Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
Speaker: My name is Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fell.
Speaker: I teach you how to avoid the mistakes I made and bring in the top solar dogs of the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro, and closing more deals.
Speaker: What is a Solarpreneur you might ask?
Speaker: A Solarpreneur is a new breed of Solar Pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.
Speaker: What's up, solopreneurs?
Speaker: Taylor Armstrong back here with another episode.
Speaker: And we're doing a little bit different format.
Speaker: If you heard the previous one, we've got a special guest back on the show.
Speaker: So let us know what you think of these kind of debate style topics.
Speaker: So we got James back on.
Speaker: What's up, James?
Speaker: Thanks for coming back on the show with us.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: It was a blast a couple days ago.
Speaker: I do want to say this, though.
Speaker: We are going to get better at this format.
Speaker: So we're learning a lot already from the last episode.
Speaker: I watched it again last night.
Speaker: I was like, all right, I got to shut up more.
Speaker: I've got to ask Taylor some more interesting questions and not...
Speaker: Try to jump on everything like I'd like to.
Speaker: So I'm going to try to chill back a little bit.
Speaker: And then one of the things I think we wanted to implement was kind of more formalized questions, like a real deal debate where we each get a chance to respond on specific topics.
Speaker: Yeah, I think we're learning a lot and we both liked it.
Speaker: And one of my favorite debates was the Trump debates.
Speaker: Did you watch back bowls back in 2016?
Speaker: I've studied the crap out of those, man.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a master class in persuasion, man.
Speaker: Yeah, that was good stuff.
Speaker: And for me, it was just more the entertainment factor because I love Trump just ripping Hillary apart.
Speaker: and a coloner and nasty woman and all that, even though I kind of felt bad.
Speaker: Well, that's why he's a master at it, dude.
Speaker: It's like, it's comedy plus insulting the other party.
Speaker: It's like,
Speaker: It's dangerous.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: But what I thought was interesting too is Trump, they went back and analyzed his debate.
Speaker: And Trump, if you watch him, he uses like very simple language.
Speaker: He's not using sophisticated words.
Speaker: So I was reading some study.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And just repeat it over and over.
Speaker: Basically the point in very simple language.
Speaker: What was it like?
Speaker: He always had like demeaning ones like crooked Hillary.
Speaker: Was that it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then he had Lion Ted.
Speaker: Remember Lion Ted for Ted Cruz?
Speaker: So you would get like, they're like Lion Ted.
Speaker: He came up with like nicknames for him.
Speaker: Like that's all they say.
Speaker: It's yeah.
Speaker: Anyway, we're not doing that.
Speaker: We're not going to take shots at each other, but who knows?
Speaker: Crooked James.
Speaker: Crooked James.
Speaker: Lion Taylor.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So no, we probably won't get that hardcore.
Speaker: I'm probably going to not attack James personally or anything like that, but we'll try to give our interest.
Speaker: Hey, shoot for it, dude.
Speaker: This one's going to be spicy though.
Speaker: I think today is a spicy topic because last time both you and I, it wasn't a real debate.
Speaker: I mean, come on.
Speaker: We agreed way too much on the last one.
Speaker: It was like, hey, get good at offline, then do online if you want to.
Speaker: This one though, this is a different, this is a different animal.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, I'm curious to hear what you have to say on this one, because on the last show we did, I pretty much knew what your side of the story was, what your take.
Speaker: But this one, I'm a little bit more in the dark, so I'm curious to know what you have to say.
Speaker: What are we talking about?
Speaker: The debate today, we're talking about work-life balance.
Speaker: Can it exist?
Speaker: Can it be attained?
Speaker: Should you even have balance?
Speaker: We got some juicy questions we're going to go over.
Speaker: I think we're just going to go with the questions.
Speaker: I'm going to say my side, what I think.
Speaker: James, I'm sure you'll challenge me.
Speaker: I'm sure I'll have some stuff to say about what you're throwing down.
Speaker: So yeah, that's what we're going through.
Speaker: So should we jump into the questions or anything?
Speaker: Let's review what the topics are.
Speaker: So question number one, what is the belief about work-life balance that you have within solar?
Speaker: And then what principles do you adopt for it?
Speaker: So that's question one.
Speaker: Question two, what do you think is required to have success in the industry, right?
Speaker: For most people, general statement.
Speaker: And then three, what would you advise to someone who is struggling with work-life balance?
Speaker: Solar reps, managers, CEOs, all of the above.
Speaker: So that's going to be more tactic-based.
Speaker: Like how would you actually improve your work ethic?
Speaker: Things like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Good stuff.
Speaker: So yeah, I'm excited to hear what your take is on all these things.
Speaker: So what do you think?
Speaker: So are you up first?
Speaker: It's your podcast, Taylor.
Speaker: Question one, man.
Speaker: What is your belief about work-life balance and principles that you adopt with solar?
Speaker: All right, okay, let's jump into it.
Speaker: So here's my take on this.
Speaker: Basically, what I've seen in solar is you gotta have seasons.
Speaker: And what I mean by seasons is there's gonna be ups and downs.
Speaker: There's gonna be times where you're pushing super hard, and there's gonna be times where you're taking breaks, where you're not pushing as hard.
Speaker: And I think it's a little bit different than these summer cells, guys.
Speaker: Everyone's heard the summer cells.
Speaker: You go out, you do pest control, you do alarms.
Speaker: But solar, as a lot of us are, it's year-round.
Speaker: We're doing this 12 months out of the year.
Speaker: It's a full-time thing.
Speaker: So when I see the top guys in the industry, they're not – I mean, we're not all knocking –
Speaker: 12 hour days, like these alarm guys, um, we're, you know, we're coming out of more strategic.
Speaker: I'm knocking usually anywhere from, you know, four to six hours just depends.
Speaker: So, um, I say seasons because you look at these big companies like the Vivint Solars, the Sunruns, the, all these big ones.
Speaker: These guys, they're being super consistent, but they're having ups and downs.
Speaker: I see these top guys, they're taking time off.
Speaker: Like, for example, Vivint Solar, they have their, I think it's every six months, every three months, something like that.
Speaker: They have their huge competitions and they have their guys go insanely hard for, I don't know, a month, six weeks, whatever it may be.
Speaker: They're all pushing each other as a team.
Speaker: They're all going out there.
Speaker: Maybe they're working 12-hour days for that six weeks or for that month.
Speaker: They're pushing super hard.
Speaker: But then even the top guys after that, they've got to have a cool-down period.
Speaker: It's like you're pushing so hard.
Speaker: They're...
Speaker: you know, working way harder than they normally would.
Speaker: They're getting a ton of results and then they're going on a trip after or they're cooling down.
Speaker: And I even talked to some of them.
Speaker: A lot of them, once these big competitions start, they go to their wives and they're like, hey, honey, I'm gearing up for this competition.
Speaker: Do I have your permission to throw it down super hard?
Speaker: Because they know that for the next month or whatever, they're not going to see much of their wife.
Speaker: So they literally have to go get permission from their wives and their girlfriends or whatever to not see them.
Speaker: So that's the way I look at it.
Speaker: It's just like solar, you got to have the seasons with it.
Speaker: And also it depends on, you know, kind of your goals.
Speaker: Are you trying to be just, you know, make tons of money?
Speaker: Maybe you don't even have wife, kids or anything like that yet.
Speaker: So also I think it depends on all our, on your goals.
Speaker: What are you trying to achieve?
Speaker: And I'm sure you'll get into this.
Speaker: But for me, it's all about having those seasons.
Speaker: I know that, yeah, there's going to be times maybe a month I'm going to go insanely hard.
Speaker: I'm going to close a lot of deals, but then I got to have my balance back for a little bit.
Speaker: And then maybe it's going to shift towards more of my family because I got to catch back up.
