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Blackout Punch, with Chris Hunter (Entrepreneurship, Food and Beverage, Business, Leadership) · The Action Catalyst

• 0:52
  Adam Outland: Today's guest is Chris Hunter, the founder of
• 0:55
  several successful beverage brands, including Four Loko and
• 0:59
  Not Your Father's Root Beer. His new memoir, Blackout Punch: An
• 1:03
  Entrepreneurs Journey From Chaos to Clarity, tells the story. How
• 1:08
  are you? Good to meet ya.
• 1:10
  Chris Hunter: Good to meet you as well.
• 1:11
  Adam Outland: You're hailing from Miami right now. But where
• 1:15
  did where did you grow up?
• 1:17
  Chris Hunter: Yeah, good suspicion than I didn't
• 1:19
  originally grew up in Miami. I grew up in Youngstown, Ohio.
• 1:23
  Historically, if you look back generations of my family, it's
• 1:26
  probably that there were a lot of Italian and Irish immigrants
• 1:29
  that were working in the steel mills. You know, Youngstown was
• 1:32
  once a booming metropolis for at a time top 10 city. Once the
• 1:36
  steel mills closed, and the and the auto manufacturers started
• 1:40
  shuttering this the city just got decimated. So I remember
• 1:44
  growing up and my great grandmother had these pictures
• 1:46
  of like Youngstown as this hotspot, right downtown was
• 1:50
  thriving, people were all over. And I'm like, Where is this
• 1:53
  place? Because I didn't know any of that.
• 1:55
  Adam Outland: Yeah, you know, I can't imagine we're going to
• 1:58
  talk about like your whole, successful commercial
• 2:01
  enterprises. But I'm always kind of curious. Usually, you know, a
• 2:06
  high schooler, or even a young recent graduate isn't
• 2:09
  necessarily thinking like, Man, I'm going to start all these
• 2:12
  amazing beverage companies. I gotta, I got to know what were
• 2:14
  you on the track to do? Or what were you thinking you were going
• 2:18
  to do?
• 2:20
  Chris Hunter: I don't know that I had a big, aspirational kind
• 2:24
  of career path. Except for that I was like, I want to be rich.
• 2:28
  And growing up in a lower middle class family, like you recognize
• 2:32
  the restraints that money can put on a on a family. And I was
• 2:36
  fortunate that I got into a couple classes that were they
• 2:39
  call them advanced classes, they were really just opportunities
• 2:41
  to think outside the box, I got to do an internship when I was
• 2:44
  in like fifth grade, like all these unique things. And I feel
• 2:48
  like it opened my eyes to like, what I want to do isn't here, or
• 2:52
  at least isn't present in my life. I don't know what it is
• 2:54
  just gonna be something different. That coupled with the
• 2:57
  fact that I always had this entrepreneurial spirit. It's
• 3:00
  kind of like I could figure this out, I'll find unique ways to
• 3:02
  make money that excite me, propelled me into what I ended
• 3:06
  up doing. I could not have mapped out my career path,
• 3:09
  though. What was the first business venture for you? Yeah,
• 3:12
  I mean, you can go way, way back and say the first business
• 3:15
  venture was, you know, being a first grader coloring pictures
• 3:18
  out of a coloring book and selling them door to door. I did
• 3:21
  that right. But but really more and there's many of those
• 3:24
  examples along the way. But maybe more officially was in
• 3:28
  college, there were three businesses that I started. One
• 3:32
  was never really structured as a business, but it was actually
• 3:34
  the largest. And it was cold fusion projects, which ended up
• 3:37
  being my, the parent company of for logo. And it was a it was a
• 3:41
  promotions business. So I would do nightlife promotions, mainly
• 3:45
  in Columbus, but in other cities across the country. It paid
• 3:48
  really well. It was a heck of a job for a college student, you
• 3:52
  know, bring people together, especially out of the bar and
• 3:55
  nightclub. And I met a lot of people. The other business I
• 3:58
  started, which was actually with one of my fusion projects,
• 4:01
  partners was called Wild havens. And the idea was that we were
• 4:05
  going to give people access to unique and exclusive events in
• 4:11
  different cities or locations around the world. And we put a
• 4:14
  little effort into them, probably lasted about a year,
• 4:17
  and then we shut that down. And then the third was, was a
• 4:20
  magazine. We started in Columbus with some different partners. It
• 4:23
  was centered around four main aspects of the city. It was
• 4:27
  entertainment, it was personality, I forget the other
• 4:29
  two, but you get the idea. It was a free publication. That's
• 4:33
  really where I started, like learning a little more about
• 4:35
  business. And then then I moved to Chicago was just trying to
• 4:38
  figure out how to pay my bills and ultimately took a job and
• 4:41
  then started fusion projects.
