ABOUT PETE CATALDO

Knowledge bombs for living a focused, healthy and generally awesome life

By Pete Cataldo 

We’re surrounded by distractions. From social media. To kids. To family. To work. There is a constant pull on us from seemingly every direction. I’m here to help weed through that crap and help you find the focus necessary to dominate the game of life.

 

It’s possible to realize the full potential of a focused life that takes no prisoners and no bullshit. It’s possible to enjoy a successful career and still enjoy the journey along the way. It’s possible to do all of this and still get into the best shape of your life.

I’m here to show you how.

Follow along as I share my own journey to explore a life worth living from my experiences as a dad, entrepreneur, husband, and just a guy trying to navigate through the distractions to find a real purpose along the way. I’ll share my successes and my failures. Hopefully we’ll both learn something along the way.

For those that are into credentials and need some verification that I actually know what I’m talking and writing about, my work is regularly featured in: The Huffington Post, Good Men Project, and Early to Rise.

But this site is my home and where I’ll share some of my best nuggets of info. I’ll drop knowledge bombs on:

  • Ways to find more productivity in your every day through life hacking or just common tricks of the trade passed along by countless experts.
  • Succeeding in business and relationships (and even some business relationships) that can help plus up the everyday quest for crushing enemies and being awesome.
  • How to achieve the right balance of overall health – from fitness, nutrition and mindfulness – to live a more badass life on your own terms.

I don’t pretend to know it all. But I do know a few things about a few things. And I’ll share my experiences (and countless failures) along the way to let you know that we are in this game together for that quest to be better.

A few things about me:

  • My writing will be a bit brash sometimes, because I enjoy the strategic placement of a well-timed F-bomb.
  • Most of my work will be personalized (this is my journey, after all), and you may have some qualms or additions to make your quest your own.
  • But, if you stick to most of the info I share and decide that now is the time to challenge yourself mentally and physically, you’ll be ready to crush life like a Jedi Master.

If you join me, I’ll challenge you to strive to look inward to make self-improvements to redesign your life into the work of art you deserve. I’ll share even more great content with my mailing list – most of which is exclusive and not on my website.

A couple of additional housecleaning nuggets of info:

  • I give most of my stuff away for free (except my voiceover work and exclusive fitness coaching packages, because I gotta pay the bills)
  • I’ll never overload you with stuff that is excess and full of crap (ain’t nobody got time for that)
  • If you think my email newsletter is not a good fit for you, by all means, please hit the unsubscribe button. I won’t be offended (much).

If you’re interested in learning a little bit more about how I try to live my life on a day-to-day basis to crush my enemies harder than Captain America at a Hydra party, please read “5 Core Values that will change your life for the better” below.

Now let’s go dominate.

– Pete

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5 Core Values that will change your life for the better

1) Take control of your health and fitness

There’s so much in life that we cannot control. And it’s important that we put that shit into perspective to realize how important it is to focus on the things that we have total control over: namely our ability to take care of our most important resource. Ourselves.

See, I know what it’s like to get so wrapped up in everyday life that you forget what it means to actually live your life and focus on the most important thing: YOURSELF.

A guy that was so healthy in my 20s was letting stress and craziness of my early 30s take over.

I knew I was a little chubby. But, I didn’t realize how bad it really was until the chest pains came and forced a trip to the doctor. I was more than 40 pounds overweight. My Body Mass Index (BMI) was simple, yet shocking by its one word result: obese. Whoa.

For the first time in my life, a doctor was telling me that my weight was dangerous and it was time to drop some pounds.

Lucky for me, I had the knowledge to pull up my big boy pants and get to work.

I worked my butt off to drop almost 50 pounds of belly fat to my current size. I’m healthier than I’ve ever been.

 

The before and after photos of my journey from former fatty to a more aerodynamic and healthier fitness coach.

I’m here to show you that you can do the same. Just as Frodo and Samwell needed the assistance of a mentorship from Gandalf and countless other assists from the Fellowship of the Ring, your personal trip to Mordor will not be encountered on your own.

Let me be the guide and mentor you need to show you how this is all very possible. As a certified fitness and nutrition coach, I’ll be here to weed through the ridiculous amounts of information overflow to help drill down the most important parts to the health and fitness game. And as a fellow journeyman through the doldrums of a long-term fat loss odyssey, I’ll be speaking from experience on the highs and lows of checking the scale and measurements and trying to figure out if that extra french fry on your plate is worth it for the amount of reps you’ll need to crank out in order to burn it off.

