The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - Why Should You Listen to Me? #049

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

In this episode, I’m sharing my journey from being broke to running multiple million-dollar businesses and the lessons I’ve learned along the way. I love starting businesses and have a spreadsheet of 72 of them. I’ve also done crazy things like partnering with John McAfee and donating my kidney to a stranger. Timestamps below.  Enjoy! ---Watch this on YouTube instead here: tkopod.co/p-ytAsk me a question on or off the show here: tkopod.co/p-askLearn more about me: tkopod.co/p-cjkLearn about my company: tkopod.co/p-cofFollow me on Twitter here: tkopod.co/p-xFree weekly business ideas newsletter: tkopod.co/p-nlShare this podcast: tkopod.co/p-all Scrape small business data: tkopod.co/p-os ---00:00 Introduction: Why Listen to me?00:13 My Business Ventures01:14 Personal Life and Adventures02:10 Early Entrepreneurial Spirit04:59 Mission and Life Lessons in Hungary10:02 Returning Home: Marriage and Career Beginnings16:45 First Steps in Real Estate19:59 Balancing Family and Career21:47 The Worst Job Ever: Midnight Shift at the Jail22:14 Entrepreneurial Beginnings: Textbook Crook and CK Properties22:31 The iPhone Repair Business Idea24:01 Launching Phone Restore: Overcoming Challenges26:34 Expanding and Selling Phone Restore27:14 The Success of LCD Cycle28:23 Diverse Ventures: Mining Syndicate and Texas Snacks32:40 Personal Challenges and Triumphs37:45 The Importance of Organ Donation39:12 Encouraging Entrepreneurship: Final Thoughts

Why should you listen to me? What makes me any different or better than all the other talking head business gurus out there? Well, let me start by giving you a bunch of bullet points, highlights from my life. And if you find me interesting, then keep watching. If not, then go watch something else. My name's Chris Kerner and I like to do crazy things. First of all, I showed up at Buckeys, a nationwide gas station that did not sell any of their products online. I bought one of everything. I launched this viral publicity stunt and I launched this online business for them. Today, I own that business and it's been four years and it's worth multi millions of dollars. I once showed up at John McAfee's house.

I knocked on his door. Yes, that crazy McAfee accused of murder. And we partnered. And we built a business together worth millions of dollars back in 2018. I started a business in another business in the crypto industry that reached $10 million of revenue within three months. I started a business called LCD cycle back in 2013 that reached $10 million in revenue in three years. I started buying RV parks in 2019 with some partners. We reached $10 million

in valuation from our RV parks within 18 months, sold it about a year later. I'm buying RV parks again today. We have about $80 million worth of our RV parks. Me, my partners and a bunch of investors. I own a small slice of that. I donated my kidney to a stranger. My wife donated her kidney to a stranger. I have four kids. We saw all 50 states in 60 days in an RV. all six of us. We call that 50 and 60. I spent my 20s obese. I was 260 pounds. I lost everything. And then I ran 14 ultramarathons in two years. And I won about four of them and set records in them as well. And I love business. I love starting businesses. I have a spreadsheet of every business I've ever started. It's about 72 and counting. Most of them either failed or were abandoned. And the rest were

successful or sold. And so if you like business, keep watching. And I'll tell you more details about some of these stories. If not, then I'll see you somewhere else. So my name's Chris Kerner, 37 years old. I live in the suburbs of Dallas-Fort Worth. I have a wife of 16 years. We got married and I was 21. She was 22 and four kids. When I was young, I lived in Logan, Utah. I lived across the street from a golf course and I was pretty broke. My parents didn't make much money. And these golf balls, I live across the street from the 18th hole and these golf balls would fly into my front yard. And one day I had the idea, huh, I should sell these. I could make some money for a yearbook or for a field trip or for some candy.

And so I did. I started gathering these golf balls. I'd go across the street. There was a ditch full of cat tails and mud and water. And I would dig for golf balls. And then I got a little more brazen. And I'd jump the chain link fence into the 18th hole at night with a flashlight. Search for golf balls in the golf course.

Then I'd go in the lakes. And I kept getting a little more bold, a little more brazen. And I would find as many golf balls as I could. I'd bring them home in like a plastic garbage bag. and I'd wash them clean in my red rider wagon. And then I would walk down the busy road. And if you look up a Park Avenue in Logan, Utah today, it is a busy road. I lived at, I think, 1099 Park Avenue.

And I would walk from my house to the clubhouse and try to sell them in the parking lot until one day, the clubhouse manager came out and cussed me out. That was the first time I'd been cussed out. So I never went back there. I don't like confrontation. So then I thought, huh, I need to put some signage out by my road because Park Avenue is a busy road. And so I got a big four by eight piece of plywood and some spray paint. And I just wrote golf balls three slash for a dollar. And I leaned it up against my mailbox.

