Resilience for Business Success: The Pro Athlete Mindset with Joel Green
Joel Green’s Journey: From Professional Athlete to Entrepreneur
Jennifer Dawn: Hey. Hey everybody. I’m super excited to kick off our happy, productive today. We have a really cool guest. His name is Joel Green, and he is done so many amazing things like professional NBA player has a pro training company. Just amazing stuff. So I’m super excited to have a great conversation with Joel today. Joel, welcome to the show. We’re super excited to have you here.
Joel Green: Thank you for having me on. I’m really excited for the conversation just to, you know, kick things off.
Jennifer Dawn: Excellent. Well, if you wouldn’t mind, just introduce yourself to the audience and just give us, you know, a couple of minutes on just who you are and what, what you’re doing.
Joel Green: Well, as you already mentioned, uh, you know, played professional basketball for some years, uh, after being a division one basketball player, which was, you know, a lot of work in itself. And just, you know, really decided to apply those same intangibles to the business world. And shortly after, stepping away from the game of basketball, I would say probably six to seven years, sooner than most anticipated. Um, I started a company, uh, pro level training, as Jennifer said, and, um, has always had a itch just for business, always When I was playing in Ireland, um, one season I got my business license over there. Just always would. I always knew that I would do something, you know, I had about four or five businesses that didn’t work out before I found what needed to be found. And, um, I stuck with that and decided to retire from basketball early and, you know, just. Go ahead and see if I can be domesticated a little bit and stay home, sit tight and, uh, everything worked out. And, you know, I started pro-level training. Our company, uh, turned a lot of hits because the way we would train kids and Nike caught wind of it. And, um, Nike Sports can ended up partnering with us and by way of became a national director for Nike Sports Camps. And, um, and root to all this I was doing, you know, Jennifer makes me sound cooler than actually am, but she said I do a lot of cool things. You know, I did, uh, sports and fitness modeling and acting, you know, uh, featured on a TV show, commercials and, uh, there’s some cool stuff, uh, being on a Cheez-It box, things like that. And just, um, a lot of really, um, innovative and creative projects that I worked with and worked on. So, you know, beyond all of that, I’m a speaker, so I go and speak at different venues, which I love. It’s my passion to really, um, impact people, whether it be the youth or the many adults I talk to entrepreneurial expos and things like that. So, um, that’s me in a nutshell.
Jennifer Dawn: Oh, I love it. And look, when you get on the Cheez-Its Box, you’re cool. That’s just it. Like you’ve kind of made it to a level of, that’s pretty cool when you’re on the Cheez-It box.
Joel Green: I’m going, I made you know.
Jennifer Dawn: Oh, I love it. I love it. Well, one of the things that you said was “I had four or five businesses that didn’t work out” before. The one that you’re in right now that is working out. Let’s talk about that a little bit, because a lot of our listeners are all business owners and we all know that, you know, you’re gonna have a lot of failures. But if you’re in, if you’re on that path and you’re in that journey and you’re failing, it’s such a hard place to be. ’cause you just feel like, you know, you’re all alone. The world’s gonna end. You know, there’s nothing after this. You know how, how we go. So talk to us a little bit about just some of those earlier failures that you had in business.
The Mindset of Resilience: Turning Failure into Fuel for Success
Joel Green: Well, again, for me, I’ll be honest, having an athletic background, it prepared me perfectly for business. Um, you know, you’re gonna win some, you’re gonna lose some. And that’s what prepared me for having some losses in business. But I always tell people, now I win some and I learned something. I don’t, I’m undefeated now. I don’t have any, I don’t take any losses ’cause every single thing is a lesson from me. So, you know, from that perspective, it’s, it allows me to keep moving forward despite a failure as opposed to sulking panicking, which happens a lot. You know, when we have failures in business. Uh, we panic and we get out or we panic and we change course when it’s like, Nope, just stay in course, and those failures became, it became mid points instead of end points for me. So every time I would come up short of an initial goal, I said, all right, cool. Let me just take a look back and really to assess why I fail Said, I don’t do it again. And um, and just any failure I would say that I ever had, or, you know, anytime I came up short, I always reached out to a mentor and say, “Hey, look, what would you do?” Someone that’s more successful to me at, at that certain point in time, I’m like, “okay, what would you do in this instance?” I get as much advice as possible and I pivot as much as I can and just, uh. It’s hard to, it’s hard to sit still for me. So, um, that’s a blessing in disguise to where if I happen to come up short or I fail, I’m going to keep moving forward no matter what. Um, hopefully it’s in the right direction, but I’m going to keep moving.
Jennifer Dawn: Do you think that like your athletic training kind of helped you develop that mindset?
Joel Green: Yeah, I would say I developed a co, a co to, to defeat, just being honest. Um, I didn’t care about it. I knew that with every single defeat, there was a reason why I was defeated. There was a reason why I lost. There was a reason why I came up short, and if I dared myself to look into those reasons and I try to ignore them or brush them under the rug. Then that rub wouldn’t pile up and I’d trip over it again. So for me, anytime I, I came up short or I, I failed at something, especially in business, which was, was a different level of failure outside of sports because I can’t say it was more public, but people relied on me in a different way. Um, money was involved in a different way. I didn’t have teammates, so it was all on me. So I, I had to hold myself accountable at a different level and that actually helped me, that pressure actually helped me work that much harder ’cause I knew that people counted on me and I’ve been a captain on different teams I’ve played on. So I was used to having that level of accountable pressure. So, uh, I embraced it. I embrace it, you know, it’s things I tell my athletes and I tell, you know, different organizations too, embrace the fatigue. You have to embrace the fatigue. When you embrace it, that’s when you tap into the second win. And, um, that’s one thing I, I practice all the time. Anytime I’m fatigued, I’m tired of working on a certain project, or I’m getting that burnout or that small word yet, start kicking in, which can be damaging. I embrace it, embrace, I lean into it and just say, look, try one more thing. And um, that’s what always helps me out. Just like trying one more thing and saying, “all right, look, I messed up. Let’s see what I can adjust and make happen.” This is the core of **resilience for business success**.
Jennifer Dawn: Very nice. Now, your company pro level training, what? What are you guys training? Tell everybody what you’re doing.
Joel Green: Well, we train. We’ve trained up to nine sports, so you know, water polo. Basketball, of course. That’s my specialty. Uh, football, lacrosse, everything. Soccer. And, um, now we we’re really specializing in the camp venue. We, we’ve grown so much around the country where while we’re in 16 states in about 35 countries, I mean 35, yeah, 35 cities rather. And we’re in two different countries here. We’re also abroad in Canada. And, um. We haven’t gotten away from the individualized training, but we do more camps because now we can train the masses. So we have a lot of camps and clinics around the country, uh, by way of our, our Nike partnership. And we, we really, we show kids what it takes to get to the pro level. We know that everyone’s not fortunate to make it there, so our objective is to say, “Hey, look, we know that you love. Him. We know that you love Steph Curry. We know that you love these different players, Serena with whatever. Whoever the athlete is. We want to show you what they are doing right now in moderation, of course, and we’ll deliver it to you so that you can truly know what it takes to get you, at least to your middle school team, your high school team, to maybe get to college. And if you’re fortunate enough to make it to the pro level, you have all the tools with you now physically as well as mentally, which is more important for me to be honest. Um, we, we give them those tools. Pro level training is a testament to the power of a **resilience for business success** mindset.
The Unbreakable Link: Physical Fitness and Business Achievement
Jennifer Dawn: I love this, so I would love to hear your take on. So one of the things that we’ve been talking a lot about, so last year I committed to do a Spartan race. Um, Spartan race is an obstacle course race where you’re doing distance, you’re out on terrain, and you’re doing, um. Obstacles, many of which I can’t do. It sounds cool, but it’s just like, it’s not very cool when you see some of the obstacles and I’m like, yeah, that’s not happening. Let me go do the penalty loop. So, um, I had committed to do one and then that kind of turned into three, and then three turned into 12. And so last year I did 12 Spartan races. And what happened though was that my business revenues multiplied by two and a half times. And that to me. Was such a surprise. Like I didn’t expect that result in my business when I increased my physical, what I could do physically. And I think you’re the guy to talk about this because you, you have, you’ve probably seen this too. And it was one of the things that caused us to, we started, we, we um, actually this year we just launched our unbreakable retreats where we now do. Three days of business coaching and then on the fourth day we go out and we do a Spartan race. And just the results that people are getting from these are. Really amazing of pairing the physical fitness with, or, or a physical challenge with, you know, business. And I learned so much about my own mindset just out on those courses of just, you know, digging in. And when you’re like going through two miles of swamp and you’re, you know, waist tie in the swamp for two miles, you’re like, yeah, I’ll go sit and work on my business. Hiring that new person is not a problem. I can handle this. Um, but I would just love to hear your take on this, this the, the concept of your physical fitness and your success in business.
Joel Green: Well, number one, kudos to you. That’s, I know about Spartan races. That’s, that’s nuts. Um, I haven’t actually just did a 10 K yesterday in Philadelphia and you know, having to think about that, plus going into the swamp and doing these other, that’s pretty crazy to me. So I give you a lot of props for that. That’s pretty, that’s impressive. Um, but yeah, I mean, I’m serious. I, you, you’re gonna have me interested. Now. I’m, I’m such a competitor, so I’m gonna now look into a Spartan race, but, um, you know, like I’m, I’m big on the psychology side. I have a degree in psychology. I read on The Mind every single day. Um, read countless books and just, that’s, that’s, that’s what I love. So when I’m, when I have an assessment with an athlete, uh. That’s the first thing I tackle. It’s funny, even when I’m having a business meeting, I’m just meeting someone for the first time, networking. I’m picking their brain, I’m picking their mind just to see where they are currently, to see where I can help or assist, you know, through that network, through that connection. And so many people don’t realize the physiological connection and the, and the enhancement that could take place. When you really challenge yourself physically, it enhances everything. You know, neurologically, it just, it just does. I wish I knew the exact signs behind it, but it just really increases your productivity and I, I really believe that the more we feel that physical is harder than mental, right? When it comes to different tasks, so that when we see that we can complete various physical tasks, we believe in ourselves that much more mentally, we know like, okay, I can sit down and do this thing. All I have to do is think about this. I did that yesterday. That was physically challenging. So for me, I take that on all the time. If I’m out running miles or just in the weight room, I know if I tackle that, I can sit behind a desk and tackle anything. You know, I can just sit down. I don’t have to sweat to do that. And, uh, I really believe it’s an internal belief system that happens in addition to that neurological, you know, things that fire to where we just, our body’s just ready to work that much sharper. This is the foundation of **resilience for business success**.
Jennifer Dawn: I agree completely. I think that was one of the things that I. By accident, kind of discovered is that the mind creates so much nonsense and drama and resistance. And in our businesses it’s like, um, you know, we know that we need to expand. We know that we need to add a new product. We know we need to fire this person. Right? And these are hard things, and the brain creates all this junk and out on a course. They’re hard. They’re hard, and you, you come up to an obstacle or you’re gotta walk through a swamp or whatever, and you’re out there and there’s nobody rescuing you. There’s no like, oh, exit this door this way. Right. And so you s. Right. You still have all the mind stuff going, “I can’t do this. I’m not gonna be able, I’m gonna fail.” But you have to do it anyway. The line is moving that way and there’s no turning around. So, and then you do it and you realize. I could do it. I could do so much more than my brain was telling me I could do. And it really helped me to kind of overcome that crap when I got back to my business and to go, “wait a second, I was able to do that so I could probably handle this.” And to almost just sum, kind of ignore some of that stinky thinking. And I think in your training as a pro athlete. I, I’ve seen this like with Pro Ale and I don’t know anything about pro athletes. I, I, I love sports. I love sports, and um, there you go. But as a spectator, I’ve never played professional athletics, but the training, I think the training to be a pro athlete in that mindset that when you said it sets you up to be perfectly, to be in business, that correlation there is that, that mindset I think is kind of the key.
Joel Green: Time. Uh, I, I’ll be honest, I can even relate that back to college. Um, my last two years I was on, you know, I had honors as far as you know, grades go. And I graduated college with honors. Those last two years, my training. I’m talking about, I, I, I knew that being a pro was around the corner, so I took it that much more serious. And I said, “okay, if I’m going to be a pro, I have to get myself in the absolute best condition possible and just be as sharp as possible. I’m gonna be critiqued as much as anybody can be critiqued at this point in order to make it to the next level.” So I, I turned everything up. Um, literally I train from nine to 11 hours a day. During my off seasons and it carried over into my professional off season. I tell kids all the time of my regimen, you know, I woke up four 30 in the morning, four a lot of times, four in the morning, and four 30 was a nice break for me to wake up. And uh, I used to love the four 30 wake up ’cause it was just like I get to sleep in half hour. But I would be out on the track by five 15, start my workout there, and I would just go up until about seven in the evening because I would have a ProAm game or something in the evening. And after training like that, my grades picked up. Believe it or not, you would think that the fatigue would’ve kicked in and I would be too tired for all the study. I I, number one. Now, you, you can attest to this, I’m sure you get more energy the more you expand. So like, it is one of those delayed gratification things to where it comes on the tail end. And I, I tell people all the time, the fund isn’t always first. You know, you gotta suffer through, you’ll enjoy the fun on the other side of the hard work. And that’s, I think, one of the things you’re kind of getting at to where, you know, the fun comes after you put in that physical, uh, give yourself that physical attention. The mental is gonna pick up, the business is gonna pick, everything’s just gonna pick up. And. The connection between physical challenge and mental output is a key part of **resilience for business success**.
Post-Traumatic Growth: A Personal Story of Resilience
Jennifer Dawn: I love what you said, that you were working harder physically, and then your grades actually increased. It’s that same thing together. Oh, I love it. I love it. Now you’re clearly a super successful guy. I would love to know, because sometimes it’s easy, we listen to a podcast and hear about a really successful person and you think, oh, well, you know, they had it easy. And I always say to people, uh, probably not. And so tell us a little bit about just your upbringing. Did you like, you know, have everything handed to you or did you have to work hard for it? Like, what, what did that look like?
Joel Green: That would’ve been nice. Actually. It wouldn’t have been nice to have everything handed to me, and I certain I didn’t. I certainly didn’t. Uh, I grew up in Philadelphia in an abandoned house in North Philly to be exact. Um, I was actually, the 10 K that I ran yesterday was right across the street from my old neighborhood. Which I make an effort to visit every single year just to kind of reflect on where I come from. And it’s, it’s, it’s intentional for me because I don’t want to forget what instilled the grind in me, just being honest. Um, I did whatever I could to escape that in addition to what my parents were doing to help us escape as a family. But it was a rough upbringing and, um, like literally, you know, at, to give you. At six years old, I’ll never forget, 1991, I was about 10 feet away from a shooting, and that was the only person there outside of the two shooters and the kid that got shot. And having to run away from that thinking I was gonna get shot in the back at six years old was, it is hard to even put any 6-year-old. I have a 9-year-old son, and I remember when he was six, I thought back on that situation that I went through. I said, I, I can’t imagine him in that situation. Um, just having to deal with that. It could be t it is, it was traumatic, you know. Um, I never forget, I went home and called my mom crying. She worked at an insurance company. I said, “I, I don’t wanna live here anymore. I wanna move. They, they saw me, they saw me.” And I, I don’t, you know, I don’t wanna get shot anyone, let alone a child has to say something like that is traumatic. And, uh, so having that upbringing had a knife poured out on me when I was about nine years old, having these type of things happen. It, it, it bred again, like I mentioned a call earlier, I developed a call to defeat. I developed a call to downturn. To be honest, you know, fortunately I started off on the lower end, um, as opposed to the higher end because if I, to fall, I’ve been there before. I know how to get back up.
Jennifer Dawn: And do you feel like your, the earlier upbringing really helped develop that mental toughness of, “I I can fall and I can get back up ’cause I’ve been there.”
Joel Green: Yeah. You know, I, I would say it, it definitely helped develop that side of me. Um, and again, you know, for sure you, you need mental toughness and business and life, period. Um, it helped me so much because I, I really, I saw what you can come from and achieve despite. You know, I, I’ve been told that, you know, my whole schools have been told in elementary, middle school, you’re proud of your environment. And as I grew older, my parents helped me to see that’s not the case. “No, your environment is a product of you.” And once I really adapted that and began walking in that, I realize that it is true. You know, I’m not a product of my environment. I don’t, it doesn’t matter how terrible my environment is. If I change the things around me will change. So I had to stop getting in trouble or just make sure I listened to authority and the moment I respected authority, they respected me more. You know, I realized literally my environment’s a product of me and I apply that to the sports environment. Now I apply it to the business environment. If I up my game, my business ups, that’s just how it is. That’s the kind of **resilience for business success** that can be learned.
Jennifer Dawn: Would you say that there was any particular moment where you made that decision that, you know we’re growing up in this abandoned house and you’re seeing shootings. Was there any moment where you made any kind of like a decision, “I’m gonna get out of here,” or “I’m gonna do something different,” or was there any moment like that?
Joel Green: Great question. I, I would say, I would say yes, and I was probably about five years old, believe it or not. Um, my, my parents, they’re big on planting seeds. They’ve done it, you know, um, sneakily our whole lives, I’m the youngest of four, so it was six of us, you know, in the house many times. Again, it was an, it was an abandoned house, so we didn’t always have, we used to have kerosene heaters, if you’re familiar with those. But back in the eighties, and if it wasn’t enough kerosene in one, you know, in the house, it was enough for one room. So we were all asleep on their bed, you know, all six of us, which I still, I, I promise, I don’t know how it happened. Because we’re a big family. I’m six eight. You know, obviously I wasn’t at the time, but my siblings are already tall. I don’t know how we pulled it up at all. Six of us, we would be in the same bed and every, not every Sunday, but every once in a while after church, we’ll go get a water, rice and a pretzel and drive across the bridge in New Jersey to South Jersey, the suburbs of New Jersey. And coming from a house that actually still had a couple boarded up windows when, you know, and we had graffiti on our walls and everything. We had holes in the staircase. We used to play hopscotch around the holes in the staircase for fun. But, um, they would take us over to South Jersey to an area called, uh, Glassboro, and we would go into model homes. And I’ll never forget, I was about five years old. I just, the, the smell of new carpet, new paint. And these model homes was like, “wow, this is, it’s quiet.” And you, I would see this water coming out of the ground. It was sprinklers. I didn’t know what it was at the time. And um, I’m like, “this is, this is a nice neighborhood.” You know, people out here just walking and this, no one was looking at you with a mean look. And I wanted them, that seed was planted in me at five. I wanted to escape. Where we were to get as close as possible to that because it, it smelled good. It, it, it was, it felt like it was sunnier out there. Less pollution, just less trash, or it, it just, it was a, a beautiful environment and that seed that was planted in me made me work to make those rough things smooth later in life. This foundational story demonstrates the roots of **resilience for business success**.
