Next Level Pros - #3: My Story Pt. 3 - Paid Education and Launching Solgen

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

Tune in for the remaining education that Chris needed to experience before he launched Solgen Power. From his garage, he grew this national empire in just under 4 years and became the 6th Fastest Growing Company in the nation according to Financial Times. 🚀 Join my community - Founder Acceleration https://www.founderacceleration.com 🤯 Apply for our next Mastermind https://www.thefoundermastermind.com ⛳️ Golf with Chris https://www.golfwithchris.com 🎤 Watch my latest Podcast Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-founder-podcast/id1687030281 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/1e0cL2vI1JAtQrojSOA7D2?si=dc252f8540ee4b05 YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@thefounderspodcast

Welcome to the Founder Podcast, where we explore the journeys of some of the most successful and inspiring entrepreneurs from around the world. I'm your host, Chris Lee, a serial entrepreneur with a passion for building and growing businesses. Throughout my career, I founded multiple nine-figure businesses and learned a thing or two about what it takes to succeed in the world of business. I want to share those lessons with you by searching out the coolest guests on planet Earth and have them share their own incredible stories. But this podcast, it's not just for entrepreneurs. It's for anyone that's looking to be inspired by these stories of people who have overcome incredible odds and create something truly remarkable. So join me on this journey as we explore the fascinating world of entrepreneurship and meet the founders that are shaping it today.

Let's dive in. Oh, baby. Oh, baby. Oh, baby. Oh, baby. Welcome to another incredible podcast. Let's go. Man, if you're still with me, if you listened to episode one, two, and now number three, thank you. First of all, I mean, the fact that you are somewhat interested in my life,

that's cool. That's cool. You know, it's, it's interesting throughout my life. Um, I've had a very divisive personality. It's either you love me or you friggin hate me. And, you know, for whatever reason, I just have one of those personalities. Right. It creates a divide. And, you know, people either think I'm like a lying, cheating scum or they think I'm one of the coolest human beings that they know. So first of all, thank you for being with me, listening to my life story and kind of listening to what really created me as a founder of multiple businesses, but more importantly, as a family man and a son of God. And so anyways, thank you for listening up until this point. Hopefully we can continue the story and tell you just a little bit more of what helped form me into the man I am today. So jumping in.

So on the previous episode, we talked about just kind of that day and that whole education side of my career, founding my very first business and ultimately failing, and then building up a couple little businesses. Throughout this whole process, I failed to mention on the previous podcast, I continued to try little things. I'll give you an idea. I started a company called The Coupon Book in which me and Daryl, we needed some additional money. This was during the collapse of my whole first business. While we were still living in Utah, we went and approached a bunch of different businesses, convinced them to do buy one, get one frees, or sometimes free services,

like a free adjustment from a chiropractor or a buy one, get one free lift ticket from a ski resort or different things like that. And we said, hey, we need this, a really cool offer. And we're not going to charge you anything to be a part of this coupon book. It just, the offer has to be really good. And then we took it and we printed those for 83 cents. And then we got on KSL, which is like a version of Craigslist. And we hired a bunch of just whatever people to go and sell these things door to door for $20. We'd pay them 10 bucks and we'd net out like 10 bucks on each of them. And man, we got to a point where we're selling hundreds of these things a

day and it made a nice little side income while we were struggling through. And I've done all kinds of businesses like this, not only like the search engine optimization, which I talked about earlier. But I have flipped houses and failed. I have flipped cars. Me and Daryl used to go and buy cars from a place called Copart. It's where wrecked cars go and they're sold by insurance companies. You come in, you get it, you do body work, you flip the car, you keep it for yourself or whatnot. Did several different of those cars. I've owned cows. I've owned beehives. I've just really tried making it in any little side hustle that possibly could.

One of my favorite side hustles is we went to Costco and we found this Rosetta Stone lookalike. And they were selling for like $17 at Costco. And at that time, I think Rosetta Stone was selling for like a couple hundred bucks. And so we bought them for 17 bucks. We bought a bunch of them. There's just these programs to learn a language. And then we sell them on eBay and we advertise it as like Rosetta Stone. And we sold these things for like 50 or 60 bucks.

And we shipped a bunch of these things. Anything to make a buck over my career has been just fun and so many cool things learned and so much. But yeah, kind of jumping back into the point of my career. So when I went to go back and work for others, right? And really swallowed my pride and like got over this fact that, hey, I am a business owner and I've owned my own businesses. I've done it myself. Well, I don't want to go and work for somebody else. But then I really settled in on the fact that like, what if I went and I viewed employment from a completely different lens rather than just going there to get a paycheck or swallowing my pride. But I looked at more as an entrepreneur instead of an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur is somebody that's like building something within a company that already exists and look at it from a paid education standpoint.

And so that's really how I started viewing it. And so when I was knocking doors and doing sales, I was learning, I was growing, I was seeing how people were building these teams and doing it successfully. And then at the same time, I was until the end of 2016, I had the opportunity to learn from incredible entrepreneurs, incredible founders. One of those founders was a guy named Todd Peterson. He's the founder of Vivint. This guy has taken two to, well, took Vivint Solar Public. He did a SPAC on Vivint, Vivint Inc, Vivint Smart Home. He has done multiple private equity deals. And then that's just in the Vivint side. Outside of that, a remarkable investor has had equity stakes in all kinds of different businesses. Guy has the Midas touch. I had the opportunity to be able to spend time with this guy, learn from him, learn from

