From Failing College to Financial CEO: William Bissett on True Leadership and Letting Go

​From Failing College to Financial CEO: William Bissett on True Leadership and Letting Go

William Bissett: One lesson I've learned over the course of the last 10 years is failure creates strength, and that became apparent to me of all places in the gym where I learned that your muscles grow as they fail. But that's not the end, right? And the word... And the other thing I've learned is failure is only upon giving completely up, right?

There's strength is the aspect of growing past hard times. And so it's actually, it's written on the wall in our gym, and if you ask my kids at any point in time what do they know about failure, they'll tell you that failure creates strength because we say it a thousand times in our household.

Don't give up. Giving up creates the failure. Strength comes from those hard, challenging moments in life.

Welcome to the Remarkable People Podcast!: The Remarkable People Podcast. Check it out.[00:01:00]

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The Remarkable People Podcast

David Pasqualone: Hello, friend. Welcome to this week's episode of the Remarkable People Podcast. Today, whether you're in Asia, North America, or Antarctica, we have the first time I can remember in nine years where we have a brother of a previous guest. So today, William, welcome to the show.

William Bissett: Oh, man, Bo was a guest, too. Thanks for having me on, David.

David Pasqualone: Yes. Today, ladies and gentlemen, we have William Bissett with us, and in the past we had his brother, Bo. They're two separate men, two separate stories, both fantastic. Check 'em out. But William, today we have listeners around the world tuning [00:02:00] in.

This may be their first time, or they're a serial friend and listener. But for whoever is listening, they're going to spend the next few minutes with us, and they're going to hear your story and what you were able to achieve or overcome. If they commit to staying with us, what do you commit that they will absolutely get and be able to take from your story, apply to their lives, and have a better existence?

William Bissett: Oh, man, that's a great question. Look, one thing I'll commit is raw truth, right? I'll admit the failures I've made and the systems and processes I've developed to help myself overcome 'em and get past 'em and to grow as an individual, right? So absolutely.

David Pasqualone: Awesome. I- truth, I think every area of life, either you're right and I'm wrong, I'm right and you're wrong, or we're both wrong and we need to seek truth.

So I'm down with truth always. And then we find, I believe the source of all truth is God and the Bible, and our listeners, whether [00:03:00] you believe that or not, you're about to hear William's story and what he sees as truth, and how he took obstacles in his way and used those systems and processes to overcome and succeed.

So we're going to take a very short commercial break and be right back with William Bissett

​

Speaker: After switching to Hunter's Blend coffee, people often tell us, "Hey, I don't use coffee creamer anymore." Well, that comes as no surprise because coffee creamer is used to cover up the crummy taste of crappy coffee. In Hunter's Blend, there's no crappy coffee. So people want to know, "Well, what do I do with all that leftover crappy coffee-covering coffee creamer?"

Well, there's all kinds of practical uses for that leftover coffee creamer. But our favorite? We built this creamer cannon powered by a big old tank packed with 135 PSI of compressed air. First, you want to fill the barrel of your cannon all the way to the top with that coffee creamer. Then, light a road [00:04:00] flare.

and give it the send-off we think it deserves​

David Pasqualone: Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. William, let's hear your story, brother. Where were you born? What was your upbringing like? Good, bad, ugly pretty ugly. Share with us what made you the man you are today.

William Bissett: Yeah, absolutely. William Bissetttte, I live in Charlotte, North Carolina these days. Not far from where I was born. I was born in a little town in eastern North Carolina called Kinston. And I'm the youngest of two. And when I was five years old, David, we picked up and we moved right down the road to New Bern, North Carolina, which is for those of those that are interested in the history, it's the first capital of the great state of North [00:05:00] Carolina.

I believe the capital as a colony was Bath. And when we formed as a state, we moved to New Bern, and then as all the other states were moving their capitals inland, we moved ours from New Bern to Raleigh in the 1800s. So anyways, neat little town right there on two rivers. Oftentimes here referred to as the Twin Rivers.

But we moved there when I was five. It's actually the first re- first memory I remember as a kid. I guess it's not the best first memory. But I remember watching from my bedroom out the front window of my house in Kinston so I was five years old watching the real estate agent put the sign in the front yard, right?

And there we are. We're off and moving down the road. And back then it was 15 minutes down the road, which as a kid is a lifetime away when you're used to playing with all of your friends that lived in the same neighborhood as you, right? So we moved to New Bern. Things went fairly well. I was a fairly normal kid.

Played I played soccer, I played basketball, I played golf. My dad coached me in everything I did, I [00:06:00] think. T-ball I remember T-ball too. Coach pitch, played all the way through coach pitch, and then for those of those out there like me, I was... I had a friend of mine who was a year older that had his jaw broken by a kid throwing a fastball.

He was leaned too far over the plate, and he had to drink out of a straw for, what, six or eight weeks, and I was like, "Man, there's no way in hell I'm playing kid pitch baseball." So I dropped baseball and switched over to soccer and golf and basketball. But when I was in I was in fourth grade I remember after Christmas, my parents sat me and my brother down and let us know that they were going to separate.

And, I remember Bo, your previous guest running out of the house and me sitting there stunned by everything that was going on. Parents got divorced and like most parents probably back then, David, I don't know. It seems like most parents I knew things started off all shiny and happy.

We had dinner tonight that first night together. And then after that, no more dinners together and nothing but [00:07:00] bickering back and forth amongst the parents. So we spent ti- spent time living in between the two right? Sunday, Monday, Tuesday we're at mom's house. Wednesday afternoon we'd pack up in a bag and go over to my dad's house.

Stay Wednesday, Thursday with my dad, and then we'd alternate weekends. So but so I basically learned to live out of a suitcase. I don't know if, It's funny, we go on vacations these days with my wife, and we'll go somewhere for four days, and she'll unpack her suitcase and put everything away in the drawers.

It's "What are you doing that for?" She's "I don't want to live out of a suitcase." It's I did this for my entire life," right? "I'll live out of a suitcase forever if I need to." But yeah, it's- That's

David Pasqualone: funny you mention that. I actually was just having this conversation a couple weeks ago.

I'm 49, and I can't remember one time... I think maybe one time in a hotel I actually used the drawer, just because I was like, "I've never done it." Yeah. But it felt so wrong, right? Yeah. Living out of a suitcase is kinda how we grew up,

William Bissett: yeah. [00:08:00] It's funny, for the first time in, s- you overcome things later in life, David.

And we were at the beach. I was telling you beforehand, we were at the beach with my in-laws this past week. We were there for a week. We got there Saturday, left on Saturday. And for the first time ever, when we got there on Saturday, I unpacked everything and put it away in drawers. And it took a little while for it to kinda hit me and say, "Wait a second, that's...

I've never done that on my own." So- Okay ... small growing steps, right?

David Pasqualone: Yeah, and it is. It shows processing, whether it's conscious or subconscious. You're moving through stuff, so that's awesome.

William Bissett: Yeah. I-

David Pasqualone: All right. I didn't mean to cut you off, but I know a lot of- Yeah ... our listeners connect with that.

They don't even... I can remember months living out of a suitcase and doing laundry and putting it right back in the suitcase.

