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121: Solarpreneur Origins
40 Plays5 years ago
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.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Solarpreneur Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
00:00:08
Speaker
My name is Taylor Armstrong.
Taylor's Journey to Success
00:00:10
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.
00:00:19
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.
Defining Solopreneur vs. Solarpreneur
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Speaker
What is a solopreneur, you might ask?
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Speaker
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.
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Speaker
Yo, yo, yo, what's going on solopreneurs?
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Taylor Armstrong back with another podcast.
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Hope you're doing well.
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Speaker
I'm here to help you close more deals, get more referrals, and
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Speaker
and hopefully make your life easier and better as a solar entrepreneur.
Teaser: James Swierski's Story
00:01:04
Speaker
So today, I want to do just a quick episode, just kind of a preview for what's to come.
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Speaker
And this is something that a lot of people have been asking me actually for probably a year now.
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And that is, what happened to James Swierski?
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If you don't know who James is, he was on this podcast for probably the first, I would say, maybe 70 episodes.
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He was my co-host.
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He was running the show with me, and he was doing some good stuff.
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There were some... He was kind of a mixed bag, I'll be honest.
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And the reason I'm doing this episode is because James, I actually got him to agree to come on our next episode.
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as a guest.
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And if you haven't heard him, I mean, you can go back.
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He's in the first 50 to 70 episodes, something like that.
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So you can go back and hear him.
00:02:04
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He put out a lot of great content.
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He did a lot of great things.
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But I wanted to just basically give kind of a preview of what we're going to talk about for his episode.
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It's already recorded.
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And a lot of people are curious about it.
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So I want to give just a brief, I guess, side of my story of kind of what happened.
00:02:29
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And then next episode, you're not going to want to miss out.
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We're going to go super deep into where he's been, why he got off the podcast, kind of the good, the bad, the ugly, because there was some ugly that happened.
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We're going to go through it all.
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James gets super raw, gets super real.
00:02:47
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And if you ever wondered what happened to James, why isn't he on the podcast anymore?
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then definitely don't miss out.
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Okay.
Origins of the Solarpreneur Name
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But anyways, so my side of the story, we started Solerpreneur about, it's been almost two years now at the time of this recording.
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And the way it happened was, well, first of all, the name, I don't know if I've told this story, but I was at a marketing conference.
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I think it's Funnel Hacking Live.
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It's called
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Chip talked about some marketing, ClickFunnels, a lot of people use them.
00:03:23
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And a lot of them, a lot of the topics that they teach about their, and I guess a word that they use, kind of their jargon, is people say solopreneur.
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Solopreneur, that's someone that's just doing everything themselves, right?
00:03:38
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It's an entrepreneur that works solo, doesn't have any employees, just does everything themselves.
00:03:44
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But the story goes that as I was sitting listening to someone talk about that, I wasn't hearing solopreneur.
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I was hearing solerpreneur, soler, soler.
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I'm like, what?
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Why are they talking about soler?
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And then it took probably a couple minutes until I even realized that they were saying solopreneur.
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I'm like, oh, what the?
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I'm like, well, I like solopreneur.
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And all of a sudden, the gears started shifting in my head.
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I'm like, Solarepreneur.
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That's a cool name.
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And at the time, I already had the desire to start a podcast.
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Wanted to do it.
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But just, I don't know, you know how it goes.
00:04:26
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We all procrastinate stuff.
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We all think it's too hard.
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Trust me, I bought probably two different courses.
00:04:33
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Spent a couple grand just in, like, doing the learning piece of how to podcast.
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And to this day, I haven't even fully been through these courses.
Collaboration and Rebranding with James
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But the story goes that I saw James actually doing some.
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So he was doing just a course on, I think, how to sell more solar or something like that, how to use digital marketing in your solar cells.
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And his course, I think it was called Solar Millionaire.
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something like that.
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Anyways, he talks about it in our next episode.
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But I bought his course and then I think it came with a quick consulting call just to kind of go over your goals and see what your expectations were.
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And in this call, we were just talking and I told him about my idea.
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I wanted to start a podcast.
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And I remember it was called Seven Figure Solar.
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That's what his brand was at the time.
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And he goes, oh,
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That's cool, man.
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We actually already have a podcast.
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Go check it out.
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It's a seven-figure solar podcast.
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And so I went and checked it out, heard it.
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Decent content.
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It was good stuff.
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And then he called me, I think, or texted me maybe the week later after I bought his course, was kind of going through it.
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He's like, hey, man, you seem like you've got a lot of experience in the industry, have had success.
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And I know you told me you wanted to start a podcast.
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We're trying to do a ton of content.
00:06:07
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So what do you think about us combining forces and just rebranding it, the Solar Printer podcast?
