Chris Shurian shares powerful lessons on resilience, leadership, and personal growth shaped through real-life challenges, hard-earned experience, and a commitment to growth.
Give A Heck Podcast
Real conversations about purpose, personal growth, financial stewardship, mindset, faith, and intentional living.
🎧 Episode Overview
Life does not always go as planned.
For Chris Shurian, it has been shaped through challenge, adversity, and the kind of experiences that test who you are at your core.
In this episode of the Give A Heck Podcast, Dwight Heck sits down with Chris to unpack lessons learned through what he calls “bootstraps and battle scars.”
This is not theory.
It is lived experience.
Chris shares what it takes to navigate difficult seasons, build resilience, and continue moving forward when circumstances are not in your favour.
From leadership and personal responsibility to mindset and growth, this conversation highlights what it really means to take ownership of your life and decisions.
🔥 What You’ll Learn in This Episode
• How adversity shapes character and builds resilience
• Why personal responsibility is critical for growth
• Lessons learned through real-life challenges and setbacks
• The importance of mindset in navigating difficult seasons
• How to continue moving forward when life does not go as planned
• Why experience, not theory, often creates the greatest transformation
💡 Key Takeaway
Growth is often forged through challenge.
The experiences that test you are often the ones that shape you the most.
If this episode resonated with you, continue your journey with these powerful conversations from the Give A Heck Podcast:
👉 Ken Kunken: Paralyzed at 20, Built a 40-Year Legal Career Anyway
A powerful story of resilience, mindset, and purpose in the face of life-changing adversity.
👉 Why Most People Never Tell Their Story (And Regret It Later) | Michele DeFilippo
A compelling conversation about legacy, storytelling, and why sharing your life matters more than most people realize.
👉 Alcohol-Free Leadership: How Quitting Drinking Unlocks Clarity and High Performance with Toni Will
An honest look at change, clarity, and what becomes possible when destructive habits no longer lead your life.
👉 Turning Grief Into Story: How John DeDakis Transformed Loss Into Purpose
A thoughtful conversation about writing, healing, and turning painful experiences into meaningful work.
👉 From New Age to Jesus: Dr. Laurette Willis on Addiction, Healing, and Truth
A powerful story of transformation, faith, and identity that challenges how we view purpose and direction.
🧩 Key Themes Discussed
• Resilience and perseverance
• Personal responsibility
• Leadership through adversity
• Mindset and growth
• Learning through experience
👤 About Chris Shurian
Chris Shurian is a speaker, leader, and advocate for resilience, growth, and personal responsibility.
Through his platform Bootstraps and Battle Scars, Chris shares insights and lessons drawn from real-life experiences, helping others navigate challenges and build stronger, more intentional lives.
His message is grounded in authenticity, accountability, and the belief that growth often comes through adversity.
🤝 Connect with Chris Shurian
🌐 Bootstraps and Battle Scars
https://bootstrapsandbattlescars.com
📘 Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/shurian.chris.rachel
▶️ YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/@chrisshurian2025
📸 Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/shurianchrisandrachel/
💼 LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisshurian/
🤝 Connect with Dwight Heck
🌐 Give A Heck Website
https://www.giveaheck.com/
🎙️ Give A Heck Podcast
https://www.giveaheck.com/podcast/
▶️ YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/@giveaheck
🎵 TikTok
https://www.tiktok.com/@giveaheck
💼 LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dwightheck
📸 Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/giveaheck
📘 Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/dwight.heck/
🙌 Final Thoughts
Life will test you.
The question is not whether challenges will come, but how you respond when they do.
Your experiences, both good and bad, shape who you become.
📣 Call to Action
If this episode impacted you
✔ Share it with someone who needs this message
✔ Subscribe to the Give A Heck Podcast
✔ Leave a review and help others discover purpose-driven conversations
Full Unedited Transcript:
What does it take to rebuild when everything falls apart? Not once, not twice, but across eight companies, four decades, a cancer diagnosis and a life that has never once followed the script anyone would’ve written for it. Welcome back to the Give a Heck podcast. I’m your host, white Heck here to help you live life on purpose and not by accident.
My guest today describes his life as a movie about resilience, reinvention, and grit, all wrapped in a smile and a wicked sense of humor. I already like him. He also describes himself as a customer service fanatic, which either means he is an absolute joy to work with or completely unbearable to be behind in a returns line.
We will find out. Chris Shurian grew up in southern California, was dropped into rural Montana at 12 years old. Trading freeways and sunshine for dirt roads and winters that have opinions. Joined the LDS church at 19, served as a served a mission part of me in Brazil, and then spent nearly four decades building companies in remodeling, construction, manufacturing, real estate development, foreign investment, hospitality, restaurants, and finally retail.
He led a $15 million construction company, developed a World Waters Edge, pardon me, resort at Bear Lake and founded Cody’s Gastro Garage Restaurant. He has been a finalist for the Earnest and Young’s entrepreneur of the Year. Was named to Utah Business Magazines 40 under 40, and has awards and scars to back everything up.
He teaches. He has also survived cancer. Finished two Iron Man triathlons that is 146 point miles each. Or for the rest of the world, Canadians, that’s 226 kilometers. Yeah. Just to give you some education, navigated a significant spiritual transition after 25 years in the LDS Church and built eight companies across his career successfully exiting for them.
He calls himself an eight times founder, and we will get into what that number actually represents today. He’s the founder of Bootstraps and Battle Scars and the creator of Founders Exchange, where he coaches entrepreneurs one-on-one builds mastermind communities where founders can finally drop the armor and get real and just delivers keynotes and workshops for groups and teams on leadership decision making and building with intention when the pressure is real.
Chris, welcome to the Give a Heck podcast. Thanks for agreeing to come on and share with us some of your life journey. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks Dwight. That’s quite an intro. I don’t know, I don’t think I wrote that. You wrote that, didn’t you? Yes. You borrowed some of my, yeah, that was awesome. I appreciate that.
Of course. I, you have to borrow, right? Yeah. You have to have, take information, you have to do research, right? like I said, I used your website, like I, we talked about before hitting record. I used all the service information that, that was there, and I used Dr. Google to find out more info, right? That’s just the way it should be.
And, at the end of the day and then I’m that paranoid. I take all of it and I put it into a service to make sure that it’s gonna flow properly, that I haven’t missed something that was integral with the flow. And yeah, an average podcast takes me six hours of my life and people, that’s impressive.
Not, a lot of guys will do that. That’s impressive. I do it because it’s a passion, as I mentioned to you, right? I wanna showcase. Brilliant people like you and I imagine our conversation’s gonna be through the roof. So listeners and viewers on YouTube, buckle up, get ready for Chris and all the fabulous information he’s gonna share.
So one of the things I focus on, Chris, is a person’s origin story. It’s people just do not take it serious enough. Our origin and it may not be indicative of our future, but it leaves, signs, it tell it, it can be an indicator of success, failure, it can be an indicator of complacency. And people really don’t look back at their origin and say, oh, this happened when I was younger and this what made me as a young adult, I thought back, wow, I don’t wanna be like that.
What I, experienced from my family, friends, I wanna do different or my life was great as a child. But then when I hit the harsh reality of it, my life was great because I was sheltered about everything. You understand what I mean? oh yeah. Do me a favor, share whatever you feel comfortable as far back as you want to go, as long as you want to talk about your origin and share that with the listeners, please.
Dwight, my, I, had a pretty colorful childhood growing up. my, as you’d mentioned, I was born in Southern California. My parents divorced when I was young, and it was an ugly divorce. I was eight years old and I didn’t really realize what was going on at the time, but all of a sudden we moved into a different house with my mom and my dad didn’t move in with us.
