The Home Service Expert Podcast - Beyond the Sale: Building Enterprise Value for a Multi-Million Dollar Exit

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

Chris Lee is the founder of SolGen Power, a premier solar installer and provider recently recognized by Bennett Financial Times as the sixth fastest-growing privately held company in the nation. He is also the host of a Top 30 Business Show, “The Founder Podcast,” and a member of the Forbes Business Council. In this episode, we talked about door-to-door marketing, building enterprise value, exit strategies, work-life balance...  

I would say that most people miss in wanting the glory of being a business owner rather than building enterprise value. And this is what I mean. Most business owners will actually rob the business to fulfill their own ego, to be able to pound their chest to their friends and family and say, look, look at me, Mr. Business owner, nice watch, nice cars, nice house. And they're stripping their business of the dollars that should be reinvested into actually scaling their business and building real long-term value that can be exited. But because people don't have that vision, they're not trying to build enterprise value. They just think, well, I made all this profit. I deserve this. I need to strip

it from the company and look good to all my friends and family and people that don't even know who I am. And so I would say that is probably the number one downfall of business owners. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text NOTES to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299. And you'll

receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. Okay, guys, welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today is going to be really, really fun because I got a buddy of mine. I haven't

known you very long, but just an amazing guy, amazing business owner. You got an amazing podcast. I got Chris Lee. He's an expert in sales management leadership. Chris Lee is the founder and chairman of Solgen Power. Solgen, which employs over 1,300 team members, was recently recognized by Financial Times as the sixth fastest growing privately held company in the nation. This was all accomplished in under five and a half years in being in the business. Recently, Chris closed on a private equity deal that valued Solgen at $360 million, his second nine-figure exit in the last 12 months. Chris is a leader, successful entrepreneur,

and member of the Forbes Business Council. He bootstrapped his business in the solar industry before building an extensive real estate portfolio focused on multifamily and short-term rentals. Chris is also the host of the Founder Podcast, a top 30 business show, and one of the world's fastest growing podcasts. Chris.

Pleasure. Hey, man. Excited to be with you, Mr. Tommy. Love hanging with you. I love it too, man. I can't wait to come visit you in Idaho. You're down the street from me, so that's going to be fun. Yes, sir.

Tell us a little bit about you. Tell us how you got started. Tell us a little bit about the business and what the future holds. Yeah, sir. So tell us a little bit about you. Tell us how you got started. Tell us a little bit about the business and what the future holds. Yeah, man. So I love, first of all, I love the name of your podcast, the Home Service Podcast. I've been in home services and products virtually my whole career. So started at the age of 21, knocking doors, selling pest control, door-to-door contracts. And then I was in the home security and

home automation space for eight years. And then I've been in the solar space since 2014. So in January, we'll hit a full decade in the solar industry. And dude, it's been a wild ride. Background, most of it's in sales and marketing. And I did it the old fashioned way, door to door, made a lot of money, built different companies, had some successful, some failed. The very first one I launched at the age of 24, I ended up losing. I launched in 2008 and a financial crisis and all kinds of different things happened, poor decisions, all that stuff. I ended up filing bankruptcy, having everything, all my assets stripped from me. I had less than a thousand dollars in my bank account, car repo from the driveway, you know, the drill. And so, yeah, man, that was a very humbling way to start in the world

of business. And, you know, prior to that, it was just selling things before I actually launched my first business. But I bounced back and did a lot of different things until ultimately we launched Solgen out of my garage in the fall of 2017. And we built that thing, scaled it up. I recently stepped down as the CEO of the business in April. Prior to that, the full calendar year that I ran the business, we did $233 million in rev. And it was a fantastic, fantastic year. We ended up acquiring a company earlier this year for $120 million. And then I promoted that company's CEO to take my spot. I decided to step away from the business, spend more time with the family and concentrate on a few other entrepreneurial endeavors. So that's kind of like the whole thing in a nutshell, just kind of the run of the mill, but a lot of, a lot of details in between. Yeah, no, it's amazing your career and just what you've been able to accomplish. How old are you these days? Dude, 39. I turned 40 here in February.

I turned 41 in March, so we're not far off. Yeah, dude. We're just a couple of 40. It's supposed to be the golden years, so I think they're going to be. You're attending a leadership course. Tell me a little bit about that. I'm really intrigued by what you're doing and what you're going back to school. Yeah, essentially. Yeah. I wouldn't call it your traditional school. So I attend a program at Harvard, which is, is pretty awesome. And anybody that's a high level business owner, I would highly recommend going and do this, especially for somebody that like you and me, Tommy, that, that a bootstrapped things and learned through experience and mentorship and everything else and less of the traditional education route.

This program is called OPM. It stands for Owner's Presence Management. And essentially, what it is, is you go to school with 165-ish entrepreneurs. I think 40 of them are billionaires in my group and everybody's successful business owners. And you're not back just studying at school. You're actually doing case study, which is pretty cool. So we basically three to four case studies every single day. You're analyzing businesses, the issues that they're in and the scenario that they're up against and the decision that they're trying to make. And then you get together with... They break it into two groups that you're attending these classes with and you're debating with very successful entrepreneurs how you would handle this particular situation. And they educate in the things that are very imperative to business,

negotiations, finance, culture, different things like that. And the professors are really the best in the world from the standpoint of one, in the education system, but two, most of them have actual real world experience. For example, our negotiations professor, he sold a private equity business for a few hundred million and then decided to retire and teach at Harvard. And so it's a pretty cool experience, but I think the coolest part of it is we lived there for three weeks a year and it's three weeks straight. It's a three-year program, three weeks a year, and you are living and eating and studying and networking with such incredible individuals, the type of individuals that never have any time.

