Alright look:

There isn’t anything special about Chris that isn’t also special about you–he just made more mistakes and learned more lessons earlier than you did.

He completed a Master’s degree in engineering a long time ago, and immediately went to work for a start up company that failed six months after he got there. Shortly after, he went to work for a larger company that did not fail, and instead learned to develop and launch products at a dizzying rate that led to a lot of success, but also a lot of burnout.

He took some time off, moved to Europe, became a consultant, and then helped found another start up, using the lessons he learned before. That one was successful, and exited in 2007.

Chris took the rest of that year off because he was tired.

Then he joined another massive company and learned how to run teams spread across multiple continents, time zones, languages, and styles of breakfast. After that, he tried another start-up that… didn’t go great. He went to an innovation think tank after that, learned some more by working with what are now household names (you’re welcome, Elon) and then joined a tiny backwater division of another big company.

He turned that backwater in to an engineering powerhouse and it went so well that they spun that company off and after that, Chris became a consultant.

Now he teaches individuals and companies how to be successful in a much straighter line than he learned the same lessons in.

He also somehow got an MBA at some point, but he doesn’t like to talk about it.