Naturally High

In this deeply moving and powerful episode of Naturally High, Jeanne sits down with Nick Prefontaine—top motivational speaker (Yahoo Finance, 2022), real estate investor, and brain injury survivor—for a conversation that bridges physical trauma, emotional resilience, and the human capacity to defy all odds.

At just 14 years old, Nick suffered a life-threatening snowboarding accident that left him in a coma, with doctors predicting he would never walk, talk, or eat independently again. What followed was nothing short of extraordinary. Through unwavering belief, the power of support, and a mindset rooted in possibility, Nick not only recovered, but ran out of the hospital.

Together, Jeanne and Nick explore the parallels between physical trauma and emotional healing, and how our greatest challenges (whether mental, emotional, or physical) can become the very curriculum that shapes our highest potential. This episode is a testament to the power of belief, the importance of support, and the transformative nature of adversity.

If you’ve ever questioned what’s possible for your life, this conversation will expand your perspective and remind you that healing, growth, and transformation are always within reach.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:
  • Nick’s life-altering snowboarding accident and the moments that changed everything
  • The critical role of belief, mindset, and vision in recovery
  • Why support doesn’t have to come from family, and where to find it instead
  • The powerful influence of Nick’s mother and her refusal to accept limitations
  • The STEP system: Support, Trust, Energy, and Persistence (and how it applies to any setback)
  • How physical trauma mirrors emotional and psychological healing journeys
  • The importance of having a vision for your futurem even before evidence exists
  • Why chasing “perfection” can actually lead to excellence and freedom
  • How to stay grounded and focused during long, uncertain recovery processes
  • Turning adversity into purpose, meaning, and impact

About Nick Prefontaine

Nick is a nationally recognized motivational speaker, bestselling author, and real estate investor based in Rhode Island. After surviving a traumatic brain injury at age 14, Nick developed the STEP system, a framework that helped him recover and now supports others facing adversity in their own lives.

Today, Nick is a seven-figure business owner, partner at Smart Real Estate Coach, and founder of “Common Goal,” where he inspires individuals and organizations to overcome setbacks and achieve their highest potential.

Resources discussed in this episode:
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Contact Jeanne Foot | The Recovery Concierge: 
Contact Nick Prefontaine: 

Creators and Guests

Host
Jeanne Foot
NP
Guest
Nick Prefontaine

What is Naturally High?

On Naturally High you’ll receive transformational tools and hear inspirational stories that will guide you into holistically healing trauma in every corner of your life. You deserve to invoke your inner healer. I'm so glad you're here!

Jeanne Foot: [00:00:06] Our next guest, Nick Prefontaine, was an extraordinary interview for me. It touched on so many things that consciously, I hadn't been able to connect before around physical trauma. After a terrible, life threatening snowboarding accident at the age of 14, Nick was left with the diagnosis that he wouldn't probably ever walk, talk, or be able to feed himself again. And he's not only transformed that, but he's done way more than anybody could ever anticipate. And we talked about the innate challenges that our own unique curriculum presents to us in these moments, whether it comes in physical trauma or emotional trauma or mental health issues or grief loss or anything, any aspect of the human story. And it was just fascinating to me how all roads lead to Rome. We give it a path that seems so foreign from one another, but yet it has similarities. So please welcome Nick and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do, and I look forward to hearing your feedback.

Jeanne Foot: [00:01:17] Hello everybody, and welcome back to Naturally High. And today we have a super special guest with us. I would love to introduce you to Nick Prefontaine, who was named as the top motivational speaker by Yahoo Finance in 2022. At 14, Nick suffered a traumatic, life threatening snowboarding accident and was put in a coma. His parents were told he would never, ever walk, talk or eat on his own again. He did, and set a personal goal of not just walking, but running out of the hospital.

Jeanne Foot: [00:01:53] Nick does a lot of speaking work to help those suffering from brain injuries. And today Nick is a seven figure business owner, Rhode Island based real estate investor, speaker, and a partner of a smart real estate coach. I'd love to introduce you to Nick Prefontaine. Welcome, Nick. So excited to be here again.

Nick Prefontaine: [00:02:12] Thanks for having me.

Jeanne Foot: [00:02:14] You're very, very welcome. So, you know, we talk about trauma all the time. And you're probably one of my first guests I introduced as our wanted to interview on trauma from a physical. And it's so interesting because we know physical trauma so well, at least medical professionals know physical trauma so well, but they rarely understand emotional trauma. So I'm really excited to dive into you. Not only did you come against all odds, but on the physical aspects of trauma, which so many of us rarely understand. So I want to go back to that immediate day, if you don't mind. And I think you said that to me in a very brief conversation. You said to me, you know, I remember going up and then everything had changed after that moment. So can we just start there with what you do remember, and then we can lead in from there. How does that sound?

