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113. Why My Time Is Worth More Than Money
33 Plays5 years ago
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.
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Transcript
Taylor's Journey to Success
00:00:03
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Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
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My name is Taylor Armstrong.
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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.
Learning from Mistakes and Industry Secrets
00:00:19
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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.
00:00:31
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What is a solopreneur you might ask?
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A solopreneur is a new breed of solopro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one of them.
What is a Solopreneur?
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What's up, solopreneurs?
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Taylor Armstrong back with another episode here to help you make more money, close more deals, get more referrals, and dominate the solar game.
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We're going to jump right into today's episode, and we're going to talk about what I think is the number one way to become a solopreneur.
Entrepreneurs vs. Solopreneurs
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So you've heard the explanation, what's a solopreneur?
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What's a solopreneur?
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It's someone that can do it all.
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Someone that can collect their referrals.
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You think of an entrepreneur.
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What's an entrepreneur?
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They're someone that they have a team of people.
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Any great entrepreneur, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, anything great they've done, they've done it with a team of people.
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And they're not doing all the programming.
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They're the deep thinkers.
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They're the creative thinkers.
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So that's what I want you to think about when we're talking about becoming a solopreneur.
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Are you simply a sales rep that's just going to deals and selling?
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Or are you a sole premier?
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Are you thinking of everything?
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Do you have a team around you?
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Do you have people that are helping you do the things that maybe you're not the greatest
Task Reflection and Improvement
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at?
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So I want you to do something real quick right now.
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Here it is.
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Take out a pen and paper.
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Write down everything you do to sell solar.
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You probably have thought of prospecting, the actual selling, follow up with potential clients, signing HOA forms, collecting referrals, sending emails.
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And you probably think of a lot of things, frankly.
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People forget that knocking doors is, summers isn't necessarily a hard part.
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The hardest part about selling solar is when you look back at a cell and thought, I'm the reason they didn't buy, or I didn't do.
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I don't know.
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I didn't do all the follow up I should have.
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I didn't do whatever it was.
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How many things are there that you could be doing to make the sell go smoother?
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I have deals that have canceled.
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That happens all the time.
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You get the hindsight bias.
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You think if I would have done this, if I would have followed up with them more, if I would have dropped off a fruit basket after the sell,
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If I would have explained this better, if I would have brought up this objection, there are a lot of things.
Building a Support Team
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So don't make this mistake.
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I had to learn it the hard way.
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What do you need to do?
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You need to get a team around you.
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You need to have people helping you.
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So we're going to talk more and more about this, but the way I do it is I have a virtual assistant right now.
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I hired someone from the Philippines.
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Her name is Angelica.
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Shout out to Angelica because she's probably listening back on this.
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We'll be editing the show.
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But she helps me do all these things that I don't have the time and the energy to do.
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How many tasks are you doing that you could delegate?
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Or how many things are you not doing just because you're too lazy to and you know you should be?
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Maybe it's that email you don't want to write.
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Maybe it's that follow-up you want to do.
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Maybe it's the CRM you're not organizing.
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Maybe it's the list of your customers you're not falling back on to get referrals.
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There's so many things that even I think of now that if I was doing, I would be making probably 10 times the amount of money that I'm making right now.
00:03:53
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It's probably the same for you.
00:03:55
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What I want to do, I'm going to go through just a checklist of a few things that I have delegated, that I've done, give you some ideas of things.
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Really, the purpose of this episode is to get you thinking.
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What am I doing right now that could be delegated?
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What am I doing right now that I could be paying someone $10 an hour to do?
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Because if you're in solar, you should be making minimum $100 an hour.
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It shouldn't be $10.
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So why are you spending your time doing tasks you could pay $10 an hour to do?
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Or $15?
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Or if you're hiring someone from the Philippines and their culture and their country,
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I mean five, six dollars an hour, that's great money for them.
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So let's go through this list.
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Let's think of a few things that you could possibly delegate.
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If you want this list, I'm actually going to create a checklist.
Task Management and Tools
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So hit me up on Facebook or on the social medias.
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I could get you a checklist like this.
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But just in general, reviewing your goals is
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Are you doing this?
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Do you need someone else to help you review your goals?
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Checking emails.
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That's a huge one.
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How much time do you spend checking emails?
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How many emails are you getting from Chuck E. Cheese or from the Trump campaign or from the Biden campaign or whatever that you don't need to be spending hours a day reading?
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What if you had someone that could go through all these emails and sort through them and have you only reading the ones that are worth your time?
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How much time have you wasted on that returning email?
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How many emails are simple answers, simple things that anyone can answer?
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Could you have someone return email for you?
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Managing your email contact list.
