Explore Nick Prefontaine's journey in the Life Coaches Industry

So to me, what that means is being at a point in your life, which is different for everyone, when everything is stripped away, taken away from you and you have to start from scratch. – Nick Prefontaine

Sure. Whenever I talk about this, I always reflect back to my snowboard accident that I got into. Back when I was growing up, when I was in eighth grade, I was at Ski Club and was going to the mountain with all my friends. We were so excited that we got ready on the bus, so we didn’t miss a precious moment. Once we got to the mountain, we were ready and were able to go right up the chairlift. On the way up, we noticed that people were wiping everywhere because it had been raining and it was a little icy. I got to the top, buckled right in and headed right towards the trail park because when I went up the chairlift. I saw this jump which was the biggest jump on the train park and I had to go off it. Going out to jump, I caught the edge of my snowboard on the snow and that threw me off balance. Through the air I rotated and landed on my head and I kept hitting my head after that initial impact. One of the things that really contributed to me surviving that experience and being here today was the fact that I had goggles to brace my fall. I wore some goggles with a lot of padding in them, and they braced not only my initial impact, but also as I continued to roll because I didn’t just make that one impact but several. I continued to roll asn they mysteriously moved with me to brace each impact. They wanted to lifeline me at the hospital; it was that serious. However, they were not able to because it was very windy on that day so they had to send the paramedics. Out of the six paramedics on the staff that day, the right paramedic showed up. That paramedic was the only one who could intubate right on the spot and I needed that to be able to breathe. So one out of six showed up for me that day and I was very fortunate to have them. When I got to the hospital,  I was in such rough shape that the doctors told my parents that I was probably not going to be able to walk, talk or eat on my own again, even if I came out of the coma. At that point, I had so much swelling in my brain but at the same time, I didn’t break a single bone in my body, if you can imagine that. I didn’t break any bones but there was so much swelling in my brain where I made the initial impact that they had to drill a hole into my head for a shunt to be inserted so they could relieve the pressure so it wouldn’t go up. If the pressure went up, I would have died. So, they had to medicate me a little bit. I was in a partially induced coma because they were worried that if I woke up and panicked about what happened or where I was that the swelling would go up. So they had to medicate me a little bit. – Nick Prefontaine

It’s interesting people asking that question. I’m not sure, just reflecting back. I’m not sure if I’m able to pinpoint the time when I “woke up” because it was a partially medically induced coma, so I didn’t have a “eureka” moment or a very definitive moment where I woke up. It was more something that a month after my accident, approximately approximately excuse me, a month to early March, I started having a few memories here and there. There wasn’t a defining moment because it was a medically induced coma. I don’t know if that helps. – Nick Prefontaine

It’s very important that you bring this up. So, I didn’t know what the doctors told my parents. I had no idea. My parents didn’t want me to know so much because they wanted me to be able to treat it like any other situation, any other challenge or adversity that I had in my life up until that point. So, they didn’t let the doctors influence me with their view. The doctors, of course, had to paint the worst case scenario. Just to give you an idea; when I was in my coma, they would come into the room to share the news and especially early on, it was worse and worse If you can imagine. Every time the doctor came in to tell them something, it was progressively worse and the doctors would start to tell them what was going on in front of me, even though I was in a coma. My parents stopped them every time and so they wouldn’t talk in front of them. They made them go out of the room to share the news about the prognosis. Like I said early on, it was getting worse and worse. It was more severe every time they came in to share news with them. So, they didn’t want that to influence me because even though I was in a coma, they knew I was still taking information. – Nick Prefontaine

Sure. I really am not sure there was a point where I said that I was not going to accept it. The first time that I was aware of my surroundings and realized of the work in front of me, I remembered I was raised, I give credits to my parents on that about how they raised my sister and I. So, I asked what I had to do and just got up and did what the doctors and therapists told me to do every day. I did the best that I could if it was going to help me to get to our common goal with the therapists and the doctors. What we did early on was to organize everyone to make sure everyone was pulling in the same direction. Everyone had that common goal and they knew what mine was, which was to run out of the hospital. I need their help to achieve that so we organized everyone as a team, shared that, and had weekly basically accountability meetings with all. We set our goals for the week and reported on my progress on last week’s score. The therapist didn’t want to show up to the meetings and say that we didn’t accomplish our goal and it really kept everyone focused at that point. – Nick Prefontaine

