It's challenging as business leaders to realize that we need to allow ourselves that same grace in that leadership position that we do in our own individual life. This is your Badass Dreni podcast. I am Terrine Walsh, serial entrepreneur, growth strategist, executive leadership coach and best-selling author. Each week, I will bring you a guest or thought that will help you align what you love with what you do in order to build that bad-ass life and business you dream of.
Welcome, everybody, to today's episode on your Badass Dreni podcast. I have Frank Blaney on the show today. He's a leadership development and self-care specialist. He holds an MA in negotiation, conflict resolution and peace building.
Now, who doesn't need a peace builder in their life? What I love about our conversation today is that Frank really shares the tools and tips that he has seen in action on how to make sure you're building deeper connection with each other, taking care of yourself to the highest level you can, and also moving into more of a leadership role as you get through your own self-development and your own growth, what it means to actually show up as a leader in today's society. So I hope you enjoyed today's conversation. I know you're going to have some great takeaways.
If you want to connect with Frank, he's at info at D-O-W-N-L-O-A-D-Q-I.com. And again, it's Frank Blaney. So that's BLA and EY is how you spell his last name. But make sure you connect and let us know your listening and can't wait to see what your takeaways are.
Now, let's jump into today's conversation. Welcome, Frank. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me.
I really appreciate it, Karine. Well, you know, I appreciate meeting you, knowing you now, for at least, I think, through Collette, we met each other officially almost two years ago now, which is crazy how much has happened in the last two years. But what I love about your focus is how you have a performance-based business, but you're also very much integrative in how you help your clients achieve what you consider peak performance. And before we get into explaining the work that you do today, I would love for you to share a bit about your journey of how did you even decide to go into performance management, like become a leadership executive guide?
Like, what's the background there that got you to where you are today? Well, a lot of my best things that have happened in my life have not come about as a result of my master planning to be honest with you. Right. You know, life circumstances present themselves, and then we often will make an almost intuitive decision at times, as to which half to take.
And I actually became a young father, a father at a very young age, was not planning on getting married, not having kids, and all of a sudden had economic responsibility. So my first real foray into the world of real adult work was with a large corporate finance company that a friend got me into. And it was a top bank that operated on a New York. So I sat at a desk for four years straight doing what they told me to do.
And I really didn't like the work. It really was not well suited for me. And I learned a lot about how not to do things as a manager and as a leader within business. And then from that, I decided I needed to complete my education.
So having four young children that I was responsible for, and also working at that time, I kind of drifted into a ball-things construction. So I was doing very physical labor, hustling to get some classes done here and there. I mean, literally, I'm not proud of this, but it took me 12 years to finish my bachelor's degree. And it was just, you know, sign up for a class, my work schedule wasn't going to fly with that.
I've got to be a lot of that when I'll pick it up again. So once I got my bachelor's degree done, I really had the opportunity to think through what do I want to do. And that's when I kind of got drawn initially into the nonprofit world. And I always suggest as to young people who are looking for career tracks, is to volunteer for something that they're passionate about.
And I was passionate about preventing violence. I was exposed at an early age to domestic violence. My home growing up had a lot of community violence. I grew up in a very low-income neighborhood in Los Angeles.
That was, had a lot of game problems. I got my ass kicked in, but games far too regularly as I used. And so violence was really a big part of my life. And I wanted to do what I could with my education and with my skills to prevent that.
So I actually ended up volunteering for one of the first women's domestic violence and rape crisis prevention centers in the entire country. They used to stay in Los Angeles. They all called people of violence. And I started off because I had a background in self-defense.
And then martial arts by this time I had studied. I started off helping to train teachers, female teachers, to train people who would come through the rape crisis centers throughout the state of California. So anyway, I got into that field really to thrive. And being in that field, I was exposed to a lot, not just in my individual field service stuff, but because what I love about non-profits is that they run on a real streamline budget.
So you've got all sorts of different hats on, right, when you're working in a non-profit. So I transitioned from doing community education, with self-defense training, to grant writing, program management. And so that kind of took me to my master's degree, which my master's degree is in negotiation, conflict resolution, and peace building. And so I was learning this stuff in school and applying it immediately in my community.
And it was a great little, you know, trarium of learning that I have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
It was really neat. But basically the trajectory that got me where I am is just as I stepped into each new arena and each new opportunity to serve. I got more and more responsibility placed on me. So even though I never really wanted to be a manager, I was placed in a management position.
And one of the first executive management positions I had was director of youth leadership development. And that was something I really felt, you know, excited about. And so that kind of is how I got into my own little trajectory as it is. At that time, how old were your kids by the time you got into that youth leadership role?
Do you remember like around? Yeah. Yeah. They were still relatively young.
