Next Level Pros - #40: Chris Lee: My Story on "10 Minute Entrepreneur" With Sean Castrina

Starting point is 00:00:00 If you ever want to be an entrepreneur, if there's one thing you're getting from Chris and I right now, go figure out how to sell because there is no skill that you will use more. And I'll hear, oh, about leadership. Guess what? If you can't sell, you ain't going to be a leader because you ain't going to recruit anybody to work for you. I'm excited about today's interview.

Starting point is 00:00:17 I have somebody who's exited two companies in the last 18 months for nine figures. Yeah, that's nine figures. Probably a lot more than you're doing, maybe even more than you're thinking. He's the founder of Solgen Power, Pure Light Power. He's the founder of The Founder Podcast. I have Chris Lee with me here today. Chris, it's great to have you on the podcast. Great to be here. Appreciate it. All right. So it's a hard lift to exit anything above seven figures. Heck, I'd say it's, for a lot of people, it's hard to exit a seven figure. Yeah, it's hard. I think it's just hard to exit a business in general. Exactly. I was going to say, so you've, you know, you, you've married two beauty

Starting point is 00:00:54 queens according to this bio I just gave you. So what do you think, I'm going to get into why you're an entrepreneur and all that, but when I introduce anybody who's exited, because we do, it is hard to exit. It's hard. Now I will say some businesses have high valuations right now, and I think it's going to come to bite some buyers in the rear ends, but I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole right now. So what do you think the secret was to your two exits? The type of business you had, or was it, you you know there's a lot of reasons why people want to buy a company what do you think the strength was and because you sold it pretty you know pretty good good money and two of them you know within 18 months yeah i mean i think two things

Starting point is 00:01:37 uh one is building an extraordinary uh culture right for us culture was everything it was by design from the very beginning. We were building this thing to be able to sell as well. Just good, clean business, clean books, clean operations. And then an incredible sales force, right? And so building a sales force that was unique, that had unique marketing strategies that really couldn't be replicated. And so, you know, those were probably the two most important things in building something for exit. Yeah, I think what you said was the key. And I've used that phrase before in one of my

Starting point is 00:02:17 books. You start a business knowing you're going to sell it, even if you never think you're going to sell it. But you start it from day one, doing the right paperwork, you know, having the right books, clean books, showing the money trail, showing assets, showing sales. I mean, you know, somebody should be able to look at what you've got in a fairly fast amount of time and know whether it's real or fake. Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, and there's so much that goes into that, right? Holding, you know, having regular audits, having, you know, good, clean SOPs that are documented that you can be like, hey, this is exactly how the company functions, you know, and to your point, you don't necessarily have to sell. Just doing that is good business

Starting point is 00:03:03 that allows you to eventually sell. Yeah. I've said, if you did two things, when you started a business, you'd build a better business. Number one is you build it to sell. That means you're going to have clean operations, paper trail on everything. Second is build it like you would franchise it. That'll force you to put systems in place so that it can operate beyond your control. In other words, it makes selling it easy because it's designed, it's got systems in place, it's got training in place, and it's so much easier to transfer that business to a new owner. Absolutely. What do you do when you exit two businesses for nine figures?

Starting point is 00:03:44 You're a pretty young guy. What's next? That's a great question. I went through a little bit of identity crisis at the beginning because it's like, hey, this is what I've always wanted to do. I've always wanted to spend more time with my family. I have five kids, right? Me and my wife. And so, but you can only spend so much time with your kids right that

Starting point is 00:04:05 that the void of thank you for saying that because i apologize because i have to say that listen my kids adore the ground i walk on but not 24 hours of me yeah yep and yeah so i mean you got 60 70 hours that you got to fill this void with And so you go and you go to all the baseball games, you go to all the everything. And you're just like, wow, I still have 40 to 50 hours and I don't know what to do with myself. And so one of the things I decided to get into was podcasting because I really love networking with incredible people telling stories. And so I launched the Founder Podcast. It's catapulted to a top 50 business podcast in just two and a half months. So I really enjoyed that.