This is really important. This is a good point to share. There were several things and strategies that I employed while recovering from my accident since I had to learn how to walk, talk. Honestly, that’s just the way I am, that’s what I did. It’s so funny because people have asked me to deconstruct it and say how I did that. So, we’ve gone through our common goal, deconstructed it and broken it down into a process. We call it “The STEP process”’, which anyone can utilize when going through a crisis or trauma or adversity, in their life. That will help them to overcome it. STEP is an acronym. So S is ‘support’. You have to make sure that you have the support of your family and friends, because that’s very important. Once you make sure you have that support, it allows you to focus all of your energy on accomplishing your objective. So much time can get wasted on thinking and worrying about whether they are supporting you, whether they are really on your side or are they really looking out for your best interest. However, organizing your team at the very beginning is very important. That’s why S is ‘support’. T in the “STEP” system is ‘trust’. Trust that you’re going to make it to the other side and this also starts with trusting yourself. You have to trust that you’re going to make it through to the other side and that you’re going to have to trust yourself in what you’re doing. E Is ‘energy’. The reason that we have energy is for you to make sure that you’re taking care of yourself first and foremost, because if you don’t have your energy, how are you going to expect to affect and influence others that are going through a similar situation? P Is ‘persistence’. It’s important to make sure that once you start, once you take your first step in, you keep going. Once you’ve taken your first step, you’re getting up every day and you’re continuing to move forward. That’s why we felt that that persistence was so important. – Nick Prefontaine

Yeah, well, let me let me actually go back, because you asked about the emotions and things that I was going through. After I answered that, I actually got another memory. So, when I was going through recovery and was learning how to walk, talk and eat again, I had some moments of doubts like everyone has, moments where people second guess themselves. However, because I had the support, it allowed me to continue to keep moving forward. A really striking memory came up and it’s very important to share. When I was in recovery, I had double sessions every day, double sessions of physical, occupational and speech therapy. So, I would get up and I would need help. I needed help learning how to shower again, because remember, I had to learn how to do everything all over again. So, my occupational therapist would teach me how to shower again. After that, I would have breakfast and then start my first sessions of physical, occupational and speech therapy. After one of those sessions, I had lunch and for lunch I usually went back to my hospital room. I remember at the time I was still in a wheelchair and I was wondering, I don’t know, I just couldn’t really figure it out. My mom was with me all the time, every day for every therapy session. I was looking over my situation and I just couldn’t really figure it out. I asked her: “Mom, amI ever going to be able to walk again? She replied: “Of course you are. That’s why we’re here, for you to get everything back and go home and go back to living your life.” It was her confidence in that moment that made me hopeful. That was the only time where I can reflect back to and say that I had like a moment of doubt, but everyone gets it. No one’s perfect. So, because I had that support system at the time, and that’s why S is ‘support’, was I able to continue to be persistent and move on. – Nick Prefontaine

I was in hospital for a little under three months, 85 days. It was my goal very early on to run out of the hospital. My parents wanted me to make a full recovery, but once I had my surroundings and I knew what the work in front of me was, had my wits about me, I made it my goal to run out of the hospital. – Nick Prefontaine

I was just happy to be there finally. I was so excited to be there but everything had kind of changed. My focus and my priorities kind of changed at that point because prior to my accident, I was involved inPpremier soccer, Club soccer. I was doing several things. I was skateboarding in the summer, snowboarding in the winter, and then I was in Premier Soccer in the spring and fall. So I just wasn’t able to go back to that high level of activity right away. When I got out of the hospital it wasn’t like I was done and could just go back and resume life. I still had a long way to go. After I got out of the hospital, I had to be tutored in the school, and I still had to go to outpatient therapy too. So, I had to go to school in the morning , get tutored for I believe two or 3 hours and then have lunch with my classmates and friends. Afterwards, I would get picked up and I would have to go to outpatient therapy where I had sessions of physical, occupational and speech, just not double ones like when I was at the hospital. That was my outpatient therapy. I had to do that for six months until I got a clean bill of health after that. However, I was able to walk with my class from my eighth grade class and be able to go on to high school. However, the work wasn’t done after that because I had missed so much time. I had to get tutored all summer long, five days a week for two or 3 hours each day. So I didn’t have much of a summer, if any at all that year but that was for a reason. After that, I can say that my first experience with working towards my goals and aspirations happened when my dad  had (and still has) an investment company and at the time they were experimenting with door knocking on pre-foreclosure homes. I know it’s a buzzword, especially nowadays but ‘ pre-foreclosure’ means that the house owners have received the notice of default from the bank. It happens when they miss a few payments or several payments on the loan and the bank still hasn’t foreclosed. Those names are published in the paper because they have to, by law. So, they’re put on this list and that’s what I was operating out of. I told my dad, I wanted to get involved. I want to help myself, start working. This was when I was 16 years old, right around the time that I was getting my license. So to me, it made sense because if I were to go to the addresses on the list that were in the suburbs or in the really nice towns, I was only able to get a few listings. I was only able to do a couple that weren’t listed everywhere and there weren’t plentiful of those in those towns and those nicer towns. So to me it made sense to go to where the most of these houses were, these “notice to default” doors or pre-foreclosure doors, which were in very highly populated cities. So, I would go and knock on the doors and talk to the people that had received a notice of default letter. I had a script about what to say. I think that was really interesting. Someone said to me recently that it was part of my development, going and knocking on these doors in some rough areas. I’m not going to say any cities or towns to alienate anyone but I went to not so good areas of them. I would go and knock on the door when I was only 16 years old. They would open their door and they were clearly in a distressed situation and I basically had to tell them that we could help them out , show them what we could do in order to get them out of this unfortunate situation. It was my job to help. I would get an appointment set up with one of our partners to come down and meet with them about helping them out of their situation. However, I don’t think it was the start of my entrepreneurial journey. I actually had a car washing business before my accident where I had a motor scooter and I would go and visit neighbors and wash their cars. I even did it after my accident too. – Nick Prefontaine

