Next Level Pros - #50: In-Depth Nine Figure Blueprint

Episode Date: November 10, 2023

In this episode of The Founder Podcast, I join host Nikhil Sai on The Nikhil Sai Show. Join us as we explore my journey from growing up in a small town to becoming a millionaire and launching various businesses. Discover how I navigated failures, bankruptcy, and ultimately built Solgen into one of America's fastest-growing companies. Learn the secrets behind leadership, team building, and an innovative approach to digital door knocking. I share insights on culture, operations, and the mindset that fueled Solgen's success, attracting top talent and achieving a multi-million-dollar exit. Don't miss this inspiring conversation all about turning challenges into opportunities! Highlights:  "I was always looking for ways to change the world. Initially, I thought it was by being a doctor. And so I went and set up my roadmap in order to become a doctor." "Work is something that I've never been afraid of. And I've always enjoyed doing." "I saw an advertisement that said, 'Get paid a minimum of $13 an hour,' and I was like, minimum, what does that mean?" Timestamps: 00:00: Introduction 02:24: Work Ethic 06:12: Business Failures 13:02: Scaling Solar Company  15:22: Long-Term Cash Flow 18:00: Leadership  25:36: Hiring  29:19: Retaining High Level Talent 36:21: Culture 39:48: Scaling Growth 43:19: Selling 48:57: Acquisition 52:16: SOP's  58:30: Financial Planning   1:01:36: Priorities  1:12:41: Personal Growth  Live Links:  🚀 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

And for me, what I learned through my bankruptcy was like, I was no longer in the game to impress anyone, right? Like I didn't care what people saw me drive. I didn't care what people thought I had. All I knew was I wanted real tangible assets to be able to build my life off of. And then eventually, you know, I could buy the nice watches or what whatever it was but like none of that stuff my initial dollars absolutely none of it went to like luxuries what's going on what's going on everybody who's actually listening to this podcast right now first of all guys welcome back to the unique is i show which is hosted by me and guess what's going on today we have another amazing guest today we are going to interview a very crazy and fulfilling entrepreneur we will be having today and he actually built one of the fastest growing companies in america ever built in just few years of his entrepreneurship

and it's going to be fun to get into his story and we will learn about all the scale the operations on how they have actually built a company which is huge thousand piece employees and they are the fastest growing company six passes growing company as per financial times now we are going to interview an entrepreneur who actually have changed the solar installation industry with a tidal shift it's going to crazy. And these guys are operating in 11 plus states and they recently have been valued by a PE firm over $360 million. And they have done multi, multi nine figures in revenue. The guy who's actually jumping on this podcast

is none other than CEO and founder of Solgen Power, Chris Lee. Hey, Chris, good to see you today. Good to see you as well. Thanks for having me on. Absolutely. Just to correct a couple of things. So I'm no longer the CEO. I actually stepped down as the CEO. I'm the chairman of the board. I promoted a CEO in my place. So I'm no longer active in the day to day.

Wow, that's really helpful. And I think that's where the founder acceleration comes in which i'm super excited to talk about on this podcast and uh yeah i mean it's it's really fulfilling to see people who were like you know keeping their hands dirty started from garages who actually didn't raise any capital didn't take any debt but building multi multi multi nine figure exits or actually building companies which are valid in this crazy insane valuations is so fulfilling to see people like you, Chris. Appreciate you allowing us to actually get you on this podcast today. Yeah, you bet. Excited to be here. Yeah, for sure. And so we will definitely get into like the crazy journey of how you build

the company and whatnot. But before we get into like the nitty gritty of your entrepreneurship journey and your learnings, I would love to understand the backstory so we have a foundation about who you are and where you come from. So, Chris, if you could take us a little bit before your entrepreneurship and let us know what was your backstory? How did you get started in the first place? Yeah, for sure. So I grew up in a small town in Washington State. We're talking 2,500 people. So not a big place at all my dad was a school

teacher my mom was a stay-at-home mom there was seven of us children in the house and so we didn't have a whole lot but we were taught how to work from a very young age and so that's that's really where you know things started was was figuring out how to go and provide for myself or as much as I possibly could for at a young age. And so I had my very first job at the age of nine and was paying for most of my essentials besides food on the table at the age of 12. So, you know, it's work is something that I've I've never been afraid of and I've always enjoyed doing. You know, one of the parts of growing up and having a job was I woke up at 4 a.m. 365 days a year to be able to go, and I owned a paper route, and so we delivered newspapers, me and my brother, and then later we became managers of that

route, and that was kind of how I paid my way through school, paid for activities, clothes, whatever I wanted to do. And so, you know, but early on, it was just pretty much changing, trading time for money. And I didn't really know how to work smarter. I just knew how to work hard. And my dad, being a school teacher, he educated me the best way he knew, which was go to school, get good grades, go to college, and go work for the man. But probably the biggest thing that my dad taught me was the discipline of investing. And then my mom taught me how to dream big. And so from an early age, I wanted to be wealthy. I wanted to go and change the world. And so I was always looking for ways to do that. Initially, I thought it was by being a doctor.

And so I went and I set up my roadmap in order to become a doctor. I did all the school, got all the good grades, did everything possible to go down that route, but ultimately ended up dropping out of college to start my first business. But yeah, where the big shift happened was when I was 18 years old, I saw an advertisement at, so I was attending a local community college while I was still in high school, just trying to get as many college credits as I could. And I saw a little advertisement that said, get paid a minimum of $13 an hour. And I was like, minimum? What does that mean?

And so there was a commission-based job to go and sell Cutco knives. And so, uh, I took the job and, and, uh, thought it was a pretty, pretty awesome experience to be able to like go into somebody's home, sell them a product and be paid commission. And, uh, and I excelled at that very quickly, but I had poor management. So I only did it for about three to four weeks, but I made about $1,000 a week while I was in high school, which was a lot of money back then. And so as I realized that I could get paid commission, I realized that there's other ways to bring value to the hour. And so that's kind of where things started shifting for me.

And then I went into door-to-door sales while I was at college as a way to pay to go to medical school. And found a lot of success in knocking doors and doing door-to-door marketing and sales. And so, yeah, that's kind of like the background that got me down the business path. And then, you know, it was a crazy ride from there until ultimately I started my most recent business. Wow. Is this the only business you directly built as an entrepreneur? Did you have any other stories of different companies you tried?

I've started probably 17 different businesses. And so most people, if they look at Solgen and what we built, they think, you know, overnight success. But the reality is, is they don't see all the failed businesses and failed attempts in the background. So, yeah, I started my very first business when I was age 24 in 2008. It was a tough economic time, but I was blinded to it and, you know, tried, uh, I raised money. I, I got a couple of investors to, to invest in, in the dream. And, you know, I was always a good salesperson could convince anybody that they could make money. And so they invested in me and it was, it was my, my dad and my father-in-law, actually, My dad, once again, didn't have a whole lot of money,

but he put about half his life savings into what we were building. And then my father-in-law invested a good chunk of money. And two and a half years later, I was finally in bankruptcy. We lost everything, made a lot of poor decisions, tried growing too fast, too quick, without the right principles. We weren't building on the right principles. I was trying to impress people. I was trying to be the cheapest in the market and paying the most and just all kinds of just terrible mistakes that I made as a young entrepreneur. And so, yeah, at the age of 27, I found myself filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy,

losing everything, 2..2 million gone. Had my car repoed out of my driveway. Had, you know, just had less than $1,000 in the bank account. My third child had just been born. So I was, you know, a young father, me and my wife, we got married shortly after we returned home from my religious mission at the age of 21. And we started having kids right away. So at the age of 21, and we started having kids right away. So at the age of 27, we already had three kids.

