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 solopreneur, you might ask?
Speaker: A solopreneur is a new breed of solopro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery, and you are about to become one.
Speaker: All right, what's happening, everybody?
Speaker: We have got someone that is going to take your mindset to another level.
Speaker: We all know that this game is, I would say, 80% mental how you're dealing with the situation.
Speaker: So I'm excited.
Speaker: We got my friend Jens Bunnell coming on the podcast.
Speaker: Thanks for joining us today.
Speaker: Thanks, Tyler.
Speaker: I appreciate you, man.
Speaker: Good to be here.
Speaker: Of course, man.
Speaker: It's been a long time coming.
Speaker: And now I've been watching you from afar for a while.
Speaker: And I mean, I remember seeing you at the first like SolarCon.
Speaker: And you've been coming to these events for a while, like SolarCon, DoorDorCon.
Speaker: Coaching guys, how long have you been doing it now?
Speaker: About a half a decade, five years now altogether.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And yeah, I've seen a ton of value just from guys.
Speaker: I know you work with teams, just work with reps.
Speaker: And like I was saying, there's so much of this is mental and stuff.
Speaker: I forget about a lot of times too, is like, I'm sharing all these strategies.
Speaker: I'm sharing like what to say at the doors and all that.
Speaker: But then I think a big piece of it is no matter what guys say, no matter what, how much, you know, none of that matters.
Speaker: We can't get what's upstairs.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So true.
Speaker: You know, like actually a plan.
Speaker: So yeah, man, I'm stoked to kind of like touch on a lot of those things and how you guys help, how you help guys have mental breakthroughs and everything.
Speaker: But yeah, do you want to share with us kind of like your background, how you got into the door to door space and decided kind of on like, you know, this, this industry and everything?
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: First of all, thank you.
Speaker: It's, it's, uh, like you said, it's been a long time coming.
Speaker: Um, I'm excited to, to be with the solopreneur crew and, and, and, uh, be here at solar con with that.
Speaker: I, man, it's been a journey.
Speaker: Like we all have, we all have a journey.
Speaker: We all have a path that kind of ebbs and flows and we might have an idea of where we want to go and where we want to be.
Speaker: Um, but the journey to get there is probably, you know, nobody could guess.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: So, I mean, the journey for me, I started, graduated with an undergrad in business, started working at Goldman Sachs.
Speaker: I was there for a couple of years, got out right before I lost my soul.
Speaker: So I was one of the lucky ones.
Speaker: Had this dream of being a public speaker.
Speaker: And I just thought, man, I'm working so hard at Goldman.
Speaker: know, 50 to 80 hours a week that I could spend 40 hours at a normal job and then spend the other 40 hours building something I really wanted to do, which was speak.
Speaker: And so I started speaking to student athletes, doing like motivational speaking as I was doing this corporate sales job.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Right about that time, um, just hit rock bottom in my life and put me down a path of addiction recovery, trauma recovery, personal marriage, group counseling and therapy, all of that for, um, a very long time.
Speaker: I was, uh,
Speaker: Um, in a group, group addiction therapy, personal addiction therapy, marriage counseling and normal individual therapy and a 12 step, uh, program, all five of those things every week for months to years.
Speaker: And it changed everything, man.
Speaker: Um, almost overnight I went from being a pretty good sales rep to breaking records in the company that I was in.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And I didn't change anything of like how I approach people, my pitch, like what I sold, nothing.
Speaker: I just changed my mind and my heart and really worked on that.
Speaker: Separated from my wife for a little while because of what I was going through and what I was lying about.
Speaker: It wasn't telling the truth.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we came back stronger than ever because of the work that I had done on my mind and my heart.
Speaker: And she had two.
Speaker: She had a lot of.
Speaker: because of what I put her through.
Speaker: You know, she had to do a lot of work on herself because of that.
Speaker: And just we all have work.
Speaker: And so that work changed our marriage and our life and my relationship with God and all that.
Speaker: And so that put me down a path of the psychology side.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: And started working with athletes in more of a like mental and emotional performance training program, not just speaking.
Speaker: That took me to the University of Tennessee.
Speaker: Got my master's in business there while I was working with student athletes out there.
Speaker: Transitioned while I was getting my MBA into the door-to-door space and started working with reps and it just has taken off.
Speaker: There's a huge need.
Speaker: There's probably no listening.
Speaker: It gets mentally and emotionally grueling.
Speaker: I'm about a year away from a PhD in psychology, a year and a half away.
Speaker: And that's been the journey, man.
Speaker: We're, uh, with that momentum, we, um, support well over a thousand individuals now with our, uh, corporate clients and individual clients that we support.
Speaker: And, uh, there's a need.
Speaker: And so that's kind of been the journey.
Speaker: That's what brought us to this day and being here and everything.
Speaker: So it's been a blessing and, and, uh, and again, quite the journey.
Speaker: Yeah, that's incredible, man.
Speaker: And I love that, like, you had to go through it yourself, too.
Speaker: And, like, no sales, you know, like, what you struggle with, overcoming addictions, these things.
