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The 20-Minute Solar Pitch... Myth Or Secret Weapon?
93 Plays6 years ago
Hey Solarpreneurs in this episode in the 5-part solar pitch series we're talking about the immediate benefits of narrowing your pitch down to less than 20 minutes and why it's not as impossible as it might sound.
Enjoy this episode, leave us a review and share with a friend. You know the drill!
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Transcript
Effective 20-Minute Solar Pitch
00:00:00
Speaker
In this episode, I'm going to break down why your pitch is too long and how you can present in 20 minutes or less.
00:00:07
Speaker
Coming right up.
Successful vs. Average Solar Entrepreneurs
00:00:08
Speaker
Look, in the solar business, there's really only two types of people.
00:00:11
Speaker
There's the ones that crush it, make six, seven, and eight figures, and then there's everyone else.
00:00:16
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The question is, which one will you be?
Insights from Solar Sales Pros
00:00:20
Speaker
Over the last four years, we've studied the sharpest solar sales and marketing pros and how they build multi-million dollar incomes using only the best solar sales and marketing strategies.
00:00:31
Speaker
So how do these solarpreneurs do what they do and what makes them so successful?
00:00:37
Speaker
This podcast is your answer.
00:00:40
Speaker
Join us and thousands of sales pros, marketers, and entrepreneurs as we take the solar industry by storm and uncover what it takes to sell more solar with less
James Swarovski's Introduction
00:00:51
Speaker
effort.
00:00:51
Speaker
Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast.
00:00:57
Speaker
Hey, what's going on solopreneurs?
00:00:59
Speaker
James Swarovski here and today I want to diagnose the solar pitch.
00:01:03
Speaker
I want to dive into the meat of the pitch here in the next two episodes and to start out with this, I want to really just address something head-on that's very controversial that I've been putting out in the industry for a few years now.
00:01:16
Speaker
That my 20-minute solar pitch is the reason why my sales team, my students are able to close 70, 80, 90 percent.
00:01:24
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Just unheard of ridiculous closing ratios.
Human Attention Span and Pitching
00:01:28
Speaker
This clear, defined, distilled solar pitch is the reason we do it.
00:01:34
Speaker
But to give you guys some background, right?
00:01:35
Speaker
Because it sounds, let's be real, right?
00:01:38
Speaker
It sounds ludicrous, right?
00:01:39
Speaker
20-minute solar pitch is unheard of in this industry.
00:01:43
Speaker
And there's a reason behind it.
00:01:44
Speaker
And I want to cover those reasons now.
00:01:46
Speaker
And in another episode tomorrow, I want to give you the exact blueprint on how I pulled this off.
00:01:51
Speaker
But in order for this to work, you have to understand a couple of things about the human attention span, okay?
00:01:58
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And there was a study in 2015.
00:01:59
Speaker
It was a report done by Consumer Insights team of Microsoft Canada.
00:02:06
Speaker
And what it concluded was that the average human attention span in 2000, the year 2000, was roughly
Refocusing and Pitch Duration
00:02:12
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12 seconds.
00:02:12
Speaker
Okay?
00:02:16
Speaker
But since then, in 2015, when this report was done, it's since shrunk down to eight seconds, which if you guys have looked at this at all, the common household goldfish, you know, in the tank has an attention span of nine seconds.
00:02:32
Speaker
So on average, your average human has an attention span one second less than a goldfish.
00:02:38
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Pretty ridiculous, okay?
00:02:40
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And you might be saying, James, I could pay attention longer than eight seconds on something.
00:02:44
Speaker
Cool, you may not be the average person, but the study also said the average person must continually refocus their attention every eight seconds.
Impact of Pitch Duration on Sales
00:02:53
Speaker
Meaning the average person could only focus on one given idea, one thought, one task, about eight seconds, and then they have to refocus back to it because their mind starts drifting.
00:03:03
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And they could only do this, this refocusing, this is where it comes into play,
00:03:08
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on average for 10 to 20 minutes.
00:03:12
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What does this mean for you?
00:03:14
Speaker
This means you have 10 to 20 minutes of refocused attention maximum for the average human.
00:03:22
Speaker
So when you think about your solar pitch right now,
00:03:26
Speaker
Why do you think you can't get somebody to close, somebody to pay attention to the reason solar makes sense, to get them to be emotionally involved when you're staying in the home for an hour, two hours?
00:03:39
Speaker
I've even seen six hours with some people.
00:03:42
Speaker
I know, ridiculous.
00:03:43
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I know it's not you guys, but it's out there.
00:03:47
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This means, guys, we have to pay attention.
Necessity of Concise Pitches
00:03:51
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As solar consultants, as professionals, we've got to pay attention not only to solar and what's going on in the industry.
00:03:57
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We've got to pay attention to humans, okay?
00:04:00
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Because what business are we really in?
00:04:01
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We're in the people business.
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That's how we make sales.
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We get people to pay attention to us, to trust us, to trust our products, that they're going to work, and to trust our company.
