4. Sell from the Heart

—Buddy Newell (PK Time and Dubey & Schaldenbrand)

Buddy Newell is a great example of believing in what you do for a living. Oddly enough, it took the stress of a failed marriage for him to look at his career and realize that he shouldn't waste his time in jobs he didn't love. After years of living paycheck to paycheck, Buddy took his hobby—high-end watches—and quickly found a way to turn it into a lucrative career.

It sounds obvious, but many people endure working at jobs that make them miserable—the only reason they go to work is for the money. And guess what? They never make enough money to get ahead. When Buddy talks about his early career, before he found the watch business, he sounds bitter and regretful. Yet when he talks about his years in the watch industry, he beams with happiness. When he took a job for $40,000 a year selling watches, he found a way to make 5 times that within 2 years. That's the power of putting your heart into it.

Starting from Scratch

Buddy's early years were filled with hard work and frustration. First, he went to the University of Miami hoping to earn a business degree. At the time, cocaine distribution was rampant in Miami. Even at the university, he saw students supporting themselves in the drug business. While he was working for $3 an hour at some little job, these students would come home with suitcases full of cash. When the police raided the dorms one day, they arrested about a quarter of the students on drug charges. "It was like the Wild West. It was crazy," he recalls.

On top of that, Buddy was struggling with the university's policy that required all students to take courses across the curriculum. Buddy balked; he didn't want to study history, he just wanted to take business courses. But the university had its rules, and Buddy was young and impetuous. "Those were frustrating years," he recalls. "I lasted about 2 years in Miami."

He transferred to the University of Maryland, hoping a change in scenery would help. But most universities have the same requirement of taking courses outside your major, and he grew impatient. "I needed it yesterday," he recalls. "I'm not the kind of guy to sit there, read the book, and get an A. I was a real rebel." Eventually he left and moved to New York City, where he had grown up.

He approached a department store manager and said, "Give me a job, all I want to do is work." That's how he ended up working in store security as an undercover detective nabbing shoplifters. When he hurt his back getting tackled while trying to handcuff someone, Buddy quit. "I thought, 'For six bucks an hour putting my life on the line, this is not a good idea.'"

Underestimating Obstacles

Because working for other people wasn't going well, Buddy tried his hand at starting his own business. He had the idea to provide internal security for high-end boutique stores in New York that had problems with employees stealing. Turns out this is a pretty big problem, and he had a good idea. A store would contract with him to pose as a part-time employee, watching the other employees to see if anyone was up to something. He rooted out some clever scams. Sometimes employees would stash merchandise in a box, pretend it was trash, and throw it in the dumpster, only to retrieve it later that night. Another common trick was to ring up an item for $1.99 when it should have been $199.

"You get to see some interesting things," Buddy says.

Even though he started out enthusiastically, Buddy didn't love his new venture. And he found out that even though he's a hard worker, he was overwhelmed with having to run his own business. "I'm very good at something that's up and running," Buddy says. "But startup operations, starting from scratch, that's not my forté."

So Buddy was honest with himself and gave up the security business. It's no use trying to fit a round peg in a square hole, and business startups are not for everyone—which is why I'm writing this book. It's for people who have an entrepreneurial spirit but want the safety of working in an existing business.

His next job was as a doorman, and within 3 months he was managing the bellhop staff. "I was working my butt off," he says. The hotel business was 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. He was excelling at the job, but he couldn't figure a way to make it meaningful and lucrative.

Finally, to make more money, he worked two full-time jobs: at the hotel and for his father, who ran a wholesale food supply business. Buddy was in charge of getting the trucks loaded and out every morning at 4 a.m. and managing relationships with customers. He was good at this, and the business was successful. "We created a niche in the market," Buddy says. With real estate leasing for hundreds of dollars per square foot in Manhattan, restaurants don't have room to store several days worth of supplies. So daily food deliveries are the norm.

Buddy started some innovations at the business, introducing healthier food items such as frozen yogurt and bottled water. One of his successes was to convince a deli franchise to carry bottled water at its locations. "What, pay money for water?" the deli owner asked. "Who's going to pay money for water?" Buddy convinced him, and it worked out well. This might have been a great career for Buddy, but problems with his father—who owned the company—made it difficult.

That's when fate took a twist. It was 1993, when the first terrorist plot to bomb the World Trade Center came to light. Buddy was living on 24th Street, pretty close to the buildings, and he knew people who worked there. It shook him up. This was an obstacle he couldn't overcome, so he took up his girlfriend's offer to move in with her in Miami. That move set in motion events that led him to his love.

