Urban Tales -- August 17, 2022

I recently re-subscribed to The New Yorker with an introductory offer of six months for $26 or something like that with easy cancellation if I don't want to continue the subscription at full price, $119, or something like that. 

The August 8, 2022, issue with the drawing of two bicycles chained to a "no parking sign" on the cover has an essay that is worth the price of a full year's subscription: under "American Chronicles," and article with this heading: "The Hard Sell: A door-to-door salesman's quest to rebrand his profession."

I was a door-knocker for one full summer back in in the early 1970s. Hardest job I ever had? 

Even in this 12-page article -- one page devoted to a full page photograph -- the featured salesman, Sam Taggart says the second-hardest job in the world is door-to-door sales, second only to the military. 

Most lucrative door-to-door sales right now? Selling solar panels. Next: pest control.

D2D selling has grown into a much bigger deal than when I did it. 

But the actual job -- the actual sales job -- is no different than how I remember.

Number one: rejection. For every sale I made, I must have had nineteen rejections. Sam Taggart says successful salesmen turn rejection into an "asset," or a goal.

Number two: successful salesmen -- passionate about their product and believe in it. 

Number three: successful salesmen learn how to "size up" a potential customer and adjust their spiel.

From which state -- which state -- do the largest number of (and perhaps the most successful) salesmen come from?

I'll answer that later. 

Hint: the men from this state get two years of training by selling Jesus door-to-door, which, they say, is the hardest product to sell.

More on this later as I find time. 

AAPL is up $1.51 / share on a day when the market is a) falling; and, b) waiting for the Delphi oracle to speak.