Unstoppable Entrepreneurs | unDavos 2026

Todd Ault failed so many times his wife says an average person wouldn’t survive a single week of what he endures. Clayton Thomas built a social commerce fintech deployed in 80 countries and has been sued more times than he can count. Riadh Bouaziz arrived in France from Tunisia with nothing but a high school diploma and now runs a luxury linen company present in 85 countries. And a 30-year-old from Moscow got into crypto mining Ethereum from his motherboard. Dustin Plantholt moderates a raw, unscripted conversation about what it actually costs to be unstoppable.

WHAT THIS PANEL COVERS

• Why Todd Ault has been seeing the same therapist for 25 years and believes the mental health conversation is the most important one entrepreneurs refuse to have
• How Clayton Thomas built an algorithmic fintech social commerce system deployed in over 80 countries, and why he rejects the word “pivot” — “if you pivot, you don’t move, you just rotate”
• Why Riadh Bouaziz learned English at age 40+ because he refused to bring a translator, and how his 15 sustainability patents put RKF Luxury Linen in 85 countries
• How Vladimir went from mining Ethereum on video cards in Moscow to navigating the global fragmentation that is creating asymmetric opportunities across regions
• Why 99.99% of the population is not designed for entrepreneurship — not as weakness but as fact — and why understanding where you fit is more valuable than forcing yourself to lead

PANELISTS

• Dustin Plantholt — Host, “Unstoppable Entrepreneurs”; Journalist & Entrepreneur (Moderator)
• Milton “Todd” Ault III — Founder & Executive Chairman, Hyperscale Data (NYSE: GPUS)
• Clayton Thomas — CEO & Co-Founder, The ROOT Brands
• Riadh Bouaziz — Founder & CEO, RKF Luxury Linen
• Vladimir — Entrepreneur, Moscow

unDavos is a community-driven summit running during WEF week in Davos, democratizing the conversation around global challenges.

🌐 undavos.com

Tags: entrepreneurship, founder mental health, failure, resilience, unstoppable mindset, Todd Ault, Clayton Thomas, Riadh Bouaziz, Dustin Plantholt, startup advice, founder stories, crypto mining, social commerce, luxury business, sustainability patents, entrepreneur therapy, Warren Buffett, bootstrap, unDavos, Davos 2026, WEF

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TRANSCRIPT

That Elena is one of those individuals that she puts everybody else first. She was supposed to, this morning, come to Abraham House. And I had said to her there was something very special being done in her name. And she said, the people that are relying on me, those who are trusting me, they come first. So with that, Elena, I'd like you to come forward. On behalf of one of the oldest operating Islamic communities in the world, Riyadh, my Arabic is not very good. So I might need your eyes. From the chief imam to Elena. Wow, thank you very much. Thank you very much. This is in honor of how you treat people and what you do for others. And this is one of the highest honors that they give. This is a 600-year-old community from North Macedonia, going all the way back to the times of the Turks, the Ottoman Empire. And so from the chief imam to yourself and from the whole community. I'm touched. Thank you so much. That's unity. She doesn't ask people their religious beliefs. She brings everybody into her family. It's my unstoppable. So I like to give people kind of like things because I get them to get engaged. I feel like I guess bribe my friends. Unstoppable. That word. What does it mean? I'm going to go to somebody there. The guy looks away. I'm like, I'm not making eye contact. I'm not making eye contact. You're making eye contact now. Unstoppable. What does it mean to you? Relentless. Relentless. What? To be relentless. Let me give you a gift card. How about a lad

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:09

That Elena is one of those individuals that she puts everybody else first. She was supposed to, this morning, come to Abraham's house. And I had said to her there was something very special being done in her name. And she said that the people that are relying on me, those who are trusting me, they come first. So with that, Alina, I'd like you to come forward. On behalf of one of the oldest operating Islamic communities in the world, Riyadh, my Arabic is not very good. So I might need your eyes. From the chief imam to Elena.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Wow, thank you very much.