And, and that was weird, right? You just don’t understand what’s going on, and it was an ugly divorce. So my dad wasn’t really great at supporting my mom, even though my dad was very well off financially. It was a very, had a very successful career in Los Angeles. So we struggled, my mom was raised.
Four kids. And she was struggling. it was tough on her. So I was left to my own devices. by the time I turned 12, I had been, I’d been brought home by the police a couple times. I had run away from home. Now I say run away from home. I ran across the street and went out into the field for a few hours and I didn’t last very long.
In fact, a good friend of mine, he was telling me his mom was from Australia. And when she was 13 years old, she ran away from home, got on a ship and landed in San Francisco, California. Can you imagine? Wow. that’s running away, right? But, and so I had a, an interesting childhood. And then when I was 12 years old, my dad decided to retire from, his career in Los Angeles and move to Montana.
And, and I’ll tell you what, that was hard. He took me, I was his oldest son, left the rest of the kids with my mom. And, man, I landed. Not only did I land in small town. Rural Montana, but our house was 13 miles from town on a dirt road. and you’ve probably driven through Montana plenty of times.
You’ve, you know what it’s all about. And, and that was a thing. But I’ll tell you what it was great. I lived there for five years. I, did eighth grade in high school in Montana. At the time, you don’t appreciate what you have when you’re a teenager. But those four, five years in Montana were impactful on my life.
It, like I did things growing up in Montana that I could have never done in mon in California. I got away with things in Montana that probably would’ve landed me in jail in California. I, my life was significantly changed because my dad fell in love with Montana, retired from his very successful career in radio actually, and, and moved me up there.
And I, appreciate that about him. Now. My dad was a hard man. he would, he was military, grew up in a very structured, disciplined German household in Massachusetts. And he was tough. He was hard, he always wanted the best for me. He always told me how much he loved me but man, he could discipline me.
And so I wasn’t super close to my dad. But he also, taught me from a young age that I could do whatever I wanted to do with my life. I could be whatever I wanted to be. And as a kid you don’t appreciate that as a kid. You’re oh yeah, whatever dad, okay, dad. But, but I think, being who I am today is that’s part of me, that’s part of who I am today, was my growing up in California, moving to Montana and experiencing that.
And I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. and I’ve been totally blessed because of that. In fact, what you’ll learn about me as we’re talking is I look back on every experience I’ve had in my life. My business experience, I’ve had my ups, I’ve crashed, I’ve been back up, I’ve crashed, I’ve been sued by the SEC.
You probably ran into that while you Googled my name. I’ve, been hammered and, but I’ve had great success. But you know what? I don’t regret any of it. I don’t wish it hadn’t happened to me, because that’s who I am today, is I am the result of all those experiences. And yeah, origin story, yeah, I love it.
I’m a huge fan of it. It built me. And, and here I am. Totally. Here I am. And that’s, I smile about all of this because there’s so many commonalities. And at the end of the day, things happen. For us, not to us. So every moment that you had, you talk about some resilient moments that you had to be resilient, led to the fact of more success, and you got past those character building moments.
And that’s fantastic. No matter what happened. And you, talked about when I Googled you and what I probably found out, that’s just one person going through a hiccup or a character building moment in life that shouldn’t take away so many people in society use that to take away from all the good, right?
They focus on the negative instead of they focus on the positive that you got through it. You continued to climb in life. You didn’t stay camped, and you used that as a reset, right? it’s, amazing. Like you talked about the fact 12 years of age, right? Your dad moves you away.
German, structure, military. My, my dad wasn’t military, but both my parents are first generation Canadian. Their parents and from germ like, so I, I’m German heritage as well. and it’s just a commonality of how, when you were talking about some of the things, my dad was very harsh, but he was also, he loved me.
I knew he loved me. We weren’t that close growing up. Very successful business owner. And, I learned a lot from him. I don’t think I really tuned in, like you were saying, until I got older, how much my dad actually did for me. How much educated me about how to deal with people, customer service, interaction how to deal with diff ’cause he owned a farm equipment dealership.
He’s still alive. He’s 85, retired, closed down a long time ago. He literally, he. I learned a lot, learned how to deal with the difficult, I learned how to take somebody’s anger and not take it personal and redirect. I didn’t realize how many skills I was learning as a young teenager into adulthood until I moved away from a small community that I was in.
Went from 12, 12,000 to over a million population cities. it’s, it, was a, shock. So you went shock to a smaller I went from smaller to the shock, and I’ve been here, I’ve been here ever since. Yeah. We traded places. We traded places for sure. So there, but there’s definitely commonalities.
But, it’s, good to know that no matter what though, there’ll be more people in your life that’ll look at the, that hiccup, that blip of what you went through with the, I think you said it was SEO SEO. Yeah. Yes. Yes. That are gonna use that as a, whatever. There’s a hiccup in his life.
What all good did he do? Yeah. And that’s not right. Yeah. And the hard part is, just talking about that SEC situation is, when they feel like they want to come at you, they issue a press release. And the press release is bad. Like they, they put all the allegations, after you go through years of fighting it and years of responding to their allegations, and then all of a sudden you’re found clear of all those allegations, where’s the press release? There is no press release. I know the local news company, they don’t want to talk about the fact that you beat ’em.
They don’t wanna talk about that. So that was, yeah, that was a moment. And then I think, what does that tell you though about society? Oh, they feed off the negativity of life. They don’t want to hear the positives of Chris. They wanna hear the negative. Yeah. They wanna throw you under a bus so that they can let their life, which most cases if you open it up, they hate their life.
They’re living a facade. So it’s easier for them to hate on everybody else. That’s right. That’s it. People get some sort of joy out of watching people fail and, and watching ’em get hurt or whatever it is. I don’t know. But, I try not to it, like I said, it stung. It was, it was a little bit painful.
there were some relationships that went away. There was even banks, Dwight, that closed my account. I had banks close my account because the SEC was investigating me and I thought, you have gotta be kidding me. I don’t wanna do business without bank anyways. So there’s things like that happen that I, it happened.
Trust me, what am I gonna do? Try doing what I do for a living and the regulators that are, have me under a, microscope, I trust me, 25 years of doing it. They can be a blessing for certain circumstances and a curse on the other side. But they never admit their wrongdoing, right? No, never. Yeah, you’re right.
I’ve been investigated by people that complained. It comes back. Oh, you’re not, everything’s fine. Okay, great. You can apologize for some of the ignorant shit you said to me over the last while You assumed this is, this, isn’t this supposed to be innocent until proven guilty? No. You’re guilty until proven innocent.
In my, in Canada, under our regulators, you’re guilty until you prove your innocence, which is similar to what you’re talking about. It’s just, yeah. Yeah. What it is, and you wanna hear and you wanna hear the better part. This is how ridiculous it was, is I, fa I found out they were investigating me. They were calling all of my vendors and subcontractors who I’ve been paying over the last year and a half and, to ask ’em what I paid them for.
And so people started calling me and saying, Chris, the, SEC just called me to ask me, what you paid me and what you paid me for. and so my attorney and I got together, we called the SEC. So anyways, we’re going through this process of, okay, tell me what you’re looking for. And it’s we don’t know what we’re looking for, someone reported you to us, so we’re gonna investigate.
And I said, okay, what do you want? I’ll give you whatever you want and let’s figure it out. It’s almost like if the sheriff showed up at your house, Dwight, and said, I’m here to write you a ticket. And you said, okay, for what? And he says, I don’t know. what was the last time you sped and you said.
I sped yesterday. I went 10 over. Okay, I’m gonna write you a ticket for that. That was the feeling I had. That’s how ridiculous it was. So during we, it, we went a couple months and they couldn’t tell me. They couldn’t tell me what they’re investigating. So I opened up my books, I opened everything up.
They started looking through things. They started picking out things, and then they came back to me and said, we found a few things that we want more answers on. I said, great, what is it? So they gave me a list and it was about, they gave me a list of things they want me to look into. as I’m looking into it, they came to my attorney and said, Hey, why don’t we just talk to Chris about settling?
let’s just settle. And my attorney said, you don’t know Chris very well, but he’s not gonna settle for a dollar because for one, you haven’t made any solid accusa accusations against him. So we don’t even know what you want us to answer. And, we don’t know what that looks like. And they, and my attorney said, okay, but let’s settle.
If you have something on him, bring it to us. Let’s talk about it. They came to me with $6 million and misappropriated investor funds. Great. They gave me the list, partial list, and I started working on it. as I’m working on it, the attorney calls my attorney and says, Hey what’s Chris gonna do?
And my attorney said, he’s putting together answers for all these accusations you made. And they said, okay, do you think he’ll have it to us by like the end of the quarter? And this is two weeks away from the end of the quarter? And my attorney says, he’s already given you some information and we’re waiting for you to give us some clarification so he can give you more answers.
So no, we’re not gonna have it done. They said, okay, the quarter’s coming up and, we have a quota. And I either have to have him agree to a settlement or we’re gonna have to file charges against him. We’re gonna have to file a lawsuit against him because I have a quota to meet by the end of the quarter.
Oh, I hope that was recorded. And my attorney said, I, he said, you really just said that to me. what do you think? And he said, first of all, I’ll talk to Chris, but there’s no way in hell he’s gonna settle. And Dwight, the last day of the quarter, they filed that, that civil lawsuit, they issued the press release and it went out.
And then I, had to go fight it through court, had to spend more money with attorneys. That was that. And you can’t catch them to pay your legal fees either. Nope. Nope. Nothing. Nope. I’ve spent so much money on that. I’m so glad you shared this because anybody listening or watching government overreach.
Is ridiculous. I don’t care if it’s, even if they say they’re an independent body outside the government, they still, they’re given too much power to ruin people’s lives, right? Yeah. Now, yeah, let’s go after the, there’s a lot of bad guys out there. There’s a lot of bad guys, right? Go, oh yeah, let’s go after somebody.
That’s good. Yeah. But here’s a guy who, and here’s the other thing. My investors, Dwight, I had, all my investors were whole, like none of my investors were complaining. In fact, when my investors found out there was an investigation, they’re like, why? we’re still invested. We still have our investment.
We’re still in the deal. And I’m like, yeah, exactly. And then when I’d ask the SEC, I’d say, okay, what if I wrote you a check for that $6 million? What happens to that money? Oh it goes to cover this, that, and the other thing. I said, so you’re saying that, you’re saying, I misappropriated investor funds and you want me to pay you $6 million, but that $6 million is not gonna go back to the investors.
Like I thought, where Does that make sense? Yeah. So yeah, the whole thing was a screwy screw that thank you for sharing and thank you for sticking up for yourself. ’cause so many people take the easy way. They buckle. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, and then after four years of dealing with that, it came down to a million dollars.
Now they wanted a million dollars because they just couldn’t, they just couldn’t stand the idea of me walking away of losing, not paying them. Losing. Yeah. And even though I gave them verification of every expense, every dollar, I think I told you, I, I owned a little home in Mexico. They accused me of using investor funds to buy the home.
That was so easy. I showed a paper trail. I said, okay, investors invest in a project. I ran the project, we sold the project. Investors got their money back. And I used my portion of the proceeds that I earned to buy a house in Mexico. Oh, okay. yeah. Just like that stupid stuff like that, but they’ve gotta justify their, existence in a job they probably hate.
Yeah. Let’s be real. And if you’re somebody that works for them and is listening, or somebody on the Canadian side listening, the reality of life is, I’m a person that studies human behavior and you don’t like your job if you’re in that job. Most of you don’t. Yeah. And if you do like it, then you’re sadistic.
But anyway, yeah. So the moral of that story is, first of all, you don’t ever want to get sideways with the SEC, the FTC. Just don’t just avoid it, Yes. Keep it squeaky clean. What happened to me is I terminated an employee. He was very disgruntled. he wasn’t qualified for the job. He had access.
And he reported me the STC and it was just a total vendetta. Just don’t get sideways with him because it’s a hard, it’s a hard fight to win, even if you’re right. It’s a hard fight to win. Wow. And even, not realizing that what kind of a government organization takes a disgruntled employees and puts themselves through that.
Why would they do that without having simple conversations? it’s so much bureaucracy. But anyway, we’ll go on from there. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that though. ’cause it’s gonna help somebody listening. I guarantee it. I hope so. I hope so. I wanna talk a little bit, you joined the LDS church, 19, served a mission in Brazil at 21 and spent 25 years as a committed member before life and growth led you to somewhere different.
That kind of transition touches everything. Your identity, your community, your family, and your faith. What was that journey like? Can you share that with us please? Yeah. that was hard. I, say that joining the LDS church and going on a mission for the church were two of the best things that I ever did.
It gave me a path, it gave me some direction. I was 18, 19 years old, and I was floundering, wasn’t sure what I was doing in life. And so it gave me a very, solid direction. It taught me a lot. There’s the, that church teaches like a lot of churches. There’s a lot of good that comes from that.
There’s a lot of great teachings. They teach you how to be a man. They teach you how to be a husband. They teach you how to be a father. There’s principles that are wholesome and worthy to follow. So I learned a lot. But then for me, over time I felt As is all religion.
I don’t think it’s one size fits all. that’s my personal belief. And so I started analyzing my relationship with God, who I believe in, and I started really thinking about that relationship with God. And I felt like my definition of my relationship with God was different than the church was teaching.
Now I’m not saying the church was teaching wrong, I’m not saying that, but I think we all have our own way of believing. We have our own faith, we have our own idea of what God is. And so my idea just happened to be a little bit different. So for me it was like, okay, I’m gonna take all those things I learned and I’m gonna move on, move in my own direction.
So for me it’s almost like I graduated out of that religion into my own belief system. And my belief system now is that God is my heavenly father and he loves me. He loves all of us. And, his love is perfect and his love is, oh, the word just slipped my mind. But, his, love for us is perfect.
And then I started thinking about how I love my kids and how much I love my kids. And I’m not a perfect human. my love is sometimes conditional and God’s love is unconditional. And I thought, God just puts us on this earth to learn lessons, to scrape our knees, to stub our toes. And he’s got his fingers crossed that we’re gonna come out of it at the end, and, and that’s how it’s gonna be.
So, anyways, I changed my belief and that and that encouraged me and motivated me to move on from the church. And I’m still a big fan. I’m still grateful for my experience there. I still support it. I’ll defend it. There’s a lot of misinformation that goes around about the LDS Church.
and it’s just that it’s misinformation. People don’t understand it. And, and I, it was a part of my life. It was a, chapter in my life and now I’m moving in a different direction and, that’s okay. Yeah, it is. Okay. And it just goes to show you those listening and watching. Chris is a person that is taking the good, bad, and indifferent and choosing to focus on the good, whether or not he left LDS church or not.
It, I treat religion like an organized religion as a buffet. My faith as a Catholic, I, people say, why don’t you go to another church? Because I don’t need to, I take what I like, I leave what I don’t. I’m very close to, I volunteer at my church. I do different things within the church community.
I have a select group of even the priest knows my belief system. And how I, and sometimes if it’s not so cut and dried, you’d have more people in your churches, whether or not it’s a Catholic church, a Christian Church products, I don’t care what it is, LDS. Jehovah Witness. You’d have more people if you were more under understanding.
