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Introduction 0:01
Welcome to the #PirateBroadcast, where we interview #interestingpeople doing #interestingthings. Where you can expand your connections, your community, #kindnessiscool and #smilesarefree. Let’s get this party started.

Russ Johns 0:15
It's a good day for the #piratebroadcast. I'm here today with with a new pirate friend. I just want to remind everyone how grateful I am for you being here, sharing this moment and having a conversation with us. Drop comments in the feed, ask questions, make sure that you have an opportunity to connect, engage and communicate with the rest of the pirate community here. We're on Facebook, YouTube, Periscope, and LinkedIn. So like and subscribe, all that kind of good stuff. So yeah, good morning, Dennis. I want to welcome you to the party, and have a good conversation with you about some of the things you've got going on in your world. I know you just got off the road and you've been traveling and you kind of have that part of the business, but the other part of your life is something I want to talk about today around the idea of coaching and some of the mindset and some of the creativity that goes into everybody's life. That's kind of what I want to bring to the table today. So welcome to the #piratebroadcast. You're officially a pirate, and welcome to the party.

Dennis Stoika 1:39
Yeah, I should have dressed up as the part maybe a little bit today. So I think it's an awesome, Russ, name for your show. I think it's awesome that you're looking for unique persons to have conversations with, coffee talk and see what they're doing. That's really cool. So yeah, I'm a full time law enforcement professional, right. 23 years in the FBI, about five years as a police officer, four years in the Marine Corps before that. That's what I do for full time work purpose, passion, with service to others.

Russ Johns 2:18
Thank you for your service. Thank you so much. Gratitude.

Dennis Stoika 2:21
For 13 years, I ran a small part time, side business, which is an additional passion of mine, like more additional purpose and passion. That's coaching and coaching in various different ways. Coaching in general, for like performance type coaching is what I like to refer to it as, but it encompasses coaching, like one on one or group discussions, understanding growth, understanding awareness, and having an integrated training plan and working on using different strategies, tools and practices to move the ball forward, if you will, doesn't matter whether you're a stay at home mom, or you're an elite athlete, right? Everybody's using coaches and the bottom line is, well, I shouldn't say everybody's using coaches, what I mean is...

Russ Johns 3:09
Everybody could use a coach.

Dennis Stoika 3:11
Everyone could use a coach, doesn't matter whether you're that stay at home mom or your an Olympian, professional athlete, etc. But I will say that those at the highest levels of their professions, those at the highest level in other professions are using coaches, It's not just about coaches, it's about mentors and community of practice, too. There's a lot involved with that. The bottom line is that people must invest in themselves, if you want to grow yourself 1% better every day in every way. After 13 years of coaching individuals, one on one and group training in some of those strategies, tools and practices we use and to help. Of course, there's the actual coaching coaching, like I said, the discussions there, the awareness, the growth aspect, breath, meditation, visualization, journaling, various different homework assignments, books, that are recommended to write, to read. Then obviously, having a strategic plan, moving yourself forward in different aspects, either physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, for your body, for your being for balancing your relationships in your life. It could be your business as well. Business could be, again, a stay at home mom, that I'm just needing a better handle on my household or it could be that entrepreneur or intrapreneur, this high level person within a company as well, or it could be anybody in between right at the end of the da. But we use reality based self defense. When we start looking at tools, we're big into making sure that we can take care of ourselves, take care of our family, take care of our group, our little community. So we incorporate extensively self defense, functional fitness, nutrition, that's in that body piece, in addition to sleep in and any other type of nutrients that we that we want to incorporate into our bodies.

Russ Johns 5:06
Sounds pretty holistic. I mean, it sounds like you can incorporate any number of things and in

Dennis Stoika 5:13
Modern era wars is the business. I should have brought another shirt. But the back, it is holistic and see if I can get this on camera. Right, here we go. Let me see if you can you read that.