When I was the same age, 16 at that time, I had three jobs. I’d be door knocking, doing work for our foundation because we started the “Prefontaine Foundation” after my accident and I was working on a sports memorabilia store. So, I had three jobs and I was 16 years  old. After that year, I met with my guidance counselor and I sat down and told them I didn’t really want to go to college. It was ironic because I had transferred to a college preparatory high school. I was one of only two or three kids from my class not going to college, but I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to work. My mom and dad said that if I wanted to do that, they were going to set me up on a strict curriculum or a program where I would spend time on weekend intensives with mentors of ours or coaches or other peers that we had. So, that’s what I did. Then at 19, I was able to get my real estate license and I started selling real estate. – Nick Prefontaine

It was mostly outsiders. The only people that said I couldn’t do that, that I had to go to college were outsiders, people didn’t know my situation, my goals and what I was looking to accomplish. The people who knew my parents and knew my upbringing, understood that I had a particular path. I wasn’t just done with high school and go eat Cheetos and play video games all day. People close to me knew I was okay, I had a specific goal and plan to work and get my real estate license and get a coach at that point too. I had a coach very early on when I was a real estate agent. – Nick Prefontaine

Absolutely. I think also this kind of goes with the fact that I’ve always considered my dad to be a coach and mentor to me all through growing up. So I’ve always looked up to him and admired his success and he’s always helped me along the way on what I wanted to accomplish. So, I had a coach very early, when I was 19 years old. He’s still coaching real estate agents. He really made an impact on my life. Going through that experience, working with him, visiting him several times, driving out to his office, spending days with him, shadowing him absolutely influenced me for the positive for sure. – Nick Prefontaine

So, it’s interesting because you just asked me about this coach and mantra that I had when I was 19 or 20 years old working with him. He had me go through several exercises whose purpose was to create my major definite purpose with him. It was the same. It was the exact thing that we’re doing with “Common Goal” today and that’s related to helping motivated people towards their common goal. That’s it. That’s what I created over ten years ago with him. So, I’ve always had this calling inside of me. I’ve always had this motivation, this desire to share my message of overcoming adversity like my snowboarding accident to help other people that are going through the same thing. Whenever I’m talking with someone that’s going through a similar experience, going through a difficult time, I help them to focus on what’s the next step. I’ve done it naturally for years without even thinking anything of it. We have to think about what’s the next step that you have to make, that will help get you to your common goal? That’s something I’ve done for years and now it’s just basically deconstructing what I’ve done throughout my whole life several times, starting my whole life and sharing it with the world and getting the message out there to motivate and inspire. – Nick Prefontaine

