Learning Leadership The Trial & Error Way With Chris Cianciulli

LAC Cianciulli | Leadership

A quote from Winston Churchill says that success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. It is also the same for leadership. In an ideal world, a great leader is 100% ready to handle the day to day challenges that arise and lead their team with confidence. In reality, however, this rarely happens as most leaders receive very little leadership training before stepping into their first leadership role. On today’s podcast, Chris Cianciulli chats with Alicia Couri about leadership and how sometimes one eases into the role through trial and error. Chris is the Founder of CONNEXX and the Creator of the My Mistakexx Podcast.

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Learning Leadership The Trial & Error Way With Chris Cianciulli

With me here is Chris Cianciulli. Chris, thank you so much for coming on the show to talk about all things leadership and confidence. I’ve been on your podcast, I’m excited to have done that. Tables have flipped a little bit and I get to interview you. I’m excited.

Me too. I’m not used to being on this end. I’m excited to see what we’ll be talking about. Please excuse my background. Even though my green screen is off I want you to know that that’s not going to distract me. I’m going to be confident because I’ve listened to your advice.

We’re not going to allow distractions to hinder us from getting great information out to you. Chris, the first question I want to ask is what is your leadership philosophy?

My leadership philosophy and those that have inspired me to lead is that I’m a student of history. I love reading about historical figures. Teddy Roosevelt is someone who I found to be an inspirational leader because he was someone that led his men. I believe in people leading by example. I believe in people not demanding of others anything that they won’t do themselves. I believe a leader looks to create other leaders and tries to find qualities in other people that exhibit leadership as far as not being a follower, setting trends, not being afraid to take risks, but not putting others at risk when taking risks.

It’s so true that when you are a leader that is willing to do whatever it takes and you’re not telling someone to do something that you’re not willing to do yourself. That to me as well is not great leadership because now you’re pushing someone out there that you’re not willing to go. Teddy Roosevelt went into battle with his men. He wasn’t one of those leaders that sat way behind and told them, “You go fight. I’ll wait back here.” Leading by example and being willing to go and do what you’re asking other people to go and do as well. Over time, I want you to tell me your journey through different stages of leadership for yourself and how that impacted your own confidence.

I would say my first role in leadership, if we’re going business-wise or even as a team captain. I was the captain of a tennis team. That was probably my first role of having any say in the direction of plays or positioning and having others asked me. I saw that when you’re in a position of leadership, people come in to ask questions. The first thing I learned in middle school was confidence. Any decision if someone comes and asks you, “Where should we be standing?” If you say, “I don’t know, wherever,” then you’re vague. That can be at any age. It’s asking with intention or direction. The first business I started was when I was 22 years old and I opened my own gym. I had two employees working for me. One working at the desk checking people in and one who was a trainer. I thought that to be a good leader, you need to be strict. I thought that people need to fear you. I was here to be someone’s boss or employer and not their friend. I don’t know why I thought along those lines. It might be that you always perceive a boss or all the bosses I had had up until that point were jerks.

It’s because you’re modeling what you saw.

I saw how that can make people dislike you fast or talk about you often.

You had to intimidate them like, “They have to fear me so they would do what I asked.”

I didn’t ask, I told. That was an early mistake that I made when I sold my gym and merged it into a much larger organization. At that point, I had about eleven trainers working for me. I remember that I would raise my voice or if someone did something wrong, I would yell. I saw how uncomfortable that makes people but I thought that’s what being a boss or being a leader was. I didn’t learn how to be a good leader until probably in the last few years. It took burning many bridges and making many enemies until realizing if I stay on this course, no one’s going to like me in life or I will not be a leader. I don’t think many people realize that people choose to be led.

Look at how we are with what’s going on with COVID. Look how people look to politicians. People look for leaders. When there aren’t leaders or good leaders, people can be swayed or seduced by bad leaders. As I said earlier, you need to take risks without risking others. Some leaders don’t have people’s best interests at heart and they only care about what they want to achieve or a better word is agenda. When choosing to be a leader, you have to be principled and you have to be clear on what you stand for.

