The Solarpreneur

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 back with another week, another episode, and I hope you are crushing the fall. We are getting into the fall weather, perfect time to knock. And I just got back from an event myself. Um, it was called driven. So I will preface this episode. We got back at, uh, 4:00 AM last night. Um, it was up in LA the event and I'm down in San Diego. So I'm recording this because I'm not gonna miss out on some fire content that we need to drop this week, but I am a little out of it. So if things don't make sense, they, I apologize in advance, but we're going to have a great episode. So let's get right into it. My name's Taylor Armstrong, and I'm here to help you take your solar sales game to another level, by closing more deals, journey, more referrals, and hopefully having a much better time in the solar industry.

Speaker 2 (01:39):

Hope you're doing well this week, I wanted to do something a little bit different, and that is we're going to focus on our friends, our dear friends, the ladies in the solar industry. I've never done this before. And the reason I'm kind of calling this, the women focus week is because we have, um, one of my friends Suli Zinc she's coming on the next episode, we had an awesome interview with her. She had some just, I thought amazing advice on how to basically better treat women in the solar industry, how to make them feel more included in, you know, in your sales teams, in your organizations, and then just how to help them really, um, sell to their potential. And I mean, it complied to guys too. So if you're a guy listening to this, don't miss out on these episodes because don't get me wrong slowly.

Speaker 2 (02:35):

She's one of the top sellers in the solar industry. So she knows her stuff, but they're the reason I think this applies a lot to, you know, the guys in the industry is because let's be honest, it is a male dominated industry we're working in, but almost every sales team they're going to have probably a few ladies on the team do. So how can you get them to maximize their potential? And how can you make them feel included in the team? How can you treat them with, um, you know, respect and make sure they're getting their needs taken care of? Because as a guy, I didn't know, I didn't really know how to do this. I'm still trying to figure out how to do this case. We get girls on the team. And I think at times me leading our teams out here in San Diego, I don't think I've done a good enough job at helping the ladies, you know, feel more included in maximize their potential.

Speaker 2 (03:30):

So I'm going to talk about a few of my mistakes on this episode, and then I'm going to give just a little preview of, um, you know, what I've learned from mistakes I've made and then things coming up on the next episode, because I think next episode with soil, you're going to hear just a, you know, the raw stuff, the things that are helping her and things that she's, uh, has seen that haven't gone the best on teams. She's been a part of. So with that being said, let's jump into it. Um, my really first experience selling with ladies in this industry, I guess a couple of stories to start all this off is I started out on pest control. As many have heard on the podcast. This was back in 20. Uh, what was it? 2012. Yeah, summer of 2012, Dallas, Texas. And I remember starting out in the summer, um, one girl that started out with me.

Speaker 2 (04:21):

She was also a rookie sales rep. Her name was Alyssa and me and her, me and Alyssa. We started out about the same, but I remember after a month her sales just started exploding. She was getting like four or five deals in a day, which pest control. That's pretty decent day. I was lucky to get one or two. Right. And again, I wasn't that good at pest control, but I'm like, what is this girl doing? And then I remember I started to kind of like envy her. I'm like girls have it so much easier. I mean, she's, good-looking people are listening to her, she's flirting with the guys on the doors. Like how can I compete with that? So it became kind of a limiting belief in my head. I'm like, I'm never going to catch up to this girl in girls. I think having an advantage that way.

Speaker 2 (05:07):

So if you're a lady list in the podcast, I mean, you want to maximize the advantage. Not that you need to be all flirty and whatnot on the doors or in your sales, but the advantage they have is people open up more generally, I would say to the ladies on the doors, right? Because they come across less intimidating. They come across, um, you know, especially if you're a guy answering the door, then you're probably going to be nicer to that lady on the other side of the door, you're probably going to hear her out a little bit more. That's the unique advantage. I think they have. That was my first experience selling with a girl. And she crushed me and sells as a lot of girls. You know, there's a lot of superstar girls sown out there today, but then what happened, I started to have, I would say kind of a negative, um, per special in that that's where I've gone a little bit wrong.

Speaker 2 (06:00):

That's where I've, um, not been as good of a leader, especially with women as I think I could have been had, I did a two-year mission as many. You probably also know I went to Columbia, south America. And in my mission, we were, um, they assigned district leaders, which I was a district leader. That's basically imagined like a manager for a year, a little, uh, branch of missionaries or a little like group of missionaries. Typically you're in charge of, I don't know, maybe six other missionaries. So a few times in my mission, I had to, um, I had to, you know, basically help out these sister missionaries. They were, that's why they call them, call them brother, sister in the church. Um, but I had helped these two ladies out that were in our little group or organization there in Colombia. And I just remember it was good working with them, but I also got kind of like a negative thing in my head working with them.

Speaker 2 (07:01):

Um, I had to deal with problems. We would meet with the leaders in the church. And unfortunately, um, one of these sister missionaries, she was causing some problems. If any of you have been to like the Latin American culture, you know that they love it when you eat their food, if you don't eat their food that they give you, it's almost like a slap in the face. So we had one sister missionary that did not want to eat peoples figured she would reject it all the time. And boy, these people in the church there, um, they were super mad about it. So I went to church every Sunday and people in the church would come up and Hey, this girl, she didn't eat our, uh, Juni, our chicken and rice, or we seen Spanish I'm in Colombia. So I would deal with that. And I'm like, oh my gosh, why can't these girls just, you know, do what they're supposed to do.

Speaker 2 (07:53):

So I tried to help them out. And, but I think I could've done a lot better at the time. That's where the first sort of negative started is. I don't know. I just, like, I just thought, oh man, I'm better. I'm better off just like working with guys. I don't want to do what the drama, I don't want to, um, you know, deal with that. And I'm not saying all girls are like that. Okay. But I didn't know how to really help this sister missionary out. I think I could've done a lot better. Maybe understanding her point of view, seeing where she's coming from, but I pretty much just like, man, you need to knock this off at the time. And then my second negative experience, that's the last one I promise. And then we'll get into some points when I'm talking about this is I had my sister-in-law.

Speaker 2 (08:41):

She came out and sold for the summer. This was back in 2017. When I was first getting into solar, I had my sister-in-law come out and it was just a terrible experience the whole summer for she was living with us in our apartment, which was fine, but I don't think she had one deal closed the entire summer. So this is where I kind of just like had even more of a negative I'm like, all right, I don't want to like deal with these girls. These girls sales are ups anymore. They're just, yeah, they're just too hard. I just kind of made up this story in my head that girls were going to be too hard. I was just better off dealing with guys. And I talk about this a little bit in the episode with SWE, but you know, basically my sister-in-law, she would, uh, not really meant for sells, so maybe she should have, you know, figured that out sooner than later, but she would just, you know, go on the curving cry and it just wasn't, it wasn't a good experience for, so that's the stories I told myself.

Speaker 2 (09:47):

So why am I saying all these things? Just because I, now I know that after seeing all these girls crush it in the industry, now I know the reasons you should have girls on your team. If you can help them really channel their potential and become successful. The girls I've been seen, uh, you know, have success since a few of these more negative experiences have been some of the best sells or ups I've seen. I've had a couple of my team. They've been superstars. Obviously we have people like Suli. Um, another one is solar Lily in the industry and they're just dominating if they can figure out how to channel this potential and push past the rejection. Cause really, I think that's the biggest thing that probably the ladies need to overcome. And slowly talks about this too. You'll hear more about it. If you can help them get over the, like the mental part of it, then girls just naturally I think, you know, the girls have like the talking part of it, the selling probably you down a lot more naturally than most guys in my opinion.

Speaker 2 (10:59):

So that's why now more than ever, if you can find these girls, if you can help them channel their potential, they're going to be number one, super loyal. Cause that's what the ladies in this industry do. They are super loyal. If you can treat them right and help them discover their potential, and then they're going to be superstars. If you can help them get past that mental peace and help them feel inclusive. Okay. So that's why you really need to learn to manage the girls on your team and make them feel good. And I've been, um, putting off, having a girl on the podcast for a while now. Um, that's why I'm so excited that we finally got solely on the show. Um, but the first sort of negative review I had on the show was this was about a year ago. She said, um, lots of good info, but I love for the hosts and guests to try to be more inclusive with their wording regarding sells reps.

Speaker 2 (11:59):

I am a woman sales are up. So when you discuss girlfriend or wife at home or the guys or the boys that doesn't apply to us, it makes us feel out of place in excluded. We are here and we are kicking butts, selling soil as well. Pre please recognize this. So green gorgeously, I apologize publicly on the podcast for not making you feel more inclusive. That's my bad. And that's one of my goals in the podcast is to try to help the ladies in this industry feel more inclusive. So hopefully I've done a better job at that. This was a year ago. And when I saw that, I'm like, man, I'm totally doing that. I'm just talking about the boys. I'm talking about the guys. I think I was kind of probably just dwell. I'm more on the negative that I don't want to like, you know, have girls on my team and I really want to help him anymore.

Speaker 2 (12:48):

So I apologize for that green gorgeously, whoever you are. And I hope you're still in the solar industry. I hope, hope you're doing well. Maybe that was silly. I don't think it was, but maybe that's silly. That wrote that was a four-star review. So thanks for not making it worse than that, but that's my first tip for you guys or whoever you are leading a team, even if you're just a rep on a sales team or if you're whatever independent, you're your own dealer, whatever girls you deal with, try to make them feel inclusive. If you're running meetings, if you are running incentives. So what can you do? How can you make these people feel more inclusive? Maybe that's if you're in a meeting, you're not saying, all right, boys, let's go let's you want to get them fired up. But think about the language you're using in my case right now, we only have, yeah, we, um, currently we actually don't even have any girls on the team.

Speaker 2 (13:46):

We had a few, they balanced. So that's one of the challenges we're trained to face right now is how can you get girls on the team? If you have, you know, 25, 30 guys, how can you get girls in their film comfortable? And like they're part of the team, if they're the only ones selling with you. So I think it starts with that. Try to figure out a way for them to feel included. What are you doing in your own Santos? What are you doing in your team activities? Do you think girls would feel included in that? So think about that. As you're trying to recruit girls on the team, as you're running these sales, meetings, whatever you're doing, how can you make them feel more included game that goes, you know, think about every person on your team. Obviously this can apply to guys too.

Speaker 2 (14:30):

Okay. So that's step number one. And then I've got two more tips. And then after that, we're going to leave it to Suli on the next episode, sorry. I know I've been a rambling about a few stories there, but the two other tips that was the first one to help them be included. And then number two, help just the girls feel part of a community, I guess, kind of dealing with being included too. So in our case, if you don't have many girls on the team, then make sure they're listening to like Soulis podcasts. There's a couple of good Facebook groups. There's some good Instagram pages. And I know my friends, solar, Lily, if you don't follow her, she's doing a like, um, I think it's on clubhouse where she has girls go on and just talk about kind of their challenges in the industry.

Speaker 2 (15:18):

Things like that. I think she invites guys too, but people like that, they're doing great things. So go follow solar, Lily, go follow, um, solely they have two pages on Instagram. I think they might be on Facebook too. And guys, um, I know guys can follow these pages too, so go follow them. Cause I'm actually learning more about how to, um, you know, manage the females too, by being part of these groups. So the first one is called woman United and solar solar. Really. She runs that page and she also has, I think, a clubhouse where they go and talk about it. Maybe a Facebook group too. She just got done with an event that she put on two and the other one is female knockers United, or maybe it's female knockers unite and that Soulis page. And she has great content on there. See, she features different, um, uh, lady like doorknockers from different industries.

Speaker 2 (16:16):

Do you? I know she has people in alarms pest control and they'll go on there. They'll show her share tips and um, just what's working for them. So whether you are a girl or a guy, I highly recommend you go follow these pages and it's going to help you become a better sales rep. And then also learn to just, you know, help. Like I said, help the girl help the girls on your team, unlock their potential. Okay. And then the last tip I have before we wrap it up here and this really deals with, you know, guys and girls, anyone really in sales or in the solar industry is just figure out your motivation. Hey, I was listening to a Ted talk, just kind of preparing for the podcast before, um, a lady that runs like a sales organization for women. And this was her big thing.

Speaker 2 (17:08):

Is girls more than anything that females they're not usually motivated by money. Okay. And I think this goes for both guys and girls, but she was saying, especially girls. So ladies, I guess you can tell me if that's true, but this is what the Ted talk lady said. It's usually not money that the ladies are motivated by. Even though, even if they say I want to make money a lot of times that's not it. So what is it, why do you want to make the money? And I've talked about this in previous episodes. Um, I think one of them is if you go back and listen to how to develop extreme confidence or to develop confidence in sales, I think it was probably like six months back. But I talk about this going seven layers, deep on your why. So, especially with your ladies, figure out why they want to make the money, why they want to do what they say their goal is.

Speaker 2 (18:06):

And then the lady in this Ted talk, I really, I thought it was cool. What she did a girl on her team. Um, once she told her she wanted to make the money, she kind of took her through this exercise though. Why do you want to make the money? And she figured out she wanted to take her kids to Disneyland. So what she had her do, she had her kids write her a note saying, mom, I know it's a tough day today. But remember we want to go to Disneyland. And her kids wrote her this note and then put on a picture. She put this on her desk. In this case, it was a like a phone sales job, but she put this on her desk. And then any time she didn't want to like make another call or she wanted to take a break, whatever.

Speaker 2 (18:45):

She looked at this note from her kids and her card, she was like, ah, all right, I want to take my kids to Disneyland. So for you that are knocking doors that are trying to get more appointments, consider that figuring out your why, make sure you have your motivation written out and for anyone leading a team or managing, make sure you help the ladies and anyone on your team do this. So hope that helped guys let me know what you think. And if you are working with a lot of women on your team, hit me up, let me know what's working for you. And let me know. Um, yeah, what you thought. So send this to anyone that's working with the women on the team and that I can't wait to see you on the next episode where we're going to get the one and only Suli and she's going to be dropping some fire.

Speaker 2 (19:34):

So we'll see you on the next one and go crush it this week. 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.

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 (00:41):

How do you get yourself in a peak mental state, prepared to close any deal and lift yourself up. When you're feeling down, maybe you're having a rough day on the doors. Maybe you got your face kicked in, in that last appointment you stepped into today. That's what we're going to talk about. How do you overcome those feelings and be ready at all times? Hope you're doing well. My name's Taylor Armstrong. We're here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and hopefully have a much better time working in the solar industry. Today's episode is going to be pretty freaking awesome. Hopefully you are ready for it. And just what inspired this episode about how to get yourself in the peak mental state, two things. Number one, I'm going to see a Tony Robbins this weekend. He's at an event I'm going to call it funnel hacking live.

Speaker 2 (01:39):

At least I hope he is. Um, I guess we'll see. Um, by the time you hear this episode, I will be at the event. So come say, what's up if you listen to this and you're a happened to be at the summit as well, it's in Orlando. Um, but the other thing was just following some cool people on Facebook. One of my, uh, Facebook friends, hopefully you can get them on the podcast soon. His name is TJ Nilsson. He's running his company out in Vegas. So shout out to TJ. If you're listening to this, get a lot of value from your posts. Um, so quick side note, go follow as many people as you can in the solar industry. It's great to be able to see what's working for other guys connect, uh, do some networking. So I definitely suggest hopping on Facebook and Instagram as always hit me up, but fall guys like TJ and other people that have been on the podcast because a lot of them are sure, valuable content, valuable stuff on a daily basis.

Speaker 2 (02:39):

So TJ shared a little post I'll, um, I'll mention a few things from it, but he talks about staying in state and he went through his process of how he stays in state. I know he's had a lot of ups and down in his business and, um, this reminded me a lot of things that he does. I also am doing, um, a few of the things I'm not doing as often as I should have. And it remind me of things that I used to do that maybe I don't do as much currently. So just to highlight a couple of things from his post, sorry, I make sure my mic is plugged in here. Um, but he talks about number one to get in that states. You got to have an anchor here and we'll talk about that, but that's anchoring in a positive feeling essentially, and then stacking it with other, um, um, basically things you can do to trigger yourself in that confidence, trigger yourself in that state that you want to achieve and wants to, um, be able to get to, as you're pulling up to that deal as you're going to knock, maybe you're down.

Speaker 2 (03:54):

So that's the two ways of doing it and a great book. If you haven't already read, go read the way of the Wolf. Um, I have posted a few videos of this in the Facebook group. So we're premier free super group. So I've talked a little bit about it before, but just in this book, the way of the Wolf, Jordan Belfort talks about how he uses these anchoring techniques that he's going in deals. Um, when he was doing this back in his Haiti, I think he was, you know, snorting the good stuff though, cocaine. That's the powerful stuff, I guess. So obviously I don't endorse that, but I'm sure that's works too, but now I know Jordan's calmed down a little bit. So what he does, he uses these things called boom boom sticks, which we will put a link to this in the show notes and grant, if you want to support the show, that will be an affiliate link.

Speaker 2 (04:50):

Um, so great way to support if you would like to, if you enjoy the content. Um, but just to review what he talks about, go read the book. I received goes way more in depth on this, but he has a whole chapter on this anchoring technique. And so he says, anchoring is a process used in NLP, which is neuro-linguistic programming. And that's why I bring up Tony Robbins is because Tony Robbins, that's his bread and butter. He's all about the NLP. Basically. Neuro is your mind linguistic is language programming. So it's the language to trigger your minds in the specific things. So if any of you have been to a Tony Robbins event, I haven't only seen him speak a few times. So I'm definitely not the Tony Robbins expert, but that's what he does the few times I've seen him speak. He has you jump up and down.

Speaker 2 (05:41):

He has you repeat things. He has you touch. Uh, other people hug all these different things. And what he's trained to do with this is connect the information that he's giving you with the actions. Cause if he can get your emotions in involved in it, that's going to give you the best shot at really remembering it and applying it and taking action in your life. Hey, if you think back to all the memories you have, anytime it's tied with an emotion, those are the things you really remember, right? Hey, I think back to all the things I've done in my life, if they're tied to a song, for example, I listened to tons of alternative music in high school. Um, you know, everyone had those days, those good old nineties, two thousands, the alternative, uh, trying to think of examples, the Jimmy world, the, uh, you know, my chemical romance, all these like punk emo, alternative bands, all that good stuff.

Speaker 2 (06:42):

Anytime I turn on that music, now it takes me right back to high school. I remember the fire, the bonfires were billed. I remember jamming on my guitar. I remember going out in the Hills, jiving trucks and Jeeps. Cause that's all I was to do and can have Utah's just drive around in the Hills and go spotlight for deer and all that stuff. Shout out to all my small town people. Well, that's all we had to do. So anytime I listen to those things that triggers that emotional response, and that's essentially what you're trying to do with this anchoring process, right? You're trying to connect it with emotion. You're trying to connect it with that, feeling that a super high feeling where you did something awesome, where you achieve something great. So that is what Jordan Belfort teaches you to do in way of the Wolf.

Speaker 2 (07:31):

And he compares it to the Powerwall dog experiment, which you've probably heard of in psychology, right? Scientists were doing a bell every time before feeding the dog and eventually they'd ring the bell and the dog would start to salivate even without any figured. So that's what we're trying to do with this NLP, with the boom, boom. So go and go grab yourself. If you don't have a boom, boom, go grab yourself one. You can use other sands, but something unique right. And is convenient. So we're going to go through a couple stips steps here. If you want to start using this method specifically with the boom, boom, these are the steps to do this. And then we'll talk about a few ways. You can take it even further if you'd like to. So step one, if you're trained to anchor it, if you're trained to anchor that high emotion, you can get yourself prepared for those deals.

Speaker 2 (08:27):

Um, he, this is why they suggest scent because it's strong, right? It's strong. It can be tied to that emotion. So if you are using sense with it, number one, it must be a smell that you love. Okay. So don't go putting, I don't know, having your dog poop in a bag and smell that. Probably not going to be the greatest. Don't go get COVID for crying out loud because you won't be able to smell as that's the first step. And what is the point of a listing, a positive state if the smells repulsive, right? So find the smell that you love. You won't get tired of. And then number two, it must be a smell that is unique that you don't smell super often. Hey I'm you don't want to go, but most fries in a bag. Um, I dunno if you smell that often, but it's something you smell often.

Speaker 2 (09:14):

Make sure it is something unique that you're not going to smell all the time. Hey, and then number three, pick an anchor that is easy to carry and administer effectively. This means light, compact, and concentrated to get into your nose with the least amount of effort. Um, you want to be able to pull it out of your pocket or purse that moment you feel a peak state that you want to anchor. All right. So those are the three strip steps as you're picking your smell. So you don't necessarily have to use the boom boom sticks. I don't even know if I explain what that is, but just basically it essential oil and a stick that has a strong scent. So I carry them around any time I go to an a, uh, I just put it in my car at any time, I'm going to knock anytime and going on appointments at my boom, boom, stick, ready?

Speaker 2 (10:03):

Hey, and then the key with this is, is you need to make sure you set that anchor. So you got your boom, boom, you got your essential oils. You got your strong scent, whatever it is now, take a minute and recall an emotional state where you were maybe super successful. So maybe you just close the biggest deal of your life. Imagine that even better. If you can capture this in the moment, it's going to be even better. But if you're not in the moment of a super confident that super peak states just think back, close your eyes, you can do it right now. Close your eyes. Think back to a time where you were super confident, super high on something, um, was having a ton of success. Imagine that, and now take whatever that scent is and just inhale it. Try to connect it to the best you can to that specific states you are failing.

Speaker 2 (10:56):

So for me, one of the states I was doing when I was setting this up, is I in high school, I had a ton of success playing, uh, my drums, my percussion, right? I was the band nerd playing the progression. I would go out and win competitions on this instrument called the marimba. And at one point I won the state competition for the best marimba player in Utah in high school. When I was, when I won that competition, I was like, man, I'm from a small school, no one even knows what a marimba is in my town. And I just won the best marimba in the state, um, out of all these like bigger schools and stuff. So I go back to that time when I like won this award and I'm like, man, I'm the best. No one can stop me. Um, I am unstoppable on this thing.

Speaker 2 (11:52):

That's one of the states I went back to. So I'm sniffing my boom, boom, and I'm triggering that mental state or I'm anchoring it rather. And then what does it do if you can get that anchor set nice and deep. And now every time you smell the boom, boom, what's, it's going to do, it's going to trigger those same peak emotions that you had. So that was mine. So I think is what was your peak emotional state? I'm sure there's one in sales you've had already, but maybe you're just getting started in sales. Think back to something awesome. You did. You did. And then sniff your boom, boom. So that's how you're going to anchor it down. And then one thing, just to be careful of make sure to not overuse the recall function of the anchor. Okay. So just basically don't do this like super often.

Speaker 2 (12:43):

You're not going to do it like, um, you're probably not going to be doing it multiple times a day. You want to just, um, they recommend, um, the 80/20 rule. So, um, you just don't want to overuse it because then if you're feeling down, you want to make sure it's connected with the correct emotions. Um, and then it says, uh, what does it say here? She says, this will ensure that your body associates, the trigger primarily with the real feeling, just as, it's not a good idea to choose an anchor that you experience often it could be detrimental to lean on your anchor too much as your body will begin to anchor in a lower level of confidence. And so make sure with great power comes great responsibility like uncle Ben says, so make sure you're not overusing this great power, make sure you're saving it for the times.

Speaker 2 (13:41):

You really need it. Those important deals. So I do it before. Most of the deals that I go into and then just a few other ideas before we wrap this segment up here, a few other things you can do. And, um, music is another super powerful thing. And that's something my boy TJ Nelson talked about in his post too, is he, um, his example is he says, I'm the best while holding his left hand and a certain Wayne listens to a specific song. So he's combining kind of all three of them. He's speaking his affirmations, he's holding something physically in a different way and he's hearing something and he's smelling something. So I thought that was a great idea is many of the senses is you can activate, it's going to hit home even more. Um, so consider using music too. This is something that TJ talked about.

