From Rock Bottom to Turnaround King: Chris Collins on Leadership, Parenting, and Truth
In this powerful episode of On the HomeFront, Jeff Dudan sits down with Chris Collins, a record-setting GM turned leadership author and turnaround expert. They discuss the brutal truths of leadership, the emotional weight of entrepreneurship, and why building systems beats cutting costs. If you're interested in entrepreneurship in home services, franchise leadership, or the psychology of scaling a business, this episode is a must-listen.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
- How internal locus of control impacts success in business and life
- Why most companies fail to reach their full potential
- The importance of systems over people in turnaround situations
- Why leadership begins with self-esteem and personal responsibility
- How parenting parallels entrepreneurial leadership and culture-building
Featured Quotes
"The opportunity of a lifetime comes once a day."
—Chris Collins
"You can't cut a business into profitability. You grow it through experience and value."
—Chris Collins
"Truth is the through-line of leadership. It starts with owning your role."
—Jeff Dudan
Full Transcript
Jeff Dudan (00:00)
keep drinking my coffee and my Monster all at the same time.
Chris (00:04)
You're double fisting.
Jeff Dudan (00:06)
Yeah, I am double fisting, but in separate cups, which I'm not, you know, speed balling it.
All right, here we go. Welcome to the home front, everybody. I am Jeff Duden. If you grew up as a child of missionaries in Mexico, was a broke ass drummer in the Seattle grunge era of the 90s. If you got a job in a car dealership car wash to start your career in the automotive industry and rose up the ranks to be a record setting industry leading dealer GM.
and since rose to prominence as a fixer and turnaround guru for car dealerships. If you have published the most interesting two book set ever created called I Am Leader, your name can only be Chris Collins. Welcome, Chris.
Chris (00:58)
thank you. That's great intro.
Jeff Dudan (01:01)
All right, man. Well, it's
all yours. It's all yours, sir. Hey, thanks for being on, Chris. Really excited to have you on. I wasn't, I'm not in the automotive industry. I wasn't familiar with you before I bounced into you at the Genius Network a couple of weeks ago. I did notice, sir, your shoe game is intensely good.
Chris (01:24)
Yeah, I take that pretty seriously. But mostly it's Rick Owens. That's kind of my uniform. Are you familiar with Rick Owens? Yeah, so that's my shoe game in a nutshell. They take really good care of me over there, Rick.
Jeff Dudan (01:35)
Now.
Is that a retail store? that a designer?
Chris (01:46)
Yeah, he's a designer, but less known and kind of more boutique-y, but yeah.
Jeff Dudan (01:52)
Yeah, so one pair, I think had about 50 eyelets on it and it had multiple mounds of shoelaces across. It was probably the most interesting shoes I saw. And I think the next day was a pair of boots.
Chris (02:04)
Yeah, you gotta get up really early to tie those. It's like people talk about their morning routine. If I'm wearing those that day, I have to get up pretty early.
Jeff Dudan (02:07)
You
Yeah, those will injure your back. Putting those on. All right, well, look Chris, you got an incredible story and man, some people when they speak, it's just, everything that you said when you spoke of the Genius Network was kind of a mouthful of truth and it really resonated. Can you share just a little bit with the audience about your background and then how that led into
being a leading turnaround expert in the automotive industry.
Chris Collins’ Unconventional Origin Story
Chris (02:51)
Yeah, I just, think like a lot of people probably listening to this, I'm, you know, self-made. grew up in a situation where I wanted to do, I wanted to be different than the situation I was born into. And I've been running from it ever since. And, you know, part of it creates like, a little bit of a workaholic syndrome where.
You're always kind of running from this, this thing, is, you know, poor models and just a lot of, compliance and followership. And you just, you know, just the status quo basically, and a lot of externalization to God and government and luck and fate and that sort of thing. And it's all very.
depressing really is what happens is you...
I just, you know, I have a lot of acquaintances from school or even family that are just in this vicious loop that you only escape through being your own boss and creating your own destiny, basically.
Breaking the Cycle: The Add/Subtract Tool and Dirty Eyes
Jeff Dudan (04:15)
One of the exercises that I've started doing and I think so much of leadership comes out of self-correction. Until you make a bunch of mistakes and then you think about it and then you try something and then those that build education businesses are in a position to lead or to influence, we build tools.
And I built a tool, a simple tool and on one side of the page it says subtract on the other side it says add. you you can't until you can create some space for something new to grow up into, like it's not gonna happen. So when you talk about people being in a vicious cycle, it's because their plate is running over with all kinds of stuff that's not helping getting them the direction where they wanna go. And you know, like there's
There's a term in football called having dirty eyes. And if you got dirty eyes, that means you're looking at the wrong thing. If you're reading the wrong keys and your eyes are in the wrong place, put your feet in the wrong place, you're out of position, you don't make the play.
And dirty eyes can be anything from scrolling too much social media to being around the wrong people to, you know, different types of, you know, you know, maybe drugs or alcohol at a level that's, you know, distracting you stealing your time. You know, you can get dirty eyes in a lot of different ways. But man, sometimes, like as leaders, it's our job to calm the swirl and you've got to give space for the universe to organize itself.
Chris (05:50)
Yeah, that's well said.
We're just very mimetic as humans, right? Like we kind of learn from the examples that we see or from the information that we intake. And so I think, you know, part of being an entrepreneur, being a leader is being outside of that and being the one that is creating their own path in a sense.
Jeff Dudan (05:58)
Mm.
Contradictions in Leadership and Mimetic Behavior
Chris (06:23)
And I don't know, think from a very early age, I noticed that what the adults were saying and what they were doing were in conflict.
Like I could just see it like, you're, you're telling me to live this way, but you're miserable. Like it just didn't make sense. You know, and I, I have always kind of been able to do that when it comes to business too. It's like, if you go into a business to turn it around, what the people say in the business that's underperforming and often losing money.
is really different than what the truth is. And most of the time, the conversation is around the symptoms, but nobody steps back and looks at it globally or looks at the overall cause in a sense. And when you're, when you're just treating symptoms and you're reactionary, that becomes automatic pilot. becomes habit. And that's the world you, you know, you end up living in, in a, in a sense. And so
From a very early age, always kind of just saw the conflict and the contradiction in what people said versus what was actually happening didn't line up, you know.
Truth, Systems Thinking, and Root Cause Analysis
Jeff Dudan (07:44)
Are these people, they in business or when you were growing up, do you think these people were lying to you or were they lying to themselves?
Chris (07:53)
I think that it sneaks up on us. I don't think, I don't think that it's, it's conscious. It's unconscious. You know, know, a lot of times people say the thing that's polite or the thing that they think they should say versus what the actual truth is. Right.
Jeff Dudan (08:15)
You know, in business, getting to the root cause of the problem is, it's all, it's ensconced in red tape, like people protecting their jobs, people protecting each other, sacred cows. We invested all this money in a project, so we've got to continue, when it should be killed, especially now with technology, man.
