92. Kristoffer Carter (KC) Author of Permission To Glow

Casey, welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. Man, it's been quite a day hanging out with you so far.

I've enjoyed every minute. Your love of books, as I've said many times, is just totally infectious, but any chance to hang out with you guys and nerd out on books and what it means to market them and create them is amazing.

Well, I think this will be one of the most powerful podcast interviews we've done because throughout today we've gotten to know so much about you and you have so So much to share with everybody. I also want to make mention that we have Luke co-hosting today's podcast.

Hello, hello. Glad to be here.

Luke, we go way back. Like, I believe 6 hours back. Way back.

Yeah.

Well, KC, for those in the Book Thinkers family that are not familiar with you or your book, I'd love to have you introduce yourself to everybody.

Yeah.

My name is Christopher Carter. Everyone calls me KC. Most recently known as the author of Permission to Glow: A Spiritual Guide to Epic Leadership. On paper, I am an executive coach. Fortune 100 companies down to scrappy startups, and I've always had this real deep passion for the integration of ancient spiritual wisdom into modern-day practice. So off the resume, I'm more of a spiritual teacher than I am a coach, but my work lately has been to integrate these things together and to try to bring some more of this timeless wisdom to modern leaders.

Let's kick off today's show by going back a little bit. Going back to your sales days, the hustle and bustle days, right? What was it like for you entering into a world of business that was busy and fast-paced, and how did you first get into this world of meditation and spirituality?

That's a great question. So I was driving down here. I live 2 hours away from here. We're in Columbus, Ohio today, and I live 2 hours away in Akron, Ohio. And driving back here brought back this flood of memories because this was my sales territory. I had the whole state of Ohio. So as a media salesperson, I would be driving this vast state. And, you know, at that time in my life, about 10 years ago, 2012, I was just pretty dissatisfied with just putting more noise into the world, responding to unrealistic deadlines all the time. Media is known as a real pressure cooker of time scarcity. You know, the client wants it yesterday, that old adage. And I was just, I was just over all of it. And I had begun meditating some years prior to that and starting to slow down my experience of it. I did learn early on that I can't slow it down, but I can slow down my experience of it. And that was a really key insight. It was a real point of claiming my own power. And that became the foundation of, you know, the first permission in the book and also all the coaching I do with leaders, that we must slow down our experience of this crazy world we live in. But yeah, I was a typical frazzled, overcaffeinated, stressed out, unhappy sales guy. And not all sales guys by any stretch are like that. I know some incredible salespeople, but it didn't fit the mission that I felt like I was here to do. It just felt like I was passing through that job.

Well, Nick is a salesperson and I don't think he fits into that frazzled salesperson at all. No, not anymore.

Because he lives and works on purpose.

Exactly, exactly. I know we'll get into it, but we have these 4 permissions that we talk about, and what I noticed when you were talking there is you gave yourself the permission to pause, and that is something that I think a lot of people struggle with. So how did you go from this super frazzled person to this point where you're like, I need, I need to pause?

It's a great question. Like, it's counterintuitive for most of us. when we felt— when we feel overwhelmed and pressured to create more and more and more, how do we defiantly, deliberately sit down and say, nope, pause? And for most of us, that shows up as a health crisis. You know, I was 26 when I got like a real scare in my health. I almost died from stress-related illness, and it never needed to happen, but it was a huge wake-up call that got me on the path of professional development, which led to spiritual development. So I was learning these lessons very slowly over time that our power resides in us. Nobody can slow it down for us. No boss will ever do that for us. No matter how much they love you, they can't do it for you. You can consciously practice that permission. And so yeah, it emerged slowly over time, but there have been inflection points too. Like health crises are great for those. Adding a new kid to the mix. You're a fellow dad of 3. Once you start expanding that family unit, you realize you have to dig in and show up at a different level, you know, to make room for that much more love and care and time it takes to care for another human life. So each of my other kids kind of expanded that need as well.

And how long now have you been hosting retreats and coaching people?

And so the beginning, or I should say the end of 2015, I had kind of a wake-up call in my career. My position was eliminated. The company needed to cut costs. And it was, it was a perfect scenario in retrospect because it gave me the severance package I needed to start my dream business to do what I do now. And I put my time in and I was so grateful for them. So yeah, the end of '15, beginning of '16, I didn't officially go into business until April of 2016. I took 4 full months to pause because I needed to oversee the remodeling of our house. I had to build a new vessel of a home to express this new thing. And like everything in my life was radically transforming. And if I would have tried to do it all at once, it would have been futile. You know, so I just got still for a few months, and then I started by just doing all of the processes I learned to just design something highly intentional. You know, so now it's six and a half years into the into the journey, and you know entrepreneurship. You know, it's it's you know heroin like super highs of I could see my house from here mixed with like oh my god how am I going to pay for that? And the payroll is blah blah blah blah blah all that in between. And what what I realized lately is that. The first five and a half years before the book came out was like setting this big root system of everything that would start to bloom once the book showed up in October of 2021, and now that root system broke ground and it's growing some flowers and vines and doing a new thing. And so I'm grateful that I took the time I did, and at the same time always have the story in our heads of like God, I could be doing twice as much, or I could be doing what that guy's doing, whatever. But when I take a step back and look at the journey, I'm just grateful that it took me that long because our kids are also still young and growing up. Like I don't. I don't want to be an absentee dad. I need to be there for them.

I want to go a little bit deeper on this subject because today you shared with us that your business just hit a revenue milestone last month, that it's the first big milestone that kind of made you feel like a rock star. And I just— we don't really get to talk to a lot of people who are in this period where the tree is finally blooming, you've broken ground. So what does that feel like? Can you share that with everybody?