SPEAKER_05 1:04

This is thank you very much. This is this is in honor of how you treat people and what you do for others. And this is one of the highest honors that they give. This is a 600-year-old community from North Macedonia, going all the way back to the times of the Turks, the Ottoman Empire. And so from uh the chief imam to yourself and from the whole community.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_05 1:36

That's unity. She doesn't ask people their religious beliefs, she brings everybody into her family. Unstoppable. So I like to give people kind of like things because I get them to get engaged. If like bribe my guess bribe my friends. Unstoppable. That word. What does it mean? Go to somebody there. The guy looks away and like, I'm not making eye contact. I'm not making eye contact. You're making eye contact now. Unstoppable. What does it mean to you? Relentless. What? To be relentless. How about a lady? I gotta find you. You don't, Wendy, I can't do it because you're gonna be up next. Dr. Rama, I picked on you earlier. How about that really nice lady next to you that's chewing gum like uh-oh, Dustin, don't pick on me. To those in the room, if you're an entrepreneur, raise your hand. To those of you who are entrepreneurs, raise your hand if you have failed before. Now, raise your hand if not only you failed, you spent someone else's money doing it. What? Are you kidding me? You see, there's the thing about entrepreneurship. When you learn the lessons, and they're your lessons, you taught me that, Riyadh, that failure is your lesson. It's interesting, right? Failure getting a lesson. The people I have with me today, the two individuals I know and the two that Elaine has put up here with me, I already know that they're unstoppable. Because it requires an unstoppable mindset. It requires that relentlessness that simply put, you're not going to give up. Now, as we're going to talk to our entrepreneurs about there were times where the business isn't working, wrong time, wrong industry, and that business needs to close. But usually what happens is one more beautiful opens. Let's go down the panel. We don't have too much time. Where you were born. I like the where you were born. It kind of tells me a lot about a person. Where you were born. And you came to Davos. What are you looking for? And your name.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

I'm Vladimir. Nice to meet you. Thank you for having me on this panel. Um, I was born in Moscow. And uh in Davos, I like to look for like-minded people who not only do cool things but uh inspire uh and sort of provide that um you know like image of um of entrepreneurship at its peak. So a place where all the world leaders come, and not only uh presidents and prime ministers, but business leaders. And I feel like this is that environment that is essential for any entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_05 4:51

And before we go to the next panelists, uh earlier today I heard somebody introduce themselves. I'm from Moscow. Don't hold that against me. It's interesting that someone will make this opinion that others have already assumed that somehow it is a bad thing to have come from Moscow. To me. Why is it bad to be still a patriot and not always agree with certain decisions? I know my president today said some things that I don't always have to agree with, but I still want my president to succeed, and the things that if I were to choose. But I like the fact that you didn't add, hold don't hold that against me. Because the person I met today, they said that immediately. This is one planet. Right. We are one species. Right. So why would we have to apologize? That's where you were born, and I appreciate that you said that proudly.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_05 5:55

I know you, I'm going to go to you last.

SPEAKER_04 5:56

The gentleman at the end. Uh my name's Todd Alt. I'm from the United States. I live in Las Vegas. So you're a Las Vegas guy. Um I'm a California guy. I left five years ago because uh in my state they don't know whether a man can have a baby or not. So I'm just I've tapped out of California. All right.

SPEAKER_05 6:14

I got one of these by the He's not gonna hesitate to tell me.

SPEAKER_04 6:18

The level of insanity in California is is next level. I I don't even know how it exists,$8 gas kind of thing. So we left. I left and uh did an IPO in 2021 on the NASDAQ. Um I didn't leave for tax reasons, but I'm glad I did.

SPEAKER_03 6:36

Next up, Clayton. That's a fact. I'm Clayton Thomas. I was born in Olympia, Washington. Don't hold it against me. Um what am I here for? To find collaborating partners, because business in this world today, I mean, as I built an algorithmic fintech system built around social commerce six years ago that we deployed that now is in over 80 countries. But the key in business, because we're all connected, we're six degrees from eight billion people. We're actually three, if you if you trace it. Um, but we're already all connected. So the key now is just collaboration. You know, my favorite philosopher wrote that we're each an imperfect piece to a perfect puzzle. So it's a matter of making sure that you're your best piece and then finding where you fit and filling your filling your mission to help fill out this global puzzle that we all exist in, and we're in a perfect environment to figure out how to play together.

