Fortitude Strategic Wealth

Ye's in Chicago this Labor Day weekend so I thought I'd throw it back to this time last year.

Same weekend. Same city. Soldier Field.

MCR one night. A7X and SOAD on the same bill. A7X set it up, SOAD closed it out.

City boy from Queens lands in the Midwest and never once felt like a stranger.

Food, architecture, walking until my legs quit.

Last day I skipped the sightseeing and found a gym.

Shout out Idriz Redzovic and Idriz Redzovic BJJ Academy . Opened the doors, no questions asked.

Different city, same handshake. You bow in, you roll, and by the third round nobody cares where you flew in from.

Chicago felt like NYC's cousin. Same grit, same pace, same mind your business energy on the train.

But the history hit different. More layers. More culture sitting right on the surface where you could see it.

Houston is home now and I mean that.

But nothing touches that city hustle. That pace. That grind you can feel in the pavement.

Last year me. This year Ye.

Same city doing what it does on Labor Day weekend.

Catch you in Houston, Ye. Soon.

Enjoy the weekend, y'all.

Two years ago I was still figuring out who I could actually trust around my clients.

This week Solidaris brought me out to Dallas to sit in a due diligence room with partners we've been working with for the last year.

Not a pitch meeting. A teardown.

Strategies, infrastructure, the stuff nobody posts about.

Anybody can bring me an idea.

I wanna know what's underneath it before I put Fortitude's name on it.

Timing works out.

September 1 we open the year-end tax planning window.

If 2026 has been a big income year for you, the clock is already running. Not fake scarcity. Tax planning just gets harder when you give yourself three weeks to do what needed three months.

Don't be the guy texting me December 18 asking if we can still save the year 😂

Back to work 🫡

Due to personal reasons, I'll be turning it up a fu***ng notch 🫡🤷🏾‍♂️ ...

One year on reta this week.

The numbers are in the photo. They're the least useful part of this.

South Asian Big 3 runs in my family. BP, sugar, cholesterol. I know what's waiting if I ignore it, and I've got too much to build to be moving through life tired and crashing at 2pm. So a year ago I stopped negotiating with myself and put a date on it.

That's the whole thing. Not the scale. The decision.

Sleep got better. BP moved. Cholesterol moved. Blood sugar level all day. And everything downstream moved with it. Work, training, patience, judgment. Health isn't a gym thing, it's a performance thing. You can't out-strategize being tired.

May was the peak. Also the month my body tapped 😅 Nine months of cutting will do that. So I eased up on purpose. Didn't quit. Your body talks. Sometimes it says push, sometimes it says sit down. Knowing the difference is most of it.

The goal was never twelve perfect months. It was to still be in it after twelve. And I am.

There's a ten year old kid from Queens watching to see what I do with the life in front of me. I owe him that much. 👑

Pick the goal. Put a date on it. Then do the boring part long enough for it to become real.

Alhamdulillah for the hard year and the good one. None of it was ever mine to begin with. 🤲

PS. Same shorts in all three photos. Not planned. Consistency shows up in weird places 🩳

Yo. Young Shamito.
Look at you.
Smirking like the hard part's over.
Deloitte offer in your pocket. Senior year. First in the family to pull that off.
I'm not taking that from you. You earned that seat.
But it's not the finish line. It's the front door.
Deloitte. Morgan Stanley. Merrill. You're gonna collect all three before you're 30.
And then walk out on purpose. Back to the bottom. Nothing but your name on the door.
And people are gonna think you lost your fu***ng mind.
Because a seat in somebody else's room was never the dream.
Building your own was.
You'll build it wrong the first time. Trust the wrong people. Confuse loyalty with obligation. Build on relationships when you should've built on systems.
You'll tear it down and start from zero.
Don't be scared of that. Starting over doesn't mean you failed. It means you finally learned enough to build it right.
You'll lose people. Some walk. Some you walk away from.
Then the ones you'd give anything to have back.
Your mother.
Your father.
Your sister.
They won't be here to see how this ends.
Years later, you'll still reach for the phone.
You don't get that trade. So carry them. Let the pain become the purpose.
Now hear this, because nobody around you is gonna say it.
You are enough.
Right now. Before Deloitte. Before the firm. Before anybody knows your name.
Those crazy ideas in your head? Listen to them.
That feeling that you're different? Stop trying to fix it.
You were never meant to fit in.
You were meant to fit out.
And that question you keep asking,
"Why the f**k me?"
turns into
Why the f**k NOT me?
That's when everything changes.
So keep the smirk, young king.
You don't know s**t yet. 😂
But you were right about one thing.
There is more.
Keep dreaming. We got work to do. 👑