Antonio Neves grew up poor and used that struggle to drive himself toward self-reliance. He talks about how childhood financial hardship became fuel rather than an anchor, shaping his path forward.
I hate it. Feeling helpless, especially in regards to money. Because for whatever reason, my mom would make it challenging for me to get lunch money in the morning. And I'm like 11 years old. Like, I'm like, I just want my lunch money. Like, I know you have it. Can I please have it? And I had to, like, do the sung on dance. But to your point, I found a way. I found a way out. I. There was this organization in my hometown where kids as young as 11 years old could post themselves as available for jobs, like odd jobs. So I would do landscaping, I would do painting. So I was like, I'll just pay for my own lunch. I'm 12 years old. I'll just pay for my own lunch. And then came up again like, we're going back to school, shopping. You can't have that. You can't have that. I'm like, you know what? I'll pay for my own clothes. I'm 13 now. I'll just pay for my own clothes. Just like. You know what I mean? So now when I run into any kind of challenges, I'm like, man, let me just figure out how to solve this stuff myself. Like, I don't. I don't wait for somebody to save me. So as I'm hearing us talk, it's like, all this pain, there's a purpose to it, but I'm just so concerned for the people that might go the other way and just have it drag them down as opposed to building them up.
