Show Transcript

0:00:01 - (Kevin Lowe): Do you ever feel like its just too much, too much to handle, too much to bear? Todays guest, Bashoi Tadros. He understands what that means. And matter of fact, before he was even 13 years old, he knows what that means. Because he was a child battling cancer, he would end up moving from his home across the world to America. And of course, by the time he turned 13, he would end up going in for brain surgery.

0:00:32 - (Kevin Lowe): But the powerful thing is that instead of allowing all of these obstacles to define him, he instead chose to allow them to transform him. And today, because of the journey that Bashoi has been on, because the man he has become, he is here today to hopefully inspire you in your own journey. So from an egyptian immigrant battling cancer to a man who has found a way to turn every setback into a powerful comeback, Bashois journey is one of hope, love, determination, and inspiration.

0:01:13 - (Kevin Lowe): So if you're ready for an inspiring story to pull at your heartstrings to get you motivated, maybe even a little empowered to tackle your own challenges, well then, my friend, you have found the right podcast to listen to. This is episode 318. This is my interview with Bashoi Tadra. Yo, are you ready to flip the script on life?

0:01:38 - (Bishoy Tadros): Cause those bad days, they're just doors to better days.

0:01:41 - (Kevin Lowe): And that's exactly what we do here at grit, grace, and inspiration. Your host, Kevin Lowe, he's been flipping the script on his own life, turning over 20 years of being completely blind.

0:01:52 - (Bishoy Tadros): Into straight up inspiration, motivation, and encouragement just for you. So kick back, relax, and let me.

0:01:59 - (Kevin Lowe): Introduce you to your host, Kevin Lowe. Did you know the mission of my podcast is to inspire the world. And yes, that means you to never give up on life, even when it may feel like life is giving up on you. How do I accomplish this mission? Well, I do it by bringing on guests who I believe can inspire you, empower you, motivate you, encourage you to keep going just one more day. This life is hard, and I feel like we can all use a little help along the way.

0:02:35 - (Kevin Lowe): With that said, I hope you enjoy today's inspiration brought to us by Bashoi Tadros.

0:02:43 - (Bishoy Tadros): So I was born in Egypt back in August of 1987. When I was three years old, I was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. And the story, you know, quite frankly, was this was around 1990, and from a medical advancement perspective, you know, Egypt wasn't necessarily equipped to handle a case like mine where ultimately became a life or death situation. And so while I, you know, do have some really, really vivid memories of my time there, mainly being around grandparents, my grandfather in particular.

0:03:21 - (Bishoy Tadros): You know, I have a little bit of memory with. I do know that it was a highly chaotic time for my parents. And, you know, the reason being was that it was all they knew. You know, they grew up there. They had spent their entire lives there. All their family and friends were there. They didn't really know much about life outside. My father had troutwalled a good amount. But still, you know, when you think about settling down somewhere completely foreign, regardless if, you know, there's the idea of opportunity there, it's still a very, very difficult decision to make, to leave everything that, you know.

0:03:58 - (Bishoy Tadros): And so that was the foundational reason why my parents had to ultimately make the decision to up and leave, you know, some additional background is the fact that my family is unique in the sense that my dad is a coptic orthodox priest. And when you think about, you know, that period of time in Egypt, Egypt was a heavily muslim nation, and so about, let's call it, five to 10% of the population was christian, and the Coptic Orthodox church composed a heavy majority of that.

0:04:34 - (Bishoy Tadros): And across the entire Middle east, the Coptic Orthodox church is the biggest christian church. And that's important context because a lot has happened, obviously, over the last 35 years in terms of how the country has evolved. But historically speaking, when you think about the priest's role in the community, especially in Egypt, it's a very figurehead type of position, meaning that he had served a community of thousand, if not thousands of families and essentially kind of had an open door policy for people in a country like that to call him whenever they needed on a 24/7 policy of sorts.

0:05:18 - (Bishoy Tadros): So it's important to call that out because that was a unique part of my overall childhood and how he had to take that part of his life and then figure out how to do that here in the states, where obviously it's a much different demographic and much different breakdown. And the role of the religious institutions don't really play as big of a role as they do in some nations outside of the US. And so that was a big part of, of my move as well.

0:05:53 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Wow. Now, after you guys moved, did you ever get to see family, whether on traveling there or them coming to America, even just on vacation?

