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I Wasn’t Supposed to Have This Career

I didn’t have any direction when I was starting out in my career, and I didn’t have anyone to advise me. I had amazing, wonderful parents: I was loved and nurtured, and they taught me right from wrong, black from white, with no gray. They were good providers with excellent moral standards, and they were absolutely my role models in life. I would not trade my childhood for anything. However, neither of my parents went to college. My father was a printer for the New York Daily News, and my mother was a bookkeeper. They both worked very hard, but fairly or unfairly, I didn’t view them as role models for financial success. We lived in the New York City projects. I wanted a financially secure life for myself. I knew it was out there!

I was the first in my family to go to college. I didn’t know what I wanted to study; I just knew I wanted to go. My family didn’t have the money to send me to an out-of-town school, and so I went to a city school, Brooklyn College, because it was affordable. I majored in education and sociology because I wanted an easy time in college. That’s not what I would do today, nor is it what I would advise anyone else to do. My parents could not provide the insight I needed other than to suggest that I become a doctor or a lawyer, but I wasn’t interested in either of those professions and did not think I could master the training. I’m not blaming anyone; I’m just stating the facts. They did their best, and all their hard work set an important example for me, but I wanted to escape from Brooklyn.

I had always worked from the time I was old enough to do so. I started ironing shirts for my mother to earn an allowance and understand work. To this day, I enjoy ironing: I find it very calming and satisfying. My first real job was in a post office: I worked as a mail sorter one summer, when I was 15. After that, I worked in retail stores, selling men’s clothes. It was easy: I didn’t need to have any special training, I liked clothes, and I felt comfortable doing it. My first job in retail was as a salesman in Levine’s, a local men’s and boys’ store, a job I got in high school. It was a successful second-generation family business in a shopping area in Flatbush, near where I lived in Sheepshead Bay.

I knew people who worked at Levine’s, and so I walked in one day and asked to see the owner. He hired me because I had the right look to work in a men’s clothing store; I was always into fashion, although I didn’t realize at the time that I would have a career in it. That wasn’t where my head was at.

I’m not suggesting that looks and fashion sense are the key to getting your first job. Some people get hired because they’re polite and good-natured, and many business owners want to hire people who will get along well with their coworkers and the customers. Some people get hired because they’re very smart and quick to learn. Some people get hired because they’re hardworking and that work ethic comes through in the interview. Today my advice to people, young and old, who are looking for a job is to figure out what’s special about you and find a business that will appreciate that skill or talent or quality. The owner of Levine’s was selling children’s suits to parents, and so he wanted someone who would present his merchandise well. When I think back on that now, I realize that looks, not substance, got me the job. I had a lot to prove, and I had a lot to learn about life. You need to find what will appeal to the owner or manager of whatever business you want to work in.

I worked at Levine’s all through high school, and then I moved on to another retail store in my neighborhood, Bogart’s, where I worked part-time throughout my college years. It was in one of the first malls that opened in Brooklyn, the Kings Plaza Shopping Center, and Bogart’s was the most prestigious store in that mall: it looked very expensive, with marble floors and beautiful fixtures, and it sold beautiful, expensive clothes. It was a multibrand store that offered the best American brands and emerging designers (such as Polo by Ralph Lauren) as well as European designers. It was like a small Barney’s or Bergdorf’s.

When I graduated, I didn’t have a clue about what to do next. This should relieve some of you who are in school or have graduated recently and are perplexed or panicked about what to do. You’re not supposed to know. For those of you who have ideas or do know what you want to do—more power to you. The rest of you will reach your destiny by accident: I was a member of that group. I didn’t know where to begin my career. All my friends had gone to Europe to celebrate graduation, but I didn’t have the money to do that, and I felt responsible for myself and for my future. Therefore, I looked for a job instead: I learned that work ethic from my parents.

Although I enjoyed working at Bogart’s, I viewed it as just a job, not the first step toward my future. I had no idea how to start a career. I didn’t have a clue how to apply for jobs other than walking in and asking to talk to the manager. I didn’t know what was involved in a job interview or how I should prepare for one. I believed I could find success only in Manhattan—which I believed was the big time—not in Brooklyn. I didn’t think I would be successful getting paid a commission based on how many suits I sold, and I didn’t believe that type of work melded with a college education. Also, I didn’t know that retail was a real career, that there were big stores with great training programs that would develop people into future merchants who could rule the industry. I had absolutely no idea how to become successful.

I didn’t have the right mindset. I didn’t go to the finest prep school or graduate from a prestigious university. I didn’t intern at Fortune 500 companies. I didn’t have any training or preparation to begin a career. I also didn’t have any connections or friends whose families had come over on the Mayflower. I didn’t even know any professionals. I didn’t have professors in college who asked me what I was going to do with my life; in fact, my parents didn’t even ask me what I planned to do after college: because they didn’t have careers (they had jobs), they thought I would just keep working at Bogart’s. I didn’t have any mentors or any other role models in my life who could give me advice or direction.

I was prepared to work because I always had, but the only thing I knew how to do was smile, greet people, and sell suits, and being charming would take me only so far. I had a serious desire and drive to make something of myself and to have a better life financially than my parents had. Also, I had traveled a little—nowhere exotic, just to Florida, the Caribbean, and Central America—with the money I earned at my part-time jobs in college. I loved to travel, and I met interesting people who were different from the people I had grown up with because they were worldlier and had more life experience. Traveling made me realize how sheltered I was and how little I knew of the world. And it triggered a desire in me to have a bigger life. I just needed to figure out how to get started.

I decided I wanted to be a TV newscaster. I was interested in the world around me, it seemed like a cool job, and I liked that newscasters looked and sounded good. I thought I was well-spoken and looked good enough to do that job. Thus, I followed the same tactics I had used in getting jobs in retail. It didn’t occur to me that I needed skills and training or that I couldn’t just walk in off the street with a heavy New York accent and get a job sitting at a news desk in front of a TV camera.

Yet that was exactly what I tried to do during the summer after I graduated from college. I had a tan, my hair was very long, and I was well dressed (although I had holes in the soles of my shoes, which I covered on the inside with cardboard). I thought I looked terrific! I drove into Manhattan, double-parked in front of the buildings where there were TV stations, and left a friend in the car while I went upstairs to try to get an interview.

The first station I went to was WOR, which was Channel 5 in New York. I walked up to the front desk and said, “I want to interview to be a newscaster. Who do I speak to?” When the receptionist stopped laughing, she said, “You’re kidding, right? No one’s going to interview you, the way you look.” I asked her what she meant, and she said, “You don’t look like a newscaster. Where did you go to school? Did you study communications?” When I answered her questions and she realized I knew nothing about the news business, she gave me one piece of advice: “If you’re really serious, get a haircut and move to Ohio. I think you have a shot at getting in the front door there.”

After a few more encounters like that at other networks, I gave up the idea of becoming a newscaster. I didn’t want to cut my hair, and I certainly wasn’t going to Ohio to apply for jobs. I needed to find a new idea for what to do with my life; little did I know that inspiration and help can come from the unlikeliest source—if you open yourself up to it.