Chris Lee
Appearances
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And so I got introduced to door-to-door sales and went and did this summer program. First year I go out, sell for three months and I make 65 grand.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
I love Vegas for the same exact reason, man. I've been able to do so many great podcasts. Yeah. It's incredible.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Crushed it.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Crushed it. In fact, me and Sam, I was actually just reminiscing with, do you know who Myron Golden is? I don't know Myron. So Myron, one of the best guys to sell from stage or whatnot. Me and Sam and a handful of like highly successful people were all part of this program. There's only 10 of us. Seven years ago, this is right when Sam was launching door to door con.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And like Myron taught us all how to sell from stage and like, and, and Sam since then has just crushed it and all these other guys have crushed it. It's, it's been fun. That's great.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Come on. Come on. So, so here's, here's the thing. I, I'm a firm believer. Like you don't need high pressure sales. You actually just know how to properly identify pain and solve and solve pain.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Right. Like, and so, yeah, you could call me, I'm a closer, right? Like I know how to get people to do a decision, but, uh, but yeah, I, I want to put myself in the same camp as like a slimy car sale.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Um, I studied for sure. And, but, but I was natural at it too. Like I, I've always had a really good high energy that had been able to suck people in. And, uh, and so like my key knocking on doors is always like causing question, like what's going on? Who's this guy? And like and then as soon as they question sucking them in and getting them to like my energy.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
You need to really understand like the four different buying profiles. Right. Like understanding that there's there's people that are going to be very high energy and you need to match it and be challenging to those type people. Right. Like that we call it the aggressive personality. Right. Like somebody like you, I'd probably put in the camp of aggressive mind personality. I'm aggressive. Yeah.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And so a guy like you, what I would do is I would match your, I would match your energy and I would challenge you. Right. Because I guarantee you respond well to challenges. Oh, sure. And what you want is, with your personality, just looking at your face, I know that you want to be challenged and I know you want quick things that make sense.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Like just numbers that add up, not like super complex details, but like quick, like mathematical, like, Oh, that makes sense. Let's go. You're not wrong. Yeah.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And so like understanding like the, the social, the social buyer, what are the, what are the, what are the other? So, so you have the aggressive, you have the social, you have, what's the social, you're looking at social proof, that person or So, so the social buyer is somebody that is usually like the fat, funny person. Okay. And, and they want to do what the crowd's doing. Right.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Test control.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Typically you can actually see it in their face. And the reason why they're fat and funny is because they like hanging around people eating food. Like, like they're the social person. They do what the crowd does. They want to keep up with the Joneses. They want to do things for approval from others, everything like that. And so like those are that that's like highly, highly important to them.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And so like reviews and, you know, like this is what everybody else is doing. Be a part of the crowd. All the cool kids are doing it. Just give it a try. Come on, just try it. And the cool thing is for like a social buyer, they don't even, it doesn't have to add up, right? Like if the price is 97 bucks, you'd be like, yeah, it's around a hundred bucks. Let's go.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Right, right. So they're not looking for things to add up necessarily. It's just like, does it feel good? Yeah. Yeah. And so that's your social buyer. And then you have your analytical buyer, which is like one of the more difficult that most people suck at, right? And those people, they usually have like little beady eyes, a little bit skinny of a face.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
They usually are in the sciences, the engineers, like those types of things. They spend a lot of time diving. Thinking. Thinking. And the thing is you can, Close those guys same day. It's just going to take a little bit longer and a little bit more information. Yeah. Right. And so like everything has to add up for that person. Yeah. Right. Like deep dives, like pluses and minus.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
You screw up one number, you're done. Yeah. Right. Like and so just like understanding that that profile is. And then and then you have and then you have the grandma. The name of the profile is not coming to me. But but essentially what I liken it to is like if you're selling grandma. Right. Like grandma just needs to have trust. Right.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Like, and, and so, so your social, your social and aggressive buyers, your high energy, your analytical and your grandma's, your low energy. So if I'm talking to grandma, drop down, easy peasy. How you doing? Have you, have you talked to the neighbors about what's going on? No. Okay. My name's Chris. You probably heard about me. I'm in the area. I'm knocking on your door.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Have you, have you been able to see what's going on? Oh, I don't know what's going on. Grandma responds really good to guarantees grant and, and to have a grandma personality again, for whatever reason, it's not coming to me. It's not grandma, but I best see it with grandma. Um, It, you could be any, like you could be a young, young grandma type personality, right?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Like somebody that's a little bit more timid, right? Like is unsure.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
They need that trust, that reassurance. They need the guarantees, right? Like more socially driven, like the social person, but way less energy, right? And then so like, if you understand those four different type of profiles and how to identify them, target them and whatnot, you can sell anybody.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
yeah so it's like grandma it's like hey it's okay for you to think this is a good idea yes for analytical guy it's what do you think for social person it's how does this feel to you yeah and then for the aggressive it's i know what you're thinking already we're doing this yeah yeah so like an aggressive guy knock on your door and you come to the door like hey dude i know you're busy you give me 30 seconds i'll i'll go off your door if you don't like what i'm hearing in 30 seconds go ahead and slam the door cool yeah
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Dude, I would definitely say made. You know, I grew up in a great household. No money. My dad was a school teacher. Mom was a stay-at-home mom. Seven kids. Seven? Seven, yep. Where do you rank on the... So right in the middle. So six that were from my parents, and then we raised my cousin as well.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
right? Challenge. Yeah. Hit you straight, right? Like I'm, I'm giving you a timeline. They like, it makes sense. Like, dude, I can kick this guy out in 30 seconds. Yeah. I'll give him 30 seconds because he understands my personality.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Right. It's terrible.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
So, I mean, like, like I shared, like if I, if you're an aggressive buyer, that's what I'm going to lead with. Hey, look, I'm Chris. I know you probably want me off your door. You're thinking I'm selling you something. Give me 30 seconds and you will not regret it. Yeah. Like, you know, like what? Nobody's ever been approached with something similar to that.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
But but also so usually the way like if I don't know the buyer profile or whatnot, if I knock on a door, I'm actually just facing away looking at a binder and I'm sitting there and waiting for them to talk.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Yeah, yeah. Can I help you? Hey, yeah. Are you the homeowner? No. Oh, you are? Okay, cool. Is it John? Because usually I'll have like a public record. Is it John? Okay, John. Hey, real quick, let me show you what's going on. And I take off.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And, and immediately if they follow me, now we're through the battle zone. Now we can have a conversation. Pattern has been interrupted, right? They're, they're wondering what's going on, whatever else. They don't follow me next door.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And so, you know, we didn't have a lot, but because of it, we had very strict rules around money and how we created it and everything else in the house, right? My dad was a very disciplined investor, believe it or not. He was able to put away half of his $65,000 a year check into investments. Yeah. And so with it, we had rules in the house.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Yep.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
