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

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

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

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

This life isn't worth living.

If I have no one I can go share.

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

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

I had wealth.

I had a business that I had built.

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

and isolated and it was the worst.

And so I have to fight toward that.

And that means I have to give up control.

Welcome back to seek, go create.

I've got a question for you.

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

that truly impacts your community?

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

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

he's written about it, literally.

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

Wall Street Journal bestselling author.

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

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

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

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

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

fosters authentic community and deeper relationships for business leaders.

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

dives deep into this very philosophy.

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

do here at Seek, Go, Create.

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

Chris, welcome to Seek, Go, Create.

Thanks for having me.

I am glad to have you here too.

And you're coming to us from Austin.

You said you bounced

Austin, Texas.

Austin, Texas.

That's right.

Yeah.

Awesome.

it's great to have you here.

Let me fire away.

My first question, we just bumped into each other.

We meet somewhere.

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

And I say, Chris, what do you do?

What's your answer?

When somebody asked you that?

All right.

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

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

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

how to answer this question.

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

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

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

the last two years to really love people.

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

me in so many ways financially.

with family, church, and other aspects of life.

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

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

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

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

we are, really diving into identity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

a job title or, something like that.

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

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

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

I get from people that think deeper.

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

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

into that deep end immediately

Yeah.

Don't bail them out.

Yeah.

But let me do that in the second question.

So what is your assignment in God's kingdom?

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

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

maybe dive in the deep end right here.

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

and it was an addiction.

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

And with my background being very similar, I usually.

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

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

which sometimes that might be what it is.

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

not the only one that has had that.

absolutely.

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

that I am addicted to tomorrow.

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

time understanding how to be present.

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

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

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

could make a service I could offer.

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

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

performed unless they did their job.

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

again being addicted to tomorrow.

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

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

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

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

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

realization that we were addicted to more.

Yeah,

Which is related, it may be slightly different,

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

grander vision of the future.

And so it took shape in different ways.

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

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

grander vision that I want to live in.

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

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

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

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

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

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

question was, how did I get out of it?

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

was able to recognize my addiction.

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

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

family business, basically asked to leave.

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

retirement thinking were not aligning.

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

We know you love that market.

It's a big growth potential.

Can you please?

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

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

And moved here in 2011 to build a business.

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

and.

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

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

to get here, to now 70 employees.

And, we went and had our Christmas party.

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

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

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

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

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

at what we've been able to pull off.

this was a special night.

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

notice.

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

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

he's just a pastor at heart.

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

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

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

I try not to feel any of those things.

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

and anger is my comfort space.

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

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

In control of the situation.

It's when I turned to anger.

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

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

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

like into some kind of, betrayal.

I had been on this journey with, a discipleship pastor

from my church of empathy.

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

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

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

you need to be a problem solver.

You need to be absolutely amazing in managing crisis.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

feel the way that you feel currently.

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

they just wanted to not feel alone.

And all I wanted to do.

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

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

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

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

And so right after Jason left.

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

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

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

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

words to say, fine, good or okay.

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

Kept probing.

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

who on this planet would you share?

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

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

I've got friends.

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

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

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

for betraying me.

Mad at God.

I've been a good boy.

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

Why are you doing this?

And I just remember getting angry at traffic and angry at

everybody as I'm driving home.

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

That because I had not been vulnerable with one human being

that nobody actually knew me.

And I didn't know me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

agreed to disagree about the next steps.

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

I appreciate you sharing that because it gives me about 12

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

some words that keep jumping out.

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

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

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

discuss here, as we move forward.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

cars and houses and all that I live in it.

I live in an rv.

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

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

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

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

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

Obviously they've never read the Bible.

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

Bible, but we won't go down that.

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

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

people that have been in family business.

We interviewed people that have consulted family businesses.

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

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

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

that was probably the beginning.

You thought things were going awesome.

Yeah.

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

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

and dad who were supposed to love us.

Yeah.

They said, Leave.

Yeah.

Tell me more.

So I, we started in 96.

