I was introduced to and have gotten to know Michael through this pandemic. I love how he helps other people grow their business and speaking careers. Like me, he believes that you need to step outside of your comfort zone in order to learn and grow. He believes that everybody is here for a purpose. Everybody can do great things if they’re willing to tap into their gifts and use them. His business is called UnleashU where Michael and his team work to release people’s inner potential. 

Michael was born without the ability to hear until he was three years old and couldn’t talk until four or five. His family was a hardcore military and forced him to go through the same things other kids his age were going through and start school at the same age as his peers. Because his listening and speech skills were different he struggled and couldn’t pass third grade. Since he couldn’t really express how he felt, he would act it out and got in many fights. He was in and out of juvie throughout his younger years. This caused him to have quite a strained relationship with his family, especially his father. He didn’t realize this at the time, but now he believes that the universe, God, or whatever you believe in, was allowing him to get caught to try to tell him to stop doing what he was doing. At sixteen he moved out of the house and was living out of his car or at a friend’s house. Six months before his dad died, they got together for lunch and decided they were going to try to have a decent relationship for his mother’s sake since she was battling health issues at the time. After his father died, Michael was very grateful that he did wind up having a relationship with his father but was sorry that he never had a chance to say thank you.