Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
Speaker: My name is Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in the year and cracking the code on why sales reps fell.
Speaker: I teach you 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 solopreneur, you might ask?
Speaker: A solopreneur is a new breed of solopro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery, and you are about to become one.
Speaker: Okay, what's up, everybody?
Speaker: We are live here at SolorCon.
Speaker: We actually just got done with a little recruiting panel, and I'm excited.
Speaker: We got someone that was on the panel with me here, Christian DeLuca.
Speaker: He's coming on the podcast with us.
Speaker: Thanks for coming on the show today, Christian.
Speaker: 100%.
Speaker: Thanks for being the best moderator in the game.
Speaker: I guess some of the podcast stuff transfers over, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, let's go.
Speaker: Yeah, so we just got done with this panel.
Speaker: I'm like, man, Christian dropped some bombs up there.
Speaker: Like, let's just run up a podcast right after.
Speaker: Yeah, perfect timing.
Speaker: The juices are flowing.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: Keeping the momentum rolling.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: So I'm excited because Christian, he's we talked about some really cool systems he has in place for his company to recruit a massive team.
Speaker: I mean, he's grown his company from a few reps to now he's got what about 100 reps?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And how long did it take you to get to 100 reps?
Speaker: I mean, it's taken about, I would say a year or so.
Speaker: It's fluctuated as well.
Speaker: But yeah, I'd say just about a year.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, still, that's insane.
Speaker: Like you see so many companies and especially he's in California too, where we've seen so many companies just like disappear with NEM3 and all these challenges and Christian's still being able to build his company and keep it rolling.
Speaker: So I'm excited to talk about that.
Speaker: And then also he's a golden door.
Speaker: What year did you get your golden door?
Speaker: 2022.
Speaker: So then got that award in 2023.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: So we're going to be talking about like what it takes to be a Golden Door Award winner, how to build a massive team.
Speaker: I'm excited to get into it.
Speaker: So you ready to roll?
Speaker: Let's do it, man.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Let's jump into it.
Speaker: So yeah, I know you started with, you know, another company dealers before, but yeah, do you want to give our listeners kind of like a background story?
Speaker: I mean, my dad was in the industry and I think like if you actually look at it, it seems like all roads lead to Vivint or Solar City.
Speaker: So my dad was in the industry, he was selling and they actually used to own athletic clubs.
Speaker: And so...
Speaker: You know, as I was younger, I would grow up in athletic clubs and I'd be passing out towels to people that would walk in.
Speaker: And when the 2008 economy crash happened, my parents lost everything.
Speaker: And so I went from like, I was honestly a spoiled kid.
Speaker: Like I'd go up to the front and I'd ask for like fruit roll ups or something or like a Gatorade.
Speaker: And I'd be like, put it on the tap.
Speaker: Like, like I thought I was the coolest kid ever.
Speaker: And I went from that and not that like we like became poor overnight or anything, but like definitely a more humble lifestyle after the 2008 economy crash and we lost all the businesses.
Speaker: And so after that, I think that's like kind of humbling as a kid.
Speaker: And it's cool because you can see like the perspective of like what it's like to have abundance and then what it's like to not have abundance.
Speaker: Because then what you can do is then you can make a choice.
Speaker: Like, what do you want in your life?
Speaker: And so after that, my dad started knocking doors and I'm like 13, 14 years old.
Speaker: And I'm like, what are you doing?
Speaker: Like, I thought you're this businessman showing up in a suit every day.
Speaker: Like you're out knocking doors.
Speaker: And then like he started making a ton of money doing it.
Speaker: And like I got to see the lifestyle that we got from the doors.
Speaker: And I was like, wow, like, okay, the doors actually can provide.
Speaker: And so I'm like,
Speaker: As I got older, I really wanted to get into the door-to-door industry.
Speaker: And it's funny because like most people, you know, when you're in kindergarten, you're not thinking like, oh yeah, I want to be in door-to-door.
Speaker: Most people are like, I want to go to the moon.
Speaker: I want to be a doctor.
Speaker: Or if you're Taylor, you're like, how can I find free stuff on the internet?
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Essentially, I really wanted to get into door to door.
Speaker: And my dad told me, he's like, you need to go out and get three jobs before you get into door to door.
Speaker: And so I think what it did is it made me respect the opportunity so much more because most people get into it almost unwillingly.
