Next Level Pros - #59: Daryl Kelly: Co-Founder Of Solgen Power, Serial Entrepreuer

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

In this episode of the Founder Podcast, host Chris Lee interviews his longtime business partner and friend Daryl Kelly. Chris and Daryl share stories from their early days working together in pest control sales and the challenges that led them to start their first business venture together - a coupon book fundraiser. Daryl discusses growing up in a large family on a farm and the values of hard work and family that were instilled in him. Chris and Daryl also reminisce about memorable experiences over their 19 years working together, from competitions in wheelbarrows to daring dares to drink hot sauces. Join us for a fun look back at the friendship and entrepreneurial journey that started it all! Highlights: "Grew up fourth of eight kids. So grew up in a big family in the middle." "I think my dad and mom have always been principle based. You know, this is what we do. This is who we are, this is why we do it." - Daryl on lessons learned from his parents. "We won that contest. The wheelbarrow on a wheelbarrow haul baby, like obviously we had dinner and we've met before that but that was like the first like memory of like, really like doing something together." Timestamps: 00:00: Introduction 01:47: Childhood Memories 07:02: Growing Up 15:45: Family & Business 24:41: Coupon Book 33:16: Mentorship's 39:43: Policies & Politics 45:38: Conspiracies 54:33: Overcoming Struggles 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 so you have like these two people, two individuals with just very broken family experiences. Like my mom's driven for family. Like she's like, it's bred into her. And then my dad's just driven just to work hard. Like put your head down, work hard. No one cares how you feel. Like just get the work done. And so I think you just combine those two.

And obviously there's tons of, you know, tons of issues and conflicts or whatnot, but you just had like this overarching, like work hard and like put family first. Yo, yo, yo, yo, welcome to another episode of the founder podcast. Today is an extremely special day. First off, I'm wearing Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer. You can't get better than Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. On top of that, got my good friend, long-time business partner, Mr. Daryl Kelly. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.

Oh, you know, the people have been begging for this one, Daryl. I've been getting a lot of comments like, where's Daryl at? Can we hear from the man behind the scenes that actually is doing all the work? Is that what it is? So, dude, excited to have you. Tell your story a little bit. Dude, give us a little of your background. Like, if you were going to give a 30- second elevator pitch on who you are what you do

give it to us so yeah the best way to describe who i am in the now um so i am a father of four girls and been married for 17 years my oldest is 16 and then and then I've got a 13, 9, and soon-to-be 6-year-old. Grew up fourth of eight kids, so grew up in a big family in the middle. Let's see here. Trying to think of what I want to tell. I'll be outside of our conversation, but, um, I love riding dirt bikes. I love being outside. I love boating. Um, I just love goofing around. I feel like there's this different personality that comes out of me when I'm playing versus when I'm working. And, um, yeah, I enjoy, I enjoy doing a lot. I enjoy working. I enjoy creating. I enjoy traveling.

I enjoy being at home. I enjoy lots of things about life. Daryl, what is your first memory of me? Oh, gosh. First memory? Well, if you ask my wife, I don't have a good memory. And I'll say probably the memory memory that some let's see here first memory i think the first like real memory would be when we uh won that contest the wheelbarrow the wheelbarrow

oh baby like obviously we we had at dinner and we've met before that but that was like the first like memory of like us like really like doing something together. There's two things that stick out about the experience. So what Daryl's referring to, so Daryl was my first pest control manager. So Daryl's always, you know, Daryl's two years older than me. We were born the same month, February. Daryl's turning 42 this February. I'm turning 40.

And so he's always been a little older, a little wiser. And so he was my first manager, door-to-door sales. And we did this, what they called Super Saturday. And essentially what it was, was we got together and there was training and there was competitions and there's different things, but there's two things that stick out to me about that day. One, we won the wheelbarrow contest, which was dope. So literally, you know, picking somebody else up and running. And was I, was I the one on the ground? Yeah. Yeah. Cause Daryl, Daryl's like light and strong and I could just bowl rush. And so, you know, I know i'm i'm the driver daryl's just freaking flailing his arms so that winning that was awesome but the other thing that sticks out

about that day remember the guy that broke his leg was his leg or his arm his ankle remember his ankle oh dude it was something gnarly that was bad in a wheelbarrow contest dude so it wasn't about just winning the wheelbarrow contest. It was like we were winning tickets for the raffle. That was a different day, actually. Was it? I feel like we found the advantage of we could win this every time. And so then we were getting more raffle tickets

so we could win prizes. So there was two Super Saturdays, if I remember the story correctly. But the first, there were two different locations. The second one where the wheelbarrow race was like a place that was like big and open, had cement floors. Yeah. The other one was a smaller venue, but there was two reasons. So we were winning raffle tickets, and I won a big screen TV.

It's huge. It was like 24 inch or. Yeah, dude, it was 30, 37 inches. And at that point, Vizio is selling for 1800 bucks. Yeah. It was a big deal. It was a big deal. It wasn't even that big, but it was a big deal.

So me and my wife had one car at the time. It was a Dodge Neon. And literally we go out and we had to take it out of the box. And it fit end to end, end the tv end to end in our back seat to the doors like it was touching both doors the tiny little car but uh there's there's actually two so two competitions i ate a bunch of they they did this thing where they had like grasshoppers and they're like yeah we'll give you like one ticket or 10 raffle tickets for everyone you eat. So I literally went and ate everything they had. And they're like, oh, this was supposed to last a whole lot longer.

They didn't think one crazy guy would come in and eat all their bugs. That makes me think of, oh, man, that makes me think of in North Carolina that summer when we were at a restaurant and i remember what you you ate something that no one else i know exactly what it was what was it we're at a barbecue joint dude so you guys know like i'm i'm the craziest stupidest human being when it when it comes to like winning and competitions and stuff. Yes. So we're at a barbecue joint and Daryl points at this huge bottle of barbecue hot sauce. Like, I mean, dude, it was like, it was gnarly. Daryl's like, I'll give you, he says to somebody else, like a hundred bucks if you drink this thing.

