CHAPTER ONE: THE WOUND

I didn't grow up poor. But I grew up scared of being poor — and that's almost worse.

My father was an engineer at the pulp and paper mill in Saint John, New Brunswick. My mother was a nurse. We lived in a middle-class neighborhood, had food on the table, clothes on our backs. From the outside, it looked fine. But inside our house, money had a sound — and that sound was anxiety. We can't afford that. That's too expensive. Don't rock the boat. Get a good education, find a stable company, and grind out enough to retire. That was the script. That was the ceiling.

I was handed that ceiling before I was old enough to question it.

Grade eight was when it all broke open. The bullying started — relentless, grinding, the kind that doesn't leave bruises on the outside. I was mocked, excluded, made to feel like I didn't belong anywhere. I was maybe twelve, thirteen years old, and I remember the pain being so deep that I couldn't find the bottom of it. I didn't want to go to school. Some days, I didn't want to be alive at all. I just felt worthless.

One night I ran. Literally ran — into a snowstorm — because I had no other way to say this hurts and I need someone to see it. An older couple found me on the highway and brought me home. I got in trouble for it. Which tells you everything about how well the adults around me understood what was actually happening.

I survived by finding a crowd that would take me. They weren't good for me — we drank, we smoked, we fought. I won some. I lost some. But there was something underneath the anger, something that was always looking for a place to aim itself. I just hadn't found the right target yet.

Rugby found me at seventeen. Or maybe I found it — because I was aggressive and I needed somewhere to put it. My coach, Dave McPherson, was one of those rare men who looks at a kid no one else believes in and decides to believe anyway. He saw something. I started to work. Really work. And for the first time in my life, I understood that effort had a return — that you could get better at something just by refusing to stop. I played for the province. I moved to Vancouver to chase it further. Rugby didn't make me rich. But it made me the kind of man who could eventually get there.

My biggest dream back then? Become an electrician at the paper mill. Make six figures. That was it. That was the vision — not because it was my dream, but because it was the biggest dream my environment had taught me to have.

I went to trade school. Didn't get the job. Went back to get my engineering degree at twenty-three. And somewhere along the way, I noticed something. The engineers sat behind desks. But the sales guys? They had expense accounts. Nice cars. Hockey games on a Tuesday night with clients. I was terrified of public speaking — genuinely, physically terrified — but I made myself a deal: learn it or stay small. I joined Toastmasters. I got good. Then very good. I learned to ask questions, understand what people actually needed, and solve problems. Engineering taught me how things worked. Sales taught me how people worked. I didn't know it yet, but I was assembling the exact toolkit I'd need later.

Then Stephanie happened. We fell in love at university. And then the summer before our final year, she told me she was pregnant.

I was scared in a way I'd never been scared before. Not the bully-in-the-hallway scared. The I am responsible for a life scared. But we didn't run. We stayed. We chose each other.

I left the hospital — my son Jacob hours old — and went to write my final chemical engineering exams. I graduated. Got my first job offer in Boston. Packed up everything. And immediately discovered that an engineering salary in Boston, with a wife who couldn't work yet because of our visa status, student loans, rent, groceries, and a car payment, didn't add up. I lay awake doing math that never worked.

So I started reading. Rich Dad Poor Dad cracked something open in me. I'd see men out golfing on a Wednesday afternoon — nice car, no boss, no time clock — and I'd think: what's the difference between that man and my father? The answer wasn't talent. Wasn't luck. It was what they understood about how money actually moves.

We bought a two-unit in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. I rented one side. I came home from the office and worked on the other unit nights and weekends, getting it ready to rent. When I got transferred to Maine two years later, we sat at the closing table and left with a check for $50,000.

More money than I'd made in an entire year of engineering.

That's when I was hooked.