You could be $3 million into a technology build, and now you can do it for $300,000 with AI. And it's like, know, tough, right? You want to hang on to what you had going on to? Yeah, I mean, it's... And we're pattern creators. it's, you know, our will is an exhaustible resource. We only have so much battery. It's harder to make a change than it is to just show up and do the same stupid thing every single day. That's why television's so great, because you can just stare at it.
and you really don't have to do much and you actually you're entertained. You're sedentary. Yeah, we're screwed up. We're a mess. yet like, but people that grew up without a net, know, I didn't didn't grow up with a lot of means, you know, as a failed student, I failed and, know.
I ended up did go to college, but failed out of the first one, dropped back to a junior college, ended up getting a football scholarship out to one. So I kind of got out. If it wasn't for that scholarship, man, if I couldn't catch a football, that would have been it. That would have been a different path for me. But one thing I do know is that I can go to zero. And for me, I'm just getting back to where I started.
So sometimes when people start with a lot, their ability to make progress is harder because they have a higher starting point. When you start with nothing, then everything is a bonus.
Rethinking Leadership: Management vs. Creation
Chris (10:18)
Yeah. So good. It's good. You know, so interestingly for me, I think everything I needed to learn in school, I was a terrible student. Had a hard time sitting still. Like, well, you know, I think eighth grade was eighth or ninth grade was probably where I could have ended and been okay. Thank God I didn't try to go to college and keep trying to do what everybody was telling me I should do. but I got to work. Look, I just started working.
Jeff Dudan (10:21)
Yeah.
Chris (10:47)
and I learned more by working in just, you know, kind of to the, to the point of the contradiction of what I noticed in adults when I was a kid, what they would say versus what reality was and how miserable they really were in businesses that are underperforming and what people say versus the truth or the reality is that they're, you know, they're not performing and that
the commonality in both of those, which is fascinating to me, is that in most situations or most interactions that you have, full potential is never on the table. Like we're so busy with everything else that nobody talks about full potential at all. you know, the book that I made, I Am Leader, it took me a little over four years
Jeff Dudan (11:22)
Mmm.
Chris (11:46)
to do it. And I was doing that out of frustration in the sense that I would go to leadership training and I would buy leadership books. And it all seemed like management training to me. And it made people feel good, right? Like there's a lot of feel good books, like leaders eat last and like, you know, these kind of cliche dog whistles, but they don't change anybody. And it really wasn't addressing leaders. Like leadership is a big deal.
It is held in high self-esteem and it's not easy to obtain and takes a complicated, you know, bunch of characteristics that you have to be good at in order to be a leader. have to be charismatic, right? You have to know how to speak. You have to know how to read a financial statement. You have to understand sociology. You have to understand design and architecture and
you know, design of systems, design of customer experiences. There's so many, you know, aspects of human behavior and systems that you have to understand in order to be a leader. Leaders are really one in a million. Everything that we're talking about most of the time that gets, you know, titled as leadership is management. Most people are managing something that somebody else creates.
Jeff Dudan (13:08)
Yeah.
Chris (13:12)
If you own a franchise, you're managing a system that somebody else created. I have this client on the East Coast, Mr. Mills, and we were talking about this the other day and he said, it's the difference between the builder and the landscaper in a sense where if you build something, you create something, you're the builder, you're the creator.
But most people are landscaping the yard that somebody else already designed. They're just mowing the lawn, right? And that gap in having a real conversation about what leadership really is, it always felt like everybody was trying to be politically correct, but not talking about what it really is. And so when I was writing the book, it became very clear to me that it was two books.
Jeff Dudan (13:46)
Yeah. Yeah.
Chris (14:10)
that there had to be the I am the part about the individual. And then there had to be the leadership part, but we couldn't talk about leadership until we address some fundamental things about us as humans and, you know, dealt with some stuff way before leadership is even, you know, a possibility really. And so, you know, it's that same.
Same thing. the funny thing is, that most of the people that have come to the workshop that I've done here, so I've done about seven of them. And it's like a two day kind of immersive thing. I'm not doing it anymore because I really, to do it, I need to break it up because it's too much for people in two days. But when I was doing it, the thing that happened invariably,
is that everybody related it to parenting. So people would leave the first day and they had homework, they'd come back the next morning and we would discuss like what they'd experienced the day before. And everybody was like, I went home and I called my kid. I want, I'm buying this book for my kid. want, you know, and the thing that they would do is they would relate it to parenting, not business, which was a surprise to me. But.
Jeff Dudan (15:11)
Hmm.
Parenting as the Ultimate Leadership Test
Chris (15:36)
I would also say that parenting maybe is the hardest leadership role there is. And most, most people are passive or even indifferent in parenting. Like, for example, I was born into a situation where my father left when I was two months old. So, I mean, it wasn't like two people were sitting around going, Hey, we're going to have this kid and we're going to raise him to be a better version of us. Like,
Or, you know, there was no intentionality whatsoever in my existence except for that I happened. And now I was around and I had to be dealt with, but there was no intentionality. so that, you know, true leadership in parenting is, you know, having a plan and being intentional and working, you know, two parents working together to create a human being that outperforms what they did. Right. Like you want your kids to be better than
You want them to be more accomplished. That requires intentionality. It doesn't happen by accident. you know, I had, before I was 13, I'd had one dad that left in two months and a stepdad that left when I was 13. And, you know, I was, it wasn't intentional. My, my, uh,
design of how I think and how, you know, I was to behave or whatever, mostly came from me observing, not from anybody sitting me down and like, hey, we're gonna raise you to be something, you know, incredible. And I would contend, because people always have a hard time when I talk about this, like, because people will say, well, well, you turned out really good and you're successful. this, you know, so why talk, you know, why?
have these regrets or whatever. And I'm like, it's not a regret, it's an observation. But I would contend that I might be a high school coach, way more fulfilled than being this successful workaholic, you know, that's running from something, if that makes sense. Like, I don't know, because we have no way of A-B testing our lives that way. But it is, it is a, you know, it's a fascinating kind of thing to explore and think about.
in that way, but people relate the book more to parenting or to parenting first and then business second. And that's been a interesting outcome of this.
Jeff Dudan (18:13)
So I do shorts and when I came back from the conference that we were at, I actually did a short and relating to how parenting was similar to building a business, leading a company was similar to leading a family, because I got that. It's amazing that you mentioned that, but I got this little bit that 1 % of people create all the value. They're the builders.
They create the vision, they create the game that everybody else plays. The next 19 % of people manage that value and then the last 80 % of people consume it. you know, it's, I mean, so like, what is that, if, so if we want to change our state and where we are in life and we want to be a builder, then like, it's a high bar. There's a lot of things you gotta let go. There's a lot of things you gotta be willing to do. If you want to stand on nothing and create something, which is what am I?
favorite definitions of a leader. You can stand on nothing and create something. Man, was lot inside of that. I did notice in your book where you did, there was one page where you were talking about where people, about parenting and that parents are saying it was such a sacrifice to raise their kids.
And I also noticed you had one, there was one page where you said leadership and management is same as Kanye West and abstinence, right?
Chris (19:45)
Yeah,
it's funny. So what would you that meeting we were at, what would you say that average annual income is in that room?
Jeff Dudan (19:56)
over a million. It's yeah, millions, millions. Millions. I'm just think. Yeah.
