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How To Vacation Like A King For Free
196 Plays24 days ago
What can you do to keep your vacation costs down without compromising your valuable free time? This episode is gonna go through some tips on planning and playing the points game for your most important downtime of the year.
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Transcript
From $50 to 150 Deals: Taylor's Sales Journey
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level. My name is Taylor Armstrong. I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in the year and cracking the code on why sales reps fail.
00:00:19
Speaker
I teach you avoid the mistakes I made and bring in the top solar dogs of the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro, and closing more deals.
00:00:31
Speaker
What is a solopreneur you might ask? 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.
How to Travel Luxuriously for Free
00:00:41
Speaker
Hey, what's going on, Solopreneurs? Today, we're going to be talking about how to travel luxuriously for free. You heard it correctly, traveling luxuriously for free. We're going be breaking it all down in today's podcast, so stay tuned until the end. My name is Taylor Armstrong. We're here here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and have a much better time
00:01:02
Speaker
in the solar industry. And part of that includes vacations, traveling. Hey, let's talk about why you should take some vacations. Hey, hopefully you've taken some vacations, but if you've not, I'm giving you permission. You can take vacations from time to time. Before we get into the podcast, please, if you have not, go leave us a review on Apple, iTunes, Spotify, wherever you listen to this podcast. It'd be much appreciated. Today's episode, something that I've been experimenting with a little bit.
00:01:31
Speaker
We recently book booked a trip for our 10 year anniversary, my wife and i and was able to do it without spending a dime. So I'm going to share with you what we did, how we booked our trip, and i know this isn't directly talking solar panels, but hey, we're all business we're all business people, we're all sales people, we're all solarpreneurs. It should include some vacations.
00:01:55
Speaker
So part of being a solar professional and an entrepreneur is enjoying the journey. I believe that and I believe that you will be a much more effective salesperson, solopreneur, really just any aspect your life if you can learn how to you know enjoy the process, enjoy the journey, and know how to recharge the batteries. And part of that is taking some time off here and there.
00:02:18
Speaker
Hey, and so we did a previous episode on a similar topic on ah how to book ah flights for free or at a massive discount. So we will include that episode. I'm going to talk about some similar concepts in this episode. But today we're specifically going to gear it towards booking an actual vacation. Hey, so I'll tell you our story, what we did, and then I'm going to give you some tips, some tricks, some things you guys can start thinking about, and hopefully it inspires you to go book your own luxurious vacation
The Performance Benefits of Taking Vacations
00:02:48
Speaker
this year. Hey, so first off, why should you take a vacation?
00:02:52
Speaker
And um something that got me really thinking about this is if you listen to guys like Ed Milet, one of my favorite podcasts, Ed Milet Show, he talks about how he would book these vacations and it would help him perform that much better when he was um you know when he was first starting to become more successful. He would book these vacations and allow him to perform at a higher level when he got back.
00:03:18
Speaker
And he calls them, you know, just mini vacation. he would take like two to four day vacations. So not enough to like let the wheels fall off and lose all his momentum, but just a little bit of time off to recharge, then jump back in refreshed, you know, just pick up right where he left off, but just more refreshed.
00:03:35
Speaker
And he talked about just the power it gave him to prevent burnout, increase productivity, and then also just gain that strategic perspective. He would think of ideas, think of things when he was on vacation. And so I thought he had some good points. He would also use it as something to reward himself, right? He talked about how before he had money, he would be with people at the Ritz-Carlton, He hit his sales goals for the quarter, so he'd go book the vacation, hang out with all the ah super successful people there, and he was really envisioning himself as one of those super successful business people. Of course, he manifested that, and
Maximizing Travel Rewards with Credit Card Points
00:04:12
Speaker
he is one. Okay, so I think we can do the same thing, but what's even cooler about this is you can vacation up for free if you do it correctly, and that's what we're going to share today. Here's how you need to think of this. and When you're planning your year, you should put the vacation time in first.
00:04:29
Speaker
Think of your big rock. If you haven't read Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, he talks about this. is You're putting the big rocks in first. You're planning the most important things first. So I believe you should have your vacations planned already for the year. And that's what we did this year.
