I remember the moment 13 years ago when I took my first step toward becoming a corporate instructor. Dressed up in fancy marketing language, it was 'acquiring target prospects through crawling,' but honestly, it was just 'grunt work.' As a graduate student, together with two undergraduate part-timers, I spent day and night hunting for the contact details of HR and training team leaders at companies. We secured well over a thousand contacts at KRW 1,000 (≈ US$1) each, refunded if the email hard-bounced.
I typed keywords into the Google search bar and went through company websites one by one, looking for org charts. Sometimes I would spot an HR director’s name or ID in a press release, then search that name and try to guess the email address. It was a truly primitive method, but it was all I could do at the time. What followed was an endless string of rejections. Emails were marked as spam, and texts and KakaoTalk messages got me blocked. People around me shook their heads, saying "You’re crazy," "What’s the point?" and "That’s a clueless way to do it." But I kept going. Steadily, like daily homework.
The Paradox of the Digital Age
When I teach 'B2B digital marketing' these days, I find that many participants want everything solved with a single mouse 'click.' They believe AI and digital tools will magically put customers right in front of them. Of course, that is not wrong. Technology has certainly made marketing more efficient. But a story from a stationery wholesaler I met recently came as a real jolt. To find their prospects, wholesale and retail stationery shops across the country, they combed through Naver Maps one by one. They even checked Street View to read the contact details on shop signs with their own eyes. After realizing that their customers were older and not comfortable with digital, they did it the 20th-century way: they printed several thousand thick product catalogs and mailed them out one by one. It cost tens of millions of won in one go. People around them probably laughed, saying "Who does it that way these days?" But that 'clueless' method made them one of the leading stationery wholesalers in the country.
What real success looks like
Behind every success story is a real story that was never polished for show. There are the stretches of starting from nothing, putting up with people who laughed, being called 'clueless' and 'crazy,' and quietly getting it done anyway. Thirteen years ago, I had no idea. I didn’t know that the tedious work of collecting contacts, and the countless emails and texts I sent while being cursed at, would later give me solid footing to speak up confidently in negotiations with many stakeholders. I didn’t know that being rejected over and over would build my resilience to rejection, an instinct for reading a customer’s mind, and a stubborn refusal to give up. The owner of the stationery wholesaler must have gone through the same thing. In that 'inefficient' (or so it looked) process of combing through maps one by one to find contacts and mailing out catalogs, they must have learned a deep understanding of their customers and a true spirit of service.
The Value of 'Grunt Work'
In an age when everything is being automated and optimized, the word 'grunt work' is treated like a relic. Yet if you listen to the stories of people who have truly succeeded, every one of them had their own grunt-work years. That time is not just something to endure. It is the time when real skill is built, when you come to understand your customers, and when you shape your own philosophy and core. It is the time you spend finding and priming the pump for opening up a market, something that no AI or digital tool, however advanced, can replace.
Are you doing something right now that makes you wonder, 'What good will this do?' Are people around you calling you 'crazy' or 'inefficient'? If so, congratulations. You are planting the seeds of real success. What matters is not giving up along the way, and turning that experience into real value. Like me 13 years ago and the stationery wholesaler’s owner, you may find that someday that 'clueless' grunt work becomes your own unique and powerful competitive edge. There is no royal road to success. But one thing is certain: real success begins with the courage to start from scratch.
To be continued