The first weekend of August in Canada is a long weekend: three days during the height of summer. It’s a nice midway peak to the summer holiday and also serves as a permanent reminder of one of the most depressing moments in my life and how far I’ve come since. Exactly 15 years ago, I was a struggling comedy hypnotist, facing a precarious financial situation due to having gone through bankruptcy a...
I have two teenage kids in high school and they drive me crazy at times with how little effort they seem to put into their school work. This is a song as old as time. I do my best not to “tiger parent” them, and at the same time I know what they’re capable of. It drives me absolutely nuts. And then I look at the paralysis I can find myself in at times, where my pendulum can swing so far the other...
I got myself banned from entering the US way back in the year 2000 (working as a DJ without a visa). Last year, after 22 years, I decided to try and re-enter. I had been invited to a leadership conference, and thought it was as good a moment as any to try. A few different people stepped forward with offers of helping me by connecting me with lawyers, and I thought “Great! This is how it’s...
A little over a month ago Covid showed up in my home for the second time. The first time it showed up (from my oldest bringing it home from school), it wasn’t a big deal. This most recent time (my youngest bringing it home from school) was far more difficult. I was testing positive for almost 2 weeks, and dealing with flu symptoms which laid me out. My wife got it worse, with their symptoms...
I’ve been given a gift. A way of sending a message to a younger version of me. This is what I’ve decided to send to a version of me that was really struggling, around 6 years ago in 2017. Dear Chris, it’s Chris, from the future. Probably best if you don’t ask questions about how this is possible. Simply listen to me. I have this opportunity to tell you some things you’re going...
Except for very recent human history, almost all of humanity was spent in scarcity. Literal starvation, famine, war, struggle. I have Ukranian ancestry, my grandmother was born there in 1922. She grew up under Stalin’s Soviet Union, and a man-made famine where the food of Ukraine was stolen (this current war is like history repeating itself). My grandmother became an orphan at 6, and all of her...
A guest speaker at a function I was attending this past year reviewed my website and told me frankly, “You’d be an incredibly fascinating dinner guest.” His comment made me feel seen and reminded me of how far I’ve come. As recently as 2019, I was a guest at a friend of my wife’s house who was celebrating receiving tenure as a college professor. The house was filled with academics. I was as quiet...
I used a phrase in my last article, calling myself a “lifestyle entrepreneur”. I intentionally stated it, because I could feel the twinge of not wanting to. The most common definition of lifestyle entrepreneur is someone who creates the life they want first, and then a business to serve that. As opposed to most traditional businesses, where the business consumes everything (often at...
My road to “success” (however you want to define that) was never a straight line. There were times of tremendous struggle. It’s well documented in my DJ memoir that despite the surface successes, I never figured out the financial part during that time of my life. I slept on the floor of my office for 2 years (I realize now that qualified me as literally “homeless”), but even after things started...
TLDR; My wife just got their (Robin is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns) dream job as a full-time cancer researcher at a top university cancer lab by back-dooring their way in with no formal education. Full pay and benefits! Longer version: It was only a few years ago, less than that, when one night I woke up at 3am and Robin was up in bed and we started talking. During that talk Robin...
For years I wrestled with a simple question: What’s Next? It served me in the past, and I easily answered it. I did new things, took on new challenges, reinvented myself, found more and more success. I wrote about it here on my website and created tools around it to help others. The problem was, it wasn’t helping me anymore. I was stuck. From this stuck place I took some much needed time for...
As someone who has wrestled with imposter syndrome for many years, and reached a crisis with it, I’ve become very attuned to when I see others dealing with it. The reality is that it’s almost everyone. The biggest tell for me is when I hear people dismiss amazing things they’ve done from their past. Everyone has an incredible story, if they saw it that way. I’m a strong believer that everyone has...
What’s the question that fills you with fear to even think about asking? What about my story do you find fascinating and want to know more about? What would I do if I were you? What clarity can I bring to your mission and road ahead? What one tool or strategy would I recommend that will change your business? What’s the one thing you need to hear that everyone else is afraid to tell...
Wow, time flies. My very first blog post was January 7, 2018. I vividly remember it, because I vividly remember the state of crisis I was in during that time in my life. I was extremely unhappy, my imposter syndrome was at critical levels, and I was hiding from the world. I took the smallest single act of courage I could muster at that moment – I installed a WordPress on my website, which...
I’ve realized lately I had been clinging to a story that my best chapters are behind me. Some of the “Greatest Hits” playing in my head are: I’ll never have success again like I’ve had. I’ll never be on a big stage again conducting the energy of thousands of people. I’ll never make the money I’ve made so easily again. I’ll never create a business as successful again as the ones in my past. That...
It’s hard to fathom, but I’m marking the 5 year anniversary of a pivotal point in my life. In October 2017, I reached out to my business partner and co-founder, Geoff, and made a very difficult phone call. I had been avoiding him for years, for reasons unknown to me at the time. I didn’t know what to do about any of this, but I knew that continued avoidance was not the answer. I invited him to...
This past week I received this private message from someone new to me. Upon receiving it, I realized this was the first time ever I had received a compliment directly for my work on the company I co-founded over 12 years ago, that has been used by tens of millions of people. I had made it impossible before that. This made me profoundly sad for the person I was for an entire decade. Initially, I...
I just watched the second of 2 documentaries about the disaster that was Woodstock ’99 (Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage on HBO and Trainwreck on Netflix. I thought the Netflix one was the better of the 2). It’s given me a lot to think and reflect on. For me it is a strong cautionary tale of what can happen when you think what the world needs is yesterday’s solution from yesterday’s people...
Recently I received an email from an old fan. He and his wife were celebrating their 20th anniversary and listening to my DJ mixes had a lot of memories for them many years ago. He offered to pay me to make him a “cameo” type of personal video. Cameo is a website filled with celebrities that will record well-wishes for you for a fee. I’m not on Cameo, but I use Loom a lot to record videos, so I...
If I’m honest with myself, I can see that much of the fear that holds me back today is not my fear of failing at something, but what would happen if it was successful. These are some of the voices currently in my head: I don’t want to create a formal program or offering because people might sign up for it and I’d be committed to running it.The more attention I bring to myself, the more people...
Chris is an electrifying storyteller that shares stories that impact the audience. What changes for you as you listen to his story?
This week I attempted to enter the United States after being banned from entering 22 years ago (I wrote about it more in this previous post and even more exhaustively in my memoir). I didn’t succeed. They turned me back after detaining me for 3 hours. It was the scariest thing I’ve done in a long time, and it pretty much went how I worst feared it. It was a long shot that they’d let me in. I...
Robin and I are celebrating 25 years together this year (20 of those married). We often joke that we should write a relationship book, and I do think that will be a future book of mine. The early days of our relationship was documented in my memoir, and it was definitely a trial by fire. As young people with no support around them, we had to wrestle with Robin’s mental health crisis and...
Would you like to be part of something awesome? I’ve been struggling for a while, due to a lot of things outside my control, and I’ve felt directionless because of it. I could feel myself trying really hard to course correct, to find a new path. And then I remembered I already had the solution. I call it my Statement of Being. I haven’t read it in a while, and I can tell right away that has left...
This past week a book I was reading introduced a thought into my head that I’ve never grieved for the loss of a past life of mine. Specifically, my rave and DJ days. There’s no question that period of my life held a lot of trauma for me and took me some time to get over. That’s part of the reason it took me 14 years to complete my memoir. I always saw the completion of that book and being able to...