Interview with Hall of Fame Speaker Chris Widener on Confidence, Calling, and Leadership
What happens when one of the world’s most celebrated motivational speakers turns his focus from stages to spiritual revival? In this powerful episode of GRASP Confidence, I sit down with the iconic Chris Widener—a man who has not only spoken to millions across the globe but has now answered a deeper calling.
Chris has delivered over 2,500 speeches worldwide and is the author of 25 books translated into 14 languages, with accolades including:
-
Top 50 Speakers in the World
-
Motivational Speakers Hall of Fame inductee
-
Top 10 Sales Speakers (SUCCESS Magazine)
-
Top 100 Leadership Speakers (Inc. Magazine)
-
Top 20 Sales Speakers in the World (Global Gurus, 2025)
More than a prolific communicator, Chris has been personally mentored by legends like Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn, and John Maxwell, and his impact continues to echo in both business and faith-based circles. But what truly sets this conversation apart is his recent transformation—from corporate inspiration to spiritual reformation.
We talk about his new 501(c)(3), Chris Widener Ministries, and the heart behind his latest book, The Coming American Revival, endorsed by leaders across politics, entertainment, and faith. Chris shares how God redirected his platform toward deeper purpose, how confidence shifts when it’s rooted in calling, and why now—more than ever—we need courageous, faith-filled leadership. This is a conversation about legacy, alignment, and the revival stirring in our nation and hearts alike.
👉 Don’t miss this powerful episode—an honest, soul-stirring dialogue on leadership, revival, and living out your purpose in a noisy world.
🎧 Listen now on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite platform.
Grab Chris’s new book at ComingAmericanRevival.com
Connect with Chris on LinkedIn
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
who has a new book to help
guide you with these steps
to grasp your confidence
and own your power.
I love that.
Look around the room.
You'll see that you're not
so alone after all and that
unconfidence could look like any of us.
Leighton,
maybe your whole life you have
(00:22):
been told that the best wins,
but I'm telling you right
now that the best known will win.
Today's guest is a global
force in personal development,
(00:43):
Chris Widener.
A member of the Motivational
Speaker Hall of Fame and
one of the top fifty
speakers in the world,
Chris has electrified
audiences in over forty six
states and across the globe.
From a turbulent childhood
to best-selling author of
twenty-three books
translated into fourteen languages,
(01:05):
Chris's story is one of grit, growth,
and God-given purpose.
His collaborations and with some of the,
I should say,
most brilliant minds of our era,
like Zig Zagler and Jim Rohn,
have cemented his legacy
and trusted voice in
leadership and influence.
So if you want to grow in confidence,
(01:25):
communicate with impact and
lead with integrity,
Chris brings the tools,
the truth and the timeless
principles to help you do it.
Get ready,
because this conversation will
shift your spirit and
ultimately stir it and
sharpen your leadership.
Let's welcome Chris to the show.
Hey, Tara, how are you?
Hey, good.
It's so good to see you again, Chris.
(01:47):
How are you doing?
Thanks for having me on.
I'm doing great.
Well,
it's not every day I get to interview
somebody of your caliber.
You've got amazing number of
bestselling books,
twenty three translated
into fourteen languages,
Hall of Fame speaker, leadership expert.
And what I love most about
you is your willingness to
(02:09):
share your faith openly,
which is one of the reasons
I think we connected in the first place.
Yeah.
I love that.
Yeah, you know, it's me, right?
And, you know,
we have a wide variety of
people who live in the world.
And it seems like everybody
feels like they can share
who they are and what they want to do,
except it feels like in the last fifteen,
(02:31):
twenty years,
Christians have been sort of
shoved to the corner and said,
shut up and don't talk.
And, you know, I don't try to be, you know,
I don't bully anybody.
I'm not, you know,
angry or bitter or anything,
but it's part of who I am.
And so, you know,
I talk about my faith and
how it affects my life and
my business and my
relationships and people
can take it or leave it, you know.
(02:53):
And I found as long as you're winsome,
here's a quote that I kind
of made up here a few years
ago and people like it.
I always say that if you're winsome,
you will win some.
And I just feel like if we're winsome,
if we're happy, if we're kind,
if we're open to other ideas,
then you can share your
thoughts as long as they
know that they don't have to take them.
(03:15):
And as long as they can
share their thoughts and
it's open dialogue.
And so I have friends that
are atheist and Buddhist
and Christian and Jewish and Muslim,
and we don't agree on everything,
but we can still be friendly.
That's what it's all about, right?
And I like to think of it as, you know,
we have four gospels.
(03:35):
So there's Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
But the fifth gospel is
actually the life of the believer, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
And it's just being ourselves, you know,
through our own inspired
action and then aligning
ourself with Christ-like principles,
right?
And you can be that fifth
gospel at any point in time.
(03:55):
And, you know,
it's really just about
loving other people and without judgment,
right?
Yeah.
Right?
Judgment is a really
fascinating conversation to
me because people say,
you shouldn't judge.
And I say, okay,
is pedophilia right or wrong?
(04:17):
wrong.
That's a judgment.
You passed a judgment.
We literally have an entire
group of people called
judges and they decide right and wrong,
this, that, and the other thing.
And so I think sometimes our
opinions when they differ
are called judgment.
And it's really just our opinion,
which is rooted in the word of God.
In fact,
there's a whole book called Judges
(04:38):
in the book of the Bible.
And so
It's interesting to me
because what's really
fascinating to me is,
I think it's second Corinthians,
first Corinthians,
where it talks about that
Christians should judge the church first.
We don't point out at the world and go,
you're doing it wrong,
you're doing it wrong.
We have to look at ourselves and say,
(04:59):
are we doing it right?
Are we living the kind of
life that we're supposed to live?
Because it goes back to that,
don't take the speck out of
your brother's eye when you
got a plank coming out of your own eye.
So I feel like we can have
our opinions rooted in the
word of God and we can
express those opinion,
but we do it in love.
(05:20):
The Bible talks about
speaking the truth in love.
And what I feel like is we either have,
most people tend to fall in
one camp or the other.
Oh, I just love you.
It doesn't matter what you're doing.
Oh,
you're ripping your business partner off.
That's okay.
It's like, God loved you.
He doesn't care how you live.
I just love you.
He loves you.
(05:41):
You're totally accepted.
That's the love side.
Then you have the truth side.
You're a dirty, rotten sinner.
You're bad.
You're this, you're that.
And, you know,
you're not living the way the Bible says.
And people say, well, I'm a truth teller.
And I'm like, well,
you're kind of just a jerk.
I mean, really, you hide behind this.
I'm a truth teller in order to be a jerk.
(06:03):
But what I feel like is,
is if you can take the love
side and you could take the
truth side and you could
speak to somebody,
like if somebody is a drug addict,
you can go to a drug addict and say, hey,
that's bad for you.
It's bad for your family.
You're going to die from this.
It's not the way God intended you to live.
God can help you get out of it.
I am passing judgment.
(06:24):
I'm saying that his
lifestyle is not a good one.
But I'm telling him the truth,
but I'm saying it in love.
I care about you.
I want to see you live your
whole life so you can see
your children grow up.
And so to me,
the way we get around the
sort of typical definition
of being judgy is by
(06:44):
speaking the truth in love,
making sure that person
knows that we're saying this out of love.
And then the last thing I'll
say is there's a Bible
passage that says wounds
from a friend can be trusted.
So wounds from an enemy can't be trusted.
Somebody didn't like you and
they start saying bad stuff
about you and just let it go.
But if your best friend or
your spouse says, hey,
(07:05):
I'm really concerned about
this and it hurts a little,
they wound you a little,
it can be trusted because
it comes from this place of love.
They're not telling you this
to make you feel bad or to
judge you or to make you hurt.
They're telling you this
because they love you.
And so the word judge always
(07:26):
kind of gets me to go off
in a soapbox because I
think it's something that
we don't really understand
that you can tell the truth
and it's not necessarily
being judgmental.
It's interesting that we're
having this conversation.
I was just talking to my
husband the other night,
and we were at a restaurant,
and I caught myself judging somebody,
(07:46):
right?
Because I'm human, so I'll be honest.
I was judging somebody.
But I've actually implemented this tactic.
I'd love to get your feedback on it.
that anytime I feel myself
doing this I say three
things I love about that
person I find three things
so I was instantly judging
them and then I said oh my
(08:08):
gosh he has such beautiful
eyes look at his beautiful
blue eyes I love eyes that
his eye color and then I
said you know what he also
has a really nice sounding
voice I bet he'd be a good
speaker and then I also
thought oh you know he's
really played I just saw
him open the door for that
old lady who was coming in
Yeah.
Now, all of a sudden,
(08:28):
I took back that judgment and said,
why was I now I realized I
was actually judging that person.
Yeah.
And I thought about this.
And you know what?
You could do this with
anything you because it's
really easy to in business
to forget our things that
we don't like doing and putting them off.
But how important are they?
Like, I don't enjoy accounting.
(08:50):
Chris, I'll tell you.
Right.
But I know I have to do it.
I got to do it.
I hire a bookkeeper.
Yeah, me too.
Right.
But I used to say, I hate doing this.
And then I would push it off because I was,
I was just judging it.
But now I've even learned
how to say things about tasks.
Right.
Oh,
but it will help me do this and this
and that.
So it's so important,
(09:11):
but especially with people
and going back to your point, it's,
it's through the lens of
love when you can start to
see other people and
As God sees them,
not as another human being sees them,
but see their heart and see
the attributes of them that, you know,
God might love.
Well, I think the other thing is,
(09:32):
I think that's a great way
when you're looking at that person.
The other thing we have to
do is we have to look in
the mirror at ourselves.
So I'll give you an example.
I met this guy.
very famous guy, young guy.
He's under thirty.
He's made millions of dollars.
He has a ton of influence,
one of the biggest guys on the Internet.
And I met him once and he
was really kind of a jerk.
(09:54):
And so I was talking to this
very famous older woman,
probably in her sixties,
who knows this guy as well.
