So, I was at Walmart, and this guy just started making small talk with me about some little speaker. He was like "As seen on TV, that means it probably doesn't work." I ended up just sorta telling him you can get headphones and make them louder by applying more magnets. Then he was reading a magazine, and it had this like 1000hp Scion tC Toyota made for time attack racing with a wing in front. He asked me what the wing was for, I told him for downforce, because it's a front wheel drive car, and also explained that it was made by Toyota because GM entered the Cobalt SS into the American Import Time Attack series, and it beat all the imports at their own game, so that was Toyota's response in the unlimited front wheel drive class.
I thought I was just rambling and annoying him slightly, by telling him all these facts, but apparently he was impressed by my knowledge of...stuff. He started asking what I do, and offered me a job and took my number down. He called me back yesterday, I got a meeting in a couple days, I'm guessing it's somewhat of an orientation. It's not a job interview, like in the classic sense, though, he said I had to dress business casual, too. So I gotta get some pants and a dress shirt that fit better, and a haircut, but uh, yeah.
Anyway, my last job was actually sales. It was a high pressure sales job, basically using shotgun marketting. I had to get leads for windows. I had little trouble with selling face to face with people at fairs, carnivals, all that stuff. The only problem I had was going off script. However, doing telemarketting cold calls sucked, and I'd basically have a meltdown while doing it, and I'd drink like 4 cups of coffee in like 3 hours.
Basically, from what I read about business development, it might actually be a good field for me, just the caveat of my NVLD/Aspergers is a tough one. The only department I'd fail in would be the nonverbal cues one. Despite whatever I do, people will think I'm weird, etc. Also, with people, it's tough. From what I've observed over the years, it seems people either have an overwhelmingly positive opinion of me or an overwhelmingly negative one. I notice normal people usually nobody has much of an opinion either way about them. I'm not like, "shy" in the classic sense. I'm just slightly awkward, but in public with random people, I'm able to talk to them like nothing. Just the followup tends to kinda suck. But yeah, I'm very outgoing and extroverted and all that with random people. Also, adults tend to like me very much more than people my own age, and obviously in business development, I'm likely going to be working with adults, with adults socially I feel like pretty much a fish in water, but people my own age, quite the opposite.
I'm not bad at selling things and haggling for things and stuff like that. I'm pretty self motivated for business. I remember when I was in high school, I'd come in with like 20+ cans of soda in my backpack, with icepacks, and sell them for $1 a piece, and while doing it for only 2-3 weeks, I made $200, with a super high profit margin. So I "get" business and how it works. I have my own little business side projects I'd like to do, and my big goal is entrepreneurship in the near future. Like for example, when I get $500 or so spare dollars, I plan to import some speed skate blades from China and sell them here. I have good sense, analytic and research capability, just the big problem with NVLD is you get significantly more knowledge than your real life capability.
So the field of business development, it's a lot of stuff. I first heard the term from him and was like "huh, wtf is that?" Basically, it's a lot of stuff, so it's kind of a vague term. From what I see, it's real business, not the high pressure sales stuff. A lot is analytical ability and research, just there is a social component to it, it is business afterall. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_development This article I think explains it well. Good theoretical thinking that's also grounded in reality is needed.
Basically, yeah, I don't know. I think I could do very well in it, but the social thing would be a caveat. I'm much more outgoing and stuff in a business situation, though. Like in school, I loved selling soda, as the kids I couldn't otherwise talk to for being popular, etc, I could by selling them soda. It made me "cool" and I liked it. The guy apparently thought I had good people skills, and I thought quite the opposite of myself. Maybe I have good people skills and all the other youths around me have terrible people skills and wear their baseball hats backward and are barbarians? Does good people skills just equal being outgoing, because if so, I believe it is possible to be outgoing but kind of an idiot about it? Also, basically, my thought process about everything I do is all about like, efficiency of things. I don't like doing inefficient things.
So, yeah, does anyone have any opinions on this field? I might have answered a lot of my own questions in this thread, but if anyone else has worked in this or has opinions, that'd be great.
Thanks.
11 Nov 2011, 11:04 am
