UncategorizedOctober 11, 2021

Meet Justin Perkins

Local Stories

Today, we’d like to introduce you to Justin Perkins. Justin was introduced to us by the brilliant and talented Jason Berv.

Justin, thank you so much for joining us today. We’d love for you to bring our readers up to speed – can you introduce yourself and share your story?
So there I was in Brazil back in 1998 on a college study abroad with the School for International Training. I was a relatively sheltered twenty-three-year-old from Boulder, Colorado, out for adventure and really curious about other cultures. It was a beautiful day in Fortaleza, a sprawling urban landscape that had papered over giant sand dunes on the northeastern coast of Brazil. My colleague and I were out for a walk to explore the city, and we stumbled upon a huge sand dune rising steeply about 600 vertical feet up from the road. It begged to be climbed, and we raced to the top.

The sky was crystal blue, and we could see the ocean sparkling in contrast to the sprawl of dull urban concrete. Walking across the dune, relaxed and full of inspiration, I suddenly felt the hair on my neck stand up. Footsteps apparently don’t make any sound on sand, and I spun around to see that a gang of about ten teenagers who had sneaked up on me. The leader was wielding a broken bottle as a knife. He yelled at me with a look of primal rage on his face and lunged towards me.

Twenty years later, as an entrepreneur raising investment capital, I told this story to the former CFO of several multi-billion-dollar companies as a way to get his attention away from quizzing me on irrelevant analytical details about my business plan. This worked, and I was able to flesh out the true intention of the CFO who had been feigning desire to invest in my fast-growing snack business – when he was really looking for a job. I was focused and in the zone – having raised a couple of million already and closing in on about fifty angel investors.

As I was reflecting on that moment on the sand dune in Brazil, I realized that everything slowed down. I can remember it almost perfectly. Somehow, I knew exactly what to do. All of the years of training as a competitive freestyle skier and soccer player kicked in. I relaxed and just knew that if I got to the edge of the sand dune, I would be fine. I experienced one of the most exhilarating states of flow that I’ve ever had. It was probably the fastest 100-yard sprint I’ve ever made, and I was able to get away without a scratch.

Back in the future, we made mistakes with the business, grew the business too quickly, and ran out of capital – just falling short of raising a critical Series A venture capital round to fund the rapid growth curve of the snack business we had created. This was about my worst fear realized as the implications unraveled across every aspect of my life. On top of this, I had a full-time career with a company that was starting to struggle, and my stress was through the roof. I would have gladly faced hand-to-hand combat with the gang in Brazil in lieu the mess of relationships and financial complexities I was facing.

Long story, short, I escaped the gang. I also landed on my feet after my business didn’t work out as planned. Little did I know how connected those two experiences would be as it pertained to how important an understanding of state of mind can be for human performance. And I will always be grateful to a kind and humble investor in my company– Jason Berv of Blue Dot Coaching – who threw me a life-line in the middle of a perfect storm when no one else did.

“I know a thing or two about stress – would you like some help?” Within a few conversations, thanks to Jason’s patient guidance, deep listening and optimistic spirit, I started to feel better. In contrast, I had done six months of therapy at one point where I didn’t really feel like I was making much progress – just spent a lot of time lamenting old wounds. Jason had the perspective to see that I was caught up in a story that I had taken too personally and helped me to see the infinite creative possibility ahead if I could remember how to relax and not get caught up in my thinking.

Flashing forward to now, a couple of years later, inspired in large part by Jason’s example, I am an executive coach with a thriving practice. Just yesterday, I got to witness the miracle of a deep transformation as a wonderful man – a fifty-year-old sales executive – found peace of mind for the first time in his life during a two-day coaching intensive in the mountains near Boulder, Colorado.

