Next Level Pros - #116: Life After a 9-Figure Exit

Starting point is 00:00:00 May the 4th, 2022, we do a transaction, get a bunch of money, deposit my bank account, and I wake up and I'm just like, wow, it's like any other day. Like, you know, you think that the heavens would open, light would shine down on you, but the only difference is I got a few more zeros in my bank account. I went from working 60 hours a week to zero, essentially zero. So I'm just like, dude, this sucks. You know, ultimately that's where like the founder podcast was born. Because I'm like, dude, I need something.

Starting point is 00:00:32 What would you do if one day you sold your business for millions of dollars and the next day you woke up with that kind of money in your bank account? This is literally what we're going to be talking about today as we talk about what it's been like to transition from running a business every single day to post nine-figure exit and how motivations change and all that different stuff. It's the thing that we've all dreamt about, all fantasized about, and I've been through. And so we're going to talk a little bit today about what it's like post exit. All this and more on today's episode of the Founder Podcast.

Starting point is 00:01:08 Yo, Levi, what up, dog? What is up, gang? What's up? Man, excited to be talking about this subject with my guy. Oh, it's good. We've seen a lot together, man. We have. So, you know, it's interesting.

Starting point is 00:01:22 I get this question probably at least a couple times a day and sometimes upwards of 10 times a day of like chris what are you doing now right because i think most people ask the question expecting that i'm like well i'm just like hanging out on beaches you know uh doing the things that uh you know, I always fantasized about doing while I was working. And I think they're often surprised by the answer. Yeah. So when you, okay, let's go to the very beginning because I think it's cool and how much we've talked about vision and growth that you yourself are a visionary. And, you know, we always laugh and talk about like how when I first started at Solgen,

Starting point is 00:02:12 I was one of the first few handful of employees that started. And even I thought what you had painted me as a vision was crazy. It was ludicrous because we're in a garage, no AC. That's right. There's four desks, there's concrete, like it's nuts. From that very beginning moment, did you always know that something like this would come to fruition? I did. I really believed it. You know, I thought I could do it earlier in my career and then it didn't work. And then once going back and kind of learning the ropes and studying from some of the greats, I realized, you know, if I could just consistently do the things over and over again that work,

Starting point is 00:02:56 eventually something big is going to happen. But as big as it got, I don't know if I even quite understood from the very beginning how big it would get. The five-year plan starting out of the gates was to do $100 million a year with 500 employees. We ended up 1,100 plus employees, $233 million the last year that I was running the business. And that was five years in. This is so nuts. It was wild. It was wild.

Starting point is 00:03:23 And so it's cool because so you know it's it's cool because you know that business it's still running today um took a little bit of a kick to the junk from uh from the old economy but uh you know back on track i think this last month they did 24 million yeah which is which is fantastic which is really cool and then so you fast forward a little bit right so you from the very beginning we've got this special idea for a solar company new new is going to turn into something special absolutely as you start creeping through and start to entertain the idea like hey we could maybe have a pretty big transaction on our hands. What was like kind of the deciding point of let's do it now rather than later? Like what was the thought process behind that decision?

Starting point is 00:04:12 Yeah, you know, whenever you're approaching a potential exit, you've got risk and reward, right? The risk is that whoever you're going to turn it over to is going to kill your baby. Yeah. Right. Also, like we did, you want to is going to kill your baby. Yeah. Right. Um, also like we did, you want to roll some equity forward for some potential upside. And so, um, that's kind of like one of the things that you're balancing, but also like you running the business and when all your eggs are in one basket, granted, I had some real estate and those type of things, but most of my net worth was tied up into Solgen and running it, right? There's a part of you that wants to de-risk,

Starting point is 00:04:52 de-lever, and to be able to take some chips off the table so that if you do make a big mistake, if you do screw up or the economy gets kicked in the face or whatever else, right? Like you're not losing everything that you went and built. And so it was this balancing act. And we always knew and we preached like, hey, we want to go and do a private equity deal from an early on, right? Like that was a target. And so this was just kind of a checkbox. And, you know, it was exciting to look forward to like, hey, you know, I'll be able to take some money off the table, put in the stock market, put into real estate, get more working for me and really just secure my financial future for the rest of my life. Right. Not necessarily my kids or their kids, but my life would be secured.

