July 29, 2025 • 65 mins
Chris Nordyke, a seasoned entrepreneur and family man, engages in a deep conversation in this episode of the Bringing Up Business podcast.
They explore the intricate balance between business and parenting, discussing how Chris's upbringing shaped his leadership style and parenting approach.
Chris also shares his journey of self-discovery, the importance of humility in relationships, and the impact of financial stability on family dynamics.
The conversation delves into the challenges of maintaining a successful marriage while navigating the complexities of raising children and running a business.
Through personal anecdotes and insights, Chris emphasizes the significance of commitment, self-awareness, and understanding family patterns in fostering healthy relationships.
More About Chris Nordyke
Chris brings a robust background in entrepreneurship and sales leadership to his role as Co-owner and President at Floodlight Consulting. His journey began at age 19 when he entered the world of direct sales with Vector Marketing, where he quickly rose to prominence as a top sales leader and branch office manager in Los Angeles. During his tenure, he was instrumental in overseeing a team of over 40 sales representatives, spearheading initiatives in recruiting, training, and team development. This experience laid a strong foundation in entrepreneurship and sales leadership, which Chris continues to leverage today, particularly in the restoration industry.
Before his current venture, Chris had a significant tenure at State Farm Companies, where he owned and operated a successful agency for five of his eight years with the company. In 2014, Chris transitioned to Summit Cleaning and Restoration, where he played a pivotal role on the leadership team. Until late 2019, he led the company's business development and marketing efforts, placing a special emphasis on customer experience, culture, and commercial sales operations.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 00 (00:00):
Welcome to the Bringing Up Business podcast,
where we talk about business andparenting.
I am your host, Kaila Sachse,toddler mom and owner of a
marketing and creative agencycalled Yumari Digital.
I'm excited to chat withtoday's guest, Chris Nordyke.
He is a serial business guy,sales thought leader, teacher,
(00:20):
and podcaster, besides being ahusband of 23 years and a father
to three teens.
Before founding BloodlightConsulting Group, Chris worked
as a sales executive in thedisaster restoration industry.
And prior to that, he spentroughly 10 years working with
(00:41):
State Farm Insurance, both as anemployee and agency owner.
Today, we're going to be divinginto what it's like to maintain
a thriving marriage, family,and business.
Chris, I'm so happy you're herewith me.
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 02 (00:58):
Yeah, same.
Thank you so I'm glad we metand I've been looking forward to
our chat today.
Speaker 00 (01:04):
Yeah, it's going to be a good one.
Let's dive right in.
Tell us about your journey withparenting, your career, which
came first.
What's the story?
Speaker 02 (01:15):
Yeah, well, so my wife and I, we started dating my
senior year of high school.
And actually, this is a bit ofa point of contention with my
wife and I, because I took herto see the movie Picture Perfect
with Jennifer Aniston.
And Jay Moore, I think, was theother star in that.
And I took her to ice creamafter that.
I've always considered that ourfirst date.
(01:37):
And that was the summer beforeour senior year.
She contends that that wasn't adate.
That was just friends hangingout.
So...
So anyway, it started earlydays.
We're one of those weirdcouples that high school
sweethearts.
And so my wife's been with methrough all of it, all of it.
In fact, my very first kind ofbusinessy job or what turned out
(02:00):
to be a sales job was sellingknives for Cutco Cutlery.
Some listeners may have theirown experience with Cutco or
have some in their kitchen.
And my wife got a recruitingletter.
then girlfriend got arecruiting letter and I, she
read it to me and I'm like, wow,$15 per appointment.
I'm 45.
So this was however many yearsago.
(02:23):
25 plus years ago.
And $15, how long does anappointment take?
An hour?
Oh my, $15 an hour?
It's amazing.
Can I go to the interview withyou?
Little did I know theyrecruited anybody that could fog
a mirror and cut a penny withsome scissors.
But that ended up kicking offmy sales career and ultimately
(02:44):
business experience.
I was an independent contractorfor them.
And so my wife and I were stilldating at the time.
I ended up taking anopportunity and opening a sales
office for Cutco down in LosAngeles while my wife was going
to nursing school up in Oregon.
And then ultimately, I justcame to realize my wife is not
(03:04):
going to move to California.
She's not going to move to LA.
So I'm either going back toOregon or we probably don't have
a future for this relationship.
So I ended up moving back andOne thing led to another and
there's been a whole series ofexperiences since then, but my
wife's been with me through itall.
Speaker 00 (03:22):
Wow.
Oh my goodness.
So you started as an associatefor Cutco and then you opened
your own office.
I mean, how did that happen?
How did you climb the ladder inthat way?
Speaker 02 (03:34):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Good question.
Well, so I was 19 when Istarted selling and it was my
first sales job, really.
I mean, I'd mowed lawns andstuff in my neighborhood, kind
of little business-y kind ofthing, sort of.
But it was my first time reallybeing taught how to sell.
And I did pretty well with it.
But of course, you know, to behonest, honest, right?
(03:55):
Like I'm selling knife sets tomy parents, friends, to my
parents, to all their friends atchurch, you know, so I'm kind
of shooting fish in a barrel, soto speak.
But I was good at it too, youknow, and I think everybody
recognized that, wow, you know,Chris has, he likes to talk to
people and he's not afraid topick up the phone and call
referrals, you know, which ofcourse is a really important
(04:18):
thing.
If you're going to be in sales,you got to be willing to pick
up the phone or knock on a door.
And I seemed to, be able to dothat.
And, um, so I spent a summer, Ithink I sold about $25,000
worth of knives, uh, during thatsummer.
And then of course my uppermanagement, they tapped me on
the shoulder and say, Hey, doyou want to be a part of our
(04:39):
branch management trainingprogram, uh, to run your own
sales office?
And I was like, well, I don'tknow, maybe I'd be good at that,
you know?
And so it was very much justkind of whimsy serendipity that
I did pretty good.
They told me I should do thismanagement program.
And then I spent the wholesubsequent school year while I
(04:59):
was going to my sophomore yearof college, driving back and
forth from Oregon to Seattle forthese branch manager training
things.
And then I was given theoption, do I want to open an
office in Seattle?
or Bellevue, Washington, or doI want to go to Los Angeles?
Speaker 01 (05:17):
And small town
Speaker 02 (05:18):
kid, I was like, I'm going to LA.
And that was the beginning ofit all.
So I was just, you know, it'slike, and this has really been
true of most of my career.
I was pretty, I got seen forbeing good at the thing that I
was, you know, kind of asked todo and then just kind of got
promoted up from there.
Yeah.
(05:38):
So it was fun.
I did that for maybe threeyears.
Unfortunately, it was like Ieither moved back from L.A.
or I'm probably going to haveto write off this relationship
with my girlfriend and I didn'twant to lose her.
So I came back up to Oregon andgot a regular job.
But that ultimately led me tomy next business.
And one thing after another.
Right.
Speaker 00 (05:59):
Yeah.
Yeah.
How did you.
So what was the prompting?
I picture you.
You're down in L.A.
You're running this office andyou're Was it your girlfriend
who was like, hey, I'mstruggling in this relationship.
You got to come back up here.
Or what were the warning signsthat you were on the rocks?
Speaker 02 (06:16):
Oh.
Oh, goodness.
Well, so my wife, my now wife,broke off the engagement.
So we actually got engaged.
Speaker 01 (06:28):
Oh, wow.
Speaker 02 (06:28):
Yeah, we're really young.
It's just funny now at 45 tolook back at some of this.
I'm like, wow.
I think I first proposed toher...
right before I moved to LA whenI was 20 years old.
Oh, wow.
And she said yes, right?
And so the ring, the wholething.
And then we were kind of longdistance.
She came down to LA a coupletimes during that subsequent
(06:50):
year and a half or so.
to visit me.
And I think it was just areally formative time in my life
where I started to get reallycaught up in the whole LA scene.
One of the things I realized isthat I wasn't making a ton of
money.
I mean, when I first opened myoffice down there, I mean, I was
really scraping along.
I was a 1099.
I was basically self-employed.
I employed a...
(07:12):
I had a full-time receptionistthat would answer calls for me.
I was placing ads in the LATimes to recruit sales reps.
I was flyering at USC and UCLAand recruiting these college
kids.
And...
I just got caught up in it.
I was 20 years old and I hadsales reps working for me.
(07:33):
There were 21, 22, a lot ofthem from rich parents.
They're driving up in fanciercars than I'm driving to the
office and I'm the boss.
And I just kind of got caughtup in all the ego of it.
And I'd spend all of myearnings on taking my sales reps
out to dinner after teammeetings and kind of kind of
flaunting the money, justwanting to be cool and being
(07:54):
cool boss, Michael Scott.
That was me, kind of.
It was like a 20-year-oldversion of me.
And a lot of that arrogance anda lot of that sort of
superficiality, I just becomereally superficial about
appearances and money andtalking the talk and And my wife
(08:17):
came down to visit me one time.
And by the end of the trip, wewere just strife between us.
And she's like, I just I don'teven know if I want to be with
you anymore.
Like, this is a version of youthat, wow, is not not what I'm
into.
Speaker 01 (08:32):
And
Speaker 02 (08:33):
I was like, wow, okay.
It was a bit of a wake-up callfor me.
I bet.
So anyway, she gave me the ringback.
I went home to visit my familythat Thanksgiving, and I took
the ring back to the jewelrystore where I had it made, and I
put it on consignment.
And I just kind of resolvedinside myself.
I said a prayer.
I was like, okay, Lord, if it'sstill here when I come back at
(08:58):
Christmas– Or I don't rememberwhat the timeline was exactly.
It was more than that.
We were broken up for maybealmost six months.
Speaker 01 (09:07):
Oh, wow.
Speaker 02 (09:08):
I'm like, if it's back here when I move home, then
that's a sign.
And I'm going to do everythingI can to salvage the
relationship and move forward.
And that's what happened.
I ended up deciding to close myoffice down there and move back
to Oregon.
And we linked back up.
And we had kind of a new commonfriend group that we
established.
And...
(09:28):
One thing led to another andhere we are.
It's been 23 years, March 22nd.
Speaker 00 (09:35):
Wow.
Congratulations.
Oh my goodness.
It's been
Speaker 02 (09:38):
hard fought.
Yeah.
Speaker 00 (09:41):
So during that time when you were engaged, I would
say the first time, right?
Because I'm assuming there's anext
Speaker 02 (09:47):
time.
The first go around.
Yeah.
Speaker 00 (09:49):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Spoiler alert.
He gets engaged again.
But during that firstengagement, were you in the
middle of planning a wedding orwas that still a future to-do
item?
Speaker 02 (09:58):
It was kind of like before we ever got into that, we
end up putting it on pause.
Yeah, yeah.
We never got into the fullthroes of all that stuff.
Speaker 00 (10:10):
Yeah, yeah.
And in one way, I can imaginethat being– making the breakup a
little bit easier because nowyou're not having to tell
people, hey, the wedding is offand go through that.
Oh, the embarrassment of
Speaker 02 (10:23):
all that stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 00 (10:24):
Yeah, yeah.
So when you move back up, yourealize like, okay, the ring is
still here.
I can salvage thisrelationship.
I'm moving back to Oregon.
What was your relationship withCutco?
Did that completely end or didyou reenter now?
Speaker 02 (10:40):
Yeah, pretty much, pretty much, you know, I think
too, this was an example, it wasone of the first times in my
career where I hit part of theexperience, aside from me just
moving up to be close to mygirlfriend, was that as I
transitioned from being a salesguy to managing people and
(11:02):
leading...
I really struggled.
And of course, that was part ofthat whole identity conflict
that I was having with thearrogance and the flashiness.
And I had just kind of taken onthis LA kind of persona.
But it was also just, I think,connected to my immaturity of...
(11:22):
Unbeknownst to me, I used tolead worship in church growing
up.
I was very much like a stageguy.
I would speak.
I did drama.
I did a lot of differentthings.
And so even though I never didsales, I was never the lemonade
stand kid, the fact that I fellinto sales, it was pretty
obvious to everybody else why,because I've always been that
(11:43):
talker, kind of easily matchingup with people and so forth.
And so I learned to kind oflean on that to a fault.
And when I moved down to LA andat one point I had like 40
sales reps on my team, what gotme there wasn't gonna get me to
(12:07):
the next level.
Like me knowing how to sell andcommunicate with people and
persuade and influence and thosekinds of things and earn
people's trust was not the samemix of stuff that was gonna help
me effectively manage anddevelop people over
Speaker 01 (12:24):
time.
Speaker 02 (12:25):
And not only that, but manage the business of the
business.
I didn't have discipline aroundmy financial management and all
of that kind of stuff.
And so I really hit a wall andI've done this since, It's
really been in my 30s and 40swhere I've started to really
touch into this pattern I hadmyself, whereas once it gets
really hard and things getunfamiliar, my tendency earlier
(12:47):
in my career was to look for anexit route, to go to the next
thing or the next businessopportunity where I could really
just hang in that naturaltalent and skill that I had and
not have to do the hard work ofgetting over that hump.
Speaker 01 (13:05):
and
Speaker 02 (13:07):
leveling up my skill and my discipline and all of
those things required for me togo to that next level of kind of
leadership andentrepreneurship.
And so that's really what brokedown there in addition to that.
And so I actually forgot yourquestion.
What was your originalquestion?
Speaker 00 (13:28):
That's okay.
You know what?