• 4:43
  Adam Outland: What did you learn in the events business about
• 4:46
  what you liked and didn't like?
• 4:48
  Chris Hunter: I loved working with people, right? I loved
• 4:50
  interacting with people. I'm a social guy by nature. I felt
• 4:53
  like it was really eye opening the impact of relationships,
• 4:57
  right how much they matter and how many doors they can open.
• 5:00
  One of the things I didn't like was for the future. You know, it
• 5:04
  was obviously young and single at that time. But that's a very
• 5:07
  grueling career path nights and weekends. And, and so I wasn't
• 5:11
  sure that that was the right right path for me. At the time,
• 5:14
  I probably wouldn't have said that. But looking back, that was
• 5:17
  a good pivot.
• 5:19
  Adam Outland: The best thing ever!
• 5:20
  Chris Hunter: It was amazing. Yeah, so go to Chicago and I
• 5:23
  refuse to get a nine to five type gig I ignorantly felt like
• 5:27
  my experience was more than that, right, I wasn't going to
• 5:31
  take some entry level corporate job. And that was fine. In
• 5:34
  theory until a couple months in, I had credit card debt racked up
• 5:38
  and is like I got to figure out a way to pay bills. And you
• 5:41
  know, what really tipped tip, the scale was there was one day
• 5:43
  where I could not pay rent, and my now wife, girlfriend at the
• 5:47
  time, cut me a check to cover rent. And I was like, Man, I
• 5:51
  really got to do something. Now, while though I had met these
• 5:55
  guys who were doing this hail damage gig, basically, like
• 6:00
  storm chasing, they'd go to neighborhoods that were
• 6:02
  impacted, and they would, you know, facilitate the roof
• 6:06
  repairs that are all making a ton of money. It's like, I'm
• 6:09
  going to take this job. And you know, you didn't need any
• 6:11
  qualifications. The funny thing, the ironic thing of that is I'm
• 6:14
  afraid of heights. So I'm climbing on roofs. But you know,
• 6:19
  necessity or desperation, whatever you want to call it
• 6:21
  will make you do some interesting things. And that was
• 6:24
  one of them. And I never lost the contest. I'd never lost the
• 6:27
  contract because I needed the money. But I didn't want to do
• 6:30
  that for long. Yeah, from my promotions career, I had
• 6:34
  collected a lot of contacts and business cards. One of them was
• 6:38
  a guy that was involved in a startup vodka company. And long
• 6:41
  story short, I bugged him literally email and call every
• 6:45
  day. And so he gave me a job. And that's what got me into
• 6:48
  beverages.
• 6:49
  Adam Outland: Wow. So you had this persistence.
• 6:52
  Chris Hunter: To give you and idea how aggressive or desperate
• 6:56
  interchange whatever word you want, I was at that time, there
• 7:00
  was this startup, there was this other startup vodka company that
• 7:03
  was very popular in Chicago was called effing vodka, they ended
• 7:06
  up becoming a pretty big brand. And I liked that brand. And I
• 7:09
  wanted to work for them. And I did the same thing with them. So
• 7:13
  much. So that I said, If I don't hear back from you, I will
• 7:16
  assume an interview on Tuesday at 10 o'clock. And I showed up
• 7:21
  at there, I never heard back from him. And I showed up their
• 7:23
  office. And no one was there, I left my resume on the desk and
• 7:27
  walked out. But like, that's how aggressive I was because I gotta
• 7:31
  eat, man, I gotta pay the bills.
• 7:33
  Adam Outland: That's amazing. It's who was that then the
• 7:35
  person that you ended up with in terms of working on this on for
• 7:39
  a logo or no?
• 7:40
  Chris Hunter: So I started selling vodka for this company.
