Even though Chris and I had never met, we keep running into each other online through various groups and even being connected to a few of the same real friends, not just Facebook friends, but old school actual friends.
I could tell the moment I started looking more into what Chris was doing, he was definitely someone I had to have on the podcast. He’s one of those people that you can tell are grateful for what life has given him, how he’s gotten through some real world intense situations and ultimately, he’s a giver and wants to help everyone rise up and ignite or reignite the rockstar within.
It was a real pleasure being able to talk with such a like-minded person and I know over time and once COVID-19 fades away, Chris and I will most likely become lifelong friends.
I hope you enjoy the wisdom that Chris shares with us and take a real look at RISE UP ROCKSTAR if you’re interested in having the support of an amazing mastermind group to help you to the next level in your life and/or business.
Thanks for listening!!
Chris Carnal:
Chris’ Websites:
Connect with Chris:
LinkedIn Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriscarnal/
Personal Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ccarnal1
Rise Up Rockstar: https://www.facebook.com/groups/274304466925636/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriscarnal
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chris_carnal
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfPQNMEYjUuXu-vxE_XA5EQ
Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: “Out and About“, Song: “Chicken & Scotch” 2014
Andy’s Links:
http://andygalore.com/
https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass
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Transcript
Joe: Everyone, welcome, thank you so much for joining me on my show. I really appreciate you lending me your ears and listening to the podcast. I have a really special guest on today after running into him a couple of times back and forth on different websites, Facebook. We’re actually in some programs together. Chris Carnel is my guest and he’s like a Renaissance man after all the stuff that I looked up because I like to educate myself on my guess. I was just tired looking at his website and all the things that he has done so. Chris, welcome and thank you so much for being here.
Chris: Joe, I appreciate it, but it’s an honor to be here. I feel all of a sudden, like I’m a jack of all trades and a master of none after that description.
Joe: Not at all, man, it’s just like you’re doing all these things that I aspire to do and we’re kind of working towards those goals and our own separate paths. But you’ve done a lot and you’re continuing to do it. I just your core message is just really cool and Rise Up Rockstar is this whole program that you have and excited to learn so much more about it.
Chris: We have thank you, it’s you know, it’s been in me for a long, long time, and I think you alluded to some of the intersections of our recent past, and I think it’s all of those things that I’m so grateful for that we’re out in all of this additional knowledge so that we can get better for the purpose of serving and helping others. And that’s really how rising up rock star was born. I grew up in Brazil and I had some really interesting experiences throughout my life that have led to these core tenets and core beliefs. And one of them is it’s a it’s a Bob Marley statement and it’s “Everything is going to be alright”. And the way that I got there, just three really important things happened in my life. One of the first things when I was young was I’m a little kid, nine and a half, 10 years old, sitting in the back seat of a car. And I see my dad just jump out and run into this crowd. And I couldn’t figure out what was happening. And he he he’s getting kicked and all these grown men are standing around. I couldn’t tell if it was a fight. I couldn’t tell if it was a conversation. And it turned out that there were these two little boys that Brazil, Sao Paulo, Brazil, where we live, there’s there is the half of one percent. And then there was everybody else at the time. So it was feast or famine for a lot of these families. And these these two young kids had come into this art school where we were and stolen some food.
Chris: And these adults, unfortunately, took it upon themselves to penalize these kids. And my dad saw that. And being a righteous guy, he jumped out of our car and ran over and jumped on the kids to protect them, putting himself at risk. And my mom was crying and she was screaming. And I’m sitting in the back seat not quite knowing what’s going on. My sister, fortunately, was too young to really recognize what was happening. And I got the boys released and then came back in the car and he was crying and everybody just started crying before we figured it out. My mom my mom kind of gave me one of these. Everything’s going to be OK. Everything’s going to be OK moments. And I thought, I don’t know how everything’s going to be OK coming out of that, but “Everything is going to be alright.” I’ll trust you. And in that whole scene, philosophy kind of evolved over time through different life lessons. And the most poignant of all of it was you lived in New York for a long time, and I was working in New York while my wife was pregnant with our second child. I got a call one day from an emergency room physician at a hospital in Scottsdale. And I said, “Mr. Carnel, my name is Dr. James Zozobrado and I am the emergency room physician. Your wife has gone into labor. You’re talking about she’s twenty seven weeks pregnant. How could she possibly go into labor? I mean, I’m in my office in New York right here talking to this guy kind of in shock, thinking this just doesn’t seem right.
Chris: And he said there was an infection. There’s a baby. The temperature was very high. I don’t remember exactly the temperature itself. And we’ve got to take it up. We’ve got to take her out. I said, is my wife OK? And they said, so far works OK. And so I can book a ticket. All the airports. I mean, you know how busy the airports are. They’re right. By the grace of God. I found a ticket a couple of hours later. I could fly direct from Newark to Phoenix. And as I’m leaving midtown, we decided to go across the George Washington Bridge instead of cutting through the tunnel. And I’ve had drivers pulling up and and we’re crossing the bridge in. This onramp comes is right next to me on the right hand side. And this little white car comes flying up the onramp. Literally, it looks like it’s about to tip over on to side wheels. It comes up and cuts us off. And I thought I was going to get hit. I was bracing for impact. I was kind of in this funky place that I you don’t really want to go back to. And as it pulls up and gets ahead of us, I look over realizing we didn’t get hit. And I looked down at the bumper and there’s a bumper sticker on his car and it said, “Everything is going to be alright.” And I just went, WOW!,
Joe: Yes.