I'm like, I'll do that for a hundred bucks. And Daryl looks at me and he says, I'll give you 20. Do you remember? And so i'm like screw it i'll do it for 20 bucks dude i drank that whole thing my stomach felt like it had a hole in it for the rest of the night it hurt so bad oh yeah i remember you saying that afterwards oh that was funny all for 20 bucks but you know the way that we grew up man I mean 20 bucks was a big deal back then so tell us about growing up you uh you have a you have a cool story about like where you grew up and kind of what all the kids have ended up doing yeah so I mean yeah I grew up I was the fourth was the fourth kid of eight. I consider myself the, I say I'm the oldest,

when I call myself the second oldest. And the reason I say that is because it was my oldest brother, sister, sister, then it was me, and then brother, brother, brother. And so I had like this, I was like the middle clan, so I kind of controlled the majority of people because we all played together and the boys dominated and so that was we were just always yeah just making a mess of things or having fun or um so i grew up on the farm and um we didn't have a we didn't have

much um as far as uh actually i don't know back then we just we played a ton right and then uh we played in the ditches or you didn't know what you didn't have we didn't know we didn't have but we played with yeah we're always up in the trees we're playing the ditches jumping bikes in the ditches we just had fun and um yeah it was a good time it was i loved it out there i loved it on the farm I worked a lot though and uh and I think that's where I remember I'd work all summer and I mean when I would harvest wheat for example I'd be working 14-16 hour days driving a combine and end of the summer would come and I'd be like got like three grand if maybe 25 bucks yeah uh The more money I made, the more, like, pretty much the more bills I paid. There was always something that needed to be paid if I had the money to pay it.

So were your parents, like, asking you to pay bills for the house? No, not for the house. But, I mean, like, yeah, car insurance, tires, you know. So, basically, your parents said, you you make money you're responsible more for your own consumption pretty much yeah yeah yeah i love it love it so daryl the way daryl and i are originally connected is daryl is married to or not daryl daryl's oldest brother is married to my oldest sister and so we were first introduced when we were like 14 and like one of my earliest memories of going over to the Kelly household was uh so I was I was friends with uh Daryl's two next brothers Bryce and uh Tyler uh I was like me and Tyler the same age Bryce a little

bit younger Daryl was the cool guy that didn't hang out with us because he was two years older you know dude I'm telling you my my family talked me up like my wife she knew my family before she knew me and they all just spoke so highly of me because i was always gone and it was it was great there was one memory i have of daryl during those years because our our siblings got married when when i was like 13 or 14 and we went out on your trampoline and we were practicing wakeboarding tricks. But even then, right during that summer, I mean, I was doing combine. So I was working. I remember cause I had to like stop to go to the wedding, but I was, yeah, just working a lot. Yeah. But, uh, one of the early memories I had, so going in, these guys lived in a double wide trailer, three bedrooms, eight kids. Right. And you go into the boys room and there are five beds in a double wide trailer bedroom.

I mean, double wide trailer bedroom. What are you like 10 by 10, 12 by 12? I mean, it's like. Never measured it, but yeah. I mean, literally. Two bunk beds, two bunk beds, one dresser in between. So bunk bed, bunk bed, bed in between between there was literally like a tiny walkway there was a spot that was like to to like shimmy through shimmy through yeah and we did a sleepover i think me and tony came over it's like dude there are seven

dudes in this room oh yeah so um what uh what are like some of your foundational memories or experiences that like helped you, you and your family turn into the great people you are? You know, I've always wondered that because everyone wants to contribute success to certain certain experiences or whatnot. And I have no idea really what to connect it to. You know, I think my dad and mom have always been principle based, you know, this is what we do. This is who we are. This is why we do it. Um, I've, I learned how to work hard from my dad. I think we all did. And, you know, he's not short of, of working hard. So I think that was something we learned from him. And then, um, you know, another unique thing

is i grew up with uh there's a there's one friend that lived out there my age and um he he grew up on a feedlot he had horses his family ran the feedlot and for some reason like i literally went on a lot of their family camping trips i was around horses a lot and i think um i think that's cool too i think being around horses these big animals have a lot. And I think, um, I think that's cool too. I think being around horses, these big animals that have a lot of power. And when you're trying to train a horse, break a horse, um, you have to deal with like not being in control, but being in control of what's goes on type of thing. And, uh, and, you know, just learning how to be calm in the moment, regardless of the chaos and try to, you know, just learning how to be calm in the moment, regardless of the chaos, and try to, you know, sort through whatever issue is coming.

You know, I think about that a lot, too. I think there's a big influence there, experiencing that a lot as a kid. And we had a lot of fun, rode a ton of horses, and had a lot of fun doing that. So, obviously, whatever happened in the household you know bred some winners you know you have a lot of athletes in the family a lot of successful people so you you think it through so you got eight kids ryan the oldest he's been successful salesperson involved in like selling big contracts to to uh farmers and then and then you got your sister who married a doctor or your other sister who's uh married a successful like project manager software developer uh then there's there's you who's had success in business

you got tyler who is a doctor. You got Bryce, who started and sold a big medical firm to private equity. Then you got Shane, who's a doctor. And then you got Ashley. We're still wondering about her and her choices. I'm just joking. She married one of our business partners, Hayden. And so like eight people, all financially successful, all made incredible choices, have incredible families, you know, and, you know, started in a, in a trailer, your family's been able to stick together. So what, what are, what are like some key, how, how have you guys been able to like stick together throughout all the years and maintain really good relationships like what what do you say some of that's a that's a good question i have a ton of

