The Solarpreneur

Tune in now and don't forget to sign up for www.solciety.co!Speaker 1 (00:03):Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. online teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.Speaker 2 (00:43):Ok What's going on Solarpreneurs. We're back with another show and we've got at legend in the door to door industry. He's written multiple books now, and I'm super excited to have him on the show. We've got the one, the only Lenny Gray. So thanks for coming on the show with us today, Lenny. Absolutely. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks Taylor. Yeah, I'm super excited. And we were talking just, um, before the recording here, how I just finished your new book that came out and, um, I had been posting just a little, like, you know, highlights of it on my Instagram every few days. And it's crazy. We've been getting just message after message. What is that book? I've never seen a book like that, but it's sent off probably 50 messages and, um, should have put it in the title. Cause I kinda got sick of sending out the same message. It's the next door to door or door to door a millionaire.Speaker 2 (01:34):But yeah, so people loved it. So congrats on the book. Plenty. It's huge accomplishment right in a book like that. So no, thank you. I appreciate it. So I, uh, it's kinda funny when I wrote the first one, it was really to kind of get out of the door to door sales industry. I was kind of doing some other things and I thought that was kind of my stamp on the industry and it threw me back in, uh, more violently than ever. So I, uh, I jumped back in and again, the first book I wrote was eight years ago. So this is uh, eight years in the making and the second book. And it's definitely, as it says in the title, it kind of takes things to the next level. So a lot more experienced, uh well-versed door to door reps seem to appreciate the second book a lot better even than the first one.Speaker 2 (02:16):Yeah. Yeah. That's how I felt for sure. So yeah, I mean, it's gotta be a ton of work right. In a book like that. I mean, I've thought about random book, but I'm like, man, it seems like so much work. So where you always well, at what point did you decide that you needed to write even a second book? So I, you know, I was an English minor in college, so I figured I'd put that to good use maybe. I don't know, but uh, didn't really have, uh, you know, a desire to write a book necessarily, but boy, I just had so much experience in so many things and it kind of another motivation for me was when I first got into the door to door sales, like late nineties, right. Forever ago, I'm a dinosaur. But when I got into these, uh, into this industry, I mean literally the company I worked for handed me a training manual that was, you know, 10, 15 pages long.Speaker 2 (03:04):And I was like, that's it? And, and I felt so unequipped to go out and knock any doors. And so I, I just felt with that as my background and then also what I heard and what we still hear in the industry unfortunately, is kind of the lie cheat and steal your way to the top. Like I just, I didn't love that at all. And I, and I I'm just so anti that, that I

Tune in now and don't forget to sign up for www.solciety.co! Speaker 1 (00:03):Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. online teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one. Come on. Y'all let's go.Speaker 2 (00:46):Taylor Armstrong here back with another episode, decided to switch up the intro a little bit, um, for those that have done that workout program, insanity, maybe that sounded familiar. Um, I, I do that intro because, um, during 75 Hard, the workouts, I was doing twice a day, decided to do some insanity for old time's sake. So for all my Shaun T fans, my workout friends, hope you like that intro for those that don't know what I'm talking about. Let's jump into some solar knowledge. We're going to be bringing some heat today, talking about the number one way you can train your reps. So this can be specifically talking to managers, team leaders, anyone that's trained to help grow their office, but guess what, if you are a regular sales rep, if you are trained to improve your abilities and learn as quick as possible, then this episode is also for you.Speaker 2 (01:48):So we're going to get into it. But before I jump into that to have a couple exciting announcements that wanted to share with my peeps, with my Solarpreneurs. And so, um, recently our team, we did a merger with, um, those of you that follow sells. Um, legends sells legends in the industry. Jason Newby may have heard of him. He was the top rep at Vivid for years, um, top alarm rep, and he started a solar company here in San Diego. So we did a merger actually with his team. Um, so I was working for a company called Switch to Solar. Now we are all combining we are future home. So if anyone is looking to make a switch and come join the revolution here, but future home and bring that up because Jason, his team, they are dropping a ton of value in things.Speaker 2 (02:47):They share things they post about. So definitely go shoot them a follow Jason Newby. And then, um, their Instagram is Future Home, go follow them. We're going to be posting and we're going to be changing the industry. Um, we're helping the team grow a lot. So that's the first exciting thing. And then the second is, um, just wanting to think or Solarpreneurs all our listeners for checking out the Taylor McCarthy episode on those two episodes today. And I really appreciate all the people that have shared it that have sent it to friends, sent it to people, trying to grow in the industry. Um, it has gotten away more downloads than a lot of other episodes. And matter of fact, he passed up. Um, yeah, he passed up a lot, a lot of past episodes that we had in such a short amount of time, just because of you great people that have been shared it that have been spreading the word, um, he's passed up, Danny Pessy actually, who is, um, you know, the other Knock Star guy, Taylor already passed them up.Speaker 2 (03:52):So I don't know if Danny's going to be happy about that, but we're all about spreading the wisdom, spreading the knowledge and helping each other grow. So go check that out and guys, please continue to share, continue to leave ratings. Be

Tune in now and don't forget to sign up for www.solciety.co!Speaker 1 (00:03):Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. online teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.Speaker 2 (00:42):What's up. So we're preneurs. Welcome to another episode and I'll be honest. This is the second time I am recording this episode right now. I had some fire money content that I was spitting, and I don't know what happened cause they didn't press record, but I go and replay the recording and dead silence crickets. So I'm back for another one. So hopefully it's even better than the first time I recorded it. Um, but I am currently in lake Powell, Utah right now. So just to preface this, if you heard some waves hitting the shorter that's, what's going on standing on top of the top of a houseboat right now, recording some content for my solar preneur peeps. So I'm dedicated. I want to show you guys that I am committed to helping you improve your lives as solar cells, professionals. So let's jump into it this episode today.Speaker 2 (01:37):I want to talk about gratitude. We've talked, had a lot of guests on that have talked about the importance of gratitude. Earl capuli was one probably about a month ago. He is known as Mr. Gratitude. So go listen to his, if you haven't already. But the reason I'm thinking so much about this is because I went to a conference a couple of weeks ago in Dallas, Texas. Um, you guys probably heard me talk about it was the knock star conference, Danny PESI Tanner McCarthy that had been on the show. They run the knock star movement. They did an awesome event to definitely check out, going to their next one. Bat this event, they brought a guest. His name is John Israel. And if you haven't heard of him, he is known as Mr. Thank you a little bit different than Mr. Gratitude, but Mr. Thank you.Speaker 2 (02:24):And what he did was he wrote, uh, um, five, thank you cards a day for 365 day streets every day. And it took him about an hour and a half a day on average to write these cards. So these weren't just little, you know, little notes. These were full-blown thought out, thank you cards. And he couldn't write them, write them to more than three people. Hey, so we're cutting. Just keep writing. Thank you cards to his wife. He could only do a max limit of three per person throughout the course of a year. Pretty incredible what he did. So he wrote a book on it. He's spoken to all types of, and he's really created a movement and change people's lives in the process. So super inspiring dude. And the reason I got thinking about him so much is because I am on this boat, reading his book, it's called the Mr.Speaker 2 (03:17):Thank you project. And then the book, he just documents the journey, what he did and talks about it. And so the reason I'm thinking about it so much, because I hadn't experienced actually, before I left on this little trip that went hand in hand with some of the things he talks about. So I'll get that, get to that in a second. And actually I shared this experience on Instagram. So if you're not falling already go shoot me a fall at Taylor J Armstrong. And I shar

