Balls and Brains: Chris Woods on Fear, Strengths and Reinvention

Overcoming fear starts with facing what holds you back and naming the strengths that move you forward. In this episode of Reignite Resilience, hosts Natalie Davis and Pamela Cass sit down with Chris Woods, certified professional coach, author of Balls and Brains, and former four time global C-suite executive and Google sales leader, to unpack how fear shapes careers, relationships and self worth, and how to trade fear for strength.

Chris grew up the youngest of five in a tough blue collar Boston neighborhood near Tufts University. His father died at 40, and this fact planted a fear in Chris that stayed with him for decades. He spent his twenties, thirties and part of his forties working to pay off student loans and build a career, driven less by ambition and more by a ticking clock he believed he could not escape. At 40, Chris contracted cardiac Lyme disease. His heart stopped in the hospital. Doctors brought him back, installed a pacemaker, and told him he had another 40 or 50 years to live. This moment forced Chris to ask a new question: what happens after you survive the fear you spent your life running from?

The answer became Balls and Brains, Chris Woods's framework for helping people, especially men, name their fears and own their strengths instead of hiding from both. Chris walks Natalie and Pamela through the Enneagram and the Clifton StrengthsFinder, two tools he uses with coaching clients to map where fear shows up and where natural strength already lives. He shares the life changing question he borrowed from coach Peter Crone: who would you be in the absence of your concerns? And he explains why he coaches clients toward evolution, not revolution, when they are ready to change direction.

In This Episode:

• Why Chris Woods named his coaching framework Balls and Brains
• How growing up in a tough Boston neighborhood shaped his relationship with resilience
• What happened when his heart stopped from cardiac Lyme disease at age 40
• The most common fears holding high achieving men back from playing bigger
• How the Enneagram and Clifton StrengthsFinder work together to map fear and talent

Chris Woods now runs a CEO consulting business, helping leaders align who they are with what they do so success feels energizing instead of exhausting. His story proves fear does not disappear. You learn to work with it instead of running from it.

The Quiet Gift: A Journey of Self Worth and Resilience is now available for download as an audible.  Check it out!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

All of us reach a point in time where we are depleted and need to somehow find a way to reignite the fire within. But how do we spark that flame? Welcome to Reignite Resilience, where we will venture into the heart of the human spirit. We'll discuss the art of reigniting our passion and strategies to stoke our enthusiasm. And now here are your hosts, Natalie Davis and Pamela Cass to another episode of the Reignite Resilience Podcast.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

I am your co-host, Natalie Davis, and so excited to be back with all of you today. And joining me, of course, is your co-host Pam Cass. Hello, Pam. How are you?

SPEAKER_03 0:57

I am fantastic. It is Thursday. We're almost through this week.

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Exactly. It is. It's um and it's a short week with a holiday at the end, and it is officially summer, and I feel like it's everything is just a whirlwind.

SPEAKER_03 1:12

So it is rolling really, really fast, and I'm just trying to hang on.

SPEAKER_02 1:17

Exactly. Exactly. Well, I love that. Um, I love this time of year. I'm just happy that my voice is back. I have been talking quite a bit over the last week. So I got a little bit of a hint of a raspy something another. I'm not trying it, it just happens. So you're welcome to our listeners. If you hear that raspiness come out, you're welcome.

SPEAKER_03 1:37

We know what it is.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

Anyway, today we have a wonderful guest that is joining us, Pam. So I will turn it over to you to let our listeners know who's joining us today.

SPEAKER_03 1:47

Yes, absolutely. So today we have Chris Woods. He is a certified professional coach, author of Balls and Brains, and a former four-time Global C-suite executive and Google sales leader. Through his book and coaching, Chris helps people overcome fear, maximize their strengths, and stop playing small. Raised in a tough Boston neighborhood, Chris's journey took a dramatic turn when he flatlined in the hospital bed at the age of 40, an experience that forced him to redefine success and confront the fears driving his life and career. Today, Chris combines real-world leadership experience with powerful personal insights to help leaders and professionals align who they are with what they do. So success feels energizing instead of exhausting. Welcome, Chris. It is wonderful to have you with us. And I kind of want to just go to how'd you come up with the name, balls and brains for your book? Because I love that. And it's one I will never forget. And so I'd love to hear that story first, and then we'll then we'll rewind.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