Speaker: And yeah, I really respect a lot of entrepreneurs like Russell Branson.
Speaker: A lot of these big entrepreneurs, I think they preach a lot of the same things when they're launching books, when they're launching big projects coming out.
Speaker: Same thing, they're working, you know, 15 hour days and just going extremely hard, but then they're going on trips and taking...
Speaker: vacation, stuff like that after.
Speaker: So how would you, I have a question on your thing.
Speaker: So how would you summarize your work, work, life balance belief in like one sentence?
Speaker: Is it sprinting and then rest, refuel, sprint, refuel?
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's sprint and then
Speaker: I don't want to say rest because unless you have like a trip or something planned, I don't think you're like, I mean, you're not going to like rest always, but I think it's sprints and then trots maybe.
Speaker: So it's like sprint and then cool down, sprint and then cool down.
Speaker: So not like completely off is what you're saying for a rest period.
Speaker: It's you're still kind of on.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I think, yeah, plan trips and stuff like that.
Speaker: So if you're going extremely hard, I think it is a good idea.
Speaker: Plan like a trip or something after.
Speaker: Go get away for a weekend.
Speaker: So in that case, yeah, rest.
Speaker: But maybe you're doing like a mini sprint for a week.
Speaker: And then maybe it's, you know, you're only knocking three, four hours a day the next week.
Speaker: You're going to a trot.
Speaker: So, yeah, I think be consistent, whatever you're doing and plan the trips, plan the vacations.
Speaker: I mean, yeah, plan your schedule.
Speaker: If you know you want to have the date night with the wife, there's something we just had a guest on the podcast, Ashton Buswell, and he said his biggest like,
Speaker: One of his biggest accomplishments he's helped other people achieve in solar is he's taught them to schedule out like a date night every Friday with their wife.
Speaker: I just literally listened to his interview before our thing today.
Speaker: That's freaking hilarious.
Speaker: I listened to him because he's a work horse.
Speaker: So I was curious what his opinion was.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So yeah, I respect guys like that.
Speaker: I mean, he's pushing insanely hard sometimes, but he says like no matter what, he's always having what's important to him also scheduled out in advance.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's like that.
Speaker: Sprints, know when your sprints are, know when your risks are.
Speaker: But yeah, should always be planned and then have those times where you're pushing hard.
Speaker: It shouldn't be always just, you know, doing the minimum work to get minimum results.
Speaker: If you're just closing one deal week after week, you shouldn't be happy with that.
Speaker: But I think plan for some sprints and plan to get extreme results too.
Speaker: And that's going to bring you fulfillment.
Speaker: So that's my take on it.
Speaker: Fair.
Speaker: Solid.
Speaker: We're not 100% off on those, to be honest.
Speaker: No, that was a surprising answer.
Speaker: I was expecting more Tim Ferriss four-hour workweek answer.
Speaker: No, that's good.
Speaker: I agree with the sprints thing for sure.
Speaker: It's funny.
Speaker: I think of you as the Tim Ferriss four-hour workweek just because you've talked about the book a lot.
Speaker: But what you actually practice is not necessarily the stigma of
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, no, I do like that too.
Speaker: And you, we've talked a lot off camera.
Speaker: That's why I hire like an assistant and everything.
Speaker: Cause yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Trust me at the end of the day, I want to work, you know, usually as little as possible and get the max results, but I enjoy what I do too.
Speaker: I like being on the podcast.
Speaker: So cool.
Speaker: So you want to answer the question?
Speaker: You wrapped up.
Speaker: You want me to go?
Speaker: No, you got to say.
Speaker: So my, my take on this work-life balance is I'm not going to attack the
Speaker: Should you be working all the time?
Speaker: Should you be balancing all the time?
Speaker: If that's a thing, whatever the heck you call it.
Speaker: I'm going to attack the concept and the idea of work-life balance and why I think it's flawed.
Speaker: I actually think the idea of, oh, I'm trying to live a more balanced, wholesome life, right?
Speaker: I'm trying to be balanced in all these areas, right?
Speaker: I think that's flawed and it's the number one killer of people's success, especially in solar.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: I'm not against what Taylor's saying necessarily.
Speaker: I'm against the idea of work-life balance that we have in our society today, right?
Speaker: I think our society, we can all agree with this, right?
Speaker: Society has gotten a lot more soft, PC, people getting banned on social media for talking about stuff.
Speaker: Trump gets banned for six months on Twitter for talking about things, right?
Speaker: Like worlds change and getting pretty weird with stuff, right?
Speaker: And in general, like people have become a lot more,
Speaker: Whatever.
Speaker: I'm going to use the term weak-willed.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I was listening to another podcast the other day, a value attainment podcast.
Speaker: One of my mentors, Patrick Bet-David, is the host of that.
Speaker: And he was talking about how the military is adopting a new concept.
Speaker: And I can't remember what it's called, but basically they're taking away the tools and strategies they would use to basically toughen up soldiers, get them used to rejection and pressure.
Speaker: where the drill sergeants will literally go in and anybody who's been in the military and has stories about that knows anybody who's been in there, right?
Speaker: You literally day one boots on the ground.
Speaker: The drill sergeants are just demeaning, right?
Speaker: Just swearing at you, just going off on you, right?
Speaker: Just hard, just trying to like break you down, right?
Speaker: So the military is literally getting rid of this as we speak right now with soldiers, which I completely think is a terrible idea.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: I have quite a few family members who served as well.
Speaker: And they're just like, dude, that goes against everything.
Speaker: Because what are we incentivizing?
Speaker: We're incentivizing soft, weak type of culture.
Speaker: And I think in general right now, the reason we have so many problems with anxiety, substance abuse, alcoholism, porn addiction,
Speaker: you freaking name it, right?
Speaker: Anxiety is at an all-time high.
Speaker: And if I look at the stat here, I look this up.
Speaker: So 40 million adults in the US ages 18 or older, and over 18% of the population is diagnosed with some sort of common mental illness like anxiety.
Speaker: And these stats, this was not existent 40, 50, 60 years ago, right?
Speaker: Back in the 40s and 50s when our grandparents lived.
Speaker: And-
Speaker: Taylor, how old are your grandparents alive still?
Speaker: Yeah, they're still kicking.
Speaker: Yeah, I think they're late 70s.
Speaker: What did your grandparents do for a living, like your grandpa?
Speaker: One grandpa was a music professor, Utah State.
Speaker: Go Aggies.
Speaker: And then the other one was a dentist.
Speaker: Dentist, yeah.
Speaker: So I don't know if the conversations you've had with them –
Speaker: what they go like, but I could tell you with both of my grandparents.
Speaker: So one grandparent, he was an entrepreneur, very successful, owned a couple of eight figure companies.
Speaker: One was an electrician.
Speaker: And talking to both of them, these guys worked like a hundred hours a week, like their entire life until they retired in their seventies.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's the kind of culture I grew up with.
Speaker: And my dad adopted the same thing.
Speaker: I grew up watching my dad be out the door working at 6 a.m.
Speaker: and get back at 8 p.m.
Speaker: six days a week, right?
Speaker: So it's like, that's kind of how I grew up.
Speaker: That's what I'm used to.
Speaker: So when I come from that background, like obviously that experience is familiar to me, right?
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: I think the concept of like the 40-hour work week, the work-life balance is more of a cop-out and an excuse to not put in the effort to realize your fullest potential.
Speaker: And I believe...
Speaker: And my theory is that most mental illnesses, um, unhappiness, anxiety, depression, divorce, things like that are all caused because people are not realizing their fullest potential.
Speaker: And this 40 hour work week type of setup is to blame.
Speaker: So that's my big idea on this.
Speaker: Um, what do you think about that?
