We recently connected with Eric Cox and have shared our conversation below.

Eric, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

Turning down $150k for SIGN UP! Brand

In 2011, I entered the healthcare industry.

I got my start in hospice care but made the switch to working with adults who had problems with alcohol and other drugs in 2013.

From 2013 to 2022, I worked my way up through the ranks, first assisting individuals seeking treatment and members of support groups, and later supervising the department responsible for training all staff members at nine sites across eight states.

I had worked in the addiction field for nine years before realizing that I needed help from a mental health professional to maintain my health.

To sum up, I needed some time away from the office to regroup and take stock of my priorities.

In August of 2022, I separated from my company as Assistant Vice President of Training and Development at a large corporation, where I had been responsible for supervising a team of twelve people who provided assistance to the company’s 2,000 employees.

A call came in a week or two after my separation, asking me to help establish a training and development division at a different healthcare organization.

I was offered a salary of $150,000 over the phone, with no in-person interviews required.

When asked how I felt about the offer, I replied, “I am humbled and appreciative of what this offer means in terms of how you feel about me and my ability to produce.

However, my mental health and happiness are more important to me, so I need some space to focus on building my personal and professional identities.”

I took a chance and went full-time with my current brand, SIGN UP!, with no backup plan.

SIGN UP! stands for Set Intentional Goals Now to Unlock your Potential.

Since August 2022, I have gone on to:

Release 11 guided meditations across major music platforms.

created a merchandise line

Re-branded my first published book, SIGN UP!

Created a YouTube channel for the brand SIGN UP!.

Contracted as a coach for the T-Time Foundation under the LLC of SIGN UP!

contracted as a coach for Career Thrivers Organization under the LLC of SIGN UP!

Launched my first SIGN UP! Branded course, titled “Handling Difficult Conversations and Effective Confrontations.” With over 2,000 students now enrolled in the course

The risk seems to have paid off so far.

I have jumped off the cliff and am simultaneously building and piloting the plane, but it is in the air.

The first step was to take a chance by jumping.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

How you got into Healthcare and then coaching?

I am a native Nashvillian. 37 year old Capricorn. And Youngest of five boys.

I grew up working poor in the area with the highest incarceration rate in the country during that time, zip code 37208.

I graduated from high school and then went to college to receive my degree in communications from The University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

After graduating, I opened my first sales franchise | independent contractor business in Clarksville, TN.

After a 2010 flood, I relocated back to Nashville, TN. And in 2011, I took my sales | marketing experience into the healthcare space, with a hospice company. I transitioned from hospice into the addiction space. After the transition, I pursued and completed my master’s in organizational management with a project management specialty from Ashford, University based in Clinton, Iowa.

Both prior to and during my time in healthcare, I served as a coach and teacher to many under my leadership direction. I’ve coached sales teams, in one on one and group settings, as well as leaders at all levels: aspiring and emerging leaders, supervisors, managers, directors, and CEOs.

Coaching came naturally for me and helping others structure goals, while tackling the limiting beliefs that held them back from doing more was fulfilling.

I care about the wellness of others and I struggled with mental health all my teenage and young adult years as a LGBT member who was not open, so it was important for me to find a way to give back in a meaningful way to those who also struggled with navigating life in a world still not accepting of LGBT community. That expanded to working a lot with women, who also had to traverse some of the traumas that come along with minority and marginalized groups, both in the workforce and daily living.

I’m on a mission today to equip (women | LGBT+ | millennial) professionals with transformational tools to lead courageous, healthy, and fulfilling business and personal lives.

What are your products and services

To first support myself, I turned to the spiritual practice of meditation. I grew up in the church and was raised in the Christian system of beliefs. As I grew older, I began the process of unlearning some of the harmful rhetoric associated with religion, when communicating about LGBT+ people and people of color, more specifically. Though I share in the belief of a creator, whether ascribing the name “God” or another name to define the deity, what was taught and how it was taught when it came to treatment of LGBT+ and women never settled well in my spirit. I was also not well convinced of the fear constructs of heaven & hell or the divided thoughts on what women can and can’t do in terms of power within the church dynamic. AND, based on my own world travel so far, I struggled with the belief that anyone who didn’t believe what I grew up to believe, simply from being born in the culture I was born in, and irrespective of how good or loving a person was, would find themselves in this eternal place of torture and burning.

So I found solace and peace by going inward and learning the skills for living an internally peaceful, calm, clear, and balanced life void of fear propaganda. That tool, meditation, has helped transform my inner and outer worlds. I became aware that I struggled with anxiety, self-doubt, uncertainty in life, and low productivity activities that were not aligned with who I am, leaving me feeling very unfulfilled throughout most of my existence.

