Next Level Pros - #115: The HOW of Building our $233M Rocket Ship

Starting point is 00:00:00 A lot of people start their business and like once things go in that direction, like you said, rock bottom, what advice would you tell them? What was that aha moment that you were like, okay, this happened in my life that that made me take this in this action that took me to the next level? You know, most people will never experience rock bottom because they're scared of rock bottom. It was actually a blessing to experience rock bottom because I realized, man, it's really not that bad. I still have my health. I still have all my experiences, all my skills.

Starting point is 00:00:32 I have my family. I have my God, right? And so like, if this is the worst it can be, why not keep going? I have nothing to lose at this point. In this episode, I had the opportunity to jump on with Julio, who's an entrepreneur down in Puerto Rico. We discussed how we built strategically our business out of my garage in 2017 to $233 million a year. You're going to learn so many incredible things like how

Starting point is 00:00:58 we backed into it, how we build our operations. You've been hearing a lot of me talk about, if you watch some of our previous episodes, about building out the detailed map, the five-year blueprint. We go into even more detail on this episode, identifying the principles and the self-talk and everything that it takes to go and scale a business in today's level of entrepreneurship. You're going to enjoy this and so much more on this episode of the Founder Podcast. My mission is to change the lives of 2 billion people through entrepreneurship, helping entrepreneurs realize that their business is more than just economics, more than just creating paychecks for employees, but it's actually helping their team members become better physically, economically, with their associations,

Starting point is 00:01:52 the way they impact their communities, and also their spiritual side. Hey, everybody. I hope that you're doing amazing. Today, we had a podcast with Chris Lee. We're here in CEO Bias. Chris Lee is a person that, number one, I saw him and he was super humble and he had an amazing trajectory in building companies and doing exits. And I thought that you can all guys learn from him. Chris, great to have you here. Yeah, excited to be here. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. So thank you. Thank you, Chris. So there are a few things I want to ask you. And the first one is how did you become Chris today? Like, what's your backstory for people that are in Latin America, Puerto Rico and Brazil and different areas that they hear us out like how do you got there well i mean that's

Starting point is 00:02:48 a it's a pretty loaded question uh lots uh lots of details it's definitely not just one quick answer of i worked hard and here i am uh you know there there's been a a lot of life events, series of events, things that have led me to achieving the different things. For me, I don't think there's necessarily a success as an end point. It's a journey. It's a trajectory. It's something that we're all striving for. And each of us have a different interpretation of writer. And because, frankly, each one of us were put on this earth to to do something different. Right. Like Julio is different than Chris and Chris is different than Edgar and and Jose and everybody else. And so, you know, for me, my life's mission is to impact and change others through influence. And my method of influence has been entrepreneurship, owning businesses and impacting employees and customers and everything

Starting point is 00:04:07 else. And now I'm on the mission to changing the world through impacting other entrepreneurs by teaching them how to run successful organizations, cultures, and change their employees' lives. And so, you know, I grew up in a very humble household. My dad was a school teacher and my mom was a stay-at-home mom. And my dad was a first-generation college graduate. Up until that point, most of his family had just been very low-wage earners and undereducated. And so, you know, it was a big step for my dad to go and be a college graduate and go the traditional route of being able to make some money. And we didn't have a lot of it. There was seven of us, six siblings and my cousin were raised on a school teacher's salary. And so from a young age, learned how to work, learned how to be disciplined, learned how to provide for myself and really be self-sustaining. And I learned a lot of great principles from my parents, principles of work ethic, sacrifice, putting God first.

Starting point is 00:05:27 You know, those were some of the, the main and most important things and really just how to dream big. You know, my mom always told me that I could go out and accomplish anything that I desired in my life. I just had to put in, uh, put in the effort consistently and be disciplined in it. And so, you know, that's my path has been the last 20 years of entrepreneurship. Initially, I thought I wanted to be a doctor, dropped out of college my senior year to go and pursue entrepreneurship, start my first business. It all hasn't been sunshine and rainbows though. I've had many businesses that just haven't worked out. My very first business, I tried going too big too quick with the wrong partnerships, made a lot of poor choices, was very egotistical and driven for the wrong reason. And two and a half years after the launch of that business, or just over two years after the launch of that business, ended up filing chapter seven bankruptcy, lost for 2.2 million. Lost everything,

Starting point is 00:06:31 had less than a thousand dollars in my bank account, car repoed from my driveway and was in what most entrepreneurs would consider is like worst case scenario type environment. And so had a decision to make, do I keep going down this path or do I quit and go back to and do what everybody else is doing, work for the man and get a real job? And so, you know, I'm grateful to God that I was inspired to continue down that path and take everything that I had learned and developed and went and continue to apply it. And so then over the series of the next six, seven years, it was a lot of education, learning, starting, developing different businesses.

