A Journey That Started 7,000 Miles Away
Brian Safdari’s story doesn’t begin in the San Fernando Valley. It begins 7,000 miles away, in Afghanistan, in 1981, during one of the most dangerous periods in that nation’s history.
The communist war between Afghanistan and Russia was tearing the country apart. Bombs fell. Families disappeared. Every day brought new uncertainty, new danger.
Brian’s father was the #1 soccer player in Afghanistan, a star on the Afghanistan National Team. He had fame, recognition, a career that brought pride to an entire nation. But he also had a newborn son and a wife, and he had to make an impossible decision—the kind only parents can make when their child’s life hangs in the balance.
He walked away from it all. The stadium crowds. The national spotlight. The soccer career he’d built with blood, sweat, and sacrifice. For his family’s safety, he gave up everything. Their home. Their possessions. Their community. His identity as Afghanistan’s top player. Everything they had built.
They fled Afghanistan with only what they could carry and one thing that weighed nothing but meant everything: hope.
Five Years of Faith and Perseverance
Iran became their temporary refuge. But “temporary” stretched into months, then years. Brian’s grandparents were already in the United States, working tirelessly to sponsor the family, to navigate the labyrinth of immigration paperwork, to bring their loved ones to safety.
Four years passed in Iran. Four years of waiting. Four years of prayers. The legal green card never came.
So Brian’s parents made another impossible decision. They left Iran and fled to India, taking yet another chance, making yet another leap of faith. One more year. One more country. One more prayer that somehow, someway, God would answer.
And in 1986, after five years of dangerous journeys, after giving up everything twice, after prayers whispered in three different countries, the miracle came. The green card arrived.
The Safdari family landed in Northridge, California. They had nothing. But they had each other. They had safety. They had opportunity. And they had faith that had been tested and proven through five years of impossibility.
From Refugee to Rising Star
Young Brian found his outlet on the soccer field—the same field where his father had once been a legend. It was in his blood. He started in recreational leagues, just a kid learning to love the game his father had sacrificed so much to leave behind. But something special emerged. The same determination that had carried his family across continents, the same talent that had made his father Afghanistan’s #1 player, now fueled Brian’s athletic dreams.
He climbed from recreational leagues to competitive club teams, then to the elite level. His father watched from the sidelines, seeing his own dreams reborn in his son. By high school, Brian was a four-year varsity player at Chatsworth High School, where he captained the team as a center midfielder. His talent was undeniable—he became one of the highest-ranked soccer players in the West Valley League.
Then came the Olympic Development Program (ODP), where the nation’s best young players competed. Brian made the California State Team. He represented the United States at the Junior Tournament Team at the France ’98 World Cup, playing on the world’s biggest stage—something his father had never gotten the chance to do.
The refugee boy from Afghanistan, son of the country’s greatest player, was now being recruited by NCAA Division I colleges across the country. The soccer legacy his father had sacrificed was being fulfilled through Brian.
The Dream Within Reach
The envelope felt heavy in his hands. Duke University. Division I soccer. Everything he’d worked for since he first kicked a ball on American soil. Everything his father had once dreamed of before war forced him to walk away. Duke wanted him. His dream—and in many ways, his father’s deferred dream—was right there, printed on official letterhead.
But dreams have a price tag.
Brian’s parents sat across from him at the kitchen table, the financial aid package spread between them. His mother’s eyes were red. His father—the man who had once been Afghanistan’s #1 soccer player, who had given up everything so his son could have opportunities—sat with his jaw set tight. They had sacrificed everything to get him here. His father had walked away from a national team career. They’d fled three countries. They’d spent five years in refugee limbo.
And now, after all of that, after Brian had risen through the ranks just like his father once had, after proving he had inherited his father’s extraordinary talent, the answer was still no.
The numbers didn’t add up. They never would.
“We’re so proud of you, son,” his mother whispered. “We just… we can’t.”
Brian looked at his father. The man who’d given up his soccer dreams so Brian could even have the chance to dream. And now Brian’s dreams were slipping away too, not because of war, but because of money.
Brian was the first in his family to even go to college in America. There was no roadmap, no uncle who’d navigated the system, no family friend who understood financial aid. Just a FAFSA form that looked like it was written in a foreign language and a family doing their best with what they had.
