Next Level Pros - #136: Title: "I've spent over $1M on my education" - My Advice to the Youth - Chris Lee Unplugged

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

Welcome to a new episode of Next Level Pros! In this special episode, the roles are reversed! Today, Cameron interviews Chris Lee, a successful entrepreneur, family man, and host of the Next Level Pros podcast. Chris shares his extensive entrepreneurial journey, from his early days of door-to-door sales to building and scaling a multi-million dollar solar power business. He discusses the lessons he's learned from both his failures and successes, the importance of continuous learning and personal development, and his insights on the impact of AI and technology on the business landscape. Apply to be on the show: https://forms.gle/hwDijQPFyKCEtHNs8 Highlights: "Go and fail as much as possible. If you're living at home, this is the perfect time to fail, right? Your safety net is pretty strong, right? You don't have to worry about food on the table. You don't have to be worrying about a roof over your head, but you can go out and you can fail." "Transparency is one of the biggest things that I learned from my mentor Todd at Vivint. A lot of business owners operate in the dark, meaning that they only allow a certain amount of information to go to their employees, and they treat them, probably like they're dumb." "For me, that's what I took from the education system, and I've been able to apply, and that's where I would say most of my success has come from, is being constantly hungry for learning." "You will not lose your job to AI. You will lose your job to somebody that knows how to use AI, and that person will be more and more efficient because of it." Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction  11:13 - Lessons learned from business failures and successes 20:50 - Transparency and culture in business 27:07 - Advice for aspiring entrepreneurs 34:00 - The importance of personal education and continuous learning 44:00 - Chris Lee's views on AI and its impact on business 48:36 - Chris Lee's political views and support for Donald Trump 54:00 - The role of AI in education and the need for adaptation 59:16 - The most valuable skill in public speaking and sales Want me to teach you how to grow your business? Text me! 509-374-7554 Want access to more of my content? Click the link below for all of our latest updates and events! https://linktr.ee/nextlevelpros Want to be a guest on our show? Apply here!https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1YlkVBSluEKMTg4gehyUOHYvBratcxHV5rt3kiWTXNC4/viewform?edit_requested=true Watch my latest Podcast Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/next-level-pros/id1687030281 Spotify- https://open.spotify.com/show/1e0cL2vI1JAtQrojSOA7D2?si=95980cd4e55a437a YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/@NextLevelPros

My teacher had a specific question for you. Cool. She wants to know how education underneath the American school system has benefited you on your entrepreneurial journey. Ooh, good question. So big fan of education, but not traditional education. Sorry teacher.

My buddy, he goes, I have a business idea and I'd like to get started. If he has an idea to go start and learn a business, just try something new, where would you recommend to start or win? If you're still in high school, and still on your mom and dad's roof, like that's an incredible time to be able to take risks.

Your 20s should be the time that you take the most risk. So like the best advice I could give to any person is go and fail as much as possible. Today I have someone quite special on this interview. Not someone you know like your friends or your parents like everyone else is doing. I have someone quite a little bit more important, at least in my eyes. Today I'll have Chris Lee on our interview. He's a family man, businessman, man of God, and in my eyes, a very, very successful businessman. Chris, real quick, run it down for my class. What has been your past?

My whole past? Your whole past, in a nutshell. Which, so, I've been involved in entrepreneurship for nearly 20 years, and so, I mean, there's a lot that goes into my past. Started off knocking doors, very similar to you, which I think is the foundation for any great entrepreneur. They gotta learn how to sell, and knocking doors is probably the easiest way to,

well, easiest meaning the fastest way to be able to develop up that skill. So knocked doors for many years, selling different products. Anywhere from when I was 17, well actually just after my 18th birthday, I started selling cutco. Did that in a cold calling type fashion. I served a mission for my church, which required a lot of door knocking for two years. And then ever since then, been involved in different sales industries, sold pest control,

sold cars, sold alarm systems and automation systems and ultimately solar systems. And so all those products, besides cars, I sold door to door in some facet and had a, you know, initially started out doing it to pay for college. I was doing it to what was called a summer sales program. And so while I was attending Brigham Young University, I was going out three and a half, four months a year, making between 60 and $100,000 over that period of time and doing pretty well for myself,

but with the intention to pay for college, become a doctor. Because ever since I was young, I knew I wanted to be wealthy and I knew I wanted to help people and I felt like that being a doctor was that route. And then as I was attending school, I realized I didn't want to go to school for the rest of my life.

I didn't want to wait until I was in my mid thirties to really start making money until I was outside of residency and specialization and all the different things that go with becoming a doctor. So right before I was going to take the MCAT, I decided that was no longer the route that I wanted to go. I dropped out of that program, took all the prereqs for business college, did that, got into the Marriott School of Business, which is at BYU. And so I went and studied entrepreneurship and business management.

