Playing sports. Having H.O.R.S.E. tournaments in the pool. Helping them with their homework. Putting music on way too loud and having impromptu dance parties in our living room, stepping on their toys way more than I would like to admit or watching them do something completely ordinary and wondering how the heck they're growing up so quickly.

Our life isn't particularly spectacular. But it's very special to me.

And strangely enough, that life is also a big reason CareerSprout exists.

Because my life didn't always look like this.

I grew up believing there was never enough.

My family immigrated to the United States from Africa when I was 5 years old.

My dad had a ninth-grade education, struggled with English, and had an incredibly difficult time finding work.

So he started a small printing business and for the first 6 years, he never once made more than $1,200 per month, which forced my mom (who was college educated) to work two jobs to help keep our family afloat.

Suffice it to say, money was constantly tight.

We lived in a low-income neighborhood where drugs, gang violence, robberies and crime weren’t abstract things you heard about on television.

They were around us.

• When I was eight, one of our neighbors was murdered outside our home.
• Financial stress consumed our household.
• Eventually, because of that stress, my parents filed for bankruptcy.
• Which then ultimately led them to getting a divorce.

And for a very long time, I carried that feeling of lack with me.

• Lack of money.
• Lack of confidence.
• Lack of connections.
• Lack of opportunity.
• And sometimes, lack of hope that life could look much different.

Then I started my own career…

…and I wasn’t exactly an overnight success story.

During my first six years in the workforce, I had 10 different jobs.

• Most of them went nowhere.
• I was laid off twice.
• I watched friends around me progress while I felt stuck.
• And I never earned much more than the mid-$40,000s.

At one point I genuinely started believing:

Eventually I helped build a staffing company. It didn’t even turn a profit for the first 17 months and I almost quit three different times.

That company grew to this before being acquired. In 2017, after the acquisition, I became one of the youngest executives at a publicly traded company.

At the same time, I started CareerSprout.

And once I finally felt like I had cracked the code on how careers, opportunities, relationships, positioning and compensation actually worked…

I couldn’t stop thinking about all the people who were still where I had once been.

• Talented.
• Hardworking.
• Capable of far more.
• But frustrated because nobody had ever shown them how to navigate any of this.

And today, I’m incredibly proud that I’ve had the privilege of helping close to 1,000 people through one-on-one coaching.

Not because I think everyone needs to become wealthy.

Not because I believe your net worth determines your worth.

And certainly not because I think success is about accumulating more stuff.

It’s because I know what having options can change.

Today, my family doesn’t have to live with the financial fear I grew up with.

• My kids get experiences I never had.
• We can travel together.
• We can save.
• We can invest.
• My wife and I can give generously.