In many ways, our children are more privileged than we ever were because neither of us was raised in the kind of home we have established for our children, and neither of us knew what it was like to live in a healthy, functional environment like we have today.

My Husband, Hans

Although Hans’ mother did her best to raise her two sons, some of her poor choices made things hard on all of them. I hate to say this, but in some ways she used them to make money so she could be at home, drinking, partying, and doing her thing. They were forced to bring in money at the ages of eight and six. Hans was in the second grade and his brother was in kindergarten. They would pick flowers off of trees, make leis, and sell them to tourists after school, every day. Sometimes they would also dive off the pier for coins just to have enough money for dinner. Unfortunately, McDonald’s was often the choice, especially when living with her, which was not often because she couldn’t afford to maintain a home.

Han’s mother was a boat captain. At the times he lived with her, she would leave for two weeks at a time and he and his brother would have to fend for themselves. At other times, they would be sent to their grandparents’ or friend’s homes, or wherever they could just lay their heads. Hans has memories of living on a lanai as a young kid and sleeping on a lounge chair with a sheet covering him.

Since Hans was raised without a father, he didn’t know how to be a father or a husband. What he did have was an absolute resentment of his family’s extreme poverty and a decision to never be poor again. He made this decision at a very young age, and as a result worked many jobs before the age of 18.

At the time we met, Hans was an 18-year-old commercial diver looking to make some extra money. He’d been on his own supporting himself financially since age 12. In fact, he even supported his mother financially during a couple of occasions when she moved in with him. The lures of determining his own future and being financially independent led him to an interview with my company. After coming on board, he attended the debut of my very first seminar, First Steps to Success, in Kona on the Big Island. Shortly afterward, we left Hawaii for California to expand our operation.

Me

My family was on welfare until I was 12. My dad, who raised me from the age of 6 months, was very lazy, extremely angry, and physically abusive. (For 17/ years, I was misled into believing that he was my biological father.) He would beat the snot out of my mother, me, and my two sisters. So my motivation for success was to be nothing like my parents. I just wanted to be free of them and have a normal, functional life. My motivation for success had nothing to do with money.

After my mom broke her neck when I was 11, I became the caretaker for the family. I gave her showers, changed her bedpans, diapers, and dressed her. When I was 14, she got a huge financial settlement. What that did was bring in more expensive drugs, more chaos, more nonsense, and more neglect. So I hated money.

But Mom’s courage, determination, and persistence was remarkable. She went from living in a bed completely paralyzed from her neck down, to moving an electric wheelchair with her chin. Within five years of her injury, she worked herself into a regular wheelchair, a walker, then a cane, and finally, to riding horses, taking trips on airplanes, and being able to care for herself again. My mother refused to give up, and I was able to witness my first miracle.

My parents took my sisters and me out of public school and placed us into a Christian school. It wasn’t because they were converting; it was in hopes of preventing us from unwed pregnancies. This proved to be one of the best things that they ever did for me. The training I received at that Christian school resulted in me receiving Christ as my Lord and Savior at the age of 13. I met Him and He was my Everything at that time—my Savior, my Safe Place, my Refuge, and my Comforter.

I was molested from the time I was three. At 16, I moved out of the house because I hated the man I called “Dad” who started violating me when I was 12. My mother was doing nothing about it, so I moved. Understand that my parents would be snorting cocaine, smoking weed, taking hundreds of pills, and partying all night long. All I wanted was to do what was right.

All kinds of hostility lived in my childhood home: from being kicked across the room by my father, to watching my mother receive black eyes and bloody noses, even during her years recovering from paralysis. The mental anguish and the physical and emotional pain and suffering I endured during my childhood were horrible.

My sisters grew up in the same house as I did, but their reaction to the abuse was different from mine. They stole my parents’ drugs and wound up drug addicts themselves. One sister has been in and out of jail for the last 20 years and the other one is dead. She died from a drug overdose at 21 after doing a drug run for my parents. (Isn’t that something? Here were three girls growing up in the same house, seeing and experiencing similar things, yet making different decisions and having different outcomes.)

Making a mistake with the deacon’s son (my boyfriend of almost four years who constantly badgered me to have sex), altered my life. I was a senior in high school, living on my own with numerous college scholarships to play basketball, and I found myself pregnant at the age of 17. I soon dropped out of school in order to support myself and my soon-coming baby.

