you take that with you and you study it and you come back and tell us what you think we should do." And I was like, sure.

So they handed me all their financial paperwork. I mean, it's insane when I think about it today, I was really clueless. So clueless that I didn't even know how clueless I was.

I walked out of that farm and I was just like carrying it all, you know, secretly hoping they wouldn't watch me to my car.

Threw it all into the trunk, started my car. And I remember looking at the rear view mirror, with a bit of swagger, a bit of Greek cockiness. And I thought: "I can do this. I can be good at this. People fucking like me and people trust me. I can do this. I can be successful at this."

And thinking about this 20 years later, this was the truth. I was naturally good at selling and sales and people always trusted me, and that was an incredible tool and foundation on which I built, first of my sales career and then my entrepreneurial career.

But I still had a lot to learn. I tell the whole story here in this video.

Today I'm very, very grateful for that. And I ended up exclusively having 50 years old and older clientele, German, upper middle class families. The types of clients that I would have never believed would trust me with their investments, and fortunately most of them did fairly well with the investments that I presented to them. But that moment when I realized: I can be great at this. People trust me.

That was a very empowering emotion that really propelled me forward and I'm really grateful for that.

Really, if you think about it...

What person in their right mind would take financial advice from an 18-year-old driving a 300 Euro car?

These people were making significant investment decisions with the money they've saved over the course of their lifetime. Tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of Euros.

In the video, I talk about the reasons why people trusted me.

But I didn't deserve their trust

It's not that I advised them badly, or that I was dishonest. I had my heart in the right place. I cared about their financial well-being. But I lacked the discipline to properly see things through.

All the administrative paperwork that was involved—I handled that really badly. And it created a lot of stress, friction, and unnecessary costs.

I forgot to take care of little details, had to ask clients to sign contracts repeatedly because the prior ones they've signed wouldn't get approved because of some missing formality.

Oftentimes I wouldn't show up for appointments.

Sometimes I told people: I'm going to come back to you tomorrow with the details on this. And then they wouldn't hear from me for two weeks.

Not good.

Not because I didn't care. Not because I had bad intentions. I just hadn't mastered my own emotions yet. I was at the mercy of my moods. All the things I didn't feel like doing... if I did them at all, I usually did them half-assed.

Because I thought I would get away with it.

My biggest strength turned into my biggest weakness

I was so great at connecting with people and closing deals, I felt I was above handling the adminstuff.

And this is something that I see happening to a lot of people:

When something comes naturally, when something comes easy, they don't really appreciate it. They undervalue it. And they don't feel like they need to put in real effort, because, hey, I'm so good at this already, right?

That's how our biggest strengths, our natural talents, can turn into our greatest weakness.

It's so easy to our gifts for granted, because we never experienced what it's like to not have those talents.

What if you'd double down on your strengths?

Now here's my call to action for you: Identify one thing you're naturally talented for. One thing where you don't need to put in effort, and yet the result you produce is better than what others deliver after working real hard to accomplish it.

What would happen if you, with your natural ability, would apply the same amount of effort in that area?

Not just for a week or a month.

But really for the long run.

What if you'd work consistently on improving this talent even further?