Every scaling CEO eventually encounters it.
The deal that’s almost aligned.
The client who can pay but doesn’t quite fit.
The opportunity that fills next quarter’s revenue gap while subtly eroding how you operate.
The decision rarely feels dramatic in the moment. It feels practical. Flexible. Necessary.
For Chris Shurian, that moment appeared repeatedly across industries, including construction, development, hospitality. The pattern was consistent: when he drifted outside his defined customer and standards model, friction followed. When he held the line, the business strengthened, even if it cost him in the short term.
His framing is direct:
“I would rather take the hit than leave my customer with a sour taste.”
This is not a branding slogan. It’s a cost-bearing decision rule.
In construction, his companies positioned around what he called a “Mercedes experience.”
“We’re going to provide a Mercedes experience, and people pay for that.”
That choice required structural alignment:
Those decisions increase cost. They narrow the addressable market. They slow certain forms of growth.
They also clarify identity.
Premium positioning is not an aesthetic choice. It is a cost structure, a hiring model, and a discipline filter. Once adopted, it becomes difficult to toggle off without damaging trust.
Chris observed that his companies “performed better at that level.” That performance wasn’t accidental. It reflected alignment between market, pricing, and operating model.
The harder decision came when opportunity knocked from outside that positioning.
A homeowner with a tighter budget.
A referral that didn’t quite fit the model.
A job that could keep crews busy during a lull.
The temptation wasn’t greed. It was practicality.
But when Chris accepted projects outside his ideal profile, the results were consistent: margins tightened, supervision costs stayed high, and he often absorbed losses to preserve experience.
He describes the lesson plainly:
“Once you figure out who your customer is, you have to focus on that.”
This is not a marketing insight. It’s a constraint discipline.
Growth outside ideal positioning compounds operational friction:
Short-term revenue feels like expansion. In reality, it can be margin compression disguised as growth.
The most revealing moments weren’t expansion decisions—they were loss-absorbing ones.
When projects drifted or estimates proved tight, Chris faced a recurring choice: push cost overruns back to the customer, or protect experience and absorb the impact.
“I would rather take the hit than leave my customer with a sour taste.”
That choice has immediate financial consequences. It also sets a cultural precedent.
Teams observe what the CEO defends under pressure. If leadership protects standards only when margins are strong, the culture adjusts accordingly.
Protecting experience when it costs money signals permanence.
It also creates irreversibility. Once your reputation is built on disciplined execution, lowering the bar to recover margin becomes more visible—and more damaging.
Maintaining elevated standards across construction crews and restaurant teams required more than preference. It required systems.
In hospitality, Chris implemented scorecards tied to detailed checklists. Weekly grading created visible accountability. Rankings were posted. Performance was transparent.
“We created an environment that motivated them to be great.”
The principle carried across industries:
He also believed that improving employees personally improved performance professionally: “If I can improve their lives personally, they become better employees.”
That view influenced hiring, training, and mentorship. It reinforced the idea that standards are cultural, not procedural.
Premium experience requires premium internal discipline.
What becomes clear in Chris’s experience is that the risk is rarely catastrophic in a single decision.
It is cumulative.
A slightly misaligned client.
A minor exception to process.
A tolerance for “good enough” on a busy week.
Each instance feels manageable. Over time, the company drifts from its original operating identity.
The inverse is also true. Repeatedly choosing standards—even at cost—compounds trust, reputation, and internal clarity.
The market begins to understand who you are. So does your team.
Chris’s career included visible success, collapse, public scrutiny, rebuilding, and eventual repositioning toward founder mentorship. The path was not linear.
“You can’t go from point A to point B in a straight line.”
Those experiences informed his belief that CEOs need disciplined peer environments where performance posture is unnecessary.
“Sometimes we need to take that armor off.”
That insight led to Founders Exchange—a structured, confidentiality-driven environment built around experiential learning rather than advice-giving.
The philosophy mirrors his operating model: clarity, discipline, and standards applied to leadership itself.
The core question is not whether growth matters. It does.
The question is whether your growth vector reinforces or erodes your positioning.
A CEO reviewing Chris’s experience might ask:
Protecting standards is rarely the cheapest path in the moment.
It is often the clearest path to durable identity.
Chris’s companies were not defined by avoiding difficulty. They were defined by the moments he chose not to compromise identity for convenience.
That decision compounds—both ways.
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Chris Shurian is the founder of Bootstraps & Battle Scars and Founder’s Exchange. Over multiple decades, he has built, lost, rebuilt, and exited companies in construction, development, and hospitality. His current work focuses on supporting founders navigating growth, volatility, and leadership isolation through disciplined peer environments and experiential insight.
Chris' LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisshurian/
Company: Bootstraps & Battle Scars
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Jeff Holman is a CEO advisor, legal strategist, and founder of Intellectual Strategies. With years of experience guiding leaders through complex business and legal challenges, Jeff equips CEOs to scale with confidence by blending legal expertise with strategic foresight. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
Intellectual Strategies provides innovative legal solutions for CEOs and founders through its fractional legal team model. By offering proactive, integrated legal support at predictable costs, the firm helps leaders protect their businesses, manage risk, and focus on growth with confidence.
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The Breakout CEO podcast brings you inside the pivotal moments of scaling leaders. Each week, host Jeff Holman spotlights breakout stories of scaling CEOs—showing how resilience, insight, and strategy create pivotal inflection points and lasting growth.
Listen and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform:
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Want to be a guest—or know a scaling CEO with a breakout story to share? Apply directly at go.intellectualstrategies.com.
Transcript Summary
Full Transcript (AI generated and might include errors)
Jeff Holman (00:01.996)
Welcome back everybody to the Breakout CEO podcast. I'm your host, Jeff Holman, and I am here with Chris Shurian and Chris. So good to have you on the show.
Chris Shurian (00:11.303)
Good to be here, Jeff. I always enjoy talking about CEO stuff, so I appreciate you having me on.
Jeff Holman (00:16.686)
Well, it's a good place to do it. So we got an audience that wants to hear CEO stuff. And as you know, specifically, how do we bring access to our listeners into the minds of smart CEOs making tough decisions and navigating pivotal moments? So that's what we're here to talk about today. And you and I had a chance to get together for lunch recently, enjoy some great Italian deli sandwiches. And it was fantastic getting to know you better that way.
Chris Shurian (00:42.044)
Yeah.
Yeah, and you even bought lunch, so I appreciate that. That was awesome, it worked out great.
Jeff Holman (00:48.078)
Yeah, I mean if you're make the trip I might as well buy you lunch, right?