Starting point is 00:07:19 I've owned things in everything, real estate, farming, flipping cars, flipping houses. I had a coupon book, medical pendant business, a search engine optimization company, home security, dabbled in pest control for a minute, just all kinds of different things. And so I think most importantly, I learned what did work and what didn't work. And I'd say most people aren't willing to find out what doesn't work. And so I've never been scared of failure. Well, that's not true. I've never been, I've always been willing to approach failure. I have fears just like everybody else, we scaled from no money to our fifth year in business did $233 million. And so, you know, and there was a lot of different things learned along the way. We built a team of 1100 employees and team members and just built something that I was extremely proud of.

Starting point is 00:08:48 And I've been able to take that same framework and apply it to other businesses and been able to see other nine figure exits and builds and everything. And so like, that's kind of the overview of my journey and path. And, you know, today, like I said, my mission is to change the lives of two billion people through entrepreneurship, helping entrepreneurs realize that their business is more than just economics, more than just creating paychecks for employees, but it's actually helping their team members become better physically, economically, with their associations, the way they impact their communities, and also their spiritual side. And so that's my mission. It's why I get out of bed every morning. It's why I'm on this podcast, because there's a lot more to life than just money. 100% Chris. And honestly, I was curious when I first heard your story,

Starting point is 00:09:49 because a lot of people start their business and like once things go in that direction, like you said, rock bottom, like how in the world, like how do you have the stamina to go? Like I'm in my lowest point. Like, how do I don't quit? Like to other people that are out there in a certain degree and they're like in that moment in their life that they're trying to kick off their business.

Starting point is 00:10:19 They're trying to get sales, but it's not working. What advice would you tell them? What was that aha moment that you were like, okay, this happened in my life that made me take this and this action that took me to the next level? Yeah. I mean, my life experiences up until that point, it always taught me that you may have a goal, but typically the route or the road to that goal is not the way that you initially planned it out. And so my goals didn't change when I failed, right? Like I just had to change the action and the route to be able to get there. You know, I had experienced that with sports. I had goals to be a state champion in American football.

Starting point is 00:11:07 And, you know, I thought it would look one way and it looked completely different. We ended up getting there and winning that championship, but I learned a lot of hard lessons of failure and not getting what I wanted along the way. So, you know, I, I would continually draw on experiences like that, that, uh, and, and frankly, you know, most people will never experience rock bottom because they're scared of rock bottom. And, and so it was actually a blessing to experience rock bottom because I realized, man, it's really not that bad. I still have my health. I still have all my experiences, all my skills. I have my family. I have my God. Right. And so like, if this is the worst it can be, why not keep going? I have nothing to lose at this point. Right. Uh, and everything to gain. And so, um, you know, I think, I think most people think that they have too much to lose or, you know, I think, I think most people think that they have too much to lose or, you know, that like their safety, their security, their comfort. Uh, and so if

Starting point is 00:12:13 you're willing to just get to rock bottom, like for me, like right now, like you can take everything from me. You can take my real estate and my stock portfolio, my homes and my cash in the bank and everything like that. I'm willing to go back to zero. It doesn't mean I will go to zero, but I'm willing to go back there because I understand that the fruit, the results aren't who I am. The results are simply a derivative or an equation or the end result of who I am. And so, like I said, you can take everything I have and I'll still be able to reproduce it tomorrow. So as you said, you talk about the fruit, everything that you're living, because in a way, all entrepreneurs, in a way, they start with, because probably in my case, I started because I come with humble beginnings. You and my family didn't have money, and I had to go in the streets, hustle, sell bottled waters, sell chocolates and everything. I know what's the struggle, but for me and like,

Starting point is 00:13:27 what do you think Chris, like in a way are the skills that you have today that if tomorrow, God forbid something happened to you, like you'll be like, okay, I need to do this thing, this thing, because you have already that mindset still in you.

