The Fastest Way To Grow Your Career

Michael Chachula (00:00)
I would audit other people’s dads and other people and other adults, But I would see, nope, don’t like what they’re doing there.

So I was almost editing.

the person I wanted to be in real time

there is not a one size fits all when you sit down in a chair as a CIO or as a C level

I had prostate cancer was very difficult for me, because I was going through a divorce at the time as

almost a year of my treatment, I did

I knew it was my dad.

said, nope, gotta fight, gotta fight.

about people and you’ll see your career will skyrocket.

Kevin Rice (00:48)
Welcome back to CEOs and ABCs. My guest today is Michael Chachula a seasoned corporate executive whose career spans some of the most recognizable brands in the restaurant industry. Michael is currently the CTO of Propelled Brands and has previously held executive roles at Fat Brands, the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, and Applebee’s and IHOP. But Michael’s story isn’t just about titles and trajectory. It’s about resilience. It’s about growing up fast after losing his father at a very young age, learning leadership by observing the people around him,

and building a career through discipline, curiosity, and relentless adaptation. Along the way, Michael has navigated reinvention, major career pivots, cancer, and even confronting his own mortality. Experiences that reshaped how he leads, how he parents, and how he thinks about what success really means. So this conversation is about perspective, how adversity sharpens judgment, why pausing can be a leadership superpower,

and what it looks like to build a life and career that stays grounded when everything else is moving.

Kevin Rice (01:51)
Michael, thank you so much for being here.

Michael Chachula (01:53)
Kevin, thank you for inviting me. Good to see you again.

Kevin Rice (01:56)
It’s great to see you. It’s been a long time since I had the pleasure of working with you while you were at Dine Brands. So thank you for joining the show. catch me up, What’s life like today? What are you working on and what’s taken up most of your attention these days?

Michael Chachula (01:59)
Been a while.

Sure, well yeah, it’s been a while. So since Dine Brands, we’ve had COVID, we’ve had all sorts of things happen. So a lot has transpired. Needless to say, the restaurant industry was quite a interesting place to be, especially full service during COVID. So obviously where you and I met, we did a bunch of layoffs because of the fact that, you know.

No one knew how long it would last and customers weren’t coming in. So I left Dine Brands at that time. And then I started working with Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and I worked with them for just about a year or so. I worked heavily on their to go and the digital side.

and then after that, I worked at FAT Brands for probably two and a half years or so, and decided to take a job in Dallas. So moved out of California, and now I’m the CIO CTO of Propel Brands. And that’s brands such as Fast Signs, Camp Bow Wow, and My Salon Suite. You’ve probably heard of some of those.

And that’s what I’m doing now. obviously, numerous things in between. Had a grandson in that time as well.

Kevin Rice (03:11)
Yep.

Congratulations.

Michael Chachula (03:19)
We love it.

Kevin Rice (03:19)
Amazing.

Well, it’s been really nice to kind of reconnect with you, get to know you on a little bit more of a personal level. And as I’ve started to, to learn your story as one very much of resilience and overcoming a lot of challenges in your personal life. cause all I saw was this really impressive career. I’d sit across from you and you were this really strong leader and you have had all these professional accomplishments, but I had no idea what was going on behind the scenes.

Michael Chachula (03:23)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rice (03:45)
Maybe we could start with the earliest adversity that you had to overcome. And that was at a young age when your father passed away. What was that experience like for you? And, how did that change who you were as a, very young adult?

Michael Chachula (03:49)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, think that’s a great place to start. I no one expects at the age of, 14, 15 years old. I think he got sick when I was 13. Actually, I was 13 years old and my father was diagnosed with cancer. think that when you’re a young boy who is heavily involved in sports and you’re being driven all over the place, you’re not spending a ton of time with your family. So, you know, it’s hard for me to say at the age I am now.

because I think it’s formed the father I became and even the grandfather I’ve become, which is I didn’t spend a lot of time with my dad when I was young because I did other things. was in sports, football, soccer, baseball. I did all of it. So most of the time I would see him, it’d be either he’d be in the stands or dropping me off and picking me up later because he was going to school. So imagine for those 13, 14 years, he was finishing a degree and president of a bank and just, you know, I just didn’t see him a lot.

So I think when he passed when I was 14 and 15, it left not only a hole that you lost your dad, I think it left a hole in I had to change the way at a very young age that I learned, that I learned certain things. what I mean by that is, is boy, I made a lot of mistakes, Kevin.

you make a lot of mistakes. had no one to correct you, really. I had a mother who was in mourning. She never remarried. She never dated. She used to say that I had a husband, and love doesn’t end with death, right? So commitment doesn’t end with death. That was her perspective. And so she never dated. I never had another male figure. So I was always searching for either folks to teach me or help me learn. I turned into a lifelong learner.

Kevin Rice (05:43)
Hmm. Did you, did you have any coaches or people in your family circle that helped fill that gaps in different ways?

