Transcript
Speaker: Hey, Taylor here. Wanted to give a quick intro to this podcast. This was a interview I was featured on with David Hunt over at his podcast. He runs a company called Opsync, which is a really cool software you'll get to hear a little bit about for recruiting and helping build your team.
Speaker: But we did a podcast, talked about some of our favorite leadership principles, uh, some of the books that have helped us the most in sales and a whole lot of other topics. So some really good content thought you all would enjoy. So check it out coming up on today's podcast.
Speaker: Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong and I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in the year and cracking the code on why sales reps fell.
Speaker: I teach you 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 solopreneur, you might ask? 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. but love to have you introduce yourself, Taylor. Welcome. Yeah.
Speaker: Thank you, dude. Yes, I'm Taylor Armstrong. As we were talking before, been in solar about 10 years now, and then did two years of pest control before that as well. and Yeah, just a family man. been living out in San Diego now for yeah about nine years, and growing the podcast have my own podcast solopreneur podcast been doing that about seven go check it out yeah go check it out yeah the plug but yeah that's pretty much me just always trying to grow and learn that's why i love doing podcasts i'm sure you'd agree david it's just like you get to connect with people who a lot of times know more than you do and so it's you're in their perspective and
Speaker: yeah um I feel like it's the cheek out. And I always tell people at the time when I started the podcast, ah companies were really closed off. Like you couldn't just reach out to people. It wasn't like there's this big social media thing where it's like, hey, dude, what's been working for you to grow your team or grow your business or get a bunch of sales? People wouldn't really respond like that. Yeah.
Speaker: And me coming from a smaller company at the time, i wanted to hear like what was working. I saw these people crushing the other companies. But i didn't necessarily want to leave my company. So i'm like, man, how can I get in front of them to hear what they're doing?
Speaker: And then I was always a big podcast listener. so I'm like, well, you know what? Maybe I should start a podcast. And sure enough, that like all the people I reached out to before that would reject me when I was like, oh, hey, we're doing a podcast and we're gonna feature you. Like, OK, sure. We can podcast. Yeah, no, it works. Now they actually wanted to talk to me. So that was kind of initially why I started it. That makes sense since then. Yeah. Well, that's really cool. Well, I guess like first, okay, first thing I want to talk about a little bit, social media. Okay. So obviously you've had some really good success on social media and there's a lot of reps out there.
Speaker: A lot of people out there who maybe have a team or a company and they're trying to figure out this whole social media thing. like I think every every leader knows at this point they they should be doing social media, but maybe not all of them completely know how or you know like how to do it. And like even if they get some followers, how do they you know how do they figure out how to convert and stuff like that? I would love for you to share a little bit about your journey with social media in the door-to-door space and how you've been able to grow your audience, you know, your following, produce content, stuff like that. Like what would you tell a rep who's just trying to, or a leader who's trying to start out with social media and grow?
Speaker: Well, yeah, First of all, I wouldn't consider myself a social media expert. I'm definitely still learning as far as that goes. I've doing the podcast, but social media, it's still learning process for sure. But just the things that have worked for me, I think it applies to any type of content, podcast, social media, whatever, is just being consistent, first of all.
Speaker: You know, people ask me about the podcast. I've literally been doing it for seven years now and haven't really taken a break. And even though it's... Sometimes it's not the world's greatest content. I think the secret really pretty much anything is you just keep showing up. So for the like the first year i was doing social media and podcasting, that was getting like very, very few listeners and downloads and all that. But as you keep doing it, you know slowly you get more and more and then some stuff will hit more than others. So I think the same goes for social media. That's what's helped me too, is just, um, being consistent with it. You know, that's on the flip side. I haven't been as consistent with the social media as the podcasting. Yeah. So I think actually I could do a lot better with social media side of things. Cause I do post podcasts and, you know, clips and all that, but it kind of, kind of comes down to, um, you know, you only have so many hours to be selling, growing your team and, podcasting. And so, and I know I could grow the social media even more if I was consistently doing like the reels. I think reels are the big things, you know, the video, short, short videos and stuff like that. But yeah, just showing up, them just try to make it a story about you doing the posts, the stories. and And, um, you know, if you want to get serious about it, I think making like a content plan, all the people that really grow, have a content plan and follow that. Say a little bit more about a content plan. Explain, explain what that is.
Speaker: Well, just like, you know, you look at a guy I follow lot. His name is Brock Johnson. he probably seen him. He has he teaches people to like grow on Instagram and everything. Yeah, come across. them But yeah, it's just like a schedule that you're going to follow because people like we're doing right now. And you told me even before we started doing the podcast here, you've done like three, four interviews this week.
Speaker: And so most ah people on social media, it's like they're planning these content days and they're planning out their whole month for like in one day. Right. They're shooting a bunch of content. And then you're dripping it out. There's lots of softwares you can use to drip it out too. Right.
Speaker: So you can start small, but I would say for anyone that doesn't really have a social media right now, you can just start with smaller things like that. Just posting stories, maybe like one day a month you think, okay, I'm going to go out and shoot videos with my teams. if you're running door to door like I am, you know, maybe have your team in the area, get some clips of you guys knocking some doors or doing something funny out on the doors.