0:06:05 - (Bishoy Tadros): Yeah. So most of my treatment was between the ages of three and 13. And so my mother, when she moved in 1990, she was 26 years old with a three year old child with cancer, and she was months pregnant with my sister. So just imagine being 26 year old with a child with cancer and eight months pregnant, and having to leave your family, your friends and everything that, you know. Right. And so in the years that followed, some of the relatives did try to come and visit us in the states, although there was just a lot of distraction. My parents were trying to get settled, trying to figure out where they were going to live. They were trying to figure out how healthcare even worked in the US and the translation of egyptian pounds to us dollars, they were really, you know, figuring it out from the. From the ground up.

0:06:55 - (Bishoy Tadros): And so family did come to visit every now and then, and that definitely provided them some sort of comfort. And my parents went back almost annually, but because I was in the midst of treatment, I didn't go back that frequently. I did, you know, eventually go back. I recall one time in high school and then, or maybe when I was in my upper elementary school years, and then I went again maybe a couple years after that.

0:07:21 - (Bishoy Tadros): But my parents definitely have close ties and they still go back.

0:07:25 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah. Wow. You mentioned how old your mom was. I started to say, I guess it just speaks so much to the power of love, the power of being a parent, and just, even just who your mom and dad were. The fact that they're willing to give up basically everything, the family that they had, the position that your father had to move to this foreign country, all in pursuit of better medical care, I mean, you can't help but just admire them for the courage that they had.

0:08:04 - (Bishoy Tadros): Absolutely. I mean, you know, when I talk about my story, it's impossible to talk about the story without talking about the sacrifice that they made. And you fully understanding that that sacrifice was rooted in love and unconditional love and how when it comes down to it, especially when you think about relationships like a parent child dynamic, you really can't put into question the heights or the limits of that love.

0:08:32 - (Bishoy Tadros): Now, as a parent, it's become abundantly clear to me that when it comes to the overall well being of my childhood, there are no limits to how far I should go as a parent.

0:08:43 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. Now, where in America did you guys move to?

0:08:48 - (Bishoy Tadros): So when we first moved, we moved to the city of Hope in California, and that's where I did about a year of treatment. And, you know, I have vivid memories of that as well, because now I'm four years old and my memory is starting to take form. In my first book, I talk about how my parents were also trying to figure out the schooling system over there. And so now here I am, an immigrant child battling cancer.

0:09:12 - (Bishoy Tadros): You know, there's a lot of assimilation that has to go on not just in terms of, you know, basic cultural assimilation, but small things. Like, at the end of the day, English was not my first language. And in the book, I talk about how my parents were really focused on trying to normalize things for me. Right. And trying to. Again, as a four year old, you can't really explain the complexity of cancer.

0:09:34 - (Bishoy Tadros): You can't explain chemotherapy. You can't explain what a spinal tap is or what radiation is. So you have to do your best to make sure that your child is living the most normal of lives as they can. And they had put me in a Montessori preschool outside of where we were living. And I recalled that I was the only non asian student in that school. And so here I was as a four year old trying to learn English, and I ended up in a hodgepodge of, you know, Mandarin and, you know, other dialects, essentially, as a four year old.

0:10:19 - (Bishoy Tadros): And the intention was obviously good, but immediately I moved to this new country under these extreme circumstances, and immediately I realized I was different than everybody around me.

0:10:33 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't help but think, my goodness, it was a kindergarten. It was, like, thrown into the Tower of Babel from the Bible. Everybody speaking a different language. Yeah. Now, would you guys stay in California, like, your whole childhood?

0:10:50 - (Bishoy Tadros): No. So we did a year there, and then about a year later, my father got relocated to Long Island, New York. So he moved over to a town called Woodbury in Long island.

0:11:02 - (Kevin Lowe): Okay. Okay. Talk to me a little bit before kind of like moving on through. Through this journey. Correct me if I'm wrong. You said that you basically battled leukemia until you were 13.

0:11:13 - (Bishoy Tadros): So I had a good amount of setbacks along the way. And so the diagnosis with leukemia. And then I had to undergo chemo and radiation. And when I was approaching my 13th birthday, I started to get a series of violent headaches. I was vomiting frequently. You know, my father had taken me to multiple checkups. The prognosis from different doctors was inconsistent. A lot of doctors wrote it off as a virus of sorts.

