Was it tough to say, ‘So long, private sector; I’m going to start a nonprofit’?
I was fortunate enough to sell the business I had. By doing that, I obtained the financial freedom to make an avocation my full-time vocation. Still, you must have been walking away from a lot of potential earnings. Every person has to think through how finance fits into their life for themselves. For me, when I sold my business a lot of people said, ‘Now you can make a lot more money—10 times as much because you’ve had success.’ Some people would have found that option attractive. Others may not have needed to do what I did first: to get stable financially and know that I could take care of my family. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer. What were your first steps in founding Year Up? I did six months of research by myself. I just sat down, Googled ‘youth workforce development’ and ‘youth development,’ and started to get some feeling of who’s out there. I went to visit some people, made contacts and organized what I was learning. And then I started to get an idea of what wou
