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 how to avoid the mistakes I made and bring in the top solar dogs of the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro, and closing more deals.
Speaker: What is a Solarpreneur you might ask?
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.
Speaker: What's going on, solopreneurs?
Speaker: We have another fantastic episode, and we are live here in Las Vegas, Nevada, here in the man of the hour, his mansion here, just hanging out.
Speaker: So we've got Mr. Jerry Fussell on the show.
Speaker: Jerry, thanks for coming on with us today.
Speaker: Yeah, thanks for driving up, too.
Speaker: I appreciate it.
Speaker: How far from San Diego?
Speaker: It's like five hours.
Speaker: Five hours, yeah.
Speaker: So thanks, man, for coming up and hanging out.
Speaker: Glad to have you here at the house, and thanks for jumping on the podcast with me, man.
Speaker: Yeah, I love it.
Speaker: And no, Jerry's been treating me to Pop-Tarts and sandwiches and all the pizza I can handle here.
Speaker: So, hey, man, if there's food, I'll be here.
Speaker: You can tell it's definitely a house that we house door knockers a lot because pizza and Pop-Tarts and sandwiches, that's pretty much it.
Speaker: Okay, I had more food than the first door knocking house I was in.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: All we had was eggs, pretty much.
Speaker: We have a lot of those, too.
Speaker: Okay, so they got it all.
Speaker: But no, it's been an awesome time here.
Speaker: So yeah, we've been able to shoot some content and just kind of hang out here with Jerry and his guys.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And and the other big announcement we have before we kind of jump into things here is Jerry.
Speaker: He with his company Pi Syndicate, they are the first ever sponsors of the Solarpreneur podcast.
Speaker: So we're happy about it.
Speaker: And we're going to let Jerry talk a little bit about that.
Speaker: And then also is partnering on it.
Speaker: But just like the summary of it, they are, well, I guess you can say, what's the summarized version you want to tell our listeners what Pi Syndicate is real quick, Jerry?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Pi Syndicate is more of a supportive kind of mastermind.
Speaker: We didn't start to really make money.
Speaker: I already have some successful solar companies.
Speaker: And one of my partners, Mikey Lucas in Austin, already have successful businesses.
Speaker: The reason why we started is because we realized that about 85% of the guys in the industry are
Speaker: that are top earners.
Speaker: So the guys making over $150,000 a year end up leaving the industry and they have no money.
Speaker: They don't own any real estate.
Speaker: They don't have any money in savings.
Speaker: And about half of them owe money to the IRS.
Speaker: So when we talk about why we work, you know, it's a fun job going door to door selling stuff.
Speaker: There's a ton of reasons why we all work.
Speaker: But when it comes down to it, if it didn't actually pay us any money, we would all stop.
Speaker: And that's eventually what happens is guys get burnout because the money's not.
Speaker: not good enough to overcome the fact that they owe money on taxes or that they haven't really accumulated any wealth.
Speaker: And it's just, you know, just like you and I, we both probably hopped around to different houses, you know, door knocking across the country.
Speaker: It's not indicative of saving money.
Speaker: It, you know, means that we go buy a BMW when we get enough money or we,
Speaker: We go out to fancy dinners or whatever we're going to spend the money on.
Speaker: Or we buy our wife a $20,000 wedding ring when we propose because we're making money.
Speaker: And guys leave the industry eventually.
Speaker: Majority of people end up not door knocking forever.
Speaker: Some of us love it.
Speaker: Some of us love it for five years and it's time to move on.
Speaker: And the sad thing for us is when they do move on, they put a lot of sweat and work into the job and they leave the industry with nothing to show for it.
Speaker: And these are guys making in the top, you know, one, 2% of income earners in the entire country.
Speaker: And they're not having any money in savings and investments.
Speaker: And so.
Speaker: That's our mission is to change that.
Speaker: We want to, within five years of working in the solar industry, have a plan for retirement in place where a guy can walk away from the door-to-door industry, go be a dentist, whatever he wants to do, and still have a substantial financial portfolio with investing and savings and emergency funds and all the things you need.
Speaker: Also, a credit score, enough income to buy your first house, all the things that companies don't really educate their door knockers on and their sales guys on.
Speaker: is really the gap that we fill within the industry.
Speaker: We're kind of selective, but at the end of the day, we want to hang out with cool people that are knocking doors.
Speaker: It's just the coolest single job to meet people that live differently, right?
Speaker: That wake up every day excited to go to work.
Speaker: Because if you don't, you quit within three months probably.
Speaker: So if you're there a couple years and you're a top earner,
Speaker: You're a guy I want to hang out with and be around.
Speaker: And so that's what the mastermind is about is hanging out and being together.
Speaker: The reason I'm so excited to sponsor the podcast is because we feel like you're adding value, whether it be a new guy that's, you know, 30 days in the industry or maybe just thinking about going into solar.
Speaker: I've heard guys tell me that they've listened to your podcast to make a decision even to accept a job in the solar industry.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: but you're still out door knocking virtually every day.
Speaker: So the content is fresh.
Speaker: It's exactly what's going on to help you make money.
Speaker: And when you have guests on, the conversations you have with them definitely flow very well because you're doing the same job as them.
Speaker: So it's real life questions.
Speaker: It's real life answers about how to make more money, how to be more consistent in solar.
Speaker: And that's what we really preach is consistency and hard work.
Speaker: And that's the same thing the podcast help brings to people that listen to it.
Speaker: So we are super pumped to be a sponsor and we look forward to being a sponsor for years to come and all the success in the world.
Speaker: We know you're going to hit 500 listeners, 500,000, 500,000 listeners pretty soon as our goal as a sponsor.
Speaker: So we're going to be boosting some of the marketing and stuff to help you get there because literally everyone in solar right now, everyone in door to door needs to be listening to a mentor, tell them how to do their job better.
Speaker: And we feel like,
Speaker: you're a great guy to do that for us.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: Appreciate that, Jerry.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely, man.
Speaker: And yeah, no, it goes without saying too, it's like you're saying so many guys just get out of this and it reminds me of the NFL or something.
Speaker: We've all heard like guys in the NFL, I think I heard a stat that like, I don't know, some crazy number of them are broke within a couple of years after they can get out of the NFL.
Speaker: And I feel like door to door is very similar in that guys make insane amounts of money knocking doors and
Speaker: But let's be honest, we're probably not all going to be doing this until we're, you know, retirement age.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: So that's what's so cool about what you're doing with Pi Syndicate is you're teaching guys how to really hang on to that money and turn that money into future investments and keep a hold of it.
Speaker: Because, yeah, a lot of people that aren't, you know, super smart with it and blowing money on things.
Speaker: And, you know, to be clear, I wasn't super smart with it either.
Speaker: I started out door-to-door when I was 19, right?
Speaker: selling cable internet door to door and it only paid $30 a sale or something like that but you go out and sell 10 of them a day it's still really good money and then I became a regional manager and started to make even better money and you know a few hundred thousand dollars was flowing in and I was making all this money and then 26 years old came around I had my first child and talking with my wife I decided to go out and get a real job I had been in
Speaker: Door to door for about six years was killing it making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year had literally had about a million dollar net worth.
Speaker: And I thought I was doing awesome.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then I decided, well, I really want to do something.
Speaker: So I got a job at a children's home.
Speaker: I was working on a college degree.
Speaker: And within a year, I was completely broke.
Speaker: just completely devastatingly broke, you know, eating ramen noodles again.
Speaker: I'm like, dude, I have a professional college level job.
Speaker: And now me and my wife are back to eating beans and rice.
Speaker: And we're like, is this what real life's supposed to be?
Speaker: But this is what everyone tells you to go do.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: But what happened is I was living a lifestyle based on being a door-to-door guy and not everyone stays a door-to-door guy forever.
Speaker: And so that transition for me was extremely difficult when I realized that I,
Speaker: I thought I wanted to do something out of it.
Speaker: I thought I wanted a real job that everyone talks about.
Speaker: And I'm so glad that I found my way back.
Speaker: And so the first time I engaged with a publisher to write a book, I thought for sure my book's title was going to be Millionaire by 25 years.
Speaker: and broke by 26, um, to really explain why to manage your money better, how to take care of your money.
Speaker: Cause it was a hard life lesson, but it's almost identical to the majority of guys in the door to door industry.
Speaker: And we're not talking about the guy that makes it 30 days and quits.
Speaker: We're talking about guys that are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year selling solar pest control, roofing, um,
Speaker: They're not going to last forever.
Speaker: They always think that they want to go do something else.
Speaker: And at that point, I don't know of a single another occupation without like being a brain surgeon that you can go and make 300K a year.
Speaker: Like it's just not going to happen.
Speaker: Maybe over 30 years of building it up, even being on Wall Street, building up, being with a trading company or something like that.
Speaker: You could get there, you know, over years of dedication and working hard with your clients.
Speaker: Maybe insurance.
Speaker: You know, there's some things that you can build up this business and make hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Speaker: But there's nothing I can think of that you can leave door to door knowing nothing about anything besides sales and make 300K years.
Speaker: So there's always going to be this turmoil in your life where you decide to get out of sales.
Speaker: And for me, it was...
Speaker: I didn't want to work after 5 o'clock.
Speaker: I wanted to go home at 5 o'clock, have dinner with my family.
Speaker: I thought that was the American dream, to have a normal job.
Speaker: I get off, go home, eat dinner, have a dog, walk the dog.
Speaker: I learned very quickly, over about a year eating beans, that the American dream wasn't so fun.
Speaker: I decided to go back to work.
Speaker: At the same time, I realized there's guys that are not going to decide to go back to work.
Speaker: There's going to be guys that are super happy to make $50,000 to $100,000 a year
Speaker: but their lifestyle is going to have to change.
Speaker: And just like the NFL players, it was hard for me to adapt my lifestyle to the lower income.
Speaker: So when my wife wanted to go out for our anniversary, we still spent $250 on dinner.
Speaker: You know, we still bought, you know, $200 shoes instead of $50 shoes.
Speaker: Like all the things that we had trained ourselves to budget for were all incorrect.
Speaker: And we had never had to live on a budget being 21 years old and making 200 grand a year.
Speaker: You don't really have to budget.
Speaker: You just spend your money on whatever you want.
Speaker: And then you're like, oh man, I ran out of money.
Speaker: I need to go knock more doors.
Speaker: And you just can't keep the money coming in.
Speaker: That's not a very smart way long-term to live.
Speaker: So my goal is to get with people that are 18, 19, 25.
Speaker: Really, you could be 35 and this is the first time you're in door-to-door and you're like, this is a lot of money.
Speaker: Those are the guys that we want to help, and they're the same audience that you're trying to help too.
Speaker: So I think there's a lot of alignment there just helping guys get to that next level.
Speaker: So we're excited to help them.
Speaker: Yeah, love that.
Speaker: Love that.
