Hi, I'm Ty Cohen, you might know me from my podcast appearances. And you might know me from the Kindle Cash Flow program. You might have seen me in my insert in national magazines such as Forbes and Black Enterprise or a lot of other places online. If you were betting on where I would end up 10 years ago, you would have lost all your money - because I looked locked in as a failure.
Sounds pretty harsh, but I'm just relaying what the facts are.
Someone like me was never meant to be where I am now. It's not just being self made. It's a self made miracle. I grew up in Connecticut. Most people think of it as a palatial place. They think of estates and farms, all those kinds of things. But I grew up in a city called Bridgeport, and if you do your research, it'll turn your stomach.
We were swamped in crime, murder, violence. But the thing that stuck with me wasn't the violence. It was the hopelessness. It was a place that dragged everyone down - nobody seemed to be able to escape the grip of poverty.
The tools just weren't available.
It was even easier to get into hopelessness because I had a blood disorder called sickle cell anemia. Once you're born it, there's no cure for it, and it's incredibly painful.
Your blood cells basically change shape in a way that makes it very hard for blood to get through your veins, they cause clogs, and it creates a pain that is like nothing else. It's serious suffering and I wouldn't wish it on anybody.
And when you're in that kind of pain, you can't even think about working. And trust me, I wasn't thinking about doing anything as a kid. I could barely concentrate enough to get through school.
I remember being 11 years old and overhearing a doctor telling my mom I wouldn't live past age 17.
I sat there crying at age 11, thinking, "What can I even do with my life, if I only had five years left?"
And as a kid that gives you a whole new way of thinking about time, about urgency and about what's really important in life. I'm dealing with that and on top of that, my sister who also had sickle cell anemia, she passed two years after I heard that from the doctor.
I was living with two death sentences over my head. I just knew that I had to do more and become more, or at least try to, or I'd die grieving for myself!
I stumbled into a book by read Les Brown and I read it around the clock.