Then came the injury. Career-ending. Suddenly, even the athletic scholarship leverage was gone. The dream of playing Division I soccer at Duke evaporated like morning mist over the San Fernando Valley.
Two generations of soccer dreams, ended. One by war. One by injury and financial impossibility.
The $53,000 Mistake
Brian ended up at California State University, Northridge. It was close. He could live at home. It would be affordable.
Except it wasn’t.
He started as an accounting major at CSUN, thinking he’d become a CPA. But as he dove deeper into his studies, he realized something: he loved the problem-solving aspect of finances. He loved taking complex financial concepts and simplifying them for people who felt overwhelmed. He switched his focus to finance, discovering a passion for helping people understand money in ways that actually made sense.
But understanding finance academically didn’t mean he understood the financial aid system. He filled out the FAFSA himself, trying to make sense of questions about assets, income, and dependency status. He made mistakes. Crucial mistakes. The kind that disqualify you from grants you desperately need. The kind that no one catches until it’s too late.
The college—and Brian learned this the hard way—is a business. When the grants disappeared, they didn’t send him home. They offered him private loans. Over 15% interest. Sign here. Initial there. Your education awaits.
It was ironic. Here he was, studying finance, learning about interest rates and debt management, while simultaneously drowning in one of the worst financial decisions of his life. The student who would become an expert in financial planning was learning his most valuable lessons through painful personal experience.
A Light in the Darkness
But even in this difficult season, God was working. In 2001, Brian met Genessy. She was different—someone who saw not just his struggles, but his potential. As they dated over the next few years, she became his anchor, his encourager, his partner in every sense of the word.
When Brian walked across the graduation stage in 2005 with his diploma in one hand and $53,000 in debt shackled to his future, Genessy was there. She believed in him when he struggled to believe in himself.
The Breaking Point
The first loan statement arrived, and Brian felt his chest tighten. The monthly payment was staggering. The interest was compounding. At this rate, he’d be paying for decades. He’d be 50 years old, still paying for a degree he earned in his twenties from a school he’d chosen because it was supposed to be affordable.
He couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t eat. The weight of that debt pressed down on him like a physical thing. Every job posting he looked at, every career opportunity, every life decision was now filtered through one question: “But how will I pay back these loans?”
Bankruptcy crossed his mind. Default seemed inevitable. He was drowning, and there was no shore in sight.
So Brian did what his parents had taught him through their five-year journey to America. He prayed. And he searched for solutions.
The Conference That Changed Everything
The college loan conference was being held in a hotel ballroom downtown. Brian almost didn’t go. What could they possibly tell him that would make a difference now? The debt was already there, compounding by the day.
But something—or Someone—pulled him through those doors.
That’s when he met them—college advisors who understood the system. Really understood it. They didn’t just know about financial aid; they knew how to navigate it, how to maximize it, how to make it work for families instead of against them.
And then they told him something that made his blood run cold.
“With proper planning, you could have attended Duke—a private university—for less than what you paid at Cal State Northridge.”
Brian sat there, stunned. The words echoed in his head. Duke. For less. Everything he’d sacrificed. Every dream he’d deferred. The debt that was crushing him. It didn’t have to happen.
The Calling Becomes Clear
In that moment, sitting in that hotel ballroom, Brian understood. All of it. The refugee journey from Afghanistan. His father giving up his career as the #1 soccer player on the Afghanistan National Team. The five years of dangerous travels. Brian’s own soccer injury. The crushing debt. The overwhelming adversity.
This was God’s way of preparing him. Of positioning him. Of giving him a calling.
Just as his father had sacrificed his soccer career to save his family, Brian would sacrifice what could have been—Duke, Division I soccer, a different life—to save other families from the same financial devastation. Just as his parents had fled Afghanistan to make a better life for him, he would help families navigate the treacherous waters of college planning to make a better life for their children.
His father had given up everything so Brian could have opportunity. Now Brian would dedicate his life to ensuring other parents wouldn’t have to say “we can’t” when opportunity came knocking.
This wasn’t just about financial aid. This was about fulfilling his purpose. This was about honoring his father’s sacrifice by making sure no other family’s dreams died at a kitchen table.
