Meet Greg!
Coach Greg in action!
Hey Team,
Coach Greg here. You will very frequently see me start my email/blog post with a “hi team” or a “hey team” because that is the feeling I want to convey. We started this business, and I am in this line of work to make everyone feel valued, heard, and that we are all on the same TEAM.
I also like the sound of coach Greg. I have never formally been a sports coach and have never had the opportunity to hear the little ones say it until we started FIT Sports, now Inclyousion Sports. I like the term because that’s how I see myself and it’s how I identify with my purpose and mission. Coach to me means a few things: 1. I am a coach of the coaches. I give them knowledge and competency and help them apply it to deliver meaningful experiences for the kiddos. 2. I am a coach of the parents. I translate principles of behavior change in Lehman’s terms, provide strategies and resources to make the day to day maybe a little bit easier, and provide encouragement and perspective when viewing their child’s successes. 3. Lastly, I am a coach to the children. I provide a safe, caring, engaging, program where they are free to be themselves to try new things in a welcoming environment. I love all aspects of the word coach and I think it suits me.
Leaving my position as Clinical Director at Futures Behavior Therapy Center was a difficult decision. I had been in the Futures family for almost 10 years which is an enormous chunk of my professional life. As a BCBA, we have parent consults and work together to make sure skills learned in the center are being generalized to the community and other settings. While having these conversations, hundreds maybe thousands of conversations, I didn’t have an answer for where a family could take their kiddo to learn new sports and generalize the skills they were learning in the center. There were volunteer programs, adaptive programs, but nothing that put ALL kids on the field at the same time. It finally came to a point when I was talking it over with Kristen and I literally just threw my hands up and I said “F it! I’ll do it!” With my passion for sports, inclusion, and working with families, it was a no brainer. Once this kind of leap of faith moment was said out loud at the dinner table, Kristen and I went into overdrive researching the steps of starting a business and began conversation after conversation with helpful people in our circle. Looking back at everything now, Kristen and I say frequently that we need to write a book about everything we learned and how to help other new businesses maybe avoid some of the issues we went through.
They say life or success is about the journey and not the destination. As we are in the thick of this journey, we have our vision of a destination, but I agree that the journey has been incredible. We are meeting tons of new, amazing people. We are learning so much about our own kids, as they are attending many classes to help ol’ dad. Kristen and I are learning about each other, professionally (type A Kristen – keeping us focused, me somewhere in the middle between type A and type B depending on the day) and personally (what motivates us, what do we define as success, within our own business where do our passions lie). It’s only been 6 months since we launched in September, in many respects it seems like 2 years and then sometimes I sit back and think, holy crap it’s only been 6 months! Cheers to the journey and we’re thrilled to have you on board!
Greg
