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 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 going on, solopreneurs?
Speaker: Taylor Armstrong here with another podcast.
Speaker: Welcome back to the show.
Speaker: If you are new, we are here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and hopefully have a much better time in the solar industry.
Speaker: Hope you're doing awesome.
Speaker: If you're listening to this around the holidays, recording this the day after Christmas, so Merry Christmas to you.
Speaker: If you're listening to this around Christmas, if not, don't worry, this is still going to be super applicable to your solar business.
Speaker: But I wanted to wish everyone a happy holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year.
Speaker: And speaking of New Year, that's what we're going to be talking about today because with the new year comes a new you.
Speaker: And we want everyone on this show to really have their best year ever and crush it in solar.
Speaker: So today that's what we're going to be talking about is how you can crush it for this next year and how you can really game plan to set yourself up.
Speaker: for the year of your wildest dreams.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Who wouldn't like to have the year of their wildest dreams?
Speaker: You deserve it.
Speaker: And that's what we're going to talk about today.
Speaker: Before we get into that topic, I wanted to give a very special thank you to my man, Naeem Smith.
Speaker: He left us a review.
Speaker: He says the best podcast if you're trying to get jump started or polish your skills in solar.
Speaker: Then he gave us even a little
Speaker: 100% emoji.
Speaker: So love it.
Speaker: Neem, thank you.
Speaker: That was a great Christmas gift you left us with.
Speaker: And if you have not had the chance to leave a review or share the podcast, it would be much appreciated.
Speaker: So let's jump into the topic.
Speaker: We're going to be talking about the big word, the big thing no one likes to do, and that's New Year's resolutions.
Speaker: But we're not just going to do it for the new year.
Speaker: We're going to do it all year long.
Speaker: And this is something I almost did a podcast on this a year ago, but there's just so much we can talk about.
Speaker: I got overwhelmed trying to plan the episode.
Speaker: And so this year I was like, okay, I really want to do an episode on goals on something about the new year.
Speaker: I don't want to make it overwhelming.
Speaker: because there's so much we talk about.
Speaker: There's so many different goal setting systems, so many different ways to do it.
Speaker: So this year, I'm just like, you know what?
Speaker: Screw it.
Speaker: I'm just going to talk about some simple steps with it.
Speaker: I'm not going to go insanely in depth like some of these goal setting systems do.
Speaker: We're just going to keep it as straightforward, as simple as possible.
Speaker: And that's how I like it because pretty much everything I've done, the second it gets complex in my head or complex that I realize it's going to be a lot of steps to do, I don't do it.
Speaker: So if you're like that, then this podcast is for you because we're going to try and break it down.
Speaker: Simple how to five steps that you can do today.
Speaker: And most important thing with goal setting, with really anything, in my opinion, you do is to make it simple so you actually do it.
Speaker: Because at the end of the day, done is better than perfect.
Speaker: So repeat that 10 times in your head.
Speaker: Done is better than perfect.
Speaker: There's so many things we want to do, but we just don't do them because they're too complicated.
Speaker: There's too many steps.
Speaker: So let's take this baby step forward and actually do the thing.
Speaker: Okay, so with that, I'm going to give you five steps, five things you can do to plan out your year to start doing them.
Speaker: And if you if you do like to get super in depth with it, I'm going to have some recommendations as well.
Speaker: Because I think it's even better if you do break it down as much as possible.
Speaker: But let's just get stuff on paper and let's make it as simple as possible for now.
Speaker: And then you can maybe you want to geek out on this stuff.
Speaker: And I'll point you in some directions with that.
Speaker: So I'm going to give you five steps.
Speaker: And the first step is to brain dump.
Speaker: And what I mean from brain dump is really just go over last year and brain dump everything that happens.
Speaker: So when I did this last year, I took a course actually.
Speaker: This is last year was really my first year kind of doing a yearly planning session.
Speaker: And again, I just, it always got too complicated.
Speaker: So I never did it.
Speaker: So last year I'm like, man, I really need to do this.
Speaker: I need to make something happen.
Speaker: So I went and invested in a course and here's something, if you do want to get even more in depth, I would highly recommend it.