Speaker 2 (14:37):

I also do this before every deal I step into, I try to listen to something that pumps me up. Okay. And I still listen to a lot of that same alternative music that I did in high school, because that's what I to, during a lot of the times, whereas filling on top of the world. Okay. But I pick a song. I have my playlist hit me up. If you want my a playlist of music, it's probably going to be different than a lot of people's, but picks your song that makes you feel super confident and think you're Conor McGregor walking out into the ring, right? What song are you going to choose? We're fighters. We're fighting for our livelihood. We're fighting for deals. So you want to have something that pumps you up, takes you to that state and just gets you in the mood to crush it.

Speaker 2 (15:24):

I think of a, all you office fan Dwight. He, uh, I don't know if you remember the episode, but Dwight he's listened to his, I think metal music or something, and then banging his head against his seat in his car, stuff like that. I mean, Dwight got it right in the office. Do things like that. Just get yourself pumped, get yourself fired up. And then as you combine all these things, I've found, that's how I'm getting myself in a state to go in there. Even if I'm tired, even if I'm not feeling it, these things really helped me get in that peak state and get myself in the mood to go and clues that deal or go out and knock that door. Or if I'm getting rejected hard, sometimes I, uh, do these same techniques to bring me out of it. So let me know if you guys have any other things you were doing to get yourself in a peak mental state, but super important.

Speaker 2 (16:19):

Sometimes we don't think about this mental side as much and really sells so much of it is mental, right? You can learn all the closing techniques. You can learn all the cool lines, the slick lanes from Taylor McCarthy and always, you know, top closers. You can learn it all, but if you are not in the right mental state, it's going to be tough to have the success. And no matter what you say, if you're not seeing it confident, if you're not coming across as the boss in the room, it's going to be tough to close deals. So think about that. Write down. I want you to write down after this episode, what is the things you're committed to doing to get yourself in that peak mental state? Okay. So maybe you're going to start out with your boom boom stick. Make sure you get that anchoring in what is your pre deal routine, write it out and then commit to that. And then that's how you're going to be able to trigger these emotions, trigger this confidence, trigger this wave of success coming your way. Hope that helped share it with someone, you know, is struggling maybe with their clothing or struggle with their mental state and try it today. Look forward to connecting with you all. And we will see you on the next one.

Speaker 3 (17:33):

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

• Learn more about https://siro.ai/
• 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 here back with another fabulous episode. We've got a great guest here on today. We, um, always love to feature new products. New software we're finding out about here is Solarpreneurs. So I've got one that I'm stoked for you guys to hear about, and he's going to tell us all about it and kind of his background with everything. So we've got Mr. Joe Jordan on the show junkie, Joe. Thanks for coming on with us today.

Speaker 3 (01:08):

Taylor it's my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:11):

Yeah, for sure, man. And, um, I was telling you before we kind of made the connection. I usually just pretty much delete people's messages. They send me, um, if, if I, you know, feel like they're trying to pitch me something and I'm like, oh whatever, but when you, when you messages me, it actually caught my attention. I'm like, wow, I've never heard like a product like this. So this actually might be worth hearing out. And so sure enough, I heard them out and pretty frequent awesome where you guys are doing with the product. So, uh, before we get into it, do you want us to kind of give people, uh, Jen, uh, I guess just a general overview of what your company is and what the product is that you guys do. And then obviously we'll get into a lot more detail here in a little bit.

Speaker 3 (01:52):

Sure. So Siro is a sales coaching platform for field sales and door to door sales teams. So how zero works reps record all their conversations with customers through CRM and they'll surface to you their most coachable moments from their conversations that day. And at the end of the day in between your own doors at lunch, whatever it might be for you as a sales leader, you can jump into each moment and respond to them with a role play or piece of advice as easily as you might respond to a text message. Okay.

Speaker 2 (02:25):

Yeah, super awesome. And I had never really, I mean, I'm sure most people listen to this podcast. I think most of us have just recorded ourselves on like voice memos or some type of recording app. But, um, once Joe showed me on all the features, which we'll get into in more depth here in a little bit, um, it just made it so much easier to, you know, get transcriptions that are recording, help your team out. And yeah, just so much more streamlined than trying to do this on a voice recording app and, you know, listen back to it. So, uh, cool. Anyways, that's what the is, that's what the Siro software is. And so before we get into that, Joe, do you want to kind of walk us through your background, just like cells in general and the queen here, um, kind of your background in that whole, in the whole industry?

Speaker 3 (03:14):

Yeah, I'd love to. So my, my story and sales starts my freshmen summer in college. I got a letter in the mail to sell Cutco knives for vector marketing, and I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but it sounded like something that would look better on my resume than camp counselor. So, uh, I tried it, I ended up really liking it and being pretty good at it. Um, my after my first summer, I was the only student asked to come run the division headquarters as a sales manager of the following campaign. And we started with one sales rep at the beginning of the summer and ended up hiring over 180 throughout the course of the summer and being one of the top, top offices in the company that year. And it was an amazing experience. I learned so much from that, which I'm happy to talk more about.

Speaker 3 (04:04):

Um, and then next up for me as I finished up college, I wanted to get really good at building things, creating products. So I did a stint in software engineering and Amazon over on the Alexa team. So, you know, Michael, my, you know, Alexa wake me up to Michael Jackson. That was us. And, uh, when I, when I graduated college, I teamed up with my partner, Jake Ronan, who also got started in Cutco, spent two years at McKinsey. And, uh, we both quit, our jobs, started working on this thing and we've been doing that for about the past year or so. And then, Hey,

Speaker 2 (04:37):

Love it. That's cool. Did you guys know each other in Cutco then, or you just kind of made that connection after we met each other?

Speaker 3 (04:44):

So it's actually a really funny story. Uh, we didn't know each other while we were at Cutco, but we were both building separate competing apps for Cutco sales reps to make phone calls through, uh, without sort of knowing about each other. And Jake saw me on the app store, saw my app reached out to me, asked if I wanted to work together and, uh, working with Jake ended up being the best decision, uh, by far that I've made so far in my, in my young business career has been an awesome partner and we've done some, some really great things together. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:19):

That's awesome. Well, that's cool. And yeah. What makes it even cores? You guys have the Cutco background because, um, I think that makes, for me that makes a lot more powerful that you guys have been in sales. You know, what people kind of struggle with. And, um, all of the sales concepts is pretty similar across, you know, all industries. So it makes it a really powerful as you guys are, um, you know, trying to get your product launched and in, in the hands of more sales teams, which is awesome. But yeah, I wanted to hear a little bit about, more about your cook co background, Joe. Um, you guys got my mad respect just because to me that sounds like a, I don't know, like a tough product to sell. Maybe you tell me, but, um, like Caicos it pretty, pretty rough start, or how has it just like getting started in Cutco?

Speaker 3 (06:07):

Yeah. Uh, it was an awesome introduction to sales. Um, once you get in the home, uh, doing the demo, the product actually does a pretty decent job of, of selling itself. Um, the toughest part is actually booking the appointments over the phone and that's probably what is the most similar to the door to door experience. And because of that, we've seen a lot of people graduate from Costco into door to door and do really well. Um, and the biggest things that that I learned from from Cutco, um, the first thing was just that personal growth is not just a means to other ends. Um, it's an end in itself and it's one of the most noble ends. There is, um, it was a really growth focused culture. And I think all of direct sales, including DOD is very focused on, on growth as well. And it's one of the most rewarding things that you can focus on for yourself.

Speaker 3 (07:04):

Um, and at the risk of sounding like I'm tooting my own horn here. Um, you know, I, I graduated from Wharton, um, which is the best business school in the world, but I would trade, um, the Wharton experience for the Cutco experience. If someone made me the two things I learned at, at Costco that I would not have been able to learn anywhere else where risk tolerance and rejection tolerance, and those two things are not optional. Those are requirements. If you want to go out and start your own business. And I think the lack of those two attributes are the number one thing, holding Americans back in today's economy.

Speaker 2 (07:46):

Yeah, no, I agree. A hundred percent. And that's interesting. So your Cutco, was it door to door to, or was it mostly just like phone setting appointments and going to homes?

Speaker 3 (07:56):

Yeah, it was mostly setting appointments over the phone and then doing the appointments. And, um, once I'd set them up, I don't tell my manager, we're not supposed to do this, but I did go door to door a little bit in one of those pushes because I was running well on weeds and then wanted to try something new. Um, as one might expect my first time out there, I wasn't too hot, but the push ended up going, going well for me. So

Speaker 2 (08:20):

That's cool. So they like to encourage you to not go door to door, then they pretty much told me, you know, don't go door to door, just focus on the phone.

Speaker 3 (08:28):

Yeah. You start out with, with people, you know, that you practice with, you call them book appointments, and then at each appointment, um, you know, you ask for referrals and then sort of call those guys. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:40):

Okay. Gotcha. Now what's really cool. Cause I've heard a few people that have that background that are now in the solar industry and are crushing it now. And, um, a lot of things they learned from Cutco, they're applying to their solar cells and I know it's helping them a ton. Matter of fact, we had a guest on his name was Matt Crowder. I don't know if you'd know him, but, uh, he sold Cutco for, I think years too. And he just said the biggest thing for him is the like referral principles and Cutco. Cause he was just talking about how in every Cutco presentation, the next thing you had to do was just pretty much go through their whole list of contacts and say, all right, let's see what they could, could they possibly bike at the end, just help the customer get you referrals and really incentivize them for that. So he's getting just mountains of referrals now in solar. And I think it's just cause that Cutco journey, cause he knew that every single Cutco presentation he was walking out with referrals. So yeah. Tell me about, is that, would you agree with that? Was it pretty focused on referrals? And do you want to tell us a little bit about your referral process when you were in Cutco?

Speaker 3 (09:41):

Yeah, sure thing. Um, it's definitely very heavily focused on referrals because the number one thing you need as a sales rep to keep your business going is referrals. Like I'd rather have an appointment where it's a no sell, but I got 10 referrals then an appointment where I sell a $1,200 set and get zero referrals. Um, and we let people know that that the best way to prep people for referrals upfront is to get them tied into your personal story. So the most important thing that I've role play with reps, um, ad Cutco is their goal sharing at the beginning of the presentation. And so, um, before I have my reps dive into their conversations, I have them say by the way, um, before we dive into this, do you mind if I share my goals with you? And after that we let the rep authentically tell their story and share why they're in this business, why they're excited about the product, why they're sitting down in front of you and what I'm working on and how you can help me towards that.

Speaker 3 (10:43):

And once you get someone tied into you like that, when you make a friend before you make a sale, um, and they feel like they want to help you, that's the, that's the first step to opening the door to having them give you referrals. So that's the first thing. And then the second thing you want to do is just name drop. Um, as you go, uh, people that referred you on the way to that person and it's like, Hey, by the way, but so-and-so loved about it was this with so-and-so loved about the presentation was that, um, and sort of get them feeling like everyone gives a ton of referrals. And then the last neat trick that I saw, a lot of people do at, at Cutco is when they're asking for referrals, um, they'll take a binder with everyone's referrals that they wrote down on them.

Speaker 3 (11:25):

They're if you collect them like on a phone or using red card or something like that, just go back in and write them down on a piece of paper afterwards. And when you open the binder to get their referrals, just flip through a bunch of pages, full of names before you get to that one page that's empty. Um, and you can sort of make a show that like, oh, I can't find like a, like an open one, wait a second. Oh, here we go. Um, and, and that, those are the sort of the, the big three tips on referrals there. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:54):

That's awesome. No, I like that. And I like the personal story. That's something my Catherine really chaired before signing. That's cool. And so for like personal story, are you talking more like kind of their business goals? Or can you give us an example for what you mean by like say I'm telling you my personal story. What would your story be? When were you when you were open in these presentations?

Speaker 3 (12:14):

Sure. So how to put myself in the Headspace of a 19 year old Joe here, um, it was something like, you know, I got a letter in the mail for this job and I thought it seemed kind of weird, like selling knives, but I ended up really loving this thing because as an athlete, my favorite thing about this is the harder I work and the better I get, the more money, the more money I earned, but more importantly, the more things I learned and I want to run my own business someday. And when I love about this is it teaches me how to face rejection. Um, it teaches me how to make sales, which is something that's super important, um, everywhere else and there's opportunities to advance. So my biggest goal with you here today is that you like me, you want to recommend me to your friends and you'd recommend me for the promotion I have coming up. And in order to hit it, my goal was to get to $10,000 in sales by the end of the week, right now I'm at 5,000. Um, you don't have to buy the other 5,000 just to help me out by the way Mrs. Jones, if you do, that would be great. Um, but really I'm just here to, to, to, to work on my goals and make sure we're friends by the end of this presentation,

Speaker 2 (13:27):

Um, that's fire. I love that. It's cool. Cause you're getting them emotionally bought in and I'm sure they taught you this all the time, but you know, people buy with their emotion, then they're justifying it with the logic. So I think, especially in solar, we get caught up more in the logic piece of it, just because solar is so logical for people. It's like, look, you're paying 200 bucks a month right now. You're only gonna pay one 60 with solar. And then so many times, especially a newer reps, that's all they focus on. Um, but then they get cancels. They get people shopping out and everything. But I think that's the important thing that, especially in solar, we forget about if you can get these people bought in emotionally and then kind of bought into your cause that, oh, you're, um, we're trying to get to more, you know, this week or whatever.

Speaker 2 (14:08):

I liked that line a lot and people are a lot more willing to help you out and want to see you succeed and then obviously get more referrals from it too. So that's awesome. I'm definitely something I'm going to play with that. So, uh, yeah. Personal story, make the friend and then name drop as you go. And then yeah, I remember my, my buddy Matt Crowder that was on the podcast. He said a similar thing with the name list where he would just, you know, have a sheet all filled in and then he would just pass in the sheet and it wasn't even like an option really. He just said, okay. So yeah, what we do with everyone is we just help you get like, um, at least 10 people that could potentially benefit from our product. And so I'll help you. And then he would basically just have them go through their contacts and get they'll send people not limited to den. So, uh, yeah, that's been actually helping me a ton with referrals and slower as well. Um, but yeah, that's awesome. And then anything else? Um, how long, how long did you do Cutco for, by the way, Joe?

Speaker 3 (15:06):

Sure. So I was a sales rep for about a year and a half and then a sales manager for a campaign and a half.

Speaker 2 (15:14):

Okay. What does a campaign, what does that mean?

Speaker 3 (15:17):

Also a campaign is a third of the year, so there's the spring campaign, the fall campaign in the summer campaign. Um, gotcha.

Speaker 2 (15:25):

Cool. Okay. And so after Cutco, that's, when you went and did the whole business school thing and gotten the software stuff after that

Speaker 3 (15:32):

That's right. Yeah. I was sort of doing the business school and Cutco in parallel. Uh, I was in both the engineering school and the Wharton school at Penn. So, um, I was sort of getting the business and the technical side and the sales side all at the same time. So it was really a whirlwind of, of learning. Um, and my last summer going towards the end of college was when I did that software engineering stint at an Amazon, got a chance to write some real production code for a company that has some of the best engineering practices out there.

Speaker 2 (16:04):

Wow. That's incredible. That's awesome. Um, so I'm curious to know at Cutco we're like, role-plays a huge same as your in Cutco is. And would you say that contributed you to you like eventually making Siro and everything? Um, tell me about that

Speaker 3 (16:20):

For sure. Um, so I was driven to start Siro by two feelings that I had while I Cutco the first was just an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the amazing experience that I got while I was there. I would not be where I am without my cocktail experience. There's no way I could have started this thing. And the second feeling was just frustration that I couldn't replicate that experience for the people I was responsible for coaching. I had a ton of people that I was working with who were perfectly capable of creating awesome experiences, having the success I had, but their results weren't meeting their expectations. And I didn't have the time to help them. And even when I could set aside like an hour to sit down with them and figure out what was going wrong, um, it was really difficult to make that time productive because someone can tell me what's going wrong, but usually they're not right about it.

Speaker 3 (17:18):

And sometimes reps, aren't totally honest with you about what's going wrong and it's not because they're trying to deceive you. Like when you're struggling, the first person you lie to is yourself. And, you know, we might role play, but the way they role play is not going to be the way they role play with the customer. They might say they're having trouble handling this objection, but really the problems earlier in the conversation because it didn't gain the customer's trust. So I just thought, how awesome would it be if I could be a fly on the wall in these conversation and just listened to your last three or four referral approaches and see why you're not getting referrals, you know, listen to how you're sharing your goals. So I know why you're not getting the customer on your side. And, um, that that's sort of where the idea for this thing came from just the ability not to jump in and listen to an end tire hour long breezing and listen to the stuff that I knew reps were struggling with and leave them some feedback on a, on a situation they actually had. Hm.

Speaker 2 (18:11):

Yeah. That's cool. And when you were at Cutco where you guys kind of doing this whole same old school stuff of district coordinator on your phones and doing that, or did you have any like similar thing at Costco where you guys recorded yourselves?

Speaker 3 (18:25):

Yeah, so we, we tried it, um, a couple of times, but the problem was, it was difficult to do at scale because of how long these conversations were, you know, waiting through a voice memo, even getting a rep to send you a voice memo. Once they recorded actually turns out to be a pretty big problem. Um, and not knowing when they actually had their appointments and when they missed her record. So it was difficult to do as an office system. And so we only ended up using it sparingly. Um,

Speaker 2 (18:58):

Yeah, no, it makes sense. And that's pretty much the same that I've seen on solar sales seems to, it's just like, um, I don't know, sales reps just think it's a hassle. They don't want to get their phones out. They forget. And then they, after Korea, like 10 times before they get one, that's like an actual conversation, things like that. So it is a big ask and pretty much the only way we've gotten our teams to do it in the past is just like incentivizing say, Hey, if you guys record this day, we'll give you like 30 bucks just for recording. That's all you need to do. And even that sometimes like pulling teeth to get reps, to actually go out and do this just because if it is, you know, kind of a hassle and it is something they have to remember and, um, put forth effort to do.

Speaker 2 (19:40):

So I think that's a big key that you guys have. Um, I mean, you still got to put forth that effort with Siro and we'll talk about that more, but I think it just makes a lot easier and a lot more streamlined, so there's way less hassle. And then the rep doesn't have to remember to send you their reporting. It just gets sent to the manager automatically, things like that. Um, but yeah. So tell, um, you wanna tell us a little bit more about like how it first got started then, and then why you guys decided to like focus on the door to door industry and specific for your software, Joe?

Speaker 3 (20:12):

Sure. So we, we were always excited, uh, about door to door. Uh, from the very beginning we were talking to guys that at Vivint and other companies in the space, and we knew it was time to double down and focus mainly on door to door, especially solar. Um, after talking with Conner Ruggio they had decided at Aptive they were willing to pay just to try this thing based on the designs we had, we hadn't even built anything written, a single line of code. And he was like, yeah, this thing is awesome. We want to try this. And that's when we knew it's time to focus the door to door space. And so we launched a pilot with Aptive this past summer. Um, and since then we've gotten 40,000 sales conversations in the system. We have over 1300 reps who have used this thing and over 4,000 coaching comments have been sent through the system. Um, and that's just in the past couple of months here.

Speaker 2 (21:07):

Yeah. That's incredible. How did you guys first make the connection with it? You said his name was Conner from Aptive

Speaker 3 (21:13):

Conner Ruggio. Uh, one of the presidents of sales over there. We reached out to him over LinkedIn. Um, it turns out Jake and I are pretty good at getting people to read our messages, even though a lot of people get gets fan. Um, so that's how we made the connection.

Speaker 2 (21:28):

Yeah. Okay. That's awesome. And no, I mean, that's all it takes too is, um, I mean, we're going through a similar thing actually, right now I've told you a little bit, but we've watched her Solciety, um, kind of training platform. So we're going through a similar thing, just trying to get that big domino and get people to start using it because once people see the benefits and you have some case studies and be like, look, look what the results they got helps a ton. Um, so yeah. Do you want, do you have any like stouts on results that, uh, and any like huge improvements that you saw from people Aptive or did they tell you, like, I don't know, some cool stats that you have to report from people that have been using it so far?

Speaker 3 (22:05):

Sure, sure. Um, so the biggest thing that people are loving about it so far is the time savings for sales leaders. We have guys who are saying, they went from spending 20 hours shadowing to spending two hours in Siro in a week, getting a certain amount of coaching value. Um, my favorite example is Logan Porter. He's a team lead over at Aptive. Um, he said that since they started using Siro faithfully, he saw the progression of this rookies pitches and sales increase exponentially. And when you look at the number of accounts sold per day, uh, for these reps, you can predict, uh, almost exactly what day they sought a recording and Siro because their accounts like double or triple, and he loved that. But his favorite part about it was how much time it gave him back. You know, a lot of us who are, who are coaching in this industry also have our own sales to make. And it's really difficult when you feel like you have to make a choice between [inaudible].

Speaker 3 (23:07):

And so, as an example, Logan, the week two of last summer, so the 11 accounts personally, and that's because he was doing a bunch of shadowing this summer after a couple of initial shadows, he was mostly coaching through Siro and he was able to sell 26 accounts personally that week. So almost doubling his personal sales, just because of those time savings there. Um, now obviously pest control pitches are much shorter than like a solar closing conversation. They might be anywhere from 10, 15 or 20 minutes, but why a Janet led like a hundred reps underneath them as a regional, got to the point where he could listen to 20 pitches in 12 minutes.

Speaker 2 (23:49):

Wow. That's so cool. And yeah, I mean, it's funny, cause it sounds like it's almost more beneficial probably to like the managers than it is, you know, like the new reps. Cause obviously it goes both ways, but like all the time-saving aspect of it and like you're mentioning the ability to be able to focus way more on yourselves and having to go out to people's areas, do more shadowing and uh, yeah, I mean, Joe, even, so we started using, it means, um, one of our coaching clients here over at, uh, that Solciety, we started using it. And um, could you not, I had been bugging my coaching client, his name's man I'd been bugging him for probably two and a half weeks and like, Hey man, send me a recording. Let's just do like a, you know, door approach analysis. Let's see if there's anything we can focus on, help you out and does the same old story like, oh Taylor, I forgot.

Speaker 2 (24:44):

Oh Taylor, I didn't get any good recordings today. Oh, Taylor, um, my phone deleted it, like all this same stuff you hear from reps over and over. And then right when we got Siro hooked up for both of us is like, you know, the next hour we are already lined up and I was already able to give them feedback. And I know he's seen, you know, improvements quickly now just because, you know, it's way better system set up. So yeah. Um, I think that's the main thing is just the time saving aspect and then being able to focus, especially I can imagine if you're leading a huge team, like I was getting overwhelmed, just trying to do this and bug one person to send it to me. So I can't even imagine time-saving with like you leading a team of like 20, 30 reps and then trying to bug them all to send and recording.

Speaker 2 (25:27):

So I think that's huge. Um, but no, that's cool. And so, yeah. Do you want to tell, like maybe just give us a walkthrough more and we can dig a little bit more into the features and then, um, tell us, I dunno, how, how they've been helped for any, uh, I guess any more takeaways from the features. So I guess first of all, records people on the app. So I don't know, maybe give us like, I guess sell us on serial here. If you're trying to get like a new client, tell us what the features are and how it's beneficial to the teams. You don't mind.

Speaker 3 (26:00):

Um, so again, sort of the one sentence overview is zero keeps your reps learning by recording all their conversations and servicing to you the most coachable moments. So you can dive into each one and respond to them like you would a text message. And so what that looks like for, for guys on the doors, they'll record right through Sera, either on their iPhone, their Android, or their tablet, any mobile device. And when they're done with the conversation, they can optionally send a moment from it to their coach. So wherever they felt like they were struggling, um, and it'll go to the coaches inbox. And as a coach, I can go through this inbox, choose which ones I want to dive into based on the, of like what the rep needs help with. And once I open it up, it might be a 10 minute recording, a 15 minute recording, a 60 minute recording.