Speaker: And then you just come up with like, it's super easy now with AI, right? ChatGPT can make your whole content plan. Right. Less than a minute today. So you go out and shoot the content, you use AI to help you brainstorm. and And yeah, it really it's just about taking the action because with all the information you yeah we have now and with AI, it's like,
Speaker: If anyone follows that, there's no way you're not going to grow. But the reason people don't is because they just don't do it. Yeah. Like so easy to know what to do. It's just, are going to go and implement? Are you to shoot the content? And are you going to have, are you going to post it? And then the next step is, um, what's I think just having a team. Like right now you got a guy that's helping us with the video part of it. and So if you have someone, yeah shout out you are running a team. You're doing a good job back there. Especially if you're busy, like myself, I got family, running my team, I'm getting my sales. So there's no way I could do a podcast or do much on social media if I have a team and I got some virtual assistants and stuff like that. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, those are some ways i think people could start. Yeah, I i really like that because i think that when people think about social media, they think, OK, I need to like film some videos and then just like post consistently. And they're just like, OK, I'm going to add that to like my my my mye my list of goals is to like post consistently on social media or whatever. But I think there's a difference between having that as a conscious goal and then going through and making a set plan of like of on the
Speaker: June 13th, I'm going to go out and film content of me knocking and and setting appointments. And then on July 20th, I'm going to go and film a couple of closes, you know, and whatever it is. And just being able to go through and have that plan, specifically schedule time in your calendar for going and filming. um And then those systems for as far as like posting it and everything is so important because, yeah, it it really does just does just take posting consistently, obviously you want to be high quality stuff because you know, somebody comes across a crappy reel, they probably don't want to follow you. Right. Um, but, um, yeah, I really liked that. So you mentioned a couple of like softwares that you can use to like drip it and everything. So aside from the content plan and scheduling, is there any like parts of your, I guess I should say like your social media system, like the softwares or your virtual assistants that have made a big difference for you that you'd recommend that people go check out and implement if they're trying to post consistently on social media.
Speaker: Yeah, for sure. um Like I said, I started out just getting a virtual assistant. You can get these people, you know, from Philippines. um There's a bunch of different sites you can go on. I know like onlinejobs.ph. Yeah, a few different sites where you can find these people and really inexpensive. And a lot of them are really good too. yeah they're lot of them have like college degrees and everything, get these people inexpensive. They can help post the contents and organize all that. And so I would say that was something to help me too. Cause once I started paying someone to to do it, all a sudden I'm like, uh, well, if I'm paying for it, I probably should actually do it. Yeah. And that's just kind of the type of person I am. It's like, if I pay for a gym membership, then I'm going to go. Cause I'm like, if I'm not using it, then I hate to just be
Speaker: sending that money down down the drain. So that helped me a lot. But yeah, and then going back with AI, there's so many things now, even if you don't want to hi hire like a virtual assistant, you can literally do probably 90% of the job now with AI. Because there's there's a lot of like podcasting softwares, for example, that will let you edit it there. Right.
Speaker: Before it's like I would have my virtual assistants do all the edit editing and post it. Right. But now click of a button, you can have AI... like take out all the ands, the ums, filler words, you can have it. Descript is pretty good for that, i think. i yeah that Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. There's a bunch of different, there's a bunch of those different things, but I really liked that virtual assistant thing. I really liked that. I like the recommendation of getting a virtual assistant, getting them to help you because yeah, I mean, and It's an investment for sure that you're wanting to make into like making this happen. And if you only, even if you put a but a bunch of time and money into getting equipment or whatever, um and then filming some stuff initially, if you don't do it consistently, you will fall off. Yeah. And you're not going to get the benefits you're wanting. And I think sometimes people do, especially when it comes to sales door to door, like as you're shooting content, you're not going to see like an instant return on that. So that's why i understand I can relate to sales guys because we can go out and get another sale. Right. And we're getting we're getting money from that. Right. Yeah. But this if we shoot a podcast today, you out and shoot a bunch of content, it's not like you're goingnna get an immediate return from that. Probably unless i don't know, you go crazy viral or something. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, it's more, you got to think of it more kind of a long-term thing, just like recruiting, building a team too. If you out and get a recruit, you're not getting instant money from that. Right. But you know, as you build a system and you build up the kind of a library content, I've seen a lot of like long-term benefits come from that and um can help in so many ways, just building that personal brand and building that story around whatever you're trying to do. So um I would say for anyone listening, and just don't think of it as something that's going to be like an instant return.
Speaker: Cause I think that's where guys get discouraged. theyre Like, Oh, I want to do this, but you know what? This appointment came up or this came up and they might go make money from that. and that happens to me still too today. Something be like, Oh, I had this podcasting rescheduled, but have this appointment where you'll close and make, yeah you know, good money. So, And it's unmotivating because my last reel, only person that liked it was my mom. Yeah, exactly. um so But on that actually, on that note, I think a lot of people who maybe even let's say they are disciplined and they are good, they'll schedule out the time, they'll make time for they'll film the content, they'll post it, and they'll do the things that they're supposed to do. i feel like there is a pretty large subset of people, myself included,
Speaker: who are nervous about using their own personal page as you know posting content there um for a couple different reasons. So first off though, for the record, like personal pages perform so much better than a business page, for sure. like People follow people you know in general. like They don't really follow organizations as much. There's a few out there, but they're the outliers.