No kidding.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
I did not see that one coming, man.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
So 24 years old, I'm like, I know how to do all this crap. I'm going to go do my own. I'm going to start my own business. See all these guys making millions of dollars in my eyes, right? Like, why don't I go get a piece of that? Yeah. So launched my first business in 2008.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
So, yeah, obviously looking back, terrible time economically from a macro environment. But, man, I was blind to everything. Like I was just saying, blindly ambitious and thought I knew everything and very egotistical. I'd never like up until that point, I had no reason not to believe I wasn't going to be so successful. You just knew it. I just knew it. Yeah, of course. I'm awesome. Yeah.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Love me some meat. Love me some meat. And so, man, I went and I raised a million bucks from my father-in-law to build this business. And I took half my dad's life savings.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
and went and i made terrible decisions bad partnerships bad uh like did things egotistically driven didn't ask for help what was the business uh so it was a home security business okay well let's talk about let's let's break each one of those down so first thing bad partner you know without giving names or say or throwing why why was it a bad partnership
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Like, so not just bad partnership, but even structure of partnership, right? Like structure is so important in a partnership, like making sure that guys that are in it are in it. And second of all, who brings the money and everything else should have more control and decision-making power. None of that was true, right? Like, so I had me and two other business partners, We were 25, 25, 25.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And then my father-in-law was 20%. And then my dad was like 5%, right? And so like no decision-making authority for me for bringing the money to the table. My name is on everything, right? Because I got the best credit. I've got all the things. And so- that's, that's terrible. On top of that, like the only experience I had working with these guys was at a previous door to door company.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And like, we were all good. So we just thought, Oh, we're going to run a good, great business together.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Partnered like at classic mistake, classic mistake, right? Like you, you, you definitely don't want to work with yourself.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And so, man, just, just so many things went wrong, paying salaries early and all, just all kinds of crap, dude. Just, just real quick.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Like, dude, I was 24 years old. I was 22. 24, no outside help. My dad was a school teacher. Nobody was teaching me jack about any of this stuff. It was just like, oh, you own a business. I want to own a business.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
When you're 12, underwear and food on the table was all you got. Everything else you had to pay for.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Yeah.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
So later in businesses, so obviously this business failed, but, uh, but later in businesses, I realized like, I'm going to form a partnership. We actually start with less ownership and then we have like an earn out period, right? Like there, uh, what I know about partners is that there is a six month honeymoon stage, right?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And no matter how good, or do you think, you know, this person or whatnot in six months, you will know everything about them to make a good decision, right? Right. And so the way I structure like earnouts, equity earnouts, anything like that, it's always has to have a six month honeymoon. And then you make a decision of like where to go from there.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And you have like a pre six month and a post six month like definition of the partnership, equity structure, everything like that. And that served me really well.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
So nine years old, delivering newspapers.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
I agree 100% with that. So I've been business partners with a guy for a long time now, and we're fantastic. And we've, we've become friends over the years, but like, we're, we're definitely not naturally like we don't have the same interests. Yeah. Right. Like he's out riding motorbikes. I'm playing football, you know, like whatever.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Every 365 days a year. You know, had to wake up early. And so did that... I wasn't like an entrepreneur by trade at all growing up because I didn't know any better. Right. Like as a school teacher, like he knew the system, he knew, you know, 401k invest as much as possible. Right. Real estate was out of the picture. All these things are out of the picture.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Um, but over the years, you know, we've, we've become really good friends and been able to hang out. But similarly, we, we hang out a lot more in work than we ever do outside.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Yeah.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
It did. So here's your 24 and a half, two and a half years in, in, but hang on, but hang on.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Yeah. Lost it. Yeah, dude. I'll, I'll talk all about it. Yeah. So two and a half years in scale too fast, too quick. I got debtors and collections calling me off the hook. Money's gone. Right. I'm literally taking personal credit cards, going to my buddy and say, can you process this and rebate me back the cash so I can make payroll? Like, I mean, that, that, that bad. Right.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And it's just that that's, that's how I'm living. I'm liquidating every asset I know to make payroll, to keep this thing alive. And I'm getting no fight or help from these other partners. Right. Right. Like to the point where like I relocated to be outside of a contractual zone so we could sell to another alarm company to be able to generate more revenue. Just all kinds of crap. That was a mess.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
So, yeah, dude, end up filing bankruptcy and I have to go and I got to address it with my father-in-law. Look, dude, your money's gone. Seven figures gone. Right. I know I told you we're going to take that one and make it to 10, but it's zero. Right. you know, and it was like, still remember the day, very like emotional, uh, experience for me. And, uh, he didn't take it well at all.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Like, um, he was terrible. Like our relationship was destroyed for about six or seven years. Yeah. And, uh, so this was January, 2011 that I, that I lose everything when I filed, end up filing bankruptcy, um, went to my dad and, uh, He's a, he was an all-star. Yeah. Yeah. So like, I mean, dude, he, he, he said, Chris, I know you'll make it right. Yeah. And, uh, that's, that's all I needed.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
That's all I needed to hear.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
So, you know, over the years, so this is what I was told, like my father-in-law was in my ear all the time and like, Hey, we need a payment plan. We need like, and like legally I owed them nothing, right? Like bankruptcy, it was wiped clean. Yeah. But I told him I was going to make it right. Um, and, uh, you know, my, my father-in-law was always like, Hey, I need a payment plan.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And so, um, So over the years, I gave them token stuff, like gave them both cars. And then I told my dad, I said, look, dad, I'm trying to build up money. I said, invest alongside me, like do some real estate deals. I will get you involved in some real estate deals that I am certain will pay off. And so like over the years, I made my dad seven figures in real estate. Nice. Did really well.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And then ultimately I cut him a check. plus interest for what he had gotten into. That's a good day. And that was fantastic. And did the same thing for my father-in-law, except for the real estate thing. Like, frankly, like for my father-in-law, it was like transactional and love him now. But like, there was times that I didn't feel like I loved him. And because he made it pretty miserable.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And so, but my dad, he was a football and wrestling coach at the high school. And so grew up in a very sports competitive environment. What part of the world is this? Washington State. Washington State. Okay. Yep. I actually live about 30 minutes from where I grew up because I have like so much love for the way that I was raised that I wanted to raise my kids similarly. Same way.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Well, I think when you go through something like that, you realize it's not as bad as what you, uh, like, uh, had a nightmare about, right? Like, Like every entrepreneur's nightmare or potential entrepreneur's nightmare, I lived, right? Like $2.2 million bankruptcy, car repo, less than $1,000 in my bank account, owe money to both of my fathers. And you're still here. Right, right, right.