00:04:10
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The only way we could do that is if we communicate with them.
00:04:14
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And if we don't understand, and if we're too selfish and centered focused, right, to realize that people really do not want to pay attention and they're inhumanly capable of paying attention for longer than 20 minutes, then I don't know what to tell you.
00:04:29
Speaker
So guys, this means...
00:04:32
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A 20-minute presentation isn't just nice to have right now, especially as competitors are coming in.
00:04:38
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Competition's getting greater.
00:04:40
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The industry is changing.
00:04:41
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Having a 20-minute presentation is a must-have, and I want you guys to get that in your head, okay?
Benefits of Shorter Pitches
00:04:48
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Know it's possible.
00:04:49
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Know I've been doing it for years.
00:04:50
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I'm going to show you how to do it.
00:04:52
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I am the guy for the 20-minute solar pitch.
00:04:55
Speaker
Now, I want to talk about in this episode, though, the top reasons why you should shorten your pitch.
00:05:00
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What are the byproducts of doing this?
00:05:03
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We know the prescription here is to shorten your pitch, and I'll show you how to do that in tomorrow's episode.
00:05:09
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It's super simple, but you've got to understand what are the benefits behind this?
00:05:13
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Because if you don't realize the benefits of anything, especially this,
00:05:17
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something that is out there, left field strategy that you've never heard.
00:05:21
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If you don't know the benefits of this, there's no way you're going to spend time figuring out how to do it.
00:05:28
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So my idea is to give you the proof, the proof on why you should do this, what it's going to do for you, what is the benefit to your entire career.
00:05:37
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But before I do that, I want to ask you this question.
00:05:40
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It's a super simple question, but I want you to really think about it.
00:05:44
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If you had the choice between spending an hour and a half at somebody's home, talking about solar, presenting, going out in the backyard, looking at the meter, all that stuff, and closing the deal, if you had the choice between doing an hour and a half, two hours of that, or being able to do it in 20, maybe even 30 minutes at the long end to get started, which one would you rather have?
00:06:06
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See, the answer, it's pretty obvious, right?
00:06:09
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But when I ask beginning students or any of you guys out on social media, which they'd rather take, you guys kind of give me a funny look with it, right?
00:06:17
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And it's because you don't believe it's possible.
00:06:22
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And why is that simple?
00:06:24
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Because they've never believed it or you've never believed it because nobody's done it.
00:06:31
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You've never seen it.
00:06:31
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You don't know anybody else has.
James's ADHD and Pitch Simplification
00:06:34
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And over the last three years, out of all of the sales strategies that I've worked with, working with thousands of solar pros, extracting the top producers information and applying them to my own
00:06:45
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sales pipeline and my own team, I've spent the most amount of time and research on the presentation and giving the presentation in 20 minutes.
00:06:56
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And the reason I did it was simple.
00:06:58
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It came out of necessity.
00:07:00
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I actually have ADHD and there isn't a chance in hell I would ever listen to a boring pitch about the usual stuff that we talk about, the warranties, microinverters, whatever it is.
00:07:11
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And there's no way I'd be able to put my own customers through that exact same thing.
Major Benefits of 20-Minute Pitches
00:07:16
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So it came out of necessity.
00:07:18
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I couldn't pay attention for hours in a presentation.
00:07:21
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I knew homeowners couldn't do it either.
00:07:24
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So here are the top benefits.
00:07:26
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Let's cut to the chase.
00:07:27
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This is why you should be presenting at 20 minutes or less.
00:07:30
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Number one is an obvious one.
00:07:33
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by cutting down your pitch, you have more time to go prospect, to go find more leads, okay?
00:07:40
Speaker
I see a lot of solar pros dedicate so much time to presentations, right?
00:07:44
Speaker
Because they know it's an opportunity to close and that's great.
00:07:47
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But if you spend, calculate an hour drive time, 30 minutes there, 30 minutes back, okay?
00:07:53
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I know a lot of you guys are even driving more, but let's say you drive one hour for each presentation and then you spend an hour and a half for that home.
00:08:00
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That's two and a half hours of your day.
00:08:03
Speaker
okay you do that in the evening around 6 p.m 6 to 8 30 okay that's prime prospecting time that's prime presentation time every single minute between the hours of maybe 4 and 10 p.m are should be treated like gold right they're really sacred time sacred hours for you as a solar consultant and by spending all of this time you're
00:08:25
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on your presentation, wouldn't it make more sense if you could find a way to cut it down, right?
00:08:31
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If you could cut that down to 20 minutes, imagine how much time you could be on social media, right?
00:08:38
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Prospecting, how much time you could be calling and following up with leads, right?
00:08:42
Speaker
I actually used to take Ubers and Lyft drives all the time to my appointments instead of driving so I could be on social media prospecting on the way over there.
00:08:52
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See, by doing that, I was able to literally set leads while I'm on the way to an appointment.
00:08:57
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This was before I started doing virtual sales, but it was an effective use of my time.
