Scaling Businesses with Purpose ft. Chris Lee | Coffeez for Closers with Joe Shalaby

0:00He took a company from zero to$233 million in four years, sold it and then turned around and started helping other businesses do the same. If you're a founder, a leader, or just someone who wants to build something great, you're going to want to hear this. Chris Lee isn't just another coach. He's been in the trenches. As the former CEO of Solgin Power, he built one of the largest solar companies in the country, then led a$120 million acquisition before stepping away in 2023. Now he's showing business owners how to scale, lead, and create real impact. But here's the thing, Chris isn't just about numbers.

0:42He's about faith, family, and building a business the right way. Today, we talk about culture, leadership, making big exits, and why faith should never take a backseat to success. Welcome to Coffees. Just to give the audience a quick overview, just give a 10 ,000-foot overview of what is it that you do currently. Yeah. So I run a education and training community called Next Level Pros. We mainly work with brick and mortar businesses. And so, but we have people from all different industries, but yeah, we have a full community in which we train typically through a series of workshops and coaching and support and help businesses scale and grow.

1:31And the big thing is I come from the space. I come from being in the seat of the business owner. I'm not just some coach that learned it at a seminar. Yeah, and you've scaled some nine-figure businesses. So Solgen, which was one of the biggest solar companies in the country, you exited that in what? Was it 2023? 2022 is when we sold to private equity. I stayed on for a year. We did another$120 million acquisition while I was CEO, and then I stepped down as CEO March of 2023. Now you're teaching other companies how to do it. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. We'll dive right into it. I like to start the show off the same way I start with every founder CEO I meet with.

2:17And Chris, what is your morning routine? What is my morning routine? It kind of depends. I go through different ebbs and flows, but for the most part, I wake up around 6 a.m. And one of the first things I do is I pray, and then I head to the gym, and I go and work out. So I've gone back and forth from working out at a gym to working out at my home. I have a pretty nice gym at home, and I've found that right now I'm kind of in a season of life where I work out at home so I can be around my kids a little bit more in the morning. Because when I go to a gym, we live out on a 23-acre hobby farm and we're about 15 to 20 minutes from civilization.

3:05And so once I leave, I'm basically gone for the day. And so I've shifted to doing most of my morning routine at home. Some level of workout, I'll implement cold plunges and sauna and different things, a lot of different biohacking type thing. A big focus on the fitness and then also the learning. I usually spend 20, 30 minutes listening to an audio book and usually about 15, 20 minutes in some level of scripture. And, uh, so yeah, big, big focus on relationships, education, and spirituality, uh, during, during that morning routine. I love that, Chris. I have a very similar morning routine. So biohacking listens to, listen to God's word, kind of do some self-reflection and, uh, you know, try to be around the kids as much as possible.

3:59Um, so, you know, when you, when did, what year did you start SoulGen? So 2017 was when we, so we scaled it. I sold it four and a half years after starting it. Yeah. So that's what I wanted to get into. It's that you managed to scale a company from zero to a hundred in a period of four years and have an exit, you know, and you know, what are some of the key principles that you implemented in growing an organization to that kind of scale? Well, first off, it wasn't my first go around. And a lot of people can say I hit the market ride or whatnot, but everything in that business was done by design.

4:42It was done on purpose and with forethought. And so prior to that, I launched my first business in 2008 when I was 24 years old. And two and a half years later, I found myself bankrupt and just made a lot of terrible decisions. And then I tried all different kinds of things and tried to scale and just didn't know how. And, uh, and frankly, didn't ask enough help of others. And, you know, when I was, when I was young, I lied to, I liked to think that I had it all figured out, which I didn't. And so it wasn't until I went back and I, in 2012, I started working, uh, for, for someone else. And I spent four and a half years working and studying what high growth CEOs were doing.

5:34And so I was very intentional about why I was working for these businesses and the people that I was working under. And yeah, I just developed a clear roadmap of when I was ready to go and spread my wings again, it was going to be all done on purpose. And so I think that was the most important thing and principle was doing it by design, not by default, and building culture that was going to attract the right type of talent to be able to go and scale and not try to do it all myself. Nice. Culture seems to be a fundamental need for any business to grow, especially at scale. In the solar business, it's like, well, how do you develop a strong, attractive culture?

