I filed for bankruptcy at 25. Lost my car — which was basically the only thing I had to lose. I was living with my cousin in Sarasota, waiting tables at a restaurant 15 miles away. I rode a bike there and back every day because I had no other option.
I want to be clear about something: I didn't have a plan. I didn't have a mentor. I didn't have a map. I just knew that what I was doing wasn't working and something had to change.
So I started grabbing at whatever was in front of me. Sold insurance — hated it. Sold mortgages — did okay until 2008 pulled the floor out. Became a process server — made good money until the day a woman answered the door, already crying because she knew why I was there. Her husband had died two weeks after they refinanced from a 30-year to a 15-year mortgage. She could have afforded the original payment on her own. Now she was losing the house.
I handed her the papers. I walked to my car. And I sat there and cried.
I wasn't building anything during those years. I was just digging. Searching for something I couldn't name, going wherever life's current took me. Every opportunity was just the next thing — not the right thing. I was moving, but I wasn't going anywhere.
That's a place a lot of people live in longer than they'd ever admit. You're not lazy. You're not incapable. You're just searching without knowing what you're searching for. And because you don't know what you're looking for, you grab what's available instead of what's aligned.
For me, the shift happened in a place I didn't expect. A small Buddhist temple in Sarasota. I walked in for one session and I knew. All that searching — the questions I'd been asking since I was a kid sitting in Catholic church trying to make it fit — they didn't get answered. But they stopped mattering the way they used to. I stopped needing someone else's framework to tell me who I was.
That's when I stopped digging and started climbing.
Climbing is different. Climbing has intent. When you're digging, you're reactive — you go where the current takes you. When you're climbing, you're navigating. You're choosing. You're not waiting for life to hand you direction. You're building it.
But here's what climbing taught me that digging never could: there are no answers out there. There are only tools. And you need the right ones. A hammer is a brilliant tool — unless you're dealing with screws. The people selling you their framework, their system, their course — they're handing you their hammer. It might not be what you need.
The real work isn't finding the right answer. It's becoming the kind of person who can figure out which tool fits which moment. That's what I call being the cause in your life instead of the effect. You're either navigating the river or you're letting the current take you wherever it goes.
I spent a decade letting the current win. Bankruptcy, bad jobs, wrong relationships, chasing whatever paid next. I don't regret any of it because all of it built the instincts I use now — for myself and for the people I help. But I wish someone had told me sooner that the thing I was looking for wasn't out there. It was in learning to trust my own judgment, stop outsourcing my decisions, and start climbing with intent.
If you're digging right now — if you're grinding every day but can't point to where you're actually going — you're not lost. You just haven't made the shift yet. And the shift isn't a strategy. It's a decision. Stop going with the flow. Pick a direction. Start climbing.
The view from up here is worth it.
