#115: The HOW of Building our $233M Rocket Ship

Speaker 1 A lot of people start their business, and like once things go in that direction, like you said, rock bottom. What advice would you tell them?

Speaker 1 What was that aha moment that you were like, Okay, this happened in my life that made me take this and this action that took me to the next level?

Speaker 2 You know, most people will never experience rock bottom because they're scared of rock bottom. It was actually a blessing to experience rock bottom because I realized, man, it's really not that bad.

Speaker 2 I still have my health, I still have all my experiences all my skills I have my family I have my God

Speaker 2 right and so like if this is the worst it can be why not keep going I have nothing to lose at this point in this episode I had the opportunity to jump on with Julio who's an entrepreneur down in Puerto Rico we discussed how we built strategically our business out of my garage in 2017 to 233 million dollars a year.

Speaker 2 You're going to learn so many incredible things like how we backed into it, how we built our operations.

Speaker 2 You've been hearing a lot of me talk about, if you watch some of our previous episodes, about building out the detailed map, the five-year blueprint.

Speaker 2 We go into even more detail on this episode, identifying the principles and the self-talk and everything that it takes to go and scale a business in today's level of entrepreneurship.

Speaker 2 You're going to enjoy this and so much more on this episode of the Founder Podcast.

Speaker 2 My mission is to change the lives of 2 billion people through entrepreneurship, helping entrepreneurs realize that their business is more about, is more than just economics, more than just creating paychecks for employees, but it's actually helping their team members become better physically, economically, with their associations, the way they impact their communities, and also their spiritual side.

Speaker 2 Hey, everybody, I hope that you're doing amazing.

Speaker 1 Today we had a podcast podcast with chris lee um we're here in ceo bias chris lee is a person that number one um i saw him and he was super humble and and i and he had like an amazing amazing trajectory and building companies and doing exits and i thought that that you can all guys learn from him um chris great to have you here yeah excited to be here thank you Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 thank you. Thank you, Chris.

Speaker 1 So there are a few things I want to ask you and and the first one is how did you become chris today like like what's your backstory for people that are in latin america puerto rico and and and

Speaker 1 brazil and different areas that they they hear us out like

Speaker 2 how do you got there well i mean that's a that's a pretty loaded question uh lots of lots of details it's definitely not just one quick answer of i worked hard and here i am uh

Speaker 2 you know there's been a lot of life events, series of events, of things that have led me to

Speaker 2 achieving the different things. You know,

Speaker 2 for me,

Speaker 2 I don't think there's necessarily a

Speaker 2 success isn't an endpoint.

Speaker 2 It's a journey, it's a trajectory, it's something that we're all striving for, and each of us have a different

Speaker 2 interpretation of, right?

Speaker 2 and because frankly, each one of us were put on this earth to to do something different, right? Like Julio is different than Chris and Chris is different than Edgar and

Speaker 2 Jose and everybody else. And so,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 for me, my, my life's mission is to impact and change. others through influence.
And

Speaker 2 my method of influence has been entrepreneurship, owning businesses and impacting employees and customers and everything else. And now I'm on the mission to

Speaker 2 changing the world through impacting other entrepreneurs by teaching them how to run successful organizations, cultures, and change their employees' lives. And so,

Speaker 2 you know, I grew up in a very humble household. My dad was a school teacher, and my mom was a stay-at-home mom.

Speaker 2 And my dad was a first-generation college graduate. Up until that point, most of his family had just been very low wage earners and undereducated.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, it was a big step for my dad to go and

Speaker 2 be a college graduate and go the traditional route of being able to make some money. And we didn't have a lot of it.

Speaker 2 There was seven of us,

Speaker 2 six siblings, and my cousin were raised on a school teacher's salary. And so from a young age, learned how to work, learned how to be disciplined, learned how to provide for myself and

Speaker 2 really be self-sustaining. And learned a lot of great principles from my parents, principles of...
work ethic, sacrifice, putting God first.

Speaker 2 You know, those were some of the main and most important things. And really just how to dream big.

Speaker 2 You know, my mom always told me that I could go out and accomplish anything that I desired in my life. I just had to

Speaker 2 put in the effort consistently and be disciplined in it. And so,

Speaker 2 you know, that's

Speaker 2 my path has been the last 20 years of entrepreneurship. Initially, I thought I wanted to be a doctor.
dropped out of college my senior year to go and pursue entrepreneurship, start my first business.