I think my oldest was about maybe 13. And my youngest was about eight. So yeah, they were still burning both candles. Yeah.
You were leading them as well. That's why I was asking. Because sometimes, you know, like when you get the hints of help of as a service outward, right? Like it starts to integrate with who you are and then how you actually show up in the role you play at home or the role you play in your domestic life, right?
Like, and especially coming from what sounds like a very volatile upbringing, you know, and not feeling the level of certainty and safety in, you know, in maybe your own personal upbringing in your home life, but figuring out not only how are you going to help youth who go through that or go through trials and tribulations, I just immediately started to think about your own family and potentially the impact that that had on them going through that journey. And I just want to say the fact that it took 12 years to get your undergrad, it's almost like who cares that it took that long because you need to celebrate any achievement that you have and the fact that you actually cross that finish line to even get your master. So I just want to celebrate you there because we can easily measure ourselves against someone else's process. But it sounds as if the way you were sharing that is that it actually lined up at the exact right time for you to then put yourself into that new arena to then figure out your next focus.
So really cool. Tell us a little bit about the discipline around that self-defense program that you brought in and the martial arts you've done. How's that played a role in your life and how you stand as a leader today? That's a beautiful question.
When I was a little kid, you used to walk to the end of course you see Bruce Lee and you can see the Kung Fu series with Kevin Reacher's name, the guy that played Kane. And so that stuff made an impression on me, but my reality was getting my ass whipped all the time. And I was raised by a single parent mom who was very low in country, worked in a factory and we never owned a car. We were on my entire life run up.
We were all below poverty level according to the government thing. And so I didn't have my mother didn't have resources to send me for self-defense class. I wasn't one of those guys. When I was five, I was doing this.
I didn't start doing it until I was 21. I had no intention of becoming a black belt. I just wanted to learn something that would help me not to have to experience being beaten again. It was very pragmatic, right?
But what I found was that this thing that I really loved doing, I was not that good at athletics in school, but I just loved martial arts so much. And it was a very healing thing for me as a male. And that's something that I share with people that I work with, is that a lot of men have been traumatized now, obviously, statistically speaking, a race of sexual assault and violence against women is even higher. But a lot of men have also been traumatized and they have that machismo thing where they don't want to admit it, you know, that type of stuff.
And there's something therapeutic about males going through these motions of martial arts practice together, which helps them to recalibrate the violence they may have experienced, either as a child or in their youth. And that's exactly what happened with me. It was a very healing thing for me. And I just stayed in it and eventually got a black belt after six years of heart training, got a second of your black belt and a teaching certificate.
And then, you know, that was when I parlayed that into my volunteer service, doing that. But in regards to how it's helped me as a human being and as a person doing business, it's really just understanding that we progress in increments, very small increments, you know, daily, daily, daily input. And you don't see the fruit right away. And I think our culture really struggles with that.
When you go back in history, right, you've got these agrarian cultures where it was almost instinctual because they would plan a seed. It would take a long time for that seed to bear fruit. And then, you know, that was what they were used to operating according to the earth cycles, right? We live in these little boxes and they're tied up to these computers.
They're going fast, fast, fast. We don't know about patience. We don't know about slowing down. And I got all that discipline through my martial arts training.
And that's a lot of what I share with my clients comes from that background. So it's a very rich, beautiful thing. I'm hoping that I'll be able to do that until I lay down the grade, which I hope that's going to be a long time. Yeah, you have plenty of time for that.
I think it's beautiful how you equated the energy cycles of the past where we didn't have this much technology and or mass production of our food cycles, the access to water, the things that like a lot of us in our time today take advantage of. Like we don't even even appreciate that that was at once it took an effort or discipline to actually have access to it, to that gifting. I love that alignment to how the practice of martial arts, because the way I see it is, as you were talking, I was thinking about all the shows that I've loved to watch recently. Like on HBO Max, there's the whole Warrior series.
I don't know if you saw that, but it was based on a Bruce Lee story. He wrote himself and then they created this series out of it. And the martial arts in that, it makes me want to get up and figure out how to do all those moves. It's so amazing to see real craft in that, because it's not always about aggression.
It's about protection. It's about passing the energy forward. All the things that as leaders, we have to think about too, where it's in this moment, what is the best stance for me to have? What's the best next move?
What's the way I can keep things flowing? Or is this a time to pause? I could totally see the relatability from having a black belt and then the framework of that moving into how as a leader, you need to be able to do that. I don't know if you need to show up in it, but it does take that daily practice.
And then the other visual I had was you were telling the story. I was like, what was it like for you to have your first, I would say, a move, complex move that you had to do as a black belt? And I think about aerial spins or the certain types of kicks or I don't know, you have to explain to me because I am not the master. You are.
