Why I do what I do

Hey, so I just want to kind of get real with you basically and let you know me more because I don't want to be posting YouTube videos and social media or whatever and kind of being out there, especially being a speaker and a coach and a trainer and all that. If you don't really know anything about me, I'm just kind of like throwing information. It's like, oh, that's cool, but who are you? So that's why I'm making this. I wanted to share with you my story, the challenges that I've been through and how I've used self-leadership in my life to get me to where I am today. Basically, I grew up in a small town called Penn Grove up in the Bay Area, about an hour north of San Francisco. And I grew up in a family of bikers, like Harley-Davidson mobbin' bikers. My parents were involved with outlaw biking gangs. It was cool kind of because I'd be able to help my mom and my dad work on their bikes and wrench, and there's some pictures of me where I'm, I'm wrenching on the bike, helping my mom out, and it's, uh, we got my mullet back in the day. Good stuff. My parents are very different than a lot of people's parents from what I saw growing up and kind of what I still see today, because my parents loved to do things. They love to have different hobbies. Like, I grew up on a horse ranch with 5 to 7 horses at a time. My parents love motorcycles, they love the horse ranch, they love going out on the lake and going jet skiing and partying. My dad loves scuba diving, and he, he told me that he had a duffel bag for everything that he did. So he'd like 6 duffel bags. Like, oh, we're going to the lake, grab the duffel bag. I'm going scuba diving, grab the duffel bag. And it's funny because that's something that's really kind of sprinkled off onto me because I have a lot of different hobbies. I do my speaking and coaching and all that. That's like a whole world that I'm in. And then I'm also in a punk band, and we're called One-Armed Joey. You can check us out. I go snowboarding, skydiving. I got certified as a skydiver. It's all this fun, crazy stuff that I love to do. Growing up in that, I really sprinkled off onto me. So I love doing all this crazy stuff, and I'm super grateful for that because I live a super rich life where I get to do tons of stuff. And I used to play video games a lot and I don't anymore because life is my video game. I get to go skydiving. I'm like a real-life action figure basically. It's pretty awesome. And with my parents being involved with the biking gangs, that was like the biggest thing that was kind of the hardest part of my life because there was a lot of alcohol abuse, there was a lot of drug abuse, and there was a lot of violence that I saw, my whole family witnessed. Really my sister and I, she's 8 years older than I am, and it was kind of a, it was tormenting really. Really, to go through that because my parents would— they'd get really drunk or they'd be on drugs or something, or be dealing drugs or something like that. I don't even know. All I knew was that my parents would fight so much. They would legitimately fight, screaming at each other, physical attacks. Every time they would fight, my sister and I would pretty much just go to our room that we shared and we would just hold each other and cry because there was nothing that we could do. They'd be screaming at each other, physically abusing each other, fighting each other, throwing things at each other. Then the next day they're totally loving each other. They're hugging each other, giving each other kisses, saying, "Hey, I love you." And it was like nothing happened. I'm sitting there as this little kid just like, "What? What? What is this?" I remember my dad like tackled my mom in front of us and my sister started kicking him, kicking him in the side, kicking him in the head. I was like, "Okay, like yeah, I'm gonna go in." So I started kicking him. I don't know why this has always just been something that's been burned into my brain. It was shortly after this whole thing with me kicking him and my sister kicking him and he was pissed. That we did that. And really, we're just sticking up for ourselves and our mom. One day we were driving through town, it was me and my dad, he was like driving me to school or something. I remember sitting on top of the railroad tracks and I was looking down the railroad tracks with him just barking in my ear. And I remember just thinking like, I want to get out of here so bad, but I was terrified. I was terrified of opening the door and just running down the railroad tracks because he would have got out, he would have chased me. What would have happened? I don't know. I was, I was too scared. I was too scared to even find out because I never wanted to get physically beat. And I never was physically, like, beat. I was never physically abused. I was, I was just emotionally and mentally tormented. And I remember when I was 8 years old, I get woken up by my mom and it's like really early in the morning and I was just a little 8-year-old and I'm thinking, oh, we're gonna go on a trip or something cool, because I never knew. I never knew if we were in danger mode or we're in super cool family mode. She says, we gotta go. She's frantic moving around. I heard my dad come in and he was screaming at my mom and I said, oh, it's not fun family mode, it's danger mode. And he's screaming at her saying, you shot me. And my mom had shot my dad. Now hear me out, that could put a lot of pictures in your brain of her just, oh, she just walked up and capped him, you know? And that's, that's a story. Another story that I've heard was that his cheek pushed on her finger and that's what shot the gun. Bottom line is he got shot. And what I firmly believe is that she would carry this gun because she was so terrified of him killing her, because he almost did multiple times legitimately kill her. She was terrified of it. My mom came home one day and then he wanted to get the keys and get in the car so he could drive out, and then she didn't want him to go, so he was reaching in the car and