All right. So my uh work background is always been in sales and marketing, my MBA is in marketing. So when I was going to do a book, I was like, it needs to be an attention grabber, right? In this day and age of short attention spans, what's something that's going to stop the scroll and at least give people to give me the permission to give them another 10 seconds to explain, you know, what the heck it is. So it's really around the two steps that I've been using in my coaching practice for quite some time here, which is to help people identify the fears that hold them back from going all in on being themselves. And then the brains part of it is not about being smart in school, it's about actually having an awareness about what you're really, really good at, what your strengths are, and so that you can actually go full in on those as well.

SPEAKER_03 3:42

Oh, I love that. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 3:44

In a nutshell, like that's great in terms of like marketing, right? Like you have to have that marketing brain. You're like, we can narrow this down to two words. It will be great.

SPEAKER_03 3:53

And it worked. I mean, I will never forget the name of that book.

SPEAKER_02 3:56

So exactly. All right.

SPEAKER_03 3:58

Well, take us back to the rough Boston neighborhood that you lived in, because I'm assuming a lot of what happened back then kind of has led you to where you are today.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

For sure. So I'm um I'm the youngest of five. Um, grew up near Tufts University in Boston. So it was uh uh it was a tough blue-collar area in the 70s and 80s when I grew up. So, youngest of five, my dad died when I was two. My mom went to wake him up and he had uh died in the bed at 40 years old. So she hadn't worked and didn't have a driver's license, so had to get a driver's license and get a job. So she ended up becoming a motel uh housekeeping, house cleaning person, and then just worked in real tough areas. So I learned early on about uh resilience and that no one really wanted to hear you complain. Just uh just you know, get the job done and um uh and do your best. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 4:53

Absolutely.

unknown 4:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:54

Did you carry that on as just as you were going through life, like through school and entering in as a young adult into the workforce, things of that nature?

SPEAKER_01 5:04

For sure. So I ended up having to put myself through undergrad and then came out with a ton of loans and was just like, all right, I'm gonna do whatever it takes to pay the loans off and to be a success. And frankly, one of the things that was always in my head was, as I had mentioned, my dad died. Uh he was 40. And I, for whatever reason, had it embedded in my head. No one told me this, but I felt like I was gonna go early too. So I always felt like there was a clock ticking for me coming up on 40. So I always told people that I didn't feel like I was necessarily trying to build a resume, but I was looking to build an obituary, which is kind of morbid to say it out loud. Uh, but it fueled me, you know, like I don't think anything else could have. Yeah, fueled you to probably work and work and work and work and work.

SPEAKER_03 5:52

Wow. Which probably led to potentially that flat line at the age of 40.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Yeah, I think so. I think it was a combination of it. What actually was the the trigger for it was I got cardiac Lyme disease. Um it's uh it's a it's an awful form of Lyme disease where you get bitten by a tick uh and it attacks your heart. So I was in the hospital and then I had what they called a sinister vasivagal, where instead of sometimes your blood pressure drops, my heart just stopped. But fortunately, I was uh surrounded by the best doctors in the world, and they called the code blue and brought me back, you know, with the paddles and ended up keeping me in the hospital for a few weeks and ran a bunch of tests um and ended up installing a pacemaker in my chest and eradicating the cardiac Lyme disease after a few months. But then as a result of that, they said, you know, Mr. Woods, you probably have another 40 or 50 years to live now. And so it ended up opening up the question like what am I gonna do with another 40 or 50 years?

SPEAKER_03 6:52

Now done it 40 and not have to worry about that.

SPEAKER_01 6:57

Seriously.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

Yeah. That's it's truly like in a spot where you could look at that and think, okay, well, now what am I supposed to do? Right. Like I strive to really knock out as much as I could before the age of 40 because I quote unquote knew this was coming. Um, and now here you are on the other side of it. Yeah. What does that look like? What I mean, does it give you a clean slate that is invigorating or does it give you anxiety?

