Nobody is coming to save you. So make it happen.

My memories of childhood aren't picture-perfect. I was five, living in a trailer down the Cape with my mom. My last memory of my dad is hearing his voice on the phone. Shortly after that, he died. A few months later, my mom and I moved into a shelter, and she never came back.

My mom was eventually deported to Portugal, and later she passed away. I found out walking home from church. Before I even got through the door, I heard my brother. If you've ever heard that kind of scream, you know. That was my "no looking back" moment. It's when I understood, literally: nobody is coming to save you.

I went through the foster care system. I could list the excuses: the loss, the addiction in my family tree, no money, growing up as a Black man in Greater Boston, having to be independent before I knew what the word meant. If I'd used them as excuses, I'd be angry, bitter, in jail, or worse. I used them as fuel instead.

My brother Joey stepped up when the rest of the world stepped out. Salem has been home since I was seven, because of him. When I found myself completely on my own at seventeen, Joey adopted me. He was 21.

He was working long days in the union to keep a roof over our heads, and he looked at me after one of them and said: "You have to be great, kid. Never be a statistic." I've been trying to live up to that ever since.

My grandfather, Cecil Ray Cole, dedicated his life to theology and ministry in Kansas City. When you called his phone, his voicemail said: "Where the joy and morning meet." It was his flag for Psalm 30:5: "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." My nights were long. Grandpa taught me they're temporary, and that if I stayed disciplined, the morning would have no choice but to break.

Coach Marc Crovo changed the direction of my teenage years. I didn't have the background of a kid playing elite club baseball, and no one was paying for showcases. My girlfriend's brother brought me to a Vikings practice. Coach Crovo didn't know my story. He just saw an athlete and a kid who wanted to work, and he took a chance on me. When Joey tried to write checks for my spot, Coach wouldn't cash them. He let me play for free because he believed in who I could become.

He drilled one phrase into me that I still run on: "Don't get too high. Don't get too low." When life fell apart, I couldn't afford to sink. When things went right, I couldn't afford to stop working.

I played football at Salem High, and in 2016 the Boston Herald wrote about it: "Long odds proudly overcome by Salem football's Xavier Cole" (opens in a new tab). Long odds is a fair description.

Statistically, kids who come out of foster care aren't supposed to finish college. I took that as a challenge. I put myself through the UConn School of Business, studying Finance and Real Estate & Urban Economic Studies, and became the first in my family to earn a degree. I served as President of the UConn Real Estate Society and graduated early with my real estate license in hand.

Then I sent out more than a hundred job applications and didn't get one real estate offer. So I built my own door. While I was still a student, I started a house-painting business through Young Entrepreneurs Across America with zero clients and zero experience holding a paintbrush. I knocked on doors until dusk, learned to market, budget, hire and manage a crew, and cleaned up more than one spilled five-gallon bucket. That summer we did over $60,000 in sales. Business isn't about what you already know. It's about what you're willing to figure out.

UConn Today told some of that story in 2020: "Make excuses, or make it happen" (opens in a new tab).

Nobody hands a kid from Salem with a chip on his shoulder a million-dollar listing. My first sale, after more than a thousand cold calls, was a houseboat.

I took it seriously anyway. The buyer had a condo to sell, so I listed it. Then I sold their sister's condo. Then they bought. Piece by piece, I built a business out of crumbs.

For a year I tutored students at Salem High during the day, nine hours, then sat at my real estate desk for five more at night. I wanted to give back to the school that raised me, and I wanted to build something that would last.

People ask why I didn't leave for New York or Florida. Growing up in a trailer and then a shelter, I didn't know what it meant to have a foundation. So I flipped it: I chose to master the very thing I was denied. I'm in this business to help people find the security I didn't have, and I'd rather do it here, in the community that raised me.

Today I'm a real estate consultant with HomeBase at eXp Realty, working with buyers, sellers and investors across the North Shore and Greater Boston. I mentor agents, and I founded The Loop (opens in a new tab), a free community for agents from every brokerage.

I'm the bridge between two powerful families. On my father's side, the Cole line, my ancestors survived slavery and the Jim Crow South in New Orleans and Mississippi, and held onto their faith. On my mother's side, the Fula line, they were legends in the Azores. My great-grandfather Manuel was a champion whale fisherman who rowed a wooden boat into the open Atlantic to hunt whales with a hand-thrown harpoon. My mother came to Massachusetts from the islands at thirteen.

When you know your great-grandfather stared down a whale, you don't get to be afraid of a cold call. When you know what your family survived just so you could exist, you don't get to be afraid of a closed door.

When I first looked into my daughter's eyes, my "why" changed from survival to legacy. I chose to be the end of the trauma in my family and the start of something new: predictable routines, being present, and a stable home. Her normal will look nothing like mine.

Four words: Contact, Connect, Consult, Close. Reach out first. Build a real relationship. Give honest advice, including when the answer is "wait" or "this isn't the one." Do that well and the closing takes care of itself.

And four habits behind it:

1. Commit to being great.
2. Strategize your exact moves.
3. Work efficiently, not just exhaustingly.
4. Reflect, and reinvest in your growth.

You can make excuses, or you can make it happen. I tell the full story in my chapter, Owning Your Future, in Bounce Back Vol. 4.

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