Connect With Chaz

Fernando Angelucci graduated from University of Illinois with an engineering degree, landed a job at Dow Chemical with a pension, a 401K, a truck, and an expense account, and was completely miserable within six months. Thirteen months into the job, the night after he quit, he applied for 64 credit cards. Twelve got approved. He cash advanced $97,000 and went all in on real estate.

Today Fernando owns over $150 million in self-storage assets and is on a path to 1.6 billion by 2030. He has started five companies, participates in four masterminds, and spends 5% of his income every year on personal development. He is also one of the most data-driven, risk-aware, systems-minded entrepreneurs you will hear on this show.

In this conversation with Chaz Wolfe, Fernando breaks down the pre-mortem decision-making framework he uses before every deal, why red flags start looking like pink flags when you are addicted to closing, how willpower fails even high performers and what to do instead, and why the distance between the learning moment and the implementation moment is the only thing you can actually control.

Key Takeaways:

• Fernando applied for 64 credit cards at 21, got 12 approved, and cash advanced $97,000 the night after quitting his job. Reckless or data-driven? He ran Tim Ferriss's fear-setting exercise first and determined the worst case was moving back with his parents. The upside was a nine out of ten life change.
• The entrepreneur's highest and best use is thinking, not doing. Fernando walks his neighborhood for 75 minutes every morning with no phone, no music, no calls. That is his thinking time and it is non-negotiable.

If you are a business owner doing $1M+ and you feel stuck in the day-to-day, we built GTK for you. Through peer mastermind and 1:1 coaching, we help you:

• increase profit
• install real systems
• build a team that runs the business
• get your time back

Visit www.gatheringthekings.com for information on how to apply.

Books and Resources Recommended:

Traction by Gino Wickman - https://amzn.to/4tzKcWk

Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki - https://amzn.to/4mK5HRA

Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss - https://amzn.to/4ttAsNf

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill - https://amzn.to/3QuakmP

Connect with Fernando Angelucci (Guest):

Website (Self Storage):  https://ssse.com/

Website (Titan Wealth Group):  https://www.titanwealthgroup.com/

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/TheStorageStud

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/thestoragestud/

Connect with Chaz Wolfe (Host):

Website

Facebook

Instagram

LinkedIn

YouTube

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Connect With Chaz

Make More Money. Work Less. Win At Home.

Chaz Wolfe launched a remodeling company in early 2023 knowing nothing about construction. He had never swung a hammer on a client job. He did not know the trades. What he knew was how to build a team, create a sales process, and design a client experience that makes people say yes and refer their friends.

In twelve months, Kings Collective went from zero to $1.73 million in revenue. In this episode, Chaz walks Jake Isaacs through the exact six steps he used to do it, including how he architected the team before writing a single proposal, how he niched down to avoid the headaches most contractors walk into, why leads have to become an obsession, and what a real sales process looks like in a remodeling business where the average project runs $80,000 to $160,000.

If you are a contractor doing $1M+ and you want a repeatable framework for growing a service business fast without losing your mind or your family, this episode is a direct download.

Key Takeaways:

• Step 1 is people. Before revenue, before leads, before anything else, Chaz used personality profiles to architect the right team. A sales and construction partner, a creative marketing partner, and a proven integrator, all chosen based on known strengths and wired to run without him.
• Leads are an obsession, not an option. If you are not converting Angie or HomeAdvisor leads, the problem is almost never the lead source. It is your response time and your sales process. Chaz's integrator stops everything she is doing the moment a lead comes in.
• The sales process is four steps: open, discovery, presentation, close. Every single time. In that order. A confused mind does not buy.
• Over-communicate every step of fulfillment. If your client has to ask a question, you have already failed at communication. Build trust at every step so they never wonder what comes next.
• The client journey starts before the first call and ends when the relationship ends, not when the project ends. Every five-star review and referral is a product of the emotion the client feels at the end, not just the quality of the work.

If you are a business owner doing $1M+ and you feel stuck in the day-to-day, we built GTK for you.

Through peer mastermind and 1:1 coaching, we help you:

• increase profit
• install real systems
• build a team that runs the business
• get your time back

Visit www.gatheringthekings.com for information on how to apply.

