08/15/2026
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about where I came from, where I am now, and everything it took to get here.
I started in this industry 20 years ago. I didn’t come from money. I didn’t have connections or a last name that opened doors. And my life certainly didn’t look like the picture most people have in their head when they imagine someone building a career in finance.
I was a young woman in a wheelchair walking into an industry that was overwhelmingly male driven, and in many ways still is.
I learned pretty quickly what it felt like to be underestimated. To walk into rooms where people made assumptions about me before I ever opened my mouth. To watch men be given credibility that I sometimes felt like I had to earn over and over again.
But that isn’t even the hardest part of what I’ve seen over the last 20 years.
The hardest part has been watching what money, power and success can do to people.
I’ve watched good people change.
I’ve watched ambition become greed. Confidence become arrogance. Competition become cruelty. I’ve watched people I once respected become so consumed with being bigger, making more, winning and proving something that somewhere along the way, they seemed to lose the person they used to be.
I’ve seen egos get bigger as bank accounts got bigger.
I’ve watched friendships disappear when money became involved.
I’ve watched people care more about production numbers than people.
And I’ve seen behavior justified with the words, “It’s just business,” when the truth is, business is still made up of human beings.
Maybe that is one of the reasons I’ve been so intentional about checking my own heart as we’ve grown.
Because success brings its own temptations too.
You start growing. You start making more money. You start getting recognition. You start building something bigger than you ever imagined.
And it becomes even more important to remember why you started in the first place.
I never want growth to make me greedy.
I never want numbers to become more important than people.
I never want success to make me believe I’m more important than someone else.
And I never want to forget where God brought me from.
Owning a business has also taught me that leadership isn’t always the fun stuff you see on Facebook.
Sometimes being the employer means making decisions that absolutely break your heart.
Sometimes those decisions involve people you genuinely care about. Sometimes there isn’t a bad person or a villain. Sometimes circumstances change, businesses grow, roles change, expectations change, and you still have a responsibility to make the decision you believe is right for the business, your team, your clients and the future.
I’ve learned that you can love someone and still have to make a difficult decision.
You can be compassionate and still have boundaries.
You can be a Christian business owner and still have to make choices that hurt.
That part of growth doesn’t get talked about enough.
But then I look around.
I look at the business God allowed us to build from practically nothing. I look at our team. Our clients. The families who trust us with some of the biggest decisions of their lives. I look at the new office going up. I think about the awards, the opportunities, the doors that have opened, and things I once prayed for that have quietly become everyday life.
And I am humbled.
Not because everything has been perfect.
Because it absolutely has not.
There have been tears behind closed doors. Mistakes. Hard conversations. People who disappointed me. Times I disappointed myself. Decisions I questioned over and over again.
But I have never wondered if Agape was worth it.
Not once.
If anything, the difficult seasons have made me even more certain of why we built it.
I’ve had to remind myself that I don’t have to become hard just because this industry can be hard.
I don’t have to become ruthless because I’ve encountered ruthless people.
I don’t have to measure my success by someone else’s bank account, business, title or definition of winning.
I can build differently.
And I think that may be one of the greatest lessons God has taught me through all of this.
Twenty years in this industry has taught me a lot about money.
But building Agape Wealth has taught me even more about people, leadership, faith, forgiveness, humility and myself.
I’m still learning.
I’m still checking my heart.
I’m still going to make mistakes.
And I’m still incredibly grateful that the girl who had every reason to believe her life would be limited has gotten to watch God build something far beyond anything she could have planned herself.
At the end of all of this, I don’t just want to be able to say I built a successful business.
I want to be able to say I built one without losing myself.
Without losing my compassion.
Without losing my faith.
And without forgetting the people who helped me get here.
Faith. Family. Then finance.
That order matters more to me today than it ever has. ❤️
