November 26th, 2024

What is your area of expertise or focus and who do you help?

My general area of focus is health and wellness, but I focus on mindfulness and mental performance. I look to help people who have understood the physical part of the game but are struggling with or are looking forward to getting into the space of mental and emotional wellness. That is where mindfulness and breathwork comes in. I love working with people one-on-one as it’s how I started as a personal trainer but these days, I work a lot more with groups of people in speaking engagements. I would love to get back to doing a little bit more coaching in small groups and cohorts.

My services can seem kind of broad because they are about health and wellness, but they stack upon each other. Exercise is how I worked with most people for most of my career, and then I added on nutrition. These days, nutrition is probably the foundation of my work. People are coming to me because they want to live a healthier life. Nutrition is going to be at the crux of that but along with that is stress. A lot of my clients are people who are leading other people, whether they’re parents, they’re coaches, or they’re business people, and they’re stressed out. So my services look like a really deep dive of doing a wellness survey. From there, we highlight an area that we could focus on or a change that can be made. People come to me a lot when they’re in a season of change, whether that’s relationships, new jobs, career shifts, school, stress, and sleep quality. Sleep is probably the one that I don’t talk about enough about on social media, but it’s the one that I definitely nerd out about the most. So those are the five areas that we focus on: sleep, stress, change, nutrition and movement.  

Speaking engagements are fun because they could be anything, but what I’ve been requested to speak about the most is self-care. We were all stressed out during the pandemic with ambiguity, and uncertainty, and I found a niche there. So, I help people with workplace wellness, whether it’s a mindfulness meeting and we need some breathwork via Zoom, or it’s having a more general conversation about what we can do as professionals to take care of our health, usually, the strategies I’m using in group conversations or speaking engagements are going to be active listening, meditation and breathwork. 

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I’m from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and grew up on the East Coast in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, so I have that duality of being a Midwest and East Coast kid. I’ve been in Milwaukee for most of my adulthood. I played college sports, which is a part of my identity. I don’t love watching sports, but I do like to compete and be around athletes and athletics. I live here in Milwaukee with my wife, Becky and our dog, Lou. We’re expecting our first little one in 2025. For fun, I like to travel, I like music, shoes, and spending time with my family. I read a lot less these days than I used to, but I really love to read when I can find a good book.

What do you find to be the most rewarding thing about being a coach

Selfishly, the most rewarding thing about being a coach is that I am always learning something by teaching other people. Along with the learning, is accountability. So being a coach, you have to walk the walk right? Then lastly, the thing that is most rewarding about coaching is seeing other people have that aha moment, seeing them be successful, especially when they think that they might not have ever been there. We’re just naturally optimistic people, but I get to see it in them before they see it in themselves. So, when they get to see what you saw in them, I think that’s also a beautiful moment. I love that. It reminds me of something I heard once that as coaches, we are here to hold space for others until they can hold space for themselves. 

What do you find to be the most challenging thing about being a coach

I’ve had a hard time niching down and finding a group to work with. It’s been my lot in life, and it is what it is. So while it’s hard now, I’ve got a chance to work with little kids and with seniors who are up to 85 or 87 being the oldest client. So the hardest part for me is, you know, just wanting to help everybody, but that’s not possible. That’s why we have so many beautiful people who are also great coaches in their own right. So for me, the most challenging part is just understanding that I’m not going to be able to help everyone. 

Outside of that, whenever something comes around as far as a new modality, I’m usually a little slow to get on what’s popular. For example, meditation mindfulness. I had no idea that would be something I would be teaching. The idea that I don’t know trends and what’s going to be happening next is kind of frustrating for me on the development side. 

I know compassion fatigue is real for people. I think because I have such a wide range of people that I get to serve, getting compassion fatigue is a lot less common because I’m not in one space. I was literally going to different buildings when I was in education, seeing different schools that have different cultures and different climates. It’s different everywhere, right? So now, maybe I’m doing social-emotional learning with a younger person, and it might be active listening with the older men that I work with. I think that helps me not get fatigued. I’m also a social extrovert, so I can become social and I can talk to people, but I spend a lot of time by myself recharging. I speak about self-care so much that I am literally not able to coach and talk to people if I’m not doing it myself. So in times that I am not practicing what I’m teaching, I feel it really deeply. 

What are some of your top tips for starting, running, and growing a coaching business?

Study. Make sure that you know what’s working, what’s not working, and the market, and then just let it go and make your own plan. Come back to the idea that you’ve studied every quarter, twice a year, once a year. This gives you the chance to dig around and figure out what works over time. That said, every few years, I do ask people what they see in me. Not that I want to be bogged down by what they see, but I think it’s my form of market research where it’s like if you’re gonna hire me, tell me why. What do you think I do? So, try not to get too bogged down with research. I think having that 80/20 or 60/40, researching and going off of your instinct or gut. 

I think right now, the biggest shift for me has been being a multi-hyphenated professional. Shout out to Moriah, because, you know, working with someone like that is new for me. I had an assistant when I ran my full-time business, but being a smaller business now, where I’m still reinventing and growing, the idea of having a virtual assistant or a project manager or a business coach has helped me prioritize the time, the money, and the effort as well. Having someone that you can talk to about your business outside of your wife or your friends, I think, will be really helpful, especially in today’s age. 

In terms of growing the business, I can remember literally passing out five business cards a day and collecting five business cards a day for years. I don’t have one now, but I had shoe boxes full of business cards. I would take those business cards and put them into my Google Contacts, which would be linked to my phone, which would then link to my Facebook, and then I would find people that way. So I’ve been someone who’s been collecting contacts for a very long time, and who knows the number of those contacts that ever run into business. I’m not sure what it looks like today. Maybe that’s sending out reasonable Facebook requests, LinkedIn requests, or Instagram DMs. I think that’s what I would be doing today if I was looking to build a group of people that I’m looking to connect with. For me, it always looked like just asking those people for coffee, I was not trying to sell. That’s why I have so many opportunities these days, is that I’ve been doing it for almost 20 years, and in those very first years, I was a relentless networker. I think it’s a great strategy to connect with people and serve them in a way that fits you authentically, but also addresses what they’re asking for. In the beginning, maybe provide people what they’re looking for for free and at some point you won’t be free anymore. They’ll know that, because they’ll come back and see your growth and they’ll tell you, Hey, I remember you doing this for me. And I’m like, yep, not anymore, now you have to pay. 

Is there anything else that you would like to share that might be of value to our readers? 

At this time of year, I really like the idea of first of the month, first of the week, first of the year. I’ve been thinking about the transitions of seasons, and this is a good time right now, as we step into the holiday season, wherever you are, to reflect. Spend some of your time whether it’s five minutes daily or just on the weekends, reflecting and recharging a little bit before you start to reinvent yourself or go into the new year. 

Where can people find you and your business? 

The best place to find me is on my updated website. I’m really looking to spend more time on LinkedIn and I spend probably too much time on Instagram. Those are the three best places to find me.