Team Never Quit

Are uncertainty and hardship inevitable in this life? Could you use a jump start for pursuing your goals, while living a healthy, fulfilled life? This week’s guest, Erik Korem, is the guy that can equip you to that end. His unquenchable curiosity and eagerness for knowledge made him an expert in high performance. Erik started as a walk-on football player at Texas A&M, and that's where he found two things – a never-quit attitude and curiosity for high performance. After spending over 15 years working as a sports scientist, Erik’s passion for solving the data-to-action gap in the wearable tech and mHealth space came to life. He is the founder & CEO of AIM7, teaching people how to turn data into healthy habits. In this episode you will hear: I dealt with bullying, and I just wanted to change myself. Kids can be cruel. In physical fitness events, I was always last. After watching John Jacobs and The Power Team, I was so inspired and told my dad, “I’ll never be last again.” I learned there was a science to the physical gap I was in. Playing football at Texas A&M, I learned how to suffer well. You can’t fight what you don’t see coming. I could’ve paid attention to how much it sucked, or paid attention to what I could do about it. The Olympic Games are more than winning medals; it’s more like political warfare. I learned about the synchronization of the physical, psychological, technical, & tactical. Wearable devices provide much data, but what do you do with it?  Stress is the gateway to improvement, but chronic long-term stress can be a really bad thing if you can’t get it under control. If you don’t get enough sleep, your brain is literally full of crap. In REM sleep, your body is in a state of paralysis. I don’t praise grades; I praise their effort. If you synchronize with the sun, you’ll start sleeping like a baby. There are research studies that show that if you want to reset yourself, go camping. Sports got me into the game, but curiosity launched my career.

This week, the TNQ Podcast brings you the inspiring never-quit journey of Aaron Quinonez – aka “Sgt. Q” – a Marine Corps Veteran, speaker, author, father, and PTSD ambassador. Having been raised in a rough, homeless environment surrounded by people in the drug trade, Aaron became a marine right out of high school. What he didn’t know is that his real battle would be fought in his mind. Sgt. Q suffered from depression, anger, and panic attacks and was diagnosed with PTSD. He nearly ended his own life in the parking lot of a church, where later he was redeemed by Jesus Christ, who gave him a new life. When he volunteered to build housing for a family in Mexico, Quinonez was so inspired by the experience that he founded the organization, Q Missions, to bring Veterans together to construct buildings around the world and bring mental healing through mission service. Quinonez authored the book: Healing Thru Service, The Warrior’s Guidebook to Overcoming Trauma. In this episode you will hear: I grew up with rednecks, hippies, and pot farmers. Everybody I knew growing up was involved in the drug trade. To be homeless as a kid is a trip. My work ethic came from my mom, struggling to raise four kids as a single mother. I was once on the school bus driving thru the pouring rain and saw a lady carrying two garbage bags, and as we passed I realized - it’s my mom. You gotta reposition your mindset from negative experiences to find something positive and focus on that, because what you focus on - your brain will find more of. If you have one trauma, another trauma will stick to it and eventually become PTSD. Your brain is like a weapon – if it’s malfunctioning you do a function check, and you get back in the fight. I went from the battlefield to my front door in less than 48 hours, so there wasn’t any out-processing. It wasn’t until I could overcome the victim mentality that I was able to get my life together. You may have left the battlefield in Iraq, but every day that you wake up and put your boots on the ground, you’re on another battlefield – the battlefield of the mind. You can repurpose military tactics to overcome trauma. When anxiety hits, the first thing to do is return fire – speak truth: There’s no real threat; There’s no real danger: I’m totally in a safe environment. Bring yourself out of that emotional state. 67% of men in America have admitted they’ve struggled with a mental health crisis. You didn’t fight the war alone, so don’t fight PTSD alone. Communicate with people and tell them you’re struggling.

