The Solarpreneur

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Speaker 1 (00:02):

Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. I teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.

Speaker 2 (00:42):

What's going on Solarpreneurs Taylor Armstrong. Back with another episode we're in the month of December, we're spreading some Christmas joy by saving people money on their utility bills. So I hope you're having an awesome start to the month of December or whenever you're listening to of this podcast. And as always, if you haven't heard it before, I'm here to help you save time in closing more deals and generating more referrals and having a much better experience in the solar industry. So today we're gonna do, a quick announcement, then we're gonna jump into the topic of today and I'm gonna share something that helped me double my sits from the previous few weeks, a small tweak I made in my presentation as I was out knocking doors. And this is gonna be something that can be applied to whatever were doing in solar.

Speaker 2 (01:43):

Whether you're setting up more appointments, trying to close deals or doing online appointments, setting up leads over the phone appointments. We're gonna jump into that. But before we get into that wanted to make a quick announcement. And that is along with spreading the Christmas chair here of the season. What's the next thing that's coming up that you should have on your calendar. That is a door to work on. If you haven't been to door to work on, it's coming up in January, it's the best event, in my opinion, for door knockers across all different industries. And if you haven't heard our episodes on it, you can go back a year ago. We've done a couple door-to-door con review episodes, couple episodes of why I think you should attend live events. So go check those out. But I wanted to extend a special invitation to you, especially if you have not been to door-to-door con yet it's the premier event in the door to door industry.

Speaker 2 (02:48):

Some of the top guys in door to door in solar are gonna be there and you're gonna be able to network with the best and learn from just top people and entrepreneurship business, self development. So I hope I can see you there. And the gift that I'm extended to you is a little discount. If you want to go. And the second invitation I have with it is let me know if you're going, I'm considering doing a little meet up there, depending on how many people we can get going. First of all, shoot me a message and we will see if we want to do, we can get little meet and greet, lined up. We'd love to hang out with some listeners of the podcast there. And especially if you you know, use the coupon. Okay. So shoot me a message over on Instagram, on Facebook.

Speaker 2 (03:44):

And I'll just drop the code here. Okay. If you want to get your door to door con ticket at a solar exclusive discount, then use the code it's Armstrong D two D. And we're gonna put in the show notes instantly the door con, where you can get your ticket, but consider coming to it. And again, shoot me a message. Let me know if you're gonna be there would love to hang out with my solar premier peeps. That being said, let's jump into the episode. Oh, and by the way, door door con is in about a month. I believe it's the 13th through the 15th of January. So let me know. So today's topic is this it's something that I had been forgetting about. And primarily as I was out setting up appointments, knocking doors, this is something that I was not doing a good enough job on and coming up on the holiday season, something that I struggle with, that I know people struggle with just holidays in general, is appointments falling through.

Speaker 2 (04:51):

And there's all the things we can do to solidify appointments, double confirm, confirming them doing the lock close. I talk about, which is so, Hey, besides like a nuclear meltdown, is there any reason you guys will, will not be here at this time having 'em put it in their calendar. I've talked about these things and we'll probably do another episode on things you can do to solidify your appointments even more. But before you get into those ninja tech, think there's something super important that you need to remember about setting up appointments out there, knocking doors. And that is you need to create a massive problem in the homeowner's head. And those that are closing deals. If you're out there closing deals, you should be doing this. That's how you close deals, right? We all know that if you can create a huge problem in your perspective, customer's head, it's gonna be so much easier to close them.

Speaker 2 (05:52):

But how often are you doing this? As you set up appointments? I made a small tweak in my door presentation to really just kind of emphasize the problem more. And I noticed that almost right off the bat, my appointments sat more. I was having less cancellations. People listened to me more. The more I focus on the problem giving the solution and I was already doing this to a degree, but my presentation, I wasn't focus focusing on it too much. And I wasn't really hammering in the problem. And so something that helped me is just really identifying what are the big problems in your market for solar? Okay. I'm here in San Diego and there's some pretty massive problems with utility here. So it's somewhat easy and most people know what the problems are with. The utility down here in San Diego, in other markets, you're gonna have to be a lot better than I am this cause in other markets, utility is most likely a lot cheaper than San Diego.

Speaker 2 (07:04):

I think last I checked San Diego was I believe like the second highest electric rates in the country. So if you suck at selling, then come sell here because you don't have to be that good at sales to convince people that they should save money and switch, right? But for those you true salespeople that are selling in markets where maybe people aren't even saving money going solar, it's even more important that you hammer this down, that you figure out what problems are there and how can you all offer them the solution it's maybe in your market. Maybe it is really, really tough to, you know, identify the problem, but you still wanna help people just see that there's some small problem, whatever it is, cuz that's the first step, make sure whatever market write down the biggest three problems in your market with your utility.

Speaker 2 (08:04):

What problems are huge that you can help your perspective clients see? So for me, it's easy. Like I said, rates are going up here and an insane rate. And for us, you can go directly on utilities here and see a huge difference. If you go back 10 years ago in the rates, you can show your customer that and you can show 'em the current rates super easy. There's it's, you know, double the price today compared to what it was 10 years ago. So maybe that's a big problem. And for me that this is what I did change up in my door approach is I said, Hey, you guys noticed the problem with the increasing rates. All your neighbors have been noticing that the rates went up almost double this year, not double, but I just get them to agree that there has been some rate hikes.

Speaker 2 (09:00):

And luckily there's, you know, some pretty big spikes in the bills this year. And for most people we're coming off the summer months, right? I guess it's winter now. But San Diego people are just kind of coming off their higher bills cuz the highest bills tend to be in like September October-ish or in San Diego. So it's still fresh in their minds that they had some high bills. They had spikes say, so that's a problem. Hey, people are noticing that the rates go have gone up quite a bit this year. I'm sure you guys notice the same, right? Just a small line like that. Get getting them to agree. Doing the head nod made a huge difference. Now they're seeing that there is a problem they're agreeing with it. So adding statements like that, another problem that we have here in San Diego, and again, this isn't gonna apply to all markets, but here in San Diego, they charge people on the time of use rates, which means from four to nine, they increased the price of electricity.

Speaker 2 (10:02):

So another problem that I helped people see is, Hey, you guys notice how they switch the rate plans from four to nine. It actually cost more guys notice. Yeah. So what I'm, what we're actually out here are doing is just making sure people know to conserve as much as you can from then maybe it's more than notification the value add door approach, right? For some people use. So there's another thing. Figure out some type of problem to throw in there, get them to agree with it. And it's gonna make it just a lot easier for people to pay attention to you, for people to listen to what your solution is. Right? And then another thing that's very important in this, make sure you have some type of slicks. You're showing people, okay. If you can get side by side with the homeowner, you don't wanna be standing in the same place.

Speaker 2 (11:00):

Just pitching the homeowner for 10 minutes. Right? Most likely people aren't aren't even gonna listen to you that long. And the second issue is if you're just spouting out information facts, you're not engaging your customer, your potential client. They're not gonna pay attention and they're gonna close the door. They're gonna be busy. They're gonna have to take a phone call. They're not gonna, they're not gonna listen. So step number two in all this is engage and the best way to do this in my opinion is get some type of door slick. Okay? So our friends over at kn star university, okay, go listen to Taylor MCCA, these podcasts, if you haven't already. But he talks about how he uses slicks on the door. A slick is just like a laminate. You can pass them. And the actual information on the slick is less important than just using it to engage with the customer.

Speaker 2 (11:56):

Okay? Maybe it's a line. Like I say, Hey, did you guys get this in the mail? Did you guys have this notification come in, pass it to 'em make sure you're turning it to the side. So they can't just read it. Right? You wanna slip it almost like CRO chop to 'em have them grab it. And then what do you do? Boom, you swing right to the side pivot. You're standing side by side and you're walking 'em through the actual information on that. So if you can combine your problem, selling your problem, presentation on the door with having your proof of that, slipping it to 'em having 'em handle it. Having 'em see it having 'em taste it. Okay. Not taste it. But you get the idea, engage in as many of the senses as possible. These are gonna help people digest that there is a problem happening.

Speaker 2 (12:47):

There, there is stuff going on and that they need to pay attention to what you're saying. Cause people, I, most people are visual learners. Okay. That's the thing we forget. If we're just speaking to someone they're only taking it, especially on their doorstep. They're already thinking that you're bugging them. That they're, that you're pitching 'em on something. So if you have something in their hand that they can see, it's gonna add credibility to whatever you're saying. They're gonna buy, they're gonna buy what you're saying. Right? They're gonna believe a lot more that the rates are going up or whatever's going on. But whatever your market is, go look up. If you don't have some type of door slick, make your own right. Go buy the knock star ones. Okay? Love supporting those guys. But worst case, just go print off something, go to a print shop, go to your local staples, whatever.

Speaker 2 (13:40):

Just find some type of I don't know, article that's relevant, some type of rate plan. It's where your utility is something that can be added into your presentation and it's gonna help out tremendously. Hey, so these are the two things that help me. Not only set up more solid appointments, but like I said, also get them to generate more interest, get them to listen more and get them to sit down. Cuz guess what? Even if you're super assumptive, even if you're saying all the right things, if the customer doesn't believe there's a problem, they're not gonna see a reason to sit down with you. Right. And that's something I realize over the last few weeks and something that helped me boost my sit down rate is just making sure I hammer down that problem. Cuz if you can hammer it down, they're gonna see a need to actually sit down with you, hear you out and buy your product.

Speaker 2 (14:38):

So don't forget. Make sure you include this in your presentation. Take a look at whatever you're saying right now. If it doesn't include something on the problem of your market, the problem, the, our product, which is solar can solve, go and write it down. Write down three of the biggest problems in your market promise is gonna help you and send this to someone who's been struggling to set up appointments this week. Hope that helped hope you have an awesome week. Love you guys. And again, hope to see you at door to door con shoot me a message. Let me know if you'll be there. Let's plan a meetup or something if possible and use the code when you're getting your ticket. So we'll talk to you soon. I see you on the next episode.

Speaker 3 (15:25):

Hey, Solarpreneurs quick question. What if you could surround yourself with the industry's top performing sales pros, marketers, and CEOs, and learn from their experience and wisdom in less than 20 minutes a day. For the last three years, I've been placed in the fortunate position to interview dozens of elite level solar professionals and learn exactly what they do behind closed doors to build their solar careers to an all-star level. That's why I want to make a truly special announcement about the new learning community, exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with top performers in the industry. And it's called the Solciety, this learning community with designed from the ground up to level the playing field to give solar pros access to proven members who want to give back to this community and help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry. Brightest minds four, are you ready for it? Less than $3 and 45 cents a day currently Solciety is open, launched, and ready to be enrolled. So go to Solciety.co To learn more and join the learning experience. Now this is exclusively for Solarpreneur listeners. So be sure to go to solciety.co and join. We'll see you on the inside.

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Speaker 1 (00:03):

Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. I teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.

Speaker 2 (00:42):

What's going on Solarpreneurs, we're back with a another episode, and this is another feature we have with our recent sponsor on the show, and that is pipes in to get. So we've got the man behind kind of the, I would like maybe like the scientist behind the scenes working on the backend of all this. So he's going to give us yeah, just get a stoked about pipe syndicate. Tell us a little bit more about what's going on. So we've got Austin Underwood on the show, Austin. Thanks for coming on with us today.

Speaker 3 (01:11):

Yeah, thanks for having me today. Yeah, so we I came on to talk about a company that we've been involved with and Taylor's been doing some stuff with called PI syndicate. It's basically a program that we've decided as a mastermind to help solar wraps any real wrap in the door door industry, but primarily solar. I mean, you get all these kids that are coming in to do quite a bit of money all of a sudden, and they don't really know what to do with it, or maybe they're not as smart as they, as it could be. And they don't really know that. And so we help them manage and kind of help really just manage that money. So we're, we're helping them utilize our skills to make that money go further for them as they're, as they're younger and they don't know what to do with it, or they just don't know how to get into certain aspects of, of the investment pools that they want to.

Speaker 3 (01:58):

And then a big portion of that is tax mitigation. So we help mitigate the taxes on your income side. And we do that a numerous of ways. I mean, we really just decided that we needed to start something that would help out the reps. I there's so many different companies that come in and help the owners, the CEOs, the high level executives. Everybody wants to take care of those guys, but nobody's really talking about, you know, that, that new rep that just started in solar, that you know, is going to crush it and make, you know, 250 K this year, that just came out of nowhere. And and nobody helps that kid, right? He, he gets his tax bill. He goes to a CPA. He thinks he's doing everything the right way. And he doesn't really know that there's a different way to do it, or there's more opportunities than he really thinks there are.

Speaker 3 (02:40):

And so we wanted to start something that would really help, not only the companies, because we have corporate memberships, we have memberships that include CEOs and owners and things like that, but we wanted a lower level package for the reps. So I rapped could afford it. And a rep could come in and, and say, Hey, I don't know what to do here. I don't know how to file these. I don't know what the right expenses should go, where we just take care of all that for you. We've designed it to be a white glove service. That'll just take care of it for you.

Speaker 2 (03:10):

That's awesome. And it's cool. Cause you guys have, you know, different packages, different levels. So there's really no excuse for anyone not to being, be getting help from you guys financially. Cause yeah, I mean, yeah, they're lower packages. Maybe it's just the taxes you want done.

Speaker 3 (03:24):

Yeah. Well, and we, we do the three packages. There's about three main ones and we do them for a reason is we really want, you know, we go anywhere from 5,000 to 30,000 and we do that because we know that there are different needs for different people. Some people aren't in a place this year, you know, some of those new reps, aren't in a place to need all of the benefits with a 15 and $30,000 package, but they definitely needed a $5,000 package and, and vice versa. Some guys are too far. But what, what we do allow is as you grow, we grow with you. So you eventually can move into those spots and not have any problems.

Speaker 2 (03:54):

Yeah, that's awesome. So yeah, we're going to talk more about that and get into more detail here, but I wanted to hear from you, do you Austin, we were talking yesterday and you told me your background. What's really cool. Austin has just kind of the rags to riches story. I grew up in pretty humble beginnings and all that. So I wanted to see if you would tell our listeners kind of like your upbringing, your story with that, and then how you got more involved in like, you know, door to door and like financial side of things.

Speaker 3 (04:21):

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So we, we we grew up in Utah, so we're from salt lake city, Utah, but we grew up in a little suburb subsidiary section and a Ned called Magna super far west. And it's a, it's a really humble little city. I mean, it's, it's really small compared to most cities in Utah. We we struggled a little bit with, with financial matters and you know, it wasn't like I ever went without things for the most part. I mean, there was a few times that, you know, things got a little, a little sketchy, but for the most part, you know, we, we made it work and, you know, I think for the time and the era, you know, my parents were bringing in like $30,000 together. Like both of them were working, full-time multiple jobs at one point. And you know, it was just hard to figure it out. Right. You know,

Speaker 2 (05:07):

And you're not that old, so that's right. Yeah. Cause some people are like, oh, maybe he's maybe Austin's like 60 years old.

Speaker 3 (05:14):

Yeah. I'm only 25. And I I just decided like, you know, at a young age, I, I'm not going to live like this. I can't, I can't do this, this isn't for me. Like not even just the money, but just the security behind what the money brings. Right. It's really not about the money it's I wanted to be able to first off utilize how to use the money. So what do I need to do to keep the money that I'm going to bring in? Right. Not just trying to generate millions and millions of dollars. Like I think most people think, right. You could have a million dollars but use it the right way and still have more money than somebody with $5 million that uses it the wrong way. Right. Yeah. And so that's kind of where, where I started out and I really was just like, yeah, there's gotta be something I can do.

Speaker 3 (05:53):

So actually, one of my first jobs as I went around to a local restaurants and things like that, and I was like, Hey, that disgusting garbage brick wall thing that you guys keep your garbage Kennan. I'll scrub it out, you know, for like 20 bucks an hour, I'll come every Saturday and I'll do it all. I just ride my bike over there and you know, I was like 13 years old and I needed money for something. Oh, I, well, I wanted to go to a T I wanted to go on a trip to New York city to visit my uncle. We were never really able to go on any sort of traveling trips. I didn't really start to travel until I got into my early twenties when I could pay for it myself. The, the most I had ever really traveled as we would drive somewhere, anywhere we could drive, we could kind of go, but that was it.

Speaker 3 (06:32):

I had never been, I didn't get on an airplane until I paid for my ticket by myself. And I just happened to be 13 years old. But I just, I just, I went crazy all summer and I just hustled as hard as I could. And so I started doing that and I got that company up pretty, pretty good. I think I was doing at one point like 50, 50 restaurants within riding, riding, riding my bicycle distance. So there's a big street. If you drive out to 5,600 west where it's just lined with restaurants up and down, both sides of the street. So I just went and talked to every, every single one that I could. And, and I had an uncle that was in the franchise world and he was like, well, yeah, you can come do you know mine? And I was like, okay, you'll let me come do these.

Speaker 3 (07:16):

You already agreed to it, but here's the catch. I don't have a car. I can't drive on 13. So you gotta come get me and take me to all these things. So I made him come and pick me up and go do that. And so that's kind of where I realized like, okay, so if I do this something by myself, I'm obviously gonna make a lot more money. I have to rely on anybody else. I can do the work myself. And so that's when I kind of was like, I got to a point where I actually had a little bit of money. And so I thought I have to figure out how to manage this money the right way. And so I started just kind of doing, taking some small classes doing some college stuff, you know, some community stuff kind of going through and figuring out like, you know, how do I do this? How do I do that? What's the tax side. I mean, you know, what is the tax sides of these mean?  

Speaker 2 (07:57):

That's cool. Most, most people aren't thinking about that. Well,

Speaker 3 (08:00):

They're not right. And I think that's the problem is that I don't think that there's enough education for people available. I mean, cause it's out there and you can find it, but how hard is it defined? It's a lot easier to find a dumb video of, you know, a super rich kid online doing something stupid with money. So that's the envision people have in their head and I needed, that's not real. And so I was like, I have to figure out how I can manage this money the right way.

Speaker 2 (08:23):

I think that came just from like your upbringing and seeing that you guys learned growing up. So you're like, okay, I want to figure out how to like,

Speaker 3 (08:29):

Yeah, a hundred percent. I don't think my goal in life when I decided that I wanted to be able to make some money. My goal was never to be the richest man in a room. My goal was to be stable. That's all that I wanted. There was so much unstability growing up in a poor family and you know, things just are all over the place. So I wanted the stability of what the money could bring. And so my idea was never to make a lot of money. I mean, in theory, that happens, I guess, where you, you do make good amounts of money being pretty strategic and smart and cautious about what you're doing. But for the most part, it's really just, I wanted the street, the strategic ability to be safe and content, right. Savings accounts, things like that, that most people are like, not important. I can do that later. Well, that's not true. You need to be doing that now.

Speaker 2 (09:16):

Yeah. That's a good point. And that's cool. And so you were in a, were you already in college at that point or was this still in high school? You're doing

Speaker 3 (09:25):

No. So it was, it was still in high school. So the high school that I went to had a a secondary program where they'd ship you out to a college campus, just the slick campus, the community college campus. So I was doing some classes from high school to try and get some of that knowledge that I wanted for that.

Speaker 2 (09:40):

Okay. That's awesome. And so yeah, especially, I'm sure you can agree with social media and everything. Like you're seeing, you're just seeing people flash the big cars and how many people I mean, I have people I know that just got, make rent, they fancy cars and all that. Just go show it off on social media and then they're not actually making that type of money. Well, yeah,

Speaker 3 (10:00):

Exactly. It's funny. Cause you, you really see the difference between somebody that has a lot of money and somebody that doesn't right. Like you can tell the difference, you know, and it's about, you know, and I think that's just my, my analytical analytical mind thinking is like my thought process is, is the dude that has more money lives in a normal size house drive normal cars. He's not spending money on frivolous things that he doesn't need. Right. The ones that need to feel like they have more money than everybody else push out the other way. And there's nothing wrong with that. If that's the life you want to live, do it by all means, just make sure you can really afford it.

Speaker 2 (10:35):

No. Yeah. And what's cool is you guys, won't talk more about this, but you guys are teaching people that like kind of have the best of both worlds. You got your clients that have the nice cars and all of that, you know, getting it probably off a passive income, they were using it like is avoid taxes, things like that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:50):

Well, and that's yeah, we, we definitely don't want to refrain from people buying the things that they want. Like that's our goal isn't to say live, you know, as frivolously as possible. Like we, I, there was, I had a conversation with a guy yesterday and I was like, you know what? I think the best ideas of what you should do is go buy $140,000 car go buy that Tesla model X, you know, that new plan version just launched. And we went through why it was something that he wanted and I went through why it was actually tax advantaged to him to do that. And so we go through both, both sides of life, obviously there's a fine line to walk amongst. But we're definitely not a group. That's going to say, you know, go buy the Corolla over the Tesla. Like that's not something that we want to do. We want to help you get what you want, get it when you want it and make it work for you the best.

Speaker 2 (11:42):

Yeah. That's awesome. And yeah. And Austin, how did you get more involved in kind of like, you know, the door to door space and I know you worked with door to door experts, those nails for awhile. So how did, you said you got in the, kind of the financial education, how did you transition into kind of helping the doorstep?

Speaker 3 (11:59):

Yeah, so-so is actually out consulting some other companies on on financial footings and things like that. The financial foundations, I actually just wrote a book about it. That's going to be launched with a PR company out of Alabama. But so I was, I was kind of doing that. I was, I was, I was consulting those other companies on the financial structures, like the very beginning basics, right? Like the foundations of the financial processes that they were missing. And and I had a guy that I knew that was working at the D experts. He was there in intro CFO. He's just kind of filling in as Sam was trying to find somebody else over at the door to door experts. And and he called me and he's like, Hey, you know, this is a really cool opportunity.

Speaker 3 (12:46):

I really liked this guy that I'm working for. You should come over and interview with me and see if it's something that you would even really think about. And I was like, okay. Yeah. So I actually went over there to to do that with him. And, and the position that he was looking for was actually a just somebody to kind of help oversee his books and, and do some of this stuff. And all internally, it was all internal when, when I first was over there and I went to him and I was like, Hey man, look, you know, we've had the bootcamps and they, you know, they have these events that everybody's coming to. And I was like, I really think that there's a bigger market for the door to door industry that people just don't know about.

Speaker 3 (13:21):

I think all these company owners, aren't, aren't realizing how much more they need to pay attention to the financial sides of things. Because I think, and I especially learned in the learning as I'm going through the door to door industry more and more is they're so sales focused, right? Everything that they, everything in their mind can be fixed with more revenue or revenue, more sales like that, that's their job. That's what they're good at. That's what the exact day, no. Or that had exactly that, how to do that. And so we're able to, I was able to say, look, look, there's a secondary system to this. The admin side is no fun. Nobody likes it. But the admin site includes the financial footing. It includes, you know, the staff, they experience like all of these things, the operations that aren't as aren't as known or, or not as practiced.

Speaker 3 (14:04):

And so I was able to convince Sam, like, we need to come in and do this and I'll go out and do this. And I started traveling, you know, to company, to company. I was going twice a week out to Atlanta, then Washington and Illinois than Idaho, just kind of everywhere. And it really just started to blow up. And so it really became a a staple to the, to the door. And her name is like, Hey, we're not only are we a consulting company, but we're a consulting company that, that helps you with your finances, which is pretty unknown. Like you have to hire somebody basically just to take it over. I was showing these owners how to help them. So not just doing it for them and then leaving them and saying, well, if you want me to do more, it's, you know, another $10,000 or, you know, these, these companies, these CFO guys they're expensive. And so if you could learn to do it by yourself, when you want to, right. I mean, we're all hustlers out here. That's what we're doing. You know, slinging doors is not an easy job, so anything else we can make that easier for that? You don't have to cost you a fortune, you know, we wanted to be able to be a part of that.

Speaker 2 (15:04):

Awesome. And so I'm sure you had a lot of experiences seeing what people were, I don't know, not focusing on mistakes. I'm sure they were making, is that a lot of these companies, they not even have CFOs and they were just kind of trained to do things. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:15):

So a lot of these companies, they didn't have CFOs, they didn't have bookkeepers, they didn't have anything.

Speaker 2 (15:20):

Wow. And so you would help them set that up and run it.

Speaker 3 (15:24):

So I would do a few different things. I think the majority of the companies that will lend to either didn't have QuickBooks or some sort of a CRM or not CRM at some sort of tracking tool for their actual books. And so I helped them kind of figure it out. Some of them did. But I, I worked with the systems they were using and they weren't awesome. And so I would either convince them to switch or I didn't, and, and either way was fine. I, I really have a bias towards QuickBooks. I just know it really well. I got my certification in it because I wanted to be the best at it. And obviously things have changed and I'm probably not the best at it anymore, but you know, there's a point in your career where you don't do some of the things that you used to do really well. Yeah. But a

Speaker 2 (16:03):

Cookbook is pretty, pretty, somewhat simple. It's

Speaker 3 (16:05):

Super simple. I mean, it's just really intuitive. Like it knows what the customer experience should be. And so I really liked that, especially with owners that don't want to push a budget to a financial footing or a financial team it really just makes it easy for them to be like, all right, I can set up all this automatically. And then I never have to go back in here. It'll just kind of do it by itself. And so it's really easy to do. You just have to know what you're doing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:26):

Awesome. And so cool. I know you gained a lot of experience doing that, working with Sam, seeing other companies, I'm sure. Learning from their mistakes, things like that. And now you're a CFO. I hear it's a, you're in, that's the name? Green energy coercion.

Speaker 3 (16:40):

Okay. And yeah, and then PI send the kid as well

Speaker 2 (16:43):

By any yet. And so yeah, you guys are doing incredible things. We just talked with Josh and Jerry on the podcast who were also part of that. And yeah, it's been really cool seeing how you guys have things set up structured and you really focused on teaching these reps. I was just talking with Josh about not just like selling, but all kinds of aspects of it. And I think you teach your guys the finances, you teach them the social media, teaching their recruiting. That's really cool to see. And so what gave you I guess why, why did you guys start pious indicate and what's what's kind of your whole goal around that. I know you talked a little bit in the beginning, but

Speaker 3 (17:19):

Yeah. So I would say the main reason is that is that me and Jerry have been around enough companies to know how much is truthfully going wrong. Even without people knowing what's always wrong. And so just being able to compile a by, you know, I've probably consulted upwards of 200 companies by now. And so being able to see that many different companies doing that many different styles and that many different types I think it's really drove the pie syndicate drive because we were, we were sitting in a room and we were talking about we were actually in St. George at, at Jefferson JKRs office. Well, that's where we first started talking about PI syndicate and doing some of this stuff is, is out there with Jefferson. And we were just talking about, you know, there's so many mistakes they're being made every day that I don't think people know that they're doing anything wrong.

Speaker 3 (18:09):

And so how do we create a, something that not only it can be an outreach program for them to learn about it, but something that like a mastermind that will really help them learn. And so we developed by syndicate off of all of the bad things that we've seen happen in solar and in past, and, and in roofing, like we took all of the bad things that we could find and all of the things that people didn't know or that we had seen, even if we only had sought once we still brought it to the table. And and so that's kind of where we got the drive for, for PI syndicate. And what we want to do with it is really get the knowledge out there. You know, there are masters masterminds all over the place and, and they're all great. And so I thought, you know, it's not going to be that hard to push one more.

Speaker 3 (18:50):

That that really is something that truthfully helps people that really makes them, you know, learn and experience things in a different way than they ever have before. And, and I mean, it really is something different. And so we even are so confident in what we're doing. You know, we, we went in to the drawing board and we said, look, we, we want people to know exactly what we're here for. And so we actually do something very unique. You know, when was the last time you were able to go to your CPA and say, Hey, if you don't save me more money than I'm paying you, I'm out,

Speaker 2 (19:18):

Right. That's a pretty strong guarantee, pretty strong

Speaker 3 (19:22):

Guarantee. So we actually guarantee our, our pricing. So if we cannot save you more than what you paid us we'll pay you the difference in what we don't save. You were, we'll, we're willing to put our own money up to bat to say, we know what we're doing, and we know we can do this, let us show you. And if we can't do it, then you're right. And here's, you know, here's that difference back

Speaker 2 (19:42):

Incredible. And it's like, why wouldn't you do it with that guarantee? You don't hear it out from CPAs or financing.

Speaker 3 (19:48):

Never, never. And so we want it to be different. We want him to be able to push our name out there differently. And that's how we've decided that not only do we have the knowledge we know that we do, but you know, a lot of people don't put their money where their mouth is. And so we thought, you know, we're going to be the first to do that.

Speaker 2 (20:02):

Yeah. Now it's really cool. Cause I've heard a few just, you know, Mikey, you guys hopping on calls with people and it sounds, it seems like it's almost the same exact things they're hearing from their CPA, the exact same thing. Oh, they told me to do this. I'm going to owe this much in taxes. And then you guys are just telling them, you know, the same, it's the same stuff. They hear it from everyone. Cause all that is pretty standardized advice. I mean, they're, they're telling you the same stuff over and over. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:27):

Actually we make jokes and, and we say, you know, CPA firms are like our silent partners. Every time they go and talk to a CPA firm, they always come back and follow up with us and see the difference in and switch over. And so we, we, we, we joke and we call them our pro our silent partners. But but it's true. I mean, we were actually just having a conversation with a guy the other day yesterday. And he went to a CPA and he's like, okay, you've got to spend 150,000 to $200,000 to save 60,000 in taxes, but you're still going to have to pay 40. And me and Jerry just dropped that. We didn't even know what to say. We were, I mean, we were stunned. We were like, that's an incredible observation to give somebody, spend $200,000 to save 60 bucks, but you still have to pay 40,000 times since at the end of the year.

Speaker 2 (21:14):

Hopefully they have a lot of money.

Speaker 3 (21:16):

I'm like, that's, I'm, you're, you're talking about, okay, well, if you go spend $260,000, then I can get your tax bill down to authority. How does that make any sense who would want to do that? Who thinks that that was a good idea to, to offer it as a buy. And it's just something that you see every day, the CPAs are doing everything they're supposed to, if they're not doing anything wrong and I'm not talking about it with them in any way whatsoever we've just dedicated and prided ourselves on monitoring the changes that happen when they happen categorizing expenses correctly what the mileage is, right? Offs are things like that. That just, most people don't think to dive deep into that are a really big difference that make a huge difference to not spend the 200 K to save.

Speaker 2 (22:03):

Huh. Right. Yeah. No, that's really cool. And do you think I mean, like you said, there's a lot of good CPAs out there and I know they're doing, you know, the best with their resources and everything, but do you think it's that they don't have the knowledge on these things or they don't want to like necessarily tell them to do these things?

Speaker 3 (22:21):

I don't, I don't, I don't know. Honestly, I think that there are definitely CPAs out there that have the knowledge to do it. I do think that the CPA certification itself gives them some pushback on what they can and cannot offer people to do. And so one of the things that we really do differently is we actually have our CPAs on staff. But me and Jerry are not CPA. So we run everything through CPAs, everything is done the right way. Everything is above board. We're Uber transparent with everything that we do to refrain from any sort of auditing. Or if you do get audited, it's knocking the park as long as we've been in it long enough. And we're doing everything that we're supposed to be doing the right way. I mean, there's no way that you're going to fail an audit.

