Determined Society with Shawn French | Adversity & Mindset - From Merrill Lynch to Managing $1.5 Billion: Chad Willardson's Journey to True Wealth

Episode Date: July 6, 2026

Chad Willardson, founder of Pacific Capital, six-time author, father of five, and wealth advisor managing over $1.5 billion, joins The Determined Society for a powerful conversation on faith, family, money, leadership, risk, and building real wealth without losing what matters most. In this episode, Shawn and Chad discuss the moment Chad walked away from Merrill Lynch with no safety net, no clients to take with him, and everyone telling him he was making a mistake. Chad opens up about building Pacific Capital from the ground up, choosing family over hustle culture, walking away from millions of dollars when it did not align with his values, and why success means nothing if it costs you your marriage, your kids, your health, or your peace. This conversation is about wealth, principles, patience, leadership, vision, and the determination to build a life that is successful from the inside out. The Determined Society is hosted by Shawn French — a show for people who refuse to quit. Every episode goes beyond the highlight reel to explore the real stories behind resilience, reinvention, and the relentless pursuit of a life built on your own terms.   Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all others.. If this episode moved you, share it with someone who needs to hear it — and leave a review. It helps more than you know. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

So why is it that we can seek failure in the gym, but in life, we try to run from failure? Because people are embarrassed. I tell my kids, if you guys didn't fall down at least three times, do not, we're not meeting up for lunch. They told me it was a big mistake. They told me I would regret it. I would not be able to find clients. And I remember part of me worrying that that they were right. In 2011, on a Monday, he decides to pick everything up and walk out of everything he built. No safety net, no clients to take with you. Out of that, he built. Pacific Capital. Well, now manages over one and a half billion dollars, a six-time author, father of five, married to the same woman for over 20 years. The man next to me is Chad Willardson.

Have there been any massive checks that you've walked away from because it wasn't in congruent? It wasn't congruent with who you are. I was offered three to four million dollars. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan all offered between three and a half and four million up front. I didn't completely tell my wife that there was that much money at stake. After everything you've been through, experience, wins, losses. What does determination actually mean to you? Oh, man. Welcome to the Determined Society.

I'm grateful to be here. Yeah, I'm grateful to have you, man. You're short. You're short, man. And my family, I am short. That's what you were saying. I'd have to see it in real time to actually believe it. But, man, I want to start at the beginning.

You know, that day, you're sitting there on a Monday. It was actually 11, 11, 2011. It's true. You're sitting there at your desk. walk me through what's going through your mind before you picked up the boxes and walked out of there. I was very nervous. I did not have any entrepreneurial experience.

I wasn't a kid who, like, started a bunch of businesses. I just knew that something, there was something better for me. I felt trapped. I felt frustrated. And so it was like, I have to do something, and it's going to be new and it's going to be drastic. But in the back of my mind, I just hoped that it would work out. And so I left on a Monday morning.

Usually you leave the Shark Tank, the Wall Street Shark Tank on a Friday afternoon, you know, because everyone in the office is going to be calling your clients and trying to, you know, say all kinds of things about you. And for me, it was just like, if I'm going, I'm going out. I'm going out with a bang. And so I said goodbye to everyone and I left. And I think everyone there thought I was crazy and thought that it would be a big mistake. I had friends even tell me that like, what do you do?

doing you know you have a really good situation and and you're going to start all over after almost nine years and no one knows who Pacific capital is and you don't have any kind of a brand really but man I I look back and I think gosh that was kind of crazy it was a little bit crazy and it makes me nervous thinking back and sometimes I wake up and I'm like thank goodness I did that it took a lot of faith and it took a lot of a lot of work but it was the right move absolutely I mean look what you've created since then. You know, that day though, right? When you go, I mean, because you had to have some type of nerves. Yeah, for sure. Going in there, you know, speaking to your leader, hey, I'm out. Right? And having no safety net. What was the response from, from your leadership at that

point? They thought, they told me it was a big mistake. They told me I would regret it. They told me I would not be able to find clients without the big name brand on my business card. and I remember part of me worrying that that they were right. I remember seeing, you know, Merrill Lynch was a big sponsor, even I remember the baseball games. They were on the home run fence. It was a massive Merrill Lynch bowl and the ads. And I remember thinking like, man, like, how do I compete with these monster global companies

to win the trust and respect and admiration of the clients I was going after? And so, yeah, I definitely felt the fear. That's a good point. in the early months, the first few months, was there any point in time where you sat back and you looked and thought about everything your friends and even your leadership was telling you

like unnecessary, risky, not going to work? Did any part of you ever think that they're probably right? In the back of my mind, I was so determined to prove them wrong that I didn't really, I didn't give myself a moment to dwell on the fear. It was like, I told my wife, I said, look, it's going to be three to six months, of like absolute grind. I got to give whatever it takes to make this work.

And I was, I mean, I was hustling. Well, I mean, look, your time at Merrill Lynch, I mean, you were top 2% of 16,000 advisors. What does something like that actually take? And the follow-up question is, what does it actually cost you? It costs me a lot. So people, I think what people get wrong

is they sacrifice stuff that matters to be successful in business. And I was never willing to sacrifice what matters. married young my wife and i were married at 22 and 20 uh we were broke we were living in a downstairs apartment i was making 525 an hour we shared a car i make the joke that we could vacuum the whole apartment without unplugging the vacuum like it was really that small and so i i never wanted to be in an industry or a career where i would have a broken family just to be successful and climb a ladder so i had to sacrifice other things like i really did give up stuff like i used to want to

watch, I used to watch TV shows. I used to watch movies. I used to do stuff that now I look back and I probably wasted a lot of time. But I decided, you know what, I'm going to give up that stuff. I'm going to grind and see if I can make this career work in the first five to seven years. A mentor said, if you grind for five to seven years, you'll be able to know if it's going to work for you long term or not. And so I said, for these five to seven years, I'm going to cut out a lot of distractions, personal distractions. And so I read a ton. You know, there wasn't really YouTube or podcast back then. So I was just book reading. I'd go to conferences. I was going door to door in business parks and trying to meet business owners, cold calling every single day, getting 95%,

99% rejected. And so eventually though, things started happening, momentum started going forward, and I realized, like, I can do this. This is going to work out. I love that. Thank you for sharing that. because a lot of times when you talk to entrepreneurs, and even in my early journey with the show, there was moments where I wasn't fully vested at home because I was building. What you're saying is you were always fully vested at home. This just isn't something that you're teaching from the standpoint of this is where I got it wrong. And now I'm trying to teach you how to be. Wow, that's amazing.

