Les Gold - For What Its Worth: Business Wisdom from a Pawnbroker

Face Your Fear

Believe in Yourself

Love What You Do

Build a Business with No Boundaries

Negotiate Like a Pawnbroker

Create Long-Term Success

Build Trust Throughout Your Community

Put Family First

Conclusion

Introduction

I am lucky enough to have an unusual job. Well, thats putting it mildly. My business, pawnbroking, goes in so many directions, theres no such thing as a typical day at work. One day, I might be taking in a 1965 Bentley in pawn. The next, I might be running out into the street after someone whos just lifted a gold chain. Ive been a master negotiator, a jeweler, a gun salesman, a car dealer, a confidant to the down on their luck, a gambler, and a loyal citizen of Detroit. Dealing with the unexpected is one of the reasons I became a pawnbrokerand learning to love the craziness is one of the reasons Im so damn good at it.

While Ive been the star of Hardcore Pawn, you may have seen me try to make deals for a hearse and a stripper pole and an Olympic torch. Youve seen me deal with customers who start fights, an employee who bit a colleague, and a trusted manager who turned out to be a thief. Youve seen me fight with my son, Seth, and my daughter, Ashleymy best, or at least my loudest, employeesand youve seen our relationship evolve every day as we work together. Youve gotten a sense of what life is like in our crazy little slice of Detroit.

My job isnt easy, but I love what I doand that passion helps me succeed. I first opened my shop, American Jewelry and Loan, in a tiny fifteen-hundred-square-foot space in a strip mall. Now weve expanded into a fifty-thousand-square-foot former bowling alley. I started out making two or three loans a day. Now we make a thousand loans a day and employ fifty-five people.

In more than five decades of pawnbroking, Ive learned invaluable business lessons I couldnt have learned anywhere else. No business school in the world could have taught me everything I learned in pawnshops: buying, selling, negotiating, managing employees, dealing with customers, advertising, tracking trends in technology and fashion, and predicting the economys ups and downs. Doing my job well takes determination, courage, and love. In this book Im going to share what Ive learned from fifty-five years in the most interesting job in the world.

Whether youre a fellow pawnbroker, the owner of a small business, a manager trying to work as hard as possible to get the best from your employees, or an individual trying to build a career youll love, I believe I can offer you valuable lessons learned across a lifetime in business. I not only practice what I preach, but I also constantly try to change the perception of what it takes to be successful. If I can make a splash across the country by running the best pawnshop possible, I believe that all people have opportunities to better themselves through their careers.

One reason I wanted to write this book is that throughout my careerthroughout my lifeIve been trying to change the ideas people have about pawnshops. If you walk into a traditional pawnshop in China, the pawnbroker is sitting above you. The very arrangement is telling you youre no good; its demeaning to walk into that store. Today, pawnshops may be laid out differently, but too often the message is still the same: This is a place that caters to desperate people who need money for food, rent, and car payments, money to keep life going.

When I look at my store, American Jewelry and Loan, I see something different. I see a dynamic business that can adapt to any kind of economic environment. I see an exciting enterprise thats constantly changing and constantly surprising me. I see a retail center thats a resource for the Detroit communities I live and work in. I see the hundreds of people Ive helped over the years. I see the lessons I learned working in my grandfathers pawnshop and the legacy Im trying to leave for my kids.

Over the years Ive made lots of changes to my pawnshop, but theyve all been in service to this higher purpose: building a business I can be proud to leave to my children. I dont want to leave my kids a business that looks down on its customers. At the shop, we make sure its not demeaning to pawn something with us. When you walk into my store and you see a hundred people in line behind you, you know you can feel good about what youre doing.

My grandfather Popsie immigrated to America in 1905 when he was twelve. To help his family financially he became a rag picker in the United States, driving his horse and buggy around looking for junk on the side of the road that he could sell. In the 1940s, with my great-grandfather, he opened a pawnshop. Today, the grandson of a onetime rag picker and the son of a sometime pool hustler, Im running a million-dollar business and starring in a reality TV show. Its amazing what you can do in this country if youre willing to work hard and smart. America was built by entrepreneurs, and it still rewards those who have the initiative, drive, and commitment to build something new.

Its taken me a long time to build a business I can be proud of. In this book Im going to show you how I did it. Im going to reveal how I took my familys business on this journey from literal rags to riches. Whats more, Im going to tell you the secrets of my success: Im going to teach you to think like a pawnbroker. A pawnbroker knows the value of everything, from a fur coat to a persons word of honor. In this book Ill teach you how you, too, can learn to get what you need for what its worth, in the broad sense.

In some ways Im already a teacher. People come up to me on the street all the time and tell me that they learned to negotiate from watching