Speaker 02 (13:29):
Where was I going with that?
Speaker 00 (13:32):
I'm noticing a pattern between Leadership,
effectively running a business,sales being an important element
too for running a business.
I mean, how do you connect thedots between sales, leadership,
and running a business?
Speaker 02 (13:51):
Wow.
I mean, in some ways, it almostdemands three different people.
Speaker 01 (13:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 02 (13:59):
You know, in the sense of like, it's really work.
I don't know very many peoplewho are good, like naturally
gifted at all, at all of them,right?
And I certainly wasn't and amnot.
I have learned, I have...
I have built up some of thosedeficiencies to a point where
they no longer cause me harm.
(14:19):
Right.
And they're good atestablishing and setting up
systems and processes and likethey're task oriented and all
(14:41):
that kind of stuff.
But then oftentimes people thatare wired that way, they have
call reluctance or they feelsheepish in front of crowds.
They don't like public speakingor they bristle at the idea of,
quote, selling.
Right.
And so it's pretty rare thatpeople embody that.
both of those types of skillsets at the same time.
(15:02):
And so I think the connectionis that regardless of what
somebody is sort of naturallyborn with, there's a leveling up
that I think every single oneof us has to do.
Here's one way I heard itdescribed.
There's this guy named, Ialways forget his name.
He was the founder and CEO ofInfusionsoft, which now I
(15:27):
believe is called and it's amarketing automation platform.
Anyway, I wish I had his name.
That would have made thismoment a lot better.
That's okay.
But I remember he was speakingto a group of entrepreneurs and
he said, any CEO is capabletypically of leading a company
through one, maybe two growthcycles, significant cycles of
(15:52):
growth.
He said, but beyond that,they'll struggle.
And his message wasn't, hey,you can only lead a company
through two growth cycles.
It was, as a CEO, you almosthave to completely reinvent
yourself in order to be theleader manager that the business
(16:12):
is going to need to growthrough another season, right?
And that was kind of a profoundmessage to me.
And I realized in that moment,it was really just the beginning
of understanding andconsciousness around this, is
that, wow, I have to reinventmyself.
(16:34):
And these are some of the keyareas in terms of sort of
process development, detailmanagement, time management,
some of these things that I'dbeen able to sort of...
improvise on and kind of fumblemy way through because I was so
good at the public speaking,the sales stuff, that type of
(16:55):
thing.
I could kind of cover up andobfuscate my lack of attention
and my lack of intentionalityaround all those other things
that later on in life justbecame more and more fundamental
to, hey, like when I owned astate farm agency.
I was trying to get by on mypersona and my charisma and my
(17:17):
ability to kind of draw peoplein.
But then slowly I was turningover my employees because they
get so frustrated of just howADD I was.
They liked me.
But they couldn't stand workingfor me because it was just so
unpredictable and soinconsistent and unreliable in a
(17:38):
lot of the ways that anemployee wants their employer to
be reliable.
You know what I mean?
And so that's been a reallyinteresting growth path for me
is working to– continue todevelop my strengths and get the
very most out of the talent Ihave while at the same time
shoring up some of these areas.
(17:59):
And sometimes it has beenhiring employees to, to really
own some of those areas, butthat can also be a crutch.
And it has been for me.
Um, you know, I think about,can you tell me if I'm talking
too much, but
Speaker 01 (18:12):
one of
Speaker 02 (18:13):
the, one of the learning experiences that I had,
um, when I opened my state farmagency, I had five employees.
And I remember as I wasinterviewing to hire those
employees, I would tell themthings like, Hey, listen, um,
something you should know aboutme is I'm not great with
details.
(18:33):
I'm not super consistent, notgreat with paperwork.
I'm not great with really liketask management, that kind of
stuff.
It's not my thing, but I'mgreat at sales and I'm great at,
um, I'm great at working withclients.
I'm great at earning theirtrust and all these things.
But the reason I'm hiring youis to take care of all that
stuff I don't like.
I would actually say thingslike that in my interview
(18:55):
process.
And at the time, I was reallycoming from this place of like
good Strength Finder.
Remember that book, StrengthFinder 2.0 by Gallup?
Yeah.
And one of the premises theytalk about is, hey, don't worry
about like turning yourweaknesses into a strength,
focus your attention on whatyou're good at and what your
(19:16):
core strengths are.
That's way more valuable thantrying to like build up your
weaknesses.
I took that and I ran with it.
I'm like, oh yeah, I don't needto be good at details.
I don't need to do, you know?
And so I brought this into myinterviews, but in hindsight,
right?
With 20 years of hindsight, Irealize now that I was just
(19:38):
really, you know what I wasdoing in that moment?
was I was avoiding the shameand embarrassment of those
employees catching me in the act
Speaker 01 (19:50):
of
Speaker 02 (19:52):
failing on the details and not following
through.
So it was like I waspreemptively saying, hey, you
can't be mad at me once youstart here because I told you it
was going to be this way.
I'm not good with details.
I'm not good at rememberingthings.
I don't take great notes andput them in the system.
And this is why it might behard to work for me.
And so if they still sign on,It's like, hey, you can't be mad
(20:12):
at me if I– you know what Imean?
Speaker 00 (20:15):
It's like you signed on the dotted line.
Now you're working for me.
You already know all thedetails.
Yeah, your
Speaker 02 (20:21):
problem, not mine.
Speaker 00 (20:22):
Exactly.
Speaker 02 (20:23):
Yeah, and of course that wasn't my attitude per se
because I like people and Iappreciate people and all the
things.
But it was just– again, it wasanother indication of my
immaturity just as being abusiness owner of, yes,
delegation is important.
And– There is a baseline levelof competency and discipline
(20:44):
that I think every owner has tolearn
Speaker 01 (20:46):
in
Speaker 02 (20:47):
order to not drive their people crazy, to create a
stable work environment, tocreate an environment where
people can thrive and reallysucceed and they feel supported.
All of these things that I'velearned since.
But it's just funny to lookback at prior versions of
ourselves and see And you haveso much more clarity.
You're like, oh, well, that'swhat I was doing.
(21:08):
That's really what I was doingin that conversation.
I was ashamed of the fact thatI suck at these things and I
didn't want them to be able touse that against me later on.
Speaker 00 (21:18):
Yeah.
How did you realize that youwere the problem and not your
employees?
Well, I wish I
Speaker 02 (21:28):
could say I realized it later.
when I was owning and runningthat business.
But it really, frankly, itwasn't until much a number of
years later.
Um, I think some of it, uh,some of, some of it I became
conscious with or of, um, duringvarious like counseling types
of things that I do with mywife, you know, as our marriage,
(21:51):
as we were kind of growing inour marriage, we did all kinds
of over the years, we've done alot of different counseling
modalities and groups and,retreats and all that kind of
stuff.
And you learn about yourself.
What you start to see is apattern.
You start to realize that.
And I think this is the otherthing that has just become so
real and true and justfundamental for me is that
(22:12):
business people, and I thinkthis is less true of like
younger people without puttingany definition to that.
But I think a lot of us grew upwith parents, grandparents,
really kind of segmenting, well,that's my professional life,
that's work.
Speaker 01 (22:32):
This
Speaker 02 (22:33):
is home, this is my personal, you know, and there
was a real distinction betweensomebody's personal and
professional life.
And I think what a lot of ushave come to see and understand
is that there is no, therereally is no distinction.
Like who I am at homeabsolutely affects who I show up
as And vice versa, right?
(22:55):
So if I've got any kind ofdysfunction or brokenness or bad
behavior or poor habits or thatkind of stuff in either one of
those zones, it's inevitablyaffecting my performance or the
way I show up to all of it, youknow?
Yep.
(23:15):
Relative to my marriage was abig part of it.
And of course, that offeredinsights into my parenting.
And all of it pointed to thesepatterns in how I protected
myself and what other peoplethought of me.
And all of that, well, we'regetting really deep here, aren't
(23:37):
we?
All of that kind of pointedback to my family culture
growing up, which was reallyheavily predicated on
reputation.
Speaker 01 (23:46):
What other
Speaker 02 (23:47):
people think of you?
My dad was a public schoolteacher, very, very successful,
very well regarded, and awonderful person.
And it's never the whole story,right?
But so there was a little bitof this family culture of, like,
here's a very funny exampleabout reputation in our family.
And I'm sure other people canrelate to this.
Like, we had this pattern.
(24:08):
My parents used to invitepeople over a lot.
It was a bright spot in mygrowing up.
We'd have people over afterchurch.
We had friends.
My parents would hostsleepovers with my friends.
It was great.
Sounds like a great time.
It's funny.
We had a nice house, middleclass.
Dad was a teacher.
Mom was a nurse.
We had a nice house, butnothing fancy.
(24:30):
Our house, when people cameover, was always very tidy.
The counters in the kitchenwere all cleared off, right?
The door to the laundry roomwas closed.
Guess what was behind the doorto the laundry room?
All the stuff that used to beout on top of the kitchen
counters, right?
(24:51):
I developed a pattern of when Iwas cleaning up my room for
company, everything got shovedin the closet.
So there was this appearance ofus being put together, us being
tidy, us being conscientious.
Speaker 01 (25:04):
And
Speaker 02 (25:05):
the reality was a lesser version of that, for
sure.
And so that's just one example,I think, of how we adopt these
ways Behaviors and patterns.
I think many of us from ourcore family unit and we carry
those things forward.
And if we're not conscious ofit, I mean, I know, I mean, I'm
(25:27):
sure this is true even to me ofme in some ways today.
We carry that forward for therest of our life unless we
become conscious of it and startto actively change our
behavior, you know.
Speaker 00 (25:39):
1000%.
The way that we grow up wireswho we are.
And it's not until we find anissue with that wiring and are
forced to confront it that wehave the opportunity to rewire.
I definitely had the same issuegrowing up.
We always look like we had ittogether.
(26:01):
Until the doors were closed andwe were able to be fully
expressive of ourselves and dealwith all of our demons.
And to be frank, it was roughliving what felt like a double
life.
Yeah.
Living this life where I wastold, hey, you have the best
parents.
You have the most amazingfamily.
That must be super cool.
(26:22):
And in my head, I'm like, wow,yeah, I wish I could feel the
same way about
Speaker 01 (26:26):
our
Speaker 00 (26:27):
family.
And this isn't too– To sayanything negative about my
parents, we had a very difficultset of cards to work with.
I had a deaf and autisticbrother growing up, fully
disabled, needed 24-7 care.
(26:48):
Raising him was unlike raisingany other type of child.
Raising him definitely wasn'tlike raising me.
So I found myself having tohide in a corner and be the good
girl and just stay out of theway.
I would often have to step inand help with household things,
(27:09):
not in an empowering way, but ina way to keep the family unit
running and functioning.
So I felt like I had to grow upfaster than what I should have.
But all that to say, I ended uphaving to deal with
perfectionist tendencies lateron.
And that came to light when Iran into walls of, oh my gosh,
(27:34):
I'm spending so much timefocusing on these little teeny
tiny details that don't matter.
I'm not making any realprogress on my business or on
myself.
So all that to say, completelyagree.
The way that we grow updefinitely affects who we are
today.
So- Okay, so you have thisopportunity to learn about
(27:56):
yourself through the State FarmAgency.
At what point did you and yourwife decide to have kids and
what was that whole processlike?
Speaker 02 (28:10):
That's funny how that question sounded, right?
It's real.
I know what you mean.
Yeah, it's real.
Well, let's see here.
So I had my daughter about ayear.
before I opened my state farmagency, a year and a half.
In fact, I was in the throes ofstarting a franchise business
(28:33):
with a friend called RapidRefill Ink.
It was through this heyday 20years ago of companies
remanufacturing and refillingink cartridges and laser toners,
that kind of stuff.
And so we started a businessthat way.
I was right in the middle ofthat when we got pregnant.
Another interesting little datapoint on our story is at the
time we were living in a big sixbedroom house with two other
(28:57):
married couples.
Speaker 01 (28:58):
Oh, wow.
One
Speaker 02 (28:59):
of whom already had twins and a third child that
they just had and another thathad a child 10 months before us
while we were living in thathouse.
So we conceived our first childin there and we lived with
these couples.
It was an incredibleexperience, actually, especially
in our early days.
So this would have been like...
from 21 to 24 years old we wereliving in this kind of communal
(29:24):
we weren't wearing white robeswe weren't all sleeping with
each other it wasn't some crazyyou know lascivious kind of
environment but it was actuallywe were all friends from church
and it was this perfectly laidout house it was incredible and
and so i was starting thatbusiness that rapid refill inc
business my other buddy wasgetting ready to go to law
school we were all kind of inthis this soup of life.
(29:47):
And, uh, it was, it was reallyincredible.
But, um, so we left there, mybuddy went to law school that
kind of affected the whole mojoof the household.
And eventually we just kind ofall disbanded.
Um, and, and after I sold myinterest in that business is
when I went into state farm.
And I It was very uncertain.
Like when I first started withState Farm, they gave me a
(30:10):
$20,000 line of credit, whichthey give all agents when they
get an agency.
But you're a 1099.
I mean, I was self-employed.
I had a LLC that I set up.
And so I had to create all theincome.
And so my first year owning anagency, I think I netted, I took
home maybe $28,000.
(30:31):
Now, of course, this is 20years ago.
It's a little bit moreequivalent now, but it was
meager.
And I remember...
I remember my wife and I buyingtrays of Costco cookies, you
know, those big, huge monstercookies they make, and then
repackaging them.
