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Next Level Pros
#136: Title: "I've spent over $1M on my education" - My Advice to the Youth - Chris Lee Unplugged
01:01:38
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- [00:00]
A
My teacher had a specific question for you. Cool. She wanted to know how education underneath the American school system has benefited you on your entrepreneurial journey.
- [00:09]
B
Ooh, good question. So, big fan of education, but not traditional education.
- [00:16]
A
Sorry, teacher, My buddy, he goes, I have a business idea and I'd like to get started. If he has an idea to go start and learn a business, just try something new. Where would you recommend to start or.
- [00:25]
B
Win if you're still in high school and still under mom and dad's roof? Like, that's an incredible time to be able to take risks. Your 20s should be the time that you take the most risk. So, like, the best advice I could give to any person is go and fail as much as possible.
- [00:47]
A
Today. I have someone quite special on this interview. Not someone you know, like your friends or your parents, like everyone else is doing. I have someone quite a little bit more important, at least in my eyes. Today I'll have Chris Lee on our interview. He's a family man, businessman, man of God, and in my eyes, a very, very successful businessman. Chris, real quick, run it down for my class. What has been your past?
- [01:13]
B
My whole past.
- [01:14]
A
Your whole past in a nutshell, which.
- [01:16]
B
So I've been involved in entrepreneurship for nearly 20 years. And so, I mean there's, there's a lot that goes into my past. Started off knocking doors, very similar to you, which I think is the foundation for any, any great entrepreneur. They got to learn how to sell. And knocking doors is probably the easiest way to. Well, easiest meaning the fastest way to be able to develop up that skill. So knock doors for many years, selling different products anywhere from when I was, when I was 17. Well, actually just after my 18th birthday, I started selling Cutco. Did that in a cold calling type fashion. I served a mission for my church which required a lot of door knocking for two years. And then ever since then, been involved in different sales industries. Sold pest control soldiers, cars, sold alarm systems and automation systems and ultimately solar systems. And so all those products besides cars, I sold door to door in some facet and had a, you know, initially started out doing it to pay for college. I was doing it what was called a summer sales program. And so while I was attending Brigham Young University, I was going out three and a half more months a year, making between 60 and $100,000 over that period of time and doing pretty well for myself, but with the intention to pay for college, become a doctor. Because ever since I was young, I knew I wanted to be wealthy and I knew I wanted to help people and I felt like that being a doctor was that route. And then as I was attending school, I realized I didn't want to go to school for the rest of my life. I didn't want to wait until I was in my mid-30s to really start making money until I was outside of residency and specialization and all the different things that go with becoming a doctor. So right before I was going to take the mcat, I decided I that was no longer the route that I wanted to go. I dropped out of that program, took all the prereqs for business, college did that, got into the Marriott School of Business, which is at byu. And so I went and studied entrepreneurship and business management. And about a year into that, decided I learned everything I needed to know. And so I dropped out to start my first business at the age of 24. So started a business, scaled too fast, too quick, lost everything, filed for bankruptcy for 2.2 million, had less than $1,000 in my bank account, car repoed out on my driveway, had a pretty large organization that we ended up having to shut down. So yeah, it was learned. Learned the lesson of hard knocks the, the hard way and you know, let a lot of people down. And it was a very low professional point in my life. And during that time I had a lot of people telling me like, hey, just go back to school, you know, get a real job, quit chasing the money. And luckily I didn't listen to those people. And immediately I got right back into the same industry. I knew the decisions that I had made that were the wrong ones and brought in a good solid partner who I'd done some work with in the past. And so we started another home security business that we built up very small, wasn't very big, we just kind of micro grew it. We ended up selling that business off and then tried a bunch of different things. I've owned businesses in every type of industry. I've search engine optimization, Internet marketing. I've flipped cars, flipped houses, flipped cattle. So I've owned cows and beehives and rental units. I owned a coupon book. I've been in the medical, medical pendant industry, done international energy projects, all different kinds of things, and ultimately realized that there was a whole lot more that I needed to learn. And so eventually I went back and I went and worked for some larger corporations that were growing the way that I saw was the right way. And so I, I spent four and a half years working at three different businesses and studying the CEOs of those businesses and really locking down my theories behind business and so one of my favorite mentors, his name is Todd, he was the CEO of Vivint. And I studied a lot from him and I learned probably the most from him. We didn't have a lot of one on one conversations, but I was in the room a lot of times when decisions and directions were being made and I just saw the culture and the organization and the strategy that he was applying and I was taking a lot of notes. Where other people were there for paychecks, I was there to learn. Made a lot of money during those times. But ultimately, finally, fall of 2016, I decided to walk away. I was an executive for a business at that time, making a half a million a year. Had a company credit card that I could put anything on it. I was the VP of human capital is what it was called. I was over recruiting and developing out teams and I had what would be considered a incredible job, right? Like I could go to any steakhouse, any ballpark, any place in the country, bring in recruits, have a good time, sell them on the vision of the business, everything like that. It was, it was a great job, it was a great job. But ultimately it wasn't fulfilling me in a way that I knew that I could go and build. And I had learned everything that I needed to learn by going back to work for someone else. And so fall of 2016, I stepped away and everyone thought I was crazy because like I said, I had, I had the dream job, the perfect job when with working with somebody else and for the next year figured out what I wanted to do next. And I explored the international energy markets, did some projects there. I