About Chris

I was born in a small southern Ontario, Canadian town called Monkton in the mid-1980s. As the eldest of three boys, I established myself as a force in the Hanna household. From a young age, I demonstrated my entrepreneurial tendencies: trading and selling hockey cards, flipping pogs at recess, making deals during garage sales in the driveway, and even selling self-help study cassettes for $20 apiece to other students.

At the age of 10, I had my first job, delivering newspapers for the Toronto Star every Saturday & Sunday. Recognizing the need to provide an exceptional customer experience, I focused on the extra touches with my subscribers on my route: putting each newspaper in a bag to ensure the wet, cold Canadian winters didn’t ruin anything, while also organizing my route to meet the demands of early risers who expected their weekend edition by a particular time. When I was 12, armed with a desire for more independence, I took on a new challenge working at the local arena. What started out as working the admissions during the Sunday public skate, eventually turned into new responsibilities providing maintenance and support of the facility, including timekeeping local games and tournaments. It was while working at the Monkton arena, I developed an incredible work ethic, focused on the details.

In 2001, seeking a new challenge, I began working at Zellers in Listowel, Ontario, as a Customer Service Specialist in the Home Theatre department. My work ethic and dedication to the customer experience led to being the go-to guy in the department, helping to reorganize the team’s efforts and improve performance. Seeing the need for product training mixed with my love of presenting, I created specialized sessions for staff members on the latest technologies, without being asked. By the time I was ready to attend post-secondary education, store management had suggested that I consider the Management Trainee program instead.

Despite the allure suggested to me of becoming a Store Manager, I left Zellers to attend Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario pursuing an Honours Bachelor of Arts Degree in Business Communications. During my final year at Brock, I worked for the university’s Career Services Department, as a Career Advisor. I loved this role, helping students and alumni with résumé reviews, interview prep, and job-hunting techniques. While in this position, I also got to solidify more of my coaching skills as well. 

With graduation close approaching, I applied and was successfully hired by Enterprise Rent-A-Car in May 2007, beginning as a Management Trainee. Seeing the need to gain work experience, coupled with wanting to leverage the well-regarded training and development program at Enterprise, I rose up the ranks working at 11 different branches during my time there, including becoming “Branch Manager of the Year in 2011.” The best part of working at Enterprise was the autonomy to manage a business and territory. Setting aggressive targets and working to achieve them alongside my teams was motivating. At Enterprise, I was known as a fixer – if there was a branch struggling with customer satisfaction, revenue generation, or operations, I would come in and turn around the performance.

In March 2012, I started working for a global organization focused on providing connectivity needs to IT professionals. Seeing the opportunity to provide value and clean up the operations of the team, I rolled up my sleeves, striving to drive change and continuous improvement with the teams I led and worked with. We produced game-changing results and fostered an exceptional employee experience. In early 2015, I devised the strategy and game plan to overhaul the operations, implementing a 24-hour global, support structure while driving significant improvements to people, processes, and tools. Managing the team closest to the customer experience, fostered a culture of ongoing continuous improvement and data driven analytics into all aspects of the team. In 2020, the team was recognized as the “Best Small Contact Center” by ICMI as part of their industry, global awards, an effort that I drove and led.

In January 2021, I joined an organization called CashFlow Tribe, as their VP of Operations. CashFlow Tribe was a Canadian-focused real estate education company, offering virtual training, events, and mentorship for real estate investors. In many ways we helped real estate investors become business owners, helping many of them take the leap into entrepreneurship. During my time there, I not only became a mentor, working closely with many of our customers, but I was also promoted into the role of CEO for the company shortly into my tenure. As CEO, I drove not only the vision for the company, but oversaw all major functions of the business – operations, sales, marketing, IT, HR, etc. It was an incredibly thrilling and life-changing opportunity to be CEO and I learned a lot – about myself and leading. After almost two years with CashFlow Tribe, I decided it was time to get back to my true passion, though, leaning into being an entrepreneurial person.

You see, in late 2018, I was recognized by the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) as part of their inaugural list of “Movers & Shakers” in the Customer Experience industry. With this recognition highlighting my experience, combined with a desire to embrace my passion, I launched Evolving Management. One thing that stood out to me was that throughout my career, my management approach has evolved greatly. I’ve made a ton of mistakes and learned a lot of lessons along the way, always striving to grow in the process. I aimed to use what was initially just a blog at Evolving Management to share the lessons I picked up over the years. In time, I came to realize that through Evolving Management, I could expand and share additional solutions and resources with companies and leaders to help them rethink and evolve their approach to managing the Employee Experience.