William Bissett: Yeah, and you... I don't think about it any differently, 'cause that was my life from third grade through 12th grade, right? And then so nowadays when I do something for a short period of time, it's not even really anything other than second nature.

And that's so much of who we are, right? You're 49. I'm [00:09:00] 40... I'll I'll be a year behind you here shortly. I'll be 48 in the not too distant future. We do things out of habit, and it just sticks with us, and that doesn't necessarily make it right or wrong. It just means that's the way that we're accustomed to doing something.

But when you think about that, in so many ways, that habit that we formed it takes conscience-breaking. And I think, a little bit as a business owner, that's something that I've had to come to grips with is I can't do something just because it's always been done that way. And so I've kinda come to grips with that some over the course of the last couple years as I've tried to figure out how to grow this business and live with some of my own demons that I have from from growing up, right?

But anyway. So yeah, no, is that... I don't know, David. I can tell you horror stories forever. I remember, so I was going through school my mom wanted to send me to a small private school in sixth grade that was down the road, believe it or not, back home in the little town that I was born in Kinston, North Carolina.

We couldn't afford it, so they gave me a scholarship for sports. I played [00:10:00] basketball and soccer and golf for their different teams. It's a 50-minute ride on the bus every s- every day on the way to school, and a 50-minute ride on the bus every day on the way home. I remember still, if you got in trouble back then on the bus, these the bus driver was a guy by the name of Mr.

Tom, and Mr. Tom was a, was an old Marine, and if you got in trouble, he made you sit at the he made you sit at the front of the bus. And right from the time you got called until we got home on a piece of paper, "I did not shoot the rabbit." And so I don't know how many times I wrote the stupid sentence, "I did not shoot the rabbit," but it was a lot over my childhood.

But middle school for me sucked. I was out of place, right? Everybody knew I didn't fit. I wasn't one of the kids that was paying. So I had glasses. I had braces. I was scrawny. And so I got picked on a lot in seventh grade and eighth grade. All kinds of names called, right?

Was tough for me. Fortunately I found two good friends and then a third good friend came along not too long after that. So [00:11:00] I had that to fall back on. And one of those friends actually two of those friends are still absolute best friends today. I spent the weekend with one of them. And I remember in sixth grade, he got, I got a phone call from him and he asked me if I could come over and eat dinner. And I was like, "Yeah, I'm happy to come over and eat dinner." So I got over there and his parents had just told him that they were getting a divorce. And so he and I had that kinda tight connection, right? And so as a result, him and I ended up living a life of rebellion from the time we were in sixth grade to 12th grade.

So we did things that most people probably wouldn't do through those time periods. But so yeah, no, I had my I had my outlet and, I had my older brother who I had a pretty good relationship at that point in time with as well. And decent relationships with parents.

My dad ended up getting remarried. I would never forget. I... You learn more about your parents as you get older David? And I was in ninth grade, and I'd gone [00:12:00] to school. I was playing on the basketball team, right? I was the point guard. Scrawny little point guard. I was telling somebody the other day when I played point guard, I always wore a shirt underneath my jersey because I didn't have big enough biceps to fill it out right.

It was a Friday afternoon, or I guess it was a Friday morning. I get a phone call that my dad or I got a... they... y- remember the old PA systems when you're in trouble with the principal's office and they called you down to the office?

David Pasqualone: Yep.

William Bissett: I got a phone call down there. It was like, "You're, William, come to the office.

You've got a phone call from your dad." I was like, "Oh, God, what's wrong?" So I got a phone call. I went down to the principal's office and my dad was calling me to tell me that he was going to get married that night and that he'd like for me to come home and go to the wedding at Christ Episcopal Church, and maybe six hours ahead of the wedding.

And that's when I learned that my dad didn't like confrontation and didn't know how I was going to respond to it, so he waited till the last possible minute to tell me. And- Yeah, you're

David Pasqualone: not kidding. Six hours pulling you out of school, that's last minute ...

William Bissett: so I told Dad I wasn't coming, that [00:13:00] I was the point guard for the basketball team and I was going to the basketball game instead.

And so I went to the basketball game had a great game. So anyways we won. I don't know if that r- is really relevant or not, but I do remember that we won, and the funny thing is that we actually played in Henderson, North Carolina that night, which is where my dad was born and raised.

I found it ironic that we won the game in the, his hometown when I was skipping out on his wedding. So it was, When you were

David Pasqualone: playing that night, were you able to just shut it out, or was it almost like vengeance like mad at your dad, so you took it on the other team?

William Bissett: Yeah.

No, it was more of a tune-out than it was anything else, right? Like I, I didn't want to deal with anything. I ran from a lot of things in life, David. And anytime something like that came across, I was always able to to tune things out, and maybe as a result of tuning it out, be a little bit more hyper-focused than I would've been otherwise.

Not just tune that out, just tune out all things. And so yeah, no, that's that was the first time I realized that [00:14:00] confrontation was not my dad's strength. And as a matter of fact, it ended up being his downfall. So that's a fair amount of people now know my dad died in bankruptcy and one of the reasons he died there is because of his f- inability to confront difficult- situations head on.

So anyways, so I don't know how long you want me to go, David. I can keep going- Oh,

David Pasqualone: no. We're not... You just tell your story, and it doesn't have to go deep, or it can go very deep in your childhood. You just feel what you share. You share what you feel is relevant and what's on your heart, man.

William Bissett: Yeah.

David Pasqualone: So because everybody goes through some form of struggle, and I'm sure that the model of your dad not facing confrontation, that had to be carried through or at least probably something that you had to recognize.

Because normally if people have a parent that avoids confrontation, they either model that behavior or the polar [00:15:00] opposite, but either way it needs to be balanced out. So all the things you're sharing I'm sure come into the story down the road.

William Bissett: Yeah. No. So yeah, f- from that point on gosh knows, David, I was a kid in East North Carolina.

East North Carolina back then, probably everybody smoked. So not long, actually prior to that, I think it was ninth grade, first started smoking cigars because I always told myself that if you didn't inhale that it was okay, you wouldn't become addicted. And then somebody stuck a cigarette in my hand, and I was like, "Man, this is a lot easier than a cigar."

Started smoking and drinking at a young age. Middle school carried through for a while. Learned to have fun on the weekends, party on the weekends, we were good, though. It was strange. I'm not sure if everybody else was as good as we were in, in high school, but we were always really good at making sure that one of our friends wasn't driving, right? And we always took turns, or one of our friends was driving, right?

There was a sober driver everywhere we went. And I don't know how that came about being. I don't know if our parents grounded into [00:16:00] us or what, but we did. And we had a couple outlets. Again, in Eastern North Carolina, there's a lot of empty fields that you could go to where, there'd be parties in fields and parties at, pe- somebody's hunting camp or anything else.

So partying was a way of life for me for a long time. Me and my buddy Emmett and a couple other friends. And and then when I was in so sophomore in high school I had my buddy Mike over and my dad had moved into a four-story condo with his wife, and he had two... She had two kids, too.

But they converted the garage into mine and my brother's and my stepbrother's room. And so they laid a carpet down there, they put a bathroom and shower and all that stuff down there. And then we had a TV and Nintendo, right? Nintendo and Sega? Yep. I think 'cause, again, we're back in the '90s. So Nintendo and Sega.