Chris (20:06)
Yeah, I'm gonna guess, I'm gonna guess five, but it's a guess,
right? I don't know, but it's, there's some people in there doing some pretty big numbers. And the thing that I thought was interesting is throughout the day, what, you know, way before I went up there and was talking, people were somehow parenting came up and people were talking about raising their kids and should we pay for my kids' college and don't pay for their college and all this superficial stuff that was so odd, you know, odd to me.
I was dying to talk, but I waited until, you know, I w I was up there. And I mean, if you, if you want to raise kids that are going to be successful, the number one thing that you want them to have that protects them from, you know, being followers from making decisions based on pressure, from being depressed, whatever, you know, all the negative things that you wouldn't want your kid to have.
is you want them to have high self-esteem. High self-esteem protects them from everything. if you have a general, you know, there's that quote and we talked about it at the meeting where there's this book, Six Pillars of Self-Esteem, and he says in there that self-esteem is the immune system of consciousness. Just think about that for a second. Self-esteem is the immune system of consciousness. Consciousness is with us.
Jeff Dudan (21:08)
Yes.
The Power of Self-Esteem in Leadership and Parenting
Chris (21:34)
every second we're experiencing it live, you know, and so how we feel what our self-esteem is, what are, you know, how we're going to interact with our consciousness, how we experience things. If we, if we have low self-esteem, we're always going to think things are an attack or we're not good enough or we don't believe, you know, there's all these negative outcomes that come from that.
It's the, you know, it's exactly the same thing with leadership is if you want to raise a strong leader, you want to develop leaders. Like I believe fundamentally that I have a leadership factory and I create leaders and anybody can be a leader if they want to put in the work. But the first thing that I want in anybody that I, that I'm trying to turn into a leader is I want to raise their self-esteem because you know, the
The people that have authority or have power that have low self-esteem are the ones that do bad things. They're the ones that are corrupt. They're the ones that, you know, narcissists or psychopaths. Like, it's, you know, the tools, like the tools in the book, and I make the point in the beginning of the leadership book that Hitler was a leader. Like the same roadmap that Hitler used to become powerful.
is the same one that is used by Mandela. Like a lot of people are using the same, you know, the same architecture, but it's the intentionality and who you are that is going to, you know, determine whether you use these tools for good or for evil in a sense. And so just like with kids, you know, the first place to start with leadership is self-esteem.
You gotta have healthy self-esteem and you know, one thing that drives me crazy and this happens all the time. I do this series, I don't know if you saw it on the channel, but it's called Books That Changed My Life.
Jeff Dudan (23:41)
Okay.
Chris (23:42)
So people come in with a book that changed their life and we talk about it and invariably a lot of those books are self-help. And in a lot of those books, they'll say and people will be talking about the book and then they'll say, then I'm really working on chapter six, I'm really trying to love myself. that's a self-help thing that is continuity if you've ever seen it because...
If you, if you're trying to love yourself, then you're to have to break up with yourself and get back together. Like it doesn't even, that doesn't even make sense. Right. And my point. Yeah. My point is always like, Hey, why don't you just like yourself? We're not, none of us are so great. Like we're just not so great. Why don't you like yourself? And then you'll be more willing to deal with the parts of you that need to be addressed.
Jeff Dudan (24:16)
What does that makeup look like?
Chris (24:36)
And when I say that, when I say, you know, the thing that I've found is don't try to love yourself. Just learn to like yourself. People literally, their posture is like, and they'll be like, I'm still glad you told me that. yeah, like trying to love yourself. it's, you know, and it's all, all people are more susceptible to that sort of nonsense when they have low self-esteem and they're trying to find meaning in belonging. Right.
Jeff Dudan (25:04)
Right.
Looking through line of everything that we've talked about this far is truth. You know, can you truly be extra perspective? If there was a camera in the corner of the room that was watching you and you were objectively observing yourself, how accurate is your self image? How true to yourself can you be? How much grace can you give yourself? And like you talk about like people in companies, parents, you talk about parenting like
I've got some simple I got three kids. They're all doing just fine. I didn't grow up in a kind of a nuclear household. you know, I had, you know, so part of my parenting with my kids was I think, some like neglect like, first of all, I never lied to them. I never sugar coated anything if they didn't make the team you didn't make the team cat didn't run away. I ran it over.
dogs, you know, grandma, whatever, you know, like you just tell them the truth because if you ever lose the locker room with kids and they think you will lie to them to protect them, they think, well, I'm not worthy of being told the truth. They know when you're lying, right? They they're smart. They're just less experienced. They're just as smart as you are.
They just don't have the perspective and they don't have the experience. Then the other thing is just don't rescue them. I mean, how many of us grew up, you know, without, under resourced, under managed, with very little intention, there's no net underneath us. So if we fall off, we're gonna hit the ground. And then what do we learn? We learn to bounce. We learn to figure things out. We learn to...
Well, and then another thing you talked about in the book and mentioned was the, where is your locus of control? When you talked about that, I could not unsee it. Everybody I talk to now, and I hear it in their language, I'm like, they've just blamed three other conditions or people for what's happening to them. And it makes it hard to navigate. It's because in...
And the concept is external locus of control. Who's responsible? Who's in control of what happens to you? Is it external factors? Or at the end of it, are those just circumstances and you're really in control about what you do about it?
Locus of Control: Who’s Really in Charge of Your Life?
Chris (27:26)
Yeah. So yeah, for anybody who doesn't understand locus of control, it's basically where do you plant your flag of control for your life? Is it external? Is it religion? Is it all in God's hands? Is it fate? Is it luck? Is it the government? Is it, you know, I had terrible parents, so the reason why I'm all messed up is my parents or...
You know, what, what are you externalizing control to? And there's a very small, it's 10 % of the population had kind of made the decision that the control is inside of them. Like they're planning their flag and they're saying, it's me. Like it comes down to my work ethic, my ability to learn and be flexible, my charisma, my, you know, ability to sell my ability to manage myself. Right. Like it's, you know,
A lot of people say too, well, I can't control my emotions. Like, can if you want to, but it's easy to say you can't. But if you want to be successful and you want to have some sort of belief in yourself and high self-esteem, you're going to have to look in the mirror and decide that you're the answer to all of your problems.
Because you know, the outcome, there's tons of studies on Locus of Control. There's thousands of studies. I have no idea why we don't teach this in school. Because if we taught this in like, I don't know, fifth, sixth grade, we would have highly productive, highly energized, patriotic kids. And we've known about this for a long time. We've known that the common denominator between people that are successful and happy and the people that are depressed,
low status, poor, miserable is locus of control. It's agency. But for some reason we keep this a secret, but it is the key to everything. And then it ends up that kids in high school, they've studied this over and over again. The kids in high school that have an internal locus of control end up being more successful. They end up being more fulfilled and the kids that don't are.
prone to anxiety, depression, all kinds of negative stuff and they're low status in a sense. And the other part of Locus of Control 2 is we're not just talking about work, we're talking about your personal life. There's people, and I have friends, that'll say, the reason why my kids are all messed up is because I worked so hard and I was never home.
It's your fault. Like you decided to work too hard and not be home. Like that was a decision. Whether you're conscious of it or not, you made that decision, right? And so, I have friends that struggle in their love life and they'll, I have one buddy, he's a complete Adonis. Like works out, eats nothing but probably...
chicken breast and embryos or something, I don't know, but he's an Adonis. And he believes that women are corrupt or gold diggers. He has all these negative connotations about women. And we live in Los Angeles and he says, there's no women here. And you're like, there's 18 million people here, nine of them are, nine million of them are women. Like, is it them or is it you?