Michael Chachula (05:43)
and what it

Yeah, yeah, of course, you know, I did definitely have I had some teachers, George Gentes was the music teacher, I got heavily into music. And, you know, they really tried to help and steer and guide way. as I got older,

Phil Trevor was another one that I had when I started my college career. He was a Mennonite. So he had a very unique perspective on how, you don’t know a Mennonite is, it’s almost Amish, you know, in your beliefs, but you use electricity. And he was a college counselor. And just speaking with him, and he really helped ground me in you need a lot of self-love to be in the position that you’re in. And what I mean by self-love is that you have to understand it’s okay to make mistakes. gonna make mistakes.

So you just have to be kind to yourself. And I think a lot of people forget to be kind to themselves and to say it’s okay. And that yesterday is yesterday and today you could try something new and you really do have to look at what happened and learn from it. But I really learned that self love at a very, very young age. And I would argue some folks at the age I’m at right now haven’t even reached.

what I was given as a gift through tragedy, which was the death of my father. I had to learn that at a very young age.

Kevin Rice (07:02)
Yeah. When something like that happens, I think everybody kind of has a choice, whether they consciously or unconsciously know it

you have an opportunity to grow through it or you can be a victim. for you, I recall from our conversation, you grew through this, you, I think started working pretty young and you’ve obviously, had an incredibly successful career, but you also could have just sat back and said, like, I’m not even going to try anymore because

this tragedy happened to me and it’s not my fault. So I don’t have to achieve. so what, what was it in you that kind of gave you the strength to move through this and grow through it instead of just being a victim.

Michael Chachula (07:40)
I think it was first faith, right? had the church and I had, at the time I was still going to church because Sundays your mother said go to church. I was still very for a young person. But I also think that I didn’t view it as a complete tragedy. I also viewed it as an opportunity. And I think with the opportunity that it did give me that other children might not have had is that

I had thousands of fathers. I didn’t have one way of doing things. I was able to sit back and I almost became an auditor.

I would audit other people’s dads and other people and other adults, whether they be male or female, to be honest, because like I said, my mom, she was in mourning for a while and it’s just very difficult something to talk about. But I would see, nope, don’t like what they’re doing there.

Nope, don’t like what they’re doing. Nope, don’t like. So I was almost editing.

the person I wanted to be in real time to say, want to become something that is someone who is very understanding, but at the same time, learn something through everything that they do. And I approach things very differently. I take a lot of chances, not with other people’s money, not in my career. As an executive, I don’t go out there and just willy nilly do things. But even there, what it gave me the opportunity to do is, okay, I’m going to put that analytical person I saw when I was 16 years old.

or 17 years old that I remember really, really well, or I’m gonna put that investigative role that I saw that.

One of my friends’ dad was in the FBI, right? So I just saw even the way that he asked me questions on how school was going and how’s the family was succinct, direct, was very militaristic in an approach. And you would sit up in your chair almost because of the way that he asked the question. So it really crafted me to be able to become a chameleon in business to where I learned a lot about business, I learned a lot about technology,

When I worked at HSBC many, many years ago in my career, I became an underwriter. I became a loan processor. I sold credit cards. I sold mortgages. But then I also worked heavily in compliance. I worked in the SOX.

area of finance. I worked in the finance area. I worked on when Visa went public. So I was able to change my way of thinking even from left to right brain because I wasn’t brought up by a singular parent unit. So I’m almost of the hive mind, if you will. So I’ve had the opportunity to use that hive mentality of

Kevin Rice (09:57)
you

Mm-hmm

No.

Michael Chachula (10:14)
there is not a one size fits all when you sit down in a chair as a CIO or as a C level

And quite

Amazingly, what a proper name for a podcast for me, because it really is the infancy of who you are is every day you wake up. You’re an infant every day you wake up, because you don’t know what new challenge you’re going to face in that day. And just like an infant, that challenge is going to hit you sometimes square in the jaw.

Kevin Rice (10:31)
Mm.

Michael Chachula (10:42)
Could be a career decision, it could be the death in the family, it could be, right, and maybe you’ve never had one and you’re in your 30s or 40s. it’s that type of idea and how I crafted myself really overcome adversity and look at things very differently and not take things personal and always know that, you know what, it’ll be all right.

Kevin Rice (10:57)
Yeah.

Well, I love how you saw it as when you look back, you saw it, you know, not just as a tragedy, but as an opportunity. And if we’re always looking at life as happening for us and not to us, then it kind of leads us to that path of like, how can I learn through this? How can I grow through this? And so you were kind of thrust into Manhood, right? Like a lot of people will say that when your father passes away, that’s when you officially become a man.

Michael Chachula (11:08)
Right.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Kevin Rice (11:29)
and you had to go through that at a very young age. I think you started working pretty young. how did you start your career? And what did that feel like to carry a load of responsibility at a very young age that most kids aren’t given?

