As a kid, a winter snowfall used to teach us something. Not just how to make money shoveling but a lesson on leadership, sales and what creates champions. Self-drive, initiative, perseverance, lifelong learning, and the ultimate superpower that will enable you to achieve your goals and keep you on top of the competition – GRIT. If you’ve ever wondered why some people hesitate, need to be pushed to perform, or wait longer to act, while others already won the game, this story starts with a driveway and ends with self-reflection.
I woke up early Sunday morning to a perfect winter wonderland. Fresh snow. Quiet streets. The kind of morning that feels like an invitation to enjoy natures beauty and, to be a kid again.
It also meant that it was time to break out the snowblower!
As I set it up for the first run of the season, I found myself thinking about winter when I was a kid. Snow did not mean just snowball fights, building snowmen, sledding, and making igloos. It also meant grabbing a shovel, knocking on doors, and earning whatever money someone believed shoveling their driveway was worth.
I’ve lived in my neighborhood for about twenty years. Not once, over the last eight years or more, has a kid knocked on my door, asking if I wanted my driveway shoveled.
What I do see are trucks. Logos. Businesses. The knock still happens, but it is not a kid anymore. It is a company.
After clearing my driveway, I decided to do something I had not done since I was a kid. I grabbed my snowblower and started walking up my block, ringing doorbells to see who needed help. Not for the money. But just to help other neighbors, especially, elderly ones.
People were surprised. Not because of what I was doing to help. Possibly because of my age. 
But mostly because I wasn’t charging them anything. I was there because I chose to be. Because, I was curious. Besides, it’s fun operating a snow blowing beast!
With each person who’s driveway I cleaned, we had a chance to talk. I learned about their holidays with the family. Who was recovering from surgery. Who was doing wonderful. Who had lost a spouse. Who had not spoken to another sibling all year. Who lost their job, and got a new one. Who has a family member who is sick. The excitement of their first grandchild due to arrive next month.
One driveway became a conversation. One conversation developed connection and trust. Connection and trust then created a sale, which turned into a friendship. And strangers became neighbors and friends.
By the end of the afternoon, people had offered me a total of about $2,500. I asked them to donate it to a charity.
This was never about the money. It was about something that expanded into our values, our humanity, other people, and into our business. Most of all, it was about what today’s leaders and salespeople are losing more each day – confidence, initiative and grit.
A Sign of the Times?
Studies show that teen employment has collapsed. In the late nineteen seventies, nearly sixty percent of teens worked during the summer. Today, it’s closer to thirty percent, and those who do work put in far fewer hours.
At the same time, academic pressure exploded. Teens spend more time stacking credentials, preparing for school, and polishing résumés. Paid work became optional, then inconvenient, then discouraged. More than half of high school students now say schoolwork interferes with having a job.
Shoveling driveways. Babysitting. Lawn mowing. Paper routes. These were once respected entry points into responsibility. Today, if the work is not structured, supervised, or producing expected results, it barely counts.
Of course, parents, with the best intentions, play a major role. Many shifted from preparing kids for discomfort to protecting them from it, and instead, focus on academic success.
The result?
Only about one in five teens today say they feel confident they are work ready.
Knocking on doors. Hearing no. Negotiating value. This is what made me a top salesperson. This is how I developed grit, thick skin, self-motivation, and relentless perseverance.
The Inner Game of Grit – Your New Superpower
So, how do you make grit your superpower? It starts with exploring and understanding the synergistic relationship between confidence and grit. Confidence precedes grit. Confidence is the foundation.
Confidence fuels grit.
You may be able to see the power of leveraging grit as your superpower to forge ahead through any obstacle, or any naysayers, but if you don’t have the unconditional confidence and belief in yourself, grit becomes short-lived or an idea rather than a calling.
Confidence Isn’t What You Think
The bigger challenge when developing unconditional rather than conditional confidence is, you’ve been lied to your entire life when it comes to how to develop confidence. We’ve been taught that confidence is conditional based on external results, and reputation rather than an unconditional, inner choice, regardless of outcomes, performance and results.
Confidence isn’t developed by measuring outcomes, titles, or approval. It’s a mindset.
It is not something you wait to feel because you’ve achieved something, but a belief in yourself that you’ve already proven your worth. Now, you can build upon this foundation of confidence to ignite the grit you need that will keep you in front of the sales pack and propel you to your next level of performance and success.
