3. Lahera in the Flesh

If I had not run for school board, I do not believe that I would have ever met the individual that I am going to discuss.  This is not your typical entrepreneur who is business-oriented or says that you need to own a storefront and start pushing product.  He isn't even what I would call the idealist entrepreneur, like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates.  This entrepreneur does not fit the mold of anyone other than his own.  I find everything that he does incredible and I have started to look up to him as my mentor in terms of self-development.  My friend is Dave Galit, and I want to tell you about how I met him.

I had just started my campaign for school board at 18 years old and was at a political party meeting.  Dave calls me to the back of the room, and says, "You're the guy I saw on TV, I want to sponsor your first 100 signs."  Now don't let me fool you, that conversation probably contained a bit of expletive language.  Here was a guy that I did not know, but he surely knew me.  At the end of the meeting, he asked me if I was going to Dunkin' Donuts to introduce me to his crew.  At this point, I'm thinking it's 9:00pm, a school night, and this "crew" surely sounds suspect.  I was too young to already be involved with what I thought was the mafia.  So, I said, "eh, I really need to go home and get some homework done."  To which he responded, "No you don't, if you want to win, you're coming with me to meet everyone at Dunkin' Donuts."  I reluctantly followed and ended up saying out way past when I should have and my parents honestly thought I had gone missing.

A few days go by and I reach out to this man, and he was already ready to order my signs and get me moving on the campaign.  I share this detail because ever since the moment I met him, he does not really believe in planning.  With everything in his life it is just, "let's get it done."  He doesn't want excuses, he doesn't want to hear "no", and he doesn't care about social structure.  He follows the same mode of thought as Dr. Pryor when it comes to the concept of legality.  His most favorite thing that he likes to tell me is that his highest grade was a "4" in school.  To this day, I am still not very sure what that means, but I assume it is emphasizing that he doesn't care about another social structure, school.  He frequently tells me not to listen to anything I am told in the education system because they want to destroy my creativity.  On that note, if you ever meet him, he will also ask you how many fingers he is holding up.  It's always 2 or 3, but he doesn't like to hear that.  13 or some outrageous number is always the answer because it breaks the mold and tells you to think bigger than what society wants you to.  Overall, with his personality, he is the most outspoken person I have seen, everyone gets to know THE Dave Galit, he has ADHD when you speak to him, and no tact because there is no time for it.  However, he is so genuine and wants to see good done in the world.

I think that I have started to rant about him, but with his entrepreneurial spirit it follows all the same qualities of his personality.  He has recently got involved in the tree care business which I do some of his consultation work for.  What did he self-admittedly know about tree care?  Absolutely nothing.  Did he care that he knew nothing about tree care? Absolutely not.  His willingness to innovate and persuade people is the reason that he has remained so successful.  He went and helped the panhandle after Hurricane Michael and I am sure he will be putting his skills to work after Hurricane Dorian.

If I can pass on any of his advice, it's to not care what other people think.  Put yourself out there and make people say "yes" to you.  If you accept "no", that is the only answer that you will ever get.  Finally, he recommends that everyone take the Dale Carnegie course and read, How to Make Friends and Influence People.


Personally, I took this course because I need a place to channel my creativity.  I have so many complaints about the world around me (which is evident by my last post).  If I continue to just complain about the world around me and not take any action, I feel like I am part of the problem.  It is a lot of weight to bear to think you are part of the problem.  My biggest issue (which may be a few things), I don't know to take the next steps in terms of my self-development.  I know that I want to make an impact on this world, I just do not know what the right avenues are to do it.  As we continue in this course, I sincerely hope that I will have the skill of entrepreneurship to fall back on.  As an Economics and Political Science major, there are a lot of 9-5 jobs, but I truly don't want to fall suspect to the mundane.  I may be able to help a select few people in one of those positions, but it is not going to be the impact I want to have on the world.

I am assuming that the image is of myself, so here we go: