Welcome to the #piratebroadcast™: 

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Connect with Dennis
https://modernerawarriors.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennis-stoika-81963612b/

Connect with Russ
https://russjohns.com/
https://thepiratesyndicate.com/
https://nextstepnext.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nextstepnext/

Audio digitally transcribed by Descript

Introduction: [00:00:00] 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.

Dennis Stoika: [00:00:10] The intro never gets old.

Russ Johns: [00:00:13] It's fun. It's just fun. And welcome back to the #PirateBroadcast™ Dennis, how you doing my brother?

Dennis Stoika: [00:00:20] It's great to be here. Thanks for having me again. Like I said, I love the intro and I love the concept always of what you do here and bringing people on. I listen to as many of them as I can too. So I greatly appreciate you and all your fans. They're out there as well.

Russ Johns: [00:00:36] Thank you so much. The pirate community is one of the things that I really enjoy in life. Before the show, once again, we were talking and getting all this conversation and it's oh, we should start a show.

Dennis Stoika: [00:00:48] Yeah. Hey, it's 10:02. Now we've got, people are waiting. It's all good.

Russ Johns: [00:00:54] Last time we talked, we had just started this this kind of thing that's going on with COVID and, speaking and slowed down for you. And you're still training. You're still doing a lot of things, but catch us up on what's going on in the world of Dennis. And for those that may not have met you yet, or not aware of who you are yet, give us a snapshot of what's going on.

Dennis Stoika: [00:01:17] Yeah. So a couple of different aspects for different parts of life. Like when I coach people, I've had some people like in the coaching business tell me that you can only have one why and I totally think you can have multiple whys in your life. I'll start with that. And then I have multiple whys in my life. That's why I started the conversation this way, coaching hat on, but also individual. And different aspects of my life. One of that is working for the FBI right when COVID started, I went over to go work for actually the attorney general at the department of justice. And it's moved into a year long project of a president's commission on law enforcement. I'm putting it together, bringing subject matter experts together, experts within the feds and state and locals in addition to academia and non-for-profits, so you name it right? Church groups, all that, and a big report came out of that. We were supposed to be traveling all year and going to different cities and meeting different peoples and learning best practices in different cities too. So a lot of that did not happen. Or it happened a different way, right? Because of COVID. Working very hard every day, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays with subject matter expert calls and then getting those transcribed. And then we have working groups and 15 different areas of actually policing, whether that'd be officer health and wellness or crime prevention or technology, just to name a few. So tons of work at work this past year, especially with our environments,  for police reform too. And of course we've had change in administration and a big piece now has been just getting the new administration up to speed on who we are, what we do for them, for law enforcement as well. And they're still busy getting nominations of other people coming in. And so that's pretty much the work aspect, but yeah. It's had a toll on a lot of people, right? So whether it's government employees a lot of law enforcement getting sick on the streets of our country, first responders that have passed away less effect on feds at least. Cause we're not necessarily on that first line of defense. But whether that's getting PPE right away to people or PPE to those at the border, with people coming across the border. With regard to that's been like full speed, go ahead. And, but all that was people in the federal government where you can not, and again, not the cop on the street, or the first responder on the street, but even working from home. Because a lot of people, right? Not just any, anybody in any business, thank God for StreamYard and zoom and all these other technologies that are out there at your WebEx and all kinds of stuff that people are using. That's one hat. And then the other hats that coaching. And that's whether it's performance coaching, what I refer to like mindset type coaching, and then reality based self-defense and the fitness and nutrition and yoga and Pilates. I've made some business changes over the last year too. I think a lot of people have had to pivot, a lot of people having to pivot. So I lost a lot of students, but in West Virginia or with our governor too, we were one of the last states to close. And they never said don't get together in small groups, big gyms. They closed some gyms down for it was only about two, three weeks, maybe three weeks. They closed gyms down in our state. And then they said you had to wear a mask. But I run small group training  and that's plus or minus 10 people in the entire time that we've been in business. And in addition to that, just one-on-one performance coaching, which is done over zoom. So those things can continue, have had some clients that have continued with that. I had a small group that continued with the rally based self-defense. And in the fitness and nutrition, in addition to the people that come to the weekly classes, we do some exciting stuff. We do a monthly challenge. It could be like cold water or conversations before we started like a long ruck or run or something. Mental challenge, physical challenge, emotional challenge, something like that. We also have a yearly camp that we did before COVID so our next one will be coming up actually, as we move out of it, but it will be in the fall. But the greatest thing that happened to me personally for my business is that I took everything that we did three years ago with different programs, like top 20 self-defense techniques or kettlebell techniques, and six week challenges for fitness and self-defense in addition to some coaching talks is I have moved online, especially after being on the #PirateBroadcast™.