We were bankrupt. We had nothing. And, you know, all I had was the experience of going through it. So from there, I launched more and more businesses and continued to try to figure things out. And I've continued to try to figure things out, and I've done everything. I've owned beehives and cattle, flipped cars, flipped homes, had a medical company, a search engine optimization business, a coupon book.

I've done fundraisers, ran charities, you name it, I've done it. Ultimately, I decided that I needed to go and learn some more so I went and I I actually decided to work for somebody else and and uh as what I viewed as a paid education portion of my life and so I spent I spent uh four and a half years working for other people during that time, I experienced two different initial public offerings, IPOs, working for these organizations, saw a lot of high growth, studied the CEOs, what they were doing to build culture, and really just was there for more than a paycheck. I was there for experience and learning and studying these great entrepreneurs. And so ultimately, by the time we decided to launch Solgen,

I had a game plan of exactly what I was going to do when I launched my next business. Interesting. I think that's quite a brief answer. And I love where this is actually heading to. What actually made you think about actually creating Solgen? What actually clicked? Is this because the previous companies where you worked with,

where they were doing IPOs, were they related to solar in any way possible? Or like, why solar though? Yeah, I got into the solar industry in 2014, working for one of these door-to-door businesses. And, you know, they were hyper growth. They went public at the end of that year from when I started. And so, you know, I saw the solar industry, but when they were doing it differently, one thing I knew is that being a part of the solar industry,

I didn't want to run a door-to-door organization. That would, that had been my background. I'd done it for several years. Uh, I knew, I knew I could be successful at it, but at the same time, it was, it was highly, uh, saturated in the marketplace. And so we wanted to do something different. So actually, um, before starting my business, I took a course on Facebook marketing with a drop shipping course. And I wasn't 100% sure what my next business was going to be, but I wanted to understand internet marketing better. And so I took this course the summer of 2017, and I spent about $2,500 on it, which at that point was the most money I'd ever spent on a program, on a course, on coaching or anything.

Like up until that point, I had only spent maybe 500 bucks on an event or bought books or different things like that. And so when I did that, it was like a big leap for me, big leap of faith. Like I'm gonna give some random internet marketer $2,500 to teach me Facebook marketing. And so I went all in, went for about six weeks.

I did 14 hours a day in really diving in and understanding Facebook marketing. And by the end of that, I was drop shipping flashlights and teeth whitener all over the world. But I understood Facebook marketing, which was the most important. I was making some good money. But I realized, I'm like, this is something that I can actually go and apply in the solar space. At that point, I had stepped away from the solar space. I wasn't working for anybody else. I was just kind of deciding what my next, my next

move was going to be. And I wasn't even specifically going to be in solar because the, for me running a business isn't even about your product, right? Like there there's a million, a million different products, a million different services. There's so many different ways that you can, that you can make money. But, uh, what I did have a game plan for was exactly how I was going to build a business. And from a how, from standpoint of like focusing on my people, from culture and leadership and developing that out, whatever product we were going to offer, I knew exactly how I was going to bring that and change the world through that. So while I was learning this Facebook marketing, I realized, man, this would work pretty good with solar, and I don't want to be in the door-to-door space anymore.

And so we started pioneering what we call digital door knocking. And so we were the first in the industry to advertise on Facebook and Instagram and YouTube, uh, our product. And so since then it's, it's become saturated. A lot of people have, have followed our pioneering steps, but, but we, but we started generating leads and then we would go and we would sell them in person. And then, uh, later we transitioned into virtually selling them. And we did that before COVID, before everybody else went to video sales. And so, you know, a little bit of luck, a little bit of right timing, a little bit of risk-taking led all to it. But yeah, the fall of 2017, after I had done that Facebook marketing course,

we decided to launch Solgen Power out of my garage. So it was right in October we filed the paperwork. November 1st, we started marketing. December 5th, we had our very first installation. And then one of the other things we knew is if we were going to get into the solar spaces, we were going to own the whole process. Most companies were a sales only company or an install only company. We wanted to own everything from marketing, sales, install, finance it all. And so we dove in deep and worked on building out all those verticals.

That's quite interesting i mean it's fascinating to see one skill set could actually turn around i mean i i'm sure like there's multiple skill set you stacked upon through the entire career and all the failures and all the jobs you've done and whatnot but i think that marketing uh you know online for solar is what gave you that click moment overall now coming back that's interesting so many people learn how to market online but they still fail in an operational standpoint i mean we could see like already you're pretty good at sales you're damn good at talking uh but coming back to how you actually have built a team and a culture which allowed you to scale thousand employees in

like five to six years is no joke and clocking in you know over 200 and something million dollars is no joke as well like it is a small company especially with no debt or investor money uh it's quite fascinating so if you could dig deeper into what are the early foundations because i'm sure it comes back to the foundation so many people build that quick money mindset foundation and it couldn't scale after a certain revenue standpoint, but you had a very different approach this time. So let us dig deep into that mindset of like the basic foundation of the business and what was your overall action plan to grow this? Yeah. From the beginning, the goal was to build a business that could be sold or be taken public or whatever. Maybe most entrepreneurs, they start off with, I just want to make money.

I didn't care about making money. At this point, I'd actually already become a millionaire because I was a very savvy investor. Once again, going back to my dad, my dad taught me how to invest at an early age. Even though he didn't have a lot of money, he put away 50% of his paycheck every single month. And so after I went bankrupt, I immediately started plowing in any money I could make into real estate. And so I was always building passive income. And for me, what I learned through my bankruptcy was like I was no longer in the game to impress anyone.

Like I didn't care what people saw me drive. I didn't care what people thought I had. All I knew was I wanted real tangible assets to be able to build my life off of. And then eventually, you know, I could buy the nice watches or whatever it was, but like none of that stuff, my initial dollars, absolutely none of it went to

like luxuries. Right. So I have different rules on like when you can actually buy luxuries, which have helped me be, uh, stay disciplined and, uh, very satisfied in life with where I'm at in my position. And so, so I think the difference is when I started this business, I wasn't doing it for the wrong reasons of just quick cash. I was doing it like I wanted to build enterprise value. And when you're building enterprise value, you're investing every dollar you're making back into the organization. You're recruiting top-notch talent. You're willing to pay the right salaries for the operating partners that are significantly smarter than you. And so for me, there was a huge focus day one on

bringing in the right people and being willing to give up a piece of the pie to people that caught my vision that I was trying to build. And so we went, we, we brought in a guy that had 15 years experience in the operations of solar. I didn't, I had solar sales experience. And so, so I, I turned it over to him and, and, you know, managed him. And so the, the biggest skills that you can learn as an entrepreneur are one sales and marketing and two people management, because every entrepreneur needs to know how to sell and market. They need to know how to build Because every entrepreneur needs to know how to sell and market. They need to know how to build brand. They need to know how to sell the vision to other potential employees, to potential customers, whatever it may be. You have to understand that

skill. But then the people management is the second most important because you have to be able to get people on board that know way more than you do about operating, finance, all the different things. And so, you know, I've built do about operating finance, all the, all the different things. And so, you know, I've built up skills in these things over the years in operations, in finance, in, in analysis, uh, accounting, whatever it may be. Uh, but, but at the same time, I've always hired people that are way smarter than me and, and put them and known how to motivate them and put them in, in their correct position. And so, you know, and that's, that's what I was talking about earlier when I, when I said,

