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How I Almost Accidentally Screwed Over My Solar Customers...
56 Plays3 years ago
Listen to these other episodes:
- How to CRUSH Solar Objections - Solar Joe
- How to Separate Yourself from Competition Without Dropping Price - Jake Hess
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Transcript
Taylor's Journey to Solar Success
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
00:00:08
Speaker
My name is Taylor Armstrong.
00:00:10
Speaker
I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fell.
00:00:19
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.
00:00:31
Speaker
What is a Solarpreneur you might ask?
00:00:33
Speaker
A Solarpreneur is a new breed of Solar Pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.
Mission of the Solarpreneur Podcast
00:00:43
Speaker
What's going on, solopreneurs?
00:00:44
Speaker
Taylor Armstrong here with another episode.
00:00:46
Speaker
I'm your host, and I'm here to help your life be much easier as a solar pro, and as usual, help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and have a much better time in the solar industry.
00:00:58
Speaker
Hope you're doing awesome.
00:01:00
Speaker
Hope you are slinging lots of deals lately.
00:01:02
Speaker
We are coming to the time where the daylight is
00:01:05
Speaker
is becoming shorter and shorter out here in California.
00:01:08
Speaker
It's dark by like 645 now.
00:01:11
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So I'm just trying to take advantage of the daylight hours while we still have them.
00:01:15
Speaker
If you're not listening to this during the fall, then enjoy the time while it's not dark super early.
00:01:22
Speaker
I'm from Utah, so I'm used to it being darker later, but out here in California,
00:01:27
Speaker
It does get dark pretty early, one of the downsides.
00:01:29
Speaker
But remember, when it does start getting dark, you can knock in the dark.
00:01:32
Speaker
And we've actually done some podcasts on this.
00:01:35
Speaker
Maybe we'll republish it, update it, be in search for that.
00:01:39
Speaker
We have done some podcasts about knocking in the dark.
00:01:42
Speaker
Or you can make calls in the dark.
00:01:44
Speaker
A lot of stuff you can do once it's dark.
00:01:46
Speaker
Follow-ups, referrals, online leads.
00:01:49
Speaker
No excuse to not work just because it's a little bit dark.
00:01:53
Speaker
But anyways, I digress.
00:01:55
Speaker
Let's jump into the topic.
Training Insights and Avoiding Panel Upgrades
00:01:56
Speaker
The topic today, we're going to be talking about some electrical content.
00:02:00
Speaker
The reason we're talking about this, I recently did a training or attended a training rather with J. Kess and Solar Joe.
00:02:08
Speaker
They did this a few months back.
00:02:10
Speaker
I meant to do it sooner while it was fresh on my mind, but got caught up in a few other topics.
00:02:15
Speaker
But they did a great electrical training and just gave us...
00:02:19
Speaker
some knowledge, things we can do to avoid electric panel upgrades, things we can do to differentiate ourselves from the competition and just sound like an expert when we're out selling a solar.
00:02:30
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And I would highly recommend just gaining a basic understanding of some electrical terms, some electrical, just topics that relate to solar.
00:02:40
Speaker
We have done some podcasts on this.
00:02:42
Speaker
We'll try to link to them in the show notes.
00:02:45
Speaker
Hopefully my assistant is hearing this and she'll link to them.
00:02:48
Speaker
But we've done a couple of
00:02:50
Speaker
basic episodes on just some electric stuff.
00:02:53
Speaker
And today I'm going to talk about a few of the takeaways that I thought were really cool that I gained from attending this training.
00:03:01
Speaker
I know they're doing another one here pretty soon, I think a battery training.
00:03:06
Speaker
So it's good stuff if you want to check it out.
00:03:08
Speaker
But that's Jcast Solar Joe over at Solar Academy.
00:03:11
Speaker
They are my go to guys for anything electrical.
00:03:15
Speaker
And you know what?
00:03:15
Speaker
I say Solar Joe, but I actually think he may have started working with Lumio.