Yeah, it did. Well, I'm excited because I got to know you more. I've looked at your profile. We've chatted a little before, chatted at lunch. And I think there's like a ton of stuff here that you can share with our audience. you've just, you've got a really, I'm gonna call it a really well-rounded background. You've been through a lot of different things. You've had a lot of successes. You've navigated some obstacles.
Just to orient our audience though, give them a flavor of a couple of the highlights that you've, know, places that you've been, things that you've done leading up to today.
Chris Shurian (01:36.145)
Well, that's a good one. You know, I've been an entrepreneur for, I did some math the other day and of the 39 years that I've been adulting and providing for my family, of those 39 years, I've only worked for somebody else directly for four of those years. And that was early on. And, and so I, I've been fortunate that I built a very successful, I call it a construction company. You know, we were a general contractor. had a custom cabinet shop. had a electrical contractor. We provided.
Jeff Holman (01:51.416)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (02:00.611)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Shurian (02:04.977)
great services for our community, had great success doing that, received a few awards for being an entrepreneur and being somewhat successful, and then lost it all. The economy, the big crash of 08, 09 really hit my business hard. And then I built up and I built again. And I got back into a rhythm and started building, started having success and started working on a...
Jeff Holman (02:10.754)
Nice.
Jeff Holman (02:22.893)
Yeah.
Chris Shurian (02:32.005)
a really great resort development up in Northern Utah. And once again, was sitting on top of things and having great success. then, you know, had made a few bad decisions and had a few little, you know, issues creep up on me that kind of pulled the carpet out for me again. and then one more time, you know, built a restaurant, had great success, had fun building a restaurant. And, you know, that's a tough business. But, you know, now I'm in a position, I had an exit just recently, was able to sell the restaurants and
Jeff Holman (02:46.508)
Yeah.
Chris Shurian (03:01.959)
come out of there with a little bit cash and now I'm able to focus on helping others. I love serving others. I've always loved being a mentor and working with other entrepreneurs and business owners and helping them be successful. And now I have the ability and I'm somewhat blessed with the opportunity to take all these experiences I've learned and share them with others and help them be successful.
Jeff Holman (03:26.466)
Yeah. Well, I'm glad you're, I'm glad we're one of the stops on your, on your journey to share this with other people. So it's great to have you here. So when you coach or when you're talking with other entrepreneurs about their experiences, I'm really curious and we'll just dive right in because you know, you've had the good, you've had the bad. How do you approach talking with other people about this or rather how do you maybe approach
talking to them about them talking about their experiences. It's not easy to say, listen, I had a great run, but man, it didn't end right. Like it didn't go well. I have some of those things in my past and I'm like, well, do I really wanna talk about them? But that's the nature of the business. That's the nature of business itself is to be, you have some winners, you have some losers and navigating those conversations.
Chris Shurian (04:03.837)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (04:22.732)
at least to me, seems like they're kind of fundamental. If you can navigate a conversation about a failure you've had, you can pretty much tackle any other topic in business, I think.
Chris Shurian (04:32.455)
Well, you know, that's a good point. You and I had a good conversation the other day about this. You know, some of my failures, I'm not going to call them failures, but some of my issues I've had in business are very public. And you can find anything on the internet nowadays, right? So if someone searches me and reads about me, they're going to read a lot of good, and they're going to read a couple of things that weren't good that I've had challenges with.
And so I can't hide it and I wouldn't want to hide it anyways. So for me, as I'm meeting with entrepreneurs, meeting with people that there may be a potential relationship there, man, I hit that nail on the head. I share some of my struggles I've had and I talk about how they were such great learning experiences and that's actually made me part of who I am and I think made me better to help other people. I've had people, I'm not going to lie.
I've had people not do business with me because of stuff they've heard or information they've dug up on me. And, uh, you know, it is what it is. So what are you going to do about it? There's nothing I can do about it. So I keep plowing ahead, but I also have people that I work with, uh, who know very well what my, some of my other past challenges were and, uh, and they feel the same way I do. It's a great learning experience. And, know, plus as we all know, you know, the court of public opinion,
is somewhat skewed into the, idea that you're guilty and you don't even have the chance to prove your innocence. Like, you know, I had, I had an issue with the SEC that I've worked through and I've almost, almost have it resolved. But when the SEC releases an initial press release saying here are the allegations against this guy. Well, everyone reads that and that makes front page, but then five years later.
Jeff Holman (06:26.723)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Shurian (06:28.753)
When I get to the end of this and the SEC actually realizes that everything they accused me of was not true and I was able to prove that, well, where's that new story? That doesn't show up on the...
Jeff Holman (06:39.01)
Yeah, they don't they don't issue a second press release then do they?
Chris Shurian (06:41.949)
No, they don't. And even if they did, who wants to read that press release? Nobody. So it's just one those things. And I look at it and I chalk it up to learning experiences. I don't think any entrepreneur goes through life and gets from point A to point B in a straight line. It just doesn't happen. And I think you talk to any entrepreneur, any business owner, anybody that's had any kind of success, and they're going to tell you that it was a road.
Jeff Holman (06:45.58)
Yeah.
Chris Shurian (07:11.975)
I mean, there was peaks and there was valleys and that's just the route to success. And so, you know, I'm fortunate that I can put those to work to help others as well.
Jeff Holman (07:25.366)
Yeah, no, I often talk about seeing around the corner, right? As a legal advisor, I've helped people with issues that some people only experience those issues once. But I've seen them a lot of times because I've helped multiple people who've each experienced them. With that road analogy, it's kind of the same way. Peaks and valleys, I've seen over the next ridge. I've seen over it a few times and you've seen over the next ridge. And sometimes that's a ridge you want to see over so you can go there.
Other times it's a ridge you gotta see over so you know not to go there, right? So that.
Chris Shurian (07:57.689)
Right. And Jeff, you're a legal professional and you know that no matter how good a work you do up front to help people, you know, avoid challenges, avoid lawsuits, avoid legal issues, no matter how good a job you do, there's always somebody that feels like they can argue that or they have a different opinion or, you know, it's just amazing how many different issues can come up.
No matter how well you think you are prepared for it, things still happen. Right. And no matter how well prepared you are, man, you're still going to have to at some point defend yourself. no doubt about it. Yeah. No doubt about it.
