From Nurse to Entrepreneur

As Jake was closing in on his 4 year degree and graduating as a nurse, there was another pivotal moment that completely changed the trajectory of his life. While working in the Emergency Room (ER) on a quiet day, the doors slammed open with docs and nurses around a stretcher and on there was a man who had a heart attack. This was the very first time Jake is experiencing what it means to save a life as they needed to bring him back to life.

Hours of protocol flew by and the man finally was in a stable state so his family could see him. This was such an emotionally charged moment as the kids and wife are literally seeing their dad for another day when he could have lost them (especially since it was bad habits that led to the heart attack). Some time after,  Jake helped to discharge the man with his family and in this moment he felt like a hero. Euphoria came over him that night after work because of how special it was to save his life. Well, that is until things had a turn for the worse..

A few months went by and it was another quiet day in the ER. Once again, the doors slammed open with different docs..different nurses..but the same man on the stretcher with another heart attack. It took Jake just about 3 seconds for him to realize who this person was. And when that happened, it was like there was a tear in Jake’s soul because of how painful it was to see the man’s life you saved at one point on his potential death bed again.

From here Jake questioned what his purpose really is. What he REALLY wants to do in life. And after graduating with his degree as a nurse, life has decided it’s time to start the journey of entrepreneurship even though he had no clue what that meant.

Becoming A Business Strategist

Jake has privately consulted a spectrum of clients from startup solopreneurs to Fortune 500 executives, and much in between. He has helped clients and/or companies increase sales success, solidify their brand identity and position in the marketplace, and create more effective marketing campaigns and strategies that the results speak for themselves. He has worked with an array of professions such as realtors, insurance agencies, investors, medical practices, land acquisition companies, interior designers, coaches & consultants, network marketing leaders, construction companies, professional speakers, tech engineers, brick & mortar business owners, and many other professions. 

What surprises people is how he is able to work with all these people and get them real results in business when not long ago he was a nurse whose only “business related” class was Economics 101, which he got a C in. The answer – by learning how to take decades of information and wisdom from those who are experts in the field and apply the methods appropriately to obtain desired results on a CONSISTENT basis. That’s the key. It must be consistent results. And that is exactly what he did.

How the business consulting started was because during the time Jake was running his online health coaching business for busy entrepreneurs, he was naturally hearing them share business struggles during his health check-ins. So he would start to give them advice on things he has read on or studied which a few days or weeks later they would follow up on how that advice worked. After a good amount of times doing this, he knew he was onto something. So Jake reached out to a couple friends of his who ran businesses and offered free consulting.

Well as hoped for, the friend’s businesses saw results in their sales and growth which then gave the confidence for Jake to offer business consulting to the public. As Jake would non-stop learn the latest strategies of business while getting results for one client at a time, he started to have referrals sent to him and there established his new business consulting company. To this day, Jake works with just a select number of entrepreneurs who receive weekly 1-on-1 business consulting sessions with him.

Becoming a Keynote Speaker

4 years ago, Jake couldn’t have even imagined being a keynote speaker let alone a transformational one that leads events and immersive workshop experiences. But while on the pursuit to helping others in his successful online health coaching business tailored for busy entrepreneurs, he had the most significant pivot in his life to date.

His good friend Nick Santonastasso invited him to come be part of an intensive speaker workshop across the country in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Even though Jake had no plans at the time to be a keynote speaker, he didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to be in a room of successful speakers and also have a signature talk for later use (or so he thought).

3 days fly by of working on his signature talk and he ended up extracting a powerful message and stories unique to him that would captivate the audience. This completely shifted his mindset of speaking yet he just thought to “put it in his back pocket for later in his career”.

Right from that event is when Jake, Nick, and his other friends flew to Miami for round two at a Tony Robbins’ Unleash The Power Within (UPW) event. This was a 15,000 person event in the Miami Heat arena and Jake was sitting just a few rows from the stage.

Day 1 of UPW and Tony asks everyone “what’s your extraordinary life?” So normally Jake would write down goals of running a huge business consulting company and being a celebrity trainer for people like Tony Robbins, but this is where he thought “maybe today’s the day things change and I become a speaker.” So instead he very reluctantly wrote he’s going to speak on stages ALL OVER the world, be PAID $50,000 to speak, and speak on TONY ROBBINS’ stage. This may have been the least confident Jake has ever felt as he read that outlandish list. But this is where everything changed..

