21. Chris [Umar] Carter

Chris Umar Carter grew up on a farm in Jamaica, feeding pigs and chickens before dawn, where a trip to Kentucky Fried Chicken was a fourteen-mile drive and a genuine treat. He arrived in the United States at twelve years old and learned something quickly: when everything around you is new, you stop talking and you start watching. Middle school was brutal. There were days he locked himself in the bathroom at lunch. Four decades later, he has been a project controller in Brussels, an auditor who inherited a predecessor's ledgers written entirely in French with no Google Translate and three weeks to close the year, a CFO, and for the last fifteen years a cybersecurity leader. He was doing fractional executive work long before anyone called it that. This conversation covers a lot of ground, but it keeps returning to one idea. Umar's father told him never to rise after the sun. His mother told him to do it right or not at all, and never wait to be told. Those farm rules became a 4:20 AM ritual of mantras, prayer, and hours in the gym, and they became a leadership philosophy that he states plainly: stop trying to impress people and start becoming useful, because useful people become trusted, trusted people become leaders, and leaders create opportunities. In this episode: Why a finance leader sees cyber risk differently, and his framing that numbers tell you what happened while relationships tell you why Whether AI is hype or the next industrial revolution, and how to keep your independent thinking from atrophying along the way What Brussels and Germany taught him about patience, observation, and the fact that his way is not always the right way The trap of performative leadership, and why character is who you are when no one is measuring your performance A year out from cancer surgery, and how the question changed from how much can I accomplish to what will matter Why success that is not shared eventually becomes empty The one thing he hopes his college-bound son carries with him Umar's answer to our title question: making more trust. His goal is to leave behind more of it than he found. Connect with Umar on LinkedIn, where he runs a 30 for 30: thirty people, thirty minutes each, thirty days of coaching and mock interviews for job seekers. Find Billy on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/bigeyedfisch/ or visit his website, billyfischer.focalpointcoaching.com.