Ramtin Naimi

I did that throughout my duration in high school.

I only had two real jobs in my life.

Job number one was when I was 14 years old, I shelved books at the local library.

And then job number two was I worked at West Elm, the furniture store.

which is actually my wife's favorite story about my upbringing because of the way I did sales.

Tell us, how'd you do it?

I had this job when I was 16 and 17 years old and I used it to finance a side hustle, which I'll tell you about in a second.

But everybody in West Elm has a corner of the store and every corner is its own version of a style of an apartment that you can have.

And I worked there on the weekends and I always kept an eye out for people that came to Marin from the city with zip cars.

So they rented a car to take some furniture home.

So I always spotted the people who rented a car because I knew they were there for a mission.

And when they came in, West Elm wasn't commission-based, it was incentive-based.

You didn't get a percentage of your sales.

You got a progressive bonus based on the size of a sale.

You were incentivized to upsell people.

If a sale was $500, you got a $10 incentive.

If a sale was $1,500, you got like a $150 incentive.

We graduated exponentially.

So somebody would come in and they would want to buy a sectional and they're ready to take it home.

Staging is everything in those stores.