The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – No Ceiling, No Excuses: How To Stop Stalling Your Dream and Start Building Your Life by Christopher J. Capuano

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

No Ceiling, No Excuses: How To Stop Stalling Your Dream and Start Building Your Life by Christopher J. Capuano https://www.amazon.com/No-Ceiling-Excuses-Stalling-Building/dp/B0FGJY8366 Noceilingnoexcuses.com You don’t need more hours in the day. You don’t need another degree. You need to stop waiting and start building. No Ceiling, No Excuses is part memoir, part workbook, part blueprint. It’s for anyone who knows they’re capable of more but needs the tools and push to get started. Chris Capuano didn’t come from money, mentorship, or stability. He grew up in chaos: addiction, instability, and uncertainty, and still managed to build a life of freedom, ownership, and real success. He walked away from a stable union job with benefits, a vacation fund, a pension, and a guaranteed retirement to bet on himself and build something from the ground up. No connections. No playbook. Just hunger, grit, and the belief that he was made for more. Inside, you’ll find: • Lessons learned the hard way from family struggles to job sites to business ownership • The H.U.S.T.L.E. framework that changed everything • Sales, mindset, and leadership skills that actually work • How to build revenue streams that work when you’re not • A raw look at what it means to grow when life stacks the deck against you This isn’t fluff. This isn’t theory. This is what happens when you stop waiting, stop stalling, and start building something real. If you feel stuck, burned out, or just ready for a new chapter, this is your sign. This is your permission. This is your starting point. Because there is no ceiling. Only the one you choose to live under. Let’s get to work.

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Because you're about to go on a moment. monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss here from the chris voss show dot com ladies and gentlemen welcome the big show as always from 16 years 24 episodes we bring in the chris voss show because we had nothing better do we're just sitting around throwing darts at the wall uh eating uh eating uh cheetos out of a bean bag chair naked watching tv and we're like, hey man, all the cheat of dust is getting everywhere. We should go find something to do. I stole that joke from a comedian, by the way.

I don't know who it was. My apologies to whoever I stole that from. Anyway, I don't want to get assaulted by, I don't know, people who are wondering around and going, you stole jokes! I stole it. So anyway, guys, go to goodreadrease.com, Fortress, Chris Voss. Forrest, Chris Voss. Forrest, Chris Voss.

Facebook, dot your family, friends, and relatives. Facebook.com, 4chus, Chris Voss. One of the TikTokity, and LinkedIn.com, Fortess, Chris Voss, and all that good stuff. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today, an amazing young man on the show.

We're going to be talking about his new book out July 10, 2025 called No Ceiling. No Excuses. How to stop stalling your dream and start building your life. I think my dad said that to me when I turned 18. He goes, no ceiling, no excuses, get out of my house, get a job. I think that was how that one. Christopher Capiano joins us on the show with us today. We're going to get into it with him and his details and find out why he wrote this book and how you can improve the quality of your life.

Chris is living proof that your starting point does not define your finish line. He's worn every hat you can imagine, including busboys, server, power washer, drop shiver, Uber, driver, real estate agent, union steamfitter, and now entrepreneur. Does that mean he has an only fans? Chris walked away. It's usually how goodness, I think, doesn't it? Chris walked away from a stable six-figure career in the trades and chased something bigger, freedom, ownership, and impact. He does not have investors or shortcuts.

What he had was drive, grit, and unshakable mindset that there is no ceiling on what you can build. Raised in a home surrounded by addiction and chaos, Chris did not just beat the odds. He flipped them in his favor. survival mode taught him resourcefulness street smarts turned into systems pain became purpose and purpose became profit welcome the show chris how are you i'm great and it's only feet dot com not only fans only feet oh okay it's one of those things all right well i guess someone's got some competition against my only fans only ankles i don't know great name by the way chris i would say smart parents very smart parents and you can tune into only ankles that uh you know this is actually

true story that one of my first girlfriends, her dad was, you know, an older gentleman because I'm old and this is when I was young. And, and he told us a story about how back in the day women dress very modestly and they would cover just about everything of themselves. And so what they would do to catch some skiing, if you'd call it that, is they would go down to the train depot and they would catch the ladies coming off the train with their, you know, their beautiful Easter long dresses on. And the only thing you can see that wasn't her face and arms was her ankles. So they all got like ankle finishes.