Yeah. Yeah, that was always a priority. So we had date nights from the beginning. I had kids young. So my oldest is almost 22. And in fact, I will share this. Last week, we went somewhere and someone just asked us, they asked us, where did you two meet? And I said, actually at the hospital, we're at the hospital, because I'm her dad.

They thought we were together. And she's like, that was so disgusting. And I'm like, but it is kind of cool because you got a young dad, right? Yeah, exactly. Family was always first. I had the option to go investment banking or wealth management. And as I dug into those two fields while I was in college, investment banking, they said it's going to be 60 to 80 hours a week. And it's going to be Saturdays and Sundays.

And I was like, well, Sundays for me is a no-go. And I'm not going to be working 80 hours a week because I didn't get married to disappear for 10 years. And so I'm definitely teaching not from a point of I made all the mistakes as a family man. I'm teaching that you can actually do it and succeed as a family man or a woman. I love that because the narrative nowadays is not that, right? It's a lot of the jockey and for grind, grind, grind, hustle, hustle. And I've seen things about you saying that the work-life balance is a lie. Yes.

And the hustle culture is not. I hate it, yeah. Right. So dig into that because I think the audience would really like to hear that from somebody that has experienced that has built massive amounts of wealth. because there's too many people listening to what the internet says. Yeah. Yeah, I love motivational stuff, so I listen and I absorb a lot of that. And the message that you can't succeed unless you give up sleep and you sleep on three or four hours a night and, you know, delay having a family because you got to put in the 10 years of grind.

I don't believe that's true. And I don't believe it's true because I didn't do it that way. And I know other people who did. I'm not the only one who's lived like this. but I just feel that you can be more intentional about what you do in your work and you can waste less time. So like I prioritize family, faith, fitness, and my business. And there's a lot of hours in the day that most people spend on other stuff. Yeah.

I literally have never, Sean, I've never watched anything on Netflix in my whole life. Well, hold on a second. Yeah. Never. Never. Never had an account, never logged in, never seen a dot. I know I've missed a lot of great stuff. Dude, it's my jam.

I know. I'm sorry. It's a lot of people's jam. People tell me about all the stuff I'm missing, but I'm like, you know what? I've never, I never miss my kids,

tournaments and games. That's awesome, dude. So like I choose what I'm, I choose some boundaries and standards and principles, and I do my best to stick to those. I love that. Would you say, in your experience,

because of the priorities that you have held to your standard, right? It's about who you are. And the family always came first. Do you think that the family, the faith, the fitness, and your business coming last, do you think in that order, do you think that's why you've been so successful because you're focused on what matters most? Absolutely.

Absolutely, because the drivers of who you are make up your outcome. So I'm successful, I think, from the inside out. And I'm not taking credits. My family, my faith, everything I have is a blessing from God. And I have great parents. I've got three younger sisters who I'm very, close with my wife and I celebrate 25 years this year being married so I have a great support system but if you get it backwards like we were working with a client who said he's trying to buy back

his relationships with his adult kids they're in their 20s and he said I was so focused on hitting a number and his number was 50 million and he said I've got to have 50 million for some reason to him that was success and so he built this construction business and it grew and grew and grew and grew and he got to like 40 million in his bank account. By that time, he'd been divorced twice, and he said to me, Chad, I missed all of my kids growing up. I was there barely at all. And he said, I can afford to do really cool things now.

I'm close to my $50 million number. And if I could go back, I would do it completely differently. And to me, that's just like heartbreaking. Yeah, it is. You know, his kids are like 25 and 29. They don't know them very well. He doesn't know them. You can't make up for lost time.

So with investing and with family and with faith, you have to start building the foundation. And it's a compound interest over time that makes the biggest difference. It's not let's wait till I'm 60 and become a great investor. Or let's start building a business. After I've had fun for 20 years,

you've got to start early. And the earlier you start, the more the compounding can grow. You know, it's interesting because when you're talking about these things with that man, you know, 50 million, did you ever ask him? Why is it 50 million? For sure. I always ask him. He just said, I don't know, I just had a number. There was a guy that I looked up to that was friends with my dad. And, you know, he said when you're at 50 million, you can do anything, you know, you can afford anything. And it's just this freedom that you really have. I have, I have a friend. And he was so convinced he has to sell his business for 100 million. And he's not married. He lives in Europe. He's built his company. It's probably worth 100 to 150 million, but he's got a minority partner.

And he just says, I got to be able to sell it for 100 million. And I push back so hard. I said, dude, why? Like, where does that number come from? What can you not afford with 10 million that you can afford with 100 million? You know, like, are you right? And he really didn't have an answer. And then what happened was his father was passing away from an illness,

and it was him, his brother, and his mother. around the bedside. And he said, I was there with, we were all there gathered, retelling stories for the last week of my dad's life. And I realized at my current path, my pace, no one's going to be around that bedside. Dude. And he's like, Chad, you've been telling me this for years,

but now I get it. Because my dad had us, two kids and a wife. He goes, I have nobody because he's chasing this. $100 million number. That brings me back to something that you've said. When someone says to you, you left a sure thing, right? And you're like, well, if it doesn't feel right, it's not a sure thing. I can't imagine not having anybody around, not knowing my kids being close to them,

not being married or even having those experiences just to build a business. I can't imagine what that would feel like. Super empty. What's it for? Yeah, what's it for? Like, why? You know, my biggest thing is I just, I don't. want more money so I can pick up and go places with my family anytime I want.

Totally. You know, that's it. Yeah. It's just interesting to me, the, I don't know if it goes all the way back to how they were parented and how they were raised or what insecurities or programs they have in their minds where like, okay, this has to be it. You know, it's just, the world doesn't work that way. Yeah.

You know, our friend Tony talks about significance and people chasing significance. And so it's like they have to feel that they matter and the only way they matter is by measuring in dollars, but really you're going to come to some point in your life where you realize that's not how you measure worth. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you're on the right path, man. Thank you.

You know, you've built something amazing, you know, in the face of everybody telling you you can't do it. You've proven people wrong, but you have your family right beside you and you have great relationship with your wife of over 20 years and five amazing kids that are very successful and, you know, all taller than you. So, I mean, but there's something to be said about that because you want people to be around you. Totally.

at those last moments. Yeah. And I know that that you will. I know that I will, but it breaks my heart to hear about people that are so focused on just getting uber rich and not having real wealth in their life. Yeah. Big difference. I couldn't do any of this without my wife.

Absolutely. You know what I mean? Without my children and being able to share the experiences with them and have them go places with me. It's very rewarding. You know? So let's go to the grind times at Pacific Capital. Walk me through.