Speaker 3 (26:51):

Obviously I don't have time to listen to a ton of these. So what I want to do is get to the point where the rep needs the most help, give them that feedback and move on to the next conversation. And that's helpful because it saves time for me, but B because a rep can only get one or two takeaways and actually implement them at one time. Anyway. So when you're spending like an hour diving deep on a reps conversation, a lot of that hour is wasted because they're only going to be able to take away a small portion of those things. So as an example, and this was super common for me, I'm sure it's common for you guys. Um, imagine you have a rep who the customer is asking questions that are demonstrating they're, they're interested and they're asking questions. And the rep is just busy entering the questions, losing control of the conversation and they don't set the appointment.

Speaker 3 (27:42):

Um, so if a rep flag that for me, uh, they flag setting the appointment. I could jump in and listen to them. Um, as they're struggling to handle this, this customer's questions and the moment I hear him starting to lose the conversation, I can hit audio comment and record how they might've role-played it better. So I say, Hey, next time, just answer this question and then try something like this. But when our technician comes around tomorrow, they'll be able to handle all those questions for you and make sure you're all up to speed to mornings or afternoons work better for you. Then you send that comment will resume the conversation and you can listen for the next moment before you move on to the next one. Um, so that's sort of the, how the coaching flow works. Now. The other value proposition that I think is actually even better for reps is the chance to learn from some of the top people around the company who match my sales style.

Speaker 3 (28:41):

So if there's a situation that a lot of people are struggling with, maybe it's like the spouse, not home objection or explaining net metering correctly. The moment someone on the team nails it, you can just clip that portion and drop it into group meeting or the WhatsApp, put it in the training library and a recognize them for doing a great job and incentivize everyone else on the team to try and nail those things so they can get their conversations, uh, shared and sort of flex on everyone. Um, but you also educate the other guys. And the moment you give a rep, an example of a sales rep who matches their style, that's better than them crushing something. You give them a target. And I think a lot of people struggle with superficial wise, like money, motivation, things like that. But once a rep gets a vision of who they want to become, what they could be like in two to three months, if they keep learning, then they have intrinsic motivation and that's a Y um, that can actually withstand the adversity that you face every day out on the doors when it's lonely out there.

Speaker 2 (29:46):

I love that. And now it's cool because especially if it's like, I don't know, a new year rep or a first year rep for a newer rep, um, it's like, it doesn't necessarily have to be an experienced guy. That's getting their clips and out you be like, Hey, this is someone's for their first year two. And then they're seeing that, okay, we got a new rep, that's already crushing it. He's already being featured. And then I think it's cool for people to be able to see, um, you know, reps in similar situations and be able to, um, just have that motivation, you know, copy what they're seeing. That's cool. I didn't even, I didn't even realize that. I don't think so. It's almost doubles as like a training platform to, for the company to be able to see clips. And then so once, so can you save on there? And, um, everyone that has access to the app, they can see kind of the top, uh, I don't know, I guess overcoming objections or whatever that clip might be and they can go on there and access that later too.

Speaker 3 (30:40):

Yeah, that's right. So we'll silo it to your company. Um, so that only people in your company are able to access it. There'll be a trending section for the top clips at the time across any category. And then we'll create custom categories for you based on what you think reps should be able to dive into and, and focus on. Um, and because Siro, bookmarks all the key places of the conversation and transcribes it, it's really easy to find clips that will match those things. So if you know, if there's a rep that's really great at pricing, you just want to populate the training library, just like you would, when you're giving some poaching feedback, you open up one of their recordings. We'll bookmark where they went over pricing, where they encountered this ice decise breaker and where they got the business card smoke screen. Um, and you can jump right to where, you know, there'll be crushing it, um, highlight the piece of the transcript, which we'll also provide for you automatically where they're crushing it and then share it either to your group. Me WhatsApp, I message. And then right to the training library and zero.

Speaker 2 (31:40):

Wow. Yeah, that's incredible. So much, so much time saving right there. And then, uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you, so you'll add in that you can add in your company's presentation or pitch or whatever, and then it'll like automatically kind of categorize it based on kind of what step they're on and things like that too. Right?

Speaker 3 (31:59):

Exactly. And that's what makes these moments as easy to respond to as a text message is the ability to jump right to them and what our conversation engine will do over time is learn your pitch. So it knows this is what pricing looks like for this organization. Um, and obviously reps will differ on how they say certain things. Um, but it will be robust enough to detect, um, uh, differences across reps and let you know where they're doing the intro pricing, um, net metering, you know, explaining your company and, and so forth.

Speaker 2 (32:37):

That's cool. So this thing is like learning. It's like, uh, I guess that's why it's AI, right? It's like learning your pitch and, um, becoming smarter as days, go on stuff like that. It's not going to come alive and destroy the planet or anything. [inaudible],

Speaker 2 (32:58):

That's awesome though. So yeah, I mean, in all seriousness, so much time saving and I noticed that too, just, um, just the transcripts. That's another big thing. Cause, um, like how many times have we have to listen just like fluff, that's going on? Just like stuff. That's not even part of the presentation where as I was using it with men, our coaching client, I was able to just skip past all the stuff that's okay. I don't need to listen to hear them talk about their dog or how fluffy their cat was or how fat that cat was. So I don't need to listen to all that. I'm just going to go straight to the meat and potatoes and give them the feedback he needs and then get out and get out of there. So yeah, that's something I was really impressed with. So yeah, ton of cool features.

Speaker 2 (33:37):

And, uh, Joe, I know you guys are focused primarily on companies and that's probably how it's most beneficial if companies can use it and, um, you know, share all this throughout the entire organization. But, um, do you have any right now, do you have just like individual reps or let's say other companies aren't, I don't know, fully bought in on the, on the idea yet. Do you have any examples of just like reps using it for themselves or ways that it just looks like a single rep wanting to use it, that they could, you know, be able to still get benefits with it? Do

Speaker 3 (34:07):

Sure. So, um, most of our clients right now, um, started out with a handful of teams or even just one team who started using this thing. Um, we had a meeting, a sales demo the other day with the guys at Google fiber out in Utah. And the reason they set the meeting was because the rep from Aptive came over and said, Hey, like, let's try this zero thing and booked a meeting with me. Um, so if you're a rep who is excited about using Siro to record your pitches, being able to digest them faster, um, and get more access to your coach, um, let them know and send them to our website, book a demo. I'm happy to speak to them and get your team on it. And, uh, if your team likes it, then we can, we can talk about moving it up after that. But, um, we're perfectly happy to work with any sales team, larger, small, um, our mission with this thing. I think direct sales is an amazing opportunity in this country. I think it's one of the most meritocratic industries that exists and is going to equip you with the skills you need to succeed. So you know what, whatever you are larger, small, we'll put together a plan that we can, we can get you on this thing and help you achieve those things.

Speaker 2 (35:24):

Yeah, for sure. And, and no, I'm, I think Joe and your team, you guys are super giving and, you know, trying to really train to get it out. So, um, I think even if you just want to like check it out and go back to your team, that's how you can experience it and just try it for yourself. And then, um, for sure, go back to your team. Cause that's how it's going to be most beneficial is getting an entire team on it and getting you guys all bought in and helping each other. Um, so yeah, speaking to that before we kind of start wrapping up here, Joe, um, just, um, to be able to connect with you and get the demo and all that, is it just best to go to your website or where's the best place people can kind of reach out to you and, um, be able to book a demo and everything.

Speaker 3 (36:04):

Sure. Head to www.siro.ai. And you can just book a demo with us there, let us know that you heard of us from Solarpreneurs and we'll get you a discount in there as well. And I'm happy to talk to you and figure out how we can help you.

Speaker 2 (36:22):

Awesome. So guys, our Solarpreneurs go take Joe up on this. If you're not recording yourself right now, it's probably because of those excuses that you taught that you're telling yourself, like I was just takes too much time. It's too much hassle. You have to go back and find the parts that I'll put that are applicable to you. And what school I was telling you about this, Joe. But we had a guest on, I think it was about a month ago now about Mikey Lucas. He's a consulting, a lot of people in solar, I'm helping out a ton of people. And that was one of his top tips is tops trainings that he did. He actually did a training for our team do. And she gave us like a sheet and he was like, guys, I guarantee you, if you just start recording yourself, you don't even have to send it to managers or other people just record yourself and then go through this checklist and give yourself the feedback.

Speaker 2 (37:08):

And I think that's 90% of the problem. People just aren't willing to record themselves. Cause you don't even have to give your, you don't have to send it to anyone necessarily, but it's like, you know, I was a musician. Like that's what I studied in school and everything. And I think the times when I improved the most is because I was recording myself like crazy and I was going back and just me listening to it. I didn't even have to get feedback, but it's like, cause we think we say one thing, we think we're doing it one way, but the recording never lies. Right. We can go back and listen and it might be completely different how we thought we were doing it. So that's another thing. Um, just even if you're not using it with your team, start recording yourself and Siro, I think is the best tool that I've seen. I'd never heard anything like this. So appreciate you guys, Joe, for coming up with the, uh, you know, the software and it's gonna, I think it's going to change the industry. And I think you've already seen that too. So, um, yeah, I know we've got to wrap up pretty quick, Joe, but uh, any, um, we always kind of leave with just, uh, any final words of advice or anything that you can leave with that the solar industry specifically, do you feel like could help our Solarpreneurs out, out here trying to change the world?

Speaker 3 (38:18):

Yeah, absolutely. So my biggest thing in sales guys is you have to have a really strong why, obviously it's not an easy business and if you're wiser, superficial, they're not going to be able to withstand the adversity that you're going to face. Um, and the best exercise that I'm aware of to find a why is to think about if you were able to execute at a hundred percent and fully realize your potential for the next 12 months and truly perform to the maximum of, of your natural abilities, what would you sell? Like what numbers would you put up and then take a look at that number and think about what kind of person you'd have to become to hit those numbers. What it would feel like to wake up as that person in the morning, what it would feel like to, um, to, to interact with other people as that person and to fully embody that in your daily life.

Speaker 3 (39:15):

And that's a reward that is worth going after. And that's a why that can withstand the university on the doors and any plan to become that that person will include recording yourself on the doors to take ownership over your conversations, to perform at your highest ability. And whether you record those things in, in Siro or not, make sure you do record them. If you're not you're burning money and potentially even losing out on, on faster promotions. The moment I started doing this, I doubled my average order and I could have got promoted way faster had I done it earlier. So whether it's through zero or not record your conversations, if you want to do it through Siro head to www.siro.ai and I'm happy to chat. Good luck on the doors guys.

Speaker 2 (40:04):

I love it. Fire Joe. Thanks. Thanks again for coming on guys, go check out his software. It's going to change the way you sell, bring it back to your teams. And uh, yeah, like Joe said, whatever you do, just record yourself, even if you don't get on it. So thanks again for coming on Joe. And hopefully we get lots of people reaching out to, if anything, go give him a shout out and let him know you appreciated everything he shared on the episode today. So, Joe, thanks again for coming on my man.

Speaker 3 (40:28):

My pleasure. My pleasure. Thank you, Taylor. All right.

Speaker 2 (40:31):

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

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 up Solarpreneurs Taylor Armstrong here today. We're going to talk about why recording yourself is a must in today's sells environments. And also we're going to demo an exciting new software that you should be using to record yourselves more on that later. Welcome to the podcast. If you are a newcomer, appreciate you tuning in, and if you are new, we are all about helping you generate more leads, close, more deals, and get more referrals and make it a boss to be in this awesome solar industry. Hope we can accomplish that for you today. Just got back from an appointment and myself, I don't know if this has happened to you guys. I'm sure it has, but confirm with the, uh, with the wife and I'm like, Hey, uh, her name was, I think Mary Jane, I'm like Mary Jane. I'm uh, on my way.

Speaker 2 (01:35):

Husband's going to be there. Right? Make sure both decision makers are there. She's like, yeah, yeah, come on over Taylor. I show up sure enough. Guess what? Her husband's not home yet. She opens the door, comes outside and he's like, can you just show me what you got? And I'm like, well, I mean, I want to make sure we answer both you and your husband's questions. So she calls up her husband and sure enough, her husband's, you know, like go kick rocks tells me to get out of there. It says not interested. That's like, come on guys. That's the beauty of this industry though. I mean, you'd see it all you deal with all, you can confirm things 20 times and you still get people like that. So tests your patience, but Hey, happens to the best of us. Right? You just got to move on, go to that next door and push hard.

Speaker 2 (02:25):

So sorry, a little side story there, but just fresh on my mind anyways. So today's topic before we jump into that, just wanted to let you know, shoot me a message. If you guys have any topics, suggestions, if you have things you're struggling with, if you have things you want us to talk about guests, you want us to bring on the show. We're always looking for new people and we're always looking for different topics because I'm going to share, what's working for me. I'm going to share struggles that I'm going through, but really it's about you. We're here to serve our Solarpreneur audience. And we want to know what you guys think. We want to know what you're struggling with and how we can serve you better. So let us know, give us some feedback and again, appreciate all the reviews we got coming in and do.

Speaker 2 (03:09):

That's how we get more exposure on the show. But more importantly, if you can share this on social media, if you can send it to someone that's struggling, that's really helping us grow as well. So appreciate all the shares, all the tags on social media, you guys are awesome. So today's topic. The reason why I'm talking about this, if you haven't figured out the structure of the podcast yet for right now, it's basically every two episodes I'm coming at you with, um, things that are helping me with topics that I think are valuable with a specific things that are, uh, helping me have success that week. So it goes every, I do two episodes bringing some fire for you, and then we have a guest episode. So next week's guest, um, is someone named, uh, Joe, um, okay. I'm drawing a blank on his last name, but Joe, he created a software where you can record yourselves and use it with your teams.

Speaker 2 (04:08):

And it's super, super dope. You're not going to want to miss out if we're going to get into the nitty gritty of it. But, um, just to give you a little preview for next episode, um, you're not gonna want to miss out because he's going to go through all the features of the recording software and trust me, it's going to make it so much easier to record yourself and give reps feedback because it transcribes the recordings. It puts them into bite sized pieces and it breaks down where reps are struggling and tags unit. So you can give specific feedback and also makes it easier for you to give yourself feedback. So don't miss out on next episode, but today just wanted to really reiterate why it's important that you're recording yourselves. I know we've talked about that in some recent episodes. If you haven't listened to the Mike, Mike, you Lucas podcast, go listen to that.

Speaker 2 (05:00):

It's something that he swears by. It's something that he's used with his team to have massive improvements. Just recording yourself because when you record yourself, that's where you really see your weaknesses. That's where you see your chinks in your armor. So to speak. Sometimes we think, we think we're so awesome. We think we're saying everything super clear. We're explaining it, um, how the customer would understand, but then we would go back and listen. It's completely different than we thought. And I've talked about it. I go back and listen to my podcasts. And sometimes I think I sound freaking awesome too. And it's way different at times than I thought so happens. They're running. If you haven't recorded yourself, if you're not recording yourself, go and do it. Even if you're a super experienced rep, um, it's still important to record yourselves. I go on streaks where I'm closing deals and things are going great.

Speaker 2 (05:55):

And I forget that I should record myself, but I always get some nuggets when I go back and listen to any recording that I make. No matter how on fire, I feel. So I want to invite you to start recording yourselves again, this software that we're going to talk about on the next episode is going to make it 10 times easier to do that, but just wanted to get into a few reasons why you should do it more often. If you're not doing it and then leave it at that and hopefully leave you on a cliffhanger. So you go check out the next podcast. Hey, but really, um, number one, recording yourself is cause you sound much different than you think. So. Talked about that a little bit, but um, I always compare it to just learning a musical instrument, a N S mini, you know, that's what I studied in my university.

Speaker 2 (06:47):

I was studying percussion drums, playing it. Sometimes I would think I was playing my drums right on the beat. I was a grooving. I was hitting all the fills and rudiments and all that. If any, you know the drums, that's how you're throwing down some grooves. You're throwing in some fills. You're trying to stay on the beat. But many times I will go back and listen to myself. I would be off the beat. My fields wouldn't be how I thought they were. And it just wasn't near as good. So really it's the same thing in cells. I know I talked about that just barely, but when you record yourself, you can experience it from a different perspective. And that's why even more important than like sending it to your manager or anything is given yourself feedback. Because I guarantee you, if you give yourself the feedback first, rather than sending it out to just a manager for outside feedback, what's it going to do?

Speaker 2 (07:48):

It's going to force you to think what could I have done better? It's going to force you to evaluate yourself and think, did that make sense? What I was saying? Did that make sense? I was explaining it, what I buy from myself. And again, we talked about it in the Mikey Lukey Epps Lucas episode, but he has a rubric that he uses for himself, basically a little scoring sheet. And if you didn't do that, I want you to go hit up Mikey and, or send me a message. I can help you out, get that sheet from him. Cause that's what you're going to want to do. You're going to give yourself a self evaluation before you even send it to any manager or any company owner or whatever. And if you are a team, if you're leading a team right now, or if you're a company owner, make sure you have your reps think because so many times we're just, we just want to get feedback.

Speaker 2 (08:39):

Uh, Hey, what could I have done better coach coach me. And we're not helping our reps think for themselves. I do it too. I run a coaching program right now. We got guys in there and I have to catch myself all the time from just giving too much feedback and not having the rep think for themselves. I'm thinking back to like Yoda or something, all the star wars fans. How many times did Yoda give the direct, you know, specific thing to do versus coaching Luke Skywalker into what he thinks he should do. He made his jetties think, and that's what we should be doing as team leaders. That's what we should be doing when we coach our reps. So make sure you develop a rubric, hit me up for that or hit Nike Lucas up and then coach yourself before you get outside feedback. Okay.

Speaker 2 (09:38):

And then number two is try to get some video in there, gain the software we're talking about for next time is only audio, but get some video because you're going to want to analyze your body language. You're going to want to analyze how confident you look. You're going to want to analyze, um, how the interaction went with the customer, where they moving around a lot of different things you can see in video. And so we went to a, um, talked about this a lot too, so sorry, I keep drawing from this, but Danny PESI Taylor McCarthy's event, the knock star event down in key west Ford. I was out that and a lot of the, um, a lot of the different coaching moments, a lot of the teachings they went through was from Taylor McCarthy's own interactions on the doors. That was a big thing in his presentation.

Speaker 2 (10:35):

He kept pulling up videos of him on the actual doors and going through this, why I do this? This is why I say this supervisor. You will have that video content. And if you don't have why video content of view on the doors of view in presentations, highly recommended because people can learn from that. And that's one of the reasons why this Knox star program is so unique. They have hours and hours of footage, of live action of them on the doors of them closing deals in real time. So you use that and then get recordings from your top reps. This is a super invaluable for trainings for onboarding new people. If you can get recordings of your reps, video and audio, and then they can hear that it's going to help, help them, you know, develop their own presentation and just take elements from people that are most like their selling style and put it in their own presentations.

Speaker 2 (11:33):

Hey, and so that's another cool feature about the software we're going to be talking about on next episode is that it has the ability to store all these different recordings and then rep reps can go listen to the ones that are featured, um, ones that they feel like is, uh, most similar to their selling, selling style. Okay. So regardless if you use the software or not that we're going to be talking about, it's called serial by the way, S I R O regardless, if you use that, these are things you should be doing, okay. Get your own content, get your own recordings and get your own video content and make sure you have it in a place that reps are actually going to see in use. If you need help. With that, hit us up. We have got a whole training platform that companies are using and they're able to track.

Speaker 2 (12:21):

They're able to put their own content on there. They're able to see who is actually going on and logging into it, going through it. And they're able to test the reps on it. So if you need a solution for that, that's the next step, get your recordings in one place. And then we can help you put that in a training platform where people are really going to maximize the value they get from it. So make sure you're doing that. Okay. So three things get a rubric, score yourself, record yourself, and Hey, if you got to do an incentive, we did incentives like that all the time where let's be honest, it's tough to get reps sometimes to record themselves out there. But if you're a leaning team throwing a little incentive, we like to do the ones where, uh, you throw something random in your door presentation.

Speaker 2 (13:09):

We do like, I don't know, may the force be with you guess I'm on a star wars kick today, but have had them say something random in it and then give, I don't know, 20 bucks to whoever does that. That's a way to get people to record themselves, make sure people are doing it and then make sure they're grading themselves before they send it to you. And then another thing is have them condense it down, especially if you're leading a bigger team, you don't want to be going through hours and hours of these recordings, as much as you love your reps, right? Have them condense it down. This is what I do actually have a, a fitness coach right now. And I have to send in videos of the specific workouts, but he always says, Taylor, please trim it down. I don't want to watch 10 minutes of you a warming up or whatever.

Speaker 2 (13:58):

So I go at trimmed down the video to the specific exercise to the reps he wants me to do, and then I send it to him. Okay. And so something that software, the Ciro software makes way easier as well. But if you're going to do anything, coach your reps to send in a condensed version, the meat and potatoes of it, then it's going to help you be able to listen and give feedback to as many of these as possible. Okay? So most important things get a rubric, um, take examples from it, using, use them in trainings, and then just be a good example. Do it yourself. If you're asking people for these recordings, make sure your coordinator herself as well. So hopefully we've convinced you, you need to be recording yourself. You need to be giving yourself feedback and also getting outside feedback, but more importantly, give yourself feedback and then tune in for next episode, because we're going to be demoing the software.

Speaker 2 (14:54):

That's going to make it just 10 times easier, so much easier. So don't miss out. We'll see on the next one and it's shoot me some feedback. Let us know if you want us to cover specifics topics or bring on specific guests. So keep crushing hope you close some deals this week and we will see you on the next one.

New Speaker (15:14):

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.

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 (00:43):

Speaker 2: (00:43)
Why are you thinking like a real estate agent is a must in the solar industry, and what are the things that they're doing that you're probably not in your solar business? All that and much more in today's episode of the Solarpreneur podcast, let's jump into it. My name's Taylor Armstrong. I'm here to help you generate more referrals, get more leads, close, more deals, and hopefully have a much better time in the solar industry. Hope you're doing well. We're entering fall and I'm loving it. It's cooler. What a perfect time to knock doors, right? Cooler outside. People are not sweating their, their pants off. It's uh, just a great time. The only downside is it does start getting darker a little bit earlier here in, uh, California. It's dark by like seven o'clock, which is kind of a bummer. And then once daylight savings, time hits start at like six.

Speaker 2 (01:39):

So we've done some episodes on that about why you should be knocking in the dark. Really. It's not that big of a deal, right. But great time to be knocking. And so before we jump into the topic today, wanted to just, um, thank those of you that have connected with me on a social media. I put out a post about an unfortunate experience I had on a Instagram. So thank you to all those who responded and helped me with some feedback on it. You can go, uh, follow me on Instagram, if you didn't see that, but had a unfortunate kind of referral experience that I got some great feedback on. So go check that out. Would love to hear your feedback on it. I did post on my story. So maybe by the time you're listening to this probably won't be up anymore. But, um, just the long story short, I got a referral from someone and they sent me just the address of it.

Speaker 2 (02:35):

And I did end up closing the deal, which was awesome. So I told him, I said, Hey, got the deal. Um, locked down. I'm going to shoot you a little referral bonus. And this person, they requested that I pay him half the commission on the deal. And I'm like, well, you only gave me the address. It wasn't like a, you know, set appointment or anything. He just sent me the address and told me to go check up on him. He had closed them earlier, I guess in the year, then an up canceling. So he said, Hey, if you're around here, see if you see if you can make something happen. And I did. And he expected half the commission. So I asked for some feedback on that. So I kind of a long story, but anyways, the overruling whelming response was that probably doesn't need half the commission, but I will shoot them a referral bonus anyways, great place to connect with people.

