Laurie Wintonick is the current CEO of JI Elite Coaching. Laurie has extensive experience in strategic planning and event planning. Throughout her life, she has had a passion for helping and supporting others and is now helping individuals find balance in all aspects of their lives. Laurie discusses what it means to her to be ‘boringly consistent’ in her journey to making herself a priority.



https://youtu.be/xBDDnBBNL4o

Brett Gilliland: Welcome to The Circuit of Success. I am your host, Brett Gilliland. Today I've got Laurie Wintonick with me. Laurie, how you doing? 

Laurie Wintonick: I'm doing great, Brett. How are you? 

Brett Gilliland: I'm doing great. You're in New Jersey. What part of New Jersey? I didn't ask that part.

Laurie Wintonick: Yeah, I'm actually, you know, central, northern New Jersey. It's really northern New Jersey cuz you know, there's the argument whether Central Jersey, central Jersey exists or not.

But I am in, um, the northern part of central Jersey in Colonia, um, about half hour, 45 minutes from New York City, half an hour from the beach, an hour from the mountains and yes. 

Brett Gilliland: Beautiful. You got anybody in the uh, Super Bowl we may be rooting for this weekend?

Laurie Wintonick: Not really. Not really. I was kind of, I mean, I'm a Giants fan.

I, I Jersey, I'm a Giants fan, uh, sorry Jets. But, um, I was really hoping that the, the Chargers were gonna make it in this year. Um, yes, Kyle Vannoy is a, is a, um, a. Someone that I've worked with and I was really hoping for him and his team to get in. So I was kind of bummed when that didn't happen.

Brett Gilliland: Yeah. Yep.

They had a good season but didn't, didn't get, uh, quite far enough. So you are the CEO of JI Elite Coaching, uh, which is Jesse Itzler. Uh, which for those of you that are on social media, Jesse is a phenomenal follow and, uh, but you run his coaching program. Uh, which we'll talk about. And, uh, but you've been an executive before and, and you, what'd you, what I see you called yourself a, an avid uh, no, a serial volunteer. Uh, loving to do all that stuff, but, uh, but really helping tons of people with the coaching that you all do out of the JI uh, Elite Coaching program. But before we dive into that, Laurie, if you could just kind of give us a lay of the land on what's made you, the woman you are today.

Laurie Wintonick: Really strong foundation of family really is what is, is where I'm gonna start. So I grew up, um, in a decent sized Italian family, you know, one of four children. Family dinners were super important to us. We were always very close. I could have been anything I wanted to, my mother always said growing up and all I wanted to do was be a mom.

That was my major focus. Went through, um, high school, basically doing everything I could from, you know, cheerleading, the student council, and, um, all the programs. I was on the, you know, debate team, science club, all of it. And, went to college, was gonna be a chemistry major in college to be a high school chemistry teacher.

And cuz I wanted to have the summers off cuz I wanted to be a mom and you know, got outta college and kind of was trying to figure out what to do. Started working and, um, Just always loved helping people. It was really in my kind of DNA, um, that, you know, "Mama Bear" they call me and, and I like to just always be around helping people get whatever they need and, and do whatever they need and just better themselves.

I took that through college into afterwards. I started working. I got married. I've been married, it'll be 23 years this year. I have two beautiful children, um, who are both in college now and are amazing, amazing young women. And you know, all through that. Every time, you know, serial volunteer, every time somebody needs something done, they call me or I'm in a room.

My mother used to say, used to get that, you really need to get that spring broken. And I'm like, what's spring? She's like the one in your arm that just keeps going up, like, yeah, I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll do it, but I figure if I can help, I want to. And that's really what's always driven me and it's just that service mentality that I have.

And, and it's really, it's been great, but it also takes a toll when it's, um, when you're doing way too much. And I kind of lost myself over the years of trying to be a mom, trying to work full-time, trying to do all of the things, volunteering everywhere. And the only thing that suffered through all of that was me.