Jennifer Dawn: I love that so much. I had a not, I had a difficult upbringing as well. Our parents moved around a lot. Um, uh, an abusive father, things along those lines that had to be overcome. And I remember at 13. Um, watching a news story on the news and my parents were watching the news and it was a, a girl who had been abused and, and I think she had been murdered. It was a terrible, terrible story, but I remember listening to the story and hearing about what happened to her, and it was almost like the first time the awareness came on because it was like, “wait a second. I’ve been abused like that too.” And I was seeing the parallels in her story, and I remember at 13 saying, “this isn’t gonna be how I end.” Um, I, I’ve, I’ve got things in common with this girl of her childhood and her upbringing that were actually like me, realizing, “oh my gosh, like I’ve got these things in common with her.” Um, but making that decision right then, “I’m not gonna allow my ending to be on the night evening news for this kind of a, a terrible end.” Just at 13, just going, “I’m not gonna let this happen to me and it’s gonna be different. I’m gonna have a different life.” And it sounds like at five, same idea you were, maybe you weren’t consciously aware that you were making a decision. Right. And tapping into your power at that point and deciding, “I’m gonna have a different life” and “I’m gonna get out of here” and “I’m gonna have sprinklers in my yard.” Right, right. So powerful. And I always love, you know, people who are listening, it’s, it’s easy to sit and go, “oh, well he’s so successful and he, you know, when you’re a pro athlete and it sounds so cool and, you know, fantastic” and think that, “but I’m not like that.” But the truth is like, you know, you grew up in an abandoned house and you were able to get out of that. And if you’re listening right now, look, I don’t care what the circumstances are, you can get out of whatever situation it is, and I hope you’re hearing this and inspired to know that for most of a lot of successful people, it wasn’t just handed to them on a silver platter. Like you had to work for it. You had to work hard for it.
Joel Green: Yeah, it, it’s, it’s funny even linking back to something you said earlier, and I, I didn’t mention, you know, I, I lost my older brother when I was 17. You know, I have two brothers and a sister and. You know, for me, it, I’ll be honest with you, so I, I speak on goals, you know, one of the main, I gave a TED Talk last year, um, and I incorporated goals. It was called three Essentials to Equality. And I just gave three actionable steps for people to use. And I, I, I tell people often about these three steps, and for me growing up, I used to set goal, I didn’t know I was setting goals. But I used to always try to distract myself from what we were going through, and apparently I was setting goals, you know, to achieve certain things. It was just so I didn’t have to think about going past. Some of this was during the crack era as well, you know, the late eighties, early nineties. And so you would walk past certain people in our neighborhood and you didn’t know what they were going to do. There were plenty of times to where I’m walking past somebody, I’m a little kid and the guy just looks scary, you know? He, he’s talking to himself. You don’t know what’s going on. And I’m like, “alright, let me go the other way. Lemme stop at the basketball court for a shoot around for a little bit. Then I’ll go to the, the store later on and I’m, let me go get up a hundred shots really quick.” It’s a goal that I set for my side. I didn’t realize. I’m like, let, lemme go do that. Distract myself from that guy until he leaves the block and then I’ll go back when I see it’s all clear. And I would just set these different goals for myself and just, you know, distract myself apparently. And, um, just start achieving things left and right. And when my brother passed, it was suddenly we be, he wasn’t sick or anything. Um, tragic incident, I shut down for sure, but I discovered something that was the, exactly the moment I discovered, um, something amazing. That I can, I can get something great from something terrible. I didn’t know before that point. I had, you know, when I was six years old, my, my, one of my older cousins, he was shot and killed outta the blue. Someone came up to him at a bus stop shot, shot him and killed. So I saw a death, um, at that point, but it was never in my house. Uh, the moment it hit my house, it, it, it was, I felt it even more. I shut down for about two weeks. I don’t think I went to school for about a week and a half or so, but I discovered during that time, I made some promises to him during that time period. I said, “I’m gonna do better in school,” because he would always tell me, “man, make sure your grades up.” “College coaches want you, but you can’t have terrible grades. If you’re gonna go on to college, make sure you get that scholarship.” I’m like, “all right.” He’s the one that started me off in basketball, so he was always coaching me and um, so I promised him “I’m gonna get a scholarship. I’m gonna pick my grades up.” And I never made the honor roll ever in my life. That year as 16, 17 years old. I made the honor roll for the first time ever, and this was, he passed in February 16th, 2002. I graduated that June and turned my whole everything around the last two quarters of school, got a scholarship, division one scholarship to college, made the honor roll, and I was the number one recruit for multiple division ones. And, um, I just discovered during that time like, “okay, you can actually have terrible things, fuel your fire if you choose to,” but it’s our choice. We do have the choice to do it. Um, and I told my son, my son, we, we, we have quotes every morning. So before school we, I created these quote cards. So while we’re waiting in the roundabout to let ’em out before school we’re sitting in, I give him, I said, “all right, pick a quote card,” and, um. One of the cards says, “complain or correct. Complain or correct it. You have a choice.” And so he knows that. So whenever we’re going through something, he’s complaining. I’m like, “look, you have a choice right now. You can either complain about it or correct it. You got a choice.” He is like, all I know. So you know, it, it is. That’s, I discovered so much of those things during that time period.
Jennifer Dawn: Absolutely, and so many people talk about post-traumatic stress. It’s a very, very real thing. But what you’re talking about is the post-traumatic growth, which is that. Beautiful part of something traumatic that happens where we grow as humans and we grow spiritually and we take it and we use it to fuel ourselves forward. And I am such a huge fan of post-traumatic growth. Why not pull everything good and beautiful that we can out of a really bad thing that’s happened?
“My Story Wasn’t for Me”: From Vulnerability to Purpose
Joel Green: Absolutely. And that, and that’s exactly, you know, uh, just finish my first book. We’re writing my first book, um, called, and it’s, it’s, it stems from what occurred with my brother and it is called *Filtering*, uh, the way to extract strength from the struggle. And that’s, that’s what I discovered. I discovered it during that time as far as man, okay. I’m struggling right now. I couldn’t even, I promise you, Jennifer, I couldn’t even talk without tear. I’m talking about sobbing, tears coming out. I couldn’t talk about anything. I couldn’t talk to her. My friend come by, just try to con console me. I could not see their, I couldn’t see anyone’s eye. I couldn’t look in anyone’s eyes. I remember it was hard to look anyone in the eye because I felt like they saw what I was thinking, and I felt, and it wasn’t until I, I began daring myself to say, “all right, start talking to people again. Just do it whether you feel like it or not, they’re here to help you.” And once I leaned into doing that, and I remember my uncle came by to visit one day. He said, “look, I know you don’t want to see me. You don’t wanna see anybody right now.” He came up to my room, my bedroom, and he sat on the side of my bed while I was laying down, face down on the pillow and said, “look, had his hand on my back. He said, ‘you gotta get up. You gotta get up. You have no choice. You gotta get up. You’re still here.'” And once I had to take that approach and, and just realize that, that, although my brother wasn’t, I was, I gotta keep living and I had to extract something from it. And like I said, those promises I made to him at that moment, I said, “I can actually extract fuel, you know, from this situation to, to make this struggle turn into something successful.”
Jennifer Dawn: I love that so much and you read my mind because I was getting ready to ask you about the book. And so it’s like, oh, there we go. Right there. And he is reading my mind about the book and I, I, in, when I was in high school, my very best friend was 16 and she was killed in a car accident. And I was actually in the room with her when she passed on. And I remember just that, you know, I’m 16. I really didn’t have much experience with death. Um, it happened so suddenly, and I just remember that grief and it was just for weeks afterwards. I know what you, you mean when you’re just like, “nobody look at me, nobody talked to me” because “I’m just gonna fall apart.” And every time I had a private moment, I was falling apart until you kind of like can get it back together again. But I remember we had gone to like. My boyfriend was playing racquetball or something and we had all been best friends and I remember sitting on the tailgate of the truck and they’re all playing racquetball. And I just remember the breeze, the wind, and I, at that moment I was just like, “you’re still here.” And I, I know what that moment is and it’s so powerful and it’s so hard and it’s so beautiful and it’s so sad and it’s just like, but you do have to go on and you do have to keep going. After these things, and so I love that you’re writing a book about this. This is so, so good. So tell me like, when is the, is the book out? Is it coming out? Tell us about the book.
Joel Green: Well, I’m super excited, of course. Uh, it is my first book. It’s set to release in September, so September the sixth is the, uh, te release date. But, um, it’s, it is gonna be a very impactful, uh. Piece of content for, for so many people. It’s six years in the making, believe it or not, six years. I began, six years ago, I began writing the book, uh, making notes toward the book, and I paused for a moment, especially during the pandemic. I wanted to take it in. I wanted to see what, what this thing was about. “Is this gonna be the next plague?” “Is this gonna be an airborne situation, like on the movies?” “What is this thing?” So I took off for over a year just to really assess that. Um, and even prior to that, I was going through some things. I took off a little bit, but still contributing notes to it. But, uh, I started back in 2016 and I, I had the name of the book of it then, and I stuck with it. Added content to it over the years and, um, I, I said I have to do this. I have to, people were telling me for 10 plus years before that point, “you have to have a book, man. You know, you have to have a book. You, you need to begin speaking.” I’m like, “Nope, that’s not me speaking. Absolutely not.” Like that’s, I’m terrified to get on the stage and, and speaking, you know, and I came up under. Two pastors like me, my parents are pre or pastors. So I saw, I’ve seen my family on stage, you know, my sister, she’s a singer. Like I, I’ve seen it, but it wasn’t me. My stage was a basketball court. And um, but the moment I began hitting the stage and I spoke my story or just a small portion of it with minimal detail, people were in tears. And I said, man, this is this. Is helping someone. This is helping someone. And they would come up to me afterwards, say, “thank you so much,” and I’m, I’m, I’m up there venting my story. But then I realized my story wasn’t for me. And you know what? The moment I took that on the fear of public speaking left me because I realized it wasn’t about me. You know, I became more selfless as opposed to selfishly thinking, “well, I’m afraid,” like, no, but they need what you have to say. And the moment I said, “okay, I need to give full detail, full transparency,” I said, “I’m gonna write a book.” And, um, the book is just really showing people how to properly make adjustments, how to pivot, how to get beyond obstacles, how to see things from different perspectives to where. There is a per, there’s multiple vantage points when it comes to every single thing we go through. And if we dare ourselves to kind of get off our emotions a little bit and see that we can get a prize from everything, uh, it doesn’t matter how terrible of a situation it is, we can get a prize from everything. So that’s really what the book covers and so much more, a ton more. Um, but it really shows people actionable steps as far as how to extract something great. From whatever you go through, even if it’s a victory. What a lot of people overlook is that we all want to repeat that victory again, but we don’t always lean into that victory to extract what we did to get there so that we can rent and repeat that process. So for me, I went to national championships in college at two different schools, and I took that to another. I took the same thing I helped my team do here, and I took it over there and we did the same thing. And I learned over the years how it, it’s, it’s all a process. If you lean in and you take note of what the process is, you can apply it anywhere in life. So that’s really why I’m trying my best to teach people and, and just let them know, “Hey, here’s, here’s what works. You can do it for yourself as well.”
Connect with Joel Green and Jennifer Dawn Coaching
Jennifer Dawn: Hmm. I love this so much. So, Joel, share with everybody if they wanna go find out more about you, if they wanna get the book when it comes out, where should they go to find you?
Joel Green: Well, you can find me on, uh, my website, which is joelbgreen.com. Uh, you can see a whole lot of information about me there. Some of the things that we discussed as far as cheezit, uh, box, and just some other, uh, fun tidbits. Um, but also on Instagram, I’m on there often, which is, uh. My handle is J Green, so JAY green, uh, PLTJ, green PLT, um, on Instagram, and you can find me on Facebook as well. And I, I’m one that, believe me what I tell you, I, every audience I speak to, I say, look, please contact me and I’m not one to ignore you. I, it is my purpose to, to help people where I can help, to assist when I can assist. Um, to help network. I’m a connector, you know, so if someone says, “Hey, how did you get with whoever as a partner?” “here’s how I got it done.” And if I can, if it makes sense, I’ll connect you as well. And um, that’s one thing I’m always looking to grow as far as business. Um, I love just developing partnerships the same way we developed a partnership with Nike, with Body Armor, sports drinks, Dick Sporting Goods. I’m always looking for new companies or anyone who can help benefit us and we can benefit them. Um, but yeah, so you know, those are some of the platforms you can find me on. Um, and. You know, we’ll be getting some more information about the book out soon. We have a really cool book trailer that’s being developed that I’ve never seen ever before. Uh, it’s a 3D book trailer. Uh, if you’ve ever seen Moana Toy Story, um, you’re gonna see some of the things I mentioned throughout my life. This trailer’s gonna detail it. You’ll see it to a t. Um, some of the experiences growing up that I had, the good, the bad, the ugly. You’ll see it all in a book trailer. It’s gonna pull people in like I’ve never seen before. Oh, that’s so exciting. Awesome. Uh, good for you. Like really and truly good for you from where you came from and where you are now. And I love how you’ve turned it all around and you’re just. Helping to put good out into the world and break some of these chains of, you know, violence and trauma and things like that. And I just, I love the work that you’re doing. Thank you so much, Joel, for being here with us today. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right, you guys. I know there was a ton of amazing stuff from today’s show. I hope you really enjoyed it and get out there and have a happy, productive day. Bye everybody.
Jennifer Dawn: I love what you said, that you were working harder physically, and then your grades actually increased. It’s that same thing together. Oh, I love it. I love it. Now you’re clearly a super successful guy. I would love to know, because sometimes it’s easy, we listen to a podcast and hear about a really successful person and you think, oh, well, you know, they had it easy. And I always say to people, uh, probably not. And so tell us a little bit about just your upbringing. Did you like, you know, have everything handed to you or did you have to work hard for it? Like, what, what did that look like?
Joel Green: That would’ve been nice. Actually. It wouldn’t have been nice to have everything handed to me, and I certain I didn’t. I certainly didn’t. Uh, I grew up in Philadelphia in an abandoned house in North Philly to be exact. Um, I was actually, the 10 K that I ran yesterday was right across the street from my old neighborhood. Which I make an effort to visit every single year just to kind of reflect on where I come from. And it’s, it’s, it’s intentional for me because I don’t want to forget what instilled the grind in me, just being honest. Um, I did whatever I could to escape that in addition to what my parents were doing to help us escape as a family. But it was a rough upbringing and, um, like literally, you know, at, to give you. At six years old, I’ll never forget, 1991, I was about 10 feet away from a shooting, and that was the only person there outside of the two shooters and the kid that got shot. And having to run away from that thinking I was gonna get shot in the back at six years old was, it is hard to even put any 6-year-old. I have a 9-year-old son, and I remember when he was six, I thought back on that situation that I went through. I said, I, I can’t imagine him in that situation. Um, just having to deal with that. It could be t it is, it was traumatic, you know. Um, I never forget, I went home and called my mom crying. She worked at an insurance company. I said, “I, I don’t wanna live here anymore. I wanna move. They, they saw me, they saw me.” And I, I don’t, you know, I don’t wanna get shot anyone, let alone a child has to say something like that is traumatic. And, uh, so having that upbringing had a knife poured out on me when I was about nine years old, having these type of things happen. It, it, it bred again, like I mentioned a call earlier, I developed a call to defeat. I developed a call to downturn. To be honest, you know, fortunately I started off on the lower end, um, as opposed to the higher end because if I, to fall, I’ve been there before. I know how to get back up.
Jennifer Dawn: And do you feel like your, the earlier upbringing really helped develop that mental toughness of, “I I can fall and I can get back up ’cause I’ve been there.”
Joel Green: Yeah. You know, I, I would say it, it definitely helped develop that side of me. Um, and again, you know, for sure you, you need mental toughness and business and life, period. Um, it helped me so much because I, I really, I saw what you can come from and achieve despite. You know, I, I’ve been told that, you know, my whole schools have been told in elementary, middle school, you’re proud of your environment. And as I grew older, my parents helped me to see that’s not the case. “No, your environment is a product of you.” And once I really adapted that and began walking in that, I realize that it is true. You know, I’m not a product of my environment. I don’t, it doesn’t matter how terrible my environment is. If I change the things around me will change. So I had to stop getting in trouble or just make sure I listened to authority and the moment I respected authority, they respected me more. You know, I realized literally my environment’s a product of me and I apply that to the sports environment. Now I apply it to the business environment. If I up my game, my business ups, that’s just how it is. That’s the kind of **resilience for business success** that can be learned.
Jennifer Dawn: Would you say that there was any particular moment where you made that decision that, you know we’re growing up in this abandoned house and you’re seeing shootings. Was there any moment where you made any kind of like a decision, “I’m gonna get out of here,” or “I’m gonna do something different,” or was there any moment like that?
