Do you have a child that is gender confused?
Are you the parent of somebody that is either identified as transgender using different pronouns
or some other type of gender confused, just propaganda being shoved down your kids' throats?
I created the Biblically Parenting Gender Confused Children Support Group for parents just like you.
The support group is completely free, we meet monthly, and you are able to connect with other
like-minded Christian parents that are struggling with how to parent children that are gender confused.
They're getting all sorts of nonsense brought to them by the world, and I want to help connect
parents that are going through similar struggles and be able to tackle this issue through a biblical worldview.
If you are interested in joining this group or know somebody that might be interested in this group,
head on over to faithfullyengaged.com and there's more information about the support group there.
I have a link down in the description below.
Everyone, welcome back to another episode of Faithfully Engaged. Really excited about a guest
I have on today, Alex Dimchek. He is a former quarterback in the SEC at Missouri. This was
an interesting one for me. I don't know when this will air, but this is the middle of football
season when we're airing this or when we're doing this. That would be interesting. Talk to him about
that, but also as a writer and speaker, all sorts of good stuff. Alex, why don't you tell the audience
a little bit about yourself? Yeah, Johnny, thanks for having me. We're at Mizzou plays LSU tomorrow
at home. We will be at the game. We're excited whenever your listeners listen to this. We're in
the middle of football season. Mizzou is five and zero right now. There's my little football snippet
for the podcast. I live in Missouri, married with two kiddos, and get the chance to do about 50
speaking engagements per year. Then in 2020, started a company called Streamline Books with my
co-founder. We help people write and edit and publish their book in about a 20 week or about a
six month process and give or take. We just love helping steward people's stories, man. We just
feel like there's so much news in the world today. It's like, what can we do to move people's stories
and their testimonies and their encouragement forward? I would say right now, it's about 50-50.
I spent my time like this morning. I had a speaking engagement in St. Louis. Then half my other time
is helping people with their book and things like that. It's fun. I live in the Midwest.
Yeah, man. Excited to be here. Awesome. Let me start actually on the since we are on football
season. For those of you that are in my area, I'm in Oklahoma. It's OU Texas weekend. It's a big
deal around here. Tell me just a little bit about your football journey and what it was like playing
college football. Yeah, man. It's a great question. Yeah, that's a big rivalry game you just mentioned
right there. Growing up as a sports fanatic, I would say, I always loved sports and got the chance to
play college football and walked on at the University of Missouri. Honestly, if I'm being
toy transparent my first two years on the team, life was good. I had no complaints. I was in the
zone. Things were up into the right for me. Going into my junior season, every year you have this
meeting with one of your coaches. Going into my junior season, I had another one of those meetings
and it was really chill. No big deal. I walk in and instead of one coach being there, there was three.
One of the coaches, when I sit down at the table, he actually gets up to close the door behind him.
I'm thinking, that's not a good start to this meeting. One of the coaches sits down at the
table, looks right across the table from me and says, Alex, I want to shoot you straight. We have
over scholarship at quarterback. We are bringing in someone to take your spot. At that point in my
life, football was my identity. That's who I was. If I had a bad practice, my whole day was ruined.
So much of my identity was wrapped up in who I was as an athlete. In that moment, what he was
essentially telling me is, you are not good enough. In that moment where my mind is racing,
where he's telling me this crazy news, he says, Alex, you have two options. Option number one is
your cut. That's it. Thank you, but no thank you. Option number two is you can stay on as this volunteer
assistant coach. We could find something for you to do. He's like, by the way, you need to decide
right now in this meeting room what you want to do. As you can imagine, as a junior in college,
my mind is racing. I'm frustrated on all these things in that moment. He's like, you have to give
us an answer right now. I don't even know what to say. I just felt in that moment called to
stay at Mizzou. So I said, well, I guess I'll stay on as an assistant coach, whatever that means.
So they all stood up and they shook my hand, walked me out of the door,
and it was like a business transaction. I remember walking past the player who took my spot. I knew
who he was. That was tough. I remember going out to my truck and just parking it somewhere and just
crying, just feeling so humiliated. I had all these big aspirations, kid from a small town,
wanted to do these things. And then this is where it leads to, like me getting cut from the team.