ideas coming to my mind of some of the things i do attribute to um so if you look at my parents right you got my mom and you have my dad so my mom grew up with you know alcoholic parents her mom died from alcohol when she was 14 she was was home alone with her. Um, after that, she bounced around and stuff. You have my dad who, I mean, his parents, um, his mom was loving his dad, probably more selfish kind of guy. Um, didn't really care for him much by age six, like his family would, you know, he would go out and work on the farm all summer and didn't really care for him much. By age six, like his family would, you know, he would go out and work on the farm all summer and didn't need to. It just, his parents just kind of got him

out of the house that way. And so you have like these two people, two individuals with just very broken family experiences. And like my mom's driven for family. Like she's like, it's bred into her. And then my dad's just driven just to work hard, like put your head down, work hard. No one cares how you feel, like just get the work done. And so I think you just combine those two. And obviously there's tons of, you know, tons of issues and conflicts or whatnot, but you just had like this overarching, like work hard and like put family first. And that was just always like driven in absolutely everything we did.

You know, we, we, we lived in a small house. I didn't look at a small, but looking back, I mean, we were pretty close, right? Looking back as a small house, but like, didn't feel that way living there. But, um, so then we just had to learn to live with all these people around you, right. And learn to love it. You don't have a choice. You either going to be excited about it or absolutely hate it. And you know, my sisters, I, it was entertaining watching them sometimes complain about things, but, um, cause they're older than me, but, uh, yeah, I i think i think you combine like the kind of the mission of what my mom and dad wanted and and what that put or instilled into us as kids and i think that's what you have speaking of your dad let's let's talk papa bob love bob so bob bob's like one of

the most unique cool dudes i know so extremely intelligent, from a standpoint of like, well-read, uh, watches the news probably way too much. Uh, you know, loves Fox news and, and all, uh, all the, you know, super conservative, real good guy. Um, you know, probably like one of the coolest, like silent cheerleaders we have out there. Oh yeah. You know, I, know i one thing i love about bob is like you know we so we had our jet for about a year and a half and whenever we were taken off he would pull up and like watch us take off not only that he would watch every flight on his phone right he tracked tracked the flights like where are we at what we're doing he's over there he's like cheering super proud you know but but at the same time like

super silent about the whole thing like you know he wouldn't necessarily let you know that he's cheering but if you like talk to him you realize holy crap this guy has literally followed every step of what i've done for the last however many years for sure so my dad so something super interesting about my dad he um so his dad passed away a few months ago and he reached out or, um, anyways, I, I, I knew that that was a fractured relationship. So I sat down with my dad. I'm like, all right, dad. So how do you feel about this? He's like, I don't want to talk about it.

I'm like, great. Well, guess what? That's your dad. You're his son. You're my dad. I'm your son. You're going to talk about that relationship because it impacts our relationships. Let's talk about it. You know, there's no not talking about it. So we started talking about it and I'm like, you know, what's, what's probably the, what's the one thing that he said to you that

hurt the most? And he said, after I graduated, my dad told me to leave the house and never come back. And I thought, that's the thing that hurt the most. He said, yes. Ouch. My dad told me the exact same thing. Oh, really? Yes. Wow.

But it didn't hurt you? I said, dad, I said, that's funny. Cause he knew, obviously he had said it to me. I said, it's pretty funny that you say that and that you said it to me. And I said, and it just came to me in the moment. I said, you know, I think that message was always meant for me because it really did push me out of the house and it pushed me to go just explore. And I met some amazing people that I would have not met otherwise. And I kind of took them back of like, and I told him, I said, I'm sorry that that was hard on you and that you had to hear that and hold on that message for so long for me. But I am so grateful that you told me that. That's cool. That's cool. So dude, we've,

we've experienced a lot together so daryl and i have been business partners for essentially 19 years and you know we've we've traveled all over the U S like, what are, what are some of your most favorite memories of building businesses or just like unique experiences that we've had over the years? I mean, I'll be honest. My favorite is the library so the library was a funny situation because um I had I had like I had been working in pest control for quite a while I had a big region of teams built up and um I ended up shifting and going to work with another company. And that company just had nothing in place. It was just a complete sham.

And so things just flattened out there. And so I had to rebuild and just kind of start from scratch. And I really, you know, I basically just led all my teams to like a dead end. It was pretty. And for perspective, this is like January of 2010. Oh, the library, yeah. Yep. And so, yeah, so I just graduated.

You know, I thought maybe I'll just go get a job. 2008. Yeah. Good luck. So I take my degree. I go try to apply for a few jobs. The FBI is one of them. There's like this technology firm.

Can you imagine working for the FBI? That would have been terrible. Well, I think there was enough on my resume that they were interested, and then I took this test, and there was questions in there. They were like, if... They're like, have you ever paid anyone

to drink a full bottle of barbecue sauce? Like, off the list. No, it was like, if you go to the gas station, they give you 24 cents more and you don't realize until you get in your car what do you do like i'm gone i'm leaving i'm not turning 24 cents like you're out of here i don't have a clue what they're looking for there but i'm sure i wasn't the i wasn't the guy so um but anyways yeah so then i'm looking i'm like i gotta i gotta figure something out and i mean i don't know if we want to rewind,

but Chris and I hadn't talked for like two years at this point. So we kind of had a falling out. So to be clear, Daryl's fault. Of course. So we sell together summer 2006. We're selling pest control, right? And I was very entrepreneurial from the get-go and like before we had ever even gone out for the summer i was like telling daryl that like

dude let's do something together like and we had looked into uh potentially starting up a branch for this company yeah doing a uh franchise a franchise through through point pest control and uh and so we're like we were talking about this and i was like starting to like make some plans a little bit around it like fantasize you know me big dreamer big dreamer and uh we'll go out have a good summer and then like nothing came of it and daryl like just kind of went back to school and was doing the thing. And I'm like, dude, I thought we were talking about taking over the world. Like, and, and so then, uh, then I go and, uh, and so it's not entirely Daryl's fault, but, uh, but, uh, I, I get it.

