TentBoy

January 2nd, 2012

Part 11 Building A Home Stateside

Having made the decision to make the move to the USA permanent Richard and Jeanette exchanged the L1 and L2 visa’s for green cards which allowed them to purchase there first home together in Phoenix. Under the influences of Steve Scrimshaw Richard continued to enjoy the life of the tent salesman and all that it [...]

May 17th, 2011

Part 10 The States are never the same again...

Despite the chilly flight from Miami to Phoenix, Roder USA and Germany manage to work out the details to send Richard and his new wife, Jeanette to Phoenix, AZ in January 1992.

With an apartment at the Pointe South Mountain and access to a pool along with 70-degree temperatures, everyday was a vacation.

But after only 4 [...]

July 16th, 2010

Part 9 Roder renegotiates?

After a successful meeting at the Lipton Tennis tournament’s office, Mark Tudi and Richard departed almost immediately for Phoenix.

They were both feeling celebratory, after all, together they had helped secure a major program for Roder and the thrill of the sale was still pulsing through their veins.

Feeling fairly confident, Mark leaned over to Richard on [...]

June 22nd, 2010

Part 8 A smashing success.

Richard landed in Phoenix and Tom Wilky head of marketing, met Richard at the airport. The flight landed around 8PM, Tom figured Richard was tired and took him straight to his hotel, the Fiesta Inn. It was the holiday season, and as they drove from the airport into Tempe, where Roder’s offices were, Richard got [...]

June 15th, 2010

Part 7 Another new opportunity.

Newly married, Richard’s life felt pretty stable. He and Jeannette were living in an apartment he’d owned since he was 18. Jeannette’s job was good, she’d been there 13 years and Richard continued to feel confident about his tent sales career at Roder. Settling into married life hardly felt like settling at all.

All was not [...]

June 7th, 2010

Part 6 Highs and Lows

After the success of the tradeshow on Roder’s home turf of Germany, Richard had extra swagger and confidence; he was a tent salesman and he was good at it.

Richard was only 18 months into his time at Roder UK. Already, he was getting a reputation around England as a “Tentboy”. Richard even imagined that someday, [...]

May 28th, 2010

Part 5 Exhibit your best performance

Finally seeing a career for himself at Roder, Richard welcomed the invitation to go to the Roder exhibition in Germany, where Roder annually hosted their most important customers. There he would receive a crash-course in Roder culture and the tent industry.

“Get up with the first customer, go to bed when the last one.” That was [...]

May 25th, 2010

Part 4 Life as a trainee saleman for Roder UK

Formula 1 is generally known as one of the world’s largest party circuits, so it should come as no surprise that TentBoy found himself at Silverstone, the British track used in F1 as part of his training at Roder. But Richard wasn’t there to party, Silverstone was the the start of his sales training, which [...]

May 11th, 2010

Part 3 A new job comes with a very bad day

Richard survived his potentially embarrassing job interview quite well: he had received and accepted a position with Roder UK as a sales trainee.

Finally, Richard would be living his dream career of a “real” salesman. His start date wasn’t for a couple of weeks so he had plenty of time to begin visualizing his success. The [...]

May 7th, 2010

Part 2 The last interview at Roeder UK.

Richard was now officially interviewing for his dream job: a sales job.

It had been 5 days since Richard so brazenly walked into Roder UK to apply in person for the trainee sales role. He’d had time to pat himself on the back for his initial success and had more than a few beers at the [...]

TentBoy

Tentboy Gear

TentBoy Recommends

TentBoy’s Past Entries

Categories