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 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. online 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. Should you even go on vacations as a Solarpreneur?

Speaker 2 (00:45):

How should you prepare for your vacations and the best things you should be doing during your vacations? You take them. That's what we're going to be covering today. Interesting topic, something I've thought a lot about. So let's get into it. How are you? I'm Taylor Armstrong. We're back with another episode. We are changing lives. We're changing the solar industry. And thanks for being a listener of the show. Appreciate all you guys do to share the love, share the podcast and reach out to others who are needing help. So we're all about in the industry. And that's what I appreciate about seeing guys that I interact with in the industry is most people are super giving, super willing to help out. So pat yourself on the back for that. Okay. Before we jump into the topics today, wanting to give a quick update, if you haven't already heard, we are launching a full on, uh, on, on board training app training platform.

Speaker 2 (01:46):

It's called Solciety. If you haven't checked it out, he can go check it out as solciety.co. It's launching, uh, July 1st. So depending on when you're listening to this episode may already be out, but if not go check it out. It's going to have some dope features that you're not going to want to miss out on. And I think it's going to change the industry. Okay. And I'm not just saying that cause it's me on there. Guess what? It's not just me on there. Spoiler alert. The reason I'm saying it's going to change the industries because we're getting the best of the best all combined in one place. Okay. I know I can speak for myself. I know I got some awesome stuff to share with you all, but when you add to me with, um, you know, Taylor McCarthy with Jay Pez with, um, a lot of other guests, we have James Swiderski.

Speaker 2 (02:35):

A lot of other people we have that are going to be featured on the platform. That's where the magic happens. They were trying to bring the best of the best all at your fingertips. So you can literally be sitting on the toilet. You can be learning from the top guys in the industry. So go check it out, get yourself on the waiting list. We are actually currently doing Beta testing with about 20 people. We're getting some great feedback and we're excited to launch it to the public. And we're also also doing some enterprise deals. Yeah. Some stuff I can't talk about, but you're definitely going to want to be on the list and see the full features and everything when it comes out on July 1st. Hey, so, um, yeah. Anyways, check it out. And the reason that I'm bringing this as well as, because we actually have one of the experts, one of our, um, trainers featured on Solciety is on, um, the episode is on the podcast, I should say next episode.

Speaker 2 (03:39):

So what I meant to say, and that is Taylor McCarthy guys. This guy has some buyer, some money tips, some, some of the best content I've heard for solar guys. So don't miss out. He's next episode. So today I'm going to kind of demo a few things that he talks about the jams on, but, um, just be prepared, go listen. The next episode it's dropping on Friday, it's going to be some sweet stuff. So Taylor McCarthy he's with a Knockstar. We've talked about him. We had, um, Danny Pessy his partner in crime. He was on a while back Taylor McCarthy, he is like the ying to the yang. These guys are awesome. And so we're going to feature him. So let's jump into the topic today. A few things that, uh, Taylor talks about is, um, first of all, obviously we're talking about like vacations, should you take them?

Speaker 2 (04:33):

But another thing besides that, um, Taylor McCarthy, something that he does is this guy's big on social media. And he will literally like manifest his goals. He'll call them out. Um, he sold, it was some crazy number of roofs, Taylor McCarthy. He also he sold roofs, alarms he's pretty much sold at all. But he tells this story about when he manifested the number of roofs he was going to sell. I think it was like a hundred roofs in a week. I don't know something and saying, and he puts it on social media. He says, Hey, how many do you guys think I can sell a hundred roofs in a week? Yes or no. He got the feedback. And then once people voted the yes or no, he used this as fuel to inspire all the people that voted. No, he takes a screenshot of this, puts it as a background on his phone.

Speaker 2 (05:24):

And then he's looking at this every probably, I don't know, hour of the day, just using this as few, holds it in the fire, be like, yo, I'm going to prove these idiots wrong. I'm going out. I'm closing a hundred roof deals in a week and he does it. So that's something I thought he was. Yeah. He had some awesome advice on is guys. If, especially if you're that, that type of person, you can use your heaters as fuel, try something like that, go out and make a social media post. See how many people challenge you see how many people say you're not going to do it. Use that as fuel, prove those people wrong, prove them wrong. It's that's a money tip. You're right there. The reason I'm saying that though is because, um, at the time of this, I am going on a little trip next week, going to Lake Powell.

Speaker 2 (06:18):

Um, that's in Utah, Arizona, if you guys have been there, probably the coolest lake, I would say in the world, you got there's cliffs. You can jump off of you get a houseboat. Um, I know like Sam Taggart he's as retreats there with his, um, door to door game. He'll do like leadership retreats and stuff there. Todd Peterson, he actually has a houseboat. He'll take a lot of the Vivian guys there. And um, a lot of door to door guys know about it. So I'm going there next week. Usually try to go there, um, in the summer. Um, but the way this all correlates is because trips are something I've really struggled with. Um, and anyone that's an entrepreneur, that's a Solarpreneur. I think you can probably relate in solar. We're not really making money for on a trip, right? Unless you're closing virtual, which that's cool.

Speaker 2 (07:09):

But lake Powell, I mean, I'm out there with basically no service. So ain't no close and virtual really for me out there. And let's be honest when we're on vacations, I want to enjoy the vacation. Okay. I don't want to be necessarily doing sales calls all day long, which maybe I differ in viewpoints with some people, but that's my line of thought. I want to enjoy the vacation. I want to go all out. I want to be a hundred percent in the vacation. Okay. And enjoying myself. Not to say you can't do other things, which I'll talk about here in a second, but what sh what should you do before the vacation? Okay. You should do. In my opinion, you should go all out. You should try to close as many deals as possible. You should do something like Taylor. McCarthy does make a social media post, get some haters, but go all out.

Speaker 2 (08:02):

Hey and the reason I do this. I say this is because when I started in pest control, I went on a vacation. I remember, I think I went on a cruise with my family and anyone that's doing the summer grind summer sales, you know, that summer vacations, it's basically a negative. Like you don't go on vacations. It's going to kill yourselves. But the reason that kills yourselves is because what happens with guys? What happened to me especially is probably about the three, four days before vacation. Guess what? I let my guard down. I said, okay, um, I'm going to check out mentally. I know I'm going on a cruise. Yeah. My head's not in it. So I'll just take it easy. I'll just coast. Get a few cells and be good. So three, four days before my numbers went, way down, didn't sell as much.

Speaker 2 (08:52):

Then obviously I'm in the, in the, on the cruise ship, on the vacation, you know, not making money. And then I get back. And especially first year ups, I had to basically relearn the pitch, um, relearn the door presentation and get back into the flow of it. So it takes me of the three, four days to get back to what my numbers were. So if you do the math on that, that's three, four days before the trip, three, four days after the trip, that's eight days basically of reduced selling. I've taken to adjust back into things and then that's a week on the trip. So you add that up. Now, all of a sudden that one week, it's a little worse, right? Well, that's 15 days. We're talking now. So this is the problem with vacations. And this is the problem I've always had. It's so hard to get back into things.

Speaker 2 (09:45):

And it's so easy to let your mind slip. It's so easy to not push as hard if before you went on the trip, especially in solar, it's like, oh, I don't need to go out and knock because, um, yeah, I'm going to be gone. So there's no point in setting up an appointment. Right? That's been my mindset at times in solar do so how do we overcome that again? Do a Throwdown like what Taylor McCarthy is talking about, do a challenge on social media and instead of taking the days before the trip to slow down, speed up. Yeah. That's what I've seen. The truly successful people do in this industry. There's lots of guys in this industry that take tons of vacations. And I used to think, oh, you can't take a vacation. You're never going to be successful. Some of the top guys, I know at like vivant, solar managers, they're taking more vacations probably than anyone.

Speaker 2 (10:36):

Um, but they're making more money than anyone I'm like, how are these guys doing it? And this is how they don't let trips become a thing where it's taken them 15 days or eight days to, you know, wind back into things. And their sales are slowing down before the trip. No, none of that. They're pushing extremely hard before they're closing tons of deals. Okay. I talked to my buddy, uh, Matt Crowder. He's um, he's been on the show. He's a district manager, Vivant Solar doing tons of deals. I remember we went to door to door con, um, we're hanging out a door to door con this last time. And he says, Taylor, yeah. Luckily I closed three deals before I came out here. There was like two days, you know, that he had to sell before he came out and go door to door con.

Speaker 2 (11:23):

And I'm like, dang, man, I didn't even, yeah, I didn't close any. I mean, I was actually gone the week before that too. But how many times have you been on trip? You didn't close any the week before you went on trip or you didn't get the results you wanted. This is what has to change. If you're going to go on a vacation, have it be something that you push extremely hard, you get a ton of deals lined up and you give yourself a shot at closing a boatload of deals before you go on a boat. That's what I'm doing, baby. I'm going to go on a houseboat and I want to close a boatload before I leave. So my goal this week is, um, I've got Monday and Tuesday. Um, it's when I'm recording this, I'm leaving on a Wednesday. So my goal is I want to close three deals before I leave.

Speaker 2 (12:13):

Okay. And I mean, I'm doing everything I can control. Okay. I know these people. I can't like, you know, for some, the sign up, I'm going to hear everything I possibly can. Everything that I possibly can, but what I did, I stacked my schedule. Okay. So I knew I want to close three deals. What's my closing ratio. How many deals do I honestly need to set up to give myself the best shot at that? For me, I've closed between 40 to 50% of the appointments I sit in. So that means I need to set up at least six appointments to have a good shot at closing. Right? So you need to be doing the math in your head to, if you have a goal, if you know you're leaving on a vacation, how many deals do you need to close before you leave? And then what's the math on that.

Speaker 2 (12:59):

Okay. I knew that what that math was, I knew when I was leaving. So I said, okay, Monday and Tuesday, I need to stack these appointments. It can't be, um, yeah, I mean, close same day deals, but I would rather just have my schedule stacked. I don't have to worry about, um, setting anything up. I can just go to these appointments, give myself the best shot at closing them. That's what I'm doing. I got a six appointments doctor in the next two days, and I know I have a good shot at closing, three of these bad boys. So do the math. Okay. And that's what I wanted to say is before you go on a trip, use that as fuel to push hard, use it as an incentive. Okay? Just envision the trip. How much more enjoyable is it going to be? If you know, you just closed out a handful of deals before you left on the trip and trust me, it is way more enjoyable.

Speaker 2 (13:51):

If you know, you got money coming in the bank. If you know you close deal before it trips are way more enjoyable. Okay? So that's what you do. And then as far as like during the vacation, that's another thing is for us, for us Solarpreneurs, it's tough to turn off. Okay. It's tough to turn our brains off. We want to be making money. We want to be feeling like we're improving. And that's something that I've struggled with too, is I just feel like I'm on a vacation. I can't, what am I doing? I'm not making money. It's tough to like, I'm not growing necessarily. But get rid of that mindset. You can grow in other ways though. So I talked about using, use the trip for other things, such as relationships. You don't need to be working a hundred percent in the trip.

Speaker 2 (14:45):

You shouldn't be working, you know, the same way you were before, but use it to focus on other things I've talked with a lot of successful people that, um, have, you know, thoughts on that. Like work-life balance. If it's a myth and what all these guys are saying is you work in seasons, K you there's no balance. Right? And we did an episode on this recently, but balance, it's a myth. Hey, they're seasons. So you push hard. And that's what I'm talking about. You push hard before a trip and then your balance is shifting. You're not working. Then what you should you be focusing on? You should be pushing hard towards those relationships. If for me, I'm married, sin, something I'm trying to improve on. I'm definitely not perfect. I struggle with them. Yeah. Not giving my wife enough attention. So you can go give her a shout out if you want.

Speaker 2 (15:38):

Tell her, sorry for me not giving her enough attention. But this is something that I'm trying to improve on is use these trips as seasons to improve my relationships, improve my relationships with my friends, with my family. And then number two, using, uh, using your vacations for learning too. Okay. I always bring a good book. Bring your audio books. You're not reading the whole time, but I just got done with 75 hard where you read, uh, the 10 pages every day. Okay. In my trips, I try to read at least 20 pages. So you use it as education. And that's how, for me, as a Solarpreneur, as an entrepreneur, that's how I get that part of my brain. That still feel like I'm making progress is I use it to, you know, improve my craft. I use it to learn new things that I can go back and implement right when I get back.

Speaker 2 (16:32):

So that's my thoughts on the vacations and Taylor McCarthy, he's going to talk more about his throwdowns. The vacations don't necessarily have to do with what we talked about, but I just got reminded of it because I'm going to be on a trip and Taylor McCarthy talks about his throwdowns. So go make sure you listen to the next episode. It's going to be lit. Share this with a friend, if you're going on a vacation. Okay. Remember those two things use it as fuel to push extremely hard to before you leave and then make sure you use your vacation time as the season to focus on your relationships and focus on yourself, improvements on your sales skills. Okay. Fuel that side of your brain too. So that's my thoughts. Let me know what you thought. Let me know if you guys have anything else that helps you as you're preparing to go on vacations, whereas you leave. And then remember when you get back, don't take forever to get back into it. Like I did push hard. When you get back, get your pipeline backflow and back full, and don't take forever to get back into the flow of yourself. Hope you enjoyed it. Listen to next episode. Love you guys. And we'll see you on the next one.

Speaker 3 (17:45):

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 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 solar learning community, exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with the top performers in the industry. And it's called Solciety. This learning community was designed from the ground up to level the playing field and give solar pros access to proven mentors who want to give back to this community and to help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry's brightest minds. For, are you ready for it? Less than $3 and 45 cents a day currently society's closed the public and membership is by invitation only, but Solarpreneurs can go to society.co to learn more and have the option to join a wait list. When a membership becomes available in your area. Again, this is exclusively for Solarpreneur listeners. So be sure to go to www.solciety.co to join the waitlist and learn more now. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you again in the next episode.

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 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. online 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. I'm sure here to help you change the

Speaker 2 (00:45):

World by closing more deals, generating more leads and dominating the solar industry. How are you? I hope you're doing awesome. Hope. You're gearing up for the summer and getting ready to close deals galore. You should be doing already. If you're listening to this podcast, because this is where we drop that knowledge. This is where we get you on the right track to hit your goals and crush your outcomes that you want in the solar industry. It's been nice connecting with people. Um, I've said it before in a few episodes, but hit me up on social media, trying to be a little more active there. Um, so it's Instagram, it's Taylor J Armstrong. Um, Facebook, just Taylor Armstrong go shoot me a fall. Send me a message. I've been enjoying hearing from some of our listeners and just connecting with my solar printer peeps. That's what we're trying to do is create a community and it's been awesome just hearing from people.

Speaker 2 (01:44):

Um, another thing is we're looking for topics that people could use some help on guests that we, uh, want on the show. So anyone you would like to hear on the show or specific topics, send me a message. We got some great feedback on, um, some potential topics coming up. Um, just last week, someone sent me a message. They're struggling with negative reviews, online, losing deals because of that. Um, so we're going to do an episode soon on that. Anything you can think of, it's much, much appreciated. I'm sharing. What's helping me, I'm sharing, what's helping our team. I'm sharing what I'm hearing. That's helping other teams. But if you guys have specific problems or issues that you're facing, I would love to hear about it. Shoot me a message, shoot me a fall. And let's connect that being said, let's jump into the episode today.

Speaker 2 (02:36):

I want to talk about why you should treat every objection as only a complaint. Okay? So those that have listened to grant Cardone at all, this might sound somewhat familiar. He talks about this kind of a lot. If you've read the closer survival survival guide, this is actually one of the top 10 reasons that closers fell is they treat objections, um, or they handle objections that are only complaints rather. So what does he mean by that? At first, when I first heard that I was a little bit confused and the reason I'm actually doing this topic today is because I have a few experiences that happened last week. One was where I treated an objection, um, with, uh, with too much legitimacy, I treated, um, the objection more serious than I should've and the other one, whereas I, where I did treat it as a complaint and got two different outcomes, pretty interesting reminded me of why it's important.

Speaker 2 (03:41):

So that's what I want to share with you. But before we get to that, I want to actually read what uncle G grant Cardone has to say about the topic. So if you haven't read this book, I would highly recommend it closer survival guide. I've talked about it a lot on the show. Some things apply to solar more than others, but specifically the, um, like just, you know, general tips on closing everything. I think most of this stuff applies. The closes. They go a little aggressive and I've will say I've tried. Um, a lot of them in solar, some definitely work better than others. Some are a little aggressive. Haven't gotten me great results, gotten people, a little annoyed and everything, but grant Cardone, he has some good tips. So let's jump into it. Let's hear what he has to say. So if you look in the book, this is number eight.

Speaker 2 (04:33):

Um, it's the number eight reason why closers fell. So he says sales people unfortunately have been taught to handle objections for years that are not objections at all, but just merely complaints of all the sales books I've read. I've never seen this issue distinguished over years of research, I learned that most so-called objections from the client are not actually objections at all, but just simple complaints that people automatically make throughout life. So his rule is treat all objections as complaints until further validated. This honestly is one thing that's changed the way I sell a hundred percent and I've seen it time and time again, especially if you're knocking doors, that's basically the definition of a smoke screen, right? How many times have you knocked a door? First thing right off the bat. There's not interested. Um, you're the 10th guy here. Those are complaints. They're not projections be treated as an objection.

Speaker 2 (05:29):

Then you've already lost, especially at the beginning, it's a smoke screen, right? So you got to treat all of those as complaints. I just think of, I have a kid now he's 19 months now. And this kid will freak out. Sometimes when he doesn't get what he wants tonight, he was, um, screaming. He wanted to a Go-Gurt. We put our Go-Gurts in the freezer, some delicious stuff right there, but he's freaking out. He's not taking no for an answer. He wants a Go-Gurt. These kids are aggressive, but if you treat those as complaints, then it's going to go away. But if I validate it, I give them what he wants. It's gonna keep on happening. You're feeding that addiction, you're feeding what they want. So this is something that's very important. Um, especially on the doors, in the clothes in grant kernel. And he goes on to say, most of the time, the closer is handling a complaint that never required more than I understand.

Speaker 2 (06:29):

When you treat a complaint like an objection, you validate it and turn it into something that is, is not the more you validate it and handle it. The more real, the more solid and significant it will become to everyone. The first thing I do when I hear what appears to be an objection is treat it like a complaint until further validated as a real objection. And if it is a legitimate objection, you will know as soon enough, because when you try to handle as only a complaint, your prospect will make it clear that this is more than that. But trust me, most of what you hear in the clothes are not objections. They're just mere comments or complaints, no different than someone commenting on the weather. Boom. So there you have it. That's what grant Cardone says about this. So I want to tell a few experiences that happened to me last week.

Speaker 2 (07:15):

Um, the first one was I was knocking doors neighborhood here in Escondido, California, I'm knocking. And then I get to this home where it's, um, single lady answers the door and she's listened to my door presentation. I'm going through it. Um, I'm thinking, all right, this is a booked appointment, no doubt. A hundred percent. And then what happens about midway through the presentation? She hits me with, oh, you know what? I've got food on. I've got food cooking. I'm kind of busy. Um, can we hurry this up? Or can you come back? And then immediately I just jumped to, oh, I'm super busy, which is good. You know, I kind of flipped the script on her said, oh yeah, no worries. I actually need to get to a bunch of your neighbors. I'm busy too. And then I try to go back into it. But what happened for whatever reason I let this complaint get in my head so much.

Speaker 2 (08:10):

I treated as an objection. And I, I got so psyched out for whatever reason. I'm just like in my head, I'm like, oh, she doesn't have time, better. Hurry this up. I start speed in through the rest of my presentation. Guess what? She listened to me for another, probably two minutes. And I got through everything and it was obvious. She actually had times you stepped out. She's still listening to me. But what I did, I just psych myself out. I told myself that she was busy, even though I kept talking. And I said, uh, you know what? Um, yeah, so I, I got to run to a few homeowners, but let me come back. Um, tomorrow, I'll try to get you guys tomorrow. And I just like stumbled through it. Stuttered. I don't know what happened. Just had a mental breakdown on the doors. And I turned this complaint into an actual objection that she didn't have time.

Speaker 2 (09:03):

I didn't let her validate it. That's the key with these things. If people validate it, guess what's going to come up again. If she said, oh, I'm dizzy. I kept going, which is good. And it didn't come back up. So I already validated in my head what she didn't validate herself. If he was truly busy, she would know like, really I got food on the stove. I got to go right now. Okay. And that's a tough one. Obviously, if people really are busy, not a whole lot, you can do. But the point of it was she wasn't busy. I mean, she was maybe a little busy, but she wasn't busy enough to stop listening to me. Right that second. So I was mad. I lost that appointments. I didn't book it. And then yeah, I was kicking myself the rest of the night had that mental breakdown.

Speaker 2 (09:50):

So that was the first experience I had. I treated it as a foreign objection when it wasn't. So that's the negative, here's the positive experience I had though, this actually kind of finished today. And this experience was I closed the deal last week, the homeowner was, um, psyched to go solar at someone. I followed up with a gay couple, super excited him and his partner to get solar up there. And during the presentation, he actually mentioned that yet another quote, and it was cheaper than mine. I'm out here in California. We sell high, you get these inexperienced companies that basically don't have cells, or they'll just send out, you know, bottom of the barrel quotes. Just try to win people over. So luckily I know how to sell. I know how to build value my product. I told them about our product, our warranties, um, and they had, frankly, just, you know, misquoted them had no idea how much energy use using, just throw out some generic quo, which was weird.

Speaker 2 (10:51):

So I kind of like brushed over it and I treated it as a complaint. Okay. I didn't like put that much time into it just because I knew I've already built the relationship with this guy. He trusts me. I'm just gonna, you know, brush over it. Show him a few things of value. Why we're different. Hey, I showed them that we were given a better interest rate, a couple of things. And I had already, I already knew his needs, so it was no big deal. Okay. Um, but what happened was he reached out today and guess what? He further validated that complaint. So now it was an actual objection. Yeah. He said, Taylor, I'm still like, I'm confused. Like why was there so much cheaper and then, okay. I know. Okay. He actually had, he has an actual objection. Now I need to go through it.

Speaker 2 (11:40):

Now I need to see what's going on. Now. I need to overcome this objection. So I had already closed them. He came back to me. Luckily I built the trust with him. I got to know him and his, uh, partner. And it was all good. And he trusted me. I overcame his objections. I again showed them that we're given a superior product that we're giving him a better term that he wanted because he was looking to just get as cheap as possible monthly. So we gave him the 25 year term where the other people, they gave him a 10 year term with a higher interest rate. So I really just broke down his needs. I said, Maurice, this is what you're getting. You told me you wanted to pay as little monthly as possible. Right? Cool. So this is why we're doing this. This is why we're giving you the number of panels.

Speaker 2 (12:26):

And I really gave them an apples to apples comparison. I broke it down now, fully overcame his objection and then boom. He trusts me after that and had no more issues with it. And he called me in, didn't even bring it up after that, but it just goes to show, I didn't treat it as a full on objection in the presentation. Okay. And even though I could have made a big deal about it, I couldn't even after he came back to me with it, I just gave him what he needed to knew, need to know about it. I didn't keep bringing it up in the call because I sent him an email for a few texts. Just explaining it. Then when we had a call after that, I didn't say, Hey, here's why we're here. XYZ. I had already overcame that objection. So don't keep bringing things up.

Speaker 2 (13:15):

I think newer reps, especially we get in the tendency, um, or when I was new, I got in the habit of just like immediately dropping price. If people got cheaper, quote, how would immediately drop price? If people were hesitant, I immediately dropped price. People didn't want to sign today. A drop price. That's a problem. People just want to drop, drop, drop, drop, drop price, learn how to sell, build value, write them out. If you haven't done that. This is a great exercise. Write out all the specific things that you can do in your company to build value. And it's going to help you because guess what? Most people don't know how to sell. There's a lot of solar guys that aren't listening to this podcast that don't know these things that are going to be much weaker sales guys. So go share the podcast with them so they can learn not to give you more competition.

Speaker 2 (14:04):

But the truth is, if you are listening to this right now, you are most likely, much more committed than a lot of average sales reps out there. You were taking your learning seriously. You are trained to improve and that's, what's going to get you there. If you learn to treat these objections as only complaints, if you've learned to build value, it's going to be a game changer. So don't make the mistakes. I made a don't be on the doors, treating these time things, treating every little word that comes out of the customer's mouth, the homeowner's mouth as fallen objections, learn from my mistakes. And when you are in your closes, same thing. If people have a cheaper quote, don't draw price, figure out what's going on with it, figure out what product and you be, the expert, you be the one to educate them, know your product, differences, know how you can build value. And that's going to help you have success in industry and close deals. So I hope this helped go out and share it with someone that could use that tip of the day, gay and go read closer survival guide. It's a good book. Go look up point number eight in the top 10 reasons closers spell. Let me know what you think of this episode. Hit me up on social media and we will see you on the flip side.

Speaker 3 (15:20):

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 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 solar learning community, exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with the top performers in the industry. And it's called Solciety. This learning community was designed from the ground up to level the playing field and give solar pros access to proven mentors who want to give back to this community and to help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry's brightest minds. For, are you ready for it? Less than $3 and 45 cents a day currently society's closed the public and membership is by invitation only, but Solarpreneurs can go to society.co to learn more and have the option to join a wait list. When a membership becomes available in your area. Again, this is exclusively for Solarpreneur listeners. So be sure to go to www.solciety.co to join the waitlist and learn more now. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you again in the next episode.

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

Speaker 1 (00:00:03):

Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and 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. online 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

Speaker 2 (00:00:42):

And we're back here with another episode, and we're doing a little bit different format. If you heard the previous one, we've got a special guests back on the show. So let us know what you think of these kind of debate style topics. Um, so we've got James back on what's up, James? Thanks for coming back on the show with us. Oh yeah. It was a blast a couple of days ago. I do want to say this though. We are going to get better at this format. So we're learning a lot already from the last episode I watched it again last night, I was like, all right, I got to shut up more. I've got to ask Taylor some more interesting questions and not try to jump on everything. Like I like to. So I'm going to try to chill back a little bit. And then one of the things I think we wanted to implement was a kind of more formalized questions, like a real deal debate, where we each get a chance to respond on specific topics.

Speaker 2 (00:01:39):

I think we both liked it. And one of my favorite debates was the, was the Trump debates. Did you watch back bowls back in 2016? I've studied the crap out of those man. Yeah. That's a masterclass in persuasion, man. That was good stuff. And for me it was just more the entertainment factor. Cause I love Trump just ripping Hillary apart and a corner and nasty women and all that, even though I kind of felt bad. Well, that's why he's a master at it, dude. It's like it's comedy plus insulting. The other party it's like dangerous, but I know, but what I thought was interesting too is Trump. Um, they went back and analyzed this debate in Trump. If you watch him, he uses like very simple language. He's not using sophisticated words. So I was reading study over and over basically the point in very simple language. What was it like? Uh, he always had like demeaning ones, like crooked Hillary. Was that it? Yeah. And then he had lion, Ted remember lion Ted for Ted Cruz. So you would get like they're like, Lion Ted came up like nicknames for him. Like that's all they say it's yeah. Anyway, we're not doing that. We're not gonna take shots at each other, but who knows crooked James right crooked James lion lion.

Speaker 2 (00:03:01):

So, no, we're probably won't get that hardcore. Um, I'm probably gonna not attack James personally or anything like that, but we we'll try to give our interests shoot for it, dude. This one's going to be spicy though. I think today is a spicy topic because last time both you and I, it wasn't a real debate. I mean, come on. We agreed way too much on the last one. It was like, Hey, get good at offline then do online. If you want to this one though, this is a different, this is a different animal. Yeah. One. I'm curious to hear what you have to say on this one. Because on the last show we did, I pretty much knew what your side of the story was, what your take, but this one I'm a little bit more in the dark. So I'm curious to know what you have to say.