Connect with Chaz Wolfe (Host):

Website

Facebook

Instagram

LinkedIn

YouTube

Connect With Jake Isaacs (Co-Host): 

Website

Facebook

LinkedIn

Instagram

YouTube

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Entrepreneur families grow closer, dream bigger, & build legacy together. Join our Family Vacation.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

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Like what you heard?

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Connect With Chaz

Make More Money. Work Less. Win At Home.

If you are spending two hours a day checking email, you are losing a full week every month to a task someone else could handle for $10 an hour. Joe Rare figured this out early, outsourced everything he possibly could, and built multiple seven-figure businesses from a mountain town in Bozeman, Montana with a team based largely in the Philippines.

Joe is the founder of Level 9 Virtual. He runs a marketing agency for wedding venues, a freight dispatching company, a data resolution company, and his VA services business. Every one of them runs on outsourced staff. His operations director manages hundreds of employees from the Philippines. His lead developer has a master's degree and teaches at a university. Joe is a college dropout. The talent is there. The question is whether contractors are willing to let go.

In this conversation with Chaz Wolfe, Joe breaks down exactly how to start delegating, why checking your notifications is a health problem not just a productivity problem, how to run a remote team that actually builds culture, and why hiring one VA at $3 an hour is a completely different strategy than building a career-driven team that stays for ten years.

Key Takeaways:

• Nine out of ten businesses fail not because they have too much cash but because they are focused on the wrong activities. Delegation is the fix.
• Start with a voice memo. Walk around your workspace and audio record every single thing that is driving you nuts. Nobody will write a list but almost everyone will talk one out.
• Checking your email 30 times a day on your phone is an addiction. It is not productivity. Compound that behavior over a month and you have lost an entire week you could have spent on dollar-productive activities.
• The VA industry has conditioned people to think outsourcing means cheap and low-quality. Joe's operations director runs hundreds of employees from the Philippines. His lead developer is a university professor. Quality is available if you hire for careers, not transactions.
• Delegating is a muscle. You have to practice it. The entrepreneurs who stick with one VA forever are not growing their businesses. The ones scaling are building teams.
• Build a Visionary/Integrator relationship with your operations manager. Cast the vision clearly. Give full access but expect them to only use it when they actually need you. Review the numbers regularly and let the data drive decisions.

If you are a business owner doing $1M+ and you feel stuck in the day-to-day, we built GTK for you.

Through peer mastermind and 1:1 coaching, we help you:

• increase profit
• install real systems
• build a team that runs the business
• get your time back

Visit www.gatheringthekings.com for information on how to apply.

Learn more about outsourcing with Level 9 Virtual here:  https://www.level9virtual.com/

Connect with Chaz Wolfe (Host):

Website

Facebook

Instagram

LinkedIn

YouTube

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Entrepreneur families grow closer, dream bigger, & build legacy together. Join our Family Vacation.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the show

Like what you heard?

Share this episode with a friend and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!

Join the conversation by visiting GatheringTheKings.com and apply to connect with other high-performing entrepreneurs and their families.

Connect With Chaz

Make More Money. Work Less. Win At Home.

Brian Decker turned $500,000 into $7 million in crypto in under 12 months. The cycle before that, he turned $50,000 into $400,000. This is not luck and it is not gambling. It is a data-driven approach to understanding economic seasons, money supply cycles, and the four-year Bitcoin halving pattern that has played out the same way every single time.

Brian is the CEO of SOAR Energy, a leader in clean energy, crypto investing, real estate, and wealth building. He also poured his life savings into an AI software company that took two and a half years to find product-market fit and almost broke him. In this conversation with Chaz Wolfe, Brian covers the discipline behind managing multiple businesses without shiny object syndrome, the data-driven pivot that took him from defeat to Fortune 200 clients, and what he told his kids about taxes, charity, and investing before they were ten years old.

If you want to understand where smart money is going right now and why, this episode delivers a framework most people will never hear in one place.