It's, he has a belief system and it's, you know, the thing that doesn't happen is he doesn't look in the mirror and decide that he needs to change his approach or his beliefs. You know, he externalizes it to women or gold diggers or corrupt or whatever it is. And that's how most people are. There's areas of our lives that we externalize control.
In the areas where we're the most intentional, we will automatically develop an internal locus of control. So like for me, I didn't want to be poor. So I had an internal locus of control when it came to business, but I had an external locus of control when it had, when it came to other stuff, because that's just how I was raised. I was raised that God was the controller of everything and it was fate and your destiny was already laid out. And it ends up none of, you know, none of that is true. There's the.
The old joke about the guy who prays to God to win the lottery over and over again. Have you heard that one? So he prays, he gets his whole church to pray. They have prayer meetings. He does it for years. And then finally, God sends a message down to the pastor of the church. says, Hey, could you tell him to buy a lottery ticket to help me out? Like, how do I make him win the lottery if he never buys a ticket? Right? It's like, people think, well, Chris, you know, Chris is saying that God isn't real. It's like,
Jeff Dudan (32:16)
now.
Chris (32:40)
It's not what I'm saying. I'm saying you can't blame all your problems on God. Or fate or luck, you know?
Jeff Dudan (32:46)
Yeah, you have to take some sort of an action. Have you seen a correlation between people's locus of control, their success in life, and the size of their friend group?
Chris (33:12)
Yeah, but I would, I would maybe say that the friend thing is also followers. Like the thing that automatically happens is the person who has an internal locus of control usually ends up being the natural leader in the room. And so, yeah, they have friends, but they're the also the one that people count on that people look to because they're more in line with the truth. Right. and you can count on them.
Jeff Dudan (33:29)
Hmm. Okay.
Hmm.
Chris (33:40)
And they are who they say they are. They're more authentic. mean, people are attracted to authenticity. And when you start to own your own stuff, you become more authentic because the only way for you to improve is to work on yourself. And so it goes back to what I was saying about liking yourself is if, know, you're genuinely rooting for yourself and you're trying to get better and you're trying to improve, well, you're going to have to change some things. You're going to have to work on some things.
through that process, you just become more authentic and more genuine. And we're all attracted to people who are authentic and genuine.
Jeff Dudan (34:17)
Yeah, I would suggest that sometimes as you, when you get successful, lot of the interactions that you have start to be around business. And then a lot of those are either, some of those are vendor relationships, some are employee relationships, some are dependent, financially dependent relationships. And...
You know, it's, it's, and if you, if you, if you truly don't care that much about what other people think, meaning it doesn't, it's, it's not that you don't care. that you're not going to let it impact you and you're not going to let it change your actions. Then you're probably less likely to be caring about things at the golf club or the social events or these types of groups. don't know. maybe I'm internalizing that a little bit. but you know, I, just, I've developed a.
real impatience for solely social situations. just being, trying to go there and be palatable, maybe be somebody I'm a little bit not, maybe that's my kind of hangup or whatever, but I take full accountability. I catch myself, but I do think I have an internal locus of control. And I think sometimes if it is to be, it's up to me, so.
I'm very, maybe you get a little bit narcissistic, you get a little focused on yourself because you know that like that's where the work is. You know, if you don't spend any time blaming other people for things, the blame's going to you. And now it's like, well, then why did I just waste four hours doing this or why did I waste four hours doing that when I could have been making myself a little bit better? I don't know. Maybe there's nothing there, but I just, find this fascinating.
Chris (36:06)
That's really, that's,
it's interesting to me that that's how you feel because like, you know, you have a presence, right? So like when, when we were at that meeting, I noticed you, had a, you had a presence. And, I was, I was wondering when I was on stage, what you thought, because you, you, you kind of are like me, you have a poker face a little bit. And then you went out of your way to come and tell me.
And talk to me about, about it. And you were very complimentary and excited about getting the book and, know, which then, you know, made me feel great and made me feel like I belonged there in that room and, know, that sort of thing. So it's interesting that you feel that way in the sense, because you, you navigate it very well and you were, you know, you were very, welcoming in your.
in your actions and behavior for me, you know, that's the first meeting I'd been to since like 2018 or something. I don't know.
Jeff Dudan (37:15)
Well,
I will say I was genuinely interested and fascinated and you know, I was, mean what you talked about. Really.
Chris (37:21)
Yeah, but most people won't say anything. Like you went out
of your way to, know, which then validated me in a way, you know, which was, which made me feel like...
Jeff Dudan (37:29)
Hmm. I appreciate that. Yeah, they put the guy with put the
guy with the big head. Tell Joe not to put the guy with the huge head in the front row next time. Just staring at staring at the guest. Well, it was, you know, I
Chris (37:39)
It wasn't your head, it was your, it was your poker face.
Cause like I
got a couple, I got a couple of laughs, but you were, you were kind of like, I felt like you were still trying to figure out if you trusted me or liked me was the feeling I had. And so, you know, also like a compliment means more from somebody who isn't just laughing and following what everybody else is doing, right? Cause it means you're genuinely thinking about stuff and that way too. But you have a tremendous presence. Like you, have a...
Jeff Dudan (38:08)
Yeah.
Chris (38:16)
a very calming, nice presence in a room too. So maybe how you feel is different than how others are experiencing it a little bit.
Jeff Dudan (38:21)
Man, I appreciate that. Thank you.
Hmm, yeah, maybe. Yeah, I don't know. That's interesting. I appreciate that. Thank you for the awareness. Yeah. So speaking of awareness, you said a couple things about walking into a car dealership. So let's talk about truth. If you're walking into a car dealership, it's not working.
Right. You've seen the numbers, you know, they're bad. You know, they're last in the region or they're not hitting their rebate numbers or anything like that. You walk in, you start walking around. Everybody's smiling. Everybody's shaking your hand. I'm the sales manager. I'm this guy, that guy, right? What you know that you're there to fix it. What, what are, what's your approach? How do you enter? How do you wade into that pool? And what are some of the first things that you do and why?
Turning Around a Business Without Cutting to Profitability
Chris (39:26)
So there's probably two narratives going on in a sense, right? It's like, what the truth is, isn't verbalized, right? Because if I come into a situation and it could be a car dealership, it could be a bicycle shop, it could be a doctor's office, it could be a bunch of different things. If you came in and you told the truth, you would isolate people pretty quick because everybody - you know, everybody wants to feel like they're important and like they belong. And so the easiest path to turning something around is asking everybody their opinion and making them feel like their opinion matters, even if their opinion is wrong in a sense, right? So the way that I would do it is I would go in and I would interview everybody and I'm asking questions strategically that are almost designed like guided discovery.
Right. But I'm, I'm making everybody feel important. The other thing that happens is when I talk to everybody in a business and it, really doesn't matter what kind of business I find out who's sleeping with you and what's really going on, who really calls customers back, who doesn't, you that you learn more from the people actually doing the work on the front than you do anybody in any sort of management or executive tower.
