Bradley

Well, I was very, very fortunate because I learned exactly the lesson that Brad's talking about.

I had an internship when I was a senior in college, getting a marketing degree.

Cal State Northridge happened to be quantitative marketing.

They focused not on the fuzzy part of marketing, but on the quantitative marketing.

And they actually had B2B sales orientation to one marketing for business course.

And I got an internship with IBM in sales.

And when I graduated, based on that internship and being a good guy and scared to death and just trying to impress people because, damn it, I need a job tomorrow.

When I graduate, I got a job in sales with IBM, went to IBM sales school.

I was scared to death.

I was literally insecure and scared to death in that class.

There were people there with the gold cufflinks and everything that were coming from other companies to IBM.

But whether you came out of college or you were coming to IBM with less than five years of sales experience, you're in the same class because they were going to teach you their way.

I finished number one in the class by just paying attention and following instructions.

And by the end of the class, I was ranked number one.

I surprised myself, but I sat and I said,

I can hang with these people.

These are people four and five years working for Xerox that want to work for IBM.

I got the same job they did.

I just finished it.

And that gave me great confidence, but also the realization getting commission for your hard work is a heck of a way not to have to ask for a raise because a raise can be driven by me and how hard I want to work this quarter.