Author: George Romanes
Photo credit: Chris Harris
Chris Harris, known as “The Warrior Maker”, spent 25 years training military personnel and special forces as a private contractor before founding Chris Harris LLC. He built his successful keynote speaking and executive coaching business around a simple but powerful premise. The same mental barriers that obstruct warriors from succeeding in combat prevent business professionals from achieving and exceeding their goals. Now, Harris is taking his signature “7 Rivals” framework far beyond its original applications by building it into sales and leadership keynote speaking.
From Battlefield to Boardroom
The journey from elite combatives trainer to renowned keynote speaker began when Harris realized that the foundational principles of mental toughness were just as relevant to B2B sales and leadership as they were to elite warriors. In 2015, Harris developed the “Phase Selling” methodology. Leveraging the four Cs of Phase Selling proved so effective that Harris quickly became a notable top sales performer, leading to hundreds of clients eager to learn his process. This overwhelming demand for his speaking and coaching services led to the formal establishment of Chris Harris, LLC.
“For 25 years, I taught close-quarters combat as a private contractor to federal agencies, the military, and special forces for the U.S. and its global allies,” Harris explains. “Today, I teach the same warrior mindset to audiences of leaders and sales professionals who want to achieve peak performance and effectiveness in business.”
Harris has since trained hundreds of organizations from more than 60 countries. He is an active member of Business Executives for National Security (BENS) and the Forbes Coaches Council. Additionally, he is a bestselling author with numerous books to his name, including his 2025 release, “7 Rivals of Success.”
The 7 Rivals Take Center Stage
At the heart of Harris’s dynamic keynote speeches lies the identification of what he terms “rivals”, which are internal obstacles that hinder success and fulfillment. His four-book “7 Rivals” series explores how these barriers manifest differently across various contexts. For personal success, the rivals include fear, doubt, the past, idleness, adversity, distractions, and mindset. In leadership contexts, these rivals include fear of failure, ego and arrogance, close-mindedness, inability to delegate, poor communication, lack of strategy, and insufficient personal development.
But Harris’s strategic plan goes much further. His company has strategically developed specialized applications of the 7 Rivals framework to address emerging business challenges for global audiences that traditional speaking, coaching, and consulting approaches have struggled to solve.
Beyond Traditional Applications
The expansion reflects a growing recognition that modern businesses face unprecedented internal challenges. Remote work has created new forms of isolation and communication breakdowns. Artificial intelligence is generating both opportunity and anxiety among workers. Global economic uncertainty has heightened stress levels across organizations.
“I empower executive leaders and sales teams with a Warrior Mindset so they can achieve peak performance in business and life,” Harris notes. Additionally, his company’s future trajectory suggests this warrior mindset has impactful applications far beyond these traditional domains.
The strategic plan includes developing frameworks for organizational change management, where rivals might manifest as resistance to new processes, fear of obsolescence, or attachment to outdated methods. In innovation contexts, the rivals could include perfectionism, fear of failure, or excessive risk aversion.
The Warrior Mindset Advantage
Harris’s unique background and expertise offer a distinct perspective on understanding and overcoming these challenges. Unlike traditional business consultants who developed their theories in academic or corporate settings, his methodologies emerged from training people to perform in “death ground” types of situations. This origin gives his approach a practical edge that resonates with business leaders facing their own critical decisions, especially when navigating highly competitive environments that offer little or no margin for error.
The warrior mindset Harris teaches emphasizes seven core traits: clear mission focus, high self-motivation, resilience under pressure, a zero-excuses mentality, unbreakable resolve, a strong shared purpose, and continuous improvement. These qualities, originally developed for combat effectiveness, prove equally valuable in navigating complex business environments.
In addition to being a highly sought-after keynote speaker and executive coach, Chris Harris is a U.S. military veteran, an award-winning inventor, and has been inducted into the Martial Arts Hall of Fame, holding the rank of Grand Master. He also remains involved with U.S. Taiho Jutsu (USTJ), the U.S. Martial Arts Federation (USMAF), and the U.S. Ju-Jitsu Federation (USJJF).
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