Lead by example. Do not demand of others anything you won’t do yourself. Click To Tweet

That’s what some people who had large companies, who are the head of large countries, it’s how are they gaining that support or followers? What is their agenda? I found that even looking at the people who I have allowed to lead me, who I’ve answered to or mentors, or people I’ve respect for. I chose those people to be my mentors because they carry themselves in a way where they always respect those around them. It’s a cliché term, but to get respect, you have to give respect. It’s so cliché but it’s also so true.

You have to be able to hear other people where they’re coming from and find validity in what they’re saying instead of saying, “No, it’s my way or the highway.” That’s one leadership way. People look at it as, “My way or the highway,” and it’s not necessarily the right way. You said in the last few years or so, other than thinking that, “I’ve burned a lot of bridges. Nobody’s going to like me.” What else was going on that made that switch for you? Was there something that was like, “Wait a minute,” that went off in your head?

The thing that trained me best for leadership was I got into networking and networking groups. There are a couple that most people are familiar with. They have three letters in the title. Most people know that one. When getting involved, I became president of a chapter that had seventeen people in it. In about three years, I grew it to 83 people. In doing so, the first year, I wasn’t good. I was using that mentality of setting rules and telling people that these are the rules. This is what we expect? I used to say “I” a lot. I would say, “Here’s what I expect.” What I learned is people don’t answer to an individual the answer to an organization, a company, a group or a club. I did change it from, “What I expect,” to, “What we expect of you.”

Every time I rarely will say the word I anymore. I’ve switched it to we. I change that narrative of what we expect of you. Instead of giving people a list of rules, I handed out a sheet of paper, and a pen or pencil to everyone and I said, “What are the ten rules that everyone here thinks that we should have in place so we can grow to better everyone’s businesses?” By having everyone contribute to the rules we were going to follow, people didn’t feel that they were answering to my rules. They were the rules that the group had set. If someone came out of the attire that we agreed on, men wearing collared shirts, women wearing something that would go into work, something appropriate, not like you’re going out. These were the words that were used by the members.

They took ownership. You gave them ownership of it. That’s another great asset of a leader. It’s when you’re able to give people ownership of the result. They are now engaged more because you’re not telling them what to do. They have input in how this grows and how it succeeds. That’s great. You started reading, improving and expanding your mind.

I look at leadership like pretend that you and a bunch of friends are going on a road trip and someone says, “You drive.” That person in the driver’s seat is the leader. Eventually, they’re going to turn the car keys over to someone else and someone else is going to drive. A good leader will teach, show, and inspire other people to want to step up. With that group, expansion happened and we added so many members. I was awarded President of the Year for the whole organization with 325 chapters. I was so proud of that award because I know I wasn’t good when I started out. Even toward the end, my vice president said, “How would you rank yourself as a president or as a leader?” I said, “A 10.” I realized in that answer that it wasn’t even the answer that a true leader would give because if you think that you’re perfect, then you’re done.

No room to grow.

The best of the best leaders can only be nines. Maybe 9.5 or 9.75. I feel that there’s always something someone can do.

There’s always something to learn and grow.

The key thing I learned about leadership to cap off that experience is when I was going to leave or no longer be part of that organization. I said to my mentor, “Let’s see if the whole thing falls apart now.” I made the comment and he said, “If it does fall apart, that will show that you weren’t as good as you thought or everyone else thought.” I said, “No, that will show that I was good because without me it fell apart.” He said, “A good leader doesn’t do that. A good leader builds something that’s sustainable. Even if they’re not there. If you put the right people in the right places, they can carry on. That’s how good leaders have legacies.” That was powerful to me. When I look back and see the group now, it has held its own over a year later after leaving that. As someone said to me, that’s a testament to the leadership that you put a foundation in place that they can now oversee and do what they choose to expand.

