Kenny Chapman marks 10 years married to Christie, reflecting on how she enabled his career and the Blue Collar Success Group. He was once convinced he wouldn't live past 40. Christie turned him down the first time he asked.
3650 days (10 years).
On Maui, outside of Wailea.
47.
Hey, my friends, Kenny Chapman here, the blue collar coach. I want to talk to you just for a moment today, a very special day, and I would like to challenge you to have a little bit of reflection yourself on my behalf, if you will. Today, I'm selfishly going to talk a moment about my amazing wife, the lovely Christie. See if I can get through this. So 3650 days ago, my life changed forever. And it's when we got married on Maui, outside of Wailea. And see, what's very interesting is I lived a lot of my life not planning to live past 40. So now, at 47, I stand before you and, you know, do the best I can in my life. I make a lot of mistakes. I do a lot of things wrong. I consciously, you know, to eat something different than I do, whatever, right? But I'm a normal human being. By normal, I mean abnormal, by easy to live with. There's probably zero part of that that exists, right? You look at our lives, we travel almost all the time. It takes a special woman to put up with a driven entrepreneur, that there's never enough. And I live my life based on always grateful, never satisfied, or so I think, right? Then we take these trips, and we've been down around, you know, from we got on this ship in Lima, Peru, after spending a few days at Machu Picchu. We've gone to several historical sites, we've seen several great lectures on our cruise about history and different types of things. And as you meet the local people and, you know, we're on this amazing oceanic cruise, and I mean, we're playing bingo for, like, the jackpots, like three months of these people salaries, where we're going and visiting and getting off the ship and things. And I go, God, Kenny, you might not have a grateful strain in your body, right? You're so spoiled in every aspect of the word, in every way of the world. And, you know, it's just a really important reflection time. And as I think back to 10 years ago today, and I look at the mistakes I've made in this past decade and the challenges that I've presented Christy with, usually unfairly in the different things. But I also reflect on the fact that, you know, hopefully, if you're watching this and you're one of my followers, I've made a positive impact in your life in some way, shape or form. And I want you to know that Christie's largely behind a lot of that. She's not on stage. She's not the face or the focus. But I wouldn't be doing what I do. Had she not married me 10 years ago, the blue collar success group didn't exist. I spoke once a month for a great national trade organization, for sure. Very, very grateful for all that time and the relationships that have chosen to stick with me as I pursue my goals and dreams. And you know what's fascinating is I spoke about once a month, I played golf four or five days a week and all this kind of stuff. I live in Scottsdale now and don't remember last. Well, remember last time I played golf was with Tim Flynn after one of our acceleration events, like a year ago or something. Right. So what's my point? My point is that Christie helped me develop the confidence to go after what I want in life. And now we're challenged at 10 years in that we continue to grow together. And I don't know how long you've been married, I don't know how many marriages you've had. I don't know any of that. And really it doesn't matter because what matters is you have today and the one that you're with. You have an opportunity to express gratitude and to be grateful for those things. Not to look at what's wrong, not to wish certain things were different, not to look back and go, 10 years ago you were kind of this way and now you're a little bit different. Well, guess what, it's been a decade, you better be a little different, right? So if you're still seeking that perfect individual, don't give up. I was not looking to have a relationship when the lovely Christie walked into my life for the first time. And in fact, many of you may not know when I did finally get up the gumption and the courage to ask her out, she said no and turned me down. Because she was getting out of a relationship and was clear enough and conscious enough and bright enough to know that she needed to be comfortable with who she was as an individual person before she entered another long term relationship. Though neither one of us knew at the moment it was going to be long term, but we knew there was something special. If you're seeking that person, go deeper within yourself to find that person. Meaning that I did so much work on myself, I created space for the universe to bring the lovely Christy into my life. And for that I will always be grateful. And if we've made any kind of a positive impact in your life, I would encourage you to be grateful that the lovely Christie said yes to me 300 or 3650 days ago. And now I'm gonna get back into this sweep. We're out on our cruise and enjoy time with my lovely Christy. That probably didn't come out right. That's not what I meant. But nonetheless, have a better than fantastic day, and I'll see you when we get done with this amazing vacation. Cheers.
