Building Stronger Rep Agencies - Leadership Presence, Mindset Growth, and Team Development with Chris Atwell

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This is the Beyond the Story podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. And now, Sebastian Rusk Chris, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks, Sebastian. Good to see you, man. Good to see you too, man. I know that you and I met in Canada.

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My first trip to Canada. in the summer. I don't know if I would ever go there in the wintertime, but it was It is, it is. I live in Toronto, way different than the Rocky Mountains and Kelowna. We've already got lots of snow here, and hey, it is what it is.

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It's like east coast and west coast, right? So Yeah, Toronto, well, it's not quite east. It's more like, Cause you can go way East in Canada, but Toronto is more like, I don't know.

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It's like when they call Chicago the Midwest, when it's not really West, right?

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's Midwest. You're like midway to Right, right, right. So I love telling people's stories on this show. I always like to go back for context purpose, go back to the beginning of the story. That's different for everybody. Bring us back to the beginning of the story for you. I know you said you used to be a rapper and had a quiet music career and love to hear about all that, but bring us back to the middle of the story, or the Yeah, so grew up a military brat across Canada.

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My dad was getting posted all over the place. And one of the things that I always wanted to do growing up was to be a DJ. And as I became a teenager, started playing with music. um and before you know it i'm in college and i am studying business and i'm also rapping producing beats you know we're going early 2000s here having a blast playing all major concerts and after college even though i kept my music career going on the side i started a sales career working in sales for a number of large corporations and i built this this, uh, a career around sales leadership while still being a rapper part-time. So I was literally living two lives, right? The suit and tie during the day, Clark Kent, and then, uh, playing concerts with Method Man and Busta Rhymes and OB Trice in the evenings and weekends. And that carried through for about 20 years. I produced a lot of music on the side. I even got my song, uh, one of my songs in a LeBron James Sprite commercial back in 2017 played during the NBA playoffs, the NHL playoffs played during Superbowl, which was really cool. And then around, uh, 2022, 21, 22, I ended up in the hospital with something called rhabdomyolysis. My kidneys failed on me. They were on the verge of failure. And that was a really big wake-up call for me. The lifestyle that I had been living for so long, the kind of two lives, eventually caught up to me and I had to change my ways or I was gonna go down a bad path. And that's when I realized that I really enjoy coaching. I've been doing that for a long time in the music business and on the sales side when I was managing salespeople and managing artists. And lo and behold, here I am four years later after that rude awakening hospital visit, I run my own leadership coaching business and really living Well, that's quite the shift. I mean, I got, you know, life shows up. So you're like, wait a second, let's reprioritize what's Well, it's interesting because when I was in the hospital, I started thinking about, you know, what, what do I want to do with my life? Is this it? Like, am I doing everything that I want? And I realized that I had a passion for helping people.

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At first, when I got out of the hospital, I realized that I needed to change a lot of my habits and routines. And I started documenting my journey on Instagram and on Facebook. Quit the alcohol, quit smoking weed, quit late nights, focused on fitness and healthy living. As I was doing that, I ended up getting some people who reached out to me on LinkedIn. And one of them was a manufacturer's rep agency owner.

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His name's Jamie. And he goes, Chris, I see what you're doing and I need help. He ran this business. He recently took over the business from his father-in-law and he needed help with habits and routines. And that's how my coaching business started. I was a habits coach, helping people dial in on their health and fitness and healthy living routines, et cetera. And as it evolved and I brought on more and more manufacturers rep agencies, owners of these agencies, I realized, holy shit, like leadership starts with you. And I started coaching people on that energy part of leadership on focusing on themselves. And because of my experience in managing people in the corporate realm, I was able to coach them on that too. And it just evolves into leadership coaching. It used to be mindset and habits coaching.

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And over the last two years, I really dialed in on the whole leadership piece, knowing that I can help people recognize where their blind spots are, focus on their own energy so they can show up as the best version of themselves in their business and develop future leaders. And Love it. So nothing left over with the music stuff at all?

