Rich Paul’s New Memoir Detailing Traumatic Childhood ‘Hit Home’ for Partner Adele: ‘It Was Very Emotional’ 

The powerful sports agent is opening up about his tough beginnings in new book ‘Lucky Me: A Memoir of Changing the Odds,’ out Oct 10

PHOTO: RICH PAUL;GETTY

Rich Paul wasn’t always living the dream.

These days the popular founder and CEO of Klutch Sports Group is known for being one of the world’s most powerful sports agents, LeBron James’s right-hand man and loving partner to superstar Adele. “I’m happy in all aspects of my life,” Paul, 42, tells PEOPLE in an interview ahead of his book Lucky Me: A Memoir of Changing the Odds, out Oct. 10, from Roc Lit 101 publishing. “I’ve always been somebody that never allowed things to get to me.”

But when he was growing up in a crime-ridden section of Cleveland, Ohio, in the ’80s and ’90s, the odds were severely stacked against him. In his memoir, Paul describes the deep trauma of having a mother who struggled with drug addiction and sometimes wouldn’t return home for days on end.

RICH PAUL

“I had built up this wall as a young kid,” he says, “to just have the understanding to move forward and know that she’s not going to be there. Like, Mom is not coming home.” That reality, he adds, “was one of the toughest things for me to relive and write about.”

Other difficult moments include him having to routinely duck gunfire from warring neighbors or run for his young life after winning a high-stakes dice game. “The thing about it is,” he says, “I was never really a kid.”

That sentiment, and the depths of his childhood trauma, are what he says resonated most with his partner of more than two years, Adele. “It was very emotional,” he says of the star’s response to his book. “I think a lot of it probably hit home, so yeah, it was a difficult read [for her].”

Adele, 35, has been open in the past about her own childhood struggles. Growing up between Tottenham and Brixton, London, she experienced the devastating loss of her beloved grandfather, who died of cancer when she was just 10. Also her father, Mark Evans, disappeared from her life for years, only to resurface when her career took off in her 20s.

“I went to go and see him in Wales and I wanted to play him ‘To Be Loved.’ My main goal in life is to be loved and love,” Adele told Oprah Winfrey in 2021, describing the time she met up with her father shortly before he died. “I wanted to go back to my dad and tell him, ‘You’re the reason I haven’t done that yet.’ He was the reason I didn’t fully access what it means to be in a loving, loving relationship with somebody.”

Rich Paul credits his late father, Rich Paul. Sr., for making the positive difference in his life, and teaching him skills to not only survive his rough childhood, but thrive in the successful world he finds himself in today.

“I had a great example of who a man should be and what a man should do,” Paul says of his dad, who ran a local corner store. “I had a front row seat to what work ethic was like, what perseverance was like. I watched my dad play air traffic controller in a community that was a war mixed with a tornado, but also a picnic at times. He was my hero in that regard.”

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It’s lessons like those from his father, and others he had to learn all on his own, that Paul is hoping to impart to readers.

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“When you read the book, you get to dive into a lot of the things that I had to overcome,” says Paul. “But hence the title of Lucky Me. I was lucky enough to be able to continue down a path where there wasn’t a ton of light, but the door was cracked with a little light and I was smart enough not to invest in the pitfalls that were there for me every day in my environment.”

For more on Rich Paul’s gripping new memoir, pick up this week’s issue of PEOPLE on newsstands Friday. 

Lucky Me: A Memoir of Changing the Odds, is available Oct. 10.