really spent a lot of time understanding Internet marketing and I learned Facebook ads and I took a drop shipping course where I spent some money and I was drop shipping teeth whitener and flashlights all over the world and realized that that skill set would be well applied to a much higher ticket product. And I knew the solar industry. I'd been in the solar industry since 2014, so I'd spent almost three years in that, in that industry, actually three and a half years at that point, mid 2017. And so ultimately decided to take that skill and apply it to generating leads for solar. People said they were good. So I'm like, man, we might have something to actually go and build a business off of. So fall of 2017, launched a business out of my garage, bootstrapped, which means it didn't take any outside investment, didn't have any loans or any outside capital to be able to grow the business and just bootstrapped it myself out of my garage and kept expenses extremely low and invested in all the right things. And so November 2017 is when we started marketing. December 5th we had our first solar install of 2017. So 2018 was our first real year in business. We did nearly 16 million in revenue year number two we did 32 million, then 34 million, then 89 million, then 233 million. And eventually becoming the sixth fastest growing company in the nation as recognized by Financial Times Inc. 5000 put us as number 12. That's out of any privately held company or industry in the US and it was a wild ride. We built it up to 1100 employees and eventually exited or sold the business off to private equity for nine figure deal. And I stayed on for about a year and a half running the business and then had a drastic life changing event where me and my boys were hit head on. We had a head on collision with a drunk driver which led me to kind of pondering on what I wanted to be spending my day to day doing. And so March of 2023 I stepped down as the CEO of that business. So that company was soldier on power. And then since then been involved in things that allow me a little bit more flexibility with my time to be able to spend time with my family. And so now I, I run a private equity group. I have a, I have a podcast. It's consistently ranked top 20 in the nation for business podcasts. If you go to Apple you can see it's called Next level Pros. It was initially branded as the founder podcast. We recently changed the branding. But yeah, there I interview very successful business owners and then I also do live consulting for businesses that are wanting to scale their business. And so we run that. Then I have recently we bought a flooring business that we're scaling up. I have a business that's involved with Major League Baseball coaches in which we train youth. It's called Vetted. So we give youth baseball players access to major League baseball coaches. And then I have an agency, a real estate development company and then, and then my info products in which I train businesses through, through masterminds and workshops and weekly calls and those type of things. So that's where I, that's where I find a lot of my passion now. And I, I travel around the world speaking on stages. This last week I spoke down in Las Vegas at an event that was full of mergers and acquisition professionals, people that buy and roll up businesses. So I was training them or did a 90 minute presentation from stage this last week. Down there. And so. But yeah, I. I've spoken on stages all around the world. I've spoken in Paris, you know, all. All throughout the United States. Yeah. So I love, love educating, love teaching, and recently started a. A youth mastermind here in the Tri Cities where met great people like yourself. And it's my way of giving back and sharing a lot of the knowledge that I have with the next generation so they can really build budding entrepreneurs today. Awesome.
- [13:51]
A
You do. Your highs are so high. Your lows are so low. It's incredible to see how deep you've gone and how far you've dug up after that. Dude. Bankruptcy on 2.2 million. Yep. Oh, brutal. Brutal.
- [14:05]
B
Yep.
- [14:05]
A
I. I have a lot of respect for missionaries who can go out and sell because you are selling the hardest product I can imagine. Right. I mean, you're. You're pretty much going at the door and saying you need to change the trajectory of your life.
- [14:18]
B
Right.
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A
And it seems so hard to sell. Do you think as a missionary, your cells have improved?
- [14:25]
B
So. How do you mean?
- [14:27]
A
Like, for the. Because in my eyes, that's really hard. Hard to sell, Right?
- [14:31]
B
Yep. I was a pretty good missionary.
- [14:34]
A
Good missionary, Yeah.
- [14:35]
B
I had a lot of. A lot of what you'd call success.
- [14:38]
A
Yeah.
- [14:39]
B
So, you know, I think luckily God. God gave me the. The gift of gab very early on. And. And really the gift of more than the gift of gab, I'd say the gift of boldness, I think, being able to, like, challenge somebody and get them to commit to something that will change their life and better their situation. So for me, like, any product that I've ever sold, whether it's the gospel or knives or pest control or whatnot, is stuff that I believe in. Like, one of the biggest things I tell any entrepreneur, like, if you can't get behind this product, go find a different product.
- [15:17]
A
Right.
- [15:18]
B
Like, I have to, with every bit of myself, really believe that I'm going to better somebody's life by them buying my product. And so I. I think, you know, that's something I learned very early on, that I wanted to be behind the best products, the best services. And so, like, if you look at all the things that I've sold since. Since I was little, whether it's knives or the gospel or pest control or anything, like, I have all those services and products in my home. Like, I still go to church. I have a big block of. Of Cutco knives. I have pest control services. I have home security, I have solar. Right. Like, all those things I'm I'm a big proponent of. And yeah, it's not just something that I sold, but it's something I believe in.
- [16:08]
A
Nice, Nice. You had Todd as a mentor at Vivint, CEO of Vivint. What are some lessons or information he's given you that really changed your trajectory?
- [16:18]
B
Yeah, so I think one of the biggest things was transparency. Todd, a lot of business owners, they operate in the dark, meaning that they only allow certain amount of information to go to their employees and they treat them probably like they're dumb, frankly. Where Todd, what I saw him do is he created a very transparent program. Like, if I came in as a salesperson, I knew exactly how much money the manager was making and this, that, and the other. And that didn't bother me because there was a clear path of how I could become there. And so Todd was always very, like, created clear paths in his organization. There weren't hidden pay scales.
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A
Right.
