It started early.

Watching my father build a new house with his own two hands. And watching my grandfather fix typewriters at the dinner table every day after school.

Then one night, my family's own dinner table was flipped upside down—and suddenly everything changed. A childhood fractured by a divorce of Shakespearean proportions left me struggling through my adolescence, barely finishing high school with a GED, floating around with no real direction or purpose to speak of.

My first job at 17 was in a restaurant. Five years later, I was working at the busiest Applebee's in the world, in Bradenton, Florida. A year later, I was back in Michigan.

What followed was years of feeling stuck in motion, a sense of directionlessness that was paralyzing and feeling undervalued at every job I ever excelled at.

This led to patterns of recurring bouts with depression, self-remedied by drink, drugs, and late night juvenile debauchery—the kind of lifestyle that, unbeknownst to me at the time, would become inseparable from the people and culture surrounding me.

But then something happened that would ultimately change the course of my life.

One night, a conversation with a close family friend led to him proposing that I accept an unusually absurd offer. The kind of offer that a guy like me at the time who had no money, no job, and only five cigarettes left in his pocket would be a fool to refuse.

The offer was simple.

"I'll pay you 100 bucks a day to sit there, watch, and get high."

This was like going undercover. Because what I was watching for was people stealing money.

The money came from the sale of illegal marijuana through a newly formed marijuana consignment business. The two owners were mutual friends. In the beginning, they hired three guys to run the store. But despite an overwhelming amount of business, the owners soon began to notice that they were losing money every month—eventually, around $4,000.

On my third day of sitting, watching, and getting high for free, I watched one of the employees take the money bag home. It contained roughly $1,150.

When we all returned to work the next day, he had the bag, but the store's money was gone.

Out of that turmoil, I quickly became the manager of the entire operation. Within the next year, we made somewhere close to $1 million. What I thought, at first, was just a favor to a friend — it quickly turned into something more permanent and profitable. I confidently thought I was looking at a successful career in cannabis.

Then in 2013, a raid on my house and a federal indictment stripped me of that confidence and with it, everything else—my identity, my hard work, my possessions, my plans, but most importantly, my freedom.

The next three years were difficult.

But not because I had to get sober and all of a sudden start following the law. But rather because I had to learn how to change my thoughts and behaviors—and, more importantly, over time, how I perceived my own value.

I obviously didn't change overnight. And I can tell you it didn't happen at the end of my three years on federal parole. And it didn't happen when I later achieved things I never dreamed I would. That's because it's not a happening, it's a slow progression. All good things worth doing come with time.