Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
Speaker: My name is Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fell.
Speaker: I teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bring in the top solar dogs of the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals.
Speaker: What is a solopreneur you might ask?
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.
Speaker: Hey what's going on solopreneurs?
Speaker: We are going to highlight the recent Noxstar event that I went to.
Speaker: I'm going to give you guys some takeaways.
Speaker: some secret sauce, some ideas that I took away from this conference, and a whole lot more.
Speaker: So let's jump into it.
Speaker: My name's Taylor Armstrong.
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.
Speaker: Hope you're doing awesome.
Speaker: Hope you are staying warm wherever you're at.
Speaker: I woke up here in San Diego, and it was 37 degrees.
Speaker: No longer the land of sunshine.
Speaker: It was still really sunny and warmed up, but I was shocked.
Speaker: I don't think I've ever seen it this cold in San Diego.
Speaker: So for those people that are not getting colder than that, I don't know how you do it.
Speaker: You got to be crazy.
Speaker: Everyone should be out here.
Speaker: in the winter.
Speaker: But actually I did talk to people that are in some colder markets and they did tell me that there's way less competition when they're knocking in snow.
Speaker: They said hardly anyone is out knocking in inclement weather.
Speaker: So gotta hand it to you people that are knocking in cold weather.
Speaker: But that's beside the point.
Speaker: Today we're highlighting the Knockstar event.
Speaker: And I actually went to this last minute.
Speaker: I didn't have tickets until like the week before.
Speaker: But just had Taylor McCarthy hit me up, a few other people.
Speaker: And I'm like, hey, these guys are salespeople.
Speaker: They sell me.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: Decided to hit up the event, but I was not disappointed.
Speaker: This was another great event and if you are not doing if you are not going to events You're missing out.
Speaker: It's something that I talk about a lot.
Speaker: There is a ton of power in going to events You get a network with people you get to hear what's Working for other guys in the industry and what I think is probably the biggest thing is you just expand your mindset and
Speaker: Every time I go, I see barriers that have been broken, see guys that are just doing way more sales than I ever thought were possible, and really just helps me see what needs to be done, or helps me see rather what's possible in the industry.
Speaker: So speaking of events, if you did not make it to the Noxstar one with us there, we are actually planning on going to Door2DoorCon.
Speaker: And we have an exclusive solar printer discount code for that.
Speaker: That's ARMSTRONG20.
Speaker: You go to door2doorcon.com and discount code is ARMSTRONG20.
Speaker: If you want the exclusive solar printer discount, we'd love to hang out with you.
Speaker: We'll probably plan last year we did a solarpreneur lunch so hit me up if you are going we'd love to organize a little lunch for everyone that listens to the podcast do some networking but so let's jump into this topic I'm just going to highlight this event.
Speaker: For those that have not been to a Noxstar event, tell you a little bit what their format is, a little bit about it, and then just some takeaways.
Speaker: So I'm not going to go into extreme detail.
Speaker: Sometimes I struggle with these event highlight podcasts because there's so many notes to go into.
Speaker: Could make it hours long, but...
Speaker: Don't want to talk you around for hours, so we're just going to highlight some key takeaways I had from a few of the speakers.
Speaker: Let's jump into it.
Speaker: First, I got back from the event...
Speaker: And I had my whole book that I took notes in.
Speaker: They had the little packets there with all the speaker notes and everything.
Speaker: Got home and realized I actually took home someone else's speaker packet.
Speaker: So I think I took home Nico's packet here.
Speaker: So Nico, I apologize.
Speaker: Maybe you have my notebook, but I got your notes.
Speaker: You got better handwriting than I do, so it's okay.
Speaker: But I don't have notes on a few of my key takeaways, but I'm trying to organize...
Speaker: what was said, so sorry for rambling.
Speaker: But like I said, before we get into some takeaways, I want to highlight just the format of the event if you're not familiar with it.
Speaker: So it was a two-day event.
Speaker: It was in Florida.
Speaker: Great weather.
Speaker: Very warm during this time of the year.
Speaker: And what's interesting that Taylor McCarthy does and Noxstar does, it's a little bit different than other events, is most of the speakers are from his group of Noxstars.
Speaker: Okay, and at the time of this recording, I'm not currently in the Noxstar United program, which is his mastermind.
