The Street-Smart Salesman: How Growing Up Poor Helped Make Me Rich

Introduction

Dirt Poor to Worry-No-More: Here from There

When I go into Manhattan on business, I often drive the long way home through East Harlem in New York City. That's the neighborhood where I grew up dirt-poor. And, without knowing it, it's where I learned everything I needed to know to become a wealthy, high-performance salesman.

Nowadays I live in Bedford Hills, New York, which is about 40 miles north and about 40 worlds away from East Harlem. But it's still important for me to touch base with my rough and tumble beginnings from time to time, just to acknowledge the source of the street-smarts that have served me so well, the crowded streets and tenements of Italian East Harlem in the 1950s and 1960s. Born into crushing poverty—believe me, it's no overstatement—I got out of Harlem to become a high-performance salesman and a millionaire several times over. And I believe that growing up poor helped make me rich.

Back in July 2007,Janine Dreyer and I walked around the few square blocks that contained my youth. Until that day, I hadn't realized that I hadn't once gotten out of the car in all my many detours through the old neighborhood. I must have been feeling pretty nervous about walking those streets again. Get this: When I changed out of my jogging clothes at the gym that morning, I found that I'd brought two left shoes to wear with my suit and tie.

So there I was, back at Holy Rosary Elementary, this time in sneakers and a Brioni suit, feeling nervous and self-conscious ...