Because I spent my days talking to everyone in town (pretty much, it was a small town), rather different jobs fell into my lap, and as I was saving hard for school, I didn’t turn down many of them.
One was a very part-time job as a pollster for The Gallup Poll organization (I believe they call them consultants now). The Mayor (for some reason) was asked if he knew someone willing to conduct surveys in the area. Since I wrote a nice article about him the week before (not intentionally, he merely said some nice things that needed repeating), I got offered the job. I sent in my resume (polished by the high school admin staff) as a formality.
The hourly rate was great for this entrepreneurial girl but the jobs were few and far between (only two jobs in four years). However it was my first taste of marketing research. I would go from door to door, gauging demographics and consumption patterns. Being a smart girl (and easily bored), I started making predictions on what people bought based on how old they were, how much they made, how many kids they had. My results were half decent.
Learning:
People will tell you anything if you simply ask. I, a scrawny little high school student, would ask fairly personal questions (how much money people made, what type of tampons they used) and most people would answer me without hesitating (okay, some had their dogs chase me off their property…I learned to jump fences like an Olympic hurdler).
Information is valuable. The polling company would pay me good money to gather information. They would in turn sell it to other companies for even more money. And they would keep history. They’d ask me to return to certain houses for an update. They wouldn’t keep the information if it lost all value with time.
Individual results may vary but averages are consistent. Not every 30 year old mother of two buys ready to eat cereal but the average 30 year old mother of two certainly does.