The Solarpreneur

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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 (00:01):

What's going on Solarpreneurs. I am stoked for this episode today because we have someone that, um, has been doing something pretty unreal. We've got a guy that's I got a text a few weeks ago, heard about chance here, that's with us today and you're going to hear all about them. But he said to my knowledge and industry record close 68 freaking deals in a month. Let's go appreciate it, bro. So we're going to hear, um, what was working for him and yeah, just kind of his whole story and what he's been doing to achieve that level of success. Cause I've never heard anything like it before, so a chance welcome to the show. Thanks for coming

Speaker 2 (00:40):

On. Yeah, appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:42):

Yeah. So I'm stoked to hear just kind of what led up to this. And I I'll be honest. I didn't believe it. At first when I heard I got a text from my buddy Marshall and um, he told me about this guy and I'm like, no, no way, Marshall. I got a guy that I work with that close. I think, uh, yeah, he's closed like 43 in a month. I was just telling you chance. I, I thought that was the record. Like no ways anyone closing more than, than 43, that Marshall texts me. He's like, no chance got 68. I did. I was like, all right, I got to get this show on the guy on the show.

Speaker 2 (01:15):

Yeah. So a little background about me. Um, again, my name is chance [inaudible] but so ever since like I grew up, I've always had like an entrepreneurial mind, of course. But yeah, when I was 13, I, I mean, I've been doing e-commerce and everything. Solar I've been in the industry for about 15 months. Um, but yeah, literally I came out here, I saw an ad. Um, I actually filed Zane and that's the CEO of better earth. So that's who I work for. But I saw an ad with Zane and I was like, all right, I'm going to apply. So I think that they had like 800 applicants. It was all housing. Um, all expenses paid for, for your first three months. And I dropped out of school about a year and a half in. I never really wanted a piece of paper that millions of people get every single year, but I've flew out here.

Speaker 2 (02:02):

Uh, I got the job flew out here and I dropped everything to my parents, whether you guys like it or not, I'm going to California. So I'm originally from Wisconsin. But when I was about 13 years old, I had like $150,000. So she was my room. I used to buy and resell tickets, shoes, whatever it may be. You name it? I did it. So any type of get rich quick, and I realize, of course you just got to keep putting the work in. You said drop ship, like crazy. But when I was 17 or 16 years old, I created a company called smile, big clothing. So you guys can all check that out if you want. But yeah. Um, I was going through a little different time with my parents and they actually like got a divorce and everything was hard on me just cause my brothers I'm the youngest of, I have three older brothers, but, um, yeah, so I was going through it a little different time and I've made smile, be clothing, just cause I knew a lot of people are going through bigger struggles than myself.

Speaker 2 (02:54):

And that's why I dropped out of school. I used to sit in a dorm room, wake up at four 30, work on websites, inventory, skip all my classes, just to go package a bunch of merch. And it was, it was ridiculous. Yeah. So I dropped everything came out to California and when I came out to California, I didn't have a car or anything like that. I put all my money into the inventory. You still order way more than I could afford just to push my paradigm and make sure that I have to, I have one thing, one option. So, so

Speaker 1 (03:21):

That's awesome. Always been hustling.

Speaker 2 (03:23):

Absolutely. So after that I came out to California, didn't have a car used to Uber, to turf used everything, my bank account to do it and you're out there. There's no other excuse to it. Um, you're either going to sit on the sidewalk, you're going to go bang doors and get after some people. So I did that. And my first month I think I had like 16 deals in my first month in solar. Um, and yeah, we were pushing a lot of paradigms in the company. I've kind of set like that company record right away. And ever since that, like I'm always just been holding myself accountable to my goals of course. And I don't really compare myself to others. I really just keep improving. And that's the most important part and staying consistent and making sure that you're outworking every single person. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:03):

A hundred percent. And yeah, I think that's probably, we'll talk more about this, but that's probably a huge key to success is most guys they'd hit, you know, 30, 40 in a month and be like, like I was thinking, oh, this is probably a record. I don't need to do more than this. Right. Go take a London

Speaker 2 (04:17):

Person.

Speaker 1 (04:18):

Yeah. So I think that's probably a lot of your success. You're was like, oh no, I'm going to beat Mike previous record. So big. And you're probably not even looking at this score, but you're just comparing it to what you hit in the other months, right? Yeah,

Speaker 2 (04:28):

Absolutely. Yeah. I always have a big whiteboard in my room and that's literally all I compare myself to and it's just my last day or my last month or whatever may be. But staying in the present, taking every single day, one by one every day is a sprint always just control what you can of course can control and yeah, you definitely see a lot of results and a lot of improvement as well. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:49):

So we'll get more into the solar stuff, but yeah, I wanted to ask you chance, like with your previous businesses, was that always pretty successful when you started out selling shoes and everything? Tell me about that. Was that always a big success or was that kinda up and down? How did that go?

Speaker 2 (05:02):

You know, it was up and down just because I was in middle school and high school and of course, like I was playing sports. My dad used to be a coach and had a lot of practices after I used to get my phone taken away and all my classes. Cause I was always messaging people back on eBay. So that was always like a struggle and staying up super late and trying to balance work like schoolwork or whatever it may be. But yeah, the shoe is, was like actually a pretty big success, especially just being young. And honestly like, even if I broke even, I didn't like, I, I did pretty well for myself being young, but yeah. I mean, honestly just like the knowledge I learned and seeing how like businesses operate and seeing like how to actually sell definitely benefits in a lot of other ways are than just business. It develops yourself as a person too.

Speaker 1 (05:45):

Yeah. And so I love hearing about people's background because I mean, it's like we were talking about a lot of people in solar. It's kind of the paradigm that reps get is they're lazy. They close a few deals were paid at like we're talking about before we did the show and you literally close a couple of deals a month and be making more than most average Americans make. And so like, do you think, I don't know your upbringing, your previous as previous businesses, things like that. Do you think that contributed to just kind of like the hustle mindset you have now? Or do you think that was more developed or were you born in this way or how do you, how do you develop that stuff? Maybe

Speaker 2 (06:19):

That's a good question. Um, honestly I've kind of just been born that way, but yeah, I've realized, so when I first came out here, it was called the 90 day blitz and I was like, dang, like, we're going to have to go like 13, 14, 15 hours a day or whatever it is, you wake up at six, you come back at until it's, I mean, pitch black. I used to literally knock my own neighborhood until it was literally pitch black. But yeah, I think that was huge for me. And I realized that I've kind of been blitzing for the last seven years. So yeah, I kind of just like trained myself to that and I didn't realize like, of course this is like more like physical or you're walking around, but I used to be on my computer for 12, 13 hours in college and high school or whatever it may be. So it definitely kind of like trained me just to kind of, of course bring it to the doors. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:04):

Yeah. I love that. And so yeah, at better, if, um, do you guys have like a, I dunno, a set schedule for your reps? Are you, you're talking about blitzes, do you guys do mostly Brit blitzes that better? Or how does the schedule work that you guys get your reps success over there?

Speaker 2 (07:19):

Yeah. Good question. So honestly like you you're on your own hours. Like no one really can like tell you exactly what to do. So we don't really have like a schedule, um, a lot of like team leaders or whatever may be, might make of course, like a blitz, like a two week blitz, three week blitz for like, of course their team and have like a cool goal or whatever may be like a competition. But a lot of it is just kinda like all self jammed, like work-based performance, like of course there's you get what you put out of it? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:44):

Okay. Yeah. Cause I'm noticing that a lot. Um, a lot of companies I've been with, they just have the typical, like, all right, guys, we're going to try to go out and work from, I dunno, three to seven today. It's kind of like the hours, but then what I've also seen with that is sometimes I get like mediocre results. Cause you're not doing like go hustle blitz. Everyone's just kind of trained. Okay. Let's try to get her, you know, one to two deals in the week, a hundred percent. If we work 20 hours on the doors or something, then we can probably get like one or two deals. Yeah. But especially recently effort from wat I guess, coming on the podcast is that they're really trying to do more. This blitz. You can get people to hit, you know, high numbers. So I think it's really cool is because if you do that, then a lot of times what I've seen on teams as reps limit themselves, like, okay, I'm going to work my 15 hours, whatever I'm the doors get like, I don't know, maybe four or five deals this month, which is great money.

Speaker 1 (08:37):

But what I think is really cool from guests, I'm hearing, okay, let's do like a three week blitz and then guys are hitting like, I don't know, maybe 15 deals. Whoa. That's crazy. I didn't know. That was possible. Yeah. So it's kind of less also breaking the mindset too, from what I've seen during the blitz and really like working more hours and they thought they could work and getting them out of the shell because yeah. I mean, I've kind of been in that, unfortunately I think it's time for me to do a blitz, but I've kind of been in the same thing, work three, four hours a day or at least knocked doors for four hours a day. I'm in San Diego. So I'm just working kind of local areas too. Yep. And so it's yeah, it's an easy trap to fall into is I'm just going to work like, you know, kind of, not the minimum, but minimum to get a couple of deals in a week and then not push myself further. So would you say that's a big thing for you guys to just um, or in anything you guys do to help reps just, I don't know, increase their potential and break past the limits, things like that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:29):

100%. One thing that I do for like any type of my reps, like, um, so when I first started my team just cause I've only been in the industry for about say 15 months. So I brought four guys out, uh, probably my third month in and yeah, they were up at six o'clock I'd bang on their doors. Make sure that they're up, whether you're going to be reading meditating, of course, doing whatever that's going to get your mind. Right. Nine o'clock we'd have a morning meeting right after the morning meeting you're at the doors and you're not coming back until it's pitch black. There's no other way around it. Or is it going to be locked if you come back, you're not coming in. So sit in your car, do follow up whatever it is. But definitely like that was really, really beneficial. So I came in, his name was Andrew Zimmern, Betty.

Speaker 2 (10:05):

I came in, I lived with [inaudible] and that was big for me just to have like my routine of course down. And after that, like, yeah, like you're not going to waste your time. There's nothing worse than going to hit 200, 300 whatever. How many doors in a 10 hour period and just get nothing. So yeah, definitely just making sure like your health, like holding yourself accountable and everyone else, like being a leader, you got to lead from the front. If you're not doing results, why would I would really reps ever get results? So always pushing, like it's addictive. It's very, very addictive to push everyone else's paradigm, see like the results that you can bring to them and see, of course like when you do 60 ideals, anyone that does tens thinking, oh my gosh, like I got to get going. So it's the same thing with my team. And last, last month we did like 200 something like 200 deals as a, as a team, which is pretty cool

Speaker 1 (10:54):

And credible. And yet you're what, you're 21, right chance 21 crazy say I'm here 28. And then like, man, these young hustlers coming out, it's funny, I'm on a team right now where at like my previous company as with a lot of us were like married guys and yeah. All right guys, let's close our deals, get back to their kids, whatever. But now I'm seeing these guys coming in like your age 21 and they're just like straight hustle.

Speaker 2 (11:18):

Right? Not as many distractions. Right. You don't have a full-time job at home with the kids

Speaker 1 (11:22):

Or whatever it may be. Yeah. Obviously you don't got, you know, wife, kid to give back to you, anything like that. Right. So I wish, I wish I would've been more like that when I was your age too though, is because like, even though I'm married now, I'm still probably working about the same as when I was like single and all that. Yeah. But if I get a go, if I could go back, I would have done like more blitz style when I had more time and I have like wife, whatever, to go back to your kids. Um, so for all like you young people listening, you young folks, not like me, 28, married and all that. I think that's a huge key push as hard as you right now, because trust me when you're married, when you have a kid and stuff, I mean, you're still gonna push, but it's not the same.

Speaker 1 (11:58):

Like you're not going to be able to push as hard. You still, still going to your bullets and stuff like that. But uh, I mean I'm already sleeping on them. Not like literally, but I'm already like in the doghouse sometimes with my wife, like I hate you putting too many hours this week, stuff like that. Right. So I think that's a big thing. Um, but yeah. So for you chance, like people you're training, um, do you ever get any pushback or is it like people you bring in, are you immediately saying, all right guys, we're blitzing like crazy or do you get pushback from guys? Like, cause I know obviously you're a straight killer out there working all these hours and like hitting massive things and all that. But what about for guys that aren't like you that come in, maybe they've never worked this hard in their lives. Um, anything else that you guys do to kind of like condition them to really hit big things and break those limits? Is it just kind of doing bootcamp style, like you said, or anything else that you guys?

Speaker 2 (12:46):

Yeah, I think like the biggest part is like setting the expectations straight right away. So, um, if they're getting pushed back or like, I don't see like them actually doing it, then I'm just not going to bring them out. So like I have a bunch of people that want to come out, but yeah, just making sure we're scaling, like of course, like a, a good pace and making sure where I can put a lot of time into these guys, but no there's really no pushback or anything like that, just because I tell them exactly how it's going to be. I tell them they have to get up at six and they're not gonna be able to come back. So they know that they're gonna be working 80 to 110 hour weeks. And that's literally the truth that month in August. Like literally I didn't have time to eat. So just being super busy and making sure that they are, and again, like that's my job. Like if they put the work in, I want to make sure that they like see a ton of results last month. Um, one of my top guys, Ryan testing her, he had like 28 deals. So it's definitely just shifting paradigms and yeah, everyone works really, really hard and yeah, we're just a big family. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:40):

That's awesome. And so let's get into a little bit like this huge month you had tell me, yeah. You talked about, you barely have time to eat in, obviously in the, you know, super busy, like 68 deals. I don't know how you do anything besides close deals. Um, literally, but yeah. Do you want to tell it, like, what was your schedule this month and did you kind of map it out? Yeah, yeah. Tell us about that. Oh, this came to be, yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:02):

So I mean, of course my goal is actually 70 for that month and I literally saw myself accountable. So I took a whiteboard and I literally broke down every single day and I just kept chasing myself if I'm behind, I gotta like catch up of course. But my schedule was of course I get up super early and since I do have guys, like, I seriously would not go to bed until like 12, um, going over like pitches wins. And of course, like voice memos, like you're

Speaker 1 (14:25):

Still managing a team while you're trying to

Speaker 2 (14:27):

Live. Yeah. I live with 15 guys, so I brought in a whole entire squad. Um, we're actually in Orinda, California, but yeah, literally I was managing everyone and I went to Arizona. I was brand new market for me, which was definitely different. Um, but kinda crushed it there. I had 11 deals in four days there and then I ended up having to go to LA, um, which is a newer market for me as well. And I think I had like 14 deals in like five there. So yeah, just like adapting to whatever, like is put in front of you. And I did travel a lot, but it was pretty sick.

Speaker 1 (14:58):

Wow. That's awesome. So like 6:00 AM and then like you're talking about before is kind of like 6:00 AM then meaning at nine and then just like knocking her in Dale's still dark, dark,

Speaker 2 (15:08):

Basically a hundred percent. Yeah. And then I think like the most beneficial, like the, something that was really, really beneficial for me is a lot of times when people like get an appointment sad or like your time is so valuable, as I said before, but like, don't sit people out. Of course aren't worth your time. So I don't like force it anyone, like if I get, say I go get eight or nine calls in a day, like I'm probably saying only three or four of them. So I like that was super beneficial or don't like set appointments way out, same day or next day at all times. And yeah, your time is super, super valuable. Like I don't think I've ever sent an email with a proposal in my whole entire life. It's either you're going to sit with me or are you just not going to go solar with me?

Speaker 1 (15:46):

That's awesome. Yeah. No, I think that's a big thing. Especially new reps. I see they get kind of this, I dunno, we're rushed. They're having success when they get a lead and maybe, maybe they'll let them in the house and they're like chatting and stuff. But I know for me as a new rep, I would like get in the house with some old lady or whatever that wasn't even qualified for roofs, like wrecked. She has like zero credits, um, you know, on social security and all this stuff. And I like sweet. I just booked a solid appointment. She's letting me in. She's like telling me your whole life story. And then two hours later she's like, oh, by the way, a non-interest in solar have zero credit. I'm like all this stuff.

Speaker 2 (16:21):

Yeah. Just getting kind of all that stuff out of the way to start. And that, that is definitely like the most important part. A lot of people want to like set appointments that they just force it and they kind of waste an hour and a half, like an hour and a half on the doors. That's that's real are leads. So super, super important just to balance your time. And again, like, know that your time is that valuable in this industry? It's crazy. Like I always like to look at it as like an Easter egg hunt, right? Like literally you're just looking for golden eggs. So gain like the hardest people, like the hardest people look you out are the easiest to close. So yeah. And then of course like simple is better. So I don't really like talk about the product as much. Like I attach myself to the deal and from there, like it's really, really simple.

Speaker 2 (17:01):

You got dumbed down the deal, I'm big into analogies and just really putting into perspective on, I only can help your situation. This is something you've already been paying for. Like, all you do is you just pay a lower bill and that's kind of where it comes down to. And after that, like once it clicks or you get like that one objection or they like spilled the beans on why they didn't do it in the past and why it didn't make sense in the past. That's where you just actually tee that thing up and hit a home run.

Speaker 1 (17:25):

Yeah. I love that. And now I think those are super key to, um, just helping people dumb it down as in as simple as possible. I think the most successful guys I've seen in the industry are breaking it down. So basically like a third grader could understand it so simple. Like how could you not do it? Absolutely. Oh yeah. Tell me, do you have any, uh, specific analogies you use that you feel like you help a ton as you're sitting in homes? Yeah, just

Speaker 2 (17:49):

Like a lot of the times, like even it's on a door most of the time like that, I really like dumb it down to them. But one thing that I always like to say is like, so of course, like they're already renting their power and now they get to own it for nothing on their pocket. But then I just like put it into perspective on like things that they actually own. Like you probably own this house. Right. And they go, yup. Probably on your car. Yup. I'll commute on your power. Pretty contradicting. You get to own your power for less than you already renting it for, for nothing out of your pocket. You literally could have $0, your name to do this. My mom always says when it sounds too good to be true, it usually is right. What's the catch there. Isn't one. And that's why I moved all the way from Antarctic, Wisconsin for this. Do you get your bill online or in the mail?

Speaker 1 (18:30):

The assumption love it. And that's awesome. Um, ask you. Yeah. And so like for guys, uh, another thing I was going to ask you a chance, um, especially for newer reps, like I've seen just recognize someone that's super qual qualified versus someone that could be possibly a waste of time. And when you close these 60 deals, I'm sure you had to be like, you know, super, super good with your time. So how did you recognize, like maybe someone's going to be waste of time or like filter all these people they're going to be felt credits or they weren't good leads. How do you filter out the holes and just spend your time with as many good prospects

Speaker 2 (19:04):

That's possible? Yeah. Good question. Honestly, I usually like kind of qualify them on the door. Um, I asked them questions after like get the bill and everything, like start talking about like them talk about myself for a little bit. And then after that, like if I see like something that may be a concern, like a roof or whatever it may be, I kind of get it out of the way, but what I usually do, and I dunno if this is like the best strategy I, it works for me eyes. I always just double book appointments. So ones that are like iffy or like, um, maybe they won't sit cause it was like a one-legged or whatever. It may be. Alice have two appointments. So I get to pick two, one doesn't show the other one's going to show. So that was something that I always like, felt like was really, really beneficial, but all our part two is just mapping out your schedule. So before I go out to Tara for out to of course, knock, I always have like my schedule plan. So like there on my time, I'm not on theirs. So making sure that I'm not putting an appointment right in the middle of the day, all my appointments would be at like 4 30, 6, 7 30 and nine. So that's where I always would do I have four appointments, I got to fill them. And that's what of course leaves you open for some same days. But yeah, that, that definitely works for me, um, at almost always. So yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:10):

Yeah. I like that. Yeah. I don't feel this in the grant cartoon much, but it talks about like new problems. It's good to have new problems. Right. Like double booking appointments. That's a problem. Right. But it's like, like, especially in solar, how many appointments fall through or stuff happens. Right. So I think, especially if you're trying to do volume like that, you gotta have like some deployments just stacked all day. Absolutely laying them up. And so for our doubters out there chance tells like how many of these were self Jan's? Um, like, I don't know. It's almost like a little bit of the stats for

Speaker 2 (20:40):

Yeah. They were like almost all self gen. So, I mean like in Arizona, like that 11, um, was also of gen I one the days in California at six same days and our dad five same days and those are all door knocks. Um, and so Cal I had those 14, those were self gen, but yeah, like almost all of them, herself, Jen, of course I have to help some of my teammates like out, um, if they ever need like help on a deal, but a lot of times, like I'm always rescheduled in my appointments for it. So it's kind of like a sacrifice, but of course, like their production is more important to me than mine. So yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 (21:12):

Yeah. That's a good mindset to have. And then how many, uh, at a little 60 for Lozar Blanco, bro, he probably had like 40 of those cancers come to St. John's

Speaker 2 (21:21):

When you think you can look at my commission summary. Um, now I've probably had like transparently. I probably had like six to eight, cancel, maybe nine. Um, and I mean, sometimes you just can't control it. Two of them were after the sites for it came out, the roof didn't qualify and they didn't want to do a reroof, but that's just the honest, transparent truth, but people can think whatever they want, I guess. Right. Yeah. You can shadow me on the door then

Speaker 1 (21:43):

That's seriously. We all go out the mouth. It's more video footage. Yeah. But no, that's still incredible. I mean 10% was at 10% or something maybe. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Appreciate that. Super incredible. Um, so yeah, but no, I like how you're still rep focused. Like most guys they're hitting huge numbers. I see like, all right guys, I'm not going to take any deals. I'm not like focused on anything and they just have to go all in. But the fact that you did this all while still like leading a team and training guys and still going to other people's deals and that makes it, uh, you know, even more incredible. It was crazy. Yeah. Um, what did your guys think when you hit this really? Like, just like, like blown away or

Speaker 2 (22:24):

Not really? Um, or they saw,

Speaker 1 (22:26):

You said you hit been hitting some big numbers.

Speaker 2 (22:28):

Yeah. I was hitting like a lot of big numbers before and like I was really like rep focused then like a lot of times when you have new reps and they don't know exactly like what's a really good appointment or wherever it may be like there I'm sitting with people that would know show or I'm driving an hour just to go to an appointment that doesn't sit or whatever it may be. And I would still do like 40 some or whatever it may be. But yeah, a lot of my guys weren't really surprised. Like I set that goal in our morning meeting and I kind of like spoke it into existence. I like just telling someone or the team what I'm going to do. And then I already put it out to the world, so I have to do it otherwise I make a fool out of myself. So

Speaker 1 (23:03):

Yeah. That's awesome. And yeah. So like leading up to that, you had a few months, you were saying before we started this a few months at like 40, right. And yeah. And then you just like anything that led to you wanting to like hit 70 or just like, I'm just want to have a massive month and just go all out. I think the,

Speaker 2 (23:18):

I guess part is I didn't have like a brand new like waiver recruits. So a lot of these guys have been out here for like two months beforehand or two and a half months I would say. So like they were kind of on their own doing all like solo production where then I really got to like blitz on my own. Okay. So that was nice. And of course, like I had some people, like they I'd knock with a couple of people just for fun. Um, just cause they always like to knock with me and I always like to get some deals from, so yeah, again, like very unselfish. Like I love, literally change other people's lives. That's the most important part to me. And like, that's my why. And so the more people I can bring out, the more differences in life, second change, like that's a big, big win.

Speaker 2 (23:56):

It's not even about the dollar science, not about the deals, not about the numbers, nothing like that. It's about really just like of course, like switching their paradigm and changing their lives and their family's lives. And that's why my why's like to have a billion dollars to make a bit like a billion differences. So it kind of goes back to like smile, be clothing for every order we get, we donate a t-shirt to a child in the hospital. So yeah. So I've always just been a big giver. My mom's always taught me that and we used to sacrifice our Christmases for other people's Christmases. So it really is just like, that's the coolest part about this industry is like, we only can help someone out, literally every single house that you see. It makes sense for them unless they sit in the dark with like a flashlight. Right. They're going to have a high enough electric bill. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (24:33):

Yeah, yeah, no, I think it's yeah. All the successful people. I know they have sort of that same mindset and Hey, you probably read some of those books, you know, like the Zig Ziglar, Zig Ziglar and you know, greatest salesman in the world. It's not their book. And that's something that key points of it is like the more you can care about other people, the more you're going to get back, the more deals you're going to get back in your life. Absolutely. So big key. I think Fran, when Jane have success, don't like, look at it. How many people can you serve this this month? How many people can you help? How many lives can you change? And uh, I think that's, there's a big thing speaking to in existence. Do you like your saying? Absolutely. Um, and so yeah, another question I just thought of too, like you mentioned, you're double booking appointments, things like that. So let's say you have you show up to one, they sit then the other one. What do you do with the other one? I just show them what time.

Speaker 2 (25:20):

Yeah. It's true. My texts really quick and say like, Hey, my meeting's going a little bit longer than already. Like of course it plans to say, I didn't have an appointment after the seven o'clock work or seven o'clock probably will work for you. Right. And then after like a lot of times, or I can just reschedule it for like the next morning, like 8:00 AM or at late night, again, like nine o'clock, eight o'clock. So I always like to set up appointments early, early morning or late at night. So I always want to keep that window where I can go hit some doors. Yeah. Okay. Pipelines always got before.

Speaker 1 (25:46):

Yeah. That's awesome. And so yeah, for, uh, same days, how, yeah. Um, to go into a little bit of like your clothes, how long would you say your typical clothes works? And what's kind of like your closing process, if you don't mind sharing?

Speaker 2 (25:59):

Um, honestly I would say my typical clothes is like 30 to 35 minutes. Okay. So I get to the numbers, um, probably in like five minutes and after the numbers, I'm probably getting to the forms in 20 minutes tops. So keeping it really simple, like we were already talking about, but yeah, when you keep it simple, like once you're like a lot of people like to overexplain the deal and you're just shooting yourself in the foot and you're over analytical then of course like you keep telling him all this like nonsense then of course they're going to say, yeah, I might need to do some more research instead. You're just paying a lower bill. Hopefully don't have a problem with building equity in your property, owning your power instead of renting it. And that will be good. So yeah. That's like how long my closing takes, but yeah, I've talked about like a couple of main points right away.

Speaker 2 (26:40):

Um, probably like for five minutes, just like information, um, just to give me like a better feel. What's your biggest concern? What's your biggest goal? Have you ever looked in going solar? And a lot of people, what they do is like they, oh, my biggest concern is I don't want to lease my power. I don't want to pay anything out of pocket. Like, yeah. I wouldn't want to either. And I keep going and I want to use all of that as ammo. Like once I get to like the numbers, after that, I can just tee up whatever, like of course there, my biggest concern was, and that's how I go right into my clothes. Really like harping on the things that they're concerned about. And then from there keeping it simple. It's just like, this is an absolute, no brainer. Nice.

Speaker 1 (27:13):

So, so you don't go, like, I don't know. What about for people that are like have checked out solar are more analytical, things like that. Do you change your presentation much? Or is it pretty much the same with what those guys do? I go chance we've gotten like four quotes now. Like just show me the numbers, whatever.

Speaker 2 (27:29):

Yeah. So I'll never go right to the numbers no matter what. Um, I always just tell them like, we'll get to your number. So like, if they say like they have three or four quotes or whatever, it may be right away. What I'll always say is like, okay, like I'm going to keep away from the whole entire, like sales spiel. But I do want to go over like, like a couple of things. We'll take two minutes, we'll get right to your numbers. Absolute like that. They're actually open-minded. But a lot of times, even when people get quotes, they don't even know what like net energy metering is or whatever, how everything works. And then they ask that and literally just like kills like your momentum and the deal. Yeah. So that's something where I get everything on the way they have to have full understanding before I show them their numbers. After of course the numbers are going to make sense. I'll tell them why we're different. And then from there I'm going to reach the close.

Speaker 1 (28:08):

Nice. Nice. So it sounds like even before you even get an appointment, it sounds like they already kind of pretty good, pretty good idea of like how the process works, how the solar works and like, like with your analogies, things like that. Cause you don't, you don't get into a ton of like descriptive stuff in the presentation. A lot of that stuff they know before.

Speaker 2 (28:25):

Yeah. Um, they know like a lot of things, like, I don't really like get into like equipment as much. Of course I'll tell them like how many like modules I have and I'll tell them like the brand of the inverter, but from there, just like, honestly I could put a stuffed animal on your roof. And since he ever preferred like a production or performance guarantee, like either he doesn't matter, like the system's going to produce. So that's where like I kind of stay away from that kind of stuff. But yeah, I kind of get right to the numbers right away. And then it's just going for the clothes. But honestly their clothes, every, almost every single time I sit down with.

Speaker 1 (28:56):

Yeah. The big part is just your mindset. I can tell you, like I can tell just from the way you're talking, like every deal you sit in, it's like, you're, you're telling yourself they're close. As soon as a slam dunk

Speaker 2 (29:06):

Every, every time. Like if you have any doubt or like any doubt in your mind that you're going to a deal and they're not going to close, like yeah, you just spoke that into existence. Every single time I go to a door or every single time I go to like a meeting. Yeah. Like my number one, like my mindset slurry, just like you're closed. Yeah. Like yesterday, like for instance, both of my people were like, yeah, we're just looking around. Um, we're not gonna sign any papers. And after him, I was just like, you know, tell me that in about 45 minutes, buddy. Exactly.

Speaker 1 (29:34):

Yeah. It's a Champion's mindset and every high producer has exact same mindset that you have, um, take taking their McCarthy. Um, yeah. He came on the show and he's seen a lot of the same stuff that you said, it's like this one's going to close a hundred percent, a hundred percent. This one's closed. He'd snapped him as he's walking up to the doorstep. Absolutely. Just based on stuff. So it's like, he's speaking in existence. You have that. And then yeah. Another thing that, uh, I can grant Cardone talks about too, you're just looking at, um, stuff that they've already bought. It's like they were bought this nice car. They already bought a house like white, white shouldn't they buy their electricity. Why shouldn't they own their lectures direct. Yeah. They're not going to do it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:08):

Yeah. Literally rather like you're already paying for it, you know, literally just makes no sense not to do it. Yeah. So,

Speaker 1 (30:16):

And so if you're, that's another key for our solar printers listening, if you're not like a hundred percent sold on your product and a hundred percent sold that you're helping people out a ton and just like, don't have that complete confidence, just figure out a way to get that. Cause that's going to be the difference maker. Like probably for you. I'm going to guess that like when you first started, you closed, you said you closed 16 deals, right? Yeah. You probably know new, barely anything. It's the lawyer at that point, right.

Speaker 2 (30:40):

At you, 70% of the company better earth. And that was more about sorta to me stale. So yeah, literally you don't have to get like super descriptive and it makes sense. So that's all it matters.

Speaker 1 (30:52):

Yeah. Yeah. So that's the mindset you got to have for our listeners. Figure out a way to develop that and that's going to help you have this success theater trying to hit for sure. And so at chance, tell us, um, like for people that are having a high cancellation, I know that's another thing we deal with. Sometimes that a lot of reps, especially in California, it's been hit so hard. There's like so many comparisons, anything you do that helps to have like have so many of these push through and actually go to install. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:18):

I mean, there's always like a couple of things it's always different. Like for every like situation, but one thing maybe like take a picture of the homeowner Senate right after, just to like, of course, like when they go to your text messages, like they see them smiling. But another thing too is like, stay at the house, like build value with them. Like they can't like think you're actually selling something. So if I put a girl Pearl on my body, every single time that I do in FC, after I leave it, literally we're friends. So it's not like, oh, thank you for helping with the solar. It's just like, thanks brother. You're the man. You know? Like that's just kind of how it is. And it's just like, I always like put it into perspective, like talk to people like they're your best friend? Like your parents' best friend.

Speaker 2 (31:52):

Yeah. So doing that, it's just like, your tonality is not sales. Like my tonality and the FC is just like this. I sit back, relax, whatever it may be. But yeah, I think the biggest part is of course like do follow up, but don't do too much. And with it, take a picture with them at the very end. So they always have that. And then in our thing I was to do is just of course, like we still got to make sure the site is going to qualify too. So if the site doesn't qualify, like literally you're Sol you know, then you're stuck with PGNE. But as long as you don't have a problem with paying a lower bill, bill and equity, and of course using more electricity instead of chucking it down the gutter every month, like, man, this makes sense. Right. Nice. Yeah, absolutely. And then from there, yeah. Then I'll maybe bring up a testimonial, provide them with a reference if they really need it, but you always have like that feel. But a lot of times, like the people that I have, like QL a lot of times are people like no one else really like will QL. So it's clearly new to them. Qualified lead. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:45):

Yeah. Okay. No, that's helpful. And so you're saying you're taking a picture with them and then texting it to the homeowner right after and just seeing like congrats, something like that.