I know we talked a little bit about the picking up the phone, cold calling, telemarketing, getting the door shut on you 99% of the time. But walk us through those early years and how you built it. And when you started noticing that, like, wow, I really do have something here. Yeah, I think the biggest shift for me where we were kind of slowly growing or stagnant to where we really started taking off is I learned the more I gave up control, the more we grew. And so I used to really look up to entrepreneurs who were successful and also had freedom. And so I would ask them, like, how did you do it?

What did you really do? What was a secret? And they always talked about getting great people on their team. And so the more I learned to hire and train and develop leaders, great people, that I could entrust. If you talk to my team, you would know that I really do push a lot onto them. They do stuff and make big decisions without me. And I'm okay with that. What I see a lot of entrepreneurs doing is they have a chokehold on decision making.

You know, I compare it to a relay race and you're passing a baton. And a lot of entrepreneurs and founders are holding onto the baton and they're squeezing it and they don't want to let go. And so you're kind of like trying to run together. But if you learn to get to hire fast runners and pass on the baton and allow them to fly, you're going to have a faster time as a team. And so we grew and we were stagnant. I mean, we grew 11 to 15% a year, which was great the first few years. And then I started hiring better and getting people on the team that were real experts in their areas. And I got great executive assistants on my team.

And as soon as that, I built like an infrastructure of All-Stars. Everything just took off. That's amazing. The one thing that I've learned in my early journey, I'm five years in, it's not a long time, is that once I was able to have certain parts of the business offloaded to a team, the more I was able to breathe a little bit. Yes. And it's very hard to give up that control.

The hardest thing. I mean, yeah, and for the audience listening, you know, whether they're a leader in a sales organization and they have sales reps and they got that choke hold on it because they have to hit that number. There's a lot of pressure in corporate America, right? And they choke the hell out of it. It's just important to understand that just with any like a sport. team. Everybody's got to do their part. Different roles. And you got to, you got to all be rowing in the same direction to make the boat go faster. And if there's anybody that's swimming against the current, well, then they don't belong. But you're going to plug that, you're going to plug

that whole up with somebody that understands the mission and the goals and work with you in that. So it's just super important to understand that we can give up control in some areas. Some you can't. But, you know, did you learn that lesson early on? I made plenty of mistakes. I made hiring mistakes. I had people in the organization too long. I didn't sometimes I wasn't a great trainer or leader. And I had to learn how to be a better business leader because I didn't know what I was doing. Functioning in a big corporation versus making all the hiring and firing decisions yourself is very different. One thing I will say, though, I learned something about delegation. And the reason leaders don't want to delegate is because they're better at it than someone else. So they're giving.

up a task or a project that's going to take longer to do. And it might not be done as well. And so it's like, I don't want them to do it. I'll just do it myself. I'm better at that anyways. And so I learned the difference between delegating and elevating. And to me, elevating is giving a task or project to someone who is better at it than you. So you're excited because they're a pro at it. Right. So in the studio, we have studio people that are incredible with the lighting and the cameras and they're doing all that stuff. Having them to handle that is elevating the task. Absolutely. Delegating is giving it to someone who you're going to have to babysit and train, and it's going to end up back on your plate, and you're checking up on it, and you're not sure if it's done. So the more I learned to elevate and not delegate, the faster I saw us grow, because I found someone who's amazing at this, I'm going to give it all to them. I found something amazing at this. I'm going to give it all to them. And so we just kept growing and learning how to hire and elevate and partner and collaborate, and that's changed everything. That's such a great point because there's nothing worse than delegating a task and then ending back up on my plate.

Like, why am I dealing with it? Why am I still doing? Why am I eating this crap? Yes. Like, this is you. This is on you. Or it wasn't done right. And it's like, no, I told you to do it like this.

And well, I wasn't really sure. Yeah, that's a hard thing. And I know it's resonating with people right now that they're listening because everybody's experiencing that. It's like, why delegate if it's just going to come back and I'm going to have to do it. Might as well just do it myself. Do it myself. And then now I'm stressed. You know, now they can't, they can't be present at home.

And that, man, your spouses and your kids don't deserve that. Yeah. They deserve you to be fully present, just like you were. And just like, I aim to be every single day. You said something that I want to dig into, though, man. You said that you made plenty of mistakes as a leader and you weren't a very good leader. Maybe that wasn't your exact words at the very beginning. What were some of the biggest mistakes you made as a leader early on?

I got excited to hire some people without really understanding what they'd be great at. I didn't do enough digging into the people I was hiring, I believe. Right now, like, I've persuaded people out of a job before. That's awesome. Someone who said, like, I really want this job and they're trying to work for me and I've had them take assessments. I've had them answer questions. I've done all these things. And then I said, you know what?

You would be so bored if I hired you for this. Like you're going to be better in marketing and sales, and this position is not that. This is more like service and operations. So if I hire you, in three months, you're going to be asking for something else. And I remember this girl just started crying. Oh, man. Because she wanted this job so bad. And I was like, look, I promise you you're going to come back and tell me, thank you, because this is not the right job for you.

You're so talented and qualified, but this position that I'm hiring for is not a fit. But that's a good way to communicate it, though, right? because at the core of you, you know, you're a good person. And you're also, you know, a founder of a big capital firm, right? And you have a job to do. So, hey, another heartbeat, another salesperson. Great. Fantastic.

Let's do this. But what you did for that girl probably blessed her way more than making any amount of money in that office because she would have been miserable. And like you said, three months down the road, she's probably gone. And now you have the cost of turnover. And we've got to start over. She's got to start over. We've got to start over.

Yeah. It's so much money when someone turns over prematurely like that. Yeah. And it's something that, you know, as a business owner, you put so much time into somebody and then they just roll out. It's like, I got to do this all over again. Yeah. So I'm much more thorough in the hiring process.