Starting point is 00:13:41 Because I know that with your skill set like because you have proven it not once twice like it's already like like a map that you have like a blueprint like what what skill set like entrepreneurs should be focusing yeah i mean really it all comes down to influence and influence sales is a uh is a subset of influence, right? So, uh, the, the ability to get other people to see life from your perspective is, is the number one skill that anyone can develop. And this applies to sales. It is, it applies to marketing.

Starting point is 00:14:20 It, uh, it applies to recruiting and building a team and everything else. And so like the number one skill that I have is I can go and I can create vision and direction for people, whether that's an employee to come work with me or a customer to come work with me, right? Like helping them see that they don't have to live in the pain that they currently are and that there are solutions out there. And so, I mean, that's my number one skill set and I will continue to use for the rest of my life. And I know that I can go and apply to selling bottled water in the streets. I can go and sell coaching. I can go and sell yachts. I can go and be a member of somebody

Starting point is 00:15:08 else's organization and sell their product or service, right? Influence, right? I can go and build teams. And so influence has many predecessors like confidence, right? You have to be confident in order to have influence. And the way that you build confidence is you stop lying to yourself, right? And the way that you stop lying to yourself is you do the things that you said you were going to do, right? You be a person of your word. If you say tomorrow, hey, I'm going to start my diet tomorrow, or I'm going to start working out tomorrow, or I'm going to be a better husband tomorrow, I'm going to treat my kids with more love and dignity tomorrow. If I do that, I get a vote of confidence and my confidence goes up. If I don't do that, I start questioning like, well, am I a good person? Am I a person of my word?

Starting point is 00:16:07 Am I someone of integrity? And then my confidence goes down, right? And so the biggest way to gain influence is to start doing things consistently, little things. It doesn't have to be big, right? It could be like, all right, today I'm going to do one push-up. One push-up. Okay, I did it. My confidence boosted.

Starting point is 00:16:30 Okay, I am good. Today I'm going to write one page of my book. I write one page of my book. Today I'm going to send five kind texts to love, to my family members. Today I'm going to say prayers to my God, right? Like whatever it is, whatever it is that's going on in your head, whether you write it down or you're telling yourself here, if you go and you fulfill on it, your confidence will be boosted. When your confidence boosts, you naturally can be more influential because now I can get up in front of somebody and be like,

Starting point is 00:17:07 you are going to love this. Why? Because I am confident in whatever is backing me, whether it's my product, my service, myself, that I am a person of my word that always backs it up. So if I say, I'm going to help you get results and I'm going to help you become the best version of yourself and you're going to grow and you're going to build and you're going to have opportunity and all this and stuff, I can say it with so much confidence because I know on my end,

Starting point is 00:17:40 I will do everything possible to help whoever I'm talking to get that thing, get that product, get that service, get that result, right? And so, which will naturally attract more and more people. So once again, backing it, diluting it all down. Like if you want to develop the best skill set in the world of influence, you have to have confidence. If you want to develop confidence, you got to be a person of your word. If you want to be a person of your word, start doing what you said you were going to do. Start with the truth. Have a real inventory,

Starting point is 00:18:14 right? And admit when you screw up, no one's going to be perfect 100% of the time. Integrity is owning the truth. It's not perfection. It's owning the truth. Yesterday, I said I would do 10 push-ups. I only did five. I only did five, so I have improvement to be made. Or yesterday, I said I was going to write a page in my book. I only wrote a paragraph. I'm not going to lie to myself and say, oh, that page or that paragraph is basically a page. It's probably good enough. Or, you know, those two pushups were all, I mean, on the way to 10. So it's probably good enough, right? When you start lying to yourself and just telling yourself these stories and not owning the truth, you will never be able to improve. And if you don't improve, you won't have confidence. You don't have confidence. You won't have influence. If you don't have influence,

Starting point is 00:19:04 you won't be successful. Well, that's like a punchline right there that's like what i call like uh like uh like a golden nugget um chris can you can you like think and go back with me like in that moment when you're in your garage and you want to start this business how do you pursue this industry that you pursue like the like your company like how do you like what in what way you were like okay like i want to go in this route because this is the day that is telling me like what what the what's your process before building a company because honestly chris i had to give you an applause because you have done it twice once it's not

Starting point is 00:19:45 like a home run like in you if you got crypto lucky like in 2016-17 like you got lucky you you got you got in early it's not like like that type of success it has success that's planned a success that is like like like it's designed you know that yep designed designed that's the word I'm looking for yeah so so first off, whenever you're building a business, you have to have something that works. Okay. Like I chose solar because I knew solar worked. Right. I'd been in the solar industry.