Jeff Holman (08:39.404)
Yeah, no, the too many external factors. Well, I want to, I mean, that's, that feels like, that feels like we went straight to one end of the pendulum, right? Let's, let's swing to the other end of the pendulum for a second. And I'm sure we'll end up in the middle, as we, as we talk. but the other end of the pendulum, you were mentioning to me previously that some of the people that you've, employed or mentored along the way, like, like you've been a really positive influence for some people who've gone on to see some great success. That's, you know, that feels, that feels
opposed to or very different from, you know, I've been a business owner and I've had my challenges and I've taken my lumps, but there's some rewards along the way too, right?
Chris Shurian (09:19.815)
Yeah, you know, I think we were talking the other day about, there's a couple of fellows that used to work for me that got their start working for me. And, you know, I always felt like as a business owner, I was really interested in teaching my employees more than just how to do the job. And so we talked about, you know, self-improvement. We talked about how to run a business, you know, they all watch how I ran our business and
Jeff Holman (09:43.896)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Shurian (09:46.437)
And how, you know, every business I ever was involved in, especially early on, everything I did was very focused on the customer experience. That was very important to me. And so some of these young guys watched and learned and would talk to me and ask me questions. and one of them in particular, you and I were talking about, you know, he just, he just sold half his business for $250 million. And now he's, which is, you he brought in a private equity partner and now they're building it.
up again and they're going for a billion dollar exit. And when I went to lunch with this guy, you know, who worked for me 25 years ago, 20 years ago, you know, he, you know, he says, Chris, I owe it all to you. And of course I'm like, okay, yeah, you know, you, you've done way more. But he did. He said, look, you, I watched you. I saw how you take care of customers. I saw how you ran your business. I saw how you took care of employees. And then
Jeff Holman (10:33.784)
That's very nice of you to say that, right? Yeah.
Chris Shurian (10:44.957)
You know, I was a young, you know, business guy, our young, a young electrician trying to figure out my way. And one of things you taught me was to read books. And you taught me how important it was to keep learning and to go find good books and read them and learn how to be better at what you do. And he said, and I did exactly that. And, uh, and he just started reading and never stopped reading. And then when I asked him, said, well, how did you learn about the whole private equity idea? And he said, I read books about it, Chris. I'm serious. You taught me.
Jeff Holman (11:03.448)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Shurian (11:14.501)
And you challenged me to read books and I started reading books. And I was flattered, right? I was flattered like, wow, here's a young guy that actually listened to me, who looked up to me as a mentor and whatever the few things I was able to teach him or share with him, man, he did it and did it well, right? And so, you know, and I've had another, there's another young guy who worked for us, a similar idea. He was a heating and air conditioning contractor.
Jeff Holman (11:32.236)
Yeah, that's awesome.
Chris Shurian (11:43.259)
And he just had an exit a few years ago where he's retired. I don't know if it was as big as the other one, but he had a really nice exit and same thing. We went to lunch and he, he shared with me some of the experiences, share with me some stories about interactions we had that, that, that molded him and, and guided him into how he wanted to do his business. And it was, once again, it was, it was kind of cool, you know, to hear that. And, and some of the stories were.
We're entertaining. Actually, we laughed. We went to lunch and laughed and, um, and we laughed about some of the things that we did. uh, if you don't mind me just indulging in your number of story, but we were talking about something and, uh, and he said, Chris, I was thinking about our interaction the other day when, before we came to lunch. And I remembered this one time when I came into your office and you said, Hey, we're going to visit a client.
Jeff Holman (12:19.436)
Yeah, no, go ahead.
Chris Shurian (12:40.509)
tomorrow and can you make it because we're look at their project and he said yeah I can make it I'll be there and I said you need to cut your hair first and and he okay so he's telling me the story I'm like I did that right but he said yeah he said you know I hadn't cut my hair I've been working hard you know I was grinding it been probably eight weeks maybe a couple months or I guess eight weeks would be a couple months so you know it was a while since I had a haircut and I looked a little mangy
Jeff Holman (12:53.015)
Yeah, yeah.
Chris Shurian (13:08.495)
And you said, yeah, before we go meet this customer, you're going to cut your hair. And then you explained to me, because I was saying, yeah, I know, I know, it's just hard to get the haircut. And you explained to me, said, listen, the way I do it is I go and get my haircut and I schedule it and I do it every four weeks. And before I leave my barber appointment, I schedule the next one and I do it and I schedule the next one. And he said, Chris, I have not missed a haircut since I have. I have the same hair, the same barber.
Jeff Holman (13:34.05)
Really?
Chris Shurian (13:37.703)
that I had 20 years ago, you taught me that lesson and I have not missed a haircut since. Yeah.
Jeff Holman (13:44.95)
Is that the lesson you thought you'd be teaching him?
Chris Shurian (13:47.589)
Right. And we just laughed about that because we're like, a haircut, know, clean shaven. But just one of those things that, yeah, you know, I had an impact. It's pretty cool to see the impact that I may have had on some of these young guys who have built successful businesses. And now I get to do that every day. You know, now I get to do that. It's my job is to do that same thing. And on days when I'm feeling maybe like, man, I've been beat up a little bit over the years.
Well, you what you think about the times you actually help somebody and help them improve their business, gave them just one little nugget that improved their business, improved their life, and then it's totally worth it.
Jeff Holman (14:28.334)
Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's fantastic. And I, I put that into perspective by looking back when I was, you know, what 22 or something like that. And I was working at an engineering firm and I had a chance to go visit clients with the owner of the firm. And he said, Hey, come with me. We're go deliver gifts. And I, and I was like, that sounds great. I'm going to learn so much from this guy. And we went and delivered gifts, but we didn't talk about haircuts. We didn't talk about business. We didn't talk about life. Uh, we
The only thing I remember from that whole trip and I feel like maybe I didn't know how to leverage the mentorship opportunity or something. Because the only thing I remember is we drove past some, you know, some diner dive that he had gone to as a kid and he told me about picking up on some girl with a wooden leg. And I'm like, what? I'm like, why am I supposed to take away from this? This is really weird. so.
Chris Shurian (15:18.019)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (15:25.87)
It's good that you've had the opportunities to do that. Why do you think it is that maybe you would take the opportunity to teach these people, these employees, these things? Whereas I was with somebody who, and he was a great guy in a lot of ways. I'm not trying to bad mouth him at all, but I don't know that we took advantage of mentorship opportunities when we were together.
Chris Shurian (15:25.97)
Yeah.
Chris Shurian (15:49.585)
Yeah, you know, that's a good question. I always had mentors somewhere along the way. I don't know if it was someone that taught me this idea or if I read it in a book somewhere, but I was taught the importance of having mentors in your life. know, people that you looked up to, people that were successful, people that were doing things that you wanted to do someday and associate with them or even sit down and talk to them and ask them questions and learn from them.