And I would wait all summer for these golfers to pull into my driveway and hand me a few bucks for nine or ten golf balls. That was my first business. And it paid for my Schwinn bicycle and all the candy or peaches or plums I ever wanted because I love eating fruit. That's always been my thing. And so I would get on my bike. I'd ride to the Macy's grocery store. that is now a gym, I think, and I would buy candy and fruit. And then I would wait for the bus with my friends and I would eat candy and fruit on the back

of the bus. That was my first business. I was like eight or nine years old in Logan, Utah. At 11, we moved to Florida, central Florida. My dad got a job at Kennedy Space Center. And I, that entrepreneurial gene kind of left for a while. I got interested in girls and in wrestling and in surfing and friends and hanging out. And my parents were still pretty broke, but I just didn't care about starting businesses for a while.

And so at 15 years old, I got a job at a Mexican restaurant called El Eon Cito. And it's a famous Mexican restaurant. It's still there. It's right on US 1. And I was a bus boy with my mom and my sister. All three of us worked there. I had three siblings, one brother and two sisters. And half of everyone in the family was working at this Mexican restaurant.

And that's how I made my money to go out and hang out with my friends. And so I wrestled in high school. year round. I'd go to the beach with my friends. I had a great childhood with great parents. And then at age 19, I served a mission for my church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You've probably heard of us. We used to be known as the Mormons. And we go out in white shirt and ties, had age 18 or 19 for 18 to 24 months, anywhere in the world. Maybe it's Lubbock, Texas, maybe it's Tasmania. I served in Hungary in the city of Budapest, the capital city. I was there for about half the time. And then I was in outlying cities for the other.

half of the time. And that is where I met my current best friend and business partner, Nick Uluski. He goes by co-founder's Nick on everywhere, on all the socials. And I went first to the missionary training center in Proho, Utah, and they taught me, they tried to teach me Hungarian for 12 weeks. You don't really learn a lot, though, until you actually get to the country. So after 12 weeks of learning Hungarian with 10 others that were going to Hungary, I flew to the country, and I met Nick. He was my first companion, also called my trainer. And we spent all summer, 2006, knocking doors in Buda. So Budapest is split in half by the river Danube. And the east side or the west side is called Buddha. And the east side is called Pesh. And so we were in a more affluent part of Buddha knocking doors and street contacting people

all day every day in my broken Hungarian, Nick trying to teach me. And we just became fast friends. We were companions for three months or two transfers, basically the whole summer of 2006, and then we went our separate ways. About six months later, he went home and I stayed, he went home at the end of his two years, and I stayed my whole two years and had an amazing life-changing experience. And really what that mission did for me was teach me how amazing America is. I never understood that. I never saw what was special about America because it's all that I knew. And then I went to Hungary and I would meet these amazing people that had multiple college degrees. that couldn't make more than $5 an hour.

And they didn't know how to get out of that. They didn't have opportunity. There was too much regulation. They didn't know how to make money. And they were just kind of burdened by the sins of their father, so to speak, and living in this country that used to be run by communists, not too long ago, actually. And so I came home from Hungary, and I was just ready to take on the world. I didn't know what, but when I left, I didn't know what I wanted to do for college.

But for some reason on my mission, I thought, I want to do business, internationally. I want to do international business. That's what I want to do. And so while I was on my mission, I had a very serious girlfriend that I had actually baptized into our church. And we were close. We were going to get married for sure. But six months into my mission, she got married to my friend without ever telling me. She just stopped riding me out together. And then my mom told me that her and he were hanging out a lot. And then I found out that they got married. So that was a huge blow. Big distraction on my mission. Just it was very, it was tough, honestly. And luckily, I had a, my best friend, one of my best friends in high school. Her name was

Jesse. She lived in Florida near me, and she had moved away to Alabama after a couple of years. And we didn't really stay in touch. But while I was on my mission about halfway through, she came back home and she sat next to my mom in church. And she said, how's Chris doing? And my mom said, oh, he's on a mission in Hungary. You should write him. So she said, what's his address? So she got my address from my mom. And she started writing me physical letters, believe it or not. This was 2007. And I started writing her back. And we kind of rekindled this crush slash friendship over letters in the summer of 2007.

