2025 was when I came to peace with the reality that I was out of cash, and out of reserves.
To that end, I asked a friend at church if he had any work for me… and that was the beginning of a 6 month long stint as an overnight dispatcher. There I was, taking calls again like an animal with the added challenge of (1) being the only one around, being the only person to contact while the rest of the office was out, (2) dispatching trips one at a time as hospital after hospital called in (from the same city and/or from different cities across the eastern side of Washington state) and (3) catching poorly scheduled trips for the next day.
My last day working with those fine folks was December 31, 2025. Reasons for leaving: (1) It was getting tougher on my physical body and mental disposition. I could hardly average 5000 steps a day, and I was on-edge for 10 hours straight. I worked Mondays through Wednesdays, and after my Wednesday shift I was already mentally bracing myself for Monday the next week. (2) I couldn’t do anything else but work during work – I could hardly work out, and I would watch the rest of the folks in the house go through the day, maintaining the house when I should be the one doing it. It was especially tough to see my Mom leave the house to get a ride to wherever, when I should be the one driving her. (3) As fate would have it, during mid-December my name was picked to take on a higher leadership role in the Church I served in – which entailed that I needed to devote far more time into the ministry.
2026 was when I returned to an eventuality – I was out of cash, and out of reserves, again. The business I was apparently banking on was dragging along, and we were apparently far from starting. Was around July when my Mom was being my Mom – she just mentally kicked my ass telling me that I’m a grown man without any drive and without solid income. I shouted back… at first. Then I shut up and realized, damn it, she’s right.
To that end, I saw a couple posts from a childhood friend – both also Work From Home, but one I recall was for administrative duties (right up my alley) and another one for sales. I asked him about the first, but he offered the latter.
I never touched Sales, through any and all of the jobs I’ve had. I mean, Sales was present – During my call center (senner) days they had us upselling even as Technical Support agents. When I worked as a VA they also had me calling leads generated from a website… but I wouldn’t be pushing but rather booking appointments, because I didn’t have any legit credentials as a Real Estate Broker for the fine state of Texas. Never wanted Sales as a main job, and when it was around, I never wanted anything to do with it.
So that was the original state of mind. I was iffy… and at that time I remember I was willing to go back to working back where I worked during 2025; but my friend who got me in there told me, stick it out with your childhood friend, ask all the questions you need to ask, and then make a decision.
Take note, that was right after church when he told me that. And also right after church, I had to drive my Mom to the grocery, while I headed out to buy some stuff for myself as well… and, lo and behold, I see the same childhood friend along the way. We had a long-enough talk, and I asked him all of my hard questions, to which he responded the following – These are all going to be ‘warm’ calls (with prospects who expressed interest over the product I was going to be pitching), and we will be selling an in-demand product to folks in Australia. I told him, the mere fact that I saw him and talked to him face to face pushed me to actually taking the job. I sent what they needed from me, had the mandatory interview, and met who would eventually be my manager.
Then things… changed. On the Sunday before we would start training, manager calls and tells me that while we may be doing warm calls, there’ll be a whole bunch of people we’d be cold-calling as well. When I was told the news I said, well, I’m already in, and I might as well.
Side note: Something else that was on my mind was one portion of Naval Ravikant’s famous ‘Tweetstorm’, particularly where he said something to the effect of: ‘Learn to build. Learn sales. Learn both, and you’ll be unstoppable’. So that was also pushing me into this.
Training began. We started role-playing, and we started actually calling as early as 3 days in. After my first batch of, oh, 10 or 20 dials, I remember messaging the manager that I needed to unload – there was the fear of rejection. There was the fear of being cussed at. There was the fear of saying the wrong thing with the wrong timing and/or the wrong tone. Can’t really remember how he responded, but I suppose I’m just glad he called and listened.
I also talked to a fellow who was cold-calling with me, and it was just nice to know that what I was feeling was normal. This guy had sales experience himself, as a door-to-door salesman for MLM… and he told me that rejection is my friend. He reminded me to lower my expectations, dial, talk, and move on.
Because we were working on commission, my manager also actually didn’t have too many expectations from us as well. If we could call, then we call – but when something came up, then, well, he’d just appreciate how we let him know.
The feeling of ‘freedom’ was both liberating and disengaging. I kept up with it for around a month and change – it was a part of my day filled with its own share of dread, but it was a smaller part of oh, around 4 hours on average. We’d start at 10 and end by 2. I don’t remember my average rate of dials, but it wasn’t much – and, as early as then, I would already start ‘playing’ with numbers; skipping on folks who were already dialled before, and so on.
Sure, of the hundreds we dialled, we’d still have a handful of folks who were genuinely interested – therefore proving what our manager said: ‘Volume negates luck‘. Every now and then, our manager would feed us some ‘warm’ data, and we really had better results with those. Yeah, now that I’m writing about all of this, I had absolute zero expectations of getting anyone interested from cold data. We’d call our warm leads again and again…
…and as August transitioned to September, I had one lead who was absolutely interested in investing in a proper water filtration system. I got our manager involved, and together we went through call after call getting this one lead that much closer to signing the paperwork and getting the initial downpayment in… up until the point that, weeks later, he emailed that he went with a cheaper competitor.
We got this news the weekend before our Church was to celebrate it’s 45th year anniversary. Considering (1) the work we needed to do for Church, and (2) that ONE lead falling through… I told my manager and my childhood friend I was taking the week off; I told them I was going to work with Church, but I also wanted the week to thing and pray things through.
(End of Part 1)
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