Today's discourse centers on the remarkable journey of Chris Capuano, a testament to the notion that one's origins do not dictate one's destiny. Chris, who has traversed a diverse array of vocations—from Uber driver to steam pipe fitter—has emerged as a successful entrepreneur, with his enterprise processing over one billion dollars in payments. His narrative is not merely one of vocational achievement; it encapsulates themes of resilience and transformation, particularly as he shares the profound insights detailed in his latest publication, "No Ceiling, No Excuses." This book serves as a compelling narrative that articulates the significance of accountability, perseverance, and the relentless pursuit of purpose in the face of adversity. Join us as we delve into the pivotal lessons gleaned from Chris's life and the strategies he advocates for overcoming self-imposed limitations.

In this moving episode, Chris Capuano shares his remarkable journey from a tumultuous past filled with addiction and chaos to achieving notable entrepreneurial success. Hosted by Keith Haney, the conversation uncovers the core principles that have guided Chris throughout his life, culminating in the release of his book 'No Ceiling, Nowork not only details his experiences but also acts as a motivational blueprint for those striving to overcome their own challenges. Chris's story serves as a powerful reminder that one's beginnings do not define their potential, and through perseverance and accountability, anyone can carve a path to success. Excuses.' This

The discussion highlights several key themes, including the importance of grit and personal accountability. Chris explains that the 'no ceiling' in his book's title represents the lack of barriers to growth and achievement, while 'no excuses' emphasizes the importance of taking responsibility for one’s circumstances and results. He introduces his Hustle framework, which covers strategies for success in both business and life. Throughout the episode, Chris shares powerful stories, including lessons learned from the tragic loss of an employee, which deepened his understanding of empathy and the significance of supportive leadership.

Listeners are encouraged to reflect on their own journeys and the ceilings they may have set for themselves. Chris advocates taking action, even when faced with, emphasizing that imperfect action is much better than doing nothing. The episode serves as a call to aspiring entrepreneurs to embrace their unique stories, learn from their struggles, and pursue their dreams with relentless determination. Chris’s ultimate goal is to leave a legacy that touches others, to help them realize their full potential, and to make a meaningful difference in the world.

Takeaways:

1. The podcast introduces Chris Capuano, a successful entrepreneur who overcame a chaotic childhood marked by addiction to achieve remarkable success in business.
2. Chris emphasizes the importance of taking responsibility for one's actions and outcomes to foster personal growth and achievement.
3. His book, 'No Ceiling, No Excuses,' serves as a memoir, blueprint, and workbook, offering insights into resilience and transformation.
4. Listeners are encouraged to take imperfect action rather than succumb to perfection paralysis when pursuing their entrepreneurial aspirations.
5. The Hustle framework presented in the podcast outlines essential principles for achieving success and generating passive income.
6. Chris shares a profound moment in his life that highlights the necessity of empathy and understanding the struggles of others in both personal and professional contexts.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. noceilingnoexcuses

Welcome to Becoming Bridge Builders, the podcast where we explore stories of resilience, transformation, and purpose.

I am your host, Keith Haney.

Today's guest is living proof that where you can start doesn't define where you finish.

Chris Capuano has been a busy boy, Uber driver, steam pipe fitter, and now a successful entrepreneur whose business has processed over 1 billion in payments.

Raised in chaos and surrounded by addiction, Chris didn't just beat the odds, he flipped them.

His new book, no Ceiling, no Excuses, is a raw, powerful message about grit, ownership, and building a life of impact.

Let's dive into his journey and the lessons he's learned along the way.

Welcome, Chris, to the podcast.

How you doing today?

Hey, great.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me on.

I appreciate it.

Looking forward to the conversation.

So I'm going to ask you my favorite question.

What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

The best piece of advice that I ever received.

That's a.

That's a.

That's a really good question, man.

Kicked it off right today, huh?

We jump right into it, man.

Yeah, I mean, honestly, I would say.