Speaker 2 (00:03:43):

Um, but yeah, the debate today we were talking about work, life balance, um, can exist. Can it be attained? Should you even have balance? So we got some juicy questions we're going to go over and yeah, I think we're just going to go to the questions I'm going to say kind of my side, what I think in James I'm sure. You'll challenge me. Sure. I'll have some stuff to say about what you're throwing down. So yeah, that's, we're going through. So should we jump into the questions or anything like that? So let's review what the topics are. So question number one. Um, what is it the belief about work-life balance that you have within solar and then what principles do you adopt for it? So that's question one, question two. What do you think is required to have success in the industry? Right. For most people, general statement and then three, what would you advise to someone who is struggling with worth work-life balance?

Speaker 2 (00:04:39):

Solar reps, managers, CEOs, all of the above. So that's going to be more tactic based. Like how would you actually improve your work ethic? Things like that. Yeah. Okay. Good stuff. So, yeah, I'm excited to hear what your take is on all these things. So what do you mean first? Your podcast? Taylor, question one, man. What is your belief about work-life balance and principles that you adopt with solar? All right. Okay. Let's jump into it. So here's my take on this. Um, basically what I've seen in solar is you got to have seasons. And what I mean by seasons is there's going to be ups and downs, and there's gonna be times where you're pushing super hard. And there's going to be times where you're taking breaks, where you're not pushing as hard. And I think it's a little bit different than, um, the summer sales guys everyone's heard the summer sells.

Speaker 2 (00:05:30):

You go out, you do pest control, you do alarms. But solar, as a lot of us are with year round. We're doing this 12 months out of the year. Um, it's a full-time thing. So when I see the top guys in the industry, they're not, I mean, we're not all knocking 12 hour days like these alarm guys, um, we're, you know, we're coming at it more strategic I'm knocking usually anywhere from four to six hours. Just depends. So, um, I say seasons because you look at these big companies, like the Vivid Solars, the Sun Runs the, all these big ones. These guys they're being super consistent, but they're having ups and downs. I see these top guys, they're taking time off. Like for example, Vivid, Solar, they have their, I think it's every six months, every three months, something like that. They have their huge competitions and they have their guys go insanely hard for, um, I don't know, a month, six weeks, whatever it may be.

Speaker 2 (00:06:31):

And they're all pushing each other as a team, they're all going out there, their work, maybe they're working 12 hour days for that, um, six weeks or for that month, they're pushing super hard. But then even the top guys, after that, they got to have a cool-down period. So it's like, you're pushing so hard. They're um, you know, working way harder than they normally would. They're getting a ton of results and then they're going on a trip after, or they're cooling down. And I even talked to some of them, um, a lot of them, once these big competitions start, they go to their wives and they're like, Hey honey, I'm, um, I'm gearing up for this competition. Do I have your permission to throw it down super hard because they know that for the next month or whatever, they're not, they're not going to see much of their wife.

Speaker 2 (00:07:13):

So they literally have to go get permission from their wives or girlfriends or whatever to not see them. So that's the way I look at it. It's just like solar, you got to have the seasons with it. And also it depends on, you know, kind of your goals. Are you trying to be just, you know, make tons of money. Maybe you don't even have wife, kids or anything like that yet. So also I think it depends on all our, on your goals. What are you trying to achieve? And I'm sure you'll get into this, but for me, it's all about having those seasons. I know that, yeah. There's going to be times maybe a month. I'm going to go insane. The hard when it closed a lot of deals, but then I got to have my balance back for a little bit. And then maybe it's going to shift towards more of my family because I got to catch back up.

Speaker 2 (00:07:56):

And yeah, I really respect a lot of entrepreneurs like Russell Brunson. Um, a lot of these big entrepreneurs, I think they preach a lot of the same things when they're launching books, when they're launching big projects coming out, same thing, they're working, you know, 15 hour days and just going extremely hard. But then they're going on trips and taking a vacation, stuff like that after how would you, I have a question on your thing. So how would you summarize your work work-life balance belief in like one sentence? Is it sprinting and then rest refuel, sprint refuel. Yeah, I think it's sprint. And then, um, I don't want to say rests because unless you have like a trip or something plans, I don't think you're like, I mean, you're not going to like rest always by being in sprints and then trots, maybe. So it's like sprint and then cool down sprint and then cool down.

Speaker 2 (00:08:52):

Cause you so not like completely off is what you're for a rest period. It's you're still kind of, yeah. I mean, I think yeah. Plan trips and stuff like that. So if you're going extremely hard, I think it is a good idea to plan like a trip or something after go get away for a weekend. So in that case, yeah, rest, but maybe you're doing like a mini sprint for a week and then maybe it's, um, you know, you're only knocking through three or four hours a day of the next week. You're going to a trot. So yeah, I think be consistent, whatever you're doing and plan the trips plan, the vacations. Um, I mean, yeah. Plan your schedule. If you know, you want to have the date night with the wife, this is something we just had a guest on the podcast, Ashton Buswell.

Speaker 2 (00:09:35):

And he said his biggest leg con one of his biggest accomplishments he's helped other people achieve in solar is he's taught them to schedule out like a date night every Friday with their wife. So he, he just literally listened to his interview before our thing today. That's freaking hilarious. I've listened to him because he's a work, he's a workhorse. So I was curious what his opinion was. Yeah, yeah. So yeah. I respect guys like that. I mean he's pushing insanely hard sometimes, but he says like, no matter what's he's always having what's important to him also scheduled out in advance. The, I think it's like that. Um, sprints. No, when your sprints are no, when your wrists are, but yeah. Should always be planned and then have those times where you're pushing hard. It shouldn't be always just, you know, doing the minimum work to get minimum results.

Speaker 2 (00:10:23):

If you're just closing one deal week after week, you shouldn't be happy with that. But I think plan for some sprints and plan to get extreme results too. And that's gonna bring you fulfillment. So that's my take care. So salt. We're not, we're not a hundred percent off on those to be honest. No, that was a surprising answer. I was expecting more Tim Ferriss, four hour workweek answer. Now. That's good. I agree with the sprints thing, for sure. It's funny. I think of you as the Tim Ferriss four hour workweek, just cause you talk about the, you've talked about the book a lot, but what you actually practice is not necessarily the stigma. Yeah, well, no, I do like that too. And you we've talked off camera. That's why I hire like an assistant and everything because yeah, trust me at the end of the day, I want to work, you know, usually as little as possible and get the max results, but I enjoy what I do do.

Speaker 2 (00:11:19):

I like being on the podcast. So cool. So you want to answer the question? Do you want me to go? No, you got to say my take on this work-life balance is I'm not going to attack. Should you be working all the time? Should you be, uh, balancing all the time? If that's a thing, whatever that you call it, I'm going to attack the concept and the idea of work-life balance and why? I think it's flawed. I actually think the idea of, oh, I'm trying to live a more balanced, wholesome life, right? I'm trying to be balanced in all these areas. I think that's flawed. And it's been number one killer of people's success, especially in solar. So I'm not against what Taylor's saying necessarily. I'm against the idea of work-life balance that we have in our society today. Right? Um, I think our society, we can all agree with this, right.

Speaker 2 (00:12:12):

Society has gotten a lot more soft PC people getting banned on social media for talking about stuff. Trump gets banned for six months on Twitter for talking about things, right? Like world's change of getting pretty weird with stuff, right. And in general, like people have become a lot more, whatever I'm going to use the term weak-willed. Okay. Um, I was listening to, uh, another podcast the other day. Uh Valuetainment podcasts, one of my mentors, Patrick Bet-David, as the host of that. And he was talking about how the military is adopting a new concept. And I can't remember what it's called, but basically they're taking away the tools and strategies they would use to basically tough enough soldiers, get them used to rejection and pressure where they're drill sergeants will literally go in. And, um, anybody who's been in the military and has stories about that knows anybody who's been in there, right.

Speaker 2 (00:13:09):

You literally day one boots on the ground, the drill sergeants are just demeaning. Right? Just swearing at you, just going off on. Right. Just hard. Just trying to like break you down. Right? So the military is literally getting rid of this as we speak right now with soldiers, which I completely think is a terrible idea. Um, I did have quite a few family members who served as well. And they're just like, dude, that that goes against everything. Cause it's what are we incentivizing? We're incentivizing soft, weak type of culture. And I think in general right now, um, the reason we have so many problems with anxiety, uh, substance abuse, alcoholism, uh, porn addiction, uh, you freaking name it, right? Anxiety is at an all time high. And if I look at the stat here, I looked this up. So 40 million adults in the us age is 18 and you're 18 or older.

Speaker 2 (00:14:03):

And over 18% of the population is diagnosed with some sort of common mental illness like anxiety and these stats. This was not existence 40, 56 years ago, right back in the forties and fifties when our grandparents lived. And Taylor, how old are your, uh, are your grandparents alive? Still? Yeah. They're still kicking there. Uh, yeah, I think they're late seventies. Yeah. What is your grandparents do like for living like your grandpa? Um, one grandpa was a music professor, Utah state, um, go Aggies and then the other one was a dentist. So dentist. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know if the conversations you've had with them, what they go like, but I can tell you with both of my grandparents. So one grandparent, he was an entrepreneur, a very successful on a couple of eight figure companies. One was an electrician, um, and talking to both of them, these guys worked like a hundred hours a week, like their entire life until they retired in their seventies.

Speaker 2 (00:15:09):

Right. Um, that's the kind of culture I grew up with and my dad adopted the same thing. I grew up watching my dad be out the door, working at 6:00 AM and get back at 8:00 PM, six days a week. Right. So it's like, that's kind of how I grew up. That's what I'm used to. So when I come from that background, like obviously that experience is familiar to me, right? So I think the, uh, the concept of like the 40 hour work week, the work-life balance is more of a cop out and an excuse to not put in the effort to realize their fullest potential. And I believe that my theory is that most mental illnesses, um, unhappiness, anxiety, depression, divorce, things like that are all caused because people are not realizing their fullest potential. And this 40 hour work week type of setup is to blame.

Speaker 2 (00:16:05):

So that's my big idea on this. Um, so what do you think about, yeah. Yeah. I think, I think I agree with that, but like for someone in the solar industry, let's say someone's starting out. Um, like, would you tell them if they're thinking of doing this like full-time career or whatever, would you tell them, Hey, go out and work like 40 hour weeks? Or would you have them? I dunno, maybe go easy in and like, just do like a 20 hour week. What, what would you tell a new guy starting out? Like, do you think someone's going to get burned out by doing 40 hour weeks in solar, say they're hitting doors are doing, you know, going out and doing this prospecting quite the opposite, quite the opposite. Here's the problem I see. And why people are not successful in solar. I've coached several hundred directly.

Speaker 2 (00:16:54):

One-on-one solar reps to whether it's under my own company, whether it's people are Solarpreneurs. So I've done this quite a bit. I can tell you that the reason solar reps are unsuccessful is not because they burn out. It's almost never going to be because they work too hard. Okay. Can we both agree on that? That sales reps are not going to fail because they work too hard. Have you ever seen this? I've never seen this man. There's some lazy reps, right? But it's like, dude, nobody, it's such a small percentage of people that end up burning out. I hate the term burnout. I'll never use it except for on this podcast for this example. But anytime you see someone searching like, oh, what if I get burned out? Or aren't you afraid of burn out? I would say like one out of 10 people actually experienced burnout and the other ones, they just need a quick two, three hour refresh break, get back in the game, get re-energized on their goals.

Speaker 2 (00:17:54):

What are they doing things for my case, for the sales rep thing to get back to this, I think every person who is new to sales, working on a commission basis, um, they need to get a little bit of a taste and glimpse of what they're really capable of as a, as a human being. Okay. We're living in such a fraction of our potential as humans. I don't know. You know how we only use like 40% of our brain, right? We've heard this study. Yeah. Something like that. I think that applies to everything. Uh, Tim Grover, right? Relentless guy. He talks about how in that? No, it's David Goggins. Sorry. He talks about how, when you think you're done and your brain's telling you, you're tired to throw in the towel. You're only 40% of your capacity. 40%. Okay. That story we tell ourselves of, ah, I should just take it easy.

Speaker 2 (00:18:46):

Maybe I should just go call it a day. It's five o'clock on a Friday. Today's Friday. We're recording this it's five o'clock on a Friday. Maybe I shouldn't knock doors or maybe I should take Saturday off because it's, you know, we're good to go. That's cool. If that's what makes you happy. But if you're just accepting that belief, because that's what mom and dad told you, that's what society has told you at the 40 hour work week. You're never going to get to see what you're capable of. So my advice to the rep, the diagnosis from Dr. James here is doctor to go and give everything you possibly can for a time period, set a week set a month. I don't care what it is and go balls to the walls. I'm talking as hard as you freaking can literally push yourself to the brink of failure.

Speaker 2 (00:19:38):

Okay. And that is when you're going to recalibrate what you're actually capable of. What is your work ethic actually capable of? First time I did, this was I believe in high school. Right? So again, grew up with a super hard work ethic to begin with. But I played trumpet in high school, did a lot of competitions. And I remember my dad literally sat me down and he said, Hey, like he had this talk with me about work ethic. They talked about capabilities. Like, what is your actual capability as a person? And he challenged me to do this, like for a month to get into a, it was like a statewide competition thing. Right. Um, and I didn't believe I could, I was uncomfortable with it. He said, just go with it until the competition and see if you could do it. Just go all out.

Speaker 2 (00:20:21):

So I did. And I remember, and again, it's not people will disagree with this. Right. But I literally took two weeks off of school, ditched all of my classes. I had practice trumpet all day for two weeks. Yeah. I failed like a bunch of tests and stuff like that. And I was like 14 at the time. Right. My mom wanted to kill me, like all this stuff. Right. She wanted to kill my dad in particular. Right. But I wasn't your dad, a principal. He is now he was in a music education though for like 25 years. Okay. Yeah. He didn't say skip school. That was me. Who decided to do that? He said just work really hard. So I did, and I got a taste very early of holy crap. Like I got into the competition shortcut, right. Instantly became top of the class. I was failing earlier.

Speaker 2 (00:21:16):

I was like, that was just two weeks I was able to accomplish this. Right. So ever since then, that mentality has been baked in. And that's what I did immediately off the bat with solar. When I got me to just do it. And I was 19, I just came in. And my first week I blew in 65 hours at a mall kiosk talking to people. People are like, dude, what the hell is wrong with this kid? Like going on? I knew that if I put in the work, the work will take care of me to on that trumpet. It was a trumpet lesson I got from a famous jazz musician, his name's Roy Hargrove. And he gave this advice to everybody. He always says, if you take care of the music, the music will take care of you. Right. I apply the same thing with work.

Speaker 2 (00:21:56):

Take care of the work. The work takes care of you every time I've never seen it fail. That's good. Well, man, I think we kind of agree because on the same stuff, so maybe this isn't as much of a debate as we thought, because I think, I think I pretty much agree with most of that, but it's nothing to disagree with. I mean, we'll get into it more if you know what you want in life, which we have not touched on is a big part of this. If you'd know what you want with exact clarity and you know, what makes you happy? You'll do whatever it takes to get that. It's the people who don't know what they want that make up the excuses, the work-life balance. I'm going to take this day off this day off, stuff like that. Yeah. No, I agree. Fun. Interesting side note on David Goggins speaking to him. Um, I think I might've told this story a few episodes back at Sam Taggart, but he was supposed to speak at, at the door to door con events last time. But I guess you didn't show up because of COVID when all the other speakers did really David Goggins was a spooked. Didn't want to show up because of COVID I'm like, well, isn't he supposed to be the baddest mother effer on the planet talking to the show, honestly, we'll off. COVID capable of catching it.

Speaker 2 (00:23:11):

That's what I was saying. And then John's scare off COVID yeah. John Maxwell. Who's 80 years old shows up, but kind of like yeah, yeah. Goggins of all people. Yeah. He's he's gonna, you know, whatever. Yeah. Spending too much time in California. Maybe. Yeah. I get out. But yeah, no good stuff, man. So yeah, the only thing I'd add to that, and maybe we'll get into this too, but you kind of touched on it. They're just bigger than I think it depends on what are your goals in the industry? What are you trying to achieve? Um, speaking to that, I was just listening to podcasts the other day. Um, John Lee Dumas, he does the Entrepreneurs on Fire podcast and this guy has been making, um, doing 2 million revenue for like the past eight years. Um, so a super successful podcast, but he hasn't grown in like eight years.

Speaker 2 (00:24:01):

Just been 2 million too many years. So in this interview I listened to, he says, people ask him like, why don't you like, why haven't you scaled it? Why you just keep doing 2 million, don't want to don't you want to increase, increase by 5% a year or something. And his answer is no, that's not really my goal. I'm fine. I only work five days a month right now. Um, I have 25 days off those five days. I go extremely hard. I'm working like, you know, 16 hour days for five days, but then I have 25 days off. I have a team of like six people. Um, so yeah, I'm happy where it's at. And that's that's my goal is that I can just do whatever I want, have the freedom to be who I, uh, who I want to be with, where I want to be.

Speaker 2 (00:24:45):

And then have a business that I love doing. That's gets me excited to work those five days in a month. So I think it comes down to, or like, what are your goals? Are you trying to achieve that freedom? And I think I lean more towards that, which is maybe where we agree less. That's why I like the whole four hour workweek stuff. Cause, cause I'm the same as Johnny do, as I want to do whatever I want. And I like when I have my kids, I want to put them in sports and all that. Just be able to go to their games whenever I can and not have to be tied down to the work. So that's my goal. But maybe for the guy getting into it again, are you a new rep? Maybe you don't have a family. Maybe your goal is to just make as much money as possible.

Speaker 2 (00:25:24):

And um, your iron wheel wills, maybe you're going to knock eight hours a day for the next, um, two months. Even those guys, I think they still need to have their seasons and you know, go harder during other times. But yeah, I think that's another important factor in this. What are your goals? What are you trying to achieve? Is it make as much money as possible or is it, you know, have time to have that freedom and to go where you want to go take days off when you want to take days off. So that's my other side of the, they respond on this. Yeah. I have an interesting perspective on this one. So I believe that if you're truly, I don't believe people are seeking freedom. That's where I'm going to disagree. I don't think the biggest thing people are seeking freedom. I think they're seeking happiness and someone's happiness.

Speaker 2 (00:26:12):

Can we agree on that? That people want to be happy. It's not because you can be free and unhappy. Can you agree with that? Yeah, that's true. Okay. So happiness is what we're really after as people, right? If you're truly happy and content with where you're at, um, you've succeeded at the highest level of my opinion, right? You have made it. That is success. Success doesn't have to be the fancy cars, the contests at your company, the vacations. It doesn't have to be that if you're happy without them. Okay. But my problem is the, and you see it all the time, the very exact moment that you end up desiring something else that you don't have. Maybe you get jealous that someone else is more successful in one area. Maybe you're jealous that some guys outperforming you at your company for a minute and you compare yourself a little bit and you say, man, I wish I could do that.

Speaker 2 (00:27:10):

And then you make an excuse on why you can't do that. That's my problem. And I would say that person is not truly 100% happy because they see that person, they see a part of themselves in that person, often case they'll say, Hey, maybe I could do that. I think I could, if I actually did what this guy did, I think I could accomplish that. Right. But what do they do? They say, they're not willing to put in the work to do that. It's not worth the sacrifices to make that happen. So if that's you and you say, Hey, it would be nice to make, I don't know, 500 grand a year selling solar, but I'm not willing to work the hours that is required. Then you need to do one of two things. One examine your work ethic and adjust to be in line with what you want or to step down and say, I would be okay without having that thing.

Speaker 2 (00:28:03):

And if that makes you happy then cool. But if it doesn't and you say, uh, I don't want to have to tolerate that. Right. That's when you know you've got to change something. Yeah, no, I think there's a ton of excuses in the industry too. I've had tons of reps on my teams, um, where basically they sell themselves out of a competition before it's even started. Oh dude, that's the worst of competitions then try to like give up. Yeah. Yup. Like, no, I'm not willing to, you know, push hard. So yeah. I don't really care. I just want to, you know, be happy. You just want to like quit. And so that's the other, that's nice. Don't think that person's happy. Yeah. I don't, I don't think they are. It's an excuse. Yeah. So they're complacent. So I say all this stuff, but honestly I think it is pretty dangerous for solar reps because a lot of people are telling themselves right now.

Speaker 2 (00:28:54):

Yeah. I'm happy. I'm fine. Just making a hundred grand a year. And um, cause I wanna, I want to go on my trips. I want to do my vacations and I want to do me and maybe, yeah, maybe those people are only working like three hours a week, three hours a day. We'll get into that about tactics. People don't work as hard as they think they work. That's the other side of this. Yeah. Cause I think it comes back to what you're saying at the end of the day, we can do way more than what we tell ourselves we can. Yeah. You're only using 40% of the brain or whatever. You can push way harder. That's why David Goggins. That's pretty much his whole basis of his book. Can't hurt me. That you can do way more than you think again, you just gotta be pushed to those levels. That's why he ran. He went through bootcamp or whatever with, I think it was a leg. Um, he ran, what was it like a hundred miles while he's was puking. He's done all of it. Yeah. He's bleeding. He's peeing blood, throwing up dehydrated, broken everything. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:29:57):

Can I give you a formula on this that I use? So I have a formula I use when I'm coaching people for this stuff. And just so you know, like behind the scenes, I'm coaching a sales rep on that I've coached sales reps from zero to 500 K in their first year. I have one student who made a million bucks in a year. Um, all of it is mindset Taylor and I could agree like it's, it's all freaking mindset. There's, there's not that many tactics you need to know to make it. I remember the interview. I said I was reviewing with, uh, Ashton Buswell. Right. Um, he already said, he's like, I'm not the best sales guy in the world, but I just worked my guts out. That's the secret, right? Yeah. I've experienced the same thing. I'm not really good at anything. I'm just good at working pretty much.

Speaker 2 (00:30:39):

And that's the advantage. Um, but there is, there is this formula, use this three step formula on how I can basically help someone be aligned to figure out where they want to be. So this is what it is. This is the happiness, happiness formula. And this isn't my proprietary thing. I've gotten this from a lot of mentors, but one is, you got to know what you want out of life and exact clarity, right? Not just, oh, I want to have financial independence. That's not specific. How are you going to make your money is more important than if you actually make it okay. So how are you going to make your money? What's your house going to be like, right? What kind of cars are you going to drive? And the reason you get specific about all of these things is because the next time you see someone driving a fancy car and you're like a little jealous of it, you should have already determined in your mind.

Speaker 2 (00:31:28):

Pre-advance what kind of car you want to drive. And you're happy and content with, right? If you don't go all out and really paint a picture of what your entire life looks like, you're going to face problems with this. The person, person who is exactly clear on what they want is the most dangerous. Uh, second is you've got to get real about your capacities, abilities and talents as a person as well. So for example, let's say I wanted to go play basketball. I'm not LeBron James. Okay. I'm a skinny white kid who is not tall. He's not strong. I can't freaking dunk. I can't shoot free throws. Right? My coordination is so freaking bad. Anytime someone plays like a, so Joseph Taylor knows Joseph, right? My old business partner. I remember one time he came out to San Diego and we played like us who's ball or air hockey.

Speaker 2 (00:32:21):

This guy beats me 15 to zero. I literally lose every game, 15 games that are like, I have the worst coordination ever. Dude. It's terrible. So I can't be a top level sports player. It's not in the cards for zero chance. Right? So this is another thing I really hate too, is our cultures all everybody's equal. Right? Everybody could do whatever they want. They have no, they freaking can't. There's no way, Hey dude, it's like follow your passion, go work. And what you love follow you make a business out of it or all the business things, the worst. Right. Everybody's trying to pop up a business. Right? Like, and I used to think that I was one of these guys too, that maybe shouldn't be in business and that, you know, I'm here five years later and I'm still doing well with it. And I'm like, okay, that is in the cards for me.

Speaker 2 (00:33:13):

But since I was a kid, I was also hustling, like doing shoveling people's driveways and stuff like that since I was like eight years old. Right. Mowing lawns for people. Right. So it's like, that's been in the cards since I was a young age and I enjoy doing that. So I know my abilities and my gifts and talents that goes into my capacity. Right. So you have to understand that if you're not a great communicator and you're not great at, uh, selling people necessarily, right. Look at another facet of the solar industry. There's a lot of ways to make money. My partner, Joseph old partner, right. He's not great at sales, but he's really good at marketing and systems. He's really good at people and coaching, right? There's a spot everywhere. Maybe you're better at mentoring team members. Right. Maybe you'd be a better manager in solar.

Speaker 2 (00:34:03):

Right. So that's aspect two. And then three is what is the amount of effort you're willing to give? Okay. So sometimes people say, I want all the crazy stuff. I am super gifted and talented. I have all these persuasive skills. I'm great with people, but I'm not willing to work 60 to 80 hours a week to get it. Well, we've got to readjust something because guess what happens when someone's not aligned, Taylor all of the problems. We talked about addictions, anxiety, depression. Um, Taylor was watching my old, uh, video yesterday about like my personal story coming up in solar. Right. I used to have anxiety attacks a lot. And in the store, main story I talked about, I talked about the first time I had it, I was coming back from deployment. I'm driving home. And also my arm starts going numb. My next go numb.

Speaker 2 (00:34:56):

I'm like fricking busy season up the right half of my body is I had to pull over. I'm freaking out. I'm like, what the do, my vision's getting blurry. I'm like, dude, this is like a heart attack. Like what is this? Right. So I ended up getting in the back of an ambulance, heading off to the ER, right. And the guy's just like, dude, what the heck kind of stress do you have going on? And he's like, dude, it's not hard tech. It's like, you just have an anxiety attack. I'm like what? Uh, and the cause of that was very simple. My aspirations were here. I wanted to be one of the best solar reps in the entire plan. Right? Just number one guy. Right? My work ethic down here, I was working pretty hard, but I was not living up to my highest potential.

Speaker 2 (00:35:42):

I was not asking for the help getting the mentors I needed when I knew I should be. I wasn't living up to that potential. It wasn't putting the fuel in the tank. There was that misalignment and that's what caused all the problems. So in summary, you got to figure out what you want. What are your capabilities and talents, be honest about it. Ask others around you. Everybody has them. Okay? Like, it's not like there's, I don't believe anybody is born without a special, unique ability or talent. You've just got to find it. And they get the right amount of effort with your aspirations. If you want to make a million bucks a year in solar, newsflash, you're not going to do it working 30 to 40 hours a week. You're not, maybe you can 10 years from now. I know guys who do it, we've been in it for a decade.

Speaker 2 (00:36:24):

But the next decade, you better be willing to work 80 hours a week. Right? Yeah. Talk with your wife, talk with your family and say, Hey, the next five, 10 years, it's going to be, it's going to be intense, but this is why I'm doing it. This is important. Get on the same page. So yeah. I'm good. I love it. There we go. Yeah. I think another big myth, man. And you'd probably agree. So many people are just like, follow your passion, follow your dreams. If you don't love it, don't do it. But yeah, I've come to rise. I'm like against that man. Cause so many people they come in and they don't love solar. They don't love a few things and they quit. So I think the millennials, I don't know if it's millennials or what, but like it is millennials and yeah, it's the, it's the, it's the same.