And about a year into that, decided to learn everything I needed to know and so I dropped out to start my first business at the age of 24. So started a business, scaled too fast, too quick, lost everything, filed for bankruptcy for 2.2 million, had less than $1,000 in my bank account, car repot out on my driveway. Had a pretty large organization that we ended up having to shut down. So yeah, it was, learned the lesson of hard knocks, the hard way, and led a lot of people down,

and it was a very low professional point in my life. And during that time, I had a lot of people telling me like, hey, just go back to school, get a real job, quit chasing the money. And luckily, I didn't listen to those people and immediately I got right back into the same industry. I knew the decisions that I had made that were the wrong ones and brought in a good solid partner

Who had I'd done some work with in the past and so? We we started another home security business That we built up very small Wasn't very big it we just kind of micro grew it. We ended up selling that business off and then tried a bunch of different things. I've owned businesses in every type of industry. I've search engine optimization, internet marketing, I've flipped cars, flipped houses, flipped cattle. So I've owned cows and beehives and rental units. I owned a coupon book. I've been in the medical and medical pendant industry, done

international energy projects, all different kinds of things and you know ultimately realized that there was a whole lot more than I needed to to learn and so Eventually I went back and I went and worked for some larger corporations that were growing the way that I that I saw was the right way and so I I spent four and a half years working at three different businesses and I spent four and a half years working at three different businesses and studying the CEOs of those businesses and really locking down my theories behind business. And so one of my favorite mentors, his name is Todd. He was the CEO of Vivint and I studied a lot from him and I learned probably the most from him.

We didn't have a lot of one-on-one conversations but I was in the room a lot of times when decisions and directions were being made and I just saw the culture and the organization and the strategy that he was applying and I was taking a lot of notes where other people were there for paychecks, I was there to learn. Made a lot of money during those times. But ultimately, fall of 2016, I decided to walk away. I was an executive for a business at that time,

making a half a million a year, had a company credit card that I could put anything on it my My I was the VP of human capital is what it was called. I was over recruiting and developing out teams and You know, I had what would be considered a incredible job, right? Like I could go to any steakhouse, any ballpark, any place in the country, bring in recruits, have a good time, sell them on the vision

of the business, everything like that. It was a great job. It was a great job. But ultimately, it wasn't fulfilling me in a way that I knew that I could go and build and I had learned everything that I needed to learn by going back to work for someone else and so fall of 2016 I stepped away and everyone thought I was crazy because like I said I had I had the dream job the perfect job when with working with somebody else. And for the next year, figured out what I wanted to do next. And I explored the international energy markets, I did some projects there, I really spent a lot of time

understanding internet marketing. And I learned Facebook ads and I took a drop shipping course where I spent some money and I was drop shipping teeth whitener and flashlights all over the world and realized that that skill set would be well applied to a much higher ticket product. And I knew the solar industry, I'd been in the solar industry since 2014. So I'd spent almost three years in that industry, actually three and a half years at that point, mid 2017 and so Ultimately decided to take that skill and apply it to generating leads for solar People said they were good. So I'm like man, we might have something to actually go and build a business off of so fall of 2017

Launched a business out of my garage, bootstrapped, which means it didn't take any outside investment, didn't have any loans or any outside capital to be able to grow the business. And I just bootstrapped it myself out of my garage and kept expenses extremely low and invested in all the right things. And so November 2017 is when we started marketing. December 5th we had our first solar install of 2017. So 2018 was our first real year in business. We did nearly 16 million in revenue. Year number two we did 32 million, then 34 million, then 89 million, then 233 million.

And eventually becoming the six fastest growing company in the nation, as recognized by Financial Times. Inc. 5000 put us as number 12. That's out of any privately held company or industry in the US. And it was it was a wild ride. We built it up to 1,100 employees and eventually exited or sold the business off to to private equity for a nine figure deal. And I stayed on for about a year and a half running the business and then had a drastic

life changing event where me and my boys were hit head on. We had a hit on collision, but with a drunk driver, which led me to. Kind of pondering on what I wanted to be spending my day-to-day doing. And so March of 2023, I stepped down as the CEO of that business. So that company was Soul Gem Power. And then since then, been involved in things that allow me a little bit more flexibility with my time to be able to spend time with my family. And so now I run a private equity group. I have a, um, I have a podcast. It's consistently ranked top 20 in the nation for, for business podcasts. If you go to Apple, you can see it's called next level pros.

It was initially branded as the founder podcast. So we recently changed the branding. Um, but yeah, there I, uh, interview very successful business owners. And then I also do, uh, live, um, consulting for businesses that are wanting to scale their business. And so we run that. Um, and then I have recently, we, we bought a flooring business that we're scaling up. Um, I have a, a business that's involved with major league baseball

coaches in which we train youth. It's called Vetted. So we give youth baseball players access to Major League Baseball coaches. And then I have an agency, a real estate development company, and then my info products in which I train businesses through masterminds and workshops and weekly calls and those type of things. That's where I find a lot of my passion now and I travel around the world speaking on stages.

This last week I spoke down in Las Vegas at an event that was full of mergers and acquisition professionals, people that buy and roll up businesses. So I was training them or did a 90 minute presentation from stage this last week down there. And so, but yeah, I've spoken on stages all around the world. I've spoken in Paris, you know, all throughout the United States. Yeah. So I love, love educating, love teaching and recently started a youth mastermind here in the Tri-Cities where you make great people

like yourself and it's my way of giving back and sharing a lot of the knowledge that I have with the next generation so they can really build budding entrepreneurs today. Awesome. Dude, your highs are so high and your lows are so low. It's incredible to see how deep you've gone and how far you've dug up after that. Dude, bankruptcy on the 2.2 million.

Yep. Oh, brutal. Brutal. Yep. I have a lot of respect for missionaries who can go out and sell, because you are selling the hardest product I can imagine, right? I mean, you're pretty much going at the door

and saying you need to change the trajectory of your life. Right? And it seems so hard to sell. Do you think as a missionary, your sales have improved? So how do you mean? Like for the, because in my eyes it's really hard to sell, right? Yep. I was a pretty good missionary.