Speaker: What do you think about?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think I think I agree with that, but like for someone in the solar industry, let's say someone starting out, um,
Speaker: Like, would you tell them if they're thinking of doing this like full-time career or whatever, would you tell them, hey, go out and work like 40-hour weeks?
Speaker: Or would you have them, I don't know, maybe go easy and like just do like a 20-hour week?
Speaker: What would you tell a new guy starting out?
Speaker: Like, do you think someone's going to get burned out by doing 40-hour weeks in solar?
Speaker: Say they're hitting doors hard doing...
Speaker: you know, going out and doing the prospecting.
Speaker: Quite the opposite, quite the opposite.
Speaker: Here's the problem I see and why people are not successful in solar.
Speaker: I've coached several hundred directly one-on-one solar reps too, whether it's under my own company, whether it's people at solopreneurs.
Speaker: So I've done this quite a bit.
Speaker: I could tell you that the reason solar reps are unsuccessful is not because they burn out.
Speaker: It's almost never going to be because they work too hard.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Can we both agree on that?
Speaker: That sales reps are not going to fail because they work too hard.
Speaker: Have you ever seen this?
Speaker: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker: I've never seen this.
Speaker: There's some lazy reps, man.
Speaker: There's some lazy reps.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But it's like, dude, nobody, it's such a small percentage of people that end up burning out.
Speaker: I hate the term burnout.
Speaker: I'll never use it except for on this podcast for this example.
Speaker: But anytime you see someone searching like,
Speaker: oh, what if I get burnt out?
Speaker: Or aren't you afraid of burnt out?
Speaker: I would say like one out of 10 people actually experience burnout.
Speaker: And the other ones, they just need a quick two, three hour refresh break, get back in the game, get re-energized on their goals.
Speaker: What are they doing things for?
Speaker: My case for the sales rep thing to get back to this,
Speaker: I think every person who is new to sales, working on a commission basis, they need to get a little bit of a taste and glimpse of what they're really capable of as a human being.
Speaker: We're living in such a fraction of our potential as humans.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: You know how we only use like 40% of our brain, right?
Speaker: We've heard this study.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Something like that.
Speaker: I think that applies to everything.
Speaker: Tim Grover, right?
Speaker: Relentless guy.
Speaker: He talks about how, and no, it's David Goggins.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: He talks about how, when you think you're done and your brain's telling you you're tired to throw in the towel, you're only 40% of your capacity.
Speaker: 40%.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That story we tell ourselves of, ah, I should just take it easy.
Speaker: Maybe I should just go call it a day.
Speaker: It's five o'clock on a Friday.
Speaker: Today's Friday.
Speaker: We're recording this.
Speaker: It's five o'clock on a Friday.
Speaker: Maybe I shouldn't knock doors or maybe I should take Saturday off because it's, you know, we're good to go.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: If that's what makes you happy,
Speaker: But if you're just accepting that belief because that's what mom and dad told you, that's what society has told you at the 40-hour work week, you're never going to get to see what you're capable of.
Speaker: So my advice to the rep, the diagnosis from Dr. James here is to...
Speaker: Go and give everything you possibly can for a time period.
Speaker: Set a week, set a month.
Speaker: I don't care what it is.
Speaker: And go balls to the walls.
Speaker: I'm talking as hard as you freaking can.
Speaker: Literally push yourself to the brink of failure.
Speaker: Okay?
Speaker: And that is when you're going to recalibrate what you're actually capable of.
Speaker: What is your work ethic actually capable of?
Speaker: First time I did this was...
Speaker: I believe in high school.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So again, grew up with a super hard work ethic to begin with, but I played trumpet in high school, did a lot of competitions.
Speaker: And I remember my dad literally sat me down and he said, Hey, like he had this talk with me about work ethic.
Speaker: He talked about capabilities.
Speaker: Like what is your actual capability as a person?
Speaker: And he challenged me to do this like for a month to get into a, it was like a statewide competition thing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I didn't believe I could.
Speaker: I was uncomfortable with it.
Speaker: He said, just go with it until the competition and see if you can do it.
Speaker: Just go all out.
Speaker: So I did.
Speaker: And I remember, and again, it's not
Speaker: People will disagree with this, right?
Speaker: But I literally took two weeks off of school, ditched all of my classes, and practiced trumpet all day for two weeks.
Speaker: And yeah, I failed like a bunch of tests and stuff like that.
Speaker: And I was like 14 at the time, right?
Speaker: My mom wanted to kill me.
Speaker: Like all this stuff, right?
Speaker: She wanted to kill my dad in particular, right?
Speaker: That's funny.
Speaker: I did this.
Speaker: Wasn't your dad a principal?
Speaker: He is now.
Speaker: He was in music education, though, for like 25 years.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He didn't say skip school.
Speaker: That was me who decided to do that.
Speaker: He said just work really hard.
Speaker: So I did, and...
Speaker: I got a taste very early of, holy crap.
Speaker: Like I got into the competition shortcut, right?
Speaker: Instantly became top of the class.
Speaker: I was failing earlier.
Speaker: I was like, that was just two weeks.
Speaker: I was able to accomplish this, right?
Speaker: So ever since then, that mentality has been baked in.
Speaker: And that's what I did immediately off the bat with solar when I got in the industry when I was 19.
Speaker: I just came in and my first week, I blew in 65 hours at a mall kiosk talking to people.
Speaker: People are like, dude, what the hell is wrong with this kid?
Speaker: Like what's going on?
Speaker: I knew that if I put in the work, the work will take care of me.
Speaker: On that trumpet note, there's a trumpet lesson I got from a famous jazz musician.
Speaker: His name's Roy Hargrove.
Speaker: And he gave this advice to everybody.
Speaker: He always says, if you take care of the music, the music will take care of you, right?
Speaker: I apply the same thing with work.
Speaker: Take care of the work.
Speaker: The work takes care of you every time.
Speaker: I've never seen it fail.
Speaker: So that's good.
Speaker: Well, man, I think we kind of agree because on the same stuff.
Speaker: So maybe this isn't as much of a debate as we thought, because I think I pretty much agree with most of that.
Speaker: But there's nothing to disagree with.
Speaker: I mean, we'll get into it more.
Speaker: If you know what you want in life, which we have not touched on is a big part of this.
Speaker: If you know what you want with exact clarity and you know what makes you happy,
Speaker: You'll do whatever it takes to get that.
Speaker: It's the people who don't know what they want that make up the excuses to work-life balance.
Speaker: I'm going to take this day off, this day off, stuff like that.
Speaker: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker: Interesting side note on David Goggins, speaking of him.
Speaker: I think I might have told this story a few episodes back at Sam Taggart, but he was supposed to speak at the Door-to-DoorCon events last time.
Speaker: But I guess he didn't show up because of COVID when all the other speakers did.
Speaker: really david goggins was uh spooked didn't want to show up because of covid i'm like well what is isn't he supposed to be the baddest mother ever on the planet does it mentally will off covid i'm incapable of catching it that's what i was thinking then john yeah john maxwell who's 80 years old shows up but which is kind of yeah
Speaker: Yeah, Goggins of all people.
Speaker: Yeah, he's going to, yeah, whatever.
Speaker: Yeah, spending too much time in California maybe.
Speaker: Yikes, get out.
Speaker: But yeah, but no, good stuff, man.
Speaker: So yeah, the only thing I'd add to that, and maybe we'll get into this too, but you kind of touched on it there just barely.
Speaker: I think it depends on what are your goals in the industry?
Speaker: What are you trying to achieve?
Speaker: Speaking of that, I was just listening to podcasts the other day.
Speaker: John Lee Dumas, he does the...
Speaker: entrepreneurs on fire podcast.
Speaker: And this guy has been making, um, doing 2 million revenue for like the past eight years.
Speaker: Um, so super successful podcast, but he hasn't grown in like eight years.