Speaker 2 (32:53):

Yeah, absolutely. You can't wait to start saving your wallet in the planet. Nice. Let's get to it, you know, and then with it, other than that too, sounded like a $5 Venmo. Here's a taste of your solar savings, whatever it may be. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:03):

That's cool. That's big. And yeah, a lot of people, uh, you know, do the videos. I mean video picture, that's a big thing. That's been a game changer too is because you can get like a video or a picture. Um, I mean, especially if they're explaining back to you, like why solar is a good thing. Yup. Like sums in hell with me. Hey, let's grab a quick video. Just tell me like, if you like the experience, whatever, it's be like 30 seconds. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Like, sure. And then they're having to sell me again on why they even wanted to go like solar in the first place. Yep, absolutely. So, yeah, that's huge. And then like, um, another big thing you're seeing are same day appointments. So I get a lot of questions asked about that from people I go, how do you, I think that's kind of a newer thing. I didn't like when I first started in the floor, no one that I knew of was doing same day appointments. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:47):

That was the same thing with better earth. My first starting to, we were definitely a lot smaller and I remember people were posting like same-day Q or something like that. And when I first started, but um, same days and everything, like, it's not too difficult. Like of course, like make sure like both decision makers are there, even if they're not like a one-liner and everything, like, they're not hard, but with it, like, I always just like say, Hey, I'm going to send this over to our engineers. We'll be back in 30 minutes. You're free. Right. Yep. Okay, cool. And I just go right back. Um, every single time I don't really like same, like knock it and go right in. I do that sometimes, but a lot of times, like, I want to be like, Hey, I'm actually going to take about 30 to 45 minutes to drop your custom plan.

Speaker 2 (34:22):

So it doesn't look like I just like put these panels on their roof. Where the heck did you just get your numbers? It like makes it look like I put a lot more time into their plan. So that's why I do that. Um, I realized like, and then of course, like I'll send them like give them like the website. They can look at like this little training course, just so they have a better feel for it. And then I come back and like, they're somewhat knowledgeable about it. Or they looked at our reviews or testimonials or whatever it may be. Okay. But I don't get business cards or anything like that.

Speaker 1 (34:47):

Yeah. That's I think a big camp scene dues, just like there's something Missy did you're Hey, you're going to be, you'll be here 30 minutes. Right. Someone will take me. Cause like, especially reps that I see newer reps, I'm training and stuff like that. I go, what am I getting? Not getting same days. They're going. They never free. But the way they're asking me is like, Hey, are you guys going to be here? Like here? But like notice the difference. You're just like, you're, you'll be here 30 minutes. Right. We'll be right back with it. Absolutely. That most people are going to be here if that's the only option in their mind. Right. Cause you didn't say

Speaker 2 (35:16):

Right. And then also like of course, like put it like bill and scarcely behind it. Like we're only picking out two more homes than the zip code. So like, this is a big opportunity. Like again, I don't want to waste your time. I don't want to waste my time. But like hopefully you guys are on the right rate schedule. If you're not. Or if it's like this doesn't make sense. I'll just shoot you a text and say, Hey, this is not going to work for you. But I'm actually meeting with the Benson's like four homes down. You probably even know them. They always walk the German shepherd at seven. But with that, I'm actually going to be back at seven or eight, which one works best. And just like a multiple choice answer. Like they have to pick one of them. It's not your, or you forget seven. Now they can make any excuse. You know, like now I have to go to my kid's game or whatever it may be. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:54):

Yeah. That's awesome. And then you get the takeaway in there too. Only picking two more homes in the zip code on the street, um, are big, so chance, some awesome stuff. You've been, uh, Sharon Yan. I can see why you're having success. It's just like all these little things, nothing like crazy think people think they're going to hear some crazy lanes you're using her. Um, some of the same, but really I think it just comes down to you're working more hours than I think probably anyone has in a month. And so it was like, I don't know. Do you, do you have an idea of how many doors you knocked or how many total hours you put in that month? If you had to guess?

Speaker 2 (36:28):

I mean like doors are knocked like a lot hours, a ridiculous amount. Like seriously. Like I didn't do anything fun, you know? Like I just worked and like, I love doing that. And I wanted, like I told myself, I want 70, I fall short by two, but yeah, it was a ridiculous month, but honestly I'd say doors wise, I don't really have to hit like a crazy amount of doors. It sounds like kind of dumb, whatever it may be. But yeah, I really don't have to hit that main doors. Like with Ryan, like testing her, we went and knocked and I think we knocked for probably 45 minutes and we had four same days and like, um, but yeah, like when you, when you said that too, it's just like, yeah, everything's super simple. The biggest part about anything is just attaching yourself to the deal.

Speaker 2 (37:09):

Like if it was the company there, there's a reason why reps have four and one has 40 or one has 10. Someone has 60, whatever it may be. It literally just comes down to your conviction and how much you believe in the product and how much you believe in yourself. Once those two things add up and they're in line, there is no reason you can't like double or triple your production that you're doing right now. And so that's the biggest part. And that's the thing that I knew I could control. It was like how hard I'm going to work. And every single day, like there's not one person like out there that will outwork me. And I work when others don't I knock when others don't and that's why you get those results. But yeah, it's super simple, but yeah, just dumbing down the deal, keeping it, like you literally could tell, like tell us like a third grade and they would do it. You know? So honestly that is something like I found myself like

Speaker 1 (37:56):

Pretty good at it. Yeah. No, no doubt about that. And I mean, in your you're working like zero days off in the month, right? Third 30 days, same schedule 6:00 AM till dark every day for that month. So usually every day

Speaker 2 (38:09):

And that's, that's the truth. I mean, sometimes like of course, like around the holidays or maybe there's a day. Um, but like when it comes to a blitz, like my first 90 days I did not take one day off. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:20):

Yeah. And so like with your guys' blitzes, um, cause I mean that's crapped on hours that guys are working, so I'm sure, you know, guys, when you do your blitzes, you're working straight hard, but yet for you, do you have anything like to re kind of rejuvenate yourself or you get yourself back in the flow? Cause um, I mean, I don't think you're gonna work that day. That schedule, I would see like 365 for sure. In a year, but like what do you do on your off days? Let's say your months, you're not trying to hit 70 anything you do to kind of like refresh yourself and yeah. Get yourself back back to new, to do another blitz or anything. Yeah. That's

Speaker 2 (38:54):

Um, on my off days and everything, like, I'm still like doing a lot of personal development, like helping everyone else, but maybe I'll go hit the links. Maybe I'll go get a round of golf. And um, I really don't golf much anymore. I used to work at a country club back home. So I used to golf every day when I was like in high school. But, or like in the summer days, like I used to play a little bit of golf, just free golf, but yeah, maybe like going out to dinner with some of the guys, um, like top producers hanging out with some friends like here and with that, like honestly, like it doesn't really feel like a job just because my house is like a college house. It seems like, well, we just all have like that same mindset where it's not like drinking and stuff. Like no one drinks in her house. Like of course, like we'll have one night out or whatever it may be in a month. Yeah. But yeah, it's just like everyone just surround yourself with people that have the same mindset and like gets fun.

Speaker 1 (39:43):

15 dudes you got now it's yeah. It's a

Speaker 2 (39:45):

Pretty big house, but it definitely got a little more crammed with, so we're actually splitting back up. So like two Airbnb's. Okay.

Speaker 1 (39:51):

That's awesome. Well, good stuff, man. Will a chance. Yeah, you're crushing it. Dude ends. We appreciate your having on the podcast before you kind of start wrapping up here. Do you want to tell guys where anything can kind of connect with you more or find you on social media and all that good stuff? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:04):

Yeah. My Instagram is chance Pran. So C H a N C E P R O N. And that's kinda like my main thing. So yeah. Find me on Instagram or you can file smile, be clothing on Instagram, wherever it works for me. But yeah. Anyone on this podcast appreciate you guys listening. And from there, like if you guys ever have any questions or interested in having like mentorship, wherever may be like, you guys can always reach me there. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:27):

Yeah. He'll probably be on the doors when you hit him up. Probably. Huh? Maybe it'll take a couple minutes. It's funny. That's incredible, dude. And um, yeah. For your clothing, do you guys, uh, do you want to tell us a little bit about your clothing stuff? Is that a like, well door knockers, like this clothing or you got any ed door knocking gear or anything like that yet?

Speaker 2 (40:44):

Yeah. I mean like smile big, like your solar savings. Get it like for like, of course, like a family, um, on install day. I mean literally and your smile is contagious, so yeah, like, honestly it's it's playful brand. It gets pretty sick. Like it's all comfy clothes, all the best like materials I used, I went to Las Vegas to make sure I got all the best materials. It's all American made. But yeah, I honestly, I think like our clothing is literally good for anyone, any age, any gender, whatever it may be.

Speaker 1 (41:12):

And it's your customers or anything like that? She saw the sun smiling or something. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:17):

Or shirt on smile big. But yeah, a lot of that stuff, like I had designed all of it and definitely being able to put a lot more capital into it and we got a lot of big things coming, so hopefully everyone will follow along. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:27):

Oh cool man. So just before we wrap up here, what's next for you, man? You, you trying to hit past that goal or surpass your goal or any big things

Speaker 2 (41:34):

We've got coming. So I took like the new position with better earth. So now I'm like the VP of sales. And um, honestly, like right now I'm going to be kind of going back and forth to Arizona. So Cal Norco with my team and of course like training a lot more people in the company. Definitely like my number one goal is to have every single person on my team, in the company to one beat the record, but to everyone needs to get into double digits. So that's kind of what I'm going to be focusing on. Yeah. Like I'll probably end up like having a lot of deals, but I'm going to do a lot of stuff where I'm not going with them trying to like, of course, like shift paradigms and make sure that they're going to be financially free as well. I mean, that's literally the most important part for me. So yeah, after that. Yeah. Maybe one, one of those months, I'll try to break it, but from there, I'm going to make sure that I can keep focusing on my guys. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:17):

That's awesome. So, yeah, I don't, I think that record or stand for a little bit for our listeners, I guess, let us know if you hear of anyone that's creeping up close and then we'll tell chance, say, man, you gotta, you gotta up there.

Speaker 2 (42:28):

If someone is someone broke it though, then, then yes, next month, the month that I'm going to go get it. Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:33):

We'll be in touch, but I cool. It's a chance. Appreciate you coming on the show. And then last question. Do you have any, like, I dunno, final words or anything like for a newer rep that you, uh, would want to leave with them before we end here? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:47):

At work every single person, like do the personal development, listen to yourself on like voice memos. Like sometimes like you're always gonna be saying like a word that you don't even notice. It's just like your unconscious competence. So that's one thing. Another thing that I always just like to say to you is just like, stay level-headed like, again, control what you can like control you. Can't control who's behind that door, but you can control your mindset. So every like the doors are just a game. So honestly, my number one thing was keep the door open as long as possible that any other rep couldn't. So that's one thing for me that was really, really beneficial. But the other part too is just having that conviction. You gotta be able to find like that passion behind the product and you have to believe in yourself and literally attach yourself to the deal. If you see like your FCS or like your closings going about like an hour, hour and 15 hour and 30. Yeah. Shorten that up. Literally shorten it up. I promise you, you will see a lot more results. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:37):

Love that whole cool chance. So yeah, Solarpreneurs make sure you're keeping it super simple and make sure you're outworking anyone. Cause that's really what it takes to succeed at the level of that. I'm sure you want to hit in the industry. It's what Coby Bryan was dealing. So Michael Jordan, all the greats they're putting in the hours and they're combining an app with their SQL and then that's how we're going to have success. So thanks again, chance for coming on. We'll keep in touch and make sure you hit them up. Let them know. You're grateful for him coming on the show today and we will talk with everyone soon. Appreciate it, man. Thanks

Speaker 2 (44:07):

So much, Taylor. Appreciate you bro.

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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 (00:41):

What's up Solarpreneurs. Today, we're going to be talking about how to plan your week like a boss, how to plan your week, like a Solarpreneur, how the top solar dog has do it. So we're going to jump in and up. But before we get into the topic, I want to invite you to tune in to next Tuesday's episode, because we have a very special announcement. We've been working on a top secret project. I know you guys are gonna love it. So make sure you tune in to next Tuesday's podcast. So let's jump into the topic today. It's going to be a quicker one, but the reason I am thinking so much about planning lately is because as some of you know, I'm in the Knockstar training, which talked about it before highly recommend, then Pepsi came in, Rick, Curphey those guys over there, they do some great training.

Speaker 2 (01:33):

So go follow them on Instagram if you're not already, but I am in there a coaching group right now, we have calls every week. And this last call, we had the opportunity to listen to someone that's if you've been endured or for any amount of time, you know, this guy he's like the guy, one of the godfathers of door to door sells his name's. Jeff Mendez walked to get him on the podcast here, but he talked about, um, just some keys that he's had to six his success. But one of the biggest takeaways that I got from that call that he and a lot of other top guys are doing is they are planning like insane amounts. They plan their days, very specific. They know what they're doing every 15 minutes. And again, another thing, um, I went to this conference about a month ago and a lot of the top guys there, a lot of the, you know, business leaders, entrepreneurs, um, they were talking about the same thing that if you don't have clarity in, if you're not planning, if you don't know exactly what you should do every 15 minutes, then you're probably not clear enough on your goals on the directions you want to be taking.

Speaker 2 (02:45):

And I'm not to that level yet. And maybe you're not either, I don't know. I'm not to the level of clarity where I know what I should be doing every 15 minutes, but hopefully I'm going to get there. And that's the goal. But as I was listening to Jeff Mendez, talk about all this stuff. I realized that man, I plan every once in a while, you know, once probably once, twice a month, I'll go and do some planning, but it's not a consistent thing. And as they listened to him, talk about all this, just like, man, I'm letting my days just basically tell me what to do. I'm reacting to events, every phone call that comes in every customer that hits me up. I'm just reacting. So what if I flip the script on that? What if I made it? So the day reacts to what I tell it to do?

Speaker 2 (03:32):

And this is what Jeff was talking about, how we need to get to that level, where we tell our days, what did you wear? We are the ones being proactive, not reactive. And so I decided to try it out this last Sunday, Mike, all right, Jeff Mendez talked about it. I'm going to get a little deeper in that planning session. Watch some YouTube videos studied some books I had about the topic. And I want to share with you guys a few things I had forgotten about that were really effective for me as I plan my week. And matter of fact, happy to report that as I did this time session, I, that next Monday, I got probably three times as much done as I had the other Mondays. So pretty cool. So if you haven't been planning that I want to invite you to start in the most important thing with this is to do it consistently for me.

Speaker 2 (04:29):

It's yeah. I just noticed a huge difference. Um, as it's consistent versus not consistent, like I've been doing once a month, isn't really gonna cut it. These things need to be weekly and then daily, right? You need every weekly and daily planning sessions. So I'm talking about weekly today. And then on a future episode, we'll talk about some daily planning tips, but your weekly planning session, couple of things with it here. Um, there's a great video. My guys over at art of Manliness. It's another cool podcast. You don't have to be a man to listen to it, but anyone can go take some cool, um, tips from this it's by Brett McKay, he does just kind of like men's lifestyle, tips, tricks, and secrets, but he put out a YouTube video on this and highly recommend it. In fact, I'm going to link it here on the episode.

Speaker 2 (05:22):

So go check out the show notes on wherever you're listening to this, but he breaks it down. So I want to give you a few highlights that I took from him. And then you can go watch the video. If you want to get more in depth, another tool and resource with this, I would definitely suggest you go read the book. Seven habits of highly effective people. It's one of the classics of self-development, uh, by my man, Stephen Covey, go read it. But he breaks this down in his book. And if you want to take him to an extreme level, he goes like in depth, I'm not doing it the level he does, but that's how you can really plan out your entire like life direction, where you want to go. Stocks talks about things like that. So I would suggest going first, go check out this video on weekly plan, but then go read seven habits of highly effective people if you haven't already.

Speaker 2 (06:15):

So here's the weekly planning session, couple things there. Um, first things first, you need to set aside the time to do it. And so whatever you're using, I use Google calendar. Just put a recurring event. That's going to happen every single Sunday I do them on Sundays. So I would suggest Sundays, but you could do it any day. So set a time and make it recurring in your calendar and then make sure you stick to that and then, um, pick your calendar tool. So I like to go digital. Some people use the paper stuff, but, uh, digital is cool. You can have all your obviously customers showing up on there. So if you're not having some sort of calendar sync with your, you know, solar appointments and all that highly suggest that as that's the first two steps. And then the another, another huge thing with this is make sure you're performing what people call a mind dump.

Speaker 2 (07:11):

So this is where you just take all the things that are on your mind. Just put them on a piece of paper, slap them down, anything that you need to do. So for me, it was like, I didn't get my oil changed. I need to fix one of the lights on my car. That's out. I need to, uh, go. Yeah, well, a lot of stuff on there, but all the things you need to do, just perform a mind, dump all the tasks you need to do. Um, so this podcast, it was on there. Every single thing in the think I've put it down and then this is another place I would suggest doing it, like on your phone or something, maybe in a notes app, because if you're like me, you're going to be probably have add like most salespeople have, okay. That's that's the, uh, curse and the blessing of being a salesman.

Speaker 2 (08:00):

A lot of us have very short attention spans. If you don't then, then great. I mean, you're one of the lucky ones, but put it in a place you can always access because chances are, you're going to forget to add things to the list. And you're going to think of something now, or, oh, I need to do this too. And then what that does it frees up your mental capacity, your mental space. So you can focus on what you really need to, and this is crucial because then throughout, as you go throughout your week, you're not just, again, reacting to things, you have it all written down and you know, what needs to be done. And then after that, just for you review your goals, review your life plan again, if you want to get more in depth, this is where, um, obviously before even doing all this stuff, if you can have like a life direction, then even more so effective review those goals though, and then review the previous week and then the planner I've been using for this, um, hour, once again, linked to it, but it's called the best self planner.

Speaker 2 (09:04):

You can go get [email protected]. I use the one called self journal, a lot of other great ones. And I don't think it's as important. You know, which planner you use. A lot of them are great ones. I've used brilliant cartoons, 10 exponent or in the past. Um, I've used Brendon Burchard is high performance planner. Think you use that one for a little bit. Um, this one I like, I just got off Amazon actually from, um, suggestion from Taylor Turnbull, one of the, uh, regional managers over it, Vivint Solar, I guess Sunrun. Now he actually suggested this one to me. So I picked it up like it a lot. So we can go get this a best self.ceo. It's the self journal, but what's really cool is they have weekly review sections in there where you can review everything, how it went for the week. And then you can track habits.

Speaker 2 (09:55):

You can set daily targets. So I think it's cool because you can set, you know, your numbers for the week weekend and set yourself goals in there. Put how many contexts you want to make, how many appointments you want to sit down with for the week, how many closes? And like we've talked about on the podcast before, this is how you really make cells. Not so much, I guess, in game, but as science is, you start tracking those numbers. So it set some goals around that, but get some type of planner that you can use. So I'll link to that one. If you guys want to go check it out, that's the best self planner. Hey and so review the previous week makes it easy. If you have a template set some weekly goals, and this is going to be a lot easier when after you've done the mind dump, right?

Speaker 2 (10:40):

You know, which tasks you want to take from, um, pretty easy usually to recognize what are the most important things, what things are not so important, you can go and put, I don't know, EBC, if you want focus on the most important ones first and the things that are going to actually move the needle. And then, like I mentioned set some cells goals that were solar sales people. So you can set, recruit recruiting goals in sets. Um, how many homeowners you want to talk to every day and maybe you want to talk to 15 homeowners a day, set that goal and then track it to every day. That will be a difference maker for you. And then after you figure it out, all the things you need to accomplish for the week, the non-negotiables put those in the calendar block out the time, as soon as you can.

Speaker 2 (11:26):

And that's where you can just throw them in your Google Calendar, right? If you know, you need to get your oil change, figuring out what's the day that you can do that. What's the morning you have free and then go ahead and put it in the calendar. And, um, yeah, Stephen Covey, he talks about the concept of big rocks. So if you haven't heard that, um, analogy he talks about, it's just putting in the big rocks, the most important things first, and then you imagine them in a jar, you pour the pebbles around them. You're going to fit room for everything, right? Where if you put in the pebbles first, you're not going to fit the big rocks in there. Okay. So that's really the essentials of this main thing is just get a planner and make it consistent. Hey, it doesn't have to be some complicated, long thing with it.

Speaker 2 (12:16):

Just be consistent, whatever you do set aside time. Every single week. I remember when I did my, uh, church mission, we had their two year mission in Columbia. I was on their plan and in Spanish had no idea what people were saying, but they made us do this. Every single week. We had to set plans for who we're going to visit, how many people were going to baptize. And then every single week we had to do this two hour long thing where you apply on your entire week. And then you did this thing. We were in companions there. Um, so I was with, you know, Mexicans, uh, you know, Peruvians, all different, all different walks of life down there. They pair off with one of them. And then you have to like say what you liked about that person this week, and then bringing up the stuff that was bugging you, pretty intense sessions.

Speaker 2 (13:07):

Okay. So, um, if you're married, maybe do that to maybe get your spouse down and, uh, get them to do some planning with you. Hey, but I promise this will pay dividends. If you're not doing that already, I noticed a huge difference. So I'd love to hear what other systems you guys have. What other planners have worked, go and shoot me a message or post it in the Solarpreneur or Facebook group, if you're a part of that. And that's pretty much it guys. So just a crash course on the weekly planning. They'll let me know if you like this kind of stuff and we can go more in depth on the weekly and the daily plans and then get digging some deeper stuff with it. Let me know what you think though. And don't forget next to today. We're going to be dropping the big announcements. So tune in next Tuesday, tell your friends, tell your mom, tell your grandma, listen to the podcast. Next Tuesday. You will not want to miss out. So with that being said, thanks for listening. Appreciate you guys. Love you guys. And we will see you on the next episode.

Speaker 3 (14:10):

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.

Visit Solciety.co 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):

Today's episode. You're going to hear about the mistake that cost me over 30 grand in commissions and how you might be losing money without even realizing it, all that and much more in today's episode of the Solarpreneur. 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. It's a great day today. It's raining outside here in San Diego, California. Hopefully wherever you're at, don't let the rain scare you away. We get some of this winter weather. I'll admit I am a sucker for not for not wanting to, you know, work in the inclement weather. That's why I live in San Diego because let's be honest. San Diego has pretty much the best weather in the 60 to 70 degree range, basically all year round.

Speaker 2 (01:36):

So if you're sick of knocking in that brutal heat or those winter storms, then come on over, we got a job for you, but in all seriousness, sometimes it is an advantage to knock in those inclement weather conditions. I've got friends that are out in Colorado, friends in Arizona, knocking, knocking in snow, snow storms. And the advantage you have with it is people are usually going to be more sympathetic and let you inside the house. And I was talking with one of my friends in Colorado saying that when they're knocking in the winter, it's so cold outside that people just let them right in half the time. So that's your advantage if it is raining or if it is hurricane weather or whatever, then people are probably going to let you inside either that or tell you you're crazy and not listen to you at all.

Speaker 2 (02:26):

Right? But with that being said, let's jump into the episode. So before we get into that, I wanted to just remind everyone that I was on the solar objections live stream. If you didn't have a chance to go check that out, go head on over to the solar objection, Facebook group, and obviously join the Solarpreneur Facebook group. We actually posted a copy of it in there, but make sure you're part of both of those Facebook groups. Cause we got some cool stuff going on. You don't want to miss out on them and you can see every play of yours, truly dropping some heat for y'all. So go check it out. Let me know what you think. Let me know if you liked the content we had in there and maybe we'll start doing more stuff like that. So that's once again Solarpreneur Facebook group in the solar objection group with my friend, Solar Joe over there.

Speaker 2 (03:20):

So today's episode, hopefully that got you a little intrigued. I did lose out on about 30 grand in commissions. And I want to tell you guys some mistakes I made with that, how I could have probably prevented it. Nothing's hunted a hundred percent preventable and just some steps that you should be taking yourself to ensure that you are getting paid, what you're worth. Okay. And so I'm going to preface that with a little story. When I first started out in pest control, as many of you know, started out my first summer in Dallas, Texas, this was back in 2012. So while back I'm one of the old guys here, back then, we, it was all paper hay. We carried around our clipboards. Um, I assume the pest control guys have like digital stuff. Now, digital contracts, um, been awhile since I've been in the pest control game, but that's how it was back then we literally carrying around paper contracts, just stacks of them in our clipboards.

Speaker 2 (04:21):

And then we had just this chunks of chalk. There was no sales rabbit. There was no canvas. There's no knocking app like that. We're carrying around chunks of chalk. Every time someone rejected us or was a follow-up follow-up we'd put an X on the sidewalk. If it was someone that said no, not interested. And then we put just a straight line down the middle, um, of the sidewalk, if it was someone who said to come back and then I'd put the time next to it that go, husband's not here, come back after five, I put 5:00 PM next to it. So you got a lot of people looking at you. Like you're crazy walking around with a piece of chalk, just drawing all over the place, but that's besides the point. Um, anyways, what happened back then though is we had one of the reps in our office.

Speaker 2 (05:10):

His name was Corey. He was our top rep. And he was getting, I don't know, like usually four to six deals a day in pest, which is pretty decent. I know there's guys bowling numbers like that out of the park today in pest control. But back then is pretty phenomenal what this guy was doing. And he had already, I think two kids, he was one of the more mature kids on the team, mature guys on the team. He's probably like, you know, I don't know, 28, the age I am right now. So I don't want to call him an old guy because that would make me old, the old guy right now. But Corey, he was having a ton of success. He was closing a lot of deals. Number one thing that stood out to me is he always was insane. The organize with these deals, every single contract he signed, he kept a copy of the paperwork and he put it in these folders.

Speaker 2 (06:05):

He had stacks and stacks of these copies of the contracts. And once he put that copy of it in a folder, he would, um, make a spreadsheet. I think it was a spreadsheet or I dunno, some sort of binder. And he kept record of the name of the customer, their contact info, exactly how much you sold them for and exactly how much you supposed to make on this deal. So one time I saw him doing this and I said, Corey, why are you keeping track of all this stuff? What's the deal. I mean, you sign up a deal and you get paid. Why are you keeping track of this? That's for the office people and what you told me. He said, Taylor, you'll learn in this industry. People make mistakes, no matter how many deals you think you closed, no matter how organized you think the office, people are, mistakes are going to be made and you're not going to get paid on things.

Speaker 2 (06:54):

If you don't keep track. And if you don't keep records yourself, it's that kind of brush to the side. I'm like, eh, I've always gotten paid. You do your work and you get paid for it. Whatever. And I only closed, you know, hundred pest accounts, whatever. So what do I know? Right. But I didn't listen to them and what happens? I didn't get paid as much as I thought I did, but I had no proof of anything. Hey, when they went to pay me, they said, Hey, you had deals, cancel this. And this happened, I had no records. So I'm just like, okay, well I'll take whatever. And they probably were right. But I learned an important lesson. That's going to transition into how I lost 30 grand in commissions. And that is that you need to be keeping records of your accounts. You need to be keeping track of who you signed up.

Speaker 2 (07:45):

You need to keep track of their progress. You need to keep track of they're still active because if you don't, you're going to get short cut. You're not going to get paid. And inevitably, you're not going to get paid at some point, what you thought you were owed. You're going to have people mess up on a commission. Maybe you're supposed to get paid 20 grand. You won't get paid two grand. Hopefully not that drastic, but things are going to be inaccurate. At some point. I don't care how organized your company. It is at this time I was with, uh, Aaptiv, which bigger company, but they're, you know, probably the biggest door to door pest control company at the time. So I thought there's no way they can mess things up, but come to find out, lots of people had things that weren't right with them selfish and happy.

Speaker 2 (08:32):

The big companies. I don't care if you're with a big company, if you're a well established dealer or whatever, you should be keeping track of your accounts. Okay. And so here's what happened to me. Here's how I lost about 30 grand in commissions. So I signed up two accounts. One was a, um, they're both around 15 kilowatt systems. Okay. And so out here in California, for me that equal about 30 grand in commissions. So pretty huge systems, the Wells as we call it, and one was a referral from the other. So there's several problems with this. And like I mentioned the beginning, even if I would have done the deals perfectly, I don't know if, I mean, who knows if they necessarily would have gone through, there's a couple of issues, but I'm going to talk about the things that I could have prevented. And if I would have been organized, then I probably would have at least one out of these two accounts installed.

Speaker 2 (09:36):

Okay. So the first one, his name was Hutch, signed him up. Everything was good. He was super excited to go solar. He said he checked it out once before, but the company couldn't help them. For whatever reason. They said they didn't like his roof type. I don't know, but it was fine. Um, we got them approved, but the issue was we had switched to a new installer. Um, we're a dealer here in San Diego, future home power. I'm working with, we switched to a different installer. Obviously we have multiple installers we can choose from. But our primary installer, we had switched to a local one that had really great reviews, uh, great warranties, 25 years on everything across the board, including like the roof, the workmanship flavor, all that stuff, something, man, that's pretty awesome. And they got good reputation. They're a local company. So we all start slinging deals through this.

Speaker 2 (10:30):

But the problem was all of us thought that they're going to be smooth as butter, just deals fighting through installs happening. What I didn't know behind the scenes is that there were a lot of issues going on that they didn't know how to handle all this new business. We were giving them, I close these accounts probably like the first week we started using these guys. And so all of a sudden they're getting dozens and dozens of deals sent to them. And guess what? They didn't know how to handle the volume. I didn't know this at the time. I just thought, okay, if I sign them up, it's just going to be about like the same as all our other installs. They'll go quick. They'll do their thing. They get installed and no problem at all. But what happened was pretty much the opposite. It didn't go quick.

Speaker 2 (11:16):

There were mistakes made and come to find out about two months after I signed up Hutch, the first customer they had gone and they didn't even have the correct site survey pictures. I found this out two months after, after they did their original site survey. And after I signed all the documents, so Hutch was a chill guy, but the other mistake I made the other, the second account that I closed, that was part of this whole thing. It was actually hutches girlfriend. And he had referred her and she liked me when great. She was a little more skeptical. She was a single mom. So she was pretty hesitant to sign up, but apply it a little bit of pressure. Um, soft, closed her and boom. She was good to go. But then what happened with her is they went and they missed again. They miss pictures on the site survey.

Speaker 2 (12:18):

So the first mistake made is I call her back. She was already, you know, a little bit on the fence. So I called her back and I'm like, Hey, um, so the missed some pictures. We're going to need to come back and go through this. This was probably two and a half weeks after I had closed her. Which at this point, anyone that closes a deal, you should, it should be a done deal. You shouldn't have cancels unless it's maybe in the first couple of days, because everyone has the three-day or cancellation. But after that, you should not be having cancels. So I'm thinking for both of these smooth selling, they're not going to cancel. It's going to be good to go, but she hears me say this and just cause the fact she's already on the fence. She's like, you know what, Taylor, um, yeah, if I'm going to have to do this, I just, like I told you from the beginning, I still feel like I should just take it a little slower, get some more quotes.

Speaker 2 (13:13):

So why don't we just put it on pause? So that's why I say it wasn't a hundred percent because of this, but the fact that I had to call her back, I had to try to schedule a site survey again. She cancels and this was kind of the first domino that falls. And then of course Hutch, the one that I closed originally that was a lot more saw, a lot more excited about it. We go through the similar stuff and I don't know this for sure, but I assume that he probably talked to his girlfriend and um, you know, maybe she was in his chirping in his ear a little bit, but similar thing happens only with Hutch. It was two months after the fact, right. Two months after the fact, we had to try to redo a site survey and similar thing happens. He says, Taylor, yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:59):

You know what? Um, I just feel like nothing's really happened. And it's been taken a long time and site survey that was already done. Seems like there's mistakes being made. So yeah. Why don't we just go ahead and put this on hold. I want to go ahead and get some more quotes due to deals lost cause this stuff. So here's what I could have done better. If I would have been number one, checking in with the installer, making sure they were doing their stuff, making sure we had all the right pictures two months wouldn't have gone by, um, because two months the site server, that should be like the first thing that happens. Right. And after two months, we're back to square one. We have to redo a site survey. Ridiculous. Okay. And obviously a lot of this, you know, the installer had to figure out some stuff and we've helped them improve their processes.

