Growing up, I was influenced by my parents in two very important areas:

1. My mother’s passion for teaching and using creative ways to help her students become better citizens.

2. My father’s passion for medicine as a service and a vocation, not as a business.

Instead of following the Status Quo, they both chose to work with people who needed them the most instead of taking a lucrative path that would’ve disconnected them from students and patients.

I didn’t have the opportunity to see my mom teaching in a classroom, but I did see my dad at work when I was very young. I remember going with him to remote areas of the Panama rainforest where he periodically gave free exams and health presentations. In his consultations with patients, he would take his time to listen and ask questions; he try to read their emotional state, stress levels, and learn about their work and family life. He gathered all this prior to the examination and well before writing a prescription. To him, medicine is a vehicle to maintaining health not just treating disease.

Life was very good for me in the early 2000's. Still, something was missing, so in 2007 I started a health and wellness company.

I did a lot of work and created great plans, but didn’t execute well and ended up closing the business. I didn’t help anyone, lost money, but learned a lot about how to live a better life. In 2010, I decided I needed to do something in the space of motivational content, so I started collecting articles, reading books, watching videos and crafting ideas. I did not start a business, but I laid out plans of how to collect and collate valuable, meaningful content and facilitate it to the masses. It was another great idea with no results but with great personal growth.