⚡️ Today’s level up ⚡️

Today’s edition breaks down my complete journey from childhood, through my time in corporate sales, to today as a one-person business operator with over a $5M net worth and the freedom to follow my ambitions on my terms. My goal is to illustrate how being highly purposeful throughout this journey has yielded financial independence, solid relationships, good health, and memorable experiences.

Let’s go!

Read time: <12 minutes

If you missed last week, read it here.

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Warning

Okay, this another doozy edition, similar to this one and this one. In fact, I’m going to break this up over two editions.

Staying surface-level with gimmicky hacks is never my style (and not why you’re a subscriber), but if you’re looking for actionable advice, I don’t have a specific playbook for you this week. However, I do want to take some time to paint the broad strokes of my journey to bring to life the concept of Purposeful Performance.

The intent is to show you that extraordinary results can be found by ordinary people – those with mental disabilities, from disadvantaged homes, crippling adult failures, or much worse.

If you’re pressed for time, then I suggest you bookmark this and come back to it later. But if you can stick with me until the end (which will be next week), I’ll make it worth your while.

Let’s dive in!

The early years

I guess I liked trains as a kid

I was born on April 28, 1979 to very young parents and raised until I was ten in Point Pleasant, West Virginia – a small Appalachian town that hasn’t evolved much since that time.

My parents were hard-working and honest people, and luckily for me, both independent thinkers that didn’t fit the normal prototype for young adults in the area – those who drank a lot, hunted, and watched a lot of sports. Nothing against any of those things, but had both or only one of my parents chosen to “fit in” with that crowd, who knows how my life would have turned out.

I was the second of two children. I have an older sister named Sunshine (no, my parents weren’t hippies…they were too young to be a part of that movement).

My birth was (apparently) planned, while my older sister’s was not. She’s four years older than me and was conceived by accident when both of my parents were still in high school. They eventually finished high school and even went to some college before getting into a terrible car accident when I was about five years old that nearly took their lives.

On their way to Marshall University one night with a friend of theirs, they had been struck by a driver. Luckily they had their seatbelts on (in this case, independent thinking literally saved their lives, as wearing a seatbelt back then in that area was not the norm). Their friend, who was driving, was not wearing one however. Sadly, she died instantly in that crash.

To be honest with you, I don’t remember a lot of details during that time, just that it seemed really scary to me when I visited them in the hospital and saw my Dad’s jaw all wired up.

My Dad did go on to graduate from college (and then eventually got his Master’s and a Doctorate in Psychology over the years) while my Mom worked odd jobs until she eventually got her Cosmetology license and settled into that for most of my youth.

One thing they did not rebel against was the consumerist mentality of the 80s and early 90s. Looking good and having nice things were important to them. I never wanted for anything. I was always a pretty well-behaved kid and when I asked for something, they generally got it for me – from toys, to bikes, to video games.

Yeah, you could say I was spoiled in that regard.

I had a pretty good childhood, even if my parents were younger than most, meaning they made mistakes as they were still maturing as adults while raising us. They had to figure out what it meant to be an adult and a parent at the same time.

When I was ten, we moved to Akron, Ohio – the rubber capital of the world, hometown of LeBron James, and the incubator for music icons like Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders, Devo, and The Black Keys (BTW, anybody recognize the guy next to me below [I’m on the left in the dark clothes]). Rock on!

Can you guess who was the co-captain of our high school soccer team with me? He’s may sing Lonely Boy, but he’s not one

Akron’s a working-class city and was an awesome place to grow up during my most formative years. Although when I first moved there I was bullied and had a lot of insecurities to overcome (a country mullet doesn’t make you a lot of friends in a place like Akron apparently). I never quite moved past those insecurities throughout middle school and high school.

Not knowing anything about social anxiety, introversion, or even high-functioning autism, I always felt like an outsider and that gave me an aura of superiority to others, when in reality, I was just terrified to be around others in social settings.

Needless to say, I was not a fan of middle school and high school. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

In the summer of 1995, between my sophomore and junior year, I began to get a respite from the inner turmoil when I started throwing myself into my passion at the time – soccer. In addition to that, I got a job working for Mary Carr. Had it not been for these two events, I could literally be bones in a casket right now.

See earlier that year, I wanted it to all go away. When my parents were separated for a time (they have since divorced – something for the better), and I was alone in my Dad’s temporary apartment, I snuck it into his underwear drawer, grabbed his hand gun, loaded it and had the intention to pull the trigger against my head before I could chicken out. I didn’t even write a goodbye note.

