‘When you do those side hustles, when you’re involved in making money outside of the traditional means, you start to normalize the risk-taking, and then you realize that it was a preconceived notion.’
Chris Michael Harris is the founder of StartUpU, a podcast host, a speaker, and a business and performance coach. He has founded, bootstrapped, and scaled businesses, and now he helps business owners tap into their own potential.
‘Don’t be afraid to be seen getting started.’
Chris shares more than just an entrepreneur’s success story. He wants to help you make your own too. How do you shift from an employee to an entrepreneur mindset? Learn about the difference in thinking between employee vs. entrepreneur.
– Discerning which information source to learn from
– Finding your people
– Hiring a business coach
– Creating motivation
– Building habits
Connect with Chris online:
Personal website: https://chrismichaelharris.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heycmh/
John: Thank you for tuning in today, don’t forget to subscribe and share this episode. My guest today is Chris Michael Harris, he’s the founder of a Start-Up you, hold up, Start-Up you Podcast and a speaker performance coach. Chris has founded bootstrap and scaled multiple businesses and now he helps business owners tap into their own potential. Thanks for joining me today, Chris.
Chris: John, man. I’m happy to be here, let’s do it.
John: Yeah. So I’m excited because I know you mentioned earlier before we started that Toronto’s on your bucket list so come visit. I wanted to just start off with tell us a little bit more about your journey to where you got to now so maybe go as far back as you would like but share with the audience members what got you triggered to entrepreneurship.
Chris: Yeah. So I say this a lot and for people that are maybe wondering if entrepreneurship is for them or you know I see a pattern and I had this pattern as well and maybe you’ve had this pattern too, John. But as I interviewed people I saw that everybody was either detailing cars, or doing lawn care, or something when they were young like that’s just a commonality we all have. We all had to side hustles when we were in grade school, or middle school or, whatever and that was very much true for me. I was always doing things outside of the hour for-pay model, now the thing is entrepreneurship as a career at that time and we’re talking even the last 5 – 6 years it’s only become mainstream like people are putting an entrepreneur on their Instagram bio and now I’m an entrepreneur but it wasn’t mainstream 10 years ago when I was getting started. Anyways I got to college and just kind of didn’t really know what I wanted to do still really confused. I had friends that had interviews and I’m a senior now so it’s time to get serious and I was less sure about what I wanted to do senior year of college than I was. When I was like in seventh grade I mean it was really, so anyway I’m still defaulting to these side hustles and I have crazy stories man like flipping cars and clothes. Went to New York the day after black Friday and as a college kid literally bought forty-three thousand dollars worth of clothes with a friend of mine, flipped it on eBay within a matter of two weeks for eighty-four thousand dollars it was a crazy middle Manhattan like nuts and parents didn’t even know that I went did it. So I’ve always been doing things that have led me in the direction of being a business owner, providing for myself thinking outside of nine to five so going into senior year as I mentioned college I saw my brother and I saw these two girls that were moving this big fold-out sofa down a hallway. Then the building we lived in Downtown Athens Georgia and I was just like let’s help them this thing, it’s obvious they were struggling and it’s a long haul. Anyway, mom tips were like 50 bucks a piece and I’m like ding ding ding we’ve got something here, let’s just put a flyer up at the front leasing office. I’m not thinking it’s a business, I’m just thinking it’s a way to make money over the summer months between junior and senior year. For me, next thing you know we made eight to ten thousand dollars over the next 45 days, just moving people out of that one building. So anyway, I graduate go off, get a quote-unquote, real job, travelling, sales job. My brother continues that business, moving business just for college students expanding beyond that business. They do like 25 000 next summer. I was funding. I was coming back on the weekends. I was like helping them pay for t-shirts and marketing and they were pitching to their classmates, going to fraternity, sorority house, and stuff like that. Well, I’m really miserable in this job realizing nine to five again. It’s just not for me knowing what I kind of always knew about myself, so I come back to take over that business full time, didn’t go to school to start a moving company. I know it’s not glamorous well, within the next probably 24 months from that point forward, if not less maybe 18 to 24 went from where we were just the college side hustle to hit 1.2 million in revenue with zero outside funding. Doing business in 32 states I had hundreds of employees working with five of the seven major furniture, manufacturers in that industry because we went from just doing residential moves, which we did continue to do but we were also then kind of the trend in student housing and maybe still the case. Today is fully furnished so students show up to their apartment and all the furniture is already provided right, the mattresses, the nightstands, the entertainment centers, whatever, right? They just bring their clothes so instead of bringing grandma’s old oak furniture which we were moving for them multiple times. I think the average turnover rate in college for an apartment to apartment is one year and eighty percent of the buildings turn so it’s a lot of people moving around those collar summer months. Now we’re like we’re playing on both ends, we’re doing the installation work, and we’re doing the moving and that was the big catalyst for growth because these are multi-hundred thousand dollar contracts. In fact, the year that we hit 1.2 I actually turned away two million dollars in businesses that year alone because we just had stretched, we were going multiple, we grew a thousand percent from year one and year two. As a full-time venture growth is fun making extra money but you’ve got to have the bandwidth to be able to support that, so that was kind of my first real official business and now I’ve done a lot of different things. I’m involved in the tech space. I’m involved with online space like what we’re doing. Now I have my own program with Startup U, where you know we help people kind of learn what I’ve learned through that journey, through that experience of starting that business and the other business ventures I’ve been involved with, so that’s kind of me in a nutshell man.
John: That’s awesome. I love the story right behind how you got started so can you share with the audience members what did you study in school and also were there people that put you to this. I would say like side hustle entrepreneurial, kind of journey along the way earlier years.