But I can only imagine how much discipline it took and practice it took to get to that epic move, let's just say. And then the ability to repeat it again and again and again, right, to figure out that mastery. Was there a moment like that that you had that helped show you your growth or like helped show you that, okay, I'm now actually at that next level? Yeah, actually, there's a specific term in the Japanese martial arts, which is where I focus most of my attention.
I studied after I completed my second black belt in Japanese Jiu Jitsu. I did another six years in IT, which is another Japanese martial art. And that obviously is very much about flow and all that. And so the term that's used in Japanese to describe where you kind of hit that maybe not mastery, but that flow is called motion.
M-U-S-H-D-M-U-S-H-I-N is the English Transciteration of a U-N-U-N-U. And basically what that means is that you have done those daily practices so often and so keenly, they are literally just downloaded into your nervous system. So that you don't have to think about what you do. And one incident happened to me.
I'd actually been on a really long business trip and I'd come back and I'd signed up months ago for this Jiu Jitsu tournament, right? And I'm not a very competitive person to be honest with you, but I just signed up for it. I thought it would help you push myself a little. I'm competitive with myself.
So I got sick on the airplane. I had almost beaverish. I just got wiped out. I didn't know, and I just showed up and all I wanted to do was to make sure I could maybe drive myself home if I didn't care about winning or any of that stuff.
And so the tournament format was such that I had multiple opponents that I had to deal with and I had three minutes where I had to be in there and deal with whatever they were coming. They could bring sticks and knives. All this crazy stuff. And so I just went in.
I was so exhausted. All I did was pipe out and then the referee goes, how do you make it? Which means start, right? And everything was a blur.
It was an absolute. I have no memory recollection. I just remember people clapping at the end and I sit down and all of a sudden I went first place in that particular position and I was competing. And this was out of a pool of about 30 guys.
And I'm like, okay, so I guess that was probably the point where I figured, okay, all these nights that I've been showing up. And doing this activity and it was there. And I think the key thing that the takeaway on this is that it's the same thing when we get into whatever it is that we're calling our profession is that daily practice of what we're doing is going to come forth at the right time and the right degree in the right amount in the right way. You won't have to think about it.
You just won't have to think about it that much. Not that you don't. These strategic and logical courses, all that going on. But whether it's a sales pitch, right?
Or whether you're going to strategy meeting with colleagues, ever it is. You've ingrained it so deeply within yourself. It's just there. It's part of you.
That's where we want to get. Yeah, no, that's beautiful. And I think it brings a level of certainty in self when you allow for what you have learned to show up in its natural stance. I think a lot of the times, just like how you were saying in the energy around us is so demanding.
And it can force sometimes, we have to force a decision or force an action versus the discipline of seeing it for what it is. And then giving it a moment to decide what is the best for the situation right now. Like for me, one of my practices in order for me to feel as though I'm staying in consistent action or flow. I had to give myself permission to fumble or I had to just allow, I also say, like I can change my mind at any time.
Like that's the other thing. Like it was like it's the right decision for right now, but maybe some learnings after that decision could determine, oh, you know what, we need to pivot in this direction or we have to change my mind. Let's go back to this, whatever it could be. And I think that when you're doing it physically in a physical practice that doesn't require for you, you're deciding for yourself in that moment that one to one unless unless in this group fight like there were six against one.
I don't know how bad ass you are in the fight, but I'm assuming it was one to one most of these fights that you have to get through is that it's for your own self preservation as you're thinking about that opponent in leadership, though, we have to think about not only ourselves and the whole. And so as you started to create these peak performance business programs and like, and you started to also become a trainer in Chigong, which I would love for you to share with our listeners to how that has benefited, not only your own personal self care and practice to continue in your discipline, but how has that helped also your clients as you work with them on their peak performance. But we're in a business leadership position. Our quote unquote mistakes can have really powerful ramifications for people that are looking to us for leadership.
And when I say leadership, I mean, that in a very concrete way, if their employees, they could lose their jobs. If you make a poor decision, you know, if we make a poor decision and things go south, you know, so that's a lot of responsibility that we carry on our shoulders, you know, and that is, I think one of the biggest pressure cookers that leaders have is being leaders. And I think the more that we can try and understand that we really need to be one unit when we're doing something. What I mean by that is our bodies, our minds, our emotions, our focus and attention, our goals, they need to be unified.
And when we are operating in a thing, and I call this centered power, when we're when we're operating in a place of integrity with who we are as individuals and our skills. Like you so eloquently mentioned, you know, acknowledging your gifts, you know, and not operating from a fear base where, oh, they're going to judge me if I do this or there. We might this might happen when that happens. You know, I think one of the things that is challenging for business leaders that we need to remember is that in our personal lives, think about how many things that we've had occur, which seemed initially as to be mistakes or whatever, right?