All of a sudden they have time. And so because of that, it's such a unique experience. One of my really good buddies from the program, he's from Dubai. They do 3.6 billion a year. And we've become best friends through this program. I'm actually going to visit him for my 40th birthday and hang with him and his wife, with my wife. And so the network that this thing has exposed me to is absolutely insane. I love that, man. And I love the fact that you're by every account accomplished, but you still see an opportunity. And I always say your network is your net worth. And we're in a global economy and there's so many opportunities. I think the

United States is still leading at a lot of factors, but I take business and like, for example, in Australia, they have not applied the same principles that we did a decade ago to marketing and sales. And there's just low hanging fruit everywhere. Yes. Great Britain. I mean, it's crazy. The opportunities out there, what's your network? And the interesting thing of this exposing me to global network is like how easily these guys do business across country lines. Like here in the US, we're very border centric. Like if it's not in the US, we don't do business there, right? Where you got a guy in like Central America or over in Europe or whatnot, and they're like in like serving like 20 different countries or whatnot. And they're like in like serving like 20 different countries or whatnot. And it's just like boggles my mind that it's like so fluid for these type

of guys. And they just go and they expose opportunities. But to your point, like the marketing tactics that are being used in the U.S. aren't deployed in other places. And those that do that, I mean, dude, they blow it out of the water. They have so much success in these emerging markets. It's crazy. I know. I mean, I was just in Atlanta yesterday and we were just talking about how hard permitted it could be in counties and cities. I don't understand how people do like 10 countries because it makes sense for e-commerce and other things of that nature. But man, there's so many opportunities in this global economy. It's ridiculous.

You know, it's interesting. I see a lot coming up. Like when you talk about emerging markets and opportunities, dude, India and Africa are so ripe for explosion. And I'll tell you what, the Indians, like I love, I have so many friends from this program that are indian by native yeah and dude these guys are taking over the world right like from our program 160 people that originate from india they literally represent every country i got indian friends from australia

indian friends from florida indian friends from Dubai. And dude, these guys are hustlers and they are teaching and grinding over there. And all I can say is watch out for India over the next decade or two. They're going to take over the world. Well, you look at it and my brother-in-law spends a ton of time in India and he works for GE as a CIO. He's on my team now. And he spent a month, a year in India. And he said, once you really learn what's capable there, like some of the best programmers in the world, we're getting really big into AI and building a whole AI team. Right. And it's just so many, you look at what happened with China. There was more millionaires produced per day than there was here per year. And you've got

to identify those markets because it just hasn't happened. What's happened here is the industrialization of some of the economies and what's going on. And as they build up these markets, they need more infrastructure. Somebody's got to do it. And home service is the perfect place to be because I think we're pretty recession-proof, especially in the demand type service. And also, we're essential. We proved through COVID-19 that we would stay busy and still have a job. And I don't think anything is going to take over fixing garage doors, whether it's solar, landscaping. I see people... I think a lot of the programmers, AI is going to help facilitate that. I think even with production of videos and stuff, I just don't see home service getting where you're not going to need a guy to show up to your house.

Yeah, it is interesting. It will be the last thing that AI takes over because the only way that it takes over is through robotics. And robotics is so underdeveloped, right? Like you have to get to a certain point from the artificial intelligence before you can even begin to address the robotics aspect of like of an autonomous vehicle showing up to a home a robot rolling out being able to go and like diagnose a toilet or a garage door or get on a roof and do an install of whatever type. So yeah, I agree. Like the home services is going to be one of the most essential industries

for the next two, three decades. And you started out door to door and I think there's a real business door to door, but I know a guy named Paul Giannamore in the pest control who he handles, I think 80% of all the transactions he did Terminex. He's done the major, major things. He's out of Puerto Rico. He just told me the door to door business are not valued the same. He said a lot of people get their start

in door to door, but the customer's longevity, it's just, they're not valued the same because those customers are more than likely to change over the course of a year what i think it's a great skill to have because you go make your own demand i mean you go knock on doors and they weren't even expecting it the best sort of doors i mean i know guys that make three four hundred grand in a summer right right what is your yeah i mean that's that's the kind of money i was making a decade ago, selling alarms for three months or whatever. And it was fantastic. But to your point, it's not really the model

that is going to endure and create real enterprise value. But at the same time, I do think anybody that doesn't have at least some aspect of their business in the home services that's doing door-to-door, you're missing out on a real opportunity. There is a way to create brand, to create awareness that isn't just a straight summer sales type product where you're just slinging stuff and got the boys from Utah rolling in or whatever it may be. There is real opportunity. So when we built our business, I wanted to be completely away from door-to-door. And in fact, for the first two years, we refused to touch it. We did all internet marketing. And so we were really the pioneers

in the home solar space to do what we call digital door knocking, which was Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. It wasn't just your run-of-the-mill search terms or whatnot. And so we built that business on digital door knocking. And then eventually, we did open up an aspect. We did about 20% of our business through door-to-door because we saw it as another opportunity to be able to go... The beauty of door-to-door is you can get really, really micro-targeted. If you want to market to that house, you can go and knock that door where it's really hard to do that besides mailers. That's the only other way that you can get that direct targeted because internet marketing is a smattering of using pixels and everything else, but you can't necessarily target this specific home with this specific roof, this perfect sunshine or whatever.

So there's definitely an aspect of door-to-door that should be utilized in every home service business. Explain to me. I got a buddy that spends $40,000 a month and he does solar and energy audits and also does like, he'll do windows. His dad owns or owned in Detroit. He owned Anderson's Renewal or Renewal by Anderson. And they figured out this YouTube ad that just brings in leads. It's super high funnel, but you don't need to close a lot, but 40 grand a month on YouTube ads. It's one of those things where I look at companies like yours, like his,

and all my stuff is like, you Google broken garage door or search our name. I mean, we get a lot of demand. I don't have to really go out and find the work. Whereas solar, a lot of times windows and pest control, a lot of the business is going on and getting it. I'm just curious, what works when you're doing this digital door knocking?