Like how does that work? That was not in my five-year plan. And we had a few weeks until our first
practice. And I'm like, you know what? After I was, I mean, it was a tough few weeks. I can't sure
code it. It was a huge trial because football was such a big part of my life and it was this
massive loss. And I thought, you know what? I'm going to be positive. I'm going to make it as a
coach. I'm going to do big things as a coach. And that's what I thought at least. And I remember
showing up to that first day of practice thinking, you know what? They're going to give me this big
role on the team. Like they're going to give me the free Mizzou swag, the free gear, the free new
Nike shoes, all these things, all the perks you get as an athlete, right? And I show up, Johnny,
and one of the assistant coaches. He kind of pulls me aside and he's like, Alex, I want to show you
what your job's going to be. And he shows me, I still have it to this day. He shows me this yellow
flag. And for your listeners, it's like a yellow referee flag. This is the actual flag he gave me.
And he pulls me over to the side. He says, Alex, I want to show you what you're, you know, we need to
work on our discipline in practice. And so what you're going to do is when someone jumps off sides,
you're going to take this flag and your listeners can't see this, but you're going to throw it down
to the ground, right? You're just going to throw it down. And the worst part about the whole deal
is he actually like demonstrated how to do that twice. He like showed it to me twice. And I was
like, you know, in my mind, I'm thinking, wow, what a rocket scientist of a coach, you know? I'm
like, what is going on right now? But long story short, for the sake of your, this show here,
my entire junior season, I'm throwing the darn flag. I'm doing, I'm printing off, you know,
copies of the practice plan before practice. I'm making coffee for the coaches. I'm doing all these,
like in my mind, like such irrelevant things. Like what, like why asking all the big questions in
life? Like, why am I here? What am I doing? And I'll just say this in that junior season,
some cool things started to happen. Number one, just the sheer humility of the situation,
of being brought so low, you know, there was, there are so many relationships today that I
forged in that time because I stuck with it. And I think people, just the encouragement they
gave me when I was at my lowest, right? And, you know, my senior year was coming around the corner.
I told the coaches, I want to do whatever I can to get back on the team. And I remember being like
in my street clothes at practice, I'm like running sprints with the team. I'm doing all these things
to show like, Hey, I have one more year of eligibility. I want to get back on the team.
I'm not going anywhere. And long story short, I did get back on the team as a quarterback. We go
to the Citrus Bowl my senior year, we beat Minnesota. It was like an awesome, I guess,
ending to my career. But the reason why I share that on your podcast today, Johnny, is that when I
look back at all my years as a player, and then the one year where I threw this darn flag, and I
didn't really have a title and I felt kind of worthless, I would argue. And I think a lot of
my old teammates, coaches, fans would agree that I made a way bigger impact. The one year that I
threw that darn flag, the one year that I didn't have a title, the one year that I was questioning
so many things in my life, then all my years as an athlete. And my message to your listeners is that
leadership requires no title, you know, and I think I had to learn that the hard way. And I had to be
humiliated and exposed in that way. But I had to fully take ownership of, Okay, what can I do to
get better? And so, man, I'm sorry for that mouthful right there. But that you asked me, you open it
up, man, that's my story. That's a little bit about man, my background. And so now my message,
when I go speak to organizations and teams is that's my message is to be excellent, to show up
today with excellence. I don't care what where you are at the depth chart, I don't care what your job
title is, because you can show up with integrity and be excellent today. And the only person stopping
you from doing that is yourself. I think that's such a such a neat story there. And I'm sure
there's all sorts of other twists and turns that that are along the way in that as well. But
yeah, I have such a fascination. I always grew up playing sports and I've loved watching sports.
