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. I teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery. And you are about to become one what's up Solarpreneurs Taylor Armstrong here with another episode.

Speaker 2 (00:45):

Hope you're doing awesome. And I am here as always trying to make your life better. As a solar sales professional, help you close more deals, help you generate more leads and help you be successful in this awesome industry. Hopefully I can do that. So today I just got back from a little trip, went to a Dallas, Texas was at Door to Door Fest, 2021. That's what we're going to be talking about today is just a little recap of the event. And hopefully everyone here has gone to some events. I consider them something that's vital to your growth. Something that you need to do something that's refreshing. Okay. Then there also is the flip side, I'll admit. Sometimes I get an a on an event spree. I consider myself sort of a personal development junkie at times. And, um, I think it's easy to get caught in that trap, um, of going too many, go into too many events and not applying the stuff you've learned.

Speaker 2 (01:50):

So there's gotta be a balance, but I think it's good to go to, you know, an event a quarter, at least a couple events a year. These are things that are going to help refresh your mind, help you give you new ideas, help you connect with other people who are crushing it in the industry. And that's what you need as they say, your network determines your net worth. So you never know who you're going to meet. What that one line is that you're going to learn it. That's going to help you take it to the next level. If you haven't been to any events or if you don't know why you should go to events. We actually did a show on this, uh, probably six, seven months ago, little while ago, but it's the called the importance of live events, I believe was the name of the episode.

Speaker 2 (02:36):

So go search for that. If you haven't already, and that we broke down just specific reasons why you should be attending events. So I'll get off the soap box, but I wanted to give you Solarpreneurs. I recap if you weren't there of what you missed at door-to-door Fest 2021. Okay. So they got to in door-to-door con and now door to door Fest, not to be confused. Okay. This door to door Fest is, um, put on by my friends, Taylor McCarthy and Danny Pessy two guys who are doing great things for the industry, have a lot of respect for them and both top performers in their own. Right. Um, so I highly recommend their program. Knockstar, if you haven't checked that out. And we had Danny Pessy on the podcast, um, a few weeks back, he shared some details about that and drop some value bombs.

Speaker 2 (03:27):

So go listen to that episode, if you haven't already, but door-to-door Fest, it was a great event. It was their first kind of big event that they put on. I mentioned I went through their Knockstar program, um, just got through with that. So that's a great resource. If you want to go try it. If you're looking for additional training, it's a great resource. And this was their big event. What I liked about it, um, is it was very solar specific. Most of the people there were in the solar industry and a lot of them were in fact guys that had been on the podcast. So if you recognize any of the names, congrats, you have been a loyal listener. Hey, goodbye guys like Moe Falah. Um, Ian Wendt, Chris Lee, uh, Duane Richins, Zach Bassett three people. Now that they've been on the podcast, um, John Israel, anyways, we'll go through a few different people here, but some sluggers, some heavy sluggers heavy hitters that took the stage and dropped some serious knowledge.

Speaker 2 (04:30):

So I'm going to break it down day by day. Just give you a brief re recap, hope. Hopefully give you that FOMO that you missed out, because I want to see you all at the next event. I love hanging out with peeps. I love getting introduced to, um, loyal listeners and people who've heard the show. So if you go to these events, come up and say, hi, say what's up. I love it. When people do that and tell me they heard the podcast. Okay. So we went there on Thursday. The event started, um, technically Friday and Saturday was the event, but Thursday they call it the day in Dallas. That was, uh, kind of VIP people who wanted to spend a little bit extra and gets some, um, VIP treatment. And this was awesome. I had never been to quite a pre event thing going on like this.

Speaker 2 (05:18):

So we get there. We had a training in the morning. Good little training, talked about some, um, sales techniques. Um, a lot of things that you can actually go back in here in Danny Pessy's podcasts, a lot of things similar to that. Um, I received, you know, extra value we heard, but we went in the morning and then where it got interesting was the afternoon. So we go and we're supposed to take buses to go do some margarita, margarita tasting. I don't drink. So for me, it was just going to be kind of hanging out and watching everyone just flushed down these margaritas, but it's all cool. I'm fine with that. Seeing people served down there, we went and we're all sitting outside, waiting for the buses to come and they never show up. So we sit for like 30, 40 minutes and I guess they got their own hotel.

Speaker 2 (06:09):

So we're all hanging out there, just a shooting, the breeze and hanging out, but made for some good networking. That was the first amount in the afternoon. So we actually skipped the margarita, which I was like, whatever. Cause I was going to give my margaritas to my buddy Rick anyways. Um, so then when the buses finally show up, we go to the next event, which was torn the stadium of the Dallas Cowboys, which was dope. Um, I'd never done an NFL stadium tour and this place is amazing. If you haven't looked it up, go look up. Uh, I think it's 18 T stadium is what it's called. This place can literally fit the statue of Liberty inside it. And still have, I think it was 20 feet of space before it hits the top of the stadium, just a massive stadium. And what was neat is they were actually getting ready for the Canelo fight, uh, the boxer Mexican boxer.

Speaker 2 (07:05):

Um, so they were getting ready for that. Just stacking chairs, setting up their ring and everything. So we got to see him actually preparing for that event, getting the big screen ready. Um, just a massive jumbotron they had, um, yeah, just biggest screen I've ever seen. I'd say, uh, looked by the IMAX theater on a gym as a jumbotron. So just massive. And then yeah, we, they took us through the locker rooms, took us through to the VIP suites and everything and got to see where all the, you know, rich people hang out famous. People got to see all the players, locker situations, which is cool. Never done that. Got to see like a press room. So it was cool. And we had a little dinner there. Um, hung out, did some more networking. And then after that gets better, we went to a Korean bath house.

Speaker 2 (07:56):

I didn't even know what this was, but if you guys haven't heard of this, go check it out. Korean bath houses, I guess they are. Uh, I don't know how big it actually is in Korea, but um, very interesting place. So go check it out if you haven't done one, but Danny Pessy swears by these things as something to relax on your off days of knocking, it's just basically a big bath house filled with a bunch of different saunas and hot and cold tubs. And the idea is you just go in all these different rooms. They've got like a cold sauna. That's just filled with, um, kind of ice, I guess, not ice, but um, it's blowing cold air at you. It feels like you're in a igloo. They've got a super hot one. They've got a salt sauna. Um, just anything you can think of as far as saunas go, they've got it all.

Speaker 2 (08:44):

And then where it got super interesting. Um, now I was a little hesitant at first, but they have the, uh, actual bathroom where obviously, you know, separate you by gender, but you're going into your, your bathrooms. And they've got, um, a cold, a cold tub. They've got a median tub, they've got a hot tub and they've got a scalding tub. I would call it and they go in this bath, um, bath house, whatever you want to call it, you gotta be completely naked in there. So we're going in there. There's like a, I don't know, 50 other guys in this. And they're like, all right, everyone pile in the bath house got to take your clothes off first. And I'm like, Oh shoot, do I want, do I want to pile on the room? Have all these guys see me butt-naked and uh, hanging out with guys that I just barely met. And at first I'm like, ah, maybe I'll just go to the saunas first. But then we all warmed up. We're all friends. Then we piled in the bath house. After that we're all naked in there, no judgment in there. So it was a different experience. Took a second for me to warm up, but Powell in the bath house and nothing better than sitting naked in a cold tub. A bunch of different guys, I guess right.

Speaker 2 (09:59):

Was a little, uh, yeah, definitely interesting experience something I had to warm up to, but go try it. Don't knock it until you try it. I will say it was super relaxing. Helped us open the pores and ladies, there was all this stuff for the other gender. Two ladies had their own little bath house, um, had their own sections. Don't worry guys. Weren't they weren't combined in genders or anything combined in the bath houses, but it definitely opened up the pores. You definitely felt like you had some new skin slopped on you and was a great experience. I can see how it's relaxing. So go Google. If you have a bath house in your area, I would highly recommend it. If you're looking for something different to do something, to relax you're on your off days and knockin, especially if you're a summer rep, something like that.

Speaker 2 (10:44):

And you're grinding super hard. I would suggest going and checking these out cause was definitely relaxing. So that was day one. We went and hung out. Did the day in Dallas, toward the city, um, toward the stadium I should say, and then went to the bath house. Good time. And then after that, just to give a brief root crap, that was what I thought was really cool. Never had been doing a meant quite like that or torn stadiums and go into Korean bath houses. But then after that, um, yeah, he had the events, the speakers. And again, like I mentioned, what was really cool about this is they had solar specific speakers and this is something I would suggest anytime you're going to an event, do some research on it, look at the speakers, look at who's going to be there. Um, if you can figure out maybe some other attendees stuff like that, figure out who you want to network with, because these are things that you're going to help you maximize your time in the event.

Speaker 2 (11:45):

So for me, that was a big factor in me actually deciding to go to them since I was sort of on the fence. I'll admit, I didn't know if I should go in and know if I should take time off. But when I saw the speakers, when I saw, especially this bowl, solar specific guys, I'm like, all right, I can't miss on this. And that's one way you can determine if it's worth your time, go into things like that. Okay. But, um, yeah. Recap on the speakers. Moe spoke Moe follow who we had on the podcast. He just spoke about his origins. Um, very similar to what he talked about in the podcast. And then he just broke it down to really the grit, the grit, that determination you need to have to succeed in your business. And also about importance of setting up systems, um, uh, importance of sending up a SOP standard operating procedures in your business and with your team.

Speaker 2 (12:41):

So that was the highlight of him. We had, uh, Ian Wendt speak, which these are all what you should be following these people on social media, by the way, if you're not following Moe, if you're not following. So that's something I'll invite you to go, go look up door to door Fest. I would follow all these speakers because guys, this is how you're going to increase your knowledge, follow the best of the best. If you want to get better at something specific, then you go for the best. And that's what this podcast is about is we're surrounding you with the best people in the software industry. Okay? But also we're inviting you to go follow these people, see what their posts and see what is making them successful. Because a lot of these guys are given free value or given awesome golden nuggets every day. So you need to be following them.

Speaker 2 (13:24):

Okay? Ian Wendt, he spoke about an importance of knowing different customer types. And we're actually going to have him on the show here soon, do some podcasts on this. So we're going to do a recap of that. So stay tuned, but that's something you should definitely consider. What are your different buyer types? Are people aggressive? Are people calm is an old lady. You need to be able to identify these buyer types and change and transform. You need to be a chameleon out there adjusted these different types of buyers. So I was his, and then Chris Lee had him also on the podcast, actually one of our, um, first interviews that we did on the show, go listen to that. But he has a super successful business in soldier, up in Washington state. Um, he talked about his beginnings in the business, in the industry. Um, Zach Bassett of course spoke about the financial stuff.

Speaker 2 (14:19):

He was on the podcast, um, search creator, social media guy. And then one of my favorites, if not, my favorite of them meant was John Israel. Um, hoping to get him on the show here soon too, that's pending. But if you haven't heard of John Israel, this is another guy you should look up, follow on social media by his book, what he did. If you're not familiar, he wrote five. Thank you cards every day for 365 days, he did kind of an insane challenge. If you think about it and the rules of it are were, he couldn't write more than three. Thank you cards to the same person. So he did that for a year straight and change his life while he's doing it has some amazing stories of just the people he inspired. Um, just the gratitude that came from what his challenge was and all the people that's, hadn't even a lot of people didn't even get thank you cards like this, really in their lives.

Speaker 2 (15:17):

And he wrote them cards and really inspired a lot of people. So just, these are just a few of the speakers. Okay. I don't want to go on and on forever with all of them, but that's the recap. That's the highlights again, we're going to be getting a lot of these guys on the podcast. A lot of them have already been on the show, but guys go to events like this, look at ones you can attend. Um, I would definitely suggest going to things like this. We're hoping to do some events, Solarpreneur. So hit me up. Shoot me a message. If you would like to see a Solarpreneur event, something we're considering doing and would be awesome hanging out with everybody. Okay. So go share this with someone that missed out on door to door Fest. And if you ever come to the next one, I'll be going to the majority of these events. So hit me up. If you are going, would love to connect with y'all and don't forget, increase your knowledge and make sure to apply cause knowledge without applications useless. That's why you don't get caught in the trap of going to event after event and not applying because that is how you will waste time and money. Trust me, it's happened to me a lot. So thanks for tuning in. We'll see you on the next episode and close some deals this week. Keep crushing.

Speaker 1 (16:32):

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.

Speaker 3 (18:01):

[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 what's up Solarpreneurs, Taylor Armstrong. Back with another episode,

Speaker 2 (00:45):

I am stoked today because we have a guest that we have been trying to schedule for a while. Now. He was, he is high level high profile. I've been following him for a long time. And he was one of, I would say the people that got me into kind of online marketing online lead gen taught me a ton about, um, hiring people from our teams. So I got to thank you today. We have a Brock Johnson on the show Brock. Thanks for coming on with us today. Yeah, absolutely. Taylor, thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to finally be here. Yeah, I'm stoked. And, um, Brock I brought one of your, I bought one year, uh, first courses you made on a Snapchat. I don't even know if you remember that it's been awhile since way back, way back, about four or five, maybe even six years ago now.

Speaker 2 (01:31):

Totally. So that was, um, that was one of the coolest courses. I'm like, wow, this has got a Snapchat guru. Who's teaching guys, delay dance, do all these crazy things on Snapchat. And um, yeah, it's I got a thank you got a ton of value from that course. And thank you. And, uh, yeah, I've been continuing to follow you and your mom, so you guys host a podcast together and um, do you want to tell us just kind of your background Brock, how you got into, um, being like an Instagram expert that you are and kind of how things evolved from your early Snapchat days? Sure, absolutely. So, yeah, I got my start back in like 2016, 2017, uh, teaching. This is gonna sound crazy to say now, but I was actually originally teaching moms how to keep their kids safe on Snapchat. Uh, back in like 2016, 2017, Snapchat was as popular as something like Tik Tok is today.

Speaker 2 (02:24):

It was wildly popular. Um, and with the whole disappearing messaging thing, there was just like a lot of fear going around related to Snapchat. And so that's where I created. My very first course was teaching parents kind of basically how to use Snapchat and then some tips on like how to keep their kids safe on the app. Um, that very quickly evolved into the course that you said you were a student of, which is like how to market and grow a business using Snapchat because very quickly influencers and business owners and network marketers and direct sellers, they were realizing that, Hey, you could monetize this social media following. People could

Speaker 3 (03:00):

Build on Snapchat, not too long after that. Instagram released Instagram stories and a mass exit is from Snapchat, happened to everyone, left Snapchat for Instagram. And I went with them, um, and I spent the next year or two really honing my skills on Instagram, growing my own following very organically, figuring out like what strategies work, what strategies don't work. Um, and now here we are about three or four years later. Um, and that's what I do full-time. So now full-time I teach people, I teach business owners, network marketers, entrepreneurs, how to organically grow their Instagram, following how to do it the right way with the least amount of time possible and not just, you know, growing to get more likes or more followers. I'm not in it for vanity sake. I teach you how to grow your following with followers who will actually become customers really, uh, that way using your Instagram as a lead generation magnet.

Speaker 2 (03:53):

That's awesome. Yeah. And I've learned so much from you and your mom. So I got to ask Brock, um, obviously your mom is huge in the entrepreneur space and growing up around that. Um, um, yeah, I'm jealous. You gotta be always surrounded by experts and, you know, learn from the best. What was it like growing up with your parents being such entrepreneurs and at a, did you always like want to be an entrepreneur and getting this whole social media game? Where, how was that with?

Speaker 3 (04:20):

Yeah, so there's a great question for people who don't know my mom, if you're listening, uh, you might know her, if you haven't turned on your TV at like 2:00 AM and you see one of those fitness infomercials, that's how a lot of people know her. And that's how she gained. A lot of her kind of popularity or notoriety was from fitness infomercials and marketing and selling fitness DVDs and workout programs. Uh, she actually, it sounds so funny to say that she has half a million followers on Instagram. Most people they think about their parents, they're like, Oh, they don't even know how to use social media. My mom, literally for a living grows social media platforms and teaches people how to market their business with social media and without social media. Uh, so that's her background. And like you said, I was very much raised in an entrepreneurial family.

Speaker 3 (05:04):

My parents have bought and sold dozens of different businesses throughout my life. Um, so yes, I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I've always wanted to work for myself. One of my goals for myself from a very young age was to never have a boss to order me around and tell me what to do and have set hours or whatever. I've always wanted to work for myself. I didn't know it was going to be social media or Instagram. I mean, I was born nine years before Facebook was even invented. So I was, you know, growing up in the social media age, for sure. Like all of these different social media apps were being invented when I was growing up. But, um, I never thought I would necessarily become an Instagram marketer, but I always knew that I would be an entrepreneur in some way. And, uh, this is my expertise right now. This is what I'm really good at. And this is what I love to do. So this is what I do full time.

Speaker 2 (05:52):

Yeah, I love. And if I remember your story, right, you kind of went off to school and um, all of a sudden you're like, Oh crap, I'm not at home. I got to start. I want to start making money on my own. And that's kind of when you launch your first, uh, first Snapchat course from there, right?

Speaker 3 (06:06):

Exactly. Yeah. I got the, I got to college my freshman year. Um, and I wanted to create some financial independence and freedom for myself to not have to rely on my parents, um, and, and, you know, use them to pay for everything. So that's kind of what my first real business, which was that, that Snapchat course back in my freshman year of college.

Speaker 2 (06:23):

Yeah. I love that. Cool. So, uh, we were talking off camera before this, what we're going to jump into is just basically how we can, um, kind of grow our social media followings as Tom Brock. Obviously this is a podcast for solar cells, professionals, and we are definitely trying to use social media to generate leads. Um, I don't know, does your, your parents have solar on their house? Do you know Barack? You guys have all right. Well, we can talk to them after getting him hooked up. Um, but yeah, so we're in the business of getting homeowners, solar panels and social media. We're trying to use it to obviously provide value, especially here in Southern California. I'm in San Diego. People are constantly getting hit up by, um, you know, door to door sales people, which is what we do a lot of. Um, but threes and we, I kind of created this podcast.

Speaker 2 (07:16):

Solarpreneurs is because I want to expand what we're doing, not just knocking doors, but really we're trying to teach these cells, people that become entrepreneurs and, you know, use kind of the new age cause the truth is, I mean they, not, everyone is going to respond to having their door knocked on. Um, I mean, really, I think it's super important that we as sales people are to generate leads through social media, through online channels. And then also grow our teams. I mentioned a Brock is another big thing we're doing. Um, a lot of the biggest sales teams are growing through just social media because, um, in the solar industry we can make thousands and thousands. Um, so people are seeing that and it's attracting other people into the industry. So Brock for you. Um, I guess what, what can you go through maybe some of the mistakes that you see people making on Instagram and maybe just give us like the biggest, um, yeah. Common errors, mistakes, and then the little things that you teach your students to start doing in the beginning just to kind of have that basis to start on.

Speaker 3 (08:21):

Absolutely. So I think that the first biggest mistake that I see people making is failing to niche down. And if people are scared by the word niche or have never heard it before, basically a niche also pronounced niche is basically just, it's a focus, it's an expert piece, it's a group, it's a subcategory it's who are you specifically serving or trying to attract? And I know that immediately people are going to think, well, I want to put solar panels on everyone's phones and that's awesome. But if you're trying to talk to literally every single homeowner in America at the same time where every single homeowner, even in your County, or even in your city at the same time, you're not going to be able to show up and serve all of those people effective. And also a 65 year old homeowner has totally different motivations, totally different desires, totally different problems.

Speaker 3 (09:09):

When they're considering putting solar panels on their home compared to say a first-time home homeowner, somebody who's 25, someone who's fresh out of college and just landed their first job. Those two people are in a very different group. And if you're trying to market to all of them, both of them at this same time, you're going to market to neither of them. Honestly, you're going to market very ineffective. When you try to serve everyone, you're going to serve no one effective. So that's step one on Instagram. That's really step one on just about any social media platform is pick a niche. And really ultimately there's just two things you need to pick, pick a specific group of people to help or to serve my niche. My specific group of people is entrepreneurial groups, whether you're a small business owner, you're a direct sell or a network marketer.

Speaker 3 (09:54):

I know that I can talk to on for new words, influencers or people who want to grow on Instagram, just because they want, you know, to be famous or whatever. That's not who I talked to. That's not who I help grow. I help entrepreneurs, small business owners grow on Instagram. Then the second thing that you have to pick besides just the problem is the group of people, or excuse me, besides just think of where people is the problem. So what is the problem that you serve? Like I was just saying, my group of people is small business owners, but the problem that I solved, the problem that I serve, the thing that I have figured out is organic Instagram growth. And if you think about the different groups who you might be serving the 25 year old first time home buyer, the 65 year old retiring, you're going to identify that they likely have very different problems or at least that their, their priority rankings of, of what matters the most to them.