Yeah, I'll tie it directly to my book. It feels terrifying, overwhelming, miraculous, and incredible. You know, so I'm always making this connection between the success that we want the most, that we know we deserve. We're also terrified to create it because big dreams are just as confronting as big setbacks. They spook us. You know, like, do I deserve that?

That's—

I didn't grow up in a house where that was possible. You know, so when you start doing those things, it brings up all those things very naturally. And, you know, and all of this is relative. You know, like a huge milestone for me might be like a drop in the bucket for somebody else. It might be completely impossible for somebody else. You know, when I started out being a coach, I just wanted to get past this, you know, really low bar that 90% of coaches make $40 grand a year or less. That wasn't an option with a family of 5. It just wasn't going to happen. So in order to scale my time in a way and to develop something more substantial, I had to get creative. And I think that's what I'm most present to. I'm just proud of all the creativity.

Yeah, you talk a lot about fear in your book. You bring that up, and I think—

Are you calling me a scaredy-cat? Maybe I am.

I know that I'm definitely a scaredy-cat in a lot of ways. But I just, I would like to know, like, how did you overcome that fear? Like, how did you take that first step? Like, what was the process that you went through to get to that step where you're like, okay, I know this is gonna— I know I'm gonna be afraid, I know this is gonna be hard, But I wanted— I'm going to do it anyway.

I remember calling my wife from the train in Chicago, like maybe a half hour after this moment happened. And in this moment, I went to our headquarters in Chicago at my old job. I faxed in the closing documents committing ourselves to buying this new gigantic house that we got qualified for with my job. And within 5 minutes, the CFO called me into his office to eliminate my position. So I had no income to support that house I just committed to within 5 minutes. So I called my wife from the train and she was doing the safe route. She was like, you know, we are going to figure out a way to back out of the house. It's totally fine. We will stay put. We will build from where we are. The house was totally affordable. But I had this intuitive hit that that environment, those views out the window with the neighbors saying wrecked backyard they would never fix up, would keep me in this limited perspective. I needed to totally blow out the doors on what was possible and I needed the home The newer big home is motivation to create what needed to create. So I was telling you earlier, like sometimes I felt like as a kid in suburbia, middle-class family, that I didn't have those drivers to really create intense risk, intense skin in the game. So that event, the losing the job thing, galvanized my motivation. But then from that point, it's a series of just tiny bold moves. Everything kind of overwhelmed, like is a little bit overwhelming. Like there's always some new bigger investment to make or some new, you know, thing to You know, look through or some new giant setback or a corporate client just won't pay you.

Uh-huh.

You know, like when you're counting on the money to show up. These are very natural things that occur and I make just a series of tiny bold moves to get around, through, and beyond those things. And that's all I can do. I think that's all anyone can do. You know, we want to be brave and glow in the dark all the time. You know, like it was grandiose and it went like this and I was flying through the sky and it looked amazing. But it's not like that typically. It's like, oh wow, what's the one thing I can make happen right now?

Can we unpack something you just said a little bit deeper? And we talked about it earlier today when we were working together, but you grew up in this suburbia household where you weren't forced to take massive risks. You always had this kind of like cushy thing that you could fall back on. And I find myself in that same position. And sometimes you need to create artificial— I don't know what you call it—

resistance, something to push against.

Yeah.

Like Michael Jordan, if you saw The Last Dance documentary series, he was so amazing at making up rivalries in his head. And if he put that label on you, watch out, you're going to die on the court. Because he needed something to push his genius against. And I think we really need that. And what I was saying earlier was that in suburbia, privileged middle-class white kid, The stakes were never high. Like, I could have a very clear path. College was paid for. Go get a safe job in a cubicle and pass 30 years if you're lucky and retire and have the benefits package. All that just felt super boring and unchallenging, you know. And there's nothing wrong with any of that. The people that are on that path that find meaning in it, we need those people. They keep the lights on for most of us. And because my purpose just wouldn't shut up, frankly. I had to figure out a way, and I feel like my soul engineered that scenario I described, which was, you're going to buy the house. We're taking it away. I got a very clear spiritual sign that this was about to happen. I left a New Year's Eve meditation at the end of 2015 into '16, and I was praying that whole 3-hour meditation for reconciliation in my life and career, and I got this very clear audio sound in my own head that just said, Prepare yourself, reconciliation is coming. And I know that I heard it. It wasn't like maybe I heard it. I knew it was there and I was like, oh God, here it comes. And sure enough, within 2 weeks, you get the house, you don't keep the job, time to do the thing. And so I felt like some longing in my soul created that scenario and I'm grateful for it. The year I was in it, terrifying, didn't sleep well, grew a beard, looked a little strange, wore sweatpants too often. And I needed that cocoon period to come out on the other side and be who I'm here to be. So I wouldn't wish it on anybody, but sometimes that is what it takes. And other people just do the thing like right out of the gate. My friend Jenny Blake, who wrote this great book Free Time, she's been naturally hardwired as an entrepreneur. So she like skated out of Google, started writing books, doing the thing, growing an immense business by herself. And I was never wired. I didn't grow up in that house, you know, so I had to Do it in different ways, more dramatic, I guess.

That's amazing. You mentioned purpose, and I'd like to unpack that a little bit too. What do you mean by purpose, I guess, would be the first question. And then second, how do you recommend people find a purpose? Do you think everyone has a purpose, or what are your thoughts around that?

