“Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.” Hebbel
I started my fitness journey as skinny, puny 145 lbs 18 year old. Like most guys, I wanted muscles to get noticed but what started as a way to get a date with a girl became a lifestyle and a career. After tirelessly trying to break into the fitness industry, I got my first training job in 2004. I was certified and ready to start whipping people into shape. What started as something I was doing on the side became a love and an obsession. Personal training was what I wanted to do! I trained them all; professional athletes, wannabe pro athletes, housewives, wannabe housewives, executives, and wannabe executivesJ. You name it, I trained them. My next moves were instilling the education and know how I developed as a trainer to other trainers. In 2007 I was promoted to Quality Control Director for Urban Active Fitness. I have spent the past 6 years directing and leading 400 personal trainers in 7 states. I’ve certified trainers; I’ve proctored hundreds of seminars and conference calls and even contributed 10 published articles. My mission is to spread the word of fitness to as many people as I can through personal training. My motto is Train, Motivate and Inspire!
This is my listed biography, short form, but doesn’t tell you everything about me. It has been a long road for me, a road with alot of high points, a few low points but otherwise great career. A career that could have been derailed several times but one that keeps going very strong. A great word I like to use is virtuosity. A word that most people are unfamilar with but one that is very important particularly to me. It simply means “doing the common, uncommonly well,” a moniker I strive to live by. The last 60 days have been a challene for me on a professional level but also a personal level. Personal training is life to me; clients, members and trainers are my family. With Urban Active I helped develop thousands of trainers some of which are with the newly name LA Fitness and some are spread throughout the industry. That simply means everything to me. On October 25th, 2012 at 5pm EST Urban Active closed its doors after nearly 20 years of operations. My entire fitness journey occured within the four walls of Urban Active. A part of me died the day we closed the doors. Now, I could of hung my shoes up and moved on to something else but I wouldn’t be living by the virtuosity defininition. There is a fire inside of me that needs to make a difference, that needs to lead. I need it like I need to breath. I am rambling I know but these thoughts have been trapped for the last 2 weeks and I needed an avenue to reliquish it
To summarize my feelings and future plans I want to say this; I need fitness as I need food. I cannot leave my passion and refuse to let my vision die just because Urban Active closed the doors. It is time for a new journey a journey I have not been on before. My search for new obstacles to conquer has begun, please join me on this ride, I promise you will not be disappointed. I am back jack!
By Jonathan Miller, on Wed Jun 12, 2013 at 2:11 PM ET
Welcome to Episode Two of The Recovering Politician’s CRISIS TV, a weekly roundtable discussion of the highest profile national scandals, with expert analysis from those who’ve served in the arena and suffered through crises themselves.
SPOILER ALERT: Be prepared to laugh — these former pols tend not to take themselves too seriously.
CRISIS TV is hosted by The RP, former Kentucky State Treasurer Jonathan Miller.
This week’s guests include:
Rod Jetton, former Speaker of the House, state of Missouri
Jason Grill, former State Representative from Kansas City
Josh Bowen, Nationally renowned and published personal trainer
Click here to order
This week’s topic — Baseball and Performance Enhancing Drugs
The panelists discuss the nature of the scandal, what Major League Baseball and accused players such as Ryan Braun and Alex Rodriquez have done wrong, how they could have handled the crisis more effectively, and what advice they would share with the players and owners.
The panelists discuss the lessons they learned from their own crises, detailed in the book they co-authored, The Recovering Politician’s Twelve Step Program to Survive Crisis. Click here to order.
5 Gifts That Keep You At The Top Of Clients’ Minds
The Fruit of the Month Club was way ahead of its time. Now, you can have everything — from razors to makeup to dog treats — sent to you on a monthly basis. I personally use a few of these subscription-based companies to make sure I don’t run out of the essentials, but I really see the value of subscriptions for client gifts.
If you’re in the service industry, staying top-of-mind with your clients (in a positive way) is important. Our company wants to show our clients and partners that we appreciate them in a genuinely thoughtful way, not in an “I’m bribing you with a $500 bottle of wine” kind of way, so we’ve enlisted the help of a few subscription-based companies.