That is incredible. That is a big a-ha right there that a great leader creates that foundation that others can follow into, so that what you started building doesn’t crumble when you leave. It continues to blossom and grow. You said something earlier that I want to go back to when you were a team leader of the tennis club or team. You said that you had to have enough confidence to tell people or instruct them where to stand, what to do, and how when you started working, that switched. Going back to making a decision, having the confidence to make a decision, even if you don’t know whether it’s the right decision or not, how do you feel that plays into leadership? A leader needs to be able to make a decision about something. You may step into a situation you don’t know but they’re looking to you to make that decision instead of being, “Go wherever you want to go. Stand where you want to stand.” How does that play into good leadership for you having the confidence to do that?

Leadership: A good leader will teach, show, and inspire other people to want to step up.

If I understood the question correctly, if a leader doesn’t have an answer at that moment, the best thing a leader can say is, “I don’t know.” I respect a leader that doesn’t know and says, “I need to look into this a little bit further. Let me find out and get back to you.” That’s what I meant when I said to take risks without risking others. Not to get political in any way, but even the way that a leader handles crisis, I believe that no decision at this current time is a decision. To even say, “We don’t have answers for you at this current time, we’re working on it. We will be able to get back to you in the next 24 to 48 hours. We want to look further into it. We don’t want to give you false hope or put out false information.”

When people look to a leader, you’ve got to imagine it. It’s like a child looking to their parents. I remember being a child and no matter what was going on, my parents were so amazing at never allowing us to worry. To this day, I can look to my father and if he’s calm in his situation or not worked up, I remain calm. I see with my kids, when they start to panic, they look to me to see how I’m reacting. I don’t react as well as my father did. I’m not as stoic as he is and I get worked up. Some of my emotions shine through when it comes to my kids or my family. It’s different from the workplace. With leaders, that’s a key thing as well. It’s being able to separate from emotion to not make an emotional choice when it’s the workplace. Whereas when it’s your family, it’s hard to not have emotion attached to it because their health, lives, and safety could all be on the line.

That makes a lot of sense. Saying nothing or doing nothing is not ever doing nothing when you’re a leader because you can always say, “I don’t have the information now.” Even with my children, as you were talking about, I’ve learned to do that as they got older. When they were younger, you definitely have to keep that calm. If they fall you don’t jump up and go, “Oh my gosh.” You stay calm and you keep them calm. You look them over. Nothing’s broken and bleeding. You’ll be fine. It’s a little boo-boo. As they get older and they start asking more difficult questions, as a parent, I have also learned to say, “I don’t know that. Let me go find out.” I’ve never had to look at or had an experience with that before. Sometimes I tell them, “You go find out the information and you come to tell me. Let’s have a discussion about it.”

You’re so right in when you’re leading people. A lot of the CEOs I’ve spoken to through this COVID because I’ve been doing some insight interviews. The ones that their companies are increasing in this time, they’ve said that they have been transparent. They have told them, “I don’t know what’s happening. We don’t know what’s going to go on. One thing I will tell you and what we do know is that we’re not going to panic. We’re not going to lay people off. We’re going to look at our finances. We’re going to make sure that we can do this, this and this. We may have to cut back on some things.” They’ve been transparent and telling them what they don’t know and what they do know.

If I could add to with that experience of being involved in a networking group and being a president, or a leader of the chapter, you said, what changed that philosophy of leading? When you are a boss and you are paying employees, naturally, people are going to listen to you because you’re the boss and you’re signing their checks. Being president of a group like this, members were paying $1,000 for the year to belong to this group. They’re all business owners who are their own boss. A tricky and challenging thing for me was, how do you keep people motivated and engaged when they’re not used to answering to anyone, and they’re paying to be there? That clicked to me and I said, “This is going to be a challenging job. The way that I’ll be successful at it is if I include and involve everyone in things that go on.” That carried over and I feel a good leader when someone comes to you with a problem. It’s creating a culture where people don’t come to you with just problems, but they come to you with problems and solutions, or problems and ideas.

Let’s just say gaps. They say, “I noticed a gap here and I have a solution for this.”

