In this solo episode of The Chris Project, host Christian Brim reflects on the past 15 months of personal and professional upheaval, using his story to illustrate how entrepreneurs often tie their self‑worth to their business. He begins with a surprising experience at two mastermind groups where faith and business merged, prompting him to question his long‑held separation of religion from work. He then recounts promoting his marketing director, Delaina, to a revenue leadership role, describing the shift in team dynamics, his difficulty tolerating her failures, and a costly, aborted live‑event idea that left him feeling like a failed leader. This led to a painful realization that his identity was enmeshed with the company’s performance. Christian traces this pattern back to early childhood wounds—parental divorce, a narcissistic mother, and feelings of being “half” of a family—which drove him to seek control and validation through business success. He describes a series of surrender prayers, recognizing a persistent inner voice (the Spirit) that highlighted his lingering attachment to the business. Through this spiritual confrontation, he learns to view the business as an object rather than his identity, allowing him to surrender control to God. He uses a toddler‑and‑father analogy to illustrate the need for help and the peace that comes from quitting self‑sufficiency. Finally, he re‑articulates his purpose: to help creative professionals build financially sustainable businesses without becoming consumed by them, trusting that God will shape the future direction. The episode ends with an invitation to listeners in pain to see their struggles as purposeful, to surrender, and to remember they are not alone.
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This is the Chris Project, where we discuss mental wellness, self-awareness, and mindset with entrepreneurs and experts. Set your perceived ideas and biases aside and let's go on our journey for yourself, for your family, for the world. Welcome to another episode of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. This is my first solo episode of The Chris Project. And I'm going to tell a story. So, bear with me if I ramble or the path does not seem straight, because it probably won't be. I'm going to tell you a story about the last year 15 months and what has changed in my business and my life and how I think that's important. So I'll start with January of '25. I was invited to a mastermind in Managua, Nicaragua. With a group. It was a mastermind of digital agency owners. And I was very shocked, because on the surface, there was no indication. But when I arrived, all of the participants were Christians. And not, you know, just in name only. They're I had never been in a group where business owners were shifting from conversations easily about, you know, business and digital conversion rates to talking about Jesus and like going back and forth. And it was a very unnerving, maybe uncomfortable, maybe I had always thought that two things didn't belong in the workplace, and that was religion and politics. Kind of like the way you're supposed to treat your other relationships, that you kind of, you know, don't talk about those subjects that might make people uncomfortable. And, you know, about the time that I got invited a few months before that to that mastermind meeting, I had made the conscious decision that I did not want to live my life that way anymore. I have been a believer in Christ since I was 16 and had very poorly tried to live my life as a Christian for my adult life, sometimes doing much better than others. But I consciously made the decision that I was going to keep that separate. And, you know, I didn't have conversations about my faith in work or in a business context. And once I had made that conscious decision to, to not put that wall there, that just whatever happened happened. I wasn't going to be proselytizing and preaching the gospel. I just was going to be open to where the conversation led and not keeping myself from having those conversations. So, when I show up in Managua, I was like, "Hmm, this is kind of strange." And then I joined Perry Marshall's Mastermind last year, and I went to my first meeting for that in, you know, a couple of weeks later in Chicago. And I got there, and it was also a gathering of believers. Not on the surface. It was not advertised. It was not promoted. But, you know, the conversations, again, were business and faith. And that kind of really was a strange pattern. But I'm like, was this always here? And I just didn't notice that these groups were always there, and I just didn't go into the rooms? Or was this, you know, something that was new? And I think it was the former. I think I wasn't maybe consciously or subconsciously willing to go into those rooms because I was not comfortable with that marriage of those two things. So I proceeded to go through last year. I had— 3 years ago, we had pivoted to a target market of serving creative professionals. And I had sat in the head of revenue seat for those 3 years or 2 years. And, um, it had some success, but I, I realized that I was not the right person in the right seat, and I was not the person to be doing this. So I made the decision to promote my marketing director to that seat. And, um, the, the first thing I noticed was a change in perspective when I was not the one trying to solve the problem. It, it was a different perspective on the problem. Right. And it also affected the leadership team in that when I was sitting in the seat, it was very easy for them to just defer