We have an inspiring guest in this week’s Team Never Quit podcast. Brian Kilmeade shares his motivating views about reaching your personal potential, despite apparent failures along the way. Brian is a television and radio presenter and political commentator for Fox News. On weekdays, he co-hosts Fox's morning show, Fox & Friends, and he also hosts the Fox News Radio program The Brian Kilmeade Show. He has authored or co-authored non-fiction and fiction books, and is a New York Times Best-Selling Author. Brian is also a father of three. His attitude related to pursuing a dream, making things happen for a better life, and his love for this country is refreshing. In this episode you will hear: • Coming out of college, I just wanted to talk sports and news. • I played soccer through college. I wanted to be great, but I wasn’t. • If you fire me or don’t hire me, that’s your choice, but I’m not gonna quit. • It’s our job to reach our potential – whatever it is. • If things don’t work out, you can’t blame people. • Newscasters pretend they didn’t put an oar in the water or tell you who to vote for, but by a look - by the way they give one side more power that the other. When you think you’ve heard a straight newscast – no you didn’t. • If you are for an open border, you don’t care about the country. If you destroyed the oil and gas business, you don’t care about the country. If you’re gonna stand down the Army to talk about white supremacy, you don’t care about the country. • If you want to see an example of overcoming obstacles, pick up Andrew Jackson’s book. He was orphaned and he was raised by his town, his county & his country, yet he became a 2 term President. • Don’t get caught up in results. If you fail, your success is just delayed. • The only time you fail is when you quit. • The most rewarding thing to me is helping other people.

Now here’s a guy with an unbelievable vision, drive, and a relentless pursuit of success. Dre Baldwin not only helps athletes get recognized for their talents; he’s a former basketball player, speaker, influencer, YouTuber, and author of The Third Day: The Decision That Separates the Pros from the Amateurs. Tre is a master at teaching discipline, mental toughness, and personal initiative. Listen in as this well-spoken motivator tells of his personal path from his high school team's bench, to the first contract of a 9-year professional basketball career, then pioneering new genres of personal branding and entrepreneurship via an ever-growing content publishing empire, publishing literally thousands of YouTube videos, viewed over 73 million times. If you could use a spark to get your life moving, this is the podcast for you. In this episode you will hear: When I realized I had no talent for baseball, I stopped that, then stumbled across basketball. I did not go pro immediately after college. After college, I attended “Exposure Camp”, a job fair for athletes. After that event and dozens of cold calls and videos to agents, I was finally signed to a contract to play basketball in Lithuania. I gained popularity, not from basketball videos on YouTube, but from the motivational things I said on them. I launched The weekly Motivation on YouTube. I had to find a way to do something I love to do, plus be a computer geek, and make money from it. I’m a very competitive person. At home, I was taught discipline, respect, honoring authority, and respecting elders. I would make up challenging stories in my mind so I’d have a target to shoot at. If I don’t have anything to aim for, I’m not gonna give my best effort. But when I do, it brings out the best in me. Our generation, ages 30-50 – we are the best generation. People are following me, not for basketball videos, but just to watch The Weekly Motivation. This is life stuff – it’s not athlete stuff. Using the challenges of your life to make yourself better for the future summarizes the entire self-help industry right there. When you have the right people around you, you can go further, faster. In life, you just have to show up.

What an incredible saga of a ten-year-old boy, from Baton Rouge, LA, who had been sexually abused by his Karate instructor, then abducted by him and taken to Los Angeles, CA, where he continued to be abused. Our guest this week, Joseph Plauche, tells of the events that led up those scenarios.  By way of a traced collect phone call, the FBI rescued “Jody” in LA and his abductor was arrested. To add to the craziness of those events, Joseph’s father waited at a bank of pay phones at the airport and then shot and killed the abductor as he walked by, all of which was captured on film by a local news crew. Plauche has worked in the field of violence prevention since 1995. He wants his story to help others in abusive situations, and he offers direction on protecting children.  In this episode you will hear: Plauche authored the book, 'Why, Jody, Why?' During the sexual abuse, there was a physical pleasure, but there was mental anguish. Despite being abused, your body still responds, like a human body responds. He took me to Disneyland. Even though I was kidnapped. It’s not like I was gagged and bound.  I can’t say I enjoyed it, but I kinda did. When I finally told the truth, I felt like the weight of the world was lifted off my shoulders.  I didn’t like him molesting me, but other than that, I thought he was a good guy. For him (my dad) to do what he did, he had to be in so much pain. If he could have seen who I was to become in the future, he probably wouldn’t have done what he did. My dad was the kindest, sweetest man I knew. It’s a parental instinct to eliminate someone that hurts your child. A boy saw me on Geraldo, and then told his mom about being abused by his pastor. The pastor was arrested. That’s the moment that I realized that I could use something negative and turn it into something positive. I wanna help as many as possible. I feel like I can be a role model for victims of sexual assault.