Speaker 3 (10:45):

It's going to be very different. So step one, um, to growing on Instagram is picking your niche. And also the flip side of that point. And that's also the biggest mistake people are making is they're not defining their niche. They're not clearly defining who do I help serve and then how do I serve them? That's the first biggest mistake. And then the second biggest mistake, if I can quickly share that as well. Second biggest mistake that I see people making on Instagram, specifically direct sellers network marketers is selling, which sounds counterintuitive sounds counterproductive because you would think if I want more sales, I have to sell more. But actually the opposite is true. When you are selling on your Instagram feed, you're turning people away because ultimately when you're selling with your Instagram feed posts, you're doing the digital equivalent of door to door sales.

Speaker 3 (11:34):

You're just knocking on people's doors saying who wants to buy this most, buy this, just trying to sell, sell, sell, and it's going to turn people away. It's going to be really tough to grow your following, going to be really tough to get your followers, to pay attention and to engage with you if you're constantly selling on your Instagram feed. So instead, what I would recommend doing is using your Instagram feed to serve your Instagram feed posts, all those pictures, videos, reels that you post on your Instagram feed, use those as opportunities to serve people, to teach things, to teach about solar panels, to, um, solve problems for them for free to just really serve. And over-deliver with your Instagram feed. And then, you know, down the line, you start building these relationships and start having direct message conversation. That's where sales can take place. Sales can take place in the future with a personal relationship and the direct messages sales aren't going to take place. If you're just hosting promotions and sales and discounts and Christ tags all over your Instagram feed. Hmm.

Speaker 2 (12:35):

I love that. And it's huge as they say riches in the niches, I guess it doesn't really work as good with the niches, but, um, I know that's a big key. I think that people are a big error that people make all the time. And so let me ask you, Brock say I'm a sore, um, manager, Sam trying to use my Instagram to not only, um, you know, spread the word to maybe more homeowners, um, just get more solar, solar knowledge out there, but also I want to use it to recruit other people on my team. Um, so other, you know, potential sales reps can come and join my team. So would you say, is that a mistake to kinda like have both those niches, um, having, having both be gone at the same time, or would you suggest maybe like creating separate Instagrams to do those, to add those two purposes? Or what would you say in like an example?

Speaker 3 (13:25):

Yeah. So this is a great question. And one that every person who's in network marketing direct selling multi-level marketing hats, because there are always these two sides to the business. There's the actual business itself, the actual product or problems that are being solved. And then there's the team component. There's the business component, there's the money-making component. Um, and so there's the, there's the confliction of like, how do I promote both or talk about both if they're kind of different, you know, how do I get someone to buy, but also maybe at the same time to join my team or maybe they don't want to buy, but they know that they want to join my team. You know? So there's always going to be that challenge. Um, and I think first of all, no, what fires you up? Like know your own passions and what got you into this?

Speaker 3 (14:07):

Are you in this business? Because you're like, yeah, I don't really care about solar panels. I don't really care about the benefits. I don't really care about them. I just care about check and I just care about making money. Like if that's why you're in the business and you're just trying to build a side hustle and you want other people to be able to build a passive income or a side hustle themselves, then go ahead. You can take that angle. Um, but I recommend picking whatever angle you're more passionate about. Is it that business side or is it the actual like product? Is it the actual solar panels themselves, pick one, focus, your feed, your Instagram feed all around that. One thing, that one niche that one subject or focus. And then in your stories, that's where you can kind of allow your followers to see everything.

Speaker 3 (14:48):

And really that's what stories are stories on Instagram are a place where you kind of go behind the scenes. You let people see every area of your life, whether it's related to the niche or not. And so on your stories is really where someone would see, um, you know, Hey, this, person's got a really successful business and they've got two kids and they're a stay at home mom or dad, and they're able to just be with their kids and don't have to work a nine to five job and be gone all day. They can take their kids to practice or whatever that may be, or, you know, they, uh, be able to go on this vacation because they've built this extra income for themselves. So really show all of that on your Instagram stories, let us see it all. And then all of that will lead to people being like, yeah, I want that.

Speaker 3 (15:29):

I want to know what you do. I want to know like, how did you get into this? And they're going to ask you questions. And when you get people asking you questions, it's the equivalent of like someone coming up to you at a coffee shop and being like, Hey, can you tell me more about what you do? It looks really interesting. Now they've taken an interest. They're curious, and they're literally asking you to basically invite them onto your team. And that's a much better starting place for the relationship rather than just hold messaging, thousands of people and hoping that you get a few responses.

Speaker 2 (15:58):

Yeah, definitely. And that's, our dream is sells people that they will reach out to us instead of having to go knock on another door because it's like, yeah, it's just like a gifted sell to us. And that little things happen, but it can't happen if you're not, you know, on social media doing those things consistently, which I know is another big thing that we'll probably talk about. Um, but before we kind of shift gears Brock, do you have any stories or any of your students where you kind of taught them? This thing helped them find like a niche or maybe they thought they were already being specific and they're posting their publishing, but then they, you know, double down and focus more on something super specific. And then they started having tons of success after you seen any of that.

Speaker 3 (16:38):

Absolutely. So, uh, one of our instant club hub, which is like our Instagram membership, one of our top members in there, uh, she grew by more than 10,000 followers in a month and it wasn't like she was at, you know, 3 million and then she went to like 3 million and 10,000. She went from 2000 followers on Instagram to over 12,000. I think now she's closer to 14 or 15,000. And she did that in a month after really just doing two things, niching down, getting really clear about like, who is that group? And what is the problem? And focusing on Instagram reels, which is something that, you know, we can talk about later if you want to. Um, if we, if we can, but reels definitely are a huge way, a huge component of growth on Instagram. So she really just did those two things and saw about 10,000 followers in a month. Uh, I also just had a student this week on a much smaller scale. She ended up her bio and really niched down. She posted to Instagram reels and just from two posts and focusing in on her niche, she said that she signed three new clients and had four upcoming potential client collaboration calls where she was going to have like an introductory meeting. So basically three guaranteed new clients and seven possible total new clients, just from two little tiny Instagram posts and cleaning up her niche.

Speaker 2 (17:54):

Wow. That's incredible. So what were they, I guess, what were they focused on before and then what, what was it that they cleaned up about their, their niche?

Speaker 3 (18:03):

Yes. So for, for, uh, Shariece Alison, who is the person who grew by about 10,000 followers in a month before her bio said something, it was she's in the fitness industry and her son, her bio said something along the lines of, you know, like helping you get fat or helping you live your best life or helping you with your fitness transformation, something like that, which is somewhat specific, some might say, but honestly, uh, who is the, you says helping you, who is you, like let's get really specific with who is that group. And then rather than just saying live your best life, we'll get fed, let's get really specific. So I think her new bio says something along the lines of, uh, helping women are helping women in their thirties even, uh, transform their bodies with less than 30 minute at-home workout. So she like got really specific with like, this is how I solved the problem less than 30 minute at-home workout. So she's, she's solving a problem for a very specific group of people, uh, women in, I believe in their thirties. And so that's really what allowed her to grow super fast in such a short amount of time.

Speaker 2 (19:03):

That's awesome. Love hearing those examples. So yeah, for our listeners, make sure you're being as specific and whatever you do. And I like that that clarified something for me because, um, I think, um, some something that I've tried to do is kind of have my foot in both ends of the spectrum, but, um, yeah, I think that's a fire tip right there. Pick what you're passionate about and then go all in on that one thing. And then, um, I know bio is another, uh, your bio description. That's another thing that is important to make sure you're putting the description in that. So people know exactly what it is. You do exactly what it is that fires you up and that you're trying to help the problem that you're trying to help solve. So Brock I know something, another huge key that you talk about all the time is just consistency. And I mean, that's might be kind of a no-brainer for people, but I think that's probably the biggest struggle for me. And probably most of your students, you just doing those things consistently for people that are just starting out, what do you, uh, like recommend as far as consistency? Like how many times do you have posts and what is consistent and look like for your students that just, um, start out on Instagram?

Speaker 3 (20:09):

Yeah, absolutely. So consistency is key really. There's, there's no way we can talk about growth on Instagram. There's no way we can really talk about growth in any area of life without consistency. If you want to be a great piano player, you don't play piano once a month and hope that you have great results. You have to practice every single day. And it's the same exact thing with Instagram feed posts. If you want to grow on Instagram, you need to be posting at least once a day to your Instagram feed. And I think that that's a great starting point. And maybe just, you know, if you, if you've never really posted on Instagram before, you've never been consistent, or this is first time, you're really seriously considering it. I encourage you to just set a goal for yourself to post four or five times this week, four or five times this week.

Speaker 3 (20:57):

And maybe that's all you're going to do for now. And eventually you'll turn that dial up and you'll start posting more, but really ultimately there's kind of two sides to this whole consistency thing. Number one, you want to be posting as frequently as you can. I actually recommend for ideal growth for optimal growth, multiple feed posts per day, like two to three feed posts per day. But for most people that sounds crazy. That sounds outlandish. And that's something that they could never sustain. And that brings me to the second point, which is what can you sustain? I don't want you to get so fired up from this podcast. And you're like, Oh my gosh, Taylor and rock from the fire. Like I can't wait to get on Instagram. And then you post three times saying you post three times tomorrow and then you're burnt out and you're overwhelmed. You're like, I just can't sustain that. So really there's the two sides. It's what can you sustain and how much, you know, what's, what's the max that you can turn that dial up, uh, while still staying consistent, serving your audience and showing up, uh, every single day, if not multiple times a day on your Instagram feed.

Speaker 2 (21:59):

Hmm. That's awesome. And I know something that holds me back and I'm sure a lot of your other students is like, what do you post and how do you keep getting ideas? And like, I've done this for two weeks, but now I don't have any more ideas, what I post about Brock. So, um, I know you teach a ton about those things, but, um, I guess just a shorter, um, uh, some summarized answer. What do you, um, how do you give people all these content ideas and what do you say to people that ask that and always run out of ideas for content?

Speaker 3 (22:27):

Absolutely. So I think that, uh, really there's, there's two ways that I come up with my content. Number one in the vast majority of the time it's taking ideas and youth from other people and using them as inspiration. So I follow a ton of other Instagram marketers. And if they post their top seven hashtag tips, I'll be like, Hmm, I can come up with my own hashtag tips and maybe I don't have seven. Maybe I have four. Maybe I have nine. Maybe my tips are very, very similar to theirs. Maybe they're totally different. So I'm constantly using other people's posts as ideas, you know, like solar panels, you know, how do I install them? And there's tons of questions that someone might have. How do you install them? Are they installed professionally? Do I install them myself? How are they plugged into my house? What happens on a cloudy day?

Speaker 3 (23:13):

What happens on a rainy day? What happens if I live in Southern California and it's always sunny, can I store it up for a rainy day? There's so many questions that the average person, uh, may have. And so that's kind of the second point that I want to make. And that's the second way that I come up with my co my content is I think, what would it beginner need to know? What does someone who has no idea about this topic? What questions are they asking? And honestly, it's not like you need 300 different questions. You just need, you know, about dozen, maybe 10, 12 different questions that they commonly ask. And that has 10 to 12 posts right there. And you can just continually cycle through those questions. And I think sometimes we have to remind ourselves that we get so close to our own expertise and what we love to do and what we love to talk about that we forget that the vast majority of the population isn't as obsessed and isn't as knowledgeable as we are.

Speaker 3 (24:06):

So we really have to go back to the basics. You know, sometimes even myself, I get lost in the nitty-gritty the tiny little sub facts about Instagram. I want to share this little tiny trend that I found. And in reality, people want the basics. People want, wait, wait, wait, don't talk to me about like the most powerful phrases to use in the last 33 seconds of your real life. Don't get that nitty gritty. Let's just say like, Hey, Brock, how do I make an Instagram real I can deal with every day that what the heck even is an Instagram real after remind myself, like take off the expert cap, put on the beginner cap and go back to the basics and just start teaching and serving and educating people, um, on the very beginner stuff that they one stop and people will really appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (24:52):

Yeah. I love that. And yeah, for our listeners, I mean, we've interviewed dozens and dozens of top guys in solar. So if you're not, if you're trying to grow, go follow guys like that. And to Brock's point, go see what they're posting model that you're not trying to copy people, but I think that's, um, great way to get ideas. Just see what they're posting. If, um, if you're trying to target those same people, then your followers are probably gonna have similar questions and that's how we're going to be able to grow. So that's a great key. And then with, with that Brock, um, I'm sure you have a pretty dialed in like, you know, content, calendar and stuff scheduled, things like that. Um, but for me, that's an issue that I run into all the time. Like for example, last week I was in, uh, I was, uh, down in Mexico down and up, where do I are?

Speaker 2 (25:36):

The last thing I wanted to do is, um, you know, be worrying about what I'm going to post on, uh, on Instagram while I'm sipping pina coladas. And I'm like, man, I don't want, wanna, I don't want to get on Instagram. I just want to like sit in the pool. Um, but for you, what does that look like? I know probably, um, beginners, I mean, we're probably not going to have some die without content plan, but do you suggest for like beginners to have like stuff scheduled or what is your like content calendar look like and what do you suggest for people starting out with that?

Speaker 3 (26:08):

Yeah, so this, this answer might surprise you Taylor, and actually I don't have anything scheduled. I don't have anything planned out. I don't really have very many pre-made posts. I don't use a scheduling app. Um, I do have a running list in my notes app and in my to-do list app, just a running list of ideas of screenshots, of things that I'm like, Hey, I could boast about this. Hey, I could do this topic. Hey, I could elaborate on this subject. So I do have post ideas and I have lists of literally dozens, if not hundreds of post ideas so that if I'm ever not feeling super creative, I can refer to list in terms of scheduling things out and planning these ahead of time. I honestly don't do much. Now. I will say this batch producing content producing multiple Instagram reels in one sitting, making multiple Instagram posts at one time on Tamba.

Speaker 3 (26:59):

For example, that can definitely be very useful because then, you know, when you are sipping pina coladas, you don't have to worry about creating the content. You can just literally post it and move on, cause you already have to create it. So, absolutely that can be beneficial. I can tell you myself, most of the time I'm creating the content either the day of, or maybe the day before at its earliest. And I'm doing my best to stay on top of it that way. Um, but also I think everyone needs to recognize that like life has seasons and, and also that like business and social media and Instagram, there should be boundaries for this stuff. So if you're sitting in the pool and you're sipping a pina colada and you're on vacation, forget about Instagram, like enjoy life, enjoy the vacation. I can tell you that.

Speaker 3 (27:40):

I oftentimes take weekends off. People say, do you ever unplugged from posting on Instagram all the time? I take weekends off all the time. I don't work on weekends. I might make a post if I feel inspired or if I want to, but I enjoy my weekends. I don't work after 6:00 PM. I hardly work after four or 5:00 PM. I don't work before 10:00 AM. So have those boundaries absolutely take your time off of Instagram. And it's having those boundaries in place. It's taking enough time away from Instagram, which will actually allow you to be more mindful and more thoughtful and more engaged when you are on Instagram, because that's less of a chore and it's more of something you can actually look forward to.

Speaker 2 (28:17):

Yeah. I love that. And that's something I really respect about you and your mom Brock is, um, I've heard in previous podcasts you guys have done. Um, I remember maybe it was like a year ago or something, but for whatever reason, it was a couple of weeks where maybe you didn't have a podcast or there's just like one podcast where I was used to hearing, you know, like a couple podcasts in a week. Oh my God. I wonder what's going on with Barack and Shaleen. Haven't heard with them for as much for a little bit. And then your mom on that show, she's like, yeah. Um, I had, you know, family stuff, things were busy and I, you know, family's my priority. Things come before, like my podcast posting and I really respect to them. I'm like, wow, okay. If Shaleen and Brock are saying that, and even they have boundaries and put other things before their business, then, um, that actually was something that helped propel me forward because at the time in my podcast, I'm like, I was just kind of starting now.

Speaker 2 (29:13):

And I'm like, I don't know if I want to do a podcast. Cause all these podcasts are saying you have to publish every day and have a podcast episode scheduled out for months in advance, all these things on my land. This is overwhelming. And then I hear that and I'm like, okay, if these Brock and Shaleen are saying that, then I don't have to stress as much. So I like that advice a lot. It makes me feel better about myself, but at the same time, I know it's not an excuse to not, um, you know, produced content. But uh, no, I appreciate those tips Brock. And then, um, kind of the, one of the other last things I wanted to go over with you before, maybe I have some final tips to share is one of the first things you helped me learn. And I think I bought one of your mom's courses.

Speaker 2 (29:58):

Um, I think it was a virtual business Academy, something like that where you guys talked about just getting like, you know, virtual assistants to help out. And in solar we do a ton of things. We have to handle different documents for homeowners. Um, there's things that's, um, aren't necessarily a great use of our time when we could be closing more deals, getting in front of more people. So for you, is that still a big focus for you? Do you still have like a virtual assistance and um, I guess what if you do, what does that look like for your social media posting and what you do on Instagram?

Speaker 3 (30:32):

Yeah, so I think I have the best business decision that I ever made was hiring my first virtual assistant. And I will say this, you will never feel ready to hire someone if you've never hired someone before, you'll never feel ready. And if it's a virtual assistant, someone, who's literally, it's their job to assist you and help you out. Especially as an entrepreneur, someone who's like the Jack of all trades and you're trying to wear every hat and you're trying to do everything within your business. Let me tell you, you will never feel like you're totally ready hire that person. And by the time you do feel like, okay, I'm ready. Like I know I need to hire them. It's probably too late. And I don't mean it's too late to hire someone. You can still hire someone. But by that point you're probably feeling ready because you're way too overworked.

Speaker 3 (31:17):

You're way too overwhelmed. You just know you you've been dropping the ball in other areas of your life. Like you just know you can't do it on your own anymore, but I think you should hire someone before you get to that point. I think you should hire someone before you get to that point of overwhelm and exhaustion. Um, so yeah, about four or five years ago was when I hired my first virtual assistant. She still works for us now and she's actually recently been promoted and upgraded to a full-time team member who, um, works on a couple different other projects, a little bit more in depth now and doesn't just assist me. And so that means that I was out of an assistant. Um, so I actually just literally this week is my first week with my new virtual assistant, um, who was going to help me with, uh, mainly email management.

Speaker 3 (31:59):

So she will manage all my emails for me, respond to those schedule appointments, also be managing my calendar. Um, any schedules, interviews, anything like that should be managing that for me going forward. Um, but having someone to help you with those tasks and really, I like to encourage people to, uh, just think about, is there any part of your business or your job that you hate, that you don't like that you're not very good at? Is there any part of your job or business that you do repetitive with day after day? Like checking emails or going through your calendar or scheduling meetings and events and appointments? Are there things that you're repetitively doing over and over again? And if yes, to any of those questions, those are things you can outsource. Those are things that you could, I mean, maybe you would hate video editing I or a video, and then that way they can edit your content for you.

Speaker 3 (32:47):

Now it's done, it's going to look a lot better because it's professionally done. You get to employ someone and you get to do more of what you love, the stuff that actually you're good at. And that brings you joy rather than spending your time, banging your head against the wall, video editing or, uh, you know, podcast reporting or replying to emails or whatever that specific thing is in your business. I cannot stress enough, hire, help, hire virtual assistant, even if it's just starting with like a content editor or something like that, it can really make all the difference in your business.

Speaker 2 (33:18):

That's huge. And yeah, and one of the exercises I heard from one year podcasts Brock is just to go through the tasks you're doing. Just basically write out every task you do for a week and look for things that maybe you could outsource. I mean, if you're spending a couple hours a week, grocery shopping, you're spending a couple hours a week doing laundry. Like I wonder if someone else could do that. I think you mentioned back when you were, uh, you know, in college, I think when your podcasts, you said you're having someone come do your laundry and stuff like that. And I'm like, well, yeah, there's really tons of things. And I think it's important for entrepreneurs. That's what we're trained to teach these, um, our solarpreneurs to do is just think like an entrepreneur, cause obviously entrepreneurs, we can't do it all.

