My story is not very conventional, so it might be worth reading it if you have the time.
Also, this is a small summary of the things I have done during these years. People always seem very surprised by the amount of things I have managed to do and accomplish so far.
And they still ask me how I am able to do so many things. Maybe they should enroll in some of my mentoring sessions, except, most people do not want to put the work it takes.

I was born in the south of Italy, in a city called Napoli (internationally known as Naples).
Yes, that’s where Pizza was invented.

Over there, there is a lot of criminality of all kinds, mafia and camorra, and in general a lot of places where you DO NOT want to be.
On the other side, it is an incredible city: full of life, and beautiful like very few places in the world. The good people living there have incredible hearts and they are always willing to help, laugh about their problems, and keep life on the “happy” side, all the time.
And trust me, some of these people have very serious problems.

I have now lived in a few different countries, and I am always reminded of how safe, shielded, and relatively easy life is in some of them.
This is surely true here in Vancouver, Canada, where I currently live.

Growing up, my family didn’t have many resources. There were always a lot of arguments about money and so, every time there was something to buy I would try to avoid asking, as much as possible.
That included school books or trips, maybe buying an extra package of cookies or things that I really liked and wanted to improve upon that required any sort of investment.
Yes, that created some childhood traumas in me, but that’s a video for my YouTube channel and another time.

The only possible thing I could do was to get to work and make some money myself, to avoid being a burden for my family.
I did all sorts of jobs but what I was really good at was assembling computers and doing IT assistance.
In the meanwhile, I was learning more and more about my real passion: 3D Computer Graphics, which, at the time, was pretty unheard of in Italy.
I was determined to work for the Visual Effects industry and I knew that it was my first life goal to get that done.
I kept learning it from foreign magazines that I would buy whenever I found them (they were rare) and eventually, I started being pretty good at it.
I started working professionally when I was 17 years old, opened my first company with two other older people when I was 19 years old, worked in the industry in Italy for about 12 years, and then worked another 13 years abroad.
It was not easy, at all.
I also almost had a nervous breakdown when I had my company, which pushed me to quit it after only 3 years of owning it.

There were always difficulties, but my purpose was always in my head and I was determined to reach it.
Even if the kind of jobs were not exactly what I wanted to do, because of the size and the kind of work that you could do in Italy vs, for example, Los Angeles at the time. But I learned as much as I could from anything I was doing, and that was a win right there. I just did not know at the time, but I do know now.

One anecdote is that for a period of time I rented a small house in a very small town near a Lake and I had opened my photograph gallery in the main square of the tow.
It never took off, because I ran out of money before I could really start making it work properly, but it was one of the most important experiences of my life, and also living in a place like that gave me perspective on how food should taste and how a simple life can actually be very fulfilling and make one happy.