Speaker: Their backs against the wall and then they get into door to door to try to fix some sort of situation.
Speaker: It seems like that's the typical rep that gets in the industry.
Speaker: And so I went and I worked at Safeway.
Speaker: traditional, like scanning the groceries.
Speaker: And the hard part about jobs like that is you can show up in whatever state you'd like to be in.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I could be hung over.
Speaker: I could show up like drunk, whatever it is.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It didn't matter.
Speaker: The groceries are going to scan the same.
Speaker: But and after that, I went to Costco like these jobs just like give you an idea of what you don't want to do.
Speaker: And this is when I'm like 17, 18 years old.
Speaker: And then I started selling cars for a place called Courtesy Automotive.
Speaker: It was like BMWs and Mercedes.
Speaker: And I worked with a sales representative there.
Speaker: And he was like, Christian, he's like, why are we selling these?
Speaker: We should be driving these.
Speaker: And I was like, whoa, that's kind of eye opening.
Speaker: But I started selling cars there.
Speaker: And after that, hopped into the solar industry.
Speaker: I didn't have the traditional like go out and, you know, sell a hundred, hundred deals in like your first year.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Um, I started and in the first two months I didn't sell a deal at all.
Speaker: And I only had $2,500 in the bank.
Speaker: And so I blew through that $2,500 in the first month, second month, my living expenses were about $2,500 every single month.
Speaker: Second month I was $2,500 in credit card debt.
Speaker: And then the third month in, like on the first or second day of the month, I sold my first deal.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: And then after that, I did eight the next month and just up from there.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: But I think like...
Speaker: A couple of things that really helped were just like, number one, I had to earn the opportunity to get into the industry.
Speaker: But then number two is like, I'm really grateful for those times when I was like in credit card debt because it just really tests like how far are you willing to go to make this thing happen?
Speaker: Yeah, that's so good.
Speaker: And I love hearing, I think you're the first person I've ever heard that their dad was door to door.
Speaker: So he was in solar, your dad was?
Speaker: Yeah, he was in solar.
Speaker: And yeah, it was funny.
Speaker: And so I mean-
Speaker: After that, I started working for a company called Phoenix Solar Energy, which actually my dad brought me over to as well.
Speaker: I started working over there and he was like a huge mentor for me.
Speaker: And the company started growing at like a really rapid rate because we had had the Paradise Fire, the Camp Fire, 12,000 homes overnight, burnt down.
Speaker: And so obviously after that, a lot of people want storage, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And also when they're rebuilding all these homes, it's mandated that they have solar on them too.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I started selling a lot of accounts and a company didn't end up doing too well.
Speaker: Like the classic solar story, I know you've been through it too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was building a team there and then lost tens of thousands of dollars in commission.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: So that was pretty rough.
Speaker: Then after that, went down the dealer route because I'm like, if one installer did bad, then that means I need three.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I think like, that's kind of like the natural progression.
Speaker: And so I started working with like multiple dealers and like, it's hard, you know, you hear the phrase, you chase two rabbits, you get none.
Speaker: Also, if you chase three rabbits, you get none.
Speaker: And so like,
Speaker: We were doing around 25, 30 deals a month.
Speaker: And then finally, one of the guys I had worked with at Phoenix, his name was Cody, and he was more on the operations side.
Speaker: He's my business partner, Cody Pitts, and he had his license and everything.
Speaker: Because I'm just the sales guy.
Speaker: I'm not going to be out there installing solar.
Speaker: And so we partnered, and then we've started to build Ohm ever since then.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah, that was kind of the beginnings of it all.
Speaker: Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker: So does your dad still do solar?
Speaker: Is he working for you now?
Speaker: Yeah, so he had some health issues.
Speaker: And so he like, essentially, like just helps consult and then does some recruiting as well.
Speaker: So still have him like work with us in the business.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Father, son.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: Yeah, that's so cool, man.
Speaker: That's awesome to have your dad.
Speaker: And what was he like?
Speaker: Was he kind of pushing you to build your own thing?
Speaker: Did he have a say in any of it?
Speaker: Or?
Speaker: Yeah, so he was going through some medical issues.
Speaker: There was a lot of stress from when that company went out of business.
Speaker: As much money as I lost, for him, it was triple, quadruple.