My boyfriend was furious at the news and demanded that I get an abortion. I refused. Then he and his parents pressured me for four months to give the baby up for adoption. I refused. The hypocrisy and condemnation I received from people in my church was harsh, even considering that two in church leadership had illicit pasts.

Massive Identity Crisis

It was also during this time that I found out I was adopted. When I was three months pregnant with Kristina, my aunt told me that I was adopted by my dad. This news was earth-shattering. My whole life seemed a mess. I had suffered from Mom and Dad’s rejection and abandonment for drugs, and then I found out that there was a biological father who had abandoned and rejected me, too. Nothing was ever stable in my life. Everything was always “high drama.” I had been totally and deliberately misled by my parents, which caused a massive identity crisis.

During my childhood I was told that I was named after Dan, the man who raised me and whom I called Dad. This seemed feasible since my name is Danette. They also told me that my dark, brown eyes came from Dan’s father since I was the only dark-skinned person with brown eyes in my immediate family. My sisters were blond with fair skin, and everyone either had green or blue eyes. But in actuality, I was this little Nicaraguan kid who was six months old when Dan came into our lives. It’s amazing because it never even dawned on me that I had been lied to even though I was so different from them.

I even bought the lie that my mother was a virgin on her wedding night. Why not? I had no reason not to believe her. It was when my grandmother threatened to tell me the truth while we were still living in Los Angeles that my parents quickly moved us to Northern California.

There is so much stuff I could say about that confusing time in my life, but I’ll limit it to this. After all those months of consistent pressure to give up my baby for adoption, I did the most regretful and heartbreaking thing in my life—I released Kristina for adoption.

During that time, I explored various paths to self-improvement and spiritual enlightenment, including Eastern mysticism and the whole metaphysical thing, only to come away with misguided beliefs, a harmful spirituality, a disappointed heart, and a naïve approach to life.

At 18, I met my biological dad, and we’ve since established an awesome relationship. Everything has been restored; in fact, he even walked me down the aisle when Hans and I recommitted our wedding vows a couple of years ago. I look at the kind of mother that I am today, and I am totally thankful that our home is the absolute opposite of the home in which I was raised. When I say this, please do not think that I’m bragging about myself. Rather, I am totally boasting in God who rescued me from my past, blessed me with an awesome family, and surrounded me with great people, great clients, and great friends who have made a massive impact on my life. Gone forever are the daily verbal and physical assaults from a drug-addicted father who was pathetically enabled by an indifferent, drug-addicted mother.

How I ended up in Hawaii, 3,000 miles away from home, is another long story, so I’ll just give you the highlights When I was 21, I eloped with a man I barely knew after being with him for seven days. We eventually moved to Hawaii. For me, it seemed like a fairy tale come true. I’d married a charming prince and had moved to a beautiful place to live life happily ever after. Up until that point, my life had been a roller-coaster ride of personal disappointments, few shining moments, and many painful memories.

Deceived and Depressed

At 18 I left my hometown and all the painful memories and people to start a new life. At 19 I was introduced to the concept of becoming an entrepreneur, something I knew nothing about. After attending several classes given by successful, multimillionaire business owners, I figured that even if I failed to produce their income by 90 percent, and even if it took me 20 years to learn how to get good at it, I would still be doing better being self-employed than if I stayed at JCPenney’s.

I found a product to market, and I was in business. After six months of absolute failure and living off of my credit cards, it was apparent that being in business was much harder than I thought it would be. I began looking for people who were succeeding and invested in educating myself about how to succeed in business. I spent thousands of dollars and learned much. In fact, I stopped losing money and within a few months realized incomes of over $20,000 a month. I was amazed.

I felt that I had finally arrived. For the first time in my life, I had money, confidence, and celebrity-star status. People had actually sought me out to see what they could learn from me—from me. Earlier that year while at a training event in Los Angeles, I received numerous accolades as the top-earning sales rep for a business I’d operated. One of the attendees asked if he could pick my brain for some business tips. He looked like a movie star, was incredibly charming, and made me feel wanted, appreciated, and important. We spent the following week together, and at the end of that week, got married after I had fallen head-over-heels for him.

This proved to be a big mistake. Within four months, the man I married deserted me for another woman and drained my bank account. I was left with a $35,000 debt and exactly $2.03 to my name. I felt what it was to be completely devastated, totally abandoned, hopelessly confused, and very, very scared. Evicted from my house shortly afterward, everything I owned was packed into my tiny car. I found myself parked on a beach, showering in public facilities, not knowing where I was going to sleep or where my next meal was coming from.