Good missionary? Yeah, I had a lot of what you call success. Yeah. So, you know, I think luckily God gave me the gift of gab very early on and really the gift of, more than the gift of gab, I'd say the gift of gab very early on and really the gift of more than the gift of gab, I'd say the gift of boldness. I think being able to like challenge somebody and get them to commit to something that will change their life and better their situation.

So for me, like any product that I've ever sold, whether it's the gospel or knives or pest control or whatnot, is stuff that I believe in. Like one of the biggest things I tell any entrepreneur, like if you can't get behind this product, go find a different product, right? Like I have to, with every bit of myself, really believe that I'm going to better somebody's life by them buying my product.

And so I think that's something I learned very early on, that I wanted to be behind the best products, the best services. And so if you look at all the things that I've sold since I was little, whether it's knives or the gospel or pest control or anything, I have all those services and products in my home. I still go to church. I have a big block of Cutco knives. I have pest control services. I have home security. I have solar, right?

All those things I'm a big proponent of. and yeah, it's not just something that I sold, but it's something I believe in. Nice, nice. You had Todd as a mentor at Vivint, CEO of Vivint. What are some lessons or information he's given you that really changed your trajectory? Yeah, so I think one of the biggest things was transparency.

Todd, a lot of business owners, they operate in the dark, meaning that they only allow a certain amount of information to go to their employees and they treat them probably like they're dumb, frankly. Where Todd, what I saw him do is he created a very transparent program. Like if I came in as a salesperson,

I knew exactly how much money the manager was making and this, that, and the other. And that didn't bother me because there was a clear path of how I could become there. And so Todd was always very like created clear paths in his organization. There weren't hidden pay scales, right? He wasn't paying one guy this and somebody else

in the same type of position. It was like, if you wanted to get paid more, you had to do X, Y, and Z. And then also, anytime that the company was struggling, he was very transparent of like, hey, this is the battle that we're going against in the business. So like one of my favorite stories was actually

before I came to work for Todd, where the crash of 08 started happening and the markets were, there was not a lot of cash in the market in 2009, 2010. And in the summer sales game, you pay an upfront check and then what's called a backend check. And at the end of that sales season, Vivint didn't have enough money to pay the backend checks.

And where a lot of other business owners would have gone and tried to figure out a solution to get the money or whatever else and just not even let their people know that they were in trouble, Todd chose a different path. He went to everybody and said, look, we don't have enough money to pay you, but we are growing this business, this is the vision, the direction and everything else.

He said, if you guys will sacrifice and invest your back end checks into the business, there will be an equity upside that you'll be able to benefit from. And it was like something like 90% of the Salesforce chose to invest. Like they could have taken the money. He was good for the money,

he would figure out a way to get paid, but it was like 90% of them that took their paychecks and put it towards investing in the business. And a couple years later, Vivint sold for $2 billion. But like that for me was just such like a testament of trusting your people, being authentic with your people, and creating transparency of like what's working,

what's not working. Because like the flip side, when my first business failed, I was everything but transparent, right? Like to the outside world, we were crushing it. To my employees, we were crushing it, everything else. But behind the scenes, we couldn't make payroll and everything everything else and I was just scrambling and doing everything else then ultimately it came to an head where we ended up having to file bankruptcy and it really caught a lot of people off guard because they didn't understand the struggle that the business was going through and so

I think that one lesson taught me a ton about creating culture and buying and everything else and so it's something that I've ultimately really, really strived to apply across my organizations. The other thing is just from a pure business strategy standpoint, like you don't have to pay the most to pay the most. Meaning a lot of times people in sales, they look for the highest percentage of commission that they can make versus the total compensation

that they can make. Because great organizations take money that they would have paid to the sales rep and put it into the support that allows the salesperson to go and sell and produce more, which ultimately means more money. And so it's better for a company to have big margins and be able to support the customer experience, which means the sales rep and internal customer experience, the employee,

but also the end user. And so I'm a big believer behind margin, charge a lot, pay a little bit less, create an opportunity to be able to go and grow and there's more compensation than just a paycheck to anybody that works within the organization. You can compensate through helping them develop physically, economically with their associations and their spirituality and just really providing a pathway to help them get there. And so like those are a lot of the lessons that I learned from Todd. Solid advice.

Transparency is great. It's starting off, at least for me, it is a little bit difficult, right? Very small business, had a, occasionally my window cleaners come through and I'm like, hey, do we have work all day Friday? And I'm starting to think like, yeah, probably. Look at my schedule, no one's booked, you know?

So now I'm scrambling last minute to make some sales, work for them. And I see what you're talking about, but it's fine line. It is more than just a paycheck. My teacher had a specific question for you. Cool. And I mean, she went to college, right? Eight years and teacher of high school, right?

She wanted us to know how education underneath the American school system has benefited you on your entrepreneurial journey. Ooh, good question. So, big fan of education, but not traditional education, sorry teacher. So, no, there's definitely been some benefits. I learned a lot from different teachers growing up, K through 12.