[00:03:07] That sounds awesome. Yeah, that sounds fantastic. For me and the reason why I always bring everyone back and bring you and your listeners back is it was that day that, for lack of a better term, everything changed after that and after that experience. So the day was free for my friends and I had brought our snowboard gear onto the bus to get ready so we wouldn't miss a precious moment. Once we got to the mountain, we got to the mountain, headed straight for the chairlift, and as the rest of the class wasted time to go inside and get ready, we were ready to go. So we hit the chairlift right off, right when we got there and then going up the chairlift, we noticed that it was very icy because it had been raining earlier in the day, so people were wiping out everywhere. The chairlift actually went right over the terrain park where all of the jumps were, and I knew as soon as I saw it that I had to go off the biggest jump in the terrain park. I mean, there wasn't even a moment of thinking, oh, should I be careful today because it's a little icy. Or maybe I should or shouldn't do it. So there was no doubt in my mind. And I got to the top, buckled in my snowboard, took a breath of that crisp winter air, and confidently charged towards that jump. With all my speed and going into the jump, I caught the edge of my snowboard. That's the last thing that I remember.

Nick Prefontaine: [00:04:36] They wanted to bring a helicopter to the mountain to rush me to the hospital and they couldn't. It was pretty windy, so they had to send in an ambulance. And out of all the paramedics, there was only one who could intubate right on the spot, and I needed that to be able to breathe. And lucky for me, he was one of the paramedics that showed up to the mountain that day. He had actually been, for whatever reason, fate luck would have it, he was in the parking lot when he got the call. So when I'm always retelling this, it's always easy to retell because there are three things. So that was the first thing, the right paramedic was right in the parking lot. Secondly, although I didn't have a helmet on, a pair of goggles that I had on my eyes or resting on my forehead were very thick with a lot of padding. So not only I learned this after the fact, but not only did they brace my initial fall, what the doctors, experts, friends of mine that I had that were there, that saw it said that not only did they brace the initial impact, but as I continued to hit my head and continues to roll down the mountain. Because remember, it wasn't just one hit and I'm done. I continued to have my goggles moved to cushion each blow between my head and the ice, and I had some pretty big goggles with a lot of padding.

Nick Prefontaine: [00:06:05] They were pretty thick. I never would have fathomed that I would need them to brace my fall. So the third thing for me is, whenever I'm retelling this, it's always easy to remember that when I got to the hospital, I was in a partially induced coma, resting in the ICU intensive care unit, unable to communicate with anyone, and we sent. The doctors would come into my room. They came into my room to share progress updates because they figured, oh, let's just go talk to his parents. He can't hear us, he's out. He's in a coma. They went to share the news right in front of me. And my mom stopped them and she said, "no, no, not in front of him", because she understood that even though I was in a coma, I was still taking in information. So she made the doctors step outside the room, and then once they were there, that's when they said that I probably wouldn't be able to walk, talk, or eat on my own ever again. And even if I was able to come out of the coma, there was a good chance that I would need 24 hour care for the rest of my life. So lucky for me, they didn't accept this like so many patients do as a death sentence. So they took the information, thanked the doctors, and then this allowed me to treat it like any other situation.

Nick Prefontaine: [00:07:30] So I didn't know any of this. They kept me protected. They kept this hidden from me. So I just treated it like any other situation. I got up literally and figuratively and did the best I could every day. And I ended up in a coma for three weeks. Like I said, a partially induced coma. So I really don't remember a month. And it was a month after my accident that I was transported to a rehab hospital in Boston, and that's where I really began my journey of having to learn how to walk, talk, and eat again. And because I was coming off of the medication from a partially induced coma, my first memories didn't start until a month after my accident. So it was at this time that I started to unknowingly use a system to not only make a full recovery, but run out of the hospital. And I'll tell you a little bit about where that came from.

Nick Prefontaine: [00:08:35] So that system is a step system. That's what I teach both from stage and my keynotes and one on one work with clients and my step video program to this day. But Step is an acronym that stands for support. Or make sure you have the support of your family and friends right from the beginning. And this is going to have you falling back on relationships that you built prior to your setback. T is trust. Trust that once you take your first step, your next step is always going to be available to you. And this also starts by trusting that voice that you have inside of yourself that we all have inside of ourselves, and making sure that you follow that, that you listen to that. So the best way I can describe this is a month after my accident when I was in the rehab hospital in Boston, I can remember overhearing my parents talking with my team of doctors and therapists, and they were saying, okay, what do we need to do to make sure Nick makes a full recovery? I heard in the back of my head, you're going to run out of the hospital. So running out of the hospital became our common goal. That's where my company name comes from and what we were working towards every day and every week, and there were some pretty long days for me. I mean, I would get up and I would need help from an occupational therapist to learn how to shower again. I mean, something as basic as that. So then I would have breakfast and start double sessions of physical occupational and speech therapy. And that was just the morning I had physical occupational and speech therapy in the morning. And then after we would break for lunch and go back to my room for half an hour, 45 minutes, and I would have lunch.

