We recently connected with Mike Domitrz and have shared our conversation below.

Mike, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

While I was in college, my older sister was sexually assaulted. Months later, I would hear a speaker talk about the issue and thought, “I can do something about this.” I went to that speaker’s home and learned everything I could for a day. He provided me lots of materials to take with me. Keep in mind this was 1990 when sexual assault prevention was rarely discussed in society, including educational institutions.

Next, I wrote my first speech on the topic and asked a teacher at my high school alma mater if I could speak to her class. She said, “Yes!” After that speech, she said this is where I belonged. I believed her. I went all in on becoming a speaker with a mission to stop sexual assault.

What schools said was unique was the approach of being interactive while having a conversation with the students (instead of talking “at them”, you talk “with them”). By asking the students about their realities, the entire speech was about them and not me the speaker. 3 decades ago when I started this work, people would say, “As you get older, they are going to stop bringing you to speak because you’ll be too old to relate to the students.” The irony is the demand for our programs in schools has increased every year. Why? The speech was not about me. When you make it about the audience, they engage and they look into the mirror for making transformational changes in their own lives.

Mike, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Today, in our 3rd decade of doing this work, we help our clients solve the problem of providing those they are responsible for with realistic, transformation tools and skills for building a culture of respect in all facets of live (from work to home).

We serve and live our mission by delivering the following 4 services:

1. Providing school assemblies and parent programs to middle schools and high schools for teaching healthy relationships, boundaries, respect, consent, safer decision-making, societal influences, sexual assault prevention, and supporting survivors.

2. Supplying universities programs for teaching respect, consent, sexual decision-making, sexual assault prevention, and supporting survivors.

3. Presenting keynotes for corporations and associations for deepening their workplace culture to being founded on a culture of respect where each person is valued.

4. Hosting adventurous retreats for couples wanting to building “Mutually Amazing Relationships.”

Our clients share what sets us apart is our ability to quickly connect with participants in a deep and meaningful way. We provide audiences and attendees a safe place to explore their beliefs and assumptions around relationships, respect, and how we treat each other (including ourselves). What we are most proud of is how often we hear back from people about how that one event they attended changed their relationships and their life forever.

We love how our clients rave about how we make the process both thought-provoking and fun throughout the experience. And how each person leaves looking forward to implementing the new skills they’ve gained.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

We love staying in touch with our clients – whether through social media or email. Just last week, I was walking through a small town in Wisconsin and I saw an old book being sold outside a bookstore. The book was about one of my client’s campuses in Minnesota. I immediately purchased the book to send it to our client as a nice surprise. We treasure the relationships we have with our clients. Often our clients engage back and forth with us on social media too.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

In the early years of this work, I looked like I was 16 years old when I was 22 years old. In the early 90s, allowing a person in the early 20s to talk about sexual assault prevention in schools was tough enough. To look significantly younger made the journey that much more challenging. 10 years later when I decided to go full-time speaking, we had no cash reserves and a family of 6 (4 sons, my wife, and I). We knew speaking on these topics is where I belonged and so we chose to go into debt using credit cards to fund our mission. While this was very stressful at times, we knew this is what we belonged doing. In those early years, we had early morning newspaper routes to try and fill in the cash flow (which was nonexistent). We just kept focusing on where we were headed and not where we were. Was that easy? No. Creditors were calling and those calls were not fun. We kept going back to our vision.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.CenterForRespect.com
• Instagram: https://www.Instagram.com/MikeRespects
• Facebook: https://www.Facebook.com/MikeRespects
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikedomitrz/
• Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/MikeRespects
• Youtube: https://www.YouTube.com/CenterForRespect

Image Credits
All photos are owned by me.