I didn't know what product I was going to be selling, but I knew how I was going to do it. Like I knew, I learned team building, team management, building culture, those types of things. And I knew that that's all I needed to do. Right. And go and put that into place. And ultimately we'd be successful. And so, you know, from from day one, I brought in brought in a lot of different people. I built a great culture and anything from like high fives every single morning to like a good casual atmosphere to dressing up in Christmas stuff, November 1st to December 25th. Like I'm just that crazy fanatic wacko that does these things, but knows how to like motivate and inspire a team. And so, you know, I, over the years, I studied leadership, a lot of book reading. The other thing is in 2015, I committed that every single quarter, every three months, I would go and I would participate in some sort of active learning, whether that's a mastermind or an event or a coaching seminar, whatever, right? Like it

could be real estate, anything that was going to improve my education, improve my mindset, I was willing to invest in that. And so I've been consistent for the last eight years in doing this. And even if it's me, the most successful in the room, person in the room sitting at the feet of somebody that knows more than me about a certain subject, I'm totally fine with that. And a lot of times that blows people's minds like uh one of my one of my buddies Chris Rude uh he runs a real estate mastermind in which he teaches people how to like invest in uh trailer parks and different things and I'm like I've always wanted to know how to invest in trailer parks I don't know how to invest in trailer parks I'm gonna go to Chris Rude's mastermind I'm gonna go and pay him five ten grand and I'm sitting there and like uh Chris had never met me and like it comes out that like I flew there on my private jet

and you know different things like that and like people are just like baffled because most of these guys are like just starting out in their career and here I am I own a private jet I'm sitting at somebody else's mastermind there to learn from them. And so I think like that mentality has has really been the difference maker as far as as far as just like I always want to learn. I know that there's always somebody smarter out there than me. I definitely don't know everything and I'm going to be a lifelong learner. And so, I mean, that's the culture that we built. And so from the beginning, it was very mission centric, building a brighter future for

our people, which is Solgen's mission with our six core values of synergy outside the box, love of family, generosity, excellence, and no excuses, right? And so we built everything based off of those core values and people live them, they breathe them. We had a lot of fun along the way. We built it out of my garage, my garage, which is a little bit bigger than most people's. It's about 3,500 square feet. We built it it out we had 53 people showing up to my garage every single day by the time we moved out two and a half years later we had four locations by the time we moved out and uh you know but what we did was we invested in the right things we invested in branding we invested in our our trucks our appearance everything like to to the customer we look like this big

crazy company but behind the scenes, we're operating out of a garage that can barely, uh, you know, fit people. Uh, it doesn't, doesn't quite keep up on the AC or the internet. And so, but preaching to the vision of the people like, Hey, we're a high growth company. Eventually we're going to build this beautiful headquarters and we're gonna do all these incredible things. And so, um, you know, I don't know if that answers your question, but that's how we built it. It definitely does. I mean, it's fascinating to kind of hear.

And, you know, I'm just I couldn't stop listening. You know, I don't want to stop like, you know, the entire story. The more I dig in, the more crazy and the more interesting it actually gets. Trust me when I say this. Now, coming back, there are so many questions in my mind. I'm like, okay, what do I ask first? Now, let's really kind of, first of all, start with the important question here. I mean, you're a salesperson.

Like, you're damn good at that. Like, I am also a sales-led person. Like, I know how to talk to people, at least from my own level. Now, what I really lack or what most entrepreneurs do lack when trying to build business is the operational mindset, that aspirational investment mindset to actually reinvest into business, reinvest into people because company is nothing but the people. But I believe, if I'm not mistaken, the first 50 people in the garage

are the people who actually stayed until you exit as well or maybe even after that. Yeah, many of them did, and not all of them. Some of them were lower-level operators, and they didn't grow with the business, and they weren't the right fit. But yeah, many of those guys. One of the things that I've been great at

is setting up compensation packages, in which it motivates people to come and be on board. I brought in a guy and paid him $40,000 a year, and he had just the year prior sold his Amazon business for several million dollars. And he was willing to come and work for 40 grand because of the vision that we preached to him and a potential to have an earn out or a piece of the pie. And so, you know, when, when we, when we ultimately did our exit to private equity, we sold off a percentage of our business. I had, besides myself and, and, uh, my main partner, Daryl Kelly, there were, there were, uh, nine others that were made multimillionaires on, on the day of that transaction. And so, uh, there were, there were, uh, nine others that were made multimillionaires on, on the day of that transaction. And so, uh, you know, it, and that's like one of the greatest

things that you can ever do as an entrepreneur is like share the wealth because it like, it's, it's way, it's way more fun getting rich together than on your own. Um, and so, and, and then on top of that, we built out a employee bonus pool that we were able to pay out on the exit to several employees. And then on top of that, we built out an employee stock option plan that allowed from the transaction forth for different key players in the organization to earn out equity. And so I think that's like extremely key is like incentivizing people the right way. But as far as like operations, like I'm pretty good at operations, but you don't have to be great at operations to run a good operation. Once again, you have to be great at sales and marketing. You have to be great at building culture and managing people.

And if you can learn how to build culture and manage people, you can attract great operators into the business. And so the thing for me is I've never been scared to approach somebody that's gone and done something big. Most entrepreneurs, they want to hire people that are lower than them right they want to that they feel more accomplished than the people that they're bringing in because it's because it's ego right like i don't want to have somebody around me that knows more than me and they're gonna find out i'm a fraud that i don't know anything and so they what they end up doing is they hire stupid people because they want to feel good about themselves, where the opposite is true. You have to find people that make you feel stupid, right?

Like if you don't feel stupid, you're hiring the wrong people. And so for me, like I've never been afraid of like shooting my shot. If somebody has sold a business for several million dollars and, and I'm like, dude, come work for me for 40 grand and, and a, and a piece of the vision, right?

Like that is something, once again, I've, I've never been, been afraid of doing. And, and the same thing is so like whenever, whenever I'm trying to hire somebody,

like I think who is the craziest, coolest, best person for this job? How do I get in front of them? So, I mean, I'm telling you, like most business owners, I would offer jobs to, you know, and I was just like, Hey, I know you got a cool, successful business. Why don't you come work for me? Right. Like, and, and, and, you know, 50% of the time i could get it i i get people to either shut their business down sell it come work for me whatever whatever it is right and and so they're like that that is like the the level of confidence that you have to have because people buy into your conviction when

you believe like uh i love what i love what ed my letet talks about as far as being an evangelist. An evangelist is not somebody that, an evangelist's goal is not to get somebody else to believe what you believe, right? Like, I don't need people to believe in Soljan like I believe in Soljan. I didn't need people to believe in Soljan like I believe in Soljan. I didn't need that, right? But an evangelist's job is to get people to believe that you believe, right? And so my job all the time was telling people how much I believed in Soljan, and I needed to be so convincing that they believed that I believed that I was going to go and do that. Right. And so when you make that shift and truly become an evangelist of your product, of your service, of your organization, of your vision, your goal that you're going towards.

That's when life really like people buy in. They're willing to shut down their businesses. They're willing to leave a higher paying job. They're willing to go do this because they're like, man, I don't know what it is, but this guy is contagious. He is crazy, but he believes it. So there's got to be something there. And so like that has always been me. It's like, dude, I just need people to know how much I believe in what I am doing. And I'm going to attract incredible people.