00:09:02
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And I understood the value of that precious time between 4 and 10 p.m.
00:09:08
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Cut down on your pitch.
00:09:09
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You have more time to get more leads.
Elevating Consultant Status
00:09:12
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Number two, and this is my favorite, this is a game changer.
00:09:15
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Out of all of our strategies that we teach like in the Solar Spartan system in my training, right?
00:09:20
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The one that really makes a huge difference for most of the students is this one right here.
00:09:25
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It's raising their status to the homeowner.
00:09:28
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You're going to show the homeowner when you do a presentation in 20 minutes, right?
00:09:34
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And you make yourself do it in 20 minutes that you're a solar consultant of worth.
00:09:38
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You're not a desperate needy salesperson and you're not afraid to lose the sale.
00:09:44
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The less afraid you are of losing the sale, the more likely you will get it.
00:09:51
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It's a funny thing how that works.
00:09:53
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Homeowners can sense it.
00:09:55
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They call it sales breath for a reason, right?
00:09:57
Speaker
When a guy's just so desperate to make a sale and he'll spend hours in the home just to try and get the sale with you, homeowners know exactly what you're doing by presenting in 20 minutes and forcing yourself to do it, okay?
00:10:12
Speaker
I always make our new students do this as an exercise is to literally go into the homeowner's house,
00:10:17
Speaker
pull out your phone, put the countdown clock on for 20 minutes and say, I have 20 minutes right now before I have to go to give you the idea about solar and help you move forward with this.
00:10:30
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I don't want to waste your time.
00:10:31
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Let's get moving.
00:10:32
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Boom.
00:10:32
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And they click the 20 minute timer in front of the homeowner and put it on the table.
00:10:38
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absolutely a game changer because now the homeowner is paying attention because that clock is ticking.
00:10:44
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They're not wasting time.
00:10:45
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You're paying attention.
00:10:46
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You're not bullshitting about how the dog and the family's doing.
00:10:50
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You get straight to the facts on what is needed to close and nothing else.
00:10:55
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Awesome, awesome strategy.
00:10:57
Speaker
And by doing that, you show that your time is valuable, that you are a high status person, that you have a lot of people, a lot of homeowners seeking you out.
00:11:06
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And it makes the homeowner believe that more people are doing solar because you're so busy.
00:11:14
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Raise your status.
Standing Out with a 20-Minute Pitch
00:11:16
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Lastly here, number three, is you instantly separate yourself from the competition.
00:11:21
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You guys know this.
00:11:23
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Maybe hearing this for the first time, you're just like, what the heck?
00:11:26
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Nobody's doing this.
00:11:28
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And that's the point.
00:11:29
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Literally none of your competitors will do this.
00:11:32
Speaker
You're going to be 100% different.
00:11:34
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Every single time that I was selling in Utah, right?
00:11:37
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My first 18 months in the industry in Utah, super competitive market, five, six, seven, eight bids on the table.
00:11:44
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I would be the last guy that comes in a lot of the time.
00:11:47
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And they would say, I've heard the solar pitch.
00:11:49
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And boom, I get in there.
00:11:51
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And every single time, I kid you not, compliments on my 20-minute pitch.
00:11:55
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Compliments on how efficient I am, how professional I am.
00:11:59
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And guess who got that deal?
Adopting the 20-Minute Strategy
00:12:01
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I did.
00:12:04
Speaker
So instantly separate yourself from the competition, present in 20 minutes.
00:12:09
Speaker
Guys, that's it for this episode.
00:12:11
Speaker
In the next episode tomorrow, I'm going to break down exactly what is covered in this 20-minute pitch.
00:12:15
Speaker
But know this, if you just took today's episode and you didn't even know how to do it,
00:12:20
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Just by shortening the length, doing that one strategy of whipping out the timer, you're going to increase your closing ratio.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:12:27
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I guarantee it.
00:12:28
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I've never seen the strategy not fail.
00:12:31
Speaker
Takes a lot of balls, takes a lot of guts, but so does sales, guys.
00:12:36
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If you're not willing to do these things that are uncomfortable that most people can't do, you're going to just be a mediocre average salesperson.
00:12:44
Speaker
That is the gosh darn truth here.
00:12:48
Speaker
Guys, I'll see you tomorrow in the next episode.
00:12:51
Speaker
Keep crushing it and we'll talk to you soon.
00:12:52
Speaker
Wow, what another amazing episode of the Solarpreneur podcast.
00:12:57
Speaker
Now, before we take off here, do us a favor and go leave an honest review on your platform of choice or wherever you're listening to this podcast.
00:13:06
Speaker
It helps us get the word out about the solopreneur movement and impact more entrepreneurs, sales professionals, and marketers just like you.
00:13:15
Speaker
And hey, don't forget to head over to Facebook and join the solopreneur group for more daily content that's going to impact you and help you take your sales game to the next level.
00:13:24
Speaker
See you guys in the next episode.