In Pursuit of Freedom | Chris Walker, S3E2

Chris Walker bootstrapped Refine Labs from $3,000 to over $20 million in revenue in three years, becoming one of the most influential voices in B2B marketing. He had the audience, the recognition, and the revenue. Then he walked away from all of it.

In this episode, Chris and I go deep on what happens when you do everything you're supposed to do and it still doesn't feel the way you thought it would. We talk about how he rated himself a 2 out of 10 on mental and time freedom while his business was thriving, the self-doubt he carried for 33 years behind a confident public persona, how his sense of identity and purpose shifted as he came into financial success, and why he sold two companies for a fraction of what they were worth to buy back his freedom.

We also get into his 10 Dimensions of Freedom framework and how he uses it to make decisions that protect all ten, and what he's building now with ENCODED.ai.

This is a conversation about the gap between achievement and fulfillment, and what Chris did to close it. If freedom is a priority for you, this one's for you.

_____

(01:08) What success looked like in Chris's corporate years
(04:32) Starting Refine Labs with $3,000 and $62K in student debt
(06:30) The freest he ever felt
(07:42) When passion turned into proving he was smarter than everyone
(09:32) The Success Game: the six-step hamster wheel
(14:00) Why believing success requires suffering creates it
(17:14) A 2 out of 10 on mental and time freedom
(18:35) Realizing $100M in B2B marketing was purposeless
(20:42) "This is just who I am"
(22:11) The biggest breakthrough of his life
(27:30) How self-doubt and public confidence coexist
(28:30) Frequency: identity, beliefs, and intentions
(31:55) Money as the goal vs. the byproduct
(34:30) Why $100 million would never be enough
(39:00) Selling Refine Labs equity at 20% of its worth
(40:38) Selling his Passetto shares for $18
(43:12) The mission behind ENCODED
(45:30) Frequency training as a daily practice
(47:50) The 10 Dimensions of Freedom
(49:42) Isn't life about trade-offs?

Show notes:

• Find show notes of each episode on ProfitLed.fm. 

Connect with our host:

• Follow Melissa on LinkedIn where she shares stories & lessons from her founder journey weekly.
• Connect with Melissa at melissakwan.com and subscribe to  'your founder next door', Melissa's weekly newsletter on what it's like to build a company without an abundance of resources and friends in high places.
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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Our guest today is Chris Walker, founder and CEO of Encoded and the former founder of Refin Labs, a B2B marketing agency, he bootstrapped from $3,000 to over $20 million in revenue in just three years before exiting in 2025. Chris was one of the most influential voices in B2B marketing. He had the audience, the revenue, and the recognition. He did everything he was supposed to, and he walked away from all of it because it didn't give him the fulfillment that life promised it would. In this episode, we get into what success meant for him at every stage, how the thing he built to give him freedom ended up taking it away, what anxiety and self-doubt looked like behind the scenes when the world thought he was crushing it, and why he sold his companies for a fraction of what they were worth just to buy his life back. If you ever felt the gap between achievement and fulfillment, this one's for you. Welcome to another episode of Profit Led. I'm your host, Melissa Kwan, co-founder of eWebinar. This season, we're exploring the intersection of passion, profit, and purpose, and how those things change as founders evolve and come into financial success. Let's get started. Take me back to the first chapter of your life when you're working in corporate, I guess that's more than 12 years ago. What did success look like for you back then? What were you chasing?

SPEAKER_00 1:06

I feel like the same thing that everybody is taught to chase, I suppose. You just follow the track that has been laid out for you, like try to get good grades, go to college, study something responsible, like math or engineering or science, and then get a job and work hard and make 65K a year and try to climb the corporate ladder. And every year maybe you'll get a 3-5% raise. And then when you're 27, time to hitch up. You better find someone. You're running out of time. Like if you're not married by 30, then something must be wrong with you. And so you might as well just follow this track that has been laid out for you. And then maybe when you reach some final destination, you'll be making enough money, having a nice house, and then one day far in the future, maybe you'll feel enough.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

So you were looking to just to climb the corporate ladder and it like you didn't think more than that.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

I think that around 26, 27 is when I started to become dissatisfied and question the path that I was on. Up until then, it's just, yeah, this is how life is. This is what I'm supposed to do. I'm doing the right things, even though I feel like I'm made for more. I feel like I can do more, but you know, I'm not one of those people that are lucky that that's not who I am. Those are some of the stories that happened in my early 20s.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

I heard on a podcast that you used to work from home even when you weren't technically supposed to. And that to me sounds like freedom has been a theme for you, I guess long before you started a company. What role has freedom played in your life since those early days?