I have a buddy that, uh, I grew up with comes and approaches me and says hey come and sell security systems and uh frankly i didn't know how to like address with daryl and so i just kind of like fizzled out and went and and sold security because i thought it was a better opportunity and daryl was no longer like for me i was looking for more opportunity and daryl wasn't really wanting to pursue the the pest control more opportunity and soaryl wasn't really wanting to pursue the, the pest control more opportunity. And so I saw this home security thing as like another opportunity. It turned out great for me in the initial year. And so, but that led to me and Daryl kind of, you know, breaking up and.

Yeah. So we didn't talk for a couple of years. And then I just remember thinking like, I should just, I should go talk to Chris, swallow my pride, go talk to Chris. Swallow my pride. Go talk to Chris. Was that when we went and had dinner and you had long hair? Maybe. We hadn't talked for like a year and a half. And then like our wives decided that we needed to like have dinner.

And we went, I think we went to like Applebee's or something. And we come and Daryl's got long curly hair. What the freak? And anybody that remembers like 07, 08, that was dope. To have like a little bit of a shag, a little bit curling around the hat or something. Yep, that's right. So anyways. Yeah, so then we meet up and it was interesting because, you know, Chris, at the time, you know, he's driving this Mercedes.

I go to his office. He's got a frigging waterfall in the entry point. I mean, who doesn't want a waterfall in their entry? He's wearing a suit to work. Custom suit. And I'm just thinking, wow, this guy is just blinging out of control. Out of control, dude. My father-in-law's money was awesome.

So I'm like, you know what? i've got to make something happen here i gotta figure out what it is i didn't want to work with chris and like his security business um just because i knew that was i had nothing to do with it so i'm like chris we should look at doing something he's like yeah let's do it he was all interested i'm like okay let's do it you know why you're so interested backstory i'm like i'm broke can barely pay my bills yeah i had the facade going on like it all looked good but like we are barely covering payroll every single month and i think i'm yeah yeah i'm right about that time maxing out my personal credit card to make payroll and so you, you know, looking good to everybody, but meanwhile, just

scrambling. Yeah. So he's like, yeah, let's, let's talk. And that's what I loved about Chris beforehand is like, when we would just start talking, we would talk, talk, talk, and there'd be no limitations. And it's like, how big can we, can we make this? Um, so I'm like, dude, let's, let's talk. So we, we, uh, we decided we're going to go to the library and we're gonna come up with an idea on how to make money. And that's, and cause I needed money. I needed cash. So did I. Didn't know that. So just me from my perspective. Um, but yeah, so we were definitely aligned there. Um, and so we went to the library and, uh, you know,

we come up with the coupon book and then it was like, so I remember the idea originated so your stepfather-in-law had like helped do this fundraiser for some coupon book up here in the tri-cities and i mean we were living in utah at this time and they were like wait what he came up with a fundraiser and so kind of the the nitty-gritty of that was like we're like all right let's find someone that needs some proceeds from us selling and so we found like some like local lacrosse lacrosse team yeah and we were going to give them like a dollar of every sale that we made and and so yeah yeah yeah so we i mean we went knock doors with businesses.

We come up with a coupon book, really good one, actually. It was dope. It was really good. Like it was actually one of my first lessons on like networking and like just reaching out to people and just asking for things. Yeah. So we went through and we did, uh, we got all the coupons we needed and then we. Do you remember some of those coupons?

Yeah. Which ones were they? Buy one, get one free at the ski resort. Dude, that was dope. I don't remember how. That was a connection that I had, like a friend of a friend. Someone knew somebody at this ski resort. And I reached out and we were just like, yo.

Yeah. Would you do something really cool? Basically, our ask was, for the listeners, it was like, hey, Mr. Business Owner, we're going to let you advertise for free in our coupon book, but it's got to be a dope coupon. It was a good coupon. We had like free oil changes. Yeah, three free oil changes.

We had... We had orthodontics. That was a big one. It was like $1,000 or $2,000 off the normal price of orthodontics. That was a big one. It was like $1,000 or $2,000 off the normal price of orthodontics. And he said he would do that in exchange for being like the front of the coupon book. Yeah. We had, I remember Salon. I don't remember the offer.

I think we had a couple free haircuts. Dude, we even got stuff from like Del Taco. Yeah. Remember that? Yeah. I remember being in there. For whatever reason, I have a distinct i remember being in there for whatever reason i have a distinct memory of being in del taco's parking lot we were strategizing and we're like

dude how do we like go into del taco and talk to somebody in charge right yeah like this doesn't make any sense but we did it and somehow we got a hold of like the person that could give it to us yeah it worked it was like it all came together quick and then we i still remember the numbers do you remember the numbers how you did it how we did it no oh are you saying the cell the economics well so first so then we so then we put it together right i designed it yep shipped it off so what were the numbers so and meanwhile i remember thinking like okay who do we know they can print this? Right next to Five Diamond, which was my company, there was a little printing company. That's right. And I went and quoted out 83 cents to print a book.

And so we had this full color copy book with like tearaway coupons for 83 cents. And we priced them at 20 bucks. 20 bucks. Yep. Yeah. And then we, and then we're like, okay, how do we sell these things? And we started a Craigslist. We got a bunch of people from Craigslist. Craigslist and KSL. I think

we'd give them what? 10, 10 coupon books. Yep. They'd have to give us the money and then we'd give them 10 more. So yeah, exactly. So we would, dude, it was the ghetto-est thing like ever. It was great. Like in the morning they would come to my freaking town home. Right. And you were there, like we would have like a box full of them. And I mean, these guys are druggies, you know, like people coming in, they're willing just to hustle for the day to get paid cash the same day. Yes. Right. And so they're coming in, they're checking out.