Like what was some of the campaigns and what are the marketing? How do they look? getting it. I'm just curious, what works when you're doing this digital door knocking? What was some of the campaigns and what are the marketing? How do they look? Yeah. So in this world, because like you're talking about in the garage door world, people are Googling something that they need. My garage door needs repaired or whatever else. Nobody is Googling, how do I get solar put on my roof? I mean, there are, but not very many, right? Because the fallacy that's created around solar is like, well, people aren't well-educated in the solar industry. And so because of it, you have to go out and hunt people and actually get them to be interested. That's the reason why door-to-door works. You knock on somebody's door, they're not interested,

you shift to their paradigm and you sell them. And so the digital door knocking as much in the same where essentially we're creating hooks through videos that are very high level, getting somebody to at least get a free proposal to see what it would look like on the roof. Hey. And so, you know, there was all different kinds of campaigns as far as like somebody being next to a meter and saying, Hey, did you know that this thing can run backwards? This is how you make it work or whatnot. And it's just really an educational funnel. And so you target and retarget through different snippets of education, helping the consumer understand that, hey, did you know that you can create ownership rather than rent your power for the rest of your life, you know, that, that type of stuff. And so it's really helping generate the need or the interest where, like, for example, in your service, somebody needs it right now. Like their door isn't functioning. actually specializes he works with uh heavily with the finance company uh specifically a good leap and he said he goes to like what he specializes in is he started out in hvac his whole life

and he's like i take hvac guys and teach them how to do solar if they get the financing just to add that to the ticket like why not take that client and he's like the first question he asks is if i could give you a unleaded pump in your garage at a buck a gallon, would you install it? And the answer is always yes. And he said, what if I could install something that would give you, when do you pay your electric bill off? He asked me, I said, I don't think I've ever paid off my electric bill. It just is ongoing. He said, do they have to call you every time they raise the price? I said, no, they could raise it whenever they want. And I said, I understand solar, but at these rates and he goes, you can buy down points. And I think it makes sense. I'm sure you've

got a much better, this is what you do for, I mean, you've built a massive company, but it made sense to me if I'm going to stay in the home for at least 10 years or more. And I always said, can I get the money back out when I sell the house? And I know the houses sell quicker. And I know obviously the 30% IRA, Inflation Reduction Act. And they said we could get some of the air conditioning covered through that. We could get all the insulation of the home covered. And I heard a lot of, you hear companies going out of business all the time for adding those to the rebate, right? This isn't about this. This Inflation Reduction Act

is probably the best thing that ever happened for companies that are doing energy and doing auditing for energy. But what are some of the rules and how does that all work? Yeah, so like in the solar industry, you get 30% tax credit based off of the total system cost. So

if it's 50 grand, you're getting $15,000. Now, of course, that's tax credit. It's not a rebate, right? You have to have that much in taxable income in order to be able to get it back. But yeah, I mean, typically the offer, why people are so attracted to solar is two reasons. It's solar, we sell certainty, and we sell ownership. So certainty, essentially with an electric bill, they are uncertain. They have no idea when it's going to go up, how much it's going to go by. Really, they're at the mercy of the landlord with their current electric bill. And so we provide certainty. This is what your electric bill essentially is going to provide certainty. This is what your electric bill essentially is going to be every single month. We provide zero down financing,

do it for 25 years. And you're buying down principal and you're building value in the home. And then the second one is ownership. Why would you continue to rent something that you have to pay every single month? And so typically people don't realize they have a choice in that. And so that's the big appeal and providing the financing. But yeah, that's essentially the basic offer in the solar world. So these ads for these digital door knocking, they're super high funnel. And I know a company that actually is owned by Gridiron and they're in the roofing space. And they're also... They've got the leaf fitter where they do the top of the... Oh, I'm brain farting.

Because we don't have them here in Arizona. But basically, the gutters... It's the gutters is what I think about. The top of the gutters. And they're so vague with their ads. But people want to know more. And then you get them calling every day for the next month. I mean, they're so good at taking that lead and turning it into business. I mean, it's a whole different type of sale

versus someone calling out saying, I need you guys out here. Exactly. You've mastered that. I'm just curious because I want the listeners to understand what would they need to build to be able to go that high in the funnel? How do you make a lot of money just by piquing someone's curiosity? And what does that even look like on the backend? Yeah. So you, you pique somebody's curiosity and they fill out a form, right? Name, phone number, email, hopefully address of their location, right? Like that's a

little bit lower down on the funnel, but at a minimum, a name and a phone number. And then we have a team of setters that are going and calling and dialing these people. But really, the software build of the CRM, the distribution of those leads is like one of the most important aspects. Making sure that the best leads are going to the best setters and doing it in a timely manner and that those calls are being made almost immediately that the information is being filled out. And so, you know, and there's a variety of different communications, right? Like they fill it out, they get a text message, hey, somebody's going to be calling from this number and suddenly immediately it reaches out and they don't answer. You leave a voicemail or you immediately do a two-call dial because they didn't recognize

the number to begin with. And so you got to make sure you follow up. And so then you have a whole team of setters that their whole job is to get somebody on the phone, gather more information, get them further down the funnel, gather an electric bill, set some expectations, set an appointment for a close in which we can put together, we have a proposal team on the back end that is creating that whole proposal. And then that's sent over. And usually the appointment's 24 to 48 hours after that first initial contact.

And a closer gets on the phone with them or a closer in the home. We have a two-different step approach, but sits down with the homeowner, shares the proposal, gets them to commit to it, checks their credit, gets them approved for a loan right there, signs them up to have a site audit completed. And what can someone expect? I mean, I'm not talking just about solar, but whether they have a window business or if they were to set up that initial top line funnel. So someone comes in and then you got to convert it with the setter, then you got to convert it to sold. What are the conversion rates? What to expect with something like that? Yeah. I mean, every product is different, but your overall conversion to actually an install

in the solar world, if you're doing two to two and a half percent is great of total, right? And so your amount of leads that are converted, you should be converting about 20% of all of your leads to appointments. A lot of those are disqualified, right? Because you're fishing in the top end of the funnel, you got people that claim they're homeowners, but they aren't, or they got a single wide trailer, or they're calling about their RV that they want to get solar on or whatever else. So there's a lot of disqualifications, poor credit, poor income, whatever it may be. So you're doing a lot of DQing there.

