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The Biggest Reason People Quit Solar...
72 Plays2 years ago
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The SOLARPRENEUR podcast is here to help you close more deals in the solar industry, generate more leads and referrals, and hopefully, have a much better time and situation.
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Transcript
Taylor Armstrong's Journey from $50 to 150 Deals
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.
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 fail.
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.
00:00:31
Speaker
What is a solopreneur you might ask?
00:00:33
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.
Why Do Solar Sales Reps Fail?
00:00:41
Speaker
What's going on, Solarpreneurs?
00:00:43
Speaker
Today, we're going to be talking about one of the biggest reasons we fell in solar cells.
00:00:49
Speaker
Or if you're a religious person, I think this is one of the biggest ways that the devil attacks us in today's world.
00:00:56
Speaker
Okay, we're going to be talking about some pretty serious stuff here.
00:00:59
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Okay, but welcome to the show.
00:01:02
Speaker
My name is Taylor Armstrong.
00:01:04
Speaker
We're here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals and have a much better time in the solar industry.
00:01:10
Speaker
Hope you're doing awesome.
00:01:12
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And don't worry, it's not going to get super serious.
00:01:15
Speaker
You know, we try to keep it lighthearted.
00:01:17
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But but hey, this is a topic that could make or break you in solar cells.
00:01:22
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And I think really in life.
00:01:25
Speaker
Okay, so we're going to be digging into that.
00:01:27
Speaker
Before we jump into the podcast, I wanted to thank a couple people.
00:01:31
Speaker
As you probably have heard on the recent podcast, we did a little giveaway for people that left us reviews, sent out a little gift for the person that hit 200 reviews.
00:01:43
Speaker
We are now at 204 reviews.
00:01:45
Speaker
readings on Apple podcasts.
00:01:48
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So thank you so much.
00:01:49
Speaker
If you were one of the people that's helped us reach this goal, it's been a goal of mine for a while to get 200 plus reviews.
00:01:56
Speaker
Podcast has been going, I think coming up on four years now.
00:02:00
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So it was definitely a goal I wanted to achieve and couldn't have done it without my peeps with my home dogs.
00:02:08
Speaker
Thank you guys so much.
00:02:10
Speaker
So recently we had a couple new ones.
00:02:14
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This one is from DMACCMO.
00:02:17
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It says, great work.
00:02:18
Speaker
I've been listening to this podcast for a couple of years.
00:02:20
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And even though it seems like I've been through it all in the solar world, every episode has something new and helps me out.
00:02:25
Speaker
I really appreciate what you do.
00:02:27
Speaker
Thank you so much, DMACC.
00:02:30
Speaker
We had one from Jay-Z Michigan, Solar Pro, been listening for a couple years, all good stuff, definitely worth your time, appreciate that.
00:02:38
Speaker
We had another one from Physics Smith, great value for new and experienced reps.
00:02:44
Speaker
One of the first podcasts recommended to me when I joined the solar industry and been full of great information and insight information.
00:02:51
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From easy to remember word tracks to deep dives on presentations and door approaches, this show covers all the bases for the solar industry.
00:02:58
Speaker
I appreciate all that I learned from here.
00:03:00
Speaker
So thank you guys so much.
00:03:03
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And really, this podcast would have stopped a long time ago if it weren't for people sharing the show, leaving reviews like this, shouting it out on...
00:03:13
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Instagram, social media.
00:03:15
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And also, as I mentioned last podcast, it's been really cool to see the people that have it in their top Spotify podcasts for the year.
00:03:25
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So appreciate it.
00:03:27
Speaker
Love you guys.
00:03:28
Speaker
And let's keep this industry afloat.
00:03:30
Speaker
Let's keep it rolling.
00:03:31
Speaker
Okay, so let's get into the topic today.
The Role of Discouragement in Solar Sales Failure
00:03:34
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And that is one of the biggest...
00:03:37
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I think ways that we lose in this industry are one of the biggest reasons people quit.
00:03:46
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And so before I tell you what that is, can I keep you on your toes here?
00:03:52
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I was listening to a book, give you a little book recommendation if you guys are looking for a book to read.
Book Recommendation: 'Chop Wood, Carry Water'
00:03:59
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I posted this on my Instagram the other day, but I recently started a book called Chop Wood, Carry Water.
00:04:06
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I forget who the author is.
00:04:10
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You can look it up, but it's only five bucks on Audible if you want to go get it.
00:04:15
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I was recommended this book by my friend Ashton Buswell.
00:04:20
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He is definitely, I think, one of the goats of the solar industry.
00:04:26
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He's been in solar since, I think, 2014.
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And just absolute beast of a salesman.
00:04:34
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Just belongs, I think, on the Mount Rushmore of solar, I would say.
00:04:40
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But
Discouragement: The Greatest Evil Tool
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he recommended this book to us.