Speaker: Just been 2 million a year, too many a year.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So in this interview I listened to, he says, people ask him like, why don't you like, why haven't you scaled it?
Speaker: Why are you just, why do you just keep doing 2 million?
Speaker: Don't want to, don't you want to increase, increase by 5% a year or something?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And his answer is no, that's not really my goal.
Speaker: I'm fine.
Speaker: I only work five days a month right now.
Speaker: I have 25 days off.
Speaker: Those five days I go extremely hard.
Speaker: I'm working like, you know, 16 hour days for five days, but then I have 25 days off.
Speaker: I have a team of like six people.
Speaker: So yeah, I'm happy where it's at.
Speaker: And that's, that's my goal is that I can just do whatever I want.
Speaker: I have the freedom to be who I, who I want to be with, where I want to be.
Speaker: and then have a business that I love doing that gets me excited to work those five days in a month.
Speaker: So I think it comes down to, or like, what are your goals?
Speaker: Are you trying to achieve that freedom?
Speaker: And I think I lean more towards that, which is maybe where we agree less.
Speaker: That's why I like the whole four hour work week stuff.
Speaker: Cause, cause I'm the same as John Lee Duhm.
Speaker: I want to do whatever I want.
Speaker: And like when I have my kids, I want to put them in sports and all that, just be able to go to their games whenever I can.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: not have to be tied down to the work so that's my goal but maybe for the guy getting into it again are you a new rep maybe you don't have a family maybe your goal is to just make as much money as possible and um your iron wills maybe you're gonna knock eight hours a day for the next um two months even those guys i think they still need to have their seasons and you know go harder during other times and
Speaker: But yeah, I think that's another important factor in this.
Speaker: What are your goals?
Speaker: What are you trying to achieve?
Speaker: Is it make as much money as possible?
Speaker: Or is it, you know, have time to have that freedom and go where you want to go, take days off when you want to take days off.
Speaker: So that's my other side of that.
Speaker: Let me respond on this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I have an interesting perspective on this one.
Speaker: So I believe that if you're truly, I don't believe people are
Speaker: Seeking freedom.
Speaker: That's where I'm going to disagree.
Speaker: I don't think the biggest thing people are seeking freedom.
Speaker: I think they're seeking happiness and someone's happiness.
Speaker: Can we agree on that?
Speaker: That people want to be happy.
Speaker: It's not because you can be free and unhappy.
Speaker: Can you agree with that?
Speaker: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So happiness is what we're really after as people, right?
Speaker: If you're truly happy and content with where you're at, you've succeeded at the highest level, in my opinion.
Speaker: right?
Speaker: You have made it.
Speaker: That is success.
Speaker: Success doesn't have to be the fancy cars, the contests at your company, the vacations.
Speaker: It doesn't have to be that if you're happy without them.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But
Speaker: My problem is, and you see it all the time, the very exact moment that you end up desiring something else that you don't have.
Speaker: Maybe you get jealous that someone else is more successful in one area.
Speaker: Maybe you're jealous that some guy's outperforming you at your company for a minute and you compare yourself a little bit and you say, man, I wish I could do that.
Speaker: And then you make an excuse on why you can't do that.
Speaker: That's my problem.
Speaker: And I would say that person is not truly 100% happy because they see that person, they see a part of themselves in that person often case.
Speaker: They'll say, hey, maybe I could do that.
Speaker: I think I could if I actually did what this guy did.
Speaker: I think I could accomplish that.
Speaker: But what do they do?
Speaker: They say they're not willing to put in the work to do that.
Speaker: It's not worth the sacrifices to make that happen.
Speaker: So
Speaker: If that's you and you say, hey, it would be nice to make, I don't know, 500 grand a year selling solar, but I'm not willing to work the hours that is required, then you need to do one of two things.
Speaker: One, examine your work ethic and adjust to be in line with what you want.
Speaker: Or two,
Speaker: step down and say, I would be okay without having that thing.
Speaker: And if that makes you happy, then cool.
Speaker: But if it doesn't, and you say, I don't want to have to tolerate that, right?
Speaker: That's when you know you got to change something.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, I think there's a ton of excuses in the industry too.
Speaker: I've had tons of reps on my teams, um, where basically they sell themselves out of a competition before it's even started.
Speaker: Oh, dude, that's the worst of competitions.
Speaker: They don't even try to give up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Like, no, I'm not willing to, you know, push hard.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: Yeah, I don't really care.
Speaker: I just want to be happy.
Speaker: You just want to like put in.
Speaker: So that's the other.
Speaker: I don't think that person's happy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't think they are.
Speaker: It's an excuse.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So they're complacent.
Speaker: So I say all this stuff, but honestly, I think it is pretty dangerous for sole reps because a lot of people are telling themselves right now.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm fine just making 100 grand a year.
Speaker: And because I want to I want to go on my trips.
Speaker: I want to do my vacations and.
Speaker: I want to do me and maybe, yeah, maybe those people are only working like three hours a week, right?
Speaker: You know, three hours a day.
Speaker: We'll get into that about tactics.
Speaker: People don't work as hard as they think they work.
Speaker: That's the other side of this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cause I think it comes back to what you're saying.
Speaker: At the end of the day, we can do way more than what we tell ourselves we can.
Speaker: Yeah, you're only using 40% of the brain or whatever.
Speaker: You can push way harder.
Speaker: That's why David Goggins, that's pretty much his whole basis of his book, Can't Hurt Me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You can do way more than you think you can.
Speaker: You just got to be pushed to those levels.
Speaker: That's why he ran and he went through boot camp or whatever with, I think it was a broken leg.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He ran, what was it, like 100 miles while he's puking blood.
Speaker: He's done all of it.
Speaker: Yeah, he's like bleeding.
Speaker: He's peeing blood, throwing up, dehydrated, broken everything.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Can I give you a formula on this that I use?
Speaker: So I have a formula I use when I'm coaching people for this stuff.
Speaker: And just so you know, like behind the scenes, I'm coaching a sales rep.
Speaker: I've coached sales reps from zero to 500K in their first year.
Speaker: I have one student who made a million bucks in a year.
Speaker: All of it is mindset.
Speaker: Taylor and I could agree.
Speaker: Like it's all freaking mindset.
Speaker: There's not that many tactics you need to know to make it
Speaker: I remember the interview I said I was reviewing with Ashton Buswell, right?
Speaker: He literally said, he's like, I'm not the best sales guy in the world, but I just work my guts out.
Speaker: That's the secret, right?
Speaker: I've experienced the same thing.
Speaker: I'm not really good at anything.
Speaker: I'm just good at working pretty much.
Speaker: And that's the advantage.
Speaker: But there is this formula I use, this three-step formula on how I can basically help someone be aligned and figure out where they want to be.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: This is what it is.
Speaker: This is the happiness formula.
Speaker: And this isn't my proprietary thing.
Speaker: I've gotten this from a lot of mentors.
Speaker: But one is you got to know what you want out of life and exact clarity, right?
Speaker: Not just, oh, I want to have financial independence.
Speaker: That's not specific.
Speaker: How are you going to make your money is more important than if you actually make it, okay?
Speaker: So how are you going to make your money?
Speaker: What's your house going to be like, right?
Speaker: What kind of cars are you going to drive?
Speaker: And the reason you get specific about all of these things is because
Speaker: The next time you see someone driving a fancy car and you're like a little jealous of it, you should have already determined in your mind pre-advance what kind of car you want to drive and you're happy and content with, right?
Speaker: If you don't go all out and really paint a picture of what your entire life looks like, you're going to face problems with this.
Speaker: The person who is exactly clear on what they want is the most dangerous.
Speaker: A second is you've got to get real about your capacities, abilities, and talents as a person as well.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: So for example, let's say I wanted to go play basketball.