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And we started together.
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I had told him about the name and everything.
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And he's like, we started together.
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We can be co-hosts and we can crank it out.
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Now I'm like, okay, maybe it's the kick in the pants I need.
00:06:26
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Because I was talking about it.
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I was telling lots of people, but I just never had done anything.
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So I'm like, all right, well, they're already kind of established.
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They got a course.
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They've got, you know, a small audience.
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So all right, yeah, rock and roll.
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Let's do it.
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So I agreed to it, and we got it rolling.
00:06:47
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And initially, it was good.
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I was getting guests on the show.
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You can go back and listen.
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I know a lot of my episodes back then were probably trash compared to them.
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you know, what we're doing now.
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I think they've gotten much better content-wise, at least I hope so.
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But yeah, I was getting interviews.
00:07:05
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I was going on getting some of the top guys in the industry to come on the show because there wasn't really a podcast out there.
00:07:11
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There wasn't much content at the time being produced around solar.
00:07:16
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So guys love to come on the show, tell what they're having success in, and just kind of jam.
00:07:25
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So I was getting people on the show and that's how we did it.
00:07:28
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Basically he did most of the solo content.
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He would go out and talk about stuff that was already in his course and I would go out and I was frankly just too nervous to be on a podcast by myself at the time.
00:07:42
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I wanted nothing to do with going on a show and just talking on mic.
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I thought no, there's people selling way more than me.
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I mean I've been successful but I shouldn't be on a mic talking.
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I'm not qualified.
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There's people having way more success.
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So in my head, I'm just like, okay, I'll go out and just interview people that are having success because they're the ones that should be talking.
00:08:05
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So that's what we did.
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He did his own thing.
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He did a lot of episodes, and then I would basically do an occasional interview.
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But what started happening is I remember we were at a door-to-door con, yeah, two years ago now.
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James and I were walking around, and everyone...
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recognize James everyone's like hey you're the guy from the podcast hey awesome podcast and we would be together and I'm like what the heck like that it's my podcast too I started the name and even people be like hey awesome name and in my head I'm like no way like I came up with this name I have been getting awesome interviews and everything guys coming on and occasionally people would recognize my voice and
00:08:51
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But really, it was more James' podcasts.
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I mean, he was the one that was putting out, I would say, probably 70% of the content.
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And I was doing 30% as, like, interviews.
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So it was mostly him.
00:09:03
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And that's why guys recognized him.
Tensions Over Course Promotions
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Guys thought it was his podcast.
00:09:08
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And so it created a little bit of friction between us.
00:09:12
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Eventually, I brought it up.
00:09:13
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And really, it was fine.
00:09:15
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But the moment it started getting a little more...
00:09:20
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I guess heated, you could say, is when he came out with this course, his new course, it was called the Solar Spartan Academy.
00:09:29
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And he started putting ads into all our podcasts and selling this course.
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So that's the point where it started rubbing me a little bit wrong.
00:09:37
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I'm like, okay, I'm putting out 30% of the content, but he's like profiting off all this.
00:09:42
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He's getting the name recognition.
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He's making money.
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Like, what am I doing?
00:09:47
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Like, yeah, I'm
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getting good tidbits from guests and things like that, but like I should be getting a piece of this pie.
00:09:55
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So that's where things started getting a little bit dicey between us.
00:09:59
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We're all good, but I'm like, James, man, we can't keep doing this.
00:10:02
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Like if you're profiting off the show, I got to be getting a piece of that.
00:10:06
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So we'd always talk and like he, um, at times I think was trying to get me off the show a little bit.
00:10:14
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And I mean, I was, I
00:10:16
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at times trying to get him off.
00:10:17
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I was like, man, you should go out and do your own podcast and you can do your own marketing.
00:10:23
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And to his credit, he put in all the time, he put in all the work to make a great course.
00:10:28
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He was helping a lot of people.
00:10:30
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He was getting guys having success.
00:10:33
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So people were buying it and people were hearing about it from the show.
00:10:38
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But it just wasn't, I mean, it wasn't to my benefit.
00:10:41
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I wasn't making anything off of it.
00:10:43
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I wasn't really being helped.
00:10:47
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So what happened is we went on like that for a while.
00:10:50
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We would talk and he would throw out some new ways that I could maybe be a coach inside of his course, things like that.
00:11:00
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But really it didn't go anywhere.
00:11:03
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And then after that, I noticed some people started having a bad experience with
Partnership Reflections and Challenges
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his course.
00:11:10
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Not necessarily having a bad experience.
00:11:12
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He helped people in his course.
00:11:14
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But here and there, he would ghost people.
00:11:17
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He was supposed to be, I don't know, maybe doing consulting calls or maybe promise coaching to a company or multiple clients.