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

meant or what it would look like.

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

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

my dad in technology worked for Digital Equipment Corporation.

and they wanted to start a business together.

So we started a business in 96.

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

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

role, and it had taken me all over.

the U.

S.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

then my parents come back in and it is chaos.

There are three CEOs now.

And there's this dance that was happening.

and I love my parents.

I claim parent privilege.

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

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

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

that I had intrinsic value.

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

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

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

different than mom and dad at home.

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

the greatest person on the planet.

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

And I'm like, what is happening?

Like, how is this possible?

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

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

This idea of fulfillment became about production.

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

at work, I've got to produce.

fast forward to now.

The state of Maine changes the regulations.

They step back in.

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

Again, a lie.

But the reality of I've got no.

So what do I do?

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

No.

What do I do?

I fight for value.

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

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

idea and then hit one out of the park.

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

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

I'm the middle child.

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

have no risk tolerance whatsoever.

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

And so every single board meeting is four on one.

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

to get there and they're like, Nope.

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

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

back, I'd like to go to breakfast.

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

gone to breakfast with my dad.

And I'm like, what is happening?

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

surprise that they had enough.

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

I know you're loving Texas.

You love that market.

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

just go down there and do your own thing.

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

New England, but you're freed up.

And so I walked away going, this is awesome.

I can't wait to do that.

And then it dawned on me.

They're just kicking.

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

bucking everything they're saying.

So that's how that came about.

all right, a couple things related to that.

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

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

Is that correct?

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

Good.

Okay.

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

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

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

have said to yourself, I'll show them.

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

to and they listened to me.

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

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

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

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

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

would do what I tell them to do.

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

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

just said in whatever way you want.

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

What would that look like?

So just respond to whatever you want to there.

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

no, I love it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

what's driving the behavior.

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

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

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

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

No, I don't deserve this.

this isn't right.

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

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

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

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

not going to do that to my employees.

no.

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

second.

let me ask one question related to that.

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

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

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

going to make it without me?

Exactly.

No, they had no

That was me.

when we

Oh,

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

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

and they just kept clicking right along and you know what

they did fine without me.

Yeah.

What?

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

I'm the driver of this whole thing.

You have the over importance.

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

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

to Austin was to prove two things.

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

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

to question what their value was.

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

direction on where we're going.

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

However, it didn't really come to fruition.

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

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

the hallmark of a great company would be.

And when I had my moment of crisis.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And so my metric was crushed it, proved it.

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

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

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

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

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

those 9 to 12 months of wrestling.

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

got to be alignment for employee's sake.

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

And that's where...

The business took off.

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

three years later, 21 million a year.

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

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

never, you would have never, ever thought.

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

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

you do your part and I will do mine.

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

And the trade off had to come down to this.

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

Are you willing to work toward unnecessary every single day?

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

10, 12 years later.

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

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

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

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

And I'm not.

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

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

something later that was beneficial.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

incredibly thankful.

I would not trade any of those hardships or hurts.

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

a way that gives life deep meaning.

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

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

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

it really reassures me that I'm loved.

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

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

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

It creates such a community, authentic community.

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

link that to faith?

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

can do it about on just about anything.

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

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

but tie this together with faith.

How does.

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

is it so critical that we get this?

absolutely.

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

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

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

so first of all, understanding that empathy requires vulnerability.

And so without vulnerability, without knowing how you feel,

I can't empathize with you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Without vulnerability, the truth stays hidden.

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

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

stems from lies inside our head.

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

I believe in that moment.

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

and then they get to be with me.

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

And then I invite them to influence me.

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

Let me get that out there.

Let me trust you with this.

Now I need the truth instead of these lies.

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

and we live in an echo chamber.

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

truth of who I am or who God is.

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

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

born out of a truthful thought.

It's always out of a lie.

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

exposing those lies through vulnerability.

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

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

kids, what did they see differently?

But let me ask it this way.

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

Chris version 2.

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

want to have the empathy conversation.

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

never even entered in the conversation.

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

different or you responded differently.