Most of the time there's a big disconnect between what's really going on and what isn't. then, so that's the kind of tension of truth, right? Is nobody's really talking about the truth. They're reactive most of the time. The more money they're losing, the worse the people usually are, the less talent is there in a sense. There's usually very little talent.
But the thing on the other side that's happening that I know is like, I know what the fix is already. Like I know that we're gonna go through this 90 day process and by the end of it, they're gonna be making money or on their way to making money. But it's the definition of magic, right? It really is a magic trick. And the best definition of magic I've ever heard is that magic is the initial and the final solution and the casualty between. Like the magician knows
that they're gonna pull a rabbit out of the hat. The magician knows what the final solution is or what the outcome is. It's the audience that doesn't know, right? And so when you go in to turn something around, if you told people like, we're gonna be making money in 90 days, most people are like, well, first of all, I didn't know we weren't making money. Because most of the time the employees don't know that the company isn't making money. But second of all, they would be like, well, there's no way. And then,
The other thing is if they're smart at all, the thing they start to figure out is, well, you know how they're gonna make money is they're gonna cut me or they're gonna cut my pay. So panic starts to set in that way, right? Because people, initially when you go in, people will be like, you're gonna come in and cut and restructure, that sort of thing. But what I know the problem is in between is systems. The systems are broken. People are...
Jeff Dudan (42:33)
Right.
Chris (42:51)
People are secondary in the beginning in a turnaround. Like everybody wants to talk about how people are the most important thing. And when I was young, I used to debate this with people and I would always, you know, lose the debate in the sense that I wasn't convincing anybody, but nobody was fixing businesses like I was. They were in a business and they wanted to believe that people were important so they could believe they were important, right? It's like the same thing I was saying earlier about books like
Jeff Dudan (42:55)
Hmm.
Chris (43:20)
leaders eat last. Well, that's great because you want people to treat you that way. And so yeah, leaders should eat last because we all feel good, but it doesn't fix anything. Like it's not, it's one little tool in a toolbox, but there's also leaders that everybody should stand up and wait to eat until they're sitting down. You know, it depends on the situation and the application and the time that we're in. And, you know, there's a lot of variables. And so the
Jeff Dudan (43:30)
Yeah.
Chris (43:47)
The first thing that I have to do to turn something around is I got to get some systems in place that take away all of the friction and improve the customer experience. Because invariably, what I'm going to have to do is add more value to the customer in anything that I'm fixing. Like the thing that fixes everything quicker is customers that perceive that they're getting more value than what they're paying for. And also a lot of times I need to raise the prices.
So I have to dramatically increase the value by making the customer experience frictionless and more emotional. I need to add a lot of perceived value and make people feel good through the process. So I need to put a system in place and a system kind of has different elements to the recipe. But the way I see a system in a turnaround is
Jeff Dudan (44:16)
Right.
The Art of Creating Momentum and Culture Change
Chris (44:44)
that it has a, you know, a built-in improvement mechanism, a feedback loop in a sense. And then there, there's some sort of intention, like what is the intention? What is the outcome we're trying to create that drives that feedback loop? And then usually I'll, I'll gamify it or, or tie pay plans to it or something. But, that's, that's kind of what is happening while they, while I'm getting people's opinions and
kind of getting to know everybody and building trust. So then what happens and what I do usually is I kick every change that I'm going to do off on the same Monday. So new pay plans, new pricing strategy, new system, the new people that are starting, because usually got to hire people. If you're going to double the sales, you're going to have to have more capacity to produce. Like in a car dealership, the
the most profitable individuals are technicians because technicians are selling time and they're fixing something. So I'm to have to add technicians if I want to, you know, increase the, their, revenue dramatically. And so all those technicians are kind of going to start on the same day. And then I create so much momentum by doing it all at once that people either get on the bus or they get off. you know, the better I
Jeff Dudan (45:55)
right.
Chris (46:11)
I've gotten at it, the less turnover there is, the more people that buy in, but it's all based on momentum in a sleight of hand. Because if you went to people and you said, hey, the pay plans are out of whack, then they would want to quit because you're going to change their pay plan. And if you say, well, hey, but we're going to increase sales, so you're actually going to make more in the end, they don't believe that you're going to increase sales because they haven't seen it. So you have to do this kind of...
Jeff Dudan (46:20)
So you.
Chris (46:38)
slide of hand and there's a leap of faith that happens that they're not even aware of. Once momentum starts, there's no way to stop it, in a sense.
Jeff Dudan (46:51)
Yeah,
that is so counterintuitive because when I've thought about the turnarounds that I've had to get involved with, and there's been several over the years, the best question to ask is if private equity bought the company today and walked in here, what actions would they take and why are we not taking them? But that leads to cuts, right?
So basically you have a subtraction mindset where you're saying, well, the first thing we're going to do is we're going to, oops, again, camera. My camera went out. That's fine. The first thing that we're going to do is we're going to cut and then we're going to build back. But you're saying, let's create a wave. Let's create a movement. Let's create momentum. And let's go ahead and start by creating this wave of positive actions.
And then inside of that, the subtractions will happen by people that don't choose not to get on board or people that choose not to participate in that. So and.
Chris (47:53)
never,
never cut a business into profitability. It only happens by increasing the customer experience and your margins. Now you want to run expenses tight and you want to get your, you know, your personnel in line and be a good steward of that. But that will, you know, that will only get you, get you a marginal increase. need, you need a
Jeff Dudan (47:57)
Right, you gotta grow it.
Chris (48:22)
You need momentum going up. You need more sales. yeah, I've never cut anything into profitability.
Jeff Dudan (48:24)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Hang on a second, Chris. Right. Is are we going to are we going to get that?
Chris (48:34)
or not true profitability that's scalable, you know?
And also the
deduction mindset of cutting has a negative effect that takes a little time to recover from because if you, you know, if you, if you, if your only thing is cut and you don't have a distraction of momentum and sales going the other way, that becomes the focus and people that are just focused on cutting and expenses don't, don't grow.
Like that's why accountants don't make very good CEOs because they don't understand marketing and sales and there's an art to that. And it's a different mindset. And that's why I say leadership, you have to have both. You have to understand accounting and you have to understand people and the magic and psychology. Also they go hand in hand.
Jeff Dudan (49:11)
Right.
Yeah, as you were starting talking about it, leadership versus management, I was thinking myself, well, is it more art or is it more science? But it's really both. Yeah.
Law and Order: Defining Culture Through Boundaries
Chris (49:43)
Yeah. It's art - for sure. Most, and you know, lot of, lot of, people, just back to Locus of Control to that point, cause I think it's a valuable, tool for your, your audiences when you have an external Locus of Control. So you're, you're basically indifferent in your outcome, right? So you're externalizing your fate to your boss or to God.
or to the government or to the market you're in, market conditions are the reason why sales are down, whatever it is, invariably what happens is those people also have an unconscious association with routine and safety, right? So your average blue collar person wants to know that they're safe in their job and they wanna show up and do the same thing every day.
That is the opposite of what it takes to be successful, which is creativity. The best leaders have to be creative because if you can't externalize control to something outside and you're forced to look in the mirror, when you look in the mirror and you want to change it, you got to be creative. You got to find other paths or, you know, paths of creativity to change the situation that you're in. And so the, one of the most important
you know, characteristics of a leader is creativity. You have in its art, right? Being creative is an art.