Speaker: I'm not LeBron James.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I'm a skinny white kid who is not tall.
Speaker: He's not strong.
Speaker: I can't freaking dunk.
Speaker: I can't shoot free throws.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: My coordination is so freaking bad.
Speaker: Anytime someone plays like a, so Joseph Taylor knows Joseph, right?
Speaker: My old business partner.
Speaker: I remember one time he came out to San Diego and we played like a foosball or air hockey.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This guy beats me 15 to zero.
Speaker: I literally lose every game, 15 games in a row.
Speaker: Like I have the worst coordination ever, dude.
Speaker: It's terrible.
Speaker: So I can't be a top level sports player.
Speaker: It's not in the cards for me.
Speaker: Zero chance.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: So this is another thing I really hate too, is our culture is all, everybody's equal, right?
Speaker: Everybody could do whatever they want.
Speaker: No, they freaking can't.
Speaker: There's no way, dude.
Speaker: It's like follow your passion, go work in what you love, follow your business out of it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, the business thing's the worst, right?
Speaker: Everybody's trying to pop up a business, right?
Speaker: And I used to think that I was one of these guys too that maybe shouldn't be in business.
Speaker: And I'm here five years later and I'm still doing well with it.
Speaker: And I'm like, okay, that is in the cards for me.
Speaker: But since I was a kid, I was also hustling like business.
Speaker: doing shoveling people's driveways and stuff like that since I was like eight years old, right?
Speaker: Mowing lawns for people, right?
Speaker: So it's like, that's been in the cards since I was a young age and I enjoy doing that.
Speaker: So I know my abilities and my gifts and talents that goes into my capacity, right?
Speaker: So you have to understand that if you're not a great communicator and you're not great at selling people necessarily, right?
Speaker: Look at another facet of the solar industry.
Speaker: There's a lot of ways to make money.
Speaker: My partner, Joseph, old partner, right?
Speaker: He's not great at sales, but he's really good at marketing and systems.
Speaker: He's really good at people and coaching, right?
Speaker: There's a spot everywhere.
Speaker: Maybe you're better at mentoring team members, right?
Speaker: Maybe you'd be a better manager in solar, right?
Speaker: So that's aspect two.
Speaker: And then three is, what is the amount of effort you're willing to give, okay?
Speaker: So sometimes people say, I want all the crazy stuff.
Speaker: I am super gifted and talented.
Speaker: I have all these persuasive skills.
Speaker: I'm great with people, but I'm not willing to work 60 to 80 hours a week to get it.
Speaker: Well, we've got to readjust something because guess what happens when someone's not aligned, Taylor?
Speaker: All of the problems we talked about, addictions, anxiety, depression.
Speaker: Taylor was watching my old video yesterday about like my personal story coming up in solar, right?
Speaker: I used to have anxiety attacks a lot.
Speaker: And in the main story I talked about, I talked about the first time I had it, I was coming back from an appointment.
Speaker: I'm driving home.
Speaker: And all of a sudden, my arm starts going numb.
Speaker: My neck's going numb.
Speaker: I'm like freaking seizing up the right half of my body.
Speaker: So I had to pull over.
Speaker: I'm freaking out.
Speaker: I'm like, what the?
Speaker: dude, like visions getting blurry.
Speaker: I'm like, dude, this is like a heart attack.
Speaker: I'm like, what is this?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I ended up getting in the back of an ambulance, heading off to the ER.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And the guy's just like, dude, what the heck kind of stress do you have going on?
Speaker: He's like, it's not a heart attack.
Speaker: He's like, you just have an anxiety attack.
Speaker: I'm like, what the, and the cause of that was very simple.
Speaker: My aspirations were here.
Speaker: I wanted to be one of the best solar reps in the entire planet, right?
Speaker: Just number one guy, right?
Speaker: My work ethic down here.
Speaker: I was working pretty hard, but I was not living up to my highest potential.
Speaker: I was not asking for the help, getting the mentors I needed when I knew I should be.
Speaker: I wasn't living up to that potential.
Speaker: I wasn't putting the fuel in the tank.
Speaker: There was that misalignment and that's what caused all the problems.
Speaker: So in summary, you got to figure out what you want.
Speaker: What are your capabilities and talents?
Speaker: Be honest about it.
Speaker: Ask others around you.
Speaker: Everybody has them.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Like it's not like there's, I don't believe anybody is born without a special unique ability or talent.
Speaker: You just got to find it and then get the right amount of effort with your aspirations.
Speaker: If you want to make a million bucks a year in solar,
Speaker: Newsflash, you're not going to do it working 30 to 40 hours a week.
Speaker: You're not.
Speaker: Maybe you can 10 years from now.
Speaker: I know guys who do it, who have been in it for a decade, but the next decade, you better be willing to work 80 hours a week, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Talk with your wife, talk with your family and say, hey, the next five, 10 years, it's going to be, it's going to be intense, but this is why I'm doing it.
Speaker: This is important.
Speaker: Get on the same page.
Speaker: So yeah, I'm good.
Speaker: Boom.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: Yeah, I think another big myth, man, and you probably agree, so many people are just like, follow your passion, follow your dreams.
Speaker: If you don't love it, don't do it.
Speaker: But yeah, I've come to rise.
Speaker: I'm like against that, man, because so many people, they come in and they don't love solar.
Speaker: They don't love a few things and they quit.
Speaker: So I think the millennials, I don't know if it's millennials or what, but like...
Speaker: It is millennials and earlier.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's the, it's the, it's the same, it's the same reason, same cause of why we have the PC culture, dude.
Speaker: It's the same thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like, yeah, you're not going to love everything you do about what your job is, but yeah.
Speaker: Like go out and work, go out and grind and go out and yeah.
Speaker: So that's, you know, you got the Gary V side of things.
Speaker: Gary V is just like, you know, work, work, work, grind, grind, grind.
Speaker: Gary V is the same thing we're talking about right here.
Speaker: Like if you really listen to what Gary is saying, he's not work, work, work.
Speaker: It's self-awareness.
Speaker: It's what do you want?
Speaker: And you say you want that.
Speaker: This is what you need to sacrifice.
Speaker: Like, are you willing to sacrifice?
Speaker: Yes or no?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, anyways, but yeah, that's a big problem, especially here in San Diego.
Speaker: All these new people we try to hire drives me nuts, man.
Speaker: Dude.
Speaker: So many people just like quit.
Speaker: There I go.
Speaker: I don't, yeah, I want to make a ton of money.
Speaker: That's my biggest gripe about West Coast.
Speaker: That's my biggest gripe about West Coast since I moved back.
Speaker: So I moved back to Utah, right?
Speaker: I was out in San Diego for a couple years, LA, right?
Speaker: West Coast, my gosh, dude.
Speaker: Like if you want to be surrounded by people who go after it, it's not the place to be, man.
Speaker: It's difficult to find running mates, people who are willing to really go after it and don't want to just chill and smoke weed all day.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah, it's tough.
Speaker: But anyways, so yeah.
Speaker: Question two, let's get to more tactical.
Speaker: We spent a lot of time on question one.
Speaker: Yeah, should we jump to question two?
Speaker: Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker: Your turn.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So question two is, what do you think is required to have success in the industry?
Speaker: It's a good question.
Speaker: Is this for newbies or just overall?
Speaker: What are we thinking here?
Speaker: Is this like for the new guy?
Speaker: We kind of talked about that.
Speaker: For me, I think it's pretty much whether you're new or old.
Speaker: For me, it's pretty much the same answer, I think.
Speaker: But do you want to start that one out?
Speaker: Why don't we define some levels of success?
Speaker: Because we just barely got off a rant on why you need to be defining what success is.
Speaker: So let's start with like, what's like the first level of success in solar, would you say?