I have almost this. It's almost kind of like my true crime type of passion that sometimes I'll look
up athletes that have, you know, on top of the world making millions of dollars and then they
end up like being poor and have no money when they're in their 40s and 50s. And I just always find
that so sad because they yeah, they literally had everything, everything that every little boy ever
dreams of. And then it's just squandered. And I love hearing the reverse of a story like yours
where that humility came in. And that's really what drove you towards better success. So sometimes
those athletes that don't have as much humility given to them early on, they you're going to find
it at some point in life, it's better to find it a little bit earlier on and able to apply that when
when you become an adult. Yeah, that's a really good perspective. I haven't I hadn't thought about
it like that before, but you're right. And it's like, I'm grateful that I was in a way humiliated
and had to go through that because I don't think we would be on this podcast right now together
because I don't think I would have ever pursued the work that I'm pursuing as being an author and
a speaker and all these things. I think that's the message to anyone listening is that you never
know how you'll be used during those moments that are trials in your life. You know, and so you can
look at a situation like that, and I didn't handle everything perfectly by any means. But as I look
back on it, it's like, you can either a situation like that can either define you or you can let
it refine you. And I think when you live with that mindset of, you know what, I'm going to show up
today, I don't have to show up to practice today, I get to show up to practice when you have that
mentality, it changes the way that you do things, it changes the way that you work. I think all of
us could apply that simple strategy of, I don't have to do my job, I get you don't have to do this
podcast, you get the opportunity to have a podcast, I can make an impact on people. And like when you
think of it like that, it truly does change your perspective and your outlook on life.
You bring up a really important word that I was telling Alex right before came on here that my day
job is as a counselor that most of you listening have probably heard that before, that often what
I emphasize with my clients that healing and getting through some of these emotional difficulties
generally is pretty simple. And I make sure to force that out a little bit more. I don't mean
that it's easy, it can be very difficult, but I liken it to things like an athlete or going to
the gym, go to the gym getting in good shape, that's not very complicated. You wake up and you lift
weights, you run, you eat better. I mean, there's not a lot of moving pieces there, but it's that
consistency and putting in that hard work. And I love that you brought out that simple piece there
that doing hard work is really not that complicated, it just takes discipline and it takes being
consistent. And I would love to hear kind of your story after college, getting into speaking and
becoming an author and doing all the things you're doing. How did that happen? I know it
took a lot of work, but what was your story about getting involved in those things?
Yeah, that's a great question. I took a public speaking class my senior year at the University
of Missouri and in that class, I remember there was only 27 kids in the class, but there was only
two of us that enjoyed it. I remember looking forward to the presentations where everyone
else in the class was like, it was one of those deals where it's like, if you go first, you get
like an A. So every time I'm like, I'll go. What's the worst that could happen? So I realized I
enjoyed speaking and then I met John Gordon, who's now my co-author about eight years ago when I was
on the team at Mizzou, he spoke to the athletic department and I saw the motivation, the things
in his life that I said, wow, I want to be like that when I'm older. And so I straight up asked him,
I said, look, I see what you're doing. I would love to do whatever you just did. I
want to do that when I'm older. Can I be mentored by you? Can I learn from you? And he gets asked
that a lot. I didn't know that, but I just went up to him and asked him and he essentially said,
are you willing to work for free? And I think he was kind of testing me a little bit and I said,
absolutely. And so I started managing, doing sales for him, doing all kinds of things that
which then led to me speaking on his books. He has now 28 books. Many of them are best-selling
books. And then last year, just through years of speaking, kind of underneath him and learning
from him, then I brought, we worked on our book called The Sale, which we published together
last year as co-authors, a book about building trust, integrity. And it's a business fable,
so it's a story. It's a story that teaches these principles. And I think what's unique is,
he's way further in his career. He's been doing this for 20 years now. I'm just getting started,
but it's cool that we've seen as co-authors, integrity in each other. We've built trust.
I didn't come to him and say, what can you do for me? I came to him and said, how can I add value
to you and then learn from you? So on both ends, we've added value to each other over the last
seven years. And then now we write a book about how you can build trust to other people through the
way you lead with integrity. And so it is cool. It's definitely, I think, as a person of faith,
I think it's just God aligning that and God blessing the different aspects of that relationship.
But I think it's just a cool lesson for me that I've learned is when you see something that you're
like, wow, that is something I aspire to, or I want to learn how to do that, just be willing to ask.