00:04:43
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We had a little call with him, company call.
00:04:46
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And I've been listening to it.
00:04:47
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I'm not finished with it yet, but it's really cool.
00:04:50
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It's just a bunch of stories put together.
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A guy goes and trains with this like sensei in Japan.
00:04:58
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It's his dream to become like a samurai archer.
00:05:02
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So this whole book so far is just basically stories that his sensei is teaching him, just kind of life lessons.
00:05:08
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And a lot of them have to do with cells.
00:05:10
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A lot of them have to do with life.
00:05:12
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A lot of them have to do with business.
00:05:15
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Some of it, I think, is a stretch that a Japanese sensei is really teaching this guy stuff.
00:05:19
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And it gets, you know, kind of cheesy, I would say, that I wouldn't expect some of these stories.
00:05:26
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Like, they're talking about Kobe Bryant and stuff.
00:05:28
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So I'm thinking, I feel like they weren't going to be talking about Kobe.
00:05:31
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And it's kind of like Americanized.
00:05:35
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I'm like, if I'm in Japan at some dojo, I feel like I'm going to be in the middle of some monk village where
00:05:41
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They don't have anything and they don't even know who Kobe is.
00:05:44
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But anyways, good lessons nonetheless.
00:05:47
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So in, it's actually chapter 11.
00:05:51
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They told a funny little story that got me thinking.
00:05:55
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So the story is, you can go listen to it.
00:05:57
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He tells it better than I do.
00:05:59
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I think the author is Joshua Milton, now that I remember.
00:06:02
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But the story is, they're going on
00:06:06
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they're chopping wood, carrying water.
00:06:08
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He's kind of like Mr. Miyagi.
00:06:11
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Essentially, chopping wood, carrying water is their version of waxing on, waxing off before they get to the actual techniques.
00:06:19
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Just doing the basics, right?
00:06:20
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So as they're chopping wood, carrying water, it gets super hot.
00:06:24
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So the sensei's like, okay, you know what?
00:06:26
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We're going to the lake.
00:06:27
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We're going to go cool off.
00:06:28
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So while they're walking to the lake, he tells his student, he's like, hey, have you heard what evil's greatest tool is?
00:06:36
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And the student is like, no, let's hear it.
00:06:41
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So he goes on to tell this story, and you can go listen to it.
00:06:45
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But the basis of it is, he's like, there was a witch that was retiring from her witchcraft.
00:06:51
Speaker
Okay, I know.
00:06:53
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Intriguing title just right off the bat.
00:06:55
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Intriguing story.
00:06:56
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And since she was retiring, she decided to sell all her tools.
00:07:00
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So she's having a yard sale, selling all her potions, her whatever, witchcraftery, all this stuff.
00:07:06
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So she's selling, you know, the greed, the lust, the jealousy, adultery, just all the evils you can think of.
00:07:14
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And basically they're like, yeah, I'm picturing my head like,
00:07:19
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garden tools to have this magical power to make people greedy, lustful, whatever.
00:07:26
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So she sells pretty much all of them.
00:07:28
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And she gets to the end.
00:07:31
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And there's just a couple of tools left.
00:07:34
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And so the last tools, she has someone come and buy one.
00:07:38
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It's all like rusted, doesn't look that valuable.
00:07:42
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And she's like, oh, no, actually, you know what?
00:07:44
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This wasn't supposed to be here.
00:07:45
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No, no one's buying this tool.
00:07:47
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And the guy's like, that's weird.
00:07:48
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This one's like ancients.
00:07:51
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Seems like no one would want this.
00:07:54
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So she puts it back in her house, doesn't sell it.
00:07:56
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And then when she's on her deathbed, her niece comes and her niece is in witchcraft training.
00:08:02
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And the niece is like, hey, Andy, I want to be the greatest witch in the world.
00:08:06
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Why didn't you leave me any of your magical tools, your evil weapons?
00:08:11
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And she lets her like freak out for a little bit.
00:08:14
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And then basically she says, sweetie, go look under the bed.
00:08:19
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She puts this ancient tool that she didn't want to sell.
00:08:22
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And she goes on to tell her niece, this is the greatest evil weapon I have of all.
00:08:28
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And this is the tool of discouragement.
00:08:31
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So there you have it.
00:08:33
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So the story goes on to say that the niece took this evil sorcery of discouragement and
00:08:39
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went on to rule the world, became like the greatest witch the world has ever known because she used this evil tool of discouragement to discourage people from their dreams, to stop people from achieving greatness.
00:08:52
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She knew if she could get people discouraged, they were going to fail at everything they wanted in life.
00:08:58
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So that's the story.
00:08:59
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Hopefully it was groundbreaking.
00:09:02
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You can go listen to the chapter if you want to hear it more in depth.
00:09:06
Speaker
But it got me thinking,
00:09:08
Speaker
How many people get discouraged in solar cells?