And we wrote each other faithfully for that second year of my mission. She sent me gifts and snacks. And I happened to come home from Hungary the same week that she had spring break. It was March of 2008. And she said, hey, how about I meet you at the airport? And it's like, I was very excited, but also both of us were pretty nervous because It's a little awkward. I hadn't seen her in years. And is she totally different? Am I totally different? But we said, let's just go for it. So she drove down from Tuscalo, Alabama. She was a student in the

University of Alabama to Titusville, Florida. And then she went with my family to the Orlando airport. And there she was. And I have a picture of this moment that I'll upload here. Anyway, we hit it off quickly. We started dating the next day. We went to a church dance the day after that, we got engaged a month later to the day on her birthday. And then about three and a half months after that, we got married. We got married in the Orlando Temple for our church. So in our church, we get married. We try to get sealed for time and all eternity in these holy temples. There's only a couple hundred of them around the world. And so we have been happily married for 16 years. And she is incredible. She's my everything. And I've got a lot of sins. They've got a lot

a fault, but my marriage is just about perfect. And I can say that with full confidence. And that's because she just makes it easy. We see eye to eye on just about everything. It just makes life nice and easy. And we have trials. We've got kids that have had serious illnesses. We've moved all over the country several times. But my marriage is rock solid. And I'm grateful for her and for that. Anyway, so I came home from my mission. We got married very quickly. And when I came home from my mission, I had to report to the leadership in my local congregation. It's called a state high council. And they're 12 of them.

And I had to sit at this boardroom and basically present to them how my mission went. And it sounds a lot more intimidating that it is. They're actually very kind. And they just want to hear stories from me. And so I told stories from my mission. This was the Sunday after I came home in March of 2008. And then they said, what do you want to do with your life, Chris? What's next?

And I said, I want to do international business, whatever that means. And afterwards, one of the gentlemen pulled me aside. His name is Nate Quigley, and I look up to him to this day. And he was the CEO of a company called Live TV. And I'd never met this, man. I'd never heard of Live TV. And it was about an hour away from me in Melbourne, Florida, an hour south. And he said, Chris, I'm looking for an intern in our finance department.

Pays $10 an hour. And it's just for the summer of 2008. And I said, absolutely, sign me up. That sounds like business. And I want to do business. And so Live TV was the first company that actually enabled live television. on airplanes. That was their claim to fame. And they were owned by JetBlue. They were subsidiary of JetBlue Airlines. And so I took that job. I made $10 an hour. And I bought this

$1,500 Kawasaki motorcycle. And every single day, I would ride it down I 95 to my job. It was a 95. And I filed papers and I learned what AR accounts receivable and AP accounts payable was. And I learned general business principles. And I worked with great people. And it was a very corporate setting, but it's all that I knew. And I loved it. And I loved the environment of business. And my hours were flexible. They just wanted me to work 40 hours a week. They didn't care when. And so I would work 10 hours a day from Monday through Thursday. And then every Friday, I would still get on my bike and drive to Melbourne. But I would go to Barnes & Noble around the corner instead of to lie TV. And I was too broke to buy any business books. So I would just sit there all day and read books about real estate for dummies, startups for, dummies. Rich dad, poor dad, four hour work week. I would read all these books, but never buy them. And then I would go to Taco Bell and get three bean burritos, no onion for lunch. And I would do

that every Friday. And when I came home from my mission and I saw how incredible America was, I had this confidence that I'd never had before. Because when I was in high school, I was just like, I was just, I wasn't anything special. I was just a kid. I was doing dumb things. I had a three point something GPA. I was cheating on my tests and cheating on my quits. And cheating on my quills. is. And I took a couple AP classes that I barely scraped through. And I was just dumb. And I wasn't motivated. I had no big plans or ambitions. College, who knows. The only thing I knew was that I wanted to go on a mission. That's it. That's all I knew. And I didn't even really want to be wealthy or rich or successful. I didn't have any plans. I didn't know what I wanted to do in college.

But then when I came home from Hungary, I got rejected over 22,000 times in Hungary. And I added these up. I had a journal. And we went door knocking and street contacting almost all day, almost every day. And I got rejected tens of thousands of times. And that plus the contrast of how amazing America is compared to most of the world, how much opportunity we have. I came home from America ready, or I came home from Hungary ready to take on the world with all the confidence you would ever imagine. I had it. And so when you take that, plus all this knowledge that I acquired from Barnes and Noble, never having bought a book, just reading it in a comfy chair, I was ready to just be the biggest businessman that you have ever seen. And so that summer of 2008 was very

transformative for me. And I maintained this long term or this long distance relationship with Jesse, my wife, because she was still a student at the University of Alabama working and taking summer classes. And so we would, you know, every other week we would fly to each other. But we were trying to plan this wedding while I was working full time and learning about business. So then August 2008, 2008, August 8, 2008, I got married. We went on a quick honeymoon to the Virgin Islands, came home, put all of my stuff in a U-Haul trailer, and we got her Toyota Corolla, and we drove from Titusville, Florida, to Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Because I hadn't started college yet. I hadn't done anything but taken two community college classes before my mission and two AP classes. So I went to Tuscalo, and I broke, and I started at Shelton State Community College. college. And I just wanted to save money. So why go to Alabama first? So I did. I went to a community

college and got my associate's degree. And I wanted to start businesses. But I needed money. I needed a job first. And so we lived at this little attic apartment right off campus. And this Thai restaurant had just opened called Surin of Thailand. And I thought, I'm going to go be a server because they can make good money. So I just walked around the corner. It was like a two-minute walk. And I walked in and I met a manager named Net, N-E-T. And he's a great guy. and I'm still friends with them today. And I applied for a job and he gave it to me. And then I said, hey, can my wife get a job? Get a job?