Wow. That just sounds like a, I would say cheat sheet or like an absolute playbook. I mean, I could totally see this is working out as long as you build like a strong foundation of a dozen people who believe in your vision and who think that there is something beyond you. And once they come together, it's them who is beyond you like the bond of 12 people working together is what it's beyond i would love to get into a deeper question here it's interesting to see you reaching out to multi-millionaires to come work for you for 40 grand and especially when you're operating in your garage it's just crazy to even think about that situation if you could like roughly i don't want to exact specific but if you could like roughly lay out because i have seen i've made these mistakes

i've seen my clients make this mistake everybody in the friend circle who makes this mistake everybody i know makes this mistake they give up too much equity early or you know they they kind of don't give anything and they try to be so much for themselves or they give crazy incentive structures where they lose all the profit margins or they don't incentivize enough so that they lose the talent itself how what was your take on to attract talent who are high level retain them and if you could give like a clear structure to like multiple levels like roughly that would really help our audience who are actually trying to create or come up with better incentives yep most most guys try incentivizing with cash.

Cash is not the incentivizers. Cash is a part of the incentivization. And so it's the same, it's the same, uh, it's the same principle as customers don't buy a product specifically because of price, right? Customers buy a product because of the return that they're going to get on whatever price they, they, they paid, like the experience, the, the reputation, whatever, whatever things. And so like, when you're talking about making an offer to, to your, your team, you got to understand, like, I'm going to pay this person in more ways than just cash. There's two things and two things only that people will bleed for, and it's not money. Okay. It is, it's culture. And the second one is a piece of the pie,

a piece of the equity, right? And, and a piece of equity, yes, it has some financial, it has some financial hope, but it isn't money right now. And so structuring out a deal in which somebody can come in and get a piece of the upside is one of the best things that you can do early on. And so you have, you have two ways, right? You either have to give, give more equity and less pay or more pay and less equity, right? Like when, when you're talking about a financial compensation. And, and so for me, I, I, like I said, I would much rather have people that are, that are yoked with me that believe in the vision that have a piece of the pie

versus just a bunch of people that I'm telling what to do and, and, and don't have any, any attachments. So there's, there's a lot of different ways that you can structure this. You can structure it with profit shares. You can structure with employee stock, stock option plans that have strike prices. As long as you bring value over 100 million, anything over 100 million, you get a certain percentage. You can have traditional stock, which is actual equity in the business, which I did, like I said, for nine others besides my main co-founder. And with that, there's typically going to be earn-out periods.

My favorite structure is what I call the 6-18-3 year plan. And essentially what it is, is say I'm going to give somebody 3%. I'm going to give them 50% at six months and 50% of that at 18 months. And so the way that is structured is they go and they work for six months, they hit all the requirements and everything that they need to do, they're going to earn a percent, a point and a half. And then at 18 months, they'll also earn a point and a half. So at that point, they have 3%. But the three-year option is essentially if somebody quits before three years, if they do not fulfill their obligations and their duties within the organization, all of that equity can be revoked if they don't finish their three years. And the psychology behind all this is, one, six months

is what we refer to as the honeymoon phase. And when you get into bed with anybody, everybody thinks that you have proper and the same intentions. Hey, we're going to go take over the world. We're going to build this. You're awesome. I'm awesome. We're going to go and do crazy things. Within six months, the honeymoon will wear off.

Sometimes it wears off in two days, two months, you know, whatever, but it's always guaranteed to wear off within six months. I've never seen a honeymoon last longer than six months. And so what happens is that at that six months, you have a decision to make. Is this somebody that I want to continue in business with? If it is, you let them vest and you give them their 50% of their vesting. And the reason I do it so fast is I want them to taste a little bit of the blood quickly. And so they realize this is real. This isn't a five-year earn out. This isn't a 10-year earn out or whatever, right? Like this is something that I am actually able to see working right now. And so, and the same thing goes for the 18 months. Both are very short times,

but it gives them a chance to start participating in distribution. So if you start having earnings and you have a million dollars in earnings and you give them their $30,000 of earnings because they have 3%, like that's something they get a little, they taste the blood.

They're excited about it. Like, oh, I am building something that's something they get a little, they taste the blood, they're excited about it, like, oh, I am building something that's paying me more than just my traditional compensation, and at the same time, so that's the mentality between the six and 18, I want to accelerate it as fast as possible, but still have it drawn out, and it's going to be contingent on them working, accomplishing whatever the tasks that are affiliated with their specific job. So if it's operational-based, like in our business, it would be like we need to hit a certain amount of installations or a certain amount of profit margin or whatever it may be. And as long as we're on there, then you're going to hit this vesting.

And then at three years, once again, if they don't make it three years, you have the ability to revoke that. Now they got the distributions during the time, but they're not going to participate in a sell-off when you go and you sell this thing for a few hundred million dollars. And so that, that incentivizes them correctly. And the reality is, is if someone's willing to work there three years and walk away, I'm OK with it because I got the value. But the reality is, is if you properly delivered real value to them year after year for three years, there's no way they're leaving because they're going to think my best effort is staying here and improving the value of my stock. And so that that is like the like, like really, this is a plan. I don't know anybody else that runs this model. This is my model.

This is what I created and developed. And so I know there's similarities or other things out there or whatnot, but it's basically years of experience of seeing what was working, what wasn't working in the marketplace, and me coming up with, all right, I understand the human psyche, how it works, this is how I'm going to properly motivate it, and go on. But that's the equity side. The more important is the culture side, because people, once again, will bleed for great culture. When they believe in something, when it serves more than just their pocketbook, when they come to work and they feel great, they're around friends,

they're around people that pushing them to be the best version of themselves, they don't want to leave that, right? It's the same reason why entrepreneurs go and pay for coaching. It's because they want somebody that helps them become the best version of themselves. So if you can be the coach of your employees and help them accomplish more than just better at their pocketbook, like, like one of, one of the things I've always done is we, we focus on the development of the whole human association, spirituality, economic, and physique of all my people. Like, like we focus on health. We do health challenges. We do weight loss, you know, challenges. We do, we do things that, you know, fasting and different things that we do as an organization,

things that we would do typically in maybe like a coaching atmosphere. I do that with my employees, right, and helping them realize that there is more to this world than just money. You want to be a great father, a great mother, a great sister, brother, son, daughter, you know, contributor to society. We would do regular ways that we give back to community, always doing charitable events. We go and we buy Thanksgiving for hundreds of families in our area, and we take all the employees shopping, and we'd go and do the same thing for Christmas and deliver Christmas for families in the area. And like teaching these people like there is more to this world than money.

It's like giving back, contributing, serving, being a awesome member of society and being a and then and then not only how to make money, but how to invest their money. And so, you know, one of the things I would do is what we call financial Fridays, where I would get together all my employees that were local and then Zoom call for anybody else. And it was optional during lunch. They could come and learn about how do I invest in real estate? How do I invest in the stock market? How do I how do I do these different things that that I have made my wealth doing outside of just my business. And we teach them strong foundational principles. And you build that, you do that for your people, that's culture. That is like where people are like, man, this is a society I want to be a part of. And I just so happen to get a paycheck every two weeks as well. It's freaking phenomenal.