Speaker 2 It all hasn't been sunshine and rainbows, though. I've

Speaker 2 had many businesses that just haven't worked out.

Speaker 2 My very first business, I tried going too big, too quick with the wrong partnerships, made a lot of poor choices, was very egotistical and driven for the wrong reason. And,

Speaker 2 you know, two and a half years after the launch of that business, or just over two years after the launch of that business,

Speaker 2 ended up filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy, lost for $2.2 million.

Speaker 2 Lost everything, had less than $1,000 in my bank account, car repoed for my driveway, and

Speaker 2 was in a, you know, what most entrepreneurs would consider as like worst case scenario type environment. And so had

Speaker 2 a decision to make. Do I keep going down this path or do I quit and go back to and do what everybody else is doing, work for the man and

Speaker 2 get a real job? And so, you know, I'm I'm grateful to God that I was inspired to continue down that path and take everything that

Speaker 2 I had learned and

Speaker 2 developed and went and continued to apply it. And so then over the series of the next six, seven years, it was a lot of education, learning, starting, developing different businesses.

Speaker 2 I've owned things in everything, real estate,

Speaker 2 farming, flipping cars, flipping houses. I had a coupon book, medical pendant business, a search engine optimization company, home security,

Speaker 2 dabbled in pest control for a minute, you know, just all kinds of different things. And so

Speaker 2 I think most importantly, I learned what did work and what didn't work. And

Speaker 2 I'd say most people aren't willing to find out what doesn't work. And so I've never been scared of failure.
Well, that's not true. I've never been,

Speaker 2 I've always been willing to approach failure.

Speaker 2 I have fears just like everybody else,

Speaker 2 but I've learned how to handle my fears and go and take action regardless. And so,

Speaker 2 you know, that

Speaker 2 all that education led to me starting a company out of my garage in 2017 that

Speaker 2 in four and a half years, we scaled from no money to our fifth year in business did $233 million.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 so,

Speaker 2 you know, and there was a lot of different things learned along the way. We built a team of 1,100 employees and team members

Speaker 2 and just built something that I was extremely proud of. And I've been able to take that same framework and apply it to other businesses and

Speaker 2 been able to see other nine-figure exits and builds and everything. And so like that's a, that's kind of the overview of my journey and path.
And, you know, today,

Speaker 2 like I said, my mission is to change

Speaker 2 the lives of 2 billion people through entrepreneurship, helping entrepreneurs realize that their business is more about, is more than just economics, more than just creating paychecks for employees, but it's actually helping their team members become better physically, economically, with their associations, the way they impact their communities, and also their spiritual side.

Speaker 2 And so, that's that's my mission. It's why I get out of bed every morning.
It's why I'm on this podcast. Um, because there's, there's a lot more to life than just money, 100%, Chris.

Speaker 1 And, and honestly, I was curious when I first heard your story, how, because a lot of people start their business, and like once things go in that direction, like you said, rock bottom, like, how in the world, like, how, how, how, how do you have the stamina to go?

Speaker 1 Like, I'm in my lowest point. Like, how do I don't quit?

Speaker 1 Like, like, how, like, to all the people that are out there and in a certain degree, and they, they're like in that moment in their life that they're trying to kick off their business, they're trying to get sales, but it's not working.

Speaker 1 What advice would you tell them? What was that aha moment that you were like, okay, this happened in my life that that made me take this and this action that took me to

Speaker 1 the next level.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 2 my

Speaker 2 life experiences up until that point had always taught me that like you may have a goal, but typically the route or the road to that goal is not the way that you initially planned it out.

Speaker 2 And so my goals didn't change when I failed. right like i just had to change the action and the route to be able to get there you know i I had experienced that with sports.

Speaker 2 I had goals to be a state champion in

Speaker 2 American football.

Speaker 2 And, you know, I thought it would look one way and it looked completely different.

Speaker 2 We ended up getting there and winning that championship, but I learned a lot of hard lessons of failure and not getting what I wanted along the way.

Speaker 2 So, you know, I would continually draw on experiences like that.

Speaker 2 And frankly,

Speaker 2 you know, most people will never experience rock bottom because they're scared of rock bottom

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 and so it was actually a blessing to experience rock bottom because i realized man it's really not that bad i still have my health i still have all my experiences all my skills i have my family i have my god right and so like if this is the worst it can be

Speaker 2 why not keep going i have nothing to lose at this point right uh and everything everything to gain. And so,

Speaker 2 you know, I think, I think most people think that they have too much to lose or, you know, that like their safety, their security, their comfort.