6:20Because that's, you know, very watered down, very unsexy business to begin with. And it's a very, you know, boots to the ground. Yeah. You know, the, the interesting thing about culture, and this is what we always said with Soulja, and Hey, we're building a culture and our strategy may change. The strategy was solar culture is independent of whatever industry you're in. You could build incredible culture in a dumpster, uh, business, you know, a garbage business or whatever it may be because culture is about people. And as long as you build a business that has people and you're doing it in a way.

6:58So one of the biggest keys to my success was I focused on the development of my people more than just being productive at work, but being better physically, economically with their associations and their spirituality. And that is the foundation to be able to scale a group of individuals that can get behind the same mission and vision of whatever it is, whether it's, whether it's solar, whether it's financial strategy, whether it's, you know, you build homes. I mean, whatever the business is, people will buy into it if you value them. So you've, you've always put Christ at the center of your organizations.

7:44yeah yeah for sure i you know from from the very so when we launched my businesses out of my garage and from very early stages we do potlucks and we pray over food and we do everything and like and i i'd say hey look you don't need to agree with everything that i believe in but we're all spiritual beings having a physical experience and we will continue to you know have have a level of focus there. And, you know, I, I can proudly say that throughout, throughout my career, I've been able to bring people closer to Christ. I've been able to help people lose weight. I've been able to help them invest their money and, and become independent on very low wage type jobs and all different types of things.

8:28So like those, those are, those are the things that really mattered to me is that I develop out my people to be incredible citizens in their communities. And that's what it's about. You really put a servitude mindset at the forefront, and that's enabled you to scale. And I always kind of live by that principle, do God's work, he always does your work. And you're a testament to who God's going to favor. Yeah, for sure. I firmly believe that. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs, they try to put things off while they focus on their business or whatnot. And I would say the key to my success was that I kept a balanced impact across my life.

9:20I focused on working out. I know Alex or Mosey will say, oh, people only get in shape after they exit their businesses or this, that. No, that wasn't true. I still put God first. I chose my family first. I have a wife of almost 20 years and five children. I chose to have a family and build a business around a family rather than the opposite. And so those things have just really paid off because I think ultimately people are attracted to a holistic human more than they are just a flashy car and a nice watch. Yeah, that's the reality. I mean, flashy cars, nice watches, all that stuff fades. It's, you know, having a good godly family that that's eternal.

10:14So what do you think, like, besides kind of like living a holistic life, what were some of the key decisions you had to make to scale your business? For sure. So, you know, I learned from other business failures. One is balancing the priorities of the business. You know, my first business, my priority was customer, employee, then business. And by that, it was charge as little as possible, pay as most as possible, and hopefully there's something left for me at the end. Ultimately, what I've found is that the reverse is absolutely imperative. You have to design with whatever your target profit margin is, which typically I like to target a 25 % to 30 % profit margin.

11:07Because if I'm highly profitable, I can then take care of my employee in a very good way. And then they will in turn take care of my customer. And because of that, in order to get highly profitable, it's charge more than the rest of the marketplace and over deliver on the experience. And so, you know, we were well known for being the most expensive in the solar industry. But because of it, we were able to afford to take care of the customer in throughout the experience and that customer being both the employee and and the end user. And it also afforded us to make a lot of mistakes. When you're operating on good, healthy margins, you can screw up and then you can take care of the customer.

11:57And so we were charging about twice as much as most local solar installers were, which, again, like I said, put us at the very top of the market. I'm a firm believer that there's only two places that you can play in an offer. You either got to be the most expensive or you got to be the cheapest because anywhere in between, you're ultimately screwing yourself. Because if you're playing the middle game, you will always be undercut in price by that low cost leader. And so if you're going to be undercut, you might as well be undercut while delivering the best experience at the most expensive price.

12:33And so, and the only way that you can play that low cost leader is you got to be Walmart. You got to be willing to sacrifice in the customer experience. You got to sell butt cracks and whatever else with high level automation and crazy scalability at razor thin margins. And so very few of us can afford to get to that level. So if you can't afford to get to that level, you better be playing the other game. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, everyone likes, you know, most entrepreneurs play in that middle. Middle ground. Yeah, I hate the middle. In fact, one of the one of the first things that I do when somebody joins our community is I get them to shift their offer.