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Like going through that is everybody's nightmare. But when I went through it, it was like a gut check, but I'm like, dude, this isn't as bad as I actually thought it would be, right? Like still have my God, still have my family and still have all the experience that I had up until this point. And so if it's not that bad, should I ever fear getting back to here? Yeah. No.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And so like, so I think it actually creates that, like you're willing to keep going risk because you realize, and most people aren't willing to go to zero. And so they always fear zero and it keeps them playing small. Yeah. And so like, but once you, once you get there, then you're like, dude, this is it. Like, cool, man. Let's, let's go to the moon. Good. I'm not tired.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Not right away. No, I immediately started another security business because I learned, I learned a lot and I, and I started back with my now partner, right? Like, so I knew who I wanted to do business with and it was this guy. And so we both started and we were both like fresh and we tried to scale and we didn't, we built like a nice little nest egg, but like nothing.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And then like we tried everything. Freaking dude, anything to make a buck. I've done it. Flipped houses, cars, uh, farms, cattle, like, uh, dude, I had a coupon book, a search engine optimization business. Like dude, if, if there was a way to drop ship and make a buck, I was trying to, and so, uh, It came to the realization, I'm like, dude, I don't know how to grow a business. I suck.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And so I actually, like one of the most pivotal moments of my life is I decided to swallow my pride and go work for somebody else. And so because I knew there was something I needed to learn. So then I spent the next four and a half years working hard. for some of the greatest entrepreneurs that I could find. And I moved to Utah and I went and I worked for Todd Peterson. Do you know who Todd is?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
I don't know Todd. One of the greatest that will ever do the game. And so Todd is the founder of Vivint, two multi-billion dollar- Obviously know what Vivint is, yeah.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Two multi-billion dollar IPOs. And I had the opportunity to like sit down, study that guy and take notes. And during that time, I made really good money.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And I've moved all over. I've lived in Vegas before. I've lived in San Diego, Arkansas, North Carolina, Minnesota, Chicago. Me and my wife have moved 14 different times over our career.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
So it wasn't, it wasn't even necessarily that, but I would just put myself in positions to like be in the room, right? Like whether it was in management meetings or whatever else, or like just networking, like inside the company to like learn and grow. Like, why is he doing this? What, like, what was the decision-making process? Like all that thing.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
People love people that are willing to learn, right? Like, yeah. And so I spent, I worked for three different businesses over four and a half years and each very intentional, taking notes, designing what I was going to do next. And, and so ultimately at the end of 2016, I walked away. At the top of my game, I was making half a million bucks a year. I had like the dream job.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
I'm like, all right, I'm ready to go figure out what I want to do next. And then during this time, I've spent a lot of money on personal development, coaches, masterminds, everything like that. And ultimately in 2017, so I went after a couple of big things and failed actually. Like, I chased this magic generator thing. I call it magic because it never came to fruition.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
But we sold $2 billion worth of contracts in six months. Whoa. It was wild. And didn't fulfill any of it. Couldn't fulfill any of it. And made $0. Oh. Yeah. That is magic. That was magic. That was magic.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
That's not good.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
But what I learned from that experience was it wasn't the generator. So I networked to like the highest level and grew so fast during those six months. And I realized it wasn't the generator that made me do it. It was my belief in the generator. And I'm like, man, if I can have this much belief in something that actually works, life will be incredible. Yeah, you'll kill it.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And I like up until that point, it never made sense. It just clicked. My biggest pain point in door knocking doors is self-replication. I couldn't replicate myself across 10,000 doors at one point. Online, I couldn't replicate 10,000 screens at one time. So figured that out. Launched my company fall of 2017 out of my garage.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And just everything dialed in, like our exact strategy, exactly how we're going to do it. I'm road mapping five years. I got this perfect map. I'm like, okay, I'm five years. We're going to have 500 employees, a million bucks. This is exactly what the 500 employee structure is going to look like. This is how we're going to get there. Like I had it all dialed in.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
This is our culture, core values, our mission. Do, do, do, do, do. what I call the eight pillars for growth, I had completely dialed in. And so we launched on my garage, fall of 2017, no money, no outside cash. Year one, we do 16 million. Year two, we do 32. Year three, we do 34. Year four, we do 89. Year five, we do 233 million.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And initially sending salesmen, and this is like one of the miracles that happened. Initially it was that, Fall of 2019, I get this bright idea like we should start selling over Zoom.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
We should start selling over Zoom. So we start that. By the time COVID hits, I got a 25-person sales floor already built. We scale that to 300 people. All on Zoom. All on Zoom. And so I build this, I build this 1100 person organization where the six fastest growing company in the nation, all privately held that have any company, any industry. Like we are just, and we're making 24% net margin.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Private equity. Knock, knock, knock. Yeah. So meanwhile, during that same time, I was consulting another business and I told him I would only do it for equity. I had about 10% equity in this business. Three years, I give them the same roadmap that I built my business off of. They build and sell for $120 million in three years. Not bad. Not bad.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
So I get, I experienced these two different one as the founder creator and the other one as a consultant equity shareholder. So I have two nine figure exits in a, in a five year period. And yeah, I mean, it was, it was a phenomenal ride. Dude, that's awesome.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Yeah. So we're running Next Level Pros, which is a it's a training and coaching platform. So I have like the most incredible team I have. So I have these eight pillars that we help companies use to scale, to grow. Right. Majority of our clients are home service, home product, but it applies to any industry.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
I got medical professionals, I got restaurants, I got all different type of business owners in this platform. Right. And the cool thing is, like, I've created this program where I have coaches that come in. They implement. I teach. We do workshops, everything like that. But, like, I've, like, attracted some of the most incredible coaches in the world.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
I have a three-time Olympic gold medalist on my team that teaches mindset. He's a 400-meter Olympic gold medalist. Awesome. Like, just absolute studs across the board. Like… My magic and my like ability to like grow teams and like build culture is transforming over into this. And like, it just gives me a ton of purpose.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Like we have a, we have a five-year roadmap to get to where our community is generating an additional from where they come in to where they're at in our community, additional 125 billion a year. And that's our goal. We call it Impact 125. It's on my wrist. Our mission is designing lives that impact the world. I truly believe that the best way to change the world is through entrepreneurship.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
So we have two KPIs that we track within our community. how much additional revenue we're generating and how many hours of community service that they give as a, as a organization. So we have a goal of 3 million, 3 million hours a year to give as a, within our, the next level community.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
It's the hours that are hard. Absolutely. It is. It is. Absolutely. And so like, the way I've always built, like not always, but when I built on purpose and when I've had success building organizations, it's always when I focus on developing employees, whole human, physically, economically, their associations, their spirituality. Like people don't understand that.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And it wasn't even just like the simplicity. Like I was taught to work hard and I wanted to raise my kids on a farm and So I didn't grow up on a farm, but I grew up working on farms. So I was delivering newspapers, driving tractor, you know, working odds and ends jobs, just finding ways to make a buck.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Like most, most employers are like, Hey, get them a paycheck, make sure they're taken care of that way. Like, good. No, Help them lose weight. Help them be a better father, mother, better contributor to society. Help them grow closer to God. And they will never, ever want to leave you because they're getting paid so many different ways. And they will take care of your customer.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