Oh my God, that's great. I mean, there's the famous photo of, who's that famous actress from back in the day? And she, you know, she's standing over the subway with the air going up or whatever. Oh, Marilyn Monroe. Yeah, Marilyn Monroe. Exactly. I mean, I'm literally living in New York City right now. You think I would know that.

You think you would have took some photos down there of yourself straddling. that I got away from public transportation. I can't do it. I don't know how these people do it. I don't know. I did too. The judge says I can't do it anymore. There's laws evidently. Oh, that's why you have the ankle fetish. I got. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I just moved to that. Yeah. So let's get into it with you.

Do we get your dot com yet? I can't remember. No, it's www. Noceiling, no excuses.com. We almost turn this in the only fans, the only feature. Yeah, you can turn a PG podcast into an hour. Actually, I'm a pretty heavy guy. And my only fans might be cankles.com. You're making my, you're giving me an ad workout right now.

Thank you. So we just get all the keywords in. Cangle, that's just, that's trending. Hashtagel. It is. It's always trending. I've seen things. Anyway, Chris, give us a 30,000 overview.

What's in your new book? So book came out a month ago. And it's basically three books in one. Part one of the book is my story, my journey, how, what it's like, living in a broken family from having an alcoholic mother to a stepfather, addicted to drugs, and, you know, the whole fun divorce thing that happens when you're a kid and you have no idea what the hell's happening around you and you get sucked into life's tornado when you're seven years old. That's part one. If you're a devil, if you're evil, you're going to love

that part of a book. Second part of the book is all the different jobs and careers that I had along the way, including like you mentioned earlier, driving for Uber, starting my own power washing company starting a snow removal company being a waiter being a bus boy being a teacher's assistant trying to flip ebay shoes women's shoes on ebay and being a drop shipper literally everything you could imagine under the sun i tried part three of the book is where i'm kind of at now how i decided to walk away from a stable six figure job i was making over a hundred grand a year i had benefits i had a vacation i had a pension i had security and i decided that uh i don't like having a ceiling in my life I didn't think it was right that I could bust my ass get more done in a day than the guy

next to me, and we were both getting paid the same. So I walked away from all that, maybe about four years ago, started the business and the company I'm with now. And what we do is payments, merchant services, and point of sale systems. And I'm loving it. Everybody needs that because everyone's buying stuff. Last time I checked, you know, we need the point of sale stuff. So talk to us about your journey.

This is kind of a memoir, I guess. Is that correct? The first part of the book is, yeah, just like the first thing. third of the book would be considered a memoir absolutely and you talk about the hustle framework what is that and how can i use that on my cancels only so it's a cream and you're going to apply it twice a day and uh the h is going to stand for hunger basically means uh you know the hunger inside of everyone that the burning to do more to get a lot of stuff done in a day uh the use stands for understand the game okay and then that could mean you know you got you got to assign it to your life right so

It's a generic framework, but I want you, the listener, to think about it in your life specifically. The S is going to stand for sell yourself. So you've got to realize no matter what industry you're in, you're essentially in sales, even a waiter. You're selling your customers on what the best item is. And obviously, at the same time, if they get a more expensive item, what happens in return? Yeah.

You're getting a bigger tip, right? You're getting a bigger tip. The L is going to stand for leverage your lessons. And what that could mean is every time something bad happens to you, which is going to happen a lot if you're putting yourself out there, as long as you learn something, then you didn't lose. It's all about learning from your mistakes. And then the E is the idea that you can earn while you sleep. Think of residual income. Think of businesses that generate revenue without you having you trade your time to be there.

So if you could figure out how to create some sort of flow of revenue, like whether it's, It's, let's just say, I don't know, like a rental property or something. That's like a very easy example to understand. You invest money into it once. And then it keeps generating money without you being there every single month. Yeah, shit's going to break in the house. You know, the kitchen sink has to get replaced every now and again. But at the end of the day, it's an asset.