Jeanne Foot: [00:10:29] And I can remember it was one of those lunches. And I always like to hit on this story so that I can remember I was in my wheelchair at the time. I still hadn't learned to walk. I still hadn't regained that strength to learn how to walk. And I can remember I was just in the grind, I guess you could say, for lack of a better term, I was just doing the work. And so I just had a moment of weakness, and I had a moment of doubt. And I can remember looking over my situation in the wheelchair, and I just couldn't figure it out. And I can remember turning to my mom and asking, "mom, am I ever going to be able to walk again?" and she said, "of course you are. That's what we're doing here. So you can get everything back and we can go home". So this allowed me to continue to move forward. But I always like to share that because we all have doubts. And I think it was what I can remember, at least that was the only real moment of doubt that I had. Otherwise it was just, okay, what's the next? I gotta keep focusing on the next. I had my double session physical, occupational and speech therapy that afternoon, and they were, like I said, long days.

Jeanne Foot: [00:11:43] So you said so much here. And firstly, I want to honor your mother for being that guiding light, whether it was intuitive for her, and I'd love to know whether it was something that was absolutely non-negotiable for her. This is not going to be his reality. We're going to defy all odds here, but he is going to walk again to the point that you even address. Like, when we're in the grind of showing up every day, just like many people who try to change their life from an emotional perspective, show up every day, every day, every day and wondering if it's ever going to be easier, right? And just like, am I ever going to walk again? And so, just showing up before the actual evidence with the faith that this is going to be the new normal. Yes. You will walk again. Yes. You will find freedom from drugs and alcohol and not be limited by a collapse. For want of a better word, around your noose, around your neck from this. Right. And you just defied all those odds. So I want you to try to take our listeners into a little bit of the psyche of your mother, because she was such an amazing force. No matter how she came to it, it's irrelevant, she just knew intuitively or she knew to do it. And just let us understand a little bit of where she was at that led to that, because I think that's just an amazing part of your recovery. Had you been given a different set of parents, your circumstances could be very different.

Nick Prefontaine: [00:13:15] That's why support is the first thing, you have to make sure you have your support lined up right from the beginning. But Jeanne, I think a thing that a lot of people get stuck on is the fact that, oh, lucky for you, you have supportive parents. I don't have supportive parents or family. So therefore what you're saying isn't relevant to me. And I think that really couldn't be further from the truth. Your support can come from anywhere. It can be a friend, a neighbor, maybe even someone you're not friendly with that keeps coming around asking if there's anything that they can do for you to help and support you. But because you're in this box, this tunnel vision of it only can be immediate family. You're not opening yourself up to that possibility of accepting help from outside sources. And then my mom, she's always done an amazing job at this. I can remember all through my life as recent as within the past few years with her mom- that's like the doctors. That's that you have to say that for liability reasons, like she understands that. So just because it's a doctor, someone is saying it with a lab coat in a name tag doesn't mean that that's reality. They have to give that to you as a worst case scenario for liability reasons. They can't be preaching to everyone, 'oh yeah, you're going to get better. You're going to get better'. They can't be doing liability reasons with the insurance companies. And with all that wrapped up in health care to this day. So she's always understood that. And like I said, even the present day with her mom, with my Nana.

Jeanne Foot: [00:15:04] I agree with you. And speaking to your point about you having support, like you could be loved but may not necessarily have the support that you need, right. Or which will be helpful. So having the right type of support, having a person who can believe in you, but your mother, she speaks to one key aspect that I truly believe in and that we have to have agency in our own healing journey, whether we're recovering from mental illness or physical illness. There's a typical hierarchy of top down in medical in the medical community in particular, and I think more so than mental health because that's more abstract. But in the medical community, the doctor is always sort of he knows best, right? Or she knows best. And your mother recognized that there was a part that you, as a patient needed to do, too, which was to show up and try your hardest, okay, to the resources and support that you were given. And I don't think we speak about that. I think we outsource our health and well-being all too often. I have a condition. What's the medication? Okay, I'll get on with it and take it. Or, this is the procedure that I need to have and that it's more of a passive role. And yours was a very active role, not only from showing up with the physiotherapy and all the physical aspects of it, but it was a mental aspect that you knew that you needed to think a certain way in order to overcome the obstacles you had. We want to expand on that a little further.