Because if I wouldn't have asked, if I would have never reached out and been intentional,
like again, I probably wouldn't be on this podcast with you. And I think it's just a message to
remind myself every time when I think of something, obviously, I guess you could get carried away with
this. But for the most part, when in life, when there's an opportunity where you kind of, you know,
like, okay, should I ask this person this question, or should I, you know, help this person that's
in need, it's like, it's just, it's almost, for me at least, the times that I don't act on those
impulses or those promptings, I usually look back with regret. And so for me, it's like,
life's too short for that. Write that book, you know, quit that job to start your own
counseling practice. It's like, figure out what you are called to do and take steps in that direction
to do it. I love what you were saying there of asking for help. That's something that
so often I see in my in my practice of, Oh, I don't want to ask for help. I don't want to bother them,
or maybe talking about themselves too much. I don't want to look like I'm selfish, and
constantly and redirecting wait a second. Being humble kind of that whole concept,
it means that you're not thinking of yourself all the all the time. It doesn't mean that you're
just downgrading yourself or talking terrible about yourself or not accepting help, like,
God gave us people around us for a reason. We need community. When he created Adam,
he didn't just keep Adam, right? He made Eve. Like we're built in that way. So I love that you
parse out there that just go ask for help. That actually is kind of a, like for my Christian
listeners, that is a sign of pride to not ask for help. That you're saying that you got it all on
your own and you don't. We all need other people. What was that? Was that a struggle for you to
ask for help? Or did that something maybe after your experience there in college kind of that
humility became a little bit easier for you? Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. But you bring
up a great point. I mean, I think especially as Christians, are you willing to not act like I have
it all together, right? I think about, you know, even last year, me and my wife, I remember we
went to a friend that recommended us to a really good Christian counselor in our area. And I kind
of went in a little skeptical because I'm like, I don't know if I, whatever air quotes need this,
right? But I'm telling you what he did is he sat down with us. He opened up the Bible and when he,
I just really respected the way that he had conversations with both of us. There was things
that it was mainly for me that I thought that going in, but then it was mainly me that needed to be
worked on in a lot of different ways. And so it was cool in the end how that all just, yeah,
I walked away from that going like, wow, I think I should regularly be meeting with a counselor of
some type. So I think the work that you do is so important. So I just want to encourage you in that
and your listeners as well. But I do think there's an element of at times we think, well, you know,
at life's so busy, like this is the time where I don't really need this, you know, maybe at some
point when life slows down, then I will get the coach, then I will get the accountability, then
I will get the accountability, then I'll get the counselor. But as you know, you see people every
day I'm sure in your practice that they should have done it earlier. And they should have. And
if they could have got that accountability, they could have got that reinforcement, they wouldn't
show up at your office with maybe some of the issues that could have been easily avoided earlier
on. There's a song by the band, Casting Crowns, called Slow Fade, right? And in the song, I'm
not going to sing on your show. Don't worry, Johnny, I don't want to turn away all your listeners,
but you know, there's the song at the end, you know, it says people never crumble in a day.
And I love that line because the reality is, I'm sure you would agree, you know,
you'd see the same thing in your practice. It's like, you know, when you see in the news,
maybe a celebrity or someone who makes just a really bad decision that negatively impacts a
lot of people, you know, there's that ripple effect, whether it's an organization, a sports
team, you name it. When you look at that person's life, you know, my dad, he's been like an
investigator for 40 years. When he talks about investigations, he does, there's never just,
there's usually never one person who wakes up on a Monday morning and says, you know what,
today is the day that I'm going to humiliate my family, throw everything away, you know, get fired
for my job. Like usually it doesn't happen like that. Usually there's, if you look back, there's
usually this trail of rationalization. There's this trail of betrayal, or there's these, you know,
there's these signs that you can point to to say, wow, look at those small rationalizations that
started snowballing to where now there was this massive explosion, I guess you could call it.
And so I think for me in working with leadership teams, things like that, it's like, how can you
be introspective to look at your own life and realize, you know what, I don't have all the
answers, I don't have it all together. What are the things that I can do in my life to ensure that
I can lead for the long haul, you know, to be a durable leader. I literally sent out an email
newsletter this morning, I have something called Focus Friday, I send out to thousands of leaders,
and I was driving my Honda CRV last night on the way to speaking engagement. And I thought in my
head as I was driving down the highway of like, because it hit 100,000 miles, right. And so it's
an older car. And I thought, you know, what makes a durable leader? What makes a Honda, you know,
it's not really a flashy car, but for the most part, they last a long time. I looked up an
article, there's this in Kentucky, there's a Honda CRV that lasted a million miles, right. And so
it's like, these things are battle tested, they're, they're, they're, they're in it for the long haul.
And so I started thinking, what makes a leader durable in that way? And I think it starts with
integrity. I think it starts with, you know, understanding the vision for where they're
headed, the North Star in their career, what allows them to have that long term success.