Key Takeaways:

• Shiny object syndrome is not a gift. It is the reason most entrepreneurs end up with a resume full of 30% completed projects. The answer is a short-term and long-term vision list where new ideas get parked until the current priority is complete and monetized.
• Social media shows you someone's best day of their best year. That is not reality. Building a real business takes five to seven years. Most people quit before they find product-market fit.
• Brian poured $5 million, 70% of his liquid net worth, into his AI tool and spent two and a half years unable to figure out why it was not selling. His fix was to pay homeowners $150 each for 30-minute interviews, spend 50 hours doing it himself, run the transcripts through ChatGPT for a SWOT analysis, and let the customer tell him what he was missing. Fortune 200 companies are now competing for exclusivity on the product.
• Data does not translate into relationships. Being physically present at home is not the same as being emotionally present. Brian's kids called him "phone boy." His wife told him he did not exist to her. He had to slow down his businesses and say no to things in order to keep his family together.
• Hours at home mean nothing. Emotion, attention, and presence are what matter.

If you are a business owner doing $1M+ and you feel stuck in the day-to-day, we built GTK for you.

Through peer mastermind and 1:1 coaching, we help you:

• increase profit
• install real systems
• build a team that runs the business
• get your time back

Visit www.gatheringthekings.com for information on how to apply.

Connect with Brian Decker (Guest):
Website: https://www.thebriandecker.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebriandecker/

Skool: https://www.skool.com/thewealthsociety/about
Connect with Chaz Wolfe (Host):

Website

Facebook

Instagram

LinkedIn

YouTube

Vacation With Entrepreneurial Families
Entrepreneur families grow closer, dream bigger, & build legacy together. Join our Family Vacation.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the show

Like what you heard?

Share this episode with a friend and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!

Join the conversation by visiting GatheringTheKings.com and apply to connect with other high-performing entrepreneurs and their families.

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Make More Money. Work Less. Win At Home.

Charles Bonfiglio left Brooklyn at 21 years old with two suitcases, a one-way plane ticket to Florida, and a dream of opening a car stereo shop. He could not get a loan. He could not get a landlord to take him seriously. So he found franchising, used it as leverage, and never looked back.

Fifteen years after buying a six-store chain called Tint World for $100,000, Charles runs the number one automotive franchise in America with nearly 200 locations and still climbing. In this conversation with Chaz Wolfe, Charles opens up about the CEO who looked at him differently when he found out Charles never went to college, the chip that put on his shoulder, the two years he spent reading every business book in Barnes and Noble, and why his father's simple belief in him shaped everything he built.

This is a conversation about what it actually looks like to build a legacy through good decisions stacked on good decisions, a wife who showed up every step of the way, and children who are now stepping into the empire.

Key Takeaways:

• Most franchise systems never reach 100 locations. Charles built Tint World to nearly 200 starting with $100,000 and no college degree.
• The chip on his shoulder came from a specific moment: a CEO's demeanor shifted the second he found out Charles had not gone to college. That moment sent Charles to Barnes and Noble every weekend for two years to self-educate.
• He did not set out to be a franchisor. He set out to open a car stereo shop. When a franchise gave him the leverage to get loans and leases, he used it. Then he built the franchise he always wanted.
• He grew Tint World slowly and under the radar for 10 years, reaching about 75 locations by 2019. Then he decided the brand was ready to scale and doubled it in the next four years.
• His father told him repeatedly in his 20s and 30s: keep doing what you are doing and people will come to you. Charles thought it was crazy. In the last 10 years it became exactly true, from private equity to speaking invitations to franchise buyers seeking him out.
• The two things his father taught him: how to work with his hands and how to work with people. Neither was taught in school. Both built the business.
• His wife has been with him since the first store. She runs accounting and compliance. He runs sales, marketing, and operations. They stay in their lanes at work and leave the business at the door when they get home.
• Tell your children they are special and mean it. Let them believe it. Then empower them to work. Do not just say it.

If you are a contractor business owner doing $1M+ and you feel stuck in the day-to-day, we built GTK for you.

Through peer mastermind and 1:1 coaching, we help you:

• increase profit
• install real systems
• build a team that runs the business
• get your time back

Visit www.gatheringthekings.com for information on how to apply.

Visit Tint World here: https://www.tintworld.com/

Connect with Chaz Wolfe (Host):

Website

Facebook

Instagram

LinkedIn

YouTube

Vacation With Entrepreneurial Families
Entrepreneur families grow closer, dream bigger, & build legacy together. Join our Family Vacation.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the show

Like what you heard?

Share this episode with a friend and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!

Join the conversation by visiting GatheringTheKings.com and apply to connect with other high-performing entrepreneurs and their families.

