From Wall Street to Zen - My Unlikely Path to Clarity

How slowing down transformed my definition of success.

Introduction: The Path of Knowledge

We are all brought to Earth to walk the path of knowledge and, through it, reach the inevitable attainment of wisdom. Most never realize this truth, yet those who do awaken to it take control of their lives with purpose and intention.

In America, we are often taught to chase money as if we are hamsters on a wheel, running tirelessly toward something we can never quite reach. This became especially clear to me during the pandemic, when the entire world was forced to slow down and re-evaluate life from top to bottom.

I want to make it radically clear that I achieved what many would have considered impossible. I was an individual with zero Wall Street ties who found a way to get a foot in the door at one of the top fifteen financial firms in the world. I rose through the ranks quickly and eventually became Vice President of Sales in one of the most powerful wealth centers in Southern California.

I had the privilege of consulting bespoke RIA advisory firms that managed the wealth of some of America’s most successful individuals. I was trained by an esteemed media coach and took part in broadcasts, commercials, panels, and global conference calls.

Then one morning, I woke up and realized that the season I was in had run its course. Only I could see it. I made the most difficult decision of my life at the time: to leave a six-figure role and step into the unknown. That choice came with challenges in every direction — family tension, financial uncertainty, inner doubt, and moments of isolation.

Why did I do it? Because I knew that true freedom could not be found in comfort. Most people would not walk away from a high-paying job, living a block from the beach in Santa Monica, with all the perks that come with it, to earn nothing and start a business from scratch without training or guarantees.

Yet that single decision changed my life forever. I chose freedom over comfort, purpose over predictability, and creation over complacency. That was the moment my journey toward Zen truly began.

The Next Chapter: The Birth of VIBE

The next step after Wall Street was not Zen. In fact, it was nowhere near it.

It was my first venture, one that would change the course of my mindset, lifestyle, and every future endeavor until I leave this plane of existence. It was the birth of VIBE — a tech-forward wellness ecosystem designed to promote a Good VIBE Lifestyle.

👉 increasemyvibe.com

VIBE was remarkable, enlightening, and invigorating to create. It was also challenging, but the process was deeply transformative. We hosted wellness and branding experiences around the world to bring the brand to life — from Malibu and Venice Beach to Barcelona and Stockholm.

We even designed a prototype for a mobile app intended to gather personal inputs from users and return customized lifestyle recommendations aligned with their unique body constitution. The goal was to create a system capable of learning from each interaction to provide evolving insights into diet, movement, and daily routines — all tailored to support long-term health and balance.

VIBE was built to take people from zero to one. It was the closest I have ever come to the divine — transforming a concept from the ethers of imagination into a living, breathing ecosystem. Our goal was to integrate future tools such as green grocery scanning to help users determine whether products were aligned with their individual needs, and even Shazam-style music recognition that could analyze frequency and mood to enhance focus and energy while maintaining a positive vibration.

Just before this, an inflection point redirected my path completely. During the depths of the pandemic, I began teaching yoga over Zoom to my cousin, a cancer patient. After our first session, she sent a text that forever altered my life: “My whole being feels energized. I haven’t felt this alive in years.”

That message became a cosmic confirmation. I could no longer ignore the signs. I had to move forward — even if it meant risking everything I had worked for. In truth, everything I had built up until that moment was leading to this: taking back my power, choosing creativity over convention, and using technology to serve human well-being.

Through the course of building VIBE, there were seasons of struggle. I was scraping together coins to pay bills, often eating very little, doing whatever it took to keep the vision alive. During that time, I read a post from a venture capitalist on LinkedIn that changed my trajectory yet again.

The post said that if you aspire to be a world-class founder, you should start a creative consultancy to help early-stage founders go from zero to one. Doing so would allow you to master every dimension of building — strategy, design, operations, and scalability — while creating a profitable structure that could sustain future ventures.

That single insight gave birth to Zen Creative.