Speaker 3 (23:05):

It's just not every once in awhile, there's one weird little thing that that gets passed or, you know, something that they find that's just really weird and random, but, you know, for the most part it's, it's pretty solid. Yeah. But I do think that, I think that that's really that I, I don't think that it's still, they don't have all the information. I don't even think that this, they don't want to share the information. I think that there are certain things that they just can't do, or they're not allowed to talk about because they have specific certifications and they don't need to get their certifications taken away. I mean, that's not worth it to do that for them. And I, and I wouldn't suggest they do that either. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (23:37):

Yeah. No, that's good. That's good stuff. Yeah. Cause it's like, I've worked with a lot of CPAs too. And and some of them have, you know, finance coaching, do they type stuff they do. But the disconnect I've seen too is a lot of times they don't, they're not all communicating with each other. Like, you're talking about how you guys have it kind of your own internal CPAs. You're communicating with them. So everyone's on the same page or they gave me this advice. This is what's going to happen where other you know other CPAs I've worked with like, yeah, I get advice from one thing, but their CPA is not gonna necessarily help me do that. And then me not having good financial knowledge necessarily. I don't, I don't know necessarily how to like explain to them, well, Hey, I want to do this. Or this is what's best because they're just all me kind of the one size fits all stuff.

Speaker 3 (24:22):

And it's interesting, I think, and one of the things that we do differently than that as well is we're, we're pretty limited on the capacity we want to grow at because I think that's the problem. I don't think that it's, that they're not communicating. I don't think that it's, they don't know what they're doing. I think that they just grow so rapidly. They really just say like, okay, you're one CPA. You handle these 50 clients, but then this other CPA is gonna handle these 50 clients. And when this guy goes on vacation, this guy's kind of picking up that slack. But then there's the disconnect because it's not his actual client. So I think the scaling is just too fast. They just don't know how to keep up with it. They might just add some people do it. Great. I mean, there are massive CPA firms out there that just crush it.

Speaker 3 (24:59):

I think H and R block is huge. They're nationwide. They're everywhere. Obviously they scaled it up at a very scalable rate, but I feel like for the most part, you know, those are just generalized CPAs. They help random regular people. Yeah. You know, do their taxes and stuff. So they're not really going to go that extra mile for somebody like you, who's on the doors who's knocking, who's got, you know, LLCs and things like that that are quite a bit more to actually function through the actual filing. And so they, you know, they don't really want to do any of that. So they don't push that extra mile to do that, which is fine. They probably don't get paid to do that. Honestly, they don't.

Speaker 2 (25:33):

Yeah. And that's, what's cool. You guys are guaranteeing it too. I'm sure you guys back in it, it's like, you want to know it it's right.

Speaker 3 (25:40):

But then that's why we, we do you know, that's why we limit our, our capability of growth is because we know how much we can, we can really truthfully take on and still keep a truck in the way we want to. And so we're, we're pretty particular about who we want to let in and where in the, in the, in the stages that we have. And so it's more along the lines of, we definitely want to help everybody. We can help. But we want you to, we want you to come to us or, and say, Hey, look, this is what I've got is what I have. And then we would, we would literally sit down and do a call with you and say, you know, this is the plan. I think you should be a part of, this is why this is what I think we can help with. And this is how fast I think we can get it done in, in, in addition to the filing and the bookkeeping sides and the white glove service of it. All right. Mikey offers some specific coaching with it that he does with these guys. I mean, he's been on calls with these guys every day, seven days a week. I mean, he'll call it, he'll talk to anybody whenever they want to talk to them.

Speaker 2 (26:31):

Yeah. I know. He's helped me a ton. And that's, what's so cool about it. You guys have so much personalized attention. It's like weekly follow ups say, is this, how's this going? And yeah, I've never had this much just financial attention from anyone I've worked with. So yeah.

Speaker 3 (26:45):

And we do, we do some other cool stuff as well. You know, we really want to, to be able to get in person with these people, meet them face to face, have these conversations one-on-one. And so we we're down here in Las Vegas and, and we'll invite people down and want them to come and experience this with us and do these events with us. And the purpose of that is to have those one-on-one conversations, have the ability to sit down and have a personalized conversation about something that's a pretty uncomfortable topic to talk about to most people like you don't want to tell people how much money you make. You don't want to tell people how much trouble you're in or debt. And and that's why we need that personalized edge side to not just be the CPA that they kind of have to tell, but we want to be there, you know, be there and have a friendship aspect to it to be like, listen, dude, we, we got you, we're going to be able to handle it and take care of it. And we're going to be able to make sure that you don't ever have to do this again, but we have to have you tell us the truth. And so we, we need to be able to build that relationship to be there. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:40):

That's awesome. And so walk me through, you guys have people coming on and like if someone wants to start working with you guys, what are some common things you see that like almost no one has said, and I can tell my experience to kind of how to spend, to kind of get onboard and start working with you guys. But if someone signs up by us in to get tomorrow would order kind of the steps you have them go through just to give people a demo. And

Speaker 3 (28:01):

Yeah, absolutely. So, so first thing that we usually have everybody do is do a consultation call with Mikey, Mikey kind of evaluates where you're currently at what you're really thinking you're needing and then what we think we, we can do for you. So Mikey, we'll do an introduction call he'll go through everything that he has in his list to go through. Are you budgeting? Do you have the right account set up? Are you utilizing QuickBooks or some sort of tracking system? Are you, are you budget sizing out everything or just personal, you know, separating out credit cards, things like that. He just goes through all of it with you, just, just on the surface touching base, making sure it's getting done. Right. and that's where we kind of start. And so that allows us to build out a financial group blueprint of sorts to be able to say, okay, well, you know, I think, you know, knowing this information, you know, I think he needs to be in this package and this, and so then we go back to the, the, the client say, okay, this is what we suggest.

Speaker 3 (29:04):

Obviously they can, they can say no, or they can want a different package than that. And we can have that conversation with them, but we give them our best thought of where they should be and what needs to be done next kind of creating that financial blueprint plan and steps. And so that's kind of where we start in. The onboarding process is actually really good. We've brought on a few other guys. We have a VA, we've got some other guys in Utah that does like three days, three, three times a week. Check-Ins you know, Monday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, really just trying to make sure you're keeping up on all your updates, making sure that, you know, everything that we know at the same time, and then as well, we utilize a really great app that we really love called Pronto.

Speaker 3 (29:46):

Maybe you've talked about that before, but but we really love it. And we put in me, Jerry, Mikey, any bookkeeper, the CPAs yourself all within that Pronto group set. So any questions you have, anything that could come up, somebody in that chat will be able to answer that and you have access to that chat 24 7. And then we also do some other cool things where we've thrown in a little bit of perks with doubt in the onboarding process, you get a, you get access to an attorney. We've started a a a partnership with a company that'll help with legal troubles, things like that. You know it doesn't happen super often, but if it ever did happen at something that you want that most people don't really think about, you know what, 22 year old kid has a lawyer on retainer, none. So we, we, we S we supplement that out with some of that stuff. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (30:36):

It's cool. No, it's when I was talking to Mikey, I didn't even know all this stuff you're offering, but it's like just all these different things. You got the attorney they used, he's telling me I'm going to get like some some like body tests. Then he hands me like his biome kid. He's like, yeah, we're going to have you do like a gut test. See where that's at. I'm like, man, I thought you guys were just like doing my taxes or something at first, like you starts going down the lanes, like you're getting an attorney, you're getting, you know, body test. You're getting access to all that. You're getting crypto advice, you're getting investment advice. So it's just like a whole stack of things. And I know that's not in, you know, every package depending on the package and things like that you get. But yeah. So as far as like investments, things like that, water yeah. What are some, how do you get these people started on investments? I'm sure you see what their situation is, but yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:22):

So yeah, we take what their situation is, what maybe what capital they have on hand or what they plan to have. Maybe they have a big pipeline or something like that on the back end of their waiting for, but there's a few different places that we have. We've, we've developed a really good relationship between me and Jerry on partnerships out there with a specific investment. So right now a really big one that that's just really hitting really hard as a self storage. So we'll actually anybody that comes into us with money will actually another guarantee that we have is a 10% guaranteed our, our year over year on your investment. And me and Jerry willing to back that with our money, because if we're going to put your money somewhere we're obviously going to trust it 110%. We wouldn't put our own money in it. If we wouldn't put your money in, and if we wouldn't put our own money in it. And so we really, really pride ourselves on that as well. So, so we will actually do that 10% guaranteed our, our year over year for any money that you invest with us. And we put into a solar projects, we put into self storage, we put into Touro, anything that you really want to be a part of, we can help you figure out a way to get into that industry. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (32:25):

That's so cool. Yeah. You guys are putting your money where your mouth is. I mean, you're, you're doing these investments. I know Mike, he has the Turo going. You guys are in real estate, you guys are doing all these things. So it's cool that we're not just hearing them from people that are like, oh no, this should a good idea. It's like actual investments. You're doing yourself. And depending on the package, you get the opportunity to be able to go in on the investments, which is awesome. And I mean, I know all you guys are super successful, got money. So that's, for me, that's where it is, is like go work with the people who have the money or your CPA. They're probably not going to be the richest guy in the room. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (33:00):

Well, and it, and it's, and it's really cool because, you know, Jerry's, our backgrounds are so different, right? Obviously Mike and Jerry are huge in the solar space, but you know, most of my investments are nowhere near solar. It's, interros, it's in real estate, it's in franchises, it's in all sorts of stuff. And Jerry's knowledge is in completely different aspect of it, right? So Jerry's knowledge really reaches out into solar. He started a very successful solar company. He's, he's done multiple other companies. And so his, his range is, is really something completely different. And then mine is on the other expert under the spectrum where, you know, I definitely have some, some experience and knowledge in the F in the franchise world, but, you know, I love the tech investments. There are high risks, but man, the rewards are just so much better.

Speaker 3 (33:44):

And so they're not for everybody, but but you know, I just recently did a big test investment that, you know, could pay off exponentially. Well, if it works, but you know what my point is is that all of us are in such different realms of the investment. That we're good at that we really just cover so many different aspects of it. And, and so it really just is a really good team to say, you know, what is it that you want to invest in? We'll figure out how to get you there. We, we know somebody, somebody knows somebody that we know, right. Everybody wants to be that guy. Mike was talking about that yesterday. Like everybody wants to be the guy that's like, oh, I know I got a guy. I know a guy, oh, you need this. I got a guy and we want to be that guy. I want to be that for everybody. And so that's kind of where, where we, where we've developed, why, who is in, ER, excuse me, sorry. That's that's why, who is in by syndicate is who's in, by syndicate is, is because of the knowledge and where that scope looks.

Speaker 2 (34:32):

Yeah. I love that. And it's cool. Cause you guys, like you said, are doing it mastermind style too. So you're not just, we're not just learning necessarily from you guys, but we're interacting with other people that are super, super successful. We got guys making hundreds, hundreds, thousands, you know, in the millions and all that in the group. So I liked that it's a network in there. We're all hearing about each other's investments and I'm just starting on it. So I can't wait to, you know, follow up on this on a year. See we're having that.

Speaker 3 (34:56):

I will have to do another podcast in a year and say, okay, show from, start to now, how do you really feel?

Speaker 2 (35:01):

Yeah, my before and after. Yeah. Broke picture and then picture with all my Teslas and stuff. But yeah, no. So it's cool just to be able to interact with you guys and have you know, that community too, and these community-based and I haven't done events. You guys, you said the package, how many events do you guys plan on doing? For kind of the high level?

Speaker 3 (35:26):

Yeah. So there's a few different ways that we've looked at it to do it. So I'm, we're, we're really open. We want people to feel as, as to feel like they can come as often as they need. So I think what we've decided is probably once a month we'll invite you guys down to Vegas or somewhere to just get some FaceTime and have those conversations. And then we're, we're, we are going to do two big trips every year with with some of those highest pride member packages. And either, you know, in you know, The Bahamas to buy cryptocurrency or it'll be a mixture between, between a good relief, you know, fun trip, but a knowledgeable trip. So we'll go out and I'll buy cryptocurrency with you guys. Or we'll, we'll bring in a heavy hitter in, in this specific finance field.

Speaker 3 (36:11):

Like we'll kind of do some of those things that that we've we've been talking about doing a lot of these trips. We haven't really done any of them yet. We're just kind of starting to get the ball rolling, but that's definitely the, you know, the phase two of where we're going with this is, is just blow this up and make this something that we can scale to a really big place. And then and make everybody a lot of money and help with the investment side, help with the tax side and mitigation side, everything. And then the trips will just be a bonus that we're like, okay. You know, every, everybody, every year is going to be looking for, to the pies and to get trips. Like, they'll just be those kinds of trips that everybody's like, man, the price in and keep trips coming up. That's going to be so great.

Speaker 2 (36:43):

Yeah. I love that. And know, I know, I know you guys can't I mean the cool thing about this, you're probably not going to be able to run it at this level for, depending on how many people get in, because I imagine you get, you know, hundreds of people on this, you can't be that level of attention. So for our listeners, if you are wanting to get, you know, this type of level of attention, they gain in wallets at this price, that's the other thing I know you guys will have to eventually increase prices and all that too. So you heard it here first, if you want to get in while they're still, you know, able to give this level of attention, have these guarantees and all that. I know you're probably always have the guarantees with what you're doing.

Speaker 2 (37:23):

Absolutely. But getting on this and I don't think you're going to find this level of attention, this level of financial literacy advice, all that stuff that's going on here. So that's our invitation for our listeners and I, Austin, I know you're a, you got guys going out on the doors and get you to hit doors and things like that. So it's cool as you're still involved, you know, in the solar side. So Austin has a ton of water. Yeah. Yeah. He has a ton of understanding of the solar space and he's out knocking, you know, putting his feet to the floor here after this. But for our listeners, those that do want to get in on pipe syndicate and maybe, you know, get on a call with you guys, hear more about it, where can they do that? And how can they connect with you?

Speaker 3 (38:04):

Yeah. So, so there's a few different ways. You know, we've actually got a lot of guys that just they already follow Mikey Lucas on Instagram. Cause Mikey, Lucas is the solar man to be. And so a lot of people are just DM-ing Mikey Lucas on Instagram at Mikey Lucas. But we also have a webpage that we developed and created just a 3, 1, 4 syndicate dot com. And that's a good place we, we can run through. You can kind of get a good look for, for how we're doing the website should be live next week. We went through and reiterated all the content and kind of did some of that stuff and other well guy built it out for us. Cool. And so next week or so it should be, it should be live, but there's a consultation link in there as well.

Speaker 3 (38:49):

And then and then you could always even just reach out to Taylor, reach out to somebody on the podcast and say, Hey, I want to get a phone number, call us. I mean, we're, we're just that open with it. Like we'll let anybody give out our phone number or email addresses because we want them to be able to have that that touch point that they want to have. So, you know, if somebody is like, Hey, I was listening to your podcast, I want to get Austin's phone number. Like give it to him and let them call me and we'll have a conversation about it. Cool. All right.

Speaker 2 (39:14):

We're here to hear Austin, watch a call them every day. But yeah. Especially if you're in the group, but that

Speaker 3 (39:18):

Does mean I'll answer every day, but you can absolutely call it.

Speaker 2 (39:22):

Yeah. So yeah, we'll link to all that in the show notes. So if you're interested, definitely go check that out. And at the very least go do a call with you, get with these guys. Cause that's, what's cool is even before I had the intention of getting in on this, just a call with my Dean, you guys helped me realize, Hey, at the very least talk to your CPA about this, or like get yourself,

Speaker 3 (39:42):

Come to a consultation and we'll tell you like, you know, take what our consultation is, come and have a consultation with us. After you talk to your CPA, come, come lock the loader to be like, Hey, this is what my CPA said. See if we really know what we're talking about, see if we can really beat what your CPA said, right. To have those, those calls first and then have our consultation. But there's no, there's no harm in having a consultation because you might learn something that you didn't know. Even if it's one thing. I mean, that's, that's still a takeaway. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:06):

Or like, like we're what happened yesterday. I heard Mikey talking to a guy who I think was the guy who, you know, oh, the 40 grand or whatever. So maybe you're getting ready to do your talk, your taxes. Maybe your CPA is telling you, you're going to owe this much. Might as well talk to them. You get these guys. And you know,

Speaker 3 (40:21):

If you, if you had something wrong with, you know, something in your house and you knew that it was going to be expensive to fix you, wouldn't you get more than one quote on something right

Speaker 2 (40:30):

Now, except

Speaker 3 (40:31):

For solar. That's right. That's right. But for anything else, you shop around a little bit, but no, but, but it's the same thing. Like, you know, you, you it's like a dating experience. You're not going to love this first CPA that you ever find it. You're going to have to find a few talk to a few work with a couple, you know, it's dating, you're dating. And so w w we, we hope to win that last date. Right. But but yeah. Have those consultations and, and, and then bring them to us and see what they say and see, see where it is because we, you never know what you're going to find out.

Speaker 2 (41:00):

Love that. Well, Austin, thanks for coming on the show today. And then last question, before we let you go I don't know, one word of advice, or maybe like some common mistakes that you've seen a lot of I dunno, solar reps or companies make with their finances, any like final words of advice.

Speaker 3 (41:17):

I mean, there's just so much, it's so hard to pick down, which, you know, which is the best thing. I, I would probably say, you know, one of the number one things that that I see is so many people fight for W2. You know, they think W2's king and they're like it's prepaid, it's makes the filing so much easier. W candidates is not, W2 is not king. There's so little that you can do to help mitigate some of these taxes if you're W2 and yourself. So I would say if you are a W2, if it's something that you've thought about doing 10 and nine is the way to go. And then I would say, you know, the only way to do a 10 99, the one thing most guys don't do is they're just letting they're letting their companies pay their 10 99.

Speaker 3 (42:03):

We help. And one of the things I definitely recommend is having your own personal company with an LLC attached to a 10 99 or something like that to pay yourself through. Most guys don't know how to do that. Are they, are, they questioned that? And we definitely bring that to the table, but it's not impossible, but that's probably the number one thing that I would say is the biggest overlooked thing is they're not utilizing their own things. Cause they their own companies or things like that for the write offs and, and things like that. They're just letting them pay the 10 99 and they're paying whatever they say they have to pay at the end of the year. And so I would say that's probably the number one thing, advice. The second word of advice is always strive to pay the least amount of taxes. I feel like the government already gets enough money. Do they really need any more? Not from you. Right? They can have somebody else's money. They don't, they don't need my money. So the mindset change of of of not paying taxes is something that most people have to get used to because it's something that people talk about quite a bit. Right. It's everywhere. So

Speaker 2 (42:59):

That's great advice. And guys, I went, when I started in the industry for like my first three years, I didn't know any of this stuff. And I have, like, I was getting paid 10 in night. I didn't even have an LLC set up. None of that.

Speaker 3 (43:10):

Yeah. So that's probably one of the biggest things. That's probably the, one of the first things that we fix. Every time we come into somebody's books, every time that we sign a new client on our, one of our first questions is okay. Do you have an LLC? What state it is in it? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:22):

Yeah. That's first question. I got

Speaker 3 (43:23):

So and that's exactly. Yeah, it's the truth. So we definitely help utilize that. And so that's one of the biggest things that you can do, because there's just so much that you can write off that people don't know about. Yeah. Just, just by simply opening up an LLC and having the, having your company, whoever you're working for pay that, that's it. Step number one. I mean, it really makes that much of a difference. You still have to know what you're doing and know where to put things, but I mean, it really does make a big difference to do that.

Speaker 2 (43:49):

Yeah. That's fire. So guys make sure you're getting the right financial advice. Don't take advice from people that don't know what they're doing and look at their bank accounts. If they're broke, don't take advice from broke people, right? So that's what you're going to be doing. If you want to get in pipes in the kit, you're going to be getting advice from people that are making fat stacks from guys that are in the investments themselves guys like Austin. So Austin, thanks again for coming on the show. And I can't wait to see how many people connect with you, but thanks for all you guys are doing for the industry. You're really helping us keep a hold of that money, which is

Speaker 3 (44:20):

Thanks for letting me come on. Yeah. If anybody has any questions or any concerns even about by syndicate or anything that you can think of, feel free to to reach out and, and don't be hesitant to, to ask your questions. Like we want to hear them. We want to know what they are. We want to help everybody. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:34):

Much appreciated Austin. Thanks again. And we will talk soon. Hey, Solarpreneurs quick question. What if you could surround yourself with the industry's top performing sales pros, marketers, and CEOs, and learn from their experience and wisdom in less than 20 minutes a day. For the last three years, I've been placed in the fortunate position to interview dozens of elite level solar professionals and learn exactly what they do behind closed doors to build their solar careers to an all-star level. That's why I want to make a truly special announcement about the new learning community, exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with top performers in the industry. And it's called the Solciety, this learning community with designed from the ground up to level the playing field to give solar pros access to proven members who want to give back to this community and help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry. Brightest minds four, are you ready for it? Less than $3 and 45 cents a day currently Solciety is open, launched, and ready to be enrolled. So go to Solciety.co To learn more and join the learning experience. Now this is exclusively for Solarpreneur listeners. So be sure to go to solciety.co and join. We'll see you on the inside.

DOWNLOAD SOLCIETY APP NOW!

Speaker 1 (00:03):

Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. I teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.

Speaker 2 (00:44):

The 1 thing that prevents most solar salespeople from hitting their goals and closing deals. That's what we're going to be jamming on today. That and much more coming up on today's podcast. My name's Taylor Armstrong. I'm here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and hopefully have a much better time in this great solar industry. Hope you had a happy Thanksgiving, good time with your family. Hope you took the day off. That would be a good day to go and knock. Some doors hit up some people, but I hope that you can take Thanksgiving and Christmas off at least from knocking doors, but a great Turkey day. Great time with friends and family. Hopefully you enjoyed it today. We're going to be talking about something a little bit different, and I love this topic because it's something that I have a lot to learn on. So I love hearing from experts on the topic and that is the topic of finances.

Speaker 2 (01:43):

Then I'm going to tie that into what that has to do with closing deals and hitting your goals. But it's actually been a big piece. That's helped me out tremendously to close more deals is thinking more about the financial side of things. And the reason we're talking about this a little bit more right now is because if you miss the big announcement we brought on our first ever sponsors of the show, and that is our friends over at Pi Syndicate. If you hadn't noticed, we brought Jerry, if you sell him the show and he started this financial mastermind basically to help people get their mind, right? When it comes to the money piece of the puzzle. So big thank you to them. And if you want to get, you know, your finances, right, definitely hit them up. Tell them you heard about them from the podcast and they're going to hook you up.

Speaker 2 (02:37):

They're going to take care of you. So go over to Pius in the get.com. We'll post their a website in the show notes of this, go check them out, let them know you appreciate them sponsoring the show and next up. So we're gonna actually hear from their CFO, his name's Austin. And he's going to share a little bit more about their vision and goal is with Pi Syndicate. But anyways, back to the topic at hand of the show today, and so something that prevents people from closing deals more than you think is they have no financial plan in place. And I've talked about this book a lot recently, a lot of podcasts, but closer survival guide by Grant Cardone. He lists this matter of fact is one of the top 10 reasons that closers fail is they don't have a financial plan in place. And we're going to get into what exactly is a financial plan, because I didn't even know what this was when I first read it.

Speaker 2 (03:40):

It's like, what is he talking about? Financial planning. What was that to do with closing deals? So I didn't expect it. Maybe you don't expect that either, but before we talked about what is a financial plan first, I just want to mention that you need to get your head right around money. If you're like, I don't know if anyone's like me, but I had an enormous scarcity mindset around money. And most you've heard my story. I was in college at Southern Utah university. I was donating plasma to pay my rent. And basically my summers, a pest control. Didn't go as well as I hoped. So I didn't even have money to pay my rent at the time as donating plasma. And I was that kid on campus that was going to every single club event, every single thing to try and get just some free food.

Speaker 2 (04:36):

If you've been on campuses, you know, they do those events all the time where they're handing out free pizza, where there might need to come check out the clubs. I wasted so many hours go to these events, listening to pointless meetings, just because I knew there was going to be a slice of pizza at the end. That's how desperate I was. I literally did not want us want to spend a dime out of my pocket. If I knew I'd go get free food somewhere. And that was just the tip of iceberg. I was the guy that our school had this discount card it's called disturbing student heard where every single restaurant in town, then a deal for college students was mostly like, buy one, get one free burgers. Or I don't know if some sort of like bonus you got with your meal.

Speaker 2 (05:24):

Every single day I went on in college. I refuse to go to any place that was not listed on this card. So I'm like, I'm not paying a dime over what I should. I'm going to get some type of deal. I'm going to get some type of discount or else I'm not going there. So that was me pretty sad. Right. And I didn't have money. So I mean, it was driven by that. That's not like, you know, that was kind of the factors when you're broke, you do pretty crazy stuff. And the craziest thing I probably did was we even went on a, we went on a trip with some buddies freshman year at college, we decided, Hey, we're going to go out to California. We're going to go to six flags. Knott's Berry farm. I dunno, a few different places. And we went there.

Speaker 2 (06:13):

I was so broke. I was literally finding leftover concessions on people's tables at six flags. I was going around if I saw a piece of pizza or some fries that looked like they hadn't been touched, I was snagging people's foods off tables, pretty nasty. Right? So I did some extreme stuff. I was broke and this caused me just like some crazy distress. And my head caused some crazy thoughts about money that I was never going to have money. I was always going to be short on money. I was always going to be strapped for cash. So just causes an enormous scarcity mindset. And they've seen it in a few of my friends. I didn't grow up. My parents weren't broke or anything. My dad's a dentist. So, you know, upper middle class, we always have money. We always, you know, never went hungry, nothing crazy like that, but I just never really had jobs.

Speaker 2 (07:12):

I was a music major. So I was always practicing my drums, my percussion. I didn't have time to go work. So if you're like me, if you had these, if you had these types of thoughts in your head, they're likely still carried over to this day. And that's part of what I struggle with now is I still find myself having these thoughts where I don't have money. I'm not going to be able to provide for my family. I'm going to be short on cash. Okay. And it's not an issue now, but they still creep up just because it was so ingrained in my head, back in my college days and back growing up that I didn't have money to, you know, buy what I wanted. Guess this is the first step before you create a financial plan, do you get your mindset right around money?

Speaker 2 (08:05):

It's a work in progress for me, but think how can you get your mindset right around cash. Someone that I look up to a lot that talks about this topic all the time is river Skinner. He was a guest on the podcast, but he has his whole abundance kind of movement. He calls it. He's always preaching about being more abundant. He's always going to gas stations and like cheering that he's paying four or five bucks a gallon for gas. Cause he's abundant. So think how can you be more abundant? How can you get rid of those scarcity mindset, feelings around money? Because we don't do it. It's going to be holding you back in your financial goals. It's going to make it tougher to close deals. It's going to make it tougher to have success in the solar industry. So be abundance, something that helped me is just actually having physical cash, handling it these days.

Speaker 2 (09:05):

Most people don't carry on physical cash. Most people don't even look at their dollar bills, right? It's all in Venmo. It's own PayPal. It's all in cash app, whatever, but they're not seeing the physical cash. So if you can't see it, how are you going to know you have the money, right? You go look at the bank account, but something that actually helped me tremendously go, don't go get a withdrawal of actual physical cash. And I kept in an envelope for a months. I shouldn't do this again would probably help now. But something I did for months, I would get, I had a hundred dollar bill, $50 bill, $200 bill, $10 bill. I would take them out and I would physically handle them every day. And I would just envision myself having extra cash. I would envision myself never being short on that money.

Speaker 2 (10:00):

I was handling in my hand and I was doing affirmations around it. So try that, go print out some physical data. Can you print it out, but go withdraw some physical cash, have it in an envelope and maybe get your mind, get your mind wrapped around that you have an abundance of cash. Is that step number one, make sure you get your mind right around money. And then step number two is get that financial plan in place. Ok, game Grant Cardone talks about this as one of the reasons why closers still, they don't have the plan in place. So if you have the book, it's step number seven, it's on page 66. He talks about this and go read the whole thing if you want. He just has a couple pages on it, but just to summarize it, he talks at the end, say most people correctly estimate their financial needs or never created a financial plan at all.

Speaker 2 (11:04):

Get a financial plan today and make sure it is going to do more than pay the bills, but also create financial freedom for you in your household, you will start closing more deals and you'll quit underestimating the amount of effort, energy, and enthusiasm. It takes to get a deal closed. The bottom line is this. If you underestimate what it takes to create real financial freedom, then it only makes sense that you will underestimate what it takes to close a deal. Mike drop right there. Right? And I can personally test to this. One of the recent best months of sales that I had recently is we were investing in this rental property. Is some of you that follow me over on Instagram. I talked about how we're getting a rental property for an Airbnb over in Utah. And that month I just had this excitement like, man, I want to go out and create this money so I can put it towards that property.

Speaker 2 (12:03):

In that month I had, I think it was 14 deals closed 13, 14, where the previous months I always had, I was closing, I don't know, 6, 7, 8, but I had that extra level of excitement that I was putting my money towards something that I was excited about towards an investment for my future can that's part of having a financial plan in place is your planning for how you're going to create extra income in your planning. Then miss Mintz, you're going to make with that extra income, you're planning your future with it. You're not just paying the bills. And you think of these companies that just cut costs, cut costs, cut costs, just strict budget that you'll also follow these people like Dave Ramsey, Susie Orman, who followed me into Cornell. And he bashed on them all the time because what do they talk about? They talk about just living by a super strict budget, cutting costs, cutting, chopping up your credit cards, right?

Speaker 2 (13:01):

And just, you know, live in his slim as you can. But I think it's super powerful, especially in sales, go out and close more deals to create your financial freedom, right? I want to live like a king and have extra money from my investments. And obviously, you know, there's a balance from it. You know, I'm going to go bolt insane amounts of money. You shouldn't be dropping thousands of dollars at the club every weekend, right? So within reason, but think how can you create that extra income to live, how you want to live and then have that extra money for your investments. So I think the first step in creating that financial plan is yes, figure out how much money you need to live. It. You do want to figure out what is your budget? What exactly you're going to do? You know, how much money do you need to live, right?

Speaker 2 (13:57):

And how much money do you need to fund future retirement plans, vacations children's education, all that, stuff like that. And then second Grant Cardone talks about this. Figure out how much money you actually need to bring in monthly in order to create solvency and get all that you want accomplished, which solvent seat is the ability of an entity to pay its debts with available cash. So your financial plan should include clearly state and monetary goals. Exactly how you're going to create surpluses of money, what to do with the surpluses and investments. So this is very important. Go and write down, have your financial plan written down. How much do you need to live? Hey, you should be doing that. If you haven't done that, go track, you know, figure out all your exact expenses, figuring out how much you need to live to put a week each month, but then figure out what is your surplus.

