The abbreviated, 1-minute Overview:
(Or click to jump to read the section’s full story)
Upbringing: Was raised by a loving family and was always surrounded by a great group of friends. I was incredibly athletic and was constantly engaged in something outside. Until my family decided to move when I was 10. That’s when my world flipped upside down.
Martial Arts: Having gained weight and having lost proximity to my closest friends, I was desperate for a solution. Martial Arts caught my eye. I took my first class in 2001 and have been training ever since. 20+ years later, I now run the school I took my first class in.
Education: I graduated with a B.S. from Canisius College. Not because I wanted to get a higher education for a particular job, but because I wanted to learn how to become a better Martial Arts instructor. Following a different career path never crossed my mind.
MoveMe Quotes: What started as a personal collection of favorite quotes, eventually became a full-blown passion project. With well over 8,500 insightful resources including quotes, pictures, stories, poems, and more—MMQ has become a valued library for all.
Writing: I struggled with Imposter Syndrome for the better part of 10 years. Mostly because I compared my writing with the greats. Then, on January 1, 2020, I became so saturated with curated insight, that I decided to start writing daily. A habit that I still hold today (this blog).
Today: I exercise, read, and share insight in the mornings. I tweet, write to this blog, and publish longer form essays on Medium in the afternoons. I teach, coach, and train well into the evenings at Master Khechen’s. And I hang with my dog, Stella, edit my written pieces, and share what I created with others when I get home at night.
Connect: The best place to connect with me is Twitter. If you’d like to follow my work, join my daily or weekly email list(s). If you have a specific question or would like to reach out, you can send me an email or shoot me a DM.
…And if you’re up for it, here’s the less-abbreviated version:
Upbringing
I grew up in the east side of Buffalo, NY with a loving family and a great group of friends. Life for me was football in the street, wrestling on lawns, basketball in driveways, and expeditions to the corner store for 50 cent mega-freezie pops. I had a very active, engaging, and playful upbringing.
By the time I turned 10 years old, things started to get bad in the surrounding neighborhood. There was increased crime, shootings, and gang violence. In order to keep the family safe, as much as I didn’t want to, we moved.
We settled into the new neighborhood at the beginning of summer vacation in 1999. I didn’t have any friends. There were no kids playing outside. There were no sports games to jump in on. And there were no expeditions to far and away corner stores.
As a result, and for the first time in my life, I spent the summer playing video games, eating junk food, watching TV, and, well, being sedentary.
By the end of that summer I gained a lot of weight, became very self-conscious, and felt out of place in my new neighborhood. My world was flipped upside down.
Martial Arts
A few years later, while driving to a local store with my mom, I noticed a sign for a Martial Arts school that had just opened up—Master Khechen’s School of Tae Kwon-Do.
It immediately sparked my interest and got me thinking about how it might help me get back in shape, meet new people, rebuild confidence, and rekindle my competitive spirit that craved physical challenges.
…Okay, I was only 11. Maybe I just wanted to be a real-life Power Ranger or Ninja Turtle, but all of that other stuff came intuitively as a bonus I suppose.
I had my mom call as soon as we got home and we booked my first trial class later that day. I was so excited to start that I still remember the date of my first class: April 11, 2001.
It was everything I had hoped for and more. I fell in love with the art and trained often, adopted a healthier lifestyle, was surrounded by like-minded people, and was consistently given new opportunities to grow and develop as a student and leader.
In 2004, I earned my black belt, became a junior instructor and I haven’t stopped training or teaching since.
In the early stages of my training, I focused primarily on my own abilities. I was constantly at the school soaking up every drop of insight that I could squeeze from my instructors, I competed in every local tournament I was able to, and even traveled to conferences to train with Martial Artists from across the world.
As I became a more competent Martial Artist, I started competing at regional and national tournaments. I even started choreographing my own forms. Some of my favorite creative form performances were at The Kumite Classic in 2012, Syracuse Open in 2013, and SMAC Internationals in 2014.
I also invested a ton of time into developing my skills with the bo staff. I was fortunate enough to have excellent instructors who were proficient in many aspects of the martial arts outside of Tae Kwon-Do—including how to use the bo staff. With the solid foundation they gave me, once again, I was able to create my own forms both for competition and, of course, fun.
One of my favorite bo performances was from The SMAC Internationals in 2016. Here is my first ever bo sampler video from 2010. And this was the sequel from a year later.
My all time favorite performances didn’t come from anything I did alone, though. No. My favorite and most memorable Martial Arts performances came from what I did with my team—The CORE Team.
A collection of our school’s most talented and enthusiastic performers, the demonstrations we collaborated on will forever go down as some of my favorite moments spent in this lifetime.
Here is the first sampler video we ever put out as a team when we were still in our infancy stage. This demo was special because it represented a distinct turning point between what I would consider being an “amateur” demo team and being a professionally acknowledged one. This was the last demo we did together before COVID-19.
Education
In 2007, I attended Canisius College. Not because I wanted to get a higher education for a particular job, but because I wanted to learn how I could become a better Martial Arts instructor. Following a different career path never even crossed my mind.
I honestly felt like I found my calling at 11 years old.
Because of this, I took a completely unconventional approach to college learning and decided to follow my own course schedule separate from what was recommended within any of the Majors.
I took a Physical Education core, dropped all of the sports classes (that a school gym teacher would have needed), and plugged in all of the classes that were of the most interest to me.
