From IPOs to Inner Power: Kris Land on Purpose, Prosperity, and High-Stakes Leadership

[Music] Before the tipping point, the call is clear and bright. AI and climate leaders ready for the fight. Subscribe, engage and be part of the line. Where AI needs climate leadership Before the tipping point. [Music] Welcome to episode 2, season 15 of Before the Tipping Point podcast where AI and sustainability meet climate leadership. Today we're talking about AI consciousness and maybe personal development. Welcome to the show. We have today a very important guest because I like that he has taken on a spin of what AI can do, but also he has a very solid background in brick and mortar businesses. Let's welcome to the show Mr. Chris Land. Welcome to the show Chris. Hello, thank you very much for having me on your show. It's a pleasure. He is a veteran CEO and serial entrepreneur with over 35 years of experience, leading technological innovation and transforming large-scale operations across multiple industry. He holds numerous US and international patents and has served in a senior leadership roles including CEO, CTO and EVP of technology at nine companies driving rapid business growth through cutting edge high performance technology solutions. Currently Chris is the author and publisher of the Infinity Within, a transformational work that emerges practical awakening with storytelling, reflecting his unique blend of visionary leadership and personal development expertise. Welcome again to the show Chris. Thank you very much. So let's get the show started. I wanted to ask you first 35 years. That's a lot of years that you have been leading tech innovation and transforming large scale organizations. So maybe you can tell our audience how do you apply the lessons that you learned from managing complex technology projects so that you can help individuals break through fear and uncertainty in their personal or professional lives as you describe in your book, the Infinity Within. That's a bunch of questions. Yeah, actually the 35 years is a little outdated now. It's actually been 40 plus years now because I sold my first company when I was 17. And from selling my first company, I went into a depression because I thought I'd done everything I was supposed to. And then Wright wrote all of the construct which has become the Infinity Within, which got published the middle of last year. And during that middle time, all my notes were in a filing cabinet. And I found it actually, including the one at 17, 12 different companies, took one public and then the others were either acquired or merged. And during that time, I kind of always had the ideas of the construct and how reality might be working based on what's in the book is my cornerstone for how I developed going forward and how I looked at business and fear and doubt. And it allowed me to not get stuck very often. I certainly made mistakes along the way. I certainly had challenges along the way. And each company was very different in its challenges and things that I learned from them. But the one thing that I talk about in the Infinity Within and that I think is extremely important is the idea that fear can be used more like a signpost than something that stops us or that we should be afraid of. And what I mean by that is all of us have fears. There's a kind of summarize. There's two types of fears in the world. There's the one where the Sabre tooth tiger is running down the hill is going to eat me, right? That one's pretty clear. You run and you better run fast, right? But the second one is all here. And that comes from what we've been taught as children, how we've grown up, what we've learned in schools, what we've learned from our peers. And then we end up developing, I think as a child, especially as a newborn child, we don't have a lot of fear and doubt, but we learn. We're told what reality is and we get a lot of fears and doubts because things don't necessarily align. And anyway, there's a lot of confusion. So what does fear look like for a lot of us? Well, a lot of it comes from past experience and then builds up here. We have doubts that then create the fear. So a perfect example would be let's say that you want to ask your boss for a raise. For I guess more in your group, let's say that you are the boss and you want to take a particular challenge, do a new marketing thing, introduce a new product, go to the investors and ask for more money. I mean, those kinds of things, right? And that a lot of us can get stopped by feeling fearful and creating all these ideas that I have on why we shouldn't do this thing and what's going on there. And it can stop us. It can stop us from moving forward and then it can create resentment. Then it can create us from moving forward. It can move us, create a, create a situation where we get locked. If we choose to use fear as a signpost and become curious about it, there's kind of three questions we can ask. One is, why is this fear showing up? The second is, how is it serving me now? And the third would be, how is it serving me going forward? And by asking those three questions, we can break fear away from a stopping point to a decision making point, meaning that once we ask those questions, we're left with the understanding of what the fear is, where it's coming from, how it's serving, where it's going. And now we can choose, based on those answers, on whether we want to go ahead and move forward or not. So we've moved it from stop, from fear stopping us to fear becoming a signpost that gives us choice. Very good answer. Well, case in point, it's interesting that we're talking about this right now because as you know, our topic is AI sustainability. And we were in a community meetup. 