00:03:20
Speaker
So I'm actually not sure if he's involved with Solar Academy, if you didn't
Resources and Expertise for Solar Professionals
00:03:24
Speaker
hear the news.
00:03:24
Speaker
So if you're listening to Solar Joe, congrats on the new position.
00:03:28
Speaker
Hopefully I'm not wrong on that, but I saw some stuff on social media.
00:03:31
Speaker
But as usual, his group is great.
00:03:34
Speaker
It's Solar Advice, I think, is the Facebook group.
00:03:38
Speaker
That is a great resource for anyone that's over on Facebook.
00:03:41
Speaker
So let's jump into some electrical training and this stuff gets kind of dull.
00:03:45
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I'll be honest.
00:03:45
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That is why I never liked the electrical stuff is because to me it was just like, you know, the geeky stuff, the engineers stuff that I don't care about.
00:03:54
Speaker
And really, a lot of it you don't need to sell solar.
00:03:56
Speaker
I know a ton of guys that are selling a ton of solar that know nothing about this.
00:04:00
Speaker
But I think it will help you sell even more and it will help you differentiate yourself.
00:04:05
Speaker
So if you can learn at least the basics, definitely a little cherry on top as you're out there selling.
Technical Challenges and Solutions in Solar Sales
00:04:12
Speaker
So we've talked about it before, but a couple of things, if you know some basic electrical, it will help you possibly avoid main panel upgrades.
00:04:21
Speaker
Hey, and you can go listen to the episode.
00:04:23
Speaker
We'll link to it where I talk more about that.
00:04:25
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But I want to give you a little story that happened to me recently that tied directly in with this training that, um,
00:04:33
Speaker
jkess and solar joe did and so what happened i had a customer sold them about a month back and hooked them up with high efficient panels 440 watt panels the micro inverters emphase and was selling them a ton of value on it saying look we're giving you the most efficient panels all the other companies were doing like 350 to 400 watts
00:04:58
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So we got them the 440 watts.
00:05:01
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So I was selling them hard on that.
00:05:02
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Look, you're getting more bang for your buck.
00:05:05
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And you also got limited roof space.
00:05:07
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So we're just trying to fit as many panels as we could.
00:05:11
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So I thought that would help using the higher efficient panels, which who knows, maybe I know they are bigger panels.
00:05:18
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So it could have been the same using less efficient panels.
00:05:21
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But
00:05:21
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That was my angle on it.
00:05:22
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I was just going to say, look, you don't have as much space.
00:05:25
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Let's use the most efficient panel up there, the highest wattage panel.
00:05:29
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So what ended up happening, we sign him up.
00:05:31
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Then I get a text from him a couple of days later and he says, hey, Taylor, I talked to my engineer friend and these inverters aren't going to work with the 440 watt panels.
00:05:42
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And I'm like, no.
00:05:43
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I'm like, no, you're fine, man.
00:05:45
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We've done tons of jobs with this.
00:05:46
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Never had issues.
00:05:47
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You'll be fine.
00:05:48
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Then he didn't say anything for a little bit.
00:05:51
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Then he texts me again the next day, says, Taylor, you know what?
00:05:55
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No, I talked with my engineer friend again.
00:05:56
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And yeah, he explained to me that these inverters, I'm going to be losing power if I use these inverters.
00:06:03
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And I'm like, what?
00:06:04
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Okay, well, let me talk to our guys, do some digging on this.
00:06:09
Speaker
So I'm like, okay, I've sold lots of jobs with these inverters.
00:06:13
Speaker
And I was using the Enphase microinverters.
00:06:16
Speaker
If you're new to the solar industry, you got your microinverters, you got your string inverters.
00:06:20
Speaker
That's a topic for a different day.
00:06:22
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But microinverters, each panel has its own inverter.
00:06:25
Speaker
Right.
00:06:26
Speaker
And we were selling them the IQ seven pluses, I believe, which are they have the IQ eight model, which is the newest model, I believe, at the time of this recording, at least.
00:06:38
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So I hooked them up with these.
00:06:40
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And I in my head, I'm like, these are fine.