Had a lot of really good influences, a lot of really bad influences as well. There was definitely a level of discipline, but I think a lot of times the traditional education system gets a lot of things wrong. In school they call it cheating, in real world they call it collaboration. So, the school system, if I was going to go and fix the school system, I would encourage a whole lot more what they call cheating, group projects, working on a test, finding solutions together, also utilizing the tools that are real life. Right, I was told all growing up,

like that it's not like you're gonna be able to have a calculator in your back pocket, yet here we are. And today's society is saying, don't use chat GBT because it's a form of cheating. And I'm like, dude, this is the world's greatest tool and we're encouraging our students not to use it so you know i think i think the the school system is a little antiquated uh and there's a lot of room for improvement but uh i love to learn

and you know college taught me how to learn i did not need the definition of a piece of paper to say that I have now learned enough. In fact, when I dropped out of college to start my first business, I had 165 credits. You need 120 credits to graduate. So I had learned enough to graduate, but I did not have all the box checked to be able to get a diploma. And so, you know, where the world would have been like, oh, just go finish and

everything else. Like, no, that's stupid. Like, like if I learned everything I need to learn, like why would I go and learn things that aren't applicable to what I'm trying to do. Now since college, since 2015, I've spent over a million dollars on my personal education. There's a lot of non-traditional education aspects out there. There's courses, there's masterminds, there's events, there's workshops, right? There's so many different ways. And so I've paid a lot of money to be in the right room, to be rubbing shoulders with a lot of great people, to network, to develop, to learn, to see what they're doing, to be able to apply in their life. And it's

helped me in all areas of life, physically, economically, with my associations and my spirituality. It's not just economically. And so part of that was a little bit of a non-traditional education route with going to Harvard. So I'm now, it's funny, I'm a college dropout, but I'm a Harvard alumni. So I completed a three-year program at Harvard. It's called OPM. It stands for Owners, Presidents, Management, in which I've spent the last three years with 165 different business owners throughout the world. In order to enter the program, one, you have to apply, two, you have to be doing at least 10 million in revenue, and then you have to get accepted into this program.

There's a lot of people that get rejected into it. Out of the 165, probably 50 are billionaires that are part of my group. And so, but they do something that's called case study, case study learning, which is non-traditional education. Basically, you study, it's what a lot of MBA programs have started to implement. And essentially what it is, is you have a 15 page case on a business

that talks about their background and problems that they're going through. And then you have to position yourself around these certain questions, like how would you handle this situation? And then we live together for three weeks a year out there at Harvard and with these business owners, and we go to these classes,

and we would just argue back and forth of like how we would solve this case. case and for me that's the type of education that is really really beneficial it's like real practical applicable and where I think a lot of times or traditional education route just kind of misses the mark. Again I can say I learned how to learn and learned Again, I can say I learned how to learn and learned discipline in the traditional education platform, but I've learned so much more in the non-traditional. But being a learner is one of the biggest ways that I've been able to be successful. I read books on a regular basis. Like I said, I pay to be in the right rooms.

I'm studying podcasts. I'm doing different type of thing. If the education system is teaching you that there's a finish line, that a piece of paper is your finish line, you're doing the wrong things. You have to realize that if the education system is teaching you anything, it's that you should be a lifetime learner. For me, that's what I took from the education system and I've been able to apply. And that's where I would say most of my successes come from, is being constantly hungry for learning, but getting away from this, there's a finish line to learning mentality, which I think unfortunately is what's pervasive in the traditional education space.

Yeah, yeah, totally. I had a buddy from class when I gave a quick rundown on you before I started this assignment which is actually my final for a few classes. And my buddy, he goes, well crap, I have a business idea and I'd like to get started. His parents are both doctors so they've been through college right and they're really pushing college on him but he's not the best performer in this traditional academic sense and he wanted to ask you if he has an idea to go start and learn a business just just try something new where do you recommend you start or win? So one, if you're still in high school and still on your mom and dad's roof, that's an incredible time to be able to take risk. So your 20s should be the time that you take the most risk because that's when you're

developing skill, that's when you don't have a whole lot to lose. They're like literally you're, this is the floor and this is where you're at. Like failure looks like this, right? Where if a lot of people, they waste their 20s working for somebody else, not developing skills, then then even their 30s or 40s and then they finally decide to take the risk.

They're 50s, they got a family, they've got a retirement account, they got a mortgage, they got all these different things. Failure looks a whole lot more detrimental at this than it does here. And so I would say, take the risk. If you got an idea, so I'd say money isn't necessarily made in ideas and money is made in the execution, right?

Like what I did wasn't some big novel idea. Selling, installing and financing solar wasn't, like there was plenty of other businesses doing out there. But what I did that was better is I executed at a much higher level and created creativity within a traditional type product or service. And so like you don't need something that's like

this crazy idea that's never been heard of before or whatnot to be able to go and make money. You've just got to do something that's basic way more times and better and execute better than anybody else, right? Like, so the first thing, if you got an idea, figure out how to sell. If you can figure out how to sell, then you can sell pretty much any any type of product. If you don't know how to sell, go work for somebody that that has a sales platform that you'll be able to go and work through.

But yeah, you know, don't don't get ahead of yourself. Don't look at like, oh, I should be a millionaire by age 21. I think that's where social media has a lot of things wrong. They look and they see these YouTubers or this, that, or the other that have made it or they look like they've made it, right? Where the reality is, is like the thing in your 20s, like I said, you got to learn how to hustle, develop skills. You have more time than money. So, you build out things. You pay for everything with time, energy, or money.

When you're in your 20, you have more time and energy than you do money. So, you're going to spend as much time and as much energy doing as much as possible. As you get more wealthy and you get money, then you're going to have more money than you do time or energy. And so then you're going to spend more and more money to be able to get more time and to be able to get more energy. And the only way that you get more time and energy is you pay for somebody else's time. You pay for somebody else's energy.

