Hasani X

My name is Hasani X (aka "X"). I'm the CEO and founder of Chiefs of Story — investor, business performance coach, and professional speaker — focused on one thing: building and buying service businesses, and making them exit-ready through strategic growth and brand development.

Where the story starts

I grew up in the streets of Oakland, California, where I developed an inner belief, strength, and conviction when everything around me said the opposite. And the truth is, without a STORY of possibility guiding me, I wouldn't be here today.

Even with a driving purpose, it wasn't easy. So I jumped right in, starting my entrepreneurial journey at nine years old. I sold ninja stars, husky pencils, my mama's tacos, and whatever else I could.

Those hustles, combined with my dad forcing me into Toastmasters meetings to speak, honed two highly valuable and transferable skills: how to sell and how to communicate. Or said differently, I learned how to tell a damn great STORY.

Eventually I beat the odds and became the first person in my family to go to college. For context: my high school started with about 500 freshmen. Only about 38 of us graduated.

While at UPenn, I founded A.U.N. (All You Need) Marketing. It ran on sheer hustle — getting clients everything they needed to promote their brand and STORY.

After graduating, I founded 4e Consulting, a business growth firm that combined guerrilla marketing with strategic business consulting.

The call

Fast forward a couple of years: I was crushing it in business, happily married with two kids. Life was good. Then one day, I got a call from my mom.

"Hi Mom."

"Hasani, they killed him. He's dead…"

Wait — what?

"Your brother is dead."

My younger brother Ramin had been shot and killed back home in Oakland.

As I put the phone down, stunned and heartbroken, my mind flashed back to our last conversation. We were arguing over something, and it ended when he said:

"You were never there for me… You weren't the big brother I needed!"

At the time I shrugged him off. I wasn't going to take the blame for his shit. I handled my business; he should have been able to handle his. Period.

The mirror

But that day, staring in the mirror, I realized I'd always been dedicated to doing whatever it took to succeed — and I ran away when it came to leading others.

Being honest and RAW with myself, I saw that I was comfortable doing just about anything except leading. I thought: Who was I to lead? Who was I to say what's right? Who was I to say this is where we're going?

That realization pushed me to explore the edges of personal growth and leadership. I knew I had to develop a new STORY, one that went beyond personal success and into leading others.

So I started facing my deepest fears. I jumped out of planes. I became a professional cage fighter (crazy story). I logged thousands of hours meditating, fasted for weeks on nothing but water, studied with the world's best minds in human psychology and performance, and built my own innovations in personal breakthrough science.

The mission

In time, I pushed into the personal development space, speaking and coaching leaders on how to build their businesses, life, and legacy. It was on this path that I finally found my true MISSION:

To build people and businesses.

Feeling the gratification of helping others break through, I went all in. I exited 4e Consulting, divested my other investment projects, and founded Rise of a Leader, an unconventional leadership and team development company. It was there I created the Living Leadership Model — a model I've used with everyone from presidents of publicly traded companies to prisoners facing life behind bars.

In short: anyone who would listen, I helped with my Breakthrough Performance Science. Because here's what I know — success principles don't care who you are or where you come from. If you Lead It, Live It, and Love It, you'll eventually break through.

That journey led me to found Lead Your Story, where I discovered that building businesses and building culture were one and the same. We used STORY to drive leads, growth, and strong leaders and teams. It was powerful work. But I began to realize we were still treating symptoms, not the disease.

The call that changed the work

Then in 2022, a past client broke my heart.

She called to tell me her business was shutting down. After decades of work, she was losing everything. No savings. No exit plan. No way out.

"I wish I'd focused on building a business that could sell — one that could thrive without me."

That phone call hit me hard. So I started reaching out to other old clients. Same story, over and over: good people who worked hard all their lives, now facing regret for never building a sellable business.

Then I looked at the research. Baby boomers own 12 million businesses, yet only 30% have a clear exit strategy. Worse still, only 20% of businesses listed for sale actually sell. That means more than 8 million businesses are at risk of shutting down without ever selling.

That's when it hit me: I was part of the problem.

As a consultant, I came in to make things look better. We'd sharpen the story. Fix the messaging. Tweak the funnel. And it worked — more leads, more revenue. But you can only claim to be better than the market for so long. Eventually competitors copy your promotion and start saying the same thing, and you're back on the treadmill, hunting for new messaging to drive leads.

That's when it dawned on me: marketers don't build great brands. Leaders do. Because a strong, enduring brand is more SHOW than TELL. It rests on a great product, an amazing experience, and a community that cares. Those are what make a brand stand out and stay different — customers who love them, and competitors who can't copy them.

I was treating symptoms, not the disease.

Buy or build

So I stepped away. I wound down the consulting work, vanished from social media, and did only the bare minimum for two years. Then, in 2025, I launched Chiefs of Story (COS) as the solution.

We offer two paths: BUY or BUILD.

For hardworking owners looking to sell, we offer a simple, fast exit. It's a win for everyone: owners exit and transition with dignity, their team and legacy live on, and we get to do what we love — the work of building an exit-ready brand.

If the owner is ready to BUILD, we partner to grow their small business into a profitable, scalable, exit-ready brand.

The next 20 years

Sitting back and reviewing my life, I can say that over the last 20 years I've founded multiple successful companies, grown hundreds of businesses as a consultant, coached hundreds of leaders and teams, and given over 1,000 presentations, speeches, and workshops — all while staying happily married for 17+ years, raising three kids, and living on my terms.

And in mapping out the next 20 years, I've decided to double down on what I believe matters most: building and buying service businesses. If an owner is ready to build, we grow their company into a brand that can thrive without them. If they're ready to sell, we buy it and carry the legacy forward. Either way, every hardworking entrepreneur deserves the freedom to choose their next chapter.

Out… X