Latest / CEOs and ABCs / Michael Chachula (Propelled Brands, Fat Brands, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf) The Power of Resilience, Hard Work and Education in Corporate America #024

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Michael Chachula (Propelled Brands, Fat Brands, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf) The Power of Resilience, Hard Work and Education in Corporate America #024 · CEOs and ABCs

• 0:00
  Speaker A: I would audit other people's dads and other people and other adults, but I would see, nope, don't like what they're doing there. So I was almost editing the person I wanted to be in real time. There was not a one size fits all when you sit down in a chair as a CIO or as a C level person. When I had prostate cancer, it was very difficult for me because I was going through a divorce at the time as well. Almost a year of my treatment I did alone. And I knew as my dad said, nope, gotta fight, gotta fight. Care about people and you'll see it all. Your career will skyrocket.
• 0:37
  Speaker B: Welcome to CEOs and ABCs. Real stories from execs who lead at work and show up at home. Career moves, parenting wins and fails and everything in between. I'm your host, Kevin Rice. Here's today's episode. Welcome back to CEOs and ABCs. My guest today is Michael Chichula, a seasoned corporate executive whose career spans some of the most recognizable brands in the restaurant industry industry. Michael is currently the CTO at Propelled Brands and has previously held executive roles at fat brands, the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, and Applebee's and ihop. But Michael's story isn't just about titles and trajectory. It's about resilience. It's about growing up fast after losing his father at a very young age, learning leadership by observing the people around him and building a career through discipline, curiosity, and relentless adaptation. Along the way, Michael has navigated reinvention, major career pivots, cancer, and even confronting his own mortality. Experiences that reshaped how he leads, how he parents, and how he thinks about what success really means. So this conversation's about perspective, how adversity sharpens judgment, why pausing can be a leadership superpower, and what it looks like to build a life and career that stays grounded when everything else is moving. Michael, thank you so much for being here.
• 1:53
  Speaker A: Oh, Kevin, thank you for inviting me. Good to see you again.
• 1:56
  Speaker B: It's great to see you. It's been a long time since I had the pleasure of working with you while you were at Dine Brands. So thank you for joining the show. Catch me up. What's life like today? What are you working on and what's taking up most of your attention these days?
• 2:11
  Speaker A: Sure. Well, yeah, it's been a while. So since. Since Dine Brands, we've had Covid. We've had all sorts of things happen. So a lot has. A lot has transpired. Needless to say, the restaurant industry was Quite a interesting place to be, especially full service during COVID So obviously where you and I met, we did a bunch of layoffs because of the fact that, you know, no one knew how long it would last and customers weren't coming in. So I left Dine Brands at that time, and then I started working with Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, and I worked with them for just about a year or so. Worked heavily on their To Go and the digital side. Oh. And then after that, I worked at Fat Brands for probably two and a half years or so and decided to take a job in Dallas. So I moved out of California, and now I'm the CIO CTO of Propel Brands, and that's brands such as Fast Signs, Camp Bow Wow, and my Salon Suite. You've probably heard of some of those. And that's what I'm doing now. And obviously numerous things in between. Had a grandson in that time as well.
• 3:18
  Speaker B: Congratulations. Amazing. Well, it's been really nice to kind of reconnect with you, get to know you on a little bit more of a personal level. And as I've started to learn, your story is one very much of resilience and overcoming a lot of challenges in your personal life. Because all I saw was this really impressive career. I'd sit across from you, and you were this really strong leader. And you. I've had all these professional accomplishments, but I had no idea what was going on behind the scenes. Maybe we could start with the earliest adversity that you had to overcome, and that was at a young age, when your father passed away.
• 3:52
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 3:53
  Speaker B: What was that experience like for you, and how did that change who you were as a very young adult?
• 4:00
  Speaker A: I think that's a great place to start. I mean, no one expects at the age of 14, 15 years old. I think he got sick when I was young. Thirteen, actually. I was 13 years old, and my father was diagnosed with cancer. I think that when you're a young boy who is heavily involved in sports and you're being driven all over the place, you're not spending a ton of time with your family. So, you know, it's hard for me to say it at the age I am now, because I think it's formed the father I became and even the grandfather I've become, which is. I didn't spend a lot of time with my dad when I was young because I did other things. I was in sports, football, soccer, baseball. I. I did all of it. Most of the time I would see him, it'd be either he'd Be in the stands or dropping me off and picking me up later because he was going to school. So imagine four of those 13, 14 years, he was finishing a degree and, and president of a bank. And just, you know, I just didn't see him a lot. So I, I think when he, when he passed away when I was 14 and 15, it, it left not only a hole that you lost your dad. I think it, it left a hole in. I had to change the way at a very young age that I learned. That I learned certain, certain things. And what I mean by that is, is, boy, I made a lot of mistakes. Kevin, you make a lot of mistakes. You had no one to correct you, really. I had a mother who was in mourning. She never remarried, she never dated. She used to say that I had a husband and love doesn't end with death. Right? So that's, that's. That commitment doesn't end with death. That was her perspective. And so she never dated. I never had another male figure. So I was always searching for either folks to teach me or help me learn. So I turned into a lifelong learner.