If you were more, oh, let’s talk about this. Oh, okay. We still love you. Let’s have a hug. Yeah. You don’t necessarily, you should, they might say, you should believe this, but you don’t. And we’re okay with that. ’cause you’re still plugged in, you’re still part of the community. You’re still a kind human being.
You’re still empathetic. You still want to serve. And I have so many people in my lifetime, Chris, that jump from one church to another church, just looking for what they, it fits into their, that square peg, round hole. Kind of circumstance. And it’s just sometimes you just have to do you.
Do you the way you wanna do you? And that’s a, great point because during that transition, I had a mentor in my life and he, he explained it the same way you did, but he said, look, go to church on your terms and maybe your terms aren’t exactly what the perfect LDS member looks like. But that’s okay.
You, if you can go on your terms and be comfortable there, then do it. And just like you said, there’s things about even your church that hit the nail on the head and there’s some things that you’re like, eh, fine, then just leave that alone and go focus on what works for you. And I think, and I agree with you a hundred percent on that, and I, don’t think every religion has it perfect.
But there’s a lot of good that comes from it. Absolutely. And, if you can learn to go on your terms and go take the good from it and just, apply it to your life how you want. Yeah. there’s nothing wrong with that. absolutely. And for those of my show that aren’t. God-fearing.
That’s fine too. Yeah. You worship nature, you worship whatever. I don’t care. All I want from you is you to be kind. I want you to be empathetic. I want you to be tenacious about giving. I want you to be tenacious about giving yourself grace and giving others grace and like you were talking about interpretation of, what, how people interpret us, right?
And how they reflect on who we are or they judge us. I always tell people, just because you step into a church doesn’t make you a good person. I know a lot of evil people that go to church not necessarily my church, but in my lifetime, right? they’re always tossing God’s name around, but yet they turn around and they gossip, destructive gossip.
They do, they, they create challenges for others that don’t need to be there. They don’t know how to walk away because some other person. Or entity. Part of me not called God. The devil’s got ahold of them, right? Yeah. Yeah. So I tell people just, I don’t care what you wanna worship, I don’t care if you go to church, always talk to me with respect.
I’ll do the same. Be kind. I’ll be kind. You want to challenge me? Great. Just do it in a kind fashion. Don’t attack. Yeah. Because I coach people on it and I still coach myself on it because I’m like you said, Christ was like, God himself had it. It is infallible. We are not, no, we’re not. Far from it.
Far from it. So thank you for sharing and you, and just a simple, we’ll stay on religion for just one more second. Sure. Absolutely. Go for it. Say whatever you want, brother. In the Bible we’re taught the golden Rule. Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you? if we could even just live that simple philosophy, how much different would the world be?
Just do unto others as they, you would have them do unto you. That covers the whole gamut. Look at the world stage right now. Do they follow that? Yeah. I’m not saying any specific country I’m talking Yeah. All the countries of the world, no. Every government people, do they treat to the government, treat their pe, they treat their people like that.
Do they treat their outside neighbors like that? Neighboring countries or their trading partner? No, and you get what you sow initially. I laugh when people say, my brute force, the way I always get what I want. Do you really, karma exists, right? It really does. Whether or not you believe in karma, the universe comes back and bites you, the ass.
It may not be five days, it could be five years or 20 years, but something’s gonna happen in your life. That was a direct correlation of your behavior. In my opinion, right? Yeah. Yeah. Success leaves clues, but success always wants a price too, at specific times in your life, right? Yep. Yeah, we’ll get off that part of the soapbox.
Yeah. There we go. We, we’re, having a great conversation though, right? It’s, it goes from one thing to the next, which is what it should be. This is life. Chris is laying it out, right? Hopefully that people listening and wa are watching, you’re actually taking this to heart, right?
If you have to listen to it a second time, go to my show notes page and read unedited show notes. You can read or put ’em unedited transcript and read the summaries I put in for this episode. Don’t let this escape you. If you even got a little bit of a seed in you that’s starting to sprout, keep on watering it, right?
And that’s what I think this episode can do for you. anything else you wanna add before we go on to the next? No, I think we covered that. yeah, that was awesome. I enjoyed that. Yeah. me, too. Thank you for everything you’re sharing. I appreciate your vulnerability. Eight companies, four exits, and what the numbers don’t tell us, right?
That’s what I want to get into next. You call yourself an eight times founder, eight companies built four successfully exited. Before we get into that lesson, I wanna understand what that journey actually look like. What does eight companies in one lifetime mean in practice of life? Yeah. because you shared, some of it.
Just as a side note, you did share a little bit, but I want more details. Yeah. Dwight, being a, an a, a, lifetime serial entrepreneur I actually coined a term that I use in my, in some of my keynote presentations. But I consider myself an entrepr holic. it’s fun because everyone can relate to that word, right?
Anyone who’s an entrepreneur, when you say aholic, they all roll their eyes, they laugh, they know exactly what you’re talking about. And so when I, my first my first company was construction related, and, I was a contract general contractor. I really liked working remodeling. That was my thing.
I really loved it. I got into remodeling. It just started off as a thing, and then I just fell in love with it. And I really felt that if I could bring a level of professionalism into the general contracting world, I might have something. Because, contractors get a bad rap. they don’t return phone calls.
They don’t show up on time. They tell you it’s gonna cost a hundred dollars and it costs $200. They tell you it’s gonna be on Tuesday, and then two weeks later it’s almost done. contractors have a bad rap. So I felt like if I could bring a level of professionalism in and treat my customers like.
They’d want to be treated. I would. And it, did, it worked. I had great success. I start off just with me, then I start off with two guys, and then that just grew and grew and within, let’s see that, that was in 1996. And by by 2007 or 2008, I had about 50 employees. I had the construction company that specialized in remodeling.
I had a construction company that built custom high-end custom homes. I had a high-end custom cabinet shop, and I had a, electrical service company. And so there’s four of ’em right there, And the reason why I did that is because I was doing a lot of kitchen remodeling. I was building really nice homes, and I had other cabinet companies that would build cabinets for me, but I thought, I’m gonna start a cabinet shop.
I, I met a guy who had worked at a cabinet shop and I said, Hey. Let’s go open a cabinet shop and let’s provide cabinets for all of our projects. And not only that, we’ll start doing cabinets for other people. And that’s how that started. That was my little, shiny object. Here’s an opportunity, let’s go get it.
That’s how that happened. And not only did I have those four companies but I was also doing real estate development. So I was buying land turning it into a little neighborhood, selling the lots or whatever. and, and down here in, in Utah, for oh 6, 0 7 the land values were just going through the roof.
So you could buy a piece of land and two weeks later you could sell it and double your money. It was ridiculous, right? So everyone’s doing it. And so I was not only doing my four companies, but I also had this real estate development. By the time 2008, 2009 came around. I’m not sure what happened up in Canada, but down here, just, it was a pretty gnarly recession.
Banks are closing, everything’s going to, can I say hell in a hand basket? Oh, sure. Absolutely. Yeah. And, and I was extended, I was leveraged because, when you’re an entrepreneur, that shiny object is right there and you’re just, you’re reinvesting. You’re reinvesting. So I built a $1.6 million spec home that I built, and it was gonna sell and make a bunch of money on.
I bought, $900,000 piece of land that I was gonna turn into a neighborhood and sell for $2 million. I’m leveraged. Everything I’ve got is out. And all of a sudden the recession hit and it hurt it, man. It pulled the rug out from underneath me. now, fortunately, the cabinet shop was awesome.