So a relationship was bad, or you make a poor financial decision, or maybe you pick the wrong major, whatever it is in hindsight, you realize that there was some sort of hidden lesson, a hidden message, a hidden discovery that you were able to make just through that so-called mistake. I personally don't even use the word mistake. I say learning curve. Everything's a learning curve.
And it's challenging as business leaders to realize that we need to allow ourselves that same grace in that leadership position that we do in our own individual life, because everything is really a gamble. There's no guarantees if this past pandemic of COVID-19 has taught anyone any lesson, it's, you know, there's no given. The only certainty is uncertainty, right? That flexibility, that confidence, and that, again, it goes back to that word, integrity with self.
And I don't mean being morally right. I mean, I'm talking about being true to what your genuine nature is. And I think a lot of the stress that we create for ourselves, a lot of the angst that we go through as individuals is because on some level, we know maybe we shouldn't be an up to their job count that we're on. Maybe we shouldn't be in that partnership, whether it's romantic partnership or a business partnership.
Maybe we should, you know, whatever the maybe is, we really need to bite the bullet and just go, this is my life. I've got a real brief moment here. And I just need to be true with who I am and what I am. And that's when the magic happens, when you can step into a place of courage and be who you really are.
It's so true. As you were talking, the way I started to visualize, and I've never had this visualization before, so I definitely want to share it. But I almost imagine if we could imagine that our lives are a really wide path. Like if you think about a path on a trail to go through, you know, a hiking trail, mountain, whatever, but it's super wide.
Because a lot of times we get tunnel vision around the target of what we're trying to hear, but imagine, I'm trying to get to, but imagine if it was super wide and you were allowed to zigzag to get from point A to point B, C, D, all the way up to Z and plus, right? Like that's our life. But I think if we could be more expansive in our thinking to say, I have to step forward regardless, whatever step forward I take because I need to move on my path, either. And you, a lot of people do regression work where they're stepping backwards to figure it out on how to step forward, but the forward motion of it, which is definitely my energy to where it's really about the lessons learned.
What do I want to take with me? And I think it was because similar to you coming up in challenging methods, trying to discover who I was amongst all of it, then introducing myself to different disciplines out there and just being open to knowing that something has got to be better than what this was, you know, like, and so it's that forward motion, that step motion of like, what else, what else can I learn? What else can I figure out? But because I exercise that at a young age, the trial and error of it all, the taking the big zig or zag, you know, along my path, I still was moving forward.
And I think that that's a really great thing to be able to walk away from listening today for the listeners here is that it doesn't have to feel absolute all the time. It just sometimes requires that small step and that and having the integrity to say, yes, that step worked for me. And I learned this or it wasn't exactly what I thought it was going to be, but I still learned this, you know, and you can zigzag along the path, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I was like a, you know, as a child growing up, one of my biggest heroes, you know, and I guess, you know, growing up without a father, you try and look for these fathers figures. Of course. Yeah.
There weren't many good mentors in my own personal circle. So I adopted, you know, celebrity ones or people that I kind of, you know, saw in the media and, you know, Dr. King was just a massive influence on my whole trajectory into the violence work obviously, but just as a human being and encouraged that and what he stood in. And I can't remember this kind of paraphrase, but you know, somebody asked him something about, oh, what's the next steps on this, this and this and this and you know, he was a very strategic person.
I had the opportunity to train with one of his generals, this guy named Lawson, and he was actually one of the people that would train all the civil disobedience, you know, protest people and all that. And I did a train in Kenya non-violence, they called it. And you know, so he was very strategic, but he also just, he made this phrase, he said, I don't necessarily know all the hows of how I'm going to get there. I just have an end goal and I just take the next step, the next step, the next step.
And that is kind of, you know, and so as an example, that in my early 20s before I had even completed my education, I was trying to think very pragmatically. I got to figure out a way to feed my family. I don't have an advanced degree. I need to get something going here.
And I put four years of my life into attempting to become a firefighter. And there's like, for every position, at least at that time, four or five or five, there's 2,000 applicants. And so for four years, I trained physically, you know, a lot of my undergraduate courses and fires. I just thought, let's do it, you know, let's try it.
And I told myself whether I achieved this or not, I just want to have a clear conscience that I gave it 100%. And so at the end of that four years, I got close a few times. I got some interviews, not quite, never quite got there. But the skills that I had learned on organizing my time, you know, the physical fitness elements, the training, those tests that were very difficult, that helped me in so many different ways.
There was this whole slew of skill sets that I had. And I'm glad that never happened because I like what I do now. But you know, we get so caught up like you were sharing, you get so caught up. And oh, you know, it's got to be so perfectly planned and it's got to work out this way or that way.
