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 the year and cracking the code on why sales reps fell.
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.
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: Hey, what's up, solopreneurs?
Speaker: Today is the beginning of 2024.
Speaker: So naturally, we're going to be talking about three ways you can crush your goals for this year.
Speaker: Don't worry, even if you're not listening to this beginning of 2024, there are some great secrets that I think will help you whenever you're listening to this.
Speaker: So don't skip out if you're listening to this at a later time.
Speaker: Welcome to the show.
Speaker: My name is Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: I'm your host.
Speaker: We're here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and hopefully have a much better time in the solar industry.
Speaker: We're coming at you.
Speaker: I'm excited for a new year.
Speaker: Hopefully you are ready to have your best year ever in solar cells.
Speaker: or however you are involved in solar, or maybe you're not even in solar, but if you're not, hit me up.
Speaker: I got a job for you.
Speaker: But before we jump into the topic today, I wanted to remind you of a couple of things.
Speaker: Number one, we've got door-to-door con.
Speaker: It's that time of the year, the time of conferences, the time of improvements.
Speaker: We've got Door to DoorCon coming right up.
Speaker: I'm excited for it.
Speaker: We got Lance Armstrong, my uncle speaking.
Speaker: Just kidding, he's not my uncle, but somewhere down the line.
Speaker: We're probably related.
Speaker: Lance Armstrong, you got a bunch of other speakers.
Speaker: I don't even have it pulled up here, but...
Speaker: I know Lance Armstrong is going to be there.
Speaker: The guy that wrote Never Split the Difference.
Speaker: Chris Voss, I think is his name.
Speaker: Great book.
Speaker: I know he's going to be there.
Speaker: And many other speakers.
Speaker: So make sure you get in on that.
Speaker: If you want an exclusive solar printer discount, go to door2doorcon.com, I believe is the website.
Speaker: We will link it.
Speaker: And the discount code that you're going to use is Armstrong20.com.
Speaker: It's going to get you 20% off.
Speaker: And rumor has it that they've also got a New Year's special going on right now.
Speaker: So make sure you get in on both those discounts.
Speaker: Get your ticket now.
Speaker: The second thing is, for those that listened to last episode, we did a recap of what I think were the best, the top episodes of 2023.
Speaker: And we also gave out a little gift at the end.
Speaker: And that gift was just a...
Speaker: You could call it a podcast roadmap.
Speaker: Some of our best podcast episodes we've had throughout the years, all condensed into one document, into one little form.
Speaker: So you can go through and catch up on these episodes or listen to them for the first time if you are new to the podcast.
Speaker: So you can download that at top10.solarpreneurs.com.
Speaker: That's top and then the number 10.solarpreneurs.com.
Speaker: Go check them out.
Speaker: And that is my New Year's gift to y'all.
Speaker: Okay, so let's jump into the topic.
Speaker: Goals are something that I'm fascinated by.
Speaker: Matter of fact, I went to a goal setting workshop.
Speaker: This was like three weeks ago with a couple guys on our team out here in San Diego.
Speaker: We learned some tips, tricks.
Speaker: So goals is something that you can go for entire day workshops that talk about this.
Speaker: And
Speaker: I'm not going to do a seven hour long podcast episode today.
Speaker: So really, I'm just going to give you three things, three what I think are secrets, things that I tend to forget that you can focus on as you are going through and creating your goals.
Speaker: If you want more resources, there's a million YouTube videos you can watch that will break down goals in depth.
Speaker: One of my favorite courses that I've taken on goals is
Speaker: is it's a course by Michael Hyatt.
Speaker: It's called Your Best Year Ever.
Speaker: He's this entrepreneur guy that has a lot of stuff on leadership, on goals, written a couple books on the topic.
Speaker: So I consider him an authority.
Speaker: You can go check out his course.
Speaker: And he does, I think, a live virtual event that's really cool.
Speaker: Probably will do it this year.
Speaker: But I think he's doing it like January 5th.
Speaker: So go check it out.
Speaker: And you can go through really in depth on the topic of your goals.
Speaker: Okay, but again, we're just going to give you three tips today, three things that I think I sometimes drop the ball on that are very important for you to focus on this year as you are creating your 2024 goals.
Speaker: So let's jump into it.
Speaker: The first is keep it simple.
Speaker: Hey, hopefully that should be a no-brainer.
Speaker: You're saying, okay, that's not really a secret.
Speaker: But let me explain why I put keep it simple.
Speaker: Last year, maybe it was two years ago,
Speaker: I had so many different goals.
Speaker: I went through, wrote them all out.
Speaker: I wanted six pack abs.
Speaker: Many of you know I'm doing jujitsu classes.
Speaker: So I wanted to be a jujitsu champion.
Speaker: I wanted to do some competitions in it.
Speaker: I wanted to be the top salesman at my company.
Speaker: I wanted to get 20 people in our coaching program here at Solrepreneur.
Speaker: I wanted to be the best shape of my life, eat healthier, all these different things.
Speaker: So I probably had 20 goals going out.
Speaker: Guess how many I actually achieved?
Speaker: Not very many at first.
Speaker: As the year went on, I did condense it, get a little more focused.