Speaker: The course is called your best ever or sorry, your best year ever by Michael Hyatt.
Speaker: And I think his company is, I believe free to focus.
Speaker: I think he may have changed the name for this year.
Speaker: So if you want to hold your feet to the fire and actually do this even more effective, you can go buy this guy's course.
Speaker: We'll link to it in the show notes.
Speaker: But that's Michael Hyatt, free to focus.
Speaker: He has a whole goal setting course that breaks all this thing down.
Speaker: I spent 300 bucks on it.
Speaker: I'm going to give you guys the highlights, the Reader's Digest for free.
Speaker: Okay, if you want, I can put my Venmo.
Speaker: You can Venmo me 300 bucks if you want to.
Speaker: Okay, but...
Speaker: We're going to keep it simple and I'm going to give you really the steps I went through last year and the things that I felt were most effective as I was doing this yearly planning session.
Speaker: So the first thing was, like I said, brain dumping.
Speaker: Okay, sorry to get a little off track with it.
Speaker: And so what he had us do is we went through last year and we just put down all the good, the bad, the ugly, everything that happened from last year.
Speaker: And so I'm trying to find mine and he calls this an after action review, which we'll talk more about that.
Speaker: But some questions that he had us go through.
Speaker: And this is a podcast where if you don't usually take notes, if you actually are going to do this, I would recommend taking notes because there's a lot of steps here.
Speaker: We'll try to include some of it in the show notes.
Speaker: But he had questions like, what were my plans, my dreams, my goals?
Speaker: Did I have any wins?
Speaker: What disappointments or regrets did I experience this past year?
Speaker: What did I feel I should have been acknowledged for but wasn't?
Speaker: What were the major life lessons you learned this past year?
Speaker: What was missing from my success?
Speaker: Did I have any limiting beliefs that blocked my progress or got me off track?
Speaker: So just going through and maybe you're like me, maybe you didn't even have a plan last year.
Speaker: So I was just winging it.
Speaker: I was just answering these questions to the best of my knowledge.
Speaker: But hopefully you did have some plans.
Speaker: And then after this, the step I went through was really just listing all the wins.
Speaker: I think that's was part of it too but listing all the good things that did happen because you want to start on a positive note so as I was doing this some things that I put down is I completed 75 hard I was consistent with my podcast last year we had just had our second kid I had been really consistent at the gym I started training Brazilian jiu-jitsu went on a family vacation
Speaker: So just listing all the good things you want to feel good about yourself.
Speaker: And then from there, it's just listing out your hopes and dreams.
Speaker: You're not getting the goals yet, but you're just putting your hopes and dreams and you're going through all the categories of life to do it.
Speaker: So spiritual, intellectual, emotional, physical, relational, parental, social, vocational, avocational, financial.
Speaker: So every category you can think of.
Speaker: And this really helped me because when you break it down by category, it sort of jogs the memory.
Speaker: You think, okay,
Speaker: Spiritually, I was terrible on this.
Speaker: Wasn't going to church like I was supposed to.
Speaker: Parent goals, I was not spending very much time with my kids.
Speaker: So I would go through each category of your life and then write out your hopes and dreams.
Speaker: So obviously you reflect on the past year, do your after action review compared to last year.
Speaker: And then you're not writing out goals.
Speaker: You're just writing out what are your hopes and dreams for next year.
Speaker: Okay, so some of mine were I wanted to spend 30 minutes at a minimum with my kids daily.
Speaker: vocational, I wanted to recruit 10 new sales reps on our teams.
Speaker: Spiritual, I wanted to read scriptures and pray every day, things like that.
Speaker: And so some of these became goals, some didn't.
Speaker: But that was the first step is really just doing the after action review, what happened last year, putting in the positives, and then putting down your hopes and dreams.
Speaker: So that's steps one and two right there.
Speaker: I kind of combined two.
Speaker: But number one is just brain dumping, putting down the wins from last year, and then putting your hopes and dreams.
Speaker: And then number two is doing that after action review and going through someone's question prompts.
Speaker: And so number three is the actual goal setting.
Speaker: And he had a really cool system.