Speaker 2 (03:27):

And then the other thing I wanted to ask, if you know anyone that is crushing it, anyone that is doing something unique in the solar industry, shoot me a message. Let me know about them. Um, I got a phone call from someone yesterday who someone in his office closed a 60. I think it was 64 deals last month connected me. We're going to do a podcast. So guys like that, I mean, the world needs to know about these people. 64 deals in a month. Come on, man. What are you doing? Super impressive. So if you know people like that, that hidden gem, that undiscovered talent, let me know, let's get them on the show. Let's hear what they're doing to have so much success. So without further ado, let's jump into the topic today. And that topic is why you should be treating your solar business more like a real estate agent.

Speaker 2 (04:20):

Okay. And quick backstory. The reason we're talking about this is per usual because of some experiences I had last week. Um, if you haven't noticed, I base a lot of this podcast off what's happening to me in real time off. What I see is working for our team and I'm sharing it here with my Solarpreneur peeps. Cause that's where, what we're about is helping each other grow. So the reason we're talking about this is because, um, if you've been listening, you've been hearing some ways I've been getting referrals, some ways that I've been trying to create the perfect customer experience. Hey, we learned about this. I went to an NOC star retreat there in key west, which I've been talking about. And two in McCarthy, he talked a lot about that. What's the perfect customer experience that you can create the PCX. He called it.

Speaker 2 (05:10):

And if we do that, we're going to be getting more referrals in talking about real estate agents. They work mostly through referrals, right? At least the good ones that I know they're getting a lot of referrals. They're not necessarily knocking. I know some that knock doors, but most real estate agents they're working referral based, right? They're getting leads by different ways than just going out and knocking on doors. So how can we be more like that in the solar industry? I don't know about you, but sometimes knocking doors all day. It's not the first thing I want to do. Right? And I know if anyone is doing this year round, there's probably times where you enjoy getting more referrals than out there knocking all day. Okay? If you and no offense to those that are knocking all day that's I know people are killing it that way, but in my opinion, you should be a mixed bag of tricks, right?

Speaker 2 (06:03):

You should be getting your referrals. You should be thrown in some online leads. You should be knocking on doors. You should be networking, connecting with other people in getting leads in all avenues possible because that's how you're going to thrive. Okay? It's like people that only did online ads. Um, one of my mentors, Russell Brunson, he talks about how he built his business. He's the click funnels guy, super successful. Um, if you haven't heard of him, but he talks about some of his early businesses. He built them only off of Google ads. And what happened was Google ads. They changed their algorithms to only benefit basically the big juggernauts that were running ads. So anyone that had a huge ad ad budget ad spend that was spending, um, hundreds of thousands a month, basically those ones, um, all the results went to them after that.

Speaker 2 (06:59):

And so Russell Brunson, he was, you know, a small guy at the time, a small fish in the pond and his ads dried up basically overnight. So he had to adjust. He had to open his business to different avenues, different ways, because it's like anything. If they shut down, if it's COVID and they outlaw door knocking, what are you going to do? Right. That's what happened here in California. COVID hit for basically, I don't know, two, three months, you couldn't really go out and door knock. I knew a few people that did, but I don't think they had super great results during this time. So it's like, what are you going to do? You need to be able to adapt and adjust and pivot so you can still have success. Even when these things happen, even when these surprises come up. Okay. So that's why you should think more like a real estate agent and get leads through different avenues.

Speaker 2 (07:53):

And so something that I have been doing, give you an example. I learned this trick from, um, my boy, Mikey, Lucas, family go listen to his podcast. He was on about a month ago, but we were talking at this event, the knock starving in key west Florida. And here's a little, a little referral hack. Write this down or remember this. Okay. You get customer's birthdays. Okay. And you remember them, you send them stuff on their birthdays. Who's doing that in the solar industry. Pretty cool, huh? Okay. And um, let me expound on that. So Mikey, the way he gets people's birthdays is what do we have to all do? When we get someone signed up for solar, unless you're doing a cash deal, I guess you gotta run their credit. Right. And what do you need to run their credit? You need their date of birth.

Speaker 2 (08:50):

So what Mikey does, and I stole this from him. He gets a picture every time as he's running their credit, he takes a picture of their birthday. Maybe leave the social security number out of there. Right? I don't know if you'll necessarily need that. Okay. Unless you're planning on stealing people's identities, but snap, a picture of their date of birth, and then boom, you have their birthday and what can you start doing? You can start sending them gifts every time they're having a birthday. And Mikey talked about this, he works a lot referral base. He has some huge referral chains going on. Um, he was talking about how he got, I think it was like 15 referrals from one lady. And that's how you build referral chains is you start doing those little things. And that's why I'm talking about thinking like a real estate agent, because what does real estate agents do?

Speaker 2 (09:40):

They send people stuff on their birthdays. Maybe not all of them, but I know a lot of the good real estate guys. They're sending gifts on people's birthdays. They're sending their postcards, they're getting referrals, they're getting repeat customers. And this is how they do it. They do it by staying in the loop with their customers and connecting with them, gain to take that even a bit further. If you haven't already go listen to, I did an episode on, uh, using a service called send out cards. Okay. Um, I think it was, I don't know, four or five episodes ago. Go check that out. Um, it was, I think it was the why you should take pictures with your customers. Yeah, that should be it. Go look for that one. But I talk about send note cards as a service I use. What's really, really cool about this.

Speaker 2 (10:32):

I don't think I mentioned it in the episode if I did sorry for repeating myself, but you can put in the customer's birthday as you're sending them gifts and then you can schedule, send out cards. Um, it's sendoutcards.com go create an account. We'll put, uh, if you want to support the show, we'll put our, uh, affiliate link in there too. If you enjoy the content, but you can put in the customer's birthday and then you can have emails sent to you, reminding you that, Hey, it's a John Smith's birthday coming up and then you can send out a gifts for their birthday. There you go. Little hack right there. I'm starting to do that with every single customer. If you want to create that connection, if you want to create that long-term relationship, this is how you do it. You do it by staying in touch.

Speaker 2 (11:20):

And for a lot of us door to door, guys, this is tough. This took me forever to learn. I came from door to door, pest control. How many door to door pest guys keep in touch with their customers. Not too many, especially yet some of these guys. So on a thousand accounts, a lot of people to keep in touch with, but this is how you create that lasting value. And this is why solar is different. Let's be honest. We're making real estate commissions, a lot of us by selling these systems. So why are we not treating solar more like real estate, more like a business, more like something that we build real lasting relationships with people, and don't just sell and get out of there super important. You do that. And that's how you're going to last in the industry is by doing little things like that.

Speaker 2 (12:04):

Okay. So I'll try that out and let me know if you guys think of any other ideas on how to really just create a lasting relationship with your customers and treat it more like a real estate sell. I did a little Google Google search before I did this episode and obviously real estate. They get a lot of referrals. So I searched how to real estate agents get their referrals. A lot of stuff in here that can apply to solar as well. So I'm just going to jump through them real quick. This'll probably give you some ideas as well, but the first one it says offer exceptional service again. How can you create that perfect customer experience for me, it's sending out gifts to my customers. Okay. Every single time we send them, send out cards, you send them a picture that you took with them.

Speaker 2 (12:51):

You send them a personalized letter, which is super quick to do with send out cards and you send them some brownies. Okay? Boom, perfect customer experience. Obviously there's more to it than that. Hopefully your team has something on the back end where you're communicating with your customer every week, sending them updates. Okay. So that's something that if you don't have set up, if you're a company owner, let us know, we can definitely help you create that and craft that more. So, uh, anyways, what can you do though, to offer exceptional service, start thinking of that, thinking of all the things that you can do, that's going to differentiate, differentiate yourself from your competitors to create that exceptional service. Number two was be a specialist. If you think are real estate, they've got signs out here, but I'm driving to different areas in it. It'll say, uh, it'll say like condo real estate specialist, um, I'll see signs based on different areas of the town.

Speaker 2 (13:53):

Um, like alcohol is an area out here, alcohol and real estate specialist. So that's being specific. So how can you do that in solar? Maybe it's new move in real solar specialists, maybe it's, uh, I don't know, townhome solar specialist. Maybe it's mentioned solar specialist. Maybe it's maybe you can do it based on the area. So think how can you be a specialist? How can you specialize in a specific home and the specific type of person, maybe you're Latino, maybe you're Hispanic, maybe you're that, uh, Latino solar specialist. Right? And you're focusing on all the Mexican homes, the Mexican areas in your city and a lots of people doing that. So figure out a way to be a specialist. Okay. And that's one way to really get increase your lead flow. Number three, work with local business owners, but how can you network with other people and get them to provide you referrals, to work with local business owners?

Speaker 2 (14:59):

So you can go to networking events like BNI. Um, there's there are events that happen should be in every pretty much every local area where you can go and network with people. And I have not done this personally. So I know people that have had a ton of success. Um, guy named, uh, Jonathan Brunetto. He's on, he's one of that power's top guys. I know he has some good content on this, but people are having success going to meetings like that. Networking number four was providing useful content to your clients. Okay. And what contents do you have right now? Hopefully you have some content out there on your website on, um, if you're using rep card, great place to put some useful content that you'd send to customers. And we are actually helping companies do this. So if you are a company owner or want to pass this on your company, we are actually helping people now get some useful content.

Speaker 2 (15:53):

If you don't already have that established. So hit us up. If you need help with that number five was re rewarding referrals, which obviously is a no brainer, but hopefully everyone's doing that. Make sure you ever reward your people. And, and guys don't be that person that gets a referral and doesn't pay out. I know so many people in the industry that have not paid out their refers. So make sure if you promised or referral, uh, you know, pay out and make sure you pay them out and make sure you pay him out right away, because it's a quick way to never get a referral. Again, if you do not actually pay out your, uh, customers. And it's funny, I actually had a client who had a referral. He is going to give me, but then he, uh, he said, Hey, I'll give you this referral, but I want something in writing the name, gonna get paid out on it.

Speaker 2 (16:42):

Uh, Mike I'm like, dude, I set you up with solar help for sure. Pay you out. Is that give me something in writing. So I literally had to write them up, you know, like a document saying that he would get paid out for his referral. So hopefully your trust, your customers have more trust than that, but it's pretty sad. Don't be the person that causes distrust by not paying out your referral refers that, give you a referrals, tongue twister right there. Hey. And then last couple six build relationship with industry leaders. Okay. Um, so who are industry leaders in solar that you can build connections with?

Speaker 2 (17:26):

Um, and then seven have a strong social media presence. Okay. A lot of people are crushing it in the social media game. If we've talked about some ways to get it through this, I'm not going super in depth, but just hopefully giving you some ideas here. Number eight, email implement, email marketing, automate Asian. Um, this goes back to having your marketing in place. Hopefully you have content sequences, um, texts and email sequences that can go out to people. Again, hit us up. If you need help with this number nine request testimonials, Hey, you all should be doing this. If you're following me on social media, I try to get testimonials with the majority of my solar deals. Great way to get more referrals by showing people this and having them do this. And you really anchoring yourselves. Number 10, distribute, branded material, number 11, be easy to find and contact.

Speaker 2 (18:20):

Okay. So this goes back to a lot of people aren't doing this. Surprisingly, make sure you're putting your number in customers' phones. Right? Make sure they're saving it and make sure you put like something about solar in there, because most of these people are forgetting your name. The second you walk out of their door, right? So if you don't put like Taylor solar or something, easy to find, you're not going to hear from these people. They're not going to come back to you. Number 12, host a party, number 13, work with a referral agent. Okay. So hopefully this gives you a few ideas of how you can start thinking more like a real estate agent. Love to hear your thoughts. Let me know what you think and go connect with the real estate agent. There's another way. Okay. Get your leads from there. If you can connect with some real estate agents. So I'm just trying to get you to think outside the box. It's not just about having only one way to generate leads, think outside the box and get multiple ways of generating your leads. So I hope that was helpful. Let me know if you have any other ideas on how you can generate leads and referrals and think more like a real estate agent and send this to someone that you think could use help with that as well. And we'll see you on the next episode. Peace.

Speaker 3 (19:35):

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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 (00:41):

What's going on Solarpreneurs. I am stoked today. We got an exciting episode because we got someone that everyone should know if you've been endorsed it or sells, or just like funny memes, then you definitely know this guy. We've got the master Miemer on the interwebs himself. Mr. Rick Martinez, Rick. Thanks for finally hopping on the show with us. My man. Thank you,

Speaker 3 (01:04):

Taylor. Appreciate appreciate it, man. It took us a while, but we, uh, we're we're we're finally doing it.

Speaker 2 (01:10):

Yeah, I know. I was just telling Rick before the show, him and Tony Robbins have been the two hardest guys to get on the podcasts. Haven't quite got Tony Robbins on yet, but, but, But, uh, Rick took a while to cause he's a busy guy and he's all over the place. And we'll talk about that. But, uh, no, we're just in key west Florida hanging out at the knock event and we're planning on to do a show there, but, um, Rick, he was kind of helping out things got busy and kind of make it happen. So like, all right, well got modern technology, just hop on the zoom and finally making it happen. So thanks again, Rick.

Speaker 3 (01:52):

We appreciate being on man. So let's, let's dive into it, bro. What exactly we're going to share with the people today?

Speaker 2 (01:59):

Well, we got something exciting. It's always exciting when you have Rick on. So Rick, do you want to, I don't know, maybe introduce how you got into door to door and how you first started making your memes. I guess a little background on him real quick. He runs the main page, no listing bra, which is like, you know, the biggest, I don't know, door to door entertainment page. I would say hands down, it's been entertaining door to door sales reps for years and years now, everyone loves them and he's been successful in pest control, uh, solar. And that's actually how we first met is because we brought both sold for a company called new power here in Southern California back in the day. So, uh, just a little introduction for you, Rick, but yeah. Do you want to, I don't know, go a little more in depth, how you got in the front door to door first and um, started up your meme page, all that good stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:51):

Yeah, of course. So I started in door to door back in 2014. Um, six months after I got home from my LDS mission. Um, my buddy who's like, dude, you do so well at this. You do so well at this, but I just, I was hesitant. So I spent six months working as a painter's assistant at an auto body shop working 40, 50, even 60 hours some weeks. And I finally gave in, went out on the Saturdays, set a deal. And then that later that week it closed. And I was told that I was going to make like $1,400 off of that one deal. And I was like, you're kidding me. And they're like, yeah, I'm like, what the, so the next Saturday I go out and I booked three more. They all closed. And I think like two weeks later I'm like, yeah, I'm, I'm quitting my day job.

Speaker 3 (03:42):

And I'm doing solar full-time. So from 2014, up until like 2017ish, I was with a company called new power. Built, help them build that thing out quite a bit. That's where Armstrong and I had met. And then I took a little bit of a break. Um, tried out pest control with active. And then I was selling with Aaptiv in 2018. When I started the no soliciting bromine page, I was just going through a lot of anxiety, some depression at the time. Um, and my way to cope with me, it was so nice. I found a page called summer sales fails and I thought to myself, I can make way better memes and way better content. So that's what I started doing. And since then, yeah, it's taken three years for the page to take off. But now, um, I don't think I can go into any sales team without somebody knowing me. I can't fly into Utah or walk around Provo without someone knowing who I am, which is actually kind of insane.

Speaker 2 (04:44):

Yeah, no, everyone knows. And if you go to like door to door con or something with this guy, you feel like he's the Wolf of wall street in there. You just got, you know, ladies surrounding them, just crowds of people, just like no, this listing bruh. So it's a pretty surreal experience. And uh, I always joke just because me and Rick we've found a lot of events together over the years. And it used to be where we were like hanging out on equal footing at these events. But, but now he gets lost in the crowd pretty quick, because I feel like people are kind of walking around, you know, ask him for autographs and all that stuff. So I felt glad to know Rick before he was, you know, super famous and everyone knew him, but no you've had a ton of success now. And isn't it funny that back in the day we were so stoked or we're making like a thousand bucks on a solar deal and now it's like making that.

Speaker 3 (05:39):

Yeah. I remember being pumped about making 400 bucks a kilowatt Gosh, 400 bucks as a kilowatt, as a closer selling a 21 cent PPA, man.

Speaker 2 (05:57):

I know

Speaker 3 (05:57):

That's crazy because when you're comparing that to pest control, it's like, you know, crazy money, like no way you make over a thousand, because that was my background. I came from pest control and you're making, you know, maybe, I don't know, a couple hundred bucks. I know you guys make an R or make a more impasse now, too. But, but yeah, that's pretty crazy how far things have come. So tell me though, why did you decide to, uh, kind of, I know you've been in pest now. You've been doing now you're back doing a little bit of solar, but yeah. Why did you decide to try out pests coming from a solar and you know, and so the F the first time I did it, honestly, I was sold on the location. My recruiter told me that we were going to long island, New York, and he sold me on the fact that like, dude, we're in long island, we can go to Manhattan.

Speaker 3 (06:45):

And I was like, okay, cool. Yeah. He offered me some ridiculous, like really good deal that at the time I was like, you know what I mean? This is fine. But my whole thing was, I just wanted to go to New York. Yeah. So I went and I did, well, I sold like a little over 150 with like a six 90 contract value. And I was like, and they're like, dude, that's so good. I'm like, really? So the whole time, like, yeah, like the sales were there, but I was there just to go to New York, bro. Like for me, going to New York was a dream. So yeah, I did that the next year I took off last year, I went back in, um, it's so pest control is such a fun sale, right? Imagine like setting, if you can get a really good area where you can set a crap tenant deals, that's like the equivalent of selling the pest control account. You can go in and just, I mean, what setting you clearly don't get paid for the sets. Um, but with pest control, it's like that simple, you go in, Hey, you got bugs. This is what we're doing. Oh, you're with someone else. This is why people have been switching over to us and you just close them, get them set up, get them serviced and you get paid. Okay.

Speaker 2 (07:55):

Yeah. Love it. No, it is a quick sell. Yeah. How have you seen some similarities since you switched, you know, back and forth now kind of from pests or solar, do you feel like there's been a lot of things that have helped you, that you've learned in pest that you've been able to like apply to solar now as you

Speaker 3 (08:10):

Yeah. Big time. Yeah. The option close. So does the morning or afternoon work better for my, for my, uh, specialist to Papa. Okay. Nice. The option close. Uh, try and try and get them outside of the house. Take, take taking them to the meter. Um, this is one of the things that I learned from, uh, McCarthy that we did a long time ago was, uh, downloading the Sunseeker app and taking them around the house and showing them on the app on your iPad, where, where the sun hours are at and say, so this is more than likely where the panels would go and then just getting them to move around the house.

Speaker 2 (08:49):

Yeah. That's money. Yeah. That is a huge difference. And yeah, it's funny you say that because I'm actually working right now on here on Jason newbie, steam. A lot of our top guys came from pests and that's all they talk about dues. They're just pulling people out, out, off that door. They're pulling people, the meter to the backyard. And I feel like it's just location, but getting people on like a different, you know, kind of mental state, because as you know, behind the doors, people are a lot of times super reserved, super guarded. Like what are you doing here? When we can get them outside of their castle, there are they like, it's crazy how much they open up and you know, you try it, the exact same clothes. You maybe just try it at the door, it'll work just cause you're, you know, outside, uh, you know, on their porch or in a different location with them or inside the home. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:39):

And one of the things that I took from solar that I started applying my first summer and past was, um, trying to get inside the home. Now when I wasn't, when I was in long island, um, it would, it would rain a lot. I think that was the one thing that I didn't like about how much it rains. So I made it really simple. I'm like, cool. I just got to fill this out with you real quick. Is there a, is there a small corner of the kitchen table, like a borrower to fill this out and they would give me some resistance. I'd be like, do you want me to take my shoes off? If they said yes or no, I would either take my shoes off or not and walk in. Yeah. Maybe I'd be inside people's homes. I'd be at the kitchen table, sign, signing them up for best control and then just open up the conversation. And then they would more than likely give me referrals.

Speaker 2 (10:23):

Nice. Love that. Yeah. That's shaped from new power and they're drone on that. So many times it's like, they can't say no to letting you in. You're like, yeah. I asked you, do you want me to take my shoes off? I didn't ask you. I can't come in. Like just transitioned straight to that question. But now that's a fire question for our Solarpreneurs that are listening. Yeah. You need to be using questions like that. Super assumptive getting inside homes, which side of the house is your meter on? Um, cause at that point you're just being assumptive. You're not asking them yes or no. Like, do you want to do, it's not. I think that's been a one been a, one of the biggest keys for my success if I had had. And probably you do right. Rick and solar. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So yeah. Love that. And no, I think there's a ton of things that apply in, I would say just like in the work ethic too. Cause I was out in an adjustment for you coming from solar where at new power, we are only doing like, I don't know, four or five hours maybe on the doors and pest control. They're like, all right, Rick, you got to come out. We're going from a 10:00 AM to 9:00 PM or whatever it was. Was that like an adjustment for you?

Speaker 3 (11:35):

Big time adjustment. I was like, dude, these guys are crazy. I can not do 12 hours on the doors, but I got used to it, bro. And then during, during competition do this, this, this is what these pest control companies do well is they, they get these kids so hyped up on competition that I remember my, the, the latest sale I ever made was in the, was in an Indian neighborhood because we knew the Indians were going to be up super late. And my last sale of the day I started, I knocked this guy's house at 1140 and I, and I left his house just a little after midnight. Wow.

Speaker 2 (12:15):

Crazy.

Speaker 3 (12:17):

And I had, I had never talked to this guy before I, I saw that the garage was open. People were in the garage talking, I go up and I'm like, Hey look like we're in the middle of a competition. And we are getting down to the wire, right? Like if we win, this is what we, when we do pass control, I'm going to take care of you. And then the haggling started. And I, and then I, I stopped them as low as I could so we can get enough points for the sale. I'm like, look, tell you what, this is, what I'll do. This is the best, the best I can do. And he took it.

Speaker 2 (12:52):

That's fricking awesome. Did it help? Did he pass for Indian? Did he see your darker skin? Oh, you're my brother. Yeah. A little

Speaker 3 (13:00):

Bit.

Speaker 2 (13:03):

Yeah. No, that's good. Yeah. If you can get those Indians, hopefully he gave you a referral chain. Do they give you like four referrals?

Speaker 3 (13:09):

I wish no. He told me. Yeah. I'll I'll I I'll refer you to everyone, everyone, anywhere for me and anybody, but that's fine because the only thing we needed, the only thing I needed was the sales so we can win. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:21):

That's good. I love that competition. Clothes helps a lot when people and see that you're bought into a competition and people just naturally want to help out. So I use that a lot in solar too.

Speaker 3 (13:31):

Do they happen so much? Like even this last year, like when I was going up in the masters, like the one-on-one I would tell people like, look, um, I don't know about you, but I, I hate losing. So tell you what I'm in the competition right now, me and one of the best guys in the company was my line. Um, and, and I would show them like I would pull up on my app and I'd show them the actual competition. Like, look, I do pass control. Right. I take care of the bugs. It's nothing crazy. If I can get you done while I'm out of here, this is what I'm willing to do. Yeah. I would show them like, I would show them like the regular price, regular price, what I would do. But then I would bring in McCarthy's model home clothes and be like, look, honestly, if I can just get you done as like a marketing home for me, this, this is what I'm willing to do. I'm willing to drop it instead of this, to this. The only thing I ask is that if you use social media, just give me a shout out on your Facebook or on next door. If you can give me a shout on the next door app, I will even do the first one for free. Nice. And then that way it gets me publicity out there. It gets people to know who I am and then some referrals would trickle in that way.

