In You Are Capable of More, Sund explores what keeps people from following through on the things that matter to them.
Chris Sund wrote much of You Are Capable of More on his phone at the gym. After dinner and time with his boys, he would write while walking on a treadmill, think through ideas on the StairMaster and revise between sets. The book came together around work and family responsibilities, in the time he could find to keep moving it forward.
Finding that time meant working through a challenge Sund explores throughout the book. People can know what matters to them and still spend years putting it off. Work, family responsibilities and daily routines fill the calendar, while a personal goal keeps moving to next week or next year. Sund encourages readers to consider what they can do now, within the life they already have.
Sund is an author and keynote speaker whose book, You Are Capable of More: A No-Excuses Guide to Becoming Your Best Self, won the How-To category at the 2026 Paris Book Festival. His personal mission is to help people become the best version of themselves. The book brings that mission to readers who want to change a habit, strengthen a relationship, pursue a goal or follow through on something they have been putting off.
While writing, Sund surveyed more than 200 working adults from different backgrounds, industries and stages of life. Among the people he surveyed, 92% said they were capable of more than they were currently doing. Their answers included exercising more, starting a business, learning new skills and spending more time with family. The results, published as The Untapped Potential Report, give him a concrete starting point for discussing self-doubt, fear of failure, busyness and comfort.
What interested Sund was how often respondents already knew what mattered to them but struggled to act on it. That observation shaped the book’s practical design. Personal stories sit alongside practical lessons, while a concluding Playbook revisits each chapter with a reminder, reflection questions and one action readers can take that day. Readers can work through it on their own, with family or with a team.
Sund’s own expectations once seemed straightforward. Voted most likely to succeed in high school, he had plans for his future. Becoming a father early changed them. He was proud of becoming a parent, yet struggled with the distance between his circumstances and the future he had imagined.
Taking responsibility for what came next became a turning point. Early in his career, a leadership promotion put him in charge of people with more experience. He paid attention to leaders he respected and began taking his development seriously. A recommendation to read John Maxwell’s The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership helped him see that accepting responsibility for his problems could also mean taking responsibility for solutions. “Your future does not have to be determined by your past,” he writes.
Sund serves as President and COO of Uniti Med and GQR Healthcare, and as COO of Nebula. Uniti Med has earned recognition on the Inc. 5000 and Fortune’s 2023 Best Small and Medium Workplaces in Health Care list. Some of the experiences that have stayed with him most, however, involve seeing how an employee’s growth affects life outside work.
At a company holiday party, an employee’s wife thanked him for changes she had noticed in her husband. She described someone more confident and engaged, with the difference visible at home as well as at work. The conversation stayed with him because it concerned the person beyond the job. “Success is about what you achieve. Significance is about who is better because of you,” he writes in You Are Capable of More.
His own family has also changed how he thinks about progress. Watching his oldest son reach his final school sporting events and then graduate brought home the limits of postponement. Sund recalls occasions missed because of work and recognizes that those moments cannot simply be rescheduled. His wife has helped remind him that their boys will remember whether their parents showed up. For Sund, becoming more capable also means becoming more present for his family.
His next plans include reaching more people through keynotes, workshops, the Amplify Speakers Podcast and the free resources accompanying the book. He particularly wants the message to reach frontline crews, plant teams and service workers who may seldom be offered formal development opportunities. He wants readers to define what more means for themselves and find a practical place to begin, without treating confidence as something they must possess before taking a step.
Sund hopes readers will think about something important they have been putting off and choose one step they can take today. That might mean making a phone call, setting aside time to learn something new or giving a family member their full attention. You Are Capable of More offers stories and practical tools to help readers begin and keep going. Readers can explore the book, free assessments and related resources at youarecapableofmore.com and learn more about his speaking work at chrissund.com.