Michael Chachula (11:33)
Yeah. ⁓

Yeah, you know, it’s not easy, first of all, but I think it gave me a level of discipline that how important work was. know, we wanted for nothing because my mom did a great job of managing her finances. going from the salary of a bank president to a bank teller. That’s pretty much what we did. if I wanted things, I had to work for it.

So if you want to choose or you wanted to go to the movies, I couldn’t go ask my mom because she had a mortgage to pay. She had five children. mean, geez, 1984, my oldest brother was married. He was 24 years old, but everyone else was, you my sister was in college, but everyone else is still in high school. So one was married. She had four to marry off.

for to put through college. It was a lot. So every dollar we had went towards supporting her children. I mean, she get excited, find a purse for $5, you 50 cents. You buy a new purse for 50 cents at a garage sale. was her claim to fame is how cheap can she find something to buy? Whereas for me, you know, I used to duct tape my gym shoes together.

I mean, that’s to make sure that my sister had a prom dress, right? Or something of that nature, because I knew the situation we were in even at 14 years old. So I said, you know what? I have to go get a job. And I would fight with my mother at first. And she’s like, no, you need to have your studies. You need to go through school. And I said, look, I get that. This will not impact what I’m trying to do. I just have to do it, because I can’t.

I cannot sit idly by and know that there’s things that I want to do and the feeling I would get to come and ask for money, I didn’t like it. Now, I’m saying that in a very mature way. At 14 years old, that’s not how it would come out, but it’s how I felt at the end of the day is I didn’t want to have that burden on myself. And it was truthful. My mother told my kids

Kevin Rice (13:14)
Mm.

Okay.

Michael Chachula (13:28)
story that your dad was the one that used to duct tape his shoes together and I’d have to fight with him to buy him a pair of pants or shoes or whatever. Because I just thought that there were others who needed it more than me. And I want the trouble to be on me. So I went and I started working at a pizzeria washing dishes because I wasn’t allowed to stand in front of the oven because I was too young.

So that’s what I did. thing that’s very interesting about the chameleon that I was talking about.

I was in an arcade in Chicago, Illinois. And, used to just delve myself into technology and this as I started to get older. And I’m playing the game and I started to realize, oh my God, this guy is me.

Because in Dragon’s Lair, it would say, would you like Derek to go A? Or would you like Eric to go B?

And I started to realize that’s how I was thinking as I was starting to watch and I was starting to really become an observer. That was me. What’s the best hat in the situation? And that’s how I really started to form my career. Should I put the business hat on or is this the technical hat I need to put on? it really became kind of that pause for a minute, the art of the

Pause for a minute and figure out what should Kevin or Mike do, right?

Kevin Rice (14:38)
Yeah,

Michael Chachula (14:39)
how you still do it.

Kevin Rice (14:38)
that’s interesting. It reminds me

of a Deepak Chopra book called MetaHuman. And it’s about like kind of how you evolve to a point where you’re zooming out and seeing your life almost from a third party. so kind of like watching your experience and how you make decisions versus like being inside of it. So I guess the business parallel would be like working on the business, not in the business. ⁓

Michael Chachula (14:43)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Kevin Rice (15:04)
But it really reminds me of that, of being kind of more of an observer and seeing objectively the paths and the options, because the quality of your decisions really determines the quality of your life. And it’s interesting you were able to see that from such a young age. And I love how you drew that parallel from a video game.

Michael Chachula (15:16)
Mm-hmm.

yeah.

Well, you know what they say that lack of choice and adversarial situations what help you create the answers that you find. Because at the same time, what I realized is, is that I didn’t know everything. Even though at a young age you think you do. I’m not.

Kevin Rice (15:41)
I thought I knew everything at 16

years old.

Michael Chachula (15:43)
I know

exactly. I’m not invincible. I learned about death at a very young age.

Now, my father passing away the 22nd relative I had buried from 12 to 16, you know, it was a lot to deal with. But again, like you said, I just

found coping mechanisms to try to figure out, you know, what’s the what’s the best way for Michael in this situation? And it wasn’t ever a Michael first scenario. It wasn’t what’s best for Michael. It’s what is best for the situation that no one gets hurt.

especially me, yes, but that no one gets hurt. So I never said I’m going to do this for a selfish reason. Because again, that’s also some of the challenges that you have is you start to grow in this narcissistic way. And by the time you hit the top of your career and you’re a C level, that that’s a really tough place to be is working for a narcissistic C level person, because everything is about them and no one gets credit. you know, for those folks out there that are that might listen to this, and they’re thinking about becoming a C level. That’s the thing

that I would say art of the pause. You might not have the right answer and I don’t know is a great answer. So it’s, you know, it is an answer. Sometimes and sometimes by giving an answer quickly, it causes more damage than good. it’s, you know, something think about.

Kevin Rice (16:54)
Yep, it is an answer.