she just kind of had this intuitive sense that he's gonna kill me once he gets the keys. And she had the gun put up to his cheek. I think that it was just a natural instinct that it just shot. Because when you're about to die and your one thing saving you is in your hand, I think that's where human instinct just takes over. And that was the night that my whole family pretty much fell apart. There's many sides to this story, and I want you to just know that I'm sharing my perspective, my point of view, being the little 8-year-old that went through this whole experience. So yeah, my mom wakes us up, we go outside, into the living room, and my dad's got this rag on his cheek and he's screaming bloody murder. We go out back, I see the spotlight from a cop already there quick, and I don't know how long it happened. I was asleep for this whole thing. I just woke up to this madness. The spotlight's shining on us and I see this crowd of like 5 cops come running around the corner and they separate the kids, separate us from my mom, and my dad's in the house still. And then they grab my mom, and I'll never forget them just grabbing her by the back of the head and smacking her face on the rim of the trampoline that we we had. And I'm freaking out, and I feel this officer come over and grab my arm, grab my sister, and he starts carrying us, getting us away, because all that they know is that this woman shot this man. So we come running around the corner, and I'm screaming bloody murder. I see this one officer come around the corner, and he's got like this huge M16 assault rifle, and they got pistols out and guns and everything, and I'm just screaming my heart out because I don't want to lose my mom and my dad. And I don't know what's gonna happen if I'm just gonna lose my dad or what's gonna— I don't know what's gonna happen. So they threw my sister and I in the back of the cop car. My dad, I remember seeing my dad come out and fall on the floor in front of the house. And then the ambulance came over and picked him up and took him away. And what happened, my mom ended up going away into jail for 14 months, and it would have been 14 years. Which God only knows what would have happened in that if she was gone that long. But I guess in the trial, which I heard, was that my, my dad requested that she would get 14 months rather than 14 years because he wanted her to be around the kids. When you listen to this story, it's so important. I don't want you to think that my parents are bad people. They were messed up in their heads. They were messed up because they didn't really know how to do all the things that I teach. They weren't working on themselves. They didn't have the tools. They weren't able to listen to what they're feeling and be able to cope with different things. I love my family. It's one of the, the top things on my priority list and always will be. And I'm never going to have my family go through what I went through. It just messed me up as a kid. And I had so many confidence issues, so much anger, so much depression built up. But I would wear this mask when I was at school or in front of people. Especially when I was talking with therapists and counselors that the school kind of recommended me towards and just said, hey, we're pulling you out of class, you're gonna go see this counselor. And it didn't really do anything because I didn't want the help. I was just kind of forced in front of these people in situations that would just mask it, like, look, I'm fine, and then they leave me alone. I said, cool, now I get to be left alone. And I never really had tools or anything to really help me mentally and with my feelings or emotions or anything like that. So I went through all of school, pretty much like junior high, high school, and I never really had confidence inside of myself. I could pretend like I did, put that mask on, and really I didn't have the confidence. And I remember I wanted confidence. I just wanted to be confident in myself so bad, and I would look up videos, articles, anything I could about being more confident. After a few years, my mom was back with me, and I pretty much lived with her majority of the time. I'd still go and spend some time with my dad as well, but it was a lot more time with my mom. And my mom being in jail was in a lot of different support groups and things like that. So she was reading more personal development to help her cope with the things that she was working on, because she made an agreement with herself that she was never going to have something like that happen again in her family or be put in a situation like that again. And when I was 17 years old, I came home one day and my mom had been telling me probably for about a month or 2 months about this book called The Four Agreements. And I kept pushing it off because I'd been reading articles, I've been watching videos and everything, and nothing was really hitting me to the core. Until I came home one day when I was 17, and I walk in my room, and I'm by myself at the house, look on my bed, The Four Agreements book is on my bed. I lay down on my bed and I open it up. Right when you open up the book, it has the list of the agreements. It's: be impeccable with your word, don't take anything personally, don't make any assumptions, and always do your best. Looking through that, the biggest thing that I noticed, which a lot of people notice, is Don't take anything personally. And I said, okay, all right, all right, I'll check out this book. I'll just read it a little bit because the words, it was enticing. So I opened it up and I just started reading it, and then I couldn't stop. I would read that book every single day because I wanted to drill that stuff into my brain so bad. With every page, every word that I read, it was like he was talking straight to my soul. And I'd never had that experience with a book before. I, I couldn't stand reading, not a fan. Four Agreements was the book that really set my soul on fire, and it me so much, and it was actually working because I'd implemented— because it was so