0:11:44 - (Bishoy Tadros): But I didn't mention this. Prior to my dad becoming a priest, he actually had a medical degree. He was a practicing doctor. He was a urologist. And in his mind, it wasn't adding up. And, you know, he took note of the fact that, especially at my age, the impact of radiation, it could be very comprehensive, and some things even might not show up until later years. So after a couple doctors visits, he insisted on scheduling a CT scan.

0:12:15 - (Bishoy Tadros): And when they did that scan, they discovered a mass within my brain, and immediately it was diagnosed as being a brain tumor. So doctors basically said, given this boy's medical history and given the circumstances that he's had to deal with, more than likely this is a cancerous tumor. I was approaching my 13th birthday, and I was admitted into the hospital. A lot of mris, a lot of scans. And on my 13th birthday, August 8, 2000, I had a brain surgery.

0:12:50 - (Bishoy Tadros): And they took out the mass. It was a golf ball sized mass, and it was called a venous hemangioma. And ultimately, what that is, is it was a benign blood clot. So thankfully, it was benign. And it was after that surgery that I finally got a clean bill of health. And, you know, in my book, I talk about my experience in the recovery room because you have to, you know, take a step back here when you think about my childhood.

0:13:19 - (Bishoy Tadros): Yes, I had cancer. Yes, I had physical setbacks. Yes, medically, things were not right. But what I like to point out is the fact that it was a lot more than that, because as a child, you don't know what cancer is, right? I didn't know I had cancer. No one is talking to me about cancer as a child. I did notice some abnormalities. For instance, when I was four years old, they had to inject a feeding tube, you know, that was coming down my stomach.

0:13:49 - (Bishoy Tadros): No one else had that. I didn't understand why I couldn't go swimming in a pool because of that feeding tube when all the other kids could. I didn't understand why, when I wanted to play sports, even though I was the first one at practice or the last one out, I was always the slowest kid on the court. And that was because of the chemotherapy. You know, you can't explain that to a child. Kids just aren't built to rationalize things like that, because as a child, you believe anything is possible.

0:14:16 - (Bishoy Tadros): Anything you put your mind to is possible. You believe in dreaming big, and when you're disappointed, those disappointments tend to tend to shatter you. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's easy for you to look under the hood and understand where you can make small corrections at that age. You just continue to show up. And so I share that because there I was in the recovery room, right? My 13th birthday.

0:14:42 - (Bishoy Tadros): I get out of this treacherous surgery. It was somewhere in the six to eight hour range. And I try to explain to people the amount of pain you're in when you come out of brain surgery, because your tape from head to toe, essentially, right. It hurts to breathe. It hurts to move in any capacity, and it's a pain that, quite frankly, I don't even think I can articulate or describe because your body is so swollen.

0:15:08 - (Bishoy Tadros): And I had a moment when I was in the recovery room. It was the pediatric ICU, and there was another child in there who, unfortunately, was suffering a seizure in the ICU. And I remember that my mind went to a dark place while I was in the unit. And I thought to myself, it's either going to be him or me, because there's no way that my body can survive being in this room with this kind of dysfunction. Because even the dysfunction of the nurses shuffling around to help this child was really bringing my mind to a dark place.

0:15:45 - (Bishoy Tadros): And it was around that time or that night where I had a moment with myself, and I realized I was old enough to process that it's going to be over soon. And I made a promise to myself that from that point forward in my life, anything put in front of me, any sort of obstacle, I was going to figure out a way to break through. And the idea, or the slogan, if you will, of breaking barriers was one I couldn't get over my head. It was something that just kind of stuck in me, and it became a mantra right after that surgery because I was able to reflect on my childhood up until that date, and nothing was working out.

0:16:34 - (Bishoy Tadros): I wasn't able to make friends. I was getting rejected from the sports teams that I wanted to play on. My parents did an absolutely incredible job shaping me, building perspective and loving me. But I still had to overcome the hurdle of just not fitting in because of my background being different. I want to call out that growing up, where I grew up, there weren't many people who looked like me, who had my background.

0:17:01 - (Bishoy Tadros): So I was an outcast of sorts, and I looked like a cancer patient, you know, so, like, there was really no getting around it. And so I made this promise to myself, and I. I was able to lean into the perspective that my parents gave me. And that perspective was founded on three main tenors, and those tenors were patience, perspective, and purpose. And patience was the idea that as a child, I had to learn over and over again that you won't always get the results you want when you want them.

