My Bio

My Bio

I was raised just like any other high profile youth-oriented motivational speaker, in a modest house, by modest parents and in a modest blue-collar town on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. But it isn't my upbringing I want to talk about, it's my motivational journey that made me an inspiration to many that I want to discuss.

As a successful 23-year-old with a Doctorate in Motivational Psychology, I was hailed as the "Kid Wonder of Self Help" by my peers. The world was my proverbial oyster and I had all the pearls I could handle. After my first book, Push and Pull: The Tug of War for Internal Happiness, made it on Motivational Digest’s Best Seller list, life as I knew it would never be the same.

Soon I was seeing the world and helping young adults seek inspiration through such unconventional methods like my motivational mime and my inspirational hieroglyphics.

All this was happening, while millions of dollars started to pile up in my bank account. Little did I know that as I helped others find themselves, I was slowly losing myself. Caught up in a lifestyle of fast women and experimental diets, my life came crashing down, hitting rock bottom on TV, in front of millions of fans.

It was late '89 when I was doing a television appearance on Doug Zanzibar's hit daytime show, Let's Do Lunch. I was on my 6th diet in 2 days and looking for a new diet to hold me over until the end of the show. Looking back, I should have seen it coming. As it was, I didn't, but 3 million people did. After losing control and having a nervous breakdown on stage, the cameras continued to roll as I climbed into the lap of Latin sweetheart, Churro, and sucked my thumb while I gently wept. The next thing I knew I was holding an intern hostage for 16 hours until police finally talked me into surrendering, but not before switching diets 3 more times.

After a stint in rehab I was back on the same destructive path I'd been on before, switching diets up to 5 times a day and juggling multiple diets at a time. After a couple of years, and a couple of million dollars, I had lost it all. My money, my friends, and most importantly, myself. I was living out of a shopping cart in Venice Beach, California and on the path that so many youth oriented motivational speakers before me had been. Then one night while trying to get change in front of the local convenience store, it hit me. I realized I wasn't the same man who'd inspired change in so many. It was time to inspire change in myself. From that moment on I vowed to never let myself forget who I was. I turned my life around and started to climb the inspirational ladder of hope all over again. I told myself I wouldn't stop until I regained my prominence in the world of motivational speaking. It all culminated when I was declared The Best Youth-Oriented Motivational Speaker in the World!*

*According to Motivational Speaker Digest, June 1997