And, um, I met Jesse five years ago, and once I met him, I realized that I could do all of those things. I just needed to do them differently to make it work, and I needed to make myself the most important person to help in all of it. And once I shifted and did that, everything changed and I've just really become a better Laurie.

I don't, I hate when people say they reinvent themselves cuz you don't reinvent yourself. You, you're always the same person at your core. But I've upgraded myself and I've become this better version, an older, wiser, more learned version of Laurie from, you know, my early teens and twenties. 

Brett Gilliland: Yeah. So what did you learn when you say you, you, you met Jesse five years ago and it changed your perspective.

I mean, for those of us that know Jesse, it is amazing what all he does, but how important his family is. But for you, if we could peel that onion layer back a little bit. What, what changed for you? Like what, what were the, the changes that happened and then how did you implement those changes? 

Laurie Wintonick: So as a mom or a parent nowadays, um, we tend to think. You know, there's this buzz, this buzz going around about self-care and we tend to think that that's selfish and everything we do needs to be for the kids. I wanted to make sure that my children always had what they needed and we don't really pay attention to all of the things that matter in our life.

We're so uber focused on, you know, for me it was work kids, work kids, work kids, and all the volunteer work I did was around my kids. And the reality of that was I had no fulfillment for myself personally, I had no hobbies. I had friends, but like I wasn't intentional about seeing them. I wasn't healthy, I wasn't exercising.

I wasn't eating right. All of the things. And when I met Jesse and he talked about his principles and how basically he ran his life, it was like, wait a minute. , there's four main buckets of your life. There's your professional, there's your personal, your health and wellness and your relationships. And to really have an optimized life, you have to find balance in all of those areas.

And it's not gonna happen just organically. You really have to be intentional, intentional about what you do in those areas. You have to have goals. You have to have, you know, habits that you create to make sure you're touching on those four buckets, all the time. And learning that from Jesse, I started to do that.

I started to make sure that yes, my job was my job, and yes, my, you know, my, my relationship with my family was, was important, but my relationship with myself was more important, my health and wellness from a mind, body and soul perspective. I needed to really focus on that. And then I needed to have some personal goals outside of being, you know, the, the boss at a company or Angelina and Sophia's mom or Chris's wife or whatever.

Like I needed to be Laurie again. And without personal goals and, and areas that I would learn from myself, I was really feeling empty and hollow. So I shifted and started to put some real focus on that intentionally, and that's when I started to notice everything really started to change and I became a much more happy person. Really. That's as simple, you know, as simple as it gets. 

Brett Gilliland: Yeah. And that's a big deal, isn't it? The happiness. But I, I think too is, I would love to learn more about how you implemented it, because it's easy to learn that and know that, you know, my personal life, my professional life, my health and wellness, and then my relationships, it's, it's one thing to hear that, right? 

And it's another thing to then take steps and do something about it. But, but how did you implement it to where I'm, cause I'm, maybe I'm wrong, but I'm assuming that there was, it was easy, then it was hard again, maybe you fell back in your traps and then, oh, I'm gonna do this again and set these goals and fall back and go forward.

And it just kind of teeters, toters for a while. And, and I, I think there's something about just showing up every day. Like for me it's this journal and it's, it's showing up every day and, and being boring and, and making it happen. And so when you hear that, like, what, what, what comes to mind with all that?

Laurie Wintonick: So you just said a word that is basically my motto. You said, you know, it's kind of boring. I, on Instagram will always post it. Um, hashtag boringly consistent. I had to build that muscle where I got boringly consistent in the things that I knew I wanted to do. So for my health and wellness, you know, years ago I was extremely overweight for my size.

I never realized it. I was always healthy and, and active and, and small. I'm, I'm, you know, very short and I, you know, never was a big girl. And I had kids and I just stopped paying attention and I had put on a lot of weight and the first thing I did was realize that, I was getting really unhealthy and longevity is something that's important to me.

I wanna be around for my kids and their kids, and I wanna be healthy with that. So the first thing I did was I sought out somebody who could help me do it, right? And I went and saw a weight and wellness counselor and she put me on the right path. But with that, there was an accountability where, you know, I would go see her every two weeks.

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