I have to admit that part of the attraction of subscription gift-giving is the laziness it allows. Greg Alvo, CEO of OrderGroove, explained it perfectly: “Subscription gifting is the perfect way to show appreciation and stay on your client’s mind. The best part? As the on-the-go gifter, you have the ability to ‘set it and forget it!’” It still requires thoughtfulness to find the perfect fit for a client, because if he or she is going to be receiving something from you once a month, it had better be something well-liked!
Here are some ideas for interesting items that won’t break the bank, but will pleasantly surprise your clients.
The Stylish Stud:
You know how you’re always losing socks (behind the dryer, at the laundromat, under the hotel bed)? We’ve found a solution.Sock 101 has created the Sock of the Month Club. One pair of high-quality, stylish dress socks will be sent to your clients every month. Now, when people compliment their savvy style, your company may just come up in.
And even better — a personal note from the most famous old-school handwritten note writer in the US:
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Jun 12, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
Me and cars. What do you want to know?
Me (with friend asking sales clerk for directions) : Are you sure it’s on Hubbards and Shelbyville road ?
Sales Clerk: Yes, across from Mini Cooper Dealership
Me (to sales clerk). OK. Thanks
Friend to me: (smiling because he knows I know little about cars) Do you even know what a Mini Cooper is?
Me: Are you serious ? Of course I do.
Friend: What are they?
Me: They are cars. They are, obviously, a smaller version –a sort of miniature version –of the regular-sized Cooper…..
(Pause). Snickering .
Me: I know Austin Powers drives one. You probably didn’t know that, did you? You want to know any more about Mini Coopers or entire Cooper line—including Medium Coopers, Jumbo Coopers and the soon-to-be-released Teeny Tiny Micro Coopers (mostly in Europe, of course). Or are you gonna quit before I embarrass you with my deep knowledge of cars?
The Licking Valley Courier, a small town Eastern Kentucky weekly newspaper that doesn’t have an online version, had some clever words to share about the Rebuilding West Liberty initiative discussed on these virtual pages. Thanks to Miranda Cantrell, News Editor, we post the column of Publisher Earl Kinner in its entirety below:
Town’s rebuilding plan catches eye of Clinton Global Initiative
Some pleasant ironies in story about Judge Conley’s invitation to participate in international forum
Judge Conley holding a copy of the Courier
Not many readers, we suspect, will fail to detect a bit of pleasant irony underlying the news this week about Morgan County Judge Executive Tim Conley’s invitation to participate in an international forum established by former Democrat President Bill Clinton.
After a tornado last year devastated West Liberty, the town of 3,500 began an initiative called Rebuilding West Liberty, which was designed to not only help re-build the town but to make it more energy-efficient and serve as a model for other towns looking to create sustainability and entrepreneurship.
The initiative has caught the eye of national leaders, and Morgan County Judge Executive Tim Conley has been invited to attend the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in Chicago on June 13 as a member of the Residential Energy Efficiency Working Group. This according to former Kentucky State Treasurer Jonathan Miller on his web site, The Recovering Politician. (Miller is a Democrat and Conley is a Republican).
After the tornado killed seven people and destroyed 400 homes, businesses, and government structures, the community began rebuilding with energy efficient and cost-effective techniques. At the conference Conley will provide insight on “rebuilding roughly half of the 300 residential homes that were lost to the storm,” Miller writes.
The solution West Liberty came up with was to construct “150 affordable, highly energy-efficient factory-built and site-built homes,” Miller reports. “The three-year project includes a $27 million investment of equity, grants, debt and operating grants to complete the project in West Liberty and scale innovations piloted for other disaster response efforts and affordable housing projects for factory-built homes across the nation.
Many will recall the bruising but unsuccessful effort by Democrat Party leaders (both at the local and state levels) to block Judge Conley’s bid for re-election to a second term in 2006. Thankfully, the world has moved on and the ironies called to mind by Miller’s story are pleasant to contemplate. To wit:
Jonathan Miller, a Democrat stalwart whose party virtually bet the farm trying to defeat Conley. A Harvard graduate from Louisville, Miller served as national director of Students for Gore in 1988 when Al Gore was running for President, later worked for Gore when he was Vice President in the Clinton Administration, and also served two terms as Kentucky State Treasurer, and later as Finance Secretary for Gov. Beshear.
Tim Conley is a County Judge and a graduate of Morgan County High School from Honeymoon Holler.