0:17:36 - (Bishoy Tadros): And I learned that the hard way. I learned that through medical results. I learned that through different results and different outcomes that I wanted in my personal life. Through that period, perspective was the idea that you're dealt the cards that you have because you were built to deal with them. My parents instilled that in me. They instilled in me a belief that despite the circumstances, I was built to handle them. And they did it in such a loving way with a conviction that allowed me to, you know, strongly believe that that was indeed the truth.

0:18:08 - (Bishoy Tadros): And then lastly, the idea of purpose and exiting your comfort zone in order to unleash potential. And so for them, it was this idea of, you know, you look at your circumstances and, yes, they are difficult, and, you know, there's no denying that they are difficult. But if you embrace the mindset of difficult circumstances form, you create, you build resilience in you and show you what you're truly capable of. As difficult as it is, it's those circumstances that will ultimately shape your future, drive future outcomes, and build a refined product.

0:18:48 - (Bishoy Tadros): And so patience, perspective and purpose are three key tenors that, you know, are fundamental to everything that I have done since I got out of that recovery room.

0:18:58 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow. You know, earlier you spoke about your, your mom when she moved from Egypt. I believe you said she was 26.

0:19:06 - (Bishoy Tadros): Yes.

0:19:06 - (Kevin Lowe): And you spoke with such, like, admiration for the courage at such a young age. I look at you and the story that you just shared, and you are 13 years old, and to have that type of mindset lying in the hospital that I'm not going to let anything stop me from here on out, I'm going to start living. You have to sit back and think, wow, how profound for a 13 year old kid to have that type of thought process.

0:19:38 - (Kevin Lowe): And I wonder, especially now, is you're an adult, you're a father. Do you think to yourself, wow, how at 13, did I even have the ability to look at life from that angle?

0:19:53 - (Bishoy Tadros): Yeah. I mean, look, a lot of that was because of my parents. My parents did just such an incredible job in terms of shaping my mind. Look, I talk about the fact that, right, they moved to this new country. There's a lot that they don't know. Right. Figuring out health care, figuring out where to live, figuring out a lot of the logistics, figuring out how to raise myself and my sister, who, you know, was, you know, just basically brand new to this world. And how do you prioritize even taking care of a second child when one child is dealing with, you know, a cancer diagnosis?

0:20:24 - (Bishoy Tadros): And despite all that, the one thing that was consistent and we touched on it, you know, at the very beginning of this episode was they leaned into what they knew, and that was they knew how to love unconditionally, and they knew how to love in a way where it was not just a matter of taking care of the basic needs, but in terms of cultivating a mind that has conviction in a future that's better than these current circumstances.

0:20:58 - (Bishoy Tadros): So I owe them all the credit for shaping that mindset, even headed into that surgery. And prior to that recovery room, you know, I actually didn't know what the diagnosis was going into surgery, to be honest. So at that age, they didn't even really tell me what was going on. They didn't want me to worry. So I didn't know the diagnosis was a brain tumor. I only knew that after the fact and several years after, to be honest.

0:21:24 - (Bishoy Tadros): So that was my parents doing. They didn't want me to panic. They didn't want me to be stressed. They didn't want me to have any sort of anxiety. You know, the amount of people that showed up at the hospital with gifts and the amount of cards that were sent to me and the amount of well wishes that were sent to me, it didn't click with me at the time that the diagnosis was that dire. I just thought all these people were being really nice, to be honest. Like, I just thought, and, you know, and I knew that my dad was loved by so many people, and, you know, he's got a huge network of people who, you know, support him and who love him dearly, and same with my mom. And I thought they were just being nice for them. I didn't realize the reason all these people were showing up in droves was because the diagnosis was actually very serious.

0:22:13 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow, wow, wow, wow. After surgery, after that profound kind of moment in the hospital, obviously you were 13 years old. You still had a lot of childhood kind of left to go, probably finishing middle school, high school. How did I kind of the rest of that time period go for you?

0:22:35 - (Bishoy Tadros): When I go back to that promise that I made myself, I realized that there were some things that I had to learn from what I had gone through as a child. And the first thing was around the fact that in order to succeed, you have to embrace failure. I realized I wasn't going to get out of that hospital bed, and all of a sudden, I was going to be revived with energy, and my life was going to work out. I knew that there was going to be a good amount of friction along the way, and I realized that that friction was going to come about in all forms of my life.