Let’s do it together.

Once you determine how tough the road to ultimate health and fitness can be, it actually gets easier for you. It’s just hard work and dedication that will make it happen – along with the guidance of a friendly neighborhood guru to steer you along the path to success.

 

Living the good life in Hawaii. I’m all about taking time away to enjoy life and see the world.

2) Take action on your dreams and goals

I’m a firm believer in going after that “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” or the BHAG, as proposed by authors James Collins and Jerry Porras in his book, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies.

While the concept is directed at businesses and entrepreneurs that are encourage to define visions and goals and measurements that are strategic in nature and compelling, it doesn’t mean that we can’t take this same idea on use it for our own personal lifestyle design.

Set your sights on that big time dream of building the body you’ve always wanted, on writing that book you’ve always talked about, on starting that business you’ve always been too afraid to launch.

But in order to get to that point, you have to start.

The biggest obstacle that most aspiring authors face is the fear of getting started. One of the mightiest challenges that entrepreneurs encounter is the reluctance to get their feet off the ground to begin building their dream. The highest mountain that we face in a weight loss journey is actually putting on the shoes and doing the work.

All of this is out of fear for failure.

As an entrepreneur and writer myself, I’m here to tell you that failure is all part of the game. You’ll get to a part when you anticipate and even appreciate the setbacks. It’s those challenges that make us better business owners, authors and people. We learn from them and grow from them and then take that information and adapt from them to ensure success as a result of those mistakes and setbacks and failures.

Let’s fail harder. Together. But don’t let the biggest potential failure be the inability to actual step out of the comfort zone and get started. Always take the approach of taking action to commit to those goals and dreams.

3) Always be improving just a little bit each day

If you’re following along, you’ve crafted some huge goals that will allow you to chase and eventually catch your dreams. That’s the key to life. But, in order to get there, it take a daily focus and practice on the small things in order to attain and complete the objective.

Too often, we set lofty ideals and hope to get there through some diet pill or get rich quick scheme. When the true quest to greatness lies in sweating the small stuff.

Focus on small and manageable improvements, each and every day.

Watch how skyscrapers are constructed for an example. It’s like a team just plops a building down on the foundation in finished and furnished fashion. It takes a day-to-day plan to lay the foundation, then go floor by floor until the shell is placed before applying the finishing touches. Yes, it is much more complex than this example, but just roll with me for a minute.

Approach your goal setting and dream chasing in similar fashions by attempting to do just a little bit each and every day. Think 1% better today than you were yesterday.

Trying to drop 35 pounds? Awesome. But it won’t happen overnight. And that big 35 can seem daunting and may lead to complacency for fear of failure. But if you take action on doing 1% more today than you did yesterday, that’s an improvement worth exploring and much easier to manage.

It sounds small and almost insulting to start with something so insignificant. But if you start your fat loss journey with just one pushup every morning, then compound that into 1 more each day, think of where you could be two months from now.

Just being 1% better each day, compounded over time is the key to achieving big time goals.

Avoid that bug in your ear that tells you to do more and jump face first into a huge task you’ll never be able to complete at once. Instead, start so small that there is absolutely no excuse not to do it, then dominate a little bit more each day.

This is a lifelong journey that builds like a skyscraper (brought it back full circle for ya). It takes time, dedication, focus and practice. But over the course of this construction, you’ll have built a foundation and such a solid structure that nothing will be able to tear you down as you reach for the clouds.

 

“A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.”
– Bruce Lee

4) Learn to listen and have real conversations

Turn on the TV, especially to watch my former colleagues and peers in the television news cycle and it is nothing but a bunch of people talking at each other. No one is listening. No is having a real conversation.

That shit attracts plenty of ratings, earns a big chunk of dollars in revenue, but it does absolutely nothing to further the importance of meaningful discussion and discourse over really anything that is being shoved into our face like a fat dude at a pie eating contest.

Social media is not much better. Neither is texting all day long.

We’ve devolved into this society that is so self-absorbed and attention-starved that we forgot the most important half of actual conversation includes listening. I promise it won’t hurt you.

Pick up the damn phone and call your parents, brother/sister, best friend or just a random person and have a fucking conversation for once. And when that dialogue gets cranked up, take it to the next level and ask questions.