Speaker: They do weekly calls and all that.
Speaker: I was in it for a year, thought it was awesome, so would highly recommend it.
Speaker: But a lot of the speakers are taken from the winners of the competitions that they run over at Noxstar, guys that are just having a lot of success.
Speaker: And he highlights their success, which I think is really cool and awesome.
Speaker: So we get to hear from people that maybe a lot of people hadn't heard of in the industry.
Speaker: and hear from a lot of up and comers, which is cool, but just a little bit different than your typical like solar con, door to door con where, you know, it's people that typically have bigger followings already.
Speaker: I would say bigger names that maybe they're managing at their companies, maybe they're owners of companies, things like that.
Speaker: Hey, but it was really cool to hear from a lot of these up-and-comers.
Speaker: And then also we got to hear from the one, the only Tom Hopkins, Taylor McCarthy as usual.
Speaker: So it's cool because Tom Hopkins is essentially passing down.
Speaker: the baton of his company to Taylor.
Speaker: And he brought that up actually several times during the event.
Speaker: So it's cool to see just that kind of transfer of ownership to see that Tom is still speaking at these events, but he is just passing down the reins to Taylor.
Speaker: And he did say that of anyone in the world right now, he thinks Taylor McCarthy is the one that's, you know, teaches closest to his style.
Speaker: That's,
Speaker: knows how Tom Hopkins ran his events and teaches very similar to him.
Speaker: So that was cool to see.
Speaker: But we heard from them several times.
Speaker: They spoke just kind of some shorter segments towards the beginning and the end.
Speaker: And then we also did a basketball tournament at the end of it.
Speaker: I got smashed.
Speaker: I actually won the first one.
Speaker: So that was cool.
Speaker: I came from behind.
Speaker: I was down.
Speaker: It was a one-on-one tournament.
Speaker: The winner got like a, I think a coaching session or a knocking session with Taylor.
Speaker: It was cool.
Speaker: But I was down, I think six points in the first one.
Speaker: I came back and won.
Speaker: So I was like, let's go, let's go.
Speaker: I was excited about that.
Speaker: But then the second one, I just got smoked.
Speaker: So it was very short lived, but I found out I was against the number one seed.
Speaker: So, yeah, I feel like it was, you know, come on, put me against a lower seed and let me work up to it.
Speaker: Don't just smash my face in.
Speaker: But, hey, either way, wouldn't have won it, but that was a fun little detail at the end there.
Speaker: Okay, so let's get into just a couple takeaways.
Speaker: And like I said, there's too many speakers to go into all of them.
Speaker: But the few speakers I want to highlight, I'm going to tell you just a couple things from them.
Speaker: The first one was my friend Ryan Allen.
Speaker: He spoke on The Art of Confidence.
Speaker: And Ryan, we're actually going to have him on the show here very soon.
Speaker: We were going to do a podcast at the event, but got a little busy with things.
Speaker: But this dude, he's probably the funniest guy I know in solar.
Speaker: He's got his Boston accent.
Speaker: Just can make anyone laugh and spend a lot of time with him.
Speaker: He spoke on the art of confidence.
Speaker: And what's really cool is he grew up in just a really rough environment, rough childhood growing up.
Speaker: So he just spoke about how he's been able to overcome that in his life, how he's been able to develop the confidence that we need in cells, in solar cells.
Speaker: And a few key things he spoke about is he just talked about how children, they're born relentless, but are taught later to relent.
Speaker: If you think of a child, they're not afraid to ask for things.
Speaker: I got two kids myself.
Speaker: My kid will ask over and over and over and over for his bowl of Froot Loops in the morning.
Speaker: He'll ask over and over and over and over to watch Peppa Pig on TV.
Speaker: These kids are relentless.
Speaker: And sometimes I think we forget that we need to have that same attitude in cells.
Speaker: We need to be relentless.
Speaker: So that was a cool thing with confidence.
Speaker: He talked about if you judge yourself based on your past success, you'll lose admiration.
Speaker: So just realizing that we cannot judge ourselves on our past success.
Speaker: We need to look towards the future.
Speaker: So a couple of things just to develop.
Speaker: And a lot of it was his story.
Speaker: So I'm going to save his story for when he comes on the podcast soon.
Speaker: But it was cool to hear from him.