And so I could go on and on and on. I'm writing a book about a culture right now, but there's there's just like so many things that like business owners miss when it when it when it comes to like compensation of their employees. Oh, yeah. I mean, as I know, it's always a pain in the B. Trust me. It's so tough. I mean, the word culture is so far away, especially when you're talking about a team which is smaller than 20 employees and so, and which is the most amount of businesses which ever existed almost. Now coming back, if a small business owners

who is making maybe 10, 20, $50,000 is listening to this podcast, what do you think he could do as few steps to create that culture because trust me there is no magic in most organizations i've seen them i've worked with them i own one of them as well it's just that this is work you need to get it done by this time there is always excuses there is all the shit which happens there's all the stuff which goes wrong your people are not invested there is always fires coming up and you got to be in the trenches with your clients and your sales

and whatnot so how how do you actually go about building that culture? There's like a few steps if you want to get it. I mean, the first thing is spend time. The problem with most entrepreneurs is they have such big ego that they think that they shouldn't spend time with their employees. And so they're just like, you do your work. I do my work. I'll collect a big paycheck. You collect a small paycheck and like, let's go. Like go and spend time, get to know your people, like sit down, have a lunch, rotate lunches every single day with a different employee, get to know them outside of work, understand what's going on in their family, with their, with their kids, with what, what are their dreams? What are their passions? What, what do they want to go and accomplish? You know, and,

and there's so many different things like in building a great culture. One, you got to have great trust. Two, you got to understand that these are not your servants. These are people that have chosen to come and work for you in exchange for value. And someday they're going to leave you. And you have to let your people know that you're okay with that, right? Like, I am okay if you ever choose to go and work somewhere else. I hope that you use what you learned here as a foundation and that you always look back at this as a great experience. And as long as you approach them with that type of culture, they're going to be open with you about, like, what opportunities they got going on. It's not going to be this, this like slave servant,

master mentality. And, and so that like, that's, that's step number one, get to know your people, support them in their dreams and their efforts. Like, and there's so many different things you can do, like have like play games, you know, once a week, consistent. One of the biggest things to build culture is consistency. Whatever you choose to do, and I don't care what it is, if it's high fives every single day in the morning and saying good morning to people

or doing bingo Fridays every Friday at noon, I don't care. You don't need specifics, but what you have to do is you have to consistently do it because nothing kills culture faster than saying, hey, we're going to start doing this every week, and you do it two weeks, culture faster than saying, hey, we're going to start doing this every week and you do it two weeks and then you stop, right? Like that, that kills culture because now all of a sudden you said you were going to do it. You broke trust and trust is the foundation of any great culture, right? So you have to have vulnerability. You have to have trust. You have to do what you said you were going to do. That's where bailing basic culture starts. It's like, do what you say you're going to do, and then just consistently do it.

Wow. That's fascinating to actually hear and learn from. I mean, this conversation could go all the way. Let's talk about once you actually have those people, the right people, and you give them the right incentive structures, how do you handle the growth phase? I mean, there is so many competitors in the solar space. Even before you entered, there's already big players, small players, a lot of competition, as you mentioned, in the door-knocking space. Maybe you are the first pioneer in the digital marketing, as you said. But what were those few things about how did you actually scale, like the actual growth

phase? How would you go about that? Well, one, I don't know of any competitors in my field because I don't compete, right? Like my business is my business, right? And like, if you believe that there's another solar business out there so what like i don't care we don't we don't price according to anybody else like in fact we're i think twice as expensive as most people in the space uh from a to our to our uh end user and we don't pay like anybody else we just pay what we pay we we pay what makes sense. And so like, if you do not get your offer done, right? Like if you're not priced correctly to the market, if you're not paying the right ways with enough margin, that's going to allow you to survive during tough times, then it doesn't

matter. And so I don't, I don't make my choices based off of what anybody else is doing in the marketplace. I do what is best for SoulGen Power, what is best for Chris Lee and Chris Lee's organization, Chris Lee's vision. All right. And so that's how I make decisions is like, is this best for our business? It's not, is it better than so-and-so? Is it worse than so-and-so? None of that. That never, ever crosses my mind. It used to. That's why my first business went out of business is because I wanted to pay more than other companies and I wanted to charge less than other companies, right?

Like that is the reason because I was in business to compete. I do not do business to compete. I do business to dominate and be the best version of whatever I do not, I do not do business to compete. I do business to dominate and be the best version of whatever I'm building. Right. And so, so like that, that is step number one, step number two, just going back to what we talked about, like you have to have a vision. If you have a big vision, people will buy into it. If you get performance, don't be scared to take risk. And so like, if the margins are working, whatever you

built out, and you're able to do it, go spend more money on marketing. And then if you spend more money on marketing, you have too many leads, hire more salespeople. And if you have too many sales, now you're going to hire more operators. And you're going to, but it all starts with, one, I have to be profitable at any scale. And then I can't be scared to go and make an investment to take a risk to buy up to the next level. Most guys aren't willing to spend the money. They're like, why am I not growing? Well, you haven't increased your marketing budget in six years. How do you expect to grow?

It all starts at the top of the funnel. But in order to do that, you have to have a proper offer. You have to have a proper vision. You have to have people properly motivated. You got to be making money, right? You can't scale a negative business. It has to be extremely profitable with lots of money to be able to pull right back into the top line.

Wow, that's insanely insightful i would say now coming back like let's talk about uh you know this is gonna be a little interesting here let's talk about like the like i know you actually had the vision to exit and you wanted to build a solo like you know sellable business for sure let's talk about the journey like what was the approach you know like what was the process looking like and the multiple you got i mean i'm not sure how specific information you could reveal here but as much as possible give us a rundown insight about the whole process on the exit of the soul gen you actually had yep so in order to build enterprise value to be able to

build something that sells you have to have several things in place. One is a management team. Most entrepreneurs, they build a high level hustle, which, which is essentially a bunch of employees or a handful of employees and them, right. And maybe one other high level manager. No, you have to build like a legit management team. We're talking CFO, a CRO, a COO, you know, and that has got to be in place. Two, you've got to have clean books. If you don't have your personal expenses and your business expenses completely separated in two different organizations, like you don't have a product to sell like you go and you try going to the market and like you've got your personal expenses

on the business because of like tax strategy or whatever else like guess what nobody's gonna buy your stuff you need to have a holding company that you wholly own in whatever business and you got to keep that the business your main business expenses separate from your holding company your holding company you can do all this strategy you're gonna do all the the you know whatever else like the the weird expenses that you put your personal expenses and claim them as business you can do all that stuff under under your holding company you have to separate that too if you don't separate those two you don't you don't have a sellable business um so so as and then you have to build something that runs itself. So you got to have the management company or you have to have your management side,

but with, or without you being a part of it, you can leave for a week, you can leave for two weeks or whatever. That's how you begin to test. Is this, is this sellable? Does it continue to produce without me? If it's not, then you need to get in and you need to dive deeper in into your SOPs, your standard operating procedures. You know, and that's one of the other things that most most people lack is their business aren't. They're not system centric. They're people centric. Right.

