Chris Yonker - Peace, Joy, and Fulfillment: How to Live in Your Legacy

Time is precious and so are our pets, so time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24/7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow-ups for up to 5 pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments, and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care. Hi everyone, it's Bill Black, the exit coach from the Exit Coach Radio show. You know, one of the biggest questions I get on the show is what exactly goes into a business exit plan and when should I start creating mine? Well, I always tell people that the best time to start was 5 years ago, but the next best time is now because you never know when you might need it. So we put together a free report that describes what an exit plan is and what you should know. You can get it free by texting exit plan with no spaces to 44222. That's exit plan to 44222. Again, text exit plan to 44222. Welcome to the Exit Coach Radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And now here's your host, the exit coach Bill Black. Hello everyone, thanks so much for joining me. There's truth to the adage that life is short. We all have precious little time on this earth, and that time should be spent in peace, joy, and ultimate fulfillment. No one should settle for anything less. And that quote came from my next guest's website, Chris Yonker. Chris helps CEOs, family businesses, and celebrities plug back into their souls, discover the roadblocks and the mindsets holding them back to get clear on the life they want to live, build strategies into their life to get there, and create the permanent behavior changes needed to be the person who loves and lives that life. So my next guest, we're going to talk about that, Chris. Chris, thanks so much for joining me today. Welcome. Thank you, thanks for having me on. I'm excited to be here. Chris, I've looked over your website. It's great information. It's, it's soothing just just to read it. Tell our listeners a little bit about you and your background and what you do to help people. Yeah, great, thank you. Um, well, I probably most folks, I had a challenging childhood growing up in the Midwest, and one that I had made a distinction early on is that there is, there's a, there's a distinct difference between what was going on internally in me and what was happening externally, and we'll talk more about that here in a little bit, but it kind of led me into This, this dive into really truly mastering um myself uh at many levels. I, I, uh, since that time, I've um studied NLP or neurolinguistic programming. I, I also started studying a a bit of time in Eastern philosophy duality. I spent over 30 years studying in a specific martial art, became a tenured master in that. I've been studying shanga yoga now for quite some time and practicing, I should say, and as well as meditation. And what from that that basis um I've had, I also have over 20 years of corporate experience working at 3M and and even into the leadership realm and, and about 10 years ago I started doing uh executive coaching as well as just basic business consulting and here's what I found though. It was really interesting. The CEOs I was working with. I realized a lot of them were stressed out, didn't have a lot of joy, didn't have a lot of peace, didn't have a lot of happiness, or, or, or ease in their lives, and I'm like, huh, this is pretty interesting. And it really put me on the trajectory of, of a mission of like, how do, how do, how do we get folks to really enjoy, you know, some people are like, I wanna leave a legacy. What if I could live the legacy? And there's there's a massive distinction between those two things. That's great. That's a great, interesting background. So you've gone on a personal journey and you also worked in the corporate environment and yeah, as we look at, I think a lot of us look at people, maybe, maybe they're our bosses, maybe they're people that we respect and we think they have it all together, but oftentimes that's not the case. There's everybody in some way, shape or form probably thinks there must be more to it than this. Yeah, I mean, you're right on. In fact, um, because there's like there's so many folks that I've worked with that other folks have looked at the app like celebrities, right? People with, with different names, and you look at them and say, well, you know, they have all these things and I start talking like, man, shit, I'd like to have their homes and their money, right? And, but they're, they're not happy. That's why they're, they hired me. They're, they're, they're cause whatever, here's the issue. What they set themselves up to chase and achieve was always something outside themselves. That as soon as they obtained it, it wasn't enough, because there, there was still like a hole in their bucket, if you will, though, and they, they kept trying to fill that hole over and over again and pouring more water in, but it was, it was, it's an endless cycle. Yeah, good point. Now these days, of course we've got a lot of stresses going on external stresses. It might be affecting our families. It might be unemployment. It might be health issues. It might just be that I think more and more today people are dealing with constant kind of guilt or grief. Guilt may Because they're they're not affected and friends of theirs are or or family members are, or maybe grief because they are affected or family members are. So it's it's an extra level of stress these days. If someone's kind of reevaluating their life due to the pandemic and realizing that they're not where they want to be, what's the first step that they can take towards happiness? Yeah, that's a really good question. And, and you're right, the COVID has really um It's, it's done a few things here. One is it's, it's reminded us of our own mortality. Um, at a pretty deep level. The second thing we've done is it's massively disrupted, um, the marketplace, um, as, as you know, some folks are impacted and some, as you just said, some folk folks aren't. However, what I see happening is this has already started, but now there's, there's a much more focus on this almost conscious, conscious level of consciousness or spirituality awakening occurring that is in essence so so went back into these companies. I mean there's people are sitting out there and they say, well, OK. You know, they, a lot of folks are thinking, well, how am I going to Work on my exit bill when I'm just trying to get to the next 12 months, right, or 2 years like this has a whole other huge distraction to folks, um, but the fact of the matter is this is an amazing time to check in and really say, you know, if you do need to rebuild, maybe some people need to, it's a chance to rebuild what you want, not necessarily what you've