00:00That's incredible. It's got to be so much pressure to have your family and those around you
00:04have such successful careers within college. And that's a lot of weight for you to carry on your
00:10shoulders and to feel like you have to live up to those expectations. And just with that simple
00:15drive and that passion, you wanted to pave your own path to success. And you did it. Here you are.
00:21But it's not all sunshine and rainbows. It was a lot of hard work to get there, I imagine.
00:25It was about being realistic and even mature in my teens. Let's look at it a couple of different
00:30ways. If you would put me in that box and I had to be a finance major or do something,
00:37let's say I
00:38could figure it out academically, I wouldn't have been happy. There's no passion to that.
00:43But my argument to my parents were that my great grandparents came from Eastern Europe,
00:48the United States at the turn of the 20th. And they were in the garment industry in New York and
00:54learned English and made their money. So it just skipped a couple of generations. Our
00:58families, Chris, we're no man. And how about this? It wasn't a parlor trick or something that was cute
01:03where I knew 20 vocabulary words. My family couldn't speak Spanish. And so when I was speaking
01:10with individuals that were bilingual, they were giving me positive reinforcement. They were telling
01:14my parents, yo, this kid's got it or he loves it. And there's a passion behind it. It made me
01:20marketable. It separated me from my friends. And so my argument to my parents was about where I'm
01:25going to spend my money in education and what I'm capable of doing. You have to get past your
01:31parents' guilt from time to time. And Chris, a lot of people will decide to live their own life and
01:37not
01:38fulfill the lives of others. And so did it break some hearts? I guess. But then again, my friend,
01:45we all need to leave our own castles to slay dragons and save princesses. And if someone's
01:51holding you back, you're never going to go on a roller coaster and experience life.
01:55And so my argument was to live. And I could have always clicked my heels and come home and been
02:00in
02:00the family business. But I wanted to try. I had some grit. I had some vigor. And I know that
02:06at the
02:06end of the day, I wanted to look at myself in the mirror and know that I went 15 rounds.
02:10That's the
02:10kind of forced march that people are on as entrepreneurs. Those are the sort of moments of
02:15clarity you have when you ask yourself, do I continue or do I stop? And I kind of compare
02:21myself to those that have survived being on the ocean for months or getting out of those
02:26deserts or forest situations where they should have been dead long ago. But there's something
02:33in you that drives you to do something and move forward. That's why boxers sometimes just,
02:39even though their legs are giving up, their body doesn't. They just want to keep going.
02:43I don't know, my friend, I had to be true to myself. And I think entrepreneurs, once again,
02:46need to be true to themselves as well. And I believe that's one of the key elements you need
02:52in order to have that endurance to make the distance.
02:55Yes, absolutely.
02:56Yes, absolutely.
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