Introduction

Let me take this opportunity to thank the world for the welcome it has offered Work Your Network! Given the enthusiasm that has embraced my book I must ask myself why it took me so long to write it.

Occasionally, I’ll admit that I would with ease type something quite profound on a page and then allow myself the brief daydream of a Best Seller but, more often, the words would take the long way about. They would fight me tooth and nail, landing with a thud on the page as a horrible mess. I would have to start over. At these times it was easy to consider canceling the whole project which I might have done had I not begun the work with a dedication to my late father.

Upon the book’s completion I was surprised and excited at the response from people like Les Brown saying my book was “Great!” and that he’d be honored to write a foreword and Terry Petra, Past President of the National Association of Personnel Services, who said that of the thousands of books he had ever read in his life, Work Your Network! was one of his personal favorites and when I pressed him to find out where I ranked, hoping to be in the top 200-300 books he knocked me clean out of my chair, saying that for him it was the third best book of inspiration he had ever read in his life, bested only by the Bible and a book by Og Mandino!

To me, it was just the story of my life.

Chapter One: Dropout to Millionaire

I opened the garage door as quietly as I could. My head was really spinning. I closed the garage door and then snuck inside the house. Stepping as lightly as I could, I turned the corner to go down the hall to my room. There was Dad. “What are you going to do with your life?” he asked.

I was 17, drunk and on drugs. It was 4 a.m.

I dedicate this book to the spirit of my Dad, my hero, now singing in the choir of Heaven. Yet at the time he was staring at me. “What are you gonna do with your life?” He demanded an answer. I didn’t have one and I didn’t dare speak. I would slur my words for sure and he would know I was drunk. I’m sure he did know in retrospect. I shrugged my shoulders. This scene repeated itself nightly many, many times.

I love you, Dad. This is what I did.

This book is the story of how I dropped out of high school and raised myself to a millionaire. In my speeches I often play back the scene… Dad used to say to me, “Joe, when Abraham Lincoln was your age he used to walk 10 miles a day!” I’d reply, “Yeah, Dad, and I guess at your age he was.. .of course… our President!”

There would always be Dad asking me, “What are you gonna do with your life?”

Eventually Dad’s point hit home. I decided I had to get something going for myself. Up to that point my life had not been that successful. I would like to tell you that I dropped out of high school but it would be a stretch of the truth. I was thrown out.

One day I was called into see the Counselor at College Park

High School in Pleasant Hill, California. He said to me,

“Joe, you have just two classes left here. One of them is P.E. and we just can’t have this any more.” I had been kicked out of all my other classes. I was sent to a special school in Contra Costa County where they sent all the gifted children. Those gifted in drug dealing, class clowning and truancy, all strong suits of mine at the time. They thought I’d fit in better there.

At this school they had flextime. You could go to school 5 hours a week and you were allowed to stay in school. I was a procrastinator so I’d goof around all week long and then, on Friday, I’d go in for 5 straight hours. None of my friends at the time could believe I could handle 5 hours of straight school! That’s how high achieving they were. Their goals were to get drugs and get high, to do as little work as possible. Sadly, I admit I was the same. I was there to just get a “D” and get by.

So, with that as my start, I raised myself to a millionaire. If

I can do it, you can do it. The San Francisco Business Times did an article on me, and in it I was quoted as saying, “I don’t think I’m the smartest guy in San Francisco but I might be the most persistent.”

Here’s how the article read..

“Many business owners have harbored entrepreneurial aspirations from an early age, but Pelayo acted on those impulses sooner than most. A self-described “total rebel” as a teenager, Pelayo passed on college in favor of making money. He took a job at a large employment agency, but chafed at the company’s strict, structured corporate culture.

“I don’t function well with rules,” he said.

After two years, he quit and joined a small employment firm in Oakland, where the atmosphere was more in sync with his personal style.