This week’s episode brings you the incredible, first-hand account from Donna Michaels, a US Navy veteran turned police officer – all the while suffering horrifically from depression, nightmares, and PTSD, yet embracing every day of her life with passion and courage. Donna went from victim to solution – she’s now on a relentless mission to stop PTSD suicides. She also authored the book, Courageously Broken - her journey to hell and back.  Donna has quite a story to tell, including the candid memoirs of her military life, her association with Navy SEALS, becoming a cop, the dark years of her life, and her unbelievable recovery.    In this episode you will hear: My career didn’t pan out anything like I thought it would as a teenager. The last thing I ever thought I’d be is a cop. I didn’t even like cops. In the Navy, I wanted to go where the action was. It was tough, but I volunteered for this shit, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna walk away from it as a quitter. Women are equally different. The teams (Navy SEALS} are elite for a reason. I love the idea of helping people. In law enforcement, I could be part of the greater good. I won’t be a bitch, unless someone really, really forces me to be one. I made up my mind that I was either gonna get my shit together or put myself out of my pain. The suicide rate among veterans and first responders is a lot higher than people realize. I want to let those who’ve been through hell understand that there are options for them. They just need to know where to look. Once you hit rock bottom, you’ve got nowhere to go but up. Everybody goes through some traumatic event in their life. I want to teach others that there’s hope. Otherwise, I went through all this shit for nothing. I want to be known for inspiring someone to get the help they needed. Never quit.

To say that Dr. Billy Alsbrooks is a driven motivator with a ton of positivity is a gross understatement. Billy gets real about his life’s path from martial arts at the age of 5, achieving his Black Belt at the age of 9, becoming a songwriter and Billboard recording artist, producer, and dealing with the struggles of his dad’s alcoholism, and yet becoming an influencer, author of the book Blessed and Unstoppable, and motivational speaker, with a goal of improving the lives of 1 billion people. If you’re searching for direction, inspiration, hope, and something to believe in, this episode is for you. In this episode you will hear: Alcoholism is not going to happen to me. People go one of two ways and I want nothing to do with it. When I was doing music, I was a huge promoter of that lifestyle, even though I couldn’t stand it. My goal is to reach and positively Impact 1 Billion People in my lifetime. At school, I’d wear a smile, but I was broken inside because we had been up all night, trying to sober daddy up. To make progress, you gotta deal with the hard stuff. I witnessed his father’s death when a blood clot hit his lungs. My motivational career started at the funeral home. When seeing my family’s cemetery plots, I was told “Here’s where you’re gonna lay”. Those words hit me like a ball bat inside my head. How do you sum up a man’s whole life in 2 or 3 sentences for a tombstone? If I was to die right now, what would they put on my tombstone? I had to ask myself that question. Our only purpose for being here is to leave this place better than we found it. God’s not against us having nice things, but He is against those things owning us. The moment my dad died, the mic got ripped away from me. When I say God, I don’t mean religion, I mean relationship. There’s a difference. God is all-powerful, but He needs our invitation to come in. To get to the next level, you gotta get in the ring with those things that scare you the most. I was born a champion. Raised a champion. I have champion in my bloodline. All I’ll ever be is a champion.

What do you get when you serve as a firefighter for 21 years, and get exposed to the toxins during the 9/11 World Trade Center rescue and recovery operations? If you’re retired FDNY firefighter Niels Jorgensen, you come away with an advanced form of Leukemia ten years later, due to those exposures. Even so, Niels is thankful and blessed to be staying ahead of cancer and enjoying full remission. He is the host of the 20 for 20 Podcast, sharing the stories of 20 heroes, keeping their stories alive for future generations. Niels tells about his horrific experiences from that scenario and his fight with cancer that led to his forced medical retirement. In this episode you will hear: When you have a bunch of significant emotional events, you get saturated, and being in a quiet place is best for the mind and soul. I miss the good of New York, but it’s not the city I was born in, unfortunately. Tennessee is family, country, and I know it still exists in Texas. I was in the firehouse at five years old. Those giants with mustaches are laughing and loving life. I want to be like that. I want to go to work and be happy. I loved being a cop, but I realized quickly that people don’t like cops. In 1994 the fire department had a manual with a target on the World Trade Center that said It’s not a matter of if; it’s a matter of when – Be Ready. We were en route to the World Trade Center when the second tower went down. We were overcome with guilt because we were late for the battle. I felt like I failed my men – my best buddies. 20 years after that horrific attack, two families finally have DNA evidence of their loved ones. They finally have closure. In firefighting, we were used to finding whole bodies, but we weren’t gonna find any in the aftermath of the World Trade Center collapse. I’m American, you’re American. And we need to support each other. Politicians are like dirty diapers. They’re full of shit and they stink. I want to bring back the unity of 9/12. The 20 for 20 Podcast is one of the highest honors of my life - to speak about my brave friends because they were the best that this country has to offer. We’re not hearing the stories of the good guys. We’re worshipping the knuckleheads. I say to my kids, look up from your phone. Look at people’s eyes.  Look up to your creator above, and be thankful. Come back to faith. Come back to family. Most of all, be grateful for every day. Just be a good person.