Speaker: Because I think there's a lot of, like, you know, mental coaches, therapists, whatever, that they, yeah, I'm sure they're doing great things, but sometimes they can't, like, speak that they've, like, gone through it themselves.
Speaker: Gone through it, yeah.
Speaker: So, for me, there's a lot of power in that.
Speaker: It's like, hey, I'm not just saying these things because I learned it in the classroom.
Speaker: Like, I went through it myself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I fought those demons.
Speaker: I was in the trenches and am in the trenches.
Speaker: I tell everybody I meet with, whether it's one-on-one or whatever, just because I help people with anxiety or insecurities or whatever it might be doesn't mean that I'm immune.
Speaker: It's the tools to decrease the amount of time spent in that and having the tools to properly process and go through it doesn't mean...
Speaker: Like my marriage is perfect or we never fight or whatever.
Speaker: It's just how using the proper tools to get through it all.
Speaker: And so anyway, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: I've been, I've been through it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We'll, we'll dig into that a little bit more, but I'm curious.
Speaker: You said you started with student athletes, moved to door to door guys.
Speaker: So what was the reason behind that?
Speaker: Were you just like, these student athletes are broke.
Speaker: I'm going to go to people that got money.
Speaker: Was that part of it?
Speaker: Or what was your reason?
Speaker: That was it.
Speaker: No, just kidding.
Speaker: No, that wasn't it.
Speaker: No, I loved athletes.
Speaker: I played football all the way throughout my years in university and college and everything.
Speaker: And so that was just the niche that I had, but I had a love for business and I wanted to find a niche that was very specific, that had a very specific need.
Speaker: Um, and I, I grew up in Utah, so a lot of door to door dudes and bros and girls and all that.
Speaker: And I had, uh, some really good friends that would come home from selling pest, make like six figures in four months.
Speaker: And then they'd be like, yo, but bro, like I can't go out again.
Speaker: I'm not going to do it again.
Speaker: And I'm like, what do you mean you're not going to go out again?
Speaker: And that's so much money.
Speaker: And they're like, mentally and emotionally, I just can't do it.
Speaker: And so that kind of came up in my mind.
Speaker: And so I just, I started kind of putting something together, went to somebody that had been in the space for a while.
Speaker: I was like, yeah, dude, he gave me a list of names.
Speaker: I flew out to Utah.
Speaker: I was living in Tennessee at the time, flew out to Utah, fixed up an old car that my brother had that hadn't ran for like two years in his land and just drove it up and down the state of Utah for a month and a half.
Speaker: And, uh,
Speaker: walked away with our first client and it just kind of exploded from there.
Speaker: But that's how I kind of the getting into the niche of in the door to door world.
Speaker: So you're just driving up and down, like talking to door to door companies.
Speaker: Yeah, but I'd go talk to leaders of door to door companies and just
Speaker: just like essentially hey this is what I'm thinking about doing what do you think like what am I missing what are blind spots what can I add and then also being like well hey like I would love to help your your company with this too and so um that's kind of what kicked it off and it's just that that from there that
Speaker: launched a travel stint of like two years straight of 20 to 28 days of travel every single month for two years straight being with like one to three door-to-door companies every week for those two years yeah and uh so yeah it's been it that's cool man well yeah and from your perspective because like i've been doing this you know i've been door-to-door like you know 10 years or so now so quite a lot and um i don't know if it's just me but i feel like i do see that is a common issue like a lot of guys struggle with like
Speaker: Addiction.
Speaker: Um, a lot of guys have like, you know, uh, issues with their wife's and others and all that, that they have to go through.
Speaker: Um, and I don't know, maybe I just like see it more, but would you say that's something that you see a lot in sales guys too is they just like, you know, struggle with these things.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: I mean, in a psychology world, there's something called amplification.
Speaker: Um, amplification is when you suppress something, the more you suppress something, the louder it gets.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And a lot of us high performers, we try to suppress that with more sales, performing well, having, you know, having money in the bank, like whatever it might be, or just like pushing down the emotion.
Speaker: But eventually, it's going to come out.
Speaker: Eventually, the balloon's going to pop.
Speaker: Like eventually you're going to have that and it'll manifest itself in many different ways.
Speaker: Whether you like it or not, it'll come up anxiety, hopelessness, addiction, marital issues, loneliness, isolation.
Speaker: It manifests shopping, anger, like it manifests in so many different ways.
Speaker: We all have it.
Speaker: We just choose sometimes improper ways to cope with it.
Speaker: And so it's a skill if we've not taught it.
Speaker: We don't, we don't learn it in school.
Speaker: It's just like going to the gym.
Speaker: You have to go to the gym to help your muscles increase in strength.
Speaker: We have to do that with our mental and emotional ability because it's just the same thing.
Speaker: So 100% you, you find guys and girls that are out there crushing it or struggling.
Speaker: And they just, a lot of, a lot of us just put our head down and grind, grind, grind.
Speaker: And eventually like you're going to collapse no matter how much like you David Goggins the crap out of your mind.
Speaker: Like you will collapse if you're not taking care of yourself in the proper way.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah, is there, like, I don't know, something in psychology behind that?
