[Interview] - Eddie Pinero; The Next Generation Tony Robbins

Deciding to leave the comfort of a relatively secure job in order to pursue a dream is scary, something I know all too well. Someone else who decided to take that plunge was 28 year old Eddie Pinero a writer, philosopher, musician and entrepreneur from Boston, Massachusetts who just over a year ago set up "Your World Within" a platform for inspirational ideas as well as consultancy and speaking services designed to help individuals and business maximize potential in their chosen field. A next generation Tony Robbins, Eddie regularly posts articles, and videos made up of inspirational video clips, moving music (mostly his own compositions) that accompany his thoughts and advice on various aspects of life be it in the commercial world, athletics or personal well-being. Having come across one such video, "Running in the Rain" and discovering his previous works afterwards I was curious to learn about the man behind the ideas and had the opportunity to speak to this very wise and insightful young entrepreneur.  

Thank you for this opportunity Eddie I am really honoured to be talking to you.  Please tell me a little bit about yourself, where are you from, your background?

Thank you for reaching out I am obviously humbled that you think enough of me to set this up. I really appreciate it. I am 28 years old and live in Boston Massachusetts. I have lived here for a while now, as my father was in the military so we moved around quite a lot. I lived on the west coast for a while. I went to college in Worcester, Massachusetts, it’s about an hour from Boston, basically a liberal arts school. I graduated in 2010, and then went into the corporate world for almost four years and then kind of moved onto this so-called, chapter.

What did you study at college?

I studied Political Science. I liked it because it's very analytical and plus I like the fact that there’s not a right or wrong answer per se, it’s very ambiguous and ties in a lot of things too like Economics which also ties into History; it captivated a lot of my interest. I did also think of going to law school in terms of progression it made the most sense.

So you spent four years in the corporate world, what sort of work were you doing?

I was a training consultant, started in a management programme where they take folks right out of college into a two year programme where you’re integrated into some area of the company. I did a lot of programme creation, creating training modules working with different individuals to help get them from point A to point B to help with some that would be working on. So basically some sort of training consultant role.

Okay so four years working as a training consultant. What led you to go into business for yourself and set up “Your World Within”?

Well it didn’t start out that way, it wasn’t the intent. You know I never want to talk about the corporate world with negative connotations because I have friends who love it, thrive on it, different strokes for different folks I guess but for me I needed a more free spirited approach to what I am doing. I left, kind of methodically. Initially I was building up a studio little by little while I was working because I wanted to do something with music and do some writing ventures, maybe work on a book. I had these ideas in my head and when the time was right I made the jump. And then as I was doing this my first thought was “this is stressful” because I was always in this comfort zone where I felt fine with what I was doing. I knew what to expect and now all of a sudden I don’t have this job, I am on my own trying to do these things, and it was nerve-wracking. That was when I started to coach myself through it and I started documenting some of my thoughts and ultimately put out that first video just for myself really. I showed it to my family, my friends and it got some really positive feedback and from that the whole “Your World Within” thing was born.

Did you come up with the name “Your World Within” yourself or source the idea from elsewhere?

I came up with the name myself. I remember exactly where I was when I came up with it, running on the Cape Cod canal it just came to me.

Can you go into more detail about what specific services you provide for clients?

I do some speaking, which is probably the most prevalent out of all of them, some performance coaching similar to life coaching. I also offer consulting around video creation helping people who want to put out videos. For example people and business who have a website and they want a video for their homepage I work with them to create that and help with the creative process. Then there’s the writing, blog posts things of that nature, along similar lines topics in my videos.

Do you write your own music for the videos?

Yes. I play guitar mostly keyboard, piano which I am not fantastic at but the beautiful thing about some of these compositions is it’s done through many instruments. So if you have a basic pretty elementary understanding of composition notes being in a certain key you can put something together. This is a new thing I started doing. The first few videos like “Running in the Rain” for example, that’s not mine, some I have found through Creative Commons of YouTube.

For someone so young you come across as wise and fully lived already. You’ve quoted Warren Buffet and Steve Jobs a couple of times but how about philosophers athletes. Where do draw your influences and ideas from?