And it's paid off well because I don't want to persuade anyone to work here. I want them to be a great fit. When you say thorough, like, what are some of the specific examples of, you know, the amplification of your interview process? the questions that you asked. So we do a Zoom interview. We do an in-person interview. We have them take assessments. The Colby A, Colby with a K, the working genius. We'll have them take the, we've had them take the disc or the Clifton strains. These are just things that tell us about what gives them energy, what lights them up. We're very specific on job descriptions. So I will make, our team will

make great job descriptions that also say this is what the job is not. So this job is not, or this job is is not in front of a desk. Like I want to tell them very clearly what it is and what it isn't. And then if it's a high leadership role, I will actually go out to eat with them and their spouse or their significant another. That's really cool. Spend some social time. Yeah. And that saved me once. How so? That saved me once. I had three candidates that I was very excited about. It was a hard decision. And I had them each come out with their wives. And this one couple who I thought this, this was the right guy. At dinner, it was a bad, the bad experience. Nothing wrong with ordering the most expensive thing on the menu, but I felt like it was just a very flipping attitude of

the surfing turf and the way they talked to each other was really uncomfortable. There it is. The way they talked to each other and there was a lack of respect. And then what's crazy is that, you know, we finished the meal and they thanked me and walked out and the bill had not hadn't even come yet. And I thought, this is like, because this is a position where you're going to be sitting with very high-level clients. You're going to be doing social things with clients. And they walked out before the check even came. Obviously, we all both know, you know, I'm paying for the check. But still, it's courteous to still be there. And then we're going to walk out together and say goodbye. But they took off. Now, this other couple comes in. They already knew what they were going to

order. They had looked at the menu before they got there. Super respectful. I kind of poked the wife a little bit both times and just ask questions like, you know, what does your husband struggle with? What is he not great at? What do you wish he did more of? You know, like, I just wanted to see the dynamic. Yeah. And it was, it was golden. And I was so sure after the dinners, who the right hire was. And it's worked out. He's still leading our firm. That's really cool, man. Yeah. That's a great, that's a great strategy. Yeah. You bring the wife in, have dinner with them, because you get to see, what you see in public is nothing compared to what it's like. That's right. Is nothing compared to what it's like behind closed doors. Correct. And that will, that toxicity. And it's hard to hide too.

You can kind of pick up on little things in person. That would have been very bad for your business. For sure. Because the chances are, right, this is why it's applicable for everybody to listen is how the spouse supports at home and how the man or woman is going to go perform. And if there's any type of disrespect or incongruence, it could throw a wrench in your whole deal. For sure. Yeah, alignment, a stable life, personal life, a stable home life is only makes you more successful. Yeah. And so I want people that are, that come to work and they're energized, they're happy, they're excited to be there. And so seeing them outside of the office, putting on the office face, they kind of let themselves show a little bit more.

What was your feelings like when they got up before the check came and walked out there? Because that's weird. Yeah. I was well at that point I was already like man this it's like it's a pass it's a pass I was like I hope tomorrow night's lunch or dinner interview goes better did that guy ever follow up with you he he reached out via email but I think he felt the awkwardness of that night I think he knew wow yeah that's telling yeah hopefully he's watching this podcast hopefully he is you watch something learn something man learn something same same person he hired still leading the company

That's true. But that right there, man, that's the due diligence, right? And how many years ago was that? That was seven years ago. Seven years? Yeah. Seven years. Wow.

Lots of promotions and lots of leadership responsibility increases for this guy. That's so sick, man. Yeah. That's so sick. When you flipped over and you started building this, so you said you're growing 10 to 11% a year and making the right decisions, becoming a better leader, the people that you had to prove wrong or you wanted to prove wrong. Can you name one and have you prove them wrong yet? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I remember early on, it's probably three years in and I had a young

trainee leave. He left me, left the company, but really was because he wanted to, his dream was to work at Harvard. And he got a great job opportunity with Clayton Christensen, who was in the business school at Harvard. And so he followed his dream. He left our wealth management industry and, moved back east to work at Harvard. I supported him. I was very excited for him. And the rumors at the old Merrill Lynch office was, oh, Chad's struggling, man.

He lost his young superstar who's moving, you know, back east. He's probably not even able to pay his bills. They started, you know, spread lots of rumors. And so I didn't need a second service director. But I was like, you know what? I'm going to meet with the top service director at the Maryland office. Oh, shots fired. Shots fired.

So I met with her, realized she was severely underpaid, even though she'd been at Merrill Lynch 15 years. And I made her a great job off her, and she started the next day. Wow. Just like boom. And we grew into needing her within a year. Like we went from 10, 11% a year to like 30% growth a year. Okay.

So you were ahead of the curve and hiring her. And a lot of times, that's the way it needs to be. Yeah. You got to be ahead. So that way they're ready when it hits. I just wanted to say hello to everyone back there and let them know. Yeah, just let them know. I'm here. I'm here. We're doing all right. It's okay. You know, it's interesting because

I think, too, when you meet with somebody like that, and they leave that quickly, it kind of echoes kind of what you said about when B.A. bought Merrill Lynch during the crash, right? The culture changed. 100%. And it shifted. And that's probably what happened with her. It was an easy decision for her. For you, once you saw, was there a certain moment where when that culture shifted, you knew you were working for the bank and no longer the client. Yeah, there were many times when they would talk about their focuses to have bank products be pushed on to clients and hit quotas and all these things. I was like, wow, this is not what I signed up for. Like, I'm here because I love working with the people.

I want to sit with the people and figure out what they need and come up with strategies and figure out the financial path to get them there. and I have no predetermined offering or quota to hit because that's not how I do business. And so there was a point where I saw a lot of the guys who were in their 50s and 60s that I really admired nationwide. They started leaving. And so I started wondering like, okay, like, yeah, if these guys are leaving, jump and ship, like, something's going on here. And I need to understand what's going on. Is that feeling because, you know, I've left many corporate sales jobs eight months. head of when I needed to leave. It was just one of those gifts that I had that I had, I knew I had

to move. Right. Right. Because either they were chopping up territories, changing comp plans, or going verticals, you know, and like, okay, now you can only go after this segment of the business. You can't go after this because we're not have a specific person for that now. Once that happens, you have to make a move. Right. Right. So it's easy to see for me, you know, and those people that left before you, that's probably what they saw. For sure. What was that feeling like? I was nervous for sure. I just wasn't sure where I would go and how it would work out. Yeah. But I knew that if these people I admired and respected were doing their own thing, like, I should look into that.

It's interesting because there's always physical reactions to things, right? So now that we're back on this topic, at the beginning, I talked to you about or asked you, how did you feel at that moment when you stood up from your desk or before you stood up from your desk? Now let's shift to the walk to the car. What was your body doing at the time? Were you shaking, you know, holding the boxes? What was that, was that physical response? I'd say I was probably just sweating.

I was just like, here we go, man. Like, yeah, this is going to be, this is a big deal. I felt like I was just at the edge of a very, a very high, high dive over the pool. And it was like, I'm looking down like, okay, like, I have to jump and I'm going to jump. So I might as well jump now. And it was like, I'm looking down at the pool like, all right. It's a long way down, baby. It's a long way down.

This is higher than I thought it was. week ago and here I am but I just I just got to close my eyes and jump did you ever have any anxiety for sure yeah yeah yeah did you lose sleep or did anything suffer because of that I I don't think I was sleeping a ton yeah for a little bit yeah I bet not man yeah I bet not it's interesting because when we talk about these moments right it's like they're hard to get through they're very hard to get through because there's so much writing on it and then you realize oh I just pulled the trigger it's all on me now. There's no going back.

