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Katie Duffin

Hello everyone. And welcome to the FITKYT Live Louder podcast. My name is Katie. I'm one of the co-founders of FITKYT. I'm here with Melissa Perkins, the other co-founder of FITKYT, and we are so excited to welcome, Dee Perkins, to our podcast today. Dee is a Chicago based professional boxer with a record of one win, one loss with her win coming by way of knockout. We've got shy-town in the house here people. So I'm super excited!

Dee began boxing late in life, just 7 years ago at age 34, how awesome is that?

She competed as a USA boxing amateur where she competed in tournaments across the country in the elite, 19 to 40 year old division.  Oh my gosh! In hopes of making the 2020 Olympic qualifier. That's a huge deal. Wow, her late start is attributed to not thinking it was possible along with being consumed by her corporate career and publishing business. That sounds pretty familiar....At the age of 30, she went on a mindful meditation for several years that allowed her to reduce her daily needs and live a Iife of simplicity or what she calls, the Maslow life. 

It was during a morning meditation that Dee found her way to competitive boxing. She ended her amateur career, ranked number 8, in the United States.  With a highlight being, when she won a two day WBC amateur tournament at the all female Atlanta, Classic. Wow. She began her pro career last year. Which was delayed a bit due to COVID.

The legendary. Roy Jones, Jr wrapped her hands.

A vegan for eleven years Dee believes whole heartily in healthy eating. She believes complete wellness begins and ends with the foods we eat. Citing many of the harmful ingredients in our food supply that have caused the increase of disease and mental illness.  On her spiritual and mindful journey, Dee learned that the purpose of life is to reduce the suffering of others which she admits is easier said than done.

Once again Dee, welcome to the Live Louder podcast.

Can you tell us just a little bit more about your journey? How amazing....

Dee Perkins

Well, thank you. And thanks for having me. Very happy to be here. I'm one of those people who doesn't like to talk about myself a whole lot. But, I do appreciate the opportunity and I realized that being a professional boxer and some of the goals that I have in life require me to talk about myself. So, here I am!  So thank you for this opportunity.

My journey, like you mentioned in the intro started at 30, 11 years ago.  I was just like so many people just caught up in the rat race, the corporate job. I had a publishing business on the side, that I was running at the same time.  I was working 40 hours a week, plus another 40 hours a week.  More maybe you on top of that and it just got too much and I asked myself one day.  Is this what you want?

I hit that 30 Mark and I thought okay, if you keep going, this will be your life. It will be harder to stop the longer you keep going.  So, I put the brakes on to figure out what I wanted to do.  The accounting degree that I have is not going anywhere.

If I go back into accounting at the age of 50, the jobs will still be there. The industry will be there. So, I figured the things that I want to do, require my youth, (if I still had any left) and my health.   That's what, what sparked my journey I will say.

I saw an ad on a bus shelter. When I was in college (many years ago) and it said....''are you what you wanted to be when you grew up?''

This has haunted me for like years.  Over ten years, that that haunted me and it displayed in my mind. And I thought, no.  So that's really what kicked the switch for me. And so in order to do the things we want to do when you get older, you really have to cut your life back because we get to a point where I guess you're just independently wealthy and you can do what you want.  Every day we get to a point where we are working to pay to just be here.  I was not fulfilled, you know, with that.

I was okay. I made good money, but I didn't really have a lot of time. I'm stressed. I feel Snappy, I feel tight and tense. I just don't like this.  I don't like this and so, I literally just left my job with a couple weeks notice. I wrote a resignation letter and when I was a corporate tax auditor for the State of California, I was auditing Fortune, 500 companies. I was in the middle of audits at the time and I was just like, I can't.  I physically could not do this anymore.  So I just got my cases together and handed them off to someone and went home.  