Starting point is 00:20:19 I had experience in it. I had seen that it worked. And so I decided to go all in on solar right too many entrepreneurs they don't have any experience in what they're doing and they don't even know if it works and then they hear guys like me that say hey go all in and so they go all in on something that doesn't work doesn't scale doesn't they they have no, no experience in it. So one, gain experience. Usually the best way to gain experience is go and fail a bunch of times or go work for somebody else. Both work, right? And, and a lot of, a lot of people say, oh, you need to own your own business. Why not? No, go, go work for somebody else. You can be

Starting point is 00:21:00 an entrepreneur in somebody else's organization. You could be an intrapreneur. So, um, and gain the experience, understand what you're going, like that the product works, that it's scalable. Once again, if, uh, like what happens is like people will have an idea and they're like, I think this will make money. Right. And so then what they do is they spend a bunch of time planning and developing and making sure they have the perfect product, perfect service before they even know it'll make money. Then they take it to the market. They try selling it only to find out nobody wants it. Nobody wants that product or service. Right. And so now what is like, you've just screwed yourself and they're like, oh, entrepreneurship isn't for me or whatever else.

Starting point is 00:21:51 So it's like, if you have a product or service and you have no experience in it, get a very minimal viable product, something very basic, test market it, put it out to the market, ask the question, if I created this, would you buy it? And get things going and have something that you can go and present to the market. So for me, when it came to solar, I had already been in the solar industry, so I knew it worked. I knew that people wanted my product or service and I had experience in it. So I didn't have to go and develop like a crazy new skillset or anything like that. There were things that I didn't have experience in. I never had experience in installing it. I never had experience in doing it in like what we call a B or C market, right? Where, where, uh, solar didn't necessarily make

Starting point is 00:22:44 financial sense to the customer. So those were a few things that I, right? Where, where, uh, solar didn't necessarily make financial sense to the customer. So those were a few things that I had to test out that I needed to like, do some initial marketing. Like, is there a need or want for this product in a market where it doesn't make financial sense? And so initially we did some, uh, marketing, but from there it was just everything by design and going super deep right and and my playbook was starting with the end in mind it wasn't like let's just see how this thing plays out and see if we make money it was okay I'm sitting in my garage five years from now what do I want to what do I want to have what do I want to build? What would get me super stoked? What would accomplish the goals that I have physically, economically with my associations

Starting point is 00:23:31 and my spirituality? What kind of dollar figure do I need to be able to build the life that I want and build it five years out? And then I'm going to back it into what I need to do today. And so when I looked at my roadmap, my blueprint, I looked five years from now, I want to be doing a hundred million dollars a year. And in order to do a hundred million dollars a year, how many employees do I need? What does my organization look like? And I built a five year blueprint of how many salespeople, how many managers, how many operators, how many support staff, how many everything. And the number I came up with was in order to get to $100 million a year, I need to have 500 employees. And I need them in these different departments and I need all this different stuff. And that's day essentially one or two when I've

Starting point is 00:24:25 got like one or two employees in my garage. And so I build this roadmap and I go and I start attracting people with it. And so if you'll notice, so my goal five years was to do five, was that a hundred million a year with 500 employees. In five years, we ended up doing 233 million a year with 1100 employees. Now, the crazy thing, if you look at the ratio, my ratio was almost nuts on. It was almost perfect. I needed, for every million dollars, I needed five employees or whatever that number is. So you double the 100 million to 200 million, that's a thousand employees. Like I said, we did 233 million with 1100 employees. So the ratio was almost perfect. But then we took that and that's what we recruited on. Like, hey, this is the company that we're building. This is where we're going. This is how we're going to get there. These

Starting point is 00:25:23 are the people that we need. I know you're coming in at this level, but as long as you do A, B, and C, you develop out, there's going to be this management opportunity. There's going to be this organization opportunity. And so then it was just influencing and impacting because I had so much confidence that I could go and build because once again, I'm a person of my word. I fulfilled, I'd shown up to the gym. I'd taken care of my wife. I prayed to my God. I had done everything else that I was so confident that I could go and tell someone in my garage while it's sweating and we don't have air conditioning and everything else that this is what we're going to build and I'm committed to building it. Do you want to come be a part of it or not?