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B
He wasn't paying one guy this and somebody else in the same type of position. It was like if you wanted to get paid more, you had to do X, Y and Z. And then also anytime that the company was struggling, he was very transparent of like, hey, this is the battle that we're going against in the business. So, like, one of my favorite stories was actually before I came to work for Todd, where the crash of 08 started happening and the markets were there was not a lot of cash in the market in 2009, 2010, and in the summer sales game, you pay an upfront check and then what's called a back end check. And at the end of that sales season, Vivint didn't have enough money to pay the back end checks. And where a lot of other business owners would have gone and tried to figure out a solution to get the money or whatever else and just not even let their people know that they're in trouble. Todd chose a different path. He went to him, he went to everybody and said, look, we don't have enough money to pay you, but we are growing this business. This is the vision, the direction and everything else. He said, if you guys will sacrifice and invest your back end checks into the business, there will be an equity upside that you'll be able to benefit from. And it was like something like 90% of the sales force chose to invest. Like they could have taken the money. He was good for the money. He would figure out a way to get paid. But it was like 90% of them that took their paychecks and put it towards investing in the business. And A couple years later, Vivint sold for $2 billion. But like, that for me, was just such a testament of trusting your people, being authentic with your people, and creating transparency of what's working, what's not working. Cause the flip side, when my first business failed, I was everything but transparent, right? Like, to the outside world, we were crushing it. To my employees, we were crushing it everything else. But behind the scenes, we couldn't make payroll and everything else. And I was just scrambling and doing everything else. Then ultimately it came to an ahead where we ended up having to file bankruptcy. And it really caught a lot of people off guard because they didn't understand the struggle that the business was going through. And so I think that one lesson taught me a ton about creating culture and buy in and everything else. And so it's something that I've ultimately really strived to apply across my organizations. The other thing is, just from a pure business strategy standpoint, you don't have to pay the most to pay the most. Meaning a lot of times, people in sales, they look for the highest percentage of commission that they can make versus the total compensation that they can make. Because great organizations take money that they would have paid to the sales rep and put it into the support that allows the salesperson to go and sell and produce more, which ultimately means more money. And so it's better for a company to have big margins and be able to support the customer experience, which means the sales rep and internal customer experience, the employee, but also the end user. And so I'm a big believer behind margin. Charge a lot, pay a little bit less, create an opportunity to be able to go and grow. And there's more compensation than just a paycheck to anybody that works within the organization. You can compensate through helping them develop physically, economically with their associations and their spirituality and just really providing a pathway to help them get there. And so, like, those. Those are a lot of the lessons that I learned from Todd.
- [20:50]
A
Solid advice. Transparency is great. It's starting off, at least for me. It is a little bit difficult. Right? Very small business. Had a occasion. My window cleaners come through like, hey, do we have work all day Friday? And I'm starting to think, like, yeah, probably. Look at my schedule. No one's booked, you know, so now I'm scrambling last minute to go make some sales, get to work for them. And I see you're talking about that. It's a fine line. It is more than just a paycheck. My teacher had a specific question for you. Cool. And I mean, she went to college, right? Eight years and teacher high school. Right. She wanted to know how education underneath the American school system has benefited you on your entrepreneurial journey.
- [21:29]
B
Ooh, good question. So, big fan of education, but not traditional education. Sorry, teacher. So, no, there's definitely been some benefits. I learned a lot from different teachers. Growing Up K through 12 had a lot of really good influences, a lot of really bad influences as well. But, you know, there was definitely a level of discipline. But I think a lot of times a traditional education system gets a lot of things wrong. You know, in school they call it cheating. In real world they call it collaboration, you know, so like the school system, if I was going to go and fix the school system, I would encourage a whole lot more, what they call cheating. Right. Group projects, working on a test, finding solutions together, also utilizing the tools that are real life. Right. I was, I was told all growing up like that, it's not like you're going to be able to have a calculator in your back pocket. Yet here we are, and today's society is saying, don't use ChatGPT because it's a form of cheating. And I'm like, dude, this is the world's greatest tool and we're encouraging our students not to use it. So, you know, I think the school system is a little antiquate, antiquated, and there's a lot of room for improvement. But I love to learn and you know, college taught me how to learn. I did not need the definition of a piece of paper to say that I have now learned enough. In fact, when I dropped out of college to start my first business, I had 165 credits. You need 120 credits to graduate. So I had learned enough to graduate, but I did not have all the box checked to be able to get a diploma. And so you know, where the world would have been like, oh, just go finish and everything else. Like, no, that's stupid. Like, like if I learned everything I need to learn, like why would I go and learn things that aren't applicable to what I'm trying to do now? Since college, since 2015, I've spent over a million dollars in my personal education. There's a lot of non traditional education aspects out there. There's courses, there's masterminds, there's events, there's workshops. There's so many different ways. And so I've paid a lot of money to be in the right room, to be rubbing shoulders with a lot of great people, to network, to develop, to learn, to see what they're doing to be able to apply in their life. And it's helped me in all areas of life, physically, economic, with my associations and my spirituality. It's not just economically. And so part of that was a little bit of a non traditional education route with going to Harvard. So I'm now it's funny, I'm a college grad dropout, but I'm a Harvard alumni. So I completed a three year program at Harvard. It's called opm. It stands for Owner's President's Management in which I've spent the last three years with 165 different business owners throughout the world. In order to enter the program, one you have to apply to, you have to be doing at least 10 million in revenue and then you have to get accepted into this program. And there's a lot of people that get rejected into it. Out of the 165, probably 50 or billionaires that are part of my group, but they do something that's called case study, case study learning, which is non traditional education. Basically you, you study, it's, it's what a lot of MBA programs have started to implement. And essentially what it is is you have a 15 page case on a business that talks about their background and problems that they're going through and then you have to position yourself around these certain questions like how would you handle the situation? And then we lived together for three weeks a year out there at Harvard and with these business owners and we go to these classes and we would just argue back and forth of would, how we would solve this case. And for me that's the type of education that is really, really beneficial. It's like real practical, applicable and where I think a lot of times traditional education route just kind of misses the mark. Again I can say I learned how to learn and learned discipline in the traditional education platform, but I've learned so much more in the non traditional. But like being a learner is one of the biggest ways that I've been able to be successful. I read books on a regular basis, like I said, I pay to be in the right rooms, I'm studying podcasts, I'm doing different type of thing. If the education system is teaching you that there's a finish line, that a piece of paper is your finish line, you're doing the wrong things. You have to realize that the, if the education system is teaching you anything is that you should be a lifetime learner. And for me that's what I took from the education system. And I've been Able to apply. And that's where I would say most of my success has come from, is being constantly hungry for learning, but getting away from this, like, there's a finish line to learning mentality, which I think, unfortunately, is what's pervasive in the traditional education space.