And I was like, why?
why is he such a jerk and
all this kind of stuff?
And she's, oh yeah,
he's full of himself and this, that,
and the other thing.
And it's almost like God
tapped me on the shoulder
in the middle of the conversation.
I'm fifty nine now.
We had this conversation
(10:14):
when I was probably fifty six, fifty six.
And all of a sudden I said to this woman,
I said, but you know what?
I suppose if I'd have been
that young with that kind
of money and that kind of power,
I probably would have been worse.
Honestly,
I probably would have been worse.
I would have been more arrogant.
I would have been a bigger bully.
And so then it kind of
shifted my attitude towards
(10:35):
him more to like pray for
him that God's given him
this huge platform for a
lot of good in our country.
But
was just young and full of
himself and had you know he
had I mean he was very
successful by the time he
was probably and um and so
I just thought you know
what it's not that he's a
(10:56):
bad guy it's that maybe he
hasn't grown into his his
platform yet and he will as
he gets older and as he has
some failures like we all
do that humble you and
those kinds of things and
so I think yes trying to
find the positive about
them but also looking at
yourself and going I may
not be that much better than
I've made mistakes.
(11:16):
I've done wrong things.
I've got my attitude quirks
and my personality quirks
and those kinds of things.
And so that's one of the
things I try to do.
I love that.
So much to learn there.
And I don't really know how
we got started on this.
Cause that's not how, wasn't the intention,
right?
But it's interesting when
you pick up on a single
word and it means something to you,
(11:38):
you know,
how it can really change the
course of conversation,
but it can ultimately
change our view on life in
general and reality on our perception.
So I encourage everybody listening to this,
you know, that we,
We may look at others in judgment.
Find three things or so that
you love about that person.
(11:59):
And kind of like what you
said as a mirror as well,
when we look at ourselves in the mirror,
how are we judging ourselves?
And I find it too, Chris,
because our show is about
confidence here and personal development,
becoming the best version of yourself.
How often do we bully
ourselves and have these
(12:21):
Insta judgments on ourselves?
We look in the mirror.
We think of not even three
things we don't like.
We think of a hundred things
we don't like.
Say them out loud.
You know what?
Our body remembers it, doesn't it?
It does both positive and negative.
If my wife was on here,
she would tell you it's funny, you know,
regularly,
probably two or three times a week.
(12:42):
And I kind of do it for her
now more than anything,
because it makes her laugh.
I'll be, we'll both be in the bathroom,
you know,
getting ready for the day or something.
And I'm looking at the mirror and I go,
Chris Widener,
you are one handsome devil.
And she always laughs from the other side.
He's like, what is up with you?
And you know, I'm,
I'm a solid seven and a half, you know,
but I always, but I always tell,
I always look in the mirror.
I'm like, Chris Widener,
(13:02):
you are one handsome devil.
And so she always thinks that's funny.
But no, you know, the Bible says,
look at yourself with sober reality.
And so the idea of sober
reality is it's the
difference seen if you're drunk.
It's like I'm the best
looking guy in the world.
Right.
But then you're sober and it's like, OK,
you know,
I'm a solid seven and a half year.
Right.
It's it's a it's how you
(13:23):
would view things if you
were sober as opposed to drunk.
But I think the other cool
word is reality.
You know,
most of what we say about
ourselves isn't reality.
It's speculation.
Nobody else would look at
you and say the same thing.
And a very extreme case of
this would be women who are anorexic,
(13:44):
right?
I'm so fat.
No, you're thirty pounds underweight,
right?
That's not reality, right?
It's not a sense of sober reality.
And there's people that they
think they're better
athletes than they are.
They think they're better
business people than they are.
So I think in order to gain confidence,
And by the way,
I'd love to talk to you
about the root words of confidence.
(14:05):
The basis of developing
confidence is having a
sober reality of where you're starting,
right?
And so the thing I love
about the word confidence,
I was raised by a mom who loved words,
probably why I ended up being an author.
I saw my mother once do the
(14:25):
Sunday morning New York
Times crossword puzzle in
eleven minutes in pen.
And I asked her, what's your secret?
And she said, well, you know,
I know Latin and that helps
me with root words.
And I've been doing it for
sixty years anyway.
So they use the same clues sometimes.
But the interesting thing
about the word confidence
is con is a prefix which means with.
(14:47):
And the way I always
remember this is when I was
a latchkey kid growing up,
my mom sold real estate.
My dad passed when I was four.
I ate a lot of chili con carne.
And that is chili with meat.
So I always remember that
the prefix con means with.
The Latin word that you get
confidence from is fide,
which means faith.
(15:09):
So confidence means with faith.
So I always tell people,
If you asked me to come and speak,
like literally if somebody
called me up right now and said,
there's a hundred thousand
people across the street,
you gotta cut this podcast
early and go over and give
a thirty minute speech.
I'd be like, Tara, sorry, gotta go.
There's a hundred thousand
people waiting for me.
I'm on stage in thirty seconds.
And I wouldn't have a
(15:29):
problem because I have
faith in my ability to speak.
But if they said, hey,
we're about to start a
conference with a hundred
thousand people across the
street and they need you to
sing the national anthem, I'd be like, eh,
not so much.
Like,
I don't even know if I can remember
the words and you
definitely don't want to
hear them coming out of this voice.
So it's the difference.
I find that the best way to
(15:50):
develop your confidence is
to focus on your strengths
because we have a natural
self-confidence.
We have a faith.
in our ability to do a particular thing.
I had a guy come up to me once,
this was probably twenty-five years ago,
after a speech I gave in Seattle.
And you'll get why I know
it's twenty-five years ago
(16:10):
when I tell you the rest of the story.
I was actually still holding
the microphone for some reason,
and he comes up to me like
thirty seconds after the speech.
He goes,
how do you give a thirty-minute
speech with no notes?
And I said,
you could give a thirty-minute
speech without notes.
And he goes, oh, I could never do it.
I said, where do you work?
He said, Boeing.
I said, what do you do?
He said,
I'm actually developing the wing
(16:32):
for the seven, seven, seven.
So it was before the seven, seven,
seven was released.
He said, I develop wings for Boeing.
And right now I'm working on, you know,
the,
the science behind the wing on the seven,
seven, seven.
And I said,
if I handed you this microphone
and I gave you one minute
to sort of gather your thoughts,
could you give me a
(16:53):
And what it's like to work
at Boeing and blah, blah, blah.
And he goes, oh yeah, easy.
And I go, see, you could give.
Because I would have placed
him into his place of confidence.
Something that he has faith
that he knows about.
If you ask me to give a
thirty minute speech,
I'd have to prepare for an
hour just to learn
everything about wing design.
I could probably give it.
And I could probably fake it.
If I had enough notes and everything.
(17:15):
But confidence, I really believe,
comes from playing to your strengths.
and doing the things that,
because I believe that God
uniquely designed each and
every one of us with certain strengths,
certain gifts, certain talents,
and they're different from
one another so that we need one another.
So what we wanna do is we
(17:38):
play to our strengths,
We mentioned a bookkeeper.
I could probably do my books,
but I hate doing books and
I hate math and I'm a verbal guy, right?
So I hire to my weaknesses
and I do the things that
I'm good at and I'm gifted in.
Absolutely.
Oh my gosh.
So much to be said there.
In my first book,
(17:59):
How to Grasp Confidence and
Own Your Power, I talk a lot about this.
I liken us all to a body.
Yep.
So with each individual cell,
each individual cell in a
body has a purpose.
And if that individual cell
decided to go outside of
its purpose and try to
become another cell,
(18:20):
so if a heart cell tried to
become a lung cell,
it's not that it is a failure.
It's not that it lacks purpose.
It's that it's in the wrong
space and can't perform the
functions of that cell.
So through its whole life,
thinking it was a failure,
thinking it was stupid,
thinking it didn't have a purpose.
But when you put it in its alignment,
in its area of strength,
(18:42):
the whole body functions.
But the whole body is in
competition if these cells or if us,
if we as people are in our wrong space,
too.
Well, you know,
one of the things that I do,
and you may think it's weird,
I think some people think it's weird,
but it's this idea of, you know,
we live in a culture where
the whole goal is to get
(19:02):
famous and to go viral and
to be an influencer and all
this kind of stuff.
Sometimes when I'm driving
through like a mountainous
area or something,
and there's just thousands
of trees on the hillside,
I'll look at one tree
halfway up the mountain and
And I think to myself,
nobody is ever gonna stand
at that foot of that tree.
(19:23):
They're never gonna cut it
down and use it for
firewood or to build furniture.
That tree has been there for fifty years.
It's gonna be there for
another fifty years.
And so, hold on a minute.
I was getting a call here.
I look at it and I think, okay,
it's obscure.
It's an obscure tree.
(19:45):
but it serves an amazing purpose.
It helps us have oxygen in our world.
Nobody will ever know it.
Nobody will ever sit foot at it.
You know,
nobody will ever create a hammock
and connect it to another tree.
It's just doing its job
based on what it was created to do.
Now,
There are other Douglas fir
(20:05):
trees that might get cut
down and put up in
Rockefeller Center or at
the White House for
Christmas or something like that.
And I look at us as human beings that way,
right?
Some people, you know,
they're never going to become famous.
They're never going to be a global leader,
but they're making their difference.
For example,
I could probably name twenty
countries in Africa who I
(20:26):
could not tell you who the
president of that country was.
They are very significant in that country,
but there's very few people
that take on the Nelson
Mandela role or the Mother
Teresa role or something
like that who have global impact.
And then you have national impact,
(20:48):
regional impact, city impact.
And then you have the guy
who's an auto mechanic who
coaches his little kid's
little league team, right?
Major impact on on fifteen little kids,
but nobody's ever going to
really know his name.
So to me,
it's taking your confidence in
the state in which you live
(21:10):
and the job that God has given you to do.
In certain world, I'm pretty well known.