Speaker 2 (14:41):

Yeah. That's sweet. And then would you ever pull up to the next door? It'd be like, Hey, I'm the guy that they're posting about on the next door. Did they tell you is passing by?

Speaker 3 (14:51):

I would have her do it right then and there. Um, depending on the situation, sometimes I would have a technician in like literally in the area now with texts attack, I'd be like, Hey mark, I'm getting one down. I'm getting one right now. And I dropped my pen and then by the time I was signing docs, he was rolling up.

Speaker 2 (15:08):

Yeah. Wow. That's my

Speaker 3 (15:10):

Dad, dude. It's money. It's money. And then from there I would have her posts on the next door app right then and there.

Speaker 2 (15:17):

Nice.

Speaker 3 (15:19):

But my squid you have, do you have, do you have your phone on you? Cool. Can you pull up the next door app? Okay. Um, do you mind if I just take over and I just type in the thing, put my number in and then I'd be like, cool. So you can post it. I'd just have her click post and there we go.

Speaker 2 (15:35):

Nice. No, that's yeah. That's insane. How good that stuff works. I had a guy on our team last week. He got like six deals in this, I think in one street or something just from doing that exact same thing. Just having people post on the neighborhood, Facebook group next door. And then just saying, Hey, I'm the solar guy out here that they've been posting about in the groups. Did you already see it? And then I think half the time they're like, oh yeah, we saw that. Yeah. Yeah. I guess they said, you're going to come by and it's like instant credibility, instant trust. It's basically wherever all at that point. And they were closing. Yep. So exactly. Yeah. That's something I've yeah. I haven't tried really trading the next door stuff, but yeah, I think, uh, for those that are listening, make sure you're utilizing the power of social media is, and you know, all the nextdoor stuff.

Speaker 2 (16:22):

Cause that's how people go from skeptical on the doors. Do you know, knowing you're going to be there and knowing you're going to come by. So that's good stuff, Rick. Exactly. Um, so yeah, something I did want to transition into though a little bit, I know you talked just how, um, you've gone through phases, you know, ups and downs. Like I'm sure a lot of us have, you've gone through like some depression. I know some, you know, mental side of things and that's, uh, the reason I want to touch on that super common in door to door. I know a lot of people struggle with, uh, the depression, the mental stuff that's going on in people's heads. Um, so what do you have some, uh, I don't know, advice for people that are struggling with those things or just like the mental aspect, things that have helped you to continue in this industry for what are you going on? Like seven, eight years now you've been doing all this

Speaker 3 (17:12):

Stuff. Yeah. I'm I'm I'm going on my seventh year. Wow.

Speaker 2 (17:16):

That's crazy.

Speaker 3 (17:18):

Um, I would say first and foremost, um, depression is real. Anxiety is real. So if it's really bad, then go get help. Okay. First and foremost, um, secondly, a lot of the time it's, it's situational anxiety and situational depression, meaning that it's, it's things that we've done to put us into this situation. You know, ultimately the, the most common thing is, is at, in the beginning, we start doing all the little things that brings us, brings us success. Once we have the success, we stopped doing the little things I got us to where we were at and we just expect to coast off of that confidence off of the skill set off of whatever it is that, that, that got us to that success. Um, I would say focus more on the action rather than focusing on the results. So many of us are fixated on, I need to make a sale today.

Speaker 3 (18:10):

I need to do this. I need to do that. And then they just, what do they do? They roll out of bed 20 minutes before the meeting, before the meeting or 20 minutes before they have to leave the correlation, the correlation, they're not getting any training. They're not reading, they're not studying. They just show up and expect things to happen. Right. Um, it's, it's, it just comes down to the actions, like focus on the little things like, you know, river Skinner. And I, we post every day about winning our mornings, um, rivers doing power hour. I do what I need to do. Um, ultimately if you can stack as many wins as you can, the success will come. So if you find yourself in a slump, one of the things that I've recently talked with, a lot of people is I've approached it in more of like a therapeutical manner, meaning that, okay, what happened for you to get into this slump?

Speaker 3 (19:03):

Know what, what may have caused it is a mental slump. Is it like in an emotional slump? Is it, what is it? You know what, first let's classify, what kind of slump it is for most people it's sales. Okay. That's understand. We're in the, we're in the last little bit of the summer. That's okay. People tend to, you know, work really hard in the beginning, but they can't maintain that. So what, what, what did you start dropping off last month? You stopped reading. You stopped ringing the training manual. Cool. We'll go back and start doing that. If you can, if you can figure out what caused the slump, then you know how to one prevent any future slumps, um, in the future. But you can go and fix the slump that you're currently in. Yeah. So go back and figure out what it is that may have caused it. Start working on that. Start working on a few other things, just, just, just comes down to work. I agree. Sometimes salespeople, we're, we're very egotistical, meaning that we have a lot of pride. Sometimes we just, you just got to swallow your pride and accept that, Hey, you've put yourself in this situation and now it's your turn to now it's on you to pull yourself out. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (20:15):

I like that. It's like what Taylor McCarthy always says first comes back, uh, was the first comes, the action then comes the motivation. Exactly. And uh, yeah, a lot of guys, they're just not doing enough of the action bottom line and expect and motivation to come first. So I think it's super helpful going and analyzing those things. Like most people have tasted some sort of success in door to door at this point. So this is actually like an exercise that I am having. One of my, uh, coaching students go through right now is just go write down all the things that you successful, all the things you did during the day, when you had a ton of success or during the week you had a ton of success. And most of the time it's completely different than the things they're doing right now. Like, like you said, they're not waking up at the same time.

Speaker 2 (20:59):

They're not going through a routine. They're just rolling out of bed, go into the correlation. So I think those are all super important things to go and just do an analysis of really, what are you doing now with your day? What are you doing with your routines? And chances are, you're probably doing different things. If you're not experiencing the success or experiencing the right mental state that you need to be. So, yeah. Um, I liked that though. Now I think, um, I wanted to ask you, cause like you're always traveling. You're always on the road and for me it's tough to like stay in the right mental state when I'm always a, you know, like traveling all over the place and like you're in a hotel room right here right now. So, um, do you feel like you've had to adjust like being on the road so much? I feel like this point you're like, you're like Mr. Circus, you're in so many different places. Like you're always adjusting to new environments, to new people and new places. So is that hard for you? Like traveling around so much or you just kind like,

Speaker 3 (21:58):

It's hard, it's hard. I mean, it's, it's hard on anybody. They just come down to just, I mean the best salespeople are those who are adaptable online. Um, it's almost like the sales rep that that's, oh, do you, do you, you sell more in like rich areas or poor or poor areas? My response is it doesn't matter where you put me on because I'm just going to go talk to people and I'm going to figure out how I need to adjust my presentation. So these people will buy. And that's what it is. It's just a Jessie and just like anything in life, I think even in sales, right, you have to have like a skeleton, like an outline of what you're going to do for me. It comes down to my mornings. It comes down to how I wind down at the end of the day. And a big factor is the people who are around me. So if I can get around like really, really good high-performing individuals, it makes it simpler on me to be able to adjust to this, to the market, to adjust to where I'm at, if I'm the high producer and I'm the guy that people are supposed to look up to, then it's a little bit harder. And I got to put in more work behind the scenes.

Speaker 2 (23:10):

Yeah, no doubt. And that's why it's, I mean, some people aren't as good as that. I know for me, sometimes it's tough to be that way too. Like the high producer and, um, be the best guy in everything. So for people that struggle, I mean, consider getting on a team where there are like high producers and, um, B Williams, because that starts to wear at you. I know there's times at new power G where maybe we didn't have as many guys and stuff. And then I knew going out in the car group that I was going to have to be the one to actually like, you know, jump out of that car and go sell that day. And, uh, that's fine. I did that for a long time, but then it starts to like wear on you if you're constantly having to be the one that has to get out and be the one to go hit that first door. So, um, just something to consider for guys who are struggling, get some people that you don't have to drag everywhere and consider getting around like higher level people, which I know your own high level people all the time.

Speaker 3 (24:09):

So, I mean, in that case, it makes it simpler. It makes it simpler for me to adjust. But dude, it's still hard. Like I've, I've been in every time zone this month.

Speaker 2 (24:19):

Wow.

Speaker 3 (24:21):

Like I didn't realize that last night or actually this morning at breakfast, I was talking to this girl and um, I remembered that I was doing a podcast with you and I'm like, shoot, I can't remember what time is that? And then she's like, how do you not remember me? Because he's in California and I'm here. And then we just started talking and then I told him again, I think I've been in every time zone this month. And just like her face was like, what? Like, how were you so functioning?

Speaker 2 (24:50):

I know, I don't know how you do it. I mean, I mean, Rick will go to events and you're up like helping people all night talking, getting back at three in the morning and then he's up at 6:00 AM for a workout. I'm like, dude, he's fricking nuts though. You're a different breed man, for sure. But, um, speaking of like events and stuff, Ricky, um, we've like, we're talking about, we've been to a lot of events. We go to these things. Uh, I think we both have that mindset of learning, which is awesome and trying to make connections with people. So how have you, I dunno, what's your reasoning for going to all these events and how do you feel like they've helped you in contributing to like upleveling and your success and everything

Speaker 3 (25:34):

It goes back to when you and I were both at new power. We, so I guess for example, let's take a step back. Um, John C. Maxwell in the, in the 21 laws of leadership talks about the law of the lid, right? Like your, your success will only be as high as your highest performer or as high as your, your leadership, your management will allow you to get we side. I mean, granted, we were trained by really good salespeople, but that's all we knew. Yeah. So when I left and when we both left and we started going to these events, we re, uh, for me, I think I realized that there's so much more I can learn out there. Yeah. And I'd be doing a disservice to myself if I just stuck with one form or one way of selling. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:27):

And now it's cool to see you're so like abundant, because I mean, on your page, you're always promoting different, people's like training programs and trying to help guys out and, um, you know, making connections with guys. That's another thing I wanted to ask you. Like, how have you been able to just, I don't know, bill all these connections because it's not just like, you've gone to the events and the courses, like everyone knows you, you can go up and talk to Taylor McCarthy. Obviously you guys are super tight and you're helping them promote. And, um, COVID Ivers all these guys. So how have you been able to like build these relationships with them? And, um, just kinda like, I don't know, put yourself out there on like the, not just, not just, uh, like the professional relationship, but you're like legit buddies with all of these dudes and like hanging out with them and stuff,

Speaker 3 (27:13):

I guess. So, so the, so the key to build relationships for me is the, it's the value that I bring right aside from like my page, the value that Rick brings to the marketplace. Right? Yeah. It's just about adding value. Um, luckily for me, the, the platform that I have allows me to bring exit existential amount of value. Yeah. Um, so yeah, with like Coda Ivers, Passy McCarthy, um, and even like recently, like Jake has, you know, like some of these people I've been connecting with, it's like, it's what, what can I do? Because ultimately you're right. And you, you mentioned this a little bit earlier that this abundance, um, mentality is, there is no one perfect training course. There is no one perfect way of selling. You need to take a little bit of everything from every one and apply it to mega you're out. Yeah. So whether it is, you know, society knock DocStar ODK, Spiller academy, I would say them all, like be, especially like, if you're in solar, here's your, here's my mindset behind them. It, this solar, solar is only going to be good for so long. Right. And recently I read a quote that says that if you're lazy and you know, working hard, it's because you're not grateful for the opportunity. Yeah. So how about us in five or 10 years down the road are going to look back and think, dude, I should have done more, man. I missed out I do it all the time. Cause we, we had, um, we had an option back in the day called green day. You you remember that?

Speaker 2 (29:01):

Uh, no, I don't actually, was that a new power?

Speaker 3 (29:05):

Was that new power? So I think so what it was was a super simple PPA. It was through CPN for like clean, clean power finance. It was like before Sunrun and Sunnova became super huge in the marketplace. Yeah. You can legit go in and sign them up. Same day within 20 minutes. Oh

Speaker 2 (29:25):

Man, that was before I was there.

Speaker 3 (29:28):

It was like 2015, I think 2015, 2016, somewhere around there. Anyways. Um, dude, like I kick myself in the foot so much because I saw a little pocket in Temecula where I did like three same days. Wow. And I called the good for like a week,

Speaker 2 (29:50):

But dude,

Speaker 3 (29:51):

Like, like looking back on it, like yeah. Why, why that's why I worked so hard bro. It's because I saw the oppor, I see the opportunity that I had. That was a lazy bastard. I settled for three same days and I'm like, nah, dude, I'm good at that. I made enough money to go Dick around for a little bit. You know?

Speaker 2 (30:09):

I know it's so easy to do that though. And like, I dunno, that's another thing to your point before. I think that's another reason why it's important to go to events and surround yourself by high level people. Because like where we used to think maybe three same days, it was like, unreal, good. Now we go to knock star event and Taylor McCarthy did five deals in a day, probably made, I don't know, 30, 40 grand or whatever in a day. So it's like getting around these higher level people you think you're doing good? Then it's like, go join some of these competitions, go join, knock star. Um, go get in some of these groups then you're really going to see guys who are doing insane amounts of deals. Yeah. This stuff blows my mind. Like going to the events. Where's your mind not blowing at some of these events, seeing the numbers, some of these guys of

Speaker 3 (30:55):

No doubt, no doubt, dude, dude, sometimes. And here's the crazy thing is you bring a McCarthy dude. Sometimes of McCarthy will text me when he's not being active on social media. He's like, bro, I just threw down four same days. I'm like, are you kidding me bro?

Speaker 2 (31:10):

It's no big deal.

Speaker 3 (31:11):

Yeah. Yeah. He just texted me and you know, he's like, bro, like I like went out and I did this. I tried out this new thing. I got four same days bro. I'm like, what, what?

Speaker 2 (31:24):

It's crazy.

Speaker 3 (31:25):

But it comes down to, this are going, going back to the training. I distinctly remember the same day or like the week that I got those three same days in Temecula. Um, we had just learned a new way of like trying to get inside the home and I did it. So the reason why I say buy up all of these training programs is because the reason sales reps become, I think stagnate is because they have nothing else to apply and they think that they know it all. Yeah. So if you take one thing from this course and you go into, you apply it today, as you do it and you see your work, it creates this level of excitement. Yeah, for sure. And you want to do it over and over and over again. Right. But that one thing is going to get boring. After a while the same way, like a kid gets bored with its toys, they go and they find a new toy.

Speaker 3 (32:17):

Right. So start, start learning different things to apply. But if you only have one, like your company training, how fast are you going to go through that? That, that training platform pretty fast. Right? And if that person is on can like, if that person's best month is like 20 deals in a month, then you're now limited to 20 deals in a month. Yeah. It makes it so much harder to get 20, 21 deals a month. But if you start learning from all these different people, all these different courses, you start investing in yourself. Now you're going to raise that lead.

Speaker 2 (32:51):

Yeah. A super powerful stuff. And yeah, that's why I respect people like you like river. Like I just saw a river post a few weeks ago. I think he went and, or maybe was last month or something, but he goes on by his door, door, door. You um, like he's, I mean, he's produced at a high level. He's closing tons of deals and guys like you and him, you're still looking for ways to level up and improve. And Ricky's at every single, you know, knock star event and everything. And like you probably have half the stuff McCarthy's as memorized at this point because I know you talked to them so much and them on your podcast and everything, but no, it's huge. Just invest in yourself. And that's what we're trying to do at Solciety do is just bring in guys that are produced.

Speaker 2 (33:36):

And it's not just my training course, but we're bringing in guys who are producing than eye level. Uh, the J Cass's the McCarthy's, they're all on there and they're, we're trying to get them in one place and keep adding content monthly. So keeps it fresh. Cause I think that's what guys need. And that's how, like you said, that's how they can keep themselves from getting stagnant and just falling back into old habits. They're investing in themselves and train them improve. Um, but yeah, speaking all that, Rick, I know you travel around as we talked about all the time and you're seeing teams that, uh, maybe you're seeing good and bad, but I know you're traveling to a lot of high level teams. So in your travels there with the Martinez circus, have you seen anything? I don't know what teams are doing, uh, to be successful or anything you notice, um, and in your, all your travels going to these different teams,

Speaker 3 (34:32):

Um, leadership first and foremost, um, dude, it comes down to the leadership really management. How, how well management does for me, for me, the key to a good manager or leader, someone who continuously works on themselves. Um, actually here's one thing that really sticks out to me Moe Falah recently, um, I think is on my podcast or your podcast, but he talks about when you become a leader, you become an owner. You no longer, these people will no longer work for you. You work for them.

Speaker 2 (35:11):

That's good.

Speaker 3 (35:12):

I think a leader that, that can instill that, that they work for other people and they work for their people. Right. Um, I've been in situations and I've, I've been in closes where like I've seen closers drop the price down to beat out a bed. Um, and I've been in situations where like the closure will do whatever it takes for the setter to get paid.

Speaker 2 (35:40):

Yeah. That's awesome.

Speaker 3 (35:41):

You know, and after we talk about it and the, you, yeah, the closest going to make like two, 300 bucks, right. Because they, they, they had to, they had to leverage the price so the seller can make their pay. Okay.

Speaker 2 (35:54):

Yeah. That's important that would taken care of your, you know, team, your centers. They're the ones that are, you know, feeding the golden goose. They're the ones that are helping you get paid. So that is important.

Speaker 3 (36:06):

It is. And I, and I mean, on the flip side, like even seeing some of the satyrs it's like dude, some of the centers have it really well. So I guess just this congruent or this fluid dynamic between setters and closers is really good, really important to have. No one is more important than, than the other, because I mean, I've been there and dude, I mean really singly. What happens if I know, I know you, Taylor will go out and knock if you need a knock, but you're going to back to and what the heck, there is so many closers in this industry who are so freaking spoiled that they won't even go knock, you know? So, so they just expect deals to come their way.

Speaker 2 (36:51):

Yeah. I know it's a problem for sure. Easy to get complacent, especially if they're running set or clothes or models and they're getting fed deals. It's like, oh, I got two hours. This is what I was doing when probably the last time we were working together, Rick is because Rick was actually a setter at the time and he was getting beaten the odds of deals. So if I have like a two hour break, I bet I'm just going to wait for Rick to go get another same day or even an appointment, go grab lunch, go up, look at some means.

Speaker 2 (37:26):

So yeah, it's super easy to get complacent and I'm sure you'd agree. The best people in the industry though. They're not. Yeah. They're, I'm sure they're getting deals too. But like Mike O'Donnell talks about this, how between deals he's going and getting a no on the doors. He's not waiting for the next deal. He's getting fed lots of deals. I know. But between his appointments, if he doesn't have anything, he's going to go, he's going to get at least a couple nos before he goes on to his next thing. And at the end of the day, that's what the top guys are doing. They're not waiting around for the next deal. They're going after, you know, their own appointments too and, and keeping up with it. So good. Uh, good stuff right there. Well, Ricky, I know you're a busy guy out in Texas. Um, so I want to be respectful your time. I know you've got means to create and uh, you know, places to be and all that. Um, but before we have maybe one or two other questions, do you want to tell people, um, if they don't already know and they might be living under a rock, you don't know where to connect with Rick at this point, but do you want to, um, I dunno, job, or be to connect with you and anything else you're working on?

Speaker 3 (38:35):

Yeah. So I'm mostly active on Instagram. Uh, I'm mostly known for the no soliciting bromine page. It's just at no soliciting bra I'm on Instagram. My personal Instagram is Rick dot Martinez with twosies and they are T I N E Z Z. Um, but yeah, I'm, I'm more active on Instagram. I have a Facebook or Twitter and a LinkedIn, but I don't ever check those.

Speaker 2 (39:00):

Okay. Who checks all that stuff. It's the boring social medias, so. Okay. Well cool. Well, Rick, we love having you on. And um, my last kind of question that I was thinking of anything you've seen delight, not do to like, I don't know, a successful person endorse it, or, um, what do you think they're staying away from? Or what do you think they're like cutting out of their lives, um, to be successful? Anything you have to say about that?

Speaker 3 (39:29):

I would say the most successful people that I know, oh, that's a good woman. What are they cutting out? Or what are they adding, right.

Speaker 2 (39:40):

Yeah. What are they cutting out and what are they not doing?

Speaker 3 (39:44):

Ooh.

Speaker 2 (39:48):

Or if you can think of stuff, they already, you can do that too. Whatever it is,

Speaker 3 (39:52):

There's so many, um, I would say things that take your time away from your craft. Okay. Time, time management is huge for a lot of the most successful people that I've seen. And I think I've been around just about all of them in a PR in like in, in a personal level to where they have a S they have a schedule. They have, if they don't have like a legit broken down schedule, they have an idea and they know where they are, where they need to be. At what time? Yeah. The more successful people that I've met, Carrie almost an hour by hour by hour schedule. And they plan the night before what they're going to do. And then the next day they confirm their plans by welcomes. Um, what, by what comes up the next day? I think the most successful people that I know don't leave anything up to chance. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (40:51):

Yeah. It's money. Yeah. And another thing is like, I don't know if you've done this before Rick, but just doing like a time analysis. That's something that I've seen top guys do. Cause I mean, the big problem is a lot of people don't even know where they're spending their time wasting their time. They think they were, uh, I don't know, maybe knocking for six hours when really it was like, they knocked, they spent 15 minutes on Instagram and they knocked a few more doors. They went and found a gas station. They might or might not even know that in their heads. So if you're struggling and that's, I think another huge key is figuring out what you're doing do at times study, write down for 15 minutes, every, you know, every 15, 20 minutes of the day. Exactly you did. And then that's going to tell you the truth. You know, it's like tracking your progress in the gym, do or tracking your sets. You can't really know what to improve if you don't even know what you did and you know, and kept track of it. So exactly important stuff for it. Uh, I know you got to go hit some doors and stuff, but any, uh, last, last words of advice you want to share with someone with a rep specifically in solar, I know you're in the solar mindset. Any, any final words you want to share?

Speaker 3 (42:03):

Don't miss out on this opportunity. Like I, so recently I had, I was in a team meeting and, um, it's, it's the same that Rob, Rob taught us a few years ago, Robert, um, he talked about two things, right? Life is going to be hard, no matter what, um, it's just which hard you want it to be. There. It comes down to two pains, the pains of discipline or the pain of regret, especially if, especially if you're working in these markets with high utility rates, you cannot afford to not be disciplined. You cannot afford to take time off because this time will come and it will come faster than you think. And then you're going to be looking back and you're going to be looking at your bank account and you're going to be like, I could have worked so much harder. I missed out on such a huge opportunity or you're going to be sitting on investments on whatever may be in your bank account is going to be exactly where you want it to be. If not more. And you're gonna think like, like that discipline and that pain of making that sacrifice is what's worth it. So I know for me, I've, I've, I've lived through regrets and I, and I'm not going to do it again.

Speaker 2 (43:20):

Yeah. Boom, that's fire. Perfect way to end. So for our Solarpreneurs, think about that next time you're struggling to get out on the doors. You're struggling to, I don't know, show up to your next appointment. Would you rather have that pain and go through it right now? Or would you rather look back and have the pain of knowing you didn't push as hard as you could have? So, Rick, thanks for coming on today. Everyone go give Rick a shout out, let him know you appreciated his content and more importantly, go follow them on his meme page if you're not already, but let's be honest. You should. Um, so Rick, thanks again for coming on and we will talk to you soon. My man.

Speaker 3 (43:58):

Thanks Taylor. Appreciate it, brother.

Speaker 2 (44:00):

Okay. Peace.

Speaker 4 (44:03):

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.

