Chris Record on Reframing Struggle as a Gift and Why Lifestyle Needs Both Time and Money

You built something that finally started working, and then life did not pause to let you enjoy it. A parent got sick, a child needed something you cannot fix with hustle, and you found yourself trying to run a business and hold a family together in the same week. Chris Record walks on stage in front of five thousand people and asks permission before he gets into it, because what he is about to share is not the polished training he had planned to give.

He calls himself ambitiously lazy, someone who works hard in short bursts specifically so he can spend the rest of the day with his family. That version of him is the one about to get tested.

What do you do when the struggles arrive right after the dream starts working?

Record describes losing a close family member suddenly at the end of last year, getting violently sick with food poisoning on the drive to her funeral while still mandatory on work conference calls with a celebrity client, and then, only weeks later, learning his father in law had been diagnosed with cancer that had already spread. On top of that, his two year old son was diagnosed with autism earlier this year, after Record noticed him losing eye contact and losing his speech. He is honest that the last three months have shaken him in a way he has not experienced before, and that he almost skipped this event entirely.

He is equally honest that none of this is unique to him. He points out that people in that exact room are sitting through cancer treatment of their own while still showing up. The struggle is never the same struggle twice, but according to Record, everybody in the room is carrying one.

What does it actually mean to reframe a struggle instead of just tolerating it?

Reframing, as Record uses the word, is not positive thinking layered over a hard situation. It is a decision about what a circumstance means. As he puts it, “God blessed us with this child, because we’re in the right mindset to take care of him, the way he deserves to be taken care of.” He is not pretending the diagnosis does not hurt. He is choosing what it gets to mean about his family rather than letting the diagnosis choose that for him, and he challenges the room to take their own struggles and do the same thing instead of using them as an excuse to stop showing up.

Why is a business only worth building if it buys you time as well as income?

Record breaks the word lifestyle into its two working parts on stage.

If you have time, you can really enjoy life. You can really do it. If you have money, you can really do it in style. It’s time and it’s money, right? That’s lifestyle.

He argues there are problems money solves and problems only time can solve, and that the entire point of building disciplined, focused income outside a job is to buy yourself enough of both to handle whichever kind of problem shows up. Because of a couple of hours a day of steady effort over recent months, he was able to bring in specialists for his son without waiting on insurance paperwork or worrying about the cost, and to become, functionally, a stay at home father during the exact season his family needed him fully present. That is the mechanism underneath the whole session: not more hours poured into a business, but enough income from a focused couple of hours a day to free up the rest of your time for the parts of life no amount of money can actually fix on its own.

If you are in the middle of your own hard season right now, wondering whether it disqualifies you from building anything real, Record’s answer is that the struggle and the business were never in competition. Handled right, one funds your ability to be fully present for the other.

The full session goes further than what is above, including Record’s full teaching on reframing and the story behind his own approach to leadership. Watch it in full, free, when you Create your free account.

The full session transcript follows below.

