It is with pride and joy I present to you the 22nd member of Team Do Good, the mighty Joseph Warren. I am absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to celebrate Joseph here via Tampa Bless and Team Do Good. His willingness to participate in this feature is highly appreciated. And now, without further ado...
Name: Joseph Warren
Place of birth: Rockville Center, Long Island, New York.
Currently reside: Tampa, Florida; one of my favorite cities in the United States.
Heritage: So my dad is Irish with a little bit of Lithuanian and my mother is 100% Greek, so I am a nice split of Irish and Greek, and I'm from New York so it makes me sound Australian.
Family: Married in 2019 to the girl of my dreams. I waited. I'm very grateful I waited, otherwise I would've messed up marriage because I was young and arrogant. We have a beautiful baby girl, 10 months old, and another child on the way. God's been good to us.
Alma Mater: Nothing really there because at 19 years old I started a successful business and skipped school and skipped college, and then went back on my own terms and don't even have an Associate’s because I couldn't make sense of why I was making more money than all my friends who were graduating.
Occupation: A fun way of saying what I do now is I help men blow up rocks. So the rock standing between them and true success, the rock standing between them and their wife blocking intimacy, the pile of rocks standing between them and their kids that has them parenting but not connected to their kids. So I help them blow up those rocks in their relationships so that they can live a fulfilling life with God at the head. And then I run 2 top podcasts on iTunes, on Apple, and all that.
Activities you organized or participate in related to helping others and uplifting humanity?
So like I mentioned, two podcasts. One is faith-based, the other is business. I'll start with the business. Your First 100K podcast - top 100 podcasts on Apple, on iTunes for entrepreneurship. I interview top successful business people about how they made their first $100,000 because that's where at least 90% of people get stuck or stopped or quit. So we really just tackle the mental game of entrepreneurship and that's fantastic. And then faith-based - Broken Catholic podcast. That is the number one podcast on iTunes for Protestants and Catholics, and I interview top Christian influencers down to ordinary Joes about what God's been doing in their life, where they've been resisting, where they're cooperating, and what He has next for them.
The Tampa Bless 12
1) Favorite pastime or hobby? Why? Please explain.
I love playing racquetball. I love working out and I love meeting with people and just having real conversations, not surface talk. I like deep, meaningful conversations. I hate debate without a purpose. So I like learning and growing with others.
2) Favorite sport, team, or player? If not into sports, your favorite musician or album? Or answer one of each if you’d like or any combo. Please explain why for any one or more of the questions you answered.
I'm going to go with the genre of 80s rock. Journey is probably at the top of the list. Journey, Foreigner, Def Leppard... just nostalgic memories growing up on Long Island driving the pickup truck with the surfboard in the back, headed to the beach.
3) Favorite movie? Why? Please explain.
Let me go there. The Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson. Yes. And the reason why? Brought me to tears when you see the Bible, the New Testament, visually acted out and your heart knows what you're watching is true, not based on a true story, but the actual true story of my personal salvation and redemption from my mess-ups and bad choices. Yes, absolutely transformative... that movie.
4) Favorite place (country, city, town, etc…) you have visited and why?
I had the opportunity for our honeymoon, my wife and I, to go to Greece, and we went to my mother's home island, Nisyros. I loved it. It was a small, non-touristy island, only a thousand residents. We got to go up on the mountains on the little scooter in the nighttime, and they had the big party at the church in the town square with all the Greek dancing and the drinks. And it was just beautiful, you know, just out in the middle of the ocean in Greece on an island. Favorite place in the world.
5) Last meal? You could have anything, what is it? Why? Please explain.
Ah, I'm going to go with a T-Bone steak at Bern's right here in Tampa. World-famous, and I'm going to have a nice Shiraz wine with my dinner and I'm going to finish it with a New York cheesecake and then a beautiful cigar with a glass of port.
6) Three activities or routines you would highly recommend? Please explain your reasoning for each.
1. Checking in with friends and family for no good reason. Just calling them and checking in on their life and how it’s going with no agenda for the call other than just to hear and listen and encourage and celebrate their life. I've done this several times in my life and it's just an absolutely awesome experience for them and for me. So that's a great routine.
2. I love coaching people, just listening to where they feel stuck or stopped or struggling, and giving them the key or the access to God's power, healing, and freedom. Even though it's my work, it's a routine and I love it. It's fantastic to participate in that.
3. The third is called the Holy Hour, and I do it in my coaching with my clients. It is spending an hour a day in silence with God, not talking, not reading rote prayers, but just sitting with a pen and paper, asking Him questions about my life and waiting for Him to answer and just listening and not talking. So during the Holy Hour with God is where my entire life got flipped upside down and I stopped glorifying me, and the rest of my life I spend glorifying Him. The Holy hour - best routine I've ever done in my life.
7) A) Personality trait you highly value? Why? Please explain. B) The personality trait you highly dislike? Why? Please explain.
A. Patient listening. When I see a person can sit there patiently and listen actively to someone, especially if that someone struggles with communication, and it takes a while to get to the point, and I see someone else just patiently be with them, listen with them. Man, I admire that because I struggle with that... I have the New York mind. So patient listening I admire.