Tune in now and don't forget to sign up for www.solciety.co!Speaker 1 (00:03):Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. online teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.Speaker 2 (00:43):We are back in the studio today, got back from a trip to Dallas last weekend, actually with the man of the hour who is here with us today, I'm excited to finally get him on the show because we have got the legends and the myths Taylor McCarthy. So thanks for finally coming on the show with us Taylor. Hey bro. I'm really happy to be here. I'm excited. We're going to get this to drop some drops. Some of the heat for everybody right now. Oh yeah. And everybody knows anyone with a name like Taylor, they're going to be bringing the heat. They're going to be bringing the value tips in the solar industry. So Taylor's in the room. Let's go. Good stuff. So, uh, yeah, we just got back from your events, Taylor, the Knockstar, um, the, uh, Knock Fest, I should say, or sorry, a Door to Door Fest, get all these events confused.Speaker 2 (01:35):Um, so it was great events. You guys put a ton of time into it. So tell me, how was it? You, you recovered from the events, you guys put a lot of work into that. Yeah, man, definitely a lot of stress going into that, like being able to prepare that big of an event and you know, wanting to deliver and have it come from a genuine place, you know, um, you know, when we first started north starting university, it was really just a project to say like, Hey, like let's get it back to the next generation. We'll do a six week bootcamp. We'll design a competition around the bootcamp where we can train, hold people accountable and really help them get results. And then it transformed into, you know, us wanting to do this event and, you know, putting together people that really had validity that we're walking the walk and making the plays right now.Speaker 2 (02:20):And you know, it turned out really good. You know, the best part about it was the relationships. I feel like I've formed and you know, just to be able to really give back and hold nothing back because you know, it's something that genuinely bothers me. Like why is there so much mediocrity in our space? Why isn't there everybody's a millionaire, right? Because we get the chance to write our own paycheck. Every single day, we get the ability to tell somebody what we're worth and go improve that on a day-to-day basis. You know, that was one thing that I wanted to deliver for people was to be able to not only give them motivation and teach them things, but to really give them something that they can take, you know, like specific one-liners or, you know, reasons why people say yes or reasons why people say no or understanding what to say when somebody says, I want to think about it.Speaker 2 (03:09):You know, that's why we designed the actual Solar Knock Cards, which has all the common objections and all the nasty words that people have to eliminate from their vocabulary. And then the slicks specifically, you know, to be able to engage people while they're on the doors and to give the door to door sales and in the best

Tune in now and don't forget to sign up for www.solciety.co!Speaker 1 (00:03):Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. online teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one. Should you even go on vacations as a Solarpreneur?Speaker 2 (00:45):How should you prepare for your vacations and the best things you should be doing during your vacations? You take them. That's what we're going to be covering today. Interesting topic, something I've thought a lot about. So let's get into it. How are you? I'm Taylor Armstrong. We're back with another episode. We are changing lives. We're changing the solar industry. And thanks for being a listener of the show. Appreciate all you guys do to share the love, share the podcast and reach out to others who are needing help. So we're all about in the industry. And that's what I appreciate about seeing guys that I interact with in the industry is most people are super giving, super willing to help out. So pat yourself on the back for that. Okay. Before we jump into the topics today, wanting to give a quick update, if you haven't already heard, we are launching a full on, uh, on, on board training app training platform.Speaker 2 (01:46):It's called Solciety. If you haven't checked it out, he can go check it out as solciety.co. It's launching, uh, July 1st. So depending on when you're listening to this episode may already be out, but if not go check it out. It's going to have some dope features that you're not going to want to miss out on. And I think it's going to change the industry. Okay. And I'm not just saying that cause it's me on there. Guess what? It's not just me on there. Spoiler alert. The reason I'm saying it's going to change the industries because we're getting the best of the best all combined in one place. Okay. I know I can speak for myself. I know I got some awesome stuff to share with you all, but when you add to me with, um, you know, Taylor McCarthy with Jay Pez with, um, a lot of other guests, we have James Swiderski.Speaker 2 (02:35):A lot of other people we have that are going to be featured on the platform. That's where the magic happens. They were trying to bring the best of the best all at your fingertips. So you can literally be sitting on the toilet. You can be learning from the top guys in the industry. So go check it out, get yourself on the waiting list. We are actually currently doing Beta testing with about 20 people. We're getting some great feedback and we're excited to launch it to the public. And we're also also doing some enterprise deals. Yeah. Some stuff I can't talk about, but you're definitely going to want to be on the list and see the full features and everything when it comes out on July 1st. Hey, so, um, yeah. Anyways, check it out. And the reason that I'm bringing this as well as, because we actually have one of the experts, one of our, um, trainers featured on Solciety is on, um, the episode is on the podcast, I should say next episode.Speaker 2 (03:39):So what I meant to say, and that is Taylor McCarthy guys. This guy has some buyer, some money tips, some, some of the best content I've heard for solar g