Speaker: Um...
Speaker: I would say depending on the market, and this is a tough one because if we're talking about it, depending on the market.
Speaker: I mean, I've got a buddy that's out in North Carolina.
Speaker: He has a pest control company.
Speaker: He's making $60,000, $70,000 a year or something like that, super happy.
Speaker: That's enough money for him to pretty much do whatever he wants over there.
Speaker: So paying the bills is level one.
Speaker: You've replaced your job with a solar income.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: What is required to do that, Taylor?
Speaker: Well, I think anyone starting out new in the industry, I think it's going to require, no matter how you do it, if you're new in the industry, you're going to have to work extremely hard even to hit that level, in my opinion.
Speaker: The amount of people that fell in this, it's pretty astounding.
Speaker: We bring on dozens and dozens of new guys every few months.
Speaker: And if they're new to the industry, haven't done any sales, it's a steep learning curve for them.
Speaker: Cause they've never knocked doors.
Speaker: They've never like had to be their own boss and had to dig up the motivation to go out there, hit doors.
Speaker: How long, how long did it take you to start making a stable income in solar?
Speaker: Yeah, for me, I would say probably like two years, honestly.
Speaker: So I was out here, but I came out single just living with the dudes in like a company house.
Speaker: So for me, I paid.
Speaker: I had, you know, barely any expenses.
Speaker: So it's pretty, pretty quick to get to that point.
Speaker: But if it's someone that's coming with a family that's never done solar and never has a lot of expenses to pay, I think they're going to have to push extremely hard.
Speaker: And we've had guys that came in, realized this pretty quick, that they're going to have to treat it like a full-time job and actually work 40-hour weeks to pay all their bills and get to that level.
Speaker: They weren't willing to do it.
Speaker: Like, I thought I could just go out and knock like an hour, then show up to some appointments, make tons of money.
Speaker: But yeah, news.
Speaker: It's 40 hours if you're actually working though.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, that's why I think the target shouldn't even be 40.
Speaker: It should be like 60 at least.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because most people, they're not calibrated on what work actually is.
Speaker: We'll get into that tactics, but that's a good point.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So yeah, but yeah, no, I think to get to that level as a new rep, you got to put in some extremely hard effort.
Speaker: And again, seasons once you're, you know, know how to do all these things, know to knock the doors, know to close the appointments, which took me like two years, I would say to get to that point.
Speaker: Now, yeah, I can, I'm pretty confident saying I could, I could go out and work probably three, four hour days and have enough money to pay my bills.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Enough money to save on top of that.
Speaker: It's not going to get me way ahead, but yeah, I'm confident now that four years into this, I could spend four hours a day and be just fine, save up some money.
Speaker: But yeah, anyone I think is going to need to put in a ton of efforts to even get to that level.
Speaker: Unless you're like a natural born salesman.
Speaker: You hear though, Jordan Belfort, he talks about that, how he's a natural born salesman and he can do things way easier.
Speaker: Capacity and ability is higher, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That doesn't mean you could look at a guy like Jordan and say, oh, he's, he's, cause
Speaker: Take Jordan, for example, right?
Speaker: He could go and sell and put in very little effort and still do better than the guy who sucks at sales and grinds his butt off, right?
Speaker: Jordan can still beat that guy just like LeBron James could beat me at basketball without trying, right?
Speaker: And I could be sweating my butt off just going hard, right?
Speaker: I could go and train for the next six months and it'll still be the same thing, right?
Speaker: Because his capacity is higher.
Speaker: But does that make Jordan happier because he's playing at a low level?
Speaker: Absolutely not.
Speaker: Jordan still has to realize his fullest potential, putting the work to reach his highest potential as well.
Speaker: So when you see guys like that, natural born sales guys, and they're just winging it, they're just as unhappy.
Speaker: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker: I mean, that's why you got, like, Conor McGregor, for example, about winning fights lately.
Speaker: And I think it's for him.
Speaker: He's achieved the money, the success.
Speaker: I think he's lost motivation, personally.
Speaker: He's dangerous.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't think he does.
Speaker: That is tough.
Speaker: That is rare to find a guy who starts...
Speaker: but the cutoff point I've seen where like 99% of sales reps start throwing in the towels, about 250 grand a year, about a quarter million a year.
Speaker: That's when they say, I'm good.
Speaker: I'm good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I know people get complacent.
Speaker: So yeah, no, it's a big problem.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: But yeah, what do you think?
Speaker: I don't even know if we got to the question really, but- We did.
Speaker: So we just talked about the entry level, 60, 70 grand a year payer bills.
Speaker: Right, so above that, I think the next level on that, I'll just add into this too to contribute to, we won't trade off on it because we've kind of been going with it, but I'd say the next level is like that quarter million a year, right?
Speaker: That is, you're in the top-
Speaker: You're in the top 1% of the world income earners, top 10% in the US if you make a quarter million a year, right?
Speaker: It's enough where you pay your taxes, you could drive the cars you want, you could go to the events you want, you could take care of a family, right?
Speaker: It's fairly comfortable.
Speaker: You can invest some money into Bitcoin, whatever the heck you want.
Speaker: Quarter million, right?
Speaker: That kind of level...
Speaker: I agree with Taylor.
Speaker: When you're starting out, basically you should just work as much as you possibly can when you're starting out.
Speaker: Um, full blown, like well above 40 hours a week.
Speaker: You want to make that learning curve as quick as possible.
Speaker: You want to build that momentum.
Speaker: I think after you hit that point, um, it's a standard, I would say 40 to 50, man, 40 to 50.
Speaker: If you've been at it for a few years, you could do the two 50, uh,
Speaker: I would even say five years.
Speaker: Honestly, I would say it probably takes five years of that to get to where you can work a normal full-time hours, 40 hours a week at 250.
Speaker: Well, it depends on the market.
Speaker: If you want to reach it sooner.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If you want to reach it sooner, I'd say double it.
Speaker: 80.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If you want to hit 250, I've seen guys.
Speaker: So I've coached guys.
Speaker: A guy, his name is Devin Koretsky.
Speaker: He's in Texas.
Speaker: He hit 500 grand his first year, right?
Speaker: Guy works 80 hours a week.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Like straight up.
Speaker: That's how you do it.
Speaker: And like a real 80 hours a week.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And no, I mean, it's, again, it's relative to like 250 grand in California.
Speaker: That's still good money, but like, I mean, you got taxes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: That's like a hundred grand in Utah or Texas.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So yeah, if you're in one of these other.
Speaker: The next level.
Speaker: The next level above that, that's going to fall more into your CEO category.
Speaker: That's seven figures plus.
Speaker: So if you want to pull down a million bucks, I get this a lot, right?
Speaker: So I was the big preacher back in the day.
Speaker: If you listen to my podcast, I talk about all the time, the million dollar income, like top, top, top tier, right?
Speaker: The truth is,
Speaker: It's so freaking rare to find a guy who is willing to, one, has the abilities to get there, willing to put in the work ethic to get there, right, and sacrifices to get there, that I don't even talk about it anymore because –
Speaker: Nobody freaking makes it.
Speaker: And nobody should.
Speaker: I agree that most people shouldn't want to make that much money because reality is you don't need all of the crap that you could buy with a million bucks a year.
Speaker: Most people don't.
Speaker: They really just want to impress other people.
Speaker: They want to look cool with this, this, this, right?
Speaker: And it doesn't really make them happy.
Speaker: There are a few small percent where it does make them happy being able to contribute, take care of other people, donate,
Speaker: to their church or their foundations and stuff like that, that kind of person.
Speaker: And that does make them happy.
Speaker: They have to work and live an entirely different lifestyle.
Speaker: There's no such thing as weekends.
Speaker: There's no, I'm going to be at home having dinner with my wife every night at six o'clock.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It doesn't happen.