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. What's up Solarpreneurs Taylor Armstrong. Back with another episode, I

Speaker 2 (00:45):

Hope you're doing well today. We're going to dive into why you should be asking your homeowner's thought provoking questions, why you should be getting them to realize the benefits of solar and what type of questions should you be asking your clients or the homeowners that you talk to all that and much more in today's episode, let's jump into it. So, um, it is almost a fall here. Those that have gone home for the summer. Hope you had an awesome summer, but let's be honest. You should be doing solar all year round because it's the greatest industry to be in. There's no better thing you could be doing than helping save the planet, helping homeowners get away from the utility company. That's what we're all about here. And as usual, that's what this podcast is going to train you to do. It's get more deals, get more referrals and get more results as you're out there, starting your solar business or continuing your solar business or whatever step you're at, along the journey.

Speaker 2 (01:51):

So before we jump into the topic today, um, I wanted to just remind you, go hop in the Solarpreneur Facebook group, if you're not already. And then along with that, we had a solar Joe on what was it a couple of weeks ago? He has, I think probably the, I'll say the best Facebook group. Okay. Solar printer, Facebook group. Isn't quite to the level, but we're going to get it there eventually. Um, but go join both those Facebook groups, his, his solar objections, and then Solarpreneur is the one where we're talking all things along with the podcast. And we are networking with the listeners and as usual, hoping to hear feedback from what you guys thought of the topics of the episodes of the guests we had, we've had on and suggestions for improvement, all that good stuff. But the reason I'm bringing that up is because last week I had a situation where, and I'm still going through this actually, but, um, I'm doing a solar on a couple of townhomes here in California and these hos, I don't know what's going on.

Speaker 2 (02:59):

It seems like they're getting tougher and tougher out here. Um, the past, I don't know, year or so year or two, I've done few townhomes here and there few places with shared roof spaces. And really hasn't been much of an issue. But last week I've had some just accounts on hold and I'm trying to figure out what to do for him. Um, what happened is that each ways basically came back and said, Hey, unless you guys take out a million dollar insurance policy, you can't have solar added onto these, um, to these units. And what's funny is I talked to several people in both the communities to different communities down here, and no one had to take out a policy, a separate, uh, insurance policy. I'm like, what is going on? So we brought this up to the hos and they're like, oh, we're just, we're requiring it.

Speaker 2 (03:51):

Now. They basically just ignored it and wouldn't give us an answer why it was being required. So I don't know if they talked to their lawyers again or had some issues who knows, but both of them just out of the blue started requiring this. And it's a huge hassle because the homeowners, they don't really want to take out a separate policy. And then one of them did get a quote and there's probably cheaper, you know, policies out there. But the co the one customer got, it was going to cost them an extra thousand bucks a year just for this million dollar insurance policy. And that's adding that on. Do you know what he's paying with the solar? He's paying a decent amount more than he's paying every month, which even with that, he still should go solar. But, um, he basically said, Taylor, and we don't really want to like go through this.

Speaker 2 (04:41):

We're going to have to pay more and have to get separate insurance and tough to, you know, tough to get him back on board. If he's going to have to go through this huge hassle hassle and pay all this extra money. So anyways, the reason I'm seeing all this is because I was pretty much stumped the installer where you're using. They're like, yeah, we can't even do this. And so I'm post a comment in, uh, both of those Facebook groups, solar printer, and then solar objections just got some great feedback, some great comments from guys that haven't gone through, similar situations. Um, one was from, uh, Jake [inaudible] who's at solar academy. We're going to get them on the show here soon, but they just reminded me that it's here in California. You can't have a homeowner spend more than a thousand dollars on their solar project, like extra for anything they each way requires.

Speaker 2 (05:36):

So it's not fully resolved yet. We're still going back and forth with HOA, but just from the great comments and the great feedback I got posted in the Facebook groups, I think we're going to get, be able to push these accounts there now, because California, they can't make you spend more than a thousand dollars. And if the policy itself they've already spent hundreds and hundreds just to like submit their HOA applications and everything. So if the separate insurance policy is going to cost a thousand, then come up, man, you can't make him do that. So that's where we're at. And once we figured that out, I honestly didn't know that. So, um, we're going back back to the HOA with that, um, quiver with that arrow in our quiver. And hopefully we can get these accounts push through. So just wanted to say that because if you ever are stuck on deals, if you ever need a feedback from the community, that's what it's all about.

Speaker 2 (06:34):

We're all, I've just been super grateful to get good feedback, to get, um, great people in the industry. Sharon what's helped them. And that's where you're going to get from these groups. So I wanted to invite you if you're not part of these Facebook groups, part of these communities go get in on them because there is some fantastic nuggets there, mean shared some great tidbits of info and actually going to bring up a few more things that I've learned from the groups. So go join them and then hit me up and hope to connect with you guys in there. I try to pop in there at least a couple times a week myself. So that being said, let's hop in today's topic. And that is why you should be asking your customers good questions. And the reason I'm doing this topic today is because a few weeks back at the knock star event, um, did an episode, talked a little bit about some takeaways from it, but, uh, we are in key west Florida.

Speaker 2 (07:30):

And one of the topics that Danny PESI, who was also on the pod on the podcast, go listen to his episode. If you haven't already, his topic was why we should be asking better questions. And what he talked about to start it all off is just basically, there's three ways. You can convince someone to do something and one is way more effective than the other two. And so I'm going to start with the least effective in that is you telling your homeowner why solar is a good thing, just from your perspective. It's like our Mr. Customer, this is going to save you a ton of money. This is going to help your home. This is going to benefits you long-term, it's never going to increase your electricity rate. It's an awesome product. That's basically you telling them why they should do it, right? The least effective way to explain to them.

Speaker 2 (08:25):

And I think many of us are doing that right now. So take a look at your presentation. Are you explaining to your customers just from your perspective, why your product is good and why your program is good? If not, then this episode is for you, or if you are doing it, I should say this episode is for you because the next two ways one is better than the other, but here's the next one is you telling your customer from a different perspective? So what I mean by that is we've a lot of us have heard, like, feel, felt, found, overcome objections, right? Um, I totally understand Mr. Homeowner, you know, what do you know your neighbor neighbor across the street? Yeah, he actually had the same concern and what he found that going solar, it was going to actually help him sell his home or whatever the objection is.

Speaker 2 (09:12):

Right? So that's an example of you saying something from someone else's perspective, and this is a lot more effective than you just telling them, because if they can hear it from someone else's perspective and in a story format, more importantly, then they're going to believe it more. It's going to activate that right side of the brain. Um, you want them emotionally involved, right? So if you can bring up names, if you can bring up other people, that's getting them emotionally involved because people at the end of the day, buy on emotion and justify their decision with logic. So this is the next best way. And it's a really good way in before hearing this. This is mostly what I was doing. I'll be honest. It was mostly explaining too, in my presentations, I was trained to utilize just the different points from different people's perspective.

Speaker 2 (10:04):

And so it's a great way to sell. It's a great way to make your presentation more effective, but here is the best way. And that's what we're going to talk about today. And that is you help the homeowner realize it themselves by the questions you ask them. So if you can ask them effective questions, hypothetical questions, and get them to realize the benefits themselves. This is the most effective way it's better than even telling it from a different person's perspective. Hey, so what we're going to do in this show is give you a couple talking tracks, give you some examples that you can start using in your presentation today. So go through it and I want to invite everyone. That's listening. All my Solarpreneurs that are listening today, go through your presentation, more importantly, record it and really take a look. See if you're asking effective questions, because if you're not guaranteed, your close closing ratio is going to go up.

Speaker 2 (11:01):

If you can start to utilize some of these questions and homeowners are going to realize that it's just not smart to stay with the utility company, if you can master these questions. Okay. So here's a few questions. Some of these are coming from Danny PESI so, um, appreciate him. And hopefully he doesn't mind me sharing these, but here's a few examples of great, uh, questions that you can ask your homeowners today right now. So here's one, if you are trained to get the homeowner to realize that rates are increasing, how are you doing that? Maybe you're just showing them articles, which is great. Maybe you're telling stories, but if you can get them to realize logically it has to go up, that's the best way. So here's an example that Danny PESI gave us. Um, and he does that, just asking them about the grid.

Speaker 2 (11:55):

So he says, Mr. Homeowner, do you know how old the grid is? The one that generates power to your house? And then usually there'll be like, ah, I don't know. Probably really old. Yeah. I mean, when you guys moved here 30 years ago, it was the same grid. Right. So help them realize that it's old. Okay. And in most cases, the infrastructure for the grids, I mean, they're probably a hundred years old, pretty old. So then you say anything that's a hundred years old, do you know how much money it costs to maintain something that old? And then this is where you're directing them to the customer, realizing that their rates have to go up. Hey, so you, um, and then you, and then once they kind of realize that, I mean, if basically we're putting band-aids on the grid, right? The grid is just being maintained.

Speaker 2 (12:50):

It's a hundred years old and guess who's going to pay for it. We are. So you're directing with those questions. And then the last kind of question to, um, hit the nail on the head with that one is who do you think is paying to maintain it? Do utility companies and the stock holders or the customers. Okay. And anyone that has logic, they're going to say the customers. And he gave him a great example too, of like cars for anyone that is a big car fan. Maybe they have an old car sitting in their garage or Cadillac or whatever you can say, Hey, how old is your car? I mean, it's, that's what, 70, 60 years old now old car, is it pretty ed? You have to do quite a bit of maintenance on it. Yeah. I mean, it's old, right? A lot of maintenance to be done with it.

Speaker 2 (13:39):

So think of the infrastructure of the grid, um, SDG that's our utility company, whatever your company is. They're basically putting band-aids on it because there's so much work that needs to be done. They have to put band-aids on it. They have to spend a ton to maintain it and they're passing on those costs to us. Okay. And then, so think of, it's going to depend on your area too, maybe in your area. There's Texas, for example, I mean, all of the, uh, the freezing, right? The grid went down. Maybe there's something local going on where you can bring up, you can ask them questions about, and then they can realize for themselves that their rates have to go up. There's no other option. The rates are going to go up. Hey. So whatever your point is, think of all the points you're trying to make in your presentation, go right down.

Speaker 2 (14:30):

I would say two to three good questions for each difference. Um, point you're trying to make in your presentation, then start to use these in your yeah. As you're presenting to your homeowners, Hey, here's another one. Uh, given the cost of inflation, do you see your bill in the future going up or down? Great question. I've been using that and that's a good one to kind of gauge if they really think their rates are going up. Right. So if they say no, I mean, basically no one is going to say no to that. I mean, rates cost some inflation. It's expensive, but it's a good way to gauge where they're at. Do they really believe that rates are going up? Do they really believe there's a big problem? Because if people do not see a problem with the utility rates or with what's happening in the utility infrastructure, they don't see a problem.

Speaker 2 (15:21):

They're not going to want a solution. So that's a first, that's the first thing you can do is make some questions to really see where they're at. Did they believe, did they hate the utility company right now? Hopefully they do. And then your job isn't going to be quite as hard, but if they don't have a big problem with you till the company, you have to create that forum again by using stories and again, by using questions. Okay. And then just to go through a couple other talking points, um, I'm going to pull up actually, some that I see in the group and this way you should go join these F Facebook groups because they have great content in there. They have some great, um, great points you can use in your presentations. So this one, um, actually my friend, uh, solar Lily made a kind of a list of questions in one of the Facebook groups.

Speaker 2 (16:18):

Here's another example, 20 years ago. How much was gas, Mr. Homeowner? Do you remember right about $1. So if 20 years ago I would have offered you a gas card with $0 down to have your gas fixed at $1 for the next 20 years, then you didn't have to pay for it. Uh, once paid off, what would you have said? Probably it's okay. It's only a dollar a gallon right now. What would you do for that card? So, great question. She's leading the homeowner down that road, down the golden brick road in helping them realize that that's what solar is. Okay. So once people agree to these things, that's essentially what solar is. Future-proofing your homes, energy bill against inflation, and the average 4% increases nationwide. Great talking point right there. So you can go see the group. There's a lot more examples, but bottom line start using more questions.

Speaker 2 (17:17):

Another one that I thought of is, um, just renting versus owning, right? If you're selling loans like most people in this industry, what's the main reason you guys bought your house. Do you think if renting was cheaper at the time you guys still would've bought? What if the house was $300 a month cheaper to rent? A N most people are gonna say that they would still buy their home. Even if it was a lot cheaper to rent. Why, why, why are they saying that? If you get the homeowner, think to think why it's better to own versus rent. It's going to be so much easier to get them to believe, to buy into the product of solar, especially for those of you that are in markets, where there's not much savings with solar. You need to really drill this down into their head. That it's so much better to own versus rent from the utility company.

Speaker 2 (18:11):

Right. And another great guest guest we had on, uh, Alex Smith, a couple of episodes. I thought that was something genius that he does. He said one of the main things he does in his presentation is just go through that exercise with the homeowner and be like, Hey, Mr. Homeowner, um, what if it was like 500 bucks cheaper to rent here? Would you, would you do that? No. Okay. What about 600? No. What about 700? And then just take it down. Most people would pay a ridiculous amount more to own than their rent. Right? So if you can help them see this, it's going to be so much easier. I hope this helped. Okay. But again, go and write down some questions you can start using. Let me know if you want to hear more episodes like this. If you want to hear more talking tracks, I got more, but don't want to sit here all day.

Speaker 2 (18:59):

Just, just, uh, we should probably do like a live role-play bring in someone to go back and forth with the questions. Probably be a little bit easier, but go down and write your questions. Your talking points, record yourselves. And then this is going to make it so much easier to get people to buy-in to the vision of solar and what we're doing. Hope that helped go out and think what questions can you use today in your presentations? And then how can you make it better? How can you use the questions and the stories and from other people's perspectives, those are the two best ones. Okay. So think question first, then think a story from another homeowner's perspective and then worst case scenario, it's you telling them, try not to do that. That's the least effective way to sell your product. Hope that helped let us know what you thought and you don't want to miss out on next episode, because we are going to have the one, the only Rick Martinez on. If you're on Instagram, you will have heard of this guy, for sure. He's the no soliciting bro. He makes the coolest memes in the door to door industry. So go give him a follow, but don't miss out because he has a fire episode. He's gonna be on them for the next show. We do. That's all we got today. Keep crushing, close your deals this week, and we'll see you on the next one.

Speaker 3 (20:21):

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.

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. Boom. What's going on Taylor. I'm strong here

Speaker 2 (00:44):

To help you your life easier as a solar sales professional, and close more deals, generate more referrals, and hopefully have a much better time in the solar industry. So today's episode is what to do if you hate knocking, or if you're struggling to get out there and knock. And a quick prep is for that. The reason I am doing this episode is because I'll be blunt. I have struggled to knock as many hours as I want and need to lately. And I think it's a deeper issue. There gets to a point where you need to go and just identify your why, why are you out there? Go seven levels deep. So that's something that I'm going to do. And that's the first thing I would invite you to do. If you are struggling to get out there and knock doors, you're struggling with the motivation, figure out why you're even doing this.

Speaker 2 (01:38):

Why do you want to make, you know, six, seven figures, whatever your goal is this year, go write it down and go seven layers deep. If you haven't listened to the episode, um, I think it was a couple months back, but it was uh, about how to increase your confidence in sales. Actually, one of our more downloaded episodes, go listen to it though, because I talk about an exercise. It's great for this to just going seven levels, deep on your why and figuring out why you're really motivated to do the things that you're telling yourself you want to do. That's the first step. But before we get into the rest of the tips with that, I wanted to thank our loyal listeners. We've had a lot of great reviews, a lot of people sharing. So I want to think all those that have hopped on and shared the podcast.

Speaker 2 (02:33):

So wanted to just give those people a shout out and pull up a couple of reviews that people have been leaving lately. So we got to Ruff Munios. He says Taylor does an exceptional job of bringing in people that are experienced and high-performers to help elevate others. Someone looking into solar, like myself, listening and studying these interviews brings me confidence on the jump. Thank you. Thank you, Rafael. I assume you haven't made the jump over to solar yet, so hopefully you do it soon. Um, we got, uh, uh, I'm not going to try to say this, uh, username. You're cute. Okay. I'll try to say it. CUPE we're you WQ, uh, letters on there, but he says, I like how Taylor is constantly working to help the door to door space. I love how freely he gives out pro tips and shares his years of experience.

Speaker 2 (03:32):

Great interviews with top guests. Love it. And then he gives me five fire emojis. You just made my day QP we're you WQ thank you so much. And let's do one more for fun. We got a T pep says podcasts helped me out a lot here in Pennsylvania. One of the best podcasts about solar really goes in depth about the process of making a solar deal. Appreciate you guys. And that is how we grow the podcast. That's how we help others in the industry. And it's good karma. The more you help others, it's going to come back to you. So guys, I'm not just requesting this and not doing it myself. I go on and leave reviews for the podcast I'm listening to you do. And hopefully it's going to help me get reviews back. If you want something done to you, make sure you're actively doing it yourself.

Speaker 2 (04:25):

Okay. But I want to give, I think you, those that have made an effort to share and to repost and to leave good reviews on the podcast. That's what it's all about. So let's jump into the topic today. Again, we're jamming on what you can do if you are struggling to knock, or if you're just hating knocking lately, it's too hot million reasons we can tell ourselves. Right? And one of the reasons I start thinking to the future about things, we got college football coming up. My favorite time, one of my favorite times of the year is I get to watch college football, which that an MBA. That's my two sports that I watch more than any other sports. I'm a Utah Utes fan. And sometimes I start thinking forward. I'm like, man, it's going to be so nice when I can just take a Saturday, not knock, whatever.

Speaker 2 (05:20):

And that's the problem with college football is most of the good games are on Saturdays, right? So got to figure out a way to start recording games, but there's all sorts of things. Once we get into this phase of the year, people knock in the summer are gone. Um, sometimes you feel alone. Sometimes your team isn't producing as much. So what can you do to not fall into this trap of not producing at the level you need to and not getting out there and hustling because these months in solar, especially out here in San Diego, for whatever reason, get there. Um, hi, these are the hotter months, more than July. Um, more than August. Usually September, October are super hot months for us out here. And that's when people are getting their really high bills. So for us, it's a time when we need to be speeding up when we need to be going against the flow of people are slowing down.

Speaker 2 (06:19):

We need to be going quicker. So what can you do? So I'm going to go through, I did close three deals last week, had a decent week. Okay. I know there's guys closing three deals a day, but for me I'll I take three deals. I like that. And I'm going to build on that. So what I did to still produce, even though I did not feel like knocking it all last week. Number one thing I'm going to give you right here is I teamed up. I got with an accountability partner at someone that I was driving out to my areas. Hey, I know there's a lot of teams out there in solar. They don't do car groups. They don't go out together. They're just riding solo. Cause they have their own appointments. They got their own areas. But guess what? It doesn't matter if you have your own area, if you're not motivated, if you're not going to actually hit it up.

Speaker 2 (07:18):

So that's what I did. I recognize that I'm like, I do not want to get out there today. Do not want to go knock. I recognize that. And so I hit up one of the newer guys in our office said, Hey man, let's carpool out or areas. We're actually working like close to an hour drive away right now. It's a little bit further. So I said, Hey, let's carpool up. Let's uh, share the area. And then we can just both get out there at the same time. So this is the number one thing that helped me last week. Just get out with somebody's carpool, get your car group because it's like the circumstances you put yourself in. If you don't, if you're trying to cut out sugar, the best way to do that is not have sugar in the house. Right? And if you're trying to knock the same principle applies, get with someone that's going out there knocking.

Speaker 2 (08:09):

Don't put yourself in a tough situation where you have to decide to, you know, sit in the car or get out there, be with someone that you know is going to actually go get the job done, you know, is going to, um, shadow you whatever. And that's another pro tip. Um, if you haven't listened to Mike O'Donnell's episode, this is what he does. He always goes out with somebody when he's knocking. He pays someone. Um, I think it's 50 bucks. I don't know. He'll pay someone 50 bucks to meet him at the Starbucks and get out there and hit the doors. Because if he has someone out, waiting on them to go to the doors and he paid them money, how likely is he to not actually get out there and knock and have Michael Donald was doing this? The number one, you know, solar rep in the country.

Speaker 2 (09:03):

If he's doing this, then there's no shame in it and struggling to get out there and knock. There's no strain, shame in paying people to go out and knock. That's just Michael Donald doing the same thing. He recognizes that it will be tough for him to get out there and just knock on his own. Accord, opened the door himself. So he gets someone to meet him up. He pays someone to go meet him at the Starbucks and get out there at the same time. So if you're struggling at all, that's the first thing I would recommend. Just team up with somebody, get a newer guy in your office, get good excuse to recruit right there. Or, you know, get someone to hold you accountable. And maybe you don't have an office that's cranking ton of deals. Maybe you don't have a ton of good reps that are motivating.

Speaker 2 (09:53):

I struggled with this at my previous company. There sometimes are reps that weren't pushing me to work as hard as I needed to. So if that's the case, then consider getting in on our inner circle program. Okay. You can go to not CEO apply for that, but that's what we're all about is creating a group of like-minded people that need the accountability, need the motivation and are going to push to get results. So if you need help being around people like that, go hit, apply and book a call. We can see what we can do to help you out. Well, that's the first tip. And then the second thing is, I know I've talked about a few of these in previous episodes. So if you have binged a ton of episodes, you might be hearing a few of these again, but this is an app that I, I know I've talked about.

Speaker 2 (10:44):

It's called stick S T a C K K. And this app you can go and you can find accountability partners and you can literally place money on the line, um, for a habit, whatever action you're trained to do. So that's cool app. First heard about it from Tim Ferriss. Actually one of my, uh, favorite authors in his book, a four hour shift, great book, but he talks about this. He's trying to get people to basically falls recipes and he's like, guys, you're not going to learn how to cook. If you don't actually go through these recipes, I created and go through the book. So before you even continue in the book, he tells people to download the steak app and put money on the line that they're going to go through it. Funny part is I still haven't gone through the book, so I didn't take his advice seriously enough, but anything you're trying to do, that's a great app.

Speaker 2 (11:39):

You're putting money on the line and it goes to a charity that you don't agree with. Hey, so if you hate, uh, I don't know, Trump, if you hate by it and you can, don't download it and put money on the line and it'll go to the thing you don't want it to go to. So how motivating is that pretty sweet idea. Yes, me. Yes. That's the second tip. Get someone to hold you accountable on the stick app. And then the third tip actually talks about this in a little bit in last week's episode, but just develop a knocking routine and brought this up at Taylor McCarthy. He'll go get ice to really signal his brain that he's starting his knocking day. Okay. So what habits, what trigger can you put into place? That's going to trigger you. It's time to go and knock. Okay.

Speaker 2 (12:31):

And so I know I mentioned that in last week's episode, but it's worth mentioning again, just figure out how you can really trigger your brain to get out there and to hit those doors or to do whatever you're trying to do. Maybe it's make 50 calls that day. Maybe it's contact your referral sheet, just whatever you need to do, put a trigger around it and be super consistent. And it's so simple, guys, the success is simple. The guys that are closing tons of deals, they're not doing that many more things than the guys that aren't, but they're just doing it at a more consistent level and they're not giving up. Hey, so that's the key. I hope this helped rim. Remember those three things team up with someone and get someone newer to co go shout at you, go knock. I personally love it when people shadow me is because I can't get out of it either.

Speaker 2 (13:22):

I have to be out there and I'm not going to like, I'm going to show off. I'll, I'll be honest. I'm like try as hard as they can overcome the objections because I don't want people shadowing me, be like, Hey, this guy didn't even try to overcome that. So I'm pushing harder than I normally would not have closed a lot of same day deals just by having them, someone out shadow me. Hey, so that's the first one team up with someone. Number two, you've stick number three, develop your team and put sugars around you're knocking hours. You're prospecting hours or whatever difficult thing it is you're trying to do so hope that helped. Okay. Can't wait for you to go out and apply these things. Let me know if it helps send it someone who is struggling to knock and we will see you out on the doors and in the next episode,

Speaker 3 (14:13):

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.

