>> I had a football and academic
scholarship to West Virginia Tech.
And I majored in business management.
While I was there, there was a particular
class I had was Financial Management.
And this particular course, the professor
wanted us to pick several stocks.
We had like an imaginary amount of money.
It was $10,000.
So we had to pick some stocks.
And at the end of the semester, we
would tally and see how well we did.
Well I did extremely well.
And I was like, you know what, this is exciting.
You know, and would think I'd
like to do this for a living.
So that planted the seed in my mind to
look at pursuing that particular career.
And that's exactly what happened.
My first job out of college, I
worked for A and F Financial Group,
a mutual-funds firm in Washington, D.C. area.
And that started it.
From there, I did that for a while.
It was very tough because it
was a straight commission job.
I was just out of college, and we know college
students, you know, they're typically not,
they don't have a lot of
income when they come out.
But from there I went into a branch
management position with Lewis Financial.
It was consumer and credit lending.
Spent 4 years there.
Also sold insurance on multiple products.
I also spent 8 years as a regional director of
operations with another consumer finance firm.
And the whole time I kept thinking I
would love to get back in my first love
which was investing in insuring money.
And so I made that happen.