Today we’d like to introduce you to Stephen Bienko.
Hi Stephen, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Well, it all started with a little kiss as the song goes… I grew up in Northern New Jersey, about 40 minutes outside of NYC. It was a rural town surrounded by diversity, encouragement, openness, and passion, although I didn’t exactly appreciate those values until I learned to value myself. Life revolved around sports and education for the majority of my youth, and the same went for my younger sister. I went to an amazing high school called Delbarton in Morristown, NJ that truly molded me into becoming a forward-thinking, entrepreneurship-minded individual. Coupled with my dad being an entrepreneur and the seeing-the-world-differently mentality, I was exposed to open thinking early on.
At a young age, I embraced coaching, motivating, and branding people. I loved learning how to improve performance ever since the 7th grade when I designed track programs for my middle school team with the help of my dad. By the time I was in 9th grade, I was designing workout programs for my high school football team. Hyping up my teammates with personal encouragement and quotes lifted their spirits and performances just as much as my own. I thoroughly enjoyed playing that role, and better yet, I was good at it, too.
My high school sports career enabled me to start college at the United States Air Force Academy where I played football and track, and from there I went on to finish my collegiate years at Villanova University.
During college, my obsession with human performance only intensified to the point where I was constantly observing ways to support and enhance the performance of my teammates and friends. I wrote my first thesis trying to disprove the strength and conditioning program that was the status quo at Villanova University. I argued that it was reducing the physical and mental performance of the athletes, which I truly believed.
Go figure, the year after graduating they fired the head strength coach and integrated an entirely new athletic system. I think today they are one of the top-performing schools in the country because they were forward-thinking at the time, whether or not I really had anything to do with it.
After college, I went to the NJ State Police where I focused my supporting and motivating energy into improving the performance of the communities I served. It was here where I started my first official business – outside of me selling nutritional supplements from my form room at Villanova. As a 22 year old State Trooper, I saw an entirely new market and need in the sports performance business for youth and high school athletes. At the time, there were no other training centers for youth kids as a structured business model. This was new, up and coming territory that had yet to be discovered let alone established, so I had to adapt and figure things out on the fly all the while setting the standards of what the industry was to become.
Since then this market has morphed into an entirely new mindset and the growth of high school and college sports, not to mention has also changed the way adults work out. This is the great new Ethos Athletic Club, in Charleston, which is an amazing fitness club and in my eyes one of the best in the country. As opposed to the stereotypical image of a gym filled with heavy machinery and a plethora of stations to train at, training at Ethos requires knowledge on how to train with free-based weights. This method challenges athletes to perform with their minds, not just with their bodies. So when I work out at Ethos, it’s apparent that so many of the members did some sort of athletic performance training when they were young. It’s amazing.
After my training days ended I ventured into franchising and joined the college hunks hauling junk and moving. I established the largest franchise group spanning Florida, New Jersey, Ohio, and Tennessee. Although in and of itself we were hauling and moving junk, I attacked the business with the mindset of working with young adults to establish structured, high-performance living. I developed a series of programs and strategies internally that motivated and incentivized them to build their mental capacity for greatness while also relaying that mindset back to their friends and family. They were rewarded with confidence and financial growth that they never thought possible, all the while hauling and moving junk. Can you believe it?
After I sold the company, I moved back into the space of branding, marketing, and coaching. I like to see it as my path coming full circle, now with an assortment of knowledge I am blessed to have learned along the way from amazing people, failures, and successes. I felt like I came full circle in life and business and truly found my purpose.
All along this journey my family somehow stumbled upon the low country when my father ran the Kiawah Island marathon over 25 years ago. From there we started coming to Charleston and then vacationing downtown and out on Seabrook and Kiawah Islands eventually finding homes to reside in back and forth to the North. What a great find they were. To watch this Charleston community grow into what it is today has been fascinating and an honor to be a part of it.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I can say my road was definitely gravelly with a hint of potholes, and it still is today. I wouldn’t have it any other way, though. The obstacles thrown our way challenge us to discover our core values, motives, and actions. The winds of life blow at all of us, and I think we learn over time how to either let the wind blow us around as it pleases or figure out how to use it to set sail.
My bumpy road has been filled with learning experiences that had me failing my family and business. With each failure I had the opportunity to hurt, reflect, restructure, and establish myself, and use that experience as a lesson as I continue to pursue my future and discover myself and the world.
I’ve owed tons of money, I’ve had a failed marriage, and I’ve struggled with personal identity. Each of these situations devastated me and forced me to learn how to resolve and overcome them.
With each instance I say, “because I have failed, I am now capable of helping others get back up.” I believe with all of my heart that my struggles have come upon me to serve others and their personal growth journeys.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about 42 Growth Strategies?
42 Growth is a professional business based upon life-performance business coaching and branding.
In today’s market, we understand the needs of growing people in the corporate space, the small business environment, and the personal branding sector.
We coach high performers to understand and utilize their strengths to create more production, leading toward a more fulfilled life and higher income opportunities. We also support digital branding through social media and support thought leaders taking initiative over their credibility in their respected industries through publication, or as we like to say, “turning thoughts to paper to authorship” in our book publishing division.
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
Funny you ask this question, because if you knew me growing up you would hardly believe the path that has led me here. Today I speak and support people in their growth, but until I was 13 years old my communication was more stuttering than motivational – to the point where it was difficult to get any words out let alone understand the ones that I did.
It’s safe to say I was not the most confident pup in the litter.
I struggled with my identity as a mixed-race black and white child growing up in the late 70s and 80s, and because of this uniqueness in my skin, my background, my upbringing, I always thought of myself as the ugly kid as opposed to special for being different.
I enjoyed sports and that was always my outlet for performance and acceptance, not to mention my hidden love interests music and art. Since I was young I have had such profound respect and admiration for artists.
So to sum up describing me as a kid, humm..probably something like this. “So that kid has potential, there is something very interesting about him but I just can’t put my finger on it. Let’s find him on 30 years, he may be nothing or he may be something spectacular.”
Contact Info:
- Email: Stephen@42growth..com
- Website: www.42growth.com
- Instagram: @bienkostephen
- Facebook: www.Facebook.com/stephenbienko
- Twitter: @stephenbienko
