- Cops were screaming at me, "Hands on the steering wheel!
"What are you doing here?"
Flashlights, everything.
I thought my life was gonna change.
I was going to jail.
People who grow up with not having much,
you're forced to become resourceful.
You're forced to be creative.
I used to always figure out ways
to be able to make extra income.
Getting my friends together to
go and shovel snow with all our neighborhood.
Someone ended up noticing that I was doing that
and hustling and they said,
"Hey kid, why don't you take this ounce of weed.
"Let me see what you can do with it."
I was able to sell that ounce in a day and a half.
Next thing I know, I'm getting ounces and ounces
of drugs to hustle for my school.
I felt powerful, I thought I was like
Man, I got money coming in now, I'm hustling.
People are coming to me.
I thought that like I was invincible.
And one day, I get pulled over by all these cops.
I used to actually drop off to
one of the kids that went to high school's mother.
I pull up one day like I usually do every day,
cops surround my car.
Low and behold, there was a person committing
grand theft auto, and that's the reason why the cops came.
In that moment when the cops said,
"That's who we're here for."
And they told me, "Hey kid, get out of here."
And I left with all of those drugs in
by my transmission under my cup holder.
When I drove off, I said "Wow.
"I'm gonna take this hustle mentality and
"this doesn't have to be the only way that I can hustle
"and I can make money. I'm gonna channel this
"and I'm gonna learn about business."
I just didn't want to ever put myself
in that position ever again.
So much shifted for me, I was lucky enough to find a mentor,
someone that I could relate to, someone that I saw
that was using the internet, and I became an apprentice.
I would work 'til three, four in the morning,
printing out every single public company for him,
just learning anything and everything
that I could from this mentor.
So I started, now hustling, contacting every company
that I thought was attractive and had a great story,
and say "Give me a chance, for $500 a month,
"give me a chance to tell your story."
I got my first client for $500 a month.
I over-performed.
I did everything and everything for my clients.
And I built that up into 10 million in revenue
by the time I was 24 years old.
I'd become this millionaire.
Now I call my dad: "I made it.
"I'm buying exotic cars, I'm traveling the world,
"I'm doing what I want, when I want,
"how I want, with whoever I want."
I thought I was invincible again.
I was up 20 million dollars in my account.
Market crashes, and the stock crumbles.
I lost all of that money,
and that's when I learned about my ego.
I had to sell my cars, I had to
worry about taxes, I had to move.
I cried, I was depressed, I wouldn't talk to my friends.
What the hell do I do next?
So my mother tells me a story of how
when she immigrated here with my grandparents,
she was the oldest sibling of five.
They lived in a studio apartment here,
and that apartment caught on fire.
And my mother was walking home from school,
ran home, luckily everybody was okay,
but my whole family lost everything
but the shirts on their back.
My mother told me that when she was 15 years old,
she had to take a train to Canal Street in New York City
in the middle of the winter, just so that she can
help people that were selling things on stands
to make a little bit of money for my grandparents.
And she was like, "If I was able to go through that,
and then put this roof over you and your sister's head.
That all can be taken away from you,
but they'll never take this, they'll never take this.
They'll never take your heart,
they'll never take your drive, you can do it again.
Most entrepreneurs are worried about making it,
and when you make it and then you lose it,
getting back up was one of the hardest things
I've had to do in my entire life.
Throughout your life, when something like that happens,
the unexpected happens.
Those scars will make us, those scars,
that pain is what allows you to grow.
It led me to my next big idea.
I had two interns working for me
and we came up with this idea: "Well, why don't we
"create a publication that speaks to millennials."
So we sat in an apartment with three folding chairs,
and we came up with the name Elite Daily.
Bought it for $9.99 on GoDaddy.
Just like all the entrepreneurs out there right now,
it's just this idea.
We had this passion, this drive, this idea.
We didn't know, we didn't have the perfect business plan.
We weren't experts.
And little by little, we started interviewing each other,
getting contributing writers, building out our team,
and we went from three of us to 12 of us,
to 20 of us, and in 2015, a dream came true.
We sold the business to a billion dollar company
known as the Daily Mail.
So you need to dig down deep, really deep,
to the darkest place right in your fucking spirit
in your soul, and figure out, who are you?
Why are you really here?
And realize you have such a gift and a purpose.
So what are you gonna do, that's the mentality I had.
Having that failure, having and losing everything,
being down, being feeling like you have
nothing left inside of you,
but then rising up and doing it again.
You know how much stronger you are?
Every moment in your life, every challenge
and every step of the way, every obstacle,
every time you face adversity,
you need to find that leader within yourself.
Drive forward.