David Pasqualone: Duck Hunt and Mario Brothers ... Mike.

William Bissett: Yeah. I love Mario Brothers. We used to play that and we'd come home from bars in college and we'd play Mario Brothers, [00:17:00] and the whole point of the game was to see how fast you could get through it. So it was awesome. It's an awesome game. But anyway my buddy Mike had come over that night.

We were downstairs drinking playing Nintendo or whatever it was that night, and I remember my stepmom came downstairs that morning at 7:30, 8 o'clock in the morning, and told me my brother had been in an accident and that he was in the hospital ECU and my dad had already gone over there.

And that he was alive, but they weren't sure how well he was. And so my mom came and picked me up and we rode down to Greenville, which was about an hour drive away, not really knowing what was going on. And we get there, and we got into the, It wasn't the emergency room, I guess intensive care or whatever it was, post-surgery or whatever.

And they'd already done surgery on Bo. Bo had wrapped his car around a telephone pole. He was going 97 miles an hour coming from Greenville. He got mad at somebody at a bar and was coming home as a [00:18:00] result of being mad and drunk, I think he blew a 108 or a 109 wrapped his car around a telephone pole going I think it was 97 not wearing a seatbelt.

The only reason he made it is it as a result, it threw him into the only part of the car that didn't get compacted. And so he landed in that spot of the car. And he broke all kinds of things, and I remember he broke br- both of his, the top part of his legs. Is that the femur? Is that right?

The femur is the top part, right?

David Pasqualone: I believe so, yeah

William Bissett: And-

David Pasqualone: Which is incredibly hard to break. That's a solid bone.

William Bissett: Yeah. And so they had put him in tractions. They had weights at the end of the end of the bed to pull his legs back apart so that they weren't cracked on top of each other, and so they'd weighted it down, and I walked in, and he was covered in that yellow, yellowish stuff that they use as an antibiotic, right?

So he had blood still on him. They cleaned some, but not all. He was covered in [00:19:00] that. He was in traction. And I remember walking in and my mom goes over there to give him a hug and kiss, and she's crying, and my dad's sitting there, didn't sleep much at all that night. And the only thing I could do, I would turn around and went back to the bathroom in the emergency room and puked my brains out because, A, I drank the night before, and B, seeing all that blood and gore and everything I was n- I was not well.

Anyways, that happened to him twice, right? He had that. He got run over ended up missing that fall semester and, And then four years later, he got run over when he was coming home from work on a skateboard and basically had to repeat everything he'd just gone through all over again.

So watching your brother go through that's pretty tough, right? And it was impactful as well. I'd like to say I learned lessons from it and I stopped drinking. I didn't. If anything, I probably went the opposite direction and just drank harder as I got through high school and into college. But I was decent enough in school.

I was a pretty good little soccer player and decent enough at basketball [00:20:00] and golf to continue going to my private school. Somewhere along the way, I remember I had a game in middle school. I was, Forget what team we were playing, but a lot of the kids from the football team and from the rest of the school were out there.

And I started to gain confidence in seventh grade and eighth grade on the soccer field, David. And one day we were playing against one team, and I can't remember who it was, but I got the ball on the backs on our defensive side and I just started dribbling. And I don't know. I dribbled through seven or eight of players on their team went down and scored and the whole sideline went nuts.

And I guess that was probably eighth grade. And as a result, I slowly started to get some of the people to stop poking fun at me. So I realized that if you were good on the sports field, that whether or not they liked you or didn't like you, they'd at least leave you alone. And so I became a pretty good little soccer player as a result.

Went from left back to [00:21:00] center midfielder to striker over the course of my career. Led the goal in-- school in goals scored won all conference and all those different things. So I slowly got people to stop picking on me because I was good enough at sports that they left me alone. But I was still an outcast, right?

I remember there'd be days where I'd wear all black just to be different and not be part of the crowd. I was the only, I was the only kid in my school that didn't have a car when they turned 16. So I needed somewhat other way to stick out. So

While that school was good for me in many ways one of the things it did is it, over life I slowly realized that, I wanted to be successful in my own right so that people wouldn't pick on me and to prove people that I could be what I wasn't. And it's a crappy thing to say that proven success makes you somebody but as [00:22:00] I went through life, that was certainly something I was going for, right?

And now I've I said this, I was speaking at a conference not long ago, and it's hard to keep going back and forth between present day and post-day. I was speaking at a conference not long ago, and I was talking about, I was telling the story about my dad dying in bankruptcy and how I built my team around me to hide my inefficiencies, right?

Hide my weak points. In essence, I built my team out of fear. And I asked the audience, I was like, "Who else around here, operates out of fear?" And half the room raised their hand, and the other half of the room didn't raise their hand. And I left that conference, and I was thinking about it.

I was like, man, I was like, why didn't the other half of the room raise their hand? And it took me a little while to realize that you can move from a place of fear to a place of [00:23:00] confidence and success. But I'm forty-seven years old, and I realized that at forty-seven that it doesn't have to be bu-built out of fear that you can build it out of a place of abundance instead.

And that's not something that I ever really understood or gravitated towards until six months ago. Again my brother, he was off at ECU. My dad played golf at ECU. My-- everybody in my school was going to Carolina UNC, Chapel Hill, whatever you want to call it. And as you probably can guess by now, everybody in my school was going to Chapel Hill.

The last place in hell I wanted to go was Chapel Hill. So I had a couple friends from my hometown that were going down the road to NC State, and I was like, "I'm not going to ECU to be with my brother 'cause I know exactly what path I'll follow if I go to ECU. I'm not going to Chapel Hill 'cause I'm not going to be an outcast all over again.

So off I go to NC State." It's the only school I applied to. So fortunately, they accepted me. Went there and bailed [00:24:00] out after two years. I hated class. I ha- I don't like people telling me what to do, and so telling me how to learn or what to do or how to do it was never what we would say is a strong suit of mine, right?

So apparently after doing that for two years you don't do very well in school if you don't do what you're told to do. In middle school, I was smart enough to get around it. In high school I stu- or in high school I was smart enough to get around it. I could not do homework and still get an A in the class, right?

In college they'll eventually start to fail you for that. I did that so which wasn't the smartest decis-decision I've ever made. Went home and worked that summer with my mom. I was I was at a golf course weed eating, mowing grass, doing all kinds of different things, and that was the summertime in Eastern North Carolina.

You're in Florida. We're not quite as hot and humid as you are in the summertime, but working for $7.25 an hour on a golf course made me realize that's not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, right? So my aunt and uncle lived up in DC, so I went and then lived with them, and I worked for a catering company [00:25:00] And I actually ended up working with two different catering companies, which was great because they paid twenty or twenty-two dollars an hour, which was much better than seven twenty-five an hour, right?

But you'd have to get there at two o'clock in the afternoon. You'd set up you... But the cool thing is we got to do it at museums all over DC, right? Like we, And so I, being halfway intelligent, would show up to the museums around eleven o'clock go tour the museums grab a quick bite to eat, and then go set up.