Joel Green: Great question. I, I would say, I would say yes, and I was probably about five years old, believe it or not. Um, my, my parents, they’re big on planting seeds. They’ve done it, you know, um, sneakily our whole lives, I’m the youngest of four, so it was six of us, you know, in the house many times. Again, it was an, it was an abandoned house, so we didn’t always have, we used to have kerosene heaters, if you’re familiar with those. But back in the eighties, and if it wasn’t enough kerosene in one, you know, in the house, it was enough for one room. So we were all asleep on their bed, you know, all six of us, which I still, I, I promise, I don’t know how it happened. Because we’re a big family. I’m six eight. You know, obviously I wasn’t at the time, but my siblings are already tall. I don’t know how we pulled it up at all. Six of us, we would be in the same bed and every, not every Sunday, but every once in a while after church, we’ll go get a water, rice and a pretzel and drive across the bridge in New Jersey to South Jersey, the suburbs of New Jersey. And coming from a house that actually still had a couple boarded up windows when, you know, and we had graffiti on our walls and everything. We had holes in the staircase. We used to play hopscotch around the holes in the staircase for fun. But, um, they would take us over to South Jersey to an area called, uh, Glassboro, and we would go into model homes. And I’ll never forget, I was about five years old. I just, the, the smell of new carpet, new paint. And these model homes was like, “wow, this is, it’s quiet.” And you, I would see this water coming out of the ground. It was sprinklers. I didn’t know what it was at the time. And um, I’m like, “this is, this is a nice neighborhood.” You know, people out here just walking and this, no one was looking at you with a mean look. And I wanted them, that seed was planted in me at five. I wanted to escape. Where we were to get as close as possible to that because it, it smelled good. It, it, it was, it felt like it was sunnier out there. Less pollution, just less trash, or it, it just, it was a, a beautiful environment and that seed that was planted in me made me work to make those rough things smooth later in life. This foundational story demonstrates the roots of **resilience for business success**.
Jennifer Dawn: I love that so much. I had a not, I had a difficult upbringing as well. Our parents moved around a lot. Um, uh, an abusive father, things along those lines that had to be overcome. And I remember at 13. Um, watching a news story on the news and my parents were watching the news and it was a, a girl who had been abused and, and I think she had been murdered. It was a terrible, terrible story, but I remember listening to the story and hearing about what happened to her, and it was almost like the first time the awareness came on because it was like, “wait a second. I’ve been abused like that too.” And I was seeing the parallels in her story, and I remember at 13 saying, “this isn’t gonna be how I end.” Um, I, I’ve, I’ve got things in common with this girl of her childhood and her upbringing that were actually like me, realizing, “oh my gosh, like I’ve got these things in common with her.” Um, but making that decision right then, “I’m not gonna allow my ending to be on the night evening news for this kind of a, a terrible end.” Just at 13, just going, “I’m not gonna let this happen to me and it’s gonna be different. I’m gonna have a different life.” And it sounds like at five, same idea you were, maybe you weren’t consciously aware that you were making a decision. Right. And tapping into your power at that point and deciding, “I’m gonna have a different life” and “I’m gonna get out of here” and “I’m gonna have sprinklers in my yard.” Right, right. So powerful. And I always love, you know, people who are listening, it’s, it’s easy to sit and go, “oh, well he’s so successful and he, you know, when you’re a pro athlete and it sounds so cool and, you know, fantastic” and think that, “but I’m not like that.” But the truth is like, you know, you grew up in an abandoned house and you were able to get out of that. And if you’re listening right now, look, I don’t care what the circumstances are, you can get out of whatever situation it is, and I hope you’re hearing this and inspired to know that for most of a lot of successful people, it wasn’t just handed to them on a silver platter. Like you had to work for it. You had to work hard for it.
Joel Green: Yeah, it, it’s, it’s funny even linking back to something you said earlier, and I, I didn’t mention, you know, I, I lost my older brother when I was 17. You know, I have two brothers and a sister and. You know, for me, it, I’ll be honest with you, so I, I speak on goals, you know, one of the main, I gave a TED Talk last year, um, and I incorporated goals. It was called three Essentials to Equality. And I just gave three actionable steps for people to use. And I, I, I tell people often about these three steps, and for me growing up, I used to set goal, I didn’t know I was setting goals. But I used to always try to distract myself from what we were going through, and apparently I was setting goals, you know, to achieve certain things. It was just so I didn’t have to think about going past. Some of this was during the crack era as well, you know, the late eighties, early nineties. And so you would walk past certain people in our neighborhood and you didn’t know what they were going to do. There were plenty of times to where I’m walking past somebody, I’m a little kid and the guy just looks scary, you know? He, he’s talking to himself. You don’t know what’s going on. And I’m like, “alright, let me go the other way. Lemme stop at the basketball court for a shoot around for a little bit. Then I’ll go to the, the store later on and I’m, let me go get up a hundred shots really quick.” It’s a goal that I set for my side. I didn’t realize. I’m like, let, lemme go do that. Distract myself from that guy until he leaves the block and then I’ll go back when I see it’s all clear. And I would just set these different goals for myself and just, you know, distract myself apparently. And, um, just start achieving things left and right. And when my brother passed, it was suddenly we be, he wasn’t sick or anything. Um, tragic incident, I shut down for sure, but I discovered something that was the, exactly the moment I discovered, um, something amazing. That I can, I can get something great from something terrible. I didn’t know before that point. I had, you know, when I was six years old, my, my, one of my older cousins, he was shot and killed outta the blue. Someone came up to him at a bus stop shot, shot him and killed. So I saw a death, um, at that point, but it was never in my house. Uh, the moment it hit my house, it, it, it was, I felt it even more. I shut down for about two weeks. I don’t think I went to school for about a week and a half or so, but I discovered during that time, I made some promises to him during that time period. I said, “I’m gonna do better in school,” because he would always tell me, “man, make sure your grades up.” “College coaches want you, but you can’t have terrible grades. If you’re gonna go on to college, make sure you get that scholarship.” I’m like, “all right.” He’s the one that started me off in basketball, so he was always coaching me and um, so I promised him “I’m gonna get a scholarship. I’m gonna pick my grades up.” And I never made the honor roll ever in my life. That year as 16, 17 years old. I made the honor roll for the first time ever, and this was, he passed in February 16th, 2002. I graduated that June and turned my whole everything around the last two quarters of school, got a scholarship, division one scholarship to college, made the honor roll, and I was the number one recruit for multiple division ones. And, um, I just discovered during that time like, “okay, you can actually have terrible things, fuel your fire if you choose to,” but it’s our choice. We do have the choice to do it. Um, and I told my son, my son, we, we, we have quotes every morning. So before school we, I created these quote cards. So while we’re waiting in the roundabout to let ’em out before school we’re sitting in, I give him, I said, “all right, pick a quote card,” and, um. One of the cards says, “complain or correct. Complain or correct it. You have a choice.” And so he knows that. So whenever we’re going through something, he’s complaining. I’m like, “look, you have a choice right now. You can either complain about it or correct it. You got a choice.” He is like, all I know. So you know, it, it is. That’s, I discovered so much of those things during that time period.
Jennifer Dawn: Absolutely, and so many people talk about post-traumatic stress. It’s a very, very real thing. But what you’re talking about is the post-traumatic growth, which is that. Beautiful part of something traumatic that happens where we grow as humans and we grow spiritually and we take it and we use it to fuel ourselves forward. And I am such a huge fan of post-traumatic growth. Why not pull everything good and beautiful that we can out of a really bad thing that’s happened?
“My Story Wasn’t for Me”: From Vulnerability to Purpose
Joel Green: Absolutely. And that, and that’s exactly, you know, uh, just finish my first book. We’re writing my first book, um, called, and it’s, it’s, it stems from what occurred with my brother and it is called *Filtering*, uh, the way to extract strength from the struggle. And that’s, that’s what I discovered. I discovered it during that time as far as man, okay. I’m struggling right now. I couldn’t even, I promise you, Jennifer, I couldn’t even talk without tear. I’m talking about sobbing, tears coming out. I couldn’t talk about anything. I couldn’t talk to her. My friend come by, just try to con console me. I could not see their, I couldn’t see anyone’s eye. I couldn’t look in anyone’s eyes. I remember it was hard to look anyone in the eye because I felt like they saw what I was thinking, and I felt, and it wasn’t until I, I began daring myself to say, “all right, start talking to people again. Just do it whether you feel like it or not, they’re here to help you.” And once I leaned into doing that, and I remember my uncle came by to visit one day. He said, “look, I know you don’t want to see me. You don’t wanna see anybody right now.” He came up to my room, my bedroom, and he sat on the side of my bed while I was laying down, face down on the pillow and said, “look, had his hand on my back. He said, ‘you gotta get up. You gotta get up. You have no choice. You gotta get up. You’re still here.'” And once I had to take that approach and, and just realize that, that, although my brother wasn’t, I was, I gotta keep living and I had to extract something from it. And like I said, those promises I made to him at that moment, I said, “I can actually extract fuel, you know, from this situation to, to make this struggle turn into something successful.”
Jennifer Dawn: I love that so much and you read my mind because I was getting ready to ask you about the book. And so it’s like, oh, there we go. Right there. And he is reading my mind about the book and I, I, in, when I was in high school, my very best friend was 16 and she was killed in a car accident. And I was actually in the room with her when she passed on. And I remember just that, you know, I’m 16. I really didn’t have much experience with death. Um, it happened so suddenly, and I just remember that grief and it was just for weeks afterwards. I know what you, you mean when you’re just like, “nobody look at me, nobody talked to me” because “I’m just gonna fall apart.” And every time I had a private moment, I was falling apart until you kind of like can get it back together again. But I remember we had gone to like. My boyfriend was playing racquetball or something and we had all been best friends and I remember sitting on the tailgate of the truck and they’re all playing racquetball. And I just remember the breeze, the wind, and I, at that moment I was just like, “you’re still here.” And I, I know what that moment is and it’s so powerful and it’s so hard and it’s so beautiful and it’s so sad and it’s just like, but you do have to go on and you do have to keep going. After these things, and so I love that you’re writing a book about this. This is so, so good. So tell me like, when is the, is the book out? Is it coming out? Tell us about the book.
Joel Green: Well, I’m super excited, of course. Uh, it is my first book. It’s set to release in September, so September the sixth is the, uh, te release date. But, um, it’s, it is gonna be a very impactful, uh. Piece of content for, for so many people. It’s six years in the making, believe it or not, six years. I began, six years ago, I began writing the book, uh, making notes toward the book, and I paused for a moment, especially during the pandemic. I wanted to take it in. I wanted to see what, what this thing was about. “Is this gonna be the next plague?” “Is this gonna be an airborne situation, like on the movies?” “What is this thing?” So I took off for over a year just to really assess that. Um, and even prior to that, I was going through some things. I took off a little bit, but still contributing notes to it. But, uh, I started back in 2016 and I, I had the name of the book of it then, and I stuck with it. Added content to it over the years and, um, I, I said I have to do this. I have to, people were telling me for 10 plus years before that point, “you have to have a book, man. You know, you have to have a book. You, you need to begin speaking.” I’m like, “Nope, that’s not me speaking. Absolutely not.” Like that’s, I’m terrified to get on the stage and, and speaking, you know, and I came up under. Two pastors like me, my parents are pre or pastors. So I saw, I’ve seen my family on stage, you know, my sister, she’s a singer. Like I, I’ve seen it, but it wasn’t me. My stage was a basketball court. And um, but the moment I began hitting the stage and I spoke my story or just a small portion of it with minimal detail, people were in tears. And I said, man, this is this. Is helping someone. This is helping someone. And they would come up to me afterwards, say, “thank you so much,” and I’m, I’m, I’m up there venting my story. But then I realized my story wasn’t for me. And you know what? The moment I took that on the fear of public speaking left me because I realized it wasn’t about me. You know, I became more selfless as opposed to selfishly thinking, “well, I’m afraid,” like, no, but they need what you have to say. And the moment I said, “okay, I need to give full detail, full transparency,” I said, “I’m gonna write a book.” And, um, the book is just really showing people how to properly make adjustments, how to pivot, how to get beyond obstacles, how to see things from different perspectives to where. There is a per, there’s multiple vantage points when it comes to every single thing we go through. And if we dare ourselves to kind of get off our emotions a little bit and see that we can get a prize from everything, uh, it doesn’t matter how terrible of a situation it is, we can get a prize from everything. So that’s really what the book covers and so much more, a ton more. Um, but it really shows people actionable steps as far as how to extract something great. From whatever you go through, even if it’s a victory. What a lot of people overlook is that we all want to repeat that victory again, but we don’t always lean into that victory to extract what we did to get there so that we can rent and repeat that process. So for me, I went to national championships in college at two different schools, and I took that to another. I took the same thing I helped my team do here, and I took it over there and we did the same thing. And I learned over the years how it, it’s, it’s all a process. If you lean in and you take note of what the process is, you can apply it anywhere in life. So that’s really why I’m trying my best to teach people and, and just let them know, “Hey, here’s, here’s what works. You can do it for yourself as well.”
Connect with Joel Green and Jennifer Dawn Coaching
Jennifer Dawn: Hmm. I love this so much. So, Joel, share with everybody if they wanna go find out more about you, if they wanna get the book when it comes out, where should they go to find you?
Joel Green: Well, you can find me on, uh, my website, which is joelbgreen.com. Uh, you can see a whole lot of information about me there. Some of the things that we discussed as far as cheezit, uh, box, and just some other, uh, fun tidbits. Um, but also on Instagram, I’m on there often, which is, uh. My handle is J Green, so JAY green, uh, PLTJ, green PLT, um, on Instagram, and you can find me on Facebook as well. And I, I’m one that, believe me what I tell you, I, every audience I speak to, I say, look, please contact me and I’m not one to ignore you. I, it is my purpose to, to help people where I can help, to assist when I can assist. Um, to help network. I’m a connector, you know, so if someone says, “Hey, how did you get with whoever as a partner?” “here’s how I got it done.” And if I can, if it makes sense, I’ll connect you as well. And um, that’s one thing I’m always looking to grow as far as business. Um, I love just developing partnerships the same way we developed a partnership with Nike, with Body Armor, sports drinks, Dick Sporting Goods. I’m always looking for new companies or anyone who can help benefit us and we can benefit them. Um, but yeah, so you know, those are some of the platforms you can find me on. Um, and. You know, we’ll be getting some more information about the book out soon. We have a really cool book trailer that’s being developed that I’ve never seen ever before. Uh, it’s a 3D book trailer. Uh, if you’ve ever seen Moana Toy Story, um, you’re gonna see some of the things I mentioned throughout my life. This trailer’s gonna detail it. You’ll see it to a t. Um, some of the experiences growing up that I had, the good, the bad, the ugly. You’ll see it all in a book trailer. It’s gonna pull people in like I’ve never seen before. Oh, that’s so exciting. Awesome. Uh, good for you. Like really and truly good for you from where you came from and where you are now. And I love how you’ve turned it all around and you’re just. Helping to put good out into the world and break some of these chains of, you know, violence and trauma and things like that. And I just, I love the work that you’re doing. Thank you so much, Joel, for being here with us today. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right, you guys. I know there was a ton of amazing stuff from today’s show. I hope you really enjoyed it and get out there and have a happy, productive day. Bye everybody.
Jennifer Dawn: I love what you said, that you were working harder physically, and then your grades actually increased. It’s that same thing together. Oh, I love it. I love it. Now you’re clearly a super successful guy. I would love to know, because sometimes it’s easy, we listen to a podcast and hear about a really successful person and you think, oh, well, you know, they had it easy. And I always say to people, uh, probably not. And so tell us a little bit about just your upbringing. Did you like, you know, have everything handed to you or did you have to work hard for it? Like, what, what did that look like?
Joel Green: That would’ve been nice. Actually. It wouldn’t have been nice to have everything handed to me, and I certain I didn’t. I certainly didn’t. Uh, I grew up in Philadelphia in an abandoned house in North Philly to be exact. Um, I was actually, the 10 K that I ran yesterday was right across the street from my old neighborhood. Which I make an effort to visit every single year just to kind of reflect on where I come from. And it’s, it’s, it’s intentional for me because I don’t want to forget what instilled the grind in me, just being honest. Um, I did whatever I could to escape that in addition to what my parents were doing to help us escape as a family. But it was a rough upbringing and, um, like literally, you know, at, to give you. At six years old, I’ll never forget, 1991, I was about 10 feet away from a shooting, and that was the only person there outside of the two shooters and the kid that got shot. And having to run away from that thinking I was gonna get shot in the back at six years old was, it is hard to even put any 6-year-old. I have a 9-year-old son, and I remember when he was six, I thought back on that situation that I went through. I said, I, I can’t imagine him in that situation. Um, just having to deal with that. It could be t it is, it was traumatic, you know. Um, I never forget, I went home and called my mom crying. She worked at an insurance company. I said, “I, I don’t wanna live here anymore. I wanna move. They, they saw me, they saw me.” And I, I don’t, you know, I don’t wanna get shot anyone, let alone a child has to say something like that is traumatic. And, uh, so having that upbringing had a knife poured out on me when I was about nine years old, having these type of things happen. It, it, it bred again, like I mentioned a call earlier, I developed a call to defeat. I developed a call to downturn. To be honest, you know, fortunately I started off on the lower end, um, as opposed to the higher end because if I, to fall, I’ve been there before. I know how to get back up.
Jennifer Dawn: And do you feel like your, the earlier upbringing really helped develop that mental toughness of, “I I can fall and I can get back up ’cause I’ve been there.”
Joel Green: Yeah. You know, I, I would say it, it definitely helped develop that side of me. Um, and again, you know, for sure you, you need mental toughness and business and life, period. Um, it helped me so much because I, I really, I saw what you can come from and achieve despite. You know, I, I’ve been told that, you know, my whole schools have been told in elementary, middle school, you’re proud of your environment. And as I grew older, my parents helped me to see that’s not the case. “No, your environment is a product of you.” And once I really adapted that and began walking in that, I realize that it is true. You know, I’m not a product of my environment. I don’t, it doesn’t matter how terrible my environment is. If I change the things around me will change. So I had to stop getting in trouble or just make sure I listened to authority and the moment I respected authority, they respected me more. You know, I realized literally my environment’s a product of me and I apply that to the sports environment. Now I apply it to the business environment. If I up my game, my business ups, that’s just how it is. That’s the kind of **resilience for business success** that can be learned.