executives that he trained, and be a part of that organization. So I went and worked at Pinnacle, as you guys heard me talk about when I won that Range Rover and ultimately ended up going and working at Vivint for the next couple of years. I followed my good buddy, Casey Baugh. You'll see him on one of these podcasts. He's phenomenal. We'll also be talking with Todd Peterson later. Really love the guy. But what I was studying was like, man, how are these guys growing at such a phenomenal rate? And what kind of culture are they building? How are they going about it? Because up until this point, I had tried to go big, ultimately failed. And then I just played the game small, right? Really small solopreneur, handful of employees or whatever it was. I was scared of growth, right? Really small solopreneur, handful of employees or whatever it was. I was scared of

growth, right? Having filed bankruptcy in 2011. And so when I went and I studied, it was like, okay, how are they recruiting? How are they building vision? How are they handling difficult times? You know, and there's, there's a handful of things that I really learned from Todd Peterson that had forever changed my life. One is, is how to create vision and build buy-in, right? Like to get people to drink the Kool-Aid. Anybody that's ever known anyone that's worked at Apex Alarm slash later Vivint knows what I'm talking about when you're like, man, those guys drink the Kool-Aid, they bleed Vivint. And I wanted to know how and why, what, what it got them in, right. And they, they stood for core values and they did charitable trips and they did all these different things. And so my, my time at being at Vivint, I just saw these things being implemented, right. I had the opportunity to go do an 11 day service trip in Nepal in which we helped rebuild a school and furniture and all kinds of stuff for

a village that, you know, had only had electricity for a few years. Then we went and visited another village and never even seen white people, right? Like these experiences, these buy-ins, like the vision that was created. One of the, one of the things that I really loved and I learned from Todd was that of transparency. Okay. I loved how transparent they were about pay, how transparent they were about the company, the problems, the good things, the bad. One of my favorite stories was before I worked with Todd was during the 2008, 2009 financial crisis. And they needed money to be able to make it through. And they owed a bunch of backend checks to these, these salespeople. And yeah, mind you, Vivint had in that time, probably a thousand to 1500 reps. When I worked for them in 2012, 2013, they, they had 3,000, 4,000 sales reps, right? And that, and that's just on the sales side, let alone all the other employees.

And so they needed to pay these back-end checks. They needed money. Wall Street wasn't going to be lending the following year. And Todd goes, and he was just extremely transparent, said, Yo, we can't afford to pay your back-end checks. We want to be in business business and lending is seized up. And what we're going to do is give you the opportunity to basically invest your back end check into the organization. You can have some equity and upside. Man, the vast majority of

people did it because they bled it. They loved the transparency. They loved the fact that this guy was willing to tell them exactly what was going on with their organization and they, they buy in. And, and so they made it through that time. And it's stuff like that, that made them so strong. And I had the opportunity to learn from this guy and learn from his leadership and learn from his executive team that was doing these exact things, living in a, in a world of transparency and a, in a, uh, you know, just this awesome buy-in. And so I looked at it, my, my time, my two years that Vivint and Vivint Solar, uh, is just paid education.

So while I was at Vivint, I heard, uh, there was a guy named Bodie Garner and, uh, he didn't know I was listening. I was like reading a book or something and he was talking to somebody and he didn't know I was listening. I was like reading a book or something and he was talking to somebody and he started talking about the solar that they had recently expanded into. And Bodhi said these exact words. He said, there will never be an opportunity in the history of our lives as similar to this. I was like, what? Like, you don't say something like that around Chris Lee, even if it's in hearing distance or whatnot, because I'm interested. I need to know what is going on. And so then I caught the, caught the solar bug and realized that,

man, I could, you know, one thing I was really focusing on was discipline and staying at one organization and being a part of similar leadership and like really expressing loyalty to be able to continue to learn through a compound effect. And so I didn't want to leave Vivint, but the fact that I had the ability to go and do a different opportunity within the same business that was unique and that there was never going to be another one like in the history of our lives. And I wanted to be a part of that. So once again, picked up my family and we moved to San Diego and down in San Diego, I had the opportunity to run the sales office for Vivint Solar. During that time, I had the opportunity to participate in the initial public offering, the IPO of Vivint Solar, which ended up like crashing a little bit, but it was such a cool experience.

In fact, the night before the IPO, I was on the phone with the CEO, expressing my frustration that I couldn't buy in more stock. He was coming to me because I was a top producer for his organization. Man, just so many cool experiences there at Vivint Solar. And I worked with them for a year. The end of 2014, a good friend of mine, Doug Robinson, who I'd worked with over the previous three years from 2012, 2013 and 14, decided to start his own business. And at first I didn't follow him. But then later, just a couple of months into it, he recruited me over as the vice president of human capital. One of my greatest skills that I possess and had possessed up until this point, I had learned while working at Vivint, was the ability to recruit, was to be a visionary, to get people bought into exactly what's going on and be able to get people on board or like motivated to go and do big things. And so I had the opportunity to go and be one of the founding, essentially a founding VP over there and, and really go and help them build. And at this point, I think they had like four locations. And over the next two years, my job was, I ran a

team of headhunters and recruiters. And, uh, we went and we recruited sales teams around, around the U S uh, we built it up to 28 locations before I ended up leaving at the end of 2016. During my two years there, once again, I looked at as a paid education. It was a little bit riskier. It was a little bit more entrepreneurial, right? This, this was a startup, but it was somebody else's startup. And I was willing to take a little bit more risk. And, uh, and so, man, I learned so many things from Doug Robinson. I owe that man so much, right? Like he, he taught me like recruiting. He taught me vision. He taught me belief buy-in, right? Like so, so many cool things. And I love Doug and, and, and who he is and what he represents. Great family man. Um, great man of God. And, uh, yeah, just, uh, had two incredible