B. And then a personality trait I dislike is when someone shows up as a know-it-all, and they're not actually listening to me or to anyone else, say in a small group setting. I see this often. There's one guy at least in every small group that has the answer to everybody's problems, but yet his life's not working. That makes me laugh. And that, I definitely dislike. I don't mind the humble know-it-all, the one that when he's called upon, he knows a lot. But the guy that is always soliciting advice, he's always offering advice unsolicited, he was never asked for it... I used to be that guy, so we tend to dislike in others the things we dislike in ourselves. So that's my top disliked personality trait.
8) Favorite thinker (author, philosopher, theologian, etc…)? Why? Please explain. And what is your favorite piece of advice, quote, or text from them or in general? Why? Please explain.
I would say a thinker/author is C. S. Lewis and the reason why is… well, one - his book Mere Christianity. He not only wrote just in a very deep, critical thinking kind of manner, which I think the world needs more of right now, but he also spoke and wrote in a very unifying way where he didn't point out one Christian denomination as better than the other. Instead, he said here's what we believe as Christians all together and it was very unifying. So he has really stood for unifying Christians everywhere, regardless of labels. And that's also what I'm called to do, what I do in my podcasts as well. So definitely I'm aligned with the way he occurred. And he got so close to becoming Catholic... so close.
Favorite quote is, “Grant me chastity and continency, but not yet.” - St. Augustine of Hippo (Confessions 8,7)
9) Biggest influence in your life or a top one, and what was it about them that really stood out?
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. Growing up we didn't watch TV much, but my dad allowed us to watch him. And back then in the 50s and 60s, he was the Oprah Winfrey of his time. He had 30 million TV viewers. 30 million across all denominations. It was absolutely fantastic. Jews, Muslims, everybody watched him and he was Catholic. Who knew? And the reason why? He spoke with the authority of Jesus when he spoke God's truth. He didn't do it with apology; he spoke it with fire. You could see the fire in his eyes and you could see the Holy Spirit just raising up in him, and I was like, wow! He could speak. He was theatrical with his hands and motions. And I was like, you know, subconsciously, I want to be like that someday. I want to speak on stages someday. It was completely subconscious because I first had to get past my fear of public speaking. But yes, yes... Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.
10) If there is one thing you could change in the world, what would it be?
What would I change in the world? I would change me. As another author points out, what's wrong with the world? I am what's wrong with the world. So I'm aiming to do that right now. I've been surrendering for years every facet of my life to God and allowing His power to heal me and change me and transform me so that I can show up as His hands and feet in the world. So that's what I would change in the world. Change me. That's how you change the world.
11) Where did your desire to help others and uplift humanity come from? Please explain.
First half of my life I spent glorifying me, chasing money, success, pleasure. Got them all at a very early age. Realized it was empty at the top. It was lonely. It was miserable and I crashed and burned. The rest of my life, I have made a definitive decision to glorify God. Where that desire came from was when God broke me. I am a broken Catholic and former atheist. That's where the name of the show comes from. It's like God had to break my ego, my arrogance, my false identity, my fake self, and He did it with force. I resisted. Finally, after He persisted, I surrendered. And from that surrender, He put the desire in me to serve Him. So whatever I'm doing now that's good in the world, that desire came from Him. There were many coaches along the way that led me to that next step. Or as my spiritual coach likes to say, “Joseph, we are bus drivers for God. Where people get on and where they get off, none of our business. We just take them to the next stop.” And there were many bus drivers in my spiritual journey that took me to that next stop. Overall, it was God that put the desire in me. 12) What are you working on now and how can people get involved?
God's had me start multiple projects. Right now, I'm writing a mega-bestselling book and that's not an audacious claim or inflating my own ego. I'm looking at the people God has put around me. I'm actively working with Mark Victor Hansen, who wrote Chicken Soup for the Soul and has sold over 500 million books. One of the bestselling authors of our time and I was just on the phone with him and he's saying what we're going to do together. So yes, I am actively writing a mega-bestselling book. The title is still being named. A mega-bestselling book for God, and it's going to be a transformative book. It's taking everything I have learned in my own experience with my walk with the Lord, as well as all the coaching with my clients, all the breakthroughs, all that, and I've put it in this book. And God's going to heal people through the book. I'm very clear and confident. The book should be releasing sometime later this year.
Also, I would say the book is one thing. The podcasts, they can also actively get involved with the podcasts. That's a good place to start. Broken Catholic and Your First 100K, and then of course, you can find me for the coaching business. If there are any guys who are reading this or listening and they got some rock standing in between them and true success or in their marriage or in their relationships with their kids and they want to blow them up together. We can go in and have some fun and blow up those rocks so that they can have the life they want. They can go to blowuprocks.com and then anything with me personally as well as everything else can be found at Josephwarren.net.
Thank you so much for your time Joseph and for all that you do. The place we live in is that much better because of you. I hope that this feature has served to inspire you, as well as successfully celebrate those that help others and uplift humanity.
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