And doing that, I kept starting to run across people that at the time I didn't know who they were, and I slowly figured out who it was. Alan Greenspan, who was the federal chair- Federal Reserve chair that just passed away, was one of them. Colin Powell was another one. And so I started seeing them and other popular people around DC, and I was like wait a second.

This is a much easier way to live life than making seven twenty-five an hour weed eating and mowing grass." I was like, "What do I need to do?" And I was like shoot, I need to go back to school." So Alan Greenspan [00:26:00] had just written his book, so I read his book on and decided I was going to go back and study economics.

So I went to NC State and I said, "Look, y'all kicked me out. What do I need to do to get back in?" And they said, "You've got to prove that you're willing to do it." I was like, "All right, what do I need to do?" They said, "Take classes at a community college and send us your transcript." They said, "But you better get all A's."

So I did. I took accounting, economics, business, marketing, and something else finance and got my transcript, ran it back down to NC State and said, "I want to come into the economics program at NC State." They said, "We won't let you back into the economics program. We'll let you back into the school and we'll ask that you take a full course load of economics courses, and if you can get a three five or better, we'll let you stick around, and if you can't, we'll send you back home."

So naturally, I got a three seven or three eight or something like that semester and got back in, finished my degree at NC State graduated despite the fact that I did really well that semester. David, my dad, was always bragging about his low GPA graduating from sch- from college, and so I [00:27:00] went back to my old ways.

I barely missed. I think my dad finished with a two oh three. I finished with a two oh eight. So I was trying to catch him and I couldn't. Fortunately, I was able to catch him in a couple other areas in life. But anyways finished school with a very poor economics GPA in the middle of the two thousand and two recession, and so I went and sold life insurance with a company called AXA Advisors in Charleston, South Carolina.

My girlfriend, now wife, had moved down there, so I followed her down there.

And unfortunately, was good enough at selling life insurance that I was able to stick there for 18 months. I moved over to Morgan Stanley, and I was with Morgan Stanley for six months or so. The first week I was there we were in the big training room. There was probably 10 or 12 new guys in the training room where we dialed for dollars, and the first day I was there, the guy came in and did a lunch and learn.

It wasn't the first day, it was the first week I was there. Came in and did a lunch and learn, and they taught us how to [00:28:00] sell jumbo loan mortgages, right? So this was January of 2004, and I'm sitting there listening to this guy teach me how to sell jumbo loan mortgages, and I'm like, "Man, this sucks. This is exactly like selling a stinking life insurance policy to...

or an annuity that somebody doesn't want. I'm convincing them why it's good for them."

David Pasqualone: Yeah, and I just want to interject real quick. In America, ladies and gentlemen, for our international audience- Sure ... 2004 was building to a heyday of real estate where people were signing all sorts of mortgages and loans, no qualifications, flipping it, and then in 2007, '8, and '9, the bubble popped and we had real issues.

So they were grooming you to cause the issue, right?

William Bissett: Yep, 100%. So yeah . Yeah.

David Pasqualone: I'm not blaming you, I'm just saying.

William Bissett: Yeah.

David Pasqualone: I remember having friends who were writing loans and they're like, "We know it's not going to go through, but nobody cares. They're telling us to commit fraud so they can make more money."

William Bissett: Yeah.

No, the guy was [00:29:00] out of the guy was out, out of the Atlanta office and they were telling us that people were buying them and so we needed to sell them. And this is how you sell them. And then they gave us back the phone book and told us to call that afternoon and start selling jumbo loan mortgages.

And I was like, "Man, this... I don't want this," right? I don't want to sell something. I want, I want to help people. I want to, I want to help people understand their finances more. And so I found this financial planning firm up in DC that was looking for a young planning associate. My wife was with Black & Decker at that point in time.

She actually wanted to move up to the Baltimore area 'cause Black & Decker's headquarters was there, and she was driving around a little yellow DeWalt truck selling end caps into Lowe's Lowe's stores across South Carolina. So she wanted to go work in the actual marketing department of Black & Decker, which was really cool for her because she ended up being able to work on the relaunch of the Dustbuster in 2007 which is a cool thing to be able to tell anybody, right?

That you helped- Yeah ... relaunch the Dustbuster. So [00:30:00] I found that firm. We moved up there. I worked for probably one of the s- smartest people I ever meet who's grown into being a leader in my industry, the financial planning wealth management industry, when he was just getting up and going. So I was able to learn from one of the smartest people I ever knew, and somebody who's probably one of the smartest people in our industry.

So he helped propel me forward really quickly. And I remember too, I hadn't been there. I was probably there for two years or so, David. It's funny how you remember Things that kind of change your life or change your perception. And I'll circle back around to my ex-advisors boss in a second.

But one of the partners in the firm I was with was shooting the breeze with me one day, and he said, "You know how some people, William, meet their wife on their first date that they ever have?" I was like yeah." He's I feel bad for those folks because they never really have a chance to understand what other relationships are like and blah, blah, blah."

He's "But I feel like you're in that similar stance." He's like, [00:31:00] "This is probably the best you'll ever have." And I was like, I was like-

David Pasqualone: That's a motivating conversation.

William Bissett: Yeah. So K- Ken didn't think I was worth much. And but anyways I had growth opportunity there. So when I was there, my first couple of years that I was there, David we ended up...

We wrote or typed out a lot of financial plans. So we typed probably 150 to 175 financial plans where I covered cash flow, taxes, retirement projections, insurance, estate planning, and all kinds of different things. And so each one of those was a new learning experience, right? There are little nuances. And then again, I was submitting all my work to one of the smartest people I ever know and one of the smartest people in my industries.

And so he was giving me feedback, and all of that feedback was just nothing but teaching. So I got to do that, and then I got to go work with one of the partners for two years. We moved back to, from Baltimore to Charlotte in 2011. In 2012, I had a software-as-a-service startup idea.

It was called Principled Heart. I'd learned that a lot of our clients had [00:32:00] estate documents drafted, right? We told them to have estate documents drafted. They had revocable trust, they had trust for their kids, they had, all these different trust. And a client of mine was getting his estate documents done one day, and I was walking out of the office with him after he signed them, and he said, "Now what?"

I said you put them on the shelf, and we get them down and we dust them off, just like you've done for the last, 50 years, Bill." He said, "I can't do that anymore." He's "I'm, in my early 80s. I have a special needs daughter here. I've got a daughter in Montana and a daughter in California.

My wife doesn't have any idea what's going on." He's "I need to tell my family how to operate my life when I'm no longer here." And I was like, "That's a really good point. I don't know what you're talking about, but I'll figure it out." So I created a 24-tab spreadsheet. I sent it over to him, and he said, "William, this looks great, but where's all the information?"

He didn't realize that spreadsheets had tabs. All he saw was the summary tab. And so I was like s- so maybe a spreadsheet's not the best [00:33:00] solution." So I turned it into a fillable PDF. A fillable PDF becomes cumbersome, right? Because you have to create extra pages for life insurance policies that might not exist or anything else.

And so I went to my wife and I was like, "Katie, I've got this wonderful idea. I need to spend some of our money to see if I can't develop this into a software." And so we developed it into a software. I hired a team out of Raleigh, North Carolina to do it. We developed the software. All of the while they were developing the software, I realized that the industry didn't know much about this, so I needed to write about it to inform it.