SPEAKER_00 2:50

I definitely wouldn't call it freedom back then. This is probably when I'm 27, 28 years old. But what happened is that I started to question the rules of the game that I was playing by. And one of the rules of the game was going into an office Monday through Friday from 9 to 5 p.m. when I started to realize, whoa, I'm doing some of my best work at one in the morning on a Saturday. I'm doing getting some of my best ideas in the shower at 7 a.m. Whoa, I just had a breakthrough idea walking my dog. Right. And then I started to see the pattern of, oh, I'm going into this office and sitting in fucking meetings all day and getting no actual, like, meaningful work done. It's more of just like pushing paper and sitting in meetings. And so I sort of just took it upon myself of like, I'm doing this. Other things that I started to question is like, why do we wear a suit to an interview? So I would intentionally not shave my face, wear casual clothes into an interview because this is supposed to be about how I can contribute to your company and make an impact and about who I am, not about how dressed up I am. And so if somebody didn't want to hire me because I didn't wear a suit, then I didn't want to work for them anyway. I started to question the construct. It's a man-made construct of Monday through Friday as the work week where we suffer and grind. And then Saturday and Sunday is when we relax and get drunk and do whatever we want, sleep in, stay up late, whatever they tell you. I totally, like, you know, that was created for factory workers in the 1940s. That's where it originated, and somehow most people still adopt it as if it's real, it's not, it's man-made. And so those are some of the examples of the first things I started to question before I even became an entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

So it's more like challenging the status quo.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

I would call it thinking for yourself.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

I like that. I like that. So chapter two, you know, 2019, you're out of a job, you've got $3,000, you decide to start Refine Labs. So what were you trying to build when you were starting that company? Like what did success look like and making it look like?

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Yeah. So a little backstory. I was technically I resigned, but I was fired from a Series A tech company in January of 2019 for basically challenging the idea of how a sh early stage venture company runs. Somehow you have like a 100K ARR and are burning $3 million a year. And it's like, what are we doing here? And so I was asked to leave politely, which was amazing. And I was like, okay, I guess it's I guess it's time to get another job. And the CEO said one of the most meaningful things to me ever. I didn't realize it at the time. And he said, You really shouldn't go get another job. You're an entrepreneur. And so they gave me a three-month severance, 30K, but it wasn't wasn't a lot of money, $10,000 a month for three months. And I said, okay, I'm going to give this a try. I had $3,000 in my bank account, $62,000 in student loan debt. I had to sell my car in order to create a little bit more runway. I moved out of my one-bedroom apartment and got a roommate to save $700 a month. I took the subway if I needed to go somewhere. And I gave it a shot. And at the beginning, I think a lot of people will resonate with this because I didn't have a plan. I was like, how can I make five or $10,000 a month? How can I replace my income? Was basically that. And also going through some of the thoughts of like, why would someone hire me? There's people out there that are so much smarter than me, that have more experience than me. Those people are out there are better than me for some reason. Like a lot of people will have those thoughts, and I'm no different. And uh was able to acquire three or four customers and had a full, basically a full book of business. And I was making more money in three months than I basically working 20 hours a week than I had in my job. And I had a bunch of time to then explore my health. I was exploring photography. I was practicing yoga. I was like, whoa, look at I'm making money and I have way more time. And it was a whole different way of living for me.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

But what did success look like when you were building Refined Labs? Did you think about it in terms of like a number or was it just more free time to explore?

SPEAKER_00 7:23

At the beginning, because it evolves, right? As you evolve, the possibilities in your life expand, right? Where you are right now, you can only see the doors for your life that are slightly worse than where you are and slightly better than where you are. But in reality, the possibilities for your life are literally infinite. You just have a narrow view of the possibilities from where you view it from right now. And so at the beginning, it was just, I would love to replace my income. Maybe I'll be able to make 250K a year, right? Because that's what I thought was like crushing it. And as I started to expand the possibilities of what I'm capable of, of what's possible, I started to explore the idea of having other people join the team to find ways to attract customers that are not just in my network, to be able to power and hire capable, experienced leaders to be continue to grow the business and fill gaps in places where my skill set or where I didn't want to focus.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

And what was the passion that was fueling you back then? Was it the work itself? Was it proving something? Like what was the purpose, I guess, that was driving you?

SPEAKER_00 8:35

So, including the venture that I'm working on now, I solve a critical problem, whether it's a business problem or a personal pro quote unquote problem for myself. I understand it deeply. And once I understand it deeply and I understand what everyone else is doing compared to what this could do for their business or for them, to me, after that, it's inevitable. And so at the beginning, I was very passionate about changing the way that B2B marketing worked. I saw all the flaws in the system. I was a junior level marketer that got suppressed by the company. I had a lot to offer. The company thought I was making arts and crafts all day. And I uh wanted to empower a lot of people because I knew that it would make a big impact for both people and the company. And as the company continued to grow, my intention started to move to proving to other people that I was smarter than them.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

I mean, that takes a lot of self-awareness to articulate that. I mean, your company grew to over 20 million in annual revenue in very short time, something like three years. So as you were kind of racing on this path to traditional success, what did that feel like?