had, and this is also a great time to center back on to like, well, what if I'm really out to do. What do I want? A lot of companies and folks of the baby boomers that that are in the audience that run businesses, they probably have a lot of millennials working for them, right? And we gotta look at what do millennials really want, what they desire. If you want to build in a company with full engagement of the people, we've also got to map out, we gotta line up what those folks want for themselves personally to what they're trying to accomplish with the business itself and millennials. Typically buy experiences they're not buying consumer goods nowhere near what past generations have and and we wanna, we wanna line that up and understand that, OK, well what's that mean? What's the experience about? What are they looking for? what there's an element of being in the moment with an experience. I'm sure you wanna, you wanna reference it in the past and I think it's a great amazing time to in essence. you know, look at how do I reboot and how do I get grounded. And so this is, so Chris, OK, great, how do I do that? Well, when the folks hire me, one of the first things I get them to do is, is meditating, and I've had so much flipping resistance from, you know, I worked with high achievers, very successful entrepreneurs. I have very typically very good companies. I'm not a turnaround guy. And I'm like, shit, man, I don't got time for that. I don't have time to meditate. I said, but what if you could, what if you created more space so you could get more done and so we we have to have and so they, they, here's the interesting thing, a massive amount of the clients I've worked with. That resisted me on the front side of that. Ended up saying it was one of the biggest gifts I gave them in some of the work that we did together. Cause it, it, it, it got them out, and here's what it did though, it gets them out of their heads. And the challenge is when you're looking to plan in the future, and you said there's worries all these other things externally that we're looking at we're assigning meaning to those things. And when the stress comes from very simply and simple but complicated, the stress comes from resisting. Which you don't like in your external reality. There's some external reality, you don't like it. In my book, my parents were in the ER this week. I don't like it. My dad's in the hospital right now. I don't like it, but it's reality. It's the reality of it. I'm, and I'm doing the best I can not to let it affect my neurology because it's not helpful to anyone anyway. So except, understanding and accept what is and create space to ground ourselves is extremely essential to do so and get out of our head, and that's because it in our head. We're running movies of what we don't want, worrying about things, creating conditions and things in our brain, and that's what's manifesting and creating the emotions that we're experiencing right now. And the challenge is, so most folks aren't Self-aware enough to pay attention to this. It just runs kind of on its own, like their brain runs their lives. So and that's what meditation does outside of gets you in the moment. It also activates a higher sense of self-awareness so that you could bring that into so many different things that we get to work on when I work with folks because we can't change what we don't notice. If I can't calibrate what's going on, I can't improve it. Does that make sense? Makes a ton of sense. Let's start with you can imagine a family situation that both, let's say husband and spouse, husband and wife both work from home now. Their kids are at home. Maybe their, maybe their parents are at. Home they're just they're, it's cramped and they're, you know, they're all working together trying to get along, wondering how long this thing's going to last, and they're looking for that space every time they turn around there's another stress. Let's talk about, give our listeners who might not be familiar with meditation, a quick primer. What are the basic steps? How long do you do it and what do you strive to think or not think? Great, great question. OK, um so first off, I'm gonna promote a couple apps here, um, calm, C A L M or Headspace, H E A D S P A C E. Both are available on a smart device or online. Um, I think it's guided meditation is what they introduce is a good way to develop some training wheels, um, because typically the ideal meditation really is to fill the mind. That's the ultimate objective. But it's hard for someone to go there and it'll give you some, some key elements. One of the key elements is. You can't really do it wrong. There isn't a wrong way. when for a lot of folks that are business owners, they're achievement driven. They're, they, they're goal drivers. They want to get things done. So they're trying to, trying to win the game, if you will. You can't win the game because it's, it's virtually impossible for anyone to totally still their mind for a significant period of time. So we have to accept that that's OK if and when it happens. The more I resist, this is, and this is true in anything in life, the more I resist what's happening, the more I basically generally generally manifest more of this condition. So it doesn't get me anywhere and it kind of pulls me, pulls me out of being able to transcend into a deeper meditation. So the rules of the road are find a comfortable place to sit. If you find a rat. And close your eyes, quiet, say why I'm at home, it's so busy. It's like, well, I had a, I had a CEO that had a big house that he, he runs his business in. And then you to meditate, you'd sneak away at lunch and you'd meditate in the garage. I mean, so you find, you find a place, you find a place to spend 1015 minutes, and then you, you really want to um relax and don't be so outcome driven with it. Pay attention to where your mind goes, and if you're following something guided, you want to listen and follow. What they're saying. And if your mind goes somewhere else, good, it's going to pay attention to where it goes. Bring it back to now. Pay attention to where it goes, bring it back to now. And that's, that's the that's, that's a sim very simple approach to, to doing that. But creating space is really the most important piece because if we don't create space, then we're not gonna create the time to sit down and go like, well, what do I really want? What do I, what do I, what do I, what, what, what's this whole thing about in life for me? What's ideal life mean to me? And, and, and, and, and that's like I'm looking to build my business to a certain point. I'm working with several clients right now that are within less than 10 years of vaccine, usually closer to 5 right uh ones I have right now are quite closer to 5, but regardless, they wanna, they