So everyone should at this point, I'm sure if they're listening to your show, they read rich dad, poor dad. If not, they should hit pause, go on Amazon, spend three minutes and buy that book. It's the best 20 bucks you'll ever spend other than my book. and yeah you should absolutely go check that book out you will learn a lot yeah so give us your story how did you grow up it sounds like there was a few influences you ran into uh and challenges in your life that uh you started out with and and have survived give us to the low down there yeah i mean there's a lot i mean you know i don't want to get too uh emotional on your show right now

we're being macho we're talking about we can we've had people cry on the show wouldn't be first time yeah that that's uh that's an idea i I mean, I'm sure I would if I go deep enough, but I mean, look, I've been through everything. I've been through, I mean, one of the chapters in my book is all about an employee that I hired, fell in love with this kid. He was the hardest work and most badass, genuine, goofy person I meant my whole life. Worked with him every day for six months straight. Had no signs that anything was going wrong in his life.

Took him out to dinner in New York City to the nicest restaurant, nicest Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side on a Tuesday night, just to thank him for the awesome job he was doing. wake up the next morning calling him texting him no answer and then i find out two days later he passed away he overdosed in his car oh no yeah i think i was the last person ever talked to him or feed him or or and then just it was just like so at a left field and it was a horrible horrible thing uh went to the funeral you know two days later the whole family walking up to me thanking me saying i gave him the best six months of his life and wow it was just crazy you know life is life is honestly you know me and you we're having fun right now. You don't know who I am. I don't know who you are. Like, no, you know,

you may think you know someone. You could work with them every single day and you have no clue what's going on behind the scenes. I don't know who I am either. Same. Someone earlier, I was on another podcast. They're like, who are you? And I'm like, dude, I don't know. I'm like, I look in the, I could literally look in the mirror, stare at that person and still have no clue. Yeah, I just be like, I'm not that ugly. Yeah, my mirror just breaks. Yeah, I'm like, this is, there's, this is clearly, this mirror is malfunctioning. So, but you, you know, you talked about growing up through your history, where you had, you were surrounded by addiction and chaos.

What was that like in learning survival mode and resourcefulness? So it forces you to listen to what people are saying without listening to the words that they're saying. So, you know, like my mom's, I love my mom so much. I talk to her every day up until this day, God bless her. But once four o'clock comes around, I don't communicate with her because she still drinks. And yeah, and she's always, always drank. And there's nothing in this world that I could do or anyone could do that could get her to not drink.

I would bet literally a million dollars on that. And yeah, I mean, it's tough, man. It's, it teaches you so much. It really does. And a lot of people can fall into the trap of using it as their excuse, which is kind of where I came up with this whole, you know, title of the book. sealing no excuses so that's yeah so that I'm I get sick and tired of people using crap that happens to them as an excuse and my whole point in this book is like dude I've been through it yeah I didn't have the same exact journey you have but trust me you didn't have my journey either

and if I could get through it you could get through it it's all about shifting your mindset and everyone says it because it's true if you just use it as your fuel you'll get so much further in life than if you use it as an excuse that's a really good point you know someone should make that a cup because so many people use it as a victim excuse or oh po is me i was born under a bad moon uh you know the government the environment my family my friends social media i would have done this i should have done that i could have done this if i hear woulda shoulda coulda or the words why or because one more time my freaking head's going to fall off well i mean that's the that's the great

thing and then you know your point you know use it to improve yourself use it to be better you know yes it's interesting to me and we've talked about this before on the show but you know i i often say you know stories are the fabrics of life they're the fabric of who we are they tie us together and you think about you know we've talked a lot in the show about childhood trauma and things that happened to us that affected us in youth and really made us who we are and well i still not happy with my childhood, I guess, I guess many people there you aren't. I can't, I can't see any of the way that I could have become the person that I'm happy with being now without those experiences. And you wouldn't be you if that didn't happen. You'd be like a way probably

softer version of yourself. Yeah. I probably wear flip flops and I don't know. There's a joke there somewhere and socks and I don't wear socks now. Yeah. If you didn't have all the had stuff happen to you'd be out there rocking the cancels with uh you know flip flops and socks on like a shooby remember remember rocket power they used to call shuby they call yeah yeah shubby yeah isn't that a song maybe it is don't say it because they don't know how to pay for it probably already blew it they probably already picked it up on youtube they're like yeah you said the first few lines of the lyrics we got you buddy shut it down no monetization for you man it all goes we're going to send that penny to the to the musician you so you talk about ambitious underdogs uh who are these folks