13:18And so I say, hey, how do we get you to the highest price? and then how do we use some of that additional highest price to improve the experience in the delivery of your product? And so, yeah, it's, and most people are scared of that. And so I'd say that's like step number one is coming in with the right offer because foundationally most, most entrepreneurs screw that up from the beginning. It's really hard to fix down the road. So we foundationally started with that. We focused on culture, but then most importantly for scale is that we refuse to rob the growth capital from the business. I think most entrepreneurs, once they hit that good, what they deem a good income, 250, 500 ,000, whatever, then they stop investing in growth and they start pulling profits to buy the watches, to buy the houses, to buy the different things.

14:07Where my model has always been, And I take everything I netted and I plunge it back into marketing. I plunge it back into any growth metrics that are going to drive the top line. And so we sacrificed. I mean, our first two and a half years in business, we operated out of my garage. And I have a pretty good size garage. It's a 3 ,500 square foot shop. But the day we moved out, two and a half years later, I had just in my headquarters, I had 53 people showing up to my house every single day. And so, and we refused to live by vanity metrics, which is like the office and, you know, just like looking good and saying, look at me, successful business owner.

14:53But dude, like the day that I had moved out of my garage, we had already done$75 million of business. And so, I mean, we did year one, we did 16 million, year two we did 32 year three we did 34 then we did 89 and then we did 233 million and so when like so like i think that is so important is like sacrificing the short term of like wanting to look good to your friends wanting to look good to the people that don't even like you wanting to good whatever and and say yeah like all these dollars are just going in and and then investing in the things that matter, which the only person that I cared to look good towards was our end user, right?

15:38I wanted them to think like, wow, these guys are big and incredible having awesome marketing and branding and everything else. But meanwhile, we're operating out of a freaking garage. And so like, that's, that's how, that's how we built the thing. And then ultimately we did build the big, beautiful, nice headquarters and we had 18 locations and all the cool stuff. But like, that was long-term gain over the short-term sacrifice. I mean, that's, that's incredible. The fact that you were able to kind of bootstrap it with your own income, with your own money, build it where it was so mighty right out of your garage and then just roll into the fancy office.

16:20I mean, you really, really held out for a long time to just indulge a little bit in an office. Yeah. And so we, you know, even, even then we didn't move right into our nice office. We had another 13 month period in what I call the shed. It was just a bigger, uglier garage essentially. But, uh, uh, it was a place that they were willing to, to lease to us on a, on a one year lease while we finished the construction of our 22 ,000 square headquarters. And, uh, but yeah, like I, I, that short-term sacrifice, I have, I have rarely see it not paid off in my career. And, and frankly, like you, uh, like almost like are forced to spend the, the extra money rather than like spending it when you don't have it.

17:12Now, one thing I'm impressed about with you is, uh, you're, uh, also the host of the founders podcast and it's a top 20 podcast on Apple. And one of what I wanted to ask you is what's a common theme that that's a common mistake that you see founders make when they start their business? Yeah. So that's a, that's a great question. So, uh, six months ago, we rebranded to next level pros is the name of the podcast now, but just, uh, for anybody that's going and looking for it. So there's several themes. I'd say theme number one is distraction. And entrepreneurs, we are great idea creators. We can see value in anything.

17:56I can go and look at a building and say, oh, if I just start selling this or doing this, I could make extra money. and I think a lot of times we get bored and usually the boredom sets in right about when we hit the dollar that we had previously set in our head as our comfort number. So like if our comfort number was$250 ,000 net or salary or whatnot, once we're able to achieve that, usually boredom sets in and we start getting distracted and we're looking for new opportunities rather than focusing on the thing that got us to that number. And so the greatest founders that I have interviewed or been a part of, those guys are 100 % dialed in and they make their wealth in concentration.

18:48And so there's obviously the old fallacy that an average millionaire has seven streams of income no i mean sure that you may make an argument for that but the average multi multi millionaire made all their money in one thing and then they sold it and then they diversified into other things or they went all in on something else right and i mean you look at you look at a guy like elon musk he made all his money initially in paypal right like he wasn't there wasn't all these other distractions going on or whatnot like he went all in on that thing and so for the first time in my life with soljan was the first time that i said no to a lot of opportunities that came across my plate and so the the power and ability to say no is probably the greatest discipline that we can create as entrepreneurs and founders of businesses that is amazing advice And actually, my mentor always mentions to me, it's like, dominate one thing.