Chris: You know, that that that phrase has just resonated in my life time and time and time again. And very long winded. Lee, sorry for that. It’s how Rockstar was born to you when when covid hit and everybody was in their initial phase of I don’t know what this means to me. I’m going into my own panic. I have a lot of friends like you and your listeners that own businesses, and many of them are second generation business owners where their employees have been there. The families have been employees for decades. And and my friends who are running the businesses today were afraid of the time. And actually their fears, unfortunately, came true. They had to. Lay off 40, 50, 80 percent of their workforce, and it was just running rampant through my community and everybody around me seemed to be coming to me with these same questions and concerns. And then what do we do during the lockdown? How do we do this? What? I’m scared. I’m worried. I don’t know what to think. I don’t know where to go. And I finally said, I’ve got to do something about this. I’ve been leading large scale teams for a long time. And what I found is the reason that I’m typically put someplace is because I’m pretty good at leading through uncertainty when there is no certainty in that environment. And so Rock Star was born out of my desire to help all of these people get together in a mastermind where they could just get on a phone call or on a Zoom call and see each other and talk to each other about the issues that they were dealing.
Joe: Was this always remote when you started it or had it ever been where you actually all got together in a boardroom somewhere?
Chris: You know, we have never been together
Joe: Ok.
Chris: And it’s in a generation now going into its third generation and I built this, we built this group together of 20 people that some senior leaders, CEOs, board chairs, senior executive organizations really just to talk things through. And Rock Star was all about how what happens when you get knocked down, because we all get knocked down to our knees at some point in our lives. And it’s never that time when you’re knocked down. It’s it’s how you get back up. And what I have learned is the way you get back up is by serving other people. So my own selfish version of my my subscription and rock star was I’m helping these people. And that’s going to help me get back up, too, because I’m not sure what’s happened. So we just went from there. And it’s been it’s been incredible.
Joe: Is there different levels to that, so I know there’s a high level one because I saw that one and I know that the amount of revenue per year number of employees is that that’s a different program. So besides that one up and you can totally talk about that in a second, but is there other levels underneath that or just one level? And then it’s the jump up to the larger one?
Chris: If so, what we did initially. Great question, thanks for asking. What we did initially was we had the incubator mastermind, right, which was really just testing the hypothesis of are we going to be able to are these business leaders even going to be able to communicate with each other the way that they’re communicating with me individually? If I get 20 people in a room, are they going to feel like I’ve got to sit up like this and be really tough? And I can’t be there’s no way that I can actually open myself up in this particular venue because they might be a competitor that’s on the other end of the phone and they might smell weakness or sense weakness, but it was the exact opposite. So that incubator group of 20 exists and it evolved into a different type of group where I started to sense that some of the people in there wanted some additional challenges. So in the initial incubator mastermind group, what happens is I’ll come in with a topic and talk about the topic and train on the topic for 15 to 30 minutes. And then for the next 30 minutes or so, we’ll have a group conversation. And then for 30 minutes, we’ll have someone in a hot seat that’s actually dealing with something that they need to really get out that that week, the evolution or a tributary from that kind of river, if I may, is what we call a ninety, which is a 90 day challenge for three goals, three particular lessons and 90 days to go after them and hit them.
Chris: And that’s been a real fun process, too, which is different. And now the next evolution, the incremental evolution to that, too, is the digital academy that I’m building out so that it doesn’t have to be like this directly because not everybody can hop on a call at two o’clock Pacific Time, five o’clock Eastern. A lot of people like to do things on their own. So we’re building that out and surrounding that with an inner circle group so that we still have the the face to face contact at a certain schedule. But everybody can do things at their own pace. However, they still get the same type of community that they can build on in a Facebook group and in all the other ways that we’re doing that. So it’s integrated into three different things now. And I’m sure is as proof points continue to be made and as people tell me that they’d like to do something one way or the other, and we go and we test that, that they’ll be more versions of it to.
Joe: Yeah, that’s really cool. Can you give me an example of like if you walk into the let’s say for argument’s sake, that we’re in this virtual world right now? Right. So you walk into one of these sessions that you’re having and you bring in this topic. What would an example topic be?
Chris: Lots of boys. So one of the one of the things that I love doing is talking about identity, right? Because in order for people to grow through any type of trauma or crisis or event like we’re facing now, you can’t just look straight into it because you get bogged down with the weight of whatever you’re going through. I’ve always found and I was taught it’s really healthy to figure out who you are, who you want to become and what the path is in between there. So what that connection gap is, and I call it the identity gap, very similar to what’s what’s the trouble you’re facing? What’s the solution that you want and how do you get there? So with respect to this, actually three sessions consecutively, it’s building out your identity through strengths, values and then your own core operating principles and tying those back to those of your company or if you’re the leader of the company, getting your people to do the exercise and then tying together so that you’re tying together core values. You’re leading with empathy at that point. You’re also leading with authority where you’re guiding people down a particular path. So we focus for three weeks on building up that kind of where are we now phase and where do we want to go and what do we have to do in between? And we handle that with individual strengths, individual values and individual operating principles and then putting them together. Another big one with leaders that I found is kind of a newer terminology, which is imposter syndrome. We face that in so many different ways and so many people talk about it.
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: But if you’re not doing what you’re doing or you’re not doing what I’m doing, you don’t really know what that term imposter syndrome is. If you ask somebody if they’ve ever walked into a boardroom and felt like they’re the dumbest person in the room or the the person that has the least to contribute or whatever it might be, or if they’re the luckiest one to be in there and they’d never really accomplish something, they’ll all say, oh, yeah, yeah, that was me. And then you can you can ask how that manifests in their day to day lives. And so we spend time doing that. But a lot of it is is really just building up that base at a higher level than where they were before. So that while it’s not ever completely infallible, it’s a lot stronger. So if you do happen to go to here and then fall back, you’ve got a higher base than where you were before. And you’ve learned some skills along the way that typically a male senior leader won’t get into. You’ll you think you’re a tough guy
Joe: Mm
Chris: And
Joe: Hmm.