This was pre-COVID, obviously.
Nobody would do this anymore.
(30:53):
But we'd repackage them inthese cellophane little gift
bags, and I'd take a huge box ofthose, and I would literally
take my daughter with herstroller– And sometimes my wife
would come with me.
My wife's an operating roomnurse.
And so she had work shifts thatshe was doing as well.
So either she was with me andwe were all walking
neighborhoods, knocking ondoors.
(31:13):
Hey, I'm the new State Farmagent in the neighborhood.
I'm a couple of my offices acouple blocks down.
And I'm like, I'm trying to getclients.
And my daughter's in thestroller at the sidewalk.
And it was, you know, lookingback on it, It was overwhelming.
It was overwhelming at thetime, but it was a good life.
(31:38):
And we were actually like, ourmarriage was, it was a
challenging season in ourmarriage.
Those early days, very, veryhard.
And of course, as probably alot of people listening know,
you had kids into an alreadysort of struggling young
marriage.
Unknown (31:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 02 (31:56):
It doesn't make it easier.
No,
Speaker 00 (31:59):
it does not.
Speaker 02 (31:59):
You got a business on top of that.
So my wife and I, we werestruggling.
I would say it was, I woulddefine it as the highs were
really high and the lows weredesperately low.
But we held it together.
And then my son, all of ourkids are about three years
apart.
My son was born a little over ayear into agency.
(32:22):
And so that just added, youknow, to the complexity and the
magnitude of that wholeexperience.
But I started to make moremoney.
The business grew.
I was doing well.
And so that gave us a littlemore bandwidth as a family.
Started to be able to resumesome vacations, you know.
And just, you know, started tocreate a little bit of comfort
kind of in our situation again.
(32:43):
But it was...
It was difficult.
Speaker 00 (32:47):
Yeah, yeah.
It was
Speaker 02 (32:49):
very
Speaker 00 (32:49):
difficult.
Do you think that the increasein income helped your marriage
and your family situation, or doyou think that was just a
band-aid?
I mean, how do you think thatcontributed?
Speaker 02 (33:00):
Well, I think it's pretty common for us to– poo-poo
just how big of an effect moneyhas on somebody's happiness and
situation.
There's all this research,right?
It's like once you make over 80grand a year or 100 or
something like that, yourhappiness doesn't go up very
(33:20):
much.
It
Speaker 00 (33:21):
just plateaus, right?
Speaker 02 (33:22):
Yeah.
And I have found that to besomewhat true myself.
I don't know if the numbers areall correct, but up to that
point, making more moneyabsolutely did help reduce some
of the anxiety and strifebecause Let's face it, I was
running up my line of credit,investing in the business, doing
(33:43):
marketing, all that kind ofstuff.
And so seeing the balance atthe time, seeing a $25,000
balance on my line of credit orhaving to dip into it for
payroll on any given month, it'slike, whoa.
And to my wife, she wasn'tsuper connected to the business
because she was busy being amom.
And she had her own part-time.
She worked a couple days a weekback then at the hospital.
(34:05):
So she couldn't really be supervested.
in kind of the operations ofthe business, she didn't really
understand.
So if I was stressed out, she'dask me, what's going on?
I'm like, well, you know, Ijust put another six grand on
our line of credit.
And to her, it's like, whoa,what does that, you know?
So to her, it adds a differentkind of anxiety
Speaker 01 (34:25):
that are
Speaker 02 (34:26):
we not doing good, you know?
And then I'd have to make sure,no, it's okay, you know?
And so it was just, it's just alot.
It's a lot of these differentthings in those early days.
Speaker 00 (34:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 02 (34:37):
To try to put together, you know?
Speaker 00 (34:39):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's interesting havingto balance the, we'll call it
good debt.
Having a line of credit, it canbe considered good debt.
You're literally investing intoyour business in expectation of
a payout.
There's also that stress ofhaving something like a line of
(34:59):
credit, which can hold a higherinterest rate.
It does need to be repaid atsome point.
And if you don't have thatmoney right away- there's that
stress point.
So, okay, so you're making moremoney.
You are what we'd call moresuccessful in the business.
How did you find success withinyour marriage and with your
(35:21):
kids?
Speaker 02 (35:24):
Well, we could really turn this into like a
10-part series and four or fivehours of conversation, right?
Speaker 00 (35:29):
Let's do it.
Speaker 02 (35:31):
I think for us, like, My wife and I really, I
don't, I honestly don't knowwhat it is.
I mean, sometimes like both ofus reflect and we're like, wow,
I feel so lucky.
We're so grateful that somehowwe were able to hold all this
together.
I think, I think part of whathelped us was us being together
(35:51):
from the beginning.
Speaker 01 (35:52):
Like
Speaker 02 (35:53):
we just, everything we've ever known was really
together, like since the end ofhigh school.
And so, um, So I think thatsomehow kind of fortified us.
It's like it was enough of akind of a hurdle.
Like the idea of starting overwith somebody else, even early
on, this kind of held ustogether.
(36:14):
You know, the fact that we'vebeen dating since we were 17,
that was a fair bit of glue forus.
But then I think the otherbecause of that.
So that motivated both of us.
to when we were presented withopportunities to join a marriage
group at church or to go to aweekend retreat or to sign on to
(36:36):
a couples group.
Both of us kind of pretty muchon the same timing were like,
yeah, we should do this.
And that's not typical.
Unfortunately, like everybodyelse, we've had a lot of friends
who have divorced over theyears.
And a lot of times, one of themwas ready to really work on the
marriage and the other wasn't.
Speaker 01 (36:57):
One of
Speaker 02 (36:59):
them was willing to put in the time, effort and
energy and the other wasn't.
And I just feel really luckythat my wife and I, for whatever
reason, we were inclined tolike, hey, let's try to make
this work.
Let's do this thing, see ifit'll help us.
And ultimately we settled intoa group of, it was called Soul
(37:19):
Care, which sounds reallywoo-woo, but it was just like a
biblical counseling.
It was a Christian thing.
And it was incrediblyrevealing.
It was basically cognitivebehavioral therapy with sort of
an evangelical Christian wrapperon it, language around it.
But that cognitive behavioraltherapy basically helped my wife
and I understand some of thepatterns that we were bringing
(37:42):
to our relationship that werereally predicated on our family
culture growing up.
Speaker 01 (37:47):
These
Speaker 02 (37:47):
things that we just couldn't even quite put words to
Speaker 01 (37:50):
were
Speaker 02 (37:51):
causing strife and struggle between us.
Once we discovered the sourceof that, and we had somebody
externally who was kind of likedescribing these patterns they
were hearing and seeing in ourconversations.
That combination, right?
Like having other people'sinput as to how they were
experiencing us.
Speaker 01 (38:12):
And
Speaker 02 (38:14):
then us connecting the dots together.
Speaker 01 (38:17):
In
Speaker 02 (38:17):
those behaviors and kind of natural tendencies, what
they were connected to in termsof our family culture is really
helpful.
Speaker 00 (38:25):
It's like the cognitive behavioral therapy was
a major help for you and yourwife to recognize previous
patterns and help rectify those.
Was there anything that werethere any patterns that you
noticed that were pre-wired fromyour upbringing that eventually
(38:50):
came into play with yourparenting were there any
patterns that felt negative orfelt positive that played into
your your parenting both soloand as a couple
Speaker 02 (39:02):
oh man yes well so one of the patterns was um my
dad my dad was a school teacheri think i mentioned that and he
was an elementary school teacherand again, a really, really
good one, accomplished one,naturally gifted working with
kids.
(39:23):
And I had the opportunityoccasionally where my school
would be out of session.
There'd be like an in-serviceday or something like that for
my teacher.
And so when that happened, Iwould go to my dad's school
oftentimes.
And I'd like I'd like stay inhis classroom with him.
And I got to watch my dad teachand it was really fun.
That's
Speaker 01 (39:43):
pretty cool.
Speaker 02 (39:43):
One of the, one of the, one of the funnest is
funnest.
Yeah.
One of the things I enjoyed themost was getting to see my dad
in that context.
I got to see a differentversion of my dad who was
carefree and footloose and goofyand like allowed himself to
kind of goof with the kids andthe kids loved it, of course.
And my dad would like dance.
(40:04):
My dad was a musician also.
And so he would, he wouldincorporate a lot of music in
with his classroom.
And so he would sit down at thepiano and like lead the kids in
these songs or he'd turn on aghetto blaster, you know, like a
boom box.
We don't know what those areanymore, but he'd throw a CD in
the boom box and, and do likethe chicken dance and lead the,
(40:25):
all these kids and in a, in agroup dance.
My dad was, never did that kindof stuff with my sister and I,
with rare exception.
There's some exceptions, butthat had a really profound
impact on me because what did Iexperience with my dad?
And he's a good person and hasa great legacy with what he did
(40:47):
leave me.
But oftentimes I'd come homefrom school and my sister and I,
we'd walk in, she's five yearsyounger than me.
We'd walk into the house andyou go into my house and there's
a piano and in the living roomto the right.
And then you walked in thekitchen.
And what a lot of times we dois we'd set our bags down at the
door and we'd go right into theliving room where my dad's
playing the piano and we wouldjust play.
(41:08):
And then ultimately playingwould turn into loud, like
arguing, fighting.
And I remember my dad, this wasthe pattern.
He would kind of stop playingthe piano.
He'd be like, hey, you know,he'd get all irritated with us.
Speaker 01 (41:21):
Hey,
Speaker 02 (41:21):
too much noise.
Can you guys go somewhere else?
Because he had just spent timeall of his patience, all of his
kind of life force on hisstudents.
And not intentionally, right?
It was just, this was his life.
This was his profession.
And also my grandfather was ateacher and frankly did the same
(41:42):
thing.
And so where I saw that come upfor me later is as I started
having children is I wasbringing that same irritable,
annoyed frustrated version ofmyself when i'd come home in the
evening i just couldn't icouldn't do it or right and so i
couldn't goof around with themi was mr serious my wife who's
(42:07):
naturally very sunshiny andgoofy and eclectic and artsy and
the things that i really loveabout her and enjoy about her
like all of this was starting tocollide and i couldn't even
really goof off and enjoy mywife and and who she is i'd get
irritated by the noise and thechatter and the laughing and the
goofing off and i was kind ofthat irritable frustrated dad
(42:31):
sitting at the table at dinnertrying not to be upset trying to
manage my anger and myfrustration and and then at some
point Through all this, I wasable to make this connection and
that started to break it downfor me.
I started to realize, oh mygosh, like I'm doing the same
thing my dad did, you know?
And I'm spoiling or I'm wastingthe gift of my wife.
(42:55):
Like the very thing, theessence of her that made me want
to marry her, I'm pushing heraway right now.
And I'm doing the same thing tomy kids.
So I'm doing exactly the samething that my dad, I experienced
my dad doing.
Speaker 01 (43:07):
Ouch.
Speaker 02 (43:09):
That was a hard...
It was a hard realization andI'll be perfectly honest.
It was a process of years forme to really start to turn that
corner and to recognize what wasgoing on.
But that was an important thingfor me to connect with.
I
Speaker 01 (43:27):
wish it would happen
Speaker 02 (43:28):
sooner.
My daughter, my eldestdaughter, she'll be 20 this
year.
She probably bore the brunt ofthat, of irritable dad and
annoyed and angry dad.
Whereas my boys...
you know, them being three andsix years behind her, they
really got a different versionof me, right?
And so I've, I've beenspending, I've been really,
(43:50):
really trying to invest in myrelationship with my daughter,
even just in these last three,four years, just trying to not
make up, you can't make up forthose things per se, but, but
really trying to address it and,and cultivate, you know, just
new, new levels of relationshipwith her that we just weren't
able to do when she was younger,you know?
Speaker 00 (44:08):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know what I'm learning?
with my toddler.
He's two.
He takes a lot of patience.
He's a toddler.
Even just today, I found myselflosing my cool over something
that he's just trying to expressand figure out.
He's learning the world.
(44:29):
I found myself apologizing tohim and saying, look, I messed
up.
I'm sorry I raised my voice orI'm sorry that I got snippy.
I'm having a rough time rightnow.
And that is my way of trying tomodel for him.
Like, look, we're not perfect.
We're still human.
We're still working throughthings on the daily.
(44:50):
What does repair look like toyou with your kids?
What has that looked like?
Unknown (44:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 02 (44:57):
Well, it's looked different right over the years.
So like I said, I wasn't reallyconscious of this and I wasn't
super tuned.
I wasn't tuned in at all for,for a number of years, but I
think what repair looks like nowwith my boys.
So my boys have, again, they'vehad a different version of dad
than my daughter did for themost part.
Um, what repair looks like is Itry to do it same day.
Speaker 01 (45:19):
It's
Speaker 02 (45:20):
like I try to do as much in real time.
It's like, ooh, hey, listen,I'm really sorry about that
tone.
I'm sorry I kind of freaked outon that thing here just a
moment ago.
Here's what was going on insideme.
Here's what I was reactingfrom.
I'm sorry.
I don't ever want to talk toyou that way.
I don't want to use that toneof voice with you, right?
Speaker 01 (45:39):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 02 (45:40):
So that's a lot of times what it sounds like in the
moment now.
But to my daughter, I thinkpart of what I've had to just
acknowledge is that My daughterhad a lot of feelings and
emotions flowing out of thatexperience she had of me.
