Part 2 of 5 of my origin story.
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Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, where my goal is to give you 10-minute lessons on how to grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so you can have better careers, better relationships, and better personal finances.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones.
Yesterday I talked about part one of my origin story. Here’s part two.
In yesterday’s episode I talked about how I got accepted into college but didn’t have a way to pay for it. I was always interested in money because I believed it was a vehicle to help me do what want to do it in life. My views on money have changed but were been a motivating factor in the decision I’ve made to get me where I am right now. My parents did a great job as raising me and made huge leaps in their development from where they came from. My dad is an immigrant from Oaxaca, Mexico which is the second poorest state in Mexico and has a third-grade education but one thing my dad is an incredible work ethic. He gets things done. I guess I get that same trait from him. When I worked at a grocery store in high school as a grocery bagger, I won a contest at my store as the fastest bagger. When I told my dad this, he said he was the fastest orange picker in Arizona. My mom was homeless in high school and her dad passed away when she was a kid and worked as a cashier in a place she hated. But both my parents worked hard to help out me and my two sisters get through high school.
Another event that caused me to try to understand the language of money was that my parents went bankrupt in high school. So I knew my parents didn’t have money to send me to school, so that why I choose to go into the military. At first, I wanted to go to the Air Force because I heard that’s where smart people went to but I had two friends that joined the Marines and the best way for a Marine recruiter to meet their quota is for a friend of a Marine to make the introduction. I was on the fence about joining the Marines but once the recruiter told me that one-third of all fortune 500 CEOs were Marines, he sold me on that idea. I came to find out that he lied to me but it was one of the best decisions that I made. It offered an understanding that we can push ourselves to the limit, and still have some in the tank to go farther. It also taught me how to deal with misery. Last year I was on a bus from DC to NYC and it snowed that morning. Instead of being a four-hour bus ride, it turned into a nine-hour bus ride. I was thirsty and hungry towards the end but at least it was better than spending three months in boot camp. I was able to get my entire college education paid for and earn a paycheck so that I could start investing in my Roth IRA at 19 years old.
Overall, I knew I had to get an education so that I could give myself a better future and I was able to accomplish it by only obtaining $3k in student loans. Like in the game of thrones, I paid the iron price to get my education paid for by dedicating seven years to the Corps. I learned a lot by working with a diverse set of folks and how politics can run an office. Around my five year mark, I knew I wasn’t going to stay in the Marines because it was hard on my body and I had more ambitious goals in my life. During my time in Marines, I met my previous partner who we would stay together for 10 years. I met her through my sister in Chicago because she was her landlord. I was on pre-deployment leave I head off to Iraq and one night being a little tipsy off of tequila, I asked her out. I was 21 and she was 20 so she couldn’t go out yet. We ended up going to a concert a couple of days later and remained pen pals while I was overseas. In the military, there is a financial incentive to get married and we ended up getting a year later. She helped me out with my writing. I was a horrible writer in the past because I would just write a paper without proofreading it and turn it in. No wonder I got bad grades. But she forced me to proofread my papers to remove all of the double the words and make sure I didn’t repeat the same message twice in a row. I’m such a better now because I practice it every week. To write a 5-minute blog post takes me about two hours to think about a topic, write the first draft, which is done in 30 minutes. I spend the next hour and a half editing the paper to make sure it is good to go. It’s like that Mark Twain quote where he says sorry for the long paper but I didn’t have enough time to make it shorter. So this meeting setup for what I am doing now with my blog post articles and the books that I’m writing.
The Marines was a good opportunity because I lived in Hawaii, I gained disciplined, and my confidence grew to new levels. Once I got out of the Marines after seven years of service, that is when I started to go to college full time, and I’ll talk about how this experience changed my life in the next episode.
I want to thank you for listening to today’s episode.
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