Speaker: Like, why is it that so many high performers struggle with these issues?
Speaker: Like, you know, I've had buddies, and I've seen it.
Speaker: You know, you go to, like, 12-step programs and all that, and then, you know, even in San Diego, where I'm at, I've, like, seen it, and you see a bunch of door-to-door guys that, like, watch these people.
Speaker: So, I'm like, what is it about, like, high performers?
Speaker: Is that just, like...
Speaker: The sacrifice.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, it's all, it's all, there's so many different ways.
Speaker: A lot of it for, I'd say men especially, but I don't even know if I would use the word especially because women go through it too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But work can be an escape.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a, it's an improper, proper coping mechanism.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so things aren't good at home or like I have this addiction or I have this depression or anxiety.
Speaker: Well, I can go forget about it and just go to work.
Speaker: And it feels good when I make a sale and I get that validation, everything.
Speaker: But eventually that'll end, you know.
Speaker: And so for a lot of high performers, that's what it is.
Speaker: It's an escape.
Speaker: I would say the other side of that is it's a way to receive the validation they're looking for, but not supplying for themselves.
Speaker: Like if, if we're leaning on other things to find the validation, we're going to go freaking find it.
Speaker: We will find a way to get that validation, whether it's through somebody else or something else like sales.
Speaker: But so between those two things, I would say that's, I don't know, most common, but really common.
Speaker: Those two things is it's going to escape from the things that we're going through, or it's a way to get validation.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah, it's good to know.
Speaker: And so you worked with, right now you're working with mostly teams, combinations of what's like your target?
Speaker: Personally, me, I spend my time with in-house with a few companies, consulting and being a part of their organization, helping with retention and culture and everything.
Speaker: I take about five or so clients at a time of, I mean, people would know him.
Speaker: I don't divulge that information because it's all anonymous, but some of the most high performing and highest executives within the space, that's kind of the people, my demographic that I meet with now.
Speaker: And then we have a whole team of therapists, PhD psychologists, as well as performance coaches that meet with the rep level all the way up to the executive level.
Speaker: Yeah, that's good.
Speaker: Well, yeah, it's funny.
Speaker: I did a podcast with, I don't know if you know him, Christian DeLuca.
Speaker: He runs, yeah, dude's crushing it, 25, has like 100 reps at his company.
Speaker: I've been at Chico probably four times I've worked with him.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So, yeah, you know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But, yeah, and maybe he got some of this stuff from you, but he was telling me that, like, most of the time when he sees struggling reps, whether they're not, like, working the hours or...
Speaker: Like, you know, not close as many deals as they need to be.
Speaker: Like 90% of the time, it's just like they got issues.
Speaker: You have to kind of like dig through layers and figure out, hey, what's going on?
Speaker: And it's usually like something in their life, something, some struggles or whatever.
Speaker: It's not just like they know how to work.
Speaker: But they just got like other things they're dealing with.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I asked him this question too.
Speaker: And maybe you have some more to say on it, like for maybe managers listening or like, I don't know, reps at companies that are kind of like mentoring others and all that.
Speaker: How do you work with them to kind of help them like uncover things?
Speaker: Because sometimes like I've experienced it too, I'll have reps and I'm just like, oh, do this, work harder.
Speaker: but I can't like, you know, break through the other level or like help them figure out what's really going on.
Speaker: So how do you get guys to like open up and really figure out what are these underlying issues?
Speaker: That's a good question.
Speaker: Christian, I mean, he nailed it exactly.
Speaker: I don't know if you got that from me or, I mean, he's a smart man.
Speaker: So, you know, I'd,
Speaker: What I and nearly every training or workshop I give I talk about you know where there's smoke there's fire And a lot of times we deal in our lives.
Speaker: We're just punching at the smoke Like we think oh, I just got to sell more.
Speaker: I got to get to the gym more I got to get my daily routine down like whatever it is we deal with the smoke when we punch it smoke Nothing happens.
Speaker: You get to the fire of the issue of what's going on and
Speaker: And that's where the smoke starts to go away.
Speaker: Eventually, initially you start throwing water on fire and it gets, there's more smoke.
Speaker: It billows.
Speaker: And that's a lot of times what we do is we start to kind of go down that path of that thing that like, ah, that like that hurt me when I was 10 years old when this happened or ah, that hurt me when this happened with, with a business partner or whatever.
Speaker: And we're like, we just lock it up.
Speaker: We're like, not going to go there because it gets smoky.
Speaker: It's hard to breathe, like all that.
Speaker: But the more we go down the path to put out the actual fire, the more the smoke ends.
Speaker: And it's never on the surface, usually what we're going through.
Speaker: It's a couple layers deep.
Speaker: So to get to that, like the core, asking the right questions to your people that you're with is crucial.
Speaker: Like my two favorite things is coming in with curiosity.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: not assumption, but you get curious.
Speaker: And the other side is vulnerability.
Speaker: And if you approach somebody like that, like you come through it as like, instead of yo, dude, why are you struggling like this?
Speaker: Why are your sales this way?
Speaker: Or why is your mood off?