So think about this, the way you do business with your end user and the way that you do business with your employer, the exact same way. If you think you're going to solve things with price, with your customer,
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
right you're you're so terribly wrong if you think you're going to solve something with pay you're so wrong right like like those are ancillary aspects to everything that you do like solve their physical problems solve their relationship problems solve their way that they're connected with god And you will have a loyal, a loyal Salesforce. Because you create value.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And the same thing, the same thing with your end user, right? Like, like it's never about the dollars ever, ever, ever. That is just a derivative. And sure, it has to be somewhere in line, but, but like that, and so many business owners make that mistake on their offer to their customers. They make it all about price.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
They try selling better by lowering their price or whatever else, instead of bringing value. Same thing with, with your clients.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
You know, I wouldn't change my path whatsoever. And, you know, so one, I just say, hey, keep going. When times are tough, you're going to be fine. But if I could go back to just any random old 23-year-old, he's like, look, you're only in competition with yourself. find your path and don't compare yourself to anyone else. Be your best version of you and you will accomplish incredible things.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
You know, the best way, if you have any questions about anything, is it right if I drop my phone number? Yeah, please go ahead. You can just go ahead and text me 509-374-7554. You can just shoot me a text, ask me any questions about things that we've talked about, or if you're looking at scaling your business or whatnot, you can also find me on Instagram, Chris Lee QB.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Yeah.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
But the at least was, so what it was, it was an ad for Cutco Knives. Yeah. Okay. And so sells. And then I quickly realized that I had the gift of gab and the ability to go and sell products.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Yep. So I'm between my junior and senior year, I'm old for my grade and I go into farmhouse wife's home and I could walk out with a thousand dollar check and making 25% of that.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
No, Cutco's always had a great recruiting program in my mind. And they sucked at the follow-up. Like they teach you how to like go sell all your friends and family. And then there was like no follow-up, at least from the area where I was at, as far as like, what do I do next? And so I went through all my networks, selling them all the knives I could. And then nobody told me what else next to do.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And so I ended up quitting just because like my manager was like no show or whatever else. But like I said, it changed my life realizing that I could bring value to an hour rather than just trade hours for dollars. Yeah. And so like that, that was where it all kind of started.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
So graduate high school, and I go on a mission for my church, serve a two-year mission, knocking doors for free, paying to be there.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
I mean, yeah, that's tough. So that, yeah, I mean, that's tough. And I was good at it. You know, I was a really good missionary. But, like, I think what made me get a lot out of my mission was, like, my parents made us pay to go. Like, they didn't help us on our missions. We had to save $10,000. $10,000 was a lot of money back then. Back then.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And that's what I paid to go on my mission and take care of me while I was gone. Um, and so like I was out there for all the right reasons, knocking on doors, doing, doing all the work, but yeah, it was, it was a great training program. Learned a lot from it.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Yeah, it is.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Why? You know, it's, I don't think it's really, well, I guess you'd say it has something to do with the church. In the church, we teach, there's this like strive for perfection type mentality, right? And so because of it, a lot of people take on this entrepreneurial personification, right? And so they're very ambitious, right?
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And as you know, when ambition is mixed with any little bit of like greed, it can turn south quick. And on top of that, Utah. So I'm not from Utah. I've lived in Utah a couple different times. And obviously, it's a high LDS population. Mm-hmm. You know, there's there's this like leverage that starts happening of trust because, hey, you're a member. I'm a member. We're all a member.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
We're all a member. Right. Like you can trust me because we believe in the same things. Right. And, you know, and it's not even necessarily said, but maybe even implied. Right. Like, yeah. like guys and, and you can really see the guys that have gotten in trouble that ran these big Ponzi schemes. In fact, I had a business partner. This is, this is interesting. I haven't talked about this.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
I don't think ever on a podcast. Um, I had a business and from my first business, we ended up losing everything, going bankrupt and everything like that. He went on to run a $26 million Ponzi scheme and he took a lot of my friends and family and personal connections that I had made with him, took their money, including me. Um, And so like that, that little Ponzi thing is very close to home.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Like I've seen it happen in real time. Like what path those guys go down. And, and essentially you usually Ponzi schemes never start off as Ponzi schemes.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Yeah. Ponzi schemes happen when somebody will not own the truth, right? Like you, like they say, Hey, we're going to get you a guaranteed 15% return. And then maybe a return negative money. And instead of owning the fact that it returned negative money, and it was a legit investment, right? And it lost money or whatever else. Instead of owning that, they say, no, it returned 15%.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Where do they get that 15 percent? They go and they take it from somebody else to give it to them. Right. And so that's the I've seen, like I said, several of these go and become what they become as as we've seen recently.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Yeah. You know, as a believer, you know, in the scriptures, it talks about the truth shall set you free. Yeah. Right. Like when you own the truth, good or bad, you live free. you don't have to remember as much. Yeah. You're going to remember as much and whatnot. And so, yeah. So when guys don't own the truth, then the, this kind of crazy stuff happens.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And again, because that population is high level believers and high trusting people, they're easily duped.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
like of families and whatnot like they're like they all know each other they go to each other's houses they hang out i mean they're very i mean do you look at uh i don't know i didn't tell anybody recent statistics just came out right like utah is very strong in family right 76 percent of families stay stay married like i mean they got a lot of really good things going on in utah but the negative things be from the like the basically you get polar opposites wherever you have extremely good you're going to have some pretty gnarly things yeah
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
that have taken advantage of it.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And again, you have all these incredibly trained salespeople, right? Like all these guys have learned the art of persuasion. Oh man, they spent two years. Right. This whole population. And so for all the, like, there's still a lot of good, like Utah is ground zero also for entrepreneurship.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Like if you go up there, man, they're like, I never wanted to launch a business in Utah because it's going to be immediately stolen. Right. Like people are, it's highly competitive. Yeah.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
It's like proceed with caution. It's so funny. People come up to me that follow me on Instagram. Oh, you're from Utah again? No, dude. No, no, no, no, no. Washington. Washington State, dude. Come on, man.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
So when I get home, I do the number one close, which is I get married. Married my high school sweetheart two and a half months after I got home off my mission.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Yeah, right away.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
I think yes and no. Like I, I think Mormons get married fast, but I got married faster. Right? Like I, I've been very goal driven from a very early age. I still have this yellow piece of paper that I wrote my two goals on, on when I was like six years old.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