Then came, what are you going to do about this, what about that, how are you going to eat, how are you going to, live, basically!  I cleaned out my retirement account and I was like, this may not be the smartest move, because I did not like the penalty payment that I had to pay on it.  I just thought, well if I was able to do this in a short amount of time, then I can do it again.  So, that's what I did. I just cleared out the account and I was living on like, two dollars a day. I mean, literally!  I learned how to cook not fast in a sense. Right? Rice, beans, things like that, I am vegan, so nothing is quick.  It is either raw or takes forever.  I was lucky that outside of Whole Foods they have like a little area where you can buy things in bulk.  I would buy a massive lot of lentils, a lot of oatmeal. A lot of beans and rice as they are super cheap and just started like grasping my meals and just being smart. I didn't go out anymore. I wasn't like having fun. It was, as a I call it, the Maslow life.  The hierarchy is food, water, shelter like basic needs.  If I have that and my mental sanity, I can do anything and that's what started the journey, I guess.

Melissa Perkins

I absolutely love your story. Katie and I are nodding. We've experienced it ourselves as well on the journey of starting a new business. And we started in January and COVID was around March.

Dee Perkins

Oh my goodness.  So, yes. Oh, wow. You're probably still feeling that though, now, I mean, right.

Melissa Perkins

Oh, absolutely, we absolutely understand and love your story and it's real. I actually have to say, you're not a relation to me that I'm aware of?  Katie, saw your name, Dee Perkins and she thought you were a relative of mine.

Dee Perkins

We'll you never know. I put myself in those DNA sites or something 33 and me or whatever.  I don't know. If I put my name in there. We might we might have a connection. You never know. 

Melissa Perkins

Now, the multi-million dollar question is, are you happier? 

Dee Perkins

Yes, definitely. The only reason I hesitated was because I just turned 41 last month. 30 until now has kind of been the journey.  I don't even know if this interview is to go into it, but, I had a traumatic life experience at 34. I mean, like a traumatic experience where I'm still dealing with it.  Post-traumatic stress, things that I try not to get into.  It was a family ordeal and it really left me shattered inside.

It broke my journey up in a sense, that piece that I had found and the clarity and the happiness that kind of threw it off.  I find now in more recent times, I'm not as centered or grounded. It has been one of the hardest things to overcome.  You can be having a great day and you walk out outside and somebody say's something to you or they do something or cut you off in your car, anything. One action can unravel that.  You need to be so mindful, to not lose any ground that you have made or gained, you know, with that and destiny. Clawing, clawing as it feels like sometimes.

Melissa Perkins

We live in a competitive world and I often think about that.  Competition is at an extreme level in boxing because it's you and your opponent and you have to be competitive to thrive. In everything, like I was saying, even at the very basic level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you know, you are fighting for food and survival and it can be very challenging, at times. I really can resonate with trauma.  And particularly through family events. I'm not sure about your event you know, I've had some of those experiences myself. It is really hard to overcome or make sense of some of these things that happen.

What do you do in terms of that competitive spirit or nature, how do you manage when you get knocked down, but you have to get up again, to live another day and to compete in another fight?  It would be interesting to hear?

Dee Perkins

You mean figuratively or literally in the in the ring. I'll say in in the ring it is a little easier. Because, I mean, do we want to win. That's what we train so hard for. All of the sacrifices that you make.  I want to win! 

When I get in the ring, like, I want to hurt my opponent for that brief time that we're in there, because I know that's how win.  When I was an amateur I had a lot of experiences with politics the Olympic year. There is a lot of things in that. So when you go to the judges, it's up to them.  I have no control over that just like in life. There's a lot of things that you don't have any control over no matter how good you think you did, no matter how hard you prepared and no matter how deserve it.  It's not up to you at the end of the day. That's when I have the mindset of ''hurt'' your opponent, because if I hurt them or I stop them, it's up to me. I decide the outcome of this fight, not the judge.

My first fight in Mexico a lot of people thought that I had won.  But, I don't fault her or the judges.  I don't feel that I did all the things that I needed to do, even though I felt I had won the fight.  So I just let that go, but I told myself no more judges. My next fight, I won by knockout.  People were surprised because I knocked her down three times in less than a minute. You don't see that a lot. Usually when people say knock out the referee has stopped the fight because they're just taking too much punishment.  When I say, I knocked her down, she hit the canvas three times and was just out.

People couldn't believe that I had that type of power. I credit a lot of it to meditation and veganism. I meditated the whole day before that fight. I was in my hotel room, I was in with the shades drawn and I only let myself visualize the fight and exactly how I wanted it to go for hours. That's all I did. I thought about? And then we went into the fight and it happened just like that.