In other worlds,
I'm not well known at all.
And in fact,
I decided to run for the US
Senate once in twenty ten.
And my best friend had run for governor.
And so he knew the political world.
He's very long political guy.
(21:30):
And he goes, nobody knows who you are.
And I said, dude, I'm famous.
I'm in the motivational
speakers hall of fame.
And he said, okay,
go stand in front of the QFC.
QFC is a grocery store chain
up in Washington state.
Go stand in front of the QFC
for an hour and ask
everybody that comes and
goes if they know who you are.
(21:51):
And I immediately got it.
Okay.
Okay.
Right.
You know?
And so I think,
I think we can have
confidence and we shouldn't
belittle ourselves that we
aren't as big as we want to
be because the bigger,
the bigger the stage,
the less people are going to be there.
Absolutely.
I love that.
Well, that's so timely and powerful,
(22:11):
right?
And, you know,
most of our listeners are entrepreneurs.
They're people that, you know,
have goals that you've accomplished.
So I love how you're talking
about this and leaning into
your God-given calling, your purpose,
because ultimately that's
how we get successful.
We don't get successful by
(22:31):
trying to be like other people, right?
We get successful by leaning
into our strengths and what
our natural gifts are.
They're there for a reason.
Yeah,
and we also have to realize that you
might be very talented and
it still may not become
everything you want it to become.
I heard Mark Cuban about a
year ago getting
(22:52):
interviewed on a podcast
and somebody said, if you lost everything,
how long would it take you
to become a billionaire again?
He said, oh,
I could never become a billionaire again.
And they said, really?
And he said, oh,
I would become worth ten or
twenty or fifty million
dollars easy because I can do that.
But he said,
the thing you have to realize
is becoming a billionaire,
a lot of it is just pure luck.
(23:14):
Right time, right place.
I grew up in Seattle.
Bill Gates had just gone to
college when the computer
revolution started.
He dropped out of college.
He was in one of the most
technologically advanced
cities in the world at the time.
and he was right place, right time.
If Bill Gates would have
been born ten years earlier
or ten years later,
we would not ever have known his name.
(23:35):
You know, Mark Cuban,
I don't know if you know
how Mark Cuban got rich,
but he went to the University of Indiana.
He bought a bar near the
University of Indiana.
Then he moved to Dallas.
He was really into basketball.
And he was living in Dallas,
and he would call his
friend back in Indiana and say,
put the phone next to the radio.
And the guy would put the
phone next to the radio,
(23:57):
the Indiana Hoosiers play their games.
Well,
eventually he started looking at
computers and streaming and he said,
I wonder if my friend could
just stream it across a computer line.
So his friend started
streaming it that way.
So he didn't have to pay the
dollar a minute or whatever
we used to pay for long distance, right?
And what happened was he all
of a sudden he went, well,
(24:18):
if I'm a Hoosier fan,
I wonder if Alabama fans
living in Chicago would
like to hear the Alabama games.
And I wonder if the
you know the uconn fans
living in la would like to
hear the huskies games and
and that's what he did that
his first company was
called audionet changed it
to broadcast.com and sold
it to yahoo for a few
billion dollars right place
(24:38):
right time right idea wow
incredible I love that it's
so inspiring right because
you know I I think about this a lot
We have a dream, a vision.
Maybe it's I want to write a book.
Maybe it's I want to start a business.
And we let self-doubt
absolutely just take the wheel, take over,
(25:02):
right?
And we tell ourselves all of
the reasons something doesn't work.
But what I've found in my
interviews and just knowing
very ultra successful people as well is
is that if they have a self-doubt,
it really does not last that long.
They don't let it metastasize.
They don't let it take root.
They just keep going.
(25:23):
They just don't give up.
And they have this vision and they believe,
Chris.
And then going back to our
faith-based conversation in the beginning,
it really is a faith, like a deep faith.
And it's unmakeable, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the other thing we have to realize is,
you know,
the first time I ever remember
(25:44):
my mom doing this,
I was probably ten years old,
and we were in a bookstore.
And my mother went like this
very dramatically.
She waved her hand at the books,
the ten thousand books in this bookstore,
and she said,
if all these people could write a book,
you could write a book.
she would say that about
lots of different things
but I find it funny that I
(26:05):
ended up becoming an author
but she said if all these
people could write a book
you could write a book and
the reality is is that
there's plenty of people
who have done what you want
to do write a book give a
speech open a business you
know travel the world
whatever right so some of
it is um looking at it and saying
(26:26):
a million people have done this.
I could do this.
Now, if it's placed, you know,
if it's played point guard in the NBA,
well,
not that many people have done that.
And you need to kind of be, you know, six,
two and above,
and you need to be all
those kinds of things.
So I think for the vast majority of people,
what we need to remind
ourselves is so many people,
(26:47):
so many other people have done this.
Some of them smarter than me,
some of them dumber than me.
Some of them older than me,
some of them younger than me,
but if they could do it,
why couldn't I do it?
And so just really, you know, again,
sober reality.
This is something that a lot of people do.
There's no reason I couldn't do it too.
Absolutely.
I think about that a lot.
And if someone else has made
(27:07):
a billion dollars,
it's not impossible for you, right?
It just may take a strategy
or a tactic or a mindset
shift or some kind of resource.
But if somebody else did it,
you could do it.
And I love that your mother
instilled that confidence in you.
That's so important.
I'm just like,
if Kim Kardashian can make a
billion dollars,
somebody else could make a
(27:28):
billion dollars.
Yeah.
Right, I hope so.
If Hailey Bieber can make a
billion dollars in six years or whatever,
how long ago she started her thing.
Now granted they had head
starts and they were famous
and all those kinds of
things and big followings.
But no,
I think most of the time you're right.
We downplay what we could
actually go and do.
And a lot of that is built
(27:49):
in insecurities or maybe
you were raised in a
household where somebody
told you you're trash or
we're blue collar people.
We don't go to college.
We don't make money.
We don't do those kinds of things.
You're a Jones.
We don't do those kinds of things.
You have to choose your own
life and you have to just go for it.
It's just as easy to think
big as it is to think small.
And and I think a lot of
(28:10):
people just think small
because they think that it's easier.
But the reality is I've
known this my whole life.
When I was fourteen years old,
my mom was working at Group
Health Hospital and she had
a guy that worked with her.
His job was filing medical records.
I mean, can you imagine?
I couldn't last probably a
day filing medical records, the most rote,
(28:31):
boring job on earth.
Well,
one day I was up at the hospital and
he came out and he said, hey,
I just bought the license
to this business for Washington, Oregon,
Idaho, you know, and I'm like, OK, cool.
And what is it?
He said, it's self-watering flower pots.
I said okay how does that
work he goes well there's a
it was made out of like
tupperware it's like a bowl
(28:53):
where you put the water in
and then you have another
bowl that sits down in it
and that's where the potted
plant is with the dirt and
there was like a little
nipple that went down from
the top one into the bottom
one and he had a little
thing on the side that told
it how much water to draw
up and uh he said do you
want to sell some and make
some money I said yeah that'd be great
and he goes okay deal so
what are you going to pay
me so I'll pay you a dollar
(29:13):
a pot and I said perfect
and so he thought I was
going to go door to door to
grandma's and sell
grandma's you know one or
two pots well the very
first call that I made at
fourteen was to the buyer
at pay and pack and pay and
pack was a big regional um
home store this was long
before you know home home
depot and lowe's and all
(29:34):
those everything was pretty much regional
So I called him up, called the buyer.
He had no idea I was fourteen.
And I said,
I've got a self-watering flower pot.
I want to come and show you.
Bam.
Come on in.
My mom bought me a blue blazer.
First blazer I ever owned.
She bought me a blue blazer
to make my first sales call
at the age of fourteen.
I walked in.
The guy went, oh, wow,
you're younger than I
thought you would be.
And I said, sure.
(29:55):
And so he said, well,
show me how this works.
I said, you got a water fountain.
He goes right over here.
We went over water fountain,
filled the first bowl up with some water,
took the second one,
didn't have a plant or anything in it.
Cause I wanted him to see it,
put it in there.
I had the level set on the lowest level,
little bit of water came in.
I said, now watch this.
And I moved it to the halfway mark.
More water came in,
moved it over to the left,
to the far right.
(30:16):
You know,
a bunch of water came in and he said,
I'll buy it.
And I said, really?
Okay.
How many do you want?
And he said, well,
I want to do a test run.
I want to do a test run in
twenty stores for a year
and I want to buy four boxes a month.
Now you can do the math, right?
And each box had twenty four in it.
So let's call it twenty five.
It'll make it easier to do the math.
(30:36):
Twenty five times four is
one hundred boxes per store
times twenty is two
thousand pots for a year.
He ordered twenty four
thousand pots from me.
So I got the purchase order.
I took it back to this guy.
And here's where the story
gets really crazy.
I said, I sold some pots for you.
He goes, really, how many did you sell?
And I said,
(30:57):
twenty three thousand seven
hundred eighty two or
whatever the number worked out to.
And he goes, what?
I go, yeah,
purchase order from Pay and Pack.
Now here's the crazy thing.
So there's one grid lesson.
It's just as easy to think
big as it is to think small.
There's another lesson.
He was so terrified.
He called the company up and
got his money back from
(31:17):
being the licensee.
blew him away he was so
afraid of success he'd been
working he'd been working
that that uh filing for so
long that he because if I
was making a dollar a pot
who knows what he was
making three dollars a pot
you know here's a seventy
thousand dollar you know
contract uh or you know
(31:38):
whatever you know something
like that that was ten x on
his on his uh investment
and he he couldn't do it he
gave it up now
I wish my mother wouldn't
have been so poor when I
was growing up because she
should have roused up seven
thousand bucks,
which is what he paid for
the the licensing.
She should have bought it
and we should have gone and
sold the twenty two
thousand pots ourselves.
But no,
(32:00):
it's just as easy to think big as
it is to think small,
as long as you can handle
what happens when you think big.