Jennifer Dawn: Would you say that there was any particular moment where you made that decision that, you know we’re growing up in this abandoned house and you’re seeing shootings. Was there any moment where you made any kind of like a decision, “I’m gonna get out of here,” or “I’m gonna do something different,” or was there any moment like that?
Joel Green: Great question. I, I would say, I would say yes, and I was probably about five years old, believe it or not. Um, my, my parents, they’re big on planting seeds. They’ve done it, you know, um, sneakily our whole lives, I’m the youngest of four, so it was six of us, you know, in the house many times. Again, it was an, it was an abandoned house, so we didn’t always have, we used to have kerosene heaters, if you’re familiar with those. But back in the eighties, and if it wasn’t enough kerosene in one, you know, in the house, it was enough for one room. So we were all asleep on their bed, you know, all six of us, which I still, I, I promise, I don’t know how it happened. Because we’re a big family. I’m six eight. You know, obviously I wasn’t at the time, but my siblings are already tall. I don’t know how we pulled it up at all. Six of us, we would be in the same bed and every, not every Sunday, but every once in a while after church, we’ll go get a water, rice and a pretzel and drive across the bridge in New Jersey to South Jersey, the suburbs of New Jersey. And coming from a house that actually still had a couple boarded up windows when, you know, and we had graffiti on our walls and everything. We had holes in the staircase. We used to play hopscotch around the holes in the staircase for fun. But, um, they would take us over to South Jersey to an area called, uh, Glassboro, and we would go into model homes. And I’ll never forget, I was about five years old. I just, the, the smell of new carpet, new paint. And these model homes was like, “wow, this is, it’s quiet.” And you, I would see this water coming out of the ground. It was sprinklers. I didn’t know what it was at the time. And um, I’m like, “this is, this is a nice neighborhood.” You know, people out here just walking and this, no one was looking at you with a mean look. And I wanted them, that seed was planted in me at five. I wanted to escape. Where we were to get as close as possible to that because it, it smelled good. It, it, it was, it felt like it was sunnier out there. Less pollution, just less trash, or it, it just, it was a, a beautiful environment and that seed that was planted in me made me work to make those rough things smooth later in life. This foundational story demonstrates the roots of **resilience for business success**.
Jennifer Dawn: I love that so much. I had a not, I had a difficult upbringing as well. Our parents moved around a lot. Um, uh, an abusive father, things along those lines that had to be overcome. And I remember at 13. Um, watching a news story on the news and my parents were watching the news and it was a, a girl who had been abused and, and I think she had been murdered. It was a terrible, terrible story, but I remember listening to the story and hearing about what happened to her, and it was almost like the first time the awareness came on because it was like, “wait a second. I’ve been abused like that too.” And I was seeing the parallels in her story, and I remember at 13 saying, “this isn’t gonna be how I end.” Um, I, I’ve, I’ve got things in common with this girl of her childhood and her upbringing that were actually like me, realizing, “oh my gosh, like I’ve got these things in common with her.” Um, but making that decision right then, “I’m not gonna allow my ending to be on the night evening news for this kind of a, a terrible end.” Just at 13, just going, “I’m not gonna let this happen to me and it’s gonna be different. I’m gonna have a different life.” And it sounds like at five, same idea you were, maybe you weren’t consciously aware that you were making a decision. Right. And tapping into your power at that point and deciding, “I’m gonna have a different life” and “I’m gonna get out of here” and “I’m gonna have sprinklers in my yard.” Right, right. So powerful. And I always love, you know, people who are listening, it’s, it’s easy to sit and go, “oh, well he’s so successful and he, you know, when you’re a pro athlete and it sounds so cool and, you know, fantastic” and think that, “but I’m not like that.” But the truth is like, you know, you grew up in an abandoned house and you were able to get out of that. And if you’re listening right now, look, I don’t care what the circumstances are, you can get out of whatever situation it is, and I hope you’re hearing this and inspired to know that for most of a lot of successful people, it wasn’t just handed to them on a silver platter. Like you had to work for it. You had to work hard for it.
Joel Green: Yeah, it, it’s, it’s funny even linking back to something you said earlier, and I, I didn’t mention, you know, I, I lost my older brother when I was 17. You know, I have two brothers and a sister and. You know, for me, it, I’ll be honest with you, so I, I speak on goals, you know, one of the main, I gave a TED Talk last year, um, and I incorporated goals. It was called three Essentials to Equality. And I just gave three actionable steps for people to use. And I, I, I tell people often about these three steps, and for me growing up, I used to set goal, I didn’t know I was setting goals. But I used to always try to distract myself from what we were going through, and apparently I was setting goals, you know, to achieve certain things. It was just so I didn’t have to think about going past. Some of this was during the crack era as well, you know, the late eighties, early nineties. And so you would walk past certain people in our neighborhood and you didn’t know what they were going to do. There were plenty of times to where I’m walking past somebody, I’m a little kid and the guy just looks scary, you know? He, he’s talking to himself. You don’t know what’s going on. And I’m like, “alright, let me go the other way. Lemme stop at the basketball court for a shoot around for a little bit. Then I’ll go to the, the store later on and I’m, let me go get up a hundred shots really quick.” It’s a goal that I set for my side. I didn’t realize. I’m like, let, lemme go do that. Distract myself from that guy until he leaves the block and then I’ll go back when I see it’s all clear. And I would just set these different goals for myself and just, you know, distract myself apparently. And, um, just start achieving things left and right. And when my brother passed, it was suddenly we be, he wasn’t sick or anything. Um, tragic incident, I shut down for sure, but I discovered something that was the, exactly the moment I discovered, um, something amazing. That I can, I can get something great from something terrible. I didn’t know before that point. I had, you know, when I was six years old, my, my, one of my older cousins, he was shot and killed outta the blue. Someone came up to him at a bus stop shot, shot him and killed. So I saw a death, um, at that point, but it was never in my house. Uh, the moment it hit my house, it, it, it was, I felt it even more. I shut down for about two weeks. I don’t think I went to school for about a week and a half or so, but I discovered during that time, I made some promises to him during that time period. I said, “I’m gonna do better in school,” because he would always tell me, “man, make sure your grades up.” “College coaches want you, but you can’t have terrible grades. If you’re gonna go on to college, make sure you get that scholarship.” I’m like, “all right.” He’s the one that started me off in basketball, so he was always coaching me and um, so I promised him “I’m gonna get a scholarship. I’m gonna pick my grades up.” And I never made the honor roll ever in my life. That year as 16, 17 years old. I made the honor roll for the first time ever, and this was, he passed in February 16th, 2002. I graduated that June and turned my whole everything around the last two quarters of school, got a scholarship, division one scholarship to college, made the honor roll, and I was the number one recruit for multiple division ones. And, um, I just discovered during that time like, “okay, you can actually have terrible things, fuel your fire if you choose to,” but it’s our choice. We do have the choice to do it. Um, and I told my son, my son, we, we, we have quotes every morning. So before school we, I created these quote cards. So while we’re waiting in the roundabout to let ’em out before school we’re sitting in, I give him, I said, “all right, pick a quote card,” and, um. One of the cards says, “complain or correct. Complain or correct it. You have a choice.” And so he knows that. So whenever we’re going through something, he’s complaining. I’m like, “look, you have a choice right now. You can either complain about it or correct it. You got a choice.” He is like, all I know. So you know, it, it is. That’s, I discovered so much of those things during that time period.
Jennifer Dawn: Absolutely, and so many people talk about post-traumatic stress. It’s a very, very real thing. But what you’re talking about is the post-traumatic growth, which is that. Beautiful part of something traumatic that happens where we grow as humans and we grow spiritually and we take it and we use it to fuel ourselves forward. And I am such a huge fan of post-traumatic growth. Why not pull everything good and beautiful that we can out of a really bad thing that’s happened?
“My Story Wasn’t for Me”: From Vulnerability to Purpose
Joel Green: Absolutely. And that, and that’s exactly, you know, uh, just finish my first book. We’re writing my first book, um, called, and it’s, it’s, it stems from what occurred with my brother and it is called *Filtering*, uh, the way to extract strength from the struggle. And that’s, that’s what I discovered. I discovered it during that time as far as man, okay. I’m struggling right now. I couldn’t even, I promise you, Jennifer, I couldn’t even talk without tear. I’m talking about sobbing, tears coming out. I couldn’t talk about anything. I couldn’t talk to her. My friend come by, just try to con console me. I could not see their, I couldn’t see anyone’s eye. I couldn’t look in anyone’s eyes. I remember it was hard to look anyone in the eye because I felt like they saw what I was thinking, and I felt, and it wasn’t until I, I began daring myself to say, “all right, start talking to people again. Just do it whether you feel like it or not, they’re here to help you.” And once I leaned into doing that, and I remember my uncle came by to visit one day. He said, “look, I know you don’t want to see me. You don’t wanna see anybody right now.” He came up to my room, my bedroom, and he sat on the side of my bed while I was laying down, face down on the pillow and said, “look, had his hand on my back. He said, ‘you gotta get up. You gotta get up. You have no choice. You gotta get up. You’re still here.'” And once I had to take that approach and, and just realize that, that, although my brother wasn’t, I was, I gotta keep living and I had to extract something from it. And like I said, those promises I made to him at that moment, I said, “I can actually extract fuel, you know, from this situation to, to make this struggle turn into something successful.”
Jennifer Dawn: I love that so much and you read my mind because I was getting ready to ask you about the book. And so it’s like, oh, there we go. Right there. And he is reading my mind about the book and I, I, in, when I was in high school, my very best friend was 16 and she was killed in a car accident. And I was actually in the room with her when she passed on. And I remember just that, you know, I’m 16. I really didn’t have much experience with death. Um, it happened so suddenly, and I just remember that grief and it was just for weeks afterwards. I know what you, you mean when you’re just like, “nobody look at me, nobody talked to me” because “I’m just gonna fall apart.” And every time I had a private moment, I was falling apart until you kind of like can get it back together again. But I remember we had gone to like. My boyfriend was playing racquetball or something and we had all been best friends and I remember sitting on the tailgate of the truck and they’re all playing racquetball. And I just remember the breeze, the wind, and I, at that moment I was just like, “you’re still here.” And I, I know what that moment is and it’s so powerful and it’s so hard and it’s so beautiful and it’s so sad and it’s just like, but you do have to go on and you do have to keep going. After these things, and so I love that you’re writing a book about this. This is so, so good. So tell me like, when is the, is the book out? Is it coming out? Tell us about the book.
Joel Green: Well, I’m super excited, of course. Uh, it is my first book. It’s set to release in September, so September the sixth is the, uh, te release date. But, um, it’s, it is gonna be a very impactful, uh. Piece of content for, for so many people. It’s six years in the making, believe it or not, six years. I began, six years ago, I began writing the book, uh, making notes toward the book, and I paused for a moment, especially during the pandemic. I wanted to take it in. I wanted to see what, what this thing was about. “Is this gonna be the next plague?” “Is this gonna be an airborne situation, like on the movies?” “What is this thing?” So I took off for over a year just to really assess that. Um, and even prior to that, I was going through some things. I took off a little bit, but still contributing notes to it. But, uh, I started back in 2016 and I, I had the name of the book of it then, and I stuck with it. Added content to it over the years and, um, I, I said I have to do this. I have to, people were telling me for 10 plus years before that point, “you have to have a book, man. You know, you have to have a book. You, you need to begin speaking.” I’m like, “Nope, that’s not me speaking. Absolutely not.” Like that’s, I’m terrified to get on the stage and, and speaking, you know, and I came up under. Two pastors like me, my parents are pre or pastors. So I saw, I’ve seen my family on stage, you know, my sister, she’s a singer. Like I, I’ve seen it, but it wasn’t me. My stage was a basketball court. And um, but the moment I began hitting the stage and I spoke my story or just a small portion of it with minimal detail, people were in tears. And I said, man, this is this. Is helping someone. This is helping someone. And they would come up to me afterwards, say, “thank you so much,” and I’m, I’m, I’m up there venting my story. But then I realized my story wasn’t for me. And you know what? The moment I took that on the fear of public speaking left me because I realized it wasn’t about me. You know, I became more selfless as opposed to selfishly thinking, “well, I’m afraid,” like, no, but they need what you have to say. And the moment I said, “okay, I need to give full detail, full transparency,” I said, “I’m gonna write a book.” And, um, the book is just really showing people how to properly make adjustments, how to pivot, how to get beyond obstacles, how to see things from different perspectives to where. There is a per, there’s multiple vantage points when it comes to every single thing we go through. And if we dare ourselves to kind of get off our emotions a little bit and see that we can get a prize from everything, uh, it doesn’t matter how terrible of a situation it is, we can get a prize from everything. So that’s really what the book covers and so much more, a ton more. Um, but it really shows people actionable steps as far as how to extract something great. From whatever you go through, even if it’s a victory. What a lot of people overlook is that we all want to repeat that victory again, but we don’t always lean into that victory to extract what we did to get there so that we can rent and repeat that process. So for me, I went to national championships in college at two different schools, and I took that to another. I took the same thing I helped my team do here, and I took it over there and we did the same thing. And I learned over the years how it, it’s, it’s all a process. If you lean in and you take note of what the process is, you can apply it anywhere in life. So that’s really why I’m trying my best to teach people and, and just let them know, “Hey, here’s, here’s what works. You can do it for yourself as well.”
Connect with Joel Green and Jennifer Dawn Coaching
Jennifer Dawn: Hmm. I love this so much. So, Joel, share with everybody if they wanna go find out more about you, if they wanna get the book when it comes out, where should they go to find you?
Joel Green: Well, you can find me on, uh, my website, which is joelbgreen.com. Uh, you can see a whole lot of information about me there. Some of the things that we discussed as far as cheezit, uh, box, and just some other, uh, fun tidbits. Um, but also on Instagram, I’m on there often, which is, uh. My handle is J Green, so JAY green, uh, PLTJ, green PLT, um, on Instagram, and you can find me on Facebook as well. And I, I’m one that, believe me what I tell you, I, every audience I speak to, I say, look, please contact me and I’m not one to ignore you. I, it is my purpose to, to help people where I can help, to assist when I can assist. Um, to help network. I’m a connector, you know, so if someone says, “Hey, how did you get with whoever as a partner?” “here’s how I got it done.” And if I can, if it makes sense, I’ll connect you as well. And um, that’s one thing I’m always looking to grow as far as business. Um, I love just developing partnerships the same way we developed a partnership with Nike, with Body Armor, sports drinks, Dick Sporting Goods. I’m always looking for new companies or anyone who can help benefit us and we can benefit them. Um, but yeah, so you know, those are some of the platforms you can find me on. Um, and. You know, we’ll be getting some more information about the book out soon. We have a really cool book trailer that’s being developed that I’ve never seen ever before. Uh, it’s a 3D book trailer. Uh, if you’ve ever seen Moana Toy Story, um, you’re gonna see some of the things I mentioned throughout my life. This trailer’s gonna detail it. You’ll see it to a t. Um, some of the experiences growing up that I had, the good, the bad, the ugly. You’ll see it all in a book trailer. It’s gonna pull people in like I’ve never seen before. Oh, that’s so exciting. Awesome. Uh, good for you. Like really and truly good for you from where you came from and where you are now. And I love how you’ve turned it all around and you’re just. Helping to put good out into the world and break some of these chains of, you know, violence and trauma and things like that. And I just, I love the work that you’re doing. Thank you so much, Joel, for being here with us today. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right, you guys. I know there was a ton of amazing stuff from today’s show. I hope you really enjoyed it and get out there and have a happy, productive day. Bye everybody.
Jennifer Dawn: I love what you said, that you were working harder physically, and then your grades actually increased. It’s that same thing together. Oh, I love it. I love it. Now you’re clearly a super successful guy. I would love to know, because sometimes it’s easy, we listen to a podcast and hear about a really successful person and you think, oh, well, you know, they had it easy. And I always say to people, uh, probably not. And so tell us a little bit about just your upbringing. Did you like, you know, have everything handed to you or did you have to work hard for it? Like, what, what did that look like?
Joel Green: That would’ve been nice. Actually. It wouldn’t have been nice to have everything handed to me, and I certain I didn’t. I certainly didn’t. Uh, I grew up in Philadelphia in an abandoned house in North Philly to be exact. Um, I was actually, the 10 K that I ran yesterday was right across the street from my old neighborhood. Which I make an effort to visit every single year just to kind of reflect on where I come from. And it’s, it’s, it’s intentional for me because I don’t want to forget what instilled the grind in me, just being honest. Um, I did whatever I could to escape that in addition to what my parents were doing to help us escape as a family. But it was a rough upbringing and, um, like literally, you know, at, to give you. At six years old, I’ll never forget, 1991, I was about 10 feet away from a shooting, and that was the only person there outside of the two shooters and the kid that got shot. And having to run away from that thinking I was gonna get shot in the back at six years old was, it is hard to even put any 6-year-old. I have a 9-year-old son, and I remember when he was six, I thought back on that situation that I went through. I said, I, I can’t imagine him in that situation. Um, just having to deal with that. It could be t it is, it was traumatic, you know. Um, I never forget, I went home and called my mom crying. She worked at an insurance company. I said, “I, I don’t wanna live here anymore. I wanna move. They, they saw me, they saw me.” And I, I don’t, you know, I don’t wanna get shot anyone, let alone a child has to say something like that is traumatic. And, uh, so having that upbringing had a knife poured out on me when I was about nine years old, having these type of things happen. It, it, it bred again, like I mentioned a call earlier, I developed a call to defeat. I developed a call to downturn. To be honest, you know, fortunately I started off on the lower end, um, as opposed to the higher end because if I, to fall, I’ve been there before. I know how to get back up.
Jennifer Dawn: And do you feel like your, the earlier upbringing really helped develop that mental toughness of, “I I can fall and I can get back up ’cause I’ve been there.”