I think it’s tough sometimes, right? Cause when you are an executive,

all eyes are on you and there, you do feel a bit of a pressure to have the answer when people are looking to you. And, ⁓ so yeah, earlier in my career, sometimes I would give an answer that probably wasn’t actually the right answer because I felt like I needed to give direction. and in retrospect later, I learned to solicit more input from the team and, maybe it would still fall on me, but

Michael Chachula (17:08)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rice (17:30)
but bringing in the voices of all these brilliant team members that we had made the process of leadership much easier than just trying to like have the answer myself every time.

Michael Chachula (17:38)
Yeah.

You

gave a

Kevin Rice (17:42)
so

you started washing dishes at a pizzeria. I think you’d mentioned you had like dozens, if not multiple dozens of jobs, earlier in your career. And then when did your career kind of start to take shape? When did you start to realize, okay, this is something I’m good at. This is a path I want to follow.

Michael Chachula (17:46)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think when I started Beneficial, that became HSBC over time.

because they purchased it in North America. That’s when my career started. And that would have been, I probably was 26, 27. And the reason that happened that I graduated high school, I started college, I then came home to some family situations that were going on. So I came home and a life, got married and had children. So I did odd and ends jobs, and not odd and ends, I shouldn’t say

I was good jobs, but I didn’t have a college And looking in the newspaper, I was just like, you know I have to find something And I knew that I had so much to offer and that I was being underutilized. So I said, you know what? I’m going to try out for this job. And I started selling mortgages household. And within a year, I was in A year after that, I running a call center. realized that I actually was good.

of things and then hit a wall.

I actually hit a wall because of my, my education that I was starting to find that all the good jobs that were coming out either required a degree or the people they were hiring had a degree. So I spent the next five years finishing my, my bachelor’s degree, going to night school doing all that at DePaul University. Cause I knew and kept doing mortgages and kept moving up and got to an AVP level and I couldn’t go to a director level. I just didn’t have the experience to do it.

And I went and I finished my bachelor’s And as I was finishing my bachelor’s degree, they asked me to work on a product HSBC at that time. And I worked on the product and the product was a big And they offered to send me Northwestern Kellogg School of Management. And I went and did my executive MBA. So it shows you that it’s hard work, not the education. The education is an

Kevin Rice (19:49)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Chachula (19:50)
You cannot use education to replace hard work. You have to have a hard working mentality. And you can look around, there’s a lot of people that some didn’t even finish high school, some didn’t finish college, that are highly, highly successful people. Hard work.

Sometimes the degree shows a commitment that folks want to see. Sometimes the degree shows some level of mastery. But what the thing cannot do, what a college degree cannot is give you a better attitude. And that’s where a lot of people fall down.

Kevin Rice (20:21)
Yeah, values, work ethic.

Michael Chachula (20:24)
work ethic, values, personal values, personal accountability. It can’t teach you those things. It does hold you somewhat accountable because you have homework, but at end of the day, the homework is a bad grade. When accountable to shareholders, when you’re now accountable to investors, me, it’s very different pressure.

Kevin Rice (21:02)
Getting your MBA was a big unlock for you, right? It helped you kind of grow in your career. Do you think the same value is given to MBAs these days? Like how important is education today? If we had somebody listening and they’re kind of, you know, midway through their career, do you think today an MBA still carries the same weight to help you grow in your career?

Michael Chachula (21:04)
Yeah.

Yeah, I was. Yeah.

Yeah, I think for certain levels for sure and for certain disciplines, absolutely. I think as you start to get higher up in your career, you have to show some level of mastery of certain things for people to give you the keys to the kingdom, if you will. yes, however,

I believe you have to gauge your own maturity, and this is a self-realization thing. So for you to take your Deepak Chopra book again and you were to think about if you were to elevate yourself outside of your body and you were to look at everything that you’re doing right now, have to be at a certain level of maturity to say, I’m ready to do the MBA. And I would argue that folks, especially when they’re MBAs, especially when your focus is business, like…

Accounting is different. Economics is different. Very, very different. Those people are going for a level of expertise. Maybe they want to for the government or they want to work for a big firm, want to go work for, of the big five I would say an MBA is very, very powerful to get into that place. But if you’re talking more, I want to go become, a ⁓ VP of operations or I want to do something like this. My argument would be get some experience.

If to the level to where you need to make the next step, don’t get out of college and go take an MBA to become an operations person. You want to have some level of experience so you know how to apply what you’re learning. When you go directly from a BA to an MBA, it’s all theoretical and it’s all academia. You have no experience about machine four is down. You know, no experience about there’s a hurricane.

Kevin Rice (22:53)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Chachula (23:01)
no experience and all that, you don’t see the real impact of people’s lives happens when these things happen. And you really need to have that under your belt so you can sit in there and go, yeah, I hear what you’re saying. And when I went to Kellogg, was, you know, at the end they say, most likely to succeed, most likely. I was deemed the rebel. I was the rebel because I questioned everything. People would say things and I’d be like,

Kevin Rice (23:23)
Ha!