Speaker 2 And so if you're willing to just get to rock bottom, like for me, like right now, like you can take everything from me. You can take.

Speaker 2 My real estate and my stock portfolio, my homes, and, you know,

Speaker 2 my cash in the bank and everything like that. And like, I'm willing to go back to zero.
It doesn't mean I will go to zero, but I'm willing to go back there because

Speaker 2 I understand that the fruit, the

Speaker 2 results aren't who I am.

Speaker 2 The results are simply a derivative or

Speaker 2 an equation or

Speaker 2 the end result of who I am. And so, like I said, you could take everything I have and I'll still be able to reproduce it tomorrow.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 as you said, you talk about the fruit that everything that you're living, because in a way, all entrepreneurs,

Speaker 1 like in a way,

Speaker 1 they start with because probably like in my case, I started because I come with humble beginnings, like you, my family didn't have money, like, and I had to go in the streets, hustle, sell bottle waters, like, sell like chocolates and everything.

Speaker 1 Like, I know, like, what's to struggle, but for me,

Speaker 1 and like, what do you think, Chris?

Speaker 1 Like, in a way, are the skills that you have today that if tomorrow, God forbid, something happened to you, like you'll be like, okay, I need to do this thing, this thing, because you have already that mindset is still in you.

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 1 I know that with your skill set, like, because you have proven it not once, twice, like, it's already like a map that you have, like a blueprint.

Speaker 1 Like, what skills said, like, entrepreneurs should be focusing on?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, really, it all comes down to influence. And influence, sales is

Speaker 2 a subset of influence, right? So

Speaker 2 the ability to get other people to see life from your perspective is the number one skill that anyone can develop. And this applies to sales.

Speaker 2 It applies to marketing.

Speaker 2 It applies to recruiting and building a team and everything else. And so like the number one skill that I have is I can go and I can create vision and direction for people,

Speaker 2 whether that's an employee to come work with me or a customer to come work with me, right?

Speaker 2 Like, helping them see that they don't have to live in the pain that they currently are and that there are solutions out there. And so, I mean, that's that's my number one skill set.

Speaker 2 And I will continue to use for the rest of my life. And I know that, like,

Speaker 2 I can go and apply to selling bottled water in the streets. I can go and sell coaching.

Speaker 2 I can go and sell yachts. I can go and be a member of somebody else's organization and sell their product or service, right? Influence, right? I can go and build teams.

Speaker 2 And so influence

Speaker 2 has many like predecessors like confidence, right?

Speaker 2 You have to be confident in order to have influence. And the way that you build confidence is you stop lying to yourself, right?

Speaker 2 And the way, the way that you stop lying to yourself is you do the things that you said you were going to do, right? You be a person of your word. If you say tomorrow,

Speaker 2 hey, I'm going to start my diet tomorrow, or I'm going to start working out tomorrow, or I'm going to be a better husband tomorrow. I'm going to treat my kids with more love and dignity tomorrow.

Speaker 2 If I do that, I get a vote of confidence and my confidence goes up. If I don't do that, I start questioning, like,

Speaker 2 well,

Speaker 2 am I a good person? Am I a person of my word? Am I someone of integrity? And then my confidence goes down, right?

Speaker 2 And so the biggest way to gain influence is to start doing things consistently, little things. It doesn't have to be big, right?

Speaker 2 It could be like, all right, today I'm going to do one push-up, one push-up. Okay, I did it.
My confidence boosted. Okay.
I am, I am good. Today, I'm going to write one page of my book.

Speaker 2 I write one page of my book. Today, I'm going to send five kind texts to love, to my family members.
Today, I'm going to say prayers to my God, right?

Speaker 2 Like whatever it is, whatever it is that's going on in your head, whether you write it down or you're telling yourself here, If you go and you fulfill on it, your confidence will be boosted.

Speaker 2 When your confidence boosts, you naturally can be more influential because now I can get up in front of somebody and be like, you are going to love this.

Speaker 2 Why? Because I am confident in whatever is backing me, whether it's my product, my service, myself,

Speaker 2 right? That I am a person of my word that always backs it up, right?