The anger came first—hot, burning anger at what had happened to him and his family. But then it transformed into something pure and powerful: purpose.
Building the Vision Together
Brian started talking to his friends still in college, sharing everything he’d learned. Genessy was right there beside him, helping him shape his vision. She saw what he couldn’t see yet—that this could become something bigger than just advice to friends. This could become his life’s work.
Together, they began building what would become College Planning Experts. Genessy believed in the mission as much as Brian did. She helped him take those first frightening steps from having a vision to actually starting a business.
“This is your calling,” she told him. “God brought you through all of this for a reason.”
In 2005, College Planning Experts was born. Not just as a business, but as a ministry. A mission. A calling.
The First Success Stories—And a New Problem
From 2005 to 2007, Brian threw himself into helping families get their children into their dream colleges. And it was working. He was achieving incredible results—families were receiving 20-80% off the total cost of college. Many students received full rides to their dream schools. The admissions strategies were successful. The financial aid maximization was successful.
Brian felt like he was fulfilling his purpose. He’d cracked the code that he wished he’d known. Families were getting into top schools with significant financial aid packages. He was preventing the Duke scenario from happening to others.
But then June would arrive. Acceptance letters were signed. Students committed to their dream colleges. And Brian’s phone would start ringing.
“Brian, we’re so happy! Our daughter got accepted and she got $30,000 in aid! But… we’re concerned. We still have $25,000 a year out of pocket. How are we going to fund this?”
“Brian, the financial aid package was better than we expected, but we still need to come up with $40,000 a year. What do we do?”
Call after call. The same pattern. He’d gotten them into college. He’d gotten them free money—sometimes substantial amounts. But most families still faced $20,000-$40,000 per year in out-of-pocket costs. And they had no plan for how to pay it.
The Question That Changed Everything
Brian started asking a simple question: “What’s your funding plan? What strategy did you work with your financial advisor, tax person, or anyone you seek help from on financial planning?”
Dead silence.
Then guilt. Embarrassment. Admission of failure.
“Well… we haven’t really figured that out yet.”
“Our financial advisor never brought it up.”
“We thought we’d just… figure it out as we go.”
Brian was shocked. “Wait—you have a financial planner, right? Isn’t a financial planner experienced to help you with this?”
“All they do is go over our investments,” families would say. “They never talked to us about college funding strategies. They never asked about our plan.”
It hit Brian like a truck. These families had paid professionals who were supposed to help them plan for their financial future. But when it came to one of the three biggest investments of their lives—funding their child’s education—these advisors were silent. Useless. Sometimes even harmful, because families assumed having an advisor meant they were covered.
Two Years of Critical Research
In those first two years of business, Brian watched 100 of his clients try to figure out college funding on their own. They researched. They guessed. They took the “wing it” approach, figuring they’d handle it year by year.
But Brian didn’t leave them hanging. He helped all 100 families renew their financial aid forms each year. And this gave him an unprecedented opportunity—he got to see exactly how they funded college. What worked. What didn’t work. What mistakes they made. What unexpected costs blindsided them. What strategies succeeded. What left them drowning in debt.
He documented everything. Every approach. Every outcome. Every regret and every win.
You learn the most from your own mistakes—or from others’. Brian was learning from 100 families simultaneously. He was seeing the patterns no one else could see because no one else was following families through the entire four-year journey.
The insights were staggering. Some strategies that seemed smart upfront destroyed families financially by senior year. Some approaches that seemed scary actually provided the most stability. Some “advice” from well-meaning relatives or friends led families into financial disasters. Some creative solutions that families stumbled upon by accident turned out to be brilliant.
Writing the Roadmap Others Never Had
Brian took everything he learned and wrote a book: How to Pay for College Without Going Broke (From a Parent to a Parent). It took two years to complete. Every page was born from real experiences, real mistakes, real triumphs of the 100 families he’d walked alongside.
This wasn’t theory. This wasn’t some academic’s perspective on college funding. This was the truth from the trenches—from a parent who’d been through it, from an expert who’d guided hundreds through it, from someone who cared enough to document every lesson so others wouldn’t have to learn them the hard way.