Michael Chachula (23:29)
I don’t think so. would raised my hand and, you know, I would say something and the professor would be like, you’re right. That’s true. Well, it’s because you’ve been doing this for 30 years inside the institution. I’ve been doing this for 20 years for real.

Kevin Rice (23:36)
Yeah.

Michael Chachula (23:44)
And it’s great to see the different perspectives on what’s happening and to get that academia, because then it also pressure tests and solidifies your own confidence and your own knowledge.

I interrupted.

Kevin Rice (23:55)
Yeah, I think

like early work experience is incredibly important. I had the experience my junior year of college up until then college was all kind of theoretical learning about just different business and finance and stuff. But my junior year that summer, I ran a residential house painting business where I had like four crews and I went out and I sold contracts to paint houses and I managed the crews. And at the end of every week I would do the finances.

Michael Chachula (24:00)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rice (24:24)
And when I went back for my senior year, I had like a managerial accounting class and everything made sense because I spent the entire summer doing managerial accounting in practice. So when it came to like actually learning it, I could refine the skills and learn more because I already had that, that experience. I think really important.

Michael Chachula (24:38)
Yes. Yes.

Yeah, you leveled up.

You leveled up. like being in a video games for the folks that love video games or, you know, the younger folks that like playing Fortnite and all that. You’re leveling up is what you’re doing, getting a better tool to put in right? I mean, that’s really what you’re doing, which I think is absolutely amazing. And believe me, the experience was phenomenal that I went through, but I’m telling you, have in the years under my belt of true experience, because again, what it didn’t give you is it didn’t give you when a key employee

left. didn’t give you, you you tried to do the scenario, but the scenario was, guess what? You’re doing the work now. So all of a sudden here you are running a team and your best employee leaves or very skilled employee leaves. Guess who’s doing the work? You are. Especially if you don’t have that skill anywhere else on your team. You’re trying to figure it out. You’re Googling it. You’re here trying to make it happen while you’re trying to fill the role. So, you know, that’s what I thought. But the NBA was, was absolutely kicked open a bunch of doors for me and especially from Northwestern.

Kevin Rice (25:15)
Sure.

Michael Chachula (25:42)
It being a Kellogg MBA kicked open a lot of doors. And that would be the other thing. Choose wisely where you get an MBA. Just having an MBA, people do look at, okay, where’s the MBA from?

Kevin Rice (25:52)
When you were going to school, you were still working full time. At this point, you had had a young family. How were you managing the demand of career and school and family? And how did you like navigate trade-offs in real time between like where you were prioritizing your time?

Michael Chachula (25:56)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, that’s probably where I didn’t do such a great job, to be honest. think that’s, you know, I think it’s one of those things where you think, I’m going to provide better, so I’m going to take this time not realizing that it had significant pressure.

on a very small and very young family. And at the end, you know, I it allowed me to take on bigger and better jobs. But I think it, you know, it came at a price at the end of the day, and years later. But I think it was the start of challenge. know, I made sure I put time aside for my children, but obviously I wasn’t going out as much or traveling as much or vacationing as much, you know, because I was

working and reading 3,000 pages a week or whatever the number was. It was outrageous amounts of reading and assignments and you’re working in a group so you didn’t want to let people I think that came as a shock to how much time it actually had to spend.

doing the program, but I would set Simon aside and try to spend the weekends with the girls and the kids. would do fun things and go to restaurants, just whatever I could do time with them, but also that I could do to the proper level to the studies because it was a great opportunity and a privilege to be there.

Kevin Rice (27:19)
Yeah. Yeah. Well,

what was the cost you alluded to? Like what was the cost of this, you know, sacrifice that you made to grow in your career and get a higher education?

Michael Chachula (27:34)
Yeah, I turned around and my toddlers were teenagers. That’s, you know, it’s the old adage that, blink and years go by. That’s almost what it was. That the years get really short and you don’t realize that it’s not just the most valuable currency you have is time.

Kevin Rice (27:45)
Yeah, the days are long, but the years are short.

Michael Chachula (27:56)
and you don’t realize where you give that attention and where you spend that time, you don’t realize that that comes with some level of detriment. Something for you to give the attention and time to a master’s degree, especially when you have a young family, something has to atrophy. Sometimes that’s a relationship with your daughter, relationship with your wife. Sometimes that’s relationship with my broader family. know, I think after the MBA was done, I had to re-engage with my family. You know, you just have to…

Kevin Rice (28:12)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Chachula (28:24)
I just had to make up for the time that I had lost, but now I’m making it up with young adults rather than children. Now, my kids are actually very adjusted. I don’t have maladjusted children, which is great. They’re very kind. They’re respectful a fault.