win a state championship, and get married in the temple. Those were the things. That was the goals. That was it, man. I still have it. It's in my safe, and it drove me a lot with sports.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
I like it. I like it. Got them both. And so I accomplished them both. And like, it was like, for me, I've always been like, I saw the way that I was raised and how good it was to have family values. And I wanted that for myself. Yeah. And so got married, went to college. I was studying to be a doctor while I was doing that. Where'd you go to school? BYU. Okay.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
So just typical Mormon story, you know? But while I was doing that, I was paying for school, paying to be married, like living. I didn't have anyone support me. And so I got introduced to door-to-door sales and went and did this summer program. First year, I go out, sell for three months, and I make 65 grand. I'm like, ooh.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
pest control contracts.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Yeah. So Oregon pest control out in North Carolina, me and my wife move out there. We stay there from the summer and make this great money. I'm like, Oh, this is good. Then I keep going to school next summer. I make six figures. I'm like, and this is good.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
No, I was selling alarm systems the next year.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
So like I was, I was never like up and quitting. I was always looking for more ambition. Like I would have stayed.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Right, right. Well, so we did these summer programs. It was expected. They knew you were there for now. You were there for three months, right? That's the way that the, dude, you would not believe. So these Utah door-to-door programs, like they're all centered in Utah and they contract with these different companies.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Dude. And it is the big leagues of sales. Like there's guys like in the, the, the height of my career in door to door sales, I was making a half a million dollars a summer. And there's- A summer. A summer. And there's guys that make seven figures a summer running teams and doing all this stuff. I mean, you've got a company like Vivint that has spun off two multi-billion dollar IPOs.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
What's up? Excited to be here.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
And this is all based off of door-to-door sales.
Escaping the Drift with John Gafford
From Humble Beginnings to Nine-Figure Success: Chris Lee's Entrepreneurial Journey
Sam Taggart. Sam Taggart, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
don't price yourself to impress others. Right. And that goes for what you pay and what you charge. Right. Cause the exact equivalent, what you charge, if you're trying to be the cheapest, all you're doing is trying to buy them by discounting, right. To get the next customer and they will go for the next person. That's that much cheaper about price. You made it about price.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
When you can say no to everything and yes to just one thing and just go deep and wide, it's incredible what you can accomplish in a very short period of time.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
I think that's such a key to anybody that's listening to this show right now. Like the relentless pursuit of education, improvement, right? Like not settling with where you're at and just always looking for that next edge, that next ability to level up. Who knows more than me, right? Like I think the thing that I suffered from most in my first business that failed was
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
was thinking I knew everything and not going to other people for help, right? Like that's where I struggled in my 20s, right? I just thought I knew everything. I was pretty intelligent, high IQ, successful in everything that I had done up until that point. And I was like, because of it, When things were hard, I didn't go to anybody else. I just tried dealing with it.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Instead of going to a Tommy or a Daryl and being like, dude, help me. I don't know what to do in this type of situation. Or how do I get through this? How do I improve? Whatever it may be. I think that's probably one of the most key things to anybody that's been successful.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
17 million, which is a respectable business, but it ain't anything. I wasn't keeping much of it. Yeah.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
We actually just rebranded.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Next level pros, baby. Next level pros. Let's go. Come on.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
You had a great revenue driving engine and the backside was just a mess.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
I think you're a great example of... So I think in business, a lot of guys refuse to do this. You either got to, one, have incredible partners. Or two, you got to hire incredible consultants, right? Like that is the only way to break through and get to the next level because everybody that's just trying to do it on their own, right? Based on their own IQ and everything else, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
They're going to make a lot of mistakes.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Yeah, it's going to take decades. And you'll get there, but you're going to be like in a nursing home. If... If you get there, right? Like if you're able to survive that long and continue to, you know.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Yeah, I mean, for me, it was hiring the right people and partnering with the right people, right? Like having Daryl on my side was huge because he helped keep my ideas sane, right? And I was able to bring all the good stuff, but at the same time, spending a million bucks on my personal education, getting the right coaches and the consultants.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
going and spending four and a half years working for other people, right? You're going to be talking with Todd later today. Yeah. Todd is one of my, the greatest mentors. The funny thing is, is I didn't even spend a ton of one-on-one time with Todd, like hardly any. But most of it was being in the room, seeing his strategy, seeing how he interacted with his leadership, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
And there's a few different ways that you can invest in these type of mentors. One, you can go and work for him. That's what I did with Todd, right? And I also watched from afar, kind of seeing what he was doing when I wasn't working for him. So like that was a huge turning point in my career was studying Todd Peterson and the way that this guy does business. Like I love everything about it.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Exactly. And it aligned with my personality. Me and Todd have very similar type personalities. We both big dreamers and everything else. And I saw how he was utilizing his team to be able to go and execute.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
He didn't jump in and do the work, which is so easy to do. High leverage of management team and everything else. Right. Like, all of us that are super successful at one point, we have to give up control, right? Like, because we love the micromanagement at some point in our career, because we're like, I can do this and I can do everything, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Like, and so that was probably one of the biggest turning points in building Solgen was when I finally decided, you know, I'm going to surround myself with incredible people, give up control.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Dude, I could attract any. I mean, that's exactly how we built SoulGen, right? We had guys that had sold businesses for millions of dollars come and work for us for a minimum salary to have some equity upside, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
The questions you ask, the interaction.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Yeah.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Well, you know, it's, I mean, there's, there's a lot of things, but one was the strategy of generating leads online, right? Like that was something that prior to us doing it, there was people only in the SEO game, right? Google, pay-per-click type stuff, but nobody was doing the education side of the marketing, which was Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, that type of media.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Facebook was always about 40 to 50% of our business. Like when we were running a $2.2 million budget a month, right? Half of that was going to meta Facebook. Yeah, yeah, just Facebook, not including Instagram.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
and so you know like that that was our really cutting edge because we initially we did what we called web to home where we generate the lead online go and sell it in the home and then eventually we scaled it out through a virtual sales floor yeah and we did that pre-covered right and so like the fact like we had a lot of lucky moments in uh building soulgen
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
which, you know, it was just us taking enough risk and different things. And one of those was we launched our sales floor, our virtual sales floor, November 2019. Right. And so by the time five months later, when COVID hit, we had a 25 man sales floor and we were prepped and ready to be able to just go and scale through where everybody else was like,