And Brian had a revelation: Getting a family into college wasn’t enough. Getting them free money wasn’t enough. The work wasn’t done until families had a proven, strategic funding plan that gave them peace of mind.
He’d been solving two-thirds of the problem. The missing piece was the funding strategy. Without it, families still ended up drowning in debt, derailing their retirement, sacrificing their financial security. Just like he had.
But when he could help families pay less for college—when he saved them thousands, sometimes tens of thousands per year—something beautiful happened. They could catch up on their retirement goals. They could enhance their retirement plans. They could breathe. The money that would have been lost to unnecessary college costs was now working for their future security.
Brian was helping families find money they were losing unknowingly and unnecessarily. This realization awakened something deep in him. This was his gift. This was his passion. He loved the detective work, the problem-solving, the creative thinking required to uncover money that was hemorrhaging from families’ financial plans without them even realizing it.
He started calling it “Wealth Leaks”—like having holes in your financial bucket that drain your wealth away. College funding was a big wealth leak. But as he dug deeper, he discovered it wasn’t the only one.
Discovering Wealth Leak #3: The Probate Nightmare
Then came the phone call that revealed the third major wealth leak.
One of Brian’s clients passed away unexpectedly. The widow reached out to Brian, devastated and overwhelmed. Her husband hadn’t set up a trust. She thought they’d have time. They’d talked about it but never got around to it.
Now all their assets were locked in probate.
Brian watched helplessly as this grieving widow couldn’t access her own money. Seventeen months. Over $40,000 in legal costs and fees. All while she struggled to pay bills, manage the household, and grieve the loss of her husband.
“Brian, I had no idea,” she told him through tears. “If we’d just set up a trust like you mentioned… this nightmare could have been avoided.”
Brian learned from her pain, from their mistake. A proper trust in place could have avoided all of it—the probate process, the massive costs, the agonizing wait, the stress during the worst time of her life.
This was another massive wealth leak: families who don’t have proper estate planning in place lose tens of thousands of dollars and cause unbearable stress for their loved ones during already devastating times.
The Divine Pattern Emerges
Brian sat in his office one night, looking at the patterns. College funding. Tax planning. Estate planning. Retirement security. Investment strategies. Cash flow management.
God had put him on a journey that started with his own financial devastation and had expanded far beyond just college planning. He wasn’t just a college funding expert. He was being called to help families with their overall financial planning—all the places where wealth was leaking away unnecessarily.
Every family he worked with had the same three goals: college, lifestyle, and retirement. But none of them had a real plan. None of them had someone to truly guide, coach, and help them get there. They had investment advisors who managed portfolios. They had CPAs who filed taxes. They had insurance agents who sold policies. But nobody was connecting all the dots. Nobody was looking for all the wealth leaks. Nobody was creating a comprehensive, creative, strategic plan that protected every aspect of their financial lives.
Brian thought about his own life. What mattered to him? What drove him? What gave meaning to everything he did?
Faith. Family. Friends. Freedom.
Those were his four pillars. Everything else was built on that foundation.
And then it hit him: his families wanted the exact same things. They wanted to live out their faith. They wanted to provide for and enjoy time with their family. They wanted meaningful relationships with friends. They wanted financial freedom—freedom from debt, freedom from worry, freedom to live the lives they dreamed of.
The Birth of the F4 Drain-Proof Wealth System
This is where Wealth Planning Experts’ F4 Drain-Proof Wealth System was born.
Not just a financial plan. Not just an investment strategy. But a comprehensive, holistic system built on the four things that actually matter: Faith, Family, Friends, and Freedom.
A system designed to find and plug every wealth leak in a family’s financial life. A drain-proof system that protected their college funding, optimized their taxes, secured their estate, maximized their retirement, and aligned every financial decision with what truly mattered to them.
Brian had discovered his true calling. Yes, he helped families with college. Yes, he saved them from the mistakes he’d made. But it went so much deeper than that.
He helped families achieve financial freedom while living out their values. He helped them sleep at night knowing their wealth wasn’t leaking away. He helped them build legacies that would impact generations.
The Birth of the Three Pillars
This is where Brian’s College Funding Strategies were born. This is where Brian’s Three Pillars of College Planning crystallized into a complete system:
Pillar 1: Get Into Your Dream College That Creates Career Success
Strategic admissions planning that gives students a 92% or higher acceptance rate to schools that align with their passions and career goals.