SPEAKER_05 7:32

Riyadh.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Okay. Um thanks, Dustin. Uh I'm Riyadh Boaziz, uh born in Tunisia. Do you know where is Tunisia?

SPEAKER_05 7:41

Uh yeah, you're gonna get a gift card if you know where it's from. Where is where's Tunisia?

unknown 7:46

Africa. North Africa.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

It's in the North Africa, exactly. It's on the Mediterranean. Absolutely. Great answer. Uh born in Tunisia and living since long time in France.

SPEAKER_05 7:58

I'm gonna pick on some of my besties in the room now. Pick on you. The first business you ever started. What was it? It's interesting in this room we have people that have succeeded. I'm gonna pick on another bestia of mine over there, Dr. Corso. People have this idea that once you've made it, and I don't even know how you define making it, really, because there's like it's not something, it's something else. There's always some problem. But controlling your mind, Dr. Corsa, while you're running a business. Talk about that from an entrepreneurial standpoint. How can an entrepreneur manage their mind when they're trying to manage their business? Starting with my friend here from from Vegas. When you went into entrepreneurship, why the hell did you do it?

SPEAKER_04 9:38

That's a good question, actually. I don't know why I did it to start, but you talk about failure. I I I I give a lot of speeches around the world on failure, and I literally am the poster child for failing forward. I I failed so many times and had developed so many haters, and then you know that I talked about that IPO. All the people that lost in the prior deal for me in 2009, I put them in that IPO. They made 70 million back, all their money back, and barely any of them spoke to me again after that. But then I had a whole new group of people with me, and and the level of like I can't even describe the level of failure I've had. It's just my wife says to me, if if in a single week an average person experienced what you did, they would never exist the following week. I literally have have had so much failure, but it's it's uh it's led to this whole um religious experience that every single thing happening to me happens for a reason, and so now I listen a lot better. Those failures, I'm paying attention to a lot more. The failures were 100% on me for not paying attention to what was being told to me, and and it was what I wanted to hear, but instead of listening, right? So um, why did I want to become an entrepreneur? I saw Warren Buffett on TV when I was 11 years old, and I called up his office, went down to the payphone. My mom, I lived in a poor community um in Fullerton, California. Broke. My mom was a single mom, had me when she was 18. And I called up and Gladys answered the phone, and Warren Buffett sent me every one of his perspective his annual reports, and I got addicted to the process of what he did with the holding company and didn't follow one single rule that he laid out and failed multiple times. I'd be a lot richer guy if I would have listened to him. But here we are.

SPEAKER_05 11:26

So he said something pretty impactful. I reached out. Wait, what? Look, if nothing changes, nothing will change. I hear people complain all the time. And yet nothing changes. Well, the common denominator is themselves. They simply are not learning from their last failure. And these lessons you've taught me time and time again, Riyadh, is that each and every failure becomes your lesson. Go into that and talk about your business. And I need you to brag because you started with nothing.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

I think there, first of all, I mean, why we choose to be an entrepreneur and what is the reason to be an entrepreneur? I think probably, first of all, when we are young and we have a vision and we know where we want to go in the future, if we have our goals and we know that we're gonna study, and then after that, have a dream. We want to make this dream as a reality, and it's only a matter of your mindset. The most important is if you look at your future, how you're gonna build it, and you say, Okay, I'm born for a purpose. I have a goal in life, I have my vision, I'm gonna build the strategy, I wanna reach this goal, and then you fail definitely, once, twice, three times. I've never, by the way, meet one day an entrepreneur and he will say you, no, everything is perfect. I never fail. He's a liar, definitely. It never exists on the planet if you're gonna start something and you never fail. One day, once, twice, many times it happened. The most important is to keep always your positive mindset strong enough to say, okay, now I'm gonna wake up again. Now I'm gonna be stronger. I learn from that, and then I start again, and I start again. I never stop. And this is, I think, the most powerful point. When you are a real entrepreneur, you know when you know where you know where you go. And also another point, as you say, we're gonna start from nothing. No need to be from uh a wealthy family. I'm coming from a normal family, I came from Tunisia with my baccalaureate in pocket, with my backpack. I have nothing but just only the trust of God and trust of myself. From there, I know where I want to go. I have already a goal, I have this vision, I know that I want to be successful. And this is how it makes me already having the challenge every single morning. When in my car when I wake up, I smile and I say, Wow, this is end today, this is the real day. I'm gonna be a winner, I gonna be a killer, I wanna do this, I wanna sign this contract. This is how it motivates me every single day. And we can pass by different crises. You have like financial crisis, you're gonna have a COVID, you have everything, but it makes you even stronger. You're gonna get to see the others. Okay, no, it's uh complicated right now. Okay, you can sleep, no worries. For me, I'm gonna go more. It makes me more stronger because I know where I want to go, I know where is my challenge, I know my vision, that it makes me always stronger. And I'm not afraid to uh lose something tomorrow. I'm not afraid at all to fail. But I know after that, if I fail the day after, I'm gonna stand up again in a stronger way and making and avoiding these mistakes. This thing, I think, the real entrepreneur having this vision, having this strategy in life, and having this power to stand up every time, this it is the real one.