Speaker 2 (00:37:10):

It's the same reason. Same cause of why we have the PC ultra dude. It's the same thing. Yeah. It's like, yeah. You're not going to love everything you do about what your job is, but like go out and work, go out and grind and go out. And yeah. So that's, you know, you got the Gary V side of things, Gary V is just like, you know, work, work, work, grind, grind, grind. Same thing we're talking about right here. Like if you really listen to what Gary's saying, he's not work, work, work. It's self-awareness it's what do you want? And you say, you want that, this is what you need to sacrifice. Like, are you willing to sacrifice? Yes or no? Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, but yeah, that's, that's a big problem. Especially here in San Diego, all these new people we try to hire drives me nuts.

Speaker 2 (00:37:58):

So many people just like quit. There I go. I don't want to make a ton of money about west coast. That's my biggest gripe about west coast since I moved back. So I moved back to Utah. Right? I was out in San Diego for a couple of years, LA right. West coast. My gosh, dude. Like if you want to be surrounded by people who go after it, it's not the place to be man. It's, it's uh, it's difficult to find a running mates. People who are willing to really go after it and don't want to just chill and smoke weed all day. Exactly. Yeah. It's tough. But anyways, so yeah, we spent a lot of time on question one. Yes. We jumped to question two. Yeah, go ahead. Your term. So question two is, what do you think is required to have success in the industry?

Speaker 2 (00:38:50):

Um, the good questions or just overall let's what are we thinking here? Is this like for the new guy? We kind of talked about that for me. I think it's pretty well. Whether you're new or old. For me, it's pretty much the same answer I think. But do you want to start that one out? Find some levels of success? Cause I, we just barely got off a rant on why you need to be defining what success is. So let's start with like, what's like the first level of success in solar. Would you say? Um, I would well, I would say depending on the market, and this is a tough one, because if we're talking about putting on the market, I mean, I've got a buddy that's out in North Carolina, he's he has a pest control company. He's making six, you know, I think 60, 70 grand a year or something like that. Super happy. Um, that's enough money for him to pretty much do whatever you want. So we're there. The bills is level one. You've replaced your job with the solar income. Okay. What is required to do that? Taylor?

Speaker 2 (00:39:56):

Um, well I think anyone starting out new in the industry, I think it's going to require no matter how you do it, if you're new in the industry, you're going to have to work extremely hard even to hit that level. In my opinion, it's the amount of people that fell in this. It's pretty astounding. We bring on dozens and dozens of new guys every few months. And if they're new to the industry, haven't done any sells. It's it's not, it's a steep learning curve for them because they've never knocked doors. They've never like, had to be their own boss and had to dig up the motivation to go out there and hit doors. How long, how long did it take you to start making a stable income in solar? Yeah, for me, I would say probably like two years, honestly, cause I was out here, but I came out single, just living with the dudes in like a company house.

Speaker 2 (00:40:47):

So for me, yeah, I paid, I had barely any expenses, so it's pretty, pretty quick to get to that point. But if it's someone that's coming with a family that's never done solar and never has a lot of expenses to pay. I think they're going to have to push extremely hard. And we've had guys that came in, realized this pretty quick that they're going to have to treat it like a full-time job and actually work 40 hour weeks to pay all their bills and get to that level. They weren't willing to do it. Like I thought I could just go out and knock like an hour and then show up to some appointments, make tons of money. But yeah. Yeah. Well it's 40 hours if you're actually working though. Yeah. I mean, that's why I think the target shouldn't even be 40. It should be like 60, at least, because most people they're not calibrated on what work actually is.

Speaker 2 (00:41:35):

We'll get into that tactics, but that's a good point. Yeah. So yeah. But yeah, no, I think to get to that level as a new rep, you got to put in some extremely hard effort and again, seasons, once you're, you know, know how to do all these things, no. To knock the doors, no. To close the appointments, which took me like two years, I would say to get to that point now. Yeah, I can. I'm pretty confident saying I could, I could go out and work probably three, four hour days and have enough money to pay my bills. Um, enough money to save on top of that. It's not going to get me way ahead, but yeah, I'm confident now that four years into this, I could spend four hours a day and be just fine. Save up some money. But yeah, anyone I think is going to need to put in a ton of effort to even get to that level.

Speaker 2 (00:42:21):

Unless you're like a natural born salesman. You hear though, Jordan Belfort, he talks about that. How he's a natural born salesman and he can do things way easier. So capacity and ability is higher, right? Yeah. That doesn't mean you could look at a guy like Jordan and say all he's he's cause take Jordan for example. Right. He could go and sell and putting in very little effort and still do better than the guy who sucks at sales and grinds his butt off. Right. Jordan could still beat that guy. Just like, like LeBron, James could beat me at basketball without trying. Right. And I could be sweating my butt off just going hard. Right. I could go and train for the next six months and it'll still be the same thing. Right. Because his capacity is higher. But does that make Jordan happier? Because he's playing at a low level. Absolutely not. Jordan is still has to realize his fullest potential put in the work to reach his highest potential as well. So when you see guys like that natural born sales guys, and they're just winging it, they're just as unhappy. Yeah, I agree. I mean, that's why you get like Connor McGregor, for example, about winning fights lately. And I think it's for him, he's achieved the money that success. I think he's lost money personally.

Speaker 2 (00:43:39):

That's tough. That is rare to find a guy who start, but the cutoff point I've seen where like 99% of sales reps start throwing in the towel is about 250 grand a year about a quarter million a year. That's when they say I'm good. I'm good. Yeah. I know people get complacent. So yeah, no, that's a big problem. Um, but yeah. What do you think? I don't even know if we got to the question really, but we just talked about that the entry level 60, 70 grand a year. Right? So above that, I think the next level on that, I'll just add into this too, to, to contribute to we won't trade off on it because we've kind of been going with it, but I'd say the next level is like that quarter million a year, right? That is uh, you're in the top. You're in the top 1% of the world income earners, top 10% in the U S if you make a quarter million year, right.

Speaker 2 (00:44:38):

It's enough where you pay your taxes, you can drive the car as you want. You could go to the events you want, you can take care of a family, right? It's fairly comfortable. You can invest some money into Bitcoin, whatever the heck you want. Um, quarter million, right? That kind of level. Um, I agree with Taylor when you're starting out, basically you should just work as much as you possibly can when you're starting out. Um, full-blown like, well, above 40 hours a week, you want to make that learning curve as quick as possible. You want to build that momentum. I think after you hit that point, um, it's a standard, I would say 40 to 50 men, 40 to 50. If you've been at it for a few years, you could do the two 50. Uh, I would even say five years, honestly. I would say it probably takes five years of that to get to where you can work a normal full-time hours, 40 hours a week at two 50.

Speaker 2 (00:45:31):

Um, on depends on if you want to reach it sooner. Yup. Oh yeah. Yeah. If you want to reach it sooner, I'd say double it. ADA, if you want to hit two 50, I've seen guys. So I've coached guys, uh, a guy, his name's Devin Koretsky he's in Texas. He hit 500 grand his first year. Right. Guy works 80 hours a week, like straight up. That's how you do it and like our real 80 hours a week. Wow. So yeah. And no, I mean, it's again, it's relative to like 250 grand in California. That's still good money. But like, I mean you got taxes. Yeah. Yeah. That's like a hundred grand in Utah texts to us. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, if you're in one of these level, then next level above that that's going to fall more into your CEO category. That's seven figures plus.

Speaker 2 (00:46:27):

So if you want to pull down a million bucks, I get this a lot. Right. So I was the big preacher back in the day. If you listen to my podcast, I talk about all the time, the million dollar income, like top, top, top tier, right? The truth is it's so freaking rare to find a guy who is willing to one has the abilities to get they're willing to put in the work ethic to get there, right. And sacrifices to get there. Um, that I don't even talk about it anymore because nobody freaking makes it and nobody's should I agree that most people should want to make that much money because reality is you don't need all of the crap that you could buy with a million bucks a year. Most people don't, they really just want to impress other people. They want to look cool with this, this, this, right.

Speaker 2 (00:47:14):

And that doesn't really make them happy. There are a few small percent where it does make them happy. Being able to contribute, take care of other people, donate to their church or their foundations and stuff like that, that kind of person. And that does make them happy. They have to work and live an entirely different lifestyle. There's no such thing as weekends. There's no, I'm going to be at home, having dinner with my wife every night at six o'clock. Right. It doesn't happen. You talk to your wife and you say, Hey, I'm not going to be able to make it to dinner every night. Right. Are you okay with that? Just that communication going on. Um, so yeah, that, that is just a complete level. Like your mindset is not your mindset switches from what's the least amount I could do to put into this to what's the most amount to, uh, able to tolerate.

Speaker 2 (00:48:04):

It's not like, Hey, how many hours can I just put in and get my it's like, how much am I willing to go? So the breaking point. Yeah. And yeah, again, I think that's why it's important to have like a rush where you have a month where you go extremely hard, see what that level is, see what you had to give up to actually hit that. Yep. Maybe for some people say that, right? Yeah. I did that. And so for some people maybe it's like, oh, I actually had to give up a lot less than I thought to achieve this level. Cause a lot, a lot of guys again are just telling themselves, oh, I'm not going to have them. That level of success. That's going to require me to like cut out everything. I'm going to be unhappy. I'm going to have to spend way less time with my, uh, you know, my kids, my wife, husband, where if you do this big push, maybe it's maybe it's way better than you thought.

Speaker 2 (00:48:55):

And another principle that I think we've talked about before is the, I think it's a Parkinson's effect or whatever. It's like Parkinson's law, Parkinson's law, whatever amount of time you have, you'll get what you need to done. And that level of time, a lot of guys they're, they're spending time on tasks. They're spending like three hours on stuff that they could possibly do in like an hour. Um, so it's not cited according to like, are you doing that big rush and maybe things that are taking you four hours right now, maybe just the fact that you're working harder, have more appointments stacked on top of each other, stuff like that. Maybe you'll get those same things done in an hour. So that's why, how about like bills? That's a good perspective on that as guys will say, oh, I've got till this time in the month to get money for my rent, basically that's a common one.

Speaker 2 (00:49:44):

I see where Parkinson's laws in real effect. Here's a cool exercise for you guys that are in that boat. Like just month to month bills at paying the thing, really set a deadline with yourself. That's the we're on a stat tomorrow's May 1st right. Go and say, I need to make all of my bills for the month, by the end of the first week of May and pretend like it's the last week of May. Right? And guess what freaking happens, dude. Everybody really does this. It's just like, boom. They make it happen. And it's like, what, what happened? Right. Same thing. I know. It takes me back to my college days. I would spend like weeks on a report on like a paper I had to write and I was not get anything done. And then somehow magically the night before the due date, I knew I had to get done.

Speaker 2 (00:50:33):

So I'd stay up and get it all done. And like a night when I was working on it before that, but I just didn't have the push to get it done. So it's like, and I think you told me, didn't you have times where you, you had to pay your employees, make payroll and stuff and all the money to pay him. And then you just pulled cells out of your butt at the day before payroll is due. I've done that my entire life, basically. Um, anybody who has started a company and just went through the grind of learning, how to manage a company, hire people, pay for payroll, stuff like that. Um, and maybe they're not as great as at finances. They're good at making it, but they're not good at managing it like me. Um, I've had to do that so many times where it's like, I've got to make payroll next week for all of my people, what am I going to do?

Speaker 2 (00:51:18):

Something went down a bunch of deals. Didn't go through something like that. Where, where am I going to come up with this cash? And it's just the commitment level on that. Right. And just doing whatever it takes to get there. And it happens, man, if you stay open to things and you take control of your mind and you stay positive stuff comes your way. Like every time if you're aligned, putting in the effort, doing all that stuff we talked about. Yeah. That's good stuff. Well, we'll get to tactics. Yes. We jumped to number three and then wrap this baby up. Okay. You're up? All right. So number three is what would your, your advice to someone who is, or what would you advise to someone who is struggling with work life balance the tactics? Okay. So here's what I would advise is something I actually just barely got through doing.

Speaker 2 (00:52:05):

Um, and it's a 75 hard, which probably I did actually a podcast episode. So you can go back and listen to the episode, just kind of what I learned from it. But the reason I'm saying this is because 75 Harvard, it forces you to be consistent on things in your life. And we're probably gonna create one, actually geared towards solar thinking. That'd be a good idea. Um, but it forces you to just do these little tasks every day. You, uh, you know, two 45 minute workouts drink a gallon of water, read your 10 pages. Um, take a progress picture. You have to do them for 75 days straight. And I think that's the single biggest thing that's holding this industry back is guys just aren't consistent. Okay. And even if you, even, if you just worked, I don't know, five hours a day, whatever, like just kind of the minimum, it's going to make you probably six figures or whatever.

Speaker 2 (00:52:57):

If you do that, you're going to at least achieve success. But the reason why so many people are filling in this industry is they're not doing those things. They get one cell on the week and then guess what they're dropping down to like maybe two hours the next day, or they're not pushing as hard where if you just were consistent, um, you're going to achieve way better results. It kind of reminds me of like the stock market. I've read this tactic on like the stock market, um, where guys try to like the curve. They'll try to invest when it's low and then have it go high. So dump a bunch of money in guys will lose money and everything. But a big tactic that people do in the stock market is just put in a consistent amount of money every month, whether it's high, whether it's low.

Speaker 2 (00:53:40):

And you're almost guaranteed to see returns on that because you're just putting in consistent money. It's consistently going to grow it's compound effect. So that's my thing is for something tactical, go out and do like a challenge like 75 hard, and then just figure out what you're going to commit to. Um, Michael Donald though, who everyone, probably the number one solar cells guy. This is his big thing too, is just doing them all the mini habits. So figure out what small things you're going to commit to for him. It's like between appointments, he's going to knock until he gets at least one no between every appointments. So that's what he's committing to and that's what he's being consistent with. And yeah, he saw huge, huge results. So that's what I think is something tactical, go out and do a challenge and then figure out what you can commit to.

Speaker 2 (00:54:26):

That's what I think. What about you, James? I agree with the challenge. So number one, I have five short tactics. So recalibrate your definition of work-life balance. We've talked about it a bit. See what you're actually capable of. Do an event, do a challenge. I bet you 75 hard showed you what you're capable of mentally, right? Like, oh, I, it felt impossible at day 15 here I am day 75. I'm still rocking. Right? Get one of those moments where you just go all out. Like I'm talking about you sacrifice every single thing in your life for that one thing, while it may not be what you want to be. Long-term you need to see what you're capable of as a person. That's my belief there. Uh, number two is determine who you want to really be, who you actually want to be, not what other people want you to be, right?

Speaker 2 (00:55:15):

There's a big misconception on that. Do you actually want the things you're talking about? And if that's true, you'd be willing to sacrifice things to get there, which we'll get to point number three is prioritize actions, not time. So this is the employee mindset versus the entrepreneur mindset, the Solarpreneur mindset. If you're in sales, you work on a commission. You need to have an entrepreneur mindset, not the employee mindset. The employee mindset is it takes X amount of time to do X. Okay. Completely wrong. You can just switch out of that and focus on action. So don't focus on working 40, 60 hours a week. Like we're talking about focus on hitting four appointments, a day, six appointments a day, whatever that level is to break down your goal, hit that if it's one appointment a day, do it knocking a hundred doors a day, do it.

Speaker 2 (00:56:04):

You need to have those measurable KPIs. And if you break it down and really say, oh, okay, it takes me two hours to knock 30 doors, 35 doors, something like that. Right. I don't know the stats are there. Okay. You can break that down and say that's actually two hours of, but what if you were able to cut it down to 90 minutes? I've seen guys who ride around like a, uh, like an electric scooter in between doors and stuff like that. Segway I've even seen. I've had a student who rides a segway. Yeah. He timed himself. He cut off 30 minutes today for writing that segue and was able to get an extra 30 minutes and knocking it. Okay. And if you can knock five doors in that and set one extra appointment, that one extra appointment a day compounded over six days a week appointments a week, six, 12, 1824 appointments, extra a month close one in five.

Speaker 2 (00:56:58):

That's fine deals, dude. Yeah. From writing a fricking segue. See what I'm saying? So the top pro guy who focuses on actions and shaving off that fluff stuff, uh, the next one is never sacrificing the urgent for the important. So a lot of guys mismanaged their time because something comes up, uh, a delivery shows up. I'm terrible at this. Like, I love Amazon packages. Right. I get Amazon packages like almost daily. And I want to just go to the mailbox and check them out in the middle of the day. Right? Yeah. Or set something up that I got. And then there goes the rest of my fricking afternoon, getting distracted by some dumb Amazon thing. When I could've just batched it on one day a week and made it my Amazon day. Right. Um, that's sacrificing the urgent quote unquote for the important, another one I've had with guys who are married as well is they take, uh, family calls throughout the day.

Speaker 2 (00:57:55):

So they're working right. And they should be at work like grinding hard to 11 to 3:00 PM. Their wife just calls them here and there and nothing wrong with communicating with your spouse. And you should. Right. But when your spouse is, cause I, you know, I'm not married, but I know it. I know it happens at these conversations. It's like, oh little Johnny did this little Johnny there's this problem. Can you believe whoever said this, that's planting distractions in your mind. You can't get that focus back. So have that conversation with your spouse and say, Hey look like we're both on the same page with this goal, this lifestyle we want to create. This is what's got to happen. Get honest about it. Clear that stuff. Uh, next one is you said this great place, the important things first. So date night with your wife, that's important.

Speaker 2 (00:58:45):

Do it first. All of my mentors who are happily married men, they've got four or five kids, right? They've been married 25 years. They say this time and time again. That's what I'm going to apply to. When I get married as well is date night. I'll put it in. Boom. Lock it in the calendar. It's an appointment with your wife. Some of the guys I know literally set it up on Calendly with a scheduling tool with their wife and have the wife book at it. Like if she wants to talk to them, book it on a calendar. It's, it's a serious appointment, right? If that's important to you do it. If the gym Taylor just got back from the gym, right? That's important. Block that baby in. If I don't block in the gym, I'm never going to the gym. Right? I'll forget about it.

Speaker 2 (00:59:27):

Has to be scheduled. Um, last thing, and it's my biggest, one of all is once you know all of the above, you know what you want, you know what you're capable of. You gotta be ruthless and cutting out everything that is not moving you towards that. This is the stuff you are screaming inside because you don't want to cut. This is the video games. This is the junk food is the distractions. This is the tough conversations with your spouse. This is the social media scrolling. This is checking the Amazon packages. This is the sleeping in, this is the not working out. When you know you should be taking care of your health. This is the eating, the fast food. Realize that though, the, those though, these things seem small and manual, they make up the entire difference because when you compound these little bad choices over time, like Taylor says, if you're consistently doing these little things good or bad, they will completely make or break your entire life and your happiness.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):

I made this firm decision this last year that I was going to get like really serious about cutting out distractions. Like YouTube. I love scrolling around watching freaking YouTube videos. Right? Uh, another one I cut to was video games. This last year I went off the walls and played video games, like super hard for like a month, right? Yeah. Oh yeah. It was toxic for me like dude. So I love FIFA, right? I'm a huge FIFA guy. Right? I played FIFA 21. When it came out for like an entire week straight 12 hours a day. This is what happens when I have video games around. It's like, okay, I can't even work if the stuff's here. So what did I do? I fricking, literally sold my gaming laptop, sold all the freaking controllers, got rid of all of the stuff out of the house. It's not available.

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):

And I committed. I'm like, this is not me. This is not my potential. This stuff does not belong in my life. It's not what I want. It's not what makes me happy. It's gone. I've done the same thing with alcohol pornography, junk food, all of that crap. So if you want to keep on, keep hold of those things, just realize it's going to cost you everything if it's not in align with your goals. Yeah. My drop love it. Nuggets freaking nuggets right there. So I love it. We've covered a lot. And um, long, longer episodes, let us know what you thought, guys. We covered a ton of material in there. Um, so hopefully you took some notes, cause that is a ton of stuff to cover. Um, but James, actually, speaking of appointments actually got ahead to one here. I'm going to close up someone here, here in about 45 minutes.

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):

So better wrap this up. But um, let us know if you like these kinds of debate style. And I guess this one wasn't as much of a debate because I think we actually saw eye to eye on pretty much everything, but by the end of the day, I don't think there's going to be a debate, but I don't think there's anything really to debate there bro. Cause like, I mean it's just principles. This is what is going to get you to success. So I think in this one it's pretty, uh, white and black for me, like pretty clear that these things are going to cause success. These things aren't so, uh, James, thanks for coming on the show. Um, any last words before we wrap up, that's it guys. We'll see on the next show and uh, thanks again. Peace.

Speaker 1 (01:02:53):

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 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 solar learning community, exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with the top performers in the industry. And it's called Solciety. This learning community was designed from the ground up to level the playing field and give solar pros access to proven mentors who want to give back to this community and to help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry's brightest minds. For, are you ready for it? Less than $3 and 45 cents a day currently society's closed the public and membership is by invitation only, but Solarpreneurs can go to society.co to learn more and have the option to join a wait list. When a membership becomes available in your area. Again, this is exclusively for Solarpreneur listeners. So be sure to go to www.solciety.co to join the waitlist and learn more now. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you again in the next episode.

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 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. online 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 here with another episode.

Speaker 2 (00:46):

Why should you do whatever it takes in deals and what technologies should you be implementing today? That and much more, what are we talking about in the episode today? So let's jump into it first. I want to say, go, um, follow me on Instagram. If you haven't already, I would love to connect with more you guys. Also on Facebook, trying to be a little bit more active on the social medias ever since we did a couple of social media episodes, a few weeks back, but, um, if you are following me, I did a little demo of a new tool that is seriously a goal of mine. You guys need to be using this, and we've talked about this tool actually on previous episodes, we had the founder come on, uh, Brad Mortenson can go listen to that episode, but the tool was RepCard, which hopefully all you are using by now.

Speaker 2 (01:39):

But more specifically, what they came out with was a physical card. It RepCard, it's an app. You can go and do the whole customer follow up. You can send your digital business card, but what they came out with is money is a physical card that you can literally just tap people's phones and it pulls up your digital business card, right there, gay, no need to text them. Then open the link, you tap their phone and boom, your card is pulling up right there. What's sweet about it is you can go on there and you can save your contact straight from that digital card. So you can just tap, save his contact. They're going to be in your phone now and it's going to make it ways you're to follow up with people, get referrals. I did old demo demo of it. So I obviously can't show you in the audio here, but, um, it's nice because they can see all your, your views to then go on there, leave your reviews.

Speaker 2 (02:36):

Um, they can see probably other people in the neighborhood that left reviews, which you should be encouraging them to do. And then with the top of a button, they can also send a referral. They can submit a referral for you. Okay. So I highly suggest that you go get this, um, RepCard hit me up and I can connect you with the guys over at RepCard and then get the physical. I think it's like a hundred bucks. Um, you can get just a card that says RepCard on it, even tap. And I think for an extra a hundred on top of that 200, you can get a, a card with your picture on it, with your company and everything. Okay. So go get one of these things. It is a game changer and I'm already using it. Definitely noticed a difference. Hey, so that's the first, um, thing I wanted to introduce to you guys, and then seconds.

Speaker 2 (03:28):

Um, as far as technology goes, um, another thing we've talked about is we are launching a full custom training platform. Um, it's called Solciety, and I'm sure we will be doing a full launch episode, but just to kind of give you guys the teaser on it and hopefully get your stoke for it. It is looking super bomb. So you can go check out just a preview we've um, finished some videos and things like that. So solciety.co is the website for it. You can go check it out there, but what we're actually going to be doing is doing this for teams. So you, if you or your team is interested in having a full custom training platform for your entire company, this thing's going to be a game changer for you. So whether you're a rep or needing it for your company, um, this is a full app you can get on your phone.

Speaker 2 (04:22):

It has training games from the best in the industry. We're constantly adding more coaches instructors on there. I'm on there. Um, guys like Earl Kapule, Jay Pez, James Swiderski, we're getting some heavy hitters on there. So you're not going to miss out. The full launch fit is actually on July 1st. Okay. So it might already be out depending on when you listen to this, but if you listen to this, right, if you're in June, listen to this episode, go get on there. Cause we are doing some special things for those that are, um, doing sort of the beta testing and getting on it before it fully launches. So you can go check that out at solciety.co You guys are not going to want to miss out on that. Okay. So let's jump into the show today. Um, today I want to talk about just why you should do whatever it takes in your appointments.

Speaker 2 (05:16):

And this is something that I've seen that top producers have that those, um, that really helps set them apart. That really helps them close more deals than anyone else is. They just do whatever it takes. They're so persistent. They have the ability to just keep going when others would quit in a deal. Okay. So giving an example, guys like Jason Newby, he has an office here in San Diego, actually met with their team last week. He's growing to about 40 reps. And I think he's only been a how to soar company like two or three months now is that like 40 reps. Um, and then one of his guys probably going to have him on the show here, um, his first, I think first month and a half or so, he's closed almost 40 deals, something like that. And I'm like, man, Jason, what are you teaching these guys?

Speaker 2 (06:08):

What are you guys doing? And something that he tells his guys. And I know he himself does. I was on a little panel with them at the door to door conference that I went to too. And he just says, Taylor, what we're doing is we're just not quitting. We're just persisting in deals. We're not really following up. They're not even doing any follow-up. They're just going balls to the walls. Just getting deals closed and just not taking no for an answer. Okay. I'll receive. You're not going to be. Yeah. Or you're not going to make people super mad and you gotta be, um, you know, that sneaky, persistent, you can't be the guys that just keep taking nos, nos, nos, nos, nos, and you're coming out. And what the same thing, but what Jason does with his team is he's an expert at picking and rolling it, just weaving through, through these objections, just being super assumptive, assumptive, and getting these deals locked down.

Speaker 2 (07:05):

And so it's something super important, just doing whatever it takes. Hey, in a story to go with it that I've experienced personally. Um, a few weeks ago, it was on a Saturday is having a slower week. And I said, okay, today I don't care. I'm going to go out. I need you a same-day deal. I think I only had, I don't know, I was at one close on the week, so I'm like, okay, need to finish with at least two, I'm going to go out Saturday and they hit it hard and they go get at same day deal. It's closed them up, flock it down. So I had no idea what I was going to do. Um, but I came across this deal, I'm knocking. And it was actually like first or second door I knocked and he tells me he's already signed with another company.

Speaker 2 (07:49):

Um, he says, I'm good, Mike. Oh, cool. No, that's awesome. Uh, yeah, what company you signed with and we start getting into it, just had a conversation. It went less from a sales pitch to more, just a conversation, right. Which is something you all need to be doing. Think of any interaction you have as not a presentation, not a sales pitch, but a conversation with a human being in front of you. So I just started chatting with him. We start talking, he tells me who he went with. And, um, lucky for me, it was a company I was super familiar with. I knew their sales process. Um, I had friends that were, you know, reps at this company, things like that. So I'm like, cool. Well, you know what? We've had several people actually switched our program from that. Um, what I'll do, I'm just going to have our engineers take a look and then we'll get some info back for ya.

Speaker 2 (08:42):

But yeah, we've had, we've been able to get several people, um, better program, better warranties, uh, better equipment. And then also save them a bit more monthly on what they're paying. So let me see at what I can get with, get for you. And then I'll come back by when they're done. Okay. So I was super assumptive. I didn't say, um, are you okay if we come back, give you comparison? I said, no, um, we're going to have them do this. And yeah, let's see. We can do for you. I'll be back. I'll pop back by. So it wasn't an appointment. It was a pop by, and that's what I did. So I came back, started going through everything. And if you guys listened to previous episode, I talked about how important it is for you to know your competitors and actually know their contracts that possible, know what people signed.