to me. And it was, well, that's, that's marketing stuff. So Christian can figure it out. We don't really know anything. We're a bunch of accountants, right? But with Delaina in the seat, that dynamic shifted because now they were looking at her for results and it required them to approach it differently when she did not have success like I had not. Had success. In other words, they could hold her accountable, but they could not hold me accountable. Yeah. And so that went on for a few months. And I, I was really struggling with letting Delaina fail. I knew when I put her in the situation, in the position, and I pulled her aside from the outset and said, look, my biggest fear is I set you up for failure. And I don't want that. I don't want you to fail. I knew that she didn't have the requisite experience, but I thought, okay, she can learn and we'll be patient and she'll figure it out. And as she failed, I was really, you know, initially I was trying to be a good coach and a good leader. And like, okay, what are you learning from this? You know, what can you do differently next time? You know, why did you make this decision? What, what could you have done differently? Those kind of conversations. But as the, as the failure continued, I became increasingly anxious and started meddling even more. I would make more suggestions, even to the point last year where I got off on this half-baked idea of having a live event. And that even further confused Delaina and the leadership team, cost me probably about 30 grand. In money because the event never happened. We didn't sell any tickets and we'd already made commitments to the hotel and venue and all that. And so last year, as a leader, I feel like I completely failed. I feel like I didn't lead the right way. I led out of fear most of the time. Even to the point when we came to our quarterly in the fall, I was distraught. I was like, I don't even know if I should be here. I feel like I'm causing more trouble than I'm helping. And do you guys even need me here? That was the exact question that I asked. And I remember the reaction was, well, like, yeah, you kind of have to be here, right? It's your vision, what you want. And I think reflecting back on last year, what God did to me was through a very painful process, allow me to release my identity in the business. And we've talked a lot on The Chris Project about how entrepreneurs, especially male entrepreneurs, find a lot of their identity and purpose in their business and can't separate the two. In other words, if the business is successful, then I'm successful. And if the business is a failure, then I'm a failure. And I, through the pain of the experience of getting out of any box except the visionary and integrator, I came to the place where I could legitimately say, um, my identity is not tied to the success of the business. Now, I, I can't tell you where my head was that it came to that. Maybe it was just the emotional frustration. Um, maybe it was like, you know, I just, I just gave up. Like, I can't, I can't do anymore. I can't make it anymore. But I came to that place where I, I could say success or failure of the business does not make me who I am. I am independent of that. Most entrepreneurs start a business to control the variables. On the surface, for me, it looked like, well, you know, I want to bet on myself. I think that I can succeed and provide financially for my family more than working for someone else. And those surface rationalizations are great. But the reality was I was trying to control the outcomes. I was trying to fix something that was broken in me. And I don't think I'm unique in that. I think a lot of entrepreneurs show up without that understanding, and sometimes they come to that understanding over time. But it's that, that control variable that we're looking for. We're trying to, through the control of the business, fix and heal what is broken. In us. I've talked about this in various places, in my book and on the podcast. But my origin story is that my parents were divorced when I was 2, and my mother lost custody of me at 3 to my father. But what that looked like to that 3-year-old was, my mother abandoned me. And that's mostly pre-verbal, like, you know, you're not able to speak what you feel or put your feelings or fears or thoughts into words. And so that wound was very deep. And I'll add to that, even though I didn't live with my mother, I spent significant time with her. And she's a clinical narcissist. She had a lot of damage done to her. And I, you know, I have no judgment about the fact that she is a narcissist, but that is the reality. And that reality is, is that the love that I perceived from her as my mother was not really love. It was just an extension of her needs. And I was loved by my father and I was loved by my stepmother. And I am very thankful and grateful for that. But that wound of my mother, you know, that didn't fix that. And growing up, you know, I have 4 half-siblings. I'm the oldest. I always felt out of place. I was the oddball out. I would go to spend the summers with my mother. And of course, no one else did. And so like, I didn't ever overtly feel like I was not part of that family. I called my stepmother my mother. I called my brothers my brothers and my sister my sister. But there was something niggling in the back of my mind that, like, you're not exactly complete. And I remember when my siblings got older, they started this joke, well, I was just half. And, you know, that teasing of kids usually cuts pretty deep. And I really internalized that. That hit me right where my