I got wife, I've got kids. I have to make this work. Was there ever a point early on that you ever drafted up an email just once asking for your job back? No. Faller. I love that, man. I love that.

There's many people who leave and start doing something. They give up too quick, right? Because they think it's going to be a bang, bang play. And it's typically a long arc to. to create something on your own and they give up way too soon. Yeah, I knew I would succeed. I just, I said eventually I will succeed. That's what I knew.

Eventually I will succeed. I'll put in whatever amount of work is required. I'm going to build something that I'm excited about. And I get to choose the clients we work with and I get to choose the people that I work with. And it's going to be amazing. And it's, I actually wrote years ago, we stayed at Turtle Bay in North Shore, Oahu, Hawaii. And I loved the resort feel of the lobby, like the couches and the surfboards on the wall and the wood, like the surfwood, beachwood tables, everything. And I remember I wrote down, and I still have it in my notebook.

And I said, someday I'm going to own a building that's going to look like the Turtle Bay office. And I wrote down all the things I wanted. And it would have its own little studio and it would have all the beach stuff and surfboards. And two years ago, I finally bought. a sweet building here in Southern California and it's incredible. People walk into it. We have a, we have a fish tank that my wife still is uncomfortable at how much I paid for that fish tank. Really? How much you paid for the fish tank? Oh, come on baby. Come on. It was a few hundred thousand dollars. Holy moly for for glass and water. Look at that. For glass and water. That's

not even the fish. We have over a hundred fish like the original proposal I got was over a million dollars for a fish tank for a for just for the tank and they said we're going to have a shark it and you're going to have scuba divers come in and clean it how big was a dang tank it was big you're going to have to show me a pictures i know you got yeah yeah yeah so i was like that's a little much yeah um let's let's tone it down a little scuba divers this my wife my wife scuba dives so i thought okay she'd come in and participate there you go hang out with the shark hang out with the shark but uh it's it's beautiful you walk in it does not feel like a corporate office it's it's like this kind of this coastal very comfortable home but it's it's beautiful and it's exactly

what I dreamed of. I love that because what you're talking about is the art of visualization and manifestation. Yes. But the one thing that's always missed in that equation is the work. Explain to the audience that you just didn't write it down. Right. But then you operated in a certain way and took action and had discipline and determination that led to eventually, oh my gosh, I just bought a building. Yeah. And I wrote this down years ago. Yeah, I would say not just work, but patience. Like I looked at that those notes of what my future business would be. In fact, Someone on my team just screenshot it and they sent it in the team chat and it said, whoa, I just found this. It was Chad's goals for the firm in like 2018, 2017.

And it was like this 10-year plan to be 2027. This is what the firm's going to look like, you know, what we're going to be doing. And we far surpassed that years ago. But it was really cool to see what I had written down and how we'd surpassed it. And I think people skip over the work and also the patience. Social media makes us feel like things happen instantly. But the stuff that people see on my social media, for example, is after 20 years of hard work and patience and failure. Like, I was trying to get a building.

Like, I could afford the building, and it took two years to get the building I wanted. And then it took another year and a half to actually build it all out and make it what I dreamed it to be. So nothing is fast and nothing worthwhile is like quick. Yeah. It really does take time. It takes a lot of work. and you appreciate it a lot more because of what you went through to get it. Did you guys tell them to say this to me?

I mean, good Lord. I know it's amazing because the one thing that I do lack is patience. You know, I'm a work in progress on patience. But you said something really cool. And it kind of put two and two together for me. You asked me off air or you told me like, hey, I saw that you played baseball at LSU

and I was talking about legendary Skip Burtman. Well, you did the same thing he did. See, when he first took over at LSU in the 80s, It was a placeholder between football season. It was like it was just something to do. And there was nothing there. And he had this yellow sheet of paper like this long of everything that LSU was going to do. Oh, wow.

How many national championships they're going to win, what it looked like there. Everything. Literally everything. And people looked at him like he was crazy. And it's all came true. You did the same thing, man. Dude, you did the same exact thing with your early on. You wrote everything out of what you wanted to look like, what you wanted to do.

were very specific. Very specific, yes. That is a big, big, big, but it's a, it's a trait that not a lot of people have. I have it, you have it, like, we all do it, right? But some people don't. And it's a big component of building something massive and successful. Be specific in the vision.

Like I tell my kids who are athletes, visualization plus hard work, your body and your mind is going to know what to do when you step out on the quarter on the field before it happens because you've been training yourself over and over. So I knew this is what the business would look like. This is what the office would look like. Like you'd walk in and be wowed by this massive aquarium and it would feel a certain way.

And once you visualize it, write it down, look at it and then do all that work. Eventually you can see it come to pass. But you can't just visualize without the work for sure. One other thing too. And I have a very specific. It might be a word question for you because people look at me like I have two heads when I ask it. when you visualized it and you wrote it down, did you feel at that moment,

force yourself to feel the emotions and the feelings of the actual attainment of it? Oh, absolutely. You have to. Yeah, you have to feel yourself doing it. And what does it feel like? What does it feel like when you walk in that office? I remember thinking the first time I walk in that office,

I'm going to be so excited. Like, I want to bring people there. I want my family to come see it. And so the ribbon cutting ceremony, we had a few hundred people there. I had already seen that 10 years before in my head what it was going to look like. That's amazing.

Yeah. But that makes everything worth it. And you did it the right way. You know, it's been documented that you've said, I'll walk away from any amount of revenue if it's not in alignment or if it's not the right thing. Have there been any massive checks that you've walked away from because it wasn't congruent with who you are? Yes, absolutely.

Yeah. In fact, when I left in startup Pacific Capital, I was offered three to four million dollars. And I was, let's see, I was around 30 years old. and growing family in a big mortgage and Morgan Stanley Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan all offered between $3.5.4 million up front if I left and started working there. Up front.

