We had the good fortune of connecting with Joey Szolowicz and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Joey, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking.
Risk is a funny thing. People use the word as though it’s a zero sum game. They see it as the dichotomy of you either are taking risks or you are not taking risks.

I don’t see it that way. I view risk as a part of life. No matter the choice you are making right now, there is an inherent risk involved. Be it the risk of missing out on something amazing as you strive to maintain the status quo… or perhaps the risk of going all in on a dream only to have it implode on you, leaving you with nothing at the end. There’s a risk involved either way.

Let’s think about it for a moment with some examples:
You risk it all to quit your steady job and start a business… or you risk never fully realizing your potential by staying in a safe job that doesn’t fulfill you.
You risk it all on love and move across the world to be with someone you care about… or you risk staying safely where you are and settling for someone who doesn’t share your dreams.
You risk injury by entering the martial arts competition… or you risk the consequences of living a life in which you don’t give yourself chances to build your resilience.

I know these are somewhat cliche examples but I think the point is relevant when we talk about risk. No matter what, you are risking something.

I think that’s the beautiful thing though. You get to decide if the potential upside of the risk you’re about to take is meaningful enough to you to take the leap and risk the loss of the status quo. Likewise you can also decide to take the risk of maintaining your status quo and never knowing what could have been if you’d leapt.

My life has been filled with opportunities to risk sacrificing the status quo. But it wasn’t always that way. Through my early twenties (I’m 40 as I write this response) I followed a fairly straight and narrow path. I went to college, got a degree, took an entry level management job, went on vacation once a year one state over to California, bought a small condo and a truck, and generally kept things pretty simple.

Then one day my friend asked me to travel to France for his wedding. I didn’t want to go. My thinking at the time was “why would I fly all the way to France when I could just drive over to California and hit the beach?” But given that it was for a close friend, I ‘risked’ trying something new… traveling abroad.

The decision to go was likely one of the most monumental decisions of my life. Because on that trip, I met the future mother of my 2 children, ended up on a multi-decade trans-global adventure, was pushed toward action to pursue higher education that I had previously been putting off, changed careers, and ultimately moved abroad to Portugal.

Pretty wild list of events to have arisen from what was supposed to be a week in France for a buddy’s wedding, right?

Today taking an international flight is not something I even think twice about as I travel between my 2 home-bases (Arizona and Portugal) multiple times per year. But back then, the decision to go was a big one. In making that trip, however, I opened up a door I don’t think I’ll ever be able to shut behind me. The door was the entry-way to the realization that magic may lie on the other side of fear.

It’s funny… if you fast-forward a few years in the story… my wife at the time and I were living in Denver (my wife at the time being the woman I had met on the trip to France years earlier). I was back in my entry level management job I’d taken after college and one day my brother called me to ask me to move down to Arizona to start up a small business with him in the telecommunications space. I knew absolutely nothing about telecommunications. But the experiences over the previous years since France had only grown my appetite for risk in the form of leaving the status quo in order to try new things. So I went.

It was a risk. I had a good steady management job, was in the middle of grad-school for my MBA, and we had a newborn baby. When we got to Arizona, the opportunity fell apart. We ended up living at my parents house for 6 months while I bartended to make ends meet and finish grad-school. Leaving my job in Denver had been a risk and in the short-term it didn’t pan out in my favor.

Then one day, about 6 months later, my brother called me up and said “hey, it’s not exactly what we’d talked about but I have an opportunity for you to do some simple field work on cell towers in Arizona and New Mexico… It’ll be a lot of windshield time, but decent money and may turn into something bigger later.”. Without hesitation I said ‘sure why not?”. That small consulting business doing simple equipment inventories for a major cell carrier in Arizona and New Mexico later turned into a 7 figure business that I operated for 5+ years.

Again… stable job in Denver while working on an MBA and raising a new born… or living with my folks in Phoenix with my new wife and newborn, while bartending and driving all over the desert southwest to count boxes of cell-tower equipment? Either one was a risk. I risked staying in a job I was not fulfilled by or not being able to pay the bills while I grinded with my brother to build a business. To me the choice was simple.

Once that business closed down, I did find myself back in the stable grind of a good and steady corporate job (in telecommunications)… but I quickly came to miss being an entrepreneur. My wife at the time was Portuguese, so we traveled frequently to visit her family in Azores, Portugal. On one trip I suggested that it might be fun to invest in some real estate on the island she was from and build a vacation rental business. What was supposed to be a 2 week stay over Christmas break ended up being closer to 2 months while I looked for, made offers on, and invested in 2 properties on an island I didn’t live on. That turned into a year of traveling back and forth to remodel the properties and get them permitted as vacation rentals.

Again… risk. As a parent of dual-passport holding children, I’d always wanted to own property in both of their home countries. But it’s a big leap to take to be working a project management job in Phoenix, Arizona to continuing that job and opening a rental business in Azores, Portugal.

On the other side of that coin, however, I knew that property prices were increasing and if I hadn’t acted when I did, I’d likely not have been in a good buying position too much further into the future.

That vacation rental business is ultimately what opened the door for me to invest in a home in Portugal that I spend a good portion of my year in to this day.

Risk… it’s a funny word. My life has been filled with opportunities to risk diving head first into the unknown or to stay happily living to my status quo while staying oblivious to what I might have been missing out on.