But yeah, 20% to 25% of conversion to an appointment. And then from there, anywhere from 15% to 20% converted. And so two and a half to 5% overall conversion of leads is typically where the market runs in the solar industry. And so every product is different depending on ticket price, how easily accessible it is from a financial standpoint, how easily financeable it is, that type of thing. You know, I want to run something by you since you're used to doing case studies in your Harvard program. I'm just curious how you work through this. Selfishly, I'm going to give you a used case and you can tell me. So I have a guy I work with. He's the door-to-door millionaire, Lenny Gray. Very good at door-to-door. And he came to my office.

So about four years ago, I met him. He was in my office and I said, here's my plan. I want you to go door-to-door and not even sell anything. I want you to just say, we're here in your neighborhood. We did the neighbor's house, replaced their springs. Yours are about to go. We're just here to lubricate your garage door and put a sticker up. We're not here to sell you anything. Open up your garage. It takes less than two minutes. And in the expectation that some of those jobs would close is, hey, listen, we noticed you got a cable that's loose or your bottom rubber is not keeping the bugs out. Well, what we found was we get a lot of stickers and those stickers turn into money six months later. And we did this whole, we've been doing this a long time.

The problem is it's too expensive right now. I need them to sell something there. And so we offer storage, right? We offer the stuff that hangs down from the ceiling. We offer Deco hardware. We've tried different things. Never had a good enough conversion rate to pay for the program. I mean, he could hire 500 people tomorrow.

And if I could figure out a way to just get in the black, like a penny, then I could blow the program up. Really, I want the stickers, but it's got to pay for itself. I'm trying to figure out what would be the right sell in the home to where somebody could afford it.

Like, hey, listen, Chris, we're not here to sell you anything, but we are in the neighborhood next week. A lot of the neighbors have opted in because we're here Tuesday, Wednesday installing the storage. They're $797 installed. We're doing them for $397 because we're already here. There's no drive time. We got our installers out here.

So we're going to test different things, but I just need the program to just break even or make a little bit of money. And I'm wondering what am I missing? I mean, what is the program costing you? Like you're sending these guys, are you paying them like for every door? Are you paying them by the hour? I'm paying them on conversion.

When they get it, that sticker put in, they're making about $10, right? So if they get 15 stickers, they're making $150 a day. So all I would need to cover is that $150. And on the storage, we basically figured out a way

to get them at really, really amazing rates, better than anybody in the United States. So there is margin there. It's just coming up with the demand that people are like, yeah, that's cool.

I think I want that. Because typically, if you're not got someone's door, they're not like, my garage is working there. It's just coming up with the demand that people are like, yeah, that's cool. I think I want that. Because typically, if you're not got someone's door, they're not like, my garage is working fine. I don't really need anything right now. Right. But if there's something's cool, and they're educated, and they say, you know, the storage would actually make sense because I could clean up all the stuff and Christmas stuff. And we're going into the storage season right now. So I'm just curious, what would you do? I love any offer that replaces or saves something that people already have money out of pocket for, right? Like an energy obviously is the biggest one. So solar is fantastic for that reason.

But at the same time, if you're trying to get volume, you're not going to get a ton of volume with solar, right? A lot of people have been pitched on solar and those types of things. There's a variety of different products that reduce energy consumption that you could make a lot of money back on, right? And so there's a product that average ticket price on it is about 500 bucks. You go and you service an HVAC. Anybody could do it. One of these door-to-door guys could do it. It takes about 10 to 15 minutes. And it's a lubricant that's put into an HVAC system that reduces their energy consumption on the HVAC anywhere from 5% to 10%. And so something like that, where the cost, your COGS on that is anywhere from 150 to 200 bucks and you're selling it for

500, you're going to be recouping. And it's a very easy decision for these type of people, right? Especially if you offered some sort of payment plan on it, right? Like if you came in and said, you know, Hey, we'll finance this to you over the next 12 months or whatever, 50 bucks a month for the next 12 months. Now, what you have is a product you're making $300 on. But more importantly, it's covering all your sticker costs to get in the door. I like that. I think one of my buddies did ads on Facebook for HVAC. And he sold the company for like $10 million. And he said, our number one response was between 5 and 10 PM. And it was financing for the HVAC unit.

It was literally payment starting as low as $39 for a five ton unit. And it comes with a hell of a warranty plus maintenance. And it just murdered it. And he goes, finance offers work the best. And getting them at the right time when they're home and contacting them that night, getting into the message with them and actually gathering the information. It's something I'm so interested about because I'm like, man, if I figured out you guys are so hungry, you create your own demand. You guys have figured out a way with no demand to go out there and create your own luck.

We've always been very fortunate that we get 18,000 jobs a month. But if I figured that side out, it's another animal. Dude, we need to spend longer than just a podcast and let's go take over the world, baby. I know. I know. I love LCO. I love LSA. I love all the aspects of incoming leads. If I mastered outbound, it would be just unstoppable. You literally have gone through, you said your company, you lost everything. And I think a lot of people, when they go into business, they say, I'm starting a business to get back my time, spend more time with my relationships, but it never goes that way. And a lot of people, I just had an event and I said, raise your hand if you want to exit in the next five years. And 40% of the hands went up.

And I go, what did you guys start a business for? Because in my experience, and I don't know what you feel about this, but you should always be planning on an exit. That's when it changes your family tree forever. And that's really what you should build a business for, build to sell. I'm not saying you have to sell, but if you've got a 10-year target, I mean, I could say that if you're in your early 20s, maybe, but so you're going to grind for the next 10 years, hoping that maybe you could do an exit. In this economy, in this evolution of technology and AI, things are changing. I think you should have a five-year plan or less.