Chris: Your feelings don’t matter. And I can power through this and all those kinds of things. I had a guy this morning when I was talking to him, somebody that I coached, and he’s on the fringe of Rockstar and he’s not in it. He’s kind of tipping his toes in every now and then. And he was going to the doctor to get some blood drawn because he’s got a high iron level. And I said, I don’t know a lot about high iron, but I know a lot about health and fitness. Have you ever tracked your sleep patterns? And he goes, Oh, man, you are such a hippie. What do you talk about? Track and sleep that I said hippie. When’s the last time somebody use that word? It’s not over the age of 50. And so we got a kick out of it. But it’s really it’s introducing concepts that people sometimes think they’re a little bit above or a little bit beyond because they want to focus on others so they don’t spend enough time focusing on themselves. And that’s why identity and health and mindset is a little bit overused. So it’s not as much mindset. It’s more about how you figure out your goals and what your core beliefs are and what’s holding you back and what we need to do to move forward. So the crux of rock star is we all get punched in the face. It’s what we do after that and how we can help others understand that they’ll get punched in the face, too, and what they can do. So paying it forward all the way through.
Joe: Is there a balance in the like how do you do you cap it at 20, so let’s say all of a sudden there’s you know, you have another session. I see that you have sessions that ended in July. I don’t know if I saw anything in August, but then I see September again. Do you cap each of these mastermind’s sessions to 20 people? And do you try to blend it so that there is not a large disparate sort of gap between the different people in the group or how does that work?
Chris: Yeah, it’s again, another great question, so the courses that you’ve seen are and maybe those dates and they are actually a calendar for the 90 days that that program occupies. So that one is shut down unless somebody wants to come in and and kind of we’ll call it audit, kind of like in college when you’re not really officially taking the class, but you want to just not for a full grade. That’s that’s kind of what I allow people to do today, just to stick their feet in to see if they like it and listen and participate. It gets tough, though, because the sanctity and the confidentiality and the community that gets built in each group is one that if you let one person in in this bad blood or or just doesn’t fit, it disturbs the entire ecosystem that you’ve worked so hard to build. So with Rock Star, my goal initially is building individual groups of these, and it doesn’t have to be 20. It can be 12 to 15 to 20 and taking them through 10 sessions. So it’s 10 monthly sessions with weekly interactions. And whether you start in session three or session seven, it doesn’t matter because they’re not consecutive where you have to sit through one to get to two to get to three to get four four. So if you’re a good fit in a group or you know somebody and somebody wants to bring you into one group, Michael, ultimately with it, if I look forward three to five years, it’s to have these pod type communities built all around the world and then integrating the different parts of the world together.
Chris: So taking a group, let’s just say, for example, we don’t have this, but let’s say, for example, we have 20 people in the northeast of the United States and then we have 20 people in Australia. And we want to blend those two groups or we have 10 people in Egypt and 10 people in the UK and we want to blend those groups together. Ultimately, my goal is to build bridges across the entire world so that people that are dealing with some of these issues that they’re dealing with recognize that not only do other people have those issues, too, but now you’re building friendships and you’re building a different level of community so that if you own a company that decides that and we need to expand over here, you’ve already got those contacts there and you’ve already got somebody that you can trust and you’ve got somebody that you know deeply rather than just, hey, Joe, who do you know in Dubai where I can work with them on getting this contract to do that? So that’s that’s my longer term most altruistic goal is taking the entire world and bringing it into a place where people have these reference points that they can actually operate in these individual communities and feel really good about doing.
Joe: Would it get to the point where you actually had these pods, but you would then, like you said, have subsets where if you had all of the people that have been part of Rise Up Rockstar that were financial type people where they could all go in and talk about, you know, let’s let’s take an example like our our friend Joe Wealth Management. Right. So you’ve had people come through your program and you’ve had various people that are that are experts in wealth management. They would have like a mini summit on the newest things in wealth management or just a brainstorming session on how are you handling A, B and C?
Chris: I think you hit it with the mini summit, right, because it is what I have experienced in my career is that if I put a group of people together from wealth management, they’re in that same industry. So they’re going to be very hesitant to share all that.
Joe: Yeah, yeah.
Chris: They’re going to be hesitant to say or make up an example. You know, my 14 year old has a heroin addiction and is distracting me. And I’m going to need to take a 90 day leave so that I can make sure that he or she is cared for because they might have a competitor right across the street that is saying, OK, now I can I can go after this company. And this is this product is in my time to advance. I think the the the the mini summit that you mention, though, is perfectly appropriate, because then it gets to be a group of people that are part of a community that trust the community, that have this additional level of trust when they walk into a room or walk into a Zoom room to talk about philanthropy in the United States and how asset management can impact the hunger or the homelessness population in the more globally philanthropy across the world, how the asset management industry can more and more readily impact global hunger or global poverty or whatever it is. That is absolutely something that is is on the horizon.
Joe: I think we all start out as young entrepreneurs and we’re super aggressive and we’re going to conquer the world and we’re going to just kick ass and take names and in our industry and nobody’s going to stop me and I’m going to work as many hours as I can and get as little sleep as I can. And I’m just going to jump ahead of all the competition. And I think maybe as we get older, things change and we realize that I don’t like you said, mindfulness. Is this potentially overused a little bit? Maybe leaving a legacy is overused a little bit. But that’s where I feel like I start to get to. Like, I don’t want to leave here and not do something good for the world before I leave. Right. So I don’t know if we start to calm down as we get older, we shift our reference point. You’re probably type A, right? I would assume. I don’t know. So we’re cut from the same cloth in that sense. And I feel like I’ve come to myself and I said, I just want to do good and I want to help others. You hear all the horror stories about all the money in the world does not make you happy about family, love, community serving others. So were you that other person when you first started out like most of us, or were you always this calm about.
Chris: You know, so I grew up in kind of that that Wall Street era of greed is good
Joe: Mm hmm.