years and I had the coolest job. Like if, if working for somebody else, I don't think it could have gotten any better than working for Doug Robinson. I had an unlimited credit card that I got to go and I used people recruiting, right? I got to go to major league baseball games. I think I went to 16 different major league baseball parks during that time. Steakhouses, I was flying around the US, got the platinum Delta, the SkyMiles was being upgraded to first class all the time. Man, it was cool. And I was making four to 500 grand a year. It was awesome. You're like, holy crap, that's a great employment. And I thought so too. And during this time, Legacy Power, which was the company I was working for,

we were the largest sales dealer for a company called Sunrun. Many of you may have heard of it. Sunrun is the largest residential solar installer in the nation. And I think we were doing like 50% of Sunrun's total capacity at this time. It's to the tune that we got invited to be a part of the IPO. So all of us, we flew out to New York. We were standing on Wall Street next to Lynn Jurich, the CEO and founder of Sunrun. So we got to participate in this really cool IPO. So in a span of just a few years of going and getting this paid education, I was part of two different IPOs, saw so many crazy cool things that happened, had just a blast learning and growing and just adding to the repertoire of being able to go and build, build my, my business. And, um, during this time, I had so many people that came to me and like, Chris, why, why are you working for somebody else? Why, why don't you go out and start your own thing? You've

done it before you're smart. You have the skills and everything like that. And it was interesting. Like, I just knew that the timing wasn't right, that I everything like that. And it was interesting. Like, I just knew that the timing wasn't right, that I was not ready. And there was still more for me to learn. And so I just kept telling people like, Hey, now's not the time. One day there will be the time. I'm just kind of waiting for the feeling. And you know, I'm never one to really put things off, but for whatever reason, in this point in my life, I just needed to wait. And it was during this time when I was living in San Diego working for Doug and I was flying all over the United States that Doug, uh, uh, was, was okay with me continuing to work remote. And then I said, dude, if you're okay with me working remote, is it okay if I move back to

Washington state? Because as I stated, I'm originally from Southeastern Washington in the Tri-Cities area. Me and my wife love, love, love, love the Tri-Cities. I've lived all over the United States, lived in Arkansas, North Carolina, Florida, Texas, uh, heck Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, uh, New York, uh, Rhode Island. I've lived, I lived in all these different places. And, um, frankly, I don't think there's a better place. And more importantly, no better place to raise our kids. And so I convinced Doug that, um, uh, he would be okay with me moving back to the Tri-Cities of Washington. And then I would continue to commute. And I commuted three days a week down to Utah, three weeks a month. And so I did a lot of flying.

I think that year, the year of like 2015, or it might've been 2016, I flew 162 flights. It was wild. I mean, I do not recommend that amount of travel to anybody, no matter what, excuse me. But yeah, it was, it was a wild, wild, wild year. Um, so convinced and we moved back and, and at this point we had just had our fourth child while we, um, right before we moved, we lived in San Diego for a year and a half, right before we moved to San Diego, we had our fourth child, uh, Dylan. Um, when, so he was just shy of two when we moved back to the tri cities and eventually we had our final, uh, boy brewing, uh, here in

tri cities. So, um, I think I shared this before. So I have five amazing kids and all their names end in the letter N. So last name Lee, we have Addison, Caden, Jocelyn, Dylan, and Bruin. And they're just amazing. I think the first two were just by happenstance. And I think by the third, we did it on purpose and we're like, well, we got to stick with this trend. So anyways, love being a dad, love being all these things. So during this time, like I said, I'm, I'm working for legacy. People are wondering like why I'm not going and doing my own thing. And I got the best job in the world, best job in the world. Fall of 2016, I'm approached by, um, someone who has this remarkable product. And, um, it's what I now refer to as the

magic generator. It was this solar generator, um, that helps start the engine or, uh, the generation. And then it ran, it ran off of neodymium magnets. It's a rare earth magnet. Um, I think it's a rare earth magnet um i think it's like 60 on the periodic table or something like that and uh you know it ran off this and this thing was going to change the world like if it really worked it could literally power the world do it in as much smaller space than solar doing and it was it was an alternative to burning coal and all these different things. And it was essentially perpetual energy and like, like no way perpetual energy isn't real, but you know, you'd heard all these things about like potentially, uh, Tesla in, uh, inventing something that was perpetual and just like, well, maybe. So I started looking into it while I was working at legacy and man, this thing was intriguing. You know, we could go and we could

sell it for half a million dollars. Our manufacturing cost was 250,000. We could essentially have a gross profit of 250 K and it was about half the price of solar. Just like, dude. And what one generator, which was like eight feet by eight feet, eight feet cubed. It that much could produce as much as it was like five acres of solar. And so it was like ridiculous. And I'm just like, dude, there's got to be something about this. So we flew in and this guy was based out of California and we fly in different engineers and everyone to take a look at this. Like, dude, please verify that this is legit. Please tell me it's legit.

And everybody that we had take a look at is like, oh, yeah, this checks out. It's worked. There was a working prototype down in Southern California. Just like, dude, got to start selling this thing. And so as soon as I saw this thing, I was smitten. And I walked up to Doug and I was like, all right, I think I'm ready to walk away. And frankly, people were just baffled that I would give up what I had for, you know, just kind of a hope and a dream. And even at that point, like I wasn't 100% sold that selling this generator was going to be the next thing that I wanted to do.

I just knew I wanted to be a part of it and that I was going to look for the next thing because I felt the timing was finally right for me to go out and do my own thing. And so the next eight months, I really began to understand the power of networking, but more importantly, the power of belief. When you believe in something and you are just so sold on it personally, you can convince anyone to talk to you and you can network to the very tippity top of the world. Okay. So, and what I mean by this is over the next eight months, I built a sales army with a couple other guys and like we had 200 sales reps selling this thing all over the world. We did contracted and financed. We had $2 billion B as in boy in sales in less than eight months.