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Uh the clean slate. And so that's what ended up kicking off the whole kind of introspection that I had never done before and made me realize that I was just always running on fear, like essentially 100% fear. And that's what's then led me to what I now do in coaching about helping people, particularly men who don't want to talk about things that they're afraid of, is an idea that I can kind of lead by example on that and say, listen, I'm not telling you you need to lay down on the therapy couch, or I'm this is going to make you weaker by admitting that you've got some sort of kind of concerns. But really, think about how much better you can be if you have some awareness around these things and you're choosing to run off of faith, off of strengths, as opposed to fears.

SPEAKER_03 8:11

Wow. What are some of the most common fears that men have that you work with?

SPEAKER_01 8:17

So um failure, first and foremost. Um uh embarrassment, you know, public humiliation, disappointing the family, friends. Some of them it's underachieving. Some of them, then once they've reached success, is losing it because then once, you know, it was one thing where they didn't have as much to lose, but now when they actually do, they feel like the stakes are higher. And that oftentimes causes not only, you know, stress and anxiety, but for them to play smaller than they are capable of because they're coming from a point of concern about loss as opposed to gain.

SPEAKER_03 8:54

Yeah. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 8:57

Christopher, when you're talking to these clients that you're working with and exploring all the different types of fear that pops up or how fear pops up in their lives, when you go back and look, do look at the introspective work that you did for yourself. The fear did it only surround that clock of, you know, turning 40, or were there other things that popped up for you as well that you were able to recognize?

SPEAKER_01 9:19

For me, it was mostly around the clock. And, you know, I was concerned about um underachieving. I was also like it felt really awful to feel like I was gonna leave my kids early, the way that my dad had had had left me and my my kids. And so um it was always like a very morbid thing when I was spending great time with my kids. I would I would sometimes feel like, wow, they're really gonna miss me. And it was, you know, I didn't know any other way to live. So then once I got the second chance and I got some time to, you know, with therapy as well as looking into it, I was like, oh, I don't actually have to think like this. And this doesn't have to be the the way that I have to do this.

SPEAKER_03 10:02

Wow. Did new fears arise once you did get to the other side of the flatlining?

SPEAKER_01 10:09

Well, once I started to then get in touch with the things that I was good at and what I really wanted to do, the only fears that I really had on that was like, what's that going to look like? Because much the same as then when people achieve a lot of success, they're like, what if I give this up? You know, what if I take a risk and it doesn't work? So that was the concerns that I had that I had to then work on for a little bit, but I eventually got there. Guys, can I ask you to pause one second? Because my dog is giving me a hard time, and I'll be right with you.

SPEAKER_02 10:36

Hold on one second. Yes. I'm gonna mark there.

SPEAKER_03 10:44

That's funny because I thought that was my dog, and I was like, why is he?

SPEAKER_02 10:47

Oh, you did. I couldn't hear it. Okay, I couldn't even hear it. And I can't like Oakley.

SPEAKER_03 10:53

Like, what's going on?

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Sorry about that. So, yeah, so she's in the other room and she heard me talking and she was whining. I think she thought there were people in here.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

Okay, that's and she's missing out.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Yes, she's missing out. So, just in case she makes any kind of other noise here, I'm gonna put these headphones in.

SPEAKER_03 11:14

Okay, and I'm gonna let's see. I'm gonna do this.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

How's that sound?

SPEAKER_02 11:23

Still sounds good.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

Great, awesome. And again, apologies for that. This is the first time she's ever done that. So I apologize. Right. We have no worries.

SPEAKER_03 11:31

We have the voice that attracts dogs, apparently.