Because I knew the struggle. I knew the weight of ambition, the complexity of scaling without burning out, and the tension between creation and exhaustion. I realized there were few resources for founders to stay in creative flow, sustain wellness, and build efficiently while maintaining emotional and energetic alignment.

Zen became the evolution of that lesson — a space where creativity meets consciousness, and founders are empowered to scale with clarity, vitality, and intention.

Legacy and Lineage

My late great-grandmother graduated college with a bachelor’s degree in Home Economics, her diploma stamped with the word NEGRO. That single word, frozen in time, represents both the weight and resilience of my lineage.

My upbringing shaped me to walk the path of knowledge and to pursue freedom in every form — spiritual, creative, and financial. Though my family was rich in heritage, values, and character, we often lacked the financial resources to fulfill certain ambitions.

Yet I never allowed that to define me. Instead, I learned to use what seemed like limitation as leverage, to turn lack into learning and adversity into advantage.

Early Lessons on Wealth

My first job was as a caddy at the Hollywood Golf Club in Deal, New Jersey. At the time, I did not realize that those early mornings carrying bags for Wall Street executives, doctors, and elite surgeons would foreshadow my future in profound ways.

I remember feeling insecure about where I stood compared to the members, yet I never let that determine who I was. Instead, I studied how they moved, spoke, and carried themselves. I paid attention to where they dined, where they traveled, and how they interacted among peers. I was fascinated by the cultural contrasts, not for their materialism, but for their mindset.

Their worldview was different from what I knew growing up, yet the core values they lived by — discipline, integrity, and vision — echoed what I had been taught as a young boy. That realization changed everything.

I understood that I was not meant to idolize these individuals. I was meant to observe them, to study their habits, their patterns, and their thinking, and then integrate those lessons into my own journey to elevate my family, my community, and myself.

A Defining Moment

There was a pivotal turning point that took place in the caddy shack at Hollywood Golf Club. I stumbled upon a book that would forever shape my worldview. The book was Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.

It was life-changing because it offered perspective on the balance between natural ability and relentless work ethic. It spoke directly to my soul. The world of academia had never come easily to me, yet this book revealed that those with unwavering persistence over long time horizons often surpass those with greater natural gifts.

Gladwell’s work gave me hope. It illuminated the truth that consistent effort compounds over time and that mastery is not about talent alone, but about patience, repetition, and faith.

The Art of the Baby Step

Years later, I came to call this philosophy the art of the baby step. It is the ability to take one small step forward every day, even if that step exists only in your mind. The very act of thinking about a goal plants the seed for a solution, and over time, those small moments of progress lead to seismic shifts.

This approach works in any endeavor. It proves that transformation does not happen overnight but through thousands of quiet, intentional moments that eventually create an avalanche of momentum.

I share this to remind anyone who feels unequipped or behind that their journey is unfolding exactly as it should. Keep moving, no matter how small the step. Eventually, the process becomes lighter, the momentum builds, and what once seemed impossible becomes inevitable.

If this message resonates with you, then you are in the right place. If you have always wanted to start something of your own, take this as your sign.

Vision Beyond the Visible

Since childhood, I have been a visionary in my own way, always seeing life from a slightly different angle. I often been told, “Ray, you are a little left of center.” That might be the truest thing anyone has ever said to me.

I have always wanted to go deeper into the why behind things, to understand cause and effect, and to explore how we can all live more consciously and fruitfully than those before us.

When I was in the third grade, I wrote a short presentation titled “From Baby Shoes to Successful Shoes.” On the cover, I glued a pair of baby shoes next to a pair of polished dress shoes — not far from what I would wear years later on Wall Street. It is as if my soul already knew the direction I would take, long before I understood how I would get there.

People often assume my awareness was always visible, yet on paper, it was not.

This is only the beginning of my story. I share it for those who feel called to build something meaningful, ventures with the power to shape culture and create positive change for generations to come.

Find your center with #ZEN.