001: From Struggle Comes Success

Everybody sees me today in the position I'm in, a fast growing company. They don't really understand the story and the struggle behind my success; where I've come from, and really what it takes to achieve success.

My story starts like many others around this world; it starts unfortunately growing up in poor situation. I grew up in a pretty wealthy area being poor, and I think there's nothing worse in life than growing up poor in the face of people having everything.

It makes you really realize what you don't have. When you grow up in an area where nobody has anything, you're kind of all on a level playing field. But when you grow up in a wealthy area where everybody seems to have so much more than you, you know, you know that you don't have as much as them. You know your parents don't have as much money. I realize what I don't have, I realize what I wanted, and I made sure from a very young age that I would succeed at every goal I've ever dreamed of.

Seeing my parents work and struggle inspired me to work. I didn't have the money like everybody else did when they went to University where their parents paid for them, and they had the nice cars, I worked three jobs to put myself through University. I graduated, and till this day I'm so thankful that I had to go through those experiences because it's those struggles, and those hardships that define me as a person.

You need to sacrifice almost everything to achieve your goal. So when people say “You're lucky,” they don't know what they're talking about. And people that say that will never achieve their goal because luck has nothing to do with it because if I was that lucky I wouldn't have fallen on my face so many times.

I wouldn't have failed so many times. I wouldn't have had so many sleepless nights. Perseverance is the key to success, and then when you succeed people are going to try to justify to you in a very simple way why you succeeded. I know what I'm capable of, I know what I'm going to do, and I know where I want to be, and nothing is going to stop me.

I look at myself, and I say “Well, what else do I want to achieve?” And the answer is still the same from when I was a kid, I want to achieve greatness. In many people's eyes, I've achieved success, but in my eyes it's not enough, I want to achieve greatness.

That is my story in life, it was my story in the past, and it'll be my story in the future. The ability to never give up, and to always know where I want to go. I will not let anybody deter me from that goal, and I will never let anybody discourage me from achieving my goals.