Speaker 2 (14:55):

So how much surplus do you want to have each month? What are you going to do with that? Write down your investments in this goes into why I think joining something like Pi Syndicates is a great idea because if you don't know, if you're like me, you don't know what 10 miss your money in it all. I'll be honest. I am not a financial group. I'm not good with investments. And that's why I never invested really in the past. That's why it still can meet, taken me until now to get my first rental properties, because I just thought, oh, I don't know where to look. I don't know. I don't know how to tell if this is a good deal or if it's going to cash flow. But if you can be around a group of people who know what they're doing, a mastermind style, like Pi Syndicate guys that have, you know, multi-multi millionaires that you know, have tons of different investments that are super successful.

Speaker 2 (15:55):i

That's going to jumpstart the process. So that's why I decided to have them as the sponsor for the show is because so many people in this industry, they can make money, but what are they doing with it? And are they paying all the uncle, Sam, if that's the other thing, that's super powerful joining pipes. And they get, you're going to learn how to actually take that money. You would be given to uncle Sam and investing it and avoiding what you would probably paying taxes otherwise. So that's the two big steps of the day. And this is why a lot of people felt you don't have a financial plan. So today, wherever you are after your workout, after your ride out to area, wherever you're listening to this, sometime today, take out your notes app, take out a pad of paper, write down what is your financial plan?

Speaker 2 (16:48):

How much do you need to have the live every month? And then how much surplus are you going to have every month? What are you going to do with that? Write it out, get it in front of you, slap it on the mirror, put it on a vision board. If you're into that stuff, I think is super cool to have maybe print out a picture to go with it. And then that's how you're going to create this excitement. I guarantee you, if you do this, it's going to motivate you to push harder and deals than you were before. And something that I feel like I became a better closer when I had a kid actually just had my second kid. Now, when I'm in deals, I know, okay. I want to feed my kids. I want to know on for my kids' future. So it allows me to push harder to hang in deals longer than I would otherwise it's.

Speaker 2 (17:40):

So what's that motivation that you have? What stage you're in, how are we going to create that extra motivation to push hard in those deals? Yeah. You're not going to be pulling people's teeth, but you're going to stick in that deal and this is the way to do it. So that's the topic of today. Make sure you get your mind right around your buddy. And then step two, have that financial plan in place. It's going to change your game in solar. I promise you. So let me know what you think of this topic. Let me know if you like these financial topics. Next episode, we're going to have Austin on the show. He's going to dive in a little more. He's the expert on this stuff. So you're gonna hear from him. So don't miss out and get your finances, right? Close. Some deals deals this week and we will see you on the next episode. Peace.

Speaker 3 (18:32):

Hey, Solarpreneurs quick question. What if you could surround yourself with the industry's top performing sales pros, marketers, and CEOs, and learn from their experience and wisdom in less than 20 minutes a day. For the last three years, I've been placed in the fortunate position to interview dozens of elite level solar professionals and learn exactly what they do behind closed doors to build their solar careers to an all-star level. That's why I want to make a truly special announcement about the new learning community, exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with top performers in the industry. And it's called the Solciety, this learning community with designed from the ground up to level the playing field to give solar pros access to proven members who want to give back to this community and help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry. Brightest minds four, are you ready for it? Less than $3 and 45 cents a day currently Solciety is open, launched, and ready to be enrolled. So go to Solciety.co To learn more and join the learning experience. Now this is exclusively for Solarpreneur listeners. So be sure to go to solciety.co and join. We'll see you on the inside.

DOWNLOAD SOLCIETY APP NOW!

Speaker 1 (00:03):

Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. I teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.

Speaker 2 (00:42):

What's up Solarpreneurs Taylor Armstrong here with another episode as usual here to make your time as a solar professional, much more enjoyable. And of course help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals and dominate the solar industry. So let's jump into the episode before we get into this one, to think all of you that have gone on to leave a review or share the podcast. That's what keeps us going over here at Solarpreneur and just super grateful. It's coming up on a Thanksgiving actually in a few days as I'm recording this year and want to express my gratitude to all the listeners and all the people that have reached out to let me know that something's helps you or I made it easier to close a deal or get that next lead. That's really what we're all about here at the podcast and love hearing your feedback.

Speaker 2 (01:40):

So thank you. Thank you so much for those who haven't done that and wanted to give a shout out as well too. We got a recent review from a sports master 92. He says amazing. I listened for the first time last week, my team was in a slump and I made all of my reps start listening and we have had a big turnaround that quickly have in we'll keep recommending sports master 92. I love sports as well. You rock. Thanks for the good review. And so today's episode, we're going to talk about something that has been helping me quite a bit recently want to give my man a Jason newbie, a shout out something that I didn't remember, but we've been doing some trainings here in our team correlations. And I started implementing a couple of these techniques and it's been helping me immensely.

Speaker 2 (02:35):

Just get people to open up more, get people to listen. And those of you that knocked doors, really anyone, whether you're knocking doors or closing deals, that's what we need. We need people to open up to us. We need them to tell us what they're thinking, because really that's how you're going to gain the trust. That's how you're going to know how to overcome their objections. And really that's the goal of any fact-finding you can do as you're sitting in these. You just want people to spill the beans. You want them to tell you exactly why they haven't gone solar. Exactly what their concerns are, because guess what they tell you, those things the deal's done. They just told you exactly how to close them. Because if you can overcome those objections and answer those questions that they're having answer the reasons why they hadn't gone solar yet, boom, it's a done deal.

Speaker 2 (03:23):

So today we're going to talk about two techniques to ninja techniques that help your prospects open up in a way that they wouldn't otherwise. And these techniques, they come from a book called never split the difference by Chris Voss, great book, recommend a hundred percent go read it. I need to reread it. I listened to it on audible, but ton of takeaways you can get from that book. And for those that haven't heard of the book, Chris' boss, you as an FBI, negotiator would literally negotiate with you know, people doing crazy things murders, I don't know, just all sorts of different situations. And he takes what he learned and talks about how we can apply those same negotiation techniques in the business world and in cells. And so two of his techniques, Hey, the first one it's called mirroring mirroring. I can pronounce it.

Speaker 2 (04:22):

And then the second one is called labeling. As I'm going to tell you a little story, and then I'm going to talk about these techniques and give you some implementations, how you can start using them right away. Okay. And so I was out knocking. This was just last week. I'll be hitting some doors here and we'd done this training pretty recently. We did a little exercise, which y'all, I'll talk about it for those leading teams. It's a great exercise. You can put your team through to help with these techniques, but I'm talking to this lady and she is super closed off. She's a neighbor of the deal. I just closed a couple of days before, and I was trying to get some HOA signatures, which I've talked about this before, but one of the best ways to little hacks to pick up some quick leads, go get those HOA forms filled out here in California.

Speaker 2 (05:18):

I assume it's probably the same with most Safeways, but here in California, you have to go get neighborhoods signatures. Typically for these hos saying that they acknowledge, they know that their solar being installed here in California. It's nice because the laws make it so they can't deny the solar, but HOA is still typically require this thing. So I'm going, I'm getting the neighborhood signature. And of course, you know, I'm going to use that to my advantage, try and get some more appointments as I'm getting these neighborhoods signatures. And typically every time I get, I fill out these forms, typically I'd get a couple appointments out of it because it's a great regard. He got a name to drop. They know you're an installing their neighbor. And if you just kind of slip it in there, Hey, we checked out. You haven't checked out solar before I view, they'll give you an objection, whatever.

Speaker 2 (06:10):

So I go do this. I'm with the lady she's being super closed off. Okay. Of course I slipped that in there. I say, Hey, I noticed you don't have solar. If you guys ever looked into it. And instantly, usually they'll have a conversation with me, but this lady just instantly closes off. She's like, no, no, not interested. No Mike, whoa. I wasn't even trying to pitch it because that's the other advantage. Usually people don't look at you as a salesman if you're just coming by to get signatures. Right. But this lady right off the bat, she goes on the defense. She's saying no, not interested. No. And just didn't want to start a conversation about solar at all. Even though I wasn't coming across as salesy. So I start thinking about these two techniques, Hey, mirroring and labeling. And I'm like, all right, I'm going to put these to the test.

Speaker 2 (07:00):

So she goes through I finally get out of her. I go, no solar, not interested, not interested and force her to replay. Okay. Here's the first technique. I'll explain these in more depth later. But mirroring is basically you repeat the last two words that they said, or you replete some keywords. They said in the statement and force them to elaborate. Okay. So she goes, oh yeah, not interested. No, it doesn't make sense. And I go, doesn't make sense. Okay. And what's she going to do? She has to replay, says, yeah, looked into it. Doesn't work for us. It doesn't work for you. I do it again. And what I'm doing, I'm forcing her to open up to elaborate on these things. And I noticed just from doing this, it worked way better than me being like, oh, why didn't make, why didn't it make sense?

Speaker 2 (08:02):

Why didn't you check into it? Okay. Cause what happens is people feel like they're being interrogated sometimes when you just go after him with why? Why, why, why? And this is what every other sales person is doing. Right. They're saying why, why haven't you gone solar? Okay. So I'm trying it this way. I'm putting the Chris boss technique to the test. So it doesn't make sense. She goes, yeah, we just have a low bill. And I noticed she starts to open up way more. She starts actually giving me reasons. Okay. And then I put the other technique in the use. The other technique is called labeling. And this is where you basically summarize what you think they told you, but you put a sound like in front of it. So she said, yeah, we have a pretty low bill. Nick's expensive. So I label that.

Speaker 2 (08:57):

I said, oh, sounds like soar was pretty expensive when you looked into it. And she goes, yeah. Yeah. She starts telling me basically all the reasons why she didn't go solar. Okay. And I will say, I didn't end up booking this appointment. So it doesn't have a happy ending, but I did throw these techniques into place. And I noticed I got way further than I probably would have just do my typical stuff. Okay. Because typically I would just do though, why haven't you done it? Oh, well, solar different now. Here's why XYZ. But what I was doing, I was getting her to open up, open up. I was again having her, tell me all the reasons she hadn't done it and doing it in these ways with these techniques, it made it way less threatening because especially with someone closed off like this, the more you can seem like you're not trying to just be the typical sales guy trained to interrogate them.

Speaker 2 (09:57):

The more they're going to open up to it. So she opened up way more. Still couldn't get her to buy on an appointment. But she told me all the reasons she wasn't spending much of money. She was too busy. XYZ tried to overcome it. Couldn't but I got her to actually start talking. I got her to elaborate how much she was feeling. Okay. And I'm noticing that as I do this, people are talking way more, not only in, on the doors, but also in appointments as I'm sitting in appointments. Oh, Taylor. Yeah. You know what? Our bills are too low. Oh. Sounds like you guys looked into it before and financially didn't make sense. Yeah. We looked into it a long time ago. We looked into it like three years ago and it didn't save us any money. Save you any money. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:51):

Cause we were expecting to save a bunch and only saved us like five bucks a month. Okay. There may be. You find out that they're expecting to save, I don't know, 10 bucks a month. It's all about expectations. These are ways you can figure out what their expectations were. Hey, so you can use this with pretty much anyone, anything and anyone, any objections, but you can also use it in your daily social situations in Chris Voss talks about this, just using it in conversations. It's a way to get people to open up and just listen. Feel like they're being listened to more. Okay. So those are the two techniques and I'll read a little description of them. Okay. The first one was mirroring and that's again taking two to three key words and repeating them. Yeah. Solar is too expensive, too expensive. Yeah. We looked into it before and it costs like 40 grand, 40 grand.

Speaker 2 (11:52):

He just labeling or sorry. Mirroring is repeating back two to three keywords and using it to gather Intel. Hey, and then it expands what you know about them in their position. Hey, that's textbook definition right there. And then the second one again is called labeling. And that is where you basically summarize what they told you. Hey, by using, oh, seems like it costs a lot back then. Oh, sounds like you guys didn't have a good experience with what you're looking at. And those are the two. I think those are the two key phrases sounds like, or seems like, seems to be the one that Chris' boss uses more than anything. Hey, and it's important. Another thing I dug up as, as, as, as kind of researching, a lot of us tend to do phrases like, oh, what I'm hearing is, or I think, okay.

Speaker 2 (12:54):

And as you do a first person phrase like this, sometimes it can signal that you're the number one priority. And we don't want it to come across as, this is what we think. Okay. We want it to be about them. Cause what do people care about brain trees? Tracy says, w I F M right? What's in it for me. That's all people care about. It doesn't matter if they're saving money. It doesn't matter. What's in it for them. And what do they want? That's what these two techniques are going to dig, dig up is what do they really want? And if you can make people think, oh, this product has what I need, what I want. That's all they care about. Right? They don't care about savings, but they care about saving the planet. You're going to hit on that. And that's how these techniques can be effective.

Speaker 2 (13:47):

Okay. So make sure you use them again. That's mirroring and labeling, and this is just a crash course on it, but great exercise you can do with your teams. Maybe you're leading the team. Maybe you're managing or go bring this back to one of your trainings. If you're just, you know, maybe you're not managing, but go take it back to your teams. Go practice this a great exercise. We did that got me thinking way more about this is in our meetings. We had someone just go up, stand in front of the room. And he started off with like a statement. And then we just went down every single rep that was in that room. And we did either a mere statement or we did a label. So for example, I think the rep started out with a, yeah, it's been a really tough daily. I don't know, start out with just something random.

Speaker 2 (14:39):

And then the first rep in front, he had to say tough daily. And then the guy in front of the room, he said, yeah, I didn't get a good grade on my tests. XYZ. I don't know. He started expounding on that. And then the second one, and then you go down the line, then the next person he could do a mirror label. So you could do all sounds like it's been rough times lately. And then you're just constantly getting the person in front of the room to elaborate on what they said. Obviously keeping it in line with the topic. You're not going way off topic. Yeah. You're keeping it on track and you're trying to dig up relevant information. So think about that as you're knocking or as you're out there, closing deals, use these two techniques mirroring and labeling. Hey, it's been a game changer for me.

Speaker 2 (15:28):

So probably my two takeaways from the book and go read the Chris Voss book. Sorry. My mind just drew a blank. Yeah. Anyways, we'll post to it here in the show notes, go read it. Let me know if you have any takeaways or things you are using from the book. We'd love to hear it and would love to hear any other ways you're using to mirror and label your prospects in your deals are on the doors. So go out, apply this, send it to someone that has been struggling to connect with people, to book appointments out there in the neighborhoods and hope you have a great Thanksgiving. If you're listening to this before or on or after Thanksgiving, whenever it is make sure to be grateful, a great episode on gratitude. We had probably six months or so back and go look Earl Kapule. He is Mr. Gratitude. He talks a lot about how gratitude gratitude has been a game changer in a solar cells. So don't forget be grateful and all that you do keep your gratitude, gratitude journal, and let's go out and crush it this week. Go close some deals and I'll see you on the next episode. Peace.

Speaker 3 (16:45):

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Speaker 1 (00:03):

Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. I teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.

Speaker 2 (00:42):

What's going on. Solarpreneurs. We are here live in Las Vegas. Guests probably won't be alive by the time you hear it, but we have, uh, Mr. Josh Peters on the show here on the podcast. Josh, thanks for coming on and with us today.

Speaker 3 (00:55):

Absolutely. Yeah, I'm super excited to be here with you.

Speaker 2 (00:57):

It's going to be awesome. And Josh, he is the director of experience here at your energy co if you're watching the video, he's all decked out in the gear. Yeah. You can see

Speaker 3 (01:07):

Every present.

Speaker 2 (01:08):

We're lucky cause he's about to roll out on the doors himself. So he fortunate enough that you would give us some time before he gets on the doors here on a Saturday. So, uh, Josh excited to have you on. And, um, you've obviously been super involved in recruiting over the years. I know you're just putting together, um, a whole experience now for these recruits coming in and it's super valuable for our listeners to just hear how to recruit the right way. And obviously you're doing a lot over social media, digital recruiting, which is super valuable, super important in today's. Um, just kind of landscape with things, especially during the COVID I bet, right?

Speaker 3 (01:45):

Yeah. I mean, you know, especially nowadays back in the day, you could just post that ad on Craigslist, but today you have social media and that's the biggest push for where people are. And so wherever the people are is where you go to recruit, honestly.

Speaker 2 (01:56):

Yeah. I know a huge in so many people, I see do it the wrong way as I'm sure we'll touch on. So before we get into all that, um, do you want to kind of, um, tell us about your like door to door background, how you got into solar and I guess how you kind of transitioned into all these recruiting absolutely. Down over the years. Cool.

Speaker 3 (02:15):

So yeah, I started about five years ago in the door, their industry, um, I got started in Kirby, so all you guys out there, um, if you don't know, Kirby's the vacuums, they've been around 107 years, so they're like the biggest sales org when it comes to door to door sales. Um, and the funny thing is, I didn't even know as a sales job, I just applied to a position and I was like, cool. It says 2000 a month, I'm going to work there. Um, and so when I got there and they were like, this is a sales position, uh, it was kind of a shocker for me cause I'd never done sales. Yeah. So I was just like, well, I'll give it a try. Um, and so when I got into Kirby, you know, obviously I dealt with the difficulties of not doing well, my like my first few weeks.

Speaker 3 (02:54):

Uh, but then when I caught on, um, I actually made my way to being the top salesman in the office. I got promoted to being team leader. Um, and then the next promotion I had after that was into a recruiting position. So, um, I did sales for quite a bit in Caribbean. Then I moved into a recruiting position where there's still sales involved. Um, but it's, it kind of taught me a lot about, uh, what a good process should look like for a sales company on how to, you know, create a pipeline, how to, you know, interview these people, how to hire them, train them and then get them to their first sale. Cause as director of experience, you know, one of the things that's the biggest part of my job is retention. And that's something that I've started to learn from, from my first recruiting job all the way up until here is, is the experience of making sure, you know, what keeps people into a business, what keeps people at the company.

Speaker 3 (03:42):

Yeah. Um, but yeah, so I, I did Kirby for about three years and the last two was, was basically just me hiring people, training them, um, and, and recruiting. Um, then after Kirby, I got into selling water systems. I did water systems on the doors for a while. Uh, the one like the full water filtration, water softeners, all that kind of stuff. I helped that guy build out his recruiting platform as well. Um, and then, uh, the timeline didn't work on me for that one. Cause he wanted to start recruiting like a year later. And I was like, well, I want to do it now. It just didn't work out. Um, but then, uh, after that, well, while I was at that job, I actually, um, we were on the sales call with the door to our experts, which just kind of funny. And that's where I first got introduced to the door, to our experts.

Speaker 3 (04:30):

And while we were on the sales call, um, I actually applied to go work for them. Um, and so that's how I got my job at door they're experts, uh, working in the recruiting department. Um, so I went to work with them. Uh, I started out just as kind of like a, like setting the position or setting the interviews for like the senior recruiters. Um, and then after about a month I got promoted into a senior recruiting position. Um, and it's then when I started to work with all the different industries, right. Cause I had only done Caribbean water systems before that, but then I started to work with best control companies, solar companies, roofing companies, garbage companies, you name it, right. We would recruit guys for all these different industries. Um, and while I was there, I started to work more, uh, more personally with solar companies.

Speaker 3 (05:14):

Um, and that's where I started to see kind of where the real opportunity is, you know, cause I've been in sales, like you were in pest control sales before, right. Um, and obviously, you know, there's money to be made in different industries. But the money I saw that was, was to be made in solar and the opportunity in solar is where my interest really started to peak. And so that's when, um, I started researching into, you know, different solar companies. I started looking into that opportunity. Um, and that's when about eight months ago I got connected with Jerry. Um, and he talked to me about, you know, starting this company here in Chico and building something that would be, uh, very easy to, to aggressively grow and expand as a company. Um, and kind of all the ideas he had for the company. So I started working with him about eight months ago. Um, and then I came to work for him. I quit the job there at DD experts and I came here about two, three months ago.

Speaker 2 (06:07):

Okay. Yeah. You've been through a lot man, while I've experienced a lot of different things. That's interesting. And it's cool. Um, I mean, we've, I've heard a few, few, few people on the podcast that, of transitioned over into kind of more recruiting roles like yourself. And so for you, was it, um, like did someone recognize, Hey, this guy is super good at recruiting, let's put them over and where recruiting role or was it you, you kinda just liked more, they recruiting type stuff. So you did it yourself or how did that work? How did you first transition into more? I recruiting stuff?

Speaker 3 (06:37):

So it was actually really cool. Um, because at Kirby, the way they structured it is they was, they would tell you all the different positions that you could attain, uh, through the company, uh, all the way up until earning your own office. Right? Because at Kirby it's a franchise, you can, you can have your own office. Right. Um, and when they talked to us about it in the training class, one of the positions was the recruiting position. Right. They call it a DPS, which I don't even remember what it stands for. I think it's something about like personnel something. Um, uh, but when they talked about that, it was what peaked my interest from the very start actually. Cause I, I really love working with people. Um, I love to have the opportunity to teach people stuff, but at the time, obviously I didn't have anything to teach them.

Speaker 3 (07:16):

Like, I mean, I wasn't good at sales yet. And so after I had gone through the sales process, after I, I knew what I was talking about, I had the product knowledge, the sales knowledge and the door knocking knowledge. Um, I got to the point where I was like, I didn't feel fulfilled just selling, you know? And so for me, the fulfilling part of things was when I got into recruiting, you know, helping other people to be successful. Right. And just like with any sales company, you know, you hire a lot of people and a lot of people fall off. Um, and so that was one of the things that kind of got me started on a journey of figuring out the best way to, to not only bring people into a company and to train them, but to keep them because I think, uh, everyone in this industry will agree that the biggest issue we have when it comes to recruiting is drop-off, you know, and, and that constant cycle of trying to get people into the company and the churning.

Speaker 3 (08:05):

So, um, but yeah, so that's, that's where I kind of started to find the passion for recruiting, um, for working with reps, uh, and, and the training side of things. Cause I mean, I loved the sales. I was good at it. Like once I figured it out, you know, I, I could go out and make some good money. Um, but for me, I always thought it's a lot cooler to see the fruits of your, of your labor and other people. Yeah. Cause like the fruits of my labor when I was selling was the money. Right. And that was cool. Um, but then it's a whole different level when you can take, you know, 10 people at a time and a training class, um, put them through like a product training, a sales training, then a door knocking the training and see them have success in their first week and see them get excited and see them make money. Uh, I really got addicted to that process.

Speaker 2 (08:49):

That's awesome. Yeah. And now I see so many people that just want to bring in more recruits. It's like putting band-aids on, you know, open bleeding women. They just want to bring in a hundred recruits, but yet they have no system set up to like nurture these recruits. And then they're surprised when all these, you know, all these guys just drop off after two weeks it's I've seen companies go out and hire these recruiting agencies, just get tons of leads coming in, have 50 people show up to a recruiting meeting. And then, but yeah, if they don't have a structure, a process in place, a way to nurture all these things away systems like you guys have set up here at your energy go, then I'm sure you've seen it do. There's a huge drop-off in people just quit. And after a weekend.

Speaker 3 (09:29):

Yeah. Very fortunate because the office I worked for in Kirby, um, the entire idea was retention because there's a lot of offices in Kirby where it is just churn and burn, like get a person in there. You can make a sale off sailor to off of them and then they'll leave. And that's like, um, that's like common. Right. But the, the office I worked for, the biggest thing that we tried to focus on was the retention, um, was the career growth, was like their path into a successful salesman. So, um, even though like, yeah, you're right. There are so many companies out there that they're just like, it's, they think it will take more work to retain like six good people than just to keep hiring over and over again, like 10, 15 people that are going to drop off. Right. And, and it might be a different type of work, but it's, it's way better to have a good, solid team of six people because those people are, what's going to attract and retain even more.

Speaker 2 (10:22):

Yeah, for sure. And yeah, so just getting that core people and building it out. And I know some people don't have like, you know, recruiting people over recruiting, but for me, as I've seen the companies I work with like hire people where nurture these recruits and build out systems, but I'll kind of like a map, a pathway of things they need to do. Um, you know, just starting the job. I think that helps a ton versus just, you know, saying, okay, let's start go, uh, dump guys off in an area in toughed out, have them have success like that. Um, but yeah. So for you Josh, like what are some big mistakes you've I know you worked with like DDD experts and you were seeing just companies all over the place, um, you know, helping them with their recruiting. So when you were going into these companies and helping them build out their processes and helping them recruit, what were some like big mistakes that you were seeing and things that they were doing wrong,

Speaker 3 (11:12):

Um, you actually hit the nail right on the head of what I wanted to talk about. And it's, and it's basically in one word it's it's attention. Right. Whereas like you said, you know, a lot of these companies will go out without the systems and processes built out yet. They're just, you know, cause when guys started a company, um, or they, they split off or whatever they're doing, um, what's the first thing on their mind. I need to make money. Right. Um, and I want to do it fast. And so sometimes what they'll do is they'll step over the simple things that could, that could keep, um, or could, that could start a good process and just get in, try, try to get right into the moneymaking. And so the biggest issue I've seen, especially in the door door spaces, uh, they think that they think that they're behind curve.

Speaker 3 (11:53):

It's just like people with like crypto, for example, like if you see something spike people, oh my gosh, I have to buy it now. Right. Um, so, so the biggest issue that people have when it comes to recruiting is, you know, if they start a company, they think that they need to have just like 50 people in a training class right then and there. Um, but they don't have a hiring manager. They don't have a training person. They don't have a onboarding process. They don't have like a training program put together for these reps once they get there. And so even if they do get those 50 people in the room, um, believe it or not, you know, reps aren't done, like you get 50 people in the room. They're smart enough to know like, if the processes are off, if these people know what they're doing, it's just like, um, having product knowledge and sales knowledge.

Speaker 3 (12:36):

Isn't good enough when it comes to, just to, to training reps to be successful. Right. Um, because as most people have learned in this industry, sometimes what you do, isn't a generalized, good thing for every single person to do. Right. Right. Like, especially if it's reps I've never sold before, um, like your you're pitch and what you do, your nuances on the door, like you can't just teach that. You can't just transfer it to them. Right. So putting together these processes and making sure that you have a simple, like, from, uh, apply. So like from applicant to onboarded and on the team, having those steps down. Right. Um, and just a quick outline of what that would look like. Right. Is, so you've got your ads. So whatever platform you use to run your ads, whether it be ZipRecruiter, indeed, Facebook, um, Craigslist, whatever you're using.

Speaker 3 (13:27):

Okay. Um, honing that process, uh, because one of the things that I saw when I was working with these companies, cause everyone's already doing their own recruiting. Right. And a lot of people use indeed. Um, a hard part about indeed is if you don't know the tricks behind it, Indeed's telling you to spend like 200, 300 bucks a day. Yeah. It's a lot of money. You figure out what you're doing. And then I tell you that, right. Because they make money off of you. Um, you don't have to spend that much money. You can optimize your ads way easier than that. Right. Um, and so that was one of the first things I would teach, um, these companies, because after they were done with us, they were going to continue recruiting. Right. Like after we had sent them people and they'd been in, um, in our little program, they were going to continue recruiting.

Speaker 3 (14:11):

So I taught them how to optimize their ads, what keywords to use, how to make it look best because when people are scrolling through indeed, um, they're looking at titles, right. Um, they're looking at titles. I think that was the 29 minutes. Okay. Restart that. Pods let's do it. We can edit it right back into a scene. Um, yeah, sure. Did you have, I think we were talking about, um, yeah, go ahead. Where, where you're like, I was just talking about like how people apply on indeed. Um, the first thing that they'll do is they'll scroll through and then those titles. Right. Okay. Um, so you want to have a good title and then the next thing that they notice is the pay. So, uh, whatever is the industry standard. Um, it depends on the type of person you're trying to recruit. So you have to understand, um, I know lots of these companies, they're like, I want to experience people experienced solar guys.

Speaker 3 (15:13):

Aren't on indeed. Yeah. Most of the time, they're not you on the why, because they have connections. Like if they're an experienced solar rep, they know about all the other companies, that's more of a head hunting type of thing. That's more of ongoing on, on social media. I'm trying to find these people, I'm talking to people in the industry. So if you're using indeed, it's mostly people that might have some sales experience in the past, um, or who would be a good candidate. Right. So you had to make it a more realistic looking pay. Uh, some of the biggest issues I saw with that is solar companies will get on indeed. And they'll put, you know, 200,000 to 400,000 a year. And these people to be true for these people, not even that, but they do not feel like they qualify for that. So why would you, they wouldn't even apply to the job because they're like, there's no way I could get a job that pays out high.

Speaker 3 (15:57):

Cause if they're going from $40,000 a year in their head, they're not worth $400,000 a year. Right. Um, so that was another thing. So the that's one of the first things that they'll see is they want to see the title and then some type of pay that makes sense in their head. Um, normally I would like to do just like, you know, 60 to 80,000, um, just because if they were making 40,000 a year for them, 60 would be an awesome jump, but it's not impossible. Right. And if they're in that 50 to 60, 70 range, then 60 to 80 is it's doable. Right. Then they will apply. So that's just, it's just one of those psychology things you can use when you're using like indeed, um, to help people apply. It probably depends on like the market. Do you like what you're either in that's true.

Speaker 3 (16:40):

Yeah. It depends on the market, but that's just in a general sense that that usually helps best when you're talking about indeed. Yeah. Okay. Um, but yeah, and then just the next thing would be, you know, you've got the ads down, that's the first step. Then once they apply, what, what are you doing? Uh, there's, there's different ways to do it. Um, and I'm going to say this from the start. I am not a fan of group interviews. A lot of people do them and I've ha I've heard people tell me, they're like, oh, they're the best thing they work. Um, I think they say that because they think it's a better use of their time. I disagree. Uh, I've never seen group interviews be as successful because here's the problem with group interviews, the type of people you're looking for, if they're in the same room as someone that looks like they're not even competent, right.

Speaker 3 (17:25):

It looks like they shouldn't even be able to get this type of job. Um, and they see that that person got the job. They won't come back and their trust level goes down. Does that make sense? And then like normal people are used to going to interviews one-on-one uh, or the higher level reps are used to one-on-one interviews. Yeah. So the funny thing is when you're doing group interviews, you're weeding out the type of people you want to just get the lower hanging fruit. Yeah. Right. Um, and that's, that's my opinion. That's what I've seen in the industry. That's what I've dealt with the last four years of, of recruiting that I've been doing. Um, people still do it and that's fine if it gets you, the, the numbers that you want. That's cool. But I recommend having a better process and, and the, the best process, I think, uh, when it comes to the way that you handle these applicants, um, is, is a two touch system, right?

Speaker 3 (18:16):

So like once someone's applied, um, you can either do it through texts or a phone call, but you, you texted them to set up a time to interview. Okay. Um, and then you do the interview. So it's a two touch process. Um, and with that, uh, after, after that interview that you do with them, um, another big problem that people have in the industry is just jumping the gun, right. Offering them the job, offer on the job right off the bat. They're like, oh, this conversation has been great. You have the job. Um, and, and the funny thing is, and, and this is a little tip I learned from Brandon Hall. It's a really, it's a funny way to think about it. But you know, like something that people do in the door to our industry is they try to sell the job to you. Right.