Transcript

we have very uh special guests coming up we have a couple speakers left um your next speaker is the founder of team take massive action let's welcome chris record everybody yeah yeah what's up what's up how's everyone doing right here we're packed up there look at how packed we are can you believe there's about 5 000 people in this room how awesome is that and i'm excited that was awesome intro i'm loving i'm just back there watching mike hobbs and the family man that stuff really kind of gets me going i mean that's why we're here right we're here for we all have passions in our life now i've got a few minutes i'm going to share with you we're going to do a little i'll give you a little bit of teaching a little bit of training but there's also something on my heart i've had it really on my heart all weekend and uh i'm gonna be honest i you know i don't mind being in front of people i don't mind speaking but i'm just gonna be real honest with you right here and sometimes sharing some personal stuff can can be a little difficult i don't know if anybody can relate to that so i just want to ask permission here for the audience i want to feel really comfortable i want to feel if i get a little bit vulnerable can i get some mutual respect here i just want to be in a place where you guys can accept that so success the journey of success i like to symbolize it it's the dream the struggle and the victory it's difficult to be victorious you haven't if you haven't gone through a struggle if you haven't gone through something to be victorious for so a lot of times we find ourselves in a struggle with situations with drama things that go on in our lives and what that does is that causes justification and excuses and reasons why we don't prefer perform at our peak right and our goal should be to be at peak performance all the time but how can you do that when you're facing struggles when you've got drama going on in your life and you know what i'll bet each person in this room has a struggle that's probably knocked them down at times and maybe even knocking them down this is the ultimate foundation of success the dream the struggle and the victory so we're not immune to these struggles so you start with this dream whether it's you know to have a nicer life money with success whatever it is just more time with your family you start with this dream and then all of a sudden you expect this victory and then all of a sudden you get hit bam struggle bam struggle so how can we overcome those how can we reframe those how can we take our business to the next level this is the ultimate foundation of success the dream the struggle and the victory well i'll tell you i'm a very very big dreamer right i've got ambition but at the same time i don't know if anybody can relate i'm ambitiously lazy does anybody relate to that like i'm ambitious so that i can be lazy right like i'm willing to get in for a couple hours work my butt off so i can spend the rest of my day with my family okay it's ambitiously lazy so but i'm ambitious i just believe that we could all have the life that we deserve do you guys up there believe you could have life you deserve right i believe that we have this great life waiting for us and it's our decision to just step up and take it but then here comes these struggles so you know i don't mind i'll share some of these with you you know everybody goes to their own struggles you know so so here i am i'm in empower i'm having fun making money things are going well right well at the end of last year just before austin really and our family we lost a very very close family member i'm sure a lot of people can relate to that we lost a very close family member in her 30s and it was a like a heart attack kind of out of nowhere it's one of those situations where you you get a call and you've lost someone right so we go down to the funeral in santa cruz california and on our way down to stop at a little restaurant get some food and i don't know one thing happened but it gave me food poisoning like really bad food poisoning i mean i have actually in my entire life never been sicker in my life than that trip right there we're down at the funeral to leave the funeral to get into the car, turn up the heaters full blast, lay the seat back and just shake like this the whole time.

I'm just sick. I mean, really, really sick going drinking everything I can do whatever I can. At that exact moment, I'm also working a full time job. For those of you kind of know my background, that exact moment, it was the busiest time for my job.

We were bringing on a major superstar person, celebrity endorsement, and it was mandatory that I had to be on the conference calls. I had to be on the work. I had to be a part of all of it. It was absolutely mandatory.

It was not optional. So here I am at a funeral, just in a messed up emotional state. Here I am shaking in the car, literally with the heaters on full blast, on this conference call, talking to this celebrity superstar, really not even talking. I don't know what was coming out of my mouth, but I was just trying not to throw up the whole time.

And here I am trying to do all of that. Meanwhile, you know, there's people in my team. I'm upset that I didn't answer a question fast enough. And it's, there's a, there's this balance like, like, damn, life can just get tough really, really fast.

And, but I got through it. Got through that. No problem. So we just keep moving.

We keep moving. Well, we get another call. See, my wife is all about family. I love my wife.

By the way, just let me take a second. She's not here with me, but can I just take a second and say, I love my wife, Vanessa. She's the reason I am who I am. That's sort of my motivating drive.

So she, one of the things I love about my wife, just I love, and anybody who knows Vanessa knows this for sure. She's all about family, man. She is just family driven. So when we got the call that her father is diagnosed with cancer and it came out of nowhere, boy, that turned everything upside down.

That was just recently, about a month and a half ago, two months ago, something like that. So here we are in the thick of it. Let me just tell you a quick story about amazing personality. I'm going to tell you a story about amazing perseverance.

Amazing, it's not really a story of perseverance. It's just amazing character. Her dad, when her grandma got dementia and Alzheimer's and everything, out of the whole family, her dad took care of her. That was, he went to work, came back, you know, did the, changed the diapers, did the bath, made sure she was taken care of.

That was his life revolved around just going to work, blue collar worker, coming home and taking care of her until she passed. And that was recently too. That was just last year. When she passed, her dad has, at age 18, got diagnosed with schizophrenia.

So he's like a paranoid schizophrenic and it, you know, he's in and out of, in and out of treatment and stuff. And so when she, when grandma passed, he basically took her, him under his wing. And every single day after work, you know, he'd come over and they'd spend time together. He's really just trying to contribute and trying to help.

This was a man, and is a man, who's filled with servitude, who's filled with just serving others and helping others. And he finally retired from his job. And now he's got the time and the freedom to go out and live in retirement and really experience some life. But that's when he got diagnosed with cancer.

And he went in to go get the treatment. And this was just a couple months ago. He went in to go, they had to go test him to see what was going on. And it had spread so quickly that the cancer was in four different places already.