Speaker: And, yeah, we've had a couple of finance guys and things like that come on.
Speaker: Yeah, this is kind of the first... You're the first people I've seen really put together kind of mastermind style and help people at this level.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is awesome.
Speaker: So that's why, you know... Yeah, and the whole thing about Pi Syndicate is it's sharing a lot of the resources for my company.
Speaker: But, you know, we made...
Speaker: Last year was $151 million.
Speaker: And so the revenue is very large.
Speaker: But then that means I spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on legal, on CPAs, on advisors.
Speaker: You know, I spent $400,000 last year on mastermind groups.
Speaker: You guys don't have the resource to do that.
Speaker: You're doing really good, Taylor.
Speaker: You're killing it.
Speaker: You're in the top of the industry.
Speaker: you're still not going to go out and drop a hundred thousand dollar retainer on an attorney because you don't need it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It just doesn't make any sense.
Speaker: Your wife would be like, are we getting a divorce?
Speaker: Why do you need a hundred thousand dollar retainer?
Speaker: Um, so it's just something that you don't think you need until you need it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so it's much better to have my legal team on standby to have our CPAs answer really hard questions, to have my tax strategies that you normally only invest in.
Speaker: If you make, you know, $10 million in profit a year or more, uh, be available to you guys.
Speaker: And we do it in a mastermind setting so that we can share the knowledge pretty openly, but with only guys that we want to hang out with.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: There's some guys in masterminds.
Speaker: I'm sure you've been to events and things.
Speaker: You're like, I'd rather not go hang out with that guy afterwards.
Speaker: So we definitely want to make it a group of guys where we stay together for a really long time.
Speaker: and then we want to see your businesses grow, you know, and I would love to see your podcast.
Speaker: I was saying 500,000 listeners earlier.
Speaker: I'm not joking about that.
Speaker: I'd love to see your podcast expand to grow.
Speaker: You know, when people talk about the solar guys are listening on podcasts, it should be at my let, you know, Jordan Belford and Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: Like that.
Speaker: I mean, that's really when it comes to selling how many viewers you need to have listening in, because it's a lot of valuable things.
Speaker: I literally think anyone not listening to your podcast is,
Speaker: is probably selling the wrong thing.
Speaker: They're probably selling cars.
Speaker: They're probably selling watches at a jewelry store, probably selling cell phones, and they're all listening to the wrong podcast.
Speaker: They think that Ed Milet's going to make him rich or Grant Cardone, and they're not.
Speaker: Solar's going to make him rich, and they need to be listening to the right podcast.
Speaker: There's no doubt about that.
Speaker: I always say we're the Navy sills of the sales industry.
Speaker: No one's selling like we are.
Speaker: So if you learn how to sell solar, then it's like...
Speaker: I mean, that's why we got so much money in this.
Speaker: And yeah, I mean, it can translate to anything else too, for sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we definitely have to get good.
Speaker: We got to hone our skills because, um, it's not about how much money you even make per job.
Speaker: It's about how much money you make at the end of the year.
Speaker: And we know that this is the gold rush right now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, but the guys that made the most money, um,
Speaker: during the Gold Rush, you know, you've heard the saying that they sold the shovels and they were the support guys.
Speaker: They built the businesses around it.
Speaker: And so, yes, we need to be Navy sills.
Speaker: But the reason to hone our skills that much is because it's not going to pay this much forever.
Speaker: Five years down the road, let's say the average commission is...
Speaker: you know, $1,000 a job then instead of $2,500 or more now, that's going to be devastating for someone that hasn't honed their skills.
Speaker: If they're used to a 5%, 10% close rate and they think they're killing it because they live in California and they're making serious money per sale, that's not going to be around forever.
Speaker: And so the reason why you have to hone your skills is, yes, it's nice to make a million dollars a year this year selling solar by having a 40% close rate would be awesome, right?
Speaker: But the real reason is because in five years,
Speaker: you're going to have to close at a 40% rate to make the same amount of money you're making today.
Speaker: So view this as the training time.
Speaker: View it as a quick start bonus.
Speaker: View it as the companies are encouraging you to get out there and sell.
Speaker: It's not going to be like this forever.
Speaker: The law of supply and demand means that the more people that want to sell solar, the less money the companies will pay to sell for us to sell solar.
Speaker: Now, they're always going to have all commission jobs.
Speaker: So you're always going to be able to make serious money selling solar.
Speaker: You know, look at the other industries, the pest control, the roofing.
Speaker: A thousand dollars per sale is still super competitive.
Speaker: And I really believe that's probably where we're going over the next five years.
Speaker: And so we got to hone those skills because a lot of us that are selling four jobs a month, five jobs a month, a thousand dollars to sell is not going to cut it.
Speaker: We need to be selling, you know, sitting in three appointments a day and selling, you know, one of those a day.
Speaker: Then we start still making good money, even with the money being turned down.
Speaker: We're still turning out 200,000 a year or more.
Speaker: Even when the industry changes, we also need to prep our skills because there's a few times where, you know,
Speaker: Your skills mean more than just what you can do with them.
Speaker: Navy SEALs end up retiring from the Navy SEALs.
Speaker: They go into subcontracting work and there's companies that will pay them millions of dollars to train other people how to do those skills.
Speaker: So when we talk about honing our skills, it's not just about what you can do with the skills.
Speaker: It's about how you can leverage that to help others.
Speaker: And when we talk about even the big guys in sales, Grant Cardone never made as much money as he's making until he made a decision to help other people make money.
Speaker: And same thing with a lot of the other trainers, right?
Speaker: They could go out.
Speaker: There's only so many hours during the day.
Speaker: So they're only going to make so much money.
Speaker: Guys like Ed Milet that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars did it by having thousands of people underneath of them selling stuff.
Speaker: And that's really what we have to think is I have to get my skills to a level where I can leverage that to help others.
Speaker: And in helping others solve the problem, they're going to give me a small amount of percentage of the problem I solved.
Speaker: So if you help them make $1,000, maybe they're willing to give you $100.
Speaker: But while you can only run five appointments a day, guys that are on your teams running stuff for you could be running hundreds of appointments a day.
Speaker: So it's just the economies to scale are where it's going to be at.
Speaker: So I encourage the guys listening to this podcast and really being interested in solar to hone your skills.
Speaker: Stop thinking about even your close rate today.
Speaker: Think about what it will allow you to build in a year and two years and three years because the economy is not always going to stay the same.
Speaker: So your skills have to up level.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I agree 100%.
Speaker: And that's why I talk about on the podcast, too.
Speaker: I encourage all the people listening.
Speaker: I go out and teach your teams to sell, develop that skill to like present to others to teach other people.
Speaker: You know, they've got all sorts of things like you can go to the Toastmasters, the speaking trainings, things like that.
Speaker: I think that's a huge skill to learn because, yeah, we're not always going to be, like you said, making as much as we are in solar necessarily right now.
Speaker: So it's important for people to develop those other skills, which are money-making skills, presenting to others, training other people.
Speaker: And then you have a whole different skill set you can do when maybe solar isn't as good.
Speaker: So, yeah, that's huge, Jerry.
Speaker: And we're going to have your partner, Austin, in.
Speaker: He's going to also talk about Pius Indicate, too.
Speaker: So we'll leave some stuff for him to talk about with that, too.
Speaker: But yeah, with you, I wanted to hear, I know you talked a little bit about your background, how you started in selling, but I wanted to hear how did you transition specifically into solar sales?
Speaker: And can you talk about how you started your first company with that?
Speaker: And it's obviously super successful.
Speaker: Yeah, so it was a rough transition.
Speaker: I had...
Speaker: I'm gone home and I was selling ADT as a directory level.
Speaker: So nice house, no debt, had everything we needed, was making 200,000 a year.
Speaker: I thought I was at the top of my game.
Speaker: And then a solar company kept stealing my top reps.
Speaker: So I managed a three or four state region,
Speaker: Um, and they kept stealing reps and it was always my best ones.
Speaker: Always the guys that were making 30 deals a month.
Speaker: Now all of a sudden are solar reps.
Speaker: So I decided to go to this company cause I'm pretty mad.
Speaker: So I'm just going to walk in.
Speaker: I'm a straightforward guy and say, Hey, stop selling my people.
Speaker: I train these people.
Speaker: You know, it's unfair.
Speaker: And the guy said, let me vent for a little while.
Speaker: And he goes, well, don't you ask yourself why they are selling solar?
Speaker: Don't you want to know how much money you could make selling solar?
Speaker: And so I listened to the pitch and I was like, dang it, it's a good pitch.
Speaker: Like that's way more money than security, right?
Speaker: And so I was like, okay, I need to take this seriously.
Speaker: So I go home and I talk to my wife and say, hey, I think we have to make this transition.
Speaker: I had already noticed some of the writing on the wall.
Speaker: ADT had actually not brought on more customers than had canceled since the time that I've been there, over the few years that I've been there.
Speaker: And so that was worrying.
Speaker: You know, if we couldn't outsell the cancels, that's a bad thing.
Speaker: And so how ADT dealt with it is they would acquire other companies and kind of fluff their numbers because they're publicly traded.
Speaker: So it never looked like they lost subscribers.
Speaker: But it wasn't because of sales.
Speaker: We could not outsell the cancels.
Speaker: Cancel, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so that doesn't sound sustainable to me.
Speaker: So I had already had some fear that no matter how good we sold, it was just a matter of time, five years, 10 years, 20 years down the road that nobody's going to want to buy security door to door for $60 a month payment.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I was just a little bit worried.
Speaker: So I went home and I talked to my wife and we decided to go ahead and me take an offer, you know, and, and go into that.
Speaker: I accepted the offer within the first 30 days.
Speaker: I thought I was going to make all kinds of money and I made one sale.
Speaker: And so my wife's like, you got to tell me what's going on here.
Speaker: This is crazy.
Speaker: I would also driving three and a half hours to get to the field.
Speaker: So I was at the time,
Speaker: because we were trying to save money, I was like, I'm going to do this as cheap as physically possible.
Speaker: I'm going to drive back and forth, you know, as much as I can.
Speaker: And if I have to, I'll just sleep in the car, get up, knock turf in the morning and go at it.
Speaker: I had a nice SUV so I could lay a whole air mattress, one of those that you see on Amazon where you pump them up, you know, and they cover the seats.
Speaker: I was like, this is going to be cool.
Speaker: Just park right in your area.
Speaker: Yeah, just park.
Speaker: right in the area.
Speaker: So I was grinding, right?
Speaker: I was knocking like 12 hours a day.
Speaker: And my only break for air conditioning was like, maybe go watch a movie or something like that.
Speaker: I was like, if you watch a movie, why can't you just go get a hotel?
Speaker: I'm like, well, maybe he's 12 bucks.
Speaker: Like, I don't want to stay in a $12 hotel.
Speaker: That's disgusting.
Speaker: And, uh, but it was a grind, right?
