Everything rises and falls on leadership.
Why is it so important to you to build the leadership into other people? True education is self-discovery.
“So in that you're finding out what are my strengths and lean in towards your strengths”
and what are some of those weaknesses and also getting better at those as well.
And ultimately it's about influencing and getting others to perform at a higher level
that even they thought wasn't possible. Charles Solano is a resilient, purpose-driven entrepreneur and the founder of Rotium Leadership Academy time to wing it and a big big coffee owner. Through his work he helps professionals master their mindsets and build thriving ventures, creating a lasting legacy of empowered leadership, bold action and community enrichment.
Talk to me about the story of breaking some Guinness World Records. I had a period in my life where I got pretty obsessed with doing chin-ups. I went after the 24-hour record which was 5,320 at the time and I didn't get it. It was a failed attempt. I tore my right bicep but in my after-action report as David calls it,
“I got a lot of learnings. We are limitless. We are limitless. If you want to put in the work”
it's amazing what our bodies can do. What do you think is the number one lesson that you want
people to learn from viewing your episode? I hope the viewers get a lot but I would say it's not over. I'm telling our way. The living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Insight Success Podcast. I am your host Jason Tyler and I am joined today by none other than Charles Solano. Now I know that you guys can see this on the screen but his shirt says time to wing it and
I just want to take a minute to just kind of explain what's the what's the ethos behind time to wing it? What are we? What have we got going on here? So time to wing it is a quick service chicken wing restaurant. We're going to revolutionize the way the right way to fried chicken wings. And now we talked about this in the episode. I don't want to give away too much of the sauce. But you guys do your wings a little bit differently. Talk to me a little bit about the differences.
Our sauces are fabulous. We've got the all we've got for the categories. We got mild. We got hot. We got medium and we got lava hot. So now what separates us apart with the taste of our wings
“is that we fry everything in beef tallow. See that was the that's what made when we were talking”
about it in the interview that's what made my ears perk up. I was like we were we're doing we we're frying everything in beef tallow. All right that's something that I can get behind because the last thing I want is to you know go out and eat fried food and now I feel super slow again afterwards. I can't get none done. I'm not going eat fried food again for another week. So that's like a big big benefit to having everything fried in beef tallow. Now I don't want to just spend
time on time to wing it. You're in so many different businesses and obviously you have your background in the Marine Corps. So I want to talk a little bit about just what is it like running and operating so many different businesses even specifically just in big big coffee. How is it like what's it like running five different locations? I got a great team in place now that runs the coffee business and I wouldn't have ventured out into these other businesses if I
didn't know that I've got a solid team of leaders in to run the coffee business. I still have to meet with my leaders weekly and we talk about our KPIs. We talk about store performances and you know company culture and stuff like that. So now that I've have those leaders in place it affords me the time to do some other things. So you want to talk about constant prioritization
and to do lists and stuff like that. Yes it's always there but I love it. I love it. My time is in the
morning from about four to seven in the morning and then it's like bring it on. Bring on the
Rest of the day and what I think.
you when you're running and operating a business that's really what it is life is going to throw
“obstacle. I mean we talked about obstacles versus opportunities. Life is going to throw obstacles”
at you and you have no idea what they're what they're going to be and that's where the chaos part comes in, right? But if you're organized, if you're practicing good leadership, I mean you have the leadership academy. You can get through a lot of those obstacles and what you'll find is those obstacles are the opportunities themselves, right? That's another thing that we talk about. So I want to take a second here to talk about rodeon leadership academy because throughout
your episode we talked about how important leadership is. Why is it so important to you to build the leadership into other people? Everything rises and falls on leadership and it's a constant,
you know, we always want to develop ourselves and self-improve and the people that we bring on
board into our businesses, we make sure that the values are there. We want to make sure that they're pretty, they're pretty high on wanting to develop themselves. They've got some hunger there and
“they are looking to learn. So in the leadership academy, that's that's what it's all about.”
It's all about learning and growing and you know, we say in the leadership academy that true education is self-discovery. So in that you're finding out what are my strengths and lean in towards your strengths and what are some of those weaknesses and also getting better at those as well.
