How To Stop Founder Chaos With One Breath with Chris Franks

Ambition can build a company, win a race, and change your life, but it can also quietly pull you away from yourself. We sit down with Chris Franks, founder and CEO, University of Colorado faculty member, author, podcast host, and six-time Ironman, to unpack a tension so many high performers live with: the push to achieve versus the pull toward stillness, presence, and peace. Chris calls himself a “cowboy Buddhist,” and he makes a compelling case that calm is not the opposite of drive, it’s what makes drive sustainable.

We talk about the mindset shift from chasing outcomes to focusing on what you can actually control: your effort, your ethics, your relationships, and your day-to-day practice. Chris shares a dark moment from his founder journey, a deal that fell apart and led to a crushing financial and emotional crisis, and how that experience reshaped his definition of success. If you’ve ever felt like you’re only as good as your last win, this conversation offers a more resilient way to lead and live.

You’ll also get practical tools for founder mental health and sustainable leadership: daily mindfulness or breathwork, daily gratitude, compassion practices like metta and Tonglen, and a values-based “zoom out” to reduce restlessness and burnout. We challenge hustle culture myths, talk about diminishing returns, and make the case for rest and recovery as a real performance strategy. If you want to build big goals without losing your center, subscribe, share this with a driven friend, and leave a review with the one practice that helps you stay grounded.

Transcript

Ambition Versus Stillness Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Delless, there's a tension at the center of almost every ambitious life, I would say. That the drive that builds the company, finishes the race, achieves the thing, and the part of us that just wants to be still, to be present, to be peace, right? And most of us, we assume that we have we have to pick up one thing at least, like be a driven achiever, to be calm, to feel guilty, or maybe wanting more at all at the same time as well. But what if those two forces were never actually the opposites, the enemies? What if the stillness was the very first thing that made the striving sustainable? Yeah. So today we are with someone who lives in exactly that meeting point. Yeah. So hey dear listeners, welcome back to another powerful episode of Mind Meets Machine. I'm your host, Avek, and today's conversation brings together the two worlds that we usually keep apart. Like the world of building and leading, and the world of inner stillness and the presence. So we are talking about how to pursue real ambition without losing your center. And at the same time, what is the next generation of founders and leaders most need to learn? So if you're someone who wants to achieve and stay grounded, then this one is for you. And my guest today embodies this blend in a way that it's really, I find genuinely fascinating. So please welcome my guest, Chris Franks. So welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. And it's a topic I I like talking about, and I don't think we talk about enough.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Yeah, exactly. Lovely. And thank you so much for joining us today, Chris. And uh so, like there is like before we delve deep into it, I did quickly love to introduce with Chris. So Chris is the founder and CEO and faculty member at the University of Colorado, six-time Iron Man, and author, podcast host, and a self-described cowboy Buddhist and student of the Dharma. Here to teach and serve the next generation of business leaders. Yeah. So why do we? Welcome to the show again, Chris. Thank you so much. It

Hungry And Humble Leadership

SPEAKER_00 2:00

is again a pleasure. Amazing. Amazing. So, Chris, like uh I want to start with this contradiction that in how you describe yourself as a cowboy Buddhist, like a CEO and six-time Iron Man who's also a student of Dharma. I think like most people assume that the those drives are just the opposite of one another. And you are either relentless, ambitious, or kind of deeply centered. So, what do people uh most get wrong about it?

SPEAKER_01 2:27

I think you're discussing one of probably the largest and most difficult tensions to overcome in the life of most founders and entrepreneurs, which is this idea that you have to be hungry and there is ambition. And ambition is this idea that you believe, particularly for founders, we know the statistics, 80% of companies fail. Yeah. You are hungry. You believe that you can be successful where 80% of people fail. There is a level of bravado and drive and energy there that is call it maybe a little bit silly or nuts, right? It's maybe a little insane. And on the secondary component is that the longer that you are around, particularly if you're a student of the Dharma, you want to work on trying to be centered and understanding that the reality is what the reality is. And you don't necessarily always have control over the outcomes. That tension is incredibly difficult to overcome. And it's been one of the centerpieces that I've really tried to understand through the last probably decade or so of my life, which is how can you balance hungry and humble? Those are those the two H's. Hungry of sing and then but but being humble enough to understand that a lot of this stuff is completely out of your control. There is no simple, easy example, but I think that like so many things within the mindfulness work, understanding that that is a conflict and understanding there's inherent tension there and working to try to find balance is is the path.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Amazing, amazing. So, like uh like I I asked you about this. So I mean, when someone stops seeing the ambition and the stillness, which is obviously they feel their opposites, when they stop seeing this, then what do you

Letting Go Improves Outcomes

SPEAKER_00 4:13

think? What shifts in them, like how they leave and eat?