Yeah. Yeah, it was a one-time check. I didn't completely tell my wife that there was that much money at stake because she would have freaked out. Don't let her watch this. Don't tell her where you're at. She knows now. She knows now. Sorry. It is what it is. But you know what, though? You passed up that initial immediate gratification. And you

long played it and now you've made way more money than that true story that's pretty that's pretty and i'll say this we had a client um at the time this was i don't know 10 years ago my largest client was investing around 30 or 40 million with us so we were managing that money for him i got a referral and this referral came to me so he approached me and he had 120 million dollars to invest so this is triple my largest client and this was at least 10 years ago. I was very excited. I was just like, oh my gosh, this is a whale of a client, right? And so we started doing virtual meetings and over the next two weeks, I realized, oh my gosh, this guy's a headache. He's super demanding. He's high maintenance. He was very, very rude and condescending to the to the women who worked on my team. And we picked

up on that fast. And so over the weekend, I was thinking and I'm like, you know, we can mold him. Like, we can mold him. We can have him only work with specific people. We can tell him this is how we do things. I mean, this is going to be millions in revenue per year. We just got to figure it out. And I couldn't really, I couldn't sleep on it well. And so I thought, I've just got to tell this guy, like, he's just not a fit. And it was hard. How would that come? I'm not going to pretend it was easy. It was not easy. Yeah. And so I get on this virtual call with them and I said, hey, I think after just evaluating our last two weeks of conversations, I just don't think we're a great match. And we focus on this and these are our services and you're wanting a lot of other stuff. And guess

what? He lost his temper at me. I was going to say, what was his, he was very angry. He was insulted. He was like, how, you know, I came to you with trust. I've already told you all these things about my business and my finances. And I said, look, that's going to stay here. Yeah. I'm never going to share the stuff you told me, I just don't think we're a fit. And he threw, he threw kind of a tantrum and then he disappeared. And I'll tell you what changed for us. The, the loyalty of my team to me after that moment will never be the same. They rallied around me and they saw that I gave up millions of dollars a year because he wasn't going to hurt me. Like I wasn't going to be dealing with him as much as my team was going to deal with him every single day. Yeah. And so I could have just

said guys i know he's difficult but you guys just handle it part of the mission we got to do this you got to take care of it he's a huge client he can be demanding that's just he's at that level and when i said no to him because i wanted to protect the team culture and and like how the office felt it was like a lift like everyone felt light everyone felt excited and i was like honestly that week i thought i'm i'm never going to find a client that big like holy cow i just said no to something i will never, I'll never find again. Have you found it again? Yes. Exactly. Yeah. We have clients, we have clients coming in this year that we'll have between 300 and 500 million each. And so that's three to four to five times what I thought I would never see again. And these people are

amazing people and they're grateful and they take our advice and they're fun to work with. So it just goes to show that if you put principles over money, you'll never regret it. Well, that's the thing about you like in for the audience this is this is a question that I want you to ask for the audience because your team's experienced it right yes it was never about money for you coming from a wealth guy you got manages money why should the public or someone listening to the show believe someone that has a lot of it well like me mm-hmm because I didn't always have a lot of it I had a little of it you know I was I was broke as could be I remember our clients I I was really good friends with these two guys and their wives.

There were clients. They were business partners. And this was, you know, 10 years, eight years into my career. They were financially far ahead of me. And they invited us out on a triple date. So I was going to bring my wife and we were going to go out with them. And I looked up the restaurant before it was here in Newport Beach. I looked up the restaurant and I was like, oh boy.

This is going to be tough. Like I don't think I can afford this restaurant. This is like $100 a person. And it's not going to work. So I'm like, okay, we're going to like share, we're going to like share wedge salad and something cheap. And we'll just keep them talking and have a great time. And hopefully they won't notice that we didn't order 300 bucks worth of food. And I think one of my clients, one of the guys, sensed it.

And so he covered the whole bill. And I went home just like, oh, my gosh, thank goodness. You know, so I didn't come from a super wealthy background. And I'm teaching from experience. And yeah, it's easy to say. things once you're successful and you have money, but I've been saying the same thing for 25 years. So this is not like a new message for me. Thank you for answering that because it's a question that's hard to answer, right?

Because it's very direct, but at the same time, it's for people to understand that people in your, like someone in your position, it wasn't always that way. No. You know, you had to work to get there. And we've spoken in this conversation about everybody wants the quick hit. Everybody wants the quick hit. How quickly can I get there? Yeah.

I can understand wanting to accelerate a little bit, but do it the right way and understand that people who have this wealth now just didn't start there. It wasn't handed to them. Some people are, some people it has been, right? But that'll run through their hands quickly. Very quickly because they don't appreciate it. Yeah, we have a business right now that I have a sports business. And I've been working for my partner and I for two years on finding an incredible location in L.A. County as a second location that hosts USA volleyball tournaments. And it's been a grind. We have

we've come up against so many roadblocks. We've been rejected at the last minute. We've been trying to, I mean, these are these are eight figure businesses, um, each building. And we, we just had in the last eight days more progress than in two years. I like everything has come together. We found a perfect facility, struck a 10 year partnership with USA volleyball. Like it's going to be an incredible, incredible business. We may have the opportunity to do 10 more, maybe 50 more. I mean, this could create an opportunity that's half a billion dollars a year type of business. And I just thought of the Chinese bamboo tree where you see nothing and no growth and no progress for five years. And then in a few weeks, it shoots up to 100 feet. And so people are going to see this,

and once we do a massive rollout, and we're going to have the whole ribbon-cutting ceremony ahead of the Olympics in 2028 in LA and they're going to think like wow of course like of course Chad did this and it just worked out and they have no idea all the hours of touring buildings of getting on calls with my partner of talking to our broker of working with USA volleyball like years of struggle to get to this point and so when we're hosting the Olympic team and doing all this cool stuff for USA volleyball I'm going to know my partner's going to know my family's going to know it took a huge grind to get there. And I hope that people watching, when you see people who are successful, just know they went through a journey of struggle to get there. It wasn't quick. It made you appreciate it more.

100%. You know, I mean, you're a good person. I've known you for about an hour and a half. Thank you. As soon as you walk the door, you know, smile, good dude, right? And those are the reasons. Like, people don't realize how many of, because if they don't know you and they know about Pacific Capital, they may have certain assumptions, right? But to know you is to truly know you. right and and there are people out there that are doing well they have you know good money because they've done the right thing so everything you're talking about right now with your sports business in the building and what you're preparing for the 2028 olympics here in l.a is on the backbone of doing the right thing always sure and i'll say this because the clients i work with for pacific capital they have a net worth of at least a hundred

million, 100 million or more. Many of them have a business that's worth one, two, three, five billion dollars. They've got a lot of money we're managing, we're doing so many things for them. Guess what? We notice that they all have in common. They're all really nice people. They're really generous. They're really unselfish. They're really caring. Like they'll ask my team members about my team members. They'll send, you know, someone on the team has a baby. They'll send a baby gift to the family. And I, and I've thought about that. Like, are they nice because they're wealthy and successful? Or are they wealthy and successful because they're nice?