Speaker 2 (33:59):

I know. Um, you and your mom, you guys, you know, and, or your parents' businesses, they have teams of, um, you know, probably dozens of people, helping them with all the tasks they need to do. So I think that's huge. And for us it could be maybe it's managing your leads. We've got CRMs. Um, there's lots of little things you do. I get overwhelmed with all my leads coming in. Um, did I sit down and appointment with them? Do I need, do they need to be followed up with, um, I have my virtual assistant. She helps me follow up with these leads. Um, she helps me manage email too. So for our listeners, think about those things that you're doing. What don't you like? What, uh, sorry, what do you not like doing like Brock said and what could you possibly outsource? And then for those people that want to consider getting like a virtual assistant Brock, where do you go, where do you actually find these people to help you out with tasks like that?

Speaker 3 (34:48):

Yeah, so I, I think that, uh, there's a great website called freelancer. That's one that I've used in the past for mainly like project based work. Um, I found my original virtual assistant, um, on online jobs with an S dot P H P H for the Philippines. Uh, that's where she was located. So I, that's where I found my original virtual assistant who still works with us today. This most recent assistant who I just hired. I actually found her via social media, which might not be an option for all people, but basically I just put out a little help, wanted ad on my Instagram. I had a bunch of people respond to it and we kind of went through the process from there. And actually we're releasing an episode of our podcast on Thursday, April 15. That's kind of detailing my entire, uh, process of how I hired that assistant and all of Oh, awesome.

Speaker 2 (35:38):

Love it. Awesome. Well, broccoli, appreciate you. Um, yeah, giving us some fire tips today as some good advice on how to get started in growing our Instagram's growing our social media and I definitely need to get going in going, um, on the social media. I know I'm lacking a ton, so you've helped me out. Um, so appreciate you coming on the show. So Brock before he let you go, where can people find out about, um, you know, your podcasts, what you're doing. I know they can find you on Instagram, but you want to share where people can find you and learn more about Instagram and possibly become one of your students in your courses. Sure, absolutely. So the best place to get connected is like you said, on Instagram, my Instagram handle is at Brock 11 Johnson. So the Eleven's right there in the middle.

Speaker 2 (36:22):

Um, I do respond to all of my DMS personally. It's always me managing them. So if anyone has a question or they listen to today's episode and they, uh, you know, he literally wanted to tell me how much they hated it. Go ahead. Send me a DM on Instagram at Brock 11 Johnson and then yeah, our podcast out. Oh, it's the one I just mentioned. It's called build your tribe. So if anyone wants to search that up and subscribe to that as well, you can find that on just about every podcast platform. Awesome. Love it. So go fall Brock shooting him, DM, let them know you appreciated him coming on the show. And last question I had for you Brock, do you have any questions that you wish the people don't usually ask you, but you wish they did ask you before we let you go?

Speaker 2 (37:04):

Hmm. This is a great question. You know, someone actually did ask me this exact question the other day on Instagram said, what questions do you wish people would ask you more? I have an answer to that. I don't know if I have a question. I definitely get, um, more than my fair share. More than I can handle. Sometimes have questions on Instagram. So I don't know if there's a question that I'm really dying for anyone to, to ask me, but I appreciate you as well. Good guests. People are asking good questions then. Well, thanks again for coming on the show Brock we'll definitely hit you up and um, yeah. Follow him. If you want to grow your Instagram or social media is, and he is the master. He's going to show you the ways so Brock will let you go and appreciate you coming on the show. We'll talk to you soon. Taylor, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (37:46):

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 4 (39:14):

[inaudible].

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 what's ups, Taylor

Speaker 2 (00:44):

Taylor Armstrong. Back with another episode, tripping on my words today, excited to be back for another show. It's just me today. And we're going to be talking about some social media strategies, things you can do, even if you hate social media, I'm going to be honest. I am not a big fan of social media. And if you follow me, it's probably pretty obvious. Cause I have been recently a little bit inactive on social media, but I'm going to tell you why that is where I've been on social media and really kind of prep you for the next episode we got coming out. We've got a social media master on our next show where you're not going to want to miss out. His name is Brock Johnson. He is an Instagram guru, some prepping you for that episode and just jamming on social media for a little bit today.

Speaker 2 (01:32):

My thoughts where I've been and yeah, just kind of jam on it. See what comes out. So before I do that, I have a special invitation, as you probably know, we are here in San Diego coming at you from San Diego, California. And the invitation I have is we're actually doing a solar event. It's going to be on the 15th of this month. So short notice we're in may here. So if you're listening to this, um, in the future probably already passed, but don't you worry? We're going to have more events soon. Okay. But this event it's the 15th of May, 2021. Okay. And if you go to solar cells, workshop.com, you can register for our events. We have coming up. We're gonna have some awesome speakers. I'm going to be coming at ya. Your boy here, we got Earl Kapule who has been on the podcast. Speaking about gratitude.

Speaker 2 (02:26):

We got, uh, Brent Attaway marketing genius, and we have, uh, Jay KES, who, um, if you have your bins on social media, he's also done several events. It's pretty big name in the solar game. He does the soar Academy. So we're doing the events on the 15th. Um, so come to it. It's I think it's free. Yeah, pretty sure it's free. There's going to be some giveaways. We're giving away Adidas gift card. Um, we're giving away some coaching sessions and more cool than anything we're giving away access to the Solciety program, little access to that. So come do it. If you can, it's going to be one day only. We're going to hang out. We're going to jam on some solar. There's going to be food free food, which that always got me to any event. So come to it, let me know and let me know if you're coming and we will hook you up.

Speaker 2 (03:24):

So let's jump into the show today. So social media, um, the reason I have been off social media, I'll tell you right now. I, um, I have sometimes issues with spending way too much time on things, probably like a lot of people out there in the solar game. I think I got some ADD going on. Remember I got back from my, a church mission, did a church mission in Columbia. I came back and we had a mission psychologist and I was just kind of emailing them back and forth. And I don't know what it was, but I forgot maybe to, I dunno, put like a subject line or I forgot to say from Taylor or something and this mission psychologist, he goes, Taylor, I think you might have ADD. You should go get tested. So I went and took this test. They call it the Toba test.

Speaker 2 (04:18):

Um, but basically it's just testing your attention to detail. How, how, uh, how long you can stay focused on something. And yeah, I remember I took that test and I definitely had ADD, so it's probably no surprise most, um, yeah, a lot of sales reps have it. A lot of entrepreneurs have it. And sometimes it's a blessing. Sometimes it's a curse. I think more than anything, it helps you focus in on things. Um, what comes to mind? Any, any of you that have been watching the NFL draft, you just, um, saw Zach Wilson. That would be why you quarterback. He gets drafted number two, and this kid has 80, more than anything. He will focus in so hard. He, he admitted it himself. He sucked at school. He couldn't pay attention to his classes, but you put them in front of some football film. This guy would focus 24.

Speaker 2 (05:15):

He would just stay up all night, watching football, film, just so detailed oriented on what interests him. I think that's the super power of ADD you can target in on things that other people aren't going to targeting on. Maybe you suck at school. Maybe you're not good at that, but you can focus in on things that interest you. So I think that's the advantage that people with ADD have. But anyways, for me, social media, it became one of these things that I was focusing in on way too much. I was following people, um, that were just time-wasters. I was getting a lot of negativity from it. So I decided to do a social media fast. So that went on for about the last three months. I'm just starting. I deleted the apps from my phone. I was hardly on there. Um, actually I don't think I was on there at all.

Speaker 2 (06:07):

I think possibly might've. Um, my assistant might've been managing some things for me, but I was just off social media. Didn't even want to get on it. I'd wasted so much time had felt it affect me negatively. And also I watched this documentary, which would highly suggest that it's on Netflix, that social dilemma just talks about how addicting these pop forms are. The people working at these Facebook, Instagram, their job is to get you addicted to their platforms. And if you notice now, if you click on links inside the platforms, you go to websites, it doesn't take you off the app. It takes you in a browser inside the app to go to these websites. So I watched this documentary and I'm just like, man, I just need a break from social media. Just got so overwhelming trying to be on Facebook, Instagram, um, haven't even gotten into the Tik TOK stuff.

Speaker 2 (07:01):

So I got off of it. Didn't get on it for three months. And I apologize for those that have sent me messages. Those that have reached out. Um, I do, I did try to respond here and there, but was largely inactive for the past three months. And I will say it felt great. Didn't have to worry about anything. I had way more time than I had before. Um, was able to focus on the podcast more, which you probably see a correlation the past few months. We've been much more consistent on bringing you the top content in the industry. And this is a big reason why is because instead of spending all this time on social media wasting the time I decided to channel it into the podcasts, bring more awesome content for my peeps. So that's what I did. I want to suggest if you feel like you are spending too much time on social media, do a fast, even if it's just a week or two, just do a little fast.

Speaker 2 (07:55):

And just, if anything, just release yourself from that beast. See what happens, channel that energy into something else. And I'm not saying you can't be on social media, but just do a fast and see what other things you can create. Cause it can control you. So anyways, that's where I've been. Okay. So I'm going to give you some tips now that I'm coming back, um, again, Brock Johnson, our guest for the next episode, he inspired this, um, more than anything, he kind of kicked my butt into gear and made me see that social media, it is important. We gotta be on it, but I think there's things we can do to kind of use our time wisely on it, to, uh, you know, maximize our efficiency, prioritize things that are important on social media. And that's what I want to share with you as I'm getting back on, I'm trying to do it the right way and I'm trying to not get sucked in, not addicted, not looking at things I shouldn't and not letting it control my life.

Speaker 2 (08:55):

So I want to share some thoughts with you, especially if you feel like you are someone that's hate social media. I do not like social media. I'll tell you. I know it's important. I know I gotta be on there, especially for business' sake, but I am not a fan honestly. So if you hate social media, if you feel you're spending way too much time and power, uh prioritory is prioritizing that over other things that need to get done. Then this episode is for you. I'm going to share some things that have helped me as I'm getting back on the platform and things that I've heard from other people, um, that are social media, ma masters. So here it is. Number one, pick one platform to focus on, especially starting out. If you're just rolling back in on social media, don't try to get on everything.

Speaker 2 (09:40):

If you're trying to post don't feel like you have to post everywhere, pick one platform to focusing on for me, it's Facebook, I'm old school. That's the first thing that came out first platform that was released back in my day, the two thousands. Um, so that's where I focus in on my time. Hey, for these newer cats, I know Instagram is the big one tik tok. So maybe you're focusing in on the tik tok. Maybe you're focusing on clubhouse, which is also a new platform for me. It's Facebook. That's where I'm focusing my thing. And that's where I'm going to try to, um, you know, posts, do my primary, um, hopping in checking in on comments, things like that. And that's the goal. Okay. And I'm, I know I'm saying this, I get all of these things from Russell Brunson, which is, if you haven't heard of him, he's the funnel master marketing master.

Speaker 2 (10:32):

He, um, this is one of his suggestions is you just pick one platform. The second thing is, um, unfollow, all the people that aren't relevant for what you're trying to do. For example, I had a lot of friends from high school, old friends. Um, they get on there, just posts like, you know, drama fights, political stuff. Um, they post their old cat videos, things that were not there was just a waste of time. Okay. I'm not going to gain anything from watching the cat videos, even though I love those cat videos, they were entertaining what I have to do. I have to go in and unfollow those people. Because if you were following all these people that are just posting meaningless content that are posting nothing, that's going to uplift, do a posting, nothing. That's going to get you towards your business goals or help you network with people or potentially be future customers to put solar on their homes.

Speaker 2 (11:30):

Then just ask yourself, what's the purpose of me even following these person, these people, and maybe you unfriend them, but at least just on follow them. You don't need to just be taking in these content. So the goal is to have your whole timeline. Anytime you go on social media, have it be things that are progressing you towards something. Okay. Is it a potential client? Is it, um, networking and solar? That's a big one. How can you network with other people in the industry? How can you connect? Okay. Networking is huge. And that's, I think for me, one of the main purposes of social media, you should be networking. You never know where the connection is going to get you, your network determines your net worth, as they say. So use social media to network and I'll give you just a few groups. You need to join.

Speaker 2 (12:19):

First of all, if you're not in the Solarpreneur Facebook group, hop on that. Okay, we're going to be posting more and more content on there. Again, I know it's been a little bit inactive as I've been on the social media fast, but we're going to be posting more and more in there. And that's where all our Solarpreneur dogs are hanging out. That's where we're chatting with each other and building each other up. So join the Solarpreneur group. Okay. If you're not already in the door to door tribe, that's our boys, Sam Taggart, who is on the podcasts, I believe last week. That's um, the best group for door knocking, everyone that dot knocks doors from any industry they're going to be posted by you on their aunts, uh, dropping questions and answers. That's a good one. Um, another good one is online door knockers.

Speaker 2 (13:05):

That's by, uh, my friend Kota, Ivers, who has also been on the show. He posts a lot of tips to generate your leads online, how to follow up with them scripts to fall and does some good value. Okay. Another one Knockstar, a university. I believe that's a public group. Um, all of these people are guys we've had on the show. So I'm helping, um, you know, build up their groups. They got some good things to share some valuable stuff to knock star university. That's another one on Facebook, solar objections. Um, that's a good group. I don't personally know the guy that started this group. Um, but they do do, um, role plays, things like that. A lot of people post, uh, questions, you know, concerns, um, objections, they're hearing, they do role plays, stuff like that. And then the last one I would suggest joining is solar pros, which is, um, I know Jay KES is one of the big guys on that.

Speaker 2 (14:05):

And then also S uh, sunny rock who we had on the show. Jay, it's been probably a year now, but they're very active on that group. Spread a lot of value. So there's just some examples, go join these groups. And if you're getting on Facebook, use it to network, go on these groups, popping, um, spread value, um, post valuable things, answer other people's questions. Hey, and that's how you're going to profit from social media. But that's, I think should be one of the main things you do and then involve people that aren't, um, contributing to your value. Okay. And the last tip I have is consider using a social media manager, especially if you are trained to post fear, ramping up your posting. And, um, depending on what you're doing in social media, maybe you're posting things, geared towards homeowners, maybe you're posting, um, I don't know, cool stuff about solar.

Speaker 2 (15:02):

Um, go on there's tools like buffer, uh, Hootsuite, these apps you can download and you don't even have to go on social on Facebook, whatever you, you can go on this app and you can schedule the things to post, and then you can just be cycling through content. Okay. So one thing that you posted maybe six months ago, you can repost it. Maybe you have it gone Instagram one week Facebook then week after that. Okay. And it makes it way easier to handle. You can see comments on there. So consider using a tool like that. And then my last thing is consider getting a virtual assistant. I've talked about this before, but, um, basically anything that I did on social media last couple of three months, that was my social, my virtual assistant, helping out. She helps out a ton and just, um, she's in the Solarpreneur group.

Speaker 2 (15:53):

She helps manage the content in there. Um, she does postings and, you know, she responds to people. Occasionally don't worry if you message me, I'm getting it. But, um, you know, pointless stuff that I message, she will respond to those things occasionally. And it's just something very useful, more than anything, they can help you manage email, which that's another topic for another day, but consider getting a social media, managing tool like buffer and consider getting a virtual assistant that that can help you manage all these things. And that's going to help you be more efficient in your social media use. It's going to help you feel much better about getting on there and not wasting time. So that's my tips with it. Let me know if you guys have any tips again, I'm learning all this stuff. And next episode, you're going to have the privilege to hear a Instagram master.

Speaker 2 (16:47):

He's going to knock it out of the park, but this guy has thousands and thousands of followers. I think he's at, I don't know, 30,000 followers on Instagram, something like that. Um, but social media master. So if you want to take it in the next level, don't miss out on the next episode, but these are just some thoughts that I had as I'm trying to get more active on social media and ideas. I have that I've gotten from other experts on just how to handle this stuff. Even if you hate social media. So let me know if you guys have any tips and let me know if there's anything that helps you as someone that does not like social media. Okay. But some thoughts I threw out there hope it was valuable and we will see you Solarpreneurs on the next episode.

Speaker 1 (17:29):

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 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 what's up Solopreneurs Taylor

Speaker 2 (00:44):

Armstrong, back on the mic here to help you sling some more solar close, some more deals and be the top rep in the solar industry. Maybe second top rep. Cause I'm the top kidding. I'm not the top, but I am very good. So today we are going to dive into an episode. I just got back from a little company retreat up to big bear, California. All my Southern Californians probably know that's the mountain town of California. It's where people go skiing and hanging out. It's really cool about where we are at in San Diego. You can literally drive 20, 30 minutes to the beach and then you can drive like an hour, an hour and a half to the mountains. So great location. If you want to have that advantage, come out and sell some solar San Diego Southern California hit me up. If you're looking for an opportunity, great market out here, and it is expensive, but if you're selling solar, doesn't matter, you're going to be closing deals.

Speaker 2 (01:47):

You're going to be making top bucks in this great industry. Um, so go back with a great trip. Did some helicopter writing spent some time with our team? Um, so that's the first thing I wanted to see. If you are not doing team building activities, you're missing a huge opportunity to build and strengthen your team. If you miss the, one of the single biggest things you can do is just, um, get to know your team, spend time with them. It's going to help that you don't lose guys. And I've seen guys, um, you know, stay at companies that are paying way less than other company, just because they're doing these things. They're building culture, they're building up their reps and they're billing that good comradery, not to say that you shouldn't get paid, what you're worth, but that's why the culture is so important. And, um, hopefully you listened to Sam Taggart's previous episode, where we talked about culture and things you can do to build the culture in your company.

Speaker 2 (02:45):

So just a little side, tangent plan trips in your company, hire someone to help you do those things. Right now, we have, um, awesome Jeanette in our company. She's awesome. She helps us plan, things like that, and just kind of helps us be way more organized. So get someone like that. That's helping you do kind of little secretarial things, plan trips, plan events, and get your team hyped. That's what it's all about. Okay. So today I'm going to talk about just a few things that helped me last week. He closed three deals on the week, so decent week. Um, and before I get into that, I will say I'm getting over a little cold. So hopefully I don't sound too much like Squidward right now. I've got a stuffy nose, but doesn't matter going to get out, going to sell some more salt, we're going to close more deals.

Speaker 2 (03:34):

So here's what helped last week. And this is something that not a lot of people are doing came because it's kind of is annoying to do sometimes. And I'd be surprised. Let me know if you have done this already, but I know I wasn't. So here it is, I'm going to drop it on you, video testimonials. That's what we're talking about today. This thing is super powerful. If you're not getting video testimonials from your customers, you're missing a huge opportunity. I'm going to tell you a story of last week. I was in this neighborhood, a lot of Filipinos in this neighborhood, um, here down in San Diego. And, um, the deal that I closed, she was an older Filipino lady, had a low, a little bit lower bill, but she had never really talked to anyone too much. And number one, cause she lived alone.

Speaker 2 (04:28):

So she didn't really, um, she wasn't confident in your decision-making making abilities. Um, she didn't want to make a quick decision and it was a same day deal, which you talked about that same days are awesome. If you can get in the house, you can set the lead, get inside the house and start closing them. Um, it's way easier because you don't have to wait to come back in the home. You have to set the appointments and cross your fingers that they're going to be there the next day. So I go inside this house and she's telling me to hear the sounds good, but not making a decision. Matter of fact, she didn't even let me in the house before I basically promised her that I wasn't going to sign her up that day. So she was super skeptical and it's because single or ladies, they're not confident a lot of times in their decision-making abilities.

Speaker 2 (05:19):

So it's a blessing and a curse. The good thing is they don't have to go talk to their husband or they're the only one involved in the decision. But the bad thing is sometimes they're not competent at all. So they want to go talk to neighbors. They want to go talk to people who can help them with the decision. So she proceeded to bring all these things up, that she wasn't going to make a decision that it sounded good, but she wasn't saying anything. So I knew that I needed to build a ton of social proof to get her over the edge. Hey, and first thing I always do and tell them stories of other neighbors, stories of people that have had the same experience. But what I started doing recently is trying to get more video testimonials. I'm explaining how to do this here in a second.

Speaker 2 (06:07):

But I pulled out a video testimonial of an older couple about her same age, had similar concerns that she had. I pull this out and they can see me. She can see me in the video with these people. I'm doing it kind of interview style. And they cover a lot of the same questions, concerns that she was having right at that moment. I show her this and boom instantly her. Um, I could just see her almost soften. She was way, way less. Like I'm not going to sign up in more like, Oh, okay. Yeah, this does sound good. And of course I still proceeded to build a ton of value. I showed this video basically, first thing as I was getting into the details and the nitty gritty, I show her this and it just instantly softens the tone. It makes her way more trusting in me what I was telling her.

