Beyond Material Success: Finding Purpose, Authenticity, and Empathy in Leadership with Chris Meroff

Chris Meroff: 00:00:00

We rarely see ourselves the way God sees us or other people.

Chris Meroff: 00:00:03

And control, lies, they all move me away from people.

Chris Meroff: 00:00:08

And when I was in that lonely place, man, thoughts in my head of depression

Chris Meroff: 00:00:13

and suicide and all these other things that they filled my head.

Chris Meroff: 00:00:18

This life isn't worth living.

Chris Meroff: 00:00:20

If I have no one I can go share.

Chris Meroff: 00:00:22

My deepest fears or hurts or hopes with, then why am I here?

Chris Meroff: 00:00:27

Like I had the things that the world told me I should have.

Chris Meroff: 00:00:30

I had wealth.

Chris Meroff: 00:00:31

I had a business that I had built.

Chris Meroff: 00:00:34

I had all these successes that the world calls successes and yet utterly alone,

Chris Meroff: 00:00:38

and isolated and it was the worst.

Chris Meroff: 00:00:41

And so I have to fight toward that.

Chris Meroff: 00:00:43

And that means I have to give up control.

Tim Winders: 00:00:56

Welcome back to seek, go create.

Tim Winders: 00:00:58

I've got a question for you.

Tim Winders: 00:01:00

Are you struggling with finding purpose in your work or building a business

Tim Winders: 00:01:03

that truly impacts your community?

Tim Winders: 00:01:06

If so, today's Seek Go Create episode is definitely for you.

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I'm excited to introduce a man who has been there, done that, and

Tim Winders: 00:01:13

he's written about it, literally.

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Meet Chris Meroff, a CEO, founder, serial entrepreneur, and a USA Today and

Tim Winders: 00:01:21

Wall Street Journal bestselling author.

Tim Winders: 00:01:23

With a career spanning over 25 years, Chris has his fingers in numerous

Tim Winders: 00:01:28

pies, from hospitality and farming to medical and community development.

Tim Winders: 00:01:34

What makes Chris stand out is his devotion to shattering the old paradigms

Tim Winders: 00:01:37

of leadership that often breed a culture of isolation and disengagement.

Tim Winders: 00:01:42

Through his venture, DCX Community, and his own podcast, The Table Network, Chris

Tim Winders: 00:01:47

fosters authentic community and deeper relationships for business leaders.

Tim Winders: 00:01:51

His upcoming book, The Empathy Revolution, we'll be talking about that,

Tim Winders: 00:01:55

dives deep into this very philosophy.

Tim Winders: 00:01:58

I love that his mission aligns so well with what we aim to

Tim Winders: 00:02:02

do here at Seek, Go, Create.

Tim Winders: 00:02:03

We're both out to redefine success and help others lead with purpose.

Tim Winders: 00:02:07

Chris, welcome to Seek, Go, Create.

Chris Meroff: 00:02:10

Thanks for having me.

Tim Winders: 00:02:11

I am glad to have you here too.

Tim Winders: 00:02:13

And you're coming to us from Austin.

Tim Winders: 00:02:15

You said you bounced

Chris Meroff: 00:02:16

Austin, Texas.

Chris Meroff: 00:02:18

Austin, Texas.

Chris Meroff: 00:02:19

That's right.

Chris Meroff: 00:02:19

Yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:02:20

Awesome.

Tim Winders: 00:02:20

it's great to have you here.

Tim Winders: 00:02:22

Let me fire away.

Tim Winders: 00:02:22

My first question, we just bumped into each other.

Tim Winders: 00:02:25

We meet somewhere.

Tim Winders: 00:02:26

I don't know where, and we just give our names or whatever.

Tim Winders: 00:02:29

And I say, Chris, what do you do?

Tim Winders: 00:02:31

What's your answer?

Tim Winders: 00:02:31

When somebody asked you that?

Chris Meroff: 00:02:33

All right.

Chris Meroff: 00:02:33

So first of all, it's probably my least favorite question, that I get.

Chris Meroff: 00:02:38

but it's the most often asked question, I get.

Chris Meroff: 00:02:41

and man, I've done like a mental gymnastics to try to figure out

Chris Meroff: 00:02:44

how to answer this question.

Chris Meroff: 00:02:46

in a way that's meaningful to who I am and really what God's called

Chris Meroff: 00:02:51

me, to do and more importantly be so answer your question.

Chris Meroff: 00:02:55

do a lot of different things, like you said, and, but my focus has been over

Chris Meroff: 00:02:59

the last two years to really love people.

Chris Meroff: 00:03:03

and so I know that's a weird answer, but, God has blessed

Chris Meroff: 00:03:07

me in so many ways financially.

Chris Meroff: 00:03:10

with family, church, and other aspects of life.

Chris Meroff: 00:03:13

And, I'm a recovering addict, as it relates to running business.

Chris Meroff: 00:03:18

And he keeps calling me away from that, and toward people.

Chris Meroff: 00:03:21

And so what I get to do now is write and speak, on this idea of community,

Chris Meroff: 00:03:26

this idea of authentic community, and understanding the truth of who

Chris Meroff: 00:03:30

we are, really diving into identity.

Chris Meroff: 00:03:32

which again goes back to the question, what do you do?

Chris Meroff: 00:03:35

A lot of us derive our identity from what we do.

Chris Meroff: 00:03:38

I know I did for most of my life and still struggle with it.

Chris Meroff: 00:03:42

so now what I do is I really try to rewrite that identity

Chris Meroff: 00:03:44

in the hearts and minds of the people that join our community.

Tim Winders: 00:03:49

The reason, and I like your answer at the beginning there, I agree.

Tim Winders: 00:03:53

It's a fairly superficial, repeated question that doesn't mean a lot.

Tim Winders: 00:04:01

And most people, and I think I did that for years too, would answer it with

Tim Winders: 00:04:05

a job title or, something like that.

Tim Winders: 00:04:08

So I appreciate that you don't like the question.

Tim Winders: 00:04:12

I really do, because I've probably asked that 200 plus times on this

Tim Winders: 00:04:18

podcast, and I'm getting to where I don't like it, but I like the responses

Tim Winders: 00:04:22

I get from people that think deeper.

Tim Winders: 00:04:24

because really, it's, the better question, I think, would be what's

Tim Winders: 00:04:28

your assignment or your purpose, but I don't know if I want to dive

Tim Winders: 00:04:32

into that deep end immediately

Chris Meroff: 00:04:34

Yeah.

Chris Meroff: 00:04:34

Don't bail them out.

Chris Meroff: 00:04:35

Yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:04:38

But let me do that in the second question.

Tim Winders: 00:04:39

So what is your assignment in God's kingdom?

Tim Winders: 00:04:41

No, you already said that you help people with, identity and things like that, but

Tim Winders: 00:04:45

I do, there, there's something that you mentioned that I will, we'll go ahead and

Tim Winders: 00:04:50

maybe dive in the deep end right here.

Tim Winders: 00:04:51

You mentioned that you had, I think you called it an addiction

Tim Winders: 00:04:54

and it was an addiction.

Tim Winders: 00:04:55

I think in your bio, it says something about a serial entrepreneur.

Tim Winders: 00:05:01

And with my background being very similar, I usually.

Tim Winders: 00:05:06

I think the same thing when I see that I go, okay, this is someone who is

Tim Winders: 00:05:11

just either searching or looking for something or they're addicted to more,

Tim Winders: 00:05:16

which sometimes that might be what it is.

Tim Winders: 00:05:18

Tell me more about that addiction and how you broke it because I think you're

Tim Winders: 00:05:21

not the only one that has had that.

Chris Meroff: 00:05:25

absolutely.

Chris Meroff: 00:05:25

So my addiction, if I were to really boil it down, to its base form is

Chris Meroff: 00:05:30

that I am addicted to tomorrow.

Chris Meroff: 00:05:33

and so my problem is, being solely focused on the future, that I really had a hard

Chris Meroff: 00:05:40

time understanding how to be present.

Chris Meroff: 00:05:42

And so that's really the root of my addiction.

Chris Meroff: 00:05:43

And that just played out in work because that's something I could, again, in

Chris Meroff: 00:05:47

air quotes, control, was a company that I would start a product that I

Chris Meroff: 00:05:52

could make a service I could offer.

Chris Meroff: 00:05:54

And it was always the next client, always the next conversation.

Chris Meroff: 00:05:57

and my employees were invisible in the process, unless they really.

Chris Meroff: 00:06:01

performed unless they did their job.

Chris Meroff: 00:06:05

and so that's really, I think the root of my addiction is

Chris Meroff: 00:06:08

again being addicted to tomorrow.

Tim Winders: 00:06:11

Interesting because I've always said with myself, I was addicted

Tim Winders: 00:06:15

to the future, but that's very similar to being addicted to tomorrow and had a

Tim Winders: 00:06:21

great conversation sometime back on the podcast with someone who had served time

Tim Winders: 00:06:26

in prison and they were very wealthy and they had, anyway, insider training,

Tim Winders: 00:06:30

some stuff like that, but during the conversation, we both came to the

Tim Winders: 00:06:34

realization that we were addicted to more.

Chris Meroff: 00:06:37

Yeah,

Tim Winders: 00:06:37

Which is related, it may be slightly different,

Chris Meroff: 00:06:41

Yeah, thankfully, the more for me was a bigger,

Chris Meroff: 00:06:45

grander vision of the future.

Chris Meroff: 00:06:48

And so it took shape in different ways.

Chris Meroff: 00:06:49

And thankfully, again, God doesn't, or I haven't, got the, call to, to

Chris Meroff: 00:06:54

get, bigger homes and more cars and those kinds of more, but a bigger,

Chris Meroff: 00:06:59

grander vision that I want to live in.

Chris Meroff: 00:07:01

And so having a real growth mindset, and having this idea.

Chris Meroff: 00:07:06

Of what could be, it really drove a lot of and it continues to drive.

Chris Meroff: 00:07:11

It's not like I've fully recovered here.

Chris Meroff: 00:07:13

I'm continuing to struggle with that because tomorrow is so much

Chris Meroff: 00:07:16

more appealing to me, than what I'm having to deal with today.

Chris Meroff: 00:07:21

and that, you asked, the second half of the question on the last

Chris Meroff: 00:07:24

question was, how did I get out of it?

Chris Meroff: 00:07:26

I'm so thankful, that I had, a real crisis of identity and that's how I

Chris Meroff: 00:07:32

was able to recognize my addiction.

Chris Meroff: 00:07:34

and I moved to Austin in 2011, grew up in New England, and, had been in my family's

Chris Meroff: 00:07:41

business for 15 years and went through a painful, separation or divorce from the

Chris Meroff: 00:07:46

family business, basically asked to leave.

Chris Meroff: 00:07:50

and at the end of the day, my future thinking and my parents,

Chris Meroff: 00:07:54

retirement thinking were not aligning.

Chris Meroff: 00:07:57

And basically, hey, Chris, here's some contracts that we have in Texas.