Starting point is 00:05:38 And so like that was that was exciting. It is exciting. So then you guys, you know, a lot of people don't realize it's not just overnight process. It's not an overnight process that you start to entertain the idea of a transaction. And then it just happens and you wake up with millions of dollars in your account. Like for, I remember, you know, when we started saying, hey, you know, this could be happening. And we're going to start talking to banks and equity groups and stuff like that. It felt like it was always we'd always joke is always six months out. It's always six months out.

Starting point is 00:06:13 Oh, we're six months away because there's just so many things that you guys you just can't account for with that. So could you talk a little bit more about how long that process and why? Yeah, I mean, we talked about selling for several months before we made the decision that we were going to run what's called a process. January of 2021 is when we actually started running the process. And we didn't close that process or close a deal until May 2022. So it was literally 16 months that it took. So it's definitely not an overnight. It wasn't your typical transaction. When you're talking about a nine-figure transaction,

Starting point is 00:06:55 there's a lot of work that goes into it. Writing a book, getting representation, having a banker, lawyers, finding the right private equity group, going through it all. And I know we've talked about that on some other episodes, but, but yeah, I, you know, the purpose of this episode is kind of like what has happened since. Right. And so May the 4th, 2022, we do a transaction, get a bunch of money, deposit my bank account. And I wake up and I'm

Starting point is 00:07:22 just like, wow, it's like any other day like you know you think that the heavens would open light would shine down on you but the only difference is i got a few more zeros in my bank account and you know cool but like nothing drastically changed and also at that point on i I was, I was planning on running the business for a long time. I wanted to continue in the business. So fast forward another year, I get in a terrible car wreck and I decide, um, at that point in my life, like I want to step away from the business. Um, and so I step away and that's like really what people are like, dude, what are you doing now?

Starting point is 00:08:05 Like, are you just traveling? Because a lot of people that follow me on Instagram, if you're not following on me, definitely hit that up at Chris Lee QB. They see my stories. They see my travels. You know, I've been to Dubai and India and, you know, Hawaii and Vegas. And like just I'm just kind of like all over the map, just kind of depending on, on the time of year. And people are like, are you just full-time traveling? Like, what are you doing? And so it was interesting. I tried the retirement thing for

Starting point is 00:08:38 six weeks and it was the worst six weeks of my life. Right. Anybody that's watched some of my other podcasts, I've talked about this a couple of times just like i was like a dark place in my life of like where i felt like i didn't have a whole lot of meaning because i had attached so much of my identity to running a business and i thought i wanted to spend a bunch more time with my wife and kids and all this stuff which which I did. And I did. But the thing is, is like, I went from working 60 hours a week to zero, essentially zero. And no matter how great of a parent you are, allocating another 60 hours to your wife and kids is too much. It's just like, you can, like, okay, I went to the dance recital.

Starting point is 00:09:24 I went to the sports game. I picked him up, dropped him off at the school, picked him up from school. You know, like, do I start volunteering for the like parent teachers association? And like, do I teach for, I don't know. Like, so like, these are all the things that I'm like balancing. I start driving the tractor around my house and it's like, dude, this sucks, you know?