Please tell us more about your practice.
In my newfound passion for executive coaching, I work with impact-oriented high performers with big hearts who want to experience life with more joy and freedom as they express themselves as creators and leaders – but also as partners and parents. To me, this harkens back to the experience of being a high-performance athlete and having coaches who knew how to fan that flame. This is similar – only with the game of career, leadership and life across the human landscape. My mission is to help unlock the creativity and performance of incredible leaders who will have a ripple effect of good in the world through their businesses and families. In the last few months, here are a few of the stories I helped to support. A CEO found more confidence in his leadership, and as a result, exhibited more control in the board room of a challenging startup, where only weeks earlier the conversation with investors was contentious. A woman in a toxic co-founder relationship where she was being physically threatened by her “temporarily insane” co-founder found her common sense – and got out. A highly creative entrepreneur gracefully exited a nonprofit that he helped scale, left it in good hands, and set out on a new adventure. An incredible man navigated a perfect storm of losing his job during the pandemic, launched a new career in an old job, got equity in the company, and created a healthy divorce. A young coach who is launching his coaching career created his first client – an hour after our call– and invited a young NBA potential to work with him to pursue his dream of getting into the big leagues. Applying some of the concepts we discussed, the young athlete hit nine straight free-throws during a high-level game. A senior sales executive negotiated equity for his next job and increased his payout potential by about $3 Million. A partner in a tech company felt excitement for not reacting – for the first time – to the drama of a conflict with his partners and seeing the possibility for a more heartfelt relationship and enjoyment of his life. A gay man who was forced out of academia with a halo of discrimination, found the courage to follow his passion for human rights and go back to law school at age 40. And a founder of a creative agency connected with a potential partner that could help scale his impact and potentially create an exit opportunity. My coaching comes from a place of deep empathy as a human being, along with the professional experience in five industries, having been exposed to a wide array of organizations both nonprofit, for-profit, tech, media, internet, food industry, and government. I am also a life-long student of leadership styles, having worked for some of the best – and worst – leaders. More importantly, through decades of my own introspection, leadership training, travel, entrepreneurship, and experiences as a competitive athlete and professional musician, I have found a unique way to connect with people and create a safe environment where we can go below the surface of behavior and speak soul to soul. This space creates the possibility for deeper transformation, and then naturally translates into common sense action in the world and higher performance. I care deeply about my clients and see my role as helping to create bespoke experiences and conversations to help free people up to perform with more wisdom and healthier relationships. This is exactly the type of experience and transformation Jason Berv helped create for me in his unique way, and he was humble and generous enough to help support me in also becoming a coach.

So, as we mentioned to our audience earlier, you were introduced to us by Jason Berv and Blue Dot Coaching and we really admire them and what they’ve built. For folks who might not be as familiar, can you tell them a bit about your experience with Blue Dot Coaching.
As I mentioned, Jason was an unexpected and welcomed surprise at a time when my life was going sideways, and I was red lining with stress. I think it’s important to mention that Jason was an angel investor in my company, and to me, it speaks to the depth of his character that he would set aside the personal loss of his investment in my company to help me. I choke up every time I think about this kindness. That alone made a transformational impression on me in light of the pressure I was putting on myself to do everything I could to take care of the many investors who had trusted me by investing in my startup. This contrast also became very helpful as I was facing a couple of investors who were very upset with the outcome of their investment being lost and took it very personally, even though I had taken the professional and legal steps to communicate transparently the risk inherent in any business investment.

Jason is a deep listener and has a unique way of creating space that helped me to relax my thinking, which was frantic at the time. He asked me non-judgmental questions in a way that I was able to see fresh perspective about the challenges I was facing – for myself, and from my own common sense and wisdom when I slowed down – not the typical well-intended advice I was used to from other mentors. I was in a very complex tangle of business, financial, and tense relationship challenges, and there was really no piece of advice that would help me out of the quagmire. I was the only one who understood the nuance and dynamics of the circumstances – and I think Jason’s deep trust for the capacity of people to find their own wisdom helped my confidence come back to the surface. Also, Jason’s background as an entrepreneur in the education space, his clear care for me as a human being, and his understanding of human beings from his academic background – helped me relax and trust that I was in good hands. As a result, I have had the most dynamic adventure of my life since meeting Jason, and the leveraged impact of his time with me continues to unfold as I consistently live my life with more joy, ease, abundance, and creativity. And most importantly, as I’ve relaxed and found a steady state of wellbeing, my key relationships with my wife and daughters continues getting better and better. Anyone who has a chance to spend some time with Jason is lucky.