Jeff Holman (16:05.539)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Shurian (16:19.045)
And so I learned that early on as a young adult, that idea. And so somehow when I started my own business and I began hiring people and working with other teams around me, I somehow adopted this idea that I wanted to influence the people around me for good, whether they were employees or customers or just, you know, young friends or family, whatever. And so I
I felt like I wanted to influence them for good. And as far as employees were concerned, I always felt that if I can make, if I can improve their lives personally, they're going to become better employees. If I can teach them something that makes their life easier, makes their life better. I think they become better employees. And so a lot of times we, we talked in our team meetings, in our company meetings, we talked about, you know, personal improvement that sometimes had nothing to do with being a contractor or building cabinets or being an electrician.
And, and, and cause I just had this, I don't know this, I don't know where it came from, but I just had this idea that I wanted to help others be better. And so, and that's always been the case. I mean, you can talk to anyone that's worked for me, even in the restaurants, most recently we would have a monthly meeting and, and there was always me talking about. They're sharing some life hack on how they can improve their life, how they could be happy, you know, what, what it means to have a positive attitude, what it means to, you know,
surround yourself with good people, whatever the topic was, you could talk to anybody and they'll tell you that that was my thing is I wanted people to be better people. and, know, someone, someone told me the other day, we're having this conversation and they talked about their team and how they felt like if they could treat their employees, like their employees would like, he wants their employees to treat their customers.
There's that's good. That's great leadership, right? And, and I thought about that. thought, man, that's kind of what I used to do. And so to hear, you know, these stories come back to me that people actually took something away from that. You know, that's cool. And yeah. And, and I was going to say one other thing, man, Jeff, you get me talking, you put a quarter in and watch out. You here I go.
Jeff Holman (18:19.662)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (18:35.97)
That's fantastic. Yeah.
Chris Shurian (18:47.365)
I used to read a lot, a lot of books. would read books, read books, read books. I mean, I have bookshelves full of books. And I realized that not all of the people in my organization would read a book, a full book, right? So I actually used to make book reports. I would go through and when I read a book, would dog, I'd dog your pages. would highlight quotations. I'd highlight paragraphs. And then I would take all that, all those notes and put them into what I call the book report.
And then I would hand that book report out to all my people on my team and say, Hey, or read this. And, you don't, you may not read the 300 page book, but if you read this page summary, you'll get a lot of nuggets out of it. And because I wanted them to at least get something good out of that book, knowing that they probably weren't going to read the whole thing.
Jeff Holman (19:26.061)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (19:37.474)
This was not a school assignment. You're just making book reports for as an owner a business owner What do these book reports look like?
Chris Shurian (19:45.735)
Well, know, I seriously, would, as I would read the book, I'd highlight our dog here. And then I'd go to my app, I was going with the book. I'd sit in front of my computer and I'd go through that book and just type up all of the highlights, all of the important and all the bullet points that I pulled out of the book. And seriously, it was like an eight page document, just a word doc that I'd print and just hand to them.
Jeff Holman (20:05.262)
Did you did you add your thoughts you're like hey, this is why this is important important or was it okay?
Chris Shurian (20:09.179)
No, no, would just take exactly word for word the thing out of the book that I read and transfer it over.
Jeff Holman (20:15.992)
transferred over and so I assume if you had a chance for a conversation with somebody about this book report, then it was easy to explain, yeah, this is important in our business because XYZ. Yeah.
Chris Shurian (20:28.733)
Yeah, then we can talk about it, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was cool. In fact, I stumbled across some of my book reports the other day and I read some of them and I was like, wow, that's pretty cool. Go Chris.
Jeff Holman (20:41.506)
That's awesome. was, do you have an experience with an employee who where that book report like made a difference to them and they, you or you altered kind of how the business was running? I mean, I think a lot of business owners do this, right? I've got a stack of books on my desk right here actually in front of my keyboard. And I, you know, I read several this year so far, more than I have in past years. And I am talking to my team about,
concepts from different books, next, not next week. Tomorrow, we'll be talking about unreasonable hospitality, because I think there are aspects of that that apply to any professional services company, anybody who's giving service, maybe every company in the world, the restaurants that used to run, right? It's a fantastic book. I'm gonna talk to my team about that book. I don't have a book report, but maybe there's still time to put one together.
Chris Shurian (21:33.277)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, you know, I'm trying to think of any, any direct correlation to how a book report may have affected somebody, but I will share, um, I'm a huge fan of, of Walt Disney and the whole Disney experience, right? And so early on I read, you know, a lot of books on Walt Disney and Disneyland and how he did the things he did. And, you know, he was a pretty, pretty fascinating guy. And, you know, it was amazing how.
Jeff Holman (21:47.416)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Shurian (22:03.237)
He would just sit at the entrance to the park and he'd watch people and just watch them and watch them and study their habits and study the routines. And then he would, he would, he would figure out, okay, for example, you know, when you go to Disneyland, it, you know, you come into Disneyland, the main gates, and then you have Disneyland kind of opens, you go around that center Island to get into the park. Right. Well, he, he watched and realized that people naturally have a tendency to go to the right.
Jeff Holman (22:25.398)
Right. Yep.
Chris Shurian (22:33.125)
as they came in the park. And then as they're leaving, they'd come out the other side. So if you go to Disneyland, you'll see that all the kiosks on the right-hand side, where people are typically coming in the park, have the things they need that they would want to buy as they're coming in. That's where the strollers are. That's where the umbrellas are or the things that they might need as they're coming into the park. And then on the opposite side, what do you got? Those last chance souvenirs, the things they want as they're leaving. And that was something that he just observed people.
Jeff Holman (22:53.165)
Yeah.
Chris Shurian (23:02.459)
and said, huh, if I put stuff over here that they'd want as they're going in and stuff over here that they'd want as they're going out. So, you know, those were the books that probably had the most impact on my team because once again, we were very customer service oriented, which as a general contractor just was kind of unheard of still. Right. And, and sharing those book reports, I could see how those had a real impact on my team. And now, you know, these two fellows I talked about who
Jeff Holman (23:19.488)
Yeah.
Chris Shurian (23:31.345)
gave me some credit for their success. Part of their success and part of their business model is customer service and how important it is. You've got electricians walking into houses and putting on booties and putting down floor mats to wipe their feet and wearing, they're dressed well. And those are all things that we learned and talked about. Fresh, haircuts, yeah. In fact, I'll tell you, one of those companies requires almost a missionary haircut.