Speaker 2 (06:59):

And it made it so much easier. As I built, I started with that foundation of a video testimonial, seen other people talk about it. And then I told stories on top of that, this new year, this neighbor, this, uh, older lady had the same experience and it helped so much. So it's something I forgot about. And I got to give a shout out to my, uh, knock star guys, Danny PESI, who was on a few episodes back. He was, he sort of reminded me of this, how powerful it is. Cause I hadn't done one in awhile. So if you are not currently getting video testimonials, I'm going to explain to you how to get them. Hopefully that convinces you. They're powerful. They can help overcome objections. You can use them as ammo in deals and tough situations. Okay. So I'm going to explain to you how to get it though.

Speaker 2 (07:50):

Okay. Obviously you have your iPhone, your, your camera on there. Hey, so tip number one is after the deal, you gotta be super assumptive, just like everything you do. Okay. And then, um, tell them what you're doing and it's not going to work with everyone. Some people don't want to be in video testimonials, but you make it no big deal. Okay. For people that you think needle, extra motivation to do it, you can tell them, you'll send them a gift card or you can tell them if a neighbor, um, a neighbor signs up, um, because they saw the testimonial. You'll give them a hundred bucks, whatever. So you can throw stuff like that in. Okay. But look for the chill people that hopefully won't care, just like Mr. Jones. So, Hey, we're actually talking with a lot of your neighbors out here and what's really helping is just, um, we do these little videos with people.

Speaker 2 (08:44):

So the neighborhood, that way the neighborhood hood can see who we're working with. So what I do with you, if you don't mind, just a quick like video with both of us and don't worry, you don't have to, you don't have to say too much, but I'm just going to ask you like a few questions of kind of what your concerns were and why you decided to participate in the program. And then, uh, that's it. And then don't worry. It's not going on social media. We're not sharing it to a bunch of people. We're just going to show it with a few people we're working with. Just things. See that it's you. And um, if anyone does sign up because of it, then yeah, we're going to send you a gift card or we're going to send you a hundred bucks for helping us. So it'll be real quick.

Speaker 2 (09:28):

Okay. And key with that. You're not asking them yesterday. You know, again, you're being assumptive, just like everything you're doing in the cell. Super assumptive. Hey, so you pull out your camera and here's tip number two, instead of doing the selfie style, getting it on the front camera, any phone camera you have, it's going to be better on the front camera. So with the screen facing away from you. So that's the second key. Try to get that. It's going to be a little bit better quality. And then what you do is just get both of you in the video. So that way your customers can see that you're actually talking with these people, you're interacting with them. And then you're just going to ask them why they decided to go solar. What was their pain? What were they seeing with their bill? Hey, so I have a set list of questions and think about what are the concerns that your homeowners are having when they go, when they have doubts about solar, right?

Speaker 2 (10:22):

So maybe it's they thought there was a lien on the home, maybe it's they thought, um, it required a bunch of money up front, maybe it's they thought, um, the home was going to be tough to sell. So all of those objections that people usually throw out common concerns, try to cover those. You're not going to hit all of them with every single person. Okay. But cover that so same. So you're on video. You're on camera. You're pointing the phone on the front camera. You're saying, Hey, um, I'm Taylor, I'm here with Mr. Jones. Um, and we just helped them save money on solar. Um, so Mr. Jones, what was your, what were you guys seeing with your bill that made you decide to look into solar and participate in the program? So then they list off the things. Oh, we saw our bills were getting super high.

Speaker 2 (11:13):

We were paying more than ever for electricity. We saw 8% increase last year or whatever. So try and get them to throw out some of those things and then say, great. And then what, what did you guys like about the program? Um, what were the benefits for you guys in going solar with the program? Uh, we really liked that it gave us a set bill. We know exactly what we're going to pay. Oh, we really like that. We're helping them. They are mint or we were like, so whatever. See if you can get them to help them out. Yeah. You can help them out even in the video. What about, did you like that? There's no liens on the old, Oh yeah. That was really awesome. Um, so get those things, obviously you're not really trained to ask yes or no questions. You're trying to get them to tell their story, try and get them to hit those emotional pain points.

Speaker 2 (11:59):

Okay. So hope we can get someone that really hated their utility. That was sick of all these increasing rates, increasing bills, and then try to get those senses. Those emotions involves. So it's simple as that. So try it with every deal you're in. You're not going to get everyone I recently. And I should say you don't have to do a testimony with every single customer, but the truth is you're probably going to get one out of, I dunno, maybe three or four that just refuse to be on a camera video. Okay. So you don't want to like be a jerk and force people to do it, but you want to encourage people to, so I would just make it a step at the end of every cell, try to get a testimonial, K, make an attempt. And it's going to help you. Cause especially if you are working in a neighborhood, how powerful is it?

Speaker 2 (12:46):

If they see Mr. Jones with the big white Husky, they recognize him, maybe get his dog in the video too. Right. You can get those things. And then Judy, um, four doors down says, Oh, Hey, I've seen that guy walking his dog by my house. Yeah. That's Mr. Jones. We've been working with him and he loved this. Here's a video. Here's what he liked. So tempted to attempt it with every customer, get those testimonials and then store it, go in your iPhone. Hope we have an iPhone because the better phone, but go in there and create a testimonial folder and store it all in there. That's another common error. That's what I was doing is I would get these videos, but then I was forgetting where they were and I was having to drag go dig through, you know, 50, a hundred photos before I felt in this video.

Speaker 2 (13:33):

So go create an album, a folder in your phone, put all the testimonials in it. And then I also like to put them on Google drive, just have it all in one place. And then you can use it for potentially making marketing videos. You do, obviously you make sure people are okay with that, but create a folder that way they're not getting lost in there. Super powerful. Use it as you're meeting with other neighbors, other people in the neighborhood. And then worst case, if you can't get a testimonial video, at least get, get a selfie photo with these people. At least that's another thing that's powerful. Even if you don't have a video and say, Oh yeah, here's the photo of, um, the Joneses five doors down. We just met with him. Yeah, look, there's this dog. And you've probably seen him. And then it's making your stories more credible, making your stories more believable because hopefully you're incorporating stories into your presentation and using that, using the power of these stories and these testimonials.

Speaker 2 (14:31):

Okay. So that's the tip. Go out, make it a common thing. Get these video testimonials. I promise you, it's going to help you. Especially people that are skeptical with older folks that think there's scams going around, it's going to help you build that social proof, add that element and it's going to help you close more deals. So get out there, let me know if you have any helpful tips as you're doing video testimonials or stories that have helped you love to hear them love to hear what our peeps have got, what our Solarpreneurs are doing. So hit me up. Let me know what you thought of this and we will see you on the next one.

Speaker 1 (15:09):

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. 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 what's up.

Speaker 2 (00:44):

We're back with another episode, we got familiar face on the show. If you've been a time listener, you have probably heard the episode with the man, the myth, the legend to Sam Taggart. And we're fortunate enough today to have him back on the show. So Sam, thanks for coming back. Once again, he must be doing something right for you to agree to come on the show again. No, I'm, I'm excited to hear, to spread the love, you know? Yeah. Well, you're doing awesome things, man. And, um, I'm just happy that you pull off a door to, to work on steel during COVID. I thought it was going to be canceled, but you were like the only events that I saw even still happens. I'm like, dang, she pulled this off. I better get to it. Yeah, it was, it was, we had to move venues two weeks before like really I was literally pulled out from under us and they're like, Hey, we're not gonna, we're not gonna be able to load your event.

Speaker 2 (01:33):

I'm like, Oh, what do you want me to do? Call like 600 people and just tell them, Hey, we're moving. Like not doing it. Like, like, what do you want me to do? So I'm like me and me door knock. And Sam, I just go start knocking on venues. I'm like, how about deer? How about here? How about here? And I just started calling. There's not a ton of options in Utah with like to fit that many people and vendors. And it was hard, but, uh, yeah. So, but yeah, kudos. You've pulled it off. I'm just, I was, I was sad that David Goggins didn't want to come anymore, get seatbelt. He got scared of COVID dude. Like he literally was like, Oh, I'm just nervous to travel with Kona. And I was like, you can't hurt me. What dad is doc. They're like, no iron cowboy. And he's doing his hundred Ironman right now in a hundred days. And there's anybody that James Lawrence was like, yeah, David Goggins a. And I was like, anybody can say that you got some balls to shake. I'll shut my mouth. They'll beat my, I thought it was funny that John Maxwell comes and he's like, what? 70, 80 years old? I literally tell John Maxwell. I was like, Hey, I was so shocked that you came David Goggins Belden. And John Maxor goes, Oh, COVID, it's a joke. It's not real.

Speaker 2 (02:54):

I was like, Oh, it's not even real. That's awesome. I didn't know.

Speaker 3 (03:01):

But he was so cool. I have so much more respect for Maxwell. Like just how he showed up and like just who he is. I mean, I'm excited. I'm excited for this next year. We're we're vetting some speakers right now. I'm not going to say, but, um, we're open to suggestions too. So if anybody's listening to this, like I'm friends with Mark Cuban, I'd be like, yes. So I am throwing that out to the universe. Um, so connect me if you guys know of any good keynotes, so,

Speaker 2 (03:33):

Okay, good, good. Oh, cool. Um, so hopefully you should all know who Sam is, but I guess if you don't, I mean, he's the door to door master. He's started door to door experts. He has the door to door podcasts. So I'm, unless it's like your first day or something, you probably should have heard of Sam by now. I would hope. Um, but yeah, that's what he's about. So if you haven't go subscribe to his podcasts, he's done a good ton of awesome stuff. And we'll talk about his event. He has coming up soon. Um, but Sam, what I kind of wanted to jam on today is just the first app, uh, podcast we did with you. We focus more on like the solar specific stuff. Like I think we did kind of like a live role play thing and, um, you know, broke down objections, things like that. So this time I kind of wanted to focus on what you've really just learned to views. You've consulted all these companies and you've been doing this for years. You've probably seen what works, what doesn't work now have a ton ideas on that. So I kind of wanted to see just kind of the broader, um, perspective, I guess now. So in all your consulting, what do you see that is making a big difference for the solar companies you work with? I guess what's, what's been helping the companies you work with.

Speaker 3 (04:43):

Um, it's everybody asks me like, what are the behaviors that I should be doing? Right. Like teach me the right pay skills, teach me the right. You know, knocking techniques teach me the right training. What they're not asking is then like I go to most companies and they'd never really understand why they're a company. Like what's their identity. And I'm finding the companies that really get clarity around their vision, their core values, their identity and, and anchoring in some sound foundational elements of like what our mission is. Then it's so much easier to couple on the, the, the behaviors and the structures and all the other things that follow up. Um, so a big piece of what we do a lot of times is just help realign them because even businesses that have been around for 10 years, I mean, we've consulted some, you know, billion dollar companies and it's like, we're just sitting here kind of like, you've lost your, your mojo.

Speaker 3 (05:43):

You've lost, like why you even exist. You're just like in this mud of like, we're just like rowing, but with no direction, like, so where are we going? I don't know, you know, another 10 million. And it's like, okay, where we go? And I'm like, you're people are losing a little bit of their love because they don't see the vision. They, they, they're not getting communicated with on the path. They're not getting in a role every week, every month, every year, why they should realist re-enlist in your company. Does that make sense? So like a lot of big problems in this industry is turnover. A lot of big problem in this industry is how do I avoid getting my reps to go start their own company or go to my, get poached or, or ask for more money or whatever that is. And I'm like, yeah, they got to understand like where you're going for sure. Driving themselves.

Speaker 2 (06:38):

Yeah. Yeah, no. And I know that was, that was a big problem. We had it's one of the previous companies I worked for is, um, we would hire, we, it was a setter closer model, so we would hire all these setters on, but then, um, you know, fast forward a few months, the setters started hearing how much like the closers can make and, you know, even reps from other companies and things like that. And then they want, they start asking how they can progress. And, um, the culture is basically you can't progress. We want you to just keep, you know, keep sending bills. Um, so just cause a ton of turnover. Yeah. We had some solid guys, but they wanted like, what's that next step? How can we progress into like closing the managing or whatever the next thing is. So yeah, I think that is super important and just creating that vision and just helping guys see what the next step step is, where they can go. So when you're consulting these companies, how do you get them to like, what are the steps you take them through to help them out with this and create like, I dunno that vision and keep their reps motivated and all that.

Speaker 3 (07:37):

Yeah. And every, every like, I mean the first thing is every company is unique. And so it's really understanding, like getting down to the root of what, what, what do you want? You know what I mean? It's like some companies, like we have a pest control company that we kept asking me like, well, are you building this to sell off your accounts? Are you building this to just keep building a reoccurring residual? Or are you building this to go and you know, build more in an empire all over. Do you want to stay at a local guy and lean and mean, and take big distributions? Do you want to keep reinvesting? Like, I don't know, you tell me. And I'm like, well, I'm not going to tell you what you want. Like that there'll be some purpose. If I just projected what I want on you in a week, you're going to be like, well, that's maybe not what I want.

Speaker 3 (08:24):

And I'm like, but the fact that you can't answer, what do you want? That's the impediment to your real growth and success. The clarity when you can understand what you want and, and define it and clarity and, and then go into why you want it, then it makes it easier to go and, and, and construct. So a lot of the things I start with is like, what do you want? Like, what do you want? Let's fast forward a year. What do you want to have happen? Let's fast forward five years. What would you want to have happen? Oh, I want to be selling off in an distance. So The Bahamas in Selma company, I'm like, okay, what assets do you have? What's the, what's the enterprise value. You're fricking sales, or you don't even install. Do you have any IP? Do you have any actual value located? And let's start putting some tracks down right now, putting some enterprise value to where somebody to actually transact, like you're going to sell to like a, I don't know, like, well, how do you, how do you, so when you don't even know what type of buyers are looking to buy you.

Speaker 3 (09:22):

Okay. And I'm like, okay, you're going to have to private equity and banks. Are you going after a bigger solar company acquire you? And why would you, why would a bigger solar company buy you if they're already there? Like, what is like, what value like, and so I just start quizzing them and they're just like, I don't know. And I'm like, okay, at least you've got your wheels turning. And so being a coach or a consultant, it's like, it's fun because I get to ask the questions. They're afraid to ask themselves, but they know deep down inside there should be asking themselves and they're just avoiding it.

Speaker 2 (09:55):

No, that's key. And I think, um, that's something that even just sells people can do too, is I think you talked about this just on your most recent episode is just that, like, why exercise, figuring out why you're trying to do the things that you do and like a, you know, Dean Grasiozi talks about like the seven whys and it's just digging super deep on the why. And most people I know when I did that exercise, I didn't know why I, I, I I'd tough time answering the questions of why I wanted to do anything. So when you take seven levels deep,

Speaker 3 (10:26):

It's hard. And another exercise that I didn't mention that podcast. That's a good one. It's like, okay. So where are you? You know, you're going to go build this solar company and then what, and then, you know, do it with me. So you, Taylor, you're running the solar company. So, so you build this solar company and then what?

Speaker 2 (10:48):

Um, I, um, I sell it and, or sell the solar company. So, um, make tons of money retire and yeah, just vacation the rest of the time.

Speaker 3 (11:06):

So you would make tons of money, you vacation and then, and then what?

Speaker 2 (11:13):

Um, yeah, just spend time with my kids, help them with soccer practice and

Speaker 3 (11:20):

You go skiing. And then one,

Speaker 2 (11:23):

Um, then I bias, uh, I started doing some real estates by some houses. Um, and

Speaker 3 (11:34):

So you buy some real estate, you buy some houses.

Speaker 2 (11:39):

Um, and then I start buying some commercial, commercial, real estate, some apartment units. Um, and then I, um, yeah, I don't know. I buy an Island. You bought some on the Island? Um, I, yeah, I dunno. Just relax on the islands. Just hang out there. It's my life.

Speaker 3 (12:10):

You've got these cars, properties. You're relaxing on an Island and then we'll,

Speaker 2 (12:15):

Um, I,

Speaker 3 (12:19):

You can't think so. You're just now trying to answer, right. But you're trying to give me an answer just to give you an answer. I get it. The point is, and then you die.

Speaker 2 (12:29):

Yeah. Okay. Eventually you're going to die out of that,

Speaker 3 (12:34):

But most people never even think they, like, I challenge them like this. And then what, and then what, and I'm like, so where are you going? And then they're like, Oh, then I do this. And then I do this. And I'm like, okay. And then, but then you die. And what happens is so many people are so preoccupied about like this life after death or there's, where do we come from? And what's the purpose. And I'm like, we need to preoccupied more about, is there life before death? Is there life now? Is there happiness? Like we chased this whole, like, I'm going to be a $10 million company one day. Okay. And then it's like, where are you going? And I think I watched these businesses. They just, like, I literally just had this tech company in here. They're like, we're going to do this thing.

Speaker 3 (13:14):

We're gonna do this. And then we're going to sell in three years. And then, and then, and then, and I'm like, you know, is it like, is this going to kill us and make us terribly unsatisfied trying to do it? Or are we going to be happy doing this? Is it fun? Are we aligned? Is it is what's now like, I love looking in the future and I love living in taking risks, but I think so often businesses, they they're so focused sometimes on an exit. They're so focused on the life after death. Once I'm done knocking doors, life will be good. I'm done running the solar company in the mud and the chaos I'll then be in the sunset. And I'm like, really what happened?

Speaker 2 (13:59):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (14:01):

Hold on. Let's reevaluate who you are and how you're living. And nine times out of 10, it switches to more of a personal development leadership conversation because I go, you're chasing something. That's just not even really something you need to cling to. And you're disappointed because you're not selling or making enough, or you're super satisfied because you're making more than you ever thought. But you're clinging to this expectation, this ideal that you've created somehow in your mind. And we need to deconstruct that sometimes and say, let's get to the roots.

Speaker 2 (14:36):

Yeah, for sure. And I think it's, yeah, to that point, all the people that are knocking, especially in solar, we hear that all the time is like, Oh, I'm just going to get, uh, online needs now, because now I don't have to knock anymore. Or I start managing, then I don't have to like knock anymore

Speaker 3 (14:57):

Managing, like I can only babysit now know these crazy hours for X amount of years. And then they're like, Oh, then what? I just am like, how about you just love what you do now.

Speaker 2 (15:07):

Yeah. That's huge. So yeah, something that comes to mind. Um, I know you helped Mo fall on those boys. Simple solar. Um, I was talking to him, he was telling me that you guys helped, uh, you know, their company out a lot, probably on some of these same things. Um, but I don't know. Do you have any stories around that or any, any companies that you've helped them kind of identify those big things to turn them around? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:31):

Yeah. I like take Mo perfect case study doing 30 a month. Com brings a bunch of sales guys to our sales summit last year. So we just had our sales summit last week in Nashville last year, we did it in Vegas. You know, it's just a new company, young entrepreneurs, 24, 25 years old is saying, okay, I'm going to do this. And he's hungry. He's ambitious. He's got swaggers is the right profile. If I could go recruit a guy like that, you're like, like he's, he's a step. It's not just Mo it's. Josh has his VP. It's John it's Anthony it's it's. They have a lot of good reps that are young, hungry and ambitious. And it was really easy for a guy like him to get caught up in the I'm happy selling my 50 deals, 30 deals a month making a fat override and let's just be okay.

Speaker 3 (16:14):

And he took a big plunge. He joined my mastermind, even though he was the youngest dude in my mastermind group. Most of these guys are big CEOs. And, um, he then hires us to consultant and which is a six figure dollar amount. I mean, and when we consult a company it's like deep, deep, we recruit for you. And we recruited probably 30, 40% of his people up to Matt, a bunch of bodies. We helped them put a bunch of his sales systems together as training platforms, his strategy, his areas, his schedule, how he runs his meetings, how he runs his competitions, how he does like all of that. Like we just said, let him lay this out there. We call it the unfair advantage. And um, I mean, that's what we really do. We have a bunch of experts and, um, Brandon was their expert and he's a stead.

Speaker 3 (16:57):

And, um, what he came to summit, he says, all right, I'm in, let's do this. And we add a compete against another one of our clients. It's also another fat success story of voltaic, right? In the same backyard. We said, let's compete them against each other because too often companies don't have an act antagonist to fight. So we just launched this national knocking league amongst all of our consulting clients to facilitate something similar. Um, but what it is is we said, okay, let's put this in place. And last month in March, he just did 300 solar deals. So it's like, he went, he 10 Xed, his whole company over the last 12 months. And that we've been working with them. And it's been really fun to watch him develop as a leader because speed of the leader should be the team he was in pouring into himself to say, and he was that squeaky wheel.