Jeff Dudan (51:18)
Yeah. And you have to create the space. know, one of Vern Harnish's recommendations to CEOs is get two to four hours a week, turn everything off and kind of let the universe organize itself. So, you know, and that's where that create, you know, the music is made between the notes, right? Like my, my ideas, how many great ideas do you have when you've taken three days away from the business and you're just coming back and like, you're like, wait a minute, why, why are we not doing this?
You know, it's yeah, I didn't realize till late in my career. So I was a restoration contractor and you know, just banging away, you know, sales estimating all of the all of the stuff contractors do. And, know, I'm a creative and I really didn't embrace it or understand it until probably I was 50 years old and realized, you know, Dan Sullivan helped me a little bit with that. You know, like, what's your unique ability?
Like really understanding like who you are, what your unique ability is, and then kind of, and again, like you said, blowing up into that, doubling down on that, know, taking your unique ability and creating a growth plan around it. Like nobody saves their way into prosperity and it's no damn fun on the other side of it. So what are some of the, you mentioned something about
one of the first things you do when you go into a dealership is you change everybody's furniture around. Tell me about that. what is, is that just a pattern interrupt? Is that an uncomfortable, know, discomfort, comfort thing? Is that a power move? What is that?
Chris (53:00)
It's all of that. So there's a bunch of things going on, right? When you come in from the outside, you're in a gunfight with paper. Like you, you know, you can't fire anybody. Like you're an outsider, right? So your, your influence is created by the perception, right? So if you move everybody's desk, they perceive you to be the one that has authority, right? That makes sense. So that's a
Jeff Dudan (53:27)
Yeah.
Are they in the desk when you do it? Or do you do it when they're not there? Sometimes?
Chris (53:30)
Princess.
I usually tell somebody else to tell them to do it, but they know, right. But the second thing is it's a great test. Like there's two tests I'll do is one is I'll just go in and I'll gamify something. And if I gamify something, I'll know how competitive or driven that crew is. Like, do I have leverage here? Like, are they competitive? And then the other thing is, is if you move people's desk and people are coming up to you and they're, you know, they're like, Jeff, I can't, I.
Jeff Dudan (53:57)
Hmm.
Chris (54:04)
I just can't do it anymore. He moved my desk. I'm gonna go somewhere else. You're talking about a culture, right? And culture is a big part of leadership is understanding what culture is. You have a culture of stagnation. Like people are so stuck that just moving their desk ruins their life. Like I wanna condition constant change and constant adaptability. And so as a leader, you gotta manufacture that, right?
Just like as a parent, you wanna put your kids in different situations so they can learn about themselves. You wanna do that with your team too. What happens when COVID happens and you really do have to change? How many restaurants went out of business because they couldn't pivot and go to delivery? It was too, it was too, they're.
They're making food, just the difference is they're not serving it in their restaurant. They're serving it to an Uber Eats guy or whatever. Like think about how many restaurants couldn't make that shift and it's an easy shift on the surface, but mentally they couldn't do it. what are we going to put the food in? like, what? It's like, and so that's what happens, right? Is people are just prone to routine and consistency and safety. And so I'm just trying to see how, how
Jeff Dudan (55:09)
Right.
Sure.
a box.
Chris (55:28)
How much do I have to break here? How dug in is everybody with that mindset? And that's one easy way to figure that out.
Jeff Dudan (55:41)
So you have an established playbook. You've done this hundreds of times, I imagine. How long, what's, when you walk in somewhere, you know, when's the, when is the, when does the rabbit come out of the hat? Is this a 90 day magic trick?
Chris (55:58)
So the way that I used to do it, so I don't go into businesses anymore, but I have coaches that do this sort of thing. And the timeline's a little longer, but when I did, was 60 days was the kickoff, and then 90 days was when they'd print their next financial, right? So the...
the financial in the third month was the one where we should be making money. Like I could, in two months, I could dial it in, get everybody to, you know, take a leap of faith, get momentum going, but we should make money in that third month.
Jeff Dudan (56:40)
It probably takes long.
Chris (56:41)
And I'll say the
ones that are the ones that make the most money are the ones that are making money. Like when you take a business from losing from losing to breaking even is like childbirth. Then you got to regroup. then it from breaking even to making money is another, another operation. But if they're already making money, like, you know, if they're semi-profitable going to very profitable is way easier because
Jeff Dudan (56:48)
Mm.
Yeah.
Chris (57:09)
They already have some systems in place. The people are probably pretty talented or coherent and they just need a different view. You don't have to drag them along if that makes sense.
Jeff Dudan (57:12)
Hmm.
Yeah, and then there's a compound effect because the systems you've put in place have now changed the customer experience and over time customer sentiment, customer memory will grow and it'll build upon itself. you mentioned culture. Do you have a go-to definition of culture?
Law and Order: Defining Culture Through Boundaries
Chris (57:42)
Yeah, so what is the opposite of culture?
Jeff Dudan (57:47)
Mmm.
The opposite of culture, I don't know, chaos. Yeah, that's the word I was looking for.
Chris (57:55)
So
culture is law and order.
Jeff Dudan (58:01)
Law and order, okay. A set of norms, a set of boundaries, a set of values, principles, philosophies, activities.
Chris (58:09)
Think about.
Think about
the, in football, the New England Patriots, Belichick, do your job. That's law and order.
Jeff Dudan (58:20)
Yeah.
Chris (58:26)
We're not talking about how you feel. We're not talking about, we don't let you bring your cell phone to practice anymore, or you don't like this guy or whatever. No, it's like, you got a role to do, do that role. And if you don't do that role, we're going to find somebody else who does it. Now in the back of every player's head on that team, if they didn't do their job, right, what would they expect?
Jeff Dudan (58:52)
Fired.
Chris (58:54)
It's law and order. So what happens if you murder somebody? What would you expect?
Jeff Dudan (59:01)
Well, it depends on whether it was planned or not. I would hope that there would be consequences and I would be arrested for that. That's right, yes.
Chris (59:08)
Let's say it's Matt.
You're to go to jail, right?
That's law and order. You have to have a murder line in your business. First of all, most people don't even know what they stand for. They don't have a clear mission. They don't even know what the mission is or what the problem is they really solve, right? A plumber thinks that the problem they're solving is plumbing, but it's way bigger than that. If you really understand marketing and business and what you're doing,
Jeff Dudan (59:23)
Yes.
Chris (59:45)
But in your business, you gotta have some sort of murder line where this is the acceptable behavior. And if you cross that, you can't be here. Like that's it. So people think culture is everybody sitting around smoking a vape or whatever, feeling good. no, it's, you know, when you have clear law and order and consequences, you attract better people because talented people wanna be in a situation that isn't chaos.
And if you don't have that, you usually have a lot of people with an external locus of control. You end up having to be heavier handed than you want to be as a manager or a leader because you're dealing with chaos. Like people that externalize control are very unpredictable, right? Because the only way to predict something is somebody who's owning the responsibility and trying to get better and learn.
Jeff Dudan (1:00:30)
us.