And this guy couldn't handle it.
Wow.
That is such a powerful
analogy because how often
do we just get in our own way too, Chris?
Absolutely.
I see this all the time
because I work with entrepreneurs.
I work with speakers.
I work with authors and thought leaders.
(32:20):
And they can't see themselves.
They can't see themselves doing the thing,
whatever that is.
Yep.
And as soon as they get to
that cusp right before
their breakthrough –
they sabotage themselves.
I've seen it time and time and time again.
People that play too small
with charging even for a service,
(32:43):
they usually typically,
when I work with somebody,
have them charge two to
four X or more than when they started.
But people are afraid.
And they don't believe in themselves.
You know,
I try to just believe that I
belong where I'm invited to.
You know,
I've done some of the biggest
stages in the world,
twenty five thousand people
(33:03):
at a time all over the globe.
And there's a lot of people
that and they'd be afraid, you know,
and there's really no
difference between twenty
five thousand people and
twenty five people,
except the amount of people in the room.
And if you're that bad,
the twenty five people are
going to think you're bad,
just like the twenty five
thousand people think you're bad.
Right.
But if the twenty five
people are going to think you're great,
(33:23):
then the twenty five
thousand people will think
that you're great as well.
You know,
one time I was it was it was
seventeen thousand people.
I remember this very explicitly.
It was at Rupp Arena at the
University of Kentucky.
Now, as a basketball fan growing up.
So when I walked into Rupp Arena,
people were like, were you nervous?
And I said, yeah,
but for the wrong reason or
for for the different
reason than you're thinking,
it wasn't the seventeen thousand people.
(33:45):
It was all those national
championship banners across the top.
I was like,
I was such a huge University of
Kentucky fan.
But right before the speech,
I was just off the stage.
And, you know,
when you're doing those big events,
they have like the
headphones and clipboards
and everything's down to the minute.
So I'm literally the CEO is
literally giving my introduction.
And there's this lady standing next to me.
(34:05):
She goes, are you ready?
And I go, I don't know.
I don't know if I can do this.
That's a lot of people out there.
I just don't think I can do this.
And she went, are you kidding me?
And I go, oh yeah, I'll be fine.
And then at that point he goes, welcome,
Chris Weidner.
And I walked out stage and did it.
But I think because, you know,
it's a combination.
I have confidence that I'm speaking again.
If I was going out there to sing,
(34:27):
I wouldn't have gone out there.
Right.
But I know what I'm good at.
And then the second thing is,
is I belong out there.
I belong on that field.
And there's other people
that are better than me out there.
But there's other people who
aren't as good at me who are out there.
And so I belong there.
I belong.
I belong.
I think that's something we
could all tell ourselves.
(34:47):
It's the simplest thing
right now is to tell
ourselves wherever we are, we belong,
whether it's a really big stage,
whether it's a book signing tour,
a Ted stage, big interview,
investor pitch, shark tank,
whatever that I belong.
Or a small business owner.
(35:08):
Let's say you own a really
great restaurant.
It's packed all week.
It's really great.
And somebody says, you know,
you should start a second
location or you should
start a thousand locations.
And because there's all
sorts of restaurant chains
that have a thousand locations.
Somebody did it.
I mean,
I don't know if you ever saw the movie,
The Founder about the Ray
(35:29):
Kroc story and McDonald's.
McDonald's was already there.
It was two brothers,
the McDonald's brothers.
the McDonald brothers.
And it took Ray Kroc to say, well,
if one stand is great,
why don't we just figure
out how to automate this
and let's have twenty five
thousand or however many
they have all around the world.
And so but a lot of people say, oh,
(35:50):
I couldn't do that.
I couldn't have more than one restaurant.
That would be too much work.
You know,
what would I do if I had five
hundred restaurants?
Well,
you'd be sitting on a beach a lot and
on your yacht a lot if you
had five hundred restaurants.
That's one thing you do.
But oh, well,
he's such a great businessman
and he's such a great chef and he's no,
you are to go make it happen.
Yes, I think there's a.
(36:12):
Big disconnect there too
with mindset that we think
that if we make more money,
we will work more.
And I don't believe that's true.
And here's why I know that's true.
The hardest I've ever worked
as an entrepreneur was the
year I made less than
thirty thousand dollars, Chris.
Yeah.
Let me tell you how hard I
worked that year.
Oh, my gosh.
(36:32):
I couldn't stop working.
Yeah.
And I've never worked so hard in my life.
And the easiest I've ever
had it as an entrepreneur.
was when I figured out how
to automate it to thirty
thousand dollars a month or more.
And then once you figure out
that's actually easy.
And not only is it easy,
it's not even a lot of money.
(36:54):
Well, and think about the restaurateur.
I have a hard time managing
one restaurant.
How am I going to manage ten restaurants?
Well,
you're not going to manage ten
restaurants.
You're going to hire a
manager to manage the ten
restaurants and you're
going to manage that guy.
It'll be easier to manage
one manager than it is the
forty two employees at your
one restaurant.
People have a total
misunderstanding about how that works.
(37:15):
And yeah,
they're going to be a little bit
further removed from the
day-to-day grind.
But you have to get out of your own.
And you have to believe in
yourself and you have to
surround yourself with
people who believe in you.
I think that's a big thing, man.
Surround yourself with
people who believe in you.
And when you get the right
(37:37):
people who believe in you,
early on in my career,
I was mentored by the CEO
of Mars Candies.
And I met him when his kids
were in my youth group when
I was a youth minister.
And when I started my first
church at twenty five,
I got a check in the mail from him.
And I had not asked him for
any money or anything like that.
I just, you know, when I left,
I said goodbye to everybody.
I didn't ask.
I was in a very wealthy
(37:58):
church in northern New Jersey,
and I did not ask a single
person to support me.
I just left and went on my own.
I figured God would put it
on the hearts of people
that wanted to support me.
So I get a check from this guy,
and I wrote him a nice note.
Thank you very much.
Appreciate that.
Next month, I got another check.
And I called him up and I said, hey, wow.
And it was for the same amount.
And I said, wow, I really appreciate that.
(38:19):
That's really fantastic.
I really appreciate you.
And I was twenty five.
So it was thirty four years ago.
I still remember where I was sitting.
I still remember the conversation.
And he said, Chris, I believe in you.
And I remember thinking if
the CEO of a thirty billion
dollar a year company who
(38:39):
has seen it all.
looks at a twenty five year
old guy and says, I believe in you.
Why couldn't I believe in me?
And if we surround ourselves with people,
your spouse should be your
biggest supporter.
You know, your friends should be people.
They should be the people that say, yeah,
you should quit your job
and go start a company.
(39:00):
They shouldn't be the people going, whoa,
I don't know, pal.
I mean,
how are you going to pay your bills?
And you don't have the skill set.
You're not that kind of guy.
You know,
those are the kinds of things
that you don't want to surround yourself.
You want to surround
yourself with people who believe in you.
That's what we all need at
the end of the day is
sometimes just somebody to say,
I believe in you.
So take that chance on somebody, guys,
(39:23):
because there's a point in
all of our lives when we
just need somebody to believe in us.
I love that.
Chris, where can everybody find you?
What are the best places to
find you online and connect with you?
Sure.
Well,
chrisweidnercoaching.com is a great one.
They can schedule a free
thirty minute consultation
with me if they like.
chrisweidner.com.
(39:43):
They want to hire me for speaking,
speaking engagements,
those kinds of things.
That's great, too.
I am now been on TikTok for three weeks.
So if anybody wants to jump
on TikTok and follow me,
that would be great.
Um, mostly though I'm on LinkedIn.
I think LinkedIn is the most
underutilized social media site.
And, uh,
so if you want to send me a
connection request, I, I accept everybody,
(40:06):
um, um, on my, my LinkedIn.
I love to have a big network
and you never know when
it's going to come in handy.
So LinkedIn, you can look for me as well,
but, uh,
would love to connect with
anybody who feels like it
would be important to connect.
I love that.
Real quick, as we wrap up,
I nearly forgot to share
this really amazing story.
And I said to you before we
hopped on that I've been
(40:26):
dropping your name, right,
to people and sharing this
one piece of advice.
And there's something that
we you told me on our last conversation.
I don't even know if you remember it,
but it really stuck with me.
You were giving me a little bit of advice.
I don't know if you knew you were or not,
but I was asking you, I said, you know,
(40:47):
I really love how open you
are about your faith,
sharing your faith on LinkedIn,
sharing it on your
different platforms and
just being open and honest.
And I said,
I really feel like God is
calling me to do that more,
to lean in more with my faith,
to talk about it more and
to even incorporate it in coaching.
(41:07):
And you said something that
really stuck out.
You said if somebody came to
your house and you gave
them chili and then you gave them,
they said, oh, I love this chili.
This is the best chili.
And you gave them the recipe,
but didn't put the main ingredient,
the one ingredient that
makes it your chili.
(41:29):
Brown sugar.
And you didn't give them
that main ingredient.
They would go home.
They would try it.
They would think it doesn't work.
So after that,
I started talking a lot more
openly about my faith,
started bringing it into my coaching,
and it has been so transformative.
(41:50):
So I wanted to thank you.
That's awesome.
Yeah,
you helped me put the spice back in
the chili, man.
Yeah, because if people want to know, Tara,
why does life work for you?
Why does business work for you?
And you only give them nine
out of the ten things.
But the really important
thing to you is the tenth thing.
But you pull it out.
They're not going to
experience what you're experiencing.
(42:11):
You know, I had an aunt, my aunt Norma,
and I can't remember what
the food was that she made.
but we all loved it.
The whole extended family,
we always kind of did all
the big family gatherings at their house.
They had a big house and
everything in Gig Harbor, Washington.
And my mother would ask for
the recipe and my other
aunts would ask for the
recipe and the grandkids would,
(42:33):
like everybody asked for the recipe.
It never tasted like my Aunt
Norma's recipe.