If the people were dead tomorrow or, you know, died in a car wreck or whatever may be, then their business won't survive. You have to get your business where it's systematized from standard operating procedures, where everything is written out, documented, anybody can be plugged in. It's the reason why McDonald's operates and you can get the same exact Big Mac all around the world because they have a standard operating procedure. So you have to have these things in place. And once you have those things in place, then you can go to the market. And most people don't realize

there's an actual process of going to the market. And I'll explain it briefly. But essentially, you hire a banker. But before you hire a banker, you interview a few different bankers. After you hire a banker, they're going to write a book on you. You have to do a full audit that is a financial audit

that is completed before you actually go to market. So they write the book. You get the audit done. Then you go to market. Once you're at market, they send out basically this one-sheet teaser to a bunch of different private equity firms, 250, 300 firms. They take a look at it. You get people that are interested. They sign NDAs. They get the full 65-page book on your business. Once they're

interested in that, they have what's called an IOI deadline. It's an intent of interest where basically people say, hey, yeah, we're interested in this business. They give a range of how much they'd be willing to pay, you know, roundabout. And so you'll get 10 to 20 of those. Once you get 10 to 20 of those, you decide which ones you want to actually pursue. You do what's called a management interview. They fly in. You spend a couple of days with them. They dive into your business, see what what's all about, then you have what's called an LOI, a letter of intent due date. And hopefully you get three or four LOIs at that point where they actually get specific, they say, I'm willing to spend $220 million at this, this is how we're going to fund it. These, these are the different

contingencies. And then you then you pick one, and you sign it. These are the different contingencies. And then you pick one and you sign it. And once you do an LOI, then you have typically 30 to 60 days to close. They come in with a rubber glove. They do a full audit on your operations, your security, your everything. They're literally in just finding all the cracks and crevices. They try to whittle you down they try to retrade you and say no we thought it was worth this but now what we're gonna have to comp you know compensate here there and that and then you get an operating agreement

put together during that time with lawyers you got all kinds of lawyers it's a lot of fees a lot of different things and then uh ultimately you sign it on one day you get a big wire in your checking account and uh you know off to the races that's beautifully explained chris i mean i've heard a lot of people explain the same thing but they make it such complicated process you just made it like distantly simple for any business owner to kind of understand and prove it it's in their reach. If they really had that big vision and build the right team and actually execute what you just talked about in the previous conversation. I think it is in their reach and you nailed it in terms of explanation.

Now, I would love to hear one thing you really topped up on when you're talking about building a company which is sellable and even having a value because you don't want to build a business which eventually dies you want to build a business which can live through you know even with or without you just like what you've done it's systematization it's you know interestingly building sops now you are a very operational company you're like in the ground installing solar you know it's just a lot of work compared to what most is the business to how do you go about that like in terms of systematization and being a system-driven company instead of talent or artistic-driven company, which is what most companies are? Give us some steps in that overall in terms of systematization. Well, first of all, you got to start early because if you wait until you're big and you're super people-centric and not SOP-centric, it's really difficult to change and to actually integrate a new system or a new process. And so really as an entrepreneur, your goal is to go and just break it down.

What are the major key steps in your customer experience? And so how do you envision the whole process going how does a how does a lead come in how is the sale made how is the the product delivered how like like and you think through it from an if then standpoint if this happens then do this if this happens then do this if this doesn't happen you know and so you basically create a an operating tree in which which the customer goes through the whole experience and that at each step exactly what the rules are for engagement right like if a customer calls in and asks this this is what we do these are the potential answers this is out and so and then that has to be documented across the board and

there's so many there's great tools out there one of my favorite is trainual and you go to trainual.com uh and uh you can basically create a training manual uh for it uh for for anybody that is struggling with sops struggling to to get there, I would recommend a couple different books. One is the E-Myth Revisited. It's short for the entrepreneur myth, and he dives in and into how to build out these operations. And then my second favorite one on the subject is Traction by Gino Wickman. And so Gino's got several different series of like how to set up your your organization correctly create a good accountability chart all your operating yeah how do you build out your sops everything like that and so um those those are where uh you know

without going into very much more depth like that that's where i would uh steer anybody to go towards wow that's that's really insightful it's fascinating it's really fascinating to see like the right talent with the right systems could absolutely achieve anything possible i mean we have seen this period to period like no questions asked now you know you have actually built this company in a very short time you're only two thousands of employees and thousand plus employees and you know a big exit as well with the PE firm what's next step for you Chris like what are you really trying to achieve after this thing yeah so actually here on my uh my pen uh we're building out what's called the the founder project right now and so essentially where I go in and I help founders build their businesses and

go and experience eight nine figure exits exits. And so, um, exactly what you're talking about. There's a lot of these guys that are stuck. They're making, they're either solopreneurs or they're, they're, they're sub eight figures or right. Just hit, you know, 10 million a year or whatever it may be like that. That is what me and my team now are going to helping and scaling. And we're doing it through a variety of different things. One, uh, we have some free information out there. I run a podcast called the Founder Podcast, which gives a lot of insight and different things like that. Two is we have a community called Founder Acceleration, where we help founders accelerate their business, accelerate these hurdles, these speed bumps,

and really get the answers to the questions from people that have actually gone and built it. Not just from some coach that went to a seminar that says like, Oh, I think I can teach you how to do this. No, like we have been in the shoes. And so, you know, founder acceleration, it's a, it's a community we meet three times a month. You just go to founderacceleration.com to apply, be a part of the group. We do three hour long calls. And then once a month, we fly out one person from our group where we actually spend a half day with them and totally dissect. And this is being built with my partners that actually went and helped build Solgen.

So Daryl Kelly, the co-founder of Solgen, he's no longer there as well. So he's here building this with me. Matt Preece, I talked about, he's the guy that sold his business to Amazon for a few million, came and worked for 40,000, took a piece of equity. He's now working with us. He was our CTO over at Solgen. Hayden Crane, he was a VP of operations over at Solgen. And then on top of that, we've added in Holly Flick to the group. She ran the front end of ClickFunnels, all their organic marketing for three years. She was Russell Brunson's right-hand lady in building that out. And so she's absolutely phenomenal. We brought her in as a partner.

She understands front-end marketing like nobody else. And so she's a part of this group. And so we do founder acceleration. We hold regular masterminds. And then this next year, we're going to be launching FoundersCon and hosting a big conference in which we're going to have awesome speakers and everything come out. So pretty awesome. Wow. That sounds definitely exciting. Now, I'm stoked for you. I'm stoked for you. That's all I can say. And I believe this is going to change a lot of things and a lot of lives, especially at a customer standpoint,

at a business owner standpoint. And it's definitely a positive you know uh positive uh input you are actually bringing in through what you're trying to achieve chris more power to you definitely i have a few more questions before i get into a bunch of questions i have here if you have some time uh do you have like 15 20 more minutes on your calendar can you please check and confirm okay perfect now uh let me just mark this so that my editor can edit it okay perfect now let's get into this question one of the things which you were talking about uh i would like to go back to your story which was a discipline on how your dad invests his money and while you are actually trying to build your first business you didn't kind of quite have that you didn't spend on the right things which most common entrepreneurs

definitely go through as a phase. How did you change the spending habit? How should an entrepreneur actually need to get an income from the business? And what kind of suggestions do you have at a financial planning standpoint for an entrepreneur who's actually owning the business? Yeah, so first and foremost, the number one thing that you have to spend money on is marketing. Like for me, cutting a marketing budget or a branding budget is like the absolute worst thing that you can do. Of course, the dollars have to make sense, right? Every dollar in has to be at least $2 out.

You know, or sorry, every dollar spent has to be at least two dollars coming to the uh to the top line and and and for us it was every dollar needed to have 40 on the top line in order to be able to to make it make sense because of all the product and everything that we were going to be expensing out there and so one is like don't spend money on things that aren't necessary like the nice office space the nice car the nice all this stuff like that's's not required upfront. Like, sure, that will help with culture later on. But you don't need that what you need when you're first getting going is that scrappy, that scrappy feel of like, hey, we're building something that's big. And so, you know, to the outside world, to your end user, to your your to your customer, you need to look spectacular.