Russ Johns: [00:05:22] You got a camera, you got a microphone.

Dennis Stoika: [00:05:25] I'm telling you so for everybody that's out there, right? Russ Johns actually got me thinking right. Instead of making videos and then having to send it to somebody to edit it or learning how to edit myself, I'm like, I'm going to go... I went and got my own coaching for editing. I'm like, this is horrible. I don't want to be doing this. This is not what I do. And I even coached that. I even coached like the things that you do well, that's where you should excel in the things that you don't do well. Look, I'm not saying you can't learn some stuff or understand marketing or certain things in a business. But when you can, I don't do my own books. I don't build my website and I don't want to edit videos. So you know what you can do go live like we are right now. Bring it to the table, man, and bring it to the table. So I have an online university now there's over 200 videos. We started right now, we're doing a weekly basis. There is something going up for reality based self defense. There is something going up for fitness every week and there's a coaching talk that goes up there or a podcast once a month that replaces that coaching talk. So it's crazy. We're up to about 60 videos in five months. At work, I call it, yeah. I call it knocking down the dominoes when we're getting work done and I'm knocking down my own dominos in my business and it's integrated warrior training. Ir excites me because I believe that there's nothing else like it. There is no other one-stop shop or you're going to go get performance coaching or mindset type coaching, so you work on who am I? What is my purpose? What are my passions? Where are my principles? What are my values? What two, three big topic areas maybe do I want to work on in my life? Set some goals, right? For big goals for those, and then set micro goals for those, and then work with a coach. And you could work with a coach, or  all these things I'm putting online.

Russ Johns: [00:07:20] Or you can contact Dennis.

Dennis Stoika: [00:07:21] Or you can contact Dennis. Yeah, absolutely. But it's amazing. So my content also that I've had for me this is the thing that again excites me, okay, this is all stuff that I've done in my life from the time of like little league football to where I am today. So going in the Marine Corps, to local law enforcement, to a career in the FBI, working for the attorney general. And I started year 24 in the FBI two weeks ago. Hopefully can do a couple more years. I won't say... maybe I should say. So how old is he? How old does the fandom think Dennis is is the question, right? How young do you think I am? And so that's the die young as old as possible. Die young as old as possible is one of my big things over the last few years.

Russ Johns: [00:08:08] Stay young. Vintgage.

Dennis Stoika: [00:08:10] Stay vintage. But soon enough and not much longer, I'll actually have 30 years in law enforcement. Not counting my military time too. So I would love to transition to like you doing every day. Not that I don't love law enforcement still but the reality is all of us have an expiration date. You can only stay in the FBI until you're 57, actually.

Russ Johns: [00:08:30] I think it's only fitting, Dennis, that we think about how we can integrate all of our interests in our life.  Like how do I find a little bit of joy and #gratitude and how can I help other people with what I have and where I am and all of the experience that I've accumulated over the years, that's a powerful tool that we can actually take. And as a coach and a speaker and transfer that experience. Into someone else's and, inspire them to do something greater than they imagined they could. And that's what it's about.