• 5:43
  Speaker B: And did you, did you have any coaches or people in your family circle that help fill that gaps in different ways?
• 5:51
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, of course. You know, so I did definitely have. I had some teachers. George Gentis was the music teacher. I got heavily into music and, you know, they really tried to help and steer and guide my way. And as I got older, Phil Trevor was another one that I had when I started my college career. He was, he was a Mennonite, so he had a very unique perspective on how if you don't know what a Mennonite is, it's almost Amish, you know, in your beliefs, but you use electricity. And he was a, he was a college counselor. And just speaking with him and he, he really helped ground me in understanding. You need a lot of self love to be in the position that you're in. And what I mean by self love is, is that you have to understand it's okay to make mistakes. Everyone's going to make mistakes. So you just have to be kind to yourself. And I think a lot of people forget to be kind to themselves and to say it's okay and that yesterday is yesterday and today you could try something new. And you really do have to look at what happened and learn from it. But, you know, I really learned that self love at a very, very young age. And I would argue some folks at the age I'm at right now haven't even reached what I was given As a gift through tragedy, which was, you know, the death of my father. I had to learn that at a very young age.
• 7:01
  Speaker B: Yeah, when something like that happens, I think everybody kind of has a choice, whether they consciously or unconsciously know it. You have an opportunity to grow through it or you can be a victim. And for you, I recall from our conversation, you grew through this. You, I think, started working pretty young and you've obviously had an incredibly successful career. But you also could have just sat back and said, like, I'm not even going to try anymore because this tragedy happened to me and it's not my fault, so I don't have to achieve. So what. What was it in you that kind of gave you the strength to move through this and grow through it instead of just being a victim?
• 7:40
  Speaker A: I think it was first faith, right. I had, you know, the church and I had, you know, at the time I was still going to church because Sundays your mother said go to church. I was still very, very young person. But I also think that I didn't view it as a complete tragedy. I also viewed it as an opportunity. And I think with the opportunity that it did give me that other children might not have had is that I had thousands of fathers. I didn't have one way of doing things. I was able to sit back and I almost became an auditor. I would audit other people's dads and other people and other, you know, and other adults, whether they be male or female, to be honest, because like I said, my mom, you know, she was in mourning for a while and it's just very difficult something to talk about. But I would see, nope, don't like what they're doing there. Nope, don't like what they're doing. Nope, don't like. So I was almost editing the person I wanted to be in real time to say I want to become something that is someone who is very understanding, but at the same time learn something through everything that they do. And I approach things very differently. I take a lot of chances, not with other people's money, not my career. You know, as an executive, I don't go out there and just willy nilly do things. But even there, what it gave me the opportunity to do is, okay, I'm going to put that analytical person I saw when I was 16 years old or 17 years old that I remember really, really well. Or I'm going to put that investigative role that I saw that, you know, one of my friends dad was in the FBI, right. So I just saw even the way that he asked Me questions on how school was going and how's the family was succinct. Direct was very, you know, was very militaristic. Right. And is in an approach. And you would, you know, you would sit up in your chair almost because of the way that he asked the question. So it really crafted me to be able to become a chameleon in business to where I learned a lot about business. I learned a lot about technology when I worked at HSBC many, many years ago in my career, I became an underwriter, I became a loan processor. I sold credit cards, I sold mortgages. But then I also worked heavily in compliance. I worked in the SOCs area of finance. I worked in the finance area. I worked on when Visa went public. So I was able to change my way of thinking even from left to right brain, because I wasn't brought up by a singular parent unit. So I'm almost of the hive mind, if you will. So I've had the opportunity to use that hive mentality of there is not a one size fits all when you sit down in a chair as a CIO or as a C level person. And quite amazingly, what a proper name for a podcast for me, because it really is the infancy of who you are is every day you wake up, you're an infant. Every day you wake up because you don't know what new challenge you're gonna face in that day. And just like an infant, that challenge is gonna hit you sometimes square in the jaw. Could be a career decision. It could be the death in the family. It could be right. And maybe you've never had one and you're in your 30s or 40s. It's that type of idea and how I crafted myself to really overcome adversity and look at things very differently and not take things personal and always know that you know what it'll be all right.