and why is your book good for them ambitious underdogs are people that are making right now between 50 and 200k and they want to make more definitely slumming only 200k what is wrong with these people yeah they're bums they're on their butt doing nothing these losers now now i i have to put a cap on it somewhere right because i'm in new york if honestly if you're making 200 grand a year in New York, it's still not easy to buy a house. I swear to God. It's like, and it goes back to one of the things I mentioned in my book, one of the terms that I actually coined and I call it reverse math. So my dream was to always own my own house, have my own backyard, have my own life, my own family. I didn't want to rent for the rest of my life. So if you just

take the cost of a house in New York is like, I don't know, six or $700,000 and you do the reverse math on it, you realize that taxes are going to be. about 10 to 15 grand a year where I am in New York. So now your mortgage is what? Call it 50, 60 grand every year. So now that means you have to make 100 grand a year just to pay for your mortgage. Right. So we're doing reverse math. Now that's before you flip a light switch. So now we have bills. We have cars. We have car insurance. We have food. We have clothes. We have emergency. We have pleasure we have vacations right add all those things up that's another hundred grand easy right unless you're that type of person oh i take a bus every day and i eat a peanut butter and jelly

every day and i pinch pennies and i clip coupons that's not me and i wish i was kind of more like that i'm kind of the opposite i'll spend i'll buy everything at full retail price because i look at it like i don't have time to sit there and clip coupons and save 50 cents i'm worried about making the extra thousand that's always been my mindset i don't like necessarily look i'm not saying I don't like saving money. I like spending money. I also like my, I have my passion is to make it.

I love cash flow. I love to do things and get excited. Saving money to me feels like you're putting me in a box and I'll bust out every time. Yeah, I mean, you can end up wasting a lot of time with your, you know, time is money when it really comes down to it.

So you can end up wasting time if you're not careful on all the stuff that goes on there. So you talk to, you kind of target 20 to 45 year olds, workers who feel stuck and they want a, they want a new ownership and freedom, but they've got to replace that income. So that's kind of a challenge, especially if you're making 200K to just leave that and go start a new business, right? Yeah, I'm not saying you should go leave your job. I'm saying that you're at your job for what, 40, 50, 60 hours a week. Okay, what are you doing the extra 20 hours? On the toilet playing candy crush, are you learning a new skill? you're learning you're building something like everyone has two thumbs in a smartphone it's never been

easier to make money today than it has ever been in the history of humanity ever period and a story true so why are we not taking advantage of this if you're not learning a new skill every day you're doing yourself a disservice why are you not on youtube learning how to use AI better why seriously ask yourself that yeah why there's no reason other people are doing it yeah or on only fans with your canckel. Yeah. Why are you not learning? Why are you not typing in?

How can I get more popular on only fans with my cancels? Give me 10 video ideas, write me, SEO captions, and give me 15 hashtags so I could go viral with my cancels. Why are you not writing that? Why can go viral with my cancels? Did I say that with a straight face, by the way?

Chat, GPT would come back and be like, have you seen your cancels? They'd be like, you spelled cancels wrong. It's where they can. He spelled kinkles wrong with a K. Is it? I don't know. You mean caps?

The, uh, so the book's also targeted towards, uh, new entrepreneurs and side hustlers and, uh, helping people in their first one to three years of launching a business, sales career, or freelance venture. Tell us about your journey. How did you get into the field that you're in, you know, that you've excelled at? And did you, did you go through a few iterations of starts and fails, or did you hit the home run right from the get-go. My starts and fails were just all the different jobs I had.

Yeah, this industry, I realized that, you know, the potential's there as long as they put the effort in. How'd you get into it? Yeah, good, good question. My brother has an ATM company and I had some extra money in the bank and I was like, hey, let me get involved in the ATM business with you. And he's like, and this was like eight years ago, he's like, dude, cash is dead. No one, no one uses cash anymore.

Everyone uses credit cards. you should look into the credit card business because every time a credit card is used, you could make money on that. I was like, what? No way. And I got so fascinated by it. And for six months,

I dug my head into a computer. I bought all the books on it. I learned as much as I could. Walked into my Taylor eight years ago, told her that, hey, I think I could probably save you money on all the fees you're paying with all your credit cards. She's like, oh, here's my statement.