Connect With Chaz

Make More Money. Work Less. Win At Home.

Most business owners have been chasing the wrong thing. Work-life balance sounds reasonable until you actually examine it. Balance implies that to give more to one area, you have to take from another. Chaz Wolfe says that is the wrong model entirely, and it is quietly limiting what contractors believe is possible at home and in business.

In this episode, Chaz and Jake Isaacs break down why balance is not the goal, what work-life obsession actually means in practice, and how a shift in the target changes everything about how you show up every day. Chaz also takes on burnout directly with one of the most direct takes on the topic you will hear anywhere: burnout does not exist. You have just lost clarity on why you are doing what you are doing.

Key Takeaways:

• Balance requires taking from one area to give to another. Work-life obsession means going all in everywhere, on purpose, in the right sequence.
• Growth requires movement and forward progress. A truly balanced life is a stagnant one. The two cannot coexist.
• You already are an obsessive creature as an entrepreneur. The only question is whether your obsession is aimed at just the business or at winning in all five dimensions: business and finance, family and marriage, health, faith, and lifestyle.
• Fulfillment does not come from achievement. It comes from the process of pressing toward the next version of yourself in every area. Entrepreneurs who sell their business and stop striving often crash within weeks.
• The feast or famine cycle in business happens for one reason: you stopped filling the pipeline when things were good. The same principle applies to your marriage, your health, and your faith.
• Celebrating your first deal is fine. Just do not exhale so long you get blindsided. Obsession means the next deal matters more than the last one.
• A 5am affirmation reminder in your phone is not fake. The reminder gets you there. The genuine thought you send is what counts. Systems create the conditions for authenticity.
• Burnout is not real. What people call burnout is a loss of purpose and clarity. The fix is not rest. It is realignment.
• Obsession does not mean perfection. It means winning today, in the dimension that matters today, at whatever level you are currently at.

If you are a business owner doing $1M+ and you feel stuck in the day-to-day, we built GTK for you.

Through peer mastermind and 1:1 coaching, we help you:

• increase profit
• install real systems
• build a team that runs the business
• get your time back

Visit www.gatheringthekings.com for information on how to apply.

Connect with Chaz Wolfe (Host):

Website

Facebook

Instagram

LinkedIn

YouTube

Connect With Jake Isaacs (Co-Host): 

Website

Facebook

LinkedIn

Instagram

YouTube

Vacation With Entrepreneurial Families
Entrepreneur families grow closer, dream bigger, & build legacy together. Join our Family Vacation.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the show

Like what you heard?

Share this episode with a friend and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!

Join the conversation by visiting GatheringTheKings.com and apply to connect with other high-performing entrepreneurs and their families.

Connect With Chaz

Most contractor business owners are looking for the next system, the next hire, or the next revenue strategy. What they are not looking at is the personal habits that are quietly capping everything they are trying to build.

Chaz Wolfe has made every single one of these six mistakes himself. He built and scaled multiple businesses, became a millionaire by 29, and still had to confront each of these blind spots along the way. In this solo episode, he breaks all six down with personal examples, practical fixes, and zero filler. If you are a contractor doing $1M+ and you feel like the business keeps plateauing, there is a good chance the ceiling is not in the business at all.

Key Takeaways:

• Mistake 1: Living entirely in the future. Ambitious entrepreneurs are wired to think 5, 10, 20 years ahead. The problem is that your spouse, your kids, and your team live in the present. Missing the now has a real cost.
• Mistake 2: Ignoring stress. Most experienced entrepreneurs have developed a callus for stress. That does not mean the stress is not there. It means you are running at an 8 or 9 while telling yourself it is a 3. Your body keeps score even when your mind checks out.
• Mistake 3: Having zero real time management. 98% of entrepreneurs talk about time management and do nothing consistent with it. The fix is simple: sit down on Sunday, predetermine what matters that week, and block it before anyone else can fill it.
• Mistake 4: Having no personal budget. Most contractor owners who track business finances ignore personal finances entirely. Chaz and Julie do a weekly personal P and L review of the Wolfe house finances. If you want to build wealth, you have to get into a relationship with your money.
• Mistake 5: Spending time with the wrong people. Your net worth is your network. That is not a cliche, it is a system. If the people around you are negative, energy-draining, or going nowhere, that is the result you will get. You can still love them. Just be intentional about the time you allocate.
• Mistake 6: Not being generous. Generosity is not just writing a check to your church. It is time, effort, resources, and showing up for people around you who need it. The abundant mindset that makes generosity easy is also the mindset that builds serious businesses.