SPEAKER_05 15:04

Entrepreneurship. When you start to finally have a little traction, it's like Murphy's Law. Boom, something happens. You thought you were gonna get that big check, you thought that customer was gonna pay that bill. You thought you assumed, oh boy, the the worst is behind me. And then you get hit, and you get hit by lawsuits, you get hit by claims against your character, you get hit by partners that do you wrong. But you keep getting back up. Clayton, I pick on you because I love you. Because you knew all that's happened recently. I say it because that comes with a cost. Success is not free. There is a cost. Every relationship you will ever have, there is a cost. You want a business. Oh, are you willing to give everything to it? Because you cannot go halfway in. You need to go all in. Because out there there is someone like Todd that says, I want to help my mom. I want to make sure that nobody in my family has to feel what I felt. Somebody like Riyadh, whose father paid half of his salary so that Riyadh would get a good education, and Riyadh paid it forward with his brothers. That it's almost as through this process of pain, this hurt, that you become unstoppable. Clayton, you have been attacked by many people. I call him crazy from time to time, but he's my kind of crazy. How do you not allow that to stop you?

SPEAKER_03 16:40

What do you do? They despise us because they are not us. Right. So entrepreneurialism in in the aspect of what you're seeing up here, 99.99999% of the population is not made for it. It's you can go to Harvard, you can go to any business school, you're not, you're not from a personality standpoint, from a design standpoint, you're not made for it. That's not a strength, it's not a weakness, it's it is a fact. The key in this is understanding your value and knowing where you've where you fit and that aspect of collaboration. Because what Todd's done is not my area of expertise. And it's it's knowing where you fit. And from an entrepreneurial standpoint, if you're gonna develop something, and there's the adage that the future favors the bold, and but there's also the aspect of he who goes first is gonna take the most arrows, and you're gonna take shots because in a world that is somewhat controlled in many aspects, if you're going to innovate, if you're gonna change, if you're going to disrupt, and this this entire concept of decentralization, DeFi, um, the introduction of an entirely new financial system and new ecosystems into an old infrastructure that is still grasping for control, there's going to be a fight that takes place, and you have to be willing to bear that burden or don't even go on the walk because it's part of the process, right? You're I've hey babe, how many times have I been sued in the last five years? The the key thing is if you're not doing anything and you're not making money, no one cares. If you're not changing things, no one cares. Haters don't go after the unsuccessful, right? You had people come out and at you, not when you were losing, but when you started winning and they know you won, they're like, oh, wait a minute, he has something that I don't have. So the key is understanding you're gonna take shots, and that's just part of the part of the process. And as a real entrepreneur, that's fun, right? That's that's like boxing. Mike Tyson, everybody's heard Mike Tyson's quote. Everybody's got a plan until you get hit in the mouth. And and that's just it is no going in. You're gonna get hit in the mouth, you're gonna get hit in the kidneys, you're gonna get hit a couple times in the liver, you're gonna get rocked a few times, you might get knocked down a few times, and how many times are you gonna get up? And what are you gonna do with it? What are you gonna learn from it? How are you gonna adapt and identify what's going on in the environment you're in and change your approach? I hate the word pivot, right? That word's been used commonly in the last five years. Everybody's I have to pivot, I have to pivot. I play basketball. If you pivot, you don't move. You just rotate. And if you're boxing and you pivot, you're probably gonna get hit in the back of the head. So the key is understanding your environment and knowing your environment, because we all have specific gifts. You might identify something in a market that no one else is seeing, and everyone's going to think you're crazy. You might create a concept to develop a social commerce platform that rewards people for creating value in a company in an algorithmic fintech model, understanding the tokenization of assets is going to come, but you can't tokenize assets that aren't developed, and everybody's gonna think you're nuts. Now I want to jump into that because you'll talk forever, you're like me.