Well, when my Aunt Norma died,
one of her daughters finally
gave us all the real recipe.
And my mother's like,
I can't believe that.
That's what I've been
missing the whole time.
And then made it and it
tasted just like my Aunt Norma's recipe.
(42:54):
That's hilarious.
So brown sugar is your secret.
Brown sugar is the secret.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
Well, Chris,
thank you so much for being an
amazing guest,
sharing all of your wisdom
and being on the show.
And thank you so much for
everyone who tuned into
this episode of Grasp Confidence Podcast.
Guys.
Don't forget to like, follow, subscribe,
(43:15):
share this episode with
your audiences and leave a review.
Each review helps more
people who are just looking
at podcasts see the value in tuning in.
So each one is read by me
and I love them all.
Chris,
thank you so much for being a guest
on the show.
We will see you guys on the next episode.
Take care.
Thanks for having me.
who has a new book to help
guide you with these steps
to grasp your confidence
and own your power.
I love that.
Look around the room.
You'll see that you're not
so alone after all and that
unconfidence could look like any of us.
Leighton,
maybe your whole life you have
(00:22):
been told that the best wins,
but I'm telling you right
now that the best known will win.
Today's guest is a global
force in personal development,
(00:43):
Chris Widener.
A member of the Motivational
Speaker Hall of Fame and
one of the top fifty
speakers in the world,
Chris has electrified
audiences in over forty six
states and across the globe.
From a turbulent childhood
to best-selling author of
twenty-three books
translated into fourteen languages,
(01:05):
Chris's story is one of grit, growth,
and God-given purpose.
His collaborations and with some of the,
I should say,
most brilliant minds of our era,
like Zig Zagler and Jim Rohn,
have cemented his legacy
and trusted voice in
leadership and influence.
So if you want to grow in confidence,
(01:25):
communicate with impact and
lead with integrity,
Chris brings the tools,
the truth and the timeless
principles to help you do it.
Get ready,
because this conversation will
shift your spirit and
ultimately stir it and
sharpen your leadership.
Let's welcome Chris to the show.
Hey, Tara, how are you?
Hey, good.
It's so good to see you again, Chris.
(01:47):
How are you doing?
Thanks for having me on.
I'm doing great.
Well,
it's not every day I get to interview
somebody of your caliber.
You've got amazing number of
bestselling books,
twenty three translated
into fourteen languages,
Hall of Fame speaker, leadership expert.
And what I love most about
you is your willingness to
(02:09):
share your faith openly,
which is one of the reasons
I think we connected in the first place.
Yeah.
I love that.
Yeah, you know, it's me, right?
And, you know,
we have a wide variety of
people who live in the world.
And it seems like everybody
feels like they can share
who they are and what they want to do,
except it feels like in the last fifteen,
(02:31):
twenty years,
Christians have been sort of
shoved to the corner and said,
shut up and don't talk.
And, you know, I don't try to be, you know,
I don't bully anybody.
I'm not, you know,
angry or bitter or anything,
but it's part of who I am.
And so, you know,
I talk about my faith and
how it affects my life and
my business and my
relationships and people
can take it or leave it, you know.
(02:53):
And I found as long as you're winsome,
here's a quote that I kind
of made up here a few years
ago and people like it.
I always say that if you're winsome,
you will win some.
And I just feel like if we're winsome,
if we're happy, if we're kind,
if we're open to other ideas,
then you can share your
thoughts as long as they
know that they don't have to take them.
(03:15):
And as long as they can
share their thoughts and
it's open dialogue.
And so I have friends that
are atheist and Buddhist
and Christian and Jewish and Muslim,
and we don't agree on everything,
but we can still be friendly.
That's what it's all about, right?
And I like to think of it as, you know,
we have four gospels.
(03:35):
So there's Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
But the fifth gospel is
actually the life of the believer, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
And it's just being ourselves, you know,
through our own inspired
action and then aligning
ourself with Christ-like principles,
right?
And you can be that fifth
gospel at any point in time.
(03:55):
And, you know,
it's really just about
loving other people and without judgment,
right?
Yeah.
Right?
Judgment is a really
fascinating conversation to
me because people say,
you shouldn't judge.
And I say, okay,
is pedophilia right or wrong?
(04:17):
wrong.
That's a judgment.
You passed a judgment.
We literally have an entire
group of people called
judges and they decide right and wrong,
this, that, and the other thing.
And so I think sometimes our
opinions when they differ
are called judgment.
And it's really just our opinion,
which is rooted in the word of God.
In fact,
there's a whole book called Judges
(04:38):
in the book of the Bible.
And so
It's interesting to me
because what's really
fascinating to me is,
I think it's second Corinthians,
first Corinthians,
where it talks about that
Christians should judge the church first.
We don't point out at the world and go,
you're doing it wrong,
you're doing it wrong.
We have to look at ourselves and say,
(04:59):
are we doing it right?
Are we living the kind of
life that we're supposed to live?
Because it goes back to that,
don't take the speck out of
your brother's eye when you
got a plank coming out of your own eye.
So I feel like we can have
our opinions rooted in the
word of God and we can
express those opinion,
but we do it in love.
(05:20):
The Bible talks about
speaking the truth in love.
And what I feel like is we either have,
most people tend to fall in
one camp or the other.
Oh, I just love you.
It doesn't matter what you're doing.
Oh,
you're ripping your business partner off.
That's okay.
It's like, God loved you.
He doesn't care how you live.
I just love you.
He loves you.
(05:41):
You're totally accepted.
That's the love side.
Then you have the truth side.
You're a dirty, rotten sinner.
You're bad.
You're this, you're that.
And, you know,
you're not living the way the Bible says.
And people say, well, I'm a truth teller.
And I'm like, well,
you're kind of just a jerk.
I mean, really, you hide behind this.
I'm a truth teller in order to be a jerk.
(06:03):
But what I feel like is,
is if you can take the love
side and you could take the
truth side and you could
speak to somebody,
like if somebody is a drug addict,
you can go to a drug addict and say, hey,
that's bad for you.
It's bad for your family.
You're going to die from this.
It's not the way God intended you to live.
God can help you get out of it.
I am passing judgment.
(06:24):
I'm saying that his
lifestyle is not a good one.
But I'm telling him the truth,
but I'm saying it in love.
I care about you.
I want to see you live your
whole life so you can see
your children grow up.
And so to me,
the way we get around the
sort of typical definition
of being judgy is by
(06:44):
speaking the truth in love,
making sure that person
knows that we're saying this out of love.
And then the last thing I'll
say is there's a Bible
passage that says wounds
from a friend can be trusted.
So wounds from an enemy can't be trusted.
Somebody didn't like you and
they start saying bad stuff
about you and just let it go.
But if your best friend or
your spouse says, hey,
(07:05):
I'm really concerned about
this and it hurts a little,
they wound you a little,
it can be trusted because
it comes from this place of love.
They're not telling you this
to make you feel bad or to
judge you or to make you hurt.
They're telling you this
because they love you.
And so the word judge always
(07:26):
kind of gets me to go off
in a soapbox because I
think it's something that
we don't really understand
that you can tell the truth
and it's not necessarily
being judgmental.
It's interesting that we're
having this conversation.
I was just talking to my
husband the other night,
and we were at a restaurant,
and I caught myself judging somebody,
(07:46):
right?
Because I'm human, so I'll be honest.
I was judging somebody.
But I've actually implemented this tactic.
I'd love to get your feedback on it.
that anytime I feel myself
doing this I say three
things I love about that
person I find three things
so I was instantly judging
them and then I said oh my
(08:08):
gosh he has such beautiful
eyes look at his beautiful
blue eyes I love eyes that
his eye color and then I
said you know what he also
has a really nice sounding
voice I bet he'd be a good
speaker and then I also
thought oh you know he's
really played I just saw
him open the door for that
old lady who was coming in
Yeah.
Now, all of a sudden,
(08:28):
I took back that judgment and said,
why was I now I realized I
was actually judging that person.
Yeah.
And I thought about this.
And you know what?
You could do this with
anything you because it's
really easy to in business
to forget our things that
we don't like doing and putting them off.
But how important are they?
Like, I don't enjoy accounting.
(08:50):
Chris, I'll tell you.
Right.
But I know I have to do it.
I got to do it.
I hire a bookkeeper.
Yeah, me too.
Right.
But I used to say, I hate doing this.
And then I would push it off because I was,
I was just judging it.
But now I've even learned
how to say things about tasks.
Right.
Oh,
but it will help me do this and this
and that.
So it's so important,
(09:11):
but especially with people
and going back to your point, it's,
it's through the lens of
love when you can start to
see other people and
As God sees them,
not as another human being sees them,
but see their heart and see
the attributes of them that, you know,
God might love.
Well, I think the other thing is,
(09:32):
I think that's a great way
when you're looking at that person.
The other thing we have to
do is we have to look in
the mirror at ourselves.
So I'll give you an example.
I met this guy.
very famous guy, young guy.
He's under thirty.
He's made millions of dollars.
He has a ton of influence,
one of the biggest guys on the Internet.
And I met him once and he
was really kind of a jerk.
(09:54):
And so I was talking to this
very famous older woman,
probably in her sixties,
who knows this guy as well.
And I was like, why?
why is he such a jerk and
all this kind of stuff?
And she's, oh yeah,
he's full of himself and this, that,
and the other thing.
And it's almost like God
tapped me on the shoulder
in the middle of the conversation.
I'm fifty nine now.
We had this conversation
(10:14):
when I was probably fifty six, fifty six.
And all of a sudden I said to this woman,
I said, but you know what?
I suppose if I'd have been
that young with that kind
of money and that kind of power,
I probably would have been worse.
Honestly,
I probably would have been worse.
I would have been more arrogant.
I would have been a bigger bully.
And so then it kind of
shifted my attitude towards
(10:35):
him more to like pray for
him that God's given him
this huge platform for a
lot of good in our country.