Starting point is 00:09:50 And so ultimately that's where like the founder podcast was born. Cause I'm like, dude, I need something that gets me excited and gets me out of bed. Cause I think a lot of, a lot of people think that business is just business. Like it's to make money. Yeah. To make money,

Starting point is 00:10:03 separate your personal feelings and emotions but i think as an entrepreneur like you kind of alluded to it a little bit like this was your baby like it is an emotional experience you know your baby graduated and is off to college on its own and independent can you talk and highlight a little bit more about how you felt during those six weeks of like maybe was it all all glitz and glamour for the first couple of days and then you started to realize that you're not feeling fulfilled or what what was that you know it was like okay i sleep in day one and i'm like okay what should i do today and i'm like i don't know right like okay i gotta spend time with my kids i go play with them and then it's like okay they

Starting point is 00:10:45 want to go to a friend's house and i don't have them anymore and i'm like huh like what it but yeah so it was like two or three days of just like trying to find purpose and then realizing man i don't have much purpose i remember like going to lunch with a few different people during this time and i just felt down rightressed and like wasn't myself at all. I wasn't the rah-rah high energy or any of that stuff. And, you know, the funny thing is, is like it just reassured me that everything that I've always known that like money isn't the motivating factor, right? And I've always known that.

Starting point is 00:11:24 It's what I preached in our culture and everything else. Like, you know, you work a whole lot more than just money. But it wasn't until like that it really slapped me in the face that it like became so real that like money doesn't fix this. Money, like being around my team, being around a purpose, being around something that like gives me energy every single day. That's what fixes it. And so shortly thereafter, I just started searching,

Starting point is 00:11:53 okay, what am I going to do next? Because this whole idea that society has pitched me for my whole life of like retirement, travel, spending all my day every day with my kids is not the solution at 39 years old and so immediately launched the podcast and then started like really saying okay what can I do that can really leverage the message that I have you know and for me my message is that as entrepreneurs, we can change the world way faster than politicians, way faster than most people in society. Because entrepreneurs are tied at the root. Everybody has to have a job.

Starting point is 00:12:36 Everyone's got to pay bills. Everyone's got to do those things. as entrepreneurs we can create jobs but not only create paychecks we can create a place where employees can come and become better physically economically uh with their associations how they give back to their communities everything and spirituality like if we can come change that like we can really change the fabric of society and i'd always done that at soul gen and so for me I was looking okay what can be my next shift where I can parlay that up more than just one business and so that's where I really fell in love with the idea of working with business owners to help them build their own soul gens in the same culturistic way. And you started off by doing obviously the founder podcast.

Starting point is 00:13:30 And that was kind of like where your brain went first is let's, let's start sharing the story. Cause it was a unicorn of a story. Like not many people get to experience what we were able to experience at soul gen, like ever in their life, let alone at a relatively young age you know right and so now you're able to start connecting and networking with other business owners that you have in the

Starting point is 00:13:51 past but i think what's really cool is how much that's levered into being able to collaborate and work and network with people of all different ranges of scope of business background to just starting to sold their business for a billion dollars and whatnot do you think that that's what kind of inspired more growth and hey we could actually turn this into something and help more and more business owners absolutely so like the podcast for me was like everything that i enjoy about business, networking, influencing, sharing, teaching, consulting. Right. And so dude, and we've, we've chatted about this so many times, like it has put us one handshake away from pretty much anybody in the world, you know? Uh, and like,

Starting point is 00:14:39 dude, things are coming out of the woodwork all the time yeah it's crazy weird like like literally yesterday i get a dm from the offensive coordinator of the world series champions the texas rangers yeah nice like this guy's like hey i intentionally followed you i heard one of your podcasts your message and my message aligned i'm doing this thing with coaches in the in the major leagues i want to jump on a phone call with you and like that's the kind of stuff that like the podcast has put in front of us like i mean dude t-pain and uh dude like uh what's her name's dad can't even think beyonce beyonce crazy name to forget that's that's how cultured I am. Right. Yeah. I mean, literally Beyonce's dad, we've got like billion, uh, people that have had multiple billion dollar exits on the