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
panicking anybody that was in the door-to-door world or the over-the-table type sale they're like what do we do people won't let us in their homes right like especially in some of the more liberal states oh really yeah i mean washington oregon like these are where you live oh yeah these are places that literally people are quadruple masking right they want 10 foot social distancing like it's just crazy you can't even go into a coffee shop
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Right. Right. And so like having that set up was one of the biggest things. And then from day one, you can't give Daryl everything. You guys got to alternate.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Operating out of my garage.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Well, that's the cool thing. I think we all come from very similar backgrounds, right? Daryl grew up in a... double wide with eight kids. You know, my dad was a school teacher. Mom was a stay at home mom. Like all of us really came from like basic essentials, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Yeah, so I mean, culture was extremely on purpose by design upfront from day one, right? The way that we were creating trust, the way we were creating transparency, the vision, the core values, all the things, right? From day one. And many of the things that I learned from Todd Peterson, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
And being a part of like everybody in the Vivint industry, this home security automation that everyone always called it the orange Kool-Aid, right? If you're drinking the orange Kool-Aid, Because Todd was the master orchestrator of culture. And so we went and took his blueprint and just we applied it and just thought big and crazy.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
And the cool thing was the first couple of years when we were operating out of my garage, the vision was so crazy. And people walk into a garage, people think... People are just like, dude, this is nuts. Like, why would I believe you? Like we're sitting in a garage. That's a hard sell. That's a hard sell. But that actually made it even better, right? Because it was so extreme, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
People either had to like jump on board completely with the vision or be like, there was no in between. It wasn't like, oh, I've got a comfy office space to be able to operate. And if I'm committing to coming and sweating in 85 degrees in a garage, The only reason is because I believe in what this idiot keeps preaching every single day.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
He started in a garage. Well, it's funny. I had this picture. It was like four different garages. It showed the Google garage, the Facebook garage. We had the Solgen garage and we would always be like, look, this is us. This is what we're building. And so people would buy into it and just get excited about it, even though from all outside perspective, there's no reason they should have bought in.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Yeah.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
We all had shirts on our backs and food on the table and good loving family or whatnot, but they've all built something pretty, pretty amazing. It's interesting what you're talking about. The whole premise of our new show with Next Level Pros is that no matter where you're at, there's always the next level. You always have the ability to level up.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
You do have to have an idea, right? You have to have a roadmap of like, this is how it's going to be possible, but you don't have every single detail. Correct.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
So what is another reason that you think... So let me actually jump in and add to this. Giuseppe, we need a little water. Water's for these guys and me. So I think one of the big turning points is when we got really clear on KPIs and the reporting, right? Like that is one, I think, fundamental to any business. But two, it was so... So we went in 2019, we did 32 million. 2020, we did 34 million.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
It wasn't great growth. But during that year, we set foundation from a management perspective, like the management team that we put in place, the reporting, the KPIs, right? We set this foundation in 2020 that was absolutely phenomenal. And between 2020 and 2021, we went from 34 to 89 million, right? We tripled our revenue and much of that. And then the next year from 89 to 233 million.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
And frankly, success and happiness come from when you are leveling up. When you're plateauing or leveling down, no matter how much money, how much success you've had...
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
And much of that is because we were reporting real time Like to this day, like I still have some equity in that business. I get a text message every time a deal is generated. Right. And it's like this full report. Like this is how the lead was generated. This is this is where we're pacing. And so we created this way of competition and recognition and accountability. Right.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
that just drove the business to go and level up continuously and so then we would set these goals or these projections and every single hour we'd be able to measure like are we on pace off pace right like and that's where i think things really became crazy right it was just with this level of accountability and i think part of that foundation was we always protected the margin
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Especially in solar. I see that all the time. Their model isn't scalable, right? They build it for today, not for tomorrow. Right.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Half the price, right? We would be priced at 60 grand and better would be at 30. for the same system, right? And to be able to help these guys see why that was necessary, right? Like why allowing us to be able to not cut corners, focus on the customer experience, be in business long-term, have a healthy profit margin that's going to be able to go and scale growth, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
And so those are levels of like our culture and transparency where just people knew what our margins were and everything else. And they were fine because they were bought into the long-term and the vision.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
And the same thing goes for employees, right? Like, as you said, like when you make it all about compensation from a financial, they'll go for the next 10 bucks or whatever else. And it's like, that is one thing that so many people get wrong, pricing their product correctly and paying their people correctly and realizing that you compensate way more than just monetarily.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
I love it. I love it. So you're bringing up some solid points that we definitely implement in our culture. One, there is no loyalty in business, only trust. A lot of business owners fail on the side of they try building this loyalty. And what is loyalty? It's like, you just work hard for me because you're part of the family. It's not where trust is like,
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
you're going to bring value and I'm going to make sure that you receive value, right? Like I'm going to provide opportunity or roadmap. You're going to have long-term buy-in, right? And the second that that's violated, I expect you to go work for the competitor versus a loyalty type relationship. It's more of like a slave and a master, right? And it's like, you just do this because I said so.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Not because there's benefit, not because there's anything else, right? Just do it because I cut your paycheck, right? Right.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
And the thing I always tell people, I said, look, if you're building this loyalty type of relationship, you have a slave and a master. And what happens when a slave wants to leave? They leave in the middle of the night. You're not going to get the opportunity to retain these type of people because they're just going to leave your culture versus a trust culture. Trust culture.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
The guy's going to come and say, hey, look, I've got this opportunities being presented to me down the street. But I know you always have my best interest. What do you think? Should I take it?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Should I like, and that's the type of culture we always tried to foster where, and because of we never lost our top players because they knew that if there was a better opportunity for someone else, we expected them to go and take it, right? And we encourage them to go and take it.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
And so our job as business owners was always leveling up and making sure that we can provide enough opportunity that is going to give these guys roadmaps to be with us long-term.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Well, and the crazy thing is the amount of time that that happened. We're only talking three, four years. And I think that's important for any listener that's trying to build their business or whatnot, scale it up. It's like, if you just apply these correct principles and do it repeatedly, it doesn't take long.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
And there's a lot of us, Tommy included, that have struggled for years to get to that point. But once it clicked, once it worked... You know, I mean, the level of scale, the compound effect becomes real. It's true.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