19:53Just dominate it. Don't go and set up this company and that company and be mediocre. Just dominate what you're best at. So it's great advice, those listening. And it's very easy as an entrepreneur to get distracted because they're just trying to, especially at their beginning, they're just trying to survive. So they're like, oh, I'll take that. I'll do that. Or I'll add that as a vertical. And what they don't realize is all these other verticals you're adding are just massive distractions. They're just taking you away from the end goal. Now, one thing you've done with SoulGen is you managed to bring in great talent.

20:27We kind of alluded how you were able to bring great talent. But what are like, what's some tips that you can give the audience so that, you know, who are actively looking for talent so they can attract great talent? So first of all, I mean, just to give you a little background. So I grew my organization to 1 ,100 people. And we were the sixth fastest growing company in the nation at that point, any industry. And the secret sauce to that was one, always focusing on recruiting. Like recruiting was always just permeated throughout our culture. Everybody was recruiting. Everybody was getting their friend to be able to come in that shared common values or whatnot with them.

21:16So there's that focus on that consistently. The second thing is building a personal brand. My brand, I have refused to allow it to be tarnished over the years and I've always just established myself as someone that is reliable and trustworthy and that people can depend on and it constantly has opportunity. And so because of that, a lot of the seeds that I'd sown over the years started to come to fruition. So I'd be able to reach out to somebody that I met 10 years ago and say, hey, look, we're doing this thing or whatnot. The other thing is like, he who has the greatest vision will always win the recruiting battle.

21:59And what I mean by that is like, when you are clear on what you are building and you can show a roadmap. It's not just some crazy lofty goal, but you're like, Hey, in five years. So like when we started out, I had a roadmap. It was five years. We would have 500 employees and we'd be doing a hundred million dollars a year. And I had built out the roadmap of exactly what the organization would look like in order to achieve that. And so when somebody's sitting down with me in my garage and they're a high quality talent and they're like trying to ignore everything physically around them like dude i'm in a garage and i'm sharing with them hey this is the vision the direction and this is exactly how we're going to get there and this is where you're going to fit in the organization and this is how you can progress in the organization here's the clear roadmap and the career path and everything else people start to buy into that and again he who has the greatest vision will always win the greatest talent, right?

23:01So like, for example, if Elon Musk called me up today and said, Chris, I need you to go and run this division for me, there's a good chance that I'm shutting everything down that I got and I'm going to work for Elon. Why? Because although Chris Lee is crazy and has an incredible vision of going to billions of dollars, it ain't even close to going to Mars. Right. And so Elon's goal and vision of going to Mars and taking like just transforming the world will always win the greatest talent. And so like the, that is what really set me apart is like, I have always been an incredible visionary, but not just like I said, lofty goals, but like creating clear paths that guys could get on and get behind on top of that.

23:51greed is the reason why most people don't grow, right? They want to have 100 % of the pie. For me, I created equity structures that was able to attract incredible talent into my team. In fact, I had a guy that came on year number one in the business. He had sold his business for a few million bucks. He came and worked for me for$40 ,000 a year with the hope and the promise that he was going to have an equity earn out structure to be able to go and grow with us. And so the cool thing is like, so me, I, me and my main business partner, Daryl Kelly, we founded the business the day that we, so we held the majority shares of the company, but the day that we sold that business to private equity, there were 11 other people that were made multimillionaires at that transaction.

24:41And so the secret sauce is like putting together the team and aligning them in a way that they get a share in the upside, not being some greedy son of a gun that wants 100 % of everything. But then also there's a science in the way that you structure that to make sure that you don't get burned, right? Because there's a lot of people out there looking for a free handout and they got the gift of gab up front, but not the work ethic to be able to back it up. And so just making sure that you structure those equity deals that is going to get you the long-term results that you're desiring. Nice. So set a big, hairy, audacious goal, like Jim Collins' book always mentions, and then give them some sort of equity.