Speaker: um So coming from somebody who obviously your personal page, you know, you've done a lot of posting there and with your podcast and everything, I think a lot of people are like, oh, people will think I'm weird. People think I'm a tryhard or whatever. If I go and I'm like starting to post on social media and starting to make things happen. What's what's the reality of being on the other side of after, you know, podcasting for what, coming up on seven years now? and posting content and everything. like What's the actual reality of like after you start posting, like does does anything change? ah Do people actually think you're weird? Yeah, well, and I don't think. I mean, maybe some people were will have heard. It's like depending on what you're posting. I remember I used to be on like Snapchat, right? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And like, you know, all this content came out around building a brand on Snapchat. And before I would just post like ridiculous stuff on Snapchat, you know, like messing around with your buddies or whatever. Yeah. But I'm like, would be cool. I'm going to try and like build a brand on Snapchat and have people follow me and do like door to door stuff. Yeah. So I remember when I first started posting, all my buddies were like, what are you doing? Like posting all this like weird door to door stuff, like showing yourself right around the on the segue. Yeah.
Speaker: And I was trying to post motivational stuff. You know, haters are going to hate. You're going to some people that are oh, what are you doing? But um yeah, I think over time you just keep doing it. And that's how it's going to be. Right. Like people that don't like it are going to unfollow you. And you've got to realize that reality is in the beginning, no one's really watching anyways. Yeah. It's like it doesn't. even It doesn't even matter. It's not that deep. So if you suck in the beginning, the good thing is it's just training for you. No one's watching anyways. Like the first probably 50 podcasts I did, I was getting very few downloads and listeners. So if you just think of it that way, people are going to unfollow. You're going start attracting your target audience over time. Yeah, i think that's the but the best way to look at it. Nothing changes really. It's just like... You're going to be practicing for yourself and you're going to be developing for yourself. And over, over the long hauls, you keep doing that. That's when you start to see little changes. That's when start to see more followers, more listeners.
Speaker: Um, but yeah, it just comes down to starting and realizing that, yeah, like you said, not much this is going to change. You just got to go out and take the first step. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's the same thing with recruiting. You kind of just have to learn to overcome that social anxiety of putting yourself out there. And and I think it is a little different when it's personal. It's like content you created that maybe you feel like is getting rejected versus, you know, maybe a company that you work at that somebody if you're trying to recruit somebody and they reject the idea of doing door to door or you know working at a certain company whatever, it's like less personal because that's not your company necessarily. Maybe it is. but um
Speaker: But when it's your content, I think that're a different there's like there's a different feeling of, oh this is me But... I mean, in reality, that's where, that's where people grow and that's where you make progress is when you put yourself in uncomfortable places. Um, and so, yeah, I think there's a real a real side of that and that's why i wanted to ask you about it. Yeah. Um, but let's talk a little bit about your, door door career.
Speaker: So you've been doing door to door for what would you say? 10 years now? 10 years in solar. And then guess I did two years of pest control before that. So, so about 12 years. Yep. A long time. man Okay. Yeah. So here's the thing. I feel feel like guys like yourself. So obviously, you know, you've got a really cool podcast going on.
Speaker: You've gotten some, some success in social media and everything like that. There's a lot of places, there's a lot of options and things that you could be doing. Um, obviously, cause you're a capable guy. Um, why door to door? What, why, why'd you start? Why do you stay with it? Yeah, I just think it's um you so a crazy good opportunity. Well, speaking for solar, like when I started, i was in college. Like a lot of guys get recruited from college, right? And they hear this crazy money you can make. um i was a music major at the time. was studying music and all that.
Speaker: And so I started hearing these summer opportunities where guys were making more in a summer than what I can make in a year with like a music degree. So I'm like, okay, well, maybe I'll check this out. Yeah. I'm so broke.
Speaker: So, yeah, I was just always intrigued by the opportunity that you can go and create something really out of nothing. And it doesn't matter your background. it doesn't matter if your parents are rich, poor. doesn't matter really anything, right? Because it doesn't matter how educated you are. Guys can go out and just create their own destiny, really. And you control how hard you work. You control a degree how much you make. So I think I was just intrigued by that and just being able to control, um yeah, like the income and a lot of growth too, cause you're the one to the, to the degree that you improve yourself, that's going to reflect in your paychecks too.
Speaker: So, um, you know, me coming from music, I was always in the, you had to practice, right? i was a drummer. So it's like, you got to go practice. You got to show up every day, practice, otherwise you're not going to see the improvements. And I felt like there was a lot of parallels between that um because this job, you can't just go out and do it, expect to make money. Well, maybe some people can, but for the most part, you got to show up and you got to actually practice the stuff outside of the job because that's how you're going to improve. That's how you're going to get better. So ah kind of took the same mindset of learning music and being a music major and took it over to door to door. And I feel like that's kind of the reason I started a podcast too, because I'm like, okay, in music and percussion, I was always going to like, you know, like events. I was always calling people saying, Hey, how did you, how did you improve in this area and music and all that? So I took the same thing over to door to door and that's what helped me.