SPEAKER_01 4:17

I think I think that there's a myth here, and I think it's a pervasive myth, which is you have to have that hunger and you have to have that drive to be a successful entrepreneur. And you have to have that to be able to be successful. And just like so many other things, it's it's actually the reverse is true, which is there is a sense that for every founder that you want to be a person that is changing the world and changing an outcome. And we call it high-agency people that believe that they can, they have agency over situation. But the the myth is that you can't do that in a way that continues to be centered and humble and accepting of reality the way it is. I found the exact opposite, which is the moment that I started to let go of the things that I couldn't control about, not things that I couldn't control, I actually had improved outcomes. So I was became a better founder, I became a better leader, I became a better CEO. And secondarily, this whole notion about being compassionate to both yourself and to others has become a true centerpiece in how I lead and how I lead companies, which is yes, there's still this energy, there's still drive, there's still ambition, but also feeling compassionate about all the parties in a business, including my customers. That notion of being having compassion and trying empathy for those people is incredibly important.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

Exactly. Exactly. I mean, obviously, there is something that you said I want to hold for a second. It's like that what you said about stillness is not a kind of obstacle or break on the ambition, but almost as a thing that makes the ambition clean and sustainable. So I think people who are listening who are, and obviously there are a lot of people, a lot of driven people who are listening, have felt that torn between achieving and being in practice. So I guess that is that'll definitely help them.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

Yeah. Yeah, I think it's it's it's a false dichotomy. This is this idea that ambition is something where you can't be centered and you can't do that. I think if you look at at least at least the way that I understand the Dharma is there's nothing there that says that you can't go out and try to change the world, but you do need to accept what is real and what is reality. So a couple of things that come up. First is a continuum mindfulness practice is something that allows you to start to block out a lot of the noise. And there's so much noise in being a founder. There's so many things I call them the nasty shoulds. You should be doing this, you should be further along, you shouldn't have raised more money, et cetera. And so it allows you to start to see a little bit more clearly what's the stories that are being told and what's the reality of your business, what's the reality of the market, what's the reality of your product or market fit, and start to block out some of those other components. I think it's that is equally, if not more so, important than this idea of living with compassion and living with compassion for yourself and others. I think that those two things can be held together. I it's hard. There are moments where I certainly fall out of that, but I do feel like it's something that, just like so much of the mindfulness, it's just a continued practice and continued to working on those things. Exactly.

Redefining Success After Failure

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Exactly true.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

And also just to go deep into this, like a lot of high achievers or founders, especially, like are chasing some things that they cannot quite name it. The the kind of the next milestone, the next mean. Always, I mean, on the go and more and more and more. But and your practice of Vidharma is which is the I mean, which sits at the question of why we chase at all, right? That why part. So, what is the deeper pattern that you see all beneath beneath all those relentless striving for something more that most ambitious people don't see in themselves? And what a big question.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

I think I'll I could talk about my journey and I think it's maybe a little bit easier. Maybe there's some wisdom there for other people, which is I started as a first-time founder. I started with, well, first of all, epic failure, like, you know, failure after failure after failure. But I started with this idea of success, and I wanted to become a founder because I wanted to be successful. And I couldn't even necessarily have told you what that meant. After going through a number of business failures and keeping at it, what do you start to realize is that there is no way, there's no way that I can predict whether your company is going to be successful or my company's successful. There's none. There is, there is almost no data that shows whether or not, if you come to me with a business idea about whether or not business is going to be successful, and all you need to do for a proof point on that is look at the venture capital returns over the past decade. They're almost non-existent. You could have boot your money in the S P 500 and done better. And so this idea that you want to be successful and you want this outcome, where I switch my thinking along the way is the work of being a founder and the work of starting and building companies and leading companies is the reward. And so this is, I think, something that's very, very prevalent at Dharma, which is there is no destination. If you love the work of being a founder and if you love the work of creating and building, that's the reward. And so success then is the ability to continue to do that. So I had to redefine what I consider to be successful along the way, which is just the ability to get up and get to do this job, which is a reward into itself. It's an amazing, it's the best worst job in the world. And it gives you a sense of clarity and purpose that the vast majority of professionals don't have. So I've changed my success now, is the opportunity to continue to get to sit in the seat. And it's in something that when you learn it, you can become incredibly grateful and humble about. Because it is a very, it's a important place, it's an important seat, and it's one that's incredibly meaningful where you get to experience things that the vast majority of professionals don't.