Speaker: For a whole month that I made one deal and I thought this is, this has got to be over.
Speaker: I think our average commission back then was $1,500.
Speaker: So I traded somewhere around $20,000 a month.
Speaker: And that first month I went down to about $1,500.
Speaker: And of course you don't get it until they install it.
Speaker: So they gave me like a little bit and they're like, Oh, and you'll get the rest just whenever we don't know.
Speaker: And I'm like, Oh, I'm in trouble.
Speaker: ADT was like next day, you know, somebody would be out there installing it.
Speaker: So I misunderstood that coming into solar.
Speaker: Where was, where were you selling?
Speaker: Kansas city.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Not a great market.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: How long ago was that?
Speaker: It was only about six years ago.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So, and they had a huge rebate in Kansas City, and the rebate had gone away the month I started.
Speaker: So it went from having, I think the state level was up to a $2 a watt rebate.
Speaker: Then it had gone down to a dollar a watt, and then it kind of went away.
Speaker: Well, $2 a watt rebate is huge.
Speaker: So our average sale price was like $3 a watt.
Speaker: And between the rebate and the ITC at the time was 30%, we literally were giving away solar for free.
Speaker: So when I accepted the job, I thought I was going to go door to door and just give it away for free.
Speaker: And then like the week I started like, Hey, the rebates gone away.
Speaker: You really got, it's not free anymore.
Speaker: You need like 25 to $30,000 on every deal.
Speaker: And I'm like, what?
Speaker: I thought we gave stuff away for free.
Speaker: What's going on with this.
Speaker: And so it kind of changed the game really quickly on me.
Speaker: I adjusted those.
Speaker: So once I figured out how to sell, I realized that it was a lot about understanding the benefits, understanding the taxes, really understanding how much money they would save.
Speaker: Because I was so new, it allowed me to adjust faster than the guys that had been doing it two years with this huge rebate and everything.
Speaker: And so the next three months, I had made about 100 sales, I think 102 sales in the next three months.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: So it really kicked in and I did really, really well.
Speaker: What's strange is you have these self-limiting beliefs though.
Speaker: I always believed in ADT that I had to sell 30 deals a month and I really peaked out around the same thing.
Speaker: So it's almost like this mindset that I was a 30 deal a month rep.
Speaker: I carried over into solar as well.
Speaker: And it's just recently that I realized that mindset is completely wrong.
Speaker: Listening to some of your podcasts with guys, I think you said recently you had someone on that sold 68 deals in a month.
Speaker: So more than double, more than double what I was selling.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I look back saying, man, I wonder if I totally just carried over a self-belief from selling security that had nothing to do with solar.
Speaker: But I consistently would put up 30 deals a month.
Speaker: The cool thing about solar is there's commercial too.
Speaker: So my last month, I killed it.
Speaker: Commission-wise, I probably would have made somewhere around $285K in 30 days.
Speaker: So it was incredible.
Speaker: I went home, talked to my wife.
Speaker: We were super excited.
Speaker: We're like, man, this is it.
Speaker: We're making, we love this company.
Speaker: The company's like, Hey, by the way, we can't actually afford to pay you that much.
Speaker: And we're nine months behind on install.
Speaker: And I'm like, Oh wow.
Speaker: That's crazy.
Speaker: Some of you listening have probably heard words similar to that before from a solar company.
Speaker: So I decided really quickly to go out on my own because I was like, how much worse can it be if they can't pay me?
Speaker: And it takes nine months to install.
Speaker: I'm sure I can do better than that.
Speaker: So the trouble was I had to walk away from all of that commission and then didn't have a lot of money in the bank.
Speaker: And so because you know how far behind commissions are.
Speaker: So really, I walked away from even more than that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, um, but I had no debt on my house and everything.
Speaker: So we had to sell our house.
Speaker: We had to cash out 401k, invest everything we had into starting a solar company.
Speaker: And when you tell your wife that it's time to sell the dream house to go door to door again and sell more solar, it was a hard conversation.
Speaker: I'm so thankful that she supported me through that though and made that leap and,
Speaker: It took about three more years of making a really minimal amount of money.
Speaker: I think I pulled maybe $30,000 a year out of my company.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: The first six months, you couldn't hire an EPC like you can now.
Speaker: They just really didn't exist.
Speaker: And so I had to hire a NABCEP trainer to come in and train me to install.
Speaker: So the next six months, I installed all my own jobs.
Speaker: Realized really, really quickly.
Speaker: that I was bad at paperwork.
Speaker: So I had to hire administrative assistants and people do net metering.
Speaker: And then I realized I didn't like talking on the phone.
Speaker: So I had to hire an admin person to answer the phone.
Speaker: Then I had to hire a phone salesperson to answer all the incoming calls.
Speaker: And I'm like, man, this is crazy.
Speaker: Now I have like 14 people that work for me.
Speaker: I got to start making a lot more sales.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So it was kind of the, you know, they say the mother of invention is necessity.
Speaker: And that was it.
Speaker: I had to learn how to sell a lot more just to support the company.
Speaker: But selling 30 jobs a month, you know, a lot of solar companies don't even do that much.
Speaker: So me, myself, could go out and support my whole company.
Speaker: But then I just kept growing, you know, and I brought on other sales guys.
Speaker: And, but I stayed very conservative.
Speaker: So a lot of owners, you know, brag about their, their fancy watches or they drive fancy cars right away.
Speaker: I always knew this was a long-term play for me.
Speaker: And if I was going to expand faster than my competitors, I had to do it, um, through really being wise with my resources.
Speaker: And so I reinvested almost all the money for three years.
Speaker: We lived on about $30,000 a year.
Speaker: Now I had retired from the military.
Speaker: So that's not lived in California, man.
Speaker: No, I lived in Missouri and started the company headquarters there.
Speaker: I also had my military retirement, so the medical, and I had some pension coming, so I had more money than that.
Speaker: But out of the company, I only pulled the very minimum that my CPA told me I had to pay myself to be legitimate, or I wouldn't have probably paid myself anything.
Speaker: And that allowed me to reinvest in marketing and tools and to better management.
Speaker: And, you know, it's kind of crazy there for a while that everyone at my company was making more money than me.
Speaker: But at the same time, I knew that long term I was going to make a lot more money than everyone else.
Speaker: So, you know, that's the old saying that you've all heard, but do things that others aren't willing to do so that later on you can.
Speaker: do a lot.
Speaker: And so that's what was able to happen in my life is that those three years of really investment allowed us to build out a fully integrated solar company.
Speaker: And we were able to get into things that other companies weren't, you know, we go as far as doing the customer's taxes for up to five years after they buy solar.
Speaker: We do internal financing.
Speaker: Um, 2020, we did $50 million in internal solar loans.
Speaker: ourselves without paying finance fees.
Speaker: So you just can't do that without a significant amount of resources, but you only have a significant amount of resources when you don't spend resources.
Speaker: And so it was, um, one of those things that we just chose to stay in Missouri, live frugally, you know, all of our installers, we have a very different, uh, formula to install.
Speaker: They all live out of Missouri and making 20, $25 an hour in Missouri is incredible.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: You know, they can live really well, buy their home, buy nice cars.
Speaker: They live really well.
Speaker: And so they're willing to travel out of Missouri, take the solar panels and go to Minnesota or go to Florida or go to Texas or go to, they'll drive all the way here to Vegas to install solar panels.
Speaker: Now we try to rack up several jobs in the same week and our teams are really well trained.
Speaker: So a team of three guys can install a job in one day.
Speaker: And so they can stack up, you know, two teams can travel out here to Vegas, knock out,
Speaker: you know, quite a few jobs, you know, 10 jobs in a week and then travel back, you know?
Speaker: And so it's just a different way to look at business.
Speaker: And we try to solve problems, not necessarily with spending more money on it, but how do we actually solve the problem?
Speaker: You know, and the most people would say, well, let's just hire a big EPC in Vegas or California or Florida, because that's easier, but that also costs a lot of money.
Speaker: And so we make a lot more money and a lot more profit margin because that is,
Speaker: We're also what I would call a white glove service with doing the customer's taxes, some extra benefits to the client.
Speaker: We are probably one of the more expensive solar companies in the country, which is a hard thing, right?
Speaker: Like it's, it's means that some sales reps don't want to work for us because they want to sell for a more competitively priced company.
Speaker: What we do is a process called value stacking where we believe that once your value stack exceeds the price, that it doesn't matter what the price is, the client will buy it.
Speaker: So we just try to deliver such a tremendous amount of value that we're still able to sell at a higher price.
Speaker: And then we have a very good margin and then we reinvest that margin.
Speaker: And so...
Speaker: Last year, we were able to break $151 million in revenue, extremely profitable.
Speaker: And we owe no money.
Speaker: We have no debt.
Speaker: We have three years of operating capital on hand at all times now.
Speaker: So we're the only debt-free three years worth of capital company I know of.
Speaker: Specifically in solar, it's nearly unheard of.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Through COVID, we had 24 dealerships that were sub dealers basically under our brand.
Speaker: We were able to support all of them and their reps through COVID.
Speaker: We were able to support all of our staff, even though we shut down operations.
Speaker: All the installers got paid.
Speaker: All the office workers got paid.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And so it's something we're pretty proud of, but it's also means that while other companies buy Ferraris, I'm still going to be here in 10 years so they can enjoy their Ferraris and I'll enjoy my, my safety net of money in the bank.
Speaker: It also allows me to have money to help other companies.
Speaker: So I'm an investor in over 50 companies at this point and own equity in those.
Speaker: And so
Speaker: Those create passive income streams for me, which help.
Speaker: But it's also just a way that I can help other companies because they need the money.
Speaker: And they, unfortunately, most of them weren't good at saving money.
Speaker: They were the guys buying the Bentleys or Ferraris.
Speaker: And so they come to me and end up needing to borrow some funds.
Speaker: And I'm happy to do it as long as it's going to help the company and help them long term.
Speaker: And obviously it helps me if I can own a chunk of their company as well.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: And no, that's one thing I've noticed about you, Jerry, is you're a very giving guy.
Speaker: I mean, I'm not part of your company or anything, but I come in here.
Speaker: Jerry treats me like family.
Speaker: He's like, dude, I'll get you a hotel.
Speaker: First thing he says when I come into their house here, he's like, okay, I'll get you a hotel room.
Speaker: We don't have like the best beds and stuff here.
Speaker: I'm like, dude, I'll sleep on the couch.
Speaker: I don't care.
Speaker: Yeah, we were talking about it.
Speaker: We were like,
Speaker: man, this is a house for door knockers.
Speaker: I have a real bed, but everyone else has twin size bunk beds.
Speaker: And there's a bunch, bunch of them upstairs.
Speaker: But we were thinking, Hey man, this guy just drove five hours and now he's going to sleep in a bunk bed.
Speaker: We all kind of had this moment where like, we probably should have thought this thing through.