Speaker: massively just having the learning mindset and just being able to it. So for me, that's what I liked about it. Just being able to have that control and then just being able to take the aspect of always learning and seeing that I can make improvements and seeing that reflect in my paychecks. I just always thought that was something really exciting about door to door. Yeah, no, it's true. It's really cool. And I really liked that. You mentioned that you did music, by the way, for the record, for people listening out there who own a company or are recruiting teams, a lot of door door companies, like obviously have figured out like, Hey, if you were, if you were like a collegiate athlete or like a ju juco athlete or just like a good athlete in high school, like your success, like the success rate of those people going out and doing sales,
Speaker: It's pretty high and so they'll target those people. I've even even seen like stuff on social media. It's like, if you did, if you were a good athlete in school or whatever, I have an opportunity and store to door recruiting that they're doing in the video. But that is an untapped market that I think, don't think people people realize or take seriously enough is musicians. Yeah. So, um, so a lot of, so my, my, everybody in my family plays an instrument, myself included. It was like a sport growing up. you know We practiced every day. We were involved in a team setting, like an orchestra, right? And it takes a lot of mental discipline, to be honest, to sit there at a drum set for four hours and practice a certain set of rhythm that you're just trying to get right, and and you you don't most of the time. Right. So for those out there listening, go hit up college music programs. Everybody's poor. Like, nobody help like unless you're, unless you're hitting it really big as like, like a mainstream music person, you probably don't make that much money, especially in college. You know, and they're probably poor.
Speaker: They're pretty disciplined, like, especially if they're on scholarship or something like that for music. They have been doing this for years. um So I think there's there's there's definitely something to that. I mean, it goes back to like the aphorism of how you do one thing is how you do everything. So if you were a really successful if you're a successful athlete you know in high school and college, that's going to translate well to sales. Same thing with music. That's going to translate to set well to sales. Right. Yeah, I mean, you might get some more. You get the more nerds and stuff like that in music, right? so maybe maybe more like socially awkward people, stuff like that. But yeah, as far as the discipline goes, yeah, I agree 100% with the same thing as sports. and You're going to get really disciplined people and...
Speaker: Yeah. If they're willing to go out and talk to people. And I think it's funny. i always tell this story how we had a guy on our team the first summer I started solar is, um, this guy, he had like, you he had autism and really just talking to him as like really kind of uncomfortable, socially awkward. Yeah. But he was actually one of the ones that he made good money that summer. Not like insane, but like good money because he showed up. He just followed the script we gave him.
Speaker: And even though he didn't really have social skills, he just went out there. He worked every single hour we told him to and just followed the scripts. Yeah. he made the money. It's true. So it's like, I think that's 90% of the job is just doing that or doing the work and then showing up, doing what people say. And even if, even if you suck at talking to people and still go out and make money with this. Yeah. But yeah, musicians are good. 100%. Well, I think it's what's really cool about that is the difference. So you'll have you know maybe somebody who's pretty naturally talented at sales. They're good at communicating. They're charming, and charismatic. um they'll They'll mount the learning curve to sales, right? This initial kind of like learning curve that you have to get over in order to start making sales consistently. um
Speaker: For those talented people, they climb that learning curve really quickly um and they'll start they'll start producing really fast. But I've seen a lot of those talented people flatline after that. So they'll they'll mount the learning curve really quickly to get to the point where they can consistently make, for example, to say in pest control, maybe like one or two sales a day. And they're consistent, they're making decent money. They're not bad, but they kind of flatline.
Speaker: and The people who have a harder time climbing Climbing that learning curve if they can make it to the point where they do hit that crest of being consistent But I feel like I've seen more is actually they continue curving up Yeah, like because because it was a harder process They can they just keep going and that those are the guys that in my opinion i see do the very very best are not necessarily the ones who picked it up the fastest or the more the most naturally talented It's the ones who are committed to the process of continuing climbing that learning curve versus maybe just being at the top of it from the beginning and just being able to be you know charming and charismatic. yeah and that's where And that's where I think you know music would come in there is they've just they've been committed to a certain, dedicated to a certain instrument and a process of practicing that you know and improving that for years. yeah So they already know how to do that. They just need to point their focus towards sales. There's...
Speaker: i mean, there's a guy um at one of the companies that uses off sync who I talked with. He's the exact case of this. He's like a concert pianist. And yeah, definitely saw some of his pitches and stuff. And um he was not great initially. yeah um Definitely, definitely not. But he's like, I've been, I've actually been in stating contact with him and he's done really, really well this summer.
Speaker: um So yeah, really, really, really cool. So anyway, untapped resource, go to the college music programs. You'll find people. Maybe not it's quite as many as athletes, but i think it's like it's being ignored. So yeah, yeah. Just want to throw that out there. But okay. So you've been doing solar for obviously a long time. Yeah. There's been a lot of changes in the landscape of solar in the past couple of years.