Speaker: But the reason I say keep it simple is because so many of us, we want to conquer the world.
Speaker: We want to be the top at everything we're doing.
Speaker: And a lot of us, we have shiny object syndrome.
Speaker: We get in on these new hobbies.
Speaker: Maybe you're like me, you start doing jujitsu, you start playing an instrument, whatever.
Speaker: And all your attention just wants to shift to that and be the best.
Speaker: Hey, well, we only have so many hours in a day.
Speaker: And especially if you got, you know, family like myself, you have kids, it's tough to have time for all these things.
Speaker: So this first secret is keep it simple, focus on a few things and
Speaker: A few podcasts ago, I mentioned we were reading the book, Chop Wood, Carry Water.
Speaker: And so I'm dropping the ball.
Speaker: I can't remember who wrote it, but chop wood, carry water.
Speaker: And the basis of this book is that we need to focus on the basics.
Speaker: We need to chop our wood.
Speaker: We need to carry our water.
Speaker: And something that our team is focusing on, just on this topic of chopping wood, carrying water,
Speaker: is we're just all trying to focus on three things in the year.
Speaker: The first was having meaningful connections.
Speaker: Second was hours prospecting.
Speaker: How many hours are we going to be out there prospecting?
Speaker: And third is personal improvement.
Speaker: And I love the idea of just...
Speaker: keeping the focus laser dialed, right?
Speaker: Keeping the focus on minimal things.
Speaker: And really, if we keep it that way, I think that's what's going to give us the maximum results.
Speaker: If we can just focus on those tiny habits and those are how great things are going to come to pass, right?
Speaker: A lot of scriptures,
Speaker: that you read, talk about these tiny things that you do are going to help you achieve something great.
Speaker: So that's secret number one is keep it simple, focus on the small things and don't have too many goals.
Speaker: Another thing I've learned is that you should only maybe do set more goals
Speaker: Hey, you can have, I don't know, I think maybe 10, 12, that's probably the max amount of goals you want to even have for a year.
Speaker: But focus on no more than two to three goals per quarter.
Speaker: Hey, more than that, you're just going to get super overwhelmed.
Speaker: All right, so number one is keep it simple.
Speaker: Number two, make a not to do list.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Many of us, we've heard of a to do list.
Speaker: We probably have a to do list that's 50 items long.
Speaker: I know I do my phone.
Speaker: But what about not to do?
Speaker: I really struggle sometimes.
Speaker: You know, I'm out in the neighborhood.
Speaker: I'm checking Instagram.
Speaker: I'm checking, you know, I get hooked on these phone games, Clash of Clans, stupid games like that.
Speaker: And I just get distracted.
Speaker: So one of my goals this year, one of the things I'm going to focus on is having a not to do list.
Speaker: Hey, maybe you can think back to last year.
Speaker: What were the things that prevented you from hitting some of your goals?
Speaker: What were the things that prevented you from hitting your sales targets?
Speaker: You probably have things you want to cut out.
Speaker: So, so many of us were focusing on what can we do?
Speaker: How many more people can we talk to?
Speaker: How many more hours can we work?
Speaker: What about what can we cut out?
Speaker: What are the things not to do?
Speaker: So this is the second thing is make a not to do list.
Speaker: Maybe like me, maybe you're spending too much time on social media.
Speaker: You can go on your iPhone.
Speaker: which you should have, right?
Speaker: If you're serious about sales and you can go on the screen time app, you can set your limits.
Speaker: So maybe this is something you do first thing in the year is go and set your limits for your social media apps, for your phone games, for wherever else, your news apps, another thing.
Speaker: And lots of these little distractions, they can be helpful.
Speaker: Maybe you're looking up sales tips on social media, but I guarantee you,
Speaker: There's a limit like you can only take in so many sales tips.
Speaker: So go in, set your limits on your phone and make that not to do list.
Speaker: That's secret number two.
Speaker: Hey, and then number three, we're just keeping it concise today on the topic of keeping it simple.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Number three is reviewing your goals daily.
Speaker: This is probably the biggest thing that I have not done.
Speaker: Probably the biggest thing that I think stops a lot of people from hitting their goals is you talk to people a month after the new year, they don't even know what their goals were.
Speaker: They don't even know what their new year's resolutions were.
Speaker: So we need to keep our goals top of mind,
Speaker: We need to review them daily, weekly, quarterly.
Speaker: We need to have our weekly planning sessions.
Speaker: We need to just be keeping them top of mind.
Speaker: So a couple tips on this.
Speaker: The best way that I have experienced to keep these things top of mind, well, I guess two different ways.
Speaker: Number one is you can create a vision board, which we have done a few episodes on in the Solarpreneur archives.
Speaker: But a vision board is just a board you can put on by your bed, maybe in the bathroom.
Speaker: You can keep it simple, maybe just put a tape square or whatever, and you put images on.
Speaker: and texts that correspond to your goals.
Speaker: So for example, maybe if you want to get six pack abs, you write get six pack abs, and then you print out a little picture of the best, most jack six pack abs you can find.
Speaker: Or if you're a lady, maybe you just want to get toned abs if you go print out.
