Background Story
I grew up in Brooklyn, NY in the Glenwood projects. I learned from a young age the desire to better my life and surroundings. Growing up as a mixed individual (Mother-Jewish, Father-Jamaican and Cuban) I always had a confusion of who I was. I grew up in a predominately black neighborhood and when you are one of the only brown kids with a white mother, this makes you different. And as kids always find a way to do, when you a different, they make sure that you know. So I got picked on a lot growing up. I also grew up in a tough neighborhood. I was scared to go outside for a long time. Just to give you an idea, I saw the first person get shot and killed in front of me when I was in JHS, I saw a second person get killed when I was in HS. I’ve been beat up and robbed. I really had a tough time. It wasn’t always so bad, up until the 4th grade I really didn’t know any better and was pretty bright eyed and bushy tailed. In 4th grade I remember getting into a fight with a neighborhood bully. The next day everyone at school heard about it and continued to make fun of me at an even worse rate. I remember one of my best friends deciding not to hang around me any more because he couldn’t be associated with such a loser.
So I started spiraling down into a deep depression. I would look out my window and ask G-D why was I put here, in this situation. I knew I didn’t belong in such an area and I hated my life and myself. I had a deep seeded hatred for my life and thought life was meaningless. So much so that I contemplated just ending my life many times, but never took myself to that moment.
I can remember when I was younger my father taking me on a car ride, he drove me to a very nice neighborhood and pointed at the big homes and cars and said “Son, You can have that home, you can have that car, You can have whatever life you want” He then said to me, “We are all given challenges in life. We are given those challenges so that we can overcome them and become the person we are meant to be.” At the time I didn’t understand the impact of his words, but they always stayed with me. That car rides were some of the most important moments in my developing mind. I started seeing that there was more to the world than just violence, drugs and self-doubt. That the world had amazing things to offer. And even though I didn’t have any of those things, I knew that he felt something inside of me beginning to emerge, I just didn’t know what . I somehow trusted things would get better as I entered JHS.
Enter Junior High School, any coolness that I might have held onto was completely gone at this point. I started to look at the “cool kids” and ask myself, “What makes them cool? And me not? How do they say things, do things? What was respected about them?” The funny thing I noticed that while my parents and other adults were telling me that not smoking, getting good grades, behaving, helping others was really cool. It seemed that the “cool kids” were doing the complete opposite of all of those things and reaping the rewards of popularity. This confused me a lot, if adults say all of these things are what you should be doing yet everyone else are doing opposite things now, why are they reaping the rewards? Luckily, my dad taught me another valuable lesson. He stepped in to let me know the concept of delayed gratification, planning for the future, doing the what you deep down inside know is right is more important than what other people say or do. I may not see the rewards now, that I was planting the seeds of greatness for my future. Though it was not completely easy to swallow, I listened to his advice. However I could not escape my feelings of depression. The only time I went outside during my JHS years was to walk my dogs. And I would pray they would do their business as fast as they could so I could get upstairs away from everyone.
My parents sensed I was having issues and wanted the best for me so they exposed me to as much as they could. I went to summer camp, after school programs, and other programs. Though my parents normally could not afford such things, they found a way to make it work, to at least get a taste of the ‘good life’. Thank Goodness for scholarships and city programs. This taught me another valuable lesson growing up, that once you are exposed to something great, you become driven to want to be around it as much as possible.
Fast forward to High School. I am still not cool. And even worse, violence is getting worse. I attended a high school in a tough area of Brooklyn, and the time I was in high school, gang violence was spiking. I though that if I at least was a star athlete I would get some cool points, because I always saw sports as a means to success. I joined the wrestling, football, and baseball team. The only thing about joining the teams, was that I sucked in all three sports. It at least gave me a cover to say “Well I’m on my football team” when trying to fit in. With my dreams of becoming a professional athlete pretty much gone I turned to college as being a “way out”.
Skip ahead to college, finally… some sort of acceptance. College started out awesome. Something amazing happened in college. In college all of a sudden it was cool to do well in school, it was cool to volunteer, it was cool to be yourself. I learned a valuable lesson of how much the people you surround yourself with and your environment can effect how you feel. I also made a personal realization. I was finally able to admit to myself that I had low self-esteem, which was very hard for me to do. I began a journey to fix my now realized problem. I started reading books and surrounding myself with self-development material. After my first year of college, after a near death experience I decided that I had to start creating something in my life now, because I knew how precious life really is. I became involved as a student leader and by the time I graduated, I was the president of 4 organizations and founder of 2 organizations at my college. Around junior year there was one book I read, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki, and the book opened my mind to the idea of financial freedom, and entrepreneurship. I never really knew what I wanted to do with my life and I just figured I’d become a lawyer because that seemed to make a lot of money. But after spending one day with a lawyer I knew this wasn’t in my future. But entrepreneurship seemed to be my calling
After trying multiple businesses that failed, including a party promotion company and calendar company, I finally hit the business that he felt good with. I started The Place Finder LLC, an off-campus housing service with two of my college buddies and took off with it full force.
When I graduated I decided to take a position with a multi-billion dollar consumer product goods company, Unilever. It was great, I had a company paid for car, apartment and was making more money than ever. However it wasn’t my own, and I decided to actively pursue my passion for entrepreneurship.
I started asking myself tough life questions, like “how do I want to be remembered?” What is my purpose? If I were to die today, would I feel like my life was worth something?” So I wanted to get into motivational speaking. I had no idea how I was going to do it. I then got involved with, monster.com’s Making It Count Programs as one of the youngest professional speakers in the company’s history. From that experience I have been able to grow my own company and now I have the honor of saying that in total I have spoken to over 35,000 students, in 30 states, and two countries.
877-803-4221
America's Top Young Speaker
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