Featured on Voyage Atlanta!
Hi Everyone!
I am proud to say I had the opportunity of being featured on Voyage Atlanta. Voyage Group started with their flagship publication in Los Angeles and spread across the country to many other major cities.
Accordingly our mission is to build a platform that fosters collaboration and support for small businesses, independent artists and entrepreneurs, local institutions and those that make our city interesting. We want to change the way people spend their money – rather than spending it with the big, cookie-cutter corporations we want them to spend their money with the independent, creative, local entrepreneurs, small businesses and artists.
Below i’ve included the article written but make sure you visit their page and show them some love. There are a lot of amazing artists and business featured and if you in Atlanta you can submit yourself!
Today we’d like to introduce you to Hosea DeMarzino.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Hosea. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I became a personal trainer in 2014 about six months after I graduated college. I already had known within that final year that I wanted to somehow be in the fitness industry. I was in my final years of finishing my Culinary Arts & Nutrition degree from Johnson & Wales University in Providence Rhode Island. I was coming off of a year of being very consistent in the gym as well as with my own nutrition and it changed my life and my perspective on where my career might go in the years after college.
Originally my plan going into the Culinary Arts program was to own my own restaurant. As I progressed through college, I continued to struggle with confidence issues and weight, a childhood thing for me, and decided that applying for the nutrition program would help me fix my own life and learn how to help others who struggle with the same issues because of their weight. Through my college journey, I joined a fraternal organization called Groove Phi Groove and became chapter president for two years which forced me to develop my public speaking, community engagement and confidence. As I continued through the final two years, I started to get consistent with the gym and nutrition and lost over 30lbs. This weight loss helped me gain a whole new perspective on life and my identity.
I decided that I wasn’t going to let anyone dictate what I would and could not do and what age I had to be to do it. I was going to try anything I had an interest in and not let my confidence stop me because ” I might not be good enough.” One of those interests was acting, something I was always amazed by but never thought I could actually pursue it. I began by doing a little background actor work in Rhode Island, it then transformed to taking classes and workshops, to auditioning and booking speaking roles in student films and a local commercial. I was falling in love with something I had once told myself wasn’t even a possibility. Fast forward a few years, I had finally decided I would apply in New York to study my favorite technique, Meisner technique, before venturing to another market to pursue acting as a career. I applied to 3 studios: Neighborhood Playhouse, William Esper Studio, and Maggie Flanigan studio; the latter two founded by a student of the other with Neighborhood Playhouse being the home where the technique was created decades ago. I was accepted to all three and chose Neighborhood Playhouse to complete a summer intensive before my move to Atlanta.
Fast forward to now, I have officially been a resident for a year and have delved into the many events that occur here in this booming city. I’m nearing the end of a seven month Meisner intensive at Robert Mello studio while simultaneously completing a 5-level course of improvisation at Dad’s Garage and loving every minute of it. I currently work at Orange Theory Fitness in Roswell & Suwanee and occasionally do some brand ambassador work for extra cash. I am represented by TDH Talent Unlimited and have had the opportunity to audition for some major roles on network television and I am only optimistic about the many more I’ll have in the future.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
This journey was far from easy. Most of my life, I always thought I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t good enough to play football, wasn’t good enough to have certain types of friends, wasn’t good enough to be in a relationship, etc. The fear of not being good enough kept me from the opportunity to prove myself wrong; I was my own obstacle. Finally, after years of struggle, I surprised myself and changed my health and my life. I proved myself wrong and that is when I knew that even though the journey to being confident would be a long one, I needed to give myself the opportunity to prove myself wrong, over and over again.
Becoming a personal trainer helped me meet so many people from different careers, ages, and ethnicities and it enlightened me so much. I trained the 35-year-old male cosplayer, living in an apartment with a roommate and two part-time jobs, the 55-year-old woman nonprofit full-time employee, and the 27-year-old traveling sales executive. They all had one thing in common, they all had an aspect of their life that did not fit the traditional standard of where they “should be” but they were happy. That is where I told myself I was taking the power to my happiness, I did not care where society said I should be in my career. I was choosing passion over money. Don’t let society force you into a job or a lifestyle your not happy with because they tell you this is where you should be. At the end of the day, the only person that will suffer the greatest from that choice will be you.
Tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of and what sets you apart from others.
Currently, I am here in Atlanta working as a Group Exercise Trainer at Orange Theory Fitness while pursuing my main goal of developing a long-lasting career in the Film & Television Industry. My Company H.E.M.D Wellness ( Heal Empower Motivate Define), I also create daily exercise workouts for those interested in utilizing them with their current gym membership. I am most proud of the risks I’ve taken to get here. Born and bred in Newark, New Jersey yet moving all the way to Rhode Island for college and now pursuing an acting career in Atlanta, Georgia. I could have decided to go the traditional route and pursued a 9-5 job and probably would have been financially better than I am now but that path wasn’t for me. I always say, ” to have a successful life, you must make the best of the one you already have,” and I am striving for that every day. What sets me apart is that I am me, my personality is made up of my decisions and the risks I decided to make whether or not I had someone else’s approval.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
My future plan is to never stop training. I always say I don’t want to be satisfied because that’s being complacent. I always know their is room for improvement and believing you are perfect is your imperfection itself. I want to continue learning to better myself in this craft of art and that means realizing you are always a student. I look forward to completing my classes at both Rob Mello Studios and Dad’s Garage and using the skills I learned to tell amazing stories. Acting allows us to transcend time to resurrect someone etched in history; acting allows us to embrace our creativity in ways that bring life to still text, knowledge to the ignorant, and voice to the mute. I want to portray the doctor who saves a thousand lives during a decades of war. I want to portray the painter who’s paintbrush lead him from poverty to prosperity. I want to portray the astronaut who conquered galaxies and discovered new worlds. I look forward to making mistakes and learning from today so I don’t make them tomorrow.