But
was just young and full of
himself and had you know he
had I mean he was very
successful by the time he
was probably and um and so
I just thought you know
what it's not that he's a
(10:56):
bad guy it's that maybe he
hasn't grown into his his
platform yet and he will as
he gets older and as he has
some failures like we all
do that humble you and
those kinds of things and
so I think yes trying to
find the positive about
them but also looking at
yourself and going I may
not be that much better than
I've made mistakes.
(11:16):
I've done wrong things.
I've got my attitude quirks
and my personality quirks
and those kinds of things.
And so that's one of the
things I try to do.
I love that.
So much to learn there.
And I don't really know how
we got started on this.
Cause that's not how, wasn't the intention,
right?
But it's interesting when
you pick up on a single
word and it means something to you,
(11:38):
you know,
how it can really change the
course of conversation,
but it can ultimately
change our view on life in
general and reality on our perception.
So I encourage everybody listening to this,
you know, that we,
We may look at others in judgment.
Find three things or so that
you love about that person.
(11:59):
And kind of like what you
said as a mirror as well,
when we look at ourselves in the mirror,
how are we judging ourselves?
And I find it too, Chris,
because our show is about
confidence here and personal development,
becoming the best version of yourself.
How often do we bully
ourselves and have these
(12:21):
Insta judgments on ourselves?
We look in the mirror.
We think of not even three
things we don't like.
We think of a hundred things
we don't like.
Say them out loud.
You know what?
Our body remembers it, doesn't it?
It does both positive and negative.
If my wife was on here,
she would tell you it's funny, you know,
regularly,
probably two or three times a week.
(12:42):
And I kind of do it for her
now more than anything,
because it makes her laugh.
I'll be, we'll both be in the bathroom,
you know,
getting ready for the day or something.
And I'm looking at the mirror and I go,
Chris Widener,
you are one handsome devil.
And she always laughs from the other side.
He's like, what is up with you?
And you know, I'm,
I'm a solid seven and a half, you know,
but I always, but I always tell,
I always look in the mirror.
I'm like, Chris Widener,
(13:02):
you are one handsome devil.
And so she always thinks that's funny.
But no, you know, the Bible says,
look at yourself with sober reality.
And so the idea of sober
reality is it's the
difference seen if you're drunk.
It's like I'm the best
looking guy in the world.
Right.
But then you're sober and it's like, OK,
you know,
I'm a solid seven and a half year.
Right.
It's it's a it's how you
(13:23):
would view things if you
were sober as opposed to drunk.
But I think the other cool
word is reality.
You know,
most of what we say about
ourselves isn't reality.
It's speculation.
Nobody else would look at
you and say the same thing.
And a very extreme case of
this would be women who are anorexic,
(13:44):
right?
I'm so fat.
No, you're thirty pounds underweight,
right?
That's not reality, right?
It's not a sense of sober reality.
And there's people that they
think they're better
athletes than they are.
They think they're better
business people than they are.
So I think in order to gain confidence,
And by the way,
I'd love to talk to you
about the root words of confidence.
(14:05):
The basis of developing
confidence is having a
sober reality of where you're starting,
right?
And so the thing I love
about the word confidence,
I was raised by a mom who loved words,
probably why I ended up being an author.
I saw my mother once do the
(14:25):
Sunday morning New York
Times crossword puzzle in
eleven minutes in pen.
And I asked her, what's your secret?
And she said, well, you know,
I know Latin and that helps
me with root words.
And I've been doing it for
sixty years anyway.
So they use the same clues sometimes.
But the interesting thing
about the word confidence
is con is a prefix which means with.
(14:47):
And the way I always
remember this is when I was
a latchkey kid growing up,
my mom sold real estate.
My dad passed when I was four.
I ate a lot of chili con carne.
And that is chili with meat.
So I always remember that
the prefix con means with.
The Latin word that you get
confidence from is fide,
which means faith.
(15:09):
So confidence means with faith.
So I always tell people,
If you asked me to come and speak,
like literally if somebody
called me up right now and said,
there's a hundred thousand
people across the street,
you gotta cut this podcast
early and go over and give
a thirty minute speech.
I'd be like, Tara, sorry, gotta go.
There's a hundred thousand
people waiting for me.
I'm on stage in thirty seconds.
And I wouldn't have a
(15:29):
problem because I have
faith in my ability to speak.
But if they said, hey,
we're about to start a
conference with a hundred
thousand people across the
street and they need you to
sing the national anthem, I'd be like, eh,
not so much.
Like,
I don't even know if I can remember
the words and you
definitely don't want to
hear them coming out of this voice.
So it's the difference.
I find that the best way to
(15:50):
develop your confidence is
to focus on your strengths
because we have a natural
self-confidence.
We have a faith.
in our ability to do a particular thing.
I had a guy come up to me once,
this was probably twenty-five years ago,
after a speech I gave in Seattle.
And you'll get why I know
it's twenty-five years ago
(16:10):
when I tell you the rest of the story.
I was actually still holding
the microphone for some reason,
and he comes up to me like
thirty seconds after the speech.
He goes,
how do you give a thirty-minute
speech with no notes?
And I said,
you could give a thirty-minute
speech without notes.
And he goes, oh, I could never do it.
I said, where do you work?
He said, Boeing.
I said, what do you do?
He said,
I'm actually developing the wing
(16:32):
for the seven, seven, seven.
So it was before the seven, seven,
seven was released.
He said, I develop wings for Boeing.
And right now I'm working on, you know,
the,
the science behind the wing on the seven,
seven, seven.
And I said,
if I handed you this microphone
and I gave you one minute
to sort of gather your thoughts,
could you give me a
(16:53):
And what it's like to work
at Boeing and blah, blah, blah.
And he goes, oh yeah, easy.
And I go, see, you could give.
Because I would have placed
him into his place of confidence.
Something that he has faith
that he knows about.
If you ask me to give a
thirty minute speech,
I'd have to prepare for an
hour just to learn
everything about wing design.
I could probably give it.
And I could probably fake it.
If I had enough notes and everything.
(17:15):
But confidence, I really believe,
comes from playing to your strengths.
and doing the things that,
because I believe that God
uniquely designed each and
every one of us with certain strengths,
certain gifts, certain talents,
and they're different from
one another so that we need one another.
So what we wanna do is we
(17:38):
play to our strengths,
We mentioned a bookkeeper.
I could probably do my books,
but I hate doing books and
I hate math and I'm a verbal guy, right?
So I hire to my weaknesses
and I do the things that
I'm good at and I'm gifted in.
Absolutely.
Oh my gosh.
So much to be said there.
In my first book,
(17:59):
How to Grasp Confidence and
Own Your Power, I talk a lot about this.
I liken us all to a body.
Yep.
So with each individual cell,
each individual cell in a
body has a purpose.
And if that individual cell
decided to go outside of
its purpose and try to
become another cell,
(18:20):
so if a heart cell tried to
become a lung cell,
it's not that it is a failure.
It's not that it lacks purpose.
It's that it's in the wrong
space and can't perform the
functions of that cell.
So through its whole life,
thinking it was a failure,
thinking it was stupid,
thinking it didn't have a purpose.
But when you put it in its alignment,
in its area of strength,
(18:42):
the whole body functions.
But the whole body is in
competition if these cells or if us,
if we as people are in our wrong space,
too.
Well, you know,
one of the things that I do,
and you may think it's weird,
I think some people think it's weird,
but it's this idea of, you know,
we live in a culture where
the whole goal is to get
(19:02):
famous and to go viral and
to be an influencer and all
this kind of stuff.
Sometimes when I'm driving
through like a mountainous
area or something,
and there's just thousands
of trees on the hillside,
I'll look at one tree
halfway up the mountain and
And I think to myself,
nobody is ever gonna stand
at that foot of that tree.
(19:23):
They're never gonna cut it
down and use it for
firewood or to build furniture.
That tree has been there for fifty years.
It's gonna be there for
another fifty years.
And so, hold on a minute.
I was getting a call here.
I look at it and I think, okay,
it's obscure.
It's an obscure tree.
(19:45):
but it serves an amazing purpose.
It helps us have oxygen in our world.
Nobody will ever know it.
Nobody will ever sit foot at it.
You know,
nobody will ever create a hammock
and connect it to another tree.
It's just doing its job
based on what it was created to do.
Now,
There are other Douglas fir
(20:05):
trees that might get cut
down and put up in
Rockefeller Center or at
the White House for
Christmas or something like that.
And I look at us as human beings that way,
right?
Some people, you know,
they're never going to become famous.
They're never going to be a global leader,
but they're making their difference.
For example,
I could probably name twenty
countries in Africa who I
(20:26):
could not tell you who the
president of that country was.
They are very significant in that country,
but there's very few people
that take on the Nelson
Mandela role or the Mother
Teresa role or something
like that who have global impact.
And then you have national impact,
(20:48):
regional impact, city impact.
And then you have the guy
who's an auto mechanic who
coaches his little kid's
little league team, right?
Major impact on on fifteen little kids,
but nobody's ever going to
really know his name.
So to me,
it's taking your confidence in
the state in which you live
(21:10):
and the job that God has given you to do.
In certain world, I'm pretty well known.
In other worlds,
I'm not well known at all.
And in fact,
I decided to run for the US
Senate once in twenty ten.
And my best friend had run for governor.
And so he knew the political world.
He's very long political guy.
(21:30):
And he goes, nobody knows who you are.
And I said, dude, I'm famous.
I'm in the motivational
speakers hall of fame.
And he said, okay,
go stand in front of the QFC.
QFC is a grocery store chain
up in Washington state.
Go stand in front of the QFC
for an hour and ask
everybody that comes and
goes if they know who you are.
(21:51):
And I immediately got it.
Okay.
Okay.
Right.
You know?
And so I think,
I think we can have
confidence and we shouldn't
belittle ourselves that we
aren't as big as we want to
be because the bigger,
the bigger the stage,
the less people are going to be there.
Absolutely.
I love that.
Well, that's so timely and powerful,
(22:11):
right?