00:04:45
Speaker
ah Myself and my wife, our family, we plan on our vacations in advance. So we know we've got three vacations in the book, pretty much what we're doing for the whole year. and we got something to look forward to. We're gonna plan around that, just to keep things fresh. We know exactly what's going on this year. So here's what we did. Okay, you heard in the previous episode, again, we'll link to it, but this is all a game of credit card points.
00:05:11
Speaker
And so we got a specific credit card. We used the one, it's the Chase Sapphire Preferred. Okay, and this one, it gives you a bonus offer.
00:05:22
Speaker
You go open the card, you get a bonus offer. it gives you like 60,000 points, I think was what we got. And with those 60,000 points, you can use it for a variety of different things. And here's the mistake I made. Before with these points, I would use them for things like statement credits, just getting money back on our credit card statement. um I used it for like cashback,
00:05:45
Speaker
I used it earlier this year or last year for like a case for my iPad. So things like that. And I'm like, okay, sweet, free money. It's money already spent on the credit card. Now I'm using the points for these things. But little did I know, this is the least effective way to use the credit card points. Because if you get a card...
00:06:04
Speaker
um such as the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, which is like a travel credit card, you can get insane value for these points to go travel.
00:06:14
Speaker
And here's where it gets really cool. If you transfer these points to different partners, and there's all these different airlines on there. There's ah different hotels, um and i'll I'll share how we used ours here in a minute. But if you transfer it to these different partners, you get even more value because Chase specifically, they have their whole portal where you can book travel and get these rewards and all that.
00:06:39
Speaker
I thought that was cool, but as I researched it, you get insane value if you transfer to other ah these other partners. and you know Depending on the airline, depending on the time of the year, you need a book it in advance.
00:06:51
Speaker
yeah I'm not going to go super in-depth. This would be like an hour-long podcast. and You can shoot shoot me message if you want to go deeper in on this. Happy to do a deeper episode on
Introducing SolarScout and Special Offers
00:07:01
Speaker
it. so Some of you already know that I run my own door-to-door sales team here in San Diego. And as we were gearing up for the summer, I realized if we do the same thing we always did, we're going to get the same results. But if I want to increase my deal flow, I need to do something different to get an advantage.
00:07:17
Speaker
Then we discovered an app called Solar Scout. But it's not a door knocking app. It's a data platform that shows us who is likely to go solar in our market. It shows us who has previously applied for solar but later canceled the deal, who has moved in recently, and even how much electricity the homes are using in a given neighborhood.
00:07:36
Speaker
It's been working for a lot of teams across the country and now I'm on board too. I'm going to be one of the first to use SolarScout in San Diego, so I decided to partner up. But I told them, hey, I'm going to talk about SolarScout on my show. you need to give my listeners a great deal. And they did.
00:07:51
Speaker
So go to solarscout.app forward slash Taylor and book a demo with them and you'll get 10% off your first month when you sign up. That's solarscout.app forward slash Taylor.
00:08:03
Speaker
Okay, back to the show. But yeah, as you transfer it, you can get a lot more value out of the points. So here's what we did. We booked a trip to Cabo, Mexico.
00:08:15
Speaker
We're going in August of this year. And um as we're trying to decide on our trip, it's our 10 year anniversary. As we're trying to decide, we're looking between dominic Dominican Republic and um ah we almost pulled the trigger on that.
00:08:30
Speaker
We were looking at the Hyatt resorts, like all-inclusive resorts, because Hyatt is one of the transfer partners and they do give you great value for the points. But as we were looking, we started doing the math yeah and it's a game of unique you have to go and look how much the cash price is to book the resort versus how many points it's going cost you.
00:08:51
Speaker
To not get super in-depth, basically we found that the point that the point value per dollar was like 1.2, right? right So it's like 1.2 points for every dollar comparatively for how expensive the nightly cost of the resort was. hey and so Which was okay, but then we started researching more. We found this resort in Caldwell, Mexico that was more like 1.5 points per dollar.
00:09:15
Speaker
points per dollar which is pretty big difference. So in other words, um every dollar equaled 1.5 points for the Cobbler Resort. It was just, I don't know, I don't know what the math is, but maybe 20% more value with those points. So when we saw that...
00:09:32
Speaker
We're like, okay, well, yeah, answers the question. It's pretty much the same great resort, but we get way more value from it. And we're able to book the entire trip. We're staying a week at this resort, all inclusive, didn't pay a dime.