If you are a contractor business owner doing $1M+ and you feel stuck in the day-to-day, we built GTK for you.

Through peer mastermind and 1:1 coaching, we help you:

• increase profit
• install real systems
• build a team that runs the business
• get your time back

Visit www.gatheringthekings.com for information on how to apply.

Connect with Chaz Wolfe (Host):

Website: http://www.gatheringthekings.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chazwolfe/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtkfamilymastermind/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chaz-wolfe-86767054/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@gatheringthekings

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Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the show

Like what you heard?

Share this episode with a friend and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!

Join the conversation by visiting GatheringTheKings.com and apply to connect with other high-performing entrepreneurs and their families.

Connect With Chaz

Richard White built the number one rated AI tool across 100,000 products on G2 with zero marketing spend, a team of three engineers for most of the company's life, and a single growth metric: 4% better every week. That compounds to 7x per year. He did not track monthly goals. He did not run sprints. He eliminated every meeting that did not move the product forward and stayed in his zone of genius while everyone around him handled everything else.

Fathom AI is the note-taking tool Chaz and the GTK team use every day. In this conversation, Richard breaks down how he built it, how he cold-emailed his way into the Zoom marketplace three weeks after starting the company, and why speed is the only currency that actually matters in a fast-moving market.

This is not a personality-driven episode. It is a systems and strategy episode. If you run a contractor business doing $1M+ and you want a framework for moving faster with less noise, this one is worth a listen.

Key Takeaways:

• Richard launched Fathom in 2020 when investors were skeptical of AI. He bet that transcription costs would drop to near zero and AI quality would become exceptional. Both happened faster than expected.
• Richard cold-emailed one person at Zoom three weeks after founding the company. That email got them into the Zoom marketplace launch and changed everything. The best things that have happened in his career came from cold outreach.
• His growth target is 4% per week. That is it. Simple enough to never need to recompute, specific enough to hold the team accountable every seven days.
• Richard compares a first startup to playing Minecraft for the first time with no instructions. A second or third startup is playing after watching 10,000 hours of gameplay. Every strategy question that felt like an essay question becomes multiple choice.
• The biggest mistake from his previous company: handing off his zone of genius too early. He gave away product ownership to people he hired, became a manager instead of a product builder, and slowed everything down.
• Fathom spent a year refining the product before a real public launch. The standard was simple: can 50 people use this every single day without complaints? Until the answer was yes, they were not done.
• Most companies treat customer support as a cost to minimize. Richard treats it as product intelligence. Great support reveals exactly what to fix next.

If you are a contractor business owner doing $1M+ and you feel stuck in the day-to-day, we built GTK for you.

Through peer mastermind and 1:1 coaching, we help you:

• increase profit
• install real systems
• build a team that runs the business
• get your time back

Visit www.gatheringthekings.com for information on how to apply.

Connect with Chaz Wolfe (Host):

Website: http://www.gatheringthekings.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chazwolfe/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtkfamilymastermind/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chaz-wolfe-86767054/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@gatheringthekings

Vacation With Entrepreneurial Families
Entrepreneur families grow closer, dream bigger, & build legacy together. Join our Family Vacation.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the show

Like what you heard?

Share this episode with a friend and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!

Join the conversation by visiting GatheringTheKings.com and apply to connect with other high-performing entrepreneurs and their families.

Connect With Chaz

Most contractor business owners treat their marriage like a hobby and their business like a lifestyle. Austin Holt says that gap is exactly why both are underperforming.

Austin is the founder of Conscious Christian Marriage, a certified marriage coach, and a multi-business owner. He has worked with entrepreneurs and couples for over a decade, including GTK members and their spouses. His take is direct: if you say your marriage is your top priority but your calendar, bank statements, and daily habits say otherwise, you are out of integrity. And that integrity gap bleeds into every part of your business.

In this in-person conversation with Chaz Wolfe, Austin breaks down the three steps every entrepreneur needs to take to fix a strained marriage, why compromise is a victim's word and win-wins are a king's word, and how your spouse is the most underutilized asset in your entire business operation.

