How He Did It (Again): Bouncing Back From Failure As An Entrepreneur

We can all learn from the rise – and fall – and rise again of self-made entrepreneur Christopher King. 

King is the founder of Cruzach, Inc. a holding company comprised of a dozen businesses including a partnership with the Mondavi family for a wine that retails for $799 a bottle and the executive production of a feature film, “What Lola Wants,” starring “Once Upon a Time In Wonderland” actress Sophie Lowe. I learned about King from a mutual friend and felt his advice on entrepreneurship would be beneficial to all.

At age 36, King has no MBA (in fact no degree at all) and has made his fortune from the ground up. Twice. King registered his first company at age 17 and made his first million by age 26. But even more impressive is that after losing everything in the economic crash of 2008, he picked himself up and did it again: Starting from nothing, he has bootstrapped his way to a venture worth multiple millions of dollars once more.

Christopher R. King has built his success from the ground up, more than once (Image courtesy of Cruzach.com)

How did he do it? And is business success easier the second time around? Here’s his story:

King grew up in Hartford, Connecticut. His father left when he was 11 years old. As man of the house, Chris developed a protective and compassionate nature. With two friends, he set up a landscaping business at age 17. They landed a great client—a fitness club—but failed to read the small print and couldn’t generate money for supplies up-front, and the deal fell apart. As he matured, Chris entered the music industry as a concert promoter. He quickly became a big fish in little pond, with the biggest concert he booked being an event he produced with the newly discovered 50 Cent.

Despite his success, however, he soon became burned out on the business. “In music, you always have to rely on other people, and other people can let you down,” he says. “I realized I would never be in control of what I do. I needed a business that would allow me to make more of the critical decisions myself.”

Next came real estate. The property market was blowing up in the early 2000′s. Chris moved to Atlanta and flipped his first house seven weeks after buying it, for a tidy profit of $70,000. He was hooked. “One house turned into three, three into six, six into nine.” By 2007, he’d become a millionaire at age 26. It was the big life. He was young, single, and living it up on the town. Then came the real estate crash. Now he scrambled to stay solvent.

“I thought we’d weather the storm,” he says. He didn’t. “Everything I was making went right back into real estate,” he recalls. “I had no true assets, no art, no stocks.” The lack of diversification meant that his wipe out was total. Back at square one, California beckoned him. “Beautiful weather, palm trees, the beach…. I figured it was as good a place as any for a guy to reinvent himself,” he said. He rented an apartment on Sunset Strip and soon found himself doing what he knew best once again: putting people and ideas together and brokering deals.

In 2009, King founded Monarch Medical Group and put the firm into overdrive. He expanded nationally and pushed the sales to millions. He hired 50 employees to keep up with demand. Monarch is King’s day-to-day endeavor, growing by leaps and bounds alongside the affiliated businesses he launches that seem to spring up like mushrooms after the rain. Alongside a close friend and business partner Justin Anthony they work together with Robert  Mondavi Jr., one of the famous Napa wine-making families, (in addition to collecting art and cars, Chris collects fine wines). It led to the partnership of King of Clubs, a proprietary cult wine in luxury packaging that sells for more than $700 a bottle and is served in restaurants such as Spago in Beverly Hills.

King claims there’s no magic to his golden touch. His self-generated motto is this: “If you get the right people in the room, magic will happen with very little effort.” His life has come full circle. Rolls Royce and Aston Martin vehicles fill his garage. He and his wife give their two children the level of childhood he never had. He is also active in charities that focus on underprivileged children. (He admits to being a bit of an easy mark for good causes; Sharon Stone personally pressed him into making a winning bid of $40,000 on an Ed Ruscha painting earlier this year to benefit amFAR.)

At 36 he believes his biggest deals are still to come. “Whoever said, ‘Less is more’ never had more,” he maintains. No level of personal comfort will satisfy his hunger for new ideas, new partnerships, and new ways to solve problems. With his trademark candor, Chris offers the following strategies as 

his top tips to emerging entrepreneurs:

1. Generate a Plan. A lot of people have an idea of what they want, but haven’t really solidified the goal, King maintains. The key to real success is to clearly establish your end goal and start with the end in mind. The person who knows exactly what they want in business and in life will always get what they want. A business will have a hard time moving the needle if it lacks a clear plan for the various steps in its lifecycle, he says. “There is an old saying, ‘people don’t plan to fail; they fail to plan.’ I believe this is true and that it is the same in business. I have always had a plan. Someone once told me that it is better to make a decision and be wrong than to never make a decision. A good plan is not a set course that a business must run by. Rather, it is a general direction that gives you an idea of how and when to adapt for change and what your goals will be.”

2. Don’t Quit. Life will perpetually throw curve balls.  You have to weather the storm and never give up, King says. Success is also about your perspective: Sometimes what appears to be an obstacle can actually end up becoming the solution. The answer isn’t always right in front of you, but success lies in having the perseverance and adaptability to know that you can always find a way through. Keep dusting yourself off.

3. Believe in Yourself and Believe in the Goal. Positive thinking and attitude is a must. If you don’t believe in yourself, you will never convince people to walk with you, King believes. “Self-confidence and self-motivation are what has helped me through my own hardest times,” King says. “I used to have a vision board to keep me focused on my goals. I would cut out pictures in magazines of houses, cars, watches and even the family settings I wanted and place them on the board. As I look back, I have achieved it all and more. I think the key is to visualize yourself already achieving your goal. If you keep your eye on the prize and believe it is yours, it will be.”

4. Build the Right Team. “This is the one thing that took me a while to learn before I hit my first million,” King says. “You can’t achieve success on your own. No one can. Every CEO, president, millionaire or billionaire has a created a winning team. Find the people with the work ethic, passion, vision and attitude to help you achieve your Big Dream. When you find someone who you can trust and is loyal and works just as hard as you do, do anything in your power to never lose them.”

5. Be at the Right Place (to Create the Right Time). “Throughout all of my life, I have made a conscious effort to surround myself with positive people and opportunities,” King says. “Even during my financial struggles, I made it a point to spend a little extra money to go to a more upscale coffee shop or restaurant so I wouldn’t miss the opportunity to meet the right people. Consider your time and money as an investment. Even if you only have $20 in your pocket, it is better spent on a $15 cocktail than on cheap beers at a college bar. If you want to meet the right people, you have to be in the right place. If you think as if you are broke, you will stay broke.”

6. There is No Time Like the Present. Patience is critical in business, but that doesn’t mean standing still. “I believe good things don’t always come to those who wait,” King says. “I believe great things come to those who take ownership and to out and get what they want.”

In an entrepreneurial life, not every effort will lead to success. What are your own greatest strategies for bouncing back from reversals? With thanks to Christopher King for his candid honesty, I look forward to hearing inputs from your own entrepreneurial experiences in the comment section below.

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