Sean is on the crew here. He brought up this great conversation on purpose earlier between takes of the book marketing stuff. Purpose is so essential, and it's also a tricky word because I think it could get overcorrected into, if I don't find a purpose, I better not take one more step. I'm not going to waste any more time unless I'm on purpose. And then people spin their wheels and waste a lot of time looking for that elusive, mysterious purpose that never seems to arrive. And so what we were talking about, how I think of purpose— I love this book, Primed to Perform. I know you're all about team building, culture building. Primed to Perform is the science of total motivation. It's written by this husband and wife, Doshi and McGregor, former McKinsey consultants. They surveyed 22,000 workers across the globe, found the 6 core drivers of human motivation. Out of the 6, purpose is number 2. It's the highest motivator. The first is play. Like, I don't know if I'm playing or working, what's actually happening here today. That's the highest motivator. When you're so connected to the work, you're one with the work, are we even working? The second is purpose, which is, am I able to find meaning and fulfillment in this work? The cart of my own big honking dreams to the big honking dreams of the organization or the vision that I'm here to serve. And what I was coaching you around earlier was, you know, it can get easy to want to change up where we are to get where we want to be by resisting that. Like, oh, once I get out of this boring, not sexy thing, then I could do all the sexy on-purpose stuff. I've never seen it work that way. We have to embrace and find purpose in what we're doing. And in doing so, that ignites the people around us and they almost launch us out of there. They're like, you don't belong here, you're amazing, and they bless us on. And that's— I call it the escape velocity. You know, rather than me trying to force my will to escape from something, if I can overserve, make my employer— they're not my employer anymore, they're my number one client. Treat them like your number one client. Deliver raving fan service everywhere. Just be happy to be there. that escape velocity, that slingshot will be pulled back and it will launch my ass out of there. And that's what happened with me. And all of that was in a discovery of my purpose day in and day out. I, you know, I knew I wasn't supposed to be in the ad industry as a salesperson, so I pivoted over into training and development so I could start getting into human potential and coaching and, you know, unlocking the potential of the whole team. Then I felt on purpose. Like, I loved the bus I was on. Now I was in the right seat on the right bus. And people could feel that purpose coming off of me, and I felt like those 3 years prepared me really to do what I do. I needed to learn all that to do what I do now.

And I think we often sit here and think that we need this big aha moment all at once.

That would be great if it happened, right?

It would be awesome if we just were, yeah, the heavens open. Here's your purpose. Yeah. It doesn't happen that way so often. I know that my journey has been the 5, 6 years, whatever it's been, It's been a long journey to get to where I feel like, oh, I'm actually working on purpose and I'm working with intention and working with people I care about, and it's a really cool place to be.

Oh, absolutely. So one of the things I would offer you as a coach is to not overcomplicate purpose. You know, it could be as simple as one simple thing. Like, the coaching training that I did, they distinguished my soul purpose through a series of really high-level questions. My purpose is actually divinity. And it terrifies me. Like I've said all day long, I would have not chosen to write a spiritual book for modern leadership. That work chose me. And it's like, really, God, this is what you need from me? That's a pretty heavy purpose. Like, I don't know how to do that. It's what we do, right? But the willingness to just discover what that could be, keep it simple, realize like, oh, this feels like I'm on purpose. It's somewhere in that wheelhouse. And lately I sat down and rearticulated my purpose. My purpose is to bring light and levity to the hard work of personal transformation. It's brutal work. Might as well make it fun. That is my unique contribution to the game and to the art. That's what the book is about. And that feels like when I say it, I feel the zing in my body.

Uh-huh.

And that's what something inside of me is letting me know. It's like, bingo! You know? But throughout any given day, I drift off the path of purpose. You know, when I'm stuck in expenses or banking or this or that, I'm like, am I on purpose? So we could very easily make it overly complex, but we can tune into ourselves and navigate towards it.

So, you know, the purpose of this podcast is to introduce our audience to new books and new mentors, you in this scenario, that they can use to achieve more and live better. That's our tagline. So we want to focus a little bit on the book and give our audience an introduction to what they might learn if they decide to purchase it.

Purchase a copy of Permission to Glow.

So who is the target reader for this book? Why did you write it?

By the way, decide to purchase it. It's a great book.

Thanks. Did my mom pay you to say that? That's awesome. Yeah, it's— the target audience is really young idealistic leaders that are tired of being burned out and disillusioned by the work at hand. You know, so I'm a Gen Xer. I'm 46 years old. A lot of the leaders I coach that are running substantial companies are Gen are millennials. And what I feel— one of the best compliments I ever got in my coaching was, man, I feel like every Friday when we meet, it's like Gen X is giving me keytar lessons. A keytar in the '80s, by the way, was like a keyboard you play like a guitar. And what I think he meant by that was that I want to pass along some of the best practices of our generation, Gen X, while also honoring the what I have to learn from millennials, Gen Y, everybody else in between. So the target is really these young idealistic leaders who believe it's possible, who believe that there is work to do, but that leadership is an inside job.

Yeah, no, I love that. And I think that's perfect for our audience. You know, we're mostly like 18 to 34 young professionals, people who, you know, this won't be the first book they've read, right? They've dabbled in personal development. They realize they have And that's also something that's really cool about what you do. You define coaching as— can you actually describe this a little bit? You define coaching as like the chasm between—

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I define coaching as I picture this— we're standing on a cliff together. If you're my client, we're standing on this cliff and I call this cliff what is. That's the status quo. That's where we are today. But say your next goal, your big goal is like, how do I get paid $1 million a year to be me? That's a pretty common goal for people. Like, who wouldn't want that goal, right? That's the opposing cliff of what could be, but I like to call it what will be. If you're a believer, you might as well call it what will be, right? But in between those cliffs is a dark, narrow, deep, bottomless chasm of like fear and death because we are terrified to create what will be. It's confronting, it's scary, we don't know how. I don't know how to do it. If I did, I would just do it, right? All these stories. And so coaching is about guiding people through that process, through inquiry, through helping them see themselves and see what their real possibilities are to get to that cliff no matter what, by any means necessary. It's up to the client how we get there.

