06/10/2026
Confession: I used to be a huge Donald Trump fan.
No, seriously.
A big fan.
But before anybody gets too excited, offended, or confused, there’s a very important detail:
I became a Donald Trump fan when I was 10 years old. Fifth grade. A literal child.
I still remember it. I saw The Art of the Deal sitting on a shelf at Sam’s Club, bought it, and read it cover to cover. It was the first book over 100 pages I ever finished.
And when I finished it?
I was hooked.
I thought Donald Trump was the coolest businessman in America.
And honestly, that made complete sense.
Because to a 10-year-old, Donald Trump looked like success.
Big buildings with his name on them. Fancy hotels. Private jets. Gold everything. Fame. TV. Confidence. The whole best of the best image.
To a child, that looks like winning.
And I bought the story.
I thought he was some master entrepreneur who had built an incredible empire through brilliance, toughness, and determination. Even though I knew he came from money, my kid brain thought, Okay, but he turned it into something bigger. I thought he was somebody who actually built.
But here’s what adults are supposed to understand that children don’t:
Children confuse confidence with competence.
Kids mistake branding for substance. We assume rich means smart. We think loud means successful. We mistake image for achievement.
That’s not stupidity.
That’s childhood.
A 10-year-old isn’t supposed to understand inherited wealth. Or leverage. Or debt restructuring. Or bankruptcy law. Or licensing deals. Or the difference between somebody who builds businesses and somebody who markets the image of being a builder.
Kids believe stories.
And Donald Trump was selling one hell of a story.
Thankfully, my grandfather noticed.
My grandfather was a deeply Christian man, and he genuinely worried about the influences shaping me. Not because he hated wealth or success. Quite the opposite. He admired people who built things. He admired discipline, entrepreneurship, and hard work. But he also believed in character, humility, and creating real value.
So instead of lecturing me, he did something smarter:
He redirected me.
He handed me Master of the Game, the story of Steve Ross helping build what became Time Warner. He gave me T. Boone Pickens’ biography. He introduced me to stories about people who actually built businesses, people who took risks, solved problems, created jobs, built systems, and grew organizations.
That changed me.
As I got older, I became fascinated with my own family’s story. My grandfather’s sister helped co-found Armstrong McCall, building it into a major company. I started studying business seriously, not the fantasy version, but the real version.
Operations. Hiring. Marketing. Margins. Scaling. Customer service. Reinvention. Failure. Survival.
I started working with businesses. Helping businesses grow. Learning industries deeply so I could better serve clients. Then travel widened my perspective even more.
And after studying people who built real businesses, something became impossible to ignore:
Most real entrepreneurs don’t just build wealth for themselves.
They create jobs.
They provide for families.
They pay vendors.
They build ecosystems.
They leave communities stronger than they found them.
The truly successful business owners I’ve known? They cared about reputation because reputation meant something. Their vendors got paid. Their employees fed families. Their names mattered.
They didn’t leave a trail of bankrupt contractors and unpaid bills behind them while slapping their name in giant gold letters on buildings.
And the more I studied entrepreneurship, the more uncomfortable the truth became:
Donald Trump didn’t start from nothing.
He inherited enormous advantages and massive wealth.
That’s not a moral failing in itself. Plenty of people inherit advantages.
The question is:
What do you build with them?
Do you create lasting value?
Do you strengthen communities?
Do you build systems that outlast you?
Do people who work with you prosper?
Or do people around you go broke while you protect yourself and sell the image of success?
Eventually, I realized something uncomfortable:
Donald Trump wasn’t what 10-year-old me thought he was.
He wasn’t some extraordinary builder.
He was a brand.
A salesman. A marketer. A television character. A licensing operation.
In many ways, one of his biggest talents was convincing people he built more than he actually did.
And suddenly my childhood fandom made perfect sense.
Of course I liked Donald Trump when I was 10 years old.
A lot of 10-year-olds probably would.
What confuses me now is watching grown adults with mortgages, careers, businesses, children, and decades of life experience still evaluating him with the same level of thinking I had in fifth grade.
Still mistaking confidence for competence.
Still confusing image with achievement.
Still believing branding is proof of excellence.
That’s not really politics.
That’s maturity.
Because I was a Trump fan.
When I was 10 years old.
And then I grew up.
