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 solarpreneur, you might ask?
Speaker: 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: What's up, solarpreneurs?
Speaker: Taylor Armstrong back with another episode, as usual, here to help you sell more solar, generate more leads and referrals, and hopefully have a much better experience in the solar industry.
Speaker: Thanks for listening today, and thanks for making us the first listen of every day.
Speaker: at least every Tuesday and Friday, because that's when the new episodes drop.
Speaker: So today, it's going to be a quick one, but we're going to give a little preview for our next guest.
Speaker: You've heard him before.
Speaker: This is actually his third time coming on, and he dropped some heat.
Speaker: Let me tell you, you don't want to miss the next episode coming out on Tuesday.
Speaker: So if you haven't heard the previous two, his name is Michael O'Donnell.
Speaker: People know him as the GOAT of the solar industry.
Speaker: Every single year at Door to Door Con, he's up getting multiple Golden Door Awards.
Speaker: This year he got one, but last year he got, I think, two, maybe even three.
Speaker: But this guy is a machine, and it's really cool to hear his progression because if you go listen to the first episode we did with him, he actually, I don't think he'd done a lot of podcasts at that point, and he was just starting to kind of get big.
Speaker: Sam Taggart heard about him, had him on his podcast.
Speaker: I had him on the Soulpreneur podcast, and
Speaker: And he's growing a lot because I can tell because from the first episode we had, he was just on Zoom.
Speaker: I could tell he was trying to figure out the technology.
Speaker: He was one of those people that was holding the Zoom up.
Speaker: You could see like half his face.
Speaker: So I don't even know if he knew how to work technology super well back then.
Speaker: And he hadn't done a lot of speaking, but now the guy is a powerhouse.
Speaker: And not to take anything away from the previous episodes because they were fantastic.
Speaker: He still was selling at an extremely high level back then.
Speaker: But the difference from now and then is now he has trained so many teams, so many reps.
Speaker: He's put in the repetition to just not only become a great performer, but also a great trainer.
Speaker: Which that's how I feel about the podcast too.
Speaker: Because I'll be honest, you go back and listen to some of the first episodes of the Solar Printer podcast, they weren't great.
Speaker: And I sounded like an idiot on a lot of them.
Speaker: Now I know I still do at times, but hopefully...
Speaker: Hopefully, at this point, the podcast's quality has gone way up versus the beginning episodes.
Speaker: And that's the goal.
Speaker: I know it's not always a continuous improvement, but that's all we can do is try to improve a little by little every time we do something.
Speaker: Anyways, not to get on tangents, but that is what Michael O'Donnell has done.
Speaker: So this episode is really cool because he comes on and he shares basically how he's transitioned from not only producing at a high level himself, but now he is also training at a high level.
Speaker: And what was really cool at Door2DoorCon is he actually had, I think, six Golden Door winners up on that stage, more than anyone else, as far as I know.
Speaker: So it's cool.
Speaker: He is now training an extremely high level.
Speaker: And that's what he shares about.
Speaker: He has his book coming out.
Speaker: He has his online training program.
Speaker: All those things he's going to describe in detail in the podcast.
Speaker: So make sure you don't miss out on the next episode.
Speaker: Okay, so that's the preview.
Speaker: But before we wrap this episode up, the other thing that we talked about in the podcast with Michael O'Donnell is just basically the ethics of solar.
Speaker: And Michael, he's going to tell the story in the podcast.
Speaker: But the thing that happened at Door-to-DoorCon is we had a little scuffle.
Speaker: Mike almost got into it with someone on the stage there.
Speaker: He was on a solar panel there speaking.
Speaker: And someone asked this question.
Speaker: And I'm going to keep it a little more vague seen here, the full story in next episode.
Speaker: But basically someone asked to the panel, hey, what do you guys think on what do you think about people poaching permits?
Speaker: Which if you don't know, that's going and it's public records.
Speaker: You can go find out.
Speaker: who pulled a solar permit and then you can go and go to those people and basically undercut the deal.
Speaker: You can say, hey, I see you guys got a solar permit, got it.
Speaker: So it's not technically illegal that I know of, but it is kind of a dirtbag move.
Speaker: I mean, let's be real.
Speaker: The other company puts in all the work and they went and got a permit, spend money on the job, and then you're trying to convince the customer to cancel.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And so I don't have problems with switching over customers, but what I think is unethical here is actually having your guys go out and see who pulled the permit.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: So if you're, if you're actually trying to find out who got a permit and undercut them, then that's one thing versus just like knocking on someone's door and they saying, Oh, we're in the process of getting solar.
Speaker: Uh, this is what we've done.
Speaker: And then you just, um,
Speaker: Sorry, I did a little pause in the episode because we have some screaming children in the background.
Speaker: So I apologize if you've got some background noise coming through, some background screaming.
Speaker: But what I was saying is we all just need to be careful about the ethics of solar.
Speaker: There are so many people that I hear from now.
Speaker: It's been going all over these Facebook groups.
Speaker: Hey, this company did this.
