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The Time I Almost Started a Solar Lead Gen Company..
65 Plays3 years ago
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Transcript
Introduction and Purpose of Solarpreneur Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
00:00:08
Speaker
My name is Taylor Armstrong.
00:00:10
Speaker
I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fell.
00:00:19
Speaker
I teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bring in the top solar dogs of the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals.
Defining a Solarpreneur and Taylor's Journey
00:00:31
Speaker
What is a Solarpreneur you might ask?
00:00:33
Speaker
A Solarpreneur is a new breed of Solar Pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.
00:00:42
Speaker
What's up, solopreneurs?
00:00:43
Speaker
Taylor Armstrong here.
00:00:44
Speaker
Today, I'm going to tell you about the time I almost started a marketing agency, a solar lead gen company.
00:00:51
Speaker
Not many people know.
00:00:52
Speaker
We're going to talk about that and a lot more coming up on today's episode.
Strategies for Success in Solar Sales
00:00:56
Speaker
Thank you for tuning into the podcast today.
00:00:58
Speaker
As usual, we are here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals.
00:01:04
Speaker
Hopefully, we have a much better time in the solar industry.
00:01:06
Speaker
Sorry, tripping over my words a little bit.
00:01:09
Speaker
because I actually just got out of a same day close, closed up, was expecting to set up for the next day, but started talking.
00:01:18
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They were giving me, you know, conflicts of scheduling.
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And I said, hey, well, you guys are here right now.
00:01:23
Speaker
You know what?
00:01:24
Speaker
Our engineers, they already looked at your roof.
00:01:26
Speaker
You guys are here for the next hour or two, right?
00:01:29
Speaker
They said, yes, went up, closed and ran up.
00:01:31
Speaker
So that should be always your first move is shoot for the same day close.
00:01:36
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I think it's what more and more, you know, top solar pros are doing.
00:01:40
Speaker
So a little bit, you know, just thinking in the, it's late right now.
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Speaker
It's at 1030.
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I just got out of the clothes.
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So anyways, that is where my head is at right now a little bit.
00:01:52
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So apologize for that.
00:01:53
Speaker
But we're going to bring you some heat today in today's podcast.
00:01:57
Speaker
All right, I'm going to tell you a little bit about my marketing story, how I almost became a marketer and stopped selling solar for a minute.
Guest Announcements and Marketing Focus
00:02:05
Speaker
And kind of the lessons I learned from that.
00:02:08
Speaker
But the reason we're talking about this today, we're actually having two very special guests coming up on the podcast here pretty soon.
00:02:15
Speaker
Next episode, we're going to be hearing from Rich Viola, who is the founder of Solar Exclusive.
00:02:21
Speaker
If you've been in solar for a while, you have probably heard of this guy.
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Hopefully he's doing his marketing right because Rich, he is blowing up.
00:02:28
Speaker
Tons and tons of companies are using Solar Exclusive to generate their leads.
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And she's doing a great job.
00:02:34
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We're going to hear from him on the next episode.
00:02:36
Speaker
So it got me thinking, can marketing in solar cells be more exclusive?
00:02:41
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No pun intended.
00:02:42
Speaker
How can they work together better?
00:02:44
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And it's something we've talked about on the show.
00:02:46
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If you are a long time listener of the show, you know that actually in the beginning of the podcast, we did have more marketing guys on, more online guys.
00:02:54
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And lately, more and more, it's been more focused just on the cells, just on topics more related to the actual cells of solar, right?
00:03:03
Speaker
But it's something that I think is important to talk about.
00:03:07
Speaker
How can we become better marketers in selling solar?
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And even if you don't plan on like, you know, marketing, if you don't plan on doing lead gen, there's a lot of lessons we can learn from these guys.
00:03:17
Speaker
And then it'll help us learn how to better work with these guys too.