• 11:01
  Speaker B: Well, I love how you saw it as when you look back, you saw it, you know, not just as a tragedy, but as an opportunity. And if we're always looking at life as happening for us and not to us, then it kind of leads us to that path of, like, how can I learn through this? How can I grow through this? And so you were kind of thrust into manhood. Right. Like, a lot of people will say that you, when your father passes away, that's when you officially become a man. And you had to go through that at a very young age. I think you started working pretty young.
• 11:33
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 11:35
  Speaker B: How did you start your career and what did that, like, feel like to carry A load of responsibility at a very young age that most kids aren't given.
• 11:44
  Speaker A: Yeah, you know, it's. It's not easy, first of all, but I think it gave me a level of discipline, how important work was. You know, we wanted for nothing because my mom did a great job of. Of managing her. Her finances. Imagine going from the salary of a bank president to a bank teller. That's pretty much what we did. If I wanted things, I had to work for it. So if you wanted shoes or you wanted to go to the movies, I couldn't go ask my mom because we had. She had a mortgage to pay. She had five children. I mean, geez. 1984, oldest brother was married. He was 24 years old, but everyone else was. My sister was in college, but everyone else was still in high school. So one was married. She had four to marry off and four to put through college. It was a lot. So every dollar we had went towards supporting her children. I mean, she'd get excited, find a purse for $5 or 50 cents. She'd buy a new purse for 50 cents at a garage sale. That was her claim to fame is how cheap can she find something to buy? Whereas for me, you know, I used to duct tape my gym shoes together, right? I mean, that's to make sure that my sister had a prom dress, Right? Or something of that nature. Because I knew the situation we were in even at 14 years old. So I said, you know what? I have to go get a job. And I would fight with my mother at first, and she's like, no, you need to have your studies. You need to go through school. And I said, look, I get that this will not impact. Will not impact what I'm trying to do. I just have to do it because I. I can't. I cannot sit idly by and know that there's things that. That I want to do, feeling I would get to come and ask for money. I didn't like it. Now I'm saying that in a very mature way at 14 years old. That's not how. That's. That's not how it come out, but it's how I felt at the end of the day is I didn't want to have that burden on myself. And it was truthful. My mother told my kids a story that your dad was the one that used to duct tape his shoes together, and I'd have to fight with him to buy him a pair of pants or shoes or whatever, because I just thought that there were others who needed it more than me. And I didn't. I didn't want the trouble to be on me. So I went and I started working at a pizzeria, washing dishes. Because I wasn't allowed to stand in front of the oven. Cause I was too young. So that's what I did. One thing that's very interesting about the chameleon that I was talking about, I was in an arcade in Chicago, Illinois. And I used to just delve myself into technology. And this as. As I started to get older and I'm playing the game, and I started to realize, oh, my God, this guy is me. Because in Dragon's Lair, he would say, would you like Derek to go A or would you like Eric to go B? And I started to realize that's how I was thinking as I was starting to watch and I was starting to really become an observer. That was me. What's the best hat in this situation? And that's how I really started to form my career. Should I put the business hat on? Or is this the technical hat I need to put on? So it really became kind of that pause for a minute. The art of the pause. Pause for a minute and figure out, what should Kevin or Mike do? Yeah, right.
• 14:38
  Speaker B: That's interesting. It reminds me of a Deepak Chopra book called Metahuman. And it's about kind of how you evolve to a point where you're zooming out and seeing your life almost from a third party. And so kind of like watching your experience and how you make decisions versus, like, being inside of it. So I guess the business parallel would be like working on the business, not in the business. Yes, but it really reminds me of that. Of being kind of more of an observer and seeing objectively the paths and the options. Because the quality of your decisions really determines the quality of your life. And it's interesting you were able to see that from such a young age. And I love how you drew that parallel from a video game.
• 15:22
  Speaker A: Well, you know what they say, that sometimes lack of choice and adversarial situations are what help you create the answers that you find. Because at the same time, what I realized is, is that I didn't know everything. Even though at a young age, you think you do.
• 15:41
  Speaker B: I thought I knew everything at 16 years old.
• 15:43
  Speaker A: I know exactly.
• 15:45
  Speaker B: I'm not.
• 15:45
  Speaker A: I'm not invincible. I'd learned about death at a very young age. Now, my father passing away was the 22nd relative I had buried from 12 to 16. So, you know, it's. It was a lot to deal with, but. But again, like you said, I just found coping mechanisms to try to figure out, you know, what's the, what's the best way for Michael in this situation. And it wasn't ever a Michael first scenario. It wasn't what's best for Michael. It's what is best for the situation. That no one gets hurt, especially me. Yes. But that no one gets hurt. So I never said I'm going to do this for a selfish reason because again, that's also some of the challenges that you have is you start to grow in this narcissistic way. And by the time you hit the top of your career and you're a C level, that, that's a really tough place to be is working for a narcissistic C level person, because everything is about them and no one gets credit. So, you know, for those folks out there that are, that might listen to this and they're thinking about becoming a C level, that's the thing that I would say, Art of the pause. You might not have the right answer. And I don't know is a great answer.
