So, you're ready to start your first business. Maybe, you've owned a business in the past. What if you already own a business? Wherever your journey is taking you as an entrepreneur, you're going to need to drum up business at one point and as boring as it sounds, cold calling is the most effective and efficient source of marketing, believe it or not.

Sitting there for maybe ten hours a day making cold calls and being hung up on Christmas Eve was an eye opener for me. I would get to work before the sun came up and leave after the sun went down. I was working hard but wasn't working smart. I was using my back. My sales were great according to the company's expectations, but my life was so unfulfilled. I knew I was better than the rest of the sales people I worked with and once made the mistake of speaking my mind to a boss telling him that I was the smartest guy in the room. They didn't fancy that so much. Either way, I was number one in sales for the whole company for about six hundred employees. The halls were lined with record holders and record breakers and even though I was only there a year and half, it took three years for somebody to come along and break the records I set.

Well, one day I was sitting there frustrated over the fact that I was calling the same people over and over and after one sale ended, I was back to looking for the next. From there, I would set my expectations higher, exceed the company's expectations and again, make the leaderboard, looking like a hero at the end of the month. But, as soon as the new month started, I was back to zero and had to do it all over again. There had to be a better way. Before long, I was being promoted and even in that position, exceeded their expectations. Then, one day I was called into the Executive Vice President's office and it sounded like this, "Bobby, we are going to create a position for you giving you access to every Loan Officer's queue. We want every dead deal brought to life. We want fifteen deals per month to make your bonus." The first month I hit nineteen. The second month, thirty-one. They then made me an ultimatum. I get licensed and become a Loan Officer or they will have to let me go. I had become too expensive for them to keep at my current position and they wanted loans out of me. This would require me to work for one hundred percent commission and working pretty much all hours of the day. Shortly after, I left the company.

Today, many years later, I still make cold calls every single day. However, since I now run my own business, I am able to call the shots, do it my way and make as much or as little money as I want. Some days, I just want to sit by the pool or take a drive up to Lake Tahoe and shut my phone off. Let's just say that I am now one of the most popular talk show hosts in Northern, California being voted number one FM Radio only ten months after launching my first show, The Good Life Show with Jon Robert Quinn. And all those folks at my previous job, they are all still sitting there making the same calls, the same way, making the same money and doing the same thing over and over and over again.

So, maybe I was onto something by saying I was in the smartest guy in the room. Here's a little secret. That company now pays me every month to advertise their business on my talk shows.

Let's go back to the beginning and show you all the crap I've shovelled in my twenty years as an entrepreneur. From slinging cell phones, to opening retail stores selling motorcycle gear, to writing and producing music and playing at coffee shops for fifteen dollars per night, I have done it all.