Speaker 3 (18:57):

With recruiting, it's different. You're not trying to sell the job. Like, uh, people normally are trying to sell themselves to the job. Right. And so the funny way he describes it, he's like, uh, if I was in an interview to be a firefighter, right. And the guy was telling me, and I was telling the guy, I was like, look, man, I'm going to be the worst firefighter. I'm not gonna be able to put out the fires. Like I suck. People are going to die. And the chief was telling me, dude, it's perfectly fine. You'll get paid. It'll be, it'll be cool. Like you can do an awesome job. Does that make sense? It makes zero sense that someone would say that, right. Or like 1% how they're doing. They're like, they get people that come in and they're like, oh, I've never worked commissioned before.

Speaker 3 (19:38):

I'm not going to, I'm not going to get it. Like, I'm going to suck. And these interviewers are like to, to be perfectly like, you're going to make money. You become a millionaire, like all those types of things. And it's just like, you would not do that. You would not do that in a regular interview. And so the, the thing is that we're trying to get away from, in, in the recruiting industry, right. Is we want people to understand that this is a job, right. And I know you guys are all 10 99. Right. But this is an opportunity for them that they still have to earn. And if people earn something, they treat it way better. Right. Um, if people would just get something, they, it's not something that they value. And so that's the mentality that you have to go into. It's just like sales, you have to have that mentality.

Speaker 3 (20:21):

Right. So when you're doing interviews, when you are a recruiter, the mentality that you need to have going in is that this person needs to earn this job. Yeah. Right. This person needs to earn the position because if they don't, they will be the person that in a week, they're not going to knock doors and they're going to leave. No doubt. Right. And so the value comes from, um, switching up your mentality, switching up the way that you do your interviews, uh, to do that. And the reason most guys don't do that is because they're scared that it's going to S like run people off. Like, they're scared that if they make the process more difficult, that they won't get as much as many numbers or as many people in there where it's not true. Like, yeah, you will weed out people, but it's, you don't want those types of people in your company. Anyways, because like I said, from the start, if you have a solid team of people, a solid, like five, six people that are your core people, um, that are, that are, you know, bought in that believe in the company. Um, and that they earned the position. Those guys will attract way, way more people and retain more people. And if you have a constant stream of new people coming in that feel like they didn't earn the position, um, and feel like they can just leave whenever

Speaker 2 (21:28):

A hundred percent. And I think it takes so much energy to drag these people. And it didn't even want to be there in the first place. You're constantly trying to babysit and make sure they're on the doors. And you're like, no, I promise it's going to work. If you just put in the dime when they didn't even want to be there in the first place. So it's like, yeah, I don't know. I think it's very similar to like selling, you know, if we're like begging people to a, please do this, please buy it for me. Like, no, one's going to do that. Right. It's like,

Speaker 3 (21:52):

It's the same concept. It's the exact same concept. Right. And the funny thing is, it's just like people have called me harsh before when dealing with reps. And they're like, I thought you're like a director of experience. Um, cause I think our last training class, a guy asked me, he's like, you know what, if I'm messing up or whatever, I was like, uh I'm I am a believer of 100% accountability. And I believe that if you want to be here, you will be here. If not, I'll tell you to leave. Right. Like, I'm not like, obviously you have to babysit new reps. Right. But babysit them when it comes to product knowledge and sales training, you don't babysit them when it comes to like the stupid complaints and things that they talk about. Um, cause you know, it's, it's funny like w for example, when people are on the phone with me doing an interview, right. Um, and if they say something along the lines of, well, what if I make zero sales? You know, most guys are good. What are they going to say? They're like, oh no, it'll be fine. We'll make sure you make money. You get sales, you know, the ISA I go. So you're telling me you're going to be the worst performer in the company.

Speaker 3 (22:52):

You're telling me you're not going to be good at your job. Is that what you're saying? Are you just asking a question? And then instantly they're just like, no, no, no. I was just wondering, like what happened? I was like, okay, cool. I just want to make sure. Cause if, if you're telling me you're not going to do well and that you aren't going to be a good performer for the company, I don't want you. Right. Like that's, that's not who we're looking for. And their mentality instantly changed because what guys are scared to talk about in interviews is commission, right? They're scared to talk about sales, um, because they don't know how to control that conversation. And that's the best way to flip the mentality. When it comes to controlling a conversation is you treat it like a dumb question because it is right.

Speaker 3 (23:29):

You wouldn't go up to a guy and talk about it. Like, what if I don't make the tacos? Good enough. You wouldn't do that. No. And so, um, realistically I think as an industry, we just need to start treating it more like a job, rather than just like, you are trying to bring people in and you're begging them to stay and you're begging them to come because you make money off of them. Right. And, and I know it's a hard thing to kind of switch your mentality around because, um, just like with sales, every single opportunity you're in, it's your time, it's your attention. Right. Um, but if you're a sucky salesman, you don't want to be in more houses. You want to be studying more and learning more. Yeah. Right. It's, it's, it's not because you're wasting opportunities at that point. And it's the same thing with the recruiting.

Speaker 3 (24:14):

You're wasting opportunities. If every single person that you bring into the company doesn't earn it. Um, they feel like, you know, they're just, they were begged to come onto the job. Um, and they have to be babysit for every single thing. And that's where, like I said, at the beginning, attention is one of the biggest things that is difficult for a company when it comes to recruiting because, um, they're spending time and attention on these reps that realistically aren't going to perform because it wasn't right from the start. Right. So they begged them to get into the, into the company. They told them that they're going to do good. And so because of that, the person who brought them in feels an obligation to make them good. Right. And I'm sure you've dealt with it and everyone's dealt with it, but how hard it is, how hard is it to take a rep that just absolutely has the worst mentality just is not good.

Speaker 3 (25:06):

And probably won't last a few days. What type of attention do you have to have to spend and put into this person a lot? Like you have to go with them on every single door. Um, you have to, like on the third day, go pick them up because they're like, ah, I don't know if I want to come back in, I'll come get you. Right. Everyone's dealt with it. And so if you focus your attention on, on the right part of the timeline, when it comes to recruiting, you'll see a huge change in your effort. Because if your attention is spent, um, this qualifying people from working for your company, because they're not the right fit. And then you'll see at this point when it's like time for them to, to work and time for them to be taught your attention and can, can be spent in the training. And then when they go out, there'll be much better prepared mentally. And just like, um, when it comes to the product knowledge as well that you won't have to dedicate as much time per recruit. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:01):

Okay. I love that. It's almost like another big mistake is just, you know, in general and sales people spending time with unqualified prospects, like how many new reps are spending two hours in a grandma Jean's house. He's 90 years old.

Speaker 3 (26:14):

Cause they're like, oh my gosh

Speaker 2 (26:17):

Know though. Yeah. It's like very similar in recruiting. How many recruiters are spending time with recruits? That's, you know, don't probably don't want to be there. Aren't good recruits. And I love that analogy, comparing it to other jobs that tacos the firefighters. Cause fee thing, that way it's yeah. It's like a whole different perspective that kind of really,

Speaker 3 (26:35):

And flip your mentality on it because, um, and like I said before, I understand these companies, the reason they want recruits is because they need to make money. Yeah. Right. But, but the cool thing is, um, with our industries, especially like solar, for example, um, if you don't have enough recruits or money, there's an easy way to fix that. You go knock doors and sell some. Yeah. Right. And so, and so, and a big reason why people start these companies. Cause, cause they want to start getting away from that, but they need to understand like, um, if you don't have enough time or money, like recruits won't solve that problem. I like get the money then the recruits, because then you can focus your attention on what action, what action needs to be done.

Speaker 2 (27:16):

Yeah. So money tips right there, make sure you were spending the time with qualified prospects. Make sure you're not letting your energy be sucked away by these people. That's you, aren't going to be good fits. And so speaking of not good fits, I know you guys bring in these groups all the time. How often are you bringing these ed? These recruiting groups every two weeks. Okay. So two weeks they're getting big groups or recruits in. Um, and it's really interesting where you guys are doing, just having almost like a bootcamp style, getting them in depth training. And then, um, last night I know they're doing like a scavenger hunt and uh, going out on the doors today. So, um, we'll hear maybe more about that in a second, but do you have any stories of, uh, I dunno, like bad recruits or, or like, um, interesting people give us something funny or crazy.

Speaker 3 (28:05):

The thing is guys, uh, um, no matter what you do, cause there's a vetting process. We have a pretty strict vetting process. I mean our first training class, we had 800 applicants and we brought 15 people on. Okay. So we, we, we cut it down to quite a lot because, um, like I said, if you focus your time on the right people, it goes well. Right. And you don't have to worry about like, yeah, we could have had probably 60 probably had 60 people from the applicant pool comp. Right. But we did the, we did an interview process. We did it the way that like, you know, gets rid of the people that you don't want to spend time on. Um, and, but then there are still people that will slip through the cracks. Right. And so there, there was, you know, there was someone that, you know, sounded great on the phone, did great for the training class.

Speaker 3 (28:50):

But when he showed up, we were just like, oh man, like this, this, this probably won't be a good fit. I mean, he, he showed up with a button up shirt, but it was on buttoned all the way up. His belly button didn't have any sleeves on. And he, I don't know if he was just like an actor or something, but he w he like tried to be the most dramatic person ever. Right. And, um, so we were like, okay, well, we'll, we'll see if it, if it works out, if we can give him a shot, um, but come the second day, we had to find him because we we're just like, you're not the right fit for the company. You're just, this is not the job for you. So, uh, and that's the other thing, guys, don't, don't be afraid, um, to, to fire or get rid of people because they will do more damage in your, in your, in your company.

Speaker 3 (29:37):

Um, if you let them stay, rather than if you just fire them right there. Because if you let someone that's not a good fit for the company, not going to fit for the culture, what that does for every other reps, uh, mindset is they're like, oh, well, they, they preach about their culture. They preach about their core values, but this guy doesn't have it. So realistically, what that means is they just want as many people as possible. They want us to make money for the company. Right. So getting rid of those people, um, will benefit you as a company, way more than trying to turn them into a good rep and make them a good fit for the car.

Speaker 2 (30:11):

Was this guy out knocking doors and is a button up.

Speaker 3 (30:16):

We gave him a polo to use, but he, he wasn't knocking doors. He was, he would, I had to shadow him. Right. Because, um, uh, we were told that like, you know, the police, they were trying to call the police on that for some reason, or that no, the worst part was, I think he might have been saying he was from NV energy. So like saying he was from the energy company and we're like, that's not what we teach at all. And so I had to shadow him and I think all he would do is he's not, he'd knock on the door, that'd be standing behind him. And the person would answer. He's like, Hey, my technicians right here. And he'll just walk off, just leave you. I'm just standing there like, hi, I'm the technician. Like, how are you? Like, what's your name? I guess I need to check your meter

Speaker 2 (31:00):

Quality appointment right there. I know.

Speaker 3 (31:02):

Right. That's see. That's for you guys that buy leads. Those are your appointments, by the way, those are the ones they're just like, yeah, there are people who walk up to the door and say, Hey, there's an appointment coming.

Speaker 2 (31:13):

That's funny. That's awesome. Well, Josh, I know you're about to have some doors and everything here, so we don't want to take too much more of your time. But last thing I kind of wanted to ask you about is you guys are obviously doing this boot camp style. Like we talked about bringing in hordes or recruits and, um, just getting them trained up. So why did you guys decide to do it like this, bring them all in for a weekend and kind of go out and what's been that experience, like doing it like that versus just like, I don't know, maybe the more traditional things bring in people one by one. What what'd you guys do?

Speaker 3 (31:44):

The biggest reason why we did that, Taylor is because, um, one of our, our, our mission statement and our biggest goal that we have as a company is, you know, Jerry brought us all together, um, because he wants us to be an opportunity company. Uh, our, our mission statement is we want to create the most millionaires and any other company in the world, um, through the solar industry. Right. And so we decided as a company, we're like, yeah, we could get a traditional office and we could do training classes there. Um, but it does not have the same impact impact on mentality and mindset for these reps. Um, I can tell you right now, you know, um, pulling in, in a Mercedes, you know, a Mercedes sprinter van, that's, uh, an executive van bringing them in and they see this huge mansion and they walk in and they just see just they see success.

Speaker 3 (32:29):

Right. Um, it puts them in the mindset to actually understand what we're trying to accomplish with them. Um, I mean, we had, uh, like for our training class yesterday, I talked with a few people and I like, I wanted to get your opinion. I asked him, I was like being here. Does it help you open your mind a little bit more to the possibility of you becoming a millionaire? Um, because, uh, what we, what we have is we tell these, we tell these reps, we tell these guys that they are future millionaires. We make them say it. We make them think it, we make them write it down. Um, and every single one I talked to, they're like, yeah, this, this opens my mind so much. And most of them are Vegas locals. They're like, I've never even been to this side of the, of Vegas.

Speaker 3 (33:07):

I've never even been to this side of the state where it's like the houses and like the mansions in the cars. Um, and so the biggest reason why we chose to do it this way, rather than the traditional get an office and all that, because, um, we really want these guys to open their mentality, to open their understanding, having an open mind to what we want them to accomplish. Um, and it's worked amazing so far. I mean, every single person we have on the team, um, it's really awesome, but like we have them send videos and they talk to people and they do their own recruiting. And that's, uh, that's another thing that I'm really big on is internal recruiting. Right. Um, but every single one of them are sold on the idea that they are future millionaires, they're surrounded by millionaires, um, and that they will get to that point. Nice. And it's all because of, you know, how we, how we present it, how we explain it and, and, um, you know, just, just what we have available for them within the company. And so that's why we decided to do it this way. So

Speaker 2 (34:08):

That's a really cool cause. Yeah. It seems like it's almost more like you're giving them the personal development, the mindset. So we're just happens to be kind of the vehicle do that. And, and often, yeah, there's some guys that, um, I mean, you're bringing in guys that it's really cool. Like you said, having experienced this type of thing, but I think for them to see that versus just going into a traditional office office and traditional thing, I think that's really cool what it does to someone's mindset to see that even for me, I came in and like, Jerry has his bodyguard and I'd never been in a van like that. Like, dang, these guys are high rollers, so really cool experience eating. Um, and so Josh, last thing, um, I know we were talking a little bit before we started recording just about the social media recruiting. Lots of guys are trying to get into that, and I know you, that's another big mistake you see, is people doing that wrong? So just for like maybe ourselves or ups or people that are trying to get more recruits that maybe aren't necessarily going to go hire like a recruiting agency or do this high level stuff that we've been talking about, what advice can you give to just people in general that want to maybe use more social media for recruiting and just start bringing in more of their personal recruits and building their own teams?

Speaker 3 (35:15):

Yeah. Well, the first word of advice is, um, use it, you know, that's, that's the biggest one is, you know, social media is the next big push when it comes to, um, success within recruiting because it's where everyone is. Right. Like, you know, it's funny, but you know, people scoffed at sick talk, but now everyone's on it. Right. It's one of the biggest platforms. And so, um, one of the biggest I see when it comes to social media recruiting, and there's so much I could go into, but I'll just talk a little bit about, uh, your own following, right? So if you are a, if you are a rep, if you are an owner, if you are whatever, right, you should be using your social media as a platform to kind of, um, to highlight your success right. To post like your, your accomplishments, your achievements, um, and, and you can post failures too.

Speaker 3 (36:01):

I like to tell people be real, right? Like, I mean, I post when I have a bad day, sometimes I post when, when things might not be going the right way. Um, but obviously you always post like how you solved that problem, but use it as a way to kind of highlight your success, highlight like, you know, the life you're living and what you're doing. Um, and that right there is what's going to cause you know, people that start, uh, you know, looking at it differently in the end, they'll see what you're doing and they'll, and they'll, you know, go through your stories. Um, and it gets the, it gets the seed planted. Right. Um, and I think what a lot of guys, uh, run into and it's the same problem it's patients, right? Um, they're like, oh my gosh, I have 5,000 people on my Instagram.

Speaker 3 (36:39):

Why is everyone not working for me right now? Yeah. You know? And so the biggest tip of advice I have when it comes to, you know, like for Instagram, for example, it's, it's touch points, right? So touch points means like the conversation or the messages that you're sending to these people. Um, so the best market that you have, the warm market for recruiting on your social media are people that will swipe up and like send emojis, right. To your stories, like the hundred or the handclap. Right. Um, those people, when they see those successes, when they see those stories, they'll swipe up and say something or they'll interact. Right. And a lot of the times guys will, uh, as soon as they see that, they'll send a message. Hey man, you want to be successful. You want to make a lot of money. I saw that you, you know, your profile looks amazing.

Speaker 3 (37:22):

You'll be really great at this. Um, let's talk, oh my gosh, you can't tell me how you, I can't tell you how many messages I've gotten like that on my Instagram in the last five years. And they turn off the recruiting director. I'm like, they turned me off so quick. I'm just like, oh, that looks horrible. Right. So, so my recommendation is when you have a warm market, right. When you have these people respond to your, to your messages, um, just small touch points. Like the first thing can be like, Hey, thanks for it. Like, um, thanks for the emoji. Like, or just like a thumbs up back, or like, what you can do is if you follow them, send them emojis on their stories. Like just get them starting to realize that you know who they are, you know of them. Um, and that like, you see them as well.

Speaker 3 (38:10):

Right. So those little touch points. And then like, eventually you'll see, they'll start sending like little messages with the, with the messages, with the stories too, right? Like if you, if you post a story of you in Mexico or in the car, they'd be like, oh, that looks so cool. Right. And so letting them initiate it and then like letting that conversation kind of flow because social media is different than face-to-face right. It happens over a period of time and you have to let it happen naturally and organically. Um, and so like, those touch points are going to start to get bigger. Right. They'll start like saying, oh, that looks dope. And then you can be like, yeah, it was super fun. You know, we ha we invited all the people who won this or the people who earned this trip out to Mexico and, and, um, it was a great trip.

Speaker 3 (38:52):

Right. And so they'd be like, oh, okay, cool. That's awesome. Um, and then they might ask a question on the next one then. Right. They'd be like, what are you guys doing? So, so touch points when it comes to social media are probably one of your best ways to not look like a desperate recruiter, right. To not look like, you know, the multilevel marketing guy, like, um, or I love those, those memes you see of, of like the Hey boss girl, like boss, babe, what you do, right. Yeah. When it comes to makeup with me. Exactly. Um, so those touch points, I, I would recommend to everyone, um, to start doing that, paying more attention to the people on your social media. Um, and I honestly, you know, I, I think it kind of hit home for me the most when, when I started like following successful people within the industry, because when I first got into like Kirby, all I knew was Kirby.

Speaker 3 (39:43):

Yeah. Right. But then I started branching out. I started following people in pest control in solar and roofing. Um, now I'd followed these really successful guys with really busy lives and all these successful people. Um, it would be cool because I did the same exact thing back in the day I would send the emoji. I would send a little message. Um, and that's where I started to learn how it worked because they would do what I just mentioned is the touch points. They wouldn't try to sell the position like instantly. Right. They would just gradually like let the conversation, um, grow. Um, and then they'd be like, Hey, I've got this event I'm doing, or I've got a ticket to this game gonna come with me. And then that's, that's, that is the best way to do it. When it comes to, you know, hot hiring these people through your social media following, um, that initially might not, you know, be looking for a job or it might not be looking in that type of industry, but then they'd see the success.

Speaker 3 (40:37):

I mean, I got a message yesterday from someone, um, that I I've known for years and years and years, I haven't talked to him in like six years, but he sent me a message yesterday. He's like, Hey, I see all the, like the success that you're having. I see the things that you're building up. I've been following you for like five years now. And I've seen kind of the progression, like, what tips do you have? Like, what are you doing? Like, how did you build up the success for yourself? And so sometimes it's just like, they come out of nowhere and it's just based off of you being consistent with your social media and showing people what's going on.

Speaker 2 (41:06):

Yeah. Like that guy is probably been seeing it for years. Right. And then finally he reached out to you and that's, what's cool is cause like, yeah, I've gotten a couple of recruits even just the last few months just from like, yeah. Um, I mean, I wasn't that consistent on social media, but we're the last six months, whatever I've been trying to post a little bit more. And, uh, these people, I mean, obviously at first it's not like they're coming right into my lap, but just me posting. One of them had like an issue with his other company. They they're off. It's basically like, you know, ran out of reps and it was just closing down. So because I was the one posting and, um, we kind of talked at events, things like that. I was the one that he reached out to because I built that relationship.

Speaker 2 (41:48):

He saw us post events and things like that. So that's like, you're talking about that's, what's cool is you don't have to beg these guys. They're just organic recruits. They're seeing your posts and they're coming to you. It's almost like a, I don't know, referral and Excel. Right. Those are the easiest ones to get are the ones that you're just doing, what you're supposed to do right place, right time, just you showing up, being consistent. Um, having that relationship even, it's just the emoji really relationship clap. And when they get a sell things like that, guys remember that and they'll go, oh, Josh is cool. I'm going to hit him up. See what's going on. So yeah, it's been, even if you got quite a few recruits, just coming organically through that too.

Speaker 3 (42:21):

Yeah. And the coolest thing about that, um, that I was going to say is obviously that's what I do, right. Um, that's what all the executives do guess what guess what we do as well. We teach and train all of our reps to do it smart because, uh, you know, we might have a following combined of like, you know, 50, 60,000 people as the executives, but then you start adding recruits. Um, and it's just, it just multiplies, like if you get sent people in there that have a thousand followers, that's instantly 10,000 more people that can be accessed. Right. So one of the biggest things we hit on as a company is social media. We have a professional photographer and videographer that when, once they joined the company and we start creating content for them, we start teaching them how to post on their stories.

Speaker 3 (43:04):

We tell them as soon as they get in the house, they're like, yeah, man, take a story. Let them know, like show the people that, you know, follow you, where are you at? What you're doing. Um, create a post, talking about how you are a future millionaire and how you're going to accomplish that. And so we get them started from day one on how to utilize their social media to start kind of explaining the opportunity that they have. And so organic recruiting is my absolute favorite way to do it because it costs you zero money. And they're always the best recruits because they're friends of people who are bought into your culture, who are bought into your company and your dream. Right. Um, and that person convinces them of that. You have to do zero work for that. It is my absolute favorite thing to do.

Speaker 3 (43:45):

And so we, one thing we hit on big is just social media. So all of our ribs, they all follow our internal social media. They all follow our, um, like our company, social media, and every time that they're posting, you know, we're giving them this content of them, really cool pictures, you know, in Vegas, in front of the mansion, a really professional looking things to put on their story. We're teaching them to do that. And I think just with this training class, I've had four people tell me they already have someone that wants to come work for me already. And that's just from them posting the stories from the pictures that they're putting, talking about what they're doing.

Speaker 2 (44:18):

Yeah. Right. That's huge. And now I love that you guys have, I'm seeing that more and more are these successful companies like simple solar? Uh, I mean, all these guys, they have, you know, daddy, they'd get a video guy, content guys, and they're given access to the reps and having them share all the content and tag people in it. So I think, yeah, I think that's kind of the future. That's what these successful companies are doing and no doubt it's working for you guys. So, uh, Josh, no, it's been awesome here. And um, and just seeing, I've been here over the weekend with you guys, just seeing the experience and yeah, it's been a good time. And, uh, just speaking, hanging out with you guys, seeing the process, so anyone that's listening, um, I would suggest you guys, you know, consider doing more content with social media, um, have your reps involved in that process.

Speaker 2 (45:07):

And then, um, just keep in mind, all the things Josh was talking about, make sure you have a process for these, um, you know, indeed recruits all these, uh, you know, recruits you pay for to make sure you have a process dialed in, because if you don't, it's just like pouring water through a leaky bucket, right. You're just losing, you know, half the reps that come in when you could be keeping them in, retaining them saving. That's one of the most important things. So Josh, we appreciate you coming on the show. I know you're going to get out and hit some doors here and everything. Um, so before we let you go, where can people connect with you and hear more about what you're doing and do you want to drop your social media and all that

Speaker 3 (45:41):

For sure. Yeah. I, my Instagram is just my first and last name, Josh Peters, 1996. Um, and my Facebook is just my first and last name. Um, and you can find me on those, on those socials. Uh, and then just to kind of touch on what you said, if you have questions or need advice, I get free advice. Like I don't charge people for advice. So if you ever have any questions, reach out to me on there and I absolutely respond. And, um, because most of the time when I talked to people about recruiting, they just have a thousand questions, you know? Um, so if, if anyone has questions or want to reach out to me and talk and set up a time to call and, and figure out what a better process might look like, I absolutely can do that.

Speaker 2 (46:17):

I love that. Appreciate that and yet very giving a guy here. So definitely hit him up. Let Josh know you appreciated him coming on the podcast today. And then if you have any recruits that liked to, you know, knock with their shirts on button or whatever, then shoot them. Josh is the way I do it because he loves the recruits like that. Get them chained up, be their technician. So, uh, with that being said, thanks again for coming on the show, Josh and we will talk soon. Yes, sir. Thanks.

Speaker 2 (46:43):

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Speaker 1 (00:03):

Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. I teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.

Speaker 2 (00:42):

Two big mistakes I made last week and some golden rules that were broken, that in much more, we're going to be talking about in jamming today on the Solarpreneur podcast. What's up, what's going on? My name is Taylor Armstrong. I'm here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals. And as always, hopefully have a much better time in the solar industry. Hope you're doing well. We're coming up on Thanksgiving, the holiday season, depending on when you're listening to this and always a great time to get people in a better mood. Um, if you can get them some solar panels on their roof, what a great gift, what a great thing to be thankful for and what a great Christmas present, right? So hopefully it gives you some extra motivation to push hard something we've been talking about in, um, some of these Knockstar trainings and other mastermind groups I'm in right now is a lot of people use holidays to relax, to not push as hard, but you being a Solarpreneur, you should push even harder.

Speaker 2 (01:47):

If you know, you're going to be taken off two weeks for Christmas or 10 days, whatever, push as hard as you can go do a blitz, get out there and then you can rest easy knowing you crushed it, leading up to the holidays, Thanksgiving and all that. So we're going to jump into the topic, sorry to get sidetracked on the holidays, get thinking about Santa Claus and all that and, um, birth of Jesus and just gets me grateful. But let's jump into the podcast. Before we go into the topic today, just wanted to give a reminder. We have a solar training platform called society. You can go download the app and I'm getting messages on social media about, um, you know, other people's training platforms about Knockstar we'll. We might do some podcasts on just, you know, course reviews. I know there's some great content out there.

Speaker 2 (02:41):

Some great courses that people have already put together for solar training and it's all good stuff. So whenever people ask me, Hey, what should I buy the D2DU the Knockstar, the Solar University, whatever. There's a lot of different ones. And you can ask me about those, but before you me to go download our soul society app, cause we have snippets of their trainings. You can go sample the different trainings because we are setting up partnerships with the people that already have courses out there. And also if you want to be, you know, if you want to be a member of society, if you want to get the exclusive content on there, we're doing it at a super reasonable price and you get discounts to everyone else's courses and a lot of cool tools and things like that on there. So anyways just is in my head because I've been getting a few messages about it.

Speaker 2 (03:35):

So if you want additional training first, go check out our society platform. And um, I say, go buy everyone's our training program, right? We're all doing different things. We're all adding unique value in the industry. And if you're listening to this, you should be trained on the things you've learned. Take what you learned from the podcast. Go teach it to other people. Go ask to give trainings at your correlations. Even just go on social media. I dunno, do a Facebook live, whatever. Go on Instagram. Talk about what you've learned. Tag me would love that. And guess what? If you do that, it's going to solidify the content more in your head. So anyways, go download society. Let's jump into the topic. So today we're going to be talking about two mistakes I recently made and two golden rules of selling that I broke. And I'm going to preface this by inviting you.

Speaker 2 (04:33):

If you haven't already read closer's survival guide by grant Cardone. I've talked about it many times in the podcast. And I know I've probably mentioned these same golden rules before, but I was reminded of how important there, because I broke them reasonably and it costs me time. It cost me money. It costs me, uh, deals. So I don't want the same thing to happen to you. You will learn from my mistakes. And that's what I'm trying to do is help you learn from my mistakes. You don't have to go out and make the same ones. So the first ones, and I have stories that happen with these. So you're going to hear the stories first, and then I'm going to read the little section, um, these golden rules they can come from, obviously grant Cardone's closer survival guide. So go read that. Um, especially the first section in there.

Speaker 2 (05:25):

I think there's a ton of great things that can be applied. So anyways, the first rule that I broke, here's what happened. I was in a deal on Saturday. This was two days ago at the time that I'm recording this podcast and this, uh, you know, this appointment I had set up, it seemed a really solid, um, they let me in their house, we're chatting at their dinner table as was setting up the appointment. Um, next day appointment told me to come back. It's 2:00 PM. So I went back, I'm actually in the morning I was doing some knocking in the area. I saw the guy in the garage and I said, Hey, Manny, I'm looking forward to going over the solar design numbers here at two. And he confirmed in the garage, said, yeah, we're looking forward to it. We'll see you soon. Always a great sign.

Speaker 2 (06:15):

If you can catch them out, you know, weed in their yard or in the garage, always a good idea to double confirm it or to, you know, say what's up as you're walking by. So I had a good feeling about it, but what happened was I went back, went through the presentation, went okay. Um, his wife came out and she wasn't quite as excited as she was, as I was setting up the appointment. That's the other reason why I felt like it was more solid. Cause I talked to both decision makers, both husband and wife. They said they're going to be there. And they were, I'm like, okay, great. We're talking in his garage about his drones. He races, drones. He has like 50 drones hung up all over his garage. So we're talking about that. We're just, uh, you know, shooting the breeze, built a good rapport, good relationship.

Speaker 2 (07:05):

But as we start going through everything, the mistake I made was this. We were sitting in their garage the whole time and guess what? There was only one chair in their garage. So the one big rule that I violated here, I was not sitting down with them. And that was not in their house. If you're in a garage, it's going to be a lot harder to lock people down. We go through it and they're still interested. But at the end they say to her, yeah, we need to, you know, go over this. We might be moving next year. We need to really think about something we want to do. We don't want to like some applications. We don't want to do anything. We'll get back to you on Monday. Um, try it a few times, three, four times to, you know, loop around and go back into it, get them to Elise, uh, get the application in and all that, but nothing. So I'm like, okay, couldn't lock it down. But again, the big mistake I made and this is the rule, I did not have him sit down and I'm just going to read what grant Cardone says about this. If you have his book, it is on page 74. He goes through 20 rules of closing. And matter of fact,

Speaker 3 (08:28):

Rule number one always be seated when negotiating and closing. So here's what he says. He says, this is a policy that is frequently violated and miss. Even by seasoned professionals, you will hardly ever close someone. If you're standing up the same goes, present the product service or idea on your feet, but always negotiate the terms from your seat. In addition to making sure you're seated when attempting agreement closure, you want to have the prospect seated as well. Even if your a prospect stands up, remain seated, suggesting that you are not done, you are not reacting and that you are not calm, that you are confident of agreement going from a seating position to standing up, suggest that something has changed and allows your prospect to exit in, in the negotiations. So there you have it, uncle G himself, he's saying that you always need to be seated. You always need to negotiate and close, seated and preferably at their kitchen table. That's a second

Speaker 2 (09:32):

Key to this is if at all possible get them on the kitchen table rather than just sitting at a couch or sitting, I don't know, on the outside patio. And that's that works too, but ideally get on their kitchen table. Cause who do we have at our kitchen table? We have guests. We have family members. We have the people that are closest to us. Who do we have on the couch? In the front room. We have people that are visiting that are stopping by to say hello. But the people that we grow, the closest to that we trust the most we're having at the dinner table. Right? So that's step two of this. If at all possible, get them sitting down at the dinner table and make sure you get everyone sitting. And I did make an attempt at, so I'm not going to say I forgot this completely as it definitely went through my mind, I need to get these people sitting down.

