When Cummings was 18 years old, he got a job at Rainbow Vacuum Company as a salesman. Each day, he went from door to door peddling a product that he rarely sold. “I just went out, knocked on 150 doors, and didn’t sell one,” Cummings describes his first sales job. “After about three months of trying to sell the vacuum cleaners, I had done like- 100 presentations - I think I sold one of them.” Everyone at the company was sure he would quit because his sales were so low. “The owner took me out on the next 13 presentations I showed and I closed 11 of them. The owner said I had a great presentation, I just didn’t know how to ask for the sale until David showed me,” Cummings says laughing. “I had no idea what rejection was. It didn’t bother me,” he recalls. He didn’t quit....
Persistence can be a good thing, whether in the vacuum business or the music business, and in the end it didn’t take long for him to become the top salesman. During this time in his life, Cummings discovered two very important things. He learned how to sell things, and he met his now-wife, Paula.
Five years Cummings’ elder, Paula was Rainbow Vacuum’s manager. “I never thought I had a slim chance at all because everybody in town wanted to date her,” Cummings says. The same determination that made him the top seller at the vacuum company and allowed him to pursue his wife has led Cummings throughout his life. After they left the vacuum business, he and his wife eventually started their own successful mortgage company named Cummings Financial Services, Inc. in Tampa, Florida where they now live.
This freed Cummings financially, enabling him to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a country music singer. “I think that the struggles of learning sales and getting out there and getting [my] head beat in quite a bit has also taught me a lot about going after my dream. There are so many negatives that you’re going to have, but every negative [will] turn into a positive as long as you keep working at it.”
Though Cummings has managed to do a lot in his 32 years of life, his passion has always been performing live for fans. He prides himself on being available to fans. “The main thing that I am as a person is that I like to give back as a person. I like to make people feel good,” he says. “I like to let them know that I’m not a person that’s so far away they can’t come and shake my hand or take a picture or sign an autograph. That’s me as an artist.”
“I want to perform and I want to touch people’s lives,” Cummings says with enthusiasm. “I can do that when I’m up on the stage performing.”“If I can do that the rest of my life, I’ll be a happy person.”