But you know, they wanted their dad and probably more than I had given them. It’s not something I regret, but it’s definitely something I will teach others. Because it’s allowed me to give them a better life, right? At the same time, they got married, they all went to college, right? So.

Kevin Rice (28:52)
Mm-hmm. Because at the same time, they…

Yeah. And

they, and they learned by watching you pursue something that you felt was important and be passionate about. And so I imagine, do your kids have a similar work ethic as you did?

Michael Chachula (29:02)
Yeah.

Yes, much so. They are very good at what they do and they have a great, great work ethic.

Kevin Rice (29:14)
That was, that was one of the reasons that I started this podcast was because I had taken time off work and I started to realize that like my kids there, they weren’t old enough to remember when I was in my peak career. And I didn’t want them to grow up without them seeing me pursue something I’m passionate about and like build something. I wanted them to actually experience it as they were a little bit older. So hopefully they could

Michael Chachula (29:26)
Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rice (29:38)
learn those lessons and inherit work ethic and grit, by watching me. So getting back into consulting and advisory and starting the podcast was kind of, one, because I felt that missing, right? Like I spent so many years of my career and my career gave me a lot of my needs, like competition and community and contribution, like a lot of those core needs. But, ⁓ I really wanted

Michael Chachula (29:44)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, exactly.

Kevin Rice (30:04)
to do it so that they could see what it’s like to pursue something you’re passionate about. Because I was like, what happens if they spend the next 10 years and I’m just out golfing every day?

Michael Chachula (30:10)
Yes.

Yeah, very true. mean, and you’ve very impressive career as well. And folks don’t see to the point that you made, they don’t see the underside success doesn’t always mean you’re successful. And that’s where folks don’t realize that.

great, you might be successful in business, but you’re unsuccessful as a parent, or you might be successful as a parent, but that comes with its own trade-off, and maybe you’re just not successful at moving up in your career, and that’s okay. But you have to realize that there always is gonna be some level of trade-off and some decision that you’re gonna have to make. As I mentioned before, are you gonna do A or are you gonna do B? Which are you gonna do? And you really have to take that pause and say, what is the consequence of me doing either?

And maybe there’s a C, you don’t do any of You just lie in bed and hold your kid, you know what I mean? Or hold their hand or go for a walk and you just don’t do any of it. And sometimes that’s the most rewarding at the end of the day. you know, it’s just make sure you realize that success isn’t always about the position you hold. It’s more about the memories you leave.

Kevin Rice (31:08)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s not just your resume, your LinkedIn profile, probably what you just described about your kids and your relationship with them today. And then being like well adjusted and happy and kind. That’s, that’s the measure of success for a parent, for a father.

Michael Chachula (31:33)
Be a good person, the rest will follow. That’s really what it comes down to.

Kevin Rice (31:35)
Yeah. Yeah. ⁓

you had, you had mentioned there was another opportunity for you to continue that growth curve in your career, but it required a big move. could you tell the story about kind of how you were considering the move to, to Switzerland?

Michael Chachula (31:44)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, the move to Switzerland very, very interesting. I was working at Novartis Pharmaceuticals and there was a bunch of jobs open. And was taking a look at technology jobs that were out there. The job that I currently, the job that I was holding was going evaporate because the new CTO was now in Basel, Switzerland. So I went and started looking at jobs out

stood out on the platform at three in the morning ⁓ in Basel, Switzerland, and the wind came over the Alps. Now mind you, I’m from Chicago and lived, born and raised 40 years, lived in New Jersey, freezing cold, tons of snow, right? Chicago, freezing cold, Jersey, tons of snow. And I’m standing on that platform surrounded by tons of snow. And the wind came off the Alps in January at three in the morning, because I was catching the train from

Kevin Rice (32:23)
Chicago gets cold.

Michael Chachula (32:41)
downtown back to was a three hour train ride. And the whole way I said, nope, nope, nope, nope, because that wind hit me. And I swear I’ve never been that cold in my entire So I went back home. said, no, I’ll take the package. I’m not going to, I’m not going to do it. So after I did that, I sat with the family and I said, what do you guys want to

And all of them said almost simultaneously, we wanna be warm. We don’t want snow. said, okay. So I started looking in California I got the job Avery Denison and this shows you the way that your career meanders. went from a ⁓ global head of infrastructure

Kevin Rice (33:03)
You

Michael Chachula (33:20)
at at Novartis to being a director level Avery Denison. it looked like a step back, but it wasn’t. It was just a different step.

And I went there and I was running ⁓ IT effectiveness for the organization.

after about a year or so, a year and a half, they asked me to step into a program.

management officer role for the organization to look at not only the IT but also business projects within of our brands.

it was a great opportunity, great career.

Kevin Rice (33:49)
And,

and you spent some time going between IT and business management. And I’ve noticed a lot of people kind of stay in their swim lane. I know a few executives have kind of balanced or jumped between like marketing and IT, but it seems to be more rare. What did you learn from working in different functions within these organizations?