You brought up an incredible principle that we talk about. Don't price yourself to impress others. And that goes for what you pay and what you charge. Because the exact equivalent, what you charge, if you're trying to be the cheapest, all you're doing is trying to buy them by discounting to get the next customer. And they will go for the next person that's that much cheaper.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
You made it about price. And the same thing goes for employees, right? Like, as you said, like when you make it all about compensation from a financial, they'll go for the next 10 bucks or whatever else.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
And it's like, that is one thing that so many people get wrong, pricing their product correctly and paying their people correctly and realizing that you compensate way more than just in a monetary way. can compensate them in culture and opportunity. So much.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Yeah. That was probably one of the biggest moves from a strategic standpoint that we did. Well, one... that we owned our own business. We were never going to fulfill for anybody else, right? Like if you wanted to come, like there were sales organizations all the time coming and saying, hey, will you just do our installs? And like, that was a big, like all the time.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
And we got approached six, seven times a week by sales organizations. That was a big no. The other one, as Daryl's talking about, is like, we do not hire industry people. We don't because industry people are trained up incorrectly, right? There's a lot of terrible business owners, a lot of bad cultures, like everything else. And these people become entitled. A hundred percent.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Like they're coming in and saying, well, I did this, this, and this at this organization. So you owe me this based on my resume. Like, screw you. I don't owe you jack. Right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
And so the cool thing is we never, not one of our salespeople had any experience selling solar. Zero. And so we trained them. Some of them had other experience. They sold cars. They sold this or that or the other. But it was like, man, if you were trained up in the door-to-door entitled industry, Utah-based group, we didn't want any part of you.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
And so then we were taking these just raw, hungry kids that had great personalities that were making $14 an hour doing something else. How old were they? I mean, most of them in their low 20s. Yeah.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
We had to create... Yeah, we created these people. Literally, we're taking people from the local coffee shop that are like... playing barista while they're going to college.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
It could have been a, you know, for us, it was all about like a personality assessment, disc assessment, right? Like we could go find high D high eyes, right? Like the dominant personality as Tony Robbins says, he doesn't hire any salespeople without a D type of personality. That dominant personality was always a winner for us. And so we'd bring these guys in.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
And regardless of what their background is, it didn't matter. If they had a D personality, we could shape them into a salesperson. And we would put them through incredible boot camps. Right. Like there's guys that so to this day that now work for other organizations because we're no longer part of things that are like, man, that boot camp was the foundation to all of my success. Right.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Like we put them through a two week, just rigorous training stuff that we had learned knocking door to door for many years and become masters of the sale. They influence. Robert Shadeen. Yeah.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Absolutely. So I think every entrepreneur should go to experience at least once. Right. Like, like going through the experience is a fantastic thing. Right. Going. I lost a little bit of hair. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, fantastic is a interesting way to determine, you know, it's tough, right? It's grueling, you know, very long, intensive, you know, worse than a prostate exam. Yes. Yes.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
I mean, rubber glove to the extreme, but to have gone through it, you learn so much and you can bring so much to any other entrepreneur. Like, this is what you could do, what you expect. This is how I would have done it differently. The way we would have pegged our deal would have been at the trailing 12 at the time of close. We would have... Got a lot more money.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
We would have got a lot more money out of the deal. But if I would do it again, I'm not sure I would go the PE route just because I've already checked that box. I think I've shifted into the more of like hold phase, right? Just long-term... nice-sized chunk of equity in different businesses that I'm a board member of and can influence but don't have these... P, you've been very lucky.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
And we thought we were lucky at first, but it became increasingly difficult to work with and everything else. But yeah, you know... If I had to do it over again, we would have negotiated a little bit better of a deal. I think I think we could have gotten more money. But at the same time, looking back, you have rolled more or less.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Yeah, yeah. We went through a formal process. I would have probably rolled a little bit less knowing what I know about the private equity group. And so that's interesting.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
literally the more i work on me the better i am for everybody yeah it's pretty crazy how like everything really you know trickles over to one discipline always trickles over the other right like when you especially when you start getting your fitness in check and your relationships in check right like that helps you be a better influencer on the side of the business right or in your society or whatever maybe and like that's
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Dude, I think you're one of the most generous, loving, non-douchey people where you could be douchey. You're in a position where you could clearly be douchey. You ride off into the sunset with the money and be like, screw you, team. Thanks for the... Yeah, it's been a fun life.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Yeah, man, I think, you know, transitioning in business, like everybody has different experiences. There's so many different PE groups, strategics or whatnot. And to each his own. I think the hardest thing, I don't know if you experienced this, is just like allowing somebody else in to the baby that you've created. Yeah.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
You know, I think that was probably the hardest thing for me and that I did not realize would affect me as emotionally as it did. This is the baby that literally was birthed out of my garage. This is the thing that I have built strategically on purpose by design. And now there's other people coming in, calling shots that I don't agree with.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
And that's probably the most difficult thing about letting go. Well, here's the thing.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
That's really, I mean, the culture that we've always been about in creating, like when we were creating SoulGen, it was always like focusing on the whole human approach. And if we can actually develop these people more than just their financial aspect, more than just a paycheck, right? Like help me better spiritually, help me be better physically or whatnot.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Well, dude, it was crazy. I mean, we were told we were going to be able to close in 30 to 40 days and it took 120 days. And that additional 90. It would have been an extra million bucks. No. EBITDA. Bro. Not like it was an extra 10 million. Of EBITDA? And trailing 12.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Thank goodness for a half percent cut yesterday, baby.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Like the loyal, the trust that was built within our organization is absolutely incredible. So, I mean, I think that's probably one of the biggest keys that most business and entrepreneurs miss, right? Like they're just about solving financial problems rather than the other aspects.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
You want me to pay you for what the ARV is going to be? That's the crazy thing in real estate all the time. If you go buy an apartment complex, guys try selling on a pro forma of what it could be. Like if you raise the rents and you change all these things, it's worth this much. We're like, well, why don't you do it?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
But then on top of that is like, there is a right fit for every single person on this earth somewhere, right? They have a value that they can bring to society. And if they're not bringing it to us, by not getting rid of them, you are costing them their real opportunity and gift in life. If they are an artist stuck doing an accounting job for you, you are screwing them by not setting them free.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
I think that's a big paradox.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