75 people showed up in my meetup last week. And my partner and I were so delighted that people wanted to have this conversation about AI because obviously it's something that's really happening in the world right now. And one of the people who actually stood up and asked a question was an architect. And you can see that he's obviously not happy with what's going on in his industry because there's a lot of people now who not need his services. But we asked questions in terms of, so how are we going to address this so that he can upscale? Unfortunately, he left early. And so right off the bat, we feel like, okay, at a point where in we think we can help him, there's obviously, and you were to our audience, Chris was pointing to his temple when he mentioned a bill, you know, sometimes fear is just in our head. And then all of this programming that came for whatever it is, you know, cultural, church, teachers that we have that we feel in our chest is sometimes because of those for gaming. And so if you have to give I guess an advice to this architect, how would you give him so that he's not afraid that he's going to lose his bread? I guess that's right. The first question is what is the fear? Right? So if he's he needs to ask where is the fear coming from? What is it about? Is he afraid of people aren't going to contact him? He's afraid he's not going to have work because he's being replaced. He's afraid that the technology is going to do a better job. I mean, there's a lot of fear points that can come from there. So the first step would be for him what's real? What's the fear that is here? Let's say that his fear is that he's going to get replaced as an example. Great. How does that fear serve him right now? And the answer would be probably not very well because it's probably got him frozen, right? It's got him stopped. Great. How does that fear if it's not addressed serve him going forward? Once again, it doesn't. You need to you need to start digging in. Well, okay. So what's the doubt underneath that? Well, the doubt could be I don't know if I can do as well as what's going on with this new technology. Okay, let's let's run with that. How can I use this technology to teach me to be better in what I do? How can I take this technology and have it be my right hand person in addressing complex issues and accelerating what I do for my clients? Because one of the really cool things about AI is you can ask itself about itself about what it does for you so you can say. Hey Mister chat GPT i'm an architect i do these kinds of things. Why don't you name out the top 10 things that you can help me with my clients and tell me about it and explain how you would do that. And it does. So the the interesting about AI is it's actually a self answering system for fear and doubt. Whatever you're feeling whatever you're getting in fear. You can actually say it right to the AI system and chat GPT can be for free or 20 bucks a month to ask unlimited fear questions. And sit there and go i'm really afraid of blah blah blah tell me what I should be looking at and it gives you a lot of stuff and you go oh my goodness these three things resonated tell me more about these three things that tells you more right. So we're in an age now where it's where the fear as a signpost actually gives us the questions that we can now feed to the very AI that's creating the fear and get answers. Amazing amazing and this is obviously not just in the architect. Yeah, it's true right so the doctors have the same right now I think they just launch you are mentioning open AI they just launch a medical slash health application and so there's a lot of more industries and you are absolutely right most of us need to be able to get amplified with technology versus getting stopped. So perfect so my next question then becomes in your career being a serial entrepreneur and CEO always required constant adaptation and strategic foresight so how do the principles you write about trusting inner power and navigating challenges translate into actionable strategies that leaders and businesses can implement to thrive in rapidly evolving markets. I'm going to summarize that in a slightly different way that I think will resonate with everyone in the introduction of the infinity with the end. I talk about spiritual leaders and leaders of what's really going on in other words we're told that our reality is certain things that were small we're disconnected we're we're not co-creators and all these different things and we're taught that way through news and media and different things for. Some pretty real reasons right what I talk about is I name for characters and these are arguably real people well two of my know a real and two of them are probably real. I use two from the far past and two from the present to describe the idea of teaching teachers and remembering who and what were capable of doing. The first one is Jesus Christ and there's a lot of teachings depending on your religion and what you look at but but the bible is the most read book on the planet so it's pretty easy to go get right and and Jesus is said to have healed people part sees do all kinds of incredible things. And he talks about it and the bible talks about it and things like we are the children of God and Jesus tells his disciples point blank he says you will do everything I've done and much more. Well what is that really saying literally right so then we go to Buddha and he has his teachings and there's things about the mind and being present my third selection was Eckhart toll. And if you know about his history he went through some pretty harsh growing up times and then he came upon the ideas and constructs for his books and the way he looks at life now which is through the