Chris: And a bunch of money and we’re really expensive things. And that’s really what’s going to define you, which it took me a while to get to figuring out that that’s why I’m so passionate about identity today, because I realized how false my identity has been for a long time, for a long period. And I was so transaction oriented for so long that until I became transformation oriented, I really never figured out who I was and what I liked and why I liked it. I was just doing all these things and reacting. I come from my father was a Ford Motor Company guy for his entire career as a Navy man that went to work for Ford one job his whole life. My mother’s side of the family and my mother is a clinical therapist, so that’s kind of why my brain works in really funny areas. And one of these days I sit down and it’s going I’m going to have some legendary session and figure out that’s why I do that. Thanks,
Joe: Yes,
Chris: Mom.
Joe: We’re up we’re all due for one of those sessions, just
Chris: Right,
Joe: Me.
Chris: But my mother’s family were all entrepreneurs, I mean, her her grandparents came over in the eighteen hundreds from England and her one of her grandparents is this little four foot eight guy that came over, left his wife behind, came over, wound up in Chicago, was selling newspapers. He saved up enough money to to have his own newspaper stand, which then he saved up enough money to open a confectionery store, selling stationery and some other things got smart enough to brand the stationery for the people that were coming to visit him. Hey, Joe, here, I got your name on this ikarus here. I’ve got your name on this. And he built it into a company at one hundred thousand square foot headquarters at 12 buildings in downtown Chicago, Mass. It was like the first version of what Staples became. Right. So I’ve got all these incredible lessons from people that I’ve learned in my and my family’s lives that I look at those. And you mentioned legacy. And I think that legacy dies if I don’t figure out a way to resurrect it. And while it’s really scary leaving a corporate job as the CEO of a financial services organization, I started looking at my own core beliefs. And my first one was I will never, ever be able to make a living that’s going to support my family if I can do what I’m really passionate about and helping other people.
Chris: And it took me a while to really completely reframe that to I will be able to make a living and I will be able to provide generational legacy for my family because they’ll see that I had the courage to step out and do something that really meant something to me. And I did that. And in 2013, I left the for profit space and went to the nonprofit space. And since then we’ve raised over 13 billion dollars for charities and done some just absolutely amazing, amazing things. So definitely say I haven’t been somebody that’s always had the perspective I do today. I’ve gotten there because I’ve fallen. I’ve gotten there because I’ve been punched in the face. I’ve gotten there because I’ve had business partners that have stolen money. I’ve had people that have stolen ideas. I’ve had I’ve been a part of businesses that have combined and merged and my job has been eliminated. So I’ve been on the street looking for a job. But I’ve always had this guiding light, which was that everything’s going to be all right, keep moving forward, pursue. Go, go, go, go, go. Because there’s something there that is specifically for you, Chris. And my biggest fear has always been you alluded to it a minute ago, getting to the pearly gates and meeting the person that you were supposed to become and looking completely different from that person. That terrifies me
Joe: Yeah,
Chris: And to me at the same time. And so that’s why I do what I do.
Joe: So when did you so I know you’re involved in a lot of things, that’s why I opened the whole thing up to being like this Renaissance man, because I know you work out in the health part of his is really important to you and then different things that you do with non-profits and charities and philanthropy and everything. When did you leave air quotes your full time job or have you?
Chris: Yeah, so that’s been winding down now for a little over a year, so I’ve had the good fortune of being able to kind of go like this right where I didn’t I’m not one of those people that will ever say I’m so tough and I was so motivated by the mission and the passion that I had that I quit my day job and I went straight into doing this. I’m I’m a Midwestern kid initially, some kind of conservative when it comes to certain types of risks. And that risk. I’ve never been able to I’ve been in corporate America for too long
Joe: Mm
Chris: To
Joe: Hmm.
Chris: Actually pull a record and say I’m out and I’ve got I’ve got a daughter that’s got rheumatoid arthritis. So we’ve got insurance is a big thing for us, too. So I’ve got a million more excuses that I could throw at you. But my goal is in the next 12 months that this thing is going to be standing on its own. And that’s actually seven months from now. So I shouldn’t even say 12 anymore. And we’re going to go from there.
Joe: And that’s great. I saw somewhere and I don’t want to get away from I want to talk more about the other level of rock star, but but kind of. Well, first of all, I want to ask the question, Brazil. How did that happen? How did you grow or live there? And you mentioned your father worked for Ford. Did they have a factory there or something?
Chris: So Ford Motor Company absolutely did so support
Joe: Ok.
Chris: Of Brazil had it was the electronics division that my father was in and Ford of Brazil was heavy. It was a very heavy electronics organization at the time that we were down there. I won’t say one because we’ll give away exactly how old I am scared these days at Ford of Brazil had just bought a Swedish company that was called Philco and Philco made radios and televisions
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: And they made some really cool modern looking stuff. So they were down there. And that was that was the time when the automotive companies were switching from an individual production line that one car was made on to a platform that multiple different types of vehicles could be made on that same platform. So they were converting and doing a lot of that work. So it was Ford that took us down there. Yeah.
Joe: Because I was curious about how that all came, because you said you were you’re a Midwestern guy and I was like, well, then he’s in Brazil and then he’s in New York. And I was in Arizona like, OK, trying to piece it all together.
Chris: It’s a gypsy most of the time when people when I’m talking to people and I mentioned things like that, they start giving me this quizzical look like this guy’s so full of crap, there’s no way he’s in all these different places. And I’m omitting 10 places that I live by just telling the ones that you OK. And then when they start to believe me, they say, Oh, so you’re a military brat.
Joe: Oh, right, right,
Chris: I kind of I mean, Ford Motor Company was pretty much like this, but
Joe: Right.
Chris: I mean, it was incredible in the social issues that we deal with here today in the United States and global issues. Growing up in such diversity was so incredibly polarizing for me that I’m on multiple committees now with the organization that I belong to in civically, that it just boggles my mind that we can actually have the troubles that we do. I understand everybody’s perspectives and I don’t want to go down this path.
Joe: Yep.
Chris: But I think there was such a beautifully eye opening experience that I have always told every single person that I know that has the opportunity and working for a global organization to try to get an assignment outside of the United States because it will not only benefit them, but it will benefit their families so much.