SPEAKER_05 20:16

Yes, I will. But this is this is where you take shots. I'm gonna actually point something at Vlad. How old are you? I'm 30. 30 years old. Uh this is gonna be the honesty moment. So 42. Todd, how old are you?

SPEAKER_01 20:29

56.

SPEAKER_05 20:30

56. Clayton? Forty-nine. Riad.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

Again, I say over fifty.

SPEAKER_05 20:35

It's I will tell you that the men on the stage, us in their forties plus, we work harder many, many times over. What some of the younger 20, 25, and 30. Because we recognize now that this world, this world, well boy, the opportunities are bigger than ever before.

unknown 20:51

Not even the question.

SPEAKER_05 20:52

I I think it's the work ethic.

SPEAKER_04 20:54

I'm a fat guy, morbidly obese, and these 20-year-olds that work for me, uh you know, I they're they're all I'm sorry. That that's the scary part, by the way. The the generation that I'm uh employing, and there's some of them that work a lot, but they they they can't keep up.

SPEAKER_05 21:14

Yeah, but here's the beauty of it. They put themselves down around people like Vlad, the up-and-coming, the learners. Where as I found, wise men and wise women, they are always learning. And they can learn something from their kids, they can learn something from the 30-year-old, they can learn something from the 95-year-old. And that's what makes them unstoppable. So, Vlad, in the world of strategy and partnerships and taking something from somebody else, because that's what it is in business. I'm trying to take food off of Todd's plate. Todd's trying to make sure that I don't get there. He's trying to put up shields and walls and mouse traps and everything he can do. And well, boy, eventually every customer fires you, eventually. He parts ways, the company closes. Something happens. So like talk about what entrepreneurship has been for you because we are all entrepreneurs. People don't see themselves as, but you are. Every day you're selling yourself, you're having to learn quickly, either it's somebody's dime or somebody in your own. So talk about what it's been like for you building a business.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

Um I mean if you if you're gonna go into any business, you have to come with a mindset either you win or you learn. So you you cannot lose. It's like every single failure is a stepping stone to just go further and further and further. And Clayton, you're correct. If you're not ready for this and you're just gonna give up on the first time it happens to you, you might as well just not even try it out because it's difficult. And especially being younger, uh people are always, especially everyone who's older, they might sort of underplay the expertise that you had, the experiences in businesses that you had, the people who are in your circle who you've been friends with, who can help you in your business, which is also something that I've heard a lot of people say, don't do business with your friends. But in my case, I have a feeling that becoming an entrepreneur was much easier for me because I was always doing it with my friends. So it was like always fun. It was always that risk that everyone out of my friends is taking with me. So it gives it a little bit of more drive. Um yeah, until until it's not, until it's not really. And it happened.