I had a principal of a school in South Jamaica, Queens here in New York. I love the way she said it. She never says problems like, “We have a problem here.” She’ll say, “Can we address a couple of concerns that I have?” I learned that by changing your vocabulary to not use words that someone could take offense to or get defensive over, but finding more benign words such as, “I have a couple of concerns I’d like to address. How would you handle this? Is this a concern of yours?” Instead of being accusatory or telling someone something’s not going to work because no one wants to be shut down.

Either people dig their heels in or give up. You come at them, so that is great.

You want to keep motivating because a good leader will get the best that your people have to offer. You can elicit those incredible responses because you’re inspiring them. They have a sense of that energy. You can’t look at a CEO and they have this personality of watching paint dry on a wall when they’re talking and you tune them out. Most CEOs and people in charge of companies are dynamic. You want to hear what they have to say. It’s fun and entertaining. When there is a meeting or you have to go hear the leader, the CEO, or the president’s speech, it should be something to look forward to. It shouldn’t be something like, “We got this meeting. I’m going to get into naptime or think about the rest of the day.” Especially on Zoom calls when you have numerous people. If you have 20, 30, 40 people on a call, there’s nothing worse than when you look at the screens, and you see half of the people are doing something else, on their phones, typing, making dinner or whatever they might be doing something else.

Let’s talk about Connexx because you left that group that you were leading. Tell me about Connexx.

I’m going to get excited here because I’m passionate about it. Connexx was the original brainchild of myself which has evolved into something bigger and grander than I anticipated or thought it would be. If you’ve ever belonged to any of the networking groups, one of the key things about them is when you’re looking to join a group, you have to submit an application and you’re voted in. They have one person per category of the networking organization. They have a board of directors and they have rules. I hated all that. I thought that was the dumbest way.

People before profession. Click To Tweet

You’re encouraging discrimination to where you’re choosing people that you deem fit to be part of your organization. I hated the idea of those. I absolutely hated that. I set that out the window. You know my feeling on that. We’ve talked about it and I’ve been interviewed about it. I don’t like the biases when people vote someone in. I hate the idea of exclusivity of a profession in a group. What if you have someone in the group who’s an accountant, who’s into life insurance, a mortgage broker, and they stink? They’re not good at getting back to people. They are a little standoffish. If that’s the only person you have, that’s the only person that you can refer to. I didn’t like that. I don’t like the board directors. To me, why do you have to answer to someone who’s your equal in an organization? Why are they calling the shots? I didn’t like that.

There are bylaws and you’ve got his legal agreement, which it’s supposed to be fun and you’ve got rules. Connexx was formed by throwing all those concepts out the window. Connexx is a community. It’s like-minded people who have businesses or books of businesses that support, encourage, and refer to one another for business leads, business jobs, or simply introductions. We started as an area group on Long Island with myself and three other people that I was friends with from my former group. We sat down at an Applebee’s one night. We got together and started discussing. I laid out my vision, they gave me their input and suggestions of what the first step would be. Eighteen people from my former group came over and started with me with Connexx. Within 3 to 4 months, we were about 40 members. When COVID hit, we were only about 6 or 7 months and we were at 63 members.

As of September 18th, we are at 98 members. In thirteen months, we went from 1 to 98 members. It’s not just people in the region of Long Island. Long Island is broken into two counties, Nassau County and Suffolk County. When COVID hit, we started doing something called Zoom at Noon. The idea was to get people together every day Monday through Friday for 15 to 20 minutes so we would have something that was routine in our day. There was so much uncertainty, many of the members were complaining or reaching out that they were depressed, they were scared, they didn’t know what was going to happen to their clients, their patients, their customers.

We got together and I wanted people to know that I was there for them as were the other members of Connexx. It started attracting people from all the boroughs of New York, New Jersey, Florida, North Carolina, Connecticut, Massachusetts. It started drawing people in. My good friend and cohost on my podcast, Sean Rosenfeld, it wouldn’t be possible to accomplish as much as we have in such a short time without him. I owe him so much for his time and effort. We spoke and I said, “Sean, we can go way beyond being a little area networking group. This is a movement. These are people that believe in community and supporting one another where it doesn’t have to be just a transactional piece of business. Instead, it could be a sounding board where people can bounce ideas off of. It’s a community of people who have each other’s best interests at heart.”