Tune in now and don't forget to sign up for www.solciety.co!Speaker 1 (00:03):Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. online teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one. What's up Solarpreneurs Taylor. I'm sure here to help you change theSpeaker 2 (00:45):World by closing more deals, generating more leads and dominating the solar industry. How are you? I hope you're doing awesome. Hope. You're gearing up for the summer and getting ready to close deals galore. You should be doing already. If you're listening to this podcast, because this is where we drop that knowledge. This is where we get you on the right track to hit your goals and crush your outcomes that you want in the solar industry. It's been nice connecting with people. Um, I've said it before in a few episodes, but hit me up on social media, trying to be a little more active there. Um, so it's Instagram, it's Taylor J Armstrong. Um, Facebook, just Taylor Armstrong go shoot me a fall. Send me a message. I've been enjoying hearing from some of our listeners and just connecting with my solar printer peeps. That's what we're trying to do is create a community and it's been awesome just hearing from people.Speaker 2 (01:44):Um, another thing is we're looking for topics that people could use some help on guests that we, uh, want on the show. So anyone you would like to hear on the show or specific topics, send me a message. We got some great feedback on, um, some potential topics coming up. Um, just last week, someone sent me a message. They're struggling with negative reviews, online, losing deals because of that. Um, so we're going to do an episode soon on that. Anything you can think of, it's much, much appreciated. I'm sharing. What's helping me, I'm sharing, what's helping our team. I'm sharing what I'm hearing. That's helping other teams. But if you guys have specific problems or issues that you're facing, I would love to hear about it. Shoot me a message, shoot me a fall. And let's connect that being said, let's jump into the episode today.Speaker 2 (02:36):I want to talk about why you should treat every objection as only a complaint. Okay? So those that have listened to grant Cardone at all, this might sound somewhat familiar. He talks about this kind of a lot. If you've read the closer survival survival guide, this is actually one of the top 10 reasons that closers fell is they treat objections, um, or they handle objections that are only complaints rather. So what does he mean by that? At first, when I first heard that I was a little bit confused and the reason I'm actually doing this topic today is because I have a few experiences that happened last week. One was where I treated an objection, um, with, uh, with too much legitimacy, I treated, um, the objection more serious than I should've and the other one, whereas I, where I did treat it as a complaint and got two different outcomes, pretty interesting reminded me of why it's important.Speaker 2 (03:41):So that's what I want to share with you. But before we get to that, I want to actually read what uncle G grant Cardone has to say about the topic. So if you ha

Tune in now and don't forget to sign up for www.solciety.co!Speaker 1 (00:00:03):Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. online teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one. What's up Solarpreneurs. Taylor ArmstrongSpeaker 2 (00:00:42):And we're back here with another episode, and we're doing a little bit different format. If you heard the previous one, we've got a special guests back on the show. So let us know what you think of these kind of debate style topics. Um, so we've got James back on what's up, James? Thanks for coming back on the show with us. Oh yeah. It was a blast a couple of days ago. I do want to say this though. We are going to get better at this format. So we're learning a lot already from the last episode I watched it again last night, I was like, all right, I got to shut up more. I've got to ask Taylor some more interesting questions and not try to jump on everything. Like I like to. So I'm going to try to chill back a little bit. And then one of the things I think we wanted to implement was a kind of more formalized questions, like a real deal debate, where we each get a chance to respond on specific topics.Speaker 2 (00:01:39):I think we both liked it. And one of my favorite debates was the, was the Trump debates. Did you watch back bowls back in 2016? I've studied the crap out of those man. Yeah. That's a masterclass in persuasion, man. That was good stuff. And for me it was just more the entertainment factor. Cause I love Trump just ripping Hillary apart and a corner and nasty women and all that, even though I kind of felt bad. Well, that's why he's a master at it, dude. It's like it's comedy plus insulting. The other party it's like dangerous, but I know, but what I thought was interesting too is Trump. Um, they went back and analyzed this debate in Trump. If you watch him, he uses like very simple language. He's not using sophisticated words. So I was reading study over and over basically the point in very simple language. What was it like? Uh, he always had like demeaning ones, like crooked Hillary. Was that it? Yeah. And then he had lion, Ted remember lion Ted for Ted Cruz. So you would get like they're like, Lion Ted came up like nicknames for him. Like that's all they say it's yeah. Anyway, we're not doing that. We're not gonna take shots at each other, but who knows crooked James right crooked James lion lion.Speaker 2 (00:03:01):So, no, we're probably won't get that hardcore. Um, I'm probably gonna not attack James personally or anything like that, but we we'll try to give our interests shoot for it, dude. This one's going to be spicy though. I think today is a spicy topic because last time both you and I, it wasn't a real debate. I mean, come on. We agreed way too much on the last one. It was like, Hey, get good at offline then do online. If you want to this one though, this is a different, this is a different animal. Yeah. One. I'm curious to hear what you have to say on this one. Because on the last show we did, I pretty much knew what your side of the story was, what your take, but this one I'm a little bit more in the dark. So I'm curious to know what y

Tune in now and don't forget to sign up for www.solciety.co!Speaker 1 (00:03):Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. online teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery. And you are about to become one What's up Solarpreneurs Taylor Armstrong here with another episode.Speaker 2 (00:46):Why should you do whatever it takes in deals and what technologies should you be implementing today? That and much more, what are we talking about in the episode today? So let's jump into it first. I want to say, go, um, follow me on Instagram. If you haven't already, I would love to connect with more you guys. Also on Facebook, trying to be a little bit more active on the social medias ever since we did a couple of social media episodes, a few weeks back, but, um, if you are following me, I did a little demo of a new tool that is seriously a goal of mine. You guys need to be using this, and we've talked about this tool actually on previous episodes, we had the founder come on, uh, Brad Mortenson can go listen to that episode, but the tool was RepCard, which hopefully all you are using by now.Speaker 2 (01:39):But more specifically, what they came out with was a physical card. It RepCard, it's an app. You can go and do the whole customer follow up. You can send your digital business card, but what they came out with is money is a physical card that you can literally just tap people's phones and it pulls up your digital business card, right there, gay, no need to text them. Then open the link, you tap their phone and boom, your card is pulling up right there. What's sweet about it is you can go on there and you can save your contact straight from that digital card. So you can just tap, save his contact. They're going to be in your phone now and it's going to make it ways you're to follow up with people, get referrals. I did old demo demo of it. So I obviously can't show you in the audio here, but, um, it's nice because they can see all your, your views to then go on there, leave your reviews.Speaker 2 (02:36):Um, they can see probably other people in the neighborhood that left reviews, which you should be encouraging them to do. And then with the top of a button, they can also send a referral. They can submit a referral for you. Okay. So I highly suggest that you go get this, um, RepCard hit me up and I can connect you with the guys over at RepCard and then get the physical. I think it's like a hundred bucks. Um, you can get just a card that says RepCard on it, even tap. And I think for an extra a hundred on top of that 200, you can get a, a card with your picture on it, with your company and everything. Okay. So go get one of these things. It is a game changer and I'm already using it. Definitely noticed a difference. Hey, so that's the first, um, thing I wanted to introduce to you guys, and then seconds.Speaker 2 (03:28):Um, as far as technology goes, um, another thing we've talked about is we are launching a full custom training platform. Um, it's called Solciety, and I'm sure we will be doing a full launch episode, but just to kind of give you guys the teaser on it and hopefully get your stoke for it. It is looking super b