What did you come up with? I think they're nice before. I think so, too. There are good people when they were in the early phase, and that goodness and that reputation and that credibility and that long-term vision and patience has helped them become successful today. It's not the other way around. The money has magnified their niceness.

I was going to go right there because they say money is the root of all evil. And people who have a lot of money are not kind. they're not nice. I truly believe that whatever lack of money you have or how much money you have will amplify who you are as a human being. For sure. Man, that to me is the most basic thing that anybody can ever learn. It's like who you are is who you are. Right? And you either have to grow, you have to get better, but you could have nothing or everything. And it's just going to amplify who you are as a human being. And that's what you're going to project onto the world. It's a fact. Yeah, man. Finally someone who thinks like, good Lord, man, good Lord. You know, we were talking about your kids earlier, right? And your daughter's in college and, you know, the whole NIL thing going on and everything like that. But your kids have this amazing opportunity to learn from one of the best. It's a really cool experience for them, right? Not only you're a great father, you know, you're modeling to be a good husband for your kids. So now your daughters know what to look for in a man and your boys know how to treat a woman.

What is one piece of money advice or rule that you have instilled in your kids that most parents might think is harsh? I've never paid an allowance. So my kids have never gotten an allowance. Same. Yeah. We teach our kids to be very self-reliant. In my second book, Smart Not Spoiled, I share the story of having my 7-year-old and 9-year-old walk up to the bank teller and open their own bank accounts by themselves. and they were looking back at me

hoping I was going to help them and bail them out and I didn't. Go for it. And so they have learned to be very, very self-reliant when it comes to money. They're not asking for money. They have opportunities. I have a menu of opportunities that they can choose from

to do work and initiate value and they can get paid for that. But if they do nothing, that's their choice. So when it's time to go out with friends or go to dinner with friends or go shopping, like they don't have any money. So it's up to them. I like that. And here's why, because you're teaching them to be independent and to make their own decisions and to learn from the decisions they make.

Yeah. Based on that, you know, some of your kids, has there ever been in a moment where they're about to make a bad decision with money or things that weren't in alignment of what you teach that you initially wanted to go run and save but didn't? Absolutely. Many times. One of my sons, he's in college as well. He lost some of his, he works really hard. Like, oh, I'll give you an example. He went up to college and out of state, and I told him, you got a week to find a job. So I know you're going to school and stuff, but you need to get a job. And honestly, I wasn't sure what he would do. And he came back a week later, and he's like, I have a few opportunities, but I really want to do this job. And he got a job as a landscaper on campus, mowing the lawns, doing the mulch, doing, like, really hard labor grind stuff that, frankly, my whole family knows I would never do it.

I would never do that. I hate that kind of stuff. Yeah. But like shoveling snow in the winter is part of the job. And I, you know, someone found out about his situation and his job. And they sent me a long message on LinkedIn. They said, I said to, he said to see the resources that your family has. No one would ever think this kid has experienced flying in a jet and doing all these things all over the world and still is humble enough to go be a landscaper on campus.

and get up at four in the morning before school and work for five or six hours, just doing the dirtiest work on campus. Like, no one would see that. And I thought, you know, why is that? It's because they have never been raised to value money. They've been raised to value work and to value relationships and things like that. So my kids do not see their family situation and think they're better or more advantage than anyone else. They see it as an opportunity to do good.

And I think that's really important. That's a great story, man. Because it says a lot about your son. It says a lot about your family. And as far, like, people have different money programs. But I grew up, I didn't have it. I didn't have any, right? I don't know what it's like to have all that money.

I just know that if I wanted something, I had to go work my butt off for it. Nothing was going to be given to me. Yeah. And the thing with your kids, they don't value money. They realize it's a tool. Yes. Yeah. Can you walk the audience through what I mean by that?

Because I think that's a very good point. for people to understand. It's not something you worship. It's something that you work for. And if you have it, then you can do more good with it. Yeah, money can be used for anything. And so money is a tool.

It's a means of exchange for value. Our kids know that they have to be, the book is called Smart, not spoiled for a reason. Like they have to be smart with money. If they want to produce more of it, they're going to have to be smart with it. And to answer that initial question of I wanted to jump in.

So that son worked really, hard and he saved up a lot of his money and he got involved with one of the guys he was working with was doing some crypto trading and he was very excited about it and so they were in a group and they were buying these coins and doing crypto stuff and I said hey like you know that I'm a professional investor right so like you have questions I should be talking about this stuff and he's like I know dad I'm doing this I'm doing that and I said you got to be careful because some of that stuff is very volatile and it's not really it's there's no real value in these some of these coins and he called me a few weeks later and all of that account was gone to zero it was actually he was scammed out of his money oh my god he lost every penny that he had saved up and worked for the last few months and we talked about it and he he was nervous he thought i was going to be really upset and i said look i'd rather you make dumb mistakes with small amounts of money so when you're my age you don't make dumb mistakes with big amounts of money So it wasn't a large sum of money, but it was.

To him, it was. To him, it was very much. But like a few thousand bucks in the grand scheme of things, you'll be okay. Yeah. But, you know, we talked about the lessons and what do you learn about sources of advice? And if you work so hard to get money, like, how do you make sure to value it? You know, you're not chasing quick wins or get rich quick investment ideas. So it's always a trap, man.

It's always a trap. Do you still hold that position with cryptocurrency? Oh, that was, it was him. No, no. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, in general? Yeah, in general. I own crypto. Okay.

Yeah, yeah. I'm not against it entirely, but he was in a, he was in some group where they were promising extremely high returns and you got to join this and pay for this and da-da-da-da. It was not the, it wasn't the underlying investment necessarily that was the problem. It was the group of people charging these college kids money to get advice, to get in all this, you know, great tips and stuff like that. So it was definitely a scam. of taking advantage of young people. Well, he learned a lesson.

He did. You know, he made a bad investment and, you know, maybe reckless, but what was he supposed to know? He just thought, hey, this is a cool way to do it. And he learned from it. Have you ever made any massive mistakes with your, in an investment or your own money, not a client's? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Do you want to hear something? I do. That's why I asked, Chad. I know. I'm just here to you. No, I mean, I've made plenty of, one of them, Many of them have been in private companies. I invested in a digital magazine company 15 to 20 years ago.

It was on the cutting edge. And the mistake wasn't the company idea. The mistake was not realizing that everything depended on the founder's execution. I put in a lot of money at the time. I had friends that put, excuse me, put in a lot of money. And we had an offer from Apple. I want to say this was maybe 2000. 2008 to 2010 for $40 million to buy the company, which would have been great for us.