Speaker 3 (17:46):

We have a lot of clients, some of them never talked to us that, you know, they only raised their hand when we asked them to raise their hand. But Mo is the type that milk probably out of what he paid us three times out of what he paid us. Does that make sense? Like we have agreed to doing this for him. And we ended up doing this because he was always calling us always. I mean, he came on our company triumph and he was like, how do I hang out with you guys? Way more? Like, how do I be more and more and more and more and more and more involved so that I can get more and more and more and more out of understanding what the collective of solar, what the collective of door to door sales reps with the collective of the network and what you guys bring to the table. And he did it right. Like I, uh, I applauded like, literally I was like, you don't need me anymore. Like I literally, it was like, you fly little birdie. I got like a bunch of little companies that are trying to freaking figure what you just did out and I need to go help them. You know? So for me, it's, it's, uh, it's really fun. I could give you 20 use cases like that over the last 12 months that we have, he's just really loud about it. But, um, he's a dude, what a stud

Speaker 2 (18:51):

Heritable. I know, I couldn't believe it. I gone on the state. Yeah. I mean at door to door con, um, he hopped on the stage and like, I thought it was other guys winning awards, but his entire team up there on the stage when I can't, what, what word did he win up there? Is that like just the biggest growth or something you guys grow with someone? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:10):

So anyway, we have the duty industry awards we launched this year because I felt like, you know, he didn't win a golden door award because he didn't sell that much, but it's impressive what he did as far as growth. And I think having those industry awards is kind of cool this year, just having top management top recruiter or talk, you know, company growth. And I'm excited to see how that progressed for regresses. And the hall of fame was a cool one this year. And new people being inducted into the hall of fame will be exciting. And every year the event just gets cooler and go on like that.

Speaker 2 (19:45):

Yeah. No, no doubt. So yeah. Super cool success story. Um, yeah, we've interviewed Mo on the podcasts of you didn't hear that. You can go check it out for all our listeners. Um, yeah, I'll send it to you. But yeah, the last thing I kind of wanted to touch on Sam is just, I know you probably had a lot of experience in your consulting. Other companies too, is just helping them get that good culture. And it's something that, um, yeah, I've, you know, companies I'm with, we struggle with it all the time, just building like that working culture, especially in solar, like we were talking about just a lot of easy guys and not wanting to put on like the minimum amount of time to get their results. So what do you do? How did you help Moe and these other companies you work with, what do you do to help them get that good culture and just get these guys to stick?

Speaker 3 (20:29):

Well, it's cool. I went to lunch yesterday with a guy named Steven, a buddy of mine. He was in charge of the culture department of vivid Inc in alarm. Um, there's a guy named Kevin Swiss. He worked under him. He assumed he has now left. He works for a restaurant company. Um, this other guy Damon just left and went to work for similar silicones. So there's probably like four or five key players discussion was there. Video Damon was designed and we call it sales and sales marketing department. And these guys were all in charge of their events, their design, their videos, but not for the customer or most people spend so much money and time developing that for the customer where they're too cheap because they don't see the ROI spending money and time putting a sales marketing department. It's all for internal. And the companies that are winning are investing more money to market to their salespeople than they do to their customer base because they see an immediate ROI.

Speaker 3 (21:25):

They say, Oh, I get one lead. I close one lead that equals X dollars, but they don't compute is the value of a good events team, a good marketing team, internal design video clout scoreboards because of the culture. So like Viven solar, Alex COO. She also worked on the sales marketing team of Bindman solar, but she had about a $5 million budget. I did a year just in swag. And you say, okay, why did they make money on these competitions with the prizes and this and that? No, they actually broke even. But what they wanted to do is elevate the waterline by showing their reps a new level of personal performance through competition. So a good culture, isn't just designed by con competition. It's by vision it's by relationships. You know, a lot of people, they don't take the meaningful time to build a relationship with their people.

Speaker 3 (22:23):

So they just hire bodies and say, good luck. Here's your pay scale. Go make it happen. Um, it's by app innovation and showing uniqueness and competitive advantage. If I'm just one company amongst the mixed of all the other same company, he's using the same stuff, doing the same thing, but it makes me interesting. Um, you know, so, so you, culture is created by design, not by default. And what most people end up doing is they just have a default culture that they fall into based on their competency to orchestrate culture. You look at, and I'm not trying to toot my horn, but we've created, we said, DDD is going to become a culture. Like you're you have that plaque behind you with pride. You're like, look, I was a golden door winner and it means something. And we made it mean something and we highlight it and we say this, it is a big deal.

Speaker 3 (23:10):

We talk about it, everybody listening, you, we do 130. We upped the ante. It's 130 installs 2021. And that means I'm one of the elite of the elite. And, you know, is there anything meaningful in your company that looks like that? Um, you know, we do community type stuff where it's like, we have a nonprofit, we're doing ways that people can participate. We're highlighting certain people. We're, we're collectively saying let's, let's create value. And, um, we're, we're associating with cool influences like John Maxwell's and Jordan Belfort's and people like that. Like, so what are we doing as a company to make us interesting and cool. What are the relationships that we're building? I mean, me and you, we've created a relationship over the few years, even though it's not like we hang out and go to dinner every night. It's just like, we still talk on Instagram.

Speaker 3 (24:03):

We still, you know, there's still like an association of like, cool. And are you doing that with your sales people? Or is it kind of like, yeah, I don't want to talk to them. They don't matter to me. Like all those things create culture. And my question is what is the systems that you're intentional around implementing your core values to create a culture so that everybody in uniforming uniformally? Oh my gosh. My first manager is calling me the dude, that management alarms, my very first year, I haven't talked to him 10 years. Um, what are we doing to create that culture? And I think people are just trying to think that by having, I don't know, by being a company, that means they have a culture.

Speaker 2 (24:50):

That's no, that's yeah. I love those points. And it's funny you say all these things, you're saying I it's some of the exact same things that Moe was talking about. Like, I know he's doing those same things. He has like a marketing department, basically marketing to his reps right now. He's paying a social media guy, like thousands and thousands to create like, you know, social media content for his reps and like the leaderboards and all those things.

Speaker 3 (25:15):

We said, you have to do that in order to be play in the big leagues, smell like you want to play in the big leagues. That's what makes this company a retainable leader influence in the space. And he is just milking it and killing it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:33):

That's incredible. But no, yeah. That's huge. And um, yeah, some good things to think about. For sure for me is we're trying to build the culture. I love doing the podcast. Cause I can ask about a lot of other things that like, like I'm struggling myself with, on the teams. So I go out and find the best and the best of that. I'm just gonna ask them my questions.

Speaker 3 (25:52):

My guess. I'm like, I get it. I get paid for people. Realize I literally had like a culture reset meeting this morning with my recruiting department. And I was like, guys, let's like revamp this thing and let's have a heart to heart. And I, I mean, I'm, I'm literally like finding opportunities to implement the same stuff. I preach just like anybody else, guys, like it's people think on the outside, like, Oh, they must have it all together. I'm like, no, it's not easy. I'm like, no we don't. But we're trying and getting the right people empowered in the right positions is so important to getting the culture bought in. But you need like, all I did today was like, guys, this is where we're going as a company, guys, this is what's happening, guys. This is like, where what's next? And they were all like, Oh, I needed that. You haven't told us that in the last week. Like, it's just crazy how often you have to remind people to be like, this is what we're about.

Speaker 2 (26:49):

Yeah, no, yeah. No doubt. No doubt. Yeah. Well Sam, thanks for sharing these things with us. Yeah. Super important for our listeners create that culture, create the vision, create the relationships. And then, um, also you mentioned just being part of something bigger. Um, Moto, I don't know if Moe is doing this anymore, but he was, um, when I had him on the show, he was talking about doing a sales competition where it was a thousand dollar buy-in and then all the money that's people bought in with the winner got to donate it to a charity of their choice. So things like that, I'm like, wow, that's super cool, man. Like you're not just winning something. You can donate your thousand dollar buy in. Whoever wins the competition to something bigger, you know, something that you can stand behind. So I think that's another thing that companies miss is, um, you know, create that vision behind the scenes and make it more than just money. As you talked about competitions and other meaningful things you can do. So say I'm I know we got to wrap up pretty quick. Let you get to your, uh, call with your, your first manager there.

Speaker 3 (27:48):

That's exciting. It's so fun. I'm like really?

Speaker 2 (27:53):

That's awesome. Um, but yeah, before we wrap up here, can you tell people about the event you have coming up, you're doing some event on the road and then just maybe where people can find you and reach out to you.

Speaker 3 (28:04):

So the D tour is coming up, we're going May 17th to LA. Then like the 19th to Phoenix. Then we go to Dallas. Then we go to Atlanta. Then we go to Orlando, Charlotte, Newark, New Jersey, Chicago, Denver, and salt Lake city. So we're hosting 10 events in 10 States and driving around the country where you can for 40 bucks, bring your whole sales team per ticket and come and do a half day sales training. It's like people are sick of hearing tailoring this correlation meeting, teaching the same crap. Let's be like, just run a better cooler sales meeting where I train and we've got a tax and a finance and a real estate and you know, kind of some other cool speakers that are going to be doing some panels. And um, in each of these markets and I'm really just training on, um, really cool sales techniques and, and getting your people some new relevant stuff and fired up to give them some juice to go into the next couple of weeks. You know,

Speaker 2 (29:02):

See, I guess I guy that blew my mind 40 bucks if you're not there. I mean, you're not going to find it cheaper than that.

Speaker 3 (29:08):

Yeah. I've never, I literally, I, my whole team. So like we have a sales bootcamp next week, so anybody that's injured. I mean, you're probably wanting to hear this by the time it's out. But like we host a sales bootcamp is a thousand bucks. It's two day event. We host a business bootcamp, 2,500 bucks. Um, and then everyone's like in 2000 bucks last year for door-to-door cotton bucks. And people were like, I literally was like, I'm not even doing it to make money. Like I just want to pay for the venue guys. I'm doing it because I want to get out on the streets. So I'm going to go knock in each of these markets. And I was like, this is my way of getting out of my comfort zone and giving back. And really we're actually just promoting the DDD association. The certification is coming out next week.

Speaker 3 (29:51):

So level one, not non-profits, it's a, it's a certification that the door to door association is launched that will educate on sales practices, licensing terms, things like that for door to door, people to be validated by a third party and gain credibility in the streets. So it's a passion project that I've been pushing and really that's the big push. So that's awesome. We're doing incredible things. So we salute you, Sam, we appreciate you for the value you're adding to the industry, change, changing the lives of the solar professionals, professionals, our solar printers. So thanks again for coming on the show and guys we'll hope we hope to see you at the next event Sam's doing. It's going to be awesome. 40 bucks. You can't beat it. So be there. And, uh, Sam, thanks for coming on the show today. Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay. We'll talk soon.

Speaker 1 (30:46):

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 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 what's up Solarpreneurs Taylor Armstrong. Back with another episode here

Speaker 2 (00:45):

To help you dominate the sales industry, close more deals, generate more referrals and leads and see success as a Solarpreneur, as solar professional. So hope you're having an awesome week. Hope you're having a great start to this quarter. Something that I've gotten a lot of great feedback from just a few episodes back we had on Zack Bassett. He talked about these ERC COVID relief funds, and then also just some, um, you know, just some general finance advice, gotten a lot of great feedback on the episode. So if you haven't checked that out already go back should be two episodes back from this current one, you can hear him, but guys, if you don't have your finances in order, we're all making. We should all be making awesome money. Now it's time to handle it, to create that long-term wealth. So go listen to that episode, it got a ton of good feedback and then get that COVID relief fund made some money for businesses.

Speaker 2 (01:47):

We're all our own business here. So what Solarpreneur being a Solarpreneur is about. So take advantage of these funds and use them to invest. You. Don't just get that nine, 10 grand. And I mean, don't take it to the casino. I guess if you're good at gambling, you can do that, but go invest in something awesome. And let's double that money. So I'm point is go listen to the previous episodes. We've had a lot of awesome guests on, so if you're not taking advantage of these, these are guys that charge normally thousands and thousands to listen to them, hear from them. We're getting the best on the show. So take advantage of these awesome guests we're getting on and then share it with your teams, share it with the people you're trying to help improve. Okay. So speaking of the guests, next episode, we had privileged to have, uh, my friend Sam Taggart back on the show.

Speaker 2 (02:40):

And, um, I actually did a show with him too. So if you're not already subscribing to his podcasts, go check it out. And that shouldn't be dropping here in the next week or two week or two. The interview he did with me on his show, talked about some strategic door-knocking tips and some cool little hacks to help people out their areas on the doors. And just some other general solar advice, things that have helped things that I've learned from interviewing the best. So go check that out. But in our episode, I just want to give you kind of a little demo of what we talked about. And then just an epiphany I had as I was talking to him is Sam. He's worked with, um, he's helped dozens of solar companies just, you know, double their revenue, um, increase the production of their reps and just have a lot more success than they were having before.

Speaker 2 (03:33):

So I was asking him, Sam, I'm like, what are you doing? What is it? You change with these companies? How do you help them? Um, go from good to great to go from average to good. What are you doing? So one of the biggest things, and you'll hear it in the next episode, we're gonna, we dig deep into it. But number one, he talks about how these companies, um, figure out their why basically their, um, why do they want to have that product top production? What's the goal with their company? Why did they actually start it? Where do they want to take it? And he said, most of these companies, they don't, they don't have a good answer for this. They don't know why they started a solar company. Some of them say they want to sell eventually. Um, some of them don't even know where they want to take it.

Speaker 2 (04:21):

He said, that's the problem. And it's a big problem. Not only with company owners, but with all solar sales professionals. Why do you want to be in this industry? Where do you want to go with it? What do you, what are your future goals? If you had to write down what's, uh, two years in advance looks like, what would it look like if you look two years in the future? So I thought that was a good exercise and you're going to hear it gave you the second thing is sort of that epiphany I had that's what I want to focus on today is just what companies are doing to have great culture. It's something that we've been talking a lot about here in our, the dealer that I'm helping manage a switch to solar down here in San Diego. It's something we're trying to build in something that I'll be honest has been a struggle with us.

Speaker 2 (05:09):

We've had a lot of reps come on. Um, but a lot of mediocrity, a lot of people not producing up to their potential. And then, you know, you get guys coming in from local ads, things like that. That's end of the day, just aren't really producing, selling themselves short and then just pretty much fizzle out after a month or two. So I'm asking Sam, what do you see? What's the difference in these huge organizations, these big companies, what are they doing to have great culture in the epiphany? I had something he told me is that as he's talked with, um, I think he told me, he's talked with someone that was basically overall the culture, it's a Vivint solar. And then it's something you've heard from other large organizations is that they essentially have a marketing department for their sales organization. And I didn't really think about this, but it dawned on me.

Speaker 2 (06:04):

I'm like, huh? Yeah. I've seen that across all successful sales organizations is that they are marketing hard to their sales reps. So what I mean by that, if you look at we'll take Vivant, solar, for example, obviously one of the largest direct sales organizations, um, grandfather's a door to door I've been to. I've seen how they run things and what they do. They have a whole basically TV channel set up that gets their reps excited about competitions that gets the reps, um, just highlighting who the top rep was for each week. And maybe we need to get someone on to talk about exactly what it is, but obviously these guys are, you know, have a huge marketing budget for their reps. And, um, they're just doing little things to get their reps super excited. It's their marketing, probably more to homeowners, um, or sorry, probably more to their sales organization, where to their sales reps than they are to homeowners or they are to customers are trying to attract because guess what, when they market and get their reps fired up, get them stoked to go out there.

Speaker 2 (07:17):

What are they going to do? They're going to bring on more revenue. They're going to bring on more customers for them. So it's a win-win. So think about that. How are you, if you were a sales manager, if you are, if you started, um, you know, a deal or whatever you are, if you're top dog at your company, are you marketing to your, to your team, to your sales reps? How are you getting them excited? You know, I think about at my previous company, I was at two. We, they really pushed hard on these competitions. We had them twice a year. I've talked about it in the show before we call them iron mans and what we did, the winter got a big, it was like, you see the UFC belts that puts the title champion on there. We had a big belts for the winner.

Speaker 2 (08:05):

So that was a huge thing. Let's get you to the top. You're going to get your name engraved on the championship belt. So everyone was like, ah, I want to get top rap. I want to win Ironman. And then we, at one point we had a truck that they would get a drive for the next six months, which was awesome. People were fired up about that. And then, um, what they did is they had weekly videos during the competition, invested a ton into designing, like, you know, the leaderboard, the turn of bracket that went out. Um, there were, there were daily videos on like the prizes and highlighting the top reps for the week. So think about that. And it's something that I realized we're not doing right currently. And we we've ran a few competitions, but we failed to market them. Like we should, we fell to get our sales teams really excited about it.

Speaker 2 (08:58):

And, um, we haven't really done videos. It's just been kind of reminder, Hey guys, remember when the competition don't forget to push hard, that's not gonna work. So what can you do? Remind your reps, shoot them out, videos, shoot them out, texts, um, market to them. Cause that's the thing that's going to change. Another guest we had on recently, um, Moe Falah, um, go back and listen to that episode too. But it's something my that's why I say it's an epiphany because, um, I think he talked about it a little bit, but he hires, he has basically social media managers. He pays people thousands and thousands to help him run his social media, help him run his team, social media, and then just do graphic design for all his team incentives for anything they got going on for, um, you know, comp competitions tournaments. He has, um, you know, do a suite design for it.

Speaker 2 (09:52):

He has them do the videos and then he's just spreading it like wildfire on social media. Hey, our top rep this week was so-and-so. He did this many accounts and number one, it's helping his team just want to be that top guy. And then seeing them highlighted on social media seem the production that all social media guys are doing the graphic design. And then number two, it's helping them a ton in recruiting because if guys see how this rock solid culture of, if you're posting out on social media, if you're sharing it, then I know Mo he has recruited dozens of guys just off of the presence he has on social media. Okay. So something to think about, if you are leading a team, just think about that. How can you increase your awareness for your reps? If you're leading a sales organization, what are you doing to really market to your team?

Speaker 2 (10:42):

Get them fired up because I think it's a key part in the culture, getting your reps excited and then, um, helping them, um, have that excitement to want to be the best. And then also helps with recruiting Jay, and then for, uh, in the next week or two, we actually have an Instagram expert that is going to come on. His name is Brock Johnson. So we're gonna talk more about the social media and that's something that I need to approve improve on big time that I've been thinking about do, but those are all things that help a lot. So keep tuning in. We're going to have more experts come on, but if you're not taking advantage of the marketing opportunities, you have to your own team do that. I would say it's more important than marketing to your customers because the more you can market to your team, get them fired up. The more they're going to produce your results and the more success you're going to have. So that's my thoughts. Hope it helped go out and lead your teams, go out and be great. Never be satisfied. And we will see you on the next show.

Speaker 1 (11:41):

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 (13:09):

[inaudible].

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 what's up. Solarpreneurs Taylor, I'm Sean here with another

Speaker 2 (00:45):

Episode, helping you conquer the solar industry. One deal at a time, and as always, we're here to help you make it easier to close your deals, easier to get referrals and easier to have success in this great industry. So I am back from Mexico. Have you heard the past, uh, was that a week and a half ago? I was down chewing I'm part of the wire I'm back the first week. I'm back to selling last week. And I will say, um, something that has always been an issue for me is just getting back into that flow of things when I'm gone. I know everyone struggles with it. Um, when I first started in pest control, I remember I took a week. I think it was a little over a week off to go on a cruise with my family. And, um, for those that have done summer sells, you know that if you take a week off in the middle of the summer, when you're only out there for 10 weeks or so, um, I guess more than that, but you know, three and a half, four months taking a week off can just kill your sels.

Speaker 2 (01:51):

So it's no different in solar. I mean, I'm doing this year around, but you got to get strategic with how you're taking things off and use those things as a motivation to push even harder. What I did that helped me a lot is I use this trip. I knew I had planned. I tried to push as hard as possible and luckily it helped motivate me. It helped me push harder than I would have. So I didn't let it affect myself before, but coming back, um, I'll be honest. It was sort of an issue last week. I struggled heading in as many appointments as I wanted to, um, only gotten I think three or so makes it tough to close if you're not getting in the amount of appointments that you need to. So have a plan. If you are taking time off, have a plan for before, and then after the trip, what are you going to do?