Speaker 2 (14:53):

So I know I'm probably going to get messages from people saying, why, why are you using this installer? Okay, well, they look good at the time. And most installers I've dealt with know how to figure that stuff out, but people make mistakes. So what I should have been doing is I should have been keeping track of the progress. What I've since done is I've created a spreadsheet of all my accounts that I've closed. And I've got my assistant doing check-ins every week, just following up on the progress, getting an update on this. So do you think that would have happened if I would've been having her do that from the beginning? Checking on my accounts. Probably not. You don't necessarily have to have an assistant do this, but for me it saves me time. It's something I've talked about before getting a virtual assistant. That's my first suggestion I would make.

Speaker 2 (15:45):

No matter how organized you think your company is, maybe you don't need to do weekly check-ins on your accounts, but just create some sort of system. Okay. I use a app called Trello is a good one. Maybe you can put your accounts in there or just a good old spreadsheet. Google sheets, put your accounts in there. Just keep track of them. Okay. Even if you haven't had any mistakes in the past, keep track of them because who knows maybe one day he switched companies for whatever reason, at the very least, you want to be keeping track of all your customers. Hey, because think of how many referrals you could be getting, think of how much follow you could be doing. That's important data that you just want to keep track of in general. So that's the first tip. But then the second thing is in the story that goes with, this is actually last week we had a rep in our company.

Speaker 2 (16:40):

Um, I closed an account for him about yeah. A couple months back got installed. Things were good. I got paid on the account, but the rep didn't okay. The rep in our company didn't and he was the one that said it wasn't our company. We do splits, you know, he said the deal, I closed it. So we split it. So this deal for whatever reason, the people in the office didn't keep track. I don't know what happened. I got paid the full amount. He got paid nothing. And this rep, he actually wasn't even keeping track. So it went by probably about a week and a half before I even like dug into the numbers. I was like, oh, well I got paid a lot more than I thought I was supposed to on this. And then come to find out he didn't get anything. A N S I dunno, hopefully you're the kind of rep that would, you know, report this.

Speaker 2 (17:30):

Obviously, if you're getting overpaid, you know, report it, you want to make sure your guys are getting paid. Okay. So definitely don't just take the money and run with it. Obviously. That's a thought that probably crosses everyone. My know they paid me extra. Um, yeah. I don't know what happened, but I wanted to make sure this ref got fade. So I told her office people and they had no idea that it was this rep's account. So luckily we got them paid. We got to figure it out. But imagine if I hadn't reported that he probably forgot about it altogether. He wasn't getting paid on an account. This was like three grand that he got paid. That if you know, I hadn't reported it, he might've forgotten about it. And yeah. Who knows what happened? So lesson learned, and this has probably happened to me. Okay.

Speaker 2 (18:20):

Cause there's been lots of times where I haven't been organized and keeping track of this stuff, but that's the lesson here is just keep track of your accounts. Keep track how much you're supposed to get paid. Because again, people will make mistakes. Things will happen. And if you're not going to keep track of it, who will, okay. So you need to be keeping track to the dollar, the commissions you're owed, and then make sure you get paid. What you're worth. That's the lesson today. Don't be like me. Don't lose the 30 grand in commissions. Number one, make sure you're keeping track on the progress of your accounts. Okay. If I would have been doing this, this deal probably would have been installed. I mean, our installed time usually takes like a month, a month and a half here in San Diego. So the fact that took two months any cancel up that cause the issues we were having, I would have got that one installed at the very least, because I mean, any other deal would have been like a month and a half and you're not canceling after it's installed.

Speaker 2 (19:18):

Right? So keep track of your progress and then keep track of how much he need to get paid. If you want a spreadsheet I've been using to keep track of that stuff, hit me up and send you a copy of it. But don't be like me. Don't lose 30 grand in commissions and send this to someone that needs to be more organized. And we're going to be having more trainings about this, on how you can implement an assistant if you need to or ways to be more organized, but it's costing you money. I'm telling you. So get organized. Don't forget. And we will see you guys on the next episode.

Speaker 3 (19:54):

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.

Visit Solciety.co 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 (00:41):

What's happening. Solarpreneurs. We're back with another episode in this time we have the Brazilian master himself, my man Christian coming on the show. So we got Christian Maru and I thanks for coming on the show with us today, Christian.

Speaker 3 (00:56):

Oh man. Thanks for having me. I'm I'm super excited actually. It's my very first time speaking in public like this and, uh, I'm super stoked to be, to be here on the show.

Speaker 2 (01:08):

Yeah, well it's well-deserved because, um, if you haven't seen, if you haven't followed Christian yet, he's been just one of the most consistent like solar sales reps. I've seen, he's consistently hitting big numbers. Um, and we're going to talk about all that today. So he is the number one rep at affluent, right? Is it fluent? Yup. Okay, cool. Making sure I got the name right. And yeah, been doing awesome. And you're soon to start up an office there in Houston. You're telling me here in what 3, 3, 4 months, something like that. You're going to go down there. Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:42):

Yes. I started, I started with flowing on May 7th and I, after a month and a half, they say, Hey, I feel like you got a lot of potential. There wants to, to expand the company. And they showed me a few places and I chose Houston to be the place to go. Right.

Speaker 2 (02:02):

Well, my cousins down in Houston, so maybe I'll, uh, he just bought a house down there. So I'd love to get him sold. He's point, he's pulling this, you know, he's moving, he might move in a couple of years, crap. So

Speaker 3 (02:15):

I know how to handle that.

Speaker 2 (02:20):

I'm his cousin. So I can't like tell him to cut the crap as much, but if I send you to his door, I know you'll get him taken care of.

Speaker 3 (02:27):

Yeah. I can smell the blood man. I can smell blood from far away.

Speaker 2 (02:32):

I better watch out. Cause now all my Houston podcast listeners that I heard that are going to be like hitting me up. So put, put a target on his back, but no, that's a awesome man. And so yeah, I mean, again, you've been having a ton of results being super consistent and we're going to get into all that. But do you want to tell us a little bit of your background, Christian? I'm like, I don't know what, how you got started in knocking doors and um, just how you got in the store and everything.

Speaker 3 (03:01):

Sure. My brother. Um, so on September 1st it tells an 18. That's when I got that's exactly when I got here in this country. So actually tomorrow, I guess it's going to be three years. Hasn't even been three years and just like a lot of international people. And I can relate to a lot of people from my country and from different places and different backgrounds when they get here, they, they get the cleaning jobs. So that's what I was doing. I was cleaning cars, uh, in a dealership. And then we started cleaning offices and Jean, Jean places at night and stuff like that. And it just, you know, I wasn't super happy cause I was working during the day and I was working at night and working multiple jobs and, and I was like, I've done sales in Brazil. Let's put the way I felt like I was successful. My company was doing well. I was running my company for seven years in the security industry. And that's how I started knocking doors. Actually I was knocking doors in Brazil for my, for my own company. Uh,

Speaker 2 (04:11):

Yeah, like singularity system, like style.

Speaker 3 (04:15):

Yeah, something like that. And also like pepper spray, like everything that you can have to defend yourself in a situation of risk, just because in my country, actually we're not allowed to have guns and firearms or anything like that. So happen to says you better know some martial arts jujitsu, you know, you better, you better be ready because we just not allowed to have anything. So I realized that here in the U S people could have some stuff. So it just decided to, uh, to do that in Brazil. So instead of knocking doors to talk to homeowners, I was knocking on doors of the police departments. So I'll go to every single city drive to us, small town or anything like that and say, Hey, how do you guys like your equipment? How do you guys like the boots? The Cavilers, the helmets, everything, you know, the gun holsters, like all sort of equipment that law enforcement have. That's what I was doing. I was just the main distributor say. Okay. Okay. And then he was just knocking on doors, visiting police departments. And to be Frank, you gotta be ballsy to talk to this guy.

Speaker 2 (05:32):

Yeah, that's crazy. That's yeah. It's funny. I'm uh, I'm taking a Brazilian jujitsu class. Uh, right now I just took my third class the other day. I'm beat up, man. Probably can't see on the camera, but I'm, uh, got bruises all over the place. So guys,

Speaker 3 (05:50):

I can, I can see, I can see the bruises. I did it for a little bit, but I'm more of a couple era. I don't know if haven't heard of martial arts and it's pretty, pretty cool as well. So yeah, that's kind of how I started in dental. I had this cleaning jobs kind of hated. And then I got into sales. I started with T-Mobile and then I, uh, I got a manager position and I was like, okay, that's a little better. What? I realized that I was working in a store and there was no more room for growth because other than that, I was just, I don't know, maybe I should open my own store, but if I do want to do that, that's like 500,000. Uh, and I was like, yeah, I felt like there was no more room for growth and I would have to wait for people. So what I started to do, I started to approach people outside the stores say, Hey, who do you guys use for the phone? And I started like approaching people. And I got a notice saying, Hey, you can do that. You can do that. You got to wait for people to get inside the store. Uh, and that's when I realized that, you know what? I don't want to do diet because even though I was so out of 124 people, I was number one in sales for months and months and months in a row.

Speaker 3 (07:18):

And by doing that, it's still even being number one. I felt like I couldn't grow anymore anymore. Uh, I, I will have to be just passive and waiting for people. And I was like, no, I want to do something where I can run my own paycheck. So I recruited myself, nobody actually recruited him, recruiting me. I started, I got into the door to door tribe, Facebook group and say, Hey guys, I want to do sales, hit me up.

Speaker 2 (07:47):

Like, man, I wish I would've seen that post. It probably got, probably got 500 messages.

Speaker 3 (07:54):

Oh my, oh my. So I sat down with every single pass, controlling the book and I talked to Santiago and Sentire said, Hey, if you just want to learn the job past control is a good way to start. And then if your career, maybe you should look into solar. So I did, I talked to flow in and I talked to a pest control company, decided the past was for me because a lot of my friends that were doing past. So I did pass for a first summer, three months in the summer, broke my arm and yeah, I was arm wrestling. And actually I was I'm wrestling my manager for over 20 bucks

Speaker 2 (08:37):

In

Speaker 3 (08:37):

An arm wrestling. Yeah. I can send the video so you can post on your page later.

Speaker 2 (08:42):

Yeah. We'll have to put that. It's like a company in the podcast. That's crazy.

Speaker 3 (08:47):

Yeah. So I was having, I was having a really good summer, uh, number one, rookie for the company. Um, three months in the summer had like 400 counts. Uh, I was on a pace to just 600, but because it was, I broke my arm with three months and I went back. I had a recovery and then summer was over. So all of the guys, they just came back home and I talked to the owners and say, Hey, I have a goal to do 600 accounts. My very first summer, would you guys let me come back? And then everybody was gone and I flew back to Texas and I, I started working again doing passive control by myself. That was pretty much it. Oh yeah. All of the boys that were home, it was just the owners and myself. So I did go back sold for a little bit. And then the company say, Hey, you know what, you're the only one here. I don't feel like too good choice to have just you here. And then they just sent me home. Wow.

Speaker 2 (09:55):

Holy cow. Some extreme dries. That's awesome.

Speaker 3 (09:59):

Yeah. It's just because I had a goal. So something that I want to share, if you'll let me with the, with the people, with the audience, it's just that instead of goals, to be Frank, I had more of a commitment. So I, every time when you, when you see the results that you can get, I would say it's always good to reevaluate your goals because if I didn't reevaluate myself and didn't compare, I was just trying to compare myself to my very best version of myself. I feel like a lot of times we just compare ourselves to other people and that, that can be tricky, you know, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. That can be tricky. So if I, if I take to my original goal, I want it, man. I want it to do 150 pest control accounts. And I sold a hundred my first month. Like, uh, yeah. I was in the country before, like a year, a year, a little over a year. So my English was still, I still have a lot to learn, but where my English was super, super broken, but I just, you know what, sales it's, what's going to pay the most money. So I got, I got a better, I better figure it out.

Speaker 2 (11:18):

Yeah. That's incredible. So I got to ask, why did you, uh, what brought you out to like the U S in the first place? Why'd you come here? Is that for school or were you just thinking you're going to work or when did you come out?

Speaker 3 (11:31):

Awesome. That's a great question. So BYU has always been a dream for like all of the LDS families out there in Brazil. Like people just see like, oh my gosh. Like the us in general is just to like live in the dream, you know? And then my wife, she was doing manufacturing engineering in Brazil and she, Hey, what if we go to the U S and I could just go to BYU? And I was like, okay, I support you. And we got here together. And that was initially was for school, you know? And yeah, she was still going to school and work.

Speaker 2 (12:08):

Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah. No, I love hearing the drive ins. I dunno. Would you say like being in Brazil? I think, I don't know. You tell me I never been to Brazil, but I've been to Columbia. Maybe there's some similar stuff. That's where I did my church mission and it's like, I don't know. I'm sure it's similar in Columbia. People had nothing. Um, I imagine Brazil, there's probably a lot of poor parts and stuff like that. So I'm sure you gotta like, you know, scrap for everything and just like, you know, fighting call your way to success and everything. Um, probably more than out here in the U S we have, we have a ton out here compared to, I know a lot of countries down there. So do you think that contributes like your drive? Obviously you have like a ton of drive jelly, keep going where most other people to be bought in is industry. They're not, especially in solar, they're going to hit five, six deals in the month and be satisfied with that because they're making awesome money with that. So what is it? Yeah. What do you think, um, where do you get that drive from? If, if you have any, anything to say about that?

Speaker 3 (13:09):

Yeah. Um, every time when I think about drive, uh, I remember once I was talking to river rivers keener for like a while, I was just sharing like some personal stuff. And I remember it was just right when he made a post saying if you don't work hard, you're not grateful for the opportunity. That's how I always felt. It's not, I was one of the things that I learned from reading the book, grit from Angela Duckworth, gray, gray, gray book. It's just literally showing me the persistency and the grit and all of that. And when you're grateful for everything that happens. And especially when it come from a different background, I feel like sometimes here in the us, I see people actually complaining, like for not having space in the fridge. And, you know, like I came from a place where like, I will complain to not have stuff from the fridge, you know? Yeah. Sometimes we have the easiest sometimes I just feel like why fear is just so easier and never things just so, so, so cheaper that we take stuff for granted, you know, like we complain for the price of gas now, like three, $4, but in my country, 17, you know?

Speaker 2 (14:35):

Yeah. That's great. Yeah. That's awesome. And you reminded me, I don't know. Do you know a Leo salesman? He's like, yeah. Have you talked with him fellow Brazilian? He was on the podcast too, actually one of the earlier episodes of the show, but, uh, yeah, it's pretty crazy. He told me too how his dad first came here and same thing. I think he started out in cleaning and started his business and all that. And, um, went through like several bankruptcies, but it's just, uh, I think it's awesome hearing stories like that, of you guys that come from different countries and, um, you're just doing whatever it takes to have success. And, um, yeah, it shows an hours you're working. I asked, uh, I sent river a message because at first I was following you for a little bit, seeing you close all these deals and I'm like, wow, what is this guy doing?

Speaker 2 (15:23):

Is he on like sells steroids or something close in deal after deal? What is he doing? Um, and so I messaged river. I'm like, man, this guy works with you. What is he doing? And river's just like dared. He just works insane hours. He just goes out there all day, every day. And he's good at sales, but he's just putting in a ton hours. So, I mean, really, I think, do you want to give us idea how many hours are you typically working a week and give us some of your results. You've been getting to be number one rep there.

Speaker 3 (15:54):

Perfect. Perfect. I feel like, I don't know, uh, coming from passcode trope, I feel like sometimes the solar guys there, I don't want to say people are lazy, but it would just, we just don't work as hard as the farm guys or fast control guys. Exactly. I was eating up a friend say, Hey, what time you guys have meeting? And what time did you go to area? And my friend told me that, uh, his past patrol company, they have been at 9:00 AM and 10 30. They go to area and they work in art, in knife. I've been doing solar for almost almost 10 months now, and I'm never done to add myself. Uh, I work a lot, uh, some things that I might do differently. It's just that once I go to the doors, I just don't stop. And I really mean it. For example, my wife doesn't talk to me when I'm on the doors.

Speaker 3 (16:53):

And she knows that I just abide by some personal rules and some personal standards that I, I just don't do social media unless I'm posting the deals and talking about that. Like the only reason why I post and I shared that is just for personal accountability. Like it's not for visibility. It's not for the credits. Like I don't, I don't care. I have, I actually have 500 followers. Like I don't care about like how many people I have. Yeah. But you're like, the people I follow, it's just, they bring value. Like I don't follow any celebrity, like any famous people, brands and stuff. I don't have time for that. I just don't. So when I get to work, man, I have a P bottle in my car

Speaker 3 (17:46):

And I just, yeah. Like I, or I, I, okay. I can't, I can say like, just being the trees and bushes and stuff, I've done it like so many times I just have a people auto. And then that said, like, I have go to gas stations, zero times I meal prep. I'm following a diet. I started a program a few months ago. I'm sticking to I, if I'm drinking anything, I take it with me. Like I just have everything to be ready for the doors in. And then I just don't stop and say, oh, I talked to 30

Speaker 2 (18:21):

Homeowners, 30 homers. Nice.

Speaker 3 (18:24):

That's my go-to. You don't have to be talented. You don't have to be super skilled if you just pull yourself from, in front of 30 people every day. I just feel like there's no way to get the results. And the only way to talk to that many people is just being efficient with the doors, you know, just cherry picking. One of the things that I do, I use my segway a lot. I love it. I wouldn't, I just, man, I don't even, yeah. I don't know. Have you ever used a segway Taylor?

Speaker 2 (19:00):

Yeah. Yeah. He's it. I, I forgot about it for a little bit, but then say you and river breaking them out. I'm like, man, I ain't gonna pull that thing back out because I forgot how like, you know, quicker and it makes it like more fun on the tours too, to get rejected. Just hop on the segway.

Speaker 3 (19:16):

Yes. Yes. Especially even if a super hard know what I do every single time. When I hop on my segway, I feel like it's a mental break. Like I don't even feel the no. Cause my brain at that moment is just trying to concentrate on getting on the segway, get it to the next house. See if their shutters are open, see the oils things as they arise, see people's homes, see like how many cars in drive and stuff like that. So it was just a lot of things that comes out automatically to the mind just cause you're used to the job. And that's my goal too. I, I remember being on an adventure with Sam Taggart and he said, and I was asking like, what should I do when I get a super-hard note? And he asked me back, what do you do? And I told him, I just fly to the next door. Like I don't let that get inside my head. I don't wait like half a second. Like whenever they're a jerk, you know? Or like super rude to me. I just two seconds later, I'm on the next door. Right.

Speaker 2 (20:17):

That's awesome. That's the way to do it. And like all these things, but like people expect, I don't know a lot for a long time. I thought people that were closing tons of deals had some like secret formula, my secret word track they're doing, but you heard it from Christian himself. He's not doing anything. He's just doing like simple things, super consistent. And it's like, I love how you just think of it. Not in like hours work, but no, it's just, I got to talk to 30 people. I got to get in front of 30 people because if I do, that's how I'm going to have success, so I'm going to get it right. And so for our listeners, Christian, um, how long would you say it typically takes you to get in front of 30 or 30 homeowners every day. Okay.

Speaker 3 (20:59):

That's a great question. So my rule of thumb is just to be driving to an area at three. And in a lot of days, I'm on the doors at three and I work until dark plus one, something that we have part of the culture, just like whenever it gets dark, you just knock one more door and really not more than one door to be just because, yeah, just because of personal standards, but as a company, like, will you just knock until dark plus one? And then yeah, whenever it gets dark, you just be careful the way approach the door. It's just being friendly. You show your badge, you know, you just, yeah. Just the way you carry yourself. Everybody knows the rules and stuff like that. But

Speaker 2 (21:44):

Yeah, that was good. Yeah. And so I did, so you're in a Dallas, right? Cause they're not going to Dallas area. That's where I started. That's where I, uh, uh, I guess got my start in pest control is, and in Dallas actually in, uh, it was pretty brutal. I didn't, I didn't throw it on as many pest accounts as you. I was pretty terrible pest, but um, I remember I got a gun pulled one time in Texas. Those, those Texans are no joke, man. You get guns pulled on you and stuff out there.

Speaker 3 (22:15):

Yeah. I had first month growing dollars. Same, same, same, same way brother.

Speaker 2 (22:23):

Yeah. And you got it. You guys got to get like permits and every city to knock out their deer. Right. And they're pretty strict about that.

Speaker 3 (22:30):

The city and knock sometimes. And again, it's more of a, your attitude. If you feel like you belong the place and you feel like you're all in the area, I feel like everybody's going to be receptive.

Speaker 2 (22:43):

Yeah. That's awesome. Well, no. So, um, another thing I see you doing a lot of Christian is, um, just getting a lot, a ton of same day appointments. It seemed like almost every deal I see you're posting up on Instagram. It's like same day, same kilowatt, same day 11 kilowatt, just big systems. And they're like majority, same days that looks like. So what do you do? Um, like tell me about that. Do you shoot for same days and what are you doing to get so many same day appointments? Cause that's actually a question I get asked a lot too from our listeners. Okay.

Speaker 3 (23:16):

Okay. Um, so yeah, average size. It's usually anywhere from nine to 11, that's kind of the average over there. So what we're doing, what I'm doing to get the same days, I don't even allow myself to work differently than that. Like if I'm not same day in you, I don't, I don't actually set the appointment. So it's much more of the way I perceive, uh, going to the events. And again, I think I kind of shared that with you, just listening to podcasts, like your show and many others and listening to people that have been on the job for so long. I just had to learn how to respect and love myself. When I started, I would just feel pity, you know, like, oh I, and that right now, I just feel like everybody's got a Ted story, you know, like who gives a crap? We all got [inaudible] uh, I'm the foreigner I have, I don't know where English and I don't know if I can do solar. So like, man, when I started, my goal was to close 40 deals in the year and then I've closed 60 over the last four months.

Speaker 3 (24:37):

Yeah. So I just, I just started to believe in myself a little bit more. For example, just the way just the self-talk every time, uh, before I even opened my eyes, that's first thing I do. I try to get myself into peak state. So I repeat a little, like a little mantra that I have for myself. Like I, I, I'm just going to share with you guys. I say today is a good day to make it a great day. Today is a good day to make it a great day. And then on the third time I put more emphasis and I jumped out of the bed and I just get ready. Today's a good day to have to make it a great day. You know? And that gets me to a different state. You know, Tony Robbins called calls it like pig state. And then I have some more stuff. So self-talk is kind of a big thing. I know Taylor McCarthy and a lot of the big players, they talk about that. So after I say that, I also share something else. I say, I'm a great salesman. I sell every day sales come easy to me because I work the hours focused. I'm enough. I weigh my mornings. I weigh my days. I'm winning my life.

Speaker 2 (26:03):

Boom. I love that. That's awesome. And I know you and river are big on those. I see river doing a lot of stuff like that too. Yeah, it works. I mean, and that NLP stuff. Neuro-linguistic programming. Um, yeah. It's white toner. Have you been to a Tony Robbins event

Speaker 3 (26:20):

Actually. So for August, that's the, I love, I love that you asked that. So for August, uh, fluent, they had a competition. So the number one, like the number, the top performer would get tickets for Tony Robbins. Yeah. So in a month for four now in November, next month I'm flying my wife and I were both flying. Like the company got us tickets hotels, and we're going to Tony Robbins for five days.

Speaker 2 (26:48):

Wow. That's awesome.

Speaker 3 (26:50):

It's always, it's been a dream man. Like I I've seen this guy in, like I'm not your guru and a lot of stuff since I was in Brazil, I was like, dude, he's the man. And now I'm going to get to see the legend myself. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:04):

He's the goat for sure. And yeah, you'll have, I've seen them seep speak a few times, but yeah, it's just all the stuff you're saying. Like his event you'll see it as event. And I know you've seen like his documentary and all that, but it's just like screaming and shout and the whole time jumping up and down. So like for managers that are listening to this podcast, make sure you're happy. You're teaching your reps, this stuff. And, uh, Christian just gave you some sweet, um, you know, and contagions manifestations, whatever you want to call them. Souls are good things to repeat. So are you, are you kind of telling yourself those things, like as you get up or as you get out on the doors or just like all the time Christian?

Speaker 3 (27:42):

Yeah, I repeat that one. Like today is a good day to make it a great day. And then I say three times and I was repeating myself. I'm a great salesman. I sell every day. So when it started, I would say I sell every week because that was my goal. And then I realized that like, why am I selling only every week? Because if I sell every week, I might be sending like four or five, six deals. And like, that's not for me. Like I can do more than that. And it got to a point. I was like, if I'm deciding to sell, just think about the guy. I don't know. Maybe someone listening to this show they've been selling two or three, four or five a month. And then my question is why would you cut yourself short and not sell for the other 25 days of the month? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:32):

I just, I, I kind of like punch myself in the face and I kind of had a serious conversation with myself and that's when everything started to change and I started to same days. So getting back to same days, I want to answer that question. Now I want to share my thought process and how I do it a lot behind the scenes. Like it's not the magical words that that's not, you know, it's just the game. They're like, why did I decide to sell one or two a week? And now I'm telling you, man, if someone, I fun talking to you on the, let's say on a Tuesday and they say, yeah, like, I'm going to be easy. Can you come back on Friday? I'm like, no, sir, I actually can't. So I'm going to show you the calendar. And I actually show my calendar. As you can see, like everybody's been looking into solar, like if you don't want to do this, that's okay. The government, they have a lot of tax incentives. That's okay. Like yes or no, whatever answer works fine with me. My job is to find people that is ready to take the money and take advantage of the program. I've never seen anyone in my life say no to save money. What time is it good tomorrow at four or a six? Boom.

Speaker 2 (29:54):

There you go. So you're saying that you, you said you don't do next day appointments all like a hundred percent, same days, or do you, do you ever do like next day appointments

Speaker 3 (30:06):

That I've, I've driven back to houses and then all super solid guy in like four days later and then they no show, like if you just the numbers, like, just think, just trying to get to know your numbers. I think it's important. I know my numbers, like if I don't know my numbers, there's no way for me to increase my closing ratio and stuff like that. So there's a lot of stuff behind the scenes. Like getting to know your numbers, like, oh, how many deals you're closing a month? Cause some people say, oh, I closed. Yeah, you can have a good day. But that doesn't mean really good. Like everybody can have a good day. Everybody can have a good week, but you actually know a guy like for Dick consistency, like four or five months in a row or 10 months in a row, like a year or people being a top performer for years. Those are the guys that, that respect, like, I don't know, maybe selling three or four deals in a day. Yeah. That's good. But if you don't sell a deal next month, that's not good, man. That's not, you know?

Speaker 2 (31:10):

Yeah. I agree. And that's yeah. That's unfortunately like, like you said, a lot of people in solar, that's the curse of these big commissions. People see the checks coming in and then they don't work after. So that's why I tell a lot of our guys just don't even like, look at how much you're going to make. Like just go out and sell more. Right. It's gotten hit big numbers and do it consistently because that's, what's, that's what's missing. Is guys just hitting their hours and hitting their numbers consistently. Would you agree?

Speaker 3 (31:37):

Yeah. Yeah. And before I beginning to fall, just go and spend the money on stupid stuff anyway. Yeah. Yeah. It seems I started, you can ask flow in, like I never even touched a paycheck. Never like never, I never touch it because I finally feel like I just, I just invest the money. I like, I know Adam lab, some guys say invest 20% and yada, yada. But if auto manage your money, you can invest a hundred percent of it and just leave legislate broke. Yeah. But that's, that's just, I'm just trying to set myself up for the future instead of like the short-term goals. That's why like I go for same days. I really mean it. I talked to someone if I don't feel like they're a solid lead Taylor, I read her not have the lead then getting like a lead that I know that's not going to sh a no-show waste of time creating the proposal, wait for the proposal to get ready, driving back to the house. And then they know show me right. When I talk to that homeowner, I always, before setting the appointment, I say, Hey, when I come back, I'm going to show you two things. I'm going to show how many panels you're going to need on the roof. You know, where the panels go. And I'm going to show exactly the financial breakdown, how much money you're going to be saving. Uh, if everything makes sense. Is there any reason why you wouldn't move forward with this?

Speaker 3 (33:16):

I, the reason why I always asked that question. Cause if I take, give me any sort of resistancy, like I don't even set the appointment. That's not for me. Cause when I was doing solar in California, because it was a harder market, I felt like I really had to be a good salesman. You know, it was like, go for the appointment. It's like, cause I know in California you save people money. So if they latch you in, sometimes it's like a terrible lead. Like, dude, I don't want to go solar, but okay. You can come back and then you close the bill, you know?

Speaker 2 (33:55):

I

Speaker 3 (33:55):

Mean this week I had people I've had that happen so many times in California, people like, oh it's solar. I know everything about solar. I will never go solar, but yeah, come back, show me the numbers. And then like, and they signed dogs and

Speaker 2 (34:13):

That's awesome. And yeah, it's like, yeah, I forgot what I was going to say. But yeah, just being consistent set in the same days. And um, I think that's a big problem though. Is guys get this rush of excitement? I don't know about you, but when I was starting out, especially in IC in newer reps is they get this almost like rush of excitement when they can say, oh, I set a lead. I set an appointment for tomorrow, went in their head. They know is that this point is like a hundred percent not going to show crop appointments, but they just fill out the form whatever to say. They got an appointment. So I've talked with teams that don't even like recognize appointments booked anymore. We used to recognize and give like a ton of recognition for how many appointments were booked on a day.

Speaker 2 (34:57):

But now we sort of swapped it up and our teams, we don't even like posts when we book appointments for the most part it's because I don't know. I think, I think guys put too much focus on just that little rush of excitement when you say, oh, I've set an appointment. Or really like, as you know, when solar means nothing until you get it to install. Right. So at the end of the day, installs are king and um, you know, obviously you got to help people with the steps beforehand. But yeah, I agree with that a hundred percent. Um, I think people set way too many crappy appointments and get happy about it. So

Speaker 3 (35:33):

I've done it myself. Like I've done it myself, just trying to trick myself and maybe look really good for the company. Look good for the guys that you work with. But at the end of the day, like only closed deals and installs. That's the only metric that's gonna matter. Like the amount of people you you're getting from and the people you sign up. Oh yeah, I've done it like so many times. It's just that it really depends this tenders. You're holding yourself to, you know, as whenever I decided to like do same days and, and treat my time as the most valuable thing in the world, I felt like everything has changed. Just like, it's not just saying like, I love myself. It's just like, Hey, I don't know if we're going to have solar. I liked listening to the Michael Donner. When he says on his podcast, he was thinking it was, it was going to be the end of the solar. Remember that? I, I, I, I feel like I try to leave like that, like everyday, like, oh, maybe it's the inner solar. I bet I better take it of energy, the opportunity. This is the mother gold rush.

Speaker 2 (36:47):

Sure. I know the guys who are Trina like that, they're having the success. And so something that I really think is cool that you do Christian is I feel like another big thing you're super consistent on just your teens. I see you post on like, you know, pictures of books or reading workouts you're doing like you were talking about earlier the meal plan. And for me, I think I know myself, um, when I am being super consistent, I'm not as near as consistent as you. So I have a ton of respect for that. But the times where I'm working assistant or is where I'm falling, like both set schedules, those are routines. I'm doing my workouts reading, um, getting my healthy eating in. So for you, how, how big of a big of a factor would you say that is? Like your routines every day in the stuff you do before you go out on the doors, do you want to share a couple of those things that you're doing that maybe help you out just like get in the right mindset to hit the doors consistently every day?

Speaker 3 (37:40):

Yes. Yes. Taylor, I'm not, uh, you know, uh, I'm closed system when it comes to closing deals. But for example, I'm not the guy that's working out like crazy doing CrossFit. I'm not in the best shape I've lost. I've dropped 25 pounds so far.

Speaker 2 (37:58):

Yeah. You're not going to CrossFit with river. Isn't that thing.

Speaker 3 (38:03):

And yeah, he took me, he took me to CrossFit a few times, but it's just too hard for me.

Speaker 2 (38:08):

That's no joke.

