Leadership Journeys [96] - Brian J Esposito - "Money is a byproduct of good people doing good work."

This is the Leadership Journey series on the Choosing Leadership Podcast.I believe we all have a lot to learn from each other's stories - of where we started, where we are now, and our successes and struggles on the way. With this series of interviews, my attempt is to give leaders an opportunity to share their stories and for all of us to learn from their generous sharing. If you know a leader whom you would like to see celebrated on the show, please send me a message on LinkedIn with their name.In the interview, Brian shares how his world turned upside down when a drunk driver hit him in 2016, and how he turned that into a positive by creating companies that can continue to operate without him. He shares that if he doesn’t feel a connection with somebody at a grounded level, he doesn’t do business with that person.  You can find Brian at the below links https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianjesposito/ https://twitter.com/brianjesposito In the interview, Brian shares I get invited into startups, even up the Fortune 500 companies and help these companies succeed, grow, and become profitable. when I work with these startups, or even failing large corporations, it gets really fun and exciting to look at what am I holding that can make them more valuable So in the late nineties, I built the first B2B B2C eCommerce platform for the beauty. I was first to build a website basically to distribute beauty products and personal care products. I had to quickly learn that life is very difficult and we want to try to do great things sometimes. Whether it's universe or jealous, people want to try to harm you and prohibit that from happening. I learned from that experience, it turned problems into potential opportunities. So anybody that was potentially suing me, like it was a, if it was a brand, for example, or a retailer, well, I was very open and communicative with them.   So I always try to look at problems or negativity and turn in and say there's always a solution or an upside here. when they had a liquidity event or a larger company bought them out, not only did I have no connection to the upside or equity ownership, I also lost the brand and the distribution because those other companies have their own distribution. biggest turbulent time in my history was in 2016, a drunk driver hit me head on and outside of Nashville, Tennessee, I had 30 or so companies in my holdings doing what I felt was quite well and That was the first domino where I began to lose everything. So my whole world turned upside down. I realized I was the glue for everything.  I'm definitely love old movies and old western types of shows, so that's my escape. I do that every night. I'll watch, I'll flip on YouTube and start going through old Johnny Carson shows, and that's my therapy, that's my escape.