I know now with abject clarity that given a choice for a calculated risk or maintaining a status quo that isn’t fulfilling me, I’ll always choose the calculated risk.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
I am a nutrition, strength, and lifestyle coach. Like many in the fitness industry, I got started by virtue of experiencing my own journey to a healthier lifestyle. As a corporate director in a high stress industry I spent years making work my priority while everything else (especially my health) came second. I looked in the mirror one day and realized that I didn’t recognize who I saw staring back at me. The person in the mirror looked unwell, overweight, unhappy, and as though he needed a change.

In that moment, I decided to prioritize my health. I started small, by picking up a hobby that I had once had a passion for, boxing. While attending classes, I had a chance to see that some of the most competitive athletes in the gym were far more than just fitness nuts. They were living this stuff inside and outside of the gym. How they slept, who they spent time with, what they ate… it all mattered. I decided then and there to become a coach, myself.

The journey was not easy. I had always viewed fitness as a hobby, not a job. And like any new coach, when I started I had no idea what I was doing. I remember meeting my first nutrition clients at coffee shops. I barely even knew what I was selling. But I kept showing up. I tried so many different things through the years. Some worked and some didn’t.
But I found that as I continued to show up for my small client roster and to offer as much value as I could on social media more opportunities arose. And this is how my journey to become a nutrition, strength, and lifestyle coach to entrepreneurs, executives, and high level professionals began.

What sets my coaching apart is that I have been where my clients have been. I understand what it feels like to have a busy and stressful job, kids, a household to run, and every other obligation that spills over on your plate. I also understand that by virtue of this, the change process will take time.

In many cases people have a general idea of the ‘what’ they need to do. My coaching focuses largely on the ‘how’ and ‘why’. As a coach, I help my clients focus not on everything they ‘should do’ but on the smallest possible thing ‘they can do’ in order to start moving their health in the right direction.

And once my clients start to feel the energy that arises from the smallest possible wins, I am able to leverage that toward further actions… each one building upon the last, until one day the client looks in the mirror and they are exactly the person they deserve to be inside and out.

One more thing that I am excited about is that in the next year I will begin offering health and wellness retreats in Azores, Portugal (a small European island chain where I reside part of the year). These retreats will be hosted on a small property I own and will bring together wellness activities in one of the most beautiful places on earth.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
This one makes me smile. I have a lot of family and friends who live in Europe and visit regularly. So I have what I call the Arizona circuit that I take them on when they come to the state.

We start in Phoenix, where my home is, and enjoy Barro’s Pizza for dinner on their first night… sorry to you NY Pizza lovers, but Barro’s is the best pizza in AZ, hands down.

From there we get in the car the next day and drive north. I love to be outside. Fossil Creek in Camp Verde, the Red Rocks in Sedona, the mountains in Flagstaff… these are all must see locations for folks coming into town.

We’ll usually spend a night or two at my folks’ cabin in Munds Park. Munds Park is a small mountain town south of Flagstaff, but its quaint and a wonderful place to spend a few nights in the fresh air.

While there, we’ll drive into Flagstaff for a beer at Beaver Street Brewery and a night in downtown Flagstaff on Route 66.

Once we come back to Phoenix, we’ll usually round it out with a weekend morning at one of the Farmer’s Markets (Roadrunner Park Farmer’s Market is my personal favorite). I am a huge fan of supporting the local farm scene in any place I visit. If you stop by Roadrunner Farmer’s Market make sure to say hi to Willow at Desert Willow Botanicals and Dorota at Dorota Botanicals. Each are amazing herbalist who will help people live their healthiest lives.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
In terms of supporting me in my goals and dreams, there are too many people to count. I am blessed to be surrounded by amazing family, friends, and community… all of whom offer unconditional love, encouragement, and support.

One of the most important parts of my journey has been my health. When I was running my telecom business, I was too busy and I let my health fall completely by the wayside. I gained weight, over-ate, drank too much, and was not on track to have a long and healthy life.

Around the time that my business closed, I lumbered into a local boxing gym to see about doing some cardio boxing classes to work on getting back in shape. The person working at that gym was one of the catalysts for me to become the person that I am today. His name was Luis. I hired him to be my personal trainer in the boxing gym.

While working with Luis, I would be pushed physically to what I thought was my breaking point… then he’d push me just a little bit past it before pulling off the gas for the day.

Luis taught me something about myself. He taught me that I was capable of more and that how much more was entirely up to me.

While being coached by Luis, we also would discuss the health and wellness industry as a whole. I had always had a passion for fitness but viewed it as a hobby more than something I could make a living at. My post-workout conversations with Luis sent me down a rabbit-hole to get certified as a nutrition coach and ultimately start taking clients of my own. In fact my first paying nutrition client was a referral directly from Luis.

I almost feel bad only shouting out one person in this answer as there are 10 more right off the top of my head who deserve recognition for helping me along my journey. But it started with my dude, Luis at Gents Boxing Club. And I will not forget that.

Website: https://bodysystems.com/team/joey-szolowicz/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joeyszolowicz/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephszolowicz/

Twitter: https://x.com/JSzolowicz

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CoachJoeySzolowicz

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@coachjoeyszolowicz1818

Image Credits
Filipe Paiva
Alvin Laxamana

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