And thankfully, there was neverwhat people think of as abuse
(46:06):
or anything like that.
But it was just this generalunavailability of me
emotionally, not playful, oftensarcastic.
short irritated like that's thedad that a lot of times she got
and there was a lot of falloutfrom that
Speaker 01 (46:25):
yeah
Speaker 02 (46:26):
and so as I there's times where those stories or
situations will come up with mydaughter and I and she'll bring
it up and she's like man thatwas really hard and I've learned
over time not to be defensive
Speaker 01 (46:40):
because I
Speaker 02 (46:40):
often will my first response is I'll feel ashamed
Speaker 01 (46:44):
yeah Understandably.
I was
Speaker 02 (46:46):
a bad dad, you know?
Speaker 01 (46:47):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 02 (46:48):
And, but of course, when I take that tact, right,
I'm not necessarily helping herfeel seen and understood by me
having this visceral, gosh, Iwas a bad dad.
Like what she really neededfrom me was to acknowledge that,
hey, I'm really sorry that thatwas so hard.
And I'm really sorry that Icouldn't have been more there
(47:09):
for you.
Speaker 01 (47:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 02 (47:10):
Sorry that I didn't, that I couldn't be more
present.
Speaker 01 (47:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 02 (47:16):
I regret that.
You know, I regret my attitude.
I just like, you know, I wishthat had been different.
Speaker 00 (47:22):
Yeah.
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Thank you for staying with usand back to the show.
So you've done this repair workwith your sons, and it looks
(48:29):
like the repair work with yoursons is more same-day work.
acknowledging your actions.
The repair work with yourdaughter, it sounds like it's
taken place over time and you'velearned how to truly listen to
what she has to say, hold spacefor how she's feeling.
How do you think that hastransposed into your leadership
(48:53):
skills within Floodlight
Speaker 02 (48:55):
Group?
I think it has helped me.
I think probably the biggestway that It's helped me develop
and grow.
My leadership is, it's createda sensitivity in me to how
others are experiencing me.
It's created a level ofself-awareness now in me where
(49:15):
I'm just much more tuned in towhat's happening in the
relationships around me, whetherthat be employees or clients or
subs.
I think it's also over time,it's kind of developed that
change muscle in me to wherewhen I identify an area where
(49:36):
I've been misbehaving or I'vebeen negatively affecting
somebody in my orbit in aparticular relationship or not
leading well or whatever it iswhere I need to make amends or I
need to fix a situation orshore up a relationship or
whatever, I feel like I'm comingmore from a place of humility.
I think it's helped mecultivate humility in my heart
(50:04):
and in my life.
And I think part of that,again, it goes back to that
family culture of reputation'severything.
And I developed so manystrategies from watching my
parents and also just internallymy own success strategies or
avoidance strategies for makingsure that people liked me.
Even when I was misbehaving, Ihad all these strategies for
(50:27):
getting people to like me inspite of These behaviors are
patterns that I would exhibit.
And so I think over time, if Istarted to recognize those
patterns and those ways ofbeing, it's created more
humility in me.
It's like, you know, I don'thave it all together.
I'm not always a nice person.
(50:49):
I'm not always thoughtful ofothers.
And this is part of me.
I'm learning.
And some people are going to beupset with me because I'm going
to offend people.
I'm going to let people down.
And when I do, it's notnecessarily a reflection on my
character and my reputation.
It doesn't necessarily identifyme.
(51:09):
And so I don't have that sameinclination to sort of cover up
Speaker 01 (51:17):
or
Speaker 02 (51:18):
obfuscate or minimize my own behavior.
I'm getting to the point now.
In fact, I just had one of mydownline employees, which really
does him a disservice becausehe's really like, an incredibly
pivotal leader in our company,but he's an employee of mine.
He's not one of our owners.
He corrected me.
He brought something to myattention here this last week,
(51:41):
and it was actually ratherembarrassing.
I felt some of that old shameof like, oh, they see this part
of me that I'm embarrassedabout, right?
But it was just my reaction, mynatural internal reaction when
he brought this up to me wasjust so much different than what
(52:01):
it would have been 10 yearsago.
Speaker 01 (52:03):
You know what I
Speaker 02 (52:03):
mean?
Speaker 01 (52:04):
Because
Speaker 02 (52:05):
I just, I was able to hear what he was saying.
I was able to be like, youknow, yes, I can, I can
understand this.
And I didn't feel that pull tochange the way he thought of me.
I was able to just accept whathe was saying.
I was able to say to him, hisname's Wayne.
I was saying, Wayne, listen, I,I am so appreciative that you
(52:26):
had the courage to, to sharethis with me so that I have the
option of doing something withit.
I wasn't tuned in to this,obviously, or I wasn't applying
the proper priority or focus tothis thing.
I wasn't honoring you in theway I was handling this thing,
but I really wasn't tuned intoit.
(52:47):
And I really appreciate youbringing it up to me.
So I have an option to dosomething.
Speaker 00 (52:51):
Yes.
Oh, it's so beautiful how youshifted the...
Yeah.
rectify the situation, dobetter, and actually move
(53:25):
forward with that relationshipinstead of getting caught up and
then it all falls apart.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, that is so cool.
Oh my goodness, Chris, this hasbeen such an amazing
conversation.
Please tell me, what is yourdream for your career and what
is your dream for your kids andyour marriage?
Speaker 02 (53:46):
Oh.
You know, my father passed awaythis last year.
In fact, this Thursday will bethe one-year anniversary of his
death.
And somewhat ironically orwhatever, it's actually my son's
(54:06):
birthday as well.
My dad died on his son'sbirthday.
Speaker 01 (54:09):
Wow.
Speaker 02 (54:10):
My little boy's birthday.
And so I've been thinking aboutthis a lot.
My dad's death...
stirred up a lot of things inme.
But one of the things that itjust hyper-focused me on is the
legacy of my dad.
And then what is my legacygoing to be?
(54:33):
And the way I think of it sortof in a big picture way is, you
know, my dad was handed a set ofcircumstances and privilege.
My dad didn't grow up, youknow, dirt poor, some sort of
sob story.
My dad, my grandfather providedfor my dad.
And in many ways, my dad had amaybe better than average start
(54:55):
compared to other people.
But there's also a lot ofdarkness in his family of origin
and his family culture.
And somehow my dad was able tocarry the ball further downfield
for me and my sister and mymom, create a different life, a
better life than my grandfatherwas able to create and provide
(55:18):
for my dad.
And all of that just kind ofcame into full view.
And if I was able to be therewith my dad when he died and it
was a really powerful experiencewhere I just, I felt like there
was a passing of the torch oflike, hey, my dad was able to
carry the family forward.
forward so much.
(55:39):
And now it's my job.
This is, this is my task.
Like this is the dream is tosomehow carry it further and to
take it as far as I can possiblygo.
And, and meaning like one, Ithink that's me trying to find
the edges of what am I capableof as a man and as a business
person.
And just like what with thegenetics and the opportunity and
(56:01):
the, all the things that my dadwas able to give me.
What am I going to do with it?
Speaker 01 (56:07):
And
Speaker 02 (56:13):
so, you know, when you ask that question about
what's my dream, well, you know,my dream is that I would be
able to carry the ball downfieldfurther than my dad and that
I'd be able to create somethings and experiences and a
connection with my kids and atype of marriage where I'm able
(56:33):
to learn from my dad and some ofhis perhaps shortcomings like
we all have and just be able tomake good on that and carry the
family forward.
So I think about my wife and I,like I want to have the kind of
marriage where my wife and Ilike each other and continue to
(56:55):
play together and
Speaker 01 (56:56):
to
Speaker 02 (56:58):
explore and be curious about our life together.
and stay healthy and all thethings.
Both of us have a passion fortravel.
So I think creating freedom andopportunity from the businesses
that I'm involved in to enableus to explore and have freedom
to move and travel and exploretogether.
(57:19):
I think for my kids, I thinkwhat we all want for our kids is
for, not for them to have aneasier life than us necessarily,
Yeah, maybe we do.
My kids were able to dodge andsidestep.
Speaker 01 (57:36):
I
Speaker 02 (57:36):
had to go through.
But I think ultimately thatthey would be just that much
more self-aware
Speaker 01 (57:44):
that
Speaker 02 (57:47):
they would become conscious of things that I
wasn't really conscious of untilmy 30s.
So I'm really trying to haveconversations with my kids and
be open and transparent and toengage in a different kind of
conversation with them now at13, 16, 19, the kinds of
conversations that I wish I'dhad with my dad,
Speaker 01 (58:08):
you know?
Yeah.
Speaker 02 (58:11):
So that, you know, by the time that they're 45 and
they're having a conversationlike this, their story sounds
radically different.
Speaker 00 (58:18):
Not perfect.
No.
Right?
That's unrealistic.
Speaker 02 (58:23):
Right, but healthier and...
But healthier,
Speaker 01 (58:30):
you
Speaker 02 (58:31):
know, and healthier sooner.
And hopefully they don'tstruggle through 10 years of
marriage like my wife and I did.
Like hopefully, you know,through my wife and I modeling
our commitment and love and carefor each other, we'll
accelerate that for them.
And they'll enter theirmarriage with a little bit more
awareness and intentionalitythan we did, than we knew to,
(58:53):
right?
Speaker 01 (58:54):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 02 (58:55):
Um, and same thing goes with like work ethic and
risk taking and everything else.
Like I, I think my dream isjust to hopefully model what it
looks like to really explore ouredges as a person and to try to
become the best version ofourselves that we can possibly
muster.
Yeah.
And then to have the greatestpositive effect on the people in
(59:18):
our orbit.
Yeah.
Um, yeah.
I don't know that there reallyis much.
I have other material dreams,but they're minimal.
You know, it's funny, like theolder I get, the less concerned
I am with the Lamborghinis andthe fancy hotels and things of
that sort that maybe at onepoint were enticing to me.
I feel like I have certainthings that I want materially.
(59:42):
One of the things is my wifeand I have a dream of having a
house in the forest.
Unknown (59:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 02 (59:49):
For some reason, that's just always like
occasionally we'll rent anAirbnb by the river and the
forest.
And it's just both of us.
It just feeds our soul.
You know, my dad always growingup, my dad's thing, his luxury,
his big expense was he had aMazda Miatas.
You know, those littleconvertible
Speaker 00 (01:00:08):
roadsters.
Little roadsters.
Yeah.
Speaker 02 (01:00:10):
So he had two of them over the course of my life
when I was in the house and Igot to drive it when I became
driving age.
I took my wife on dates in itwhen we were dating and I just
have this natural affinity.
And of course now with my dad,you know, passing away.
Yeah.
I feel that much more connectedto little things like that.
So right now, one of the thingson my so-called dream board, my
(01:00:30):
proverbial dream board, is toget an old Miata and fix it up,
do an engine swap, do somethingfun, and have a weekend car that
I take my wife out in and putzaround in.
I
Speaker 00 (01:00:42):
love that.
Speaker 02 (01:00:43):
But beyond that, it's like all my other dreams
and goals are really builtaround connection and
relationship.
It's like I want to have thefinancial resources and the
flexibility with the businessesI own to– create moments and
experiences for our kids to joinus on things and someday
hopefully maybe bring their kidsalong with.
So that's really kind of whatit all centers around for me
(01:01:07):
now.
Speaker 00 (01:01:08):
Beautiful.
Oh my goodness.
What a gift to yourself, yourkids, your marriage, the world,
the way that you have thought sodeeply past the material items,
which are fun.
Material things are fun todream about.
We can't discount that.
But the deeper stuff, thelegacy leaving, the connection.
(01:01:32):
I don't know about you, butthat's my definition of success.
More and
Speaker 02 (01:01:38):
more.
Yeah, yeah.
I think the other thing too,and you probably see this in
your work, like I work with alot of business owners.
Some of them are fantasticallysuccessful financially.
Yeah.
And some of them are alsosimultaneously very successful
in their social relationshipsand their marriage and
everything else.
More rare.
Speaker 01 (01:01:55):
Yeah.
More rare.
Speaker 02 (01:01:56):
But they're there.
But then, of course, there'sample examples of folks with a
lot of success financially whoAll of the trappings of success
that you would imagine orotherwise want, but the
relationships around them arebroken and fraught with
(01:02:18):
dysfunction and disappointmentand anger and frustration.
And it's like, oh, I actuallycan't imagine a worse outcome to
have it all and to basically bealone.
Speaker 00 (01:02:30):
It's almost better to not
Speaker 02 (01:02:32):
have it.
Speaker 00 (01:02:32):
100%.
To be alone, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, you're in total agreementabout that.
Chris, where can people findyou?
Speaker 02 (01:02:46):
Well, so LinkedIn forward slash in slash Chris
Nordyke is one way people canfollow me.
They can also follow...
I hope it's okay with me sayingthis, our podcast at Head,
Heart, and Boots.
Speaker 00 (01:02:58):
Of course, yes.
Speaker 02 (01:02:59):
Google Head, Heart, and Boots.
It's my business partner and Ido that.
And then floodlightgrp.com.
Floodlightgrp.com is ourconsulting website.
And I've got my bios on thereand you can reach me through
there as well.
But those are the big ones.
Somebody's on Facebook.
We got Facebookers.
You can look for Chris Mordyke.
(01:03:21):
Look for the guy with the beardin the lineup.
And that's probably my profile.
Yeah.
people who find me there too.
Speaker 00 (01:03:27):
Perfect.