Speaker 2 (09:31):

So lucky for me, I knew exactly what type of program this guy was in. I knew the ins and outs of what he had agreed to. And I ha I helped him actually pull up his paperwork from the other company. And we went through it. I showed them, were you aware of this? And there's several things that, um, I'm sure they didn't like, you know, lie to them or try to not tell them things, but things that he might've forgotten that weren't, um, you know, it's been beneficial for him. I went through all these things and it gave me such great credibility. I'm just showing them these things. I say, go to exhibit B, go to this point. And he, he saw that. I knew, um, yeah, knew this competitor pretty well. So if you can do that, no, your competitors talked about it in a previous episode.

Speaker 2 (10:18):

Um, but I did whatever it took. He was not planning on switching. And then, um, what I did is he got hit with the cancellation fee, but I said, no problem. We're going to take care of that. So really I just did whatever I needed to. Um, he kept on shooting objections, reason why, uh, reasons, even though he did want to switch, but reasons why he couldn't reasons why it was too hard. And I just gave him the answer for everything. Oh, you got a cancellation fee. No worries. We'll help you get through that. Oh, your HOA is already reviewing your old design. Oh, no worries. Yeah. Your neighbor actually there, they went through the same thing. I told them stories of people that had switched to us that were that far along in the process and really just helped him, um, feel that I was going to take care of them.

Speaker 2 (11:05):

I was going to give them the best offer and I was going to be there for him. So that's what set me apart. And that's what helped me get that deal. Okay. But really just doing whatever it took in anything, he came at me with, I gave him a solution. Okay. So help people find solutions, help people get what they want and you are going to be rewarded with deals. Okay. And then another, um, yeah, another actually situation. Just last weekend. I had a appointment, um, this was the next day appointment and set on a Friday. He went back on a Saturday and it was pretty closed off. Um, he was one of these guys wearing two face masks. Any guy that you see, especially at this point, that's wearing double face mass. I know they're they mean business. Okay. They're going to be tough.

Speaker 2 (11:52):

Close. Um, I don't know what it is, but people coming at you with double face mask, they are, they're no joke. So he comes with two face masks, um, come to the door and I had prepped him beforehand. I said, um, when I first set the appointment, I said, Hey, we're going to be coming back and all come. Um, just inside your home, it's going to be on a computer. I have all the, all the information, all the details with you. So when I, uh, pop by tomorrow, that's what we'll do. We'll go with you. And he had told me, he's like, ah, okay. And when I came back to the house, he said, well, yeah, I don't feel comfortable with you coming in the home. So we're just gonna have to go outside. So I didn't have much of a choice. He takes me outside.

Speaker 2 (12:32):

He refused to let me in inside the house. And we're just standing back on his AC unit. Okay. He says, just set your stuff here, show me what you got. And I'm like, oh my gosh, everyone knows that if you can't get inside the house, um, if you can't get at that kitchen table, you are fighting a major uphill battle. So I'm in his backyard. I know it's going to be a really tough close, but again, I'm just thinking, okay, what is this guy bought? He's bought lots of other things. I can close this. He's a buyer. And does another thing that helps me a lot. Grant Cardone talks about this, but just look for things that they have bought. They have the Tesla front, do they have, um, out of camper, look up their cars, look at all the things they have purchased in the past.

Speaker 2 (13:20):

Okay. If you can build your evidence, this evidence in your head of things that they have purchased, then that's going to help you. Even if loo look for things that seem like silly that people would buy, it's like, okay, they have this, uh, I don't know this pile of junk here that they bought. They spent money on. Okay. They can definitely buy some soar. They can definitely let me help them out with solar. They're willing to go buy stuff like this. That's a little games I play in my head that helps me a ton. Just looking for that evidence of things they have purchased in the past. Okay. But we were going, I'm fighting an uphill battle. And my goal was just take it as far as I could. Okay. Some of these, you know, it's going to be a tough close, like this one, but take it as far as you can see where it goes and we go through it.

Speaker 2 (14:08):

He's skeptical. He's not wanting to sign today. But, um, just pushing through the deal, just being assumptive, I've eventually get them to close. Eventually get them to do the unthinkable. That he was no way he wanted to do that day. I said, okay, we're just going to get the ball rolling. Um, we need to did the takeaway, Hey, we need to see if we can get your home approved, where you, we need to fill out these forms and then have our guys come check it. And the meantime, yeah, you can re you can review it all. This is our agreement. We're going to summit with you. You review it all. Worst case scenario. If you feel like something isn't working for you guys by all means, let me know. And then no problems at all. We'll just scrap the whole thing. But this, um, I mean, obviously we, if we get it approved on our end, you can't think of anything that wouldn't be beneficial for you.

Speaker 2 (14:58):

Right? Mr. Customer. See what he says, do go a trial close and he's like, no, everything, everything looks good. Um, yeah. Seems like it would work for us. Great. Well, yeah, we'll just get a few forms and they're just going to verify the credit and then, uh, we'll fill out a couple of forms that there you'll get everything that I told you in writing. And then we'll get this started for you. Then hopefully cross our fingers. It does go well on our end. Hopefully we don't have to turn your home down, but, um, yeah, it's going great. Showing them a few testimonial videos, um, got them sold on the credibility that we built with the people we had already helped in the neighborhood. Okay. So just do whatever it takes. Don't quit and deals. I see this so many times where people just quit and deals.

Speaker 2 (15:43):

They do not want to get to that uncomfortable point. And I still get super uncomfortable in almost every deal I go to because no one wants to sign up the first day. Everyone wants to think about it. Everyone wants to, um, you know, have 10 days to review the contract. Okay. But our job is to get people to take action. Our job is to get people to realize that by waiting, they're missing out on things. So have that mindset and really just think of yourself as someone serving how many people are not going to do this because they get scared of waiting. How many people are not going to do this because they weren't doing with someone that helped them understand the benefits and that helped them take that action. Okay. So that's the biggest thing our industry needs as closers guys that can close them on why they should have an appointment to see their solar proposal, which don't use those words, but, um, have a pop by and see their solar information, right.

Speaker 2 (16:40):

For the words that I use. So think of that as you were out there and knocking as you out there, setting appointments as you're out closing deals, just do whatever it takes. Um, I think how far can you go? How uncomfortable can you make it that they feel like they need to get in on this? Okay. And then use those tools. Guys, go check out solciety, the training platform, get yourself a RepCard, a physical card. And then last thing, send us questions. I loved hearing from our listeners. What questions you guys have? I went and talked to Jason Newby's team last week, um, was able to go in for one of their trainings. And it was cool. Got to stand up here. Some of their questions that a lot of new guys have. So if you have suggestions on who you'd like to hear on the show, if you have a, I dunno, questions, concerns anything you want us to jam on in the show, give you, what's working for us here at Solarpreneur and, um, yeah. Have experts on, they can talk about it. Let us know. We'd love to check those things out and thanks again for listening. We will see you guys on the next episode.

Speaker 3 (17:51):

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 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 solar learning community, exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with the top performers in the industry. And it's called Solciety. This learning community was designed from the ground up to level the playing field and give solar pros access to proven mentors who want to give back to this community and to help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry's brightest minds. For, are you ready for it? Less than $3 and 45 cents a day currently society's closed the public and membership is by invitation only, but Solarpreneurs can go to society.co to learn more and have the option to join a wait list. When a membership becomes available in your area. Again, this is exclusively for Solarpreneur listeners. So be sure to go to www.solciety.co to join the waitlist and learn more now. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you again in the next episode.

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 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. online 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.

Speaker 2 (00:43):

Back. We're gearing up for the summer. We are today. Memorial day is when I'm recording this episode. You'll probably hear it later, but we are ready for an awesome summer to close enormous amounts of deals and take advantage of these hot temperatures that we're being given right now. So I'm excited. I'm ready to start crushing some summer deals. I hope you are in whether you are a summer sales rep or you're doing it year after year after year, like myself, take advantage of this summer, coming up and use it to really jumpstart your deals. So I'm excited for an episode. And first, before we jump into anything, I need to give a huge thank you to you. My listeners, um, I just, we just got our hundredth review over on iTunes and I am super appreciative. So if you are a long-time listener or you're just hearing these episodes, give yourself a pat on the back right now.

Speaker 2 (01:44):

I love you guys and appreciate the support that you've given us over the years of we'd done this. Um, it's been a long time. If you look back, we've been doing this podcast since 2018 now, and as I've said before, there's no way I would have kept this going. If it weren't for people sending me comments, leaving reviews, uh, let me know that it's helped them. And then on top of that, just me being a little benefit as well. I'd tell a lot of people that even if guys don't listen to the show, it's helped me learn more. And it's helping me connect with guys who are really doing some awesome things in the industry. So thank you again. Thank you for helping us get to a hundred reviews and yeah, I hope you are taking some good stuff. That's helping you in your cells from the Solarpreneur podcast.

Speaker 2 (02:34):

So that being said, let's jump into it. Um, I did a little presentation two or three weeks ago. We had an event here in San Diego, which we're actually going to be having more. So I'd love for you to come out to our next one, if you want to find out more, um, yeah, shoot me a message. We actually have, I think a list we can put you on that would notify you for any future events. Um, but it was a good event and we had myself, we had Earl Kapule here in San Diego. Who's been on the show, uh, Brent Attaway our marketing guy. Um, and Jay Pez, another big guy that does events with the soar academy here in San Diego. We all spoke at it. We had a good turnout, probably around 30 people there, um, which we didn't promote it a ton, but it's just good to kind of, um, you know, connect with others network and then hear from some of the top minds in solar.

Speaker 2 (03:32):

So what I want to talk about today is just, um, what I presented on at this event. And we had some pretty cool slides that we went over and obviously I'm not going to do the whole presentation. It was like an hour, hour and a half presentation that I gave out this event. So I'm not gonna, um, do an hour and a half podcast right now. But if you want the slides that we did, um, hit me up and definitely send you those. But the title of the presentation I did at this event was called how to separate yourself from the competition, actually being as how to stand out from the competition. And the reason they did this is because here in San Diego, there's there are so many solar companies. I went to church this last Sunday and someone in at my church came up and said, actually, I already hooked them up with solar, where they came up and said, Taylor, since you hooked us up with our soar and got the process started, we've had like four or five guys come to our house.

Speaker 2 (04:30):

And this is in the past month. So I don't know what it's like in other markets, maybe areas are getting hit up that hard, but four to five people in a month, it's like one floor guy knocking on the door a week, right? So that was pretty saturated here. Guys get hit up a lot. And if, especially if you're in a saturated market like San Diego, if you're not progressing, if you are not hustling, then it's going to be really tough to have success. And so that's what I, that's why I did my presentation on that is just because in saturated markets, you need to stand out. You need to think of ways to be different. And even if you're not in a saturated market, if you can do these things, it's going to get you even more cells. Okay. If you're in a market that hasn't been touched much at all, it's going to be easier sells, but really implementing strategies that I'm going to talk a bit here about in this episode, they're going to help you have even more success, even if you're not in a saturated market.

Speaker 2 (05:27):

Hey, so let's talk about a few of them. Okay. And so, first of all, I have a story that happened a few weeks back that illustrates a couple of these points. I was down in Arkin around two of Vista here. That's just kind of the suburb of San Diego and actually got a referral from a deal that I was working with. And funny about this deal. I had gone to him. He had already signed with another company and I thought we could get them like switched over. I, you know, built some value. I showed them what's different about our products, what we had to offer him. And he's like, Taylor, that's sweet. Yeah. Helped me get switched over. And what happened was he ended up being basically a really far along in the process. He was going to get hit with a huge cancellation fee.

Speaker 2 (06:17):

Actually, he didn't even know how to fully cancel it. So by the time I was helping him get the process started with us. He calls me, um, like early in the next week and said, Taylor, actually, I can't cancel they're on my roof right now. Sorry, am I doing it? Then you get to them fast enough. So I got beat to it. But what happened with this deal? He actually gave me a referral. He got installed by a different silver company, but Yami referral, uh, which was his son. So this was the other deal I went to. And that's what I want to talk about. So I show up to his son's house. Um, it's the referral and never had a referral like that really where they sign with another company. And, um, you know, gave me the referral, even though they got installed by someone else.

Speaker 2 (07:06):

Um, but I'm talking to a son I'm saying, Hey. Yeah. Um, unfortunately we were able to get your dad installed, but he did like our program way better. There are some good benefits we're able to offer to him. So I think you're going to love it. Okay. And so I made some crucial mistakes with this, um, appointments that I'm going to bring up here. Um, but as I'm going in the appointment, it's going pretty well. He's telling me what he wants. I'm going through the fact finding saying, Hey, what's your experience? What do you want out of solar? Um, what are you looking to do? Which everyone should be doing, you know, taking out your notepad, writing down what his experience has been with solar written down, what he wants written now, what questions he has. And then as I'm figuring out these things, he tells me, oh, you have two or so I do actually want to get AC and a new roof included in with my solar deal.

Speaker 2 (07:58):

So at this point it kind of throws me for a curve ball. I'm like, okay. Um, yeah, let's look into that. And um, yeah, so he wanted to make it a huge project. He wanted to add in all these extra things, which some people do this, but I prefer to just hopefully keep it as simple as possible. I personally don't love adding all these things in, even though it can be super powerful if you were adding in different products and different home improvements into the project. But of course I'm like, okay, no worries. We're going to get you this. Yeah, we can do that. No problem. So we're going through in the deal. And, um, it became pretty obvious. I went on to, I wasn't ready to necessarily add these different home improvement products in with the deal I was telling him we could get them for him.

Speaker 2 (08:44):

But truth is I had no idea how much those things were going to cost. Um, I had no idea, um, you know, how to get those things started right. Then I just thought, okay, I'm gonna sell his deal. Hi, I'm going to add in, you know, 10, 15 grand on the total cost of the project. And that should cover it. Um, actually it was more than that cause he wanted a roof too. So I think I added in like 20 grand for a new roof in AC, so a pretty big project. Um, and then we're going, he's like, and everything about it. And we're talking with him and his wife and we got them approved for credit. Everything's good. Then we go to sign the dotted line. The wife comes out sweeps out of nowhere and says, Taylor, yeah, I just don't feel comfortable. I know you're saying you didn't get us the AC ans um, the new roof, but it's not detailed anywhere in the contract.

Speaker 2 (09:37):

And yeah, it seems like you're not prepared with that yet. So we're going to have to hold off. Um, and then we can get back to you. So my big mistake was I wasn't prepared to have these things added in and these homeowners, they could sense it. They knew that I didn't know what needed to be added and exactly they knew I wasn't ready to fully close this deal. And so it killed me, the wife, since that. And then ever since this time, I haven't been able to get back in touch with them, unfortunately. And they were comparing me with another company too. It was funny actually the same company installed their dad. They gave him the referral. He gave them the referral originally first, but then he gave me them after he gave it to me after and said, Hey, um, get my son to switch.

Speaker 2 (10:25):

Cause I think he's going to sign with this company too. So I still trying to get in touch with them, but a couple of points from this deal I want to talk about. Okay. Is number one, um, know your competition. Okay. And the big mistake I made with this referral and his dad is, I didn't know the competition. I didn't know who they were going with. I didn't know anything about them really. So I wasn't prepared to show them the differences. Okay. I said what I thought based on what they told me, but I didn't truly know what they were being offered. They told me the company and there's so many here in San Diego. It's tough to know them all. Um, but what I should have done in hindsight is figured out all these details. Okay. And uh, even better if I could have had a contract saved, maybe from this other company, maybe what they're offering would have helped out a ton.

Speaker 2 (11:23):

I was on a Instagram the other day. Um, yeah, someone I follow her. Name's Kiarra. She's going to be on the show here. She does. A lot of virtual sells. Virtual closing has a team and she demoed her a sells portal that she uses with her team. And I thought this was a great idea. Something that you could implement yourself or with your team. She saves an entire folder of dozens, of different contracts from other companies. Just these she's collected over the time, over time. And as someone says, they're comparing, she has multiple contracts. And what, most of the time she has contracts from the exact companies that people are comparing. That's something you can do. As you're meeting with people, as they're comparing your product CP, you can get their contract and then save that bad boy. You can have those contracts saved. Gene that have that animal stored up.

Speaker 2 (12:21):

It's going to be so powerful. If you can be like Mr. Customer, oh, here with you with XYZ company. Oh yeah. Actually one of your neighbors, they were thinking of going with them. Matter of fact, here's, here's their agreements that they had, but I'm just going to point out a few things that they didn't like, and this is coming straight from their agreement. Let me show you here real quick. Boom. You pull up the contract, you show them those things. Do, you can have stuff like that. Saved. If you can know your competition, like the back of your hand, it's going to be so powerful. You can help these people switch. Hey, and then in another this something we did actually back when I was doing pest control, we knew all the companies, our wholesales manual, it had, um, a bunch of different competitors listed out exactly what they're offering and it, um, it really helps you be perceived as the expert.

Speaker 2 (13:10):

If you can tell your customer, oh yeah, we've dealt with them. This is exactly what they're doing. And pest control is, oh, they don't have the, uh, they don't have their agricultural license. So they actually can't spray the yard. We have our agriculture license. We can cover the yard. We can cover these different types of pests. And I would get destroyed by people sound passenger right now. It's been a long time since I've been out on the doors, sling and pest control. But the point is, if you can know all these things, if you know what's being offered, you're perceived as expert in, is going to make you that much more powerful in your closes. Hey, and so I wasn't prepared. I didn't have, um, you know, contract saved from the other company. And I wasn't prepared in the fact that I didn't have these things factored in.

Speaker 2 (14:00):

Did he wanted, he told me he wanted AC factory and he told me he wanted a new roof. So if you can know these things beforehand, it's going to help you be prepared as possible. Hey, and I've been tell you I've lost a lot of deals over time, just because of the simple fact that I haven't been prepared and little things, little delays, um, things like the home is in the trust. If a homeowner has a home in a trust, you need to know those things because most finance companies that you deal with, they're going to need copies of those trust documents, right? So things like that. And the way to be prepared is try to do a mini backfire in your, um, as you set the appointment, right? And sometimes it's not always possible. Maybe you're doing a same day appointment, but if you're sending your appointment, ask these things.

Speaker 2 (14:51):

If they're older homeowners, Mr. Customer has a home in a trust. Um, if the roof isn't looking great, Mr. Customer, how old is your roof up there? If they, uh, have an older electric panel, Mr. Customer, do you know how many amps their electric panel was? No. Well, let me take a look, let me grab a picture of it then. You know, uh, things like if they're going to need an electric panel upgrade, so gather as much information as you can be prepared, figure out what they want, figure out why they haven't, hadn't gone solar and that's going to help you have all your ammo ready, locked, and loaded so you can close any deal. So you can be ready for any scenario that you come across. Okay. So that's just a couple points that I talked about in the presentation a few weeks back again, if you want the slides from this, hit me up, happy to send them.

Speaker 2 (15:42):

I went over, um, you know, way more details, had a lot more specific things in it, but just thought, I'd give you guys a recap. And those are a few things you can do to set yourself apart from the competition, save contracts from other companies, know your competitors, and then be prepared, be prepared to throw an extra, a home improvements projects, um, be prepared with prices, be prepared with everything you need. And then that's going to help you just lock down the deal the first time and not opt to have it been in this. Follow-up like I'm going through right now. And so if this helped you share with someone, thanks again for helping us get to a hundred reviews, you guys are awesome. And this is how we're going to change the industry is by knowing our competitors and being experts. So go out and do those things and keep crushing.

Speaker 3 (16:33):

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 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 solar learning community, exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with the top performers in the industry. And it's called Solciety. This learning community was designed from the ground up to level the playing field and give solar pros access to proven mentors who want to give back to this community and to help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry's brightest minds. For, are you ready for it? Less than $3 and 45 cents a day currently society's closed the public and membership is by invitation only, but Solarpreneurs can go to society.co to learn more and have the option to join a wait list. When a membership becomes available in your area. Again, this is exclusively for Solarpreneur listeners. So be sure to go to www.solciety.co to join the waitlist and learn more now. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you again in the next episode.

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 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. online 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.

Speaker 2 (00:43):

We are back. We are alive from door to door Fest here in Dallas, Texas, and I'm stoked today because not too often, do we get to do a live interview like this. And we have got the man the myth, the legend river Skinner on today. So river, thanks for coming on the show. Excited to have you.

Speaker 3 (01:00):

Yeah. I'm excited that we do get to do it live because I think you've missed kind of like a element. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:06):

I know. I love it. It's cool. I've never done one from my hotel room, so nice stuff off

Speaker 3 (01:11):

View of unmade beds, you know?

Speaker 2 (01:15):

Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. My dirty clothes are sitting right behind, uh, you know, the mic, the camera here. So don't mind that if we don't get in the S what he smells there, did a few workouts. So if you smell smoky clothes, that's mere river, but I can handle it for 45 minutes. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, I'm excited to be here. So river, we just heard you speak here at door to door Fest and you gave an awesome talk on recruiting. We'll dive into that. And you're here in Texas. So we want to hear all those things our listeners want to know, but yeah. Do you want to kind of share maybe how you got into solar and your story with that? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:50):

Um, I I've always been into sales. I grew up, you know, eight years old. My dad will actually, you know, my dad, my whole life owned produce stands, and he's paying me $3 an hour to work at the produce stands. And he ended up telling him, he's like, Hey, listen, I can pay three bucks an hour. Or if you sell watermelons for me, I'll pay you 50 cents a watermelon. I'm like sweet. So every person that came through the door, I came through the door, but came into the sh into the produce stand I'd, sell them watermelons, make 50 cents a pop. And I was making more off my commission than I was on my hourly pay. I'm like, this is awesome. So, anyway, so I got recruited into door-to-door from one of my dad's other employees named Aaron, Aaron invited me to go satellite with him.

Speaker 3 (02:33):

And I went and sold satellite with him. Um, that summer, the summer I graduated, um, that following year, no two years later, uh, one of my good friends, um, just was like, dude, why are you not selling solar yet? I'm like, I don't know. Um, so I started recruiting. I got recruited in Utah to sell solar sold solar for a month. I sold eight deals my first month. And, um, back then I, that was like 10 grand or something. And I was like, ecstatic. I was like, oh my gosh, I just made 10 grand in a month. Um, I wasn't making good money previously, um, in door to door. So like, for me, that was like, awesome. And I just fell in love with the product. Uh,

Speaker 2 (03:15):

That's awesome. I know it's, especially in Utah, it's, uh, I got out of Utah, so scared of selling all the, you know, Mormons and stuff out there, and they're intimidating, but you know, lower rates. So I'm in California, but yeah. Have you been with someone and you died, you feel like, and I know now you're in Texas. What, what do you feel like the differences are between the markets you've like gets pretty similar to, I haven't experienced both Margaret. Um,

Speaker 3 (03:43):

I think Texas is unique in the sense that, you know, it's deregulated and, and, and a lot of the utilities they're deregulated. Some of them are co-ops where it's just one utility. So it's really different in the sense, like, you don't know, like, Hey, you're not with SDG and E you're not with Rocky mountain power. You could be with one of a thousand different power companies. And so they could be paying 8 cents a kilowatt hour to 22 cents a kilowatt hour. And you have no idea until you collect their power bill. And so that's something that's really unique to Texas is that you're kind of like Easter egg hunting. It's like, Hey, it may be a super sexy prop, or it may not be, um, you know, comparative to Utah, but, you know, Utah, I think, I think there's great. I grew, I started selling in Utah and I sold them Boise where rates are even cheaper than Utah. And so I've never been to a market like California, where, you know, you're showing people these crazy savings. I've just never, I don't even know what that's like. And so Texas,

Speaker 2 (04:37):

Anytime my friend, thank you.

Speaker 3 (04:39):

So Texas is, you know, if they have a large bill, great. If they're not paying anything, that's fine too. I'm used to some people with low rates. Um, but at this have a higher rate than great. Yeah. So that's awesome.

Speaker 2 (04:51):

So, yeah, I'm sure we'll talk more about that, but yeah, what I really wanted to hear, so river, you, um, you won the, the boot camp, they were doing the knock star bootcamp, right? You were at a winner for your group. Yeah. And so for our Solarpreneurs that don't know, um, knock star, if you guys haven't checked them out, they do great trainings. We're at the conference right now. And they have a bootcamp that they do, um, think three or four times a year or something like that. And then they have a tournament that goes on, may do just kind of head to head. They put you in teams and they pick a winner that sells the most during the, uh, six week competition. So river, he won his competition. How many deals did you do in that, those six weeks or

Speaker 3 (05:31):

Honestly, it wasn't like that crazy amount. I think it was like 13 or 14 deals in that amount of time. But, um, during that I sold them all out, you know, out of those 14 or whatever nine of them were in one day. Um, and so that was cool. I just didn't work

Speaker 2 (05:47):

As hard as I could. They saved all your, your work for that weekend. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:51):

So, um, yeah. Was like 13, 14 deals. It was kind of in this time period where the net metering just changed in Utah. And I was like, ah, I don't, you know, I just kind of put my, I put my feet up, you know,

Speaker 2 (06:03):

Well, that's incredible nine deals in a day. And I remember when that happens, that's actually when I first hit river up to do a podcast, cause everyone was posting about it. Um, you know, a super crazy number nine deals in a day. My record was four in a day. So I'm like, wow, this kid did more than double what I did in a single day. He's gotta be on some sort of sales steroids or something like that. That's

Speaker 3 (06:27):

A skill that I, I was thinking in my brain the way I think I'm like what I see people doing when people do something amazing, it gets people really attracted to them. Right. And it's really good for recruiting because you establish yourself as an expert. So I started asking myself, what could I do that when people would start giving me more credibility? So people would trust me to come and work with me. Um, it was for, as for recruiting and as I was like, I could do, you know, try to do 50 deals in a month. I could start to do this or that. And honestly, I messaged Sam Taggart and I was like, Hey, what's the record for like the most in a day. And he's like seven, I'm like, sweet. I'm gonna make it. I'm going to do double-digit solar one day. No one's ever done it.

Speaker 3 (07:07):

And I know someone has, we'll get into it, but, um, I'll sweet. He said seven, I'm gonna do 10. And that's my goal. And so I started realizing like, cool, how am I going to do this? And it's I sort of asking myself that question. Um, and so I'm like easy. I'm just going to set up one Saturday, just as much as I can. And so I started just asking people like, Hey, would you mind doing a 7:00 AM appointment? And in my mind prior to that, I would never have asked that I might call 7:00 AM, boom, seven, 10, 11. So I had an, I had an appointment every hour on the hour from 7:00 AM to 10:00 PM. Wow. And that's the real trick. The solar, in my opinion. Yeah. Closing solar is easy, right? As long as you follow the process, you can enter the homeowner.

Speaker 3 (07:47):

They trust you. Uh, you answer questions, you know, how to, how to, um, rebuttal to, to the basic objections. What if I move, what happens to my roof, et cetera, it really all just comes down to opportunities, right? So the real challenge of closing 10, nine deals on a day, wasn't the closing part. It was getting in front of the homeowners. And if you get enough in front of enough homeowners, then the new close you'll close a high volume. That, that in my opinion is the real, the real trick to solar is just getting in front of homeowners that are interested in the product. And so that's, that's what I went out and did you know? It was really crazy for me. I closed, like it was like seven, eight, nine, 10, no, seven, no showed closed. My eight, 8:00 AM closed by 9:00 AM, closed by 10, 10:00 AM close by like 11:00 AM.