Speaker 3 (38:10):

Yeah. But something that helped me, for example, the same consistency with some, some people have with the gym I have with the diet and with the meal prep. So I'm trying to get one thing at a time in order in my life. Cause I feel like the way you do one thing is the way you do everything, but there's no way to change everything at once. It's just tapped by stop. So I started with the diet and I, I'm pretty sure that pretty soon I'm going to be the guy just super consistent with working out. Because for the last 10 months I've been taking the cold showers and it's not like I hate it. I hate it. I came from Brazil like there. Yeah. It's like, it's a one country, you know, it's like, yeah. But I, I saw like Dora, Dora guys doing the cold showers, people doing for years.

Speaker 3 (39:01):

Like, you know what, I'm going to give it a try and then realize that now, like it's not that hard for me anymore. So even when I don't do a whole lot of things, I just, Hey, I've done hard things myself in the past. So even the days when I wake up late, which I do, I don't win the morning every day. I'm not the guy went in the morning everyday. I want to share that with you. But what happens is when it's game time, it's no joke. It's game time. Even when I was doing pest control, uh, it's not, uh, now if you are a little bit of a shame of Shea, uh, saying that, but our meetings was at 10 hours, the guy waking up literally and 9 58, and now I'm serious. My alarm was set for 9, 8 58. I was broke and I was going to brush my teeth for 30 seconds and fly.

Speaker 3 (40:01):

And for so many times I had to like pee one-on-one and eat it. Yeah. Eat like Marjorie or, or, yeah, just like do crazy stuff, you know, be slammed and punch. And they're like, yeah, that happened. Like, yeah, I was late like a lot of times, but still I was able to be number one by the end of the summer. So it's not only about waking up early or it's not only about winning the morning or really it's just implementing what you do. I don't read 20 books a month. I don't read, I read one book a month sometimes, but whatever I read, I try to implement as well. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:51):

I love that. And that's something my think is really cool too, is you're sharing the wins and the losses. I mean, you don't have to do it all a hundred percent to be number one, Christians. Oh yeah. Some guys think that, oh, I didn't. I missed my morning routine. Well, this day is shot. I'm going to get out on the doors late. Uh, this day's going good. But I think the guys that are having success, they're missing things here and there, but they're still being as consistent as possible. Like if they miss their workout or if they miss out on their cold shower or whatever, they're cutting their losses and they're still gonna make that day as accessible as possible. That's another lesson that I feel like I still need to learn sometimes. I don't know if you get out on late on the doors, don't like consider your whole day shot.

Speaker 2 (41:34):

Just go out and push as hard as you can for the hours you did get out instead of letting it effect your whole day, which I think is awesome. And you posted the other day, Christian. Um, I think it was on a Saturday. You posted, um, that you got out and knocked the whole day, but you didn't get like, I don't know if it was in a single appointment or a single close. And I thought that was cool, dude. Cause I'm used to seeing you post sale after sale, and then you kept that real scene. You didn't get anything on that. Saturday was that last Saturday you posted that.

Speaker 3 (42:02):

Yeah. So again, I work three weeks, super hard in a take, I don't know, like a few days off. So, uh, I realized the Saturdays are first solar in my opinion. Cause they can get people home. And because my goal is to same day, I was like, I'm going to be at the door. So what happen is over the last 16 weeks, five weeks I was out. Okay. Cause pretty much once a month, I'm out for training for traveling vacation, whatever it is. So what happened out of the 16 Saturdays? I worked at last of those. So last Saturday was the 11th Saturday. There was always selling and now was, I was trying super, super hard. I did get on the doors like nine, 10:00 AM and I D I didn't stop. Like I, I stopped to eat for three minutes, my meal prep at the guest.

Speaker 3 (42:58):

I dunno for some of my posts. I was there to just eating at a gas station and I was like, I can't, I'm on a winning streak. You know, like just the momentum that everybody talks about. So I wanted to carry that. Cause now it's a tradition. It's like sailing on. It's not even a question anymore for sure. And yeah, so I was like, I got to find the deal. And then I did, uh, for example, when, uh, when I went to Houston for the first time, it was like a month ago actually my, my first Houston installed is going to happen tomorrow. Nice. Yeah. I realized that I was having consistency consistently, but I never had a two spot in, I, and I've seen a lot of guys just selling three, four deals in a day. I was like, oh crap. How did these guys do that?

Speaker 3 (43:53):

You know? And I was like, you know what, I'm doing it. And wa and I did it. And then the following day, I sold two as well. Nice. And then the following day, I sold two again. And then, and then I realized that whatever is your standard, try to raise the bar. So what I mean by that, for the listeners that I sell in four or five, six, dude, just like, there's no way you're not selling 10 a month. Like why you're not selling double digits because once you do, you just do it and then it was just do it again and there, just do it again. And then was just going to do it every month because you've done it because you've done it. So, yeah, I like, I've done like 10 and then I get 10 and then 10 and then 12 and then 15 and then 16. And now like, now I want to close 20. I want to close.

Speaker 2 (44:53):

Yeah. That's true. And yeah, I think that's another miss people like set their standards so low and then they hit it, get complacent. Um, but yeah, I actually just got out of pot and podcasts earlier today with the Alex Hogan hall. And she was talking about that too. Just how competitions help her reps like get to a new level. And then it's like, okay, you saw yourself do 15 in a month during this competition. Like, why can't you do, why can't you do that every month now? So I think that's a key thing for managers, leaders and stuff like that. Get your guys to hit higher levels. And then they see it's possible. It's like they, once they see the four minute mile has been done, then you can't say it's impossible anymore. Like Christian just went out and did it. Right. Just went out and did it. These guys can do it. It's possible. I mean, Christian, you didn't even know, you didn't even know English from selling pest control for crying out loud. Like anyone should be able to hear,

Speaker 3 (45:49):

I know you don't like roaches. I don't like cockroaches as well. Okay. We got up, we got something in common. Let's get you started. Okay. The trucks are right there. You know, the Johnsons, boom. Yeah. The trucks is going to finish and then you're next on my list. I'll do super cheap. Boom.

Speaker 2 (46:05):

That's why I left Brazil. There are too many roaches and spiders. That's awesome stuff, Christian. Um, and then like with goals. So can you talk about real quick before we kinda wrap up here with your numbers? What, what type of metrics is there some metrics like, you know, you need to hit to hit your goals every month, like X amount of appointments. Um, is it pretty much just 30 homeowners you're focused on focusing on and then, you know, the rest will fall into place with that or any other metrics you focus on for the month?

Speaker 3 (46:39):

Yup. Yup, definitely. Um, so when it comes to the numbers, uh, it's important to know your numbers. For example, I'm just going to look, I have my numbers on the notes, on my phone that way. Uh, I always track, I have, uh, I've shared my calendar on social media anywhere to anyone that wants to see my calendar and how it looks like how I have my appointments, how we book it and how I know exactly the outcome. I, what I did. I color coded what I mean by that. For example, every time when I have a showing in blue, I noticed an appointment when they shows a purple. I know it's an appointment that I pitched that didn't close when it shows green. I know the people that I showed. So I have, uh, I have a visual just right in front of me. So it's, it's kind of easy.

Speaker 3 (47:29):

I just opened my calendar and I know, I know that I'm doing well, and I know that I'm not doing well, and I know what I have to work on. And I know what I have improved because it's visual. I just call her a code in my calendar and knowing that I it's always there. It's always available for example, um, why don't we just go, hold on. I just, I just switched phones. I got a new phone, but it was so busy working. Like I, I had owned the bot for a month, a new phone and the brand new iPad. Like he came out, I got it. And I didn't even open. I was just busy working.

Speaker 2 (48:07):

I know I got to close more deals than that at bed.

Speaker 3 (48:12):

I just moved to Utah for like two days or something. It was like, you know what, I'm just going to take the iPad and the iPhone. So I started up, but I remember, I remember, so when it comes to July, I had 41 appointments out of this 41. I have, I don't know, 18 or shows. I had like 14 that I pitched that didn't close. And I had 15 that, a page that did close and I had three, the fail credit. So I realized that August, if I ha if I wanted to have my best month, which I did, I had to do bigger numbers because it's a numbers game. So what I did, I increased my numbers. So for August, I had 62 appointments and out of the 62, 23, no show me, which is 30%. And then out of the people that showed up, I pitched 18 that didn't close and a page 16 that they'd closed. So right now I'm sitting at a 50% closing for the people that I sit down. Wait. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:14):

That's incredible. Yeah. And yeah, that's, that's no secret to, I think a lot of guys forget is like top guys, like you, any top guy that I get on this podcast, that's closing a lot of deals. They all know their numbers like that instantly. So for our Solarpreneurs listeners, um, if you, if you can't like, you know, tell back your numbers right now and go through your ratios, like Christian just did, then you're missing something there. Cause I think that's a huge thing. If you can't know your numbers, you don't know like the back of your hand, how are you going to improve them? That's what Christian has been doing. That's how he's been all day increases numbers. He's just like, oh, I need to sit with more people than it being cheap as ratios the same or improve them. I know my best months and sales.

Speaker 2 (49:57):

Um, yeah, I've, I've been a mad man about tracking numbers too. So that's that's um, yeah. Huge thing. If people aren't doing that. So a Christian, I know it's getting late. You're in Utah, we're doing a late night podcast right now. So Christians appreciate you for coming on. Um, we went back and forth so glad to finally get you on the show, even though it's, you know, 10 o'clock at night for you. Awesome. But, uh, Christian. So before we kind of wrap up here, where can people find you on social media and connect with you and all that?

Speaker 3 (50:29):

Yeah. So when I got here in the U S I actually, I didn't have social media for about like two, almost three years now. I still use Facebook, Krisha, moron, and the ground. I that's why I have like 500 people. Just pretty much all door to door people. Yeah. I started needs to grow and like, not like maybe a year ago, stuff like that. I just want to share it. Won't last thing that the numbers, they, they didn't look like this. When I started, like, I will have to sit down with five, six people to close one. So I had to work way, way harder now because it closed at 50% every day, I just got to get inside two houses and that's it, whatever your number is. If you're closing one out of four, just do the reverse engineering. Because a lot of times people, they just do like how much money they can make, but they don't break down with the reverse engineer to see how many people they have to talk to how many hours they have to put in order to get those appointments.

Speaker 3 (51:35):

Well, how many of these appointments are going to show how many of these appointments are going to cancel? What's your cancellation rate? Like it's important to know that stuff and just backtrack and do the reverse engineer. So cause when it started, I was like, yeah, I want to do 40 deals. And I was like, no, I don't want to do 40 anymore. And then I wanted to do 60 deals. And then I realized that I could do 16 for months. And now, now I want to close way more than that. You know, it's just, yeah, that's pretty much what I, what I wanted to share with the guys that like, it was, it was hard. It was hard, but now I'm just grateful. So we had to push for meetings, Christian Maroney, and I'm available. Like I don't care for work for a different company hours if people, Hey, I'm going to Houston, you are invited to just stay in my place. You can just work with me. I don't care, whatever t-shirt, you're working with. I don't care whatever company, if I can provide any value, if I can. Like, if I, I dunno if I can stand for the industry, if I can support any solar fallow, because I feel like sometimes people they're not happy with their current companies or sometimes people aren't happy, but they still can learn from people, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:49):

That's huge. So yeah, no, I think abundance mindset. Um, definitely appreciate that. And um, yeah, like I always tell the story, but a lot of people starting out when I started in solar, didn't have that mindset. They're like, no, if you're from a different company, I'm not going to talk to you. I'm not like sharing anything, company secrets. So I think it's awesome that guys like you now are, you know, just coming from that abundance mindset and willing to share, what's working for you and you know, specific things you're doing and saying on the doors. So a last kind of follow up question that Christian, before we let you go here, um, you, you mentioned that you, you know, increase your closing ratio and improve those numbers a lot. I just been going anything specific that you did to like increase those ratios. Do you think it was just more, experience-based just more time you needed or were you like drill on role playing like crazy? What helped you increase those ratios in your closes and all that

Speaker 3 (53:42):

Fantastic question, Taylor. I love it. I love it. So I learned at a young age, I don't know, probably most of the listeners they know Zig Ziglar. They know Napoleon hill. They know gene rum for me. Like if you're listening to, if you listen to Zig Ziglar and Jim, like, I just compensate with numbers. What I lack in skill, that's it numbers, what are lacking skill? What I mean by that? I just had to get myself in front of a lot of people until I could learn. So what made the change is that along the process, I realized that I just needed to simplify. I was making solar too complicated. I was explaining in a way that people go like, dude, I'm not sure in my car. Did he says a confused mind? We always say no, just make it simple, like stupid, simple in a sense that now every single one of my presentations, I'm pretty pretty a hundred percent confident that if I do my presentation to a third grade, they're going to understand like a hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (54:55):

Hmm. That's awesome. Yeah. Love that. So Christian, thanks for all the tips you shared. So for Solarpreneurs, keep it simple out there. And guys, it's not rocket science. Christian came from Brazil, barely know in English and he's killing it in this injury. He's one of the top reps in the industry. So do those simple things, be consistent, get out on the doors at the same time, be consistent in your closes, tracked your numbers like a madman. And I think that's pretty much all there is to it. So, uh, so Christian, thanks again for coming on the show and before yep. Before we let you go, I guess we pretty much went through anything, but any, uh, any final tips you want to share with our Solarpreneurs before we say goodbye,

Speaker 3 (55:37):

My brother, uh, I think, I think that said something that I do know that I also do. I want to share one thing like with the international people, sometimes some guys it's like, oh, like it's hard, no doors, doors for you as well. You know, just believe in yourself. And you have, I've seen so many people just getting to the industry and crushing it. I'll say that's something that I wanted to share as well just believe in yourself, this, this is for you and know your demographics. I know exactly what type of people that I closed at a higher percentage. It better send that you ratio rate. So that's, that's kinda my, the people that I go to. So when I, same days just based on their body language, they, they react. They, they talk to me the way they carried themselves. I can save from closing that deal or no. So if I don't feel like I'm closing, I don't even set the appointment. So just kind of know the people that you close easier. Cause the Indiana, the day, you don't want to be the best salesman in the world. Just go talk to, just look for the low hanging fruit.

Speaker 3 (56:48):

Just look for the low hanging fruits and that's it.

Speaker 2 (56:51):

Yeah. I love that. So w what, what are the demographics for you, Christian? What, which ones do you go after?

Speaker 3 (56:59):

Um, now, now it's getting to a point that I can close. Pretty much everything. It wasn't like as now. I don't, I don't have a demographics, but yeah, in Texas, there's a lot of like, uh, black people. I feel like that's a really good demographic for me. I can connect with this people really, really well, and I haven't closed. So in my country we speak Portuguese, but I learned here in dos. I, I don't close a whole lot of deals in Spanish to be Frank with you. Nah, but I like it's, it's good people. So, but that's not my go-to. I feel like, yeah, I'll say black people, but I, I like, I like styling everyone.

Speaker 2 (57:42):

Yeah. Let's go. Well, Christian, thanks again, my man. Sorry. I think I've said we're going to wrap up like 10 times and then you keep, you keep, you keep dropping a cold on us. So I'm like, dang, I need to ask him about this. And he follow up with

Speaker 3 (57:56):

Very, very first time speaking in public. So I just can't. I just can't hold myself.

Speaker 2 (58:00):

Yeah, no, you did awesome, man. So I appreciate you guys go give Krishna fall. Let them know you appreciated that episode. And thanks again. We'll be connecting and talk soon, Christian. Thanks for coming on the show.

Speaker 4 (58:13):

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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 Taylor Armstrong here with another episode. And as usual, we're here to make you a sell more solar, close, more deals and get more referrals and more leads. So I kind of butchered that in show, but I'm just getting back from a little hunting trip more about that later. So apologize if I'm a little out of it here, got back late last night, trying to get back into the grain of things here and excited to get back into it. Get closing some deals before we jump into the episode today. And of course, I'll tell you more about my, uh, hunting trip for my hunters out there. If you don't care about hunting, then you can skip pass maybe the first minute or two after this. But before we jump into that, I want to invite you to a special live stream I'm doing with my friend, Solar Joe.

Speaker 2 (01:36):

He was on the podcast, I think about a month ago. So he's a master of objections. He has what I would say. The number one Facebook group for solar pros, um, Solarpreneur, Facebook group. Isn't quite there yet, but, um, someday his group is called solar objections and he does some awesome live streams in there, which he graciously invited me to take part in one. So that's happening tomorrow. Um, at the time, you know, you hear this episode will be tomorrow. Um, but when I say tomorrow, I mean Wednesday, October 20th, 2021, of course. So if you listened to this episode after the fact, I apologize, you're late to the party. So listen to the episode, right? When they come out and come on, turn your notifications on and get this content. You can be fresh on the announcements, but if you want to join that, it's going to be at 4:00 PM Pacific standard time.

Speaker 2 (02:34):

And I would love to see you on there. Hit me with some questions. I'm going to try to brush up on my objections a little bit. So hopefully I don't look like a complete idiot up there. I know I'm probably not the world's greatest at overcoming objections, but I think I can drop some knowledge in there. Hopefully help some people out. So go join in. If you want to check that out and of course join the Facebook group if you haven't already. So without further ado, jump into the topic for today. Okay. And what I want to talk about is why we need to keep solar super simple and a couple different meanings with simple. When I say simple, Hey, actually my hunting trip that I just got back from kind of ties into this. And I got thinking about it. I got asked an interesting question.

Speaker 2 (03:24):

Um, couple of days back, I, I always love, you know, interacting with my Solarpreneurs, with my homeys, with, uh, all our listeners here. So definitely feel free to shoot me a message. I try to respond to all of them on a Facebook and Instagram, but I got a question, um, from my friend Carston, he asked if you were to go back and start from the beginning, which skill would you put your focus in to get back to where you are now, the fastest? What would you say are the most important skills that one can develop when just starting out to maximize or maximize their effectiveness? So I thought that was an interesting question. And I want to talk about that a little bit more on the podcast. And the short answer is I would focus on keeping things as simple as possible. Hey, in simple, in the fact that people complicate their presentations too much people combo complicate the process.

Speaker 2 (04:24):

People come complicate just solar in general, in many different aspects. So I want to talk about some ways that we, as Solarpreneurs, solar professionals, we can simplify things and just focus on the things that matter the most. And so here's how this hunting trip kind of ties into this. This is my second, uh, hunting trail. I took I'm from Utah. So I went back down to Southern Utah, met up with a buddy, went on this little hunting trip, just, you know, the general rifle hunt, um, bought my first gun actually, um, last year. So I'm not a big time hunter. This is my second time ever. And I needed to have my buddy coming with me because I don't know what I'm doing out there. So I meet up with him and my first hunting trip, I was able to get a deer probably in like, I dunno, second morning, where out there didn't spend much time.

Speaker 2 (05:20):

Um, just sort of drove around and found a deer on the side of the road, shot it and was done. But this trip was a lot different. What happened was we went out it's a Thursday morning. We went out, drive around, drive around, didn't see anything, Thursday night drive around, drive around hike, hike, drive, drive, rinse, and repeat finally saw one dough. But of course, you know, you got to shoot the buck. So we didn't even see any bucks, just one dough. All right, man, what's going on? So next day, morning, drive around, drive around nothing. Absolutely nothing afternoon of Friday, um, slash evening drive around, drive around. Finally we start seeing herds of dos. So a lot more deer we see, but no box. So at this point we're just pretty frustrated because not only have we driven around, we're going to side by side at truck.

Speaker 2 (06:21):

Um, we're driving a lot, going all over these mountain trails, but we also hiked probably seven or eight miles up to this point. And it's like, you know, up mountains and Hills and stuff like that. So it's not easy hiking. So I'm thinking, man, why is this taking so long to, you know, see a buck? Like I usually at least see something by then. And this is me. I mean, I'm impatient. I'm not a patient guy. Like I said, this my second time hunting ever. So those that are actual hunters, they're probably hearing this and thinking, this is stupid. Cause I know guys will go out and scout and you know, search for deer for months and you know, pass on box and stuff like that. But me being a beginner hunter, not really know what I'm doing. I'm getting frustrated. I'm like, man, I thought you just go out there, see tons of bucks and you can get yourself a monster, one be done with it.

Speaker 2 (07:17):

But no, that's not how it was. And then the other thing is there's lots of hunters up here. So we're seeing tons of people. You might as well call it Disneyland up there in the mountains. There's a ton of people just walking around. I felt like there's crowds of hunters. So got pretty frustrating. And then finally, Saturday morning, well, we didn't see anything again on Saturday morning, but at this point I'm about ready to just call it quits, give up, okay. This is day three. I'm like, man, okay. I'm not getting the data this year. And we decided, okay, let's go out one more time. I took my car up to the base of the mountain. We didn't camp that night just because we're getting sick of camping in the freezing cold. We went back into, uh, Cedar city where Stan, um, and find the Friday afternoon slash evening though.

Speaker 2 (08:11):

We finally see a couple of bucks and it's a little, two point, nothing big. If you follow me on Instagram, you saw me post it, but get it, shoot it from the side of the road. And I'm stoked to finally, I get my buck, taking it to the butcher, get some meat out of it. Uh, Mike, about freaking time. So how does this tie in with solar? Well, it's not that much different. Yeah. I was not patient out there. We're going to different areas. We're knocking on doors. So to speak. We're trying to get our opportunities, but we're not getting anything we're searching around. We're a trick or treating for dear, I guess you could say, but there's no sign of anything. So sometimes that's how it is in solar. How many times are we going to neighborhoods? Maybe we're used to getting a deal closed the first day.

Speaker 2 (09:05):

Maybe we were, we were used to booking lots of appointments after, you know, an hour, whatever, but sometimes that's not how it's going to be. This is how it was on my hunting trip. The first time I went out, got a deer pretty much right off the bat. This time it took driving around for tons of miles that took hiking, probably like close to 10 miles when it's all said and done, and it took a ton of work to get the same result. So that's how it is in solar. Some weeks are going to be that way some weeks it's going to take twice the amount of effort to get a deal as other weeks. So that's why you need to keep things simple. You need to keep things consistent and you need to not give up. You need to take your mind off of the results and focus in the input.

Speaker 2 (09:57):

What are you inputting to get the results? If you focus, if you take yourself out of the results and focus more on the output you're putting in the time you're putting in, that's what you can control, right? You can't necessarily control how many people are going to sign up that week, but what can you control? You can control the doors. You knock, you can control to some degree. The people you talk to, you can control the hours you put in. Okay? There's things you can do to control your attitude. So focus on those things you can control and that's how you're going to get way more consistent results. Okay? So this is part of what I told Carson. Um, when he was messaging me, what would you focus on? And that's what I would focus on. I would focus on those things. You can control and track it like a mad man, the most successful people I know in this industry, that's what they're doing.

Speaker 2 (10:49):

They're keeping everything super simplified. They're tracking their numbers and whether they close 10 deals that week or whether they close one deal, they're working basically the same day they're putting in that same output as they, as the week that they closed 10 deals, whether it's one deal or 10 deal, 10 deals. So it's easy to forget. I did this couple of weeks ago. Matter of fact, where I closed a couple of deals early in the week, and it's a trap we can all fall into pretty easily. If you don't watch yourself because I got two deals closed early in the week, I started getting lazy like, okay, well, you know what? I'm not going to go knock. Um, you know, I'm just going to follow up and I'm going to see if I can get some, uh, installs, hopping a little bit quicker, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna not start knocking until a little bit later today.

Speaker 2 (11:45):

And what could have turned into many more deals that week? I only closed the two because I, I took down my effort. I took down my production and I got lazy because I closed the two deals. And then guess what happened after that? Both those deals ended up canceling. So now instead of having the two deals close on the week, I was at zero that's kicking myself. I'm like, man, why didn't I keep my production the same? I could have had two deals that stuck two more deals that stuck, but I got lazy and didn't do it. So at that'd be a lesson to you, focus on keeping things simple, keep, keep things, um, focused on what you can control and then track it like crazy. I've talked about this before, but keep spreadsheets of, um, you know, the hours you're putting in the doors, you're knocking the appointments.

Speaker 2 (12:41):

You're sitting down with homeowners, the closing opportunities. You're getting have those key metrics, make sure you're tracking them like a madman, cause that's how you're going to make improvement. And then there's an app you should all be using. If you're on the doors or however you're tracking stuff. I just have an app that my friend Earl told me about. It's called counter. You can go download it app store and you can customize it to the things you want to track. So for me, I'm checking my close deals on the week. I'm checking my appointments kept track of my appointments booked. I'm tracking my conversations on the doors. Okay? How many qualified prospects my talking to? So I would suggest tracking those things, go download that app. And on next episode, we're going to hear from one of my friends that is having some insane results, not just right now, but the past pretty much, I would say six weeks or sorry, six months minimum.

Speaker 2 (13:37):

I've been seeing this guy close, super consistent deals. And I think he's hit 15 deals on the month for going on. I think like six, seven months now consistently. So these are things that he actually talks about in the podcast. We did his name's Christian Maroney. So you're not going to want to miss out. That's going to be next episode. And he's going to talk about a lot of these topics. We're going to dive deeper into it. And you're going to see the things he's doing to be super consistent and get results and be the top rep at his company. So tune into that episode, I hope this helped you send it to someone that wants to simplify more. And we'll talk more about how you can simplify other things, but for now just simplify the process, focus on the things you can control. And it's not that complicated.

Speaker 2 (14:24):

Sometimes we make it difficult. Oh, why, why aren't they closing deals? Go back to the beginning, focus on those things that matter. And that's how you're going to get massive results. Hope that helped. And you we'll see you on the next episode with Christian Maroney, send this to someone who needs it. And don't forget to tune into the live stream tomorrow. You can make it in the solar objections, Facebook group peace.

Speaker: (15:26):

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.

Visit Solciety.co 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 (00:41):

Hey, Hey, Hey, what's going on Solarpreneur? Taylor Armstrong back with another episode and as usual here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and hopefully have a much better experience in the solar industry. So before we jump into today's topic, have two little announcements and one's kind of an ask. So number one, we are launching our new Solciety app. It's going to be coming out. Um, it should already be on the Google play store for those weirdos that are still using Androids. You can probably actually go get it already if you want to check it out. And for the normal people, the iPhone users, um, you're going to have to wait a little bit, I guess that's the downside with apple. They're a little more strict when it comes to, uh, you know, approving apps. So anyways, we're going to be dropping an episode soon about what's going on with that, but just wanted to give you a teaser.

Speaker 2 (01:41):

If you're wanting to get first exclusive access to that, be checking the app store, go to the Solciety.co And you can get first access first dibs on what we're going on, what we got going on with the soul side of the app, but it's gonna feature, you know, top training, exclusive discounts and a whole lot of other things. So definitely go get on that. When you have the chance, then number two, I'm thinking about actually to start charging a price on the podcast. No worry it's not money, but what I mean by that, I've been listening to a lot of, uh, Andy Frisella, his podcast it's called real AF, highly recommended. Um, he talks about right now, you know, mostly just issues that are going on in the U S for all of our, uh, listeners here in the USA. Um, but he starts out almost every one of his podcasts.

Speaker 2 (02:37):

If you listen to it with an ask and that ask, is it instead of paying them money to listen to it, you go share it with a friend you post on social media. You, uh, I don't know, help promote it somehow. And that's his price for the podcast and he, this guy's, he's got, I think like number one, business podcasts in the world, and I'd go check. But one of the most popular podcasts doesn't advertise on it at all, which he's probably the only top podcast like that, that I listened to, that doesn't have ads on it. He could be making seven figures, easy a year, popping ads on that thing, but that's his. Is it? You just go out and share it with someone. You talk about it. So I'm like, maybe I should start making that ask on my podcast. So we're trying to grow the Solarpreneur movement.

Speaker 2 (03:28):

So I want to make the same as to you. If you got value from this episode or any of our previous episodes, please go send it to someone, help us spread the word. We're doing all this for free. And to be blunt, I know I could be selling probably an extra deal a week with the time I spend on the podcast, but I choose to spread some value and help my peeps close more deals, because that's what it's about. And it's helped with me. The more I share what I learned. I know I, I get a lot of value from that too, and connecting with other people. So it's not like I don't want to be doing this, but anyways, that's my ask. If you got value from this podcast, please go share it with someone. And as always, you can leave a review to you if you feel so inclined.

Speaker 2 (04:15):

So with that being said, let's jump into today's topic. And this topic comes from just last week's experience, just like a lot of episodes do. So what happened last week? I was having a rougher week up until Friday. So how many of you have had a tough week? You're just grinding it out. You're knocking lots of doors. You're calling lots of leads, referrals, whatnot, and you're not getting anything. And I don't know about you, but if Friday comes around and I haven't closed the deal, I start feeling a little sick inside. I'm like, man, I need to get at least a few deals closed this week. I've gotten nothing. So that's why if you can get the deal closed early in the week. For me, it takes a lot of pressure off knowing that I have a deal closed thing going on the weekends, um, with some wins, if you will, but last week I didn't have any wins.

Speaker 2 (05:08):

Didn't have any closes. So I was getting a little stressed with it. I'm like, man, what's going on here? What do I need to do to get my few closes at least on the week? And so here's what I did. I looked, I looked for the low-hanging fruit. Hey, what do I mean by that? I looked for deals that I thought would be a lay down. And I've talked about this a little bit in the podcast. If you want to go back and listen to the podcasts around when we have Laney Dray, Mr. Door-to-Door millionaire on the show, we go into a few topics that have to do with this, but specifically in solar, what I mean is you go find people that potentially have not been talked to hardly the at all, if ever, Hey, and so I'm going to talk about how you do, and especially here in San Diego or in saturated markets, I think that's one of the keys to having success in these saturated markets is you got to look under the rocks for the deals you got to look and all the hiding places for these homeowners.

Speaker 2 (06:14):

Because if you're just going to cookie cutter neighborhoods, knocking all the typical stuff, yeah, you can have success. But for me, I like to have success and be able to get more quality leads and not necessarily be sifting through, you know, a hundred people that have been talked to 20 times, which sometimes is the case, especially here in San Diego. Okay. Now you might not have this issue as much. If you're in newer markets, maybe your issue there, just getting people to believe that solar works. But if you're in California, pretty much anywhere in California, you gotta be good at finding these people that have not heard as much about solar gain. The other benefit to this too. If you can find those people that haven't, um, you know, been hit up a million times about solar, that haven't really checked it out, then it's a lot easier to price the deals.

Speaker 2 (07:11):

What's your worth. Okay. None of this, what drives me nuts is when a homeowner has 10 quotes already and I go, okay, price me at, uh, two, five a watt. I'll buy it from you, whatever, some ridiculous number. And they're just trying to drive the pricing to the bottom. Now we seen still close those people. You just got to build value, but I love it when I can just build value and not have to sit in, pull teeth and fight on price. Okay. Makes it easier when you find these people that are quote unquote. Laydowns right. So let's talk about how do you find these people? Okay. Some of this again is going to sound familiar, but I'm going to refresh your memory. And for those, maybe you haven't heard this before. Okay. But number one thing is go off the beaten path. And I brought up Lenny grey.

Speaker 2 (08:02):

If you haven't read his book yet, it's called more door to door millionaire. Um, he also has his door to door millionaire, original book, two books he wrote, and he has a section on this. The entire book is super valuable. So I definitely recommend you go check it out and buy it if you haven't already. But on page one 14, if you have the book he talks about, he calls the strategy off the beaten path. And just to kind of summarize it, he talks about how he was knocking with, um, one of his rookie sales reps and where they were just hitting up this cookie cutter neighborhood. And every single person was like, Hey, you're the third guy. That's come by this week. And they were just getting hammered out. They're not having success. So after, I don't know, an hour or something, he goes onto the main highway where always the cars are speed and buying everything.

Speaker 2 (08:57):

And there's houses also along the main highway. But these are the houses that the longer driveways that, um, maybe they add some, I don't know, farm animals out front Barnes, whatever. They'll have bigger properties, things like that. So he says, Hey man, let's go try these houses. So they go to these houses on the main highway, instead of just talking to the cookie cutter neighborhood ones. And he says, within 15 minutes, they are sorry. You said the first house they sold that one. Then 15 minutes later, they sold the other one. And this was like, you know, just around the corner from this cookie cutter neighborhood, they'd had been knocking. It's the point of this is, and the point that he makes is that sometimes you need to go the strategy of call the over quantity. Hey, and he calls this like the low-hanging fruit.