I think we checked out upwards, like for good guys, we would give them 20 bucks. Right. And then I remember like the lesson on like, we went and like created the coupon book LLC. We got a bank account at Wells Fargo. So guys could take, they could take cash or check to the coupon book LLC. Yep. Right. And so they would go out and they come back is whatever they return back is that checks and, and and uh

and cash then we'd give them half of the back we pay them 10 bucks a book and we took the rest of the proceeds so we were making like eight bucks because we pay a dollar to the to the lacrosse group yeah made eight dollars a book and dude we were making i don't know you i think i think we made like 10 grand in like 20 days. Yeah, it was good. I remember thinking like, this is working. Right, right. Keep it going.

But then, oh, it's so funny. Had we dug that deeper and actually stuck with it, dude, it could have been something crazy. Oh, for sure. Right? It's so crazy to think back like how many things we got off the ground and then just fizzled out because like we lost passion we didn't take yeah and then and then that well because we were like okay what's what's next

this worked out pretty quick pretty well how do we grow the next thing what's what's bigger how can we leverage something else and then that's when we're like, well, let me show you alarms. I'm like, let's do it. Dude, it wasn't at that time. Yeah, we went down to Houston first, right? Yep. Yeah, Aaron Negretti. My man.

So, dude, and I think by this time I opened up to Daryl that like. Oh, yeah, this time I knew what was going on. Like, things aren't going great, and i'm needing to make money too and so i told him kind of we you know we had like four offices set up at the time and we need to make sales year round and you can make pretty good cash and he's like all right i'll go sell and so me and daryl pick up we leave our families in utah we go down to houston no joke we are sleeping in this guy's closet, or at least I was. Where were you sleeping? I mean, I was on the floor.

I think— I was sleeping in an air mattress in this guy's closet. Yeah. And, you know, I'm the owner of the business. It's hilarious to think that and i'm sleeping i'm sleeping in this guy's closet hustling to make a buck dude oh aaron aaron negretti was he was dope he was such a cool guy i mean first off we're just crashing on his floor this guy was like he is a killer sales guy killer sales guy dude he's got super nice apartment too dude like

like he was spending every dollar he was making right like super nice apartment he's got a porsche cayenne or whatever it was what are the what are the funniest memories of aaron is like we pull up into a grocery store and he pulls into a handicapped space and like dude what are you doing he's like don't worry about it pulls open thing he's got a handicapped thing that he pops in the window he's like yeah my doctor buddy hooked me up yeah aaron was uh i loved aaron like he was a cool guy speaking of which i i don't know if you've ever heard this stat but like uh with they they did a morality test on you know just uh uh poll out there and they said, okay, on a scale of zero to 10 or one to 10, 10 being the most immoral thing, one being the least immoral

thing, what would you rate cheating on your spouse? And it was like a four or five. And then parking in a handicap was like seven. No joke. the handicap was like seven no joke people in the u.s think that it's more immoral to park in a handicap spot than to see on your spouse you guys need to go to you you should be burned for that yeah so then uh yeah so then we built that up and uh man i don't know if we're going through the whole story but my favorite memory was was just sitting down at the library coming up with an idea executing on it and uh just making it happen and then we just we've done that over and over again

but i just remember that being like the first time that we we said hey let's let's do something so daryl when we chose to like split up again you just kind of go around separate ways but it was a good it was a good thing like why did you pursue bee uh darryl went and became a bee farmer i mean i just i saw this business and uh i mean i grew up on the farm right like nostalgia nostalgia and it wasn't just like any bee farm this guy was a pretty big bee farm you know um i know it just sounds funny though it's a crazy business i mean you look at the numbers right he's he was doing about three million in revenue um he was making i mean he had everything paid off no debt he was making about a million a year which back then seemed like a hundred million yes for sure right like it was huge yeah now that you say that he's only three million in revenue i'm like that's it i remember thinking you were going to be a part of

this big farm like three you know it's cool i like granted you know it's cool that he was making a million bucks a year but man the dude it literally seemed like a hundred million yeah so i mean that's that's the thing i mean growing up on the farm and like yeah so that was kind of the the draw there someone passed the information on i'm like i'll check this out and i think we were just out of time where we were just trying to figure things out didn't know really what we were doing or not doing so it wasn't like we had like this direction it was more of us going back to what you said earlier where we were just like what are we where are we going with this yeah i know like that point in my career i just didn't really have any direction it was just like trying to make money it was trying to hustle trying to do just whatever it was to make a buck there wasn't like an end goal in sight or something that was being built to sell

and so i mean for me that's why the pivot was like go back and work for other people because i needed to go and learn more yep yeah it's interesting so obviously that that was a that was an awesome memory core memory for you where where's been the the your favorite place that business travel has taken you favorite place lake powell lake powell our our summer trips there and eclipse that that was pretty cool um let's see here for business let me think here i still remember when we worked for legacy eating at a restaurant in new york and we all this the the tower of appetizer it was tower but like a 200 appetizer then they brought out this one carrot, and someone took a bite of the carrot.

And they're like, guys, this is the most delicious carrot I've ever had. I'm like, okay. Someone else takes a bite of it. Dude, this carrot is amazing. Anyways. As you can see us, couple small town kids,

we're easily impressed. But that whole table was like drooling over this carrot because there's probably like six pieces of this carrot with just one big carrot cut up and he was i got a piece of it it was like delicious it was amazing don't know why that was such a profound memory but uh what are your uh who are your biggest mentors and how they impacted you um biggest mentors i mean for me when if i'm thinking about you who i would think you'd say is like tony robbins joe dispenza you know some people like that yeah i mean we're talking like memories back in the day so i think of different people um you know jeff

shoals back in the day he was definitely uh he he inspired me a lot. So you guys know, Jeff, Jeff was like the guy that believed in us when nobody else did. Um, so after I'd filed bankruptcy, Daryl and I started K2K Alarm. And one of the things that we wanted to shift was instead of selling contracts off to, uh, monitoring companies, we wanted to in-house them and own them because we saw, um, a lot of volatility because essentially what had happened with my business was the company buying our contract said, hey, we can only buy 100 a month.