Joe: Yeah, it’s amazing how outside of the United States in particular places, not every place, but let’s just take Brazil. There’s a level of poverty that’s there, right. Areas that definitely struggle. But those people have such a positive attitude towards life and they just work and they continue to be good people and do their thing here. We have everything handed to us and all we do is manufacture crap on top of crap to just make ourselves feel miserable. And it’s not us like, you know, but it’s it’s all of the things we deal with that don’t need to be there.
Chris: When you have a system of entitlement, it tends to breed more of that. And the beauty of being a Ford Motor Company kid, watching what the unions have done to the cost of cars, and I actually when I was in college, I joined the UAW to work at a Ford automotive plant. And seeing how inefficient some of those operations were, I understand a little bit more about the way some of these things work. And just looking at at that sense of entitlement. The positive side of entitlement, though, is ironic because this will sound when we have people that say I’m too good for that job. I don’t want to go make ten dollars an hour to an hour. I’m not going to do that yard work and build that house. It creates a massive opportunity for people to come from other countries that say, I would love to do that and I can’t wait to have the opportunity to make ten dollars an hour. I’m making 10 hours a month. Imagine the food and the money I can send back to my family if I do that. And then we shut things down so that they can’t. And, you know, we got off on a tangent and I apologize for that. But, you know, the beauty of what we have in front of us right now and the opportunity that you have and the idea is that we can become entrepreneurs and we’re both doing that. And I love the fact that I have you call me a Renaissance man. Thank you. That’s much better than I deserve. I mean, I have put businesses into the woods to just as much as I’ve gone the other I’ve owned companies. I created an augmented reality software tool that was a CRM. I created a financial services company and a broker dealer, a global liquor distributor I’m excited by and I’m not afraid to step into it. But where I have been afraid to step into is with both feet. And that’s really hurt me in the past and it won’t hurt me in seven months.
Joe: So the ramp up to starting to Rise Up Rockstar, you’re, what, five months into it now, right? Because you said you have seven, but covid-19 hit, like, right at the beginning or, you know, sort of in the middle of March. Right. So, like, the same with me getting my bucket list and started doing. Was that sort of like, OK, this is definitely the time for me.
Chris: It is you know, I’ve been if you go back to two thousand is the first time that I took over a big sales team and I was doing not only was I leading the sales team, but I was also conducting sales training and doing additional level training beyond just how to sell. So I have always loved doing that and seeing people improve one aspect or two or three or four because of something that we’ve worked on together has always been a massive passion of mine. So I’d been looking for ways to actually take that and move it forward. And I had signed up for some. I was just finishing out when it hit. I was just finishing a 30 day process of kind of creating a blueprint for a mastermind or an online company or an information company. And I had some of this knowledge. So when I was talking to my friends about the issues they were facing or they thought they would face, it was just it was just the perfect opportunity for me to keep that knowledge out in front of me and then have them put some things in there and then see what we could create and see what we could stick up on the wall. So, yeah, it’s it’s it’s all relatively new, but it’s just so necessary.
Joe: It’s been really tough for a lot of people, and it’s it’s sad for people that have lost loved ones and certain people not taking it as serious as it should have been. And all this stuff and I’ve had these conversations with other people where my business was just slamming when this happened. I had expanded into Colorado last year. So I had was booking entertainment here and in Colorado. And we were not only doing it for resource, but we were doing it for large corporations. Any of the destination management companies that are here in Arizona or in Colorado, they would call and say, hey, I need synchronized swimmers in a pool for a cocktail hour or I would need an A-list. I want somebody asked me for Dave Matthews down at the Phantom Ranch in the Grand Canyon for a corporate event. Right. So I was doing everything from instrumental guitarists all the way up to what would ever anybody ask for. And when this hit, it just was like, poof, went away, like it happened so quick. But I never got the because I had all of these things that I wanted to do that I had never been able to do. So my approach to this and like you has been different than a lot of people. It’s been a relief to have this time to work on myself, to work on all these things that I wanted to do. And I just was wondering what your perspective on that was.
Chris: They are very, very similar to yours and I I’m with you in the deference and respect that we have to pay to the people that that we’ve lost and it’s a big number and who knows how much it’ll continue to grow. So with my ultimate respect, going out to the families and friends and everybody that’s been part of that, I don’t want to appear as if I’m not very respectful of that, because I certainly am.
Joe: Mm hmm.
Chris: I think that the opportunity that we’ve been given to almost cleanse our lives of some of the things that we were not doing naturally because we were so caught up in the rat race a couple of years ago. I wrote something in my every six months I put together these AM statements in my personal mission statement. And one of the things I wrote was, I need to get off this hedonic treadmill because I’m running at the same pace, but I’m not going anywhere. I’m acquiring the same things. But even though they look different, they’re the same. And so I feel like we have been given a gift. As hard as that may be to swallow, we’ve been given a gift. It’s up to you to determine whether you accept it or whether you reject it. And you and I have said we accept it
Joe: Hmm.
Chris: And we embrace it and we’re going to lean into it to figure out exactly what that gift is. And in my own experience, in my own path, the more open I have been to it, the more it’s taken me to different places that I hadn’t explored before. So very some very uncomfortable growth, some opportunities and things that I never thought that I would ever do. I sat through four days of the Tony Robbins virtual unleash the power within in this chair in this awful night, in this chair, because I yell at you and you have to get out of your chair hours for four days. And I’m thinking there’s no way I would ever do something like that. But it was one of the greatest things I’ve ever done. I’ll do it again and again and again. And he’s doing another one. But I never would have experienced these things had we not been in the place where we are. I’ve got three daughters and a wife, and the connections that we have today are so dramatically improved because we were given the gift of at first it was like, OK, Soccers, you’re not going anywhere is the way that it felt. And then once we went through the initial mourning phase of having to be around each other as much as we were and I’ve got a couple of teenagers, so I say that tongue in cheek we all were. We all want each other now a lot more. And we say, I love you a lot more
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: And a lot more time together. And that helps me so much with the the peace of my heart that I need to march forward into the uncertainty to Rise Up Rockstar rings into other people’s lives. And I can use those examples when somebody says, how do you do it? How deep my my family’s falling apart, being around each other like this, how do you actually do it? And what we really have to be careful of, too, is all of the analogies back to 2008 where people say, well, Uber was created in the in the economic downturn and all these really big companies, Zillow and these others, they’re all created in these downturns. They were. But it was different. It was economic. It wasn’t this physical pandemic that that has been killing so many people where we couldn’t be around each other. And and I certainly hope that we get out of that. And in the relative, you know, with as least with as few amount of additional casualties as we can.