Nick Prefontaine: [00:16:40] I would love to, because I'm actually just writing about it right now in my newsletter that is the April newsletter, my next newsletter that's going to come out. I don't know when people are going to be listening to this, but my next month's newsletter, that's going to be coming out in a few weeks. I will talk about this exact thing. So there was a quote from Vince Lombardi, I think it was, and I have the edits and the notes on my desk here. There was a quote from Vince Lombardi that says, "perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence". What I loved about that was, even with me, with having to learn how to walk, talk and eat again, what was always in my mind is there's no medical or any limitation or anything. What was always in my mind was a perfect field, a healthy individual that was out there in the world, impacting and affecting people and helping them to elevate them, helping them to live a better life. But I think the only reason that I'm where I am today is because I had that picture in my mind and I wouldn't give in to falling like, oh, okay, it's not so bad if you have a certain limitation or this or that. Did I achieve the absolute pinnacle? Am I 100% just like I was prior to my accident? No, that's not realistic. However, that was always my goal. So in having that as a goal, do I have any limitations? I don't have any limitations. I don't call it that. I don't call it limitations. There are a few things that I know that I have to watch and pay attention to as a result of my accident, However, I'm a lot better off having to shop for perfection and have that picture in my mind than I am with saying at the beginning, oh, okay, well, maybe I'll get there, but it's okay if I don't. So I just think you always have to follow that picture that you have in your mind.

Jeanne Foot: [00:18:48] I appreciate you saying that you speak to the aspect of manifestation visioning. You can call it a variety of different things, and I think it is important to have a vision of something that we pull towards, right? We're not striving for perfection because I think it's not even achievable because as soon as we turn to our left or to our right, we're going to be pulled out of the game. So we want to be pursuing the vision that we see. And as you say, we catch excellence on the way. I personally believe, and I'm wondering what your thoughts are before I even tell you what I think personally, that there's an element of innately who you are as an individual, your soul's purpose maybe. Or as I say, our spiritual curriculum, whatever we've been brought here to learn, the lesson we learn in the adversity of it all. Do you want to speak to that as to what really pulled you forward? Or is it a bit of both, or is it something else altogether? I'm just curious what was going on for you? And I think other people too, because we're talking about reaching our highest potential. You talk about that often, and I believe that recovery is part of that, redesigning your life in a way that's meaningful to you. And somehow you found meaning and fulfillment out of such adversity. And I think people want to know what that secret sauce is.

Nick Prefontaine: [00:20:17] Yeah. Happy to share a little bit more of my journey, like as I grew up and got further along, something else happened, some other challenge happened. And as a result of this, having overcome being in a coma and having my parents told I probably wouldn't walk again, I was able to be like, oh, okay, I did this once, I can do it again kind of thing. So if you fast forward less than 60 days later, after being transported to the rehab hospital, I realized my goal of running out of the hospital. And I mean, it wasn't like my work was done. I had to continue to go to outpatient therapy for another six months, along with being tutored all summer long in order to continue on to high school with the rest of my classmates. And looking back on it, it's a little surreal that when you're younger, as you know, time is compressed. So if you look like six months out, 12 months out, 18 months out seems like a lifetime. However, it's really not that long. I mean, it's not that much time. However, the older I get, I'm seeing that that's really not a lot of time to go by. So 18 months later, after finishing my rehab from my snowboarding accident, I got my start in real estate and I was door knocking pre-foreclosure doors or homeowners that have received a notice of default letter from the bank, meaning that they have missed several payments on their mortgage and the bank still hadn't foreclosed.

Nick Prefontaine: [00:21:51] So I would go to their door, get a list, go to their doors, try to set up meetings with one of our investors. Only 18 months later, after my accident, to me was the following week about potentially buying their home and looking back at this. And it took a mentor pointing it out to me 4 or 5 years ago that this process of door knocking was a part of my recovery, going door to door, helping people out of their unfortunate situation. So I continue that throughout the rest of high school. Got my real estate license, started helping buyers and sellers. And then in 2014, I started helping my dad alongside being a realtor, started helping him as an investor, so marketing all his properties that he was buying creatively without using any banks, signing personally on loans or getting big investor down payments. He was acquiring all these properties, and he needed help with someone putting them on the rent-to-own market. And that's different than being a realtor and listing them. So I said, oh, I could do that right alongside being a realtor. And I started doing that.

