Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
Speaker: My name is Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: 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 fell.
Speaker: I teach you how to avoid the mistakes I made and bring in the top solar dogs of the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro, and closing more deals.
Speaker: What is a solopreneur you might ask?
Speaker: A solopreneur is a new breed of solopreneur that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.
Speaker: What's up solopreneurs?
Speaker: Today we're going to be talking about how to plan your week like a boss, how to plan your week like a solopreneur, how the top solopreneurs do it.
Speaker: So we're going to jump into that.
Speaker: But before we get into the topic, I want to invite you to tune in to next Tuesday's episode because we have a very special announcement.
Speaker: We've been working on a top secret project.
Speaker: I know you guys are going to love it.
Speaker: So make sure you tune in to next Tuesday's podcast.
Speaker: So let's jump into the topic today.
Speaker: It's going to be a quicker one, but the reason I am thinking so much about planning lately is because, as some of you know, I'm in the Noxstar training, which talked about it before.
Speaker: I highly recommend Danny Pesci, Taylor McCarthy, those guys over there.
Speaker: They do some great training, so go follow them on Instagram if you're not already.
Speaker: But I am in their coaching group right now.
Speaker: We have calls every week.
Speaker: And this last call, we had the opportunity to listen to someone that's, if you've been in door-to-door for any amount of time, you know this guy.
Speaker: He's like one of the godfathers of door-to-door sales.
Speaker: His name is Jeff Mendez.
Speaker: We'll have to get him on the podcast here.
Speaker: But he talked about just some keys that he's had to his success.
Speaker: But one of the biggest takeaways that I got from that call that he and a lot of other top guys are doing is they are planning...
Speaker: like insane amounts.
Speaker: They plan their days very specific.
Speaker: They know what they're doing every 15 minutes.
Speaker: And again, another thing, I went to this conference about a month ago and a lot of the top guys there, a lot of the business leaders, entrepreneurs, they were talking about the same thing.
Speaker: If you don't have clarity and if you're not planning, you're
Speaker: If you don't know exactly what you should do every 15 minutes, then you're probably not clear enough on your goals, on the directions you want to be taking.
Speaker: And I'm not to that level yet.
Speaker: Maybe you're not either.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I'm not to the level of clarity where I know what I should be doing every 15 minutes, but hopefully I'm going to get there.
Speaker: And that's the goal.
Speaker: But as I was listening to Jeff Mendes talk about all this stuff, I realized that, man, I plan every once in a while,
Speaker: You know, once, probably once, twice a month, I'll go and do some planning, but it's not a consistent thing.
Speaker: And as I listened to him talk about all this, just like, man, I'm letting my days just basically tell me what to do.
Speaker: I'm reacting to events, every phone call that comes in, every customer that hits me up.
Speaker: I'm just reacting.
Speaker: But what if I flip the script on that?
Speaker: What if I made it so the day reacts to what I tell it to do?
Speaker: And this is what Jeff was talking about, how we need to get to that level where we tell our days what to do, where we are the ones being proactive, not reactive.
Speaker: And so I decided to try it out this last Sunday.
Speaker: I'm like, all right, Jeff Mendez talked about it.
Speaker: I'm going to get a little deeper in that planning session, watch some YouTube videos, studied some books I had about the topic.
Speaker: And I want to share with you guys a few things I had forgotten about.
Speaker: that were really effective for me as I plan my week.
Speaker: And matter of fact, happy to report that as I did this planning session, that next Monday, I got probably three times as much done as I had the other Mondays.
Speaker: So pretty cool.
Speaker: So if you haven't been planning, then I want to invite you to start.
Speaker: And the most important thing with this is to do it consistently.
Speaker: For me, I just noticed a huge difference as it's consistent versus not consistent like I've been doing.
Speaker: Once a month isn't really going to cut it.
Speaker: These things need to be weekly and then daily, right?
Speaker: You need to have your weekly and daily planning sessions.
Speaker: So I'm going to talk about weekly today.
Speaker: And then on a future episode, we'll talk about some daily planning tips.
Speaker: But your weekly planning session, a couple things with it here.
Speaker: There's a great video, my guys, over at Art of Manliness.
Speaker: It's another cool podcast.
Speaker: You don't have to be a man to listen to it.
Speaker: But anyone can go take some cool tips from this.
Speaker: It's by Brett McKay.