• 16:54
  Speaker B: So it's, it is an answer.
• 16:56
  Speaker A: It is an answer sometimes. And sometimes by giving an answer quickly, it causes more damage than good.
• 17:02
  Speaker B: So it's, you know, I think it's tough sometimes. Right. Because when you are an executive, all eyes are on you. And there you do feel a bit of a pressure to have the answer when people are looking to you. And so, yeah, earlier in my career, sometimes I would give an answer that probably wasn't actually the right answer because I felt like I needed to give direction. And in retrospect, later I learned to solicit more input from the team and maybe it would still fall on me. But bringing in the voices of all these brilliant team members that we had made the process of leadership much easier. Just trying to have the answer myself every time. So you started washing dishes at a pizzeria. I think you'd mentioned you had like dozens, if not multiple dozens of jobs early in your career. And then when did your career kind of start to take shape? When did you start to realize, okay, this is something I'm good at, this is a path I want to follow?
• 18:02
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think when I started Household Beneficial, that became HSBC over time because they purchased it in North America. That's when my career started. And that would have been, gosh, I probably was 26, 27. And the reason that happened is that I graduated high school, I started college, I then came home due to some family situations that were going on. So I came Home and found a life, got married and, you know, had children. So I did odd and ends jobs and not odd and end, I shouldn't say that jobs, good jobs. But I didn't have a college degree. And then looking in the newspaper, I was just like, you know what? I have to find something else. And I knew that I had so much to offer and that I was being underutilized. So I said, you know what, I'm going to try out for this job. And I started selling mortgages at that household. And within a year I was in management. A year after that I was running a call center, you know, so I realized that I, I actually was good at things and then hit a wall. I actually hit a wall because of my, my education that I was starting to find that all the good jobs that were coming out either required a degree or the people they were hiring had a degree. So I spent the next five years finishing my, my bachelor's degree, going to night school and doing all that at DePaul University because I knew and kept doing mortgages and kept moving up and got to an AVP level and I couldn't go to a director level. I just didn't have the experience to do it. And I went and I finished my bachelor's degree. And as I was finishing my bachelor's degree, they asked me to work on a product at HSBC at that time. And I worked on the product and the product was a big success. And they offered to send me to Northwestern Kellogg School of Management, and I went and did my executive mba. So it shows you that it's hard work, not the education. The education is an amplifier. You cannot use education to replace hard work. You have to have a hard working mentality. And you could look around, there's a lot of people that, some didn't even finish high school, some didn't finish college that are highly, highly successful people. Hard work. Sometimes the degree shows a commitment that folks want to see. Sometimes the degree shows some level of mastery. But what the thing cannot do, what a college degree cannot do, is give you a better attitude. And that's what a lot, where a lot of people fall down. Work ethic, values, personal values, personal accountability. It can't teach you those things. It does hold you somewhat accountable because you have homework. But at the end of the day, the homework is a bad grade. When you're now accountable to shareholders, when you're now accountable to investors, believe me, it's very different Pressure.
• 20:44
  Speaker B: Hi, Kevin here. If you're enjoying this conversation and you know Someone else who's working to grow in their career while staying present at home. I'd really love it if you could share this episode with them. It's one of the best ways you can help us and help more leaders build their careers in a way that they're proud of without missing the moments that matter most. Getting your MBA was a big unlock for you, right? It helped you kind of grow in your career.
• 21:08
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 21:09
  Speaker B: Do you think the same value is given to MBAs these days? Like how important is education today? If we had somebody listening and they're kind of, you know, midway through their career, do you think today an MBA still carries the same weight to help you grow in your career?