Starting point is 00:04:51 And really, the next thing for me is I realized I want to grind. I want to continue to do things, but I want to build it around a lifestyle that allows me to be at all the sports games, allows me to be at all the kids activities. And so really, the next thing for me is I'm investing in consulting and businesses and, uh, and helping, helping guys that are stuck in that seven, eight figure mark catapult to that, that nine, 10 figure type, uh, type exit. Yeah, no, I mean, you know, when you've done it, obviously, you know,

Starting point is 00:05:20 I always say, if you want to learn how to do something, find somebody who already did it. I can't, can't make it any more simple. You know, if that, that, that is the roadmap. Yeah. I mean, the one thing I throw out there to you, you know, obviously somebody's raised children and we, we, you know, did a good job with that. And I always say I never missed anything. The only thing I ever missed was a piano recital. And I did it on purpose, Bailey on purpose had nothing to do with business. I want to be clear about that. Everything else I attended is partnering. Partnering in business has been the secret that I have found, keeping my sanity. I always say I'd

Starting point is 00:05:57 rather have 50% of a lot than 100% of a little. I'd rather have 50 percent of something I didn't have to work 100 hours a week for. You know, it's that one sweet spot of when, you know, especially with the knowledge you have and you have, you know, there's only a few things you need to start a business. You need capital. OK, and you need a good idea. You're probably got those two covered. So the thing that's missing is time, you know, getting somebody to go alongside you because you don't even have to give a great piece of the pie probably to get a partner because you I don't have to anymore. I can put the capital. I have the capital. I have the infrastructure. I need bodies. I need sharp people to run with me. Yep. You know, you bring up a great point. Both of my businesses were built with partners, you know, because I knew that I could run faster with incredible people than I could alone. And I've never met a billionaire that did it completely on his own. And so, you know, one of the things that we did in building our businesses was motivate people with equity. Now, we didn't give away the whole pie, right? It was just slivers of the pie. And, you know,

Starting point is 00:07:06 somebody will bleed for two things, one culture to a slice of the pie, no matter how small it is. And, you know, and that's, that's the thing that I that I found in my businesses and, and really what we're using to go and scale additional organizations. Yeah, no, I agree with you. So when did you know you were an entrepreneur? I'm obviously, we know that now we got two exits. We've established that, but when did you know, okay, man, I can't work for anybody. You know, I started selling Cutco when I was 18 years old and had my, had my first job when I was nine delivering newspapers and selling newspaper subscriptions and stuff. But when I was 18, I sold Cutco and I realized, man, I really like creating value

Starting point is 00:07:48 with just my intelligence, right? Like this isn't just a trade hours for a thing. But at that point I was planning on being a doctor. And while I was going to school, going to get my bachelor's in science, I started knocking doors and doing door-to-door sales. And, you know, when I figured out that I could make nine figures, not nine figures, sorry, six figures, different, different. So I can make six figures in a three and a half month period. I realized,

Starting point is 00:08:16 you know, this is fun. I like creating things. And so I dropped out of college at the age of 24 to start my very first business because I thought I knew everything it took to go and build a business and found out very quickly I didn't. And within two years, I tried scaling really big, lost everything, had filed chapter seven bankruptcy, lost investors money, all kinds of stuff. And I was humbled really quick that, man, I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to build things, but I really don't know how. And so, you know, I spent the next few years building a few little things and not really scaling them. But then I eventually went back to work for somebody else with the, with the intent to be paid for education. And so I went and worked in a sales job for somebody that was scaling really big businesses. And I just went there to study them while being able to have a little bit of entrepreneurial spirit in the sales world. And so, you know, I've really, really known

Starting point is 00:09:17 since then that I want to go and build anything. So when I eventually went and launched this business, it was very on purpose, very like this. I knew strategically exactly what we were going to do. We were going to bootstrap this thing. We were going to take on debt. We weren't going to take on investors. I was going to attract really good talent for low salary and a piece of the upside and just create culture by design. And so, I mean, that's kind of kind of the whole story that, that eventually led to where we're at today. Yeah. No, there's, you know, if you, if you can get a team, that's the secret to anything because it creates momentum. I always say there's, you know, in, in, in sports and in business, your greatest friend is momentum in sports and in business,