Speaker 2 So if I say, I'm going to help you get results and I'm going to help you become the best version of yourself and you're going to grow and you're going to build and you're going to have opportunity and all this and stuff.

Speaker 2 I can say it with so much confidence because I know

Speaker 2 on my end, I will do everything possible to help whoever I'm talking to get that thing, get that product, get that service, get that result, right?

Speaker 2 And so, which will naturally attract more and more people.

Speaker 2 So once again, backing it, diluting it all down, like if you want to develop the best skill set in the world of influence, you have to have confidence.

Speaker 2 If you want to develop confidence, you got to be a person of your word. If you want to be a person of your word, start doing what you said you were going to do.
Start with the truth.

Speaker 2 Have a real inventory, right? And admit when you screw up, no one's going to be perfect 100% of the time. Integrity is owning the truth.
It's not perfection. It's owning the truth.

Speaker 2 Yesterday, I said I would do 10 push-ups. I only did five.
I only did five, so I have improvement to be made. Or yesterday I said I was going to write a page in my book.
I only wrote a paragraph.

Speaker 2 I'm not going to lie to myself and say, oh, that page or that paragraph is basically a page. It's probably good enough.
Or, you know, those two push-ups were,

Speaker 2 I mean, on the way to 10, so it's probably good enough. Right.
When you start lying to yourself and just telling yourself these stories and not owning the truth, you will never be able to improve.

Speaker 2 And if you you don't improve, you won't have confidence. You don't have confidence, you won't have influence.
If you don't have influence, you won't be successful.

Speaker 1 Whoa, that's like a punchline right there. That's like what I call like a like

Speaker 1 a golden nugget. Um, Chris, can you, can you, can you like think

Speaker 1 and go back with me? Like in that moment when you're in your garage and you want to start this business, how do you pursue this industry that you pursue, like the like your company?

Speaker 1 Like, how do you, like, what, in what way you were, like, okay, like, I want to go in this route because this is the data is telling me, like, what, what do you, what's your process before building a company?

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 1 honestly, Chris, I had to give you an applause because you have done it twice, learned once.

Speaker 1 It's not like a home run, like, and you, if you got crypto lucky, like in 2016, 17, like, you got lucky, you got, you got, you got in early, it's not like that type of success.

Speaker 1 It's a success that's planned, a success that is like, like, like, it's designed, you know that yep design design that's the word i would look for yeah so so first off

Speaker 2 whenever whenever you're building a business you have to have something that works okay

Speaker 2 um

Speaker 2 like

Speaker 2 i chose solar because i knew solar worked right i had been in the solar industry i had experience in it i had seen that it worked and so i decided to go all in on solar right too many entrepreneurs

Speaker 2 they don't have any any experience in what they're doing and they don't even know if it works. And then they hear guys like me that say, Hey, go all in.

Speaker 2 And so they go all in on something that doesn't work, doesn't scale, doesn't, they have no experience in it. So, one,

Speaker 2 gain experience. Usually, the best way to gain experience is go and fail a bunch of times or go work for somebody else.
Both work, right?

Speaker 2 And, and a lot of, a lot of people say, oh, you need to own your own business. Why not? No, go work for somebody else.
You can be an entrepreneur in somebody else's organization.

Speaker 2 You could be an intrapreneur. So

Speaker 2 and gain the experience, understand

Speaker 2 what you're going, like that the product works, that it's scalable.

Speaker 2 Once again,

Speaker 2 if

Speaker 2 like what happens is like people will have an idea and they're like, I think this will make money. Right.

Speaker 2 And so then what they do is they spend a bunch of time planning and developing and making sure they have the perfect product, perfect service before they even know it'll make money.

Speaker 2 Then they take it to the market. They try selling it only to find out nobody wants it.
Nobody wants that product or service. Right.

Speaker 2 And so now what is like you've just screwed yourself in there like, oh, entrepreneurship isn't for me or whatever else.

Speaker 2 So it's like, if you have a product or service and you have no experience in it, get a very minimal viable product, something very basic, test market it, put it out to the market, ask the question, if I created this, would you buy it?

Speaker 2 Right. Like, and get like things going and have something that you can go and present to the market.
So for me, when it came to solar, I had already been in the solar industry.

Speaker 2 So I knew it worked, right? I knew that people wanted my product or service and I had experience in it. So I didn't have to go and develop like a crazy new skill set or anything like that.