Tony asks the audience “who wants to share their extraordinary life?” and WITHOUT HESITATION Jake raises his hand and Tony calls on him. Talk about God making the impossible possible. Jake stands up and in front of 15,000 people tells Tony these 3 things on his list and the whole crowd erupted with applause as Tony chuckled (since he basically was told this dude was going to speak on his stage).

Little did Jake know that a speaking bureau agent was in the audience and came up to him at break and said “we need to talk. I see the greatness in you and have a speaking opportunity for you.” Fast forward 3 months to February 7, 2020 and Jake is doing a 60 minute keynote at an in-person summit next to Mark Victor Hansen who co-authored Chicken Noodle Soup For The Soul, Brian Tracy who’s a personal development legend, and Robert Herjavec who’s one of the original Sharks on Shark Tank. This was the beginning of what then transitioned into transformational speaking.

Evolving Into Transformational Speaking

As Jake began to do more keynote presentations, workshop training, and many virtual talks (because of the world shutting down in 2020-2022), he started to evolve his talks to be more transformational. The model for him was the one who inadvertently started his speaking career, Tony Robbins. Jake has attended multiple events of Tony’s as a Platinum Guest in the front rows where he has been able to witness what it looks like for someone on stage to command a room and lead people to a completely different life when he’s done speaking.

Jake was taking both conscious and subconscious notes on the way Tony keeps the audience engaged so they better retain the information, how he tells captivating stories that further drive the teachings into their nervous system, and how he prioritizes on equipping the audience with tools and strategies to apply right away in their life and business. 

So as Jake kept speaking on stages, he started to show up in a different way where the audiences are now experiencing every emotion and saying countless times, “my life won’t ever be the same after your talk.” Jake then started to offer and lead teams in more immersive workshops that would range from 3 to 8 hours in a day because he knew he could transform an audience and hold their attention all day just like how Tony does it. After his first 8 hour workshop teaching a Real Estate team of 30 people The Blueprint To Human Influence, he knew he was onto something because of their incredible results they have noticed and how 8 hours flew by with the immersive workshop. Then there came another pivotal moment that shaped how we would transform people’s lives..

Creating His Very Own Event

In Summer 2022, Jake was negotiating details of a custom-tailored immersive workshop experience for a real estate team in Los Angeles. As he was lining up the logistics of the event venue, audio and visuals, having a music master to keep energy up, and camera crew, he realized this would be a hefty bill for only about 20 realtors. So he pondered on the idea of doing a publicly promoted event by searching up nice venues by the ocean that can handle around 200 people and looking at available dates. Then he also confirmed the music master, Skemaddox, is available the same day as the availability of the hotel venue. All the dots were connecting. But there was one final dot that launched the vision.

Jake went on a walk with his beloved, Emily, where he was enthusiastically sharing his vision of this potential event he will lead. You have to remember that this is a DREAM of Jake’s as he’s witnessed how Tony Robbins’ is able to create his own environment of experience running his own events. So as Jake was sharing this to Emily who’s been speaking for 13+ years and have been on stages of more than 10,000 people, what she said back to him is what turned the dream into a reality.

Emily said with excitement “I love everything you’re sharing! You know, if you want me to speak on the ITfactor there, I would be more than happy to get my name behind it and promote it.” Mind you that Jake holds a standard in their relationship to never put Emily in a situation where she feels obligated to do something. So as he heard her say this, his grinned from ear to ear and knew history was about to be made.

With only 8 weeks to the event date, Jake had to build from nothing and within 4 weeks to the event is when they could finally promote the event. Long nights, non-stop phone calls and messaging, and one of the most stressful moments Jake has ever experienced just two days before the event. 

Fast forward to October 22, 2022 in Santa Monica, California, Jake is leading a 12 hour immersive event alongside Emily to over 150 entrepreneurs in a moment that many audience members have said “life will never be the same after this day.” It was called the Optimizing Influence Workshop. 

As Jake describes, “days before this event was one of the top two most stressful moments in my life. But pushing through that tension and resistance is what allowed me to experience a ‘timeline jump’ because ONLY that type of pressure can create that. Now after this event I feel like I am on a completely different timeline that I couldn’t even have imagined happen so soon.”

Jake and Emily went on and had an even bigger event just 3 months later in Newport Beach, California of over 200+ entrepreneurs. The mission is to grow it up into multi-thousand person transformational events that truly delivers extraordinary results in sales and influence while unleashing their ITfactor