She has experienced waiting tables. And he was basically like, calm down. We don't like spouses working together. Maybe we'll see how it goes. She was waiting tables at a steakhouse, but it wasn't going very well. They weren't very busy.

And so I started working at this Thai restaurant. And I don't like serving tables. I don't like waiting tables. I'm an introvert. I don't like talking to people. I don't like pretending to become friends with someone that I'll never see again. And I don't like it when servers do that to me. But it was a job and it paid the bills.

And I worked really, really hard. And I got the attention of Net. He liked me. So I finally convinced him to bring my wife on board. And she became a server too. And he was very cautious. And I'll never forget the first night we served together. We served a party together.

And she's a great hard worker and I'm a hard worker. And we did a great job. And that the head of the party went up to Net and said, you know what? Chris and Jesse. And I don't know if he knew that we were married or not. But he's like, they are amazing. servers. You have really great servers. And I just thought, man, we are going to get this all the time. Like, what are the chances on our first night working together? Someone would go out of their way to

compliment us. This is going to happen all the time. And I think in the three years we worked together, it might have happened two or three more times. But it was just kind of a neat, tender mercy, so to speak, that they did it on that night because from then on, Net was sold that Jesse and I were good to work together. And so we both worked at that Thai restaurant. She would walk to class at the University of Alabama, and I would drive to class at Shelton State. They had two different colleges. And then I eventually applied to be a student at University of Alabama, and I got in, and we have hit this turning point because we wanted to buy a house. So my timeline's a little off here, but seven months after we got married, we had been looking for a house. Now, this was 2008 into 2009.

The housing market was a mess. Alabama was more immune than other states because it really never appreciated a lot. So there wasn't much to crash. But nonetheless, people weren't buying houses. And we wanted to buy a house as two broke college students with student loans waiting tables at 2.13 an hour per tip, plus tips. We found this lady named Ginger Pennington, and she was a loan officer. And I don't know how. I don't know how, but we made it work. We took out a loan. It was not an FHA loan. It was a conventional loan, three and a half percent down. We found a $90,000 house about seven minutes from campus. It was 60 years old, three bedroom, one bath.

It had been listed for six months. And I just wanted to own real estate. That's all I wanted to do. It'd been listed for six months. And we called the realtor that was listing it for sale, which now I know you shouldn't do. They're representing both parties. And I said, hey, I want to buy this house.

And she said, okay, well, and she learned that I was young and impressionable and dumb. And so she's like, well, you know what? The sellers just won't. They just, they won't take a price reduction. So I'm sorry. And I was like, that's okay. We'll buy it anyway, idiot.

It'd been on the market for six months. So I paid full price, $90,000. And we moved in. We broke our lease. We gave our lease to some friends. We were paying $500 a month for that attic apartment on campus. And our mortgage was $541 per month. So we thought, wow, that's an upgrade.

We've got a carport, a driveway. We got neighbors, three bedrooms in a bath. We are living in the high life. We had a great day. And this was the American dream. And so then in this time, President Obama was giving $8,000 tax credits to people that bought their first home, first time home buyer tax credit. And it was literally an $8,000 check that you got in the mail after buying.

And that was a big reason that we bought, believe it or not. And so about seven, eight months later, after chasing down the government, we got an $8,000 check. And we both agreed, let's put this into a rental property. And so we found a rental property five minutes away in a rough part of town. It was a four-bedroom two bath. And we found it from one of the gentlemen that we waited tables on regularly. His name was Sam. He became a great friend.