Speaker: He does just kind of like men's lifestyle tips, tricks, acts, secrets.
Speaker: But he put out a YouTube video on this and highly recommend it.
Speaker: In fact, I'm going to link it here on the episode.
Speaker: So go check out the show notes on wherever you're listening to this.
Speaker: But he breaks it down, so I want to give you a few highlights that I took from him, and then you can go watch the video if you want to get more in-depth.
Speaker: Another tool and resource with this, I would definitely suggest you go read the book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
Speaker: It's one of the classics of self-development by my man Stephen Covey.
Speaker: Go read it.
Speaker: But he breaks this down in his book.
Speaker: And if you want to take him to an extreme level, he goes like so in depth.
Speaker: I'm not doing it at the level he does.
Speaker: But that's how you can really plan out just your entire life direction, where you want to go.
Speaker: He talks about things like that.
Speaker: So I would suggest going first, go check out this video on weekly planning.
Speaker: But then go read Seven Habits of Highly Effective People if you haven't already.
Speaker: So here's the weekly planning session.
Speaker: A couple things here.
Speaker: First things first, you need to set aside the time to do it.
Speaker: So whatever you're using, I use Google Calendar, just put a recurring event that's going to happen every single Sunday.
Speaker: I do them on Sundays, so I would suggest Sundays, but you could do it any day.
Speaker: So set a time and make it recurring in your calendar, and then make sure you stick to that.
Speaker: And then pick your calendar tool.
Speaker: So I like to go digital.
Speaker: Some people use the paper stuff, but digital is cool.
Speaker: You can have all your obviously customers showing up on there.
Speaker: So if you're not having some sort of calendar sync with your, you know, solar appointments and all that, highly suggest that.
Speaker: Yes, that's the first two steps.
Speaker: And then another huge thing with this is make sure you're performing what people call a mind dump.
Speaker: So this is where you just take all the things that are on your mind, just put them on a piece of paper, slap them down, anything that you need to do.
Speaker: So for me, it was like, I didn't get my oil changed.
Speaker: I need to fix one of the lights on my car that's out.
Speaker: I need to go, yeah.
Speaker: Well, a lot of stuff on there, but all the things you need to do, just perform a mind dump, all the tasks you need to do.
Speaker: So this podcast, it was on there.
Speaker: Every single thing you need to think of, put it down.
Speaker: And then this is another place I would suggest doing it like on your phone or something, maybe in a notes app.
Speaker: Because if you're like me, you're going to, you probably have ADD.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Like most, you know, salespeople have, okay.
Speaker: That's the curse and the blessing of being a salesman.
Speaker: lot of us have very short attention spans if you don't then then great I mean you're one of the lucky ones but put it in a place you can always access because chances are you're gonna forget to add things to the list and you're gonna think of something an hour oh I need to do this too then what that does it frees up your mental capacity your mental space you can focus on what you really need to and this is a
Speaker: Crucial because then throughout as you go throughout your week, you're not just again reacting to things you have it all written down and you know what needs to be done.
Speaker: Hey, and then after that, just review review your goals, review your life plan.
Speaker: Okay, again, if you want to get more in depth, this is where obviously before even doing all this stuff, if you have like a life direction, then even more so effective review those goals, though.
Speaker: and then review the previous week.
Speaker: And then the planner I've been using for this, I will once again link to it.
Speaker: It's called the Best Self Planner.
Speaker: You can go get it at bestself.co.
Speaker: I use the one called Self Journal.
Speaker: A lot of other great ones, and I don't think it's...
Speaker: as important you know which planner you use a lot of them are great ones i've used grant cardone's 10x planner in the past um i've used bernan berchardt's high performance uh planner i think he used that one for a little bit um this one i like i just got off amazon actually from um suggestion from taylor turnbull one of the regional managers over it
Speaker: Vivint Solar, I guess Sunrun now, he actually suggested this one to me.
Speaker: So I picked it up, like it a lot.
Speaker: So you can go get this at bestself.co.
Speaker: It's the self journal.
Speaker: But what's really cool is they have weekly review sections in there where you can review everything, how it went for the week.
Speaker: And then you can track habits.
Speaker: You can set daily targets.
Speaker: So I think it's cool because you can set, you know, your numbers for the week.
Speaker: You can set your sales goals in there.
Speaker: Put how many contacts you want to make, how many appointments you want to sit down with for the week, how many closes.
