Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Gary Vee audio experience.

I'm Mike from Team Gary Vee, and today I'm especially excited to share with you an episode of the podcast.

In this one, Gary sits down with Howard Lutnik, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald.

Howard's journey from personal tragedy to becoming one of Wall Street's most prominent figures is nothing short of inspiring. In this episode, we'll explore the lessons he learned from building a

multi-billion dollar firm to overcoming adversity and leading through some of the darkest moments

in our nation's history. I hope you all enjoy this episode. Make sure you come back tomorrow

to listen to the second part of this incredible conversation. Enjoy. My parents died when I was young. Mom when I was 16, dad at 18. So that sort of starts the process. You lose one parent. It's one thing. You lose the second parent. It's a whole other thing. Family pulled out. You think, okay, all the uncles and aunts are going to come jump into rescue. No, no, no, no. They were afraid we'd be sticky. You know, they'd invite us over it and we'd never

leave. So at my dad's funeral, my dad gets killed in September. So my mom dies of cancer, Long Island

classic, Long Island breast cancer. Dad has cancer. It goes in for his first chemotherapy shot. We had no money. So we went

to the local hospital. A nurse makes a terrible mistake, gives him someone else's dose and

kills him on the table. Jesus. September 12th, 1979. Okay. So at my dad's funeral, September 15th,

my dad's brother says, hey, you want to come over for Thanksgiving? I'm like, isn't that like November? Why, aren't you worried about how I'm going to eat, say, tomorrow night? He was like, just let me know if you want to come over. Never spoke to the guy again. Got didn't care. My sister's 20. I'm 18. My brother's 15. Three of us. That's it. On her own,

not really any money. Sell the house. Just try to figure it out. And that's how we start the

world. So my college takes care of me. Yeah. Steps up in a crazy way and says, we want you to come back.

Because I was dropping out, take care of my brother, dropping out, going to run, like,

my dad's travel business.

He had a travel agency. Like, I went to run his travel business. Like, I have any clue at the end of 18. Like, I don't even know what a check looked like. Right. My favorite thing was the only checks I'd ever seen were my mother's checks.

They had like a sunset on them.

Yep.

So I thought, yeah, you get a sunset check.

Yeah.

And then one day I was sitting with one of my friends and he had like a regular blue checkbook. I was like, what do you get those? Like I got this little sunset thing. I got boats. And so Harford, small school in Pennsylvania, calls me and says, listen, uh, listen, come back.

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