Who is Steve Martile?
I’m an Entrepreneur, and Spiritual Teacher who loves adventurer and having fun. I started as a mechanical engineer then became a life coach. Today I run a marketing agency that helps Entrepreneurs build their businesses. I have roughly 1.5 million+ views on my Youtube channel, and have become known for the 7-day manifestation experiment.
A Little More About Me…
Most people wouldn’t expect the same personality who does engineering to also be a life coach. So how did I go from engineer to life coach?
I’ve had some defining moments along my journey. They always came with a fair amount of discomfort. One of those moments occurred while I was working in Toronto as an HVAC engineer. One weekend my wife and I were driving north to Sudbury in our Honda Accord to see family. We were talking about the new job I had started six months earlier.
I remember saying to her, “I feel depressed.”
My wife says, “Is it me?”
“No, of course it’s not you,” I said. “It’s the work I’m doing.”
I felt this rigid programming take over when I was in my job. It was as if there were two of me. One part of me felt that I should keep everyone happy. Keep the peace. Don’t ruffle any feathers. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t do anything that will upset anyone. Don’t stand up for yourself, especially if it might upset someone else. We wouldn’t want that.
The other part of me (the real me) was screaming inside to do the things that made me feel happy, to be true to myself, to honor my feelings. I needed to speak up for myself at meetings when I felt guided to do that. I needed to explore, to be creative, to try new things, to be less rigid and more adventurous.
The real me was getting louder and louder. I knew I needed to make a change, but the truth was I felt trapped. One part of me had taken the job in Toronto because it was the ‘right thing to do’ and the ‘money was good.’ Yet the real me was pushing to emerge. It wouldn’t stand down.
I started working on projects for two different senior engineers. They both had conflicting ideas about which projects were the most important. Imagine walking into a meeting where you’re told that project X needs to be your highest priority. You leave that meeting and walk into another meeting five minutes later, and you’re told by a totally different supervisor that project Y is more important than project X.
It was driving me nuts. I was pulling my hair out because I wanted both supervisors to be happy with me. I had the so-called “disease to please”. I was miserable. Pleasing others was a trap I had created for myself. I desperately wanted out.
That’s when I started looking for answers. I decided to open my mind to new ideas. I decided I was going to do something different because the pain and internal discomfort were too much to bear. I had to change course, so I started reading books and becoming more receptive to new ideas.
One of the first books I read was Think and Grow Rich. Written by a guy named Napoleon Hill in 1937 at the height of the Great Depression, the book has sold over 15 million copies. It blew the limitations on my mind wide open. The idea that you could ‘think’ and grow rich was revolutionary for me.
The second book I read was Tony Robbins’ Unlimited Power. Robbins describes how he helped top performers achieve at their highest level and how readers can use the same techniques to accomplish their own goals. Both of these books expanded my mind. I could identify with what the authors were saying. It was all about empowering yourself, feeling empowered, and being self-reliant. It was about doing things that made you feel happy and fulfilled. I desperately needed to hear this message. It was a lifeline.
As I was reading these books and others like them, I started making different decisions. My perception changed and I came to a new understanding that I could think and become rich. Gradually, I began to invest in live training and meeting other people who were on a similar journey.
The first personal development course I took was in February 2006 in Toronto. It was a training course that involved coaching. We participated in a large group of around 100 people once per week and then had a smaller group of six members where we did the coaching, led by one coach.
During the second week of this course, the leader of our group quit. She just left with no warning. Now there were five of us left. Everyone looked around and asked, “Who’s going to be the leader now?” Without hesitation, I raised my hand and said, “I’ll do it!” I was starting to speak up for myself and follow my inner guidance. It felt good, but I didn’t care about being the leader for the sake of being the leader. I raised my hand because I wanted to do the coaching.
That’s when my life really started to change. Coaching was a Godsend. I loved coaching. It was better than breathing. It made me feel alive. I got to help people and change lives. My outlook on life was becoming very different. As I was coaching and going through these changes, I ran into the best man at my wedding. “You’re a totally different person,” he remarked.
I was happy and the difference was noticeable. I realized that we’re all happier when we are actively pursuing our potential. We don’t want to be locked into a room or an office or a cubicle and left for dead. We want to truly experience life. The way we do this is through our own growth.
My energy had changed when I got into coaching. Like many coaches do in the very beginning, I started off doing it for free. I loved it. Coaching was giving me life and a renewed sense of purpose. I kept coaching while I was working at my full-time job. It was now 2008, right around the time of the great financial crisis.
By this time, I had been working at my engineering company for five years. All the while, I was attending more seminars, reading more self-help books, and generally meeting more and more people who were like me – human beings who believed we had more potential.
During one of those seminars, I got this wild idea: What if I quit my job and started a coaching business? It didn’t take long for this to become more than just an idea. In the fall of November 2009, I quit my job. My wife thought I had gone off the deep end. We had a mortgage and bills to pay. But I was convinced I could do this.