Nick Prefontaine: [00:23:01] That morphed into, I'm going to need to hire someone to handle all these inquiries that's coming in off your marketing. So can you help me with working with those buyers? So I started doing that. Over the course of the next 13 months, my income shifted where I was making the majority of it with him as an investor. So in 2016, January 2016, I actually let my real estate license go. And it was in 2016 that we started holding events where I've always had the opportunity to tell my story. And this has really meant the world to me, because ever since I've graduated from high school, I've always had this voice in the back of my head, back to that saying, no matter what I'm doing, turn a living. Yeah. Great, Nick, we really need to be telling your story from stage and helping trauma survivors thrive with the rest of their lives. So I always thought by sharing my story once or twice a year, maybe I was doing it kind of, but not really. And it took until 2019, me sharing my story at one of our events, that I was approached by a woman named Sharon Spano. She complimented me on my talk and said if I was ever looking to fine tune it and bring it to another level so I could reach the most amount of people have maximum impact.

Nick Prefontaine: [00:24:28] She could introduce me to a few coaches and mentors that have helped her along the way. This is what I was referring to when I said I had a challenge, so I wasn't ready yet at this point because when she heard me, I was in the final throes of a voice issue that I had developed in 2012, and I think it was not a direct result from my action, but I think it was because of my accent. I was more susceptible to this. I had a lot of tension in my throat. It's kind of like it was really hard for me to get the words out, so I wasn't ready to call her and say, yeah, let's do this kind of thing. However, I always hung on to her card. And if you fast forward to May of 2021 after the voice issue had worked its way out of my system. Obviously, I don't have a voice issue now I'm able to speak with you here. I finally reached out to her and I said, okay, I'm ready. What should I do? Who should I talk to? And she introduced me to her mentor, Tricia Brooke. And on that first call with Tricia, she told me I should do a speaker salon that fall, fall of 2021 in New York City.

Nick Prefontaine: [00:25:40] That was 25,000. And I said yes. I had to follow this again. That voice. And during the speaker salon, Tricia pitched the idea of what it would look like to work with her one on one. And she said that was 75,000. And I said, I don't have that in my back pocket. However, give me a week and I'll figure it out. So, six days later, I wired her the money and it's the best decision that I've ever made because she was the one who helped me launch my company, Common Goal, to write several keynote talks, 45 and 60 minute keynote talks. But it was that experience from my accident, that voice issue that I developed in 2012. I was like, I have some knowledge of overcoming something, and I think I'm more proud of the voice issue because I might have a little bit of recency bias, but it took longer. I was getting Botox injections into my vocal folds for six and a half years. I was really dealing with it for 7 or 8 years. So whereas my accident, I just like, yeah, okay. It was a blip on the radar. It happened when I was growing up. And with that, I feel like it tested my resolve, if you will.

Jeanne Foot: [00:27:07] Absolutely it tested your resolve because here you are intuitively saying, I feel like I need to be sharing my voice, and then you have no voice to even really test with no voice to actually to bring it forth. So the vehicle for how you wanted to share your story, you could have just said, hey, I'll go write a book. But you didn't. You just said, no, I'm going to stick with this. And you invested and your problem solved in six days. Most people would have given up at that point. 75,000 is too much. It's not worth it. It probably is not going to work. All their self-talk would have come through and you just kept going, which is one of the most amazing attributes about you. And I feel that we all have that within us. How do we access it? Do you want to speak to our listeners a little bit about what you think it takes to access that within us?

Nick Prefontaine: [00:28:04] Yeah, I'm happy to by the way, this is why I love podcast guesting, because there are different aspects of my story that come out in every conversation. It's the same message. But there are different aspects of my story sometimes that I don't even talk about. So I wrote about this in one of our talks for our company that I did. We have them called In the Trenches Boot Camps, and we have people come in from all over the country and spend three days with us here at the office at Smart Real Estate Coach. I'm still involved in the small family business, but so there was a talk I did for that and I do for that regularly. It kind of speaks to that. Several years ago, I was working with an energy coach one on one sessions that I started off having every, every week, every other week. And then I was doing them once a month. At this point, I worked there for like 3 or 4 years. And what came out was really interesting in that I had an experience with her where in a meditation, I went back to that day of my accident on the chairlift looking like seeing the jump and having that conviction.

Nick Prefontaine: [00:29:26] Am I being in my soul that oh, yeah, that's definitely what I'm doing. That's for me. Like it has my name all over it. I have to do this kind of thing. It wasn't like I had to talk to anyone and get their opinion. What do you think about this? That's what I'm doing. That same motivation and that same conviction, I guess you can call it came when I was given the opportunity to work with Trisha. So for both times for the speaker salon, at a soul level, I had to do this. Like I had to continue to follow this. Then during the speaker slot, I was able to amongst credit cards and different accounts I have, I was able to collect it and get it together. That's 25000. Then during the speaker salon, when I was given the opportunity to work with her one on one, I didn't have $200,000 sitting under my bed or sitting in a bank account. But I could just say, yes, okay, I'll wire the money tomorrow like I had to.