I’ve always been passionate about sharing and presenting. With this in mind, I wanted to share my ideas and messages with a broader audience. In early 2019, I became an ICMI Featured Contributor in 2019, sharing insights with the contact center community. In addition, I also had the opportunity to speak at events and conferences while being featured in webinars as well. Evolving Management opened the chance to do what I loved and was passionate about – speaking, presenting, and helping others. In early 2020, I was stunned to named by ICMI as a “Top 50 Thought Leader to Follow on Twitter in 2020.” Throughout 2020, I continue to be a Featured Contributor both with ICMI.com again, and ThinkHDI.com, too, sharing content mostly on the role of a leader in fostering an exceptional employee experience. I’ve also had the opportunity to present more via webinars and live virtual events.

Because of the various experiences I’ve gained, I can lean on talking about being a virtual leadership coach, helping leaders who struggle with feeling authentic stop faking it till they make it, with my course and mentorship program available on evolvingmanagement.com. I’ve also incorporated consulting back into the business again, too. I provide business owners support to audit and improve their operations, customer experience, and employee culture.

When I was younger, I used to dream about being on the radio or on TV as a host of my own show. Whether it was school plays, or public speaking events, I loved to present and be in front of people.

I applied and was accepted to a college radio & television broadcasting program after high school, but went down the business path instead. But whenever the opportunity arose to present in any aspect of my life, school or work, I jumped at it. Both in university and everywhere I’ve worked throughout my career, I’ve loved the opportunity to present and share. While I ultimately didn’t go down the radio or TV path, I did come full circle with launching my own podcast, The Chris Hanna Show. The podcast launched in mid-2020. Podcasts have become the radio experience I was looking for almost 20 years ago.

The Chris Hanna Show is a podcast dedicated to helping people achieve more by improving their impact, productivity, and performance. Subscribe and listen to the latest episodes wherever you listen to your podcasts. Every week, new episodes are available on many of the major podcast directories, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and more. Every week I’m speaking about topics such as leadership development, workplace flexibility, and more, while also delving into personal effectiveness tips. I’m also offering tips and tricks to help people evolve their approach to managing their careers, teams, or organizations.

In 2023, I am excited to begin interviewing entrepreneurs and business owners or people who decided to pivot their careers to live life on their terms.

In mid-2022, I launched a new business called Hire4Me Inc. I am the Founder and CEO of  Hire4Me, where we help solopreneurs find that next critical hire who will help their business grow. With my done-for-you hiring solution combined with the training support I offer to help onboard employees, my goal is to make the life of a small business owner easier. For years I kept hearing the same thing from business owners and solopreneurs that I mentored or coached, “I wish someone would just hire for me.” 

Not a lot of people have the interest or experience with hiring. Having been building and leading teams for almost twenty years across a variety of industries, I’ve personally hired, promoted, or led over 500 different people directly. Plus, add on that I have a background coaching and providing career counselling, too, it was a natural fit.

In late 2023, I officially launched my latest company, All In Content Inc.

For years I’ve been batch creating content, specifically videos for myself. In time, as people started to learn more about me I would get lots of questions on my process. That led to coaching and consulting on video production and best practices, as a side gig. Then companies and business owners started asking me to batch record videos with them, and manage their social media. It turns out that something I enjoyed doing myself could be monetized into a successful business.

With that in mind, I launched the company and quickly grew the company to have clients in many different industries – roofing, property management, plumbing, real estate, bookkeeping, short-term rentals, and more. No one batch creates videos at the scale I do, which is why my clients have started to refer to me as the “Video Batch Creation King.”

What’s fun is when I can also introduce myself as a poker player, sharing some of the crazy and wild adventures I have had over the years. Poker, to this day remains one of my top passions and most profitable side hustles. There have been times throughout my life, especially in recent years, where my winnings from poker and gambling (which I refer to myself as semi-professional), has far exceeded my monthly salary from my full-time roles. 

I’ve come to embrace the concept of going all-in, in more ways than just poker, too. It’s part of my mindset and belief that for us to win, in our lives, career, or businesses, we need to go all-in on what we do best – our strengths. My wife and I regularly travel to Vegas, got married there (by Elvis), and have the words “All-In” inscribed on our wedding rings. So from time to time, you may see me post content about poker or related subjects, as it’s one of my passions.