And then I think the last part you hit on that I said in the newsletter this morning,
was, you know, leaders have support, durable leaders are to have support around them and people
that are in their corner and who are saying, Hey, you know, I support you, how can I be praying for
you? How can I be encouraging you all these different things and without, you know, God created
us for that and, and, and to have that, like you mentioned. And so man, those are the things that
I'm kind of passionate about. So I appreciate you, you bringing that up. Absolutely. One major
reason why I made this podcast is so much content out there is focused on what's going wrong. And
mind you, I always say it's not a bad idea to know what's going on around you in the world. If there's
things going on either in, in politics or just things going on that you disagree with,
I think being informed is good. So I'm not telling listeners to turn off the news forever.
What I am saying is that staying there and just being glued to the TV all day, oh my goodness,
can you believe this happened or that happened? And then just being angry and apathetic. And that's
it. Like that's, that's not what we're called to do. We're not called to just be passive viewers
of the carnage around us. We're called to be creators. We're called to be doers. We're called
to be active. So that's what I like a lot, a lot of the work that you're doing. You're, you're
encouraging people to be active, regardless of the listeners out here, whether they want to be a
speaker or a writer or ask a girl out or try out for a new job, whatever they're doing, if they are
being passive and not putting themselves out there, what would you be, what would your advice be to
the listeners to put themselves out there, be active and go for it? What do you think that they
should do? Yeah, that's, that's a great question. I think first off, you know, as a Christian, I think
for myself, it's like, how can I align with the things that I'm doing with what God is calling
me to do? And so I think it starts with just being in prayer of, you know, God, would you open up
opportunities? Would you make it clear to me in the path that I should go? And I think for me, it's
like, what are the things that I am passionate about that I would not have to get paid and I
would still do that, right? And so for me, that's speaking, that's writing books, that's being on
podcast. I'm not getting paid to be on on this podcast, right? So it's like, but I love doing
this, right? And so it's like, those are the things I recently read a book, it just came out by Dan
Sullivan and a strategic strategic coach called 10x is easier than 2x. And the whole book talks
about, it's not just saying 10x as in work 10 times harder, it's saying, find, find the 20%
of your unique ability. That's what they talk about in the book, everyone has a unique ability,
find that unique gifting and ability, and really spend a large majority of your time in that
gifting, right? And because, because what he says, the argument in the book is that so many people
as business owners don't do that, they do the opposite, they get bogged down and all the other
things, but they neglect that unique ability. That's what you need to be fostering. That's
you need to double down on. And so I think, you know, I read a John Maxwell book called Put Your
Dream to the Test. John Maxwell, he's the author of 60 books. I've done all these things. And what
he said is when you look for a career, you find a calling, he said, a lot of people will enter a
career that maybe naturally on a scale of one to 10, on a scale level, they're a four, right? And
if they want to work really hard and grind it out, maybe they could get to a seven or an eight,
right? But what he says is you find something that naturally you're maybe a six or seven,
right? And then when you apply hard work to it, boom, now you're getting closer to that nine to
10. And that really, that really struck me because I was in a job in corporate America, crunching
numbers, doing things that it was, yeah, it paid the bills and it was a great job. But man, like,
I wasn't that I didn't feel very called to do that. I wasn't passionate about that. I'm glad I did it
for five years. But that's when I started cultivating this side hustle and started doing speaking on
the side. Right. And so then after five years, I was able to walk away from my lucrative full time
career, because I was able to show my wife, look how much money I've made from the side hustle,
it's actually almost more than my full time job. So it was easy conversation. She's like, of course,
go for it, right? And I think a lot of people assume like if they have this dream or passion,
it's like, well, to do this, I would have to quit my full time job. Like, that's not true. Like,
what is the step that you can take now proactively to take one step in that direction? Is it starting,
you know, starting a podcast? Like what you've done? Is it creating a website? Is it blogging?
Like there's so it's never been easier to start a business, a lifestyle business. And I think
for me, I'm passionate about telling people, I started as a side hustle. And I did that for four
and a half years before I then made the leap because I felt like God was calling me to do that.
