My Story

I can remember it like it was yesterday. A sophomore in high school with 3 D1 colleges and 1 D2 college already looking at recruiting me. This is it. This is what I’ve worked so hard for. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And suddenly…

I’m in the hospital and I have to have emerging surgery within 24hrs. And just like that my basketball dreams were over. 

Growing up in a small town in North Carolina, sports were all I knew. It was either to play sports and get a scholarship or sell drugs. The second one wasn’t an option because I had a mother who would kill me if I tried to be the next Pablo Escobar so I chose the first option, sports. 

Most people say they can’t imagine me not being athletic or muscular since I’m now a grown man that’s 6’6” 235lbs with year around 6 pack abs (December and January depends on how good the holiday food is lol) but I was never the most athletic kid growing up. I was pretty chubby with very little muscle development to my frame. We didn’t have much money growing up and barely had money for food at times. I watched my mother not eat some nights just so I could eat, so whatever we had I was grateful for. 

Growing up like this can either make you get used to it (the majority of people) or strive to never want to struggle again (me). I vowed at the age of 11 that I would never again struggle like this or have my future wife and kids struggle. Because all I knew at the time was sports I turned to sports. 

At first, it was football. Although I had never really played football much, because the kid’s recreation league had weight limitations, and as I said I was chubby. So I often didn’t meet the skinny kid weight requirements. But after I made myself the promise to never struggle again I realized I would be eligible to play 7th-grade sports the next year. So decided to lose a ton of weight that summer. My genius plan at the time was to eat once a day and play basketball nonstop. Although not healthy by today’s standards it worked. I lost over 21 pounds and I tried out for the basketball and football team. I made both. 

When you’re 33 and 32 or 53 and 52, there’s not much age difference. Well, when you’re 12 and kids are 13 that’s a whole other year of development. There were kids with muscles and mustaches at my school at 13 years old drinking alcohol and smoking. And here I am Mr. Baby face who’s now slim but still didn’t have any muscles. Nevertheless, I was letting nothing stop me from achieving my goals and making it out of the tough situation I had grown up in. Although I got put on my butt a lot. And I mean a lot. I slowly but surely got better and better and earned a starting spot on the middle school football team as a 7th grader. We went undefeated and unscored on for the first time in our county’s history. 

I saw how much I developed in one year and continued to improve. By my 8th grade year, the coaches were talking to my mom about sending me to college football camps for the summer and that I had great potential. Well little did I know I’d be having my first knee surgery at the old age of 13 that very first year. 

After my first surgery, I decided to stop playing football since I was scared to have another surgery. So I focused all my attention on basketball. After 8th grade year I began to play AAU basketball every summer against great competition, a few guys who are actually in the NBA right now! By the 9th grade summer, I was traveling with and playing summer basketball with the high school’s varsity basketball team and rumor had gotten around the coach was going to move me up to varsity as a sophomore which was the ultimate accomplishment! If you played varsity basketball as a sophomore you pretty much knew you were going to college on a sports scholarship. On top of that, I had 3 D1 colleges and 1 D2 college looking at me that summer. In my last AAU game before traveling with the varsity team I scored 15pts in one half alone so I was confident in the new skills I worked so hard for. 

We played multiple games in a day. The first day went great, getting good playing time and scoring when the team needed me. At the start of the second day, my leg started feeling funny but I was used to having knee pain. Up to that point I had always had it. I figured it was just growing pains because I was 5’6 at the end of 6th grade and by the beginning of 8th grade I was 6’3”.

I was the first man off the bench. I subbed in for a senior and it was now my time to shine. I got a pass drove to the basket for a dunk and was hit hard and fouled. I shook it off but moments later I noticed my leg was snapped in half. I had broken my growth plate and entire leg in half at the knee. The only thing holding my leg together was skin. I had to have emergency surgery in 24hrs. 

As I laid in the hospital after surgery, my second knee surgery in 2 years all I could do was think about what was I going to do. Well luckily I’m persistent and I rehabbed and kept playing. Little did I know I would be having a 3rd knee surgery 12 months later because they didn’t fix everything after the 2nd surgery and it caused complications. 

I visited the doctor shortly after to hear him say “I’m sorry James but you’ll never be able to run or jump again. And if you still want to play sports you need to take up swimming”. I immediately balled crying. Sports was my way out, at least I thought so at the time. At that moment I knew basketball was over for me.

