Singing the Blues? Maybe This Guy Can Cheer You Up

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Sourena Vasseghi’s cerebral palsy hasn’t prevented him from earning a bachelor’s degree in business and marketing from USC or from writing two books.


So why should his severe speech impediment keep him from becoming a motivational speaker?


“It’s something completely crazy by conventional wisdom,” the 28-year-old Vasseghi said through his interpreter, Greg Trock, 21. “But I’ve always known that I have the ability to inspire people, and I like entertaining them too.”


He’s just getting started but has spoken to the Kiwanis and Rotary Clubs in his hometown of Agoura Hills, as well as groups at his alma mater. Vasseghi says his goal is to do this full time so he can make the path easier for someone else with the same physical challenges.


“He really wants to motivate people and he wants to share his story,” said Jim Ellis of USC’s Marshall School of Business. Ellis said his former student is insightful about the inner workings of business and he has a special perspective.


“He’s got a hell of a story to tell. Somebody’s going to think they’ve got problems and they’re going to hear his story and wonder why they were singing the blues.”


Vasseghi and his family came to the United States from Iran in 1979. He became interested in business while working for his father’s three restaurants, two Persian and one Italian, as a youth. He operates his consulting and speaking business, which his parents are helping him get off the ground, from their Agoura Hills home.


Vasseghi says that part of his motivation is practical: he needs an income to pay for the assistants, a wheelchair and other equipment to help him in his daily routine. He has a computer program that reads books to him because his neck muscles won’t stay still long enough for him to read fine print and a special keyboard that enables him to answer e-mail.


Since graduation in 2001, Vasseghi has kept himself busy consulting for businesses owned by his friends and writing two books, one about overcoming obstacles and second with 10 guidelines for success in business and relationships. He’s currently shopping for a publisher.


When he thinks of giving up, which he says he does all the time, Vasseghi says that he sits in front of the TV for 30 minutes and gets bored. And then it starts all over again.


Business goals are the means to a greater end for Vasseghi, who hopes to have a family and calls himself a “hopeless romantic.” He’ll know he’s made it, Vasseghi says, when he’s sitting in his Santa Monica dream home with a wife.

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