Tell me a little bit about your goals when you first started. I guess life kind of hit you hard in the face and you learned a lot from it. Yeah. So I'm a big believer in building to exit because a business, if built right, is able to be exited at any point, right? So clean books, clean organization, clean culture, clean processes. You understand this. I mean, you're a big SOP guy or whatnot. And that's essentially what creates enterprise value. And so my very first business that I started at the age of 24, sure, I wanted to exit, but I was stupid. I didn't know anything when I

started my very first business. I literally knew nothing. All I knew was how to sell a product, and I thought I could do it better than the guy I was working for. And so because of that, and I was just overly confident that my skills and my ability to learn would pull me through. And so that's where I started. So that first business, I had no idea what I was doing, no idea, no real plan or whatnot. But after that business failed, I went and I started several different businesses, just kind of figuring out what would work next. And initially when I did those, I was very small thinking. It was like just doing things to make money. I was scared of growth, scared of debt, scared of everything that had led to my demise previously. And so because of that, I played really small. But then what I did is I actually went back to work for three other companies over a period, four and a half years. And I went back as an employee with the specific reason to become more educated and to study

these CEOs of high growth, high operating businesses. And so I knew that the next business I was going to start was going to be fantastic, but I needed the education. And I wasn't going to go back to school for it. I wasn't going to go into like, I was going to go and make a crap ton of money working for other people while studying them. And so that's, that's what I did for three years. And over those three years, I experienced two different IPOs, you know, which was a fantastic experience. In fact, I was on wall street for one of those on the day that we had the initial public offering. Really cool experience. Helped a company grow to 28 locations in two years. Did some really cool things. But the whole time, instead of when the CEO or whatnot was coming out and saying,

hey, we're going to do this, I wasn't asking, why is he doing that to me? I was asking, why is he doing this for him? What is his reasoning behind this? And so just studying culture, studying processes and everything. And so when I started my business in 2017 out of my garage, it was very much by design and not by default. Every single move was calculated from the way that we were marketing to the money that we chose to spend. We operated out of my garage for two and a half years. My garage is a little bit bigger than most, 3,500 square feet shop. But that was our headquarters because I knew that money didn't need to be invested in that. But to the outside, we needed to look like a billion-dollar business,

online marketing, wrapped vehicles, gift boxes to the customer, everything like that. We looked creme de la creme. And the culture that we were creating was very much on purpose, like culture of transparency, culture of trust, with aligned core values and mission statements and direction of the business. So day one, I knew that in five years, we wanted to have 500 employees and we were going to be doing $100 million in revenue. And this is how it was going to look and X, Y, and Z. That was the roadmap. And so started that very much on purpose. And so from the beginning, we had clean books, we had clean processes. We were never perfect, but to your point, we knew we were going to be exiting and we told people about it like,

hey, this is the game plan. We're going to build this business. We're going to bring on a private equity partner and we're going to build even more. And then we're either going to sell to a strategic partner or do an IPO. And we were preaching that day one in the garage when we got like six people in there and people are sweating over keyboards because the AC isn't working and everything else. And so just really painting that vision and direction and doing it by design. What do you think most businesses are missing? I think a lot of them are missing their brand. They call it their last name plus gutters or landscaping. I think a lot of them never chose to be branded correctly. And a lot of them never set out with a mission or vision of where they're going. And they just said, I'm a good worker.

I think you're absolutely right. SOPs, picking the right CRM, training and recruiting, brand, the culture. But where do most people miss? I would say that most people miss in wanting the glory of being a business owner rather than building enterprise value. And this is what I mean. Most business owners will actually rob the business to fulfill their own ego, to be able to pound their chest to their friends and family and say, look, look at me, Mr. Business owner, nice watch, nice cars, nice house. And they're stripping their business of the dollars that should be reinvested into actually scaling their business and building real long-term value

that can be exited. But because people don't have that vision, they're not trying to build enterprise value. They just think, well, I made all this profit. I deserve this. I need to strip it from the company and look good to all my friends and family and people that don't even know who I am. And so I would say that is probably the number one downfall of business owners. Yeah. And I think that typically in a husband and wife situation, they go, we've foregone five years of our life. We deserve that second house. We deserve the cars we want. And if they would just reinvest it for another three, it would compound to be 500% of what it is today. And enterprise value, when I learned, I don't know, five years ago, how arbitrage works,

I was like, this can't be legal. Wait, you can buy it for this multiple and the day you buy it, it's worth 4X. How is that even fair? And then I realized it is legal. It's like, I thought Pablo Escobar had a lot of stuff worked out, but if he knew about this, like back in the day,

like, wait a minute. And it's crazy that people still say, oh yeah. And then a lot of people tell me this, Chris, I want to do what you did. I want to get to a hundred million or more. And I asked them why. I think you got to start with the end in mind. What do you want your life to look like? What do you want your kid's life to look like? What do you want to do for your family? And people don't understand this, but when you sell your business and make millions and millions of dollars, you just sign a non-compete in that market. You could go start the same business somewhere else, but now you got options. Now, opportunities will find you that are better than what you're at today once you have that $4 or $5 million in the bank. And I always ask, why do you want to go to

$100 million? You got this eight-year plan. and I'm not trying to squash dreams, but I'm saying there's no purpose for what your life wants to look like. You don't need 250 million. You actually bought a plane. I think this is a great story. Do you mind sharing that? Because people are like, when are you going to buy your plane? And after talking to you, I'm like, we'll see. I mean, it's in the future, but. Yeah. So I bought a jet at the end of 2021, paid for it cash. It was like 7 million bucks and it was awesome. It was cool. Like had it. And there's a lot of things that I really loved about it. Like the way it made me feel like the convenience, it was literally a time machine when it worked, but man, at the end of the day, I never really fully appreciated it. And it was a pain in the butt to have.

In my mind, I always just imagined that that's what I wanted. I wanted the jet. But the reality is 20% to 25% of the time I go to use it, it's got issues. Some light is on and the FAA is going to ground it and won't let you take off or whatever else. And there's no local flights that I can even get to the place that I want to get. And like, it just ends up being like the biggest pain in the butt. And eventually I get, so we have it for about a year and a half. So I had it until, was it February or March of this year? And I got an

unsolicited offer for a million bucks more than what we paid for it. And I was like, dude, I'm going to get a million dollars more. And this is just a big pain in my side. Yes, please take it from me. And so we ended up selling the jet. And although it was cool, I quickly realized that I can go and get a jet. Well, if I'm going to get another jet, I'm not going to go and spend what I did. Literally, as reliable of jet, I can go and pick up for $500,000 to $600,000 and same operating costs and everything like that. I don't know. There's just so much headache. And to your point of knowing what you want, I think most of us have goals that society has set for us, not that we've actually set for ourselves. Yeah, that's pretty profound. You know, I lived in

a apartment a thousand square feet for four years, even though I owned a lot of houses, it was close to work. My technicians stayed there to train. And I kind of missed the days that I could just hop in the truck three minutes away was the office. And I bought a big house and I'm building the big house in Idaho, but I kind of like being at a place where I can have family and friends deep in relationships. And, you know, I was listening to a podcast the other day, the guy's like, I sold my $5 million house. He's like, I always had people there, shit getting worked on. Something was leaking. It was like the maintenance guy was there. And then he had a full-time cleaner. And I'm like, it's kind of what I want now.