Tune in now and don't forget to sign up for www.solciety.co!Speaker 1 (00:03):Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. online teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery. And you are about to become one what's up Solarpreneurs.Speaker 2 (00:43):Back. We're gearing up for the summer. We are today. Memorial day is when I'm recording this episode. You'll probably hear it later, but we are ready for an awesome summer to close enormous amounts of deals and take advantage of these hot temperatures that we're being given right now. So I'm excited. I'm ready to start crushing some summer deals. I hope you are in whether you are a summer sales rep or you're doing it year after year after year, like myself, take advantage of this summer, coming up and use it to really jumpstart your deals. So I'm excited for an episode. And first, before we jump into anything, I need to give a huge thank you to you. My listeners, um, I just, we just got our hundredth review over on iTunes and I am super appreciative. So if you are a long-time listener or you're just hearing these episodes, give yourself a pat on the back right now.Speaker 2 (01:44):I love you guys and appreciate the support that you've given us over the years of we'd done this. Um, it's been a long time. If you look back, we've been doing this podcast since 2018 now, and as I've said before, there's no way I would have kept this going. If it weren't for people sending me comments, leaving reviews, uh, let me know that it's helped them. And then on top of that, just me being a little benefit as well. I'd tell a lot of people that even if guys don't listen to the show, it's helped me learn more. And it's helping me connect with guys who are really doing some awesome things in the industry. So thank you again. Thank you for helping us get to a hundred reviews and yeah, I hope you are taking some good stuff. That's helping you in your cells from the Solarpreneur podcast.Speaker 2 (02:34):So that being said, let's jump into it. Um, I did a little presentation two or three weeks ago. We had an event here in San Diego, which we're actually going to be having more. So I'd love for you to come out to our next one, if you want to find out more, um, yeah, shoot me a message. We actually have, I think a list we can put you on that would notify you for any future events. Um, but it was a good event and we had myself, we had Earl Kapule here in San Diego. Who's been on the show, uh, Brent Attaway our marketing guy. Um, and Jay Pez, another big guy that does events with the soar academy here in San Diego. We all spoke at it. We had a good turnout, probably around 30 people there, um, which we didn't promote it a ton, but it's just good to kind of, um, you know, connect with others network and then hear from some of the top minds in solar.Speaker 2 (03:32):So what I want to talk about today is just, um, what I presented on at this event. And we had some pretty cool slides that we went over and obviously I'm not going to do the whole presentation. It was like an hour, hour and a half presentation that I gave out this event. So I'm not gonna, um, do an hour and a half podcast right now

Tune in now and don't forget to sign up for www.solciety.co! Speaker 1 (00:03):Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. online teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery. And you are about to become one what's up Solarpreneurs.Speaker 2 (00:43):We are back. We are alive from door to door Fest here in Dallas, Texas, and I'm stoked today because not too often, do we get to do a live interview like this. And we have got the man the myth, the legend river Skinner on today. So river, thanks for coming on the show. Excited to have you.Speaker 3 (01:00):Yeah. I'm excited that we do get to do it live because I think you've missed kind of like a element. Yeah,Speaker 2 (01:06):I know. I love it. It's cool. I've never done one from my hotel room, so nice stuff offSpeaker 3 (01:11):View of unmade beds, you know?Speaker 2 (01:15):Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. My dirty clothes are sitting right behind, uh, you know, the mic, the camera here. So don't mind that if we don't get in the S what he smells there, did a few workouts. So if you smell smoky clothes, that's mere river, but I can handle it for 45 minutes. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, I'm excited to be here. So river, we just heard you speak here at door to door Fest and you gave an awesome talk on recruiting. We'll dive into that. And you're here in Texas. So we want to hear all those things our listeners want to know, but yeah. Do you want to kind of share maybe how you got into solar and your story with that? Yeah.Speaker 3 (01:50):Um, I I've always been into sales. I grew up, you know, eight years old. My dad will actually, you know, my dad, my whole life owned produce stands, and he's paying me $3 an hour to work at the produce stands. And he ended up telling him, he's like, Hey, listen, I can pay three bucks an hour. Or if you sell watermelons for me, I'll pay you 50 cents a watermelon. I'm like sweet. So every person that came through the door, I came through the door, but came into the sh into the produce stand I'd, sell them watermelons, make 50 cents a pop. And I was making more off my commission than I was on my hourly pay. I'm like, this is awesome. So, anyway, so I got recruited into door-to-door from one of my dad's other employees named Aaron, Aaron invited me to go satellite with him.Speaker 3 (02:33):And I went and sold satellite with him. Um, that summer, the summer I graduated, um, that following year, no two years later, uh, one of my good friends, um, just was like, dude, why are you not selling solar yet? I'm like, I don't know. Um, so I started recruiting. I got recruited in Utah to sell solar sold solar for a month. I sold eight deals my first month. And, um, back then I, that was like 10 grand or something. And I was like, ecstatic. I was like, oh my gosh, I just made 10 grand in a month. Um, I wasn't making good money previously, um, in door to door. So like, for me, that was like, awesome. And I just fell in love with the product. Uh,Speaker 2 (03:15):That's awesome. I know it's, especially in Utah, it's, uh, I got out of Utah, so scared of selling all the, you know, Mormons and stuff out there

Tune in now and don't forget to sign up for www.solciety.co!Speaker 1 (00:03):Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. online teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery. And you are about to become one what's up SolapreneursSpeaker 2 (00:42):Taylor Armstrong. Here we are back with another great week, another awesome week of content for the podcast. So before we get into the show today, you are going to learn how to recruit more quality reps, how to stop losing reps. And we're going a little, get a little podcast preview for the week. What else do we have coming up here? So before we dive into that, I wanted to have a rather ask a special request. We are at 96 reviews on iTunes, on podcasts. And my goal is I want to get to a hundred reviews. So if you could please do me a favor, we need four more, who are my four players that are, that are going to come in clutch. I need four superstars to go and leave me an awesome review. And then we're done no more reviews after that. I'm just kidding.Speaker 2 (01:36):You can be number one oh one if you want, but I would really appreciate it. If you could go leave a review and let's get to a hundred reviews, let's change some lives and then also share the podcast. If it has helped you so special request, please do me a favor, help me out. Yeah, but besides that, we've got a great week of content here at Solarpreneur. Today, we're going to be talking a little bit about recruiting. Some things you can do to improve on that and actually really kind of the focus of the week because our special guests we have coming on later in the week is River Skinner. You may have seen him. He's big on Instagram. He's got a podcast and we've got them coming up later this week on the show. So I'm stoked to have him. Um, and he actually spoke at door to door Fest in Dallas, that I was at a few weeks back at the time of this recording, he had dropped some serious value on us and shared some ways that we can recruit shared some things that he does, um, have helped him win awards for being top recruiter.Speaker 2 (02:41):Um, recruit a team of, I think he had 75 reps at one point huge teams. So he has some serious secrets he's going to share with us. You don't want to miss out on the next one. So today I'm going to kind of give an update on a few things that happened on the recruiting front here in my office, in San Diego, and then just kind of preview a few things. Give my thoughts on a few things that actually River spoke at the events and hopefully get you excited to go hear what the next episode brings. So let's get into it. Um, this week on the recruiting front, I had sort of a loss good and bad. Um, so the bad news is we lost one of our top dudes to another team, but the good news is he is still on, um, in our office.Speaker 2 (03:30):He's just on the north team. Um, so what happened was, um, he he'd been working with us for awhile. He might listen to this. So hopefully me saying this will get them to come back and join our team again. But he'd been working with us for a while, was doing good, having some successes, we got them trained up. Um, but we have, um, he did live more in the North