Okay. Because we believe so much in this product and we started networking to the highest. We were literally sitting with the prime ministers of safeway slash albertsons um literally all over the world we had stuff going on in panama and africa and asia and like dude it was crazy this thing was nuts and we're contracting we're signing these things and we're going to the manufacturer like dude you got to be able to fulfill let's get these things deployed oh yeah don't worry i have 200 on on the. They're being currently manufactured in South Carolina. And all this stuff, we kept getting the runaround, kept getting the runaround. Like, dude, we got the money. We got the financing. We got people willing to pay cash. And it ultimately came down, like this guy kept giving us the runaround,

but he had a working prototype. We're just like, dude, why? Please make it make sense. Make it make sense. Literally, we signed a power purchase agreement with Mexico, with Mexico that would have paid the three of us $10 million each a year for 20 years. You heard that right? $10 million each a year for 20 years through this power purchase agreement that we were going to do with these things, man. And ultimately like I ended up spending like two to 300,000 in travel and everything else. And I wasn't making

an income at this time. Um, as far as like on a, on a regular basis, I continue to start up side hustles and whatnot to make sure, because I've never been one to want to just like dip into my savings account or live off of, uh, live off of investments, right? Like I want new cashflow coming in. And so during this time, so I had left legacy in fall of 2016, February, 2017. I'm brokering a few deals as far as like, I got a sales company. I got a install company in the solar space, brokering it, making a little like five to 10 cents, like helping the relationship and everything like that. And we were presented this opportunity like, hey, there is some craziness happening

with a solar incentive out in Rhode Island. We're just like, wait, what? Rhode Island? And I mean, I didn't even consider even like passing through. This little place is like 30 miles end to end or whatever. So Daryl and I started looking into it and they got this program

where literally is like paying people to go solar. Like they don't have to come any money out of pocket and they start saving day one. I was like, this is crazy. And so immediately me and Daryl look deep into it. Daryl at this point had left legacy. He was working there as well. And, uh, we're like, dude, let's go get an Airbnb out in Rhode Island. Let's go knock some freaking doors. And so we go, we rent a big Airbnb. We convinced like 13 dudes to come out with us, like guys that are just different sales dogs that have been a part of with us in the door-to-door space. And we say, Hey dude, come out to Rhode Island. We're going to pay a thousand dollars a kilowatt. It's going to be amazing. Let's get, let's get it. And, uh, over the next 30 days, I went, I left my family, moved into this Airbnb, uh, to be able to just

make sure I had some good cash coming in. And I think over 30 days, I made like something like 120 or $130,000. It was crazy. It was a gold rush. And, uh, over the next few months, we continue to have people living in Airbnbs out there. And I would go out there occasionally, hold like Tupperware parties with my customers, work referrals and continue to do that. So this was kind of my side hustle it's the house that we live in. At that point, it was like completely obliterated. Okay. So let me back up and give you the story. So when we had moved up to Washington, we had some land in which we were going to build our dream home. It was about two and a half miles away down the road from my in-laws out in the country. And so meanwhile, we moved in, they have a shop

and they have a three bedroom condo in their shop. And so we move in, we start paying them rent and we're like living in just kind of three bedroom is a stretch. It's like, it was kind of interesting. I think the whole thing is like maybe a thousand or 1500 square feet. And so we're living, living in the space, paying, space, paying minimal rent or whatnot, planning on building. Meanwhile, in their neighborhood, and by neighborhood, I mean 20 to 25 acre parcels, like huge parcels. There's this house that is being seized by the government. And the reason it was being seized by the government is that the guy that was living there was growing poppy flowers. Now, it's legal to grow poppy flowers and it's legal to sell dry poppy pods or poppy flowers.

But the minute you start turning into drugs or a.k.a. opium, it becomes illegal. And this guy was the number one search on Google. So he was number one page that would pop up on Google if you looked for decorative poppy pods and he was selling them by the pound. And if I remember right, it was like $130 a pound. So this was the previous owner of my house that I now live in. And so he's selling these things by the pound. My father-in-law is just super suspicious. The funny thing is this guy literally goes to the local newspaper and brags about how a genius of a businessman is, right? Most farmers can make anywhere from 500 to a couple grand an acre. This guy on two and a half acres made like $500,000

his first year selling decorative poppy pods. And he goes and brags to the newspaper. And so all of a sudden it turns on like private investigation, my father-in-law, like his court, just like, oh geez, goodness, what's happening? Anyways, this guy ends up having his property seized. And it wasn't because he was selling the dry poppy pods. It was because these undercover guys came to buy some poppy pods. And he made them opium tea out of it and fed the undercover detectives, which ultimately led to his demise and got busted during the trial. Now check how sketch this is. So I'm not sure if he was involved with the mafia or whatever, the cartels, but during his trial, him who's like in his sixties and his son,

who's 32 years old, both involved in this business, die from similar conditions within six months of each other during the trial. What? Are you kidding me? How sketch is that? And so both of them die, leaving the wife behind. She has like a nervous breakdown. She's never made money in her life. She's got the house paid off, but has no way to even service the taxes or utilities. This guy left

zero investments. Anything was cash or whatnot was seized. They ended up giving the house back to her, but she can't even afford it. So she starts losing it literally to the government, right? Like you, she can't pay these taxes anymore. So the government's like, Hey, if you don't have it sold by X date, it's going to auction. So she puts it up on the market. Meanwhile, she's been living in it for almost. So at this point, when I'm living in my in-laws shop, hopefully you guys are like following all this crazy stuff. Um, me too. So I'm living, I'm living in my in-law's shop. This house comes on the market, but it hasn't been like maintained. She's been living in a kind of crazy lady for the last three years. She hasn't watered the

two and a half acre lawn. The thing's infested with mice. She's got like three dogs in it that have pooped and crapped and peed all over the floor. It was this beautiful 5,000 square foot home with a 3,500 square foot shop on 23 acres with a pool and great cement work and all these amazing things. And she literally let it go down just the tank. So she goes and she puts it on the market for $850,000 in 2016. And, uh, she posts the previous pictures. The last time it had been listed a few years prior, whenever somebody come and take a look at it, it's got like three foot high weeds around it. The grass is dead. Dandelions everywhere. They're like, what? And so luckily we were able to capitalize.