Speaker: You talk to your wife and you say, Hey, I'm not going to be able to make it to dinner every night.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Are you okay with that?
Speaker: It's that communication going on.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: So yeah, that is just a complete level.
Speaker: Like your mindset is not, your mindset switches from what's the least amount I could do to put into this to what's the most I'm able to tolerate.
Speaker: It's not like, hey, how many hours can I just put in and get my, it's like, how much am I willing to go to the breaking point?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And yeah, again, I think that's why it's important to have like a rush where you have a month where you go extremely hard, see what that level is, see what you had to give up to actually hit that.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Maybe for some people.
Speaker: You did that.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Yeah, I knew that.
Speaker: And so for some people, maybe it's like, oh, I actually had to give up a lot less than I thought to achieve this level.
Speaker: Because a lot of guys, again, are just telling themselves, oh, I'm not going to have that level of success.
Speaker: It's going to require me to cut out everything.
Speaker: I'm going to be unhappy.
Speaker: I'm going to have to spend way less time with my kids, my wife, husband.
Speaker: where if you do this big push, maybe it's way better than you thought.
Speaker: And another principle that I think we've talked about before is the, I think it's the Parkinson's effect or whatever.
Speaker: It's like- Parkinson's law, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, Parkinson's law.
Speaker: Whatever amount of time you have, you'll get what you need to done in that level of time.
Speaker: A lot of guys, they're spending time on tasks.
Speaker: They're spending like three hours on stuff that they could possibly do in like an hour.
Speaker: So it's that side of the coin too.
Speaker: Like, are you do that big rush and maybe things that are taking you four hours right now, maybe just the fact that you're working harder, have more appointments stacked on top of each other, stuff like that.
Speaker: Maybe you'll get those same things done in an hour.
Speaker: How about like bills?
Speaker: That's a good perspective on as guys will say, oh, I've got till this time in the month to get money for my rent, basically.
Speaker: That's a common one.
Speaker: I see where Parkinson's law is in real effect.
Speaker: Here's a cool exercise for you guys that are in that boat, like just month to month bills, paying the thing.
Speaker: Really set a deadline with yourself.
Speaker: Let's see, we're almost at tomorrow's May 1st, right?
Speaker: Go and say, I need to make
Speaker: all of my bills for the month by the end of the first week of May and pretend like it's the last week of May.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And guess what freaking happens, dude.
Speaker: Everybody really does this.
Speaker: It's just like, boom, they make it happen.
Speaker: It's like, what, what happened?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Same thing.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: I remember it takes me back to my college days.
Speaker: I would spend like weeks on a report on like a paper I had to write.
Speaker: And I would not get anything done.
Speaker: And then somehow magically the night before the due date, I knew I had to get done.
Speaker: So I'd stay up and get it all done in like a night when I was working on it before that.
Speaker: But I just didn't have the push to get it done.
Speaker: So it's like, and I think you told me, didn't you have times where you, you had to pay your employees, make payroll and stuff and money to pay them.
Speaker: And then you just pulled cells out of your butt the day before payroll was due.
Speaker: I've done that my entire life, basically.
Speaker: Anybody who started a company and just went through the grind of learning how to manage a company, hire people, pay for payroll, stuff like that.
Speaker: And maybe they're not as great as at finances.
Speaker: They're good at making it, but they're not good at managing it like me.
Speaker: I've had to do that so many times where it's like, I've got to make payroll next week for all of my people.
Speaker: What am I going to do?
Speaker: Something went down, a bunch of deals didn't go through or something like that.
Speaker: Where am I going to come up with this cash?
Speaker: And it's just the commitment level on that, right?
Speaker: And just doing whatever it takes to get there.
Speaker: And it happens, man.
Speaker: If you stay open to things and you take control of your mind and you stay positive, stuff comes your way like every time.
Speaker: If you're aligned, putting in the effort, doing all that stuff we talked about.
Speaker: Yeah, it's good stuff.
Speaker: Okay, let's get to tactics.
Speaker: Yeah, should we jump to number three and then wrap this baby up?
Speaker: You're up.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So number three is what would you advise to someone who is struggling with work-life balance tactics?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So here's what I would advise.
Speaker: It's something I actually just barely got through doing.
Speaker: And it's a 75 hard, which I did actually a podcast episode.
Speaker: So you can go back and listen to that episode.
Speaker: It's kind of what I learned from it.
Speaker: But the reason I'm saying this is because 75 Heart, it forces you to be consistent on things in your life.
Speaker: And we're probably going to create one actually geared towards solar, thinking that'd be a good idea.
Speaker: But it forces you to just do these little tasks every day.
Speaker: Do two 45-minute workouts, drink a gallon of water, read your 10 pages, and
Speaker: take a progress picture.
Speaker: You have to do them for 75 days straight.
Speaker: And I think that's the single biggest thing that's holding this industry back is guys just aren't consistent.
Speaker: And even if you just worked, I don't know, five hours a day, whatever, just kind of the minimum, it's going to make you probably six figures or whatever.
Speaker: If you do that, you're going to at least achieve success.
Speaker: But the reason why so many people are failing in this industry is they're not doing those things.
Speaker: They get one sell on the week and then guess what?
Speaker: They're dropping down to maybe two hours the next day or they're not pushing as hard.
Speaker: where if you just were consistent, you're gonna achieve way better results.
Speaker: It kind of reminds me of like the stock market.
Speaker: I read this tactic on like the stock market.
Speaker: where guys try to like play the curve.
Speaker: They'll try to invest when it's low and then have it go high.
Speaker: So dump a bunch of money in guys will lose money and everything.
Speaker: But a big tactic that people do in the stock market is just put in a consistent amount of money every month, whether it's high, whether it's low and you're almost guaranteed to see returns on that.
Speaker: Cause you're just putting in consistent money.
Speaker: It's consistently going to grow.
Speaker: It's compound effect.
Speaker: So that's my thing is for something tactical, go out and do like a challenge like 75 hard and then just figure out what you're going to commit to.
Speaker: Michael Donald, who everyone, probably the number one solar cells guy, this is his big thing too, is just doing those mini habits.
Speaker: So figure out what small things you're going to commit to.
Speaker: For him, it's like between appointments, he's going to knock until he gets at least one no between every appointment.
Speaker: So that's what he's committing to, and that's what he's being consistent with.
Speaker: And, yeah, he saw huge results.
Speaker: So that's what I think is something tactical.
Speaker: Go out and do a challenge and then figure out what you can commit to.
Speaker: That's what I think.
Speaker: What about you, James?
Speaker: I agree with the challenge.
Speaker: So number one, I have five short tactics.
Speaker: So recalibrate your definition of work-life balance.
Speaker: We've talked about it a bit.
Speaker: See what you're actually capable of.
Speaker: Do an event, do a challenge.
Speaker: I bet you 75 hard showed you what you're capable of mentally, right?
Speaker: Like, oh, I...
Speaker: It felt impossible at day 15.
Speaker: Here I am day 75.
Speaker: I'm still rocking, right?
Speaker: Get one of those moments where you just go all out.
Speaker: Like I'm talking about, you sacrifice every single thing in your life for that one thing.
Speaker: While it may not be what you want to be,
Speaker: Long-term, you need to see what you're capable of as a person.
Speaker: That's my belief there.
Speaker: Number two is determine who you want to really be, who you actually want to be, not what other people want you to be.
Speaker: There's a big misconception on that.
Speaker: Do you actually want the things you're talking about?
Speaker: And if that's true, you'd be willing to sacrifice things to get there, which we'll get to.
Speaker: Point number three is prioritize actions, not time.
Speaker: So this is the employee mindset versus the entrepreneur mindset, the solopreneur mindset.