Speaker: Oh, right.
Speaker: So I had some health issues due to that.
Speaker: And so really, at that time, I was like, well, I need to...
Speaker: be able to build an opportunity where not only I can help provide for myself, but like for my family as well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, and so after that I was, I was really just like, I think that's the biggest motivation you can have is like when a family has a health issue to like be able to like help take care of them as well.
Speaker: And like,
Speaker: he's killing it now, but, um, to help provide us like probably one of the bigger wise.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: Were you, I don't know if this, were you ever like competitive with your dad?
Speaker: Like, Oh yeah.
Speaker: Like start out.
Speaker: So on him, he's like, Oh my, my kid's not going to be me.
Speaker: You're like, I'm going to be my old man.
Speaker: I wanted to beat him every single month and he wanted to beat me too.
Speaker: And like, it was funny because he'd hold me accountable.
Speaker: And you know, when you have conversations with reps, when you're trying to get them out on doors and they reps do this all the time.
Speaker: And I did this is they choose an activity that's productive, but not as productive as it should be.
Speaker: Like pipeline, managing the pipeline when you should be knocking.
Speaker: I'm putting together Aurora designs.
Speaker: I can't go out and knock doors.
Speaker: It's like, dude, come on.
Speaker: Following up with all the stuff.
Speaker: Like I needed to have non-negotiable time.
Speaker: And it's funny because I'd go and I'd work out at like 2 p.m.
Speaker: and my dad would be like, you need to set non-negotiable time for the doors.
Speaker: You need to set non-negotiable time.
Speaker: I'm like, that's stupid.
Speaker: I'm not doing that.
Speaker: I just wouldn't listen to him.
Speaker: And it's funny because now I have those same conversations with reps.
Speaker: Like, well, you need that non-negotiable time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's so cool.
Speaker: I've been there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: um well no and so yeah you um so what what like motivated was it just seeing that other company like you know have some struggles start is that what motivated you to go start your own organization because that's a big step and a lot of people it's a lot of work as I'm sure you know and you're you'll talk about but yeah what was the motivation to go start your own thing
Speaker: Yeah, I think it was that.
Speaker: And then when everything goes bad, like, you know, everything not to do.
Speaker: So then it gives you like a clear vision as to what to do.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so I think that that helped a lot.
Speaker: And it was just natural.
Speaker: Like I was the sales side of things and Cody was the operational side of things.
Speaker: And so we meshed really well.
Speaker: Um, and so from there, like it, obviously I think even I started a business, um, a full EPC, even when I still needed to develop, there was areas where I still needed to grow.
Speaker: Like I didn't become a golden door award winner until like we had to own for like three years.
Speaker: It wasn't just like some overnight success.
Speaker: And so like what it took a lot of was just like investing into myself and like the personal development aspect of the job.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like when we first started, like we're making good money, but like I was spending a lot of my time like going on vacations, like not really reinvesting into the business and just trying to live the life, but not like do the things necessary to really grow the business.
Speaker: And so like a huge foundational piece for me was like Cody and I think everybody has somebody in their life.
Speaker: And if you don't, you need somebody who can help hold you accountability.
Speaker: Accountability is like one of the biggest aspects of this job.
Speaker: And I'm really grateful because Cody helped hold me accountable.
Speaker: And he's like, Christian, dude, you're capable of more.
Speaker: Like I need you to get out on the doors.
Speaker: I need you to start building teams.
Speaker: Like we can't just be running this EPC off like your own personal accounts.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like we're doing...
Speaker: you know, not a ton of numbers to begin with.
Speaker: And so like he held me accountable to go and do it.
Speaker: And then naturally I started looking for like, where can I find good information?
Speaker: Like one of those places, which is so funny is Solopreneur, right?
Speaker: Other places like door to door you.
Speaker: And just like the resources are out there for anybody to go and be a golden door award winner, build a team of over like,
Speaker: 100 reps.
Speaker: But and I think that's the hard part is we all know what to do.
Speaker: It's just like having somebody in your life that can hold you accountable to go and then do it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which like, and you know, especially in California, not as many people are like EPC shopping anymore or red line shopping.
Speaker: But like, what you really should be shopping for is accountability.
Speaker: Who's going to push you to like go and do more and take you to that next level?
Speaker: Yeah, that's so good because like you're saying, I mean, there's already so many resources.
