Today we’d like to introduce you to Mateo Marquez.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Mateo. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I grew up in Albuquerque, NM, but went to school here in Fort Worth at TCU (go Frogs). I’ve lived in DFW for about 22 years now. In my twenties, I was a self-made millionaire. I was one of the top corporate head hunters in the world, helping startup companies that were in hyper-growth modes recruit and train sales forces. I was sort of Jerry Maguire and did the whole corporate grind thing and worked real hard. And then around my 30th birthday, I literally kind of crashed and burned. I had gotten away from myself and lost touch with who I really was. I ended up losing everything I was working for in the first place as a result; my family and friends and really a chunk of my soul. After that sort of seismic collapse, I moved from North Dallas closer to my sister, back to Fort Worth. And I began writing a book about this whole experience. Then about the month of April 2010, (my birthday month), I just sort of put it all out there. It’s an autobiographical, real, sort of narrative and almost testimonial about my life- good, bad, and ugly- and sort of self help hidden in these very graphic and tropey misadventures of this guy trying to figure it out like everyone else. I printed up 5,000 paperback copies, loaded it up on a big pink and purple trailer painted like the cover of my book- The Phoenix of Hotel Freds. I toured the country for several months and gave away every single copy signed by hand.
This phoenix myth, this whole fly, crash, burn, rise, fly again human cycle that we go through, and hopefully learn from, I think it’s just part of life.
My sister, who is a big yoga person here in town, dragged me, very reluctantly, kicking and screaming to my first yoga class. And as literally the last person on the planet that would ever do yoga, I kind of had this ah-ha moment. I felt really good. I felt like sort of the opposite of everything that I was in my being. It was something that made me feel good mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually… all the different types of health that we strive for in our lives and that really had all eluded me at different times. I started practicing a lot of yoga. I was asked to teach by a studio that I was taking a lot of classes at. I went to teacher training, and started teaching grown up yoga. Can’t help myself and my entrepreneurial side and needing to sort of replace some type of professional life, I wondered if there was a business opportunity I could create for myself. I really started devising and designing Poser Yoga as a brand. This concept of sort of being a “poser” is really just living your life. To me, it’s yoga at it’s purest. It’s.. ‘How do we navigate through the poses of our lives?’
It started with me experimentally doing a lot of events at parks, or me and a musician friend and artist would post up at you know, food trucks or places like that. I was really focusing on acceptance and inclusion and reaching out to the 95% of people that are not “yoga people”- eating kale, wearing their stretch pants and drinking green smoothies, lighting the incense and speaking Sanskrit, namaste and all that kind of stuff. Just normal schmoes like me, and people that maybe felt some of that was daunting or elitist, or not financially accessible to them. And really, I always sought to make this for everybody. Yoga for everyone and anyone. And given, I’m a dad, and I’m a large child also, I wanted to find a niche in the saturation of this massive, growing yoga industry. I started experimenting with a lot of family-friendly events. And these were all self-financed, all free things, and I was just trying to, you know, get people out there doing something and engaged in this lifestyle brand I was creating.
In 2013 I actually checked myself in to rehab for alcoholism. I felt this was just a missing piece in my life. It was something that kept pulling me down now and again and was also cannibalizing whatever positive work I was doing in the community and with other people. It was something I just wanted to do for myself and get to the root of just some personal stuff. My yoga quest, if you will, led me to a gorgeous rehab resort in Fredericksburg, TX in the fall of that year, and I haven’t had a sip of alcohol since.
I really committed to PoserKids Yoga as a brand and as an endeavor, and really sharing this message of acceptance and inclusion that I had found through a lot of success and failure in my life. Through writing, through entrepreneurialism, through the business world, through personal relationships, divorce, through loosing a child.. through all kinds of ups, downs, and sideways… That’s life. That’s much more difficult and important than, you know, who can stretch and contort and do the best pose in a heated room during a yoga class. That’s practice for real life. What happens when your son dies in the middle of your second divorce and you don’t drink anymore? How do you deal with that? Things like that. This acceptance if you will, starting with self-acceptance, is sort of the glue that holds us together as beings, holds us together with other beings, and kind of keeps the universe together. That’s the message that I’m trying to share with these kids. It’s real. I’m not a perfect individual by any means. I’m perfectly imperfect like everyone else, but transparency and honesty, first with yourself, and with others, is very liberating. And this mindfulness- or I would say even more so, heartfulness- this principal is a very important message to share with our children. As we are in danger of loosing this generation to a culture that is really void of a lot of values… A lot of family values, valuing the good stuff in life, integrity, honesty, and character… listening, being respectful, doing your best and having fun in all things, are actually are the four tenants we call our PoserKids Poser promises, and are really the glue that holds our program together. And our yoga is: ‘How do we put these things into motion in our everyday lives?’ So we share this now through events, classes, teacher trainings, retreats, and really focus on content; digital content, videos, music, and books. Sharing this message with kids and families all over the earth has become my life’s work, and something I’m very passionate about.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what where some of the struggles along the way?