We needed 120 to break even. And they said, you can't sell in these areas. You can't sell them to anybody else. It was like the craziest like catch 22. And so Jeff, when we started our company, had come in and said yo i think you guys are cool i believe in you and he actually gave us cash to go and front the money to install these uh these or these systems in homes and hold the contracts ourselves yeah and so when literally

nobody should have believed in us yeah like especially me like luckily i had daryl with me but and like i just filed being bankruptcy for 2.2 million and this guy was willing to like front it was like a few hundred thousand for us to there's a lot it's a big deal um the thing though i appreciate most about jeff was i remember when i worked i lived with him so he was one of the guys where you know my dad's saying hey don't come home which meant you can come home and visit don't come home and live and so Jeff was a guy I reached out to because I heard he was you know yeah I knew he had a business and that he had money so I'm like come maybe he'll give me a job so I reached out

to him and he let me live with him for a few months, I think total seven months. And he treated me like he would have treated royalty. And that was the first time I saw someone who didn't have to treat me good treat me better than I felt like I deserved. And that always stuck with me. I thought, you know what, that's how I want to be. He always put people above money, and he always took care of his employees. He took care of his people. And so that was just like a big lesson early on of just treat people good

and don't put money over people. I mean, you see that a lot when you don't know what to do. A lot of times you're like, protect your money first, and you don't realize it doesn't matter like a lot of times you're like protect your money first and you don't realize like it doesn't matter. Like money's going to come and go, you know, but to have good people and good relationships, like that's the battle that's worth fighting for. And I luckily learned that from him.

Love it. Love it. Shifting gears from mentors, thoughts on current government, thoughts on Joe Biden for president 2024. Let's go, Joe Biden. Donald Trump. Let's go Trump. Let's just put them all in the White House.

I mean, what are your thoughts? What are your thoughts on the current government situation? Well, I think it's a complete mess right now, and I think the messier it gets, the quicker we get out of it. But I don't know how long it's going complete mess right now and I think the messier it gets the quicker we get out of it but I don't know how long it's going to be so who are you voting for? I'm voting for

Kennedy my boy Kennedy so what if Kennedy doesn't run on his own? dude, Trump and Kennedy Trump and Kennedy? that's my ticket what are your thoughts on its own? Dude, Trump and Kennedy. Trump and Kennedy? It's my ticket. Dude, what are your thoughts on Vivek? Have you watched much of his stuff?

No, I mean, I know he's good at debate, but I mean, that's a, yeah, I don't know. Probably the most well-oriented guy out there, like the way that he speaks. I mean, dude, he's the Ben Shapiro of the ticket right now as far as just understands policies and history and everything else. Like, so well-spoken. It's pretty phenomenal. And, you know, there's a lot of debate out there.

It's like, is he real? Is he fake? Is he AI? I don't know. I think the tough part when I look at politics is that, like, all the... I just don't feel like we think the tough part when I look at politics is that like all the, I just, I don't feel like we're talking about real solutions. I think we're talking about problems.

Yeah. Right. I mean, imagine if, imagine if running a business, all you did is you focused on your problems. You put all your energy in your problems versus like figuring out, okay, what's causing these problems. Right. You know, how do you,

how far upstream do you go to figure out where the real issue is? Right. Politics, I feel like don't really do that. They're more like, let's manage the war. Let's manage the chaos. So the arguments, I mean, he's probably great at arguing, but the tough part is the real conversations that will actually change. It's tough, man.

We're such an extreme society right now like we either go super far left super far right you know i'm a conservative by by nature of course you know that but um it's like i'm to the point where i feel like we've got to go super center for anything to get done and i think you know uh kennedy Kennedy is a fantastic candidate because of that. I've listened to him the most, like, soundbites online. And I might listen to the same ones over and over again. I don't know. But, like, everything he says, I can't, I don't argue with.

I like his stance on drugs. I like his stance on, I don't even know his stance on drugs. He's mentioned a few things about drugs and I'm like, yeah, because my perspective is like, it's, it's, I don't do drugs because they're illegal. Like I don't do drugs because I care about my body. I care about myself. I care about my future. And like, so it's like, it's not about like stopping drugs from being used.

It's like, what are we, how are we educating people? And like, what's the focus of our society? And so it's like, yeah we how are we educating people and like what's the focus of our society and so it's like yeah let's go argue drugs all we want but that's not gonna change things you know it's interesting you bring up drugs so i've always believed so i've kind of been more libertarian from a standpoint of like hey just legalize things and it'll naturally weed people out from from a standpoint of like people that don't want to do drugs won't do drugs people that do do and they'll do them regardless and and it drives down cartels and everything like that's always been my belief yeah but it's interesting so i watched

the youtube the other day it was uh about vancouver canada have you heard about this no so they legalized everything like okay everything and dude it is a war zone really like yeah just in the last 12 months and this guy uh went down youtuber and he's like interviewing these homeless druggies and stuff and they're like just spreading and taking over and it's like it's pretty wild like they've even created facilities that allow people to do drugs safely, essentially. And it's supposed to be this nice, safe, clean environment, clean needles, all that stuff like that.

You go in and it's like probably the dirtiest place you've ever been in. And so it's like weird regarding that policy. Like where is the balance, right? It's almost like you create strict rules, strict laws to keep people who don't have self-control, but then like focus on like the things that will actually help people the most.

The education. The education. Right. Yeah. I mean. The higher law. The same thing with like abortion. It's like, oh my gosh, like debating abortion.