It was worth money. I sold it. Had an exit. It was great. The, the electrical company, it was doing great. I sold it. I made some money. I had an exit. the construction company, I sat down, my general, manager, and my superintendent said, Hey, it’s all hands on deck. It’s all every man for themselves.
Take the company, go to work, feed your family. so for me, that’s how that happened. I was fortunate enough that there, here’s a lesson I learned. Okay, here’s a lesson I learned. when you’re making lots of money, you’re allowed to buy toys, right? Why not? You have a cabin up in the mountains, you have a houseboat down Lake Powell.
You have, classic cars. I love classic cars. You can see behind me. Yeah. hot Rod Magazine. I had toys, I had things, but had a boat, had all these things. But I always paid cash for whatever. Luxury item I had, I probably could have had a hundred thousand dollars boat, but I paid cash.
So I bought, a $50,000 boat because I was paying cash. So I was very smart that way. So when the recession hit and things were going to pot I could sell the boat and bring in cash and support my family. I could sell the Corvette, the classic Corvette, and bring it and if it was a fire sale, that was okay because at least I was getting cash.
I had friends that had really nice stuff, but they had loans on everything. They were stuck, they couldn’t fire sale anything because they owed more money on it than it was worth. So I was very fortunate to have done that and that was a principle that was very important to me at the time.
And so that saved me. And, so that got me through the recession. I did have to file bankruptcy. I, could only do so much and I had to do that, which is. It’s hard, but it’s, there for a reason. And I needed that protection for me to rebuild. And I did. And, and I rebuilt, I got, I focused more on real estate development.
I started building a commercial project with, condominiums and hotels and, that’s when I got into the restaurant business. But that’s me. that’s my entrepreneur spirit is I see an opportunity and I go after it. And then, as I’m doing that, something else comes up and I pivot or I do it simultaneously.
so there’s many times in my life where I’ve had several different, businesses going at once. And sometimes that worked and sometimes it didn’t. But, but that’s a little bit behind how I got to eight different founded eight different companies. had four exits. And then I had a couple that were like.
That didn’t work out so hot. So we, probably need to just not do that anymore. The restaurant business, I, my last exit was in the restaurant business. I had, I had three restaurants at one point and, we ended up selling one, selling a building that the restaurant was in. And we closed the restaurant and then I ended up closing another restaurant because it was just failing.
And then I was able to sell the third unit. And, and that’s an exit. And, I had an exit. When you put in this much money and take out and sell it for this much, on paper it doesn’t look so good, but it’s an exit. It’s an exit. I walked outta that deal with money in my pocket. So yeah that’s how that works.
And, I’ve had some good exits. I’ve made some money. I’ve, flipped some deals. I’ve, it’s been fun. It’s been quite a journey, that’s for sure. But I’ve had my ups and downs, but that’s the journey of life though. Just from what you’ve shared and what I’ve, from what I’ve read about you in the last 24 hours and researched, you have something that’s very unique.
As a, as serial entrepreneurs, most people don’t give it enough credit. You have a superpower called tenacity, another superpower called resilience. Yeah. Yeah. At most, there, there’s so many people in my life and it, breaks my heart. They have so much potential. Potential. Does not pay bills, though.
They have so much potential. They have one failure and they slither back into their, into a shell and they never, ever try again. Those listening are watching. Put a bandaid on your booboo and move forward. Yeah. Success. Success. It could be right around the corner. Light doesn’t bend around the corner and neither can you.
So keep on going and then get to the corner and look around. Wow. Oh their successes. But don’t give up on yourself. Everybody’s worthy. And it doesn’t have to be about the fact that you’re searching for that million dollar deal, that thing that’s gonna make you, a, multim multimillionaire.
It can be just about wanting to service and take care of your family and have enough to save first pay spend later. That’s what, that’s the best type of financial advice I could give you. Learn to save, live off the difference. Chris did that very intentionally. Buying a $50,000 boat. How many people do that?
I, when I bought my first boat, I sold it back in 2023. I bought it in 2014. I could have bought a new boat. I bought a used boat, I bought something that could pull around my kids in a tube. It could and then my grandkids and it, we could go and fish if we wanted to out of it. We could have fun on the lake.
And it was an adventure. It wasn’t about the fact of having all the. Fancy, shiny blink. It’s about having that opportunity to say, Hey, let’s meet at this lake. Hey dad, grandpa rented this cabin. I did it for years. Come on out. I’m gonna be out there for seven, eight days. You can stay over a few nights.
I’ve got a boat launch. ’cause I used to rent the same cabin all the time, had a boat launch so I could keep my boat out in the water and just, it was, it’s experiences. You don’t have to have the shiniest bling. You don’t need to impress the neighbor. You just need to live a consistent, happy life where you can avoid as much as possible shock.
But when shock happens, like it did with Chris, he still had an exit, right? That is the message you need. Don’t always have the best, don’t leverage your life for personal toys that lose value so quickly, right? That you really can’t flip because now you owe more than it’s worth on the market. Yes. So thank you for sharing that.
And to your 2008 comment that affected the whole world. Yeah. It did not just affect what most people don’t realize and probably ’cause my largest listening population is in the United States. Then Canada, then Europe, even Russia listens to my podcast Ukraine. nice. not every episode, but once in a while I get a smile on my face.
’cause it says, oh, you had this much percentage in Ukraine. I’m going, oh my gosh, they’re going through a war and they’re listening to my podcast. Good for them. Maybe. That’s awesome. Let’s give ’em some hope. Yeah, give ’em some hope. Maybe they just like me. Maybe they think I’m goofy and it makes ’em smile. I don’t know who it might be.
Your haircut. It might be your haircut actually. Exactly. Like I tell my grandkids, okay, if you’re gonna touch my one little granddaughter, she’s six. And she’ll, she likes touching my head. I say, make sure you make a wish. She goes, what do you mean grandpa? So I explained to her, I said, there’s this thing called Buddha and people have believed for years if you rub the belly of a, you make a wish.
So you rub my head, make sure you’re making a wish. And now she says that to me. I started teaching her that when she was three. She’s in grade one now. She’s six. That’s awesome. Yeah. That’s awesome. Life is too, you can’t take it too serious. But the tenacity nature of you is the way that our country was during the 2008 crash.
You probably don’t realize this, but Canada, you can do the research, has the strongest banking system in the world. It is absolutely the strongest banking system in the world. We avoided, we never had one bank falter. It was all set up by the, government set it up that way. Our current prime minister is the guy who was hired by the government to do that.
He ran the Bank of Canada. Then he ran the Bank of England. Very, smart economist. He did a lot of good things, whether do I like everything. No, but he’s a business person. He did things smart. So much so that your banking system, we went in and, bought in a fire cell. Two of our largest banks went down and bought between the two of them, close to approximately a thousand Different branches.
Yeah. Of two different BA T, td, TD Ameritrade. Guess who they are? That’s Canadian. Oh, okay. Yeah, there was some opportunities, that’s for sure. That’s Canada and Ameritrade’s not a small company, TD Ameritrade. Then you look at Bank of Montreal went down there too, which is the first bank that was ever in Canada that started a couple hundred years ago.
They went out and bought, and I’m not saying that to make it look bad, it’s they, you can put things in place to protect yourself. And our country did that and now there’s many countries that have modeled after that to protect their citizens from a collapse in the housing market or a collapse in the energy market it tomorrow, something could happen again.
So we also need to shore up our own personal investments. And you’ve proven that’s possible, right? Yeah. Yes. You had to go into bankruptcy, but you still had an easier time of it than other people. I know American friends of mine and I have, we have relatives down there too that Yeah. Gone lost everything.