Nick Prefontaine: [00:30:41] I had to go and figure it out. And when I say figure it out with our company, Smart Real Estate Coach, we have access to funding partners to help our associates to get to different experience levels, if you will, that they otherwise wouldn't have access to. So I got resourceful, talked to my dad and said, "hey, is this something that I can access this resource of like a funding partner for to do a coaching program like this?" He eventually said yes, made a special exception because usually just for our programs, but made a special exception. One of the partners of the company, still a partner in that company, wants to use this and everything like that. So I applied for 75,000. I was approved for 70 and then used that and sent it. Now, since I've paid that off with a whole life policy that I had that I have established since then again, just couldn't be happier. But I just got resourceful. It wasn't like I had that sitting in a bank account. I wanted to give you and your listeners the full story there.

Jeanne Foot: [00:32:00] Well you had skin in the game and you see it sometimes when people are gifted things versus really putting something of value into it or put something at risk to do something for it, whether it's starting a new business or coming up with money, like you said, or being gifted. I've seen situations where people have been gifted opportunities and typically not saying all the time, people will waste it because there's no skin in the game, and there are the odd person who would realize that it is not an opportunity or a gift, and will absolutely utilize it and make everything they can out of it. But too often it's because there's a lack of skin in the game that they don't attach the same importance to it. And so I think that's a big part of it. It's also who you are as a person. I understand that, but you were resourceful. You said, okay, like that's a tall task to find 75 grand in six days, in one week.

Nick Prefontaine: [00:33:01] Thank you for saying that. I know this again, in my being, at my core. I know that with my work with Tricia, I feel like I'm forever going to have a relationship with her. The amount of effort and energy and focus that we accomplished in our work together is really like, I still have it to this day. Seeing the fruits of that labor, there is so much that I don't know that's going to continue to unfold because of my connection to Tricia. I know that, and I'm so excited to see what's going to happen next.

[00:33:42] Beautiful. So I want to talk to you a little bit about your intuition because for me, my intuitive sense is such a strong part of who I am and why I do what I do. I have no idea why I do what I do know. Why I do it is because I'm being compelled to do what I'm doing, just like you. You knew you had to share your story. I know I have to speak on bigger stages, which is one of the reasons the podcast feels the most accessible to me because I can speak to my insights, my knowledge, my lived experience, my professional training, and at the same time and garner others experiences as well. But your intuition is clearly a big part of your driving force. I see that in you, and I know that within myself. So how would you describe where this is intuitive knowing what it is? How does it show up for you? What does it look like for others if they're trying to access that Intel? Because I think it's so important because one of the things about intuition is it often doesn't make sense. So we discount it like, well, I don't know why I'm supposed to come up with 75 grand in six days. Like it's not exactly something that makes sense. Or I've been told I can't walk, but here I am. I'm going to run out of here. So where do you think the essence of this intelligence that we all have comes from, and what are some of those qualities maybe possibly look like for you?

Nick Prefontaine: [00:35:10] Love the question. This thing that you're calling intuition can be called many things, as I'm sure you can imagine. I get pitched daily. Oh, I know what you gotta do. You gotta buy this great program. You gotta write a book. You gotta invest in this. You gotta join this great mastermind group. The feeling that and even like having the opportunity to work with old coaches that I've worked with in the past, when that opportunity presents itself and it's all right. So there's a few different answers for this.

Jeanne Foot: [00:35:46] So knowing, right, let's be honest, there's an absolute knowing.

Nick Prefontaine: [00:35:51] Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. So that feeling that I'm getting, like I get from all these people that reach out to me, pitching me this and that, you got to do this, you got to do that. And like I said, even all coaches that I have a relationship with, that I'm sure out of the goodness of their heart, are just trying to help me to say, oh, well, you're doing it all wrong. You need to do this. You need to do that. That knowing inside of myself is, no, I don't. I'm exactly where I need to be right now and spreading my story and my message out there. But I think that being in touch with that intuition and that knowing comes from my meditation practice. I didn't start meditating until 2009. I was taught to meditate from who was at the time like a mentor, a master, if you will, is a qigong and tai chi master energy healer, who I now has become a good friend and I still see him monthly once every five weeks for Tui na cupping after he does three nine. If you want to look that up, you can look up the definitions of those. It was basic bodywork, Chinese bodywork. But he's the one that taught me how to meditate. And I would say being able to listen to that voice comes from meditation. I do a combination of meditation and qigong 3 to 4 times a week for 30 to 45 minutes each time. And I think that is the number one thing I would say that is really trying to my intuition. And if anyone's interested in learning more about meditation and how I was introduced to it and how you can start it, you can check out one of the talks I did with my mentor in New York City called my Introduction to Stillness was a Coma. That's only a 6.5 minute talk.