Speaker 2 (09:49):

Hey, these people, they're not going to be talked to as much. You can, you know what I'm talking about. If you go to any neighborhood where they have super long Dre ways, if there are more smaller towns, if they're super spread apart, all homes like these they're way more likely to have been hit up a million times versus your cookie cutter neighborhoods. So that's the first strategy, make sure when you're out knocking. And I know some people are with, you know, the bigger companies, maybe you're with the Sunrun's, the legacies, maybe you're assigned areas and you're not supposed to be knocking different places, but even if you're assigned an area, make sure you look for those houses that are spread apart. Try to look for houses where maybe they're tough to access. Um, maybe they're they have gates in front of them. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (10:42):

Just anything you can note, any clue you can pick up on that. Maybe it would have been tough for any other newbie sales rep or sales rep that hasn't been listening to the Solarpreneur podcast to get access to. So make sure you do that. So that's number one. Look for those houses that are off the beaten path. Okay. And tip number two, make sure you are conscious of new move-ins is another big strategy that I've implemented. Okay. And I didn't even finish my story at the beginning, but I was having a rough week when I started out, like I said, didn't have anything and Friday that's exactly what I did. I went to a place where I didn't think many people would have knocked yet and sure enough books, like one out of every three people I talked to in this neighborhood. Okay. It was a condo slash townhome neighborhood.

Speaker 2 (11:35):

That's another thing that's I would classify in the, off the beaten path. And depending on your area, depending on what state you're knocking in, maybe like shared roof spaces or condos, town homes, maybe they're not allowed to get solar. I don't know. You'd have to look at what the regulations, all that in your state, but here in California, you can basically put solar on anything, even if it has a shared roof space. So keep that in mind, these like places that maybe even look like apartment complex, sometimes these places are townhomes or condos. So be wary of that and make sure you're paying attention. And that's another, I would say classification that's off the beaten path. Okay. And then the second point, um, was, um, sorry to finish my story. I ended up closing two last week on Friday and Saturday, knock on those town homes, but lay down sells low-hanging fruit.

Speaker 2 (12:36):

And then the second point that I was getting into before I started rambling, there was make sure you're conscious of the new move-ins. And I've talked about this multiple times as well on the show here, but make sure you're going on to Zillow, make your spreadsheet of your new move-ins. If you're assigned an area, go look up all the new people that moved in. This is the way you can target those people. You can bring up specifics in your door approach and Hey, we're just letting all the new move-ins know what's going on in the neighborhood. You guys, you probably didn't hear yet. You guys just moved in, right? Because what's super cool is you can see literally when people moved into their house right on Zillow. Okay. And I know there's a lot of other apps. Um, I'll have to put some in the show notes, but there's apps.

Speaker 2 (13:23):

You can get that realtors use where you can see like way more data than this. You can see, like if it's in a trust, the homes, um, like who is on the title of the home, things like that. No, there's a couple paid apps out there. Make sure you're doing that. And the best reps I know in the industry, um, are you using the strategy third going, of course, they're going to go like train reps and cookie cutter neighborhoods. They're going to knock and cookie cutter neighborhoods themselves, but they're mixing it up. Okay. Some days they're going to just the new move ins and goals. And if you're doing this strategy, make sure you're knocking around the new move ins too. You don't want to be driving for miles. And then only knock one door. I would suggest knocking all the way around, um, you know, the two neighbors on the side and then the three neighbors across the street minimum.

Speaker 2 (14:17):

And hopefully you have a name to drop where you can bring up the fact that you're, um, letting the people are in and say, Hey, do you know, the people just moved in next door? It's a good opener for their neighbors. Hey, but anyways, so the top guys are using all these strategies. They're going to the off the beaten path. They're doing the cookie cutter neighborhoods and then they're doing the new move-ins. Okay. And then the last point with all this is target the homes that already have solar too. Guess what? Especially here in San Diego, in California, there's a lot of homes. I've had solar for a long time. A lot of these people are getting huge, true bills where their solar is not covering everything they're using for their energy. So be conscious of that, make sure you're knocking these homes, especially if you know, maybe they have a pool or maybe if it just seems like, okay, this house is huge.

Speaker 2 (15:14):

They should have more than 10 panels up there. Especially those homes knock them. Cause you're going to get lots of people that either number one, they're being super conservative still. Cause they don't want to have those huge true-up bills or number two, they're paying huge, true bills. The utility that's not being covered. And these people, they already have solar. You don't have to sell them on the idea of solar. You just have to sell them on adding more panels, which is usually a super laid down low-hanging fruit sale. So that's the three tips guys, make sure you're knocking off the beaten path, including condos and town homes, depending on which state you're in and the laws and regulations around that number to make sure you're knocking the new move-ins. And even if your assigned areas, make sure you're looking those up and being aware of who maybe just moved in then number three, make sure you're also knocking the true-up systems that people that already have solar and another thing out here in California, a lot of all the new homes have to be built with solar.

Speaker 2 (16:22):

So for us Californians, that's another strategy that's our team has implemented go to those homes that are being built with solar because none of these homes that are being built with the systems already are sized to what the homeowners are using. So if you can find that out, you can go and look at this data. You can see how long people have been in the home and you can target maybe the people that just moved in, but also keep in mind target the people who've been there for a year because the new movements that's typically the one objection they have is that, oh Taylor, yeah, we don't want to do it. We want to see what we're using in the home. So in that case, make sure you're keeping these people in your follow-up list. And then also targeting people that have been in their homes, you know, six months to a year because they do have some data on what their electric usage history is.

Speaker 2 (17:12):

So that's what helped me this last week. That's how you turn a bad week into a good one as well. Make sure you're mixing it up, go off to that low-hanging fruit, but more importantly, just make sure to grains. Cause even if you're going after the low-hanging fruit, that's not an excuse to work less. And I'll be honest. Sometimes I've gotten a couple of deals from that and I've, and I've, uh, not worked as many hours as I should have. So make sure if you're using these strategies, use them with responsibility. Okay. Work just as hard as if you're grinding out in a cookie cutter neighborhood and you're only booking one out of every 10 appointments. Cause if you keep that same mindset, that's how you're going to have a lot more success is doing a combination of these strategies. So I hope that helps go share it with someone that could use the tips that's having a slower week, get out there and close some deals.

Speaker 2 (18:05):

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.

Visit Solciety.co 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. I am super excited for this episode. We have a live episode in the studio. I always love doing it with live guests because I think I get more out of it and more connection with the guests. And I'm super excited because we have our second lady, second girl rep coming on the show. I don't know. I don't know if you guys like get like female girls, lady, whatever. Um, but anyway, it's okay. So we've got Alex Hogan hall on the show here, live in the studio, Alex. Thanks for coming out today and coming on the show. Yeah, of course.

Speaker 3 (01:15):

Taylor, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be

Speaker 2 (01:17):

Here. Yeah, it'll be super fun. And she's, uh, hopefully moving our assume, but you're right now you're commuting from Utah working with the team, right? Yes, sir.

Speaker 3 (01:25):

Yep. Back and forth,

Speaker 2 (01:26):

California. You're getting sick of that. Uh, that plane ride yet. Are you guys like riding in the plane?

Speaker 3 (01:31):

Oh my gosh. I feel like everyone at Delta probably has to know me by now. It's the same flight.

Speaker 2 (01:38):

Uh, is it like you see like the same pilots and like flight attendants and stuff? Or does that change your name?

Speaker 3 (01:43):

I see the same, like Utah based crew. I feel like every time.

Speaker 2 (01:47):

Nice. Well, that's cool. And, um, so for those that don't know, Alex, she right now is the, uh, you might have to help me a little bit, but your CMO right at,

Speaker 3 (01:57):

Yep. I'm a chief marketing officer and chairman of the board for true power.

Speaker 2 (02:02):

Okay. True power in Alex. She has a ton of experience. We're just talking a little bit before the show and she gave me their own whole, you know, kind of run down of everything. She's done all the experiences she's had and, um, she's done a ton awesome stuff. So, um, Alex, do you want to give us kind of like the rundown for those who don't know you kind of how you got into the industry, how you got into door to door and, um, I guess how you got into the position that you're at now too. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (02:25):

Sure. Cool. So, um, so I got started in the industry back in 2015. I had just finished up college with a degree in Marine biology and I was just loved the environment of super, you know, pro hippie fixing, fixing climate change. So couldn't find a job in Marine bio. So I applied to this position to knock doors and sell solar. So I was like, look, I can do this for a petition signing or something. It's going to be easy to get paid. Um, so I tried it out. I was one of the first, uh, direct training classes over at Trinity solar out in New Jersey. Um, back in, I think of 2015. And at the time we really didn't have much training in place support systems. It was still very new to the business. Um, so I was one of the first female sales reps. They brought on board.

Speaker 3 (03:11):

I had to like make my own polos with the logo on it and stuff, um, at the time. So yeah, just start now and I, uh, didn't have any sales background or anything didn't think I'd ever get into sales, but I, you know, did pretty well. I am a super hard worker, so I just went straight into, um, you know, knocking every day, making sure I was working the hours and I did pretty well. I was doing about five or six a month and was able to pay off all of my student loans within the first year I was able to, uh, get my first, uh, apartment with some friends. I was able to get my first car. So pretty much everything I wanted at 22 and I was getting all that stuff covered. Yeah. And so I enjoyed what I was doing. Um, but I was starting to think about getting back into Marine biology.

Speaker 3 (03:56):

This was about nine months to a year later and the director of sales and I kind of sat down before I was looking to leave and they offered me a role to come in and kind of just use a little bit of experience I had out in the field understanding kind of what the field was going through to start building out their support systems. So that's covering anything with onboarding. What does our recruiting process look like? What do our competitions look like? What's our training, our marketing materials, kind of you name it. And that was kind of the stuff that I got into and the way that I did it was mostly like, you know, figuring out what problems existed in the org that I could come in and solve. And, uh, and just kind of figuring out where my hard work could get put in a place. And when you don't really have a skillset built out for something like that, a lot of what you're going to be able to do, that's unique is provide value through your hard work. So I worked my butt off or to really late hours, um, kind of whatever I needed to do to start getting that off the ground. And within, I'd say two years, I was managing a team and then took a director position at Trinity over, uh, all of sales admin, and then also recruiting.

Speaker 2 (04:59):

Let's go, was there a lot of like, was there a lot of girls at the time or you really, really like the only one coming into the office?

Speaker 3 (05:05):

So we, our office staff is a little bit heavier on the female side, lots in our different support departments. Um, but I was our first and only female director, youngest director. So yeah, not, not as, quite as much at the leadership level on the sales side, for sure. Okay. Yeah. And so that's kinda where I grew into my director level self, I guess. And then, um, I transitioned into working with legacy, uh, built out the setter closer model over there. Again, I'm very heavy on like building out the systems, kind of the backend stuff, making everything work. Um, and then, uh, after working at legacy for awhile, transitioned over into vivant solar and took on a role managing the sales marketing department there under Jason Del stra. And, uh, that was probably my most fun part of the career before branched out into consulting. I loved, you know, we had this big $5 million budget.

Speaker 3 (05:55):

I had a huge team. We were very heavy on the culture and that's kind of where I realized how unique and valuable it was to be excellent at building out culture. So, um, when, you know, kind of doubled down on that as the way that I could provide, you know, unique value in the industry. And so when I left Viven and got into consulting with door to door experts, that was kinda my thing. So I worked really heavily on both new hire experience, repor tension, increasing your per rep average for your team, just kind of that type of stuff that kept people around, um, long-term and could make companies unique. Um, culture is really interesting with that where, you know, I'm going back to school now and something we're learning about is how does a business provide a competitive advantage or sustain their competitive advantage.

Speaker 3 (06:38):

And if you think about it in door to door, our audience for marketing, isn't so much like, uh, the solar customer, as much as it is this as it is the sales rep. So that's kinda my biggest audience is how can I provide the best possible experience for my sales reps? And so a sustained competitive advantage also, you know, usually comes from something that's really socially complex. And so if you can build a really unique and interesting culture that keeps people around, it's something that's very hard for other companies to imitate. So that's going to be kind of the way that you can, uh, set your company apart from the rest.

Speaker 2 (07:09):

No doubt. And yeah, I saw Alex first speak actually back at door-to-door con was that last year and last year. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, got a ton of like nuggets from just her talking to door to door con. Um, and you talked to a lot of things you just mentioned, like the culture of the competitions, um, how to increase the per rep average. I remember, um, need to go back and review my notes, but it was super good, super valuable stuff you talked about. Um, and yeah, in my opinion, I think that's why we need more like girl reps in door to door is because I don't know, you've probably seen this by now, but pretty much every successful, you know, door to door rep, at least the guys we all got add, we're all super disorganized. We're all, you know, take an Adderall, all this stuff.

Speaker 2 (07:53):

That's like the, you know, door to door, culture and everything though. Um, in every like most, every girl I see come in and they, you know, they're on top of it. They want organize things. They just get people in line and yeah. Then matter of fact, that's how it is. Our company ran out. I told you just off, um, before we started the interview here, we got someone that used to be at Trinity solar to your name's Jeanette. And, uh, yeah, she helped us like just dial in like being so much better than, than what we were doing before though. Yeah. Um, for those that are looking for, you know, more organization, I would consider looking at, you know, bringing in some more girls in your organization because yeah. I think that's kind of the super powers that a lot of, probably not all girls, but I would say in general, um, they're definitely more organized. Is that fair to say Alex?

Speaker 3 (08:39):

Yeah, I would say so. I mean, that's definitely been like a blessing for me at first I was like kind of done being the only girl in my org. It was tougher for me to find mentorship, you know, connect with the male leaders that I was with. It was just, you know, there's just that barrier there. Um, so it was for us to build that relationship. So for awhile it was kind of sad, but then after I realized, you know, just like you mentioned, Taylor, like so much of my natural skill set or the things that I knew I could double down on to become unique. Like a lot of that was very different than the skill set that my male peers brought to the table. A lot of them were growing up and having success, like getting into director roles through being really great at sales. And so, um, I was fortunate enough to have kind of that mix of doing well enough with sales to really understand what reps are going through. So then when I could come in and build out those systems and provide that structure, it w it was a very specific to them and help that out a lot.

Speaker 2 (09:30):

Yeah. That's awesome. So how long were you like in the sales before you got into more like the like management's type stuff organization?

Speaker 3 (09:37):

Yeah, so I, I knocked for about a year, um, and then took a lot of referrals after that, that lasted for awhile. And then once I moved out of New Jersey into Utah referral game, kind of dried up there, um, wasn't working out there quite as much, but yeah, I still, you know, to this day, I'll go out and talk with our sales reps here and there and make sure I'm spending as much time as in the field as I can. I think it's super important to know firsthand what they're going through in order to make sure that, you know, everything we're building is the best it possibly can be to support them and, um, keep them here longterm, as everybody wants to find a home in their career. I think oftentimes we think in door to door, how, like, you know, reps don't stay that long. It's kind of fleeting. It's okay if you lose a lot of people, but I think it's, um, it's a challenge, but to think about it the opposite way where, you know, if I can figure out if I can crack the code on how people can stay longterm, I'm actually gonna have an org that connects at a way deeper level has success at a way deeper level. So that's what I'm

Speaker 2 (10:32):

A hundred percent. Yeah. I respect that a ton like leaders that still want to go out and knock with their teams as all these top companies. I see all the leaders. A matter of fact, I just saw a post about a, I think it was Sunrun CEO or something shows up. I don't know if he saw that, but she shows up to a meeting and then they thought they're going to have a meet and greet after. And she's like, no, we're going to the doors who might knock them with like, wow, she's awesome. So like, I think people really expect respect that. And I've talked with reps from other organizations that don't do that, where their leaders are just coming in and doing trainings and then heading out and they're talking about all these things. I go and knock harder, go close more doors and things like that. But I think it's hard to, um, I don't know, maybe take that information sometimes if the reps don't see, oh, they're willing to do it themselves. And, um, they're going to come out and like, show me how it's done even though, I mean, I mean, I'm sure you're not to the level you were before when you're knocking consistently every day. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:26):

This is just here and there, but I mean, you're so right. Like even, you know, in the times where I've been even recruiting at the manager level, a DM will sometimes say, okay, like I am down to come over and I'll do this, that, and the other thing, but I don't really want to knock anymore. And I just think it's so silly to think that you can be as effective and be the best person for your people if you don't really know what they're going through and you're not willing to do that with them. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:50):

That's for sure. Yeah. So when you, um, like kind of transitioned more into the management stuff, more into building out the systems, things like that, was that, were they asking you to do that? Or were you kind of like, I dunno, is that, was that you more wanting to get into that type of role? Or how did that transition go?

Speaker 3 (12:07):

Yeah, I, I didn't really know what to expect when I first took the role. I was kind of, even in the mentality of, you know, I'll, I'll come on, I'll do this and I'll keep looking for a job that I want in the meantime. Um, but coming in, I, I didn't realize how valuable this question was at the time I was like 23, but I remember going, um, department to department the first couple of weeks of my job, because my boss was traveling to all the offices. So I'm just sitting around corporate. I'm like, okay, what am I going to do? And I went to all the departments and I said, Hey, I'm Alex, I'm working with the direct sales team. I just wanted to know, like, how do you interact with them? What problems do you run into? Like, how can I make things easier for you guys?

Speaker 3 (12:42):

And kind of like build that, um, kind of system up and everybody had their own opinions and things. And so not only did it build a ton of relationship equity for me, like people kind of talked about playing politics and corporate, I don't think it has to be politics, but you do need to build relationships. So I built up a ton of that equity by, um, going out, doing things for other departments, kind of seeing how I could kind of grease the wheel there between their relationship with sales. And, uh, and because of that, I noticed a ton of holes that needed to be filled, created systems and kind of, um, different problem solving solutions that I could put into place there. And then I managed it because I put it into place. So as I grew and built more systems under me and things that I was managing, I was able to convince my boss to let me bring on additional people. And that's how I got into management was purely just working my butt off and then figuring out, okay, what problems exist that no, one's either thinking about solving or wants to solve and figure out the solution to that, and then kind of build out my influence from there.

Speaker 2 (13:39):

Uh that's awesome. So it sounds like you're more like super proactive, like, Hey, what problems can I help with? What things can be improved? It wasn't like them doing yoga, doing this, go do this, like went out there and kind of recognize that yourself and like suggest to them, things like that.

Speaker 3 (13:54):

Totally. And I think that like, it applies, I think, no matter what position you're in, like anyone that's trying to get into leadership, if you can be proactive about figuring out, you know, what needs to get done, that's not getting done. What are the holes that you can fill with different solutions? Um, that is the way to kind of stand out and be unique. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:10):

Well that's, yeah, that's a good point. Good point. And so I'm with team, I know this is what you're doing at a door to door experts for awhile while was helping people kind of help build out these systems and more on the organizational thing, the rep retention. Right. Um, what was like some big mistakes that you would see as you went into a company? I'm sure you've dealt with some pretty disorganized companies and maybe some that were a mess and everything. Do you have any, uh, I don't know, cool stories of companies that were a disaster and you helped them turn things around or anything like that,

Speaker 3 (14:40):

Dude, that's such a good question. Um, yeah, I, I'm just thinking through all these examples, I would say one of the biggest things I noticed was if you're a smaller business or you're like a manager looking to do this for your team, you know, you're not doing it huge scale of in status yet, or anything like that. A lot of people, you don't even realize you're doing it, but you're like trying to imitate a big culture. You're trying to imitate these big players that you admire. So it's not coming from a place of like genuine, authentic, like you're trying to do what's in your reps, best interest. You're like building out systems or creating competitions or doing all these things because you think you need to, and because you think that's, what's going to work. And so it's like, it's this weird, like disconnect, like emotionally in between like you and the sales rep.

Speaker 3 (15:28):

So instead a big part of it was getting in touch with that. Company's like identity, like what are the things that they really care about? Who are the people that they're trying to bring on board? Like who really aligns with their core values and then figuring out how do I build out systems, build out training, uh, build it into my recruiting process, whatever a way that I'm providing what is best for the best interests of the sales rep. And that will also align with your best interest as a business or a, you know, manager simply because you're bringing on the right people. So, you know, you're bringing on the right person, if your best interests and theirs align perfectly because you're bringing somebody into your culture that shares your values.

Speaker 2 (16:05):

Okay. So it sounds like step one is kind of recognizing what are the core values before anything and then going out and finding people that fit into that. And that's more, would you say that's what we, what you were helping companies with as you started working with them?

Speaker 3 (16:20):

Yeah, I would say so because a mistake I made in the beginning was I would, you know, I just, I, I feel like I've got these systems now that could be successful anywhere. So we'd start on the system front and we'd put the stuff into place. And, um, their retention didn't go up. Like the metrics kind of, we were trying to measure, we're not really changing. And so if I looked at it, it was like this, yeah. It was just this like false imitation of what we really needed to be providing. So we started a step back and said like, okay, who are the people that we're truly trying to bring on board? Right. Like, and one thing I, um, I was telling you about this earlier, but a little Simon Senate training I saw that I think is super valuable is, uh, he, he was interviewing a leader in Navy seals and he was talking about, um, how they choose who they want to bring into their org.

Speaker 3 (17:01):

And he kind of drew this little graph. So one of the axis was, uh, high performance, so low to high performance. And then the other axis was, uh, culture, or, you know, how good of a human is this person kind of thing. So every company wants someone that falls under that one corner where it's high performance, you know, high, high value to the culture. Nobody wants someone that's in the low and low corner, but then, um, oftentimes people will choose the high performer. That's a bad fit for your culture over the, a low performer. That is a great fit for your culture. And I think that's a huge thing we do here in door to door because we care so much about that production, but this guy kind of defined that person as a toxic team member. So it's someone that comes on board. Um, they might be breaking your rules.

Speaker 3 (17:45):

They might be kind of going against your core values. And then as a manager or a leader, you're looking at this person and you're like, dang, I really want the production. So you keep them on board. You make concessions with yourself, you kind of give up some of that identity that you care so much about with your, with your team and what you guys stand for. And then you think that, that person's either, you know, providing a neutral or a benefit to the team where oftentimes if you put a top performer, that's a bad fit for the culture in place, and you prioritize them over your good guys on the team that are maybe mediocre, you know, you work with that person versus developing them. Then you're actually going to detract from the overall kind of culture and performance of everyone.

Speaker 2 (18:19):

That's interesting. So how do you know cause like, um, um, I'm sure you've seen, sometimes it's tough to recognize you do one, two interviews and you don't necessarily know how this person's going to work out with the team. So how do you, like, what do you do? Say you bring on someone they're crushing it, but yeah. They're not fitting into their culture. I don't know. Maybe they're like doing shady stuff or, and I'm sure you've seen all types of things going on that, like, what do you do with these reps? Do you like, Hey, strike one, strike two year out or do you like sit down and talk with them or do you like, I don't know if you see they're not a good fit in your culture, do you try to like mold them first? Or what do you do in these cases?

Speaker 3 (18:55):

Yeah, I would, I would say always like, step one, you should be a high enough level person too. If you have a high performer, that's not a good fit for your culture, you should be able to control that situation enough to try to mold them into what you need. Okay. So oftentimes, you know, someone's, um, uh, being, you know, really aggressive or territorial or just kind of this personality that doesn't fit with the group. If you first try to level with them and be like, Hey, like I want to provide a space for you to, you know, move into leadership here, make the most money. You can, whatever that person's goals are, I'd kind of aligned with them there and be like, I need you to do me a favor though, because you are such a high level influencer on the team because of your production level and like how well you can go out and perform that if you don't come to meetings and you do all of these things that are like against the basic rules that I'm trying to hold everybody to.

Speaker 3 (19:42):

And those expectations, it sucks for me as a leader because I have a tough time. Like all these people look up to, you have all this influence over them. So I need to try to hold you to those same standards if it's not, you know, just for you coming to the team, cause you don't care that much about going to the trainings every day. Maybe you don't need them as much, but the rest of the team does. And so you would be doing me a massive, massive favor if you could, you know, follow X, Y, and Z. So whatever those basic expectations are, I try to kind of set it that way. And oftentimes if you level with that person and they're like, yeah, um, I'm just doing something nice for the team like that usually connects and will resonate with people. Um, if they are still not going to be a good fit for the group, I have, you know, um, consulted people and we've said, okay, let's put this person kind of out on an island.

Speaker 3 (20:25):

So, you know, don't come to the meetings. We're not gonna put you on the leader board, but you're welcome to come here and sell lights out and kind of do your thing and work with me. But I can't just put you in with the rest of the team because you're kind of a bad influence on them. Um, or worst case scenario too. Like I've also, um, personally lost people that I thought were high, high performer, toxic team member. Um, and I've also had, uh, one of my roofing clients actually in Colorado, they lost their top top person that they were petrified to lose because they finally put some expectations in place like this. And he left and they were petrified that the whole team was going to leave. And now they're like five X the size that they were like this little training room where they had these influences that kept them from holding their expectations. Um, when I was there, like that was tough for them. So now that person's gone, they're able to hold everyone to a higher standard, the team actually gels a lot better. And so they've only gotten better since then.

Speaker 2 (21:16):

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's like cutting the fat off, but yeah. And then I think it's that scarcity mindset people get, they don't want to let go of the golden goose, the things it's feeding them. So they're afraid to, I don't know, do sometimes what's necessary. Like a lot of times they, they probably know they need to do it right, but they're just like scared to like, I don't want to cut a guy that's closing 10 deals a month, whatever it, 10 20 deals

Speaker 3 (21:37):

For sure. And if that person leaving allows you to help everybody else in the office get one or two more deals a month and that kind of covers your 10 or 20 that you're losing. So I look at it.

Speaker 2 (21:48):

Yeah. I like that. I agree for sure. And so another thing I know you've helped a lot of companies with, and you're probably one of your strengths do is just the rep retention. Um, so does that, would you say that's pretty hand-in-hand with what we're talking about? Like retaining reps, just figuring out the culture first, any other ideas you have on that? Because as you know, solar, I mean, at my first company I was with, it's like, you know, trying to pour, uh, uh, like water in a colander, you know, you're trying to fill up a colander and the water is just flowing out of there and you're constantly just filling it up, filling it up every single week. I go, at one point we were recruiting, I don't know, maybe like five or six reps a week. And then we're lucky if one of them like stayed double next week. Cause we're just like bringing in these guys from, you know, restaurant, is it ZipRecruiter, indeed all these things. So yeah. In your opinion, Alex, what's like the biggest, um, I dunno, mistaken retention. I know probably a lot of that stuff we just talked about, but anything else you would say that's helps a lot that you've seen in companies you work with in retention? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:50):

Yeah. So I would say, um, first off is I think a big mistake we make in the industry is, you know, we put a lot of weight on recruiting, but then mentally people start to kind of check out of the recruiting process once that person gets hired. So as soon as that person shows up to bootcamp, you're like, cool, my job is done. This person's here. And that's what we reward people on. We say, oh, he brought in this number of recruits, but what we really care about is that person staying retained. So I'm a metric and solar that I got from a previous company, just with a ton of data, was, um, if a rep can get five sales within their first 60 days, they're 80% more likely to stay with that company six months or longer, which is a huge step for us in our industry.

Speaker 3 (23:29):

Right. So, um, I, you know, knowing that, I mean there's a million things you can think of to put into place. You know, how I answer the question? How can I get more of my sales reps to hit five sales in 60 days? There's a lot you can build into place there. But I think a big thing too, that should be thought of through the recruiting process and kind of, as it bleeds into that onboarding and the first couple of weeks is just kind of the journey that your, your recruit is going to have to go through in order to actually stay retained and like fully integrate this new job into their life. So for example, let's say you've got, um, someone that's working like a nine to five job. They're a young parent, young mom or dad, and they've got like a two or three-year-old at home that they put to bed at like 7, 7 30 every night.

Speaker 3 (24:11):

And that's like their little family time. It totally fits into their current routine. And now you're trying to recruit this person from that lifestyle into door to door. Well, if you're asking that person, you know, you, if you're feeling resistance during the recruiting process, you might immediately go to, let me throw more money at this person. And let me give them a manager title, like whatever, some of these perks that we can give versus thinking through that hesitation is more so based on the changes to their lifestyle, that they haven't thought through a solution to yet. So like this person, this example may come into your org and if they plan to like, they've always needed to be home at seven 30 for bedtime, and now you're telling them they need to knock until eight or later, every single night, that's going to be a disconnect for you guys.

Speaker 3 (24:52):

So you could nip that stuff in the bud, even during the recruiting process, by getting to know that person at a deeper level, know what their life is, like, know what they care about. And then, um, you know, that could be setting up a schedule where a couple of nights a week you want them out late and a couple of nights a week, you're cool with them going home because they get their doors in or they start earlier, like whatever it's gotta be. But if you can kind of figure those things out early on and mold some of the process with them, it breaks that barrier down between where they are and them being, you know, fully self-sustaining in this role, making money and working with the longterm. So I think if you can think through solving that, that is going to change the way you recruit your processes, your onboarding, your incentives, like everything else kind of falls in line. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:34):

Yeah. Okay. I love that. Yeah. That's a good point now. And I'm doing a little bit with that right now. I mean, the company I'm with now, it's like we have all these young guys that just came like young hustlers coming from, uh, Vivian alarms and stuff like that. They're all lined up for the summer. And then, um, yeah, I told you before we started recording here that I was running a team of just like 10, 15 reps. Most of us were like married guys, just, uh, I don't know, kind of doing our thing had kids, stuff like that, but now our teams, like we ha we got 30 guys that they're not married, they're off like, uh, just doing like the single guy stuff. And we're trying to kind of like, um, you know, fit into that culture and everything. And then, uh, you know, you get like girls coming on the teams too. So like there's all these different, like people that can come into the organization and from all types of scenarios, different schedules that they're used to. So, um, I dunno, do you have any like tips on say you got something like that where it's a bunch of young people and you've got some married guys, then you got some girls. I don't know. Is that how your team is right now currently or, yeah,

Speaker 3 (26:36):

Yeah. We've got a really good mix over at Tru. We've got, um, I'd say probably 30% of our like active reps are women, which is cool. Um, yeah, we, we have a younger Salesforce, but we've got plenty of married people with young kids and everything. Um, I mean, I think a big, a big piece of that is like, we've got all these little subcultures within our teams that I've noticed people that have similar schedules. They're kind of like breaking off and doing some of their own thing. Um, you could even incentivize the groups that start to naturally form like that to like, do little head-to-head matches. Like you can do some office level incentives with them on that type of stuff. Okay. Um, and then, I mean, just touching on bringing people into solar from summer programs, I've got like a whole thing that I've been, uh, brewing up with a couple with, you know, Brandon and Parker, a couple of old experts, but, um, we've been talking about a lot how, how different it is going from a summer program over into solar.

Speaker 3 (27:32):

And I think for anyone like recruiting from summer programs right now, this is a hurdle that you guys might not be thinking of people in pest control or alarms or something they're coming from this very regimented schedule. They know what they're doing. Like every hour of the day for the summer, they've got really robust training systems because they're trying to, you know, in a summer program, you need to get people, videos, get that stuff figured out, and then they need to be on the doors producing as soon as the summer starts. So they've got this whole system in place. And oftentimes, you know, a lot of us got into solar maybe because you were doing other sales and you loved the freedom and things that come with the schedule we can create. And solar, well, if you're a manager that values freedom with your time and you're kind of unstructured and you don't care if people are showing up to the meetings twice a week and stuff like that, and you recruit a group of alarm guys, like what are the chances that, that person's going to be successful in this unstructured culture where it's like, no, man, you can do whatever you want.

Speaker 3 (28:25):

Like kind of thing. You know? So, um, so oftentimes we see that as a perk that we got into this industry for, if you're bringing on summer teams, I would say, match what they are familiar with until they know what they're doing. And then you can let off the gas a little bit, like put something into place that feels remotely similar to what they've been going through with their training and their schedule and their structure. And it may not match what you're asking the rest of the team to do, but it's going to help those people come on board and get past the learning curve.

Speaker 2 (28:54):

Okay. That's interesting. So almost like having them do, even though we say you're only meeting twice a week or something, so you bring in a group of summer guys. So you're saying maybe like meet with them every day and just have them do their same schedule for a while until they start seeing success. Things like that.