00:06:42
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They're like, basically the newest model, there's no way they're not going to work with the panel.
00:06:46
Speaker
So I do some digging, talk to Jake Hess again.
00:06:50
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And he tells me, yeah, Taylor, your customer's right.
00:06:53
Speaker
You need to be using the newest model of microinverter.
00:06:57
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You need to be using the IQ8Ms, he told me, which is like basically the highest, you know, the best one they offer and the newest one.
00:07:06
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And I'm like, are you serious?
00:07:07
Speaker
why?
00:07:08
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What's going on?
00:07:09
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And this was actually after he did this electrical training.
00:07:12
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So he's like, Taylor, were you not on the electrical training we did?
00:07:15
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I'm like, yeah, turns out he explained all this, but I think I was finishing up an appointment or something.
00:07:23
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So I missed the entire section where he explained all this.
00:07:26
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I had to go back and rewatch it.
00:07:28
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But this was one of the topics he covered in the training.
00:07:31
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And that is that your inverters have to match up with the wattage of the panel because they have a max continuous output, I believe.
00:07:40
Speaker
And keep in mind, I'm still learning this stuff.
00:07:42
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So some of you guys that might know a lot of this advanced stuff, I'm still just a beginner in it.
00:07:47
Speaker
But I'm sharing with you my experience, what I learned and how it related to my customer.
00:07:51
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:08:48
Speaker
If I were to use this model microinverter with the 440 watt panel, on their max production days, the most alternate current that they could take in, I think would have been like 380 watts when maybe their capacity was 400 watts.
00:09:03
Speaker
And I'm probably explaining it wrong, but bottom line is they were going to be losing power.
00:09:07
Speaker
It's called clipping.
00:09:08
Speaker
They're going to be losing power on some days when they're taking a lot of energy if I were to use these inverters.
Importance of Electrical Knowledge in Solar
00:09:14
Speaker
I had no idea.
00:09:15
Speaker
I was ready to sign them up and be done with it.
00:09:18
Speaker
And end of the day, it probably wouldn't have been a huge deal.
00:09:21
Speaker
And I'm pretty sure I've already signed up or installed a decent amount of these people with higher wattage panels that probably didn't match the correct inverter that they could have been using.
00:09:29
Speaker
But end of the day, I had no idea.
00:09:32
Speaker
And I was doing something for my customer that maybe wasn't in their best interest.
00:09:37
Speaker
So I, of course, had to go to this customer.
00:09:39
Speaker
I'm like, hey, found out you're right.
00:09:42
Speaker
We're going to use the IQ8Ms and get you hooked up.
00:09:46
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That way you're not losing any power.
00:09:48
Speaker
And he was happy.
00:09:49
Speaker
End of story.
00:09:50
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But it did make me not look the best, right?
00:09:53
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I didn't look like an expert in that moment.
00:09:55
Speaker
So the lesson is, is that you should know more than your customer.
00:10:00
Speaker
Okay, I could have lost the deal.
00:10:01
Speaker
Luckily, this guy was chill.
00:10:02
Speaker
But how many engineer types, how many people after finding this out that you signed them up not having a superior product knowledge?
00:10:10
Speaker
A lot of people would take that as a sign, not want to do business with you, go with someone else.
00:10:14
Speaker
So it's these little things that if you can know them individually,
00:10:17
Speaker
If you can explain your customers, which, by the way, if you Google your Enphase microinverter, it's going to show you the max capacity of them.
00:10:24
Speaker
OK, but it's like the max.
00:10:26
Speaker
So I think the IQ7s that said max was like 400.
00:10:30
Speaker
But really, it was like, I don't know, 20 less than that, 380.
00:10:33
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Jake has explained this to me, so I'm still figuring it out.
00:10:36
Speaker
But you can Google the sheets, Google the spec sheets of your inverters, of your panels, a lot of the stuff you can figure out for yourself.
00:10:43
Speaker
So I'd recommend doing that, especially the panels and inverters that you're offering.
00:10:46
Speaker
I would have those just bookmarked, handy, ready to show your customers the details if you need to.