00:09:12
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And I think discouragement really is the reason why people fell at this job.
00:09:18
Speaker
They quit.
00:09:19
Speaker
They don't achieve the goals that they set out to achieve in solar because they get discouraged.
00:09:26
Speaker
Right.
00:09:27
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And so think about that.
00:09:29
Speaker
I went, I was just thinking my recent failures or recent times where I haven't achieved my goals.
00:09:36
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I think I shared on a recent podcast, we were in a competition and it didn't go my way.
00:09:40
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Let myself get discouraged.
00:09:43
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And I did way worse than I think I could have because let myself get in my head, got discouraged.
00:09:49
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Let that affect my attitude out on the doors, my attitude in my closes.
00:09:54
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discouraged because I have a cancel here and there.
00:09:56
Speaker
How many of us has been discouraged in our career and let it affect ourselves?
00:10:01
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So think about that in three specific ways that I know I have gotten discouraged.
00:10:06
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You probably have too.
00:10:07
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Number one is comparison.
00:10:10
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They say comparison is the thief of joy.
00:10:14
Speaker
If we compare ourselves to other people that are crushing it, that are doing way better,
00:10:18
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which we're going to hear them on the podcast.
00:10:20
Speaker
Sometimes we can let ourselves get discouraged.
00:10:23
Speaker
This dude, he's been in the industry for six months.
00:10:26
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He closed like 20 deals this month.
00:10:29
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What's going on?
00:10:29
Speaker
I only closed six deals.
00:10:31
Speaker
I've been grinding.
00:10:33
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We let ourselves, we get that negative self-talk.
00:10:37
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We're going to get discouraged.
00:10:39
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So don't compare yourself with the top people in the industry.
00:10:44
Speaker
right we see guys like ricardo ritchie many people that have been on the show closing insane amounts of deals we need to compare ourselves with our version um our with with who we were last month that should be a comparison we make so that's number one the second way is focusing on the outcome instead of the input
00:11:05
Speaker
How many of us focus on the fact that we only closed six deals when we wanted to close 12?
Avoiding Discouragement: Focus on Effort Not Outcomes
00:11:12
Speaker
How about we focus on the inputs?
00:11:14
Speaker
Did we actually put in the hours?
00:11:16
Speaker
At the end of the day, if we put in the conversations, the hours, if we put in our input, then we got to be happy with the results.
00:11:25
Speaker
We got to accept the results that come from that.
00:11:28
Speaker
Right.
00:11:29
Speaker
So instead of focusing on the results, the outcome, what was your inputs?
00:11:34
Speaker
And don't get discouraged by the end results if you actually do put in the inputs.
00:11:41
Speaker
And then number three, I think I know I've gotten discouraged many times when I let myself get too high or too low.
Maintaining Consistent Effort in Sales
00:11:49
Speaker
And you've probably heard these things.
00:11:50
Speaker
You've probably gone through them yourselves.
00:11:52
Speaker
But if you are too high,
00:11:54
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then I've noticed I stopped pushing as hard.
00:11:58
Speaker
Some weeks I'll be on a streak where I got four or five deals by Wednesday.
00:12:03
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I get high and then I'm like, you know what?
00:12:07
Speaker
It's probably good.
00:12:08
Speaker
I can just work a half day.
00:12:09
Speaker
I want to spend time with my wife, my kids, which time and place for that, right?
00:12:14
Speaker
But if you're pushing for deals, you don't get too high.
00:12:18
Speaker
Because you never know, maybe those five deals all call the next day and cancel, then all of a sudden you're at zero.
00:12:23
Speaker
Right?
00:12:24
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So don't get too high.
00:12:25
Speaker
Don't get too low.
00:12:27
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A great example, I saw this.
00:12:28
Speaker
I was actually out knocking with one of my buddies, Mike, out here in San Diego.
00:12:35
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We had planned to meet up later in the afternoon, hit a couple doors together, all that.
00:12:41
Speaker
And we meet up
00:12:43
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And he's like, hey, so he ended up being late.
00:12:45
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He's like, hey, sorry, I'm late.
00:12:46
Speaker
Just got done closing my fifth deal.
00:12:49
Speaker
It's like four o'clock in the afternoon.
00:12:51
Speaker
I'm like, you closed five deals today already?
00:12:55
Speaker
And yeah, he had closed five deals and he's still meeting up, heading out knocking.
00:13:01
Speaker
And in my head, I'm like, wow, if I close five deals, would I still come back?
00:13:06
Speaker
And he just got done driving an hour, I think.
00:13:10
Speaker
I'm like, would I still come back and go out and knock doors if I hit five deals on the day?
00:13:15
Speaker
And it just made me think, okay, this is what separates the contenders from the pretenders.
00:13:20
Speaker
They are never satisfied.