Russ Johns 5:28
Integrated warrior training? Yes. And I know somebody that you probably have association with, right? Yes. Frank Podany?

Dennis Stoika 5:40
Yeah, so he's in one of the communities that that I do associate with, so integrated warrior training is a lot of coaching. If someone looks for coaching, a lot of it is stovepipe. Meaning, I may go to one specific coach, it may be just about a relationship coach. But we are holistic and that's why I refer to it as integrated training. I call it integrated warrior training. because there's a warrior in everybody. It doesn't matter whether you're a stay at home mom, or again, you're the highest level of some corporation, or you're an elite athlete. One thing I don't like to refer to people, as a lot of people in the CrossFit world refer to when they coach clients is athletes. I may be coaching an athlete, that's if you're an athlete, but the average person is not that. These tools are for everybody and anybody. The bottom line is, if you want to take yourself from where you are now to another level in your life, and continuously working, my mantra, and the book that just came out here recently, it's on my website as well. 1% Warrior

Russ Johns 7:00
1% warrior Just for everyone watching or listening to the podcast, the show notes are available on RussJohns.com so search for Dennis and his podcast will come up and you can actually connect in the transcriptional there, either you can read it, you can listen to it, you can watch it, whatever you want to do. I want to talk a little bit about...because a lot of times some of the biggest obstacles in our life are the the limiting perceptions we have of what we're capable of doing. The only time that I've been able to get past those perceptions, and that perceived limit in my life has been through coaching and somebody else telling me and giving me the confidence that I could, hey, you can do this. This is how we're going to do it. Here's the roadmap and you're acting as a guide. Not everybody needs everything. A lot of people just need to break one of those things, in order to kind of snap themselves into the reality of you can do more than you imagined. So how do you go through the process? How do you kind of break somebody down and say, okay, here's an area where you can actually make some stark improvement in your life and make a difference.

Dennis Stoika 8:29
It's a great question. Then in the integrated training, we sit down, we we ask you to identify what your purpose is, what your passion is, and what your principles are in life. That's right away. Those might be a work in progress to some extent, like the actual principles, maybe I add another one here and that's definitely something that we want to make sure that we go back every year and work continuously to evaluate. Am I pivoting and changing in life? But we should be living our why. Which is our purpose or passion or principles? There's a lot of people whether they're 50 some years old, 70 some years old, 20 years old and 20 year olds probably don't know that so much. As we get older, we hope to maybe have a better understanding and our why can change in life a little bit, we can change careers or stop making the same mistake over and over. When we get beyond our why or purpose passion principles, we then sit down with someone. Well, basically in in the first discovery call, though, I have conversation on what's what, why did you call me? What was going on in your life? Where are you now? Where do you want to be? So from hearing you, I can decide, okay, wow, you're telling me and I'll ask some questions, of course. Like we might have someone's already doing tons of work and now they don't need like you said which area do they need to work on?

Russ Johns 9:52
They might be excellent at CrossFit.

Dennis Stoika 9:56
Yeah, but you can have someone that's doing amazing work physically, but they don't do any yoga in their life. So yes, I said yoga people, meditation, breath work, always start, always start with breath. Before we move to meditation, there's purpose behind that, and making sure that we're doing visualizations, and we're doing journaling. So even if people are doing some great things in the physical aspect, adding yoga for durability, but the bottom line to get to your question is we're going to narrow some of that down. In which category do you already do relativelywell in? What are you doing okay, in? What do you need to work on the most? I do find out that...so I like to refer to what we coaches body being balanced, and then business. And then there's other things that fit into those larger categories. The bodies, the physical, the being is mental and emotional awareness and control and resiliency. Then balances the relationships, you have a relationship with yourself, you have a relationship with everybody else in your life, whether it's co workers, bosses, anybody within your family, wife, husband, kids, etc, right? Neighbors, pirates and the last would be business, right? What we'll end up doing is really focusing on making you create a training plan for physical, mental, emotional well being. Awareness, intuitional awareness in a spiritual, by the way, it could be something that's very religious, or it could be something that's a spiritual for you, okay? Spiritual for you. But we'll focus on one or two of those within a six month period. If things are going well, we might transition off right to something, but the bottom line is, it's going to take someone six to 12 months to really work on one of those areas.