SPEAKER_00 9:55

So without even knowing it, now I've been able to reverse engineer the path, but a majority, it's gotta be 80% or more of humans play the game of life based on a repeating cycle known as the success game. And with the success game, what happens is that everything that you focus on is external to you. So step one is to learn, to read books, to consume podcasts, to take another course, to get a coach with the core assumption that somebody out there knows more than you and knows better than you. So focusing externally to get the information. Step two is to grind, to work hard, to overwork, to suffer as a means to feel like you're important with the implicit message of I am draining my energy, creativity, and vitality in order to get to some destination. Step three is to achieve. So you hit that next milestone, you get that promotion, you buy that car, you get the house, you get the funding round, you acquire something. When you acquire it, it feels good for a little while, but it doesn't last. That over time the bar moves further, and you're like, oh, I guess I needed to hit a bigger target. I guess I needed to do something different in order to feel okay. And that is called conditional happiness. When you take happiness and move it outside of yourself, you will never actually achieve what you think. The bar will just keep moving. Step four is to optimize. So then when it doesn't achieve what you thought it would, then you get productivity systems, you find a new AI tool, you build a better routine, you get more disciplined in how how much or what time you wake up and what time you go to bed, and you're optimizing further within this game that you're there is no winning in. Step five is you that you burn out. That eventually it's like, I'm running on this hamster wheel, I just I just need a break. So we run away to a vacation, we try things like therapy or meditation or some other external system to recover from this level of burnout, which creates a dependency on something else to feel okay. And then step six is that we repeat the cycle over again, more books, more podcasts, a new coach, another framework, repeat the same cycle over again. And eventually, if you've cycled through this enough, I wish somebody told me this in like 2019 because I would have played the game totally differently, which is why I'm sharing all this, by the way. I share all of this because I wish there was someone out there sharing this with me when I was on my journey. I feel like it would have gotten me in a much different place with a whole different level of life satisfaction. And so we repeat the same cycle over again. And as we move through this hamster wheel enough times, we reach a level of dissatisfaction. We realize what is happening that we're spinning through this cycle. And then you start seeking different answers. Like, why is my company more than 10 million in revenue? And everyone said that's why I would what would make me happy. And I don't feel free, I don't feel happy, I don't feel successful.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

So had you heard that, like exactly what you're you're telling somebody now, had you heard that in 2019, what would you have done differently?

SPEAKER_00 13:19

I would have focused on sourcing my happiness, self-trust, validation, clarity within myself, instead of thinking that another revenue milestone or hiring 10 more employees or getting 10,000 more followers was the thing that was going to make me happy. Because it's not.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

Do you think you would have needed to go there first and know that, oh, those followers, that money, none of that actually gives me satisfaction to know that?

SPEAKER_00 13:51

So this is a complex answer. So stick with me here. So for me, I needed to go through that because it's my purpose to share this with others. So I have no regrets about my life. Everything happened exactly the way it was supposed to to bring me exactly where I am right now. But for everybody else to think that they need to go through that level in order to learn the lesson is totally wrong. What happened was that I was conditioned by the people that I was listening to, entrepreneurs, influencers, coaches, books, to believe success requires suffering. And when you believe that success requires suffering, you invite a bunch of suffering into your life. And when the suffering happens, you think that it's a good thing. That when you're suffering, that's that you've been told that something good is going to happen afterwards. So you create your own suffering through that belief system. I believe that if I worked harder, that means that I'm more valuable or that I'm serious and I'm important. And so even if there was no work to be done on Saturday at 10 a.m., I was sitting at my laptop doing fucking bullshit just to feel like I was busy and important. I believe that the more that I posted and the more people that clapped and cheered for me, that that means that I was more important. And I could go on with a bunch of other subconscious beliefs that get installed through us. And because of those beliefs, that is how my life was created. That's how I created my own life. Now, conversely, I could have just as easily believed that when I'm on the right track, my life feels effortless. If I am suffering, that is a sign that I am not on the right track and I should reevaluate where I'm going. There must be a way that doesn't involve suffering to achieve my goals. And it would have created an entirely different decision-making set and an entirely different experience had I believed that belief instead. If I had taken the belief that the more I empower others, then that means that the more important and successful that I am, and that would mean that I'm working less and empowering others more, then I would have not been sitting at my laptop at 10 a.m. doing nothing in order to feel important. And so it's simply the level, I think myself definitely, and basically everyone significantly underestimates the power of our subconscious beliefs. And they are super important and rarely questioned. They create our emotions, they drive our decisions, they create our actions almost an autopilot because we assume that that is a fact about how the world works. And it actually is not a fact. It is a belief that has been reinforced and conditioned through in us through society, through media, work, school, family, friends, influencers, celebrities, news, everywhere, to a level that we assume that it is a fact, but it is not. It is actually optional.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

I mean, I think on the point of suffering, there is something to be said about how society, especially in the startup culture, we glorify suffering as if it's a rite of passage, but suffering is just suffering. It does not equal success. And so you wrote about rating yourself two out of 10 on mental freedom and time freedom while your business was thriving. You couldn't take a vacation without feeling guilty. You couldn't sleep without lying there for three hours. You were spending time with people that you felt obligated to be around. When you were in the middle of that, did you know that was happening? Like what did that feel like and how did you cope with it?

