I had a random encounter with the person who ran Vanderbilt's trauma program in California.

He comes up to me and he's like, hey, I know you're from Nashville.

Any chance you'd want to come work at Vanderbilt? Now, for the past year, I had been building this thought and this vision of what I'm going to do.

But in that moment, I quickly did an analysis.

I'm like, this is worth the pivot.

The opportunities that this could provide for me are going to be huge.

there's not a whole lot of research suggesting that leadership development is very effective, at least the traditional approach.

In fact, depending on which researches you read, I've seen estimates as high as 90% of leadership development is a total waste of time and money because it does nothing to change behavior.

And so I think what happens is, People see it as, you know, we're not really expecting this to make a huge difference.

We just want people to know that we care about them and we're investing in them.

So we're going to hire, you know, some speaker to come in and pay him a bunch of money.

And they think, oh, we got this bestselling author.

But so I arranged this delivery, and I had to do several dishonest things to do this.

So I had to violate my own morals and ethics, you know, where I forged a signature of another officer.

I made a phone call to the Federal Reserve Bank pretending to be this officer.

And then Brinks, the armored car service, actually asked me to go to their office in San Diego and sign a document in person, which I did.

And so they, unbeknownst to me, they were, somebody was already, you know, they knew what was happening.

So as I was on, you know, once I left Brinks, I just said, man, there's no way I can do this.

The SPACs, special purpose acquisition companies, which are very popular today, were not so popular back then.

Several very respectable people have tried them, failed.

It was viewed as a way to take your company public.

But the companies that were viewed to go public at the time were not viewed to use a SPAC only if they had no alternatives and so forth.

But I did one.

And as everybody else experienced back then, 2010, I believe, it was quite challenging.

I can spend two years building this business.

You own it all.

And then I can pick up, walk across the street, take the track record, take the intellectual property, take all of the people that were there with me, take all the clients, and I can have my own business.

And he looks at me and he said, that's correct.

And if that's the kind of guy you are, I don't want to be your partner.

And so it was a real moment of what real integrity is all about.

Now you're at Winn-Dixie.

So now I'm in Winn-Dixie, and I go in, and they hired me, and they knew I didn't speak English, but I didn't have to really speak English because I wasn't really interacting with customers.

All I was doing is just make sure the shelves are full, the truck's getting unloaded, make sure everything goes in the freezer, and all that good stuff.

So, you know, I was it was 40 hours a week.

I was not allowed to work overtime.

So I get there and my first week there, they had this freezer and it probably was about maybe a little bit larger than this room, I would say, that you have here.

And half of it was just boxes and boxes and boxes of frozen food.

what's the difference.

They hired me, and they knew I didn't speak English, but I didn't have to really speak English because I wasn't really interacting with customers.

All I was doing is just make sure the shelves are full, the truck's getting unloaded, make sure everything goes in the freezer, and all that good stuff.

So it was 40 hours a week.

I was not allowed to work overtime.

So I get there and my first week there, they had this freezer and it probably was about maybe a little bit larger than this room, I would say, that you have here.

And half of it was just boxes and boxes and boxes of frozen food.

The way you leave Russia, and this was back then, you don't bring nothing with you, basically.

And government makes it extremely hard to leave the country.

Therefore, they make it extremely hard because you have to understand this is a socialist slash communist country.

So they control your property.

They control everything you have.

So even taking money with you was extremely impossible, which we didn't have much.

So we immigrated.

We had an opportunity to move to Israel or to move to the United States.

And obviously the United States was the number one choice because, number one, most of the family were here already.

And, yeah, we applied for the documents like everybody else and went through the process and went through interviews and, you know, about...

Almost three-year process before we were able and we were approved to move to the United States.

So it's a very lengthy process.

and I was driving on the way here, and I was thinking about it, you know, and I know that's what I tell my kids all the time, because sometimes, oh, I don't like this, and I don't like that.

I'm like, hey, you might not like this for now, but if this is what you're doing, you need to give all you've got, because on the other hand, there's somebody that's expecting that, somebody's waiting on this, or somebody's, you know, just waiting on you to finish this job.

Make it perfect, you know, and you'd feel better about yourself, no matter what it is, you know.