The wealthy buy people's time, the poor sell their time. And so initially you need to sell as much of your time and energy as possible to be able to build up those skills, build up leadership, build up sales, build up any type of like strategy type examples. And then the best investment that you can make early on, a lot of people like real estate, stock market, no, spend money on yourself, right? Like as you gain more and more of that resource, spend more, right? Because the better rooms I can get in, the faster it's going to cut down my time, right? A million dollars over 20 years and a million dollars over one hour, it's the same amount of money, it's just a different

amount of time. And so the goal that you have to look at is how do I compress time? And the way you compress time is you develop out skills and you buy other people's experience. Nice, yeah. So you're very big on personal education. I had a buddy actually ask me one day when I was about to leave to your mastermind and Sussing up some friends beforehand and they're going they went about a drive 30 minutes to go sit down for an hour and listen to a do talk

like yes, of course like like a lot of people my age don't understand the value and going out and learning and not the traditional I Learn about biology or even psychology stuff like that. But sitting down with something you're passionate about, for example, business for me, and putting it into go up there. 30 minutes is not bad when I'm learning, you know, 30 grand of information, 20 grand of information in my life. That's not more, you know? I think your masterminds are great.

Love what I'm learning out there. And you recommended reading a few books, right? You had us read Rich Dad Poor Dad, and then you, one day, were talking about the psychology of money, because some other kids ask about other books. So I actually went out and bought Psychology of Money. I was reading through it, very interesting book.

And there was a concept in there that's brought up, and it is the concept of not knowing when to stop. It's not a problem for people who are like me, for example, not worth millions of dollars, but I noticed it talks about people who made millions, hundreds of millions, and you're so locked in on the idea of hustling and grinding and you love improvement. I'm sure you do, right? You're working on all these new businesses.

And there's a point where a lot of people climb so high, climb so high, and a lot of people tend to crash a little bit. And this book, for example, a super simple term makes it based just like, you climb so high and you fall into a nutshell, right? When I look at you, you made $2.2 million in that $2.2 million business, you hit bankruptcy, you didn't stop there, you kept going,

you kept climbing even higher. More businesses, more back to back, and here you have it, Soulja Power, sold it for nine figures up there. And that is crazy. So do you get burning? That's a great question. So if you are aiming for the wrong, so a lot of people they work for money, money is a

hygiene factor. And by hygiene factor, I mean it's very similar to oxygen. So when you can't breathe, when you're stuck under water or blankets or whatever else, it's the only thing you can think about. How do I get my next breath? The second you start breathing and you get plenty of air, it no longer becomes a front of the mind concept, okay?

Money is the same way. And when you have enough where you can pay your bills, your mortgage, your car payment, your food, your electric bill, your insurance, whatever else, right? And even a little bit of the things of your wants, right? It no longer is a driving factor. It's no longer a motivating factor. So really you got to understand the difference between a hygiene factor and a motivating factor. Hygiene factors only elevate to one level, but they no longer push. Motivating factors will always push you. And so for me,

my motivating factors are much more than money. Money is simply a derivative or something that is the fruit of what I love doing. And what I love doing is I love creating value. I love building teams. I love motivating. I love selling. I love having an impact in the world. And so as long as I can focus on those things that get me excited to get out of bed in the morning, money and everything else will take care of itself.

And so a lot of people, they've been taught by society like work as hard as you go to school, get as good grades, get a good job, save for retirement for 40 years, 401k, those type of things. And then when you're 65, you step away and you're old and decrepit and you retire, right? That is again, a finish line approach. There's no finish line in life. There's no finish line mentality

will always leave you disappointed. Because if you think that there's going to be this miraculous occasion once you have a million dollars in your bank account that the heavens are opening and the angels are going to come out and be like, oh, you're a millionaire. That doesn't happen. And so you will find emptiness if you are searching for a finish line. What you have to do is you got to figure out what motivates you to keep running forever. Right? And so for me, there's a couple things. One is putting God first.

Second is my family. And third is building businesses around those two things. And so because I believe that entrepreneurs are the greatest influencers of society and have the greatest impact. And the reason for that is initially when someone comes to work for an I believe that entrepreneurs are the greatest influencers of society and have the greatest impact. The reason for that is initially when someone comes to work for an entrepreneur or business owner, they think they're there for a paycheck. If that entrepreneur can then mold that person to be better physically, economically with their associations and their spirituality, they can really impact the world because initially,

like I said, they're there for that paycheck. And so we have more powers as entrepreneurs than anybody else in the world. And because of that, I am very passionate about improving the world through entrepreneurship. That's my motivating factor, right? And our mission statement around here is designing lives that impact the world.

And so like helping other people get better, that pushes way past money. And so like, when is enough enough? There is no such thing as enough enough. I'm going to make a bunch of money, but I'm going to use that money for good. I'm going to go and I'm going to create value and give back and create charitable and philanthropical type opportunities. But again, I never think that there's a finish line with anything.

The goal is always to level up to the next level. In fact, that's the name of my organization is next level because no matter where you're at, life is about trajectory. Happiness is based on trajectory. Where am I am I leveling up? If I'm plateauing or leveling down, even if I'm worth a billion or a trillion dollars and I'm leveling down, I'm going to be dissatisfied and unhappy, right? If my relationship is fantastic but it's going down, I'm going to be dissatisfied and unhappy. If my spirituality is fantastic but leveling down, I'm going to be... So it's about where am I pointed?

What direction am I going? Am I pursuing the next level in everything? That's where true happiness and satisfaction comes from. That's great. A lot better of an answer than David Goggins, talk it out. All day, just go hard, don't worry about it, you know? Like, I get that a lot.