SPEAKER_00 10:11

Interesting. Yep. Ooh. So and was there a moment in your life that maybe in business or out onto the Iron Man goes where you came face to face with it?

SPEAKER_01 10:23

I mean, it's funny because every time I hear the opening, the story about being a five-time founder and a six-time Iron Man and all these really successful components, I always kind of chuckle to myself because the most impactful part of this business journey for me was a terrible failure. So I went and I sold a company. I sold it. We had a contract, and to make a very, very long story short, the company that purchased our software never paid us. And so we ended up through multiple rounds of a federal lawsuit, very, very difficult financial time for myself and my family. And, you know, for all intents and purposes, it was an emotional crisis for me. I felt like a failure. I felt like somebody who had let my family down, who let my team down. And why, why didn't I notice this? Why couldn't I have stopped this component? And it was a dark, dark time for me. And dealing with that failure, first of all, was one of the things that really drew me to a mindfulness practice that became more of a Buddhist practice, but it started this journey of trying to figure out what I defined as success. Because for all intents and purposes, I signed a deal that was going to be worth millions of dollars. And then that success turned into a terrible failure. It became about how I framed that and realizing that I didn't have that control. I could have done a couple of things different that could have minimized that, but at the end of the day, that was not something that I had the ability to figure out was going to happen. So letting that piece go and starting to focus on the things you can't control, which is just the day-to-day of this job. So yeah, I mean, it's it's a if you spend any time with founders and entrepreneurs, as I know you spend a lot of time with founders and entrepreneurs, there's always a level of failure, disappointment, struggle that is just directly below the surface. And it's part of this journey. You will not be a founder and entrepreneur without failing. It's part of it. It's just inherent in the job. How you deal with that really defines how well you'll be successful long term. And that's my goal. I want founders to be successful long term. I want them to continue to come back and do this job again. The world needs founders. We need entrepreneurs. But if this story, if we're constantly comparing it as this story that is false, it's a myth about you just start a company and you're wildly successful, then you're gonna leave because you end up thinking that you're a failure. When the reality is you're not, you're just you're just part of a journey that is an awesome journey. So long as you don't mind the ups and downs, it can kind of smooth out the business cycle, so to speak.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

So, and if you talk about the our our

Finding Your Why And Values

SPEAKER_00 12:54

daily life, right? The daily version of us, because most people listening are not running the companies or something. But they all feel this push and pull part time spirit. So for someone who is trying to be both ambitious and grounded in our in in in their day-to-day life, what do you think? Like, where does that tension show up most in their normal day to day-to-day life?

SPEAKER_01 13:16

For me, I think that the work to be done, and I'll answer it in sort of an indirect way, but I'll get directly to the question, which is I think that deciding and understanding your why, if people call your mission your personal mission, or et cetera, is I don't I don't necessarily tend to think of it that way. I tend to believe that every person on the planet has a special set of skills, abilities, and talents. And all of those skills, abilities, and talents are equal to everybody else's skills, abilities, and talents. There's no such thing as a truly extraordinary human being. You just have the abilities that you have. And your job is to figure out how to best leverage those to make the world a better place. I think that there's so many people get caught up in the fact that maybe their why doesn't necessarily align with what it is that they're doing day in, day out basis. That can be cause a lot of tension, internal tension in what you're doing. I would suggest that so if that's the case, if truly your values, what you are, if you're doing something that doesn't align with those values, it's pretty much incumbent on you to go do something else. Because your work, and not only your work, but your life, if it doesn't align with that core of who you are, why you exist, and what it is that you value most in the world, I think it can become really, really challenging. And so most of that will show up for people not as that clearly stated. It'll show up for people as there's just tension and they're feeling unhappy at work and they're feeling frustrated and they're feeling like they're not moving forward. And it's kind of this restlessness. When I start to feel that restlessness, I've learned down through the years that that's the moment when I need to just take a step back and go, wait, is the work I'm doing aligned with my why and where I want to be going? And if I can figure out a way where this piece of my life fits into my long-term vision of what I want, that's what it can become successful. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

So, so and in those moments, uh, what is the one small practice or maybe something from Dharma or from your own life that helps someone stay centered without

Mindfulness And Gratitude Practices

SPEAKER_00 15:15

losing it? Like, what do you think?