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 (00:41):

What's going on. Solarpreneurs. We are back with another episode and I'm excited today because we are in the studio with Mr. Dan Dunn. What's going on, Dan? Thanks for coming on the show. You bet.

Speaker 3 (00:52):

Good. He could to be here. Okay. Well, you're

Speaker 2 (00:56):

Hearing me too. Yeah, it's, it's fun. We're hearing a Newport beach, made the drive up here from San Diego and, um, we're doing some video content too. So excited about that. So Dan, you want to tell us a little bit how you got like in the solar space and your background, where you came from and everything.

Speaker 3 (01:14):

Sure. Yeah. I should have this down to an elevator pitch by now. Um, I was born in Illinois in the Midwest. I was then transplanted, California. So I clean California is my place of growth, I guess kind of sounds a little cooler. Um, and then, uh, went to yeah, went to college in Utah. I then, uh, and I majored in music in English. We just talked about that before this podcast started. Yeah. Um, yeah. I love music nerd and music nerd. That's right. And actually, uh, the movie pitch. Perfect. I was actually telling, um, this guy to the, to the left ear off, off camera earlier that, uh, my wife and I met through similar circumstances as Anna Kendrick and the guy. I don't remember his name anyway. She was in a female acapella group. I was in vocal point male acapella group kind of came together like jets and sharks and west side story anyway. Um, so yeah, met my wife there been married almost 16 years. Uh, live in Southern California. I love this place. Feels like home will never leave. And, uh, old harness. I started the harness brands in 2017, so we're almost five years old next year. Awesome. Um, and then have a production company in the music space called prosody music. Okay. That's me in a nutshell.

Speaker 2 (02:31):

That's awesome. I love hearing guys that are like, you know, like music nerds and stuff like that. Cause I was just telling you, I was a music major myself in college, studied drums, percussion. That was the dream I was all about, you know, just graduating and being a music teacher, making my 30, 40 grand a year. And I was like, this is it. I'm going to love it. That's the dream. And then yeah, came out. Yeah. Came out, made that, you know, like in the summer or whatever. And I'm like, it's a little bit longer.

Speaker 3 (03:02):

Right. I can still picture, Hey, imagine dragons. When they have their live shows, they need some good drummers up there. Right. Have you ever been to one of those?

Speaker 2 (03:09):

Uh, I haven't been to their show, but I haven't been to, I don't know. Been to all its other concerts. Yeah. Same with maybe they'll listen to this podcast. If they're listening, give me a call and I'll be

Speaker 3 (03:19):

In the drummer. We've got a table right here. He can start anyway.

Speaker 2 (03:22):

Let's do it. But yeah, what I wanted to ask you, Dan, I mean being like music, English and all that. Yeah. Do you feel like, I mean, I don't think there's a ton of us that did music before, um, you know, solar, but the few that I have met that have, I feel like, I dunno, it's helped them in a way. Maybe like creativity. Do you feel like music has helped you in business or in any, any aspects of what you're doing now?

Speaker 3 (03:45):

Absolutely. So I mean, scientific studies have shown if you put your kids in piano lessons early on, they'll connect certain parts of their brain and think more critically. And I'm not trying to pump myself up at all. I mean, don't feel deficient out there guys, if you didn't get piano lessons, it's not your fault, but it does help. Uh, yeah. You looking at problems from multiple sides of the spectrum. And so when your brain makes those connections, you have kind of that openness to multiple solutions and seeing both sides of an argument, uh, really, really helps in problem solving interpersonal relationships, um, leading. It helps them and I think all aspects of business to me. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:23):

That's awesome. Leading. Why do you say that?

Speaker 3 (04:27):

Well, because as a leader, you're going to come across the fires. We have to put out constantly. Right. And so to put out fires, you could, you could throw a huge bucket of water on it and say, it's good. Or you could kind of massage it and come at it strategically and see if there's, you know, two or three different ways to go at it. And which one's best consider the consequences. Being able to look at that, that cube from all sides, I think will, uh, it has paid dividends. So

Speaker 2 (04:53):

Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. No, and I always compare it to just like, I'm sure, you know, music where you like a specific instrument. Are we just voice Canon boys in a way? Okay. Yeah, for me, it's like, I don't know about you, but all those hours you put in practicing. Yeah. That's true. That's something that I feel like it's like, I was, I was no way like a natural sales guy or whatever. And I still, like, I'm not like the top guy, but because of all those hours that I put in not being the top drummer or whatever, I'm like, okay, why don't I just use that same, you know, method of getting better at cells all the hours I put in practicing the guys are doing it. You know,

Speaker 3 (05:27):

I just made that connection. Now. That's crazy. I used to like hold myself up in a practice room for four to six hours a day just going at the keys. That's and then of course that's what I did on the doors too. That's weird. Never made that connection. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:41):

So cool. I think it's super power for sure. I agree. Well, you know, can go with a distance like that, but cool, man. So tell us Dan, how, uh, so harness you started that in 2017. Yep. Okay. And were you, uh, just working on a sales team before, how did you transition to like starting your own company and everything?

Speaker 3 (06:00):

Yeah. So back in 2002, I started doing pest control for a couple of summers. Then I did alarms for eight and a half years, mostly summers, but also some year round programs built up, you know, deems and regions during that time. And then transition to solar in 2012 with vivant, when they started their San Diego office, I was in that original office that was full of all kinds of cool guys. We were, we were a cool crew. Anybody that's listening? I don't know if you are, but it was, it was cool. Everybody from that office branched out and either became at least DMS, mostly regional VPs, owner, company owners, et cetera. Um, and so, uh, helped them went up to orange county and then, uh, left for solar city Tesla. And uh, when Elan fired us all in 2017, best thing that happened to me. Um, that's when I started harness because I, I felt like I had learned enough. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:53):

Okay. Yeah. A lot of good. A lot of superstars came from that. Yeah. Including, uh, you know, Taylor McCarthy. We were just talking about that a lot too. That's cool. We've been solar though. Were you, uh, do you know Rob Brian river? Yeah, for sure. With CLL, we used to call them the bull. The bull. Was he back there in 2012 with you guys? He was, yeah, he was in that office. That's funny. Yeah. Yeah. So he, uh, yeah. New power that company he used to work for, he went on to be like VP of sales for that company. Yeah. Yeah. He was my boss for a long time over there, but I know that's cool. Yeah. A lot of superstars came from that and um, I know it was like rough, at least according to Rob, he said it's pretty rough. In the beginning, you have water issues with stuff. Well, we felt

Speaker 3 (07:34):

So good about selling a 15 cent PPA for like $200 a kilowatt or 180. I think it was, we were so excited about 180 a kilowatt for a PPA. And by the way, the con the customers back then from a customer standpoint, we were setting people up with 15 cent CPAs now in San Diego. Um, you know, I think the average might be up to 19 20 cents somewhere in there. And so like just, I was talking about this with my team the other day at the companies feel at Liberty to continue to raise the prices as long as utility continues to escalate proportion with that. So yeah, it's interesting. The, the whole urgency pitch is, is real. It's not just a sales tool, like go solar now or you're going to probably pay more in the future. Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:16):

I know. I love those things. It's like natural urgency that we don't like. We don't have to make it up. It's like stuff is actually happening. Tax credits. It's actually happening a lot of good reasons. I'm not at the school. And so a harness it's a 2017. Do you think, do you think you would have like went on to start harness had solar city not had they not let everyone go. Do you think you would have gone that same path eventually or

Speaker 3 (08:42):

Eventually, maybe? Yeah. Um, thing is, I was, I was pretty bought in to the vision. I was, I was a little bit of an Ilan worshiper, not a bad way. I mean, I did have a big blown up picture of him, you know, that Obama poster with the hope, you know, the blue and red and white. Yeah. I made one of Ilan and I put in progress and it was, it was a little foolish I think. But, um, I had that up in the office and uh, yeah, I just, I, I loved his vision. I was at like the Gigafactory grand opening and sparks Nevada. Um, I loved what we were doing. I felt like it was obviously much bigger than us, so everybody feels great about that. But, uh, when it stopped, it was an easy decision to do my own thing. I'd already been knocking doors for 15 years straight with no stops, you know, consistency and practice, um, and you know, running regions and divisions, stuff like that. So I felt like it was a good time, but how do you not fired us? That's a great question. I don't know. I think I was stuck with it for a while and man, it was just, it was, it was cool. Cool.

Speaker 2 (09:47):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true. Everything happens for a reason, so sure. Yeah. Maybe a good thing. It happened definitely in hindsight. Yeah. Um, but yeah, so like, I mean, I know it's, you know, a lot of challenges going through starting your own company, starting your own brand business, all that. So starting out, I'm sure it wasn't all like sunshine and rainbows and all that. What was, what were some of like the challenges that you had to go through to get, you know, get things rolling with harness?

Speaker 3 (10:13):

I had the team from solar city pretty much. It was easy because there was no like non-slip stations. They fired us. So we just started, you know, it was no big deal. Uh, so I started with a T a sales team that was nice, but partner wise, um, a lot of companies, you know, instantly become dealers for other installation companies. And that was the, that was the thing. I'm a diligent student of who I'm going to be hopping into business bed with. And I did, I remember to this day I did 17. I interviewed 17 different EPBCS, which are, uh, installation companies went through it, got it on a PowerPoint, did like a, you know, a risk benefit analysis of it. Um, and I even presented it to my team like, Hey guys, this is what I've been going through to make sure we're going the right direction, settled in on one. I won't mention their name, but I sailed in on one and uh, on paper they were the best. And then in reality, they had horrible.

Speaker 2 (11:08):

Yeah. They leave me alone.

Speaker 3 (11:11):

Lost me a lot of money. Yeah, exactly. Interestingly enough, I hope I wish that the story was different, but, um, but what it did teach me was, uh, again, you can look good on paper executions, everything when you're in a partnership a lot of times too, and those go south like that, um, you can, you have to cut your losses. There were definitely some losses early on in the business first year, but I also came into the business knowing like all the stories I had read, that's pretty common. It's pretty common in your first year to anything, but in the five-year range. Yeah. It's common to, to have some struggles, have some learning lessons, some big ones. Um, and yeah, it's about it really tests your metal of if you're serious about the business and the long-term aspect of it or not. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (11:53):

No doubt about that. And so something that, uh, while I'm sure you've struggled with it too, like your teams just, I mean, commissions are so high in solar right now. Um, people are making 10, 15 grand on single deals and stuff, especially out here in California. Like how have you in your teams? I don't know if it's changed as time has gone on, but how, what, what are some things you're doing to like, keep your guys motivated earth stuff that you like passed down to like yourselves managers for our listeners,

Speaker 3 (12:21):

Uh, considering what they make, is that what you're asking?

Speaker 2 (12:23):

Yeah. And we'll just, that's one obstacle. Yeah. Yeah. That's like the curse of solar, right? It's like guys make 10 grand on a deal and then three weeks I'll be back next month. Right?

Speaker 3 (12:33):

Yeah. That is a, that is an interesting question. And it is something of course that we grappled with one way is to constantly have them expanding their idea of themselves. So, uh, it's, there's an income thermometer in every single person. And so once you've reached that thermometer top of a hundred thousand dollars a year, if that's essentially what you think you're worth, or I don't even know if it goes that far in your head, usually you're just like, this is where I'm comfortable. I love freedom and I love taking off and going on experiences. And now I have the freedom to do that. That's all fun and games. And I think everybody deserves to have that time in their life. But if you mentioned this concept of expanding the idea of yourself, often enough in meetings, which I try to, then you can, we actually have a, an archetype I created, uh, so Chad, the cheetah or Chad DRA for the women.

Speaker 3 (13:24):

Um, and, uh, so there's a, there's a turtle, Tom, the turtle there's Harriet the hair. And then there's Chad that cheetah. So essentially like how fast can you accelerate your progress towards semi-retirement towards being like a, you know, a 10 or a 20 or a hundred door owner properties, et cetera. And, you know, you can follow Dave all or some of these guys in the industry that have made it and have done that. Yeah. Um, and, uh, and it's, it's a reality for us in solar. Like we can get there quick because of the money, for sure. So do you want to just kind of live at this range, which I understand is extremely enticing and fun, but you could also make a million dollars in the next few years and accelerate your progress and, uh, do a whole lot more with your life. Right.

Speaker 2 (14:06):

Okay. So it sounds like just basically helping them see a higher vision and set bigger goals for themselves. Yeah, I have to. Yeah. That's huge. And so what are some ways that you do that for your reps? Is it like you personally sitting down with them or you like having your managers sat down and I don't know, I'm like quarterlies or anything you guys are doing to help them actually like see those bigger goals and visions for themselves.

Speaker 3 (14:27):

All of that. We started doing quarterly submits this year, which I don't know why we didn't do them before. They're extremely, they moved the needle a lot because we all get together and have that memory together. This, this quarter we're getting together at Pirate's Cove in Henderson, Nevada overlooking lake Mead. Oh yeah. I've heard about that.

Speaker 2 (14:43):

Yeah. Our, yeah. Cool. Same thing.

Speaker 3 (14:46):

This is one of those things that gets tossed around in the industry. So we rented it out for three days and we're, we're taking, uh, our top producers there for the three days. And then we're taking the rest of the company. We'll meet there for like a half day at the summit. That's awesome. And, uh, yeah, getting together and having those memories, having the comradery and the culture come together super important. And during those seasons, of course, we address that topic among many others. That's one needle mover. And the other one is, uh, yeah. Having, uh, you know, we have weekly calls with our leaders of course, and we disseminate what's most important. And there are things that we talk about over and over. Yeah. That's, that's one of them. So

Speaker 2 (15:25):

That's huge. It's communication. Yeah. It's funny. I'm so I'm working down with, uh, uh, Jason, I don't know if you know, Jason newbie squatting down there, but sure. Yeah. He's talking about the Pirate's Cove too. He said, yeah. I think he said Vivian got like banned from it or something like

Speaker 3 (15:38):

That. That doesn't surprise me. No, it doesn't surprise me though.

Speaker 2 (15:41):

He's like, but I didn't get banned, so yeah. Right. Yeah. There's no longer associated. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:47):

That's funny. I went there with Trevor, uh, Trevor in the top. He he's winning the cup every single year on the alarm side. Uh, I wonder if their group did it cause they're pretty

Speaker 2 (15:56):

Wild. Yeah. Anyway, so yeah, I guess that's a story Jason will have to tell black guys. Nice. No, that's cool. And so, yeah, I like the quarterly summits idea. I think that's huge for probably, you know, the culture and things like that. Anything else that you guys are doing just like build the culture of working of like going out every day, if not getting lazy reps, what else are you guys doing?

Speaker 3 (16:18):

That's a good question. So we have, um, we started a prime program prime, and I think this industry is moving in this direction anyway. Uh, prime is essentially our, uh, senators. So, you know, we have centers in most of our offices. Now it's a very structured program at keeps. Uh, I wouldn't say that keeps people not lazy and they may even contribute to a little bit more, but I don't, I don't think so because it's very dialed in. And of course we have it structured to where we give the most appointments to the highest, highest skilled closers. Um, and so I think that helps a little bit, but also, uh, just the, the, the cadence of accountability. And I don't know we to be Frank, this question is interesting because we, as a company we're, we're not high high, like, um, what's the best way to put this.

Speaker 3 (17:09):

I'm not super super concerned with being the, like the top sellers in the whole country. Uh, as far as solar sales, I'm concerned with quality mostly. And so I would take honestly, uh, you know, a hundred installs from a group a month versus 300. And I know that sounds rash, but I would take them if they were super quality, uh, you know, the, the sales were done with trust and, uh, and not sloppily and not creating a whole bunch of stress and extra stress for people. Yeah. That's just me. That's the way I want to run the business. Um, one of the things I noticed with publicly traded companies is they're always making decisions based on their stockholders. And, uh, I never wanted to have that again as just a, again, an archetype of what I want, I didn't want, so in this company, we're, um, more principles focused, I think, just trying to always do the right thing. Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 2 (17:59):

No, that's huge. Yeah. I talk with, you know, some of my friends that own their like EPC stuff like that, I mean, they deal with some of these dealers who it's just like, they're pushing through deals no matter what, on any type of roof, getting guys the same, like roof waivers and stuff, and just throw them panels up there. And it's crazy and, uh, [inaudible] cells, but yeah, it's like 25 years people

Speaker 3 (18:20):

And that's a long time.

Speaker 2 (18:22):

It's like, yeah, you throw on these roof waivers and then just put the panels up. Stuff is going wrong. And it's like, what's that? What's that gonna look like down the road for customers and things

Speaker 3 (18:30):

Like that. It's literally the roof over somebody's head. They worked their entire life to buy their house and make sure it's good. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:38):

So, no, I definitely appreciate that. I think that's the, you know, the only way really to build long-term and make sure you're focusing on your customers and your clients,

Speaker 3 (18:49):

That brings up a point. I mean, because there's so much money to be made in the solar industry. There's, it's naturally attracting fly by night people. So it's, it's an, it's an unfortunate fact, the industry right now, I feel, uh, needs a huge pivot towards integrity based sales and installs. And I think on the installation side, especially, yeah, there needs to be a big step up in quality and, uh, and customer service towards, you know, uh, sales partners.

Speaker 2 (19:18):

I know no doubt. And it's like, how many times have you heard it? Um, I hear it all the time where like, oh, what's the reason you haven't gone solar. Oh. Cause our neighbor had a bad experience. So cause their friend know, cause our uncle's roof is leaking. Like how many more customers could we all have? We were just doing quality work and know, you know, not lying to people. So yeah. Ripple effect. So yeah, it's definitely super frustrating, but I know, so yeah. That's good to hear that, um, you know, that you're passing that onto your leaders and it's your company. Cause I think that's really what the industry needs. Um, but yeah. So how many teams do you guys have? So you said you're in, uh, California, Utah. Where else?

Speaker 3 (19:56):

California, Utah, uh, New Jersey. Um, a little bit in Nevada and a little bit in Florida and then we've got a team in Puerto Rico as well. Okay.

Speaker 2 (20:05):

That's awesome. How many reps do you have for the whole company? Um,

Speaker 3 (20:09):

We're around two 50. Okay. All right.

Speaker 2 (20:12):

Okay. And so what do you see? I don't know. I'm sure some, obviously some teams are better than others. What do you see in your great teams, your best team versus, you know, teams that are struggling, anything you see that's um, is, you know, helping contribute to a good team or is it the teams that are struggling?

Speaker 3 (20:27):

Yes. I think a good team obviously starts with leaders so you can have a good team without good leaders. It's obviously, uh, a again, a ripple effect. I hate to use that phrase twice, but, um, so if the leaders aren't dialed in, you can, you don't even need to see or meet the leaders. You can tell by the team if you just met the team. But anyway, once that's dialed in and this is part of what the leaders do, having the team have an identity, a name, and even a creed, something that they can coalesce around as a principle or principles that they live by once they have that and identity as a group, then it's about having fun, which is part of culture is kind of what we think about with culture. Like, yeah, you want a yacht somewhere. Um, so having fun and then, uh, getting into flow.

Speaker 3 (21:13):

I was listening to Aubrey Marcus podcast recently and he had a guy on there it's supposed to be the master of flow. Um, my VP Owen recommends to me anyway. He says there's steps to get into flow. And, and uh, the first one is curiosity. So as if the leaders can create curiosity, uh, with their people somehow, I mean, there's, we can brainstorm around that for a while, but we've, we've had ideas about it and we're looking to increase this constantly because when people are in flow, they don't have to think too much. They just feel, and they're feeling great about what they're doing and, you know, flows. Like we just went surfing this more in the morning and got tossed around in the water, positive ions flowing all around. Yeah. And that was the best way for me to start my morning before I got here.

Speaker 3 (21:59):

Yeah. So activities like that, if we can, if we can make, um, sales and solar as flowy as, as the way I feel when I'm surfing. Um, then I think we've, we have hit the jackpot. So our best teams, they feel that they don't feel like they're going to work. They feel like they're just in a, in rhythm with a bunch of their friends and they're making a ton of money together, which is awesome. But it's, they want to show up to meetings. Yeah. It's fun. You know, so there's good quality content being shared in the trainings, the bad teams, um, again, bad leaders or it's hard to say bad, uh, ineffective, ineffective leaders. Yeah. Not doing some of these things, no identity. Maybe, maybe they missed on the culture piece. Um, they're not having a much, they're too serious. Not having enough fun. Yeah. Uh, and it's the fun is not just like throwing out incentives and let's meet a Jamba juice it's it's like, right. You know, it's making jokes and having actually vernacular having like inside jokes around your work. Yeah. That kind of, stuff's fun. Yeah. So that's, it's all about. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:04):

That's cool. And yeah. Be a big struggle with like companies I've been a part of, um, I mean that's a big struggle is starting new offices, especially like when it's far away from your home base. Right. Or what have you, it's like sometimes it's tough to keep that same culture and expand and ensure, you know, find good people. Cause yeah. I mean, one of the first companies I was with it's like we expanded to, I think we opened up five offices in a year, but then, um, the next year all of them closed down except for like one, it was just like, because they didn't have like solid leaders in place. And I don't know, it was just tough to grow in too fast. Yeah. Keep it going.

Speaker 3 (23:39):

So, one thing that we've we've found is to bring like, use your best office and bring your leaders that are struggling or new leaders for sure new leaders bring them into that office and by osmosis the learn and feel the culture. So in fact, we just hired a new Vegas manager today. I just got off a zoom call with him this morning. And uh, he's coming in for two weeks into San Clemente where our top offices, uh, and he'll be learning by osmosis what they're doing. And it's not even just because you could describe to them what to do, but it's, you got to feel it. And you got to meet the people and see how happy they are and talk to them and like all that's going to be super valuable, invaluable. And he'll bring that back to, I guess, have a much better start.

Speaker 2 (24:21):

Yeah. That's awesome. So that works pretty well. They kind of see what the other people are doing and like, oh, I'm going to go implement that in my

Speaker 3 (24:26):

Office. It's pretty basic, but I don't think on a lot of people are doing it.

Speaker 2 (24:31):

Yeah. I know. We definitely weren't when we were having that problem though. Right. That's that's a great idea. Um, and yeah, like as far as like, uh, your inspiration and everything, what's what are the things that like motivate you to keep it going through all the challenges? And I don't know when their struggles, ups and downs, what are some things that,

Speaker 3 (24:51):

Um, that's a good question. Multiple things. So I've thought about, what's been driving me since I've been a kid and it's actually hard to put my finger on it. I have some kind of motor in me that won't stop. I feel I've seen the musical Hamilton. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was just the Disney plus version. Yeah, exactly. Me too. I haven't been to a live show, but you know how there's a song in there that there's, the lyrics are like he's running out of time. He always felt he was running out of time. I've always felt that way. I've always felt like, Hey, this is a very, it's a short life. Um, you gotta, you got your time to make a mark on it. And uh, and so I think that's ever present in my mind. Yeah. And I, that drives me. I mean, I actually just heard, you know, some of the most successful people in the world, art are both running away from something and running towards something.