Speaker: So we were like, yeah, do you want a hotel?
Speaker: Are you cool?
Speaker: And he's like,
Speaker: No, I'm cool.
Speaker: And then right after he said he's cool, I see one of our guys carrying in a queen-sized, like, bell-a-top mattress.
Speaker: I'm like, thank goodness that somebody went out and bought a bed for this guy.
Speaker: So, but yeah, so thanks for saying that, man.
Speaker: I believe in this theory about investing where...
Speaker: Um, if you're investing in the right people, um, there's no bad investment.
Speaker: And so even though it might not make monetary sense today or tomorrow, I invest my time, energy, and resources and money into people that I want long-term relationships with.
Speaker: Because even though you don't work for me and you may never work with me or we may never do anything specifically together, maybe you send me a referral and you're like, hey, my company doesn't cover Maine because it's the polar opposite side of the country from San Diego.
Speaker: Could you do you want this referral in Maine?
Speaker: And absolutely, I would.
Speaker: And I'll figure out a way to get an install to Maine, even though my install crews, if they're listening right now, are like, what's Jerry talking about?
Speaker: I don't want to go to Maine.
Speaker: We would figure it out and make money on it.
Speaker: So I just believe in being very giving.
Speaker: And I think people reciprocate that.
Speaker: Now, I'm not stupid about it.
Speaker: I don't give to everybody.
Speaker: I give of my time most sparingly.
Speaker: My time is the resource that I can't get back.
Speaker: Money, I can make more of time I can't.
Speaker: And so I invest my time into things like the mastermind, into my company, into the people I mentor, and definitely into...
Speaker: Things like this podcast, which I think is going to bear fruit for both your podcast and my companies by being a sponsor.
Speaker: And so I look forward to developing our relationship and giving you now next week.
Speaker: He's going to email me and be like, hey, man, I really need a new Tesla.
Speaker: I was just wondering if you could spot me 120K because it's a Plaid.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm not that good.
Speaker: Only let you be the sponsor.
Speaker: Buy me a Tesla.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: His company is going to be like, why is the side of your Tesla say Pi Syndicate on it?
Speaker: That's really weird.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But no, I definitely agree with that because I worked with, you know, several different companies at this point, too.
Speaker: And we were having conversations before this.
Speaker: So, you know, some people are more giving stuff than others.
Speaker: And so I think it pays dividends as long as you're smart about it, like you're saying is.
Speaker: Just be that guy that's not like the cheap guy that's like, oh, this guy is going to nickel and dime me.
Speaker: But if you're investing in relationships, especially, you know, on business level, I think it pays dividends.
Speaker: Like, as a matter of fact, last week I did my church mission in Columbia down there.
Speaker: And that's one of the things in, you know, these South American countries, a lot of them are super poor.
Speaker: And so I get hit up all the time about people asking for money and stuff like that.
Speaker: So yeah, I got to give everybody selective, but I just sent, you know, 500 bucks last week for a family's funeral that I knew down there.
Speaker: And like, they're like, oh, we'll pay you back.
Speaker: We promise.
Speaker: I know 99% chance they're not going to be, they're not going to pay me back.
Speaker: Yeah, I've decided, yeah, I've decided that, um,
Speaker: I do sometimes give loans, but if it's iffy like that, and I think that you're right, there's a good chance they won't be able to pay you back.
Speaker: I'm very upfront with it and say it's a gift, and then say if you're ever at a time in your life where you can give something to somebody else, go ahead and do that, because they're going to feel guilty if it's debt, right?
Speaker: They're good people.
Speaker: I'm sure they are.
Speaker: And eventually that's going to wear on them, and it's going to impact their life negatively because they're not going to pay you back, chances are.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because they may not have the resources and stuff like that to do that.
Speaker: And so think about doing stuff like that as gifts.
Speaker: I gift my time a lot.
Speaker: I gift things not connected to any type of repayment.
Speaker: And gifting seems to reward me a lot better than loans.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Now, in businesses, if you want $100,000 loan, I'll do that, too.
Speaker: But that's a loan.
Speaker: Normally, stuff like that is somebody in need.
Speaker: Give it as a gift, and you'll see dividends of that.
Speaker: It also helps you feel a lot better right away.
Speaker: It feels good giving them a loan.
Speaker: If you had made the decision to just give it to them as a gift, which is basically, it sounds like what you did.
Speaker: But if you had said that in your head, I'm going to give it as a gift and tell them I'm giving it as a gift, it would have had a little bit more positive impact even inside yourself, the gratitude that you felt being able to help someone.
Speaker: And so it's a cool way to manage your money like that.
Speaker: The thing that I, one of the things I talk about when I talk about gifting, though, is my time.
Speaker: And so I don't know if you've ever heard a term called time vampires, but I definitely believe in the concept that there's some people that just siphon away your time.
Speaker: And so while I'm very free to help people and to mentor them and stuff like that, be selective on who you help.
Speaker: Just like you said, you get hit quite a bit for money.
Speaker: The same thing with time.
Speaker: And you're an influential person.
Speaker: You have a lot of value to add to other people's lives.
Speaker: But you have to start being selective.
Speaker: And one of the rules that I've set for myself is that I only interact daily on a day-to-day basis with 10 people.
Speaker: So if I ever get to a point where I'm talking to someone every single day, I either need to figure out if there's somebody I'm mentoring or if there's somebody that needs to be communicating with one of my 10 people.
Speaker: And I have a wife and four kids.
Speaker: So that means I only have five people outside of that to communicate with on a day-to-day basis.
Speaker: So my intimate little work circle is about five.
Speaker: And it makes for some hard decision-making.
Speaker: I talked to the general manager of Solar Solutions.
Speaker: She's in training for all intents and purposes.
Speaker: She's the CEO.
Speaker: And I've talked to her one hour in the last week.
Speaker: And she's running a multi-million dollar company for me.
Speaker: And I trust that she's doing a great job.
Speaker: Um, but I don't have time day to day.
Speaker: She's not by any means a time vampire.
Speaker: She's listening, but, um, I don't have time.
Speaker: So, but making those decisions, even when they're hard decisions, like not to talk to your GM every single day, um, mean that it makes it much easier to make a decision about talking to a friend from high school that just wants to chat about video games or fantasy football.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I cut them out pretty quickly because if I don't have time for my GM, I really don't have time for them either.
Speaker: And so setting up some type of structure in your life to make decisions based on time and who you're going to invest time in is very, very important.
Speaker: You go a lot further in life if you invest your time correctly.
Speaker: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker: That's a good point.
Speaker: So yeah, for all our listeners, I think it's a good thing to do.
Speaker: Another thing I've talked about is just, you know, a time audit, just really tracking what you actually did with your hours, how you spent your time.
Speaker: So a lot of times we think we're being, you know, super productive, smart with our time.
Speaker: And then we actually track it.
Speaker: We just spent two hours talking about fantasy football to someone or, you know, playing a game on the phone, whatever, things like that.
Speaker: Yeah, what's strange is now that I, last year I had done the math on, you know, how much money I was making per hour that I worked.
Speaker: And the number was much, much larger than what I had previously thought about it being.
Speaker: And in the last few years, it's led me to really, really feel guilty about wasting my time.
Speaker: So like I love video games.
Speaker: I love World of Warcraft back in the day and things like that.
Speaker: There's zero chance that I could open up a computer, get on World of Warcraft tonight and play for four hours without having this tremendous amount of guilt.
Speaker: You know, just because my time is I know what my time is worth right now.
Speaker: And if someone would ask me, hey, would you give me twenty five thousand dollars to play World of Warcraft?
Speaker: I would say.
Speaker: no, I'm not going to give you 25 grand to play a video game.
Speaker: But that's exactly what we do in investing our time and activities that don't actually generate income or generate a better relationship with those around us is it's time that we're really, really stealing from ourselves.
Speaker: Yeah, 100%.
Speaker: So no, that's a good point with that.
Speaker: And so going back a little bit, Jerry, something I wanted to ask you about, we were talking before we started recording here is just like you're saying, so many people just sell their prices low.
Speaker: You said you're like one of the higher price companies that sell solar.
Speaker: And I think that's awesome.
Speaker: I started out with a company that was kind of similar to that.
Speaker: They
Speaker: tried to bundle in like some solar cleaning and some like, I don't know, yearly checkup type things they did.
Speaker: I kind of found some loopholes around it.
Speaker: And I think it made a few customers mad because they put in the fine print that they would only do that if the customer like contacted them.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: It was kind of a, yeah, maybe not the greatest way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The whole thing about being the most expensive company is you also have to do the best job.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so you can get away with that.
Speaker: What's crazy is it's easier if you're a good salesperson to sell being the most expensive than it is being the cheapest.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The only person that thinks it's easier to sell being the cheapest are bad salespeople.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like that's what it comes down to.
Speaker: You're probably not listening to this podcast if you think the only way to sell is by lowering the price.
Speaker: That's probably not your target audience.
Speaker: People are trying to learn.
Speaker: They're trying to get better.
Speaker: We grade sales reps, A, B, and C sales reps.
Speaker: C sales reps sell by being cheap, and that's how we remember it.
Speaker: If the only way that they can sell is by being the cheapest in the room and they're not selling based on anything else,
Speaker: then they're a C-cells rep.
Speaker: There is definitely room in the solar industry for C-cells reps.
Speaker: So if you sell based on price, don't feel bad about it.
Speaker: Just either educate yourself to get better or find a company that really is the cheapest, and that's where you need to be at to make money.
Speaker: B-cells reps are those that really are good at one of two things.
Speaker: They're either technical experts or they are expert closers, and it's one of two things.
Speaker: They're either the best closer in the whole world.
Speaker: I would refer to like...
Speaker: Mike O'Donnell or Taylor McCartney, you know, incredible closers, but I know more about solar than either one of them.
Speaker: So the other, the other B cells rep is someone that is very, very technical.
Speaker: I would look at, you know, quite a few people in the marketplace that I would look at.
Speaker: Jake Hess would be the one that comes to mind.
Speaker: Very, very technical closer, you know, through his Academy, he trains people how to be very technical and,
Speaker: And then the A cells rep is those that combine both.
Speaker: So yes, Taylor and Mike can definitely answer those technical questions or they know how to pivot really well.
Speaker: And so they're A cells reps because at the end of the day, phenomenal closers and they know everything they need to know about solar to get the cell closed.
Speaker: Now, Taylor's kind of bizarre because he does know just a little bit, but he's that good of a cells rep that he's still an A cells rep.
Speaker: And I was talking about something one day.
Speaker: He's like, I don't even know what you're talking about.
Speaker: I was like, okay, well,
Speaker: I guess I'm more of a technical sales rep instead of as good of a closer as Danny Pesce.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Some one time.
Speaker: Like, I don't even know what an inverter is.
Speaker: That's what he told me.
Speaker: That's what we're talking about.
