At 19, Dillon Phaneuf fell five stories and woke up in a hospital bed with a broken spine and a body he no longer recognized. The recovery that followed nearly took everything from him. But it also set him on a path that would change not just his own life, but the lives of more than 1,500 people over the next 15 years.
Today, he is the founder of Rebuild Coaching, a deep one-to-one coaching experience built around physiology, behavior, and identity.
The fall that changed everything
Dillon Phaneuf grew up in a family where obesity was part of everyday life. Most of the men around him were hundreds of pounds overweight, and because it was normal at home, he never questioned it. “I just thought that’s the way I was,” he says. By the time he was 19, he was 150 pounds overweight and had never once tried to change it.
After falling five stories, the life-changing accident broke his spine from L1 through L5, along with both heels, his left ankle, and his right elbow. When he woke up in the hospital, the doctors had more news: he had high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and was pre-diabetic.
Over 16 weeks of recovery, Dillon became addicted to prescription painkillers, and the life he had started to unravel. “As a young man, it was too much for me to handle,” he admits. “I didn’t have the emotional capacity, and my life fell apart.”
The turning point came from his mother. She came to his house one day, prayed over him, and told him “Dillon, this is not where your story ends. The path you are headed down is the path to hell.”
Dillon took it to heart.
Starting with a walk
Dillon’s recovery didn’t begin with a program. It began with walks, then with cutting back on fast food and alcohol, one small change at a time. “All of our inputs always equal the outputs that we see in our lives,” he says. Over the next 18 months, those inputs added up to 150 pounds lost and his first bodybuilding competition.
What drew him in was the sense of control. As someone who craves certainty, he loved discovering that his body was something he could actually take charge of.
But the real reason he became a coach came later is when he started helping other people make the same change. Being of service turned out to mean more to him than his own transformation ever had, and 15 years and more than 1,500 clients later, that is still what drives him.
Betting all on one thing
A few years ago, Dillon’s business life looked like a success by any measure. He owned multiple supplement stores, ran a gym, and had a coaching business, all of which were doing well.
But his ambition was specific: “I want to be one of the greatest human development coaches that’s ever lived.” He knew he couldn’t be the best in the world at three things at once.
“It was very hard to walk away from large businesses and people circles, and more importantly, identities,” he says. “Being like a local celebrity around these things. It was hard to walk away from that status.” He did it anyway and went all in on one-to-one coaching, which he believes is the one thing he was truly made to do.
Where Everfit comes in: 15 years of experience in 1 system
Like many coaches, Dillon had run his business on spreadsheets and WhatsApp for years, and he’d become efficient at it. But the Rebuild needed more room than that setup could offer.
With Everfit, he centralized 15 years of experience in one place: his workout videos, his resources, and the education he had built over his career.
When a new client joins, their calendar is already filled with both elective and non-elective tasks designed to help them level up, and his education is dripped out to them over time rather than delivered all at once.
Without having the system to be able to do that, and the communication, it would be very difficult. So, I’ve loved Everit. My experience with it is amazing and I’m looking forward to scaling as a partner with them as the Rebuild grows
Dillon Phaneuf, Rebuild Coaching
That structure is what lets the Rebuild grow beyond a standard online coaching experience. Alongside the day-to-day program, Dillon runs weekly problem-solving, deep one-to-one and community calls, and in-person events.
Everyone deserves a chance
While the industry tells coaches to niche down as narrowly as possible, Dillon works with white collar and blue collar clients, younger and older.
The truth is is I want to coach human beings that have pain, that have trauma, and that have tried things before and not been able to keep them. The amount of people that change and create weight loss and health outcomes once in their life is huge, but people never keep it.
Dillon Phaneuf, Rebuild Coaching
Rebuild Coaching is designed to work against the quick fixes the industry sells. Its framework covers physiology, behavior, and identity, and it draws on ideas like the six human needs to help clients align their health with their values, so they become someone who can carry their goals for the long term.
Dillon sees his work as breaking a generational pattern. When his clients change, they bring those habits home and teach their kids and families how to keep them going. The health gets passed down instead of the weight.
All on the future
Rebuild Coaching has a mission to help a million people find their best health. He credits the team around him and a community focused on personal development, where, as he puts it, a rising tide lifts all ships.
Getting there, he believes, will require him to grow again. He wants to write a best-selling book, speak on stages around the world, and build a business that reaches far more people than it does today. That means breaking out of identities that might be holding him back, which is the same work he asks of every client, whether their journey is about health, a career, or a relationship. “If we can get less focused on the outcome and a lot more focused on who we’re becoming on that journey, I promise that that is wisdom worth gold and rubies at the end of your life,” he says.
Ready to make coaching seamless for you and your clients? Start your free Everfit trial today.
Dillon’s story is part of our 6th Anniversary: All On Coach Spotlight Series.
In it, we sit down with coaches in the Everfit Community to talk about the moment they went all in: the decision, the risk, and what it took to follow through. Each story comes back to the same belief. Real progress isn’t powered by willpower alone.
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