Pillar 2: Get Maximum Grants Regardless of Income or Assets
Insider financial aid strategies that secure 20-80% off college costs, with many students receiving full rides.
Pillar 3: Fund College While Boosting Your Retirement Plan
Proven funding strategies—documented from 100 real families—that allow parents to pay for college without going broke, without drowning in debt, and without sacrificing their retirement security.
All three pillars. Not just one or two. Because Brian had learned that missing even one pillar left families vulnerable. His own story proved it—he’d gotten into college, but the funding strategy destroyed him financially. Other families got funding right but sent their kids to the wrong colleges. Still others got into great schools with good aid but used funding strategies that wrecked their retirement.
Brian now had the complete solution. The roadmap he wished he’d had. The expertise that came from personal pain, academic training in finance, and real-world documentation of what actually works when rubber meets road.
Equipped with these proven strategies, armed with knowledge of every mistake to avoid and every option available, Brian could finally give families true peace of mind. They wouldn’t be drowning in debt after college. They wouldn’t be lying awake at night worried about retirement. They’d have a plan that worked—because it had been tested, refined, and proven with 100 families before them.
Making College Attainable and Affordable
Brian built College Planning Experts on a simple but powerful promise: no family should have to say “we can’t” when their child gets accepted to their dream college. He knew firsthand the pain of that moment, and he was determined to prevent it for others.
But he also knew that getting into college was only half the battle. Students needed to get accepted AND be able to afford it. So he created a comprehensive system that guides families through every stage of the college journey.
Career Discovery & Major Selection
Brian remembered being a lost first-generation college student with no guidance. So the first step in his process is helping students uncover their strengths, passions, and ideal career paths, then aligning them with the right-fit majors and colleges. It’s not just about getting into college—it’s about getting into the right college for each unique student.
Strategic High School Planning
With former and current college admissions officers on his team, Brian provides families with insider strategies on what top universities truly look for. College Planning Experts builds a customized academic and extracurricular roadmap for each student that maximizes their acceptance odds—giving them a 92% or higher chance of getting into their dream college.
This is the admissions advantage Brian never had. The insider knowledge that could have changed everything for him.
Maximizing Financial Aid
Once students are accepted, this is where Brian’s personal experience, education in finance, and passion for problem-solving truly shine. He helps families maximize financial aid, grants, and scholarships—no matter their income level.
His expertise in financial aid strategies and financial planning sets him apart. Brian has a unique gift for taking complex financial planning and simplifying it—the same skill that drew him away from accounting toward finance at CSUN. He developed proprietary concepts like “Wealth Leaks” and the F4 Wealth Plan to help families understand where their money is going and how to plug the leaks that prevent them from reaching their goals.
For low- and middle-income families like his parents were, Brian uncovers hidden grant and scholarship opportunities that others miss. He makes sure they don’t make the same FAFSA mistakes he made—mistakes that cost him over $53,000.
For high-net-worth families, Brian uses creative planning to legally and ethically qualify for aid and tax-advantaged “college scholarships” that most accountants and advisors don’t know exist.
Then he designs cash-flow-friendly funding plans that align with each family’s financial goals, ensuring that paying for college doesn’t derail retirement or lifestyle.
Three Pillars of Success
College Planning Experts’ success is built on three pillars that Brian developed through years of personal pain, academic study, and documenting real-world outcomes with hundreds of families—pillars that no other company fully delivers:
- Get Into Your Dream College That Creates Career Success — Insider admissions strategies with a 92% or higher acceptance rate to schools aligned with students’ passions and career goals.
- Get Maximum Grants Regardless of Income or Assets — Proven systems to uncover and secure 20-80% off college costs, with many students receiving full rides.
- Fund College While Boosting Your Retirement Plan — Strategic funding approaches that allow families to pay for college without going broke, without debt that destroys their future, and without sacrificing retirement security.
Brian had learned the hard way that you need all three pillars. Getting accepted to Duke meant nothing when he couldn’t afford it. Attending Cal State Northridge seemed affordable until the FAFSA mistakes made it a financial disaster. And even his early clients who got into college with good aid packages still struggled because they had no funding strategy.