Speaker: And then two others that I want to highlight.
Speaker: We had Tom Hopkins.
Speaker: He really just spoke about the power of questions, how we need to be leading people down the road to their own decision.
Speaker: And so he did a little magic trick drill with us where he just brought someone up on the stage.
Speaker: Asked him to guess the card and asked all these questions.
Speaker: You know, is it ace or spades?
Speaker: Is it red or black?
Speaker: Just all these questions.
Speaker: You can tell I don't play cards very much because I don't even know all the questions he asked.
Speaker: I would have to go back in my notebook and see the questions.
Speaker: But bottom line, he just compared the questions he asked in his little magic trick that we need to ask the same questions.
Speaker: Because remember, people may not believe everything you say, but people have to believe 100% of what they say themselves.
Speaker: Everything they say can and will be used against them in the cell.
Speaker: So that was his big point is we need to help people realize the benefits of solar by the questions we ask them and get them to speak it themselves.
Speaker: And then a really cool line he had that he actually shared with us on the last day.
Speaker: This was just really if you have someone that is trying to think about it, doesn't want to
Speaker: sign up that day.
Speaker: His line was, that's fine, John.
Speaker: Obviously, you wouldn't take your time thinking this over unless you were seriously interested, would you?
Speaker: So may I assume you'll give it very careful consideration?
Speaker: Just to clarify my thinking, what phase of this opportunity is it that you want to think over?
Speaker: Is it the quality of the service I'll render?
Speaker: Is it something I've forgotten to cover?
Speaker: Seriously, please level with me.
Speaker: Could it be the money?
Speaker: Okay, and then he just, you know, goes into isolating the objection.
Speaker: So I thought that was a cool line he shared with us at the end that you can use.
Speaker: So pause that, re-listen to it.
Speaker: You can ride it out.
Speaker: But yeah, just developing the skills of asking questions.
Speaker: So I think it's a good thing.
Speaker: Go analyze the questions you are asking in the cell.
Speaker: If you're new to solar, just go with your manager, go with someone that's closing a lot and figure out what questions are they asking.
Speaker: We've done episodes about questions on the podcast here, but it's great to do a little self-analysis and
Speaker: Great to record your sits, your appointments, figure out am I asking effective questions that get people to realize the pain of staying with utility, the benefits of going solar, and what they'll lose if they don't go solar now.
Speaker: Hey, and then just a couple other highlights here.
Speaker: We heard from Mikey Lucas.
Speaker: He talked about the art of creating wealth, and he took us through a really cool exercise of just really identifying how we can create passive income and really just figuring out what is our status right now in our financial situation.
Speaker: And most people don't do this, but he had us go and write down all of our expenses,
Speaker: figure out how much passive income we need to really be financially independent.
Speaker: So it was a cool exercise just to figure out exactly what my expenses are.
Speaker: I haven't done that in a little bit.
Speaker: and then figure out how much money we actually need to invest to create that amount of passive income because it's true financial freedom when you get to where your passive income, your investments can cover all your expenses plus more, and then you're just working to get ahead at that point.
Speaker: So that was a cool exercise.
Speaker: And one last takeaway before I start.
Speaker: Getting too much in the weeds here going through everyone.
Speaker: This guy I was really impressed by.
Speaker: His name was Will Dirlene.
Speaker: He is over at OmniPower Group, I believe, in Arizona.
Speaker: Hopefully you have him on the show here soon.
Speaker: So if you're listening to this, Will, hit me up.
Speaker: Let's do a podcast.
Speaker: But was really impressed by his closing process.
Speaker: He took us through his whole close, his whole format of how he closes people.
Speaker: And just a couple of things I learned at the end is just with objections,
Speaker: He does a lot of what Mike O'Donnell does, Mike O'Donnell, but he really just changes his mindset to, hey, I'm not coming back here.
Speaker: I'm getting this done today.
Speaker: His secrets that he uses to close, I think he said 80% of his deals, is he goes for the close just like everybody.
Speaker: If he can't get him that time, then he says, hey, just so you know, the States gives you three days to think this over.
Speaker: Hey, it's not like you have to get 100%.
Speaker: It's not like we're getting married today.
Speaker: We're just asking that we start the process and then we fill in the 10.
Speaker: We get you to 90%.
