Humble Beginnings

Video Transcript

It starts when I was a kid. So, growing up, didn’t have a whole lot of money. But what my parents always did is they always made sure we had nice clothes. I think back when I grew up it was OshKosh B’gosh. So, we had that– the little seersucker outfits.

My mother grew up on a farm on the border of New York and Vermont. And my dad went to a two-year college and has worked in a variety of companies. So, neither of them had a four-year college education. My brother was the first.

He and I growing up– even though my parents didn’t necessarily make a lot of money, and we grew up in an apartment first for a few years, then moved into a trailer that was directly next door to my grandparents on my dad’s side. It was part of their property, so we were able to just put a trailer on that property. And it took my parents about a decade to save up enough money to– not buy a house, but build a house. So, we ended up building a house when I was 12 or 13, I believe.

And for me, seeing that growing up was really important because I saw the hard work my parents put in, even if they weren’t in high-paying jobs. And my brother and I never, ever felt like we were underprivileged in any sort of way because there are a lot of people that are worse off than we were. There wasn’t anything that I could point to that just made us feel differently than anybody else because there was no difference. For me, it was a progression of just different steps along the way and getting to a spot that my parents hadn’t been to. But they put us in a position to get to succeed where others may not have the opportunity.

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