I had just been going, going, going in life without really looking up to see where I was or if that’s even where I wanted to go. I had been trapped in the hamster wheel of survival and a mindset of scarcity.

I took meditation seriously, went through a certification course, and began a daily practice. First, I would meditate for 5 to 10 minutes. Then up to 15–20 min. And now I meditate for hour-long sessions with a unified mind instead of the “monkey mind” I began with, where thoughts were wild and had me spinning in all sorts of directions.

I wrote a book on goal setting and realized the importance of combining the art of meditation with setting life goals that stick.

Through my own journey of healing, I knew meditation, goal setting, accountability tracking, and mindset shifting tools helped transform who I saw myself as. And since seeing myself as more, I have been able to produce more from myself.

What I offer is a process of transformation for clients. I do that through the following products and services:

Book: SIGN UP! (Available in all formats.)

11 Guided Meditations: Each teaches different techniques for peace and balance.

Digital Courses: The first is “Handling Difficult Conversations and Effective Confrontations.”

Transformation Coaching: Where I work with clients one-on-one (and in groups) to build their tailor made map for navigating life in order to go from a place of feeling stretched to a place of strength, using my own 7 step framework for designing and seamlessly executing business and personal life goals.

Speaking | Training: I also serve as a keynote speaker, group facilitator | trainer teaching how to SIGN UP! In life.

Find out more at EricLCox.com

The website will be going through structural changes but will give visitors a good idea of who I am and how I can help.

Problems you solve for your clients

I help clients attain a true sense of wellness, peace, and balance in life. These are individuals who often sign up for others but not for themselves. For the people pleaser, the person who hides behind their smile to cover their sadness, the one who says things like they feel stuck, the one who often tears themselves down before anyone else gets a chance, the one who exaggerates who they are and their accomplishments because that persona makes them feel better than who they really are, the one who loves the comfort zone, and infamously known as a multitasker, I help each to discover who they are and reimagine a life where they are actually happy and fulfilled in the skin they’re in.

What sets you apart?

There are a plethora of life coaches out there.

Numerous people are now advising others to meditate.

I use my background in marathon running, executive leadership in healthcare, project management, meditation, a passion for comic books and superheroes, the ability to track high levels of performance, my faith, my experience as a black LGBT+ person, and my coaching skills to assist others in re-establishing a connection with themselves, re-imagining their lives, developing a new set of goals and objectives, and executing on those goals from a place of inner peace and harmony.

Because I am a relationship-oriented coach, it’s vital that I establish strong bonds with my clients.

If you want someone who can skillfully guide you through the process of creating your success map, based on who you are and who you want to become, while also being a down-to-earth jeans-and-hoodie-loving HGTV-binging jokester with over two decades of real-world experience, I’m your guy.

Most proud of

I’m most proud of the times I moved forward in life even though I was scared and didn’t know how things would turn out.

That part of me that comes out when things are hard has helped me live a fuller life.

Main things you want potential clients | followers | fans to know about you | your brand | your work

My brand, SIGN UP! is a brand dedicated to helping you make a shift in your life and start living with more purpose and intention by setting goals, focusing on your values, and making decisions that reflect who you want to be.

What I want any audience to leave with is this one, concise belief, “You are enough. Just as you are. Just who you are.”

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

2020 Covid

In 2020, when I was still the company’s Director of Training and Development, the rise of COVID meant that we had to quickly adapt everything we’d built for face-to-face interactions to meet the company’s virtual needs, since we supported the new hire and ongoing training for a 2,000-person operation.

Anyone who works in instructional design knows how much time and stress it can cause to have to start over on a project from scratch. And customers have unrealistic ideas about how long it will take and how good the work will be. While at the same time leading a team with half of the members in the same place and half in different places through the emotional and logistical unknowns of a global pandemic.

I was also dealing with the storms of life that come with a global pandemic and the complexities of being quarantined at home for a long time.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

2010 Flood

After being in that depression hole for a season, due to the loss of my first business out of college, I joined another sales company in Nashville, TN. I remained in that role for less than 3 months after watching the Justin Timberlake movie “In Time” where he lived in a world where time was the currency and not paper money. At the end of that movie, I asked myself a life changing question: “If you weren’t getting paid to do what you’re doing now, how much longer would you do it?” I answered within myself that I wouldn’t go another five minutes. So, without a plan, I quit. I struggled for a few more months and then found my way into healthcare. The rest is history.    

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ericlcox.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EricLCoxSignUp/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericlcoxsignup/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/EricLCoxSignUp
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvdEdo4qdJYjfldjraSd5Fw

Image Credits
@PhalconPhotography