Jeff Holman (23:47.192)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (23:51.81)
Fresh haircuts, right?
Chris Shurian (24:00.061)
from their employees because that's just the clean cut, you know, person they want going into somebody's home and they're all dressed in uniforms. mean, it's, yeah, it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. So yeah, I know those books had an impact. I know those book reports had an impact. And now I bump into people that worked for me 25, 30 years ago, who still, we talk about the book reports. We talk about the stuff we talked about. We talked about these, you know, these lessons we have.
And it's cool. It worked. It worked.
Jeff Holman (24:30.35)
That's awesome. It's awesome to be building that legacy all along. I think a lot of people get to the end of their career and like, oh, it's legacy time, but you know, why not be building the legacy as you go and all the people that you're impacting. That's cool. Do you have a time in your experience, you know, I'm not sure which business it might be in, but across these businesses, you know, what are some of the pivotal moments for you that required you to think hard, but maybe even
made you level up how you think. Approach things from a different mindset or gain a new perspective.
Maybe the easy things to go to are always, well, things didn't work out how I wanted, so of course I had to shift my perspective. But those aren't always the most impactful on how we make decisions, maybe how we react to things, but maybe not how we make decisions.
Chris Shurian (25:29.723)
Yeah,
Chris Shurian (25:34.226)
Wow, I'm thinking through some of my most recent experiences.
Jeff Holman (25:40.461)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Shurian (25:43.933)
I mean, wow. Okay, Jeff, this is going to be a tricky one. I'm just because I, you know, like there's things in my career, for example. Um, well here, here's one and I'm, and I'm probably going to go a little bit different direction, but you know, we were, when I was a general contractor, we prided ourselves on doing really great work, uh, for people. We, know, the whole, like I said, the whole experience, old customer experience was, was different. And it was, it was a.
And we gave an elevated type of service. provided an elevated service to our customers. So when we built homes, when we did remodeling, when we did cabinets, we really focused on, we probably did a little bit nicer, higher end work for people who were willing to pay for that level of service. You know, it's kind of like, if you're going to go, why would you spend $100,000 on a Mercedes when you can go buy a Toyota for $50,000?
Jeff Holman (26:26.658)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Shurian (26:42.353)
Well, there's a lot of things Mercedes have that are worth more money, right? And so, so when we built our company, all the companies, we, that was my mindset is we're going to provide a Mercedes experience and people pay for that because sometimes it's not cheap to provide that experience. so.
Jeff Holman (27:00.172)
Yeah. What did that mean to do a Mercedes experience for you guys? Like how would a customer experience that differently than say somebody who was providing the other experience?
Chris Shurian (27:11.163)
Yeah, yeah. So let's use building a custom home, for example. We built several, many very nice, very high-end custom homes. And in a custom home versus like a starter home, it's just everything. The material quality, materials is better. The quality of the cabinets, the appliances, the countertops, the tile, mean, everything is just elevated, just cost more money for having a better quality product.
And one of things we would do is if we were building a custom home, we would have a superintendent and we have one superintendent on that job and he only had one job to do and that was to build that house. Now that's expensive for me to have one guy who is on that job every day, all day, not bouncing around between different jobs. That allows him to be involved in every aspect of the project. He sees everything that's going on every day.
He knows the job sites clean. knows the things, the house is being built properly and the customer can show up anytime during that job during that day. And they know that our superintendent is going to be there so that they can talk and ask questions and walk around and do whatever. And, and like I said, that's not cheap. and a lot of contractors can't afford to do that because they, they're not, they're not charging the customer to have that experience. You know, I had a customer call me one time and he said, he said, Chris, why is.
Why is my, you know, $75 an hour project manager or superintendent, why is he, why is he sweeping? Why don't we have like a $25 an hour labor sweeping? And I said, well, um, I could do that, but here's the thing. My superintendent is going to be there no matter what, because his job is beyond your job all day, every day. I make sure he's right. So if he's standing around waiting for some subcontractors show up or he's doing this or doing that.
Jeff Holman (28:58.71)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Shurian (29:07.377)
You know, why not grab a broom and sweep up the job site? You know, now he could call and get us labor in there to do that, but then now we're charging more. And so, so that's how we ran those projects. And, and that just, that just costs more money. But then at the end of the day, I'll tell you what, our customers loved us. They love the superintendent. I had several customers hire people away from me because they had that relationship. They loved that guy.
you know, we built an estate for a family one time that was, you know, in today's dollars, probably a $75 million estate. And, and, you know, that's a, there was 13 buildings on 20 acres, you know, a pond, a pool, and, know, there was a pretty extensive project. Well, yeah, they hired away my superintendent to help just maintain the place and they gave him a full-time job just to be there. And I think he still works for him. This was probably 10.
Jeff Holman (29:41.678)
Hmm.
Jeff Holman (29:50.531)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (29:58.616)
Wow.
Chris Shurian (30:04.733)
15, 20 years ago we finished this project and I think he still works for him. So that's just how that was the experience we wanted our customers to have and that cost more money and their customers are willing to pay for that.
Jeff Holman (30:17.974)
Was that an easy decision for you to say, we're going to like, is it just like, it goes with the market that we're targeting. And so we're going to be higher end. So we're just going to do it. Or was it, or was it not as easy? Cause I know a lot of people, especially if you're in business and you haven't like hit the jackpot right off the bat and you've got the money flowing. It's really easy for people to start to say, well, I'll do it when I get money or all, you know, I, I want to do this when I have more time.
And they just never get around to it because, you know, offering quality does take more time and it can be more expensive. So is that something that was just an easy decision? You're like, we're just doing it? Or was it something you had to work through? Was your team on board with it?
Chris Shurian (31:03.847)
You know, I, when I was doing, when I started my first construction company, you know, I was the guy. It was me and a couple of guys. were doing all the work and we were doing smaller jobs and so forth. And that was just the way I operated. You know, I, when I started my first construction company, I knew that, that I was going to bring a level of professionalism that didn't exist in that world. And so that's just how I operated. So when I hired fellows to work for me, they just saw and they just said, okay, well, this is how we do it here.