I. I would say don't.

You gotta stop caring so much about what everyone else thinks about you.

Don't worry about how others perceive you and just do what your gut is telling you to do and what you believe in.

Good.

I like that.

So let's dive into your book.

I'm dying to get into this book.

So your book is titled no ceiling, no excuses.

Why does that.

What does that phrase mean to you personally?

Yeah.

So no ceiling, no excuses.

It.

It actually means.

It means.

It means kind of two different things.

Right?

Because you have the no ceiling part of it.

And the no ceiling is like the financial ceiling, the mental ceiling, whatever ceiling is currently being imposed on you in one way or the other.

And then the no excuses part is owning every single outcome as your own and taking responsibility and taking accountability for actions.

Now everyone's like, oh, you can't control everything.

That's true.

But you could take accountability for everything.

And when you start owning everything that happens, you're going to start excelling and start leveling up in whatever business or industry or thing that you're focusing in on your current.

Your current state of mind and life and journey.

And it's just going to help you get to where you want to go.

You know, if people are screwing up, I like to think, hey, what can I do better to help prevent that from happening again?

Whether it's one of my employees or a friend or whatever you know, so if you shift the mindset into thinking that everything is your fault, you start, you know, taking more accountability and getting to places where you want to go faster.

I love that.

So your book, for those who don't know, is part memoir, part blueprint, part workbook.

You offer raw, honest look at into your journey, your chaotic upbringing marked by addiction, instability to becoming a founder of a multi million dollar business as what inspired you to put all of that out there in a book to share with the world.

You.

Yeah, so it's funny, growing up, you don't realize how, I guess people care about your story until you kind of tell people and they're like, wait, that really happened to you?

And it's like, yeah, that really happened to me.

And it's like.

And then you, you, you know, you tell other people and you get the same reaction.

So then it's like, shoot, maybe I should consider putting this down on, on paper, you know, and there's a lot of highs and a lot of lows with owning a business as well, so I wanted to kind of share those stories.

And I've tried every other job under the sun, from Uber driver to bus boy to, you know, to power washer to Union Steam Fitter to dropshipper to ebayer to waiter to busboy, everything.

Like, everything, everything, everything.

And then I realized that you got to figure out how to stop trading your time for money.

Robert, I believe his last name is pronounced Kawasaki, but I'm probably butchering it from rich dad, poor dad.

You know, he always talks about you got to job stands for just over broke.

So you got to own whatever business you're in.

And, you know, when you could figure out how to build systems and scale systems, you could stop trading your time for money and create generational, you know, passive income that gets passed down.

And, and you know, it's, it's tricky, man.

It's not easy and every day is going to be a struggle.

But if you're, you know, if you're persistent and you know, you keep putting the work in and you keep doing the reps, eventually you're going to get where you want to go.

And I just hope to inspire even just one person from my book.

So I, I don't know if you gave the website, but it's www.no ceiling, no excuses.com and you can pick up, I think the audiobook or whatever, the digital copy for like 5 or 10 bucks, and then the actual paperback is 20.

If you don't like it, shoot me a message.

I promise I'll refund you.

No one's asked for a refund yet, so that's impressive.

So let's talk about a little bit about your journey.

You talk about turning pain into purpose.

Can you share a moment where that transformation really clicked in for you?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So there's been a lot of moments.

It's hard to really kind of pinpoint one specific moment and be like, oh, that's what kind of shifted everything.

But, I mean, there's.

It's hard.

I mean, I have one specific chapter that I do reflect on in the book, and it's all about how we hired an employee, and we became really close with the employee, and out of nowhere, he ended up actually overdosing, you know, and it just threw us for a loop, and, and it just taught me that you just never know what someone else is going through in their life.

And you have to have more humility, and you have to have empathy, and you have to, you know, assume that just because everyone is happy on the outside, it doesn't mean that everything is okay on the inside.

So that was a super hard moment for me.

Yeah.

If anyone picks up my book, they could, they could read that story.