Speaker 2 There were things that I didn't have experience in. I never had experience in installing it.
I never had experience in doing it in like what we call a B or C market, right? Where

Speaker 2 solar didn't necessarily make financial sense to the customer. So those were a few things that I had to test out, that I needed to like do some initial marketing.

Speaker 2 Like, is there a need or want for this product in a market where it doesn't make financial sense?

Speaker 2 And so initially we did some marketing, but from there, it was just everything by design and going super deep, right? And my playbook was starting with the end in mind.

Speaker 2 It wasn't like, let's just see how this thing plays out and see if we make money. It was, okay, I'm sitting in my garage.
Five years from now,

Speaker 2 what do I want to have? What do I want to build? Okay.

Speaker 2 What would get me super stoked? What would accomplish the goals that I have physically, economically with my associations and my spirituality?

Speaker 2 Like what kind of dollar figure do I need to be able to build the life that I want and build it five years out? And then I'm going to back it into what I need to do today.

Speaker 2 And so when I looked at my roadmap, my blueprint, I looked five years from now, I want to be doing $100 million a year. And in order to do $100 million a year, how many employees do I need?

Speaker 2 What does my organization look like? And I built a five-year blueprint of how many salespeople, how many managers, how many operators, how many support staff, how many everything, right?

Speaker 2 And the number I came up with was in order to get to $100 million a year, I need to have 500 employees. And I need them in these different departments and I need all this different stuff.

Speaker 2 And that's day essentially one or two when I've got like one or two employees in my garage. And so I build this roadmap and I go and I start attracting people with it.

Speaker 2 And so if you'll notice, so my goal for five years was to do five was that 100 million a year with 500 employees. In five years, we ended up doing 233 million a year with 1,100 employees.

Speaker 2 Now, the crazy thing, if you look at the ratio, my ratio was almost nuts on. Like it was almost perfect.
I needed

Speaker 2 for every million dollars, I I needed

Speaker 2 five employees or

Speaker 2 whatever that number is. So like you double the 100 million to 200 million, that's 1,000 employees.
Like I said, we did 233 million with 1,100 employees. So the ratio was almost perfect.

Speaker 2 But then we took that and that's what we recruited on. Like, hey, this is the company that we're building.

Speaker 2 This is where we're going. This is how we're going to get there.
These are the people that we need.

Speaker 2 I know you're coming in at this level, but as long as you do A, B, and C, you develop out, there's going to be this management opportunity. There's going to be this organization opportunity.

Speaker 2 And so then it was like just influencing and impacting because I had so much confidence that I could go and build because once again, I'm a person of my word. I've fulfilled.
I'd shown up to the gym.

Speaker 2 I had taken care of my wife. I had prayed to my God.
I had done everything else that I was so confident that I could go and...

Speaker 2 tell someone in my garage while it's sweating and we don't have air conditioning and everything else That this is what we're going to build, and I'm committed to building it.

Speaker 2 Do you want to come be a part of it or not?

Speaker 2 And then I was able to influence incredible operators to come and be a part of it because they saw the vision, they saw the direction, they saw what we were building. And so, like,

Speaker 2 what was the secret sauce?

Speaker 2 It was, it was beginning with the end in mind, creating a five-year blueprint that I was confident I could go and do, and building the confidence based off of living in integrity and being a man of truth.

Speaker 1 You mentioned a lot of God, and I'm a believer of God.

Speaker 1 One day, behind cameras, we can have like a few experiences that I have had.

Speaker 1 But how do you think God is like how important for people in their lives, like in like in terms of in general and success? Because

Speaker 1 you have it all. You have health, wealth, and relationship.
You have it all. Like what every people aspire, you already have it.

Speaker 2 So how God has played in your life uh uh uh play in in to make it you know like like happen well first of all god isn't part of life god is life right like i i believe that i lived with god before this life i believe that i will continue on that path after this life and that life is a time

Speaker 2 to prove who I am and what I am capable of becoming. I believe that I am a son of God.
And as a son, that I have just as many characteristics that I could potentially inherit from my father, right?

Speaker 2 And so

Speaker 2 because of it, I look at everything in life as a way for God preparing me to inherit his kingdom. Right.

Speaker 2 And so I see influence and business and family and physical fitness and everything as a form of God. I believe that God

Speaker 2 is a science, right?

Speaker 2 Like people, like a lot of times they'll talk about like, oh, I believe in God or I believe in science. The funny thing is, is I believe that science is the way that God operates, right?