Jeff Holman (31:12.269)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Shurian (31:33.745)
You know, we sweep up every day. You know, my, my philosophy when we were doing remodel jobs and even new construction is that at the end of the day, a customer could walk through that job site barefoot to see what happened the day that the day that day, which means if you're, if you're going to walk through a job site barefoot, you know, what's that mean? You know, we've got to sweep up, we've got to pick up our tools, you got to put away everything. And so that was my philosophy. And when people worked for me, they,
They figured it out. And then when it got to the point where we got bigger, where I wasn't the one on the job every day and I had other fellows and other people running jobs, that whole philosophy, that mindset of mine is what I taught and talked about and expected. And that's, know, if I showed up on a job site at the end of the day, and if it wasn't barefoot accessible, they heard about it and we talked about it. And so that was always how I was. And as I built the business,
I built it with that same idea of this is how we're going to do it. And so when I would go out and meet with customers and potential customers, could, you know, I had a way of determining if they were going to be a Toyota customer or a Mercedes customer. And I'm not dismissing the Toyota customer at all. I mean, that's, I'm not doing that, but I just knew that we performed better.
at a certain, on certain types of jobs. everything we did, the cabinet shop we built, built very, we called it a furniture company because we built kitchen furniture. I mean, we built nice stuff and, and I just knew we performed better at that level. And so, to build it, it just took time, but it was also, that was what I wanted to this. That's how I wanted my customer to be treated. And those are the customers I wanted to go after. And so everything we did, focused on that.
And every time we were tempted to do a job that maybe wasn't within our wheelhouse, maybe someone was on a tight budget, maybe someone didn't have the ability to do it. mean, every time we tried to do that, you know, I usually lost money because I would not, I wanted to make sure that our customers always had a great experience. So if I made the mistake of saying, yeah, I'll go build this project for you. Not normally how we would do it, not normally within the kind of budget we would like, but we're going to do it.
Jeff Holman (33:42.606)
Hmm.
Chris Shurian (33:57.489)
Well, I would still do it right and still make sure they had that experience. And it usually costs me money because I'm not the guy that's going to go to a customer afterwards and say, isn't this great? Don't you love it? by the way, you owe me more money than we talked about. That's just not how I operated. So I would rather take one. I would rather take the hit than to have my customer leave my customer in a position that, you know, left a sour taste in your mouth.
Jeff Holman (34:18.956)
Yeah, well, yeah, I get that. It's hard to lower your bar when you feel like that's the minimum you should be doing to really offer the quality that you want to offer. And so then you then yeah, I think every attorney has done the same thing. They're like, hey, well, can you do this? Yeah, I can do it for you. Now it's like, no, I don't do that. Like, you don't want me to do it. You want somebody who's willing to do it the way you want it. And that doesn't work for me to do it that way.
Chris Shurian (34:45.373)
Oh yeah. It's like, you know, I'd have a customer who are building this beautiful home for, and then their kids would say, Hey Chris, can you build my home too? And I'd say, ah, no. You know, we just can't, we don't have, there's, there's contractors that specialize in that. There are builders that know how to build homes on a better, on a lower budget. They just know they're better at it. Their subs are good at it. Their suppliers know everyone knows how to do that. And that's just not how we're programmed. And so.
I just, would just have to say no. And that's, think that's an important business lesson too, is once you figure out who your customer is, who your clientele is, you have to focus on that. I think attorneys, a lot of attorneys are really good at that because you know, you know, Jeff, you're an attorney and you specialize in a certain area. Well, if someone came to you and said, Hey, I need, can you help me with my divorce? Well, you're a lawyer. Why can't you help me with my divorce?
Jeff Holman (35:36.014)
Do you want it to go even worse than it's going right now? That's probably what I would say. Yeah.
Chris Shurian (35:39.581)
Yeah, yeah, and you know what your specialty is and you know, and so you're going to say, well, yeah, no, but I know some guys, but no, I'm not your guy. Yeah, I'm a lawyer, but it's different, you know, so.
Jeff Holman (35:49.41)
Yeah. Yeah, I've had one or two friends come to me. They're like, I've got, I've got this problem with the law. And I'm like, you're going to go to jail if you hire me. Like, I, it's not an area I know. and, and, and I will make a mistake and you'll be in jail. So.
Chris Shurian (35:56.989)
Yeah.
Chris Shurian (36:03.463)
Yeah, and there's some great lawyers that totally understand that world and are good at it. Yeah. So that's how we were in our business. That's just how we operated everything we did. We made sure we knew who our customer was and we targeted that customer. And then once we got them, we did everything we could to make sure that they're well taken care of.
Jeff Holman (36:07.412)
Absolutely.
Jeff Holman (36:22.944)
Yeah. Did this translate over into your restaurant business? Because I've eaten at your restaurant. I didn't know it was yours. I mean, we met well after the fact, but we would go up to Bear Lake. We'd at your restaurant every time we were there. Great food, great atmosphere. Did this carry over? I mean, how did that translate?
Chris Shurian (36:30.013)
Thanks.
Chris Shurian (36:43.133)
Yeah, so, okay, that's a great question. Well, how was it first of all? Was it okay? You're right. Yeah, there you go. Yeah.
Jeff Holman (36:50.348)
Yeah, I mean, we kept going back. That's like the baseline right there, right? We were like, hey, let's go. And we noticed when it wasn't available, you know, if it was closed or something, we noticed. We're like, we can't go today.
Chris Shurian (37:02.299)
Yeah, so it did translate because still I wanted to make sure that everyone that walked in that restaurant had an experience. And so we always talk to our servers about, hey, we're trying to provide a special experience for our guests. So make sure you do whatever you can. You take care of them.
Jeff Holman (37:17.88)
Well, I have to stop you here because I think you skipped part of it. you, part of that experience is walking in. And if I'm not mistaken, you would see a car somewhere. You would see a motorcycle on the wall or maybe, maybe under a countertop. this was more like good service, but like the ambiance was set right as you walked in.
Chris Shurian (37:32.721)
Yeah.
Chris Shurian (37:38.353)
Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah. So part of the experience was coming to a cool place to get a meal. And, you know, we had the theme was hot rods and Harleys. You know, we love hot rods. We love Harley's. So if you walked in the front door, right on that wall, right behind the host's hand was an old Harley sitting on the wall. And then you walked in the restaurant and we had two hot rods up on lifts. And then you walked further a little bit deeper and there's another Harley on the wall.
Jeff Holman (37:50.84)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Shurian (38:07.143)
Then all the decor was the vintage, you know, hot rod and vintage Harley, you know, signs that we had everywhere. So yeah, that was part of the experience is people walk in and go, wow, this is pretty cool. Okay. And that's, and that's step number one, you have to have a cool place in my opinion to wow people. Then step two is you have to have great, great experience. The food has to be good. The food has to be different than what you can get down the street. the service has to be good.
