LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER
Resilience Is the Secret to Long-Term Success
PHOTO BY TERENCE DUFFY
“ Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm ."
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
Through the years , many young people have asked me how they can best enter the business world , and I often suggest that they find a job in sales . I remember from my own early years in advertising sales ( and I ’ ve been in it for about 47 years ) that the line between winning and losing is clear cut . You work hard and diligently every day . You plan your work and you work your plan . You make your pitches to prospects . The customers either buy or they don ’ t . In sales , you know immediately if you have won or lost . More often than not , you lose . It ’ s just the law of averages .
But I think a job in sales is one of the best places to develop skills that help us get through the long haul , both for business and for living . To be successful , salespeople have to learn how to relate to other people , how to be resourceful and creative , and how to communicate . But most important of all , salespeople learn how to be resilient .
Being resilient is bouncing back from adversity , recovering from a setback and staying on course to reach a goal . It ’ s a quality that successful salespeople have to exercise often , given those darn laws of averages . To succeed , they have to pick themselves up after a customer says no and approach the next customer with fresh enthusiasm , believing they can still get to “ yes .”
There are many classic Horatio Alger-like “ up by their bootstraps ” stories of businesspeople who ultimately reached the highest levels of success . Sometimes , their stories read like overnight successes . Truthfully , their success came after many defeats and setbacks .
Chances are , if you are reading this on the digital version of Comstock ’ s magazine , you are using a computer program from a company that dominates the tech industry that was founded by two men , Bill Gates and Paul Allen . Few people recall that their first business venture failed badly before they launched Microsoft . Henry Ford , who introduced assemblyline production to the industrial world , went bankrupt five times before becoming one of the world ’ s 10 richest men of his era . Edison failed at over 1,000 experiments in his lab before perfecting the light bulb . Their success , and that of many others , required more than sheer determination . They had the ability to
shake off failures , learn from them , and still retain their passion to persevere until they reached their goal . That ’ s being resilient .
All of us have had to find that reservoir of mental strength at some time or another . Setbacks like the death of a loved one , the breakup of a relationship , or the loss of a job or company are just some of the pitfalls that find us during a normal life and require us to pick ourselves up by the bootstraps , regroup and move on . It seems to me that the chaos and disruption of the last couple of years have challenged us all to dig a little deeper , to find another level of coping skills , especially as a virus has shown us nature ’ s ultimate example of resiliency . Teachers and students figured out how to work through computer screens . Parents survived juggling working from home while taking care of children full time . Workers hit with pandemic-induced job losses are finding their way back into the workforce .
Over the last two years , thousands of people from economically disadvantaged neighborhoods flocked to programs from SMUD , the Greater Sacramento Urban League and the Greater Sacramento Economic Council to learn new , entry-level job skills and start new careers in the IT industry . Those who were selected for the programs learned valuable digital and instrumentation skills . But the biggest factor in their success was their resiliency . They had the resolve to overcome the obstacles that got in their way , whether those obstacles were poverty , lack of education or feeling intimidated by being in a classroom for the first time in a while . Nearly everyone who started these training programs graduated and many have begun a new career as a result .
What they and others show us is that resiliency is really an attitude ; one of optimism and hope . It ’ s what I believe propels all of us to long-term success , day by day , just like the successful salesperson who greets each new customer with the same enthusiasm and hope as their first call of the day .
Winnie Comstock-Carlson President and Publisher
April 2022 | comstocksmag . com 19