Starting point is 00:26:07 And then I was able to influence incredible operators to come and be a part of it because they saw the vision. They saw the direction. They saw what we were building. And so like what was the secret sauce? It is beginning with the end in mind, creating a five-year blueprint that I was confident I could go and do, and building the confidence based off of living in integrity and being a man of truth. You mentioned a lot of God, and I'm a believer of God. One day, behind cameras, we can have a few experiences that I have had. But how do you think God is like how important for people in their lives, like in like in terms of in general and success, because you haven't you have at all,

Starting point is 00:26:52 you have health, wealth and relationship. You have it all like what every people aspire, you already have it. So how God has played in your life play in in to make it you know like like happen well first of all god isn't part of life god is life right like i i believe that i lived with god before this life i believe that i will continue on that path after this life and that life is a time to prove who I am and what I am capable of becoming. I believe that I am a son of God and as a son that I have just as many characteristics that I could potentially inherit from my father, right? And so because of it, I look at everything in life as a way for God preparing me to inherit his kingdom. Right. And, and so I see influence and business and family and physical

Starting point is 00:27:58 fitness and everything as a form of God. I believe that God is a science, right? Like people, like a lot of times they'll talk about like, oh, I believe in God or I believe in science. The funny thing is, I believe that science is the way that God operates, right? Like that, that there are formulas, there are equations, there are different things. And that and that uh as like god wants to be involved in every intricate uh thing that we do and it's only us that keep him out he never takes himself out of of our lives it's we block it i think the best way that I ever heard it explained is God and his blessings are like rain, right? It is constantly pouring out and he's wanting to pour them down upon us. A lot of times we throw up an umbrella and we block them out, right?

Starting point is 00:29:01 He doesn't stop raining. He doesn't stop raining his blessings or whatever else, but he wants his, the scriptures talk about that his hand is stretched out still. God is there waiting for us to return, waiting for us to turn to him, to everything else. And so for me, involving God in everything that I do is absolutely imperative. I believe that he helps me physically. I believe that he helps me achieve my goals from, like I said, fitness and my relationships and my financial goals. Now, I don't think, like I'm not saying like if you're poor, you don't believe in God.

Starting point is 00:29:42 But what I'm saying is if you're poor, you're not using the proper equations that God has prepared. Right. And so, you know, there are equations to success. Most of us are just too impatient with the timeline that that equation takes. Wow. That's powerful. Wow. Honestly, you're giving so much golden nuggets here. Wow. That's powerful. Wow. Honestly, you gave me, you're giving so much golden nuggets here.

Starting point is 00:30:08 Wow. I'm speechless. Like, honestly, I mean, got, got excited when, when I heard this. But also in terms, you know, since this is like a, like, like a business podcast, I want people to understand how do you structure a 500 people company like like in a way because for me i i manage like like five to ten employees and i think it's like like a lot like i don't know how do you do it like in a way like 500 is like a hundred times more like how do you do it well you first of all you have to think big enough right like what i hear you saying is like i have 10 employees i can't imagine having 500 well you got to start imagining right like you got to you got to say what what does life look like if i am julio living my best the best potential that god

Starting point is 00:31:02 has put me on this earth to do right Right. And, and so for me, I look at it and like, you know, God's got a lot of potential for me. I've got to go and become the best Chris Lee there is. Right. And so the best Chris Lee there is doesn't play small, right? The best Chris Lee doesn't play with 10 employees, doesn't play with whatever else. And so the way you structure it is like I said, you got to begin with the end in mind. You got to go after a big number that's going to allow you to have impact and influence and everything else. And then you got to figure out like, what are the unit economics to be able to make that thing work? Right? So like the easiest,

Starting point is 00:31:42 the easiest way to start structuring a hundred million dollar business i don't call it a 500 employee business i call it a hundred million dollar business because employees are are tools to get to a hundred million it's it's not give me 500 employees and make a hundred million it's how do i make a hundred million with the proper tools and employees are part of that structure. And so you always address any organization first and foremost with sales. Like how am I going to sell my product? Now, if it's through automation, you don't need a whole lot of salespeople. If it's one-on-one interaction or one-to-many interaction, you're going to need some level of salespeople, whether it's B2C, business to consumer, or B2B, business to business. And then they're giving you affiliate offers or whatever it is, right?