Michael Chachula (33:55)
Yeah. Yeah.

I learned the art of elicitation. I think that’s what a lot of folks haven’t done in their career. And if you don’t know what the art of elicitation is, there’s a book,

called Confidential. If you could get your hands on the have to go on eBay or you have to find it. It talks about how the intelligence community elicited information from people without them realizing that they’re giving you the information. And what I mean by that is a lot of times that you’re eliciting information from folks, it’s because they don’t know that they know. that make sense?

So what you’re doing is you’re having to kind of coax out of them what it is they want you to do. So in my career, a lot of times, if I was sitting on the business side or on the IT side, someone either on the opposite side of the fence, whether on the business side or the IT side, are like, how do you do that? you know that that’s what we wanted for the project? If I’m sitting on the…

IT side, it said, well, here’s what I’ve done. Can you come on this side and do that for us? I kept getting stolen back and forth. I’d go on the business, then I’d get stolen back into IT, I’d go back to the business. Because they were like, how do you do that? It a unique skill to have, but it’s one I started doing at 14 years old.

Kevin Rice (35:27)
We’ll drop it in the show notes so people can go and try and find it themselves. feel like a lesson in interrogation could be helpful for anybody, especially if you’ve got young children.

Michael Chachula (35:29)
Yeah, it’s an interesting, interesting book.

Yeah,

yes, yeah it does. It does help with teenagers, I’ll tell you that much.

Kevin Rice (35:42)
Yeah. So you’ve, ⁓ you’ve dealt with mortality, quite a few times in your life. And after your father passed away, that wasn’t the last time you kind of faced. And in this case, your own mortality, because, around this time of your life, you were diagnosed with prostate cancer and then later severe COVID. How did those like difficult experiences? ⁓

Michael Chachula (35:46)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Kevin Rice (36:06)
affect you, did they give you moments of clarity as you were kind of like, like I said, facing your own mortality?

Michael Chachula (36:09)
Hmm.

Yeah, you think what it does do is it gives you a level of hypervigilance of who you are. you become very analytical about if this is the end, is this the person I want them to remember that I’ve created and left behind? At least for me, it

it really allows you to go inside of yourself when you’re faced with the hard decision of whether you’re going to keep fighting or not, because it’s not easy. The fight fighting is especially

I had prostate cancer was very difficult for me, because I was going through a divorce at the time as

So I actually had to move out of my house. I moved into an apartment in the first eight months, almost a year of my treatment, I did

And I was in California, all my family was in Chicago or

You had to make a decision whether you’re to get up to use the bathroom or get up or eat something because you didn’t have energy to do both. And that was the big excitement for the day is whether or not you would do one or the other. it really, it really allows you to self-examine the person you’ve become. And if and if that’s the person that you want to continue. And it goes back to where I said you need to move around to reinvent yourself.

Kevin Rice (37:16)
Mmm.

Michael Chachula (37:36)
And that includes the way you think, move around your thinking, maybe give that person the benefit of the doubt that before you were being really tough on or that family member, you might not have known what they were going through. You know, it really allowed me to have that, that clarity and I had to change some things. I just didn’t like the person I was, especially when, you know, I had the cancer because I really didn’t know what the outcome was going to be. And then I sat down and, and I said, you know what?

Kevin Rice (38:00)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Chachula (38:03)
I need to fight this and there was two scenarios and I have the pictures actually were two times in the time when I was trying to figure out if I wanted fighting this or not, that I was sitting on the couch in the apartment I had lost 50, 60 pounds.

I was 130 pounds at the time, I looked like hell, you know what I mean? I looked sick. And I was just like, gosh, do I really wanna keep doing this? And as soon as I said that, I looked out on my balcony and there was a dove sitting on my balcony railing.

Kevin Rice (38:38)
Hmm.

Michael Chachula (38:42)
I knew it was my dad.

said, nope, gotta fight, gotta fight.

Kevin Rice (38:47)
That’s beautiful. Yeah.

Michael Chachula (38:48)
Second time

trying to figure it out. And again, wasn’t well. wasn’t feeling well. was actually…

the hospital, I was actually in the hospital, and I looking out the window, and again, there’s a freaking dove. I’m like, what is going on here? And I could hear it before I saw it, know, the hoo, hoo, know, the coo, coo, you know, and was like, what the hell is this thing, you know? And I found it, I’m like, you know what? I get it now. As much as we think we’re doing this alone, as much as you think you’re sitting in a room alone, you’re not alone.

Kevin Rice (39:17)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Michael Chachula (39:26)
You’re

not. There is spirit there that you’ll never, you’ll never ever understand. What is there? If you open your heart, you open your mind to your employees, you open your mind to the projects you’re working on, your children, your spouse, come to find that you are not alone. So.