Russ Johns 12:02
I have to believe that having your experience and your training and everything, all the efforts that you've had in law enforcement, and your bs meters pretty high, so when somebody's giving you a lie and saying, I'm doing it, it's like, yeah, I know you're not.

Dennis Stoika 12:23
So Russ, coaching is different than therapy. It doesn't mean that I don't work with clients that also have therapists, right? It doesn't mean that I won't work with a client that also has another, someone that they're doing something physically with, because they're not maybe here. I coach people online, right? I also coach people in my gym that are local. But as a coach, you will work with other entities as well, to make sure that again, holistically, you're trying to give the client the best of what they need in order for them to grow. I will tell you this, coaching is a co creation thing you do with them. So you can't be too hard. You can't give them too much. You have to give them just enough to bite that they do the work and everybody's different.

Russ Johns 13:18
Some people are motivated by something unique in their life. They're coming to a coach for improvement. However, they may not know what improvements are, what changes in their life will make a difference in here, in their mind. So you have to kind of be a guide in how to navigate through that process. For me, we probably forget more than most people learn about a lot of these efforts, mental toughness. Being trained in a lot of different disciplines, you have to realize that there are others that may not be at the same level, and they just don't know how to get there. I mean, it's like I know I want to get there. I just don't know how to get there. So, being able to unpack some of this is a huge value. It's a huge value. I want to take a minute here. There's a couple people in the room that are pirates. Jeff Young says congrats on becoming a pirate Dennis. And thank you for the service. Network and make all sorts of terrific energy. And then Cathi Spooner says Good morning, pirates from YouTube this morning. Good morning, Cathi. Cathi's pirate shoes on earlier. Definitely a fan of coaching when you're an entrepreneur because we need someone to help us navigate the various challenges that arise and keep us moving forward. Being an entrepreneur is is a lonely business sometimes, it really has a lot of ups and downs, so we have to think about that. I'd like to dive into that a little deeper. Gabriel. Huge fan of Gabriel. Morning, everyone. Happy Friday. It's rainy and dreary here in Dallas, Texas. But there is always sunshine in my heart.

Dennis Stoika 15:26
I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. That that goes along with...

Russ Johns 15:32
Cathi's statement...

Dennis Stoika 15:34
What goes along, Russ, with no matter what type of cloudy day you may be having, rno matter how hard it may be or negative, maybe there's always sunshine. Yeah, there's always sunshine behind it.

Russ Johns 15:46
Absolutely. That's the way I've always positioned my life. I've had some rough moments and challenges and it's like, you just have to look at the opportunities that are the education in the experience, you know, it's just an experience. It's one of those things, it's like, okay, what can I take away from this? How can I enjoy it. I'm not gonna say that it's rainbows and unicorns all the time. However, I think, especially with social media, you have a tendency to see the a game, or the highlight reel of everyone else. I'm here to tell you that I'm a pretty positive person as long as you know, me and Frank Podany knows me for years. He knows how positive I am and how much work it takes to get there some days.