Dennis Stoika: [00:09:01] You're absolutely right. And that's what you do by bringing people on here to talk about different types of people doing awesome things in life. And too, and I'm not so sure, I'd have to go back and look what month that was, I know it was before COVID, but I'm not sure when. So I'm not so sure if my book got published after, or it was published already. I don't remember, but yeah.

Russ Johns: [00:09:20] Do you have something that you could share with the pirate community? I do a giveaway and we didn't get a chance to talk about it, but we could do a giveaway and either you could talk about, contact the winner for 30 seconds or 30 minutes, or I have a book or something like that.

Dennis Stoika: [00:09:33] I'm happy to do a giveaway. I can easily do an electronic version or we can mail out a hard copy, either way.

Russ Johns: [00:09:40] I just want to give a shout out to a few people here. Marcia says thank you very much for your service. Not an easy job. Absolutely.

Dennis Stoika: [00:09:49] Thank you, Marcia.

Russ Johns: [00:09:50] Marcia does copper, microbial copper, that's certified to kill germs.  So that'd be great tool for that.

Dennis Stoika: [00:09:58] Does that work for COVID?

Russ Johns: [00:10:00] Good morning, gentlemen, from Los Angeles, Louis. Elize in from South Africa. Fantastic. Good morning. Good day. Good evening from Pakistan. We've got an international audience here today. It is awesome that you coach people, help them get where they need to go in their lives. Absolutely. Jenny Gold out of Colorado, hi pirates Dennis and Russ. Thank you so much. Sheila Chamberlain is in the house from Memphis, Tennessee. I love the ribs.

Dennis Stoika: [00:10:30] Memphis, Tennessee. Oh, dry rub ribs in Tennessee.

Russ Johns: [00:10:34] Officer wellness. Yes. Very important. Very important. Very important. Absolutely critical. Your service is so greatly appreciated. Dennis, pirates are a rough bunch, but the Admiral is a compassionate leader. We get a hardy meal before we walk the plank. Louis, absolutely, Russ, I'll be picking your brain soon. Thank you so much, brother. Howard Kaufman is in the house. Thank you for your service and dedication. Absolutely. So everyone, I want to ask you to type in hashtag pirate nation and I'll bring it up on the screen, but type in hashtag #piratenation in the comments and let's let's have the winner connect with Dennis and we're get some things going on with that. Great question! On February 10th, EPA certified that our copper kills germs that cause COVID. Great.

Dennis Stoika: [00:11:24] That's awesome.

Russ Johns: [00:11:26] To answer your question, yes. Yes. But let me bring that up. The banner here, you can get your pirate treasure here at #PirateBroadcast™ , so just drop it in the chat. Dennis, I want to dive in a little deeper because we're talking about training and I know that there has to be some serious mental challenges, gymnastics, if you will, from going to where you were pre COVID and change and not to get political here. However, there's been a lot of challenging moments in the government and as someone that serves the public and supports these things that are going on, I really have to believe that wears on individuals. And a lot of people are stressed, not only by COVID, but the the impact of the community. And so how do you coach people to keep moving forward?

Dennis Stoika: [00:12:20] Keep moving. That's a mantra.   It's an amazing question. It's a large question too, by the way. So at the end of the day, there, there has to be pieces. If someone wasn't getting coaching and they just need help, like getting through COVID and change of government and stress and anxiety that lots of people, staying home can be really stressful for people. There's good things about it.  Things can be stressful too.  I'm going to say a couple of things, but then you have to have work behind it. Okay. And I'll try to get to thework behind it, but...

Russ Johns: [00:12:51] Everything worthwhile takes action.

