John Cerasani was excited to get a job in the “real world.” After attending two prestigious universities, Northwestern and Notre Dame, he was geared up and ready to enter white-collar America. He got a job in business-to-business sales and quickly rose as a top performer, later pivoting to another end of the same industry with another employer. He was doing well and was respected. He had the job title, the assistant, the office with a view, but he also started developing doubt. Major doubt.

He was only 27 years old when he realized that Corporate America was filled with smoke and mirrors. There was evidence of brainwashing that suggested employees couldn’t achieve this type of success as an entrepreneur, and John discovered that everything was put in place to trick both employees and clients to believe that bigger is better when, in fact, that isn’t the case at all. This eventually led to his selling the company he started from his kitchen for tens of millions of dollars.

In 2000 Percent Raise, John uses his experiences in leaving Corporate America to compete on his own as a step-by-step guide for the listener, giving them the ammunition to pull the trigger in not only reevaluating the pitfalls of working for someone else, but also how to be successful against much larger employers when working for themselves.