Speaker 2 (10:30):

But my issue was I only made one attempt and I didn't play so much importance on it. They said, Hey, we're, uh, w we'll just meet in the garage. And I said, okay, well, um, do you have, I kind of started, I hesitated. And I said, well, do you have some chairs we can sit at? And they brought out one and they, and they said, oh, you can sit here. Just put your stuff here. And that was it. I didn't fight him on it. I didn't make an attempt to, you know, get inside the house again. And that was my big mistake, cost me money. And who knows what? I've, what I've closed. The deal buys at the kitchen table. Maybe not, but what I've had, what I have had a much better shot at it, much better chance, a hundred percent. So make sure whatever you do.

Speaker 2 (11:15):

You're getting them to sit down. You're getting on those buttons in a seat and it's going to build that much more trust. It's going to make sure you can hang in the pocket more. Cause guess what happened? As things started getting tough, they were already on their feet. As they were hesitant to submit an application, the wife, she just starts walking towards the door, walking in. They can escape. If they're sitting down, you can keep them there and you can go through everything you need to. So that's the first big mistake I made. Make sure you get people seated at all times. And here's the second one. This one is, um, not just a single mistake I made, but I've made it multiple times over a lots of deals. And I see this, especially with people that are new to closing, I see this one made all the time in people that are just starting out closing.

Speaker 2 (12:09):

So here's this mistake. Um, two deals in particular. The first one I had closed, this was about, um, three months ago, actually. And we had some issues with some documents. I had to go back a few times and the deal just kind of turned out to be, to be a mess. He ended up canceling in the second instance, um, I went to this house. I closed them, got them all signed up. They were super excited about it. And what happened was I closed this through SUNNOVA, which those who are familiar with SUNNOVA or have used them as a lender. You know that if you have a home, that's in a trust and write this down, if you are using SUNNOVA, because I didn't know this for a long time, so no, it can be a pain, but what happened was the home was in a trust.

Speaker 2 (13:08):

And if you have closed with Sonoma, you know that if the home is in a trust, you have to get the homeowner to sign the contract, but then they also have to sign the contract as a trust. So basically the trust is the co-signer on the loan and both sets of documents have to be submitted one through the homeowner and then one through the trust. So I actually knew this in the deal, but my mistake was, I was actually, uh, I think we're headed to, I dunno, um, like to go eat somewhere, or I told my wife, I was going to be back at a certain time and I was running late. So what I did is I thought, okay, well, um, I don't see the second set of documents it in his email. We'd finished that in the contract. And I thought to myself, well, this could happen, but I'm just gonna worry about a later, I'm gonna get out.

Speaker 2 (14:02):

I'm hungry and I want to go eat dinner. We have stuff planned, how I'm gonna get out of there. So the mistake I made it for these two separate deals is I put off getting documents in that were needed. And especially when I knew that there needed, I put it off and I went and did my own thing, came back to bite me because what happened on the second deal is homeowner called me, his name is Francisco. Um, we, he was within a week of install, already had a date and everything. And we get an email from SUNNOVA saying they canceled his account. And that's, what's super annoying about Sonoma do, if you've used SUNNOVA, they're going to just start canceling your accounts. In my experience, they don't really send you like notices or reminders. They just like straight up, cancel your account. You have no idea why, and you have to call in and find out all this stuff.

Speaker 2 (14:59):

And it's people with, uh, you know, super broken English talking on the support lines. So if anyone from Sonoma is listening to this, give me a call. Let's get some stuff figured out because there's a lot of room for improvement on their end. But anyways, they cancel this account. And what happens is these are both older Mexican guys, and this is something to be aware of to older people or older people don't speak great English. They tend to not be great with technology. They tend to get sort of buyer's fatigue. The more things you need to have them complete, especially digital documents and stuff like that. And my experience, they start to go bananas over this stuff. So if they have to do multiple digital documents and it turns out to be a lot of effort for them, they'll just straight up cancel. It could be saving them a million bucks.

Speaker 2 (15:52):

But if they have to like put forth a bunch of effort and open their computer, figure out emails, they're going to cancel it. So what happened with this guy? He didn't cancel it, but he just, um, put it off, right? He was still super excited to get solar, but he put it off, put it off, put it off. I was trying to contact them. Couldn't get ahold of them. You know, three weeks go by of me contacting them, saying he was going to do it, but he didn't do it. And guess what happens at this point? It's already been, you know, almost two months, time has gone by because he hasn't been responding and, uh, permit took a little bit longer. Two months passed by. He opens up this document again and he forgot all the reasons that he went. So he forgot all the reasons that he was sold on solar in the first place.

Speaker 2 (16:43):

He forgot the benefits. He just opened the contract. He sees all these big numbers, staring them in the face. And since I wasn't there, guess what happens? He gets cold feet. He doesn't want to sign it. So he calls me up. He says, Hey, I don't know if I want to do this anymore. I explained to him, I'm like, Francisco, my home boy, you can't be canceling this word. We got the permit. We're going to be installing it here. And good news is silver lining. I'm meeting with him tomorrow. So I think we'll get Francisco back on board, but moral of the story is, and here's the second role. Whatever you can do today, don't put off until tomorrow. Okay. So grant Cardone, he calls this being reasonable. And if you have closer survival guide, it's on page 64, it's number six. It's one of the top 10 reasons closers Phil and the story grant kernel entails.

Speaker 2 (17:41):

Um, I'll read it straight from the book here. He says, my sister had a friend who wanted me wanted to buy my first book from, and she asked me if we would send the book out and wait for her, wait for the check. I said, sure, I can do that. Or I can call her, get the money, send the book out and close it. Now my sister said, grant, you can't need $30 at battle. It's so urgent has nothing to do with $30. It has more to do with creating the discipline, to originally attack finishing things and going on in the next thing, don't be reasonable on this point of urgency. At closing practice, finishing everything. You start as a discipline to start closing more deals. Now the urgent desire to close the deal, any deal, no matter how the amount is, what I live by one close deal becomes a second close deal, be urgent and don't be reasonable ever.

Speaker 2 (18:30):

Boom. So keep that in mind. And I think this is a huge lesson. If you leave loose ends, if you leave, leave things untidy, if you don't complete documents like is that I see this over and over from guys that just start closing deals, they'll get, um, you know, maybe they'll get most of the documents signed, but here in California, you need a utility bill to, um, be able to get it net metered. You need all their account information. Um, or they'll, you know, maybe forget to sign out of, you know, net-metering document or they'll just forget documents in you. What it's doing. It's putting, hold holds on your accounts. But number two, it's creating loose ends that are potentially gonna lead to cancels. Like happened to me. I already had one deal recently canceled. I added up all the deals that have canceled because of loose ends because of buyer's fatigue, just customers getting frustrated of incompleted, things that I, cause I guarantee you, it would be dozens and dozens of deals over the almost six years I've been doing this.

Speaker 2 (19:39):

So don't be like me. Don't create yourself loose ends just when you're inside the home, do everything you can to get the documents needed. Okay. And I did this pretty well actually because, um, another example is you're closing through Sonoma or pretty much any lender that I know of. If a home isn't a trust, you're going to need copies of their trust documents. And you're going to need, you know, specific pictures. The page that shows that their trust was notarized things to keep in mind. So if you know, you need a certain, I don't know, picture of a documents, or maybe it's a picture of their roof, just do it now. Don't procrastinate what you can do today and wait till tomorrow. So those are the two lessons and those were the two things I was reminded of. Hey, so I want you to learn from my mistakes.

Speaker 2 (20:28):

Number one was always be seated when closing and negotiating preferably at their kitchen table, right then number two was, don't be reasonable, Hey, do everything possible to just get documents in, to get things completed, to not leave loose, get it all done. Make sure you don't procrastinate. When I was preaching the gospel, the word of a Lord, we would always say, don't procrastinate the day of your repentance. And we tell people, and you're doing all these terrible things now, but don't procrastinate the day of your repentance. Get things fixed now and turn away from them. So it's the same thing. When you're out there closing solar deals do not procrastinate. These things, just do them now. So send this to someone that needs to hear it. Maybe you've got some new closers in your office, send this tip to them and remember, um, shoot me a message on social media. Tag me, go out and teach these things to your team. Go out and do. I don't know, Facebook live Instagram, whatever tag me in it. Let me know that you got something from this. So we will see you on the next podcast.

Speaker 4 (21:38):

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Speaker 1 (00:03):

Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. I teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.

Speaker 2 (00:42):

What's up Solarpreneurs how are ya? My name is Taylor Armstrong, and we are here as usual to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and hopefully have a much better time in the solar industry today. We're going to be jamming on some recruiting content. And the reason I want to talk about this is because recently I was at a, um, a little recruiting retreat, not retreat, but, um, our, uh, onboarding bootcamp with, um, my friend, Jerry Fussell, who's on the show at two episodes ago. So hopefully you listen to his podcast, ton of takeaways, and the guy grew over a hundred million dollar company, a solar company, and he's starting a new one. So some incredible takeaways from that podcast. But anyways, I was there at their, uh, bootcamp and we're jamming recording podcasts hanging out there, but I got to be just kind of a fly on the wall and see how they run their boot camps there.

Speaker 2 (01:45):

So I want to talk about a few things I observed. And then also next episode, we're going to have on Josh Peters, who is there, um, think director of experiences as title, but basically their recruiting experts. He came on the show was generous, generous enough to talk about what they do, um, you know, in their recruiting kind of their model. And then also just share the experiences he's had. He was an over, you worked over at door to door experts in, uh, in their recruiting department, recruited hundreds and hundreds of reps. So a ton of experience got to pick his brain as well. So I just want to give a couple of observations I noticed. And if you are in charge of your recruiting at all, um, you can get some takeaways from this, but also send this, um, it's nice to have someone that is over recruiting.

Speaker 2 (02:40):

So if you don't have anyone that's helping you organize your recruiting structure, your recruiting. I think that is a big secret. So if you're a company owner, or if you, you know, if you're just our rep at a company, maybe send this to your, you know, management, have your guys get someone that can help with organizing the recruits that can help with setting up a structure and that can help just getting everything squared away. So people have the best experience coming in. Cause the last thing you want to happen is guys coming in, they say, Hey, what am I doing? What does day one look like? Am I going to shadow someone? Uh, who am I going to shadow in them? What I see it's the majority of companies being quite friendly is it, they don't, they don't have these things set up. They don't know who's a new rep is going to go shadow.

Speaker 2 (03:33):

They don't know the exact steps that a new rep needs to take to be onboarded. And a lot of companies let's be honest. They don't even have someone at running or helping with this. So maybe you're a one man show trying to recruit. Maybe you're a rep at a company, whatever it is, consider hiring someone that you can get someone to yourself to help with your personal recruits feel, have someone, or just figure out a way to implement these things. But trust me, it's going to be a lot easier. You have someone that is dedicated to doing these things. So I'm going to jump into three ways to onboard new solar recruits. And then you don't have to have someone doing this, but anyone that is recruiting new reps, you're going to want to figure out a way, especially the first one I'm going to share with you.

Speaker 2 (04:23):

This one is absolutely essential and make sure you're doing this one, but the other two, just some observations that I had while I was at the, uh, their bootcamp this past weekend in Vegas. So here's number one. Okay. Crucial, crucial, crucial. Make sure every new recruit is recording and passing off their door, presentation or pitch, whatever you want to call it. I call it presentation because I'm in the, uh, knock start mastermind right now. And at 2:00 AM recurrent, the Benz's over in Spain says if we say pitch, so trying to get that out of my vocabulary, but presentation, right? To make sure every new recruit, every potential recruit. Make sure anyone you're bringing on is passing off their presentation. Okay. Everyone should have a script they're following. Right? Make sure they're recording it, passing it off. And what was really cool this past weekend in Vegas, not only did these recruits, these new recruits have to pass off their presentation, but they have to do it live in front of everybody.

Speaker 2 (05:31):

And Jerry Fussell was up there, he was listening. And a couple people, if it wasn't, if it didn't make sense, if it was lacking energy, if it would just way off, he made him go back, practiced outside and come back in and they had to passed off in front of everyone. So I thought this was a great idea. So I think it should be two things. Get, have them record it, do video audio, some way to record it, have them pass it off word for word that way, but they can, you know, they could just be reading the script probably if they're recording it. Right. So that's a good way to do it. But I think if you want to take it to a next level and what I really liked about what Jerry and the boys were doing is if you make them pass off live, it adds that pressure element to it, right?

Speaker 2 (06:20):

It's almost like performing in practice versus performing in a game. And obviously that's not, you know, a hundred percent how it's going to be on the doors either, but adds another layer of pressure. Right? And it's going to make them think that not much more, you're going to see if they actually have the presentation memorized in kin, you know, overcome a few objections. They're not going to be impossible for them, but consider that. So make sure people aren't passed off. Number one in recorded setting and number two, have them do a live role play in front of everyone. Okay. And then the second key, the second, um, observation, second way you can onboard new people in your company consider doing some type of bootcamp. This has seen, um, this is something I'm seeing a lot of companies do recently, guys that are having all the success.

Speaker 2 (07:14):

Jerry Fussell, they have all our guys flying in. They do this bootcamp and he doesn't have them all work in local in Vegas, but he flies him in and then some of them are staying. Some are going back to their markets, but they have groups of recruits come in a bootcamp style. And I know another company doing this is a true power. I've seen doing bootcamp style like this. They've been growing a ton recently had Alex Hogan whole on the podcast who is crushing it, doing some amazing things, growing a company done. I know they do boot camps. So success leaves clues, right? You're seeing these successful companies do these things. Maybe it's something you should implement. Okay. You don't necessarily have to do these things to be successful, but, um, it's something you should think about. Okay. So in Vegas they had all these recruits come in.

Speaker 2 (08:06):

They had, uh, you know, food ready and they, what was really cool about it is we were all staying at a big mansion there. So I thought it was cool. Cause everyone was learning the same speed. Everyone's getting motivated at the same level. They're all kind of in the same boat. They didn't feel like they were just a brand new guy coming in and just getting thrown into the wolves. They're all doing it as a team. So what I thought was really cool is just the level of excitement as everyone was going in. Um, I've never been in like, I dunno, Marines or Navy or anything like that. But it's how I imagined like Navy bootcamp going, like you're going in with a group of guys you're forming a brotherhood and sisterhood, whatever. And they're all kind of in the same boat, you all feel like you're connected, right.

Speaker 2 (08:55):

And you all want to see each other succeed. That's the feeling I got from this. So if you're at a company, if you're recruiting guys consider doing something like that, maybe it's just a day bootcamp, bring him in, have him play sports. Um, I don't know, do competitions up, have some fun, have a box of Pop-Tarts. That's what I, uh, I ate so many pop tarts to this house cause they had tons of pop tarts laying around and I have little snacks and stuff. Right. Make it fun. And then do the presentation and recording and uh, you know, make sure they get all the training. They can that bootcamp. Hey, and then the third thing, third observation, a third way. Third thing to consider as you're bringing on new recruits, this was a cool idea. I'd never seen it done actually before I got to their bootcamp, but they did a scavenger hunt and what was cool about it.

Speaker 2 (09:51):

And I didn't really think about this is before these new reps even go up to knock a door, he was having them go out and do a scavenger hunt. So in a way it's knocking doors, but you're not actually like, you know, you're not going to pitch in your, when you're not doing a presentation. Yeah. So on biggest, this was a prime place to do it. Cause he just took these, uh, band full of recruits, dumped them off on the strip and plenty of, uh, interesting things going on the strip, plenty of interesting people that do a scavenger hunt with, but uh, Jerry, he had them do things like take a picture with a baby, go do a trust, fall on someone random, uh, go get a picture with a cop, go do a dance in public. I don't know, just crazy stuff. And then record a video of it.

Speaker 2 (10:40):

Then he gave cash prizes to the ones that were the most interesting, the ones that were the craziest. And he had like three prizes with it. So I don't know, three winners, um, most interesting, craziest and longest. I can't remember what the third one was, but I thought that was a great idea. Send your guys out, uh, break the ice with them. And after they got back doing the scavenger hunt, everyone just came back like laughing, having a good time. They were out there essentially doing the same thing that we do on the doors. Right. And that's getting in uncomfortable situations in front of new people. That's what door knocking is soft. After that, he said, guys, you just went out and did basically what the job is. You didn't in a group, right? You did some wacky stuff. And people probably weren't really like mean to you, but that's what door knocking is.

Speaker 2 (11:32):

You're just going out in front of new people, doing something uncomfortable, but only now you're getting paid the big bucks for it. So maybe you're onboarding and bringing on groups of new recruits, go try out something like this. Maybe go to a scavenger hunt, get them to do something, to break the ice, get past their fears and show them that it's that hard. Sometimes we overthink door knocking so much prospecting really. That's all it is. And if you can learn to get past that fear, that's what it takes to be successful in the solar industry. So those are three just observations I had gave. Remember the first one though, I think is going to be your crucial and make sure any new person, even if you're just a one man band, you're a lone Wolf. And if you bring on anyone, it just makes sure they memorize a presentation, give them a script.

Speaker 2 (12:24):

And then if you want to take it to the next level, use a tool like Ciro talked about this on the podcast, but it is an app where you can record your presentations. It'll automatically transcribe it. It'll um, categorize it in the sections and objections. And it's great for training your reps in we'll help you take these things to the next level. So if you want access to that, go download our solciety app. You can join Solciety. You're going to get access to all these things, but consider using that tool like cereal for your company where reps can record themselves. So hope those things helped, whether you're, uh, you know, just recruiting reps yourself, or maybe you are the recruiting person at your company. Try that out. Let me know if it helps. We're definitely going to be experimented with them here in San Diego. And then remember on the next episode we're going to have Josh Peterson himself is going to drop some fire on what it takes to really build an empire and bring in quality recruits. So don't miss out on the next one, share this with anyone who needs to up level their recruiting game. And we will see you on the next episode.

Speaker 3 (13:33):

Hey, Solarpreneurs quick question. What if you could surround yourself with the industry's top performing sales pros, marketers, and CEOs, and learn from their experience and wisdom in less than 20 minutes a day. For the last three years, I've been placed in the fortunate position to interview dozens of elite level solar professionals and learn exactly what they do behind closed doors to build their solar careers to an all-star level. That's why I want to make a truly special announcement about the new learning community, exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with top performers in the industry. And it's called the Solciety, this learning community with designed from the ground up to level the playing field to give solar pros access to proven members who want to give back to this community and help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry. Brightest minds four, are you ready for it? Less than $3 and 45 cents a day currently Solciety is open, launched, and ready to be enrolled. So go to Solciety.co To learn more and join the learning experience. Now this is exclusively for Solarpreneur listeners. So be sure to go to solciety.co and join. We'll see you on the inside.

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Speaker 1 (00:00:03):

Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. I teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.

Speaker 2 (00:00:41):

What's going on Solarpreneurs? We have another fantastic episode and we alive here in Las Vegas, Nevada here in, uh, a man of the hour, his mansion here, just hanging out. So we've got Mr. Jerry Fussell on the show, Jerry. Thanks for coming on with us today.

Speaker 3 (00:00:57):

Yeah. Thanks for driving up too. I appreciate it. It's how far from San Diego? It's like five hours. Five hours. Yeah. So thanks man, for coming up and hanging out. Glad to have you here at the house. And, uh, thanks for jumping on a podcast with me, man.

Speaker 2 (00:01:09):

Yeah. I love it. And know Jerry has been treating me to pop tarts and a sandwich. Isn't all, all the pizza I can handle here. So, Hey man,

Speaker 3 (00:01:18):

It's definitely a house that we house door knockers a lot because pizza and Pop-Tarts and sandwiches that's

Speaker 2 (00:01:26):

Okay. I had more, more food than the first door knocking the house I was in. That's true. All we had was eggs. Pretty much.

Speaker 3 (00:01:32):

We have a lot of those too. Okay.

Speaker 2 (00:01:33):

So they got it all, but I know it's been an awesome time here, so yeah, we'd been able to shoot some content and just kind of hang out here with Jerry and his guys. And, um, and the other big announcement we have before we kinda jump into things here is, um, Jerry, he, with his company Pi Syndicate, they are the first ever sponsors of the Solarpreneur podcasts. So, uh we're yeah, I'm happy about it. And we're going to let Jerry talk a little bit about that and then also is partnering on it, but, um, just like the summary of it, they are a, well, I guess you can say, well, it's just a summarized version. Do you want to tell our listeners what pipes in the syndicate is real quick?

Speaker 3 (00:02:12):

Yeah. Yeah. So Pi Syndicate is more of a supportive kind of mastermind. Um, we didn't start a truly make money. I already have some successful solar companies. My, one of my partners, Mikey, Lucas and Austin already have successful businesses. The reason why we started it is because we realized that about 85% of the guys in the industry that are top earners. So the guy's making, you know, over $150,000 a year, ended up leaving the industry and they have no money. They don't own any real estate. They don't have any money in savings. And about half of them owe money to the IRS. So when we talk about why we work, you know, it's a fun job going door to door, selling stuff. There's a ton of reasons why we all work, but when it comes down to it, if it didn't actually pay us any money, we would all stop.

Speaker 3 (00:02:57):

And that's eventually what happens is guys get burnt out because the money is not, not good enough to overcome the fact that they owe money on taxes or that they haven't really accumulated any wealth. And it's just, you know, just like you and I, we both probably hopped around to different houses. You know, door-knocking across the country, it's not indicative of saving money. It means that we go buy a BMW when we get enough money or we, we go out to fancy dinners or whatever, we're going to spend the money on. Or we buy our wife a $20,000 wedding ring when we propose because we're making money and guys, uh, leave the industry. Eventually majority of people end up not door knocking forever. Some of us love it. Some of us love it for five years and it's time to move on. And the sad thing for us is when they do move on, they put a lot of sweat and work into the job and they leave the industry with nothing to show for it.

Speaker 3 (00:03:47):

And these are guys making the top one, 2% of income earners in the entire country, and they're not having any money in savings and investments. And so that's, our mission is to change that we want to, within five years of working in the solar industry, have a plan for retirement in place where a guy can walk away from the door to door, industry, Copia, dentist, whatever he wants to do, and still have a substantial financial portfolio with investing and savings and emergency funds and all the things you need. Also a credit score, enough income to buy your first house. You know, all the things that companies don't really educate their, uh, door knockers on and their sales guys on is really the gap that we fill within the industry. We're kind of selective, but at the end of the day, we want to hang out with cool people that are knocking doors.

Speaker 3 (00:04:32):

It's just the coolest, single job to meet people that live differently, right. That wake up every day, excited to go to work. Cause if you don't, you quit within three months, probably. So if you're there a couple of years and you're a top earner, you're a guy want to hang out with and be around. And so that's what the mastermind is about is hanging out and being together. The reason I'm so excited to sponsor the podcast is because we feel like you're adding value. Whether it be a new guy that's 30 days in the industry, or maybe just thinking about going into solar, I've heard guys tell me that they've listened to your podcast to make a decision, even to accept a job in the solar industry, which is really cool. But then I would say your normal audience is one of two things, either kind of new to solar.

Speaker 3 (00:05:16):

And they're looking to see what podcasts are out there. And then the other one, which is strange is like the really seasoned guys like me that just want to hear good conversations with guys that are still in the field door knocking. Part of the reason why I respect you so much is because not only do you do a podcast, but you're still out door knocking virtually every day. So the content is fresh. It's, it's exactly what's going on to help you make money. And when you have guests on the conversations you have with them, um, definitely flow very well because you're doing the same job as them. So it's real life questions. It's real life answers about how to make more money, how to be more consistent in solar. And that's what we really preach is consistency and hard work. And that's the same thing.

Speaker 3 (00:05:56):

The podcast help brings people that listen to it. So we are super pumped to be a sponsor. And we look forward to being a sponsor for years to come and all the success in the world. We know you're going to hit 500 listeners, um, uh, 500,500,000 listeners. Uh, pretty soon as our goal has a sponsor. So we're going to be boosting some of the marketing and stuff to help you get there because literally everyone in solar right now, everyone in door to door needs to be listening to a mentor, tell them how to do their job better. And we feel like you're a great guy to do that for us.

Speaker 2 (00:06:26):

I love that. Appreciate that, Jerry. Absolutely man. And yeah, no, it goes without saying too, it's like you were saying so many guys just get out of this and reminds me of the NFL or something. We've all heard like guys in the NFL. I think I heard a stat that like, I don't know some crazy number of them are broke within a couple of years after they can't get out of the NFL. And I feel like door to door is very similar in that guy is making insane amounts of money knocking doors, but let's be honest. We're probably not all going to be doing this stower, you know, retirement age. No. So that's, what's so cool about what you're doing with Pi Syndicate is you're teaching guys how to really hang on to that money and turn that money into future investments in keep a hold of it. Because a lot of people that aren't, you know, super smart with it

Speaker 3 (00:07:08):

And, you know, to be clear, um, I wasn't super smart with it either. I started out door to door when I was 19 selling, um, cable, internet door to door and it only paid $30 a sale or something like that. But you could go out and sell 10 of them a day. It's still really good money. And then I became a regional manager and started to make even better money. And, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars was flowing in and I was making all this money. And um, then 26 years old came around. I had my first child and, uh, talking with my wife, I decided to go out and get a real job. I had been in door-to-door for about six years was killing it, making hundreds of thousands dollars a year. I had literally had about a million dollar net worth. And I thought I was doing awesome.

Speaker 3 (00:07:51):

Right? And then I decided, well, I really want to do something. So I got a job at a children's home. I was working on a college degree and within a year I was completely broke. Um, just completely devastatingly broke, you know, eating ramen noodles again, I'm like, dude, I have a professional college level job. And now me and my wife, uh, are back to eating beans and rice. And we're like, is this what real life is supposed to be? But this is what everyone tells you to go. Do you know what I mean? But what happened is I was living a lifestyle based on being a door to door guy and not everyone stays at door to door guy forever. And so that transition for me was extremely difficult when I realized that I, I thought I want to do something out of it. I thought I wanted a real job, um, that everyone talks about.

Speaker 3 (00:08:35):

And I'm so glad that I found my way back. And so the first time I engaged with a publisher to write a book, I thought, for sure, my book's title was going to be millionaire by 25 and broke by 26. Um, to really explain why to manage your money better, how to take care of your money. Cause it was a hard life lesson, but it's almost identical to the majority of guys in the door to door industry. And we're not talking about the guy that makes it 30 days and quits. We're talking about guys that are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, selling solar pest control roofing. Um, they're not going to last forever. They always think that they want to go do something else. And at, at that point, I don't know of a single another occupation without like being a brain surgeon that you can go and make 300 K a year.

Speaker 3 (00:09:20):

Like it's just not going to happen. Maybe over 30 years of building it up, even being on wall street, building up, being with a trading company or something like that, you can get there, you know, over years of dedication and working hard with your clients, maybe insurance, you know, there's some things that you can build up this business and make hundreds of thousands dollars, but there's nothing I can think of that you can leave door to door, knowing nothing about anything besides sales and make 300 K year. So there's always going to be this turmoil in your life where you decide to get out of sales. And for me it was, you know, I didn't want to work after five o'clock. I wanted to go home at five, o'clock have dinner with my family. I thought that was the American dream, you know, to have, uh, a normal job.

Speaker 3 (00:10:00):

I'd get off, go home, eat dinner, have a dog, walk the dog. And uh, I learned very quickly over about a year eating beans that, uh, the American dream wasn't so fun. And I decided to go back to work. But I, at the same time realized there's guys that are not going to decide to go back to work. There's going to be guys that are super happy to make 50 to a hundred thousand dollars a year, but their lifestyle is going to have to change. And just like the NFL players, it was hard for me to adapt my lifestyle to the lower income. So when my wife wanted to go out for anniversary, we still spent $250 on dinner. You know, we still bought, you know, $200 shoes instead of $50 shoes. Like all the things that we had trained ourselves to budget for were all incorrect.

Speaker 3 (00:10:43):

And we had never had to live on a budget being 21 years old and making 200 grand a year. You don't really have to budget. You just spend your money on whatever you want. And then you're like, oh man, I ran out of money. I need to go knock more doors. And you just can't keep the money coming in. Um, it's not a very smart way longterm to live. So my goal is to get with people that are 18, 19 25, really, you could be 35 and this is the first time you're in door to door. And you're like, this is a lot of money. Those are the guys that we want to help. And they're the same audience that you're trying to help too. So I think there's a lot of alignment there just helping guys get to that next level. So we're excited to help them for that.

Speaker 2 (00:11:19):

I love that. And yeah, we've had a couple of finance guys and things like that. Come on. But yeah, this is kind of the first, um, you're the first people I've seen really put together kind of mastermind style and help people at this level, which is awesome. So that's why,

Speaker 3 (00:11:34):

You know, yeah. And the whole thing, the whole thing about Pi Syndicate is it's sharing a lot of the resources for my company, but, you know, we made last year was 151 million. And so the revenue is very large, but then that means I spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on legal, on CPAs and advisors. You know, I spent $400,000 last year on mastermind groups. Um, you guys don't have the resource to do that. You're doing really good Taylor, you're killing it. You're in the top of the industry. You're still not going to go out and drop a hundred thousand dollar retainer on an attorney cause you don't need it. Right. It just doesn't make any sense. Your wife would be like, are we getting a divorce? Why do you need the a hundred thousand dollars retainer? Um, so it's just something that you don't think you need until you need it.

Speaker 3 (00:12:15):

Right? And so it's much better to have my legal team on standby to have our CPAs answer really hard questions to have my tax strategies that you normally only invest in. If you make, you know, $10 million in profit a year or more, uh, be available to you guys. And we do it in a mastermind setting so that we can share the knowledge, um, pretty openly, but with only guys that we want to hang out with, right? There's some guys in masterminds, I'm sure you've been to events and things. You're like, I'd rather not go hang out with a guy afterwards. So we definitely want to make it a group of guys where we stay together for a really long time. And then we want to see your businesses grow, you know? And, um, I would love to see your podcast. I was saying 500,000 listeners earlier.