Dennis Stoika: [00:12:54] Daily habits, right? Consistency. So the ABCs of coaching, one of the A's is awareness. One of the B's is big goals and one of the C's is consistency. There's other A's and B's, and C's within that framework, but you have to every day understand that all these other things going on around you are not you. And at the end of the day, I need to wake up and worry about me. So if I'm having a good am ritual, I start my day off right. Whether it's a glass of water, maybe a green shake, some exercise, if that's when you do your exercise or some breath work and some meditation. Breath work and meditation. Perhaps use some of that time, morning time, too, as your personal PhD program, some people may read a Bible or some other religious book, some other people just may read or a book or listen to some podcasts, or do some online training. So it starts with some time, I'm going to throw this out. This is what I think is crazy. People have relationships with other people all the time. They're good. They're bad. They're, hey, whatever. That's my coworker. It's my boss. It's my spouse. It's my kids. Whatever. We don't challenge ourselves to have a better relationship with ourself,  so I would ask all your listeners, even out there, do you spend 20 minutes a day with yourself? I'm not talking about 20 minutes... it's great if you're spending 20 minutes on a treadmill or walking the dog or whatever, too, but spending 20 minutes with yourself. Like in breath and meditation and visualization. Coming forward to who am I? What am I doing for the day? Does it align with my purpose, my passion and my principles? So no matter what craziness is going on around you, you're still worried about Dennis. You don't have control, right? We do not have control. 99% of what goes on in our lives, we have no control over.

Russ Johns: [00:14:42] We have control over how we react...

Dennis Stoika: [00:14:44] and respond. Correct, a hundred percent. So it's with breath and meditation. So if something's going on, I'm having a hard day, you can come in and you can breathe, but there's a lot that's easy. You have to start doing breath work every day. You have to make daily actions, habits. You can have bad habits and you can have good habits. 

Russ Johns: [00:15:00] I think to tag on that, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I want to make sure I  get this out, otherwise, I forget. And the reality is self-awareness and becoming self-aware of how we're feeling about certain things, what triggers us, so we can learn to notice it rather than react to it. I think it's really important and breath work and meditation helps that become clear in our minds and interactions.

Dennis Stoika: [00:15:29] So awareness is the first premise in my coaching. And that's an understanding of who you are, what you are, big goals, things of that nature.  People can choose... I have friends, you do you and I do me. You do you, I do me. You want to wear a mask? They were all that type of questions. You do you, I do me. Stuff like that. But our society has become very polarized in the last 15 months or so, too.  Left and rights and we really, I can say this, and some people just will totally disagree with me and that's okay. But we need more kindness. Like you broadcast #kindnessiscool. We need understanding. We need to respect one another and I at least should be able to give you the time of day to listen to you.  I don't have to agree with you. I don't have to live by what you want. But respect and understanding goes a very long way. And then I will say this, how do you not let it stress? They want to do this? I don't believe in that. Or I can't believe you're not doing this when I'm doing this. You know what, we have to learn to have non attachment. It doesn't mean I don't love somebody if I'm not attached. I also want people to become a minimalist because don't try to chase the next shiny thing or think that material things are going to make me happy. Those are  things that are...it's great to have money. I can go on a vacation. I have a great time on vacation. But those things are not every day going to make you happy. And it came back to what you said, right?  At the end, I'm here to help people and teach them what integrated training is and how you can actually achieve outcomes and results.  I don't get those for you. People I coach, you have the job, it takes your work. I help you get there by co-creation, but at the end of the day, you gotta do the work.

Russ Johns: [00:17:07] You mean I can't hire you to do my pushups?

