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Underrated Key To Your Success in Solar
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In this episode, I share some of my tips to keep the ball rolling as we all aim achieve for success in the solar industry. Time is the most valuable asset we have, and it's important we find ways to use it wisely.
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Transcript
Taylor Armstrong's Journey to Success
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong. 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 fail.
00:00:19
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.
Becoming a Solopreneur: The Path to Mastery
00:00:31
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. Hey, what's going on,
Mastering Time Management in the Solar Industry
00:00:42
Speaker
solarpreneurs? Today, we're to jamming on how you can master the one thing that you can never get back, and that is your time.
00:00:50
Speaker
So if you feel like you're struggling in solar, if you feel like you're constantly overwhelmed, then this podcast is for you. Welcome to the show. My name is Taylor Armstrong. We're here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and have a much better time in the solar industry.
00:01:06
Speaker
And in this case, master your time. This is one of my favorite topics. You've heard me mention it. You've heard me ah share some things about it before in the podcast.
00:01:18
Speaker
But we're doing a special training for a team tomorrow and just thought, hey, what a good time to revisit this. and ah dive a little deeper on a few different aspects of this topic that is so important.
Engagement and Appreciation for Guests
00:01:30
Speaker
So before we jump in, please, if you have not already, go leave us a review on Apple, iTunes, Spotify. Go leave us a comment on YouTube, wherever you listen to it. This is how we grow the show.
00:01:41
Speaker
Now, hope you're enjoying. We've had some incredible guests on lately. Please let them know that you heard their podcast. These guys, ah they... and spend a lot of their time and they're high producers. So it's been a honor to have some pretty phenomenal guests on lately.
00:01:57
Speaker
So let's get into the topic, this time thing.
Weekly Planning and Prioritization Techniques
00:02:01
Speaker
um It's something that I think is so important because as you get further along the solar journey, there's probably going be a point where you know Maybe you got other things going on. If you're like me, I got three kids, I'm married, and it's something I'm thinking about all the time. How can I have the time to focus on these different aspects of solar? right and We talk about in our organization, we want to master all aspects of life, faith, family, fitness, finance, fun. You want to have it all.
00:02:33
Speaker
and The only way to do that, I believe, becoming a better steward of your time. so I'm going to go through a few different just ways that you can better organize, better manage
Conducting Time Audits for Better Efficiency
00:02:43
Speaker
your time. And hopefully it's things that maybe you haven't thought about that you can go and apply today. Okay, so the first one, I think this is crucial. You need to you need to have a planning session. You need to do at a minimum weekly planning This is something that's changed the game for me. It's just like so many times we're letting things just pile on top of each other. We're being reactive. If any of you have read the book, um The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, great book.
00:03:12
Speaker
Definitely recommend it. But he talks about the rock. not sure what he calls it. Rock analogy, maybe. need to go back and... read exactly how he describes it. But in the book, he has a yeah jar full of of rocks, right? And he has two different examples he gives.
00:03:28
Speaker
um One is there's a bunch of small rocks piled on top of each other. You try to fit more between it, but you put all the pebbles in first so nothing fits in in between the cracks of the rocks. The second example he gives, he puts in the big rocks first, and then he fills the rest with the tiny rocks or with the sand, and then he's able to maximize maximize everything.
00:03:50
Speaker
And so the principle from that is, are we focusing on our big
Outsourcing Non-Essential Tasks
00:03:54
Speaker
rocks? Are we focusing on the most important things and filling the things around them? If we're just being reactive, if we're letting our customers control and demand our time whenever they want, and then it's probably not a big rock, right? So I want you to ask yourself, how selective are you with your time? Are you someone when you're with the family, you're at the gym, you get a call from a customer, are you dropping everything to answer it?
00:04:19
Speaker
if you If that's you, I mean, maybe it's, I get it, customers are important, but do you ever stop to think, hey, maybe this is something that could wait, right? Maybe I can send a text to the customer say, hey,
00:04:31
Speaker
I'll call you back. I'm in a meeting and schedule for a different time. Hey, I know for me, the probably the first and I sometimes I still struggle with this, but there's so many times where I would just let my customers dictate every ounce of my day, every second of my day. If I was in the middle of something um whether it was church family fitness whatever i I'll drop everything because I'll be like, oh, this customer, with what if they have a question?
00:04:56
Speaker
And what if just because I didn't pick up right now, they cancel their solar and they lose out on that? Well, guess what? They're not going cancel because you didn't pick up their call right away. And if they do, then but they probably would have canceled whether you picked up or not.