The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), an initiative of the Clinton Foundation established by former Democrat President Bill Clinton, convenes global leaders to create and implement innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges. CGI Annual Meetings have brought together more than 150 heads of state, 20 Nobel Prize laureates, and hundreds of leading CEO’s, heads of foundations and NGOs, major philanthropists, and members of the media. To date CGI members have made more than 2,300 commitments designed “to improve the lives” of over 400 million people in more than 180 countries. When fully funded and implemented, these commitments will be valued at more than $73.1 billion. Clearly, the Clinton Global Initiative is no small potatoes.
As for Judge Conley’s invitation to speak at the CGI’s international forum in Chicago next week, congratulations to him. He’s one of our own and proof certain that country-bred common sense, sincerity, and competence trump lots of things, including partisan politics, and that’s as it should be.
Click here to join the great work being done by Rebuilding West Liberty.
I follow up my observations about the challenges conservative reformers face with some thoughts about how those issues are playing out in the debate over Common Core educational standards. Stanley Kurtz’s observations on the subject in National Review Online are a pretty fair articulation of the right’s grassroots based activism against the Core. To be sure, he gets lost in his share of rabbit holes—raising the Fifth Amendment-taking IRS bureaucrat Lois Lerner as a bogeyman is about as irrelevant as Arnie Duncan’s comparing opposition to the Core to worrying about black helicopters; and Kurtz’s specter of liberals imposing “fuzzy math” sounds loopy because it is—but he highlights the dilemma rank and file Republican politicians are running into. And his claims raise an important question right of center Republicans ought to be stressing over: is education reform about to become the next subject that Republicans are about to cede to the left?
To be sure, the Core is not the most inspiring kind of fight. Liberals who spent the last decade waging trench war against national accountability standards are playing a hypocritical game by suggesting that resistance to Washington driven reform is now the province of Luddites and primitives. There is no question that curriculum content is being artificially elevated to the point that it is drowning out elements that are far more decisive to student achievement, like the deteriorating quality of entry level teachers, the impediments against parents transferring their kids out of under-performing schools, and the institutional protections that make replacing inept teachers all but impossible in many districts. It is also far from clear that state by state variations in the Core’s focus of math and science teaching are as substantial as some advocates suggest.
But Kurtz and some of the Core’s sharpest critics go too far in their suggestion that education should not even be on the table as a national agenda item, and it’s worth remembering that they hardly represent the only conservative vision on educational policy. In fact, for most of the last decade, the right’s critique of No Child Left Behind was not that it overstepped some constitutional line but that the law wasn’t aggressive enough about incentivizing ideas like vouchers or charter schools. True, a number of conservatives questioned the heavy handedness of the Race to the Top fund; but for much of the first Obama term, the case was made with equal force that it imposed too weak rather than too strong a set of rewards for tenure reform or merit based pay for teachers.
As sanguine as Kurtz is about the decision-making processes of local school boards and state legislatures, the local and state level have been venues where teacher unions have typically been far more effective than reformers in driving their cause. It’s an illusion that a locally driven debate is necessarily one that favors the interests of parents or accountability, and conservatives who think so should be discomfited by the ease with which the teacher unions mimic arguments about local control in their efforts to thwart the most rigorous goals within Race to the Top.
Until recently, the political right also seemed to enjoy a rough consensus that the values that underlay the effort to prod states and districts toward more demanding standards on education were conservative in nature. As much as today’s conservative libertarians denigrate George W. Bush’s forays into rewriting education law at the national level, those efforts deserve to be appreciated as a campaign to inject market driven notions of performance and results into education rather than some weak kneed effort to pander or out-promise Democrats.
To be sure, there are very few conservatives who don’t have a palpable suspicion of the federal government using the leverage of funding to compel states to do much of anything. And it’s not a revolutionary insight that reforms are most politically palatable on the right if they are linked to language and values that ordinary Republicans will embrace. Given those realities, Republican governors who are shortchanging populist initiatives like overhauling tenure and parental choice will probably find that they haven’t stored up enough capital with their base to take on fights like the Core.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: Conservatives and the Fight Over the Common Core
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Jun 11, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET
Anyone familiar with 12-step programs or various philosophical guides to serene living will tell you that the key to happiness is to surrender to the moment, to change what you can, to accept what you cannot change, and to know the difference. And anyone familiar with air travel in recent years will tell you that even the Dalai Lama would struggle with staying serene when you’re confronted with cancelled flights, long lines, inedible overpriced food, and cramped uncomfortable seats.