So is this book sort of the written version of your coaching program? Is this what you would typically bring somebody through?

The Four Permissions The central framework of the book is the central framework for my organization, Epic Leadership. It's our conscious leadership framework. It lights that chasm one by one until it glows. You realize it's not scary in there. That is my journey. So we start with Permission 1, we work through Permission 4. So it's— yeah, the book represents— coaching is a privileged profession. Not everyone can afford my services or most coaches' services. I wanted there to be an accessible entry point into powerful coaching for people. $16.95. You know what I mean? Just make it as widely accessible. These are all the things I would've killed to know early in my career that would've gotten me to where I am today way faster. So I'm actually excited for people who are that age listening to this. This is the stuff I'll sit down and make my kids read at some point because I, I don't have better advice than this.

Yeah. You just highlighted something, which is the potential ROI from a book purchase. So for under $20, you can learn what other people are paying thousands of dollars a year. Tens of thousands of dollars a year.

Yeah, yeah. But here's the thing. The book, it's incumbent on the reader in these types of books to apply what they're learning. You know, Chris Guillebeau, we were talking about him earlier, he had this great quote, creator of World Domination Summit. He said, information without action is entertainment. And we're not looking to be— I don't have time to be entertained. I mean, I love to be entertained. I don't know that I always have time to be entertained. What I encourage people to do is not only get the book but to work the book. Let it work you. It works me every single day and I am confronted by these same truths and practices every single day as I'm working on my thing. So yeah, work it like a coach would.

Yeah, that's great. The first thing when I started reading this book that I recognized, and I actually told my wife this, I was like, this book actually feels like it's alive. And she's like, what do you mean by that? I'm like, when I read through it, it actually feels like I'm I'm doing something and every chapter has something for you to do to actively become better and become— to get to the glow, right? And I just, I love that. I don't know, maybe we can share the 4 permissions on here and then like maybe walk through a little bit of them. That would be awesome.

Yeah.

So we have permission 1, which is permission to chill, right?

Permission to chill, yeah, the counterintuitive thing we talked about earlier, which is like sit your Butt down and find some stillness. You guys like the metaphor of the snow globe that we can't operate from and create the life we deserve if our head just looks like a shaken snow globe. We have to separate chaos from opportunity. We have to let things settle down, but we do that first by permission one, giving ourselves permission to chill. The foundational practice is creating a meditation habit.

Well, meditation is one of my favorite subjects, so let's go a little bit deeper. It took you 5 years to find a consistent meditation practice, yet A lot of people get discouraged when they download Headspace and they go through one session and they can't make it 10 minutes and so they give up, they delete the app and they move on.

Yeah. Yeah, so my journey with that was interesting. So I look at apps, apps are great, but apps are also like your dad holding a 2-wheeler bike seat. You know, like, champ, you want to leave the cul-de-sac someday? I've got to let go. Like, we've got to get off the apps at some point. We have to learn. So I think I told you earlier that my Meditation started as literally falling asleep on my basement floor every night because I thought meditation was what came at the end of yoga class. It's called shavasana, corpse pose, where you're laid prone on the ground, vibing music, it's dark, and you typically fall asleep. So that clearly wasn't working. That's how ignorant I was to the process of meditation. When I started really figuring out what it was, like finding the gaps between thoughts, finding the gaps between breath, bringing the attention back as many times as necessary, I started meditating on the train in Chicago when we lived there on my commute. North and Clybourn is next. The doors open on the right.

North and Clybourn.

Like these automated voices, people brushing past me, ripping out my earbuds because they weren't wireless at the time. And just this learning how to meditate in the most disruptive environment possible helped me build the muscle and the determination to go deeper and deeper. So that was like, you know, literally like a 10 to 16 year process. To become consistent and then to find the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda, study those Kriya Yoga lessons. Those are very intense and deep. Those are what I still do today. And that's an hour minimum each morning, a lot of different practices. So the fact that people think they can just flip it on like a switch, I think is a folly of human beings. You know, like, oh, I'm going to be a meditator tomorrow and just stick with it. It's like, look for the minimum consistency you can do. And just trust it to grow from there. It's like a vine that will take over your life. It's a beautiful thing. You just have to show up.

Yeah, earlier today, and for everybody listening, this was a magical experience, but you actually put us through a meditation when we were filming some content earlier. It was an amazing experience. So tell us a little bit about Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda and what sort of impact that book has had on your life.