“In that environment, I flourished,” he said. “At the age of 21, I earned over $100,000 in personal income. “

In 1990, Pelayo founded Joseph Michaels (his middle name is Michael) with $15,000 in savings and personal credit. He started with one employee, and by the end of the year, his staff had grown to eight. Joseph Michaels focused on accounting (recruiting) because that had been Pelayo’s specialty in his former jobs. To get the business rolling, he sent letters to 500 former clients and followed up with phone calls.

Today Joseph Michaels has revenues of about $2 million, a database of 40,000 clients and candidates, and a client roster that includes Foster Farms, Sony, Sega, Cisco Systems and Coca Cola’s Oakland regional office. The company has turned a profit and increased revenues every year since its inception.

“Somehow we out-muscle the competition,” Pelayo said.

Pelayo has used technology to give Joseph Michaels an edge. He invested (early) in a shared database so all the recruiters have access to the latest information on every client and candidate. He uses broadcast fax and e-mail as marketing tools. Once a month, he sends fax and e-mail updates to 10,000 contacts.

When screening candidates, Joseph Michaels combines an in-depth personal interview with a video interview, where the candidate is taped in a three-minute, three-question session. The videotape allows all the recruiters to get a sense of the candidate, Pelayo said. The company also has a video on how to interview for a job, which it provides free of charge to any unemployed accountant. According to Pelayo, the tape improves a candidate’s chances of getting a second interview or job offer by 40 percent.

Pelayo considers himself a power networker. He is active in

Pinnacle, an organization for the nation’s top recruiters, the Institute of Management Accountants, where he is past president of the East Bay chapter, and the Young Entrepreneurs’ Organization, where he is president of the San Francisco chapter. He said YEO has been an invaluable support network.

“It’s a group of peers who can relate to you and an informal board of advisors. “

Among the personal attributes that have contributed to the success of his business, Pelayo ranks determination high.

End of article.

Sometimes when I speak, if the people in the audience already know me well, I’ll just open with the short version, a poem:

I started out as an idea

In Mom or Dad’s mind

One night on a homebound drive

They came together on the idea that night

And I was alive

First thing I remember

I’m spending the day at Creative play

Learning to use an eraser

But looking more forward to the afternoon edition

Of my friend Speed Racer

Elementary and High School found

I was smart enough but a bit of a clown

In the end, in High School, I was rarely around

Cutting to my business career

I gave the papers reason to cheer

While Stanford or Berkeley I did not attend Lots of energy I did expend

And when asked how I became such a Big Shot

Without a college degree

I explained to thee

In a way I hoped they found not too high falutin!’

A big shot is just a little shot

Who kept on shootin’

That’s what I did. I kept on shootin’. I got kicked in the teeth so many times I felt like I was the poster boy for cosmetic dentistry. People would just hang up on me when

I started out in the headhunting business. I mean some days

I got beat up so bad I must have looked like I came in 2 place in the “Sock Full of Nickels Fight” at the family picnic. But, I kept on. “It’s hard but it’s worth it,” as Les Brown says. You’re gonna be on the planet anyway so you might as well succeed. Most people stay in the bleachers of life. The guy who says he doesn’t care about money will probably lie about other things as well. They say, “Money isn’t everything,” but as Rita Davenport says, “It’s right up there with oxygen.”

I’m not saying you should drop outta school to chase your fortune. That was one of my first mistakes: thinking I knew enough after the 10^th grade. What I am saying is this: If I can become a millionaire without a degree, then you can do it with one. And if you dropped out, like I did, and you think you can’t succeed because you didn’t finish high school or college, then as Wolverine in the X-men says, “Hey, I’m talking to you, Bub.”

February 17^th, 1986, I started out in the recruiting business with General Employment, a publicly traded, Chicagobased employment agency and one of the oldest and largest employment agencies in the world. Roger Howland told me, “If you come to work here you’ll need to wear a suit.” So I asked him, “If I get a suit, can I start on Monday?”

You’re reading an excerpt of a leading Executive Recruiter’s book, Work Your Network! By Joe Pelayo.

Hiring? To contact the Executive Recruiters at Joseph Michaels International Visit: www.Josephmichaels.com