SPEAKER_00 17:38

The feeling is this isn't what I thought it would be like. And I get that a majority of people have not built a $10 million business or more that has a hundred plus employees and thinks that if they did that, then they would feel super happy and free. I get that many people cannot relate to the situation. So I'd invite you to trust through my experience, I've been through it, that you it's the success cycle that I went through, right? So you just keep going. Oh, I need to learn more. Let me go get another coach. Maybe we need to hire a consultant. Now let me grind some more. Oh, now we got another 100K MRR. We want a big client, wonderful, but I still don't feel anything. Let's, you know, build another system or automation. Now I'm burnt out. Let me run away to a vacation for five days to, you know, St. Lucia or wherever. And then I come back and you repeat the same cycle all over again. And so that's what it was feeling like until I built enough clarity and self-trust to say, this isn't what I want. I know that everybody, you know, the people in the B2B marketing world, right? All the people that were listening to my content think, well, what why is this idiot leaving B2B marketing? Like he built this huge audience, he crushed LinkedIn, he was like the number one person. He had this amazing podcast, he built this big company. If he just kept working in his business, he would have made a hundred million dollars. And it was like because it felt purposeless.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Were you going for something at the time? Like were you trying to build for an exit, or were you just literally working for with no end?

SPEAKER_00 19:22

The intent overall was to fundamentally change how B2B companies grow. That was the objective. And at a point I realized that that goal was futile, that I was wasting my time because the way I was approaching it was not going to change the system. The system is built on raising extractive capital, having 92 to 95% of companies fail to grow or die, to burn people out. And the where that control happens, you don't fix in marketing. So finally, after like three or four years spinning my wheels to try to make a big impact on an industry and help a lot of people and honestly help a lot of companies and their investors, when I realized that what I'm doing is not going to work, that was the moment that I decided to change my path. And was it the right thing to do to try to do it? 100%. Would it have worked for these companies? 100%. Would it have made more money for investors? 100%. Would it have been a better experience for every single person that worked at those companies? 100%. So when I realized that this industry doesn't run on merit, it's not about that. Um, that that that is when it it became clearly purposeless to me and I made the decision to move on.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

And you had shared before that you were also having anxiety like multiple times a week as you were building this company, but you kind of just accepted that, like this is who I am. Right. Like how long did you believe that before something cracked in you?

SPEAKER_00 21:09

Whether it's anxiety, imposter syndrome, negative self-talk, emotional reactivity, feeling frustration, feeling not good enough, like it can come in different flavors for people and for many people, all the different flavors, self-doubt, slow decision making, inconsistent follow-through, any of those things that I had experienced those for basically my whole life. And through taking on the responsibility of building my company, it just exposed everything. And so the idea that, you know, I get an email from a client and I feel anxiety, and I'm like, I don't know, I guess this is just something that happens to me. Now I'm thrown off for four hours, and it was happening multiple times a week. And then there's other times of like wanting to post a Piece of content and feeling self-doubt or wanting to do something and having a voice in your head saying you better not do that, you're not good enough for that, or whatever. That the realization for me is that my beliefs about those situations are what is causing my anxiety. It is not about who I am. I do not need medication for it. How I've been programmed to think is why I feel anxiety. And it is the biggest breakthrough in my entire life. And it has fundamentally, as I've been practicing it, changed everything about everything and how I approach everything, how I feel, how I make decisions, how I'm able to help others, my level of empathy for others, basically everything. And so, as an example, right, you get an email from a client and then you feel anxiety. Why? It's because when you get the email, you think that I must not be doing a good enough job. Maybe this client's gonna leave. If they leave, then I'm gonna have to fire Julie. Like, and then that's why you feel the anxiety. The email actually doesn't do anything, it just triggers these subconscious beliefs or fears that you have. And this is we're talking at an elite level here, right? This is not therapy language. Many executives, entrepreneurs at all levels of quote unquote traditional success experience these things. So that's a simple example. I'd be happy to go deeper in any direction, but that was the honestly one of the most meaningful turning points in my life as I started to become aware of that and practice it for myself.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

How did you become aware of the programming? Did you have help doing that, or was it like an epiphany moment?

SPEAKER_00 23:42

As we've gone through the podcast, you could see that I was naturally starting to challenge programming that just didn't make sense to me. So I believe that I've over time built the skill. Like, just why did I make such an impact in the B2B marketing world? Because I just challenged the way that it was done. It didn't make sense to me. I was like, when did this start? Who decided that it should be this way? Oh, somebody decided in 2005, Marketo or something, that this is how you should do B2B marketing. And then 15 years later, everything has changed, but people just accept that this is the way it is. That's just not how I do it. And so I've learned a process to basically look at this is the way it is right now. So when was it decided it would be this way? Who decided that it should be this way? What would be their motivations and intentions for it to be this way? What has changed in the world since they decided it? If I started over right now, is this the way that I would do it? And almost always the answer is no.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