Yeah, well, it's, it's a book that people told me I should read for about 8 years, and I finally surrendered and read it as our third child, my son was being born. So as my wife was giving birth to my son, natural childbirth, I was reading her these passages of Autobiography of a Yogi, these epic passages where Yogi— this book's been around since 1946. It's a spiritual classic. Steve Jobs read it every year of his life, famously gifted it to everybody at his funeral. So it had a massive impact on him. And I knew that there was something to that book in the eyes of the guru on the front, they are— talk about alive. Like, they look at you, they follow you, they speak to you. Everybody who got zapped by that book has the same story. George Harrison, the guitar player for the Beatles, people I've met, that book has fallen off the shelves and landed on their feet. You know, one of my friends, Bhushan, he's in his 90s now. When he became a devotee of Yogananda, he found this book. He was walking by a bookstore in Canada, saw the eyes on that book through a window and thought, I need that book. Goes and buys that book, stands under a streetlight, reads this entire book cover to cover. That book is long and deep and epic. It's an 18-hour audiobook, so I don't know how long it took him to read it, but he didn't stop standing and reading until he read it. This was back in the '60s. That book has that level of spiritual magnetism and power to it, and it became the foundation for everything I've needed to learn in my life, and it's just beginning. I probably got my 11th or 12th grade. And the audiobook by Ben Kingsley is highly recommended. And I'm always either reading it or listening to it, and it just continues to change my life. And it definitely set the foundation for the Four Permissions framework.

There's also another book, The Four Agreements, that you talk about that you really liked.

And then tell us how that kind of tied into the Four Permissions and how that influenced Yeah, I think, I mean, I grew up as a musician and if we're being honest, we have to like honor all of our influences. You know, like I play bass the way I do because I grew up on Flea from the Chili Peppers and Les Claypool from Primus, you know. And Don Miguel Ruiz was one of those really forebears of modern spirituality that just, it was ancient Toltec wisdom and modern spiritual pithy beautiful form. There's not a lot of words in that book. But damn, each one of them matters. You could read it and get something different every time. So that just really stuck with me, the elegance of that framework and how applicable it was. I mean, I think about those agreements all the time. And so when I was starting— when it was starting to come into view that there needed to be 4 permissions, I thought, yeah, I want to honor some of that earlier work by people like Don Miguel Ruiz and also 7 Habits and You know, there's many of them, but to me, no one did it better early on than Doppigold, Ruiz, and Stephen Covey.

Let's move on to the second permission. This is the one that you needed the most, right, when you wrote the book? Yep.

I got the essential oil right here. Permission to feel all the feels. Right hand, gentlemen.

Give me your right palm.

I have these essential oils that my intuitive healer, Shawna Watenkamp, who's on our retreat team and mixes You good? You want one too, Sean?

Yeah.

All right, let's do it. This one's a more like an earthier, moodier combination that invites permission to— permission to feel all the feels is about accepting our inherent vulnerability, our authentic emotions, being honest with what we're feeling so we might navigate by them. So at first, this means accepting how we're feeling. And then tuning into the wisdom our body is speaking to us through our emotions. It's very powerful. You know, it starts out maybe as emotional intelligence, and it ends up into intuitive spirit-guided leadership. Like, how do I know that I'm supposed to be doing the thing? I just know because I feel it. You know, but if I'm not willing to feel those earlier feels, I'll never have access to that quiet voice that speaks to me when I need it. So yeah, all of my breakthroughs with my coach happen in permission too. I'm usually most scared and reluctant to have that conversation. But once I'm in it, if I'm willing to squirt a few tears per se, or to go be a little rage monster out in the woods by myself, I come back and I tend to glow because that was here to inform me. And this is the work I encourage leaders to do.

Can we talk a little bit about vulnerability? I think that sometimes there's this toxic trait with The traditional definition of masculinity, that men can't feel all the feels and you can't be vulnerable and open yourself up to these types of things. I know for me, I sort of eliminated the ability to feel a lot of these emotions when I was growing up.

Yeah. We make those little agreements up as kids to protect ourselves from either trauma or being perceived as weak, any of these little things. A lot of times, they're just innocent little agreements we make. They're kind of benign.

That was it for me. perceived as weak.

Yeah, they, they, they— because, because it's, it's more attractive to be a superhero. You know, I had that thing too. I wanted to just be a performer all the time and be kind of like superhuman. And I started to realize like superhumanity is found in— it's a, it's a Goethe quote, uh, the philosopher Goethe— our superhumanity is found in our friendships. But we can't connect if we just have this veneer armor on of like, I got this, I'm perfect. Aren't I something to behold? I'm, I'm impervious to vulnerability because my manhood doesn't allow me to be that. You know, it's, and it can be scary. Make no doubt about that. But it's, it is a pathway to really getting what we crave, which is to be seen and heard. It's what we want more than anything is that little, that little tiny kid still lives inside of you, still lives inside of me. And my coach had me do a lot of inner child work when I was writing the book. Because like anything big, we just resist the big work, you know. Doing that work, I resisted it. I hated it. I hated it. Then all of a sudden, the flood of feels comes, and on the other side of that, you're able to see things as they are and tap into your power and get back to work.

That's really interesting. Growing up, and probably to this day, I really love Superman as a superhero. He's super powerful, and most people are turned off because of that, because they're like, oh, you can't even defeat the guy. He's just too powerful. But what I love about him is his humanity. And if you actually read a lot of the comics, if you read a lot of the fan fiction, which I have done, it really sits there and it puts him into the feelings, right? Like Superman is super strong and he could— I mean, he could destroy the whole Earth, right?

Yeah.

But his ability to sit there and feel all the feels, right, is what makes him human and actually is what actually gives him strength.

So the greatest example in scripture, all of these prophets throughout time, Jesus Christ, the Buddha, Bhagavan Krishna in Hinduism, these beings were avatars of God. They were literally superhumans. They had such connection to the omniscient Father Spirit that they did have powers. They could perform miracles, but they didn't do that for just like party tricks. They did it because they have deep, profound compassion for humanity. They're able to feel anything that any of us are feeling and only want us to find our own path back to love, path back to spirit. And that to me is just so inspiring. That, that's what I think Superman taps into, is that, you know, there's a lot of people that misinterpret the teachings, teachings of Jesus and every— everybody else. They want to use those teachings to judge others or to separate marginalized people. It's like, no, At the core of everything he taught was compassion, that none of us are beyond— that's why the Pope washes beggars' feet. It's an act of humility because every human being deserves that dignity. That's what Superman taught us. To me, the best one was Christopher Reeve from the '80s, but we could get into that later.

