Meet Chris Clews

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Chris Clews. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Chris below.

Chris , we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.

Ah the origin story.

I spent over 20 years in various corporate marketing roles and found myself in a job that just wasn’t working out for me. I was having a self-pity party of one over my job situation and watching the movie – The Breakfast Club – when the character John Bender said, “Screws fall out all of the time. The world’s an imperfect place.” I sat up and said to myself, “My screws have fallen out. I’m in an imperfect place. What am I going to do to put them back in?” Continuing to flip channels, I stopped on another 80s classic, The Outsiders and literally jumped off my couch when I heard the character Johnny Cade say, “You still have a lot of time to make yourself be what you want.” Yes, I do still have a lot of time to make myself be what I want. Now what is that exactly.

I was 46 years old and deep into the marketing career that I had worked so hard to build but it wasn’t who I wanted to be. I spent the next 18 months burning the proverbial candle at both ends working 60-hour weeks at a Head of Marketing position while writing my first book, building out a website, working on my speaker content and searching for keynote speaking opportunities.

As I write this today, I now have three books in my series – “The Ultimate Series on Essential Life & Work Lessons from ‘80s Pop Culture – and I’m a full-time keynote speaker having spoken to organizations such as DHL, VISA, Penn Medicine, Duke Health, PoolCorp, University of Florida, American Marketing Association (Iowa) and many more. My keynote is titled “Everything I Need To Know (For Life and Work), I Learned from ‘80s Pop Culture”. It’s a fun, interactive, unique, and relatable look at all things workplace culture, leadership, teamwork, communications and life through the lens of ‘80s pop culture, specifically the movies and music. I am as happy as I’ve ever been and feel so fortunate to do what I love each and every day.

Additionally, I find my purpose in the support of animal rescue which has been passed down for generations within my family beginning with my Grandmother who was a supporter of animal rescue back in the 1940s and ’50s. I donate a portion of the proceeds from my book sales and speaking events to Wonder Paws rescue, the organization that saved my pittie named Bodhi. I also transport dogs in need of a safe place to heal and find a forever home (mostly the bully breeds) for Off The Streetz Bully Rescue and when traveling for keynotes I always looks for a rescue/shelter in the area where I can volunteer my time.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

Professionally I’m focused on growing my speaking business so I can reach as many people as possible with my content around lessons for life and work we can learn from ’80s pop culture via my keynote – “Everything I Need to Know (For Life and Work), I Learned from ’80s Pop Culture.” I’m also starting to think about beginning work on a 4th book in my series – The Ultimate Series on Essential Work & Life Lessons from ’80s Pop Culture. Writing a book can be a very isolating process and challenging for an extrovert like me, so I have to be a point in my life where my focus is on that and that only. I’m not quite there yet 🙂

From a legacy and advocacy perspective, I’m focused on my work with animal rescue and in particular rescue/shelter dogs. As I mentioned earlier, animal rescue has been in my family since my grandmother started doing it in the 1940s and 1950s. It’s been passed down through the generations and our family has only had rescues for almost 90 years. They can’t speak so we have to speak for them.

From volunteering my time to transport dogs to safety from bad situations to donating supplies and looking for opportunities to volunteer at shelters in cities where I have keynote speaking engagements, animal rescue will always be a priority for me. I never had kids so I won’t have little footprints in the sand filling mine when I’m gone so my legacy will be in the animals that I had a small hand in helping find their very best life. All of them deserve to be loved just like us.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Three areas that were most impactful in my journey and can be in anyone’s journey:

1. Staying positive regardless of the challenges that were presented. Using levity and humor to face challenges just like John McClane did in Die Hard.

2. Loving what you do. I mean truly loving it. A lot of people like what they do and I did for over 20 years but the chasm between liking what you do and loving what you do is wider than you think. As Henry David Thoreau said – “The mass of men (people) lead lives of quiet desperation.” I was one of them and didn’t realize it until I truly found what I love.

3. Just be you. Don’t sacrifice who you are for anything or anyone. As Del Griffith (John Candy) said in Planes, Trains and Automobiles – “I like me. My wife likes me. My customers like me. ‘Cause I’m the real article. What you see is what you get.” Just be you.

As far as people who are early in their own journey, this is the advice I would give:

In the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the main character and ‘80s pop culture poet laureate Ferris Bueller said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop to look around once in a while you could miss it.” I was sixteen when that movie came out, so I didn’t really appreciate that line when I first heard it, but it is absolutely true. I recently turned 54 and although I am at a totally awesome point in my life, I can’t believe how quickly a half a century of living can come and go. No matter how busy your career and your life get – and they will get busy – always make time to stop and look around. You’ll never regret taking a moment to look around and appreciate all of it.

Another piece of advice from an ‘80s movie. In the movie Dead Poets Society, Robin Williams plays John Keating who is a teacher at an elite boarding school. The kids he teaches are told by their families that they will be exactly who the family demands they be. They do not get to take their own path. Keating says nonsense boys and I’ll paraphrase here but he says to them, “…the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.” Do everything your heart tells you to do. We get so focused on what others think and what our life is supposed to look like based on perceived notions, that we often forget that we should always be the author of our own story. Your life journey is unique. Your life journey is yours. Don’t ever let someone else dictate it for you.

What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?

Since my career and my content are centered around lessons from ’80s pop culture, I’m going to reference a lesson for stress management from the wise and wonderful Mr. Miyagi from the 1984 movie, The Karate Kid.

Ah, the great Mr. Miyagi and his Zen approach to all things life and living through his delicate work on his banzai tree and his philosophically crafted sayings like “Don’t forget to breathe. Very important.”

When Mr. Miyagi is training him in the basics of self-defense, Daniel becomes frustrated at the pace and the types of exercises he is being asked to do, such as washing Mr. Miyagi’s car: “First, wash all car. Then wax … Wax on, right hand. Wax off, left hand. Wax on. Wax off. Breathe in through nose, out the mouth. Wax on. Wax off. Don’t forget to breathe. Very important.”

“Don’t forget to breathe. Very important.” When feeling overwhelmed or stressed, it’s good to recall that quote from Mr. Miyagi, take a step back and take time to breathe. And I don’t mean the involuntary act of physical breathing. “Breathing” can be taking a walk, playing with your kids, having a cup of tea, working out, playing with your dog (or cat), meditating and anything else you can think of that will take your mind of off the person or thing that is causing you stress.

If you are a leader in your workplace, it’s important that your team members know that they can take that time to “breathe” whenever they need it (not just PTO or the standard lunch break) and it is equally important that you take time to breathe as well. A stressful environment is unhealthy for everyone and creates a substantially less productive environment.

All of this is to say that the workplace and life stress signs are almost always there – both mentally and physically – but we rarely heed the warnings … thinking that if we just plow through, it will alleviate itself. But stress really is like dehydration, and by the time you realize you have it, it’s too late. As a place to start, when we feel stress at work or in life, we would all be very wise to embrace the words of the great Mr. Miyagi when he said, “Don’t forget to breathe. Very important.”

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