This was a wonderful chat.
Thank you so much for sharingall of your knowledge with us.
I am definitely feelinginspired and I hope to lead a
life of humility the way thatyou have learned to.
So thank you.
Speaker 02 (01:03:40):
Great questions.
Thank you for bringing me on.
I appreciate
Speaker 00 (01:03:44):
it.
Thank you for joining us onBringing Up Business.
If you could, please take amoment to subscribe to and rate
the podcast on Apple, Spotify,or wherever Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
(01:04:06):
Say bye-bye.
See you later.
(01:04:32):
Bye-bye.
Thank you for watching.
(01:04:54):
are subject to risk includingpossible loss of capital
(01:05:23):
individuals should seriouslyconsider if a decision is
suitable for them by referencingtheir own financial position
thank you
Welcome to the Bringing Up Business podcast,
where we talk about business andparenting.
I am your host, Kaila Sachse,toddler mom and owner of a
marketing and creative agencycalled Yumari Digital.
I'm excited to chat withtoday's guest, Chris Nordyke.
He is a serial business guy,sales thought leader, teacher,
(00:20):
and podcaster, besides being ahusband of 23 years and a father
to three teens.
Before founding BloodlightConsulting Group, Chris worked
as a sales executive in thedisaster restoration industry.
And prior to that, he spentroughly 10 years working with
(00:41):
State Farm Insurance, both as anemployee and agency owner.
Today, we're going to be divinginto what it's like to maintain
a thriving marriage, family,and business.
Chris, I'm so happy you're herewith me.
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 02 (00:58):
Yeah, same.
Thank you so I'm glad we metand I've been looking forward to
our chat today.
Speaker 00 (01:04):
Yeah, it's going to be a good one.
Let's dive right in.
Tell us about your journey withparenting, your career, which
came first.
What's the story?
Speaker 02 (01:15):
Yeah, well, so my wife and I, we started dating my
senior year of high school.
And actually, this is a bit ofa point of contention with my
wife and I, because I took herto see the movie Picture Perfect
with Jennifer Aniston.
And Jay Moore, I think, was theother star in that.
And I took her to ice creamafter that.
I've always considered that ourfirst date.
(01:37):
And that was the summer beforeour senior year.
She contends that that wasn't adate.
That was just friends hangingout.
So...
So anyway, it started earlydays.
We're one of those weirdcouples that high school
sweethearts.
And so my wife's been with methrough all of it, all of it.
In fact, my very first kind ofbusinessy job or what turned out
(02:00):
to be a sales job was sellingknives for Cutco Cutlery.
Some listeners may have theirown experience with Cutco or
have some in their kitchen.
And my wife got a recruitingletter.
then girlfriend got arecruiting letter and I, she
read it to me and I'm like, wow,$15 per appointment.
I'm 45.
So this was however many yearsago.
(02:23):
25 plus years ago.
And $15, how long does anappointment take?
An hour?
Oh my, $15 an hour?
It's amazing.
Can I go to the interview withyou?
Little did I know theyrecruited anybody that could fog
a mirror and cut a penny withsome scissors.
But that ended up kicking offmy sales career and ultimately
(02:44):
business experience.
I was an independent contractorfor them.
And so my wife and I were stilldating at the time.
I ended up taking anopportunity and opening a sales
office for Cutco down in LosAngeles while my wife was going
to nursing school up in Oregon.
And then ultimately, I justcame to realize my wife is not
(03:04):
going to move to California.
She's not going to move to LA.
So I'm either going back toOregon or we probably don't have
a future for this relationship.
So I ended up moving back andOne thing led to another and
there's been a whole series ofexperiences since then, but my
wife's been with me through itall.
Speaker 00 (03:22):
Wow.
Oh my goodness.
So you started as an associatefor Cutco and then you opened
your own office.
I mean, how did that happen?
How did you climb the ladder inthat way?
Speaker 02 (03:34):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Good question.
Well, so I was 19 when Istarted selling and it was my
first sales job, really.
I mean, I'd mowed lawns andstuff in my neighborhood, kind
of little business-y kind ofthing, sort of.
But it was my first time reallybeing taught how to sell.
And I did pretty well with it.
But of course, you know, to behonest, honest, right?
(03:55):
Like I'm selling knife sets tomy parents, friends, to my
parents, to all their friends atchurch, you know, so I'm kind
of shooting fish in a barrel, soto speak.
But I was good at it too, youknow, and I think everybody
recognized that, wow, you know,Chris has, he likes to talk to
people and he's not afraid topick up the phone and call
referrals, you know, which ofcourse is a really important
(04:18):
thing.
If you're going to be in sales,you got to be willing to pick
up the phone or knock on a door.
And I seemed to, be able to dothat.
And, um, so I spent a summer, Ithink I sold about $25,000
worth of knives, uh, during thatsummer.
And then of course my uppermanagement, they tapped me on
the shoulder and say, Hey, doyou want to be a part of our
(04:39):
branch management trainingprogram, uh, to run your own
sales office?
And I was like, well, I don'tknow, maybe I'd be good at that,
you know?
And so it was very much justkind of whimsy serendipity that
I did pretty good.
They told me I should do thismanagement program.
And then I spent the wholesubsequent school year while I
(04:59):
was going to my sophomore yearof college, driving back and
forth from Oregon to Seattle forthese branch manager training
things.
And then I was given theoption, do I want to open an
office in Seattle?
or Bellevue, Washington, or doI want to go to Los Angeles?
Speaker 01 (05:17):
And small town
Speaker 02 (05:18):
kid, I was like, I'm going to LA.
And that was the beginning ofit all.
So I was just, you know, it'slike, and this has really been
true of most of my career.
I was pretty, I got seen forbeing good at the thing that I
was, you know, kind of asked todo and then just kind of got
promoted up from there.
Yeah.
(05:38):
So it was fun.
I did that for maybe threeyears.
Unfortunately, it was like Ieither moved back from L.A.
or I'm probably going to haveto write off this relationship
with my girlfriend and I didn'twant to lose her.
So I came back up to Oregon andgot a regular job.
But that ultimately led me tomy next business.
And one thing after another.
Right.
Speaker 00 (05:59):
Yeah.
Yeah.
How did you.
So what was the prompting?
I picture you.
You're down in L.A.
You're running this office andyou're Was it your girlfriend
who was like, hey, I'mstruggling in this relationship.
You got to come back up here.
Or what were the warning signsthat you were on the rocks?
Speaker 02 (06:16):
Oh.
Oh, goodness.
Well, so my wife, my now wife,broke off the engagement.
So we actually got engaged.
Speaker 01 (06:28):
Oh, wow.
Speaker 02 (06:28):
Yeah, we're really young.
It's just funny now at 45 tolook back at some of this.
I'm like, wow.
I think I first proposed toher...
right before I moved to LA whenI was 20 years old.
Oh, wow.
And she said yes, right?
And so the ring, the wholething.
And then we were kind of longdistance.
She came down to LA a coupletimes during that subsequent
(06:50):
year and a half or so.
to visit me.
And I think it was just areally formative time in my life
where I started to get reallycaught up in the whole LA scene.
One of the things I realized isthat I wasn't making a ton of
money.
I mean, when I first opened myoffice down there, I mean, I was
really scraping along.
I was a 1099.
I was basically self-employed.
I employed a...
(07:12):
I had a full-time receptionistthat would answer calls for me.
I was placing ads in the LATimes to recruit sales reps.
I was flyering at USC and UCLAand recruiting these college
kids.
And...
I just got caught up in it.
I was 20 years old and I hadsales reps working for me.
(07:33):
There were 21, 22, a lot ofthem from rich parents.
They're driving up in fanciercars than I'm driving to the
office and I'm the boss.
And I just kind of got caughtup in all the ego of it.
And I'd spend all of myearnings on taking my sales reps
out to dinner after teammeetings and kind of kind of
flaunting the money, justwanting to be cool and being
(07:54):
cool boss, Michael Scott.
That was me, kind of.
It was like a 20-year-oldversion of me.
And a lot of that arrogance anda lot of that sort of
superficiality, I just becomereally superficial about
appearances and money andtalking the talk and And my wife
(08:17):
came down to visit me one time.
And by the end of the trip, wewere just strife between us.
And she's like, I just I don'teven know if I want to be with
you anymore.
Like, this is a version of youthat, wow, is not not what I'm
into.
Speaker 01 (08:32):
And
Speaker 02 (08:33):
I was like, wow, okay.
It was a bit of a wake-up callfor me.
I bet.
So anyway, she gave me the ringback.
I went home to visit my familythat Thanksgiving, and I took
the ring back to the jewelrystore where I had it made, and I
put it on consignment.
And I just kind of resolvedinside myself.
I said a prayer.
I was like, okay, Lord, if it'sstill here when I come back at
(08:58):
Christmas– Or I don't rememberwhat the timeline was exactly.
It was more than that.
We were broken up for maybealmost six months.
Speaker 01 (09:07):
Oh, wow.
Speaker 02 (09:08):
I'm like, if it's back here when I move home, then
that's a sign.
And I'm going to do everythingI can to salvage the
relationship and move forward.
And that's what happened.
I ended up deciding to close myoffice down there and move back
to Oregon.
And we linked back up.
And we had kind of a new commonfriend group that we
established.
And...
(09:28):
One thing led to another andhere we are.
It's been 23 years, March 22nd.
Speaker 00 (09:35):
Wow.
Congratulations.
Oh my goodness.
It's been
Speaker 02 (09:38):
hard fought.
Yeah.
Speaker 00 (09:41):
So during that time when you were engaged, I would
say the first time, right?
Because I'm assuming there's anext
Speaker 02 (09:47):
time.
The first go around.
Yeah.
Speaker 00 (09:49):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Spoiler alert.
He gets engaged again.
But during that firstengagement, were you in the
middle of planning a wedding orwas that still a future to-do
item?
Speaker 02 (09:58):
It was kind of like before we ever got into that, we
end up putting it on pause.
Yeah, yeah.
We never got into the fullthroes of all that stuff.
Speaker 00 (10:10):
Yeah, yeah.
And in one way, I can imaginethat being– making the breakup a
little bit easier because nowyou're not having to tell
people, hey, the wedding is offand go through that.
Oh, the embarrassment of
Speaker 02 (10:23):
all that stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 00 (10:24):
Yeah, yeah.
So when you move back up, yourealize like, okay, the ring is
still here.
I can salvage thisrelationship.
I'm moving back to Oregon.
What was your relationship withCutco?
Did that completely end or didyou reenter now?
Speaker 02 (10:40):
Yeah, pretty much, pretty much, you know, I think
too, this was an example, it wasone of the first times in my
career where I hit part of theexperience, aside from me just
moving up to be close to mygirlfriend, was that as I
transitioned from being a salesguy to managing people and
(11:02):
leading...
I really struggled.
And of course, that was part ofthat whole identity conflict
that I was having with thearrogance and the flashiness.
And I had just kind of taken onthis LA kind of persona.
But it was also just, I think,connected to my immaturity of...
(11:22):
Unbeknownst to me, I used tolead worship in church growing
up.
I was very much like a stageguy.
I would speak.
I did drama.
I did a lot of differentthings.
And so even though I never didsales, I was never the lemonade
stand kid, the fact that I fellinto sales, it was pretty
obvious to everybody else why,because I've always been that
(11:43):
talker, kind of easily matchingup with people and so forth.
And so I learned to kind oflean on that to a fault.
And when I moved down to LA andat one point I had like 40
sales reps on my team, what gotme there wasn't gonna get me to
(12:07):
the next level.
Like me knowing how to sell andcommunicate with people and
persuade and influence and thosekinds of things and earn
people's trust was not the samemix of stuff that was gonna help
me effectively manage anddevelop people over
Speaker 01 (12:24):
time.
Speaker 02 (12:25):
And not only that, but manage the business of the
business.
I didn't have discipline aroundmy financial management and all
of that kind of stuff.
And so I really hit a wall andI've done this since, It's
really been in my 30s and 40swhere I've started to really
touch into this pattern I hadmyself, whereas once it gets
really hard and things getunfamiliar, my tendency earlier
(12:47):
in my career was to look for anexit route, to go to the next
thing or the next businessopportunity where I could really
just hang in that naturaltalent and skill that I had and
not have to do the hard work ofgetting over that hump.
Speaker 01 (13:05):
and
Speaker 02 (13:07):
leveling up my skill and my discipline and all of
those things required for me togo to that next level of kind of
leadership andentrepreneurship.
And so that's really what brokedown there in addition to that.
And so I actually forgot yourquestion.
What was your originalquestion?
Speaker 00 (13:28):
That's okay.
You know what?
Speaker 02 (13:29):
Where was I going with that?
Speaker 00 (13:32):
I'm noticing a pattern between Leadership,
effectively running a business,sales being an important element
too for running a business.
I mean, how do you connect thedots between sales, leadership,
and running a business?
Speaker 02 (13:51):
Wow.
I mean, in some ways, it almostdemands three different people.
Speaker 01 (13:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 02 (13:59):
You know, in the sense of like, it's really work.
I don't know very many peoplewho are good, like naturally
gifted at all, at all of them,right?
And I certainly wasn't and amnot.
I have learned, I have...
I have built up some of thosedeficiencies to a point where
they no longer cause me harm.
(14:19):
Right.
And they're good atestablishing and setting up
systems and processes and likethey're task oriented and all
(14:41):
that kind of stuff.
