What did you do over quarantine? A puzzle, maybe read a couple of books or workout. How about making $5,500? Seems crazy right? To most people, it seems not only crazy but unthinkable for a high school student. Yet for senior Dimitri Ramirez, it was an easy task to complete by sitting in the comfort of his own home. With seemingly nothing to do except selling knives for the company Cutco, Ramirez was certainly not expecting to be this successful in his sales.

This opportunity arose in May for Ramirez after a friend called him up and recommended the job. At first, he was a little skeptical of the idea, talking to random people, what if they say no? What if they give me a hard time, what do I do? After some convincing, he finally decided to give it a try, why not? After that decision, it was smooth sailing from there. With COVID-19 still keeping people confined to their homes, door to door sales were not an option, leaving only over the phone sales. To start, he was forced to call family members or people around town to try and get little sales, which would hopefully help Ramirez get recommended to others.

When asked about the process of a sale, Ramirez said it was simple.

“All you have to do is first give a small presentation of our product, if they were interested in a purchase, we would set up a date, later on, to follow through with the sale,” he said.

After weeks of soliciting himself and the product to others, the cash started rolling in. In just a short time from when he started in May, Dimitri made north of $3,000. Not only that, he was also awarded No. 1 High School Sales Representative, won $1,100 worth of knives for his family, a trip to top golf, and even received job offers from people interested in his sales ability. His biggest sale was $2,000 worth of knives to his next-door neighbor.

In addition to the money, Ramirez says that this job gave him an opportunity to work on and improve his “people skills,” talking to people and interacting with different personalities.

“It is tough at first because many people receiving this call think that it is an ad, they either hang up immediately or yell at me to never call again and then hang up,” Ramirez said. Fortunately, on some occasions, Dimitri was able to talk to the customers and persuade them to actually purchase knives.

With all this success and all this money, what else is there for Dimitri to possibly want out of this job? Well, the sales company offers scholarships for college to some of the top salespeople that demonstrate leadership qualities and the best sales statistics. Motivated by this incentive, Ramirez is currently working more diligently and is focused on winning one of the scholarships. Any of Cutco’s scholarships would add an impressive staple to Ramiez’s accomplished high school résumé as well as be a reward for all the hard work he has put into his sales during the quarantine.