Sunday, February 4th 2018 will always go down as one of the most memorable days of my entire life. As a lifelong Eagles fan who is used to dealing with bitter disappointment and tragic ends to promising seasons, I was finally at the Super Bowl. As amazed as I was to see my Eagles take the field on that hollow ground I was perhaps even more amazed at the series of events that led me from being broke and homeless with absolutely no prospects to sitting in these $20,000 seats in the Valhalla club. I took a second to take it all in pausing only to reach back one row and slap hands with Jimmy Fallon (yeah, Jimmy was BEHIND me) I wondered to myself, how did I get here? How did I break out of the slump I had put myself in and achieve a level of success that so many people strive for and yet so few ever accomplish? I found the answer to those questions and more on the field that day.

The untold story of Super Bowl 52 is about a wiry running back named Corey Clement who finished the game with 100 yards. Corey was an undrafted player who walked on to a tryout for the Eagles that same year. He went up against six highly regarded running back prospects and it was widely expected that he would be cut before the season began. Nothing personifies my life quite like the story of Corey Clement, the local boy who never should have been, fighting and scratching his way to the top of a roster and winning the biggest game in franchise history against the heavily favored Patriots. As the confetti rained down that night a question popped into my mind. Did Corey Clement get to this pinnacle of sports history despite his background or because of it?

When I walked into my first sales job, I was the Corey Clement of sales. If we are being honest I was much worse off than Corey. I had no experience, no home, sixty dollars of cash to my name and a slightly used pair of shoes I had acquired at the Goodwill. Nobody expected me to stick around very long. This absolute and complete hunger to beat the odds consumed me almost 24/7. As the experienced sales guys took long lunches and waited for warm leads, I was grinding. I took every call, every sales lesson, read every book and worked every single lead. I was obsessed with success. Three weeks into my new job I was the highest producing salesperson for the week, six months later I was one of the highest producing in the state and after a little over a year I was running the entire sales office for the company.

When I started running the sales office hiring became a part of my job description. Like most people I put out ads and hired recruitment firms to bring me the highest qualified and experienced salespeople. It was an absolute disaster. My sales floor was full of people that didn’t put the effort in, only worked the warmest leads and complained every chance they got. I knew I had to change something before I was fired from my new job so I thought back to my roots. Instead of putting out ads I looked around my daily life for people who I thought had a good personality for sales and could use a chance to improve their lives. I called them Starbucks kids because I usually found them working at Starbucks. People thought I was crazy but after a few months, the company’s sales had tripled and the floor was full of positive, hardworking, high producing salespeople who loved their jobs. The Starbucks kids outworked their peers every time. They stayed later and grinded harder than everyone who was supposed to be better than them. Today these people have flourishing careers and better lives than they ever imagined.

Not every experienced salesperson is a prima donna but we all can become one if we are not careful. The day I forget where I came from or what it was like to be a guy like Corey Clement, who nobody thought would make it, is the day that I lose my edge. The next time you go to hire, try to find your own Corey Clement, he or she may be serving you your latte.