- [27:08]
A
Yeah, yeah, totally. I had a buddy from class when I gave a quick rundown on you before I started this assignment, which is actually my final for a few classes. And my buddy, he goes, well, crap, I have a business idea and I'd like to get started. His parents are both doctors, so they've been through college, right? And they're really pushing college on him. But he's not the best performer in this traditional academic sense. And he wanted to ask you if he has an idea to go start and learn a business. Just try something new. Where do you recommend he start or when?
- [27:43]
B
So one, if you're still in high school and still under mom and dad's roof, like, that's an incredible time to be able to take risk. So your 20s should be the time that you take the most risk because that's when you're developing skill. That's when you don't have a whole lot to lose. Like, literally this is the floor and this is where you're at. Like, failure looks like this, right? Where if a lot of people, they waste their twenties working for somebody else, not developing skills, and then even their 30s or 40s, and then they finally decide to take the risk. Their 50s, they got a family, they've got a retirement account, they got a mortgage, they got all these different things. Failure looks a whole lot more detrimental at this than it does here. And so I would say take the risk if you got an idea. So I would say money isn't necessarily made in ideas and money is made in the execution, right? Like, what I did wasn't some big novel idea. Selling, installing and financing solar wasn't like there was plenty of other businesses doing out there. But what I did that was better is I executed it at a much higher level and created creativity within a traditional type product or service. And so, like, you don't need something that's like this crazy idea that's never been heard of before or whatnot. To be able to go and make money, you've just got to do something that's basic way more times and better and execute better than anybody else, right? Like, so the first thing, if you got an idea, figure out how to sell. If you can figure out how to sell, then you can sell pretty much any, any type of product. If you don't know how to sell, go work for somebody that, that has a sales platform that you'll be able to go and work through. But yeah, you know, don't, don't get ahead of yourself. Don't look at like, oh, I should be a millionaire by age 21. I think that's, that's where social media has a lot of things wrong. Like they look and they see these YouTubers or this, that or the other that have made it, or they look like they've made it, right? Where the reality is like the thing in your 20s, like I said, you got to learn how to hustle, develop skills. You have more time than money. So you, you build out things. You pay for everything with time, energy, or money, okay? When you're in your 20, you have more time and energy than you do money, okay? So you're going to spend as much time and as much energy doing as much as possible. As you get more wealthy and you get money, then you're going to have more money than you do time or energy. And so then you're going to spend more and more money to be able to get more time, to be able to get more energy. And the only way that you get more time and energy is you pay for somebody else's time. You pay for somebody else's energy, right? The wealthy buy people's time, the poor sell their time. And so initially you need to sell as much of your time and energy as possible to be able to build up, build up those skills, build up leadership, build up sales, build up any, any type of like strategy type examples. And then the best investment that you can make in early on, a lot of people like real estate, stock market, no, spend money on yourself, right? Like as you gain more and more of that resource, spend more, right? Because the better rooms I can get in, the faster it's going to cut down my time, right? A million dollars over 20 years and a million dollars over one hour. It's the same amount of money. It's just a different amount of time. And so the way, the goal that you have to look at is how do I compress time? And the way you compress time, you develop out skills and you buy and you buy other people's experience.
- [31:36]
A
Nice. Yeah. So you're, you're very big on personal education. I had a buddy actually ask me one day when I was about to leave to your mastermind. And so I was hanging out some friends beforehand and they're going, they, they went, you're about to drive 30 minutes to go sit down for an hour and listen to a dude talk. I'm like, yes, of course. Like, like a lot of people my age don't understand the value in going out and learning. And not the traditional, oh, learn about biology or psychology, stuff like that. But sitting down with something you're passionate about. For example, business, for me, and putting in it to go out there 30 minutes is not bad when I'm learning 30 grand of information, 20 grand of information in my life, if not more. I think your masterminds are great. Love what I'm learning out there. And you recommended reading a few books, right? You had to read Rich Dad, Poor dad. And then you one day are talking about the psychology of money because some other kids ask about other books. So I actually went out, bought Psychology Money. I was reading through it, very interesting book. And there's a concept in there that's brought up, and it is the concept of not knowing when to stop. It's not a problem for, you know, people who are, like me, for example, not worth millions of dollars. But I noticed it talks about people who made millions, hundreds of millions. And you're so locked in on the idea of hustling and grinding. And you love improvement. I'm sure you do, right, working on these new businesses. And there's a point where I. A lot of people climb so high, climb so high. And a lot of people tend to crash a little bit. And this book brings it into a super simple term, makes it basic. Like you climb so high and you fall in a nutshell, right? When I look at you, you got. You made $2.2 million in that $2.2 million business. You hit bankruptcy. You didn't stop there. You kept going, you kept climbing even higher. More businesses, more back to back. And here you have Soldier Power. Sold it for nine figures up there. And that is crazy. So do you get burnout?
