Entrepreneurship has always been in my blood, and I could only blame it on how I was raised. I grew up lower-middle class in Channelview, one of the poorer suburbs surrounding Houston, and my parents didn’t necessarily have the funds to get me the gifts I wanted outside of necessities. 

When I was at the age of 13 and started wanting more expensive items like most kids my age, such as an mp3 player, fancy shoes, game consoles, and a phone. When I asked for these things, it was an automatic no from my parents because it was too expensive, so the only way I could get these types of things is if I found ways to make money and saved up the money myself. 

++As a kid, I had to find ways to make money myself if I wanted something. That’s how I bought my first big item – an Xbox 360 at age 13! To do this, I saved every penny I received for my birthdays and Christmas and found different ways of making some bucks by doing housework like washing cars; cutting yards; or even walking neighbor’s dogs while they were away!

+When I finally got a debit card at the age of 16, it opened up new opportunities for me to make money. I began selling on eBay and using Paypal more often – this was when my online entrepreneurial journey first started!

+I decided to dedicate my time and energy to entrepreneurship during high school. This led me to resell high fashion clothing, do arbitrage on eBay, and run a profitable amazon shop! I made thousands of dollars in the process which encouraged me, even more, to get involved with online business ventures.

++This gave me an idea of what type of job outside grade school would best fit my needs. It had to be analytical and have flexible options for freelancing or owning my own business if so desired. Web design was perfect because it has many different avenues with digital marketing being one of them!

So I skipped college and began self-starting, within 3 months from graduating I taught myself HTML, CSS, & the basics of Javascript by learning through Youtube and the team treehouse courses and was able to build functional websites.