Speaker: I'm talking Michael Hyatt course I went through last year.
Speaker: But his system, he calls it smarter goals.
Speaker: You've probably all heard of smart goals, specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely.
Speaker: Hey, but he adds on an E and an R, makes a couple adjustments to these.
Speaker: And so I'm going to give you the golden nugget here.
Speaker: Smarter goals are the following.
Speaker: You got your specific, you got your measurable, you got your actionable,
Speaker: You got risky, which is different.
Speaker: You got time bound, exciting, and relevant.
Speaker: And so this was his system.
Speaker: I thought it was cool.
Speaker: And he gives us reasons for changing this.
Speaker: But the ones that you might not recognize from this system, he changes the R to instead of relevant,
Speaker: I guess he adds relevant in the end, but he adds in a risky.
Speaker: And his idea with that is you want to set a goal that stretches you.
Speaker: Most people, they set these realistic goals, which I think is what the regular SMART goals is, realistic, right?
Speaker: We hear this realistic word.
Speaker: And we set ourselves short.
Speaker: We say, okay, you know what?
Speaker: It's going to be way too hard to lose 20 pounds this year.
Speaker: So let's stick with something more realistic.
Speaker: Let's only do five.
Speaker: So he talks about setting these risky goals that are somewhere between, he calls it the realistic zone and the delusional zone.
Speaker: You don't want to tell yourself realistic.
Speaker: It's probably going to be too easy, but you don't want to be delusional.
Speaker: You're not going to say, I'm going to go to the NBA next year.
Speaker: If you're a regular, regular dude like me, you want it to be somewhere in between that.
Speaker: Something that is attainable, but something that scares you to do it.
Speaker: And something is like, wow, okay, that might be possible, but that's actually going to be really hard.
Speaker: It's going to be a stretch.
Speaker: So that's the system, smarter.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And then he gets in the actual goal setting and we're just breezing through this.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But listen to this on repeat if you want to hear it again, smarter.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But then he, from there, what I did last year,
Speaker: is we did a maximum of three goals per quarter.
Speaker: So something, a mistake I was making before previous years when I was half-heartedly trying to do my yearly planning is I would just list out 50 goals and then I would forget about them after that.
Speaker: And so what I learned from this whole breakdown, this whole course is that we should really only be focusing on a couple goals per quarter because if we focus on more than that, we're going to get overwhelmed.
Speaker: So as you're starting to actually set your goals,
Speaker: for the next year.
Speaker: Number one, make sure you go through your dreams.
Speaker: The previous step, make sure you go through all the things that you put down on your list, your dreams and desires, and then start setting those smarter goals.
Speaker: Then try to pick from multiple categories.
Speaker: You're not just picking pure sales goals, even though I know this is a podcast about solar sales, but you need to focus on other areas of your life.
Speaker: Look at that whole hopes and dreams page.
Speaker: And then take from that, start setting your smarter goals.
Speaker: Make sure it satisfies those requirements of smarter.
Speaker: And then keep in mind, this should take, I think I spent three, four hours on this last year.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But if you want to take really just as little time as possible, and if you don't think you're going to do it, if it requires a lot of time, just take half an hour, an hour to do this.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It's not going to be as effective, but I think you can get through this in an hour.
Speaker: If you sit down and block out some time.
Speaker: And so that's step three is actually go write out your goals, take from the different categories of life, different life domains, and then actually write out your SMART goals.
Speaker: And remember, you need to write these out.
Speaker: You're not just going to put them in notes.
Speaker: You're going to actually get pen and paper, write them out, and then make sure it's somewhere you can review them.
Speaker: Step number four is find your whys and also write those down.
Speaker: Every goal you have needs to have multiple whys.
Speaker: And this is something that people that are in the coaching group with us right now, which hit me up if you want it, possibly get in that.
Speaker: We're launching it for the new year.
Speaker: helping guys double their cells.
Speaker: But this is something that our students are going through is we're having them write out just as many whys as possible.
Speaker: Brian Tracy talks about the difference between the top cells guys and the low producing cells guys is usually they have way more whys than the lower producing cells guys.
Speaker: When you're out there on the doors, it's
Speaker: 100 degrees outside, you're sweating up a storm.