And, you know, obviously for, you know, privacy reasons and everything, I, I, I change his name.

But in the book, he's referred to as Atlas.

And he became basically like a brother to me.

I love this guy.

We took him out to dinner the night before and had an amazing time, just as a thank you for all the work he was doing.

And then, you know, a couple days goes by, and I end up finding out he's.

He's gone.

And it just.

It just changes everything.

And, you know, I lost my dad unexpectedly about three years ago, and that was really hard.

And, you know, it's just.

It's just life, like I said, has a lot of highs and lows, but it's all about, you know, are you going to use the lows as your fuel or is you.

Or are you going to use it as your crutch and as an excuse?

So I like to, you know, own it.

I've had a pretty challenging life up into this point, and every day is still a challenge.

So I like to use the negativity as positivity.

And getting in that mindset of eating the worm in the morning and getting the hard part of your day done in the first hour that you wake up is something that I think helps a lot as well.

So let's talk about the Hustle framework.

Tell us what that is.

So the Hustle framework is the core of what the book is based on.

Each letter stands for something without giving too much away.

I'll just throw a couple out there.

The E is going to stand for earn while you sleep.

And that's when I dive into the whole, hey, you really need to figure out how to make income without treating your time.

And, and you know, passive income is the way to do that.

Residual income is the way to do that, you know, and like, I don't know what else S will stand for sell yourself.

So no matter what business or industry you're in, you're essentially in sales, whether you want to admit it or not.

So you have to be good at selling yourself.

The product actually comes second.

So as long as you could talk and have a genuine connection with people, you're going to be successful in no matter what you do.

So, so you talk about that.

There's no excuses, and no excuses is the ceiling we put upon ourselves.

And you have this quote in your book, there is no ceiling, only the one you choose to live under.

So tell us how you apply that into the work that you do in the workbook part of your book.

So, I mean, look, I talk about how I went from having a six figure stable job, you know, I was making 150 grand a year.

I had vacation, benefits, pension, I had everything anyone could ever want.

I talk about how I moved from that mindset of going from that comfortable, secure spot to switching and basically starting at ground zero and making that shift, knowing that there's no ceiling and you just have to basically push past all your self imposed limits.

That's, that's going to be the key to success.

What gave you the courage to make such a bold move?

I mean, to do that, to give up that security.

What, what motivates you to say, okay, I gotta take this leap right now and take this chance?

Yeah.

So I live in New York and I came up with what's called reverse math.

And I realized that I want to buy a house.

And if you just do reverse math, which is basically like, okay, you want to buy a house, how much is a house?

500 grand.

How much is your mortgage going to be?

Mortgage is going to be five grand a month, you know, after taxes and interest and everything like that.

Okay.

And then you have to pay for the bills, you have to pay for food.

So if you start doing the reverse math, you realize pretty quickly that 150 grand a year is not going to be enough if you actually want to own your own house.

So I'm like, okay, well, I also didn't like the fact that I could work my butt off and still get paid the same amount of money as the guy next to me.

So I didn't think that that was fair either.

Wow, that's.

That's pretty true when you think about it.

You hear about those stories about, you know, know, living in places like.

Like New York, and no matter, you could be the.

The working.

Working poor.

So you kind of describing a little bit of what you went through.

Absolutely.

So your business process over $1 billion in payments.

What are some of the biggest challenges you ran into scaling your business up to that level?

You know, every day is a challenge, but it's just.

It's tricky, man.

It's like, you know, there's a.

You're dealing with small business owners who have a million things going on, and timing is everything, and getting in front of them and, you know, figuring out the different pain points for every business is.

Is something that, you know, is super important.

And then realizing that, you know, you got to build a good team around you, and you have.

You got to have good people to help support everything.

So that, that's, you know, the most important things.

It doesn't matter, you know, who's going to be mayor.

It doesn't matter who's president.

It doesn't matter that, you know, you're.

You just got in a fight with your brother.

None of that stuff matters.