Starting point is 00:15:32 show, like Naveen Jane and like, dude, it's, it's wild. It's, it's been crazy. And so now like it, it has been really cool, you know, like over the last year of building the podcast out now you know thanks to you guys being top at our peak you know within top 12 of top business podcasts in the world which is super special it's put us in a really cool position to make a huge impact with with business owners which i think especially which are bread and butter is home service business owners right and you know a lot of the things that we teach are applicable applicable to all industries but our passion is the home service industry because there's so much unbelievable opportunity to go from two chucks in a truck to hey this is a scalable business i don't have to be in my truck working or in on the roof or whatever myself, like there

Starting point is 00:16:26 are better ways to live. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And because of that, so we've designed out this program. And so, you know, this is like the real answer, like, what are we doing on a daily basis? Yes, we're running the podcast. The podcast is a great like forefront, gets us networked and everything. But yeah, as you're saying, like our passion is influencing business owners and more directly those in the home service. But the cool thing is, even if you're not in the home service space, like what we do and teach, you can apply 90% of it. Absolutely. And so that's really the beauty. And so what we've done, I'm actually, I actually brought my iPad to the show. And if you're listening to this

Starting point is 00:17:11 on Apple, I'd encourage you to watch it on YouTube or even Spotify, because we have a little bit more video, but I've got a little, we'll do a little screen recording on my iPad over here, so jump over with me. But we put together this package thing where we teach people from top to bottom. And really, no matter where you're at in your business journey, you can get something from what we offer. And so we have this acceleration package, which is essentially a few months ago, I spent, I don't know, three, four weeks taking all my theories, all my strategies and getting behind a camera and an iPad and recording it. It's the same stuff that we've taken and we've helped consult other businesses, to other businesses besides Solgen to nine figure exits and multiple other businesses scale up 50, 100, 300%

Starting point is 00:18:12 using the strategies that we teach. And I know you spent a lot of time behind the camera doing the marketing strategies. And so you ran the marketing side of the business that was spending $2.2 million a month in ad spend. It was so crazy. And so Levi shot 40 videos. And so what we did is we packaged this whole thing. And it was such a fun project. And now we're making it available to the world. And once again, whatever you're in, you can take advantage

Starting point is 00:18:45 of this. If you're in the home service, you're going to take more advantage of it, but wherever you're at. And so we have this acceleration program jumping over here to the iPad that allows people full access to our course. And the, the crazy thing about this course, it's not being sold to you by someone that has no idea that just is a professional course builder. We are professional business runners that so happen to build a course and have an exact strategy. And I think that's something that's super unique about what we do. And so the cool thing about the acceleration program, it's cheap. Like literally what you spend on like some sort of like software type thing for your business or whatnot for two hundred and ninety seven dollars a month. You can get full access to our course. Right. And with that, you also get recorded calls which is freaking dope yeah um so with the premier group which i'm going to jump up here they have live calls like you probably for anybody that

Starting point is 00:19:55 follows me on instagram or whatnot you probably see me uh post on my stories hey love monday nights or love this that and the other what that, those are members of our premier group. They get on and they get live coaching, live Q&A. So for people that need more of that one-on-one or ready to invest a little bit more into their business, the premier group is like where people are rocking it. And dude, what are some of the results that some of our guys been getting we've had it's been nuts because you sometimes i think i often struggle with imposter syndrome you know like when we were working at solgen for years all you see are the problems all you see is

Starting point is 00:20:37 the mess you're constantly going to clean up and then now since we've left solgen and now doing this and teaching business owners you start to realize that there's actually a lot of value in everything that we did in solgen that have helped so many business owners such as like we've had guys come to one of our workshops and we've explained how this is the exact reason why you should increase your prices. How to increase it, where to improve your offer. Right. And instantly, instantly doubled his profit. Literally the next day on the plane ride home, he told us a story of how he increases prices like 30 percent. And now he's like there's no problem when during the sale. And that's just one example there's so many other examples of

