I never had a strategy about my life. I didn't have enough information to have a strategy. I'm the first person in my family to go to college. I had no family mentors.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I don't really have any strategy for my career.
I look up to a lot of people, but outside of my parents, I've never really had a mentor.
I remove a lot of the pressure from myself by saying I'm not competing with my parents. They are the persons who taught me my ideology. They actively practiced what they preached. They're the exemplars and the role models. So how does one compete with a mentor?
I have never had any success in planning my life, really.
I never went to college. But the structure I grew up with was planted so deep that when it came to doing business, I knew how to be disciplined, create teamwork, and persevere. It set me up to be an entrepreneur and a successful franchiser.
Fortunately, I grew up in a family that was grounded. My mother and father knew how to guide my career and look out for my best interests.
I've helped some of my classmates on how to strategize to get to the next level of their businesses. And it's interesting, because here I am sitting there from the entertainment industry and the fashion industry, and I'm giving a billionaire that has a business that's been in his family for 300 years - I'm giving him advice about strategy!
My early years were hardly a model of focus, discipline, and direction. No one who met me as a teenager could have imagined my going into research and making important discoveries. No one could have predicted the arc of my career.
My plan growing up was to leave home and try not to panic. I always knew that to strive to be self-sufficient was an important ambition.
I look at where I'm at today and realize that most of my success is owed to the mentors that was in my life.