Tune in now and don't forget to sign up for www.solciety.co!Speaker 1 (00:03):Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. online teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery. And you are about to become one what's up for, for me. Where should you go to door to door tour?Speaker 2 (00:45):Should you invest in this event, plus a full re recap of the event? Hey, we're going to get into it. I'm Taylor Armstrong here to help you close more deals, create more income in the solar industry, generate more leads and referrals and hopefully make it easier to be a solar pro in today's changing industry. So I want to talk about before I get into this event, recap and give you my recommendation. If you'll go before I get into that, I need to tell you guys about an app that if you are not using to take notes, you are killing yourself. Okay. This app it's called Notability. Okay. Write that down or download it right now. Um, I think it's cost like 10 bucks or something, but this app literally has been a game changer. In any event, I go to anything I need to take notes in, especially for solar specific things.Speaker 2 (01:48):And here's why the app, what it does. It lets you record, um, the presentations. So you're recording, which I know you can just use like a voice memo or other ways to record these apps, but what's super cool about it and was a game changer. Is it pairs the recording with the actual notes you're taking? So let's say you're at an event and you write down a really cool line. You heard, um, Hey, this person says, um, at a really cool line on how to get inside the home to book an appointment. Then as you write that, it'll pair it with the exact audio from that exact moment, you know, let you just click on that note and you'll get to hear what was happening at that precise moment. That was super cool because I go through, I take all these notes and then a lot of times it's like, I don't know exactly what the context was.Speaker 2 (02:46):Um, or there something that I want to hear, maybe their intonation, how they're saying a specific line and all you do. You click on the note and boom, it's going to take you to that exact moment where they said those things, even here are the, you can hear the line they're using, um, exact words they're using. So for example, this events that I just got done with the door-to-door tour, which I'm gonna talk about here in a second, but Sam Taggart, he had a lot of great lines that you used on, um, his closes on his solar closes and I'm not going to be able to write down word for word what he's saying. A lot of times he's seen these exact lines one time, but with this app, I can go back. I can click on the exact moment and I'm going to hear his word tracks.Speaker 2 (03:34):Now I can go back and review them and I can really get them into my brain and be able to implement them. So for those that are going to this event, or even for those that are just going to solar, I dunno, team meetings or events, um, you know, anything you go to where you are taking notes, get this app and it's going to change your life. Got to give a shout out to, uh, my boy, uh, Matt Romero. He's the one that

Tune in now and don't forget to sign up for www.solciety.co!Speaker 1 (00:03):Welcome to the Solarpreneur podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. I teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bringing the top solar dogs, the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals. What is a Solarpreneur you might ask a Solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery. And you are about to become one what is going on onSpeaker 2 (00:42):Solarpreneurs. We are back with another show. We're doing something a little bit different, and we have a familiar face on the show. And for those of you watching, we're going to be start doing some video too. So we've got us both in our home studios, but we have today back on the studio, uh, James Swiderski what's up, James? Thanks for coming back on the show. Yeah, man, it feels like home feels like, yeah, you're good house. Thank you. Appreciate it. And so for our solarpreneurs, some of you are probably wondering what the heck is James doing back here? Um, we had him on probably a couple months back. Just kind of told your story, why you ultimately left the podcast and started doing some different things though. Um, for those that are wondering why James is back, I'll just tell you why. Um, so we have been working together.Speaker 2 (01:30):I actually hired James, um, around the time that we had him back on to tell his story of kind of what went down, why he left the podcast. I actually hired James after that. Cause now he is working, um, primarily with coaches, consultants, helping them build their brands and helping them launch courses, things like that. So I thought, well, James he's he's, he knows the solar stuff and he's good at helping coaches and everything. So why don't we figure out a way we can work together? So since then we've been working together, have some excited things, exciting things coming out. Um, he helped me kind of put together the Solciety, which we'll be talking about more it's in a beta testing right now. So for those that are on the wait list, go join the wait list. If you haven't already solciety.co.Speaker 2 (02:15):But after that, I invited him to actually be an instructor in on the course. And obviously you have a ton of insight to have done solar online Legion. So I'm had some valuable stuff to share. So that's why he's back on. We're going to be doing just a little bit content here and there. And I think there's still a lot of value he can add. So yeah. So happy to be here. Yeah. So James, today we're jamming on, um, just, you know, the lead gen, we're talking about a whole lot just over the past couple of days, just online versus offline. And so can you give us like your background? You did the online lead gen. You basically had an agency with for years. So I don't know. You want to give your background in that role. So yeah, I've done. Um, I've done it all for lead gen.Speaker 2 (03:07):So started out as a sales rep, a solar rep, like everybody and did not do online leads. Uh, a lot of people think I just came out of the gate in my solar career, started doing social media, all that good stuff, but, uh, it's completely the other way around for the first three years of my career, I never generated a single lead online. It was all in person, uh, strategies, which we'll talk about, um, whether it's door knocking. I did a little bit of that, bu