Speaker 2 Like that, that there are formulas, there are equations, there are different things, and that

Speaker 2 as like God wants to be involved in every intricate

Speaker 2 thing that we do, and

Speaker 2 it's only us that keep him out. He never takes himself out of our lives.
It's we block it. I think the best way that I ever,

Speaker 2 that I ever heard it explained is God and his blessings are like rain, right?

Speaker 2 It is constantly pouring out and he's wanting to pour them down upon us.

Speaker 2 A lot of times we throw up an umbrella and we block them out, right? It doesn't, he doesn't stop raining.

Speaker 2 He doesn't stop reigning his blessings or whatever else, but like he, he wants his, the scriptures talk about that his hand is stretched out still.

Speaker 2 Like God is there waiting for us to return, waiting for us to turn to him, to everything else. And so like for me,

Speaker 2 Involving God in everything that I do is absolutely imperative. I believe that he helps me physically.

Speaker 2 I believe that he helps me achieve my goals from, like I said, fitness and my relationships and my financial goals. Now, I don't think, like, I'm not saying like,

Speaker 2 if you're poor, you don't believe in God.

Speaker 2 But what I'm saying is, if you're poor, you're not using the proper equations that God has prepared. Right.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, there are equations to success. Most of us are just too impatient with the timeline that that equation takes.

Speaker 1 wow that's powerful wow honestly you you you gave you're giving so much golden nuggets here

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 wow i'm speechless like honestly i mean got got excited when when i heard this um but also in terms you know since this is like uh like like a business podcast i want people to understand how do you structure a 500 people company like like in a way because for me like i i manage like like five to ten employees and I think it's like, like a lot.

Speaker 1 Like, I don't know how do you do it, like, in a way, like, 500 is like a hundred times more. Like, how do you do it?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 you, first of all, you have to think big enough, right? Like, what I hear you saying is, like,

Speaker 2 I have 10 employees, I can't imagine having 500. Well, you got to start imagining, right? Like, you got to, you got to say,

Speaker 2 what,

Speaker 2 what does life look like if I am Julio living best,

Speaker 2 the best potential that God has put me on this earth to do? Right.

Speaker 2 And so for me, I look at him like, you know, God's got a lot of potential for me. I've got to go and become the best Chris Lee there is.
Right.

Speaker 2 And so the best Chris Lee there is doesn't play small, right? The best Chris Lee doesn't play with 10 employees, doesn't play with whatever else.

Speaker 2 And so the way you structure it is, like I said, you got to begin with the end in mind. You got to go after a big number that's going to allow you to have impact and influence and everything else.

Speaker 2 And then you got to figure out like what are the unit economics to be able to make that thing work. Right.

Speaker 2 So, like, the easiest, the easiest way to start structuring a $100 million business, I don't call it a 500 employee business. I call it a $100 million business because employees are

Speaker 2 tools to get to 100 million.

Speaker 2 It's not get me 500 employees and make 100 million. It's how do I make 100 million with the proper tools? And employees are

Speaker 2 part of that structure. And so you always address any organization first and foremost with sales.
Like,

Speaker 2 how am I going to sell my product? Now, if it's through automation, you don't need a whole lot of salespeople.

Speaker 2 If it's one-on-one interaction or one-to-many interaction, you're going to need some level of salespeople, whether it's B to C, business to consumer, or B2B, business to business.

Speaker 2 And then they're giving you affiliate offers or whatever it is, right?

Speaker 2 And so, but you have to back in your sales and marketing first because sales and marketing is how you generate money in the door, right?

Speaker 2 And so

Speaker 2 there's three basic verticals in any organization. You have sales and marketing, one vertical, which can later be split into two.

Speaker 2 You have operations, which is the fulfillment of whatever you sold, product, service, whatever. And then it's finance, which is essentially keeping everything structured and reported on, right?

Speaker 2 And so

Speaker 2 you have

Speaker 2 those three basic departments or verticals in the business. You have to start with the first one, which is your sales and marketing.
And you say, okay,

Speaker 2 if I want to do $100 million a year,

Speaker 2 what does the average salesperson

Speaker 2 in my industry sell on a yearly basis? Right.

Speaker 2 And so let's, for round numbers' sake, we'll say that the average person does a million dollars a year. Okay.

Speaker 2 If it's a million bucks a year, then what does that mean? It means I need a hundred salespeople to be able to do $100 million a year.