SPEAKER_05 23:32

It happened a few years back until it stopped became it's hard to hold your friends accountable because they simply do not respect you the same way.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Uh it's hard. Yeah, but you have to structure it the business in a way. It has to be a modern business, it can't be something old money, like crypto, for example, because I ended up being an entrepreneur because I was mining initially, just mining Ethereum, which technically didn't require anything except some tech knowledge and plugging into some video cards into your motherboard and the computer essentially into the wall. Um and those type of businesses you can sort of navigate through with a bunch of friends. But once it becomes, you have to raise capital, once it becomes you have to make important decisions, once it becomes uh very frictionate between you, it definitely becomes more and more difficult difficult to keep the friendship. However, um it comes and goes, you know, you you break up with people, you start working with them again, uh, somebody fires you, you they they call you later, come back, I I need you. Like it's it's it's waves. So you always have to be ready to take a shot, as you say. Um, you always have to be ready for someone to come after you. You always have to be ready for someone to steal from you an idea, money, whatever it is. I mean, like you you're always vulnerable. And that's what's uh very important to understand. You always have to be like you understand that you're vulnerable from every angle. You have to make sure those vulnerabilities aren't either shown, or if they are there, still there, they have to be somehow protected as much as possible. And it goes um uh a keynote speaker, Marie Yam, was just speaking about her book, how a person can be happy, absolutely happy, but at the end of the day, commit suicide, even though they're successful, beautiful, and then and everything. So you have to understand, like, this does take toll on your mental well-being. Like a lot of people are are just not that ready to handle losses, big losses, millions in dollars, ten millions in dollars losses. It's difficult, it's hard. Uh, especially if you have somebody's money under management because they come after you and they say, Where's my money? Where's my money? Where's my money? Um, and you have to find for new opportunities to take more risk, and essentially it's about balancing whether you're able to keep up with the risk you're taking, and you're not gonna get wiped out and just killed completely, uh, to be able to sort of like maneuver in in these waters between sharks. It's difficult, but it's fun, it's a lot of fun. Like once you understand that you're just there being bombarded with with problems all the time, it becomes fun. Problem solving is fun, especially if no one can solve the problem.

SPEAKER_05 26:20

So I think 2005 was the first year I had incorporated a business. So 21 years ago. And you know, I had these big plans of what it was gonna look like. I was starting an insurance agency. I had a friend of mine that had his own and had his own business and did very, very well. And I guess I was young, you know, naive. I thought overnight this is gonna happen. But boy, it didn't happen overnight. At the end of my first year, I could remember having made$27,000. And I remember I had about$25,000 to$30,000 in credit card debt because everything was going on my card. And every year or two, I made$36,000 and I was up to about$60,000 in credit card debt. A monthly interest payment was like$1,500. I was sitting in my car. Quitting was never an option. It was simply never an option. I'll tell you kind of interesting story. I had this podcast I started in 2019 called Life's Tough. You can't be tougher. I interviewed this navy SEAL, and he had been injured, and he was on his last two weeks of SEAL training, and he hurt his ankle and they fell him out. Anybody probably would have quit. He didn't. His leg healed, he put himself back into SEAL training. He hurt his ankle again, he was in the final week. And I asked him what happened next. He said, I signed back up and I became a Navy SEAL. He said, they'd already drowned me. He said, because that's what happened. And every time they said, should we throw you back in? Yes. I said, so you weren't going to quit. It was never an option. What I hear from you, Todd, and Clay, and Riyadh and Vlad, that quitting was never an option you gave yourself. That you saw these failures as lessons. Okay, this one didn't work, but I'm not quitting. That inside of you that fuel because insanity, you know, to keep going, to feel this pain. To to continue. Just like I don't know where you are, but self-made. You can jump in and then quitting's always an option.

SPEAKER_03 28:44

It's always an option. It's never a consideration. There's a difference. You can always quit. Happens all the time, right? And there's different ways of quitting. I mean, like you talked about. Some people will just quit. Like, I'm gonna kill myself. I mean, the rates of suicide amongst highly successful people. We live in in an environment in Brentwood, Tennessee, that is one of the most affluent areas in the entire country. And we have friends that have made tens and hundreds of millions of dollars and will hang themselves in the garage. You can quit. It's an option. But in in our world, it's not of consideration. Right? And I think this is an important part for kids to understand. Like we talk about you know being in your 40s and being built from a different mold. I can remember being a kid, 13, 13, 14, 15 years old, and sitting in my room and dreaming about killing myself. It's an option. And then being able to work through the psychological process of okay, why do I feel I'm not living up to you know what my potential is and why am I not here? And then planning it out and going, okay, these are the things I have to do. So you can quit. You can always quit.

SPEAKER_05 29:55

Todd, the mental health aspect, I like this conversation, by the way, I do. Because this is the part that people never want to talk about because they think somehow it's weakness. I actually think that it's strength. The mental health aspect, what was that like for you on your own journey? Because I tell you what, when you have people that look at you, I lost. I lost money because of you. I trusted you. That you had to find a way to continue through it through that moment. Talk about what you did. What was your process?

