OVERVIEW:
In the first part of a 3-part episode, Sofia Shah (CEO, Dynasty Leadership) talks to your host Erik Smith about her origins.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
- Moving to the US from Peru when she was 4 years old, not knowing any English, taught her to acclimate quickly to new environments.
- Health was always a priority in Sofia's household growing up, including a vegetarian diet and playing soccer.
- Sofia always wanted to identify as an athlete because she loved the competition and admired the discipline and eventually became a runner in high school because it was the least expensive sport to participate in.
- She got onto a cross country team in college but had to leave the team due to health issues, but after that in order to keep up her fitness, she started running shorter races and found herself winning.
- Growing up, she had always assumed she would end up working for someone else until she read about Sam Walton founding Walmart and Sam's Club.
- Sofia turned down scholarships to graduate school in order to go into business for herself and tried real estate when she graduated college at age 20, but it didn't stick because of the market crash.
- When the real estate market crashed, she found a stable job at Verizon Wireless, and to distract herself from how much she hated it, she started working out more regularly.
- With her coworker (who later became her husband), they grew their Verizon store to number one in the franchise.
- When Sofia found the financial services business she is now in, she knew immediately that's what she wanted.
KEY POINTS:
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Nobody starts off great at what they do.
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Be open to ending up where you never expected.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
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"The store that we worked at, the Verizon in Irvine, when we both started to really care and work, we brought that store to the top, number one store." –Sofia Shah
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