But then oftentimes people thatare wired that way, they have
call reluctance or they feelsheepish in front of crowds.
They don't like public speakingor they bristle at the idea of,
quote, selling.
Right.
And so it's pretty rare thatpeople embody that.
both of those types of skillsets at the same time.
(15:02):
And so I think the connectionis that regardless of what
somebody is sort of naturallyborn with, there's a leveling up
that I think every single oneof us has to do.
Here's one way I heard itdescribed.
There's this guy named, Ialways forget his name.
He was the founder and CEO ofInfusionsoft, which now I
(15:27):
believe is called and it's amarketing automation platform.
Anyway, I wish I had his name.
That would have made thismoment a lot better.
That's okay.
But I remember he was speakingto a group of entrepreneurs and
he said, any CEO is capabletypically of leading a company
through one, maybe two growthcycles, significant cycles of
(15:52):
growth.
He said, but beyond that,they'll struggle.
And his message wasn't, hey,you can only lead a company
through two growth cycles.
It was, as a CEO, you almosthave to completely reinvent
yourself in order to be theleader manager that the business
(16:12):
is going to need to growthrough another season, right?
And that was kind of a profoundmessage to me.
And I realized in that moment,it was really just the beginning
of understanding andconsciousness around this, is
that, wow, I have to reinventmyself.
(16:34):
And these are some of the keyareas in terms of sort of
process development, detailmanagement, time management,
some of these things that I'dbeen able to sort of...
improvise on and kind of fumblemy way through because I was so
good at the public speaking,the sales stuff, that type of
(16:55):
thing.
I could kind of cover up andobfuscate my lack of attention
and my lack of intentionalityaround all those other things
that later on in life justbecame more and more fundamental
to, hey, like when I owned astate farm agency.
I was trying to get by on mypersona and my charisma and my
(17:17):
ability to kind of draw peoplein.
But then slowly I was turningover my employees because they
get so frustrated of just howADD I was.
They liked me.
But they couldn't stand workingfor me because it was just so
unpredictable and soinconsistent and unreliable in a
(17:38):
lot of the ways that anemployee wants their employer to
be reliable.
You know what I mean?
And so that's been a reallyinteresting growth path for me
is working to– continue todevelop my strengths and get the
very most out of the talent Ihave while at the same time
shoring up some of these areas.
(17:59):
And sometimes it has beenhiring employees to, to really
own some of those areas, butthat can also be a crutch.
And it has been for me.
Um, you know, I think about,can you tell me if I'm talking
too much, but
Speaker 01 (18:12):
one of
Speaker 02 (18:13):
the, one of the learning experiences that I had,
um, when I opened my state farmagency, I had five employees.
And I remember as I wasinterviewing to hire those
employees, I would tell themthings like, Hey, listen, um,
something you should know aboutme is I'm not great with
details.
(18:33):
I'm not super consistent, notgreat with paperwork.
I'm not great with really liketask management, that kind of
stuff.
It's not my thing, but I'mgreat at sales and I'm great at,
um, I'm great at working withclients.
I'm great at earning theirtrust and all these things.
But the reason I'm hiring youis to take care of all that
stuff I don't like.
I would actually say thingslike that in my interview
(18:55):
process.
And at the time, I was reallycoming from this place of like
good Strength Finder.
Remember that book, StrengthFinder 2.0 by Gallup?
Yeah.
And one of the premises theytalk about is, hey, don't worry
about like turning yourweaknesses into a strength,
focus your attention on whatyou're good at and what your
(19:16):
core strengths are.
That's way more valuable thantrying to like build up your
weaknesses.
I took that and I ran with it.
I'm like, oh yeah, I don't needto be good at details.
I don't need to do, you know?
And so I brought this into myinterviews, but in hindsight,
right?
With 20 years of hindsight, Irealize now that I was just
(19:38):
really, you know what I wasdoing in that moment?
was I was avoiding the shameand embarrassment of those
employees catching me in the act
Speaker 01 (19:50):
of
Speaker 02 (19:52):
failing on the details and not following
through.
So it was like I waspreemptively saying, hey, you
can't be mad at me once youstart here because I told you it
was going to be this way.
I'm not good with details.
I'm not good at rememberingthings.
I don't take great notes andput them in the system.
And this is why it might behard to work for me.
And so if they still sign on,It's like, hey, you can't be mad
(20:12):
at me if I– you know what Imean?
Speaker 00 (20:15):
It's like you signed on the dotted line.
Now you're working for me.
You already know all thedetails.
Yeah, your
Speaker 02 (20:21):
problem, not mine.
Speaker 00 (20:22):
Exactly.
Speaker 02 (20:23):
Yeah, and of course that wasn't my attitude per se
because I like people and Iappreciate people and all the
things.
But it was just– again, it wasanother indication of my
immaturity just as being abusiness owner of, yes,
delegation is important.
And– There is a baseline levelof competency and discipline
(20:44):
that I think every owner has tolearn
Speaker 01 (20:46):
in
Speaker 02 (20:47):
order to not drive their people crazy, to create a
stable work environment, tocreate an environment where
people can thrive and reallysucceed and they feel supported.
All of these things that I'velearned since.
But it's just funny to lookback at prior versions of
ourselves and see And you haveso much more clarity.
You're like, oh, well, that'swhat I was doing.
(21:08):
That's really what I was doingin that conversation.
I was ashamed of the fact thatI suck at these things and I
didn't want them to be able touse that against me later on.
Speaker 00 (21:18):
Yeah.
How did you realize that youwere the problem and not your
employees?
Well, I wish I
Speaker 02 (21:28):
could say I realized it later.
when I was owning and runningthat business.
But it really, frankly, itwasn't until much a number of
years later.
Um, I think some of it, uh,some of, some of it I became
conscious with or of, um, duringvarious like counseling types
of things that I do with mywife, you know, as our marriage,
(21:51):
as we were kind of growing inour marriage, we did all kinds
of over the years, we've done alot of different counseling
modalities and groups and,retreats and all that kind of
stuff.
And you learn about yourself.
What you start to see is apattern.
You start to realize that.
And I think this is the otherthing that has just become so
real and true and justfundamental for me is that
(22:12):
business people, and I thinkthis is less true of like
younger people without puttingany definition to that.
But I think a lot of us grew upwith parents, grandparents,
really kind of segmenting, well,that's my professional life,
that's work.
Speaker 01 (22:32):
This
Speaker 02 (22:33):
is home, this is my personal, you know, and there
was a real distinction betweensomebody's personal and
professional life.
And I think what a lot of ushave come to see and understand
is that there is no, therereally is no distinction.
Like who I am at homeabsolutely affects who I show up
as And vice versa, right?
(22:55):
So if I've got any kind ofdysfunction or brokenness or bad
behavior or poor habits or thatkind of stuff in either one of
those zones, it's inevitablyaffecting my performance or the
way I show up to all of it, youknow?
Yep.
(23:15):
Relative to my marriage was abig part of it.
And of course, that offeredinsights into my parenting.
And all of it pointed to thesepatterns in how I protected
myself and what other peoplethought of me.
And all of that, well, we'regetting really deep here, aren't
(23:37):
we?
All of that kind of pointedback to my family culture
growing up, which was reallyheavily predicated on
reputation.
Speaker 01 (23:46):
What other
Speaker 02 (23:47):
people think of you?
My dad was a public schoolteacher, very, very successful,
very well regarded, and awonderful person.
And it's never the whole story,right?
But so there was a little bitof this family culture of, like,
here's a very funny exampleabout reputation in our family.
And I'm sure other people canrelate to this.
Like, we had this pattern.
(24:08):
My parents used to invitepeople over a lot.
It was a bright spot in mygrowing up.
We'd have people over afterchurch.
We had friends.
My parents would hostsleepovers with my friends.
It was great.
Sounds like a great time.
It's funny.
We had a nice house, middleclass.
Dad was a teacher.
Mom was a nurse.
We had a nice house, butnothing fancy.
(24:30):
Our house, when people cameover, was always very tidy.
The counters in the kitchenwere all cleared off, right?
The door to the laundry roomwas closed.
Guess what was behind the doorto the laundry room?
All the stuff that used to beout on top of the kitchen
counters, right?
(24:51):
I developed a pattern of when Iwas cleaning up my room for
company, everything got shovedin the closet.
So there was this appearance ofus being put together, us being
tidy, us being conscientious.
Speaker 01 (25:04):
And
Speaker 02 (25:05):
the reality was a lesser version of that, for
sure.
And so that's just one example,I think, of how we adopt these
ways Behaviors and patterns.
I think many of us from ourcore family unit and we carry
those things forward.
And if we're not conscious ofit, I mean, I know, I mean, I'm
(25:27):
sure this is true even to me ofme in some ways today.
We carry that forward for therest of our life unless we
become conscious of it and startto actively change our
behavior, you know.
Speaker 00 (25:39):
1000%.
The way that we grow up wireswho we are.
And it's not until we find anissue with that wiring and are
forced to confront it that wehave the opportunity to rewire.
I definitely had the same issuegrowing up.
We always look like we had ittogether.
(26:01):
Until the doors were closed andwe were able to be fully
expressive of ourselves and dealwith all of our demons.
And to be frank, it was roughliving what felt like a double
life.
Yeah.
Living this life where I wastold, hey, you have the best
parents.
You have the most amazingfamily.
That must be super cool.
(26:22):
And in my head, I'm like, wow,yeah, I wish I could feel the
same way about
Speaker 01 (26:26):
our
Speaker 00 (26:27):
family.
And this isn't too– To sayanything negative about my
parents, we had a very difficultset of cards to work with.
I had a deaf and autisticbrother growing up, fully
disabled, needed 24-7 care.
(26:48):
Raising him was unlike raisingany other type of child.
Raising him definitely wasn'tlike raising me.
So I found myself having tohide in a corner and be the good
girl and just stay out of theway.
I would often have to step inand help with household things,
(27:09):
not in an empowering way, but ina way to keep the family unit
running and functioning.
So I felt like I had to grow upfaster than what I should have.
But all that to say, I ended uphaving to deal with
perfectionist tendencies lateron.
And that came to light when Iran into walls of, oh my gosh,
(27:34):
I'm spending so much timefocusing on these little teeny
tiny details that don't matter.
I'm not making any realprogress on my business or on
myself.
So all that to say, completelyagree.
The way that we grow updefinitely affects who we are
today.
So- Okay, so you have thisopportunity to learn about
(27:56):
yourself through the State FarmAgency.
At what point did you and yourwife decide to have kids and
what was that whole processlike?
Speaker 02 (28:10):
That's funny how that question sounded, right?
It's real.
I know what you mean.
Yeah, it's real.
Well, let's see here.
So I had my daughter about ayear.
before I opened my state farmagency, a year and a half.
In fact, I was in the throes ofstarting a franchise business
(28:33):
with a friend called RapidRefill Ink.
It was through this heyday 20years ago of companies
remanufacturing and refillingink cartridges and laser toners,
that kind of stuff.
And so we started a businessthat way.
I was right in the middle ofthat when we got pregnant.
Another interesting little datapoint on our story is at the
time we were living in a big sixbedroom house with two other
(28:57):
married couples.
Speaker 01 (28:58):
Oh, wow.
One
Speaker 02 (28:59):
of whom already had twins and a third child that
they just had and another thathad a child 10 months before us
while we were living in thathouse.
So we conceived our first childin there and we lived with
these couples.
It was an incredibleexperience, actually, especially
in our early days.
So this would have been like...
from 21 to 24 years old we wereliving in this kind of communal
(29:24):
we weren't wearing white robeswe weren't all sleeping with
each other it wasn't some crazyyou know lascivious kind of
environment but it was actuallywe were all friends from church
and it was this perfectly laidout house it was incredible and
and so i was starting thatbusiness that rapid refill inc
business my other buddy wasgetting ready to go to law
school we were all kind of inthis this soup of life.
(29:47):
And, uh, it was, it was reallyincredible.
But, um, so we left there, mybuddy went to law school that
kind of affected the whole mojoof the household.
And eventually we just kind ofall disbanded.
Um, and, and after I sold myinterest in that business is
when I went into state farm.
And I It was very uncertain.
Like when I first started withState Farm, they gave me a
(30:10):
$20,000 line of credit, whichthey give all agents when they
get an agency.
But you're a 1099.
I mean, I was self-employed.
I had a LLC that I set up.
And so I had to create all theincome.
And so my first year owning anagency, I think I netted, I took
home maybe $28,000.
(30:31):
Now, of course, this is 20years ago.
It's a little bit moreequivalent now, but it was
meager.
And I remember...
I remember my wife and I buyingtrays of Costco cookies, you
know, those big, huge monstercookies they make, and then
repackaging them.
This was pre-COVID, obviously.
Nobody would do this anymore.
(30:53):
But we'd repackage them inthese cellophane little gift
bags, and I'd take a huge box ofthose, and I would literally
take my daughter with herstroller– And sometimes my wife
would come with me.
My wife's an operating roomnurse.
And so she had work shifts thatshe was doing as well.
So either she was with me andwe were all walking
neighborhoods, knocking ondoors.
(31:13):
Hey, I'm the new State Farmagent in the neighborhood.
I'm a couple of my offices acouple blocks down.
And I'm like, I'm trying to getclients.
And my daughter's in thestroller at the sidewalk.
And it was, you know, lookingback on it, It was overwhelming.