So I wrote seven peer review journal articles. I've never written a peer review journal article prior to that, David. I don't know if you have or not, but I don't advise it for folks that don't like in-depth- ... intense writing. But as a result of that, I got picked up as an expert, and New York Times called me one day and said, "Hey, we're doing an article on estate planning and what happens when you're no longer here.

We'd like to feature your company alongside two other companies." And so [00:34:00] fortunately, we'd launched the software at that point in time. And so it went live on Saturday, and I remember I got something like 1,500 signups that day, and I was all pumped. But unfortunately, most of those signups were on the 30-day free schedule.

And as that 30-day free schedule ran out most of them fell off, right? I think we're like 50 or 75 after that, and we kept losing some on a regular basis. And I realized that we needed to keep priming that machine. Rather, we had to keep pumping out Content and ways to get in front of people to keep that sign-up engine going.

And all the while, I was still working as a financial planner for that firm. And so after three years, I finally shut it down. Learned a boatload, but I had to make a decision, David. I had to make a decision whether or not I wanted to run what I thought was... At that point in time, I thought the sky, the limit of that business was probably a five to ten million dollar revenue business, [00:35:00] but it was going to require hiring a software team, a product team, and running it as that style of business.

And I asked myself, is, am I... Is that my better role or am I a better role as a financial planner? And so I made the decision that my better role was a financial planner. And so I shut it down. About that same time I stumbled into an article locally about the local angel fund. So I went to an angel fund meeting learned all about angel investing, ended up joining the local angel fund which for your audience out there, angel groups are awesome groups to become a part of.

They're not high capital commitments. Usually, most of them are twenty-five to fifty thousand dollar of capital commitments. You join a group, you go meet monthly. It's an awesome way to see the future support the local economy and meet other interesting business owners, which mostly it is business owners around town.

And so I did that. So I've been a member of Charlotte Angel Fund one, two, and three for the last ten years, I guess eleven years at this point in [00:36:00] time. Launched a podcast in two thousand and seventeen because I was tired of the same 30 middle-aged to old white men standing in a room talking about investments that they didn't know anything about.

And the guy that runs the Charlotte Angel Fund said that nobody here in town understood what angel investing was, and that every time he met with somebody, he got the nice, polite Southern no which was "Yeah, this sounds great. I'll be in touch." And then they never follow back up with him or answer any of his phone calls.

And so I launched the podcast as a way to educate people about what angel investing was, what local startups were doing. And I don't know if it worked or if it's just time worked out in its favor, but that angel fund now probably has a hundred and fifty to two hundred members in it. And so in some way, shape, or form, the startup community here in Charlotte's gotten, fairly strong it was that same time I left the firm out of Baltimore.

I'd been told numerous times that they'd set up an office here in Charlotte, [00:37:00] and after four years of being told that after we'd left Baltimore and moved to Charlotte, I finally realized that finding a local firm with a presence here was my better route. So I went that route. I stayed with that guy for three years.

He said after two or three years, we'd sit down to have a partnership conversation, and I'd grown to be about 40 to 45% of the revenue of that company in three and a half short years. And we sat down to have a partnership conversation, and the offer was 5%. Damn. And so I called my old partner from the firm I was with in Baltimore, and I told him.

I said, "Hey, look, A, congratulations. It's, a great opportunity to go join a firm." He's but the reality is it doesn't make sense for him, right? He- he can't give you more than, five to 10% of his business. It's just, it's not going to work out that way for him, and you can't accept five to 10% of the business when you've grown as fast as you have and have the trajectory that you have.

He's "You just earned yourself your own [00:38:00] company." So on January 3rd, 2019, we filed the LLC paperwork to start Portus Wealth Advisors, which is odd because when I went in and quit at AXA Advisors in January of 2004, 15 years previously my boss at AXA, Troy Ballentine, or was it Barrinton?

I think it was Troy Barrinton. He said, "Go wherever you want to, but I can tell you that one day you're going to have your own firm." And I never really thought about it much after leaving his office that he said that. But upon filing the paperwork and on multiple occasions since, and probably multiple occasions before that I realized that that he was right.

And so I filed the f- paperwork. Fast-forward seven years, we're six employees. We'll add a seventh employee this year. We've continued to grow 30% year over year and it's been a struggle the entire time. And I think a little bit of it has been a struggle because I'll go back to what I said earlier.

Up [00:39:00] until recently I built out of fear rather than out of abundance. And we're slowly changing that around a little bit. But that's a somewhat long winding road of how I got to where I am. Certainly struggles numerous struggles besides that, right? My biggest struggle I think was, It was mentally for a long time really not accepting the fact that I failed out of school.

That's a hard one to come to grips with. I still... I think it was two weeks ago, David, I still had that dream that a lot of people have when they get out of school, that they get the phone call saying they didn't complete some paperwork or something like that. I still get the dream from time to time that NC State calls me back and tells me that I didn't actually finish school and that I need to come back in and do one more credit or some crap like that.

Two weeks ago what is that? Twenty-five years later I'm still having that recurring. So that that one hurts. And the struggles of my parents, right? We didn't grow up in a wealthy family. My mom sold cars. God, my mom did everything, man, just to try to hold it together, [00:40:00] right?

She sold cars. She worked at a paint store. She sold real estate. She tried a couple different independent sales roles anything to hold it together. Fortunately, she hit her ground running sometime after 2008, 2009. She went back into real estate and has had a, a good run at it since.

But she struggled for a long time. And the dad was the same way. That accident, my dad, didn't have car-- didn't have health insurance on my brother on that car insurance. And he had medical bills stacked up forever and again, he filed his first bankruptcy, I think, in 2008 or 2009.

In 2012 or 2013, he came to me one day and he said, "Son, I need to use your credit card for some things for a little while. Are you okay with it?" And I was like, "Yeah, here's my credit card." So he used my credit card. He ended up putting his car payment on there and, I don't know, probably $2,500 a month of other expenses on my credit card.

And after about four months, I was like, "Dad," I was like, I can't do this, right? That's $2,500 a [00:41:00] month." We just had a kid. We just moved. And I was like, you can't keep putting all this stuff. You've got to figure out something else." And he's "I don't have anything else."

I was like I'm sorry. I can't do it." I hadn't realized... A, I didn't realize until much later that he filed bankruptcy in 2008, and I certainly didn't know he was on the verge of filing bankruptcy again in 2012. And so we took him off the credit card, and a month later they came and repo'd my stepmom's Ford Expedition.

And so that one was a tough one to live with that was my-- it wasn't my decision, right? It was his place that he was in that had the car repo'd, but me taking the credit card away from him ultimately ended up leading to another bankruptcy. And then when he had triple heart surgery, bypass surgery in two thousand and seventeen and he couldn't afford to miss work, so he was out for two or three weeks and went straight back.

He was doing taxes at that point in time. And so he had surgery in February, and that's the heart of tax season, right? So he was back at his [00:42:00] desk in the second or third week of March and never really recovered from it. Ended up back in the hospital in January two thousand and eighteen and ended up having a hole is in his intestine.

