I grew up on the Canadian prairies, in the exact middle of nowhere. My parents were pretty hardcore in the religion department and raised my six siblings and I with old testament violence, which they chose to believe was "good." The other people all around me were small-minded, to put it lightly. Nobody aspired to anything more that drinking on the weekend, getting laid, and driving a shiny pickup truck... it was my perfect definition of hell.

I go into a lot more depth in an earlier post of mine but my candles in the dark were all on television and in books. I read the entire original Hardy Boys series while in elementary school and loved watching Star Trek, The Next Generation. Such were my windows to a larger wold beyond my little redneck fishbowl. The internet came along and helped a lot too but the biggest influence came in the form of Tony Robbins' Personal Power 30-day cassette program. My dad had purchased the set because of an inspiring late-night infomercial but only ever listened to the first tape. He put them, down in the basement to collect dust for a decade before I finally stumbled on them as a twelve year old boy. It sparked a fire and set me down the path of self determination and entrepreneurship. I rejected all the psychological barriers set up by my authority figures and committed myself to perpetual growth and excellence. Christians talk about being born again and I suppose that program was the closest thing to a baptism I'll ever experience.