Key Takeaways:

• Approach your marriage the way you approach your business: with values, vision, mission, agreements, and a scorecard. Most couples run on expectations. That is not a system.
• If your business is not giving you time, money, and energy, it is not set up correctly. A broken business model is a marriage problem, not just a business problem.
• If your marriage is your stated top priority but you are only winning in business, that internal misalignment will cause you to sabotage your own success. You will not want to bring wins home to a marriage that does not feel like home.
• Austin does not believe in compromise. Compromise means someone loses. Win-wins mean you get creative enough that both people get what they want.
• The greatest point of leverage in a man's life is his marriage. When it is working, everything overflows. When it is not, you are building on a cracked foundation.
• Men connect emotionally after sex. Women connect emotionally before sex. Understand that dynamic and stop waiting until 11:30pm when you are already depleted.

If you are a contractor business owner doing $1M+ and you feel stuck in the day-to-day, we built GTK for you.

Through peer mastermind and 1:1 coaching, we help you:

• increase profit
• install real systems
• build a team that runs the business
• get your time back

Visit www.gatheringthekings.com for information on how to apply.

Connect with Austin Holt (Guest):

Website: https://austinjholt.com/

Instagram: https://www.instaustinjholtagram.com/austinjholt/?hl=en

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/austinjholt/

Connect with Chaz Wolfe (Host):

Website: http://www.gatheringthekings.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chazwolfe/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtkfamilymastermind/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chaz-wolfe-86767054/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@gatheringthekings

Vacation With Entrepreneurial Families
Entrepreneur families grow closer, dream bigger, & build legacy together. Join our Family Vacation.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the show

Like what you heard?

Share this episode with a friend and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!

Join the conversation by visiting GatheringTheKings.com and apply to connect with other high-performing entrepreneurs and their families.

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In the summer of 2023, four men climbed into a single rowing boat in Monterey, California and rowed 2,800 miles to Hawaii. They were at sea for 41 days.

By the time they reached the Hawaiian shore and fell into their families' arms, they had raised over $41 million for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. More than 26,000 individual donors contributed to the campaign. Their fundraising goal started at $28 million, one million for every hundred miles. They blew past it. Then they raised their goal to $41 million to honor the 41 days on the ocean. They blew past that too.

But this episode is not really about the numbers. It is about what happens to a man when the vastness of the ocean removes every distraction and leaves only what actually matters: the men beside him and the family waiting at the finish line. Brendan Cusick, Peter Durso, Scott Forman, and Patrick Morrissey join Chaz Wolfe and Jake Isaacs to talk about the darkest moments of the row, what it means to show up for each other when you have nothing left, and why the emotional recovery took far longer than the physical one.

Key Takeaways:

• You cannot prepare for the vastness of the ocean. Pat Morrissey describes days of flat, dead water where every shift felt like you had not moved at all. The mental challenge dwarfed the physical.
• When Pete Durso found out on day 20 that the trip would take a week longer than expected, he broke down on deck. Scott came up and held him. That is all it took to keep going.
• Scott Forman says the physical recovery was easy. The emotional recovery took months and still hits him when he recounts specific moments.
• Pat has Parkinson's. Rowing suppressed his tremors almost completely while he was on the oars. When they stopped, the symptoms returned. During storms and sleep deprivation, his team covered for him without hesitation.
• On day three, in the middle of a violent storm, Scott and Brendan looked at each other after hours on deck, soaked and depleted, and said nothing. They just pulled up the anchor and started rowing again. That was the moment commitment became absolute.
• Scott said he did not do this for himself. He did it for the three men beside him. Every one of them said the same thing about the others.
• Pat's lesson from the row: surround yourself with the right people and you can do anything.
• Brendan's message after landing: when you put your heart and mind into something, anything is possible. But it has to be true. It has to come from the heart.
• Being vulnerable as a man is not weakness. Pete says fully embracing help from his teammates was one of the most important lessons of his life. He wishes he had learned it at 20.
• The community of 26,000 donors sending messages of support at the exact right moments became the team's emotional fuel when their own was gone.

Connect with Chaz Wolfe (Host):

Website: http://www.gatheringthekings.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chazwolfe/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gtkfamilymastermind/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chaz-wolfe-86767054/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@gatheringthekings

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