They did an emergency eight-hour surgery to fi- try to fix it. He came out of it for about a week. I think they did surgery on Saturday, and I went down to see him on Monday. And it was one of those things with with Dad. I got there, and he was asleep when I got there, and nobody else was in my-- in his room.

My stepmom wasn't there, my little sister weren't there. They'd gone somewhere to do something. And he came to, and he looked at me, and he didn't say, "Hey." He didn't say, "I love you." He didn't say, "Thanks for coming to see me." He didn't say anything else. He said, "My property tax is three weeks behind and I need it paid so they won't put a lien on the house."

He's "Can you go pay the property tax?" So I left his hospital room with my checkbook and went down to the property tax [00:43:00] office and paid his property taxes. He slipped in- So he was

David Pasqualone: under constant extreme mental and stress from the finances.

William Bissett: Yeah. I man, I think I think Dad gave up. So I do.

I think I think knowing that he had to come out of it again I don't think he had the energy or desire to do it all over again. Knowing that he was still in the midst of bankruptcy and what the uphill climb was I think he ultimately rolled over, and a week later, he passed away. I got down there long enough.

I had to-- I was the president of my homeowners association, so we had a meeting on that Sunday. Afternoon, I ran that meeting. I came home, and my wife told me, she's "You've got to get home." She's "Your dad's slipping and he's not going to make it." So anyways made it home. Got a chance to sit by him at the hospital room, he was gone at that point in time already.

You could tell his body was already cold, right? Like he was on his way out. And so anyways, he didn't make it through the night. I'd lost touch with my brother at some point along [00:44:00] the way, I guess back in 2014, 2015. I'm not sure exactly what happened. But so I didn't really, I didn't have any...

I had my wife, who was super helpful, but I didn't have my brother who we'd gone through a lot of that childhood emotional parents divorce, yelling at each other all the time types of stuff together. I didn't have that. Bo came back in the picture 2023, 2022. So still struggled financially and everything else.

He tried to do a lot of stuff. He tried to hit a lot of home runs, and that hadn't worked out. And he came home and as, he's posted on social media, tried to take his own life right after Thanksgiving of 2024. And fortunately has come through that and emotionally and professionally is on very solid, steady ground right now which has been...

that's like you get to see your kids. So I've got two kids. I've got a 16-year-old son and a and a 13-year-old daughter, and you get to see your kids [00:45:00] grow up and who they become, and we're slowly starting to see who they're becoming, right? It takes them a while to hit maturation and understand that they actually hold intellectually intelligent conversations with people and stuff like that.

It's "Hey, wait a second. We helped create that," right? That's really cool. But that stuff's really cool. It's also been really cool to see my brother over the course of the last two years in a professional world be who you knew he could be all along. So I don't know. That's a little bit about where I came from and a little bit about where I am.

David Pasqualone: Absolutely, and anybody who's started a business knows that your home life and your past bleeds into today. So we're not trying to dwell on the past, but we're trying to learn from it and help each other. Now, we talked about at the beginning, and actually I want to add this in. Everybody, we joke about it, but if it was easy, everybody would be doing it.

To start a business and have seven employees, that's an accomplishment. It takes a lot to keep going and supply seven other families with income, not just [00:46:00] yourself. So you talked about at the beginning of the episode systems and processes. What were some of the obstacles you faced, William, and what were some of the solutions, the systems and processes you put in place to overcome those obstacles?

William Bissett: Yeah. For a while David, it's brute force determination. And I don't, I think a fair amount of me has always thought that you had to do it on your own. I don't know why that... I always thought that people became successful because they were smart or determined. And I've since read, a lot of the audience has probably read a couple books of the song same song, right?

Which is "10X is Easier Than 2X," which is a great book. "Who Not How," which is another great book. And somewhere along the way, I remember when I left Pinnacle, which was the firm I was with up in Baltimore in 2015 my [00:47:00] longtime assistant left not long after me and, But she stayed in contact.

She and her husband actually became clients of mine about a year later. And when she became a client, she said, "Hey, look, when you start your own firm, I want to be your first hire." And I was like, "Hey, that's really cool." And so yet another person somewhere along the way telling me I was going to start my own firm, right?

And so when my partner here in town made the five percent offer to me I called Katie and told her first my wife. I called Dwight soon thereafter. But I called Jill second. Dwight was my old boss, the one that told me, I had to start my own firm. But I called Jill second.

I already knew it, what Dwight was telling me. I just needed confirmation that I was not an idiot. And so Jill came on board, and really, without Jill's help, I wouldn't have gotten there, right? Like, all of the paperwork that we had to go through her knowledge of what we were doing and, A, she had knowledge of the clients too, right?

She knew some of the clients 'cause ultimately, once my [00:48:00] non... They turned my non-compete into a non-solicitation, and so slowly some of my old clients were reaching out to come back on board with me. So she knew some of the clients. She knew all the processes and systems of how to open up accounts at Schwab and do all the different things.

And so her, talk about brute force strength. Without Jill's brute force strength, I don't know where I'd be. But sh- when she used to work with me at the firm I was with previously, she worked with me and another advisor, and she managed us. And combined, we had about 150 or 175 clients.

And when she came on board with me, I had 29. And so she was always asking me stuff, "What else can I do, William?" "What else can I do?" And I was so scared of giving the outfit up, David. So scared, right? Without control giving somebody else control of my life I wasn't ready to do, right?

I'd gotten to where I was by brute force strength and not brute force and strength. And then again, it goes back to I always thought that's what success was, right? People just beat themselves into success and so as we [00:49:00] grew in two thousand and twenty-- late two thousand and twenty, I called my old boss again, the guy up in Baltimore, and I told him where we were, and he's "Where are you staff-wise?"

And I was like, "Oh, it's just me and Jill." He was like, "Oh, man." He's "You're late." He's "You need another hire." And so he's you need somebody to take some of this off your plate." And so we hired a a young girl, and then I hired a another advisor as well. But it's still even then it was it was not turning things over.

It was just letting people do some things. But as we ran through twenty twenty-two and twenty twenty-three, and that ended up being a difficult time for us from a profitability perspective. We had that little mini res-- almost recession in twenty twenty-two, twenty twenty-three, when the Federal Reserve was raising interest rates.

Markets tanked. I'd made two hires cover that payroll at a point in time where, revenues were down quarter over quarter for a while. And coming out of that, I realized I can't do it anymore, right? Like I can't hold everything. And [00:50:00] what we're trying to do, like I've given up Complete and total control basically on the investment side of our team to the young lady that I hired who has now been with us for five years.

She's got her CFA. She's extraordinarily smart. So helping her develop a process for how we manage money, how we make decisions, what we look at developing that process for that side of the house has alleviated that responsibility for me. I used to write every newsletter that went out on a monthly basis.

We now have a process and system set up for how the newsletter gets set up. We run a monthly event series which replaced the podcast. I shut the podcast down in two thousand and twenty-four because we started focusing on small business owners, right? Like our niche, David, is small business owners with net income between one and five million, which is basically speaking generally ten to fifty million in revenue.

We run a s- monthly speaker series for them, and at first it was [00:51:00] me running the monthly speaker series. And we hired a young lady to replace Jill, who retired at the end of twenty twenty-four. And between her and my brother, they're running the speaker series for us now, right? And so it's-- we had a speaker in two months ago.