• 21:27
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think for certain levels, for sure. And for certain disciplines, absolutely. I think as you start to get higher up in your career, you have to show some level of mastery of certain things for people to give you the keys to the kingdom, if you will. So, yes. However, I believe you have to gauge your own maturity. And this is a self realization thing. So if you were to take your Deepak Chopra book again and you were to think about, if you were to elevate yourself outside of your body and you were to look at everything that you're doing right now, you have to be at a certain level of maturity to say, okay, I'm ready to do the MBA. And I would argue that folks, especially when they're MBAs, like, especially when your focus is business, like accounting is different, economics is different, Very, very different. Those people are going for a level of expert. Maybe they wanted to work for the government or they want to work for a big firm. They want to work, go work for one of the big five, then I would say an MBA is very, very powerful to get into that place. But if you're talking more I want to go become a VP of operations or I want to do something like this. My argument would be get some experience, get to the level to where you need to make the next step. Don't get out of college and go take an mba to become an operations person. You want to have some level of experience so you know how to apply what you're learning. When you go directly from a BA to an mba, it's all theoretical and it's all academia. You have no experience about machine four is down. You know, no experience about there's a hurricane, no experience and all that. You don't see the real impact of people's lives. That happens when these things happen. And you really need to have that under your belt. So you could sit in there and go, yeah, I hear what you're saying. And when I went to Kellogg, I was, you know, at the end they say, oh, most likely to succeed. Oh, most likely. I was deemed the rebel. I was the rebel because I questioned everything. People would say things, I'd be like, yeah, I don't think so. I would raise my hand and, you know, I would say something and the professor would be like, you're right. That's true. Well, it's because you've been doing this for 30 years inside the institution. I've been doing this for 20 years for real. And it's great to see the different perspectives on what's happening and to get that academia, because then it also pressure tests and solidifies your own confidence in your own knowledge.
• 23:55
  Speaker B: Yeah, I think, like, early work experience is incredibly important. I had the experience my junior year of college. Up until then, college was all kind of theoretical learning about just different business and finance and stuff. But my junior year that summer, I ran a residential house painting business where I had, like, four crews, and I went out and I sold contracts to paint houses, and I managed the crews. And at the end of every week, I would do the finances. And when I went back for my senior year, I had, like, a managerial accounting class, and everything made sense because I spent the entire summer doing managerial accounting in practice. So when it came to, like, actually learning it, I could refine the skills and learn more because I already had that. That experience, I think.
• 24:42
  Speaker A: Yeah, you leveled up. You leveled up. It's like being in video games for the folks that love video games, or, you know, the. The younger folks that like playing Fortnite and all that. You're leveling up. Is what you're doing getting a better. A better tool to put in your armory. Right. I mean, that's. That's really what. What you're doing, which I think is absolutely amazing. And believe me, the experience was phenomenal that I went through. But I'm telling you, having the years under my belt of true experience, because again, what it didn't get, what it didn't give you, is it didn't give you when a key employee left. It didn't give you. You know, you tried to do this scenario, but the scenario was, guess what? You're doing the work now. So all of a sudden, here you are running a team, and your best employee leaves, or a very skilled employee leaves, and guess who's doing the work? You are. Especially if you don't have that skill anywhere else on your team. You're trying to figure it out, you're googling it, you're, you're trying to, to make it happen while you're trying to fill the role. So, you know, that's, that's what I thought. But the NBA was, was absolutely kicked open a bunch of doors for me and especially from Northwestern, it being a Kellogg mba kicked open a lot of doors. And, and that would, that would be the other thing. Choose wisely where you get an mba. Just having an MBA people do look at. Okay, where's the MBA from?
• 25:52
  Speaker B: When you were going to school, you were still working full time at this point. You had a young family.
• 25:58
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 25:58
  Speaker B: How were you managing the demand of career and school and family? And how did you like navigate trade offs in real time between like where you were prioritizing your time?
• 26:09
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's probably why I didn't do such a great job, to be honest. I think that's, you know, I think it's one of those things where you think I'm going to provide better. So I'm going to take this time not realizing that it had significant pressure on a very small and very young family. And at the end, you know, I think it allowed me to take on bigger and better jobs. But I think it, it, you know, it came at a price at the, at the end of the day, years and years later. But I think it was the start of that challenge. You know, I made sure I put time aside for my children, but obviously I wasn't going out as much or traveling as much or vacationing as much, you know, because I was working and reading 3000 pages a week or whatever the number was. It was outrageous amounts of reading and assignments and you're working in a group so you didn't want to let people down. So I think that came at as a shock to how much time it actually had to spend doing the, doing the program. But I would, I would set a set sim aside and try to spend the weekends with the, with the girls and the kids and you know, we would do fun things and go to restaurants, you know, just whatever we could do to spend time with them. But also that I could do, do to give the proper level to the studies because it was a great opportunity and a privilege to be there.
• 27:23
  Speaker B: What was the cost you alluded to, like, what was the cost of this, you know, sacrifice that you made to, you know, grow in your career and get a higher education?
• 27:34
  Speaker A: Yeah, I turned around and my toddler, toddlers were teenagers. That's, you know, it's the old it's the old adage that you, you blink and years go by.
• 27:45
  Speaker B: Yeah. The days are long.