Casey, let's talk a little bit about permission 3, which is permission to glow in the dark.

Yeah.

Yeah. What does that mean?

The performer in me says this is where it gets interesting, but you can't do number 3 if you don't do the earlier work of 1 and 2. If you're not willing to chill, you're not able to feel. You're not able to feel, you're not able to glow in the dark. It's to fully self-actualize with witnesses, to do the brave, bold thing despite the ever-present fear. This is what it looks like to get paid well to be yourself, is to be in total alignment with your mission. You don't give a whatever about what anybody has to say about it, including yourself, and you do the thing you came here to do. It is exhilarating and terrifying. My friend Melissa Bernstein, who's the founder and CEO of Melissa and Doug Toys, she calls it exhilarifying. I think that's a perfect word for glowing in the dark. Yeah, it's basically full self-expression despite the ever-present fear.

I'll give you a quick story. So years ago, especially when I was in late high school, early college, I had a lot of ego and also a lot of insecurity. But the ego piece of me was what we talked about before with permission to. I always wanted to be perfect and I didn't let myself outside of my comfort zone very often because I didn't want to be embarrassed. I didn't want other people to think of me in a bad way, etc. And so after reading Black Sheep by Brandt Mensah-Pharre, I was doing a podcast with him actually And he asked me about my core values, and I didn't mention impact at all because at that period in my life, I wasn't really focused on other people.

I was more focused on myself.

And Brendon said, what about impact? I think it's your number one core value. And it was very terrifying for me at the time to admit that I cared a lot about other people because I had built up this persona and this ego that didn't allow me to care about other people. And so I was scared that people from my past would say, wait, That's not Nick. It's not what he cares about. He's all about himself.

He's faking it.

He's faking it.

I do the same thing. I was scared to admit that, but in that podcast, that was the first time that I openly said, yeah, you know what? I do really care about other people and I'm capable of feeling these things now. That was an example of me. I had to kind of lay it all out there. Now, I'm so happy that I did because I gave I gave myself permission to be more aligned with who I really was and didn't care so much about, you know, being misaligned with the previous version of myself.

Well, and you said it earlier too, I thought it was so powerful that until you had that breakthrough or those types of breakthroughs, like everyone wants to know how you build a following like Book Thinkers, you know, how do you attract that many people to an idea, to some energy, to a concept? It's like building a magnet. that attracts people by shared values, shared love of books in this case. But that work you did to really see what you're working with, to speak it loudly into the universe and say, this is important, this will help people, these books helped me, it creates that beacon. But yeah, I went through all the same stuff. Part of my glowing— when you want to glow in the dark, you get confronted by all sorts of stuff because the darkness crowds around the light. And so, you know, my joke was, if you're not willing to change, you'll be an older version of the same scared little punk you were in high school. Like, I was a sarcastic little pretty boy, whatever. I'm a good kid and I had my ego and like the things that kids have, right? But in the willingness to move beyond that stuff, we discover what our actual glow is and it might not look anything like what you thought it would.

Yeah, it's a terrifying thing. I've struggled over the last, well, my whole life I guess. The last 28 years of my life to find that glow. To glow in the dark. And it's really interesting because this last, I was sharing this with you earlier, like these last 3 months of my life I've really started to come into myself and like just kind of leave behind all those old beliefs and come into these new ones. And it is, it's a very scary It's a scary thing. Like, I'm thinking about even now, like, saying it out loud is a little scary. It's a little scary to even just say that out loud that I'm coming into it because then I'm even worried that maybe I'm not coming into it. Maybe I'm lying to myself and you get the ego in the way.

Can I be your coach for a second?

Oh, please. Absolutely.

What do you need to say that hasn't been said? What does glowing in the dark look like for you this year? You can't get it wrong. Just what could it be? I think—

you're going to make me— I'm literally like thinking about it, I'm going to cry. But I want to impact others and I know that I can do that. I used to have a coffee shop and our saying there was, better days are here. And that rings so true to my person and my being because I love giving people I love giving people better days. Like, that's why I exist. I exist to serve people and I want them to be happy and I want them to have a good life. And if I can be a part of doing that for others, I will have lived a great life. Yeah.

Awesome. I would think everyone here would agree that you're on your way. You're doing that. That the vehicle of that expression doesn't care if it's a coffee shop or a day job or a this or a that. The expression itself, that saying, better days are here, is what holds you accountable. That's your boss.

Yeah.

You know, and then it becomes the privilege. I have the privilege of doing this every day.

Yeah.

You know, it's beautiful, and I felt it when he shared it, that that has that warmth, that glow to it. It's not like a, oh, that'd be nice. But do you believe it's possible to create any type of career that allows you to express that?

I do, yeah. I believe I'm on my way to that and every day that passes I get closer to that. And I'm very excited for the future. I can't wait to see what's in store.

Well, I mean, I think we're done here coaching.

Breakthrough alert.

Yeah, it's these conversations, you know, we've been working together all day around the 4 permissions, but when you take a day like this To just get present to what matters to you and how to get there and what the journey inside really needs to look like. To me, it's so much more productive than the tactical, well, there's a million ways to crack this nut. I got to find the right job and angle it. That's the doing of the thing. But when you surrender to the being of the thing, I get to be the guy who believes better days are here and get everyone else around me to believe that. And I don't care how I get to do that, but that's Yeah. It's undeniable, you know. So thanks for doing the work.