Dennis Stoika: [00:17:09] No, sorry. I'll do push-ups with you. I'll do pushups with you, but no. So this is a thing too, and I just had this conversation Wednesday night in yoga. Wednesday nights yoga for us. So we value based self-defense, we get functional fitness in that Wednesday. We do yoga, long yoga workout. Thursday, we were back to value-based self-defense and some functional fitness. Saturday, we were doing some grappling and striking in dissonance and ladies self-defense that we teach on that day too. And our regular self-defense and more fitness.  In yoga, if people aren't doing yoga and it's something that you've never tried, I challenge you to do it. And if you are doing yoga, I challenge you, is there breath work actually associated with your yoga, meditation, visualization and journaling?  It might be an awesome yoga class, right? It might be an awesome yoga class, but are they actually spending time teaching you breath work? Are they spending time doing meditations? Or are you taking some of that yourself and spending some time doing breath meditation with your movement, with your yoga and do you visualize? So another piece is, when we talk about the stress anxiety and what I can recommend for people is to visualize your future. What do you want your future to look like? And every day, in addition to breath work or meditation, journaling or contemplation exercises you can actually visualize. So if you want something in life, we can help teach people strategies and framework for coaching. So when you're done with whatever topic that you and I are working on, you can take that forever and then continue to work on other things in your life. When you need some help again, you come back to a coach if you need it. We all do.  I'm a coach and I've had multiple coaches over the last few years. I have a coach right now.

Russ Johns: [00:18:53] Coaches have coaches, right?

Dennis Stoika: [00:18:54] Yes, they do. Cause my objective is to get better still.

Russ Johns: [00:18:58] Constant cyle of  of improvement.

Dennis Stoika: [00:19:00] Constant. 1% better every day in every way.  1% better every day in every way.

Russ Johns: [00:19:03] I want to give a shoutout to Jeff Young. He's someone that is always out helping someone else.

Dennis Stoika: [00:19:07] Once a marine, always a Marine.

Russ Johns: [00:19:09] Yeah. Once a Marine, always a Marine. Thank you so much. Amen. Every day is a great day to decide to be kind. Absolutely positively. True, a hundred percent. Jeff, thanks for being here too, by the way. I just think it's so critical, Dennis, that we continue to improve our thought process because that's where it all starts.

Dennis Stoika: [00:19:32] So I hit two things, I said I had a why of like my career and why of my business. And then there's a why of my relationships with my girlfriend and my kids, but then again, all those whys start with yourself.  There's never been an instance where I coach someone and there's not something about relationships because there's always a relationship with you and whatever that is. There's always going to be a something. If I want to excel in my business, great. How much balance are you going to have with your family? You just put things into perspective, right? And so it's for me, when I look at four big prongs of our coaching, it's body is exercise, sleep, diet, nutrition, time in nature, being, which is that spiritual, mental, emotional, all fits within the being. And other tools that we, again to get back to the question you had,  there's specific exercises behind it, but mental toughness, emotional resiliency. So part of getting through this whole last year, plus with people, mental toughness. I'll share this one with everybody here. Breath control or arousal control, we work on arousal control through breathing to help calm the physiological aspects of our body. So we do that with breath. And so breath is one piece of that. And then you have positive self-talk. You don't feed your monkey mind, the thing that's racing that something's horrible or I'm stressed or there's anxiety, so you feed it. We're all gonna die off the plank. This guy is falling. Positive self-talk. And then coming up with mantra, keep moving. No matter how hard it is, keep moving. I have a buddy, his son's name is Will and he was doing a special event and physical type events and his mantra for that 50 hour period was willpower. I can go another hour. Willpower. I can go another hour. So whatever works for you and it can change or it can be specific,  but breath work, positive visualization or positive self-talk then positive visualization. You actually want a hear, see, smell, taste, use all your senses that you possibly can for that visualization. And then your last one is micro goals. Chunk it down to the smallest pieces to get to the next what. I've got one more hour of work. And by the way, for everybody, it's Friday. How many hours you got left to work before the weekend. So chunk it down, right?

Russ Johns: [00:21:53] Unless you're someone like myself that loves work, so I continue to do it all the time.

Dennis Stoika: [00:21:58] So by the way, I pretty much work seven days a week.

Russ Johns: [00:22:00] It's integrated in my life.  If I have to pause on a Tuesday afternoon and do something for myself, go somewhere for my family,  I have the flexibility and I have the ability to do that.