Joel Green: Yeah. You know, I, I would say it, it definitely helped develop that side of me. Um, and again, you know, for sure you, you need mental toughness and business and life, period. Um, it helped me so much because I, I really, I saw what you can come from and achieve despite. You know, I, I’ve been told that, you know, my whole schools have been told in elementary, middle school, you’re proud of your environment. And as I grew older, my parents helped me to see that’s not the case. “No, your environment is a product of you.” And once I really adapted that and began walking in that, I realize that it is true. You know, I’m not a product of my environment. I don’t, it doesn’t matter how terrible my environment is. If I change the things around me will change. So I had to stop getting in trouble or just make sure I listened to authority and the moment I respected authority, they respected me more. You know, I realized literally my environment’s a product of me and I apply that to the sports environment. Now I apply it to the business environment. If I up my game, my business ups, that’s just how it is. That’s the kind of **resilience for business success** that can be learned.
Jennifer Dawn: Would you say that there was any particular moment where you made that decision that, you know we’re growing up in this abandoned house and you’re seeing shootings. Was there any moment where you made any kind of like a decision, “I’m gonna get out of here,” or “I’m gonna do something different,” or was there any moment like that?
Joel Green: Great question. I, I would say, I would say yes, and I was probably about five years old, believe it or not. Um, my, my parents, they’re big on planting seeds. They’ve done it, you know, um, sneakily our whole lives, I’m the youngest of four, so it was six of us, you know, in the house many times. Again, it was an, it was an abandoned house, so we didn’t always have, we used to have kerosene heaters, if you’re familiar with those. But back in the eighties, and if it wasn’t enough kerosene in one, you know, in the house, it was enough for one room. So we were all asleep on their bed, you know, all six of us, which I still, I, I promise, I don’t know how it happened. Because we’re a big family. I’m six eight. You know, obviously I wasn’t at the time, but my siblings are already tall. I don’t know how we pulled it up at all. Six of us, we would be in the same bed and every, not every Sunday, but every once in a while after church, we’ll go get a water, rice and a pretzel and drive across the bridge in New Jersey to South Jersey, the suburbs of New Jersey. And coming from a house that actually still had a couple boarded up windows when, you know, and we had graffiti on our walls and everything. We had holes in the staircase. We used to play hopscotch around the holes in the staircase for fun. But, um, they would take us over to South Jersey to an area called, uh, Glassboro, and we would go into model homes. And I’ll never forget, I was about five years old. I just, the, the smell of new carpet, new paint. And these model homes was like, “wow, this is, it’s quiet.” And you, I would see this water coming out of the ground. It was sprinklers. I didn’t know what it was at the time. And um, I’m like, “this is, this is a nice neighborhood.” You know, people out here just walking and this, no one was looking at you with a mean look. And I wanted them, that seed was planted in me at five. I wanted to escape. Where we were to get as close as possible to that because it, it smelled good. It, it, it was, it felt like it was sunnier out there. Less pollution, just less trash, or it, it just, it was a, a beautiful environment and that seed that was planted in me made me work to make those rough things smooth later in life. This foundational story demonstrates the roots of **resilience for business success**.
Jennifer Dawn: I love that so much. I had a not, I had a difficult upbringing as well. Our parents moved around a lot. Um, uh, an abusive father, things along those lines that had to be overcome. And I remember at 13. Um, watching a news story on the news and my parents were watching the news and it was a, a girl who had been abused and, and I think she had been murdered. It was a terrible, terrible story, but I remember listening to the story and hearing about what happened to her, and it was almost like the first time the awareness came on because it was like, “wait a second. I’ve been abused like that too.” And I was seeing the parallels in her story, and I remember at 13 saying, “this isn’t gonna be how I end.” Um, I, I’ve, I’ve got things in common with this girl of her childhood and her upbringing that were actually like me, realizing, “oh my gosh, like I’ve got these things in common with her.” Um, but making that decision right then, “I’m not gonna allow my ending to be on the night evening news for this kind of a, a terrible end.” Just at 13, just going, “I’m not gonna let this happen to me and it’s gonna be different. I’m gonna have a different life.” And it sounds like at five, same idea you were, maybe you weren’t consciously aware that you were making a decision. Right. And tapping into your power at that point and deciding, “I’m gonna have a different life” and “I’m gonna get out of here” and “I’m gonna have sprinklers in my yard.” Right, right. So powerful. And I always love, you know, people who are listening, it’s, it’s easy to sit and go, “oh, well he’s so successful and he, you know, when you’re a pro athlete and it sounds so cool and, you know, fantastic” and think that, “but I’m not like that.” But the truth is like, you know, you grew up in an abandoned house and you were able to get out of that. And if you’re listening right now, look, I don’t care what the circumstances are, you can get out of whatever situation it is, and I hope you’re hearing this and inspired to know that for most of a lot of successful people, it wasn’t just handed to them on a silver platter. Like you had to work for it. You had to work hard for it.
Joel Green: Yeah, it, it’s, it’s funny even linking back to something you said earlier, and I, I didn’t mention, you know, I, I lost my older brother when I was 17. You know, I have two brothers and a sister and. You know, for me, it, I’ll be honest with you, so I, I speak on goals, you know, one of the main,
Jennifer Dawn: Absolutely, and so many people talk about post-traumatic stress. It’s a very, very real thing. But what you’re talking about is the post-traumatic growth, which is that. Beautiful part of something traumatic that happens where we grow as humans and we grow spiritually and we take it and we use it to fuel ourselves forward. And I am such a huge fan of post-traumatic growth. Why not pull everything good and beautiful that we can out of a really bad thing that’s happened?
“My Story Wasn’t for Me”: From Vulnerability to Purpose
Joel Green: Absolutely. And that, and that’s exactly, you know, uh, just finish my first book. We’re writing my first book, um, called, and it’s, it’s, it stems from what occurred with my brother and it is called *Filtering*, uh, the way to extract strength from the struggle. And that’s, that’s what I discovered. I discovered it during that time as far as man, okay. I’m struggling right now. I couldn’t even, I promise you, Jennifer, I couldn’t even talk without tear. I’m talking about sobbing, tears coming out. I couldn’t talk about anything. I couldn’t talk to her. My friend come by, just try to con console me. I could not see their, I couldn’t see anyone’s eye. I couldn’t look in anyone’s eyes. I remember it was hard to look anyone in the eye because I felt like they saw what I was thinking, and I felt, and it wasn’t until I, I began daring myself to say, “all right, start talking to people again. Just do it whether you feel like it or not, they’re here to help you.” And once I leaned into doing that, and I remember my uncle came by to visit one day. He said, “look, I know you don’t want to see me. You don’t wanna see anybody right now.” He came up to my room, my bedroom, and he sat on the side of my bed while I was laying down, face down on the pillow and said, “look, had his hand on my back. He said, ‘you gotta get up. You gotta get up. You have no choice. You gotta get up. You’re still here.'” And once I had to take that approach and, and just realize that, that, although my brother wasn’t, I was, I gotta keep living and I had to extract something from it. And like I said, those promises I made to him at that moment, I said, “I can actually extract fuel, you know, from this situation to, to make this struggle turn into something successful.”
Jennifer Dawn: I love that so much and you read my mind because I was getting ready to ask you about the book. And so it’s like, “oh, there we go. Right there.” And he is reading my mind about the book and I, I, in, when I was in high school, my very best friend was 16 and she was killed in a car accident. And I was actually in the room with her when she passed on. And I remember just that, you know, I’m 16. I really didn’t have much experience with death. Um, it happened so suddenly, and I just remember that grief and it was just for weeks afterwards. I know what you, you mean when you’re just like, “nobody look at me, nobody talked to me” because “I’m just gonna fall apart.” And every time I had a private moment, I was falling apart until you kind of like can get it back together again. But I remember we had gone to like. My boyfriend was playing racquetball or something and we had all been best friends and I remember sitting on the tailgate of the truck and they’re all playing racquetball. And I just remember the breeze, the wind, and I, at that moment I was just like, “you’re still here.” And I, I know what that moment is and it’s so powerful and it’s so hard and it’s so beautiful and it’s so sad and it’s just like, but you do have to go on and you do have to keep going. After these things, and so I love that you’re writing a book about this. This is so, so good. So tell me like, when is the, is the book out? Is it coming out? Tell us about the book.
Joel Green: Well, I’m super excited, of course. Uh, it is my first book. It’s set to release in September, so September the sixth is the, uh, te release date. But, um, it’s, it is gonna be a very impactful, uh. Piece of content for, for so many people. It’s six years in the making, believe it or not, six years. I began, six years ago, I began writing the book, uh, making notes toward the book, and I paused for a moment, especially during the pandemic. I wanted to take it in. I wanted to see what, what this thing was about. “Is this gonna be the next plague?” “Is this gonna be an airborne situation, like on the movies?” “What is this thing?” So I took off for over a year just to really assess that. Um, and even prior to that, I was going through some things. I took off a little bit, but still contributing notes to it. But, uh, I started back in 2016 and I, I had the name of the book of it then, and I stuck with it. Added content to it over the years and, um, I, I said I have to do this. I have to, people were telling me for 10 plus years before that point, “you have to have a book, man. You know, you have to have a book. You, you need to begin speaking.” I’m like, “Nope, that’s not me speaking. Absolutely not.” Like that’s, I’m terrified to get on the stage and, and speaking, you know, and I came up under. Two pastors like me, my parents are pre or pastors. So I saw, I’ve seen my family on stage, you know, my sister, she’s a singer. Like I, I’ve seen it, but it wasn’t me. My stage was a basketball court. And um, but the moment I began hitting the stage and I spoke my story or just a small portion of it with minimal detail, people were in tears. And I said, man, this is this. Is helping someone. This is helping someone. And they would come up to me afterwards, say, “thank you so much,” and I’m, I’m, I’m up there venting my story. But then I realized my story wasn’t for me. And you know what? The moment I took that on the fear of public speaking left me because I realized it wasn’t about me. You know, I became more selfless as opposed to selfishly thinking, “well, I’m afraid,” like, no, but they need what you have to say. And the moment I said, “okay, I need to give full detail, full transparency,” I said, “I’m gonna write a book.” And, um, the book is just really showing people how to properly make adjustments, how to pivot, how to get beyond obstacles, how to see things from different perspectives to where. There is a per, there’s multiple vantage points when it comes to every single thing we go through. And if we dare ourselves to kind of get off our emotions a little bit and see that we can get a prize from everything, uh, it doesn’t matter how terrible of a situation it is, we can get a prize from everything. So that’s really what the book covers and so much more, a ton more. Um, but it really shows people actionable steps as far as how to extract something great. From whatever you go through, even if it’s a victory. What a lot of people overlook is that we all want to repeat that victory again, but we don’t always lean into that victory to extract what we did to get there so that we can rent and repeat that process. So for me, I went to national championships in college at two different schools, and I took that to another. I took the same thing I helped my team do here, and I took it over there and we did the same thing. And I learned over the years how it, it’s, it’s all a process. If you lean in and you take note of what the process is, you can apply it anywhere in life. So that’s really why I’m trying my best to teach people and, and just let them know, “Hey, here’s, here’s what works. You can do it for yourself as well.”
Connect with Joel Green and Jennifer Dawn Coaching
Jennifer Dawn: Hmm. I love this so much. So, Joel, share with everybody if they wanna go find out more about you, if they wanna get the book when it comes out, where should they go to find you?
Joel Green: Well, you can find me on, uh, my website, which is joelbgreen.com. Uh, you can see a whole lot of information about me there. Some of the things that we discussed as far as cheezit, uh, box, and just some other, uh, fun tidbits. Um, but also on Instagram, I’m on there often, which is, uh. My handle is J Green, so JAY green, uh, PLTJ, green PLT, um, on Instagram, and you can find me on Facebook as well. And I, I’m one that, believe me what I tell you, I, every audience I speak to, I say, look, please contact me and I’m not one to ignore you. I, it is my purpose to, to help people where I can help, to assist when I can assist. Um, to help network. I’m a connector, you know, so if someone says, “Hey, how did you get with whoever as a partner?” “here’s how I got it done.” And if I can, if it makes sense, I’ll connect you as well. And um, that’s one thing I’m always looking to grow as far as business. Um, I love just developing partnerships the same way we developed a partnership with Nike, with Body Armor, sports drinks, Dick Sporting Goods. I’m always looking for new companies or anyone who can help benefit us and we can benefit them. Um, but yeah, so you know, those are some of the platforms you can find me on. Um, and. You know, we’ll be getting some more information about the book out soon. We have a really cool book trailer that’s being developed that I’ve never seen ever before. Uh, it’s a 3D book trailer. Uh, if you’ve ever seen Moana Toy Story, um, you’re gonna see some of the things I mentioned throughout my life. This trailer’s gonna detail it. You’ll see it to a t. Um, some of the experiences growing up that I had, the good, the bad, the ugly. You’ll see it all in a book trailer. It’s gonna pull people in like I’ve never seen before. Oh, that’s so exciting. Awesome. Uh, good for you. Like really and truly good for you from where you came from and where you are now. And I love how you’ve turned it all around and you’re just. Helping to put good out into the world and break some of these chains of, you know, violence and trauma and things like that. And I just, I love the work that you’re doing. Thank you so much, Joel, for being here with us today. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right, you guys. I know there was a ton of amazing stuff from today’s show. I hope you really enjoyed it and get out there and have a happy, productive day. Bye everybody.
Jennifer Dawn: I love what you said, that you were working harder physically, and then your grades actually increased. It’s that same thing together. Oh, I love it. I love it. Now you’re clearly a super successful guy. I would love to know, because sometimes it’s easy, we listen to a podcast and hear about a really successful person and you think, “oh, well, you know, they had it easy.” And I always say to people, uh, probably not. And so tell us a little bit about just your upbringing. Did you like, you know, have everything handed to you or did you have to work hard for it? Like, what, what did that look like?
Joel Green: That would’ve been nice. Actually. It wouldn’t have been nice to have everything handed to me, and I certain I didn’t. I certainly didn’t. Uh, I grew up in Philadelphia in an abandoned house in North Philly to be exact. Um, I was actually, the 10 K that I ran yesterday was right across the street from my old neighborhood. Which I make an effort to visit every single year just to kind of reflect on where I come from. And it’s, it’s, it’s intentional for me because I don’t want to forget what instilled the grind in me, just being honest. Um, I did whatever I could to escape that in addition to what my parents were doing to help us escape as a family. But it was a rough upbringing and, um, like literally, you know, at, to give you. At six years old, I’ll never forget, 1991, I was about 10 feet away from a shooting, and that was the only person there outside of the two shooters and the kid that got shot. And having to run away from that thinking I was gonna get shot in the back at six years old was, it is hard to even put any 6-year-old. I have a 9-year-old son, and I remember when he was six, I thought back on that situation that I went through. I said, I, I can’t imagine him in that situation. Um, just having to deal with that. It could be t it is, it was traumatic, you know. Um, I never forget, I went home and called my mom crying. She worked at an insurance company. I said, “I, I don’t wanna live here anymore. I wanna move. They, they saw me, they saw me.” And I, I don’t, you know, I don’t wanna get shot anyone, let alone a child has to say something like that is traumatic. And, uh, so having that upbringing had a knife poured out on me when I was about nine years old, having these type of things happen. It, it, it bred again, like I mentioned a call earlier, I developed a call to defeat. I developed a call to downturn. To be honest, you know, fortunately I started off on the lower end, um, as opposed to the higher end because if I, to fall, I’ve been there before. I know how to get back up.
Jennifer Dawn: And do you feel like your, the earlier upbringing really helped develop that mental toughness of, “I I can fall and I can get back up ’cause I’ve been there.”
Joel Green: Yeah. You know, I, I would say it, it definitely helped develop that side of me. Um, and again, you know, for sure you, you need mental toughness and business and life, period. Um, it helped me so much because I, I really, I saw what you can come from and achieve despite. You know, I, I’ve been told that, you know, my whole schools have been told in elementary, middle school, you’re proud of your environment. And as I grew older, my parents helped me to see that’s not the case. “No, your environment is a product of you.” And once I really adapted that and began walking in that, I realize that it is true. You know, I’m not a product of my environment. I don’t, it doesn’t matter how terrible my environment is. If I change the things around me will change. So I had to stop getting in trouble or just make sure I listened to authority and the moment I respected authority, they respected me more. You know, I realized literally my environment’s a product of me and I apply that to the sports environment. Now I apply it to the business environment. If I up my game, my business ups, that’s just how it is. That’s the kind of **resilience for business success** that can be learned.
Jennifer Dawn: Would you say that there was any particular moment where you made that decision that, you know we’re growing up in this abandoned house and you’re seeing shootings. Was there any moment where you made any kind of like a decision, “I’m gonna get out of here,” or “I’m gonna do something different,” or was there any moment like that?
Joel Green: Great question. I, I would say, I would say yes, and I was probably about five years old, believe it or not. Um, my, my parents, they’re big on planting seeds. They’ve done it, you know, um, sneakily our whole lives, I’m the youngest of four, so it was six of us, you know, in the house many times. Again, it was an, it was an abandoned house, so we didn’t always have, we used to have kerosene heaters, if you’re familiar with those. But back in the eighties, and if it wasn’t enough kerosene in one, you know, in the house, it was enough for one room. So we were all asleep on their bed, you know, all six of us, which I still, I, I promise, I don’t know how it happened. Because we’re a big family. I’m six eight. You know, obviously I wasn’t at the time, but my siblings are already tall. I don’t know how we pulled it up at all. Six of us, we would be in the same bed and every, not every Sunday, but every once in a while after church, we’ll go get a water, rice and a pretzel and drive across the bridge in New Jersey to South Jersey, the suburbs of New Jersey. And coming from a house that actually still had a couple boarded up windows when, you know, and we had graffiti on our walls and everything. We had holes in the staircase. We used to play hopscotch around the holes in the staircase for fun. But, um, they would take us over to South Jersey to an area called, uh, Glassboro, and we would go into model homes. And I’ll never forget, I was about five years old. I just, the, the smell of new carpet, new paint. And these model homes was like, “wow, this is, it’s quiet.” And you, I would see this water coming out of the ground. It was sprinklers. I didn’t know what it was at the time. And um, I’m like, “this is, this is a nice neighborhood.” You know, people out here just walking and this, no one was looking at you with a mean look. And I wanted them, that seed was planted in me at five. I wanted to escape. Where we were to get as close as possible to that because it, it smelled good. It, it, it was, it felt like it was sunnier out there. Less pollution, just less trash, or it, it just, it was a, a beautiful environment and that seed that was planted in me made me work to make those rough things smooth later in life. This foundational story demonstrates the roots of **resilience for business success**.