SPEAKER_02 11:33

Exactly. Exactly. Okay, so we yes, go right ahead. I think you were you were talking to us about the the fear that was popping up and the after post-flatlining and what that looks like.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Yeah, and so then it ended up just then becoming any fears that would hold me back from just, as I say, letting it rip. And it was like, you know, what do I have now to lose? Uh so what I then ended up doing, it was it ended up being an evolution. It wasn't like after it happened, I flipped the switch and completely blew up my life. It was something that I, you know, kind of started mapping and evolution towards what I ended up doing afterwards. And that becomes a recurring theme in the things that I now talk to my clients about, is that I don't want them to think about what we're going to do is this as a revolution, because revolution is scary, it's disruptive, it's messy, and oftentimes it doesn't work. And so what I try to then talk to people, particularly high achievers like me and other ones that I know, they sometimes tend to catastrophize and they're like, oh my gosh, if I do any of this, everything's gonna get ruined, or I'm gonna blow everything up, or I'm gonna change everything. And I'm like, we don't have to do that. I'm not saying that this is a complete teardown. I'm just saying, let's identify where you are, where you can go, and then the steps to get there. And that's what a coach can help with, and that's what the work that we do together can do. And so that ends up becoming part of what I try to reinforce with people is that I want this to be paced. I want it to be an evolution because evolution's natural.

SPEAKER_02 13:04

Yeah, absolutely. Well, and Chris, when you look at the fear, that's kind of the lag measure, right? Like the fear is coming from something else. So you're working with your clients to uncover what is causing this. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_01 13:15

For sure. So you guys may have even heard this quote from Peter Crohn. Um, so a British kind of like uh life coach and spiritual guy. He's he's amazing. And the way he phrases this, I just think it's a magical question. And he asks, Who would you be in the absence of your concerns? And I just love it's very British the way he phrases it, right? But it's also just it, it I feel like it opens up a part of your brain, and I think even in your soul, that says, Wow, this is the per. Well, if I didn't have these concerns, I would feel this way, I would do this, this is how my life would look. And then you can compare that to what it currently does. So, what I always encourage people who haven't done that exercise before is to do it the first time and stream of consciousness, write down the answer, and then do it again the second day and do it again the third day, kind of an iterative process and see if additional things come out. And then when you look at that, that can be a bit of a North Star. It's like that's who your soul is telling you you are capable of being without these concerns that are holding you back. And we use that then as a step-off point, is like, okay, so how close to that person can we get you?

SPEAKER_02 14:31

I just recently heard that question uh just a few weeks ago. And when I heard it, it's one of those questions that stops you in your tracks. You're like, well, shoot, I've never allowed myself to even go there. I don't know. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

And I love the way he phrases it because you've heard before, what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail? But like that just doesn't trigger the same way. It's like a magical sequence of words that he uses.

SPEAKER_02 14:55

Yeah.

unknown 14:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:56

I love that. Yeah. When you're able to uncover this with your clients, what does that next step look like? Right? Because now we we've gone through the process of understanding what's holding us back and identifying like who we'd ideally like to be. How do you get from here to there? What does that mean?

SPEAKER_01 15:14

So I have I have them take the Enneagram, if you guys are familiar with that, right?

SPEAKER_02 15:18

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

So that ends up then giving you out like oftentimes that first thing is kind of creative and it's it's magical writing from the soul. And then the Enneagram gives you, you know, some feedback that's more kind of data driven based upon real responses and and maps these things out. So it says, you know, what your biggest driver is and like what your biggest fear is and what your biggest needs are, right? And so that ends up then becoming more of uh digging in on the question is that if this, what is this, does this resonate with you, this type of person, this also is how fear shows up for you, right? So when fear shows up and it's a negative way, this is what you tend to be. But also when you're in times of growth, this is the way that you respond. So it's like then using that to double click on their thoughts and their responses to make sure that they are now then getting in tune with the fears they have, um, as well as the nature of their personality and the stuff that they need to be happy and to succeed. And then we use that as the first step to be like, all right, so how is that compared to what you currently are doing? So that's that's how we address the fears part of it.

SPEAKER_03 16:31

Okay. And what made you bring the Aneagram into this? Like what how did you get introduced to it?