I think it’s a culmination of all of them. I do a lot of reading and it’s funny but most of the reading I have done most recently has been entrepreneurs and people within the corporate world but it really depends and I think that’s why some of my videos are sports related, and some philosophical, basically whatever has come into my head or have come across and read about recently.

From watching and listening to your videos you obviously enjoy running, and you used to do rowing at College. How did you make the correlation between running and success in life? How did that come about?

The light-bulb went off for me in college rowing. I don’t row anymore, mostly for my cardio I run and cycle a little. Going to college and joining this team as a novice I realised that this is what hard work is, I just had no clue before. I always thought I was working hard, doing what I was supposed to but I never really understood what it took to separate yourself from the pack. I understood what commitment is, what it takes to put yourself ahead and so that mentality of trying to always one up your competitor, you get out what you put in all of these things I realised during races when I was at college, I realised when I run. It’s same thing as when you’re cycling or anything really.

Throughout your videos there is a recurring theme of delving into yourself in setting habits, winning habits and goal achieving and maintaining that mind-set which I think is quite interesting. As you make these videos have you noticed that there are certain themes that you keep coming back to?

Yes I definitely think so. I’d like to say that there’s no such thing as a disciplined person, there’s someone who has built winning habits and there’s someone who hasn’t, anyone can. Which is why I think it’s interesting because, as I am sure you know I put clips in the background in the videos for example a football player or someone running. So someone will say “hey I like this I am in med school can you make a med school video?” My first thought is if you remove that clip and put med school students it applies and it’s the exact same concepts across the board.

How long has “Your Word Within” been going now?

For about a year I’ve been kind of pursuing it, it’s been a progression. I was balancing that with music I was writing a lot of like acoustic work, writing songs for people and playing shows around the Boston area. In trying to juggle both with “Your World Within” obviously it’s continuing to evolve and I came to the point where I was like “look you can do both of these things somewhat well or you can pick one and make it the entirety of what you are about” and that wasn’t that long ago, maybe four or five months ago where I decided “Your World Within” was going to be my things that I was going to make something out of.

How is it going in terms of a business. Is it proving to be everything you hoped for and more?

It definitely is. Like everything there is a learning curve but I am able to connect with an audience and that is sort of a reassuring thing the fact that what you’re putting out provides value to your audience. From a subscribers standpoint, a social media standpoint the analytics have been pointing up, like we discussed earlier it’s opened doors to different services, speaking opportunities and got the ball rolling. It’s not something that was planned but when you focus on one thing when you’re putting yourself into it and you allow it to grow these things kind of open up.

How has the feedback been in terms of what you are doing on a business level, personal level, are you generally getting positive feedback?

That has certainly been the most rewarding part. I’ve been getting tons of feedback, a lot of it heartfelt comments and stuff like that. It’s a motivation to keep going, it really does. Of course once your audience reaches a certain point you need to expect some negativity, you’re going to get trolled, people are going to say stupid stuff so I am not at the point where I get it a lot, it’s almost like when it starts coming and I get people saying, you know negative things I look at it as a benchmark because it means you’re big enough to bring people in that are not your original niche.

You’ve been doing this for nearly a year and sounds like so far it’s been amazing; just taking stock then are you finding that a) you’re looking at what you are doing and thinking “My God this is real, I am really doing this” do you find that? b) Have you found that over the year that you’ve grown as a result, do you think the person who started this at the beginning has kind of changed as a result?

Yes I think completely. The biggest thing in terms of the change is my perspective on making things happen, on working with people. There’s a cliché that you have to fail to succeed? I didn’t realise the extent of being denied, being rejected, being told something’s not good, not getting a response on an email, trying to push your product your ideas in places and having it turn to nothing and keep moving through that, to get a job done because again you hear it all on the surface but until you move through it – it’s easy to say just keep moving forward but when you’re not at a state where you’re experiencing success immediately it’s hard to move forward so that was definitely a big learning point. In terms of is this real? I feel very fortunate very lucky to get up and do what I do, and do something I like. Sometimes I do have to pinch myself but at the same time in the greater scheme of things I have a long long long way to go.

Look out for part 2 of the interview in which Eddie and I discuss our favourite videos from his extensive body of work. For more information about Eddie and his work visit the Your World Within website or subscribe to the YouTube channel.