And life's not like that. Life is like, you know, life is like, just to which I trained in, you know, you think somebody's going to come out, you would one thing. They come at you with something and you just got to roll with it right there and just work it out in the midst of it. And, you know, the more I think that's what's really missing now with a lot of traditional, what would you call it like, paradigms of leadership is, you know, we still have this domineering type of mentality when it comes to leadership, right?
It's very proactive. And I taught and people listen, I make decisions and people follow versus a more synergistic kind of give and take. You know, it's a collaboration. When you get right down to it, you know, we talk about these heroes, Ellen Must or whoever Jeff Bezos, whether you like them or not, these people are with people called successful people.
They didn't get there by themselves. You know, they never do. It's about having a synergy with a team that you're with and really going with the energy in the room, not to get to, you know, woo, woo. But it really is emotionally, it matters a lot.
Emotional intelligence is a key missing thing. And I think honestly, that's why, in my opinion, women make some of the best business leaders because they're more structured societally to have that sort of emotional intelligence in the honor given a little bit more push and, you know, depending on how you define it indoctrination, sometimes to be more emotionally intelligent to navigate around the domineering men. But the reality is that skill set is what's needed more in leadership. It's definitely from everyone.
Yeah. From everyone. I do think that there is an opportunity, an amazing opportunity for that kind of integrative learning in what synergistic leadership stands could look like, regardless of your sexual orientation, let's just say. I know for me, definitely my EQ was way high.
And I did as a female in a male dominated industry and technology, you know, that I started back in the day, also being in a society where they definitely would recognize men's achievements over the women. And feminist movement was just coming up where, you know, we, the language around training women and showing women that it is possible to do it all. I do think it's been a great support into who I have become, you know, as a female leader in this world and helping other leaders also show up. I think though that men who have had a dominant masculine stance because that's what they were trained to become, they were conformed to become that and maybe potentially their EQ and their emotional side was swatched because it did not belong in those constructs.
That's the traditional paradigm you were just talking about. That's the piece that I love seeing when I meet with other men and women who have spent the time to actually understand both the economies and figuring out like, what is this synergy to stand in it all. And the word reciprocity comes in a lot, in my opinion, because that's that give and that take, right, of energy and feminine side on our bodies, our left side, the masculine side is our right side. You know, as women, we tend to overwork our right side if we're having to be in a masculine environment for so long.
And this year, especially post being in the tail end of, I hope, this pandemic where we're back out into the world expressing who we're meant to be physically with each other as opposed to just virtually like this, where a lot of women I've talked to even myself have been going through like health, almost like a rebirth. It feels like it's happening because we had to sit in this recognition in this past year of, you know what that masculine energy of that push push push doesn't work anymore. And we need to figure out how we can like raise up the feminine energies or and what is also fed into the EQ measurements out there too, where it is about this synergy. It's about that alignment of who am I truly?
What is the best way for me to show up in this moment and stop with the veil or the the being who are not anymore? Just like, you know, if you've been in the toxic male environments and that was not who you were, you know, you were beat up on a lot as a kid, but you were not meant to be a fighter, you know, but you found a discipline where you could protect yourself and also show other people who are not. And also show others how to protect themselves, which is a very integrative stance on on that masculine and feminine energy. So I do think it's a topic we need to face more and like have more discussions on because it's it's the only way I think we're going to create the new environment that this awakening of this last year has created for anyone who wants to be a conscious leader today has to understand not only for themselves to feel healthy in their role, but also to cultivate it in their organizations.
Absolutely. Yeah, that those that domineering paradigm has never worked for males and you know women who during a certain time frame, I would say even now, like you're saying in a lot of industries, women in order to make themselves hurt and make themselves have the impact that they they want to have within their careers sometimes need to exercise what would be called traditionally masterland type of energy is right. And you know, whether regardless of the gender of the person exercising that it's not healthy in the long term, if it's in balance, you know, and I think that's one of the beautiful things about you know, Chi Gang that I've learned over the over the 20 years that I've been doing Chi Gang 21 years actually is that this balance like it sounds like a slide track, but I'm inside. No, no, it sounds perfect.
Like I really want to explain the benefits of it too. So please share with our listener. What is Chi Gang and continue? Sure.
Well, in Chi Gang, which you know, the term for that is Chinese yoga. One of the things that you do is everything you do. On the right side, you balance out on the list side, the end and the on right. So we know conceptually in our conversation that we should do this, but when you add your body into that equation and you reinforce the learning of the emotional intelligence training or the training and development that may come into play in a workplace or even just in your own personal life, someone who's maybe learning how to meditate or whatever it is, when you add the kinetic dimension to that is another avenue of learning that can enhance our totality as a human being so that these energies of masculine and feminine.