Dennis Stoika: [00:22:09] We're probably getting short a little bit on our time, but that third piece I said was relationships with yourself or others. And one big thing during the last year and a half that I've talked to, so many people have coached people in my gym, friends, family, right? All of the pirates that are out there guaranteed. We now probably have a newer perspective or at least another perspective or come to some realization that, wow,  a lot of us are like I've worked really hard in my life and I need or want some change for this. And that comes back to relationship. Again, you realize maybe how hard you've been working and you've come full circle. It's been an aha moment for people to say no matter what it is to hit you, it just sets you back.  That awareness and what I refer to from the military time is OODA. So observe. Then you orient yourself in that and then you make some decisions and then you act. So another quick coaching tool that all the pirates out there,  no matter what it is, you can always OODA. I'm trying to decide whether I want a regular coffee or an espresso today. I'm observing, I ordered,  I make a decision that I want a double espresso and then I act.  And so it can be done with anything.

Russ Johns: [00:23:23] It can be done with anything. I love that Dennis. If someone were to catch up with this episode, what would you want to leave with individuals to  inspire them to listen to this episode?

Dennis Stoika: [00:23:35] Write your own script. I'll leave it at that. We should be writing our own script for that aha moment. A lot of people have been really hit by the last year, plus with a lot of changes, whether it's loss of jobs or someone in their family or someone dying from COVID that we might've known. So again, at the end of the day, just like you said, you work seven days a week and you love it. I might have a job that pays well and does whatever, but that doesn't mean that you can't be out there doing what I do part-time or what Russ does. So I challenge you to find your why, your passions and things that you're good at, things that you can share with others.  And do it get after it. That's what I want this to be about. That's about identifying the topic, identifying the big goal. That's what I want to do. Don't just make it a dream. Do it because you gotta be the one that writes the script in your life. And I don't care whether you start in your garage, you can make it happen.

Russ Johns: [00:24:30] #MakeItMatter.

Dennis Stoika: [00:24:31] #MakeItMatter.

Russ Johns: [00:24:33] Thank you so much for being here.  I just want to do a giveaway real quick and then I'll I'll share a couple of things before we take off, but let's give away some pirate treasure for the day. Alright?

Dennis Stoika: [00:24:45] Sounds great.

Russ Johns: [00:24:45] All right. Let's see, we got a few interested.

Dennis Stoika: [00:24:49] And drumroll, please.

Russ Johns: [00:24:50] We're coming down to the wire.

Dennis Stoika: [00:24:52] Here we go. This is cool.

Russ Johns: [00:24:53] Who's it going to be? Marcia Reece! Marcia is awesome. I love her. And you will, too. So cool. Thank you so much. And so Dennis how do you like and enjoy having people get ahold of you?

Dennis Stoika: [00:25:08] So if you're on Facebook, you can message me. If not, just send me an email to my business Marcia.

Russ Johns: [00:25:13] Marcia. I'll introduce you to Marcia.

Dennis Stoika: [00:25:15] Cool, she can email me at Dennis Stoika, s T O I K A at modernera warriors.com and I'll get you a free copy of the book.

Russ Johns: [00:25:24] Awesome. Also, it's all in the show notes as well.

Dennis Stoika: [00:25:27] Cool.

Russ Johns: [00:25:28] All the links will be in the show notes at RussJohns.com and we'll get this out to multiple locations, over 20 locations today.

Dennis Stoika: [00:25:34] Perfect. You're awesome. Hey, thank you so much, Russ, admiral and thanks for the community. All the pirates out there, greatly appreciate being on board.

Russ Johns: [00:25:43] We're all here having a great time together. Have a fantastic Friday and a wonderful weekend, everyone. I look forward to seeing you on Monday and as always #kindnessiscool, #smilesarefree and you #enjoytheday.

Dennis Stoika: [00:25:55] Awesome. Bye-bye

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