Starting point is 00:32:38 But you have to back in your sales and marketing first because sales and marketing is how you generate money in the door. And so there's three basic verticals in any organization. You have sales and marketing, one vertical, which can later be split into two. You have operations, which is the fulfillment of whatever you sold, product, service, whatever. And then it's finance, which is essentially keeping everything structured and reported on. And so you have those three basic departments or verticals in the business. You have to start with the first one, which is your sales and marketing. And you say, okay, if I want to do a hundred million dollars a year, what does the average salesperson in my industry sell on a yearly basis?

Starting point is 00:33:38 And so let's, for round numbers sake, we'll say that the average person does a million dollars a year. If it's a million bucks a year, then what does that mean? It means I need a hundred salespeople to be able to do a hundred million dollars a year. And with a hundred salespeople, what kind of management support and training staff do I need. Law management tells me that I need between a person can only manage up to three, three to eight people lower on the totem pole, the more people they can manage. So at the bare minimum, if I have a hundred salespeople and people can only maximize eight, that means I need at least 13 managers. Okay. Because 13 managers times eight is 104. Right.

Starting point is 00:34:28 So I have a hundred salespeople, 13 managers of the 13 managers. I'm probably going to break it down into regions of four and five people. That means I'm going to need three, three to four regional managers for the three to four regional managers. I'm going to have a divisional president that's going to manage regional managers. For the three to four regional managers, I'm going to have a divisional president that's going to manage those people. From that, I'm going to probably have a VP of sales and marketing or VP of sales. And that's just the, hey, let's go and sell group. But do they need training? Do they need reporting? Do they need development, right? Okay. Well, I need to do a sales enhancement arm, something that builds out a training platform and consistently

Starting point is 00:35:11 takes care of these people, help support the managers with the data and everything else. And so I go back and I build out my whole sales organization. Okay. If that's what it's going to take, what is my marketing organization? Am I going to outsource my marketing? Am I going to, am I going to build out my own internal team? Right. And then you go and you build that out. Now, when you start with the end in mind and you do something like this, it's not going to be perfect. Right. And there's lots of resources out there. ChatGBT is a great resource. Google's a great resource. People like me are a great resource, like going and being a part of coaching groups and consulting groups that can tell you, hey, what kind of ratios you should be looking for

Starting point is 00:35:50 or does this look good? Does it not? But whatever you start with, whatever you go and you build out and same thing goes for operations. If I go to operations and say like in the solar business, we need crews to be able to install our solar systems. And we say, okay, how many solar systems can a crew install on a weekly basis, on a yearly basis? And then we back into the number of like, okay, if I want a hundred million and my average ticket price is 35,000, that means I'm going to be doing 3,000 jobs. If I'm doing 3,000 jobs and the average crew does 200 jobs a year, then I need how many crews, right? And you back it up, law of management all the way up, supporting staff, research and development, you know, quality control, whatever it is, right?

Starting point is 00:36:43 And once again, you can go to different resources and say, hey, what should a structure like this look like? Whatever. And then you build the whole thing out. Now you got a roadmap. Now you got a game plan to be able to go and take over the world. Wow. Honestly, I'm impressed.

Starting point is 00:36:59 You're like one of the people that I honestly admire. I met a lot of people, big people. But one thing I admire you, Chris, and want people to also listen to it is your humbleness and your ability to help others. Like you do it. You don't need to be here. You're here.

Starting point is 00:37:16 And like a person that like literally can be doing anything that they want in their life and they choose to share with us. And also ungrateful people like go follow chris and and we'll we'll leave the the links below i have two last questions you know because um i want to respect your time the last one is what is with your spanish how do you learn to speak Spanish? hablando por medio de las ventas por medio de la gente yo tengo muchos empleados que hablan español

Starting point is 00:38:10 y todo eso y entonces pero hace 20 años que regresé de mi misión pero si todavía hablo no es perfecto pero pero bien fluido y la última pregunta But if I'm still talking, it's not perfect, but I'm talking.