SPEAKER_01 15:16

Well, you're assuming I haven't, I'm not losing it, which is, you know, most days I'm okay, but there's some days. There's there's two pieces that I believe are really critically important, and both of them have been now backed and verified by different scientific studies. And the first is a daily practice of mindfulness, whether or not that's using headspace, whether or not it's listening to music and sitting and doing breathing exercises, breath work, whatever that is. I've chosen the more sort of spiritual end of that, but it's been proven the fact that if you can have a daily routine as some sort of meditation practice, it just lowers the anxiety to a point where you can start to listen and hear things a little bit better. Second piece is a daily practice of gratitude. And where this can come together is in metapractice or sometimes Tong Lin, which is really starting to look at what you're grateful for, look at what is out there and wishing other people well, wishing that you could take that away. Those two things are very related in my mind, which is I'm I start to think about other people, people that I love and people that I interact with on a daily basis and try to be grateful for those people in my life. And it's just a moment where you can kind of slow down a little bit and appreciate the journey. And the real work comes when you can start to appreciate the stuff that's not even all that fun. And it can be a little bit painful. But if you know it's part of the individual journey, it can become something that is meaningful. And I'll give you a very basic example. I hate doing the administrative accounting. I hate doing the bookkeeping stuff of the job. It's just it's minutia. I don't really like it that much. But if I can reframe that as an important part of my journey to be able to get the company where I want it to go, where I can continue to build on the good stuff we're doing as a company, that helps me be grateful even for the stuff I don't really like to do. Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

So that that's that's something really, really uh great to hear from you. And also one more thing is like on the on, I mean, for the person who's deep into the grind already, who feels that they have lost their center somewhere along the way, where do they start finding their way

Recovering From Burnout And Overwork

SPEAKER_00 17:25

back?

SPEAKER_01 17:25

It's I I would say continually to revisit an exercise. And if you want a very practical advice, go read the work of Dr. Brene Brown. She has a core values thing, and I I believe it's one of her first couple of books. I I think it's the power of vulnerability. But core values and why, if you can continue to revisit those and try to identify what that grind is and what is does what is fitting within the things that you value most and what is not, it helps do a very, very human thing, which is to do a cognitive reframe, a zoom out. And second component there is something that else entirely, which is if you're in the grind, if you're in the day-to-day hard work of whatever it is that you're doing, there is very real science around burnout and overwork and now quiet quitting, which is a epidemic. Part of the practice of mindfulness is realizing when you are starting to experience diminishing returns, when you're starting to get burned out, when you're starting to not find any joy or meaning in your work. Part of that is just to be able to say, can you, if possible, not everybody has this ability, but can you take a step back and rest and recover? It is so critically important. We as entrepreneurs and founders tell these stories about working 90 hours a week, and there's no, you don't take weekends and you don't take vacations. And the reality is the science is completely opposite of that. What it says is that you're working those hours, but they're not productive. And a way better approach is for you to take a little bit of time, take some rest, actually try to recover both mentally and physically, and you will be more productive along that path. And so uh, and I understand the grind is real, and particularly early in my career, it was I worked consistently 80 and 90 hours a week because I had to. But you will start to burn out and you'll start to see diminishing returns. And so if you can find a way to do whatever practice you is and sleep, try to get like you, Avic, get to bed. It's late, you know? It's 11:30. Try to get, you know, a good nice rest. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 19:37

That that that's uh really interesting, yeah. Uh I mean, not only interesting, I mean it is very, very important as well. And I I know like sometimes it happens, sometimes it not happens, but that's not a good thing, definitely. So I mean uh it it really reframes everything. The way you said about uh leading from grounded to rather than from the constant urgency. So I think a lot of young leaders who are uh coming into the picture needed to hear this because that you don't have to sacrifice your soul to build something that's very, very real. So and one more part which I feel nobody is actually talking about and uh nobody puts in uh in the in the founder highlight, like the hard stretches, uh the the burnout, failure, and what we say, right? Like where where your body or your business breaks down and the times the center you worked so hard to find that to find uh just slips away. And you have worked in that long era of building and of training as well. So I I would ask you like, how do you stay grounded when ambition and life knocks you, knocks you down or kind of knocks you flat?