Jennifer Dawn: I love that so much. I had a not, I had a difficult upbringing as well. Our parents moved around a lot. Um, uh, an abusive father, things along those lines that had to be overcome. And I remember at 13. Um, watching a news story on the news and my parents were watching the news and it was a, a girl who had been abused and, and I think she had been murdered. It was a terrible, terrible story, but I remember listening to the story and hearing about what happened to her, and it was almost like the first time the awareness came on because it was like, “wait a second. I’ve been abused like that too.” And I was seeing the parallels in her story, and I remember at 13 saying, “this isn’t gonna be how I end.” Um, I, I’ve, I’ve got things in common with this girl of her childhood and her upbringing that were actually like me, realizing, “oh my gosh, like I’ve got these things in common with her.” Um, but making that decision right then, “I’m not gonna allow my ending to be on the night evening news for this kind of a, a terrible end.” Just at 13, just going, “I’m not gonna let this happen to me and it’s gonna be different. I’m gonna have a different life.” And it sounds like at five, same idea you were, maybe you weren’t consciously aware that you were making a decision. Right. And tapping into your power at that point and deciding, “I’m gonna have a different life” and “I’m gonna get out of here” and “I’m gonna have sprinklers in my yard.” Right, right. So powerful. And I always love, you know, people who are listening, it’s, it’s easy to sit and go, “oh, well he’s so successful and he, you know, when you’re a pro athlete and it sounds so cool and, you know, fantastic” and think that, “but I’m not like that.” But the truth is like, you know, you grew up in an abandoned house and you were able to get out of that. And if you’re listening right now, look, I don’t care what the circumstances are, you can get out of whatever situation it is, and I hope you’re hearing this and inspired to know that for most of a lot of successful people, it wasn’t just handed to them on a silver platter. Like you had to work for it. You had to work hard for it.
Joel Green: Yeah, it, it’s, it’s funny even linking back to something you said earlier, and I, I didn’t mention, you know, I, I lost my older brother when I was 17. You know, I have two brothers and a sister and. You know, for me, it, I’ll be honest with you, so I, I speak on goals, you know, one of the main, I gave a TED Talk last year, um, and I incorporated goals. It was called three Essentials to Equality. And I just gave three actionable steps for people to use. And I, I, I tell people often about these three steps, and for me growing up, I used to set goal, I didn’t know I was setting goals. But I used to always try to distract myself from what we were going through, and apparently I was setting goals, you know, to achieve certain things. It was just so I didn’t have to think about going past. Some of this was during the crack era as well, you know, the late eighties, early nineties. And so you would walk past certain people in our neighborhood and you didn’t know what they were going to do. There were plenty of times to where I’m walking past somebody, I’m a little kid and the guy just looks scary, you know? He, he’s talking to himself. You don’t know what’s going on. And I’m like, “alright, let me go the other way. Lemme stop at the basketball court for a shoot around for a little bit. Then I’ll go to the, the store later on and I’m, let me go get up a hundred shots really quick.” It’s a goal that I set for my side. I didn’t realize. I’m like, let, lemme go do that. Distract myself from that guy until he leaves the block and then I’ll go back when I see it’s all clear. And I would just set these different goals for myself and just, you know, distract myself apparently. And, um, just start achieving things left and right. And when my brother passed, it was suddenly we be, he wasn’t sick or anything. Um, tragic incident, I shut down for sure, but I discovered something that was the, exactly the moment I discovered, um, something amazing. That I can, I can get something great from something terrible. I didn’t know before that point. I had, you know, when I was six years old, my, my, one of my older cousins, he was shot and killed outta the blue. Someone came up to him at a bus stop shot, shot him and killed. So I saw a death, um, at that point, but it was never in my house. Uh, the moment it hit my house, it, it, it was, I felt it even more. I shut down for about two weeks. I don’t think I went to school for about a week and a half or so, but I discovered during that time, I made some promises to him during that time period. I said, “I’m gonna do better in school,” because he would always tell me, “man, make sure your grades up.” “College coaches want you, but you can’t have terrible grades. If you’re gonna go on to college, make sure you get that scholarship.” I’m like, “all right.” He’s the one that started me off in basketball, so he was always coaching me and um, so I promised him “I’m gonna get a scholarship. I’m gonna pick my grades up.” And I never made the honor roll ever in my life. That year as 16, 17 years old. I made the honor roll for the first time ever, and this was, he passed in February 16th, 2002. I graduated that June and turned my whole everything around the last two quarters of school, got a scholarship, division one scholarship to college, made the honor roll, and I was the number one recruit for multiple division ones. And, um, I just discovered during that time like, “okay, you can actually have terrible things, fuel your fire if you choose to,” but it’s our choice. We do have the choice to do it. Um, and I told my son, my son, we, we, we have quotes every morning. So before school we, I created these quote cards. So while we’re waiting in the roundabout to let ’em out before school we’re sitting in, I give him, I said, “all right, pick a quote card,” and, um. One of the cards says, “complain or correct. Complain or correct it. You have a choice.” And so he knows that. So whenever we’re going through something, he’s complaining. I’m like, “look, you have a choice right now. You can either complain about it or correct it. You got a choice.” He is like, all I know. So you know, it, it is. That’s, I discovered so much of those things during that time period.
Jennifer Dawn: Absolutely, and so many people talk about post-traumatic stress. It’s a very, very real thing. But what you’re talking about is the post-traumatic growth, which is that. Beautiful part of something traumatic that happens where we grow as humans and we grow spiritually and we take it and we use it to fuel ourselves forward. And I am such a huge fan of post-traumatic growth. Why not pull everything good and beautiful that we can out of a really bad thing that’s happened?
“My Story Wasn’t for Me”: From Vulnerability to Purpose
Joel Green: Absolutely. And that, and that’s exactly, you know, uh, just finish my first book. We’re writing my first book, um, called, and it’s, it’s, it stems from what occurred with my brother and it is called *Filtering*, uh, the way to extract strength from the struggle. And that’s, that’s what I discovered. I discovered it during that time as far as man, okay. I’m struggling right now. I couldn’t even, I promise you, Jennifer, I couldn’t even talk without tear. I’m talking about sobbing, tears coming out. I couldn’t talk about anything. I couldn’t talk to her. My friend come by, just try to con console me. I could not see their, I couldn’t see anyone’s eye. I couldn’t look in anyone’s eyes. I remember it was hard to look anyone in the eye because I felt like they saw what I was thinking, and I felt, and it wasn’t until I, I began daring myself to say, “all right, start talking to people again. Just do it whether you feel like it or not, they’re here to help you.” And once I leaned into doing that, and I remember my uncle came by to visit one day. He said, “look, I know you don’t want to see me. You don’t wanna see anybody right now.” He came up to my room, my bedroom, and he sat on the side of my bed while I was laying down, face down on the pillow and said, “look, had his hand on my back. He said, ‘you gotta get up. You gotta get up. You have no choice. You gotta get up. You’re still here.'” And once I had to take that approach and, and just realize that, that, although my brother wasn’t, I was, I gotta keep living and I had to extract something from it. And like I said, those promises I made to him at that moment, I said, “I can actually extract fuel, you know, from this situation to, to make this struggle turn into something successful.”
Jennifer Dawn: I love that so much and you read my mind because I was getting ready to ask you about the book. And so it’s like, “oh, there we go. Right there.” And he is reading my mind about the book and I, I, in, when I was in high school, my very best friend was 16 and she was killed in a car accident. And I was actually in the room with her when she passed on. And I remember just that, you know, I’m 16. I really didn’t have much experience with death. Um, it happened so suddenly, and I just remember that grief and it was just for weeks afterwards. I know what you, you mean when you’re just like, “nobody look at me, nobody talked to me” because “I’m just gonna fall apart.” And every time I had a private moment, I was falling apart until you kind of like can get it back together again. But I remember we had gone to like. My boyfriend was playing racquetball or something and we had all been best friends and I remember sitting on the tailgate of the truck and they’re all playing racquetball. And I just remember the breeze, the wind, and I, at that moment I was just like, “you’re still here.” And I, I know what that moment is and it’s so powerful and it’s so hard and it’s so beautiful and it’s so sad and it’s just like, but you do have to go on and you do have to keep going. After these things, and so I love that you’re writing a book about this. This is so, so good. So tell me like, when is the, is the book out? Is it coming out? Tell us about the book.
Joel Green: Well, I’m super excited, of course. Uh, it is my first book. It’s set to release in September, so September the sixth is the, uh, te release date. But, um, it’s, it is gonna be a very impactful, uh. Piece of content for, for so many people. It’s six years in the making, believe it or not, six years. I began, six years ago, I began writing the book, uh, making notes toward the book, and I paused for a moment, especially during the pandemic. I wanted to take it in. I wanted to see what, what this thing was about. “Is this gonna be the next plague?” “Is this gonna be an airborne situation, like on the movies?” “What is this thing?” So I took off for over a year just to really assess that. Um, and even prior to that, I was going through some things. I took off a little bit, but still contributing notes to it. But, uh, I started back in 2016 and I, I had the name of the book of it then, and I stuck with it. Added content to it over the years and, um, I, I said I have to do this. I have to, people were telling me for 10 plus years before that point, “you have to have a book, man. You know, you have to have a book. You, you need to begin speaking.” I’m like, “Nope, that’s not me speaking. Absolutely not.” Like that’s, I’m terrified to get on the stage and, and speaking, you know, and I came up under. Two pastors like me, my parents are pre or pastors. So I saw, I’ve seen my family on stage, you know, my sister, she’s a singer. Like I, I’ve seen it, but it wasn’t me. My stage was a basketball court. And um, but the moment I began hitting the stage and I spoke my story or just a small portion of it with minimal detail, people were in tears. And I said, man, this is this. Is helping someone. This is helping someone. And they would come up to me afterwards, say, “thank you so much,” and I’m, I’m, I’m up there venting my story. But then I realized my story wasn’t for me. And you know what? The moment I took that on the fear of public speaking left me because I realized it wasn’t about me. You know, I became more selfless as opposed to selfishly thinking, “well, I’m afraid,” like, no, but they need what you have to say. And the moment I said, “okay, I need to give full detail, full transparency,” I said, “I’m gonna write a book.” And, um, the book is just really showing people how to properly make adjustments, how to pivot, how to get beyond obstacles, how to see things from different perspectives to where. There is a per, there’s multiple vantage points when it comes to every single thing we go through. And if we dare ourselves to kind of get off our emotions a little bit and see that we can get a prize from everything, uh, it doesn’t matter how terrible of a situation it is, we can get a prize from everything. So that’s really what the book covers and so much more, a ton more. Um, but it really shows people actionable steps as far as how to extract something great. From whatever you go through, even if it’s a victory. What a lot of people overlook is that we all want to repeat that victory again, but we don’t always lean into that victory to extract what we did to get there so that we can rent and repeat that process. So for me, I went to national championships in college at two different schools, and I took that to another. I took the same thing I helped my team do here, and I took it over there and we did the same thing. And I learned over the years how it, it’s, it’s all a process. If you lean in and you take note of what the process is, you can apply it anywhere in life. So that’s really why I’m trying my best to teach people and, and just let them know, “Hey, here’s, here’s what works. You can do it for yourself as well.”
Connect with Joel Green and Jennifer Dawn Coaching
Jennifer Dawn: Hmm. I love this so much. So, Joel, share with everybody if they wanna go find out more about you, if they wanna get the book when it comes out, where should they go to find you?
Joel Green: Well, you can find me on, uh, my website, which is joelbgreen.com. Uh, you can see a whole lot of information about me there. Some of the things that we discussed as far as cheezit, uh, box, and just some other, uh, fun tidbits. Um, but also on Instagram, I’m on there often, which is, uh. My handle is J Green, so JAY green, uh, PLTJ, green PLT, um, on Instagram, and you can find me on Facebook as well. And I, I’m one that, believe me what I tell you, I, every audience I speak to, I say, look, please contact me and I’m not one to ignore you. I, it is my purpose to, to help people where I can help, to assist when I can assist. Um, to help network. I’m a connector, you know, so if someone says, “Hey, how did you get with whoever as a partner?” “here’s how I got it done.” And if I can, if it makes sense, I’ll connect you as well. And um, that’s one thing I’m always looking to grow as far as business. Um, I love just developing partnerships the same way we developed a partnership with Nike, with Body Armor, sports drinks, Dick Sporting Goods. I’m always looking for new companies or anyone who can help benefit us and we can benefit them. Um, but yeah, so you know, those are some of the platforms you can find me on. Um, and. You know, we’ll be getting some more information about the book out soon. We have a really cool book trailer that’s being developed that I’ve never seen ever before. Uh, it’s a 3D book trailer. Uh, if you’ve ever seen Moana Toy Story, um, you’re gonna see some of the things I mentioned throughout my life. This trailer’s gonna detail it. You’ll see it to a t. Um, some of the experiences growing up that I had, the good, the bad, the ugly. You’ll see it all in a book trailer. It’s gonna pull people in like I’ve never seen before. Oh, that’s so exciting. Awesome. Uh, good for you. Like really and truly good for you from where you came from and where you are now. And I love how you’ve turned it all around and you’re just. Helping to put good out into the world and break some of these chains of, you know, violence and trauma and things like that. And I just, I love the work that you’re doing. Thank you so much, Joel, for being here with us today. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right, you guys. I know there was a ton of amazing stuff from today’s show. I hope you really enjoyed it and get out there and have a happy, productive day. Bye everybody.
Jennifer Dawn: I love what you said, that you were working harder physically, and then your grades actually increased. It’s that same thing together. Oh, I love it. I love it. Now you’re clearly a super successful guy. I would love to know, because sometimes it’s easy, we listen to a podcast and hear about a really successful person and you think, “oh, well, you know, they had it easy.” And I always say to people, uh, probably not. And so tell us a little bit about just your upbringing. Did you like, you know, have everything handed to you or did you have to work hard for it? Like, what, what did that look like?
Joel Green: That would’ve been nice. Actually. It wouldn’t have been nice to have everything handed to me, and I certain I didn’t. I certainly didn’t. Uh, I grew up in Philadelphia in an abandoned house in North Philly to be exact. Um, I was actually, the 10 K that I ran yesterday was right across the street from my old neighborhood. Which I make an effort to visit every single year just to kind of reflect on where I come from. And it’s, it’s, it’s intentional for me because I don’t want to forget what instilled the grind in me, just being honest. Um, I did whatever I could to escape that in addition to what my parents were doing to help us escape as a family. But it was a rough upbringing and, um, like literally, you know, at, to give you. At six years old, I’ll never forget, 1991, I was about 10 feet away from a shooting, and that was the only person there outside of the two shooters and the kid that got shot. And having to run away from that thinking I was gonna get shot in the back at six years old was, it is hard to even put any 6-year-old. I have a 9-year-old son, and I remember when he was six, I thought back on that situation that I went through. I said, I, I can’t imagine him in that situation. Um, just having to deal with that. It could be t it is, it was traumatic, you know. Um, I never forget, I went home and called my mom crying. She worked at an insurance company. I said, “I, I don’t wanna live here anymore. I wanna move. They, they saw me, they saw me.” And I, I don’t, you know, I don’t wanna get shot anyone, let alone a child has to say something like that is traumatic. And, uh, so having that upbringing had a knife poured out on me when I was about nine years old, having these type of things happen. It, it, it bred again, like I mentioned a call earlier, I developed a call to defeat. I developed a call to downturn. To be honest, you know, fortunately I started off on the lower end, um, as opposed to the higher end because if I, to fall, I’ve been there before. I know how to get back up.
Jennifer Dawn: And do you feel like your, the earlier upbringing really helped develop that mental toughness of, “I I can fall and I can get back up ’cause I’ve been there.”
Joel Green: Yeah. You know, I, I would say it, it definitely helped develop that side of me. Um, and again, you know, for sure you, you need mental toughness and business and life, period. Um, it helped me so much because I, I really, I saw what you can come from and achieve despite. You know, I, I’ve been told that, you know, my whole schools have been told in elementary, middle school, you’re proud of your environment. And as I grew older, my parents helped me to see that’s not the case. “No, your environment is a product of you.” And once I really adapted that and began walking in that, I realize that it is true. You know, I’m not a product of my environment. I don’t, it doesn’t matter how terrible my environment is. If I change the things around me will change. So I had to stop getting in trouble or just make sure I listened to authority and the moment I respected authority, they respected me more. You know, I realized literally my environment’s a product of me and I apply that to the sports environment. Now I apply it to the business environment. If I up my game, my business ups, that’s just how it is. That’s the kind of **resilience for business success** that can be learned.
Jennifer Dawn: Would you say that there was any particular moment where you made that decision that, you know we’re growing up in this abandoned house and you’re seeing shootings. Was there any moment where you made any kind of like a decision, “I’m gonna get out of here,” or “I’m gonna do something different,” or was there any moment like that?”
Joel Green: Great question. I, I would say, I would say yes, and I was probably about five years old, believe it or not. Um, my, my parents, they’re big on planting seeds. They’ve done it, you know, um, sneakily our whole lives, I’m the youngest of four, so it was six of us, you know, in the house many times. Again, it was an, it was an abandoned house, so we didn’t always have, we used to have kerosene heaters, if you’re familiar with those. But back in the eighties, and if it wasn’t enough kerosene in one, you know, in the house, it was enough for one room. So we were all asleep on their bed, you know, all six of us, which I still, I, I promise, I don’t know how it happened. Because we’re a big family. I’m six eight. You know, obviously I wasn’t at the time, but my siblings are already tall. I don’t know how we pulled it up at all. Six of us, we would be in the same bed and every, not every Sunday, but every once in a while after church, we’ll go get a water, rice and a pretzel and drive across the bridge in New Jersey to South Jersey, the suburbs of New Jersey. And coming from a house that actually still had a couple boarded up windows when, you know, and we had graffiti on our walls and everything. We had holes in the staircase. We used to play hopscotch around the holes in the staircase for fun. But, um, they would take us over to South Jersey to an area called, uh, Glassboro, and we would go into model homes. And I’ll never forget, I was about five years old. I just, the, the smell of new carpet, new paint. And these model homes was like, “wow, this is, it’s quiet.” And you, I would see this water coming out of the ground. It was sprinklers. I didn’t know what it was at the time. And um, I’m like, “this is, this is a nice neighborhood.” You know, people out here just walking and this, no one was looking at you with a mean look. And I wanted them, that seed was planted in me at five. I wanted to escape. Where we were to get as close as possible to that because it, it smelled good. It, it, it was, it felt like it was sunnier out there. Less pollution, just less trash, or it, it just, it was a, a beautiful environment and that seed that was planted in me made me work to make those rough things smooth later in life. This foundational story demonstrates the roots of **resilience for business success**.
