01A life shaped along the way
A life shaped along the way
When I look back, I see a journey whose meaning became clearer with time.
Some seasons gave me opportunities. Others exposed mistakes, challenged my priorities, and required me to begin again. I have experienced business setbacks, returned to education as an adult, and rebuilt when the future looked different from what I had planned.
Through those circumstances, God has taught me lessons that success alone could never have taught me: preparation matters, relationships matter, and the responsibility of building something reaches beyond the person whose name is on it.
Today, I understand my work through the responsibilities it carries. Decisions made in business affect a family. The way we handle pressure shapes the people around us. What we do with money reveals something about what we value.
I am a Brazilian-American entrepreneur, husband, father, and author. My professional life spans several fields, but the thread connecting them is stewardship: learning to use resources wisely and give them a purpose.
02From banking to a wider world
From banking to a wider world
My professional journey began at Banco Bradesco in Brazil in 1990. Banking was an early chapter in a life that would continue to revolve around money, business, and the decisions people make with both.
In 1996, I entered international business, working as an executive in importing and exporting between Brazil and the United States.
That work took me to more than 30 countries and exposed me to different cultures, ways of doing business, and circumstances of life. Africa remained the continent I had yet to visit until a mission trip in 2025.
International business broadened my perspective. It also became part of the foundation I would carry into financial planning, entrepreneurship, and property investment.
After three decades in international business, I have learned to respect the distance between seeing an opportunity and being prepared to carry it through.
03Learning money through people
Learning money through people
In 2004, I began my career in international financial planning, a field that remains part of my professional life.
My financial planning work has been outside the United States. I did not practice as a financial planner in the United States.
Working with families deepened my understanding of money. Financial decisions are tied to hopes, fears, habits, responsibilities, and the future people imagine for those they love.
Over time, my attention expanded from earning and managing money to the larger question of building something durable.
Income sustains the present. Assets can help sustain the future. Both require care.
Liquidity provides room to respond when circumstances change. Discipline helps turn plans into habits. Time gives patient decisions an opportunity to mature.
These ideas became part of the way I approached my own businesses and investments, and later, the way I wrote about money.
04Putting the principles to work
Putting the principles to work
Real estate became a practical expression of that perspective.
I entered the Memphis real estate market in 2017. My experience has since grown to encompass hundreds of real estate transactions, including acquisitions and sales, alongside renovation, residential development, and rental ownership.
My work includes restoring existing homes, building new residences, owning long-term rental properties, and developing furnished housing and hospitality experiences.
Every property brings decisions: what to improve, how much to commit, how to finance the work, and whether to sell or retain the asset.
A successful project requires judgment before the work begins and discipline while it is underway. The numbers must support the decision, and the execution must support the numbers.
That combination—financial perspective and practical responsibility—is an important part of how I build.
Yet real estate is one chapter of a larger story. The deeper lesson is the same across the businesses I have worked in: understand what you have, respect its limits, and use it carefully.
05The shade of trees I did not plant
The shade of trees I did not plant
One property helped me see that lesson differently.
In 2025, I renovated a house whose backyard held large, old trees. Someone had planted them long before I arrived. I did not know that person, but I could sit in the shade their work had left behind.
The original plan was to renovate and sell. As the work came to an end, I felt God directing me to keep the property. It became part of my furnished rental work and a new chapter in how I thought about the use of an asset.
Those trees stayed with me.
I was benefiting from something someone else had planted without knowing who would eventually enjoy it. That image helped me understand what I wanted my own work to become.
Some things we build will serve us now. Others may serve people we will never meet.
Both deserve our care.
06Sharing the lessons
Sharing the lessons
As my experience grew, I began sharing what I was learning.
In Goiânia, Brazil, I hosted “Pra onde vai o seu dinheiro?” on Rádio Vinha. Radio gave me a way to bring conversations about money, habits, and responsibility into the everyday life of millions of people in the audience.
Writing offered another way to carry those conversations further.
I am the author of four books. Together, they reflect a journey through financial habits, strategy, personal experience, and the deeper responsibilities of wealth.
I write from a life still being shaped. I have made decisions I would repeat and mistakes I would handle differently. Both have something to teach.
My hope is that these experiences help readers think more clearly about their own choices: how they earn, what they keep, what they build, and whom their decisions will eventually affect.
07What Africa helped me see
What Africa helped me see
In 2025, I traveled to Africa on a mission trip, visiting Kenya and the communities of Kitale and the Mount Elgon region.
After years of international travel connected to business, this journey carried a different purpose.
It brought me face to face with circumstances very different from my own and deepened my reflection on money, joy, generosity, and service.
Experiences like these remind me that a bank balance cannot describe the fullness of a life.
Resources matter because of what they can make possible: care, opportunity, dignity, and help that reaches another person.
I want that understanding to remain part of how I work and how I use what has been entrusted to me.
08The man behind the work
The man behind the work
I am married to Ludmilla and a father of three wonderful children. Those relationships give the idea of legacy a personal meaning.
God has used the circumstances of my life to shape how I understand those responsibilities. He continues to teach me patience, humility, and the importance of being present.
There is value in providing for a family. There is also value in the example we leave: how we treat people, how we respond to difficulty, and whether our choices reflect the faith we profess.
For me, Christ is the foundation beneath that work.
Businesses, properties, and financial structures can be useful building materials. They need a purpose and a foundation capable of supporting them.
I want the things I build to reflect the person God is shaping me to become.
09From little to enough
From little to enough
One ability I am grateful to God for is learning to manage limited resources and gradually turn them into enough.
Enough to meet responsibilities. Enough to create room for the future. Enough to help someone else.
That process requires work, patience, and the willingness to learn. It also requires understanding when to preserve resources, when to commit them, and when to change direction.
There are seasons for earning today’s income and seasons for planting something that takes longer to bear fruit. A family needs both.
This is why I think about wealth in terms of usefulness and continuity. What can it sustain? What can it make possible? Who will be prepared to care for it when our season is over?
Those questions guide my work and run through my books.
10What I hope to leave
What I hope to leave
Transfer wealth. Transmit values.
Preparing a legacy means caring about the assets and the people who will receive them.
I want to leave something useful. I also want to leave an example of faith, responsibility, generosity, and thoughtful work.
Some of the trees I plant, I may see grow. Others will provide shade after I am gone.
That is part of what makes the work worth doing.
A few established milestones
Along the way
- 1990
Banking
Beginning of my professional journey at Banco Bradesco in Brazil.
- 1996
International Business
Importing and exporting between Brazil and the United States, with executive experience and travel to more than 30 countries.
- 2004
International Financial Planning
Beginning of my international financial planning career outside the United States.
- 2017
Memphis Real Estate
Entry into the Memphis property market, followed by acquisitions, renovations, sales, development, and rental ownership.
- 2025
Mission Trip to Africa
A journey to Kenya that deepened my reflections on faith, service, and the purpose of resources.
- Along the Journey
Books and Radio
Four books and the radio show “Pra onde vai o seu dinheiro?” on Rádio Vinha in Goiânia.
Closing invitation
The experiences and questions that shaped my journey became the foundation of my books.
If you would like to explore these ideas further, I invite you to discover them.
Explore My Books ↗
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