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 everybody. Should you knock doors?Speaker 2 (00:44):Should you be out grinding every day? How should you be getting your leads? That's what we're going to talk about today on the podcast, but I'm, [inaudible] Taylor. I'm Sean. Back with another episode here to make your life as a Solarpreneur, easier here to help you close more deals here to help you generate more referrals and hopefully make it all around. Easier to be in the solar industry. I hope you like my intro. Trying out a few different intros. Okay. So hope you enjoyed trying to work on my little, uh, drum drum roll intro. There. Maybe we should get an actual drum. I know it doesn't really sound like a drum roll starting off the episode, but let's jump into the episode today. So should you knock doors? What I want to talk about is the importance of knocking doors. Why? I think everyone should be hitting the doors, grinding out there in neighborhoods.Speaker 2 (01:39):If you were already hitting doors everyday grinding in super hard. Maybe this episode isn't for you. Maybe you've got it figured out it's okay. But if you're anything like me and I know a lot of people in this industry, we struggle to get out on the doors. Sometimes we struggle with motivation. Sometimes we wonder why should we knock doors? Why don't we just follow up with people? Try to get referrals, try to do other methods of lead gen. Okay. So I'm going to tell you why. I think it's so important that you get out there on the doors that you make it part of your general routine and get out there multiple times a week. Maybe you have a setter closer model in your company. Maybe you have other ways of generating leads, but I want to tell you right now that if you're not knocking doors, you are selling yourself short on those other lead gen methods.Speaker 2 (02:28):Why? Because being out there on the doors, it's going to make you that much more effective, have a closer, it's gonna make you that much more effective at overcoming objections. It's gonna make you that much more effective at just the mental game. Being out on the door is it's a mental battle out there. And if you learn to master the mental side of things, how much more effective are you going to be as your colon online needs? How much more effective or are you going to be as you're closing deals, as you're in homes, it's going to be a huge difference. Okay. So hopefully I can convince you today that you need to be knocking doors. Even if it's just a couple of times a week, you should be getting out there. You should be grinding. It's going to make you way more successful. Okay.Speaker 2 (03:13):So I want to tell you a little bit about my start in the door to door. And I know I've gone over this a few times. Hey, but what some people don't know is that growing up, I was insanely shy as a kid. And part of it was, I wouldn't talk, I didn't want to express myself. Um, I felt like no one paid attention to me and even, uh, my

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

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 couldSpeaker 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,

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, TaylorSpeaker 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.Speake

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 TaylorSpeaker 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 g

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 expe

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 hereSpeaker 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

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 anotherSpeaker 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 shou

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. SoSpeaker 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 trackSpeaker 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, yo

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 tip

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 c

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. Solarpreneurs. We are backSpeaker 2 (00:45):With another fantastic episode and I'm super excited today because we have one of the OGs of knocking on the show today. His name is Danny Pessy. Thanks for coming on Danny. What's up guys? How you doing? Oh yeah. So we're excited to have Danny on and if you haven't heard of him, you're probably living under a rock cause this guy is a producing awesome content. He's got 11,000 followers on Instagram. He's all over the place. You've been the door to order Connors or anything like that. You've seen him in all his, uh, his, uh, you know, like mob outfits he's wearing like tiger skins and stuff like that, showing up to events. So you can't miss this guy, but beside the flyer that he brings to the industry, he is definitely a top producer. Um, I mean you've sold thousands and thousands of alarm accounts, Danny, and doing tons of solar now.Speaker 2 (01:40):So, uh, yeah. What was your top summer like 350 alarm counts accounts 456, 456. Ooh, okay. Fire. So you're crushing a man and then now you're doing some solar deals, right? Yeah. So we, uh, so we we've trained, we've pivoted our business, um, from, uh, security to solar. So, you know, for the last, uh, 60 days I've been heavy doing solar and it's been, it's been a fun transition and we've, uh, we've started a setter closer model and a self-gen model. And, uh, we've transitioned our alarm sales reps to solar and we are converting our alarm technicians into solar installations and the company I worked for Titanium, we're transitioning now into being installation company. So we're going to control the whole process. Yeah, it's been, it's been fun. And you know, it's been, it's been mentally, uh, emotionally challenging to shift industries. Cause alarms have been great to me. I never had, I've never had a bad year and it's because of the environment that I grew up in and, you know, working for good. And for so long, I felt myself to a very high standard. And, you know, obviously that is like the standard of top performing reps and you, a lot of, uh,Speaker 3 (03:00):A lot of, uh, you know, what I've been able to accomplish just because of the identity that I held as, you know, a top performing rep. And so with me identifying as that, it was hard to make that transition into solar. And so I've had to do a lot of work to do it. Cause, you know, it's kind of like leaving a girlfriend that's been successful and you know, it's unfortunate, but a lot of people don't realize that like emotional attachments to your business can be devastating to you. And, you know, a perfect example, my uncle, he used to run, um, an art deco decor company and he was crushing it in the nineties and two thousands. And what he would sell was his high ticket item, um, sculpture. So he'd make brass sculptures and, uh, you know, beautiful light fixtures. And there were thousands of thousands of dollars, high-quality brass.Speaker 3 (03:52):And what happened was the marketplace show. It slowly shifted from high ticket, high cost items to Ikea. Cheap would buy it for a couple of years, throw them away when you're done and he never pivoted his business. And then eventually, um, you know, all the money that you've accumulated over the years, uh, kinda went,

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 ArmstrongSpeaker 2 (00:45):Back with another episode here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and more referrals and dominate in the solar industry. Hope you're doing well today. We've got a little bit different episode and I'm going to go through a program that I just completed. Um, actually at the time of this recording, I have two more days left. Okay. But I am planning on completing it, I guess, a Dane a quarter. So that program, if you've been listening to the previous episodes, I brought it up a few times already and it's something that I highly recommend. So I'm going to tell you my experience with it, my hesitations going into it, um, actually thought about doing for doing it for probably over a year now, but finally got around to doing it. So I'm telling my hesitations in experience and what I overall just gained from going through it.Speaker 2 (01:44):Okay. So that program I'm going to talk about is called 75 Hard. And a lot of you have probably heard of it. It is pretty popular and a lot of people post about on Tik TOK, social media, a lot of people have gotten great results with it. Um, you know, sales guys at helps a lot of different benefits, so I'm going to jump into it. Okay. So first of all, I heard about this program from a few friends, her, I guess, coworkers, people that I have sold with for awhile. Um, some of the guys that first got me in the industry actually told me about it. My first buddy that did hit his name is Dallin. He's actually been on the show Dallin Pancheri, probably about 50 episodes ago. You can go back and listen to him, but he told me about this program.Speaker 2 (02:30):He went through it and what it is, if you're not familiar with it is for 75 days straight, you have to follow a checklist of specific items. And if you miss even one thing on this checklist, you go back to day zero. So the things you have to follow is you have to do two workouts a day. They have to be 45 minutes. Each you have to take a progress picture. You have to read 10 pages, you have to drink a gallon of water. You have to follow a specific diet you can't have any cheat meals or alcohol. So that's the program. And honestly sounds, I mean, somewhat simple, probably a lot of you are doing these things already. So I'm thinking of, okay, workout, um, read a few pages, drink some water. It doesn't sound like that. I can be away now, but the key with all this, and I found this out pretty quickly, it's that you have to be ultra consistent.Speaker 2 (03:24):Like I said, if you miss even one thing on there, you're going back to D zero. Right? So that's the key with it. And then the other thing is you can make it as strict or as easy as you want. Okay. I mean, obviously I'm more applying do the workouts and the diets. Okay. Cause he doesn't specify what type of workouts you have to do. He doesn't specify which diet you have to follow. So when I first heard about this program, my friend, Dallin, he did a diet where he didn't eat any sugar for 75 days. Okay. And by no sugar, I mean, he, even if it had a gram of sugar, he's not eating it. His, so you look at most things have sugar in them right. Right. Um, so yeah, I mean any food label, not even a gram of sugar, he's like, no, not e