Jennifer Dawn: I love that so much. I had a not, I had a difficult upbringing as well. Our parents moved around a lot. Um, uh, an abusive father, things along those lines that had to be overcome. And I remember at 13. Um, watching a news story on the news and my parents were watching the news and it was a, a girl who had been abused and, and I think she had been murdered. It was a terrible, terrible story, but I remember listening to the story and hearing about what happened to her, and it was almost like the first time the awareness came on because it was like, “wait a second. I’ve been abused like that too.” And I was seeing the parallels in her story, and I remember at 13 saying, “this isn’t gonna be how I end.” Um, I, I’ve, I’ve got things in common with this girl of her childhood and her upbringing that were actually like me, realizing, “oh my gosh, like I’ve got these things in common with her.” Um, but making that decision right then, “I’m not gonna allow my ending to be on the night evening news for this kind of a, a terrible end.” Just at 13, just going, “I’m not gonna let this happen to me and it’s gonna be different. I’m gonna have a different life.” And it sounds like at five, same idea you were, maybe you weren’t consciously aware that you were making a decision. Right. And tapping into your power at that point and deciding, “I’m gonna have a different life” and “I’m gonna get out of here” and “I’m gonna have sprinklers in my yard.” Right, right. So powerful. And I always love, you know, people who are listening, it’s, it’s easy to sit and go, “oh, well he’s so successful and he, you know, when you’re a pro athlete and it sounds so cool and, you know, fantastic” and think that, “but I’m not like that.” But the truth is like, you know, you grew up in an abandoned house and you were able to get out of that. And if you’re listening right now, look, I don’t care what the circumstances are, you can get out of whatever situation it is, and I hope you’re hearing this and inspired to know that for most of a lot of successful people, it wasn’t just handed to them on a silver platter. Like you had to work for it. You had to work hard for it.
Joel Green: Yeah, it, it’s, it’s funny even linking back to something you said earlier, and I, I didn’t mention, you know, I, I lost my older brother when I was 17. You know, I have two brothers and a sister and. You know, for me, it, I’ll be honest with you, so I, I speak on goals, you know, one of the main, I gave a TED Talk last year, um, and I incorporated goals. It was called three Essentials to Equality. And I just gave three actionable steps for people to use. And I, I, I tell people often about these three steps, and for me growing up, I used to set goal, I didn’t know I was setting goals. But I used to always try to distract myself from what we were going through, and apparently I was setting goals, you know, to achieve certain things. It was just so I didn’t have to think about going past. Some of this was during the crack era as well, you know, the late eighties, early nineties. And so you would walk past certain people in our neighborhood and you didn’t know what they were going to do. There were plenty of times to where I’m walking past somebody, I’m a little kid and the guy just looks scary, you know? He, he’s talking to himself. You don’t know what’s going on. And I’m like, “alright, let me go the other way. Lemme stop at the basketball court for a shoot around for a little bit. Then I’ll go to the, the store later on and I’m, let me go get up a hundred shots really quick.” It’s a goal that I set for my side. I didn’t realize. I’m like, let, lemme go do that. Distract myself from that guy until he leaves the block and then I’ll go back when I see it’s all clear. And I would just set these different goals for myself and just, you know, distract myself apparently. And, um, just start achieving things left and right. And when my brother passed, it was suddenly we be, he wasn’t sick or anything. Um, tragic incident, I shut down for sure, but I discovered something that was the, exactly the moment I discovered, um, something amazing. That I can, I can get something great from something terrible. I didn’t know before that point. I had, you know, when I was six years old, my, my, one of my older cousins, he was shot and killed outta the blue. Someone came up to him at a bus stop shot, shot him and killed. So I saw a death, um, at that point, but it was never in my house. Uh, the moment it hit my house, it, it, it was, I felt it even more. I shut down for about two weeks. I don’t think I went to school for about a week and a half or so, but I discovered during that time, I made some promises to him during that time period. I said, “I’m gonna do better in school,” because he would always tell me, “man, make sure your grades up.” “College coaches want you, but you can’t have terrible grades. If you’re gonna go on to college, make sure you get that scholarship.” I’m like, “all right.” He’s the one that started me off in basketball, so he was always coaching me and um, so I promised him “I’m gonna get a scholarship. I’m gonna pick my grades up.” And I never made the honor roll ever in my life. That year as 16, 17 years old. I made the honor roll for the first time ever, and this was, he passed in February 16th, 2002. I graduated that June and turned my whole everything around the last two quarters of school, got a scholarship, division one scholarship to college, made the honor roll, and I was the number one recruit for multiple division ones. And, um, I just discovered during that time like, “okay, you can actually have terrible things, fuel your fire if you choose to,” but it’s our choice. We do have the choice to do it. Um, and I told my son, my son, we, we, we have quotes every morning. So before school we, I created these quote cards. So while we’re waiting in the roundabout to let ’em out before school we’re sitting in, I give him, I said, “all right, pick a quote card,” and, um. One of the cards says, “complain or correct. Complain or correct it. You have a choice.” And so he knows that. So whenever we’re going through something, he’s complaining. I’m like, “look, you have a choice right now. You can either complain about it or correct it. You got a choice.” He is like, all I know. So you know, it, it is. That’s, I discovered so much of those things during that time period.
Jennifer Dawn: Absolutely, and so many people talk about post-traumatic stress. It’s a very, very real thing. But what you’re talking about is the post-traumatic growth, which is that. Beautiful part of something traumatic that happens where we grow as humans and we grow spiritually and we take it and we use it to fuel ourselves forward. And I am such a huge fan of post-traumatic growth. Why not pull everything good and beautiful that we can out of a really bad thing that’s happened?
“My Story Wasn’t for Me”: From Vulnerability to Purpose
Joel Green: Absolutely. And that, and that’s exactly, you know, uh, just finish my first book. We’re writing my first book, um, called, and it’s, it’s, it stems from what occurred with my brother and it is called *Filtering*, uh, the way to extract strength from the struggle. And that’s, that’s what I discovered. I discovered it during that time as far as man, okay. I’m struggling right now. I couldn’t even, I promise you, Jennifer, I couldn’t even talk without tear. I’m talking about sobbing, tears coming out. I couldn’t talk about anything. I couldn’t talk to her. My friend come by, just try to con console me. I could not see their, I couldn’t see anyone’s eye. I couldn’t look in anyone’s eyes. I remember it was hard to look anyone in the eye because I felt like they saw what I was thinking, and I felt, and it wasn’t until I, I began daring myself to say, “all right, start talking to people again. Just do it whether you feel like it or not, they’re here to help you.” And once I leaned into doing that, and I remember my uncle came by to visit one day. He said, “look, I know you don’t want to see me. You don’t wanna see anybody right now.” He came up to my room, my bedroom, and he sat on the side of my bed while I was laying down, face down on the pillow and said, “look, had his hand on my back. He said, ‘you gotta get up. You gotta get up. You have no choice. You gotta get up. You’re still here.'” And once I had to take that approach and, and just realize that, that, although my brother wasn’t, I was, I gotta keep living and I had to extract something from it. And like I said, those promises I made to him at that moment, I said, “I can actually extract fuel, you know, from this situation to, to make this struggle turn into something successful.”
Jennifer Dawn: I love that so much and you read my mind because I was getting ready to ask you about the book. And so it’s like, “oh, there we go. Right there.” And he is reading my mind about the book and I, I, in, when I was in high school, my very best friend was 16 and she was killed in a car accident. And I was actually in the room with her when she passed on. And I remember just that, you know, I’m 16. I really didn’t have much experience with death. Um, it happened so suddenly, and I just remember that grief and it was just for weeks afterwards. I know what you, you mean when you’re just like, “nobody look at me, nobody talked to me” because “I’m just gonna fall apart.” And every time I had a private moment, I was falling apart until you kind of like can get it back together again. But I remember we had gone to like. My boyfriend was playing racquetball or something and we had all been best friends and I remember sitting on the tailgate of the truck and they’re all playing racquetball. And I just remember the breeze, the wind, and I, at that moment I was just like, “you’re still here.” And I, I know what that moment is and it’s so powerful and it’s so hard and it’s so beautiful and it’s so sad and it’s just like, but you do have to go on and you do have to keep going. After these things, and so I love that you’re writing a book about this. This is so, so good. So tell me like, when is the, is the book out? Is it coming out? Tell us about the book.
Joel Green: Well, I’m super excited, of course. Uh, it is my first book. It’s set to release in September, so September the sixth is the, uh, te release date. But, um, it’s, it is gonna be a very impactful, uh. Piece of content for, for so many people. It’s six years in the making, believe it or not, six years. I began, six years ago, I began writing the book, uh, making notes toward the book, and I paused for a moment, especially during the pandemic. I wanted to take it in. I wanted to see what, what this thing was about. “Is this gonna be the next plague?” “Is this gonna be an airborne situation, like on the movies?” “What is this thing?” So I took off for over a year just to really assess that. Um, and even prior to that, I was going through some things. I took off a little bit, but still contributing notes to it. But, uh, I started back in 2016 and I, I had the name of the book of it then, and I stuck with it. Added content to it over the years and, um, I, I said I have to do this. I have to, people were telling me for 10 plus years before that point, “you have to have a book, man. You know, you have to have a book. You, you need to begin speaking.” I’m like, “Nope, that’s not me speaking. Absolutely not.” Like that’s, I’m terrified to get on the stage and, and speaking, you know, and I came up under. Two pastors like me, my parents are pre or pastors. So I saw, I’ve seen my family on stage, you know, my sister, she’s a singer. Like I, I’ve seen it, but it wasn’t me. My stage was a basketball court. And um, but the moment I began hitting the stage and I spoke my story or just a small portion of it with minimal detail, people were in tears. And I said, man, this is this. Is helping someone. This is helping someone. And they would come up to me afterwards, say, “thank you so much,” and I’m, I’m, I’m up there venting my story. But then I realized my story wasn’t for me. And you know what? The moment I took that on the fear of public speaking left me because I realized it wasn’t about me. You know, I became more selfless as opposed to selfishly thinking, “well, I’m afraid,” like, no, but they need what you have to say. And the moment I said, “okay, I need to give full detail, full transparency,” I said, “I’m gonna write a book.” And, um, the book is just really showing people how to properly make adjustments, how to pivot, how to get beyond obstacles, how to see things from different perspectives to where. There is a per, there’s multiple vantage points when it comes to every single thing we go through. And if we dare ourselves to kind of get off our emotions a little bit and see that we can get a prize from everything, uh, it doesn’t matter how terrible of a situation it is, we can get a prize from everything. So that’s really what the book covers and so much more, a ton more. Um, but it really shows people actionable steps as far as how to extract something great. From whatever you go through, even if it’s a victory. What a lot of people overlook is that we all want to repeat that victory again, but we don’t always lean into that victory to extract what we did to get there so that we can rent and repeat that process. So for me, I went to national championships in college at two different schools, and I took that to another. I took the same thing I helped my team do here, and I took it over there and we did the same thing. And I learned over the years how it, it’s, it’s all a process. If you lean in and you take note of what the process is, you can apply it anywhere in life. So that’s really why I’m trying my best to teach people and, and just let them know, “Hey, here’s, here’s what works. You can do it for yourself as well.”
Connect with Joel Green and Jennifer Dawn Coaching
Jennifer Dawn: Hmm. I love this so much. So, Joel, share with everybody if they wanna go find out more about you, if they wanna get the book when it comes out, where should they go to find you?
Joel Green: Well, you can find me on, uh, my website, which is joelbgreen.com. Uh, you can see a whole lot of information about me there. Some of the things that we discussed as far as cheezit, uh, box, and just some other, uh, fun tidbits. Um, but also on Instagram, I’m on there often, which is, uh. My handle is J Green, so JAY green, uh, PLTJ, green PLT, um, on Instagram, and you can find me on Facebook as well. And I, I’m one that, believe me what I tell you, I, every audience I speak to, I say, look, please contact me and I’m not one to ignore you. I, it is my purpose to, to help people where I can help, to assist when I can assist. Um, to help network. I’m a connector, you know, so if someone says, “Hey, how did you get with whoever as a partner?” “here’s how I got it done.” And if I can, if it makes sense, I’ll connect you as well. And um, that’s one thing I’m always looking to grow as far as business. Um, I love just developing partnerships the same way we developed a partnership with Nike, with Body Armor, sports drinks, Dick Sporting Goods. I’m always looking for new companies or anyone who can help benefit us and we can benefit them. Um, but yeah, so you know, those are some of the platforms you can find me on. Um, and. You know, we’ll be getting some more information about the book out soon. We have a really cool book trailer that’s being developed that I’ve never seen ever before. Uh, it’s a 3D book trailer. Uh, if you’ve ever seen Moana Toy Story, um, you’re gonna see some of the things I mentioned throughout my life. This trailer’s gonna detail it. You’ll see it to a t. Um, some of the experiences growing up that I had, the good, the bad, the ugly. You’ll see it all in a book trailer. It’s gonna pull people in like I’ve never seen before. Oh, that’s so exciting. Awesome. Uh, good for you. Like really and truly good for you from where you came from and where you are now. And I love how you’ve turned it all around and you’re just. Helping to put good out into the world and break some of these chains of, you know, violence and trauma and things like that. And I just, I love the work that you’re doing. Thank you so much, Joel, for being here with us today. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right, you guys. I know there was a ton of amazing stuff from today’s show. I hope you really enjoyed it and get out there and have a happy, productive day. Bye everybody.
Jennifer Dawn: I love what you said, that you were working harder physically, and then your grades actually increased. It’s that same thing together. Oh, I love it. I love it. Now you’re clearly a super successful guy. I would love to know, because sometimes it’s easy, we listen to a podcast and hear about a really successful person and you think, “oh, well, you know, they had it easy.” And I always say to people, uh, probably not. And so tell us a little bit about just your upbringing. Did you like, you know, have everything handed to you or did you have to work hard for it? Like, what, what did that look like?
Joel Green: That would’ve been nice. Actually. It wouldn’t have been nice to have everything handed to me, and I certain I didn’t. I certainly didn’t. Uh, I grew up in Philadelphia in an abandoned house in North Philly to be exact. Um, I was actually, the 10 K that I ran yesterday was right across the street from my old neighborhood. Which I make an effort to visit every single year just to kind of reflect on where I come from. And it’s, it’s, it’s intentional for me because I don’t want to forget what instilled the grind in me, just being honest. Um, I did whatever I could to escape that in addition to what my parents were doing to help us escape as a family. But it was a rough upbringing and, um, like literally, you know, at, to give you. At six years old, I’ll never forget, 1991, I was about 10 feet away from a shooting, and that was the only person there outside of the two shooters and the kid that got shot. And having to run away from that thinking I was gonna get shot in the back at six years old was, it is hard to even put any 6-year-old. I have a 9-year-old son, and I remember when he was six, I thought back on that situation that I went through. I said, I, I can’t imagine him in that situation. Um, just having to deal with that. It could be t it is, it was traumatic, you know. Um, I never forget, I went home and called my mom crying. She worked at an insurance company. I said, “I, I don’t wanna live here anymore. I wanna move. They, they saw me, they saw me.” And I, I don’t, you know, I don’t wanna get shot anyone, let alone a child has to say something like that is traumatic. And, uh, so having that upbringing had a knife poured out on me when I was about nine years old, having these type of things happen. It, it, it bred again, like I mentioned a call earlier, I developed a call to defeat. I developed a call to downturn. To be honest, you know, fortunately I started off on the lower end, um, as opposed to the higher end because if I, to fall, I’ve been there before. I know how to get back up.
Jennifer Dawn: And do you feel like your, the earlier upbringing really helped develop that mental toughness of, “I I can fall and I can get back up ’cause I’ve been there.”
Joel Green: Yeah. You know, I, I would say it, it definitely helped develop that side of me. Um, and again, you know, for sure you, you need mental toughness and business and life, period. Um, it helped me so much because I, I really, I saw what you can come from and achieve despite. You know, I, I’ve been told that, you know, my whole schools have been told in elementary, middle school, you’re proud of your environment. And as I grew older, my parents helped me to see that’s not the case. “No, your environment is a product of you.” And once I really adapted that and began walking in that, I realize that it is true. You know, I’m not a product of my environment. I don’t, it doesn’t matter how terrible my environment is. If I change the things around me will change. So I had to stop getting in trouble or just make sure I listened to authority and the moment I respected authority, they respected me more. You know, I realized literally my environment’s a product of me and I apply that to the sports environment. Now I apply it to the business environment. If I up my game, my business ups, that’s just how it is. That’s the kind of **resilience for business success** that can be learned.
Jennifer Dawn: Would you say that there was any particular moment where you made that decision that, you know we’re growing up in this abandoned house and you’re seeing shootings. Was there any moment where you made any kind of like a decision, “I’m gonna get out of here,” or “I’m gonna do something different,” or was there any moment like that?”