How'd you guys grew together? So it's interesting. We always refer to, well, I refer to Daryl as my work wife. Right. Like we have to figure out how to work together the same way I have to work with my wife. Just no sex. Right. And it's been interesting. We've known each other for a long time. We first met when I was, I think, 13. Daryl was 15. His oldest brother married my oldest sister. Wow.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
And it's crazy. The people that want to go in and change those pay structures because these guys are making too much when they're actually performing and producing. Especially management. Oh, it's crazy.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
You can compensate them in culture and opportunity. So much. Yeah.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Follow me on Instagram. It's probably the best. At Chris Lee QB. Quarterback. Where are you at? Are you mainly on Facebook, Instagram? What's the best spot?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
It's funny. Us like 40 year olds, the guys in the forties, right? Like we're, we're still on Facebook. Yeah. We made that transition from. I'm not on Snapchat. From MySpace. From MySpace to Facebook. So it's like hard for us to make another transition, right? You know, it's my family. What about you, Daryl?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
I always give Daryl a hard time. I'm like, bro, get on social.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
I mean, one that... many people have heard of, but I always go back to is Atomic Habits by James Cole. I mean, dude, every time I read that book, it gets my mind right. And I'm reminded of, right, like habit chains and everything else. I'm like, ah, I got to get back in it. And I always sharpen right back up.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Dude, it's, I throw that thing in audible for one year and I'm, or for one hour and I'm dialed. I'm ready. I'm ready to take on the world and just be the most disciplined human being in the world. Let me read you something while you're thinking.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Where's that from?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Yeah. So that's where the initial introduction, but we didn't have this immediate connection of best friends or anything like that. In fact, we didn't hang out, I think, what, six years later? Eight years later?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Yeah, I love that.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
He's a great guy. We actually flew him out and met directly with our management team.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Yeah. So you were 21, you were 23. Yeah, yeah. So I was 21. I come home off a two-year mission, right? And Daryl was like, hey, dude, come sell with me. And immediately, we got this really good flow as far as balancing out each other.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Didn't work out a lot.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
focusing on that as well 10 i'm gonna know saturday dude 10 geez dang gina i mean what was a year and a half ago you were 26 really no less than a year that's incredible that's incredible by the way he's got a great doctor that uh i did a call with we need to do a group council jay yeah part of part of it like the four-hour work week it's like
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Oh, yeah.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
I mean, we have a tranny. How is that the health person? I'm sorry. You went for it. I'm sorry, but man, dude, that's a health issue. Yeah, I agree. What about you, brother?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
You pushed each other up.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Well, I, I also think it's just like being out of whack, any one direction, like the guy that only cares about his physical appearance and that's it. Like spend six hours in the gym, has a terrible family life. Yeah. Can't barely pay his gym membership or whatever else, right? I think there's that, right? And so what we have been taught on the opposite side is like, that's bad, so don't just...
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Yeah. So I mean, for the last almost 20 years, we've been doing business together in one aspect or another. We had two divorces along the way. which I think any good relationship has to go through hard times, right? You're in your third marriage. No, I'm kidding. But yeah, we broke up from a business standpoint a couple different times, like didn't talk to each other.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Like you start with one thing and domino effects into everything else. Stress is the inability of action.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
And I think when you're taking action in the gym and being disciplined at the dinner table, it's much easier to address these hard things that cause stress, right? Like go and have the hard conversation.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
They're fine with the action. That's awesome. What is your, you know, for me, I've thought a lot about just like the why, right? Like everybody knows about like, yeah, you got to have a why that motivates you and everything else. But I think more important than that, you need to have a why that's unique. Most of us try to create whys that are somebody else's why. I need the house, the car, this.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
We define success based off of other people's parameters rather than our own. And I think really getting detailed, like for me, what's changed my life is when I put detail to the reason why I want a certain dollar amount. Like, what am I going to do with those dollars? Like, what does that actually mean for me if I have a billion dollars in the bank account?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Not just to say I have a billion dollars, but like, what am I doing with that billion dollars? Like, what type of charity events am I running? What am I doing in my community? How am I involved in my family's life and everything else because of these type of things? And doing the things... for me, not for it to impress anybody else. Right.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
And, you know, for some people living in a cottage, you know, that's off grid somewhere in Kansas, maybe it and other people, it's going to be a $10 million condo in New York or whatever it may be. And like getting to know yourself and what actually brings you joy and happiness and everything else is,
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
So just getting to that and really understanding yourself and being driven that way rather than just be like, Oh, Daryl has this. I should probably want that. Or Tommy's done this. And I think it's really easy, especially as a listener to the show. They see three guys that have accomplished a lot of really cool things to be like, Oh, I need to go do that. Or I want to go do that. It's like...
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Maybe like, is that the thing that drives you, that pushes you, that motivates you, that's going to give you true fulfillment in life? And if it is, then get a exact detailed plan and go and make it happen.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
I think the longest point was what, 18 months or two years?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
A lot of fun, man.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Thank you guys. Thanks, Tommy.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Yeah, stuff having a partner in crime. Yeah, and I think some of the struggles is like, I'm a big voice in the room. You know how it is. Oh, yeah. Yeah, me and you.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
We got two alphas just, just, and so Daryl has some alpha in him. It's just not as crazy as me. And so I think some of the struggles over the time is like, I steal a lot of the limelight, right? I'm the loud one. I'm the crazy one in the room. Even though Daryl, like if I'm out of the room, Daryl is loud and crazy. Just, you know, it's, it's hard to compete with a Tommy or.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
And I think that's, Daryl's been my strategic advantage. I mean, it doesn't appear, you've never had like a right-hand guy, right?
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
But he's no longer involved. He's no longer involved. Right. Yeah. So for Daryl, Daryl's always kind of been my filter, right? Like, because as you pointed out, it's very easy for a guy that has our type of personality to just be like, got this great idea. Let's run. Right. And so I go to Darrell, I'm like, dude, that's a great idea.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
And right, he understands that like only like one in 20, we should actually go and implement.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Oh, yeah, dude. I don't know if you've ever experienced this. But yeah, in our organization, right? If something doesn't go right, it's my fault. Yeah.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
17. So it's kind of been your thing for a very long time, right? Like the one thing saying no to pretty much everything along the way.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I think there's so many different paths to success, not one person, right? Like I can't line my path to success and say like, this is the reason why for you or me or whatnot.
The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Homegrown Advantage: Why Training From Scratch Beats Hiring Experience
And so like you 17 years for us, it was like, we said yes to so many different things, so many different industries, so many different ideas for so many years until it was like, all right, let's take everything that we've learned, concentrate it into one and just go. Yeah. And it's amazing to your point, right?