Chris “Shmiddy” Schmidt · Attorney | Executive | Entrepreneur
Go Maximum Velocity
How to keep moving when life doesn’t go according to plan.
Almost nobody’s life unfolds the way they drew it up. Chris helps people find a direction worth moving toward, act before everything is figured out, and see how the experiences, setbacks, and relationships they’ve collected may already be converging into what comes next.
Move with purpose. Go Maximum Velocity.
Attorney. Executive. Entrepreneur. Speaker. Storyteller. Forbes Contributor. Expert Advisor.
Credentials
- Top 10 Corporate Counsel in the world 2024 OnCon Icon Awards
- Forbes Business Development Council Official member
- Forbes Contributor Since 2020
- Licensed to practice law Texas and Virginia
The idea
It is not about going faster.
Maximum Velocity sounds like a slogan about hustle culture. It’s actually the opposite.
Speed without direction is just noise, and most of the people telling you to move faster haven’t bothered to ask where you’re pointed.
The idea is simpler, and more demanding, than hustle.
Maximum Velocity starts with a simple premise: you don’t need to know the destination before you make a move. You need character, enough self-awareness to know what actually matters to you, a direction worth moving toward, and the willingness to start before you have everything figured out.
Then you need the humility to learn from experience and the courage to change course when the evidence tells you to.
And when something finally deserves everything you have, you commit at the level the goal actually requires.
That part matters.
Because exploring forever can become its own way of standing still.
Keep your principles fixed. Keep your destination flexible.
The part most people miss
The dots do not merely connect. They combine.
Convergence of experience. It is the idea this whole thing rests on, and it is the one people have not heard before.
Experience does not only accumulate. Sometimes it converges. A job teaches you to sell. A failure teaches you judgment. A relationship quietly creates access you will not need for another nine years. A career that turned out to be wrong tells you something precise about what does not fit.
Looked at one at a time, those episodes can feel like a mess, or like lost years. Later they intersect, and produce something none of them could have produced on their own. That is not the same as the comfortable idea that everything happens for a reason. Plenty of it was genuinely bad. The point is that the residue is still yours, and it is still working.
Which leads to the uncomfortable part. An experience is not automatically valuable just because you survived it. You have to go and get the value out of it. Ask what it actually handed you: a skill, a relationship, some judgment, a reputation, a story worth telling, or a much clearer sense of what you will not be doing again.
You’re not back at square one. You’re back at square one with experience.
What stays fixed
Character is the compass, not the sermon.
Before speed, there has to be something that decides which opportunities are worth taking and how people experience you on the way through.
Honesty
Tell yourself the truth about where you actually are, not where you meant to be by now.
Integrity
Decide what you stand for before circumstances decide it for you. They will offer.
Diligence
Do the thing you said you would do on the day the motivation does not show up. That day is most days.
Responsibility
Own the part that is actually yours. It is usually smaller than the blame and larger than the excuse.
Consistency
Become someone people can count on. Start with yourself, since you are the hardest one to convince.
Courage
Move before you feel ready. Ready is a feeling that tends to arrive well after the opportunity.
Two talks, one argument
Same philosophy. Different room.
Corporate, sales & leadership
Go Maximum Velocity
Find direction. Rebuild momentum. Get moving again.
For rooms that have lost a step. Rarely because people stopped caring, usually because they stopped moving and the motivation left with the movement. This is about getting both back, beginning with the part that is actually theirs to control.
Sales kickoffs · Conventions · Leadership events · Field organizations · Associations
The Maximum Velocity keynoteCollege & young adult
You Don’t Need a Five-Year Plan. You Need Five Options.
The pressure to have it figured out, and the better bet.
For students and early-career audiences carrying a question nobody can honestly answer. The relief lands first. The challenge lands right behind it, because direction and character still decide most of it.
Orientation · Student leadership · Career services · Greek life · Young professionals
The Five Options keynote
On stage, where the argument actually gets made
Why he can make this argument
A lawyer named Shmiddy walks into a keynote…
Drummer. Young father. Construction worker. Phone salesman. Limo driver. Timeshare sales. Law school with four children at home. Twenty years an attorney. Chief Compliance Officer. Chief Legal Officer. Studio owner. Actor.
None of that looked like a plan while it was happening. It looked like a person taking the next available thing. The convergence only became visible later, which is exactly why he is not asking anyone to copy the sequence. He is asking them to look again at their own.
Booking
Get your room moving again.
Send the date, the audience, and what they have been through lately. Speaking, podcasts and interviews all start at the same place.