Joel Green: Great question. I, I would say, I would say yes, and I was probably about five years old, believe it or not. Um, my, my parents, they’re big on planting seeds. They’ve done it, you know, um, sneakily our whole lives, I’m the youngest of four, so it was six of us, you know, in the house many times. Again, it was an, it was an abandoned house, so we didn’t always have, we used to have kerosene heaters, if you’re familiar with those. But back in the eighties, and if it wasn’t enough kerosene in one, you know, in the house, it was enough for one room. So we were all asleep on their bed, you know, all six of us, which I still, I, I promise, I don’t know how it happened. Because we’re a big family. I’m six eight. You know, obviously I wasn’t at the time, but my siblings are already tall. I don’t know how we pulled it up at all. Six of us, we would be in the same bed and every, not every Sunday, but every once in a while after church, we’ll go get a water, rice and a pretzel and drive across the bridge in New Jersey to South Jersey, the suburbs of New Jersey. And coming from a house that actually still had a couple boarded up windows when, you know, and we had graffiti on our walls and everything. We had holes in the staircase. We used to play hopscotch around the holes in the staircase for fun. But, um, they would take us over to South Jersey to an area called, uh, Glassboro, and we would go into model homes. And I’ll never forget, I was about five years old. I just, the, the smell of new carpet, new paint. And these model homes was like, “wow, this is, it’s quiet.” And you, I would see this water coming out of the ground. It was sprinklers. I didn’t know what it was at the time. And um, I’m like, “this is, this is a nice neighborhood.” You know, people out here just walking and this, no one was looking at you with a mean look. And I wanted them, that seed was planted in me at five. I wanted to escape. Where we were to get as close as possible to that because it, it smelled good. It, it, it was, it felt like it was sunnier out there. Less pollution, just less trash, or it, it just, it was a, a beautiful environment and that seed that was planted in me made me work to make those rough things smooth later in life. This foundational story demonstrates the roots of **resilience for business success**.
Jennifer Dawn: I love that so much. I had a not, I had a difficult upbringing as well. Our parents moved around a lot. Um, uh, an abusive father, things along those lines that had to be overcome. And I remember at 13. Um, watching a news story on the news and my parents were watching the news and it was a, a girl who had been abused and, and I think she had been murdered. It was a terrible, terrible story, but I remember listening to the story and hearing about what happened to her, and it was almost like the first time the awareness came on because it was like, “wait a second. I’ve been abused like that too.” And I was seeing the parallels in her story, and I remember at 13 saying, “this isn’t gonna be how I end.” Um, I, I’ve, I’ve got things in common with this girl of her childhood and her upbringing that were actually like me, realizing, “oh my gosh, like I’ve got these things in common with her.” Um, but making that decision right then, “I’m not gonna allow my ending to be on the night evening news for this kind of a, a terrible end.” Just at 13, just going, “I’m not gonna let this happen to me and it’s gonna be different. I’m gonna have a different life.” And it sounds like at five, same idea you were, maybe you weren’t consciously aware that you were making a decision. Right. And tapping into your power at that point and deciding, “I’m gonna have a different life” and “I’m gonna get out of here” and “I’m gonna have sprinklers in my yard.” Right, right. So powerful. And I always love, you know, people who are listening, it’s, it’s easy to sit and go, “oh, well he’s so successful and he, you know, when you’re a pro athlete and it sounds so cool and, you know, fantastic” and think that, “but I’m not like that.” But the truth is like, you know, you grew up in an abandoned house and you were able to get out of that. And if you’re listening right now, look, I don’t care what the circumstances are, you can get out of whatever situation it is, and I hope you’re hearing this and inspired to know that for most of a lot of successful people, it wasn’t just handed to them on a silver platter. Like you had to work for it. You had to work hard for it.
Joel Green: Yeah, it, it’s, it’s funny even linking back to something you said earlier, and I, I didn’t mention, you know, I, I lost my older brother when I was 17. You know, I have two brothers and a sister and. You know, for me, it, I’ll be honest with you, so I, I speak on goals, you know, one of the main, I gave a TED Talk last year, um, and I incorporated goals. It was called three Essentials to Equality. And I just gave three actionable steps for people to use. And I, I, I tell people often about these three steps, and for me growing up, I used to set goal, I didn’t know I was setting goals. But I used to always try to distract myself from what we were going through, and apparently I was setting goals, you know, to achieve certain things. It was just so I didn’t have to think about going past. Some of this was during the crack era as well, you know, the late eighties, early nineties. And so you would walk past certain people in our neighborhood and you didn’t know what they were going to do. There were plenty of times to where I’m walking past somebody, I’m a little kid and the guy just looks scary, you know? He, he’s talking to himself. You don’t know what’s going on. And I’m like, “alright, let me go the other way. Lemme stop at the basketball court for a shoot around for a little bit. Then I’ll go to the, the store later on and I’m, let me go get up a hundred shots really quick.” It’s a goal that I set for my side. I didn’t realize. I’m like, let, lemme go do that. Distract myself from that guy until he leaves the block and then I’ll go back when I see it’s all clear. And I would just set these different goals for myself and just, you know, distract myself apparently. And, um, just start achieving things left and right. And when my brother passed, it was suddenly we be, he wasn’t sick or anything. Um, tragic incident, I shut down for sure, but I discovered something that was the, exactly the moment I discovered, um, something amazing. That I can, I can get something great from something terrible. I didn’t know before that point. I had, you know, when I was six years old, my, my, one of my older cousins, he was shot and killed outta the blue. Someone came up to him at a bus stop shot, shot him and killed. So I saw a death, um, at that point, but it was never in my house. Uh, the moment it hit my house, it, it, it was, I felt it even more. I shut down for about two weeks. I don’t think I went to school for about a week and a half or so, but I discovered during that time, I made some promises to him during that time period. I said, “I’m gonna do better in school,” because he would always tell me, “man, make sure your grades up.” “College coaches want you, but you can’t have terrible grades. If you’re gonna go on to college, make sure you get that scholarship.” I’m like, “all right.” He’s the one that started me off in basketball, so he was always coaching me and um, so I promised him “I’m gonna get a scholarship. I’m gonna pick my grades up.” And I never made the honor roll ever in my life. That year as 16, 17 years old. I made the honor roll for the first time ever, and this was, he passed in February 16th, 2002. I graduated that June and turned my whole everything around the last two quarters of school, got a scholarship, division one scholarship to college, made the honor roll, and I was the number one recruit for multiple division ones. And, um, I just discovered during that time like, “okay, you can actually have terrible things, fuel your fire if you choose to,” but it’s our choice. We do have the choice to do it. Um, and I told my son, my son, we, we, we have quotes every morning. So before school we, I created these quote cards. So while we’re waiting in the roundabout to let ’em out before school we’re sitting in, I give him, I said, “all right, pick a quote card,” and, um. One of the cards says, “complain or correct. Complain or correct it. You have a choice.” And so he knows that. So whenever we’re going through something, he’s complaining. I’m like, “look, you have a choice right now. You can either complain about it or correct it. You got a choice.” He is like, all I know. So you know, it, it is. That’s, I discovered so much of those things during that time period.
Jennifer Dawn: Absolutely, and so many people talk about post-traumatic stress. It’s a very, very real thing. But what you’re talking about is the post-traumatic growth, which is that. Beautiful part of something traumatic that happens where we grow as humans and we grow spiritually and we take it and we use it to fuel ourselves forward. And I am such a huge fan of post-traumatic growth. Why not pull everything good and beautiful that we can out of a really bad thing that’s happened?
“My Story Wasn’t for Me”: From Vulnerability to Purpose
Joel Green: Absolutely. And that, and that’s exactly, you know, uh, just finish my first book. We’re writing my first book, um, called, and it’s, it’s, it stems from what occurred with my brother and it is called *Filtering*, uh, the way to extract strength from the struggle. And that’s, that’s what I discovered. I discovered it during that time as far as man, okay. I’m struggling right now. I couldn’t even, I promise you, Jennifer, I couldn’t even talk without tear. I’m talking about sobbing, tears coming out. I couldn’t talk about anything. I couldn’t talk to her. My friend come by, just try to con console me. I could not see their, I couldn’t see anyone’s eye. I couldn’t look in anyone’s eyes. I remember it was hard to look anyone in the eye because I felt like they saw what I was thinking, and I felt, and it wasn’t until I, I began daring myself to say, “all right, start talking to people again. Just do it whether you feel like it or not, they’re here to help you.” And once I leaned into doing that, and I remember my uncle came by to visit one day. He said, “look, I know you don’t want to see me. You don’t wanna see anybody right now.” He came up to my room, my bedroom, and he sat on the side of my bed while I was laying down, face down on the pillow and said, “look, had his hand on my back. He said, ‘you gotta get up. You gotta get up. You have no choice. You gotta get up. You’re still here.'” And once I had to take that approach and, and just realize that, that, although my brother wasn’t, I was, I gotta keep living and I had to extract something from it. And like I said, those promises I made to him at that moment, I said, “I can actually extract fuel, you know, from this situation to, to make this struggle turn into something successful.”
Jennifer Dawn: I love that so much and you read my mind because I was getting ready to ask you about the book. And so it’s like, “oh, there we go. Right there.” And he is reading my mind about the book and I, I, in, when I was in high school, my very best friend was 16 and she was killed in a car accident. And I was actually in the room with her when she passed on. And I remember just that, you know, I’m 16. I really didn’t have much experience with death. Um, it happened so suddenly, and I just remember that grief and it was just for weeks afterwards. I know what you, you mean when you’re just like, “nobody look at me, nobody talked to me” because “I’m just gonna fall apart.” And every time I had a private moment, I was falling apart until you kind of like can get it back together again. But I remember we had gone to like. My boyfriend was playing racquetball or something and we had all been best friends and I remember sitting on the tailgate of the truck and they’re all playing racquetball. And I just remember the breeze, the wind, and I, at that moment I was just like, “you’re still here.” And I, I know what that moment is and it’s so powerful and it’s so hard and it’s so beautiful and it’s so sad and it’s just like, but you do have to go on and you do have to keep going. After these things, and so I love that you’re writing a book about this. This is so, so good. So tell me like, when is the, is the book out? Is it coming out? Tell us about the book.
Joel Green: Well, I’m super excited, of course. Uh, it is my first book. It’s set to release in September, so September the sixth is the, uh, te release date. But, um, it’s, it is gonna be a very impactful, uh. Piece of content for, for so many people. It’s six years in the making, believe it or not, six years. I began, six years ago, I began writing the book, uh, making notes toward the book, and I paused for a moment, especially during the pandemic. I wanted to take it in. I wanted to see what, what this thing was about. “Is this gonna be the next plague?” “Is this gonna be an airborne situation, like on the movies?” “What is this thing?” So I took off for over a year just to really assess that. Um, and even prior to that, I was going through some things. I took off a little bit, but still contributing notes to it. But, uh, I started back in 2016 and I, I had the name of the book of it then, and I stuck with it. Added content to it over the years and, um, I, I said I have to do this. I have to, people were telling me for 10 plus years before that point, “you have to have a book, man. You know, you have to have a book. You, you need to begin speaking.” I’m like, “Nope, that’s not me speaking. Absolutely not.” Like that’s, I’m terrified to get on the stage and, and speaking, you know, and I came up under. Two pastors like me, my parents are pre or pastors. So I saw, I’ve seen my family on stage, you know, my sister, she’s a singer. Like I, I’ve seen it, but it wasn’t me. My stage was a basketball court. And um, but the moment I began hitting the stage and I spoke my story or just a small portion of it with minimal detail, people were in tears. And I said, man, this is this. Is helping someone. This is helping someone. And they would come up to me afterwards, say, “thank you so much,” and I’m, I’m, I’m up there venting my story. But then I realized my story wasn’t for me. And you know what? The moment I took that on the fear of public speaking left me because I realized it wasn’t about me. You know, I became more selfless as opposed to selfishly thinking, “well, I’m afraid,” like, no, but they need what you have to say. And the moment I said, “okay, I need to give full detail, full transparency,” I said, “I’m gonna write a book.” And, um, the book is just really showing people how to properly make adjustments, how to pivot, how to get beyond obstacles, how to see things from different perspectives to where. There is a per, there’s multiple vantage points when it comes to every single thing we go through. And if we dare ourselves to kind of get off our emotions a little bit and see that we can get a prize from everything, uh, it doesn’t matter how terrible of a situation it is, we can get a prize from everything. So that’s really what the book covers and so much more, a ton more. Um, but it really shows people actionable steps as far as how to extract something great. From whatever you go through, even if it’s a victory. What a lot of people overlook is that we all want to repeat that victory again, but we don’t always lean into that victory to extract what we did to get there so that we can rent and repeat that process. So for me, I went to national championships in college at two different schools, and I took that to another. I took the same thing I helped my team do here, and I took it over there and we did the same thing. And I learned over the years how it, it’s, it’s all a process. If you lean in and you take note of what the process is, you can apply it anywhere in life. So that’s really why I’m trying my best to teach people and, and just let them know, “Hey, here’s, here’s what works. You can do it for yourself as well.”
Connect with Joel Green and Jennifer Dawn Coaching
Jennifer Dawn: Hmm. I love this so much. So, Joel, share with everybody if they wanna go find out more about you, if they wanna get the book when it comes out, where should they go to find you?
Joel Green: Well, you can find me on, uh, my website, which is joelbgreen.com. Uh, you can see a whole lot of information about me there. Some of the things that we discussed as far as cheezit, uh, box, and just some other, uh, fun tidbits. Um, but also on Instagram, I’m on there often, which is, uh. My handle is J Green, so JAY green, uh, PLTJ, green PLT, um, on Instagram, and you can find me on Facebook as well. And I, I’m one that, believe me what I tell you, I, every audience I speak to, I say, look, please contact me and I’m not one to ignore you. I, it is my purpose to, to help people where I can help, to assist when I can assist. Um, to help network. I’m a connector, you know, so if someone says, “Hey, how did you get with whoever as a partner?” “here’s how I got it done.” And if I can, if it makes sense, I’ll connect you as well. And um, that’s one thing I’m always looking to grow as far as business. Um, I love just developing partnerships the same way we developed a partnership with Nike, with Body Armor, sports drinks, Dick Sporting Goods. I’m always looking for new companies or anyone who can help benefit us and we can benefit them. Um, but yeah, so you know, those are some of the platforms you can find me on. Um, and. You know, we’ll be getting some more information about the book out soon. We have a really cool book trailer that’s being developed that I’ve never seen ever before. Uh, it’s a 3D book trailer. Uh, if you’ve ever seen Moana Toy Story, um, you’re gonna see some of the things I mentioned throughout my life. This trailer’s gonna detail it. You’ll see it to a t. Um, some of the experiences growing up that I had, the good, the bad, the ugly. You’ll see it all in a book trailer. It’s gonna pull people in like I’ve never seen before. Oh, that’s so exciting. Awesome. Uh, good for you. Like really and truly good for you from where you came from and where you are now. And I love how you’ve turned it all around and you’re just. Helping to put good out into the world and break some of these chains of, you know, violence and trauma and things like that. And I just, I love the work that you’re doing. Thank you so much, Joel, for being here with us today. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right, you guys. I know there was a ton of amazing stuff from today’s show. I hope you really enjoyed it and get out there and have a happy, productive day. Bye everybody.
Jennifer Dawn: I love what you said, that you were working harder physically, and then your grades actually increased. It’s that same thing together. Oh, I love it. I love it. Now you’re clearly a super successful guy. I would love to know, because sometimes it’s easy, we listen to a podcast and hear about a really successful person and you think, “oh, well, you know, they had it easy.” And I always say to people, uh, probably not. And so tell us a little bit about just your upbringing. Did you like, you know, have everything handed to you or did you have to work hard for it? Like, what, what did that look like?”
Joel Green: That would’ve been nice. Actually. It wouldn’t have been nice to have everything handed to me, and I certain I didn’t. I certainly didn’t. Uh, I grew up in Philadelphia in an abandoned house in North Philly to be exact. Um, I was actually, the 10 K that I ran yesterday was right across the street from my old neighborhood. Which I make an effort to visit every single year just to kind of reflect on where I come from. And it’s, it’s, it’s intentional for me because I don’t want to forget what instilled the grind in me, just being honest. Um, I did whatever I could to escape that in addition to what my parents were doing to help us escape as a family. But it was a rough upbringing and, um, like literally, you know, at, to give you. At six years old, I’ll never forget, 1991, I was about 10 feet away from a shooting, and that was the only person there outside of the two shooters and the kid that got shot. And having to run away from that thinking I was gonna get shot in the back at six years old was, it is hard to even put any 6-year-old. I have a 9-year-old son, and I remember when he was six, I thought back on that situation that I went through. I said, I, I can’t imagine him in that situation. Um, just having to deal with that. It could be t it is, it was traumatic, you know. Um, I never forget, I went home and called my mom crying. She worked at an insurance company. I said, “I, I don’t wanna live here anymore. I wanna move. They, they saw me, they saw me.” And I, I don’t, you know, I don’t wanna get shot anyone, let alone a child has to say something like that is traumatic. And, uh, so having that upbringing had a knife poured out on me when I was about nine years old, having these type of things happen. It, it, it bred again, like I mentioned a call earlier, I developed a call to defeat. I developed a call to downturn. To be honest, you know, fortunately I started off on the lower end, um, as opposed to the higher end because if I, to fall, I’ve been there before. I know how to get back up.
Jennifer Dawn: And do you feel like your, the earlier upbringing really helped develop that mental toughness of, “I I can fall and I can get back up ’cause I’ve been there.”
Joel Green: Yeah. You know, I, I would say it, it definitely helped develop that side of me. Um, and again, you know, for sure you, you need mental toughness and business and life, period. Um, it helped me so much because I, I really, I saw what you can come from and achieve despite. You know, I, I’ve been told that, you know, my whole schools have been told in elementary, middle school, you’re proud of your environment. And as I grew older, my parents helped me to see that’s not the case. “No, your environment is a product of you.” And once I really adapted that and began walking in that, I realize that it is true. You know, I’m not a product of my environment. I don’t, it doesn’t matter how terrible my environment is. If I change the things around me will change. So I had to stop getting in trouble or just make sure I listened to authority and the moment I respected authority, they respected me more. You know, I realized literally my environment’s a product of me and I apply that to the sports environment. Now I apply it to the business environment. If I up my game, my business ups, that’s just how it is. That’s the kind of **resilience for business success** that can be learned.