He sold us this house for about, it was like $53,000. And it was in a rough part of it down once again. And we were now rental property owners. And we never had a problem renting it out. I think we rented it for $900 a month, which is not a bad return for a $53,000 house. And we rented it to all walks of life. I remember one time we rented it to a Hispanic, family that was in town for landscaping. And one day I went to check on them because they hadn't

been responding or paying their bills. And there were like 14 air mattresses in the house and candles everywhere because they had stopped paying their electric bill and they couldn't see. So there were a lot of people living in that house. And it was really a wake-up call as to what being a landlord is like. So that was a great learning experience. It was also very tough. I remember my wife had to retile the bathroom once and she did not the best job, but better than I would have done just watching some YouTube videos. And so that was our second house after only being married for a year. And then my wife got pregnant with my what is now my oldest son. And we didn't have any health insurance. We didn't have any money. I mean, we got pregnant on purpose. We wanted to

get pregnant, but we didn't have a plan. And I was only 22 when she was pregnant. And then I was 23 when he was born. And so I had to get a job. And I had heard that the county jail was hiring. And so I went and applied for a job at the Tuscaloosa County Jail. and talk about a miserable job. I got it. It was like $14 an hour, which in 2009 or 10 was amazing. And I had full benefits, health care and all that time. But at the same time, I had also applied for a full ride scholarship to be on the Alabama speech and forensics team. Now, believe it or not, Alabama at the time had like a top 10 program for public speaking. They had a traveling public speaking team where you would go and compete against other state schools. And it was a really good team. And I, I had experienced speaking in my church and on my mission. And so I'll never forget, I had to go apply by giving a public speech to the current team and the advisor for the team. And I gave it on investing in stocks in the stock market.

And I got in. And it was a full ride four year, all expenses paid to school. And I got this at the same time I got that job in the jail. And this was a big turning point in my life because I had to decide, do I chase this dream and get this scholarship that has a real monetary. benefit and probably an amazing experience. I was going to be gone a lot. I was going to be traveling and competing. Or do I take this horrible job in the jail that will provide for my family and provide insurance for my child? I couldn't decide. So being a man of faith, I prayed about it.

And I felt strongly that I needed to take the job in the jail. And so I never took that scholarship. I took the job in the jail. And I don't regret it. It was quite the learning experience working in the jail, although it was absolutely terrible. It was the worst job I've ever had. It was the midnight shift, 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. 3 to 4 days a week. And I was a guard. I would go guard the inmates and serve food and take fingerprints and mugshots. And it was absolutely terrible. And I had it for exactly nine months, just long enough to have insurance for when my son was born. But I'm glad I did. And I have some crazy stories from that. So we had my first son. And I started some businesses during this time. I started a business called textbook crook and I had my rental house.

That was CK properties and textbook crook was a marketplace for students to buy and sell textbooks to each other. And I had all kinds of little businesses at the time. But one day, I was on campus and I saw a sign that said, I'll fix your iPhone, $60. And I didn't know what an iPhone was. And I had a dumb phone. It was a Palm Prio or something with a physical keyboard. It was bright red.

And then a day after that, I was in a group doing group work at Alabama and one of the students said, I have a broken iPhone in my drawer if anyone wants it. And I said, I want it. You know, growing up broke, I'll always take free stuff. So he gave me this broken iPhone. I didn't even turn on. I went back to that flyer. And I said, hey, can you fix my iPhone? He said, come to my dorm room. So I did. And he had this little LCD screen. And I watched him fix it. He had a suction cup and a little, he had a suction cup and LCD screen and a screwdriver. That's it. And I just peppered him with questions, just like I do today with business owners. And I said, where'd you get the LCD screen?

How long does it take? Where'd you learn how to do this? I got it from eBay. It's $15. I'm like, well, I'm paying you 60. Wow, okay. I got it from eBay, learned on YouTube. And I just had this light bulb moment where I can do this.

I can do this business. So right around the same time, I read this article about this business called iPhone MD. And they were in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. They were LSU students. And they started a physical retail iPhone repair store. And there was a line out the door every day. And they were bragging to the media about it. And they were making,

$20,000 a month and they were planning their second location on airport road and Apple tried to sue them because they used iPhone and their business names. They had to change their name to my phone MD. I was just like, man, if these guys can do it, I can do it. This will be my first real business. And so I started doing research and I looked up locations and I found a retail store right next to a subway and a McDonald's on 15th Street in Tuscaloosa, 15th Street and McFarland, which is like the busiest intersection in the county. Tuscaloosa County. And I signed a personal guarantee on a five-year lease, 505 East 15th Street suite C. And it was $2,300 a month. And I had no money to my name. And the suite had been vacant ever since the building was built for years. No one had taken it. And my commercial real estate agent was

like, oh, you got to sign a five-year lease. That's just what they're going to have to sign a personal guarantee. Looking back, it's like, no, this place has been vacant for years. I, I didn't have to do anything. I could have done a six-month lease with an option to terminate. But I didn't know any better. And so I started business. And I'll never forget, I went to the small business development center. And I wanted to get some advice on my business plan. And I talked to this boomer that owned a home inspection business.

And I was so excited about this business. And I told them about the guys in Louisiana. I told them about the iPhone. They're making millions of them. And it's going to be the next big thing. And this guy just laughed me out of the room. And he said, this is a stupid idea. This is dumb.

