My guest today is Patrick Bet David.

I am excited to talk to you today.

It's great to be out with you.

Now, you've got a lot to say, and I'm going to let you do a lot of talking here.

What do you think was the thing that sparked you into doing things for yourself, being in business for yourself, taking the initiative of

writing your own path instead of being a rank-and-file worker for a big organization.

That's a great question.

And again, it's great to be on with you.

For me, when I was in high school, I had a 1.8 GPA high school.

So I wasn't one, a kid that was going to go college, you know, I don't have the grades for it. I was great in math. I was great in pre-calculus, math analysis. But everything else, my parents were going through divorces. It was a lot of inconsistency. I just wanted to get away from L.A. I went into the military.

I learned hard work in a military and camaraderie.

I learned hard work for my dad who worked at a 99-cent store in Inglewood right next to Great Western Foreign for many years. And then when I got out of the military, I wanted to be Mr. Olympia. I said, I'm going to be the next Arnold, and I went to Mr. Olympia to meet the guys and kind of learn what the lifestyle was like. And then I realized it's not going to be for me. I'm 6'4. I need to be at 350, 400 pounds off season. They didn't want to do it. So knowing what I liked, I liked people. I'm always curious about stories of people. And I also love numbers. And I got into sales at

Bally Total Fitness. I don't know if you remember Bally's back in the days, Nautilus Valley. So I

started working at Bally's. And while I'm at Bally's, I started liking sales. I became

rookie the month. I became the, you know, triple crown of what Ballets used to call it quarterly in sales.

And then from there, I was approached by somebody to get into financial services.

I started working on Morgan Stanley Dean Wooder day before 9-11.

And Dave Kirby, who was the branch manager, gave me an opportunity.

And I went to Transamerica and obviously the rest of its history. But if I had to really break it down, it was the example of hard work,

it was to thinking about what you're good at and what you're interested in. I love numbers. I love

people. Then the next one, Dr. Phil, that made it simpler for me was to accelerate the process, was to shadow somebody.

If I'm able to shadow the right person doing what they're doing, I have an advantage.

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