00:03:21
Speaker
because a lot of us have used online lead gen some have had good experiences some have had bad but a common factor is that of the people that have bad experiences most of them didn't know how to handle these online leads correctly most of them didn't know how to maximize their efficiency when they're getting the leads and so that's why i think it's important to talk about you know why online lead gen why marketing and
00:03:43
Speaker
And then how can we take some of the techniques, some of the things these guys do as they're marketing, even if we don't plan on doing online lead gen or marketing, how can we take what they're doing and apply it just in our door-to-door sales or in our presentations and our closes?
00:03:56
Speaker
Because there's lots of lessons that can be learned.
00:03:59
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So we're not going to get into a ton of that today, but more I just want to kind of introduce the I guess we can call it the podcast series coming up.
00:04:06
Speaker
So we're going to be focusing a little bit more on the marketing for the next week or two.
00:04:10
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We're going to be having these marketing guys on and we're going to be jamming on it.
00:04:15
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So hopefully that is something that you feel can be valuable to you.
00:04:19
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The other people we're having on is Prospect Bacon.
00:04:23
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They're another big player in the Solar Legion.
00:04:26
Speaker
You probably heard of Josiah Atkins.
00:04:28
Speaker
He's also going to be coming up here soon on the podcast.
00:04:32
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So yeah, we're going to be jamming on it.
00:04:33
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We're going to learn from these guys that are crushing it in the online Legion for Solar.
00:04:38
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Okay, so I want to just introduce it a little bit why we're talking about these marketers here.
00:04:43
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And they're not just a bunch of geeks.
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I know at first when I thought of online marketers, I just thought a bunch of nerds hanging out in their house, just playing video games and oh, let's run some Facebook ads, bro.
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What's up?
00:04:55
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You know, just smoking their doobies and all that.
00:04:57
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But no, these guys are cool.
00:04:58
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They know their stuff.
00:05:00
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And I think you're going to learn a lot from them.
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I know I definitely did.
Taylor's Lead Generation Venture and Lessons Learned
00:05:03
Speaker
So I want to tell you about the time I almost started a online lead gem company.
00:05:09
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In fact, I'll call it my company.
00:05:11
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Okay, I started an online lead gem company for a minute.
00:05:14
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And here's what happens.
00:05:16
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I started learning, you know, I'd been knocking doors for two, three years at that point in solar, had a little bit of success for that story.
00:05:24
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But I started thinking, man, what if I could also knock on doors, but just get some of these online leads,
00:05:29
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I don't have to knock as much, have people that came to me interested.
00:05:33
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How would that go?
00:05:34
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So I started working with this guy.
00:05:35
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His name is Ben Claybrook.
00:05:36
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He's actually been on the podcast.
00:05:38
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We can link to his podcast episode.
00:05:40
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He was one of our earlier guests.
00:05:42
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We should probably have him on again.
00:05:44
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But he's...
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He's the guy that I first started buying some online leads from.
00:05:47
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And then I thought, huh, I wonder if I could just do this myself.
00:05:50
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And so I bought his little course, signed up for his training program, which is super good.
00:05:55
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Learned a ton from it.
00:05:56
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So there's a plug for him.
00:05:58
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If you want to go check out his episode and I can do set up a call and he can tell you about it.
00:06:03
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Still doing a lot of that.
00:06:04
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He has a company called Solar Funnels.
00:06:06
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But anyways, so he taught me stuff, took his online course, did some calls with him, and then was ready to go.
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Started running my ads.
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It was going good.
00:06:16
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I was getting leads from it.
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I was closing deals.
00:06:19
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And then I thought, okay, well, I'm ready to do this.
00:06:22
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I'm ready to scale this bad boy up.
00:06:23
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Let's start running more ads.
00:06:25
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Let's get my company involved.
00:06:27
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So I started selling a few leads to my company and
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started paying me a little bit for some marketing I was doing.
00:06:34
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And then I thought, okay, well, I'm going to start getting other people on this.
00:06:37
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I ended up getting two or three clients and things were going awesome, I thought, for a while until the big doomsday came.
00:06:47
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And that is that all of a sudden, one day I woke up, I noticed I was getting less leads.
00:06:55
Speaker
I'm like, okay, well, that's weird.