I don’t think there is such thing as a smooth road. Especially for entrepreneurs. You have to be half nuts, you’ve got to have very selective listening, you’ve got to have a real short-term memory, really thick skin. You have to have some type of financial background. Fortunately, I was able to self-finance this endeavor to this point. But you learn as you go why close to 90% of small to medium-sized businesses fail, and I can empathize with those brave souls that try to do this on their own. I mean, I miss working half as much for actually making money, you know? I’m working more than I have ever worked in my life… In different directions… more stress, more heartache, heartbreak… I think, like anyone that has had any modicum of success in business and in the game of life, I’ve had all kinds of failure, personal and professional. I’ve been married and divorced twice. I have a wonderful daughter, and I also lost a son that was stillborn in the middle of my second divorce. I have made and lost millions of dollars. I’ve also been fortunate to have accomplished a lot of things. I mean I’ve had my share of success as well as just colossal failures. But I think they go hand in hand…
Please tell us about PoserKids Yoga.
We are PoserKids Yoga. We specialize in youth mindfulness, typically for pre-school to elementary age kids. Our services include a real focus on digital content through videos that are available on Prime Video and YouTube. We have 5 original video series that we produced, the feature of which is the PoserKids show. It’s sort of a cross between Seinfeld and Mr. Rogers. It puts this whole Poser brand into a very neat visual setting with its almost sitcom-like shows. Our other feature video series called Poser Pulse is actually a news format, sort of a channel one, Saturday Night Live Weekend Update type thing with mocu-mercials and editorial pieces that are all very thematically bundled with the rest of our content.
We have books available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. They are adaptations of some of our videos, and great for early readers We have original music downloads available on iTunes and other music platforms online. We even make our own kiddie-sized yoga mats called PoserPads. Theoretically any child, anytime, anywhere can roll out a PoserPad and engage with our program via our videos, books, or music. Our PoserKids theme song is actually our 18-pose yoga sequence set to music. One of our greatest differentiators from the myriad of kid’s yoga programs out there is that we teach and train a set sequence, and being set to such a cool little jingle helps children and instructors alike to commit it to memory. Kids learn predominantly though movement and sound after all. I’ve always targeted educators more so than yoga fitness people, although our program is very structured for both. We also provide CEU credits as a Continuing Professional Education provider in several states, (including Texas). Our business model has shifted very much to ‘how can we empower you to do something amazing with your children’, as opposed to ‘how can one of our people come and do it for you’. We then support you digitally and virtually, with readily available content and continuing education. We also have mats, books or videos for you to use as well. We provide this sort of mindfulness happy meal with all the different things that one would need to be a one-stop, youth mindfulness shop, if you will. We use yoga, meditation, breathing, and creative arts as our tools.
I wanted something that was very inclusive, very agnostic, very much about acceptance, and that had some type of core values, similar to Don Miguel Ruiz and his Four Agreements. It’s all rooted in our four core values which have become a pledge or mantra that we do before any Poser class, video or book, which is: “I promise to Listen, Be Respectful, Do My Best, and Have Fun”. Our yoga then becomes about how to put these core values into motion.
There are amazing physical benefits to yoga. Physical fitness- or a lack thereof, among children is just a real issue and challenge right now. So we’ve tried to meet the child where they’re at, sort of Maria Montessori style. And where they’re at is at least 3.7 hours a day they are on their digital gizmos. We’re not going to change that any more than anybody is, but we can at least meet them there and have some amazing interactive, engaging content that is values based and is inclusive of anyone anywhere, including the grown-ups in their lives. So that’s what PoserKids Yoga has become and will hopefully continue to be. And I think what’s at the core of it all -the core, pun intended- is our core values, our Poser Promises, and our digital presence which allows us to transcend any kind of geographic or socioeconomic obstacles so that anyone, anytime, anywhere can access our program, engage and participate. And you don’t even need me or anyone else from Poserland to be there.
