From rags to riches: SAP CEO's secrets to success
SAP CEO Bill McDermott made nearly $10 million in total compensation in 2013. But the 53-year-old executive wasn’t always so well paid.
McDermott began his career by working an hourly job at a deli on Long Island—by the time he was 16, he was able to borrow $5,500 to buy the failing deli himself. McDermott strategically targeted specific customers and was able to turn the business around and then use the profits to pay his way through college. After college, he used his customer service skills to quickly move up the sales ladder at Xerox-- he began selling copiers door-to-door and ended as an executive.
Bill McDermott is a clear example of the American dream, but would he be able to succeed in the way he did if he were just starting out today-- Is the American dream still alive? “Absolutely the American dream is still alive,” he says. “As long as that fire and that dream never leave your mind and you’re passionately committed to doing whatever it takes, you will get there.”
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In his book, Winners Dream, McDermott discusses the experience of his childhood home burning down. “I was standing on the corner with my mother, my father and my sister and we didn’t have anything,” he says. “But the one thing we did have was a mother that convinced us all that we’d been through worse, we’d get through this and that everything is possible with a dream. And here I am.” If his house had burned down today, he says, he would have still been the same Bill McDermott. “And I think this next generation is really the great generation and the opportunities are more robust because they’re all over the world.”
McDermott believes that in order to succeed people must first take an assessment of themselves to make sure their dreams are audacious and big enough. “As hard as I have worked,” he says, “I really have never gone to the office, I’ve always been working for the dream.”