And I met with, you know, mentors in my life, they affirmed it like, Hey, go for it. You know,
you got nothing to lose. And I think the only reason I got there is because I was first faithful
into taking those early steps to show up to be excellent to say, how can I get better at this
craft? Even if I have to get up early before my day job starts, I want to honor the employer. So
I'm going to work outside of my work hours to make it happen. Like those are the steps that I had to
take. And I think a lot of people ask me all the time, how can I be a speaker? How can I,
I want to go speak at X amount of events per year? Well, that's awesome. But do you want to
sleep in the airport? Like I had to do two months ago, like that's part of it. Like you see all the
stuff on social media, but you don't see the fact that like sometimes like, I will literally be in
an airport for 13 hours to go speak for 45 minutes. That's the trade off because of the flight delays
and things. But it's like, I keep showing up and doing it. And so I think for me headed into the
new year, it's really, you know, defining what I want in my business and defining what I feel like,
you know, for example, I with two kids now, I don't the appeal of being traveling always being
gone isn't there for me anymore. And so how can I be intentional to say, Hey, you know what,
I actually only want to do 36 speaking engagements this year. That's it. Right. And so I'm going to
trust that that I'll be able to provide for my family based off that. And so I think there's
things like that that I'm trying to get intentional with that, man, I think people can can do the
same thing in their lives and their businesses as well. I really like what what you teased out there
and something in my personal life that so I started my own counseling practice. It's been
it's been about a year now that that I did that. And much like you, I had a full time job when I
opened it. And this was not my full time job. The podcast same thing. Still definitely not a full
time job. But been doing it on the side. And actually, I don't think I've actually talked
about this on the podcast yet. Earlier this year, the full time job I was working at it was for
those of you that really don't know a lot about the counseling world. Finding a job and counseling
is basically the easiest thing ever. I could go to Alex's hometown right now and find a job like
that they're everywhere. There's hard and people absolutely everywhere. So I've never really worried
about being laid off before because there's people that have issues all over the world.
But the company I was working for was more on the tech side of things than on the counseling side
of things. They're based in California. And those of you that remember, again, this is Erin and
are outwards recording October 2023. And March of 2023, there is all these bank closings. The
first one was Silicon Valley Bank. And wouldn't you know that was the bank my company used. And
my alarm bells are going off. We got an email saying, Oh, we should be able to get your pay
checks this week. I'm thinking, Oh, that that sounds bad. So because I'd already started my
practice, I had already kind of done some things. I was able to say, you know what, I don't need to
live in fear of having a job being laid off when I know I can get jobs elsewhere. So I left them,
and I'm on my own now and doing some contract work. And one of the perks of me having that full
time job was we had eight weeks off of leave when you had a kid. And we just had our had our son
just a couple months ago. Well, wouldn't you know that the very week that my son was due to be born,
that company I worked for went under like eight weeks off wouldn't have mattered. I wouldn't
have had a job. And they would have given me a whole one week's worth of severance. So
would have been in a very bad spot. And I certainly thank the Lord for kind of the wisdom
and guidance there and protection for the family. And we've were in such a better spot there. But
that would not have been possible. Had I not done my due diligence and done some of my side things,
kind of like Alex did, it it's kind of an insurance blanket there too. So yeah,
what you said earlier, Alex is true. The only thing limiting you is yourself. So just just go out
and do it. And if you fail, you fail. But you gave it a shot much better to fail and have tried
then to fail by not even trying at all. Yes, exactly. And yeah, I love that man. And yeah,
I'm excited to continue to listen to your podcast because you're bringing on people that are
that are doing that. And I think, yeah, for all your listeners, I would love to connect with
anyone that wants to reach out. And yeah, I'm just really excited to stay and connect with you,
man. Yeah. And speaking of that, where can people find you once this show airs?
Yeah, so my website is alexspeaking.com for anyone that wants to bring me in and speak at an event.
But then if they want to write a book, if you're like, Hey, I have a story I want to share, I want
to use it as a business card for my business. Our website is write my books.com. So that's
write my books.com. You can just fill out the info and we'd love to set up a call with you just
to hear more about your book and how we could help help you do that and bring your book to life.
Awesome. All right, well, I'll have all of that included down there in the show notes below. And
Alex, thanks again so much for being on and sharing your story with us.
Hey, thanks, Johnny. Be blessed, man. And thanks so much for having me on.
Absolutely. And thank you to everybody that listened to another show faithfully engaged and we'll catch you on the next one.