simple and easy to follow. And reading that book, just, it was like it was striking the chord of truth inside of me. And the whole book's about self-love, and I think I was looking for confidence when really to make me confident was self-love. It was me not loving myself and who I was. So I'd read this book every single day. I was literally obsessed with it because I could relate to it so well. I remember I would wake up every morning and I started saying, I'm gonna do my best today. I'm gonna do my best to be impeccable with my work, to not take anything personally, to not make any assumptions. I'm gonna do my very best today. I would say that every day, and I was 17 years old. Now, going out of high school into the real world, uh, my— I had two options pretty much. It was going to college or going to Local 38 Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Union, which is like the highest paying union in the world. It's what my dad did for 30+ years. The way I saw it was I can either go to school and get my general education, or I can start making money. Starting wage was $25 an hour, and I was 19, so I figured, yeah, I'm gonna go start making $25 an hour at 19. Plus, I was going to school through the union to where I could actually be building college credits. So if you're into that kind of stuff, you're into plumbing and pipe fitting, check out Local 38 because it's a phenomenal program. Just wasn't for me. So I decided to go straight into the union. It was pretty fun at first, you know, it was new, it was exciting. I was making good money at 19. I was making more than any of my friends, and then eventually I was making more than my whole family. I was, I was the, like, breadwinner of my family, basically. There was just one thing missing. I did not enjoy any of the work that I was doing. And like I said, I love skydiving, snowboarding, playing my music and everything, and do all this cool stuff outside. And it was like so much fun. I was in a relationship at the time that was going well, a lot of really cool stuff. And then I just kept boiling it down. I was like, why do I feel so empty still? I never wanted my life to be empty like that. I wanted to live this full spectrum life where my health is awesome. I do the things I love, the hobbies that I enjoy, my relationships are great, and the work Oh, that was the thing that was missing. It was the work that sucked for me. I just— I felt like when I was going to work, I was checking my soul at the door, going into the construction site, the concrete walls everywhere. Wake up at like 3:30 every morning, roughly, sometimes earlier, drive from Petaluma to San Francisco, which is about an hour drive or so, 45 minutes. And every day it was like I was just dreading going to work. You can tell how much you enjoy your work by how much time you spend in the bathroom. I spent a lot of time in the bathroom. And what I was doing is that in the bathroom, I'd sit in these porta-potties that smelled horrid. Oh my— oh no. I would rather sit in a porta-potty than be out doing the work that I was doing. I'd rather sit in this hot, sweaty, disgusting porta-potty. And what I was doing in there is I wasn't just chilling in there. I was on my phone and I'm researching what else could I do with my life. And I'm always asking myself, like, what could I do that's as lucrative if not more lucrative, that is something that I love to do. Because if— for me, it was like, once the, the work is there, then I got this awesome life. And I'm looking for outside help and all this, something to clarity based on what it is I do want to do. And I knew that I love music, and there's a lot of people that are rock stars. I was like, alright, I'm gonna be a rock star. So I see this ad to do a coaching call, and I say, okay, I'll check out a free coaching call, like listen to a coach, like a mentor person. I didn't really know anything about coaching. I signed up for the call. Finally get on the phone with the person, and I'm like 21 at the time probably, and I'm thinking this guy's gonna be so impressed with me because I like work on the Four Agreements every day. I'm young, he's gonna be so thoroughly impressed. He was not very impressed with me, didn't even really care about that. He was caring about where I was and where it is that I wanted to be. He made me feel so much pain as to where I was and realize that, and then he made me feel so much of a longing for this thing that I wanted. That's what I work on with people, is you have longing and discontent. You're discontent with the current circumstance or situation that you're in that's causing you that pain. That's like the first step to self-leadership is being self-aware. Right here, he was helping me be more self-aware. And after that call, I realized something a little bit later. I didn't sign up for coaching. He offered me coaching and I wanted to, but I was so wrapped up in fear, especially about money from my parents, my childhood and all that, that I didn't end up doing it. Looking back, I'm really curious as to what would have happened if I did. But what are you gonna do? But it really got me thinking. That's what this call did. It got me thinking about something else that I could be doing. Just got my brain thinking differently in general. And I was thinking more and more about it, and I was like, that was such a cool experience. I realized that I want to do what that guy's doing, this coaching thing, whatever that is. On my commute to work, I would listen to Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn. I'd listen to Bob Proctor, all these different big speakers. And the more and more I listened to him after that call, I realized like I could be that person. I could be one of those coaches. I could be a speaker. My brain started going AWOL on this. I'm back in the porta-potty and I'm sitting there on my job site and I'm thinking, there's got to be something that I can do. Like, how do you become a coach? How do you do that? I found a school called the Life Mastery Institute. Something about it— the