I don't really like those terms, honestly. Yeah, I know. I don't either. But yeah, like if you have new terms, I would love them because I don't like them either.
I feel like it's also too constraining. Yeah, I don't. I have a lot of critique of the old terms. I, you know, when I did a lot of training with young men and women around these issues, I would refer to it as gender indoctrination.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, and it was interesting for me growing up in a single mother's home because, you know, I would have people or the society, I should say, which I mean, this is how women should act and this is how men should act.
Well, I didn't, I wasn't raised by a woman or a man. I was raised by a human being. Right. And so when the bill collectors would call and my mother had to get into that more direct energy to protect herself and her kids, you know, there was no difference between what I saw in a strong mail or even physically defending her kids sometimes.
Yeah. And then, you know, but still just that nurturing and that tenderness that both males and females have in varying degrees. So I'm, you know, I'm a, I consider myself a very tender and nurturing person with my kids. I have my kids.
I've always been just that guy, you know, so I long for a day where we can actually outgrow these these old modes. And I think what's going to happen in particular in the business world and in particular after this pandemic, exactly what you're saying, these old domineering ways off balance, because sometimes you do have to assert, but these domineering ways, if people, male or female, do not find a way to balance their entire person and operate energetically with teams that they work with, they are going to go the way of the dinosaur. It simply is not sustainable. It's not sustainable in a health paradigm.
That's for sure. But it's also not sustainable economically because people are tired. Like you see a shift in advertising going on now, you know, that'll hammer the advertising stuff. We used to get his kids growing up.
That's, I mean, you know, the younger generation, they could give a rasping. You know, what about that? That's like, get out of here with that. So everything is shifting, you know, and to tie back to the she gone.
She gone is basically slowing down doing deep diaphragmatic breathing and allowing our bodies to heal and the movements. There's 10,000 different she gone forms. And, you know, my own personal journey into that was I hit a point right around 2000 where I had a very severe health crisis. I was having heart problems.
I was put on medication for. I had a lot of personal stressors in life. I was put on medication for depression. I had clinical depression.
And, you know, even though I was active with martial arts, even though I was eating okay, you know, my stress levels were so high, even that wasn't doing it. So, you know, I had a choice of continuing on prescription medications, which I had a friend at the time who was a PhD biological researcher in the pharmaceutical field. And he was a redirect. He's like, do they don't have a longitudinal studies on his stuff?
So you kind of plan a gambling if you stay on that path. And he of all people recommended I find some ballistic way to deal with it. So I didn't want to do yoga because that would mean lying down in jiu-jitsu. You want to be relaxed as you move.
So I thought, okay, I found out about she gone Chinese yoga. And, you know, just threw a few different exercises together from some pretty crappy book that I found in bookstore. And I'm like, okay, this is my symptom. Okay.
Okay. Whatever came up with some made up my own goofy seven minute routine. And within about a week, the symptoms just dropped. I'm like, okay, that's really weird.
Right. And then that pull me into understanding why this happened. You know, at that time, I was a very analytical guy, a very, you know, you know, that's it. And then over the years doing this mind body paradigm is balanced out the two sides of my brain, the left brain, right brain, the right brain.
It's really brought me into more touch with my intuition, but it hasn't weakened my rational and logical mind. And I think that's kind of the storehouse that I've been trying to unpack as a self-care modality for individuals who are in high stress situations. But like you're saying, even more so integrating that into cultures of workforces and in workplaces, that's really where my heart is at right now. Yeah, I love that.
I know you have something we can download in regards to understanding qi-young better, or you have a tell everybody what that is so that they can grab it if they want to learn more and like figure out some of the start of some of this integration because I think it's super important. Yeah. Well, my website is download qi.com and if you go there, there's a little sign up button and I'll get a introduction introduction. I also have some connections for YouTube videos that I do, things along those lines.
So, topically, I generally will stay focused on the business aspects of integrating these into your practices, but also, you know, my wife has an autoimmune disorder, many of my friends have an autoimmune disorder. And so that's something else I also teach about because unfortunately, Western medicine and those types of mechanistic paradigms are not very helpful when it comes to diagnosing or treating these stress-related disorders. And 80% of all visits to the doctor is stress-related and all they can do is give you some pills now for the best. And that's not really a solution.
You know, we need to do something that's a little bit more empowering. I consider sleep, I consider eating decent quality food and doing qi-young or some form of exercise is creating our own medicine. And that's really where we want to get people to be at. There's obviously a lot of controversy going on right now.
Should you get the vaccination or not get the vaccination, it will help you, it will not help you. You know, my thing is do whatever's best for you, but boost your own immune system no matter what. I mean, that's really what we got to do. Yeah, that's how Jeff and I are too.