Speaker: It's, hey, I've sent something and I appreciate you.
Speaker: I love you.
Speaker: I want to show up for you.
Speaker: And I've had some hard times that have been difficult for me.
Speaker: And so I just want to like, and I know what it's like to, to go through some things.
Speaker: And I don't know if you're going through something I've gone through, but I'm wondering like, Hey, how can I support you?
Speaker: Like what's happened?
Speaker: What's what, what's happened in your life?
Speaker: Is there any way I can support you?
Speaker: And you get curious with it and vulnerable with it, which is hard in our space sometimes.
Speaker: But a lot of times people will approach that in a way that they're open.
Speaker: They'll start, they'll get to the fire instead of saying like, oh, well, you know, my car broke down this last week, so I couldn't get to area when all reality, there's something going on at home that they, you know, that's happening.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, that's good.
Speaker: Yeah, and I think there's a lot of, I don't know, maybe we all listen too much, like David Goggins, Andy Elliott, Andy Fursell, all these guys, just effing get out there.
Speaker: But do you think there's a balance between, I don't know, like some of these people that are just like, oh, get on the grind.
Speaker: I think there's never a balance or negotiation with shame.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Shame breeds isolation, addiction, hopelessness, and to be honest, suicide.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, so I would say anything that looks like, or smells like, or sounds like, or feels like shame.
Speaker: Never, never a good thing.
Speaker: You can try to motivate by shame and it's easy to motivate by shame.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And people will, they like to unite with that because if I can shame somebody else, it makes me feel good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you can disguise it of like, oh, I'm just telling it how it is and I'm helping you, but it's shame.
Speaker: And it's not consistent and it never, I rarely say never.
Speaker: So maybe I shouldn't say it now, but
Speaker: it's very rare that it works over time.
Speaker: It'll be short.
Speaker: It's a flash in the pan.
Speaker: But I, at the same time, not but, but, and there's room for realness.
Speaker: There's room for being upfront, for seeing things how they are, for accepting where you are, what you've done.
Speaker: Like when I was lying to my wife for two and a half years about an addiction and everybody else around me, I had to get really real with myself and be like, I need to fix this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I didn't shame myself like, what the are you doing?
Speaker: Like all this stuff.
Speaker: Because the shame that I was feeling was the thing that was perpetuating me hiding.
Speaker: So the more you are able to, you meet with compassion, not excuse, but you meet compassion with the reality of the situation and you create consistency.
Speaker: So you could like, there's harmony and balance in that and the realness of the situation and being really firm with yourself.
Speaker: It has to be met with compassion in order for it to be consistent though.
Speaker: Again, not excuse.
Speaker: A lot of times we don't give ourselves compassion because we feel like it's an excuse.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But real compassion met with real reality that creates consistency.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay, I like that.
Speaker: So some of you already know that I run my own door-to-door sales team here in San Diego.
Speaker: And as we are gearing up for the summer, I realized if we do the same thing we always did, we're going to get the same results.
Speaker: But if I want to increase my deal flow, I need to do something different to get an advantage.
Speaker: Then we discovered an app called Solar Scout.
Speaker: But it's not a door-knocking app.
Speaker: It's a data platform that shows us who is likely to go solar in our market.
Speaker: It shows us who has previously applied for solar but later canceled the deal, who has moved in recently, and even how much electricity the homes are using in a given neighborhood.
Speaker: It's been working for a lot of teams across the country, and now I'm on board too.
Speaker: I'm going to be one of the first to use SolarScout in San Diego, so I decided to partner up.
Speaker: But I told them, hey, if I'm going to talk about SolarScout on my show, you need to give my listeners a great deal.
Speaker: And they did.
Speaker: So go to solarscout.app forward slash Taylor and book a demo with them and you'll get 10% off your first month when you sign up.
Speaker: That's solarscout.app forward slash Taylor.
Speaker: Okay, back to the show.
Speaker: Yeah, and I'm sure there's maybe reps struggling and things like that.
Speaker: Maybe they've tried one thing.
Speaker: Because I know it sounds like when you were going through stuff, you went through a lot of, I don't know, maybe it's therapy, like 12-step programs, whatever.
Speaker: So, I don't know, for people listening to this, what are some things that helped you?
Speaker: Did that stuff help you?
Speaker: Or do you think it's more like, I don't know, some of that stuff you see, 12-step programs, all that?
Speaker: versus you like therapy or what you do.
Speaker: I don't know, did that stuff work or for like a rep struggling with maybe addictions, whatever.
Speaker: Is there stuff you think they can do on their own or should they go to some stuff?
Speaker: What's like the most effective stuff would you say?
Speaker: Yeah, good question.
Speaker: I think in general, the number one thing is community.
Speaker: That's huge.
Speaker: Again, especially for women too.
Speaker: For men though, we find out harder for men to find a community and be open and vulnerable with the community.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like to be able to have that tribe that's not business friends, it's not family friends, it's like friend friends, 4am friends you can call, no bias, no judgment, no agenda, they're there for you.
Speaker: And that's what I had from the beginning of my addiction recovery was, man, I still meet monthly with those guys.
