I’m a first-generation American who started at the bottom, working entry-level labor jobs until I found my way into a sixteen-year career as a financial advisor, where I managed $95 million in client assets.
At thirty-six, I walked away from all of it. Not because it failed, but because of an emptiness I could no longer ignore — it wasn’t the work I was meant to do. What followed was the hardest four-year stretch of my life. In the span of six weeks I went through a divorce, lost my home, my financial stability, and eighty percent of my relationships, had a 12-week-old puppy, and became a single father of three kids. And through all of it, I was building a private equity real estate fund.
Somewhere in that stretch I decided to run a 54-mile ultramarathon with zero running background and only ten weeks of prep. That’s where I discovered the true power of gratitude. Not the greeting-card kind, but a mental discipline that, when paired with taking on challenges and doing what you said you were going to do, moves you into a life of alignment built on your truths. That run became the backbone of Zero to 54: The Making of a Grateful Mind and a Life of Earned Peace, a hybrid memoir and 100-day guided practice.
Today I’m the founder and CEO of Fortune Bridge Capital, a real estate investment firm, the second career built from a standing start in the middle of a recession. And I speak to audiences about what the rebuild taught me: gratitude not as positivity, but as a practical tool for staying steady when life comes apart.