They were leveraged too much. They were, they didn’t see the forest for the trees. Yeah. and it’s easy to go look back now and see, okay, man, had I not done this or not done that or not done this, I could have survived that even better. But, that’s not a game, hindsight is always 2020.
Exactly. So we can’t do anything back. But you can take that knowledge looking forward and say, okay, let me prepare myself differently. So if it happens again, I’m even in a better spot. Exactly. out of all that stuff, is there any, there’s a few things that have happened. is there any one specific failure throughout that whole process to where you are today that really was that aha moment?
That, oh my gosh, moment for you. Oh man. I, wouldn’t say there is one particular failure I think that’s a, that’s an interesting question, but I think where I’m at today is a result of so when I came out of oh 8, 0 9 and I went into my next business, it was small. It was, I didn’t have a lot of employees and I really, enjoyed that.
I really liked that. And I, and then all of a sudden, I was sitting there operating this business and I was going, we’re doing well. And I remember just being me and, and I thought, why would I want to go back to when I had 50 employees and, every two weeks of gigantic payroll and how much stress that caused.
And, that was, a, that was an aha moment, but. I fell back into that same trap. I started growing the next business. I started building the next business. We opened restaurants, we opened a spa, we opened retail, we opened hotels and condos. Next thing you know it, where am I? I’m right back at that.
Stressful employees, payroll, the whole thing. And so I think I had that aha moment once, but I got sucked into, back into the old ways. And now where I’m at now is when I exited that last restaurant. It was for me, it was another one of those okay, hold on a minute. What’s next? Yeah, I’m gonna do this. I come to my office, it’s me, everyone that works and that supports me is subcontracted.
CPAs, you know all these other people. And, And so that aha moment now for me is Hey, I love serving people. I love helping people. That’s why all the businesses I was in were all customer service oriented, and now I can serve other entrepreneurs. I can serve business owners. I have clients that maybe can’t afford to pay me right now.
I’m still gonna give ’em the time of day. I’m still gonna spend a couple hours a week with them. Because that’s me giving back. And, I love that. I, and I do. I love it. I’ve, I had an experience last week that, we might get into, but but yeah, I love doing that and I love giving back.
And the podcast, for example, is a way for me to give back. if someone can listen to my podcast and hear a story, hear an experience that, that inspires them or motivates them or gives them hope, then awesome. sitting here talking to you, if someone is gonna listen to this and, get a nugget.
From my story. If they, whether it’s about the SEC or about religion or about building a business or whatever, then you know, that, that makes my, that, that, makes my soul happy. So that’s my motivated, that’s my motivation right now. I’m getting into public speaking. I love public speaking.
I’m not very good at it, but I’m working on it. I have a coach that’s helped me become a better public speaker. And if my message, if I can stand in front of a group of people for, 20, 30 minutes, an hour and entertain them and teach them some principles that they can walk outta that room and say, that was cool.
I took some notes and I learned some things then that satisfies me. so yeah, those aha moments came. And I think that’s what’s led me to where I am today. Yeah. That’s amazing. One thing that I liked though is you talked about, you sold the last restaurant, you talked about the exit of the other businesses.
What it, what people need to really understand that are listening, awareness and resilience are two factors that are right in your DNA, Chris. You had the awareness, yes, you got back into it. You like not having as many employees and you got back into that same circumstance, awareness, and then the resilience to understand that, oh my goodness, look what I’ve done.
I’ve done it to myself again. And on top of that, you’re sharing it with people. Most people don’t, they hide, they don’t tell people their secrets. So they can serve your whole journey in life, in my opinion. God bless me to be alive. My duty and responsibility is to serve me so I’m healthy, physically.
Health, nutritional health, mental health, so that I can go out every day. So when I wake up in the morning, I am blessed. Thank you, Lord. Now I get to go out and serve you. Let me be alive another day. I’m gonna go out and serve others. It’s gonna give me what you talked about. It makes you feel good. I call it the warm and fuzzies.
Yeah, okay. I’m feeding my soul. I’m feeling my brain. I’m feeling my energy and I’m serving others right? And by serving others, God doesn’t always give me or anybody what we want. You still have trials and tribulations, but it’s never forgotten, ever. It’s in time. That family, you may not know the impact of you speaking on the stage like you’re talking about.
’cause I speak on stage. So you, got that impact of that. I do workshops, I do different videos. I do different things. We don’t always know. What the little ripple effects of that pebble in the water is gonna do. Yeah. So good for you. And, let me tell one more story real quick about that.
Sure. Go for it. yeah. when, construction was going great you remember the extreme makeover? Yeah. thing that was going on, it was all our tv. Yeah. So I decided one Christmas that, I had a neighbor, a young couple who had a couple young kids who had just moved into our community, who bought an old home and they were in the process of remodeling it and fixing it up.
He was an electrical contractor and, good family, hardworking, they were doing a great job. in the middle of their remodel, he lost his job and, they couldn’t finish their house. They were living in the basement. They couldn’t get their house finished. Now, and that, that was like that for, six or seven months.
And I knew him. Like I said, he lived in my community. He got another job, but he was working out of town and just couldn’t get the job done and couldn’t get the, home finished for his family to move into it. So I decided that I would rally my resources and my subcontractors, my suppliers, and, we were gonna finish his home for him.
And because that, that extreme makeover thing was happening, we did that. We flew him to Disneyland for a week, and in that week’s time, we completely just worked 24 hours, 7, days a week. We turned that house over around, we fixed that house. We made it nicer than he ever thought it would be. We put a Christmas tree, it was around Christmas time, we filled the house with presents.
We filled the house with furniture and everyone in my circle just pitched in. and, and so we did what I called the Christmas house. And the news showed up. We did the whole move. That bus, the family saw their new home. it was just awesome, right? It was just in fact. The producers of Extreme Makeover contacted me.
Yeah. ’cause they got wind of it and said, why did you do that? And I said, I was watching your show, and I thought, yeah, let’s do it. And we did it. And I did for four years in a row. I did that for a different family. And, and they, and some were, they’re pretty big remodel projects, but every year my trades and my subcontractors would come to me and say, Hey, are we doing another one?
Are we doing another one or doing another one? I remember sitting in the bank in 2009, working out, anyone that’s had trouble with the bank, there’s a workout, You go in, you sit down with a banker, and fortunately the banker and I were good friends. We had a relationship.
And that’s a huge piece of advice for any business owner is. You when I say, when I say, who’s your banker? I want you to gimme a name. Not, oh, it’s Central Bank, or, oh, it’s whatever bank. I said, no, I want you to gimme a name because you have to have a relationship with your bank.
So I remember sitting in that bank, and her name’s Vicki Curtis, and, she had been my banker for years. And, we were talking about this one big, I think I had a million dollar loan with the bank that I was doing this subdivision. And it was, it was hard. And I said, man I’ve done so much for other people and the, money I’ve put into building other people’s homes and doing these Christmas houses, and, I said something just tongue in cheek.
I said, man, I wish I had some of that money back. And she looked at me and said, Chris, she said, you know what? We’ve watched you do that for the last four or five years. We know who you are. And the reason why we’re sitting here talking to you right now and working this out is because of karma.
You said it earlier, Dwight Karma. They said, we saw what you did. We know how much you invested in the community, and right now we’re here having this conversation because that’s who you are. And we know it. And so that was a good life lesson for me right there. That, karma, is real, right? You do good.
You cast out your, your whatever, and it comes back, And, and that, and, I still, live in that community. I still drive by those homes and it warms my heart every time I drive by. there’s this great family down the road, seven kids great, awesome people.
