My life reads like a movie about resilience, reinvention, and grit — all wrapped in a smile and a wicked sense of humor.

I was born in Southern California and dropped into rural Montana at age 12, which meant I grew up straddling two very different worlds: fast-paced city life and slow-grit country living. That contrast shaped how I see people, opportunity, and possibility. At 19, I joined the LDS Church, served a mission in Brazil at 21, and spent 25 years as a committed member before life, growth, and experience led me down a different spiritual path. The transition wasn’t easy — but like everything else in my story, it made me wiser, more grounded, and more human.

Professionally, I’ve lived nine business lives in one. Over 39 years, I’ve built, operated, bought, broken, and resurrected companies in remodeling, construction, manufacturing, real-estate development, foreign investment, hospitality, restaurants, and retail. I’ve worked with everyone from EB-5 investors to small-town contractors. I’ve won big, lost big, survived cancer, finished two Ironmans, and I still show up with the enthusiasm of a guy launching his very first venture.

I’m a customer-service fanatic, a storyteller, and an entrepreneur with the scars — and the receipts — to back up every lesson I teach.

Today, I’m the founder of Bootstraps & Battle Scars and the creator of Founders Exchange, where I coach entrepreneurs in the trenches, help them become extraordinary, and create powerful mastermind experiences where people can finally drop the armor and get real.

I’m a father, step-father, husband, and the kind of guest who is wildly entertaining, brutally honest, deeply insightful, and genuinely fun to talk to.

If your audience loves real stories from real entrepreneurs — the messy ones, the triumphant ones, and the ones that teach you something you can actually use — I’m your guy.

Check out my podcast here: https://www.youtube.com/@chrisshurian2025

Rory Paquette is a professional podcaster, coach, author and speaker. He currently hosts 10 different podcasts: The Power of Man, Wake Up the Lions, THE Podcaster Nation, Step Up to the Mic, The Write Path, and co-host of Boiling Point: Faith & Fire Podcast, plus 4 more. He has written two books, "The Lone Wolf Selling System" and "The 5% Diet." (currently working on books #3 & #4.) He has decades of experience in public speaking, coaching, management and sales and has brought all of this together into his current coaching programs. Rory provides Life-Coaching for Men through his program, "Power of ONE!" He works with men and women in becoming better, more profitable podcasters through his podcast coaching program, "WAKE UP THE MIC!" He coaches aspiring and current speakers and is the Managing Director of the Social Media Management company Silver Core Media. He also offers his own affiliate program to podcasters who are looking to monetize quickly called "The Rising Tide System.”

Rory
Rory Paquette's Website