It was overwhelming at thetime, but it was a good life.
(31:38):
And we were actually like, ourmarriage was, it was a
challenging season in ourmarriage.
Those early days, very, veryhard.
And of course, as probably alot of people listening know,
you had kids into an alreadysort of struggling young
marriage.
Unknown (31:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 02 (31:56):
It doesn't make it easier.
No,
Speaker 00 (31:59):
it does not.
Speaker 02 (31:59):
You got a business on top of that.
So my wife and I, we werestruggling.
I would say it was, I woulddefine it as the highs were
really high and the lows weredesperately low.
But we held it together.
And then my son, all of ourkids are about three years
apart.
My son was born a little over ayear into agency.
(32:22):
And so that just added, youknow, to the complexity and the
magnitude of that wholeexperience.
But I started to make moremoney.
The business grew.
I was doing well.
And so that gave us a littlemore bandwidth as a family.
Started to be able to resumesome vacations, you know.
And just, you know, started tocreate a little bit of comfort
kind of in our situation again.
(32:43):
But it was...
It was difficult.
Speaker 00 (32:47):
Yeah, yeah.
It was
Speaker 02 (32:49):
very
Speaker 00 (32:49):
difficult.
Do you think that the increasein income helped your marriage
and your family situation, or doyou think that was just a
band-aid?
I mean, how do you think thatcontributed?
Speaker 02 (33:00):
Well, I think it's pretty common for us to– poo-poo
just how big of an effect moneyhas on somebody's happiness and
situation.
There's all this research,right?
It's like once you make over 80grand a year or 100 or
something like that, yourhappiness doesn't go up very
(33:20):
much.
It
Speaker 00 (33:21):
just plateaus, right?
Speaker 02 (33:22):
Yeah.
And I have found that to besomewhat true myself.
I don't know if the numbers areall correct, but up to that
point, making more moneyabsolutely did help reduce some
of the anxiety and strifebecause Let's face it, I was
running up my line of credit,investing in the business, doing
(33:43):
marketing, all that kind ofstuff.
And so seeing the balance atthe time, seeing a $25,000
balance on my line of credit orhaving to dip into it for
payroll on any given month, it'slike, whoa.
And to my wife, she wasn'tsuper connected to the business
because she was busy being amom.
And she had her own part-time.
She worked a couple days a weekback then at the hospital.
(34:05):
So she couldn't really be supervested.
in kind of the operations ofthe business, she didn't really
understand.
So if I was stressed out, she'dask me, what's going on?
I'm like, well, you know, Ijust put another six grand on
our line of credit.
And to her, it's like, whoa,what does that, you know?
So to her, it adds a differentkind of anxiety
Speaker 01 (34:25):
that are
Speaker 02 (34:26):
we not doing good, you know?
And then I'd have to make sure,no, it's okay, you know?
And so it was just, it's just alot.
It's a lot of these differentthings in those early days.
Speaker 00 (34:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 02 (34:37):
To try to put together, you know?
Speaker 00 (34:39):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's interesting havingto balance the, we'll call it
good debt.
Having a line of credit, it canbe considered good debt.
You're literally investing intoyour business in expectation of
a payout.
There's also that stress ofhaving something like a line of
(34:59):
credit, which can hold a higherinterest rate.
It does need to be repaid atsome point.
And if you don't have thatmoney right away- there's that
stress point.
So, okay, so you're making moremoney.
You are what we'd call moresuccessful in the business.
How did you find success withinyour marriage and with your
(35:21):
kids?
Speaker 02 (35:24):
Well, we could really turn this into like a
10-part series and four or fivehours of conversation, right?
Speaker 00 (35:29):
Let's do it.
Speaker 02 (35:31):
I think for us, like, My wife and I really, I
don't, I honestly don't knowwhat it is.
I mean, sometimes like both ofus reflect and we're like, wow,
I feel so lucky.
We're so grateful that somehowwe were able to hold all this
together.
I think, I think part of whathelped us was us being together
(35:51):
from the beginning.
Speaker 01 (35:52):
Like
Speaker 02 (35:53):
we just, everything we've ever known was really
together, like since the end ofhigh school.
And so, um, So I think thatsomehow kind of fortified us.
It's like it was enough of akind of a hurdle.
Like the idea of starting overwith somebody else, even early
on, this kind of held ustogether.
(36:14):
You know, the fact that we'vebeen dating since we were 17,
that was a fair bit of glue forus.
But then I think the otherbecause of that.
So that motivated both of us.
to when we were presented withopportunities to join a marriage
group at church or to go to aweekend retreat or to sign on to
(36:36):
a couples group.
Both of us kind of pretty muchon the same timing were like,
yeah, we should do this.
And that's not typical.
Unfortunately, like everybodyelse, we've had a lot of friends
who have divorced over theyears.
And a lot of times, one of themwas ready to really work on the
marriage and the other wasn't.
Speaker 01 (36:57):
One of
Speaker 02 (36:59):
them was willing to put in the time, effort and
energy and the other wasn't.
And I just feel really luckythat my wife and I, for whatever
reason, we were inclined tolike, hey, let's try to make
this work.
Let's do this thing, see ifit'll help us.
And ultimately we settled intoa group of, it was called Soul
(37:19):
Care, which sounds reallywoo-woo, but it was just like a
biblical counseling.
It was a Christian thing.
And it was incrediblyrevealing.
It was basically cognitivebehavioral therapy with sort of
an evangelical Christian wrapperon it, language around it.
But that cognitive behavioraltherapy basically helped my wife
and I understand some of thepatterns that we were bringing
(37:42):
to our relationship that werereally predicated on our family
culture growing up.
Speaker 01 (37:47):
These
Speaker 02 (37:47):
things that we just couldn't even quite put words to
Speaker 01 (37:50):
were
Speaker 02 (37:51):
causing strife and struggle between us.
Once we discovered the sourceof that, and we had somebody
externally who was kind of likedescribing these patterns they
were hearing and seeing in ourconversations.
That combination, right?
Like having other people'sinput as to how they were
experiencing us.
Speaker 01 (38:12):
And
Speaker 02 (38:14):
then us connecting the dots together.
Speaker 01 (38:17):
In
Speaker 02 (38:17):
those behaviors and kind of natural tendencies, what
they were connected to in termsof our family culture is really
helpful.
Speaker 00 (38:25):
It's like the cognitive behavioral therapy was
a major help for you and yourwife to recognize previous
patterns and help rectify those.
Was there anything that werethere any patterns that you
noticed that were pre-wired fromyour upbringing that eventually
(38:50):
came into play with yourparenting were there any
patterns that felt negative orfelt positive that played into
your your parenting both soloand as a couple
Speaker 02 (39:02):
oh man yes well so one of the patterns was um my
dad my dad was a school teacheri think i mentioned that and he
was an elementary school teacherand again, a really, really
good one, accomplished one,naturally gifted working with
kids.
(39:23):
And I had the opportunityoccasionally where my school
would be out of session.
There'd be like an in-serviceday or something like that for
my teacher.
And so when that happened, Iwould go to my dad's school
oftentimes.
And I'd like I'd like stay inhis classroom with him.
And I got to watch my dad teachand it was really fun.
That's
Speaker 01 (39:43):
pretty cool.
Speaker 02 (39:43):
One of the, one of the, one of the funnest is
funnest.
Yeah.
One of the things I enjoyed themost was getting to see my dad
in that context.
I got to see a differentversion of my dad who was
carefree and footloose and goofyand like allowed himself to
kind of goof with the kids andthe kids loved it, of course.
And my dad would like dance.
(40:04):
My dad was a musician also.
And so he would, he wouldincorporate a lot of music in
with his classroom.
And so he would sit down at thepiano and like lead the kids in
these songs or he'd turn on aghetto blaster, you know, like a
boom box.
We don't know what those areanymore, but he'd throw a CD in
the boom box and, and do likethe chicken dance and lead the,
(40:25):
all these kids and in a, in agroup dance.
My dad was, never did that kindof stuff with my sister and I,
with rare exception.
There's some exceptions, butthat had a really profound
impact on me because what did Iexperience with my dad?
And he's a good person and hasa great legacy with what he did
(40:47):
leave me.
But oftentimes I'd come homefrom school and my sister and I,
we'd walk in, she's five yearsyounger than me.
We'd walk into the house andyou go into my house and there's
a piano and in the living roomto the right.
And then you walked in thekitchen.
And what a lot of times we dois we'd set our bags down at the
door and we'd go right into theliving room where my dad's
playing the piano and we wouldjust play.
(41:08):
And then ultimately playingwould turn into loud, like
arguing, fighting.
And I remember my dad, this wasthe pattern.
He would kind of stop playingthe piano.
He'd be like, hey, you know,he'd get all irritated with us.
Speaker 01 (41:21):
Hey,
Speaker 02 (41:21):
too much noise.
Can you guys go somewhere else?
Because he had just spent timeall of his patience, all of his
kind of life force on hisstudents.
And not intentionally, right?
It was just, this was his life.
This was his profession.
And also my grandfather was ateacher and frankly did the same
(41:42):
thing.
And so where I saw that come upfor me later is as I started
having children is I wasbringing that same irritable,
annoyed frustrated version ofmyself when i'd come home in the
evening i just couldn't icouldn't do it or right and so i
couldn't goof around with themi was mr serious my wife who's
(42:07):
naturally very sunshiny andgoofy and eclectic and artsy and
the things that i really loveabout her and enjoy about her
like all of this was starting tocollide and i couldn't even
really goof off and enjoy mywife and and who she is i'd get
irritated by the noise and thechatter and the laughing and the
goofing off and i was kind ofthat irritable frustrated dad
(42:31):
sitting at the table at dinnertrying not to be upset trying to
manage my anger and myfrustration and and then at some
point Through all this, I wasable to make this connection and
that started to break it downfor me.
I started to realize, oh mygosh, like I'm doing the same
thing my dad did, you know?
And I'm spoiling or I'm wastingthe gift of my wife.
(42:55):
Like the very thing, theessence of her that made me want
to marry her, I'm pushing heraway right now.
And I'm doing the same thing tomy kids.
So I'm doing exactly the samething that my dad, I experienced
my dad doing.
Speaker 01 (43:07):
Ouch.
Speaker 02 (43:09):
That was a hard...
It was a hard realization andI'll be perfectly honest.
It was a process of years forme to really start to turn that
corner and to recognize what wasgoing on.
But that was an important thingfor me to connect with.
I
Speaker 01 (43:27):
wish it would happen
Speaker 02 (43:28):
sooner.
My daughter, my eldestdaughter, she'll be 20 this
year.
She probably bore the brunt ofthat, of irritable dad and
annoyed and angry dad.
Whereas my boys...
you know, them being three andsix years behind her, they
really got a different versionof me, right?
And so I've, I've beenspending, I've been really,
(43:50):
really trying to invest in myrelationship with my daughter,
even just in these last three,four years, just trying to not
make up, you can't make up forthose things per se, but, but
really trying to address it and,and cultivate, you know, just
new, new levels of relationshipwith her that we just weren't
able to do when she was younger,you know?
Speaker 00 (44:08):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know what I'm learning?
with my toddler.
He's two.
He takes a lot of patience.
He's a toddler.
Even just today, I found myselflosing my cool over something
that he's just trying to expressand figure out.
He's learning the world.
(44:29):
I found myself apologizing tohim and saying, look, I messed
up.
I'm sorry I raised my voice orI'm sorry that I got snippy.
I'm having a rough time rightnow.
And that is my way of trying tomodel for him.
Like, look, we're not perfect.
We're still human.
We're still working throughthings on the daily.
(44:50):
What does repair look like toyou with your kids?
What has that looked like?
Unknown (44:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 02 (44:57):
Well, it's looked different right over the years.
So like I said, I wasn't reallyconscious of this and I wasn't
super tuned.
I wasn't tuned in at all for,for a number of years, but I
think what repair looks like nowwith my boys.
So my boys have, again, they'vehad a different version of dad
than my daughter did for themost part.
Um, what repair looks like is Itry to do it same day.
Speaker 01 (45:19):
It's
Speaker 02 (45:20):
like I try to do as much in real time.
It's like, ooh, hey, listen,I'm really sorry about that
tone.
I'm sorry I kind of freaked outon that thing here just a
moment ago.
Here's what was going on insideme.
Here's what I was reactingfrom.
I'm sorry.
I don't ever want to talk toyou that way.
I don't want to use that toneof voice with you, right?
Speaker 01 (45:39):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 02 (45:40):
So that's a lot of times what it sounds like in the
moment now.
But to my daughter, I thinkpart of what I've had to just
acknowledge is that My daughterhad a lot of feelings and
emotions flowing out of thatexperience she had of me.
And thankfully, there was neverwhat people think of as abuse
(46:06):
or anything like that.
But it was just this generalunavailability of me
emotionally, not playful, oftensarcastic.
short irritated like that's thedad that a lot of times she got
and there was a lot of falloutfrom that
Speaker 01 (46:25):
yeah
Speaker 02 (46:26):
and so as I there's times where those stories or
situations will come up with mydaughter and I and she'll bring
it up and she's like man thatwas really hard and I've learned
over time not to be defensive
Speaker 01 (46:40):
because I
Speaker 02 (46:40):
often will my first response is I'll feel ashamed
Speaker 01 (46:44):
yeah Understandably.
I was
Speaker 02 (46:46):
a bad dad, you know?
