Backstory
Blair’s mother volunteered and worked in mental health and social services. Blair joined his mom since he was 5 years old volunteering.
At 21 Blair and his mother started a private College called Life Skills College to implement government
research on essential life skills to benefit people who were stuck, not coping well, not problem solving and who were marginalized and at-risk.
At 21 Blair was the vice president and youngest coach in the school.
Our company, Life Skills Colleges, was the last hope for many of our clients before going out on the streets, back to jail or suicide.
I needed a consistently reliable way to help people get their lives back on track and return to productivity. The problem was that we couldn’t get consistent results.
Then I had a personal crisis. My father went into a permanent coma and I fell apart. I was unable to function and that put me in the same place as many of our students /clients.
I found out that the mindset I was teaching them didn’t work for me in my own life.
On top of losing my father, I felt like a fraud.
In my darkest moment, I accidentally created the first Mind Model, which I called the Pivot Post.
I realized that the life I had planned was over. I had to go in a completely new direction.
I needed something more than a positive mindset to lean on. Life Skills was good but not meant for these people. I needed something more effective.
The Origin Story
For many years, Blair studied personal development and became a Life Skills Coach and with more study a certified coach trainer and certified NLP practitioner and mindset facilitator.
He did everything “right” and even hired his own mindset coach and trainer to stay on top of things.
Like so many others, Blair didn’t realize how ineffective mindset training really is until he faced tragedy.
His father had to have open-heart surgery and everything seemed to go well. Then, 15 mins before being released from the intensive care ward in the hospital, there was a complication.
They had to induce a coma and 2 weeks later his father didn’t come out of the coma. (His father was in a coma for 14 years before he passed.)
Crushed, crying in the shower, Blair immediately started to implement all of his “mindset” training to help him in this insanely emotional time….It didn’t help.
He called his mindset coach to get more help and they suggested he do everything that was already done and had nothing else to offer him.
At the end of that conversation the mindset coach said, “Blair, you just don’t believe enough”.
Blair knew at that moment that mindset did not work as claimed! you see, 80% of the students at Live Skills College were potentially suicidal. If he said that to his students it will be like handing them gun.
This was totally unacceptable to Blair.
That’s what started Blair’s journey to find a better system. Something that works even in the most emotional times of life whether or not you believe in it. Something that is externally verifiable, not based on opinion, not based on what other people are telling you is supposed to work for you. And when it doesn’t work it’s not the systems problem… It’s your problem. That was completely unacceptable to Blair!
He needed something that works at least 80% of the time instead of mindset that works, maybe 1% effectiveness, as research has now proven.
That’s when Mind Models were born.