But it doesn't necessarily bring me happiness. It just creates opportunities. And I'm actually working with Dan Martell on some stuff. And he said, I want you to write 30 truths about your life that are inevitable in the next three years. And I want you to be specific as possible. If you want to be the best speaker, who are the top three you want to be in the arena with? If you want to do this, if you want this, what color car do you want?

What color does really manifest into detail what you want? And it was tough for me. I had to sit in a dark room and really meditate. And I kept coming up with more and more on specifically what individuals in my life and what I wanted to look like. And it's tough because a guy like me and you, we don't really just relax for a month and fish. And I don't go golfing three days a week. I see that in the future. I mean, but what do you think we need to do to figure out when's the right time to sell? What are the indicators? How do you come up with that plan?

Yeah, for me, a lot of mentors told me over the years, when you have the first opportunity to sell, you take it. Now, you don't take all your chips off the table, but you take an opportunity to get some cash. Very few people will ever have an opportunity to take seven, eight, nine figures off the table, right? Like there'll be several people that build seven and eight figure businesses, but actually to take in a one event type of transaction, that amount of cash that can be deployed in other type of

assets and investments and really diversification that's going to set you, your family, and anybody else up forever. I say, once you're hitting that $3, $4, $5 million in EBITDA on an annual basis, you really should start considering taking some sort of chips off the table. Delevering an opportunity to be able to, one, continue in the business, but to not have everything at risk a hundred percent on what you were building. I mean, that's, that's my advice. You know, there's a lot of other theories on that. They like, Hey, all your eggs should be in one basket and you should just go super deep. But man, like if you have an opportunity as a home service provider to build something, that's that fantastic. For me, when I

stepped down in the business our previous year, we had done $36 million in EBITDA. And so mine was much further past what I'm recommending. But there's incredible opportunity out there. But to your point, none of us are ever going to fully slow down. So it's like, how do you design the life that you want while still getting that hit from being an entrepreneur? Yeah. I tell people go all in in the beginning because everybody's got a side hustle. They're like, oh, my buddy owns a bar. So I'm finally making money. I'm going to start a bar and I'm going to become a real estate investor. And I'm going to start this side business because my customers are asking me for it, but they're never become true specialists. And I'm like, if you go all in, in the beginning,

you'll create opportunities. That bucket's so full, it could overlap into other things. Then you could hire leaders of other businesses where you're not the one. One of the things I appreciate about Dan Martell, buy back your time is he's like, dude, I didn't pick out my first dog. He's like, I bought a second house and never looked at it. He's like, I just bought a car, never seen it yet. He's like, I got people do that. He's like, it's not that important. The dog was everything I wanted in a dog. It looked great from the picture. And I said, yes. What else would I have done? He's like, so many people are control freaks. And he's like, I don't want control. He goes, he's got one of the biggest things for

his group with mentors on the programmers and software. He's like, I don't even show up to those events. He's like, if I'm there, I'm a spectator. He's like, I don't build businesses around me. I build them around a great leadership team. And I think Richard Branson and Warren Buffett and a lot of these guys that have done well have figured out you start with leaders that are going to go run that business where you're not going to be everything to everybody. But we're addicted, especially small entrepreneurs that aren't very deep into the game. We want to be that smartest guy in the room. We want to be the control freaks. We want to make the decisions. It's our way or the highway. No one does it like us. And man, when I learned that it could still get done, maybe not

100% of what I would have done, maybe 80%, but I don't have to touch it. And it's okay for people to fail as long as they get back up and they fall forward and they don't make the same mistake twice. It freed me up so much. I'm like, man, I want to be the dumbest guy in the room now as much as possible. I want to hire people that are so much smarter than me. And it's tough when you're small. And that goes back to what's the one thing guys are missing i would say that's one of them like one of the biggest ones is just like giving up the control

because like you said man like that for me like overcoming being in control being the smartest guy in the room right like allowing myself to be dumb allowing myself to give up the reins like that was the hardest lesson for me to learn as an entrepreneur, but definitely the most valuable. When you started the Founder Podcast, what are some of the biggest takeaways that you've taken out of it? Just interviewing so many amazing founders and so many business leaders. Yeah, I think one of the biggest things is that no two pathways are the same.

Because I've interviewed guys that have had nine, 10, 11 figure exits and done just remarkable things or doing remarkable things. And like, although there are similar breadcrumbs that they've left that match other things, like no two pathways are the same. Like the guy that had success at 25 and the guy that had success at 65

had completely different pathways to success. And there's so many different ways to make money. And so I would say one, don't get overly down on yourself because you are comparing yourself against somebody that has had success, right? Like, I think that's where a lot of people get as entrepreneurs is like, well, so-and-so is only 39 years old and he's already accomplished X or so-and-so, they did this and they had way success. Why is it not working for me? Because the reality is each one of us have a unique skillset that is to be offered to the world. And the goal is to find out what that is and to live your path. Now, there are principles of success. I think the rule

in success is that you're going to have to do it for a very long time. Occasionally, there's exceptions to the rule, the Mark Zuckerbergs or whatever else that started out with the intention to do it for a very long time, but that saw success right away. But those are exceptions. And too many of us base our input based off of exceptions. Why am I not losing weight faster? Why am I not having success quicker? Why is my relationship not improving immediately versus just like... And so that's what I've seen is just like those that have success are dedicated and committed to the path and they find their own way. And then on top of that, continuous learning.