Jeanne Foot: [00:37:54] Beautiful. And we'll make sure we link that in the show notes for people so they can go right to that. So that would be, I think, an important lesson for sure. So you're very similar in the sense of how I feel around intuition. There's a definite knowing, but there's also this quietness that has to be like, it's not like I overanalyze it, but I also create some space to see what needs to come through. So it's like I put the intention out there, do I really want to do this? Or is this something for me? And then I allow it to sort of be permanent and see what I would say. Maybe it's not permanent. I think the words percolate and sort of sort of see what comes through and then make that decision from that place. So I just love it. Tell us a little bit about the Step program and how you use it in your life with your clients, and how people can access that if they want to.

Nick Prefontaine: [00:38:52] Sure. The step system was something that I, it's just how I've dealt with things, how I was raised to deal with things, to overcome things. So after recovering from my snowboarding accident and then again, having something else that came up with my voice issue and overcoming that and getting to the other side, I really started to think, okay, I have something here. Like I have something here that I need to be sharing with everyone and with my work with Tricia on our first call, because I only had ten calls with her, which she still talked to this day, but like part of the program was you had ten calls. And so I was paying a lot of money for those calls, obviously. And on that first call, she said to me that, okay, you have this amazing story that your parents have told you, you wouldn't want her to eat again, and then he ran out of the hospital. How did you do it? I said, I don't know, I just kept getting up every day and doing the best I could, and kept working towards it, and eventually I got there. She kind of leaned in and was like, no, not good enough. How did you do it? And she kept asking me to a point where I was very frustrated with her.

Nick Prefontaine: [00:40:13] I think I may have even ended one of those calls early because I was so frustrated. And I was obviously paying a lot of money for those having the opportunity to work with her. But I'm so happy seeing that we went through that process because she was able to pull the step system out of me. All the steps are, like I said, almost an internal compass for me, how I've always approached any challenge, any crisis in my life, to overcome it, to get to the other side and thrive with the rest of my life. And now I'm able to share that in keynotes 45 and 60 minute keynotes at brain injury associations and webinars for them at their events, and other organizations that support individuals that are going through trauma. It's In Step, the e-book, which I'm going to give away. Actually, this is as good a time as any. What we went over is like just a ten thousand foot view of the Step system. And if you go to Nickprefontaine.com/step, you're going to be able to download the entire step system for free today and learn all about support, trust, energy, and persistence.

Jeanne Foot: [00:41:30] And so the third way that people have access to this system, the only product that I have right now is the step video series and what that is, it's the next best thing to working one on one with me and that each letter STE and P gets its own attention, its own video, its own coaching emails and support. And each letter gets a workbook. And how it gives you the framework to apply that to your own life. And that's only $37. And people can pick that up on my website as well, nickprefontaine.com/thatvideoseries. And then my one on one work with clients. So it's really just about, I mean, ever since my accident, whether I had the company come and go or not, I've always helped people that are in the midst of their own trauma crisis or life challenge. And the goal, of course, is always to help them get through it and then to thrive with the rest of their lives. And now, with the help of my mentor, Tricia, in our work together, I'm able to give this e-book free first and we'll start a video series and also work one on one with people.

Jeanne Foot: [00:42:51] Absolutely amazing. It's interesting because I definitely don't want to negate your experience or disrespect it in any way, because it is so life changing, and it deserves the respect that it does in order to overcome it. But I've always been the believer that pain is pain, right? That when we have severe emotional trauma and some adversity like one like myself, like many others have had, it's not the same. But yet it has many similarities in it. I was just curious what your thoughts are on that because you've had such a different experience of trauma, being physical trauma and leaving your body extremely compromised, which actually does impact your brain. Because I think our brain and our body are one organism, even though we tend to treat them separately or the medical community tends to. I just wonder what your thoughts are on that.

Nick Prefontaine: [00:43:46] All right. So having experienced that one trauma or call it, even if you want to extend it to my voice, issuing two traumas doesn't give me the license to help anyone that's in any kind of situation, ever, that they're working with to go through their problem. However, like you said, there are commonalities in these traumas and challenges. And what I've found is it doesn't matter what it could be. A health challenge can be abuse, physical, sexual abuse. It can be any kind of challenge. They all have common threads. And drawing on my experience of having not only run out of the hospital, but then learning how to speak again basically get my voice back. Those two challenges and traumas I was able to overcome. So therefore, and really always naturally, like I said before, there was even at a company, I've always just naturally done it. Whatever people are dealing with a challenge or trauma, they got in an accident is oh, have you talked to Nick? You gotta talk to Nick, because I've always had this ability to help them get through it and then to thrive with the rest of their lives. So definitely don't give me a license. I've just always been able to be there for people and help them in their time of need. And that means the most to me.