Speaker: I really want to hear from you um about the things that you've seen because the same thing can happen in a lot of different and and industries, right? Whether it's, you know, pest or whatever, going through those fluctuations, even ah even if it's at your individual company, things can go up and down a little bit. I'd love to know a little bit more about your mindset and approaching what you've done with solar and and being consistent, even with you know the landscape kind of moving under your feet a little bit. Yeah. No, it's been a been... That's why they call it the solar coaster, right? Yeah. this lot of things have have changed. But yeah, like it goes back to what we were talking about before, just showing up. Same thing like I've always done with a podcast, just showing up even when...
Speaker: You know, listeners have fluctuated. Things have changed. In solar, it's no different. Like, you know, those that listen my podcast know my story. I was at a company where installers stopped paying us about $100,000 that i I didn't get paid out from a company. And that was ah right as we were trying to buy a house in San Diego, too. Yeah.
Speaker: And so um part of it, just I think, just came down to ne necessity. So it's like we got our house and now I got kids. I got a family. Yeah. And so it's just just what I do. Right. That's yeah what I know. So I got to go. I almost got my feet to the fire. I can't not show up because I got lot of expenses. Yeah.
Speaker: So maybe some people it's like they need to go out and I don't know, have more. But part of when I started producing more was actually when I had kids. Well, when I, when I got married and had kids, cause it's like you're forced to produce more. You can't really just be messing around. Yeah. Sometimes if you don't have many responsibilities or expenses, yeah, maybe you can afford to go out there and mess around. But like for me, when I'm out there, going to an area to knock doors i know i can't just i can't be sitting on my phone playing scroll on instagram or whatever because yeah it's like i got kids counting out on me i got my team counting on me so i don't maybe for some people listening maybe that's what it is maybe you need more people that count on you or yeah I don't know, maybe you need to be. it And that's what I what i love about like leading people, too.
Speaker: Even if you're not married, even even if you don't have kids, if you're leading people and you you're in a way forced to show up to your to your team. Right. One of the the greats in Solwar, his name Michael O'Donnell, but he always talked about just he would get people to go meet him at a Starbucks to go out like he would never knock alone. He would always have someone training or following him. And even on days where there was no one on his team to train, I think he said he would pay like his niece or cousin or something just to go like follow him out knocking doors because he knows someone was counting on him. Someone was, you know, kind of holding his feet to the fire. So some of you already know that I run my own door door sales team here in San Diego. and As we were gearing up for the summer, I realized if we do the same thing we always did, we're going to get the same results. But if I want to increase my deal flow, I need to do something different to get an advantage.
Speaker: Then we discovered an app called Solar Scout. But it's not a door knocking app. It's a data platform that shows us who is likely to go solar in our market. It shows us who has previously applied for solar but later canceled the deal, who has moved in recently, and even how much electricity the homes are using in a given neighborhood.
Speaker: It's been working for a lot of teams across the country, and now I'm on board too. I'm going to be one of the first to use Solar Scout in San Diego, so I decided to partner up. But I told them, hey, I'm going to talk about Solar Scout on my show, you need to give my listeners a great deal. And they did.
Speaker: So go to solarscout.app forward slash Taylor and book a demo with them, and you'll get 10% off your first month when you sign up. That's solarscout.app forward slash Taylor.
Speaker: Okay, back to the show. So yeah, I think that's what helped me with all the fluctuation is just knowing that I got to show up and I've always seen the potential even when times have been tough. I always think of it as the guys that come out on the other end. If you can be the one that sticks it out, um even when things are hard, then that many more people are going to look to you as a leader.
Speaker: um When things are going crazy and you're staying level headed and when people are leaving, if you can stay level headed, then I think there's a lot of opportunity for those people on the other end. And maybe it, maybe there's times where it is smart to leave. I'm not saying that maybe that's not the right decision for everyone, but, um, for me sticking it out in solar, yeah, I've seen huge returns from it and I've been able to build and recruit people. Um, you know, other people lost faith. so that's what I would say.
Speaker: No, I really liked that. I mean, I think that, I think what you just said there, um, connects also to kind of what we were talking about before with social media is, you know, with sales, like what Michael O'Donnell did, you know, with, um, meeting up with people, you know, and having somebody knocking with him. Um, it's like that aphorism of, you don't rise to the level of your motivation. You fall at to the level of your systems. yeah So if that system is having somebody knock with you or even, i mean, having kids, you know, right, that's incorporated into your daily life. That's incorporated into your system. It is a new it is a new requirement. So a lot of the I mean, if you look at all the most successful entrepreneurs in history, pretty much all of them had kids, almost all of them.
Speaker: um And so, yeah, i i I really do like that um because, you know, it's not maybe you're not intentionally having kids in order to raise your sales numbers. Right. You know, everyone go have kids. Yeah, absolutely. Hopefully you want to hopefully you want to have kids and then, you know, and then you feel, you know, the responsibility of, you know, providing for them. And that's what increases it. Um, not the, not the other way around necessarily. yeah Um, but absolutely. So, um, okay. In your personal life with, um, you know, sales team building, i would love to hear a little bit about some of your, some of your personal systems as when it comes to building teams and, and, you know, staying consistent with your personal sales that, you know, have helped you. So yeah, our team, what we do, we're your own program. So if people coming from pests are listening, it might be a little bit different. I know pests, mostly summer programs, right? Yeah. and
Speaker: But yeah, like what we've done, we do two correlations a week. So we'll have guys meet up Tuesdays and Fridays. And then ah we'll have like our team chats, pretty standard. We'll do like a so we, we run a pretty large team in San Diego. There's like, I don't know, 80 to a hundred people on the entire team.