Actually, it was last month. It was this month. It was in June of twenty twenty-six. And he made a really good point, and he said, "I'm not a CEO yet." He said, "Right now I'm a COO, and but I'm trying to get to the point where I'm CEO of my company." And I was like, "Man, that makes a lot of sense," right?

Like at first you're-- when you started off it was just me. I was a financial planner. And yes, I was the president of a company, but I wasn't the CEO of a company. I wasn't carrying CEO responsibilities, right? I was just a planner that had staff. And so now I'm trying to climb up that ladder so that I am the CEO and trying to identify...

We have a full-time book-- or not a full-time, we have an outsourced bookkeeper now. And the partner that [00:52:00] the advisor that I brought on board in twenty twenty-one is now a partner. We made him a partner. We offered him a partnership stake in twenty January of 2025. And so he's taken over s- that CFO track, right?

So it's slowly starting to realize what are the tracks that I'm good at? What are the places where I can succeed and allow those around me, the team that we've hired to put in place to serve the clients? What am I good at and making them better at? And so that's where we are right now.

We're in that growth stage where I'm slowly trying to figure out what those systems and processes, what those roles and responsibilities that I don't need anymore, what can they be? Who can fill them? The new hire that we're bringing in is somebody that I think can do CO-- well, the hire that we're looking for is somebody that can do one role as well as what I think can ultimately be a COO role as well.

So we're just thinking about all those growth channels and what can we c- do to be [00:53:00] successful. And again, it goes back to a little bit of that transformation I've tried to make over the course of the last six months or so of making decisions out of out of success and abundance rather than... I always go back and say, one of my driving forces for the longest time, and you understand this more now since I told you the story my dad was awesome, right?

I re- both my parents were awesome parents. They did anything and everything they could. They didn't have the resources to do as much as other parents could, but if they could do it, they did it, right? But one of my driving forces for the longest time was not to be like my dad. I didn't want to be financially strapped and to go through bankruptcy.

And so that was that drive of fear, right? Like I drove, I was driving hard not to be that. And I realized when I was sitting in that room I was talking to you about earlier, that making decisions out of fear was a bad place to lead from. That's not leadership. And so I'm trying to [00:54:00] get to that place now where we're making decisions out of abundance, out of growth, out of smart, forward-thinking decisions instead.

David Pasqualone: Yeah, and a lot of times we hire staff and we have that plan, but the natural state when you've done things yourself for so long is to pull it back in. How do you keep yourself accountable to let them make decisions and to even make decisions you wouldn't make, but that's their job now and you need to trust them?

William Bissett: Yeah. We man I laugh because I'll tell you one of my better stories on this is I realized early on that running a... So our event series is called Charting Opportunities, and I'm a big believer that there's opportunities all around us, right? So Portus Wealth Advisors, the name Portus actually comes out of the out of the word opportunities, right?

And our event series is called Charting Opportunities, and I turned it over to the, my now partner, John, and Caitlin, who's the young lady that replaced my original [00:55:00] assistants, who will grow out of that position in the not too distant future. And I said, "Look," I was like, I can't do all of this."

I was like, "I need y'all's help. Y'all, y'all take this over, and y'all do the emails, and y'all do the this, and y'all do the that, and handle the technology for the event too." And so we ran the event in I want to say it was February of 2025. It might've been January of 20- 2025. And it was a complete and utter tail- failure.

Like technology didn't go right, like four people showed up, the lighting in the room was all wrong, the microphones weren't... nothing worked. And I did what any bad leader did. I freaked out. I told them they were doing a horrible job, and I was taking it back all over again. And I led that way for about three months.

And then I was like, "You know what? I don't have any better idea than they have of s- what's going on here." But they want this job. They want this res- they want to see this. They're emotionally [00:56:00] invested in it as well. And, It's not fair to them. Like I'm choking off their growth. Like I go back and say we had a meeting not long ago, it was probably two years ago, we were talking about 10X.

10X is better than 2X, and one of the things in that book that you'll recognize is As individuals, we're oftentimes we're oftentimes focused on how far away we are from our goal, right? And in the book, he defines that as the gap, and the gap always exists, right? And the gap always exists because the goal is always moving, right?

We never say, "I want to read," or, "I want to, make $50,000 in my life." And then you make $50,000 in your life, and the next thing it is you don't want to make $50,000 a year anymore. You want to make $100,000. So the gap's always out there. But what he asks us to focus on is the gain. Like, how far have you come?

Which is a is a excellent flip because when you've recognized how you, how far you've come, you're not deficient, right? You can look in the rear [00:57:00] view mirror and realize how much you've accomplished in order to get to where you are, which is emotionally helpful. It goes back to that fear and abundance flip that we were talking about earlier, right?

And so I asked the team, I was like, where do you want to be in, in at the end of the decade, 2030?" And they all had ambitions, right? They all had things that they wanted to do. And when I'm taking away that responsibility from them, then ultimately what I'm doing is I'm stripping away their ability as individuals to grow.

And I'm taking away our ability of a company of getting to where they all wanted to get to in in that 2030 timeframe. And so the check for me, David, in going forward since I took that away and then gave it back to them, is recognizing I love my team, right? I love my family, right?

I love my mom, my wife, my kids, my brother. But I love the team as well, right? And they're good people, and they're smart people, and they [00:58:00] all want to be better than they are today. And so what I've had to realize is that and I'm not perfect in any shape or form is trying to give that up so that they can succeed and achieve the things that they want to.

But again, I'm I'm a work in progress, so don't call my team and ask them if I'm great at it. I'm working on it.

David Pasqualone: No worries. We are all a work in progress, just in different levels and different areas, right? So let's do this. Where are you today? We kinda talked about it a little bit, but where are you heading next, William?

And if someone wants to get ahold of you, what's the best way to reach out to you?

William Bissett: Yeah. No, we individually, I'm still working. I, I hired a coach a year ago realizing that I'm not the person that I ended up wanting to wanting to be. I'm not finished yet right? I hope I still have a lot of years to become the person I want to be.

And I've slowly realized [00:59:00] that

Not having somebody there to help me along through that path, that accountability that, When I went through my first employment review in 2005 with the firm I was with in Baltimore my-- the partner asked me to self-critique myself. And I talked for 30 minutes about all the things that I wasn't good at.

And he told-- he said, when it was his turn, he's like: "I guess I don't have to give you any negative feedback. You're your own hardest critic." And I've realized that not having somebody there to help me understand some of those aspects. So where am I now personally? I am trying to grow as a person because I don't think I've done the best job at it over the course of the last 20, 30 years.

And where I am as a firm is, or as a company is I want to be a better leader, right? I want to be a better leader to, the team that we have now, the team that we're going to have in the next five years. I can't do that if I don't work on myself some. I can't do... I think I've been a, like [01:00:00] my parents, I think I've s- I've been a pretty good parent.

But I want to be a better parent, a better husband. That those things are more and more important to me these days. I think I'm a really good financial planner in dealing with clients and business owners on the issues that they have to face. But that's becoming less and less of an important role and more and more the role of a CEO.