Chris (1:00:38)
When you go to somebody and you're like, Hey, that thing you're doing, it the outcome isn't there. We're not selling or customers are miserable when they interact with you. And you're like, Oh, well, all customers are crazy. I can't do anything with that. I, if somebody says, well, what is your observation? What do you think I could do to get better? And I said, well, you could smile and you know, find common ground with people or whatever it is. If somebody wants that feedback and they want to improve. Now I got some, you know,
There's got something to deal with. I have a path there that I can go with, but you know, people with an external locus of control usually create a lot of chaos because it's nobody's responsibility and they don't own anything. Nothing's their fault. Nothing's their responsibility. And then as a, as a manager or, know, you just, you overreact because it's just chaos. You're fighting, you know, a lot of people go into work every day and they feel like they're playing whack-a-mole. Well, you designed that.
Jeff Dudan (1:01:23)
Yeah.
Chris (1:01:37)
That's the outcome of what you're allowing to happen.
Jeff Dudan (1:01:37)
Yeah.
Yeah, think about the matrix of excuses that are created if you're working with a bunch of people with external locuses of control. It's a competent, everything's getting blamed on something else, supply chain, the economy, the coffee pot. And then, yeah, it just lacks, you know, it just smacks, it's just truth, man. Like to me, I see it as truth, but.
to those people that probably is their truth to them. They believe it.
Chris (1:02:09)
Well, starts at the top,
Usually, the person at the top is making excuses and won't accept responsibility, they have a bunch of like-minded people below them, right? Cause you kind of attract what, who you are in a sense. And so most of the time that it starts at the top, because if you, if you have an internal locus of control and you're intentional about growing your business, you're going to.
Jeff Dudan (1:02:25)
Yeah.
Chris (1:02:38)
attract and only allow people that feel the same way into your business because it's too important to you. You can only make excuses for so long, Like you won't find anybody here in my company that is going to blame the market. It's not, you know, because this is not how we think, but that's an extension of me. Like, you know, you'll, you'll just like,
If you come here to my office, you'll interact with people and you'll find that they're very similar in mindset and in personality and in energy to me. Like they're very nice and kind, but they're looking for the truth and they're driven. And, you know, we're a little bit of the island of the misfit toys in a sense. But we, the thing that we all kind of share in common is we think we can make the world a better place. And it's going to take a lot of work to do that. And we're willing to do it.
The Book ‘I Am Leader’ – Vision, Format, and Impact
Jeff Dudan (1:03:38)
I don't wanna get outta here without talking about the book for a few more minutes. This is a...
Chris (1:03:45)
How would you describe the book?
Jeff Dudan (1:03:48)
So you have an Apple level unpacking experience with several surprises along the way. Books, gifts, thoughtfully packed, high fit and finish. just from the, it just reeks of quality from the moment that you open the box. This is 12 pounds of paper, I believe. I heard on one of your podcasts it was 12 pounds. It felt heavier to me.
But 12 pounds of paper and the book, I would say that the book is raw. There's some darkness to it. It's a combination of a compilation of wisdom from others and then clearly some authentic text from you. And I think it's put together in a thoughtful way.
And it's one of the most unique pieces of work that I've seen and it should probably be prominently displayed in nice homes and businesses everywhere. How's that?
Chris (1:05:00)
Yeah, it's great. So, you know, the intentionality of me creating the book and I kind of shared earlier how I felt like nothing like this existed. And then the other thing that I know is most people buy books and they don't read them, right? Because I've written books and people meet me and they'll go, I have your book. And I go, what do you think? And they're like, I haven't read it yet. Because it's like what 10 % or 15 % of people that buy a book actually read it.
Jeff Dudan (1:05:13)
right.
Yeah.
Chris (1:05:30)
And so what I wanted to do is I wanted to create an experience where anybody who bought it and the price point kind of determines this too, right? Like it's going to be priced at a point where the people that buy it have probably read a book or if they have it, they're going to read it because they've invested that much in it. And then when they get it, it's going to be an experience and there's going to be kind of a tempo to it. And, you know, a way of communicating.
Jeff Dudan (1:05:30)
right.
Chris (1:05:59)
that pulls them in and keeps them, but they are going to start to feel accomplishment because like it's a page turner, right? You're turning pages, you're thinking about it, but it's not work. I didn't want it to feel like work. I wanted it to feel like discovery. I wanted it to be like, I'm going to think about that and come back. And then the design of it is like a coffee table book where it's not going to fit on your shelf. You're going to put it somewhere prominent. And then it gives it more value because it's a coffee table book. It's big.
Jeff Dudan (1:06:08)
Yeah.
Chris (1:06:28)
It's important, right? The design of it is intentional. It's something that people are going to come over and they're going to be like, what is this? you know, it's a, we, was asking my marketing department this morning, it's over 40 % of people that buy the book, gift the book to somebody else.
Jeff Dudan (1:06:47)
For sure. My kids are getting these. For sure. Yeah. It'll be, it's a legacy. Yeah.
Chris (1:06:50)
Yeah. And they're going to be personal to them, right? Yeah. Personally, it's your
book now. You wouldn't, this isn't a book you would lend to a friend. You would buy it for them because it's personal.
Jeff Dudan (1:07:01)
no. No.
Yes. How did you or?
Chris (1:07:06)
So
all of that went into it. As boring as that might be, that was my intention when I was working.
Jeff Dudan (1:07:15)
No, and the imagery is, it's as much art as it is content. The imagery goes with it. So like how I've decided to use the book. So, you know, I got the thing maybe 10 days ago and I couldn't fit it in my suitcase from Phoenix, so I had them ship it to me. So I got it. Thankfully, I got it before we got together on the show here today.
And, but like I have, I've had a crazy week personally and professionally, meaning a lot of dinners out and just, you know, not, not a lot of time. So I've only taken an hour maybe to go through it and to read select things. But like, what was apparent to me is like, this is not a skim through book. Like this is where every morning I'm going to wake up and go through 20 pages. And because it's thought you need to think about it.
Like it's this isn't a book that you read to get through. Like it's it's not it's not formatted like that. It's it's going to be a passage. There might be 20 words on a page. There might be 500 words on a page. There's going to be some imagery and it's and then there's sections. You know, you've sectioned it off in a way. I'm like, OK, well, this is going to be a book that is, you know, I'll I'll wake up, I'll do my journaling and then I'll this is what I'll read and I'll read for 30 minutes or.
or however long I've got and then I'll just bookmark it and then go back to it. Because there's a lot of philosophy in here and again, I've looked more in the I am than the leader side of it, but is that the recommended way to go through this? When you go to some books, it's like, can, what the one that Tim Ferriss wrote, you can go anywhere and start and there's five pages by this, Tools of Titans or whatever, but.
Do you mean for this to be consumed in that manner or what was your intent?
Chris (1:09:09)
Yeah. And hopefully, but you know, I've experienced it, however you, feel whatever's organic to, to, it, but I'm hoping there's parts where you stop and it takes a couple of days to come back. Like you're like, okay, I to think about this. And, the other thing is most people don't get through IM. Like they, they stayed IM for awhile. Once you're done with IM and you read leader.
If you go back and read, am again, I am as a roadmap on how to lead people. The first time you experience, I am, it's going to be personal to you. But the second time you experience it to be like, okay. This is, this is how I become, you know, a, a really effective leader is understanding that this, you know, 90 % of people have an external locus of control. They're very memetic. They're looking for you to give them the answers.