Speaker: Who's going to be the one that sticks it out?
Speaker: The one that has like two whys with his sales goals or the one that has 50 whys that's trying to feed his kids, that's trying to, I don't know, get the next, I don't know, whoever has the most whys is usually going to win.
Speaker: So keep that in mind as you're writing out those goals.
Speaker: put as many Y's as possible and then rank them, put your top three Y's.
Speaker: And if you want even more help with this, we're actually going to include
Speaker: Should be done by the time this is launched, but we're working on a little solarpreneurs goal sheet.
Speaker: The domain for that is going to be goals.solarpreneurs.com.
Speaker: Once again, that's goals.solarpreneurs.com.
Speaker: And you can go and download a little template that's going to help with this.
Speaker: It's going to help you actually write out these goals.
Speaker: I would suggest printing it out, hanging it up, and it's going to help you write out your why's with it and really have everything in front of you.
Speaker: So look in the show notes for that.
Speaker: If anything changes with the domain, it'll be in the show notes, but that should be the domain for it.
Speaker: So that's step three, actually set your goals.
Speaker: And step four is the whys.
Speaker: Then probably the most important step with this all is to actually review it.
Speaker: If you do this once, you're going to be like every other person.
Speaker: You're going to write out your goals.
Speaker: You're going to think about it.
Speaker: Two weeks are going to pass.
Speaker: You're going to forget what you even wrote down and zero progress is going to be made on those goals.
Speaker: So step five and probably the most important step is do your weekly planning.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And actually read these goals.
Speaker: And there's a lot of different ways to do this.
Speaker: You can do the Grant Cardone method.
Speaker: If you've got his 10x planner, he has you read out your goals every day.
Speaker: So that's great.
Speaker: I think as often as you can review your goals at a minimum monthly, but hopefully daily and weekly you're reviewing these goals, the better shot you're going to have actually achieving them.
Speaker: So that's the five steps.
Speaker: We're going to review it one more time.
Speaker: Step number one is doing the brain dump.
Speaker: writing down your wins from last year, and then writing down what your perfect life would look like, writing down your dreams and your hopes.
Speaker: Number two, doing an action after action review.
Speaker: Go through those questions and really just write out what happened last year, things you think you can improve from last year.
Speaker: Number three is actually setting those smarter goals based off of
Speaker: your hopes and dreams for this next year step number four is finding your whys writing down as many whys as possible for each goal you put and remember don't set a million goals set 12 max and i like to focus on two to three per quarter yes that's another secret is put the quarter that you're focusing on each specific goal you set and then the last review your goals weekly and make sure it's top of mind that's how you're gonna achieve them
Speaker: So I hope that helps.
Speaker: Hey, we kept it pretty simple.
Speaker: Hopefully this helps you just take some sort of action and hit me up if you want even more resources.
Speaker: But I think that's a good place to start is just doing your little yearly planning session.
Speaker: So go download our little giveaway if you want more help with it.
Speaker: That's going to be at goals.solarpreneurs.com.
Speaker: Go plan your yearly goal session right now.
Speaker: Set those goals and let's make next year the best year ever and crush our solar cells.
Speaker: So we'll see you on the next one.
Speaker: I can't wait for you to hear some of the guests we have coming on end of this year and next year.
Speaker: It's going to be awesome.
Speaker: So we'll see you guys on the next one.
Speaker: Hey, solopreneurs.
Speaker: Are you sick and tired of spinning your wheels every month and not seeing your sales increase?
Speaker: Well so was I and the truth is I was never able to improve it until I figured out what was going wrong.
Speaker: So that's why I'm excited to announce for a limited time we are doing a free sales diagnostic.
Speaker: We'll break down your sales process, figure out the holes in your business and see how we can help you improve.
Speaker: So act now we have six bucks for this month so book a call now, don't miss out.
Speaker: What you're going to do is send an email to taylor at solarpreneurs.com.
Speaker: That's taylor at solarpreneurs with an s dot com.
Speaker: I'll send you out a calendar link and we will figure out the time that works best.
Speaker: So shoot that email and let's increase your sales.