Chris Meroff: 00:08:00

We know you love that market.

Chris Meroff: 00:08:01

It's a big growth potential.

Chris Meroff: 00:08:04

Can you please?

Chris Meroff: 00:08:05

leave and go do that and leave and let us just retire.

Chris Meroff: 00:08:08

cause you're driving us nuts with all this, risk and growth.

Chris Meroff: 00:08:11

And moved here in 2011 to build a business.

Chris Meroff: 00:08:14

And, you got recruited three people that are close to me.

Chris Meroff: 00:08:18

and.

Chris Meroff: 00:08:18

said, Hey, we're gonna, we're gonna crush this thing.

Chris Meroff: 00:08:22

Four years in we had, I'd grown from three employees, that I felt like I hoodwinked

Chris Meroff: 00:08:27

to get here, to now 70 employees.

Chris Meroff: 00:08:30

And, we went and had our Christmas party.

Chris Meroff: 00:08:32

A company Christmas party and between the 70 employees and all their

Chris Meroff: 00:08:36

significant others, there's well over 100 people, at this Christmas party.

Chris Meroff: 00:08:39

And I remember saying to one of the guys who helped me start the

Chris Meroff: 00:08:42

business, four years earlier, I'm like, look at what we've done.

Chris Meroff: 00:08:45

In fact, I called him on the way home that night and was like, dude, look

Chris Meroff: 00:08:48

at what we've been able to pull off.

Chris Meroff: 00:08:50

this was a special night.

Chris Meroff: 00:08:53

The very next morning, that same guy, Jason, put in his two week.

Chris Meroff: 00:08:56

notice.

Chris Meroff: 00:08:57

And, I had recruited him out of the ministry, to help me start this company.

Chris Meroff: 00:09:02

And I knew at some point he'd go back into the ministry.

Chris Meroff: 00:09:04

he's just a pastor at heart.

Chris Meroff: 00:09:06

And so he was called, to be a pastor up in Colorado Springs and had been

Chris Meroff: 00:09:10

on that journey for nine months, but didn't tell me anything about it.

Chris Meroff: 00:09:13

and so I go where I normally go, which is, I only feel happy, sad, mad, and

Chris Meroff: 00:09:20

I try not to feel any of those things.

Chris Meroff: 00:09:22

And so what I do is I convert all of those three things right into anger.

Chris Meroff: 00:09:26

and anger is my comfort space.

Chris Meroff: 00:09:28

It's the, my, I call it my, my, my safety shelter.

Chris Meroff: 00:09:32

and if I'm angry and loud and, in control again.

Chris Meroff: 00:09:37

In control of the situation.

Chris Meroff: 00:09:39

It's when I turned to anger.

Chris Meroff: 00:09:41

and I just really struggled, with why he would betray me like that.

Chris Meroff: 00:09:45

And that's probably my deepest fear in life is that somebody would betray me.

Chris Meroff: 00:09:49

And so I convert every behavior that everybody does that I don't

Chris Meroff: 00:09:52

like into some kind of, betrayal.

Chris Meroff: 00:09:56

I had been on this journey with, a discipleship pastor

Chris Meroff: 00:09:59

from my church of empathy.

Chris Meroff: 00:10:00

I did not grow up in a home where empathy was modeled for me.

Chris Meroff: 00:10:04

And so empathy just really represented kind of weakness or, hey, if

Chris Meroff: 00:10:09

you're in leadership, you need to show up strong and confident and

Chris Meroff: 00:10:12

you need to be a problem solver.

Chris Meroff: 00:10:14

You need to be absolutely amazing in managing crisis.

Chris Meroff: 00:10:17

and so this idea of empathy, I would tolerate maybe those conversations

Chris Meroff: 00:10:22

at church, that's one thing, at work, absolutely not, with my

Chris Meroff: 00:10:26

kids, no way, and with my wife, no.

Chris Meroff: 00:10:30

there was this side of me that was, opposed to empathy.

Chris Meroff: 00:10:34

And so I remember, this discipleship pastor, for years leading up to this,

Chris Meroff: 00:10:38

he kept saying, mourn with those who mourn, rejoice with those who rejoice.

Chris Meroff: 00:10:42

And, I would say that I started to develop a muscle that I could, be

Chris Meroff: 00:10:46

empathetic so somebody could come to me and my first response wasn't

Chris Meroff: 00:10:50

my natural response, which was, Hey, here's how you fix it and don't have to

Chris Meroff: 00:10:53

feel the way that you feel currently.

Chris Meroff: 00:10:56

that never worked, of course, with my wife or anybody else.

Chris Meroff: 00:10:59

they just wanted to not feel alone.

Chris Meroff: 00:11:01

And all I wanted to do.

Chris Meroff: 00:11:03

Again, was run away from all emotion, and so I started to get a muscle.

Chris Meroff: 00:11:07

But, what I realized was that I am not going to ask for empathy at all, ever.

Chris Meroff: 00:11:13

that's not what I'm called to do.

Chris Meroff: 00:11:15

I'm called to be strong and confident for the people that I love and care about.

Chris Meroff: 00:11:19

And so right after Jason left.

Chris Meroff: 00:11:22

I met with the same discipleship pastor and he started the meeting

Chris Meroff: 00:11:24

like he did every meeting, which is Chris, how you feeling?

Chris Meroff: 00:11:27

And I reverted right back to fine, good and OK those are fantastic words.

Chris Meroff: 00:11:32

If you don't understand empathy or emotion, those are my favorite

Chris Meroff: 00:11:36

words to say, fine, good or okay.

Chris Meroff: 00:11:39

Well, he knew I wasn't fine, good or okay.

Chris Meroff: 00:11:42

Kept probing.

Chris Meroff: 00:11:42

And by the end of the conversation, he finally looked at me and he gives Chris,

Chris Meroff: 00:11:46

who on this planet would you share?

Chris Meroff: 00:11:48

Or do you have anybody that you would share your deepest fears or hurts with?

Chris Meroff: 00:11:53

And of course I lied and said, yes, I got my wife.

Chris Meroff: 00:11:55

I've got friends.

Chris Meroff: 00:11:56

I would share that with, and on the way home that day, I'm in the car and

Chris Meroff: 00:12:01

I again, and raging mad at Donnie, my discipleship pastor for asking

Chris Meroff: 00:12:05

me that question for probing and poking, mad at Jason for leaving.

Chris Meroff: 00:12:11

for betraying me.

Chris Meroff: 00:12:13

Mad at God.

Chris Meroff: 00:12:15

I've been a good boy.

Chris Meroff: 00:12:16

I've been trying to do things the way that you wanted me to do.

Chris Meroff: 00:12:20

Why are you doing this?

Chris Meroff: 00:12:22

And I just remember getting angry at traffic and angry at

Chris Meroff: 00:12:26

everybody as I'm driving home.

Chris Meroff: 00:12:27

And I realized that I was in a prison of my own making.

Chris Meroff: 00:12:32

That because I had not been vulnerable with one human being

Chris Meroff: 00:12:36

that nobody actually knew me.

Chris Meroff: 00:12:38

And I didn't know me.

Chris Meroff: 00:12:40

And for the first time as an adult at 42 years old, I wept and I'll be

Chris Meroff: 00:12:46

honest, it's been now eight years and it feels like I haven't stopped weeping

Chris Meroff: 00:12:50

for the pain that gets caused when you bottle up the gift of emotion, that

Chris Meroff: 00:12:56

he's given us, which is really a way that we can, as human beings connect.

Chris Meroff: 00:13:01

and so that was my crisis and it took me another 12 months to figure out.

Chris Meroff: 00:13:06

What this was going to look like, I'd say for nine of those months, God, and I

Chris Meroff: 00:13:10

agreed to disagree about the next steps.

Chris Meroff: 00:13:13

but that was, that's how this whole thing came to life for me.

Tim Winders: 00:13:17

I appreciate you sharing that because it gives me about 12

Tim Winders: 00:13:22

different places to go from here, which I love, by the way, but, because there's

Tim Winders: 00:13:27

some words that keep jumping out.

Tim Winders: 00:13:29

You mentioned at the beginning, some alignment that you had with

Tim Winders: 00:13:34

your family, which I think is a book you wrote shortly after that.

Tim Winders: 00:13:38

and then that led to Empathy, which is the book we're going to

Tim Winders: 00:13:41

discuss here, as we move forward.

Tim Winders: 00:13:44

So we have Alignment and Empathy, but there's a few things that I've really

Tim Winders: 00:13:47

got to address with this situation before, before we get to that.

Tim Winders: 00:13:54

we'll, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I want to talk about the book and things like

Tim Winders: 00:13:57

that, but this process is something that keeps coming up over and over.

Tim Winders: 00:14:03

And over again chris, especially with what we're doing here at seat

Tim Winders: 00:14:07

go create because we press in We don't we're not like hustle culture.

Tim Winders: 00:14:13

Everything's great success equals, whatever however you define success,

Tim Winders: 00:14:18

usually it's You know the I joke sometimes about the ballers on youtube with their

Tim Winders: 00:14:22

cars and houses and all that I live in it.

Tim Winders: 00:14:25

I live in an rv.

Tim Winders: 00:14:26

Okay, it's like Things are a little bit different here, so there's a few

Tim Winders: 00:14:31

things that I want to ask about that, that I think are important to this.

Tim Winders: 00:14:37

And the first one is the issue with the family and the family business.

Tim Winders: 00:14:43

A lot of people, even people with some spiritual foundation, They think that

Tim Winders: 00:14:48

there should be perfection and holding hands singing kumbaya within a family.

Tim Winders: 00:14:53

Obviously they've never read the Bible.

Tim Winders: 00:14:54

They don't understand, they don't understand family in the

Tim Winders: 00:14:58

Bible, but we won't go down that.

Tim Winders: 00:15:00

We'll just talk about air quotes here, family values.

Tim Winders: 00:15:04

Tell me about that because most of the time, and we've interviewed a lot of

Tim Winders: 00:15:08

people that have been in family business.

Tim Winders: 00:15:09

We interviewed people that have consulted family businesses.

Tim Winders: 00:15:13

I was in one up to 08 that was all real estate.

Tim Winders: 00:15:18

And we're patching a lot of things together with all that happened

Tim Winders: 00:15:22

after that, but tell me a little bit more about that, because I think

Tim Winders: 00:15:25

that was probably the beginning.

Tim Winders: 00:15:26

You thought things were going awesome.

Chris Meroff: 00:15:28

Yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:15:29

You were up in Maine, up there in beautiful country.

Tim Winders: 00:15:32

And then somewhere along the way, there was this conversation from mom

Tim Winders: 00:15:36

and dad who were supposed to love us.

Chris Meroff: 00:15:38

Yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:15:40

They said, Leave.

Chris Meroff: 00:15:42

Yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:15:43

Tell me more.

Chris Meroff: 00:15:45

So I, we started in 96.

Chris Meroff: 00:15:48

I was 22 years old, directionless, and not really aware of what career

Chris Meroff: 00:15:53

meant or what it would look like.