We went in and we ended up buying this thing for $685,000, which at that point seemed like a crazy stretch. We're like, dude, what are we doing? This thing that totally needs gutted and redone and everything else. But now, I mean, fast forward to 2023, it's like, holy smokes, you were able to get that for $685,000? You kidding me? That's the history and the story behind the house. While I was out in Rhode Island and doing all this stuff in early 2017, we were in the middle of remodel. Me and my wife did almost all of it. I've always been pretty handy.

I love woodwork. I love doing different things. I've loved remodeling houses. I've finished basements and done trim work in all my homes and different things like that. And so that's a little like some of the stuff I'm passionate about. You can see some of this trim work behind me. I've done stuff like this. This was actually done by a guy that I paid just because my time has been like so everywhere with my business and whatnot. But anyways, this is like what, so we're remodeling the house. I'm selling out there. We're trying to get, push this magic generator. All of a sudden the magic generator stuff just starts crashing and burning. I'm like,

I got to figure out what I want to do for the rest of my life. And so during this time, we started getting frustrated with like these deals that we were brokering between sales orgs and install companies. We would sell it one way, the install company would fulfill in another. And it just became really frustrating not being able to control the whole process. And midsummer, I get an ad and it's purporting that this guy made a million dollars in three months by dropshipping stuff and running Facebook ads. And once again, I'm like, squirrel, you know, like just crazy. Like this is just how I've always been, right? Like haven't been able to concentrate for longer than a year at a time or six months at a time. It's just like, I have entrepreneurial ADD and so many different things. I see this thing on like a

million bucks and the internet has always intrigued me, right? At this point I had owned my SEO company. I had sold that off. Um, I had done all these different things. And so like the internet and, and I've been a door knocker by trade And I'm just like, I am tired of knocking doors. This sucks. Right? Like I need to be able to figure out how to scale. And so I call up Daryl. I'm like, dude, I want to learn Facebook marketing and do it through dropshipping. And he's like, okay. And at this point, me and Daryl basically decide, Hey, we're going to do everything together for the rest of our lives. Right? You're my work wife. I'm your work wife type deal. And, uh, and so I'm like, dude, this program costs $2,500. I'm just like,

I up in this point, I think the most I'd ever paid for a program is a thousand bucks or like a ticket to some event for 500, like $2,500 for a digital course. I just couldn't, it was hard for me to wrap my mind around it. And I'm just like, Daryl, I'm going to do it. I need you to support me. Keep running like the dealer and sales model. I'm going to go and learn Facebook marketing. And so for the next six weeks in the middle of the summer of 2017, I spent 14 hours a day diving into this digital marketing stuff. And this was back in a day where like Facebook marketing was still very fresh, right? It was still just kind of gaining ground and everything. And it intrigued me that this

guy had made a million bucks in three months. And I'm just like, dude, that sounds awesome. Awesome. And so I spent 14 hours a day and my wife, I'm like in my home office, my wife seeing me, I'm just like, just head down grinding. And I start drop shipping stuff. Like I follow the program, start drop shipping. These defense flashlights are really cool. They're flashlight. They were like, they were like untwist come out into a baton. You could beat somebody with it or drop shipping those, um, all over the world. Canada was a huge hit and then teeth whitener. And this is just kind of funny. I'm pretty sure teeth whiteners outlawed in the UK and I was just running ads like worldwide in the UK, just like kept getting

hit and like people loved it there. And so then I started concentrating over there and come to find out, I'm pretty sure it's like outlawed, but I'm drop shipping teeth whitener over there for 50, I think it was $50 a thing. And I was buying it for like $3 and 50 cents shipped from China. It was crazy. And within four weeks,

I'd made $10,000 and I'm like, this is cool. You know, this is awesome. So about six weeks000 and I'm like, this is cool. You know, this is awesome. So about six weeks in, I'm like, what am I doing? What am I doing? Why am I selling $50 products? I have been in the solar industry for the previous, you know, handful of years. We're talking what? It says 14, 15, 16 and a half, three and a half years selling 30 to $50,000 products. And now I'm selling a $50 product. I'm like, what if I could go and become a digital door knocker and use this whole Facebook marketing thing the same way that I did knocking doors, but knocking

screens. Right. And I started kind of developing this idea through click funnels around being an attractive character, being like the Ronald McDonald of a brand like, Oh, okay. Well, what if, what if I do X and I do Z? And so I started generating leads out in like Rhode Island, a few other places. And then I would just sell them to people and say, Hey, go, go do this. And like pay me $40 a lead. I was generous for like 20 bucks or whatever. And people come back and like, dude, that stuff was good. We sold a handful of $40,000 systems. I'm like, dude, what am I doing? Okay. So, and then I just like closed up shop and was like, okay, no more drop shipping. Let's go solar lead generation.

Meanwhile, I had a business partner approach me, Robbie Clyde. He says, dude, I think we should open up in Washington State. I'm like, dude, no way are we opening up solar in Washington State. Let's keep going to Rhode Island. Let's keep going to this place. He's like, dude, no, for real. They have this really cool incentive. I'm like, dude, Washington is the cheapest energy in the nation.

