An Early Start

I was born and raised on the west side of Detroit. Raised by a single mother and my mom and my aunt and I had a cousin named Juan who passed away maybe a decade ago. They all used to encourage me to do different hustles and kind of entrepreneurial endeavors even as I was a kid. And my aunt, in fact, her name is Olivia, she used to purchase me magazines like Business magazines, Inc. Magazine, Forbes magazine. She would encourage me to read them. And I would. And then I would do deep dives about everything that was interesting that I read. And from there I just sort of had this book, you know, for entrepreneurship. And so, you know, I would do. You know. My brother and I for several years had a lion care business called D and D. We still argue about who was the true founder and CEO, but truthfully, it was me all over. I had a business where I would download music and put it on flash drives for local DJs, and they would pay me a weekly retainer to do so. And that was a pretty profitable business for me. And eventually my mom, she wanted me and my brother to both have summer jobs to stay out of the neighborhood we lived in a pretty violent neighborhood. And so my brother worked at this meatpacking place. And then I ended up working at this cell phone store. And the owner of the cell phone store took me under his wing, taught me a business. Eventually I left. I went to own my own cell phone stores. This car rental worked in venture. Now I'm here. But yeah, sort of started at this early age, mostly from a catalyst standpoint because of my mom and my aunt and my cousin.