• 7:44
  And they put me in quite possibly the most difficult
• 7:47
  situation that you can have, which is on premise, which is
• 7:49
  bars and nightclubs and restaurants in Chicago. And the
• 7:53
  reason it's the most difficult situations, because every brand
• 7:57
  is spending their money there that have big budgets, right.
• 8:01
  And so I was going in these places with no budgets and no
• 8:03
  experience, just ask him, you know, to believe my story or to
• 8:07
  believe in me and put the product in their in their
• 8:09
  stores. I did that for a couple months. Then he started
• 8:13
  expanding my responsibilities. So I managed off premise, which
• 8:16
  is stores, grocery stores, liquor stores, whatever may be
• 8:20
  in Illinois, and then they expanded me to five states. At
• 8:23
  that point, I realized that I understood at least enough the
• 8:28
  distribution game, you know, in alcohol, it's a three tier
• 8:31
  system. So you have the supplier, which is the creator
• 8:33
  of the product, you have the distributor, which takes the
• 8:36
  product to the bars of the store, and then you have this
• 8:38
  retail location. And so I understood that I met enough
• 8:41
  people, and I was selling a lot of the vodka that was being
• 8:46
  mixed in with Red Bull. I was 25. I was out also drinking a
• 8:50
  lot of vodka mixed in Red Bull. And so I said, you know, maybe
• 8:53
  we should try to do this as a combination ready to drink
• 8:57
  product. And so I called my old college buddy. He's the guy that
• 9:00
  I had tried to start wild havens with. And I said, Hey, I'm
• 9:03
  thinking to start in this thing. And he's like, yeah, man, he was
• 9:06
  part time in it a couple months in we realized neither of us
• 9:09
  really wanted to do the financial modeling and DAX and I
• 9:12
  had a buddy who worked for ABN AMRO, I called him and I said,
• 9:14
  Hey, what do you think? Yeah, man, and that's how we got
• 9:17
  started. Our investors were friends and family. You know,
• 9:22
  where I started being that I'm from Youngstown, blue collar,
• 9:25
  lower middle class there, there was no money from friends and
• 9:28
  family for me. Fortunately, my partner's both went to their
• 9:31
  families, and they put in small amounts of money in retrospect
• 9:34
  for the size the company became, but that was our investment. We
• 9:38
  didn't have the experience or the connections to really go
• 9:41
  raise traditional funding, and so we bootstrapped it and and
• 9:45
  that looking back luckily, we did because I think that had we
• 9:50
  had more money in the early days, we would have just spent
• 9:53
  more money on all the wrong things.
• 9:56
  Adam Outland: What were some of the walls and challenges that
• 9:58
  you didn't expect in and growing this thing?
• 10:01
  Chris Hunter: Well, everyone had told me at the beginning, like,
• 10:03
  make sure you understand the exit. How do you guys separate
• 10:07
  in the future? And being naive 25 year olds, I think we just
• 10:11
  blew past that, hey, we're friends, who cares, it'll all
• 10:15
  work out. And quite frankly, like, I assumed I was kind of
• 10:19
  the connection point, right, I brought the two guys together, I
• 10:22
  assumed I would always kind of be in the majority with one of
• 10:25
  them. And it wasn't really a big deal. And so we just set up
• 10:28
  Legal Zoom documents that were very, like, basic. And it was
• 10:32
  kind of like majority rules. And in retrospect, you know, I
• 10:35
  learned that we should spend more time thinking that through
• 10:39
  we were not thinking big picture long term, things change, people
• 10:43
  change, lives change. I mean, mine Sure did, right. I was 25.
• 10:47
  At that time, in my 30s, I got married, I have three kids now,
• 10:50
  like life was very different. And that ended up coming back to
• 10:53
  bite me. So it was kinda like, let's just divide and conquer,
• 10:56
  right? Let's not, I have a different mentality than you.
• 10:59
  And instead of aligning or hashing through that, what do
• 11:02
  you do what you want your world and I'll do what I want my
• 11:05
  world. And we brought in the business coach when the company
• 11:08
  got bigger, and he identified that that was a significant
• 11:12
  threat to the business quickly, he said, You guys have a three
• 11:15
  headed monster with no real hierarchy. And if you can't
• 11:18
  figure this out, you're gonna sink the business, and it was
• 11:20
  too big for for us to sink at that time.