Speaker: Oh, cool.
Speaker: having that and being a vocal with whatever you're going through.
Speaker: I get emotional because in the last three weeks I've been to two funerals, have heard about one more of men taking their life.
Speaker: If they would have known, like, and the people that show up at those funerals, like if they would have known that they had that kind of community, if they would have known they have that kind of love, I know they'd still be here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's for like, we just, we have to reach out.
Speaker: It starts with you reaching out and speaking up.
Speaker: And a lot of us are like, well, I don't just need to talk about my feelings.
Speaker: That's not going to help.
Speaker: Well, it's not just talking.
Speaker: It's like you getting support, you getting that need.
Speaker: And so whether it's therapy, performance psychology, addiction recovery, like whatever, like getting being vulnerable and open and getting people that are professionally trained in what they do is so helpful and so crucial.
Speaker: Again, you go to the gym, you can't get stronger unless you go to the gym and like work out those muscles.
Speaker: You can't.
Speaker: increase your mental and emotional ability just by putting your head down and getting through it.
Speaker: Like utilizing people to be in your corner is huge.
Speaker: That community is so crucial.
Speaker: Yeah, I love that.
Speaker: No, appreciate you sharing that.
Speaker: And I think it's hopefully resonating with someone listening to this on the podcast or whatever.
Speaker: Because, yeah, I mean, I know in my life, I actually have a buddy that he lost his wife to cancer.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's been like three, four months now.
Speaker: But it's been super tough to like, you know, he has a two-year-old daughter going through all this stuff.
Speaker: But, I mean, my buddy, he's like super stubborn and...
Speaker: We're telling them, hey, man, like, you shouldn't be going through this alone.
Speaker: Like, get help, work with professionals.
Speaker: So, yeah, it's just tough to see that, like, some people are like, oh, I'm not going to, like, get help.
Speaker: I'm just going to power through it.
Speaker: And you see that they're, like, you know, just, like, hurting and trying to, like, power through all this stuff.
Speaker: Man, it's so true.
Speaker: I mean, the hardest step is the first step.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was the hardest thing for me to have to tell my wife what was going on.
Speaker: And crying on the floor, her standing over me bawling.
Speaker: And then to her leave and us be separated for months.
Speaker: Like the first step is the hardest step.
Speaker: That is the hardest step.
Speaker: And that's what my goal is with everything we do is just helping people bridge that gap to take the first step, get the help that they need.
Speaker: That first step is everything.
Speaker: And I always say like, you can choose your heart.
Speaker: It's really hard to carry a load, carry in isolation and not get help and hold that and try to suppress it.
Speaker: That's really hard.
Speaker: It's also hard to go and talk about it, to get skills and work on it.
Speaker: but you choose your heart.
Speaker: You can either climb the mountain once, get perspective and have some little bit of peaks and valleys in your life.
Speaker: Or you can go down and climb the mountain multiple times and not really get the help and just put your head down and get through it.
Speaker: You choose your heart.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, no doubt.
Speaker: So yeah, hopefully, you know, anyone listening to this, if you're trying to like, just go through a bunch of stuff and, you know, carry yourself, hopefully that's inspiring someone out there to just like, go reach out to someone like Jens, go get help, join a community.
Speaker: Cause yeah, I've seen a change list for sure.
Speaker: And I know we've seen the opposite too, where guys don't do that and just try to power through and
Speaker: But yeah, on the flip side is, like you said, being at funerals where, you know, guys probably could have gotten more help.
Speaker: So yeah, I want to shift gears a little bit, like as far as like sales go too, because not only, I mean, this stuff is going to help you just emotionally, physically, so many different areas.
Speaker: But for talking sales to you, relating it to solar and everything that we talk about on the podcast, like I don't know, do you have any examples of guys that have like...
Speaker: I don't know, their cells were suffering and just by changing some stuff, any, uh, cool stories, guys you've worked with where they've not only like changed, I don't know, maybe addiction or whatever other they're struggling with.
Speaker: And then seeing them like just start crushing and sell.
Speaker: I know you did, but yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's some like cool examples, cool stories.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, so, so many, honestly.
Speaker: Um, and it's nothing of what myself or the coaches do.
Speaker: Like we have the easy jobs, like,
Speaker: It's what these men and women have chosen to do, to do the work and put themselves into it.
Speaker: Two of them come to mind.
Speaker: One was a while ago, I was working with this rep that we were going through.
Speaker: He really struggled to get out on blitzes and then stay out for longer than four days.
Speaker: And then that increased to a week.
Speaker: And then he was out there two weeks in the whole blitz.
Speaker: Um, but while I was out there, we were kind of going through some of the basic stuff, kind of the smoke of like, Hey, you know, when are you planning to knock?
Speaker: How many days are you staying out there?
Speaker: All that kind of stuff.
Speaker: And he got to Saturday and he's like, no, no, no, I don't knock on Saturdays.
Speaker: Like, what do you, what do you mean?
Speaker: You don't knock on Saturdays.
Speaker: Like that is, if you're not going to knock on a day, like don't knock Monday, but like Saturday is the day.