He's like, that rent is too expensive. You need to open up in the ghetto. where it's $500 a month instead of $2,300. And I was like, yeah, but they put bars on the window. They put bars on the windows there. Like, who's going to go there to get their eye? Like, what sorority girl is going to go get her iPhone fixed in the ghetto? It's like, no, no, it's too risky.

So I left there so angry at this man, so fired up. And that taught me a lesson that I still use to this day. And that's if the haters know more about the industry or as much as you do, then listen to them. Take their advice to heart. If they don't, then just let it be a chip on your shoulder and ignore them. let it propel you forward. So I opened this business, phone restore, and it was very slow. And my first customer was my entrepreneurship, a professor. And I was very grateful for him. Anthony Hood, Dr. Hood. I still appreciate him today. And he brought me his wife's iPhone. They paid 60 bucks.

And that was my only sale that day. The next day I had no sales. And the first month was just slow. I was barely covering my bills. If so, I don't even remember. And then one day I went to the mayor's office. I just knocked on his door and said, Walt Maddox. I said, Walt, will you host my grand opening. Will you come to a grand opening? I'm a student and I really lean on that hard. I want to have a grand opening and he did. And then I emailed the Tuscaloosa News and the crimson white, which was the newspaper on campus. And I had this big grand opening. And from then on, things were different. And I had a business. And I could tell you all kinds of stories about that business, but I won't do to time. But I ended up opening four locations over the next 18 months.

One in Birmingham, two in Huntsville, Alabama. And then that one in Tuscaloosa. And we got taken out by a tornado. April 27th, 2011, a swath of tornadoes came through the southeast. Hundreds of people died. 50 of them were in Tuscaloosa, and it went right over our store, and we couldn't pay the bills. We put another four by eight plywood sign with spray paint out, just like I was a nine-year-old in Logan, Utah again, said, you know, iPhones, we'll fix your iPhone. And we made it work. It was right before the summer, so there were no students. It was a tough time. We just opened our second store. But somehow we made it work and I ended up selling that business two months, two years later. And I started a company called LCD cycle. And LCD cycle was a, so phone restore got to six figures in revenue. It

ended up getting, I sold two thirds of it to some partners. I kept a third. It ended up getting to seven figures in revenue. And then we sold it for about a million bucks. And that was nice. I got an exit in my 20s. And the day after selling it, the first time I sold it, I started a company called LCD cycle and we bought and recycled iPhones, iPhone screens, and we would send them to China. And that's a whole story in and of itself, but LCD cycle grew like gangbusters. We did 2.1 million our first year, 4.8 our second, 9.6 our third. And then year four, we kind of started to stagnate. We got to eight figures in revenue, but then we started to stagnate because the market got a lot more saturated. And I wasn't paying as much attention to it as I should have been, honestly.

But that ended up being a really good business. It paid me millions of dollars that helped build this house that I'm sitting in today, our dream house on a few acres in a great school district. And then we ended up selling it year seven or eight. That was LCD cycle. And then all along the way, I've been starting all kinds of other businesses. I started a company called Mining Syndicate that's still around today. It's been three and a half years.

And we did $10 million in sales our first three months, profitably, bootstrapped. So that's an eight-figure business. I started a company called Texas Snack. and we're the unofficial exclusive, quote, exclusive seller of all Bucky's products worldwide. And so Buckees is a popular gas station chain that originated in Texas. They have about 55 locations, but they're a multi-billion dollar company, and they don't sell online. And so we did that for them. And I kind of growth hacked my way.

I kind of forced my way in there to sell all their stuff online. And it's a good, it's a good seven-figure business today. And my partner Kirk runs it and does a great job. I own another business or we started another business with my partner, Kirk, called SendEats. They got to seven figures in revenue. And then we ended up firing all of our customers. Send Eats was a third party logistics business for food brands, which is a fancy way of saying, if you sold food on the internet, we managed all the logistics for you.

That was a really, really tough business. It was profitable, but not very profitable. Single digit margins. Really, really tough to make work. So we ended up basically shutting it down, firing our customers and going all in on Texas. snacks, the Bucky's business, because that is a profitable business. It's hard, but we've cracked the nut. We figured it out. The hardest part is behind us. And we grow about 30% year over year. So that's a good business. I've started over 70 businesses. And I have some other podcast and