Speaker: So I run like a squad within our team. So I think what's really helped our guys is just accountability systems. We'll, we'll do like ah accountability call on Mondays. We'll go through guys numbers. And then, uh, is that, is that a group event where everybody's on the same call or is that you individually one-on-one with somebody? That's a group event. Okay. and Then, yeah, we'll also do like one-on-ones at least once a quarter. We'll go through that and set goals with guys. Why the group event on Mondays for accountability?
Speaker: What? Yeah. Yeah, I think it's been really effective just because guys, they almost feel like they're basically getting called out. Yeah. Like they're not working. Yeah. And solar, it's a lot. That's, that's tougher to hold people accountable and, you know, keep them motivated in and year round program. Like pest control, you just know you're grinding four months. Yeah, you're just locking it for four months. Yeah. But solar, it's, you know, we're not, we're not knocking eight, 10 hour days for 12 months of the year, right? We're kind of. It's a little more laid back. We're doing competitions where we're pushing more. So, yeah, I think the um weekly calls, we call it kind of our cruising altitude on weeks where we're not like on a blitz or competing in something. We're just going, hey, these are weekly standards. We need to have you guys... hitting these numbers, we put them in there. ah We have like a spreadsheet tracker and guys know if they didn't hit their conversations on the week or a cell, they're going to be like on the red and we're putting that on the screen in front of everybody.
Speaker: And then they're going to tell us their plan to get out of the red, which is not meeting the team standards. So I think that's been a system that's helped our team a lot to grow. Just seeing that, you know, checking in with guys too. But me on like a personal level. Yeah, I think, well, first all, we're going to set or close our program.
Speaker: I still knock, but a lot of times I'm running around to appointments. So that's another way. It's like if I'm going an appointment, I know I can't I can't miss an appointment. Guys are counting on me. So got to be showing up for these appointments.
Speaker: And it's really just looking at the calendar. I'm making sure I'm either knocking or in an appointment from two to eight. That's kind of our that's kind of our year round schedule. And so it's just showing up to appointments. If not, I'm going out knocking with guys. And like I mentioned before, where I'm leading the team, I know I got to be out there hitting it.
Speaker: Because if not, it's like, how can I tell my team to get out there I'm not doing it myself? So, yeah, those are some small systems that and help their team stay accountable. and Yeah, especially when there's appointments on the calendar. Yeah. I'm for sure accountable to that. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker: Yeah, no, hundred percent. As far as, you know, personal mentality when it comes, and when I say mentality, I should say almost like your mental systems. So a lot of the guys that I've seen do really, really well in sales, they have their own, like,
Speaker: daily routines, but almost it's like a mental routine as well for, you know, how they manage the mental side of just doing sales every single day. Right. Um, or just for an extended period of time. Um, like there was one really successful guy that I ran into where he would go and he would, he, so he, he would, he was a pest guy. Um, but he had a really, really, really specific,
Speaker: um system and schedule that heat that he kept that just helped him mentally. And and what he would do is he um he woke up at the exact same time every every day, um like the exact same time, went to bed at the exact same time. um He literally ate the exact same lunch every single day um because he knew like it was predictable. like If he just ate the same thing for lunch every day, you know then you know you're you're not going to go eat something in a weird Mexican restaurant that's going to make you go... how to use the bathroom mid-door if you're trying to hit a certain number, right? um
Speaker: And so, and then he had this whole like wind down routine at the end of the night and everything like that. So for you, obviously, you know, it's a little bit different, and you know, like instead of like an intense shorter period, you know, it's more of like a sustained longer period. But I'm curious if there's anything that you have done, like, you know, as far as approaching like the mental aspect of things to keep yourself good and ready and just, I guess, just consistent.
Speaker: Yeah, good question. and I think, well, for me, it's always starting out something physical in the day I do. Jiu-jitsu, go to the gym. um So that's probably, you know, God and something physical. That's kind of the most important things to start the morning, I'd say. Get up, do some, do some praying, doing some scriptures and then doing something physical right after. Because, um I don't know, for me, it's kind of like self-confidence thing. Like, I know if I went in, I just feel better about myself. Going to the gym, it's not really necessarily for the physical aspect. It's more, i would say, it's more for the mental aspect.
Speaker: Because if I get like a workout in, then I know I'm going to feel more confident on the doors. I'm going to feel better out there. So, yeah, that's a big one for me. The guy you were talking about, especially when you're trying to hit big numbers or like in a competition, That's where I try to get it way more dialed. Some of the stuff you're saying, like eating the same things, like I'm taking the healthy snacks in my car. i don't want to be running to the gas station, grabbing Twinkies and stuff, feeling like crap. So I think it's great, especially if you're trying to dial in. You got like a competition, and you know, you think of like a bodybuilder, something like that. If you're trying to hit big numbers and door to door and um you're in a competition or something, then yeah, I'm way more focused on, if you can do something like male prepping, get it and dialed in as possible. So it fluctuates, you know, on a year round thing. Yeah, I'm more consistent in some months than others. Right. Yeah. It's kind of more up and down. Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, that's another thing, too. It's like when I got um I got kids, too. They're in school now. And so and that's another thing that's changed. I can't really be staying up till 2 a.m. now because we're following kind of a set schedule with them. Right. Right.