00:10:53
Speaker
You know, you shouldn't have to get in that too often, but maybe you're selling an engineer type that wants to have the spec sheet right there.
00:10:58
Speaker
Makes you look like an expert.
00:10:59
Speaker
And after this, I went back through my accounts.
00:11:03
Speaker
I found like four others that I had sold the exact same thing.
00:11:06
Speaker
Four 40 watt panels with IQ7 plus inverters.
00:11:09
Speaker
And I went and changed all of them to the IQ8Ms.
00:11:13
Speaker
Did the good thing.
00:11:14
Speaker
Maybe you're doing the same thing.
00:11:16
Speaker
Maybe you made this mistake.
00:11:17
Speaker
And end of the day, your installer, they're probably not going to tell you this.
00:11:21
Speaker
They don't care.
00:11:21
Speaker
They're just like a factory.
00:11:22
Speaker
And this is something we went over in the electrical training.
00:11:25
Speaker
What they're doing, they have all this pressure.
00:11:27
Speaker
How many people are begging your installer, hey, get these jobs in quick, move on to the next one.
00:11:31
Speaker
I want to get paid.
00:11:32
Speaker
So what they're doing, they're just trying to get these things on a conveyor belt and move them through.
00:11:37
Speaker
A lot of these things, even though it's electricians that they have, at least in my case, our installers, they have an electric
00:11:42
Speaker
electrician working through them, but he's not spending tons of time.
00:11:46
Speaker
He's got so many jobs to manage, so many projects that sometimes they're not paying attention to these things.
00:11:52
Speaker
And I've gone through, it's a good idea to look at all the CAD designs that come through because I've seen where panel types have been wrong.
00:11:58
Speaker
I've seen where they're using the wrong inverter.
00:12:00
Speaker
I've seen where they want to do a main panel upgrade, but they don't need one.
00:12:04
Speaker
So I would definitely recommend take a look at that.
00:12:07
Speaker
know how to read a CAD design.
00:12:09
Speaker
And again, I know Solar Academy has all sorts of trainings on this, but you can always shoot me a message.
00:12:14
Speaker
I can share what I know with my beginner knowledge, with my caveman knowledge of the topic.
00:12:20
Speaker
So that was a big takeaway.
00:12:22
Speaker
Make sure your inverters match up with the wattage of the panels.
00:12:25
Speaker
And then just a couple other things.
00:12:28
Speaker
I'm not going to get super geeky with this here, but a couple other things that I thought were interesting takeaways I had is really just making sure you know how to read your main panels, the main panel rating, and then the bus bar.
00:12:40
Speaker
So the breaker, the way you figure out how many amps the main panel is, you go, you look at the main breaker, which that is the big one with the big switch.
00:12:50
Speaker
And then you look at the number on that.
00:12:52
Speaker
Pretty straightforward.
00:12:53
Speaker
And so that is the rating here.
00:12:54
Speaker
of the main panel and then the bus bar that's like the spine of the leco panel that's the back part of it the way you find that is you go look um on the sticker as you're opening the panel there should be a sticker there and you go and look in the fine print the sticker will say max rating and usually it's 100 amp 125 150 200 etc
00:13:15
Speaker
That's how you find it.
00:13:16
Speaker
So those two things are key to know the panel rating and then the bus bar rating.
00:13:21
Speaker
And besides that, there's a bunch of different equations where you can figure this stuff out, which I'm not going to get into.
00:13:26
Speaker
Part of it is because I'm still figuring out myself.
00:13:28
Speaker
So as I learn more of this, I will share on the podcast.
00:13:32
Speaker
but what you should do is just know those things and keep in mind if it is a 100 amp panel and then a 100 amp bus bar there is a pretty good chance that you're gonna need a main panel upgrade so something to consider there's equations for this and there is a cheat sheet you can hit me up i think i'd be okay to share this cheat sheet with you but um the max amount of panels you can fit typically let's say it's a 100 amp panel 100 amp bus bar then you're looking at
00:14:01
Speaker
Let me just make sure I got the number right here.