wound was. I was like, well, you're right. I'm incomplete. Not half as good, not, you know, but no, I'm only half their sibling. And so the connection piece that, that 3-year-old needs, um, was, was further agitated. Fast forward to when I was 16, the family business, uh, went bankrupt, and my grandmother died at that same year, and she was kind of the matriarch that held the family together. And between the two of those events my family dispersed, um, and for economic reasons, um, and that also hit me in the wound. And, and so that was the origin story for my why of helping business owners with their money Um, because I, I didn't want other people to go through what, what I went through. And so what, what I perceive is that I built the business for the right reasons, but I moved into repeating certain patterns that were very counterproductive. And those patterns were primarily around control. If I am valuable, if I am successful, if I create this, then I'm okay. That, you know, I'm not worthy of being left. But as it was reflected back to me, that was just an insurance policy. It wasn't a verdict. It was— I was protecting myself by being useful. I was protecting myself by being successful. And it just papered over the wound. It didn't heal the wound. So, going back to last year and what transpired, eventually last year I got to the point where I was like, the business is not my identity. I hadn't I hadn't healed the wound. But I had made that separation. Psychologists call it the, the subject-object. I was no longer the subject. The business, the business was no— the business was an object. It was not my identity. I can— I'm going to circle back to the faith piece. Many times over my life, I had prayed a prayer of surrender of like, whatever I have, God, is yours. And wherever you want me to go, I'll go. Whatever you want me to do, I'll do. And I believe every time I prayed that prayer, it was genuine. Like, I did want that surrender. But what I remember distinctly, every time that I said that prayer, there was this very small voice that said, what about the business? And I would immediately start rationalizing. I mean, like, well, I don't, I don't care about the business. I rely on God to provide for my family. And that was true. I did not— I totally surrendered the finances. Like, that was easy for me to do. But what I came to the conclusion very recently was that that voice was the Spirit. And God was telling me, you're still holding on to the business. But I didn't understand that the way I was holding on to the business was who I was, what my value, what my worth was. And I finally could surrender that. And I don't think that's an insignificant thing because Christ said, if you love your life, you'll lose it. He called us to come and die, die to ourselves, which is that surrender piece. But for me, most of my life, it was, it was, it was surface level. And over the last 5 years, I can tell you that there was a tremendous amount of pain with my wife and my marriage, with my kids, with the business. But it was necessary to grow and to eventually leave those things behind. I'm still married. I still have my kids. I still have my business. But I I had surrendered it. And I sit here and I think about the analogy of a toddler and a father. And the toddler is trying to fix some problem, you know, put together some toy or figure out how something works. And they, you know, try and fail and get frustrated. And all the while, the father's just sitting there waiting for the toddler to turn the problem over and say, 'Can you help me?' And it took me a real long time to understand what the problem I was truly trying to fix was and to surrender it, to say, Dad, I, I need help. And the loving Father was always there. He was just waiting. And It's almost like he's saying, okay, you know, you did, you did fine with the business, but let me show you what I can do. Let me show you what I want you to do. And I'm, I'm truly, I'm truly eager to see what he can do now that I've gotten out of the way. And I don't know what that will look like. I, I doubt that it will just be growth or any metric of success from a worldly standpoint. But the reality is, is my passion, my why on this earth, is to help specifically those creative professionals have a business and have finances that support their family, that doesn't wrap them up in something that consumes them, that's not profitable, that, that takes all their time. And I want the vision that God has set before me is I want to help more of them. And I don't know what that's going to look like. I think I'll probably be very surprised looking 5 years on and looking backwards and saying, like, huh, I never would have come up with that myself. Like, this is crazy. I tell all of you this because if you're in a place of pain and frustration and anxiety with your business, know that there's a purpose behind it, that there's a reason why you're suffering these things. There's something that you're trying to fix. That you can't fix. And hopefully you'll reach the point of surrender to say, Dad, I need help. I know for me, receiving help is very hard. I'm a man of a certain age raised in America, and my mantra is self-sufficiency and don't quit. And The reality is only when I quit, when I quit striving, when I quit trying to fix it, when I truly saw the problem that I was trying to solve and I asked for help, that I actually knew peace. Hopefully this has resonated with you. Um, if it has, please share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast, and until next time, remember, you are not alone.