Chris: Yeah. So a couple of things that immediately come to mind what I studied is funny because I had an existential crisis. I was studying business at the University of Georgia and I just quickly felt that they were teaching me how to work for somebody else and I just didn’t jive with that. I’ve always had a real rebellious streak in me and I just really rebelled against that so I literally just picked a degree. If I’m being totally candid with you I literally just picked a degree that would allow me to do my side hustles and not be that it was the easiest degree but one that I literally was I don’t care what the job would be I just want to do something that interests me and put everything else aside. I don’t recommend that for most people. In fact, if I could go back, no if I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I wouldn’t have just gone to a school that was as prestigious and required as much time as the University of Georgia. Today it’s a pretty prestigious school, it’s the number one public school in the State of Georgia. I would have gone to a school that’s more of catered towards commuters or catered towards people that have a full-time job and they’re doing college on the side. I would have stayed with something because that would have allowed me to kind of continue to explore what I really wanted to do. There was a major compromise for me and always this contentious point of internal conflict of am I going to be a full-time student or am I going to go and hustle and flip this car today, some of my teachers understood it and some of them would dock me. I’d get an A or B on the test but I almost failed the class because of the attendance record so that really really hurt me. So something that if other people are in school and listen to this now, if you don’t know you want to be a Doctor, Attorney you know Lawyer whatever it’s okay to not go to a big school and rack up a bunch of student loan debt if you don’t know that just so I just wanted to slide that in because that was that would have been that’s one thing I would run very differently as far as people that influenced me along the way. My dad always really pushed me, he’s like if you’re not playing sports you need to be making money that was the negotiation, it’s like if you’re playing sports that’s cool and I did play sports but he’s like if you’re not you got to be working and so there’s a constant push to be doing things to learn what he would say the value of a dollar and that really benefited me a lot. So I was one of the only people in between fifth and sixth grade so elementary school to middle school where I lived it was doing anything to make money over summer, when my friends were hanging out at the pool he helped me get a credit card and I’m like out there mowing lawns and using the credit card to pay for the gas. So I really building my credit. I really was learning about how things worked and running a business and stuff like that all those things were really valuable to me. Then the big mentor that I had the kind of made me like pushing me over the edge of like why are you really in school, why are you doing this because it’s obvious this isn’t for you, was the guy I did the New York trip with he was two years older than me was just constantly always hustling, always doing something hustling and so that really normalized what I was doing because so many people weren’t doing what I was doing and I kind of feel like an outsider, an outcast and so seeing someone that was like two years ahead of me doing other things a non-conventional route at that time was what I needed, was the push that I needed to really just go for it.
John: That’s amazing to hear because it seemed like you had a good foundation, your parents or your dad really guided you early of hard work and that dollar starting you up with credit and making sure that you understand like you got to earn that money. So as you mature and you become wiser and you become more curious in terms of schooling and what you like and what you don’t like. Finding people that are different that you can really connect with on that level because there’s a lot of people are comfortable, they’re worried about I guess change they become complacent, they do what is a norm or what everyone else is doing so they’re right and I can kind of connect with you because I was different too. I come from a different culture but it was ingrained in me to want to see what else was out there and without knowing and I would fly and go travel and every time I came back, everyone was doing the exact same thing. I came back with so much knowledge, experience, relationships with people that I can connect with on different levels that everyone’s still doing the same thing, every single day, week with the same people not expanding themselves in any way so I love hearing that too.
Chris: And there’s big something I thought of while you were saying what you were saying and I think it’s important to note for people that again, maybe thinking about making a transition to starting a business when you do those side hustles. When you’re involved in making money outside of the traditional means of getting a job and relying on an employer for your income, you start to a normalize the risk-taking and then you realize that it was a preconceived notion. To begin with what I mean by that with a job which is the quote-unquote secure route to go, you have one client if you don’t serve that client to the full capacity or that client’s not doing well you lose income stream as a business owner, as somebody that’s doing other things outside of that. If you lose a single client, okay well you just probably have three or four more. You can rely upon maybe you take a ding in terms of your overall income coming in but there’s other means, so for me going and doing things where we’re flipping clothes in New York and Manhattan and making forty thousand dollars over a course of two and a half weeks that tells me I just made somebody’s annual salary as a college kid in two and a half weeks so it just starts to make you see things a little bit differently and that experience I don’t think. I would have had the courage to jump into starting my own business, had I not seen the potential of really reverse engineering that risk and what it looks like and I do this exercise, John, with my clients and my students all the time. Where I say, what’s your revenue goal, What would you need to leave your job to completely subsidize your income and well I have to make at least six figures. Six figures are the magic number like okay, let’s break that down six figures, let’s divide that instead of just saying, oh, the big holy grail of six figures a hundred thousand dollars right. Let’s break that down, how much is it per month, how much is it per week, how much is it per day, and how much is it per hour and oftentimes. What you’ll find is they need to make three or four sales a day with their current unit cost of what they’re selling, three or four sales a day, 365 days a year now obviously there’s gonna be days you’re not working on the weekends like that. So account for that too but you’re talking maybe five to seven sales in some capacities or even less if you sell a high ticket offer that’s not outrageous but we don’t practically put things in our way to figure out a transition or a means of transitioning to take away this big hairy, scary thing in our mind about this perception of entrepreneurship. Being so risky and so I’m glad to see that things are being normalized people are playing around with things, they’re playing around social media they’re learning what it could possibly look like, they’re seeing the opportunities and what their lives could be because that didn’t exist for people like you and I probably when we were getting started so I really like to see people do that. I think it really helps you in that process, in that journey take that first immediate kind of scary step.
John: So do you feel cultural because you’re in the USA. I’m in Canada and the culture of education it’s really pushed on us while in many places in the world whether it be Asia or Europe or Africa everyone doesn’t have. There’s no social support system where you’re reliant on making things happen to pay the bills, shelter, and food here in North America. This Holy Grail of getting a nine to five living a comfortable life while everyone else is like entrepreneurial I would say right to then survive to make a difference, to make understand business. What are your thoughts around that because I look at here in Canada and the US we’re rich, like much more advanced in terms of technology, much more advanced in terms of resources accesses information and we can service the world, right? While they don’t have that and therefore, there’s barriers to entry have you put a lot of thought into how things work here versus there.