Speaker: He's like, no, it's man.
Speaker: Like whenever I get out there, I just feel weird.
Speaker: I feel like people, there's more families out there.
Speaker: I feel people are looking at me weird.
Speaker: And I was like, huh?
Speaker: So we got curious.
Speaker: started diving into it, got it, got, you know, we're good scientists and observed what was going on and dove deep into his life and figured out that I think it was when he was like four or five, he had an experience that was on a Saturday that brought up the similar feelings that he felt when he would go knock on Saturdays.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: So he gave him the proper tools.
Speaker: He started working on himself.
Speaker: That was on like a Tuesday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, something like that.
Speaker: I get a text on Sundays like, dude, I just knocked the first Saturday I've ever knocked.
Speaker: I set more appointments than I've ever set in my life in that day than any other day.
Speaker: And I think it even matched his like weekly high.
Speaker: So it's like, again, it's never on the surface.
Speaker: And Saturdays were fine for him then.
Speaker: And
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Crushed it.
Speaker: I'll give one more.
Speaker: One more is a man that he was working on himself, working on his relationship with his dad, unbeknownst to his dad, like he didn't know.
Speaker: Started just doing work on himself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Holiday season came around.
Speaker: And he'd never had like a really deep conversation with his dad.
Speaker: And there's a lot of trauma there because of the past.
Speaker: And he just sat down with his dad and his dad just opened up and was like, I'm so sorry for everything I put you through and everything you went through.
Speaker: And it just like,
Speaker: melted all of this for this man.
Speaker: They've gone through so much.
Speaker: He went from barely being able to knock like 20 doors a day to knocking, I'm trying to remember the number, it was 100 and something every week consistently.
Speaker: So it just, again, you start doing the work and things start to align and just everything else falls in line.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, that's incredible.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And like, so once you've, uh, kind of like helped them discover their, I don't know, maybe past traumas, whatever.
Speaker: What are some, I'm sure there's like maybe a lot to it, but what are like some tools or things like, like what type of tools do you give these people to help them actually like work through this and like resolve it and make changes?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's a few that we do.
Speaker: We get really focused on the nervous system.
Speaker: There's some really interesting things about the nervous system of how like you are every day that you've lived.
Speaker: Your nervous system doesn't know time.
Speaker: So you can help yourself through things that happened in the past by working through it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think, you know, I heard it today, somebody talking at our booth, but I think a good word that's kind of coming to mind now is awareness.
Speaker: Like when you're aware of what you've been through, what you've gone through, what you're feeling, it gives you a really good opportunity to work on it.
Speaker: One thing we talk about a lot with guys is the window of, it's called the window of tolerance.
Speaker: And our window is like when we're inside our window, our most true, authentic, real, like highest, not like highest.
Speaker: Not that kind of high, but real authentic self.
Speaker: And we get outside of our window.
Speaker: Like, for example, if you're hangry, you're impatient with people, you're not yourself, you get mad fast, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker: You increase the size of your window, like in what you're able to go through in your life.
Speaker: And you can go through the same stuff, but not have it affect you in the same way.
Speaker: So understanding what are the things in my life that get me outside of my window that caused me not to be able to go knock or whatever it is, finding some of those fires in your life.
Speaker: So you can increase the size of your window.
Speaker: The same stuff might happen, but you can continue to be consistent and everything.
Speaker: And it's a skill.
Speaker: The more you increase your window, that might be through therapeutic trauma work.
Speaker: That might be through more of the, like, I need to find my numbers and work back from, like, how many closes I want.
Speaker: You know, like it.
Speaker: But but that helps maintain consistency whatever we can do to increase that window.
Speaker: That's the goal And I say with everything that we do our goal is to be fired with my company Because if we're doing our job Then we should be providing people with the proper tools to become mentally and emotionally independent
Speaker: Yeah, that's good.
Speaker: Well, yeah, that brings up another point, too, because, you know, I've seen guys go through, have, you know, struggle with addictions, whatever.
Speaker: And sometimes they, yeah, they go through these programs, whatever, coaching, 12-step, and, like, I'll see them be good for maybe a year, but then...
Speaker: They'll like fall back or maybe get in their head again.
Speaker: So what are like, how do you get people?
Speaker: So they actually like fire you and feel good about not like falling back into their demons or whatever.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: I mean, the work never ends.
Speaker: Like we're never out of the trenches in the, in the battle for our heart.
Speaker: We were always battling for our heart.
Speaker: Um, all the way till then.
Speaker: I think that's the way it's supposed to be.
Speaker: Cause it'd be fricking damn boring in this life if we weren't fighting for something.
Speaker: And so we'll never have it completely figured out.
Speaker: But there's levels, like there's levels to the growth.
Speaker: There's levels to all of that.
Speaker: And so when I say like we should be fired, we should be fired probably from sessions weekly.
Speaker: It doesn't mean that somebody won't have like a quarterly or monthly maintenance check-in.
Speaker: But there's growth always and there's leveling up always.
Speaker: But the work, it never stops.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, so those listening, they're like, oh, I'm just going to hire Jen.