I mean, that was a huge part of my last year is realizing that I was programmed from my parents or, you know, we we all are, right? And understanding that I don't have to be this way. Right. There was a lot of things that I believed was my personality. Like that's just who I am. But I learned about this term called patterns, I guess, in psychology, like a bad behavior. And I thought, well, I'm just reactive. That's just who I am. That's my personality. And I never thought that I could wake up every day and choose to be someone else, completely different, and choose to be me starting from a blank slate. So yeah, like I did a lot of self-development work last year, and that was the theme. And understanding that, like where the self-doubt comes from, the negative self-talk, and now still having that, but actually just being aware of that voice. I mean, you said that you live with self-doubt for 33 years, right, before understanding what was causing it. So, but meanwhile, you were one of the loudest, most confident voices in the business world and in B2B. So, how did these two things coexist? And how did self-doubt show up in your life? Hey, I want to take a minute to talk about the thing that makes my life and this podcast possible: my own company ewebinar. Here's something no one questions. We expect every piece of content in our personal lives to be available on demand, from this podcast to our favorite TV show. But when it comes to business webinars, whether it's demos, training sessions, or onboarding calls, anything where a live person has to show up and deliver content, we're still asking people to be somewhere at a specific time on one specific day, hoping they'll make it. And it just doesn't scale. The average attendance rate for a live webinar is 30 to 40%. That means a majority of people who want your content never see it. Prospects who never see your demo don't convert. Customers who skip onboarding don't activate. Anyone who misses training won't adopt your product. EWebinar was built to solve that. We turn any video into an interactive experience that runs on autopilot 24-7 in every time zone. Your audience joins when it works for them. And our live chat lets you respond to questions in real time or later through email, so every question gets answered and nobody feels ignored. It outperforms live by every metric. Attendance, watch times, engagement, and conversion rates are all higher. When live delivery is no longer the bottleneck, you open up a whole new world of opportunities. And that's the real unlock. You're not just replacing the webinars you're already doing, you're finally creating all the ones you never had bandwidth for. The onboarding series, the product walkthrough, the sales demo for that segment you've been meaning to go after. Come see it for yourself. Visit eWebinar.com to join our demo at your own time. No salesperson required. All right, let's get back to the episode.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

So they can coexist because you can be smart and be right in a domain and still not trust yourself in the rest of your life. I can be super competent, I would argue, one of the most intelligent, forward-thinking people in the B2B marketing world ever, and not leave a relationship that I know wasn't right for me at the same time. And so when we think about people are like, oh, I'm going to put my business suit on over here and I'm going to put my life over there. And it's like, no, they're all together. You are you. And so that is how they can coexist. And then when we think about, like you had mentioned the example, right? I'm just a reactive person. There's actually a chain reaction that happens that when you can understand this invisible chain reaction of why you are reactive or why you're expressing in a reactive way at this very moment, it's a much better way to say it, is based on your frequency. And frequency is our identity, beliefs, and intentions, the invisible force that drives our emotional responses and our act and it just expresses in our actions. And so you said the I am word, right? I am reactive. That is an identity statement. It is reflective of who you believe you are. So I am reactive. Underneath that, then it might say, when somebody criticizes me, it means I'm not good enough. Or if somebody has a direct conversation with me, that means they might leave me. Or so then we have these beliefs underneath it about how the world works inside of that identity. Then we have our intentions. Our intentions might be to protect, to make sure that we don't lose someone, to people please so that they don't leave us. Then we feel our emotions, which might be anxiety, it might be fear, it might be frustration sometimes, like these people don't understand me. And then we act reactively, which is confirmation bias to the idea that we are a reactive person. And the loop continues to spin and reinforce itself to a level where it just feels like it's this is who I am. Now, the way that we break this loop is by adjusting our frequency. Everyone on LinkedIn is telling you, oh, just stay calm, just take a couple of breaths, you know, just meditate for five minutes a day and try to stay calm. Those are all band-aids. The real thing is to go up the chain and focus on the source of why we are feeling and acting this way, which is the belief that I'm a reactive person. No, I've been expressing in a reactive way, and I am a calm, confident person. And then to begin to believe when people give me direct feedback, they're trying to help me. They're trying to express something that's important. I'm not at risk here. This isn't something I need to be afraid of. And then to have our intentions. Our intentions don't need to be to protect someone from leaving. If somebody wants to leave, they are welcome to. I'll be okay. And then when we actually believe all that stuff about ourselves in the world, we don't feel anxiety. We don't feel fear and we don't act reactive. And this is the most powerful thing for most humans to learn in this very moment. Because most people tell me that it is impossible to stop their anxiety. It's impossible to stop the voice in their head that says you shouldn't do that. It's impossible to be able to make decisions with clarity without worrying about what other people think. It's not impossible. It's not. And your belief that it's impossible means that it's impossible for you. But there, and just because we haven't been taught this, right? I wasn't taught this. I know pretty much everyone listening to this podcast wasn't taught these things. Just because we weren't taught them in school doesn't mean that they're not possible. And I a lot of people will tell themselves a story about how their anxiety is a good thing. If I'm fearful, that means I'll be vigilant, right? Or if I have this voice in my head telling me not to do that, that must be a good thing. It's going to make sure that I'm cautious and that I'm careful. Those stories are not helpful, are not real, and we do not realize how much it slows us down and prevents us from living a life of freedom, purpose, and clarity.