Chris: Oh, for sure. I mean we are the reason why we are what we are is because of this industrious spirit that we have, so I always tell people this if you live here or in Canada or in the developed world you’ve already won the lottery like really and truly. And you should have a lot of pride in that because you have opportunities that many people sure, I could sit here and say this all day about starting a business but the reality of that is just not as true as it is for being here right now, that all said and I want to make sure this is the great equalizer in all of this on the internet. You can be literally anywhere so I’ll give you an example we employ, we have an entire team of people in the Philippines. I love our Philippines team they’re fantastic in many cases, they’re making three, four, five times. What their friends their counterparts make working for us, they’re working for an American company and for us, it’s a cost-saving play because having full-time work and hiring that in the states would cost us a lot more than what it cost. Just due to the nature of the cost of living you know retro in comparison but for them, they’re making three-four times what their counterparts make, so it’s a huge opportunity and you mentioned culture, and you mentioned education. Again I’m gonna reference the internet because now you have the ability unless you’re in like a communist regime or communist country, where you literally don’t have access to the internet and even then I think it’s kind of hard to kind of compress that and even resist people from being able to access that kind of information. You have the ability and I always tell people this I have a PhD in Wikipedia and what I mean by that is I’ve learned a lot in school but most of what I’ve done in my entrepreneurship career has been outside of that. If you’re taking your education from college I actually think it’s a detriment. I’m going to say, I’m going to limit say this. I think it’s a little bit of a detriment in some cases because the entire system of education that we have built is about you doing what I said before, it’s about you going out and working for someone else and helping them further providing utility to their business and into a lot of ways, in a lot of ways I tell people you’re gonna have to divorce your task master because there’s this whole notion of how you do things and how you succeed in the world and it’s here’s your list of things you’re supposed to do if you do those things you’re going to get an A on the test and you’re going to get a promotion at work and that’s not how it works in entrepreneurship. You may think that and you may be playing taskmaster in your business right now and what happens is as your business grows or as your business ceases to grow, it might be because of this that list gets longer and longer right, there’s more and more things you have to do and moreover, even if you roll those things down there’s an endless amount of things to do in a business endless and so you have to discern where is my time most valuable, what’s the highest rate of return, where’s my highest level of impact on the things that I’m doing not just here’s my list. I’m checking it twice right and so I wanna make sure that I agree the culture is strong. We are very industrious and you’ve won the lottery for being here but also two if that wasn’t your upbringing if that wasn’t your environment because I know you have a global audience don’t necessarily think that you are operating at a disadvantage because you’re not and the internet is the great meritocracy right, it provides democratized information and you can literally access anything you want including this conversation right now, to up-level your life, to change your mindset and to do what you really want to do in the world and I don’t want to dismiss that because I think it’s so profound and important.
John: I totally agree with the internet access to information at your fingertips on video, audio, written, images there’s so many different formats right and if you’re eager to learn you got to go up and see.
Chris: Yeah and the hardest part now is the discernment it’s so much information, it’s who do I listen to what I see more often now, is not people that are uneducated about what they should be doing, they know what they should be doing it’s a matter of they have too much stuff. They’re trying to do because they’ve learned from so many different directions in contradictory sources and that’s the really really hard part is how do you discern and align yourself with an orthodox, you are teaching that is best suited for you and your business pursuits that’s really tough.
John: So it’s very similar to medical, there’s a lot of different diets and fads ways to improve your immunity and health, there’s experts left right and center could you do trust who you really want to go with, so same with business, same with finances, same with any aspect of environment right relationships. Whatever hobbies interests you have there’s so much information and then it’s like all these niche experts, all these people that claim that they are thought leaders and experts in their own right. So yes, there’s a lot of clutter out there, it’s more trying to take it slow because if you do too much information overload you’re never gonna get anywhere, really put your mind to its focus and do it slowly just like as a business owner, way too many ideas what is the most urgent project that you work on that will move the needle, the fastest you might want to invest more time in so understanding all that I mean it’s great to get your perspective. So learning about business and let’s go back to your journey, so running that business, moving business did you exit or are you still owning it with your brother.
Chris: No, we exited that business, not by our choice. Actually, we can get into this as much as you’d like to but I actually got a pretty nasty health diagnosis. I was pre-cancerous for colon cancer and so rather than go through the process of selling that business because it is an arduous process to sell a business, we just opted to move on from that company, we had other things in the online space already working out. Anyway, it’s a whole long convoluted story but effectively I had to put my health first because the doctors were like, look based on your labs you’re not gonna be around at 40 or 50 if you keep trending in this direction. So we did exit leave that business and kind of just moved on from it, love it, the experience I gathered is invaluable and it helps me even today but that’s where we are with that business.
John: So, this is so critical for even business owners, understanding what you went through as much as you’re learning and working probably very hard, stressed your health is so important to ensure that you’re optimal in terms of food, diet, sleep, air, water, whatever you need for nutrition and then understanding that once you are optimized in health, mind and then that journey of entrepreneurship will be optimal as well because if you’re putting too much strain on chasing, you need to really have that balance like what has changed since that outcome for you.