And, you know,
most of our listeners are entrepreneurs.
They're people that, you know,
have goals that you've accomplished.
So I love how you're talking
about this and leaning into
your God-given calling, your purpose,
because ultimately that's
how we get successful.
We don't get successful by
(22:31):
trying to be like other people, right?
We get successful by leaning
into our strengths and what
our natural gifts are.
They're there for a reason.
Yeah,
and we also have to realize that you
might be very talented and
it still may not become
everything you want it to become.
I heard Mark Cuban about a
year ago getting
(22:52):
interviewed on a podcast
and somebody said, if you lost everything,
how long would it take you
to become a billionaire again?
He said, oh,
I could never become a billionaire again.
And they said, really?
And he said, oh,
I would become worth ten or
twenty or fifty million
dollars easy because I can do that.
But he said,
the thing you have to realize
is becoming a billionaire,
a lot of it is just pure luck.
(23:14):
Right time, right place.
I grew up in Seattle.
Bill Gates had just gone to
college when the computer
revolution started.
He dropped out of college.
He was in one of the most
technologically advanced
cities in the world at the time.
and he was right place, right time.
If Bill Gates would have
been born ten years earlier
or ten years later,
we would not ever have known his name.
(23:35):
You know, Mark Cuban,
I don't know if you know
how Mark Cuban got rich,
but he went to the University of Indiana.
He bought a bar near the
University of Indiana.
Then he moved to Dallas.
He was really into basketball.
And he was living in Dallas,
and he would call his
friend back in Indiana and say,
put the phone next to the radio.
And the guy would put the
phone next to the radio,
(23:57):
the Indiana Hoosiers play their games.
Well,
eventually he started looking at
computers and streaming and he said,
I wonder if my friend could
just stream it across a computer line.
So his friend started
streaming it that way.
So he didn't have to pay the
dollar a minute or whatever
we used to pay for long distance, right?
And what happened was he all
of a sudden he went, well,
(24:18):
if I'm a Hoosier fan,
I wonder if Alabama fans
living in Chicago would
like to hear the Alabama games.
And I wonder if the
you know the uconn fans
living in la would like to
hear the huskies games and
and that's what he did that
his first company was
called audionet changed it
to broadcast.com and sold
it to yahoo for a few
billion dollars right place
(24:38):
right time right idea wow
incredible I love that it's
so inspiring right because
you know I I think about this a lot
We have a dream, a vision.
Maybe it's I want to write a book.
Maybe it's I want to start a business.
And we let self-doubt
absolutely just take the wheel, take over,
(25:02):
right?
And we tell ourselves all of
the reasons something doesn't work.
But what I've found in my
interviews and just knowing
very ultra successful people as well is
is that if they have a self-doubt,
it really does not last that long.
They don't let it metastasize.
They don't let it take root.
They just keep going.
(25:23):
They just don't give up.
And they have this vision and they believe,
Chris.
And then going back to our
faith-based conversation in the beginning,
it really is a faith, like a deep faith.
And it's unmakeable, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the other thing we have to realize is,
you know,
the first time I ever remember
(25:44):
my mom doing this,
I was probably ten years old,
and we were in a bookstore.
And my mother went like this
very dramatically.
She waved her hand at the books,
the ten thousand books in this bookstore,
and she said,
if all these people could write a book,
you could write a book.
she would say that about
lots of different things
but I find it funny that I
(26:05):
ended up becoming an author
but she said if all these
people could write a book
you could write a book and
the reality is is that
there's plenty of people
who have done what you want
to do write a book give a
speech open a business you
know travel the world
whatever right so some of
it is um looking at it and saying
(26:26):
a million people have done this.
I could do this.
Now, if it's placed, you know,
if it's played point guard in the NBA,
well,
not that many people have done that.
And you need to kind of be, you know, six,
two and above,
and you need to be all
those kinds of things.
So I think for the vast majority of people,
what we need to remind
ourselves is so many people,
(26:47):
so many other people have done this.
Some of them smarter than me,
some of them dumber than me.
Some of them older than me,
some of them younger than me,
but if they could do it,
why couldn't I do it?
And so just really, you know, again,
sober reality.
This is something that a lot of people do.
There's no reason I couldn't do it too.
Absolutely.
I think about that a lot.
And if someone else has made
(27:07):
a billion dollars,
it's not impossible for you, right?
It just may take a strategy
or a tactic or a mindset
shift or some kind of resource.
But if somebody else did it,
you could do it.
And I love that your mother
instilled that confidence in you.
That's so important.
I'm just like,
if Kim Kardashian can make a
billion dollars,
somebody else could make a
(27:28):
billion dollars.
Yeah.
Right, I hope so.
If Hailey Bieber can make a
billion dollars in six years or whatever,
how long ago she started her thing.
Now granted they had head
starts and they were famous
and all those kinds of
things and big followings.
But no,
I think most of the time you're right.
We downplay what we could
actually go and do.
And a lot of that is built
(27:49):
in insecurities or maybe
you were raised in a
household where somebody
told you you're trash or
we're blue collar people.
We don't go to college.
We don't make money.
We don't do those kinds of things.
You're a Jones.
We don't do those kinds of things.
You have to choose your own
life and you have to just go for it.
It's just as easy to think
big as it is to think small.
And and I think a lot of
(28:10):
people just think small
because they think that it's easier.
But the reality is I've
known this my whole life.
When I was fourteen years old,
my mom was working at Group
Health Hospital and she had
a guy that worked with her.
His job was filing medical records.
I mean, can you imagine?
I couldn't last probably a
day filing medical records, the most rote,
(28:31):
boring job on earth.
Well,
one day I was up at the hospital and
he came out and he said, hey,
I just bought the license
to this business for Washington, Oregon,
Idaho, you know, and I'm like, OK, cool.
And what is it?
He said, it's self-watering flower pots.
I said okay how does that
work he goes well there's a
it was made out of like
tupperware it's like a bowl
(28:53):
where you put the water in
and then you have another
bowl that sits down in it
and that's where the potted
plant is with the dirt and
there was like a little
nipple that went down from
the top one into the bottom
one and he had a little
thing on the side that told
it how much water to draw
up and uh he said do you
want to sell some and make
some money I said yeah that'd be great
and he goes okay deal so
what are you going to pay
me so I'll pay you a dollar
(29:13):
a pot and I said perfect
and so he thought I was
going to go door to door to
grandma's and sell
grandma's you know one or
two pots well the very
first call that I made at
fourteen was to the buyer
at pay and pack and pay and
pack was a big regional um
home store this was long
before you know home home
depot and lowe's and all
(29:34):
those everything was pretty much regional
So I called him up, called the buyer.
He had no idea I was fourteen.
And I said,
I've got a self-watering flower pot.
I want to come and show you.
Bam.
Come on in.
My mom bought me a blue blazer.
First blazer I ever owned.
She bought me a blue blazer
to make my first sales call
at the age of fourteen.
I walked in.
The guy went, oh, wow,
you're younger than I
thought you would be.
And I said, sure.
(29:55):
And so he said, well,
show me how this works.
I said, you got a water fountain.
He goes right over here.
We went over water fountain,
filled the first bowl up with some water,
took the second one,
didn't have a plant or anything in it.
Cause I wanted him to see it,
put it in there.
I had the level set on the lowest level,
little bit of water came in.
I said, now watch this.
And I moved it to the halfway mark.
More water came in,
moved it over to the left,
to the far right.
(30:16):
You know,
a bunch of water came in and he said,
I'll buy it.
And I said, really?
Okay.
How many do you want?
And he said, well,
I want to do a test run.
I want to do a test run in
twenty stores for a year
and I want to buy four boxes a month.
Now you can do the math, right?
And each box had twenty four in it.
So let's call it twenty five.
It'll make it easier to do the math.
(30:36):
Twenty five times four is
one hundred boxes per store
times twenty is two
thousand pots for a year.
He ordered twenty four
thousand pots from me.
So I got the purchase order.
I took it back to this guy.
And here's where the story
gets really crazy.
I said, I sold some pots for you.
He goes, really, how many did you sell?
And I said,
(30:57):
twenty three thousand seven
hundred eighty two or
whatever the number worked out to.
And he goes, what?
I go, yeah,
purchase order from Pay and Pack.
Now here's the crazy thing.
So there's one grid lesson.
It's just as easy to think
big as it is to think small.
There's another lesson.
He was so terrified.
He called the company up and
got his money back from
(31:17):
being the licensee.
blew him away he was so
afraid of success he'd been
working he'd been working
that that uh filing for so
long that he because if I
was making a dollar a pot
who knows what he was
making three dollars a pot
you know here's a seventy
thousand dollar you know
contract uh or you know
(31:38):
whatever you know something
like that that was ten x on
his on his uh investment
and he he couldn't do it he
gave it up now
I wish my mother wouldn't
have been so poor when I
was growing up because she
should have roused up seven
thousand bucks,
which is what he paid for
the the licensing.
She should have bought it
and we should have gone and
sold the twenty two
thousand pots ourselves.
But no,
(32:00):
it's just as easy to think big as
it is to think small,
as long as you can handle
what happens when you think big.
And this guy couldn't handle it.
Wow.
That is such a powerful
analogy because how often
do we just get in our own way too, Chris?
Absolutely.
I see this all the time
because I work with entrepreneurs.
I work with speakers.
I work with authors and thought leaders.
(32:20):
And they can't see themselves.
They can't see themselves doing the thing,
whatever that is.
Yep.
And as soon as they get to
that cusp right before
their breakthrough –
they sabotage themselves.
I've seen it time and time and time again.
People that play too small
with charging even for a service,
(32:43):
they usually typically,
when I work with somebody,
have them charge two to
four X or more than when they started.
But people are afraid.
And they don't believe in themselves.
You know,
I try to just believe that I
belong where I'm invited to.
You know,
I've done some of the biggest
stages in the world,
twenty five thousand people
(33:03):
at a time all over the globe.