SPEAKER_01 32:04

I want to talk about money for a second. A lot of entrepreneurs I talk to, they just want to be rich. Like money is a very central part of their identity and their business. You haven't mentioned that once, which I think is refreshing, but you actually built a really big company. So when that revenue started coming in, like within a very short time, how did your relationship with money change, if at all, as you came into financial success?

SPEAKER_00 32:31

The best way that I can start this response is to say that while I was building that company, I never felt more free than when I was making 20K a month with no employees working 20 hours a week. And I could do whatever I want. I had three clients that were happy. There was, you know, nobody depending on me. And that as I continued to chase more money, it simply exposed a lot of the things that I hadn't figured out for myself yet. And so when we think about money, there are two central ways to think about it. The first way is I need to go and get this money so that I can feel better about myself or impress other people. It is a very extractive intention. We are trying to extract resources from other people in order to prove to people that we're valuable and to impress others based on our achievements or bank account. And there's another way to think about money, which is that I am going to contribute, I am going to make an impact for others, I'm going to empower people, I'm going to create these things because I feel passionate about it and because it's something that I want to do. And when I do these things and I contribute value to others, I get money flows to me. I as I make an impact, money flows to me. And it is a natural byproduct of following my purpose, impacting others in a positive way, and doing that. And the difference here is thinking about money as the objective or as the byproduct. And one of them leaves you drained and feeling like it's never enough and that you always need more to feel okay. And if you have one down month in your business, it feels like you're failing and you, you know, you're spiraling out of control because you're dependent on it growing to feel okay. And the other one you source internally. You say, I love to do this. This is what I want to do. I don't care what other people think about me. I don't need their validation. I don't need to impress anyone. I feel good about myself. And so I'm going to do these things. And when I do them, I will receive money as a byproduct. And it is a fundamentally different way to approach entrepreneurship in life that I would encourage many people to consider because ironically, when you take the second approach, one, you have way more life satisfaction in all areas, and you usually make more money, but it's not the goal.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

Did you always have that outlook?

SPEAKER_00 35:14

No. Come on. No, I was stuck on the hamster wheel until 2023, thinking that if I made $100 million, then I could, you know, buy a boat.

SPEAKER_01 35:25

And were you unhappy that you hadn't hit $100 million?

SPEAKER_00 35:29

It's just never enough. It doesn't matter. Whether it's $100K, a million, 10 million, 100 million, it doesn't matter. Whether it's a literal lot, it's just never enough when you operate at that frequency. When you outsource your self-worth to money, achievements, funding, validation from others, followers. It doesn't matter. Anything outside of you is required in order for you to feel okay or for you to feel happy or successful, it'll never be enough.

SPEAKER_01 35:56

I mean, especially in the business world and in the startup world, like money is a measure of success, right? It's the thing that tells you that you're on the right track.

SPEAKER_00 36:06

For some people.

SPEAKER_01 36:07

Yeah, it's hard to detach from that, especially because social media, LinkedIn, right? That's all you're consuming. It's all that's being put out there. And it also fuels the self-doubt, right? That that at least I have in myself, right, as a founder as well.

SPEAKER_00 36:24

The idea that it's hard, hard, right? Hard is subjective, right? One person thinks it's hard to have a direct conversation and they're feeling anxious about it for a week before they have it. And the other person says this is easy to have a direct conversation. I can talk to this person, I feel confident about doing it, I have the right intentions, this conversation's going to be easy, right? So hard and easy are subjective. Good and bad are subjective, high and low are subjective. It's called a duality. And when we have these dualities, it actually creates a lot of suffering in our life. Because when we say this thing is good, it inherently means that there is a bad, right? So if our revenue goes up, that's good. What does that mean? That if it doesn't go up enough, then that's bad, right? Or you could look at it that it just is the way it is. Like it went up last month, we've been doing the right things. It went down this month. It's giving us an opportunity to identify where we could be better, where we could serve our customers better, or something like that, and to not have that overall response. Now, you see all of the this company made 400 million ARR, right? This one raised a trillion dollars, right? Everyone wants to be like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, right? Here, all these people basically bragging about their MRR in order to extract validation or praise from other people, which is all built around the venture capital machine of promoting the people that are successful to get other founders to raise venture capital and run on their hamster wheel forever. It's the system, and it happens a lot on LinkedIn, but it had like, you know, there's people flashing their cars on Instagram and TikTok. It's happening everywhere. That you can make the switch, and it doesn't need to be harm. And the switch is it's not about revenue. It is about impact. How many people, how many families, how many entrepreneurs, your target customer, how many businesses, how many people am I making a positive impact for? That's what matters. And when I make a positive impact for people, I receive money for it. And so at our entire company is built on that metric. How many people had a positive response within seven days? How many people had uh positive changes within how many areas of their life within 30 days? How many people had a growth in their freedom levels within the first 45 days? Those are the metrics that we care about. If you see me promoting something on LinkedIn, it's going to be how many people we positively impacted, not about how much MRR we have.