Chris: Yeah. So I think well going through the metaphor that I kind of broke down before about divorcing your taskmaster that was so fundamental for me in making that transition because most people what they’ll do and what I did if they type A specifically type A’s and pretty much only type A’s are people that start businesses. It’s very rare you see somebody that’s not a type, that’s running a business unless they have a particular set of skills like they’re really good at arts, crafts, and things that nature and they want to sell us on the internet instead of working for somebody else. I do see that from time to time but most of us are pretty type A, the problem is that you’re going to attack that so ferociously you’re going to make your list and you’re just going to crush it every day to your own detriment. Especially if you’re younger, if you’re in your 20’s and you feel invincible and large you probably believe you are because you can go out and get hammered and get up the next day and not even notice it, no hangover whatsoever right so you start to feel invincible. The problem is that approach there is a consequence at the end I mean dude I was driving from all over when we’re doing those commercial installation projects you know doing the front for the student housing apartments it was not uncommon for me to I think in a 10-day span. I drove from the distance from New York and Elliott halfway back over the course of 10 days I mean, I was red-eyeing. I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t doing it and in my mind, success, happiness, health those were all destinations. It was this is going to pay off one day and then I can do those things, then I can enjoy my girlfriend who is now my wife, and then we can go on vacations, then we can and the problem is that you have to realize entrepreneurship is not a career, it’s a lifestyle and what that means is you have to be fully immersed and if you’ve already started a business you know this, you don’t clock in and clock out. It’d be awesome if you could do that but things are going to be always prevalent and if you have employees they could call you any time of the day or things happen, your website goes down and you can’t predict those things it’s going to happen, so what I’ve had to do is build fundamental habits that’s the first thing. What are the success habits that lead to the results that I’m desiring, not just try hard, right? The first business I just tried real hard. I just outworked everybody and I thought that was my superpower and to a large degree, it is an important aspect of what you do I’m not going to dismiss hard work it’s important, it’s essential, it’s an essential ingredient but it can’t stand alone. You’ve got to have all these other things in place too, so you have to be educating yourself, so I say be a leader litr is an acronym learn implement test and repeat it’s a methodology you go through, it’s first and you’ve said this before identify what’s the thing I need to work on in my business and rather than jump to straight to implement which is the I in the acronym you first learn about that. What is the specialized knowledge that I need, you’ve got to think and grow rich behind you so I’ll reference specialized to accomplish this task in a manner, in which I don’t have to repeat it 12 times and waste a bunch of time. How can I do it once or twice and then maybe build a system around it so I never have to deal with it again or hire it or outsource it or whatever, then implement, after you’ve learned but then on the final end of that is to test so I’ve built this thing. I’ve built this system. I’ve worked on this thing. I’m not just going to set it and forget it I need to make sure that I have measurables in place so I can make sure it’s working, so I can augment that because a lot of people they’re doing and just give one example of sales because usually, that’s what people are focused on, you may think I need more leads that’s my problem It just my marketing is bad. I hear it’s all the time. I’m not driving enough leads to my website and I say okay what are your conversion numbers look like what how are you convert, oh, I don’t know I haven’t looked at that but I just need more leads, it’s like well you don’t know that because you haven’t tested your sales mechanism because increasing your conversion rate by five percent with your current amount of leads, you might actually have a very profitable business and then we readdress that but you don’t know that unless you’re actually testing and looking at your data, looking at your numbers or whatever that looks like for whatever aspect of your business. You’re working on and then continue to repeat that process now I will layer that on top of one other thing that I think is important and people. This is where they get kind of caught up with this because leader is one aspect of and that’s very important, then it’s how do I decide what I should be working on next because people what they’ll do is they’re aimlessly grabbing books and they’re aimlessly going through courses or they’re aimlessly listening to podcast episodes and they’re not really specific about the information. They need for this particular season of their business right now and what they do is they try to just make sure that everything is okay, there’s no chaos things are stable and the problem with that is that you’re making sacrifices for other areas of your business, that are the most important, that are going to be the next feasible steps for you to take profound growth in your business. You may be putting that off and procrastinating on that because you’re trying to make sure that you’ve got the fort held down. I hear that all the time holding down the forward and I don’t have time to do those things but once I get everything under control then I’m gonna focus on that, so there’s a book that I recommend. I don’t know if you have it but highly recommend it, it’s called the one thing by Gary Keller. So Gary Keller is the founder of Keller Williams which is a Massive Real Estate Empire that’s actually here where I am in Austin Texas and he did what I did, he went crazy, he got himself sick, he had to reinvent himself what the one thing teaches you is of all the things you could be doing. What’s the one thing right now not forever for right now, that is the most important thing, the single most important thing that you could be doing for your business to take whatever steps you need to be taking. What I talked about before discernment who you’re listening to where you’re getting information, stuff like that it also comes down to what’s the highest level of impact that I need to insert myself and focus my energy on right now. So that I can go through this process of mastering that, so that I can then go on to something else so you need to think of it as like I’m building. I’m continuing to build this foundation. I’m putting this lego together. I’m not building like fancy, little trinkets before I’ve built the foundation of this thing that I’m building and that’s what you need to constantly focus on and that’s where it’s such a radical mindset shift for people that have gone from job or school into running a business but is so fundamentally important is what do I work on how do I decide. What’s most important to work on because I’ve never done this before I have no idea what I should be working on. How do I even decide that and then what’s the mechanism that I work through to be able to make sure that I’m doing it appropriately doing it the right way and making sure that it’s built to last built to sustain itself. Not just I have added another thing to my list of daily to-do’s and that’s a really really hard thing for people to grasp and learn but those are the two resources I’d recommend that you really think about as you’re going through that process yourself.
John: Yeah. Thanks for those resources. I’ve read that book, great I love real estate as well. So that’s one of my other interests, nice tell me a little bit about now that you’ve run a couple of businesses from your service-based, who now some online as I believe community build podcast. What piqued your interest like what pushes you to go on to start something? And what’s your theory now that one thing that you’re working on?
