Fifteen years ago, a client walked into my office carrying twenty-five pounds of peanut M&Ms.
Five enormous bags. All Christmas colors.
Daniel went to three different stores to find them because apparently five bags of Christmas-colored peanut M&Ms were a surprisingly difficult thing to acquire.
He told me I’d sounded a little down the last time we’d spoken, and he wanted to cheer me up. He remembered me mentioning that peanut M&Ms were my favorite.
And the five bags? One for each Christmas he’d made it through with my help.
Daniel owned a retail enterprise in Ohio, and the holidays were an especially demanding season. We’d worked through five of them together, navigating the pressures of running a business during its busiest time of year.
For years afterward, a five-pound bag of peanut M&Ms arrived every Christmas, usually accompanied by a ridiculous note, a picture of his pups, or both. Even after I moved thousands of miles away, the tradition continued.
We’d schedule thirty minutes to talk business and still be on the phone three hours later, talking about everything under the sun. Daniel was my client for more than twenty years. He was also my friend.
And recently, he killed himself.
I still catch myself expecting the familiar things. The next conversation. Another photograph of his pups. The next Christmas delivery that makes me laugh before I’ve even opened the box. Twenty years of friendship leave an enormous amount of life behind, including ordinary moments you never imagined having to experience without someone.
I’ve spent a great deal of time in the last couple of weeks since his death thinking about what it means to live in a world where someone can be so extraordinarily generous with their love and still experience so much cruelty simply for existing as themselves.
Daniel was an immigrant, neurodivergent, gay, and a transgender man. He’d spent much of his life navigating rejection, discrimination, and the exhausting work of trying to exist safely in a world that kept finding new ways to tell him he didn’t belong. The increasingly hostile political climate and the targeting of people who share his identities weighed heavily on him.
I can’t tell you everything that contributed to his death. Suicide is complex, and no one outside another person’s experience can claim to understand every part of their pain. I can tell you that he deserved better. He deserved to live without having to defend his humanity. He deserved to grow old, spoil his dogs, make people laugh, and keep sending absurd quantities of candy to the people he loved, all while being loved unconditionally.
His death has brought me back, again and again, to the question of what kind of world we’re building.
Why does it cost people to live fully as themselves?
How many people are navigating circumstances that demand extraordinary courage simply to claim the dignity and freedom that should already belong to them?
We’re completing an election cycle this week, and the stakes extend far beyond who wins or loses. Decisions about war, genocide, the rule of law, bodily autonomy, healthcare, civil rights, economic security, and personal freedom have consequences that reach into people’s homes, businesses, relationships, and daily lives. For people whose humanity, rights, and very existence have become subjects of political debate, those consequences are profoundly personal.
Those decisions are made in legislatures, courtrooms, boardrooms, and government offices. Their consequences are lived in homes, workplaces, schools, and communities. They shape the opportunities people can pursue, the care they can access, the places they can safely live, and the futures they can imagine.
And while money can’t guarantee safety, eliminate discrimination, prevent tragedy, or replace the respect and dignity we owe one another, financial resources can expand the choices available to us. The ability to leave a harmful situation, access care, relocate, hire help, take time to recover, or withstand an emergency without losing everything we’ve worked to build.
I want more people to have those choices.
I want people whose lives, identities, and values have been treated as negotiable to have greater power over their own futures. I want the rebels, healers, changemakers, artists, entrepreneurs, and community builders who envision a different world to have the resources to participate in creating it.
And I want them to enjoy their lives along the way.
I’ve spent more than thirty years working with entrepreneurs, and I’ve watched some of the most talented, compassionate, visionary people I’ve ever known build businesses that take care of everyone except themselves. They pay their employees, their contractors, their vendors, and their landlords. They accommodate their clients, absorb unexpected expenses, and find creative ways to make their work accessible to people who need it. Then they look at whatever is left and try to figure out how to make it stretch far enough to cover a week’s groceries.
I’ve watched healers discount their work until they can barely afford to continue offering it. I’ve watched founders go years without paying themselves a meaningful salary. I’ve watched people with extraordinary expertise apologize for their prices while living on credit just to survive.
We call them heroes, and then we leave them on their own to figure out how to survive the cost of their heroism.
Fuck that!
I want you abundantly resourced. I want your business to pay you beautifully, your taxes funded, your retirement growing, your savings substantial, and your reserves deep enough that an unexpected expense doesn’t threaten everything you’ve built. I want you to have the financial capacity to make decisions about your life without having to calculate how much of yourself you’ll need to sacrifice to afford them.
I want you to have the home you dream about, the experiences you crave, the ridiculous little luxuries that make you grin, and the freedom to discover desires you haven’t even allowed yourself to imagine. I want you to take the vacation, buy the art, hire the help, and experience the pleasure of having more than enough.
You get to be the first beneficiary of the wealth you create. Always.
Your life deserves to be abundantly funded before you decide what portion of your resources you want to direct toward anyone or anything else. Your wellbeing, your happiness, your security, and your future belong at the epicenter of the financial decisions you’re making.