They still live in that house. They still love that house. Every time I run into ’em, they say. Chris. Oh, Chris. They gimme a hug because, 20 years ago I remodeled their house for Christmas. And, and that’s, and that’s, huge. talk about warm fuzzies, Dwight. It’s hugely warm and fuzzy.
Absolutely. Absolutely. yeah. But I remember that conversation with the banker, Vicki Curtis said, Chris, stop thinking that way. ’cause it is paying you dividends right now sitting in this bank. And I said, awesome. Thanks Vicki. Can you make that million dollars go away? It didn’t happen.
Oh yeah. That would be, oh my goodness. What a story. And they’re still my banker. I still, they’re still my banker. It’s true though. it’s not Vicky, it’s Cynthia. And I know I can call Cynthia, if something’s weird in my account, she’ll call me ahead of time and say, Chris, there’s something weird in your account.
So I still have, when someone says, who’s your banker? I say, it’s Cynthia Harward down at Central Bank. I have her cell phone. I can text her. I can ask for help. I can ask questions. it’s, amazing having a banker and having a relationship with that banker is, so important. So important.
And, I’ll have an addition on that as being a financial educator and planner. Have a good relationship with that person, right? Yes. I’m telling you, right? They can, if they’re somebody with experience and value, like I’m a serial entrepreneur tour. Every business I owned, I brought information, knowledge, right?
Character building moments, highs and lows into the new business and used it as an awareness piece to get better, right? So I’m a culmination of all my clients of 25 year. I’m a culmination of my own life experiences going from being married to a joint custody dad to a full-time dad on my kids. To them moving when they were younger to understanding all of that.
So when I say you need to know your financial person, they, if they’re not just transactional ’cause I’m, bankers can be transactional. Yeah. Not everybody’s gonna be like Chris is talking about, I’m sorry. ’cause I know a lot of bankers to find that banker and that bank that is about relationships.
Find that financial person that can help you learn how to save first, live off the difference and goal set and get your life in order, which is what I do. Find that person. Interview multiple people, get what connects with you and listen to your body. Listen to the pit in your stomach. Inappropriate sentences from somebody, inappropriate jokes or whatever can be a sign. So I’ll get off that soapbox, but I’m, thank you for sharing that. I do agree with you. You need to know your person, but. Interview lots. yeah, Don’t just take the first person that’s got a shiny, bobble that they’re attracting you with.
Oh. Like back in the day here you get a free, now it’s, nowadays it’s get a free iPhone or get a free, or that come set up your counts, whatever. Yeah, no. Yeah. One time it was a four slice toaster, and before that I was a two. Yeah. Yeah. And you brought it up, you said, listen to your gut.
Like we have this, innate, this instinct in us, and I can tell stories about not going with my gut and it bit me in the butt. That kind of rhymed, didn’t it? I should, yeah. Yeah. That, rhymed. ’cause I was gonna say bit me in the ass, but I’m not sure if this is, I don’t appropriate, I take care of all that.
Don’t worry about it. And you know what? That’s not explicit. There’s a lot That’s not bad words in that. That’s not, yeah. So I got no way to say. Yeah. So yeah, go with the gut. Just fall, just listen to it. And sometimes there, the shiny object is powerful and sometimes it’s, strong.
But when your gut says walk away. ’cause, it, and sometimes you never know. Sometimes you never know why you walked away. But also but you gotta do it. You gotta follow it. Listen to the gut for sure. Absolutely. So we’re gonna go on to the next thing. We’re running out time here. What a great conversation.
And we’re not even halfway through, unfortunately. And I can, I’m gonna con encapsulate it down. Trust me. I’ve done this a while. I believe you. I believe you. So you survived cancer and then went on to finish two our man. Wow. That’s amazing. I have a hard time. I can do 5K for Americans. That’s three miles.
But I don’t know if I could do that. So I wanna ask you about both. I believe they’re connected. Yeah. So what do the cancer diagnosis strip away and what did training for and finishing those Ironmans put back? Okay, let’s work on the timeline a little bit. Yeah, I actually the Ironman, the whole triathlon thing started.
After that oh 8 0 9 debacle. Okay. And so training for Ironman happened right after that, and that was an opportunity to just write my mind. Oh, okay. I had a coach, an Ironman coach, and, and he there, man, this is a, this is this great big long story all by itself. But I’ll try and give you the abridged version.
But, there was things that he would give me a workout a weekly workout regimen. And so every day I would look at the workout and I’d go do it. I’m not a runner if you can’t tell, but I’m a big guy. I’m, 235 pounds. What, how, I don’t know how many kilograms that is, but. I was a football player.
I was never a runner. So for me to even be out there running, my body had no business doing that. every week he’d gimme something like, okay, go run two miles. And I would say, I’ve never run two miles before, but I’d go run two miles and then, the next week is, okay, go run four miles.
And I’d be like, wow, I never ran four miles before, but I ran two, so I’ll go run four. And so that whole journey that took six months to prepare me for an Ironman was just that every day I was doing something that I’d never done before. This camera situation. Okay. And I talk with my hands a lot, you can tell.
But, every day I was doing something I’d never done before. Every day I was having a little victory, Hey Chris, go swim for a half hour laps. I’ve never done that before, but I did it. So my mindset completely shifted. I’ve always been pretty optimistic. I’ve always been very persistent.
And but this was a journey of, in order for me to be able to accomplish 12 hours of exercise in one day, which is what the Ironman ended up being. It was a mindset shift. And that Ironman training got me there. I have a whole keynote that I give about how Ironman, and my mindset just, it was a lifeline, right?
So then when cancer came along, I was in the best shape of my life. I had just finished my second Ironman and I was getting ready to sign up for my third Ironman, which was, I, figured in my life I would do a Ironman every other year. So I would do a whole bunch of stuff in between. I would do some half Ironmans, but every other year I’d do an Ironman.
So I’m getting ready to sign up for my my third Ironman. I’m trying to decide which one I want to do. I’m training hard. I’m, I was in, in the kind of shape d do Dwight, that if on Friday night if a friend of mine called me up and said, Hey, we’re gonna go run a half marathon tomorrow. Great, let’s do it.
I didn’t have to train for it. I could go run a half marathon because that’s the kind of shape I was in. And then all of a sudden the cancer came. And I’m lucky that I caught it early. I feel like an imposter by saying I am a cancer survivor because I know people have it a lot worse.
I lost a very, good friend a couple years ago to breast cancer and she, it was a battle, right? And so for me, as I mentioned, I feel like a little bit of an imposter to say I’m a cancer survivor. ’cause I caught it early. I had time to research the treatment options. I had the ability to decide what my treatment plan would be, and I was able to do it, and I was able to conquer it.
I was able to overcome it. And I was lucky enough that I never let it defeat me mentally, because, I just did two Ironmans. I went from, I couldn’t run a mile to running a marathon after biking 112 miles and swimming 2.4 miles. And so for me that was part of my journey. It was just the whole Ironman, the mindset and then.
Cancer. I can do that, I can do that. And I was lucky that I was able to get through it, and I didn’t have to do what some people do when it comes to dealing with cancer because cancer’s a bitch and the cancer is a respecter of no person. it’ll get you and you don’t have a choice.
And I’m, very fortunate that for me, I was able to conquer it. And it didn’t defeat me in any way. It didn’t defeat me physically, it didn’t defeat me mentally. And I was able to move on from that. And that’s, fantastic. We could go into more depth of that because I’ve experienced way more than one person suffering and dying from cancer, especially ’cause of clients and obviously big family.