Speaker 2 And with 100 salespeople, what kind of management support and training staff do I need? Okay, the law of management tells me that I need between

Speaker 2 a person can only manage up to three, three to eight people. Lower on the totem pool, the more people they can manage.

Speaker 2 So at the bare minimum, if I have 100 salespeople and people can only maximize eight, that means I need at least 13 managers. Okay, because 13 managers times eight is 104, right?

Speaker 2 So I have 100 salespeople, 13 managers. Of the 13 managers, I'm probably going to break it down into regions

Speaker 2 of four and five people. That means I'm going to need

Speaker 2 three to four regional managers for the three to four regional managers. I'm going to have a divisional president that's going to manage those people.

Speaker 2 From that, I'm going to probably have a VP of sales and marketing or VP of sales. And

Speaker 2 that's just the, hey, let's go and sell group. group, but do they need training? Do they need reporting? Do they need development, right?

Speaker 2 Okay, well, I need to do a sales enhancement arm, something that builds out a training platform and consistently takes care of these people, helps support the managers with the data and everything else.

Speaker 2 And so I go back and I build out my whole sales organization. Okay, if that's what it's going to take, what is my marketing organization? Am I going to outsource my marketing?

Speaker 2 Am I going to build out my own internal team? Right. And then you go and you build that out.
Now, when you start with the end in mind and you do something like this, it's not going to be perfect.

Speaker 2 Right. And there's lots of resources out there.
Chat GBT is a great resource.

Speaker 2 Google's a great resource.

Speaker 2 People like me are a great resource, like going and being a part of coaching groups and consulting groups that can tell you, hey, what kind of ratios you should be looking for, or, you know, does this look good?

Speaker 2 Does it not? But whatever you start with, whatever you go and you build out, and same thing goes for operations.

Speaker 2 If I go to operations and say, like in the the solar business, we need crews to be able to install our

Speaker 2 solar systems. And we say, okay,

Speaker 2 how many solar systems can a crew install on a weekly basis, on a yearly basis?

Speaker 2 And then we back into the number of like, okay, if I want 100 million and my average ticket price is 35,000, that means I'm going to be doing, you know, 3,000, 3,000 jobs.

Speaker 2 If I'm doing 3,000 jobs and the average crew does 200,

Speaker 2 200 jobs a year, then I need how many crews, right? And you back it up, law of management all the way up, supporting staff, research and development,

Speaker 2 you know, quality control, whatever it is, right?

Speaker 2 And once again, you can go to different resources and say, hey, what should a structure like this look like? Blah, blah, blah, whatever. And then you build the whole thing out.

Speaker 2 Now you got a roadmap. Now you got a game plan to be able to go and take over the world.

Speaker 1 Wow. Honestly, I'm impressed.
You're like, like one of the people that I honestly admire. I met a lot of people, big people.

Speaker 1 But one, one, one thing I admire you, Chris, and want people to also listen to it, is your humbleness and your ability to help others. You do it.
You don't need to be here.

Speaker 1 You're here and like a person that literally can be doing anything that they want in their life and they're choosing to share with

Speaker 1 us. And also and grateful people, like go follow Chris and we'll leave the links below.
I have two last questions, you know, because um I want to respect your time.

Speaker 1 The last one is: what is with your Spanish?

Speaker 2 Po que to la español.

Speaker 1 How do you learn to speak Spanish?

Speaker 2 El Español, la hablando,

Speaker 2 por mio de las veentas, por mio de

Speaker 2 la gente, yo yo tengo muchos employados que que habla en español y todo eso

Speaker 2 y entonces, pero hace hace bente años que que regrece

Speaker 2 de mimission,

Speaker 2 pero, pero si todo víarlo

Speaker 2 nos perfecto, pero pero lo a.

Speaker 2 Pero y, vero yi influido.

Speaker 1 And the last question, Chris, so we can

Speaker 1 wrap it up.

Speaker 2 If you

Speaker 1 were in 2017 and you let's go back because I think that this is the most powerful thing because most people right now, like usually in like when in Puerto Rico, Latin America, when they're starting a business, you know, they're bootstrapping because you know, like the mid-year age, for example, in Puerto Rico, the median average income of people, like a family houses, of twelve thousand dollars a year.

