“Coach Freddie” Cecchini is a lifestyle and business coach and the creator of the iHemp Revolution, a web-based “Podcast” on iTunes and Stitcher Radio, featuring leaders in the industrial hemp industries. He coaches businesses in the sustainable living industries, and he’s a certified meditation instructor through the Deepak Chopra Center for Wellbeing. Coach Freddie, who lives in the Virgin Islands, is currently on the Hemp Road Trip across the USA. He was interviewed by Cameron Patterson, HempToday West.
HempToday: Why would you leave the Virgin Islands to take a hemp road tour in the USA?
Coach Freddie: It’s part of my mission and vision for the hemp industry. Although the Virgin Islands is the perfect place to be, when you have a vision, comfort comes second.
HT: Tell us about your hemp journey. How did you come around to combining your experience as a lifestyle and business coach with hemp?
CF: I was a lifestyle coach and I was also coaching other entrepreneurs. Then I decided not to coach businesses that were polluting the earth, and that didn’t have great products, or safe products. So I wanted to do business only with those using sustainable resources. I came across hemp three years ago, and it fit this criteria, and there are so many thousands of products that you can make out of it. So I decided that hemp was the way to go.
HT: As a lifestyle coach, what is the most common challenge you come across among those you mentor about hemp?
CF: Breaking the old habits and the propaganda out there. People were told a bunch of lies for decades. But once you understand the truth about hemp it’s impossible to believe the lies anymore. The biggest challenge I have is to get people to understand all the good things hemp can do.
HT: We’d ask the same question regarding your business coaching: What are the common things that hold most people and small companies back?
CF: The most common thing is that most entrepreneurs think they know everything. They don’t understand that the right coach can propel them to faster business development.
HT: What’s your take on the U.S. hemp industry right now? In the long-term view of things, what stage would you say it’s at? What’s in the near future?
CF: It’s in the infancy stage. Even though it’s coming along every day and every year, it still has a long way to grow. I had the misconception when I got into it three years ago that it was going to take off in a year or so. But there is too much infrastructure needed along with too much disbelief. The government is not supportive because the government is run by mega corporations that control the world. So if it’s not good for them then it’s not going to happen because they’re the ones who have power.
HT: What’s still on your bucket list?
CF: I want is to see every state in the U.S. between this year and next.
HT: OK, Coach. Coach me: What advice would you give me as a 14 year old?
CF: Question authority and do your own research. You’re young and you have the ability to think; you have the power to make decisions, but listen to your parents. And just remember that sometimes there are things that you won’t want to do, but you have to do them anyway.