My dad’s one of 18 kids, my mom’s one of nine, so Wow. I have a lot of relatives. Yeah. Yeah. So can cancer is, yeah, that’s a, we could go on and on about that, but I want to cover a couple more seconds and I wanna try to wrap it up here by 20 after, so you can go onto your next call. Appreciate it. you founded Bootstraps and Battle Scars and Founders Exchange because you saw entrepreneurs trying to build in isolation, wearing armor they couldn’t afford to wear.
What does dropping that armor actually cost somebody? I’ll tell you what, it’s as an entrepreneur, and you can relate to this, and a lot of people can relate to this, it’s very lonely at the top It is very lonely at the top. And we have to put on this facade. We throw on this armor and we say, look, we got this.
We’re confident it’s gonna happen. We’re gonna make it happen. Follow me, let’s go into battle and let’s win. But there’s times I, when every entrepreneur has to take that armor off and just, Decompress. And so I’m a firm believer in that. And the challenge is that as entrepreneurs and business owners, who do we talk to about stuff like that?
Who do we, there’s some stuff out there that’s hard. You can’t talk to your employees about it. Yeah, we can edit that out. you can’t talk to your employees about it. You can’t talk to your partners about it. You can’t talk to your, sometimes you can’t even talk to your spouse about it.
So the Founders Exchange is a, place that we created. It’s a mastermind. It’s very high disciplined, and it’s a place where we create a very safe area for entrepreneurs and business owners who can come in and talk about the hard stuff and they can get support. we don’t share advice. we only share experiences.
So we talk about, hey, someone comes into the group and says, man, I’m really struggling with this employee. Here’s what’s going on. I don’t know what to do. We’ve all had employees that we struggle with. We’ve all had similar experiences. So we share that experience and help give them some encouragement and some ideas of how to move on.
So Bootstraps and Battle scars is really designed to help people hear the stories, hear the bootstrapping, hear about the battle scars and the lessons learned. And Founders Exchange is that safe place where, entrepreneurs can come in and really dig deep and talk about the hard stuff. And, and that’s, and once again, that’s me giving back.
That’s me serving, that’s me providing an opportunity for, owners and founders and entrepreneurs to, to let down their armor once in a while, going to a safe place. Then they walk outta that room, they put it back on, and they get back to work. And, and that’s, been a lot of fun.
It’s been a lot of fun. I’ve been an opportunity. I’ve, it’s served me over the years and now I’m helping it, helping by introducing that to other people to help serve them as well. That’s amazing. And on top of that, we don’t have a lot of time to talk about it, but you have a brand new podcast that you released in November, I believe you said?
Yes. so I’ll make sure that I put some of that in the show notes too, so people can come check out your podcast as well. Yeah. And you’re, you are the grant, you are the podcast Master Dwight. you’re, I think you said I’m number 291. Yes. Do I get a trophy for that? Do I should get a little trophy or a plaque?
Two. Two. Dr. the lady I interviewed Dr. T Chick, that’s 290, she gets that. Sorry. Sorry. I’ll take out that word. I missed it. The woman. The woman. The woman, not chick. Yeah. Because nowadays I can’t, yeah, we don’t wanna get, we don’t wanna get canceled dwy. It’s too really quick. Yeah. Too much cancel culture, right?
Yeah. But I did, I started this podcast and it’s fun. I’ve had so much fun with it. And we just, it is a blast. Oh yeah. We recorded episode. 13 last week. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I’m gonna keep going. I just, I love it. It’s fun. Awesome. Awesome. Maybe I’ll be, maybe I’ll be gracing your podcast stage if I’m, worthy, but we’ll talk about that time.
I might, make you two nine. I might make you my 2 92 just to point. Oh, you’re gonna, so I gotta weigh a few years. Absolutely. That, hurt. That hurts right here. We’ll see if we can expedite that for you. Chris, if you could leave one message with the entrepreneur or person listening right now who is in the middle of their hardest chapter, the one where quitting would honestly make sense.
What would you want them to hear? What would you tell them about giving a heck and never giving up? Dwight, I have had failure. I have been at the bottom, I’ve been knocked down. And the, and one of the things that always gets me through those moments. Is realizing that it’s temporary. It is temporary, it’s not permanent, and there’s only one direction to go when you’re at the bottom and that is up.
And so you don’t give up, you keep fighting, you keep doing and you keep going because it is temporary. And I promise, I’ve been down, I’ve been low. We’ve all, we all know people that have hit rock bottom and have clawed themselves back. And yeah, just look at failure as a learning experience. It’s temporary.
And move ahead. Keep going. That’s a great message. So I can respect your time. We’re gonna, the last thing I need to know is what’s the best way for people to reach out to you? I’ve got this fancy website on the interweb. Have you heard of it? It’s a new thing, it’s called Bootstraps and Battle Scars.
It’s, bootstraps and battle scars.com. you can access some of my podcasts on there. you can connect with me, contact me. You can find all my social media login or tags, whatever that is. And, yeah, that’s it. That’s the place. And I love talking to people. I love learning about people.
I love helping people. So if anyone feels inspired or motivated or could use a little whatever, happy to help out. I’m, writing a couple little, eBooks right now, so I’ll put those on the website so people can access them. And, yeah, I’m, easy to get ahold of and I love to talk to people.
That’s awesome. For those new to the Give a Heck podcast, go to give a heck.com. Go to the podcast tab. At the top you will see a scroll down. You’ll see a picture of Chris, as well as chapter summaries, details of all his social media, his website that he mentioned, which by the way, is actually a pretty nice website.
I did check it out. Yeah. And make sure that, you can. Don’t just let this drop, go in there. Click on it, Adam, as a friend, as a connection on social media. You can check out the chapter summaries. If there was one section that really resonated with you and you don’t wanna listen to the whole show, you can go and look at specific segments.
It’ll be broken down. I ensure that’s done. And for those that are, ’cause I do have some people that love it, their full unedited transcript will be there as well. So you can go through and look at it. So Chris, any last comments you’d like to say before I wrap up the show? Ah, DI, this has been great.
I appreciate you giving me the time. I feel honored to be on your podcast. and, entrepreneurship is what makes the world go round. Like every business, every every company that you could possibly imagine started somewhere with someone who had a vision or had an idea, and they acted on it and they went after it.
And, like Thomas Edison, there’s a famous story about Thomas Edison. how many times did he fail in inventing a light bulb? It took him 10,000 tries before he got it right. So he never failed once. He just learned 10,000 ways to not do it. And so I think entrepreneurship is a, is great.
And if you have an idea, have a vision, have a, way of doing something different or doing something better than go after it. Get after it. And there’s so many places you can learn and just keep learning and be successful and, it’ll be worth it. Fantastic. Thank you for that last message. So again, Chris, thank you for the honesty, the humor, and for bringing every scar into the conversation without flinching.
That is rare. Our audience felt it, and I know they appreciate it like I do. For everyone listening today, I want you to take something away from this conversation beyond the business lessons. Those tho, those are real and worth applying. What strikes me the most about Chris is not their awards or their portfolio or the Ironman finishes, it’s the fact that he turned every star into something useful, not just for himself, but for the people who come after him.
That is what experience in the hands of someone genuinely committed to others looks like. That’s what service looks like. Every hard chapter you have lived through is not wasted. It is material. The question is whether you’re willing to use it and whether you’re willing to stop carrying it alone. If today resonated with you, go find Chris and continue the conversation.
As I mentioned, go to give a heck.com. To the listeners and viewers, thank you so much for investing time with us today. We do not take that lightly. If this episode resonated with you, please share it. When you share an episode, it helps this message reach more people so they too can give a heck and live with purpose and intention.
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I look forward to reading your comments. This has been Dwight Heck. If you want to check out other podcast episodes or today’s show notes, please check out my website. Give a heck.com, and until next time together, let us all strive to give a heck.