Speaker: If you're in sales, you work on a commission, you need to have an entrepreneur mindset, not the employee mindset.
Speaker: The employee mindset is it takes X amount of time to do X, okay?
Speaker: Completely wrong.
Speaker: You need to switch out of that and focus on action.
Speaker: So don't focus on...
Speaker: working 40, 60 hours a week like we're talking about, focus on hitting four appointments a day, six appointments a day.
Speaker: Whatever that level is to break down your goal, hit that.
Speaker: If it's one appointment a day, do it.
Speaker: Knocking 100 doors a day, do it.
Speaker: You need to have those measurable KPIs.
Speaker: And if you break it down and really say,
Speaker: okay, it takes me two hours to knock 30 doors, 35 doors, something like that, right?
Speaker: I don't know what the stats are there, okay?
Speaker: You could break that down and say, that's actually two hours of work.
Speaker: But what if you were able to cut it down to 90 minutes?
Speaker: I've seen guys who ride around like an electric scooter in between doors and stuff like that.
Speaker: Segway, I've even seen.
Speaker: I've had a student who rides a Segway.
Speaker: He cuts...
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He timed himself.
Speaker: He cut off 30 minutes a day for writing that segue and was able to get an extra 30 minutes of knocking it.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And if you can knock five doors in that and set one extra appointment, that one extra appointment a day compounded over six days a week, six appointments a week, 6, 12, 18, 24 appointments extra a month, close one in five.
Speaker: That's five deals, dude.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: From writing a freaking segue.
Speaker: See what I'm saying?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the top pro guy, he focuses on actions and shaving off that fluff stuff.
Speaker: The next one is never sacrificing the urgent for the important.
Speaker: So a lot of guys mismanage their time because something comes up.
Speaker: A delivery shows up.
Speaker: I'm terrible at this.
Speaker: Like I love Amazon packages, right?
Speaker: I get Amazon packages like almost daily and I want to just go to the mailbox and check them out in the middle of the day, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: or set something up that I got.
Speaker: And then there goes the rest of my freaking afternoon getting distracted by some dumb Amazon thing when I could have just batched it on one day a week and made it my Amazon day, right?
Speaker: That's sacrificing the urgent, quote unquote, for the important.
Speaker: Another one I've had with guys who are married as well is they take family calls throughout the day.
Speaker: So they're working, right?
Speaker: And they should be at work like grinding hard at 11 to 3 p.m.
Speaker: Their wife just calls them here and there.
Speaker: And nothing wrong with communicating with your spouse.
Speaker: And you should, right?
Speaker: But when your spouse is, because I'm not married, but I know it happens with these conversations.
Speaker: It's like, oh, little Johnny did this.
Speaker: Little Johnny did this.
Speaker: There's this problem.
Speaker: Can you believe whoever said this?
Speaker: That's planting distractions in your mind.
Speaker: You can't get that focus back.
Speaker: So have that conversation with your spouse and say, hey, look, like we're both on the same page with this goal, this lifestyle we want to create.
Speaker: This is what's got to happen.
Speaker: Get honest about it.
Speaker: Clear that stuff.
Speaker: Next one is you said this great place.
Speaker: The important things first.
Speaker: So date night with your wife, that's important.
Speaker: Do it first.
Speaker: All of my mentors who are happily married men, they've got four or five kids, right?
Speaker: They've been married 25 years.
Speaker: They say this time and time again.
Speaker: That's what I'm going to apply to when I get married as well is,
Speaker: date night, I'll put it in, boom, lock it in the calendar.
Speaker: It's an appointment with your wife.
Speaker: Some of the guys I know literally set it up on Calendly with a scheduling tool with their wife and have the wife book it in.
Speaker: Like if she wants to talk to them, book it on a calendar.
Speaker: It's a serious appointment, right?
Speaker: If that's important to you, do it.
Speaker: If the gym, Taylor just got back from the gym, right?
Speaker: That's important.
Speaker: Block that baby in.
Speaker: If I don't block in the gym, I'm never going to the gym, right?
Speaker: I'll forget about it.
Speaker: It has to be scheduled.
Speaker: Last thing, and it's my biggest one of all, is once you know all of the above, you know what you want, you know what you're capable of, you've got to be ruthless in cutting out everything that is not moving you towards that.
Speaker: This is the stuff you are screaming inside because you don't want to cut.
Speaker: This is the video games.
Speaker: This is the junk food.
Speaker: This is the distractions.
Speaker: This is the tough conversations with your spouse.
Speaker: This is the social media scrolling.
Speaker: This is checking the Amazon packages.
Speaker: This is the sleeping in.
Speaker: This is the not working out when you know you should be taking care of your health.
Speaker: This is the eating the fast food.
Speaker: Realize that though these things seem small and menial,
Speaker: they make up the entire difference.
Speaker: Because when you compound these little bad choices over time, like Taylor says, if you're consistently doing these little things, good or bad, they will completely make or break your entire life and your happiness.
Speaker: I made this firm decision this last year that I was going to get like really serious about cutting out distractions like YouTube.
Speaker: I love scrolling around watching freaking YouTube videos, right?
Speaker: Another one I cut to was video games.
Speaker: This last year, I went off the walls and played video games like super hard for like a month, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: It was toxic for me.
Speaker: Like, dude, so I love FIFA, right?
Speaker: I'm a huge FIFA guy, right?
Speaker: I played FIFA 21 when it came out for like an entire week straight 12 hours a day.
Speaker: This is what happens when I have video games around me.
Speaker: It's like, okay, I can't even work if this stuff's here.
Speaker: So what did I do?
Speaker: I freaking literally sold my gaming laptop, sold all the freaking controllers, got rid of all of the stuff out of the house.
Speaker: It's not available.
Speaker: And I committed, I'm like, this is not me.
Speaker: This is not my potential.
Speaker: This stuff does not belong in my life.
Speaker: It's not what I want.
Speaker: It's not what makes me happy.
Speaker: It's gone.
Speaker: I've done the same thing with alcohol, pornography, junk food, all of that crap.
Speaker: So if you want to keep on, keep hold of those things, just realize it's going to cost you everything if it's not in the line with your goals.
Speaker: So there we go.
Speaker: Mike dropped.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: Nuggets.
Speaker: Freaking nuggets right there.
Speaker: So I love it.
Speaker: We've covered a lot and longer episodes.
Speaker: Let us know what you thought, guys.
Speaker: We covered a ton of material in there.
Speaker: So hopefully you took some notes because that is a ton of stuff to cover.
Speaker: But James, actually, speaking of appointments, I actually got to head to one here.
Speaker: I'm going to close up someone here.
Speaker: here in about 45 minutes so better wrap this up but um let us know if you like these kind of debate style and i guess this one wasn't as much of a debate because i think we actually saw eye to eye on pretty much everything but by end of the day i don't think they're ever gonna be a debate yeah but i don't think there's anything really to debate there bro because like like i mean it's just principles this is what is going to get you success so i think this one it's pretty uh white and black for me like pretty clearly these things are going to cause success these things aren't
Speaker: So James, thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker: Any last words before we wrap up here?
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: All right, guys, we'll see you on the next show.
Speaker: And thanks again.
Speaker: Peace.
Speaker: Hey, solar printers, 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 solar professionals and
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 solar learning community exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with the top performers in the industry.
Speaker: And it's called Sol Society.
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?
Speaker: Less than $3.45 a day.
Speaker: Currently Soul Society is closed to the public and membership is by invitation only.
Speaker: But solopreneurs can go to soulciety.co to learn more and have the option to join a waitlist when a membership becomes available in your area.
Speaker: Again, th is is exclusively for Solopreneur listeners, so be sure to go to www.solciety.co to join the waitlist and learn more now.
Speaker: Thanks again for listening.
Speaker: We'll catch you again in the next episode.