Chris Meroff: 00:15:55

They gave me a shot, to come in and help them build this business, from scratch.

Chris Meroff: 00:16:00

So my mom, in education, her whole life, principal.

Chris Meroff: 00:16:04

my dad in technology worked for Digital Equipment Corporation.

Chris Meroff: 00:16:07

and they wanted to start a business together.

Chris Meroff: 00:16:09

So we started a business in 96.

Chris Meroff: 00:16:11

and we built that business, over, the stretch of several years, got into

Chris Meroff: 00:16:16

multiple states, either, and with direct, to the consumer or in a consulting

Chris Meroff: 00:16:21

role, and it had taken me all over.

Chris Meroff: 00:16:24

the U.

Chris Meroff: 00:16:24

S.

Chris Meroff: 00:16:24

So I'd done this in about 17 states by this point.

Chris Meroff: 00:16:27

but in 2009, the state of Maine, which was our base of operations,

Chris Meroff: 00:16:32

they made a change to the regulations, that really harmed our business.

Chris Meroff: 00:16:37

And so my parents had stepped away and I was a CEO at that point.

Chris Meroff: 00:16:40

and, but when that crisis happened, they stepped right back in.

Chris Meroff: 00:16:45

And I had already been like, in a phase of CEO and for anybody who's gone from,

Chris Meroff: 00:16:51

a producer to a leader or a manager, you go through this phase of CEO where

Chris Meroff: 00:16:57

you're like sitting in your office going, I'm not sure what I'm supposed

Chris Meroff: 00:16:59

to be doing, this idea of leading, it was already a complex, elusive idea.

Chris Meroff: 00:17:06

then my parents come back in and it is chaos.

Chris Meroff: 00:17:08

There are three CEOs now.

Chris Meroff: 00:17:11

And there's this dance that was happening.

Chris Meroff: 00:17:14

and I love my parents.

Chris Meroff: 00:17:16

I claim parent privilege.

Chris Meroff: 00:17:17

there are realities about who they were, and their faith, and

Chris Meroff: 00:17:20

how they chose to raise me, that I am eternally grateful for.

Chris Meroff: 00:17:25

I'm so thankful that I was raised in a home where I was taught

Chris Meroff: 00:17:28

that I had intrinsic value.

Chris Meroff: 00:17:30

And it didn't matter what sports I played, what grades I got.

Chris Meroff: 00:17:34

all those other trappings of, identity, my parents did not prescribe to that.

Chris Meroff: 00:17:40

when I got to the workplace though, workplace, mom and dad are very

Chris Meroff: 00:17:45

different than mom and dad at home.

Chris Meroff: 00:17:47

And all of a sudden I get a contract, with a school district and I'm

Chris Meroff: 00:17:52

the greatest person on the planet.

Chris Meroff: 00:17:55

things go wrong in the business and all of a sudden my value is gone.

Chris Meroff: 00:17:59

And I'm like, what is happening?

Chris Meroff: 00:18:02

Like, how is this possible?

Chris Meroff: 00:18:04

But over time, I just figured it was my problem.

Chris Meroff: 00:18:07

I figured it was my fault and value as an employee was very elusive.

Chris Meroff: 00:18:11

This idea of fulfillment became about production.

Chris Meroff: 00:18:15

And it really taught me that I, if I want to find fulfillment

Chris Meroff: 00:18:19

at work, I've got to produce.

Chris Meroff: 00:18:20

fast forward to now.

Chris Meroff: 00:18:22

The state of Maine changes the regulations.

Chris Meroff: 00:18:23

They step back in.

Chris Meroff: 00:18:25

Basically, I'm being told I have no value in my mind.

Chris Meroff: 00:18:28

Again, a lie.

Chris Meroff: 00:18:29

But the reality of I've got no.

Chris Meroff: 00:18:32

So what do I do?

Chris Meroff: 00:18:33

I don't, prayerfully consider how I'm going to show up really well.

Chris Meroff: 00:18:36

No.

Chris Meroff: 00:18:37

What do I do?

Chris Meroff: 00:18:37

I fight for value.

Chris Meroff: 00:18:39

And the way that I fight for value is through conflict.

Chris Meroff: 00:18:43

Let me challenge everything you're saying so that we can hopefully find the best

Chris Meroff: 00:18:47

idea and then hit one out of the park.

Chris Meroff: 00:18:49

But that's not how the other four took it.

Chris Meroff: 00:18:52

So it was my mom and dad and then my two brothers.

Chris Meroff: 00:18:54

I'm the middle child.

Chris Meroff: 00:18:55

And so my older and my younger, who are, have no risk tolerance, they

Chris Meroff: 00:18:59

have no risk tolerance whatsoever.

Chris Meroff: 00:19:02

My parents getting towards retirement, freaking out about this regulation.

Chris Meroff: 00:19:06

And so every single board meeting is four on one.

Chris Meroff: 00:19:12

I'm sitting here thinking about where we're going to go, how we're going

Chris Meroff: 00:19:15

to get there and they're like, Nope.

Chris Meroff: 00:19:18

And that's really what led to a trip that I took to Arizona to help consult.

Chris Meroff: 00:19:22

And I get a call from my dad and he's like, Hey, when you get

Chris Meroff: 00:19:25

back, I'd like to go to breakfast.

Chris Meroff: 00:19:27

Now, at this point I am, let's see, I'm 36 years old and I have never

Chris Meroff: 00:19:31

gone to breakfast with my dad.

Chris Meroff: 00:19:33

And I'm like, what is happening?

Chris Meroff: 00:19:37

So it took, even though it was miserable, it took me by

Chris Meroff: 00:19:40

surprise that they had enough.

Chris Meroff: 00:19:43

And I went to breakfast and he's like, okay, Chris, here's the deal.

Chris Meroff: 00:19:47

I know you're loving Texas.

Chris Meroff: 00:19:48

You love that market.

Chris Meroff: 00:19:49

Why don't we sell you the two contracts that we have and let you just go, you can

Chris Meroff: 00:19:54

just go down there and do your own thing.

Chris Meroff: 00:19:56

And that way, like you're not worried about what we're doing here in

Chris Meroff: 00:20:00

New England, but you're freed up.

Chris Meroff: 00:20:01

And so I walked away going, this is awesome.

Chris Meroff: 00:20:04

I can't wait to do that.

Chris Meroff: 00:20:07

And then it dawned on me.

Chris Meroff: 00:20:09

They're just kicking.

Chris Meroff: 00:20:10

They just don't want me in the family business anymore because I am constantly

Chris Meroff: 00:20:14

bucking everything they're saying.

Chris Meroff: 00:20:17

So that's how that came about.

Tim Winders: 00:20:19

all right, a couple things related to that.

Tim Winders: 00:20:24

Family business is always interesting and fun and weird at the same time.

Tim Winders: 00:20:29

Sound like there was a foundation of faith within the family.

Tim Winders: 00:20:33

Is that correct?

Tim Winders: 00:20:34

y'all were followers of Christ and all that good.

Tim Winders: 00:20:36

Good.

Tim Winders: 00:20:36

Okay.

Tim Winders: 00:20:37

But you said that later you went through identity crisis, it sounds

Tim Winders: 00:20:42

to me, and I'm going to say a couple things and you just respond.

Tim Winders: 00:20:45

Sounds to me like one of the things you did when you went to Austin, you may

Tim Winders: 00:20:49

have said to yourself, I'll show them.

Tim Winders: 00:20:51

And so part of what was driving you was, I'll show them, dang it, they're going

Tim Winders: 00:20:57

to and they listened to me.

Tim Winders: 00:20:59

However, it seemed like you hit some walls or the Lord put some walls in front of

Tim Winders: 00:21:04

you or something happened and it started leading you down this path Because this is

Tim Winders: 00:21:08

what tell me if i'm right or wrong here.

Tim Winders: 00:21:10

There was the alignment Theme early on when you came, we need to

Tim Winders: 00:21:16

be aligned, which is code word at times for, I really do wish people

Tim Winders: 00:21:19

would do what I tell them to do.

Tim Winders: 00:21:22

You could argue with that in just a second, but now it's more empathy.

Tim Winders: 00:21:26

So I say all that, this is the question, but you could respond to whatever I

Tim Winders: 00:21:30

just said in whatever way you want.

Tim Winders: 00:21:32

What if you had the empathy you have now in 2009?

Tim Winders: 00:21:41

What would that look like?

Tim Winders: 00:21:42

So just respond to whatever you want to there.

Tim Winders: 00:21:44

I just was having fun with all that you just said.

Chris Meroff: 00:21:46

no, I love it.

Chris Meroff: 00:21:47

And the empathy part of it with my parents would have been to truly understand,

Chris Meroff: 00:21:53

understand their fears, understand, what conflict, how they feel about conflict.

Chris Meroff: 00:22:00

this is part of this idea that, it's my job, to make sure that

Chris Meroff: 00:22:04

the people who interact with me feel known, heard, and valued.

Chris Meroff: 00:22:08

And this idea of being known, and we dive deep into concepts, that,

Chris Meroff: 00:22:12

talk about personality and, whatever personality test you're comfortable with.

Chris Meroff: 00:22:16

the goal being, I'm going to leverage that to understand you better.

Chris Meroff: 00:22:20

And so that I don't just judge your behavior, but I understand

Chris Meroff: 00:22:23

what's driving the behavior.

Chris Meroff: 00:22:25

and it takes a lot of intentionality and humility that I wish I had applied

Chris Meroff: 00:22:30

back in, in 2009 so that I could have shown up in a way that would have

Chris Meroff: 00:22:34

made it easier for them to step into conflict or step into risk or step

Chris Meroff: 00:22:40

into trust, as opposed to just looking at their behavior and thinking, no.

Chris Meroff: 00:22:46

No, I don't deserve this.

Chris Meroff: 00:22:47

this isn't right.

Chris Meroff: 00:22:48

Or, why am I having to pay for, the fact that they're nervous, like

Chris Meroff: 00:22:53

all these different me statements, as opposed to empathy, which is

Chris Meroff: 00:22:56

about trying to be a humble learner about the person in front of me.

Chris Meroff: 00:23:01

And so when I moved to Austin, I was really focused on, okay, well, I'm

Chris Meroff: 00:23:06

not going to do that to my employees.

Chris Meroff: 00:23:08

no.

Chris Meroff: 00:23:09

Number one, they are going to regret, letting me go.

Tim Winders: 00:23:12

second.

Tim Winders: 00:23:12

let me ask one question related to that.

Tim Winders: 00:23:15

I'll just blurt it out and you could share it.

Tim Winders: 00:23:17

Did you think that they would continue succeeding after you left?

Tim Winders: 00:23:23

Or in your mind, did you have this thought of, they're not

Tim Winders: 00:23:27

going to make it without me?

Chris Meroff: 00:23:28

Exactly.

Chris Meroff: 00:23:29

No, they had no

Tim Winders: 00:23:31

That was me.