But we do our best to cope – for me, that means loading my Kindle with a wide assortment of reading material and bringing socks along so I don’t have to think about what I might be getting on my feet in the security line. For others, it may mean scoping out the best chair massages amd cheapest bars. And for everyone, it means trying our hardest to surrender, to remind ourselves ‘this too shall pass’ and we will, despite all appearances, eventually get to our destination.
Occasionally I try to go one step further and look for the silver lining – can anything good come out of this experience? I know of one couple who met in line to get re-routed after their flight was cancelled, and I have one friend who travels frequently for work and wrote a book while she was waiting at airports. Up until recently, the only unexpected benefit of air travel hassles I’d ever experienced was on the third leg of a rescheduled flight that was originally nonstop – I was so sick of sitting, I had walked back to the galley, started chatting with the flight attendant, and found out we had a friend in common. When she heard I’d been on the canceled flight, she poured me a double scotch and didn’t charge me. I immediately felt better – sure, the scotch helped, but it was more the unexpected generosity.
And lest you think that my only silver linings involve alcohol, this past weekend provided another. I had yet another delayed flight and long wait at a small airport, and I was also panicking since I’d been away, hadn’t kept up with the news and thus hadn’t figured out what this week’s song would be about. As I was combing through the newspaper looking for an idea, I heard the announcement about my delayed flight and a lightbulb went off – I could write a song about air travel, instead of just complaining about it! Suddenly, what was once a huge annoyance became a source of inspiration, or as my ‘woo-woo’ friends say, I reframed the experience. (Of course, it’ll only work this way once, but I’ll take what I can get!)
So have faith – next time you have a cancelled or delayed flight, look for something fun and unexpected to happen (or at least look for the nearest good chair massage place), and if you aren’t lucky enough to travel much, you can hum this song to get the general idea.
By Nancy Slotnick, on Tue Jun 11, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET
I read recently that 35% of Americans suffer from chronic loneliness. Ok, I did read it on the American Bible Study building’s electronic billboard. But that doesn’t mean it ‘s not true. When I was single in my 20s, after a really hard break-up, I was so lonely that I could physically feel an ache in my stomach. Maybe that had some direct correlation to the emotional eating frenzy that was definitively not a sign of wallowing. No, that was not it.
With my coaching clients, I dole out a lot of strategy and advice. But the most valuable service I provide is a lifeline to a world where a healthy relationship can be a comfort. Unfortunately for the state of affairs on marriage in this country, loneliness is not confined to singles. But it is much harder to dig yourself out of the loneliness hole when you are single. I think of Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, banging and clawing her way out of the coffin that she was nailed into and buried 6 feet under. Almost impossible but she did it. Such is the work here. But it’s so worth it.
So how do you go from the isolation of living alone in a Facebook-induced haze of faux connection? Not that I am knocking Facebook. Geez, my wholeMatchmaker Café business is based on Facebook. But there’s a reason that all of this social networking makes us feel more lonely. We use it as an end in itself instead of a means to an end.
If you want to use Facebook for dating (which everybody does), take specific action. Connect with 10 old friends, message someone to ask them to set you up, or message me to stalk someone for you! (Yes, I do this and it’s very discreet – I’ll explain if you write me).
Don’t resort to emotional eating and watching the Real Housewives – that only makes it worse. Eat and drink from the cup of life – it’s scary but it’s the only way.
Click here to purchase e-book for ONLY 99 CENTS this week only
There was nobody happier than I was when term limits ended my official position in 2008. I was tired of feeling responsible for all the problems that needed to be fixed in our state. I was also tired of getting beaten up in the press and having my enemies constantly trying to take me out. As a private citizen, I thought I would be able to be behind the scenes, work on my friends’ campaigns and not be in the crosshairs each and every day.
Unfortunately, my marriage was in bad shape by that time; and even though I was out of office, things continued to get worse. In early 2009, we separated; and by October, we were divorced. I tried to tell everyone it was a good thing for me; but inside, it really messed me up. After all, we had been married almost 20 years and had raised three wonderful kids.