• 27:49
  Speaker A: The years get really short. And you don't realize that it's not just the, you know, the most valuable currency you have is time. And you don't realize where you give that attention and where you spend that time. You don't, you don't realize that that comes with some level of. Of detriment. Something for you to give the attention and time to a, To a master's degree, especially when you have a young family, something has to atrophy. Sometimes that's a relationship with your daughter, relationship with your wife. Sometimes that's relationship with my broader family. You know, I, I think after the MBA was done, I had to reengage with my family. I, I just had to. To make up for. For the time that I had lost. But now I'm making it up with, you know, young adults rather than children. Now my kids are actually very adjusted. I don't have maladjusted children, which is great. They're very kind. They're very respectful to a fault. But, you know, it's. They wanted their dad and probably more than I. I had given them. That's. It's not something, it's not something I, I regret, but it's definitely something I will teach others because it's allowed me to give them a better life. Right. At the same time, paid for. You know, they got married, they're. They all went to college. Right. So.
• 28:59
  Speaker B: Yeah. And they, and they learn by watching you pursue something that you felt was important and be passionate about. And so I imagine.
• 29:06
  Speaker A: Do.
• 29:06
  Speaker B: Do your kids have a similar work ethic as you did?
• 29:09
  Speaker A: Yes, very much so. They are very good at what they do, and they have a great, great work ethic.
• 29:14
  Speaker B: That was, that was one of the reasons that I started this podcast was because I had taken time off work and I started to realize that, like, my kids, they weren't old enough to remember when I was in my peak career, and I didn't want them to grow up without them seeing me pursue something I'm passionate about and, like, build something. I wanted them to actually experience it as they were a little bit older, so hopefully they could learn those lessons and inherit work ethic and grit by watching me. So getting back into consulting and advisory and starting the podcast was kind of one because I felt that missing. Right. Like, I spent so many years of my career, and my career gave me a lot of my needs, like competition and community and contribution. Like a lot of those Core needs. But I really wanted to do it so that they could see what it's like to pursue something you're passionate about. Cause I was like, what happens if they spend the next 10 years and I'm just out golfing every day? Yeah, very, very, very true.
• 30:16
  Speaker A: I mean, and you've had a very impressive career as well. And folks don't see to the point that you made. They don't see the underside of success. Doesn't always mean you're successful. And that's, you know, where, where folks don't, don't realize that great, you might be successful in business, but you're unsuccessful as a parent. Or you might be successful as a parent, but you know, that comes with its own trade off. And maybe you're just not successful at moving up in your career and that's okay. But you have to realize that there always is going to be some level of trade off and some decision that you're going to have to make. As I mentioned before, are you going to do A or you're going to do B? Which are you going to do? And really have to take that pause and say, you know, what is the consequence of me doing either? And maybe there's a C, you don't do any of it. You just lie in bed and hold your kid, you know what I mean? Or hold their hand or go for a walk and you just don't do any of it. And sometimes that's the most rewarding at the end of the day. But you know, it's just make sure you realize that success isn't always about the position you hold. It's more about the memories you leave.
• 31:18
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's not just your resume, your LinkedIn profile, probably what you just described about your kids and your relationship with them today and then being like well adjusted and happy and kind of that's the measure of success for a parent, for a father.
• 31:33
  Speaker A: Be a good person, the rest will follow. That's really what it comes down to.
• 31:38
  Speaker B: You had mentioned there was another opportunity for you to continue that growth curve in your career, but it required a big move. Could you tell the story about how you were considering the move to Switzerland?
• 31:50
  Speaker A: Yeah, the move to Switzerland was very interesting. I was working at Novartis Pharmaceuticals and there was a bunch of jobs open. And you know, I was taking a look at technology jobs that were out there. The job that I currently, the job that I was holding was going to evaporate because the new CTO was now in Basel, Switzerland. So I went and I started looking at jobs out there. I stood out on the platform at three in the morning in Basel, Switzerland and the wind came over the Alps. Now mind you, I'm from Chicago and lived, born and raised, 40 years, lived in New Jersey, cold, freezing cold, tons of snow. Right? Chicago, freezing cold, Jersey, tons of snow. And I'm standing on that platform surrounded by tons of snow. And the wind came off the Alps in January at three in the morning because I was catching the train from downtown back to Zurich, which was a three hour train ride. And the whole way I said, nope, nope, nope. Because that wind hit me and I swear I've never been that cold in my entire life. So I went back home, I said, no, I'll take the package. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna do it. So after I did that, I sat with the family and I said, what do you guys wanna do? And all of them said almost simultaneously, we wanna be warm, we don't want snow. I said, okay. So I started looking in California and I got the job at Avery Denison. And this shows you the way that your career meanders. I went from a global, global head of infrastructure at, at Novartis to being a director level at Avery Denison. So it looked like a step back, but it wasn't. It was just a different step. And I went there and I, I was running IT effectiveness for the organization. And after about a year or so, year and a half, they asked me to step in into a program, a management officer role for the organization to look at how not only the IT, but also business projects within one of our brands. So it was, it was a great.