Tim Winders: 00:23:31

when we

Chris Meroff: 00:23:32

Oh,

Tim Winders: 00:23:32

stuff, I went, man, not only am I going to go show them, which

Tim Winders: 00:23:36

I didn't, by the way, it was, it got ugly in some ways for me personally.

Tim Winders: 00:23:40

and they just kept clicking right along and you know what

Tim Winders: 00:23:43

they did fine without me.

Chris Meroff: 00:23:46

Yeah.

Chris Meroff: 00:23:46

What?

Chris Meroff: 00:23:47

yeah, that was my thought is like, you guys are screwed without me.

Chris Meroff: 00:23:51

I'm the driver of this whole thing.

Chris Meroff: 00:23:53

You have the over importance.

Chris Meroff: 00:23:54

and that really, and I'll play up that concept here in a minute

Chris Meroff: 00:23:58

when I talk about, the empathy revolution, but the reality of coming

Chris Meroff: 00:24:02

to Austin was to prove two things.

Chris Meroff: 00:24:03

Number one, You should have stuck with, you should have stuck with me.

Chris Meroff: 00:24:07

Number two, I'm never going to run an organization by which people had

Chris Meroff: 00:24:10

to question what their value was.

Chris Meroff: 00:24:13

Like I'm going to show up in a way, that we give everyone a clear

Chris Meroff: 00:24:16

direction on where we're going.

Chris Meroff: 00:24:19

And those were the early days of alignment, in the first book that I wrote.

Chris Meroff: 00:24:23

However, it didn't really come to fruition.

Chris Meroff: 00:24:25

And there's a component of this, that I'll lead into.

Chris Meroff: 00:24:28

when I moved here, I was extremely client centric and I thought that's what really

Chris Meroff: 00:24:32

the hallmark of a great company would be.

Chris Meroff: 00:24:36

And when I had my moment of crisis.

Chris Meroff: 00:24:39

I realized, that I had created a lot of success.

Chris Meroff: 00:24:43

And so four years in, I go from losing $200,000 and having to scramble around

Chris Meroff: 00:24:49

to pay bills in my first year to now bringing in well over $6 million a year.

Chris Meroff: 00:24:55

70 employees from the world's perspective, even from my metrics, crushed it.

Chris Meroff: 00:25:00

this, my parents' company never made more than $4 million a year.

Chris Meroff: 00:25:04

Up in New England, even in all the states we were in.

Chris Meroff: 00:25:07

And so my metric was crushed it, proved it.

Chris Meroff: 00:25:12

And yet I found myself in that car at the loneliest, most desperate moment in life.

Chris Meroff: 00:25:17

And so this idea of success of where we are in relation to the world, it

Chris Meroff: 00:25:24

taught me a valuable lesson that I had to sell my soul to get to that point.

Chris Meroff: 00:25:30

and the soul being, the people that I ignored along the way.

Chris Meroff: 00:25:35

And so this idea of alignment really came to fruition, really, during

Chris Meroff: 00:25:39

those 9 to 12 months of wrestling.

Chris Meroff: 00:25:41

And it was like, okay, this isn't alignment for client's sake, this has

Chris Meroff: 00:25:47

got to be alignment for employee's sake.

Chris Meroff: 00:25:50

And so I shifted away from client centric and into employee centric.

Chris Meroff: 00:25:55

And that's where...

Chris Meroff: 00:25:57

The business took off.

Chris Meroff: 00:25:58

And we were doing in around, 7 million a year and by 2015, 2018,

Chris Meroff: 00:26:04

three years later, 21 million a year.

Chris Meroff: 00:26:07

Okay, so the alignment component and God was like, okay, here's the deal.

Chris Meroff: 00:26:12

You give me your soul in this process and I will take this to heights that you've

Chris Meroff: 00:26:17

never, you would have never, ever thought.

Chris Meroff: 00:26:20

And so he helped me engage with people through vulnerability, through alignment.

Chris Meroff: 00:26:26

In a way I'd never connected before and that's when he was able to say, okay,

Chris Meroff: 00:26:31

you do your part and I will do mine.

Chris Meroff: 00:26:33

And I had people showing up in ways they, they had never shown up before.

Chris Meroff: 00:26:38

And the trade off had to come down to this.

Chris Meroff: 00:26:42

Is Chris, are you willing to trade your power for their greatness?

Chris Meroff: 00:26:46

Are you willing to work toward unnecessary every single day?

Chris Meroff: 00:26:51

Or are you gonna keep proving that you have value to your parents?

Chris Meroff: 00:26:55

10, 12 years later.

Tim Winders: 00:26:58

I don't know why, but as you were talking, going back to the

Tim Winders: 00:27:03

early part of the story, I kept thinking about the story of Joseph, where he

Tim Winders: 00:27:07

goes to his dad and his brothers, and we know how the story turns out, but

Tim Winders: 00:27:11

he says, y'all will all bow to me.

Tim Winders: 00:27:13

And I'm not.

Tim Winders: 00:27:15

I'm not sure about the people skills of that or anything like that.

Tim Winders: 00:27:18

But we also know that he went through some very challenging times to get to

Tim Winders: 00:27:23

something later that was beneficial.

Tim Winders: 00:27:25

I think he probably learned empathy along the way, don't you think?

Tim Winders: 00:27:29

We don't have that in scripture, but I believe that he probably

Tim Winders: 00:27:31

did based on the way he responded later when he saw his brothers.

Tim Winders: 00:27:35

But is that a journey that we have to go on, Chris?

Tim Winders: 00:27:42

I've been on a similar journey, you've been on a similar journey, and I think

Tim Winders: 00:27:45

the answer is, we'll talk about this a little while, is get the book so you

Tim Winders: 00:27:48

don't have to go through this stuff, maybe, but is part of the process

Tim Winders: 00:27:53

going through that, refining, that redefining that we talk about here

Tim Winders: 00:27:59

is, I'll ask it this way, are you thankful that you went through all that?

Chris Meroff: 00:28:03

incredibly thankful.

Chris Meroff: 00:28:04

I would not trade any of those hardships or hurts.

Chris Meroff: 00:28:08

because where I am now is I get to like really investigate people, in

Chris Meroff: 00:28:13

a way that gives life deep meaning.

Chris Meroff: 00:28:15

emotions are again, something I ran from for most of my life.

Chris Meroff: 00:28:18

And now I crave them because it means I'm alive and in feeling and sharing those

Chris Meroff: 00:28:24

feelings, articulating those feelings in a way that's incredibly uncomfortable,

Chris Meroff: 00:28:29

it really reassures me that I'm loved.

Chris Meroff: 00:28:32

and when I share my weakness, when I tell somebody, hey, I have no idea what we're

Chris Meroff: 00:28:36

doing, or when I say, I need your help, and they respond really well, to support

Chris Meroff: 00:28:41

me, to care for me, to, empathize with me, it, it creates such, camaraderie.

Chris Meroff: 00:28:47

It creates such a community, authentic community.

Chris Meroff: 00:28:50

And in that, it empowers me to be who I'm called to be.

Tim Winders: 00:28:54

link that to faith?

Tim Winders: 00:28:59

Because listen, we could pluck scriptures and we could preach and teach on, we

Tim Winders: 00:29:04

can do it about on just about anything.

Tim Winders: 00:29:06

we could even pluck a scripture and justify, the hard charging, get the job

Tim Winders: 00:29:11

done like we were doing back, before, before we all went through crisis,

Tim Winders: 00:29:16

but tie this together with faith.

Tim Winders: 00:29:19

How does.

Tim Winders: 00:29:20

Empathy, the empathy revolution, how does it tie in with faith and why

Tim Winders: 00:29:25

is it so critical that we get this?

Chris Meroff: 00:29:29

absolutely.

Chris Meroff: 00:29:29

That is an awesome question because it really helps understand for me,

Chris Meroff: 00:29:35

how I'm going to have these kind of conversations going forward.

Chris Meroff: 00:29:39

So an example of that would be, this idea of empathy.

Chris Meroff: 00:29:43

so first of all, understanding that empathy requires vulnerability.

Chris Meroff: 00:29:47

And so without vulnerability, without knowing how you feel,

Chris Meroff: 00:29:51

I can't empathize with you.

Chris Meroff: 00:29:53

And so it requires you to express a feeling of emotion.

Chris Meroff: 00:29:56

And so there's a bravery there that I just ran away from for most of my life.

Chris Meroff: 00:30:02

And so now that I'm in this, kind of idea of vulnerability, guess what also happens?

Chris Meroff: 00:30:07

I get to share with my wife, with my kids, with my friends, with my coworkers, fears

Chris Meroff: 00:30:12

that I have and for them to not, to, to.

Chris Meroff: 00:30:14

practice empathy with me, and then be able to speak truth to me.

Chris Meroff: 00:30:20

Without vulnerability, the truth stays hidden.

Chris Meroff: 00:30:23

And so my faith, I boil it down to this, mental health, when you think

Chris Meroff: 00:30:28

about that topic in this day and age, poor mental health, I'll say, always

Chris Meroff: 00:30:33

stems from lies inside our head.

Chris Meroff: 00:30:35

My bad behavior, I can tie it back to a lie.

Chris Meroff: 00:30:38

I believe in that moment.

Chris Meroff: 00:30:40

and so vulnerability exposes those lies to those people in my life,

Chris Meroff: 00:30:46

and then they get to be with me.

Chris Meroff: 00:30:48

They don't fix it, but they're with me in it.

Chris Meroff: 00:30:50

And then I invite them to influence me.

Chris Meroff: 00:30:54

I invite their influence to say, okay, this is my fear.

Chris Meroff: 00:30:57

Let me get that out there.

Chris Meroff: 00:30:58

Let me trust you with this.

Chris Meroff: 00:31:00

Now I need the truth instead of these lies.

Chris Meroff: 00:31:04

Cause in our own heads, we are the loudest liars ever to ourselves

Chris Meroff: 00:31:08

and we live in an echo chamber.

Chris Meroff: 00:31:10

And so I don't want friends that aren't going to tell me the

Chris Meroff: 00:31:13

truth of who I am or who God is.

Chris Meroff: 00:31:16

That's what always results in me missing the mark with my God.

Chris Meroff: 00:31:19

Is that there hasn't been a sin I've committed that was

Chris Meroff: 00:31:22

born out of a truthful thought.

Chris Meroff: 00:31:25

It's always out of a lie.

Chris Meroff: 00:31:27

And so I need to have community around me in a way that I can feel comfortable

Chris Meroff: 00:31:31

exposing those lies through vulnerability.

Chris Meroff: 00:31:34

So that I can pursue the truth of who I am.

Tim Winders: 00:31:37

So what are, and I was going to ask what all did your wife and

Tim Winders: 00:31:43

kids, what did they see differently?

Tim Winders: 00:31:45

But let me ask it this way.

Tim Winders: 00:31:47

What are some tangible things that you could point to that.

Tim Winders: 00:31:54

Chris version 2.

Tim Winders: 00:31:55

0 now does versus if you and I had talked in 2009, and you may not even

Tim Winders: 00:32:04

want to have the empathy conversation.

