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Tell me about your vision as a life coach and and where it all started

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Great question. So the vision was honestly family trauma

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Both my parents grew up very poor and they were the oldest of multiple siblings and they've been working since they were 13 or 14 years old

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So they got right into the work field. Their mothers were working several jobs. My father's African-american

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He's a farm boy and then he got into the army and then into the business and my mother's German

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So she's been a kindergarten teacher for about I want to say 50 years now Montessori along with public schools

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So with that upbringing the structure was always there the teacher mother the drill sergeant father

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The home structure was there but because they went all in on career

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Yeah, they were never able to fully get over their childhood trauma teenage trauma and other things and I'm the youngest of multiple

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So I have two older sisters and so I realized that

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Around the age of 11 to 12. There was a shift where I realized that both parents were drinking a lot more

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But it never affected their career. Nobody ever knew there always life the party your parents is so cool

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Your family's so awesome beautiful house in Florida from the outside look great. Yeah, but once the crowd left after the barbecue

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That's when something from their past would take over

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the last bottle was finished and then physical mental emotional all the stuff would happen and

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so from the age of 11 to 13 I was dealing with that and it was just like a culture shock because I

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Wasn't by no means a perfect kid, but I never got arrested never had a referral. It's just that quite skinny insecure kid

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I was just always scared and I just said enough is enough because I was getting bullied in school and at home and

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So fitness became my step one in personal development

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So I elevated my physique and then I got into my faith and I was able to realize that I was confident myself

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I got rid of fear and I just showed up differently

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So then by the age of 15, I became a certified personal trainer and started helping people do the same and I'm 34 now

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So I've been training people for most of my life and in college when I was 23

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that's when I got deep into life coaching and I was also a

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US Army master fitness trainer

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So essentially I would get male and female soldiers mission-ready mentally and physically prepared

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So I'll prep them with that. So my whole approach nowadays I take the military I take natural modalities that I did to overcome my own traumas and

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Also faith-based and I teach people different ways to meet them where they're at to get them to the next level

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So honestly healing my inner child to then help you others so they can thrive and grow and have a positive ripple effect

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Well, how did you get started? I understand the story. I understand you putting it all together

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How did you get started and choosing to go this route and making this your career now?

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Great question. So before I was in the US Army, I grew up as a skinny kid

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People didn't know what I was bullied insecure out of really bad stuttering issue

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I was a complete opposite and I said, you know what? I want to teach people how to do what I did

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Yes, but in a professional way outside of just fitness and nutrition and I knew that I had to face my own fears first

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So out of fear of heights, I had some other fears. I faced all that in the army for a decade

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And once I overcame those things really quick. I was like, wow, I feel like a new person. I faced all these things

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I'm still alive. Awesome. I can do anything now. So from there, I also like to help people face their fears

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With whatever it is. It's usually public speaking

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It's usually asking for that raise

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Going on that first date that first first date in five years since their divorce

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It's usually those small subtle things. It's not just hey, I'm gonna tell her to go skydiving

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It's not it doesn't have to be extreme. It's usually the subtle things. But what got me into it was honestly

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Working with so many different people as an athlete in the army in college

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Also as a child, I grew up in Germany. So just living on military bases

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You're around a plethora of different ethnicities genders and all that and I just got really good at reading people's patterns

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Because my lunch table in college and in school was just like the most random people but we all connected

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Played sports, but I didn't hang out with the jocks

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I was an RTC, but I didn't really hang out with RTC kids is just

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I just had was around a plethora of different people and I just like people that were passionate about what they're doing

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Yes, so with my experience

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Being around different people and their thought process really helped me to find their patterns

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Because it honestly all stemmed from that kid

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Who would drive his parents to all the parties before he had a license and he would just people watch and he's like

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This is like a reality show

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Because I just learned so much about psychology by just watching my own family

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And realizing what the patterns were and then I took that into career. So having the gift of discernment

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Yeah, because I truly believe that everybody's trauma gave them a gift

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And just being that quiet kid. I could just read the room even though I didn't really didn't say much

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But I could just sense everything in the room

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Even though I didn't really didn't say much but I could just sense everything in the order I got I was like, huh?

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I always tend to be the dad of all my friend groups or in the army or when we're out. They're like, hey, is Derek here?