SPEAKER_01 16:38

So I had taken one a few years ago and just found it to be super impactful. And the, and this is gonna tie in the other part of it. So the brains part of the book, right? Balls and brains, the brains part of it is about getting a real handle on what you're really good at. And so I so I have them take the Clifton strength finders. And so I was originally introduced to that post-flatline. So I was working for Google at the time, went back, I had an uh executive coach at Google that they once you reach a certain level within the organization, they give you an executive coach. So when I worked with her, you know, a year or so after returning from my flatline, she had me take uh the Clifton's Strength Finder because I was talking about what I wanted to do next. When I had gotten into Google, it was still earlier stages and it was very still kind of entrepreneurial and you could do a lot of things. And then several years into it, it just really blew up. It was massive, it was scaling. And so as you grew within the organization, you got kind of like put into very specific roles, right? And so the Clifton Strength Finders came back with a lot of things, my top five, and three of the top five within them told me that I should be in either entrepreneurial or turnaround type environments, which is not what you know, these things were right. And so that's what I eventually ended up doing. So that ended up being so impactful for me that when I started talking to people about fears, I was like, you know, I could actually use the Enneagram as the step off for that. So when we do the balls and brains part of it, and when we talk about the book, it's founded in the two Enneagram and the Clifton Strength Finders, just so that we've got some real data to go on as opposed to it all just being theoretical. Oh, that's incredible.

SPEAKER_02 18:27

That is absolutely and to have the opportunity to be introduced to it when you're with a major corporation to find out this is not where I belong. For sure.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

But you know what was great. It was also this evolution thing. It wasn't like, you know, I looked at it and I was like, okay, see you later, I'm out of here. It ended up then being I started mapping my way out, and it was two years later that I left to go, you know, start my own CEO consulting business. So again, it's the evolution part of it as opposed to revolution.

SPEAKER_03 18:56

Okay, so you you walked away from that to do CEO consultations.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

So yeah, so I originally started a CEO consulting business and then got hired by investors who had companies that they were, you know, various investors in that they needed people to come in and turn around because the the sales weren't growing or they needed to break even or whatever. So I loved that when I got a chance to go do that. So I did that four times. And as I was doing and feeling so great and in the thrill of it, I was like, this is exactly what the Clifton Strength Finder said.

SPEAKER_02 19:28

Yeah, you're like, My strength finders told me this. I here I am.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

And it's stuff knows what it's talking about.

SPEAKER_02 19:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:34

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 19:35

That is awesome. And and as you're like working with these companies, realizing that you are able to tap into your strengths and your skills to turn them around, you're also getting that internal like fulfillment. Um, I'm assuming that that comes with that. Oh, not from an ego standpoint, but more from a purpose fulfillment standpoint.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

Um, 100%, right? And that's when you really feel alive, and that's when you feel like you're living, right? Is that it's a real, it's an energy and value exchange. It's like they're getting value from me, and I'm getting more than just a paycheck. I'm doing something I really like. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 20:10

How long after starting the consulting company did you write the book? Did it take to write the book?

SPEAKER_01 20:17

Oh, so I only um so I did the I started the consulting business like uh 10 years ago. And so, and then I started writing the book like two years ago. And I always tell people that it took me like two years because it was in and out. And I don't know if you guys have written books, but it's like, you know, your motivation, at least for me, goes in and out, and then you get writer's block and all this, right? And it took me like two years to do it. And I now look back on it, I was like, if I if I write another book and like like I could probably get it done in six months if I just like kind of kept my head down and actually got it done. Uh so yeah, it took me two years.

SPEAKER_03 20:54

Okay.

unknown 20:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:56

Oh no, we've both been there. And it's interesting where yeah, for me at least, I I look at my calendar and I'm like, oh, I've got all of this time where I'm not on the road, I'm not traveling. I can definitely just write, hunker down and focus. Absolutely not.

SPEAKER_03 21:10

You have to, I feel like you have to be inspired. Like, I have to get to a space where I'm like, oh, I'm inspired to write. Otherwise, it's a it's a tack.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

Thank you for joining us today on the Reignite Resilience podcast. We hope you've had some uh moments and learned a few new real life ideas to fuel the flames of passion. Please subscribe on your favorite streaming platform, like or download your favorite episodes, and of course, share with your friends and family. We look forward to seeing you again next time on Reignite Resilience.