Speaker: Jen's going to be easy after that.
Speaker: They're still going to be work involved.
Speaker: I guess check your expectations.
Speaker: I mean, I will say, like, again, I'm in the trenches.
Speaker: Like, I still meet with a therapist, with the counts.
Speaker: Like, I still do all that on maintenance because we all need it, man.
Speaker: We're always in a battle for our heart.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, I mean, it sounds like, you know, it's like going to the gym or whatever.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: You can't just go one day and got to be maintaining it.
Speaker: You got to, um, but yeah, hopefully once you have the tools in place, you know, like what to do when things come up and mental box and all that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I like that a lot.
Speaker: And then I know you're like, you know, coaching a lot of companies too.
Speaker: I see you doing a lot of trainings for companies.
Speaker: So when you're not maybe like working with someone one-on-one, what does that look like?
Speaker: How do you like structure it and help whole companies?
Speaker: What's, I guess, what's the difference when you're doing kind of like group stuff versus one-on-one?
Speaker: Yeah, so we'll do, we, we, like, I, I speak just like keynote stuff at events and then we also do workshops.
Speaker: So whether we're contracted with a company and they have a certain amount of workshops every year, or it's just a one-off workshop, we go out anywhere from a three to eight hour workshop over one to two days and we come out and it's teaching those skills.
Speaker: We'll be in person, go through the workshop.
Speaker: But that's what it looks like.
Speaker: Generally, we're working with groups that we do virtual, a lot of virtual stuff as well.
Speaker: But workshops, in-person virtual workshops, and then I speak inside the industry and out quite often.
Speaker: Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker: Do you work with any other people?
Speaker: It's all door-to-door now you work with?
Speaker: That's the majority of what we do is direct sales.
Speaker: When it comes to workshops and speaking, that's pretty everywhere.
Speaker: Like just two weeks ago, I was with all of the core employees of the state of Utah.
Speaker: So kind of like a random group, but I was there working with them.
Speaker: A couple of weeks before that, I was with a high school at a high school assembly.
Speaker: So it's kind of all over, but with our coaching and kind of that, all the performance psychology, that niche is in direct sales.
Speaker: Okay, man, all the court guys in Utah.
Speaker: Sounds like the most boring group ever.
Speaker: We got a little bit rowdy, man.
Speaker: We got a little bit rowdy.
Speaker: It was good.
Speaker: No, it was fun.
Speaker: Unsung heroes.
Speaker: That's for sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, cool, man.
Speaker: Well, yeah, just as we start wrapping up here, Jens, I know another thing that you're, and I'm actually super excited because I'm going to be going to one of your retreats coming up here in Italy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah, what about these, like, retreats?
Speaker: What are, I guess, what made you decide to start doing some retreats and,
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: What does that look like for someone coming to a retreat?
Speaker: What could they expect?
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: Something like that.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Right now we have two different kind of retreat style things.
Speaker: One is a men's group.
Speaker: It's for three months.
Speaker: It's again, it's nothing on like rotation because we should be fired.
Speaker: The goal is like it's.
Speaker: So three months, the first three days though, this is for men, it's called Momentous Man.
Speaker: The first three days are in-person retreat where we go to this thousand acre ranch.
Speaker: We pheasant hunt, trophy trout fish, shotgun shoot, work with horses, UTVs, ATVs.
Speaker: There's 200 plus head of elk that feed.
Speaker: They raise elk right at the lodge that we stay at.
Speaker: So we get to go and be close to them.
Speaker: It's all super intentional and inner work we box, like we wrestle.
Speaker: It's all intentional inner work that we're doing while we're doing this adventure.
Speaker: And the idea is helping men connect with their hearts, with their higher power and with those that matter most, like a spouse or a child or whatever.
Speaker: Men are so, we're so, we get so focused on providing, presiding, protecting, like all of that in our lives that
Speaker: We lose a lot of times some of that adventure and freedom that was so important to us in the early years of life.
Speaker: Like that warrior part of us and adventure part of us.
Speaker: Like there's this, one of my favorite books talks about how you take a little boy's guns away.
Speaker: He's going to grab his ground cracker.
Speaker: He's going to cut it out into a gun.
Speaker: He's going to start shooting things with it.
Speaker: Like there's a warrior part of us.
Speaker: There's this adventure part of us that we lose a lot of times.
Speaker: And so, and we, a lot of times we try to make work our adventure or,
Speaker: Robin Banks, our adventure or infidelity, our adventure or whatever.
Speaker: That's why men are more predominantly in that because we need that outlet.
Speaker: So we have this momentous man.
Speaker: It starts with that.
Speaker: Every tree gets connected there.
Speaker: And then for the next 11 weeks, you go with the same group of 40 men through this program.
Speaker: Um, where we'll have speakers that come in, but one to two times a week, the men can submit anonymous things they're going through in their life with spouse or kids or whatever business.
Speaker: And guys can see that and be like, yo, dude, like I'm going through that same exact thing, whoever that is.
Speaker: Let's chat, you know, or I've been through that and this is how I navigated it.