Confidence and grit enable you to:
- Trust yourself regardless of outcomes, especially when you throw yourself out of the bird’s nest and figure out to fly on your own.
- Know you’ve proven your self and your worth, with or without any evidence.
- Intentionally push yourself one step further than your normally would, into a place of the unknown, unproven, unpredictable and unsafe, since that’s where the greatest opportunities live.
- Initiate without needing validation, certainty, statistics, proof, or a safety net.
- Focus on the vision and goals, not the obstacles and noise to overcome to get there.
The Long Term Impact of Snow Shoveling
Long term studies show that early work experience, combined with an inner drive, predicts higher earnings later in life, even after accounting for education and background. Not because of the job itself, but because of what it teaches and reinforces.
Self trust. Ownership. A learning moment. Resiliency when hearing, “No.” The belief that effort matters because you know it leads goal attainment, even if you hit some bumps along the way or it doesn’t always work out. That’s grit.
Consequently, when that belief weakens, when you allow results to determine your level of confidence and self-worth, people hesitate.
This is no longer just a youth issue. It is now a performance and leadership issue.
Without grit and unconditional confidence:
- Reps with strong training or subject matter expertise hesitate to make the initial call.
- Undesired results, leads to stalled confidence and missed opportunities.
- For employees, it becomes anxiety and dependence.
- For managers, exhaustion from carrying and fixing the problems, instead of coaching people to work through their challenges on their own.
- For companies, underperformance, mediocrity, disengagement, stalled innovation and lack of initiative. As a result, nothing changes.
Quite often, we wait for certainty, to be told what to do, or for things to improve, instead of choosing to adapt, innovate and initiate.
When people reconnect effort, confidence and self-initiative to personal values, goals, fulfillment and ownership, they stop needing constant validation and external prompting because they’re now pulled forward by their dominant energy source – grit and determination.
Managers no longer have to push people to perform because people are now acting from choice, from personal passion and their core values, not external pressure.
Grit Creates Selling Opportunities
Companies that reward initiative over credentials adapt faster and perform better, especially in an economy where tools are abundant, but ownership and loyalty are rare.
The lesson is, opportunity is still everywhere. New customers are out there, waiting to hear from you. The value you deliver is still there. What’s missing is the willingness to take initiative and act, not the activities that you have comfort and certainty around, but the ones that thrust you into the unknown, unproven and uncomfortable. That’s where breakthroughs occur.
Grit is the Sparkplug to Ignite Change
In sales, the people who win are not always the most talented or the ones with the best sales process. They are the ones who act when others hesitate. The ones who make the 500 cold calls each week, while being a single parent with two young children, when their peers struggle to make 100 calls each week and need to be pushed to do so.
The first person outside after a snowfall got the best driveways. The easier jobs. The most appreciative homeowners. That was always true and still is. Just like in sales.
Grit is built upon the unconditional confidence we all need to create. It shows up the first time you knock on a door, hear no, and keep going on to the next home. This habit builds grit. It builds accountability. It builds resiliency and self-determination. It builds leaders.
It shows that we’re capable of doing more where others stop, in the face of adversity and fear, not in the absence of it. Grit teaches us we are more powerful than we think.
The Opposite of Grit is Fear
In sales, hesitation rarely comes from a lack of training. It comes from avoiding fear, discomfort and a lack of aligning business objectives and scorecards with personal and professional values and goals.
Consequently, reps wait for better timing, better messaging, better leads, more direction, or more comfort and certainty before taking action in fear of not achieving company expectations.
Be Grateful for Being Gritful
Confidence isn’t a byproduct of grit. Grit is a byproduct of your choice to be confident. Confidence does not come from results. Results follow confidence and the unconditional, internal belief in yourself that you’ve already proven your self-worth. Confidence is a choice without needing evidence or validation first.
When leaders and salespeople model what true grit looks like and the impact it has on their success and the success of their teams, that’s when engagement, motivation and sales performance improves. Leadership now becomes lighter, and results follow naturally as a byproduct of being gritful.
And it is earned one driveway at a time.
The post Where Have All the Snow Shovelers Gone? Why Grit Is the Most Important Sales Strategy in 2026 first appeared on Keith Rosen.