00:11:27
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And then he would maybe ghost them here and there.
00:11:31
Speaker
And this started happening more and more.
00:11:34
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And if you go back and search James Widerski and some of these Facebook groups, there's some, I mean, a lot of good comments, but a lot of not so great comments.
00:11:44
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about people he ghosted, about people that supposedly he owed consulting or calls, didn't show up, things like that.
00:11:53
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So in my head at the time, I'm like, oh, sweet.
00:11:55
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This sucker isn't delivering on his content.
00:12:00
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He deserves it because I'm not getting a piece of the pie, which was selfish.
00:12:04
Speaker
And you'll hear in the next episode his side of things and what was going on.
00:12:09
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But he was going through some pretty, a lot of stuff that I didn't know about at the time.
00:12:16
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Um, and yeah, eventually things kind of just, he, he kind of started fizzling out and not showing up.
00:12:25
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And I was like, sweet, this is awesome.
00:12:27
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This is what I wanted.
00:12:29
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But then as he stopped showing up less and less, um, I still had those same thoughts.
00:12:35
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I'm like, oh, I'm not qualified to speak.
00:12:37
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I shouldn't even have this podcast continue to go.
00:12:42
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And that's what happened.
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Eventually, he basically stopped, stepped down doing the podcast, which at the time, I was
Taylor Takes Control
00:12:50
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happy.
00:12:50
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I'm like, sweet, I take the reins now, finally.
00:12:54
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I will be famous.
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This is my podcast.
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This is my show.
00:12:59
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Selfish, but that's my thoughts at the time.
00:13:02
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He stepped down, and then I took over, and what happened?
00:13:06
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I feel so loud, too.
00:13:07
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I didn't do an episode for probably three months, maybe.
00:13:11
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I mean, you can go back and look.
00:13:12
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There's several months where I didn't really do an episode or maybe I had like an occasional interview, something like that.
00:13:19
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So that's what happened.
00:13:24
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And it's really interesting.
00:13:25
Speaker
Again, you've got to get on this next show because he's going to give you all his side of the story and pretty juicy details that I didn't even know about and some pretty gnarly stuff he went through.
James' Side of the Story
00:13:37
Speaker
So just wanted to give a quick preview, basically tell my side of what happens.
00:13:42
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And we've got some exciting things for the future and even some ways that we're possibly going to collaborate, not the podcast, but some exciting things in the works.
00:13:54
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But tune in to next episode.
00:13:56
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That's where I'm going to leave things hanging.
00:13:59
Speaker
Come see what happened in the next episode, and then we'll get in the depths of the behind the scenes.
00:14:06
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of James' side of the story.
00:14:08
Speaker
But there you have it.
00:14:10
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That's kind of the, I guess, my piece of the story.
00:14:14
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Some things that I went through, some thoughts in my head.
00:14:17
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And me and James, we're friends.
00:14:19
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Got a lot of respect for the guy.
00:14:21
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Even though, yeah, at the time I was like, this kid is screwing me over.
00:14:26
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He's just profiting off this.
00:14:27
Speaker
I'm putting in all the work.
00:14:29
Speaker
But he helped me in a lot of ways too.
00:14:32
Speaker
He, even though, yeah, maybe I wasn't making money off his course or anything.
00:14:37
Speaker
He did teach me a lot, and he's still teaching me things.
00:14:40
Speaker
So go see what's going on with it, okay?
00:14:43
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And then that's where I'm going to leave it off.
00:14:45
Speaker
So thanks, Solarepreneurs, for coming on the show.
00:14:49
Speaker
And we will see you with all the juicy details inside of next episode.
00:14:55
Speaker
Thanks so much for tuning into today's episode.
00:14:58
Speaker
I know when I got into the industry, I had almost no resources like this.
00:15:02
Speaker
So I hope this show is helping you get the success you deserve.
00:15:06
Speaker
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.
00:15:14
Speaker
Zig Ziglar said if you help enough people get what they want, you will get what you want.
00:15:19
Speaker
So I promise by sharing this, it will help you grow and improve.
Promoting Efficient Deal Closing Training
00:15:22
Speaker
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.
00:15:31
Speaker
I've spent the last few years interviewing the top solar experts and helping other reps and businesses discover their potential.
00:15:38
Speaker
If you want more help achieving your goals, then I put together an exclusive video training on three hacks that helped me close multiple deals a week while knocking less than 10 hours.
00:15:48
Speaker
And who doesn't want that?
00:15:49
Speaker
So go check it out at webclass.solarpreneurs.com.
00:15:53
Speaker
Once again, that's webclass.solarpreneurs.com to get exclusive access to the training and take your skills to the next level.