By doing that and coming together, it started bringing people from all over and they started joining. I never imagined it would go in that direction. What I found harder and I still struggle with it is letting go of what I envisioned it to be prior to COVID because it’s evolved into something different. That’s a sign of a leader. It’s not to fight it and try to force it, but instead to go with it. JD Salinger said, “Things in life that don’t evolve, eventually die out.” I feel that’s business. When you say, “This is the way we’ve always done it,” pack up. It’s a nail in the coffin.

It’s downhill from there. You also have to allow other people to help the vision expand. When Sean came on board, the ideas and the things that he’s doing can help take your vision to the next level. When you look at Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, nobody knows much about Steve Wozniak but Steve Jobs can do what he did without the other Steve to help push that vision even further. It’s always great when you include other people in your vision to help it go further.

The team is important and once it starts to expand, it’s delegating. Sean is good at communication. He’s diligent. He’s in the world of insurance so he’s good at getting back to you and staying on you. Sean became in charge of reaching out to members and getting them acclimated when they joined. We brought on someone who’s an employee of Connexx, a girl named Adele. She’s phenomenal. She’s so good at relationship building. She’s so outgoing. She’s done a great job recruiting. We have someone that’s onboard named Alyssa, who at 27 years old is so far beyond wisdom and being willing to be outgoing to people. She’s great at building communities.

It’s important to understand the strengths of the people that are around and the strength of the people you’re bringing on board, so you can allow them to step into their strength and do what they do, and not have your finger in each pot.

My job is the meetings. I write the meetings. I had the vision, but I discussed the vision with Victor, our SEO advertising web guy. Victor is coming up with a plan that it’s talking to Sean. I like to speak to each person individually and get a small group together to come with 2 or 3 options, but I feel a leader should always present options and not just an open form of, “Let’s discuss.” Everyone’s going to throw ingredients into the recipe and you know the expression, “Too many cooks in the kitchen.” It’s presenting your options.

It’s like, “I’m bringing my gummy bears into this casserole.”

I know I’ve evolved as a leader because I wouldn’t feel right talking about Connexx without mentioning all the people that have helped to expand it. I’m passionate about it because with all that is going on in the world now and in our country, there’s so much divisiveness. Something that feels so amazing to me is when you have a group of people that care about each other. They don’t care what your political affiliation is, what you do for a living, how much you make a year, about the color your skin, what religion you practice, or if you’re in a same-sex marriage. I love the fact of having a group of individuals in Connexx that see each other as people.

Leadership: A leader looks to create other leaders and tries to find qualities in other people that exhibit leadership.

Our motto is we put people before profession. We don’t care what you do because whatever you do for a profession, I’m not going to understand and I can’t relate to. If you’re a man and you speak to me as a husband, as a father, as a brother, as a son, I know how I can identify because I’m all those things. We form relationships based on building rapport and not based on, “I do mortgages, I do title insurance, I’m a real estate agent. We should work together.” That’s not how we connect. We all connect as a community. We connect as humans first and jobs second.

That’s wonderful. You launched a podcast out of all this because you have the two Xs and that’s My Mistakexx.

I started podcasting in 2008. My web designer in 2005 told me about podcasting. I said, “What is this podcasting thing? This isn’t going to catch on. This is a fad.” I was wrong. I did do a podcast back in 2008 on YouTube, and they’re horrible. In my experience, I look at the people that I’ve met and I’ve worked with. They’re some of the most influential individuals in an entire industry. It’s huge. I wondered how they were so successful? I would start talking to them and what they shared more than their successes were they’re incorrect decisions. We’ll call them mistakes. I started looking at my mistakes. I started realizing that I should probably be in the net worth of somewhere in the area of $10 million to $20 million at this point with some of the opportunities that I’ve had, but stupid things have screwed it up.