It's like, it's not just a one-time hit of a vaccine that's going to help you stay healthy. And, you know, it definitely, again, each person has their own choice. It's just really though the ongoing integrative care and really seeing yourself as like a whole system that requires healthy input and healthy output. Having the people to talk to and work with in order to navigate through certain phases of whatever it is you're going through or learning new practices to see what fits.
I mean, just even recently for me going through a lot of health things started to show up and I was like, oh my God, is this what midlife feels like? I thought I was good with my practices. I'm a conscious person. But your body will sometimes show and tell you that no, we're still off here.
You need to focus, you need to come up with the right tools and modalities for now. It is a progression for life too. So I love that you provide that. And I know my listeners will go and download and grab the guide you have because it's just the start of something else.
You can plug in and see how it works for you. And then obviously, if they want to reach out to you or have questions, what's the best way for them to connect with you, Frank? It would also be through the website that you'll see my email, email there's info at downloadche.com. You know, that's the best way.
And again, actually right now, my website guy who's absolutely great. Michael Gonzales, who is a magician with tech. He's doing a little quick tweak on my website. It's up, I believe.
But anyway, it's all the directives to how to get more information or basically downloadche.com. So that's the best way to get that stuff. I was just going to share one of the things that we've been brainwashed to believe in a society is a mechanistic view of our bodies. And that is something I think that we kind of, again, as a culture, need to outgrow and come up with an integrative model that you're talking about because basically how I described it to my students and my clients is that we're basically a walking battery.
We're like about 60, 70% water. We've got a little dash of minerals in there and we got an electric charge. And so doing Qigong or doing any kind of deep diaphragmatic breathing, mind, body practice yoga, some kind of martial arts, whatever it is, doing those things is basically training that electric system to operate a full capacity. It's like having, you know, when you're driving in some rural areas and your cell phone won't get the reception.
There's parts of our body that do to pass trauma. It can be emotional trauma. It can be physical trauma. It's like the information, the nutrition, the healing, the oxygen is not able to get in there.
And how I describe it to people I'm working with is that just, you know, a lot of people have gone in for acupuncture treatments and I love acupuncture and that, you know, studies in traditional Chinese medicine. And Qigong is actually the foundation for Chinese medicine. So when you go in for an acupuncture treatment, all they're doing is they're sticking needles into your body to help redirect the flow of this Chi, which is an essence, bioelectric energy. And what Qigong, what we're doing is the needle is our mind.
It's our concentration. So if a particular movement on the magic that I'm going here and then coming back, that means that that bioelectric energy is slowing up and that bioelectric energy is slowing back. And you know, one of the beautiful experiences I had in Los Angeles when I was teaching regular weekly classes there pre-COVID was I did a presentation for an autoimmune disorder group called Scleroderma. And it's a really, really painful, difficult autoimmune disorder.
And I did a presentation for some support groups and a bunch of them end up signing up for my class. So like eight or nine of the folks are in my group. And it was an IME class I was doing. And by week four, at the end of the class, some of them were requiring because they were feeling, feeling in areas that they hadn't felt in a long time.
And they're like, I'm going to be like, I did something. I'm like, hey, it's just you moving, doing de-breathing. You know, nothing special about me. This is just your body doing what it's designed to do.
And that's really what I see being the potential for this, not only with people who are suffering some of the end game results of our stressful environments, but I'm all about prevention. You know, that's my thing is if you can prevent something from happening, let's do that. So if we can start integrating some of these mind body practices as part of our work culture and not something weird that is brought in from the outside. I did a 10 hour shift.
Now I got to go do an hour and a half. You'll be classed. No, no, no, no, no, let's cut that off at the past. Let's integrate it into our workplaces.
And now everybody is going to be able to operate at the performance. Everyone's going to remain as healthy as they can be. And this is going to flow a lot better. That's what I want to see happen.
Yeah, I love it. I'm on that same mission to it. It is exactly what I've been visioning and also starting to put into formulation of how we actually help companies do that because I feel like we need leadership in that space. Frank, like you and I have seen the benefits of it.
We need to constantly keep figuring out ways to bring it into organizations because if they haven't done it yet, then they don't know how. And so sometimes you got to bring that formula in and be like, okay, here's how here's how we're going to support you that whole way. So I love that you're saying this because you're speaking my language, but also breathing life into the vision I have for this next business I plan to launch. Of course, I'm going to include you on because I know you'll add so much to it as an advisor as well as a practitioner of peak performance.