Speaker 3 (29:09):

Totally. Because for us, we might be like, oh yeah, it's cool. We only do meetings twice a week. Like this like less structured lifestyle is what we enjoy. But for someone coming from a really regimented routine and door to door that could give them anxiety and it could keep them from like their routines on how they've learned and their work ethic and their numbers are all based on them being in a regular regimented schedule. So if you mess that up, they may not have the personal, like wherewithal to just do that themselves because they know that's what they need. Like they might not even know that. So I would say, put those guys in, yeah, like a quick 30 minute meeting every day to kind of touch base for the first couple of weeks. And once you guys, once you see them kind of get into their own like groove with solar, you can always let up and pull them into the, the, um, structure that you're holding with the rest of the group. But I think that would help with retention, like big time for summer people.

Speaker 2 (29:56):

Yeah. No, for sure. I agree with that. Cause you actually, that's, I'm totally, I'm working with Jason newbie and that's basically what we're doing right now because he comes from alarms, a bunch of the guys that he has on the team are from vivid alarms. So right now, yeah, he has a meeting every day. Like it used to be 10:00 AM you moved it to 12, but it's like every single day we're having a meeting, we're getting out there and yeah. I mean, the guys are producing, so it's, whatever's doing work and working and they were producing a lot more than our team that was working twice. There was a meeting twice a week. I'm like, okay, well something must be working.

Speaker 3 (30:26):

Oh yeah. We, uh, we just finished up our first competition as a company. And it was like a one V one and our top manager that won the whole thing came from pest control. Yeah. He's got his schedule down. He works harder than everyone else because he knows like the another trap we get into with solar is the commissions are so high right now that like, it's so tough to push people, to actually make them produce what numbers you want to see on the board. If they've got any type of limiting mindset with money or they don't need that much. And they don't think about that type of stuff. So we, um, part of our practice when we're bringing people on board is we'll even frame it during the interview process is like kind of this, this problem. We want this person to help us solve, which is like, look, you can make very, very good money coming in and solar to the point where sometimes it can be tough to make people hit the numbers that we expect out of them every month, because you might sell one or two deals and like cover all your bills for the month.

Speaker 3 (31:16):

So you want to relax, but how does a person that does two sales a month affect the rest of their team that wants to do way more than that could be stretching their personal limits, way higher than we've seen people in our industry do 30 plus a month, you know, like that happens all the time. So if you hire a bunch of people and you don't kind of frame it that way first, um, you can get people kind of caught in this like, oh yeah, I'm good doing one or two sales and you've got kind of this mediocre performance. So yeah,

Speaker 2 (31:42):

No, that's true. I mean, that's, the act is do two deals and solar. I mean, especially in California, that's still like decent money.

Speaker 3 (31:49):

Yeah. You might be doing better than anyone in your family has ever done. And you're only selling two accounts. So like if you're pulling someone in, that's not from our industry and they're doing two accounts a month, they think they're winning. You think that they're, uh, you know, time suck on the rest of your team. So you got to kind of figure out how to like reconcile that early on to make sure that person knows what you expect out of them. And can, you know, if they've got some limiting mindset there, you're working with them on that, that's kind of another step to helping people stay longer term is kind of getting them in the frame of mind. Like, no, I, I may be doing way better than the rest of my family, but doing two deals a month. Like I could, now that I know this skill, I can be doing 6, 10, 15, whatever. So, um, getting people kind of in that number mindset versus the money, one is big too. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (32:33):

I would agree. And yeah, I think it's good to bring to that point to bring people from the other industries. Because like, for me, I, I saw it on myself. I was like getting lazier and lazier for awhile just because we're guys that were just pretty much in pure soul where we weren't bringing any whales that had been in like Pesan show alarms. And so we're good with our three, four hours knocking a day and, you know, just closing her maybe two or three deals a week tops and yeah, it was good money and everything. But then once I recently, once we have did this, like merger as Tony about with Jason newbie's team, got to these alarm guys, a lot of them were working on alarm schedule, like 6, 7, 8 hours of knocking. And then, and then they're closing 30 plus deals a week. A few of them I'm like, whoa, like this is possible.

Speaker 2 (33:18):

And solar guys can do this much. So I think it's a, I think it's a good idea to be bringing in people that are fresh that don't know that, that don't kind of like have that lazy solar mindset. Cause in my opinion, like, um, I've seen guys that are coming from different industries or guys there may be new. Um, a lot of times they're having more success than recruiting from like other solar companies, because a lot of these other like no offense to a lot of these companies, but they have a lot of lazy reps that are used to closing, you know, one or one or two deals maybe tops a week. So, uh, yeah, I think I liked that a lot.

Speaker 3 (33:54):

That was kind of like, you know, I was fortunate enough to work at some of the bigger companies and pull some lessons from there. So whether I'm working with a smaller company and mid whatever, like a big, a big thing has been the pattern with the top performing companies is they expect high performance all the way through their leadership stack. A lot of times you'll, you know, you could recruit someone into a smaller dealer, um, and they've done well in the past. You want to put them at this really high level. You're either bringing them in as like a DM, maybe a regional, maybe a director. And they're like, cool. I want to come in. And this is what I'm going to do. But by the way, I'm not going to knock doors. And if they go that route, like again, I saw some of the craziest performance of my life in solar, just being at Viven and those guys all the way up through the director level, like they could be managing hundreds of reps under them and they're still expecting to hit some of the highest levels of production in the industry and leading from the front.

Speaker 3 (34:46):

They're like a lot of times we will get into management and you start to get sucked into the reporting and the hiring and firing and territory management and all that other stuff. And you, and you forget how high priority you should be, um, putting, actually knocking and showing up for your team, but by far and away say the biggest pattern is like you see managers, um, able to bring teams on and have them perform at a much higher level of they are leading the charge.

Speaker 2 (35:11):

Yeah, I agree for sure. And say, I speak in a culture. Um, I know that was, you probably, uh, learned a ton as you were, um, helping them like Vivid Solar things. And I know that's part of, we talked about a door to door con too. Um, but you also mentioned like, I think you were saying smaller companies shouldn't necessarily try to do all the things that the big dogs are doing, like the vivid soldiers of the, of the world and that and all that. So what do you see? I don't know, say you're a small company. How should the culture be different? Like in a big company, how much of what they're seeing Vivint solar and all these companies that are having a ton of success? What th what should they try and take from that? And I don't know, maybe what are some things that didn't work that you saw that companies were trying to take from these big cultures that were super successful?

Speaker 3 (35:56):

Oh my gosh. That's such a good question. Um, I think a big one was the way that you're spending your money to build your culture. So I think the two metrics that matter in culture are increasing your repor tension. How long are people staying? How well are they doing? And then the per rep average. So if my reps are producing two sales a month on average, can I get that to a three or four or higher? Okay. And, uh, and so I see companies, you know, especially sometimes I do my like competition training and people get all jacked up about getting into doing a competition and, um, the way you could spend $10,000 on a competition and have it be the best thing that's ever happened to your business, or you could do it and it could be a total flop. You might not get any extra sales.

Speaker 3 (36:38):

Yeah. So I think it's, um, figuring out how to spend your money, not just to like check off all the boxes of like, I've got the fancy things, I've got a competition where someone can like win a razor and all that kind of stuff like this high level stuff. Um, you can spend a lot less money, but gain some of the lessons from that, like, you know, motivating reps through a competition, for example, um, the way Vivian is going to handle a competition with, um, they're, you know, really flashy launch videos, really big flashy prizes, all of that stuff, you know, podcasts and video casts on like all of the people that won last year, bringing them on trash, talking like this whole thing. Um, there's a bootstrap version of that that I think can happen, um, for companies at a lower level, but like a lot of what goes into making an amazing competition can just be you hyping it up ahead of time as a manager, you knowing what the rules are and the prizes, and like letting your reps know that, um, a month in advance, maybe sometimes more letting them kind of prepare, you know, if I've got a four or five week competition coming up, um, I would launch it to my sales reps in enough time where they can move, um, obligations that they might have if someone's got, you know, I'll, I'll roll out my schedule at the beginning of the year.

Speaker 3 (37:49):

Most companies should do that so that their reps can kind of plan out for sure. Yeah. So if I know, like I know the main competitions I want to do, and then maybe I'll have like one or two months where it's a little bit light and offices can do their competitions. If I do that, that allows, uh, your sales reps to not have to sacrifice family time for work time. They can plan their family time around the times and the seasons where you're going to do like high level competitions. So literally just scheduling your competition's a little bit different, like that could double the production you get from one versus spending a crap ton of money on the prizes.

Speaker 2 (38:23):

Mm genius. I love that. Yeah. Cause most, yeah, you probably see that a lot, but like guys tomorrow we're doing a competition tournament tomorrow starts tomorrow, get

Speaker 3 (38:35):

Ready. Yeah. And then like reps will go like a week without knowing their numbers in it. And they're like, Hey, what's the score? And you're like, crap. I keep forgetting to do that. And like, finally you do it. And you just like text the numbers into the group chat. Like it's not even on a graphic or anything. So, um, so yeah, like just hyping it ahead of time, setting up the rules, allowing everyone to clear their schedule, um, tracking and hyping up the numbers and what's happening during a competition, like in, as life-time, as you can to give them those updates. All of that generates that kind of competitive nature that you're looking to get out of your sales reps, that in and of itself is going to help them kind of break past their previous limits and perform way better during competitions. Um, but that was one thing I noticed at, at Vivian.

Speaker 3 (39:17):

I think this is a cool principle across the board. We did not make significantly more money because of the competitions we put into place, pretty big budgets for it. We would see a really big volume pop. Um, and then you'd see kind of this dip afterwards as everyone kind of relaxes. And you want to make sure that rise always kind of supersedes the dip that comes after, but even if it does, like the one thing we saw was no matter what happened at the end of the competition, the per rep average is kind of what went up. So we would see sales reps that previously had maybe had their best week of being four or five sales. Now they're doing 10 plus sales in a week and they didn't even realize that was possible for themselves. So reps are all setting this new personal record with themselves or a new personal record that they now have, you know, manager, the office just did 30 that month. Now they know it's possible. So you're kind of raising the limit in competitions to show everyone what they're capable of, which hopefully then you can kind of sustain that afterwards. And that's like, I think that's the target with competition. So how can I, what, what practices, or what way can I structure this competition in a way that's going to allow my sales reps to raise the personal limit they have on the number of sales they think they can do.

Speaker 2 (40:26):

Yeah. I love that. That's a massive, um, yeah, but no, it's just reminds me of, uh, my first company I was with, um, it seemed like every single competition we had, I had like some trips scheduled with my family or whatever. They would like schedule months in advance and they rolled it out like the next week or whatever. I'm like, all right, well, I'm not going to try that hard because I already know I have this like, scheduled

Speaker 3 (40:49):

Exactly. That's so if you could like prevent that stuff and it changes everything.

Speaker 2 (40:54):

I don't know. So that's not, I think that's a huge takeaway. Um, so sweet. And so Alex, um, I know we don't have all day here, but the last thing I kind of wanted to ask, pick your brain about is just with recruiting. Um, you guys said you're, uh, you have a team of 110 reps or so right now at true power. Yep. Okay. And so you did a merger. How many reps did you have, like when you first started with that merger, has it stayed the same or have you built the team a lot since you like started the company or merged?

Speaker 3 (41:23):

Yeah, I mean, and I know you're kind of going through this too, uh, merging multiple cultures and systems and everything together, um, has probably been one of the most fun challenges I've had in the industry so far. Um, we're fortunate enough to have a lot of people putting their egos aside to combine leadership. You know, we've got an awesome team. Um, we started out, uh, probably trying to think how many sales reps we had. We probably had a hundred total, but active, I'd say it was probably close to like 60 or 70, um, reps that we had. And we've had some big new hire classes, but, you know, even coming from this is the area of door to drive, decided to become an expert in, um, still retention is tough. So we've kind of gone back and forth. You know, we've had big classes, we've lost some people we've changed our practices a lot. So, um, yeah, we've been able to, we've been able to grow quite a bit, but by far and away, the biggest thing that's made a difference, I think is establishing some better systems to get like our mid-level reps, um, understanding, expectations, getting support to become better and like figure out how they can kind of level up. We rolled out a mentor program, which I think is big. Um, so that is essentially, it's something Brandon I've used in the past with companies

Speaker 2 (42:39):

Legacy does too, right?

Speaker 3 (42:41):

Yes. Yeah. Similar. So essentially what we wanted to do was along with that statistic of let's get people to five or more sales within 60 days. Um, if you are just alone manager or you're a small company, you might have only one person that can get all of your new hires past that learning curve. Like it's just that one manager. Yeah. So, um, if that's what you're doing, you're kind of limited to only being able to bring on enough people where that person can actually truly give the amount of attention that they need to, to all of their new hires at one time to get them past the curve. So, um, rolling out something like the mentor program, essentially the mentor role as this new, uh, position in leadership where you're not quite a manager yet, but it's kind of the first step towards it.

Speaker 3 (43:21):

So, um, you can, as long as you're, you know, we've got some performance requirements, but as long as you're a good, uh, kind of conduit of our culture, you understand our processes well enough. Um, this person is now going to be mentor to a new hire coming in as a mentee. And their goal is to get that mentee to five sales in 60 days. Okay. Um, so we, we do like an incentive. If anyone gets to seven sales, we'll do a rookie trip for them. So they want to get their mentees to seven sales. And then we also incentivize our mentors for that. So, um, if we have mentees hitting that, they get to go on this trip as mentors get more and more of their reps through to those higher levels, we've kind of gameified it. So we've got like, you know, scoreboards and calls with just our mentors where we can kind of work a hundred percent on focusing on that new rep experience. So that's been like, you know, we, we knew that was, uh, needed to be a focus coming in. We had some big classes, we lost a bunch of people. So now we've really like doubled down on that for the fall. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:17):

That's awesome. And yeah, you mentioned you guys do like a bootcamp, right? So you're bringing in like a big, like, I guess a new class of people, almost like a university class or something. Right. I'd get them all trained a little bit. And how are you, uh, for you guys, what's your like, system on recruiting? How you guys recruiting now in your

Speaker 3 (44:35):

Good question? So, um, it's kind of twofold. Uh, Brandon Hall, my husband is our CEO and he's made his career around becoming an expert in recruiting. So, um, he's both working on personal recruiting culture within the business, but a big thing too, is how can you, how can you succeed at bringing in web applicants and, um, help them have the same experience you would if they were personal recruits? So we all know if we bring in a personal recruit, that person is way more likely to stay than a web applicant. A lot of that's just because of the ties they have in the business, the community, they feel like they have, like, they feel like they know someone that can support them, whether the person that recruited them as good at selling or not, it's just a person they can talk to if they need it.

Speaker 3 (45:14):

Right. Um, so just having some of those elements, so that's kind of why that's some of the reason we put the mentor program into place was like, you can bring on a ton of web applicants. Anyone can figure out how to crack the code on indeed and get enough resumes coming through. It's really a numbers game there. Um, but you know, there's plenty of tactics we do in our interviews to make sure people have their mindset shaped into. Um, I, I know what to expect. This is a very legitimate company. I don't want to let them down. A lot of times we'll go into, uh, people in our industry will go into interviews and you sound like you are recruiting for an MLM. It's just like, you're going to do so great, bro. Like, you're going to kill it. Like I know you're going to make over six figures this year.

Speaker 3 (45:50):

Like I can't wait to be there for it, blah, blah, blah. So you do that. And then someone's coming on board, like dang, like that guy would have hired probably anyone with a pulse. So let's see how this first day goes. So if you have someone with that mentality coming in versus holy crap, I'm so lucky to have this opportunity. I do not want to let this company down, like I'm going to come in here and kill it. Just that mentality going into bootcamp is totally different. So we definitely shape our interviews around people having that mentality, kind of coming out of it and into our bootcamp. And then we just make sure that we are providing the experience that they would get as if they were a personal recruit. So that's where they get their mentor. They meet that person before they come on board.

Speaker 3 (46:28):

Um, so, you know, first time they walk into a corelation room, they already know, at least that one person is going to come over and chat with them and sit with them and stuff. So it's just all those little things to help someone feel like they're, um, integrating into your team's culture quicker. If you have someone that's kind of out on an island because you don't have the time to help them as a manager, no one else can come in and shadow them. Like I think that, you know, that can be a big, uh, the first week is so important for new hires. If you are giving them like polos that are two sizes too big and having a stain on it, cause you take it from a rep that left and like, you don't have a badge prepared for them. And then you're like, Hey Frank, can you, uh, can you have this new guy shadow you? And he's like, no, dude, sorry. Like I was going to go do this, this and this. Isn't going to do it. And you're like, crap. Uh, well what about you? Can you shadow this guy? And everyone's like, no, man, sorry, I can't do it. Like now you're stuck with this reps that like, dude, like, how am I going to get trained here? So, uh, so it's just having those little things organized ahead of time. Can make such a big difference for your new hires.

Speaker 2 (47:24):

It's funny. That's what happens

Speaker 3 (47:26):

All the time. Like, you know, when you, I mean, I, if you've ever had like a new hire come into your bootcamp, like wearing like a three-piece suit or anything, but I'd totally have that. And you're like, dude, that's my bad that I did not. I should have told you that you don't wear that to your first day, but it's moments like that where someone walks in and they're like, I'm in the wrong place. I don't know what I'm doing here. And it's like that mind, like that little mental story, they start to tell themselves if you can keep that from happening, keep them on the positive. Even with those little, little things, it makes such a big difference.

Speaker 2 (47:53):

Uh, no. Yeah. There's, it's funny. I've been with previous companies do where they bring in these indeed recruits and they're like, they had an interview and everything and they show up to the meet and they're like, oh wait, this is door knocking. We have to knock doors. That's like a, yeah, they don't take that in the interview. I go, no, I guess I'll come Che.

Speaker 3 (48:11):

Yeah. And it's such an art to talking about door knocking in interviews. Um, because you know, some companies like the mentality of, they'll just be like, yo, this is door to door. Are you cool with that? And then they'll scare away anyone that isn't okay with it. And then anyone that is like, perfect. I've weeded out the week kind of thing. Yeah. I think that mentality, you're losing a ton of people that could be open to it. Just because door to door kind of carries a negative connotation if you don't understand our industry. Um, but if you are talking through parts of the job where like, you know, we're super picky with who we bring on board and we care a lot about making sure this person's aligned with our culture and our business and what we're trying to accomplish here. And you know, you, and most of the rest of the team, you guys are going to spend a lot of your time outdoors.

Speaker 3 (48:54):

Uh, you're going to be out in neighborhoods because we need to make sure people are qualified for solar. So that means you need to see what their roof looks like, see what their house looks like, make sure they've got the right meter. There's all of these in-person elements to it. So you're going to be outside dealing with homeowners, kinda like that on a daily basis. So, you know, that being said, um, do you have any problems with like extreme weather or whatever you good being outside in the rain? And then P you basically just said, it's door to door. You're gonna be out in neighborhoods. You're talking to homeowners, you're in person, blah, blah, blah. You're qualifying them. Right. But you didn't say the phrase door to door to start the pitch. So then people are like, no, no, I'm totally cool with that. Like, oh, I love the heat.

Speaker 3 (49:30):

I love the cold. Like, whatever. They'll say these things to convince you, like, no, no, please hire me. Like, I'm still the, I wanna, I want to work with you. So they're convincing you to hire them in that instance. And then later on, like, as you, you can keep talking, you know, day in the life and get into how it store to door and talk about your culture. Now it's a little bit less of a blow, right? Like if you just come out and be like, Hey, this is a door to door position. Are you cool with that? You're going to weed out. A lot of people that would have said no in that instance, but could have said yes, if you framed it a little bit differently,

Speaker 2 (49:58):

It's almost like in California, how you can't really start at the door saying, I'm saying I'm selling solar doors that had like sneak your way around at first, get them to buy into that. They want to save money on energy and all that. And then the, how we do that as solar. Exactly. Similar thing. Well, that's awesome, Alex. No, some great ideas you've given us today. And for our, for our listeners kind of last question I wanted to ask you before we wrap up here, um, all, a lot of small companies, they don't have this role of someone like you. It's like super great at organizing. That's helping all put all these systems together and things like that. We didn't get one until pretty recently, actually in our company it's helped a ton. So how do you suggest people that's traditional door to door? Just like, I don't know, like manager, the sales reps a lot of times and then company owner. So what would you suggest to people that are, maybe they're struggling with all this management stuff and setting up the systems and they're hearing all these things right now and I go, dang, how do they bring someone on to implement all this, all these ideas Alex has given us all this, a fire she's spent and how do we implement these things? So what would you say to those companies that's want to like have help with getting someone that's more organized like that?

Speaker 3 (51:09):

Yeah. Good question. Um, I guess there's a couple ways you could do it depending on your circumstance. I'd say, um, you could bring in someone that either has experience on the doors and is just not doing well in your company. Similar, you know, I had the opportunity to, I was about to leave. I was able to take this opportunity instead. Um, you could pull someone in, you could even hire, I mean, a lot of this could be an hourly type of role, but like I would say the first, first position, which would totally pay for itself is bringing someone in to work on like new hire experience, help the recruiting process, flow into the onboarding, help that person get to their first sale. So, um, you could hire someone for that role and have that really be your focus. And then you will again have that person pay for themselves many times over.

Speaker 3 (51:54):

So then that new cashflow can kind of help you build out that little department if you want. Um, or I would kind of split it up amongst your management. So even if he didn't have anybody focusing on this system, um, and you just had, you know, a manager that was really focused on the interviewing process and the training, like boot camp type of training, and then you assigned yourself one or two mentors within your org that were going to help out with this new hire experience. I think that is really the most important. So you could, um, you know, I'd say first step, if you don't have any other leaders is identify people in your org that you would want to pull into a mentorship type of position. You don't need to give up any override or anything. This is just, they can be incentivized based on just getting a little portion of those first few sales, um, and kind of gamifying that. So I'd bring in your mentors and then I would start to implement some of the little systems, like a lot of this isn't super time-consuming, you're probably already doing interviews. You might just need to change the way you're interviewing. You are probably already doing a bootcamp and already trying to get them out to shadow. You just could tweak the way that you're running that system a little bit. So you're spending the same amount of time. You're just doing everything a little bit better. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:58):

Yeah. It's huge. So yeah, for all our listeners definitely consider bringing on someone like that. Um, if you're like a lot of company owners, um, if you're like myself, a lot of us are super disorganized and we need someone like Alex, I wish we could just clone Alex like 50 times and send her to every company, but you can't so listen to this podcast and then get someone to help you with that, I think is a huge key to growing and, uh, retention like Alex was talking about. So Alex, before we say goodbye here, where can people connect with you? And, um, I dunno, say what's up and thank you for coming on the show and reach out and all that.

Speaker 3 (53:30):

Yeah, of course. Um, so my Instagram handle is I am Alexandra hall, so you can find me on there. Um, we've got a little women's page too called soul sisters. So you can find that on Instagram too. It's Sol short for soliciting, kinda my little, a girls group. We're getting off the ground. Cool. And then, um, you know, feel free to reach out, um, Instagram, DMS. What have you, however, you guys can find me, um, for the right circumstances. I take on a couple of mentees here and there, a couple of consulting clients. So if it's the right circumstances, I'm happy to help, but yeah, feel free to reach out,

Speaker 2 (54:02):

Love it. So reach out to Alex, let her know. You're grateful for her coming on the show today. And we had a Suli on recently kind of talking about like the women's side of things, but that's something that I guess I kind of forgot to bring up last, last kind of tip you have with that Alex. What's what you guys said. You have 30%, uh, like female and you're coming here right now. Female reps. Okay.

Speaker 3 (54:22):

Yeah, we've got quite a few and I think a big two big contributors. Number one is our male leadership, um, has been very open to it. Like they are willing to do what it takes. They want to bring on more women. They see women having success in the industry. Um, so then just like even before I was working directly with them, they were reaching out to me while I was at D two D experts asking, you know, how, how can we provide a better culture for them? Like what do we need to do to provide the best environment? And then I think the second piece of it is how you build that environment. So we are already shifting, like it is happening in every company right now, where we're shifting away from just caring about maybe stronger masculine traits in the workplace. And we care a little bit more about some things that are traditionally feminine.

Speaker 3 (55:04):

We care more about good communication between people being capable of like, uh, understanding, controlling, sharing your emotions, like emotional intelligence, um, having empathy for your coworkers. Like all of those things are kind of more traditionally feminine traits, like healthy, feminine traits, um, workplace are already going towards that. So I think something that we're doing is figuring out how do we just integrate these two things into a great balance. That's healthy for everybody versus, you know, some things I've seen with, um, uh, more of kind of this feminist movement is like, screw the patriarchy, like it's us versus them. And like that anger is never going to get anybody anywhere. Um, so I don't think it's not, don't completely like, you know, change everything you're doing to just bring on this little girl group and have them be totally separate figure out. How can you change the way that you guys are handling your day to day in a way that kinda, um, recognizes and rewards healthy traits on kind of both sides of the fence that you've got that good balanced culture and you're building that environment. That's great for everybody. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:02):

I love it. So, uh, Alex, thanks again for all the tips you shared with us today, um, go hit her up, let her know your thing. You are thankful for her coming on the show and, uh, yeah. Let us know if there's anything we can do for you, Alex, but thanks again for coming today. Thanks

Speaker 3 (56:17):

For having me on,

Speaker 2 (56:18):

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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? Taylor Armstrong back with another episode here to make your life as a solar professional, more profitable, easier to do and more enjoyable. So if I can do even a fraction of that, you're welcome. Just kidding, but really that's what we're aiming to do. And hopefully we make it a lot easier for you to close more deals, get more referrals and have success in this awesome industry. But today I want to basically tell a little story, something that happened to me recently, that I think a lot of you, the listeners can learn some lessons from a big mistake I made. So I'm going to go through that story. But first, before I get to that, just wanted to give a shout out to, um, my boys over at, uh, knock star university. If you haven't checked out a knock star, it is a six week program I'm going through right now and they do.

Speaker 2 (01:40):

It's really cool. They have a competition for six weeks. They put you in a seating round, then they do weekly trainings. So if you're looking for some extra training for you or your team, um, great resources guys have over there, I'm going through it. And also just wanted to throw out a little teaser. We're also working on something super exciting that has to do is training. Uh, can't spill the details yet, but is going to be releasing very soon here. And I'm super stoked when it does to go over more details, but you can't say anything I want to, um, anyway, just a couple of quick shout outs for those that are looking for more trainings, go check out and rockstar. Um, so the story I have what's going on is, um, this is basically just to illustrate to you guys, what can go wrong with an account?

Speaker 2 (02:36):

The title is episode is called how I made negative $563 on a solar install. And I'm in San Diego. So especially people are familiar with the California market. You're probably thinking like, what, how do you make negative dollars on a account? Like people out here are making a thousand, 2000 at ridiculous amounts. I mean, guys are making 20, 30 grand on single accounts, even I've heard. Hey, so how can someone go to make making ridiculous money to making negative on an account? I couldn't believe it when happen to me. And I don't think I'm the first person that it's happened to. So I want to go through the mistakes I made with this particular account and hopefully help you guys avoid the same mistakes. So here's what happened in this. First of all, this was back about seven months ago, I get an online lead a which if you're not running on lane leads, why not?

Speaker 2 (03:40):

You should be running online leads. You should be knocking, should be getting leads from all sources. Okay. That's for another episode though, I was running an online leads that I get a lead. It's a solid lead. I go, um, set it up for next day appointment. I go, we're sitting outside. I find out it's actually a home that's hasn't been moved into yet. The dude had been renting it out and he was gonna move in with his family in the next few months is what he told me at the time. Okay. Um, unfortunately it didn't work out exactly how this guy was saying. Um, but I ended up closing the deal, um, closed it's a little bit higher. So I thought I was going to make an awesome commission on it, but here's the kicker with this account. This guy, before he moved in, he was doing a ton of remodeling on the house and he wanted to get a new roof along with this solar.

Speaker 2 (04:37):

And at the time I had just started working for, um, the dealer that I'm with now. I wasn't super familiar with their processes and S uh, their roofers. I didn't know exactly how you did a deal with a roof over there. This is the first deal I had. First, our roof solar combine had done with the new dealer. So I call, um, our office and I kind asked him how to do this. And I'm in the heat of the moment, which you guys should all try to close deals as quick, you know, quick as possible, not want to leave them hanging. Don't want to leave loose threads. So I'm like, all right, I'm just going to get this closed. Um, but tell me about what to price it out so we can be good to throw a roof in there because here we can, just, even if we don't have to necessarily add a roofing to the financing, you just price it high enough.

Speaker 2 (05:27):

We can pay for a roof with the commission is what we do a lot of times just price it high, make so much that you pay for a roof with it. So I price it pretty high. I think I'm okay. I'll be good. Pay for a roof with this. And I can figure out the details later. Right? And we were working with a roofer. His name was Juan, and he got us really good prices on roofs. So especially knowing about this guy, I'm like, okay, yeah, Juan's going to hook us up with an awesome deal. I'm going to have plenty in the commission to pay for all this. We'll be good to go. So fast forward, um, several months down the road, one does the roof and then the installer goes to install up there and they put up the system, they actually do the install.

Speaker 2 (06:19):

Okay. But the first problem that we encounter with as account is I get a call from the customer actually, after they had already installed the solar, they didn't do a full installation, which I'll get to in a second, they did a personal install and I get a call from the customer and the customer says, Hey, Taylor, um, I see that you didn't put gutters on with my roof. Um, you guys need to come finish up the gutters. And I'm like, okay. Yeah, I'll look into that. So I call Juan or roofer and he says, oh, I don't do gutters. The gutters that they had up there, they're rotting. They're just causing all sorts of problem when I was trying to do their new roof. So I had to take them off. So yeah, they're in the dumpster now we can't use those gutters and I don't do gutters.

Speaker 2 (07:05):

That's a separate thing. So I'm like, okay. So I actually don't know. Maybe some, maybe some of you listeners can tell me is that normally included with risks. I actually don't even know, but I took one's word with that. I'm like, okay. So I call the customer in, say, a Mr. His name was, uh, Z. His name was, uh, he was like middle Eastern. So he had a tricky name. So I just call him Z. I'm like, Casey, they actually didn't do your gutters because that's not included. That's going to be separate. Do you want to pay for it? And at that point, when the customer heard me even say that he was going to have to pay for something, this guy flipped the lid. He's like, are you kidding me? That is included with a roofing project. That is part of the project. I am not there on some expletives in there.

Speaker 2 (07:57):

So I am not paying for a roof. I'm not paying extra to put gutters in with my project, just super free. It's not listening to me, wouldn't have anything to do with it. And the good news is that he had solar on his roof. But, um, what ended up happening is we did a partial install on his home and with his other projects he was doing, he was adding like a wall around his property. And I don't know the full details on this, but the wall that he was building somehow interfered with us, being able to put, um, just the box for the inverter down by his electric panel. So we couldn't finish the installation because we are waiting for his other contractors to finish this wall. So the good news is he already had solar up there. So in my head, I'm thinking, okay, well, he can't cancel or anything.

Speaker 2 (08:54):

He has solar up there. So he can't cancel the project or say he doesn't want it anymore. Even though that's actually what he's threatening to do, saying I'm going to cancel. If you guys don't finish this. So it was calm from out that, but then the issue we ran into is we couldn't complete this installation. He needed to finish the other wall. Um, so what happened is he started using this as leverage. Basically he knew that he needed to finish the wall. So his, his side now was all, I'm not going to finish the wall until you guys come get my gutters from, come fix my gutters. So we were just locked in, essentially, it's still meat. I mean, we had leverage against him cause the solar is up there, but his leverage was, I'm not putting this wall in until you guys around. I'm not repairing this wall, whatever needed to be done until you guys come in, put the gutters up.

Speaker 2 (09:49):

So it turned into that, just a big nightmare. And the other issue is we had already actually paid one to do the roof. So Juan is paid. He's happy, he's taken care of. But in the meantime, our, you know, dealer is fronted all this money to pay one. And rather than just being locked into the stalemate, um, our office made the decision to just go ahead and pay for these gutters. So we hire another contractor. We pay the gutters, they come up and do it. That's that. And then I didn't really think anything of it until I see in my bank account. I see finally, after six, seven months find the I'm getting paid on this account about freaking time. It's been so long, been months and months and months, which we all hate waiting for. Installs. We all hate, we need to get paid on. Installs sucks. Have to wait, but find the AC it come in commission for Z. And then I look at it and this time it says 300, I think it says 300 something. I'm like, oh my gosh, 300 bucks. That's it.