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

Like it's still something that

So you're not perfect.

You haven't perfected this.

Is that what you're saying?

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

That's for sure.

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

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

learn the language of emotion.

And so again, happy, sad, mad.

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

What's the difference?

I had zero emotional intelligence.

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

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

I had to learn the language of emotion.

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

but so that I could empathize.

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

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

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

emotion, my job is to mirror that emotion.

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

don't know what that means.

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

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

empathize with you if I wanted to.

I have no idea what that would feel like.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

as the excuse for my bad behavior.

But I do need to understand what happened.

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

I can go back into my filing drawer.

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

that and just relive it and feel it again.

Not understand, not sympathize, but relive it.

you mentioned earlier that you were high on the control.

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

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

very important for the way we are.

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

That's right.

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

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

could, we don't want to unpack that.

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

for those to live in the same body.

Yeah.

And so people that are wired.

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

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

I never heard it.

Let me just say it that way

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

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

So so how then are you reconciling?

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

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

have going on, how are you reconciling?

This vulnerability that, obviously leads to empathy and all.

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

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

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

How do you reconcile that?

give us some wisdom there.

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

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

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

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

but I recognize now.

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

I recognize that control, always equals loneliness.

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

I run toward authentic community.

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

says to think on things that are true.

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

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

we tend to believe the worst in everyone else.

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

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

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

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

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

This life isn't worth living.

If I have no one I can go share.

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

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

I had wealth.

I had a business that I had built.

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

and isolated and it was the worst.

And so I have to fight toward that.

And that means I have to give up control.

Which is tough.

You mentioned authentic community, and it's interesting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

but where do people like you and I.

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

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

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

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

we go to find that authentic community?

That is one part of the question.

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

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

Yeah, absolutely.

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

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

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

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

is because we were made in his image.

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

character attributes of, my God.

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

man, it was in the image of his character.

And that exists inside every human being.

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

it's not the person I want to be.

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

this planet are really stupid.

And I literally put a number to it.

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

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

that was my entrepreneur brain.

Okay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

We ask it this way.

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

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

Let's use that.

Okay.

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

There is no difference.

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

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

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

our big conference here in Austin.

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

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

talks about daring greatly.

guess what?

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

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

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

I have the determination, the willpower.

I move at the speed of light.

I have great vision.

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

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

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

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

They can be whoever they idolize.

That's our job as leaders.

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

I love Pat Lencioni and his books.

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

thing is to establish trust.

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

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

which is to now have positive conflict.

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

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

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

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

took my company to the next level.

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

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

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

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

Usually,

right.

for some reason, the Lord has had me recently really

meditating on the concept of eternity.

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

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

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

that, he's gives me grace there.

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

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

85 percent that you just brought up.

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

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

not i'm just joking You know what?

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

Yeah.

and we're gonna go what?

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

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

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

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

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

What are your thoughts on that?

Y you're absolutely right.

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

with to feel known, heard, and valued.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

is really what they're doing.

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

This is you today.

Who knows what you're going to be tomorrow?

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

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

be, who you are made to be.

Instead of what you're made to do.

And so we just try to unlock.

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

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

gift in the workplace is kindness.

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

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

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

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

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

Okay, Kyle, you're a kind leader.

That doesn't seem like that sucks.

you're a compassionate leader.

You're a patient leader.

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

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

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

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

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

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

people that we're called to leave.

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

to discover the greatness, in people.

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

a and m college students to be interns.

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

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

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

I get to be a part of that journey.

Very cool.

you brought up the word earlier comparison, which

triggered something in me.

we're social media and everything we do.

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

But I like the tagline from the empathy revolution.

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

Practical wisdom to combat organizational and social loneliness.

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

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

I'll call it digitally, to people.

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

000 on Facebook or whatever.

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

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

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

things related to the empathy revolution.

Why is that word loneliness in that tagline?

Because people shouldn't be lonely, but yet they

that's right.

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

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

it drives us, into more loneliness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and idolized for a long time now.

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

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

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

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

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

Who do you think you are?

