I’m a first-generation American. I started at the bottom, entry-level work, no shortcuts, and spent sixteen years as a financial advisor, building a practice that managed $95 million in client assets.
At thirty-six, I walked away from all of it. Not because it failed, but because it wasn’t the work I was meant to do. What followed was the hardest four-year stretch of my life: a divorce, a lost home, a business launched into a recession, and a social life rebuilt from scratch, all while raising three kids as a single father.
Somewhere in that stretch I found an unlikely tool for staying grounded: gratitude. Not the greeting-card kind. A daily, working practice: take on the challenge in front of you, do what you said you were going to do, and move forward grateful for the chance to do it.
Then I tested it. With almost no running background and ten weeks of training, I ran a 54-mile ultramarathon. 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. 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.