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Checking voicemails.
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If you don't already, you can set up a Google Voice, which is a number on, in my case, I'm in California here, and I still have a Utah number.
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I haven't changed it.
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I don't like changing my number.
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So what I did, you can go create a Google Voice.
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It's free.
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It gives you a local number.
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And what's cool is you can share that login with your team, with your virtual assistant.
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She can go on there.
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She can send text through it, check voicemails, give you heads up about those.
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A lot of things you can do with that.
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And it's free.
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There's lots of other paid ones that do, you know, have a million features.
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But Google Voice, it's free.
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Go set one up.
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Making returning phone calls, planning trips for you.
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creating slides, PowerPoints, templates.
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In my case, I am managing a team down here in San Diego.
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So guess who's creating my slides and my PowerPoints for my team trainings?
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Not me.
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I don't want to spend an hour doing that.
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I'll write out my notes, write out my bullet points, send it to her.
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She will add in pictures for it.
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She'll add in funny little GIFs.
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She'll add in the funny cat videos, give us some comedy.
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I don't want to take the time to look all that up.
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Why don't I have her do it?
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What else?
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Update software subscriptions manage really as a solopreneur, you probably have a lot of subscriptions, a lot of different maybe services you're paying for.
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So there's an app I will recommend to you for that.
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It's called Bobby.
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You can go on there and you can put all your subscriptions.
Focusing on High-Value Work
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So for me, I have Audible.
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That's a subscription.
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You get the audiobooks.
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I have Google Drive.
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That's a subscription.
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I have a 1Password, which is a password sharing app.
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LastPass is another one.
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I got fitness coaching.
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I got ClickFunnels, which is a marketing tool.
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A lot of different subscriptions.
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And who can you have help you organize all that?
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It's another thing.
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So I'm not going to go through all these, but these are just a few things.
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Again, if you want an entire checklist, let me know and I can send you one because it's amazing.
00:08:00
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I wasn't even thinking of half these things of this checklist I have.
00:08:05
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And there's a lot of things that, frankly, you should be doing, but you're probably not.
00:08:11
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And what would happen if you hired someone out to help you do these things?
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So start thinking, get those gears spinning in your head.
00:08:17
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What are you doing?
00:08:18
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What are you spending your time on that could be outsourced that someone else could do?
00:08:23
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Once you start thinking of those things, you need to create the list of those things, which is why I told you to take out a piece of paper.
00:08:29
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So if you're at the gym, if you're at the car, or if you're in the car, rather,
00:08:35
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Then do this when you get home.
00:08:36
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Take out the piece of paper, start writing down these things, get those gears spinning, and think of what you can delegate.
00:08:43
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Because that's how you're going to take it to another level.
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If you're spending all this time on meaningless tasks or tasks that someone else could do, you're leaving tons and tons of money on the table.
00:08:54
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Okay, so hit me up if you want this checklist.
00:08:58
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If you want more in-depth training about this, guess what?
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I've got an entire course about it.
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So you can go to courses.solarpreneurs.com.
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That is where I go super in depth about how to actually get your own virtual assistants, where you should go to hire them, how you should go about training them, how you should interview them, because there is a lot that goes into it.
00:09:22
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Okay, but just for now, think of what you're doing that someone else could be doing.
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And I promise you, you will think of a few things that you should be doing that you're not and a few things that you can't
Sharing Knowledge and Resources
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delegate.
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So that's the show today.
00:09:35
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Hope you enjoyed it.
00:09:36
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Share it with someone you know that has too much they're doing, has too much on the table.
00:09:40
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And I hope you have an awesome day and dominate and close those deals.
00:09:45
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Thanks so much for tuning into today's episode.
00:09:48
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I know when I got into the industry, I had almost no resources like this.
00:09:52
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So I hope this show is helping you get the success you deserve.
00:09:56
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If you found value from anything in this episode today, think about someone who can benefit so you and I can help people fulfill their potential.
00:10:04
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Zig Ziglar said, if you help enough people get what they want, you will get what you want.
00:10:09
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So I promise by sharing this, it will help you grow and improve.
00:10:13
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The value bombs on today's show will take you one step closer to success, but it's always to the degree that you apply and execute the principles.
00:10:21
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I've spent the last few years interviewing the top solar experts and helping other reps and businesses discover their potential.
00:10:28
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If you want more help achieving your goals, then I put together an exclusive video training on three hacks that help me close multiple deals a week while knocking less than 10 hours.
00:10:38
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And who doesn't want that?
00:10:40
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So go check it out at webclass.solarpreneurs.com.
00:10:43
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Once again, that's webclass.solarpreneurs.com to get exclusive access to the training and take your skills to the next level.