I came to Canada 22 years ago. I had no friends, no money, no education, no connections, poor use of the English/French language, no special skill.

I worked as a janitor for $7/h, a busboy, stacking shelves in supermarkets, as an Uber driver.

Every low-paying job I had, I accepted it with gratitude. I never complained about poor working conditions, never complained about systemic poverty, never bitched about the system, never blamed millionaires or billionaires. I was just grateful to have an opportunity to work.

Every job taught me something and I saw every job as a step on the ladder of self-improvement. I never intended to be a busboy for the rest of my life or to be a janitor for the rest of my life. I saw those jobs as transitory.

Due to my lack of language skills, I was not able to get a higher-paying job, so I went into entrepreneurship. I opened a business. I opened a dance school.

I didn’t know much about dance. My girlfriend at the time dragged me into dancing. I saw that there was a demand for dance classes and I decided to offer a similar service.

I didn’t know much about dancing either. Everything I learned, I learned it on YouTube, for free, the same way anyone can learn practically anything for free.

While running a dance school, I was educating myself, reading free information online. I learned about investments in the stock market and I learned about investments in real estate.

Once I accumulated some capital from my dance school, I started investing in real estate. An immigrant with no job history, and with little education, was able to get mortgages to buy several properties.

I rented my properties as short-term rentals, to tourists or to people who didn’t want a long-term commitment, that way I was able to ask for rent prices 100% higher than regular rental leases. This is not rocket science, anyone can do the same thing today.

There is a myth that people have to get expensive degrees from fancy institutions and get permission from the permission givers. That’s bull shit. We live in a society where anyone can decide where on the economic ladder they want to be and they can place themselves in that slot.

I was able to make a living from my real estate investment, accelerate my mortgage payments, and have money left over to invest in the stock market.

Today, I can make a living from my stock market investments. Every month, I withdraw from my brokerage account the money I need to pay my bills and I let the rest of the money continue working for me.

I have tried to coach others into saving and investing, into entrepreneurship, but I have little luck with that. There is some kind of fear, some kind of subconscious programming that prevents people from taking control of their own destiny. It’s easier to blame the systemic factors that create poverty, to blame the system, to blame billionaires, anything other than to look at the mirror and take a good look at themselves.

I get a lot of pushback. People tell me about the evils of capitalism, about how the system is unfair, about how the rich don’t pay enough taxes, about racism. All I know is that there are plenty of opportunities out there, and although all those excuses have a lot of truth behind them, the biggest enemy is the fear of taking leadership and becoming responsible for one’s own destiny.