Speaker 2 (11:10):

So you're probably asking, wait, didn't you say you got paid a negative amount on this account. So yeah, it gets worse. What happened was I got paid 301st, but then I, as time goes on, about two weeks after I got paid this 300 bucks, we get another message from the customer saying, Hey, you guys forgot to do you didn't do the back part of my gutters. You only did the front. You need to come back and do it. And our team schedules this. And by the way, I didn't really, at this point, I didn't really know what was going on behind the scenes. So, um, lock of communication and I'll get to the mistakes after this, but definitely like communication and our team just goes ahead and schedules the back gutters to be done. Not really thinking much of it. And we get this customer taken care of, but guess what?

Speaker 2 (12:08):

We get a bill from the contractor. We paid, I think 1500 for the gutters. Okay. Which again, I thought, you know, all this was included. Um, I thought all this was paid. I'm like, okay, 300 bucks. This is ridiculous. But then it gets worse. We end up, oh, extra money on the account. And yeah, that's why I say negative 500, whatever. It was 563 is because what happened was after we paid this contract and do the back cutters. Yeah. I am being now charge back money plus some, and this isn't even all that we owed on it. I mean, luckily our office is kind enough to front some of the money, but there's faults on both sides. Okay. So more or less moral of the story, there were a ton of mistakes made and I'm going to break down a few of them. And if you have a story like this, I'd love to hear it.

Speaker 2 (13:11):

Shoot me a message on Facebook, Instagram, whatever. Shoot me a message. Let me know if you've had anything like this happen to you before, but first of all, number one, know how much your roof is going to cost you. All right. Like I mentioned, at the beginning, I had no idea that the roof was going to be, um, well, as much as it was, this one was more than I was thinking we were using Juan or roofer. Okay. And here's the second mistake made is make sure you're working with quality contractors. Hey, because one, he was a great guy, but what we find out later, we actually found out one wasn't even licensed. Okay. That's why we're getting such good prices on his roofs. This guy wasn't even licensed and maybe you're fine working without a licensed roofer. Okay. Probably not in most of most cases, but if you are, um, or whatever the case may be, make sure that customer is in some type of an agreement with the roofer.

Speaker 2 (14:19):

Kay. And you, whatever you do, whether it's you working independently or your company or your office, make sure you're setting these things in place. What's the agreement. What's the standard of quality that you need to work? What can they do? Can they, what can't they do? Cause in our case one, he just ripped off these gutters, threw them in the dumpster. But if we would have had that set in place, what can you work on? What can't you work on? If we would've had that agreement set in place between him and the customer, then it wouldn't cause an issue. Cause guess what? That would have been once issue. He would have been dealing with the angry customer saying, you didn't do my gutters, but what did we do? We just paid it directly out of our profits. And so we had to deal with all these issues.

Speaker 2 (15:03):

Cause the whole time, I mean, basically the customer hired us to do the work. We just outsourced it. Right. So set some type of agreement in place. What is your roof we're going to do? What are the expectations? You can't just rip off the gutters and then get blamed for it. Right. Have that in place having in place what's going to happen. Okay. And the fourth mistake that was made and make sure your communication is super clear. Again, I mentioned that, um, we had a lot of things being paid for all of the things being scheduled that weren't clear. And a lot of it's my fault because after six, seven months of the same account for me, it got to the point where I'm just like, whatever, just do whatever. I'm not going to look at it. If it gets installed. Great. Um, out here where I'm at, I mean, I'm used to a month, one to two month installs.

Speaker 2 (15:57):

So after that it starts getting pretty, uh, pretty what's the word? Redundant. Yeah. Pretty redundant stuff to sit and look at these accounts that aren't going through. So make sure you have communication and don't be like me be patient with it and always look at what's going on. Okay. Cause I didn't really look at the updates that were happening with this deal. Cause I just got so tired of it, but it's important to go back and see what happened with it. See what updates were left by your team. We use a sauna personally, just like a, yeah. You know, projects management. I mean you use it for a lot of things, but in the sauna our team members would basically go on leave comments. Hey, we talked to this contract or this happened, this went down and I didn't really look much at what was paid, what happened.

Speaker 2 (16:50):

So you need to be looking at your team, can communication, whatever you're using, make sure you're in the loop and make sure your team isn't scheduling stuff without your permission. And I, I think I did give him permission, but again, I was just sick and tired of it. So look at what's happening. And then you as the independent contractor, which most of you should be, I highly recommend you being an independent contractor. We're Solarpreneurs. Right. We're building our own businesses. So we're taking control of all this. Okay. But if it's not, you have your having an assistant or have someone that's keeping track of all this stuff because you can't just authorize everything and not know what's been paid, what hasn't been paid. Okay. And messaged me. Um, I know some people have made like spreadsheets to keep track of adders on deals and extra costs because the last thing you want to happen is, and go negative on a deal like this.

Speaker 2 (17:47):

Okay. And then the last thing is just figure out a resolution with everything. I talked about how we are in a stalemate with this customer. Um, things didn't really come to a resolution, but figure out a solution on both sides. Kay. I was sick of talking to the customer too. I didn't want to hear from them, but yeah, you need to be willing to have those tough conversations with your customers, admit when you've made mistakes and then come to a resolution. Okay. So those are just a couple of things I've learned and still working on being better with complicated accounts, you got to pull out all the guns, you got to be ready for the long fight. Okay. Cause there's some complicated accounts out here, whether they need main panel upgrades, whether they need roof work. I know lots of people, um, especially out here an hour adding in AC units, they're adding and maybe even paying jobs.

Speaker 2 (18:49):

Um, for, I talked to guys that companies doing all sorts of things at an installation. So point is keep track of all this stuff. Okay. Depending on how your office is set up, it's very likely that you gotta keep track of this. And even if your company is organized, even if you have project managers or managers that are on top of everything, I would suggest still just being in the loop. Okay. Cause that's another thing I know for me, I've been hit with adders and things that our back offices have, uh, has done that aren't weren't right. Either where if I would have been keeping track and things like that when it happened. Okay. So just wanted to share this story. Let me know if something like that's happened to you would love to hear it love to learn from other people's mistakes, but don't get hit with a negative commission. It is the worst feeling in the world in the world and it's definitely a momentum killer. So let me know what you thought of this. Let me know if you liked hearing from the mistake and with that, learn from it. Let's move forward and let's crush it this month. Peace Solarpreneurs.

Speaker 3 (20:00):

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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 Taylor Armstrong. Back with another episode here in the studio, hope you're doing well. And as always, we're doing these podcasts to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and hopefully have a much better time in the solar industry. Hopefully we can achieve that for you. So today we're going to get into an episode. I just got back from an event it's called, uh, driven. Um, if you're following me on social media, maybe saw me post about it by great Amanda. So I'm going to recap a few things from that event. Thought there was a lot of speakers that can apply directly to you. Uh, you know, the solar industry and some good takeaways. I got to someone to give you a little recap on a few takeaways. I got that I, I think will benefit everyone listening to this podcast today.

Speaker 2 (01:35):

Um, before we get into that, we are, uh, approaching how we in here. It is October at the time of this recording. And just remember with October, you are out there and trick or treating for free money. If you're knocking doors and whatever you're doing, really, if you are sending out online ads, if you're getting leads, remember it's just trick or treating, you know, you're just trick or treating out there. So that's the little tip of this month. Make sure you come across with that trick treating mindset, any door you knock thing. All right, I'm going to get my candy today. I'm going to get my dough today. And that's the mindset you got to have. We've had some incredible guests on just got done actually with a podcast. Um, you're going to hear about as soon don't want to spill the beans on it quite yet, but uh, this dude I think set the industry record for most deals closed in a month.

Speaker 2 (02:29):

He's he coming up on bat here in a couple of weeks as podcasts will drop. So stay tuned for that, but um, just great takeaways I've gotten and it's to have the extreme confidence that you're going to close. Any deal that you walk up to you with, you're going to book any appointment that you S um, you know, any door you knock, you're going to book an appointment with them. Really that's the big key here is people have that extreme confidence. Hey, Andy, I always think of this job like a sport, cause really it's not that much different. The great people in sports have extreme confidence that they're the best that they're achieving. The greatest things that they're the goats. And guess what the great people in the solar industry, they have that exact same mindset. They think they're the best and that's why they're having an extreme success.

Speaker 2 (03:18):

So to remember that just fresh on my mind as I get out of this podcast interview. So let's jump into this event, takeaway that I had and the main takeaways I'm going to given you are from Andy Frisella okay. If you haven't listened to my podcast on 75 hard, that was few months ago. Go check that out. And I would invite all of our listeners to go try 75 hard. If you haven't, it's going to get your brain on a different level, as far as thinking and breaking past limitations. So Andy Frisella, if you don't know him, just give a little background. He started a supplement company called first forum. That's formed with P H O R M and now he speaks on just kind of like politics. He's not like a politician like speak or whatever, but he just, um, believe deeply that our country's heading in the wrong directions.

Speaker 2 (04:08):

So that's what his podcast is focused on. Now it's called real AEF. So another highly recommended podcast, but he just has that hustle mindset. And he's, you know, tons of people listens. I think he has like the top business podcast. It's been the top business podcasts for years and he has just a mindset that I think can apply to our industry, um, and sells directly. He's been at for a long time. So he's one of the speakers I liked. This event is called driven. It's put on by Albert [inaudible] and for the event, review is a great event. The speakers world was probably one of the best speakers lineup I have ever seen at an event. Um, Albert, I will say, I'm not a huge fan of, uh, Albert Sophie's listening to this, then I apologize, but, um, didn't love his speaking, but he did bring a lot of Latino audience to the event.

Speaker 2 (05:02):

He's a Mexican and, and that was a big focus of his talk is that he had success being a Mexican and I'm like, dude, anyone can have success. It doesn't matter what race you are. I know there's limitations. But, um, anyways, that overall was a great event. And as always, always be looking for ways you can level up events, I think are one of the best ways is networking with other people and then learning from amazing speakers like this. So I want to jump into a few of these takeaways. You're going to be a quicker episode, but Andy Frisella, he just talked on basically that mindset. You need to have to push past your limitations and he gave five tips. I'm going to be given examples that we can use in the solar industry on this podcast today. And then just think about how can you apply these things in your life, in all areas, because what he talked about, it applies to everything.

Speaker 2 (05:55):

And that's why when we highlighting Frisella in specific, um, just because I thought it's most applicable and most takeaways I got that I can go do these things in change my results today, especially when it comes to solar sales. And then number two, cause he is actually, um, I guess I shouldn't say this, um, prematurely, but if he is hopefully coming on the podcast soon, so stay tuned for that. And um, that's line work, working out the details. So don't quote me on it yet, but I got a verbal confirmation. Hey Andy, for sale, it's going to be sick. Okay. So the first takeaway and first point he made is make sure you call your mind to your purpose, make sure you know where you want to go. And this mistake I realize I've been making right now, I've got a lot going on. I've got the podcasts, we're launching our society training platform.

Speaker 2 (06:49):

We're making some huge changes to that coming up very soon. So a lot of work with that. And then I realized that I lose. I've lost focus on really how many deals do I want to be closing a month? What's my purpose. Hey, what, what do I want to be doing with the money I'm making in solar? And one of my goals, favorite month, I've lost purpose. And I've lost really sight on the clarity that I used to have in solar. So I want to remind, especially the people that have been in solar for a while, make sure that you call your mind your purpose. Make sure you remember what, what's my crystal clear goal. What do I want to do with the money I'm making? And um, just remind yourself why you're doing it. Vision boards are a great way to do that. We talked about it before, but put your goal on your mirror, put it somewhere you can see and then remind yourself of that.

Speaker 2 (07:41):

Okay? Cause I go month after month, I've been in this industry, well almost six years now. And at this point, sometimes it gets easy for me. Am I okay? I'm just going to close. I'm just going to go for a couple of deals this week, where the guys that are having extreme success, they know, okay, this month I'm going to close 15 deals and here's what I'm going to do with that money I'm making, here's the investment I'm going to make. Make sure you have that type of clarity. And then number two, Andy talked about make up your mind that rules are set in stone. So he's in me. What does he mean by this? Basically just doing the hard things, even when you don't want to do them so we can apply this, especially when it comes to solar. Um, if we're out there on the doors knocking doors for trying to get in a specific amount of duels for trying to hit a specific amount of hours, what's the minimum.

Speaker 2 (08:33):

What's the minimum thing that you're going to let that you're going to do this today. Right? How many hours are you going to work minimum? So make sure you have, as a rule, that's set in stone for me, we recently did. We're going to knock, um, eat no matter how many deals we have that day, we recently started talking about at our company, okay, we're going to 15 doors minimum. Even if we have, I don't know, five, six deals that day five, six appointments. We're still going to go out and we're going to hit our 15 doors. Okay. So something like that. What's your non-negotiable what thing are you going to do? No matter what's maybe it's, you're going to follow up with five people no matter what every day. So set something in stone and make sure you do it in Andy. What I thought was really cool.

Speaker 2 (09:21):

He talked about when we start to compromise, it leads to complacency and then that complacency, it will lead to lack of confidence, which will eventually lead to quitting. And as he said that, I'm like, well, that is why a lot of people have quit in solar because they start compromise. They start compromising the little things that they were supposed to do that day. And then what does that do? Leads the complacency. Ah, I didn't hit, I didn't hit my 15 doors today. Um, yeah, I, I don't have to do that every day. I'll just do it when I'm feeling like it. Then that leads to the lack of confidence. And most people quit after that. Okay. If they don't quit, they're going to start making way less money and selling themselves short. So that was the second point. And then number three, he talked about, get your mind clear on the specific critical tasks that are essential for you.

Speaker 2 (10:10):

And if anyone follows Andy Frisella, he has something, he calls a powerless. I know he has like a planner. You can go buy a new this, but it was funny. He was talking about his planner. He's like, guys, I don't even have this planner to myself. To be honest, he doesn't even have his own product. He's like, you can do this on a piece of paper in a notebook. And his thing is, write down five critical tasks that must be done to consider your day a win. So I thought that's a great idea for people that maybe you've gotten some bad habits. Maybe you're not clear on what you need to do, do this. And your daily planning, try it, pick out the five things you need to do to consider that data win and all he does at the end of the day, he puts a w next to it.

Speaker 2 (10:53):

If he got it done, he puts an L next to it. If he lost, if you didn't get it done. And then once you execute a specific task for 21 days, you take it off your list. And at that point, hopefully it's a habit, right? If you miss three days of that thing of that thing, that's helping you win the day. Then that task must go back on the list. So for our Solarpreneurs, think about what five things do you need to do today? What are your five critical tasks? Maybe two, you need to knock the 15 doors. Like I was saying to maybe it's you need to make, um, knocks X amount of doors or talk to X amount of homeowners or get an X amount of appointments. If some of these things, obviously you can control more than others, but think about five things that you can control, the hours you work, the, uh, contacts you make the follow-ups you do.

Speaker 2 (11:45):

These are all things you can control. So what are things like that? And also, you know, just things that are helping you in your, in your, what are five things you can put on the list and then start to do that. And then you're going to see very clearly if you're winning or losing. So I thought that was a great thing. Something I'm going to start implementing right away. Then number four, he said, intentionally, focus your mind on what you will gain, not what you're giving up. This is a great tip. Just in general, anything you're trying to achieve. If you focus on the things you're giving up, it's gonna make it way harder to have success. He gave the example of like a diet, right? If you focus on, oh, I'm giving up my Twinkies, I'm giving up my Krispy Kreme donuts. I'm giving up my, uh, pizza hut.

Speaker 2 (12:30):

Like all these things. If you focus on that piece of it, it's gonna make it way harder to have success because your mind is so focused on your mind is gonna want whatever you're thinking about. Right? So if you're thinking about all that junk food, it's going to make it way harder to have success in whatever diet you're trying to be a part of. So that's a good example, but also it applies to sales, right? Um, if I'm out there knocking doors and I have fallen, I know cause I've fallen in this chap. Um, a lot myself is I'm focusing on, oh, I gotta go out and work. If I'm focusing on, oh, I need to knock five hours today. Um, this is going to, it's going to be hot out there. It's going to suck. My legs are going to be tired. All these things, the more attention you give them, the more it gets in your brain.

Speaker 2 (13:15):

That's no different whether you apply it to a diet, whether you play it to sales, whether you apply it, apply it to closing deals, whatever your mind thinks about that's what's going to happen, right. Law of attraction right there. So, um, consider that as you're outworking today, focus on the good things, right? Oh, I'm going to talk to 20 homeowners out here. That's all I need to do for me. That's a lot easier than I'm going to go out and knock four hours can be hot skin. My legs are going to be tired. Repeat at yourself. This is what affirmations are for. Hey I'm I follow a river Skinner guests we had on the podcast, but he puts out a great pod podcast and great content. He gives, he talks about affirmations or something that helps them all the time. As y'all, as he's out closing deals, he's on the doors.

Speaker 2 (14:02):

I love myself. I love myself. I love myself. I'm the greatest salesman in the world. All these things. You're going to repeat it verbally. And it's training your mind to think about those things rather than the negatives, right? So that's how you do it. And that's a great key to success as you're out there closing soul retails. And the last point before we wrap up is mentally transform negative emotions into triggers. Hey, and a great book. I would recommend, I think I've mentioned it before, but as the power of habit by Charles Duhigg, he talks about these triggers. Okay. So think about how you can transform the negative into a trigger for the positive. A N Andy said, emotions can't force you to do anything, understand, understand that your emotions are commentators, not commanders. Okay? So even if you feel depressed, overwhelmed, use those as triggers to go out and work harder.

Speaker 2 (14:56):

And Andy talked about that's how he's had success in all his businesses. Any time he calls him test days, anytime where he felt terrible, he didn't want to go work. He didn't want to push that day. Old days. He pushed even harder because he knew if he could train his brain to push, even when he felt terrible and didn't want to do anything that day, then it's going to make it that much easier when he did feel decent. So go and do it have a test day. We're all going to feel like not knocking doors, where I'm going to feel like not going to that next deal. We're going to feel like we suck, but if we can push past it and do it anyways, that's going to train our brain brain to have success and execute in spite of the negative day. And then go read that book power habits.

Speaker 2 (15:41):

It's a, if you want to get more in depth on it, Charles, do he, he talks about all the triggers and in our habits and really ways we can set ourselves up for things to be a trigger instead of a hindrance. So that those are some key takeaways. I hope you enjoy those. So I was, um, maybe a little bit over the, all over the place with my notes here, but I thought he had some super powerful things. We can start applying today in the solar industry, my Solarpreneurs. Let me know if you have anything else that helps you on those tough days. Look forward to connecting with you more. That's the episode today, send it to someone that needs help. And that's really what we're trying to do. We're trying to help as many people as possible. So don't forget push hard even when you don't want to.

Speaker 2 (16:24):

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Tune in now and don't forget to sign up for www.solciety.co!

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, your host here, and we have the first female guest ever on the Solarpreneur podcast. I'm super excited. So we got a Suli Zinck. Can I say your last name? Right. Zinc. Okay, so, so will you, thanks for coming on the show, I'm so excited to finally have a girl knocker on, so appreciate it. Appreciate you coming on,

Speaker 3 (01:07):

But I'll be honest. Taylor, yours was one. When I was looking into the solar industry, yours is one of the first ones that I like found. And I was like, oh, he there, there's not like a ton of like episodes, not a ton of people. This is definitely where I'm going to start because it's going to be like, he's going to be methodical and he's going to give you tips. And it's exactly been that since like what, when I started listening to you back in November. So

Speaker 2 (01:32):

Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And I've been following your podcast too, and your story and, um, pretty amazing stuff. So yeah, I will say we've been, yeah, I've, I think I've scheduled a one or two other girls to come on and both of them like fell through, um, um, one of them, one of them like just no showing me and then like one responds. I'm like, all right, maybe I'm not going to chain get girls on if they do this. So maybe I left kind of bad days, my mother, but yeah. But God, we made it work and no, um, you guys are crushing it with your team and I know there's some powerhouse ladies in the industry, so I think it's important. And actually, I remember now that I think back, I remember one of my like lower reviews on the PA I think it was like three stars or something, but, um, one of the reviews was like, Taylor focuses so much on like guys, Neil, he just says, here's the thing guys. And like, he never brings on me in girl.

Speaker 3 (02:27):

They was like, that is going to be my one full year. And then we like failure by two of us. Go see.

Speaker 2 (02:35):

So yeah, that's when I realized, like, I, I gotta be, uh, you know, conscious that the ladies listen to the show and not, you know, just suggest everyone by guys and stuff like that. So glad we're making it happen though. Um, but yeah, so slowly, do you want to maybe get into your story a little bit? I know you just did an awesome interview on the, uh, the door knocker podcasts. So we probably won't go quite as in depth as you went on that podcast. So people go listen to that to you, if you want to hear kind of her full in-depth story, which was awesome. But I, yeah. Do you want to give us just a little bit of the background for people who don't know you on the podcast or?

Speaker 3 (03:12):

Yeah, so I'm Sui, Juliana, Zuli all the weird games. People call me on the doors, whatever floats your boat. But, um, I started in the door to door industry 13 summers ago. This is my 13th summer. Um, I just came in with like the mindset. If I was going to give up, you know, a good job, I was going to make it count. And I ended up my first summer, I just asked the team, they're like, Hey, what is the number one girl did, uh, how many accounts pest control accounts that she serviced the summer. And, and when he told me it was like three 11, I was like, all right. And, uh, but originally the person who recruited me, it was like, look, if everything fails and sucks, like I'll at least pay for your plane ticket, everything. So at least you had like fun while you're out here.

Speaker 3 (03:58):

And so those three weeks ended up turning into 13 years. Like later I ended up, uh, that girl had did three, uh, 3 0 9 and I finished with three 16 that summer. And then there was just no turning back for me in the door to door to industry. When I saw that there was just no cap on, on basically, uh, my pay, there's just a cap with companies. And so, um, once I realized that I was like, there's no way that I was going to go to a nine to five. And, um, two summers in, I get married to my husband of 10 years now. And then I recruited him to be my service pro and then I got in trouble for having to be a service pro because I would have him work through his lunch breaks. I would be calling him on Sundays. Like, Hey, we're going to go to these homes. And we're not even supposed to like, is a W2 employee.

Speaker 2 (04:55):

Like I'm a church, let me go to church.

Speaker 3 (04:59):

And so my branch manager was like, sweet. You can be doing this. Like, there's, this is, he works for us, not for you. And, and then the following summer, um, I, we had our first kid AMA I knocked until I gave birth to her on the doors, like eight months pregnant and still did more than like my team leader on the team. And it was just no turning back. Like I just, I just have one of those like mindsets. I just feel like I'm a little bit different in the sense, like, I, I I've seen the money. I've seen the success. I've seen what this industry can do. And I just now want to have a lot more women be in the same space.

Speaker 2 (05:40):

That's incredible. And no, I got mad respect because my wife she's actually, I think, seven months pregnant right now. So, um, yeah, but she's not, she's not moving much. Like I can't even imagine trying to get her out on a door. Yeah. Just imagining that, just blow my mind that you would even, you know, attempt to knock eight months pregnant. Um, so pretty incredible. Yeah. Um, have you, but yeah, I was wondering, have you always been like that competitive because I see, I don't think there's a lot of girls. They're like, oh, what's the, what did the top girl female rap do? And then want to beat it? Is it always just been like super competitive your whole life? Or where did that come from?

Speaker 3 (06:22):

Yeah. And so that's like one of the tips that I give to like men or people in general and the door to door to industry when they are looking at female reps in the sense of like who they're wanting to recruit, like any woman who's like been in like sports for more than one year, or I've done piano lessons for more than a year have been in karate for more than a year, or have done anything consistent that, that had a little bit of competition for more than a year. Those are definitely the people that definitely the girls that you do want to want to start with. And yeah, I was super competitive period, but, um, it's, it's weird because in the industry, like, I, my husband says it all the time. He's like, you're humble in public, but in private, you're not. And I was like, well, not like, you know, I'm just like, oh, good job. And like, whatever. And I'm like, how did they get right. That's how I have to do that tomorrow or whatever. But yeah. So those are definitely a quality that you want to look in, look for when you're looking for girls to recruit.

Speaker 2 (07:24):

Yeah. And I bet I can only imagine like Sunday game night at your house, you're gonna have to invite me over to one of those things. That's just like

Speaker 3 (07:31):

Been, and I are not allowed to play games together. We just don't do games because like he doesn't care enough and it bugs me. Like he won't even like compete in like UNO or anything like that. So we just don't do card games.

Speaker 2 (07:49):

Yeah. I won a competition. That's funny. Yeah. Well you can come next time. You're in San Diego, let us know because me and my wife, we get, we get into it quite a bit. So we'll play monopoly or something.

Speaker 3 (08:02):

I known to just pop up when people tell me like, Hey, just come over here at any time. I typically just go up.

Speaker 2 (08:09):

Okay. Well, let's do it. We'd love to have you, but no, that's awesome. So w what was your background? Were you like a sports background then? Or music or?

Speaker 3 (08:20):

Yeah, so I did soccer for a few years, actually got like a full ride scholarship to go and play soccer. I was just, uh, I played goalie, but I play like Ford. I also did basketball too, but I was like more of like the sucky offense player, but I was going to be like the best defense player. Like typically they were just always calling me just play events, but I wasn't that great of a shooter. I wasn't that great of an athlete. I was just competitive plus all.

Speaker 2 (08:47):

Yeah. That's awesome. Well, no, that's good. And yeah. I mean any, um, yeah, I think that applies to, you know, girls and anyone with a sports background. Um, yeah, you've probably seen it too, but guys that have like wrestled and done just those like kind of endurance sports too, I think are great at this because especially out on the doors, it's a mental grain, you know, and

Speaker 3 (09:11):

Tracking McNeil piano, like anything consistently. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:15):

Yeah. So yeah, definitely a nugget right there as you're recruiting. Um, but no, that's cool. And so PEs, um, yeah, again, you can go listen to the other interview. I think you went pretty in depth in that soil, but, um, just the short version. Why did you decide to switch from a pest to solar then? And what was because I came from a pest background too. I don't know if you knew that, but I did it too, as summer's a pest control. And, um, you were much better than me. I would've, you would have destroyed me and pest. I think my best summer is like 120 accounts or something. So

Speaker 3 (09:53):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:54):

They're low maintenance. Um, no, that's it, it was funny. That's actually how female knockers started. And so I did my first summer three 16, and then my very last summer, before I transitioned into solar, I was the number one rep in the company. I had serviced 1,012, uh, past accounts in like 156, uh, knocking days. But before that summer, before that summer, um, had started, I, you know, basically went to like the leadership about how we needed to have a program for women, uh, in the company. And it wasn't even like, you know, I'm not even trying to say like, Hey, girls are better than guys. Guys are better than girls. It's more of just like a space. And, um, just a little bit of awareness that I just saw. A lot of regionals and team leaders were flying to Vegas and Arizona and all these other states to basically recruit more men.

Speaker 3 (10:53):

And I'm like, why don't you just make this space a little bit more inviting for the 40% of people we're not even tapping into who are returning from their missions, who are doing all these things. And they're literally in our back yards. And, um, but basically I was just kind of dismissed a little bit. And so I was like, and this was before I did the thousand accounts. And so when I came home in September, just throughout the summer, I just seen how many women were rooting me on that didn't even know me. And they were just like texting me. And they were just like keeping track of like what I was doing during the summer, because I would just post weekly updates. And the amount of like women would just like reach out to me. I was just like, so like, it kept me going and I'm on a team where there's not even like women period.

Speaker 3 (11:38):

And so that was like the biggest thing for me. So I swore once the summer ended that I was going to do something to give back. And so I'm not a social media guru. I am not the, I don't even dress fancy. I don't even feel like I fit in with like the cool, proud, but I'm like, I'm going to start something. Even if it means that I just pay like out of my own pocket. And so I started, I finished knocking for pest control in September, and then I was like, I'm going to create a coaching program or a coaching platform for women in the industry. And it doesn't matter what the shirt that they're wearing, but I want to teach concepts that could be used in alarms that can be used in Bish that could be used in solar and whatever industry, basically for women.

Speaker 3 (12:19):

Because when we're going into a lot of these teams, a lot of the men are focusing their training. And it's just kind of like we forget about the emotional side. And I used to actually not want women on my team. And I thought, this is a way of me giving back and making up for that mindset that I bought into, of not wanting women on my team. And so in October, when I basically started this platform, I started recruiting, um, women just from different, I don't know, I wasn't recruiting. I basically created this coaching program and I put it out there and I was surprised at how many people I signed up and I wasn't doing it to be rich or anything like that. I think I had like 15 people and, um, I had some from vivid or alarms at some from past and, uh, some from dish and then from solar.

Speaker 3 (13:07):

And I'm coming from the highest summer that I've ever had in pest control, like off of this high, doing financially great. Like everything's great. And I felt like a hypocrite. I'm like, I'm over here, coaching women in the industry. And I only know pest control. So I was like, screw it. I'm going to go and do blitzes, like with everyone, just for it as a learning tool to be a better coach and to be a better mentor. And so I fell flat on my face when it came to alarms and bless the hearts of the people who do alarms. I'm never going to do that again. And then I wanted to dish and I was like, okay, you guys do not get paid enough. This is way too easy. And then I had this one girl who was on this team doing solar and crap. That's probably going to sound crappy on your and try to be on your, on your team.

Speaker 3 (14:02):

Yeah. And so I was like, you know what? Um, this girl had told me that, uh, she was the only girl and, um, no one on her team had made a cell for solar like that month. I, and I literally overheard teaching her concepts about like mental toughness. And the only reason that you're not going to get a deal is because you're not going out there, you know, on the doors. So I was like, all right, well, I've got to go do a blitz, um, with them. And so I ended up going and doing a blitz, um, with their team. And I basically fell flat on my face on, uh, the first three days. And I was like, what am I doing? And, uh, it was basically the competitiveness in me that I was like, there's no way that I can't like make this happen.

Speaker 3 (14:48):

Like I am telling this girl that I am like mentally tough and I can do all these things. Like I'm going to have to figure it out. There was no pitch for solar. There's no manual, there's no nothing. I basically wrote up a pitch. I basically just put everything together and I was all right. Um, and then finally, day three, I set a bunch of appointments before lunch and I ended up closing one and I closed one every day for the next three days. And I left with like 30 grand and was like, Chad, that was a fluke I have to do again. And so I invited a couple of my pest control buddies. We didn't tell anyone, it was just about five of us. And we would meet up every morning, just like we did in pest control. And like, again, there's no training, no nothing.

Speaker 3 (15:30):

We just do like, our role plays with each other. We shared our pitch and then we'd go set appointments before lunch. We were on the doors by like 11:00 AM, like every single or 10 30. And then every day each one of us comes on with a deal and we're going home with like 50 plus K a week, all of us. And I'm like, what? The crap. Yeah. Yeah. And then, um, it was from there that basically my solar journey started, but basically my, uh, female knockers page just kind of like evolved from that mindset. And from that little accident, like I always tell people that I got into solar by accident and hearing them

Speaker 2 (16:06):

Wow, crazy. That's a cool story. And yeah, I mean, it's awesome. You're able to connect and cause I think that's a big issue with like, I don't know, maybe guy manager, stuff like that is maybe the girls feel like they can't understand their perspectives. Point of view. I know that's how it was for me. I brought out my sister-in-law actually, um, she really struggled. I wish this was like three years ago. So I wish, um, you would have been training in the solar space at that time because I was just like, I was like, all right, just get out there, knock harder. Just do it. She was, yeah. I mean, she was pretty emotional girl and I just, I didn't really know what to do. I'm just like, I dunno, just get out there and just go knock doors. So it was rough and um, you know, it didn't have a very good summer and everything, but yeah. What do you think like for you, what you've seen solely as your coach, all these female reps and, um, leading knockers and all that, have you seen that there's like, I don't know, maybe a way that they like to be coached or treated that's different than like the guy reps or what have you seen that? Uh, well I guess from a female perspective,

Speaker 3 (17:18):

Yeah. Well, one we're not teaching the concept of just, uh, how to compartmentalize our emotions because a lot of times we're talking about like women and how emotional we are, but men are just as emotional. But what you guys are really good at is compartmentalizing. Like you guys can put things aside and emotions and just go do what you gotta do. Whereas us as women, that's one thing is just, we're just not being taught how to put our emotions aside for how to put them in a box just for a short time, while we focus on what we need to do in front of us. And so I spent a lot of time just working on the mindset aspect in the sense of like how we compartmentalize, like how we can overcome anxiety, how is it that we can overcome like the negative things that are happening?

