IAM385- Startup Founder and a #1 Best-selling Author Speaks on Living Life on Cloud Nine

Jordan is a Northwestern and Kellogg School of Management graduate, a two-time startup founder, a TEDx speaker, and a #1 best-selling author. His upcoming book, The Journey to Cloud Nine, provides a new approach to the personal development world by using fictional storytelling to reveal some of life's most meaningful principles. Jordan has been asking hundreds of people around the world how they live their lives on cloud nine, and he cannot wait to share this with all of you!

• CEO Hack: Controlling my entrepreneurial chaos in the world – 40-min of focus on one thing
• CEO Nugget: Fear the what if more than the whats
• CEO Defined: Freedom to take things to the next level of choice and decision-making

Website: https://www.journeytocloudnine.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-gross-8271905b/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cloudnine_moments/

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Transcription

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Gresham Harkless 0:00

Hello, this is Gresh from the I am CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today Jordan Gross of Journey to Cloud Nine. Jordan, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Jordan Gross 0:11

Hey, what's up Gresham, thank you so much for having me on been super excited for this one as we connected first about a little over a year ago on one of your blogs. So this is nice to to finally get back in touch and add some value to maybe a new audience, maybe the same one. But do it in a podcast form, which is always fun.

Gresham Harkless 0:30

Yeah, absolutely. That's the beauty of all this technology, we have the opportunity to feature you, which is always very much so appreciated,d and then get the opportunity to hear you over the airwaves as well as well, too, which is, as well. And yeah, to kick everything off, I wanted to read a little bit more about Jordan so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Jordan is a Northwestern and Kellogg School of Management graduate, a two-time startup founder, a TEDx speaker, and a number one best-selling author. His upcoming book, The Journey to Cloud Nine provides a new approach to the personal development world by using fictional storytelling to reveal some of life's most meaningful principles. Jordan has been asking hundreds of people around the world how they live their lives on cloud nine, and he cannot wait to share this with you all. Jordan, are you ready to speak to the IAMCEO Community?

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Jordan Gross 1:20

I am more than ready. Let's do this.

Gresham Harkless 1:23

Let's do it. So to kick everything off, I wanted to hear a little bit more about your background or what I call your story. What led you to get started?

Jordan Gross 1:31

Yeah, absolutely. So my background actually came from the opposite of a CEO. And on paper, I was always very much playing it safe playing it by the book. And, you know, that led me to go into college and study economics and probably go down the finance or consulting route, because I interned in those areas, but I did a pretty good job of realizing that wasn't for me. And then there I was my junior year of college, trying to figure out, you know, the big internship, what was next, and actually did something a little bit different, where I decided to take on my own project for the first time and I started an Alzheimer's awareness group in honor of my grandfather's passing from Alzheimer's.

So it's like, it was a student-run organization where we raise funds for Alzheimer's. And it was my first taste of growing something and building something from the ground up. After that, I ended up my senior year, not really knowing what I wanted to do next. But I wanted to keep building this organization that I started. And I ended up getting a master's in management studies. While I was doing that work, the Alzheimer's awareness group was called ‘They forget, we remember'. I was also getting heavily involved with the Chicago startup scene. So I went to school.

And essentially, I have been helping some food delivery service companies. And these companies were very small and I saw how this small team was, was so inspirational to me, and I decided to start my own company. So that was really step number two. And then that actually led me down going back to more normalcy, and going into a position in the corporate restaurant management world. So I did that for a little bit. But four months into that, I said, You know what, this is not for me, this is not who I'm supposed to be not what I'm supposed to be doing. And that's when I quit and said, Let me think about the experiences I've loved and valued.

And it was, you know, it was that experience as the head of the Alzheimer's organization, it was starting my own startup company. So I said, I need to grow something from the ground up, I need to add value to other people. And I ultimately need to do some work where I am building and growing relationships. So that's when I quit. I started my first role as CEO, my first company, I wrote my first book. And ultimately, it's been the journey to Cloud Nine ever since then, that I, really understand who I am as a person and where I want to go and then help other people along that same path.