And so he went in and got chemotherapy and the doctors told us, you know, this is terminal. And it just started looking bad. She's actually there right now with the family. And you know, the kids, she's around family, got her kids taken care of.

She's there. She wanted that solo time with him right now. And we all, we appreciate that. And I'll tell you, I mean, I love him, but it's something else about watching my wife go through this.

I mean, it's just really, that's, I've been filled with a different type of emotion lately, a different type of struggle. But what happened was I started noticing some issues with my son. I have two children, a two-year-old and a son. My other son's five-year-old.

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And he's going through a lot. And he's going through a lot. And he's going and I would pick my son up. He used to just follow me around the room.

I'd just walk around the room on the phone or something and he'd just, ah, like following his dad. I'd pick my son up and he won't look me in the eyes. I was a two-year-old. As soon as his eyes would just dodge left and right.

I couldn't understand what was going on. I started researching on the internet. What are these signs? I'm starting to notice behaviors.

He stopped socializing with all the other kids. He started losing his speech. All this stuff started happening at about a year and a half. But by two years old, it was obvious that this stuff was happening.

So we had him checked out, took him in. And in the beginning of this year, really right after Austin event, we got a diagnosis that my two-year-old is fully diagnosed with autism. And it sort of just changes everything. It's sort of like you have this vision of what's going to happen and then it just changes, right?

And it's not that the change is any worse. It's just different, right? Things just change. And it's like these last three months, I'm going to be honest.

You gave me permission. So I'll be able to share with you. And I'm going to be honest. Like, I've not really been in this place.

I've not been in this place recently. And I hear all the stories of everybody. And I feel like I can relate so much more now being in this place. See, I've got a big, big, big dream.

A big dream for my family, for my legacy, to be a father, to be a husband, to be an entrepreneur, to do great things in my life. Why are these struggles happening? Not only to me, why do they happen to you? But the thing is, is this.

Despite all that's going on, and despite even how, despite how freaking difficult it is to share this stuff, despite that, you know what? It's all about how we frame things. It's all about how we frame things. Anybody that knows me knows I've, in the last 90 days, I've been sort of a preacher of reframing.

Reframing this, reframing that. Now maybe you know a little bit more of my story. Maybe you understand why I've been reframing everything. Because when I'm speaking to you to reframe, I'm also speaking to myself to reframe.

You've got to get up in the morning. You've got to just reframe everything. You've got to start to see everything as a, you've got to start to see everything as a blessing. You've got to see everything.

I look at this and go, you know what? God blessed us with this child, because we're in the right mindset to take care of him, the way he deserves to be taken care of. We all have these struggles. My struggle's really no different than anybody else's, because really everybody's struggle is personal.

If we were to compare our struggles, you'd have some people that you would just think it's crazy. There's people like literally in this room right now, that are going through cancer treatment themselves. And they're here. It's, there's crazy, crazy, crazy struggles out there.

I mean, you might look at it and think, oh gosh, they're whining and complaining. It's not really a struggle. Well, it is. Everybody, it's, it's, it's personal to you.

No matter what it is, it's personal to you, even if it's big or small. So we all go through this. So I felt like when I was going to come out on stage, I had this like blogging training speech, like prepared, you know, like I got some powerful tips I'm going to share. I'm going to be that guy.

You see me in the hallway, like Chris, man, that was freaking powerful. I'm going to go out and make a bunch of money with that. And I'm like, yeah, visualizing that. But have you ever felt God tugging on your heart a different direction?

Right? So, so I'm, I'm back, I'm backstage. I'm backstage. Ashley Needles comes up, gets me, gets me in with Will.

We're talking, you know, Dave's brother, and just, just feeding power. And I'm just feeling the love. I'm feeling it and going, you know what? That's why I'm here this weekend.

I almost, it sounds crazy. I got like, I don't know, between a few of the leaders are doing, we got like eight, 900 people, like, in our organization here. And I almost didn't come. And it would be crazy.

Like, cause I'm telling everybody, there's no excuse, right? And I'm sitting here going, damn, someone needs to call me and tell, remind me to come. Who's going to call me and like, drill me right now to come to this thing? I almost felt like not coming because I just looked at the whole situation going, you know, it's crazy.

It's crazy. But I decided, I realized now in this exact moment right here on stage, I realized there is a purpose. There is a reason why we are where we are, why we do what we do. And if there's, there's something that I could assist anyone here today.