Speaker 3 (08:32):

And I heard back, I wasn't keeping up with the appointments then sort of picking and choosing which appointments were the best. Yeah. Um, anyway, so I had like seven by like two, 2:00 PM. And then I got caught up with a few customers, but long story short, I was at eight and, um, I had one other opportunity left and I went to her house, she there. And so I called her and she was like, Hey, she texted me. She came at a party. I'm like, how long is the party? She'll be back at midnight. I'm like, cool. I'll be at your house at midnight. She's like, perfect. So I went to my last appointment at midnight, ended up talking to her husband and close the last one. And at 1:00 AM is when we finished up documents, five of the nine got installed. I've heard some people talking crap. Like all of them canceled only four, four out of the nine. So, but you know, for me, I went back and you know, for me, I just realized like, wow, you can really do a lot in one day. If you put your mind to it, I later found out there's people that close, you know, 17, 18. And that, that boggles my mind because literally there's no more time in a day in my opinion. Um, but it was cool. Yeah. Well

Speaker 2 (09:41):

That's incredible. And no, it's, it's kinda like you hear the guy who broke the four minute mile or whatever everyone thinks these things can't be done, but then when you hear someone do it, it's like, yeah, that guy, right. It is possible. And someone's going to go and do the next thing. Right. So I'm sure you got a lot of people gunning for you and yeah. I've heard people, you know, closing more. We got a Ashton Bushworth. Don't know if you heard of him, but yeah. Let's do a podcast. Yeah. He closed, I guess. I think it was 22. I think he too. Yeah. So he claimed that it's probably true, but yeah, he had everyone lined up, I guess just like doc, obviously you can't be in that many appointments in a day, but yeah. I think you just set up something similar where it's like, okay, everyone signed the documents, you know, at 12 o'clock on a Saturday. Right, right. Yeah. But still it's like crazy. The amount of preparation it takes for that. And commitments and 7:00 AM till 1:00 AM. Yes. And the thing

Speaker 3 (10:33):

That I realized from that, and I think that I actually got a lot from KnockStar was you can, you, you can get a lot more deals than you think, and you can get a lot more than you think by asking certain questions. I think we stop. I think I stopped coming up with solutions a lot of times when I'm not committed enough to getting the results. So like my first customer, um, the, uh, what was the last names of Bradford's? Um, the Bradford's they messaged me and said, Hey, don't come over. We're not interested. Well, I already talked to them and I said, Hey, I want coffee for my ADA. It was at 8:00 AM. Hey, want to come back and want some coffee? So I had some coffee ready for me. And she texts me and said, Hey, I'm not interested anymore. I said, okay, that's fine.

Speaker 3 (11:14):

But I still want my coffee. And um, she's like, oh, I'm not ready. I'm like, well, I'm at your door. And I was just texting her. And then she came in, opened up the door and then I got into the home and closed it. Whereas prior I would have just been like, whatever canceled appointment, just wrote it up as not closed. Yeah. Same thing with, um, another appointment, that one, uh, you know, I was supposed to be there at 10:00 PM. I went there. She wasn't there. I asked to come back at midnight. People will do a lot more than you think if you just ask. Um, and I think a lot of times we give up too early and closes, although this wasn't a great story, I would have had 10, but I sat in this guy's home for three hours. I literally tried probably 20 different clothes on this guy.

Speaker 3 (11:57):

And he never told me no, he just was like, he just kept on saying, I dunno, you know, that sort of language. I just kept on going and going and going and going. And, um, you know, but I ended up closing him. But what I did learn was like, you can get a lot more people than you think you can, if you just continue to go and continue to move forward, instead of just being like, oh, there's an objection. Okay. No worries. And then you edit out. I think that's what I do. Sometimes I give up too early. I think some people give up too early as well. When really when they meet resistance, it's an opportunity to move forward. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:30):

And I love that you like set it up on a day too. I'm sure. Just having it all set up. You already decided, okay, I'm going to hit the nine. And then it's like, whatever, I didn't hit it.

Speaker 3 (12:41):

I had a failed credit and I had that dude, like, I was like, pull my hair out frustrated. I'm like, dude, just do it. That was my last closes. I'm like, I'm like, let's just do it. Like, let's just do it anyway. Close. Raise my hand. Well, I don't know. I know you don't know, but let's do it anyway. I just was like, I don't know what else to say.

Speaker 2 (13:00):

I mean, you're trying to break the record. So I imagine you probably had a few closes where it's like, look, I'm in a competition, but you helped me like close. Did you pull out that one to pull out the contract?

Speaker 3 (13:10):

I did it as a pre-frame. I just said, Hey, you know, I, I have a goal. Um, I've never done more than three in a day today. What we're gonna do is we're helping 10 homeowners move forward today in order to do that, um, I have some extra incentives for you guys to make it worthwhile, to help you move forward today. Um, to help you guys out for you guys helping me out. So at the end of this, we're gonna get everything moving forward. Does that sound fair enough to you? And it gave a logical reason, although I really didn't offer them anything additional. Um, they, in their mind, they're thinking, well, I'm getting a better deal than I normally would have for X reasons. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:44):

Cause it's crazy. I've started using that. And I mean, obviously we're not always in a competition, but if you bring that up with homeowners, say, look, we're trying to help as many people as possible. Um, in a way you're not lying to them, but you know, I'm trying to beat my record, trying to help this many homeowners have a personal goal. It's like, if you can get that emotional of all evolves, then sure you saw him that day. It really helps a lot. You're more motivated than people see. It's like, oh, this kid's really trying to help a lot of people trying to win the trip to Hawaii. I remember when I won my first like big competition that was like every close, like, Hey, will you help me win a trip trip to Hawaii? I'll send you a picture when I'm there. We please help me.

Speaker 2 (14:22):

And like, boom, boom, boom. People love when they're like on your side of the team. Right? Grant Cardone has that close. Like, come on, be my superstar. If you're going to be my superstar today. Right. Sign here. I love that though. I love that. Yeah. But no, a ton of respect for what you did, obviously, you know, top, top a 1% top would probably 0.0, zero one that have done what you've done. So well, thank you. Super impressive. Um, and so river, you gave an awesome kind of talk the other day here at door-to-door Fest about recruiting. And I like what you're saying, how you did something big to kind of boost your recruiting. So tell me about your results. Did you have a, I don't know, an influx or recruit recruits come in after I did this big, I can't

Speaker 3 (15:09):

Tell you how many recruits I got, but I can tell you, I, I literally, my DMS was like 60 people, just people, people cheer, like people are genuinely good. Like I didn't break an industry record. Like I thought I did, but people still were like, wow, that was impressive. And they wanted to cheer, cheer me on. People want to cheer you on too. So when you do something like that, people are like, wow, that's awesome. And so I just connect with a lot of people and you know, my, I kind of track how many people are looking at my stories. And that day, usually it's like seven, 800 people a day that they, it was like 2000 people, 2000 people, every single story we were just watching. And so that was really, really cool. But the thing that I believe about recruiting is it's not about, um, it's not about saying the perfect thing I used to think.

Speaker 3 (15:54):

It was always about like, what's the perfect line to say, what's the perfect this or that really what I found with recruiting is it's more of a networking than poaching. Like people look at it as like, I'm going to get this person. I'm gonna get this person. Instead. What I look at it as is like, how can I connect with that person? And how can I become their friend? How can I build a relationship with that person? And my goal isn't to recruit you. My goal is I have an, I have an abundance mindset. I think that's the best way to live. There's so many people out there that are wanting to come work for me. There's so many people out there that want to have solar on the roof from me. Um, so I don't need to get caught up on one person, one customer, whatever, like they cancel.

Speaker 3 (16:31):

If they don't go through this recruit, doesn't want to come on, no big deal. There's tons of other people that come on that want to come on. Um, I just want to connect with those recruits and I want them to win. And so if at some point me becoming their friend means that they're open to coming, working here. Great. But either way, what I want to do is I want to establish myself as an authority and I want them to feel comfortable going to me for help, and I can go out there to assist them. So I have four or five people I can think of right now that are messaging me through Facebook or Instagram that are out there selling pest control or different products or solar. And they're like, Hey, how would you overcome this? How would you do this? I'm struggling with this. And I just give them free advice. And maybe we get to work together someday, but more, I'm just trying to build my network and build myself as somebody that's truly wants to give value because money follows value. And I know if I continue to push value out that eventually the money will return and the re and the recruits will come. Um, because I'm building my, um, what's the word reputation. Hopefully, hopefully a good reputation as well. I like to think so for sure.

Speaker 2 (17:38):

And I love that in your, um, yeah. Your talk the other day, you just talked about be the person that you would want to, um, like have people look up to you basically. I can't remember how you phrased, but basically become that person that people would look at first before you try to recruit, because if you're not producing at a high level, if you're just, you know, if you're barely working yourself, then why would people want to come work with you? Right.

Speaker 3 (18:03):

It's it's like you write, like you use all the hut. You just told me 150 deals in a year. Like that's insane. Um, so like, people will want to work with you because you, they know that you can lead them to where you've gotten, right? It's not some secret that you sold 150. You're amazing. But what you could do is you could teach somebody the same way to be amazing, just the way that you are. And so now you have credibility. And so what I believe is when the is ready, the recruits will come. So now it's like, cool. The leaders now ready? Like you now know how to teach somebody to get where you're at, because you've gone where they want to go. And so the first step is always developing yourself to be a person that other people want to follow you follow, and then you'll start to see you'll, you'll naturally start to find more opportunities to recruit when you're, when you're a better leader. Yeah. I love

Speaker 2 (18:51):

That. So do you have, like, was there a time when it like shifted for you? Like in the beginning? I mean, I'm sure you were always like this, but yeah. I mean, did you have a big shift where you started seeing tons more recruits come in or any, like, I don't know, changes and, and you may not

Speaker 3 (19:05):

Like this because of your pod, your podcast. So forgive me. But, um, I, I went to Thailand and, um, I was, I was in 2016 and I was kind of depressed. I kind of always like asking about getting out of sales. Like maybe I can't do this. And, um, I actually took mushrooms for the first time, and this is why you might like it. But, um, I took those and what that did was it gave me a perspective and the perspective was, I looked at myself and I S and I said, why do I, why do I look at myself in such a, a small way? Why do I look at myself and think I'm not good? Why do I look at myself and think I'm sad? Why do I have this perspective, um, of the world and of myself? And when I, and I was like, that's really not serving me.

Speaker 3 (19:52):

And it really flipped my PR perspective to be like the only reason why I am insecure. The only reason why I am depressed or sad is because I'm choosing to look at life that way. And so when I got done with that experience, which I look at mushrooms as more of like a, uh, a medicine than a drug, when I got done with that medicine, I felt healed. And I, my perspective switched. And that's when I, when I got home from Thailand, I moved to Boise, Idaho, which that I believe that people have these, we're talking about it at the panel. People have these growth spurts, and it's usually over a three month period. And that was when I've truly, I came back to Boise and all of a sudden it was like, boom, I started getting recruits. I started selling more than I ever had. I started the team sort of doing better than I ever had. And, um, it was just crazy. And so that, uh, that

Speaker 2 (20:46):

Awesome shift, so moral of the podcast, do yourself a favor, get some shrooms in, if you feel called to do that, like makes you like see outside yourself and the effect that it, that it

Speaker 3 (21:01):

Gives you, but more than anything, it's not like you need something external to do that, but more, it was, I got, I got, that was the way for me to start believing in myself. And when I started believing in myself, that's when, when better things are to happen. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:15):

That's awesome. Yeah. He almost had me convinced I need to try shrooms, but I'm sure there's other ways. Yeah, absolutely not. Yeah. But no, that's awesome. And so, um, yeah. What are, as far as like recruits, how many people would you say you've like personally recruited or contributed to? Do you have a stat on that?

Speaker 3 (21:34):

I don't have stats. I'd say, you know, a couple hundred, um, I'd say personally, um, you know, there's, I worked with some great people like Jess Regan. Um, he recruited a lot of people for our organization. Um, over the past year, we, you know, but my team that's recruited a lot of people as in a lot, you know, over the past year, probably 450 people have been recruited organization, but that's not just me. Um, that's just from our whole team's effort, but personally like personal recruits over the past couple of years, couple of hundred, um, you know, some still work for me, some don't, um, by recruited a few people. Yeah. Yeah. But that's what I love about recruiting is I, like I said, I don't care if you work for me or not. I just hope that in some way, in some way that if I did get to work with somebody that when they leave my organization or if, if we no longer work together that they can say I had a positive impact on them.

Speaker 3 (22:33):

Um, you know, there's people that I can think of that have gone off to do awesome things are in great spots of life. And I like to think that hopefully I had some sort of positive impact on their life. And that's why like to recruit is because I believe if they come work for me, that there'll be put in a better position than they were before. Um, if that's not true that I don't want to recruit them. And, um, that's why I love recruiting is because it's an opportunity to help change people's lives. So it, you know, and I don't know exact stats on my recruiting. I have, I have no idea. It could be 150 people. It could be 300, but yeah, I don't know. Yeah. Tough to

Speaker 2 (23:09):

Say. I mean, social media, you've pride. Lots of people you've maybe brought in indirectly and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (23:15):

And I actually, you know, kind of going back to it, I don't think I'm the best recruiter. I do think I'm a great networker though. I do think I'm a great networker, but I don't think I'm the best recruiter. Um, but I do know that networking over time is what's going to pay off. It's more a long-term thing than a short term thing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:31):

And I think the abundance mindset you have, that's one of the things I admire the most about what you're seeing is because there's so many reps, I'm sure you've been approached by people like, Hey bro, what's your red line? How much you make them per deal. I, in fact, I was in an, just like a month ago and this punk kid comes up. He's like, Hey, what are you doing on my turf? He's like knocking. I'm like, I've been here for a couple of weeks. Just, you know, getting some customers he's I gotta get that outta here. You don't even, you make trash and like stars in thinking he trying to like recruit me by like, say, I'm like, dude, do you think that that's gonna make me want to come work with you? Like, yeah, I can tack you mean saying, yeah. I mean,

Speaker 3 (24:11):

I think with recruiting, you gotta be, I mean, that's just a scarcity mindset, right? There's a limited amount of people in this neighborhood. Dude. How many times have you been through a neighborhood after another solar rep? And if you close deals in that neighborhood all the time, I've been to neighborhoods where people have come behind me and they've closed deals that I couldn't have. Like there's always going to be more homeowners. There's always going to be enough roofs. But when it comes to recruiting, timing is everything. And you never know when the timing is right. So if he would have approached you and said, Hey man, how's it going for you? Good. That's awesome. I've been in here. Just barely gotten here. Have you been in here for awhile? Sweet. I'm stepping on your toes. I can go find another turf. Okay. Okay, cool. Um, you know, this is what I've noticed in this neighborhood.

Speaker 3 (24:50):

You might like some of this, let me follow you on Instagram. You seem like a cool dude. And then you start talking to each other and you start communicating for the next three or four months. Let's say you're in a bad position with where you're at, which I'm not sh I'm sure you're not, but maybe you are. And then he helped you out in some way. He was cool to you. You're way more likely to go to him to talk about the opportunity he may have offered you then being like, you know, yeah. Being a Dick,

Speaker 2 (25:17):

Like, no. Yeah, no, that's you and you never know. It's like, like you said, maybe they have a pay issue. Maybe their company doesn't pay him like a year down the road or something happened. Maybe their company goes out of business and then who are they going to go to? They're going to go to the people who like cheer them on, who hit them up on social media, which I know you're talking about too. Just, you know, connecting with guys and networking. Like you're saying she has been huge for you, but yeah. Um, I want to hear a little bit about like the social media, uh, speaking of that, can you talk about just kind of what your, how you connect with people on social media and how you, um, I dunno, maybe strategies for guys who want to get better at the networking part on social media, because I'm not good at that. So yeah.

Speaker 3 (25:59):

I think one just being real and being vulnerable, right? Like sharing, sharing your things that you're, you're struggling with, right? Like you don't have to throw up on people, but just sharing your story, you know, Hey, I, I, I, I had depression growing up, you know, one thing for me, I grew up and I was on Zoloft. I was on antidepressants growing up, um, you know, struggle with that. I've struggled with, with being insecure. And when I share that part of me, there's other people out there that have dealt with the same thing and it makes me connect with them. And so by actually sharing your story and doesn't always to be sad, it can just be like documenting the journey. People will connect with you more, um, and sharing the good and the bad. And the next thing is spending time networking. And so I do what I do every day is I spend actually let me rephrase that.

Speaker 3 (26:47):

I used to do it a lot more. I can be better at it. I do a hundred touches on social media day, meaning that I, I talk to, or communicate with a hundred people a day, whether that's just sliding up in their DMS and just congratulating them. If it's a quick response of like, I see someone sell a deal, I'll just swipe, swipe up and say, nice job, brother. Um, you know, if I see somebody that, you know, whatever, I'll just find a way to connect. Just little comments, a little comments, I'll just talk to them and, um, just communicate with them. And then what I'll do is I'll just go find people that I'm interested in, in networking with and I'll follow them and I'll just start cheering them on, you know, over time, I'll just, you know, start to get to know them, sort to ask them questions, maybe take a video of myself, send them a video of me telling them, you know, what I'm grateful for about them.

Speaker 3 (27:32):

What I see in them, what what's powerful about them just spending time investing in other people, like just, just constantly be outpouring, love, gratitude, appreciation, value, and give out all of that for free, give out all your tips and secrets. If anybody wants to know, you know, anything I do that has got me to be, you know, somewhat, I feel like successful, at least I'm, I, I feel like I'm in a decent position and I have a long ways to go. I'm an open book and I want to give that to everybody because I believe the more I give out the law of reciprocation is going to give me back that tenfold. And so, you know, that's kinda my goal with social is how can I just give more out to the marketplace? Hmm.

Speaker 2 (28:11):

Yeah. It's sweet. Yeah. We just got, had the, uh, Mr. Thank you. You spoke here at door-to-door fists. Want to get him on too, but writes down, you know, five, thank you cards a day for a year. Yeah. And it's like, you don't have to be that extreme, but I mean, you did kind of your version of that on social media, I think, or that's what you've been doing.

Speaker 3 (28:29):

One of my, what I call them DMO daily method of operations. Um, you know, I believe in routines, I believe in a morning routine, very strongly, you know, work out every day, drink a gallon of water a day, re read, read a book every day. Um, meditate every day. Um, gratitude journal every day. But one thing that I've been working on is sending three people, a text message or a message every day of why I love them and why I'm grateful for them. Awesome. And, um, it could be anybody, like I mentioned, will Smith the other day will Smith. Is he going to respond to me? Maybe not, but if I send three texts a day, I got this from Jessie yet. So if I sent three text messages a day, that's 300, that's almost a thousand a year over the next 10 years. That's 10,000 messages.

Speaker 3 (29:12):

If I send 10,000 messages out over the next 10 years, do you think that one, one person liked will Smith would respond to me maybe? Right. And I made a connection with somebody I normally wouldn't have. Or you messaged somebody. He, Jesse talks about that. You have three things you consult, you congratulate, or what was the third one you can salt based or you can soul meaning if somebody has something that, um, or compliment, I was the third one. Okay. So consult, like somebody lost somebody in their family, something happened, you send them a message of con you know, consoling them hate, you know, I know you're going through a hard time. I just want to let you know. I love you. And I appreciate you. Um, and I'm here for you. If you need anything, you know, I'm thinking about you consoling, complementing, Hey, you know, I was thinking about you.

Speaker 3 (29:59):

One thing that I think you're really good at is I think, you know, specifically you, I think you're very, very sincere and you're very genuine, but more than that, you're a really good listener. And you're very, very attentive, which I love that about you. Right? So if you can make compliment somebody every day, that's awesome. Or you can congratulate somebody, Hey, I just saw that you, um, closed 10 deals this week. Congratulations. And that shows a lot about you. I just wanna let you know, I watching you, I'm seeing, you know, I'm rooting for you or whatever, right. But console congratulate or compliment. And you do that three times to three people. You can just open up your phone, go to your contacts list and just start scrolling through people until you feel someone that's on your heart. Boom. And then you can just record a video type out a message, whatever, but it takes what, five minutes, a day.

Speaker 3 (30:47):

Super easy to do. Super easy. Not to do, but once again, I'm a networker, not a recruiter. And then boom. Yeah. Or go, just go through your messages on Instagram or on your phone. Just scroll to the bottom who haven't talked to in two years. Okay. Boom. You know, you still love them. You still used to like them. I just haven't talked to you in two years, so, boom. Hey buddy. I know I haven't talked in a while. I know we're not super close friends, but I do want you to know, I I'm thinking about you and blah, blah, blah. Right. Just making touches every day.

Speaker 2 (31:16):

I love that. That's awesome. And yeah. Think of every solar person did that. If every solar printer did that, that'd be crazy. I mean, we'd be getting more deals for sure. Because yeah. I mean, think of even just from a sales perspective perspective, if you're doing that, I bet you get at least a few people you're being like, Hey, what do you do by the way? Yeah. Can you get me some solar panels? I mean, that's a side effect, but even besides that, it's like, you're not trying to recruit every person, but how many recruits have you gotten by doing stuff like that? Probably dozens, same thing with cells. Um, yeah, I think that's a huge key in anything we're doing, just having that mindsets and not looking for their award, but just doing it anyways. And then, you know, karma results are going to fall and to have success. So yeah. That's super cool. You're doing that. Yeah. That she got trained by Parker winder, right? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:05):

He had a conversation with me like four years ago, a long time ago and he taught me something, you know, be highly intentional, but lowly attached that always touched. Did he teach you that? I think he did. He's talking about my quadrant. So anyway, I, you know, I think that's how it is with life. Like, you know, just expect everything you want in your life, as long as you're putting in the work and you're being that person that will come. You just don't know when. Yeah. But so I'm highly intentional, but I'm lowly attached and you don't know, you don't know if that's going to be the customer that's going to buy. You don't care either way. You're not controlled if they choose to choose to buy or choose not to buy, but you are highly intentional and going into it and just live in a space of like, you, you trust God, you trust the universe, whatever you believe in that, what you want will come eventually, as long as you're doing the right thing. Nice.

Speaker 2 (32:53):

Yeah. It's money. Boom. See, I take note of that. Um, said money tip right there. Um, but I wanted to ask you too, um, river, do you have, like when you're reaching out to people, something that's, um, is tough for me on the social media thing is just, I get distracted, super easy ADT start wasting time on the social media and um, you know, end up just watching cat videos. Yeah. All that kind of stuff. So for you, when you're doing all the, obviously we know social media is good for all these things reaching out to guys, did you have like a set schedule or are you doing it? I know you're probably doing it intentional, but what's your kind of process as you go on social media and not get like distracted and actually have intention. When you're on social media, I spend

Speaker 3 (33:36):

So much time on my phone and it's not good. Um, so a lot of is I'm just strolling and I'm just watching people's stuff like not being intentional. And I just naturally will. I'll just naturally at the end of the video, I'll just type something on that. Mainly at stories. Yeah. Um, but no, like when I do it intentionally, it would be, I do my morning routine and then I'll after a morning routine I'll send and then I'll, then I'll get my phone after I've done my stuff and then I'll get my phone, open it up. Then I'll send the text messages, then I'll do the a hundred reaches, like reaching out when I'm doing it optimally, but I'm not as consistent. Yeah. Well,

Speaker 2 (34:10):

Yeah. I'm glad you struggle with it too. Not just me.

Speaker 3 (34:13):

It literally knows exactly what you want to see. It, it knows. I want to watch golf videos, fighting videos and motorcross videos and success videos. Those are like the four thing. It's like all of that. And I'm just like, oh, this is so entertaining.

Speaker 2 (34:27):

Oh no, they hate it. Um, yeah. So, no, I think that's key though. I was trying to be intentional, obviously easier said than done. Yeah. Um, but yeah. The other thing you talked about too in your presentation is just, um, I know he had the top golf story, recruiting guys at top golf the other day. How much of what you do? Are you like constantly as you're out just doing, I don't know, bowling activities, are you always looking for guys to recruit or do you have kind of like a set thing you try to do when you see all these guys could be good? Yeah, I can,

Speaker 3 (34:57):

I can be better at it. You know, Taylor McCarthy says, you know, you don't go anywhere to recruit you, recruit everywhere you go. Um, and for me it's more of, I'm not like that's not what I'm searching out. Like, you know, people that are do MLMs. Yeah. My, my, my dad is, that's what he does for, he has a produce stand and he does MLM. So I have a lot of respect for that, but I also get the, um, the NFL, the no friends league with MLM where it's like constantly, Hey, how you doing? Cool. Well, guess what? You can make $7 million tomorrow. If you get three friends, I get eight friends, but you have to be one of my friends, I sign up and it's just like, you're always looking for the pitch. Um, I just more as I go throughout my day, if I see someone open up the opportunity, Hey, it seems like, you know, this is a really good line for recruiting than I learned from Taylor.

Speaker 3 (35:41):

Um, he's, you know, Hey, especially like, let's say it's a waiter, let's say it's someone that's not really in a high level position. Hey, you seem to be really good at your job. You know, you're like I was at, um, four seasons and the person that was cleaning my cup clubs, I said, Hey, you seem to be really good at this. Um, is this a career for you? And obviously no, either like, no, it's not my okay. Cause you would do really, really well at what I do. And then you kind of pause really? What do you do? Well, I basically do the same thing that you do. I just serve people and I talk to people. Um, but I just get paid a ton of money for it. You know, I, our company actually just got off a hiring freeze. I can't, I, you know, I couldn't promise you a job, but I could get you an interview. Uh, I could promise you to interview. If I got you an interview, would you show up? That's like a great word track that Taylor taught me that I use quite a few times. Copy and paste word for word it's the money line. And I didn't create that. I just, I just, I just learned from everybody and try to try to take what works for the people and apply it.

Speaker 2 (36:48):

Yeah. Well that's Moneyline and yeah, I don't know if we mentioned it, but you won, um, what was the best recruiter at door to con but would've by the people, the people. Yeah. Once

Speaker 3 (36:58):

Again, you know, I don't think I'm the best recruiter. I just think I have influence in social media. So I got voted the most.

Speaker 2 (37:04):

Yeah. Well, and that just shows the influence you have, like, even if you're not people still recognize you and you have the amount of influence that. Yeah. It was good for seeing the results. Cool. So, yeah. Um, yeah, you know, your stuff and obviously you've had a ton of success. Um, so yeah, we appreciate you all the stuff you've shared river. Um, and then last thing I wanted to ask you just like in Texas, um, or yeah, you had the story about the guys at top golf that you recruited the other day. How, how big have you grown in your, um, um, you told a really cool kind of story about your transition from Utah to Texas, just kind of the struggles you, um, you went through and I know there's a whole, um, thing that changed in Utah with the net metering. So for our Solarpreneurs, can you kind of tell that story? Just, um, we like to hear about, you know, the failures, the struggles, and obviously that sounded super tight.

Speaker 3 (38:00):

So the net metering changed in Utah and long story short, we went on a blitz while we're trying to figure out a solution. We went in that blitz and Boise came back, thought we had a solution last minute we found out we didn't and there was a meeting. And, you know, I basically, we basically, you know, I, I basically didn't do a good job, um, in that meeting, leading those people, which led to a few of our main leaders, uh, in Utah leaving, uh, which led to about 75 people leaving the company over the past. That was pretty much starting in December from December, like April, we went from like 160 reps to like 75 reps and keep in mind we were recruiting people through that time period. So we will ask them a lot more than just the one 60 to 75. It was like, we probably lost like 80, 90 people.