Self Compassion And Closing Advice

SPEAKER_01 20:41

I was hoping you could tell me the answer to that. My my joke is that I can leave a meditation retreat, be perfectly grounded and rested, and get into traffic and then be completely not grounded and be angry and competitive and want to yell at people that are in the car. To me, and there's several quotes that I love here, but they all boil back to the same thing, which is this is called a practice for a reason. It's not an achievement. You don't get to this place where it's like, oh, suddenly, you know, other than the Buddha, not a whole lot of people have reached this complete state of enlightenment. And so the rest of us mere mortals understand that there's this constant version of trying to fall in and out of some sense of groundedness and mindfulness. And I think that the piece that changed for me was when I realized that it's okay because not being mindful and not having a good practice and not being centered, I started to feel guilty about. And that increased the cycle. So I started to feel guilty and then shameful about oh, I I should be meditating more, I should be feeling more grounded. And so just coming back to the practice and coming back to the very, very fundamentals, coming back to whatever it is that you do to get to a place that is more and more centered, and also realizing and be capacity. Passionate to yourself to know that that's not always possible. Sometimes life is going to happen in a way where it's going to make us not ground it and fall out. I mean, we're in the World Cup. Except for mostly there's winners and losers. If your team loses, sometimes, you know, sometimes you get a little frustrated. Sometimes you get sad, mad, angry. It happens. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

And I totally agree with you. It's all about the habits that we build. And it's not a one-day thing. And it's about habit, practice, everything. So yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

It's it's the journey, isn't it? And it's like part of the beautiful thing about the dharmas is it talks about it's it's just the road, man. Once you get on the road, it's on a road. There's gonna be bumps, it's gonna be hills, it's gonna go up and down.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

And it's a daily thing. I mean, and and it should also come like when you have that habit and when you're following this daily, that inner feeling will also tell you that suppose one day I'm missing something, it it will make you uh feel that something you are missing today. Just focus on. So I mean think that thing happened with me. So that is uh my take. So yeah. And thank you so much for sharing that. And I'll definitely uh want to uh ask you about uh if you have to give one concrete advice to all the listeners today, what that would be.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

One piece of advice, well, I mean, yeah, don't don't go be an entrepreneur, don't be a founder if you can help if you can be happy doing something else, please go do that. No, I would say that the one piece of advice, and certainly something that I wish I would have done, and this is lacking within the founder community, is to develop self-compassion. You matter, and your health matters, and your mental health matters, and your physical health matters. And because founders are people that tend to be externally focused, we tend to do things that are not always healthy for ourselves. And so I would remind founders and entrepreneurs and people that are aspiring business leaders, we need you. The world needs leaders. We need you, we need compassionate people to continue to build great companies that are based on acceptance and love and all humanity and not this myth that great businesses are built off of control and severe management. And so to do that job, you need to take care of yourself. And so try to, if possible, have some compassion for your journey and to your point, Avic. Start to notice when you're falling out of that center. Start to notice those things and try to try to do the simple practices to keep yourself more grounded and centered. Because not only being a founder or a leader, just this life will continue to try to pull that stretch you.

SPEAKER_02 24:43

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

And you know, don't get pissed off when at yourself when you fall out of, well, you know, fall off the saddle, so to speak.

SPEAKER_02 24:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Because we're all gonna fall off the saddle. That's what that's what being human's about. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

Agreed. So uh and and they can listen to us find you.

SPEAKER_01 24:59

Best place is LinkedIn. I'm LinkedIn slash in slash Chris Franks. Uh connect with me there. I am always open to connect and support founders and entrepreneurs. Genuinely the reason why I feel like I exist. I feel like I'm here to help business leaders and entrepreneurs. And so if there's anything I can do to support you on your journey, let me know.

SPEAKER_00 25:19

Amazing. So, Dayless, what I'll do is I'll put all the links, details, everything into the show notes for your easy reference. And I have to say, thank you so much, Chris. This is, I say, something really genuinely rare about a person who can hold the kind of start line and uh the meditation and uh with equal seriousness. And I think a lot of people, a lot of driven people, I'd say, are uh leaving this conversation feeling like they don't have to spit, they don't have to spit everything or themselves in too. So well, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:52

Thank you for having me. Thank you for having the conversation. I think it's a continually important conversation. I love that your podcast focused on us.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

Lovely. And and the listeners, like if you were listening right now, maybe you'll be listening later as well. So if you have been uh you if you have been caught between uh chasing more and kind of longing for peace, then here's definitely I would want to say like the next time you feel yourself striving hard, then just pause for a second. Pause for one breath and just find your center first and then keep going from there. Because ambition and stillness were never the opposite, never the enemies. The strongest people learn to actually carry forward or carry both. So, with this hope, this is your host of and this is Mind Meets Machine. I'll see you next time in the next episode. Thank you so much.