Dennis was the president of the engineering company at the time. I still remember the day I walked into his office. It was a small company with around 200 employees and Dennis always had an open-door policy. I walked right into his office and asked him if he had a few minutes to chat. I told him I was going to leave to start this coaching business. He walked right up to me and gave me a big hug and congratulated me.
That was unexpected! He must have somehow picked up on my enthusiasm. Dennis told me that I could work on contract with the company during my transition. That would give me a chance to put some money aside instead of going cold turkey and diving right into my coaching business.
Wow!
If I was going to work on contract, then that meant I was going to be hired as an engineering consultant. After meeting with Dennis, I did some homework to see what engineering consultants were getting paid in Ontario based on the PEO (Professional Engineers of Ontario) Fee Guide.
I discovered I could charge $120 per hour as an engineering consultant. That was quite eye opening. Based on the projects I had up to that point, I estimated it would take about 4 months (at 20 hours per week) to finish all the projects I had been working on for the company.
If I committed 20 hours a week, at $120 an hour, that would be almost $10,000 a month, which was double what I was making from my job! “Holy cow,” I thought. “This is good money.”
Now that I had a rough plan, I developed an outline of what I was going to do, the projects I was going to work on and how it was going to benefit the company. I figured four months to finish all these projects on contract gave me plenty of time to start making money in my new coaching business.
I pitched the idea to the VP of Operations. He agreed, and I sent him my proposal with my engineering consulting fees. The fees were added to the company’s budget, and I was approved almost right away to start working on contract as a consultant. A few weeks later I started receiving those checks for $10,000.
I was thrilled. I knew I had created this and was living out my potential. Life was great!
Unfortunately, I soon began to feel that I wasn’t worthy of the money. It was too easy, and I felt that I was getting paid too much. That’s when the self-sabotage patterns started to show up.
One afternoon – about eight weeks after I started working on contract – I remember the CFO saw me talking on the phone outside of work. Our eyes made contact and I felt this strange panic inside. I knew something was wrong.
Two weeks later I was told that my contract was going to end. Most of the projects had been finished and other managers on staff had been assigned to the tasks I was working on. I was going to get my last paycheck in January 2010. After that, I was on my own.
The reason I panicked was because I still hadn’t figured out how to make money in my coaching business. I had a lot of doubts about making real money as a coach. In fact, I didn’t make very much money at all. I was basically self-employed with no income.
However, I learned a lot from that experience. You’ve got to pick things that are believable to you if you want to create them in your own reality. That’s how the muscle grows.
Later that year things were looking up. I was doing some of my best writing that year and doing a bit of coaching as well. But I wasn’t bringing in the kind of money that I had before, which wasn’t helping the relationship with my wife.
My wife was concerned because we were spending twice as much as we were earning every month. Our credit lines were getting exhausted, and we were going into more debt. Looking back, I still don’t blame her for being upset with me at the time.
Around mid-summer of 2010, I finally sat down to look at our bank statements. That’s when I realized I needed to get another job.
By this point, I had internalized this idea that the Universe or this field of intention will give me what I want. It had worked pretty well so far, aside from a bit of financial debt. But I just knew I could make money in a stable job.
The big difference was that I wanted to find a job that would make me happy, not miserable. So that’s what I set out to do.
Every day I started to visualize doing work that would make me happy. In the beginning, not much happened. I was just happy and broke. Each morning, I woke up feeling enthusiastic and excited thinking about working in this imaginary job that would give me joy.
But then in October of that year around the Canadian Thanksgiving, something miraculous happened. I got a surprise call from a recruiter for an interview with an engineering firm. Five days later I received an email with my first job offer plus a $10,000 relocation bonus.
Now keep in mind, this was during the financial crisis, so there weren’t a lot of good jobs, but I managed to find one. Not only that – I found a job that made me happy.
I remember during the initial interview with the owner of this engineering firm, he asked me, “Do you do any sales?”
I said, “No, but I would love to learn.” That job was my introduction to sales. I learned a lot from my boss and from being in that job, but more importantly I also learned that I’m the one who created this opportunity.
I put intention behind this, and it showed up. I created it. I’ll never forget that.
A lot of people hear my story, and say “What you’re talking about, I’ve heard about this, it’s the secret. It’s the law of attraction. I tried it, and it didn’t work.”
So how do you make it work?
For now, I’ll explain how I came to this realization, the idea that ‘you create your world,’ and then I’ll dive deeper into how this works because this concept came to me slowly over time. It didn’t happen overnight.
Learn more: 7 Day Manifestation Experiment
Purpose
My purpose is this: to remind you that you are the co-creator. You are the wizard. You are the magician. You are the painter. You are the Picasso of your life. It’s all you.
Vision
My vision is to increase human awareness and prosperity globally so others can truly enjoy the freedom of choice.