25:27That's great advice. Great advice. I mean, to get the top talent in the country, and that's what I do primarily, and that's what permeates throughout our organization. It's like grow, grow, grow. You know, we're at 900 loan officers. We're doing billions a year. And we want to, and we're just, we're at like a fraction of our potential. Because, you know, I'm trying to improve the culture. God's in the forefront. You know, and I kind of echo that. Like, we're pretty loud about it. You know, even though like under the last administration, you need to get tabooed. Now this administration, you're like, do it.

26:05Yeah, I love it. Yeah. So, uh, so is there a failure that's notable that either that you can mention as a story that you kind of heard through various other founders or something that happened to you that really allowed you to shift the way you do business? Yeah, for sure. So, uh, as I alluded to a little bit earlier, so I, I had a bankruptcy in January of 2011. It was two and a half years into my first business. Ultimately, in 2010 is when things really started coming down pretty hard and collections and everything were showing up. But yeah, man, I made a lot of terrible decisions, bad partnerships.

26:50A lot of these principles that I run my businesses by now were the exact opposite of the way that I was doing business prior to. and yeah, ultimately I had to file Chapter 7 bankruptcy, 2.2 million, had everything, had my car repoed out of my driveway, lost all my assets, had less than$1 ,000 in my bank account, all with my third child on the way. And the cool thing about that experience, although it was extremely humiliating and one of the toughest things that I've ever been through, I came to the realization was like the monster that I created around failure wasn't as bad as reality. And so most people don't take the crazy action that they should because of this fear of failure, right?

27:41They're scared of zero. And I would always say that my superpower is that I experienced zero. It wasn't that I started from zero, but I nosedived to zero. And when I got to zero, I came to the realization, I look around and I'm like, wow, things suck. But I still have my God and I still have my family and I have everything that I have learned up until this point. All I've lost is physical possessions. And losing physical possessions wasn't as bad as I had made it out to be. and so from there basically i determined like if it's not that bad then let's go let's keep going and take the action and don't and so from then on i have never been scared to go back to zero like frankly you could take everything from me today and i'd be fine you know two three years i'd be right back into the position where i'm at because i have the skill set i have the relationships I have my God.

28:45I have my family. I have everything that is necessary to win on the court to make sure that there's points on the scoreboard. And so start the game over. I'm still going to come out and freaking hit three pointers in your face. And we're going to we're going to score. Love it. Now, a couple last questions. So, you know, you didn't grow up in this affluent type of situation that you're in now. So you really had to grind to achieve what you've achieved. How are you instilling that same work ethic, that same grit that you have in your five children? you know it's it's just expectation management and so like one of my wife still fights me on this but one of the things i am famous for telling my kids is like look you're not getting a dime and uh everything that i have like if i die tomorrow don't have your hand out because you're not in the will they're like the the will is everything that you can learn from me um so one I've set this expectation that there's no inheritance in the Lee household.

29:52Everything that I own is going to be donated to charity. The second thing is I've tried to recreate much of what I learned as a child from a hard work ethic. I had my first job when I was nine and I had my diamond ring fund funded by the age of 12 and I saved up money and did all these different things. I was out working and hustling. And so with my children, same thing. The reason I live on a 23 acre hobby farm is solely for my children. It's solely for them to learn how to work, to get out, get their hands dirty, work in the fields, understand that not everything comes easy. And so I have two and a half acres of black walnut trees that my kids have hand, they hand weeded for the first two or three years of, of those trees growing.

30:46Um, I have nine acres of cherry trees that they go out and they help in the pruning and the picking and, and everything else. And so, although my kids are very privileged, right? Like, I mean, they, they go on incredible vacations and we live in a nice home and we have a lot of different things. I've done everything in my power to make sure that they understand the need for work. Like example, my oldest daughter, she's 18 years old and she's planning on being in, she wants to own a spa and she wants to be an esthetician and everything like that. She's going to aesthetic school and she knows that dad doesn't pay a dime for that.

31:28Dad doesn't pay a dime for college. Dad doesn't pay a dime for everything. Right now, while she's finishing up high school, she's got a job. I've told her, hey, I can help you get into sales and I can help you get into this other, but she wanted to do a lot of things on her own. She's gone out and figure out her own little hustle. Again, the advantages that my children have over myself is I've taught them how money works from a very young age. And so all my kids have started selling product at the age of five or six. They understand inventory. They understand cost of goods sold. They understand how it is to communicate with somebody, how it is to face rejection.