Gresham Harkless 4:10

Yeah, absolutely. That's the beautiful thing. I love hearing about, you know, stories of how you kind of have progressed into you know, starting the journey and account CLOUD NINE, just because I think a lot of times people think it just happens, but the evolution of you and being able to kind of tap into that first entrepreneurial venture wanting to kind of recapture that same excitement, I imagine, kind of took you here sounds like.

Jordan Gross 4:33

That's absolutely right. Yeah. And I really had to do some internal evaluating and say, well, what experiences were the ones that were the most rewarding for me and were always those entrepreneurial ventures.

Gresham Harkless 4:44

Yeah, it's funny. I've had a very similar route where I looked back at some of the times I did things when I was younger, and I said that I want to kind of capture that same excitement if I can in this adult world, so to speak. So I appreciate you for sharing that with us. So I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper here a little bit more about the journey to cloud nine. Can you tell us about your book and the things you're doing?

Jordan Gross 5:09

Yeah, absolutely. So the journey to Cloud Nine came from a pretty chance encounter and an Uber, where I was riding in New York City. And I saw a boat in the river called Cloud Nine. And I asked the Uber driver, what Cloud Nine meant to him. And he started telling me these great stories about when his children were born, and they got married, and this childhood memory had, and the more I heard his stories, the more I thought, wow, I feel like there are cloud nine stories that really encapsulate who we are and the people that we want to be, and they really span our entire lives.

So I started asking more people and that picked up on common themes, patterns, and commonalities and all of that research allowed me to understand that I had to share this with other people. The first book that I wrote was a self-help book and some of the pushback that I got was that self-help is too authoritative and we don't want to be told what to do. So I decided to make this journey to Cloud Nine book where I was uncovering these principles that I had discovered, I made it a fiction book. So this book, The Journey to Cloud Nine is a fictional representation of somebody's CLOUD NINE life and how you could live it.

So that book will probably won't be out until January or February of 2020 and what I've done in the meantime, is create a coaching platform around it, where I'm helping people uncover and really clear their own skies as to how they can navigate through the clouds and create certainty in their lives purpose, their sense of meaning, and what makes them most fulfilled. In addition to that, I've been doing a lot of speaking a lot of podcasting and ultimately, just following my own cloudnine journey every single day, which is based on my interpretation of the person who I know I can be competent living, according to that.

Gresham Harkless 7:03

Nice, I definitely appreciate that. And I was actually going to ask you that. So I'm glad you actually brought that up because I was going to mention that, especially with storytelling, I feel like people can take in a lot more lessons, especially adults.  Sometimes we hear things as a story, rather than being told to do X, Y, and Z. But oh, you hear that nice story. We're listening, we're doing the same thing. But we're just taking it away. It's kind of easier for people to kind of take things in. So I appreciate that.

Jordan Gross 7:32

Yeah and I, that's a great, great way to say and I never want to tell anybody what to do. I want them I think the greatest coverings are when we are given advice, or we're given recommendations and then we implement for ourselves and we evaluate for ourselves whether or not that's going to be beneficial in our own lives. So that's what I really wanted to do for people I wanted to give you an opportunity to be interpretive to be introspective to be self-aware, uncover some key insights, and then implement to you know, your own life and see how it goes. Because that's really what I did.

Gresham Harkless 8:07

Yeah, absolutely and that sounds like just like you touched on, you know, being in the backseat of that Uber driver and getting that different perspective. Not only, you know, did you do it that way, but you also had a different path. And like you said, your journey to Cloud Nine might be different than somebody else's. But understanding those tools that you're writing in the book is really phenomenal.

Jordan Gross 8:26

That's exactly right.

Gresham Harkless 8:29

Nice and so now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce and this could be for you or your organization but what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Jordan Gross 8:38

Oh, I think we hit on it for sure. So I always consider the secret sauce question as being top of mind. Right? So it's kind of like in my case, you know, what kind of guy What guy do you want to be? So are you Jordan gross? Are you are x guy or you're Gresham, and you are a y guy, right? What is that phrase before guy? And for me, I think it could be twofold. It's the Cloud Nine guy where I'm helping people live their Cloud Nine Lives. Or it could be the fictional personal development guy, right? It just provides this unique spin my own unique take on principles that, you know, they may be already out there, there may be books about them, but the way that I set myself apart and stand out become top of mind is by creating, presenting it in this storytelling type of way.