Be inquisitive about someone else. This is especially important for the single people of the group that wonder why they can’t make it work with someone else. Spend more time in their world and get to know them a little better instead of shoving your life and troubles and busy shit down their throat.

 

Angela and I invested in ourselves and chase our goals with relentless determination until we achieved that dream of living in the “big” city.

 .5) Always invest in yourself

I spent the greater part of my 20s being a small-town celeb of sorts as a television sports anchor and reporter. It was my mug all over your high-def LCD screens delivering the best scores and sports news in the area. Sounds like a pretty awesome job that pays well and leads to a life of glitz and glamour.

Nah. It’s really anything but that. And my fiancée at the time and I both knew it.

She was the news reporter that I met and fell in love with at our first small-market job from hell in teeny tiny Macon, Georgia. We both made the move to a bigger more stable situation in North Florida. But after 4-5 years of long hours, small pay and little rewards, we knew it was time for a change.

The landscape of media in the early 2000s was scary. Ad revenue was pulling out, which meant stations were cutting resources, and people – we actually still see a lot of this in the newspaper business, which has been immensely slow to recover.

As a result, the fun of being the fun guy on television who talks about sports for a living was starting to be sucked out of me faster than a Dyson vacuum cleaner pulls dirt off a carpet. It was similar for my future bride.

We made the call to make a change that took a whole lot of guts and perhaps a little bit, or maybe even a lotta bit, of stupidity. We quit the news industry. We packed our bags. Sold our cars. In April of 2009, my future baby mama and I took a one-way trip to New York City at the height of the Great Recession. We made a bet on ourselves that our own goals would be achieved despite the news reports, and perhaps even conventional wisdom.

For almost 10 years, I’d spent my time telling the news. For the next five years, I’d be the one pitching my former colleagues about news that they should share as a public relations and marketing specialist.

I bounced around a few places. Enjoyed some key wins for some big brands. I even joined a major nonprofit that allowed me to feel better about schlepping B.S. to journalists for a living. It was a rewarding change to the usual large-brand marketing spin I’d been forced to convince bloggers and reporters to talk about.

No offense to the loads of PR flacks out there. It can be a really respectable career choice. But the idea of pitching misleading junk to anchors and producers and reporters who were once my peers was disingenuous to me. I needed more.

Once again, it was a crazy move to fill that void that I had missed since stepping off-camera. I needed to get those creative juices flowing again.

In 2014, I finally made the call that I needed to make all along: to work for myself and exercise those creative demons. It was time to flex my muscle as a voiceover actor and start betting on myself to deliver the results I’ve always wanted.

Our Manhattan apartment was thus converted into a small studio to block out the crazy sirens and random noise that the East Village of New York City will rain down upon us. My day now consisted of performing once again. Instead of reading the news and sports and being all kinds of awesome to people in front of the camera, I’m was performing behind a high-powered microphone and got the opportunity to be the voice behind three published audiobooks.

I’m now leaning into writing content on a daily basis where it’s my goal to help you unlock a more fulfilling life. No matter what stage of life you are in. I’ve reinvented myself countless times, including this newer venture in my mid-40s and I’m here to show you that if I can do it as a stay at home dad to two young kids, you can, too.

Voice acting allows me to pretend I’m a different person, performing a new role each and every day. Writing allows me flex even more of those creative muscles that I’d been missing while schlepping products and fetching water for celebrity spokespersons.

While that main role of my life is still the diaper-changing, baby-burping and daddy-daughter/father-son bonding of the fatherhood variety, I get to set my own schedule and my own rules for the road of business success.

My time in TV news taught me the ins and outs of performance and how to read a script. My time in public relations and marketing taught me the importance of branding and how to market both myself and my business.

And now I’ve been able to put it all together to start this small business that will prove to be the scariest, craziest, most rewarding thing I’ve ever done – besides the having two kids thing, that’s always going to take the top honor, but you get the point here.

Looking back on that move from Jacksonville to New York, it was perhaps the timing that was near career-suicidal. Sure, we probably should’ve gutted it out a few more years before jumping ship. Yes, things could’ve ended up much different if not for some hard work and a bit of luck. But, we are here now. We are better for it.

Our challenges and obstacles that we faced only strengthened us as people and it’s that same resolve and determination that define our style as role models for our young daughter and son and as the entrepreneurs we are today.

Always be willing, ready and able to take that leap of ultimate faith by investing in your own passions and goals and dreams. It’ll lead to a much more rewarding path along the way.