For me that that's the competitiveness. And then the ring and in life, like, I said, you can't control everything, right. So no matter what you do, there are things that are going to happen to you beyond your control.

I'll go back quickly to the trauma. I never really spoke about it publicly. I have put little tidbits on my social media, because I'm going to write a book about it.  I want people to get the book, you know.  Just quickly, though. So when I did leave corporate at thirty and I went on my journey, a lot of people didn't understand that.  It's foreign to them.

Wait, what!  You don't have your car anymore!  You're not in the rat race! You don't have this, you don't have that....... that's weird to some people. You don't care about many material things or that you're not living just to keep up with the next person. My day didn't involve trying to outdo anybody. Every day. I wake up and I am my only competition, I have goals. I have a list of things that I want to accomplish and that is the focus.  Not on what anybody else is doing.  It does not matter because I just believe universally, that our energy is is our own, we put it out there and receive energy and whatever you want in this world is okay. 

It really is possible when you really focus on what it is that you want and you're able to drown out distractions to the best of your ability, you will get there!  I'm proof.

My path came to a halt.  I was working on my magazine. I had a publishing in an international print and digital publication and I wanted to just kind of revamp it.  It wasn't growing, the way that I wanted. Some of the advertising wasn't happening, the pictures weren't right and things weren't going the way that I wanted. So I thought, just stop, just stop. I stop printing for a couple months just to have to time to get it right. Get it together.

I was deciding on bringing in extra team members. I'm changing things up, the format of the magazine and our approach in terms of subscribers and advertisers.  It's almost hard to talk about because, to this day, I cannot wrap my mind around why, some people do the things that they do. The best way that I can describe it is, I don't know if anyone has seen the movie, "I care", on Netflix?  See it, check it out.  It's the best way that I can describe it (what happened to me).

It was like a guardianship thing, basically my family was saying that I wasn't in the right mental state of mind and that I couldn't care for myself, and I'm like, what?  They said, that, she used to do this, and she used to have that and she had all those things aren't even important to me right now.

Why can't a person have a shift in life and that be okay? Why can't we re-evaluate and go a different direction? And that be okay? It's really interesting even to this day. I think people see you and expect you to act in a specific way and when you change, it doesn't suit them. They just find change very difficult.

Melissa Perkins

I know Katie you've had some experience with this as well. You might shed some light on your experience.

Katie Duffin

Yeah, absolutely.  Dee, I can really identify with what you're saying. I think anytime you challenge the dominant systems and how everybody else thinks they're certainly going to push against it.  I mean, you know your story and it resonate, a lot with me personally.  My experience would be that the closer you are to living in your own full authenticity the more powerful you become and that is also very threatening to people because so many people are chasing this arbitrary list that was created by society to be some definition of successful, that nobody really wants if we really think about it.

When you're pretty firm in that and you make different decisions than what everybody else is doing, society doesn't really like that. I feel for your story. I've been there myself. How did you battle through that? How did you navigate that?  Because that is very challenging?

Dee Perkins

The whole thing was fraudulent.  I've never even been in front of a judge. Like how? How do you let them have a court order to take me anywhere? So they literally broke down my door and pulled me out of my home. I have been a mental hospital for three months, fighting for my freedom, finally to get a judge who said, ''release her!".  Who said, ''Why is she here?" 

She's not on any medication. She's never been on medication. She's not a harm to herself or other people. They've said that they haven't even witnessed any behavior that warrants them, certifying me, which they did. They wrote and arranged for like three different doctors to write up a certification on me (and I didn't even meet with any of them) and they all wrote something up.  How did you write something? I didn't even talk to you! I didn't even have a conversation with you!

As somebody who doesn't suffer from a mental illness, when you do read the list, it's like. oh who doesn't fit on something, somewhere? Like seriously. Right. Who comes up with this? Show me one person who doesn't fit somewhere on the list of things?  

When in the environment, I didn't have any form of mental illness in comparison to what I was around. I mean even patients, thought I worked there!  They kept asking me, are you here to help?  and I said, I don't work here;

"What, you don't work here?"

No.

"But why are you here?"

I don't know. I don't know! 