Chris: So, I think really important and I don’t remember what book this was from I can’t remember the top of my head honestly and I apologize to your audience for not knowing this. I’ve read so many books at this point, I don’t remember what I want to say. I don’t think it was think and grow rich but anyways, the bottom line is this, it had you identify what are the values that you associate with the most right. So let’s take this, let’s do some other assessments you can do, something like 16 personalities you could do your Enneagram. Whatever but like find out what’s important to you, like what are the biggest things that kind of light you up inside and so for me I realized there’s two things impact and influence. Those are the two massive things that I really want to accomplish in my life and so how do I do that, how do I create impact, how do I have influence and you can quickly see, oh, I get it. I get. Why Chris has a podcast, I get why he’s educating entrepreneurs because if I can impact other people and have an influence in their lives to go start a business that has a chain reaction effect because now they can provide for themselves and they can say, oh man and their friends are inspired and they want to do something right and people listen, so that’s how I decided what I want to spend my time on. So everything that I do now is built around those two things can I create impact, can I create influence from that. Now it may be something different for you and maybe I want to create freedom from the nine to five and that’s what I’m really worried about as long as I don’t have to go to a job then I’m totally cool with that so figure out what that looks like for you and that is kind of the first thing and I see this all the time John and I make sure you see it too. People end up leaving a job pursuing a business not knowing if they’re building a business around their life, so they build a life around their business, they become a prisoner to their own business, they literally create a life that they can’t stand and the reason is because they didn’t identify or think about the factors that are actually important to them. The life that they want to create and the values that they want to pursue the things that are most meaningful to them, so despite the fact that the moving company did tremendously well and we exploded in growth and all those things. I built a business around or my life around my business, whatever the business needed that’s what I did. I called it feeding the beast and I was miserable. I was absolutely miserable. I hated it. I didn’t have any freedom to do things that I wanted to do and more importantly I wasn’t able to got away from impacting the what really got me interested in that business to begin with and I just didn’t know it at the time. I was hiring college students and having an impact on them, giving them good I mean they’re making 10 – 12 an hour for college kids back then. That was tremendous probably still good today plus tips but having an influence on their lives seeing them go off and become doctors and lawyers and all the various things they were trying to do are successful businessmen and using that experience I mean you run a hundred thousand dollar project installation project in college and you go tell an employer that you’re interviewing with that, you did that while you were in school. You talk about a huge resume builder I mean that’s fantastic, so we get referral calls all the time, so I had to identify and I kind of found out through the process of discernment myself that’s what was important to me and so that’s what I spend the most amount of my time on, is how do I continue to do that and how do I amplify that because that’s what really lights me up and makes me happy.
John: That’s amazing and I think you discovering it as you become more wise, living it with your perspective and then understanding where your challenges and what were the things that you could have done better reflecting, I would think a lot of people forget they’re always chasing and they don’t know what they’re chasing, they’re going after more prestige, more salary, more money chasing, maybe early days. You have no idea why during your college days, right? It was always probably chasing girls, whatever it is relationships but then as you become more wiser there’s other foundation pieces and if your dad was around or your mom and there’s people that really you trust, that’s right. Just put everything into perspective and what they see, how you can think differently, and how you want to be when you grow up. A lot of people don’t even plan let alone have goals, right? Yeah, so as an entrepreneur there’s a huge risk and it’s a huge undertaking and a lot of people get into it, not even knowing what they don’t know alone. That’s why the failure rate of business ownership is so high like they don’t practice it, they don’t have coaches, mentors. They don’t have a community, they don’t have people, they can turn to. So when they go into this, they have no idea what even to do, right? How do you think differently? How to be decisive? How do you react when there’s situations? And that’s why the failures happen like they’re just not ready and they didn’t even take any strategic planning. In terms of understanding the audience, understanding the clients, the message avatar all that stuff that’s the reason they failed.
Chris: No, you said a couple of things that are so important. I want to make sure I highlight you talked about strategic planning, you talk about mentors and coaches. Oh my gosh, if you can power stack those two and you can go through the process of understanding your market, you increase your chances for success by multitudes like I can’t even explain how much more opportunity you give yourself to succeed in a business venture. If you do the things that John just said and you power stack those together really and truly that is you’re so much further ahead of the game if you can just do those things.
John: And a lot of people don’t, right? And that’s why have so many failures in every business, right? So if you can share with the audience members what would you have, some of the mistakes that you made, what would you have done differently, and some of the successes that you’ve made like share with the audience if you don’t mind because I want to learn from you, yourself Chris, what you know some of the challenges you had.
Chris: Okay, so let’s go in order the first thing I would have done is embrace who I was because in college, I was miserable. I was depressed. I remember calling my mom and I cried and I was just like mom I just wish I was like everybody else and I knew that, like what I was doing trying to conform and fit inside the nine-to-five box. I’ve always known that wasn’t me so embracing, who I was the first thing and this is kind of the practical step of that surrounding myself like if I was miserable and I didn’t know what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be in the world and all this and that. There are clubs to get involved with, there are online programs you can, there are digital mentors that align yourself whether it’s entrepreneurship or not. Find your people because that will normalize who you are and immediately you’re gonna feel it’s so important, I talk about the world right now and how crazy things are with politics and everything else like we’ve never been more divided at least that I can remember, right? And a big aspect of it is in my there’s this Abyss of the internet and there’s the degree of polarity of different views, belief systems, and perspectives. It’s so rampant that people are failing to feel understood in a sense of belonging. I think it’s a huge problem in the world right now and the problem with that is that uncertainty leads to fear, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hatred and in my mind that’s literally what we’ve seen happen, so when you don’t do that, when you don’t align yourself with people of similar values, of similar interests, of similar pursuits all those various aspects. The problem is you start to feel like you don’t belong anywhere and that’s a huge fundamental need for humans, that’s on our hierarchy of needs. We really need to feel that’s the first thing, the second thing is I would have figured out this is what I want to do I pursue this business, right? The moving company and again I relied on tryhard a lot. I’m just gonna outwork everybody and that’s great and I want you to have that attitude, that perspective but you need to really understand what are the resources your number one job as a business owner, what are the resources I need to put around myself so that I can succeed with efficiency, right? And that’s something I didn’t do so I was learning things the hard way through experience and that’s a fool’s pursuit in business because those things, the more you grow, the more that becomes painful. I learned how to manage cash flow but I only learned, to learn how to