00:09:48
Speaker
And um we we're able to use like 25% less points than if we would have booked the other resort. So this is what the game is. You do some comparisons and it comes down to if you're getting...
00:10:01
Speaker
1.4, 1.5 points per dollar, then it's really, really good value. And if not, then you know there's guys that break down formulas for if you should just pay cash or use the points. So it's really cool game. And um this is what I would invite you to do is just start thinking, okay, let's plan a trip and let's see what we can do to just... not have to pay for it, right? Everyone wants free stuff. So why not get something for free when you're already spending money
Strategic Credit Card Use for Free Travel
00:10:29
Speaker
on it?
00:10:29
Speaker
So here's the homework for you. Go open. I will link to um a card and that you know disclaimer. I get a small kickback if you do want to go through our referral link, but go book, go ah apply for the card today.
00:10:44
Speaker
you can get the bonus offer and just the 60,000 points you'll get from the bonus offer, it can literally pay for like an overseas flight for one person, possibly business class, depending on where you're going.
00:10:56
Speaker
So if you really break it down like that, it's insane value that you can get for these points. And um it just becomes a really cool game to play. So we just thought that was really exciting. Wanted to share with you, the listener, to get you excited about planning out your year, planning out your trips, and why not get some free stuff out of it? Why not get some upgrades? Why not get some sweet stays? Even if you have a trip already planned, maybe just by going and applying for the credit card, getting approved 60,000 points, that could get you you know maybe like a free room upgrade,
00:11:31
Speaker
There's so many different things you can use these points for. So don't be like me. Don't waste points on ah stupid things that are low value. It's never going to be a good value spending points on cash, getting cash back ah or gift cards. None of that. It's not a good value, but use the points. You can start with Chase and you can transfer points to this specific Chase Sapphire card.
00:11:54
Speaker
And that's when you get such a better value if you use the book, things like that. Hey, so just wanted to give you a little preview on the world of using points to pay for your travel.
00:12:05
Speaker
And these are the ways you can get the points is ah by referring other people, getting bonus offers. And there's people that they get a new card at every, i don't know, couple months because you get the bonus offers.
00:12:16
Speaker
offers on it really just comes down to you if you think you can spend the four or five thousand in three months, it's usually something like that. Then they give you all the bonus points on it. You're going to get um probably enough points to pay for pretty a nice flight overseas or resort. Really, all we did was open two cards between between my wife and i We just spent what we normally were going to spend anyways. Just by doing that, we got a week of um trip paid for at a five-star resort all-inclusive pretty cool so i wanted to share that with you and get you thinking a little bit different episode let me know if you enjoy things like this i'm always looking for travel hacks for cool things ways we can stay refreshed as entrepreneurs and as salespeople
00:13:03
Speaker
So I hope this was something, you know, a little bit different, something cool to hear, got you get you inspired for your next vacation, next trip, and ah more importantly, motivate you to work even harder and really utilize your time um in the most effective way possible while you are working so you can, um you know, feel like you earned that vacation and be refreshed. Let me know if you want more content like this. We do have some exciting guests coming here soon on the podcast.
00:13:31
Speaker
Thank you so much for tuning in Go ah grind this week. Go grab some sales and we'll see you on the next episode.
Top 10 Podcast Episodes Cheat Sheet
00:13:39
Speaker
What's up, Solopreneurs? Hope you enjoyed the episode. Before you run out and start selling more solar yourself, wanted to let you know about an exciting new cheat sheet we created it specifically for you in mind.
00:13:52
Speaker
One of the top questions I get asked on Instagram, on Facebook, by our listeners is, Taylor, where should I start? What episodes should I listen to in the podcast? You got too many podcasts, man, because now we have over 200 episodes.
00:14:07
Speaker
So what we've done, we created the top 10 most downloaded, most listened to, and i would say widely accepted, most useful podcasts that we've done here on Solopreneur.
00:14:20
Speaker
We put them together all in one sheet so you can go, you can hit the ground running, especially if you're new, you do not want to not have this sheet. So go download it right now. It's going to be at top10.solarpreneurs.com. Again, that's top10, the number 10,.solarpreneurs.com. Don't forget the S on solarpreneurs.
00:14:42
Speaker
We will have that in the show notes. Go download it right now. And especially if you have not listened to them, go listen to them and you can re-listen to them. That's going to show you how. So go download it and we'll see you on the other side.