As humans, we’re designed to be able to connect easily with ourselves and each other through our emotions and our feelings. We’re created with a sense of intuition allowing us to feel the direction our life should follow. When we listen to it, intuition helps us to make better decisions, but overtime, we learn to ignore it. That’s because we often must do things in life that don’t feel right inside. Society teaches us that the key to success is doing things we don’t want to do. And of course, when you’re poor and utterly reliant on your paycheck, you don’t feel you have much choice in the matter. Putting your head down and grinding away at a job you hate is a way of ignoring your intuition, and over time, you get better and better at it. To be able to be truly fulfilled in life, you need to pay attention to that inner voice. I decided to move to Los Angeles to spend time in nature. The idea of being close to the beach appealed to me. Everything else was closed due to the pandemic, and the outdoors had always helped me think better and made me feel alive. One day, shortly after I’d moved to LA, I visited the arts district downtown with a friend. I’d asked my friend if they wanted to visit Skid Row, which I knew was nearby, but they weren’t interested. While we were driving, however, we made a wrong turn and somehow ended up in
Skid Row anyway. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the area, Skid Row is an area of about fifty city blocks in downtown LA that’s ‘home’ to one of the country’s largest homeless populations. It’s received a lot of attention because it’s in the middle of an otherwise wealthy part of town. Driving through Skid Row was like being in a third-world country. It wasn’t just adults there, either. There were families with children too, all living in tents and makeshift shelters. We saw kids going through garbage cans looking for anything of value. There was a pervading feeling of hopelessness. It reminded me of the places I’d visited during my college days. Once in a rural Caribbean village, I noticed several dog houses made from corrugated steel. They were tiny, ramshackle structures stacked on top of each other on a hill next to the river that separated Haiti from the Dominican Republic. When I asked why there were so many dog houses, I was informed that they were inhabited by people, not animals. I couldn’t believe it. Looking across the water, I could see the homes on the Dominican Republic side. The houses there weren’t lavish, but they were nice-looking regardless. It was shocking to see that kind of wealth disparity in such close proximity. When we turned that corner into Skid Row, I was transported back to all those memories. I couldn’t believe my eyes. My shock wasn’t at the extreme poverty. What I couldn’t believe was that this level of poverty existed right next to some of the most expensive real estate on the planet. As I drove home, I couldn’t stop thinking about what I saw. Block after block of abject poverty and squalor, right next to multi-million- dollar condominiums. Back at home, I started watching a documentary on Skid Row. A few minutes into it, I realized I’d seen it before. But this time, as I watched, I felt it. The ‘homeless’ who were filmed in the documentary were the poorest people in America. They were all people just like you or me; they’d just had a string of bad luck that resulted in them becoming homeless. Most of us have been trained to think homeless people are this
CHAPTER 7: I THINK I’LL TRY DEFYING GRAVITY | 81 different group of people who became homeless on purpose. We think they must’ve done something bad to deserve that kind of life, or that they have mental health problems, or any number of other prejudicial reasons you can come up with. There’s a stigma that says they’re all on drugs or addicted to something. Most people don’t stop to think about what might have gotten them there in the first place. It’s easier to think they want to be homeless, rather than asking ourselves why we ignore their suffering and choose not to help them. These were the least fortunate members of our society, and we’ve all decided it’s okay to let them rot away. We’re pretending like they aren’t humans, I thought. When I drove through Skid Row that day, I realized I’d been ignoring my inner voice for far too long. Having lost my faith in religion at an early age, I never gave much thought to intuition and gut-feelings, as I associated those with faith. I’d always put my faith in my own intelligence, hard work, and determination to help me accomplish whatever goals I set for myself and to helping others. Believing that something natural lied within us that could lead us to our greater purpose seemed naïve and childish. It’s called an existential crisis when you start to question the meaning of your life. Anyone who’s taken a behavioral science class will be familiar with a theory called Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It’s a theory that explains what motivates people by ascending order of need, from physical, to social, to psychological. When you’re poor, you’re focused on survival and meeting your basic, most fundamental needs. As your economic situation improves, you can satisfy other non-essential but very important needs such as safety and security, love and belonging, esteem and respect, and finally the need for self-actualization—which essentially means fulfilling your desire to become your best self. The downside to buying into Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is that you end up believing that finding your higher purpose belongs at the end of life and is an outcome reserved solely for the well-off. Ironically, as my own needs evolved beyond the physical and emotional and became