- [33:34]
B
That's a great question. So if you are aiming for the wrong. So a lot of people that work for money, money's a hygiene factor. And by hygiene factor, I mean it's very similar to oxygen, okay? So when. When you can't breathe, when you're stuck under water or blankets or whatever else, it's the only thing you can think about, right? Like, how do I get my next breath? Right? The second you start breathing and you get plenty of air, it no longer becomes a front of the mind concept, okay? Money is the same way. And when you have enough where you can pay your bills, your mortgage, your car payment Your food, your electric bill, your insurance, whatever else, right? And even a little bit of the things that of your wants, right? It no longer is a driving factor, it's no longer a motivating factor. So really, you got to understand the difference between a hygiene factor and a motivating factor. Hygiene factors only elevate to one level, but they no longer push. Motivating factors will always push you. And so for me, my motivating factors are much more than money. Money is simply a derivative or something that is the fruit of what I love doing. And what I love doing is I love creating value, I love building teams, I love motivating, I love selling, I love having an impact in the world. And so as long as I can focus on those things that get me excited to get out of bed in the morning, money and everything else will take care of itself. And so a lot of people, they've been taught by society, like, work as hard as you can, go to school, get as good grades, get a good job, save for retirement for 40 years, 401k, those type of things. And then when you're 65, you step away and you're old and decrepit and you retire, right? That is again, a finish line approach. There's no finish line in, in life. There's no finish. Finish line mentality will always leave you disappointed. Because if you think that there's going to be this miraculous occasion once you have a million dollars in your bank account that the heavens are opening and the angels are going to come out and be like, oh, you're a millionaire, like that doesn't happen, right? And, and so you will find emptiness if you are, if you are searching for a finish line, what you have to do is you got to figure out what motivates you to keep running forever, right? And so for me, there's a couple things. One is putting God first. Second is my family. And third is building businesses around those two things. And so, because I believe that entrepreneurs are the greatest influencers of society and have the greatest impact. And the reason for that is initially, when someone comes to work for an entrepreneur or a business owner, they think they're there for a paycheck. If that entrepreneur can then mold that person to be better physically, economically, with their associations and their spirituality, they can really impact the world. Because initially, like I said, they're there for that paycheck. And so we have more power as entrepreneurs than anybody else in the world. And because of that, I very passionate about improving the world through entrepreneurship. That's my Motivating factor. Right. And my, our mission statement around here is designing lives that impact the world. And, and so like helping other people get better, that pushes way past money. And so, like, when is enough enough? There's no such thing as enough enough. I'm going to make a bunch of money, but I'm going to use that money for good. I'm going to go and I'm going to create value and give back and create charitable and philanthropical type opportunities. But like the. Again, I never think that there's a finish line with anything. Like the goal is always to level up to the next level. In fact, that's the name of my organization is Next Level. Because no matter where you're at, right. Life is about trajectory. It's happiness is based on trajectory. Where am I? Am I leveling up? If I'm plateauing or leveling down? Even if I'm worth a billion or a trillion dollars and I'm leveling down, I'm going to be dissatisfied and unhappy. Right. If my relationship is fantastic, but it's going down, I'm going to be dissatisfied and unhappy. If my spirituality is fantastic, but leveling down, I'm going to be. So it's about where am I pointed, what direction am I going? Am I pursuing the next level in everything? And that's where true, like, happiness and satisfaction comes from.
- [38:18]
A
That's great. A lot better of an answer than the David Goggins duck it out all day. Just go hard, don't worry about it. You know, like, I get that a lot. So most people watching are 16, 17, 18. They're their kids, they all have phones, they're all on Instagram, TikTok sitting there burning up hours of their day.
- [38:41]
B
Yep.
- [38:41]
A
Right. Scrolling through there and, you know, occasionally good snippets of information in there. Right. Maybe you come across someone who's actually very successful. Sure. But there is a very big mirage or misleading idea on it that you mentioned earlier, and that's that you can be or it's very easy to be successful at 21 with, you know, buy my course, do this, do that. Right. There's that community on there that is super big on get rich Quick that whole idea. And I myself have, you know, I'm guilty of scrolling on my phone, watching that and being like, I'm gonna, you know, watch a few of his videos. Right. I kind of get stuck into that.
- [39:16]
B
Yep.
- [39:17]
A
And I see it's with all of my friends. It's not just, you know, it's huge. It's a major Problem. So for those people, and you're very productive, you've done a lot of great things for those people, how do you think they can get out and go do something that limits how much of this information taken in and starting something where they can build it from like the ground up? For sure, do something great.
