HOW TO WIN THE APPRENTICE: Interview with Joseph Valente.
In my recent interview with Joseph Valente a former winner of The apprentice show that aired in 2015 and an entrepreneur, we discussed a lot from matters to do with property management to how he was able to end up building successful companies despite the fact that he came from a really poor background and got expelled from school at the age of 15.
Joseph Valente has appeared in Forbes 30 under 30 magazine and has a dream to conquer the world in helping as many people as he can in achieving their dreams despite their social status or country of residence.
I hope Joseph’s story will inspire and motivate you in achieving your goals.
So How did you get started in business?
I was expelled from school when I was 15 years of age and I actually went and did a plumbing apprenticeship. I didn't have anything to do with my time and approached a local plumber and asked him instead of going to school if I could work for him free of charge for a year and when I turn 16, he can start paying meand take me into college and that's exactly what he did.
I was able to excel very quickly through the plumbing and heating industry at the age 18, at the age of 19 I was a qualified gas engineer and then by the time I hit 22 I was servicing and repairing boilers every single day and I thought is this what the rest of my life is going to be like!
When I got expelled, everybody
This made me realize that I was on my own making excuses for my circumstances as to why I was being bad and blaming him, my background, my teachers as I was blaming everybody and
I needed to change my life.
I had to take control of it as no one was coming to save me and therefore, I got into plumbing and just excelled so quickly through the ranks making over fifty grand a year at the age of 21.
There was this guy that went and did the apprenticeship with who was 25, he drove a BMW, had a pretty girlfriend and I wanted to be like him furthermore, everybody said that plumbers made 50quid an hour and where I grew up, people weren't wanting to take over the world as they just got into a boring job after school and that was like the best thing you could do to get 50 quid a day and being a plumber was like the next level up that was huge and therefore the people that I knew that worked in supermarkets and so on seemed to have settled their dreams at being plumbers.
When my mum got me Lord Sugar's autobiography I hadn't read a book for so many years probably since like year six and I wasn't a self-educator at 22. I wasn't into personal development or anything like that and so I read his books being an apprentice fan and over that two-week period I saw how someone in one lifetime was able to create billionaire wealth coming from accounting state and a poor background.
I didn't come from accountants I came from a poor background therefor I saw his journey and it made me think that if this guy can do it then so can I.
I couldn't see anything that he had that I wasn't able to replicate and therefore at the end of that two-week period, I literally quit my job and took out a 15,000-pound home improvement loan from Tesco's with no business plan or an idea of how I was going to start but it was so motivating so and whatever was going to happen was going to succeed to get this 15.
I bought a van, hit the high streets in the property management market and started trying to sell to estate agents to take their management contract to plumbing and that's how I got started in business.
Why do you think your mum got you Lord Sugar’s book?
You know what it's like when parents run out of ideas of presents to get you when you're
older and they don't really know what to get.
I've always been an apprentice fan and a bit obsessed with it since the very first series when Tim Campbell won on BBC2. I used to watch it, I used to vision from the early days you know I was from a village and Iwanted the big city like it just used to excite me so much where they used to slide the doors, open and getout in the suits and that was what I wanted for my life.
I was obsessed with the show and Lord Sugar himself and I think that's why she got it.
How did you get on the show?
I was 25 when I applied and was doing about half a million a year in revenue with seven plumbers working for me and a small office running everything from my mind like a
good little business 3,000 homes on contract and I had leveled off in my business career, I'd hit my ceiling and wanted to grow as I needed mentorship and exposure for all the world to know my name.
I came in on January at the time into my house that I had at the time got Facebook app and it said the last call for the apprentice 24 hours to apply and at that very moment I'm very a very spiritual I believe a lot in the law of attraction in the universe and I’m alwayslooking for signs to confirm that this is the right move for me to take things and I knew that that was my opportunity.
Did you think you’ll win the show?
I knew I was going to win it and my answer is always of course I thought I would win it.
Nobody enters into a competition if they don't think they can win or they might do and that's why they don't win and therefore, I was one hundred percent sure that I was going to win.
Furthermore, you have to think like that if you want to succeed even if you don't win.
You have to think that as you can't be thinking the opposite.
Do you think your big ego helped you?
Without a doubt yes I let my actions do the talking as you'd never get accepted.
I needed to make them believe I'm going to be entertaining and give
them proof that I’m going to be successful.
I needed to create myself with their ideal profile so that they’d choose me over the 60,000 people candidates.
I was doing quite well and I liked that lifestyletherefore wanted to be rich and famous, have cars, penthouses and pretty girlfriends.
That was just how I thought at that time and I always think it's important to get noticed as you've got to stand out by being prepared to do things that other people aren't and that's making an Impact.
About the Moustache, did Lord Sugar make you shave it?
Yeah well he didn't make me but this is where I’m smart as they kept talking about the moustache and actually I lost the property tasks because we were selling high-end apartments and I went to this estateagent in London and was like, I want 4% selling your property I'm the best salesman out there that’ll absolutely smash it.
He however gave it to Richard and Bernard and to be honest I know why I didn’t deserve it as they were much more well-spoken than I was and he probably thought that they were better representatives in his type of properties than me even though I sold in quarter of a million won in scrap for three-quarters of a million apartment on that day and that sort of kept in that task.
I got through that and in the next task which was theinterviews, I knew that they wanted me to change my image and I knew right that if they could tell the story to the viewers, this rough guy comes in probably first round and was a
bit of a joker but he actually backed up what he did andthe apprentice molded him into this really slob lookingbusinessman.
That night I said to the producer I'm going to shave my moustache off in the
morning he should come and capture that moment.
How did winning The apprentice feel like?
The proudest thing for me out of the whole experience is when the winner gets announced!
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