Starting point is 00:09:57 your greatest enemy in sports. If you've ever played baseball, you know what it's like that momentum go against you. And when it does, you can't, you can't stop it. If you've been in business, you know the same thing. It's funny you talk about Cutco. And I've had a joke about this. But I actually sold Cutco, too, actually out of the Northeast region. It was Vector Marketing at the time. And I'd set the record for the most $1,000 weeks in the history of the company. My entire grad school, I sold a thousand dollars a week. And then when I graduate, when I was done, I was done. And the way I did it is I hit the 50% really fast, like in like six weeks. And then I hired high school

Starting point is 00:10:36 kids to sell under me. And this is the funny thing about it is one of those ends. He's a, actually was a prosecutor in a uh which we call a federal prosecutor i was in church a few months ago and everybody had masks on right so you can't tell anybody i turn around you know just to kind of do the high thing you know they do it in different and he reaches over this person reaches over and gives me a hug and whispers in my ear it's Grayson that's a name that you don't forget Grayson's kind of you know not not and I'm like that was one of the guys who sold knives for me that's awesome and I took him and his wife to dinner last Thursday night and we were talking about cut coat knives that's kind of like where he's like man he goes you you know he

Starting point is 00:11:20 goes man you just had us so on we were so, man. You said you had your whole group of us selling those knives. And I'm like, because once I hit 50%, I never sold another knife. That's where I learned partnering. I'm like, okay, wait, I give them 25%. I make 25% to do nothing but write up the orders. On Monday, I'd write up the orders at my house, bring them to the meeting, you know, and they, oh, Sean hit 1600 again this week. You know, he sold the, the, you know, all the different sets. They had the galley. There you

Starting point is 00:11:51 go. The galley was like the $395. I still remember this is 30 years from now. That's 30 years later. And I took him to dinner last Thursday night. So it's just a funny story. Cause I still have Cutco knives upstairs. You will learn how to sell though that's a fact you go do two things sell cutco knives or go sell bibles i always say either one of them will teach you they're like cool yeah you know go you know because i used to have roommates you know that would go go sell bibles and they just drop them off in like ishbuck to Tennessee with like six boxes and we'll pick you up in eight weeks. Yeah. Nothing will get you, get you prepared for life more than that. Yeah, man. If you can sell, if you can, it's just going to,

Starting point is 00:12:36 if you ever want to be an entrepreneur, if there's one thing you're getting from Chris and I right now, go figure out how to sell. Cause there is no skill that you will use more and I I'll hear, well, about leadership. Guess what? If you can't sell, you ain't going to be a leader because you ain't going to recruit anybody to work for you. So what do you see as kind of like your next, you know, business thing? So I'm, I'm very much a strategist and I can identify, you know, issues and potential within businesses. And so really the next step for me is, is partnering that are at a plateau, that have been around for a while, haven't experienced a lot of growth.

Starting point is 00:13:10 Maybe they're just been steady and coming in and giving them a new fresh of eyes, how to market and sell and scale and attract good talent. So, yeah, that's the next step. I have a business called Arrows Financial which we, we come in and we, and we partner with businesses and, and I bring in my management team that's worked with me over at Solgen and whatnot. And, and we consult and we help and we help scale. Yeah, no. And people need to do that.

Starting point is 00:13:39 I always say insanity is, is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. Very often you're missing something. And the reason why you know that is because you're not growing and to continue that. And there are times when you got to give up. Again, I said, I'd rather have 50% of something growing than 100% of something dying. So there you go. So Chris, how can my, you know, my audience, you know, how can they connect with you? And, and, you know, if they have a business that's maybe not doing what they would like it to

Starting point is 00:14:09 do, but, you know, take it to the next level. Yeah. So I'm on all social media platforms at Chris Lee QB, like quarterback. That's, that's my, my handle on Instagram and everything. And then of course my podcast, the founder podcast, it's on, uh, all, all major channels, uh, you know, Apple or whatnot, but yeah. So we, uh, one of the things that we've been focusing on, we've been hosting masterminds of business owners. Um, this is really just to create deal flow, get people in the door, um, and, and be able to help identify, uh, issues. And so, yeah, uh, you know, we,

Starting point is 00:14:44 we hold different events, we hold different masterminds. If anybody would like to come and attend one, that's, that's really the, the best place to really interact with me. Alrighty, Chris. Thank you.

Next Level Pros - #40: Chris Lee: My Story on "10 Minute Entrepreneur" With Sean Castrina

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