So, most people watching are 16, 17, 18, they're their kids, they all have phones, they're all on Instagram, TikTok, sit in there, burnin' up hours of their day, right? Just scrollin' through there. And, you know, occasionally, good snippets of information in there, right? Maybe you come across something

that's actually very successful. Sure. But there is a very big mirage or misleading idea on that that you mentioned earlier. And that's that you can be, or it's very easy to be successful at 21 with, you know, buy my course, do this, do that, right? There's that community on there

that is super big on get rich quick. That whole idea and I myself have you know, I'm guilty of scrolling on my phone watching that and be like How many you know watch few movies videos, right? I kind of get stuck into that. Yep, and I see it's with all my friends It's not just you know, yep. It's huge. It's a major problem so for those people and You're very productive. You've done a lot of. So for those people, and you're very productive, you've done a lot of great things, for those people, how do you think they can get out and go do something that limits how much of

this information taken in and start something where they can build it from the ground up and do something great? For sure. So first of all, you've got to make the decision that I'm going to be a producer, not a consumer, right? Like the consumer mindset of just sitting there and scrolling will kill us. You know, an education only gets you so far. Application is absolutely necessary, right? Knowledge and wisdom, the difference is applied knowledge, right? Like that's what wisdom is. And so application is absolutely necessary and just understanding that

all growth and learning and development comes the same way. You never, as a baby, you didn't start walking and running one day. Like you pushed up, you fell. You pushed up, you fell. You got on your knees, you fell. You got on your knees, you fell. You crawled, you fell. You crawled, you fell. You pulled yourself up, fell. Pulled yourself up, fell, pulled yourself up, fell. Right, like it's this methodology of remembering that like I have to go through a lot of failure in order to be able to find any level of success. So like the best advice I could give to any person

is go and fail as much as possible. Like go figure out, and again, if you're living at home, this is the perfect time to fail, right? Your safety net is pretty strong, right? You don't have to worry about food on the table, you don't have to be worrying about a roof over your head, but you can go out and you can fail, you can go and knock doors and get rejected,

you can go and try selling a product and get rejected, you can go and try developing a product, you can get rejected, you can create a YouTube and only get three views. You can, you know, whatever it is, like there's a lot of ways that you can go out and fail. And so, you know, I have a 16-year-old son myself and I'm just constantly just preaching at him like, dude, just fail, fail, fail. It doesn't matter. Like stick to it. remember why you started, don't worry about having success, like success is a derivative that will come after many, many, many hours of implementation.

And so, because of it, he's been able to find different success in certain things, and he's got a YouTube channel that does pretty well, he's sponsored by a product and different things like that. But like, there's so many different ways, but you just gotta be committed to production, being a producer rather than a consumer. And like, get away from the analysis paralysis,

quit analyzing what you should and shouldn't do, just do and be okay with failure. Yeah, I haven't had much history or life or too many accomplishments especially compared to this guy over here but uh for me failure is you know where I got started where everything is at and as you're living in your parents house you know you have a roof over your head going out and just trying to sell something or do something new and even if you do want to go dropshipping or go down the Instagram Reels path I Personally tried option myself didn't have too much success with it

But I'll tell you what the skills I learned from it did build my most recent business and the entire website A lot of skills, you know derived from that drop shipping stuff. I learned so even if it doesn't work. I See a lot of value coming out of it So Another question for you. So those are all my school teacher class questions So even if it doesn't work, I see a lot of value coming out of it. So another question for you. So those are all my school teacher class questions, all that stuff. So here's some personal questions. When I wrote one of these questions, it was election day.

The original day we had it scheduled. Thank you for being cool with all the rescheduling. I wanted to say, I'm not too much of a political person, right? But I want you to sell me on Trump. Sell you on Trump. Absolutely. Easy peasy. So I am a big believer in transparency.

So Trump, to me, is the transparent person. He's not perfect. Right? He's got a lot of personal failures. In fact, everybody has a lot of personal failures. Some people are just better at covering them up than others. And I think real authentic people are better accepted because I'm a firm believer that God uses imperfect people to do his great work. Same thing with politics, right? Imperfect people to do the great work, to have the right policies.

Politics is the same root word as policy, right? And for me, policies are the only things that we should be voting around with a politician and track record of them implementing similar type of things. So for me, Trump is a businessman. A lot of people talk about some of his failures. I'm like, heck yeah, dude. This guy, like he was growing, he pushed through failures, he built an empire, right? His previous four years as president, we saw incredible economic data.

The policies that he had from an international and world view were fantastic. There was no new wars under Trump. For me, I'm all about saving lives and improving lives. And at the end of the day, you may not agree with the way that Trump goes about it, but he gets it done and gets results. And when I think about doing things that are for the betterment of humanity,

no wars and better economic situation is right at the top of my list. And so, you know, and I love that he's a businessman, he's worked with balancing budgets, and more importantly in the 2024 election, you're not electing an individual. You're not electing a Kamalo or a Trump. You're actually electing a team of five to 10,000 people that are going to be a part of their team. And when you look at Trump, it's got a both sides of the aisle approach.

You got former Democrats like Elon Musk that are supporting him and gonna be a part of his staff, right? Like he's gonna be doing the efficiency, the government efficiency, which is like absolutely incredible and absolutely needed. We have so much fat in the federal agencies and across the board that need to be trimmed down. And there's nobody better than Elon Musk.

He came in and bought Twitter, cut out 80% of their labor force and didn't miss a beat. That is a guy that understands efficiency. There needs to be drastic cuts in the government to be able to, we're taxing ourselves to death right now. You had the Boston Tea Party and those type of things that took place in the 1700s, over 2% income tax. People that were freaking out over 2% today. If you live in the state of California, you're paying 51% as a top tier income tax. That's just income tax. That doesn't include property tax, sales tax, Melloroo's tax, gas tax. It doesn't include any of those things.