• 11:22
  Adam Outland: We're talking you grow into 10 million, 50 million
• 11:25
  100 million in revenue, different challenges at
• 11:27
  different points, right? Can you can you give a few examples of
• 11:30
  like, what was challenging about getting to 10 million versus
• 11:34
  what it was like going to 100?
• 11:36
  Chris Hunter: Yeah, it's all challenging, like you said, but
• 11:38
  it's just in different ways. And I think for me, that early stage
• 11:42
  of 1 million to 10 million is is challenging, but it's a lot of
• 11:45
  fun, because you're celebrating a lot of wins, often. Right?
• 11:48
  And, and you're trying new things, and you're able to be
• 11:53
  scrappy, and, and, and atypical in your approach and things. But
• 11:58
  it's difficult, right? Because it really matters. I mean, we
• 12:01
  were at Fusion, we were almost out of business for the first
• 12:05
  two years, consistently, right? month over month, there were
• 12:07
  times where we didn't take salaries. And so those are
• 12:10
  different challenges than when we went into hyper growth when
• 12:14
  we grew from eight to 100, and 150. Plus, in two years, like,
• 12:19
  those are different challenges. Those challenges are like, how
• 12:22
  do you keep your materials coming in? How do you keep
• 12:25
  inventory? How do you scale fast enough to support this kind of
• 12:29
  growth, right, and then, and then accoya, I would say, it was
• 12:33
  a little, it's a, it's been a little bit different as we went
• 12:36
  through that phase of going from 10 to 50. Plus, you're really
• 12:41
  putting in more infrastructure, and more systems. And to be
• 12:46
  quite honest, that's not what I love to do. And so it was really
• 12:50
  important for me to have a team that did love to do that. And I
• 12:53
  still gets funny, I still get frustrated with some of the
• 12:56
  systems that are in place. Like, who cares? Just, you know,
• 13:00
  whatever. And they're like, No, this is the process. Can you
• 13:02
  please follow us so they have to hold me accountable?
• 13:04
  Adam Outland: Do you feel like your gift is like you're the
• 13:07
  resident Rainmaker, like bringing in connections and
• 13:10
  relationships?
• 13:11
  Chris Hunter: Yeah, I think every founder and CEO are gonna
• 13:13
  have a different skill set. And that's something I didn't
• 13:15
  realize, as a kid, I thought, like the the role of founder or
• 13:19
  CEO was very well defined. It's not right. And so understanding
• 13:23
  where I add the most value has been really important to me. And
• 13:26
  it's definitely that it's, I am a salesperson, I enjoy marketing
• 13:31
  and finding unique ways to build awareness. And then I enjoy
• 13:34
  working on strategic partnerships and high level
• 13:36
  relationships. And so, like, where that comes into play, and
• 13:40
  is the most effective for the company, would be the example
• 13:44
  would be Koya. With Starbucks, you know, I knew that Koya was a
• 13:47
  fit for Starbucks, I knew it's somewhere that we wanted that
• 13:50
  product to be distributed since day one. So eight years ago, I
• 13:54
  started working on how do we get into Starbucks. And we had
• 13:58
  plenty of starts and stops along the way, I never gave that up.
• 14:01
  As to one of our sales team, I said, this is my account that
• 14:05
  I'm going to figure out. And it was definitely not a linear
• 14:08
  path. But I was able to strike a strategic partnership with
• 14:11
  Starbucks, and koi is now distributed in Starbucks
• 14:14
  nationwide. Those are the kinds of things that one excite me and
• 14:18
  two, I feel like I can do and maybe you can't hire others to
• 14:21
  do on the team. I love that. Look, there are in sales, there
• 14:26
  are hunters and there are gatherers, the way we think
• 14:28
  about it right in the hunter, I not only my last name, but I am
• 14:32
  the hunter, right I like enjoy going and creating the new
• 14:35
  relationships and striking the new deals. And that's a lot of
• 14:38
  fun for a lot of people. There are other people who are
• 14:40
  gatherers and they enjoy optimizing those relationships
• 14:44
  and building on them. And there's a lot of things that a
• 14:48
  lot of us can do. But it doesn't mean we shouldn't do right and
• 14:52
  so I can do that but it's not the highest and best use of of
• 14:55
  my time or skills.