It was an absolutely devastating and humiliating time. To make matters worse, my business on the mainland had also been embezzled at the very same time. Everything had been lost—my savings, my friends, my dignity, but worst of all, my dreams. I had no vision, and that was a dangerous place to be. Feeling blindsided and confused, I drifted around in a total daze. I found myself hanging out at a beach with a handful of people I didn’t know, which provided a diversion from my loneliness and a convenient escape from despair. The beach was a favorite spot for people wanting to avoid the realities of life. They shared with me their carefree spirits, invited me into their careless lifestyle, and shared with me their means of escape—marijuana. Soon, this became my daily routine. I would hang out at the beach, toke out on weed, and drift along for another day.

During this time, I managed to get a job as a cocktail waitress. But even then, I still smoked pot upon awaking each morning since work didn’t start until 3 o’clock in the afternoon. The first two weeks as a waitress, I received unpaid training. I survived day-to-day, with no direction, hope, or clue about what I was going to do.

After hitting rock-bottom—homeless, living out of my car, depressed, contemplating suicide, and 50 pounds overweight, I had a defining moment. This is when I came face-to-face with my reality and stood at the crossroads of my life.

Defining Moment

It was Christmas Eve and I was wasted. Something I swore I would never do, I did that night—that was snorting cocaine. When I left my parent’s home several years earlier, I had sworn to myself that I would never be like them and that I would never use drugs, especially cocaine. But there I was, facing the same demons that tormented my family, stole my innocence, and destroyed my childhood. The next thing I remember is being on the beach the following day and having this powerful craving for more cocaine. The hunger for it consumed me, and I became frustrated because I couldn’t find any.

Feeling like I was hitting a brick wall, I waded out into the tide. A wave approached, and as it was about to break, I dove under it. When I came up, a change swept over me and removed the intense craving I had moments before. I was clear-headed. Then I heard a voice say, “Pick up your mat and walk.”

The day after this defining moment, I became completely focused with no more whining, crying the blues, complaining, or pity parties. I was still waitressing full-time, but from the trunk of my car and using a payphone booth, I started licensing a weight-loss product from a manufacturer. Using these meager resources, within the first 45 days, I made $18,000. Needless to say, I quit waitressing at that point. I then went on to make a quarter-of-a-million dollars by the end of my first year and my first million at the end of my second year. It’s amazing what can be accomplished with a burning desire to succeed. I am so thankful that I have never been homeless since.

As my business grew, so did my reputation as a marketing professional. This is when I conducted my first seminar called First Steps to Success. One weekend each month, I taught other entrepreneurs successful business skills. Attendance at these training seminars expanded rapidly, and it was then that I decided to contact a nutritional laboratory to custom-manufacture products under a private label and start my own health and nutrition company. The following year, I made my first million, and within two years, I became the owner and president of two multi-million dollar companies—all of this by the age of 23. In 1996 I sold my health and nutrition company and focused my efforts on my training company. Since then I have made millions of dollars building various companies and helping other people succeed financially through our training company.

Us

Hans and I have worked together as a team from almost the very beginning of this business venture. Since then, we have had outrageous success—as well as devastating hardships. Each experience has made us who we are today. Today we have so much to be thankful for. I’m thankful for a loving, faithful husband, a great family, five wonderful children, and an awesome profession as an author, speaker, business trainer, and coach. My life has been blessed in more ways than I ever dreamed possible. I shudder to think where I might have ended up if I had taken a wrong turn at the crossroads of my life and missed the defining moment that positively changed my life forever.

The path I took led me to Hans, my children, and wealth…and it absolutely led me straight back to God and to numerous miracles. The miracle of my daughter Kristina returning into my life when she was 14 was major. How we both searched for each other at the same time and were miraculously reunited is the subject for another book. The manipulation that stole her from me, the lies that were told about me, and the abuse she personally suffered at the hands of her adoptive parents has all been rectified.

Two people from two different families and two different areas ended up having several things in common. Both of us had a childhood that no one in their right minds would want. We weren’t groomed to be successful as children or taught by our parents how to become millionaires. No one in our families had achieved that measure of success, and yet both of us became millionaires in our 20s and are multi-millionaires today.

Let us assure you: there is hope available for you if you find yourself in the dire predicaments we were in. Our past backgrounds did not represent our present or future realities. Likewise, your past does not have to equal your present or your future, either. As long as you are still breathing, it’s not too late to implement the changes required to groom your next generation for success.