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And that maybe it's just a fluke.
00:06:59
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Woke up the next day or next week and was getting less leads, less and less and less.
00:07:05
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And then I started realizing, okay, something's wrong here.
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Something's going wrong.
00:07:11
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I went in there because, you know, you can check your stats on it.
00:07:14
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You can see how many views you're getting.
00:07:16
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You can see how many they call impressions.
00:07:18
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And just all these numbers were dropping.
00:07:21
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And I'm like, okay, you know what?
00:07:23
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And so I call my mentor, Ben Claybrook.
00:07:27
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I'm like, dude, I signed up.
00:07:29
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I got a couple of clients selling some leads to my company.
00:07:32
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What's going on here?
00:07:33
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You taught me to do this and it was crushing for a minute and things aren't going as well anymore.
00:07:39
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And he basically told me at that point, he's like, Taylor, welcome to marketing.
00:07:44
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These ads, you've got to be constantly adjusting them.
00:07:47
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You've got to be tweaking.
00:07:48
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You've got to be experimenting.
00:07:50
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And it's not all sunshine and rainbows.
00:07:52
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You've got to be making your adjustments because this happens in marketing.
00:07:58
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The views go down, the impressions go down.
00:08:00
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You got to figure out a new hook, a new story, a new offer.
00:08:04
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You got to figure out a new way to get these people actually viewing, you know, the ads you're putting out.
00:08:09
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And I'm like, but Ben, I thought it was just as easy as watching your videos, copying exactly what you do.
00:08:15
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And he said, no, dude, especially you got clients now, you got to be dedicated to this.
00:08:19
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You got to be figuring out.
00:08:21
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And then I'm like, oh, okay, this is harder.
00:08:23
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And then I was still managing a team for my solar company.
00:08:26
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So long story short, I had my couple clients, I got them some results, but then I went to them, I just realized this is a lot more work than I thought.
00:08:37
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So I went to him and I said, look, guys, I just don't have time with, you know, running my team, everything I'm doing.
00:08:45
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I don't have time to keep running your ads.
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So, yeah, I'm going to have to shut it off for right now.
00:08:50
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And that was pretty much the end of TNT Enterprises, TNT Marketing.
00:08:55
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That's what I call my lead gen company, TNT Dynamite.
00:08:59
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Let's explode your online leads.
00:09:01
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Okay, I'm going to trademark that.
00:09:03
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No one steal my name.
00:09:05
Speaker
But that was my company.
00:09:07
Speaker
And long story short, it's just online legion.
00:09:11
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These guys, they spend a lot of time optimizing the ad campaigns.
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They spend a lot of time optimizing, you know, the image.
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So many things you got to think about.
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What's the image?
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What's the call to action?
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What's the funnel that these people are clicking on that it's going to?
00:09:27
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So many different things.
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And then I just got to the point where I'm like, okay, I can't do this and close all my own deals.
00:09:33
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And that's why a lot of people ask the question, well, if these guys get so many leads, why don't they just close them themselves and make tons of money?
00:09:40
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Some of them do, but when they start scaling this, getting lots of clients, most of them don't have time.
00:09:45
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I mean, it's a full-time job.
00:09:47
Speaker
You got to be optimizing these ads and fixing things, getting them rolling.
00:09:51
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So that was my online lead gen experience.
00:09:53
Speaker
So if you want to try it, that is how it went for me.
00:09:56
Speaker
Okay.
00:09:57
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And I, I liked it, but I just got to the point where you can't do it all.
00:10:02
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You've got to know what you're passionate about, what you want to be doing.
00:10:07
Speaker
And it's not for everyone.
00:10:09
Speaker
And that's why you don't see a lot of people that are just getting their own online leads and going and closing them because it's usually not that simple.
00:10:16
Speaker
It can be for a little bit, but you got to be constantly tweaking, constantly adjusting, especially in competitive markets like San Diego, where I'm at, or really anywhere in California.
00:10:26
Speaker
Some places, it is a little bit easier to get leads and get results.