Greta, the way that all these questions are coming out is literally having me tell my story and how I’ve got here to this point. I was a realtor for years. Back to 2012, I was working full time and my only focus at the time was being a realtor and because I was, for lack of a better word, intense and very focused and driven towards my goals. I was always thinking how there was a certain number I had to hit, a certain number of dollars I added to it every day. I’d be on the phone for 2 to 4 hours a day, sometimes more. It was probably in the mid 2012 timeframe when I started chanting my scripts, I was screaming them at the top of my lungs. It’s just who I am and I’m working on it but I take everything to the extreme regardless. How do we do? How do we do it better? How do we maximize out? So I was screaming my scripts and I would get on the phone for two and 4 hours. After six months of doing this by September, October 2012, my voice was waving the white flag and signaling it had had enough. I couldn’t continue like that anymore. I also started noticing that people were reflecting it back to me, saying I didn’t sound right. I would disagree saying I was fine, that I had just been working a lot and I got a rash kind of thing. Finally, after resting for a few weeks, by the end of October, I just noticed that something was wrong. So I went and got a physical; checked out fine. At that point I was still looking for answers because I knew something wasn’t right. My voice just was off, It wasn’t right. So, I started going on my own to speech therapy because I had done it before. I learned how to talk once. Why wouldn’t I just do what I know and do it again? After working with a speech therapist for probably six months of doing 2 to 3 appointments per week and really getting exercises in, it just gave me strategies to, for lack of a better word, cope with what I was experiencing but nothing was fixing the problem. So, they referred me to a voice specialist in Boston and in 2013 I started seeing him and I started getting Botox injections in my throat to relieve the tension. The voice condition was like a tension. It was almost like it was difficult to get the words out. At that point I surrendered and I was taking it one step at a time because that’s all I could focus on. So like before with my accident, where everything was taken away from me and, and I only could focus on one step at a time, this was a second point in my life where everything was taken away and I had to only focus on one step at a time. Once I took that first step of going visiting with him and having a consultation, he immediately put me at ease. He heard me say one sentence and told me they deal with that all the time and would get me fixed up in no time. I went and scheduled in a couple of weeks then for a Botox injection. So then, I would say for the next seven years I received Botox treatments/injections in conjunction with working with his voice therapists, these specialists that he had in the office. So, in conjunction with the Botox therapy, 2020 was the last time I needed the treatment. Basically, I haven’t had a Botox treatment for over two years. However, looking back on it, if you would’ve told me that I had to do something for seven or eight years in order to get my voice fixed, I would have been completely overwhelmed and I wouldn’t want to do that because I was so focused on one step at a time and what was the next step. I was literally only focusing on what they gave me, what was in front of me and what I could do at that time. This was the spark for “Common Goal”. It was because I thought to myself that if I kept ignoring this calling inside me to share my message, my story with the world, help impact other people that are going through similar experiences like a crisis, a trauma, a death in the family, I would keep having things come up within me that were going to be manifested like health problems. So, I had my accident and that was my key event. After I got out of high school, I got my real estate license and I just had this in the back of my head, but I didn’t follow it because I thought I couldn’t really do that, the timing was not right. I got to do real estate because that was the path that was basically laid out for me. After doing that, my body started to break down again with having a voice issue. I decided once I’ve recovered from this, which I have, I would do something. It was over two years ago when my voice was at its worst, absolute worst. In 2013 or 2014 when it was really difficult to talk, it’s so funny that I knew that I had to be on stage telling my story. – Nick Prefontaine

It’s so interesting. This goes a while back. It’s not something that has just happened over the past year. On the contrary, iIt’s been in the works for several years. It’s something that I’ve always had in the back of my head, always feeling like I should be helping and impacting others through sharing my journey and helping them to overcome theirs. So, with our real estate company, we coach and train our associates all over the country to do real estate deals the way that we do here locally. In doing that, I have got several opportunities to be on stage and to be speaking and teaching and telling our story or telling my story. Every time that I am on stage doing that, I always get compliments on how my story impacted people and how it helped them really see their way through what they’re going through in their life. Back in 2019, it was the last time we had a live event with an actual audience and we had people there. That was the last time I did a speech with a bunch of people in a room with an audience, full ballroom. At that point, someone came up to me after that talk and said that if I ever wanted to pursue speaking and impacting people by heart, by sharing my message and through my voice, she could point me in the right direction and help me get started. She gave me her card. That was September 2019. Now, I had moved several times, but I had always kept her card and I knew that once I was able to get over what happened with my voice, I could do it. At that time I was still dealing with it and I had to go to treatment right after that event and then I got one more appointment in February of 2020 and that was the last one I had. However, I still had a road to go. So, I held on to that card. She told me whenever I felt ready I could reach out to her and I did. That was probably about a year ago. So March, April of 2021 I said I felt ready and she should tell me what I should do. She set me up with an individual, Tricia Brouk. She pointed me in her direction and said I should schedule a call with Trisha for a consultation. I did that back in May of last year, 2021 and Trisha told me that my first step should be doing “Speakers On” that she had coming up that fall. So I accepted and she told me to let her know if I had to think about it and I refused and told her she came highly recommended and that was something I was all in; that it was something I wanted to do. She recommended that I committed right on the spot and I did. For the “Speaker On” I commuted to New York City for six weeks in a row by train and that was absolutely amazing, one of the best experiences that I’ll have because it taught me so much about myself around speaking and around motivating people that I’m never going to forget. The feedback that I got from the other members in the “Speakers On” was also something I didn’t I didn’t expect. Now during the “Speakers On” Trisha and I had a kind of next level call to determine what would be a good fit working together going forward and she laid it out. We decided that she was going to work one on one with me, hand in hand with me. She said she would understand if I had to think about it because I didn’t have to give me an answer at that moment and I said that I would do it, I didn’t know how but I had to figure it out. I had got to figure out the financial end but I was 100%, I would l do it. Eventually, I figured it out. Now I’ve been working with her one on one for over two and a half months and I’m just absolutely blown away by it. – Nick Prefontaine