Tim Winders: 00:32:06

I bet you wouldn't even, you and I probably in 2009, empathy would have

Tim Winders: 00:32:10

never even entered in the conversation.

Tim Winders: 00:32:12

So just something tangible, a situation or something like that, that just looks

Tim Winders: 00:32:19

different or you responded differently.

Chris Meroff: 00:32:22

Yeah, I would say that, it was, and it's still a challenge.

Chris Meroff: 00:32:27

Like it's still something that

Tim Winders: 00:32:29

So you're not perfect.

Tim Winders: 00:32:29

You haven't perfected this.

Tim Winders: 00:32:31

Is that what you're saying?

Chris Meroff: 00:32:32

No, when that book's done, I will write that one.

Chris Meroff: 00:32:34

That's for sure.

Chris Meroff: 00:32:36

but yeah, there's a constant level of fear and, and trust issues that I grapple with.

Chris Meroff: 00:32:42

And so for me, in order to feel more comfortable, I had to

Chris Meroff: 00:32:46

learn the language of emotion.

Chris Meroff: 00:32:48

And so again, happy, sad, mad.

Chris Meroff: 00:32:52

Alright, so then, what does it feel like to feel discouraged instead of sad?

Chris Meroff: 00:32:56

What's the difference?

Chris Meroff: 00:32:58

I had zero emotional intelligence.

Chris Meroff: 00:33:02

And so I would say, if you ask my family, what is an indicator,

Chris Meroff: 00:33:06

I think they would say, he uses more words than happy, sad, mad.

Chris Meroff: 00:33:11

I had to learn the language of emotion.

Chris Meroff: 00:33:13

And I learned it not just so that I could express vulnerability,

Chris Meroff: 00:33:16

but so that I could empathize.

Chris Meroff: 00:33:19

So one of the things I had to do in life, and as I even say it to you, it always

Chris Meroff: 00:33:23

horrifies or terrifies me to think about the precipice where I found myself, which

Chris Meroff: 00:33:29

was if I truly want to empathize with you, that means that as you express an

Chris Meroff: 00:33:34

emotion, my job is to mirror that emotion.

Chris Meroff: 00:33:38

if I have no emotional intelligence, no emotional language, I

Chris Meroff: 00:33:42

don't know what that means.

Chris Meroff: 00:33:43

I remember my wife, using a word one time to describe her emotions and looking

Chris Meroff: 00:33:48

at her and going in my head going, I have no idea what that, I couldn't

Chris Meroff: 00:33:52

empathize with you if I wanted to.

Chris Meroff: 00:33:53

I have no idea what that would feel like.

Chris Meroff: 00:33:56

So God called me to go back and catalog my life.

Chris Meroff: 00:34:00

And so I, and I'm still on this journey where I've had to go back in time and

Chris Meroff: 00:34:04

I've had to relive These moments where emotion existed, but that I shoved down

Chris Meroff: 00:34:11

because I converted it to anger, and then I have to relive that moment again.

Chris Meroff: 00:34:17

And in order to find this emotional language so that I could actually

Chris Meroff: 00:34:21

empathize with another human, that was the journey that I had to embark on,

Chris Meroff: 00:34:25

and I'm still on today, and I don't go back and point to childhood trauma

Chris Meroff: 00:34:30

as the excuse for my bad behavior.

Chris Meroff: 00:34:33

But I do need to understand what happened.

Chris Meroff: 00:34:36

How did that make me feel so that I can have a catalog.

Chris Meroff: 00:34:39

I can go back into my filing drawer.

Chris Meroff: 00:34:42

If you use an empath, a word of emotion, I can go find a scenario by which I felt

Chris Meroff: 00:34:47

that and just relive it and feel it again.

Chris Meroff: 00:34:51

Not understand, not sympathize, but relive it.

Tim Winders: 00:34:55

you mentioned earlier that you were high on the control.

Tim Winders: 00:34:58

you like to control things and people that function the way you talked

Tim Winders: 00:35:03

about, that we have this high view of ourselves and all control is

Tim Winders: 00:35:08

very important for the way we are.

Tim Winders: 00:35:10

And I think in some ways it allows us to be successful to a point.

Chris Meroff: 00:35:16

That's right.

Tim Winders: 00:35:17

And we're not sure where that point is going to be

Tim Winders: 00:35:19

that we either go off a cliff or we lose control or whatever that we

Tim Winders: 00:35:23

could, we don't want to unpack that.

Tim Winders: 00:35:24

But to me, the words control and vulnerability, it's very difficult

Tim Winders: 00:35:30

for those to live in the same body.

Chris Meroff: 00:35:32

Yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:35:33

And so people that are wired.

Tim Winders: 00:35:35

That way when all of a sudden we're hearing now in today's culture where 15

Tim Winders: 00:35:40

years ago, you didn't really hear the word vulnerability or if it was out there.

Tim Winders: 00:35:44

I never heard it.

Tim Winders: 00:35:45

Let me just say it that way

Chris Meroff: 00:35:47

and I may, I probably would have made fun of it.

Tim Winders: 00:35:48

Yeah, you and I would have mocked us and i've got no need for that

Tim Winders: 00:35:51

So so how then are you reconciling?

Tim Winders: 00:35:55

Especially in your business and all the projects you've got I don't know if we'll

Tim Winders: 00:35:57

have time to get into a lot of things you've got going on But all the things you

Tim Winders: 00:36:00

have going on, how are you reconciling?

Tim Winders: 00:36:03

This vulnerability that, obviously leads to empathy and all.

Tim Winders: 00:36:08

And I am sure there's still that little bit, if not a little bit, a

Tim Winders: 00:36:12

lot of need to control situations, things that are going on.

Tim Winders: 00:36:17

Maybe family, your kids that are probably close to grown now.

Tim Winders: 00:36:21

How do you reconcile that?

Tim Winders: 00:36:22

give us some wisdom there.

Chris Meroff: 00:36:24

So yeah, the control is never gone and it's my control, but

Chris Meroff: 00:36:29

it's also I don't want to be controlled.

Chris Meroff: 00:36:30

So I struggle, I'm a rule breaker by nature.

Chris Meroff: 00:36:33

I don't want people to tell me what I can and can't do.

Chris Meroff: 00:36:36

but I recognize now.

Chris Meroff: 00:36:38

and this is again in that nine to 12 months of crisis.

Chris Meroff: 00:36:41

I recognize that control, always equals loneliness.

Chris Meroff: 00:36:46

And so the loneliness is something that I run away from every day and

Chris Meroff: 00:36:51

I run toward authentic community.

Chris Meroff: 00:36:53

I run toward truth is really what I'm running towards, because I know, God

Chris Meroff: 00:36:58

says to think on things that are true.

Chris Meroff: 00:37:01

And so I, it is, he didn't say that, hoping we memorize scripture necessarily.

Chris Meroff: 00:37:05

I think he said it because he knows that our minds are bent towards lies.

Chris Meroff: 00:37:11

we tend to believe the worst in everyone else.

Chris Meroff: 00:37:14

We tend to think either of ourselves too highly or too lowly.

Chris Meroff: 00:37:17

We rarely see ourselves the way God sees us or other people.

Chris Meroff: 00:37:21

And control, lies they all move me away from people.

Chris Meroff: 00:37:25

And when I was in that lonely place, man, thoughts in my head of depression

Chris Meroff: 00:37:31

and suicide and all these other things that they filled my head.

Chris Meroff: 00:37:36

This life isn't worth living.

Chris Meroff: 00:37:37

If I have no one I can go share.

Chris Meroff: 00:37:40

My deepest fears or hurts or hopes with, then why am I here?

Chris Meroff: 00:37:44

Like I had the things that the world told me I should have.

Chris Meroff: 00:37:48

I had wealth.

Chris Meroff: 00:37:49

I had a business that I had built.

Chris Meroff: 00:37:51

I had all these successes that the world calls successes and yet utterly alone,

Chris Meroff: 00:37:56

and isolated and it was the worst.

Chris Meroff: 00:37:58

And so I have to fight toward that.

Chris Meroff: 00:38:01

And that means I have to give up control.

Tim Winders: 00:38:04

Which is tough.

Tim Winders: 00:38:04

You mentioned authentic community, and it's interesting.

Tim Winders: 00:38:09

I think we're going through some shifts culturally right now.

Tim Winders: 00:38:14

I think there used to be this thought for people of faith that church

Tim Winders: 00:38:20

was where you go get that authentic community, and I want to be careful.

Tim Winders: 00:38:25

Throwing, throwing the quote unquote small c church under the bus here.

Tim Winders: 00:38:29

But I don't think that's been the case for some time.

Tim Winders: 00:38:33

And I think we saw a lot of that when COVID occurred and things like that.

Tim Winders: 00:38:36

but where do people like you and I.

Tim Winders: 00:38:40

Like probably listening in where do we go when we're very control wired when we're

Tim Winders: 00:38:48

achievement oriented when you know, we want to be Driving and we want to make

Tim Winders: 00:38:54

impact and you know All these words we could throw out here and some of them

Tim Winders: 00:38:58

some of those we may need to rethink Also, we may need to soften that, but where do

Tim Winders: 00:39:03

we go to find that authentic community?

Tim Winders: 00:39:08

That is one part of the question.

Tim Winders: 00:39:09

But then secondly, how do we know what it looks like when we're there, which is a

Tim Winders: 00:39:14

little bit more of an opportunity for you to talk about what is authentic community.

Chris Meroff: 00:39:19

Yeah, absolutely.

Chris Meroff: 00:39:21

So I would say that, the people that are in your.

Chris Meroff: 00:39:24

sphere of influence right now are the people that you need to seek authentic

Chris Meroff: 00:39:28

community with and so one of the things that I've had to learn on this journey

Chris Meroff: 00:39:31

is that, there is greatness inside every human being and the reason I know that

Chris Meroff: 00:39:36

is because we were made in his image.

Chris Meroff: 00:39:38

And so let's redefine what that looks like, greatness, are the

Chris Meroff: 00:39:41

character attributes of, my God.

Chris Meroff: 00:39:44

And, when it says that we're created in his image, it wasn't in the image of a

Chris Meroff: 00:39:48

man, it was in the image of his character.

Chris Meroff: 00:39:50

And that exists inside every human being.

Chris Meroff: 00:39:52

And for the longest time, and I'm embarrassed to say it, it's,

Chris Meroff: 00:39:55

it's not the person I want to be.

Chris Meroff: 00:39:57

But man, for the most of my life, I thought most of the people on

Chris Meroff: 00:39:59

this planet are really stupid.

Chris Meroff: 00:40:02

And I literally put a number to it.

Chris Meroff: 00:40:03

I'd be like 85 percent at least are dumb.

Chris Meroff: 00:40:06

In fact, 15 percent of us will always sell the 85 percent something

Chris Meroff: 00:40:12

that was my entrepreneur brain.

Chris Meroff: 00:40:13

Okay.

Chris Meroff: 00:40:14

I'm embarrassed by that, but that's how I thought.