00:10:31
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So that's my experience.
00:10:32
Speaker
So what we're going to be talking about with these guys coming on is they're going to share really just what they do for their clients, all the work that goes into it.
00:10:42
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And then what I love about this is they're going to share just specific things that they do that we can apply in sales because we don't have to all geek out.
00:10:50
Speaker
We don't have to know everything about marketing, but I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned.
00:10:54
Speaker
So that's what I like is they're going to share specific things we can do, apply them in our sales game.
00:11:00
Speaker
See your results.
00:11:00
Speaker
I'm actually already doing something that I learned from Rich.
00:11:03
Speaker
I've been using it in my door presentation as I got knock doors.
00:11:07
Speaker
And I noticed that it gets people's attention more than what I was saying.
00:11:11
Speaker
So he's going to give some specific advice, things we can use on the doors or in the clothes.
00:11:16
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I've been using it in both.
00:11:18
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and really just how it relates to marketing.
00:11:20
Speaker
And then obviously, if you want to get more into marketing, these guys are great, great resources in here about potentially using them for your own leads, introducing your company to them.
00:11:29
Speaker
Or if you want to, you know, possibly even learn more, but you know how my experience went, but possibly learn about generating your own needs.
00:11:37
Speaker
Ben Claybrook has a little course thing to do and set you up with a call with them.
00:11:41
Speaker
Or some of these guys may actually don't know if we talked about that much, but
00:11:45
Speaker
So that is what's coming up on the podcast.
00:11:48
Speaker
Just a little preview.
00:11:49
Speaker
Hopefully you're fine if we geek out on some marketing a little bit for the next week or two.
00:11:55
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That's going to be kind of the focus, the topic.
00:11:58
Speaker
So that's what's coming up on the platter.
00:11:59
Speaker
That's going to be the main course.
00:12:01
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Hope you are thirsty for some marketing knowledge.
00:12:04
Speaker
And as usual, go close your deals.
00:12:07
Speaker
Push hard this week.
00:12:08
Speaker
Push for those same days.
00:12:10
Speaker
And remember, you're only benefiting people.
00:12:13
Speaker
So as you have that belief, you're going to be able to project this onto other people and help them make their decisions.
00:12:19
Speaker
Hope that helps.
00:12:20
Speaker
Can't wait to hear the next podcast with Rich Fiola.
00:12:23
Speaker
Don't miss out.
00:12:24
Speaker
Be there or be square.
00:12:25
Speaker
And we'll see you on the next episode.
00:12:29
Speaker
What's up, solopreneurs?
Resources for New Listeners
00:12:30
Speaker
Hope you enjoyed the episode.
00:12:32
Speaker
Before you run out and start selling more solar yourself, wanted to let you know about an exciting new cheat sheet we created specifically for you in mind.
00:12:43
Speaker
One of the top questions I get asked on Instagram, on Facebook, by our listeners is, Taylor, where should I start?
00:12:50
Speaker
What episodes should I listen to in the podcast?
00:12:53
Speaker
You got too many podcasts, man, because now we have over 200 episodes.
00:12:57
Speaker
So what we've done, we created the top 10 most downloaded, most listened to, and I would say widely accepted, most useful podcasts that we've done here on Solrepreneur.
00:13:10
Speaker
We put them together all in one sheet.
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Speaker
So you can go, you can hit the ground running, especially if you're new, you do not want to not have this sheet.
00:13:19
Speaker
So go download it right now.
00:13:21
Speaker
It's going to be at top10.solarpreneurs.com.
00:13:25
Speaker
Again, that's top10, the number 10,.solarpreneurs.com.
00:13:30
Speaker
Don't forget the S on solarpreneurs.
00:13:32
Speaker
We will have that in the show notes.
00:13:34
Speaker
Go download it right now.
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Speaker
And especially if you have not listened to him, go listen to him and you can re-listen to him.
00:13:41
Speaker
That's going to show you how.
00:13:43
Speaker
So go download it and we'll see you on the other side.