Speaker: I was talking about different inverters.
Speaker: Like, to be honest, I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker: He's like, but I sold the last 14 doors.
Speaker: I knocked on.
Speaker: I was like, wow, that's a,
Speaker: That's okay.
Speaker: There's definitely some benefit.
Speaker: I noticed that they and Jake has been hanging out and I'm like, well, hopefully those guys learn a lot from each other because they'll be a powerhouse.
Speaker: But yeah, and so the A sales reps are like that.
Speaker: We specifically hire the A sales reps because they have to be good closers and they have to know a lot about the technical side.
Speaker: Because we have to justify our higher price and explain why we're higher.
Speaker: One of the things is we give real warranties instead of just fake cleanings.
Speaker: We also give free maintenance.
Speaker: But we give a 25-year true labor warranty, anything that goes wrong.
Speaker: A lot of guys in the solar industry don't realize, but they're selling what's called a workmanship warranty.
Speaker: And under a workmanship warranty, you would assume that if say a panel stops working, that the company would come out and fix it for free without charging the customer a fee.
Speaker: The truth is a workmanship warranty covers bad workmanship.
Speaker: So if they installed it incorrectly, which caused the panel to stop working, a good company would come out and fix it.
Speaker: But a good company would do that for free, even without a warranty in writing.
Speaker: They would say, yeah, you're right.
Speaker: That's our fault.
Speaker: Let us fix that.
Speaker: So it's pretty much just acknowledging that, hey, we're a good company, which is nice of them to say there's a 25-year workmanship warranty.
Speaker: But under the warranty and most of the terms, if that panel stops working, it's the manufacturer's fault.
Speaker: You would have to pay that solar company labor to come out and replace that solar panel.
Speaker: And there's almost zero sales reps that understand that concept.
Speaker: And I guarantee you no homeowner understands that concept.
Speaker: So when they get into these 25-year loans, when you talk about company evaluations and how to evaluate the value of a solar company,
Speaker: Those that give away a workmanship warranty are basically locking in that customer on a service plan for the next 25 years that increases the company evaluation because they know they're going to make X amount of money servicing that system over the next 25 years.
Speaker: A company like mine, it actually decreases our company value because we know that the relationship with that client will just cause, um, cost over the next 25 years.
Speaker: So, um, very few companies like ours that are giving free labor away, true free labor for the whole time.
Speaker: Um, but we definitely do.
Speaker: And so we line ourselves up with even our battery manufacturers are full 25 year warranties.
Speaker: So everything we do is a 25 year warranty or more, um, included with labor too.
Speaker: So even the solar panels, the batteries, if we were to go out of business,
Speaker: they'll hire an electrician to come out and service it so it's just a different pitch but a good sales rep always feels more comfortable being the guy saying i'm the best buy for me then i'm the cheapest you know let's it's a good deal let's do this you know so you'll kind of weed weed out those people that aren't quite as good yeah i know yeah it's interesting i go to these like marketing conferences and stuff and
Speaker: Online marketing, they say there's no competitive advantage to being like, you know, in the middle of the pack pricing.
Speaker: You're either like the cheapest or you're the most expensive and you add more value, but there's no like advantage at all of being kind of like middle.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: No, and you kind of disregard all the middle companies too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so I definitely think one of our strategies is we know we're going to be the most expensive, so we get that out of the way right away.
Speaker: We tell them we are.
Speaker: We actually tell them to shop around, and if they choose to go with a cheaper company, we'll even pay $50 per quote that they give us from the other companies that they've shopped around with.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: So we encourage them to give us – go shop around with four quotes, and then we'll come back and be the final one in the door, propose our price.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: 100% of the time they're expecting us to undercut the cheapest bid because they think it's a gimmick, right?
Speaker: You're giving me these quotes.
Speaker: You're going to undercut their price and then try to close me.
Speaker: 100% of the time we make sure we're more expensive.
Speaker: In fact, if we're not the most expensive person, we raise our price by $1,000 and make sure because it's easier to sell on the most expensive.
Speaker: Now, not everyone buys, though.
Speaker: And so just like a car lot, you're the most expensive.
Speaker: You're a Lamborghini dealership or whatever.
Speaker: That's how we treat it.
Speaker: But at the end of the day, if you say it's too expensive and you're getting ready to walk out, we say, hold on, wait a minute.
Speaker: Let's see if we can throw something else in.
Speaker: So we try to do value-add.
Speaker: So we may replace their air conditioner or we may...
Speaker: help replace the roof or whatever it is but very rarely will we do just a straightforward discount we're never going to be like okay you're right let us let us price it out for ten thousand dollars cheaper that's probably not going to be us yeah but we'll win those bids yeah i think that's awesome because especially in california there's no excuse for people to be selling like rock bottom prices i mean san diego you can sell a system you know six dollars a lot super expensive and you're still saving them you're still cutting their bill by 30 percent yeah
Speaker: So it's like these companies that try to sell rock bottom, like, what are you guys doing?
Speaker: We're still saving the customer so much money.
Speaker: Yeah, I think we all need to be on the same team, right?
Speaker: Like, I think there's places out there for the cheapest guys.
Speaker: The problem is...
Speaker: Those guys need to go move to Missouri or Kansas or somewhere with 10 cent per kilowatt hours if they want to sell cheap.
Speaker: California, you're not competing against each other.
Speaker: You're competing against the utility company.
Speaker: So $6 a watt is completely fair price to charge if you're reversing the utility company.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What that allows you to do as a company is make more profit.
Speaker: There is absolutely nothing wrong with profit if you're helping the client, because that means you can take that profit and go make more clients.
Speaker: You can spend more money on marketing.
Speaker: You can spend more money on paying your people.
Speaker: You can spend more money on office space.
Speaker: You can do everything you can to grow.
Speaker: And at the end of the day, we all want to have more solar customers.
Speaker: We all believe that solar is good for the environment.
Speaker: And so at the end of the day, our mission is to sell as many people as we can and
Speaker: And people get twisted.
Speaker: People that are new to business think selling cheaper will help them sell more.
Speaker: It absolutely will not.
Speaker: The resources you gain from selling a fairly priced product that's beating out your competitor, which is the utility company, is the correct price.
Speaker: And so I would never charge somebody.
Speaker: One of my ethical rules is I never charge more.
Speaker: than what they're paying on the utility company.
Speaker: So at Solar Solutions, it's a little different.
Speaker: They have to be able to pay the system off within 10 years through savings, and they have to be able to have a payment that's cheaper than their utility bill from day one, or we won't quote them the system.
Speaker: We'll tell them that we don't advise them to go solar.
Speaker: In California, that wouldn't happen very often though.
Speaker: It's so good of a deal for everybody.
Speaker: Even at $6 a watt, you should be doing that.
Speaker: Just make sure you're not going out and buying Ferraris.
Speaker: You need to be reinvesting that money in yourself and for you specifically in your podcast and your recruiting budget to help others come on board because you're not going to be able to sell prices like that forever.
Speaker: And we know that.
Speaker: So use those resources to expand, to grow, to really make a dent in the industry.
Speaker: And it's so cool.
Speaker: I learned something from you earlier.
Speaker: We were talking to our guys about how saturated Las Vegas is.
Speaker: I don't think anyone would argue that San Diego is, if not the most saturated market, one of the most saturated markets in the United States.
Speaker: Very cool market.
Speaker: And you still go out and doorknock every day and you still run into people that need solar.
Speaker: And what solar?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's incredible.
Speaker: We need to stop thinking of the scarcity mindset where we're competing against other solar companies.
Speaker: We're still not.
Speaker: Even in San Diego, we're not.
Speaker: And the truth is, you mentioned it too, but those companies may knock the door once and you're going to knock the door five or more times.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm okay with competition as long as I'm better than them.
Speaker: And it sounds like you're, you're beating them.
Speaker: So that's healthy competition.
Speaker: And so I think that that's a really cool thing to think about.
Speaker: We all need to keep our prices higher because in San Diego, if you can sell $6 a lot and the most competitive thing in the whole United States, then everybody should be pricing their structure out right below the utility company.
Speaker: Let's do better than the utility company.
Speaker: But that means I operate in mainly the Midwest states.
Speaker: That means we don't sell as high in Kansas.
Speaker: We don't sell as high in Texas.
Speaker: We don't sell as high at all in Tennessee.
Speaker: So it just all depends on where you're at, what their pricing is, because the utility is the competitor, not the other solar companies.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think that's a good rule to go by though.
Speaker: Cause you don't want to, you know, charge them way more than their pain for electricity.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I've heard some interesting guys pitch it.
Speaker: And if they knocked on my door, they're right.
Speaker: I probably would have bought it cause they're good enough to pitch, pitch it as an investment.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: My individual role with investing is I want my money back within 10 years.
Speaker: I want it to completely be liquid.
Speaker: And that really comes into about a 7% compounded interest rate or above.
Speaker: And so I wouldn't personally make an investment if that wasn't going to happen.
Speaker: I put all my money into investments like that.
Speaker: So why would solar be anything different?
Speaker: If I'm going to put it on my house, I still want that kind of ROI.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so I think I just ethically on a personal side, that's translated to the ethics of my company to say, look, we're not going to sell it unless they meet the standard for Jerry thinking it's a good deal.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that's my standard.
Speaker: There's been some guys, though, that I talked to that view it as a financial investment in states that have very low prices.
Speaker: And I don't think they're wrong.
Speaker: And there's also a lot of speculation about the price of utilities really jumping up over the next three years.
Speaker: A good friend of mine, Mike O'Donnell, talks about it.
Speaker: He's extremely convincing, right?
Speaker: Like he's the guy that I've listened to enough where I'm like, you know what?
Speaker: Even if they are spending $20 more a month, Mike's probably right.
Speaker: It's going to be okay.
Speaker: It's just not a company thing that we do.
Speaker: So that's our litmus test is we try to price it right below.
Speaker: But definitely don't price it $1.85 a watt.
Speaker: I think we can all agree that if you're the guy out there selling it $1.85 a watt, you need to listen to the podcast more often.
Speaker: And learn how to sell more because there's no reason to do that.
Speaker: And at the end of the day, what I tell customers that are getting an incredible deal is I run the numbers and I say, hey, your sales rep's making $500 on this deal.
Speaker: Who is it?
Speaker: Oh, a power?
Speaker: I've never heard of power.
Speaker: That's interesting.
Speaker: It must be a power rep that sold that for a $500 commission.
Speaker: And I say, think about this.
Speaker: It's a 25-year agreement.
Speaker: You need customer service for the next 25 years if something goes wrong, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, yeah, nice.
Speaker: Well, how much do you think the $21 a year is going to buy you in time for that guy to pick up the phone and answer your questions?
Speaker: The truth is, think of his commission like prepaying to have an advocate for you for the next 25 years.
Speaker: And in my opinion, $500 is not enough money for a 25 year relationship.