Speaker 1 And in a way like you know like we we have been like into similar situations obviously your success is way way bigger than i aspire and one day hopefully you know we will drink a tea and this conversation you know helped me get over there um

Speaker 1 what will you tell yourself

Speaker 1 what what words of of affirmation will you tell yourself like

Speaker 1 like that you feel like genuinely like that help you continue moving forward?

Speaker 1 Like what things do you think that, that, that help you in your self-dialogue, self-thought that you were thinking, okay, I have in this situation right now. Um, like, how can I move forward?

Speaker 1 Like, like, because in a way, it's something that I admire because I met so many people that they're into their entrepreneurship, things are not working out.

Speaker 1 Next thing you know, they're quitting and they're like, you know, giving up on their dreams and they're you know, leaving an average job and a leverage life when they're meant for more.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 So, a couple things that I've always told myself: one,

Speaker 2 what,

Speaker 2 or things that I would even ask myself: like, one,

Speaker 2 what would I do if I had no fear, right? And so, like, fear typically drives most people's actions. And so, I ask myself, what would I do if I had no fear?

Speaker 2 So, I identify the fear that I'm feeling in the moment, remove it, and I create a clear game plan of action of things I would do if I wasn't allowing my fear to control me. Right.

Speaker 2 And so

Speaker 2 that's, that's number one. Number two is I consistently tell myself, and this has been years of after knocking doors.
I used to do a lot of door-to-door sales and everything else. And

Speaker 2 I would tell myself, do what you're physically able to do, not what you're mentally able to do.

Speaker 2 Because,

Speaker 2 you know, there. We have a lot of excuses, a lot of reasons not to take action.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 usually, the reasons, like the better you get at producing, the better your reasons and excuses get.

Speaker 2 Like, for example, excuses I would hear is like, nobody expects you to do more. Nobody, you're already at the top of your game.
You're already doing great things.

Speaker 2 Like people already respect you and love you. Like these are, these are excuses that I hear in my mind.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I have to remind myself, that's not a good reason to give up. That's not a good reason to stop working, not to keep moving forward.
And so,

Speaker 2 telling myself, do what you're physically able to do, not what you're mentally able to do. Like, are my legs broken? Is my tongue still in my mouth? Can I make that one more phone call?

Speaker 2 Can I knock one more door? Can I do one more spreadsheet? Can I write one more page? Right? Like, am I physically capable of doing that? Like, that's what consistently has

Speaker 2 kept me going.

Speaker 2 And then,

Speaker 2 last is that, you know,

Speaker 2 results are not the reason I'm in the game. I'm in the game to become the best tree possible, not produce the best fruit, the cash, the cars, the vehicles, whatever else, like fruit is cool.

Speaker 2 I need to be the best tree possible that has the ability to produce fruit consistently. Because

Speaker 2 if my mind is on the fruit, then I'm going to be severely depressed when the fruit doesn't turn out the way I thought it was going to do.

Speaker 2 But if I'm on the tree, right, the tree is a consistent work that is growing forever and it isn't just seasonal. It doesn't just come and go based off of seasons.
And so, like,

Speaker 2 those are the main mentalities that have always kept me on the right path.

Speaker 1 Wow. Amazing.
Honestly, Chris, this is one of the best interviews I ever heard. Honestly, I feel so genuinely and like I'm very grateful for this.
And

Speaker 1 for all the people that they want to go like follow your work and also scale their business, what page would they go?

Speaker 2 Yeah, so you can follow me on all major social media platforms. Instagram

Speaker 2 is Chris LeeQB, like quarterback QB.

Speaker 2 And that's on all major. You can find me on Facebook that way.
You can find me on TikTok.

Speaker 2 I'm most active on instagram and facebook um and then i and then i run a community uh i have uh a nine dollar trial we we uh we have a course that you get access to our like our weekly uh recording calls and and uh my whole my whole way to build any business you don't have to be in the home service business to use my course it's it's it's my whole structure to build any business um it's 297 bucks a month to be a part of that but we're doing a nine dollar trial uh you can go and find it on my Instagram link or whatnot, or maybe it's in the show notes here.

Speaker 2 But yeah, I'd highly,

Speaker 2 highly recommend that.

Speaker 2 It's a platform that's hosted on school, and there's a lot of good discussion and everything else in there.

Speaker 1 Amazing. I will definitely be part of it.
I'll be joining. I'm very excited.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, thank you so much, Chris. And we see you in the next one.
Thank you, Julia.