Dennis Stoika 16:41
So this is awesome. So last night in my class, right? Two points. One, I want to go back to one thing you said, change in life and navigating and needing a coach. We're moving people from their pain to bliss, hopefully, right? Something that's the issue in their life. Oftentimes, the one reason why you need a coach is because you have BoO. background of obviousness, it's obvious to everybody else. But you know, again, you kind of sit back, like my daughter says, Dad, you're not normal. You're anything but normal. No one's like you, no one does those types of things and not knowing necessarily, right? But there's a difference between being a 1% warrior. Those are people that are doing the work day in and day out, that are continuously trying to grow to be 1% better every day in every way. But it comes back to especially this year. And you said it right? Negativity, you said the opposite. I think you said positivity. But, negativity creeps into our minds, even Russ and Dennis, even as coaches. But, that's okay. We're human and negativity will creep in. It can come in two fashions. It can come in from the individual eye. But it can come in mostly right from others too. It's about trying to limit the time that we spend maybe with others if we can, that are very negative nancies in our life and working towards when we do have that negativity is interdicting it, right? We interdicted, we redirect it, we come up with positive visualization, positive mantra, and we set goals and move forward, right? Especially this year, a lot of troubling stuff, COVID and election and civil unrest. People losing their jobs and economy, maybe down jobs, things of that nature. So a lot of negativity going on. If it's not even with you, it's with other people that we know, right? Dealing with those people too. It helps again, when you get coached, and you learn awareness is the first premise in my coaching. When you are able to be better aware, you're making better choices, making better decisions. You observe your yourself, what you observe what's going on, you orient yourself with that you make some decisions, and you act and you consistently go through that. When you're able to do that, over and over and over, consistently that becomes part of you. Right? You have that greater awareness when the bad things happen or difficult things happen or negativity happens when some type of fear happens. Or when you have less ego in your life about other things. Other people don't beat you up. Then you can have better peace more peace within yourself and be a happier person. A better pirate.

Russ Johns 19:37
Better pirates better pirates. So Dennis, tell me some area of your life that coaching has helped you personally as you're not normal, you're a pirate. So what's an area in life that you could always kind of go back to and gravitate and say this is an area that I know that I can approve on.

Dennis Stoika 20:02
So for me the last several years, it really has been my business, Russ more than the I, the individual. So again, I said body being balanced in business. So I'm operating on pretty decent cylinders for my workouts, my meditation, my journaling, emotionalism, resilience, mental toughness, right, and the things that I do and coach. I've had amazing coaches, I've gone out and invested in myself on the best...

Russ Johns 20:31
Coaches have the best coaches,

Dennis Stoika 20:32
You've got to do it right, if you want to be one of the best coaches yourself, like I do. Okay, just like the FBI, I'm in the FBI, right? Premier law enforcement agency and Marine Corps premier military and I want to be the most Premier, integrated warrior training, small business out there in the world. That means I go out and get the best people. Right now for my business, it's been how can I take what I do and reach more people because I'm in small city, USA outside of Washington DC. I do it part time, and I want to be able to reach more people. I want to be able to help because my passion is service to others. My purpose in life is service to others. I can only reach a small amount of people. So over the last few years, I've gotten with other coaches on how to be a better coach. other coaches to how to grow my business. That is 12 month coaching to write a book that just came out. International bestseller, multiple countries, four different areas of growth.

Russ Johns 21:46
That has to feel like an accomplishment.

Dennis Stoika 21:48
It wasn't easy. It's time consuming. I always said to myself when I was done with that I got another coach so I can do more organic marketing, like podcasts like the #piratebroadcast. Like the #Piratebroadcast. So doing a lot more media, pushing myself for who I am, what we do, what we can do to offer people assistance if they're interested to be part of our community, get mentoring and coaching. The next piece I again with coaching for business was for media type purposes. Not media to advertise like the advertise the book and stuff, organic marketing. I just push forward online subscription for what we do. So it will continue to grow. Right now we have a introduction of the six week challenges. There are six week fitness challenges, six week, women's self defense, six weeks of coed self defense, there's 12 coaching talks, which somewhat relate to the chapters in the book, not 100%. But some of those relate to the challenge of the book. There will be more areas coming of coaching talks on there, as well as we teach people 20 instructional kettlebell techniques, 20 instructional sandbag techniques, 20 instructional yoga techniques. Believe me, if you're a yoga enthusiast, one of your listeners was that popped up here, right? It's not normal, what I'm talking about is adding breath and meditation, visualization and journaling. So at least half of those 20 if you're not incorporating those things in your yoga, which is very typical in the United States, people just do movement, nothing wrong, we should be doing movement, right. But if we're not starting out our workouts or our day and a morning ritual with breath work...maybe before I go into a meeting where I have to talk to the kids, or whatever it may be, right when I incorporate box breathing, and there's like nine other breaths that we show in there to increase energy to relax. So even if you're in to yoga and I've got yoga, there's some valuable tools in there, and we're going to be adding more, there'll be some firearms and some crime prevention talks on there. And we're going to be adding some grabbing and striking. I'm in some conversations, I can't say it yet with some other very big people in the business to possibly even do some taping with them or incorporate some of their taping already that they've done and put on our site as well too.