Joe: Yeah, so I have to ask you, because this it takes a lot of guts to do what you did, you know, I have I did sort of what you did in 2011 right after the market crashed. I had a home automation company out here in Arizona. So when that happened, luckily for me, I didn’t have a warehouse and a bunch of vans and a bunch of employees and I literally just said, OK, I’m done. There’s thirty five bids for one job. Right. And it was manual labor. I don’t know why I ever thought it would be fun. It was kind of cool initially, but then it just got to the point where, OK, 2011, I’m out, I’m going to do music full time. So I did kind of what you did. You made a commitment toward something and you did it. I don’t want to go into my store because it’s not as exciting as yours. You did it with three daughters and a wife and the need to have insurance. That’s a big step. That takes a lot of guts. And I think, you know, what you did is, is there’s a lot of people that are sitting on the sidelines looking at someone like you and going, I can’t. How did he do that? I can’t do that. I can’t take that chance. There’s just too much at stake. And I somehow people we have all done it. We’re all guilty. We’ve we’ve checked ourselves into a certain lifestyle or whatever it might be. And then you can’t actually go and do what it is that makes your heart sing and your soul happy and make you smile every day and want to jump out of bed and tackle that. So what is your wife initially say when you said, OK, I’m going to go and do this is really what I want to do. I’m going to go do this full time.
Chris: Yeah, she’s an incredible support mechanism, and she’s supported me in the ventures that have gone well and she supported me in the ventures haven’t and been there. And she looks at the lessons that the kids learn in the lessons that she learns. And and she’s she works for a local non-profit here in the Valley as well. So she’s a fundraiser and an event planner for them, too. So she understands the difficulty of the grind and how you have to be fully committed and how you have to have people on your team that are fully committed in order to do that. So I don’t operate in an environment where I tell my family things that I’m going to do. We operate in an environment where we talk to each other about these things and how they’re going to impact each other. And one of the coolest things about it is my girls wear Rockstar t shirts by the they they talk about it, they tell their friends about it, their friends ask me. They take the stickers that I had made and they put them up in places where it’s not illegal to put them. And it’s I’ve got a I’ve got a terrific support mechanism and I always have. And I think part of that mechanism is, you know, going back to your point of a lot of people are afraid to do what I have done me to. I mean, I I’m still afraid of of doing it. And there are moments of weakness that I have where I just have to take a step back and have been coached by so many different people in so many different ways.
Chris: And you can’t really see my office. But I’ve got Post-it notes everywhere and I’ve got a lot of glass in here. And I’m famous for taking these expo markers and writing all over the glass. So if I look over here, I look at play bigger focus on how to serve, rise up, rock star, human performance, energy, all the different things that when I’m feeling a little weak, I can focus on and say I’m here because those things need me. I look over here and I look at extraordinary life, a life on my terms plan to succeed, just these reminders that when I need them, they’re there. And when I used to really be too afraid to take a step forward, I didn’t have all these things around me. And I would allow the fear to actually consume me a little bit more to get to that place up. I’ll never be able to replace the income or I’ll never be able to be happy and doing something like that because I’m always worry about the bills. And it’s it is unquestionably a challenge. And I’m kind of a as I have got as I’m getting older, I’m realizing that I can take some risks now because they’re a little bit more educated than they were before when it was really just ego and emotion that was driving things.
Chris: I mean, I’m I’ll be fifty three and a couple of weeks and I’m an obstacle course racer. I just got into Spartan racing a couple of years ago and I won my age group in an ultra and an I mean just Ultra’s like 30, 30 some odd miles and those nine and a half hours and I’m fifty two doing this thing and I’m thinking who do I think I am? And then I realized the obstacle course racing is such a great euphemism for life that as long as you keep going from obstacle to obstacle to obstacle and you don’t quit and you go through the finish line, no matter what it is that you’re doing, you’re going to look back and say, I got another small victory or I got another big victory, and that propels you forward to the next one. So for everybody that listens to to your podcast and I hope it’s millions because you’re such a great guy, the one piece of advice that I would give would be get that quick win and then don’t let your imposter syndrome come in and say that you got lucky, recognized that you worked for it, give yourself the permission to celebrate and then get another quick one, because iron sharpens iron, success leaves clues. You can you can use a million quotes from all the motivational guys that are out there to do it. Man, it’s good.
Joe: Yeah, and it’s it’s funny because you brought up something I wanted to ask you that I’m sort of a firm believer in is I feel like working out, taking care of yourself and pushing yourself when you’re doing exercise can be translated into daily life type things like don’t you don’t give up on that last 10 reps or whatever. And I and I feel I wish we could get more business people to kind of lock those two things in, because I think it’s really important in business that you have that physical aspect of your life in check because it helps you throughout all the other things.
Chris: Oh, one hundred percent, I mean, if it’s only even diet that we get the majority of business people to focus on as I’m entertaining in midtown Manhattan with people that are eating steaks at 10:00 o’clock at night and then they’re having a port afterwards and whatever it is. And then they start really early in the morning with a board meeting at 8:00 a.m. expecting that they’re just going to be on and go, go, go, go. It’s like time out.