Somebody said something that apparently, was enough to unravel my entire life, which at the time I was 30.  I couldn't understand that either, you know, I'm an adult. I don't get how this is even possible. It's hard to understand.....

To answer your question. How I battled through it?  Again, Meditation. There was like a whole court case, and this will be in my book. I have actual transcripts from the court hearing and they're asking a doctor what does she do all day?  And, their like, either reading or meditating, and you want to keep her here like this?!

And that's what I did. I meditated a lot. I would just sit in the sun room. I wasn't even allowed to go outside. This is somebody who has a garden. I love being outside and so to be confined indoors with  recycled air, in a place that they're barely cleaning. People peeing on the walls, defecating wherever they like, some people not even bathing the whole time that I was there.  I'm not faulting them, they're dealing with their illnesses. I understand.  But, nobody got treatment there. I got a glimpse of it. 

People complain about it, a lot, because there's no treatment happening.  There has to be something done, you know, laws have to be changed.  I think they need to record conversations, they claim they spoke to me and I said all this, and I said that, but it's my word versus theirs.  What can I say to make you believe anything that I'm saying over what a doctor says. But, if we had recorded the conversations it would be different.  In my case, we would have heard that there actually wasn't any conversations happening!   I mean, that's just one example.  I saw a lot of things there that I was so saddened. 

Honestly, just meditating is really how I got through that.  I got through visualizing and placing myself somewhere else and thinking about boxing training.  When I could get back to it, imagining that I still have my goal.  I can still do all the things that I want to do. 

When I got out, I lost my whole life's work.  I didn't have my hard drives, my back up, a lot of the work that I've done for 10 years and more on my magazine, like a patent that I was working on, an invention and things like that. I had lost all of that.  So here I am now, 41, kind of, I don't want to say starting over, but it feels like that, you know? 

Melissa Perkins

It's awe inspiring. Given all that you've been through and how you've overcome that.  You know adversity. Have you heard of the hero's journey? 

Dee Perkins

No.

Melissa Perkins

You'll have to have a look at it.  The hero of the story. Which is yourself? You've been through all these trials and tribulations. You hit rock bottom and then you make your way up, to the top and win.  I can really see that with you.

When I'm talking to you and just the passion and drive that you've got and belief in yourself.  You've obviously, got a great team around you too. Having Roy Jones jr. Wrap your hands. You how did that happen?

Dee Perkins

I've always been kind of a loner.  I'm shy, but I hide it well, you know.  If I'm in a crowd of people, I don't mind initiating a conversation. I can introduce myself, ''Oh, hey, I'm Dee''.  You know, ''Nice to meet you", but honestly, I always have so much going on in my head in terms of things that I want to do and then actually executing on them.  I like time alone. That suits me.  I can kind of hear those thoughts and decide how I want to go about them.

I do have a team around me so to speak. But I keep even that small, especially from the things I've gone through.  I have trust issues now.  When your family are......like when your own mother, that's something that you would never even dream about, you couldn't even imagine.  I could not have written the script.  I wouldn't even have thought it up!  When you go through things like that, it's really hard to keep people around you because you always are wondering what's your motive?  How close can I actually let you to me, you know, so that's a battle in itself.  I am trying.  You need people to get where you're going. But, how many people can you trust?

Melissa Perkins

I was reading an article, (I've got to remember where it's from), but it was saying that you only need  five people around you. And that's all you really need is five.  I believe that.  Your right, you have to have some close connections.  We call it your circle of influence. You know, the inner circle who you share everything with and then your outer circle who are people that help you who don't really know you, I would say they are more acquaintances. 

I'd love to learn more about being a vegan. How do you get the energy that you need without taking supplements? What do you do?

Dee Perkins

I don't, I probably should.  Just because I'm getting older and I probably should.  I don't know. I just try to eat well.  I make a huge smoothie every day and I'm like, okay, as long as I got my leafy greens, I try to throw in some carrots and berries, I always have a banana I have to have a banana and that's my thing.  And then, just eating well.  This vegan stuff, is the thing, right? It's like the thing to do now, and I tell people don't trust everything you see, because even though they say that this is vegan, it doesn't mean it's healthy, right? It just means there's no meat in it.  There's no animal in it, but it doesn't mean it wasn't made in the lab. It doesn't mean it has loads of sugar and salt and other ingredients in it.  I stopped eating meat when I was actually 15 years old and I just thought I could reduce meat and only eat chicken and I still ate fish.