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Not at this point. I mean, I still have a studio in the house. My two daughters and I like to, you know, mess around every now and then, but I stepped away from that business officially a couple of years ago to focus So you kind of went all in with what you got going on with, uh, with Yeah, back in, at the end of 22, the decision was made and I left corporate and been doing this full-time ever since. And then, so what kind of, what kind of clients do you work with? Owners of manufacturers rep agencies. So, A lot of people get confused about what the hell that means, right? If you're not a manufacturer's rep, you don't know. It is a niche market. Basically, manufacturers hire third-party companies to sell their product in geographical territories. And there's experts in different industries. You've got the construction industry, so electrical manufacturer's reps. You've got plumbing manufacturer's reps. You've got HVAC manufacturer's reps. And these independent agencies represent a number of manufacturers, and they have a sales team that goes out and sells to contractors, sells to wholesale distributors. Those Best part of the work that I do is Getting to see the transformation from my clients when they start shifting from the do-it-all operator in their business to actually developing a new sales manager or a new director of operations. And that takes the weight off them. And I can feel their energy because they feel that they're accomplishing something really beautiful in their business and freeing up time for themselves. That to me, it just, it confirms that what I do is powerful and it I gotta ask, you said you opened up for Wu-Tang back in what, 2017? How Yeah, I opened for Method Man back in 2007. Him and his partner, Crime Street Life. I don't know if you know who Street Life is. He's part of Method Man's circle. So back in the day, I used to rap and produce, but I was also a promoter in the Toronto area. all of the local clubs would approach me and ask me, hey, you know, we want to bring in a big artist. Who should we bring in? And I would help coordinate that stuff and promote the event. And I would be the Love that. Yeah. So, so when it comes to the type of work that you're doing with your clients and coaching, what are some things that people come to you for, for Yeah, well, the first thing is always, hey man, I feel like I'm drowning here. I'm doing all the things in my business. I'm the top sales guy. I'm the IT guy. I'm the HR person. I'm the marketing person. Help me. I need to figure out how to not do all the things anymore. So that's a big thing. And they want to create more time. So I help them navigate through their priorities and understand where they're spending their time and where they should be spending their time and come up with strategies to free that up. That's always a big one.

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The second thing is getting their team to become accountable. A lot of these owners of these agencies, they're like, man, my team just doesn't hold themselves accountable. So what I do is that I help them look into a mirror. It's the leader who should be holding their team accountable and have the tools and the knowledge on how to do that. So I help them break through that ceiling. And the next thing is a lot of these organizations are using CRM systems. So, you know, you've heard of Salesforce, you've heard of HubSpot, all these major CRM systems, they're investing in these systems and their team isn't using them. So I help them figure out how to get their team to use them.

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Love it. What would you say the best part for you is Yeah. Uh, it's creating a lot of time for myself to play golf and enjoy myself. I create my own schedule, which is amazing. I get to travel all around North America on a regular basis and meet with clients in person and conduct workshops and trainings. It's Yeah. So, uh, we're on the brink of 2026, the time we're, uh, uh, Well, I just launched a new group program. I traditionally have been coaching people one-on-one for the last couple of years. And I recognize that the evolution of my business now is to offer the same, even more value in a group setting. And I launched that two weeks ago. and I'm going hard bringing people on.

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And I'm excited to be able to lead and help hundreds of people at a time rather than just dozens of people at a time. So that's gonna be really impactful, not only from a amount of people I get to help perspective, but also from a financial So how different will the group coaching be with the one-on-one stuff?

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Well, the one-on-one traditionally is really focused on individual attention and nobody gets to see anybody but me. What I've built the group program to be is a valuable way for people to be part of a community. Right where there's like minded agency owners that they can they can bounce ideas off each other grow together share wins challenges etc. So it's gonna be a community aspect to this which is gonna be quite powerful because most of these owners are going through similar challenges are experiencing a lot of the same things i'm gonna be able to feed off each other. I also have put everything in a format that's really structured, videos, worksheets, et cetera, so people can work at their own pace now rather than, you know, I'm feeding them every week on what they need to do. So it's going to be really exciting. The one-on-one coaching program used to be six months, now it's 12 months.

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So they've actually got more time to digest everything and implement all the new tools, skills, and knowledge that they gained Love it. Well, man, it's been great to catch up with you and chat with you here and learn more about going from rapper to leadership coach. I don't know that I've ever heard that before.

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I've heard a lot of different career changes on there, but all exciting and fulfilling, needless to say. So, man, keep doing what you're doing, clearly doing work that matters, work that you're passionate about, and you got the freedom to Well, that's it, man. Yeah. It's all about creating that freedom for Any final thoughts for our listeners? Um, you know what? Just remember that hit the gym, smell good, take care of yourself, get some good sleep, eat well, make life. your Great. Great. Final thoughts there. Chris, thanks again for your time, my brother. Great to see you again. And I appreciate you coming on to hang out with me for a few minutes. Yeah. Thank you, Sebastian.

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Appreciate you. You got it. Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story podcast. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. We sure do appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast, launchlab.com studios.