And when your life is supported, when your cup is full and you’ve built the capacity to sustain that fullness, you get to serve from the saucer.
We fundamentally change the world when we are abundantly resourced.
Every dollar we spend tells the world what we value. And every dollar carries consequence.
We’ve seen people organize boycotts of Target for reversing its stance on DEI, choose to support Costco because of its commitment to inclusion, and refuse to spend money at Chick-fil-A because of its history with LGBTQ rights. We’ve seen people make quieter choices every day, too. Buying locally instead of automatically ordering from Amazon. Purchasing books from independent bookstores instead of the big-box stores. Seeking out online alternatives like Shop the Hood, Little Blue Cart, and Everywhere Is Queer that make it easier to direct spending toward businesses aligned with their values.
The links shared are direct links, and I receive nothing for you clicking on them or purchasing from them other than the satisfaction of knowing that more money is flowing through the hands of good people.
Every transaction sends resources somewhere. It helps sustain a business, compensate workers, reward certain practices, and influence which enterprises have the opportunity to grow. The choices we make with our money ripple outward, often in ways we may never personally witness.
When we’re struggling to make ends meet, our immediate needs understandably take precedence. Price, accessibility, and convenience can determine which choices are realistically available to us. There’s no shame in making the decision that keeps your household functioning.
But when we’re unreasonably resourced, we have the capacity to look beyond our immediate needs and consider the consequences of where our money goes. We can ask whose work we’re supporting, which communities benefit, and whether our spending reflects the values we want to see flourish in the world.
We have greater freedom to refuse to compromise our values on the altar of affordability and convenience.
And when enough people have that freedom, our individual financial choices become a powerful collective force.
Imagine what becomes possible when more people have the financial freedom to live according to their values, pursue their desires, and make decisions without the constant pressure of scarcity. When someone can walk away from a harmful environment, take a chance on an extraordinary idea, or build a life that reflects who they actually are.
Imagine the businesses, art, inventions, movements, and communities that could flourish when the people dreaming them into existence have the resources to make them real. Imagine what happens when more people have the freedom to challenge systems that depend on their silence, compliance, or financial desperation.
And imagine the sheer pleasure of having enough. Of knowing your future is funded, your choices belong to you, and you have room to discover what else you might want from this one extraordinary life.
What becomes possible for you when money stops determining which parts of your life you’re allowed to pursue?
That’s the question underneath everything I do at Prosperity First. It’s why I care so deeply about helping people understand their numbers, build profitable businesses, release the money stories that keep them under-resourced, and develop a relationship with wealth that supports the lives they actually want to live.
I’ve managed more than a billion dollars in client profits over my career, and the numbers have taught me something I wish more people understood. Profit creates capacity. It gives a business room to breathe, an owner room to choose, and a vision room to grow. But a profitable business can still leave its owner financially vulnerable when that profit never makes its way into the life of the person who created it.
I want you to know what your business can afford to pay you. I want you to understand whether your pricing supports the life you’re building, how much you need in reserves, and what your numbers are telling you about the decisions ahead. I want you to have enough clarity about your financial position that you can make a difficult choice without panic and recognize an extraordinary opportunity without immediately wondering how you’ll survive the risk.
When profit is intentionally directed toward funding your life, it becomes the ability to say no without fear of financial catastrophe, to take care of yourself when you’re sick, and to make decisions based on your values, your desires, and the future you’re building.
And when enough people have that kind of freedom, the effects extend into their families, businesses, communities, politics, and the wider world.
Daniel’s death has made my commitment to that future feel more urgent than ever. I can’t bring him back, undo the cruelty he experienced, or know whether any particular resource could have changed what happened. I can continue working toward a world where more people have the resources, choices, support, and freedom to live fully as themselves.
I wish Daniel were still here. I wish I had another ridiculous Christmas card to look forward to, another picture of his pups, another thirty-minute phone call that turned into an entire afternoon. I wish he’d had more time to experience the love, freedom, and belonging he deserved.
I want those things for you, too. I want you to have a long, beautiful, abundantly funded life in which your work supports your wellbeing, your values can guide your decisions, and your dreams have the resources they need to become real.
I want you to have choices. I want you to experience the freedom of knowing that you can safely be fully yourself, live whatever lifestyle calls to you, have your future funded, and take your desire for more seriously.
And I want you to know that you don’t have to figure out how to build that future alone. At Prosperity First, we’ll keep putting financial knowledge, strategy, and practical support into the hands of people who are ready to claim more for themselves. We’ll keep challenging the expectations that have made depletion seem noble, and we’ll keep working to ensure that the people who want to make the world better get to experience that better world in their own lives.
Because I know what becomes possible when people have the resources to live according to their values, fund their dreams, and shape the world around them.
That’s the world I’m working to build.
That’s why I founded Prosperity First.
And that’s why your profit is your protest.
P.S. Profit is Protest, and so is claiming the financial freedom to live according to your values, fund your desires, and direct your resources toward the world you want to inhabit.
Daniel’s name and certain identifying details have been changed to protect his family’s privacy. His story is shared with their permission.