Chris Meroff: 00:40:16

And so I went through most of my life looking at human beings as less than.

Chris Meroff: 00:40:22

Because they didn't have the same ambition, the same drive, the same focus,

Chris Meroff: 00:40:27

the same common crisis, the same critical thinking, the same problem solving.

Chris Meroff: 00:40:31

And so I thought, nah, but now that God's got a hold of my heart, He's

Chris Meroff: 00:40:35

no, my image isn't, it's stamped inside every single human being.

Chris Meroff: 00:40:40

We ask it this way.

Chris Meroff: 00:40:41

If you think of the most productive human being on the planet, a lot of

Chris Meroff: 00:40:44

people would say like Elon Musk and we lean into this idea, okay, fine.

Chris Meroff: 00:40:49

Let's use that.

Chris Meroff: 00:40:50

Okay.

Chris Meroff: 00:40:51

Whatever is inside of Elon that makes him the most productive is inside you.

Chris Meroff: 00:40:56

There is no difference.

Chris Meroff: 00:40:58

And so it's my job as a leader is to find that greatness inside my authentic

Chris Meroff: 00:41:04

community, call it out, celebrate it, and then ask them to join me on this journey.

Chris Meroff: 00:41:11

We're in this process right now of about to roll out a conference,

Chris Meroff: 00:41:14

our big conference here in Austin.

Chris Meroff: 00:41:17

And the whole idea is that we're calling people into the arena.

Chris Meroff: 00:41:21

So Teddy Roosevelt's, speech, The Man in the Arena, and it

Chris Meroff: 00:41:24

talks about daring greatly.

Chris Meroff: 00:41:26

guess what?

Chris Meroff: 00:41:27

Believing the best in my community, in my authentic community, and really calling

Chris Meroff: 00:41:34

out their greatness, trading my power for their greatness, is daring greatly when

Chris Meroff: 00:41:39

you have my mentality, which is, again, I'm the, again, I'm a, I will get it done.

Chris Meroff: 00:41:46

I have the determination, the willpower.

Chris Meroff: 00:41:48

I move at the speed of light.

Chris Meroff: 00:41:49

I have great vision.

Chris Meroff: 00:41:50

I have all these things that I want to celebrate and talk about, and I've got

Chris Meroff: 00:41:54

to let all that go, and I've got to rely on this community, and the only way

Chris Meroff: 00:41:58

I can do that is by recognizing their greatness, trading my power, my ownership,

Chris Meroff: 00:42:02

my authority, so that they can feel like they can be Elon Musk, they can be me.

Chris Meroff: 00:42:09

They can be whoever they idolize.

Chris Meroff: 00:42:12

That's our job as leaders.

Chris Meroff: 00:42:13

and then when we do that, we then call them into conflict.

Chris Meroff: 00:42:18

I love Pat Lencioni and his books.

Chris Meroff: 00:42:20

And in the five dysfunctions of a team, he talks about the first

Chris Meroff: 00:42:23

thing is to establish trust.

Chris Meroff: 00:42:25

that's really leaning into the greatness of others, which then gives

Chris Meroff: 00:42:29

permission for the next dysfunction or the next call out of dysfunction,

Chris Meroff: 00:42:33

which is to now have positive conflict.

Chris Meroff: 00:42:37

And through that is how I've been able to duplicate my efforts.

Chris Meroff: 00:42:42

I realized that I was the glass ceiling in my company because I did it all.

Chris Meroff: 00:42:48

But as soon as I saw the greatness in others, I did as little as I could.

Chris Meroff: 00:42:52

And next thing I know, I've got 30 people, instead of one that

Chris Meroff: 00:42:57

took my company to the next level.

Tim Winders: 00:42:59

So one thing that's interesting for me, I love this

Tim Winders: 00:43:01

conversation because it's, I don't want to say it's like therapy for me

Tim Winders: 00:43:06

because people with our personalities aren't super excited about.

Tim Winders: 00:43:10

therapy, but probably means maybe we need something like that.

Tim Winders: 00:43:15

Usually,

Chris Meroff: 00:43:16

right.

Tim Winders: 00:43:18

for some reason, the Lord has had me recently really

Tim Winders: 00:43:21

meditating on the concept of eternity.

Tim Winders: 00:43:25

And he says, it's really one of the reasons why I struggle with Time and that

Tim Winders: 00:43:31

future in that I, I have this thought that my time here is so limited and that's it.

Tim Winders: 00:43:37

And he says, listen, very few people understand eternity anyway, but

Tim Winders: 00:43:40

that, he's gives me grace there.

Tim Winders: 00:43:42

But Chris, what's fascinating about it is this.

Tim Winders: 00:43:46

I really do believe that he's given me some glimpses into, we'll call it the

Tim Winders: 00:43:52

85 percent that you just brought up.

Tim Winders: 00:43:56

That when we step into this other realm that's outside of this cool world We're

Tim Winders: 00:44:00

in where maybe you're a big shot and maybe i'm a big shot or we're really

Tim Winders: 00:44:05

not i'm just joking You know what?

Tim Winders: 00:44:06

I mean by that some of those 85 We're gonna find out That they're a huge deal

Chris Meroff: 00:44:14

Yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:44:15

and we're gonna go what?

Tim Winders: 00:44:18

And so that has helped me try to be more empathetic to, I, you know what, I think

Tim Winders: 00:44:24

we're doing some things that the world says, yeah, y'all are pretty cool, y'all

Tim Winders: 00:44:27

are on a podcast, and oh look, on YouTube, and Chris has these companies, and you do

Tim Winders: 00:44:31

this Tim, and all that, but it's, I hate to say it's done, I really do hate to

Tim Winders: 00:44:37

go that route, but it may not be as big of a deal eternally as we think it is.

Tim Winders: 00:44:42

What are your thoughts on that?

Chris Meroff: 00:44:44

Y you're absolutely right.

Chris Meroff: 00:44:45

And that's where this idea of really, allowing people that you come in contact

Chris Meroff: 00:44:49

with to feel known, heard, and valued.

Chris Meroff: 00:44:51

the reality is that they get to be known by you.

Chris Meroff: 00:44:55

if our job description as a leader, is to know these people, and we understand

Chris Meroff: 00:45:01

now the greatness that exists inside of them and celebrate that, even more.

Chris Meroff: 00:45:07

Our greatness, it doesn't say that we're not great again.

Chris Meroff: 00:45:09

We still have intrinsic value based on being created in his image as well.

Chris Meroff: 00:45:13

But instead of us calling it out and calling attention to it,

Chris Meroff: 00:45:16

create an authentic community where they're calling it out.

Chris Meroff: 00:45:20

there's nothing greater to me than when 1 of my employees, believes me

Chris Meroff: 00:45:25

for the 1st time believes me that there's greatness inside of them.

Chris Meroff: 00:45:31

And They want to do the comparison game all the time.

Chris Meroff: 00:45:34

They want to compare themselves to, more successful versions of themselves

Chris Meroff: 00:45:39

is really what they're doing.

Chris Meroff: 00:45:41

And it's like, well, wait a minute.

Chris Meroff: 00:45:42

This is you today.

Chris Meroff: 00:45:43

Who knows what you're going to be tomorrow?

Chris Meroff: 00:45:46

I guarantee you though, you're putting a glass ceiling on yourself.

Chris Meroff: 00:45:49

If you don't believe who you really are and who you would

Chris Meroff: 00:45:53

be, who you are made to be.

Chris Meroff: 00:45:55

Instead of what you're made to do.

Chris Meroff: 00:45:57

And so we just try to unlock.

Chris Meroff: 00:45:58

There's a guy that's worked with me for many years.

Chris Meroff: 00:46:01

And, he's always thought of himself as like less than because his greatest

Chris Meroff: 00:46:06

gift in the workplace is kindness.

Chris Meroff: 00:46:09

dude, I would give anything to be thought of, off the top as being a kind person.

Chris Meroff: 00:46:16

I would give anything for that and you can ask anybody to do anything and they

Chris Meroff: 00:46:21

automatically give you a pass because they think they know you're kind.

Chris Meroff: 00:46:27

Man, if you took those words that we in the workplace kind

Chris Meroff: 00:46:30

of think of less than and we put that in front of the word leader.

Chris Meroff: 00:46:35

Okay, Kyle, you're a kind leader.

Chris Meroff: 00:46:38

That doesn't seem like that sucks.

Chris Meroff: 00:46:40

you're a compassionate leader.

Chris Meroff: 00:46:41

You're a patient leader.

Chris Meroff: 00:46:43

Like all these things that I just thought had no value to me because I was so

Chris Meroff: 00:46:48

like, okay, this future is coming where I'm going to make it happen that I lost

Chris Meroff: 00:46:53

track of what it was going to be like for the people to be on the journey with me.

Chris Meroff: 00:47:00

And Yeah, you, people get, I think, especially in the workplace, we get

Chris Meroff: 00:47:04

this off kilter perspective of these soft skills, or human skills, or more

Chris Meroff: 00:47:09

appropriately, God skills, that exist inside of us, that we can give to the

Chris Meroff: 00:47:14

people that we're called to leave.

Chris Meroff: 00:47:17

And so that's the thing I would say has been, and it keeps propelling me forward

Chris Meroff: 00:47:22

to discover the greatness, in people.

Chris Meroff: 00:47:24

We're about to do this afternoon, a Zoom interview with 10, a and m, Texas

Chris Meroff: 00:47:29

a and m college students to be interns.

Chris Meroff: 00:47:32

And I sit there and I watch these faces and I'm thinking to myself, this

Chris Meroff: 00:47:36

is like a kid in a candy store as it relates to like, these are bright-eyed,

Chris Meroff: 00:47:41

human beings that have yet to fully discover the greatness and I hope

Chris Meroff: 00:47:46

I get to be a part of that journey.

Tim Winders: 00:47:49

Very cool.

Tim Winders: 00:47:50

you brought up the word earlier comparison, which

Tim Winders: 00:47:53

triggered something in me.

Tim Winders: 00:47:54

we're social media and everything we do.

Tim Winders: 00:47:56

And I guess the workforce when you work with people causes that.

Tim Winders: 00:47:59

But I like the tagline from the empathy revolution.

Tim Winders: 00:48:03

It's a good segue for us to begin discussing it.

Tim Winders: 00:48:06

Practical wisdom to combat organizational and social loneliness.

Tim Winders: 00:48:12

Now, what's interesting is that we are, air quotes again here, for

Tim Winders: 00:48:17

those that might be listening in, I'm air quoting, we are more connected,

Tim Winders: 00:48:23

I'll call it digitally, to people.

Tim Winders: 00:48:25

we've got 3, 000 friends on LinkedIn or connections and 4,

Tim Winders: 00:48:31

000 on Facebook or whatever.

Tim Winders: 00:48:32

But yet we have, in the study show, we have one of the loneliest groups of

Tim Winders: 00:48:37

people and you even, talked about it back when you went through your crisis.

Tim Winders: 00:48:43

How does that tagline, let's start talking about, I want you to unpack for us some

Tim Winders: 00:48:48

things related to the empathy revolution.