Speaker: And so now we're creating this group that though it ends in three months, you have that group for a lifetime.
Speaker: So the why behind it is what that's again, like I said, that's what changed my life that I still meet with them and everything.
Speaker: So
Speaker: That's Momentous Man, that's that side of things.
Speaker: And then we have our Momentum Retreat.
Speaker: It's a retreat in Italy.
Speaker: We take high performers and business executives and owners and their spouses.
Speaker: If you don't have a spouse, that's okay.
Speaker: But we invite spouses to come.
Speaker: We go to Sardinia, Italy for a week.
Speaker: It's an island outside of, just off the coast of the mainland of Italy.
Speaker: Private chef, private villa, private beach, private masseuse, private yoga instructor.
Speaker: For a week, it's freaking paradise.
Speaker: And we've got to spend time, disconnect, and connect with each other, connect with the one that you love the most, and just enjoy time out there.
Speaker: Yeah, man, you got me drooling over all this stuff.
Speaker: That sounds so awesome.
Speaker: So did you go to some retreats yourself?
Speaker: Or what's the idea behind retreats?
Speaker: Have you been to retreats that kind of helped you a lot, changing everything?
Speaker: How'd you come up with this idea of doing all these retreats?
Speaker: Yeah, man.
Speaker: The Italy one was one that I actually went with Solarcon the first year.
Speaker: They had some of their group and I went with them and found the place.
Speaker: And then I got connected with them and I was like, man, I want to bring a group out here every year.
Speaker: So that's where we started there.
Speaker: But yeah, I've been to, as far as Momentous Man, it's a mixture of some retreats that I've been to that, again, changed my life.
Speaker: And I'm taking all the things that I love from there as well as through my own journey and learning and applying and kind of combining all of that for men.
Speaker: That's so cool.
Speaker: Well, yeah.
Speaker: I mean, sounds like even if you're not going for like the mental side of things or emotional, whatever, I mean,
Speaker: Like who's not going to like just, you know, ATVs, boxing, I mean, if you're going for business, like we have people that have done it correctly and navigated of how to do it, meaning how to be successful while having a life and marriage and connection and all that kind of stuff that people that have figured that out.
Speaker: And so it's special, special time.
Speaker: Yeah, that's sweet, man.
Speaker: Well, I'm excited to be able to join you.
Speaker: At least one, hopefully.
Speaker: Yes, absolutely, man.
Speaker: Yeah, so if people, speaking of that, if people want to possibly go to one of your retreats, find out more about this, connect with you, what's the best way to get in on some of this stuff and connect with you and everything?
Speaker: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker: Thank you for that.
Speaker: You can go to my Instagram, Jens Bunnell, J-E-N-Z-B-U-N-N-E-L-L, or you can go to our website.
Speaker: Everything will be there.
Speaker: It's MomentumWeWe.com.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Sweet.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: I hope everyone listening to this, I mean, if you're struggling at all, check out what Jens is doing.
Speaker: It's definitely changing lives and, you know, more important than making money, more important than getting the next promotion or whatever.
Speaker: We got to make sure guys are taken care of, like, you know, emotionally getting through their demons, getting through their addictions.
Speaker: Because, yeah, like...
Speaker: you can be a multimillionaire, but if you have all these things, and I've seen it, I've seen a lot of like super successful dudes and, you know, you look at all the divorce guys that were super successful, but I think most of them will probably like trade all the money they made just to have like, you know, successful marriages and, and not have lost things on that side.
Speaker: So true.
Speaker: So make sure if you are struggling with that, like go check out what Jen's doing and fix it now before, you know, could get, could get worse.
Speaker: But yeah, I mean, just to wrap up here, Jens, if you could say one thing to maybe like a struggling rep, manager, or like, I don't know, one piece of advice to someone that's like, just thinks they're going to give up, quit, whatever, what would you say to that person?
Speaker: Good question, man.
Speaker: Um, kind of like I've already said, the first step is the hardest.
Speaker: Um, that my, my message has been kind of ringing in my heart because of, you know, what I've, the funerals I've had to attend or, well, yeah, wanted to attend, unfortunately attended just because of the circumstances as I, is you're not alone.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: You're not alone.
Speaker: Whatever it is, there are billions of people on this planet.
Speaker: You can't tell me there's not one person that's feeling what you're feeling.
Speaker: And you can go and search and find heaps of men and women that are going through what you're going through, have gone through what you're going through, and they've navigated it.
Speaker: They've figured it out.
Speaker: They've triumphed.
Speaker: They've won the battle.
Speaker: but you can't find them unless you vocalize it, unless you speak up.
Speaker: So take the first step, lean in, you're worth it, speak up and go and get help.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: Well, Jens, thank you so much for coming on today.
Speaker: Guys, go hit him up.
Speaker: Consider attending one of his retreats coming up and yeah, please get help if you're struggling at all with any of these things we talked about today.
Speaker: So I look forward to hanging with you at the retreat, Jens, and I'm looking forward to see what you do next.
Speaker: So thanks for coming on, brother.
Speaker: Appreciate you.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Appreciate it.
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