It could be as simple as me knocking over my green screen and causing wrinkles to why I’ve got this fuzz behind me now, to something major like building a website on a shared server in which I went on TV to 80 million people. It crashed the server in four minutes. I had $27,000 worth of sales in four minutes and crashed the server and I was not able to get it back up so anything thereafter was lost. That was a big mistake. I learned never to build on a shared server when you’re expecting heavy traffic. I started this podcast called My Mistakexx. I asked Sean to host it with me because I love the chemistry that we have. He’s calm, relaxed, and thinks things through. I do none of the above. It’s a good blend.

We’ve had a guy named Josh York who started a company called GYMGUYZ. They’re the largest in-home personal training company in the world. We’ve had Tim Sabean, who is the Senior Vice President of XM Sirius and started Howard Stern into syndication. Billy Alvaro, a real estate developer. His company did over $1 billion. We’ve had three guests that have done over $1 billion. Their success stories have so many things that didn’t go the way they planned. To me, you learn more from someone’s mistakes than you do their successes.

It took off because when Sean sends me the reports, we have listeners on every continent of the planet. Something about that gives me goosebumps, the fact that there are people in Asia, Africa, and Europe that have heard my lispy voice. It’s only audio so they don’t get to see my fuzzy beard, which I still have not trimmed since COVID started. I’m riding this all the way out. It’s been a great experience during the podcasting because I get to reach out to people who I envy and look up to. Kevin Levrone, who’s a professional bodybuilder in the Hall of Fame was my childhood idol. To interview him and have him give me a two-hour interview with some of the most telling stories that people in the bodybuilding world have always wondered and he’s never shared. He shared those on my podcast. To me, that was big. Anyone that’s watching that into bodybuilding Flex Wheeler, Kevin Levrone, Dave Palumbo, the biggest names in the sport and they’ve been on my podcast. That’s humbling.

I was your first female guest on your podcast. I was so honored that you asked.

I’ve got a lot of feedback from your interview of people loving it, where they said that you were such an inspiration. I had more men than women reach out to me telling me that. They messaged me and said, “She was so great. I love her energy. I love her story.” I was almost upset to see how few women I’ve been able to get on. I’m looking for more women in business, women of color in business to interview. I want to capture people’s experiences that I and my listeners don’t know because we weren’t born in that situation. I feel people should make an effort to better get to know individuals. Muhammad Ali once said, “The service that you do for others is the rent that you pay to live on this planet.” I feel that the service that I want to offer to people is bringing people’s stories to the forefront, to tell the struggles that people have had, the mistakes that people have made. I look at everyone who’s alive and makes it to the finish line of life that they’ve won. They succeeded. They have a story to tell.

We connect in that way. That’s why we connect so well. It’s because we have that same mission to empower people to tell their stories so others can also be empowered by them. I have another last question I wanted to ask you and this is so fascinating. You have children. What advice do you give them about their own confidence? I know you also had some challenges with yours and as I did with mine. What advice do you have for them about confidence and leadership?

I never had a problem with confidence. The scary thing is that never shook my confidence. I made lots of mistakes but I’m not scared to keep putting it out there.

I thought when I said I was short and you talked about your lisp.

We all connect as a community. We connect as humans first and jobs second. Click To Tweet

The lisp never got me to stop talking. I will speak on confidence. Losing my hair my hair was the only thing that shook my confidence because it made me start to look different than the person I thought I was. Often our looks become our identity and when you’re younger, you don’t realize that your looks are going to evolve like my beard evolved to gray which requires color to bring it back to a dark color. Speaking of hair, I dyed my daughter’s hair pink because she saw someone on TV or on YouTube with pink hair. She said, “Daddy, can I do my hair pink?” I snuck to the pharmacy and CVS where they had pink, purple, and blue. Without my wife knowing, I dyed my daughter’s hair pink and went to my parents’ house to do it there so we wouldn’t be discovered. I rinsed it out in the backyard while my daughter was laying on the grass in my parents’ backyard. She said, “Daddy, why can’t we use the sink?” I said, “I don’t want to get it pinked everywhere.” The reason that I was all for it is, that was me as a kid.