Tim Winders: 00:48:51

Why is that word loneliness in that tagline?

Tim Winders: 00:48:54

Because people shouldn't be lonely, but yet they

Chris Meroff: 00:48:57

that's right.

Chris Meroff: 00:48:58

They have access to greater connection than ever before in, in human history.

Chris Meroff: 00:49:04

And yet, as we have, more connection at the surface level,

Chris Meroff: 00:49:09

it drives us, into more loneliness.

Chris Meroff: 00:49:12

we're made in a way, our, in our humanity where comparison, jealousy,

Chris Meroff: 00:49:16

envy, all these things tend to drive us towards, like understanding what

Chris Meroff: 00:49:21

we don't have or what we're not.

Chris Meroff: 00:49:23

and in that we get into it, like I said before, like an echo

Chris Meroff: 00:49:26

chamber in our own mind around starting to believe those lies.

Chris Meroff: 00:49:30

I'm about to take the stage at this conference and I'm taking,

Chris Meroff: 00:49:34

there are other speakers at this conference who I have, looked up to

Chris Meroff: 00:49:38

and idolized for a long time now.

Chris Meroff: 00:49:41

And I'm battling in my own head this lie of comparison that says, goodness,

Chris Meroff: 00:49:46

you're gonna look like an idiot up there compared to these other people.

Chris Meroff: 00:49:49

And what tends to happen is if I don't express that to anyone, if I don't ask

Chris Meroff: 00:49:54

for empathy through vulnerability, then that lie becomes more and more believable

Chris Meroff: 00:49:59

because the only thing that I hear is that you're not good enough, you doing?

Chris Meroff: 00:50:06

Who do you think you are?

Chris Meroff: 00:50:08

And so if I don't express that and let other people speak truth into

Chris Meroff: 00:50:11

who I am, man, that loneliness just, it's like a virus that takes

Chris Meroff: 00:50:15

over and it controls my actions.

Chris Meroff: 00:50:18

And I was sharing with somebody today.

Chris Meroff: 00:50:20

I'm like, Hey, if I don't have this conversation with you, then the thing

Chris Meroff: 00:50:24

that I fear the most comes to truth.

Chris Meroff: 00:50:26

If I don't overcome that fear through vulnerability.

Chris Meroff: 00:50:30

So I said, the number one way for me to look like an idiot up there is to

Chris Meroff: 00:50:33

think I'm going to be an idiot up there.

Chris Meroff: 00:50:35

And so I've got to speak that out into the universe so that the people who

Chris Meroff: 00:50:39

love me and care about me and know me, they can speak truth into me.

Chris Meroff: 00:50:43

they can remind me that I'm, a guy who speaks his mind,

Chris Meroff: 00:50:47

who speaks out of passion.

Chris Meroff: 00:50:49

And it won't matter if I stumble over words, it won't matter if I deliver

Chris Meroff: 00:50:52

it in a way that's not as polished as these other speakers, it'll

Chris Meroff: 00:50:56

matter to people in that audience because they know you love them.

Chris Meroff: 00:50:59

if I don't hear that, it's gonna be a disaster.

Chris Meroff: 00:51:03

Thank

Tim Winders: 00:51:05

One thing that's interesting, I think I have seen the lineup there,

Tim Winders: 00:51:08

and I might let you mention that here There are probably some very, like you

Tim Winders: 00:51:13

said, well known speakers and all that, but did you ever think, what if they're

Tim Winders: 00:51:18

sitting there thinking the same thing?

Chris Meroff: 00:51:20

Yeah, I know.

Chris Meroff: 00:51:23

No, it wouldn't have crossed my mind.

Chris Meroff: 00:51:25

No, it's like that.

Chris Meroff: 00:51:26

they do a thousand times a year for them.

Chris Meroff: 00:51:28

It's no big deal.

Chris Meroff: 00:51:29

Again.

Chris Meroff: 00:51:29

These are lies that we tell ourselves.

Chris Meroff: 00:51:32

And when we do it in isolation, it creates truth for ourselves.

Chris Meroff: 00:51:36

We literally convert that to being true.

Chris Meroff: 00:51:38

And it's just not.

Tim Winders: 00:51:39

what's interesting is that I am coming more and more to believe that

Tim Winders: 00:51:43

part of our role here on this earth is to prepare our hearts for eternity or,

Tim Winders: 00:51:49

the next realm and to connect with as many people and help them do the same.

Tim Winders: 00:51:55

That looks like a lot of different things for different people.

Tim Winders: 00:51:57

some of us, I think we're in the business arena.

Tim Winders: 00:51:59

Some people might be in, like you mentioned, Jason, I think that went

Tim Winders: 00:52:03

back to being a pastor, some of its church world, some of it might be in

Tim Winders: 00:52:06

some places that boy, the battlefield or something like that, but I think

Tim Winders: 00:52:12

the biggest challenge that we have is being disconnected and isolated.

Tim Winders: 00:52:19

Because I was just thinking, I'll give you this example.

Tim Winders: 00:52:21

Let's just say there's these group of speakers, five or six speakers.

Tim Winders: 00:52:24

And let's just say that they're all going through the same thoughts that you are.

Tim Winders: 00:52:28

And none of you ever say anything to each other about it.

Chris Meroff: 00:52:31

Yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:52:32

How powerful and authentic it would be if, and I know

Tim Winders: 00:52:36

speakers come and go, they're not there at the same time and all that.

Tim Winders: 00:52:39

But if that group could say, Hey, listen, I just want to let y'all know.

Tim Winders: 00:52:44

Pretty intimidated being here.

Tim Winders: 00:52:46

And then they go, you know what I am too, but I think that authentic

Tim Winders: 00:52:50

community, I don't think we give ourselves enough opportunity

Chris Meroff: 00:52:53

No, I agree.

Tim Winders: 00:52:54

connect.

Tim Winders: 00:52:55

so how can we do it?

Tim Winders: 00:52:56

and then we're going to get into, I want you to really do a pitch for the book

Tim Winders: 00:52:59

and all of that, but how can we really get into some authentic community?

Tim Winders: 00:53:04

I really do want to know that.

Chris Meroff: 00:53:06

Yeah, I think that you take opportunities, to be

Chris Meroff: 00:53:09

transparent and real, anytime you can.

Chris Meroff: 00:53:13

And so for me in conversation again, it's the anti fine, good and okay.

Chris Meroff: 00:53:18

I get, I get asked questions all the time about how is this going?

Chris Meroff: 00:53:21

What's this?

Chris Meroff: 00:53:22

What's happening with this?

Chris Meroff: 00:53:23

How are you feeling?

Chris Meroff: 00:53:24

And, really stepping into, Yeah.

Chris Meroff: 00:53:27

being faithful to truth.

Chris Meroff: 00:53:30

And so if I'm not doing well to say I, I'm struggling, and there are

Chris Meroff: 00:53:34

circles and then inner circles and levels of appropriate vulnerability

Chris Meroff: 00:53:38

and all those things that matter.

Chris Meroff: 00:53:40

but I think those might be excuses sometimes to not just, step out, and

Chris Meroff: 00:53:45

say, okay, I'm not doing well, I'm struggling, I'm having a hard day, I'm

Chris Meroff: 00:53:49

feeling, discouraged or I'm feeling sad or depressed, whatever it might

Chris Meroff: 00:53:52

be, but to express those things, in a vulnerable way that allows people

Chris Meroff: 00:53:57

really to step in and offer some truth.

Chris Meroff: 00:53:59

One of the speakers, ironically, On our pre conference call, as we were talking

Chris Meroff: 00:54:04

through, the book and this idea of loneliness, and he leans forward into the

Chris Meroff: 00:54:09

mic, into the computer, he goes, I gotta tell you, public speaking and writing, he

Chris Meroff: 00:54:12

says, this is an extremely lonely place.

Chris Meroff: 00:54:15

So I'm like, let's do something about that.

Chris Meroff: 00:54:18

why don't we create a community of speakers that we can love each other and

Chris Meroff: 00:54:21

care for each other in this whole process?

Chris Meroff: 00:54:23

And so through vulnerability, I just think great things can happen

Chris Meroff: 00:54:27

towards a bond that if you're not really willing to go through this.

Chris Meroff: 00:54:33

This fire, this forge of, trust and vulnerability,

Chris Meroff: 00:54:36

you're just gonna miss out on.

Chris Meroff: 00:54:38

that's not living, to me.

Chris Meroff: 00:54:40

it's risking the emotional well being for truth.

Chris Meroff: 00:54:43

and that really allows, I think, for people to live for the first time.

Tim Winders: 00:54:48

So truthfully, the reason that this podcast exists, Chris, is

Tim Winders: 00:54:53

because of all that I went through.

Tim Winders: 00:54:55

And I realized that I wanted to have conversations.

Tim Winders: 00:54:58

There's a reason this is in a 20 minute podcast.

Tim Winders: 00:55:00

Also, I can't have this depth.

Tim Winders: 00:55:03

And so I get somebody like you here for an hour that we get to go deeper.

Tim Winders: 00:55:07

And that's part of the connection.

Tim Winders: 00:55:09

And then, what I like to do is I'll follow up within a month or so and

Tim Winders: 00:55:13

say, Hey, Chris, how are you doing?

Tim Winders: 00:55:15

What's going on?

Tim Winders: 00:55:15

it's just, I'm trying also.

Tim Winders: 00:55:18

to do that.

Tim Winders: 00:55:19

Tell it, tell us about the empathy revolution, how it came

Tim Winders: 00:55:23

to be and, and all of that.

Tim Winders: 00:55:25

And then, I've got a couple other questions before we wrap up, but go ahead

Tim Winders: 00:55:28

and tell us why that's so important.

Tim Winders: 00:55:31

I'm, this has been like I said, almost a therapy session for me because I feel like

Tim Winders: 00:55:34

I'm looking in the mirror as I'm talking.

Tim Winders: 00:55:37

I'm talking to you.

Tim Winders: 00:55:38

So empathy revolution,

Chris Meroff: 00:55:41

Yeah, the book itself had three different iterations.

Chris Meroff: 00:55:43

I think I started and stopped writing this book three different times.

Chris Meroff: 00:55:47

and, went down several paths, this, where it ended was a memoir or a

Chris Meroff: 00:55:51

journal of my leadership journey.

Chris Meroff: 00:55:53

And it's literally what I didn't want to do, is to, again, be vulnerable

Chris Meroff: 00:55:58

and expose, the hurts and, what really brought about, What A lot of the change,

Chris Meroff: 00:56:04

in who I am and what this means to be a leader, and really redefining leadership.

Chris Meroff: 00:56:08

And so the 1st and foremost, I really wanted to allow people

Chris Meroff: 00:56:12

to understand maybe a different version of leadership than the 1.

Chris Meroff: 00:56:15

I grew up thinking was the only way, which is again, strong, confident

Chris Meroff: 00:56:19

problem solver, amazing in crisis.