Yeah, your book is instrumental for helping people do this. And the first time that I went through this realization was after reading the book Built to Serve by Evan Carmichael. Internally went through this realization, not externally. And Evan teaches a framework called who, why, how. And I found out that my who is progress. I'm the most fulfilled when I can make progress, even small little baby steps, in my health, my wealth, my relationships, my happiness, etc. Or if I can help other people make progress in their health, their wealth, their relationships, their happiness, etc.

Uh huh.

So when I lay my head down on the pillow that night, if I've helped somebody else connect to a resource that they can leverage to make progress, I'm happy. And so that's my who and that's my why. He says your purpose comes from your pain. So my why is I went from full of ego and insecure, living a very shallow lifestyle, read a couple of books that changed my life. Now I can connect other people to books that can change their lives. And so the vehicle for me, I'm so happy that you said it this way, it doesn't matter what it is. That's the how. The how doesn't matter because I know what the why is. You know, I know who I am.

Yeah, that's awesome. And what I really love about your story, Nick, is that Before, long before we met, long before we had any of this common language around permissions or anything like that, sequentially permissions 1 through 4, your story sets up permission 4 because by living out your purpose every day, you're doing your highest and best work. You know, I mean, whether you admit it or not, this guy is made to be on camera talking about books.

Right.

I mean, it's like, you know, just, it's mostly the energy just comes through, you know. We're all jaded and skeptical online. We're like, I don't want to like this guy. But then when he sent me the video about my book, I'm like, oh my God, I love my book more because this guy loves it so much. It's just so palpable. But by him using his gifts and passion, he's able to serve so many people at a higher level and to empower their glowing and their best life too. That's what Permission 4 is. It's basically if you've done that earlier work of Stopping, maybe I need to read some self-help books and not be such a shallow person, into the feeling stuff you talked about earlier, into working for 10,000 videos plus on your full self-expression. You start to give that permission to everyone else and here's my vehicle to use for your own self-actualization. It's what our creator wants for us. It's to uplift others. Not to say, what about me and I got this, but to say, what about us? Do you feel that?

Yeah, no, I definitely do.

Yeah, it's palpable because it's what is so needed. It's what's in our face right now at this point in human history. We will not heal the planet on any level unless we heal ourselves. And as we find completion in ourselves, we can take that completion to give that completion to many, many others who really need it. And in doing so, can heal the planet, uplift the planet, get over this petty political division and everything else and just get back to work.

I think we've given everybody a good introduction to you and to the book. So let's talk a little bit about people that want to get more involved. I'm sure there are people listening or watching this podcast today that say, wow, Casey Christopher Carter, what a dude.

I would love to work with that guy in a deeper capacity.

So what options are available for people?

Yeah, so our company Epic Leadership, we offer coaching. I have a team of coaches that coach around the 4 permissions. We also lead— they're going to be every 6 months, but we have an upcoming retreat. We get together, a deep immersive experience, 4 days of permission per day activation, and it's really deep and profound. I love doing the retreats. And we also do organizational coaching and consulting. So we take the 4 permissions frameworks into larger companies, public companies, Fortune 100 companies, and activate these at scale and try to discover what conscious leadership looks like. So yeah, everything is on epicleadership.org or thisepiclife.com.

And then what about your audiobook?

Oh, thank you for asking, my nerdy pet project. So as advertised, I have 2 speeds: off and completely epic. My grandfather gave me this And I can't just have an audiobook. The audiobook for Permission to Glow drops on October 5th, the year anniversary of Permission to Glow, and it's an immersive audiobook. So it has music, guided meditations, ambient binaural waves that align the hemispheres of your brain. I mean, we went—

All done by this guy right here, by the way.

Yeah, it's a production project for sure. I've gone deep into all my skills. I grew up as a producer. I'm a professional musician. I've produced a lot of music. I've written a lot of music, and I've put my entire heart and soul into wrapping this manuscript into something that is truly an experience. That's what I love to do is create experiences for people. And I want people to be gobsmacked listening to the book and not see it coming. So that's what I'm toiling away in my nerdery with right now in my studio.

And when does that come out?

October 5th is the date. October 5th, '22.

Okay.

So if you're listening to this podcast and you like Christopher's voice, you got to check out the pod, the actual audiobook if it's later than October 5th.

Yeah, yeah, and you know, I don't blame you either if my voice drives you crazy because anytime you hear your own voice recorded, you're like, does that really sound like me? But yeah, I was a meditation teacher for years before all the coaching stuff, so I want it to feel like I'm guiding people through it.

That's amazing. Alright, well now is an opportunity for any bonus content. Luke, do Do you have any additional questions for Casey?

I do. One thing that I think we brushed on a little bit, but I would love for you to talk about big honking dreams. That is such a fun topic, and if you could just expound upon that, maybe tell our audience what yours is.

Yeah, so all the time in coaching, you have— the coach's job is to ask, what is your goal? What do we need to create here together? So there needs to be an on-the-court goal to achieve. Something. So, but we can overcorrect in this thinking in business, you know. So if I ask a CEO that I coach, what's the goal this quarter, he'll go into KPIs and metrics and very measurable, stale, clinical things that he's reporting to Wall Street or whatever. And everyone, everyone's energy and eyes in the room are just like glazing over, like business goals, yay. But if I say, what is your big honking dream, they stop and And sometimes their inner child shows up like, oh my gosh, I always wanted to do this thing and I don't know. And sometimes I'll ask female leaders like, what's your secret wish? And one of my coaches who trained me, Jody Larson, she asked me this question in front of a room of people and I got really emotional. What is your secret wish? And my secret wish was to be a spiritual teacher at the intersection of consciousness and business.

