| Time | Text |
|---|---|
|
Winning Big, Starting Small
00:02:21
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|
| My family didn't have wealth. | |
| I didn't have the academics. | |
| I didn't have the athletics to get a scholarship. | |
| I went to junior college, which was a great school. | |
| But while I'm going there, I meet this guy. | |
| That owns a liquor store but has a car dealer's license. | |
| I'll let you figure out how I met him. | |
| But one day I say, I'll give you a hundred bucks if you take me to L.A. Because L.A. has these car auctions. | |
| You've got to be a dealer to get in there. And Bakersfield is two hours away. | |
| So I start going down there and I start flipping cars to pay my way through college. | |
| I find out later it's illegal, but I don't know why I'm doing it. | |
| I've been an entrepreneur, right? By the way, just so you understand, we may have to cut this out. | |
| Nancy Pelosi is going to try to figure out how to impeach you for doing something. | |
| Exactly. Exactly. So when you go to community college, what you do on the weekends, you go visit your buddies away. | |
| My best friend was a running back for Stanford. | |
| I grew up to Stanford. I had some buddies at USC. I had some buddies at San Diego State. | |
| So this weekend, I was going to go to San Diego State. | |
| So I go pick up my friend. | |
| We go to the grocery store to cash a check so I have some money. | |
| The day before, the lottery starts in California. | |
| So as I'm cashing the check, my first time, I buy a lottery ticket. | |
| And I won the lottery. Now, it's before there were millions. | |
| The most you could win was $5,000. | |
| But put yourself... I think it's like... | |
| Is it 1985? I'm 20 years old. | |
| It's Friday night. I just won $5,000. | |
| And I end up 10 minutes from Tijuana for the weekend, right? | |
| So I come back. I take my folks to dinner. | |
| I get my brother and sister to each other in the box. | |
| I take the majority of the rest of the money. I put it in one stock. | |
| Because one thing you'll learn... I'm a risk taker. | |
| I make 30% of my money in six weeks. | |
| So the end of the semester comes... | |
| I take my money on the market, I refinance some of my cars, and I go and I try to buy a franchise, but no one will sell me one because I'm 20 years old. | |
| So just like in the speaker's race, I never give up. | |
| So I go and I open a deli. | |
| My cousin had a yogurt shop. | |
| He'd ridden this place before, so I sublet this place. | |
| And there's three lessons I learned in my business. | |
| I was the first to work, last to leave, last to be paid. | |
| But you know what? I had it for almost two years, and I've come pretty successful. | |
| I now have enough money that I can pay my whole way through college as long as I go to Cal State. | |
| And nobody in my family had finished a four-year degree yet, so I sell my business. | |
| I'm going to college. I open up the local newspaper, and the local congressman says, become an intern in Washington, D.C. I thought, well, he'd be lucky to have me. | |
|
Don't Quit Because It's an Obstacle
00:00:59
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|
| So I apply, and you know what he does? | |
| He turns me down. So you know what the end of the story is? | |
| I'm now elected to the seat I couldn't get an internship for, and now I'm the 55th Speaker of the House. | |
| Only in America can that happen. | |
| That's amazing. You don't give up. | |
| And you know what? What taught me each time, if there was an obstacle, Don't quit because it's an obstacle. | |
| Find a way around it. | |
| That's what this country embeds in you and rewards you for doing. | |
| Yeah, and I feel like that's also something that's missing in so much of Congress where people are just, they've just been, they've never actually had that hustle. | |
| Now, again, I understand where I come from in my background. | |
| I get it. But, like, my father made sure I worked minimum wage jobs. | |
| Oh, yeah. And I could drive a D10 Caterpillar. | |
| And, like, you know, I also worked for TIPS, which is something I think that's really important that everyone should understand. | |
| It is. That aspect of things. | |
| But in D.C., I feel like so much of that is lacking. | |
| No one's ever had to make payroll. | |
| No one's signed the front of a check as opposed to the back. | |
| So it's sort of unique. | |