Speaker: Even if you never bought like DDU, any coaching program, whatever, like you can go on YouTube.
Speaker: You can, you know, come to events like this.
Speaker: SolarCon, we're at right now.
Speaker: But yeah, if you don't implement any of the information you're getting, then it's not going to help you that much.
Speaker: 100%.
Speaker: So yeah, that's so cool.
Speaker: And what I'd imagine, like you're running the company, did it take you a while to figure out?
Speaker: Because there's a lot of stuff you have to do when you're the one running the company.
Speaker: How did you like manage all that and still give any advice on like when you're having to run a company while also still being able to sell a lot?
Speaker: What did you do to kind of like...
Speaker: still produce while you're running the company and everything?
Speaker: Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker: I think it's just non-negotiable time.
Speaker: So like you, I think if you live by your calendar, it makes it a lot easier.
Speaker: So like when you have like, you know, people make the excuses, like maybe there's operational things that are going on in the business.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was like use for us, like you have to set two different times.
Speaker: There's time for maintenance and there's time for growth.
Speaker: So maintenance is like fixing the things in the business that need to be fixed.
Speaker: Growth is in like the afternoon when people are home and you can go out and sell deals.
Speaker: And so I just like separated those two things.
Speaker: Like maintaining is fixing all the little like operational issues.
Speaker: Like how do we get the pipeline moving faster?
Speaker: Growth is like, how can I find time to go out and like actually the inputs that are going to like
Speaker: bring revenue into this business.
Speaker: Cause like without sales, it doesn't matter how good your systems are.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like you need systems are deals to like work the system or put deals through the system.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's so true.
Speaker: Like, you know, there's like, you're saying before, there's so many reps that waste time on pipeline management and all this stuff.
Speaker: But I think I know for sure that's something that's helped me get a golden door and, you know, tweak a few things, just like doing those non-negotiables like you're talking about.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: So, okay, if I made a commitment to knock between two to seven or whatever, then I should be out there.
Speaker: I shouldn't be out like following up with customers or like, you know, getting that too.
Speaker: It's like the easiest hack and Michael Donald talks about this.
Speaker: The easiest hack to get out there and be accountable is naturally like as humans, we're really tribal, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: If I tell Taylor, Taylor, I'm going to come out and we're going to go knock at 1 p.m., I will be there 100%.
Speaker: If I tell myself, you know, Christian, we're going to get out there at 1 p.m., 105 rolls around and like, dude, I'm not out there.
Speaker: I'm finding an excuse to go to the gym, do Aurora designs, eating Pop-Tarts at home, not doing the right things.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: Yeah, for me, it's finding free stuff.
Speaker: Got a deal.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Taylor's searching the internet for any 20% discount.
Speaker: Yeah, he's giving me a hard time because I love free deals and stuff.
Speaker: All the birthday deals and get free stuff.
Speaker: But no, that's good.
Speaker: And yeah, it's so important.
Speaker: And I think we'll talk about this a little bit more.
Speaker: But I think that's one of the big traits that will separate like the Golden Door winners from just like, you know, the struggling rep is they're super efficient with their time.
Speaker: They've got the non-negotiables.
Speaker: Like they're putting in the time to generate leads every day and not like, you know, making excuses on other things.
Speaker: Break down being a Golden Door Award winner to just a couple of things.
Speaker: And I I've gone through this framework like with our team, but it really is this simple.
Speaker: It's like, number one, create a non-negotiable five to six hours to go out and do income producing activities, not make Aurora designs.
Speaker: Yeah, that's the first thing.
Speaker: The other thing is like have the faith and the family and the fitness, like have all that stuff, like the whole person paradigm going.
Speaker: So you're in the right state when you show up to the doors.
Speaker: Then the only other aspect of the job is like, there's really only six objections that make up for 90% of what homeowners say.
Speaker: So it's like not interested, not a good time.
Speaker: You're the third solar guy.
Speaker: Those are the three smoke screens.
Speaker: And then the three actual objections are like too old.
Speaker: I need a new roof and my bills are too low.
Speaker: And all you have to do is have all of the whole person paradigm and your state in the right area, go out and put in the non-negotiable time and then memorize the six responses to the six most common objections and have a pitch memorized and do it over and over and over again.