Chris Meroff: 00:56:22

and really convert that to, focus on loving and serving

Chris Meroff: 00:56:25

people toward their fulfillment.

Chris Meroff: 00:56:27

Thank And so we break that down in the book, to understand the loving each

Chris Meroff: 00:56:31

other really is about a gap, a love, and this idea of charity and, self

Chris Meroff: 00:56:35

sacrifice and then serving 1 another, really to make sure that the people feel

Chris Meroff: 00:56:40

known, heard and valued, serving them.

Chris Meroff: 00:56:43

Community authentic community, instead of away from it.

Chris Meroff: 00:56:45

and then we really want to wrap it up in the it's toward their fulfillment, which

Chris Meroff: 00:56:50

goes through other aspects of a line.

Chris Meroff: 00:56:52

The 1st book that I wrote, which is a more practical hands on what to do as a leader.

Chris Meroff: 00:56:57

and so it's a combination, plus a little bit of, hey, here, if you're emotionally.

Chris Meroff: 00:57:02

Intelligent like I am or was here are some ways that you can take practical steps.

Chris Meroff: 00:57:09

People have said before.

Chris Meroff: 00:57:10

Oh, you're a thought leader.

Chris Meroff: 00:57:11

And I'm like, absolutely not.

Chris Meroff: 00:57:13

I'm an action leader.

Chris Meroff: 00:57:14

And so in the book, I wanted to have some practical things that people could go do.

Chris Meroff: 00:57:18

And so I touch on some phrases that you can learn as a leader to use and leverage

Chris Meroff: 00:57:23

invulnerability phrases like I'm sorry.

Chris Meroff: 00:57:26

I don't know.

Chris Meroff: 00:57:28

And I need your help.

Chris Meroff: 00:57:29

and we talk a lot about how that plays out in vulnerability, as a

Chris Meroff: 00:57:33

leader so that you again can trade your power for their greatness.

Tim Winders: 00:57:38

the reason that's good, the, I need your help.

Tim Winders: 00:57:41

People like me, and you may, this may resonate with you.

Tim Winders: 00:57:45

I found myself, I still find myself saying quite often, how can I help you?

Chris Meroff: 00:57:51

Absolutely.

Tim Winders: 00:57:52

And my thought is that's me being empathetic.

Tim Winders: 00:57:54

It's probably still me being in charge and control and things like that.

Tim Winders: 00:57:57

I don't go, Hey, Chris, man, I really need your help here.

Tim Winders: 00:58:00

No, I say, Chris, how can I help you?

Tim Winders: 00:58:01

I, that's like something that comes out of my mouth almost involuntarily.

Chris Meroff: 00:58:07

and that's similar to me.

Chris Meroff: 00:58:09

Mine is what can I do for you?

Chris Meroff: 00:58:11

And so for my personality, the reason that comes out is because I believe a lie.

Chris Meroff: 00:58:16

And that lie says that if I don't do something for you, I don't have value.

Chris Meroff: 00:58:20

I'm not lovable.

Chris Meroff: 00:58:21

And so I'm going to do something for you.

Chris Meroff: 00:58:23

And so when I stopped doing things for my kids, as they're adult kids

Chris Meroff: 00:58:27

now, it's Oh, do they love me?

Chris Meroff: 00:58:29

Am I worth loving?

Chris Meroff: 00:58:31

now that I'm not doing things for them on a daily basis.

Chris Meroff: 00:58:33

And that's one of those lies as a kid.

Chris Meroff: 00:58:36

It just keeps re.

Chris Meroff: 00:58:37

Regurgitating itself over and over again, saying, no, dude, you, if

Chris Meroff: 00:58:40

you're not doing something for somebody like you, you're not, you alone,

Chris Meroff: 00:58:44

just on your own are not lovable.

Chris Meroff: 00:58:47

And so you got to do something.

Chris Meroff: 00:58:48

And so it's really hard for me to say, I need your help because I'm not going to do

Chris Meroff: 00:58:54

it, but I need your help to get it done.

Chris Meroff: 00:58:56

And that feels.

Chris Meroff: 00:58:58

Disgusting.

Chris Meroff: 00:58:58

That feels really gross, for me to do, but tell you, it's paid off,

Chris Meroff: 00:59:03

in relationship and community in ways I could never have imagined.

Tim Winders: 00:59:08

Yeah, that's beautiful.

Tim Winders: 00:59:09

I started this off as what you do, but you've got a lot of things going on.

Tim Winders: 00:59:13

Can you just real quickly, we've only got a couple minutes here.

Tim Winders: 00:59:16

Tell me some stuff that you've got happening.

Tim Winders: 00:59:19

you mentioned the conference, I think the DCX conference and some

Tim Winders: 00:59:22

other, I think you've got some faith.

Tim Winders: 00:59:24

based investing, which is fascinating.

Tim Winders: 00:59:26

Just a real quick blurb or two.

Tim Winders: 00:59:28

We may come back and visit again, but real quick blurb or two, and

Tim Winders: 00:59:30

then we'll start wrapping up.

Chris Meroff: 00:59:32

So I own a venture capital firm called Dirigo Capital,

Chris Meroff: 00:59:36

and Dirigo is on the main state flag, and it's Latin for I guide or I lead.

Chris Meroff: 00:59:42

And so what we do, our thesis for the venture capital fund, is to, I

Chris Meroff: 00:59:47

basically say it's commerce for kingdom.

Chris Meroff: 00:59:50

And so what we want to do is we want to create commerce for kingdom sake.

Chris Meroff: 00:59:54

And the way we do that is by, really offering fulfilling employment.

Chris Meroff: 00:59:59

And so 72 percent of the people on the planet hate what they

Chris Meroff: 01:00:03

do or who they do it with.

Chris Meroff: 01:00:05

So our goal is to reverse that number is to provide employment to people in

Chris Meroff: 01:00:09

a way that they can find fulfillment and really think of fulfillment is

Chris Meroff: 01:00:13

the opposite of regret so that they don't regret their time at work at

Chris Meroff: 01:00:16

the end of the day, month or year.

Chris Meroff: 01:00:18

or career, but that they have the mindset of, man, I didn't feel like

Chris Meroff: 01:00:22

I had to work a day in my life.

Chris Meroff: 01:00:23

That's really what we're trying to do through employing the community.

Chris Meroff: 01:00:26

The way we put that to work, or one of the ways we put that to work is we

Chris Meroff: 01:00:30

work with a little town up in Maine.

Chris Meroff: 01:00:32

that is the poorest town in the state.

Chris Meroff: 01:00:34

It is top 20 poorest towns in the United States.

Chris Meroff: 01:00:37

and our goal is to double the full time employment and to raise,

Chris Meroff: 01:00:41

the median income, by about 50 percent over the next 10 years.

Chris Meroff: 01:00:45

We're two years in and we've already added about 8 percent

Chris Meroff: 01:00:47

of the jobs, to that market.

Chris Meroff: 01:00:49

And so that's what the fund is really focused on.

Chris Meroff: 01:00:52

But then the fund gets all into, we've got medical hospitality.

Chris Meroff: 01:00:55

We were in a bunch of different.

Chris Meroff: 01:00:56

of actual businesses, that we're involved with, but I'm semi retired, so

Chris Meroff: 01:01:01

I don't really run that fund anymore.

Chris Meroff: 01:01:03

I really now spend all my time in this thing called DCX

Chris Meroff: 01:01:06

Community, which is really focused as a parachurch organization.

Chris Meroff: 01:01:10

In the city of Austin, where we can, teach what leadership is come alongside leaders.

Chris Meroff: 01:01:16

we're willing to accept the challenge, love them, give them community, in a

Chris Meroff: 01:01:20

way that empowers them to show up really well, in employee centric, companies,

Chris Meroff: 01:01:24

organizations, teams, you name it.

Chris Meroff: 01:01:26

So that's what we get to do now.

Chris Meroff: 01:01:27

We do that through a podcast and a networking, lunch that we

Chris Meroff: 01:01:30

put together all over the city.

Chris Meroff: 01:01:32

and then the conference DCX conference, which is coming up very soon.

Tim Winders: 01:01:36

Very cool.

Tim Winders: 01:01:37

All right.

Tim Winders: 01:01:37

I think at the time of recording, the book has not been released.

Tim Winders: 01:01:41

We're recording this in early October.

Tim Winders: 01:01:44

I don't even know what day it is, but, tell us where and when

Tim Winders: 01:01:48

the book will be available.

Tim Winders: 01:01:49

I think by the time this episode releases, it may have been available.

Tim Winders: 01:01:54

So give us that detail.

Tim Winders: 01:01:55

And then I've got one more question and then we're done.

Chris Meroff: 01:01:57

Absolutely.

Chris Meroff: 01:01:57

book is released as of October 17th, and then the audio book version will

Chris Meroff: 01:02:02

be released, soon thereafter, probably about a month later, and then best way to

Chris Meroff: 01:02:06

connect, to me or the book, is gonna be, of course, Amazon, but then chrismeroff.

Chris Meroff: 01:02:11

com.

Tim Winders: 01:02:13

Okay, very good.

Tim Winders: 01:02:14

Spell that for us so people have that on the audible part of

Chris Meroff: 01:02:17

Absolutely.

Chris Meroff: 01:02:18

It's C H R I S M E R O F F as in frank.

Chris Meroff: 01:02:23

com.

Tim Winders: 01:02:24

Perfect.

Tim Winders: 01:02:25

Thank you.

Tim Winders: 01:02:25

And I'm looking forward to checking that out.

Tim Winders: 01:02:28

And, I think it's something that a lot of us need.

Tim Winders: 01:02:31

We are Seek, Go, Create here, Chris.

Tim Winders: 01:02:34

And I'm gonna let you choose one of those words that means more

Tim Winders: 01:02:37

currently over the other two.

Tim Winders: 01:02:38

Seek, Go, Create.

Tim Winders: 01:02:39

Which one do you choose and why?

Chris Meroff: 01:02:41

Go.

Chris Meroff: 01:02:42

Go.

Chris Meroff: 01:02:42

And again, this goes back to me living in the future, and doing.

Chris Meroff: 01:02:46

I like to get my hands dirty.

Chris Meroff: 01:02:48

I like to go and be a part of what's going on.

Tim Winders: 01:02:53

Chris, thank you, man.

Tim Winders: 01:02:54

I've loved this conversation.

Tim Winders: 01:02:55

Chris Meroff has joined us.

Tim Winders: 01:02:57

Make sure you get the book, the empathy revolution that should be out by the

Tim Winders: 01:03:02

time you're listening to this and check out some of the other things he's doing.

Tim Winders: 01:03:05

I know I'm going to, in fact, I'd love to have about another one hour conversation

Tim Winders: 01:03:09

to talk about some of these other items.

Tim Winders: 01:03:11

I appreciate you listening in here.

Tim Winders: 01:03:13

I appreciate Chris being here.

Tim Winders: 01:03:15

We have new episodes every Monday here at seek, go create until next time continue

Tim Winders: 01:03:21

being all that you were created to be.