- [39:40]
B
So first of all, you got to make the decision that I'm going to be a producer, not a consumer, right? Like the consumer mindset of just sitting there and scrolling will kill us. You know, an education only gets you so far. Application is absolutely necessary, right? Knowledge and wisdom. The difference is applied knowledge, right? Like that's what wisdom is. And so application is absolutely necessary. And just understanding that all growth and learning and development comes the same way as a baby, you didn't start walking and running one day like you pushed up, you fell, you pushed up, you fell, you got on your knees, you fell, you got on your knees, you fell, you crawled, you fell, you crawled, you fell, you pulled yourself up, fell, pulled yourself up, fell, right? Like it's, it's this methodology of remembering that like I have to go through a lot of failure in order to be able to find any level of success. So like, the best advice I could give to any person is go and fail as much as possible. Like go figure out. And again, if you're living at home, this is the perfect time to fail, right? Like your, your safety net is pretty strong, right? Like you don't have to worry about food on the table, you don't have to be worrying about a roof over your head. But you can go out and you can fail. You can go and knock doors and get rejected. You can go and try selling a product and get rejected. You can go and try developing a product, you can get rejected and create a, a YouTube and only get three views. You can, you know, it, whatever it is, like there's a lot of ways that you can go out and fail. And so, you know, I have a 16 year old son myself and I'm just constantly just preaching at him like, dude, just fail, fail, fail. It doesn't matter, like stick to it, remember why you started, don't worry about having success. Like the success is a derivative that will come after many, many, many hours of, of implementation. And so you know, because of it he's, he's been able to find different success in certain things. And you know, he's got a YouTube channel that does pretty well. He's a spawn, he's sponsored by a product and different things like that. But like there, there's so many different ways. But you just got to be con committed to production, being a producer rather than a consumer and and like get away from the analysis paralysis, quit analyzing what you should and shouldn't do. Just do and be okay with failure.
- [42:05]
A
Yeah. Yeah. I haven't had much history or life or too many accomplishments, especially compared to this guy over here. But for me, failure is, you know, where I got started, where everything is at. And as you're living in your parents house, you know, you have a roof over your head, going out and just trying to sell something or do something new. And even you do want to go drop shipping or go down the Instagram reels path. I personally tried dropshipping myself, didn't have too much success with it. But I'll tell you what, the skills I learned from it did build my most recent business and the entire website lava skills, you know, derived from that drop shipping stuff I learned. So even if it doesn't work, I see a lot of value coming out of it. So another question for you. So those are all my school teacher class questions, all that stuff. So here's some personal questions. When I wrote one of these questions, it was election Day, the original day we had the scheduled thank you for being cool with all the rescheduling. I wanted to say I'm not too much political person, right. But I want you to sell me on Trump.
- [43:06]
B
Sell you on Trump. Easy peasy. So I am a big believer in transparency. So Trump to me is the transparent person. He's not perfect, right. He's got a lot of personal failures. In fact, everybody has a lot of personal failures. Some people are just better at covering them up than others. And I think real authentic people are better accepted because like I don't. I'm a firm believer that God uses imperfect people to do his great work. Same thing with politics, right? Like imperfect people to do the great work, to have the right policies. Politic is the same root word as policy, right. And, and for me, policies are the only things that we should be voting around with a politician and track record of them implementing similar type of things. So for me, Trump is a businessman. A lot of people talk about some of his failures. I'm like, heck yeah, dude. This guy, like he was willing, he was growing, he pushed through failures. He built an empire. Right. His previous four years as president, we saw incredible economic data. The policies that he had from an international and worldview were fantastic. There was no new wars under Trump. For me, I'm all about saving lives and improving lives and at the end of the day, you may not agree with the way that Trump goes about it, but he gets it done and gets results. And you know, when, when I, when I think about, like doing things that are for the betterment of humanity, no wars and better economic situation is right at the top of my list. And so, you know, I, and I love that he's a businessman. He's, he's worked with balancing budgets. And more Importantly, in the 2024 election, you're not electing an individual. You're not electing a Kamala or a Trump. You're actually electing a team of five to 10,000 people that are going to be a part of their team. And when you look at Trump, that's got a, both sides of the aisle approach. You got former Democrats like Elon, Elon Musk that are supporting him and going to be a part of his staff, right? Like he's going to be doing the efficiency, the government efficiency, which is like absolutely incredible and absolutely needed. We have so much fat in the, in the federal agencies and across the board that need to be trimmed down. And there's nobody better than Elon Musk. He came in and bought Twitter, cut out 80% of their labor force and didn't miss a beat. Right? Like, that is a guy that understands efficiency. There needs to be drastic cuts in the, in the government to be able to, on, like, we're taxing ourselves to death right now. Like you had like the Boston Tea Party and those type of things that took place in the 1700s. Over 2% income tax, right? Like people that were freaking out, over 2%. Today, if you live in the state of California, you're paying 51% as a top tier income tax. That's just income taxes include property tax, sales tax, Mello Roos tax, like gas tax. Like, it doesn't include any of those things. 51% federal income tax for the top income earners. And so like when, when I, when I look at it across the board, like somebody that's going to come and improve government efficiency, Fantastic. You got Tulsi Gabbard. That comes from the other side of the aisle as a Democrat. You got JFK Jr. Which comes from the other side of the aisle as a Democrat. He's, he's focused on making America healthy again. Like, we have so many health issues as a society. I mean, just go and do a quick Google search. You'll actually see that the products that exist in the U.S. same brands in the U.S. and Europe, have two completely different ingredients we're literally poisoning ourselves. And to have a guy like JFK Jr. Who's a little extreme, that's fine. I think it's going to take extremity to be able to actually course correct, make some changes. And so when I look at all those things combined like, Trump is an absolute no brainer. Obviously the rest of America agreed with me. He won the popular vote. He got 312 electoral votes compared to like 220 some that Kamala got. So, you know, the world is sick of it. The US Is sick of it. We're seeing this across the world. You got Milei down in Argentina that they call him the Trump of Argentina that's come in, they were experiencing 20 to 30% inflation a month and now he's got them down to like 1% inflation a month doing the same drastic policies and government cuts that, that Trump has. So like the world is tired of these crazy policies, these crazy government spending, the just, you know, and all, all in the is, is basically done for the better of humanity is what the, the left has, has described. But it's bull crap. Like it's not taking care of the people. Like you want better people, improve them economically, improve their lives, don't kill them, you know, and, and then we can go and we can afford better health care. And so like, that's, that's why that, that's why Trump's the man, right?