Speaker: So I think whether you have kids or not, um I'm sure a lot of people listening to this have read James Clear, Atomic Habits and all that. Yeah. But he talks about setting in like almost the habit before the habit. I think it's like the secondary habit or something. So it's like something you can do before that'll like trigger the thing you want to happen. Yeah. So it's like putting your gym clothes out, go to the gym. Right.
Speaker: um Another one for me, like I so i like sitting in the sauna and And now a lot of days I'll like read, read scriptures or whatever, like while I'm in the sauna and I'll forget about lot of times when I'm in the sauna, that'll like trigger me to think, oh yeah, I usually read scriptures in the sauna. Right.
Speaker: So I think a lot of guys, whether you don't have, whether you have kids, family, whatever other people count on you, maybe you can set up some systems like that where it's okay every time I'm in my car, I'm doing this, or every time I'm pulling up to neighborhood, I'm getting out of the door right of the right away, and your your brain gets accustomed to those systems you set up, so I think that's a big secret for anyone you can set up, like, what's the thing before, what's the trigger you can set up to actually start doing that habit, and yeah, it's been a game changer for me. Yeah. I love the ideas of triggers that that's really, really cool. I haven't heard it. i Like i I personally have not read atomic habits yet and it's on my list, you but yeah, i will I will. But yeah, I love the idea of those triggers. um
Speaker: But what I think is so valuable and the principle behind like these routines that really successful guys in sales or in business in general is that sales and starting a business or running a company there's so many aspects of that that are extremely variable. you know Some days, you know and and they're not and a lot of them are not within your control. If you go and knock a bunch of doors and literally just nobody's home for some reason, you know that that whole neighborhood you were knocking in is all at the county fair or whatever, it's not physically possible for you to make a sale. Nobody's nobody's there to open the door, right? yeah um And so little instances like that, two obviously varying levels happen, and you can't always control the outcome of how many sales you're going to make or how your business is doing or whatever. So being able to take the aspects of your life and your day that you can control and controlling the controllable and limiting the number of variables in your day really helps people, I think, mentally deal with the variable side of things. So if they can limit the variables in their morning, in their evening, even what they eat for lunch, you know, then when you're dealing with the variable of a sales job or a business, then you can stay a lot more mentally healthy and consistent by, you know, controlling the things that you can control and limiting those variables. yeah and And I think it it helps people a lot, and myself included. So yeah, really, really, really love that thought. um And as far as the triggers goes as well.
Speaker: yeah and Because the triggers are the parts that help you you know stay consistent in limiting those variables. Yeah, exactly. No, like door to door. You're right. So many variables. Like I remember I was knocking in San Diego. I was trying to knock doors. was like the Padres were in the playoffs and people are like, what are you doing knocking doors right now? Yeah. Or, you know, just recently at the time of this recording, we had the world cup going on yeah and we knock a lot of like Mexican areas. So we were trying to knock doors while Mexico was playing in the world cup. Yeah. people like what are you doing like you know the world cup's on right like well they didn't give us the yeah like we still got to work yeah uh-huh so yeah you're right a lot of things you can't control but um the more controls you can put and i think just helping on a mental side of things too that's what helps whether you get better results or not but just like you know we go back to but back to conversations that's like the main thing we track and in a solar i'm sure it's in pest control too if You're not really tracking hours knocked. You're tracking how many conversations you had. Yeah. Because if you got knocked eight hours, but you only had two conversations, like that's yeah basically doing nothing out there, right? Yeah. That's more about how many conversations can you have in the amount of amount of time you're working. And that's one thing you can control. You can't really control. People say yes or no. You can do things that'll make it more likely that they'll say yes. But what you can control is the time worked and to a degree, how many conversations you have. Because even if people aren't opening, then you can still start to go. It's like, okay, if three people don't answer the door, I'm just going to go to homes where there's signs of life. I'm going go to homes where there's garages open.
Speaker: So and even that, you can kind of control the degree conversations because you could just hop in the car and now go to only places where people are outside in their front yard. Right. And that's conversation, right? Yeah. So... Yeah. I mean, I think that's the whole game is focusing on how to increase the quality and the volume of your inputs. yeah Because that will be those went by increasing the volume and the quality of your inputs to sales, to a business, whatever it is, it will improve your outcomes in the aggregate. Maybe not individually, like on the day on a daily basis, but in the aggregate of a month or a summer or a year, if you're consistently paying attention to and honestly measuring yourself, like measuring how well you did today yeah by your inputs is the way that you went for sure. And it's just going back and saying, okay, did I follow my schedule? Did I film that content I said i was going to film? you know, do do the editing or knock this certain number of doors, right? Did I do these things that I know are what leads to good outcomes in the aggregate at the end of the, like at the end of the year, I guess, and the at the end of the day, figuratively. Yeah. Did I do those things?