Speaker 2 (02:41):

How are you going to find that extra motivation to push hard? When you get back? It's a lesson I was reminded of. And now this week I'm ready to grind hard again. So what I wanted to go through this week that I knew it was going to help you Solarpreneurs out, um, have a little story. I was out on the weekend. I was at an appointment with one of our newer reps and some of these newer guys, they turn this, this game of sells and this sort of like a begging thing. How hard can you beg to get the customer to do your bidding? And we're with an older, um, older guy in his home he'd been in there forever. He actually lived with his mom. His mom was like in his nineties, he was in his like sixties. And what happened is they weren't really interested, um, in letting us inside the house, we had to kind of boil airway inside the home to get and do the presentation.

Speaker 2 (03:45):

And once we got gnome, he's like, man, I never let people inside the house. And then the mom pipes in and says, Hey, we're not signing up for anything. We don't want to do any home improvements. So at that point I knew it was going to be an uphill battle because she was technically the owner of the home, even though she was super old, wasn't really making many decisions for the home at that point. But the mistake we made and I sorta let the newer rep, um, you know, take more control, which I probably should've jumped in more, but he starts, he starts basically kind of begging for it. Oh, well, you're definitely gonna want to do it after we show you, um, you guys will love this. And then what it ended up doing by the end. I mean, that stuff works to a degree, but by the end, the more you like beg for the sell, the more you show that you're kind of desperate, it ends up backfiring on you.

Speaker 2 (04:43):

I've seen this time and time again, people beg, Oh, please do this. If you're not doing it for me, do it for my dog, do it for my cats, do it for my wife, do it for my kids. It's somewhat grant Cardone's closes. If you read his books, he has some closes like that. And those can sometimes be effective. But what you'll find in, in sales people, people are turned off when you start begging like that, people want to do pretty much the opposite of what you're, you know what you're banging them. They can see the desperation. If you're out there with desperation, people are going to snip that out immediately. It's going to turn them off to the sell. So I was listening to a podcast after that. Another great podcast listened to, um, she probably do an episode on all the top podcasts for sales guys.

Speaker 2 (05:34):

Let me know if you'd like to hear that, but there's one really good one. It's um, the school of greatness by Lewis Howes, it's a big, big podcast. He gets top guys from all different industries, I guess, entertainment, pretty much anyone that's influenced a lot of people. He gets them to come on and share, um, you know, just their stories, their successes. So a good podcast. And this last week he had on a guy named brains or haunt, which why do you have maybe heard of him? He does the, a billion million dollar listing in New York. I'm one of the top real estate agents in the world, um, is sold billions and billions in, um, you know, in revenue for real estate. And he was talking about just the new book he launched and just little tips, tricks, secrets that have helped him. One thing he said that it just going along with all this, he brought up the movie, um, ghosts of girlfriends past it's a 2009 Matthew McConaughey.

Speaker 2 (06:36):

Um, and I actually actually watched this, I mean, six months ago or something, it's kind of a chick flick. My wife sort of made me watch it, but he brought this movie up and it reminded me of something in the movie. Um, Matthew McConaughey, the guy he plays, he's basically picking up all these chicks and his dead uncle appears to him and the lion, he tells, uh, Matthew McConaughey, it's not his name, but whatever his name is in the movie, he's like, Hey, whoever, um, the power in the relationship lies with whoever cares less. And that's like his big secret for picking up chicks. Okay. And at the end, you know, more of the story he sees it. It's not just about getting all the chicks and that doesn't really cause the happiness, but, um, Ryan's are hot in this podcast interview. He brings that up and he said, sells is no different.

Speaker 2 (07:29):

The person that cares less has the power in the transaction. And that just reminded me of I'm like, yeah, that's so true. Because so many examples I have where I have kind of turned into that beggar on the doors, beggar in the presentation, and homeowners just hate that they lose their inches every time. Hey, another great book that goes along with that is pitch anything by Oren Klaff, he's basically all about using these, um, takeaways, just flipping the script on the homeowners and really making your product, the prize, making it seem like, Hey, this is exclusive. Tell me why you guys should qualify for this. Tell me why we should even consider you guys. So you're not necessarily saying those things, but I've realized that the more you can have that attitude in your presentations, in your door approaches, the more you can have it be something exclusive that the homeowner they should be begging you to get.

Speaker 2 (08:29):

If you can come across with that attitude, you're going to see so much more success. Every single time, the more takeaways I can do, the more ammo I can load up to have the homeowner, um, you know, make it make a believe or make them believe that it's exclusive, that we're not helping everything they want a more, Hey, and same thing. I mean, see it anywhere in your relationships. When you're in high school, the more exclusive you made yourself, the girls always wanted the guys that were hard to get right guys, always one of the girls that were hard to get same thing in everyone. It's just our human psychology. It's our, the way we're built. People want what they can't have. So it's just a good reminder for me. Start to notice that are you coming across a beggar in your presentations? Are you coming across as that person that has to, you know, get on your knees and kiss their feet for them to do things?

Speaker 2 (09:25):

Or are you loading up the proof that this is something exclusive that people are dying to get in on this, that you have limited availability and you know, you don't need a lie to them, but bringing up examples here in California, we have our net metering that we have with us utility companies. They do change the fees that are included in with that. Okay? So something we do is we say Mr. Jones, they are changing how the net metering works out here. So good news. All the homes were getting approved. They're letting us grandfather it in what the current net metering plan is. So that way any changes, any increase in the rates, you guys are still on the old program. Okay? That's something tax credits. How can you build the urgency? The tax credit, Mr. Homeowner. It's at 26% right now. Luckily it got extended because of COVID, but it is going down.

Speaker 2 (10:19):

These things are disappearing game. There's a ton of other things you can use to build urgency, to build that exclusivity. I mean, you look at other States, of course, we're talking the us here. So all our, uh, Australian listeners Canadian, sorry, it's a little bit different, but there's always things you can do to build that exclusivity. If you look at like Hawaii, for example, their whole net metering net metering program, um, you know, change drastically down there. So there's much more need for batteries. It's more expensive because of it. Same thing in Utah, where I'm from. They, I think it was last year. They changed their net metering, um, to where the utility company is only buying back. Something like half their energy head up to pull up the exact changes to it. But they had a big change to where it's affecting people. They need to put up quite a bit more solar, more protect, uh, production than they were having before to cover what the usage they need is.

Speaker 2 (11:17):

So all these things, you can bring those up as examples. Same Mr. Homeowner. I'm from something I use, Hey, I'm from Utah. What happened there is they changed the structure. So now people are having to pay way more for their solar. Cause they need to put up more panels to get the production they need. And also they need to buy batteries. Batteries are expensive, 10 grand. They need to put these in just to be able to produce from forum because all the net metering change there. So that's something that is, they're trying to have it happen in California. Do these people are losing money. So the reason why all your neighbors are trying to get it is because we're grandfathering all these things in they're protected by the old plan. So that way they don't have to spend more to get their solar. So think of things like that, don't go today, write out three things you can use to build urgency, exclusivity, write those out and then build stories around them.

Speaker 2 (12:12):

Okay? The more you can give real life examples, the more you can say it coming from a neighbor's perspective, not just yours, it's going to make it way more believable, even better. If you have a video is something I've started to implement. Now have video testimonial, videos of customers, preferably on their same streets is best case scenario. If you can pull up that you were having a conversation with them, they recognize them. It's going to be so powerful, blow their socks off. So look for ways you can build that urgency exclusivity. It's going to help you. It's going to be a game changer in teach your new reps to do it. Okay. We're not beggars out there we're professionals and we should be treated with respect. So make it the homeowner's or speak to you. You got her in that though, and that's how you do it. So that's my thoughts. Okay. Hope it helps you share it with your team. Let me know what you thought it is. And let me know if you guys have other questions or needs. Do you want me to get someone on or talk about and keep crushing it? Let's start at second quarter with our best quarter ever. All right, we'll talk to you in the next one.

Speaker 1 (13:18):

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 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 what's going on. So

Speaker 2 (00:43):

Solarpreneurs, we are back with another episode. I'm Taylor Armstrong. I'm your host. And I am super excited here today because we have the man that knows all about investing tax strategies. And as my personal financial coach, we have Mr. Zach Bassett on the show. So Zach, thanks for hopping on with us today. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah. And I was just telling you off the recording here, I've been hearing you all over the place. Um, I think by now people kind of consider you the go-to financial guy for especially door to door reps. I know you've coached, uh, I don't know, a hundred. How many, how many door to door reps would you say you've coached and helps with taxes by now? Oh God, it's got it's in the thousands. I mean, I've had over 10,000 door to door clients. Um, so really I tried to coach every one of them, but, um, as far as like my new coaching program right now, I'm coaching about, about 310 door to door guys right now.

Speaker 2 (01:42):

Wow. Okay. Yeah. Incredible, incredible one. Um, so if you haven't heard of Zack, you need to start following them because, um, I think my struggle on mute mine probably speak for most of the door-to-door reps is, um, I think we're notorious for blowing our money super quick and I'm getting ready to get rid of it. I know, uh, Danny Pessy, I was in his coaching program. He was just talking about how he blew his money on trips to Europe, um, spending tens of thousands going on Europe trips and, and he he's making, I know hundreds of thousands, but if guys like Danny can blow their money quick, I can't imagine guys that are making less than that. Um, blown it even quicker.

Speaker 2 (02:26):

So yeah, some awesome stuff you share. Um, but yeah, what we, what we want to get in today, I guess before we get into the ERC stuff, Zach, how did you, uh, why did you guys decide to focus on like door to door reps and specific and how did you kind of get into that side of helping door to door reps specifically? That's a good question. So, uh, you know, I started out doing this, um, I, I did door to door 15 years ago, so that was pretty young. Um, actually it was a little longer than I lose track

Speaker 3 (03:00):

Of time. I'm getting old, but, um, yeah, I was about 18. Went out, did door to door for Atlas. Um, they did a direct TV and dish network so we could switch people over and it was one of the easier sells of all time and door to door. Um, it actually broke the system because, um, like the tomb brothers, people have heard Mark and Luke tune their legends and door to door, but they sold so many accounts and, and kind of broke this like two too big of conditions. So that company went bankrupt. And, uh, so, but during that summer I noticed like all these people make really good money and nobody knew about an LLC S Corp and that strategy. So I was, I right away kind of thought, well, that's a good area. Maybe I could, um, focus on that next. I wanted to go into accounting.

Speaker 3 (03:57):

My dad's an accountant. Um, both my brothers are tax accountants. So I thought that might be kind of cool, um, and were competitive. Me and my brothers, you know, we both own all three of us own tax firms and, um, it's a competition, you know, it feels like, um, we're always kind of butting heads and seeing who can get to the do the most fastest, but, uh, it was actually me and my little brother, we started JB accounting and tax. It was a golf 10 years ago, eight years, nine, 10 years ago. I'm not sure, but we started JV, accounting and tax. And we, we really focused only on door to door in the Provo. He started JB accounting, Logan. Then he brought me on and made me, um, an equal partner out there and in Provo, Utah, and, uh, I was in charge of the door to door office.

Speaker 3 (04:48):

We had 40 clients. So it was, it was crazy. We bought this, not bought at least this huge space for 10 years. Um, because we believe in what we were doing so much, uh, 40 clients can't pay for even, you know, a fifth of that lease. So we, we, um, we knew we were going to do big things, went out and, uh, I went out and picked up, um, went out and picked up 800 door to door clients in the first summer. So I do kind of like a summer sales program myself, or I go out and present it as many offices as I can, one or two in the morning and then one and two at night, bring pizza at night. If I have to, whatever I have to do to get them to meet with me.

Speaker 4 (05:31):

That's what got me into door to door free pizza.

Speaker 3 (05:34):

Exactly. As long as you offer pizza or donuts in the morning.

Speaker 4 (05:39):

Yup, exactly.

Speaker 3 (05:42):

So that's how I get it. Yeah. And I just picked up a bunch of guys and it just kind of blew up from there. Me and my brother, we, uh, we ended up butting heads. We were at about 2,800 clients and we both just had different visions. Um, so we decided to go separate ways. And that's when I started COLS I met Mason Warn my partner. He's, he's honestly amazing, um, and perfect for this company because he knows nothing about taxes. And honestly, he's learned quite a bit, but he's a door to door sales guy. He was a regional at, at APTIV. Hmm. Um, so I just said, Hey, look, come do this with me. I promise. You'll do really well. Um, cause there's no salespeople and in the tax industry, you know? And, uh, so I was able to get him to come and see the vision and we fit became 50, 50 partners.

Speaker 3 (06:37):

And now we're up over 3000 door to door clients and yeah, my coach over 300 of them, we've got over a hundred book, keeping clients. And our goal is, is to reach 10,000 plus clients by the end of the year. Wow. Yeah. So a lot of people think that's like a bad thing. If we get too big, how are we going to service them? But that's the difference between us and other firms, the bigger we get, the more the service we'll get, because yeah. I'm putting everything back into the company and the new systems. That's why our packets all electronic this year, instead of the paper, like annoying 2019 packet that we have, um, it's, everything's getting better and we're hiring some of the top talent in the nation. So

Speaker 2 (07:26):

Yeah, no, and that's what impressed me a lot about you guys is I know you're growing a ton, but I still ask you guys questions probably every week or two about taxes or about this year, see credit and we're in talk about, and I get a response always within a day and, and I know you even have gotten busier, but I noticed you got, you know, assistant to help out with all the texts and stuff like that. You'll be getting, so I'm sure you're, I'm sure you're like, all right. If I have a hundred, Taylor's asking me questions, I need to have someone to help me out.

Speaker 3 (07:59):

Yeah. I have no choice there, but what's cool about that. I can have her handle anything that's secretarial. And, and if someone texts me, Hey, look, I'm thinking of buying a car. Um, what's the tax outcome or, um, the tasks I can do. I think of the word active that the car buying the car will have and, uh, and, and all answered those questions. So it's really nice. She's awesome. She, she's better than me at helping out with the secretarial stuff anyway. So it kind of works really well.

Speaker 2 (08:34):

Yeah. No, that's awesome. And yeah, what's cool about you guys. I think I told you, they said door to door con, but I feel like you can tell me if I'm wrong, but I think you guys kind of were the first doing taxes specifically for door to door people. I remember seeing you guys year after year after year, and then just as last year or maybe the last two years, it seems like every other booth door to door con is a, is a tax guy now trying to do it to do taxes people.

Speaker 3 (09:02):

Well, a lot of guys kind of take the idea, you know, but yeah, it was, it was me and my little brother, we brought it to the table. Um, nobody was doing it like we were before. There were some guys there's, you know, Dave Brown doing it before there was bill Koehler guys like that, but that they never, um, never put the, uh, even closer to same effort in doing everything perfectly legal for their guys. And then also doing every single thing possible, including insurance, you know, health insurance, car insurance, life insurance, um, 401ks IRAs, five 29 plans, um, and on and on and on coaching. And, you know, we do it all here and, uh, the most you get at another, uh, door to door tax place is your taxes done and, and that's it, you know?

Speaker 2 (09:52):

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I never knew, yeah. I love how you guys combine it with the financial side of things and do some financial coaching too, which we'll get into. Um, but yeah, so we'll kind of shift gears, Zack. I wanted to, um, ask you about the ERC stuff and you can tell us about it. But, um, what's crazy is I guess, just to give a little background, the ERC, Zack will explain it by gots. I think it was 10,000, my first time filling it out and then I'm guess it's available this year. But, um, the reason I say this is because I had talked to other tax guys, um, actually my brother, he uses another tax guy. Um, and he asked him about these ERC thing and he didn't even know what he's talking about. He's like, yeah, I don't know how they do that. And so I'm thinking, dang, does that guy like Donald Trump's number or something? How is he getting this year?

Speaker 3 (10:50):

Her person. Um,

Speaker 2 (10:52):

But yeah, Zach, can you tell us about this ERC and kind of what it is and how you guys actually get it for people?

Speaker 3 (10:59):

Yeah. So this is my favorite topic right now. Um, because what it's done for us is this things like this are what set us apart, right? Um, any tax firm can do the LLC escort strategy. Nobody can do that strategies. We can, they'll tell you that much there's expenses. We take that other people don't, things like that. Um, but on top of it, if there's a, if there's some, some strategy, any set strategy possible, we're going to know about it. And we're going to tell the clients about it through an email. You know, we'll do a quarterly email that says, look, check out these new things. If you're interested, watch this video and we'll have a video on it. Um, the ERC came up from one of my, uh, one of my employees. He said, look, the, in the new cares act, I've been researching it night and day he's.

Speaker 3 (11:51):

He was a super stud, um, he's not with us anymore, but, um, he, he brought it to the table. I said, look, that sounds amazing. Um, it's your start your own department. I'll give you a commission on it. And he, he ran with it and it ended up exploding to what it is today, where we've got over. I don't know, $30 million for our clients and COVID relief funds. And our goal is, is to get well over a hundred million by the end of the year. Um, so what it is is it's called the employee retention credit. And what a lot of people don't realize is that as an LLC S corporation, you by law have to have one employee. So that employee is yourself. If you are just a single member, LLC, S Corp, let's say you're not married or just single. Um, you are the employee and you're the owner.

Speaker 3 (12:50):

So if you didn't do a W2 for last year, but you had an escort, then you're essentially breaking the wall. So what may, what's good about that? That means we can go back and we can amend and do the W2 that you should have done with the reasonable wage that you should have by law done. And then you can apply for this ERC. So if you have a, uh, say a 10 K wage, you can get up to a 10 K benefit, um, meaning that, you know, your everyone's already going to have a 10 K wage, no matter what, even if they didn't do a wage last year, they ended up doing it on the tax return through something called the Meisner method. And so they ended up paying the taxes on that 10 K well now with the ERC, you have all that, those taxes covered by the ERC.

Speaker 3 (13:43):

Plus you get a check, the check is up to 5,000. If you're single and then, um, 5,000 more benefit in a tax credit, if you're single. Okay. So 10,000 bucks guys, that's like for a lot of you, if you make $20,000, how big of a deal is that that's half your summer right there, or half your year on the doors, like take all those away. And that's how much we're going to get. Yeah. Not to mention that savings on just the escort, which will be a couple thousand as well. So if, yeah, if you're what it is, you have to have a delay or so you have to have went through a two week period last year where you were unable to do your job unable, to unable to sell because of COVID-19. Um, you could have been sick for two weeks or maybe there was a mandate for two weeks.

Speaker 3 (14:34):

I know in April pretty much the whole us was shut down. So I've yet to talk to, well, I talked to a couple people that all they do is like forecasts and they didn't qualify. But other than that, it's like, everybody else is qualified because they went through a week period where they had a mandate not to go out. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, and then there's tears, right? So that's the first tier. If you meet that, then you're going to get the 5k. If you're married and you're like me and you believe your wife's an employee of your company, then you'll get 10 K start to start. Um, and then if you have kids and they had to miss daycare, it'll go up to 7,500 at single and like 16, 17,000. It's married. And then if you were sick for two weeks, whether even if you're not sure if it was COVID, but you were sick for two weeks last year, then, um, and unable to work, then it's going to jump up again.

Speaker 3 (15:39):

Um, yeah. So depending on these little criteria, um, your check will go up and up. That's awesome. Yeah. So that's awesome. But there's even more to it. Um, that that's just DRC one, which is a 20, 20 credit there's ERC. Um, there's ERC two, which has all four quarters this year. So you can get at each quarter of 2021 and it's more so instead of it being five to 10, it's seven to 12.5. So yeah. And, and yeah, you have to meet the qualifications, but for last year, it's super easy to meet those qualifications for this year. It's a little bit more difficult, but for anyone that just started their business, um, that's what I'm going to talk about it. Door to door Fest is that it's most likely I got to get it passed off by the lawyers, but 99.9%. Sure. Right now that if you started your business this year in 2021, you didn't backdate or anything like that, then you're going to be guaranteed to get this cares act, um, tax credit. And it it's going to be a lot bigger. I think you end up getting 15 to 25,000, um, 15 K is guaranteed for anyone that started their business this year. Wow.

Speaker 2 (17:07):

What about if you started it like last year? It's just a,

Speaker 3 (17:11):

There's the, it's the possible seven to 12. Okay. But it's not guaranteed. Um, I don't know why it's just the cares act rules, you know, they, they have to flip parameters on it and yeah, they just wanted to give a break to anyone that starts a business this year, because it's a little unfair to those that started a business this year. They didn't qualify for anything. Um, we're guys that started last year qualified for PPP Eid, L E R C so on.