Gresham Harkless 9:30

Yeah, I think that's definitely you know, a great example of secret sauce just because a lot of times and correct me if I'm wrong, because I know you've you know, talked with so many people that you sometimes find it you can find it hard to be able to maybe articulate that. Now how you found your cloud nine but to be able to do one and then to also be able to help others do that is definitely something that's a gift.

Jordan Gross 10:02

I heard that and I appreciate that because yeah, I think if we don't explore if we don't practice with our creative minds as much as possible, then we're really doing ourselves a disservice.

Gresham Harkless 10:16

Absolutely. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack this might be an app or book or habit that you have or even something from your book that you wanted to mention. But what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Jordan Gross 10:31

Yeah, so I consider this my way to control chaos as a CEO and as an entrepreneur and what I mean by that is, when I first went on my own, and had, you know, all the freedom in the world, I was saying yes to everything, everyone and I ended up spreading myself way too thin. So I needed to figure out a system where I controlled my own entrepreneurial chaos and what I did was, I considered a time in my life when I felt like I was at peak performance while juggling a lot of things. And what I've done is I've now structured my day, based off of like, I'm back in high school, right? So I have a number of different 40-minute periods, where I work on different things, and I can spend, so it's like 40 minutes, I can focus on LinkedIn and 40 minutes I can focus on outreach and 40 minutes I can focus on podcast, and go from there so that I don't ever get bored. So that too, you know, fully prepared to buy one thing. And so that really, I know that this is how I was, you know, my best in the past. So this is how I want to act now.

Gresham Harkless 11:41

Nice. Well, now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or a piece of advice or if you can happen to a time machine, what would you tell your younger self?

Jordan Gross 11:52

I would say to always fear the what-ifs more than the actual what? So what I mean by that is every single decision I make, especially now, I just consider what would I regret more looking back and saying, Why didn't you do that? Or, you know, actually, doing the thing and sort of rolling with the punches as they go?

Gresham Harkless 12:12

Nice. It's always harder to deal at the end of the day with the regrets of things that we should have done rather than things we actually did. Jordan, I wanted to ask you, my absolute favorite question is right in line with what you asked the Uber driver, but we're asking about what it means to be a CEO. So we're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEOs on this show. So Jordan, what does that mean to you?

Jordan Gross 12:34

Yeah, so being a CEO, to me means freedom. It means the freedom to take myself to take my company to take the people who I work with, and the people who I consider, you know, clients of mine, I really consider being a CEO, the ultimate level of choice and decision making. So for me, every single decision I make, just like I said to you, it's about the freedom to choose based on the path that's most aligned with my intuition and my heart, rather than what other people want me to do.

Gresham Harkless 13:10

Absolutely and that's one of the ultimate examples of freedom as well. So I definitely would echo that and I appreciate you for sharing that definition and I appreciate your time, even more Jordan, and all the awesome things that you're doing. What I wanted to do was passionate and like so to speak, just to see if there's any additional you can let our readers and listeners know and then of course, how best they can get a hold of you and get a copy of your book.

Jordan Gross 13:32

Yeah, so the last thing I'll leave everybody with is a thought and I like to just leave this at the end and not explain it but rather, as I said before, allow people to interpret what this quote means to them because, for me, it's just the most bone-chilling, goosebump worthy quote that I think there is out there. So I'll leave everybody with this last thing and it's that somebody once told me the definition of hell, and then on my last day on this earth, the person who I became, will meet the person who I could have become, and those two people are complete strangers.

But somebody also wants to meet the definition of heaven and it's that on my last day on this, or the person who I became, will meet the person, why could have become, and those two people are identical twins. So for me, that's everything. So I would love to hear what that means saw you guys and yeah, you can feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. My website is journeytocloudnine.com and you can get more information about everything that we're talking about today yeah.

Gresham Harkless 14:42

Awesome. Well, thank you so much again, I appreciate you for that closing statement which is definitely powerful and I appreciate you even more for writing the book and doing all the awesome things. We will have all those links and information in the show notes as well. But Jordan, thanks so much again. I hope you have a great rest of the day.

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