Speaker: And then there's the mental work of thinking, right, I put in the volume of things I need to do. Now, is there a way that I can increase the quality of of each of those inputs, right? Because sometimes you can do a high volume volume of the wrong thing. So you need to make sure that you're trying to do that and trying to improve that. But that, that, those are like the basic building blocks of, I think building something really successful longterm, like you've been able to do.
Speaker: Definitely. And it's funny, our top setter right now at our company is he's, he's this like Indian guy. Um, it's not from India, but one of those countries around there, but he goes out and he, he doesn't knock like her set schedule. He'll knock. He'll just knock Monday through Friday and nine to five. So he came from like a nine to five job.
Speaker: he's like, well, I'm just going to do that. yeah Like, well, you should knock Saturdays and you should knock in the evenings during the day. Yeah. He's like, no, I'm just going to do that. But he's he's our top setter just because he does it. He shows up nine, and nine on the dot every day and five on the dot. And even though, yeah, you could say, oh, you're not knocking like the ideal hours. Not as many people are home, but just because he's doing it every day and he's like consistent with it.
Speaker: He's putting in way more time than a lot of people that go out and knock like the primetime hours, but they're way less consistent with it. Yeah. And he's knocking, you know, that's the other thing. Most solar guys aren't knocking for eight hours either. Yeah. And he's knocking like eight hours consistent. Yeah. so just feel that He's getting the results. Yeah. He's just killing it. oh Yeah. No, that makes sense. I mean,
Speaker: Yeah, I think that people maybe don't understand always, but especially new reps or just people like yeah yeah like new people in sales. Volume honestly is king in so many areas. um I mean, it's like you follow Alex Formosie very much. Yeah. OK, sure. So I love his quote where I think the way that it goes is do so much volume that it would be unreasonable for you not to succeed in what you're trying to do right i do so much volume i think james dyson had like over 5 000 prototypes of his vacuum that he was creating before he actually hit the And in reality, like that's a great example. It's like, that is like 5,000 prototypes is so many, like he has to get it. Like it'd be unreasonable for him not to hit, like not to figure it out after 5,000 prototypes. Right. Um, like it just volume cures a multitude of ineptities. Like if you're struggling, if you're trying to improve in something, Honestly, most of the time, what you probably need to be doing is just more volume.
Speaker: like You just need to be doing more of what it is, whether it's knocking or cold calling or iterating on a certain um iterating on a certain i don't prototype or product or software, whatever it is. yeah You probably just need to do more volume. That's most of the answer. And then once you hit your capacity for like, okay, i I functionally do not believe I can do more volume, which you probably can, but If you're at the point where you're like, all right, I'm at my limit with volume. yeah It's like, that's the point where you say, okay, now how can I refine, you know, my volume?
Speaker: Um, so. Yeah. Most guys try to do the opposite. and Yeah. They think, oh, i'm I'm going to analyze my approach and change this and this and this. And it's like, you go back and look at the hours I worked and it's like, dude, you got to increase your yeah your input first. yeah it's like yeah you can improve that but yeah i think you're right 90 of the time it's just like they're increase the time on the doors the time or whatever they're trying to improve and then you can tweak the other things yeah you need both at the same time but yeah more about the effort i would say yeah sure i think that relates it really well to like your podcast social media too a lot of times it's just volume like you don't know what's necessarily going to hit. If everybody knew instinctively, oh yeah, this is the exact type of content people want. This is what the algorithm will pull up. This is what people will respond to and and and engage with, you know, and cause them to follow me.
Speaker: Then, you know, you don't have to post once a month or whatever, right? yeah It's that volume, to be honest. yeah That's the secret. It's just volume. And there's a lot of people that have started, like, that's one thing that stopped me from starting a podcast where I don't feel like i was the most qualified guy people that are better at me than solar yeah i've never been like the best guy in solar yeah but it's just because i showed up and like you said did the volume there's guys that have started podcasts on solar that i heard i'm like oh wow this is really good and i think this is i think this is a lot better than my podcast sometimes i'll think to myself but then they'll do it for like a week you'll like oh well yeah that's where it ended yeah Yeah, because, yeah, it's like the people that just keep showing up. You don't to be the most talented. Yeah. But can you be the one that keeps showing up and then you're going to be the one that that wins at the end of the day if you keep showing up over a guy that has twice the talent but only shows up for a couple of weeks? Yeah. Same thing. Like you said, the guy that has to work to get to the level of producing and sales. generally going to be a lot better because it's like the same person that saved up his money to buy his car versus someone that just got like their parents bought him the car they're probably who's going to take better the care of the car probably the one that had to save up the money right so same thing in sales and probably anything we do if you have to work to get it if you keep showing up then you're going to appreciate a lot more and things are going to go better 100 i agree
Speaker: Well, I think that's a great place to end. I appreciate having you on. Thanks for your time. Yeah. And yeah, go check out Solarpreneur guys. Solarpreneur, excuse me, guys. Let's go. Thank you, David, for having me on. And yeah, let's keep crushing it. Appreciate you.
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