In Miami for the second time, Buddy did a variety of jobs that didn't amount to anything. He even worked at a temporary labor office, providing security. Many of the laborers were recently out of prison, and when one of the managers was shot and killed by one of the workers, Buddy left. The one bright spot was working at a watch store, selling watches. It was more of a hobby than anything, giving him a discount so he could buy watches for himself.

He'd also gotten married, and that marriage was on the rocks. During a marriage-counseling session, the counselor asked him, "What do you like to do?" And he blurted out, "I'm a watch guy. I enjoy watches." But Buddy didn't see how to take a small-time job selling watches and turn it into a career. The counselor encouraged him: "You'll figure it out." And she was right.

Building Momentum—Enjoyably

Although the marriage wasn't saved, Buddy found his career. At first he worked 100 hours a week just to make enough to support himself. But in the midst of his failed marriage, the job was like a life raft. He truly did enjoy being around the watches and talking to people about them. And not just the watches themselves, but being part of the excitement and pleasure of the purchase. Most of the time a wristwatch is a gift people buy for someone or a reward they buy for themselves. Buddy liked being part of that.

Pretty soon he was giving advice to the owners of the shop: "Never say no to anybody. Once you say no, you've lost that customer." Problem was, the shop often didn't have the ability to customize their watches to what customers wanted. For instance, if a watch had a white dial and the customer wanted a black dial, they would say, "Sorry we don't have black dials." Buddy, however, was all about customer service. He loved making the customer happy and closing the sale. "Let me try and get you the black dial and make you happy" was Buddy's philosophy. He told them, "You know if you don't make that sale, someone else is making that sale." But the shop didn't take his advice.

Buddy had a friend in the watch business from whom he'd bought some very expensive watches. It had been 10 years since he'd talked to the guy, but he knew he sold great merchandise. So if the shop where Buddy worked didn't have the kind of watch someone wanted and wouldn't customize it, Buddy would tell them to call his friend. He would say to people, "Tell him Buddy from Miami told you to call." And they did.

After a while, he called up his old friend and said, "Hey, this is Buddy from Miami, remember me?" The old friend's reply: "Oh my God, you're the one who's been sending me all this business. That's unbelievable." And that's how Buddy found something he could truly put his heart into.

Taking the Next Leap

Buddy started selling watches for his friend on the road through a company that is now called PK Time. Eventually the company wound up being the exclusive representative for Dubey Schaldenbrand watches—an extremely high-end brand of wristwatch made by Cinette Robert, a watchmaker in a small town in Switzerland. These watches cost thousands of dollars.

Buddy understood his customers: They wanted immediate gratification when they came to buy a Dubey Schaldenbrand watch. "The person doesn't want to wait," he says. "Maybe you got a bonus, made some money in the stock market. You want to reward yourself, you want to walk home with the gift tonight, wear it over the weekend." So when customers ask for different watch bands or dials, Buddy finds a way to make it happen.

"I've had phone calls from Las Vegas at 1:00 in the morning from people who just made money in a casino and want to spend it," he says. Once someone called on a Wednesday and wanted a certain $60,000 watch—and he wanted it on his wrist by Saturday. The watch was in Switzerland; the man was in Aruba. Buddy managed to get the watch from Switzerland to Aruba in 48 hours.

With that kind of customer service and loyalty, Buddy worked his way up easily to sales manager and then president of the company.

And he didn't stop there. When customers asked for watches with diamonds on them, Buddy told the designer. Being very traditional, she said she would never make a man's watch with diamonds. When Buddy persuaded her to make just one for his personal use, he sold it off his wrist within 10 minutes of putting it on. That got the watchmaker's attention, and she began taking his suggestions. Customers wanted a Swiss sports watch that could be worn while golfing or swimming—and the watchmaker came out with some. She respected his suggestions so much she even came out with a "Buddy" line of watches. "It was such a special honor for me," Buddy says. "That really made me feel proud."

Even though there are only about 40 other salespeople for that brand in the whole United States, Buddy protected his market even further by being the only one to offer the Buddy designs. And it built credibility with his customers when they saw their requests come out in new designs with Buddy's name on it.

"I love the business. I love what I do," Buddy says.

So it really doesn't make a lot of sense to work in an industry that you don't feel connected to. There is tremendous power in loving what you do. You don't have to really love the product itself—such as insurance or computer software—although it doesn't hurt. What you really have to love is the benefit it provides the people who use it. It could be the instant gratification of a beautiful timepiece or something else that engages you. As long as you love it, you never know where you'll go. Buddy found what he loved, put his heart into it, and found a career beyond his wildest dreams.