Speaker: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker: So we need to pay our reps well enough that they do very good customer service or the company needs to make enough profit that they take that role on themselves, that the rep isn't the one responsible for customer service and taking care of it.
Speaker: it is definitely our responsibility to take care of them for the next 25 years.
Speaker: Like that's, that's just the way it is.
Speaker: That's our job.
Speaker: True.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I just got a call actually like a couple hours ago from guy I sold four years ago.
Speaker: Call me just barely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Luckily I made more than 500 bucks, but yeah, that's a good point though.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: I'm only making 500 bucks and it's a guy that's taken up all this time.
Speaker: That's a time suck.
Speaker: Then, uh, yeah, it's, um, like you want to be making, you know, your time worth some money for sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, and yeah, the other thing that's, uh,
Speaker: I forget the question I was going to ask you, where I was going with it.
Speaker: Well, we were talking a little bit before we started, and you were basically saying, you know, why did I step away from Solar Solutions?
Speaker: And, you know, I thought that was a really interesting question I wanted to say for the podcast.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the reason why is because I believe that the solar industry is at its peak right now.
Speaker: I think it's incredible.
Speaker: It's the new gold rush.
Speaker: Everyone we know in cells should be going into solar right now.
Speaker: It is the biggest opportunity.
Speaker: If you're not telling your friends and family members.
Speaker: and neighbors that they should be selling solar and they're working at a library or they're working at Starbucks, you're doing them a disservice.
Speaker: You should be so convicted that it's time to get into solar that I needed to transition what I'm doing to align with that.
Speaker: So if I believe everybody should get into solar, that I need to build a company that isn't one of the most difficult sales processes that requires a rep like you with all your knowledge to go out and sell for $6 a watt.
Speaker: I would need to do something more moderate.
Speaker: So Energy Co.
Speaker: is meant to recruit anybody.
Speaker: We're here at a recruiting class.
Speaker: I'm glad that you're able to say hey to them while you were here.
Speaker: And there's some kids right now in this class that are 18 years old.
Speaker: There's not a lot of solar companies I'd be excited about hiring an 18 year old.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I had to go back to a training model that allowed me to recruit literally anybody off the street.
Speaker: That guy working at Starbucks, that teacher, the person that's struggling because they got a degree in psychology and they haven't worked since they graduated.
Speaker: They're like, what just happened?
Speaker: I paid all this money for a degree and now I don't have a job.
Speaker: I wanted to go back to the days like when we worked at security or pest control that literally anybody could do it, right?
Speaker: Like you just had to knock doors.
Speaker: Solar gets more complicated than that sometimes.
Speaker: And so our whole concept here at Energy Co.
Speaker: is a division of labor.
Speaker: So we split it into the setter, the educator, and the closer.
Speaker: They work together as a team.
Speaker: You know, there's a whole bunch of people that can set because anybody can set just like in pest control, security.
Speaker: You just got to say, even if they're terrible and they're like, hey, do you want solar?
Speaker: Eventually, somebody is going to say yes, whereas the educators a little bit harder.
Speaker: You got to explain the one on ones and how solar works.
Speaker: But there are a whole bunch of second grade teachers out there that would absolutely love to make.
Speaker: money per job in 30 minutes of work, right?
Speaker: And then our closers are definitely the rarest people.
Speaker: It takes a very specific skill set.
Speaker: And so we decided to just make the division of labor.
Speaker: But our closers are now able to sit in front of, you know, 10 opportunities a day.
Speaker: They've already gone through the education process.
Speaker: And during the education process, we've ran credit.
Speaker: They fully understand.
Speaker: They've answered a simple pre-close that says, if your bill is less than it is right now with your utility company,
Speaker: and it doesn't cost you anything out of pocket, will you move forward on solar?
Speaker: So they've already done some of the pre-close.
Speaker: And so these are very, very good leads.
Speaker: They've already said yes to that.
Speaker: We've already ran their credit.
Speaker: We know what all that looks like.
Speaker: So imagine being a closer and going in and jumping on a digital call, which Zoom nobody loves.
Speaker: We're all face-to-face closers.
Speaker: I like being face-to-face.
Speaker: But imagine that educator is still sitting there with the customer who's built up all the rapport.
Speaker: And all we have to do as a closer is review the numbers,
Speaker: answer high-level questions, and overcome their objections.
Speaker: And it takes 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes to do it.
Speaker: You can do it from your house.
Speaker: But we only pay $1,000 because it's taking 30 minutes.
Speaker: But you're running 10 of these opportunities a day.
Speaker: You're closing a 30% close rate because, again, all the chaff, all the ones that never were going to buy to begin with,
Speaker: are disqualified and out of that you have someone there to help you do the paperwork you just close it hang up and trust that your educators getting all the contracts signed following up the back end's taken care of because all we want every day is to have you on the phone making those closing conversations happen and so you're working five six hours a day three grand a day 18 grand a week 750k a year
Speaker: It's one of the highest paid positions inside solar.
Speaker: And we're only paying $1,000 a sale, which shocks people.
Speaker: We interview high-level solar people all the time.
Speaker: And they're like, what are you talking about?
Speaker: I'm making, you know, they always make up these crazy numbers.
Speaker: You've heard them too.
Speaker: I'm making 10 grand a job.
Speaker: I'm making 20 grand a job.
Speaker: We're like, sure you are, buddy.
Speaker: You did that once.
Speaker: And she was 92 years old and didn't know what she was doing.
Speaker: And you sold her at $8 a watt.
Speaker: And you had to argue with the finance company even to approve it.
Speaker: And yes, be super proud of yourself that you made 20 grand on that deal.
Speaker: The other thing it allows us to do at that scale of operation is make sure that every quote that the closer sees is good for the client.
Speaker: So as a closer, they never see a quote that the client should not buy.
Speaker: We've eliminated that in the educational process.
Speaker: The designs are made by our engineers.
Speaker: If it's not good for them, if it's not saving the money from day one and costs nothing out of pocket and is really good for them,
Speaker: then the closer never sees that.
Speaker: So imagine being a closer that knows every single person I'm convicted to give them.
Speaker: And when you have conviction, you turn into convincing.
Speaker: And so you really are convincing that they should move forward.
Speaker: And you never have that ethical dilemma when you get to the end of the sale.
Speaker: And I'm sure this happened to you.
Speaker: You kind of sit there and you're like,
Speaker: Should this client really even be doing that?
Speaker: And they can see it in your eyes.
Speaker: And then every once in a while, that'll bleed over to the next appointment.
Speaker: And you know that they're a good client, but they can feel that energy where you're just not 100% convincing that they should do it.
Speaker: And the energy's off.
Speaker: Imagine being a closer where every single time you get on the phone, it is your moral obligation to close that sale.
Speaker: Like literally they're walking away and if they say no and they don't buy from you, it's financially damaging to them.
Speaker: That's the type of conviction that we bring through this model.
Speaker: And you no longer have to go and vet the clients.
Speaker: You no longer have to knock on the doors.
Speaker: you know, how many times do you say when you knock on the door, I'm not sure if this is going to be a good fit for you.
Speaker: You know, cause those of us that have door knocked for a long time, that's really the pitch.
Speaker: We start doing a lot of pullbacks.
Speaker: I'm not sure if it's good for you.
Speaker: Not sure it's going to work out.
Speaker: Only so many people are going to go solar.
Speaker: Let's just see if it's going to be a good fit.
Speaker: Let's,
Speaker: Well, saying those type of things every single day erodes your confidence.
Speaker: And then when you even a single day set, you've used those phrases when our closers are using phrases like this is absolutely what you should be doing.
Speaker: And it builds up that confidence.
Speaker: They know that every time they get on a phone, they're going to use powerful, assumptive language because they know that it's their job and even their ethical, moral duty to help this client save money because we're not passing them leads that don't need to be closed.
Speaker: And so it makes for a very, very good division of labor.
Speaker: And it helps these guys make a ton of money.
Speaker: And then the cool thing about our company is that once you've made 100 sales with us, you start your own company.
Speaker: So we don't expect guys to stay forever.
Speaker: I think one of the biggest things with the solar industry is every good rep, it may be five years down the road, but wants to own his own company.
Speaker: Not everyone, 90% of them dream about opening their own company or being a dealer or a sub-dealer or something like that.
Speaker: So we just lean into it.
Speaker: We know that's coming.
Speaker: So if you make 100 sales through our company, we will totally finance back by office space, give you marketing.
Speaker: We have full recruiting people.
Speaker: In the last 30 days, we have 1,500 people in our pipeline for recruiting, so we can turn that nozzle on and off in any market in the United States.
Speaker: So if someone is like, yeah, I want to move to Maine and go sell solar, we're like, well, good luck with that four months a year.
Speaker: But we could still recruit enough people to probably make them successful, even up in the Northeast.
Speaker: And so it's really what the company is all about to stay with us for a while.
Speaker: Let us mentor you.
Speaker: Let us build this up.
Speaker: Let us give you this dream job where you're doing what you're specifically talented at.
Speaker: We're the only company I know of that does full psychology profiling and does full disc assessments before we even let someone work for us.
Speaker: So we know exactly what role they're going to end up in, even though they don't.
Speaker: And we let them choose still.
Speaker: Some people,
Speaker: can definitely modulate their personality to be a good setter, be a good educator, be a good closer no matter what.
Speaker: Guys like you that have done all three, you could do whatever you want.
Speaker: But at the end of the day, there's certain parts of that that you probably fall into more easily.
Speaker: And so we evaluate them based on psychology, help them be successful, really build them out.
Speaker: And then at the end of the day, I partner with them and we open up a solar company and they get to own it.
Speaker: you know, hot sun, solar and, you know, South Texas or whatever it is.
Speaker: And so it's a, it's a cool way for us to grow and just lean into the natural things that are going on in the industry already.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: Cause I think so many people just try to force people into this roles that maybe they would have been better off just like setting the appointments.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But that's the problem.
Speaker: I think what you guys have going on is really cool because this sustainable model, like people see,
Speaker: For example, in California, closers, they're the ones making the money.
Speaker: I want to no matter what, I just want to step into closing.
Speaker: Yeah, our closer and our setters make identical amounts of money.
Speaker: The only position that pays a little bit less is our educator position.
Speaker: And it's because supply and demand, there's more people willing to have an educational friendly conversation than there are people willing to talk to strangers at the door or people willing to have the awkward conversation and overcome the objections.
Speaker: And so the law of supply and demand says that's the lowest paid position in the company.
Speaker: but it's also the happiest position.
Speaker: So the people that fall into that personality trait where they just want to help people and they just want to educate people and they just want to do that is a very, very rewarding job.
Speaker: And to not to be the person that has the awkward conversation, to not be the person that has to talk to strangers door to door is a very interesting job.
Speaker: It's also, if I look back at,
Speaker: you know, the thousands of people that I've worked with in solar so far, the ones that I regret the most are the people that are so smart.