So you've got to spend the right money on on the cameras, on the advertising, on on the marketing, like the brand, the trucks, the whatever else like that's where the proper dollars. And so for me, I try to avoid one recurring expense that doesn't give me an actual ROI and big expenses that don't give an ROI. Basically, I'm always looking at ROI. If I spend this dollar, will it make me more money? The same goes for an employee. I don't just hire vanity employees, right? Like if, if I cannot justify that this employee is going to make me at least three times what their salary is, then I'm not hiring them. And so like that, that's, and so that's like one of the metrics you have to consistently be looking at, like the amount of revenue per employee within the organization, what your conversion ratios are, what your different that, and you have to monitor that stuff.

And like most guys struggle because most guys and gals struggle because they want the vanity and the ego of being a business owner. They don't want to actually do what it takes to be a business owner. Totally. And so what it, what it takes to be a business owner is like, be there 14 hours a day, looking at your financials inside and out, knowing how to sell. So like our first six months in business, I, I, I hate not making an income, but our first six months of business didn't make,

didn't pay an income, even though we could have afforded to pay it. And it wasn't, we made a, it was like, we needed a million dollars in the bank before we decided to start paying ourselves salary. And so the only way that we could make money in those first six months was we had to be commissioned salespeople within our organization. So what I, what I did would, I would work in the office about eight hours a day, and then I would work in the field an additional four hours a day to be able to make my own commission to be able to support my own lifestyle. So I got paid zero for the $8, and I got paid whatever I killed for the other four. And so quit sucking dry your organization because you want to get paid.

You want to look good. Your friends, your family, I'm the big business owner. I got the nice watch. I got the like, stop that. Like, like I didn't, I didn't get a nice vehicle until like three years into the business. And when I mean nice vehicle, I'm talking like a Tesla model three, not a nice vehicle, right? Like I, I'm not talking about Ferrari. Like I could go buy a Ferrari and all these things. But like, those things aren't important to me. And that's the other thing is like, you've got to decide like, this is an important, very, very important thing. Please, you have to decide what makes you tick and what your goals are. Quit making your goals what everybody else's are. Quit

looking at social media for your goals. Quit looking at all these different things saying like, oh, yeah, I want this. When in reality, you don't. Like for me, I learned that early on in my career. I bought the really nice car on my first business that went bankrupt, and I hated it. I hated every minute of it. I didn't feel worthy of it. I felt gross driving it.

Everything about it was, was just, just vain and ego. And I realized I'm like, I'm not a car guy. Like for me, I just want something that functions, gets me from A to Z. There's a few features I like about cars. Like the reason I drive Teslas is because they have a feature where they drive themselves. And for me, driving themselves means I can text, I can email, I can not pay attention to the road. That's really important to me. It's not how fast it is or how good looking it is. So guess what?

I own two different Teslas, but they are the lowest model Teslas. I own a Model 3 and a Model Y. My wife drives a 3. I drive a Y. Why? Why do I have those? Because they're safe. They drive themselves.

I can work while I do it, right? And outside of that, I don't need freaking the Ferrari or the Model S Plaid or any of it because that stuff doesn't appeal to me. So figure out what drives you, what you actually really want. Do you want more time? Do you want more time? Do you want more things with your family and different things? And do that.

Do like what brings you joy because most people find when they're pursuing other people's goals, life just ends up being hollow for them. Yeah, I can't agree more. I mean this is totally real talk, entrepreneurship. Like we are rubbed from other people's intentions on what we should own. And we genuinely might not like really desire it, but we just own it because we want to impress other people. And I think this is a very big thing to actually avoid, especially when you're actually running into a business. And now coming back, Chris, I have a teacher parenting as well like my my mom

is a teacher and it's so tough you know even though i was making crazy money to kind of convince her that i need to quit college and you're trying to run a business of your own when you're actually getting called how was that experience of of you know your situation to actually say to your dad or your parents to be like okay OK, I'm not doing this. I'm not going to be a professional doctor. I'm going to be an entrepreneur for yourself. How was that experience overall? You know, my parents have always just been supportive of whatever whatever I wanted to do. And so, like, glory to them for like never wishing their will upon me. You know, my my mom was definitely a little saddened when when I dropped out of college because, you know, my mom was definitely a little saddened when I dropped out of college because, you know, her dad was a doctor and she thought that that was like my ticket out of potential poverty or whatever it was.

But, you know, for them, like the most important thing in my family is the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so like, as long as that's in line, they don't care what I'm doing with my life because, because what I choose to do on a day-to-day basis is simply a feeder into the most important thing, which is the family and my family, which is my relationship with God. And so like outside of that, like, heck it never mattered. And so I always had a lot of support there. Wow. That's fascinating to see. Now I have a few questions here. I would love to go through them. Now, I would love to see and understand the tools you have actually used to manage your team, your projects, your customers for your productivity. Yeah, I mean, a bunch of different things. I mean, we've used several different CRMs.

We went from Salesforce, away from Salesforce, and back to Salesforce. I mean, we've literally spent millions of dollars on developing our different CRMs. Slack is great. You know, going back to traction, I highly recommend traction to anybody that's trying to run a business and build out good business meetings and everything else. It's like literally all drawn out perfectly in there. Like that's the best tool I could give you. Love that.

Now, let's talk about two routines here because you had a before exit, you know, daily, you know, juggler who actually runs an landfill company to right now who's actually a little chill, want to build other brands kind of, you know, Chris Lee. I would love to see both of your routines and the difference in them. If you could walk us through like your typical daily routine. Yeah. So, you know, one, one thing I realized quickly, so I stepped down as the CEO of my business, April of 2023. So this year, and initially it was all the right intentions. I wanted to spend more time with my kids, wanted to spend more time doing service and different things like that. And quickly realized that retirement is not for me. Right. And and so like my daily routine looks very similar as when I ran my nine-figure business. And what it is is the morning time is dedicated to Chris Lee, right? Chris Lee and his family.

And so, you know, for me right now, I'm getting a little bit more sleep. I decided that I wanted to have a little bit higher focus on my sleep. So I wake up between 5.30 and 6.30. It actually depends on the day of the week. I have different wake-up times. It's not the same exact time every single day. Where previously, I was waking up between 4.30 and 5.30. And so I basically moved it out, moved it back an hour.

I'm getting an hour more of sleep. But in the morning, there's a high focus on my health and my spirituality and a little bit of my family. And so, you know, I wake up. First thing I do is I go and I have these electrolyte salts that I put into water and I drink a cup of water. I recently cut out caffeine about six weeks ago, so I don't drink any caffeine of any kind. And so that's how I wake up my organs, get things going. I do a prayer of gratitude.

Then I go and do some sort of workout or exercise. I usually lift weights three to four days a week and then do some sort of running, some sort of, you know, elliptical or whatnot to be able to get the heart running. I like to do cold plunges. That's usually three to four times a week, and usually I will do that before my workout. It's a great way to, to wake up, uh, burn, uh, the, the, uh, white fats and, and build brown and beige fats and, and, uh, get energy and everything else. Um, so like this morning I did a cold, a cold plunge. That's, uh, that's very important for me. Um, so for me, I like to have my day going by, uh, o'clock. And so that that's so usually I'm

going to have two to three hours in the morning of like focus on health and fitness and, and family saying prayers with my kids, you know, getting them off to school, helping my wife in any little way that I that I possibly can. And then I'm going to go and I'm going to show up at the office. And usually at the office, there's a heavy focus on building out content, reaching out to people. I reach out to, I don't know, probably 100 people a day through text, email, whatever it may be. I'm a big networker and there's always been a high focus on that and so i'm i'm in the middle of writing a book right now so that's that's a lot of the content that i'm uh that i'm focusing on uh videos podcasts uh you know those different type of things and then most of my content creation

i like to get done in the morning because about by one o'clock, I'm a little, little bit burnt out on, on content creation. Um, afternoon, I like to spend with my team, casting up ideas, uh, going through, uh, things that are working that are not working, uh, going through, uh, marketing strategy, uh, new potential ideas, uh, you know, uh, identifying identifying identifying issues in the business. Like that's that's usually how the the second half of my days is ran out. And then, you know, I head home on a good day. I'll head home at four on a bad day, seven. And and so I I come I'll either I do one to two days a week where I work from home. I have an office in the garage where we built my business.