I was a 42-year-old successful divorced man, whose personal life was not turning out like he planned it. My dad was a Baptist preacher, and the best parents in the world had given me a perfect childhood. I was a family values conservative Republican who was not supposed to have these types of problems. I won’t go into details, but my life was not reflecting the teaching my parents had taught me, nor was I being the example I wanted my kids to see.
I don’t know if you believe in God or not, but I do! In December of 2009, God finally had enough of my hypocritical ways and got my attention. After spending the night with a lady I had reconnected with on Facebook, I was charged with felony assault. The press, along with my enemies, had a heyday. I immediately shut down my consulting business. Soon after that, I was notified that I was a target of a federal grand jury investigation surrounding my handling of a bill in the 2005 legislative session.
Needless to say, I started 2010 with no job, very few friends and lots of time on my hands. As bad as my troubles were at the time, looking back now, I’m thankful for them. Life passes by so quickly, and very few of us get the chance to sit down and contemplate what is important. My troubles gave me a chance to analyze my weaknesses. With my pride stripped away, I was able to honestly evaluate my past actions. I saw how foolish I had been to put my family on the back burner. I learned how bitterness towards my enemies made me a bitter person toward everyone around me. The hardest thing for me to admit was that I wasn’t the same friendly and caring guy who had gone to Jefferson City in 2000.
Most of my friends say, “Rod you were not that bad, you handled it well. You were polite and treated everyone with respect. We liked you then, and we like you now.” I’m very thankful for those friends and their friendship, but I know the prideful thoughts I was thinking, and I know I should have handled things better.
As I mentioned earlier, I’m thankful for all the successes I was a part of. I’m also grateful for all the kind people I met along the way who helped and encouraged me. But I wish I would have worked less and stayed home more; been more forgiving and not gotten bitter at my opponents; been less prideful, less judgmental and more understanding. Plus, I wished I had lived the personal life I believed, instead of being such a hypocrite. Of course, I can’t change the past. I can only look to the future and focus on learning from my mistakes.
Life is wonderful for me now. Each morning, I wake up and thank God for the day. I spend more time with my family and stay connected with my friends. I have a lovely new wife, a great job and a contentment I never knew in my first 42 years of life. I was never convicted in the assault case, and the grand jury suspended their investigation into the ethics allegation and never charged me with a crime. I have slowly begun gaining back the respect I lost from my bad choices, and I am even back in politics.
Let’s face it. Sooner or later we are all going to make a mistake; we are all going to do something stupid that we regret.
Sometimes these mistakes go unnoticed and don’t cause us much trouble publicly. But for those in the limelight, their mistakes are written about, analyzed and discussed in the public square.
It happens to celebrities, business leaders and athletes; but it also happens to parents, kids and everyday people. Anyone who has made a mistake that becomes public has a problem; and how you deal with it will either make it a bigger problem or put it in the rear view mirror.
Just in case you’re thinking, “It can’t happen to me!” think about this: Powerful politicians, corporate leaders, pro athletes and Hollywood stars all have opponents, enemies and even subordinates who believe it is in their best interest to help promote problems for them. The more powerful or well known you are, the more likely it is that others are looking harder to find the mistakes you make. Additionally, the press desperately needs scandals to generate readers/viewers, and most reporters dream each day about breaking the story that takes someone down.
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Click here to read the rest of Michael Steele’s extraordinary chapter by purchasing The Recovering Politician’s Twelve Step Program to Survive Crisis for only 99 cents this week only.
I started my fitness journey as skinny, puny 145 lbs 18 year old. Like most guys, I wanted muscles to get noticed but what started as a way to get a date with a girl became a lifestyle and a career. After tirelessly trying to break into the fitness industry, I got my first training job in 2004. I was certified and ready to start whipping people into shape. What started as something I was doing on the side became a love and an obsession. Personal training was what I wanted to do! I trained them all; professional athletes, wannabe pro athletes, housewives, wannabe housewives, executives, and wannabe executivesJ. You name it, I trained them. My next moves were instilling the education and know how I developed as a trainer to other trainers. In 2007 I was promoted to Quality Control Director for Urban Active Fitness. I have spent the past 6 years directing and leading 400 personal trainers in 7 states. I’ve certified trainers; I’ve proctored hundreds of seminars and conference calls and even contributed 10 published articles. My mission is to spread the word of fitness to as many people as I can through personal training. My motto is Train, Motivate and Inspire!