Speaker: This company came and misrepresented, said they were trying to be us and told them we could get a better deal.
Speaker: So many things like that going on.
Speaker: And what I'm nervous about at the end of the day is if we don't represent solar at a high level, if we all don't keep our standards high in the industry, I'm nervous there's going to be regulations that get hammered down on us.
Speaker: Because one of the best things about solar is we can go make extremely high commissions, especially here in California.
Speaker: We can sell the systems super high, make great commissions, and still cut people's bills in half.
Speaker: And I know in other markets, maybe there's less savings, but there still is a lot of flexibility on what we can charge customers, right?
Speaker: What we can offer them.
Speaker: So this is me just making a call.
Speaker: Please have high ethics.
Speaker: Do not be one of those people that go and poach his permits.
Speaker: Do not be one of those people that misrepresents, that says you're warning.
Speaker: And this comes back to also knowing your product.
Speaker: I saw a post in one of the solar Facebook groups the other day.
Speaker: of a guy, um, someone was, they were just talking about if it's necessary to really know your products and know like the warranties and all that.
Speaker: And there were a few people on there saying, no, it serves no value to know more than you need.
Speaker: All you need to know is that panels get stuck on the roof, produce energy, and you can go out and sell a deal.
Speaker: And that is true.
Speaker: When I got in, that's all I knew I got and sell a deal.
Speaker: But what happened with me is because of that, I was lying to my customers without even knowing it because all I knew was the bare minimum.
Speaker: So please, please take the time to educate yourself on your markets, on the equipment you're using, on the exact type of warranties.
Speaker: One mistake I made is I didn't know that your lights went out.
Speaker: I thought if you had solar and it was daytime,
Speaker: that the solar was going to run your house even if the power was out.
Speaker: It wasn't true.
Speaker: Power kicks off even if you have solar, unless you have a battery.
Speaker: I was going around telling people this, and guess what?
Speaker: A couple years down the road, when few customers had power outages, I was the first person they called and said, Taylor, what the F is going on?
Speaker: Why is my power out?
Speaker: I'm like, uh, it is.
Speaker: Okay, I knew at that point.
Speaker: So I told them.
Speaker: I said, look, if I told you guys that, I'm really sorry.
Speaker: But I was new at the time and I didn't know.
Speaker: That's all I could say.
Speaker: So learn from my mistakes.
Speaker: Get knowledgeable.
Speaker: And when you do have the knowledge, make sure you have high ethics with it.
Speaker: Okay, don't go around poaching permits.
Speaker: Don't go around, I don't know, running people's credit without them knowing.
Speaker: Don't go around telling people they're going to get full offsets when it's only a 50% offset.
Speaker: These are all common things that I hear, unfortunately.
Speaker: It's sad.
Speaker: And if you know of people doing this or companies...
Speaker: We've got to stand up to these guys because we do not want this industry getting way more regulated.
Speaker: Already it's happening in California.
Speaker: We have to sign a consumer protection guide.
Speaker: We still sell plenty of deals, but it's an extra step and it's an extra thing that homeowners have to go through in order to get solar.
Speaker: So if you don't want this happening in other markets, you don't want more regulation, then make sure you keep your standards high.
Speaker: We got to stand up against this.
Speaker: We got to fight the evil.
Speaker: So make sure you're doing it.
Speaker: Do not contribute to the unethical stuff that's going on.
Speaker: Okay, so just a little rant.
Speaker: Make sure we put a stop to this.
Speaker: You're going to hear more what, you know, the little scuffle that Michael O'Donnell got in on stage.
Speaker: It wasn't huge, but end of the day, make sure you have high ethics.
Speaker: So if you know of someone that is misrepresenting to their customers, if they're doing shady stuff, send them this podcast.
Speaker: Hope it can help them in some way.
Speaker: And then I did a podcast about a year ago.
Speaker: on lies that I have told in sales.
Speaker: I went through some of the things that I've told customers that wasn't true.
Speaker: Some of it I knew, some of it I didn't.
Speaker: So I've done some stuff that I'm not proud of.
Speaker: Learned some lessons.
Speaker: If you want to hear what that was about, go on this.
Speaker: I think it's called lies I've told in solar.
Speaker: So you can go hear that if you want to hear more juicy details on stuff I missed up on.
Speaker: So go listen to that.
Speaker: And again, make sure you don't miss out on next episode.
Speaker: Michael O'Donnell, Mr. Goat, he's going to be dropping some fire.
Speaker: So we will see you on the next podcast.
Speaker: Hey Solarpreneurs, 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.
Speaker: And it's called Solcitee.
Speaker: This learning community was designed from the ground up to level the playing field and give Solar Pros access to proven mentors who want to give back to this community and help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry's brightest minds for, are you ready for it, less than $3.45 a day.
Speaker: Currently, SoulCity is open, launched, and ready to be enrolled.
Speaker: So go to SoulCity.co to learn more and join the learning experience now.
Speaker: This is exclusively for solopreneur listeners, so be sure to go to SoulCity.co and join.
Speaker: We'll see you on the inside.