Speaker 3 (38:51):

And then we were still recruiting people at, does that make sense? Um, and so we just lost a ton of people and, uh, you know, it, it, it literally brought me to like a place of like, man, I, I should not be, I should not be in leadership. This, this sucks. This is, and a lot of people that are very close to me left and, um, yeah, it was very emotional. And so the thing that I, uh, you know, I learned from that was one to be upfront and honest when you don't have a solution, because I pretend like I didn't feel like we were fine. The second thing is, is when there were, we pretend like we had a solution, I told everybody else to go and sell. It's going to be fine. You're gonna love it. And I, I was like, it was during that time I was kicking my feet up.

Speaker 3 (39:32):

And during that competition, I was because I shouldn't worry about it. I don't want to have to deal with the new net metering and have to learn it. So I was just like, put my feet up. So the thing at the second thing I learned is I need to do so if I'm going to ask someone else to do something hard, I need to be right there beside them and doing it with them. Um, and there's many more lessons I've learned, but what I'm grateful for is where we're going. We want to have a thousand reps and where we're at today. And the lessons that I've learned from that is gonna help me become the leader that can lead a thousand reps that I may not have learned without that, without that lesson. And so it's, it's given me a huge gift to, you know, the thing that I learned, John Frampton, I listened to that talk.

Speaker 3 (40:15):

He said, go look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, would you follow you? And I did that. I went into the mirror is in my truck. I could almost do it in my truck. I opened up my, my, you know, my little sun visor popped it open. I looked at myself, so what I follow me and I had a notebook. And a lot of, for some people I would like in these situations that would fall, man, I'm doing this well, but there's a lot of situations where I was like, hell no, I wouldn't follow you. And, um, it, it led me to see my weaknesses. It led me to see some of my downfalls and, um, now it's time to improve, right? It's now time for me to work on myself, to forge myself more into the leader that people need to have to be successful. And so it's been a gift, but, um, one of those gifts were crying. A lot of those games were some, some dark nights where of self doubt and insecurities and frustrations and heartache. And, um, but going to the darks where you get to the light. So I finally feel like I'm through the dark little house a couple of weeks ago, so,

Speaker 2 (41:20):

Well, I feel for you. Yeah. I was just glad when all those net-metering changes happened in Utah, I'm like, dang, I'm glad I already sold my parents' solar grandpa. I'm glad I'm in San Diego and Utah. Yeah. So yeah, I feel for you, man, didn't seem like, you know, super tough, all that changing overnight. I mean, kudos to you, but no, I really respected dude for being super honest, super raw with all the people that follow you. Cause there's a lot of like, as I'm sure you've seen a lot of people, I know that it's just flashed their, you know, cars flashing their money, but that's all we know about them. And people really respect the things you're talking about and not just seeing the money though, you know, Lamborghinis and all that. So one day, one day I'll get saved. So yeah. Um, so river, before we wrap up here working, do you want to tell people a little bit about your podcast, your brand, your, your, or gear and all that, where they can find all those things? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:15):

Um, so the valid morning podcast, you can find on all social media platforms or on all podcast platforms. I upload one, I try to do it, you know, five to five days a week. Um, but I haven't been consistent lately, but there's, uh, over almost over 200 episodes on there. Um, so tons of content for you to sift through and to, you know, kind of hear what's going on inside of my head and my perspective. So go to the valid morning podcast, listened to that, um, river James Skinner on Facebook and then river Jay Skinner on Instagram, just shoot me a follow and a DME. If you, you know, if you, if you heard this from the solopreneur DME and, uh, you know, let's just chat and I'd love to love to connect with you and, and help and serve given anyway. Awesome.

Speaker 2 (42:55):

Well, we appreciate you coming on. So guys go out, hit river up, tell them you appreciate them for being raw for sharing his story on the podcast. And we'll have guys in touch with you river and any last, uh, I dunno, words of wisdom you want to share with our Solarpreneurs before we say goodbye here.

Speaker 3 (43:11):

No, just be grateful. Be grateful. Your situation's better than you think it is. So just be great. Cool.

Speaker 2 (43:15):

Awesome. Be great guys. Go out and share this with someone who can value from it and, um, tell wherever you appreciate them again. And we'll see you guys on the next show. Thanks Ken river. Thanks.

Speaker 1 (43:28):

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 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 solar learning community, exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with the top performers in the industry. And it's called Solciety. This learning community was designed from the ground up to level the playing field and give solar pros access to proven mentors who want to give back to this community and to help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry's brightest minds. For, are you ready for it? Less than $3 and 45 cents a day currently society's closed the public and membership is by invitation only, but Solarpreneurs can go to society.co to learn more and have the option to join a wait list. When a membership becomes available in your area. Again, this is exclusively for Solarpreneur listeners. So be sure to go to www.solciety.co to join the waitlist and learn more now. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you again in the next episode.

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 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. online 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

Speaker 2 (00:42):

Taylor Armstrong. Here we are back with another great week, another awesome week of content for the podcast. So before we get into the show today, you are going to learn how to recruit more quality reps, how to stop losing reps. And we're going a little, get a little podcast preview for the week. What else do we have coming up here? So before we dive into that, I wanted to have a rather ask a special request. We are at 96 reviews on iTunes, on podcasts. And my goal is I want to get to a hundred reviews. So if you could please do me a favor, we need four more, who are my four players that are, that are going to come in clutch. I need four superstars to go and leave me an awesome review. And then we're done no more reviews after that. I'm just kidding.

Speaker 2 (01:36):

You can be number one oh one if you want, but I would really appreciate it. If you could go leave a review and let's get to a hundred reviews, let's change some lives and then also share the podcast. If it has helped you so special request, please do me a favor, help me out. Yeah, but besides that, we've got a great week of content here at Solarpreneur. Today, we're going to be talking a little bit about recruiting. Some things you can do to improve on that and actually really kind of the focus of the week because our special guests we have coming on later in the week is River Skinner. You may have seen him. He's big on Instagram. He's got a podcast and we've got them coming up later this week on the show. So I'm stoked to have him. Um, and he actually spoke at door to door Fest in Dallas, that I was at a few weeks back at the time of this recording, he had dropped some serious value on us and shared some ways that we can recruit shared some things that he does, um, have helped him win awards for being top recruiter.

Speaker 2 (02:41):

Um, recruit a team of, I think he had 75 reps at one point huge teams. So he has some serious secrets he's going to share with us. You don't want to miss out on the next one. So today I'm going to kind of give an update on a few things that happened on the recruiting front here in my office, in San Diego, and then just kind of preview a few things. Give my thoughts on a few things that actually River spoke at the events and hopefully get you excited to go hear what the next episode brings. So let's get into it. Um, this week on the recruiting front, I had sort of a loss good and bad. Um, so the bad news is we lost one of our top dudes to another team, but the good news is he is still on, um, in our office.

Speaker 2 (03:30):

He's just on the north team. Um, so what happened was, um, he he'd been working with us for awhile. He might listen to this. So hopefully me saying this will get them to come back and join our team again. But he'd been working with us for a while, was doing good, having some successes, we got them trained up. Um, but we have, um, he did live more in the Northern area. So he'd started hanging out with guys from the north team, which is fine. Well, yeah, we're in San Diego, we got north NSL team. Um, it's more just the names of the team. We've got guys living in all parts of San Diego, but he started spending time going to the gym with the enemy. Just kidding. They're not enemies, but hard or north part of the team, a few guys, he was going to the gym with them, spending more time with them.

Speaker 2 (04:24):

And um, then he approached me actually last week and he said, Taylor, um, Hey man, I appreciate all you've done. Um, yeah, I love the training I've gotten from you. But, um, I just feel like partly because of area and then partly, um, because I've been spending a lot, a lot of time with the Northern guys and they've been coming to some of my closes, things like that. Um, I just feel like it makes more sense to me to go on the north team. I want to hop on their team and um, their closing style. I really like, it's been vibing with me and that's what I wanna do. So I'm like, all right. Um, yeah, I mean, it's the same team at the end of the day, so yeah, you can do whatever. And I was a little bitter about it, all knit, um, tried to be cool, but I was a little bitter.

Speaker 2 (05:14):

I was like inside. I was like, what the heck? We've trained. You, we've helped you get some successes. Why you want him to go on the other team? And I got to thinking about why did he actually want to join the team? Is he just saying like, is actually because of what he said or why they want to? And I know partly it's because of the reasons he told me, but at the end of the day, I started thinking and I'm like, man, if I would have provided them more value by what I helped him have more success. Um, and he saw that I was the reason he was getting success. Um, my training was delivering more value than anything else. There's no way you would've switched. There's no way. Cause if we can help guys achieve level of levels of success that they haven't seen before, then they're not going to leave.

Speaker 2 (06:04):

If we can help them feel like family, help them feel part of something bigger than themselves, they're not going to leave. So that's a mistake I made is I failed to give him enough value. I failed to make him, um, feel like family and he wanted to go to the other team. And part of it was because he's good friends with these other guys. I mean, he's going to the gym with him. Um, I actually lost another recruiting battle. Um, a few months back, I was trying to get my, uh, I guess you call my cousin-in-law. I don't know my cousin's husband. He was trying to decide between pest and solar. And um, I'm like, bro, you gotta come do solar. Anyone that knows anything knows solar is where the money is that it's where people want to be. We got people switching from pests all the time.

Speaker 2 (06:55):

That's what I, I came from. And um, when I was talking to him and he's like, yeah, Taylor, that makes sense. Um, he agreed that he could make a lot of money. There's more potential to make bigger money. Um, but then he left and at the end of the day it's cause he had like four or five buddies selling pest control. That's a big factor too. Sorry to get off on a little tangent there. But if you can help guys just, um, feel like they're part of a family, become their friends and get that environment. Then it's very unlikely that they're going to leave. So I think that's a huge thing that people forget about. Okay. And so speaking of those things, I want to go over three, just points that I feel will help, help you. Number one, recruit more and then help you.

Speaker 2 (07:42):

Number two, retain the, the guys you do recruit. And some of these are going off of what River shared in his, um, in his presentation at the event. So you'll hear a little bit more of these in depth, um, on the next episode too, but I've got three points. Okay. And I want to get into them here. So number one is add value and focus on becoming a better leader. Hey, so River talked about this. How, if you can focus on becoming a great leader, first focus on becoming a great performer, then you're going to naturally bring in quality recruits. And he talked about the reticular activating system, which if you guys aren't familiar with that, that's basically the part of your brain that, um, recognizes things. So for example, um, probably a lot of people have heard when you're going to buy a specific car, a Tesla or something.

Speaker 2 (08:37):

You start noticing all the Teslas. A recent example for me is I started doing this, um, program 75 hard, which a lot of you have probably heard of. And right when I started doing it, I suddenly, I started seeing way more people around me doing the same challenge on social media guys. I never recognized, um, their posts. Um, I started seeing 75 heart everywhere. And so what does that have to do with recruiting? If you can focus on becoming a better leader, then you're going to start district and I, as leaders, you're going to start to recognize those traits. If you're developing those leadership qualities, those leadership traits within yourself, you're going to start to recognize those and other potential recruits. You see, Hey, and so how can you do, how can you, um, become a better leader? Well, that's um, yeah, that's a topic for another episode, but you know, focus on reading leadership books, um, focusing, focus on improving yourself, um, yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:42):

Practice leadership in other, um, and other things you do. Um, guys go to church guys, go to, um, different classes, things like that. How can you be the leader in those settings? That's one way you can do it. Okay. But example that River gave, um, two that can directly correlate to your recruiting is just cheer other people on, Hey, Rivers being on this, he would go and, or he'd still does all the time on social media. He'll add people on Facebook, Instagram, people that are in the industry, different companies, all that and cheer on their wins. This is something that I started doing when River talked about this. I mean, add me at other people in the industry. Um, guys are posting when they're closing deals, Hey, 12 kilowatt system closed today. And naturally I want to be like, dang, I wish I could have closed that a big deal, but try to change that attitude, change it from the jealousy and cheer those people aren't on, Hey, you're going to gain more respect.

Speaker 2 (10:45):

And that's one way to also practice your leadership skills here. The second point that's very important River also talked about in his presentation is be vulnerable, practice being vulnerable. And it's something that I do. That's why I share my losses too. In the podcast, you guys know, I make a lot of mistakes trying to improve every day, but it's important. Share your losses too. What things do you need to work on? And you see a lot of guys on social media that make this mistake. They're all about posting the pictures in the lamb bows, posting them with the gold chains, with the money flying up in the air, all that stuff. If that's all you're posting, then you're yeah. You're missing a huge opportunity in attracting those people that want to see your faults, your weaknesses too. People love hearing the juicy details. People love hearing what your failures failures are.

Speaker 2 (11:41):

And I know that because when I've shared my failures, guess what? It gets way more comments, way more people dm'ing me, shoot me comments. Then if I post my successes, believe it or not. In fact, I've had just this last week, I had two or three calls with guys. It's, I'm wanting to hear about some of the programs. We have a sole solciety, shameless plug. If you want to go check it out. But some programs and guys that wanted to potentially come work with us in San Diego, they hit me up. And that was, um, probably the biggest compliments I received. So appreciate those guys that I talked to. And um, yeah, they just said, Hey, I like how you share your losses. I like how you share everything that's going on. Um, it makes me feel like I can trust you a lot more than these guys that are just posts and closing deal after deal.

Speaker 2 (12:33):

Um, nothing never going wrong. And that's the other thing, establishes trust. Cause we all know guys that are just flashing their Lambo is flip, flashing their wins all the time. They've got losses to Hey, but if, if they can share it, then we're going to trust them. We're naturally an example. This is, um, I'm big in the click funnels. That's kind of a marketing community. Um, but a lady that had spoken at several of these ClickFunnels events that I went to her name's Natalie Hodson and what she did, she sold, I think it was 4 million of a $37 product online, which is insane bonkers. And the way she did it is she basically posted a video of her peeing, your pants, like after a workout or like mid workout and her kind of hook for it was, Hey I'm um, I recently gave birth. Um, and you can see here, I actually just peed my pants during this workout.

Speaker 2 (13:36):

And so I've compiled a product to help you. So you don't pee your pants for all the pregnant mothers or people that recently gave birth. And everyone just bought this $37. It was like an eBook or something. Everyone bought it. She had self herself herself. And it was just because she had like her message. She had her message of vulnerability. So think of ways you can do that as you're recruiting. How can you share the losses any next time? You're in an interview next time you're talking to someone about the job, be real with them, share your losses, share things that, um, that maybe they don't want to hear. Okay. Cause if you can be real with them, that's how we're going to establish that trust. Hey, and then the last point is do something that makes you stand out is another thing that River talked about is he went and he closed nine deals in a day.

Speaker 2 (14:29):

Some you might've seen him. Um, he documented it. He set up all these deals on a Saturday, he was working from 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM and he had just backed back, back to back deal after deal. And he ended up closing. I mean, his goal was like 12 or something out of the day, but you close nine, which is incredible. And um, yeah, he told us that when he did that and when he compost that fee, um, he looked at like his post stats and he was getting like, I think triple or quadruple the views they normally got on just like his regular posts he was making because he did something incredible. He did something great. Okay. So for those that are trained, you attract recruits or especially, you know, use social media to recruit and get people wanting to come join your organization. Think what can you do?

Speaker 2 (15:21):

That's going to blow some people's nines. Hey, can you go close nine deals in a day? And it doesn't have to be incredible as that, but maybe it's, I don't know, doing like a cold bath challenge. Okay. Earl Kapule one of our guests. He does these cold bath challenge where he goes and jumps in ice baths for five minutes. Um, maybe it's um, I dunno, talking to 50 homeowners in a day, maybe it's knocking from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM in a day. All these things are, I mean, just something that most people aren't doing, what can you do to turn some heads? And if you start thinking that way, how can you, or, um, you will be able to attract some attention and you will be able to, um, get people, you know, hitting you up and saying, Hey, what do you got going? How you pulling this off?

Speaker 2 (16:14):

Okay. So that's the flip side of it be vulnerable, but then also think of things you can do to, um, to really, you know, turn some heads, get some eyeballs, think of some big accomplishment, some feet you can do. Hey, so that's the tips. And again, you'll hear more about these things when we get into river's episode. So don't miss out. That's coming up here in a few days. So hop on that one, but let me know what you thought of this. Let me know. Um, if you guys appreciate the content like this and we will see you on the next one, don't forget. Please hit me up with four more reviews. If you wouldn't mind five ads and value. Hey, thanks again for being on a loyal listener of the show. And we'll see you guys on the next episode.

Speaker 3 (17:01):

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 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 solar learning community, exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with the top performers in the industry. And it's called Solciety. This learning community was designed from the ground up to level the playing field and give solar pros access to proven mentors who want to give back to this community and to help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry's brightest minds. For, are you ready for it? Less than $3 and 45 cents a day currently society's closed the public and membership is by invitation only, but Solarpreneurs can go to society.co to learn more and have the option to join a wait list. When a membership becomes available in your area. Again, this is exclusively for Solarpreneur listeners. So be sure to go to www.solciety.co to join the waitlist and learn more now. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you again in the next episode.

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 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. online 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 for, for me. Where should you go to door to door tour?

Speaker 2 (00:45):

Should you invest in this event, plus a full re recap of the event? Hey, we're going to get into it. I'm Taylor Armstrong here to help you close more deals, create more income in the solar industry, generate more leads and referrals and hopefully make it easier to be a solar pro in today's changing industry. So I want to talk about before I get into this event, recap and give you my recommendation. If you'll go before I get into that, I need to tell you guys about an app that if you are not using to take notes, you are killing yourself. Okay. This app it's called Notability. Okay. Write that down or download it right now. Um, I think it's cost like 10 bucks or something, but this app literally has been a game changer. In any event, I go to anything I need to take notes in, especially for solar specific things.

Speaker 2 (01:48):

And here's why the app, what it does. It lets you record, um, the presentations. So you're recording, which I know you can just use like a voice memo or other ways to record these apps, but what's super cool about it and was a game changer. Is it pairs the recording with the actual notes you're taking? So let's say you're at an event and you write down a really cool line. You heard, um, Hey, this person says, um, at a really cool line on how to get inside the home to book an appointment. Then as you write that, it'll pair it with the exact audio from that exact moment, you know, let you just click on that note and you'll get to hear what was happening at that precise moment. That was super cool because I go through, I take all these notes and then a lot of times it's like, I don't know exactly what the context was.

Speaker 2 (02:46):

Um, or there something that I want to hear, maybe their intonation, how they're saying a specific line and all you do. You click on the note and boom, it's going to take you to that exact moment where they said those things, even here are the, you can hear the line they're using, um, exact words they're using. So for example, this events that I just got done with the door-to-door tour, which I'm gonna talk about here in a second, but Sam Taggart, he had a lot of great lines that you used on, um, his closes on his solar closes and I'm not going to be able to write down word for word what he's saying. A lot of times he's seen these exact lines one time, but with this app, I can go back. I can click on the exact moment and I'm going to hear his word tracks.

Speaker 2 (03:34):

Now I can go back and review them and I can really get them into my brain and be able to implement them. So for those that are going to this event, or even for those that are just going to solar, I dunno, team meetings or events, um, you know, anything you go to where you are taking notes, get this app and it's going to change your life. Got to give a shout out to, uh, my boy, uh, Matt Romero. He's the one that pointed me, this my friend. Um, so thank you Matt, for showing me, tell me about this app and hit me up. If there's any other cool apps you guys are using to help you close more deals or to help you gain a better education at solar events or whatever it may be. So I just wanted to give you a heads up about that app before you go to an event.

Speaker 2 (04:22):

So let's dive into the episode, which is, should you go to door to door on tour? Hey, so this events put on by Sam Taggart and um, depending on when you're listening to this, if you're listening to this, when it came out, he's probably still on tour doing these events. Okay. So go, go get your ticket. You can go check it out. We can post a link to the actual website. Um, we had Sam on the, uh, podcasts, probably like five, six episodes ago at the time of this one. And he did share a little bit about the events, what was going to go on with it. Um, but I just got done attending the events, um, two days ago, the time of this recording. And I'm going to give you my honest, my real, my raw review on it and tell you if you should go, if you're on the fence.

Speaker 2 (05:14):

Okay. So here it is. I think you should go, okay. Probably not much of a surprise, but it's only like 50 bucks, which is insanely cheap. Okay. Probably one of the cheapest eventual ever get a go-to and it's only a half day, so it's not a long event, but he does pack some action into there. He give you some sweet solar content and what was really cool about them. And we went up in orange county here in California. And when he got there, I assume it will be the same at all the locations he's going to, but Sam gets up and he says, all right, how, uh, what different injury industry that we got here? Solar pest control, alarms, uh, meat and kid. You not, I think it was 99% of the room here in California was doing solar. So I'm like, yeah, that's what's up.

Speaker 2 (06:08):

Solar is the best. Yeah. Um, so it was super cool. Everyone made the right choice, everyone out here with someone solar, which is the right product, which is the best product, which is the gold rush right now. He gotta be in it. That was super cool to see. Yeah, there was only, I would say there's maybe, I don't know, 150 people, maybe 200 this event. Um, and yeah, almost everyone was in solar. So it was cool to see. So what Sam does really, he just, um, basically tailored, tailored to all the solar since we are all selling solar in the room. So that was nice. We talked about some specific things. So other stops on the tour, I don't know if there's a bunch of meat sells them in there. Maybe he's going to be talking about, um, how to sell your prime rib, better, how to describe meat, who knows, but chances are in all the stops.

Speaker 2 (07:04):

There's probably going to be a lot of solar guys. I would imagine it. So that's why I'm definitely going to recommend it. If you were in the solar industry, I think it's going to be an awesome event for you. And we're talking 50 bucks, come on. It's only a half a day, so you're not even needing to take a day off work. You can still be slinging your deals, just take the morning off and then go rush to the doors right after go hit your appointments. It's going to get you a refreshed hit. So let's jump into a little recap. Um, and I'll give you my opinion on a few of the topics. He covered, things like that. So I'm going to pull up my notes from Notability here. Hey, um, so I'll get you a little bit excited for it. Um, he gave the example of just how we should treat, um, solar, like riding a bike in a Peloton.

Speaker 2 (07:54):

So you say at Peloton. So if you think of these bikers that go out there in Peloton and they got their group of 10 different bikers and Sam, he just got done doing an Ironman. So he was sharing his experience with that. He gave the stats and everything, and he said it's 27 to 50% easier to ride with the pack. Very specific stat in there, um, takes away resistance, um, makes you have to show up, makes you have to show off and you take turns carrying the weight break in the wind, right? So he made a cool analogy that as we're out selling, this is the importance of having a team. And this is why I would recommend to everyone be on a team, okay, solar, you're going to perform better if you're in a team there's guys that go out and try and just be free riders.

Speaker 2 (08:43):

But I can tell you a hundred percent of the time you're going to perform better. You are going to push yourselves more. If you are on a team, if you're seeing guys out produce just today, we had my brother, that's our, he goes and closes three deals on the day and I'm like, dang, man, how do I catch up to you? I got one close on the day, but he got three. And just seeing those things, it motivates you. It motivates you to want to be better to improve. So Sam talked about that, just how it's, um, a vital importance to get on a team and then learn from it, learn from your team members and use them to push you. Hey, and then another thing he talked about is just 10 secrets that he's learned from dozens and dozens of interviews you've done on the podcast.

Speaker 2 (09:30):

And they're pretty similar to what I would say after interviewing dozens of the top solar pros on the Solarpreneur podcast. Okay. So you'll probably hear this, but number one was think bigger. Number two is win the morning. Number three, always get better. Number four, don't make excuses. Number five, work more number six, consistency, number seven efficiency slash time management. Number eight, don't take advice from bad reps. Number nine, compete, number 10, have a mentor. And so these are common correlations that's Sam has seen. And what I see too, as we interviewed these top guys, they all talk about these things. And so Sam broke it down in, I was honored to be on his podcasts a few weeks back as well. Um, so if you haven't heard that you can go check out Sam's PA uh, podcasts, the D2D podcast. Hey, and then there's a few financial guys that came Ed Kinsey, um, and tax guy, uh, Brady Slack, what she's been on this podcast.

Speaker 2 (10:36):

So that's cool. You get some financial training from it. Okay. But the majority of the day it's Sam just, um, really tailoring the specific solar secrets, specific things that are working out there. Okay. And the one downside of the event, Hey, maybe Sam's going to be mad that I'm giving the con of the Venter, but Hey, I'm going to get real. I'm going to get raw. I'm going to get honest. The Caren was the VIP lunch. They didn't have lunch for me. I show up and I'm like, where's my lunch, the hex. And I wanted my prime rib sitting on a plate here and I haven't gained anything. I think there's more people than he anticipated that signed up for the VIP lunch. So I guess they ran out of food. Um, so I guess my advice, if you bought the VIP ticket pack, your backup lunch, put your sandwich in your back pockets, your tater tots down there too, because there might not be enough food.

Speaker 2 (11:33):

I'm sure you learned from it, but Sam fearlessness, uh, send me some lunch or let's go, let's go grab some lunch. Since I didn't get lunch from my VIP ticket, by what I was honored to be on the, uh, experts panel at the VIP lunch. So I got to jam with some dudes up there and share some things that are helping my team and things that I've learned from Solarpreneurs that have been on the show. Hey, so that's just a little event teaser, a little recap of it. Hey, but it's worth your money guys. Go, go spend the 50 bucks or the 120, I think is the VIP package. Go check it out. Um, it's going to be great for your team. She'll try to get your team there. I think it's great for team building for networking. Go out and connect with people.

Speaker 2 (12:23):

Go out and add guys on Instagram and post your wins on Instagram. If you're listening to this podcast, golf, shoot me a fall on the gram. It's at Taylor J Armstrong. Okay. Cause I am trying to be a lot more consistent. I'm posting my wins on there and posts and tips and tricks that are working for our team. And I'm posting the highlights of what we're doing on the day-to-day behind the scenes. So shoot me a follow. Let me know you heard the podcast and let me know if you guys can think of anyone that is crushing it, that we haven't had on the show. We'd love to have him on Hey, so that's the event recap. It was a fun event and obviously we got a lot more notes, a lot more details that I didn't get into here. Sam went into more specific things and had some great lines for closing, um, for, uh, on the doors.

Speaker 2 (13:12):

So again, download the app and then you're going to be able to go listen to these notes and listen to the exact word checks, which is super important to actually digest the content. So that's the recap. Let me know if you guys have any feedback from going to the event. Let me know if you agree with my highlights of it, if you don't agree. And I'd be curious to know, did Sam cover the same topics when he went to your city? I went in California, but he's going all around the country doing this. Okay. So hope you enjoyed this. Let me know what your thoughts and we will see you on the next episode. Peace out.

Speaker 1 (13:49):

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 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 solar learning community, exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with the top performers in the industry. And it's called Solciety. This learning community was designed from the ground up to level the playing field and give solar pros access to proven mentors who want to give back to this community and to help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry's brightest minds. For, are you ready for it? Less than $3 and 45 cents a day currently society's closed the public and membership is by invitation only, but Solarpreneurs can go to society.co to learn more and have the option to join a wait list. When a membership becomes available in your area. Again, this is exclusively for Solarpreneur listeners. So be sure to go to www.solciety.co to join the waitlist and learn more now. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you again in the next episode.

Speaker 3 (15:18):

[inaudible].

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 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 is going on on

Speaker 2 (00:42):

Solarpreneurs. We are back with another show. We're doing something a little bit different, and we have a familiar face on the show. And for those of you watching, we're going to be start doing some video too. So we've got us both in our home studios, but we have today back on the studio, uh, James Swiderski what's up, James? Thanks for coming back on the show. Yeah, man, it feels like home feels like, yeah, you're good house. Thank you. Appreciate it. And so for our solarpreneurs, some of you are probably wondering what the heck is James doing back here? Um, we had him on probably a couple months back. Just kind of told your story, why you ultimately left the podcast and started doing some different things though. Um, for those that are wondering why James is back, I'll just tell you why. Um, so we have been working together.