- [48:37]
A
Trump is the man. Yeah. I listen to a podcast with Lex Friedman and Trump. I don't know if you've stumbled across that, but Trump is a great negotiator, great businessman like you mentioned. And he said one thing in there, kind of caught out to me and is on the topic of war and Russia and Ukraine, he said that if he gets elected, he has a plan for mitigating the war out there, eliminating all the war, part of the problems. And I heard once again that he plans to do it before he's even in office.
- [49:03]
B
Well, I mean, if you look what's happened in the last week, just there is strength in leadership and Trump is much more scary, much more strong as a leader than Grandpa Joe or Kamala or anything else. Right? Like the world is unsure what to do with Trump and because of it, they respect him. And so you see what's happened since the election results have popped out. We already see Hamas calling for end of the war. You got Jerusalem or you got Israel and Netanyahu that's coming out and saying Trump has told him, like this thing better be done by the time I'm out. You got Putin that says, hey, I'm willing to talk. I mean, when you're talking about Russia, Ukraine, war, you know, you've got China that, that has been just screwing us on trade and everything else, that now they're like, hold on, let's have a, let's have a discussion. I mean, you got whole trains that are planning that we're planning on coming across the southern border that have turned around and gone back home. Like, I mean, so much is taking place because of strength and leadership, strength and power. And. And I think at the end of the day, the commander in chief of the. Of the United States of America has to be one of position of power and cannot be weak, right?
- [50:22]
A
Totally. Yeah. In my eyes, war is at least up near the top of my list of priorities. And Biden and Kamala, they haven't been too promising, at least from history at all.
- [50:36]
B
Well, and the sad part is they got the warmongers on their side. Right. You got the. Dick Cheney and his wife, who literally make all their money in manufacturing war materials, are promoting them. Like, I mean, it doesn't take a genius to weigh out, like, who's more in. Who's more in favor and more willing to go to war. And you know, again, there's strength and power and having a military, but then there's a completely different weakness in like going to war, surrendering $8 billion worth of our product to the enemy. Like, I mean, it's there. There's so much to be said about promoting peace. Like, blessed are the peacemakers. Like, I. I go to the great master himself, Jesus. And like, I want to be on the side of peacemaking.
- [51:22]
A
Totally. Yeah. So AI, jump on topics here. AI has been a very relevant topic recently.
- [51:30]
B
Absolutely.
- [51:30]
A
I scrolled through your podcast podcasts a little bit. So that's relevant topic for you. You've been talking about it. I have been. I myself am in computer science. That is the field I'm interested in. And machine learning. And artificial intelligence is a very reoccurring topic I am digging into. So for you, I haven't looked too much into the business side of AI, and I wanted to hear your thoughts on how AI going to affect business, how is it going to affect entrepreneurs.
- [51:54]
B
And I guess, yeah, artificial intelligence is very interesting because by default, it should make us more efficient. Right. Like being able to replace a lot of the different jobs and those type of things. Now the, the hard thing is, like, there has to be some level of governance and there's. There's not a whole Lot of policy involved with, with AI right now. And I see both sides of the coin, both the left and the right of artificial intelligence. Like, do we get to a point someday where we are so efficient with artificial intelligence and robots that we have to have a universal basic income potentially, you know, and, and you know, we're going to see a lot more mid level jobs be removed because of artificial intelligence. Now you can either run towards it and take it head on or you can run away from it. Running away from it is only going to position yourself to get destroyed by AI. What I would be doing for anybody that's, that's in the field of business, whether as an employee or as a business owner, get familiar with it as much as possible. The future I see is not a world that's ran by AI, but a world that is ran by people that use AI, Right? And so you will not lose your job to AI, you will lose your job to somebody that knows how to use AI and that person will be more and more efficient because of it. There's so many different real world applications. You can do coding, you can do copywriting, you can do marketing, you can, I mean, response and customer service and all kinds of different things that are already being utilized in the artificial intelligence world. And so like I said, rather than run from it, we should be embracing it. And in our current education system should be a very hot topic of how do we get our kids above the current curve. Because if we're not, guess what China is and you know, somebody else is going to be taking our jobs and so we've got to fight as if our lives depend on it and really get ahead of the curve.