But then I also have an office in town. And when I say in town, I live out in the country about 15 miles north of town. And I have a 23-acre little hobby farm. And so the variation of when I go home kind of depends on my kids. I one thing I said when I when I stepped down from being the CEO of my business, I said I will never miss another kid's practice or game or activity because of work. Right. Like if I choose not to go because like it's not important for me to to be there for this practice or whatnot. But like if it was something important, important to my kids, like I'm going to be there. this practice or whatnot but like if it was something important important to my kids like i'm gonna be there and so i really put a a lot of high focus on that um and uh yeah

so that's kind of like my my normal day and then the evening is spent with my with my wife and my kids and you know i don't i i don't do a lot of like tv or or anything um i do a lot of, uh, I mean, I maybe watch, so I watch football. Football is like my, my one, uh, lust or luxury that I, that I spent some time on. Um, so I watched the Seahawks every single week, but outside of, and then maybe an hour of college football outside of that, I maybe spent 30 minutes a week watching TV. And, you know, most and then if I'm on social media, it's typically for market research. I'm seeing what else is working in the in the space, what what people are doing. Also, a way to network and reach out and let people know that I'm a real human being okay and when do you sleep typically um so recently i've been trying to get to bed earlier i try to go to bed about 11 but i'm not afraid to go to bed up

until one okay so you used to sleep at one and wake up by like 5 30 or 4 as like you used to have very short sleep yeah yeah i when four to five hours used to be very common for me wow how were you functional i mean i tried that it's it's crazy it's you know when when you believe in something and you have a purpose you don't need a lot of sleep i need to mark it for sure. Now coming back, if you could go back and talk to 20 year old yourself, Chris, or somebody who's just getting started in the business, what would be the number one advice you would give them? Keep going. You're going to go through a lot of failure and, you know, it's a success.

Success isn't isn't a result. Success is a path. It's a journey. I love that. Now, what's your life's biggest achievement and next bigger goals you actually have for yourself? Yeah, so, I mean, my biggest achievement is my family, my wife. You know, I've been extremely faithful and love that woman so much. We've been married 18 years. And so one is the relationship that I have with her and my five children.

So I would say that's like my biggest success. The second is like building teams. I love building teams. I love impacting and changing people's lives. And so like for me, if it makes money, great. Chances are it will because when you create value, money is made. And so, for me, like, value creation is building teams, helping people become the best version of themselves.

So I have a lot of big goals. You know, I've been very goal-centric since I was little. You know, I want to win a Nobel Peace Prize. I want to – I have an education program that I want to develop that will replace college that I have fully thought through and build out a business structure for it. And so I fully expect to do that in my mid to late 40s and probably do that into my 50s

and probably get the Nobel Peace Prize for the way that that changes education, the way it works. And so those are the big things for me. But the biggest, I seek the face of God. Like that's like the one thing that I'm trying to do every single day is like find out what his will is for me and try to see his hand in everything.

Love that. Now, just curious question here on top of what you said. You already had built a successful multi-nine figure valued company. Are you chasing the big b by any chance or is that like not relevant anymore to you how does that you know i i used i used to say like you know i want to be a billionaire but like chances are i will be just because of the things that i'm going to do to create value but it doesn't motivate me it doesn't push me um but uh

but yeah i want i want to be someone that creates enough value to be a billionaire. I love that. Now, what was your biggest mistake? I know you don't consider your mistakes as mistakes. It's always a learning in it, but coming back, if you could find it and be like, shoot, if you could avoid these things, like good for this podcast, how would that look like? If you could name the biggest thing is my, my ego, right? Like overcoming my ego earlier on in my career and quit trying to do things to please other people. Like if I could have learned early on that like, screw what other people think about me,

like just do what's best for you on a consistent basis. Because like, I'm a good person. I have good intention and I want to take care of people. And so like, if I'm doing good to take care of people and they hate me for it, like, so what? And, and, and so like, and I, and I would have, I would have avoided a lot of mistakes of like purchases and, and like things that, uh, like I did to look good to other people versus like what was good to move forth my vision and my mission. Interesting. And I mean, it's really tough to kind of be inspired as an entrepreneur, especially when you achieve this level of success. Now, let's talk about kind of what's your main inspiration for success and key people involved in your journey.

So say that again. What's your main inspiration for success and key people involved in your journey yeah i mean my my main inspiration is just becoming the best version of chris right like like i am obsessed with being my my best physically spiritually economically and with my associations like that that is that pushes me so hard and it's just me versus me i don't care about like what anybody else is doing you know like me and my wife were having this conversation this morning like you know i was ticking her off a little bit and she's like why can't we be like this i'm like i don't care what anybody else is doing like like like i i need to be my best and if if it's better than i was yesterday, then I'm on the right trajectory.

And so like, for me, it's all about trends. If I'm trending in the right direction, then I'm living right. If I'm not, I need to have a good, hard talk with myself and get it, get it going in the right direction. Love that. I mean, Chris, that was definitely insightful. If somebody actually wants to work with you at a closer level, where do they find you? How you're a part of the acceleration program, you're going to have a chance to interact with me. We, we do live hot

seats and questions and everything else like that. And so that's going to be the best way to, to get ahold of me. Of course you can DM me, but I literally receive so many DMS that are just like spam every single day. It's, it's wild. Um, and so like, you're probably going to get lost in there. So come and join our, come and join our community and be a part of it and, uh, interact. If you interact with my stuff, you comment on my stuff, I'm going to respond, you know, like people, people think that interacting is like liking and sending like marketing DMS. That's not like, just like interact, understand who I am, get to know me a little bit, and then we'll be able to interact. Yeah, I love that, Chris.

Appreciate you dropping it overall. Any last words before we conclude the whole session for today, Chris? I appreciate it. Just keep keep rocking. Stay disciplined. Get going. Let's go. I love that, Chris.

Once again, Chris, thank you so much for this amazing opportunity. Your story was definitely insightful. I think it will definitely inspire all the entrepreneurs who have so much stuff going on, all the fires popping up, all the bills they're getting stressed about. It just shows that proof that somebody who actually have the strong vision and can build a right team with discipline and SOPs could actually make it happen. Thank you so much for transparently sharing so much information. You absolutely made this a power pack,

nine figure business blueprint, technically speaking. So guys, if you ever want to actually get more help, feel free to check out Chris Instagram. I'll actually link that in the bio and also link that in the description. And also you can check out Fondra's version basically to see if you could actually be a good fit to work with him closely. And that's it for today, guys. I'll be coming back with another amazing guest,

just like Chris, and we will be rocking with amazing value on next podcast. Appreciate you jumping on, Chris. Thank you so much for your time. Bye for today. Thank you.