• 14:57
  Adam Outland: Selling isn't just an external thing right? Finding
• 15:00
  partnerships and selling and bringing in business is super
• 15:02
  important. But sales is a skill in general about communication.
• 15:06
  And you end up in leadership, finding yourself selling the
• 15:09
  vision to your people or selling lots of things internally right
• 15:13
  to get it done. And I'm kind of curious. I mean, one thing that
• 15:15
  popped out to me was the government regulations and a
• 15:18
  little battle that you got to kind of jump back into what you
• 15:21
  faced when you were, you know, faced with some sort of the
• 15:24
  government agencies trying to keep for local, legal, right.
• 15:29
  How did your communication skills? How was that relevant in
• 15:32
  that in that issue?
• 15:34
  Chris Hunter: Yeah, it's a complex question. And situation
• 15:38
  that was very intense, as you can imagine, but trying to
• 15:42
  summarize it up in a nutshell, it was really important for us
• 15:46
  to get aligned on how we were going to address these
• 15:50
  situations. They were very serious, right to the point
• 15:52
  where we were being sued by the FDA, that B, which governs
• 15:58
  alcohol 18 Attorney General's, there were frivolous lawsuits,
• 16:03
  class action lawsuits coming out of the woodwork, there was a
• 16:05
  point where I was told by our legal representative
• 16:08
  representation, don't answer the door, because you may get served
• 16:11
  papers or arrested, right, it was that intense. And so for us
• 16:17
  looking back at it, or at least for me, looking back at it, I
• 16:20
  was baffled because we played by the rules, our our beverage was
• 16:24
  approved by the TTB. It was approved by every state that it
• 16:27
  went into that included the formulas, the cans, everything
• 16:30
  that we're being criticized for, was legally approved. And so
• 16:35
  they had they it broad sensitives had applied pressure
• 16:39
  to other brewers that were doing similar things, and they were
• 16:42
  much larger than us. And so for them, it was like this isn't
• 16:45
  worth, you know, the juice isn't worth the squeeze. And so they
• 16:48
  just voluntarily reformulated and changed the products that
• 16:51
  were selling. For us, it was the only thing we were selling. And
• 16:54
  so our take was, hey, we will play by whatever rules you put
• 16:57
  out there. But you have to make them consistent and fair.
• 17:00
  Because if we voluntarily change, all that does is leave
• 17:04
  the door open for the next person to come along and do it
• 17:07
  until they get big, right. So in terms of communication, it
• 17:11
  really tested us with my theory is like high highs and low lows
• 17:16
  will bond you right? They're extreme, and they're intense.
• 17:19
  And it's easy to get along during those times. But it
• 17:22
  doesn't mean it's easy to communicate during those times.
• 17:24
  We were running a breakneck pace. We were trying to approach
• 17:28
  everything in a line fashion, but it didn't always happen. And
• 17:31
  so our communication could have been better. Or we got through
• 17:35
  it.
• 17:36
  Adam Outland: Literally some life changing moments during
• 17:38
  that time for you.
• 17:40
  Chris Hunter: Absolutely. Yeah.
• 17:41
  Adam Outland: I guess one of the more recent ventures was not
• 17:43
  your father's root beer.
• 17:45
  Chris Hunter: Yeah. So I start to look at, I started to look at
• 17:48
  what assets we had as a company, right. And it's very easy to
• 17:51
  understand that you have the brand with the revenue and the
• 17:55
  distribution, that's clearly an asset that most people look at.
• 17:59
  And understand. We added another asset, which was we had roughly
• 18:02
  325 distributors across the country and some in other
• 18:05
  countries that touched every retail location in their
• 18:09
  territory. So we had a distribution network. I'm not
• 18:12
  saying we owned it, but we had access, right. And so as I was
• 18:15
  thinking about, we had this big company, relatively big company
• 18:19
  and big brand, or relatively big brand that was almost taken away
• 18:23
  from us at the whim of a change of government regulations. How
• 18:26
  do we diversify? So innovation and diversifying was really
• 18:30
  important? And then the second is how do we use our assets? And
• 18:33
  so for me, at that time, craft beer was a hottest thing in the
• 18:37
  world, right? Everyone was launching craft beers. But there
• 18:41
  were there were a lot of the same. There were unique stories.
