CEOs are role models. You fill in the gaps left by parents, schools, and the government. You need to be on you’re A-Game. How I once failed greatly as a CEO and re-invented myself to support extraordinary CEOs.

In this episode, you’ll hopefully see that I am a flawed human and that I believe more in reaching for success than in learning from failure. You’ll hear my journey from haircuts to chicken necks to CEO Coach.

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Hey listeners, CEO coach Liam Chrismer here. Welcome. This is the masterclass edition of the CEO matters podcast. This is where we take a deeper, a more curated dive into a topic or an issue. You need to know more about sometimes an interview, sometimes a conversation. Other times, I simply go deep into the weeds on a CEO matter, but I think is important. So let's get into this episode of CEO matters, the masterclass edition.

Hey, listeners, CEO coach Liam Chrismer here with a masterclass edition of CEO matters, why the CEO matters podcast is for you. I thought I'd kind of get this out of the way right up front. And it serves as a backdrop for why I'm recording this podcast series in the first place. I have tremendous respect and admiration for CEOs, business owners, and entrepreneurial founders, who put it all on the line. Those who have the courage to walk a different journey, to abandon the easy path and to as Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise proclaimed, to boldly go where no one has gone before. These are the voyages of the CEO, the ups, the downs, the twists and turns the trials and tribulations, the smiles and celebrations, the life of the CEO. The world needs you, people need you. We can no longer assume that people will raise their kids with the requisite skills, values, motivation, and even common sense. We can no longer rely on our educational system, public or private, to fill in the gaps and teach people how to succeed in life, let alone in their careers. And we can no longer rely on our government or governments to solve problems that falls on the backs of companies and on the shoulders of the CEOs that lead them. And, you know, for that matter, no one teaches you as CEO how to do your job either. Much less how to take care of yourself. So we will do that here on this podcast together. So thank you for listening. You are my tribe.

Okay, I have a confession. I was a lousy CEO. Well, at least once I was lousy. More about that later. This episode is really about why you should listen to the CEO matters podcast. First of all, your time is valuable. Second, you want information you can digest in bullet form, not drawn out in a 400 page book that takes 12 hours to read. Seriously, it took me 25 hours to listen to the audio version of Walter Isaacson Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Steve Jobs. Now I love the book. But 25 hours is a long time. And number three, I will not let you down. When I was in the eighth grade, my middle school had two libraries. One was this small, cozy little nook that only held a few volumes and had a corner with current magazines and periodicals. And every Tuesday, around one o'clock, the latest issue of US News and World Report would come in. And I would rush down to that little library during my afternoon homeroom class to read the two yellow paged section called News You Can Use gave me snippets of information I could easily understand and put into action. Everything from how to change a tire to opening a checking account to tips on improving your life. I loved it. I still remember it to this day. Now that's what the magazine edition is. It's bite sized pieces of information for CEOs. The masterclass edition, which is what this is, is a longer form format where we take a deeper dive into a particular topic, or we do an interview. So what qualifies me to produce the show? While I'm probably not qualified, with the exception of a few other SEO related podcasts, such as Reid Hoffman's masters of scale, the rest of the so called SEO podcast are well, crap. So I think I can do a better job than most of them out there. And having been a CEO for a while. I've been where you are. I've spent 40 years in the CEO, LION'S DEN in one capacity or another, either as a serial CEO, or by working closely with other CEOs, serial CEO, that sounds like I ran Froot Loops or something. Then again, you know, in retrospect, a couple of my companies were like Froot Loops or Cocoa Puffs. And from that experience, I've learned that well being self care, performance in life satisfaction, all that woowoo stuff matter. And no one is paying attention to it at the CEO level. You listeners are my passion and my life's work. So let's get on with it. Now, this is part of my story. A couple of decades back, I had wrapped up a very successful career as an investment banker, specializing in mergers and acquisitions. quite successful. I made people rich, but it was highly stressful, and I was burned out. My last deal was outrageously successful for my client. And while the deal made him very rich, it cost me our friendship. He was my mentor of 20 years. And he was also my dearest friend. But the stress of the deal, put me over the edge, and I needed a break. And that's how I ended up in the middle of Tuscany stuffing chicken necks in cooking school. Now the school was glorious. He was in the countryside. No one spoke English, and I hadn't the slightest idea where I was. The town was actually nothing more than a few buildings clustered around a sharp turn in the road. Seriously. And one of my most vivid memories is how beautiful the produce was arranged, and the tiniest of corner markets was the only place to buy food. No, there was no Whole Foods, no Costco, just this tiny little market. And it was more than enough. It was a bakery next door, and the smell of fresh bread. Baking still haunts me. Baker was also an opera singer who came to the school when he bring in serenaded us with opera over dinner that we had prepared and enjoyed over a four hour feast that went well into the evening with copious amounts of wine. And I'll never forget that night. I was happy then. I like the memory of who I was. When I returned, I needed something to do. It was never my intention to be a chef. I simply needed a break. The problem was that the break came too late. I was too far over the edge. And I didn't know it. I didn't know it then. And I wouldn't realize it until 20 years later.

