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11 Seconds to Success

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dream, our land...and we sold it. Our family was all out of options. We gave up one dream to invest in a

bigger dream - going to the United States.

There we were, in the U.S., terrified and alone. A single mom, two kids, in a foreign country with no family close by...but what came next was unexpected, fun, emotional, and wholly ours. We got a small apartment. Looking back on it now, it wasn’t in the best neighborhood, but it was what we could afford. We never played outside, or really ever even left the house. My sister and I would keep ourselves busy indoors; we never thought anything was missing. One of the main ways we entertained ourselves was by creating videos with my mom’s camcorder. We would act out and re-create movie scenes and create stop-motion films and dance videos.

My mom worked part-time at a retail store, while my sister and I babysat each other, making sure we kept very quiet and didn’t do anything too dangerous in the house. Babysitters weren’t an option. It was something that we never even considered. It wasn’t possible. Back in the 90s, you would sit down and watch family sitcoms on TV, and they never looked like my family. It was typically two parents, joyful kids, colorful sweaters, and a nanny. We were so not that. So the fact that we never had a babysitter in the formal sense is something that I now take pride in.

My sister and I grew up a little faster because of the fact that we were responsible for ourselves and for each other. This accelerated our maturity, I think, and was one of the first sparks in creating an entrepreneurial mindset in me. From a very young age I felt the weight of even the smallest decisions and their possible ramifications. There truly isn’t any replacement for life lessons.