Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Christopher Sanders. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Christopher, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?
I am from a very rural part of Michigan, where my first job came at only 13 years old de-tassling corn. A bunch of teenagers walk between the rows of corn and pull the top tassel off each corn stalk leaving every 5th row untouched in order to propagate the crop. It was hard labor for a minimum wage which was only around $4 and some change at the time. That was the start of my professional life where I was able to put into practice an ideal I was raised on: never start anything you can’t finish. The many different jobs I held throughout high school continued to foster my newly formed work ethic. I worked as a ‘lot boy’ at an RV sales business cleaning RV’s, filling propane tanks, and maintaining the lot. I was a bus boy, bar-back, and server, and even worked as an installer for a commercial/auto/residential glass shop. Then I joined the Army where the solid foundation of my work ethic was reinforced over four and half years including a year in combat. The self discipline I learned in the military topped off my work ethic which has been solid since I left the military almost twenty years ago.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I have been acting and performing professionally since leaving the military almost twenty years ago. The first ten years of my career were spent cutting my teeth in Chicago training at the Second City Conservatory and working for almost 8 years with a theater company that performed for colleges and military installations. Out here in Los Angeles I’ve found commercial success appearing in campaigns for companies like AT&T, Hyundai, and FanDuel. I’ve also appeared in some of the biggest shows on television including NCIS: Los Angeles and Yellowstone, and will be appearing in the upcoming new show Paradise City with Sterling K Brown.
The experience of making someone or a group of people feel something; laugh, cry, or cheer together is just exquisite. There’s nothing else like it. That’s probably the part of my job I find the most special. I get to play pretend and have people watch me do it and, if I’m doing it well, be entertained by it.
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?
Patience, Discipline, Initiative. Patience and discipline kind of work together. You have to be disciplined in order to have the patience to wait for the right moment, but also take initiative to make the right moment happen if it isn’t coming around. Certainly being in a leadership position can help develop both initiative and patience. The military is not the only industry that operates on a “hurry up and wait” mentality. A leader in almost any organization will meet this head on and needs to develop the patience for all that waiting, but also feel empowered to make a command decision and take the initiative to get things done when the waiting is taking too long. Both of these qualities were fostered by my self discipline which I developed by setting schedules and sticking to them. And it doesn’t hurt to always operate under the military or Lombardi mentality of “if you are five minutes early, you are already ten minutes late”.
What was the most impactful thing your parents did for you?
They let me become my own person. They never hovered or did my homework for me. If I started something I had to finish it. And if I got myself into trouble I had to find my way out of it. They were fully supportive of anything I wanted to try and let me learn for myself if it wasn’t for me.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @christopherrsanders
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chrissanderscomedy/