It's like. Right. What are you really debating? And I really think it's like how you see the family unit, like how important is the family and connection with God? Like, you know, I think if you, if the focus is really around those two things, I don't think you have an abortion argument, right? I think you have a, you have like, you have people that are, that are centered around principles and stuff. And, I mean, there always will be two sides to every story. But instead, it's like, let's argue abortion. And let's argue until we're blue.

And every political debate, they have to talk about abortion. It's like it never changes. It's like, let's talk about what's causing people to get to this point. No one's like, hey, changes. It's like, let's talk about like what's causing people to like get to this point. No one's like, hey, I want to have an abortion. Let's go get me pregnant so that I can go have an abortion. Because it's kind of a fun thing to do these days. Like that's not the case. And so that's the thing is like my mind thinks is like,

what's the real conversation that would actually make the change? And can you even ever have that conversation? Like how do you get that to be the public conversation i don't know i don't know if there's there's an answer to that but that's speaking of the right conversations what's your favorite conspiracy theory um gosh the moon one i just want to know we didn't go to the moon i know just like just someone say it from the government like here's proof we didn't go to the moon i'm like all right cool like that is that is the one that's hardest for me to believe from a standpoint that we actually went right like i so there's two ones i'll come out and say like that i am a big

believer in this particular conspiracy one we didn't land on the moon and two the 9-11 thing like both those are super sketched to me, and there's so much evidence in the contract. Oh, 9-11, yeah. Yeah. It's just like, you know, 9-11, I got like, dude, building number seven. How does it randomly implode two blocks away? Come on, are you kidding me?

Well, I don't know if you saw Alex Jones on Joe Rogan, or no, on Tucker Carlson. i haven't seen it but he basically was like predicted it in july and he's like yeah i've read their stuff i've seen what they're talking about this is why i said what i said that that would happen so it's wild one of my favorite conspiracy theories that i don't necessarily believe but that is just like fun yeah is tartaria tartaria yeah you know like i think what tartaria opens up more than anything is like how easy it is to manipulate history you know and i think that's probably like going through the the whole uh pandemic in 2020 whatever that one's called and you know i don't want to get this censored on anything uh you know that really opened your mind up like holy

smokes we are in such a controlled environment that is manipulated by government by society by the news like so wild and so got this thing at Tartaria where it's like this ancient society that was like thriving and had its own free energy source and whatnot. And that supposedly it's been wiped from the history books. Yeah. And you know, the fact that there's like old document,

old classified documents that actually refer to the Tartarian empire being removed. And it's like old document on classified documents that actually refer to the tartarian empire being removed and and it's like once again i don't necessarily know what to believe regarding that and i don't i'm not like hard stance like i am on the moon with the moon i'm just like yeah dude we didn't land on the moon tartarian was like man this is fascinating and so like that that one's that one's got me like questioning, but like some more importantly, it's just like how easy it is. How close are we to just completely changing history by manipulating the education of just like one to two generations?

All right. Bigfoot real fake. Dude, Bigfoot fake. Yeah. It's gotta be fake. It's real. What do you believe? I mean, we talk got to be fake. It's real. What do you believe? I mean, are we talking... Believe or conspiracy? I mean, no.

What do you believe? You're saying it's... Like, I believe that we did not land on the moon. Oh, I have no evidence of Bigfoot, so I got nothing to stand on. So, like, I believe the 9-11 was an inside job, and I believe that we didn't land on the moon. As a Boy Scout kid, I was

scared so many times of Bigfoot in the mountains as I'm walking through the mountains that he's real in my heart. Awesome. What are some books that changed your life? Great books. I love simple book that I love. I've shared the most. I usually give it to kids is Rhythm of Life by Matthew Kelly. Nice. I just love the simplicity of his messages, like becoming the best version of yourself, how we're always working on the next version. And so there's never any issues with who you are.

It's just work on the next version and just become the next version and the next version. And you're always working on that better version or the best version of yourself. So I love that book. Yeah, funny, funny. So book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. So I remember we moved to do the alarm company here, right, after Utah. And I remember you, I don't't know you or me or what but

we decided let's read this book together and what's funny was you know back in second grade you know what actually inspired it what you remember andrew baldwin yeah so he had said something during like a correlation meeting we had like six sales reps right and he had said something about how rich that poor dad had changed his life and everything i haven't even read that and so i think that's what inspired it so here's what's funny i've graduated college by this time right in second grade i remember being in a group trying to learn how to read or get help reading and i remember being told oh yeah the reason you're a part of this group is because you don't know how to read and so like my whole life i of this group is because you don't know how to read. So like my whole life, I grew up with this whole, I don't know how to read.

Literally, I'm going to college. I'm like, I don't know how to read. And what that meant was like, if I had to read something out loud, it'd be like, all right, don't know how to read. Like read through what you're going to read through so you don't make mistakes because people are going to know you don't know how to read. Like or something along those lines. And I literally had this this voice in my head. Just repeating it. Just repeating it over and over again.

And so I remember when you were like, yeah, let's read this book. And at that point, I was like, I'm not a reader. I don't know how to read. And so graduated from college once again, didn't know how to read. Just had this belief in my head. I'm like, I got to read this faster than Chris. So when we decided to read that book, dude, I just sat down and cranked through that thing.

