Where it started

Dirt in the day. Dirty in the evening.

I grew up outside Detroit. At 11, I was getting a taste for tips, service, and hustle slinging newspapers on my paper route. By 19, I'd lost my father, experienced homelessness as a gay teen, and was grief stricken enough to sign whatever was put in front of me — including a 100% financed mortgage worth more than the house, just to keep the home I grew up in. My first encounter with predatory lending. It wouldn't be my last.

Almost two decades followed — bartending, waitressing, dancing, sex work, every tipped position in between, and the occasional construction job. From LA to NY and everywhere the work took me. I made every financial mistake possible. And even though everyone in the industry talked about money, no one understood money. But when I crossed over and started working with ultra high net worth clients, I learned how different the conversation really was — the strategies, the tools, the mental frameworks. There's a massive gap between people who make money and people who build wealth and freedom. And nobody was bridging that gap for us. So I figured it out myself.

After years on the road I landed in New York, where thanks to Craigslist and a low wage offering I snagged a finance role with no degree — working at a usurious Wall Street brokerage by day and Coyote Ugly by night — singing, dancing, and once again back to dancing for dollars. I learned the seedy side of financial services and the markets in the same year. Only in New York.

Eventually I left both and, like the previous two decades of dirt in the day and dirty in the evening, I went back into construction. I joined a luxury renovation firm working with some of the wealthiest New Yorkers and eventually became an equal partner. It was in building out our HR department and adding employee benefits that something clicked. Automation. Systems. Safety nets. The infrastructure that makes wealth-building almost inevitable when you have access to it. And all at once I could see clearly every way the industry I came from had been left out.

So in 2015 the idea for a book started needling me. I began coaching on the side, started writing, and eventually the book took on a life of its own — and has been dragging me behind it ever since. I am still here, still educating, still learning, still connecting.

Today Tipped Finance exists because nobody else was going to build it. I wrote the book, built the coaching practice, and have spent the last decade making sure that bartenders, dancers, waitresses, sex workers, salon workers, taxi drivers, tour guides, small business owners, and anyone working on a fluctuating income has access to the same wealth-building tools and strategies that were never meant for us.

When I'm not coaching or casually slipping budgeting strategies into every conversation I have with a barista, you'll find me consulting on ops for luxury renovation companies in NYC or mentoring LGBTQ owned businesses. And when I'm not working or traveling you can find me picnicking in Central Park with my adorable wife — a corporate finance nerd who hates the word catalyst.