Speaker 3 (25:38):

Yeah. There's like two motors driving them. Yeah. And so, uh, I can certainly agree with and relate to the running away from things. Um, you know, came from a divorced family. Dad died when I was young bunch of interesting, you know, storyline items that I could bring up, but running towards something I'm running towards really excellence. I'm trying my best to just be excellent because at some point along the road, the way I got the idea in my head, that being excellent is just so much more fun. And it's a choice. So why not? Like why would you choose not to be excellent? Yeah. I know it's hard and I'm certainly not good at it, uh, all the time. But, uh, I think I've developed that skill over time to just, you know, achieve excellence in certain areas of life. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:24):

Yeah. It's sweet. I like animals. I remember when I first listened to it watched the Disney plus palms and I was like, listen to that, that same song, I think on the way to my, like my deals and stuff like that run out of time. Nice. You know, I guess it's the sweet, but it's true. I mean, especially in solar, that's like a real thing. Cause you don't know, like, I don't know what your thoughts, but it's like solar is probably, probably not going to be, oh yeah. It is profitable

Speaker 3 (26:47):

For a long, I mean, yeah. Not, not 10 years from now. Yeah. Yeah. It's gonna, it's going to hit critical mass. It's already doing that in certain markets and uh, in California specifically where we are right now, I'm not gonna make a prediction, but you know, we're, we're living on borrowed time for sure. He thinks though. I mean with, yeah, with the, with the level of commissions that we're getting, um, the way and just modeled it off of any other industry in the way it's matured, you know, it's still young. Yeah. But we can model this off of a lot of other industries and you can, you can predict what's going to happen in the next five years. Pretty well. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:22):

Yeah. So yeah. I mean, that's what we're trying to tell our listeners too, is like for those that are listening to this, make sure you understand that and take Dan's words you're living on borrowed time. So push as hard as you can right now be present. That's right. So it's like the days where you're making huge commissions, probably not going to be around forever. So no. So I invest in yourself, invest in coaching and get as good as you can right now. So you can reap the benefits and make as much as possible. Yep. I think is something huge and something I'm sure you, you know, share with your reps. Do I

Speaker 3 (27:53):

Bet? Sure. Again, I mean, we've been on the wave of starting out 2012, just nine years ago, making 185 bucks kilowatt or whatever. It was 180 and being so excited and then it just kept going up every single year, but it's just like the real estate market. You can't just keep going up. It's got to crash at some point. Right. So I don't, I'm not saying we're going to crash, but we're certainly going to see corrections in the market. Uh, yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:18):

It's funny. I feel like the grandpa and solar, I started in Soren 2016. So coming up on five and a half years or so, but yeah, like I don't know all the new reps coming in. They're seeing these seats commissions. I the grandpa. I'm like, oh, back in my day, I was only making two 50. I know it's real.

Speaker 3 (28:36):

Yeah. And the opportunity arrogance is there. It's like, uh, you know them, like you said, those numbers, you mentioned earlier, they think that's normal. That's not normal. This is not normal. I

Speaker 2 (28:47):

Know. So it's like, guys, you got to understand. There's like, solar's the gold rush right now. Go take your pick and hammer and all that. No, get it now and

Speaker 3 (28:56):

Get it now and do it. Right. You know, don't ruin it for the rest of us. Don't be that. Don't be that guy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:01):

For sure. Well, Dan, I know we're going to wrap up soon here, but yeah. Last question or two, I wanted to ask you, like from your reps that are, um, seeing a ton of success out there compared to reps that are struggling and whatnot, what are you seeing? What's separating like the super successful reps versus the ones that are struggling or new teams,

Speaker 3 (29:19):

The super successful reps have their schedules dialed in. We've got a motto at harness called win the day. You'll see it on our Instagrams. Okay. Um, it's on, well, it's actually in the back of my shirt, right? Is it on the back of my shirt?

Speaker 4 (29:32):

Not this one.

Speaker 3 (29:34):

Cool moment. Anyway, you put it on the back of our swag. Uh, when the day came from Owen Santos, RVP of execution, it's a, it's something that he came up with in his own life, basically to win the morning. He wakes up every day at 5:00 AM. I was disciplined guy. I know, um, gets his workout and gets his healthy eating go and gets the surf on surfed with him this morning. Um, basically does more than a lot of people do before 8:00 AM is over. And so winning the day is what our successful reps do. They have a pretty regimented schedule that they stick to live and die by it. And, um, that makes all of their targets time-bound, which has, if you listen to Tony Robbins, you got to have smart goals. S M a R T the T stands for time bound. So, uh, I think that's critical.

Speaker 3 (30:20):

And then they are students of the game, a students of the game. So they're constantly curious again, way to get into flow state about how to get better and what's happening and, you know, stay on top of their stuff. Yeah. So I mean, those, I could say a lot more than that, but that separates them again. If you want to look at the, the flip side of the coin reps that aren't being successful are treating this, like, you know, they'll come to a meeting and they'll expect the meeting to kind of fill their cup and uh, other people to give them all the knowledge and the skills that they need instead of taking that bowl by their own bull, by the horns, with their own hands and, uh, doing homework, you actually do have to do homework to be great at this. Yeah. So I know one of the best things I can give you is when I first started, I had, uh, an approach that I would record in my phone every day when I was driving out to the area.

Speaker 3 (31:10):

And I would listen back to it to hear how I sounded to myself and put myself in the customer's shoes. Like how would I react to this guy coming to my door? And I would do that over and over and over and over and over, like, I just became obsessed with like the right words and the right cadence and my meta verbal and nonverbal communication. And it probably took me like two and a half to three months, uh, right when I got into solar to come up with an approach that I felt was hitting on all the psychological principles that you would need to have in place to make sure the customer responded in a certain way. Yeah. And that's, that's what you do. You dial that in so that you're hitting on all those things, the takeaways, the questions, the, the motion creates emotion, all that. Stuff's so critical. I

Speaker 2 (31:49):

Love that. Yeah. I can tell, let's go back to your music days. You're probably doing the same stuff and you're practicing piano, right. Recording yourself here and what's going on. That's what I'm saying. It's like so many parallels be doing it. Oh yeah. And top guys are doing it. They're recording themselves in their closes at the doors. It's just like so many things that we didn't think were doing there. Courtney is not going to lie. Right. Like it's like stupid, but I was actually sounded like that actually said that. Yeah. So yeah. So yeah, no, I think that's a huge separator and lots of people I've had on the podcast actually brought that up. That's one of the number one things that reps can do that most people aren't doing it's yeah. I didn't do it for years either, but I'm hearing it so many times. Good recording yourselves, getting feedback and just, you know, analyzing what went wrong and looking in the mirror. Yeah. That's huge. Um, well then we appreciate this secrets you shared with us today and um, yeah, I guess last question or two, I had like, what's been your biggest, uh, I dunno, is there any time at harness that there was like a, a down point or like a big struggle you had at harness and then what, what did you do to get out of it or any, or maybe there hasn't been any, but I

Speaker 3 (32:58):

Don't know. Uh, I mean there was the installation misfire in the, in the early year, the most recent one was actually online leads, man, I'll tell you, I can go off for an hour about this. So many companies sprung up during the pandemic saying that they were experts and gurus on lead gen. So many dollars were lost to those companies. Not only by me, but others. Uh, but yeah, that was definitely a struggle. Um, we, we, I think we were shut down for probably, uh, I don't know, maybe a month and a half or two. And then we kind of rebounded with the idea that we were tied to the utility company. And I think everybody in the industry agreed we were essential services, but it's still, you know, um, had our best year during the pandemic, which is cool obviously, but spent a lot of money on online leads that didn't pan out. And again, I could name some companies, I can name some names, but I won't yeah. Blacklisted names. Uh, but I would just caution any, any of the listeners to be very, I would never go with an online lead company that hasn't been vetted by somebody, you know, that can show you proof of the results. Yeah. I just, it's such a trap right now, so yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:06):

And that's huge. I don't know if you've seen it, but there's like groups on Facebook now, like blacklisted, solar online leads. I follow people just go and follow them. Yeah. Talk crap on all the people that screwed him over.

Speaker 3 (34:18):

So the names that have scorned me have shown up, so it wasn't just me.

Speaker 2 (34:23):

Okay. Yeah. No, that's good to observe. I know a lot of people are looking, thinking, oh, online leads. That's the wave. Never going to have to knock the door again,

Speaker 3 (34:30):

But yeah. Yeah. They think it's a panacea. It's really not. Yeah. It's a supplement. It always should be treated such as such.

Speaker 2 (34:37):

Yeah. A hundred percent. Um, well Dan, thanks for coming on the show today. Um, where can people find out more about your teams and what you're doing and kind of connect with you on social media and all that? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (34:47):

Luckily, uh, there's this great guy named Serge. That's been, uh, managing our social media recently and, uh, anyways, you can find us on, you can find it on Instagram at harness your future. Okay. Uh, we also have harness power official. That's kinda more of a customer facing Instagram. Okay. Easiest way to find us. And you can slide into our DMS and have some conversations. Yeah. Okay. I love it.

Speaker 2 (35:06):

And speaking of surge, I mean, I know surge comes at the price. He's not doing this stuff for free, but, uh, w w what's driving you to kind of invest in like the social media side of things. And what's the goal with that?

Speaker 3 (35:17):

The goal with that is really because we were a closed loop before, like we were growing mostly organically by referral. And then late last year December-ish of last year, we just decided, you know what, we're going to do some, we're going to make some more efforts to grow. Uh, not just organically, but you know, get ourselves out there a little bit more and show the world what we've got going. We feel like we have something very special here. It's not contrived. It's a special culture of great people that want to be part of this because it's fun. It's special. We create a lot of cool programs that are proprietary to us. So nice. Um, so we wanted to get that out there a little bit more. And Serge is just such a charismatic gentleman came to me. He's like, Hey, I can do all this for you. And he made these massive promises and, uh, now he's, he's delivered quite well so far. Um, yeah, he does a great job, great content, uh, very organized. And he's got some automated systems that are pretty impressive. So yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:10):

Yeah. Surges them in. He said, we've gotten smiling on the sidelines there. So yeah. Give him a shout out. He's in the room, but no, so yeah, social media definitely important. I know if there's a building brand and also recruiting helps a ton just recruit your ideal salesperson.

Speaker 3 (36:26):

Yeah. Yeah. And I've been averse to it, to be honest that I haven't been on social media in a while. I took a hiatus for a Facebook for like a, I dunno, a year, year and a half or something. But I think the resistance to social media was like, I just don't want to feel obligated to put myself out there with something contrived. I want it to feel authentic. And I want to feel like, I don't know that we're not trying to like manipulate people into anything. So luckily surges give me free reign on what to put on there. Um, and has worked with me on, um, the way I want to do things, which is, has been awesome. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:59):

That's awesome. Cool. Well, Dan, appreciate you coming on. And before we wrap up here, any final, I guess, words of advice you want to share with our solar printers with RS or guys that are listening on the show here today? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:10):

I would just say something I say often there's magic in the mundane, which is, goes back full circle to what we talk about. Like if you, if you practice piano for hours on end or, you know, parlayed any kind of musical talent or any other kind of rhythm, maybe from athletics, when you were young into knocking doors, you know, that the magic is in doing the same mundane things over and over and finding the magic, which is the income, the success, the, uh, the leadership, eventually all the things that you kind of want and are going after it's it's in the consistent daily. Yes.

Speaker 2 (37:44):

Yeah. Love that. And yeah, I'm sure you read the two book compound effect slight edge, but yeah. It's just like, if you haven't read those for our listeners, go read those for sure. I mean, that's yeah. That's the key to success. Most people aren't willing to do the little things everyday over a long period of time. Anyone can do it for one or two days, but the guys that are having success in this industry, or really anything they're doing the little things that no one wants to do for, you know, day after day after

Speaker 3 (38:09):

Day formula was written long ago. I just gotta follow it. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

Speaker 2 (38:14):

Love it. Dan will links were coming on the show. Guys, go give Dan a shout out soon, a message a DM on Instagram, Facebook, let them know you appreciate him on the show. And Dan, thanks again. We'll talk to you soon. Cool. Thanks Taylor. Appreciate it.

Speaker 5 (38:28):

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.

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. What's up Solapreneurs Taylor Armstrong back with

Speaker 2 (00:44):

Another episode here to help you close more deals, generate more referrals and dominate in the solar industry. Today, we're going to be talking about the two step framework that you can use today to go from one to two closes to four plus monthly. Okay. And the reason I'm seeing one to two to four, plus this is primarily for people that haven't broken through that barrier yet. Hey, that being said, if you are already closing, you know, four or 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 deals, you can implement these things and they are going to help. But the reason I'm saying from one to two to four plus is because this process, I think is the number one thing missing from people that are trying, they start hitting those consistent four plus a month. Okay. And we'll get into that. But before we jump into the topic of today, I wanted to give my boy Surge creator, a shout out.

Speaker 2 (01:40):

If you don't follow a Surge, he is, uh, helping a lot of guys in the solar industry, crush it on social media on Instagram, Facebook, if you don't, if you haven't heard of this guy, go shoot him a follow, look them up. And he's been actually helping us with some of our content, depending on when you're listening to this, you were probably going to see more video content that we're posting along with episodes. We're going to be posting some of these interviews now on YouTube. Okay. So we'll, um, we'll post a link. Once those things come out, but, uh, go search Solarpreneur. They might on YouTube. They might already be out as we're are recording this episode, but Serge has been helping us get some killer video content with some of our recent interviews. So we'd love to hear what you guys think of that.

Speaker 2 (02:28):

Do you want more video? Do you guys like the video or are you just audio people personally? I love the podcasts. I listen to podcasts when I'm at the gym, when I'm driving to deals, when I'm driving out to my turf, to my area. So I'm a huge proponent of podcasts, but I know there's a lot of people that prefer the video. So anyways, let me know what you think. I think it's good to have both options, video and audio, but we're going to be posting more and more video. And we're going to try to get some of these, uh, interviews on a YouTube. So let us know if you vibe with that, let's jump into the episode. So the two-step framework to go from one to two to four plus deals in a month. The reason we're talking about this today is because I'm actually coaching.

Speaker 2 (03:19):

Um, we are doing, we are accepting a coaching clients in our Solciety, inner circle. If you want to find out more about that, go to Solciety.co. There should be an inner circle tab. You can hit that and book a call. If you're interested in some, um, personal coaching and masterminding to take your cells, um, your closes up by 40%, 40 to 50% in a month. Okay. But, um, anyways, the reason I'm talking about this, one of our coaching clients in the inner circle, he is right now, he's not, he's primarily setting appointments and he has closers, but he's working up to, um, close his own deals. And he tells me, Taylor, my goal is in the next two months that we're working together. I want to get closing my own deals and I want to have five deals closed in a month. So I'm like, all right, that's an awesome goal, dude, let's, let's hit it.

Speaker 2 (04:20):

Let's go for it. So we've been working together three weeks or so now we're talking, we're talking, he's making some small improvements, but our last call is the reason for this episode, as we get on the call. And, um, he didn't have, he didn't have much no improvement from the previous week. We talked and I started realizing that a few of our recent calls that we had is we were talking about almost all of the sales techniques. He's like, Taylor, what do you do on the doors? What do you, how do you overcome this? Objection, how do you get more referral? All these cells, specific things, very technical what's, which is awesome to know all the technical sales knowledge and that's going to create improvements. But as I was trying to think, why, why is he making slower improvements? And this was the reasons cause we're focused so much on these little technical things that we weren't, we weren't talking as much about what needed to be talked about.

Speaker 2 (05:25):

And that is the behind the scenes, things that consistency, the routines that showing up every day, working the exact hours that you need, and then making sure you have your routines dialed in. So I started realizing this I'm like, dude, before we get in all the technical sales stuff, again, let's talk about what are you doing every day to show up? What are you doing everyday to be consistent in your morning routine and your evening routine in your hours knocked in your appointments booked. And that's the purpose of these KPIs, right? The key performance indicators is they help you see where the improvements need to be made. So for those that are training new teams, think about that. I think this is the number one thing for newer reps to take them from the couple deals a month to start closing four plus a month, because that's the thing that people don't talk about as much as they need to that.

Speaker 2 (06:27):

I see everyone wants to talk about the sexy sales techniques, the sexy closing lanes, the things that you can say on the door, what's the magic words that people are going to sign up instantly. But guess what if you're not putting in consistent hours, if you are not, if you don't have your Headspace dialed in, if you're not there mentally, if you're not following your routines, your morning routine, it's going to make it super tough to have success. Even if you are the world's greatest, closer, even if you know all the cool lanes, even if you know all the good stuff. If you read all of the sells books in the world, none of that matters if you can't be consistent. And if you can't do the small little things, day after day decree success, okay. And I brought these books up quite a few times in the podcast, but go read.

Speaker 2 (07:15):

I'm looking at it right now on my bookshelf. It's the slight edge and the compound effect. They talk about it. And there's a reason why those are two of the best. I would say personal development books that have been written because they're not talking about secret lines. They're just talking about being consistent, doing something small every day. And that's, what's going to create a massive results in your life. So think about that. What is the things, what are the things that you can do every day to create the mental space you want to get in? When I was at this knock star event, um, a couple of weeks back, we've been talking about it kind of all lately. Um, Taylor McCarthy, Danny Pessy two awesome, awesome guys in the door to door training industry. Um, they're changing the game of, for solar training. They got some great content, but I was at their mastermind event and they're in key west Florida.

Speaker 2 (08:15):

And this is something that Taylor McCarthy was talking about. He was telling us how he closed five deals in a day, all self-generated just him going out and knock. And he closed five in a day. And then he closed like 14 in the week. Um, yeah, all knocking himself, no leads, no setters, none of that. And someone was asking him like to, what did you do to create that? And the question he threw at us, he asked us to write down what our perfect day of knocking looks like. What's our knocking process in what he meant by that is, and this is a good exercise for, to go through. Um, if you have a notepad or something, it's be a great time to pause and write the answer to this down. Think back to the time when you had a massive day on the doors, massive day, closing to some of your most successful days, what were the things you did during that day?

Speaker 2 (09:17):

Okay. Maybe you haven't had a ton of success yet, but write them down. Think what were the routines you went through? How did you feel? What were the hours you worked make a checklist of those things. Okay. And this is something that Taylor had us do and kind of rate ourselves on. Okay. I'm sure you can notice a difference in the things you did on your days of massive success versus days where you didn't have much, much success. So notice those things. Did you take a, I dunno, ice bath that day? Did you do some meditation? Did you exercise? What type of food were you eating? How many hours did you work? Hey, some key things you can notice if you went through this exercise. Okay. And now start to think about, are you doing those things? Day after day, are you implementing falls? Little things that gave you the success that day, are those things that you implement in your day-to-day routine?

Speaker 2 (10:21):

Maybe so, maybe not. So what McCarthy told us is his perfect day and knocking looks like this, and this is how he, he got the five deals in a day, in 14 in a week. He said, guys, my perfect day of knocking is this nine 30 to 10. I knocked my first door. That's when I get out there before I get out, though I go in, I, yeah, my cooler full of ice. That's this trigger habit. Any of you have read, um, the power of habit. That's a great book as well, Charles Duhigg um, they talk about what are the triggers that you can put in a place for your habits. That's something to think about. So for those that are out knocking, what type of triggers do you have that can trigger you into knocking mindsets for Taylor McCarthy? He goes, and he fills up his cooler with ice.

Speaker 2 (11:15):

He goes to the gas station and then he gets all his drinks, his Gatorades. Cause he's not, he's not taking breaks to go, come back and go to gas stations. Right. He's gearing up for a full day and knocking. So from nine 30 to 10, before he's going to a gas station getting his ice. That's his trigger for his habit, which is getting out and knocking. So once he gets his ice, he knows, right? It's game time. That's his equivalent of like, I dunno, LeBron James chalking up his hands before the game, throwing it in the air. This is what Taylor McCarthy does. He gets his eyes. So I think what are, what's the key, what's the trigger you can put into place for when you're knocking for, when you're closing that can get you into that, right? Mindset can let your brain know. All right.

Speaker 2 (12:04):

It's time to go. Once I do this, that means it's time to go knock stem, to go close timing, to go work it because this job, as you know, you don't have people babysitting you. Lot of the times. There's a lot of people, a lot of solar guys out there that are getting out by themselves, much easier with the team, got respect for guys that are lone Wolf in it. But think of some trigger you can put into place. And then after that to McCarthy, he's hitting his first door from nine 30 to 10. And then from 10 to 12, he calls that just as like extra bonus time as bonus sales, anything he gets from 10 to 12 that's, um, just kind of icing on the cake. He's not necessarily expecting any deals, any, he closes from men, but he's going out there and he's just trying to talk to people.

Speaker 2 (12:58):

And then from what he does after that, he breaks it into, uh, quarters. And I guess it's not really for, I think he called them quarters, even though it's kind of three times thoughts. But instead of thinking, I'm knocking all day long, 10 to 12 is a bonus extra curricular time. 12 to three is his first quarter three to six is a second quarter and six to nine is his third quarter. And that's another pro tip right there. If you are knocking, um, you know, really any amount of time, make sure you break up your hours and it's something like that. The brain can manage quarters and little chunks of time, a lot better than it can. All right. We're going to be out here eight hours. That sounds pretty daunting. Right? So break it up into chunks. And that's what he does. That's his perfect day knocking every time there's a end of a quarter, 12 to three, he's going back to his car.

Speaker 2 (13:58):

He's getting a Gatorade, he's getting a snack, taking a little break. Okay. But he's not sitting in the car. He's not hanging out there. That's what he does. Okay. So the point of all this, make sure you have your perfect knocking day in place in the two-step framework is this number one, get a list of all the habits that are, um, contributing you, having success, write down exactly what your routines need to be. Write down the things that are helping you that have helped you have big days. And once you identify all of these habits, for example, you know, you craft your morning, your team, you exercise, you get out of bed at a specific hour, you do your meditation. This is what I talked about with my client. And then you make your green smoothie. It doesn't necessarily have to be these things, but these are just examples of things you can throw into your dailies habits.

Speaker 2 (14:55):

You can track. And then the other thing we put into place for my coaching student there is he wanted to be on the doors at one o'clock okay. Maybe it's different. Maybe your, maybe your goal is to just knock four hours for the day or go to X amount of appointments. But whatever your goal is, whatever you know is going to help you to have success. That's what you need to be tracking, measuring, and adjusting. So for my student, it was, he wanted to be on the doors by one, and then he wanted to be knocking until eight 30. Okay. So what we did is we assigned points to all these habits and all these things that he's trying to put into place because at the end of the day, he knew, he knew a lot of they close. It is a lot of the lines they say on the doors, but what he is missing and the reason he's not getting four plus deals in the month right now is because first he needs to get consistent with these things.

Speaker 2 (15:53):

First, he needs to get consistent with being out on the doors at a specific time with doing his perfect morning routine. Okay. And so if you're not closing four plus deals, or even if you are, this is a great exercise to go through, start tracking these habits, figure out what you're missing, write them all down and then assign a point value to them. That's what we've put into place. Okay. So maybe you're getting a point for waking up on time. Maybe you're getting a point if you're a green smoothie and then give yourself a couple of points for getting on the door as it can at a consistent time. And for him, it was, he wanted to talk to 15 homeowners in a day as he was out there. Cause that's what he can control. Right? He can't necessarily control how many appointments he books, but he can control how many people he talks to out there.

Speaker 2 (16:48):

Okay. So if you are for a rep or if you were training reps or even, yeah, if you are having success out there, go through this framework, all right. Write down the habits to things you want to be improving and then track them. Okay? This is something that every rep should do every week. Check these old things, give yourself points for them, make it a game, gain a guarantee. It's going to be something that increases the amount of cells, especially if you haven't tasted a ton of success yet, it's going to be the thing that if you are only closing one or two deals a month, just doing this, making this little change, tracking, measuring, adjusting, and seeing what's missing, that's going to be the number one thing. They can take you to four paws deals in a month. So try it, train your reps on it.

Speaker 2 (17:40):

Hey, let me know what you think. Share it with someone that's having trouble in their routines or being consistent and keep crushing out their hope. The end your summer is going awesome. Make sure they push super hard these months. Cause this one people are getting their high electric bills. Hope you enjoyed the episode. And next time don't miss out because we're going to have someone that is doing awesome things. His name's Dan Dunn. He is the CEO of harness power. It's a company that's, I think they're in four or five different states and his reps are doing awesome. He's doing awesome things in his company. So you're not gonna miss out on what he has to say next time on the Solarpreneur podcast. So keep crushing and we'll see you soon.

Speaker 3 (18:28):

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