Speaker: If you could break down being a Golden Door Award winner to its simplest terms,
Speaker: It's probably that.
Speaker: But the hard part is, is like, we know all the right things to do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's going back like the accountability to do it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Seriously.
Speaker: And who's doing, who is holding you accountable to do those things.
Speaker: Yeah, it's true.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so I think that's huge.
Speaker: Find accountability partner.
Speaker: But yeah, it's funny.
Speaker: Like, I don't know if you've done that in like your sales correlations.
Speaker: You get the reps like, oh, there's just endless objections.
Speaker: I can't overcome them.
Speaker: Then you ask them, okay, what are the objections you're getting?
Speaker: And like,
Speaker: like you hardly ever get people thinking of more than like 10 things.
Speaker: And yeah, like you said, they come down to pretty much like five or six anyways.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's a good point.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, if you can do that, find accountability partner.
Speaker: So your company, do you guys have a structure where you're like holding people accountable or like, yeah, what does that look like for newer guys?
Speaker: You tell them, Hey, you're going to have this, you know, a mentor or like, how do you guys do that?
Speaker: So there's a lot of accountability.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: For reps and managers, the most important thing is to have systems that promote accountability.
Speaker: So like if we leave it up to our guys to get out to the doors and let's say there's no manager call or there's no car groups or there's no van program, do reps get out on the doors?
Speaker: It's like,
Speaker: Most of the time I would say no, or they find every reason to just go put in like two or three hours.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So a lot of the times, like the reason when I worked back at Safeway, I would go and I would work eight hours and I wouldn't do six is because that was the shift that I was like mandated to do.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so like, how do we create that same type of thing and not the exact same type of thing, right?
Speaker: Like we want people to have freedom in their job, but like, how do you create that same type of thing within door to door and it's within your systems.
Speaker: And so like,
Speaker: for the reps.
Speaker: And it's funny because our reps love car groups now.
Speaker: Our reps love the van program now.
Speaker: They love getting dropped off because we've tied their why to it.
Speaker: So if it's like, hey, you know, A, B and C rep wants to be able to give back to their family at some point.
Speaker: And it's like, well, dude, you're going to need accountability to do that, right?
Speaker: You're going to need a van program.
Speaker: You're going to need somebody to go and drop you off an area to make sure that you're doing it because if it's up to you every day, it's not going to happen.
Speaker: And that's not because you're a bad rep.
Speaker: It's because that's how we're wired, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like we're wired to be more accountable to other people than ourselves.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so just creating systems for that, whether it's the car groups or whether it's like manager calls and like accountability calls to help get those guys out or a van program.
Speaker: We have one of our teams that we just bought a 15 person van for.
Speaker: And they go out to area every single day and they have the best time ever in it because when they're out going to area, they're listening to the solopreneur podcast, right?
Speaker: Like they're developing on their way and they've turned like the van into a university.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: So good.
Speaker: And when they get dropped off an area, like it's not, you're not going to just go sit on the curb.
Speaker: Like you're going to go make it happen.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We did that.
Speaker: I haven't done that in a little bit.
Speaker: It's a good idea.
Speaker: But yeah, one of my companies, we had like three or four of those vans and
Speaker: Yeah, just same thing, load everybody up.
Speaker: It's the funniest thing.
Speaker: It works.
Speaker: They have the best time ever.
Speaker: Like, I want to be in the van with them.
Speaker: Take me out.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: It works for sure.
Speaker: Yeah, but I want to hear.
Speaker: So when you got your Golden Dorn 2022, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So yeah, for those wanting to like hit those type of numbers and installs, what it's what like your daily schedule look like?
Speaker: I don't know if you have like routines.
Speaker: How many hours were you putting in knocking?
Speaker: Like set or closer?
Speaker: What does that look like for you that year?
Speaker: So how it started is I just recruited a lot of different people through like warm networks and it wasn't even through the systems that we'll talk about later.
Speaker: It was really just through like I was born and raised in Chico.
Speaker: So I knew a ton of people in the area.
Speaker: Like I had that advantage to me.
Speaker: And so a lot of people would see what I was doing and like the commission checks and all of that.
Speaker: And they were kind of attracted to the opportunity and then those people's friends and so on and so forth, kind of like the spiderweb effect.
Speaker: And so I'd bring those people in, teach them how to set.