The three pillars addressed the complete journey. Miss even one, and families suffer. Have all three, and families thrive.
Faith as the North Star
The adversities Brian had faced—fleeing a war-torn country, watching his Duke dreams crumble, drowning in debt—had all brought him closer to God. What seemed like defeats were actually divine appointments. What felt like closed doors were actually redirections to the right path. Even his shift from accounting to finance at CSUN was part of the plan—giving him the tools he’d need to help families navigate complex financial decisions.
Faith became his north star. Not just faith that things would work out, but faith that God had a specific plan, a specific purpose for his life. And that purpose was becoming crystal clear: to ensure no other family would have to say “we can’t” when their child’s dream college said “yes.”
Brian’s core values crystallized into four pillars that would guide everything he did: Faith, Family, Friends, and Freedom. These weren’t just words on a wall. They were the foundation of how he lived, how he worked, how he served.
Faith first. Always. Because without God orchestrating his journey—from refugee to soccer player to finance student to college planning expert—none of this would have been possible.
A New Problem Emerges
By 2008, Brian had been helping families with college funding and budgeting for three years. He’d worked with over 500 families, guiding them through the college planning process. But he started noticing something deeply troubling.
Many of his clients had financial advisors. But these advisors weren’t properly planning for their clients’ retirement. They would put clients into risky investments without proper risk assessment. They charged enormous fees that ate away at returns. Worst of all, they wouldn’t meet with their clients annually—sometimes going years without reviewing whether the strategy was still working.
Then 2008 hit. The market crashed.
Brian watched in horror as every single one of his clients with traditional financial advisors lost 45-55% of their retirement savings when the S&P 500 dropped in a single month. Decades of savings—gone. Dreams of retirement—shattered.
The phone calls were devastating.
Clients who were supposed to retire that year were now going back to work. Not for a few months. Not for a year. They had to extend their retirement by seven more years just to recuperate the massive losses. Seven more years of alarm clocks and commutes and postponed dreams. Seven more years of “someday” instead of “today.”
Men in their sixties, crying on the phone. Women who’d been planning retirement trips now planning how to stretch their working years. The golden years they’d worked their entire lives for—stolen by advisors who never truly understood their retirement goals.
And the worst part? It could have been prevented.
If these financial advisors had actually known their clients’ true retirement goals—if they’d understood their timeline, their risk tolerance, their life plans—they would have aligned the investments accordingly. Someone retiring in 2008 shouldn’t have been 80% in stocks. Someone five years from retirement shouldn’t have had maximum market exposure.
But these advisors didn’t know. They didn’t ask. They just put everyone in the same cookie-cutter portfolios and collected their fees.
Brian watched these “advisors” simply invest his clients’ money without truly helping families reach their retirement and legacy goals. It was the same pattern all over again—families being failed by professionals who should have been helping them. These advisors were focused on selling products and earning commissions, not on actually understanding their clients’ lives and protecting their futures. Not on finding and plugging wealth leaks.
His finance education and problem-solving instincts kicked in. When he saw this happening to his college funding clients, he couldn’t stay silent. He would educate his families and show them proper financial planning strategies to reach their retirement goals as well. He’d identify their “Wealth Leaks”—those hidden places where money was hemorrhaging unnecessarily—and show them how to plug those leaks.
The families didn’t just want his college funding expertise anymore. They wanted his financial planning expertise too. They trusted him. They saw how he simplified complex financial concepts. They experienced how he actually cared about their long-term success, not just collecting fees. They saw how he found money they didn’t even know they were losing.
“Can you help us with our retirement planning?” they started asking. “Can you review what our advisor is doing?” “Can you help us with all of our financial goals, not just college?”
The Birth of Wealth Planning Experts
Brian realized that college funding was just one piece of a bigger puzzle. Families needed help with the three biggest investments in their lives:
- College funding for their children’s future
- Being debt-free and financially stable
- Not running out of money in retirement
In 2008, Brian founded Wealth Planning Experts. It was the natural extension of his mission. His father had sacrificed everything for his family’s financial security. Brian had learned painful lessons about debt and financial planning. Now he could help families holistically—not just get their kids into college affordably, but ensure their entire financial future was secure.