Speaker 3 (18:03):

Because once women can figure that out on your teams who like the, the success is going to be endless. And so like my whole goal in female knockers is not to have all of us women knocking on freaking ones on one team. But my whole goal is all of us, no matter what shirt that we're wearing, because we're all gonna ha we're going to be in different phases of our lives. But to be able to have that unity and know like, Hey, I'm going to have someone who's going to understand and have my back and root me on where I'm at exactly where I literally want to be a big sister in the industry for women in every aspect of like, you're there in pest control. Like let's figure out how you can level up in pest control, but you're going to have to start with your emotions.

Speaker 2 (18:46):

Yeah, no, I think that's huge because for me, I don't know if this is wrong, but what I've seen is pretty much any girl that can figure out the emotional part of it. I see them have success like that. The teams I've been on. Cause it's like, I don't know for me, it's like, it seems like people are nicer to girls. It seems like bill here at Mount Moore. Um, I was always jealous of that. I remember doing pest control. I'm like, man, you can get through like way more easier pitch than I can see.

Speaker 3 (19:15):

And it's true. And I focus on the reasons I, I focus on the things that we have a leg up on w w as women in the industry and that we can look at them as like strengths rather than, you know, rather than weaknesses. And I feel like in solar, especially for me, my emotional side and how emotion and like how much emotion I put into, like my deals. Like people feel it, like, it's, it's just a different dynamic than a guy who's just, you know, just going through it.

Speaker 2 (19:42):

Yeah. A hundred percent. But yeah. Um, for you to slowly, do you have any, I dunno, like stories or examples of times where you coach like some girl reps that maybe were struggling or super emotional and I don't know, I wanted to go home, things like that and like specific things you did to turn it around. I don't know if you have any examples of people you've coached or anything like that.

Speaker 3 (20:03):

So I'll be honest. Um, so I've actually had like a, a couple of girls actually just on my team. Um, and, uh, they have been in another industry and they'd been with another company and, um, they basically always do use their emotions and the negativity to get in their cars and to go home and to let it bleed over to the next to the next day. And then we worked together again and I actually had her come out and we started just focusing on all the positive things. We actually took away, all the things that, that was negative for her in her life. And the biggest thing was having a car. The biggest thing was being a driver. It was being the driver and how easy it was for her to be able to get back in the car, get over here, taking that one thing away because we recognize that that was like one of her weaknesses and where, what she would use to be able to, um, let it bleed over to the next day.

Speaker 3 (20:59):

She ended up being one of the top producers this year, just by focusing on that one little thing. Is she still emotional? Yes. Do we still have rough days? Yes. But we were able to see a lot, a lot more success just by taking away a couple of the little things that were triggers for her. And so I, and so a lot of the girls who reach out to me who are having emotional days and things that, that stink, we, we basically just work on, find out like what some of their triggers are. We remove some of those triggers and it just makes it a little bit better to focus on the things that they can control.

Speaker 2 (21:31):

Um, yeah. That I love that I reminds me of that you grid the power of habit, that book they talked about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Super important principle. And it's so true. Um, I think a lot of people struggle with that being the driver and whatnot, but it's like, if you're on a diet, you need to get the Oreos out of the kitchen. Right. Get the stuff that's tempting out of the way. It's not tempting, tempting anymore. This is the same thing. If you're struggling to knock the door or whatever, it might be that trigger, like you're saying, see if you can figure out a way to eliminate it because a lot of people just solves a problem instantly. Yeah. So, yeah. That's powerful. Um, and what about like for guys, let's say you're, um, uh, you know, a guy who's managing a team with girls, um, maybe you seen guys be super successful with it. And what would you say to like, like me, for example, if I manage a team I'm trying to help the ladies out. Um, would you have any tips for like a guy trained to manage the ladies on his team and help them coaching?

Speaker 3 (22:32):

Yeah. It's just going to be like focusing on the little things like, whoa, what a lot of people don't understand. It's like, women are not, we're not like, yes, we're, we're wanting equal pay and all these things, but the little things like really like, matter to us, like a shirt that actually fits a girl, like actually having incentives that doesn't include a freaking wallet. That's just a one or a pocket knife or like the little things just really go a long ways in the sense of like texting and actually calling like what I do and why I don't have a car partners as a leader and in my car, because I also use that time to be able to follow up on reps. Like I'm always like driving in from like an appointment or to a house or whatever. So I'm thinking about that rep who may have had like a bad day.

Speaker 3 (23:22):

And I'm thinking about that girl who talked to me about this and I'll shoot her a text or a call, or like, Hey, how are you feeling today? Like using that time in, that's a focus on the business in front of me, but take care of that. People around me as well. So every night, like when I'm coming home, I'm reaching out to someone on my team to just ask them how their day was to just to ask them like what it is that I can train on that would help them personally. And it's every day it's gonna be like a new rep. And so every one knows that I'm going to reach out and at some point or time and another, and it's just something so small as like calling them regularly and like, Hey, how was your day?

Speaker 2 (23:59):

Hmm. That's awesome. Yeah. How do you like, remember, do you have a system set up to like, I dunno, remember, oh, this is having a hard time or keep track of all their, I dunno how big your team is, but you have, I dunno, a system in place to remember, oh, I need to call this your app. Or they were struggling with this or their numbers are down or you just going to come to you while you're driving.

Speaker 3 (24:20):

So one it's my, I have a good relationship with all the girls that they're just like coming to me, but two, we have a group chat. So like on our group, me, if I see that someone doesn't have a set or if like someone's numbers, like is enough or, um, or it's, I just don't see like any doors knock or anything, like I'll reach out to that person and be like, Hey, what time today? Can I come and knock with you? Or like, Hey, and so I, I, based the day, like when it's, if I have like a no show or an appointment, that's not there, I'll go and look at group me and see who's produced and who isn't. And I'll just start from there. And then at the end of the night, when I am going home, I'm just starting with someone who actually texted me and reached out to me about like an issue or problem or something.

Speaker 2 (25:02):

Okay. I love that. And I like this. I like your point about the little things, the shirts and the incentives and stuff like that. Um, yeah. I didn't even think about that, but I can see why that'd be a big thing. It's like a shirt that fits.

Speaker 3 (25:19):

Yeah. Even just that, like I had some girls come over here from another company and they're like, what? The, like, they're different from them. Like these are actually like women's shirt. And I didn't realize like how big of a deal, like it was to them. And it was literally an $11 shirt.

Speaker 2 (25:36):

Yeah. No, that's true. Yeah. I'm just thinking of, I don't know if you watch the office, do you watch the office? I'm just, I'm just thinking of the one where Michael takes model to them, all the girls, like, like to the mall and take small than Victoria's secret. I remember that upset. So maybe not to that level, but I think that is really important. Just being, um, you know, aware that girls probably, maybe they don't want to go, uh, dirt biking for the day or whatever. Maybe they want to get.

Speaker 3 (26:12):

Maybe they don't want to go on a golfing trip for like a lot of little things.

Speaker 2 (26:18):

Yeah. Yeah, no, that's important. Um, so cool. No, that helps a lot. Um, and yeah, I guess I wanted to ask you too. How many people are you managing right now?

Speaker 3 (26:31):

So at the beginning of this summer, so like our whole team, there was probably for the whole summer, about 35 of us. And, um, so I had another co-manager and then there was like another guy on the team. We're just kind of like, I had recruited him, but he had like a bunch of guys. So we were just because we all came from pests, we just kind of wanted to stick together. And so, yeah, I think he had about a 15 and then I had about 25 of like my own. So we can kind of just like combine and ran the summer together.

Speaker 2 (27:05):

Yeah. Big team. And, and, sorry, I guess I, I know before we started the call here, um, yeah. We're just talking about how you don't like to call yourself the boss and stuff, but you're just almost like,

Speaker 3 (27:17):

Yeah. I like, yeah. I just want to be the sister. Like, even when I have the, the girls like introducing me and we're like, yeah, like this boss you see now my, no, I'm just like a team member. I was like, I never want to look at myself as above them. I truly look at them as like, especially on solar. Like my, my mindset is just a lot different. Like I truly feel that I'm an employee of them, but like, I need to continually like take care of them obviously to take care of myself first. But like they come first.

Speaker 2 (27:49):

Yeah. I'm sure that's a huge key to your success and they can feel, um, you know, that you really care about them. Appreciate them. Um, I'm sure you learned this on your mission and everything, but speaking of missions, I think that was one of the keys to success we saw in like our missions is the more you care about people, the more they're going to respond because it's like, oh, they actually want me to get baptized or whatever. Cause they love me. And they like for like, believe in this.

Speaker 3 (28:18):

Exactly. I probably kept people longer, you know, just because they're not a number then who I should have. And I have like some reps who are super protective of me or just like, why don't you let them leave? Like, you're just too nice. Like you're just like, and this and that. I'm like, Hey guys, it's a G

Speaker 2 (28:34):

Yeah. I know. It's super important though. Like Zig Ziglar says the more people, um, you know, the more people know you care, I forget the quote, but when people see you care, that's how they're gonna, you know, respond to you and, and wanting to do business with you, tune on a team. Yeah. Um, but the point I was, I think what I was going to ask you before I got distracted by that is also like the family aspects of the way. So I know you're a mom. How many kids do you have now?

Speaker 3 (29:04):

So I have three. I have a nine-year-old I haven't about to be an eight year old and then a two year old. Mr.

Speaker 2 (29:11):

Okay. Nice, cute, cute. So that's impressive to me. I'm um, you know, I have one kid right now, one on the way here in a couple of months. And, um, so something that I really respect about you is just being able to do all this and have the level of success that you've been all that cheap. Um, while being a mom for three kids, I don't even know cause I'm with the one kid, I feel like I'm, uh, you know, already not there as much as I need to be and not the best dad at times, things that, so, um, maybe this doesn't apply to everyone who isn't a parent, but how do you manage your time being like a mom and being there for your kids and all that, how do you manage like the family aspect of everything?

Speaker 3 (29:53):

So I'll be honest. And I, one person that I love in this industry is Michael Donal. And, um, one thing that he talks about is seasons. And so I just, I, I no longer, um, you know, have this like guilt of what I used to when I was in pest control and I wouldn't see my kids. So till the, till the evening, but we have the mindset, like my kids understand it. And so to my husband, that there's a season that there's going to be a season for everything. And right now my season is going to be solar. My season is in this industry is basically just like building and being able to set up our family into a position to where that season is going to be just us and still because my, my, my husband is like bought in to like the fact of like seasons. We, we just have like that mindset, like right now, like, like this very second, it's just going to be a season and it's going to end. And I know that there's gonna be a season and a time and a place for me to be with my family and with my kids. And because we both just bought into it, it just, there's no more guilt. Like he's just a thousand percent in. And, uh, it just worked out.

Speaker 2 (31:02):

Yeah, no, that's true. Yeah. I do remember Michael Donald talking about that too. And anyone that has a family, um, that's a topic I love is like the whole work-life balance, but any successful person I hear, they always, they say pretty much the same thing. There's no like balance. There's just gonna be ups and downs, different seasons times when you're focused on different things. Right.

Speaker 3 (31:23):

But when we are with our family, it's like, we are with our family. Like my husband has to intentionally like turn off my phones and put things down and, and things like that. So he's like, okay, this second, the season, this time, this moment is for us. And I'm like, you're right. So it's just about communication and working it together.

Speaker 2 (31:44):

Uh, your husband's name is Walter right of that. What does Walter think of all this is he, uh, I know he's probably used to the old kind of sells life by now, but does he, uh, is he kind of the stay at home dad then while you're off slinging deals? Or how does that,

Speaker 3 (32:00):

Uh, so it's just kinda like funny, cause people are like, well, you know, they'll try to like, get me to talk to like these women who have kids and like try to recruit them and try to do that on my guys. There's, you know, there's hot buttons and not every woman is as mobile as me, or has like a companion who, who is willing to sacrifice. Like my husband was, he had a great job. Like he loved it. He was going to school. He's making like six figures. He was doing all those things. Um, but he saw that my season was going to get us to our end goal a lot sooner. And so when COVID hit and, uh, he just saw how anxious it was going to be for me to worry about a babysitter for our kids, not being at work, the different things like that.

Speaker 3 (32:41):

He decided that his season was to be the best day at home dad. Like he legitimately is a lot more patient of a father. He's a great cook. And he freaking takes care of the house a lot better than me. So, you know, roles are, are, are, are different for everyone. And so he enjoys our kids. He enjoys the season, he enjoys cooking. He enjoys, like, he knows my stats better than me. Like he's always kept spreadsheets. He, he knows what I did from like my first year in pest control. Like it's a sport to him. Like he can tell you which rep that I competed with, which month can tell you, he can tell you which company, which rep has the best rep. And like, he it's like the NBA for him, like thrives off of my life. And so he is just so bought into it that he just saw how much less anxiety that I would have by him doing a great job at home with the kids. So we never questioned me being gone and one parent being home with the kids and he's just an all star stay at home dad. So,

Speaker 2 (33:44):

Wow. He's like the analytic he's he has all this stats and analytics down and it's almost like the side by side announcer for,

Speaker 3 (33:52):

Yeah. He texted me, Rick texted me the other day and was like, Hey, I'm knocking in Nashville. And I know you, I know you slayed it over here. Like, what cities did you do? Well, and I'm like, I have no clue. Give me a sec. I'm going to text the hubby literally in 30 seconds, that hubby texts me a list of places that I did well. And I sent it through and he's like, oh, whoa.

Speaker 2 (34:13):

Oh my gosh. That's incredible.

Speaker 3 (34:16):

So he thrives off of like the door to door industry and he's just the cheerleaders.

Speaker 2 (34:22):

So do you ever come back to him and like, I don't know, a slower day or anything and he'll like, be slinging off the stats, say, you know, how many doors did you talk to? How many homeowners starts going through stats like that to make sure you,

Speaker 3 (34:35):

We would get in arguments. Like it had to get to the point where like, he, because I would be in like competitions for the past and whatnot. And like, I do not pay attention to numbers. That's like one thing about me. Like, I will not look at stats. I will not check them throughout the day. And when I come home, just like, you know, if you would've only did one more account, I'm like, he's secretly like it because he knows that I don't check it. It like stresses him out because he's like wanting you to win. And he knows that I just care less than he knows.

Speaker 2 (35:11):

That's awesome. Here. We might have to have him on the show and go through like the stats to hit, to be successful on the doors or whatever.

Speaker 2 (35:23):

That's awesome. Well, no, that's, that's good. And always helps a ton to have a supportive spouse and, um, you know, be, make sure you're on the same level one to explain to them that their seasons and make the time. Um, yeah, one of our interviews, Ashton, I don't know if you know Ashton Boswell, but, um, he's over like VP of sales at legacy, but that's one of his big secrets. Is he coaches all his reps just on, um, I think he says having him set aside just like one day a week or one evening, a week, go on your date night or whatever. And that's like his big thing. He's like, yeah, he's like set aside one night. Do your date night, take a break from appointments.

Speaker 2 (36:04):

So I thought that was cool. And that's like something, he coaches all of his reps. Like I'm sure whether they're married or not. He's like go on a date or whatever I needed to do that I'm here. So, so, so that's cool. And I love to about hearing about people, is that just the way that their seasons and the ways they make at work? Um, so yeah, speaking of seasons Suli I know before the recording, we were just talking about how you sort of brought the whole pest control idea of the summer sprint over to solar and you guys are obviously crushing it. Um, how, how many deals is your team doing on these like blitzes and stuff? What's like an average blitz. How many deals would you say you guys do?

Speaker 3 (36:42):

So basically my team and a, it was like 136 days. We sold a 4.7 megawatts. Uh, we had 3.9, uh, still in the pipeline to have been installed in. Uh, we've still got 1.9 and that's in a hundred and, uh, 37 knocking days that we have in the summer. So,

Speaker 2 (37:07):

Oh, again, you guys are just in Texas, right? Or any other

Speaker 3 (37:11):

Just in Texas. Yeah, we just, uh, we just traveled different cities here in Texas. We just call ourself the pure blood squad. And, uh, we do, uh, 18 days on and we'd do a full week off and I make people go home. I'm like, I wasn't supposed to run a team. I was literally going to do one week a month for a whole year and call it good. But the whole team thing came by accident and just organically. And I was like, I'm supposed to be traveling. So if I'm going to do this, we're taking a week off and I'm going to go live my life. And so it's why people see a lot of like traveling stuff like throughout the summer. Cause I'm like, because I'm making the schedule I'm choosing even and make people go home. So it's been kind of night.

Speaker 2 (37:52):

Yeah. That's cool. And so you have a house out there in Texas or what's like,

Speaker 3 (37:57):

So we don't, so all of my we've been doing like Airbnbs and so I'm actually closing on a, on a property here, like right now in Texas, because the housing that I've spent on rabbis have just been like crazy. And so I'm basically just setting stuff up to where I'm not having to, to, to worry about housing, but, um, we've been in Airbnbs all summer.

Speaker 2 (38:20):

Okay. And so when you, when you get your house closed on, is that, are you just going to still be traveling around and then go back to your house for that week still?

Speaker 3 (38:29):

Yeah, like literally the like, I'm, I'm kind of like in no man's land, I like our, this property that we're going to get, it's literally going to be a rental. It's literally going to be on Airbnb, like the rest of the year. But during the summer it's going to be used to house reps because I'm cheap and don't want to keep spending 20 grand a month on housing. And so I'm like finding a way to like how's reps. And then like my place in Utah is like rented out and I have tenants on the top and bottom and like, our properties are like rented out and I live nowhere. Like I am like this

Speaker 2 (39:03):

[inaudible]. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:05):

And so until I settled down on solar and I kind of want to ride this tax credit, I'm just, I'm just not choosing a place to be, but I'm going to everywhere.

Speaker 2 (39:15):

Yeah. Might as well that's you guys are crushing it. And so like, is this, you're doing it all year round, just this blitz model though, or you just,

Speaker 3 (39:25):

So we weren't supposed to do oppose these. And that was another thing. Like, all this stuff just happens. It's like my team grows and people wants different things. And so we were, I was supposed to be done in August and then I had girls on the team. It was like local. I want to transition into closing or I want to like, get a head start for like next summer. And then it's like, Hey, I want to recruit this person. So basically what my post season is, it's just like, it's, they're just low key vivant schedule where I'm just allowing people to come and test it out. And I'm actually like looking and, and sharpening the sob, like people that I want to be leaders to take over next summer, but I only want to be a summer program. The reason people just still see me working right now is because I'm prepping training and recruiting to set up a good next summer model. Oh,

Speaker 2 (40:09):

Okay. Interesting. That's cool. And I don't, to my knowledge, I don't know if there's anyone else doing just like a pure summer model in solar, is there?

Speaker 3 (40:19):

No, no, no. It's it's, it's why I refuse to let it fail.

Speaker 2 (40:25):

Yeah. Pulling up by the teeth. Um,

Speaker 3 (40:30):

Yeah. So this is my, uh, I'm definitely sharpening things up and putting a lot of things together and place to basically set up for April 1st when we started again. So,

Speaker 2 (40:40):

Yeah. Wow. And yeah, what's incredible is you guys are in this summer, I'm sure you've done more than most like year round solar gummies. Like there's probably not too many year round solar companies that do that for the entire year, let alone a summer. That's incredible. So what's your arguments, I guess. Would that just come from pest control or what's your argument? Why did you even try to just do that when everyone else in the solar industry's doing all year round, what's your argument for this?

Speaker 3 (41:10):

So, because I, I actually dabbled in a couple of solar companies before I came here. And again, like, I, I I'm new to this. It's like, I don't even know what I'm doing. It's why I reached out to so many people in solar before I even started. Because like, I know if I'm coaching people who don't know what they're doing, that I need to be taught and be coached, what I don't know. And from the solar places that I've been and the, and the different companies, what I saw is just, it's just a lot easier to be relaxed when you live in the location that you're knocking. It's why I would never knock in Utah when I was doing pest control. The summer that I did, I spent more time at my auntie's house. I spent more time with my grandparents. I spent more times at barbecue than I did like actually knocking doors.

Speaker 3 (41:55):

And so I just had that same mindset. I was like, look, if I can convince people to leave their homes and come to a place where they have no friends, or they don't have no family members, like, aren't they going to work just a little bit quick? Aren't they just going to work a little bit longer? But the reason I wanted to change it from the way that pest control dynamic was where it was literally just going stay for the full summer is because I felt like there wasn't enough of a break, like mental space, like physical breaks. It was just go, go, go. And I wanted to find like a happy medium. And so I saw when people can see the light sooner, or they can see the end a lot sooner, they're gonna work a little bit harder. So I want it to have end dates every single month that people could be like, look, it's 18 knocking days. Anyone can do anything for 18 knocking days, as opposed to saying, Hey, for 365 days out of the year, and let's just go knock three or four hours every day. Yeah, no, that was what it was for me. I just knew that people were just going to be a lot less laxed when they saw that there was going to be an end date each month. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:02):

No, that makes sense. And yeah, I was telling you before we started the recording, that a lot of this stuff is you're describing like what I do, and I can see that my numbers are just cause in my head, it's like, I'm doing this all year round. I don't need it more than three or four hours a day.

Speaker 3 (43:19):

So we lived there.

Speaker 2 (43:22):

Yeah. And I've seen that. I think that's the curse of the solar industry. Is everyone coming like so many lazy reps, that's the big thing. And then solar understanding, because you won't see this level of laziness in it, like any other door knocking companies, but it's,

Speaker 3 (43:37):

We also like miss out on a lot of things too. Right. There's some people who just need like an extra week to think about it or like, so I feel like we have lost some deals because it's like we are coming in and going from like different cities that we basically set up appointments for like other solar companies to come in and take a bath, you know? So the it's pros and cons, I feel like.

Speaker 2 (44:01):

Yeah. Yeah, no, that's true. But yeah. I mean, it's just like, if you can get in there close the deals, um, you guys do a lot of like same day appointments. Do things like that as your,

Speaker 3 (44:12):

Especially. Yes. Like it's like same day or die. It's like same day next day. And like, period. And I just, I just incentivize like so much on same day as the next days that it just like, we, we push it like so hard.

Speaker 2 (44:25):

Yeah. No, I think it's no secret. I think that's how people do high numbers. Um, in solar that's all Mo fall. I don't know if, you know, morphology keep bringing up these successful people in the industry, but that's basically, I think what he did do, he just brought over what was working in alarms and other industries and apply it at a solar. And now they're doing a similar thing to you blitz and all over the place. And I'm just working hours,

Speaker 3 (44:49):

Same day tips. I, I remember listening to, I was like, this is money if people aren't doing this and solar they're.

Speaker 2 (44:56):

Yeah. It helps that done. So, yeah. Um, how would you, like, I dunno, maybe someone that's used to working just a year round model, um, like myself I'm use, I'll be honest. I haven't knocked more than probably four or five hours in a day for, I don't know, probably like six months at least just because that's what I get, you know, book my same day or whatever. And I'm like, sweet. I'm off the doors. Just hit up that appointment, go close it. And so how do you turn around? I don't know if you've brought in recruited people that are used to that model and maybe have some, uh, laziness in them of not knocking as much and coming out and doing a blitz. Do you have any tips for like how to break that or how to, um, shift that mindset to going to like a blitz model versus just doing like three, four hours a day? Maybe like you're used to as a year-round rep.

Speaker 3 (45:46):

Yeah. So it's hard. I'm actually dealing with that. Like right now it was like people who've been doing like your and, and stuff like that. And so I basically managed the expectation and it's why I like the Airbnb model because I let my reps know at the very beginning, like, Hey, these 18 days are for you to judge me. And for me to judge you at the end of the 18 days, you know, if you feel like this is the team for you, if you feel like, great, Hey, like we're going to move on to the next blitz. But it's also for me to be like, Hey, if I feel like your negativity or your mindset, or you're just not adding value to this team being, it allows me to be able to be like, Hey, the Airbnb ends at this date. Like, that's it.

Speaker 3 (46:25):

And it's one of the biggest reasons why I want it to have Airbnbs because I just didn't know how well these people were coming and going and what the dynamics would look like. So for one, letting them know that at the very beginning that, Hey, every single blitz is a trial and at the end of the 18 days, if we're going to work together and it's going to be great, Hey, I'll book you another Airbnb. But if it's not, we're going to have to part ways and be friends. And so when people have that expectation that every blitz was going to be a trial and that there was a certain amount of kilowatts. So I actually, every single month in order to not be charged their rent back, they had to hit certain milestones. And so people were always doing at least the minimum and that's all I required minimum as well as a positive attitude.

Speaker 3 (47:08):

And if they have those two things they could keep coming on. And so when I have like some of the, the year round reps are coming in and they're like, holy cow, I've never knocked six hours in a day. And like, not like, I'm not sure if this is for me. And so it makes it to where the expectations are already there and they can approach me. And I don't have to be the bad guy about like, this is what our team is prepping for next summer. If it works great. If not the solar industry is endless and plenty of people will take.

Speaker 2 (47:37):

Sure, sure. No, I think that's so important though. In so many solar companies, aren't doing that setting expectations with their reps, especially your own well, yeah, as most companies are a year round, I think that's super important for our listeners. Even if, um, you know, maybe you are doing three, four hours, but set the expectations, the milestones that people need to hit, because it's like, you can go get mad at them for not producing, but if they didn't know they needed to close two deals that week or whatever it was then, I mean, how can you get mad at them? You know, they didn't know what the expectation was. Yes.

Speaker 3 (48:10):

Yeah. People milestones and give them a, give them something to work towards or else there's going to be like, you know, there has to be like consequences or there has to be something in order to hurt a little bit.

Speaker 2 (48:19):

Yeah, definitely. And um, yeah, no, we'll, we'll, uh, we're running a little bit short on time. Don't want to keep you super late. I know we're going on like 10 o'clock there your time, which you said you're a night out, so that's cool. Um, but yeah, last couple of things. So we what's your guys' schedule for a blitz. What is your, I know you're saying 18 days on then a week off. What's like your schedule during that Boyd, do you have meetings every day? Or what does that look like?

Speaker 3 (48:45):

Oh yeah. Like that's like a big thing. Like when I brought other people, they're like you guys meet every day and I'm like, you don't, you guys even learn. So we, uh, we basically meet at 10:00 AM. Every single morning. We train from 10 to 10 45, our reps around the doors between 11 and 1130. We knocked from 1130, till three o'clock. Then we have lunch from three o'clock to four o'clock and then they're knocking from four o'clock to dark Monday through Friday. And then on Saturdays, we only not sell four o'clock now. And then Sundays, no one works unless they want to.

Speaker 2 (49:20):

Okay. Awesome. Now, are you, uh, for meetings, you guys swap and trainings or, uh, do you kind of run it?

Speaker 3 (49:28):

No, it's never a guessing game. Like there's some I'm OCD and, uh, that's one thing with women, women, uh, of reps. They, they want to know that there's a little bit of a structure and I feel like I kind of overly structured. So to go into those meetings where like, Hey guys, what do you guys want to learn about today? What do you guys want to look like one it's showing your team that you don't really care. You didn't really put a lot of effort and thought into what it was that they were struggling in the day before. So me and my other co managers, yes. Each single day, we would have like, one of our lead, our lead setters would take one day. We would take a day, uh, and, uh, we would rotate. And so every single day there was going to be a planned lesson, a planned discussion.

Speaker 3 (50:10):

We going to make sure every single day that everyone had time to be able to role play, but we would have a concept every single day. And then we would incentivize on the doors based on those concepts. Hey, if you go and do like this concept that we taught today or whatnot, you're going to be able to receive XYZ. So every single day we are training, we are role playing. Um, I just don't believe in this once a week, zoom meeting that a lot of solar companies do and just kind of like let their reps come and go like, yeah,

Speaker 2 (50:39):

Yeah, no, that's, I think that's super important. I noticed that too, actually, I'm with, uh, um, Jason newbie in his squad if you know him, but that's one of the things that he brought over the, I saw like an instant boost in people's numbers. It's just like meeting, because number, I think in my opinion, the main purposes, if you meet people are gonna actually gonna go out and work, right. Like if you're not going to meet the likelihood that people drag themselves out and actually go out like way lower. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (51:10):

Girls it's like, how do you get out of your car? Like, how do you get to area? Like, how do you do all these things? And like, the biggest thing is they're meeting once a week, so It's not their fault, but

Speaker 2 (51:23):

Yeah, no, it's because yeah, I brought other people on that are seen way more success do meaning every day. And it's like, you show up, you got your game clothes on, you got your, a game base, you just get in the right mindset versus you trying to drag yourself out and, and, uh, do it all yourself. So I think that's a big secret for people that are managing teams are trained to boost their numbers, maybe consider meeting everyday, or just doing mini blitzes. Because I think that might be the future. I'm seeing almost more and more people I bring on, even if they are year round, they're doing mini blitzes like that throughout the year and going to different areas and mixing it up because yeah, it is, it is tough.

Speaker 3 (52:02):

So makes it more fun. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:05):

Well, Zoe, um, we appreciate you coming on the show and, um, don't want to take up your entire evening. Hopefully you got some dinner. Um, but if people want to find out more about, I know you got your own podcast and everything, so do you want to tell people where they can find out more about you and possibly, I dunno, I dunno if you're still running coaching or whatever you're doing. So let's hear about that.

Speaker 3 (52:28):

So you can find me on female knockers, uh, unite. Uh, I do do coaching, but since solar was just so new and I feel like I'm just trying to put like so many things together for me. I want to be intentional. Um, and so right now I'm just doing a lot more educating just on my female page, my female knockers, you can I'm uh, also my podcast is sales with Suli twice a month, every single month I'll drop some nuggets. Uh, basically the same thing that I teach in some of my coaching calls, um, and things like that. And so, um, you can find me on Spotify and all the same spots. So you can find Taylor for pretty much.

Speaker 2 (53:06):

No. Yeah. Awesome podcasts. I've been listening to them. They are. So, um, yeah, they play it at home. Guys can listen to them too. Right. It's not just girls.

Speaker 3 (53:16):

I have them episodes in there just for the guys. So check out the title.

Speaker 2 (53:20):

Yeah. And I fall a female knockers United page. So I think guys got me if I'm wrong, I guys are allowed to fall that through. Right.

Speaker 3 (53:28):

It's an open public

Speaker 2 (53:33):

Gopal that is dropping in great content in there. And yeah, I learned a ton from her podcasts and stuff. She shares, so go shoot or a follow. So I slowly thanks for coming on today. And before we let you go, do you have any, like, I dunno, final tips or things you wish you knew first getting in solar industry that you want to share with our solar printers before we say goodbye here.

Speaker 3 (53:52):

Yes. Definitely find people who have content. I remember the first solar company that I started with one, they basically gave everyone two shirts because they basically planned on you or one shirt because they planned on you never coming back. So that's already like a red flag for me. Um, but two, if you're going to find someone who is going to train you, who is going to basically teach you from a to Z exactly what to do, you're definitely going to find success, just control the controllables and just focus on the little things. It doesn't matter which industry you're in. You're going to find success. If you just focus on the things you can control. So no,

Speaker 2 (54:28):

I appreciate that. So guys, go give Sulia follow control. The things you can control, like she just mentioned and make sure you find a good mentor. Cause I think those are the keys to having success in the industry for sure. And have meetings every day.

Speaker 3 (54:42):

Yeah. Thanks so much Taylor for having me like literally, I, I I've found rolled your, your podcast for like a while. It's literally one of the reasons that I have the success that I do and I, I share your podcasts with everyone.

Speaker 2 (54:55):

Uh, thank you so much. That means a ton then that's like why I've kept it going. So I love hearing comments like that. Appreciate you Suli. So go give Suli follow and Suli we'll be in touch. Thanks again for coming on the show. Have

Speaker 3 (55:07):

A good one. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:10):

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