wanna enjoy the journey in the process now. And also, how do I, how do I make sure that when I bring someone else in here. They're enjoying enjoying the journey too, right? And why don't we create the business to begin with? There's a really good question for people to ask themselves. Was it to prove something to somebody? That's great, but that's only gonna go so far, right? Like it's only gonna go so far, or is it because you, um, wanted to have power and that's fine, but that's only gonna go so far. So some of these things. Reasons is rationales that we might need to leverage that if we weren't conscious enough when we started our business, it's a, it's an evolutionary process. When I find when I work with CEOs, it becomes more, it's, it's like it's a healing process because in order for them to let go, as you know, is one of the biggest challenges of, of leaving a business, letting go of that business, especially when it's tied to your identity and all these other illusions that we've created, it's what I ideally is it that I want to step into and how do I want to live the rest of my life? How do, how do I, how do I want that to look and feel. Great. Yeah, really, really good tips within what you just said, and I think any listener that's listening to that, I think my, my question was more like a typical CEO would ask what's the work flow to meditation, right? And you know, hey, there's there's some steps to it you can find out about it, but it's not, it's not as structured an exercise as we would like it to be. So let's, you talked about something earlier and that was creating space and so that you had time to think about this stuff, work on this stuff, work on your future and happiness, and how can someone create space to work on the future when they don't even feel that they have enough time to get through today. Yeah, it's a great question. So what I found is, um, in fact I just came across the company with this was a scenario. And There's, it's the greatest story. There's two great stories that people have, and they're both the stories are built on lack. And one story is I don't have enough money, and the other story is I don't have enough time. And this is just basically generally a human condition, and most people will buy those stories, so we sell those stories to ourselves and to other people. But at the end of the day, We all have time for what's essential. I did not have time scheduled in my day bill to manage my, my mom's health, my dad's health, finding someone to come in home, in the house to provide care for my mom, and then also figure out where they're going to go next and where can I find long-term care. But I found a day and a half worth of time, be on the phone making phone calls to doctors, the caseworkers, you can imagine, right? So, Wow, that happened. How did that happen? I didn't have the time before. So we will always create time for what's important. We have to accept that as reality, period. I had a CEO who But had had his daughter had a health condition all of a sudden he was on a plane within 24 hours and lived lived thousands of miles away from his business for 3 weeks and ran his business remotely so he could be with his daughter. We will make time for what's important. The challenge with this bill is that there's an illusion that There's always more time. There's always more time. I can do it later. It's not urgent. It goes back to Stephen Covey's, right, the, the, the seven habits, and it's it's in that quadrant of like important but not urgent, and we tend to react to what's urgent. But if you're a CEO and you're out there and you're running a, you know, $20 million.50 million dollars, $200 500 million dollars dollar business plus. You should be spending 75% of your time on strategy and people and vision. That's where we should be spending your time anyway, but a lot of CEOs of those companies, those sizes aren't, but that's really where it should be anyway. So how do I get there? Well, you deal with a critical right now. You build a 90 day plan and and deal with it. I get it. But you have to have, you know, it's not like you have to sit down for 5 hours, and for an hour. And what, what have you learned? And I would ask anyone out there, what's been the greatest gift? And I, of COVID, what's been the greatest gift to you? And I said, why would I have, it's not a gift, it's uh it's, it's awful. I, I understand. I mean, I, we've lost friends. I mean, it's, I thought something that I, I'm, I'm happy about. However, there's been gifts. I've spent more time with my family than I did before. I start my days differently than I did before. There are things that we're doing differently that we, we never really did. So it's improving our level of consciousness in regards to what we truly desire and, and appreciate. And there is, there is a gift here if you look for it. Chris, really, really fascinating to hear your viewpoints and your, your insights, and I've been looking at your website. It's fantastic. It's a good place for people to go and learn more about who you are and what you do, and I would imagine one of the things that you might make yourself available for on the website is. There's a there's a place where people can ask for information to become the architect that builds a life and a business by choice, not by chance. You have a free vision workbook there. The website is chrisyonker.com. Is there anything specifically that you would recommend that people look at to learn more about what you do and how you do it? Um, no, that, it's a, it's a great starting point, and there's also, uh, and one of, uh, you, you hosted me prior to Bill and I have a podcast, uh, link there as well on my podcast page, so I do have some other podcasts that I've, I've been on. Um, but yeah, feel free to reach out and we can, if you do do do ask for the newsletter, we'll be happy to put you that newsletter to ask for the workbook. Terrific. So it's, it's great information and I took a whole bunch of notes and I hope our listeners will take heed because this is a time when more than ever people need to find The calm, find their their a serene spot where they can command and lead from a position of strength instead of being pulled every which way. So Chris, I would love to have you back again sometime in the future. I hope you will take me up on that because I really enjoyed today's interview and thank you so much for joining me. Thank you, Bill. Have a good day. Take care. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio. Time is precious and so are our pets, so time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24/7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow ups for up to 5 pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments, and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care.