Like the brightest, most excellent minds in the world are always looking and trying to learn more and they never try to act like they have it all figured out. What is your take on staying balanced, work-life balance? I see a lot of people, especially in their 20s right now, say, I want this balance. And my experience has been whatever I drive hard at. And there's seasonality in life. But for me, I needed to stay focused and focus on the one thing. And it'll actually allow me to have more freedom long-term. But a lot of people are like, man, you're a father, a husband. You're also in an exceptional program with Harvard. You're involved in a lot of things. What does that mean to you, balance? What do you think about it? So balance in time is impossible. Balance in impact is possible. And I'm a big impact driven person. So there's four focuses that I have to have every single day. You talk about having one focus. I say you actually have to hit on the four focuses every single day to have a really fulfilled life, to be quote unquote successful.

And what I always teach is you got to eat your peas daily, your P-E-A-S, physical economic associations in your spirituality. Now, the amount of time that you dedicate to each one of those is not going to be the same, but the amount of impact can be, right? I can be as impactful in 15 minutes with my children as I can be working 12 hours in whatever my economic focus is. Most of us, the reason why we don't have a balanced life is because we don't balance impact. We want to be present with our kids, but we're on our phones or we're at the gym and taking a conference call or whatever it is. So I'm a big guy. Like if I'm doing something, I'm a hundred percent in on it. And then I closed that door and then I'm a hundred

percent in on the next thing. And I make sure that I touch each four of those areas every single day. I got to do something every single day for my physical fitness, right? I gotta, I gotta work out. I gotta eat right. I gotta do these different things. And when I'm doing it, that is the one thing I'm doing. Nothing else is taken away from my impact. Like, I mean, dude, you can accomplish a lot in 20 minutes, right? Like CrossFit is, has proven that you go and do a 20 minute WOD. You can get a lot of benefit from it. Or, you know, you do a meal prep for the whole week. You know, you do that in two hours and then you're set for like the impact that you have for those five minutes for every single meal is going to be fantastic.

Or your spirituality, spending two minutes with God, five minutes with meditation, 10 minutes on scripture, whatever else. It's just like super, you're pushing for maximize the impact. And so for me, yeah, I'm way out of balance when it comes to time. There's times that I'm freaking just never home. I'm always traveling or whatever else, but I'm still making sure that I am addressing those associations with my wife, my kids, and everything else. And that they know that dad loves them, that when I'm here, I'm here, I'm communicating eye to eye. This five minutes of

catch is going to be the best five minutes of catch ever. But then dad's going to go to a conference call right after. And so, yeah, that's my thought. And I do really believe that you can have it all. I'm a father of five, been married to the same woman for 18 years. Fantastic relationship, great relationship with my God. I believe in God. I'm a big believer in Jesus Christ. That is very, very important to me. For many years, I didn't pay attention to my fitness. And it wasn't until 2016 that it finally caught up to me. And I was like, I got to get this crap in check. And I've been able to have great impact since then. And so, yeah, I do believe you can have it all. Just you can't have all the time. When I had the financial, I'll call it a partial exit.

I don't think things got easier. I needed to rebuild my life and what it looked like. A lot of it was time management, taking care of things because now I got assets I need to rebuild my life and what it looked like. A lot of it was time management, taking care of things, because now I got assets I need to protect. It's not easy. And a lot of people, the people that help you do the deal, they don't really know exactly how to set your life up. I had to meet the guys at Goldman Sachs. I had to get a CFO on my personal family.

I had to figure out the right lawyers. And I needed to work to build a new life. And this year has been harder than any other year I've had. But now I look back at this year, because this was just past end of December. So it's not even been a year. And I'm like, wow, I've got a full family office building the house in Idaho.

I got a beautiful house. I'm doing expansions too. But you've heard the phrase more money, more problems. And I think for most people it is. And I think people, it looks good on Facebook and whatnot, but are you truly happy? And I got to say, although I'm working more and I'm working harder, I really love every minute of it.

And I will say that I wouldn't have changed a thing. I had very few people, nine out of 10 say they picked the wrong partner and they got burnt. Then they go change the culture and they start cutting things. A lot of PE thinks they can the wrong partner and they got burnt. Then they go change the culture and they start cutting things. A lot of PE thinks they can cut the way to the top, right? What do you think you need to get ready to just face when you do have the financial, maybe take some chips off the table? Well, first of all, yeah, the money, if you're making good money before you exit, one amount of a chunk of money, no matter how big it is,

will not solve any problems, right? It will not solve your problems. It will solve some problems. It's not going to drastically change your life. To your point, no matter where you're at in the game, there will always be stress. There will always be problems. There will always be conniving people and everything else, no matter what. You cannot look to money as to being the ultimate savior of yourself. You've got to be that for yourself. You've got to understand what motivates me, what drives me. Because man, once you do sell that business and you got PE involved and you got a lot of people in your pockets and a lot of people that are starting to like ask for time and dedication and everything else and decisions

that are extremely difficult to make. And I mean, you understand this, but yeah, like by no means is money the end all be all. You've got to understand like what really motivates me, what really drives me, what brings me purpose, what brings me passion. Because when I stepped down as the CEO of my business earlier this year, I tried the retirement thing for about six weeks. And I can frankly say that it was the worst six weeks of my life. I had a huge identity crisis. I had anxiety and depression and just all kinds of things because I was no longer working on building and creating something. And so quickly, I snapped out of that and was like, man, I got to go and be building something else. And so I immediately launched the podcast. I immediately launched the Founder Project in which we work directly with founders to scale businesses in the home product, home

service space. We hold masterminds and we do different things like that. For me, that brings purpose. And it has literally nothing to do with the money. I make money doing it, but that is simply a byproduct. For me, it's like, I got to have something I'm passionate about, something I'm creating, something I'm growing. And ultimately, I think that's where most people get happiness in is the creation of things. And that brings me joy. So you do run these masterminds. You're out of Washington, but you got a beautiful place in Idaho. And a lot of times you'll bring, I think you said, around 20, 25 people to these. and usually they're high caliber individuals that want to grow their business. How does those masterminds, what is the goal?