YouTube videos documenting that. It's going to be like a four or five part series and I've done two or three of them. But I've started a lot of businesses, the period, end of story. And I'm always hopping from business to business. And I believe in focus. Focus is important. But that's not what I've done. And so that's given me a unique advantage of having seen lots and lots of industries in lots of different lights. And I'm able to apply different learnings and marketing methods across these industries. When it comes to business, I like leadership. I don't really like management. I love marketing. I just love it. I love taking old school marketing methods with new school businesses or new school marketing methods on old school businesses. My dream, my retirement, the thing I do

every day that I love the most is running marketing tests, validating business ideas, testing, testing, testing. Maybe it's a Facebook ad. Maybe it's flyers on cars. Maybe it's ringless voicemelter drops or cold calls or texts or cold emails or going door to door and asking questions, market research, getting the first dollar in the door, zero to one over and over and over and over. that is what I love. And so today, me and my partner, Nick, the trainer for my mission, we own a company called Co Founders. And Co Founders owns about six businesses. We have a software business, a tree trimming business, an RV park, mining syndicate, Texas snacks, and then basically our content business. I always forget some of our businesses. Some of those are profitable. Some of them

are not. Some of them require a lot of handholding. Some of them do not. Furthermore, I have other partners in a private equity real estate fund called Blue Metric. We buy one to two large RV parks and campgrounds every month alongside investors. And so I help source those parks. I help market those parks and I helped raise money for those parks. In 2019, I started buying mobile home and RV parks with two partners. We bought over 20 mobile home and RV park between Kansas, Texas, and Georgia alongside investors. And it went well until it didn't. And it crashed landed very horribly because of a bad decision that my partner made that I will talk about in an entirely different video. Nonetheless, we were collecting $80,000 a month in rent.

We had eight figures worth of properties. We had a handful of employees. And I took that experience and I leveraged it into what I am doing today as a co-general partner in Blue metric. We are buying one to two large RV campgrounds every month. We own 21 at this point. And we have a couple thousand employees. and we're closing in on $80 million of parks under our belt. So that's what I'm doing today alongside co-founders as well.

Furthermore, I have all this content. I have a podcast, a YouTube channel, and all this where I just talk about business. I love business. I love answering business questions. I love seeing young entrepreneurs start their first business. I love helping them. Personally, I have four kids. I've done some crazy things.

I've run 15 ultramarathons. I spent all of my 20s at 260 pounds. I was just fat. And then one day on our anniversary, our 10th anniversary in Hawaii, I looked in the mirror and I just said, what happened, Chris? Like, what are you doing? You're 260 pounds. My wife, bless her heart, never said a word to me about it, never complained, never told me

I should watch what I eat. It was just myself. I just saw myself in the mirror or in pictures and said, you're done. You're done with this. And so I went on keto for five months, strict keto. I went from 260 pounds to 200 pounds. That was five years ago, five and a half years ago. And I've been 200 pounds ever since.

Once I lost the weight, I started running like Forrest Gump. I'd never run before. I'd only wrestled in high school. And I thought, I want my first race to be a marathon. And so three months after I started running, I ran a marathon. Then after that, I learned what ultra marathons were. I learned about David Gagins. And a month after my first marathon, I ran an ultramarathon.

And then I was hooked. I was addicted. You can tell him kind of all or nothing. I have an addictive personality. And so I started running ultras. First, 34-mileer, then a 50-mile, then 100-mileer, than 140 mile there. And I've broken some fastest known times on some trails. I'm not skinny. I'm 200 pounds, 6.3. I'm built more like a tight end than anything. But I've got a good endurance gene,

and I can just keep going. And I just keep eating food and keep running over and over and over. So I really love endurance events. I love doing 100 to 300 mile bike rides. I love pushing my body to the limit and doing hard things. I have four wonderful children. They're all two years apart to the month. believe it or not, three boys and a girl. My second oldest is a girl. And at age three, she was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension, which is a rare and terminal lung disease. It's a disease where the arteries in your lungs are too narrow. They're too muscular. And so your heart has to pump overtime 24-7 to get the blood through. And so her resting heart rate, her whole childhood would be in the 120s to 140s resting. And so her lips would frequently be purple. She

couldn't really climb stairs without getting out of breath. She couldn't play sports. She couldn't run around. And it was really sad. She had to literally carry a metal oxygen tank for a while, like you see old people carry. Eventually, she got an electronic oxygen concentrator. And life was tough. We put her in studies in Denver. We had to fly to Denver every month, and that didn't work. We, you know, we tried experimental drugs and nothing really worked. And at the end of the day, the doctor said, this isn't, she's got a year to live. We've got to, We've got to do a double lung transplant. And so with about two weeks notice, we, in the December of 2021, we had to move from Dallas to Houston.

Houston has the best pediatric lung transplant facility in the country. So we did. We put this house that I'm sitting in on Airbnb. We couldn't rent it out on short notice. And we needed someone to pay the mortgage. And so we moved to Houston. We rented a 1,600 square foot house, which is about a quarter of this size of this house, in a neighborhood.