Starting point is 00:38:26 But yeah, but well fluid. And the last question, Chris, so we can, you know, wrap it up. If you were in 2017 and you, let's go back, because I think that this is the most powerful thing, because most people right now, like in like when in puerto rico latin america when they're starting a business you know they're bootstrapping because you know like that media is for example in puerto rico that median average income of people like a family houses of 12 000 a year and in a way like you know like we we have been like into similar situation

Starting point is 00:39:04 obviously your success is way way bigger than i aspire in one day, you know, like, we have been, like, in a similar situation. Obviously, your success is way, way bigger than I aspired on one day. Hopefully, you know, we'll drink a tea and this conversation, you know, help me get over there. What will you tell yourself? What words of affirmation will you tell yourself, like, that you feel, like, genuinely like genuinely like that help you continue moving forward like what what things do you think that that help you the self-dialogue self-thought that you were thinking okay i'm having this situation right now um like how can i move forward like

Starting point is 00:39:39 like because in a way it's something that i admire because i i met so many people that they're into their entrepreneurship things are not working out next because I met so many people that they're into their entrepreneurship. Things are not working out. Next thing you know, they're quitting and they're like, you know, giving up on their dreams. And they're, you know, leaving an average job and an average life when they're meant for more. Yeah, yeah. So a couple of things that I've always told myself. One, or things that I would even ask myself.

Starting point is 00:40:04 Like one, what would I do if I had no fear? Right. And so like fear typically drives most people's actions. And so I asked myself, what would I do if I had no fear? So I identify the fear that I'm feeling in the moment, remove it, and I create a clear game plan of action of things I would do if I wasn't allowing my fear to control me. Right. Um, and so, uh, that's, that's number one. Number two is I consistently tell myself, and this has been years of after knocking doors, I used to do a lot of

Starting point is 00:40:41 door-to-door sales and everything else. And I would tell myself, do what you're physically able to do, not what you're mentally able to do. Because we have a lot of excuses, a lot of reasons not to take action. And usually the reasons, like the better you get at producing, the better your reasons and excuses get. Like, for example, excuses I would hear is like, nobody expects you to do more. Nobody, you're already at the top of your game. You're already doing great things. Like people already respect you and love you.

Starting point is 00:41:20 Like these are excuses that I hear in, in my mind. And, and I have to remind myself, that's not a good reason to give up. That's not a good reason to stop working, not to keep moving forward. And so, uh, telling myself, do what you're physically able to do, not what you're mentally able to do. Like, are my legs broken? Is my tongue still in my mouth? Can I make that one more phone call? Can I knock one more door? Can I do one more spreadsheet? Can I write one more page? Right. Like, am I physically capable of doing that? Like, that's that's what consistently has kept me going. And then last is that results are not the reason I'm in the game. I'm in the game to become the best tree possible, not produce the best fruit, the cash, the cars, the vehicles, whatever else. Fruit is cool.

Starting point is 00:42:20 I need to be the best tree possible that has the ability to produce fruit consistently. Because if my mind is on the fruit, then I'm going to be severely depressed when the fruit doesn't turn out the way I thought it was going to do. But if I'm on the tree, the tree is a consistent work that is growing forever and isn't just seasonal. It doesn't just come and go based off of seasons. And so those are the main mentalities that have always kept me on the right path. Well, amazing. Honestly, Chris, this is one of the best interviews I ever heard. Honestly, I feel so genuinely and like I'm very grateful for this. And for all the people that they want to go like follow your work and also scale their business.

Starting point is 00:43:10 What page would they go? Yeah, so you can you can follow me on all major social media platforms. Instagram is Chris Lee QB, like quarterback QB. And that's that's on all major, you can find me on Facebook that way. You can find me on Tik TOK. Um, most active on Instagram and Facebook. Um, and then I, and then I run a community. I have, uh, a $9 trial. We, we, uh, we have a course that you get access to our, like our weekly, uh, recording calls and, and, uh, my calls and my whole way to build any business. You don't have to be in the home service business to use my course.

Starting point is 00:43:49 It's my whole structure to build any business. It's $297 a month to be a part of that, but we're doing a $9 trial. You can go and find it on my Instagram link or whatnot, or maybe it's in the show notes here. But yeah, I'd highly, highly recommend that. It's a, it's a platform that's hosted on school and there's a lot of good discussion and everything else in there. Amazing. I will definitely be part of it. I'll be joining.

Starting point is 00:44:16 I'm very excited. So yeah, thank you so much, Chris. And we see you in the next one. Thank you.

Next Level Pros - #115: The HOW of Building our $233M Rocket Ship

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