Uh-huh.

It's a ridiculous wish to make in front of a room full of people and 4 years later it's my full-time job.

You know what I mean?

So there's power in giving voice to these things and the obvious thing that people will do first is say, oh, I can't pick just one. I have too many. I can't narrow it down or I'm going to pick the wrong one. No, don't overthink this. This isn't about thinking it. Just feel into it. What could it be? And your question, my big honking— so my secret wish was that 4 years ago. My big honking dream is to grow this into— grow Epic Leadership into an 8-figure-plus company that serves tens of thousands, if not millions of individuals, and hundreds, if not thousands of organizations. And that's what we are doing every single day, but the big honkin' dream is to get there, you know, as quick as possible because I'm a speedy rabbit like anybody else.

I have a question.

Yeah.

Follow-up to that. How do you balance the speed You want to attain that big honking goal tomorrow with making— yeah, no, I mean, yeah, that's the question, right?

Yeah, I think it's a million-dollar question. And the way I look at it is we tend to look back on the things we achieve in retrospect and notice what was really important. The timeline typically isn't as important important in retrospect. What was, was that we got to the thing, we created the thing, we felt the thing. The time pressure is necessary. It's vital in the creative project. Having a deadline, one that I just committed to publicly on a podcast, is really important to me. Otherwise, the donuts don't get baked, you know? So that pressure will be ever-present, but don't give in to either/or. Like, it's important to make it a both/and. We need tangible timelines, And we adjust the timelines to make room for something that could be better than we ever envisioned in the first place. But if we're overcommitted to the little timeline at the expense of the big honking dream, we're going to settle for these little crappy money goals or time goals at the expense of something that could have impacted us or the planet. So it's a little bit of a both hand.

Yeah, no, I think it makes sense.

Yeah, a little bit of balance. Yeah, but that time pressure is always there.

I mean, I I'm always impatient.

That's my survival mechanism. I am Speedy Rabbit. My coach joked with me one day. She's like, it's so funny that your brand is all Mr. Permission to Chill, but you spend 5 minutes with you and you realize you are anything but. I'm like, how dare you, Christine?

In front of my colleagues? Come on, Christine.

It's messed up. But she's so— she's a ninja and she calls it. She tells the truth. But it's true. I have this urgency to get this work out. But I can either operate from a healthy place with that or from a frenetic, scattered, pushy place, and I don't want to do that anymore. I'd rather be thoughtful and chill while also having the drive and the urgency.

And it's relative, right? It's your speed that keeps it healthy.

Yeah, and I can— we all can feel when we're operating from an unhealthy place, when our stomach is empty and we're overcaffeinated and we're kind of pitting out We got that frantic, like, I got to make something happen today. It's like maniacal. And you're like, why doesn't any prospect want to talk to me or buy from me? It's like, because you're giving that vibe. You know what I mean? Versus the being more, you know, having a healthier pace with things.

Glowing.

Glowing.

Glowing.

Yeah.

Yeah. Glowing is more about allowing and less about pushing. We don't need to push and perform and prove. We can allow and surrender. Surrender and receive. And it's a hard thing to learn for men because men, the masculine energy is to push and achieve and do and conquer. And the divine feminine is more about allowing, surrender, empowering. And that's what women on the planet right now are here to help us learn. And that's what will heal all of us is to give in to more of that, you know, traditionally unconventional thinking.

Hmm.

I've got one more. This is a question that you hear a lot, but I always love listening to the answers, so it's not cliché for me. If you could give your younger self, maybe early 20s target audience, if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?

One piece of advice. It all comes back to me to loving yourself. You know, my breakthrough in writing a book around inner child stuff. I have this like third-grade picture of myself, this gigantic bowl cut. It's just ridiculous. And I always wanted to make fun of that kid. But what I didn't realize was that it was that kid's tenacity and belief in the dream and the creativity that you could have a family and a music career and have a music career and a writing career and a coaching career and impact and all the things that I need to feel fulfilled. It's that kid who was able to do it, and he deserves respect, and he deserves love. You know, that if people around him weren't able to always see how special he was— there were a lot, but at some point I stopped listening to those because I didn't want to believe I was that lovable. You know, so I would tell myself just to hug yourself and love yourself, and you get to be you. I love that.

It's always a tough thing. It's a tough thing to do.

I know.

And why is it so hard? It's so perverse and weird. Like, you know, there could be people listening to this, eyes rolling, thinking like, oh, that sounds so namby-pamby or soft skills or whatever. But you try it. It's some of the scariest, most confronting work you can do, you know. So is it soft skills or that's the real stuff?

What an epic way to wrap up today's podcast.

As advertised. Epic all around.

High fives to Sean, Chris, Woo!

High fives.

Nick, Luke, thank you for spending an amazing day together and bringing this book to life and making me feel, you know, just so connected to this work. I'm really grateful for you guys. I love the work you guys do.

You're a boss. So one more time, for those that want to learn more about you and follow you on socials, check out your website, where should they go? What should they do?

Yeah, you can check us out anywhere at epicleadership.org or on Instagram It's my name, Christopher Carter, or Permission to Glow book.

All right, that's a wrap.

Mic drop.

There we go.

Thanks for respecting the equipment.