Speaker 3 (00:12:56):

I'm not joking about that. I'd love to see your podcast expand to grow. You know, when people talk about the solar guys are listening on podcasts, that should be at my let you know, Jordan Bell Ford and Taylor Armstrong like that. I mean, that's really, when it comes to selling, how many viewers do you need to have listening? And because it's a lot of valuable things, I literally think anyone not listening to your podcast is probably selling the wrong thing. Like they're, they're probably selling cars. They're probably selling watches at a jewelry store, probably selling cell phones. And they're all listening to the wrong podcasts. They think that ed, my let's going to make him rich or grant Cardone and they're not, solar's going to make him rich and they need to be listening to the right box.

Speaker 2 (00:13:33):

Okay. There's no doubt about that. I mean, I always say we're the Navy seals of the sells industry. No one's selling like we are so we can learn how to sell solar. Then it's like, I mean, that's why we got so much money in this and yeah, yeah. I can translate to anything else to,

Speaker 3 (00:13:46):

For sure. Yeah. And we definitely have to get good. We got to hone our skills because, um, it's not about how much money even make per job. It's about how much money you make at the end of the year. And we know that this is the gold rush right now. Um, but the guys that made the most money during the gold rush, you know, you've heard the saying that they sold the shovels and they were the support guys. They built the businesses around it. And so yes, we need to be Navy seals. But the reason to hone our skills that much is because it's not going to pay this much forever five years down the road, let's say the average commission is, you know, a thousand dollars a job then instead of 2,500 or more now, um, that's going to be devastating for someone that hasn't hone their skills.

Speaker 3 (00:14:26):

If they're used to a 5%, 10% close rate and they think they're killing it because they live in California and they're making serious money per sale, uh, that's not going to be around forever. And so the reason why you have to hone your skills is yes, it's nice to make a million dollars a year. This year, selling solar by having a 40% close rate would be awesome. Right? But the real reason is because, um, in five years you're going to have to close at a 40% rate to make the same amount of money you're making today. So if you, this is the training time, view it as a quick start bonus viewed. As you know, the companies are encouraging you to get out there and sell. It's not going to be like this forever. The whole, the law of supply and demand means that the more people that want to sell solar, the less money the companies will pay to sell for us to sell solar.

Speaker 3 (00:15:08):

Now they're always going to have all commission jobs. So you're always going to be able to make serious money selling solar, you know, look at the other industries, the pest control, the roofing a thousand dollars per sale is still super competitive. And I really believe that's probably where we're going over the next five years. And so we've got to hone those skills because a lot of us that are selling four jobs a month, five jobs a month, a thousand dollars a sell is not going to cut it. We need to be selling, you know, sitting in three appointments a day and selling, you know, one of those a day. Then we start still making good money. Even with the money being turned down, we're still turning out 200,000 a year or more. Um, even when the industry changes, we also need to prep our skills because there's a few times where your skills mean more than just, um, what you can do with them.

Speaker 3 (00:15:53):

Navy seals end up retiring from the Navy seals. They go into contracting work and there's companies that will pay them millions of dollars to train other people how to do those skills. So when we talk about honing our skills, it's not just about what you can do with the skills, it's about how you can leverage that to help others. And when we, when we talk about even the big guys in sales grant, Cardone never made as much money as he's making until he made a decision to help other people make money. And, uh, same thing with a lot of the other trainers, right? They could go out. There's only so many hours during the day. So, um, they're only gonna make so much money guys like ed, my left that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, did it by having thousands of people underneath of him selling stuff.

Speaker 3 (00:16:35):

And that's really what we have to think is I have to get my skills to a level where I can leverage that to help others and in helping others solve the problem, they're going to give me a small amount of a percentage of the problem I solved. So if you help them make a thousand dollars, maybe they're willing to give you a hundred bucks, but while you can only run five appointments a day, guys that are on your teams, running stuff for you could be running hundreds of appointments a day. So it's just the economies to scale are where it's going to be at. So I encourage the guys, listen to this podcast and, um, and really being interested in solar to hone your skills, stop thinking about even your close rate today. Think about what it'll allow you to build in a year and two years and three years, because the economy is not always going to stay the same. So your skills have to up-level. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:17:20):

No, I agree. A hundred percent. And that's why I talk about on the podcast too. I, I encourage all the people listening. I'd go out and teach your teams to sell, develop that skill, to like present to others, to teach other people, you know, they've got all sorts of things. Like you can go to the Toastmasters, the speaking trainings, things like that. I think that's a huge skill to learn because yeah, we're not always going to be, like you said, making as much as we are in solar necessarily right now. So it's important for people that develop those other skills, which are money-making skills, presenting others, training other people, and then you have a whole different set of skill set you can do when maybe solar isn't as good. So, um, yeah, that's huge, Jerry. And, um, we're going to have your partner Austin in, he's going to also talk about pipes and they get to, so we'll leave, um, some, some stuff for him to talk about that too. Um, but yeah, with you, I wanted to hear, I know you talked about a little bit about your background, how you started in selling, but I wanted to hear, how did you transition, uh, specifically into solar sales? And can you talk about how you started your first company with that? And this is obviously super.

Speaker 3 (00:18:22):

Yeah, so it was a, it was a rough, um, transition. I had, um, gone home and I was selling ADT as a director level. So nice house, no debt. Um, I had everything we needed was making 200,000 a year, thought it was at the top of my game. Um, and then a solar company kept stealing my top reps. So I managed a three or four state region. Um, and they kept stealing reps and it was always my best ones, always the guys that were making 30 deals a month now, all of a sudden our solar reps. So I decided to go to this company because I'm pretty mad. So I'm just going to walk in, I'm a straight forward guy and say, Hey, stop selling my people. I train these people, you know, it's unfair. And the guy said, let me vent for a little while.

Speaker 3 (00:19:06):

Then he goes, well, don't you ask yourself why they are selling solar? Don't you want to know how much money you could make selling solar. And so I listened to the pitch and I was like, dang, it it's a good pitch. That's way more money than security. Right. And so I was like, okay, I need to take this seriously. So I go home and I talked to my wife and say, Hey, I think we have to make this transition. I had already noticed some of the writing on the wall. ADT had actually not brought on more customers than it canceled since the time that I've been there over the few years that I've been there. And so that was worrying, you know, if we couldn't outsell the cancels, that's a bad thing. And so how ADT dealt with it as they would acquire other companies and kind of fluff their numbers because they're publicly traded.

Speaker 3 (00:19:47):

So it never looked like they lost subscribers. Um, but it wasn't because of sales. We could not outsell the cancels. Yeah. And so that doesn't sound sustainable to me. So I had already had some fear that no matter how good we sold, it was just a matter of time, five years, 10 years, 20 years down the road that nobody's going to want to buy security door to door for $60 a month payment. Right. So I was just a little bit worried. So I went home and I talked to my wife and we decided to go ahead and me take an offer, you know, and, and go into that. I accepted the offer within the first 30 days. Um, I thought it was going to make all kinds of money and I made one sale. And some, my wife's like, you gotta tell me what's going on here.

Speaker 3 (00:20:32):

This is crazy. I would also driving three and a half hours to get to the field. So I was at the time because we were trying to save money. I was like, I'm going to do this as cheap as physically possible. I'm going to drive back and forth, you know, as much as I can. And if I have to, I'll just sleep in the car, get up, knock turf in the morning and, and go at it. I had a, a nice SUV. So I lay a whole air mattress. One of those that you see on Amazon where you pump them up, you know, they cover the seats. I was like, this is going to be cool. Yeah. Just hit the doors. It's parked right there. So I was grinding, right. I was not going like 12 hours a day. And uh, my only break for air conditioning was like, maybe go watch a movie or something like that.

Speaker 3 (00:21:10):

Well, I was like, if you watch a movie, why can't you just go get a hotel? I'm like, well, maybe it's 12 bucks. Like I don't want to stay in a $12 hotel. That's disgusting. And, uh, but it was a grind right. For a whole month and I made one deal and I thought, this is, this has gotta be over. I think our average commission back then was $1,500. So I traded somewhere around $20,000 a month. In that first month I went down to about 1500. And of course you don't get it until they install it. So they gave me like a little bit and they were like, oh, and you'll get the rest just whenever we don't know. And I'm like, oh, I'm in trouble. ADT was like, next day, you know, somebody would be out there installing it. So I misunderstood that coming into solar.

Speaker 3 (00:21:48):

Where was, where were you selling that? Kansas city. Okay. Yeah, not a great market. It was only about six years ago. Okay. So, and, um, they had a huge rebate in Kansas city and the rebate had gone away the month I started. So we went from having, I think the state level was up to a $2, a watt rebate then had gone down to a dollar watt and then it kind of went away. Well, $2 watt rebate is huge. So our average sell price was like $3 a watt. And, um, between the rebate and the ITC at the time was 30%. We literally were giving away solar for free. So when I accepted the job, I thought I was going to go door to door and just give it away for free. And then like the week I started, they're like, Hey, the rebate's gone away.

Speaker 3 (00:22:28):

You really guys, it's not free anymore. You need like 25 to $30,000 on every deal. And I'm like, what? I thought we gave stuff away for free. Well, what's going on with this. And so it kind of changed the game really quickly on me. Uh, I adjusted though. So then, um, once I figured out how to sell, I realized that it was a lot about understanding the benefits, understanding the tax taxes, really understanding how much money they would save because I was so new. It allowed me to adjust faster than the guys that have been doing it two years with this huge rebate and everything. And so the next, uh, three months I had made about a hundred sales, I think 102 sales in the next three months. So it really kicked in and I did really, really well. What's strange is you have these self limiting beliefs though.

Speaker 3 (00:23:15):

I always believed in ADT that I had to sell 30 deals a month and I really peaked out around the same thing. So it's almost like this mindset that I was a 30 deal a month, a rep I carried over into solar as well. And it's just recently that I realized that mindset's completely wrong listening to some of your podcasts with guys. I think you said recently you had someone on that sold 68 deals in a month. So more than double, more than double what I was selling. So I looked back saying, man, I wonder if I totally just carried over a self-belief from selling security that had nothing to do with solar, but I consistently would put up 30 deals a month. The cool thing about solar is there's commercial too. So my last month I killed it. Um, commission wise, I probably would've made somewhere around 280 5k in 30 days.

Speaker 3 (00:24:00):

So it was incredible. I went home, talked to my wife, we're super excited. We're like, man, this is it. We're making, we love this company. The company's like, Hey, by the way, we can actually afford to pay you that much. And we're nine months behind on install. And I'm like, oh wow, that's crazy. Some of you listening have probably heard words similar to that before, um, from a solar company. So I decided really quickly to go out on my own. Cause I was like, how much worse can it be if they can't pay me? And it takes nine months to install, I'm sure I can do better than that. So, um, the trouble was, I had to walk away from all of that commission and then, um, didn't have a lot of money in the bank. And so cause you know how far behind commissions are.

Speaker 3 (00:24:41):

So really I walked away from even more than that. And um, but I had no debt on my house and everything. So we had to sell our house. We had to cash out, 401k, invest, everything we had into starting a solar company. And when you tell your wife that it's time to sell the dream house, to go door to door again and sell more solar, it was a hard conversation. I'm so thankful that she supported me through that though and made that leap. Um, it took about three more years of making really minimal amount of money. I think I pulled maybe $30,000 a year out of my company. Okay. The first six months I, uh, you couldn't hire an EPC like you can now they just really didn't exist. Right? And so I had to hire a, uh, NAVSUP trainer to come in and train me to install.

Speaker 3 (00:25:25):

So the next six months I installed all my own jobs, uh, realized really, really quickly that I was bad at paperwork. So I had to hire administrative shin assistance and people do net metering. And then I realized I didn't like talking on the phone. So I had to hire, uh, an admin person to answer the phone. Then I had to hire, um, um, a phone sales person to answer all the incoming calls. And I'm like, man, this is crazy. Now I have like 14 people that work for me. I gotta, I gotta start making a lot more sales. So, uh, it was kind of the, you know, they say the, the mother of invention is necessity and that was it. I had to learn how to sell a lot more just to support the company, but selling 30 jobs a month, you know, a lot of solar companies don't even do that much.

Speaker 3 (00:26:06):

So me myself could go out and support my whole company, but then I just kept growing it. You know, when I brought on other sales guys and, but I stay very conservative. So a lot of owners, you know, brag about their, their fancy watches or the drive fancy cars right away. I always knew this was a long-term play for me. And if I was going to expand faster than my competitors, I had to do it, um, through really being wise with my resources. And so I reinvested almost all the money for three years. We lived on about $30,000 a year. Now I had retired from the military. So I lived in California, man. No, no. I lived in Missouri. Yeah. And started the company headquarters. I also had my military retirement. So the medical and I had some pinching coming. So I had more money that, but out of the company, I only pulled the very minimum that my CPA told me.

Speaker 3 (00:26:52):

I had to pay myself to be legitimate where I wouldn't have probably pay myself anything. And that allowed me to reinvest in marketing and tools and a better management. And you know, it's kind of crazy there for a while that everyone at my company was making more money than me. But at the same time, I knew that long-term, I was gonna make a lot more money than everyone else. So, you know, that's the old saying that you've all heard, but do things that others aren't willing to do. So that later on you can do a lot. And so that's what was able to happen in my life is that there's three years of really investment allowed us to build out a fully integrated solar company. And we were able to get into things that other companies weren't, you know, we go as far as doing the customer's taxes for up to five years after they buy solar, we do internal financing.

Speaker 3 (00:27:35):

Um, 2020, we did $50 million in internal solar, solar loans, ourselves without paying finance fees. So you just can't do that without a significant amount of resources, but you only have a significant amount of resources when you don't spend resources. And so it was, um, one of those things that we just chose to stay in Missouri, live frugally, know all of our installers. We have a very different, uh, formula to install. They all live out of Missouri and making 2020 $5 an hour in Missouri is incredible. You know, that they can live really well by their home buy nice cars. They live really well. And so they're willing to travel out of Missouri, take the solar panels and go to Minnesota or go to Florida or go to Texas or go to they'll drive all the way here to Vegas to, to install solar panels. Now we try to rack up several jobs in the same week and our teams are really well-trained.

Speaker 3 (00:28:25):

So a team of three guys can install a job in one day and so they can stack up, um, you know, two teams can travel out here to Vegas knockout, you know, quite a few jobs in 10 jobs in a week and then travel back, you know? And so it's just a different way to look at business. So we try to solve problems, not necessarily spending more money on it, but how do we actually solve the problem? You know, and the most people would say, well, let's just hire a big EPC in Vegas or California or Florida, because that's easier. Cause that also costs a lot of money. And so we make a lot more money in a lot more profit margin because of that. We're also what I would call a white glove service with doing the customer's taxes. So make sure your benefits to the client.

Speaker 3 (00:29:07):

We are probably one of the more expensive solar companies in the country, um, which is a hard thing, right? Like it's, it's means that some sales reps don't want to work for us because they want to sell for a more competitively priced company. What we do is a process called value stacking, where we believe that once your value stack exceeds the price, that it doesn't matter what the price is, the client will buy it. So we just try to deliver such a tremendous amount of value that we're still able to sell at a higher price. And then we have a very good margin and then we reinvest that margin. And so last year we were able to break $101 million in revenue. I'm extremely profitable. And uh, we owe no money. We have no debt. We have three years of operating capital on hand at all times now.

Speaker 3 (00:29:51):

So we're the only, debt-free um, three years worth of capital company. I know of specifically in solar, it's nearly unheard of, um, through COVID we had, um, 24 dealerships that were sub-dealers basically under our brand and we were able to support all of them and their reps through COVID. We're able to support all of our staff, even though we shut down operations for install, all the installers cup paid, all the office workers got paid. Wow. And so it's something we're pretty proud of, but it's also means that while other companies buy Ferrari's, I'm still going to be here in 10 years so they can enjoy their Ferrari's and I'll enjoy my, my safety net, uh, money in the bank. It also allows me to have money to help other companies. So I'm an investor in over 50 companies at this point and, um, own equity in those.

Speaker 3 (00:30:36):

And so, um, those create passive income streams for me, which help, but it's also just a way that I can help other companies because they need the money. And they, unfortunately, most of them weren't good at saving money. They were the guys buying the Bentleys or Ferrari's. And so they come to me and, uh, ended up needing to, to borrow some funds. And I'm happy to do it as long as it's going to help the company and help them longterm. And obviously it helps me if I can own a chunk of their company as well. For sure.

Speaker 2 (00:31:01):

And now that's one thing I've noticed about you. Jerry is you're very giving gay. I mean, I'm not part of your company or anything, but I come in here, Jerry treats me like family and he's like, dude, all I'll get you a hotel. First thing he says, when I come into their house here, it's like, Hey, I'll get you a hotel room. We don't have like the best beds and stuff here. I'm like down, like, dude, I'll sleep on my couch, no longer

Speaker 3 (00:31:22):

Talking about it. And this is a house for doorknockers I ever real bad, but everyone else has twin size bunk beds. And there's a bunch of, bunch of them upstairs, but we were thinking, Hey man, this guy just drove five hours and now he's going to sleep in a bunk bed. We all kind of had this moment where we're like, we probably should have thought this thing through. So we were like, do you want to hotel? Are you cool? And he's like, no, I'm cool. And then right after he said, he's cool. I see one of our guys carrying in a queen size, like Peloton matches. I'm like, thank goodness that somebody went out and bought a bed for this guy. So, um, but yeah. So thanks for saying that, man. I, I believe in this, this theory about investing where, um, if you're investing in the right people, um, there's no bad investment.

Speaker 3 (00:32:04):

And so even though it may not make monetary sense today or tomorrow, I invest my time, energy and resources and money into people that I want long-term relationships with. Because even though you don't work for me and you may never work with me, or we may never do anything specifically together, maybe you, um, send me a referral and you're like, Hey, am I coming? He doesn't cover Maine because it's the polar opposite side of the country from San Diego. Could you, do you want this referral in Maine? And absolutely I would. And I'll figure out a way to get in and installed a main, even though my install crews, if they're listening right now, we're like, what's Jerry talking about, I don't want to go to Maine. We would figure it out and make money on it. So I just believe in being very giving.

Speaker 3 (00:32:44):

And I think people will reciprocate that now I'm not stupid about it. I don't give to everybody. I, I give of my time. Um, most sparingly my time is the resource that I can't get back money. I can make more of time. I can't. And so I invest my time into things like the mastermind into my company and to the people I mentioned or indefinitely into things like this podcast, which I think is going to bear fruit for both your podcast and my companies. So by being a sponsor. And so I look forward to, uh, developing our relationship and um, giving him next week, he's going to email me and be like, Hey man, I really need a new Tesla. I was just wondering if he could spot me 120 K cause it's a plan.

Speaker 2 (00:33:23):

Yeah. I'm not, that'd be the sponsor. Find me a Tesla

Speaker 3 (00:33:28):

It's company is going to be like, why is the side of your Tesla say Pi Syndicate on it? That's really weird.

Speaker 2 (00:33:35):

Yeah. But no, I, I definitely agree with that cause um, I worked with, you know, several different companies at this point too. And um, we were having conversations before this out. You know, some people are more giving stuff than others. And uh, so I think it pays dividends as long as you're smart about it. Like you're saying is just be that guy. That's not like the cheap guy. That's like, oh, this guy is going to nickel and dime me. But if you're investing into relationships, especially, you know, on business level, um, I think it pays dividends. Like I just, matter of fact, last week I did my, a church mission in Columbia down there and that's one of the things and you know, these south American countries, a lot of them are super poor. And so I get hit up all the time about people, ask them for money and stuff like that. So yeah, you gotta get ready, selects selective. But I just sent, you know, 500 bucks last week for a family's funeral that I knew down there and yeah, like, they're like, oh, um, we'll pay you back. We promise, I know 99% chance. They're not going to be, they're not going to pay me back because you know, yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:34:31):

I've decided, I've decided that, um, I do sometimes give loans, but if, if it's, if you like that, and I think that you're right, you know, there's a good chance. They won't be able to pay you back. I'm very upfront with it and say, it's a gift. And then say, if you're ever at a time in your life where you can give something to somebody else, go ahead and do that because they're going to feel guilty if it's dead, right. They're good people. I'm sure they are. And eventually that's going to wear on them and it's going to impact their life negatively because they're not going to pay you back. Chances are, um, cause they may not have the resources and stuff like that to do that. And so, so think about doing stuff like that as gifts I give my time, lot, I gift things, not connected to any type of repayment.

Speaker 3 (00:35:12):

Um, and gifting seems to reward me a lot better than loans. So now in businesses, if you want, um, a hundred thousand dollar loan, I'll do that too, but that's a lot, normally stuff like that as somebody in need it, you know, give it as a gift and um, you'll see dividends of that. It also helps you feel a lot better right away. Like it felt good giving them a loan if you had made the decision to just give it to them as a gift, which is basically, it sounds like what you did. But if you had said that in your head, I'm going to give it as a gift and tell them I'm giving it as a gift. It would have had a little bit more positive impact even in your inside yourself. Um, you know, the gratitude that you felt, being able to help someone.

Speaker 3 (00:35:48):

And so it's a cool way to, to manage your money like that. That the thing that I, uh, one of the things I talk about when I talk about gifting though, is my time. And so I don't know if you've ever heard a term called time vampires, but I, I definitely believe in the concept that there's some people that just siphon away your time. And so while I'm very free to help people and to mentor them and stuff like that, be selective on who you help. Just like you said, you get hit quite a bit for money, the same thing with time. And you're an influential person. You have a lot of value to add to other people's lives, but you have to start being selective. And one of the rules that I've set for myself is that I only interact daily on a day to day basis with 10 people.

Speaker 3 (00:36:29):

So if I ever get to a point where I'm talking to someone every single day, I either need to figure out if there's somebody I'm mentoring or if they're somebody that needs to be communicating with one of my 10 people. Um, and I have a wife and four kids. So that means I only have five people outside of that to communicate with on a day-to-day basis. So my, my intimate little work circles about five and it makes for some hard decision-making. I talked to the general manager of solar solutions. Um, she's in training for all intensive purposes. She's the CEO. And, uh, I've talked to her one hour in the last week and she's running a multimillion dollar company for me. And I trust that she's doing a great job. Um, but I don't have time. Day-to-day, she's not by any means a time vampire she's listening, but, um, I don't have time.

Speaker 3 (00:37:17):

So, but making those decisions, even when they're hard decisions like not to talk to your GM every single day, um, mean that it makes it much easier to make a decision about talking to a friend from high school that just wants to chat about video games or fantasy football. Yeah, I cut. I cut them out pretty quickly because if I don't have time for, you know, my GM, I really don't have time for them either. And so setting up some type of structure in your life to make decisions based on time and who you're going to invest time in is very, very important to go a lot further in life if you invest your time correctly.

Speaker 2 (00:37:50):

Yeah. I agree. That's a good point. So yeah, for all our listeners, I think it's a good thing to do. If another thing I've talked about is just, you know, a time audit, just really tracking what you actually did with your hours, how you spent your time. It's a lot of times we think we're being super productive, smart with our time, and then we actually check it. We just spent two hours talking about fantasy football to someone or, you know, playing a game on the phone, whatever, things like that.

Speaker 3 (00:38:15):

Yeah. With strangers now that I, uh, last year I had done the math on, you know, how much money I was making per hour that I worked. And the number was much, much larger than what I had previously thought about it being. And, um, in the last few years, it's led me to really, really feel guilty about wasting my time. So like, I, I love video games. I love world of Warcraft back in the day and things like that. There's zero chance that I could open up a computer, get on world of Warcraft tonight and play for four hours without having this tremendous amount of guilt. You know, just because my time is, I know what my time's worth right now. And if someone would ask me, Hey, would you give me $25,000 to play world of Warcraft? I would say, no, I'm not going to give you 25 grand to play a video game. But that's exactly what we do in investing our time and activities that don't actually generate income or generate a better relationship with those around us is it's time that we're really, really stealing from ourselves. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:39:12):

A hundred percent. So now that's a good, a good point with that. And so going back a little bit at Jerry, um, something I wanted to ask you about, we were talking before we started recording here is just like you're saying, um, so many people just sell their prices low. Um, you said you're like one of the higher price companies that sell solar. And I think that's awesome. I started out with the company that was kind of similar to that. They tried to bundle in like some solar cleaning in some like a, I dunno, yearly checkup type things dated. It kind of found some loopholes around it. And I think it made a few customers mad cause they put in the fine print that they would only do that if the customer like contacted them. And It was kind of a, maybe not.

Speaker 3 (00:39:54):

Yeah. The whole thing about being the most expensive company is you also have to do the best job. And so you can get away with that. What's crazy is it's easier if you're a good salesperson to sell being the most expensive than it is being the cheapest. The only person that thinks it's easier to sell being the cheapest are bad salespeople. That's what it comes down to. You're probably not listening to this podcast. If you think the only way to sell is by lowering the price. That's probably not your target audience. People are trying to learn. They're trying to get better. We grade sales reps, um, AB and C sales reps, um, see sales reps are sell by being cheap. And that's how we remember it. If the only way that they can sell is by being the cheapest in the room and they're not selling based on anything else.

Speaker 3 (00:40:39):

Then they're a C sells rep. There is definitely room in the solar industry for C sales reps. So if you sell based on price, don't feel bad about it. Just either educate yourself to get better or find a company that really is the cheapest. And that's where you need to, to be out, to make money. Um, be sales reps are those that, um, really are good at one or two things. They either technical experts or they are expert closers. And it's one of two things they're either the best closer in the whole world. I would refer to like, um, Mike O'Donnell or, uh, Taylor McCartney, you know, incredible closers, but I know more about solar than either one of them. So the other, the other B sales rep is, um, someone that, um, is very, very technical. I would look at, um, you know, um, quite a few people in the marketplace that I would look at Jake Hess would be the one that comes to mind, very, very technical, closer, you know, through, um, his academy.

Speaker 3 (00:41:34):

He trains people how to be very technical. And then the AA sales rep is those that combine both. So yes, Taylor and Mike can definitely answer those technical questions or they know how to pivot really well. And so they're a sales reps because at the end of the day, phenomenal closers and they know everything they need to know about solar to get the sell closed. Now Taylor's kind of bizarre because he does know it just a little bit, but he's that good of a sales rep that he's still in a sales role. And I was talking about something one day. He's like, I don't even know what you're talking about. It's like, okay, I guess I'm more of a technical sales rep instead of as good of a closer is

Speaker 2 (00:42:11):

PESI oh, you asked him one time. Like, I don't even know what an inverter is.

Speaker 3 (00:42:15):

That's what he told me. That's what we were talking about us. I went different numbers, to be honest, I don't know what you're talking about. He's like, but I sold the last 14 doors I knocked on and I was like, wow, that's a that's okay. There's definitely some benefit. I noticed that they and Jake has been hanging out and I'm like, well, uh, hopefully those guys learn a lot from each other because of your powerhouse. Um, but yeah, and so the sales reps are like that. We specifically hire the sales reps because they have to be good closers and they have to know a lot about the technical side. Cause we have to justify our higher price. And um, explain why we're higher. One of the things is we give her a warranties instead of just fake claims. We also give free maintenance, but we give a 25 year true labor warranty.

Speaker 3 (00:42:56):

Um, anything that goes wrong. A lot of guys in the solar industry don't realize, but they're selling, what's called a workmanship warranty. And under a workmanship warranty, you would assume that if say a panel stops working, that the company would come out and fix it for free without charging the customer a fee, the truth is a workmanship warranty covers bad workmanship. So if they installed it incorrectly, which caused the panel to stop working a good company would come out and fix it. But a good company would do that for free. Even without a warranty in writing, they would say, yeah, you're right. That's our fault. Let us fix that. So it's pretty much just acknowledging that, Hey, we're a good company, which is, which is nice of them to say there's a 20 five-year workmanship warranty, but, uh, under the warranty and most of the terms of that panel stops working.

Speaker 3 (00:43:39):

It's the manufacturer's fault. You would have to pay that solar company labor to come out and replace that solar panel. And there's almost zero sales reps that understand that concept. And I guarantee you no homeowner understands that concept. So when they get into these 25 year loans, when you talk about company evaluations and how to evaluate the value of a solar company, those that give away a workmanship warranty are basically locking in that customer on a service plan for the next 25 years, that increases the company evaluation because they know they're going to make X amount of money servicing that system over the next 25 years at a company like mine. It actually decreases our company value because we know that the relationship with that client will just cause, um, cost over the next 25 years. So, um, was very few companies like ours that are giving free labor away, true free labor for the whole time, but we definitely do.

Speaker 3 (00:44:32):

And so we align ourselves up with even our battery manufacturers are full 25 year warranties. So everything we do as a 25 year warranty or more included with labor too. So even the solar panels and the batteries, if we were to go out of business, uh, they'll hire an electrician to come out and service it. So it's just a different pitch, but a good sales rep always feels more comfortable being the guy saying, I'm the best buy for me, then I'm the cheapest, you know, let's, it's a good deal. Let's do this, you know? So you'll kind of weed, weed out those people that aren't quite as.

Speaker 2 (00:45:03):

Yeah, I know. Yeah. It's interesting. If you go to these like marketing conferences and stuff, and then the online marketing and they say, there's no competitive advantage to being like, you know, unless I made all of the pack pricing, you're either like the cheapest or you're in the most expensive and you add more value, but there's no like advantage at all as being kind of like middle so

Speaker 3 (00:45:23):

No, and you kind of disregard all the middle companies too. Um, and so I, I definitely think one of our strategies is we know we're going to be the most expensive. So we get that out of the way right away. We tell them we are, we actually tell them to shop around. And if they choose to go with a cheaper company, we'll even pay $50 per quote, that they give us from the other companies that they've shopped around with. So we encourage them to give us, go shop around with four quotes and then we'll come back and be the final one in the door, propose our price a hundred percent of the time. They're expecting us to undercut the cheapest bid. Um, cause they think it's a gimmick, right? You're giving me these quotes, you're going to undercut their price and then try to close me a hundred percent of the time.

Speaker 3 (00:46:01):

We make sure we're more expensive. In fact, if we're not the most expensive person, we raise our price by a thousand dollars and make sure because it's easier to sell in the most expensive. Now, not everyone buys though. And so just like a car lot, you you're the most expensive your Lamborghini dealership or whatever. That's how we treat it. But at the end of the day, if you say it's too expensive and you're getting ready to walk out, we say, hold on, wait a minute. Let's see if we can throw something else in. So we try to do value, add. So we may replace their air conditioner or we may help replace the roof or whatever it is. But very rarely will we do just a straightforward discount. We're never going to be like, okay, you're right. Let us let us price it out for $10,000 cheaper. There's probably not going to be us, but we'll win.

Speaker 2 (00:46:42):

Yeah. I think that's awesome. Because especially in California, there's no excuse for people to be selling like rock bottom prices. I mean, San Diego, you can sell a system, you know, $6 a watt, super expensive, and you're still saving them. You're still cutting their bill by 30%. Yeah. So it's like these companies that try to sell rock bottom line, what are you guys doing? We're still saving the customers.