manage cash flow when I was owed 65 or I’m sorry reverse I was owed 443 000 and within a 24 hour time spent I’d come up with 65 000 in payroll and I had six thousand dollars in my business account because of how much money I was owed. You learn how to manage cash flow but it’s extremely painful to do so, right? So I would have lined myself up with resources, here’s something that’s important right now I need to read the book, the one thing then I need to go read all these other books about I love Mike Michalowicz profit. First, there’s a million books, there’s a million courses, there’s a million things, podcasts your name, it aligns me with a few that resonate with me that has a similar pursuit or similar thought process that I have and learn from them and then be implemented that those things while I’m learning them because I’d rather have to learn things before I go fail and I’ll be a professional learner. I see the other side, the other side of that is you don’t do anything, you’re too scared to do anything, you just per learn all the time but have a nice balance, that’s why I like a leader because learn about test repeat it makes you go through that cyclical process but make sure you’re putting resources around you to succeed, that’s your number one job as a business owner is what do I need. What does Chris Nee do? What does John Need to succeed as a business owner? That’s your number one job and go get those things, go put them around you and then the last part is you need to find, it’s great to have digital mentors, it’s great and those people like listening to show or whatever. That’s fantastic eventually you need to hire somebody, you need to hire a coach and I say that because this once you hit growth it becomes everything, becomes so much every decision you make it, now has other people’s lives at stake, not their actual literal lives, they’re not going to die but their livelihoods, right? My business when I have hundreds of employees, if I don’t make good decisions they’re impacted by that now. They don’t have work or they don’t have as much work or they got to go find a new job and that can have a big impact on their lives, specifically my salaried employees, you need to have somebody that has navigated those trains before that can help you see things that you are not seeing. It’s so easy as a business owner to have the blinders go up, we’re so in the trenches and then somebody gives us a perspective from an outside perspective and you’re like, oh my gosh, how have I been missing this for two years and then more importantly and this is the main thing you need to think about, what’s the opportunity cost? That is my number one fear in business now is what was my opportunity cost in those nine months, it took me to figure this out I like to go through the process of having epiphany moments and breakthroughs and getting to the point of this is what’s going to work or this is what’s not going to work to make iterative changes, to what I’m doing to make incremental progress with what I’m doing. Not staying in a state of, wow I’ve really been missing the eight ball for a whole year and a half and look at how much better we could have done, look at how much more we could have grown, look at the opportunities that we missed out on that is so fundamentally important the way you do that has accountability partners, you have masterminds, you have business coaches. People really underestimate the power of having those things in their lives and how much it can literally ramp up what you’re doing and you may say I can’t afford those things right now business coaches I mean, I charge ten thousand dollars a month to work with me. I focus on people that are hitting growth stages and hitting scale but there are other people out there. I also sell programs that don’t cost ten thousand dollars a month and that’s maybe where you start with somebody, it doesn’t mean you could be anybody, could be jogging, whoever but you need to be going through the process of figuring out. I know I can’t afford this right now but what can I afford and then how can I work towards affording that because it’s like trying to do brain surgery without having to gone through the classes, to learn how to do brain surgery like how long do you think it’s gonna take you to figure that out on your own and why would you try to figure out to begin with, it makes no sense that’s so stupid, right? People have been successful and they’ve left clues and they’re there to help you figure out how you get to that point. That’s how you succeed so those are the biggest mistakes that I made throughout my process of any business I’ve been in but specifically early on those were the biggest mistakes that I’ve made, there’s some more nuances but those are the big ones that I would do differently.
John: It’s great that you’re sharing this like the tribes, the community and then of course like making action, taking action, taking risks huge, right? And then seeking out people that are much more a couple steps ahead of you or you know maybe very wise like I try to connect and you know speak and have fun and I have so many social circles of business owners from 50, 60, 70, 80-year-olds, different perspectives and for that gives you a better way to kind of think about where you can be when you’re at their age, how they think, right? What they would have done differently? And have a mixture of people that you’re mentoring as well or coaching because then you feel so much better, when you’re actually helping others get them closer to their goals, right? So giving back is huge, learn from people or whatever it is.
Chris: I totally agree with that’s, a great addition to what I said 100 giving back is so important.
John: Yeah, like having fun though, like this is your life so you better control it and have you know freedom and a lot of people who don’t live with fear and they’re stuck, right? Living a nine to five or entrepreneurship they’re in the business and they’re putting blinders out as you mentioned, you don’t have a clue how many people out there are going through the exact same challenges.
Chris: Yes. Exactly!
John: And if you don’t reach out, how do you know what’s out there. So many resources communities books mentors, coaches, whatever masterminds racial conferences because there’s so much out there and this is a world that a lot of entrepreneurs don’t even know exist.
Chris: I know, glad you say that because something that I heard recently maybe you heard this too from Brendon Burchard he said and I’ve been really repeating it a lot because I think it’s so true people aren’t afraid to pursue their dreams. No, that’s easy to say I’m pursuing my dream of being a business owner like that’s virtuous, right? What they’re afraid of is being seen getting started and so a lot of people are too embarrassed I actually just had a conversation on my show, they do outsource you know bookkeeping and stuff like that she said, the people most of the time they don’t come to us, they come to us like years and years later when they actually had they needed help with their books because they were too embarrassed by the fact that their books were out of order. It’s like dude you’re starting a business of why would your books be in order like what kind of weird I would actually tell you, you have spent way too much time focusing on your books. You need to focus on making sales, it’s expected that it’s going to be a mess, you’re a startup business and when we tell ourselves these crazy stories that everything should be perfect, right? We’re like embarrassed and so don’t be afraid to be seen, getting started like what John said, I think that’s so important because we’ve all been there, we’ve all done it, there’s no judgment. In fact, I’ll validate that one of the reasons and I live in Austin as I mentioned one of the reasons that a lot of people have theorized as to why Austin’s become such an amazing hub for entrepreneurship growth is because of one thing and it’s kind of that Texas spirit. Texas is Texas like redefines Southern hospitality like I’ve experienced other than hospitality. Texas takes it to a next level, I legit was weirded out by how nice people were here, I was like what are you trying to sell me on an MLM like why are you being so nice to me and they have taken that embodiment of the culture here and they focused on how do I help other people. What can I lend to you? How can I help you out? Can you grab its cross-pollination, it’s so powerful and business ownership is one of the loneliest pursuits that one could ever take on and especially now with Covid and everybody staying home and you know it’s great. I love the people working from home but now you’ve got to be even more intentional about community and cross-pollinating with people and sharing ideas and going through your challenges together and seeking advice, wisdom and all these various things. So anyway, I’m not trying to re-highlight what you said but I thought it was important.