And we lived there for six months. and six weeks after we got there, we got the call at 10 p.m. one night that said, we have lungs for your daughter. We think they look good. They're coming from Nebraska. And so we rushed to the hospital like we had planned. We had a go bag ready at any given time. We called the neighbors as we had planned. They came over, watched our other three boys, my wife and I and daughter, and we drove to the hospital, to Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. And my daughter received lungs from a boy named Sam Walman, who was an eight-year-old boy. He was the same age as my third child. And Sam woke up one day having seizures, and he never really woke up again. And his parents selflessly donated

everything they could. They saved eight different lives with his donated organs, one of them, my daughters. And so that was a trying period, but the surgery went perfectly. And the recovery has gone well. It's been two and a half years. The first year is the risky as far as rejection is concerned. We don't know what the future holds because lungs are the only transplantable organ that are constantly exposed to the outside air. And so she's at risk. Unlike a kidney or a liver, she can't be around a dust particles.

She can't be in a barn. She can't go in caves, which is not like this is a big burden to us, but her lungs are very fragile. And so the best hope for us is for a second lung transplant in, you know, two to 20 years lungs last on average eight years. Some go 15 to 20. And so we're hoping for a second lung transplant at some point in the future or some sort of medical advancement. But she's happy. She lives a very normal life. She takes a bunch of pills every day, but she no longer has that original disease that she was born with that had really no cause. It was idiopathic. We don't know what it came from.

It wasn't genetic. So she traded the disease for someone else's lungs. And that's a good tradeoff. were happy for it. And so a year, what was it, a year after what would have been Sam, Sam was her donor, what would have been Sam's ninth birthday on that same day, I donated my kidney to a stranger in honor of Sam to thank him for what he did. And then the following year, my wife this year donated her kidney to a stranger as well on the two-year anniversary of her lung transplant. Or I can't remember if it was the anniversary of her lung transplant or of Sam's death. because they were two days apart. So my wife and I have now donated both of our kidneys to strangers.

And it was an amazing experience. And we've suffered no adverse effects. There's no dietary restrictions. There's no pills we have to take. Basically, if one in every 10,000 healthy adult Americans, healthy adult Americans, if one in 10,000 donated their kidney to a stranger, then no one would die on the kidney waiting list. Whereas today, about 4,500 people die in the U.S. per year,

waiting for a kidney unnecessarily. We have two and we need one. So I could talk about that all day, but I'm a very strong proponent of organ donation, living organ donation. So that's me. I've got a lot of crazy stories. I partnered with John Mack if he wants. The Bucky story is a whole video in and of itself. I have an extreme bias for action. I have business ideas all day, every day, which is cool. It's fine. It's interesting. But I also have this quirk where I can't not do something about it. Like maybe I just tweet about it. Maybe I have to launch it that day. So I have this extreme bias fraction and all these business ideas and I just have to put them together.

So this podcast, this YouTube channel is a way for me to talk about it, right? Talk about everything I'm doing. Give you ideas because I have more than I need. So hopefully you can take an idea. You can copy me, something I'm already doing or something I'm talking about and you can start it. That's the whole purpose of this. I really want people that are stuck in dead end jobs or stuck in amazing jobs that they

hate. I want them to start a business. Some people love their job and they want to be a nine to five or that's great. I want people to be happy. But there are a lot of people, millions of people out there that would prefer to own a business. They don't want to be under the thumb of their boss. And so I'm here to help encourage and motivate them, not to sell them courses, not to talk about drop shipping, but to just talk about business experience, talk about how to market products and services

in unique ways. That's why I create this content. I want you to quit your job if you want to quit your job because I don't want people to die with regret. I've done things that I regret, but what I don't regret is checking that box, right? Like, I've started businesses that failed. I started businesses that I ended up abandoning, but at least I answered that question for myself. I started to use car business once. It was a concierge car buying service, and it was terrible. I hated it. It was successful, but I quit it as I didn't enjoy it. But you know what? If I never started that, I'd still be wondering today, what would have

happened if I started Presto cars? Would that have been a good business? I'd still be wondering. And I don't wonder anymore. So I don't want you to wonder. If you wonder what it would be like to own a business, I want you to at least check that box and check it out. See it for yourself. You might end up going back to your job and if so, great. But you might find that there's a whole world out there that you just love. That is so much better than your job. And I want to do whatever I can to help you find that. So that's why I create content on the internet. I'm driven by chips on my shoulders. I'm driven by people that have said things to me that piss me off, frankly. That drives me. I have a lot of supporters, way more supporters than I have detractors, and I love my supporters.

But the people that I think about when I'm trying to succeed are the ones that did not believe in me. So I'm grateful for them as well. Hopefully you learned something today. Hopefully you learned something about me that makes me a little different. Thank you for spending time out of your day to listen to me or watch me. And I will see you in the next episode.