Speaker: We fill in the 10% as we go.
Speaker: But hey, what I'll do for you.
Speaker: I'll extend that to 10 days so you guys have even more time to make sure it's the right decision for you.
Speaker: Does that sound cool?
Speaker: Along those lines, hopefully I'll find my closing notebook because I did write it out exactly word for word.
Speaker: But that and then the second part that he goes into, if he can't get him with extending the cancellation to 10 days, then he says, hey, this in this section from Michael O'Donnell says, hey, that's totally fine.
Speaker: Like you guys can do this whenever.
Speaker: But we do have a cool department that actually is in charge of following up with people and they're great.
Speaker: They're the best at following up.
Speaker: They'll call you off.
Speaker: More than happy to put you in touch with them.
Speaker: They're called the marketing department.
Speaker: But unfortunately, Mr. Customer, the marketing departments, they got to get paid too.
Speaker: So obviously they have different pricing because we have to make sure they get paid.
Speaker: So how about this, Mr. Customer?
Speaker: if I can get our company to take the money that they have to spend to pay the marketing department to follow up with you and just apply it to your system,
Speaker: We'd actually give you six months where we'd just go ahead and pay your solar bill.
Speaker: In addition, you'd still have the 10 days to make sure it's the correct decision for you guys and go from there.
Speaker: Does that sound cool?
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Okay, so those are just some things he took us through.
Speaker: I thought that was genius.
Speaker: He says he closes 80% plus of his deals going through that process.
Speaker: Okay, so yeah, we're going to do more episodes getting, you know, specific into these things, but just wanted to pass on a few of the notes that I enjoyed, a few of the takeaways I got from the Noxstar events.
Speaker: Okay, and I hope to see you guys at some of these coming events.
Speaker: We got Door-to-DoorCon coming up.
Speaker: We got SolarCon coming up in April, and I am hoping to do an event...
Speaker: I know I just need to make it happen, commit, but the plan is that we're going to do a solopreneur event here this year.
Speaker: So it's the first time I'm saying that publicly.
Speaker: Hit me up if that's something that you would be interested in coming to.
Speaker: We'd probably do it in Southern California.
Speaker: So love events.
Speaker: You should go to them if you have not.
Speaker: And those are a few of my takeaways.
Speaker: Sorry for rambling a little bit.
Speaker: I'm actually recording this.
Speaker: 11 o'clock at night.
Speaker: So I got caught up with a few things.
Speaker: But hey, I'm getting it done for y'all.
Speaker: And we'll be sure to bring some heat on the next coming episodes.
Speaker: We've got some fire coming at you.
Speaker: Next episode, we are going to actually be hearing from someone that's
Speaker: uh breaking records he is he closed i think i want to say 150 plus deals last last year but this guy is killing it his name is stetson sofa he is one of the top closers top installers here at legacy power
Speaker: So we're going to hear from him, hear some secrets.
Speaker: Until then, keep crushing it.
Speaker: Hope you have your goals laid out for 2024 or whenever you're listening to this podcast.
Speaker: And we'll see you on the next episode.
Speaker: Peace.
Speaker: What's up, solopreneurs?
Speaker: Hope you enjoyed the episode.
Speaker: Before you run out and start selling more solar yourself, wanted to let you know about an exciting new cheat sheet we created specifically for you in mind.
Speaker: One of the top questions I get asked on Instagram, on Facebook, by our listeners is, Taylor, where should I start?
Speaker: What episodes should I listen to in the podcast?
Speaker: You got too many podcasts, man, because now we have over 200 episodes.
Speaker: So what we've done, we created the top 10 most downloaded, most listened to, and I would say widely accepted, most useful podcasts that we've done here on Solopreneur.
Speaker: We put them together all in one sheet so you can go, you can hit the ground running, especially if you're new, you do not want to not have this sheet.
Speaker: So go download it right now.
Speaker: It's going to be at top10.solarpreneurs.com.
Speaker: Again, that's top10, the number 10,.solarpreneurs.com.
Speaker: Don't forget the S on solarpreneurs.
Speaker: We will have that in the show notes.
Speaker: Go download it right now.
Speaker: And especially if you have not listened to them, go listen to them and you can re-listen to them.
Speaker: That's going to show you how.
Speaker: So go download it and we'll see you on the other side.