Jeff Holman (38:13.176)
Yeah.
Chris Shurian (38:34.905)
The whole experience from the moment you walk in the door until you get your food and finish your food and walk out needs to be elevated. Now, the difference is, you know, I wasn't like a high end fancy restaurant. We were a pub style restaurant. I think our food was probably a little bit more expensive than you can get down the street, but not much. So that was also a challenge is you still had to be, you know, you still had to pay close attention to your bottom line.
and make sure you provided a really great meal, but within reason, because you didn't want to just price yourself out of the market. you could sell a $17 or $18 hamburger, which is reasonable. We did have people complain about our prices. It is what it is.
Jeff Holman (39:18.604)
Yeah, but they could go outside to one of the four hamburger stands and buy a burger and shake out there if they really wanted a cheaper, cheaper experience, right?
Chris Shurian (39:25.937)
Yeah, they could, they could. So, yeah, I think it did translate to that. I really wanted to make sure that everyone that walked in our restaurant had that experience. know, once again, it was a cool place. The food was great. The service was great. And they left there feeling good about it. And so, and that's hard. You know, it's very hard in the restaurant business when you have so many different employees, people that sometimes don't come from that.
Jeff Holman (39:42.434)
Yeah.
Chris Shurian (39:53.885)
ideation, right? They come from a restaurant where it's hey, you know, bang it out, get them in, get them out. You know, it's different. There's different, different types of restaurants. We've all been to different restaurants. We've been to good restaurants. We've been to bad restaurants. We've been to dirty restaurants. We've been to clean restaurants. And so we want to make sure we're cool. We want to make sure people left there going, that was cool.
Jeff Holman (39:55.723)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (40:18.402)
Yeah. What do you think you did well? Because the two industries we've talked about, know, construction and restaurants. mean, I don't want to classify a stereotype, but the employees you've got there, probably some of the issues in each of those businesses carried over, right? And so you're dealing with people who at least traditionally aren't, they're not blue collar workers necessarily. And I say this, I've worked jobs.
I worked at a gun range when I was growing up and I'm like, you know, the gun range crowd is different from the, the law firm crowd in a lot of ways. Like, so it's, it presents its own issues for, for leadership with different types of employees. What do you think you've done well to, to kind of get your employees to level up? cause I've, cause I've built a few homes, not, you know, I've not built for myself or, not built for other people.
Chris Shurian (41:09.853)
Mmm.
Jeff Holman (41:16.546)
Homes as we've grown as a family, we've built some homes and we've had some great experiences with really, really good people and we've had some experiences and you're like, man, I can't work with this guy. Like it's it's hard to communicate, like let alone get quality out of them. how do you, what have you done well there to make that work across different companies?
Chris Shurian (41:41.745)
So, you know, in the construction company, we always looked to hire good people. Now, if we're lucky, we would find a good person that had experience that knew how to build a house or knew how to remodel. And so, but we always look for good people. And then once again, we were always talking about, you know, how we can do better, how we can take care of the customer. So we were very...
Jeff Holman (41:59.694)
Yeah.
Chris Shurian (42:10.275)
that was a, that was, we're always, we're always talking about that. we were always inspecting job sites. We were making sure they did it right. We were making sure they cleaned up after themselves. And, know, sometimes you had guys that just couldn't do that. And then, you know, they would, they would kind of self select out. but there's a lot of people that really liked what we were doing and liked working for us because they also wanted to, you know, provide that experience to the homeowner, the customer. so we'd find those people then.
Jeff Holman (42:26.072)
Yeah.
Chris Shurian (42:38.909)
You know, because we had to hire in subcontractors and other trades, we established relationships with other subcontractors who also felt the same way about the experience. You know, like one of these guys I was talking about a minute ago, another story he shared with me was one of the things he learned from me was that you clean up your job site every day. And that happened one time when I showed up at the end of the day on a job site and
Jeff Holman (43:02.264)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Shurian (43:07.087)
He said, Hey, Chris, we're almost done. We're come back in the morning. We're a wrap up and we'll be done. said, great. That's awesome. Thanks. And, and I said, now what about this mess? And he's like, you know, we'll be back in the morning. So we're just going to leave our stuff out. And I, and I explained to him, that's just not how we do things. And, and he was a little bit at first, like, I'm going to come back in the morning. And I was like, I don't care. And he cleaned up and he remembered that moment. And, and so we found guys that, that, that wanted to work within those boundaries.
Jeff Holman (43:26.914)
Yeah.
Chris Shurian (43:36.989)
And then we were loyal to them. I mean, we rarely would go shopping for a trade contractor because we had guys that we knew wanted to do it the way we wanted to do it. Then we trusted them to take care of us on price. weren't going to beat them up on price. We want to make sure we were being charged fairly, but don't take advantage of us. Right. And so we surround us ourselves with good people. And that's why a lot of these guys are still in business. And that's why a lot of these guys have gone on and built bigger, more successful businesses because.
Jeff Holman (43:53.763)
Yeah.
Chris Shurian (44:06.577)
They took care of customers the way we did. Well, in the construction business, that's how we did it. Now we had a few tricky guys slip into the process. Occasionally we had a homeowner say, you know, my nephew is a, we had one that was so bad. So bad. So bad. We had a guy that we let on the job site that we did not want to let on the job site, but the homeowner was adamant that we hire this guy and it was a disaster.
Jeff Holman (44:24.873)
Ha ha ha.
Chris Shurian (44:36.157)
You know, by the time we got them off the job, there was some serious damage that we had to fix. But we really controlled the whole experience and we learned our lesson that if a homeowner came to us and said, hey, we got a sub, man, there's no way. We said, nope, not going to do it. I mean, we'll vet them and if they seem to be a good fit, then we'll give them a shot, but we're just not going to do it that way. And so now with the restaurant, it's different. Not much different, but...
Jeff Holman (44:50.935)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (44:59.022)
Yeah.
Chris Shurian (45:04.093)
You just try and hire good people and teach them how to do their job. Once again, there are a lot of really good people that are just good people that work in the restaurant. And we would try and get those, we would try and find those guys and find those gals. And if they didn't want to do their job, you know, was, we let them go. You know, we, we had a, we had a scorecard. This is pretty funny, but it was, it was a cool process that we created. Um,
Every job had checklists of what they had to do when they showed up, what they had to do during their shift and what they had to do before they left their shift. And we took those scorecards, those checklists, and we turned into a scoring system that once a week, each employee was inspected on one of the jobs that they were expected to do right. And then I would enter that into a spreadsheet and it would spit out a grade point average.