51% federal income tax for the top income earners. Like when I look at it across the board, like somebody that's gonna come and improve government efficiency, fantastic. You got Tulsi Gabbard that comes from the other side of the aisle as a Democrat. You got JFK Jr., which comes from the other side of the aisle as a Democrat. You got JFK Jr., which comes from the other side of the aisle as a Democrat.

He's focused on making America healthy again. Like we have so many health issues as a society. I mean, just go into a quick Google search, you'll actually see that the products that exist in the U.S., same brands in the U.S. and Europe have two completely different ingredients. We're literally poisoning ourselves.

To have a guy like JFK Jr. who's a little extreme, that's fine. I think it's going to take extremity to be able to actually course correct and make some changes. When I look at all those things combined, Trump is an absolute no-brainer. Obviously, the rest of America agreed with me. He won the popular vote. He got 312 electoral votes compared to like 220 some that Kamala got. So the world is sick of it.

The US is sick of it. We're seeing this across the world. You got Millet down in Argentina that they call him the Trump of Argentina that's come in. They were experiencing 20 to 30 percent inflation a month, and now he's got them down to like 1 percent inflation a month doing the same drastic policies and government cuts that Trump has. So like the world is tired of these crazy policies, these crazy government spending, the just, you know, and all in the,

is basically done for the better of humanity is what the left has described, but it's bull crap. Like it's not taking care of the people. Like you want better people improve them economically improve their lives Don't kill them, you know, and and then we can go and we can afford better health care And so like that's that's why that that's why Trump's the man. All right, man Yeah, I'll listen to a podcast with Lex Friedman and Trump I don't know if you've stumbled across that but but Trump is a great negotiator, great business fan like you mentioned.

And he said one thing that kind of caught out to me and is on the topic of war and Russia and Ukraine. He said that if he gets elected, he has a plan for mitigating the war out there, eliminating all the war part of the problems. And I heard once again that he plans to do it before he's even in office. Well, I mean, if you look what's happened in the last week, just there is strength in leadership and Trump is much more scary, much more strong as a leader than Grandpa Joe or Kamala or anything else, right?

Like the world is unsure what to do with Trump and because of it, they respect him. And so you see what's happened since the election results have popped out. We already see Hamas calling for an end of the war. You got Jerusalem, or you got Israel in Netanyahu that's coming out and saying, or Trump has told him like, this thing better be done by the time I'm out. You got Putin that says, hey, I'm willing to talk.

I mean, when you're talking about Russia-Ukraine war, you've got China that has been just screwing us on trade and everything else. Now they're like, hold on, let's have a discussion. I mean, you got whole trains that were planning on coming across the southern border that have turned around and gone back home. Like, I mean, so much is taking place

because of strength and leadership, strength and power. And I think at the end of the day, the commander in chief of the United States of America has to be one of a position of power and cannot be weak. Right. Totally. Yeah. In my eyes, war is at least up near the top of my list of priorities.

And Biden and Kamala, they haven't been too promising, at least from history at all. Well, and the sad part is they got the warmongers on their side, right? You got the Dick Cheney and his wife who literally make all their money in manufacturing war materials

are promoting them. It doesn't take a genius to weigh out who's more in favor and more willing to go to war. Again, there's strength and power in having a military, but then there's a completely different weakness in going to war, surrendering $8 billion worth of our product to the enemy. Like, I mean, it's there, there's so much to be said about promoting peace, like blessed are the peacemakers. Like I go to the great master himself, Jesus,

and like I want to be on the side of peacemaking. Totally. Yeah. So AI jumped on topics here. AI has been a very relevant topic recently. Absolutely. I scrolled through your podcast a little bit, so that's a relevant topic for you. You've been talking about it.

I have been, I myself am in computer science, that is the field I'm interested in, and machine learning and artificial intelligence is a very reoccurring topic I am digging into. So for you, I haven't looked too much into the business side of AI and I wanted to hear your thoughts on how AI can affect business, how it can affect entrepreneurs and I guess it's... Yeah, artificial intelligence is very interesting because by default it should make us more

efficient, right? Like being able to replace a lot of the different jobs and those type of things. Now the hard thing is like there has to be some level of governance and there's not a whole lot of policy involved with AI right now. And I see both sides of the coin, both the left and the right of artificial intelligence. Like do we get to a point someday where we are so efficient with artificial intelligence. Like, do we get to a point someday where we are so efficient with artificial intelligence and robots that we have to have

a universal basic income? Potentially. And we're going to see a lot more mid-level jobs be removed because of artificial intelligence. Now, you can either run towards it and take it head on, or you can run away from it. Running away from it is only going to position yourself to get destroyed by AI. What I would be doing for anybody that's, that's in the field of business, whether as an employee or as a business owner, get

familiar with it as much as possible. The future I see is not a world that's ran by AI, but a world that is ran by people that use AI. And so you will not lose your job to AI, you will lose your job to somebody that knows how to use AI. And that person will be more and more efficient because of it. There's so many different real world applications. You can do coding, you can do copywriting, you can do marketing, you can, I mean, response and customer service, and all kinds of different things that are already being utilized in the artificial intelligence world.

And so, like I said, rather than run from it, we should be embracing it, and in our current education system should be a very hot topic of how do we get our kids above the curve. Because if we're not, guess what? China is and somebody else is going to be taking our jobs. And so we've got to fight as if our lives depend on it and really get ahead of the curve. Yeah.

