Bill Dost, founder of D&D Leasing, refused an arranged marriage at 19 to claim his own path. He argues that choosing the right financing partners matters more than chasing the best rates, and tells younger entrepreneurs to surround themselves with smarter people early. His mantra: never ever quit.
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All right everyone, welcome back to the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner, and today I have a special guest named Bill Dost. He's the founder of D&D Leasing. So welcome to the show, Bill.
Thank you very much for having me, Tyler. Of course.
So we'll dive right in. The first question I have for you is, what's the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
So yeah, I think the best story from my life that has a great message was that when I was 20 years old, I was supposed to have an arranged marriage, and it was pretty insane. I was forced basically in a room by my family to say, hey, you're getting married. And I didn't realize that I had all these great reserves in my body to be able to say, no, I'm not going to do it. And what I learned from that was that me, you, all of us have great strength, great reserves to be able to determine something, make a decision, and make that decision right. In my case, it was, no, I'm not getting married. Sorry, at the age of 19. I have a life and I have goals that I want to achieve. And that's how I want to move forward. And if I didn't do that, make that critical decision, I don't think I would have made any of the decisions I made in my future.
And what's the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
So I run a finance company, and we lend money to lots and lots of people. And conversely, we borrow lots and lots of money from banks and institutions. I would tell people that Choose the right partners, not necessarily the best deal or the best rate on your money, but it's the actual people, the institution that you're working with is the most important people, the most important decision that you can make in those cases.
And what's your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily like industry specific.
Never ever quit.
And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
Get around smarter people faster and learn from them earlier in your career.
And in your opinion, what's the key to happiness?
You know, be content with what you have, but be unsatisfied enough to set the next set of goals.
And what's the best book you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from it?
I'm a Christian, so for me it's the Bible all the way, and it's that God loves you and he forgives you.
And what's your favorite quote and why?
You know, it's seek first to understand and then to be understood, because I think too often in life we always want to be heard and we want to make sure people hear us, but they don't care until you turn around, listen to them first. And I think if we can all communicate just that much better, we'll all get a lot further and we'll get what we want too.
Well, thank you so much for coming on, Bill. That was some amazing value in record time. Before we let you go, where's the best place for people to find you online?
Yeah, they can find us on our website, which is D&D, spelled out, leasing.com. So D&Dleasing.com, you'll find us and we'll be happy to connect.
Perfect. Thanks again for coming on, Bill.
Thanks for having us.
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