• 33:49
  Speaker B: Opportunity, great career and you spent some time going between IT and business management. And I've noticed a lot of people kind of stay in their swim lane. I know a few executives have kind of balanced or jumped between like marketing and it, but it seems to be more rare. What did you learn from working in different functions within these organizations?
• 34:12
  Speaker A: I learned the art of elicitation. I think that's what a lot of folks haven't done in their career. And if you don't know what the art of elicitation is, there's a book, it's called Confidential. If you could get your hands on the book, you have to go on ebay or, you know, you have to find it. It talks about how the intelligence community elicited information from people without them realizing that they're giving you the information. And what I mean by that is a lot of times that you're eliciting eliciting information from folks, it's because they don't know that they know. Does that make sense? So what you're doing is, is you're having to kind of coax out of them what it is they want you to do. So in my career, a lot of times, if I was sitting on the business side or on the it side, someone either on the opposite side of the fence, whether on the business side of their it side, are like, how do you do that? How do you. How did you know that that's what we wanted for the project? If I'm sitting on the it side, it said, well, here's what I've done. Can you come on this side and do that for us? So I kept getting stolen back and forth. I'd go on the business, then I get stolen back into it. I go back to the business because they were like, how do you do that? It is. Is a unique skill to have, but it's one I started doing at 14 years old.
• 35:27
  Speaker B: We'll. We'll drop it in the show notes so people can go and try and find it themselves. Feel like interesting book lesson in interrogation could be helpful for anybody, especially if you've got young children.
• 35:38
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, it does. It does help with teenagers, I'll tell you that much.
• 35:42
  Speaker B: Yeah. So you, you've. You've dealt with mortality quite a few times in your life. And after your father passed away, that wasn't the last time you kind of faced in. In this case, your own mortality, because around this time of your life, you were diagnosed with prostate cancer.
• 35:59
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 35:59
  Speaker B: And then later, severe Covid. How did those, like, difficult experiences affect you? Did they give you moments of clarity as you were kind of like. Like I said, facing your own mortality?
• 36:15
  Speaker A: Yeah. You know, I think what it does do is, is it gives you a level of hypervigilance of who you are, and you become very. You become very analytical about if this is the end. Is this the person I want them to remember that I've created and left behind? At least for me it did. So it really allows you to. To go inside of yourself when you're faced with the hard decision of whether you're going to keep fighting or not. Because it's not easy. The fight. Fighting is exhausting. And especially when I had prostate cancer, it was very difficult for me because I was going through a divorce at the time as well. So I actually had to move out of my house. I moved into an apartment. In the first eight months, almost a year of my treatment, I did alone. And I was in California. All my family was in Chicago or Arizona. So you had to make a decision whether you're going to get up to use the bathroom or get up or eat something because you didn't have energy to do both. And that was the big excitement for the day, is whether or not you would do one or the other. And it really allows you to self examine the person you've become. And if that's. And if that's the person that you want to continue. And it goes back to where I said, you need to move around to reinvent yourself. And that includes the way you think. Move around your thinking, maybe give that person the benefit of the doubt that before you were being really tough on or that family member, you might not have known what they were going through. You know, it really allowed me to have that, that clarity. And I had to change some things. I just didn't like the person I was, especially when, you know, I had the cancer, because I really didn't know what the outcome was going to be. And then I sat down and I said, you know what? I need to fight this. And there was two scenarios. And I have the pictures. Actually. There were two times in the time when I was trying to figure out if I wanted to continue fighting this or not that I was sitting on the couch in the apartment and I had lost 50, 60 pounds. I was 130 pounds at the time. I looked like hell. You know what I mean? I looked sick. I was just like, gosh, do I really, do I really want to keep doing this? And as soon as I said that, I looked out on my balcony and there was a dove sitting on my balcony railing. And I knew it was. My dad said, nope, gotta fight, gotta fight.
• 38:47
  Speaker B: That's beautiful.
• 38:48
  Speaker A: Second time, trying to figure it out. And again, I wasn't well. I wasn't. Wasn't feeling well. I was actually in the hospital. I was actually in the hospital and I was just looking out the window and again, there's a freaking dove. I'm like, what is going on here? And I could hear it before I saw it. You hear the who? You know, the coo. Coo. You know, And I was like, what the hell is this thing? You know, And I found it. I'm like, you know what? I get it now. As much as we think we're doing this alone, as much as you think you're sitting in a room alone, you're not alone. Yeah, you're not. There is spirit there that you'll never. You'll never ever understand what Is there. If you open your heart, you open your mind to your employees, you open your mind to the projects you're working on, your children, your spouse, you'll come to find that you are not alone.