more about seeking spiritual fulfillment, the stronger my sense of disillusionment grew. I can see now that this profound dissatisfaction was my body’s way of compelling me toward my highest purpose. My unhappiness was the consequence of not listening to my intuition. We get side-tracked from our higher purpose because we don’t realize how easy it is to connect with the collective unconscious, or God, or whatever it is you choose to call it. If we all listen to our intuition and work collaboratively together, we’re spiritually aligned, and we can accomplish anything. We don’t need to be told what our purpose is, and we don’t need someone else directing our actions when we listen to our own divine. When we make this sort of connection, we feel in synch with the universe, and everything unfolds before us naturally. If we allow it to happen, and we let that voice tell us what we truly want to achieve and what we care about, we’ll be able to accomplish it because it’s what the universe designed us for. It’ll just make sense. The answer to the poverty problem in our country hit me with a wave of clarity. I saw my mispriced idea. I’d never experienced anything like that in my life. I could fully see the math, messaging, partnerships, and policy. My wrong turn was no coincidence. I knew exactly how we could not only end poverty worldwide, but how we could make trillions of dollars doing it! Having spent virtually my entire life relying on logic and empirical data, this incredible sense of instant awareness was completely new for me. I was able to see how all the experiences of my life—the childhood poverty, the achievements in academics and sports, the international development and community outreach efforts, the corporate success, the finance, investment, and wealth lifestyle experiences—had all prepared me for what lay in front of me. I realized how I could use my collective gifts and experiences to serve a greater purpose, and everything I’d been feeling finally made sense. I started writing that night and couldn’t stop. When I ran out of steam, I went to sleep, woke up, and got right back to it in the morning.
CHAPTER 7: I THINK I’LL TRY DEFYING GRAVITY | 83 The ideas were pouring out, and I felt like if I didn’t write them down, they’d disappear. It was all there, fully formed in my mind. I just needed to get it out. I still had a day job, but I got my work done as quickly as possible so I could get back to writing and planning. In two weeks, I’d captured it all on paper. I’d written a complete analysis on how we could drastically improve our society through a minor reform that would save taxpayers enormous amounts of money and stimulate the economy. I figured all that was left to do was to share it with the right individuals. Thanks to my time as a Rhodes Scholar, I knew a fair amount of people working in government. I shared my essay with them and asked for feedback. I made edits here and there based on the feedback I received, but the core analysis stood up to all their questions. It all made sense. But that’s where it stopped. Everyone agreed the plan would end poverty and save taxpayers trillions of dollars, but so what? Having a great idea was one thing, but it was about more than a new business idea. It was about solving one of the greatest problems the world has ever faced. It wasn’t just a long shot in their minds—it was a fantasy. They didn’t see what I saw. I saw exactly who I needed to get onboard, and how we could get it done. Others only saw the obstacles; I could see far beyond them. I saw my life’s work in front of me and knew I was being called to do something bigger than myself. I saw the investment of a lifetime, and I decided to push in all the chips. I walked away from my career in finance and started working to end poverty. “You’re throwing your life away!” “How can you just turn your back on everything you’ve built for yourself?” “You’re not their savior!” “You need professional help.” “I’m worried about you!” “You used to be so normal.” “If you have to pick a battle, at least pick one you have a chance of
winning.” Those were but a few of the comments I heard from co-workers and friends when I told them my plans to drop out of the wealth race. It was amazing to see the polarizing effect my decision had on the people around me. Some took my plans as a personal affront or judgement on their own life choices, while others just shook their heads and turned their backs. Nearly every one of my colleagues in finance thought I’d completely lost my mind. So did practically all my Harvard and Oxford friends. Although Rhodes Scholars typically arrive at Oxford determined to fight the world’s fight, over time, we have the tendency to become somewhat self-centered. Prizes carrying that much prestige have a way of making people obsess about status and the acquisition of additional prizes and accomplishments rather than leaning further into service. The ego is powerful. But I didn’t care. I understood where their judgement was coming from. Instead of giving myself and my family an opportunity to build generational wealth, which was something most of those around me could relate to, I was turning everything on its head. I was no longer on a path to reach maximum financial success, so to a lot of former friends and colleagues, I was no longer useful. I was more surprised by the reactions of many friends who’d also escaped from poverty. I figured they would be on board with my plan, but most weren’t. In retrospect, I get it. When you’re poor, it only takes one misstep for everything to come crashing down. My goals had always been, in order, to get myself out of poverty, to get my family out of poverty, then to do good in the world. Fear of falling back into poverty had always been my motivator, and the accumulation of wealth had been a comforting security blanket. For kids like me who were climbing their way up from the bottom, we didn’t have safety nets our whole lives. Because of this, we learned to be unbelievably careful with everything we did. Never rock the boat. Never deviate from the path. And there I was, rocking the hell out of it.