John: Yeah and you mentioned mindset, right? That thought process of uncertainty not knowing because yes, everyone’s going through similar actions. It’s like do something about it, what is going on in your mind to prevent you from asking. Yes, you’re afraid and a lot of people analyze to crazy amounts of time and they never take action. So the analysis process is very similar to like if you’re gonna go on a date or you’re going to buy and rent a home or rent and buy a car or whatever it is, right? Like people analyze it to death, they spend way more time analyzing but they don’t even take that action of putting in the deal or offer or whatever or ask people out, like whatever you are in life you got to do something to know if you failed or not and no one’s going to remember it. Anyway, you might as well learn but a lot of people are afraid of the unknown, right?
Chris: Yep! You know it’s funny you say that because people the motivation is the big one, right? I just need to be more motivated and it’s like okay why would you assume that you could do nothing complete inaction and then all of a sudden motivation just spawns out of what because all of a sudden you woke up one day and drank, the right coffee like motivation comes from an action feeling, empowered comes from an action feeling. So you’re absolutely right 100, whatever it is you feel like you’re lacking what can you put in motion to spawn that desired outcome, right? How do you manifest that through action and seeking out the resources you need if you want to feel. I always help you with this if you want to be a better marketer, you feel like you don’t understand marketing, okay. What can I do to feel empowered that I’m a better marketer and I just it baffles me that it’s so complex for us to be like I need to level up my mindset. I need to think differently but I’m going to do that by sitting in the same office in my same house, having the same conversation with the same people, like how does that happen? You have to change the environment you have, to change the conversation you have to change, you associate with and you have to be very strategic about it 100%.
John: But it’s okay to fail, right? And the more you fail, the more rejection you have, the more confident you’re gonna become, the more comfortable you’re gonna become in taking more risk. That’s one thing a lot of entrepreneurs are you know whenever they encompass a failure or rejection they give up.
Chris: Yeah, you asked me one of the mistakes, I would add that probably maybe like A 1A mistake is how I viewed failure because exiting the moving company exit, it was a failure guys let’s call it what it was like I had to close that business and move on because it just wasn’t good, right? I was in a not a good place so let’s call it what it was, it was a failure but looking at it that way as a business owner, as you become more mature, as an entrepreneur. What you realize is that businesses are like commodities, there’s a season that they do well, there’s a season they provide utility, income, and revenue and what have you and then maybe you move on and it’s okay they just look at it like it’s gold or silver. I’m going to buy it. I’m going to sell it. I’m going to write up the value of it. I’m doing this and that really changed a lot for me and so that should give you permission, it’s not an extension of yourself, it’s not your baby, it’s okay if it’s ugly right now but so many people they’re just unwilling to do what you said, which is to just get out there and try and fail. And if you do it’s fine, it’s probably going to lead to something else or something bigger better than you would plan for.
John: And in business ownership change is good as long as you strategically plan it and you kind of and that’s why people who fail, don’t really know what they’re changing, right? So if you actually are understanding what the audience and what people intent focus users want and you have an offering or service and product for them. Then it’s good to always pivot or change your service offering, so understanding all that in business it’s like in life you can’t be still and expect better outcomes, right? You need to constantly evolve in different situations, involve different people circumstances as you mature, as you become wiser hopefully, as you grow and learn more, you’re gonna get things, understand things, and why things happen but you gotta take action. So like you mentioned, just a couple of little things right at the end I know we’re running on time. Thanks a lot for all your time Chris and valuable insights. What are some of the major pillars in your life today that you want to share besides business of course and impact? I know you mentioned that quite a bit and influence. And where do you see yourself in five-ten years?
Chris: Okay, so the biggest thing I could say is this and I’m gonna stick to this one because I think it’s so important we can get, in some other aspects of it too but the first thing and I mentioned it before but I want to make sure that we really articulate it is habits. I’m huge. I read the book “The Power of Habit” and it just changed my whole perspective because I understood the brain science of what a habit, a good habit, and a set of habits can do for you. And we are creatures of habit I’m going to prove that to you, think about when you were in college and the first day of class, everybody choose a seat. Now what’s crazy is if you think about it, most people either sat in the exact same seat or in the same general area for the remainder of that semester, there were no assigned seats. This is college you can do whatever and sit wherever you want it’s because we are creatures of habits and we’re more firmly entrenching those habits, as time continues, right? So people specifically in business ownership they rely too much on discipline and willpower. We overstate that dramatically and I’m not saying that they don’t play a part in the discussion or the equation but it’s not we overstate the importance of that. We assume that people are successful business owners, they just have this tenacious willpower, they’re just disciplined, and they’re getting up at 4:30 in the morning. And they’re just on it you know Jocko Willink, every morning 4:30, right? And the reality is that what they found and this is not my opinion, this is what the actual studies have found that. What the most successful people do, they’re not more disciplined than you, they have more willpower than you, they strategically use willpower and discipline to build new habits that lead to the outcomes that they desire. So I am constantly trying to build good habits, you’re building bad habits. I’m constantly trying to eradicate bad habits and build the habits that I want that lead to the results that I desire. Some people are focused on the external and that’s all they want to focus on, right? The business, oh, I just need more sales. I just need more of this or I just need more of that. I need one Facebook. I need to learn how Facebook, do Facebook Ads. Okay, well that’s probably reality, it’s probably a situation but how do we build the habit around you every day, doing the same routine putting the things in your life that are going to make you a successful human being. Regardless of what you do like how do you become the most productive badass person that you can be, that manifests into you, doing the behaviors that lead to you acquiring the skills and possessing the resources you need to do, whatever those external things are, so that’s the first thing. I am a borderline obsessive about the things I’m doing in building those habits. I am like clockwork at this point, John. And I’m a human. I falter but pretty much if you look at my day I try to structure every single day, the same way I start every