He brought the same passion to retirement planning that he brought to college planning. The same attention to detail. The same commitment to simplifying complexity. The same heart for protecting families from the mistakes he’d seen and experienced. The same obsession with finding wealth leaks that were draining families’ futures.
Two Decades of Impact
Twenty years since founding College Planning Experts, Brian hasn’t stopped. He can’t stop. Because every time he sits down with a family, he sees his own parents across that table. Every time he hears “we can’t afford it,” he remembers his mother’s red eyes. Every time a student gets into their dream school with an aid package that actually works, he thinks about Duke. About what could have been. About what now can be for someone else.
He’s worked with over 7,500 families now. That’s 7,500 students who didn’t have to make the choice he made. That’s 7,500 families who didn’t have to say, “We just… we can’t.” That’s 7,500 answered prayers.
The media has recognized his work nationally and locally. He’s been featured in Forbes, Yahoo Finance, MSN, Success Magazine, Fortune Magazine, Fox 11, Good Day LA, the L.A. Times, and the Daily News. Government representatives—including the U.S. House of Representatives, Congressman Howard “Buck” McKeon, Assemblyman Cameron Smyth, the California State Assembly, County of Los Angeles, California State Senate, City of Los Angeles, and City of Santa Clarita—have honored him. He’s written the bestselling book “College Planning Made Easy,” hosted the radio show “College Planning Secrets Exposed” on AM-1220 KHTS, and raised over $121,000 for charitable causes.
But the real measure of Brian’s success isn’t in the accolades or the media appearances. It’s in the emails he gets from parents whose kids are at their dream schools. It’s in the thank-you notes from students who graduated debt-free. It’s in the families who can say “yes” instead of “we can’t.”
It’s in the dreams that don’t have to die at kitchen tables anymore.
This Is My Calling
Today, when Brian tells families that they can receive financial aid regardless of their income and assets, he’s not selling them a dream. He’s offering them a roadmap. The roadmap he wishes he’d had. The roadmap his parents wished they’d had. The roadmap that could have saved his father’s soccer legacy.
He knows, with absolute certainty, that this is his calling. God didn’t bring his family 7,000 miles from a war zone, didn’t have his father walk away from being Afghanistan’s #1 soccer player, didn’t allow five years of refugee status, a career-ending injury, and $53,000 in crushing debt, just for Brian to keep that knowledge to himself.
His father sacrificed his soccer career so Brian could have a future. Now Brian has built a career out of ensuring other families don’t have to sacrifice their children’s futures.
Every adversity was preparation. Every closed door was redirection. Every moment of desperation was an opportunity to draw closer to God and understand His purpose.
And that purpose is clear: to make the world a better place, one family at a time. To ensure that financial barriers don’t destroy dreams the way they destroyed his. To be the guide that he never had. To honor his father’s sacrifice by making sure that sacrifice leads to thousands of success stories. To live out his values of Faith, Family, Friends, and Freedom in service to others.
The Legacy Continues
Brian Safdari didn’t make it to Duke. His father never got to finish his career with the Afghanistan National Team. But together, their sacrifices have helped thousands of students make it to their dream schools.
The #1 soccer player from Afghanistan gave up his career to save his son. That son grew up to save thousands of families from financial devastation. One sacrifice multiplied into 7,500 success stories and counting.
The refugee boy from Afghanistan became an American success story—not because he achieved his own dreams, but because he dedicated his life to helping others achieve theirs.
With Genessy by his side, with Nelah and Lagen watching and learning, with faith as his north star and over two decades of impact behind him, Brian continues the mission. His children are learning the same lesson his father taught him: that true success isn’t about your own glory, but about the lives you change through your sacrifice.
Because this isn’t just what he does.
This is who he is.
This is his calling.
And by God’s grace, he’ll continue answering that call—one family, one student, one dream at a time—for as long as he’s able.
Because that’s what you do when your father gives up everything for you. When God turns your adversity into your ministry. When He transforms your pain into your purpose. When He takes a national team player’s sacrifice and a refugee’s journey and turns it into thousands of families’ success stories.
You say yes. You serve. You have faith. You honor the sacrifice.
And you help others believe that their dreams don’t have to die at kitchen tables anymore.