Look, you want some blogging tips? We teach that stuff in the products. This right here, if I get real with you, there's something very, very powerful I could teach with you today. And I could leave you with a very, very powerful frame of mind.

During these struggles that are going on in this last 90 days, these last 90, actually, I could share a lot more. There's some that I really, I'm not even ready to share yet. It's just been crazy. During these struggles, I can only imagine what it would have been like if I was also worrying about how am I going to pay my cell phone bill?

How am I going to pay rent or a mortgage payment, right? How am I even going to feed my kids right now, right? I can only imagine if I was in a situation like Mike Hobbs going, I got to do a webinar. I try to sell like $700 worth of stuff just to be able to make things work right now.

With these struggles on top of that, if I had these financial struggles as well, I don't even know what place I'd be in in my mind right now. But you know what? Because of some disciplined, part-time, focused, effort in this vehicle over the last 90 days, I've not had financial concern. I've not had any sort of financial burdens.

Finances have not been tough because of this vehicle. And all of you that are going through struggles, I will tell you right now, you're still going to go through struggles. Some of you are going to reach a million dollars in this company. You're still going to go through struggles.

I know some of the stuff that Lawrence is going through with, with his family as well. We talk a lot. I mean, there's so many people I can name right now. Some of the big income earners in here, they're going through struggles.

So how is it that they get up and they still fight the fight and they still accomplish so much? What you do is you reframe it and take your struggles. And this is an assignment I'd love to give everybody here, a challenge. Take your struggles.

Reframe them. Because you know what? Had I let my struggles interfere with the abundance that I can create here, they would have been 10 times worse. But because I learned to reframe them, manage my life, and have a business while doing that, what happened was I stayed disciplined with income producing activities.

I stayed disciplined despite all that was going on. Even if it's an hour a day, it's an hour of focused time every single day. And what that did was it set me up. Because you know what?

I heard a long time ago, in fact, let me ask some questions. I love a little audience engagement. So let's ask some questions here. In fact, when I get a little emotional, I actually, I get a little emotional.

I get a little emotional. I have to get the crowd riled up to get me a little out of it. But let me ask a question here. All right.

So we have this ambition and this dream to go create a better lifestyle. Well, if I was to break those two words apart, you'd have life and you'd have style. So just hear some answers from the audience. What would it take to create style?

What really can create style for you? Be a little louder on that. Throw out some answers. What helps create style?

No? I think I heard sex back there, I guess. But we're talking, we're talking probably money, right? Money.

So, so if we break lifestyle, it's really money to create style. But to really have life, what does it take to have life? What does it take to have life? So a lot of different things, right?

So pretty much, I heard freedom, I heard time. You know, let's break it down like this. Time and money. Life and style.

If you have time, you can really enjoy life. You can really do it. If you have money, you can really do it in style. It's time and it's money, right?

That's lifestyle. And here's the thing, is that there's a lot of problems that we all have. There's two categories of problems. There's problems that money can solve, but there's also problems that money really can't solve, right?

But there's problems that time can solve and money can buy time. And the point I'm making here is that if you're making enough money with Empower Network, you're making enough money in your business, guess what? You can have time to focus on the problems that money can't solve and you can go work on things that are really important. Who's ready for that, right?

Time and money, time and money, time and money. So often we get carried away with money. So often we get carried away with money. Money, money, is a vehicle, it's a tool to buy us time, quality time.

One of the greatest joys of these last 90 days has been that I can spend quality time with my family. We work with Easter Seals Charity. They come out. We work with another group.

They come out. My little son, right now he's two years old. We got early diagnosis and so we're able to spend, we have people coming in five days a week, six hours a day. We told them, don't worry about the cost.

That's the least of our worries right now. Let's get this done. Let's go in there. Let's get, let's bring, let's do what we can to, in this year, to empower him for the rest of his life to just make it as good as we can because, you know, some people aren't as fortunate to catch things as early, right?

Take advantage of the opportunity you have. We reframed it and said, how blessed are we to have diagnosed this early that we can get early intervention and get the help, right? How blessed are we that we have money to be able to make sure that there is no financial need. We can get the right help from the right people and we're not worried about all the paperwork and all the crazy stuff.

We had to go fill out all this paperwork and they said it's going to take 45 days in order to get it covered and they're like, well, 50% might be covered or this and that and I said, stop. What do we do today to just get it started? They're like, well, if you pay and you do this and that, you know, out of pocket then you can get it all started and just get that started and figure out later if we can get reimbursed or something. I'm not waiting 45 days and I think to myself, how many people are in that situation?