0:23:09 - (Bishoy Tadros): And so, for instance, now here I am. I talk about the fact that I really struggled with friends leading up to that point in life. I really felt misunderstood by a lot of my peers. I felt outcasted. But I also knew that in order to find the right group of friends in high school, I was going to have to deal with a good amount of rejection. And so I cast a wide net when I went to high school expecting the fact that I was going to have to eventually whittle down to the people who I felt I should most closely surround myself with.

0:23:40 - (Bishoy Tadros): So, you know, that meant a lot of rejection in the earlier years of my high school years. Similarly, I always wanted to be an athlete. You know, athletics was always important to me. And I talked about how, you know, I was always the last kid on the suicide lines when I was trying out for basketball teams, despite the fact that I wanted it so bad. I can't tell you how bad that I wanted it, because I was the kid who was in my driveway shooting free throws late into the night, and I wouldn't leave until I hit a set number, like 50 free throws in a row, and I wouldn't go inside until then, but I wasn't making teams. So I talk about my experience in high school.

0:24:17 - (Bishoy Tadros): I went to St. Anthony's high school out in south Huntington on long island. And for anyone from the area, St. Anthony's is a very prominent school when it comes to athletics in particular, they had a very big football program. It was a Friday night light type of high school. And I talk about how I tried out and got cut from the football team twice before I made it the third time. And the reason why that's important to call out is because this is a team that doesn't really cut people.

0:24:45 - (Bishoy Tadros): Right? But I got cut twice. And in my mind, I was able to compartmentalize what it meant to get cut from that team, realizing that it was just part of the process. Right. I was just going about my promise to accept failure as a way to ultimately succeed. And by the third time I tried out, I finally made that team. And in break barriers, my first book, I talk about what that meant to me to finally be part of a locker room after all those years of just fighting for a sense of camaraderie.

0:25:20 - (Kevin Lowe): Wow. I mean, and just talk about the level of perseverance, the level of determination is pretty powerful. What about academically? I mean, were you through, especially all those early years? Did you get set back in school, as far as academics go?

0:25:40 - (Bishoy Tadros): No, fortunately, I actually did pretty well academically. And I think a reason for that is the fact that a lot of things weren't clicking socially. And so, you know, I was always afforded the opportunity to lean into my schoolwork. And throughout my elementary years and my high school years, schooling came to me pretty, pretty naturally. And so my mother did a good job in instilling regimen and discipline and helping me make sure that I build a foundation academically.

0:26:15 - (Bishoy Tadros): And it helped me build some confidence. Right. Being good at school at that age isn't necessarily cool. Right? Like, when you're, when you're young, like, and I'm talking more elementary school than I am talking about high school, especially back then, it's not really cool. But it was something that I could say that I did, and that helped me build a little bit of confidence while I was working on figuring out all the other pieces to the puzzle.

0:26:41 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, absolutely. Before moving past high school, did you ever find a group of friends that you really fit in with and, you know, were your group throughout high school?

0:26:54 - (Bishoy Tadros): Yeah. I mean, toward the tail end of high school, I talk about what I had to go through to find a group of friends during that period and how I wanted. I wanted to fit in so bad that when I was 15, I threw a wild party at my house, not knowing. Not knowing that it was going to get out of hand. And the crazy part about that story was that I thought I could get away with it while my parents were actually home. Like, my parents were home and, you know, and they had encouraged me to invite people over because, of course, my parents wanted to see me making friends.

0:27:31 - (Bishoy Tadros): And I'm sure they thought about, you know, maybe five, six people would be coming over. And before we knew it, you know, there was like 100 kids in my basement. And, you know, this one kid walks in with, like, a hockey bag just full of alcohol. And we're like 15.

0:27:49 - (Kevin Lowe): Right.

0:27:50 - (Bishoy Tadros): And, you know, unfortunately, one of the kids got really sick that night. And that was the unfortunate part. Fortunately, after he had to go to the hospital, he came out okay. He got his stomach pumped. So it was a scary situation for my parents and for me at the time because I didn't realize what kind of position I put them in, all because I wanted to give myself the best chance at fitting in and figuring out how to make friends. And at that point, kids were starting to go to parties and starting to drink.