But, as fate would have it, I had never handled a loaded gun before and it went off before I could raise it to my head. The bullet shattered through my Dad’s medicine cabinet in his bathroom. One, the sound and smell shocked and scared me into reality. Two, I instantly thought, “Oh shit, that bullet couldn’t even penetrate the flimsy metal on the inside of the medicine cabinet. Would that have even done damage to my brain?” I quickly snagged the bullet shell and came up with an excuse of me juggling a soccer ball that went rogue and caused the mirror to shatter.

I found out that day I was a pretty convincing actor.

That wasn’t the only time I came close to taking my life. Another time was as a freshman in college when I tried to overdose on pills. Luckily, with time, perspective, and self-development, those really dark moments are in my rearview mirror. Maybe it will take years of therapy to get at the true root of my early trauma and hopelessness, but that’s for another chapter. Back to the story…

Soccer gave me an outlet to channel my energy and something to become really good at (although I really wasn’t all that great). And working for Mary Carr, who ran a prominent funeral home in the area (no I didn’t work at the funeral home, although the morbid connection to my mental state at the time is not lost on me), gave me something to focus on other than my own internal struggles.

That job was passed down to me from my sister’s high school boyfriend’s younger brother who had graduated and was going on to college. It felt like I was a part of a lineage of “chosen ones” to help her take care of all kinds of things – from painting her rental properties, to mowing the grass, to raking the leaves, to cleaning up her dogs’ poop, to delivering chocolate Easter eggs to her closest friends and network.

The point was it gave me structure and purpose.

And I learned a thing or two about investing (she was an avid trader), the history of Akron, business savviness, and more importantly, how to be a good human.

But soccer consumed me the most. It was what I thought would be my ticket out of Akron and my path to bigger and better things. The following year I had decided I wanted to finish high school after my senior season and go train full-time at the Adidas Soccer Academy in Bradenton, Florida (now called the IMG Academy). Luckily, my parents supported that decision and I used the money I earned working for Mary along with their help to pay for it.

To make it happen, I had to double up on English credits before my senior year. So I signed up for summer school and took senior English Lit with kids who had failed it the previous year and needed it to graduate. Interestingly when I look back on that, I realize we were two ends of the spectrum with the same intended result – trying to graduate high school. They were trying to catch up while I was trying to get ahead.

My senior year was a breeze. I went to school half a day and then went to work for Mary the second half of the day through the DECA program I signed up for my junior year. Then in January, I went to Bradenton to train full-time before coming back and graduating with my class.

From there, I was recruited to play at the University of Tampa. I didn’t start a single game my freshman season. I worked hard in the off season and during the summer of 1998, between my freshmen and sophomore years, I signed up for a program that took American players to train and play in Romania for a month.

Young adulthood

Me in the middle, with two other Americans trying their luck with becoming a pro

I was good enough to be invited to come back and join a professional team, FC Petrolul in Ploiești, Romania, for a year as a trainee.

So I prepared to join them after one more year in college. I finished my sophomore season in Tampa, then went back to Akron in the winter, went to school part-time, worked for Mary part time, and trained hard to prepare for my year-long trial in Romania that summer. I trained a little too hard though and developed an overuse injury common for soccer and rugby players – osteitis pubis. I still went, dealing with the pain and taking heavy doses of NSAIDs with a cortisone injection every six months to cope.

Even though I didn’t sign a contract, my coach, Costică Moldoveanu, did let me play in one actual match – albeit with the reserve team. I had been convincing enough (through translators) that I needed actual playing time in real games in order to develop – not just the friendly matches I had been relegated to.

I had a shaved head at the time and looked close enough to an actual player on the team who was injured. Costică let me use his pass (something, if found out, could have landed him and the club in serious trouble 🤫). I got paid a whopping $150 for that match. But before you sneeze at that number, it’s important to note that in 2000, the average monthly salary for Romanians was only $450.

It was a defining moment for me, to say the least.

After a year trialing with Petrolul in Romania, I went to try my luck in England after connecting with a contact over email. He connected me with an agent who was going to help get me some trials with clubs during pre-season. I had an aunt who married an Englishmen, so luckily, I had a place to stay in Birmingham.

This was pre 9/11, so air travel wasn’t as constrictive as it is now; however, my contact didn’t warn me about the need to have a return ticket or a ticket on to the U.S. He told me, just tell them I was a student when I pass through customs.

I was detained in customs for seven hours.

