Unlock Your Greatness

Welcome From Myrtle Beach

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to Spotlight for Success by American Book Company. I am Devin Pentosa, your host. We are here in Sunny Myrtle Beach, South Carolina at the Scabsey Conference. And we are here with our special guest today, Cody Martin, CEO of Adversity University. Yes, sir. Cody, thank you for joining us today. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. All right. Cody, tell me a bit about what brings you here to Scabsey. What are you doing here as uh exhibiting?

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Well, first, you know, you know, I'm a I'm a big component of education, excuse me, I'm a big component of education and the importance of actually um, you know, guiding our young people, not just our young people, but adults that's that are leading the young people in terms of the educational field. I'm actually a licensed therapist and I own a mental health education company, Adversity University. And I developed curriculum and framework and I work with school districts and I work with youth organizations and sports organizations to be proactive as it relates to the mental health and the emotional instabilities that put that plagues our community.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Wow. So what what was your driver to say I'm gonna because you you started this university as a founder? Yes. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

So what was your driver to say I'm gonna start at Versity University?

The Three Levels Past Present Future

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Um, well, again, I am a licensed therapist, right? So I worked at the community council in the beginning and I taught for four years. And I saw that, you know, the the mental, the mental, excuse me, the mental instabilities and the struggles amongst our young people, it was like a lot of the issues were similar, but a lot of the issues were the lack of consistency and structure, right? So once I began to work with young people and I began to get positive outcomes, I mean you're talking years of personal experience and professional experience, and once I did that, I grouped that together and I actually launched uh excuse me, I authored a book in 2017 called Passport to Life. And that book did so well, uh, and everybody received it so well, I developed a curriculum around that, around that Passport to Life framework, and the curriculum is called Unlock Your Greatness, and what we do is we break the curriculum down into three different levels, right? So it could go for 30 weeks, but each level is designed for 10 weeks. So you know, organizations may want the whole 30-week program, they may only want the 10-week program and kind of you know stagger that. But how is designed with the three levels? It's level one is designed to process your past, level two is designed to manage your present, and level three is designed to focus on your future. And goal setting and accountability is at the forefront of the whole program. So what's happening is they're learning how to be structured, right? They're learning how to set goals and actually reach those goals. In the beginning of the program, they set the big picture goal, then weekly they set the short-term seven-day goals that allow them to actually uh reach the goals and hit their targets. And that's how you see the outcomes and the positive outcomes that they get because they're actually learning how to set goals, objectives, and action steps to be able to accomplish those goals. Not only that, there's a self-evaluation portion that goes along with it. So, did I accomplish my goal? Yes or no? Okay, write down what did you learn from that? And that's the most important part. You know, learning from mistakes. I preach to young people and adults, we have to make mistakes, right? That's that's how we become resilient people. We fail. We make mistakes, but we learn from it. And when we learn from it, we can apply the positive things that we learn and we can move forward.

Real Results With Struggling Students

SPEAKER_00 3:25

That is so true, Cody. That's beautiful. I love that. Can you tell me uh a bit about uh the results you've seen in the schools? So you have some examples of wow, this was so great.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Yeah, absolutely. Some of the quote unquote worst kids in the in when I first started, I'm gonna say that uh some the quote unquote worst kids, they'll throw them at me, right? Yeah. Um, you know, kids that don't show up in school, kids that are you know constantly getting suspended, and you know, grades are not doing well. So we group with these kids once we got in, and because we start with self-awareness, right? When we start from self-awareness and then end with leadership. So once we get in and allow them to become more self-aware, understand themselves, because we begin with them understanding their personality type, right? Then with that, we teach them how to manage conflict and interact with people utilizing personality type. Once they become self-aware of who they are, they begin to realize the mistakes that they're making. And they no longer want to make those mistakes. So you begin to see kids show up to school more, right? You see them managing conflict better, right? You see the grades going up because they don't want referrals, they don't want to get kicked out of school. They actually have aspirations, but see, these things are barren in young people who don't feel like they have a voice. So it's our job to pull that out of them. And that's essentially what happens. We pull out the greatness. That's why I call it unlock your greatness. We pull out the greatness of these young people and they see the light.

How To Connect And Learn More

SPEAKER_00 4:51

Oh, that is great. What a what a wonderful program uh to establish in the communities and uh and get that going. That's great. How can people from Scabsy find out more information about your organization?

SPEAKER_01 5:03

Well, they can uh visit my website, adversityuonline.com. Um, I mean they can email me, Cody, at adversity you at AdversityU Online, and you know, we can get any information that we need to you. I love to, you know, support in any way that I can.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Okay, that's wonderful. Well, I appreciate uh the work you're doing in the community and uh thanks for joining us today, Cody. Thank you, I appreciate it. All right.