Speaker 2 (17:43):

Gotcha. So you're telling me that guys can make well for every quarter. So can make like 40 grand in a year, just, just by getting in his ear

Speaker 3 (17:53):

Basically. Yeah. Now that means that your gear sucked pretty bad because you, you had to have a two week period of time missed each quarter. Okay. That's not good for business. Um, but there's other ways to qualify too. So what I want you to do is if you listen to this and you're interested is you would just shoot me a text at (801) 452-1900. Cool. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (18:26):

We'll put that in the show notes, be as pretty incredible. I got to admit, I was kind of skeptical of all of this, just because, like I said, I was hearing from other like tax guys that they had no idea what, even what it

Speaker 3 (18:36):

Even was. And then

Speaker 2 (18:39):

The Zack just comes out. Hey, just, just, uh, pay me a little bit and I'll get you this credit. And then mine just showed up in the mail. It was like, I think two weeks ago just got check for, I guess it was for last years. Cause I, I filed nine, I think in December or something few months, but yeah, just show it up. Check from IRS for like 10 grand. I'm like,

Speaker 3 (19:00):

Wow. So it's like any do to help guys out of it COVID has hurt every single person, um, in the U S in my opinion, you know, it really it's been, uh, it hasn't, I've really disliked the last year. It's what it's done to community. And, um, the whole, you know, to NCAA basketball tournament, to sports, to things that really are important to me in my life, which kind of, I love sports. It keeps me going. And, you know, obviously I love people and a lot of people were affected and so anything we can do to help is huge. Um, yes, there are firm firms out there saying that you can't do the ERC and yada yada yada, well, you can. And we, I mean, we are talking with the IRS. We are, um, we have four lawyers that look into everything for us. So every single thing we do is by the book. And, uh, you know, if we say you can get it, then you can get it. And there's other firms out there doing it for five to 10 times as much of a fee. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:11):

Yeah. And that's, what's crazy. I mean, for how much you got me, it's like, I'm like, I feel like they should be charging way more,

Speaker 3 (20:18):

But it's like free money. Yeah. That's awesome. And the goal though, is to honestly, um, the more money we put back into the client's pocket, the more, um, like my whole idea is that you might be the next guy to have this huge podcast blow up and explode and you make, you know, you're worth a hundred million in five years from now. And do you need 50,000 to a hundred thousand a year in tax help and, and bookkeeping help? Well, if I, if I was the guy that treated you well and help you get there, you're gonna keep your business with me. Right. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So that's, the whole idea is, is really help people out while they're in that growing stage. And then, you know, get a fair, a fair price from them when they, um, really make it

Speaker 2 (21:08):

Yeah. When it's like all the people that you're helping, I'm sure a lot of these people you're helping, um, probably weren't clients, maybe they weren't existing clients already. Now they're coming to you to get help with this. It's like, if you just got them 10 grand that they didn't even know about, then probably pretty likely they're going to come to you for other like financial advice and tax.

Speaker 3 (21:31):

That's the funny thing that I have other people, like, I love my account and I want to stay with them, but I want to do the ERC. Okay. So he didn't bring the ERC to you. He's not doing that for you. And yet you want to stay with them. That makes that literally. I mean, it makes no sense, right? That means he's not researching. He's not finding all the different things. We've got a team of guys just for research and development. So we're always going to have new things that are amazing, like this. Also our clients get you'll, you'll see an email come through in the next six months with the prospectus for a new property that we are going to buy. We are going to manage, we are going to even occupy and that you can, you can join in, on buying that property, be with us, become a partner with us. So there's not that many, um, tax firms out there that are allowing their clients to get in on investments with them.

Speaker 2 (22:27):

Yeah. Yeah. That's incredible. Do, and yeah, so that's what I kind of want to talk about next is, um, just the financial side of things. Now that people are getting this 10 grand ERC money. Like, um, the other question is our guys just go in and blown that on the down payment for the next car or where you're going to do it. Zack says and get that money growing. So that's what I want to talk about next. Zach is what do you, for people just getting into kind of the investment side of things, um, what do you, what are the kind of, some of the first steps you have people go through? I guess I can talk about some of the things you told me, and I know, um, you have some specific things that you do in your coaching, but just kind of like a bird's eye view, where do you have people start when they're getting this money? They're doing good in door to door, what are they supposed to do with their money,

Speaker 3 (23:14):

Help it grow? Yeah. So I mean, some of the most obvious things, the number one thing I tell people to do on their, on the list of things to do during the year is a solo 401k through their, through their, um, through their S corporation and to do it through vanguard.com. So, and if I, if you haven't read the book money, master the game by Tony Robbins, that's a must read in my coaching program. Um, because it's going to kind of teach you all the different, a lot of the loopholes in the financial system and why people are getting screwed over by traditional financial advisors. So I have them start with doing, what's going to compound their net worth. Um, when you do a solo 401k, let's say you owe 20,000 in taxes, right? So you've got, let's say you've got 50,000 in cash and you've got 20,000 in taxes.

Speaker 3 (24:10):

So your net worth is 30,000. Right? Um, if you, if you then take that 50,000, put it into a solo 401k. Now your taxes are zero, or let's say you're married with two kids. Um, now your tax outcome is a $6,000 refund. So your taxes just got $26,000 better. And yet your assets stayed the same instead of having cash, you've got 50 K in a 401k first out that 401k is going to grow and it's going to grow. If it's like mine it'll grow at 14% per year. That's what I've averaged since I was 18. And then, um, and then they just saved all that tax. So they just raised their net worth by $26,000. So instead of having the 30 K net worth, they've now got a 56 K net worth. That's incredible. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (25:09):

For guys that are like, um, start now, I know a lot of guys are wanting to just dump their money in Bitcoin, Robin hoods, all these things. Um, and that's, I guess kind of like the sexy investment. People want to go and dump it in there, but do you have people, uh, build that up first and then focus on other things like real estate? Or what are the steps that you

Speaker 3 (25:30):

Yeah. I'll start with. Well, so you need coaching first off because yeah. Otherwise it's a guessing game as to where to put your money. But, um, so what I do, I start people out from the very easiest of things, you know, I, at first I go over their credit card situation, how many credit cards they should have, how they should spend it, how they should pay it off. Then I go over their car situation, how they should buy cars, how they should pay them off, same with homes. And, uh, you know, the thing is, is minimum payments, minimum down and minimum payments on credit cards. Obviously you want to pay the majority of those off every month and you want to paint a perfect picture for the bank. That's whenever you do anything, you need to be thinking, how is the bank going to see this?

Speaker 3 (26:17):

Because the goal is passive income, right? I think for everybody, the goal is passive income. Um, so how do you get passive income, the main and best way to do it is through real estate. So we need to paint this picture for the banks that makes them love you. So we get all those things that just talked about. Perfect. And then we make sure they're doing five to 10% of their investment capital into, um, a Robin hood account and acquiring based account. So if you've got a hundred thousand to invest in a year, you're only putting the maximum $10,000 into the Robin hood Coinbase account. Totally. And I also give them a list of the stocks and a list of the crypto to buy also how to buy the crypto. Some of them are difficult. Um, but, uh, then that's going to paint a bit, that's already starting to paint this really nice picture.

Speaker 3 (27:14):

It shows that all your credit cards are being used, right? Your credit score is above 800 and stays there. And then your cars are being paid down just right. Your home's being paid down just right. You've got, you know, just the right amount into speculative investing. But then, and now you've got 90,000 leftover in your investment capital. So then with that 90,000, first off, if you, if you can do an HSA, you're going to max an HSA out every time. Um, that's a no brainer because it, it is guaranteed not to lose money and it gives you a tax savings. Um, so it compounds your net worth. And then it, once it hits a certain amount, it's actually going to grow, um, without the ability to lose. And so it's nice to have that in your portfolio and mix of zero risk, um, assets. And, uh, so then after that, it's IRA traditional IRA for anyone making over a hundred thousand, um, Roth IRA, if you're under a hundred thousand.

Speaker 3 (28:17):

And the reason for that is a lot of financial advisors would say, no, do a Roth as long as possible. Well, what good is the Roth going to do me when I've got $20 million in losses as my income each year at retirement, because of all my real estate properties, it's not going to do you good. So getting that tax break up front is what's going to be amazing, um, because that's going to compound and compound like crazy. So you do that. Um, if you guys know the rule of 72, you, you should do that. Anytime. You're thinking about an investment, but it's, you just go 72 divided by the interest rate you want to get. So let's say it's 12%. Well, you're going to get around I think, six and a half, um, at 12%. So that means your money will double every six and a half years. Uh, no, 6.1. So then, um, you'd take, how many years do you have until retirement or your goal year? And if that's, if you're 25, you've got 40 years, so you have to pull from retirement. So now you go 40 divided by six, and you're going to get six and a half. So now you take the amount you want to invest. So let's say it's 20,000. If you put 20,000 into a 401k and it compounds at 12%, for 40 years, you're going to have about two and a half million dollars one time,

Speaker 2 (29:43):

$20,000 investments. Oh no, yeah, no, every year, 20,000, just one time. So that guy that is smart enough to put 20 K away when he's 25 into a 401k, through vanguard.com and the funds that I am in, they're going to completely set themselves apart. And not only that, they're also going to be able to do several times more rental properties than the guy that's just focusing on doing rentals because of that collateral, because of their portfolio, because of the picture being painted perfectly for the banks, they'll actually be able to do more, have more in retirement, much. I mean, millions born retirement, maybe hundreds of millions more. And then they'll also have hopefully hundreds, if not thousands, more rental properties, then the guy that's just focusing on rentals every year. Okay. Incredible. And yeah, what's really cool is you give out this exact steps and I'm sure your own talk about this in a sec.

Speaker 2 (30:48):

But when I started working with you, I'd heard, I'd read like the financial books and everything, but sometimes it gets overwhelming hearing all these things and guys like me, we just need like step by step by step. So that's what I really liked the most is, um, after that call, we just did, I think it was about 30 minutes an hour and Zach just breaks it down like this, but then you texted me like the exact steps. Step one, get your credit card figured out step two. Um, thing is, you know, get the exact percentages of the, of the investments and exactly where to put it. Cause that was throwing some money in Robinhood. But I was listening to like friends that didn't really know what they're talking about. There's Oh, go buy this stock, go buy this crypto. It's like going crazy. Hey. And then they, you know, lose money and I didn't really know who it is, you know, a trust, but, but, uh, yeah, so you're really helping people, um, figure it out and yeah, that Tony Robbins book, um, I just read the one.

Speaker 2 (31:44):

Have you read the new one that came out? I think it's called like unshakeable. Not yet unbreakable. Yeah. It's on my list. Okay. So yeah, that's probably the same thing. I think it's just like a convince condensed version of the money master the game. Cause isn't one, like they are the same, it's just kind of updated, um, updated knowledge on the, you know, how you should think of life and financial perspective. Yeah. Cause yeah, in the book, um, he just talks about how, like, I think he says something like 80 or 90% of financial advisors that are like recommending you. Um, only the things that make them the most money, things like that, universal policy. So if you've been coached by someone selling you a universal life insurance policy guys, it's a hundred percent. You need to not do that. Um, if you are in it, you should just cancel it. Even though paid 10

Speaker 3 (32:40):

Grand already that just cancel it, lose the 10 K and start putting it into term life insurance and a solo 401k. You will five to six extra money now till retirement compared to doing that IUL that they promised you was so amazing. The commission on that is unreal. And if I was here to just make money off my clients, trust me, I do UL's all day long because if I do a say, I do a 401k for you. Um, and you put a hundred thousand in, I'm going to make less than a thousand dollars a year off of that. If you put a hundred thousand into a, uh, IUL with me, I would make, I don't know, $40,000. Wow. Right up front. Yeah. So backed up front. And, and yet you can't hardly blame these financial guys because it's in their best interest. And, and, and they, they lie to themselves enough to say, I, you Wells are the best before you know, it they're talking like an IUL is three times better than a 401k and a term.

Speaker 3 (33:48):

It's just the actual facts are that it is absolutely not even close to as good. Yeah. Yeah. So, so definitely that's why it's great to have a tax accountant giving you the financial advice because guys, if you take my advice on these things, I'm not making money off of any of those things. Right. Right. Now, if you do a 401k and then it makes zero off of it, if you go out and do a term life insurance policy, $0 off of it, so on and so forth. So why, why would I put you in the wrong direction? Okay.

Speaker 2 (34:20):

Yeah. I love it. And so Zach, do you have any stories of people you helped that were, I know Danny's kind of an example of someone you helped coach and is building some longterm wealth now, but do you have any other examples of people who were making like tons of money just like blowing it all and then you started suggesting these things and turn it around. Now they have a ton of properties. Now they're on a ton of success with it.

Speaker 3 (34:43):

That's the thing. The guys that have a ton of success, they normally weren't blowing their money off debt for nothing. They normally bring their best and doing it, doing an all right job. But what, you know, it doesn't mean that there's guys out there that do blow their money and coaching helps them. So, so much like, dang, he still likes to blow some money. Right. Like, he'll be the first to tell you, but he's also does a lot of investing. And uh, I mean, he's invested in me personally and uh, trusts me very much. And he's one of my favorite people in the world. Honestly, he's a great guy. Um, but uh, the guys, okay. So there's like, um, one of my, one of the guys that I did the taxes for and talked about all the different strategies of cost segregation of accelerated depreciation was Damon Lilly.

Speaker 3 (35:40):

Um, I'm not Damon, Lily's like, he's got a ton of properties. Um, he's my account. And I can't really say how many are her, he's my client. I can't say how many, uh, properties he has or anything like that. But he's, he's, he's a big dog. He's got a McLaren. Yeah. And then, uh, uh, Chandler Smith. He was a client of mine, um, back four years ago. And he's, you know, I used to talk to him every week and um, told them everything I know. And now he's, I mean, he's not a client of mine anymore is with my brother. But, um, I, he's got to have, I don't know, a couple hundred doors, at least a hundred doors, I don't know, but he's got a ton. Yeah. So yeah, that's the thing that my new company at cos most of the guys that I'm coaching are in this new coaching program, which I just started, um, you know, six months ago. So we'll have to wait and see what happens as far as the coaching goes. But I can tell you before that I was basically coaching people for the last 10 years. It just wasn't called coaching. It was called tax planning.

Speaker 3 (36:52):

Yeah. So many guys I felt get their first property and I felt them get their 20th property. So the list is very long.

Speaker 2 (37:01):

Yeah. Well you've already helped me out a ton and hopefully I can be your next success story. And we'll be in, you know, talking in a couple of years, meet with

Speaker 3 (37:09):

Multicolor. Well, I would, I would say I, I can, I would bet on it for sure. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:16):

But no, I love what you're doing. And so for people that want to start working with Zach, can you tell them a little bit about what the coaching looks like? Um, it's bringing it out as another thing I thought I was going to be dropping a ton of money and it's going to be this time consuming thing, but literally just a call for an hour. So

Speaker 3 (37:32):

Exactly. Yep. So that's the thing. Um, with me, it's not, Hey, you're going to pay 30,000. Then you get five calls a year and a weekend get away to, they guess it's, it's 150 bucks an hour and you need to do as many as you need to do so in my opinion, at first, most of the time guys need for a year, but there are certain guys that really, really need that. You know, they need a, whether it's their dad or their teacher or their coach, they need that person in their ear all the time. And maybe they don't have their dad around anymore to do it. So, um, that's, they, they use me for that. And those schedules, some of some guys schedule once a week, once a month, it's totally up to them. And uh, obviously their income situations are all different. Some guys make millions of dollars. So it's nothing, each time they call, but, um, for a year is more than enough to like really impact your life. And honestly, even two a year is, is a very good start. But four years is kind of where I say you maximize the benefit. So that's $600 a year for my coaching program. Wow.

Speaker 2 (38:46):

Yeah. Super cheap. Okay.

Speaker 3 (38:51):

Go over other pricing to just, you know, to give people an idea of what all the pricing is, right.

Speaker 2 (38:57):

Yeah. I know. I almost bought before I started working with you, I was like trying to learn more about investments. And I was looking at buying these like investing in property courses that were like, you know, three, four grand for the course. And I'm like, I'm like, all right, I'll just work with Zach and Eric. And that's so easy. Cause you give all the steps and um, like, like you said, it's not something I need to do every couple of weeks. Cause you gave me enough steps. It's going to keep me busy for probably the quarter. Um, I should be going through a quick, as quick as I can. Um, so yeah, super easy for our listeners. So definitely reach out to Zach and um, I know you dropped your phone number, so we'll put that in the show notes for you, Zach. Sure. You'll have some people reaching out and um, just to kind of start wrapping up any anywhere else that people can reach out with you or connect to you. I think you've got a YouTube channel stuff like that, right?

Speaker 3 (39:52):

Yep. Yeah. I was going to say so. I mean, a lot of the coaching, what I do is honestly available for free. Um, I'd say, you know, 30% of it's free on YouTube and we'll be adding more and more and more videos, including our podcasts, which will start to be, um, either weekly or monthly, just depending on when we can get to it. Um, but yeah, go to our YouTube channel at cos accounting and tax and it's an ampersand sign for and um, check those videos out for super beneficial and then, uh, yeah, contact us. You can Google to us accounting and tax and find the number to see to us the front desk. Or you can just text me at (801) 452-1900. I'm more than happy to get you set up with the consultation. And uh, yeah, I, I mean, I, I want to help as many guys as possible at door to door con I set a goal to help create 10,000 multimillionaires before I retire. So I want to do that. I want to retire before I'm, you know, 55. So I got to get going on it.

Speaker 2 (41:02):

Yeah. All right, well let's help you out. Yep. So for our listeners guys, if you haven't already gotten this ERC at the very least go get that, but guaranteed, if you get that, you're going to want to work with Zach more because he's going to help you turn that 10 grand into multiple tens of thousands, if you follow his advice. So go start working with them. Um, Zach, thanks for dropping some extreme diet today for coming on the show and we'll see a hopefully yet at door to door Fest soon in some of the other events. And um, yeah. Thanks again. We'll talk to you soon. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (41:34):

Thanks so much, Taylor. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Have a good one.

Speaker 1 (41:38):

Speaker 1: (16:17)

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 5 (43:07):

[inaudible].

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 , Hey, what's up Solarpreneurs. Taylor Armstrong.

Speaker 2 (00:43):

Back with another episode here to make your life easier as a soar sales professional, by helping you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals and dominate this industry. So today I have something special for y'all planned, but before I get into that, I want to invite you to share these episodes. If you haven't been listening, we've have some pretty powerful guests on the show. Over the past month, we had a coach Burt on, he was I think, four or five episodes back. We had Danny Pessy on both. These guys all have, you know, people are paying thousands and thousands to get advice from these guys. Um, coach Burt, I first heard him, um, a couple years back at Grant Cardone's 10X con paid about a thousand to go see him speak 10 X con. Um, and then Danny Pessy, um, as I've mentioned a few episodes, I was part of his coaching group, um, which, you know, people are paying thousands for that.

Speaker 2 (01:53):

These guys are dominating. The industry. Danny has made, uh, you know, millions of dollars in commissions over the years in alarms and sore now. So take advantage of the content. These guys are delivering on the show. Um, if you haven't go shooting them a message, let them know you appreciated them coming on the show. Um, cause they are charging people thousands to be coached, to get advice and guess what they delivered their advice for free to you as a solar printer listener. So we appreciate them on the show and I want to invite you to go share the content you're getting on this with someone who can use it because we are dropping extreme value on the podcast for you. Okay. So today I'm going to share something that helps me close 12 deals over a little less than a month. And um, I mentioned a few episodes back.

Speaker 2 (02:54):

I was in, uh, Danny Pessy's Knockstar group. They had a little going and guys were closing tons of deals. I closed 12, which was a good month for me, definitely more than I've closed probably in the past year or so. So it was pretty happy with the month I had. Um, and that's all you can do is just get better challenge yourself to get better every month. And that's what I did got 12 deals closed, and I'm going to talk about something that actually helped me. Um, and it wasn't something that they necessarily shared. Actually. They didn't talk about this really at all. I don't think so. There were a lot of things that the Knockstar guys shared that did help. So definitely recommend that, but something they didn't share. That's what we're going to be talking about here on the show. Okay.

Speaker 2 (03:48):

And I will say this is something I'm kind of prefacing the next episode that we're going to drop later this week because we are going to have a financial expert on his name is Zach Bassett. Um, if you haven't heard of him, he is a financial planner. Um, he's helping guys basically create long-term wealth. We all should be making great money in solar, but if you don't know how to multiply that w uh, that money you're getting can create long-term wealth. That's what we're striving for. Okay. So a little hint about what I'm going to talk about right now. Okay. So I'm going to give some, uh, yeah, some, some heavy content, some sweet tips with that here in a second. Okay. Um, but just to preface this, um, I I'm just getting back actually from Mexico is down in Porta Vallerta. Um, talked about it in the previous episode, some sales tips.