My success there because of my success as an investment banker. My SEO clients hung on my every word. They tolerated my arrogance. They put up with my oversized ego. It didn't bother them and they just expected when I was an hour or two hours late for a meeting. I thought I was invincible. And I thought I was oh so smart. In 2004, I wanted to be the person that sat at the end of the table rather than being the first officer of the trusted advisor. So I bought a barbering company called gentleman's quarters that I later named GQ barber lounge. Now I'm not a barber never had any desire to be a barber. But this was a high end barber shop with two locations. He was ahead of its time it was upscale. And I thought there were so many ways that I could grow and franchise and take this company national. Nothing like it had gone before. And I was a customer and I loved getting my hair cut there. And so that reminds me of the old TV ads by Victor Cayambe. Where he said he loved the Remington razor so much he bought the company. In my case, that's exactly what I did. I didn't buy Remington razor, I bought gentleman's quarters. So I bought this barbering company with dreams of turning it into a remarkable company. And I did. We redefined the industry. We were the cat's meow. clients loved us. We own the market. We had some of the best talent was my passion, my mistress my life. But I was an arrogant or raging asshole and I had no idea. And despite my intelligence, my obsessive commitment and my insatiable work ethic, my business slowly eroded until one day it crashed and burned overnight. Not because it wasn't a great business. It was It failed because I failed. I failed the business. I failed my employees I failed myself. I've been sleepwalking and completely out of touch with my business with The people in my life and most importantly, I was out of touch with myself. I didn't take care of myself, I didn't pay attention to wellness and diet and exercise, I hadn't seen the inside of a gym in 10 years, I lived a block away, I think there were some days when I probably didn't get more than 2000 steps. When I lost that business, I lost everything. I lost my home, my investments, my income, my friends, and my identity. And for the next three years, I wandered, lost, confused, what the hell happened? Who was I? What am I going to do? Then, Chip Conley stepped in and saved my life. Chip wrote a book called wisdom at work. Chip is the guy that had the joy to vive boutique hotel chain in San Francisco, who reached a crisis of his own, and sold his hotel chain at the bottom of the market. And he's written a number of books. But he went on to write this book wisdom at work. And it's a book about finding relevance in the later years. And he went on to found something called the modern elder Academy. And I went through that, and I'm still involved with it. And in the modern elder Academy, I learned about the process of transitions in life. And I learned that wisdom is taught, not shared. Moreover, I learned that my purpose in life now is to help CEOs understand and prioritize their own well being and their own self care before it's too late, like it was for me. Now, I'll be honest with you, it's reasonably painful to study CEOs, and their well being and realize how badly I screwed things up. The last time I ran a company. Now I didn't always, I wasn't always a lousy CEO, just probably for the last five years in that company. And now to discover the mistakes to avoid, which I didn't, to uncover success habits to follow, which I didn't, to nudge people to wake up from their sleepwalking slumber from which I didn't still, it hurts the righteous indignation that I had the the things I wish now that I could retrieve the stakes. So mistakes, you know, I like to tell people a little lie that that will actually two lies that I'm that I'm in the book of Guinness Book of World Records twice, one for making the largest number of mistakes while running a company. And the second entry for repeating the largest number of mistakes. Okay, enough about failure.

What I wanted to do is to show you that I'm human, I've been successful, I've done some things, right. But I've also done some things wrong. And I had to come to grips with myself, I had to come to grips with not knowing who the hell I was. And I want to work with CEOs to help them take care of themselves. So they can lead their companies better. And they can have remarkable lives, and they can show up and be fully awake and fully present. So we know that there are greater lessons and failing than succeeding. But I'm certainly not an advocate for failing forward. I remember the Peter Principle that we rise to our level of incompetence. Well, for me, there's not a lot of wisdom in that. And then there's the idea that we're not failing frequently enough, we're not pushing the envelope hard enough. Well, I can't imagine selling that strategy to the flying Linda's earlier in the last century that would walk on tight ropes, across halls and tall buildings, you know, push it to the limit till you fail, they didn't get another chance. And often when we're running companies, we don't get another chance. Rather, I'm an advocate for success, personally, and professionally, they go hand in hand. We set our intentions about what we're going to do. And then we go and we make it happen. The roller coaster goes up and the roller coaster comes down. And we have to know what track we're on. And we explore experience the exhilaration, and the heartbreak when things aren't going so well. You know, here's the secret. society looks at the outward appearance of our success and the Lord our accomplishments. They don't see the mess underneath the surface. Only the beautiful swan gliding across the placid lake. It looks so easy and so effortless. They don't see the turbulence underneath. Sometimes, as with me, we don't even see it ourselves. We succeed internally. First, we put our oxygen mask on first. We take care of ourselves. First. We determine our purpose, our values and our goals first. That's not selfish. It's simply smart. Because if you're not doing well As an individual as a CEO, you're not going to do well in running your company. Our people expect us to be on our a game. Our family expects us to be on our a game. And come on, why shouldn't we expect ourselves to be on our a game? And in these podcast, different episodes, you're going to hear from other CEOs that did it right and wrong, and hopefully we can learn from each other. Thanks for listening. Okay, that's a wrap.