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

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

over and it controls my actions.

And I was sharing with somebody today.

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

that I fear the most comes to truth.

If I don't overcome that fear through vulnerability.

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

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

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

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

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

who speaks out of passion.

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

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

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

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

Thank

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

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

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

sitting there thinking the same thing?

Yeah, I know.

No, it wouldn't have crossed my mind.

No, it's like that.

they do a thousand times a year for them.

It's no big deal.

Again.

These are lies that we tell ourselves.

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

We literally convert that to being true.

And it's just not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah.

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

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

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

Pretty intimidated being here.

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

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

No, I agree.

connect.

so how can we do it?

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

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

I really do want to know that.

Yeah, I think that you take opportunities, to be

transparent and real, anytime you can.

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

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

What's this?

What's happening with this?

How are you feeling?

And, really stepping into, Yeah.

being faithful to truth.

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

circles and then inner circles and levels of appropriate vulnerability

and all those things that matter.

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

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

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

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

really to step in and offer some truth.

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

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

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

says, this is an extremely lonely place.

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

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

care for each other in this whole process?

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

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

This fire, this forge of, trust and vulnerability,

you're just gonna miss out on.

that's not living, to me.

it's risking the emotional well being for truth.

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

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

because of all that I went through.

And I realized that I wanted to have conversations.

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

Also, I can't have this depth.

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

And that's part of the connection.

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

say, Hey, Chris, how are you doing?

What's going on?

it's just, I'm trying also.

to do that.

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

to be and, and all of that.

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

and tell us why that's so important.

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

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

I'm talking to you.

So empathy revolution,

Yeah, the book itself had three different iterations.

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

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

journal of my leadership journey.

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

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

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

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

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

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

problem solver, amazing in crisis.

and really convert that to, focus on loving and serving

people toward their fulfillment.

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

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

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

known, heard and valued, serving them.

Community authentic community, instead of away from it.

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

goes through other aspects of a line.

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

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

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

People have said before.

Oh, you're a thought leader.

And I'm like, absolutely not.

I'm an action leader.

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

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

invulnerability phrases like I'm sorry.

I don't know.

And I need your help.

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

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

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

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

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

Absolutely.

And my thought is that's me being empathetic.

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

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

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

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

and that's similar to me.

Mine is what can I do for you?

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

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

I'm not lovable.

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

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

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

Am I worth loving?

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

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

It just keeps re.

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

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

just on your own are not lovable.

And so you got to do something.

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

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

And that feels.

Disgusting.

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

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

Yeah, that's beautiful.

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

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

Tell me some stuff that you've got happening.

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

other, I think you've got some faith.

based investing, which is fascinating.

Just a real quick blurb or two.

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

then we'll start wrapping up.

So I own a venture capital firm called Dirigo Capital,

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

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

basically say it's commerce for kingdom.

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

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

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

do or who they do it with.

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

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

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

the end of the day, month or year.

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

I had to work a day in my life.

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

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

work with a little town up in Maine.

that is the poorest town in the state.

It is top 20 poorest towns in the United States.

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

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

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

of the jobs, to that market.

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

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

We were in a bunch of different.

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

I don't really run that fund anymore.

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

Community, which is really focused as a parachurch organization.

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

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

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

organizations, teams, you name it.

So that's what we get to do now.

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

put together all over the city.

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

Very cool.

All right.

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

We're recording this in early October.

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

the book will be available.

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

So give us that detail.

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

Absolutely.

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

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

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

com.

Okay, very good.

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

Absolutely.

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

com.

Perfect.

Thank you.

And I'm looking forward to checking that out.

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

We are Seek, Go, Create here, Chris.

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

currently over the other two.

Seek, Go, Create.

Which one do you choose and why?

Go.

Go.

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

I like to get my hands dirty.

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

Chris, thank you, man.

I've loved this conversation.

Chris Meroff has joined us.

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

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

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

to talk about some of these other items.

I appreciate you listening in here.

I appreciate Chris being here.

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

being all that you were created to be.