Calvin Ayre wasn’t always the rich entrepreneur he is now; He had to work his way up the hard way. He did well for himself, building up a gambling brand, and has now moved on to the Bitcoin world. Before the CoinGeek Live conference kicked off, Ayre joined Dustin Plantholt on the Life’s Tough podcast to discuss how he got to where he is now.

Ayre grew up in the farmlands of Saskatchewan, telling Plantholt that he walked to school with pig shit on his boots, just like all the other kids. But after gaining a college education and starting a business in Vancouver, Ayre quickly saw there was a market opportunity in the nascent world of online gambling. He gave his theory of how he did so well in those early days:

“I think my secret sauce was early on, coming up with a better branding strategy and marketing plan. A lot of the incumbents in the earliest days were actually street bookies who’d just kind of said ‘Lets go online.’ So they weren’t very flamboyant and they just didn’t really understand the concept of marketing. You don’t market yourself in a traditional manner when you’re doing street bookie stuff, because you don’t want people to know other than your customers.”

Plantholt asks if a drive for money motivated Ayre. “Actually, I never really thought I’d be this successful in my career,” Ayre answered. “I actually was more driven by challenges. I think I can do this, and I do it. It was incremental and it kept getting bigger, and bigger and bigger. I kind of just like building things, I’m kind of a builder.”