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All right, we can have fun because he could read the room. He's a little crazy, but he knows what's going on

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I'm like, hey, I got you

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So you you were the one that that corrected people

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Yeah, exactly or like if we'd be out

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In public I say hey we need to leave because in 10 minutes that dude in the red shirt

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He's probably gonna do something. They're like, what are you talking about? 10 minutes later?

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He starts fighting somebody at this nice restaurant or at the bar and they're like, how'd you don't ask Jilla?

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Let's just go somewhere else. We're here to have fun and enjoy ourselves. But

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it's interesting the people that are

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Usually the father of the mother of their friend groups or at work

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They usually work through a lot and they have to grow up quick

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so it's always interesting of why he or she's good at that thing once you learn their backstory because

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Too many times people see the final product or the final version. They're like, oh, it's it's easy for her

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It's easy for him. He's an athlete or oh, yeah, you know, you know

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Um african-american african-americans, they don't have to train hard. They're always athletic. You're gifted

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And then they see a picture of you as a kid or like that's you

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That was that was you back then you stuttered like crazy. You had bad posture. I'm like, yeah exactly

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To get to where you are. So tell me how do leaders lean into funding their vision?

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That's a great question. So with my approach is

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I was army so I use a lot of my scholarships to get certifications and schooling

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So I didn't actually have to pay for my licenses certifications things of that nature because of that and obviously that's not everybody

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But take advantage of where you work currently if you're

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About to get out of the said nine to five or the career to go full time in your business

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And see what incentives there are and also based off your ethnicity. There's so many

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There's so many college funds grants business grants. There's so much stuff that people don't realize are out there basically free money

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And that is out there that people are unaware of so I would just really sit down take

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Two hours on the weekend to see what funding is out there

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And that's outside of taking out a business loan or anything

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Like there's a lot of information out there

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And on top of that is also a huge thing that I learned from my mentor is just a quote that stands out is skills pay the bills

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skills pay the bills

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And he's like if you suck at sales focus on sales if you suck at speaking focus focus focus on speaking

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He's like if you suck at closing focus on that and we just keep it very straightforward because business is linear

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And he was like people read like level 12

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Business books and all this and they don't help them right now

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And so my other recommendation would be to ask yourself. What is the most important skill that you need to work on right now?

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Maybe it's content. Maybe it's public speaking

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But with that being said is that that skill is going to move you forward faster than most things

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Because some people they can within one month crank out sales and provide amazing value

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But they were just about to take another course on something that's totally different that they don't need right now

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So I would really assess what resources are out there. What skill do I need to elevate and three?

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I don't necessarily have a business partner, but if you do really vet your people

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Yeah, it's not it doesn't mean that getting into business with family is bad. It's 50 50. Yeah with your best friend is bad 50 50

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So personally, I like to do it solo. I'd rather work with a stranger

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There's no history. There's nothing else. It's just the way that I

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Work somebody I was in the army with and I haven't seen them in eight years. All right. Here's the vision

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here's what we're gonna do, but as a whole it's all depending on the person but

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Definitely the best thing is to look at the resources

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And your skills and don't feel that you need need to have said capital

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Because another perspective is some people they get the capital but they don't have the skills and they're like, oh shoot now what?

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Yes, yes, they got the loc. They got the office. They got the things and it's like, all right

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You had eight calls. We didn't close anybody

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So the capital is irrelevant and so I just go back to the skills because skills pay the bills because

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If you have sales skills closing and speaking, yeah

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You can create anything out of thin air as long as you have a good service product, but just my perspective and experience is that

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My younger version in business, I would read every business book

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Yes, and I realized that I was at level zero or level one in business and I was learning this high level stuff and I was like

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Oh, yeah, I got all this information

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But I don't use any of it until nowadays and I was like seven years ago

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Makes sense and I realized that I was that motivational dopamine hit person where I was learning

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but I

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Wasn't able to apply any of it because I wasn't even at that level

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So I had a lot of useless information that I couldn't really take action on

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So nowadays I don't read anything unless I need to use it

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That makes sense

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Like I rarely read so there's a lot of books behind me, but let's just say that I like gran cardone

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Mentality or sales my all right. Let me open up that or get into his course

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All right, got the golden nugget now. I don't look at it again for a couple months and I'll take action

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And then I get the result for myself or a client. Yeah, and then everything starts to go up rather than

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Going to old-school route because nowadays you can find information that you need

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Of what is most important? So it's a different approach, but I think it's more effective nowadays because everything's going quick

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Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to vision pros live

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I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward

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This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well

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We'll invite people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time and attention

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Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a vision for yourself