• 18:44
  Oh, this one's from Chicago. This one's from San Diego, but
• 18:48
  the product itself was not really that different. And so we
• 18:51
  were really lucky that we were introduced to one of our
• 18:54
  relationships to a guy named Tim Kovac, who was this like kind of
• 18:58
  mad scientist Brewer and he had come up with this alcoholic Root
• 19:02
  Beer it had no name it had no real and and he was in the
• 19:05
  Chicagoland area. And when I tried this stuff I it was this
• 19:09
  like the light bulb went off. It was this immediate realization
• 19:12
  of this is unique needs in the craft beer space, which is
• 19:16
  popular, this is unique. No one else is doing this right now.
• 19:19
  And it's in our wheelhouse, because what we really did with
• 19:23
  for locals around flavoring, right. And so for me, that was
• 19:26
  exciting. It was something new, as I mentioned earlier, like
• 19:30
  creating something new. And so this was really exciting. So
• 19:33
  there was also some internal turmoil developing as I
• 19:36
  mentioned about partnerships and lack of clarity of roles. And so
• 19:40
  I said, I'm gonna dive into this, and I dove into that, and
• 19:43
  when we brought that thing to life, it was one of the most
• 19:47
  exciting things I've ever seen. We took it from non existent to
• 19:51
  uniquely branded and to being the fastest growing craft beer
• 19:54
  in the country in a matter of 18 months and then we ended up
• 19:58
  selling had to pass. The other thing that was exciting to me
• 20:01
  about that. As I mentioned, I like to work on things. I'm
• 20:04
  aligned with it. Whatever phase of life I'm in. That was 25.
• 20:08
  When we started Four Loko, caffeine and alcohol didn't seem
• 20:11
  crazy, it was part of, you know, our weekends. At this point I
• 20:15
  was I was early 30s. And craft beer was much more by speed. So
• 20:19
  you know, that was kind of an exciting evolution and then
• 20:22
  again, realizing where I was in life and circumstances got me
• 20:26
  into a place where better for you and healthy products were
• 20:29
  really important to me.
• 20:30
  Adam Outland: That's so interesting. It's It's like your
• 20:33
  beverages reflect your your state in life like now you see I
• 20:37
  energy like go get it in the beginning. And there's more like
• 20:41
  this calm, healthy. Yes, yeah. I love the bound and gravitated
• 20:45
  towards things that reflected that for you, right, that you
• 20:49
  pursue products that you were passionate about for you. Just
• 20:53
  quick lightning round. One thing that I always wanted to know
• 20:57
  from guests is what's one piece of advice you're really glad you
• 21:02
  didn't listen to.
• 21:03
  Chris Hunter: So it's, it's something I'm actually working
• 21:05
  through right now. Koia is a refrigerated plant based protein
• 21:09
  drink, it's a ready to drink product. So bought off the
• 21:12
  shelf, you open it, you can drink it right away. It's
• 21:15
  delicious. It's it's low sugar, it's all the things that you
• 21:18
  wouldn't expect when you hear plant based protein drink,
• 21:22
  right. And the refrigerated space is very niche. In a sense,
• 21:25
  it takes additional capabilities to have refrigeration from
• 21:28
  production all the way to the shelf. It's a very competitive
• 21:32
  and difficult category. And so we've heard from multiple people
• 21:35
  throughout the years, like, Okay, you guys are a
• 21:38
  refrigerated beverage. That's where you need to stay. And over
• 21:42
  the years, as we've talked to our consumers and listen to them
• 21:45
  and understood innovations that worked and didn't, we realized
• 21:49
  that what qualia really stands for is delicious plant protein
• 21:52
  or delicious pork protein in general, we are now launching
• 21:56
  Koya. in different formats and channels, we have a shelf stable
• 21:59
  tetrapack version that will be available on Amazon, we're
• 22:02
  launching a kid's line will launch a powder. And so the
• 22:06
  advice that I'm happy we didn't follow in the long run was
• 22:09
  staying in our lane.