There is nobody buying solar in Washington state. Then I started looking into it. And I always thought up until that moment, like, dude, if I could ever make solar make sense in Washington, I love selling in Washington. I love everything about it. I love the people. I love the environment. I just love it. This is where I wanted to raise my kids. I was already living here. And so we started looking into it and we're just like, dude, I am tired of contracting things out. Let's do everything

in-house. So then we started just formulating the ideas. Okay, we're going to generate leads. We're going to do sales. We're going to do installs and we're going to ultimately look for a way to be able to do financing. And so October 2017, we file for our LLC, Solgen Power, which by the way, the name originates from that dang magic generator. So it, uh, we created the name Solgen for solar generator, right? And we were Solgen renewables at that point. And we're like, dude, let's just create it into solar generated power, right? Solgen power. Okay. Let's do that in the soul. So we, so we file, uh, in the state of Washington as an LLC, Soul Gym Power LLC. We start marketing on Facebook, doing the things that I learned through this dropshipping course. And I started playing the attractive character in November of 2017. And when we first started this, I was the only person that lived in Washington. So it was founded.

There was four of us. One of them, one of our partners ended up, we ended up getting him out because of our operating agreement required for us to move and everything like that. And after the first three months of business, he wasn't willing to move. So that founder fell off. We had three founders, Robbie Clyde, Daryl Kelly, who I've already mentioned, and myself. And both Robbie and Daryl at that point were living down in Utah, but both were originally from here in Washington State. I grew up with Robbie and then Daryl, to give you a little more background. His oldest brother married my oldest sister. And crazy enough, they have 10 kids together.

So me and Daryl met when we were teenagers, but then didn't get introduced into business until later, later in our careers. But so we decided to start, they're remotely commuting from, from Utah. And we're just like, okay, previously I lost big by spin going big on things that didn't matter, right? Trying to look good for others, look good with the nice headquarters, look good with charging the customers the least, paying the reps the most. That was the biggest reason for the failure of my business. Not only was it bank seizing stuff, but we had just decreased our margins so much by charging less and paying more that it was impossible to survive whenever you had these bank crunches.

So I was like, okay, I'm not going to be the low cost leader. In fact, I'm going to be the high cost leader because I want to one, have healthy margins. I need to be able to make a profit so I can continue to take care of my customers. I refuse to put myself in a situation like my previous business where I could not service my customers. I know that solar was a long-term investment. I want our company to be around for 20, 25 years to be able to service these things. So obviously longer, but that's about the time that we guaranteed a warranty. And we're just like, I want to be around for that. And so the only way that we can do that is one, we can't cut

quarters. We've got to offer a superior product, superior service, do incredible installs, make sure things aren't leaking. And then two, we've got to be able to make a profit, right? Because if you don't make a profit, you don't stay in business. You don't stay in business, you don't service your customers. Okay. So we came in, I was like, okay, one, we need to be the high cost leader. Two, we do not need to impress anybody. Okay. I don't need to impress my employees. I don't need to impress my customers. Okay. I don't need to charge them less. I don't need to pay my employees more. I need to get good, healthy margins. It's going to be able to take care of everybody. But the things that I did want to focus on was

the things that mattered like marketing. Okay. Spend as much money on marketing as possible. We want to look good, feel good, the whole brand, make it, make it all make sense. And then ultimately I wanted to take care of my employees because I knew that my employees were my number one customer. If I take care of my employees from the beginning, they will take care of my customers. And so that was really the focus that everything was built on SoulGent. And we kept overhead low. So we initially launched right here in my garage. In fact, I'm sitting in my garage right now. This is our old conference room that we ended up building out. But if you guys remember, I had a 3,500 square foot shop.

Of that 3,500 square foot shop, there was about 400 square feet, 20 by 20 that was finished off. Everything else was like studs and whatever. There was no bathroom or anything like that. So we end up launching out of my garage. The first interviews were taking place in my house, which if you remember was still being remodeled and there was like plastic everywhere. No joke. Some of my first interviews are like some of the funniest crap. I'll give you an idea. There's this guy, Andrew Burke, who was our very first employee. He shows up for his interview and then says like, please go around back. We're in the middle of the country. We're 15 miles north of anything. We could be ax murderers for crying out loud. So come to the back door. We come in, go to my office. My office door in my closet is off and there's a stack of guns. Remember, I love guns.

And once again, we could have been ax murderers, but this is how literally we would hire some of our initial people. So my initial people that I hired, we had them clean out the garage. At that point, it was like a cat garage. It was dirty. It was gross. There was mouse poop everywhere and whatnot. So they clean it up. We go into storage. Over at my father-in-law's dairy, he had in an old barn, he had some old dividers from my previous business that had failed 10 years prior. And we pulled these things out, dust them off, put them into this little 400 square foot thing, and we start working. And man, we just bootstrapped the crap out of this thing.

This was all from personal funds, credit cards being maxed out and paid off on a monthly basis. And man, it was just a wild, wild ride. And over the last five and a half years of building this business, there was so, so many ups and downs of building SoulGen. Initially, so we were doing all of our marketing online and going close it, give give you an idea, like into those early days, I would work 40 hours a week in the office. And then I would work another 30 to 40 hours a week in the evenings, right? From four o'clock on out in customers' homes, making the sales. So I was the admin.