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 bring in the top solar dogs, the industry, to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, following 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. What's up Solarpreneurs,Speaker 2 (00:44):Taylor Armstrong. Back with another episode here to help you close more deals, generate more referrals and leads and help you dominate in the solar industry. Hope you're doing well. If you didn't listen to the last episode you are missing out. We had the one, the only coach Michael Burt on the show and definitely a high profile guest. If you haven't heard of him, go check them out. He spoke at 10 XCon Grant Cardone's events. He's one of the top coaches, top sales trainers in the world, I would say. So go listen to the episode and share that. Give them a like in, let them know you appreciated him coming on. If you haven't already, um, besides that, what else do we have going on? Um, if you haven't heard the big announcement yet, we have our new learning platform that is opening up, um, to an exclusive group that's happening next week.Speaker 2 (01:40):It might already be out depending on when you're listening to this. By the time we have this recording here at the end of March, we are releasing to the first group of students. Um, the new learning platform, that's solciety.co. If you haven't gone and checked it out, I want to suggest that you hop on this. It's going to change the game and we're not going to dump all the details here yet. That's going to be pretty soon, but just to give you a little teaser, it's going to be something similar to, if you've heard of the masterclass, you maybe have seen ads for that, but masterclass, what they do, they go and find the best of each industry. Um, they, you can get Steph Curry to teach basketball. They get, um, you know, any difference, any of like skill you want to learn. They go and get the best person from there to teach it.Speaker 2 (02:35):So what we're doing with solciety, it's going to be something similar to that and ton, ton of other things I can't go into quite yet, but we're going to get the best of the industry. Bring them all together into one platform and create a community around it. So you're not going to want to miss out. And it is so cheap right now. I can't even believe we're releasing it for so cheap. So go get on. It's definitely going to go up in price. So hop on while you can. That's solciety.co. Um, if you want to go check it out and go get one on the wait list, we're gonna open it up, um, next week. Okay. But so let's jump into the episode today. Hope you're closing lots of deals. It's springtime here in San Diego. It's getting nice and warm outside, nice and toasty.Speaker 2 (03:25):Plenty of doors to knock. Now, people are in a better mood with that warm outside. So I want to tell a story about something that happened to me last week, some mistakes I made and, um, something that actually went really well. And then it's going to be something that you maybe haven't tried. So basically what I did is I was able to turn a customer, the, me to drop the price. I turned this customer into about eight referrals now. Okay. So crazy amount of referrals, but the bad news is, well, not bad, but I did drop the price. So I'm going to tell you what I did. And I'm going to tell you the mistakes I made first with this customer. And then I'm going to tell you how I got these eight referrals. It's not going to happen with

Having a system, processes, and guiding philosophy serve as the essential building blocks to support business and it's growth. When you incorporate them into your solar company's workday routine, these help improve your overall efficiency. But what's missing in this business world is creating targets. Keeping that intensity and persistence can create discipline. To help reach the company goal, we seek help from professional and certified coaches to create a competitive workforce. This sense of competition forces a team to get better.

Transcription: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. I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail. I teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bring in 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 sore anywhere you might ask? A solopreneur 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 in solarpreneurSpeaker 2 (00:44):Nation Taylor Armstrong. Back with another episode here to help your life easier in your solar sales journey, helping you crush it, helping you get more referrals, generate more leads and dominate. That's what we're all about. So I wanted to give you a couple updates on the things going on around my neck of the woods here in San Diego, just got back from a Mario kart tournament with our sales team, and you'll be sad to know that I came in second place. Did not, um, pull out the win, but we had a hundred dollars go to the winner, had a cool little tournament. So if you're not doing fun, little activities like that, I would highly suggest it. Do that with your teams, get types of, uh, events, activities, go on. We, we do one weekly, but it can be a little much sometimes. So I would suggest maybe every couple of weeks, get your team together through an awesome activity, get some food and, uh, yeah.Speaker 2 (01:45):Do tournaments. People love it, but yeah, came in second place and uh, I grew up on Mario kart. Um, if any of you want to challenge me? I am down anytime I lost a one match cause that freaking blue shell came and hit me at the very end. If you know Mario kart, you know what I'm talking about, but anyways, so that's, what's going on here. We're keeping the activities going we're gearing up. Um, spring is coming quickly to this summer months are flying by and guess what it's already almost done with Q1. So take a step back to look at where are you at in your goals we're already done with the first quarter. We're going into the second quarter pretty quick here. So if you're not crushing it this year, start to analyze where are you at? And that's going to lead us directly into the episode, which is why should you have a coach?Speaker 2 (02:40):Okay. Um, and the reason I'm doing this episode is because next um, episode we have coming up, we have coach Michael Burton coming on. If you haven't heard a coach Burt, he is pretty high profile. Dude. I saw him speak it. Um, actually grant Kurt owns X con and he's coached hundreds and hundreds of sales people probably into the thousands business leaders, entrepreneurs. He has I think a dozen or two books. Anyways. We introduced him in that, in the next episode, but you're not going to want to miss out on that. And it got me really thinking about why is coaching important? Hey, obviously we're going to talk more about that in the next episode do, but just made me start reflecting. Why should we have coaches in when I first started in sales, that was pretty much unheard of. I was like, I was like, no one needs a coach in sales.Speaker 2 (03:36):You got a manager. You need, you don't need a coach. But then as I've talked about in some previous episodes, I actually have hired many coaches and it has been, I would say one of the single most important things to my growth, helping me close more deals, help them keeping me accountable and helping me grow as a sales person and entrepreneur. So start to consider if you've never had a coach, I want you to consider getting one. Okay. And what, what top, you know, business people, entrepreneurs they're investing in themselves. So I think that's the first principle with this.

How do you create more interaction with your homeowners? Door-to-door may seem like a nerve-wracking thing to do . However, when done right, it's a very powerful way to build your business.

How do you maintain a work-life balance in solar sales? Many people struggle balancing their work from their personal life. This isn't surprising in solar sales with the constant rejection, meeting the quota, and being available constantly for leads and potential customers. In this episode, Ashton will share some of his secret weapons on how he balances his life and give important tidbits on how to lead teams efficiently.