Russ Johns 24:25
Well, I I coach people on creating media just like the #piratebroadcast, and so I can understand and appreciate some of the things and the essence of getting that and the best movements and things that you need in your life and I just appreciate the fact that you're here in the pirate community now and and I know that all the links and everything that will be available in the podcast and the broadcast and the post and, and we'll put it out there because I mean people need some help. I just want to go back to a couple of people here in the room. SlapTagz, Sheri Lally, she's a longtime pirate fan and supporter. She's there. Wendy says it's snowing again in Minnesota. In the world, Admiral Johns runs a tight ship. Jack says she is right. So I'm not sure what the conversation was that he was referring to; however, Russ, you are a positive force out there. You bring the light, my friend. We always look forward to the #piratebroadcast. Thank you so much, Jeff. I appreciate you. Love you, man. Angela says I needed to hear this. Awesome. Angela. Awesome. Fantastic. COVID has beaten the peace out of me. You know, there's me, challenging. Gabriel says yes, he does, Wendy Weiner Runge. I enjoy spending time with this motley crew. I appreciate that. 1918 was immediately prior to the roaring 20s. That's a good point. That's a good point. You know, everything is perspective. We have a perspective here. So Sukhdev says, good morning, Russ and Dennis, I tell my clients to forget about what others are doing and how far others have come. Start by competing with yourself. What is an improvement, like Dennis said, do what you can to become the better version of yourself every day than you were yesterday? Absolutely.

Dennis Stoika 26:33
The only easy day was yesterday because it's no longer here. The only easy day was yesterday.

Russ Johns 26:40
We just rented it. We just need to pay the rent today. Again, the benefit of breath work and manage stress, anxiety and depression is phenomenal.

Dennis Stoika 26:48
100%, Cathi.

Russ Johns 26:49
So Cathi, thank you for that. Good morning, everyone and fellow pirates. Then Michael Baker's here in the house morning. Let the sun shine. Angela says thank you. It keeps going. It keeps going. I just thank you so much. All the gratitude in the world, Dennis. I know that you're on a tight schedule and you've got things to do and places to go and conversations to have.

Dennis Stoika 27:15
I do, unfortunately,I'd love to stay on longer. So I'd love to be on another day. Russ. So when you have a break in your schedule, let's do it again. I'd love to chat and have coffee. What I love about this compared to the other podcasts that I've done is that it's live. We're taking questions instantaneously from people to where there's just again, additional talk. So it makes the #piratebroadcast live, right? So yeah, thank you.

Russ Johns 27:42
If I mess up, I mess up. That's how we learn man. That's how your life is like an instrument. You just got to keep practicing. Right?

Dennis Stoika 27:54
Very good. So I want to thank all of the pirates out there.

Russ Johns 27:59
I appreciate everybody in the pirate community. Like, subscribe, follow, share all of the things on social media, help us out and continue to be successful and in our lives and everything else and #kindnessiscool, #smilesarefree and you #enjoythe day.

Dennis Stoika 28:19
Take care everybody. Thanks, Russ.

Russ Johns 28:21
Bye.

Exit 28:22
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