For most of my life, I believed I was inadequate. I was the runt — a gap in my teeth, three older cousins who were all athletes, and a father who battled alcoholism and was only around when he was sober. My mother raised me on food stamps in the Boyd Hill projects. I played sports but never got the celebrations. My parents were never in the stands — it was always someone else's coach who let me in. Everywhere I looked, life seemed to confirm the same verdict: not enough. I even dropped out of college believing it.
Then I became a father, and I swore my daughter would have what I didn't. But early on I started becoming the man I ran from — the same bottle, the same patterns. The day I realized it could cost me my presence, I stopped. I dove into my faith like never before, and I climbed — lab instructor, systems administrator, network engineer — determined that my family would never lack.
The shift came in a conference room near Roseburg, Oregon. I was the only Black man at the table, and we had to stand and introduce ourselves. The kid I used to be would have shrunk in that seat. Instead, I stood up and said four words: "Hi, I am Demorrious." And for the first time, I owned them completely. I deserved to be in that room — and they had no choice but to see me as me.
"The two most powerful words you'll ever speak are 'I am.' Change what follows them, and everything downstream changes — your faith, your work, your money, your life."
From that room, I went back and finished what I'd quit — an associate's, a bachelor's, a master's, and now a doctorate in progress. And I made a vow: to spend my life helping people become who they're supposed to be. That's what IAM University is. Not a theory I read in a book — the work that pulled a kid who felt like nothing out of the projects and into rooms he was once afraid to sit in.
Everything I teach runs through that one truth. It was never four separate problems — faith, mindset, business, money — competing for your attention. It was always one root: who you believe you are. Change the root, and every branch changes with it.
Demorrious holds an MBA in Resilience Based Management from Columbia College and a BA in Organizational Leadership from Winthrop University.