How is loving people going to help you in your sales? What's the same principle with this? If you love the people and if you know you have a deep conviction/deep belief in your product then you will have more conviction in what you're doing.

What's this underground training program? Are you using your commute time as learning opportunities, are you really doing whatever it takes to learn every day, to improve, to be reading books, to be going through programs, if you're not doing that and you're not seeing the type of success that you want. You have got to start to look at a question and start to ask yourself why you weren't putting the time to train every day.

Finding the perfect prospect, creating the best connections, and closing deals as quickly as possible is a dream for each solar sales person. The reality is only about 2% of sales will close on first meeting. With this pretty low percentage, you need to continue to make constant follow-ups until they are open to buying. Persistence is the key. In this episode, we listen to Moe Falah on how he became successful in closing deals.

The competition is always fierce in the solar industry. This is why you should always treat solar sales like alarms. What do I mean by this? Listen closely as I provide some useful techniques that will help you condition your mindset and help your solar sales team close deals more effectively and maximize your marketing ROI.

How do you make negative dollars on an account? People out here are making 20 to 30 grand on single counts. So how can someone go to making ridiculous money to making negative on an account? In this episode, I wanna go through the mistakes I made with this particular account and hopefully help you guys avoid these same mistakes.

A smart solar salesperson knows that you can plant seeds of doubt in a potential client’s mind and compromise a deal due to blunders in timing, judgment, or phrasing. When you want to convince a homeowner to go solar, you need to undertake a lot of challenges. There are certain factors that can turn off a homeowner from your solar offering that is why AUTHENTICITY is one of the keys in achieving a successful and intuitive sales strategy. In this episode, we will learn some of James Swiderski's past experiences that can help separate your solar business from the rest.

So how did Solarpreneur begin? Where did it all start? A lot of people have been asking about James who was my co-host in the first 50 to 70 episodes. If you're curious to learn more about what happened, tune in to this juicy episode.

Do you really have that confidence when you compare yourself to the top guys in the Solar Industry? How does your confidence stack up with the top guys in your company? I guarantee you, confidence is a big part of why they are successful. If you're struggling in sales, listening to this episode is the best thing to do now because I will teach you steps on how to develop YOUR confidence and win more sales!

What are some of your favorite books for personal and/or business development? How many times have you read them? If you don't like reading or if you're a really slow reader, I am going to share some of the hacks that I have been using in order to improve in this area.

What are Tax Credits? How do you explain Tax Benefits to the home owners so they can take advantage of it and remove misconceptions about Tax Credits. An added value of a Solar company is being able to not just close deals but explain thoroughly the benefits of Tax Credits to home owners. Educate them about tax liability and their tax claims and eventually, this will help you gain their TRUST.

Is it a taboo to knock in the dark?? I mean, as solarpreneurs trying to scale our success while selling it's pretty crucial that we aren't scaring away our potential leads and even hot leads. It makes the whole matter worse though when you scare people away before they even meet you. The reason your managers tell you that selling at night isn't smart is simply because they don't know how to do it the right way. I of course always recommend my students and team wear these light up lanyard keychains to make sure they're setting the right first-impression when they knock on doors and, even when the sale seems hopeless, help others make investments in themselves.

You need to improve your skills constantly if you want to earn a consistent, and generous, income from selling solar. One of the most important things that you can improve, besides how you get leads, is how you close them. The SELL is where all the money is made after all. Let me show you then not only some of the strategies I used to close more deals in a year than ever before, but also the mistakes other salesmen make that are losing them who knows how many sales. One of the best ways I was originally trained for closing was actually by using Grant Cardone's Closer Survival Guide.

Everyone of us has times where we need to improve our selling. I do my best every day to improve my own.

The main reason TOP Salesmen don't get referrals is really sad actually. These amazing sales reps are limited in their success simply because they either don't ask for referrals, the fastest way to scale the amount of installations you have each week, or they simply don't know how to ask for them. Look, if you want to get more people to trust you that what you have to offer them really will become an asset to their family then you need to borrow the trust of their friends and family. One of my top secrets to doing that is automation liked I talked about in yesterday's episode with Virtual Assistants that help me buy back my time. But I also use softwares like www.SendOutCards.com so I can automate the way people remember me and not the countless other sales representatives that have knocked their doors in the past. Don't sacrifice your success and paycheck each week just because you think the following up to get referrals is "too complicated". It's not. If you want more help in scaling the success you have each week in selling solar then go over to webclass.solarpreneurs.com

How much time do you spend each day on things that are unimportant? Well we all do. I realized though that the amount of time I was spending on things like responding to emails and following up with clients.

There are few things that are more annoying than a conversation with someone who doesn't really care, it's true in life and in selling solar. So I make sure that every door I knock on is at least prepared or able to invest in their own house.

There's a lot of times as solar salesmen where we just get burnt out. It comes with the job of knocking doors really. The main reason you don't feel like you're progressing in your selling is simply because you don't know these core things to scale your success. If you want to get up to 100 installs in a year, earning the Golden Door award at D2DCon, then you need to understand the reason you're out there knocking doors. You can't improve as a sales rep for your company after all if you don't know why you need to scale your abilities. One of the best ways I've found to do just that is by using planners, I recommend Grant Cardone's 10X planner You need to align yourself though regarldess with people who can push you to reach your full potential. Surround yourself then with a team that gives you the resources and drive to do just that. I'm always willing to help and excited to do so. I've got a special FREE presntation waiting for you then at webclass.solarpreneurs.com

"Taylor what's this podcast even about??" It's about you really. The Solarpreneur, those of us who not only sell solar but are also dedicated to becoming the best we can be at it. Sure we could sell for the Summer or a year and MAYBE get a few installations a month, but that would hurt people like you and I too much. We don't settle for small commissions when we know there's so much more we are capable of. Selling solar does not have to be miserable, contrary to popular belief, and that's what my mission is all about!! I know how easy it is to get just 2 installations EVERY WEEK with simple strategies. I do this nearly every week because I value my time with my family and friends more than "grinding". I systematize my knocking and automate my follow ups and I want to be sure others like me know exactly how to do the same thing.

In this episode, we get to talk with Brad Mortensen - Founder | CEO at RepCard. #solarpreneurs #integratedmarketing #sandiegocaliforniasolarpreneurs #solarsales #entrepreneur #solarclosing Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/taylor.armstrong.330 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taylor-armstrong-3ba975139/ iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-solarpreneur-podcast/id1438556991 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5LDMDHyVB5iti1TwCrmMON Anchor: https://anchor.fm/solarpreneur/ If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast! In that way, you'll get fresh new episodes automatically and you'll gain more knowledge in solar entrepreneurship.