And I like loved it. I'm pretty sure back then there was no such thing as like Audible. No, I would have never learned how to read if Audible was back then. But I remember just reading the book and I'm like, one, that was an enjoyable book to read. Two, it was easy. I was like, maybe I can read. I don't know. I can't read. It was just, it was just, it was just an easy book. And then we read another book, another book. And then I was like 40 books in,

I'm like, I love reading and I can read. And it was great. It was fun. So I read a lot of books. You know, some of the books that were impactful, 10X by Grant Cardone that, you know, some of the books that were impactful 10 X by Grant Cardone that, you know, going out in the summers, just grinding and just being in that mindset of like, keep going like that. That book was definitely one of those books you just throw on and it would get you pumped in the moment. Um, what are, uh, what are some of your main philosophies that you try to live by? Yeah. You know, I think this is more around parenting. But I believe, like, my kids, the relationships I have with my kids is established and kind of cemented by the age of, like, 12, 12, 13. And so my job as a dad is, like, to establish the best relationship I can with my kids by then.

Like, that's it. That's the check. That's the checkout point. At that point, what happens is my influence just starts to get diminished. It gets diminished by friends. It gets diminished by their independence. It gets diminished by just everything. And so if I don't have like the relationship I want at that point, like I lost my loss. Um, I have no clue where I heard that. I heard that years ago and

it's always stuck with me. And so like, yeah. And so like, I've always just like put a heavy focus on just having a strong relationship with my kids. Um, and I feel like I have a phenomenal relationship. It's just, and it wasn't like a, I'm going to try. It was like, I am like, that's who I am. And that's been, that's been always like just a strong part of who I am. Very cool. Very cool. What, uh, what advice would you give to somebody that's struggling, getting going or thinking about giving up young, they're, they're thinking about launching their first business, you know, some, some along those lines, what kind of advice would you give that person? Man, I wish, uh, I love sitting down with people

and just letting them talk and just hearing all the lies that come out of their mouths and just helping them point it out, you know, not smash it in their face, but just like, do you really think this? And do you really think that? And like, you know, today I was at the high school and I met with a finance club. And, you know, one of the kids said, he's like, I want to start a business, but, you know, I'm so scared of like what people will think. And I'm so worried about being rejected. And I'm like, hey, look, I get it. If you, you know, I've been through this a lot. If you're worried about being rejected and if you're worried about

what people think, don't get into business, just do what everyone else does so you can fit in. And, and, you know, for me, like, I don't want to fit in. Like, I just want to be me. I don't want to be like you. I don't want to be like anyone. Like I want to be me. I want to take the best qualities of you and learn from those. And I want to take the best qualities of everybody else. Right. Um, and I also want to offer the best qualities in myself, but like, I don't want to fit in and I don't want to be like part of the group. Like I want to add a color to the group that doesn't exist. And so for me, like when you go through failure, it's like, so, I mean, like that's part of the process.

And someone told you at some point that, you know, avoid failure or failure is bad or like, but yeah, that's part of the process. One of the things that just went to Tony Robbins event and he talks about Stephen Curry. Do you know how many three-pointers he shoots every day probably a hundred you would think 500 wow a lot so he's taken uh like gosh I have the stats on my phone I think it was like 2.3 million shots over his career wow practice shots and he's only made like in a game like I'm making this up now but I think it was like 2.3 million shots over his career. Wow. Practice shots. And he's only made like in a game,

like I'm making this up now, but I think it's like 13,000 or something like that. He's got the most three pointers ever made. Right. But if you look at him, I mean, the guy is just like flawless, right?

I mean, I love, I love seeing some of like his warmups. He'll do like half court shots or, or shots from like the stands or whatnot. And it's, and it's literally just like part of his process to like do the craziest crap. Yeah. Yeah. He doesn't care. Like, like think

about it. Right. Why doesn't anyone else do it? Well, why would you shoot from that far back? And why would you shoot this? You know, he doesn't care. It's like his thing. And so, yeah, anyone out there struggling, it's like, dude, let that struggle be your thing. Now, I guess the, the advice I'd have, cause I've been in a lot of struggle is make a game out of it. Um, you know, I used to hate rejection just like anyone else. And, uh, I remember like getting door slammed on me and I hated it. And for me, I was trying to be polite and stay there until the door slammed on me. And, um, then I decided, you know what, the game is this before a door can slam on me, I was trying to be polite and stay there until the door slammed on me. And then I decided, you know what? The game is this.

Before a door can slam on me, they see my back and I'm walking away. And even if that's mid-sentence, because you know when someone's just like going to slam the door on you. They're not giving you time of day. They're treating you like crap, you know. And every time I would walk away before I get that door slammed on me, it would piss them off even more, which would just get me fired up and get me ready for the next door. So I'm walking to the next door more excited because I just won that game

versus getting the door slammed on me and just feeling like I got nothing to live for. So make it a game because we're always going to find things that suck. Great advice, dude. Dude, where can the listeners follow you or find you? I know you're not very active on social media, but we're going to get them there. Yeah, find me at Chris Lee QB. I have people all the time like, yeah, I've been watching you through Chris's Instagram and Facebook. I'm like, cool. And literally, I think through Chris's Instagram, Facebook. I'm like, cool.

And literally, I think people follow me more through that than any other way. That's funny. Yeah. No, my wife does a really good job, too, posting about our lives. And then I always see you post about everything else. So, but where can they find you? I know you got like 800 followers or something. That's pretty sweet on Instagram.

Pretty thick right now. That's generous. Let me see here. Is it DKelly14? You would think. I'm pretty sure it is. He doesn't even know his own Instagram handle, ladies and gentlemen.

Let's see here. DKelly014. DKelly014. DKelly014. d kelly zero one four d kelly zero one four d kelly k-e-l-l-y zero one four on instagram how many followers are we sitting at right now oh it's up there 521 521 ladies and gentlemen let's double that on the release of this episode i think it's private right don't you have to like open it up yes you're private i don't know i think it's private, right? Don't you have to open it up? Yes. You're private? I don't know. I think it was. Dude, private.

Who has a private Instagram account? Good night. Yeah, we'll have to look at that. Sweet. Daryl, dude, thanks for being on the show. It was fun. We're going to have to do it again. Do it.

We've got a lot of stories to tell. Let's go. Until next time!