Starting point is 00:21:25 guys adding in financing to their business that they hadn't had before increasing their sales some guys owning their marketing in-house where they previously outsourced it to right to agencies and now controlling the cost per lead significantly and all these different things like improving their culture improving improving their management style, creating better visions and plans for their business and strategy and understanding their financials. Like, dude, it's insane what we have packed into this thing. And so we get guys on these live live calls and they're working through the course

Starting point is 00:22:06 and then they get to come and ask us the questions and so jumping back over here to the ipad the people that are on the acceleration program they get to listen to those recorded calls so it's still like they get to participate in that direction but those that are in premiere they are getting live calls so they get everything acceleration has with the recorded calls full access to the course it's a different level of a community so they can bounce ideas off of other business owners in the in the community build camaraderie all that type of stuff but the live calls is like where like hey chris hey levi hey daryl i am am struggling with this. I need some advice on this decision, right? Three times a week we are providing that. That's over the course of six months.

Starting point is 00:22:52 I mean, you're getting 72 hours of live consulting. That's something that we've had businesses pay us tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to be part of. So the value that we're giving for that price point is kind of benign. And the cool thing about Premier, it's actually super cheap. You pay a $5,000, 5K, so back over here to the iPad up front, and it's $697 a month. Once again, super cheap.

Starting point is 00:23:24 You go and hire a minimum wage employee, especially here in the state of Washington, you're $3,000 a month. Exactly. Literally for like a fifth of the cost of a minimum wage employee, you can get us in your corner three times a week. It's wild.

Starting point is 00:23:41 Wild, wild. And it's so fun because you start to see in the community as people, you get what you put in. So the more calls that you're able to take advantage of and to be a part of, there is a strong correlation with how fast they're able to get results. Absolutely. Like there's been a lot of guys that we see in the community that go on every call for a month straight and then you

Starting point is 00:24:06 know maybe disappear for a couple weeks but they come back like hey guys i was able to take the first month of calls and i was able to ramp up my business and now we're instead of doing you know a hundred thousand dollars a month we're doing three hundred thousand dollars a month and increased our ebitda so it's just so cool to see and the crazy thing these aren't just random one-off experiences it's like anyone that has been applying it has been getting these kind of results it's it's it's wild so the the difference between so premiere you get a few other cool things you get additional tools so workbooks and things like that that that are part of the group we also give you 25 off live uh events live events so so the live events we just started doing these which are freaking awesome these workshops right we just did a

Starting point is 00:24:55 five-year workshop in september we've got a marketing workshop where you can come directly to the workshop, show up, launch a campaign, have like fully run ads. We'll shoot you a video, everything like that. We'll work you through, teach you exactly how to build out your Facebook ads, your TikTok ads, your organic platform, everything. We're going to do that as a workshop. So people, part of the premier, they get 25% off those, those type of workshops. And of course you don't have to be a

Starting point is 00:25:30 part of the community just to come to one of the workshops and come and take advantage of it. But, but like those, those things are absolutely insane. And then elite is where, you know, you like the coaching, you like the phone calls, but you're looking for something a little bit more. And this is where it gets, where you're getting a lot more of like our physical interaction. And with Elite, we give you everything that's part of everything else. So you get the full course, you get the calls, you get the tools. With this one, you get free live events which is a general general mission so you want to come to the workshop you come to any workshop

Starting point is 00:26:12 you want because we we're planning on hosting 12 of these years six different topics and focuses on each workshop the ability to take advantage of all six at no additional cost. Wild. Powerful. Wild. Yes. And then you also get three masterminds a year. And these masterminds are a couple days where you get to spend one-on-one time with us. We're going to be working on you because the people that are looking to graduate the next level, they realize it's not just strategy. It's limiting beliefs. It's leadership.