• 22:10
  Adam Outland: So you listen to someone but the advice that
• 22:12
  you're taking is from your customers and their
• 22:14
  accessibility, not necessarily from some consultant. Love that.
• 22:19
  One of the things that I think is a lot of our listeners wonder
• 22:23
  is when you're dealing with a large organization, large team
• 22:26
  and you're responsible for leading it time is one of the
• 22:29
  most scarce resources that you have. Yeah, what's one habit or
• 22:33
  practice that you feel saves you the most time each day?
• 22:38
  Chris Hunter: Well, I try and I'm not always successful at
• 22:42
  this, I try to block my emails. And what I mean by blocking them
• 22:47
  is I try to dig in emails and run through them all and then
• 22:51
  try to go do something else. And I'm not always successful at it.
• 22:54
  But when I do that, I feel like I have the most satisfaction and
• 22:58
  productivity and the least anxiety, what can suck me in or
• 23:02
  anyone is just sitting in front of your computer and hitting
• 23:05
  refresh on the email box. Like if I find myself doing that, I
• 23:09
  usually need to just pick up the phone and call that person
• 23:12
  rather than going back and forth. So that's that's one
• 23:15
  thing. I think one of the things I've learned over time is is
• 23:18
  prioritization is really important. And for me, this is
• 23:23
  the season of life that my family is absolutely the number
• 23:25
  one priority. I'm married, I have three kids, 11, nine, and
• 23:29
  six. And when I sat back and thought about it, I realized
• 23:33
  that I will always be able to create brands, I will always be
• 23:36
  able to grow them. And while I'm not neglecting them, I also
• 23:40
  realized that my children will only be this age once. So when I
• 23:45
  have something that can do for the long run, and I have another
• 23:48
  thing that is only once, I'm going to make sure that I
• 23:51
  prioritize and focus on that only once thing.
• 23:54
  Adam Outland: I love that too. Yeah, you brought at the very
• 23:58
  beginning of this podcast. He said, as a young man, success
• 24:01
  meant to you making as much money as possible. That's
• 24:05
  paraphrase. But you said money was number one, define what
• 24:08
  success means to you now and how you know when you've achieved
• 24:11
  it.
• 24:11
  Chris Hunter: So that's a great question that I think has
• 24:14
  multiple aspects to it. I think first of all, the most important
• 24:18
  thing for me was learning and understanding who I am. And when
• 24:21
  I when we brought in this consultant back at Fusion
• 24:24
  projects, he did these personality assessments and
• 24:27
  behavioral assessments, the one we did was called disc, and
• 24:31
  there's many of them. And he came back to me at that point
• 24:34
  and he said, Listen, if you have this perception of getting rich
• 24:38
  and retiring on a boat, get rid of it right now because you will
• 24:42
  be drunk, you will be addicted you will be divorced and you
• 24:45
  will be miserable. That's just my personality. Right? And so
• 24:49
  that was really impactful to me because it helped me realize
• 24:52
  like where I grew up success look like oh, you get to retire
• 24:56
  on a beach, drink a margarita and you don't have any worries.
• 25:00
  That would actually be detrimental to me. And so
• 25:02
  success means that I can stay in the mix work on things I want to
• 25:06
  work on not need to work on anything. But But enjoy what I'm
• 25:10
  doing every day staying active. And I think that not only will
• 25:13
  keep me healthy, it'll keep me alive.
• 25:16
  Adam Outland: And so you've come to really enjoy the game itself.
• 25:19
  Chris Hunter: Trust me, there are days that I'm like, Oh man,
• 25:22
  I'm in too deep again, you know, it happens. You get blinders on
• 25:26
  running a business, you forget about everything else in the
• 25:29
  world. And sometimes that's necessary. But in the big
• 25:32
  picture, yes. What What I enjoy now is growth. And growth is not
• 25:36
  comfortable. You know, I went to Iceland and trained on breath
• 25:40
  work and cold water exposure. Those are all just got done
• 25:43
  marathons. And Ironman is those are all growth opportunities for
• 25:47
  me. I want to I learn from my kids every day. That's growth.
• 25:50
  And I'm learning in business every day. And that's growth and
• 25:54
  growth is really important. And also keeps me motivated.
• 25:57
  Adam Outland: Two last quick questions; one morning routine,
• 25:58
  but what does it look like in the morning if you have your
• 26:00
  ideal routine?