And there's a lot of people
that and they'd be afraid, you know,
and there's really no
difference between twenty
five thousand people and
twenty five people,
except the amount of people in the room.
And if you're that bad,
the twenty five people are
going to think you're bad,
just like the twenty five
thousand people think you're bad.
Right.
But if the twenty five
people are going to think you're great,
(33:23):
then the twenty five
thousand people will think
that you're great as well.
You know,
one time I was it was it was
seventeen thousand people.
I remember this very explicitly.
It was at Rupp Arena at the
University of Kentucky.
Now, as a basketball fan growing up.
So when I walked into Rupp Arena,
people were like, were you nervous?
And I said, yeah,
but for the wrong reason or
for for the different
reason than you're thinking,
it wasn't the seventeen thousand people.
(33:45):
It was all those national
championship banners across the top.
I was like,
I was such a huge University of
Kentucky fan.
But right before the speech,
I was just off the stage.
And, you know,
when you're doing those big events,
they have like the
headphones and clipboards
and everything's down to the minute.
So I'm literally the CEO is
literally giving my introduction.
And there's this lady standing next to me.
(34:05):
She goes, are you ready?
And I go, I don't know.
I don't know if I can do this.
That's a lot of people out there.
I just don't think I can do this.
And she went, are you kidding me?
And I go, oh yeah, I'll be fine.
And then at that point he goes, welcome,
Chris Weidner.
And I walked out stage and did it.
But I think because, you know,
it's a combination.
I have confidence that I'm speaking again.
If I was going out there to sing,
(34:27):
I wouldn't have gone out there.
Right.
But I know what I'm good at.
And then the second thing is,
is I belong out there.
I belong on that field.
And there's other people
that are better than me out there.
But there's other people who
aren't as good at me who are out there.
And so I belong there.
I belong.
I belong.
I think that's something we
could all tell ourselves.
(34:47):
It's the simplest thing
right now is to tell
ourselves wherever we are, we belong,
whether it's a really big stage,
whether it's a book signing tour,
a Ted stage, big interview,
investor pitch, shark tank,
whatever that I belong.
Or a small business owner.
(35:08):
Let's say you own a really
great restaurant.
It's packed all week.
It's really great.
And somebody says, you know,
you should start a second
location or you should
start a thousand locations.
And because there's all
sorts of restaurant chains
that have a thousand locations.
Somebody did it.
I mean,
I don't know if you ever saw the movie,
The Founder about the Ray
(35:29):
Kroc story and McDonald's.
McDonald's was already there.
It was two brothers,
the McDonald's brothers.
the McDonald brothers.
And it took Ray Kroc to say, well,
if one stand is great,
why don't we just figure
out how to automate this
and let's have twenty five
thousand or however many
they have all around the world.
And so but a lot of people say, oh,
(35:50):
I couldn't do that.
I couldn't have more than one restaurant.
That would be too much work.
You know,
what would I do if I had five
hundred restaurants?
Well,
you'd be sitting on a beach a lot and
on your yacht a lot if you
had five hundred restaurants.
That's one thing you do.
But oh, well,
he's such a great businessman
and he's such a great chef and he's no,
you are to go make it happen.
Yes, I think there's a.
(36:12):
Big disconnect there too
with mindset that we think
that if we make more money,
we will work more.
And I don't believe that's true.
And here's why I know that's true.
The hardest I've ever worked
as an entrepreneur was the
year I made less than
thirty thousand dollars, Chris.
Yeah.
Let me tell you how hard I
worked that year.
Oh, my gosh.
(36:32):
I couldn't stop working.
Yeah.
And I've never worked so hard in my life.
And the easiest I've ever
had it as an entrepreneur.
was when I figured out how
to automate it to thirty
thousand dollars a month or more.
And then once you figure out
that's actually easy.
And not only is it easy,
it's not even a lot of money.
(36:54):
Well, and think about the restaurateur.
I have a hard time managing
one restaurant.
How am I going to manage ten restaurants?
Well,
you're not going to manage ten
restaurants.
You're going to hire a
manager to manage the ten
restaurants and you're
going to manage that guy.
It'll be easier to manage
one manager than it is the
forty two employees at your
one restaurant.
People have a total
misunderstanding about how that works.
(37:15):
And yeah,
they're going to be a little bit
further removed from the
day-to-day grind.
But you have to get out of your own.
And you have to believe in
yourself and you have to
surround yourself with
people who believe in you.
I think that's a big thing, man.
Surround yourself with
people who believe in you.
And when you get the right
(37:37):
people who believe in you,
early on in my career,
I was mentored by the CEO
of Mars Candies.
And I met him when his kids
were in my youth group when
I was a youth minister.
And when I started my first
church at twenty five,
I got a check in the mail from him.
And I had not asked him for
any money or anything like that.
I just, you know, when I left,
I said goodbye to everybody.
I didn't ask.
I was in a very wealthy
(37:58):
church in northern New Jersey,
and I did not ask a single
person to support me.
I just left and went on my own.
I figured God would put it
on the hearts of people
that wanted to support me.
So I get a check from this guy,
and I wrote him a nice note.
Thank you very much.
Appreciate that.
Next month, I got another check.
And I called him up and I said, hey, wow.
And it was for the same amount.
And I said, wow, I really appreciate that.
(38:19):
That's really fantastic.
I really appreciate you.
And I was twenty five.
So it was thirty four years ago.
I still remember where I was sitting.
I still remember the conversation.
And he said, Chris, I believe in you.
And I remember thinking if
the CEO of a thirty billion
dollar a year company who
(38:39):
has seen it all.
looks at a twenty five year
old guy and says, I believe in you.
Why couldn't I believe in me?
And if we surround ourselves with people,
your spouse should be your
biggest supporter.
You know, your friends should be people.
They should be the people that say, yeah,
you should quit your job
and go start a company.
(39:00):
They shouldn't be the people going, whoa,
I don't know, pal.
I mean,
how are you going to pay your bills?
And you don't have the skill set.
You're not that kind of guy.
You know,
those are the kinds of things
that you don't want to surround yourself.
You want to surround
yourself with people who believe in you.
That's what we all need at
the end of the day is
sometimes just somebody to say,
I believe in you.
So take that chance on somebody, guys,
(39:23):
because there's a point in
all of our lives when we
just need somebody to believe in us.
I love that.
Chris, where can everybody find you?
What are the best places to
find you online and connect with you?
Sure.
Well,
chrisweidnercoaching.com is a great one.
They can schedule a free
thirty minute consultation
with me if they like.
chrisweidner.com.
(39:43):
They want to hire me for speaking,
speaking engagements,
those kinds of things.
That's great, too.
I am now been on TikTok for three weeks.
So if anybody wants to jump
on TikTok and follow me,
that would be great.
Um, mostly though I'm on LinkedIn.
I think LinkedIn is the most
underutilized social media site.
And, uh,
so if you want to send me a
connection request, I, I accept everybody,
(40:06):
um, um, on my, my LinkedIn.
I love to have a big network
and you never know when
it's going to come in handy.
So LinkedIn, you can look for me as well,
but, uh,
would love to connect with
anybody who feels like it
would be important to connect.
I love that.
Real quick, as we wrap up,
I nearly forgot to share
this really amazing story.
And I said to you before we
hopped on that I've been
(40:26):
dropping your name, right,
to people and sharing this
one piece of advice.
And there's something that
we you told me on our last conversation.
I don't even know if you remember it,
but it really stuck with me.
You were giving me a little bit of advice.
I don't know if you knew you were or not,
but I was asking you, I said, you know,
(40:47):
I really love how open you
are about your faith,
sharing your faith on LinkedIn,
sharing it on your
different platforms and
just being open and honest.
And I said,
I really feel like God is
calling me to do that more,
to lean in more with my faith,
to talk about it more and
to even incorporate it in coaching.
(41:07):
And you said something that
really stuck out.
You said if somebody came to
your house and you gave
them chili and then you gave them,
they said, oh, I love this chili.
This is the best chili.
And you gave them the recipe,
but didn't put the main ingredient,
the one ingredient that
makes it your chili.
(41:29):
Brown sugar.
And you didn't give them
that main ingredient.
They would go home.
They would try it.
They would think it doesn't work.
So after that,
I started talking a lot more
openly about my faith,
started bringing it into my coaching,
and it has been so transformative.
(41:50):
So I wanted to thank you.
That's awesome.
Yeah,
you helped me put the spice back in
the chili, man.
Yeah, because if people want to know, Tara,
why does life work for you?
Why does business work for you?
And you only give them nine
out of the ten things.
But the really important
thing to you is the tenth thing.
But you pull it out.
They're not going to
experience what you're experiencing.
(42:11):
You know, I had an aunt, my aunt Norma,
and I can't remember what
the food was that she made.
but we all loved it.
The whole extended family,
we always kind of did all
the big family gatherings at their house.
They had a big house and
everything in Gig Harbor, Washington.
And my mother would ask for
the recipe and my other
aunts would ask for the
recipe and the grandkids would,
(42:33):
like everybody asked for the recipe.
It never tasted like my Aunt
Norma's recipe.
Well, when my Aunt Norma died,
one of her daughters finally
gave us all the real recipe.
And my mother's like,
I can't believe that.
That's what I've been
missing the whole time.
And then made it and it
tasted just like my Aunt Norma's recipe.
(42:54):
That's hilarious.
So brown sugar is your secret.
Brown sugar is the secret.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
Well, Chris,
thank you so much for being an
amazing guest,
sharing all of your wisdom
and being on the show.
And thank you so much for
everyone who tuned into
this episode of Grasp Confidence Podcast.
Guys.
Don't forget to like, follow, subscribe,
(43:15):
share this episode with
your audiences and leave a review.
Each review helps more
people who are just looking
at podcasts see the value in tuning in.
So each one is read by me
and I love them all.
Chris,
thank you so much for being a guest
on the show.
We will see you guys on the next episode.
Take care.
Thanks for having me.
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