CHAPTER 7: I THINK I’LL TRY DEFYING GRAVITY | 85 In their eyes, I was taking too much risk, and they’d worked too hard to get to where they were to be involved. These were the hardest losses. I saw how much we all were fighting to be accepted by people who would never truly ever accept us. From day one in life, we were told that we didn’t matter because we were poor or because we were part of some minority. It’s impossible not to take messages like that to heart. Instead of deciding to fight against a system that determined someone’s worth by the color of their skin and the size of their bank account, many of us tried our best to stop being poor, to stop being Black or Latino or whatever other minority group we’d previously identified with. Teaching people to hate themselves is a powerful trick. It worked on me for years. But I wasn’t going to let it stop me this time. I was on to something special. Neither the fear of failure or anything else was going to deter me from following this journey to its completion. A select number of humanitarian-minded souls stood by and listened to my plan, intrigued. “Help me to understand,” they urged. I’m fortunate to have a small but mighty collection of friends who care deeply enough about other human beings to not only encourage me to take the leap but to lend hours of support editing my essay, making introductions, poking holes in my talking points, and rolling up their sleeves to work right alongside me. It didn’t hurt that those were some of the smartest people on the planet—many of them with deep policy and legislative expertise. I was starting out on a journey to ensure every human being had access to enough wealth to meet their basic human needs: food, water, clothing, shelter, transportation—and information. It was the biggest leap of faith I’d ever taken. It was also, hands down, the best decision I ever made. I’d come up with a way to end poverty and save taxpayers trillions in the process. I call this proposal the Seed Money Act. It’s a plan that would provide an unconditional, permanent, regular grant (called seed money) to every American household in an amount that is equal to the federal poverty guidelines. The proposal outlines a fiscally responsible way to pay for the grants that’ll result in trillions in tax savings for our country.
With the help of many, I was able to turn this proposal into a draft bill. My goal was to get the bill sponsored and approved by Congress so it could become a legislative reality. (You will learn all about the Seed Money Act in Part 3.) I gave myself one year to get it done. A common saying goes that people grossly overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what’s possible in ten. In my case, the maxim was right. I figured that once enough really smart people in positions of power read how simple it was to end poverty and save taxpayers trillions along the way, it would take no more than a year before we got the legislation passed. But after a few months, it became obvious that finding the solution was the easy part, and I’d need to invest well over a year to get it done. I may not be very materialistic, but I have just as much ego as anyone else. And that ego made me scared as hell to walk away from all the social status I’d accumulated over life. When I decided to leave finance and try to end poverty, I lost a lot of friends. It turns out, when you live your life focused on accomplishments, you attract people who like you for those accomplishments. Once you no longer play that game, they no longer love you. I was saddened by how many people stopped answering my calls when I wasn’t reaching out to talk about making money or partying, but I wasn’t shocked. I took one last look at my life and asked, “What am I here for?” It was difficult to explain to others the passion that had awakened inside me. I’d experienced a deeply spiritual personal epiphany, and I’d connected so completely to my own truth that I couldn’t have ignored it, even if I’d wanted to. I could only accept it as the gift that it was and trust things would unfold the way they were meant to. The knowledge that I was following my own inner guide gave me the courage to let go of my old life and move forward without regret. I knew a lot of people wouldn’t like what I had to say. I worried about that for a while, but then I realized something very liberating; I’m not here on Earth to earn anyone else’s approval. Trust me, it’s a daily fight, but I’m determined to live a life of service to the world instead of serving
CHAPTER 7: I THINK I’LL TRY DEFYING GRAVITY | 87 my ego. The more you ‘rise’ in the world, the more everything becomes a competition. Who is the smartest? Who is the fastest? Who is the richest? Who has the prettiest partner? I knew that by walking away from my career, I’d be seen as a ‘loser’ to those still playing the game. “Would you rather have a five-million-dollar home or a one-million- dollar home and four-million-dollars that you could use to help those in need?” I asked a woman I’d been on a few dates with. She looked at me like I’d asked the dumbest question she’d ever heard. I felt an instant flutter of relief, assuming she also thought that a one-million-dollar home was plenty. “I like nice things,” she replied. I’ve spent enough time around wealthy people to know most of them, like the woman on that date, aren’t bad people. Poverty just isn’t real to them. It’s nearly impossible to understand an experience you’ve never