SPEAKER_04 30:25

I've been seeing the same um therapist shrink for 25 years. I um met her. Um I met her when my first wife out of high school after being together for 12 years decided like out of the blue, like I just I was completely clueless building my business, uh, decided to leave me. And uh that was like, you know, I had two little kids, very little kids, and um I started seeing a therapist, and um I got religion very quickly over time in this conversation. So I it's really interesting to me. Uh I meet a lot of people who want to be entrepreneurs or come to me for money. I we lend a lot of money to public companies and private companies that want to go public, and and uh I have it says a lot if they're not willing to um be admit you know their failures. Like I used to have this, for some reason, I used to, when I was a kid, I used to hate Sundays. Monday was school, and I was suicidal on it. I hated it. I hated the feeling of a Sunday that led to a Monday, and you know, I think growing up as a having a single mom. Um but what really changed it was seeing a therapist and understanding of your commitment to being with the right partner. So I remarried and I completely approached everything differently. And I won't give you all the details, but I will say that I told her that you need to be prepared for 50 or 500. And I said that was back when I said it like, you know, like I might make 500,000, I may make 50,000. And she was with me, we got married, and I had to restart that business, kind of failed after my first marriage. Again, in the same space, like an idiot beating my head into the ground, doing the same thing again. And um you you gotta you gotta marry the right person if you're an entrepreneur. You if you that that can torture you to death. And uh I'm I got lucky and married someone who understood that we have different roles. She wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. My first wife, I wanted double income, no children. I figured out I didn't want that. And um therapy and a lot of study. I study a lot of other entrepreneurs. I spend an enormous amount of time. I basically read, this would not interest anyone in this room, but I a securities lawyer would, I basically read every single deal ever that was ever on Edgar, found out who was involved in every transaction, found out how they got the financing done, how someone raised money, who was involved in raising it. And I got obsessed with it. My wife would say like a light bulb and Edgar was all I needed for entertainment. But I really did marry the right person. And to this day, um, you know, there are people at my company that if they're not working out for me and I want them to work out, I tell them you, you know, I have a therapist, you can see she won't tell me anything about you, but it'll it'll kind of set you free from your demons. Can you talk about that? People are afraid of therapy, right? And therapy is a big deal. And I heard someone over here talk about being in the now. I don't know which one it was, who said it being in the now. But I'm a deep believer that if you have a passion for something, you'll if you actually pay attention to it and you want to do it, it'll be delivered to you. You just have to put it out in the universe. You have to go meet people, you have to not be afraid to ask questions, you have to not be afraid to look bad or but you can you can figure it out. It's right, it's right in front of you. The the internet and AI and all the tools that are available to you are available to study as person, but then you still then have to decide after you completely fail because you will, because you're gonna keep going forward.

SPEAKER_05 34:12

Yeah, what's interesting? I had uh this friend of mine, he's got this clothing brand called Fubu. Uh he's on a TV. And I had asked him a question during an interview. I said, Is it okay to say I don't know? Dustin, that's probably one of the best things you can do. It's okay to say I don't know. I don't know. But then you can reach out to somebody, like a therapist, say, Look, I don't know how to get through this, I don't know how to control my thoughts, I don't know how to give myself permission, I don't know how to forgive myself, I don't know how, I don't know how, I don't know how. But that when you read Chris Bach, Chris Voss's book is one of my favorite in the world, how to negotiate, how to use your words, how to communicate when somebody doesn't know how to communicate, how to calm them down and not react that they don't even know you're calming them down. Okay, Vlad, and then Riyadh, and then we're gonna close it out. So for you, Vlad, you've got uh quite a journey ahead of you, as you've seen. Uh the young bucks over here, they're telling you it's going to be hard. It's going to require a mindset that needs to be relentless. But when you get through the hard part, I'm telling you, that's the beauty of it. When you have already gone through hell and you have reached that point and you just keep walking a little further, everything else just seems easy. Much easier. So Vlad, the next five years as an entrepreneur, what does it look like? What do you want it to be? So we come back in five years, kind of like those, you know, where where they are now moments. We'll be back here on stage and we'll celebrate it.