instructor is Mary Mannen Morrissey, and she's a phenomenal human being. She's met with the Dalai Lama on 3 separate occasions, spoken with Nelson Mandela, she's spoken to the United Nations. She's a phenomenal human being. And she popped up on the screen, it was just something Something about Mary. I was sold on Mary and her coaching school, and they taught people how to do public speaking. A lot of these other coaching schools, from what I noticed anyway, weren't really teaching you do public speaking. They were teaching you how to coach people, and this school was teaching me do public speaking so you can speak to the masses. So I get on this next coaching call. This is a few years after my initial coaching call. We get to the investment, and I'm thinking, okay, I'm not going to say no to this now. Because when you're saying no to an investment that you know by making that investment is going to get you closer to that thing that you want, you're saying no to your dream, to your vision, to the thing that you want more of. And I was shaking, trembling. It was like a $10,000 investment. I was like, I've never thrown this much money at anything except for my car, actually. I had never invested in a coaching program or anything like that. So I took a step out on faith, on belief that this is going to get me towards that thing that I I want. This is a legitimate school where people have had plenty of success. I'm going to go for it. And I did. Now fast forward 6 months, I'm fully certified now. All I got to do is just start speaking, coaching, doing the work basically. And I was here. I had this dream over here. Now there was something missing. It was me. And I have a video also on being your 2.0 self that you can check out. That's exactly what I needed to do. I needed to be my 2.0 self so I could move from being here with these kind of results to being here with the results that I really wanted. I want to be this coach. Working with people, doing public speaking and everything, and I'm over here doing construction, not doing any of that. Hmm, there's some kind of disconnect. So I had to make this kind of transition. It was the day after I was fully certified, came back, and I'm thinking, why am I here? I couldn't stop thinking about it. It's just this signal screaming out inside of me from myself, from the real me that wanted to be living this life, being a speaker and a coach. It's like I had so much awareness in the fact that I'm not supposed to be here. And the only reason I was there was because my dad wanted me to be there. It was because I wanted myself to be there. And I was thinking back on my childhood with having all this fear because I wasn't really— I never really took my, my accountability for myself, really. And this is a 5-year apprenticeship, so I was pretty much at 4 years, and I had another year left, which, as my dad would say, that's a popcorn fart. Of time. And that's what I was doing right now. So I made this decision that I was going to do 3 months of school. I was going to finish out my 3 months and work as much possible overtime as I could. I did 1 AM starts and then 13-hour days following that start multiple times. I worked every single weekend and built up as much money as I could to pay off my car ideally so I wouldn't have these other payments that I had to deal with later when I was really working on my business. And I actually did it, and my dad freaked out. And my mom was really supportive. I took all the money that I had in a Vanguard account so I could invest in another round in my coaching school, and I made it happen. That's the biggest thing, you know, with like sharing this story. I want you to just— I don't want to tell you like, oh, look at, look at my life, woe is me or anything. It's me sharing it because I know that you have a story. And if you made it this far in the video, like, that's awesome. Thank you. What I know is that everybody's got a story. You have a story. I had a story. I still do have a story, but there's a difference between you having a story and a story having you. That's my biggest takeaway for this video. I wanted so badly to have a life that was over here where my family was phenomenal. My family was tight and we were all happy and we could go have dinners together, which we do now. I wanted to have a business where I could go speak on stages all over the world, in the United States, and coach people on self-leadership so that they could be better leaders. Have more confidence and never settle in their lives, because that's what I want for myself. And what I want for myself, I want for everybody. I want it for you. Now I do get to travel all over the place and speak for awesome companies, teams, people. I get to coach people on self-leadership, and I'm living the dream. If I didn't make the decision that I did being in construction, if I did just settle, I would not be as stoked as I am every day now. I would still be sitting in a porta-potty thinking, what if? And if I got hit by a car today or something happened, or I had a moment to think about my life, I would be totally content. And that, that is, that is such a big gift to be able to know that I could die at any second. And if I did at any second, I would be content with where I'm at and who I am and the decisions that I have made. So far in my life. That's a pretty big accomplishment. So that's just kind of my life. That's how I grew up. That's the— a couple of the experiences that I've had, some of the major experiences that I've had in my life. And yeah, life is pretty rad. If you enjoy my story, you enjoyed the video, then give me a thumbs up, give me a like, subscribe to the channel, check out my other videos because this video is not really like my other videos. I just kind of wanted to put it up just so you know— you knew more about me and kind of my experiences, what I've been through. Where I'm at now, really just so you can get to know me. Like, subscribe, check out the other videos, share it with someone that it might be valuable to, and have an awesome day.