seen, let alone lived. In general, the rich are like everyone else: they think mostly about their own lives. Poverty is a problem that rarely affects them—until it’s too late. We live in a world where we just don’t care all that much about other people. I don’t blame the girl on the date or anyone else, for that matter, for wanting to accumulate wealth and status. I went through it. I get it. We dance around it, but our entire social hierarchy is based on wealth. We say it’s “nice things” that we’re after, but underneath everything, it’s status we crave. There’s a reason companies care so much about branding. We don’t buy expensive things because of the quality of the product. We buy luxury goods because of the statement it makes. No one spends $1,500 on a $75 bottle of champagne at a club because they like nice things; they do it to feel superior. They reason, “This is expensive, which makes it better. And I have it, so that makes me better!” We’ve come up with all these different systems to convince people that having money makes you better than everybody else. Our society convinces us that the people on the bottom are stupid, lazy, dirty, etc. Using this logic, it’s easy to think people who have less than you aren’t
important and don’t matter. There’s a power hierarchy in play that says as long as I have even a little more money than someone else, I have some power. So, there are a lot of people in the world who don’t want to see poor people do better. Giving poor people money would shift that hierarchy and create a change in the power dynamic. It’s a threatening prospect for many, and it’s at the root of why some people are resistant to my proposal. One of the greatest tragedies of our time is that we’ve created a society where the rich and the middle class live separately from poor people. We use that classism mentality to justify why it’s okay that we’re living in a house and have everything we could possibly want, while right across the street, we can see people who are freezing to death while they sleep on the streets. We saw a similar mentality during the Irish potato famine in the mid-nineteenth century. Although the potato crops suffered, there was plenty of other food to eat. The problem wasn’t that there was no food, it was that, at the time, the British had control over Ireland, and they exported all the food that was available, leaving the Irish to starve to death. This same separation exists in the US today. The distance between rich and poor neighborhoods prevents those with money from seeing the effect many of their decisions have on poor people. When I worked at the hedge fund, I was around people worth more than most humans can imagine. The thing most of those individuals had in common was that they had a complete disregard for the environment and the rest of the world. It wasn’t because they were horrible people. They’d simply grown up in a world where all they thought about was their own wealth and comparing their wealth to that of their peers. If you’re a billionaire, you must separate yourself from people who don’t have as much money, because those less fortunate people are constantly asking you for what they don’t have. This narrows the pool of friends you can choose from. So, who do you hang out with? The answer is other people who have hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. Ultra-rich people are no different from any other group of people in
CHAPTER 7: I THINK I’LL TRY DEFYING GRAVITY | 89 the sense that they’ve got their circle of friends, and they want to be the highest-ranking member in that circle. The difference is, when it comes to very wealthy people, the defining factor of why they’re all together is their wealth. And the way they determine their internal social hierarchy is based on who has the most money. Within these social circles, you find situations where one billionaire will be frustrated because another billionaire has more money. They’ll obsess about it. It was fascinating to see because it’s extremely stressful for them. Obsessing about who has more money isn’t something they enjoy or do on purpose. As somebody who grew up in poverty, I could see how these people were helping to create a more difficult world for those who were on the bottom, but they weren’t even aware they were doing it. It’s one of the reasons I’m confident about achieving my goal—because most rich people aren’t evil. They’re just oblivious. If you have extreme wealth and you want to gain more, you must tell yourself that other people’s needs are unimportant. You have to become blind to the rest of the world, and our social isolation of classes makes this disturbingly easy. So, when I told friends that I wanted to walk away from that bubble and dedicate my life to helping the poor, they looked at me with a blank stare, as if I’d said I wanted to go live on another planet. Because to them, poverty does indeed exist, but only in another world. Losing people in life is always painful. But the fact is, growth is traumatic. When you want to change, the people that liked the old you may not like the new you. So be it. I knew how unfulfilling that old life had been for me, and I was done with it. There were too many people with barely enough to survive for me to feel comfortable living a life chasing excess. I don’t blame others for seeking wealth because they didn’t create the society we live in. We were all born into this mess. But I was done following. It was time to lead.