At the age of 20, Benjamin Sawyer Toline is better off in life than most as a member of Vector Marketing Corporation, a student of Mechanical Engineering at Tennessee Tech University, and a brother of Sigma Alpha Epsilon.
Toline is a prominent member of the Cookeville community. One of his grandfathers, Eldon Leslie, had the Leslie Town Center named after him for his part in the community. And his other grandfather, Francis ‘Doc’ Toline was once a professor at Tech for both nuclear and aeronautical engineering after serving in the Navy and being a candidate for the Olympics that were cancelled because of World War II. Now his father, Robert Toline owner of Highland Home Improvement, serves on the board for Management of Information Technology.
All this leads up to the choices he makes today.
“I always felt like people were watching me, really because they were,” Toline said referring to the motivation he felt to do something at a young age.
He is the youngest of three boys, and something of a miracle child in more than one way. If a person passed him on the street he or she would undoubtedly notice is physical size.
“Everyone in my family is big. My brothers are over six feet tall and my grandpa the one that taught here at Tech had big hands like mine,” Toline laughed as he corrected himself, “well mine are bigger now.”
Toline was born with something the doctors at Vanderbilt have yet to name. “They basically said my circulatory system is different. Instead of one main artery to my upper body, I have two main arteries making the blood flow different.” He then pulled up his sleeves to show red birth marks, and where they are, his arms and hands are bigger.
Needless to say the doctors were intrigued Toline said. They told his parents that he was different but there wasn’t anything wrong; the doctors said to let him do whatever he wanted as long as it wasn’t something that could hurt him.
Something he thinks is interesting about being so much larger, is that he is so much stronger than most. “I could do about 25 pull-ups when I was in kindergarten and held the record throughout elementary school,” Toline said with a grin on his face.
Toline then said he was also a miracle baby because of a surgery performed before he was even born. “I was only the second baby to have had this done,” Toline said referring to the surgery, “if I had been born a year earlier, I wouldn’t have lived.” Fluid was found in his chest while developing in the womb that would prohibit his lungs from developing the way they should.
To save baby Toline, the doctors had to open his mother’s womb, perform the surgery to remove the fluid, place him back into the womb, and close it back up. Toline was born months later, two weeks early weighing 8 pounds. “I was in the NICU because I was born early, but I was so much bigger than the other babies, they called me a ‘whale.’” Toline said he still has a scar on his back from that surgery but it had nothing to do with his physical appearance today.
“I wasn’t going to be a shy child anyway,” Toline said, “I am completely confident,” which has helped him succeed in so many of his endeavors with Vector Marketing Corporation. “Everyone notices me and remembers me. People, no matter who they were, would ask about me. It made me not be afraid to talk to anybody,” Toline said about his large upper body. “It gives me more attention and I can always entertain. Others would let people hurt their feelings if they were asked questions, but I don’t.”
“He is probably the most honest, driven, and genuine person that I know,” Kandace Hanna, Toline’s girlfriend, said.
That drive is what has allowed him to get so far in Vector. What started out as a mailer he received two weeks after high school graduation, has turned into the assistant manager at the Nashville office.
Some refer to Vector and the Cutco product as a pyramid scheme, but Toline said that people are just negative about things. “The potential is there for growth, but it is on you to do it.”
Toline now makes 50% commission from his sales which is the highest level offered with less than 1% of those working with Vector achieve that level. “I’ve put in the effort and the training and tools are there. And this summer I made four times more money than anyone my age.” He spent the last two summers waking up early and making phones calls all day selling forty thousand dollars in product. This success has awarded him the title of Field Sales Manager (FSM). “It’s not that hard to do, people just aren’t motivated,” Toline said.
“My family has always been very supportive,” Toline said. His family has always been in sales and he was raised to be very personable. “But when I got my first paycheck with a comma my family got rid of any doubts,” Toline chuckled.
Vector is so impressed with his work that this summer he will be in charge of his own office in Murfreesboro that will be open from May 1 until near the end of August. “The offices are generally run by college students. And I’ll hire a receptionist and about three people who will work under me.” At the office is where he will send out mailers like the one he got. “It will look ridiculous on a resume. Just me, running my own business.”
Despite all the success with his business experience, Toline is an engineering major. “My grandfather taught here at Tech and my family has always been in engineering,” Toline said. But he has a plan that others can attest to.
“He’s got a good head on his shoulders,” Zach Miller, pledge brother and member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity, said. “He knows where he’s going. He makes decisions in life that will lead him somewhere better in life.”
Toline said that anyone can do business, but he “had the ability” to do engineering. Not many engineers have the personality of Toline so he said he plans to do sales after college. “I have more work experience and that will look better than a MBA.”
Along with a career and academics, Toline decided to join a social fraternity, Sigma Alpha Epsilon. “I didn’t want to join in the beginning, and I knew my parents wouldn’t be okay with it,” Toline said. But what changed his mind was his best friend Matt Meadows, also a Cookeville native. “I came down to the house with Matt and saw that it wasn’t what I thought it would be like. The brothers reminded me of myself and what I liked.” Another point that changed his mind was that he realized he could be successful academically as well as be in a fraternity.
Part of the appeal for Toline was “The True Gentleman,” a creed which hangs in the living room of the SAE house.
The true gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others rather than his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe.
-Jon Walter Wayland
“That is the best thing anybody could say about Toline,” Matt Meadows, best friend and
pledge brother of Toline said while pointing at “The True Gentleman”.
“I always had people around me and I wanted that comradery again.” Now, Toline is not only a brother of SAE, but he also serves on the Interfraternity Council as the recruitment chair.
Toline believes that who people are around makes who they are. “I’m a big believer in the circle of influence. About half the people I surround myself with are better than me, people I can model myself after and learn from. Then, I have people I can help.”
It seems of all the people that a person could be friends with, Ben Toline is one that should be at the top of the list.
Taking a moment, Toline said “I would hate to be like everyone else.”
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