Starting point is 00:26:44 It's everything else and we help you work through the things that took us through that next level ceiling right like that's the reason why we we call our business the next level pros because we want to help people get to the next level there are levels to this game no matter where you're at you're doing a billion dollars a year guess what there's another level you're doing a billion dollars a year. Guess what? There's another level. You're doing 50 billion a year. There's a freaking another level. You know, Elon Musk is out there pacing the levels for everybody. But meanwhile, we graduating, right? We helping people get to the next level. And so that's really the whole cool thing of what we've built out. So once again, if you guys are wondering like what we do, how can you be involved in our

Starting point is 00:27:32 community? We have put a link in the show. We're going to give you a $9 week long trial. If you just want to try it out, see what this course and everything is about, see what these recorded calls are, literally just click on the link below for $9. It's less than a McDonald's meal. McDonald's is like $9, $10, right? For the same cost as a McDonald's meal, you can get full access for a week, go in, dive in, and say, does this work for my business? If it does stay on, it's $2.97 a month. If you like that, but you're looking for a little bit more and you want those calls, once again, graduate with us up here to back over the iPad, up to the premier. And if that's not enough, if you're looking for even the next level, Elite is for you. We have people in every different section in our community.

Starting point is 00:28:28 And guys, let me just tell you, you've heard me talk, if you follow my podcast or listen to my podcast, you've heard me talk about personal education. I dropped out of traditional school, right? I got enough learning from that. But since then, I've spent over a million dollars on my personal education. This is through masterminds and courses and events and coaches and everything else. I do not regret one of those dollars, right?

Starting point is 00:28:59 Those have yielded so much return. A million bucks has yielded me hundreds of millions of dollars. And I would not do it. In fact, the only thing I do regret is not spending more. It's wild. And so we're giving you guys an opportunity to come and to work with us on a daily, a weekly, a monthly basis. There's so many opportunities

Starting point is 00:29:25 that we're going to have workshops and masterminds. Once again, if you're not a part of these, the Acceleration Premier Elite, you could still do those things, but you would also be just missing out on that daily check in the interaction. Coaches and consultants work. It's the reason why Michael Jordan had Phil Jackson.

Starting point is 00:29:41 Right. It's the reason why he had Tim Grover. Yeah. Right. Like literally had his basketball coach and then his mindset and training coach. Right. Like all like the best people in the world.

Starting point is 00:29:54 Tony Robbins pays a speaking coach. This is one of the best speakers in the world. Spends a quarter million dollars a year on a speaking coach. It's just wild. It is wild. And even more powerful at minimum outside, because obviously the course is fantastic.

Starting point is 00:30:10 It teaches you a lot of principles and the hows and the whats and the whys and the birds and the bees. But the community piece, like it's so cool to watch these communities grow and foster relationships shoulder to shoulder with a lot of these other home service pros we're finding guys that end up being in the same near the same territories and now they can share customer bases and refer each other to other your business and stuff and so there's a lot of opportunities at the end of the day if you're in the home service business you're sharing most of the same customer base. Right, right. Homeowner, good credit, disposable income, right? They need different products and

Starting point is 00:30:49 services. But again, like, you know, especially at the acceleration in the premier level, it's not just for home service businesses. We have guys who own taco catering companies in our business. We've got a real estate person. So there's all kinds of businesses that can get value out of it. Oh yeah, absolutely. Tons, tons of value you can get from all those things. But as, as you said, like this is what is giving me passion. Like when, when people ask like, what are you doing now? Post exit, post taking millions of dollars off the table, like this, the influence and impact and teaching of others like i don't need the money in fact the only reason we charge anything is because

Starting point is 00:31:32 people value what they pay for right literally when you put money out you're saying i value it at least this much right and so if we're just giving this away for free, people wouldn't use it. Right. And so it's really just a barrier of entry to say, like, are you willing to invest in yourself? Are you willing to upgrade your income, upgrade your experience, upgrade your network? And I'll tell you the best thing that you can do is be in the right room. Thanks for joining us on this episode of the Founder Podcast. Until next time!

Next Level Pros - #116: Life After a 9-Figure Exit

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