Anthony Recenello
At eighteen years old, after my father pulled me out of college for failing the hardest class I’ve ever taken in my life, English 101, a class I put all of my time into, countless hours in the library working on assignments, he told me to transfer to county college and get a job within the next five days—no excuses.
I applied to almost every business in my hometown buried deep in the suburbs of New Jersey; but it was January and most positions were filled for the year. The only place I hadn’t yet checked out was a children’s gymnastics franchise called The Little Gym of Randolph. I probably passed by that strip mall hundreds of times, yet never landed my eyes on the place; it was as if it appeared there for me at that exact moment. I parked my car and walked up to the front desk with the same bold indifference to the outcome that an early-thirties bachelor would have after approaching and continually being rejected by every potential missus in the bar, then finally finding his mojo as he approached his last one for the night.
“Hi. What is this place?”
“We’re a children’s gymnastics facility.”
“I’m good with kids, I want to work here. Let’s make it happen.”
They called me back in two days and I got started. I didn’t realize how good I actually was with kids until a few weeks in. The ease at which we’re able to communicate, their extreme readiness to listen to my teachings, the respect we have for each other. Little did I know that ten years later the immensely under-researched subject, life skills for children, would be the primary and only focus in my life, bringing me to create a company called CharismaticKid.
It still perplexes me how no one has thought to focus on teaching social skills, confidence, emotional discipline, and business skills to our youth to the extent of which that I have.
After eight years, I left working at The Little Gym and began working as a “manny” for families in New York City to further evolve and solidify my techniques and philosophies regarding the life skills of children. I don’t have kids of my own, and this provided me with an opportunity to work with them individually on the skills they needed help with as opposed to within a group setting.
The results were substantial, and the things that I was able to teach children one-on-one greatly trumped whatever I was doing previously at The Little Gym. With that, I began coaching children professionally through CharismaticKid’s “Awesome Life.” Program, and realize this is the most effective way to immediately improve a child’s life.
In terms of teaching these concepts and techniques to parents so they could impart these same skills onto their kids as I have during the coaching sessions, I needed to provide them with a simple teaching structure that didn’t require years of working with thousands of different children of various ages as I had. I stumbled upon the simple idea of allowing kids to pursue big, creative, passion-focused projects. Through the activities required of them in these projects, they were able to indirectly attain the powerful life skills I had always taught them forthright. Like the base note, beet pollen, which the protagonist Alobar had realized during an out-of-body experience in the book Jitterbug Perfume, I had realized with equal fervor that this was the base note I was looking for. The book Let’s Let Kids Do Something Big was born. Even as I write this, I am fascinated by this concept’s utter simplicity and effectiveness on any youth that attempts it.
My next step is to obtain a master’s degree in child development before I’m thirty, and continue to find ways to spread my ideas to the families who need it. I’ll continue coaching kids and teaching parents for as long as it is fulfilling to me, as it’s what feels most rewarding in my life. The rest is simply just enabling me to make that happen.
Interact With Me
If you send me an e-mail or make friends with me on Facebook or Twitter, I will respond rather quickly. Let’s discuss superhuman abilities, what your family’s passions are, or what you want to accomplish with your kid. Even if you want to just say “Hi,” and tell me how CharismaticKid has helped your family, it would put a smile on my face!
I love you all,
Anthony Recenello of CharismaticKid