My dad was a RE salesmen.. and did not like the 2 leads a week he got from the company... these are called company leads.. think movie (Glenn Garry Glenn Ross a must see)... So he asked management if he could produce his own leads.. and it was allowed.

Well direct mail was 10 cents a piece so that was too expensive in 1966... So he went out and bought a printing press.. Put it in the garage and taught me how to print off the door hangers. I had to do this 2 hours everyday after school...

He then got 4 or 5 of my same age school friends and on Sat and Sun during school and mid week in summer. .he took us to the neighborhood he wanted to canvas.. he paid us a penny a piece to put them out... so it coast him about 3 cents a piece.. response was.. ( pre internet of course.. it was a tear off with pre paid postage.. so he only paid for incoming postage not out going). we would get about 1 reponse per 100 and he would close 1 out of a thousand door hangers put out.. NOw of course he was selling real estate .. not trying to buy it.. but same principal.

So as he expanded and perfected it.. He then started going down to the salvation army on 3rd st in San Jose CA.. and he would pick up the gentlemen as they were exiting at 6:30 am for the day.. he would offer them 10 dollars to walk for 6 hours .. plus a pack of smokes and sometimes a hamburger. He would pick up about 6 of them in our van.. then drive them many times to SF or Oakland and they would get about 3k pieces out a day... this turned into hiring a foreman for lack of better words who was the boss and driver.. this lead to 3 of those guys and 3 vans out .. this lead to more leads than he could handle and the number one salesmen in the orginizatin within 2 years and his own company in 3... AS I got my drivers license I used to drive in the summers I had moved up the ranks from Passing paper to picking up the guys.. We used to get them at the Oznan center in SF as well.

Most of these guys were drifters and were quite colorful.. some worked with my dad for over a decade passing paper.. then some folks turned this into a full time company ... doing this for many different companies as an alternative to direct mail.. especially if your piece was heavy or multi paged.

So it warms my heart to see this Happening in the exact same manner as my dad created in 1967.. LOL and how I cut my teeth in RE.. .of course at 18 I did not want to pass paper anymore I wanted to sell RE got my license and never looked back.. but talk about working from the ground up.