I was only released because they had read through all of my journals, and luckily, I had a customs agent who was feeling sympathetic that day. She told me reading through my journals and learning how committed I was in making my dreams come true was the reason she would let me stay in the country for six months.

I learned that day that writing can open doors – literally.

Sadly, the injury was just too much to bear and my trials with lower level clubs didn’t materialize into anything meaningful. With only a few months left in England, I had a lot of time on my hands, so I went on an introspective journey. I dove deep into Buddhism and read a lot of teachings from Vietnamese monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, including The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching.

To heal my injury, I abstained from playing and stayed active by swimming at a local gym and taking yoga classes. In my spare time, I read and wrote.

All of it together forged a practice of deliberate mindfulness and an appreciation of the impermanence of things, being still and present in the moment, and reflecting on my attachment to things like success in soccer.

After the six months were up, my parents (back together at that time) had moved to California. I joined them. Since I never signed a pro contract, I still had two years of eligibility to play in college. I made up my mind that either I wanted to finish up in California or New York. After trying to court several colleges on both coasts, New York won out in the end, as I secured a scholarship with a small school in Long Island – C.W. Post (now known as LIU Post).

After a year and a half abroad and six months living a clean life (and practically like a Buddhist monk) in California, I was not really cut out for the transition back to college life. I stuck out like a sore thumb. The college life wasn’t for me.

After a year and a half there, I was pretty eager to move on, despite not having a degree. Luckily, Long Island has a competitive youth soccer system, and when it became apparent that playing professionally, even in the minor leagues was not a realistic possibility, I had met several people in the youth soccer training space.

After a few job offers, the last one was really enticing, and so I decided to call it quits on Post and go full-in on training the next generation. Unfortunately for me, during this time I hadn’t been thoughtful about managing my personal finances. I got a credit card in my last year at Post (those damn sharks waiting outside the quad!) and racked up a fair amount of debt pretty quickly.

But with a solid job offer in hand, I was determined to give it a go. We were different than the other soccer training companies. We had a purpose – which was to employ only American players who had gone on to play at higher levels like college and the pros (many who grew up in Long Island) and give back to the communities and clubs that developed us. Although I was not a Long Island native, that company had a culture I could believe in and people who felt like my tribe.

I moved into an apartment in Jamaica Queens with Nate (he’s pictured above in the white t-shirt to my left with a Lee bag). He came back from Romania and decided to finish playing at St. Johns University.

Being a young guy in New York City and working with people I respected and called friends, I started to grow into my own skin. I felt like I was starting to blossom a bit. But NYC is a frantic place and it certainly doesn’t take any prisoners – meaning it’s an expensive place to live, especially when you’re trying to keep up with all that it offers.

My personal debt started racking up substantially. During my time working at Coastal Soccer, one of the founders thought it would be a good idea to try DJing for fun. But doing things “just for fun” didn’t really exist for me back then. When I set my sights on something of interest, I went all in.

So much so that after a few months of teaching myself and taking classes at Scratch, I started booking gigs – ones that actually paid me. In fact, I even scored a gig opening up for Rihanna at the JCPenny’s in Herald Square, back when she was just breaking as an artist (remember Pon de Replay?).

I am DJ BrandName

What’s next?

Ok, what’s the point of all this?

It wasn’t some self-aggrandizing exercise to forge a stronger connection or try to build a storyline so that I can sell you some new product or service. Although it was therapeutic for me to write this, my intention goes back to what I outlined in the beginning – ordinary people can build extraordinary lives.

At the heart of it, in my experience, is being purposeful with your approach and decisions.

Next week, I’ll get a bit more tactical by breaking down my lessons once I got my first real sales role in 2006. I’ll plot my journey across the three levels you’ve seen me reference before:

– Level I: Apply effort to learn skills

– Level II: Leverage skills to earn outsized income

– Level III: Turn that money into lifelong freedom

More to unpack, but wanted to start with giving you this foundation. Thanks for sticking around and reading this through to the end. The best is yet to come.

That’s a wrap! See you next week.

Here’s how I can help you right now (big changes coming- get these while you can):

1 | Unlock the 7 Figure Seller OS

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2 | Download The 7 Figure Open Letter

Get the creative strategic selling strategy that landed a $5.9M deal with a top 4 major global airline. Bonus inside!

3 | Book a 1:1 coaching session right now

You can book a 60-minute coaching session with me (although the Pro above option provides access to 1:1 coaching with me at a 70% discount).