00:13:21
Speaker
Another example, my boy, uh, Caesar that I work with on our team, he closed 50 deals in a month.
00:13:29
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This is a couple months back.
00:13:32
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And we finished off a competition.
00:13:34
Speaker
We won our competition.
00:13:35
Speaker
Then the very next day, he posted a picture at 10 a.m.
00:13:40
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He was back out knocking doors.
00:13:41
Speaker
10 a.m.
00:13:42
Speaker
the next day, training two new reps.
00:13:45
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I'm like, man, 50 deals on the month.
00:13:47
Speaker
Just got done grinding on an all-out blitz competition.
00:13:50
Speaker
And he's out 10 a.m.
00:13:51
Speaker
the next day, training two new reps.
00:13:54
Speaker
It's cool.
00:13:55
Speaker
So it made me realize, like, I need to check myself.
00:13:58
Speaker
I need to make sure I'd be willing to do that because...
00:14:01
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When I first saw that, I realized right now I'm probably not willing to do that.
00:14:05
Speaker
If I close five deals in a day, I know I would be very tempted to go home
00:14:11
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but made me realize this is what the greats are doing.
00:14:15
Speaker
That's what separates the, you know, Michael Jordans from the rest, the Kobe Bryants from the rest.
00:14:22
Speaker
I'm listening to Tim Grover's Relentless book right now.
00:14:25
Speaker
Great book if you haven't listened to it, which, by the way, it's actually on Spotify.
00:14:30
Speaker
If you have Spotify, you can listen to a lot of audiobooks for free.
00:14:34
Speaker
So you can listen to that.
00:14:36
Speaker
I shouldn't, I guess, not free, but you have to have a Spotify account, right?
00:14:40
Speaker
Ten bucks a month.
00:14:41
Speaker
But you can go listen to Tim Grover's Relentless book.
00:14:43
Speaker
He talks about the cleaners, right?
00:14:47
Speaker
The cleaners are like the top 1%.
00:14:50
Speaker
They're the people that are willing to go the distance.
00:14:53
Speaker
They're the people that are never satisfied.
00:14:56
Speaker
The closers are good, but the cleaners are the greatest.
00:14:59
Speaker
The cleaners are the people that are going all out, that are closing 50 deals in a month and going out the next morning at 10 a.m.
00:15:09
Speaker
So I hope this helps.
00:15:11
Speaker
Don't let yourself get discouraged.
00:15:12
Speaker
That is the devil's greatest tool, I think, in anything great we want to achieve in life.
00:15:18
Speaker
That is the greatest reason that I see people quit in this industry.
00:15:23
Speaker
They get discouraged.
00:15:25
Speaker
So whenever you find yourself getting discouraged, just stop for a second, pause, pause,
00:15:32
Speaker
Take a deep breath.
00:15:34
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Realize you're getting discouraged and just reset, right?
00:15:40
Speaker
Try to let yourself get discouraged.
00:15:42
Speaker
I know maybe easier said than done, but maybe let yourself be discouraged for two minutes and then just let it roll off your back.
00:15:51
Speaker
Okay, so next episode, we're going to be having someone on that has, I think, mastered the art of creating a vision for himself in solar.
00:16:04
Speaker
This is someone that has been on the podcast, who's actually one of our, I think, first guests on the show, going back to Clear It In, I think 2019.
00:16:14
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But his name is Ty Williams.
00:16:16
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He is over the entire door-to-door division of Sunrun, which is biggest solar company right now.
00:16:25
Speaker
So make sure you tune into that.
00:16:27
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This guy is another one of the greats of the solar industry of door-to-door.
00:16:33
Speaker
You don't want to miss out when this guy speaks.
00:16:35
Speaker
People listen.
00:16:36
Speaker
So tune into next episode.
00:16:38
Speaker
We're going to be hearing from Ty Williams.
00:16:40
Speaker
But don't let yourself get discouraged.
00:16:42
Speaker
Hope that helps.
00:16:43
Speaker
Go crush it this week and we'll see you guys on the next episode.
00:16:46
Speaker
Peace.
Introducing Solciety: A Learning Community for Solar Pros
00:16:48
Speaker
Hey, solopreneurs, quick question.
00:16:50
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.
00:16:59
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.
00:17:12
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.
00:17:22
Speaker
And it's called Solciety.
00:17:24
Speaker
This learning community was designed from the ground up to level the playing field and give solar pros access to proven mentors,
00:17:32
Speaker
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.
00:17:42
Speaker
Currently, SoulCity is open, launched, and ready to be enrolled.
00:17:50
Speaker
So go to SoulCity.co to learn more.
00:17:54
Speaker
and join the learning experience now.
00:17:58
Speaker
This is exclusively for solopreneur listeners, so be sure to go to solsociety.co and join.
00:18:05
Speaker
We'll see you on the inside.