I studied a range of topics including Entrepreneurship, Business Administration, Philosophy, Psychology, Exercise Science, Pedagogy, and Health & Human Performance. All of which gave me deeper pockets of insight to pull from when teaching martial arts classes thereon.
What was beautiful about this approach was that I got to go to college to learn what I actually wanted to learn—not to conform to the conventional ways so I might graduate with the best chances of getting placed in a job or career.
In 2011, I graduated cum laude with a Bachelors of Science in Physical Education with a concentration in Exercise Science and Health and Human Performance. Much of what I learned, I still reference and teach today on the mats.
MoveMe Quotes
In 2010, right before I graduated from college, there was this new social media platform that was getting a lot of hype: Twitter. We all know what Twitter is now, but back then, the idea of micro-blogging was taking the world by storm, and I wanted in.
I started ‘tweeting’, reading other ‘tweets’, and brainstorming what I could say in 140 characters or less that would have any kind of meaning to followers. It turned out to be quite the challenge for me because I was the type who liked to elaborate.
That’s when I started to gain a strong appreciation for the power of words.
When you have constraints, you become more creative in your approach. And where might one find solid ideas for concise and powerful tweets…? Quotes.
They were perfect. The very essence of a quote is insight derived from other people’s life experiences that’s packaged through their own lens in the most direct and to-the-point method possible.
I became a quote fanatic.
But while I was actively seeking and ‘tweeting’ my favorite quotes from all over the web, I quickly became unimpressed with many of the quote websites that were out there.
They were either quote databases that carried every single quote ever said by every person who ever said something (overload); advertisement websites with a few quotes hidden around a bombardment of ads (be careful where you click); or out-of-date and non-aesthetically pleasing sites that made it hard to appreciate each individual idea for it’s true power (presentation is important).
So, all of the elements were coming together and my entrepreneurial mind went to work.
What resulted, on October 10, 2010, was the birth of MoveMe Quotes. I found something I was passionate about, saw an opportunity to fill a gap, and had the support system and drive to make the right moves.
The rest is history and has led to what movemequotes.com is today—a free, public library filled with powerful collections of quotes, picture quotes, short stories, deep insights, books, and more. A space that I’m still adding insight to today.
Writing
When you’re uploading quotes from some of the greatest minds who have ever lived, coming up with your own words can be daunting.
Who was I to be sharing insight when I was posting such powerful thoughts from the likes of the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, Osho, Tony Robbins, Stephen Covey, Seth Godin, Eckhart Tolle, Robin Sharma?
I felt like anything I might say would only pale in comparison and would leave me feeling embarrassed.
This is where the root of my imposter syndrome took hold of my identity.
And for the first five years after I launched MoveMe Quotes, that was the thought that guided me. I curated the absolute best insights I could find from others and never elaborated on things in my own words or even wrote introductions to the lists.
That’s how self-conscious I was.
Then, at some point in 2015, I finally decided to try. But, I still wasn’t so sure about the whole idea.
So, I did what any writer who wanted to make sure their writing never got read did—I started a blog.
It was a deliberate move that took my writing from what would have been a larger audience and put it in a place that had a significantly smaller audience. Or, maybe better put, a non-existent audience because the blog was brand new.
It was a fear based move. It was a move to avoid criticism by avoiding feedback altogether.
But, it also become a place where I could quietly continue to work and hone the skills of my craft. And that’s precisely what ended up happening.
I wrote regularly for a few months until I finally realized, I had something to say.
Because what I finally realized was that it’s not about comparing my words to the greatest words ever said—or to anyone else’s words for that matter.
It was about sharing the words that came uniquely from me, with the people whom only I was uniquely able to share them with, and in a way that was going to bring a unique connection that only I was able to facilitate.
What it took me so long to realize was that it was never about comparison—it was about gift-giving. What I came to understand was that, “Here, I made this for you” was the game—not, “How can I make something better than you?”
And then, on January 1, 2020, after five more years of curating, writing, and improving my skills—something finally clicked into place.
With a little extra push of New Year resolutions, I decided to commit to being a writer.
I decided I would pick a quote that moved me, write a few paragraphs of surrounding personal thoughts, and then number it at the end (1/365). And I did that again the next day. And again the day after that. And, as of this day, I have been writing ever since.
Today
Today, I’m working full-time as the Head Instructor at Master Khechen’s Martial Arts Academy in Buffalo, NY.
I spend my mornings exercising and uploading the best motivational resources I can find to MoveMe Quotes.
In the afternoon, you’ll find me writing short-form ideas on Twitter, writing my daily, 1-minute blog, and sharing my longer-form essays on Quora and Medium.
In the late afternoon, you’ll find me coaching, teaching, leading and interacting with the many amazing staff, students, and families at Master Khechen’s Academy.
And in the evening, usually at around 10pm, you’ll find me spending time with my dog, Stella, editing my written pieces from the morning, and sharing those pieces across the web.
As of this writing, my goal in the next few months is to write a book. Over the next few years, I aim to create a more robust personal brand that’s integrated with platforms outside those focused exclusively on the written word. And in the next ten years, who knows, maybe a TED Talk? Only time will tell.
Connect
The best place to connect with me is Twitter. If you’d like to follow my work, join my daily or weekly email list(s). If you have a specific question or would like to reach out, you can send me an email or shoot me a DM.
Thank you for taking the time to get to know me. I hope to get to know you, too, at some point in the future. Until then, all my best.