How many people have a similar situation? Maybe children with disabilities or learning disabilities or just family members and there's help out there that you want but, you know, financially, maybe you're really going through the paperwork and the insurance system and there's a lot of difficulty there. How nice would it be to be able to stay focused in some income producing activities and be able to stroke the checks for the right treatment? But not only that, time.

Time. So even despite all this time, hands on time, you know, I'm a stay at home full time dad right now. I set things up with my job, set things up with my work so that I said, you know, look, with what's going on with my son this year, I'm going to do what I'm dedicating to my son and so right now I'm focused, my job, my day job is my family and when there's services there, when there's people there, then that's my time. I can go out and I can either get clear in my mind, go out and hang with friends or go golf or go travel to an event like this or work.

But here's the thing that I love and this is, if I can impart this on everybody that's here wondering if this will work for them, it's I don't spend all day building this business. I spend a couple of hours a day just disciplined, focused effort and it's a journey I'm not expecting to have, you know, be a millionaire tomorrow. I'm looking at this going if I learn these skills, imagine how great I'll be at them a year from now and I have this vision. If I learn blogging, how great will that be a year from now?

If I start studying email copywriting, imagine how great I'll be a year from now. If I start studying search engine optimization, how great will I be a year from now? So I have this vision, this vision that a year's going to come by whether you want it to or not. It's going to come by and if you stay focused and stop getting confused, and stop getting confused, and stop getting confused, and stop comparing yourself to other people and say every day I'm going to get focused and give it my best and at the end I'll be so much better off and I'll learn these skills and I'll be able to use these skills to give myself freedom and time and money aka lifestyle so that the struggles aren't so bad because you're going to go through them.

You're going to go through them. Now, since I'm short on time I want to share one last passionate thing that I feel is so revolutionary about this community, about this company, about this team, this camaraderie. And in 2013 when all this was going on in the beginning of this year I felt this sort of passion fill in me, a different type of passion I've ever experienced before. Sort of a compassion, I guess I would call it.

Sort of an empathy that I've never really had. I'm a very strong personality type. I'm not afraid to tell it how it is. I'm kind of a guy that will slap you and then kiss you at the same time, right?

So, that's been my personality. So, you know, I've not been as empathetic. I'm sort of like, okay, there's your excuses, now get over it, right? But something kind of changed a little bit in me this year and one of the things that happened was I saw a vision.

I saw a vision for Empower. Not just my team, but for Empower. I saw a vision for where this company's going and you know what? Traditionally, this industry, internet marketing, is dominated by men.

It's been traditionally, that's been what it's been. And I just got this vision that, you know, you know what? This company could grow and reach the masses worldwide, but you know one of the strongest things that's going to make that happen? This is going to be humbling for a few of us men, right?

It's women that's going to make that happen, right? In fact, not just women, but super women, right? Where are all the super women out right there? Where are all the super women?

Right? Women are the future of this industry. Women can come in this thing. We're going to change the game because there's no other company like that that invites women the way that this company does.

There's so many women leaders coming up. There's so much leadership here. It's inspiring to me. So one of the visions that I got is I saw this, that you know what?

For those men out there, I'm telling you right now, you want to grow your business? There was something I did in the beginning of 2013 different from 2012 and my income shot from about $20,000 a month and now in 2013 I'm averaging $50,000 a month doing no more work. In fact, less work, more time with family, shot my, my average is around $150,000 for the first 90 days here and here's the thing. What happened?

What made that happen? Focusing on women. What happened was when I started focusing on women, so men out there, go recruit some women into this business if you want to double and triple and quadruple your income, right? Give love for them.

Give respect for them. So with that being said, my name is Chris Record. Listen, one last request, one last request and I'm off the stage because I'm out there taking notes and learning just like you. One last request.

Just one last request. When you see me in the halls and you see these other stories in the halls, look, I know some of you might want to say, man, Chris, you know, I'm really sorry for what's going on but listen, part of reframing, part of this process of reframing this stuff is understanding that, you know, it's what I was dealt with and I couldn't be happier with the life that I was dealt with. I don't need anybody to feel sad for me. If you want to say something, come up to me and say, you know what, Chris Record, your training in the 15K, man, those tips are helping me make more money.

Hey, you know what, Chris Record, that's what I want to hear and we do that. We reframe everything and we make big things happen. Take massive action, dream big, go to work.