• 39:45
  Speaker B: Yeah. I think the universe, spirit, God, if people choose to use that verbiage, it sends you messages and breadcrumbs, and if you're willing to keep your eyes open to it. Yeah. I think that's like, such a beautiful example of your father being still present in your life and, you know, giving you a message to continue to fight. You have more left to do here on this earth in this lifetime.
• 40:11
  Speaker A: Yeah. And then I saw a symbol. And it had a circle, small circle, and had a big circle, and then it had squares. And I said, oh, my God. It hit me and I went. When I got home, I pulled out my computer and I started writing a book. And in that book, I just started to dump all the things that were in my head. And this picture just kept hitting me, hitting me, hitting me. And inside of the picture is the center of self is you. That is you. That it. That is the center of everything that you are, the being that you are and the human that you are. And then each one of the squares, the four squares, is one was your. Your mental state, one is your emotional state, one is your physical state, and one was your spiritual state. And I started to realize that because I was sick, my physical state was pulling down when I felt terrible, which was dragging my emotional mental state down with it. But my spiritual state, since I believed that I wasn't alone, was able to pull those back into. Back into. Into the right position. So I started to realize that how I view things in my life impacts everything around me. My attitude, my altitude, my aptitude, everything. Your eq, your iq, anything you want to think of gets impacted when those things get out of whack or they're having a bad day. No, they're out of balance. Something's happened, and they're not processing it well. So I started to write this book. And then in this book, a part of it, I have a chart in it that was the rise of the Phoenix. You are, let's say, an addict or you've had an accident or you have a terrible illness. There's that. That identification that you have it. There's the identification that you have some level of illness or some level of addiction, or you start to realize your leg is missing or you have some type of, you know, critical injury that is going to change your life forever. So, you know, you Sit there and you start going down this hole to rock bottom. So, okay, let's use mine. You have an illness, you get a test. Now you're waiting for the results, which is the worst time of your life. As your brain is manufacturing scenario after scenario, it just starts producing all this terrible. And God forbid you're googling it and all this stuff. I mean, you. You already have predicted what the outcome is before you ever get the outcome. Now you get the diagnosis. That's when you hit rock bottom or you get the prognosis or you go into a center for care because you have an addiction or something like that. You hit that rock bottom where you know something has to change or you need to be treated or your life now is different. That's where the climb starts. Now that you have that information, it's what you do with it that's important that starts you on the journey of rise. You start having to rise from that. Great. You start getting treatment. You start responding to the treatment. You go for the addiction. You start responding to the treatment for addiction. You start learning how to walk with a prosthetic, or you get a new prosthetic arm, or you learn to read with one eye. Whatever it is. You start that climb of resilience, as you mentioned at the beginning to where, okay, let's get my mental state right. I'll still be emotional for a while, but once you get your mental state right, the emotional starts to get. Then you hit that physical. Like I said, all those physical things, then the spiritual kicks in. Now you say, I've realized I could do this. Something helped me along the way. A lot of people helped you. Their spirit helped you, their encouragement help you. But you don't realize that it was from the center of self of you hammer and nailing things into place to make you a better person. And you should do that in your career. Because when people come into work, sometimes they're out of balance. You got to get them benefit of the doubt. You don't know what's happened to them. And it's. Sometimes there's some tragedies going out there and out there that you just don't understand. So care. Care about people and you'll see it all. Your career will skyrocket.
• 44:07
  Speaker B: And what you're describing now is the house of self framework right within the Chichula Method book.
• 44:14
  Speaker A: Well, actually that in the Chichula Method, you see it at play, but I actually don't put that in there. That was in a book I never finished. And the reason I never finished. The reason that I never finished the book is as I started to tell some of these stories, it got too real. It got so real on some of the things that I had gone through that I realized that, holy smoke. And you know what? I guarantee you on this podcast, I will finish this book. I will finish it and I will give it. You'll be the first person to launch it, but I'll tell you, I will finish this amazing.
• 44:42
  Speaker B: Well, I'm also looking forward to seeing the next book when you finish it, because it sounds important. Michael, thank you so much for being here today. And thank you for your honesty, your generosity, and just the depth that you brought to this conversation. The way you shared what it looked like to lose your father at such a young age, face your own mortality, build a career through pure resilience is very powerful. I'm really grateful for your openness and for the way you kind of connected the dots between leadership, presence, faith and family in a way that's like, very real. So thank you so much for being here. If you're enjoying this conversation, make sure to hit subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. CEOs and ABCs is all about helping you grow in your career and show up at home. We've got many more amazing guests coming up, so tap, follow and stay tuned.