I was the salesperson. I was driving box trucks with inventory. I was running equipment and tools to our crews and everything like that. Because remember, we owned the whole freaking process, right? We weren't outsourcing to anybody. And so there's just so many, the fondest memories of my life, of my business career, just go back to those early days of the garage. We spent the first two and a half years here in this, in this garage. Uh, we continued to build it out and, and to finish off the different rooms. And, uh, eventually the day we moved out of this place, two and a half years into business, we had four other locations, but this was still headquarters. And we had 53 people showing up

to my shop every single day. My parking lot, I mean, my driveway and parking lot, we were annoyance to the other neighbors in my development. I mean, it was wild. It was like the best, like coolest experience. Somehow we had residential internet that we were paying 50 dollars a month and it was supporting 53 computers and probably 53 smartphones and maybe a couple of tablets wild and we were running a sales floor from here there's like how did that work like there is literally only one answer like god is the only reason why that thing worked because there is no reason why that stuff should work the day that we had moved out. But then, like I said, we were just hustling and growing. And, you know, right off, we built culture by design. I was taking all the lessons I learned from Doug Robinson, from Casey Baugh, from Todd Peterson,

of like just building a culture and a belief system. You know, big shout out to one of my early mentors, Travis, and to Satyam Nalli, and like so many people that help teach culture. And from day one, it was by design, not by default. Like every morning walking into the office, giving every single person a high five saying good morning. And at first they're like, weirdo, why am I giving you a high five? And then like a week later, they're like looking forward to it and ready to jump out of their seat to give me the high five and, and doing games and bingo and real buy-in of like, Hey, this is the vision. And you know, first of all, I just want to thank for any of my employees that

are, that are listening to this podcast. Thank you. Thank you for believing in me. Thank you for believing me. Like the fact that Andrew Burke, right. Our very first employee is still with us today, five and a half years later. Like the fact that he was willing to go into my, my office and see a pile of guns and not be scared and like scared and like to buy into the vision that I created. And man, it was big from the very beginning. I was just like, guys, we're going to go and we are going to be the nation's leader in the solar industry. And we're going to do things different. We're going to own the whole process.

Everybody is going towards this dealer and redline model. Not us. Not us. We are. dealer and red line model. Not us. Not us. We are. And everybody's knocking doors. Not us. We're not going to do that. And we're going to control everything.

We're going to provide an incredible customer experience. And we're going to just build this thing. And, you know, looking back, it's just like, why do these people believe me? But they did. They did. They saw my passion. They saw my vision. They saw my direction.

And we began to grow it. That first year in the garage, we did $16 million in revenue. The following year, we did another $26 million. And then the year after that, I think we did $ or 34 million and it just kept growing. And, and, and the following two years after we moved out of the garage, we grew by 300% a year, a year until eventually, um, four and a half years into the business, we brought in a private equity partner and they, um, they bought out and we were able to take some cash off the table and chips off the table and be able to set ourselves up for the rest of our lives and just crazy valuations

and crazy cool things. And then we continue to grow it. And then just six months ago, we did an acquisition of a phenomenal business that I was actually a part founder in, um, and, uh, and was able to provide value and take some chips off the table there. And, you know, it just looking back, it's wild. It is, it is wild to like go through all the different things. Let me give you an idea. So like there's so many times we thought we were going to be bankrupt, right? There were so many times just like, dude, this is it. Like, I don't know how I'm going to be able to make it through January of 2018. So we're talking,, hey, you guys are breaking X, Y, and Z codes. And we had thought we had checked all the boxes, right? And here's the one thing that nobody will ever tell you about running a business.

There's not a playbook for doing it. You're literally just going as you, learning as you go until you get slapped on the hand. And then you change your behavior until you get slapped on your hand and you change your behavior because like, there is nobody that tells you like, this is exactly how you do it. You're just figuring it out. You're opening doors. Does it work? Maybe no. Oh, okay. Next one, next, next, next. Right. And so we had talked with LNI, the state government agency, and they told us we could do it one way. And then also the local agency branch of LNI is like, no, that's not how you do it. And our rule, we reign supreme. And the crazy thing was, is they wanted to fine us for this

electrical infraction. And not only do they want to fine us for the infraction, they want to fine us for every single person that we had created a proposal for. What? Are you kidding me? The initial proposal of fine was over a million dollars. And at this point, we are like negative dollars, right? Everything's going into the investment of the business. We're starting to make sales, starting to do installs, but it's just like this cashflow. We have no money. There's no way we're paying a million. We're like to make sales, starting to do installs, but it's just like this cashflow. Like we have no, we have no money. There's no way we're paying a million. We're like, dude, it's over. And I remember like curling up on my front porch outside my house that day.

And it's like, felt so much anxiety, so much stress, this pit in my stomach. Just like, dude, how are we going to do this? There's no way. There's no way. And then I remember back to going through the failure of my business and the advice that I would have given myself of like, dude, just figure it you play it. This is how you fight them. Don't worry. Everything's going to be okay. Like big shout out to him for like giving us, giving us that direction. And so we, we fought LNI for the next nine months and ultimately did like their little in-house court. We were able to reduce the fine from a million dollars down to $18,000. And we negotiated a payment plan of $1,000 a month for 18 months. That was the best check I could ever cut every single month.

