Hey friend! I’m Stacy Kokes. Welcome to your new happy place!

So, here’s something you need to know right off the bat. My passions and desires are vast. I don’t fit into a neat, tidy box. I used to see that as a bad thing. Why can’t I have love and focus for just one thing?! Instead I am passionate about health and wellness, photography, marriage, motherhood, adoption, Jesus, financial freedom and empowering people to live life to the full. Figuring out which of those desires God wanted me to use was an exhausting task. Then God showed me,

“I want all of it. Every desire, every passion, every dream. There is purpose and life in all of it through me.”

I realized that even more important than the “what” I’m doing, is the “why”. God wants to use us wherever we are, in whatever we are doing, to bring glory to him and to be a blessing to others. So that’s what I do here! This is my little space on the internet where I wear my heart on my sleeve, where I keep it real and above all, where I hope to encourage others.

I share my life with you, not because I think I’m awesome, but because I believe that life is meant to be shared. And maybe, just maybe, God will use my story, experiences and randomness to encourage you in your life.

My Story

I am a Wisconsin girl born and raised who moved to AZ after high school to escape the cold and broaden my horizons. Four years and six changes in major later, I graduated from ASU with a degree in Exercise and Wellness. I had always planned on moving back to Wisconsin but then #lovehappened! I met my husband Joe in college and a year and a half later we were married! Our first year of marriage, we were living in a bit of financial ignorance; living above our means, struggling to make the minimum payments on my mounds of student loans and simultaneously racking up MORE debt. Before we knew it, we had more than $65,000 of debt AND a house in foreclosure. Thankfully, my husband intervened and told us things had to change, starting with our overspending. We cut wherever and whatever we could, starting with our gym membership. Saying good-bye to the gym was a huge sacrifice (or so we thought!) It was then that we first discovered Beachbody programs. In a time when we had very little but each other, these at-home workouts bonded us.

So there we were; mounds of debt, me burying my head in the sand working a part-time job in the fitness industry and my husband desperately wanting to see us flourish and find financial freedom.  That’s when I had the crazy idea to launch a photography business. With NO experience, NO money and a whole lotta heart, I was able to grow something from nothing. That’s when I saw the power of belief and that you didn’t have to “have it all together” to run a successful business. In the years the followed, we paid off our looming debt and added the role of “parents” to our resume and I launched a yoga and wellness business called Beneath the Olive Tree just before becoming pregnant with my youngest.

Balancing motherhood and businesses was hard. When God first gave me the vision for Beneath the Olive Tree, I saw something big. I dreamed of a movement of people longing to pursue life to the full; to be transformed from the inside out through the vehicle of fitness, service and community. The irony is that I was trying to build something centered around community and wellness, while putting my need for those things on the back burner. I realized I could no longer do this all alone. I needed help and accountability; a community that would pour into me as I pour out to others. Enter Beachbody Coaching!