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: Do you understand how this food is processed and digested in your system,
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: What that’s going to give you or the person at lunch that has the massive lunch that goes into a 1:00 p.m. meeting? That’s one of the most important meetings of their lives. And I can’t figure out why they can’t remember the word that they meant to say while they’re presenting. And it’s like, listen, brother, this stuff all goes this way. It all interacts. And
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: People along a while back and made the point. People don’t look at their professional lives and their
Joe: Well.
Chris: Personal lives the same way. Unfortunately, because everybody searches for balance instead of integration is the most important piece of it all. Where you’re not business and you’re not you’re not living a mullet. Right. You’re not you’re not business one time and then, you know, partying, it all has to go together.
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: Violi, who was the is the CEO of Boeing in the CEO of Ford. I heard him speak once. He’s got a family. He’s got six, six, five, five children and then his spouse. And somebody said, well, Mr. Mulally, how do you balance running such a big company where you have a public company with all these shareholders and people just want something from you all the time. How do you balance that with your family? Anita Elash, you said balance. Now you’re searching for the wrong thing. You’ll never have it. It’s about integration. And I’ve really taken that into the heart as we go through rock star. And I’m one of the things that we talk about is how you handle your morning. You know, you can look at a Louis house who’s got a million or more of these different a millionaire morning, how millionaire start their day, all that kind of stuff. And I don’t care if you’re a millionaire or billionaire, you have ten bucks in the bank. You’ve got to do it the same way. If you optimize your day by starting off a certain way, then it just helps you move forward through it. And that’s one of the biggest lessons that business people can learn, is any everybody can learn is is how to do that. So that’s that’s another thing that we actually talk about, too.
Joe: That’s great, and I think it’s really important, and that’s again, where we have the same thing, I need that to function. I need to get my brain clear. I need to get up and go to the gym, do yoga, whatever. Today did cycle. It’s the only way I can function to keep things moving forward. So Rockstar, is the incubator portion still something that exists or was that just the initial phase?
Chris: It is, it does, and
Joe: It
Chris: It is
Joe: Does.
Chris: Yet.
Joe: Ok. And then there’s NIIT, which is the 90 day challenge of oh, you said three goals.
Chris: It’s three goals, basically, each call is going to three different aspects of three lessons in there. Again, it’s the the introduction of a concept, the community and then the hotseat, some incorporating a lot of the the incubator mastermind from Rockstar into the 90 rock star. So three things in there. Yes, absolutely.
Joe: Ok, and then the top level that we haven’t talked about, who is that for?
Chris: So that’s something that’s in that’s that I’m really excited about, and we’ve also got a research project underway where we are interviewing, it’s a big number. I hesitate to even say it, but we’re interviewing over one hundred thousand CEOs and senior leaders and founders around the world.
Joe: Wow.
Chris: Six question questionnaire that then takes them into a landing page that talks about why the study is being conducted. And then the research from that will be brought back in to the Executive Impact Group, which is designed more as a. It’s kind of a combination of EOH and YPO, and if you’re familiar with Tiger twenty one, it’s a group with chapters all over the world. Now,
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: Without that, without that minimum networth requirement, but with all the great things that are inside of Tiger twenty one and the piece that is. You know, my spouse just did this and I run a private company. How do I talk about it? Or my company wants me to get kidnapping and ransom insurance so that I can fly to Brazil what they want to or for my wife or do I need it for my kids? How do I do it or have you done it? Or one of the great conversations that we have that we will have in there and we’ve had with a couple of individuals that we haven’t formally officially formed the group that lots a digital asset trust. Most people most people don’t know that the information that you’ve got, all the songs that you have on your iPod, if it’s yours or on your phone and you die, your your heirs don’t have any access to it goes away, it’s locked picture, all that kind of stuff. So there’s all kinds of interesting concepts that come through that higher end group that’s designed for people that are that are more on the lines of private equity. I need to raise money. Is it better to go private equity? Is it better to go to issue debt? Is it better to do this a lot of the higher end financing type structures that leaders of organizations that are in that position go through rather than the mid-level manager that might not actually be at that phase yet, where it wouldn’t be as beneficial for them to sit through those conversations. But what I’m finding is with the economy, the way that it is with job elimination, with everything that’s happening, unemployment where it is, there’s a much greater need in the middle than
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: There is with that high end. So I’m adapting a lot of the resort or I’m taking a lot of the resources that we’re going to be going into that extra research project and focusing more on the mid-level manager that is living in fear, that needs the tools and the techniques to actually rise up to that next level instead of living in fear of losing their job or not getting promoted or living up three percent pay increase because they have a nice annual review.
Joe: So who is Rise Up Rockstar for who is your audience? You created this when you did it. Who did you have in mind? What are the type of people that would be listening to the podcast? When they listen to this, they say, oh, that’s me. I’m definitely one of those people. I should I should get in contact with you.
Chris: Yeah, thank you for asking, you know, the the the people that I spoke with in the beginning, I looked at and said, OK, what do they have in common and what does the group look like? And if I’m going to build this out, who am I really going to build it for? So the ideal person as I’m finding and it’s evolving, which is really neat because we it started off as a thirty five to 50 year old male that was an entrepreneur or a leader and their organization or had founded the company or come from a C suite and was dealing with certain aspects in life and they wanted to rise back up. They had been knocked down for some reason, whether it was a firing or company went under, product went under, and they just wanted to rise back up. And as we as we started building that out, a couple of my female friends came in and said, this is exactly what we need to can we participate? And I said, of course. And so I initially designed it thinking. Thirty five to 50 year old male, and then what I realized was it’s it’s agnostic, we’re not talking about guy issues, you know, we’re not talking about what we have at least talked about individual guy health issues. It’s more about how we really help people. So I’ve pulled back away from the initial person that I designed it for. And now I say is for the person that’s 35 to 50 years old that has been knocked down, that is either on their knees now or it’s trying to get back up, but they can’t do it on their own and they need a little bit of help.