Speaker: Trying to make sure I'm not leaving out the ladies here.
Speaker: I've gotten in trouble for that.
Speaker: But yeah, whatever your goal is, you put a text with it and then you put a picture.
Speaker: And the idea behind this is that you engage your senses, right?
Speaker: As many senses you can engage.
Speaker: If you can hear your goal, if you can see it, if you can feel it, if you can taste it.
Speaker: I'm not sure you're going to taste six pack abs.
Speaker: Hit me up if you have any idea on that.
Speaker: But as many ways you can engage the senses, right?
Speaker: So that's going to give you the best shot at achieving your goals.
Speaker: And I think vision board is a great way to do this.
Speaker: And I know for myself, I'm going to create one for sure this year.
Speaker: I actually did not have a vision board last year.
Speaker: But just thinking back.
Speaker: It's super powerful to be able to, I personally like to look at these vision boards when I'm brushing my teeth, right?
Speaker: I'll be brushing my teeth.
Speaker: I'm looking at all the things I want to experience this year.
Speaker: I'm having next steps towards that goal pop in my head while I'm brushing my teeth.
Speaker: And then I'm writing these down.
Speaker: Hey, so this is my personal favorite way to keep the goals top of mind is creating a vision board and hit me up if you want more tips on that.
Speaker: But yeah, create a vision board.
Speaker: And again, there's lots of YouTube videos, lots of resources you can find on your vision boards.
Speaker: OK, and the other way is just writing them out.
Speaker: Hey, a tool I've used in the past is Grant Cardone's 10x Planner.
Speaker: He has a section where you're writing your goals out morning and evening.
Speaker: And I think it's a great way to keep them top of mind, write them out daily and then review them on the weekly.
Speaker: But you want to keep your goals top of mind, always thinking about them.
Speaker: And that's going to give you the best shot at actually having success.
Speaker: Hey, and just I think back to just to end here.
Speaker: A story I've told many times on the podcast is the first breakthrough I had in sales.
Speaker: I won our sales competition that we had, company-wide sales competition.
Speaker: I got the trip to Hawaii, and ultimately, I ended up staying out.
Speaker: I was planning on going back to school in Utah.
Speaker: Won this competition, and that kind of kick-started, gave me the belief that I needed to stay out and continue my journey in sales.
Speaker: But a big reason I won that competition is because I was doing all these things.
Speaker: I was looking at this where I remember the trip was to Hawaii.
Speaker: So as I was brushing my teeth,
Speaker: I'm envisioning myself winning the competition.
Speaker: I was feeling the Hawaiian breeze across my face.
Speaker: I was hearing those waves crash against the beach and I just envisioned myself on the shores of Hawaii enjoying the fruits of my labor in winning that competition.
Speaker: So that was something really powerful for me.
Speaker: And I know it's definitely
Speaker: helped me get a lot more motivation and give me some of the tools I needed to win that competition.
Speaker: So I was doing that and I was writing out the goals.
Speaker: So for maximum effects, create your vision board and write out your goals.
Speaker: No way you're going to forget if you're doing that.
Speaker: Okay, so those are three tips I have as you are creating your goals.
Speaker: We're keeping it simple.
Speaker: We could do an entire seminar, an entire hour, two hour course video on this, but just want to give you guys a few practical things to think about as you're creating your goals for 2024.
Speaker: Hope you have the best year ever in sales, the best year ever in solar.
Speaker: Let's get solar back at the top.
Speaker: I know there's been 2023, especially after the summer ended.
Speaker: I heard about a lot of people maybe not making what they wanted to make.
Speaker: I know we're dealing with multiple challenges in the solar industry this year.
Speaker: We had higher dealer fees.
Speaker: We had higher interest rates.
Speaker: Speaking in California, we have the net metering changes, a lot of challenges.
Speaker: But hopefully we can look past all that and go out, crush it, have our best years ever in solar.
Speaker: I look forward to doing that.
Speaker: I hope you do the same.
Speaker: In the next episode, make sure you tune in.
Speaker: I'm actually going to be at a NOX star event.
Speaker: And I'm going to hear from one of my favorite guests that I had on the podcast.
Speaker: Well, two of them, actually Taylor McCarthy, Tom Hopkins.
Speaker: I'm going to be hanging out with them.
Speaker: So in honor of that, the next episode, we're actually going to be doing a replay of our episode with Tom Hopkins, which if you heard the last episode, that was one of the best episodes, in my opinion, we did last year in 2023.
Speaker: So we're going to do a replay of that episode.
Speaker: And then I'm going to be cranking out a bunch of content while I'm at the events and getting a whole bunch of ideas for y'all going to report back.
Speaker: So tune in the next episode.
Speaker: You're going to hear a replay of the great Tom Hopkins.
Speaker: And then we're going to be coming at you with a lot of exciting guests after that event.
Speaker: And then hit me up again.
Speaker: Hope to see y'all at door to door con coming up.
Speaker: And then we got solar gone after that a few months later.
Speaker: Go crush it this year.
Speaker: Set your goals if you haven't already.
Speaker: And we'll see you guys on the next episode.
Speaker: Hey, solopreneurs.
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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.