And she's still my client today. So eight years later. Yeah, yeah. And thanks. I take a lot of pride in that. I love help. helping small businesses. If any of your listeners own a small business and they want help either saving money on their fees or getting better support for their credit card system

or point of sale system or they want better technology, shoot me a message, reach out to me. I'll give you my personal email. It goes directly to my phone. It's Chris James Capuano at g-mail.com C-H-R-I-S J-A-M-E-S C-A-P-U-A-N-O at g-mail.com And you build the thing, you bill your book, I should say,

as something, people who crave redemption and purpose, those raising chaos, broken homes, addiction, dysfunction. This sounds like Friday at my house. What's your address again? It sounds like a good time, man.

It's a good time until the cops show up and then it all goes down. But, I mean, it's Friday. So, yeah. Anyway, so you help people transform and utilize the experiences they had that may have been challenging. They may have learned survival techniques through and how to use them for starting a business. I mean, we've often talked about starting a business is basically they really need to rename the title entrepreneur. It's really just a daily problem solve. It's all you do is every day you come in to solve problems you solve new problems

You have to innovate you have to figure out how do I solve the new problem today And it just goes like that it's it's always like that and there's always new problems you haven't encountered before And you're like well you're gonna figure out of solve this one and so it's kind of it's kind of a game of survival when you think about it It really is yeah I mean if I call myself I'm a professional problem solver Because every day it's like oh okay I didn't think about that but now we have to fix that for that person how can we do that. And I always say to the people that work for me, I'm like, don't bring me problems, bring me solutions. Like John Taffer, I love, you know, Bar Rescue. He's always like, I don't know, John Taffer from Bar Rescue. He's amazing. I don't know if you know him or not,

but I don't. He's a rock star, man. I think they talked about getting him on the show one time. I know, I know in the notes you sent me, you mentioned Grant Cardone. We've never had Grant on, but we've had his business partner, what was it, Brandon? Brandon? Brandon. Brandon Dawson. Oh, Brandon Dawson. And then I think we were supposed to do a show with him. I think I'm going on his show or he's coming.

I don't know. There's something going on with that. Well, I'll find emails. But, yeah, I mean, these sort of things, that's all you are as a professional problem solver. In fact, I tell people the same thing, you know, what was the line you use? Bring me your solutions, not your problems? Yeah, yeah, don't bring me problems, bring me solutions. I tell it to my wife every day.

and she doesn't say anything she just shows up that's a wife joke folks out there married married folk jokes so that's why that's why Chris is single all of his life and can't get a can't get a woman but I can't I do have a canckel show on only fans

anyway only feet only feet yeah I got to get there right I got to learn I got to learn right so as we go out what more do you want people to know about your book how it works and all that good stuff so do me favor follow this journey i have no clue where i'm taking this i'm probably going to eventually do some sort of speaking you know i might put out some sort of sales course or something but uh if you kind of like my energy like my vibe go to my website buy my book it's normally a thousand bucks i put it on sale for 20 so you're going to get a 99.99% discount

so that's a home run and then if you want to like i said just keep in touch fill out the uh the the subscribe information, basically just throw your email in, and then we'll definitely be posting as we get more and more updated. Also, throw a follow on Instagram, no ceiling, no excuses. And yeah, I'll be more than happy to connect with everyone. Well, that'll be nice. Well, thank you very much for coming to show. We really appreciate it, man. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. This was a laugh. Thank you. And thanks for our audience for tuning in. Order up his book, wherever fine books are sold. It is called No Sealing. no excuses how to stop stalling your dream and start building your life and you want to start

now folks you'll appreciate it someday i remember looking back on my companies that i built over after a decade or so and thinking geez if i never just made the decision that day 10 years ago to do this and never move forward where the hell would i be and i shudder to think sometimes that or there's i've done some things where i'm like i wish you could go back at that money back and skip that whole episode we just went through, but that's a different story. Anyway, guys, thanks for two to it again. Order up his book where refined books

are sold. Go to goodreads.com Fortezs, Chris Foss. LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, one on the TikTok any and all those crazy places in it. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time. That should have us out. Great job.