You're Hired

by Rancic, Bill

• ISBN13: 9780060765415
• ISBN10: 0060765410
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-05-17
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

Success means something different for everyone. For Bill Rancic, it meant taking the things he loved-like coming up with exciting ideas and never working a 9-to-5 job-and translating that into a profitable business. By the time he was thirty, he'd achieved every goal he'd set for himself by creating an online cigar company from scratch and using the profits to begin a venture in real estate. Then an opportunity came by he just couldn't pass up-a competition to test his own personal drive and street smarts against a talented pool of professional salesmen, marketers, and MBAs, where the prize was working side by side with the master of the deal himself, Donald Trump. Being on The Apprentice made Bill Rancic an overnight celebrity. But his winning strategies were developed long before that, and in You're Hired, he uses examples from his own life to prove that the secrets of success can be found within us all. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Bill Rancic founded Cigars Around the World. On The Apprentice he went head-to-head with Harvard graduates and other highly qualified Type-A personalities to ultimately beat out 215,000 applicants and become Donald Trump's first "Apprentice." He is currently leading a multimillion-dollar Trump construction project in his hometown of Chicago

Table of Contents

Letter from Donald Trump	viii
Introduction: Why We're Here	1	(8)
The Spirit of Enterprise	9	(14)
Lessons Learned: On Goals	20	(3)
Getting Started	23	(24)
Lessons Learned: On Values	42	(5)
The Price Is Right	47	(18)
Lessons Learned: On Strategy	62	(3)
Business as Usual	65	(40)
Lessons Learned: On Leadership	98	(7)
Business as Unusual	105	(38)
Lessons Learned: On Vision	134	(9)
Playing the Game	143	(38)
Lessons Learned: On Execution	174	(7)
Putting It All Together	181	(18)
Lessons Learned: On Success	196	(3)
Acknowledgments	199

Excerpts

You're Hired
How to Succeed in Business and Life from the Winner of The Apprentice

Chapter One

The Spirit of Enterprise

The world is a business, Mr. Beale.
It has been since man crawled out of the slime.
-- Paddy Chayefsky, Network

Ask any successful person to look back over the eventsof his or her life, and chances are there'll be a turningpoint of one kind or another. It doesn't matter ifthat success has come on a ball field or in a boardroom, in aresearch laboratory or on a campaign trail -- it can usually betraced to some pivotal moment. A lightbulb over the head. Arude awakening. An unexpected turn.

Here's mine, and I set it here at the outset because it hasinformed every decision I've made since. I was a couple ofmonths out of college, and a couple of months into my firstcareer-oriented job. I'd waxed boats and rehabbed cars andworked all kinds of hustles as a student looking to pocketsome cash (more on these efforts in just a few pages), butthis was my first hitch in a real-world job, working for a bigcorporation in anything like a big way. I'd hired on with acommodity metals company as an outside salesman, whichwas actually an interesting career move considering I knewabout as much about commodity metals as I knew about fertilizeror waste management or industrial bathroom supplies. That is, I knew crap. I even said as much when I wentin for my interview, but the guy doing the hiring didn't seemto care. He liked that I was honest and young, and he likedhow I came across.

From my perspective, there wasn't much to like aboutthe job beyond the paycheck and the chance to try out a varietyof sales strategies that would serve me well later, but Iwas coming to realize that a decent paycheck can make upfor a whole lot. Ever since my graduation in May, I'd beenholding out for a dream job at a dream salary, and it took meuntil August to realize that these dreams were pretty much afantasy and I'd better grab what I could. One by one, all ofmy college buddies had taken these nothing-special entry-leveljobs, pushing papers for $18,000 or $21,000 a year (andhating the work besides), and I'd turn up my nose and tellthem I wasn't about to get out of bed for anything less than $50,000. That was my line, my attitude.I'd gotten used to earning good moneyin my summer jobs, working with myhands, calling my own shots, making myown hours and collecting full value onthe back of my full effort, and I simplycouldn't see the point in busting my buttfor a salary only slightly better than minimum wage. I was full of myself and thought my timewas worth more than that. (And in truth it was, even though Iwas probably too young and arrogant to realize it.)

Anyway, my friends joined the workforce and left mehanging, to where I started to think maybe they were ontosomething. Maybe I'd missed a meeting or a memo tellingme to get on board before the world passed me by. As a practicalmatter, it wasn't as much fun hanging out by myself all day while my buddies went to work, and I kept thinkingmaybe they knew something I didn't. At some point in all thisuncertainty, I finally realized that I should just shut up andget out of bed and get to work, telling myself that if I didn'tlike the first job I found, I could always find another.

It was around this time that the commodity metals gigturned up and I went for it. Like I said, I didn't know the firstthing about metals. Hell, I didn't know the second thing,either, but I was a quick study. I told the guy with some confidencethat I could sell anything, and I honestly believed thatI could.

The job didn't quite pay $50,000, but if I succeeded, itwould get me close. I had a company car at my disposal, anexpense account, and a guaranteed salary of $30,000, pluscommissions. Really, it was cush, and with any luck I figuredI could push my take well over my $50,000 target. It was all Icould do to keep from calling my buddies and telling themhow smart I was for holding out.

One of the most interesting things about the job was thatI was the youngest guy on the sales force. By about ten tofifteen years. All of the other salesmen were in their forties,and there I was, all of twenty-three, playing in the bigleagues. These guys had kids and mortgages and car payments.Me, I was living with my parents, same house I'dgrown up in, and all I was worried about was pizza and walking-around money, so the stakes were entirely different. Tothem, it was everything; to me, it was just an okay gig, aplace to start.

There was a lot to learn. I'd sold myself as a salesman,but in truth I had no idea how to sell. I learned by watching,by listening to the sales pitches that worked and the onesthat didn't, by modeling my demeanor on some of the more successful salesmen we had in the field. The good ones displayeda quiet confidence. They were never desperate tomake a sale, which I eventually learned was because desperationnever closed any deal. Their confidence came fromknowing they had a good product at a good price, and becausethe deals they were offering were profitable allaround. It's a lot easier to sell when you can stand behindyour product or service and know you've got the goods ...

You're Hired
How to Succeed in Business and Life from the Winner of The Apprentice. Copyright © by Bill Rancic. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from You're Hired: How to Succeed in Business and Life from the Winner of the Apprentice by Bill Rancic
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