00:05:10
Speaker
Okay, so start to think of that. What are your big rocks? Are you someone that's planning? Are you planning out the most important things? And are you dictating your time, not other people?
00:05:21
Speaker
that's step one. Have a weekly planning session. You dictate your time, not the other way around. so The second thing is really studying being conscious of your time.
00:05:32
Speaker
And that's just just like anything. Hopefully at this point in your solar
Building Support Networks for Delegation
00:05:36
Speaker
career, you are measuring your key performance and indicators, your KPIs. Prime example right there.
00:05:42
Speaker
Got our messages coming in, group chats coming in, but I'm not going to let them dictate my time. Hey, and so the second thing is... Are you being conscious of your time? Do you even know where you're spending your time and attention?
00:05:55
Speaker
And if you're like me, the answer is probably no. If you haven't actually sat down and done an audit of your time, this can be very tough to be able to improve it, be able to manage it, to be able to control it.
00:06:07
Speaker
i Just like we tell our new guys all the time, it's tough to improve in solar if you don't know... What your ratios are. How many doors are you knocking? How many conversations are you having? How many appointments are you sending out of those?
00:06:19
Speaker
If you don't know your numbers, very difficult to make improvements because you don't know what to improve, right? Is it an appointment issue? Is it a work ethic issue? Is it not talking to enough homeowners?
00:06:30
Speaker
So in that same way, it's important that we know where's our time being spent. And the best way to do this is to do an audit on your time. had a few
Listener Feedback and Future Episodes
00:06:39
Speaker
episodes on this, but it's as simple as going and breaking your day into 15 minute increments and just writing. What did you do with those 15 minutes?
00:06:47
Speaker
Hey, were you sitting on the toilets? Were you on social media? Were you having... conversations with someone. If you do that, you will start to see pretty quick. This is not, maybe this was a good use of my time or this was not, especially if you break it down to the ridiculousness of 15 minutes.
00:07:05
Speaker
If you do that for three days, promise you, you're going see pretty big things you could probably change um that you... didn't even realize, right? I know I had some big breakthroughs when I first did that time audit. it So go do a time audit. And then the book that I recommend everyone for this is a book called buy back your time.
00:07:22
Speaker
Uh, he also has a podcast, but he talks about this whole thing in depth As far as studying your time and i'm really just making audit audit of it. And speaking of that, the third one, the third point of the episode is to look for ways. How can you buy back your time? Hey, um so go check out that book if you want to get even deeper in this.
00:07:43
Speaker
But buying back your time, what are things you're doing that you can buy a back? What are some things that you can pay other people to do? What maybe you're doing work that's a $10 an hour job, right?
00:07:55
Speaker
you think you can get someone else to do that? Okay, so this is one of my favorite things is just outsourcing, looking for ways that you can delegate your tasks so you can focus on the big rocks, the high level activities.
00:08:07
Speaker
Keys with that is just write down every task you do throughout the day. And then you can assign a dollar value to it, assign a value to it, one, two, $3, right? And then from there, you can look for ways to buy buy back. Could you outsource that to someone? And the top two recommendations I give, especially for solar people, you know, if you're a company owner, depending on what role you have, could be a little bit different. But the top two ones I recommend are having an account manager. Okay. Someone that's going in and just looking through all your accounts, helping you manage them, helping you do the mundane tasks so you can focus on more on selling.
00:08:44
Speaker
more on prospecting, right? So get yourself an account manager. And then the second one, second most important, or maybe first first most important important, especially if you have a family, get someone to come do your laundry, get someone to come clean.
00:08:58
Speaker
We have someone that comes twice a week. This was a game changer for us, for myself and my wife, it's just someone that comes and does the laundry. With three kids, we were spending hours and hours and hours every week. My weekends were taking over. it Felt like I was just drowning because I was working. I was coming back practically to a point of depression because it was just just work and then housework, work, and then laundry, chores.
00:09:22
Speaker
Especially on the weekends, it's like... I wanted to do something to recharge, but i didn't have time. And I think the biggest breakthrough for us came my wife. She actually got sick and she was having stomach. She later got diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, which is like a chronic stomach issue.
00:09:38
Speaker
Pretty gnarly, you know, stomach pains, poop and blood, all that all that crazy stuff. And she had this issue going on. We didn't know what it was. She's pregnant with her third kid. made her like bedridden. She couldn't do anything. I was getting, I was starting to resent things because I was like working, came home and she was in bed and it just caused a lot of stress for us.
00:10:00
Speaker
Couldn't do anything. And the only thing that saved us during that time is we started delegating some tasks and And that's how I was able to get through it. And, you know, we prayed for She finally got into a hospital. It's a long story, but she had a bad doctor that didn't properly diagnose her, wouldn't wouldn't connect her with like a GI doctor to figure out what was going on. So it was a rough time.