How do you personally define success?
A lot of people that society label as successful, (which is a very objective term because there are all different types of success), are huge failures in so many other ways that are far more important in life.
As I approach my 40th birthday here- on April 20th… I don’t know many people that have had some of the successes that I’ve had, but I’ve also probably failed more than about anybody I know. I think there is a different kind of mindset with some of the maybe old-school millennials. We realize that you’re not just going to plant a seed and wake up in the morning and be the next Zuckerberg. You’ve got to actually work. You’ve got to really chip away at that wall. Sometimes in the face of somewhat impossible odds. I think another characteristic that is chiseled in successful people is a great risk taker’s mentality. You have to take risks, and most people are very risk averse or really fear change. But constant change is sort of the only constant. I don’t believe people change, but I believe you can change attitudes and actions. At the end of the day, those are the only two things you can control. And it’s our lack of control of all the other things that drives us insane in life. It drives us to bad stuff, bad outcomes, because of this obsession with trying to control all of the other things, especially people in our lives that we can’t. If everybody could just focus on sort of owning and dominating your attitude and your actions, I think the world would be a better place. When you cede that control, it’s very yogic. I think very much a characteristic of successful people or happy people is acceptance. This concept of acceptance is very powerful. It’s the same thing that I hope my 5, 6, and 7 year-olds at a yoga class take away. It’s the same thing sitting in a chair at an AA meeting and talking with people about how to not drink or do other things that are bad for them, and the same thing that when you’re holding your child that has no heartbeat and has your face. You know acceptance makes no sense sometimes. It’s very hard, and it’ll drive you crazy, but it’s sort of what we’re here to figure out. I mean, the Beatles were dead-on. Love is all you need, and love is why we’re here. You know, self-love is sort of this inside out, along with the principal of acceptance. I think it’s really one of the more wonderful gifts that we can give to ourselves and pass along to the people in our lives. And honestly, as parents and as grow-ups, we have a great responsibility to our children, the next generation, to give them something of value. And it’s not stuff, it’s not things, it’s the knowledge gained through our experiences. Sharing that with them as they go through their own heartbreak sometimes, or a lot of the time- especially if they choose to be an entrepreneur and put themselves out there. But these are the people that you remember. The people history remembers are the difference makers. Not the people that played it safe and conservative, that didn’t take chances and put themselves out there. They’re the people that were bold and followed their hearts and their dreams and believed in romance and the fairytale. Those are the people that change the world. I’ve always since I was a little kid, remembered watching Mr. Rogers, watching Ronald Reagan speak, watching Bob Ross and Sesame Street, seeing one too many Disney movies one too many times, and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and reading Roald Dahl and Shel Silverstein… I believe in the fairytale. And I’ve always wanted to make magic and share that with others and change lives and change opinions. You know, I remember somebody very wise told me very early in my life that you want to be someone that’s remembered and not just noticed. Hopefully when I’m gone, people will remember me for the right things, and hopefully the impact that I was able to have on their lives, even if it’s just through the looking glass of my own, and the transparency of that, the fullness of that.
So yes, failure is a huge part of life. I think one of the biggest challenges most humans have is an inability to react appropriately to failure. Really failure is a success mechanism. But most people are so afraid of it that they just stop trying after a while. I think that’s one of the great trappings of adulthood or growing up. If you fail enough, you get your heart broken enough, people go into a shell and just stop trying, and that’s really sad. And you know, kids are so great. They fall on their face off a slide, they’ve got little wood chips stuck in their forehead and their mouth and, you know, cry for a second, dust themselves off, and they’ll get right back up the ladder and go down the same slide again. Love that about kids. Kids are this great reflective surface that I think we can see ourselves more lucidly in their reflection a lot of the time. And one of the things is: kids’ fearlessness, and not fearing failure especially. Kids don’t care. Kids are resilient. Kids are tough, and kids are bold and brave. And something happens when we grow up; we lose that a little bit, you know? I’m an adult now, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be a grown-up.
Contact Info:
- Website: poserkids.com
- Phone: (214) 236-2968
- Email: info@poserkids.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/poserkidsyoga
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/poserkidsyoga
- Other: http://amazon.com/v/poserkids
http://youtube.com/user/poserkidsyoga
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