I grew up in Florida. I was a beach baby and seafood was the thing that I wanted to eat.  If you were not eating raw oysters.......we were going to fight for those oysters. You know. But now now I can't. I tried. I literally can't. The smell of eggs like repulses me and I'm like, ''Did they always smell like that?"

When I was around thirty years old it become easier. But I'm in. I don't take supplements. I try to make sure I get the protein I need through other food groups.  For me personally from an ethical perspective, it's like hard for me to reconcile. 

Katie Duffin

I would love to hear more about your progression to vegetarian.  Because I'm somewhere inbetween I eat very little red meat. 

Dee Perkins

Yeah, it's a progression for sure.  It's a journey.

Katie Duffin

You've been on it for quite some time. So how did you move through those stages and steps and what was your thought process, obviously gradually.

Dee Perkins

Don't be unrealistic, you know, if you like a burger admit that to yourself you like burgers, okay. No problem. Is it sad to kill a cow? Yes. So, the next time you want a burger maybe be mindful of it and tell yourself something else write or say once a week or start with the meatless Monday thing, you know, take real small steps, there's no rush.  To reach whatever your goal is, just have the goal and continuously work towards it. I can't remember if it was Ralph Waldo, Emerson that said that but there's someone who quoted, that;

"Success is steadily working towards your goal and you are successful if you are constantly working toward a goal, you are successful.  Period!"

Like you said, society would make you think, success means something else. It's not a dollar amount.  It's not a title at a job. It's not the number of kids you have. It's not how big your house is.  It's not a how many boats you own, none of that equals success.  None of that. I mean, some people just fall into things by happenstance, you know.  Whether they inherit something. I don't know. I can't have an extreme example, but that isn't what makes them successful.

That doesn't make you bad either.

This thing that equals success, on the outside looking in, you will see, they have this, or they have that.  Oh, they're so successful. Oh. They're so happy.  Or, your so busy....

Which is why, I think, when people look at me, it was like, she must be crazy!  She doesn't do that these days. Everybody else is going here, rushing to get there. I was in that race and at the time, I wanted all that. I wanted all those things. I wanted the corner office. I wanted it all.  But, then I thought, I can get there other ways. It may take longer and then I may find out, that I don't even want those things anymore. And that's kind of what happened.

Not that I don't like nice things and I don't want a nice vehicle and a nice home. But I'm happy. I'm happy!  Just finding my peace and knowing that every day I wake up and I'm so good about who I am. I feel good about what I'm going to do for the day and I don't have answer to anybody. I don't have to answer to a boss that I don't like.  I don't have those ties.  Nothing holds me down and that for me is success and freedom, and I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Melissa Perkins

That's amazing. I love it. I think that's the most amazing thing and from my perspective it's super empowering. What you have just said, is so super empowering. It makes me want to try better.

I've had my own challenges, you know, with trauma as well. And it is hard sometimes and particularly running your own business.  Katie and I haven't even seen each other since 2018 and where on opposite sides of the world and were trying to build a brand new business. It's solitary.

Success to me, is how we support and engage with our community.  The more that we can do this and show support the better we're going to be.  And you're right. It's not about financial. None of that really matters at the end of the day.  If businesses are led by a profit driven motive, they come unstuck, something happens eventually. That's my view. I'm not sure Katie what your thoughts are?

Katie Duffin

Absolutely.  I mean, I think what we're talking about is living a mission centered life and building a mission centered business.  I think that in the society that we're all in, that's honestly a fairly new concept that people are talking about openly.  I think when we really think about the businesses, we like to patronize. We like to interact with those are only places that are very mission centered or whatever it is, right?  I think about your story Dee and you are redefining this for yourself, what your life's mission is and how empowering is that. 

Other people hearing your story of how you unstuck yourself from the corporate life, which Mel and I both have done a little bit, that unstuck yourself from this corporate life and made intentional decisions around your own fulfillment and in the face of extreme adversity Dee. I mean, this story is going to help so many people. It's an incredible story.

Dee Perkins

Well, thank you.