Like, dude, stay off our backs. Here you go. But man, that was such an incredible learning experience to be able to take things that I had previously learned, apply it and realize, hey, this crap works, right? There are people that have gone through hard things that can help you through, help you see, right? It's so hard when you're in the moment, when you're feeling it, just like, oh, why is this happening to me? You have the anxiety or whatnot, where it's so hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. There's other people that have binoculars. There's other people with a higher viewpoint or whatever else they can guide you. Go to those people. Don't be afraid

to let other people know that you're failing, that you're struggling, that you're having a hard time. Like that is the best advice I could give to any entrepreneur. Do not be self-deceived. Do not play the ego game. It's okay to fail. It's okay to have struggles. We all have it. It's the only way that we learn and we make it through. And so we were able to push through that. And like there were so many other times that like our cash flow switch, the way that we were getting funded from our banks because we were offering zero down financing. Or when we switched from buying all of our equipment locally from a distributor the day of an install to having to buy it six months in advance and not having the cash to fund it. It's crazy. I ended up having to like go back to my parents and Daryl's brother and whatnot and

ask for lines of credit of cash. But at this point we had so many incredible assets, right? This pipeline or whatnot. So it was much easier for them to do it and make a nice little ROI on their money. But man, these are the experiences that we had over the last five and a half years. And there's never a time that it's easy. You know, as you're more and more successful, you just have different types of problems. And I think that's one of the most important things

that people have to understand. You think that like a certain amount of money or a certain amount of fruit, anything that has like a goal attached to it, that when you achieve it, somehow it's going to change your life. It won't. The goal isn't to produce the fruit. The goal is to become the tree that has the ability to continue to produce the fruit. And guys, like these are some of the lessons that I've learned in, in over the last

five and a half years, I've had the opportunity to literally spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on coaching, consulting, uh, Harvard business school with the owner's president's management program. Uh, you know, being amongst the most incredible individuals, Russell Brunson's Alex or Mosey's, uh, freaking Todd Peterson's, like all these people, right, that I've had the opportunity to go and meet and spend the money. Like, it's all the same, right? Like, we are all struggling. We are all going through different issues. It never gets easy.

Life was meant to be hard, but when it's hard with a positive mindset, a positive outlook on life, it becomes bearable and it becomes passion filled and joyful. Like joy is experienced when we go through hard things and do so with a positive mindset. You know, going back to, as I've mentioned previously from, uh, one of my favorite books Above the Line by Urban Meyer, E plus R equals O. Event plus response equals outcome. We can always control the outcome by controlling the response. It doesn't matter what the event is. And I've learned this throughout my career that like when something hard happens and it inevitably will. You just got to breathe. You got to think, okay, what are my opportunities?

What am I grateful for? How, when can I, like, I can, and remind yourself, I can get through this. I just got to put my head down and eventually we'll make it through as long as I keep on one step, one foot in front of the other. And it's all about the way that I respond to be able to make it through this. Guys, like it's been such a freaking ride. It has been such a ride. And, you know, the day that we moved out of this office, one of the reasons why that we tried staying in the garage so long is six months into our business, we bought land. We bought, it was an acre and a half with the intention to put a headquarters.

And this was a part of the vision, right? I was building this vision in the garage. Like, guys, we are going to build this amazing building. And if you guys looked at the intro, you see me standing outside this big, amazing building. That's the building that we ended up building, which I love. Our headquarters is so amazing. But we bought the land six months in. And so we had this vision, this direction that we were going towards.

And it wasn't going to be ready by the time we moved out. So we finally found somebody that was willing to do a short-term lease, a 10-month lease. We moved into what I term the shed. Big, ugly 16,000 square foot building, ugly, ugly, ugly. So we go from 3,500 square feet to 16,000 square feet and then eventually go to our headquarters of 20,000 square feet. And from there, we've expanded to three other buildings around our headquarters. But it's been such a ride of like team building and growth and catching the vision and being able to go through. And I'd love to go into more details about some of these things like raising private equity,

how we went around doing a process and bringing in a private equity group and how they created valuation or whatever it may be. I'd love to go in more detail about that. Just go ahead and in the comments, whether it's here on YouTube or in a review or anything on the different podcasts, different platforms, please ask your questions. I would love to address them in a future episode. But ultimately, it has been this wild ride. And so recently I stepped into the, the chairman role in my business and I promoted a CEO from this acquisition, uh, that, that we did, uh, a few months back. And this it's been, it's been an identity crisis for me. It's been like, okay. Um, I was planning on being the CEO for the next three to four years, but I had a variety of different things that led to me making this decision.

I had a car wreck where I almost died with me and my kids just a few months back, March of 2023. Literally a head-on collision. We veered away at the very end in my Tesla Model Y. If you guys haven't seen on my Instagram or Facebook, go take a look at it. It's crazy. I even have the video of it happening. There was a drunk driver coming at us 110 miles an hour. You know, this, this is all giving me like new perspective, like, okay, how am I spending my time? How do I want to be spending my time? And, and so it's just ultimately led to me launching this podcast. And so I stepped away from the day to day.

And now I dedicate several hours a week to the business as the chairman. But now I have opportunities to pursue passion projects like this podcast, which get me excited, get me hyped because it's like I love networking. I love business. I love talking about other founders and I just pray and hope that you enjoy this as much as I enjoy putting it together. It like it, like I said, so we're going to meet some incredible people. And if you're enjoying this podcast as far, if you stuck with me up until this point, I think we're about an hour into this episode, massive shout out. Thank you so much.

Thank you for loving, uh, what I'm, what I'm putting together. Um, please make sure you leave a review. We're going to be bringing these incredible founders. If you want to message me or find me on social media, I'm at Chris Lee QB, um, QB standing for quarterback. If you guys remember, I played quarterback in high school is one of my kind of define moments, defining moments, but at Chris Lee QB on all major platforms. So facebook.com backslash Chris Lee QB, Chris Lee QB on Instagram, Chris Lee QB on TikTok, wherever it may be. So find me there. Message me if you guys have any questions, more things that you would like to learn or know maybe about the building of our business over the last five and a half years and kind of what it led to or whatnot. But man, what a wild ride. Thank you for joining me with it. You're going to continue to learn more as I host these interviews. I interject and put some incredible things, but thank you for being a part of it until next time. I love you.