Chris: And if they’re interested in being part of a community that all operates with the same mentality of we’re here to make each other better and get better ourselves, and Chris is going to bring the tools and the techniques to stimulate the conversation and help with the training and the coaching and the performance strategies that he’s learned from being a CEO to help us go back here or get to a certain place. That’s really the person that that that we want. And now within 90 days, it’s evolved into the 90 virt has has much more of that mid mid-level field. So it’s just it’s a beautiful group, absolutely beautiful group. And I’m having fun and I’m iterating right. It’s so young that I’m here. I’m here not to say I have something and I’m going to deliver it to this group. I’m here to say I believe I’ve got something great, but you tell me if it’s great and then you tell me how you consume it and then I’ll make it. I’ll keep building it so it’s better. And your needs and my ability to deliver something will ultimately meet in the right spot. And that’s been the fun of it so far.
Joe: And with, let’s say, either all three groups or incubator and then 90 either, however you split it up, are you make everyone accountable? Are they these checkpoints along the way where you’re all jumping on a Zoom and everybody’s kind of giving a progress report of what happened with these goals you were working on? Let’s talk about them.
Chris: So the cool thing about what we’ve experienced so far, and this goes back to my point, I’m getting the right people in the group, is that I don’t need to hold people accountable. They hold themselves accountable. And when someone is going through something in the group that somebody else can see that we might not address, they get a hold of each other off cycle, whether it’s a text or an email or something. So there isn’t a hey, Joe, you have to perform these four functions in order to get to the next lesson, because I don’t have any interest in that. Somebody once said a long time ago, I’m a leader, not a savior, and I love that and I absolutely love that. So I’m marching forward fast. And if you want to march forward fast to come
Joe: Yep.
Chris: And join me. But if you’re going to sit back and put a parachute over my shoulders and try to hold me back and hold the group back, then you’re probably not the right person for this group. If you need that accountability, we can build it into the group itself by having an accountability partner or a swim buddy or whatever you want to call it. But there’s nothing in any of the elements that we have that forces you to unlock something by performing functions to get there. You get that enough in your day to day doing other things. I want to provide tools and techniques and strategies that people embody and embrace and recognize that if they if they perform accordingly, they’re going to benefit from it.
Joe: That’s great. OK, I know I’m going over time and I don’t want to keep you, so we didn’t talk about cost and I assume that that might be handled with them. The first contact you and then it’s something you talk about through the correspondence, is that correct?
Chris: Absolutely, absolutely.
Joe: Ok, OK. What’s the best way to either get a hold of you or go to Rise Up Rockstar and start the process of figuring out if one of these groups is the right thing for someone and how they get started in all of that?
Chris: Yeah, thank you. There are a couple of different ways, I think that there’s a really easy way on Instagram at @ChrisCarnel. It’s Chris C.A.R.N.E.L. That’s a really easy way to get a hold of me. Just like my email address, Chris@chriscarnel.com is egotistical, as that has always sounded to me to put your own name in your email like that. I found that it’s actually a pretty good marketing tool.
Joe: Yeah,
Chris: So people I don’t have to think about what his company is. It drives me nuts, but
Joe: Perfect,
Chris: It
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: Is. So those are those are the two easiest ways to take a look at it. The Rise Up Rockstar Web site is specifically tailored right now to NIIT, so it won’t give you a whole lot of information on what the entirety of the program is. But the Chris Arnold dotcom site talks a little bit more about all of the different things that we do. And I’m happy to have the individual conversations myself.
Joe: Awesome. Anything else that I missed that you want to talk about in regards to Rise Up Rockstar life in general before I let you go?
Chris: I appreciate that and I really appreciate at the time, thanks, I’ve enjoyed the conversation, too. It’s not so much just about me, but, you know, there’s so much going on in today’s economy if you’re in today’s world, that the one thing that I would like to share is just if everybody would just take a pause before they react to something, people are sending text messages that the tone is different because they’re scared. People are making statements on television that the tone is different because they’re scared. Nobody knows what’s going to happen. Nobody knows where we’re going to wind up. But one thing that I what that I do know is people will remember you for how you react during times like this. One of my favorite quotes being initially a kid from the Midwest was the value of the farmer is not in the harvest. It’s in the drought and we’re in the drought right now. People will see you in six months, six years for the way that you act today. And so it’s time for us really to elevate who we are as humans and humanity and to create the impact that we want to have lasting. And you’re doing that, my friend, and I’m doing my best to do that. And and I hope that a lot of your listeners are, too. So thanks for letting me say that.
Joe: Yeah, and it’s important. This is really a great episode because I’ve brought this up on other episodes that I fear some people are sitting back waiting to be rescued and I don’t want that to happen. I want people to say this is my time. Only I can do this. It’s my life. Only I can make these changes. Are these advances or go for whatever it is that I’ve always wanted to do and to hear you talk and to know that you’re doing this with all you have going on in your life. It’s super inspiring. And I hope that everyone that listens to this says, you know what, I’ve heard this enough. Joe’s been beating this into the ground on some of these episodes is like no one’s coming to rest. I keep saying the Calvary is not coming. You just got to take the bull by the horns and finally put that foot in front of the other and just start.
Chris: All right.
Joe: Well, man, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. This was an honor for me to have you on here. You’re your very inspiring. I can just tell it’s it’s all very heartfelt. And that’s what’s important to me. The people that I have on here, it’s not like you’re some sales person selling the next whatever. Right. The promise of what’s to come. You’re living what you’re trying to help others do. And that’s the cool thing. You’re not just kind of preaching down to people. You are living in the same trench that the rest of us are living in. Right. We want to just do better, do more, do what we love, do it with passion, help others. It’s really cool to have you on and I really appreciate you being here.
Chris: Thank you, buddy. I’ve really enjoyed it. Thank you, Bill.