Speaker: And like we have talked about on the podcast before, this is how you really make sales not so much a guessing game, but a science is you start tracking those numbers.
Speaker: So set some goals around that, but get some type of planner that you can use.
Speaker: So I'll link to that one if you guys want to go check it out.
Speaker: That's the best self planner.
Speaker: Okay, and so review the previous week makes it easy to have a template set some weekly goals.
Speaker: And this is going to be a lot easier one after you've done the mind dump, right, you know, which tasks you want to take from pretty easy usually to recognize what are the most important things what things are not so important.
Speaker: You can go and put I don't know, ABC if you want.
Speaker: Focus on the most important ones first and the things that are going to actually move the needle.
Speaker: And then, like I mentioned, set some sales goals.
Speaker: We're solar salespeople.
Speaker: So you can set recruiting goals.
Speaker: You can set how many homeowners you want to talk to every day.
Speaker: And maybe you want to talk to 15 homeowners a day.
Speaker: Set that goal and then track it every day.
Speaker: That will be a difference maker for you.
Speaker: And then after you've figured out all the things you need to accomplish for the week, the non-negotiables,
Speaker: Put those in the calendar, block out the time as soon as you can.
Speaker: And that's where you can just throw them in your Google Calendar, right?
Speaker: If you know you need to get your oil changed, figure out what's the day that you can do that, what's the morning you have free, and then go ahead and put it in the calendar.
Speaker: And, yeah, Stephen Covey, he talks about the concept of big rocks.
Speaker: So if you haven't heard that analogy he talks about, it's just putting in the big rocks, the most important things first.
Speaker: And then if you imagine them in a jar, you pour the pebbles around them, you're going to fit room for everything, right?
Speaker: Where if you put in the pebbles first, you're not going to fit the big rocks in there.
Speaker: Okay, so that's really the essentials of this.
Speaker: Main thing is just get a planner and make it consistent.
Speaker: It doesn't have to be some complicated long thing with it.
Speaker: Just be consistent, whatever you do, set aside time every single week.
Speaker: I remember when I did my church mission, we had their two year mission in Columbia.
Speaker: I was on there planning in Spanish.
Speaker: I had no idea what people were saying, but they made us do this every single week.
Speaker: We had to set plans for who we were going to visit, how many people we were going to baptize.
Speaker: And then every single week we had to do this two hour long thing where you plan your entire week.
Speaker: And then you did this thing.
Speaker: We were in companions there.
Speaker: So I was with Mexicans, Peruvians, all different walks of life down there.
Speaker: They pair you off with one of them.
Speaker: And then you have to say what you liked about that person this week and then bring up the stuff that was bugging you.
Speaker: Pretty intense session.
Speaker: So if you're married, maybe you can do that too.
Speaker: Maybe you can get your spouse down and get them to do some planning with you.
Speaker: But I promise this will pay dividends if you're not doing it already.
Speaker: I notice a huge difference.
Speaker: So I'd love to hear what other systems you guys have, what other planners have worked.
Speaker: Go and shoot me a message or post it in the Solar Premium or Facebook group if you're part of that.
Speaker: And that's pretty much it, guys.
Speaker: So just a crash course on the weekly planning.
Speaker: Let me know if you like this kind of stuff and we can go more in depth on the weekly and the daily plans and then get digging some deeper stuff with it.
Speaker: Let me know what you think, though.
Speaker: And don't forget, next Tuesday, we're going to be dropping the big announcement.
Speaker: So tune in next Tuesday.
Speaker: Tell your friends, tell your mom, tell your grandma.
Speaker: Listen to the podcast next Tuesday.
Speaker: You will not want to miss out.
Speaker: So with that being said, thanks for listening.
Speaker: Appreciate you guys.
Speaker: Love you guys.
Speaker: And we will see you on the next episode.
Speaker: Hey, solopreneurs, quick question.
Speaker: What if you could surround yourself with the industry's top performing sales pros, marketers, and CEOs and learn from their experience and wisdom in less than 20 minutes a day.
Speaker: For the last three years, I've been placed in the fortunate position to interview dozens of elite level solar professionals and learn exactly what they do behind closed doors to build their solar careers to an all-star level.
Speaker: That's why I want to make a truly special announcement about the new learning community exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with top performers in the industry.
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Speaker: This is exclusively for solopreneur listeners, so be sure to go to solcity.co and join.
Speaker: We'll see you on the inside.