00:10:23
Speaker
But um their our saving grace during the time was having someone to help us with surgery. the cleaning with the laundry, things like that. Cause I was drowning and that was about the point of like a breakdown for us.
00:10:36
Speaker
So hopefully for you listening, hopefully it doesn't get that bad, right? But how much more time could you have to focus on money-making activities if you did not have to do laundry? Maybe for you, it's cooking, maybe for you, it's cleaning, but ah I'm sure there's tasks that you do that's number one you hate doing number two you're not good at and number three you just shouldn't be doing because they're such low value activities so start to ask yourself do i like this task number two is it worth my time could it be delegated and number three is at high value is it actually worth my time there's a very low value low value task and depending on what you answer you're probably gonna find out pretty quick
00:11:18
Speaker
there's some things I could delegate. And then it's a separate podcast on the how. Hey, I mean, just the short answer. You can find these people online. You can find account managers online. There's virtual assistants.
00:11:29
Speaker
It's been a topic we've talked about before. you can go as simple as zip recruiter. Indeed, you can post um ads for people that will come to your laundry. You can hit me up. There's scripts you can put on there. There's job descriptions.
00:11:44
Speaker
and But the biggest way I would recommend starting out with this stuff is just look for referrals. If you've been in solar for a little bit, maybe you have a rep that's producing lower volume, need some extra cash.
00:11:55
Speaker
They know the solar game. They know how to manage accounts. Could you pay that person to manage your accounts? Shoot them some extra cash while they're getting back on their feet. Okay. Someone, something simple like that. And maybe you're part of like a church group Maybe you have people that you know in your community that ah could use some cash. You know you don't want to make sure they're quality people.
00:12:17
Speaker
But for us, it was pretty easy to just go to our church congregation, ask for references. Hey, you know anyone that's good with um kids and cleaning, laundry, stuff like that? Did we get hired? We found someone within days that could use the money and that was awesome at doing stuff like that. Okay. So hopefully this gives you some insight on how to better use your time, how to better better manage this precious resource that's the one thing we can't get back.
00:12:45
Speaker
Hey, if you are interested in topics like this, please shoot me a message. I know it's a little bit, you know, a little bit different than a lot of other topics we talk about on the show, but these things are important. And I believe it's the little things like this that can sometimes make the biggest difference more than any other sales technique we talk about. Because if you can have have an extra two, three, four, five hours a week just because you bought back some time, how many extra deals could that get you?
00:13:12
Speaker
Think about it. So I hope this helps someone out there today. Go shoot this to someone who is overwhelmed, who's drowning, who doesn't have enough time during the day. Would love to hear if this helps somebody out there. And please keep the podcast recommendations, the topics coming. Please keep the guest recommendations coming.
00:13:29
Speaker
We've got some absolute fire guests. We've had the opportunity to do two insanely good podcasts today. um Next episode, we're going to have one of my dear friends, Jeremy Rose, on the podcast.
00:13:40
Speaker
He's with the RSA Residential Solar Association. He is, I believe, someone on their board that's kind of bridging the gap between regulations and sales. And he goes over some super interesting topics, just how we can bridge that gap and how we can, you know, more involved in kind of like the regulatory side of solar um and do things the right way.
00:14:03
Speaker
So it makes our jobs easier so we can keep making really good money and keep solar sustainable. So make sure you tune into that episode and we'll see you guys on the next podcast. So some of you already know that I run my own door to door sales team here in San Diego.
Introduction to Solar Scout and Special Offers
00:14:18
Speaker
And as we are 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.
00:14:29
Speaker
Then we discovered an app called Solar Scout, but it's not 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. It's been working for a lot of teams across the country, and now I'm on board too.
00:14:52
Speaker
I'm going to be one of the first to use SolarScout in San Diego, so I decided to partner up. But I told them, hey, if I'm going to talk about SolarScout on my show, you need to give my listeners a great deal. And they did.
00:15:03
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.
00:15:16
Speaker
Okay, back to the show. Hey, solopreneurs, quick question. 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.
Solcite: A Community for Solar Professionals
00:15:30
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. 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. And it's called Solcite. This learning community was designed from the ground up to level the playing field and give Solar Pros access to proven mentors 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 Currently, SoulCity is open, launched, and ready to be enrolled. So go to SoulCity.co to learn more and join the learning experience now. This is exclusively for solopreneur listeners, so be sure to go to SoulCity.co and join. We'll see you on the inside.