Kevin Rice (39:45)
Yeah, I

think the universe spirit God, if people, choose to use that verbiage, it sends you messages and breadcrumbs. And if you’re willing to keep your eyes open to it, yeah. ⁓ I think that’s like such a beautiful example of your father, being still present in your life and, know, giving you a message to continue to, to fight. have more left to do here on this earth in this lifetime.

Michael Chachula (39:50)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

you

Yeah. And then I saw a symbol. and it had a circle, small circle and had a big circle. And then it had squares. And I said, my God, it hit me. And

I went, when I got home, I pulled out my computer and I started writing a book. And in that book, I just started to dump all the things that were in my head. And this picture just kept hitting me, hitting me, hitting me. And inside of the picture is the center of self, is you. That is you. That is the center of everything that you are, the being that you are, and the human that you are.

And then each one of the squares, the four squares, is one was your mental state, one is your emotional state, one is your physical state, and one was your spiritual state. And I started to realize that because I was sick, my physical state was pulling down when I felt terrible, which was dragging my emotional and mental state down with it. But my spiritual state, since I believed that I wasn’t alone, was able to pull those back into.

back into the right position. So I started to realize that, I view things in my life everything around me. attitude, my altitude, my aptitude, everything. Your EQ, your IQ, anything you want to think of gets impacted when those things get out of whack. they’re having a bad day. No, they’re out of balance. Something’s happened, and they’re not processing it well.

Kevin Rice (41:31)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Chachula (41:35)
So I started to write this book. And then in this book, of it, have a chart in it that was the rise of the phoenix. You are, let’s say, an addict, or you’ve had an accident, or you have a terrible illness. There’s that identification that you have it. There’s the identification that you have some level of illness, some level of addiction, or you start to realize your leg is missing, or you have some type of…

you know, critical injury that is going to change your life forever. So, you you sit there and you start going down this hole to rock bottom. So, okay, let’s use mine. You have an illness. You get a test. Now you’re waiting for the results, which is the worst.

Kevin Rice (42:11)
Hmm.

Michael Chachula (42:18)
time of your life as your brain is manufacturing scenario after scenario, it just starts producing all this terrible. And God forbid, you’re Googling it and all this. mean, you already have predicted what the outcome is before you ever get the outcome. Now you get the diagnosis. That’s when you hit rock bottom, or you get the prognosis.

you go into a center for care because you have an addiction or something like that. You hit that rock bottom where you know something has to change, or you need to be treated, or your life now is different. That’s where the climb starts. that you have that information, it’s what you do with it that’s important. That starts you on the journey of rise. start having to rise from that.

Kevin Rice (42:52)
Yeah.

Michael Chachula (43:01)
great, you start getting treatment. You start responding to the treatment. You go for the addiction. start responding to the treatment for addiction. You start learning how to walk with a prosthetic, or you get a new prosthetic arm, or you learn to read with one eye, whatever it is. You start that climb of resilience, as you mentioned at the beginning, to where, OK, let’s get my mental state right. I’ll still be emotional for a while. But once you get your mental state right, the emotional starts to get.

Then you hit that physical, like I said all those physical things, then the spiritual kicks in. Now you say…

I’ve realized I could do this. Something helped me along the way. A lot of people helped you. Their spirit helped you. Their encouragement helped you. But you don’t realize that it was from the center of self, of you hammering, nailing things in the place to make you a better person. And you should do that in your career. Because when people come into work, sometimes they’re out of balance. got to get in benefit of the doubt. You don’t know what’s happened to them. And it’s

Kevin Rice (43:50)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Chachula (43:57)
there’s some tragedies going on out there that you just don’t understand. So care.

Kevin Rice (44:02)
Yeah.

Michael Chachula (44:03)
about people and you’ll see your career will skyrocket.

Kevin Rice (44:07)
And what you’re describing now is the house of self framework, right? Within the Chuchula method book.

Michael Chachula (44:12)
Yes.

Well, actually, in the Chitula method, you see it at play. But I actually don’t put that in there. That was in a book I never finished. And the reason I never finished the book is, as I started to tell some of these stories, it got too real. It got so real on some of the things that I had gone through that I realized that, smoke. And you know what? I guarantee you, on this podcast, I will finish this book. I will finish it. you’ll be the first person to launch it.

Kevin Rice (44:21)
Mmm.

Michael Chachula (44:41)
But I’ll tell you, I will finish this

Kevin Rice (44:42)
Amazing. Well, I’m also looking forward to seeing the next book when you finish it, because it sounds important.

Michael Chachula (44:46)
Yeah.

Kevin Rice (44:48)
Michael, thank you so much for being here today and thank you for your honesty, your generosity, and just the depth that you brought to this conversation. The way you shared what it looked like to lose your father at such a young age, face your own mortality, build a career through pure resilience. It was very powerful. I’m really grateful for your openness and for the way you kind of connected the dots between leadership,

presence, faith, and family in a way that’s very real. So thank you so much for being here.