Have you ever heard of anyone who was not a United States citizen become one and enlist in the U.S. Military the same day they received their citizenship? In this week’s episode, you will meet and hear from Hernán Luis y Prado – born in Argentina, grew up in France, and became a U.S. citizen, only to join the U.S. Navy on the same day. Hernan is a 15 year Navy veteran, humanitarian, entrepreneur, and CEO of Workshops for Warriors, a nonprofit for transitioning and struggling service members, offering them advanced manufacturing training certification and job placements. His attraction to America is that it is the only nation governed by an idea, which is expressed in the Constitution and not a person or bloodline. That’s what this patriot chooses to support. Listen to this incredible man’s story of aspiration and success in the country he loves so dearly.  In this episode you will hear: I sold everything we had to start Workshops for Warriors. We train America's veterans to rebuild America's advanced manufacturing and economic backbone. We harness discipline, an ethical mindset, tenacity, and focus on our skills. You're a badass, you can do anything, improvise, adapt, overcome. It never rains, it only liquid sunshine. When you get out of the military, you go from a suit of armor to the civilian world & are cast adrift in free fall. America needs welders, machinists, and fabricators. You need a skillset. Our school is a velvet funnel. You come from a really tight straw & now you gotta give more liberty until you get to the civilian world. There are 2.3 million unfilled jobs due to unskilled labor in America. Our goal is to rebuild America one veteran at a time. We do the hard things every day. It's the easy things that kick our butts. People come in - shoulders hunched down. By the end of the first week you see them coming back. The most important thing that Americans like and right now is vision. [Marcus Luttrell] “One team, one fight.” Together we can do this, alone we can't.

A second chance at life. That’s the true story of this week’s guest, Kushal Choksi, Investment Analyst for Goldman Sachs turned entrepreneur, 9/11 survivor and author of On a Wing and a Prayer, which chronicles Kushal’s narrow escape from the World Trade Center’s North Tower on that fateful day. It was truly a life-changing event, revealing that there was more to life than pursuing his career. Life became much more spiritual for Kushal as he learned the Sky Bridge meditation techniques, freeing him from impressions and emotional impacts in his sub-conscience. Listen in on Kushal’s compelling recollections from one of the most horrific days in American history, and his path to interpersonal freedom. In this episode you will hear: In my mind, America was that land of freedom where I could become whatever I wanted. 9/11 started out as just another workday for me. There was a huge bang that shook me up. Within a few seconds, the pandemonium started. I’m not programmed to see things like this. It was raining cement, like something out of a movie. When I came out of the building, I looked up and saw a huge, gaping hole in the side of the building. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw another aircraft crashing into the other tower, spewing out a huge ball of fire on the other side. I couldn’t conceive that someone could fly a plane into the building. I saw it go into the building like a slab of butter. The smoke cloud was engulfing everything in its way. As I ran as fast as I could, there was a commuter boat leaving the slip, and I leaped onto it as it pulled away. I was perhaps the last person to leave on the last boat. I had become a statistic – A survivor. It was a dream I could not wake up from. On one hand, I was feeling lucky, while on the other I felt I had to go after whatever I was chasing with more gusto. I had a second chance at life. Whenever you go through a life event, it leaves an impression on our sub-conscience. It creates a lesion on our nervous system. This Sky Breath meditation technique that I learned cleanses the nervous system of these impressions. I am more in control of my thoughts, my emotions, and how I respond to situations. 3 rules for meditation:  1) I do nothing for 10 minutes. Let the world around me collapse. 2) I want nothing. 3) I am nothing – no labels on ourselves.