• 26:01
  Chris Hunter: I'll tell you when it's been in this best. And when
• 26:03
  it's been at its worst. So my wife got really into Joe
• 26:06
  Dispenza meditations. And so we woke up every day at 6am. We
• 26:12
  meditated for about a half hour and then we got our day started.
• 26:15
  And we were done meditating, and off like the day before the kids
• 26:19
  ever woke up. At night, we would take time after we put the kids
• 26:23
  to bed, that was our time to catch up on the day and talk
• 26:25
  those are two really important things. That's when it looks at
• 26:28
  its best. Of course, you add in eating healthy and exercise and
• 26:31
  all that all that stuff, I think which is kind of table stakes.
• 26:35
  At its worst, which I go through times now is one of them. You
• 26:39
  know, I'm waking up just before the kids, I'm getting five
• 26:42
  minutes in with my wife, I'm down to the coffee to get myself
• 26:45
  going and kind of frantic all day. It's never perfect for me.
• 26:49
  And but the beauty I guess is I can realize when it's not
• 26:53
  perfect and adjust rather than just think that's how it is
• 26:57
  forever.
• 26:57
  Adam Outland: I'm gonna rephrase this question I typically ask
• 26:59
  her yes for you. Typically, I might ask you, you know, what
• 27:02
  advice would you give a 21 year old version of yourself, but I'm
• 27:05
  going to change it and say, what's the piece of advice or
• 27:08
  the value you really hope to instill in your kids?
• 27:12
  Chris Hunter: Those are those would probably be the same
• 27:14
  answers. And I think they are be willing to take risks. And just
• 27:18
  take the first step. I will caveat that by saying the
• 27:21
  biggest mistakes I've made in my career have all been when I
• 27:25
  thought it was going to be easy when I didn't put in the work
• 27:29
  and I wasn't going to be committed for the long haul. So
• 27:32
  I think there's real value and really digging into what you're
• 27:36
  about to do or what you're considering doing what you think
• 27:40
  it's going to take. Do you want to do it you know, asking
• 27:43
  yourself all those questions up front. But don't get paralyzed
• 27:47
  by analysis. Take the first step because you know, whatever plan
• 27:51
  you put together, whatever path you think you're going to take,
• 27:55
  it's absolutely going to be wrong on day one. So just jump
• 27:58
  in. Just start be open to making mistakes, be open to learning
• 28:02
  and course correcting right, because progress is the key
• 28:06
  there is no perfection.
• 28:07
  Adam Outland: it's so interesting that so many people
• 28:10
  I did miss identify failure and mistakes, right? Like they think
• 28:15
  failure is this horrible thing that they shouldn't avoid at all
• 28:19
  costs. And from experience interviewing all of these
• 28:22
  brilliant people like yourself, who've built multiple successful
• 28:26
  enterprises failure is something that almost you have to embrace.
• 28:31
  Chris Hunter: Yeah, a reframe of that is is that a reframe of
• 28:34
  that, for me is that it's only really a failure if you don't
• 28:36
  learn from it. And so, you know, we choose to look at life as
• 28:40
  life is happening for us, not to us. And so when you look at
• 28:44
  things through that lens, what could be perceived as a failure
• 28:48
  or a setback can also be perceived as the best redirect
• 28:52
  you could ever have. And that one that you may not have
• 28:55
  chosen, or purposely self imposed, but it was imposed for
• 29:00
  a reason. And so if you look for that reason, and you go with the
• 29:03
  idea that life is happening for me, you can start to find the
• 29:06
  silver linings and the beauty in it.
• 29:08
  Adam Outland: Life is happening for you. I really like that one
• 29:10
  I'm going to take that was me, Chris, this has been fantastic
• 29:14
  interview I know you just mentioned and published this
• 29:16
  book blackout punch and entrepreneurs journey from chaos
• 29:19
  to clarity, which I think will be great for so many of our
• 29:22
  listeners, because that's the journey many of them are on. So
• 29:26
  thanks for giving us some of your wisdom here today and some
• 29:29
  anecdotes for our folks to take home with them.
• 29:31
  Chris Hunter: Yeah, it was fun. Thanks for having me on. I
• 29:47
  appreciate it.