SPEAKER_01 39:05

So you made a decision to walk away from Refine Labs, kind of wrap up that chapter two. You know, you said that you gave away a significant share of a very successful company that you had built. Why did you have to give it away? Like what was happening inside of you also at that time that made you feel like that was the right choice to do that?

SPEAKER_00 39:27

So that post is actually about my software company, Poseto, but I'll address both of them. So at Refine Labs, I sold my equity at a significantly discounted rate along the way, three separate sales. And the approach of why I did it and why I had a significantly discounted rate was because I was buying back my time and my freedom. And that selling my equity at 20% of what it was actually worth if I spent 12 months shopping it around, that was worth my freedom to me. Because whether it was 100% of the uh thing or 20% of the thing, or whatever the valuation would be, that my freedom became more important than money. And I realized that freedom has many different dimensions and financial is only one of them. And most people think that they need way more money than they actually need to be free. And so in that one, it was simply just discounted sales to buy back my freedom and then eventually to just move on from the business because I realized that what I had set out to accomplish was fundamentally impossible and I was just spinning my wheels. And then I started another business, a software AI business called Posetto, which is thriving. And I built with a couple of co-founders, had built it. We made a small Aqua Hire last year of another RevOps business and brought it all together. And I had moved on because my when I had the realization of building encoded, it was like I just can't do it, can't do anything but this. This is a contribution that is going to positively impact millions, tens of millions of people. It's all I can think about or do. And so I put some other people in charge, the co-founders of the company that had never been a CEO before, had never been a CTO before, had never been those types of roles. And I installed them to begin to build this company and I empowered them to build the company. And as I was getting deeper into it, what I realized is that it wasn't fair. That when I left the company, we were doing 50K MRR, and now we're doing 100K MRR, and they have built and made this absolutely incredible product, and they should have way more equity. And so I sold my shares for at 0.000001 cents each, which ended up being $18 for people to take a very significant share of the business for each of them, because it was the right thing to do. And it won't make sense to almost anyone. But as I've continued to make decisions that feel right and fair to me and make me feel complete and like I'm doing the right thing, instead of trying to maximize how much money I have in my bank account, I have achieved. I've made so many important decisions that have empowered a lot of people and empowered myself. And it has made a just a significant impact. And I just think that's um basically what nobody is taught in business. It's put it in the spreadsheet, maximize how much money you get in your bank account. It doesn't matter what collateral damage you create along the way, just do whatever it takes. And I've found that basically the exact opposite logic has been working far better for me.

SPEAKER_01 42:52

I mean, as a founder, I love hearing that. And it's just a sign of your integrity and people who build the business and and are in it every day. Like they're the ones that should have the company. So tell me about Encoded. You know, this is now your chapter three. What is your mission with this company?

SPEAKER_00 43:09

The mission of Encoded is to empower people to live their full potential and to live a life of freedom and to stop chasing success externally and to train freedom internally. And it is an entirely different concept than basically everything that exists right now, because everything that exists right now helps you play the success game better or to cope with the success game. So when you think about coaches, productivity hacks, meditation retreat, most of it is I'm going to go run away from that or try to use it to play the game better. And what we're doing at Encoded is empowering people to say, I'm going to change the rules of the game for how I want to live my life.

unknown 43:59

I'm going

SPEAKER_00 44:00

To identify where do I want my life to go? What are the things that would actually be meaningful to me? And what are the subconscious rules that I'm playing by that are preventing me from getting there? Like, I need to suffer to be successful, like I need to hold this all together, like having a job is safe and working for myself is risky. Like drinking alcohol is cool and fun. And we should go out and do it to celebrate, right? Whatever it is, and there are they continuously happen, whatever the things are, or what do we believe about ourselves and what we're capable of. So to be able to identify those, and then it's not about sitting in your room and meditating. It is about activating neuroplasticity through repetition in order to change the way that you think about yourself in the world. And when you change the way you think about yourself in the world, just like the example that you used, you show up differently automatically. You feel different feelings automatically. And that realization and converting it from this is a you know a random practice that I do to a training routine, just like exercise, right? So exercise, we're training our body. And I exercise almost every day because it makes me feel good. I get energy from it, I feel benefits from it. I it's just part of who I am. And I also train my frequency every day. I train who I am, what I believe, why I'm doing what I'm doing, what I'm capable of, what I want to pay attention to, and I train all of that every day for somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes a day. And it has been the most empowering, highest ROI habit that I've ever implemented. I've been doing it for five years, and it has fundamentally changed who I am, or better said, who I believe I am. Because you are simply who you believe you are right now. And as you shift the beliefs about who you are, who you actually are shifts to.

SPEAKER_01 46:04

So is it a coaching program?