Speaker 01 (46:47):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 02 (46:48):
And, but of course, when I take that tact, right,
I'm not necessarily helping herfeel seen and understood by me
having this visceral, gosh, Iwas a bad dad.
Like what she really neededfrom me was to acknowledge that,
hey, I'm really sorry that thatwas so hard.
And I'm really sorry that Icouldn't have been more there
(47:09):
for you.
Speaker 01 (47:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 02 (47:10):
Sorry that I didn't, that I couldn't be more
present.
Speaker 01 (47:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 02 (47:16):
I regret that.
You know, I regret my attitude.
I just like, you know, I wishthat had been different.
Speaker 00 (47:22):
Yeah.
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So you've done this repair workwith your sons, and it looks
(48:29):
like the repair work with yoursons is more same-day work.
acknowledging your actions.
The repair work with yourdaughter, it sounds like it's
taken place over time and you'velearned how to truly listen to
what she has to say, hold spacefor how she's feeling.
How do you think that hastransposed into your leadership
(48:53):
skills within Floodlight
Speaker 02 (48:55):
Group?
I think it has helped me.
I think probably the biggestway that It's helped me develop
and grow.
My leadership is, it's createda sensitivity in me to how
others are experiencing me.
It's created a level ofself-awareness now in me where
(49:15):
I'm just much more tuned in towhat's happening in the
relationships around me, whetherthat be employees or clients or
subs.
I think it's also over time,it's kind of developed that
change muscle in me to wherewhen I identify an area where
(49:36):
I've been misbehaving or I'vebeen negatively affecting
somebody in my orbit in aparticular relationship or not
leading well or whatever it iswhere I need to make amends or I
need to fix a situation orshore up a relationship or
whatever, I feel like I'm comingmore from a place of humility.
I think it's helped mecultivate humility in my heart
(50:04):
and in my life.
And I think part of that,again, it goes back to that
family culture of reputation'severything.
And I developed so manystrategies from watching my
parents and also just internallymy own success strategies or
avoidance strategies for makingsure that people liked me.
Even when I was misbehaving, Ihad all these strategies for
(50:27):
getting people to like me inspite of These behaviors are
patterns that I would exhibit.
And so I think over time, if Istarted to recognize those
patterns and those ways ofbeing, it's created more
humility in me.
It's like, you know, I don'thave it all together.
I'm not always a nice person.
(50:49):
I'm not always thoughtful ofothers.
And this is part of me.
I'm learning.
And some people are going to beupset with me because I'm going
to offend people.
I'm going to let people down.
And when I do, it's notnecessarily a reflection on my
character and my reputation.
It doesn't necessarily identifyme.
(51:09):
And so I don't have that sameinclination to sort of cover up
Speaker 01 (51:17):
or
Speaker 02 (51:18):
obfuscate or minimize my own behavior.
I'm getting to the point now.
In fact, I just had one of mydownline employees, which really
does him a disservice becausehe's really like, an incredibly
pivotal leader in our company,but he's an employee of mine.
He's not one of our owners.
He corrected me.
He brought something to myattention here this last week,
(51:41):
and it was actually ratherembarrassing.
I felt some of that old shameof like, oh, they see this part
of me that I'm embarrassedabout, right?
But it was just my reaction, mynatural internal reaction when
he brought this up to me wasjust so much different than what
(52:01):
it would have been 10 yearsago.
Speaker 01 (52:03):
You know what I
Speaker 02 (52:03):
mean?
Speaker 01 (52:04):
Because
Speaker 02 (52:05):
I just, I was able to hear what he was saying.
I was able to be like, youknow, yes, I can, I can
understand this.
And I didn't feel that pull tochange the way he thought of me.
I was able to just accept whathe was saying.
I was able to say to him, hisname's Wayne.
I was saying, Wayne, listen, I,I am so appreciative that you
(52:26):
had the courage to, to sharethis with me so that I have the
option of doing something withit.
I wasn't tuned in to this,obviously, or I wasn't applying
the proper priority or focus tothis thing.
I wasn't honoring you in theway I was handling this thing,
but I really wasn't tuned intoit.
(52:47):
And I really appreciate youbringing it up to me.
So I have an option to dosomething.
Speaker 00 (52:51):
Yes.
Oh, it's so beautiful how youshifted the...
Yeah.
rectify the situation, dobetter, and actually move
(53:25):
forward with that relationshipinstead of getting caught up and
then it all falls apart.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, that is so cool.
Oh my goodness, Chris, this hasbeen such an amazing
conversation.
Please tell me, what is yourdream for your career and what
is your dream for your kids andyour marriage?
Speaker 02 (53:46):
Oh.
You know, my father passed awaythis last year.
In fact, this Thursday will bethe one-year anniversary of his
death.
And somewhat ironically orwhatever, it's actually my son's
(54:06):
birthday as well.
My dad died on his son'sbirthday.
Speaker 01 (54:09):
Wow.
Speaker 02 (54:10):
My little boy's birthday.
And so I've been thinking aboutthis a lot.
My dad's death...
stirred up a lot of things inme.
But one of the things that itjust hyper-focused me on is the
legacy of my dad.
And then what is my legacygoing to be?
(54:33):
And the way I think of it sortof in a big picture way is, you
know, my dad was handed a set ofcircumstances and privilege.
My dad didn't grow up, youknow, dirt poor, some sort of
sob story.
My dad, my grandfather providedfor my dad.
And in many ways, my dad had amaybe better than average start
(54:55):
compared to other people.
But there's also a lot ofdarkness in his family of origin
and his family culture.
And somehow my dad was able tocarry the ball further downfield
for me and my sister and mymom, create a different life, a
better life than my grandfatherwas able to create and provide
(55:18):
for my dad.
And all of that just kind ofcame into full view.
And if I was able to be therewith my dad when he died and it
was a really powerful experiencewhere I just, I felt like there
was a passing of the torch oflike, hey, my dad was able to
carry the family forward.
forward so much.
(55:39):
And now it's my job.
This is, this is my task.
Like this is the dream is tosomehow carry it further and to
take it as far as I can possiblygo.
And, and meaning like one, Ithink that's me trying to find
the edges of what am I capableof as a man and as a business
person.
And just like what with thegenetics and the opportunity and
(56:01):
the, all the things that my dadwas able to give me.
What am I going to do with it?
Speaker 01 (56:07):
And
Speaker 02 (56:13):
so, you know, when you ask that question about
what's my dream, well, you know,my dream is that I would be
able to carry the ball downfieldfurther than my dad and that
I'd be able to create somethings and experiences and a
connection with my kids and atype of marriage where I'm able
(56:33):
to learn from my dad and some ofhis perhaps shortcomings like
we all have and just be able tomake good on that and carry the
family forward.
So I think about my wife and I,like I want to have the kind of
marriage where my wife and Ilike each other and continue to
(56:55):
play together and
Speaker 01 (56:56):
to
Speaker 02 (56:58):
explore and be curious about our life together.
and stay healthy and all thethings.
Both of us have a passion fortravel.
So I think creating freedom andopportunity from the businesses
that I'm involved in to enableus to explore and have freedom
to move and travel and exploretogether.
(57:19):
I think for my kids, I thinkwhat we all want for our kids is
for, not for them to have aneasier life than us necessarily,
Yeah, maybe we do.
My kids were able to dodge andsidestep.
Speaker 01 (57:36):
I
Speaker 02 (57:36):
had to go through.
But I think ultimately thatthey would be just that much
more self-aware
Speaker 01 (57:44):
that
Speaker 02 (57:47):
they would become conscious of things that I
wasn't really conscious of untilmy 30s.
So I'm really trying to haveconversations with my kids and
be open and transparent and toengage in a different kind of
conversation with them now at13, 16, 19, the kinds of
conversations that I wish I'dhad with my dad,
Speaker 01 (58:08):
you know?
Yeah.
Speaker 02 (58:11):
So that, you know, by the time that they're 45 and
they're having a conversationlike this, their story sounds
radically different.
Speaker 00 (58:18):
Not perfect.
No.
Right?
That's unrealistic.
Speaker 02 (58:23):
Right, but healthier and...
But healthier,
Speaker 01 (58:30):
you
Speaker 02 (58:31):
know, and healthier sooner.
And hopefully they don'tstruggle through 10 years of
marriage like my wife and I did.
Like hopefully, you know,through my wife and I modeling
our commitment and love and carefor each other, we'll
accelerate that for them.
And they'll enter theirmarriage with a little bit more
awareness and intentionalitythan we did, than we knew to,
(58:53):
right?
Speaker 01 (58:54):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 02 (58:55):
Um, and same thing goes with like work ethic and
risk taking and everything else.
Like I, I think my dream isjust to hopefully model what it
looks like to really explore ouredges as a person and to try to
become the best version ofourselves that we can possibly
muster.
Yeah.
And then to have the greatestpositive effect on the people in
(59:18):
our orbit.
Yeah.
Um, yeah.
I don't know that there reallyis much.
I have other material dreams,but they're minimal.
You know, it's funny, like theolder I get, the less concerned
I am with the Lamborghinis andthe fancy hotels and things of
that sort that maybe at onepoint were enticing to me.
I feel like I have certainthings that I want materially.
(59:42):
One of the things is my wifeand I have a dream of having a
house in the forest.
Unknown (59:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 02 (59:49):
For some reason, that's just always like
occasionally we'll rent anAirbnb by the river and the
forest.
And it's just both of us.
It just feeds our soul.
You know, my dad always growingup, my dad's thing, his luxury,
his big expense was he had aMazda Miatas.
You know, those littleconvertible
Speaker 00 (01:00:08):
roadsters.
Little roadsters.
Yeah.
Speaker 02 (01:00:10):
So he had two of them over the course of my life
when I was in the house and Igot to drive it when I became
driving age.
I took my wife on dates in itwhen we were dating and I just
have this natural affinity.
And of course now with my dad,you know, passing away.
Yeah.
I feel that much more connectedto little things like that.
So right now, one of the thingson my so-called dream board, my
(01:00:30):
proverbial dream board, is toget an old Miata and fix it up,
do an engine swap, do somethingfun, and have a weekend car that
I take my wife out in and putzaround in.
I
Speaker 00 (01:00:42):
love that.
Speaker 02 (01:00:43):
But beyond that, it's like all my other dreams
and goals are really builtaround connection and
relationship.
It's like I want to have thefinancial resources and the
flexibility with the businessesI own to– create moments and
experiences for our kids to joinus on things and someday
hopefully maybe bring their kidsalong with.
So that's really kind of whatit all centers around for me
(01:01:07):
now.
Speaker 00 (01:01:08):
Beautiful.
Oh my goodness.
What a gift to yourself, yourkids, your marriage, the world,
the way that you have thought sodeeply past the material items,
which are fun.
Material things are fun todream about.
We can't discount that.
But the deeper stuff, thelegacy leaving, the connection.
(01:01:32):
I don't know about you, butthat's my definition of success.
More and
Speaker 02 (01:01:38):
more.
Yeah, yeah.
I think the other thing too,and you probably see this in
your work, like I work with alot of business owners.
Some of them are fantasticallysuccessful financially.
Yeah.
And some of them are alsosimultaneously very successful
in their social relationshipsand their marriage and
everything else.
More rare.
Speaker 01 (01:01:55):
Yeah.
More rare.
Speaker 02 (01:01:56):
But they're there.
But then, of course, there'sample examples of folks with a
lot of success financially whoAll of the trappings of success
that you would imagine orotherwise want, but the
relationships around them arebroken and fraught with
(01:02:18):
dysfunction and disappointmentand anger and frustration.
And it's like, oh, I actuallycan't imagine a worse outcome to
have it all and to basically bealone.
Speaker 00 (01:02:30):
It's almost better to not
Speaker 02 (01:02:32):
have it.
Speaker 00 (01:02:32):
100%.
To be alone, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, you're in total agreementabout that.
Chris, where can people findyou?
Speaker 02 (01:02:46):
Well, so LinkedIn forward slash in slash Chris
Nordyke is one way people canfollow me.
They can also follow...
I hope it's okay with me sayingthis, our podcast at Head,
Heart, and Boots.
Speaker 00 (01:02:58):
Of course, yes.
Speaker 02 (01:02:59):
Google Head, Heart, and Boots.
It's my business partner and Ido that.
And then floodlightgrp.com.
Floodlightgrp.com is ourconsulting website.
And I've got my bios on thereand you can reach me through
there as well.
But those are the big ones.
Somebody's on Facebook.
We got Facebookers.
You can look for Chris Mordyke.
(01:03:21):
Look for the guy with the beardin the lineup.
And that's probably my profile.
Yeah.
people who find me there too.
Speaker 00 (01:03:27):
Perfect.
This was a wonderful chat.
Thank you so much for sharingall of your knowledge with us.
I am definitely feelinginspired and I hope to lead a
life of humility the way thatyou have learned to.
So thank you.
Speaker 02 (01:03:40):
Great questions.
Thank you for bringing me on.
I appreciate
Speaker 00 (01:03:44):
it.
Thank you for joining us onBringing Up Business.
If you could, please take amoment to subscribe to and rate
the podcast on Apple, Spotify,or wherever Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
(01:04:06):
Say bye-bye.
See you later.
(01:04:32):
Bye-bye.
Thank you for watching.
(01:04:54):
are subject to risk includingpossible loss of capital
(01:05:23):
individuals should seriouslyconsider if a decision is
suitable for them by referencingtheir own financial position
thank you
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