lens of the new earth and those kinds of things and really looking at how to create. reprogram our structures and the fourth character actually got my mom pretty angry because she didn't understand it and that is and this one actually I think answers your question the best and that is Elon Musk. Now if you and I sat down and ask Elon are you a spiritual leader he probably say no but look at what he has shown us look at what he has done when he got Tesla up and running and was straight trying to get it going he was told it's impossible you cannot successfully do a new car manufacturing company it's impossible delorean tried and completely failed. And yet Tesla is arguably the largest manufacturing company on the planet now then almost simultaneously he's told by NASA by countries you can never reuse rockets they'll never happen it's impossible people tried and now he's made it a daily event. And then the third one that I love is it is impossible for any of us to ever run multiple multiple million dollar companies if you don't just focus on one you're going to fail miserably. Yeah he's doing that too so. I use him as example of fear doubt and ignoring it. He's told it's impossible he's there's only I mean all of us have fear all of us have doubt what we're able to do but here's a man who is said yeah I have fear and doubt and I'm going to do it anyway. I love that it's interesting that you brought him because I think not a lot of people know that there's a big carbon credit that Tesla has that he's actually helping other companies to offset the emissions because of the EV business but I digress so but thank you for sharing that because it's interesting when you were talking about uses Christ Buddha Eckhart toll and Elon Musk it's almost like okay the perspectives of this people are like totally different from what I would have thought. In terms of what we were talking about in terms of doubt and fear and obviously how all these people in their own lifetime I guess from the stories that we have have conquered all of that because of how they have been I guess in the clarity of their mission which actually leads me to my next question because your background as a senior serial tech entrepreneur. You have exited multiple companies and even I have an IPO background and your book was about spiritual teachings and so how do you see the integration of visionaries for trial awakening with bold technological and entrepreneurial leadership which in a way you kind of alluded to when we were talking about Elon Musk but especially in helping people align purpose with prosperity as you do through businesses. So I briefly touched on the point where I sold my first company very young age and fell in an oppression right well why did I fall in the pressure. I had achieved everything I was told I was supposed to do in this material world where I thought I had and so I was left with this deep feeling of now what. I had nowhere to go I had no goals. Of course that's all untrue but it's what I believed at the time. Then what I did was I created three basic goals that I could constantly work on never fully achieve but always do and from there I started looking and asking questions and there was these I call them the three legs on the stool for me that three things that got me to write the book the infinity was. The book the infinity within which originally was going to be called the soul path or your soul path. And the first one was I got hired at the bank and CD a go and my exit and I was hired as an executive at very young age I was 20 at the time and my executive that senior executive hired me in one of our discussions his name was Christ as well we were talking about life and blah blah blah and he basically said yeah I'm an atheist. I said all right well anybody can believe whatever they want to believe that's fine but for me it didn't sit right for him so I got very curious about what does that really mean. And then after nudling it around for a while I came up with four questions that don't prove you have a soul or not but what they do show very strongly is that all the upside is in believing we have a soul and all the downside is in believing we don't. Which fundamentally shifted the way he looked at life but it also left me with a brand new question. Great we have a soul what is it what's it doing here what's our purpose right and I know this is sounds like a long winded answer to your question but it's the fundamental question. question, but it's the fundamental answer that has driven me for 40 plus years, which is if we're a soul and we believe different theologies and I've studied a bunch as a child. That's the second leg on my stool as I studied a lot of theologies growing up and even today. And my third leg on the stool is I've had a lot of really strange things happen in the as a child. Things are considered not normal. I had out of body experiences starting at the age of six. I had near death experiences starting at the age of 15. I've had some very, very mind shifting ways of looking at how and what is actually going on versus what we're told is going on. So with those three things, asking what a soul is, the strange things happening in your life and studying theologies, it left me with, all right, what's a soul? Well, a soul is this thing that exists outside of spacing time. We're in this fourth dimensional construct call I called the Game of Earth. Great. What's interesting about it? Well, the only thing that I could find interesting is that time is the primary motivator here, meaning that we have the passage of time. And then you step out, you say, okay, what would be interesting to a soul in a fourth dimensional construct? I can only come up with one thing. And that's