Speaker 2 (01:30):

I actually hired James, um, around the time that we had him back on to tell his story of kind of what went down, why he left the podcast. I actually hired James after that. Cause now he is working, um, primarily with coaches, consultants, helping them build their brands and helping them launch courses, things like that. So I thought, well, James he's he's, he knows the solar stuff and he's good at helping coaches and everything. So why don't we figure out a way we can work together? So since then we've been working together, have some excited things, exciting things coming out. Um, he helped me kind of put together the Solciety, which we'll be talking about more it's in a beta testing right now. So for those that are on the wait list, go join the wait list. If you haven't already solciety.co.

Speaker 2 (02:15):

But after that, I invited him to actually be an instructor in on the course. And obviously you have a ton of insight to have done solar online Legion. So I'm had some valuable stuff to share. So that's why he's back on. We're going to be doing just a little bit content here and there. And I think there's still a lot of value he can add. So yeah. So happy to be here. Yeah. So James, today we're jamming on, um, just, you know, the lead gen, we're talking about a whole lot just over the past couple of days, just online versus offline. And so can you give us like your background? You did the online lead gen. You basically had an agency with for years. So I don't know. You want to give your background in that role. So yeah, I've done. Um, I've done it all for lead gen.

Speaker 2 (03:07):

So started out as a sales rep, a solar rep, like everybody and did not do online leads. Uh, a lot of people think I just came out of the gate in my solar career, started doing social media, all that good stuff, but, uh, it's completely the other way around for the first three years of my career, I never generated a single lead online. It was all in person, uh, strategies, which we'll talk about, um, whether it's door knocking. I did a little bit of that, but mostly it was like kiosks movie theaters, things like that, that my company had set up. Um, so my background is actually very similar to Taylor and most guys in the industry, it's just jamming on the traditional lead gen strategies, but I really started getting into kind of the internet marketing side of things from an early, um, exactly early, but it was somewhat early perspective on my career.

Speaker 2 (03:57):

And that's when I just kind of hit that bug. I got that social media, uh, internet marketing type of bug, uh, entrepreneur bug, and started looking for ways to generate leads besides just being at the movie theater or the kiosk or any of that stuff. Um, and it's not that they were in effective. Um, I easily closed probably a hundred deals just from like kiosks, for example, at a mall or a movie theater on a weekend. So like it was very, very effective. Um, but I just didn't enjoy it and it just didn't capture my attention the same way, like online lead stuff. So, uh, that's kinda like how I got started. I just want to go into this before we kind of go into this debate. Like I have done all of the offline stuff. I'm not just coming in and saying like, ad sucks, don't do it.

Speaker 2 (04:45):

Like there's a specific type of person. I think that should. Um, and then what you just said about the lead gen side. So after I, uh, briefly kind of put my solar rep career on hold, they went out and started a consulting and advertising agency for solar professionals. Um, maybe some of you have worked with me. I know we have some past clients that have worked with us. Um, and we just did lead gen Facebook ads, Google ads, all of that stuff for, um, different companies. And we've worked with companies like Sunrun, vivid, uh, some of the big players within the industry. And I've made a lot of people, a lot of money. So I've got a lot of thoughts, a lot of opinions. Um, my general opinion is I'm more on the pro online lead gen strategy for solar. Then Taylor is, and kind of our purpose of this step is to kind of go head to head, provide some perspective to see what you should be doing.

Speaker 2 (05:37):

Yeah. So before this, we were thinking of bringing in like a town hall debate, moderator give us like the full experience here. Like Trump buy it in. Let's get it on. Um, who's who's, who's Biden. Who's Trump on the trout man. That's a bunch of crap, man. Lead gen. Great. Again. I'm going to get out, make it great again. Yeah. All right. Um, but so we didn't get that this time. Maybe we'll bring someone on for the next one. So for our listeners, let us know. You didn't tell him what it actually was. It was iron man versus captain America. Oh, that's what it was. Yeah. And we all know who's iron man here. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You can be an Ironman like captain America, like whatever, unless it's the new captain America, did you watch the new Falcon winter soldier show yet? That was a show.

Speaker 2 (06:28):

Okay. You need to watch that. But the new iron sucks for sorry. The new captain America sucks basically replace captain America. Spoiler alert. Yikes. They're never going to do that with iron man that you can't, you can't, you can't replace. Dude. If anybody came in and replaced, uh, RJ dude toast, they put a sign. I was reading, they they're making a campaign. They have a billboard in LA sing and bring a Tony stark back. So good happen. Who knows? We'll see. But yeah. Anyways, so I'm captain America, your iron man. All right. So Taylor, bottom line. Why door knocking bro? What's your background? Well, yeah, so my background is just, I think online leads are just such a distraction for people. And this is what I've been telling. You guys spend all this money, um, from what I've seen, just leading teams, time after time, reps just want to go to do these online leads basically because they're lazy.

Speaker 2 (07:30):

They don't want, they want to work less. And what do you mean by online leads? So that's a, that's a broad topic. What do you mean? Yeah. Well, I mean, just like mostly like paying someone to generate your leads because yeah. These people don't put in the time. A lot of times they just want to get off the doors and then it's tough for like leading a team. Cause I'll give you an example. We had a dude that worked with us. Um, and then he, he closed like, I don't know, six deals in a week. And a lot of them were just from kind of like networking online leads. So he stepped into a manager role, but then he didn't want to like actually go out and knock. So then our whole team that was, we were trying to train to knock. They just wanted to be like this dude.

Speaker 2 (08:16):

And after that, he, he saw like intermittent success. He closed a ton in a week and then he would have to go network a ton and try and sift through all these online leads. And then it was just like up and down, like crazy where we're just like, dude, get out and like lead, go out and just knock some doors and get some consistent leads go out there. So that's always been kind of my take on it. It's just like you're trying to lead door to door teams. There's so many people that are just, I don't know, want to do it to take the easy way out. Don't want to knock doors ins. Yeah. They're just lazy, man. So I don't know. I guess I kind of have a, a bad taste in my mouth just after seeing all these lazy on the doors. So interesting perspective having, so you've, you've never done online leads before successfully.

Speaker 2 (09:03):

Well, I have, in fact, in fact I have a guy. Yeah, I have. So I think it's like, if you're not lazy, if you're going to knock doors, do both. But like my argument is, I don't know. I don't think people should go out and try to do online leads unless until they have success in door knocking, then you can go to all my maids and doom combination. Yeah. So that's my take on it, but I don't know. What did you see when you were in your company? Did you have like lazy dudes, your, where was your company even pushing door knocking or what was your here's what, here's what, here's what I think. Uh, no, we did not push door knocking. So the, the original company I worked with, they were called FLR solar. They've actually been out of business for a few years now, but you could still look them up and check them out.

Speaker 2 (09:47):

This is back in Utah, but, um, they were actually strongly against door knocking. We actually almost had a policy against door knocking in this company and you can see why I'm not like super pro for it. It's because we'd like to keep our brand a certain way. We were going for a very kind of pristine apple valley type of customer centric brand where we cared about the experience. We didn't want to look like pesky sales guys, like the rest of the people out there. Um, which is why we hit so hard on kiosk and movie theaters. Um, if you guys have never tried those, you haven't tried those right tailor, like movie theater kiosk. How about like a trade show? Um, I've tried that maybe once, once or twice and it didn't go that great. So super good. And there was those three, right? There were like 90% of our leads at this company.

Speaker 2 (10:41):

And this was on multi eight figure company too. Like this is a big solar company. Um, so like those of you who do have companies out there to look into those strategies and give them a shot because at first glance, um, I will tell you that it's not like a plugin play. Like let's just go book a kiosk at the local mall here and see if it works. There's a lot more to it. I would say it took probably a solid year for this company to get the momentum going and these offline strategies. But I will agree with Taylor on this point. I think that you're going to find the lazy reps on both sides of the coin. In other words, if you're too lazy to generate leads, knocking doors, or you're too lazy to generate leads, uh, generating on social media or online strategies, right?

Speaker 2 (11:33):

I think they're one in the same. I think the guys who are really good at door knocking, they could also be good at lead gen. I think the guys who are not good at door knocking or not good at online leads, they're going to suck around the board. So I don't think it's an and or, or necessarily I think if you're lazy, you're lazy, right. Could be, could be, well, my question is this like in Utah, um, I don't think there were, I mean, a ton of solar companies at the time you tell me, but I don't think it was super saturated. San Diego. No, no. Yeah. So like the trade shows we've tried to do, um, my feeling was that they didn't work just cause like everyone's heard about solar, it's super saturated. They've had their door knock 20 times. The last thing they want to do is go talk to someone, you know, at a trade show when they're already in like the home depots, the Lowe's stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (12:24):

So did you see that that works or with people you work with, did you hear that? That stuff works even in like saturated markets, like counseling, there's a, there's a, uh, work, smarter work, harder strategy when it comes to trade shows and this type of in-person stuff. What worked for us was not stand behind the booth. Let me just paint a picture. Okay. You've seen it before. So you're at a mall, you're at a kiosk or something. What do you see? Usually you're going to see two types of salespeople. You're going to see one that is behind the booth on their phone, doing nothing, right? Cause they get paid by the hour that did not work. It did not work for us. And our company is still hired hourly appointment set or reps. I told them so many times, and this is one of the reason I left out on my own is because I'm like, dude, these reps literally never set a single appointment.

Speaker 2 (13:13):

They're just sitting there burning cash, right. It was the commission sales reps that thought a little bit smarter, got a little bit more out of the box with their thinking they were more effective. So when you're doing like this offline stuff, what really worked well was going to in our trade show example was actually going to the other trade show booth, uh, founders and company owners and representatives and networking with those people. That's where the real money was because when you go and you talk to them, Hey, we're at our booth. It's not going super great. What do you do? Boom, you got instant rapport going with those people. So it was like that combined with actually getting out there and working the floor, not just sitting behind the desk. So I mean, there's a right and a wrong way to do everything, but, uh, I'll a hundred percent agree with you.

Speaker 2 (14:01):

I would say 90% of reps, uh, at our company did not generate with these strategies at all, but the 10% made up for it. Hmm. Gotcha. So basically you're you wanted these people to be like the sales guys in Mexico. This is fresh on my mind. I just got back from Mexico and you know, I know you've never been there. I don't think. But like if you're in the streets, people hound you for everything. People hound, you buy other jewelry, you can't walk to one place to another without something. Yeah, dude. Okay. Makes more sense. I think it's the same spread man. 90% of people are not going to produce the results, but that 10%, isn't it the same in door knocking, right? Yeah. That's fair to say, like those top 10% they make up for all of it. Yeah. 80, 20 rule, 20% of the you, what are those top 10% guys have that the other guys don't the 90%?

Speaker 2 (14:57):

Um, well I think just the combination of the work, they're working more. Number one and then the knowledge, I mean they know all this stuff. They know how to overcome the objections. Um, so it really comes down to that. I think these guys know how to work hard and they know how to like resolve the objections. Then they're going to have success because what I see in door knocking guys will work hard for like a week. But since they don't have the knowledge, yet since they suck at knocking doors, suck at overcoming objections, they're not getting the results. Um, so then they stop working hard and then they get less results. Even though their knowledge is increasing by a little bit, they're not working hard. They don't have the work ethic anymore. So it just like kills them. And that's why people, so many people quit because they don't put in that consistent work.

Speaker 2 (15:44):

If they did it for like a couple months, I think they would get past that learning curve. But it's like few people are willing to put in the hard work and then have the knowledge, like get to the point where, you know, you don't have to work as hard. That's I think, but let me ask you this. What, what is the once the last time you talked to like a guy on your team or something that was considering online, lead strategies, buying leads, something like that. Like what's that? Tell me about the experience last time you're talking to a guy like this and what did you find? Is it just, they're trying to not put in the hard work and they think that this is a better alternative or like what do you think about that? Um, yeah. I mean, that's, that's my opinion. Like I was saying in the beginning.

Speaker 2 (16:28):

Yeah. There's a few guys, you know, that I work with currently. They think sometimes have that mindset. They want to work less hours. So they go out and, you know, do leads and yeah. I mean I've, I do all my needs currently right now, too. So I pay someone, get some online leads. So like I was saying, I don't think it's a bad thing, but especially for newer guys, they're trying to jump into it too early then. I don't think that's a good combination. We had a guy that was out here, came from Texas, sold with us for like a couple of weeks. And he was already trained to jump into online leads. He may be generated like, I don't know, maybe what did he do though? Well, he was knocking doors, but he'd only generated like three or four appointments from knocking doors that don't want to be like a jerk to him.

Speaker 2 (17:16):

But I'm like, bro, you can't, you've only gotten like four appointments from knocking in like two, three weeks now. Like why don't you focus on that rather than already chained to dump money into online leads. Cause I think you would agree that if people are good at knocking, well, yeah, I think you already said it. If they're good at knocking, then they're going to be able to set better appointments with online needs. Cause this is, you got to overcome the objections. You're still calling these leads. You still got to have to set that appointment so that you can do it on the doors, then it's way easier to do it on the phone. Would you agree? Yeah. So what if you were to summarize your case on door knocking, you think that if you're new to the industry door knocking is for you, are you saying just door knocking or what do you think about other offline strategies?

Speaker 2 (18:01):

Like networking events, stuff like that? No, I think just door knocking, man. All door knocking. I think if you can do that, like do it hard for two to three, I would say minimum three months. Even if you hate it, just cause like, yeah. See, I know you're talking about, if it's not your favorite thing to do, there's other ways to January leads by the end day, there's going to be a lot of things that people hate that we're not hanging around. So like, why not go knock doors hard for three months? Even if you hate it, just grind through it, get good at it. And then you can start to work on these other strategies. Then you can start doing them more long-term things. Cause it's going to get you past that learning curve and it's only going to help you and all the other lead gen strategies you need, it's going to help you with the communication and networking.

Speaker 2 (18:48):

It's going to help you with the overcoming objections. It's going to help you with the persistence. Not taking no for an answer, but I think, but yeah. Let me ask you this James, you coming from not knocking doors much. How do you feel like, um, I don't know. How do you feel like you developed those things to actually be successful in your kiosks and everything? Do you think it was like a slower learning curve with you not knocking as many doors or? Yeah. So this is where I got my experience. This is where I had a bit of an advantage that I used to not talk about enough on the previous podcast, because I mean, frankly like when I would tell people I'd like LinkedIn was one of my most profitable lead sources like LinkedIn, right? Nobody talks about LinkedIn in this industry, but I can tell you the skill set to do that is ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (19:35):

It makes it looking like knocking doors, like a piece of cake. Like you got to learn how to knock doors. You have to learn how to write hook a copy that hooks right? In one, two sentences, you gotta be able to hop on the phone, add value to the person and exchange, right? You have to be able to network with them, get along with them. Then you have to set an appointment with them and overcome objections, just like door knocking. Right. And if you've got to do that over and over and over again, so the skill set to do online lead gen is a lot more significant. And um, where I think I really set my foundation, my roots, correct, was actually on a church service mission, similar to what Taylor did as well. We both went on one of these, not same place, not at the same time, but on these missions.

Speaker 2 (20:19):

Right. And I'm sure a lot of you guys have heard like Mormon church, church missions, right? We all know who these guys are. Right. You're going around door knocking for two years. Right? Pitching people on why they need to like change their lifestyle, quit addictions, quit drinking, coffee, quit drinking, alcohol, quit all this stuff, right. Pitching them. Jesus. Right. Closing a deal with Jesus. That's way harder to sell than solar. I can tell you, is that a million times harder? Right. Um, and this is where I kind of got my first taste of door knocking, absolute and I first tasted door knocking. So like the first, I would say year of this mission, it was all door knocking, all grinding 10, 12 hours a day. Right. You could relate with this tailor. And that's just where I developed the skills. One to handle rejection, two to communicate and develop rapport with a complete stranger communication skills, discipline.

Speaker 2 (21:14):

All of this stuff was developed at this point. That's why I really had a leg up because honestly my first day at the solar company that I joined, when I, I did join a couple of years after that mission, um, I came in and was instantly the top lead setter in the entire company. Like I said, 10 appointments my first day, like in a couple of hours, people are like, what the freak? What? It's the stuff at the mission. So I vibe a tailor on that. The skillset, uh, I had, I had an advantage for sure. So yeah. Good point. Well, yeah. What about like, um, because another one of my arguments is all these networking strategies, the kiosks, like you were saying, they take quite a bit of time to have success with and like set up and be consistent money. That's the thing with kiosks and boosts.

Speaker 2 (22:01):

It's a lot of money we spent. I'm trying to remember. I think we spent 20 grand a month to be at one of our kiosks. Yeah. Yeah. So expense plus, plus we had to have people at the kiosk. I didn't even say this when you're doing a mall kiosk, you have to have a man at the kiosk at all times. So you've got to pay for an hourly appointment set or to be there if your closers aren't there too. So it's, it's closer to realistically with payroll, like 40 grand a month for something like that. Yeah. So it was, it was always profitable. Yeah. Yeah. But not for a long time. Not for a long time. And as for some of the stuff I'm talking about too, like if you're ever doing a kiosk thing to maybe I shouldn't even talk about it in society trainings as well.

Speaker 2 (22:47):

Like there's a lot to learn there that when we started blowing up, we actually hired a guy, a VP of sales from a solar city. At the time he was an ex guy from solar city, any help, solar city develop all their kiosks around the country. And at the time these guys were cranking probably 60 to 75 deals a month average per kiosk. And they had multiple dozens of kiosk locations across the country, just from kiosks. So, uh, don't knock on them. I mean, and they are really offline strategies to begin with. It's kind of like door knocking, but they come to you versus the other way around. Yeah. Well, yeah, you gotta hand it to these guys. Like the sun runs and all that, that have booths and Costco and the home depots they work. Yeah. Those things are working for sure. I don't know how they set that up. I wish I had that set up because what makes me mad is people think some run and all that people think they're Costco that I go, I got my solar panels from Costco and like Costco. They don't even sell solar panels.

Speaker 2 (23:48):

Not yet. Not yet. They don't Amazon, Amazon. Who's going to be everybody's lunch. I'm putting my money on. Eventually Amazon's getting into solar game and it's game it's lights. Yeah. Baby could be. Yeah. Or Tesla with these rock bottom prices. These guys are killing us man. Oh. And Bezos is the king of rock bottom, bottom prices. He will slash Teslas if he does solar, which I think he will, he will slash what Tesla's lower prices. He will take a loss on his panels. Like it does this with everything that the Kindle, by the way, every time you buy a Kindle on Amazon, Amazon loses money upfront. This has bayzos strategy. He will go underwater. And because he has such big reserve tanks, he can just suffocate everybody. So anyway, not to get to business strategy, but bayzos, McDonald's sell McDouble for a dollar don't they lose money on that and they have to make it back on the drinks and the yep.

Speaker 2 (24:52):

Yup. That's why it's not a big tie back to lead gen a little strategy for companies doing online leads. The more you can afford to pay for a customer, the better you're going to do. Long-term so some of our clients that did really well, they, instead of asking, what's the cheapest cost I can afford to pay, to buy a customer, right? Because for those of you guys would like leads, right. If I want to go and generate some Facebook ads, I've got, what's called a cost per acquisition, a CPA, right? What's it cost? What do I have to spend to go and get a new solar customer? Right. Um, and the average right now, CPA, somewhere around a thousand to 1500 for most solar companies cost them about a thousand bucks. Whether it's an ad, whether it's in hiring an appointment setter, an hourly appointment guy, right.

Speaker 2 (25:41):

Um, to, to get a new customer, uh, the long-term strategy companies who really think long game three, five years, this is why Sunrun and vivid. These guys destroy is because they don't focus on being profitable today. They don't focus on making five, six, seven, $10,000 a deal. And they say, can I go get a customer at break even? And if you can break even and get customers, um, for the same price you're spending, you might be saying, dude, you didn't make any money on the customer, but the lifetime value of that customer, their referrals, the reputation, getting more, installs, more reviews. That's when you can crush the competition. And this is also another key point. Why I think online lead strategy is so much more powerful is because I can literally wave a wand, right? With some skill. It's not like total magic. We'll get into that.

Speaker 2 (26:32):

But let's say figuratively, I can wave a magic wand and get customers for free worst case scenario. Right? Worst case scenario. I get new customers. I didn't make any on them. I am now getting more customers with this strategy because I'm not involving human power and I can leverage referrals and things like that. Call them up later on and you can grow exponentially. This is why those big guys are big companies invest so much money in online leads because you just cannot compete with it from a long-term perspective. Hmm. Interesting. It's like Dan Kennedy says, whoever can spend the most to acquire the customer wins. Right. People don't think like that it's solar is such a weird industry because guys, I, I, I do stuff in like every industry now. Right. And this is like one of the only industries I see where everybody's like, dude, I gotta make freaking $10,000 on a deal or 6,000 bucks on it.

Speaker 2 (27:25):

I'm like, you're missing the point. And then they won't get those deals because they're afraid to spend $2,000 to acquire a customer and make four grand. Oh God forbid I make four grand instead of six. That's terrible. We're just going to do door knocking because it's, it's traditional. Like it, it works. It's cheap. Right. Um, I just think, I just think companies that focus all their, they put all their eggs in door knocking alone. They're just not thinking long-term. Yeah. Yeah, no, I agree with that. I think you got to diversify at the end of the day, but here's my other question. Like my argument is at the point I'm at, I can go out and knock for four hours and usually get two to three leads. Um, so like for people, for sales reps that are listening to this, that's like, haven't done any of these things.

Speaker 2 (28:16):

What's your argument? Like why would we go out and try these offline strategies? Like it's probably going to take us more than online or yet online. I'm like, why would we spend the time to set this up? Or why would we go set up like a kiosk for example, or I don't know, set up ads or something. It's probably going to take us more than, you know, four hours. No, not, you're not going to knock on your argument here. Absolutely. If we pin new guy day one never sold solar in his life and we take new guy day one, never sold solar. And we say, you knocked doors. You go. And uh, we're not going to do the kiosk because I actually am going to put my money on the kiosk guy. If there's an established kiosk at the company, that's the, if we're going to say you go generate leads on Facebook.

Speaker 2 (29:03):

Okay? New guy knocked doors, new guy in Facebook. Every time I'm going to say the guy knocking doors is going to beat the guy doing Facebook instantly. Right now he is. But over time, the guy on Facebook, I'm betting my money on that guy. If he's willing to develop the skillset, he's willing to really commit himself to this. There's a lot of other variables, but the other big one is what's your priority and goal with solar. If you're just coming in for a summer. And I don't even know is the summer thing, like is still a, still a big thing with solar Taylor. Is that kind of old guys come in for like four months? Yeah. I think it's still big, especially with bigger, like the vivid solar's Sunrun. I think there's a lot of guys that still do the summer program. I bet. I feel like that culture of that is dying a little bit, especially with COVID but yeah, with we're definitely not as big if that's your jam and solar's not like your career, like you're in it to win this thing over the next three, five, 10 years plus right then.

Speaker 2 (30:02):

Yeah. I would say probably stick with door knocking and unless you've got the skillset and the chops like I'm talking about. Yeah. Well, I remember you even called me at one point a while back because you were considering starting up your door knocking team. Yeah. So even a guy like you, you know, recognized it and everything. I'm like, wow. James has called me for door knocking tips. Never thought I'd hear it a day. And here's why different reps have different strengths. Think of them like a, like, uh, a Pokemon card or something. Right. It's got, you've got your, your strengths and your weaknesses. Okay. So different reps, you in particular, I'm going to place if I'm like, like I'm placed in my Pokemon here right now, I'm playing a game. I'm not a big Pokemon guy, by the way. I'm just trying to, I wasn't as a kid, but I was definitely a Pokemon Yu-Gi-Oh guy. Oh yeah. I just got some Pokemon cards in my box of lucky terms. Yeah. I'm waiting for those records. I'm waiting for those Pokemon NFTs to draw. Oh yeah. Oh original. [inaudible]

Speaker 2 (31:09):

swiping those up. So anyway, if I'm there and I'm placing all my people where like chess, for example, I'm placing my pieces. I'm going to place a guy like Taylor as a door knocking guy and not like a LinkedIn networking JV type of thing. Because knowing Taylor, I know that he's better at consistent efforts. He doesn't mind grinding on the doors necessarily. Like, yeah, nobody loves it, but he'll do it right at the end of the day. And then he's motivated too. He's clear on his goals and he just wants a simple solution to do his thing. He just wants to straight line boom. Here's what I'm looking for. Here's what I'm going to do. So I would place him there. On the other hand, if you've got a guy like me, right. Who's very entrepreneurial. Even at the first company I was working with, I was, uh, what you call an intrepreneur right at this company.

Speaker 2 (32:03):

I was constantly having, I was showing up to the marketing meetings and the sales meetings, every meeting I could trying to find out ways how we could grow the company. I was the guy who was leading out the kiosks. Uh, I remember we'd booked an event at a Dave Ramsey event. Like Dave Ramsey showed up for a speaking event and we were like one of the partners there. Um, like I organize these things. Right. And uh, that type of person, they will absolutely go nuts if they're forced to be in a situation that is just, Hey, knock doors and get out. I could guarantee that guy is not going to stay. He's going to go and start his own. Company's probably going to end up beating you at some point as well. So you got to know your people, advice to advice to company owners, a VP of sales marketing is like, you got to know your reps where they're at.

Speaker 2 (32:54):

Yeah. Well, how would you, my question is how do you even recognize that though? Cause there's not that many guys like you that are, you know, super entrepreneurial and want to go start all this stuff that I see. Um, so like your own companies and stuff like w Unisphere reps or how you seen, are you just saying, Hey, this guy is lazy for knocking doors. Let's go put them on the different track. See if he does get along. Yeah. Because there's value in being consistent as a, when you're running a company. Right. You can't just have, there, there is a, we should talk about this too. Kind of the free for all self lead gen versus more organized models as well. But, um, I do think there's a, w what's your question? Repeat your question. I'm just saying like, how would you recognize that? Because when you were starting your teams, got it.

Speaker 2 (33:40):

How are you going to see, oh, this guy he's, he doesn't want to knock doors. He's not going to do good with that. Let's go set them on some kiosks, have him do some online lead gen, whatever. How do you recommend that? So as the company owner, I had to recognize that I needed to do all of the heavy lifting as I possibly could. So if you're a sales rep, I do not recommend an individual rep go and learn how to do Facebook ads for themselves, if you're talented enough and have the skill set enough to, and really just the ambition to drive through and learn how to do something like that, which it is difficult, then you've already got it figured out to begin with. I'm not worried about that guy, that guy's probably not even listening to this podcast, honestly. Um, but as a business owner, you have to set up a structure and lead systems in place.

Speaker 2 (34:27):

So it's not confusing. And you have somewhere that the reps could come in and actually play. So rather than, oh, okay, go do one of five strategies. No, no, no, no. I choose the strategies from my reps. Absolutely. And we were starting a door knocking team as well because door knocking works like, okay, I'm not, I'm not a hundred percent against it. I just don't think it's the best, all your eggs into that basket strategy. Um, for online leads, the company should be doing all the funnels and the ads and all of that stuff. The reps should never be doing that crap. I've never seen that work out well, it's so time consuming. It's like around the clock, we would have guys doing, especially as an agency owner too, we would do like, we literally have to monitor face Facebook ads, 24 hours a day.