Well, I’m actually writing right now. Tricia and I, we’re going back and forth on my TEDx talk right now and I’m going through the process of doing several applications. So right now, short term, I want to get on a TED stage and do a TED talk. That’s my goal. All I know is that I’ll get there, especially with her helping guidance. That’s my next step and that’s what I’m focused on right now. Then beyond that, I want to start doing keynote speeches for companies, organizations that will benefit from my message, nonprofits, that kind of thing. – Nick Prefontaine

Part of the reason why I’m working with someone like Tricia Brouke is because it is completely different from real estate. It’s not my world. I said this to her at the “Speaker on” because Tricia mentioned that she would help me. Part of the one on one work was that she was going to help me build out my speaker profile. That’s what I’ve been doing with her because I didn’t know what that meant. So, I’m working. I didn’t really know what it meant because all I knew was real estate so I found someone who did and I basically tied my wagon to them and I couldn’t be happier. – Nick Prefontaine

Well, I’ve been creating a bunch of training and content and focusing on deconstructing what I did, the strategy I did to run out of the hospital. It’s really interesting, because in doing that, I’ve been interviewing family members and everything about how they supported me during that time. How did they do that? They answer the same way I did to Tricia when Tricia first asked me saying they don’t know, they just did it. And I ask again because I want to know more. So, It’s really fascinating to deconstruct the process that I learned not only to overcome my snowboarding accident, but also the voice issue and really, that’s how I have accomplished tackling anything in my life now. – Nick Prefontaine

I don’t know. I’ve never I’ve never really latched onto the term “branding”. I’ve never focused on that because to me that hasn’t been important, if that makes sense. I think when it comes to branding it makes more sense to the multinational companies that are worth 100 million or 500 million dollars but when it comes to getting started, I don’t think it’s really been a focus of mine, the branding. I think everyone has a message, everyone has a calling inside of them and it’s all about whether or not you want and are willing to listen to it. If you are willing to listen to it, I think it’s going to lead you to the activities that will pave the way for you to become a $100 million dollar or $500 million company. This might very well be your reality, but I think if you don’t follow that, which I didn’t for years, it can manifest its way in other health problems like my voice issue and other things that came up because I pushed it down or pushed it back into the back of my head. I’m not going to do that right now. I’m just going to focus on what’s in front of me. I don’t know if I answered your question with that. – Nick Prefontaine

I’ve got this question before, Gretta. I don’t know, I don’t even think about it, candidly. My snowboarding accident and having to learn how to walk, talk, eat again makes for a good story. I totally get that but I have, I guess you could call it “recency bias” and I’m more proud of overcoming my voice issue because of the amount of time that it took to do that. While I was going through that and there was never a time where I had to remind myself to keep a positive mindset. Maybe it’s a part of my daily routine. Every day, I get up in the morning and I’ll meditate. Usually I’ll meditate, anywhere from 30 or 50 minutes. So, that really gets me centered and focused in the right way and then, depending on if I went for a run, I will either have coffee or tea and I’ll read and I’ll write. I only read inspirational or motivational books or things like that for 30 to 60 minutes. I think that by starting my day off like that, I never have to concern myself with focus and mindset because I’m always focusing on improvement and getting better. I always want to learn and to get better and because I have that mindset, it allows me to always stay focused on the positive, if that makes sense. – Nick Prefontaine

Sure, they can go to our website nickprefontaine.com. If they do nickprefontaine.com/step , they can download our free e-book called “Step” and that will help them get started on taking their first step. – Nick Prefontaine

The final message that I would leave everyone with is: “You can do it”, but in order to accomplish, whether it’s adversity you have to overcome or following the calling inside you that tells you have to be sharing your message, you have to be able to take that first step. Once you take your first step, it allows the next step to become possible and it allows your dreams to become possible. If you take that first step, the next step will always become available to you. – Nick Prefontaine