Speaker 3 (00:47:03):

I think we all need to be on the same team, right? Like, um, I think there's places out there for the cheapest guys. The problem is, um, those guys need to go move to Missouri or Kansas or somewhere with 10 cent per watt, kilowatt hours of they want to sell cheap California. You're not competing against each other. You're competing against a utility company. So $6 a watt is completely fair price to charge. If you're versing the utility company, what that allows you to do as a company is make more profit. There is absolutely nothing wrong with profit. If you're helping the client, because that means you can take that profit and go make more clients. You can spend more money on marketing. You can spend more money on paying your people. You can spend more money on office space. You can do everything you can to grow.

Speaker 3 (00:47:47):

And at the end of the day, we all want to have more solar customers. We all believe the solar is good for the environment. And so at the end of the day, our mission is to sell as many people as we can. And people get twisted. People that are new to business think selling cheaper will help them sell more. It absolutely will. Not their resources you gain from selling a fairly priced product. That's beating out your competitor, which is the utility company is the correct price. And so I would never charge somebody. One of my ethical roles is I never charge more than what they're paying on the utility company. So solar solutions is a little different. They have to be able to pay the system off within 10 years through savings. And they have to be able to have a payment that's cheaper than their utility bill from day one, or we won't quote them.

Speaker 3 (00:48:30):

The system will tell them that they w we don't advise them to go solar in California. That wouldn't happen very often though. It's so good of a deal for everybody. Even as $6 a watt, you should be doing that, just make sure you're not going out and buying Ferrari's. You need to be reinvesting that money in yourself. And for you specifically in your podcast and your recruiting budget to help others come on board, because you're not going to be able to sell a prices like that forever. And we know that. So you use those resources to expand, to grow, to really make a dent in the industry. And it's so cool. I, I learned something from you earlier. We were talking to our guys about how saturated Las Vegas is. I don't think anyone would argue that San Diego's, if not the most saturated market, one of the most saturated markets in the United States, very cool market.

Speaker 3 (00:49:17):

And you still go out and door knock every day, and you still run into people that need solar and once solar. So it's incredible. We, we need to stop thinking of the scarcity mindset, where we're competing against other solar companies. We're still not even in San Diego. We're not. Um, and the truth is you mentioned it too, but those companies may knock the door once and you're going to knock the door five or more times. And so, um, I'm okay with competition as long as I'm better than them. And it sounds like you're, you're beating them so that that's healthy competition. Um, and so I think that that's a really cool thing to think about. We all need to keep our prices higher because in San Diego, if you can sell $6 a watt in the most competitive thing in the whole United States, that everybody should be pricing their structure out right below the utility company, let's do better than the utility company. But that means I operate in mainly the Midwest states. That means we don't sell as high in Kansas. We don't sell high in Texas. We don't sell as high at all in Tennessee. So it, it just all depends on where you're at, what their pricing is because the utility is the competitor, not, not the other solar companies. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:50:21):

I think that's a good rule to go by though, cause you don't want to charge them way more than they're paying for

Speaker 3 (00:50:26):

Electricity. Heard some interesting guys pitch it. And if they knocked on my door, their ride, I probably would've bought it cause they're good enough to pitch, pitch it as an investment. Um, my individual role with investing is I want my money back within 10 years. I want it to completely be liquid. And, and that's really comes into about a 7% compounded interest rate or above. And so, um, I wouldn't personally make an investment that, that wasn't going to happen. I put all my money into investments like that. So why would solar be anything different if I'm going to put it on my house? I still want that kind of ROI. And so, um, I think I just ethically on a personal side, uh, that's translated to the ethics of my company to say, look, we're not going to sell it unless, unless they meet the standard for Jerry thinking, it's a good thing.

Speaker 3 (00:51:13):

Right? And that's my standard. There's, there's been some guys though that I talked to that view it as a financial investment in states that have very low prices and I don't think they're wrong. And there's also a lot of speculation about the price of utilities, really jumping up over the next three years. A good friend of mine, Mike [inaudible] talks about it. He's extremely convincing, right? Like he's the guy that I've listened to enough where I'm like, you know what, even if they are spending $20 more a month, Mike's probably right. It's, it's going to be okay. It's just not a company thing that we do. So that's our litmus test is we try to price it right below. Um, but definitely

Speaker 2 (00:51:48):

Don't price it a dollar 85 watt. I think we can all agree that if you're the guy out there selling at a dollar 85, a watt, you need to listen to the podcast more often and learn how to sell more because there's no reason to do that. And at the end of the day, what I tell customers that are getting an incredible deal as I run the numbers and I say, Hey, your sales reps making $500 on this deal. Uh, who is it? Oh, it a power I've never heard of power. That's interesting. It must be a power app. Um, the sold out for a $500 commission. And I say, think about this, it's a 25 year agreement. Uh, you, you need customer service for the next 25 years. If something goes wrong, right. They're like, yeah, nice. Well, how much do you think the $21 a year is going to buy you in time for that guy to pick up the phone and answer your questions?

Speaker 2 (00:52:33):

The truth is, think of his commission, like prepaying to have an advocate for you for the next 25 years. And in my opinion, $500 is not enough money for a 25 year relationship. So we need to pay our reps well enough that they're do very good customer service or the company needs to make enough profit that they take that role on themselves. That the rep isn't the one responsible for customer service and taking care of. Cause if we sell somebody a $25,000 system, it is definitely our responsibility to take care of them for the next 25 years. Like that's, that's just the way it is. That's our job. Yeah. So yeah, I just got a call actually like a couple hours ago from Gaia sold four years ago. Call me just barely ins. Yeah. Luckily I made more than 500 bucks, but yeah, that's a good point though. Like I'm only making 500 bucks and it's a guy that's taken up all this time. That's time suck then. Uh, yeah. It's um, like you want to be making, you know, your time worth some money for sure. Yeah. Um, and yeah, the other thing that's, uh, I forget, I forget the question. I was going to ask you where I was going with.

Speaker 3 (00:53:41):

Well, we were talking a little bit, uh, before we started and you were, you were basically saying, um, you know, why did I step away from solar solutions? And, um, you know, I thought that was a really interesting question that I wanted to say for the podcast. Yeah. So the reason why is because I, I believe that the solar industry is at its peak right now. I think it's incredible. It's the new gold rush. Everyone we know in sales should be going into solar right now. It is the biggest opportunity. If you're not telling your friends and family members and neighbors, neighbors, that they should be selling solar, and they're working at a library or they're working at Starbucks, you're doing them a disservice. You should be so convicted that it's time to get into solar, that I needed to transition what I'm doing to align with that.

Speaker 3 (00:54:26):

So if I believe everybody should get into solar, that I need to build a company that isn't one of the most difficult sales processes that requires a rep like you with all your knowledge, to go out and sell for $6 a watt, I would need to do something more moderate. So energy co is meant to recruit anybody. You know, we're here at a recruiting class. I'm glad that you're able to say Hey to them while you were here. And there's some kids are now in this class that are 18 years old. There's not a lot of solar companies. I'd be excited about hiring a 18 year old. Right. And I had to go back to a training model that allowed me to recruit literally anybody off the street. Like I worked in a Starbucks that teacher, the person that's struggling. Cause they got a degree in psychology and they haven't worked since they graduated.

Speaker 3 (00:55:12):

They're like, what just happened? I paid all this money for a degree and I don't have a job. I wanted to go back to the days, like when we worked at security or pest control that literally anybody could do it. Right? Like you just had to knock doors. Solar gets more complicated than that sometimes. And so our whole concept here at energy co is a division of labor. So we split it into the, the setter, the educator and the closer they work together as a team, you know, there's a whole bunch of people that can set cause anybody can set just like in pest control security. He just got to say, even if they're terrible and they're like, Hey, do you want solar? Eventually somebody's going to say yes. Whereas the educator's a little bit harder. You've got to explain the one-on-ones and how solar works.

Speaker 3 (00:55:51):

But there are a whole bunch of second grade teachers out there that would absolutely love to make money per job. Um, in 30 minutes of work, right? And then our closers are definitely the rarest people. It takes a very specific skillset. And so we decided to just make the division of labor, but our closers are now able to sit in front of, you know, 10 opportunities a day. They've already gone through the education process. And during the education process, we've ran credit. They fully understand they've answered a simple pre-close. It says if your bill is less than it is right now with your utility company. And um, it doesn't cost you anything out of pocket, will you move forward on solar? So they've already done some of the pre-close. And so these are very, very good leads. They've already said yes to that. We've already ran their credit.

Speaker 3 (00:56:36):

We know what all that looks like. So imagine being a closer and going in and jumping on a digital call, which zoom, nobody loves. We're all face to face closers. I like being face-to-face. But imagine that educator is still sitting there with the customer. Who's built up all the rapport and all we have to do as a closer is review the numbers, answer high level questions and overcome their objections. And it takes 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes to do it. You can do it from your house. And so, but we only pay a thousand dollars because it's taken 30 minutes, but you run a 10 of these opportunities a day. You're closing a 30% close rate because again, all the chaff, all the ones that never were going to buy to begin with are disqualified. And out of that, you have someone there to help you do the paperwork.

Speaker 3 (00:57:21):

You just close it and hang up and trust that your educators get all the contracts signed following up. The backend's taken care of because all we want every day is to have you on the phone, making those closing conversations happen. And um, so you're working five, six hours a day, three grand, a day, 18 grand, a week, 750 K a year. There's one of the highest paid positions inside solar. And we're only paying a thousand dollars a sale, which shocks people. We interview high level, solar people all the time. And they're like, what are you talking about? I'm making, you know, they always make up these crazy numbers. You've heard them too. Now I'm making 10 grand a job. I'm making 20 grand a job where like share your buddy that you did that once. And she was 92 years old and didn't know what she was doing.

Speaker 3 (00:58:05):

And you sold her, uh, at $8 a while. And you had to argue with the finance company even to approve it. And yes, be super proud of yourself that you made 20 grand on that deal. The other thing it allows us to do at that scale of operation is make sure that every quote that the closer sees is good for the client, right? So as a closer, they never see a quote that the client should not buy. We've eliminated that in the educational process, the designs are made by our engineers. If it's not good for them, if it's not saving the money from day one and cost nothing out of pocket and is really good for them. Um, then the closer never sees that. So imagine being enclosure that knows every single person I'm convicted to give them. And when you have conviction, you turn into convincing.

Speaker 3 (00:58:51):

And so you really are convincing that they should move forward and you never have that ethical dilemma when you get to the end of the sale. And I'm sure this happened to you. You kind of sit there and you're like, should this client really even be doing that? And they can see it in your eyes. And then every once in a while, that'll bleed over to the next appointment. And you know, they're, they're a good client, but they can feel that energy where you're just not a hundred percent convincing that they should do it. And the energy's off. Imagine being a closer where every single time you get on the phone, it is your obligation to close that sale. Like literally they're walking away. And if they say no and they don't buy from you, it's financially damaging to them. That's the type of conviction that we bring through this model.

Speaker 3 (00:59:32):

And you no longer have to go and vet the client. You no longer have to knock on the doors. You know, how many times do you say when you knock on the door? I'm not sure if this is going to be a good fit for you. You know, because those of us that on for a long time, that's really the pitch. We start doing a lot of pullbacks. I'm not sure if it's good for you. I'm not sure it's going to work out only so many people are going to go solar. Let's just see if it's going to be a good fit. We'll saying those types of things every single day, erodes your confidence. And then when you even a single day set, you've used those phrases. When our closers are using phrases, like this is absolutely what you should be doing. And it builds up that confidence.

Speaker 3 (01:00:09):

They know that every time they get on a phone, they're going to use powerful assumptive language because they know that it's their job. And even their ethical, a moral duty to help this client save money because we're not passing them leads that don't need to be closed. And so it makes for a very, very good, um, division of labor and it helps these guys make a ton of money. And then the cool thing about our company is that once you've made a hundred sales with us, you start your own company. So we don't expect guys to stay forever. I think one of the biggest things with the solar industry is every good rep. It may be five years down the road, but wants to own his own company. Not everyone, 90% of them dream about opening their own company and, um, or being a dealer sub dealer, something like that.

Speaker 3 (01:00:53):

So we just lean into it. We know that's coming. So if you make a hundred sells through our company, we will totally finance back, buy office space, give you marketing. We have full recruiting people. You know, we, in the last 30 days, we have 1500 people in our pipeline for recruiting. So we can turn that nozzle on and off in any market in the United States. So if someone was like, yeah, I want to move to Maine and go sell solar. We're like, well, good luck, good luck with that four months a year. Um, but we could still recruit enough people to probably make them successful even up in the Northeast. And so it's really what the company is all about is stay with us for a while. Let us mentor you, let us build this up. Let us give you this dream job where you're doing what you're specifically talented at.

Speaker 3 (01:01:36):

We're the only company I know of that has full psychology profiling, and as full disc assessments before we've let someone work for us. So we know exactly what role they're going to end up in, even though they don't and we let them choose still, some people can definitely modulate their personality to be a good setter, be a good educator, be a good, closer, no matter what guys like you that have done all three, you could do whatever you want, but at the end of the day, there's certain parts of that that you probably fall into more easily. And so we evaluate them based on psychology, help them be successful, really build them out. And then at the end of the day, I partner with them and we open up a solar company and they get to own, you know, hot sun, solar and, you know, south Texas or whatever it is. And it's a, it's a cool way for us to grow and just lean into the natural things that are going on in the industry already.

Speaker 2 (01:02:25):

I love that. Cause I think so many people just try to force people and it has roles that maybe they would have been better off just like setting the appointments. Yeah. But that's the problem. I think what you guys have going on is really cool because this a sustainable model like people see, for example in California, oh, closers, they're the ones making the money. I want to, no matter what, I just want to step into closing. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:02:47):

[inaudible] setters make identical amounts of money. The only position that pays a little bit less as our educator position, uh, and it's because supply and demand, there's more people willing to have an educational, friendly conversation. Then there are people willing to talk to strangers at the door or people willing to have the awkward conversation and overcome the objections. And so the law of supply and demand says that's the lowest paid position in the company, but it's also the happiest position. So the people that fall into that personality trait, where they just want to help people and they just want to educate people and they just want to do that is a very, very rewarding job. And to not to be the person that has the awkward conversation to not be the person that has to talk to strangers door to door is a very interesting job.

Speaker 3 (01:03:28):

It's also, if I look back at, you know, the thousands of people that I've worked with in solar so far, the ones that I regret the most are the people that are so smart, but for one reason or another, they couldn't be a setter or a closer, because they were just awkward either at the door, they gave them, they beat themselves up or during the closing, they're the people that get to the end and they say, they have to think about it. And they're like, you're right. I would have to think about it too. And they get up and they say, I'll call you back tomorrow. I'm sure you're going to buy. And you know, that never, never, ever works. And so your close rate gets destroyed. And so, so many of those people have worked with me and now no longer work with me.

Speaker 3 (01:04:04):

And over the years, I used to think, you know, back at ADT, back in the beginning of solar, um, I used to think, well, they're just bad sales reps that aren't adapting and are learning. The truth is there's just different personality traits. And so I taught a leadership course. And while I'm teaching the leadership course, I'm like, why am I not applying these things? I'm literally teaching other solar companies to not put a square person into a round hole. And I'm like, wait a minute. Like I only have two positions inside the company, et cetera. And a closer, like, there's a huge amount of interaction with the customer that doesn't need to be done by either of those personalities. And so that's what energy co is, is a division of labor that puts people in the perfect spot. And then because of that, just like Ford automobiles, it's not about how much money you make per vehicle.

Speaker 3 (01:04:50):

It's about how many cars you sell or in this case, how many solar deals you get. And so it's economies to scale. And if it was somebody sitting on a computer on a beach can make three grand a day, there are so many people that are willing to jump on board and take that and go live in key west or whatever. And just jumping on a laptop for six hours a day and do that, that I don't think we're going to have any trouble being, I would hazard a guess that on paper we pay all flat rate commission. We're probably one of the lowest paid solar companies in the country. And I guarantee you, there's very few companies paying their people on the paychecks as much as we do. And so I feel pretty good about us having a good model. That's sustainable. We're also ready when we tell people, Hey, solar is not going to make this much money forever.

Speaker 3 (01:05:32):

They say, well, why don't I want to make as much money right now? And we say, well, we are, but we're establishing things and hiring all the backend people at, at, for the last six months, I've had more executives on board than we had sales reps. That's still true today. Actually. Uh, now we have a lot more setters than we have sales reps, because you only need about 16 setters in our model for every four educators for every one closer. So it's a, it's a very big funnel to fill up for one closer. Um, but they're also the hardest person to find it's guys like you that are at the top of their game. They know how to overcome the objections. They do a friendly, not forceful, not alarm twisting, but they're awkward conversations. We have to look somebody in the eye and be like, well, what exactly do you have to think about?

Speaker 3 (01:06:16):

Like, cause I hear that a lot. Normally it means one of a couple of things. It means that you either don't understand the product where you, or you think that the price is too high or one of those true, you know, and just get it out there. And if it's, uh, they don't understand the product, they're just literally confused. You're re-explain it. And reclose, if they think the price is too high, then you didn't do a good enough job building value. And so you still go back and explain the product and then reclose them again. Um, and so, but it's one of those two things. And so, but that's an awkward conversation that most people with in the disc profile CNS are not as good at closing. And it's it's because their even influencers aren't as good at closing. And it's because they get to that point and there is logical and emotional reasons to let them think about it.

Speaker 3 (01:07:03):

Like a CRS kinda shakes her head and goes you're right. I'd want to think about it to the influencer or the eye. And the disc profile has spent so much time influencing that relationship that now they've made a friend. And would you really expect your friend to make a decision tonight? No. You'd let them call you back tomorrow. And since they've made that friendship, a lot of times an influencer on the disc profile will walk away from a job thinking that they built up such a good rapport, that that person really is going to call them back tomorrow. And they still don't. So it's an interesting thing to look at those cycles.

Speaker 2 (01:07:34):

The IDs are the ones

Speaker 3 (01:07:35):

That Heidi's are the closers, right? So I was hazard a guess that you're probably a DEI. Uh, have you ever taken the disc profile? I

Speaker 2 (01:07:43):

Actually wasn't super high. D I think it was

Speaker 3 (01:07:46):

Like about even with Dai.

Speaker 2 (01:07:48):

It was more even, but it wasn't like my high one because I always hear the DS are like, you know, the CEO is and stuff like that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:07:55):

And people, I think that I view probably we should take it again tonight and make a bet on it. Maybe we'll bet dinner on it, but I would put you at like a 38 38 on DEI. So about the same level. And then you probably do have some CNS qualities, but, um, I think you're, you're, you're dominant cause you what you want, but at the same time, you make friends equally as well. So that balance is out the dominate because people that are dominant, but they're also influencers. Don't want to force things on you all the time, because they want to use their charm and personality to convince you another way. But at the end of the day, it's the same thing. You still convince others around you to see it your way. Uh, whereas CNS will follow other people's ideas. And so it's an interesting thing to look at.

Speaker 2 (01:08:39):

And those that don't know what we're talking about. The disc personality test. I know Tony Robbins says on his website,

Speaker 3 (01:08:45):

We'll throw a free link. Um, we do a really simple disc profile. We have an internal one that our company's built more than happy to send you the results. And we charge $50 normally, but we'll throw a free link and let people take the disk.

Speaker 2 (01:08:58):

Jerry, just keeping them given.

Speaker 3 (01:09:00):

We'll also as part of our disc profile, we'll identify, um, what jobs you're best at, whether it be a setter or closer. I know a lot of closers that would have made more money in the last five years being a setter. And the industry has messed that up and they believe that that the epitome of sales as being a closer, it's just not true. It's up to the individual. And so we might be able to flip your income almost immediately by you just going back to your own and being like, Hey, this does make sense. Maybe I need to be a setter and you know, or set or manager or something like that. Our, one of our most influential hires within a company in general as our center manager. And it's a, it's such a cool position, but the guy that does it right now is a 72%.

Speaker 3 (01:09:41):

It's the highest influencer score I've ever seen. And he immediately makes a friend at the door. Like you look at the guys. We, we walked down the strip, um, here in Vegas with the guy and people were running into walls. Cause they just want to look at him and they would run it. He is a male model too, but they would like run into walls and stuff. We'll looking at him. And so the same thing with the door, like people open up the door and they literally just listened to everything. He says like me and you knock on the doors and they're like, what do you want? And they'll just listen to him. Talk for like three minutes. It's just unfair, completely unfair. But uh, he had started out in that role as a setter and then he came to us to be a closer and we re reset his vision. We're like, dude, you need to be a center manager. Like this is where you fit perfectly yet.

Speaker 2 (01:10:27):

Yeah, no, I think it's important for those listening. Go take that test. See what you are. I know another guy that's super. Do you know a Chris Lee it's Coney. Yeah. And now that's something he has every one of his like starting reps do do. So it was no secret. You guys that build, you know, successful organizations, organizations, and I know Tony Robbins talks about this all the time in his business conferences. So identifying those, um, key traits and um, I think also probably recognizing quick that maybe someone's not right for.

Speaker 3 (01:10:55):

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it can all, I don't know if it would eliminate someone completely from any role, it would eliminate some people probably from, um, set or educator or closer. I would say CNS are a little bit harder, but it would be a conversation about those roles. They can be really, really good sometimes setter or, um, set or, or, um, educators, but it's really what this personality test tells us. Um, now the other thing is it allows you to know how to supplement yourself. So I am a high D high, like an eye. And so you're right. Most of those are CEO's and things like that as CNS are almost needed to pair with me. So like I have a chief of staff who definitely is organized as loyal is thoughtful, is considerate of others. And she helps me be less abrasive cause I'm very fast decision-making and sometimes people confuse that with being unthoughtful or uncaring and uh, but really I've just processed it very quickly.

Speaker 3 (01:12:00):

And I've told you what you need to do. So sometimes a rep will come to me and they're like, I'm really struggling. I don't know if this is the job for me. And I say, look, I don't think it is the job for you. What do you want to do in life? And they're like, I came in to get advice on making more sales and you're telling me to quit. Well, yeah, I think you need to do what you want to do in life. And they're like, wow. So she kind of edits that out, right? She's kind of the, in-between like, Hey, you're doing great. Keep it up. You know, so, and I'm very, very straightforward. So it's good to supplement yourself and surround yourself. I would say three people that I talk to on a daily basis are CSS. And, and only two of the people in my inner circle that I talked to day-to-day are dis and uh, the most conflict I have day-to-day or with the other dis.

Speaker 3 (01:12:45):

So, cause we all want things to be our ways, if you're a DIY like you, and I'm guessing that you're less than 50% on both D and I, um, is probably the easiest person to work with in a sales organization. Cause you're good at everything, but you don't always have to be right. And that's probably why you do a podcast and you're seeking information from others. It's extremely cool psychology behind you actually having those traits, but then wanting to learn from others, which is uncommon in a high D we don't want to. So I have to remind myself all the time extract value from others. You don't have to, you just naturally live that way. Whereas some DNI is just want to push, push out and always be right. And so, uh, but knowing the negatives of your personality trait is just about as valuable. So I know some of those about myself. And so then I'm able to, um, take notes when I'm talking to others, I'm able to listen to other people's podcasts, which I wouldn't necessarily naturally be inclined to do that because I do think I'm right, 99% of the time. Um, but that's also a trait that helps me make decisions faster, which is very, very important in businesses to have a leader that doesn't think for two weeks about making a hard decision. For sure.

Speaker 2 (01:13:54):

Yeah, no, no, no. It's important. You know, partner with people that can supplement your weaknesses and things like that.

Speaker 3 (01:13:59):

Yeah. Two of my CSS has also have an override authority where if I make a decision and they think it's not a good idea, they get it wait like 72 hours and ask me again. So I like no, pull the trigger on this. Now one of those two people can go, well, Jerry said it, but we're going to hold out, hold on for a second and go back to Jerry in three days and tell them what we think. It's funny.

Speaker 2 (01:14:20):

Well, awesome. Well, Jerry, I know we've taken a lot of your time today. I appreciate you coming on the podcast. Um, last question before we kind of start wrapping up here, um, you talked about, and as we were talking in the beginning, just how you really struggled in the beginning. You only got one sell your first month. And we have a lot of reps that listen that, um, you know, hit me up on Instagram and things like that. It's a question people ask all the time, how do you turn it into struggling to like find your success? How do you like turn it around? Um, cause a lot of people get discouraged in solar. I'm sure you see it all the time. Especially like you're talking about, sometimes it takes 60 plus days to get paid on a job depending on where you're at. So guys get discouraged and I see people quit all the time just because they don't have that cash flow coming in. So what were some things, um, that helped you maybe turn it around or like just get past that learning curve

Speaker 3 (01:15:11):

As I've thought about this a lot. And I, and the fact I've, I've seen so many good people, not quite make it to their potential. And I've literally looked at on exit surveys and tried to figure out everyone leaving the company. What could we have done to help them or to do better? And the answer is there is some kind of invisible wall and it's different for every single person that there's no way to know how much knowledge you need, how much experience you need, how many doors you have to knock. It's different for every single person. There is literally in our data sets, having thousands of people work with us. Literally there's no way to track when someone's going to break into being successful. Some people's 30 days, some people at six months. Yeah. And so what I can say is this can work for almost absolutely anyone.

Speaker 3 (01:16:03):

If you want it to, if you're broken though, then you very quickly need to make a decision. What I do best in life and why I make a lot more money than most people's I make decisions very quickly. And if you're out there today and you're struggling and you're telling yourself, I don't know if this is for me, call a mentor, sit down with somebody that's doing the best in your office. Tell them your concerns and make a decision that day. Either you're going to start following the behaviors. That's making that person successful and stop overthinking it and just put your head down and grind it out. Because I don't know when to tell you, I can't tell you do X, Y, and Z, and you're going to break through that wall. There's just no way to track that. What I can say is that every single person that sticks with it with this and mimics the people around them and mimics the things that they hear on this podcast, a hundred percent of them will be successful in solar.

Speaker 3 (01:16:54):

100%. Now there's varying degrees of success. Maybe they make a hundred grand a year. Maybe they make 500 grand a year, but a hundred grand a year is an incredible amount of money. And they will absolutely get there a hundred percent of people that keep their head down and stay long enough. We'll get there. The sad thing is the majority of people quit. And, and sometimes I know it's just right on the brink of them, figuring it out. Um, a lot of the times it's it's after they've made their first couple sales, but then they realized their installs out, you know, 60 days or something like that. It just breaks their heart. And they're not able to keep going. What I would say is make the decision very quickly and then move on, get out of solar. There's no reason to torture yourself. If you're going to sit here and just talk about the idea of doing it, you have to play all out.

Speaker 3 (01:17:40):

You have to go all in. You have to do what you do, which is get up every day. Even though you have a successful podcast and still go knock doors, you have to make that decision. So just be honest with yourself. Are you going to do that or are you not? And then do it today. And I'm so sorry for the companies out there that have their crews are gonna quit today. Uh, but the other half, I promise you are all going to make hundreds of thousands of dollars. So stick with me here. It's going to be okay. Company owners. Um, we're going to make it through this together. And that the fact of the matter is our offices are a lot better. If we allow people to make the decision quickly and move on with their lives and go take a salary position or something like that, it'll help everyone else around get to that invisible wall faster.

Speaker 3 (01:18:21):

So, uh, make decisions quickly in life, guys. Um, if solar's not for you talk to somebody, they'll make the decision around, get with a guy like me or Taylor, and just really have an in-depth conversation and be honest, I'm thinking about quitting. Here's what's going on. What would you do? And we'll be honest with you. And I guarantee you, uh, uh, right before my guys went out today, I have a group of new guys that are doing a scavenger hunt. And I said, Hey, come back here. And if you didn't like this and you felt uncomfortable, I'll give you $20 to quit. And they were like, what? You're giving us money to quit. I'm like, yeah, because I don't want to wait until tomorrow for you to make the decision. I'm going to reward you for being a fast decision maker like right now. And, uh, I was being completely honest because I want to free them up to do what they want. There's no reason to torture yourself, but at the same time, if there's any inclination that you can make it, a hundred percent of people will make it, um, given enough time surrounding yourself with the right people, it will absolutely happen.

Speaker 2 (01:19:21):

Huge golden nugget right there. And yeah, that reminds me, my brother, he actually came out and sold solar with me and he was similar situation. Like you're saying he actually like, I don't know, four months into it. He decided that solar is not for me. He went home. Then about two weeks after that he had like six installs go in that you just thought were, I guess weren't going to get installed or something like that made like, I don't know, 20 grands in that week or something. He's like, he calls me. He's like, Taylor, actually, I'm coming back out there. He's gonna come

Speaker 3 (01:19:51):

Back out.

Speaker 2 (01:19:52):

But you're, I think so many people they quit. Um, and I know some people, yeah, obviously make the quick decision, go do something else. But I think there's way more people out there that just aren't willing to stick it out.

Speaker 3 (01:20:03):

No, I think the other mistake before we leave is if you're getting into solar right now, I suggest because I have a financial background and mastermind that does that a nugget. I can leave you as live as cheaply as you possibly can. For as long as you can. If you're getting this, I heard a little story that you told me that you ate like ramen noodles and helped your friends make their food for like the first five months you were door knocking to just survive. Right? And I suggest the same thing. If you need to take your last a hundred dollars. And instead of eating steak that week, you need to go buy 20 packs of ramen noodles and buckled down and get through this. You will absolutely become a millionaire if you're in solar long enough. And if that's what you have to do to make this happen. Cause I don't know if it's two weeks until you make money two months until you make money, prepare for the worst and you will absolutely become a millionaire in

Speaker 2 (01:20:51):

Yeah. A hundred percent. Well, Jerry, we appreciate you coming on the show today. Jerry's the only guy in this orange, I that has a bodyguard and a hangs out with them and stuff. His bodyguard was in here, like, you know, bringing me food earlier. So that's how, you know, when you're successful.

Speaker 3 (01:21:07):

Yeah. Yeah. And I think we save more on insurance than his salary. So it was a pretty good deal for me to have a guy to bring me food and stuff. He brings me energy drinks.

Speaker 2 (01:21:17):

Yeah. No, he's awesome. Um, but no, Jerry is awesome guy. So go follow him on social media. So before he let you go, Jerry, where can people reach out?

Speaker 3 (01:21:25):

Yeah. Reach out to me on Instagram. It's Fussell spelled F U S S E L L Jerry J E R R Y. Look me up, follow me. I'll follow you back. If you're in solar, I love to see what other guys are doing and the success you're having. And then, uh, definitely reach out to us with Pi Syndicate when Austin's on take a listen to his podcasts and we'd love to have you guys contribute to be part of that mastermind.

Speaker 2 (01:21:46):

Okay. And your last name is Fussell calling it Fussell or something

Speaker 3 (01:21:51):

Fussell it's I'm in sales. If anyone makes a big deal about how people pronounce their name, they probably haven't sold enough stuff because I would much rather have money than my name pronounced. Right. So I don't argue about it.