0:28:25 - (Bishoy Tadros): I thought, oh, okay, like, this is how I'm going to make a name for myself. And I joke around in my book about how some of the guys went from calling me Beshoi to Brochoy. Yeah. And that was the birth of Brochoy. And so, similarly to trying out for the football team twice and finally making it the third time, I was throwing everything at the wall and seeing what hit socially and so I would say it wasn't until my junior or senior year in high school where I finally found a group of friends that at that point, I had felt comfortable surrounding myself with.

0:29:03 - (Kevin Lowe): Yeah, yeah, understandable. So high school, years end, we're kind of exiting childhood, per se. Did you go away to college?

0:29:14 - (Bishoy Tadros): I did. And so, like I said, schooling for me came pretty naturally. I had applied to 15 colleges. I got into the majority of them. I had decided ultimately to go to SUNY Geneseo, which is a school in upstate New York, about 6 hours outside of New York City, not far from Rochester and Buffalo. And the interesting thing about it was, a lot of people don't know this, but New York is obviously a huge state, and there's a huge difference between the New York City metro area and pretty much any other part of New York.

0:29:47 - (Bishoy Tadros): And to go to school about 6 hours away from where my parents was was actually a little bit of a culture shock. You know, life was moving at a much slower pace up there than what I was used to growing up in the New York City metro area. And so I had went to school up there because I had grown up. Well, actually, let me take a step back. I went to school up there, and I went to school as a pre med major. I got into a medical program, but I actually had no desire to go into medicine.

0:30:14 - (Bishoy Tadros): It was just a program that I got into. And because I didn't have the firmest grasp on what I was going to do, and my parents saw the stability in medicine, they encouraged me to go down that route. But in my heart of hearts, I knew I didn't want to be a doctor. I didn't have an interest in the sciences or biology or any of that. I did a year of that, and my grades were horrible. And then I took matters into my own hands, and I decided to switch my major.

0:30:44 - (Bishoy Tadros): And the reason I did that was because growing up on Long island, especially pre 2008, and this was pre 2008, I started college in 2005. I saw the appeal of working on Wall Street. A lot of my friends parents had Wall street type careers, and I had a meeting that I'll never forget toward the end of my senior year in college with my college career counselor. And I told her, I said, I want to work on Wall street.

0:31:13 - (Bishoy Tadros): And she looked on me and she said, you know, we don't do that here. And I was like, excuse me. And she's like, yeah, like, you know, this school is known for accountants. It's known for teachers. It's known for, you know, other specialties and professions, but we don't really have any outlets to Wall street. And I, you know, to me, it all goes back to anytime I'm told I can't or I won't. It all goes back to that boy in the recovery room around, like, okay, you're saying there are none, but I'm telling you, I'm going to find a way, because I made a promise to myself when I was 13 that whatever obstacles in front of me, I'm going to figure out a way to navigate.

0:31:55 - (Bishoy Tadros): And for context, it's important to share this, because I graduated college in 2009 in the heart of the financial crisis, right? And all I want to do is work in finance in the middle of the financial crisis. And despite the fact that, you know, my school wasn't really graduating Wall street grads, I didn't really take that as a no. I just took that as I need to figure out a way to get there on my own.

0:32:21 - (Bishoy Tadros): And so I remembered my very first accounting class. The way that they positioned accounting was they positioned accounting as, quote, unquote, the language of business. And that really stuck with me because I said to myself, if I can speak the language of business, then I have just enough of a foundation to navigate the business world and get to where I want to go. And so I graduated in May of 2009, and the job market was bleak. I was unemployed.

0:32:54 - (Bishoy Tadros): A couple months went by, and the first job that, you know, came across was an opening for a recruitment agency. Now, this recruitment agency was specialized in placing public accountants. And so I said to myself, all right, this will get me a little bit of income. This is a good way to start. So I took that job. And the good thing about that job is it opened up a world of networking. And in having that job, I ultimately came across someone who knew of a public accounting firm that was hiring, and they were looking for a junior account.

0:33:29 - (Bishoy Tadros): And I said to them, well, I know somebody, and that person was me. And so I gave them my resume, and that person put in a good word for me, and I took that job. Now, mind you, I didn't lose sight of my goal, Kevin. I didn't want to be an accountant. I just wanted to be able to tell a good story. So that way, when I finally got a job interview at a bank on Wall Street, I had a good story to tell. So the day I got that job offer for that accounting firm, I also signed up and started my MBA.

0:34:00 - (Bishoy Tadros): So now I was starting my MBA, and I was starting to work at this accounting firm. And for anyone