Speaker: But for one reason or another, they couldn't be a setter or a closer because they were just awkward.
Speaker: Either at the door, they beat themselves up.
Speaker: Or during the closing, they're the people that get to the end and they say they have to think about it.
Speaker: And they're like, you're right, I would have to think about it too.
Speaker: And they get up and they say, I'll call you back tomorrow.
Speaker: I'm sure you're going to buy.
Speaker: And, you know, that never...
Speaker: Never, ever works.
Speaker: And so your close rate gets destroyed.
Speaker: And so, so many of those people have worked with me and now no longer work with me.
Speaker: And over the years, I used to think, you know, back in ADT, back in the beginning of solar, I used to think, well, they're just bad sales reps that aren't adapting and aren't learning.
Speaker: The truth is there's just different personality traits.
Speaker: And so I taught a leadership course and while I'm teaching the leadership course, I'm like,
Speaker: why am I not applying these things?
Speaker: I'm literally teaching other solar companies to not put a square person into a round hole.
Speaker: And I'm like, wait a minute.
Speaker: Like I only have two positions inside the company, a setter and a closer.
Speaker: Like there's a huge amount of interaction with the customer that doesn't need to be done by either of those personalities.
Speaker: And so that's what energy co is, is a division of labor that puts people in the perfect spot.
Speaker: And then because of that, just like Ford automobiles,
Speaker: It's not about how much money you make per vehicle.
Speaker: It's about how many cars you sell.
Speaker: Or in this case, how many solar deals you get.
Speaker: And so it's economies to scale.
Speaker: And if somebody sitting on a computer on a beach can make $3,000 a day, there are so many people that are willing to jump on board and take that and go live in Key West or whatever and just jump on a laptop for six hours a day and do that, that I don't think we're going to have any trouble being...
Speaker: I would hazard a guess that on paper we pay all flat rate commission.
Speaker: We're probably one of the lowest paid solar companies in the country.
Speaker: And I guarantee you there's very few companies paying their people on the paychecks as much as we do.
Speaker: And so I feel pretty good about us having a good model that's sustainable.
Speaker: We're also ready when we tell people, hey, solar is not going to make this much money forever.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: They say, well, why don't I want to make as much money right now?
Speaker: And we say, well, we are, but we're establishing things and hiring all the back-end people.
Speaker: For the last six months, I've had more executives on board than we had sales reps.
Speaker: That's still true today, actually.
Speaker: Now we have a lot more setters than we have sales reps because you only need about 16 setters in our model for every four educators, for every one closer.
Speaker: So it's a very...
Speaker: It's a big funnel to fill up for one closer.
Speaker: But they're also the hardest person to find.
Speaker: It's guys like you that are at the top of their game.
Speaker: They know how to overcome their objections.
Speaker: They do it friendly, not forceful, not arm twisting, but they're awkward conversations where you have to look somebody in the eye and be like, well, what exactly do you have to think about?
Speaker: Like, cause I hear that a lot.
Speaker: Normally it means one of a couple of things.
Speaker: It means that you either don't understand the product where you, or you think that the price is too high or one of those true, you know, and just get it out there.
Speaker: And if it's, um, they don't understand the product, they're just literally confused.
Speaker: You re-explain it and re-close.
Speaker: If they think the price is too high, then you didn't do a good enough job building value.
Speaker: And so you still go back and explain the product and then re-close them again.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so, but it's one of those two things.
Speaker: And so, but that's an awkward conversation that most people with in the disc profile, CNS are not as good at closing.
Speaker: And it's, it's because they're even influencers aren't as good at closing and it's because they get to that point and there is logical and emotional reasons to let them think about it.
Speaker: Like a CRS kind of shakes their head and goes, you're right.
Speaker: I'd want to think about it too.
Speaker: The influencer, the I in the disc profile has spent so much time influencing that relationship that now they've made a friend.
Speaker: And would you really expect your friend to make a decision tonight?
Speaker: No, you let them call you back tomorrow.
Speaker: And since they've made that friendship, a lot of times an influencer, uh,
Speaker: on the DISC profile will walk away from a job thinking that they built up such a good rapport that that person really is going to call them back tomorrow and they still don't.
Speaker: So it's an interesting thing to look at those psychology profiles.
Speaker: That's more the high Ds.
Speaker: The high Ds are the ones that...
Speaker: High Ds are the closers, right?
Speaker: So I was hazard to guess that you're probably a DI.
Speaker: Have you ever taken this profile?
Speaker: Yeah, I have.
Speaker: And I actually wasn't super high D. You were?
Speaker: I think it was like... About even with DI?
Speaker: Yeah, I think it was more even, but it wasn't like my high one.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Because I always hear the Ds are like, you know, the CEOs and stuff like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think that you probably, we should take it again tonight and make a bet on it.
Speaker: Maybe we'll bet dinner on it.
Speaker: But I would put you at like a 38-38 on DI.
Speaker: So about the same level.
Speaker: And then you probably do have some CNS qualities.
Speaker: But I think you're dominant because you know what you want.
Speaker: But at the same time, you make friends equally as well.
Speaker: So that balances out the dominant.
Speaker: Because people that are dominant, but they're also influencers, they're
Speaker: Don't want to force things on you all the time because they want to use their charm and personality to convince you another way.
Speaker: But at the end of the day, it's the same thing.
Speaker: You still convince others around you to see it your way.
Speaker: Whereas CNS will follow other people's ideas.
Speaker: And so it's an interesting thing to look at.
Speaker: And those that don't know what we're talking about is the disc personality test.
Speaker: I know Tony Robbins has it on his website.
Speaker: What we'll do is we'll throw a free link.
Speaker: We do a really simple disc profile.
Speaker: We have an internal one that our company's built.
Speaker: More than happy to send you the results.
Speaker: And we charge $50 normally, but we'll throw a free link and let people take the disc.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Jerry just keeps on giving.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, also, as part of our disc profile, we'll identify what jobs you're best at, whether it be a setter or a closer.
Speaker: I know a lot of closers,
Speaker: that would have made more money in the last five years being a setter.
Speaker: And the industry has messed that up and they believe that the epitome of sales is being a closer.
Speaker: It's just not true.
Speaker: It's up to the individual.
Speaker: And so we might be able to flip your income almost immediately by you just going back to your own and being like,
Speaker: Hey, this does make sense.
Speaker: Maybe I need to be a setter or a setter manager or something like that.
Speaker: One of our most influential hires within a company in general is our setter manager.
Speaker: And it's such a cool position.
Speaker: But the guy that does it right now is a 72% high.
Speaker: It's the highest influencer score.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: I've ever seen.
Speaker: And he immediately makes a friend at the door.
Speaker: Like you look at the guys, we, we walked down the strip here in Vegas with the guy and people were running into walls cause they just want to look at him and they would run it.
Speaker: He has a male model too, but they would like run into walls and stuff while looking at him.
Speaker: And so the same thing with the door, like people open up the door and they literally just listen to everything he says, like me and you knock on the doors and they're like, what do you want?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they'll just listen to him talk for like three minutes.
Speaker: It's just unfair, completely unfair.
Speaker: But he had started out in that role as a setter.
Speaker: And then he came to us to be a closer and we reset his vision.
Speaker: We're like, dude, you need to be a setter manager.
Speaker: Like this is where you fit perfectly at.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think it's important for those listening, go take that test, see what you are.
Speaker: I know another guy that's super, Chris Lee is coming.
Speaker: I know that's something he has every one of his starting reps do too.
Speaker: It's no secret you guys build successful organizations.
Speaker: I know Tony Robbins talks about this all the time in his business conferences.
Speaker: He's identifying those key traits and
Speaker: I think also probably recognizing quick that maybe someone's not right for any role, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah, it can all, I don't know if it would eliminate someone completely from any role.
Speaker: It would eliminate some people probably from setter educator or closer.
Speaker: I would say.
Speaker: CNS are a little bit harder, but it would be a conversation about those roles.
Speaker: They can be really, really good, sometimes setter or educators, but it's really what those personality tests tells us.
Speaker: Now, the other thing is it allows you to know how to supplement yourself.
Speaker: So I am a high D, like an I, and so you're right, most of those are CEOs and things like that.
Speaker: A CNS are almost needed to pair with me.
Speaker: So like I have a chief of staff who definitely is organized, is loyal, is thoughtful, is considerate of others.
Speaker: And she helps me be less abrasive because I'm very fast decision making.
Speaker: And sometimes people confuse that with being unthoughtful or uncaring.
Speaker: And but really, I've just processed it very quickly.
Speaker: And I've told you what you need to do.
Speaker: So sometimes a rep will come to me and they're like, I'm really struggling.
Speaker: I don't know if this is the job for me.
Speaker: And I say, look, I don't think it is the job for you.
Speaker: What do you want to do in life?
Speaker: And they're like, I came in to get advice on making more sales and you're telling me to quit.
Speaker: Well, yeah, I think you need to do what you want to do in life.
Speaker: And they're like, wow.
Speaker: So she kind of edits that out, right?
Speaker: She's kind of in between like, hey, you're doing great.
Speaker: Keep it up, you know.
Speaker: So and I'm very, very straightforward.
Speaker: So it's good to supplement yourself and surround yourself.
Speaker: I would say three people that I talk to on a daily basis are CSs.
Speaker: And only two of the people in my inner circle that I talk to day to day are DIs.
Speaker: And the most conflict I have day to day are with the other DIs.
Speaker: So because we all want things to be our ways.
Speaker: If you're a DI like you and I'm guessing that you're less than 50% on both D&I is probably the easiest person to work with in a sales organization because you're good at everything, but you don't always have to be right.
Speaker: And that's probably why you do a podcast and you're seeking information from others.
Speaker: It's extremely cool psychology behind you actually having those traits, but then wanting to learn from others, which is uncommon in a high D. We don't want to.
Speaker: So I have to remind myself all the time, extract value from others.
Speaker: You don't have to.
Speaker: You just naturally live that way.
Speaker: Whereas some DNIs just want to push out and always be right.
Speaker: And so, but knowing the negatives of your personality trait is just about as valuable.
Speaker: So I know some of those about myself.
Speaker: And so then I'm able to take notes when I'm talking to others.
Speaker: I'm able to listen to other people's podcasts, which I wouldn't necessarily naturally be inclined to do that because I do think I'm right 99% of the time.
Speaker: But that's also a trait that helps me make decisions faster, which is very, very important in business is to have a leader that doesn't think for two weeks about making a hard decision.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker: It's important to partner with people that can supplement your weaknesses and things like that.
Speaker: Yeah, two of my CSs also have an override authority where if I make a decision and they think it's not a good idea, they get to wait like 72 hours and ask me again.
Speaker: So I'm like, no, pull the trigger on this now.
Speaker: One of those two people can go, well, Jerry said it, but we're going to hold on for a second and go back to Jerry in three days and tell him what we think.