Speaker 2 (35:15):

Right. Literally hiring people overseas to look at it two in the morning in case some negative comments come up like to do about solar and nipping them in the bud immediately. Like our rep can't do that. Like if you're on four or five presentations in a row and you're out for an afternoon and you're managing your ads, your ads are going to tank like not a shot, not a shot. So recognizing that is very obvious to answer your question, you know, when somebody got it and when they don't, for example, and the biggest sign is if your rep in your organization or your manager is acting like the position acting as if they have the position they want tomorrow, today, that's the person. For example, I became the VP of sales at that company. I acted like the VP of sales on day one instantly.

Speaker 2 (36:08):

I'm like mentoring guys on the first day. So, you know, when you have that person, that's my point there. Gotcha. Yeah, no, that's yeah. I mean all these and that's, I think a big thing that all these companies you'll see, especially down here in Southern California, a lot of these dealers companies that start up they're guys that just came from alarms have only had the door-knocking background. And their thing is like, if a guy isn't doing good at door knocking, then yeah. Just like firearm, go hire the new one. Um, so I think that is an issue. Guys can't recognize value and maybe someone that could help out in another role. Um, yeah. I may ask you to stay there. Why do you think people struggle with online lead gen, like doing it themselves or like hiring people in general? Uh, so you could do reps since you're most familiar with that.

Speaker 2 (36:59):

Not necessarily a company. Why would a rep have a hard time with doing online lead gen? Do you think? Why do people fail? Like if they're, if they did it themselves set up the Facebook ads and funnels and stuff. Yeah. Well, I can tell you my personal experience since that's perfect for it. That's just, I know the patients for it. It goes back to the same thing I was telling you before. Like, why am I going to set this up? If I can go generate a lead, if I can go out and knock four hours, usually booked two or three appointments, then at the end of the day, I'm like, why should I spend all this time setting this up? So when I first learned that, because I've set up my own Facebook ads, I've set up my funnels and stuff like that. So I think I have more Nolan's happen.

Speaker 2 (37:45):

Tell us about what's happened in that process. Um, yeah. So what happened is I set it up. I took my course, you know, figured out how to do my online lead gen. And I thought I was going to be set for life leads were just going to be pouring in. But, and that's how it was for probably like two weeks. I was getting pretty consistent leads, but then they just tanked after that. And I'm like, what the heck is going on? I'm not getting leads, nothing's happening. And then I go back through this course. I talk with the guy who helped me set all this up. I'm like, man, what's happening. He's like, no, you need to adjust it. You need to switch out the copy. You need to switch out the image. Um, you go look at what other people are doing. You need to do some testing, do split tests from the AB split tests to see which one is getting the best results.

Speaker 2 (38:30):

I'm like, holy tale. I thought this was just set to go. You're telling me after run split tests, I have like adjust the copy and I have to like brainstorm. What's gonna work best and everything. So that's when I started realizing I'm like, man, this is more work than I thought. Um, yeah, it's going to take me probably six hours at least to like adjust all this stuff and then maybe get it back up and running. And at that point, who knows if it's getting good results again, I'm not, I have to adjust them the next day. So that's when I kind of realized, I'm like, man, I could adjust all this. Um, but I'm just going to go out and knock some more doors, then I'll get consistent leads. Um, so ever since then, I, I mean, I still like know the basic stuff of it, but my preference is just have someone that knows either helped me with most of the process or just like I've hired to you at birds.

Speaker 2 (39:20):

Um, Joseph, Joseph Fu. Yeah. Yeah. Taylor used to work with our, uh, my, my old company. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, for me it was just like a time thing. And it's going back to like being an entrepreneur, like you said, it's like, you're not going to master all the skills. So you go do what you're best at and then have other hire out. Other people get help to do the things you're not good at. That's kinda the approach I took. Um, what do you think about longterm? What's a better move. Longterm online leads are. And let's talk about the future of solar. I mean, that's where we're company perspective, because like, look, the company perspective matters to the rep, right? We not be, we might not be saying, Hey, reps need to go learn how to do Facebook ads. Some of them should, some of them shouldn't right.

Speaker 2 (40:06):

But the reality is our world's radically different than it was even five years when I first got in the industry. So the future of lead gen, where is the best time investment resource investment to be my thing is it's still just, I think invest most of your time in the door knocking still. And I know we were talking about this off the camera before we started things can change in the future. Maybe it gets to the point where everyone has gates up. You can't even knock on their door. Um, like I live down in Columbia for my church mission thing in a lot of these doors, we couldn't even knock on cause you have gates up and they're afraid of people breaking in the house. So who knows, maybe it's going to get to that point where, um, you can't even get to people's doors.

Speaker 2 (40:54):

So my thought is just like milk it while you can, um, go out and knock the doors, generate the leads, get good at that and then transition when you need to. So that's why I think it's good. Yeah. Get a basic knowledge, like, um, go out and learn some of these concepts. Um, but then if it gets the point where maybe people are having more success with the online things, then you can transition at that point. That's what I think. And that's what I'm going to be. Cause Ben ain't broke, broke, don't fix it. I'm having success on the doors. I know all the most of the top guys in the industry are knocking the doors. Right? You look at the Mike O'Donnell's, you will buzz well as you look at, I mean, I had a guy that was in a coaching group with close 25 deals in a week.

Speaker 2 (41:40):

All of them came from knocking doors, at least. So I think all the top guys are knocking doors. They're hitting it hard. Um, but yeah, I know to your point and you'll probably talk about this. I think in the future, it might head more towards online thing, but, but I think I have a, I have a belief that if I can master the doors and I can master the online deal and do that one, it's going, but yeah, you start, you have to start at some point. So yeah, the skillset bottom line, you will never be good at online leads. If you are not capable of sending an appointment in person facts, truth a hundred percent. I see guys try to do lead gen all the time. I've consulted lots of lead companies in solar and the reason these lead agencies suck and why like 80% of them sucked too.

Speaker 2 (42:28):

Uh, for those of you guys who have hired them before, because they've never sold solar before hundred. Think about that. Your advertising is a higher form of sales. Okay. So say we got multiple levels here. Sales is at the bottom level. Being able to talk to somebody one-on-one in real time, handle objections, pivot, adjust your approach. Right. And that's valuable because I can read Taylor. Like if I'm talking to, I'm trying to sell them solar, I could see what's going on and change it advertising on the other hand. Not so simple because it's not interactive. Right? It's not interactive. I can't see what the person's reaction is on the other side of the ad. Okay. So with that being said, you have to know your customer better. You have to have better approaches, better creativity, right. To be able to do that because you're selling to many people at once, right?

Speaker 2 (43:20):

It takes a certain level of skill. It's just, it's common sense to sell. One person takes a certain level of skill to sell thousands of people at the same time takes more skill. It's more people, right? So if you can't generate a lead in person, like good freaking luck with lead gen, that's my, that's my 2 cents on that. So I am a hundred percent of the Taylor there. I think the future of Legion does not involve knocking doors. I think knocking doors will be completely gone. I think it's almost dead right now besides California I'll even go that far. I think, I think California is basically the only place that's really, is it happening? This K close 25 deals in Texas, Texas, Texas is your other place. Right. But like, uh, Nevada now VAT is out. That metering is out Florida. It's mostly online leads. Like the majority of our clients are in Florida. It's mostly online leads. Um, but as time progresses and other five, 10 years, man, like I don't think we're even going to connection. Yeah. Can you hear me?

Speaker 2 (45:01):

Yeah. I'm here. Can you hear me? Hello? Hello? I can see you. Can you hear me? Test, test, test this thing on. Yeah. Can you hear me? Hello? Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? Oh, you back? Yeah. Okay. We're back. Somebody died. Yeah, but that's why online leads not going to work then where do we cut off? Where did we cut off? Uh, last I heard. I think you're just saying in Florida, they're not working. Um, jeez. You're just saying why the doors are dead or why do you think door knocking? Did you hear me? My comment about sales reps being dead. No, I didn't even hear that. Okay. So that cut out. That was the best part, man.

Speaker 2 (46:06):

There's two guys in this industry. They're the guys who just want to ride it out and they think it's going to be gone. Okay. You hear the companies. And you know, when you're in one of those companies, they think that this industry is going to be taken over tax credits are going to go away. So under the world, right, nobody's going to be able to sell solar, done the, writing it out to the tax credits here. That's type one. I'm not on that boat at all. When it comes to solar type two, those guys and they're out there by the way, they're the companies that like the company I originally worked with was that type of company where they're like, yo, we're in here for the next 20, 30 years. This is how we're going to take out vivid, Sunrun, Tesla. They have strategies to take out the big guys, right?

Speaker 2 (46:47):

Those are the guys who understand that sales reps are not a permanent position. I do not think the commission sales rep in solar is going to be around 10 years from now. I do not think it's going to be there. And I think a lot of sales positions in traditional jobs like that manual person jobs, I don't think they're going to be around in 10 years from now. I don't think it's going to be here in five years. Right? Um, all I'm saying is if you're that person, you owe it to yourself. If you're viewing this as a long-term career, like I think you should to start getting educated on different strategies because once you develop the skillset, which can take years, I'll be Frank. It could take years to develop the skill set, to set an online lead, to set with somebody on LinkedIn, to go to a networking event, to do a dinner seminar.

Speaker 2 (47:37):

We haven't even talked about kiosks. All that stuff could take years and years of time. Right. But you owe it to yourself to become a multi-faceted sales rep so that you're protected in the future. For example, my solar company, I, and we'll talk about this on another episode, but I was starting a solar company called the solar shopping network about, I'd say about a year ago, right? And our strategy was actually to completely eliminate the sales rep. We actually didn't hire traditional commission sales reps. Our guys who closed the deals were just hourly employees for like 15 bucks an hour. And they would close deals. We would use strategies like instant quotes. So where we actually send a virtual quote to somebody, the customer, and we don't talk to the customer. It's just an interactive quote. We send it out there. They could view it on their own time.

Speaker 2 (48:26):

It takes 10 minutes. Boom we're onto the next one. And we were able to generate enough leads to where we could just dish these babies out and the volume would work. Right. Um, that's where I think the future of this is look to guys like SunPower. SunPower is doing that. Sunrun's doing that where you could literally go get a quote, a virtual quote in real time with an artificial artificial intelligence, um, quoting machine chatbot type of thing, right. That's website. Yep. So those guys too SunPower's is pretty sweet. Um, that's our thing it's going. So I'm just a preacher of keep in mind the future of things, you know, who you are, you know, what type of rep you are. But if you're looking at this as a real longterm career, develop your skill, set out a little bit, start with the off offline stuff, develop your sales chops, then expand.

Speaker 2 (49:18):

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I can see that. Um, yeah. I mean, we're still, I don't think we're going to see a hundred percent on the whole door knocking thing. Obviously you're more about the offline stuff. Um, so by I agree with that to an extent I think guys need to at least have their knowledge in it. So at least go get competent and all this stuff. Cause probably we'll head that way. I mean, Tesla's already screwing us over. I can't tell you how many times even it's happened recently where I'm going into homes and I'm going through our pricing, everything and people have literally gotten on the Tesla website, gotten an instant quote and they're like, well, why is this? Why is Tesla like six grand cheaper than yours? And I'm like, oh my gosh. Now I have to say what's up. Especially with these, uh, yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:04):

I've talked about this in some previous episodes, but all these Indian referrals, I've been working a lot with the Indians and if anyone's stolen Indians, um, you know, they're all about like bartering getting the best prices, like shopping your house. So yeah. Tesla has, uh, made it extremely difficult with these bartering cultures because they go look this up and it's just, yeah, you try to build value. But it is an uphill battle after that. The, I think it's important. So you gotta know you gotta be competent in this stuff and you gotta develop, um, you gotta be ready for when this stuff does adjust. Cause yeah, I think I agree. There's a lot of people just say it all stay in solar until the tax credit ends. And then after that, I'm just going to bell. Um, which I've thought to myself, what's your opinion on that?

Speaker 2 (50:52):

If tax credit goes away, what are you doing? It goes away next year. Biden's like add, forget it. Nevermind. That was supposed to be the good, the one good thing by them was helping us with the tax credits. He's like, ah, just kidding. So what happens? I think commissions are going to get cut personally. There's too much fluff in the industry, dude. This is the only industry I see. That's got like, there's so much extra margin that should not be there. Okay. You might have to judge what the heck man. You're taking take away my massive commissions. Like cool. I'm down with making a lot of money, right? A hundred percent for it. But more than that, I want to expand an industry like solar forward. Right. I want to actually make it more affordable for the end consumer to get sort of easier for the end consumer to get solar.

Speaker 2 (51:42):

Okay. And that's, that's where I think your very top level guys are thinking. They're not, I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong. Taylor, do you know any guys that are cranking 25 deals a week that are like planning on leaving solar? Do you think those guys are gonna leave solar when the, the, the tax credit goes away? I haven't heard that. I mean, first of all, there's not that many guys can, can 25 deals a week. It's less than 1%. Yeah. Consistently. I don't actually, I don't know of anyone that's doing that many, but yeah, those guys out, I doubt they're going to leave it because I think anybody who performs that level of thinks longer than two, three years out. Yeah. That's all I'm saying. Even if you're only making a grand itself, you're doing 25 deals a week. That's pretty good money you're making right there.

Speaker 2 (52:30):

If you want to be in solar the next 10 years, 20 years, I think you can, but you got to start expanding your strategy. You've got to start learning. Yeah. A hundred percent. Well, James, we've got to wrap up here, got to run a meeting here, but, um, guys if you like this, give it a thumbs up. Um, and then let us know. Um, James and I, we're going to be doing more type of this stuff. Um, you know, try to do a little bit debate style. We don't agree on everything. So let us know who you think. Um, who, whose ideas, whose opinion, Julian Torah. What are we talking about next time? Let's let's tease them with what we're talking about next time. Good idea. I think we're doing the work-life balance stuff, right? The myth is balanced. A myth 20 hours a week, a hundred hours a week. Who's right. Who's wrong? What does it take to be successful in solar? That's what we'll. Okay, so guys subscribe. If you haven't, you don't want to miss out the next one, let us know what you thought. Thumbs up. See you on the next show. Thanks for coming on James. You got a man.

Speaker 1 (53:32):

Hey Solarpreneurs. Quick question. What if you could surround yourself with the industry's top performing sales pros, marketers, and CEOs, and learn from their experience and wisdom in less than 20 minutes a day. For the last three years, I've been placed in the fortunate position to interview dozens of elite 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 solar learning community, exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with the top performers in the industry. And it's called Solciety. This learning community was designed from the ground up to level the playing field and give solar pros access to proven mentors who want to give back to this community and to help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry's brightest minds. For, are you ready for it? Less than $3 and 45 cents a day currently society's closed the public and membership is by invitation only, but Solarpreneurs can go to society.co to learn more and have the option to join a wait list. When a membership becomes available in your area. Again, this is exclusively for Solarpreneur listeners. So be sure to go to www.solciety.co to join the waitlist and learn more now. Thanks again for listening. We'll catch you again in the next episode.

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Speaker 1 (00:03):

Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and 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 everybody. Should you knock doors?

Speaker 2 (00:44):

Should you be out grinding every day? How should you be getting your leads? That's what we're going to talk about today on the podcast, but I'm, [inaudible] Taylor. I'm Sean. Back with another episode here to make your life as a Solarpreneur, easier here to help you close more deals here to help you generate more referrals and hopefully make it all around. Easier to be in the solar industry. I hope you like my intro. Trying out a few different intros. Okay. So hope you enjoyed trying to work on my little, uh, drum drum roll intro. There. Maybe we should get an actual drum. I know it doesn't really sound like a drum roll starting off the episode, but let's jump into the episode today. So should you knock doors? What I want to talk about is the importance of knocking doors. Why? I think everyone should be hitting the doors, grinding out there in neighborhoods.

Speaker 2 (01:39):

If you were already hitting doors everyday grinding in super hard. Maybe this episode isn't for you. Maybe you've got it figured out it's okay. But if you're anything like me and I know a lot of people in this industry, we struggle to get out on the doors. Sometimes we struggle with motivation. Sometimes we wonder why should we knock doors? Why don't we just follow up with people? Try to get referrals, try to do other methods of lead gen. Okay. So I'm going to tell you why. I think it's so important that you get out there on the doors that you make it part of your general routine and get out there multiple times a week. Maybe you have a setter closer model in your company. Maybe you have other ways of generating leads, but I want to tell you right now that if you're not knocking doors, you are selling yourself short on those other lead gen methods.

Speaker 2 (02:28):

Why? Because being out there on the doors, it's going to make you that much more effective, have a closer, it's gonna make you that much more effective at overcoming objections. It's gonna make you that much more effective at just the mental game. Being out on the door is it's a mental battle out there. And if you learn to master the mental side of things, how much more effective are you going to be as your colon online needs? How much more effective or are you going to be as you're closing deals, as you're in homes, it's going to be a huge difference. Okay. So hopefully I can convince you today that you need to be knocking doors. Even if it's just a couple of times a week, you should be getting out there. You should be grinding. It's going to make you way more successful. Okay.

Speaker 2 (03:13):

So I want to tell you a little bit about my start in the door to door. And I know I've gone over this a few times. Hey, but what some people don't know is that growing up, I was insanely shy as a kid. And part of it was, I wouldn't talk, I didn't want to express myself. Um, I felt like no one paid attention to me and even, uh, my parents at times would say, um, yeah, he doesn't talk very much. He's a shy kid. So I took on this identity. I was shy. I didn't talk to people. I didn't express myself. And what happens? Um, I had my close friends. Okay. Had the people I was hanging out with, I would try to talk to them. But as we got into middle school, early high school, I saw that they were kind of taken off into the more popular friend groups.

Speaker 2 (04:03):

And we're talking about Canab Utah. My school, um, was like 250 kids. Okay. So pretty tiny, pretty tiny crowd of kids there. But I saw some of my buddies they're progressing into these cool kids groups. They're starting to hang out with the core guys. They were starting to, you know, get the girlfriends hanging out with girls and I was getting left behind. Hey, I was so shy. I didn't want to express myself. And I remember the breaking point of it was, or one of the things that was kind of this straw on the camel's back. I tried out for the freshmen basketball team made it. I'm not seeing that much in the school, 250 kids. They practically begged you to come on the team if you have any athletic ability whatsoever, but made it on the freshmen basketball team was stoked and got a little bit of playing time here and there.

Speaker 2 (04:56):

I remember after one of the games, the star of our team on the freshmen basketball squad, um, everyone was kind of just saying what they thought of the game. I think we lost that game. Um, didn't go well, everyone's kind of talking about it. Strategizing, what could we change to win the next one? And as we're all talking this star of our team, he straight up looks at me and says, well, don't ask Taylor. He's not going to say anything. He doesn't have opinions. He never talks anyways. And he calls me out in the middle of the rock locker room and I just feel destroyed. I get this sunken feeling. I'm like, man, I'm a part of this team, but the star of the team doesn't think I have anything valuable to say he doesn't, he doesn't even hear me talk. Doesn't know what I'm going to say.

Speaker 2 (05:42):

So at that point I was pretty devastated. I'm like, man, how am I going to be successful in anything? How am I going to keep up with my friends that are getting invited to parties now that are hanging out with the girls? And I was devastated. So at that point I took on the responsibility to start to break out of my shell. I tried everything possible and that was an awkward kid too. So a lot of times when I made the effort to talk, more things came out awkward. Um, got made fun of being chubby, things like that. Just your typical nerd. I was more of the band geek. Okay. I was the music guy and that's what I was good at. That's what I wanted to spend my time on. But I knew that if I wanted to progress, even if it was in music, I knew I needed a break out of this shell of shyness to a degree.

Speaker 2 (06:33):

So at that, from that point on, I tried to do everything possible, to talk more, um, and always smiled a lot. I think that's one of the things I did to try to break out of that shyness is I would always smile at high school. I tried to turn it around, be happy, be positive, smile. And then what happened? I get made fun of for smiling and do, okay. People said, I smiled too much said, Taylor, why are you smiling? Why are you smiling in class? Everyone else is serious. Why are you smiling? Why do you always smile when you talk? Okay. So it turned into that. So I was like, man, how do I get out of this? Not only say I'm smiling too much. I'm finally starting to talk. And now it's the smile. Okay. Ans yeah. So that's, that was my high school experience.

Speaker 2 (07:17):

So I slowly broke out of it. Okay. I feel like I am. I'm still an introvert, definitely. But I try to interact with people and that's part of why I got into door to door. The reason I tell you that is because fast forward freshman year of college, I heard about this pest control company that was hiring. I saw their PA skills, how you can make thousands of dollars by going out and knocking on doors. And I'm like, okay, I've been shy all my life. I don't think I can be successful with. Wow. I am currently with not wanting to talk to people with having a nervous knot in my stomach. Every time I approach an adult. So why don't I just go out and do this? How else am I going to break this spell? How else am I going to break out of my shell, out of my shyness?

Speaker 2 (08:02):

So that was the first time I started tried to do something that I didn't think I could do. And that's why I got in to door-to-door sales in the first place. It helped me break out of that shyness. It helped me really just conquer my fears of talking to anyone. It helped me control my emotions better, help me express myself. And it's a work in progress. I tell everyone I was never a natural salesman. I stopped to work extremely hard. And that's why you hear this podcast created today is because I want to surround myself with the best of the best. I know guys like me. I'm not the natural sales guy. I'm not the guy that's going to go out and get, you know, 10 sells in a day. Okay. I know I've had a good amount of success now, but that's because I've gotten mentors.

Speaker 2 (08:50):

I've sought out coaching. I've sought to surround myself with the best of the solar. And I credit that with the success that I have been old attain. Okay. So if you are like me, if you feel like you need to break out of your shell more, if you feel like he need to have that success, um, or find that extra success, even more reason for you to get out on the doors, even more reason for you to get out of your comfort zone, do something that challenges you. And so that's the first point I wanted to make is it's going to help you develop your communication skills. If you can get out there, if you can make it a priority to go out and knock those doors, garden, getting areas it's going to help you develop that better. It's going to help you again, like I mentioned in your closes game.

Speaker 2 (09:40):

The second reason is if you are trying to get into online Legion, I know the purpose of this podcast is to help people conquer all aspects of the soar game. Okay? So we're talking online leads, we're talking the follow up, we're talking the referral getting. So if you can knock on doors, it's going to make you that much more successful with all these other things with online lead gen, even more. So if you can knock on doors, how much easier is it going to be to recognize those patterns of how people communicate to what makes people tick? You look at any online marketer, they're taken a lot of similar techniques and they're applying it into online Legion. So if that's something you think you'll do in the future is dive into online leads, dive into marketing more online, go out and knock doors. It's going to help you.

Speaker 2 (10:28):

And it's going to help you make that jump. Okay. A good example of that was Steve Larson. He was on the podcasts. Um, geez is probably a year and a half ago. So you can go back and listen to that episode, but he's one of the top online marketers today. And, um, in the episode we had on with him, he talks about his experiences, starting off in door to door, sells and pest control. And he has stories all the time where he's talking about how things applied when he's knocking doors and how they're helping them now in online marketing, um, making millions online, one of the top online marketers, I would say today, and he's taken these drawn from those experiences he's learned in knocking doors, pest control. Okay. Another, um, example just recently in door door Fest, um, talked about it. In the previous episode, we had a kid during a Q and a, um, he was asking the speakers.

Speaker 2 (11:21):

There is a question panel, um, where everyone is asking speakers, their questions. And one of the kids he asks, um, Hey, I have a, um, I have a call center. You guys are talking a lot about door knocking techniques, but how can I apply this to my call center? How can I apply these same lines? The same concept you're talking about to the call center. And guess what the answer was, the answer was that you don't need to change really anything. Okay. The same techniques that they're talking about on the doors, you can appeal directly to your phone, uh, to your call centers, to your leads, to when you're talking to people on the phone, it's going to work across the board cells, the cells gain. Yeah. Granted there there's tweaks. You make there's little things. You adjust. There's a lot of things you change, but you don't need to reinvent the wheel.

Speaker 2 (12:11):

If it works on the doors, guess what? There's a really good chance. It's going to work on the phones in your telemarketing, in your call. Centers can all be applied. And um, even more reason to say that Chris Lee, he was actually the one more than anyone that was saying they can apply Chris Lee. He has, that's how he does his business. Um, is one tons of entrepreneur of the year award stuff like that. He's got his call center in Washington. That's how he gets, um, he gets online leads and they close them on the phone. They close them on, um, video chats on calls and he was one of the biggest, um, yeah, biggest contributors to that answer. He said, look, man, you need to change anything, just apply what you learned and dump it into the call center. Okay. So it doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (13:02):

Door to door is going to help you. Okay. And then last point, it's going to help you closing the deal. And my example of this is when I closed 150 deals in a year in 2019, got my golden door award. Okay. If you're watching the video version, you can see it right behind me here. And, um, this award, the majority of these deals were from our setters. We had a set or closer program. Okay. So I did get a lot of the leads that closed from, uh, these centers that we had knocking for us. Okay. Um, but the point I make with this is I remember all of the leads that closed when I was at my best closing when I had my big days. The big reason I had success closing was because I was trained to knock at the same time. So anytime I would go knock on my own, even though I had my pipeline pretty much full, a lot of days with preset leads.

Speaker 2 (14:05):

If I made an effort to go out and knock to go out and warm up, if you will, before my closes, it gave me so much more success as I got in the homes. Okay. Cause I was warmed up. Think of Steph Curry, shooting his free throws, going through his crazy routine. It's the same thing with knocking doors and going to deals. If you can get that up phase, if you can overcome those objections, it's gonna make you way more resilient in deals. I remember anytime I would go to a deal where I'd warmed up knocking, I just felt like way more empowered to overcome objections. I felt like I couldn't be phased by anything in a close cause. Usually if you can get an appointment on the doors, usually a close is going to be easier. A lot of times then the efforts you have to put in to an appointments, not always, but a lot of times it will.

Speaker 2 (14:57):

If you can get in the door, if you can take someone from not really interested on the door, getting their home, get the appointments, then it's going to help you develop that skill even more. Okay. So just a couple of thoughts I had. Okay. And hope you don't think I'm too big of a loser I'm trying to improve. I'm trying to bring you guys the best, but at the same time it's helping me improve. It's helping me be better. It's helping me break out of my shell. What's another purpose of this podcast. Another selfish reason that I do this podcast, but I just hope that I can share some value with my Solarpreneurs, with my peeps, help you guys achieve the level of success that you haven't been able to attain. Yet. You can go share this with someone. If you know someone that is struggling to get out on the doors, encourage them, motivate them and set your targets high.

Speaker 2 (15:44):

Hey, the reason I'm doing this, uh, podcast today is we're actually having an old debate in the next episode, um, with, um, James Swiderski, who is, um, the previous cohost of the podcast. He's actually, we've been fortunate enough to convince him to come do some, um, yeah. Kind of guest episodes come out and drop some value on the podcast. So I'm doing this today's cause actually next episode, we have a little debate coming up. We'd debate online versus offline needs. And I'm a huge proponent of the door knocking. He, uh, you know, he appreciates it, but that's not his background. It's not where he came from. So that's the topic of our little debate we have. Yeah, we agree on some things we don't agree on a few other things. So if you want to hear more on the online versus offline leads, make sure to tune in to next episode, but wanted to give you guys a little preview and hopefully convince you of the importance of going out, hitting those doors. Remember the hardest Ord open is the corridor. So get out there, run to the first door if you need to. And we'll see you on the next show piece.

Speaker 1 (16:54):

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Speaker 3 (18:23):

[inaudible].