And that's where we're going. We work with about 90 or 95 families right now. We manage about $200 to $220 million for those families. We've developed a business model specifically for business owners. So some of those families we don't manage money on at all. We bill them on a retainer basis 'cause it turns out that a lot of business owners continue to reinvest in their business forever.

And so their largest asset is their business until they don't have it anymore. But they have a lot of complexity, and so we're working with them on that complexity. We've put together a Botiful way of working with them and helping them navigate a lot of that complexity and channeling through some of [01:01:00] the the issues that they face as they navigate that business-personal component, right?

Which you talked about earlier. There's no separation between those two as a business owner, right? As a business owner, your personal finances are 110% tied up in the business. And so our goal is to get to, to working with 200 to 250 business owners. Our goal is to help them go through exits.

Our goal is to get over a billion dollars, which is a neat threshold in our industry, in client assets that we manage. And our goal is to continue to help clients understand how to become better CEOs of their own business as well, right? That growth transformation that I've gone through over the course of the last last couple years.

It's not my own transformation, right? We all go through that. We... I shouldn't say we all. If we're fortunate enough, we all grow through that. Transformation is like I said earlier, I'm not done yet, or at least I certainly hope I'm not done. And helping those business owners and those families go through that transformation is something [01:02:00] that to have seen the business owners that we've worked with leave their businesses behind, sell those businesses and move on to that next stage of their life and understand that mission is really important to them, right?

Whatever that mission is, whether or not it's giving back to veterans, whether or not it's giving back to their church, whether or not it's giving back to their families, whether or not it's just giving back to their community. Getting them through to that mission is really important, right?

If they don't have that next stage, and it goes back to our transformation my transformation is the transformation of our company, and it's also the transformation of the companies and business owners that we continue to work with. So I think my growth is important for, all three, for me personally, for the business, as well as for those that we serve, our clients.

David Pasqualone: And if somebody wants to get ahold of you, what's the best way for them to connect?

William Bissett: Oh, yeah. Sorry, I forgot all about that. Our YouTube channel we do a lot of content on our YouTube channel. It's at Portus Advisor, Portus Wealth Advisors on YouTube channel. [01:03:00] We put a lot of good content that way.

You can email me. My email is really simple. It's william@portusadvisors.com. And then, our website is fairly simple, obviously, as well. It's www.portusadvisors.com.

David Pasqualone: Botiful, and let's do this. We just spent time. Now our audience knows you and knows your background. But if you were to have just a couple minutes, you met somebody on a bus, you're never going to see him again.

You went through life. It could be, people say, "What would you tell your younger self?" Younger self in business, younger self in life. But if you were to meet our remarkable community on a bus and you just had a couple minutes, what do you share with them that you think's the most impactful for their life?

William Bissett: Give up trying to control. Which is a thing I'm very much in right now. You you can't... It's outside of me. Whether or not you think you are, whether or not you think you aren't, you're not. And the sooner you let go, the better off [01:04:00] you are. I don't care if you're a religious person or you're not a religious person, but man, you can grip as hard as you want to on anything and everything around you, but life is going on and you have absolutely zero control over it.

'Cause you don't know, right? The ne- you think you have everything under control, and the next thing you know, a car accident of you or a loved one or anybody else completely changing 9/11 happens. You lose a family member. Yeah ... you lose your largest client. Give up control.

Give up thinking you have control, because you don't. And you have the ability to do the best, to be the best person that you can be, to influence those around you, to be the best community member, to be the best version of you. But you can't control what's going to happen 30 seconds from now, 30 minutes from now, 30 days from now, or 30 years from now, right?

And if you think you can, you're wrong.

David Pasqualone: Yeah, I wouldn't, I couldn't agree more. The Bible talks about what's your life? It's a vapor. It appeareth for a moment, then vanisheth away. [01:05:00] We don't know. You could be three, you could be 13, you could be 103. You don't know when the day is. So giving the control to God and moving forward, just do your best each day.

That's all that matters.

William Bissett: Yeah.

David Pasqualone: So that's awesome, man. It's been great having you here today, William. And before we leave and end this remarkable interview, is there any other thoughts you want to share with our community before we wrap it up?

William Bissett: No, I think I love your podcast name, right? It's Remarkable People.

There are- All kinds of reasons for you to think you're not remarkable and they're probably all wrong. I go back to what I said earlier about my my first employee review where I was my own self toughest critic. We we all have remarkable in us. It's just a matter of finding it, listening to that voice, the positive side of the voice, not the negative side of the voice, because we all do have that extraordinarily loud, obnoxious, negative voice.

And we just need to quiet that down and let the remarkable voice come through, [01:06:00] right? So go be remarkable.

David Pasqualone: Amen. And that's what our cover shows. People always... They see the cartoon, but if they look close, the shadow of the cartoon people are superheroes. It's because God puts greatness in us. It says, "Greater is he," meaning the Holy Ghost, "in you than he," meaning all evil, "in the world."

So you're spot on again with what the Bible says, my friend. Thank you for being here today, William.

William Bissett: Thanks so much for having me, David. I appreciate it. Keep rocking on.

David Pasqualone: Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, William gave you his contact info. If you want to continue the conversation, you can visit his website, reach out to him.

Don't forget to shop our affiliate sponsors. It gives you great products, it saves you money, and it helps us continue to bring you fantastic, remarkable content that you can live a better life. We love you. Please share this episode with your friends and family so more people can be helped and grow, and we'll see you in the next episode. Ciao!

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David Pasqualone: [01:07:00] Ladies and gentlemen, I sincerely hope this show has inspired you. The whole purpose of the Remarkable People Podcast is to inspire you, to motivate you into action, to help you have an even better life, to overcome things you've not yet been able to overcome, or to grow to the next level that you never thought possible.

And all of this, not just to benefit you in this world- ... but to have you come to a relationship with God where it grows every day stronger, and not just this world is blessed, but your eternity is blessed. And we sincerely want to do just that and to glorify God, and we hope with this episode we accomplish that.

If we did, please let me know. It's great to be encouraged and to spread the word to our remarkable guests that it helped in your life. If we didn't, let me know. Write me an email. You can go to [01:08:00] davidpasqualone.com, go to our Contact Us page and let me know what you think. I got tough skin. Let it rip.

Anything you can think of to make this a better podcast to help you grow and to glorify God, I'm in. So that's it. Thank you for listening to the podcast. Thank you for sending us feedback. If we can help you in any way, let us know, and if you can spread the word about the Remarkable People Podcast, share the episode to your friends, your family on social media, it would be a huge honor and blessing.

Again, I'm not trying to be the most famous podcast in the world for my benefit. I truly want a podcast that's the best podcast in the world to help as many people as we can to have a better life, come to know Christ, to grow in the Lord, and to have that salvation so they can be with God in peace and joy and eternity.

And right now we're together on this earth, so [01:09:00] let's do everything we can to work together and help each other grow. Like the Bible says, "Love the Lord thy God" as a first commandment, and the next commandment is to, "Love thy neighbor as thyself." So let's do it together. I'm David Pasqualone. I love you, not as much as God loves you, but if I can help you in any way, just ask.

And again, please share this to your friends and family so we can help them too. Ciao, and see you in the next episode!

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