experience emotion or experience. Okay, great. So let's say that we are these soul-like beings that are in this game, call the game of Earth, and we're here to experience and experience emotion. What does that look like? Well, we have players or pieces, bless you, which are basically us or a part of us. We have turns, which I would argue are lifetimes. And each turn, we want to accomplish certain things from a broad perspective. And if we don't, we get to do the turn over and over and over again, until we figure it out. And then we have rules that we've agreed to when we entered into this construct. Because if you and I sat down and played monopoly and I grabbed all the money and all the properties, you wouldn't want to play with me again, right? So there are certain rules that as I was building and writing this book that made sense to me. And I'm not going to go into detail because your format's a little different. But basically they are kind of ways of how a soul would operate in a fourth dimensional construct. And then you get into the question of, okay, if you remember what I said about turns being lifetimes and accomplishing certain broad goals, well, each time we come into the game, meaning we carate as a player, there are certain things that we want to accomplish. Now, they may be that we want to go through certain emotions that we want to have a successful company or companies that we want to have to really fight for our companies. That, you know, whatever the things are, the point of the story is that when we're building companies, when we're doing stuff, we're driven by a passion typically of creating something new that hasn't existed. We're trying to solve a problem. We're trying to provide a solution. And a lot of us are probably trying to do it and make a bunch of money and not be stuck in the rat race, right? But what's interesting is the bucket of money at the end, what I found is it doesn't actually fulfill you the way you might think it does. And this gets to the story about people winning the lottery and then destroying their lives. So I would say it's the journey. And it's the things we learn and we do as we learn how to maneuver through our company, how we build it, how we we add boards of directors, we add different executives, we deal with all the different emotional patterns that all these people bring to our company. It's the journey that makes this fun. The bucket of money at the end is not a bad thing, but you kind of have to have some goals beyond that or you find yourself potentially in a very dark place. So the infinity within is really kind of an idea where you follow a fictional character named Gabe Realth, he goes by Gabe through kind of a life story where it acts as like a mirror and certain things he does and says and learns with his teacher Elias, resonate with people in different places and where it resonates, I would suggest take a look at it and where it doesn't, you leave it sit. But the book is really designed to kind of pry open what might be going on a little bit more. And the final part to that is how many do you see, how many of you folks have seen Matrix? And you remember who he went to see the work all the first time? And he's talking with the little boy who's bending the spoon. Yeah, I remember. And the boys got the spoon doing all this stuff and Neil goes, how are you doing that? And the boy answers, well, it's not so much that you're bending the spoon is that you're realizing it never existed to begin with. And so when we're going through life and we're in this material world construct of building companies and going to board members and dealing with investors and all these mechanical things that are really fun and interesting to a point, I would argue that there's a whole other layer going on that you might want to start touching into if you haven't already because that's where the real fun comes in. Well, thank you so much for saying that. It's interesting you were talking about that because I got the Chinese dramas and it's called Sinsia. And Sinsia is about two gods and we are all gods and we were in a platform where we have all these powers but to be able to get ascended from level one god to level two god, we have to go to earth and fulfill a purpose emission. So when you were talking about purpose and listeners will probably be like, what the heck are they talking about this? This is an AI sustainability problem. But you brought it home when you were talking about purpose because the United Nations Sustainable Development goes the purpose for this podcast is partnership for the goal. So we're always open to any kind of perspective coming from different people. And so when I thought about that and then you brought about the word passion for entrepreneurs and there may be another layer that's happening on a grand scheme of things. So thank you for bringing that up. That's way from our conversation. How can our audience get in touch with you? So I've been very blessed. If you put in my name Chris land, KRI S L N D or the book and or the book the Infinity within in Google or any of the search engines, I take up like the first three or four pages. So you didn't find me pretty much anywhere. My website is also chrisland.com. The book is available on Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble of all places. You can go to Walmart and get it. And there's also bookstores all over the world that you can get it now out. So it's available pretty much everywhere as well as the audible book version and audible on Apple and so on and so forth. Thank you so much again, Chris. Please remember to leave a review of the podcast. Thanks Chris. Thanks everyone. I'll see you next week. Thanks again. Thank you very much. [Music]