So this has been so great. But as a thank you for having you on my show, Frank, because I know so many people are walking away with great nuggets from our conversation and things that they can put into practice now. I would love to just thank you by giving you some time to ask if there's a question, something you're going through or need support on that I can support you on today. Well, yeah, actually, I'm sure this is something that a lot of the people that are doing their own businesses and have made that transition from working in the corporate world and are trying to do their own thing and self-employed.
Besides the Jigong business, I also have a publishing company called Less is More Press and I work with authors and stuff there. And one of the things that is difficult with the book business in particular is exposure. And of course, everyone thinks now because it's such a dominant factor in marketing and social media or maybe Google ads or Amazon is basically one big search engine. And so I've studied a lot about the SEO and I do blogging as often as I can as often as I should and all that sort of stuff.
In regards to getting old school media exposure, what I've done is back when I was working in corporations and on profits, I would help craft press releases. Okay, so, okay, shoot this off to this person. But I guess any tips that you would share for not necessarily operating within the domains of social media and navigating the SEO stuff, which everyone seems stuck there, what are some of the things either for newsprint media, local news stations, even TV appearances, that type of thing. Yeah, what kind of suggestions do you have for people that are wanting to maybe flex some of their marketing muscle in that area?
And share specifically that their writers, like that their authors in that arena or just any entrepreneur trying to... Okay, so like I just because there's like the whole book launch path, like we could talk through, but then it's just really what it what I guess I take it to the level up of like what is the platform that you are standing on, meaning is this outlet, the best thing for the attraction you're trying to get. So, you know, you're trying to get media attention, for example, especially if you're a content creator and you have so much that you're able to share, it's really about understanding what media outlet is best aligned for your brand and your presence and the platform that you stand on. And then once you determine that, so for example, is it like Entrepreneur Magazine, Forbes Magazine, do you want to be on local news in your area?
Those type of questions to ask is first to identify which media outlets matter to you and your brand the most. Then it's about doing your research to say who are the actual writers and or interviewers that you want to get in front of, because every single one is pining for new content. Like we think that media is such a far reach for us, but all it does actually take is some concentration on how do you actually get in front of the people you want to know about you and talk about you. They all have a path of entry.
Most of them have their emails that are public too that you can pitch to them on. Two of my good friends, Chris and Jen, Jim Gottlieb, they basically are here in the New York area, but they service, you know, all over the place. They have an unfair advantage media company and their tools and tips on how you get in front of media has really been a great lesson learned for me to realize that there are humans behind it all. And you just have to figure out how to get in touch with those humans that you want to be sharing your content with.
And then really understand their method of how they determine the content that they are looking to produce in order for you to be that next person that they say, oh, yeah, great. This sounds great. This is so aligned with what we love to talk about, what our audience loves to hear. And this is the date and time.
Let's set up an interview. So I think it's more approachable than we think it can be. And first you have to really determine what is the best alignment for you and your brand to step into that person's arena and introduce yourself. The way you leverage social platforms for that is to go follow those writers, go follow those interviewers, comments on their posts, try to understand what are the conversations they're having so that when you actually send a pitch to them for you to get in front of them with, it is aligned with things they've already talked about.
It becomes so much easier than to create a connection. Right. So just like we target market for our clients, we want to target market for those media outlets that we're sure to get in. And then we're just trying to get out to, you know, just like you were in with Drive Global and Authority Magazine.
And it's like, you know, these are all writers behind it looking for content. And so it's just a matter of you reaching out to know. So if you don't have a one pager that kind of explains who you are, the topics you like to talk about, if you've written books, like, you know, the highlight of the book and your bio, like just a quick one pager that goes along with your pitch, that would be something to create to make it easier for them to be like, oh, yeah, this person would be great in front of an audience. And that's just set something up.
Like, you know, but you have to kind of tell them, don't ever email and this is just more for my listeners because I know Frank, you're way more apt than thinking this, but to reach out to anyone and say, hey, can I, can do you have any like openings for me to get in front of your audience? Or like you have to make it so that it's aligned with how you're going to help them help their audience. Like that's the type of messaging. I realize we talked about XYZ.
I love dialoguing on that topic. You know, here's something that I recently wrote or I was interviewed here and you can give them other like credentials, you know, for them if they want research. And I would love to share this and explain your top three things with your audience whenever you're willing, you know, or when you have the time or however we can connect, I'd be open to it, you know, simple, keep it simple. That's how I would.
Yeah. Yeah, of course. Well, thank you for being on the show today and listeners, as you know, we love hearing from you and your takeaways. So please make sure as you're listening to go ahead and hit that subscribe button.
But also let us know what other questions you have because Frank and I are always here to support you and again, we'll see you in the next episode. Wasn't that such a great episode? I know you got amazing takeaways from that. What I would love for you to do for me if you can help me extend my reach is go ahead and subscribe to the show so you get the latest notification and listen before anyone else.
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