00:14:03
Speaker
Okay, here it is.
00:14:05
Speaker
100 amp.
00:14:05
Speaker
And so if you have your IQ7 micro-invirtors, you can fit 16 panels up to 330 watt.
00:14:13
Speaker
And then if you have higher wattage panels, you can fit 13 panels on your IQ7 pluses.
00:14:19
Speaker
Not a lot of panels.
00:14:20
Speaker
Hey, that's in San Diego.
00:14:22
Speaker
You can find some accounts.
00:14:24
Speaker
You can find some customers that only need, you know, 10 to 13 panels.
00:14:28
Speaker
But most people, they're going to need more than 13 panels typically, right?
00:14:31
Speaker
And so something to keep in mind.
00:14:33
Speaker
And then from there, as the bus bar rating goes up,
00:14:36
Speaker
and the main panel ampage goes up, you can fit more.
00:14:40
Speaker
So definitely if you're starting out, just make sure you look to see how many amps the panel and the bus bar is.
00:14:46
Speaker
And a good idea, something that we were taught is to just take pictures of that main panel and of the sticker inside of it.
00:14:53
Speaker
Hey, so just a few takeaways.
00:14:55
Speaker
I know it gets a little dry.
00:14:56
Speaker
That's why we started with the story of my customer, how I almost screwed some people over a little bit.
00:15:00
Speaker
But remember those things and get yourself a cheat sheet, write it, write this stuff down, and then just know a couple of the key electrical terms so you can sound knowledgeable, at least when you're coming up versus engineers or people that do know a little bit, a lot of electrical, you want to know, you want to sound like you know something.
00:15:18
Speaker
So I hope that inspires you.
00:15:19
Speaker
Go learn as much as you can about the electrical.
00:15:23
Speaker
Obviously, learn sales first and supplement it with some electrical knowledge.
00:15:26
Speaker
But some great things to know to just help you avoid panel upgrades and make sure you go through all the options.
00:15:33
Speaker
You can check out our other episodes where we have gone through more, you know, different options you can use instead of a main panel upgrade out here in San Diego.
00:15:41
Speaker
We have.
00:15:42
Speaker
renewable meter adapters.
00:15:43
Speaker
There's other terms like sub as main, probably missing some, but a D rate, a couple of different things you can do.
00:15:50
Speaker
So it's a good idea to just ask your installers if they've considered all the options before doing a main panel upgrade, especially if you're trying to save time and money.
00:15:59
Speaker
So hope that helps.
00:16:00
Speaker
Go use this in your closes.
00:16:02
Speaker
Use this as you're knocking doors.
00:16:03
Speaker
Sound like an expert and keep learning about electrical.
00:16:06
Speaker
Hope that inspires you.
00:16:07
Speaker
So we'll see you guys on the next episode.
00:16:11
Speaker
What's up, Solopreneurs?
00:16:12
Speaker
Hope you enjoyed the episode.
00:16:13
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.
00:16:24
Speaker
One of the top questions I get asked on Instagram, on Facebook, by our listeners is, Taylor, where should I start?
00:16:31
Speaker
What episodes should I listen to in the podcast?
00:16:34
Speaker
You got too many podcasts, man, because now we have over 200 episodes.
00:16:39
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 Solrepreneur.
00:16:52
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.
00:17:01
Speaker
So go download
Top Podcast Episodes Announcement
00:17:02
Speaker
it right now.
00:17:02
Speaker
It's going to be at top10.solarpreneurs.com.
00:17:06
Speaker
Again, that's top10, the number 10,.solarpreneurs.com.
00:17:11
Speaker
Don't forget the S on solarpreneurs.
00:17:14
Speaker
We will have that in the show notes.
00:17:16
Speaker
Go download it right now.
00:17:17
Speaker
And especially if you have not listened to them, go listen to them and you can re-listen to them.
00:17:23
Speaker
That's going to show you how.
00:17:24
Speaker
So go download it and we'll see you on the other side.