Jeff Holman (45:36.44)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (45:52.803)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Shurian (46:02.557)
And every week we would post on the wall a report card that showed how everyone was doing in the restaurant and rank against each other based on their grade point average. And it was pretty cool. It created competition. Um, you know, I remember having, we had a couple of cooks one time that man, their whole goal in life was to beat each other by like, even if it was like 0.01 of a percent.
Jeff Holman (46:16.503)
Wow.
Chris Shurian (46:31.311)
If they could just beat each other, which means they worked really hard to do their job right. and then we had new people that come in and be kind of like, what you're grading me, you're judging me, you're putting a scoreboard up on the wall. Well, you know, when they came in and they were down at the bottom of list and they wanted to how they could do better. We just go over their checklist, show them where we inspected them, show them where they came up a little short, showed them how to do better. And then they could work their way up the list. And so.
Jeff Holman (46:33.208)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (46:44.078)
Right, right.
Chris Shurian (47:00.989)
Um, that was fun. And then in our monthly meeting, we'd recognize people who came out on the top of the list. We'd recognize the cooks who were getting out good quality food on a good time and then doing their side jobs afterwards. And, you know, we'd buy them gifts and buy them candy and, whatever. And so we certainly spent a lot of time acknowledging what people were doing right. And, uh, and highlighting that and then, you know, teaching them. So it was, was a lot of fun. So.
Jeff Holman (47:24.664)
Yeah.
Chris Shurian (47:27.971)
I think we were lucky. We had some great people that worked for us, but I think we also inserted people into an environment that motivated them to be great. And it worked out pretty good. But, you know, it's not easy, but it worked.
Jeff Holman (47:43.416)
Yeah. Are these the types of things that you're translating over into the coaching side of the business now? Like you're bringing these types of experiences and other things to people who are, you know, looking for how to level up their own business.
Chris Shurian (47:59.675)
Yeah, so, you know, I have a client right now who's, you know, one of the things, you know, yeah. So yes, yes, absolutely. I tap into all my experiences and wherever that particular client needs a little help, I help them figure it out and I will offer up and say, hey, this is something we did that worked really good. And if they say, yeah, that's great, then I'll help them implement. Yeah. And that's, and that's, and what's cool about doing what I'm doing now is
As I mentioned, I mentioned as many times, I really like helping other people. like serving people. And so I can use all that stuff that we did, all that knowledge that we use and the wins and the losses and everything. And I can share that with other people and hopefully, you know, provide those tools to them to help them be successful.
Jeff Holman (48:48.524)
And what does that look like? You've got your founders exchange, right? Is that what it's called?
Chris Shurian (48:54.001)
Yeah. Yeah. So founders exchange is a, is a very high disciplined mastermind group that we put together. and when I say high discipline, I mean, there's rules. for example, confidentiality, know, you, when you come into that room, what we talked about in that room stays in that room. another thing is we avoid conflict. So we don't ever have anyone in the room who is in the same industry as somebody else or can be deemed competition.
That way, you know, it makes it easier for you to share. We avoid doing business with each other within the group. Once again, helps us create a safe space. Here's one that people find quite interesting, but you're not allowed to give advice. So if somebody comes to the room and says, hey, I'm having an issue with XYZ, you know, we're all smart. We're all business owners. know, we know everything. We're problem solvers. We're like the master problem solvers.
And we would all, you know, we have the tendency to jump in and say, well, this is what you should do. Here's what you should do. And if I were you, I would do this. we don't do that. Not allowed. So the only thing we do is we, we think back to experiences we have or have had in our business. And then we share that experience that might be similar to what they're dealing with. And then, you know, they can take away from it what they want. And so, the founders exchange is a really great opportunity for business owners to come in and.
and have a safe place to share challenges, to learn from other successful entrepreneurs and business owners and be in a room where they can be a little bit raw. Because I think as leaders, as business owners, we put up this wall, we put on this armor to look strong and look like in front of our team that we're totally in charge of everything. But the reality is sometimes we need to take that armor off and we have to let our guard down and we have to be able to
Jeff Holman (50:29.294)
Yeah.
Chris Shurian (50:46.653)
let some stuff out or learn some things. And so we provide that safe place for them to do that.
Jeff Holman (50:53.068)
Yeah, that's fantastic. How would how would somebody find out about that? Get more information get in touch about the founders exchange.
Chris Shurian (51:00.069)
Yeah, I would say go to our website, bootstrapsandbattlescars.com.
Jeff Holman (51:05.826)
where you've also got your own podcast, right?
Chris Shurian (51:08.373)
We do. have a podcast. So on the website, you'll have direct access to me. You can contact me directly. There's some more information about the Founders Exchange. If you want to listen to my podcast, it's called Bootstraps and Battlescars. And I'm actually just interviewing entrepreneurs and hearing their stories. They tell their stories, their bootstrapping stories. They share some battle scars, which are lessons learned, lessons they've learned along the way. And it's been a lot of fun. I'm 12 episodes in, so.
Jeff Holman (51:32.91)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Shurian (51:37.233)
You know, we're just getting going, but I've had some good chats and so I think going to the website is a great place. depending on how soon this episode airs, we're right in the middle of building the website and I should have something. I think I have my, at least a landing page up, but that's where all the information will be.
Jeff Holman (51:48.237)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (51:56.15)
It'll be around the first first of March that we'll launch this. So yeah. Well, Chris, it's been fantastic having you on. really appreciate you coming on and the time we spent outside of outside of this recording has been fantastic also. So it's really been a pleasure.
Chris Shurian (51:59.966)
yeah, perfect, perfect.
Chris Shurian (52:12.155)
Well, thanks, Jeff. I mean, you know, I'm an entrepreneur and we all like to talk about ourselves. So I appreciate you me opportunity to do that. And yeah, it's been good to get to know you. it's cool that we're in the same neck of the woods so we can do this more often and have lunch.
Jeff Holman (52:17.717)
Yeah
Jeff Holman (52:26.968)
Definitely, definitely. We'll grab some more Italian deli sandwiches someday.
Chris Shurian (52:30.365)
That sounds good to me. Yeah, that was good. I'll make sure I don't lose my credit card before I come up next time.
Jeff Holman (52:34.286)
Well, if you do, it's not a big deal. So, Chris, thank you so much for joining and to our audience who joined today, thank you to all of you for joining us on the show and listening, gathering insights. If you found this useful, feel free to go and leave us a rating on one of the platforms and we will see you all again next week.
Chris Shurian (52:37.009)
There you go.