SPEAKER_00 46:06

No. Coaching creates dependency. I'm not against coaches, but many people use coaches to outsource their own personal agency and decision making. And so it is a software AI product that you use that basically is able to reflect back the things that are getting in your way. You do reflections, you put in your vision, it asks you a bunch of questions. It shows you these are the limiting beliefs that are getting in your way. These are the core themes in your life. Here's how you think about yourself right now. Here's how you would think about yourself when you're living your ideal life. Here's the gaps. Let's get, and then builds a personalized training plan for you. And then the training, it comes with a physical journal, and you actually do a six-step, intentional, structured training routine every single morning that is built based on a bunch of different scientific mechanisms that target our identity, our beliefs, our intentions, our emotional responses, our attention. And we train daily with a personalized plan. And the reason that we use handwriting is because it is proven to be the most effective at activating motor neurons and rewiring our brain. So it's like, oh, this is just a random journaling routine. And the difference is what you do get benefits from freeform writing. It's called cognitive offloading. So people that have done freeform or expressive writing before have felt that one benefit. And we're adding five additional ones that are structured and intentional and personalized to you to create a massively compounding effect. So the difference is like between doing five-minute abs on your living room floor, which will you will get a benefit from it. It's better than doing nothing, versus hiring a personal trainer, getting a personalized program, doing a very intentional training routine based on your personalized goals of what you want to accomplish. So those are the, I would say that's the main difference.

SPEAKER_01 47:56

But I mean, on the topic of freedom, your post on the 10 dimensions of freedom framework really resonated with me because that's just freedom is such a core part of my life. It's why I quit every job. It's why I started a company, it's why I started eWebinar. How do you make decisions now that you have such clarity on those different dimensions to protect all 10 of those dimensions of freedom?

SPEAKER_00 48:22

I never make a choice that compromises one of them. My decisions must raise my freedom across all 10 dimensions.

SPEAKER_01 48:30

Is that possible?

SPEAKER_00 48:32

It sure is. Most people trade their creative freedom, their location freedom, their time freedom, their relationship freedom, their health freedom, their mental freedom, all for money. That's what it is. Or they trade some of those things for social status. Those are usually the two things that people are people are chasing externally. Now, when you make decisions that must raise all of them, it fundamentally changes how you look at everything. It's like, oh, this customer is going to be a pain in the ass. Nope. Not trading my mental freedom for $5K a month. Sorry. I'm like, oh, that investor is going to be with us for 10 years and I can feel how they're going to pressure us to do X, Y, and Z. Nope. I don't need to be on that train. Sorry. Like, you know, you're friends with somebody who is now complaining all the time about something, and you've been friends with them for five years, and you tell them the truth about that their complaining isn't going anywhere and they get mad at you or they snap at you. Sorry. I'm like, I'm glad we were friends for so long, but we're clearly going in different directions here. And I have too much respect for myself. And I've told you the truth and I care about you, but right now we are just not resonating. And there are, it's totally possible to do that. And I would invite everyone to consider it for themselves because it actually also creates better financial outcomes, usually, because you are doing something that matters with the right intentions, with the right people, can just be so powerful.

SPEAKER_01 50:11

I mean, the first thought that comes to my mind is isn't life about trade-offs? But I already know that that's my programming from this conversation.

SPEAKER_00 50:18

It's all about balance, right? You got to trade this for this. It's like, no, you can create a life where you have all of it.

SPEAKER_01 50:23

Well, Chris, thank you so much for this conversation. It's one of the best conversations I've ever had on a podcast. How can people find you and learn more about Encoded?

SPEAKER_00 50:33

So if you'd like to check out Encoded, we have released a new system about 30 days ago. Hundreds of people have signed up within the past 30 days, and the messages that I've been getting have just been so powerful. And so I'd invite you, if you feel called or this resonated with you, to feel free to check it out. And if you want to join, no pressure, but definitely I'd invite you to check it out. If you feel like it could be valuable, that is encoded.ai. And then I share content on my podcast called We Are Encoded and on LinkedIn and other social media platforms. My handle is Chris Walker171. And just to close, like I hope that if you've made it this far, that there was something in here that resonated with you that shifted your perspective about what's possible, what you're capable of. That is my objective. It's why I do these podcasts now. Just to like, I just wish that there was someone that that I was listening to that had shared these ideas five or ten years ago. And so I feel a level of responsibility, but in like such a powerful way to be able to share it with as many people as possible. So thank you for listening.

SPEAKER_01 51:38

Well, all those links will also be in the show notes. So thank you so much, Chris. Thank you. Real quick, if what we talked about today resonated with you, the best thing you can do to pay it forward is to share it with someone you think would enjoy it too. The only way this podcast grows is by word of mouth. Whether that's a review, a post, or even a text to a friend, it would mean the world to me and would help me keep this podcast going. Hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. And head over to profitlet.fm for show notes. If you want to connect or share feedback, I'd love to hear from you. Find me at melissaquan.com. That's M E L I S S A K W A N dot com. Thanks for listening. Bye now.