SPEAKER_00 35:47

I mean, now it's an incredible time of opportunities. They're all over the place. You can stay at home and make money, literally, just you don't have to leave your house ever. You can even order food to come to you and just stay at home, watch movies and work. Um it isn't yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:06

My one-year-old daughter won't leave that out, so I don't know if that's a great advice, but yeah, yeah, true.

SPEAKER_00 36:13

Always communication with people and just going out and having fun with your friends is is is key to to happy, successful life.

unknown 36:20

Yeah, the internet lets you talk to the world.

SPEAKER_00 36:22

True, true. But personal contact. Something you can't fabricate through a computer, unfortunately, or for for for the good of it, really. Anyhow, so for the next five years, I think we'll see a completely different world. Like Trump is doing complete bits. I really have no idea what he's gonna do tomorrow. Uh conflict from conflict from conflict, um, globalization is changing into fragmented world order. I think tons of opportunities. I think one thing that I will for sure do is I won't keep myself closed down to one region. Uh I was always look for opportunities all over the world. Because right now, since it's being so segregated, there's just so much more opportunities if you just fly out somewhere else and and then talk to somebody who is in a different region than you. So essentially, yeah, just staying open. Uh I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say this, but don't be a pussy. Uh just keep going forward and uh have role models like you guys, just it's an incredible journey, and I can I can feel it like it's gonna be it's gonna be exciting.

SPEAKER_05 37:35

Riyadh, because you and I talk about this and I always laugh about it, is because English is my first language, clearly. Um but for many of you it's not. And it's a world that requires they're not for you to speak English. There are people that are afraid. Maybe they think they're being judged, maybe they are being judged. I've met some people that clearly judge people, no question. How do you not allow that to stop you? How do you use that as your fuel? You were Tunisian, you spoke no French. And I will tell you, the French are not always that easy to deal with. You succeeded.

SPEAKER_01 38:10

Uh this is again when we see the target we have in life and the vision we have, what is our goal in this life is absolutely important. Born in Tunisia, I speak only Arabic, and when I arrive with my baccalaureate in pocket, I have to learn French already, and then I have to go to the school. And I was the first one in the school having my engineer diploma. And my target after that is to work in a very high luxury company, and I was doing it, and then my target was to create my company, and I was doing it, and then I say, now my target is to buy one of the most luxurious company or group in the world, and it was done. And then I say, okay, now I want to have uh a target of numbers, and then I start building strategically all the options and selling the product in different countries. Now we are present in 85 countries. The target is going to 100 countries, and the saying after that, how many people can use our product? I say, okay, let's increase the numbers. Now we are over 50,000 luxury property use the product. It means we touch millions, even billions of people using our product. That's absolutely also a target. Having already patents and technology based on sustainability, 15 patents already done. I mean, every time, if you listen to the others, definitely you will not uh move. If you are surrounded by negative people, unfortunately, you will not move. This is my advice to everyone. You're gonna be a leader, you have to listen yourself. You're gonna be with friends, you decide to make it, but you make your life very complicated. You want to make it easy, move forward. You have your idea, you have your vision, go. If you are with other people, they're probably gonna bring you back down, and this is not good. When I started learning the French, it was my target is to learn French. Ten years ago, I was not speaking English. And after that, I say, okay, now I want to be making business, I want to be in the word, I want to travel, I want to speak with the leaders, and they want to really make contracts. High really great one. I have to learn English. I will not bring someone with me to help me and to translate for me. And then I start learning English. Now I'm trying again to learn more, and I try to big numbers, I try to fit more and making more numbers and bigger and strategically, working in different ways, like for example, having new patents and new technology to help the people on the earth and to bring a new vision and a new strategy for the future, to have a better future to everyone. And I think we can be impactful. And it's not time to quit, anyway. I mean, this is what you say, that's it's not an option. But it's for me, a leader, have a responsibility. Because if we are born with a purpose in this life, I think we have to go really deep. We have to challenge ourselves to keep always going. Never give up. It doesn't exist for me. We have always to be focused to move and to look big. This is the real entrepreneur for me.

SPEAKER_05 41:14

Unstoppable entrepreneurs. Thank you, everybody.