Speaker 2 (04:49):

I learned some things I noticed down there, um, that we can apply to sales. So if any of you, haven't been to Mexico, you will see that these guys are hardcore down there. They're always selling. They're going to be persistent until you buy it. Whatever Mexican junk they're putting in front of you. It's not all junk, but they are persistent. And while he's down in Mexico, actually on our way back to the airport, we're in the taxi, just talking with the guy, um, that was taken us to the airport and this guy, he was talking about how Puerto Vallarta just was hit super hard by COVID. Um, for the first couple months, I mean, they're a big tourist industry. So our receive taxi driver, uh, most hit super hard by COVID. Didn't have, um, yeah. Work for basically three, four months couldn't really feed his family. So this guy, he was telling me that during these months that he couldn't work much, much what he was doing.

Speaker 2 (05:56):

He was going out fishing on the ocean. He was, uh, fishing for octopus. Um, it's fishing for big fish, and he would go sell them to the restaurants. But, um, what he told me is in the beginning, they were not letting people leave their homes. So basically you couldn't fish. Um, you couldn't even really leave her house. This guy had no way to make money. He's telling me he couldn't pay his rent. Um, he was in the process of like buying land to start building this house. But he had to cancel that and yeah, just a bad sticky situation. So what happened is this guy, he was out fishing and I guess he got a warning said, Hey, you can't be now here. Then he goes back again, Ms. Fish and waits a few days, goes back fishes again. Cause he's trying to feed his family.

Speaker 2 (06:49):

He tells me he literally had no, um, no food for his family. So he's out there fishing. And the second time he gets arrested, okay. And then he goes back, you go the third time, this time they throw him in jail for a couple of days, he gets out, he goes fishing again for a fourth time. And he goes to jail for, I think, 10 or 15 days up there. And then, um, yeah, after that, I think he got help from his parents or something, but I'm thinking, wow, this guy is hardcore. He has no, he has no food for his family. He's been threatened by the cops and now they're throwing them in jail. So it was pretty crazy. Um, so it just came to my mind. Maybe that's the reason why some of these guys are so persistent. I mean, you look at the culture down there.

Speaker 2 (07:42):

Um, you know, and depending on the parts, people do not have a lot of money. So me, I'm thinking maybe that's one of the secrets is they've got that deep. Why maybe that's why they're so persistent when it comes to selling their stuff. Because some of these people, this is literally, this is how they're going to eat for the day. This is how they're gonna feed their family. And for this guy, he was willing to go to jail for it. He went to jail multiple times to try to feed, feed his family. Okay. So the reason I share this story is that's part of, um, what helped me close these deals last month. Okay. So I'm going to talk about, um, having just a financial plan, these guys down in Mexico, maybe they don't have a set specific plan, but their why is so deep that they're going to push past the nose probably more than most of us would.

Speaker 2 (08:39):

Yeah. You think about it. If you had to feed your family, if you literally this, the, uh, appointment you're in today came down to you, feed in your family or not, how hard would you push for that deal? How many nos would you take before you go Yes, probably take a lot if that's, if that was what it took to feed your family. Right. So think about that. What is your, why, what are you, what's your purpose? What are you doing these things for? Okay. I think that's another key lesson I learned why is down in Mexico. Okay. But going along with that, here's what helps me close the 12 deals over the past 25 days or so. Okay. Was one thing that was part of it, but more than not, um, it was having a financial plan in place. Okay. And what I mean by that is I had a purpose for my money, the money I wanted to make that month, it was going towards something super specific.

Speaker 2 (09:42):

And, um, so in my case, I was actually looking to get into an investment property last month. Okay. I was looking actually with my dad, we were looking at a property in Utah, in Heber City You guys know where that is by the skiers, or it's kind of by Park City, we are going to get this, um, a house that was that's going up. It was a town home, um, in the process of being built right now, we're going to get one, we're going to turn it into an Airbnb, start renting it out. These things, of course, they fly out the shelves during the winter months because that's when everyone is skiing during the summer, it can be a bit harder. So last month this is always thinking about literally the entire month is I'm thinking, okay, for this property growing into it with my dad and my brother was thinking of going into it.

Speaker 2 (10:36):

So we're of course trying to do the 20% down. So I was looking in, in the put in about, for me, it was going to be 30 or 40 grand. We were going to put down for this. Okay. And I'm thinking, all right, I don't really want to take a bunch out of savings. Why don't I just pay for this with my commissions this month? That's what it's going to be. Okay. So we got super specific with it. We saw pictures of the house. We saw the exact plot of land is going to be on, um, all of the designs, all the layouts. We had the plans for, um, kind of what we wanted to do as far as Airbnb, um, the furniture we knew how much the furniture was going to cost. Um, we knew we were going to have to finish up the basement.

Speaker 2 (11:21):

So we got super specific. Okay. And I'll have now, this is the first time that I ever got super specific with getting an investment property. I always knew I wanted to get an investment property, but it was always just kind of that. Yeah. I want to get an investment property. I'm going to save up some money and I'll get it when the, when the time comes. But last month it was different. We knew exactly all the specifics. We, um, you know, we're talking to like loan officers. We were, um, figuring out all the set details. So it was crazy how much it actually helped by getting super specific with the goal, with the financial plan, with what I want to do with the money. Okay. So if you haven't done that, maybe for you, maybe you're looking at getting your next car, or maybe you're looking to put in the down payment on your house, maybe you're trying to get that investment property.

Speaker 2 (12:19):

Okay. So if you are in that process, here's what you need to do. Look at that. Um, look at the specifics of the details. Okay. And actually get it down on paper. Right? Get it in. Um, if it's a mess from property or something, get those emails going, start communicating with, uh, the banks, the loan officers figure out exactly what you need to do to get approved, because this was way more motivating to me than just talking about it. Okay. If you can get those Z details, see it, smell it, taste it. Okay. I wasn't tasting it, but you get as many of the senses involved as possible. That's why another thing, another big thing that successful people do they have these vision boards, Kayla putting up pictures of it. Um, as many senses as you can involve, it's getting that deeper. Why? And it's giving you that deeper purpose behind what you're doing.

Speaker 2 (13:17):

Grant Curt own. If you've read his closer survival guide, he has a list of the top 10 reasons that closers fail. Number seven is no financial plan in place. Okay. He says here, fact, if you were just working to make someone else's dreams come true, you will never be a great closer. So that's what you need to do. If you don't have, if you don't have a financial plan in place, you are never going to be. You're selling yourself short and you're never going to be great. As a closer as you could be. Hey, Grand Cardone he talks about in that section, how some of the best closers he ever met were those that didn't do it for profit. They did it for purpose. So people that were fundraisers, people that are doing charity work, mission type work for the churches. Okay. I did a two year a church mission that was down in Columbia.

Speaker 2 (14:12):

And I, this is the time that I never took no for an answer. Cause you know that deep, why I truly believe that I was changing people's lives. People told me no I'm thinking no, these people don't know. They literally have salvation at stake. So it'd be, that should be the same thing with us. What's our, that deep purpose. And what do we want to actually put our money towards? Okay. Put it. If you can't think of something for you, have it be for your kids, for your wife, for your husband, for your future wife, your future husband, Hey, whatever it is that excites you and get super specific about it. So that's my advice. That's what helped me a ton last month is just being super specific about a goal I had and having a financial plan, something I actually wanted to do with the money I was making.

Speaker 2 (15:06):

So if you haven't done that, I promise it's going to help you way more than you think. Okay. Like I said, there are a lot of things that did help going through the Knockstar program with Danny Pessy most boys, but this was kind of a behind the scenes thing that helped me way more than I thought I would. Okay. Next up. So you're not going to want to miss, we're going to have Zach Bassett on and he's going to get into way more financial advice. We're going to talk about actually, something that I didn't know about the ERC credit, if you don't know what that is, tune into next episode, but I got me 10 grand from the IRS, which is awesome. Uncle Sam sent it to me. All right. So hope you enjoyed this. If you know someone that needs help putting a financial plan in place, send them this episode. Okay. But really it's just about getting specific on what you want to do with the money you're making and then envisioning it. And that's going to help you. If you haven't done it, try it this month and see yourselves, multiply it and see your purpose. Your why increase. That's where it's at. Let me know what you thought and we'll see you on the next episode.

Speaker 1 (16:17):

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 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 , Hey, what's up Solarpreneurs.

Speaker 2 (00:43):

I'm strong here live. I guess you won't be hearing this live, but I am here currently in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, I'm doing an episode, one of the show up for my peeps for my Solarpreneurs, because I knew, I know you guys are pushing out there. You're fighting to close deals and I'm coming at you with some sales tips, even from Mexico. So I apologize if you hear a little bit of background noise, I'm out here with the monkeys in the, uh, the wildlife here, here on the balcony of our a little resort. So you might hear a few little animals sounds some wind going through the trees, but I hope that inspires you to push hard and close the, well, I guess start this next quarter strong. So you can go out and plan for your next trip. Had this plan since, uh, December.

Speaker 2 (01:37):

So it's important to give yourself those pushes those abs and those flows. Last month, I had a big push. I was competing in the, uh, Knockstar. Uh, competition had my best month. I'm probably last year close 12 deals. Um, which I know for some of you, that's probably nothing. Some of you that's a lot. So for me, that was my best month in about the last year 12 deals, about four of them or, um, leads. And then eight of them were self generated deals knocking on doors. So, but that'd be a lesson. If you have a big trip planned, use it to motivate you. I knew this trip was coming. So that's part of the reason why I decided to do the Knockstar competition for the previous month, thought what a better time than to push myself close out the quarter strong and get in some extra deals before I go on the little Mexican vacation here.

Speaker 2 (02:36):

So that leads to the episode up today. I'm actually doing an episode on what I have learned while I'm here in Mexico. Guess what? There are sales, there are sales everywhere. And if you've been to Mexico, you know, these guys, some of the best, most aggressive salespeople in the world are in Mexico. You take one foot out of the airport and you were hounded by these guys. These guys are so most persistent. Um, I would say persistence camera series. You could find, I mean, they're hounding you for everything. They got their kids selling your stuff. You got on the streets. There's Mexican kids coming up and selling your bracelets. There's people selling you, whatever you can think of out here. So I got to hand it to the Mexican people. They fight for what they got and they are not afraid to go out and approach you and sell you whatever they're trying to, to sell that day.

Speaker 2 (03:33):

Okay. So the reason I'm doing an episode is because we're staying at a resort here in Puerto Vallarta, and if you've been to resorts. You know, that's another big thing that they sell down here is these timeshares. And so my parents, they got this timeshare, this Mexican timeshare, I think they've had at 10 years or so now it's been awesome. We go to Cancun. We go to, um, yeah, this is actually our first time coming down here, but you are part of the UNESCO. They give you like a few locations. You can trade them and swap them out. So we usually come once every couple of years to one of these Mexican locations, great time. But if you've been to a timeshare, you probably know that they're constantly trying to upsell you on their next package. My parents, they have one in the more basic kind of timeshare packages.

Speaker 2 (04:23):

So first thing they do when you step on the resort, they're putting pressure on the whole time, Hey, have you seen what benefits you can get with our next package up? And they're pushing for you to book an appointment. And so that's nothing new. And my parents, as you can imagine, get super sick of being pitched the next time share. Um, they come, yeah, like I said about once every couple of years, so it's not something that they wanted to really upgrade. And they've been to plenty of the timeshare presentations. So they're kind of over all that this time was a little bit different. We got here and I'm going to share the lessons behind this versus that little story. And then I'm going to share some lessons that actually I'm gonna apply it to solar too. But we get here in my, to my surprise.

Speaker 2 (05:09):

We got here after my family was here to my surprise. My mom says, Taylor, we actually, uh, we have enough, uh, time set up to go talk about, uh, the timeshare tomorrow. And I'm like, really mom, you guys hate both things. Why'd you sign up for that? And she said, Oh, well, the lady, she was super cute, super nice. And she says, it wasn't even like a presentation. Um, it was just, they're going to show me the benefits we're missing out on. She just said, Oh, you guys aren't even used maximizing your current timeshare plan. So what I want to do is just give you guys a free session. We're going to just meet up, answering your questions. And we're going to show you about the benefits you're not using. So you have quite a few things you're not even taking advantage of. So my mom, she thought that was cool.

Speaker 2 (05:56):

It was different. And usually if you're familiar at the time shares, um, like my wife and I we've been to Vegas, they give you usually some type of bonus. They say, we'll give you the free two night stay. If you, all you have to do is listen to the timeshare presentation. So what impressed me about this one, and this is what I thought was really good, somewhat sneaky, but really good. They didn't say anything about it being a presentation. They didn't say it. Anything about it being, um, showing like the benefits of the next level up. They framed it as just something that they're going to answer. The questions they're going to show the benefits that they weren't currently using. And they made it not a big deal. They made it seem like super quick, painless harmless. We're just going to meet up, go over some questions and show you what the benefits you're not currently using.

Speaker 2 (06:49):

Okay. But little did my mom know this was just a way of getting the foot in the door. I mean, it's going to be this same presentation. You know, they're going to try and upsell you on the next thing it was really cool is they didn't say anything about that. Okay. So that leads me to something they did really well is they made it again, paying this. They made it something that was not a big deal at all. And because of that, my mom, she books, the appointment, she set up that point with these people to go hear the presentation when she is basically sworn every other time, we've kind of, she's not going to go to another one of these presentations. And what was the other thing that was impressive about it? They didn't throw out any of these incentives of any of these gimmicks.

Speaker 2 (07:32):

Usually there I go. We'll give you, you know, they're free excursion. We're going to give you, um, breakfast on us for the rest of your stay. If you come check out the presentation, but what does that do for people like my mom? That's an instant trigger. She's thinking, okay, well, if they're giving me something, then it's just cause they're going to sell me on the next thing. So what this sweet little Mexican lady did really nice that she didn't say anything about these gimmicks. She framed it in the way. It's just a conversation. We're not throwing out these gimmicks because if they would have thrown those things out, guess what? For someone like my mom, that would have been an instant trigger and it, okay, they're selling me something. No, let's not do it. So those were the good things that these people did, that this lady got to hand it to her.

Speaker 2 (08:19):

We need to get her some solar presenting some appointments for solar. Cause she did a great job on that aspect. And now we're going to get into the mistakes. Okay. So the story continues. Um, my mom later that night, I was kind of talking to her and um, she was, she was asking all of us. She's like, ah, this, I guess I got to go listen to this. And she started thinking about it again. I think it started to Dawn on her. I didn't really see anything, but it started to Dawn on her that it was probably just going to be another presentation. So she's been texting this lady that they set up the appointment with back and forth. And then my is this happened to all of us in solar. She starts just expressing some doubts, say, Anna, is this going to take a long time?

Speaker 2 (09:03):

You know what? I don't know if this is really worth our time because we're not planning on upgrading to the next, uh, timeshare. We're not planning on upgrading our timeshare. So she expressed some doubts and this is where things started to go South for this lovely appointment setter. Right? When my mom expresses doubts, instead of understanding, instead of empathizing with my mom, she goes straight to the aggressive approach. And basically she's like, well, you already set up the appointments. Um, we actually can't cancel it. And then she didn't unders have that understanding mindset at all with my mom. Okay. Um, and so my mom, once she saw that this lady was getting all aggressive, she starts kind of making some excuses about why we can't go to the, to the presentation tomorrow to their question and answer session, if you will. And then, um, we're planning to get up, go to the pool early.

Speaker 2 (10:04):

So my mom she's like, okay, I'll go. But only if we can do a 8:00 AM. And then we got to, we have some stuff planned on the day. We can't do it. And this lady, again, she doesn't understand at all. And so this lady starts throwing out that we can't change the appointments. And then my mom, he had already actually scheduled to change rooms. And the next day my brother was coming in suite, um, switched to a room with a couple extra beds. And that was one of her excuses for trying to reschedule appointments. So my mom tells the lady, look, we can't, we can't meet later. We have to do it at eight because we're scheduled to change rooms. Then this lady, she starts at this point trying to save face and saying, Oh, well, I actually heard you talk to housekeeping. And yeah, they said that we actually have to change it.

Speaker 2 (10:55):

We have to switch your room later. We can't do it at that time because they won't have the room ready. So basically she starts throwing out these lies and trying to save face in order to get the appointments. And at that point it just frustrates my mom and she canceled the appointment all together. Okay. So kind of a disaster felt bad for this appointment setter probably lost out on her commission, but what were key mistakes? If people are trying to reschedule an appointment, don't be difficult, work with them and then be assumptive gave this lady would just been like, okay, H yeah, that's more than enough time. We actually have to be pretty quick. Um, eight works. We'll see you there tomorrow. And then that's it. My mom was showed up. No questions asked. So it's the same thing. As you were setting up appointments with the people that you're on the doors with, or you're on the phone as you're having these texting conversations, number one, make sure you get this conversation set up with the homeowners.

Speaker 2 (11:49):

If you are going to have a texting conversation, get it started beforehand. Make sure these people have your number saved. Say, Hey, Mr. Jones, can you text me just a thumbs up emoji? So I have your number. Get that emoji relationship going, Hey, and then don't make it difficult that people need to reschedule. If people need to, people have concerns. Number one, be assumptive with it, empathize with whatever they are going through and have templates have scripts set up. Hey, what are you going to say? Have you trained your team on this more importantly, if you're a manager, if you don't have scripts, if you don't have templates set up, you're losing out cells, immune, you know exactly what to say. If someone texts you X, Y, Z, huge cyber response written out for all these things. And that goes for your team too.

Speaker 2 (12:36):

Right now, my wife and I were watching a show called undercover billionaire, which highly recommend our friend Grant Cardone is on it. And this is something he does. He's out there training. Um, these, this gym he's working with in the show, you can go watch it. It's obviously just going to give you the reader's digest here. But he is, um, trained in basically his, his gym team to get more gym memberships. I think they're a snap fitness or something. They're in Pueblo, Colorado. And one of the first things I saw that he did, he goes and sets up all the scripts, all the templates. Exactly what to say when people are on the phone, when people are having texts and conversations. Okay? Cause that's a lot of people don't realize it. They think they're saying these right things when you're losing appointments or you're losing sales, just like the people here at Puerto Vallarta.

Speaker 2 (13:26):

Okay. So don't make the same mistakes as these learn from the good things they did. Okay. They made the appointment no big deal, which helped them initially set the appointment. But like we see over and over people, he cold feet. People realize that they are being, that is, you know, a sales presentation. Same thing happened with my mom. Okay. When I'm out there on the doors, I do the same thing. Hey, we're just dropping by. Don't use those trigger words. Don't say appointments. Don't say a pitch. None of that. You do be exactly like this little Mexican lady say, Hey, we're just dropping by just having a quick conversation. First. Our engineer's going to check and see if it benefits the home, prepare some info. And then yeah, we're just going to drop by as same as the rest of your neighbors. Answer a few questions.

Speaker 2 (14:07):

If it makes sense. Great. If it doesn't no problem, we're not doing anything because if you can make it seem like no big deal, that's going to set you apart. Cause that's one of people's first concerns. If you look in the brains of the homeowners, what are they concerned about? They think it's going to be some long drawn out presentation. They think you're going to do a hard sell on them. That you're going to make them say yes right then. And they don't want to have to make a quick decision. All will sings. It's going through the buyer's head. So you got to understand that these are their thoughts. And then as you are setting up these appointments, cover these things beforehand. Okay. They think it's going to be some long thing. Hey, Mr. Jones, I don't have time. I'm actually meeting with about a dozen of your neighbors.

Speaker 2 (14:50):

I have to be pretty quick tomorrow. So don't worry. It's not going to be some long thing. We're just going to look at it and make sure it makes sense. Okay. They're thinking they're gonna, they're going to have to make a yes or no decision, which we all want them to. Okay. But my line is, Hey, when I come back, you guys can either opt in or opt out. It doesn't make sense. No worries. We're not going to do anything. If it does, then all we do is submit an application. See if we can qualify the home. Okay. Take the pressure off of them. Buying or deciding, make it, make the pressure beyond. You have to figure out if you can do it for their home. Cause that's the big thing. It's just a couple lessons I learned from Mexico. Let me know if you guys have had any experiences like that on your travels, on your vacations, hope you, you took a few things you can share with your team or a few things you can use, or you, as you were setting up appointments, a S but loved the Mexican culture support. Next time you hear support all those guys because they're hungry. They're not afraid to approach next though. And neither should you. So I'll see you on the next show.

Speaker 1 (15:51):

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