Yeah. So we spend three days together. Goal number one is that we become intimate from a standpoint of like really get to know each other. One of the, as you talked about earlier, your network is your net worth. And I want to do business with people that I know, trust and love. Right. And the more money you have, the more it's not about the money. It's about like just the cool experiences and the people that you're doing it with. And so we spend, you know, of the three days we typically like, for example, we got one going on in January where we're going to be going snowmobiling for a half a day. And the sole purpose of that is to just build the relationships, build trust, build camaraderie of the group.

And then we'll spend a couple of days diving deep into each other's businesses and lives. Like what's working, what's not working? What's the number one value that you can bring to this group? What's one big ask that you have from the group? How can we help you solve this big problem in your life, in your business, whatever it may be? It's super powerful because it's an intimate group of guys that by the end will essentially cry together and are emotionally bonded. And we do a lot of cool things that get us centered. We do cold plunges and vitamin drips and breathing exercises

and different things that just really get us removed from what we're working on in our day-to-day lives, give us a 30,000-foot view so that we can come back and be impactful in business and life and family and the whole thing. And so we run these every other month and we're going to be hosting our first one out of my Hawaii property in March, which I'm super excited about. We got a two and a half acre spot with like this huge waterfall in the back. It's completely private, super cool spot. So we're going to be doing that at the beginning of March, which I'm stoked about. Where at in Hawaii? It's on the big island in Hilo.

Okay, cool. Yeah, I was just in Kona recently. Nice. So if someone wants to reach out to you, what's the best way to do that, Chris? So DM me on Instagram at Chris Lee QB, QB like quarterback, real simple. I have a team and me that responds to that. But if you actually hit me with a personal message, I'll respond. If you're not just one of those scammy people that's like, Hey, we can improve your reach. We can do... I get literally 100 of those a day. Tell me something that you've actually listened to or what you appreciate about the value that I brought to you or whatever. You bring that kind of message, I'll respond to you. And yeah, would love for anybody to come and

join and be a part of the community. And is there any books that have moved you in a big way? I mean, obviously, E-Myth, Ultimate Sales Machine and Traction. And I could go through the top 10, Win Friends and Influence People, the Bible. But is there any books that just not like the big top sellers that have really affected you in a positive way? Yes. So two books, one would probably be considered a top seller, Atomic Habits by James Clear. That's a book that I give out to anybody and everybody because it's really our small little atomic habits that change our life compounded over day in and day out. There's no real secret to success besides consistency of small habits. And so love that

book, love all the principles that are taught in that. And then one that changed my relationship and the way that I lead is a book called Leadership and Self-Deception. And it really, it was, I read it during a time when my wife and I's relationship was struggling a little bit, not from a, like a faithfulness or anything else. It was just like, it was strained, a lot of kids, young kids, different things like that. I wasn't serving her very well. And, you know, we were just kind of living our own parallel lives. And that book really shifted my paradigm and really like just how self-deceived I was as a leader, leader of my home, leader of my business. And so really opened me up to new principles of leadership. I love it. Who's the author of that one?

It's actually a group. It's called the Arbinger Group. Nice. I love it. And they also have a second book that follows up that, which is fantastic as well. So tell me real quick about your place in Idaho, because I love this story because I think I'm just South of you, the lake. Right. So first of all, for those that Tommy's referring to the lesser of the lakes up in North Idaho. So I have a place in Priest Lake, which I absolutely love. Bought it summer of 2020, right in the middle of COVID. And it has just been a phenomenal spot for us and our family. We go and we spend four or five weeks there a summer. And big white beaches,

the water is just clear and beautiful. We're right on, we're in this little Bay of the lake. The lake is 23 miles long, but we're in this Bay that's kind of away from everybody else. And it's just like little slice of heaven. We've got freaking bald Eagles flying over, over the top. We call them Eddie, Eddie the Eagle flying over. And then we do a lot of canoeing and scuba diving and boating. And just, dude, it's the coolest spot. And we also head up there in the winter. So I'm doing a mastermind up there at the end of January. And so I've got my place. We're also renting one other big cabin. So it's going to be pretty sweet. You know, my mom sent me this thing about eagles.

And they can live to be 60, 70 years old. But when they reach about 35 to 40, their beaks, they can't hunt anymore. And so what they do is they hit their beak so hard that it breaks their beak. And they got to regrow it. And they pluck all the feathers out on the top of a nest and pull every feather and they got to regrow it and they pluck all the feathers out on the top of a nest and pull every feather out so they regrow all their feathers they actually pull their talons out so they could regrow their talons and the eagles have a choice die peacefully and just die of starvation not peacefully i guess at 40 or they got to go there and pluck everything out ruin their beak rebuild. Rebuild. Rebuild from the

scratch. It's a pretty cool story. And my mom, I was going to play that at tomorrow's meeting. I got to go talk to Giuseppe. But listen, man, I like to close out with an opportunity for you to talk about anything you want. I know we hit a lot of stuff. I had a million other questions, but I just, I bounced around a lot because I want people to get to know you on different aspects. And you've got a successful business. You're doing a lot of great things. Good father, good husband, traveling, educating yourself more, networking, just really trying to serve. And I appreciate everything. And you've been jumping on the podcast. I was recently about, I don't know, four months ago on yours. Amazing opportunity, but I'll give you, I'll give you the floor to just close on however you would like to close. Yeah, man. I mean, for me, life is way more than money.

And so the number one driver for me is impacting and improving the lives of everyone around me. And that's where I get my most drive. It's, it's where I'm passionate about. It's why, you know, this next year I'm going to be spending most of the year traveling and speaking on stages simply for the, the desire to impact as many lives as possible because, and so the thing I would share with your audience is like, go and find what drives you, go and find the thing outside of money that really creates passion. And if you can really identify and identify like why God put you on this earth, you will make a crap ton of money doing it. And that's the beauty of it. I love it, Chris. Hey man, this was a pleasure. I'll do this. I love podcasting, but you're a treat to be around brother. And I really appreciate

you taking the time to do this today. Appreciate it, homie. Thanks. Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service. So if you want to learn the secrets that helped me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book.

Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.