When you're growing a business, you have to look past all that.

You know, that's very true, because you got a.

You got a big election coming up there in New York.

I saw.

Yeah.

Should be an interesting one.

So it could be very interesting.

I'm curious, as you, as a small business person living in a place like New York, as you listen to other people on this podcast, you may be looking to do what you're doing to start a business, to find that unique place that they're going to work in.

What advice do you have for young entrepreneurs?

Yeah, take action.

No matter what the heck you're thinking of doing, everyone just gets stuck in perfection paralysis, and then they end up never actually doing anything because they, they.

They plan too much and they.

They're worried about failing and they're worried about screwing up.

I just say get out there and do it.

Imperfect action trumps no action 100% of the time.

So no matter what the heck you're doing, just do it.

Don't be afraid to make mistakes and enjoy the ride.

So, Chris, we've talked a little bit about your Book kind of break down the way you laid out your book so that people get a good sense of how the book flows for us.

I'd say expect it like kind of like a three books in one.

The first book, the first part of the book talks about, you know, the childhood that I had and growing up with, you know, an alcoholic mother and basically a crackhead stepfather and just crazy, horrible childhood.

But there were a lot of glimmers, as I call them.

A lot of highs and a lot of lows.

It's basically a roller coaster.

You know, divorce, drugs and this and that and death and craziness going on.

That's the first third of the book.

If you're an evil person, you're gonna like that part.

The best second third of the book is all the different jobs I had along the way.

You know, talking about how I feel like a lot of people will relate to trying to be a waiter or a busboy or just trying to figure things out until they kind of find something that, that they really like and something that they want to stick with.

And then the third part of the book is basically the job that I have now.

The business that, you know, merchant services and point of sale systems and trying to help small business out, save money, give them better technology and better support along the way.

Great.

So I love to ask my guests this question.

Chris, as you think about all the things you've done in life, what do you want your legacy to be?

Legacy?

That's why I wrote a book, man.

I'm like, I don't have kids.

I'm like, I'm like, what can I leave behind that maybe when I'm gone, people will kind of remember me by?

I'm like, other than my Facebook page, I'm like, yeah, let's try the, you know, the, the book is.

Is probably going to be a legacy.

And I'm building a house right now, so maybe that'll get left to one of my, you know, nieces or nephews or something.

Who knows, right?

So on the show this year, Chris, we're doing something surprise question.

So pick a number between one and six for your surprise question.

Okay, let's do four.

All right, four.

Cool.

I like this.

Who would you most want to sit next to on a 10 hour flight?

And why?

It's an airplane.

Why?

You know, I was just at a conference the other day with all the sharks from Shark Tank, and right now I. I'm diving more and more into like, Kevin O', Leary, Mr.

Wonderful.

I think he'd be a really cool dude for 10 hours to just ping ideas off of.

And I love the way his brain works and I love how raw he is and how he doesn't give a crap about what anyone else thinks and how successful he is.

So I'm going to go with Kevin o'.

Leary.

I love that.

Well, Chris, this has been a great conversation.

Where can people again find your book and connect with you on social media?

Yeah, Instagram, no Ceiling, no Excuses.

And then just go to my website, www.no ceiling no excuses.com and you could message me on there, email me, follow me and just kind of, you know, I guess if you're somewhat interested, pick up a copy of the book for 20 bucks.

Right.

Well, Chris, thank you for sharing your story, your powerful message behind no Ceiling, no Excuses.

Your journey is one of grit and vision and belief that you can break through any barrier for our listeners.

You can grab a copy of no Ceiling, no Excuses and learn more about Chris his work by visiting his website and following him on social media.

Until next time, keep building bridges, keep chasing purpose, and remember, there's no ceiling on what you can become.

Chris, again, thanks so much for taking the time to share your story and leaving behind the legacy of this book for us to learn more about resilience and grit.

Yeah, this was an awesome interview.

I really appreciate it.

Keith, thanks for having me on.

Thank you.