- [54:01]
A
Yeah, AI is so heavily frowned upon in school. Teachers hate it, school hates it, you're cheating on your tests, all that. Right. And I have two teachers specifically that I think are great teachers and they are very positive on AI. They, you know, want to school learn it, they allow it in class and then Pascal school district actually blocks it on the school network, which is more fun. But I think personally, ChatGPT and these large language models, all this stuff is so beneficial. The back of my business is solid, 67% AI. It cuts out a lot of the management roles. If I were to hire someone, cuts all the management roles, a lot of marketing too, I think it's a great powerhouse. But yeah, I see a little bit of fear in the rapid growth of AI and the idea that China's gonna outrun us, they're gonna outperform us here and realistically there's a topic called AGI, artificial General Intelligence. And in a nutshell, it's basically when a model doesn't want to die, when it has a will to not want to die. Right? And that's when, theoretically, humans are at threat. The idea is, if China gets to this AGI first, then China is in the hands of all the power, and then it becomes a real big problem for you as somebody who financially, you have the problem solved. Right. What are your big fears with AI coming up?
- [55:26]
B
I mean, there's a lot of ways that we could create fear around AI, and I think there's. We got to be cautiously, you know, basically we just got to be aware of everything that's going on. At the end of the day, I think that the best thing that we can do is learn it ourselves, be willing to pivot, being willing to change. Like an unwillingness to change will make you put you in a terrible position in the new world that's coming up. As far as theorizing, what are the biggest fears that we should have? Like, I, I don't really care to do that, like, because you can go down some pretty deep rabbit holes of where it can get. I would rather understand what's going on and make pivots and changes accordingly.
- [56:12]
A
Oh, yeah. Do you wish when you started soldier.
- [56:18]
B
You know, yes or no? Like, not, not really. Because, like, every level of human or every level in history has had a higher level of efficiency, right? Like, there's Those in the 80s that were learning how to communicate electronically before the Internet really took over. And those when the Internet first started taking over, they started implementing things that other people didn't have. And so, like, it's, it's never, never like, oh, I wish I had Chad GBT back in the 1960s. It's like, no, wherever I'm at, I got to make sure I'm at the forefront of the game. And, and so today we live in the AI world, so I gotta be in the forefront world of the AI, right? Like, just understanding it, utilizing it, get my team to implement it. And so that's where I say, like, the biggest, the biggest mistake we can make in the education system is saying, like, don't, don't learn it, don't use it, don't do. Like, this is it, right? It would be like back when I was in fifth grade, when the Internet was really gaining power, for them to tell us, don't use the Internet. Internet, right? Like, this is cheating. Like, you're, you're going to, you're going to Kill yourself and stunt your growth.
- [57:27]
A
Yeah, yeah. AI. Ton of pros, ton of cons. Starting to see a new con with my friends as the critical thinking skills go down about as fast as AI is improving. Interesting observation in my eyes. So I had a question that's actually quite specific. A little more for me. And before I start, I actually do want to mention when I was in that mastermind with you, you mentioned, I'm selling convenience. I'm not selling a product, I'm not selling a service. Mainly selling convenience. When you're talking about sprinkle blowouts.
- [57:59]
B
Yep.
- [57:59]
A
My original price is $45. Then you go $75. I'm like, all right. So I actually put this to test the season's ending. I did the first two weeks at $45 and I jumped it over to 75 and then I jumped it up to 100. And I wanted to let you know that that advice you gave me was some of the most solid advice ever, at least for me. Because not just sprinkle blots, you know, profits raising, but I move that over to window cleaning and then the pressure washing side of my business and less clients is amazing when there's less liability and also when they're paying, you know, you know, 33 to 44% more, if not double the price. Amazing advice. I want to thank you for that because I have seen like don't from the math. Perfect was around 30% increase in profits with like, hey, charge more like, it's so simple. I wish I understood it earlier. But really appreciate you for putting one out there. You are a public speaker. Hi. Hi.
- [58:57]
B
How's it going?
- [58:58]
A
And you do a lot of leadership. For example, you were out, you just gave a presentation out in Vegas and you're a sales guy, right? So you're good at talking when it comes to public speaking and selling people or informing people what is the most valuable skill you have or at least you think there is when it comes to talking to people in general.
- [59:16]
B
I mean it's just sales in general, like understanding that people, I mean the sales process, which is breaking preoccupation, identifying pain and identifying needs, presenting a solution and then reassuring people that the the solution is the right move. Right. And then ultimately getting people to make a decision. Decision making is the number one skill that we have to develop for ourselves and for our clients. Right. Because when people operate in the maybe that that is where mediocrity hangs out. Yes or no? Decision making doesn't mean always yes. Decision making means a no as well. But like, we are trained as human beings to be okay with maybe because it means that potentially there will be a yes. And so we will be indecisive in the vehicles we buy. We're indecisive in how to use our time. We're indecisive. Like, maybe I should do this. Maybe I should do this. Right? What? Going back and forth, the number one skill that you could develop out in anything is being decisive and helping others be decisive. And so whether that's public speaking, sales, whatever else, like, the quicker we can get to a yes or no decision, the more value that we can create in society.
- [60:39]
A
Yes, yes. Hopefully this is enough. So those are all the questions for my assignment. Part of it. Right. I also talked to you, my personal questions in there. Hopefully it's enough to get me an A. Really appreciate you actually giving this time. You want to book a meeting with Chris, go to meetwithchris.com so you can.
- [61:01]
B
Just follow me on Instagram hrisleeqb like quarterback. Follow me on. On Instagram. You can reach out to me with a dm. As long as it's not spammy, I'll respond. And so, yeah, and then every everybody that's in the class or whatnot, you are more than welcome to come and join our teenage mastermind. You can talk with your friend here and he can get you some more information. It's free to anybody here in the area. So would more than love to have you be a part of it.
- [61:31]
A
Amazing course. I love your mastermind. I'm so glad I attended. So glad Mike put me on that wonderful good stuff.