Jeanne Foot: [00:45:10] Beautiful. And I love the way you respect the fact that amidst the commonalities, there's also one who has to stay in their lane, which I think in today's world many people don't do. Stay in your scope of practice. Yes, you can speak to many things because more things are alike than different. Like I didn't realize how much as I mature, as I learn more, as I grow into myself more and more, I'm finding that systemically things are more alike than different. There's issues in every system, whether it's medical, whether it's mental health, whether it's justice, whether it's education, whatever you political even we could just go on for days around the similarities. But I think the trick is how do we extract the things out of these challenges that are relatable to other domains? And so we're starting to see that I'm starting to see how physical trauma really is very akin to emotional and deep mental trauma, even though they both have their respective differences. There's also the commonalities amongst them. And that's where we need to bring. And I think we need to bring the commonalities amongst the different domains in life and bring people together instead of separating them through, he had a physical trauma. He has no idea what it's like to be on this side of the fence or vice versa. Right? Like, of course, I don't know your experience, but I do know what pain is, and pain is pain for all of us. So I just wanted to leave that with you. And I just wonder what your thoughts are around that as well.

Jeanne Foot: [00:46:44] Pain is pain and drawing from my experience of having those. Having those two challenges in my life, I'm able to. And this is a disclaimer to when I'm on the phone with people that are dealing with various health challenges or abuse challenges, I make it a point to say I'm not an expert in physical or sexual abuse, or I'm not an expert in this one particular health challenge that you're dealing with. I'm just trying to give you a roadmap and give you a lens to see it through to help you find your way through so that you're able to thrive after this because this will pass, like everything, but I always make it a point to say that I don't tend to be a jack of all trades that I know everything and I'm the puppet master. I definitely make it a point. Yes.

Jeanne Foot: [00:47:40] I'm so glad you said that because many people don't. But I think it really relates to how common our collective human experience is. We may look different, we may have different plots, we may have different stories, we may have different times. But there's a lot of similarity in what we experience as humans. And I think you speak to that. So I just wanted to emphasize that point to the people who are listening today.

Nick Prefontaine: [00:48:07] You mentioned it in one of your comments, and I might have gone over people's heads, but we're more alike than we are different. We just need to talk to one another.

Jeanne Foot: [00:48:20] Beautiful. We do. We need to connect. We need to find the common threads that bring us where we can stay. By the grace of God, I know what it's like to walk in those shoes or tell me more about your experience, because I want to learn rather than separate ourselves by our false egos and competition and all the things. So I ask every guest that I have on our show, what keeps you naturally high?

Nick Prefontaine: [00:48:47] This is a great question, and I would have answered this differently a few years ago. I would have said, running. Oh, I was all about it. That's what I constantly be talking about and doing and advocating for. I have to say now, not that running's a bad thing, but I would have to say now it's sharing my story and learning about why. Sharing my story. People open up and they share their story, and then I'm able to see how I can help them. So I think above and beyond, like, again, you use the word ego. And I got 25 stages and, and this 20 months and everything like that. It's more that I'm able to be there for people and help them, whether I talk to them again or not does not matter to me. What matters is I was able to help them in their time of need, where the world was coming down for them.

Jeanne Foot: [00:49:49] That's beautiful and I feel very similar. It doesn't matter what the outcome is, it's can you touch them in a time of need, as you say, right? Because that's when they need the support the most. So thank you again, Nick. It's a pleasure to have had you on as a guest today on Naturally High. We will leave all the show notes, including that little video, that six minute video, plus the step program e-book. And how did the videos, how people can learn more about it. And is there anything else you would like people to know before you leave today?

Nick Prefontaine: [00:50:24] Sure. We're all dealing with something. Everyone's dealing with something. Any kind of a challenge, big or small. By sharing my trauma and my challenge. My challenges that I've had to overcome during my life. I'm not in any way diminishing what you're going through. I would say there's a way through it, but if you stop and don't do anything and you freeze, you get paralyzed, you're not going to fix it. So take that first step in whatever little baby step direction that you know, you should be going to improve. You know what it is we all do until you start, you're not going to get that next step. So once you take your first step, your next step is always going to be available to you.

Jeanne Foot: [00:51:15] What a perfect way to close. Once you take your first step, the next step is always going to be available to you. And that is so true. You don't have to have everything figured out. You just have to have the first step figured out. That's it. So thank you again, Nick. It was a pleasure to interview you today.