It’s to express her individuality.

I was a skateboarder. I had long hair, a ponytail, pierced ears, and a pierced nose. That was me. I expressed myself. My daughter who is on the shy side, which my wife says, “Don’t say that in front of her. You’re going to give her an identity. She’s going to identify with it.” I don’t anymore. When she said she wants to dye her hair, and when my wife said, “Why did you let her do it?” I said, “The fact that she wanted to stand out and she was comfortable too I wanted to encourage it. It’ll wash out. It’s not like we’re tattooing our kid, which I told her that she’s got to be eighteen for that but Daddy will take her if that’s what she wants to do.” I said that and she said, “I don’t ever want any tattoos like you, Daddy.” I say, “Great.” I want my kids to make their own decisions.

I as a parent and by no means am I saying I’m a good one or a great one at all. I take the advice of every parent who gives me a piece of advice about raising kids because I know nothing about it. Something scares me about screwing up other lives tremendously. I don’t want to give the wrong advice. I’m so scared when I get on the bus. I’m doing a double check to make sure she’s got her water, her snack, her food, her ID, and everything because I don’t want her to be that kid that doesn’t have something kids look at her and it’d be my fault. Maybe that’s my own hang-up but I want to do all that I can. I’m outgoing and I’ll make jokes and sometimes people roll their eyes like, “Was that appropriate?” With my kids, it’s the only time I don’t do that. We go to the bus stop. I say nothing. I’m quiet. I don’t make any jokes.

You don’t want to embarrass them in any way.

She said that to me, “Daddy, please don’t try to make everyone laugh.” She even said, “Daddy, please don’t kiss me goodbye.” That’s so hard as a dad because I want to kiss her goodbye and tell her I love her. We have little code words. I’ll say our code word or I’ll tap her three times.

You’re making it your own way.

It’s to not embarrass her. My other daughter, Kayla will stick her head over the window and yell, “Daddy I love you.” That absolutely melts my heart. She’s not shy. I don’t have any boys.

You could use the word reserved instead of shy. She’s more reserved.

We’ll use reserved. One is reserved and the other one I never had any boys or sons but if I did, they would have all the qualities and attributes that Kayla does because she’s me as a little girl.

She’s outgoing.

Leadership: A good leader builds something that’s sustainable even if they’re not there.

You said, outgoing. She’s crazy. She’ll jump off of things, dress up the dog, she’ll try to cut his nails and put makeup on him. Those are the things that I did. God gave it back to me. A taste of my own medicine.

Thank you so much for joining us. I love this is a great conversation. I’m looking forward to doing this again sometime. Thank you. For those of you who want to get in touch with Chris, how do they get in touch with you?

The best would go to the website for Connexx which is GetConnexx.com. You can reach me right through that. Check out Connexx, it might be something that’s a perfect fit for you if you have a business. If you do have a business and you’re a female, contact me because I need more female guests.

I’ll send some your way.

That would be great.

Everyone, this was a great show. Thank you so much. Take care.

About Chris Cianciulli

LAC Cianciulli | Leadership I have a passion working with people, and helping them to communicate better with others.

My experiences range from working in a service industry, teaching, production, distribution, logistics, writing, team building, broadcasting, conducting interviews, all while trying to keep people entertained.

*- I’ve had products rank #1 on Google & been “Amazon’s Choice” and #1 on Amazon for over a year. (2018-2019)
*- My children’s book, “The Whyz Guy” reached #1 on Amazon two weekends in a row in 2013.

I have an extensive background in fitness, with more than 23 years of experience.

-Certified exercise physiologist
-Physical training for professional, college, and high school athletes
-One-on-one training
-Consultant & representative for sport supplement companies
-Gym owner
-Personal training studio owner
-Health club fitness director
-Personal training certification instructor
-Fitness column writer
-Adult education fitness teacher