Speaker 2 (01:22:02):

Yeah. As long as you won't send your body guard off, just kidding. Well, awesome, Jerry, and then we're yeah, we're going to have Austin on the show here too. He's going to talk more about Pius in the kit. I'm sponsoring the show and all that. Um, but just if people want to join that or potentially getting on that, what's the best way for them to do that to,

Speaker 3 (01:22:20):

Yeah. Just send me a message on Instagram. Uh, we'll put you through and set up an interview process. Um, the other thing is if you're listening to this podcast for the first time, you're anywhere in the United States that isn't San Diego. Cause I would love for you to work with Taylor in San Diego, anywhere else grad in the United States definitely look up energy co uh, drop us a line message me on Instagram. I would love to have you on the team we installed in 45 states last year, where the broadest installer in the U S so if you want to work in Maine or Texas or Florida, or travel up to Wisconsin or Idaho, we can install your jobs. We'd love to have you part of the team. We'd love to bring you out to Vegas for an in-person training and get you going. We are probably, um, have the widest opportunity for solar recruiting in the U S and we're so happy to sponsor the show. Definitely. If I was in San Diego, though, I'd be working right here with Taylor and getting some free mentorship there. So, um, don't, uh, don't ask me for hiring and Sandy here, because I'm going to send you right back to this guy, cause he's going to do a better job than we are. So

Speaker 2 (01:23:21):

I don't know about that, but I will try. So yeah, you can hit me up, but, uh, I appreciate that Jerry and all our listeners go hit up Jerry and let him know if anything, you appreciated him coming on the show today. And hopefully we'll have lots of people joining us at Pius and they get to go send in your application for that. Cause remember it's not about how much money you make. It's about how much money you can keep at the end of the day. So Jerry, thanks scam for coming on and we'll be talking soon. Awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:23:47):

Hey, Solarpreneurs quick question. What if you could surround yourself with the industry's top performing sales pros, marketers, and CEOs, and learn from their experience and wisdom in less than 20 minutes a day. For the last three years, I've been placed in the fortunate position to interview dozens of elite level solar professionals and learn exactly what they do behind closed doors to build their solar careers to an all-star level. That's why I want to make a truly special announcement about the new learning community, exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with top performers in the industry. And it's called the Solciety, this learning community with designed from the ground up to level the playing field to give solar pros access to proven members who want to give back to this community and help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry. Brightest minds four, are you ready for it? Less than $3 and 45 cents a day currently Solciety is open, launched, and ready to be enrolled. So go to Solciety.co To learn more and join the learning experience. Now this is exclusively for Solarpreneur listeners. So be sure to go to solciety.co and join. We'll see you on the inside.

DOWNLOAD SOLCIETY APP NOW!

Speaker 1 (00:03):

Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. I teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.

Speaker 2 (00:42):

What's going on Solarpreneurs,  Taylor Armstrong back with another episode, hope you're doing well. We are entering the fall season. It is getting dark earlier and earlier, but if you listen to this podcast, you don't care about any of that because you're going to keep closing deals no matter what that's, what this podcast is all about. And if you're here for the first time, as always, we're here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and then hopefully have a much better time in the solar industry. But today we're going to be talking about a crucial step in the presentation that if you don't get right, it's going to kill your closing percentages. So what is this step? You'll find out here in a second, but before that a couple quick announcements, we have a new sponsor on the show, and I'm really excited to announce our first sponsor.

Speaker 2 (01:41):

You're going to hear about it on the next episode. So don't forget, make sure you're tuning in every week, Tuesday and Friday. And hopefully this is the first listen of your week. Well, I guess maybe not of your week, because we'd come out on Tuesday, but hopefully when they drop on Tuesday and Friday, hopefully it's the first podcast you go to. And as always, if you have suggestions or have topics or people you want on the show, we welcome that with open arms, always look in the future, more solar pros on here, more Solarpreneurs, people that are doing unique things in the industry that are breaking records, or that just have a good story to share because that's where, what we're about on the show. And so before we get into the topic, just wanted to give a shout out to my boy at young Abner, he gave us a five star review the other week.

Speaker 2 (02:38):

He says, great can podcast Taylor shirt, all the tips and tricks to succeed in this industry. My solar game has drastically improved from listening to the podcast on my way to area. Thanks Taylor, 10 out of 10 to recommend young Abner. You rock appreciate the five-star review. And guys, if you would wouldn't mind, please share the podcast, leave us the review. That's how we keep the show going. And that's honestly what brings me in the motivation. A lot of times it's hearing your comments and reviews. So that being said, let's get into the topic. The reason I'm talking about this is because, um, there's a few changes I've made a spoiler. The step we're going to be talking about is just the beginning of the presentation and that is some people call it different things, but could be called the fact-finding could be called. Pre-framing the deal, whatever you call it, we're going to talk about the crucial steps that you need to take.

Speaker 2 (03:40):

Before you jump into explaining solar, before you start going through your numbers, before you start going through your facts on solar, you need the master, the, you know, the first thing you do in the home, which is pre-phase free framing, which is fact-finding, which is just setting the stage for what is about to happen. So I'm going to talk about a few things that I have mixed up a little bit. Um, give you a few tips, things that I'm currently implementing, and then you can feel free to take what you want. Okay. In a few of these things, I get from my friends over at knock star. As many of you know, I am in there, knock star United program, great way, um, you know, to network with other people is to get in a mastermind or a group. And that's what we're doing with our app that we recently recently launched the Solciety app.

Speaker 2 (04:38):

You get to not only network with other top sword professionals and myself, but you also get direct feedback from us on your presentations. So this is something that we can actually help you with. So let's jump into it. So this fact finding a first thing you do, when you get in the house, I'm going to walk you through this steps. And we're only going to talk about this today. So we're going to get into what you should do. First thing you do when you get in the home. Okay? So before you start talking, it makes sure you go into the house with your pad of paper and pen crucial, crucial thing. And it goes without saying maybe a lot of you are already doing this. I know I've talked about in the podcast, but I think it is optional, absolutely essential that you carry just a, uh, what do they call it?

Speaker 2 (05:35):

A yellow, yellow pad, um, yellow pad of paper. Make sure you have your pen at all times. And if you haven't read grant Cardone's, closer's survival guide, he talks about this concept of buyers. Believe what they see, not what they hear. So why should you carry around a pad of paper? Because they're going to believe what you write down. Okay. If you write down that Trump was the best president of all time, and they're going to believe that, okay, maybe not, but there can take a lot more validity to things that they see in front of them versus just you saying stuff. And it's going to help you stay organized too, and write down what the homeowner is saying. Okay. So make sure you have that pad of paper. And what do you do next to when you get in the home? The next step is just relax the homeowner.

Speaker 2 (06:31):

All right. So what do I mean by that? You need to just be a human being. And remember when I heard whispers, um, learning the steps of closing our, uh, VP of sales, that was this thing that you just said, guys, just be a human in there. Don't be a robot. We shouldn't have to have to teach you how to do this. Just be a human. How would you talk to your friend? How would you talk to someone that you're getting to know? That's how you're going to talk to you. Your potential buyer is you're going to help them relax, because if they're not relaxed, it's going to be tough for them to trust you. And something that I like doing, um, is just keeping pictures of stuff you did in your life, on your phone. And so show him in my case, I got my two year old kid.

Speaker 2 (07:20):

So that's one of the first things I do when I get in the home. So I'll show them a picture of my kid. If they have kids, I'll say, Hey, do you have any advice on like how to deal with these kids? They're always bouncing off the walls. Do you have any parenting tips? People love giving you advice. So just a little trick that you can do. Keep some pictures. If you don't have a kid, maybe you have a dog. Maybe your friend has a dog. Maybe you're an owner or an uncle. Hey, keep just some sort of picture on there. And it's a great way to get them talking. If you have a picture of your golden dude or whatever, say, Hey guys have been dog owners for a long time. Um, what's your advice? I don't know. I don't have a dog. So probably a better questions with that.

Speaker 2 (08:04):

But point is keep some good pictures that can break the ice with them and then just be a human a and ask them about their family. Um, I always train my reps form if you don't know that acronym, it's, uh, family, occupation, relationships. And then, um, there was forget the, um, material materialistic. Okay. I'm butchering it. I didn't come prepared with what the am was or motivations. That's what it is. Motivations. What are their motivations in life? So that's a good acronym if you didn't know. And then after you have just built some sort of relationship built the rapport with them, the next step is you need to set the agenda. So what I mean by set that agenda and you tell them exactly what's going to happen and you can talk as long as they'll let you pretty much, right? Unless you're, you know, in the hurry to get to the next one, obviously you're not going to spend, I guess, within reason don't spend hours and you'd be making money, get to other people.

Speaker 2 (09:07):

But the story with this last week, the deal I closed, um, this lady, she wouldn't even let me in her house. She was very hesitant. She said, Hey, I don't do sells. I don't let sales people in my house. I said, ma'am I don't, um, I'm actually not the sales guy. I'm just the one that submits the applications from the neighborhood. I don't even know if like we can do this. So you pull back. That's a good way to get them relaxed. Do your takeaway, do your pull back and say so. Yeah, I just have a couple of things to, they just took like a picture of how your roof would look with a solar on there. So it's quick, we just go in the home and I've just checked that out. But yeah, I have to be super quick myself. And then I flipped the script on her.

Speaker 2 (09:50):

So those types of people, you do, stuff like that. Then what happened after that, with this lady is I was in her home for probably 30 minutes. We talked about nothing related to solar at all. We talked about you're my kid talked about her kids and 30 minutes later, she says, okay, well, anyways, I guess you should tell me about solar. Go ahead. She forgot all about the part where she needed sales people, where she didn't want people coming in the house, selling her stuff. So this is why it's so important. You need to build the rapport. You need to get them to relax, get them to chill out, do your takeaways and let them know that you're a human being. You're not someone coming just to sell them, you know, snake, oil, whatever. And so after you've done that, make sure you set the agenda.

Speaker 2 (10:40):

Hey, and this is where I've taken a few things from the guys over at rockstar and Taylor McCarthy. If you fell him, he has a great way. If you buy there, uh, they have some slicks. He has a process of how to, um, go through all this. So I've adapted a couple of things from him. Then a couple of things that I was doing before I learned their process. So I think it kinda meshed as well, but if you want to go get two and McCarthy's exact way to do it, they have a couple of slicks in some videos where he also goes through his process. And so a couple things I took from them is setting the agenda. Hey, I was already doing this, um, for the most part, but it goes without saying, make sure you tell the homeowner exactly what's going to happen.

Speaker 2 (11:30):

Homeowners hate surprises. If they don't know exactly the steps, they don't know. Um, you know, generally how long it's going to take what you're going to go over in their head. It's going to be strikes against you that you need to be pre-framed they know exactly what's going to happen in this presentation. So you say, Hey, Mr. Homeowner, um, so here's what I'll do. And guess what you get to the solar stuff. So I do have to be a little bit quick, hopefully that's okay with you, but today all I'm going to do pretty cut and dry here. I'm just going to show you a picture of what it would look like on the roof. Go over some numbers so you can see a comparison. And then if it makes sense, I'm the application guy. So I'm the son. I'm the one that submits the applications for the neighborhood.

Speaker 2 (12:17):

That makes sense. We'll submit an application, see if they even can approve your home. But if it doesn't, then we're not going to do anything. Does that sound fair to you? Okay. So that's, pre-framing the deal. They know what's going to happen. And then once you've gone through a couple of other questions at the end of all that I say, yeah. So I'm just going to go through a few general things. So you guys know exactly how the program works be pretty quick. And then after that, you're just going to draw a line down the middle of the, of the sheet of paper. Do you be an apples to apples comparison so you can see exactly what it looks like and then we'll go from there. Sound good. Great. So that's what I say to set up the deal to pre-frame it, it, lots of other great one-liners that people are seeing.

Speaker 2 (13:06):

So write down one liners a year, you know, maybe it's your manager, maybe it's other people on your team. This is why it's so important. I think to be part of some type of team, or at least some type of, you know, program mastermind is because you can take what other people are saying, and I'm constantly learning from the community and myself. So make sure you're keeping a notes app on your phone or a notes section on your phone of just phrases you like and things that you can implement in your presentation. Okay. And so after you've set that agenda, you walk them through a set of questions. So my line is, Hey, so before we even get to the solar piece, um, I just go through a couple of questions with you just to be sure we can benefit the home. Is that okay?

Speaker 2 (13:58):

Great. And then my questions I ask them are number one, have you ever checked out any type of solar for the home? Have you ever looked into any solar type options? And I hear some people say, have you ever gotten a solar quote before? The reason I don't love this question is because you're putting in the homeowner said that they should have looked at quotes. Hey, we want to be the people that are different. We don't want to think that we're just coming by with another solar quote, what we're doing. We're giving them an experience. We're introducing them to a solar program that they have not looked into before. If they get in their head, that this is just another solar quote being dropped off, it's something that they already may have looked into. Then it's game over. What are they going to do? They're going to go get more quotes.

Speaker 2 (14:51):

So that's why I think it's important. You phrase it this way. Have you ever looked into any solar type programs in you want them, um, thinking that this is different. You want to get it in their head? That what you're doing, what you're presenting to them is different than anything they looked at before. And as you're doing this, you're interviewing them. You're writing down all the answers to their questions. It's that's question. Number one. Have you ever looked into solar before? Okay. And then there's a couple of things that, you know, depending on the home, you may have to go through. If you already got their utility bill, you need to make sure you're asking them obviously their questions. Do you plan on using more electricity? Do you think this is accurate for how much electricity you've been using? Have their bill in hand. Right?

Speaker 2 (15:42):

Make sure you go through that with them, make sure you tell them that you want to design their system for what they're going to use in the future. Not necessarily for what they use in the past and something I've learned here from guys on our team is just make it an us versus them scenario. You want to put yourself, put your program against other, you know, against other things they may have looked at. They have heard things about solar, which in here in California, everyone's heard about solar. So you want to say things like, yeah. So I'm gonna start homeowner. You probably heard in the past where people still have to pay extra bills to the utility company or it wasn't covering all the energy they're using. So what we're doing with this program, that's different is we design it for what you're going to use in the future.

Speaker 2 (16:32):

Because most people, they tend to use more energy. That being said, do you guys anticipate in the next year, do you anticipate using more energy than you did last year? You coupon on getting your pool, put in. You plan on getting the hot tub DuPont on buying a Tesla. Do you plan on a mine and some Bitcoin here in the house? It, whatever it is, make sure you're designing it for the future. And it's a great way to kind of tackle that objection they had in their head. That it's going to be the same thing that they looked at before. So make sure you're going through that. And then here's the part that I took from my friend Taylor McCarthy that I love. And I didn't think of it this way. And my old question that used to be what questions or concerns would you guys have about solar?

Speaker 2 (17:22):

And then they would say the typical, oh, um, how much is going to save me? What happens if something breaks up there, yada, yada, yada, that's all good. And I will be writing those down. But what I learned from Taylor McCarthy, Dave, that I thought was genius is take it on the offense. So you tell them the questions that they should have first and you tackle them. And why do you do this? It makes you look like the expert you look prepared. And we all know if you're, you know, knocking doors or overcoming objections, what's the best way to overcome an objection. It's to beat them to it. It's to bring up the concern before they can. Cause if you do that, you're taking the wind out of their sales. They have nothing, nothing to hit you with. So when I heard this from McCarthy, I thought it was genius.

Speaker 2 (18:12):

I think it's great. So give them the main concern that people would have. Then you can still ask them if they have questions after that. But I've found since I've started doing this, probably I don't know, 80 to 90% of the time, they don't have questions aside from these, um, questions that I bring up. So Taylor McCarthy, he calls it the five main questions. And if you don't know these, I would write them down. This is the one big thing that I've changed in my presentation. And so the questions are what happens to my roof. Number two, what happens if we move bottom line? What is the cost to me who maintains the system? And when do we start saving money? And if you think about it, these are basically all the concerns that people have with slower. You just brought them up before they could.

Speaker 2 (19:04):

Hey, and so you bring it up and you answer it before they can even ask them, Hey, before you're even talking about solar, you answer these questions. Okay? So as far as the question, number one was what happens to my roof. So the answer to that, Mr. Homeowner is, um, the roof, the solar up there, it would actually keep the roof cooler. So it prolongs the life of the roof. And then the other nice thing is if they pick your home on the program, then they're actually going to warranty the roof where the panels are, or they're going to guarantee the roof where the panels are. Okay? Assuming you should. Most companies have some type of basic penetration guarantee, but tell them that the roof is protected, where the panels are. Can. The second question was what happens if we move to another big concern?

Speaker 2 (19:59):

And if they move, you answer this one, if you move a transfers over the same way the utility company would, and the new homeowner is able to be more economical with their future expenses. Great answer. Question. Number three was bottom line. What's the cost to me. Okay. McCarthy's answer is your cost is diverting or redirecting what you would have paid to the utility company. And now have the ability to start paying yourself. Question number four was who maintains it as far as the maintenance goes, we're on the hook for the next 25 years to service and maintain the system and something I've added into that is another takeaway type thing, which is why they are a little bit strict with who actually gets approved on the program. In the past, anyone that owned their solar would have to do all the maintenance with it. It was a big added cost.

Speaker 2 (20:55):

Cool thing about this program is if your home is approved and everything goes well, then we actually kept her for next 25 years. And then the last question was when do we start saving money? As far as savings go, the idea is now that you're producing power onsite, rather than you throwing your money away, it would now be stored in a piggy bank where you have an end game. It's a rate questions and answers from a tumor. Curt that again. And this is something that I did change, love what he's doing with that. So I would suggest, definitely adding that into your, um, presentation into your intro there. Okay. And then the last thing that I do after we've gone through these, what do you, um, so first question again was, uh, had you ever looked into any solar type options for the home, a and then you're going through the five main questions.

Speaker 2 (21:54):

And then I also typically ask them, what's your goal with solar? A lot of people will say, oh, we want to save money. And this is where you dig in a little bit, deep, deeper. This is the mistake I used to make as well. Everyone says we want to save money, but what does that mean? They expecting to cut their bill down 90% expecting be zero. So figure out what their expectation is and a good line I use for this. I say, okay, well, um, so if we cut your bill down, let's say 30% and give you way more interview. Would that be a win for you? And I'm talking in California's market. So I know people outside of California, maybe that's not possible. Maybe we're even increasing their bill, but adjusted to whatever market you're in. Maybe it's a, if we kept your bill the same as it is right now, but kept it at a set rate and gave you a little bit more energy.

Speaker 2 (22:46):

Would that be a win for you? Most people it's going to be a, no-brainer say yes to that. And then you've already got a pre-commitment. And then the last question I'll throw in there is do you guys plan on moving, but you already, you know, brought up the answer to that question. So there you have it. So those are the questions I typically go through as you are doing your fact-finding and then to put a bow on all this, after I've gone through all these things, all the steps I try to pre-frame it one more time. Say great. So, um, now, like I said, I'm going to go through just a couple of general things about solar with you guys, make sure you know exactly how it works. And then, like I said, if, if everything does make sense and looks good for the home, we would submit a quick application, fill out a few forms, get the ball rolling, to see if we can actually approve the home.

Speaker 2 (23:41):

And then another thing you can bring up at that point is credit. So you let them know that there will be a soft credit check. So you can ask them about their credits too, if you haven't already, a lot of times you'll do that before you even get into the house for the appointment. And so these are what I'm doing in my fact finding hope it helps. And I'm sure I will continue, continue to add more things to it, make tiny adjustments, but make sure you have a set process in your head. Something that makes sense. So that's the steps that you go through asking those questions. Hey, you can use a lot of those lines that I brought up. Let me know if you guys have any other, um, one-liners anything else that's working really well as you set the stage for your appointments, hope that helps and send it to someone that is struggling with their closing because chances are, if you are not doing an awesome job, if you're not drilled this like crazy, then this could be a big reason why you're not closing the deals that you need to.

Speaker 2 (24:43):

So you set the stage like this. If you get them to make that pre-commitment, then the rest of the appointment should be a breeze just going through, you know, the facts and the figures and button them up with it. So share this with someone, you know, that needs help in their presentation. And don't forget, next episode, we're going to announce the first ever sponsor for the podcast. I'm so excited. You're not going to believe who it is. Okay. So tune into the next episode. And we actually have, um, you know, the man behind the company, that's sponsoring the show, he's coming on the podcast. So you're going to hear from him as well, a couple people on his team. So you're not going to want to miss it. And we will see you on the next show. Hope you enjoyed it and close lots of deals this week. Peace.

Speaker 3 (25:35):

Hey, Solarpreneurs quick question. What if you could surround yourself with the industry's top performing sales pros, marketers, and CEOs, and learn from their experience and wisdom in less than 20 minutes a day. For the last three years, I've been placed in the fortunate position to interview dozens of elite level solar professionals and learn exactly what they do behind closed doors to build their solar careers to an all-star level. That's why I want to make a truly special announcement about the new learning community, exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with top performers in the industry. And it's called the Solciety, this learning community with designed from the ground up to level the playing field to give solar pros access to proven members who want to give back to this community and help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry. Brightest minds four, are you ready for it? Less than $3 and 45 cents a day currently Solciety is open, launched, and ready to be enrolled. So go to Solciety.co To learn more and join the learning experience. Now this is exclusively for Solarpreneur listeners. So be sure to go to solciety.co and join. We'll see you on the inside.

DOWNLOAD  SOLCIETY NOW! 

Speaker 1 (00:03):

Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. I teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.

Speaker 1 (00:55):

Let's jump into it. My name's Taylor Armstrong. I'm here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and hopefully have a much more enjoyable time in the solar industry. Hope you're doing well here. We just passed Halloween and I will say, uh, those that don't know, I have a kid he's two years old now. And if you haven't experienced Halloween with a two year old, it's pretty funny, definitely would recommend it. We took him out. Uh, he was just as Harry Potter, had the glasses, the scar, the, uh, the wand out and, uh, people loved them. We loaded up on the candy. So would definitely recommend that if you, you know, have a kid to go trick or treating with, it's much more, uh, you know, much better reception knocking on doors when people are expecting you to get candy. And that's, what's cool about that holiday.

Speaker 1 (01:50):

If you didn't go trick or treating, that's how you really need to think of knocking doors, selling solar panels. Because if you have that same attitude that people want you at their door, that they're going to open up for you, except you with welcome arms, then it's much more likely to happen. Then if you don't think that if you think it's the power manifestation, right? So that's something I observed while we were out there trick or treating on Halloween anyways, not to get sidetracked, but just had a quick thought about that. So today's episode is a big one because we're announcing our new app that just launched in the app store. You can go download it right now has some amazing features that we're going to be rolling out. We're going to be talking about. And I am just super excited cause we've been working on it for months now.

Speaker 1 (02:40):

And it's been close to launching probably like five times now, but finally, it's available. Finally go download it. And it's a fully functioning. So that's the first ask, go download it and then share this, go share it with someone. Hey, we want people download this app. We a ton of time into it. And we're still making adjustments as we're going to add more things, it's going to get better and better as time goes on and we get feedback from our users, but we would appreciate it. If you go to the app store right now, download it. And then we're going to walk you through a couple of sections here, just super stoked about it. So let's jump into it. So if you download the Solciety app at first of all, I want to give a preface for those that haven't been listening as consistent Solciety is our training platform.

Speaker 1 (03:33):

And previously it was only for paid members. Um, we had that, it was, um, 97 bucks a month. Um, if you listen to the end of most episodes, we had just sort of, the ending was talking about how we had the paid program, the paid mentorship, and previously you could only get access to the app if you're a part of that, but we wanted to make, you know, some adjustments, um, add some features. So primarily this is why we actually just decided to develop our own app because we were using a white labeled version called one huddle where we had our, uh, course our videos on you put quizzes in there, but that's about all you could do. And you know, little fixes here and there, like, you know what, we're paying a lot for this monthly. Let's just make our own app. So that's all we did.

Speaker 1 (04:29):

And it's cool. Cause there's different sections now. That's pretty exciting. So again, go download it. And this is replacing our old app. So this is, we don't have anything on one huddle huddle anymore. Now we have just our own app. Okay. And so, um, there is a paid version still. So those that were previously paying for their Solciety was subscription. You are going to get grandfathered in the 97 bucks a month. And guess what the other big piece is, if you haven't tried out the Solciety paid subscription, we're launching it at 97 bucks a month to everybody. Okay. And it is going to go up probably in about a month. So go jump on. We just wanted to get as many people in as possible. Okay? But that being said, you do not have to pay to get access to the app.

Speaker 1 (05:23):

Hey, so go download up for free. And obviously there's going to be sections. You can't access unless you are a paid member, but a lot of sections that you can. So we're going to go through, what's free. What's not weighing checkout and go download it. So once you are inside, you'll see the homepage and we're going to be rotating videos in there. Just some feature content we have the first video right now is actually an app tutorial. So I'm not going to get super specific because you can go on there and see a video. That's going to explain it a lot than I could on the podcast here, but go see that. So it's on the home page and then you'll see some logos down at the bottom. We have the podcasts, so you can go access every single episode, all in one place, straight from the app.

Speaker 1 (06:13):

So that's the fourth tab over, Hey, and then what's really cool about this. Even if you're not a paid member of Solciety. What I think is probably one of the coolest features on here, we have lined out different partnerships with software companies, with coaches, with trainers, with mentors in the solar industry where you can actually go check out what they have to offer. And we've worked out exclusive discounts for people that go download the app and go check this out. Hey. So if you've thought about getting extra training, even if it's not through Solciety, even if you don't want to be a paid member of Solciety, go download this because you're going to get great content. Number one, world-class trainers on there for free. And then you're going to get number two, you're going to get a marketplace where you can see the courses that we vetted ourselves.

Speaker 1 (07:08):

I've been through. Most of them, myself, vetted them, know that there's some of the top guys in the industry and you're going to get exclusive discounts to lead gen providers, to people teaching online Legion, to people, teaching, closing people, teaching prospecting, just all aspects of solar sales, all in one place. Hey, and that's going to be on the tools section. So if you're on the app, it's on the bottom, right? You can go to the very right corner and you can click on the pro shop. And you're going to see all these different coaches. And again, they're being added, um, every, probably every week or two, you're going to see new updates to this. Hey, but this is what we're launching with. You're going to see coaching on their new courses and training programs, software and tools to fuel your growth and access to top vetted service providers.

Speaker 1 (08:03):

So whatever, you know, whatever tool, whatever coach, whatever software you could think of in the solar industry, go check it out on our marketplace first because we've worked out some exclusive deals, some cool things that you're not going to be able to get access to anywhere else. Just to give you an example, um, rep card, they're one of our, um, partners on the platform and they've agreed to, um, anyone that, you know, gets a rep carb subscription from our marketplace. We'll get a free top card. I think I've mentioned that in the show before, but they just coming out with these new little, top cards, super sweet piece of technology. You can be in a home in an appointment top your customer's phone and your rep card, your digital business card. It's going to go straight into their phones, straight into their contacts. If you don't know, if you don't know what rep card is, go listen to the podcast we did with them.

Speaker 1 (09:01):

That was, um, probably like six months ago, but, uh, you know, great software right there. So again, go check this out. We have all these vetted service providers and some of the top stuff you can find that you will need as you go to go throughout your day-to-day tasks as a solar professional. Hey, so that is, um, the free sections of, um, Solciety of the app. And for those that are interested, Hey, you can get your subscription on here. Again, we're starting at 97 bucks. And the reason I'm saying this has to go up because we partnered with, um, Siro. And again, this was another featured software partner we had. Um, about a month ago, they are a super cool recording software where you can record your door presentation. You can record your closing presentation, get feedback from it, from your managers and you know, people within your company.

Speaker 1 (10:03):

But what we're working out with them, that's going to be available to our paid members is you're going to be able to work with myself and a lot of other top coaches in solar, where we're going to give you direct feedback on your presentations. That's right. And that is for 97 bucks where you're getting direct access to us and direct feedback in your presentations. Um, so that's, I think the coolest feature of the paid of the paid subscription to Solciety. Okay. And it's not, it costs us money. Okay. We're not getting this for free from Siro. Um, so yeah, it's costing us money for every user that comes on. So that's why I know it's not sustainable to do this for the 97 bucks for everyone that comes on, but those that want to take advantage of it, go get on. Like I said, it's probably gonna be about 30 days before we need to up it.

Speaker 1 (11:00):

So if you want to get on that tier and get it at the discount, go jump on, subscribe to it. Okay. We'd love to have you part of the community. And the other cool thing that you're getting is you're getting access to our video chat app. It's called volley. And you're going to be able to get direct communication with the community, with myself, feedback on any struggles you're going through and really just connect with other people in the Solciety community. So that's my two favorite pieces of it. But on a side note, besides that you're also getting full access to the discovery section, which includes way more contents from our, all of our coaches in there and then specific like courses. So instead of it just being videos that you'll get as part of the free Solciety app, you'll get specific, you know, modules in there, for example, videos on closing videos, on your presentation, videos, on up all, things like that.

Speaker 1 (12:00):

You're going to get access to that and be able to get, um, some specific advice depending on what you're struggling with. And so that's all available for our paid members that want to go get on that and have access to some of the top brains in the solar industry. I don't know if I'm the top brain in the solar industry, but I'm going to be connecting you with the best of the best. And that's our goal here at Solciety and here at Solarpreneur is we want you connecting to the best in the industry. Hey, I know I'm pretty good at some things, but that's, that's one of the reasons why I started the podcast just because there's a lot of things I'm not good at. And I want to connect with all those people that are better than me at the follow-up that are better than me at the closing that are better than me at whatever it is that I'm struggling with.

Speaker 1 (12:48):

So that's what you need to do is focus on your strengths and then try to learn from those that are better than you at your weaknesses. Hey, so that's just a little demo. We want to give you of Solciety, go download the app. Let me know what you think would love your feedback on it. And again, just share the podcast. Anyone, you know, that could benefit from some extra dose of solar knowledge or some extra, I dunno, training content. Please share it with them would mean the world with me, it world, to me, if you would tag us all, we're on Instagram. Taylor J Armstrong is a, my username over on Instagram or just, you know, sin, shoot it in a text message to someone at your company or someone in your circle of friends that can benefit from the podcast. That's our ask. Hope you go and download Solciety today.

Speaker 1 (13:42):

Can't wait to hear your feedback and I can't wait for everyone to go check it out for free. Go hop on it. So we'll see you on the next one. Hey, Solarpreneurs quick question. What if you could surround yourself with the industry's top performing sales pros, marketers, and CEOs, and learn from their experience and wisdom in less than 20 minutes a day. For the last three years, I've been placed in the fortunate position to interview dozens of elite level solar professionals and learn exactly what they do behind closed doors to build their solar careers to an all-star level. That's why I want to make a truly special announcement about the new learning community, exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with top performers in the industry. And it's called the Solciety, this learning community with designed from the ground up to level the playing field to give solar pros access to proven members who want to give back to this community and help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry. Brightest minds four, are you ready for it? Less than $3 and 45 cents a day currently Solciety is open, launched, and ready to be enrolled. So go to Solciety.co To learn more and join the learning experience. Now this is exclusively for Solarpreneur listeners. So be sure to go to solciety.co and join. We'll see you on the inside.