And ultimately it's about influencing and getting others to perform at a higher level that
even they thought wasn't possible. We talked about the cycle of leadership and how important it is to, you know, how important it is to create company culture, right? Culture is such an important aspect to any, I mean, any endeavor that you're going to get into, but talking to me a little bit about the company culture that you're, that you're creating in each one of your businesses. Sure, sure. My employees know that yeah, yeah, they do work for me, but when you join our teams
and join our businesses, you're working on yourselves, personally and professionally. You know, you do work for Charles in this business, but they make that commitment that they are learning
“and growing. And that's what our culture is. My leaders know that they are there to take care of”
their people. Okay, learning is not about being in charge. It's about taking care of those in your charge. So everyone who joins my team, you got a voice. We see you and we hear you and learnings can come from everywhere. They can come from the newest employee joining the team with a set of fresh eyes and the most senior and everything in between. So it's constantly, we tell our folks, you know, there's all kinds of learning opportunities throughout the day and those can be in
good situations or they can be in bad situations. Sometimes the bad ones are a little bit hard to find that nugget in there, but there's something there. And the bad feedback, I feel like when I get bad feedback in business, when I get bad feedback, that's the easiest learning opportunity. That's like a lao. So somebody telling you, giving you bad feedback is telling you exactly where you're messing up. They're going to go straight to the heart of what their experience wasn't what made it
not great. Sure. And so for me, when I get a bad review and something that I've done in business, I'm like, "Oh, all right, that's, I got to immediately change this quick to action." Now, I want to kind of touch on, there's two very important numbers tattooed on your arm there, 385107. Sure. Talk to me about the story of breaking some Guinness World Records. Yes. So I had a period in my life where I got pretty obsessed with doing chin-ups during
that COVID time. Word to David Goggons. Word to David Goggons wrote a book called Can't
hurt me and also never finished as a second book. I got to meet him back in April earlier this year.
David broke the Guinness World record for pull-ups back in 2013 and one of the chapters in this book he covers in pretty good detail of all of his milestones and his trainings. So I started gaging my training around doing chin-ups and kind of matching David's milestones. And when I
Eclipse his number in a 24-hour period, I said, "It's time for Charles to go ...
World record." So I did. In 2021, I went after the 24-hour record, which was 5,320. At the time. And I didn't get it. It was a failed attempt. I tore my right bicep but in my after-action report as David calls it. I got a lot of learnings and I learned exactly how to break that record. Now, it wasn't the 24-hour one that I ended up breaking. These two numbers on my arm are when I broke the eight-hour and the 12-hour records. And I mean, we talked about this off-camera, but
the pace that you were at when you broke the 12-hour record had you maintained pace to go to the
24-hour. You would have broken the 24-hour record, too. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. When I first went
“after the 24-hour record, 5,340, I ended up getting 5,112 or 5,107 reps. That's what I was talking about.”
That's what I was talking about. Yes, I'm just messing around. Yes. Yes, so it's amazing. What, you know, if you get obsessed and you keep working at it, what are our bodies? Our capable of. So that was one thing that I proved to myself is that we are limitless.
We are limitless. If you want to put in the work, it's amazing what our bodies can do.
And that is probably my favorite lesson that, you know, I'm privileged enough to have been able to share your story and talk with you over the last couple of hours, but I want to really
“hammer down on this for the people that are watching this right now, who have the opportunity to”
go out and watch your episode of Operation CEO. There's so many great nuggets in there, but I want you to what if you based on what you've shared so far today with me, what do you think is the number one lesson that you want people to learn from viewing your episode? I hope the viewers get a lot, but I would say there's a quote that I really love and it's the universe talking to you. What is meant to happen will happen when it's supposed to happen? I love that. So use that,
put in the work, have some patience and just keep getting after it. And if you want it bad enough,
“you'll get it. God's timing is always right. Just remember that. And with that guys, we are on”
the other side now of our podcast episode with Charles. So Charles, where can the viewers find you on social media? You know, I'm sure there's plenty that they can learn from you on your website. Social media is really, you know, books that you might be working on, things of that nature. Where can people find you online? Yeah, there's a book in my future, working on that as we speak, but online, you know, there's Facebook, there's Instagram. I've got Facebook sites for all of my coffee shops
and for my businesses. So you, I'm sure if you Google, big coffee, big coffee, Michigan area, sure, and maybe even the Guinness World record for chin-ups, you'll line me. It's still current. Listen, I wouldn't, I don't know if I'm going to make that attempt, but I do want to try to see how many chin-ups I can get in a day. So I'm going to start working on that. All right. I might
be coming for your record here in a couple of years. We never know. You never know. But with that
guys, we are on the other side of this episode of the Insights at Says Podcast. Make sure you guys tune in to Charles's episode of Operation CEO. And with that, we will see you guys in the next one.