And you when you go through things, you never think about it like that. And it's been so long, and it's been years since it's happened.  I am finally able to reflect on it and go back and see it from that angle.  Sometimes you need to go through things. I kept a lot of it to myself for the longest and I didn't even tell people when I finally got released from the hospital. I went back to my to my condo and I didn't even own it anymore and only I had the deed. Like this is my home!  It was a whole legal thing.  I had a lot of stuff in it and I was literally homeless.  I slept on a bench for almost thirty days.  I never would have ever thought I'd be homeless. Like never.

I knew by the age I graduated high school. I was going to this college, that I'm going to be in this job. And how much I would make.  I would never have thought I would be homeless.  Not even a dot.  Not in my wildest dreams.  That's why I say the name of my book is going to be ""Kidnap the truth''.  I lost everything. But I didn't lose my soul and the fight, for my life.  That's really how I feel. I lost everything, but my soul and somehow I was able to keep my sanity.  I don't have any revenge in my heart. I never, acted out to anyone. No matter how hurt I was and I attribute that to finding meditation.  Which I didn't find until after 30, it's helped me so, so much. I've gotten away from it, maybe in the past year or so. And I feel it. Even yesterday, I manage boxers too and I was talking to one of my fighters yesterday and then I told him later I said, you know what? I'm sorry. I didn't meditate today and something got under my skin and I feel it.  I'm letting it out and that's when I can bring myself back in because I feel that I'm like, nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. This is not what you want to feel. It's not where you want to be.  Rain it in right now and that's what I have to do.

Melissa Perkins

I love what you were saying around your soul, you know, and you had that, you know, to fall back on and they can't take that away from you.  I am very grateful for the opportunity to listen and hear your story. So, thank you so much Dee.  It's wonderful. 

So, what's next for you in terms of boxing? What your big goal for my big goal is? I want to be a World Champ. Like I said, I fight in the 102 pounds that's called the atom weight division. I think I'm good enough to to compete with the top talent. But it's not an overly crowded weight division, so it shouldn't theoretically be too difficult to climb through those ranks and then move up a weight class.  But, my immediate goal is for the WIBA Belt is the other women's International Boxing Association belt and the current champion and I wanted to call her out real quickly because I think it's amazing that she's forty six years old and she's the current world, Champ. She fought the world champion, another belt, last month or two months ago, in Dubai against a way younger opponent.  People like her inspire me, you know, I just think it's incredible and that's what I like about women's boxing because we're  different than men. They kind of phase out sooner, whereas we pick up later and also, because for women in boxing, it wasn't something necessarily like encouraged a lot when we were younger. So you don't pick it up until later. So now a lot of the younger girls are really into boxing and they'll have a great future in it and I can't wait to see that happen. But right now, if you look at a lot of the rankings, a lot of the active fighters, there over 30, a lot of them are well into their 40s.  Now the opportunities are here and some of them get into it late, because they see that now, I can actually do something with this.  Our bodies don't have to wear and tear.  A lot of the younger boxers who started when they were kids then they have to stop at 30 years old because there they don't want to be beat up so much.  Their bodies are worn down. I don't have that. I'm like, brand-new, you know, that's my goal though, World Champ.

Melissa Perkins

Well, were super honored to be able to listen to your story and meet with you today. And again I am just amazed by your sharing of your story of absolute resilience.  This is this has been an incredible time spent together.

And just for our listeners, where can they follow your story? Can you give us your your insta contacts and all those things?

Dee Perkins

So, I mainly just on Instagram. I have a love hate relationship with social media. So I decided to get everybody together, but you can't live with it.  Can't live without it! 

When I was on my journey, I was away from it for several years and when I first logged back into my Instagram account, I was like this is pretty cool.  My instagram handle is @dpmogul and on Twitter under that same name.  I am not on Facebook. I do have an account, but that just so I can log in somewhere. But it's like not active. So don't look for me there.

But yeah, Twitter, Instagram, and that's about it. Boxing is also on Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. That's where you can find a lot of my boxing videos.

Katie Duffin

Incredible. Well, again, this has been a great time chatting with Dee Perkins, again, an absolute honor to meet with you and to hear your stories. Absolutely incredible. Thank you.

Dee Perkins

Thank you for having me. 

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