AI is so heavily frowned upon in school. Teachers hate it, school hates it, you're cheating on your tests, all that, right? And I have two teachers specifically that I think are great teachers and they are very positive on AI. They want us to go learn it, they allow it in class, and then Pasco Soul District actually blocks it on the school network which is more fun. But I think personally, chat GPT and these large language models, all this stuff is so beneficial. The back end to my business is a solid 67% AI. It cuts out a lot of management roles. If I were to hire someone, it cuts out a lot of management roles, a lot of marketing too. I think it's a great powerhouse. But yeah, I see a little bit of fear in the rapid

growth of AI and the idea that China's gonna outrun us. They're gonna outperform us here. And realistically, there's a topic called AGI, artificial general intelligence, and in a nutshell, basically when a model doesn't want to die, when it has a will to not want to die. And that's when theoretically humans are at threat. The idea is if China gets to this AGI first, then China is in the hands of all the power and then it becomes a real big problem for you as somebody who financially you have the poem solved. What are your big fears with the AI coming up?

I mean, there's a lot of ways that we could create fear around AI, and I think we gotta be cautiously, basically, we just gotta be aware of everything that's going on. At the end of the day, I think the best thing that we can do is learn it ourselves, be

willing to pivot, being willing to change. An unwillingness to change will make you, put you in a terrible position in the new world that's coming up. As far as theorizing what are the biggest fears that we should have, I don't really care to do that because you can go down some pretty deep rabbit holes of where it can get I would rather understand what's going on and make pivots and changes accordingly. Oh yeah. Do you wish ChachiPT existed when you started, Suljan? You know, yes or no like not really because every level in history has had a higher level of efficiency.

There's those in the 80s that were learning how to communicate electronically before the internet really took over. When the internet first started taking over, they started implementing things that other people didn't have. It's never like, oh, I wish I had Chad GVT back in the 1960s. It's like, no, wherever I'm at, I got to make sure I'm at the forefront of the game. And so, today we live in the AI world, so I got to be in the forefront world of the AI, right?

Just understanding it, utilizing it, get my team to implement it. And so that's where I say like the biggest mistake we can make in the education system is saying like don't learn it, don't use it, don't do it. Like this is it. Right? It would be like back when I was in fifth grade when the internet was really gaining power for them to tell us don't use the internet. Right?. This is cheating. You're going to kill yourself and stunt your growth. Yeah. AI, ton of pros, ton of cons. Starting to see a new con with my friends is the critical thinking skills go down about

as fast as AI is improving. Interesting observation in my eyes. So I had a question that's actually quite specific, a little more for me. And before I start, I actually do want to mention, when I was in that mastermind with you, you mentioned I'm selling convenience, I'm not selling products, I'm not selling service,

mainly selling convenience. When you're talking about sprinkle blowouts. Yep. My original price was $45, then you go, $375. I'm like, all right. So I actually put this to test, the season's ending. I did the first two weeks at $45, and then jumped it over to 75.

And then I jumped it up to 100. And I wanted to let you know that that advice you gave me was some of the most solid advice ever, at least for me. Because not just minkleblots, you know, profits raising, but I moved that over to window cleaning and then the pressure washing side of my business. And less clients is amazing when there's less liability and also when they're paying, you know, you know, 33 to 44% more.

No, double price. And amazing advice. I want to thank you for that because I have seen like, I don't know if the math perfect was around 30% increase in profits, but it's like, hey, charge more. Like, it's so simple, I wish I understood earlier, but I really appreciate you for pointing out there. You are a public speaker.

Hi, hi. How's it going? And you do a lot of leadership courses. For example, you were out, you just gave a presentation out in Vegas, and your sales guy, right, so you're good at talking. When it comes to public speaking and selling people or informing people, what is the most valuable skill

you have, or at least you think there is when it comes to talking to people in general? I mean, it's just sales in general, like understanding that people, I mean, the sales process, which is breaking preoccupation, identifying pain and identifying needs, presenting a solution, and then reassuring people that the solution is the right move, right? And then ultimately getting people to make a decision.

Decision making is the number one skill that we have to develop for ourselves and for our clients because when people operate in the maybe, that is where mediocrity hangs out. Yes or no, decision making doesn't mean always yes. Decision making means a no as well, but we are trained as human beings to be okay with maybe because it means that potentially there will be a yes. And so we will be indecisive in the vehicles we buy, we're indecisive in how to use our time, we're indecisive like maybe I should do this,

maybe I should do this, going back and forth. The number one skill that you could develop out in anything is being decisive and helping others be decisive. And so whether that's public speaking sales, whatever else, like the quicker we can get to a yes or no decision, the more value that we can create in society. Yes. Hopefully this is enough. So those are all the questions for my assignment

part of it right. I asked also to toss a few of my personal questions in there. Hopefully it's enough to get me an A. Really appreciate you actually giving this time. If you want to book a meeting with Chris go to what meetwithchris.com. So you can just follow me on Instagram at Chris Lee Lee, QB, like quarterback. Follow me on Instagram. You can reach out to me with a DM as long as it's not spammy, I'll respond. And so, yeah. And then everybody that's in the class or whatnot, you are more than welcome to come

and join our teenage mastermind. You can talk with your friend here and he can get you some more information. It's free to anybody here in the area. So would more than love to have you be a part of it. Amazing course. I love your mastermind. I'm so glad I attended. So glad Mike put me on it.

Wonderful. Good stuff.