Sales Tales: The Puke & Rally

Rewind to the end of 2015. I had just graduated college and started working in sales for a Chicago radio station a few months prior. I was in my cubicle stirring powdered creamer into what was maybe the 20th cup of coffee I had ever drank in my young sales career when our manager called us into the conference room. “We’re all competing in a cold call competition from 10am-4pm today” he exclaimed. We all jumped for joy and rushed back to our cubicles to start dialing away. 

I started searching around for leads and ended up coming across a new gym in the area. I got all excited, punched the numbers in, and the phone started ringing...

“Hello, this is Kofi” 

“Hi Kofi, my name’s Zach Dulla…. Blah blah blah… Can I come try to sell you advertising?”

He agreed to the meeting and we set up a 3pm for the next day (Friday). I get off the call and immediately research this Kofi fellow only to find out that he was a star BIG10 football player who was on the Bears training camp team... So now I’m really pumped!

Fast forward to me pulling up to the gym driving my 2 month old Infiniti lease and wearing my best navy suit. Remember that at this time I have absolutely zero idea what I’m doing. I understand advertising but from a sales skill level, I’m in the “faking it to make it” stage of my career. 

So I walk into the gym and everyone immediately stops what they’re doing and looks up at me. I manage to rattle off “Uhm, I’m looking for Kofi.” 

Up pops this yoked trainer with piercing green eyes. He guides me outside the gym and I attempt to give my best sales pitch while standing in the blazing hot sunlight. Kofi smiles and responds, “If you want to keep chatting, you gotta come back and talk to me about this over a workout tomorrow.” I wiped the nervous sweat off my hands, gave him a handshake and said, “I'll see you at 9am tomorrow.” 

If you don’t know me, I’m a super competitive guy. My life growing up was all football and hockey until college. But the last 4 years at this point were nothing but casual intramural sports and lifting weights. I decided to ignore the fact that I hadn’t really done anything that pushed me past my cardiovascular limits in quite some time. 

Fast forward to Saturday morning at 9am. I’m walking into the gym with a little bit of “bet you thought I wasn’t going to show up” swagger. The music is bumping and Kofi’s in the gym alone eating a sweet potato he just microwaved. I say what’s up and he tells me we’ll get started in 10 minutes or so after his buddy gets there. I think nothing of it and start stretching out a little bit. I look up at a whiteboard that has 10 workouts with reps and set and think to myself “I played high school football and hockey. Pshhh… I got this.” 

Then I turn around and see this MASSIVE man walk through the door. He’s wearing an IU cut off and has the body structure of a wide receiver but arms of a linebacker. Kofi says “Zach, meet John (I forgot his name). You guys will be working out together today.”

"Um. Ok."

Off we go with the whiteboard workouts. We’re doing box jumps, high intensity body squats, running around, power cleans - everything that I had not done in 4 years so I’m STRUGGLING! 

We get to the last workout on the board and it reads “Pyramid Curls”. Kofi grabs a curl bar, hands it to John, and positions me in front of him. He explains “So the way these work… the first guy does 1 curl, hands the bar to the other guy who does 1 curl, hands it back to the first guy who does 2 curls, and so on.” Here I am telling myself “This is it Zach. Just get to 10 and you’re all done. You’ve made it.” Off we go…

Eventually, I finish my 9 reps and hand it to John who cranks out his 10. He hands it back and I start putting everything I have into it these final 10. I make it! Oh baby, I made it. I’m thinking to myself “You stud you... You just went toe to toe with a BIG10 athlete. College didn’t do anything to you!”  

But then… Kofi goes “Well done! Work it down and we’re finished.” My vision immediately went into that slow motion movie effect where everything starts blurring together. I didn’t realize that “pyramid” meant you work up the pyramid AND down.

All I could think was, “Oh no, Zach.”

Fast forward after working down the pyramid... John is looking like he could still go run a marathon and I’m in the corner slugging water as fast as I can. I wobble over to Kofi, give him a fist bump, and tell him we’ll talk next week. 

I get to my car and sit down a defeated man. As I sit there trying to catch my breath and comprehend how out of shape I was, I feel something in the pit of my stomach… Uh oh. It’s more than a rumble. I look up and see that my car is directly in line with Kofi and John’s vision from the open front door. I quickly throw it in reverse and start to back out. Right as I get out of the space, I projectile throw up all over myself, the steering wheel, dashboard, everywhere on the drivers side of my new car.  ??

I pull over to the side of the parking lot slowly (because at this point there’s no saving anything). I get out of the car, take my shirt off, and use it to wipe up and do whatever little damage control I could to my surroundings.

I chucked the shirt in my trunk, put my hands on my head, and leaned up against my car to finish catching my breath.  I waved a sign of “I’m ok” to a woman staring in awe from her car.

Then all of a sudden, a moment of career realization struck me… Here I am 22 years old on a Saturday morning standing in a busy parking lot shirtless and full of puke... “I guess this is sales.”

Lived and written by Zach Dulla