And these founders, they didn't want it. They wanted $100 million or bust. And they had a great product, but they were greedy. And one of my friends who was just, he was a Harvard MBA guy. I brought him in. I said, hey, look at the books and give us advice, do some consulting for these guys. I'm one of the major investors. And he came back after a few weeks and said, this is a dumpster fire.

These founders are blowing money. They've got, they're, they're basically purging the company money for personal expenses. This is a total mess. You guys should have sold the Apple. And so I approached the board and went through all this stuff. And within, within a month, it was bankrupt and we all lost all of our money. It was, I still have a family member and friend who bring that up now and again because we were so excited about it. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like a great time.

Yeah. Sounds like a great time. But, you know, I think anybody who, I don't want to say anybody, but it's always the story. Yeah. Anybody who has a lot has lost some things. And I think it's super important. Like we were talking about earlier about failure. Yep.

Right. Failure is also a tool. Yeah. It is, you know, when you go to the gym, you want to lift hard and, you know, the last three reps, you want them to hurt so badly that you're failing. Yep. So why is it that we can seek failure in the gym, but in life we try to run from failure? Because people are embarrassed. I tell my kids who took snow ski lessons when they were little, I was like,

if you guys didn't fall down at least three times, do not, we're not meeting up for lunch. That's smart. Like until you have fallen three times, don't come to lunch. We're not eating at the lodge. Like, I want to hear that you try to turn or you went down a steeper hill and you fell down. So I was just talking to someone who's starting a business. This is someone I know really well, and she's been really hesitant to put her stuff out on social media. And I said, look, you've got to build in public.

Show people the ugly. Show people the starting phase of your building your business. People will gravitate towards that because they want authenticity. They don't want to see your finished product that's all perfectly polished and edited. And she's like, but I've been so hesitant because I just don't want to fail publicly. I don't want people to see. I've already had failures and it's hard for me to face that. And yet you can't, I said you cannot go through to success.

without going through those failures. So you have to be willing to share it. It's a great lesson. I mean, it's truly a great lesson. Because, I mean, when you build something from the beginning for everybody to see it, you know, you can look back at times. Like I told you, I was looking through memories. It's just pictures of my kids I was looking at.

Yeah. I was looking at my old videos. I was looking at the old setup. Yep. I was paying attention to my speech pattern. I'm like, oh, my God. That was me. Like, terrible.

Yeah. Terrible. But if I had not failed publicly, we wouldn't have built the audience that we've built. And people wouldn't respect what we're doing here. Because they know you're real, too. They've seen you progress. So they become one of the top podcasts. Not an overnight thing, right?

And we're still not even close to where we need to be. But the point is, is I sucked for a very long time. And it's super important because you brought up your good friend that's a creator. It wants to be a creator. I think probably the root of her isn't the failure. She's worried about what people will think. 100%. And people are going to think all sorts of things.

That's never going to change. You can be an, she could be an amazing creator. You know, she could light it up like Brendan Cain did and get a million followers in 30 days. And people will still not like her. That's true. People don't, there's people that don't like me. Cool, whatever. I'm not your flavor of ice cream.

It's fine. Eat another flavor. Yeah. But the failure part of it needs to be looked at differently here, at least in America. You know, I don't know about other countries, okay? Because I've never lived in one. But I'm sick and tired of people not chasing their dreams because they're scared to fail. because as kids, you know, it could be a grandparent or a mom or a dad or someone very close to you that tries to save you from embarrassment of failure.

No, dude, run to that. Run to that failure. I remember when my son said, I want to run for student body office, you know, president, you know. It's his first year at the school. I'm going to do it, dad. I'm really nervous. I'm going to fail. I go, I hope you do.

Yeah. Because then you know what it's like to want something to work for it, to prepare for it, and have to pick yourself up off the floor and do it all over again because it, It doesn't stop. It's a carousel all your life. Invaluble lesson. Oh my. It's, it's amazing. You have to fail. So let's, let's reframe failure as a learning experience. It's not permanent. Who cares?

Yeah, kids do experiments in school all the time. Yeah. So you're just, you're doing experiments in life. That's just the way it is. It's the way it is, man. Well, dude, thank you so much. This has been a great experience. It was so nice to meet you and, you know, going through your journey of everything that you've gone through. I think my favorite thing about you is not what you built. as a business owner or a wealth manager, a CEO, a founder. It's what you've built under your own roof.

Thank you. That is a big deal, man, and I appreciate you for that. One more question, though. Okay. After everything you've been through, experience, wins, losses. What does determination actually mean to you? Oh, man. I'm going to go back to someone I got to know because of my daughter, the basketball player.

She was the exact same age as Gigi Bryant. And so Kobe's daughter. She played against Kobe's daughter many times. And I grew up, I'm going to Laker games, and I'm a Lakers fan, season ticket holder. I've got good bumps right now. Yeah. So I'll tell you this, the first time my daughter played Kobe's daughter was surreal for me. My daughter was the best player on our team.

And Gigi Bryant was the best player on their team. And Kobe was yelling at the refs because of my daughter and his daughter were, you know, battling it out. And after the game, he knew that it was my daughter, so I went up and I talked to him and got to know him. And that was the first time I actually met him and had a conversation. And I'll never forget, man, he not only did he want her to play on his academy team, but he talked about the difference between the Mamba Academy and the other clubs. And he says, if you're not willing to practice six days a week, you can't be in my club. No exceptions.

And he said, imagine the determination and the. commitment it takes for our girls who are practicing every single day and how much better they get over time because they have a goal they want to be great and they want to be excellent and they do whatever it takes within our program to be excellent and and when I think about what I learned from him it was that sheer determination like this guy is getting up at 4 a.m. working on the basic footwork in the gym shooting free throws doing the absolute basic fundamentals in a very determined way. Now, did Kobe feel like it every time? Absolutely not. He was injured. He was tired. He had all kinds of people hating on him who were, you know, not fans of Kobe. But he was so determined

to do whatever it takes. I remember when he tore his Achilles and he walked, he still walked to the free throw line against the Warriors and made the free throws and walked himself back. And to me, like, that's an incredible example of determination. So to me, determined means doing whatever it takes in the face of a lot of obstacles and doing it long enough to see your goals through to the end. It's going to take patience. It's going to take a lot of sacrifice. But if you're determined,

there's nothing that's going to get in your way until you finish the goal. Dude, thank you for that. I ask that question every show. No one has ever brought up, Kobe Bryant. I have goosebumps all over my arms. That is a beautiful example. and in definition of determination.

Thank you. Thank you again, brother. It's been a pleasure. It truly has. We're going to keep in touch. And for the audience, thank you so much for listening. Go look up, Chad Willardson. If you got money, you know where to put it.

And until next time, stay determined.