Speaker: That's funny.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Well, Jerry, I know we've taken a lot of your time today and I appreciate you coming on the podcast.
Speaker: Um, last question before we kind of start wrapping up here.
Speaker: Um, you talked about, um, as we were talking in the beginning, just how you really struggled in the beginning, you only got one cell your first month and we have a lot of reps that listen to, um, you know, hit me up on Instagram and things like that.
Speaker: It's a question people ask all the time.
Speaker: How do you turn it into struggling to like find your success and
Speaker: how do you like turn it around?
Speaker: Um, cause a lot of people get discouraged and solar.
Speaker: I'm sure you see that all the time, especially like you're talking about.
Speaker: Sometimes it takes 60 plus days to get paid on a job depending on where you're at.
Speaker: So guys get discouraged and I see people quit all the time just cause they don't have that cashflow coming in.
Speaker: So what were some things, um, that helped you maybe turn it around or like just get past that learning curve?
Speaker: So what's interesting is, is I've thought about this a lot and I, I,
Speaker: And the fact of I've seen so many good people not quite make it to their potential.
Speaker: And I've literally looked at on exit surveys and tried to figure out everyone leaving the company.
Speaker: What could we have done to help them or to do better?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the answer is there is some kind of invisible wall and it's different for every single person that there's no way to know how much knowledge you need, how much experience you need, how many doors you have to knock.
Speaker: It's different for every single person.
Speaker: There is literally in our data sets, having thousands of people work with us.
Speaker: Literally, there's no way to track when someone's going to break into being successful.
Speaker: Some people, it's 30 days.
Speaker: Some people, it's six months.
Speaker: And so what I can say is this can work for almost absolutely anyone if you want it to.
Speaker: If you're broken, though, then you very quickly need to make a decision.
Speaker: What I do best in life and why I make a lot more money than most people is I make decisions very quickly.
Speaker: And if you're out there today and you're struggling and you're telling yourself, I don't know if this is for me, call a mentor, sit down with somebody that's doing the best in your office, tell them your concerns and make a decision that day.
Speaker: Either you're going to start following the behaviors that's making that person successful and stop overthinking it and just put your head down and grind it out.
Speaker: Because I don't know when to tell you.
Speaker: I can't tell you do X, Y, and Z and you're going to break through that wall.
Speaker: There's just no way to track that.
Speaker: What I can say is that every single person that sticks with this and mimics the people around them and mimics the things that they hear on this podcast, 100% of them will be successful in solar.
Speaker: 100%.
Speaker: Now there's varying degrees of success.
Speaker: Maybe they make 100 grand a year.
Speaker: Maybe they make 500 grand a year.
Speaker: But 100 grand a year is an incredible amount of money.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they will absolutely get there.
Speaker: 100% of people that keep their head down and stay long enough will get there.
Speaker: The sad thing is the majority of people quit.
Speaker: And sometimes I know it's just right on the brink of them figuring it out.
Speaker: A lot of the times it's...
Speaker: It's after they've made their first couple of sales, but then they realize their installs out, you know, 60 days or something like that.
Speaker: It just breaks their heart and they're not able to keep going.
Speaker: What I would say is make that decision very quickly and then move on.
Speaker: Get out of solar.
Speaker: There's no reason to torture yourself.
Speaker: If you're going to sit here and just talk about the idea of doing it, you have to play all out.
Speaker: You have to go all in.
Speaker: You have to do what you do, which is get up every day, even though you have a successful podcast and still go knock doors.
Speaker: You have to make that decision.
Speaker: So just be honest with yourself.
Speaker: Are you going to do that or are you not?
Speaker: And then do it today.
Speaker: And I'm so sorry for the companies out there that half their crews are going to quit today.
Speaker: But the other half, I promise you, are all going to make hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Speaker: So stick with me here.
Speaker: It's going to be okay, company owners.
Speaker: We're going to make it through this together.
Speaker: And the fact of the matter is our offices are a lot better.
Speaker: If we allow people to make that decision quickly and move on with their lives and go take a salaried position or something like that, it'll help everyone else around get to that invisible wall faster.
Speaker: So make decisions quickly in life, guys.
Speaker: If solar is not for you, talk to somebody.
Speaker: Don't make the decision on your own.
Speaker: Get with a guy like me or Taylor and just really have an in-depth conversation and be honest.
Speaker: I'm thinking about quitting.
Speaker: Here's what's going on.
Speaker: What would you do?
Speaker: And we'll be honest with you.
Speaker: And I guarantee you,
Speaker: right before my guys went out today, I have a group of new guys that are doing a scavenger hunt.
Speaker: And I said, Hey, come back here.
Speaker: And if you didn't like this and you felt uncomfortable, I'll give you $20 to quit.
Speaker: And they were like, what?
Speaker: You're giving us money to quit.
Speaker: I'm like,
Speaker: Yeah, because I don't want to wait until tomorrow for you to make the decision.
Speaker: I'm going to reward you for being a fast decision maker like right now.
Speaker: And I was being completely honest because I want to free them up to do what they want.
Speaker: There's no reason to torture yourself.
Speaker: But at the same time, if there's any inclination that you can make it, 100% of people will make it given enough time surrounding yourself with the right people.
Speaker: It will absolutely happen.
Speaker: Huge golden nugget right there.
Speaker: Yeah, it reminds me of my brother.
Speaker: He actually came out and sold solar with me, and he was similar situation like you're saying.
Speaker: He actually, like, I don't know, four months into it, he decided solar's not for me.
Speaker: He went home.
Speaker: Then about two weeks after that,
Speaker: he had like six installs going that he just thought were i guess weren't going to get installed or something like that made like i don't know 20 grand in like that week or something he's like he calls me he's like taylor actually i'm coming back out there he's gonna come back out but sure i think so many people they quit um i know some people yeah obviously make the quick decision go do something else but
Speaker: I think there's way more people out there that just aren't willing to stick it out that are.
Speaker: I think the other mistake before we leave is if you're getting into solar right now, I suggest because I have a financial background, a mastermind that does that.
Speaker: A nugget I can leave you is live as cheaply as you possibly can for as long as you can.
Speaker: If you're getting this, I heard a little story that you told me that you ate like ramen noodles and helped your friends make their food for like the first five months you were door knocking to just survive.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I suggest the same thing.
Speaker: If you need to take your last hundred dollars and instead of eating steak that week, you need to go buy 20 packs of ramen noodles and buckle down and get through this.
Speaker: You will absolutely become a millionaire if you're in solar long enough.
Speaker: And if that's what you have to do to make this happen, because I don't know if it's two weeks until you make money, two months until you make money, prepare for the worst and you will absolutely become a millionaire in solar.
Speaker: Yeah, 100%.
Speaker: Well, Jerry, we appreciate you coming on the show today.
Speaker: Jerry's the only guy in the solar industry I know that has a bodyguard and a...
Speaker: He hangs out with him and stuff.
Speaker: His bodyguard was in here bringing me food earlier.
Speaker: That's how you know when you're successful.
Speaker: I think we save more on insurance than his salary.
Speaker: It was a pretty good deal for me to have a guy to bring me food and stuff.
Speaker: At conferences, he brings me energy drinks.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, no, he's awesome.
Speaker: But no, Jerry's an awesome guy.
Speaker: So go follow him on social media.
Speaker: So before he lets you go, Jerry, where can people reach out to you?
Speaker: Yeah, reach out to me on Instagram.
Speaker: It's Fussell, spelled F-U-S-S-E-L-L, Jerry, J-E-R-Y.
Speaker: Look me up, follow me.
Speaker: I'll follow you back if you're in solar.
Speaker: I love to see what other guys are doing and the success you're having.
Speaker: And then definitely reach out to us with Pi Syndicate when Austin's on.
Speaker: Take a listen to his podcast and we'd love to have you guys contribute to be part of that mastermind.
Speaker: Okay, and your last name is Fusel?
Speaker: Fusel is how you say it.
Speaker: I think I was calling it Fusel or something.
Speaker: That's okay, you can call me Fusel.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I'm in sales.
Speaker: If anyone makes a big deal about how people pronounce their name, they probably haven't sold enough stuff because I would much rather have money than my name pronounced right, so I don't argue about it.
Speaker: Yeah, as long as you won't send your bodyguard after me.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: Just kidding.
Speaker: Awesome, Jerry.
Speaker: And then we're, yeah, we're going to have Austin on the show here too.
Speaker: He's going to talk more about Pies Syndicate, sponsoring the show and all that.
Speaker: But just if people want to join that or potentially get in on that, what's the best way for them to do that too?
Speaker: Yeah, just send me a message on Instagram.
Speaker: We'll put you through and set up an interview process.
Speaker: The other thing is if you're listening to this podcast for the first time, you're anywhere in the United States that isn't San Diego, because I would love for you to work with Taylor in San Diego, anywhere else you're out in the United States, definitely look up Energy Co., drop us a line, message me on Instagram.
Speaker: I would love to have you on the team.
Speaker: We installed in 45 states last year.
Speaker: We're the broadest installer in the U.S. So if you want to work in Maine or Texas or Florida or travel up to Wisconsin or Idaho,
Speaker: we can install your jobs.
Speaker: We'd love to have you part of the team.
Speaker: We'd love to bring you out to Vegas for an in-person training and get you going.
Speaker: We are probably, um, have the widest opportunity for solar recruiting in the U S and we're so happy to sponsor the show.
Speaker: Definitely.
Speaker: Um, if I was in San Diego though, I'd be working right here with Taylor and getting some free mentorship there.
Speaker: So, um, don't, uh, don't ask me if we're hiring in San Diego because I'm going to send you right back to this guy because he's going to do a better job than we are.
Speaker: I don't know about that, but I will try.
Speaker: So yeah, you can hit me up.
Speaker: But I appreciate that, Jerry.
Speaker: And all our listeners, go hit up Jerry.
Speaker: Let them know if anything you appreciated him coming on the show today.
Speaker: And hopefully we have lots of people joining us at Pi Syndicate too.
Speaker: Go send in your application for that.
Speaker: Because remember, it's not about how much money you make.
Speaker: It's about how much money you can keep at the end of the day.
Speaker: So Jerry, thanks again for coming on.
Speaker: And we'll be talking soon.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Hey, solopreneurs, quick question.
Speaker: What if you could surround yourself with the industry's top performing sales pros, marketers, and CEOs and learn from their experience and wisdom in less than 20 minutes a day.
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.
Speaker: That's why I want to make a truly special announcement about the new learning community exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with top performers in the industry.
Speaker: And it's called Solcitee.
Speaker: 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 a day.
Speaker: Currently, SoulCity is open, launched, and ready to be enrolled.
Speaker: So go to SoulCity.co to learn more and join the learning experience now.
Speaker: This is exclusively for solopreneur listeners, so be sure to go to SoulCity.co and join.
Speaker: We'll see you on the inside.