They're gonna copy your behaviors. And so you'll experience I am different after you read leader than the first time. It'll read different to you. And that was by design also. There's a story arc in I am, there's one in leader, but then there's one overall too, between the two.
Jeff Dudan (1:10:26)
Got it, well, I wanna thank you for everybody for investing the time to put it together. And I hope many people are getting their hands on this. I'm sure they are. And I appreciate the time.
A Final Call to Leadership and Raising Standards
Chris (1:10:41)
Yeah. And - just, kind of in, in conclusion to Jeff is like the outcome of being an effective leader is you can just about do anything you want to do. You can make the world a better place. You can solve problems for others and people are looking for leaders. Like the problem that we have in the world right now is we don't have leaders. don't have leaders in politics. We don't have leaders locally. We don't have leaders in business.
And everybody's dying for somebody to step up and own the responsibility and improve things, you know, get everybody together to work as a collective to make the world a better place. And that's what we're missing. And, I would just say that you're, know, if you're listening to this, this might be a calling for you to become the leader and be the one that raises their hand and says, Hey, I'll,
I'll accept responsibility, I'll do it. And the outcome of that is you're be much happier and fulfilled and you're gonna make others better. Like there's nothing better than improving things and making the world a better place. Even if it's just, you know, in your small way, in your church or with your family or with your business or whatever it is. But hey, the world would be a better place if we had better parents.
Jeff Dudan (1:12:06)
Yeah. Isn't it crazy? Isn't it crazy that everything's just the simplest decision to do it?
Chris (1:12:07)
Right?
Yeah, it really is. It is a decision. But unfortunately, too many people are passive in that decision. They let life make the decision for them.
Well, Jeff, I appreciate you having me on and I can't wait to hang out with you again at the next meeting and get to know you more.
Jeff Dudan (1:12:33)
Yeah. This has been
great. How can people get in touch with you or get in touch with your business, your coaching and education business? I know that you've got a lot going on online. It looks like you have a significant education business, lots of material. What's the best way for people to connect with you and let you help them?
Where to Find Chris Collins and His Work
Chris (1:12:54)
Iamleaderbook.com is the website and then you can contact us through there.
Jeff Dudan (1:13:00)
Okay, awesome, simple. Do you have time for a curveball and a fastball? All right, here's the curveball. Gun to your head, you've got to start a business in the next 30 days and it's not something you're currently doing. What would you do?
Chris (1:13:05)
Sure.
Come to my head, I gotta start a business in 30 days. What would I do?
And it.
Well, just thinking, so I'm walking through my reasoning here is if I just needed to make money, I would probably do some sort of service like pressure washing or something like that to then build up my income. Am I broke when I do this or do I have money?
Jeff Dudan (1:13:48)
No,
no, you're who you are right now. think the question, the question. Go ahead.
Chris (1:13:51)
and I would buy something
in hospitality. So I would buy a coffee roaster, coffee shops or a hotel or something like that.
Jeff Dudan (1:14:02)
Nice. Yeah. like to see sometimes people like have they've they've seen an opportunity but they haven't they haven't acted on it and they're just you know you never know what you're going to get with that one. But all right here's the fastball this one will come right down the middle. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life that you could offer them based on your journey what would that be.
Closing Reflections on Kindness, Action, and Impact
Chris (1:14:26)
The opportunity of a lifetime comes once a day.
Jeff Dudan (1:14:30)
Wow.
Chris (1:14:31)
You just got to be willing to see it. Like there's opportunity everywhere. You have the opportunity to make somebody's day by buying their coffee when they're behind you in line, just, you know, telling somebody that they did a good job or, you know, spending a little more time on something. And, then on the business side, you know, figuring out problems for customers and, know, making the world a better place, but the opportunity.
Is there, you know, just, just think like, you know, just for example, you coming up to me and, and talking to me about my, my talk at the meeting we were at, like you, weren't aware that that made my day or whatever, but, those, know, those sort of things, kindness and, you know, saying something when, when others won't and being the one that steps up and like you said, it's a choice.
but making the choice to do the thing that makes others better and raise self-esteem. At the end of the day, maybe we're on the business of self-esteem because the world has low self-esteem.
Jeff Dudan (1:15:45)
not to unend this podcast because we just wrapped it up, but I do want to tap on this because you mentioned it. The reason I probably the reason I came up not I was very compelled by what you're saying and I wanted to meet you and and I was excited about the books and all. But, you know, I just so I got covid in December and I got walking pneumonia. I was down for like three weeks and I went like deep, deep into David Goggins.
and I didn't get it at first. And as I read his books and then I listened to him, it finally dawned on me that like our standards are the greatest thing that we can give other people and that you need to pursue your limits and standards in the face of no consequences or no purpose whatsoever, just for the sake of your standards, them unto themselves. So.
You know, I, and I was leaving, I was, I'll, I'll share it. was at, was an event the next week. I'll share the story real quick. And, know, how many times do you walk by and you see a homeless person and you're like, you know, I'd like to help them, but you just don't take the action. I don't know. Some people say don't, but whatever. So I'm at this meeting and I got to go over, I'm going to Tommy Mello's place to do his podcast. And I'm probably like pushing time and I just go down to this.
outside the hotel to this place to get something to eat. And I shove a huge breakfast burrito in my face, right, really fast. And then I walk back and there's a homeless guy and he's got a dog with him. And he's just sitting there. And there's about 75 people out at the cafe and he's drawing little pictures and he's got a sign that says food on it or whatever. And I walked in and I went to the elevator and I'm like, well, look, you know.
You don't do it for social media. You don't do it for these things. You know, I just left my bag there. I went out back where I got the burrito. I got two huge turkey sandwiches and I brought them over to the guy. Just said, hey, one for you, one for the dog, right? And Norm MacDonald makes this great joke, by the way, about a homeless, where he sees a homeless guy with a dog and he says, the dog's thinking, my God, this is the longest walk. He never gets home.
So, you I thought about that joke when I saw the guy with the dog, but then I'm like, but the dog was like in a great mood, but man, it was pretty thin and stuff like that. like, you know, in that moment, I just took the action and like that's what you like that I took that action in that day. And and that's it, man. And you just you just do it for the sake of doing it or, you know, giving somebody a smile or paying somebody a compliment just just because and you don't real like it costs you nothing.
you cost you nothing to do it. so I really appreciate that point. And, and with that, I am leader.com. I am a leader, I am, I am leader.com. I am leaderbook.com. And you can get in touch with Chris there, highly recommend. Chris, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for being on today on the home front.
Final Thoughts and Wrap-Up
Chris (1:18:46)
leader book.
Thank you, Jeff, was really fun.
Jeff Dudan (1:18:58)
Yeah, man, the amazing Chris Collins here with Jeff Duden. We have been on the home front. Thanks for listening.
Conclusion
This conversation between Jeff Dudan and Chris Collins digs deep into the mechanics of turning around a business, building intentional leadership, and understanding human behavior in work and life. From the psychology of systems to the power of self-awareness, it’s a masterclass in both strategy and authenticity.
To hear more insights like these, subscribe to On the HomeFront wherever you get your podcasts.