Now at 15 years old, having 3 surgeries in the past 3 years, and having to relearn how to walk all over again what was I going to do? I continued to play sports to stay out of the streets, but I was never the same again. I was now slow, couldn’t jump anymore, and my left knee kept around 4oz of fluid from inflammation, on it at all times. How do I know? Because I would routinely get it drained every few weeks to be able to continue playing sports. If it wasn’t for daily prescription painkillers and my routine knee draining I wouldn’t have been able to even walk up and down the court. I know it was stupid but hey, I made myself a promise. 

I now had sports still in my life as a healthy distraction but I could no longer depend on them to better my future. I now was no longer good. Luckily I always remembered my mother telling me “your education is number one”. I decided this was now the answer. I couldn’t play sports to make it out but I could give my all in school and get a scholarship. 

I can’t quite say I gave my all in high school, who does haha. But I definitely focused and ended up graduating with a 4.2 GPA and got accepted into the top schools in North Carolina with academic scholarships. 

I didn’t take this for granted. Yea, I partied, became a fraternity president, and did all the things college kids do, but I was still focused. I graduated with a degree in Accounting and went straight on to get my MBA in finance. 

I was always great with numbers and managing money. Although accounting was hard I taught myself and simplified it as I do with everything. Graduate school finance was different. The concepts seemed over-complicated for no reason just to confuse people. The final straw was when I was in one of my professor’s office having a debate about why the formulas didn’t make sense in real-life investing to me. He assured me they did and were accurate. I then challenged him and asked him to show me his investing portfolio since this stuff made so much sense. He couldn’t. Ok, I said. I understand that’s personal information but surely you’re making plenty of money from your investments to where you don’t have to teach since you have the golden investing equation right? He also couldn’t answer. I now was seeing clearly. 

And this was the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey. 

My mother always told me to get a good education, but I got to thinking. What truly successful wealthy entrepreneurs got there by going to school and getting a bunch of degrees. Not Elon Musk. Not Patrick Bet David. Not Jeff Bezos. Hardly anyone. I had been bamboozled in my eyes. Of course, there’s a place for education but to truly become wealthy it takes investing and starting businesses.

I immediately put school and both jobs (I worked two jobs full-time to put myself through graduate school) on mental autopilot. I put enough energy into them to get the job done and that was it. I now was eating, breathing, and sleeping true business, investing, and entrepreneurship. I bought 20+ books for Christmas and read them. Listened to every YouTube video and podcast I could. I did it all. 

I didn’t strike instant success but with every new business venture came a new lesson and ultimately that became a blessing. By my third business endeavor, I managed to make 4 figures in my first month, and eventually got the business to 5 figures a month by the 6th month. I was starting to see progress. Unfortunately, that shortly came to an end because I signed bad contracts and I also was never paid the money I was owed, and people I was in business with ended up stealing money from me so I lost almost everything. 

I now had the most important thing, confidence, and belief! I persevered through and although not easy, I managed to keep putting one foot in front of the other to build other businesses and correct all the mistakes from the many lessons learned before. I worked long days, 16 hours a day for weeks at a time. I lived on hardly anything and invested almost everything I could save, tens of thousands of dollars, into education and new business ventures, and it slowly started to come together. 

My constant preparation began to meet opportunities. I went from making $500 a week at a job to over 4 figures a day from my businesses. I started to see myself get further and further away from struggling and upholding the promise I made to my 11-year-old self. I kept living below my means and still do to this day as I value minimalism and true freedom of my time more than materialistic things. The true millionaire next-door mentality. If you haven’t read that book, I would encourage you to do so. 

I began to apply the same work ethic and mentality I put into business into my mind and body as well. Remember life isn’t about materialistic things but it is about great memories and experiencing life because, at the end of the day, that’s all we have. I began to study rehab tactics, different workout tactics, ways of eating, and I refused to believe what the doctor had told me years ago that I would “never run or jump again”. 

After years of this, I’m now at a point where I not only run and jump, but I hike, run 13+ mile Spartan races, I’m a calisthenics athlete, and perform or participate in almost every other outdoor sport you can think of from golfing to jet skiing. I’m down to try it all. 

We can’t control the hand we were dealt but we all have things we love and enjoy. That’s why it’s my mission to help as many people as I can experience life through all of the great hobbies, sports, and outdoor activities there are and to help them accomplish this without worrying about putting food on the table or without worrying about how they can pay a bill that’s due.

If you made it this far you’re definitely a rockstar!

If I can help you in any way please reach out and let’s get you on the right path.

“Stop Trading Your Time for Money, and Start Trading Your Money for Time”

– James A. Strong