day, the same way I use my planner, my focus planner everyday go to the gym at the same time. I mean it’s really really nuanced so that I am putting in place, you need to treat yourself like one of your employees. How do I build a structure for myself that allows me to succeed and that starts with habits, so that is fundamentally the most important thing to do. Now let’s talk about some of the other things because that’s all well and good we talked about health. Health has become kind of the center of my universe in a lot of ways, right? It’s like faith, family, and health. It’s very very important to me that I am able to do the things that you want to do but at a certain point you’ve got to have every big thing, every big outcome requires big energy, if you don’t have big energy forget about it, it’s not going to happen so fundamentally so important, there’s a million resources I correct. I could recommend to you but I’ll give you one that I would look into the book called. The book is called “Boundless” by Ben Greenfield. I love Ben Greenfield, follow him online, follow me on Instagram and go through it. It is literally the encyclopedia of health, there he’s got it, he knows John’s my people, he knows that book right there. Here’s the deal entrepreneurship, what you’re expecting to do out of yourself compared to just a typical nine to five, you are expecting so much more output than the average person and that’s not to dismiss or mitigate their significance in the world. It’s not what I’m trying to do here but the level of stress, demand, and output that you’re expecting out of yourself, you can’t and just expect that your body’s gonna be able to do it because you desire it to be right. When we talk about action versus inaction you need to counter balance your expectations with what your body needs, your body is your vessel, your body is the instrument and the vehicle to your successes and whatever it is that you do. So if you looked at my pantry you’d be like this person is a crazy person like there’s nothing in there. I promise you nothing in there that you’re probably, that you would see that you’d be like wow, this isn’t like a superfood or something really healthy or there’s no-nonsense. My sleep habits, I wear biometric devices like crazy. I’m measuring everything. I’m doing labs every six months if not more frequently than that. I spend like five, six thousand dollars a year on labs so the bottom line is this I have big goals, I know it requires big energy so I counter that with a big action period. Health is so important, the last thing I would mention is your relationships and that starts with your faith, your relationship with god or whatever it is, right? I could be the universe to be, whatever you want to be. I don’t know how you do entrepreneurship without a belief in something bigger than yourself because when the going gets tough and it’s going to get tough, you’re going to fail way more than you succeed, we’ve talked about that when that happens you have to have some kind of divine purpose in the reason behind, what you’re doing that except that it extends beyond you the physical being in this world, right? And I’m not trying to sound crazy but it is really real and I would have quit a long time ago from work for that and next is your relationships, right? So my wife is everything like she is my partner in crime so to speak and that relationship is so important my friendships are so important, my masterminds, my mentors all those people are so important if you can do those things, habits, health, relationships. There’s a lot of things that fall into those two, those three buckets but if you can start mastering those, whether you end up being a successful business owner or being an executive somewhere or you end up doing whatever you’re doing. If you can get those three things down I can almost promise you’re gonna succeed, it’s just a matter of the degree to which you succeed.
John: That’s amazing! Thanks a lot for all your time, Chris. How can some of the audience members get in touch with you as well? Do you have something that you would like to share in terms of what you’re working on that people can check out.
Chris: Yeah, so I’d invite you guys and this is something like really really brand new. We really wanted to help people because I was working with so many clients, that they just had gotten a lot of bad information, right? I talked about that a lot just bad data and people just trying things because they found it online and not really determining like is this really what I should be doing, so we had to undo a lot of really toxic stuff that people have picked up along the way, as far as running a business and making the transition and I found people like blowing through their life savings and really ended up in some bad situations, right? And helping them get out of it so we did create a brand new class it’s called how to get your first 100 customers in just 100 days without breaking the bank. Even if you’re starting from scratch that’s a mouthful but it’s important to include all those words, so I’m going to invite you guys to check that out. You can get your invite to that by grabbing our ultimate startup, checklist download so it’s USC like ultimate starter checklist download.com that gives you a seven-page PDF of all the things you should be doing to successfully transition, to running a business and then you’ll immediately be added to the enrollment for that class, for that get your first 100 customers class, you can check that out. I’d highly recommend you guys check out 100 free, literally you’re going to pay nothing to get, it’s like 45 minute class of just really awesome information. If I do say so myself and then as far as everything else goes social media at hey like hello, hey CMH and then hey, cmh.com for my website and then the last thing I’d ask you guys to do is do my friend, John, here a favor running a podcast you guys see the cool part of it of like having the actual conversation, what you don’t see is the other stuff, the research, the editing, the stuff in post all the other things that John has to do. And know because I do it myself, so I have a favor to ask and take you 27 seconds. I promise and you can tag me on social media be like Chris is a liar if it takes more than that, whatever podcast app you’re on you’re gonna do, two things I’ll tell you why you’re gonna hit subscribe and you’re gonna leave a quick review, you can literally just say great chat that’s all you have to do, the reason is that podcast apps look for two things when they determine where to rank, shows on their platforms they look for new subscribers and look for new reviews. So if you do that for John, if he’s helped you out at all and provide any value it’s like leaving a tip for your waiter or your waitress and it’s free for you to do and it takes 30 seconds, so I’d appreciate it if you do that for John.
John: Chris, that’s amazing! I think why I mean all the show notes will include, all the links that you just mentioned and for people to reach out with you that plug at the end. I should include it myself but that’s amazing. Thanks a lot, Chris. I really want to thank you for all the valuable insights, tips, tricks, and success stories and some of the stuff that you shared really valuable stuff. Thanks a lot for all your time and great conversation I would say.
Chris: Yeah, man. You’re great at this. I hope people tune into your show because you really know what you’re talking about, you do a good job so I appreciate it.
John: Yeah, thanks a lot. We’ll be in touch but thanks a lot, if you’re ever in Toronto come visit.
Chris: Let’s go. I will be there.
John: I know it’s one of your bucket lists so let’s do this. Thanks a lot, Chris. I’ll talk to you later.
Chris: Thanks, man.