Speaker: And so we had a sales system.
Speaker: So we had the word tracks for like how to overcome the top six objections.
Speaker: And we just kept it super simple.
Speaker: This is how you overcome the top six objections.
Speaker: This is your pitch.
Speaker: This is what you go out and say.
Speaker: And then we do correlations every morning around like 10 to 11 a.m.
Speaker: And then we'd get out to area, go and knock.
Speaker: Um, and essentially like it got to the point and I had a co-manager with me.
Speaker: His name was.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Um, and so I had a co-manager, his name was Max.
Speaker: Max works with us today.
Speaker: Absolute stud.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And so Max and I had our different roles, right?
Speaker: And so like we came to an agreement and we set expectations from day one.
Speaker: And I think that's a mistake that people don't do is when they recruit somebody in to like co-manage or like run a division or a region or a team with, they don't set expectations of like where people's genius are.
Speaker: So like Max was way better than me at going out and training the reps on the doors, how to do the job, right?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And like when the reps had issues that they were experiencing in their personal life, they would always call Max first.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: And then when they needed to be held accountable, Max would let me know.
Speaker: And like I would go and have that conversation.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: And so like I would, Max and I would split the appointments up.
Speaker: And so like we, that was a system that worked really well for us because we set expectations and we both knew what we were good at.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I was running appointments like all day.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I think a lot of the best Golden Door Award winners, they figure out a way and it's important to get out of the doors and lead from the front.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But also like the best leadership is delegation, but also empowerment.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So like, how can I empower a group of setters, 10 to 12 to 20 setters to go out and set more appointments than they ever have in their life?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And make a ton of money.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like I don't need to be out self-genning every single one of my accounts.
Speaker: If I need to do that to lead from the front, to set an example, like I'll do it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But for the most part, we have the system down.
Speaker: So like these guys are making a ton of money.
Speaker: We're out closing the deals.
Speaker: And like, it's just like a focus on the training.
Speaker: And I think one thing that people miss too, and it's a
Speaker: A lot of the value I think you'll notice is like in the simple things.
Speaker: I'm sure you've noticed this, right?
Speaker: And just like doing the one-on-ones.
Speaker: And so like we do one-on-ones with these reps, me and Max together.
Speaker: And the one-on-ones would be more about their personal life than it would be about Solr.
Speaker: Yeah, that's good.
Speaker: And so like when they start opening up, there's a lot of the times, and Doug Cartwright talks about this in the alchemy sales training, is like people don't have a sales problem.
Speaker: They have a personal problem that's affecting their sales.
Speaker: So when we'd get down to that and to the root of it, like we could help solve that issue.
Speaker: Like I've had stress, anxiety, and depression and all those things in my life.
Speaker: And I've used like cognitive behavioral therapy and stuff to like help work through those things.
Speaker: So I felt like that was an area where like I could really excel and like,
Speaker: I think that's how you create loyalty too, because when you can like change somebody's paradigm or like help them through an issue that they're going through in life, number one, as a leader, it feels freaking amazing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And number two, like I think those people are eternally grateful.
Speaker: Yeah, that's fire.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think a lot of probably managers listening to this, they don't really think about those things.
Speaker: It's like, hey, just stop making excuses.
Speaker: Get out there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And but they don't.
Speaker: Like, how does that work?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But they're wondering why their reps don't go perform.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But that's a really good point.
Speaker: And I think that could be applied to a lot of ways that people behave is, you know, I hear like people have addictions or whatever, like alcoholics and all that.
Speaker: A lot of times it's just because they're using that as like, you know, medicating other underlying issues and stuff like that.
Speaker: But yeah, I mean, that's how do you so how did you like maybe help these reps kind of uncover what those problems were dig deeper, like figure out, okay, what's what's the real reason you're not like?
Speaker: So reps are just like homeowners.
Speaker: So like our job actually teaches us a lot of like how to handle that.
Speaker: So when you're overcoming objections and somebody says not interested, is that a legitimate reason for them to not go solar?
Speaker: It's like, no, it's a smokescreen, right?
Speaker: And like sometimes people would be like, I just can't get out there and like knock.
Speaker: I just can't do it.
Speaker: And like that's the smokescreen, right?
Speaker: And like if I help them actually uncover the real reason why they're not able to get out there and knock, it's like you just need to spend.
Speaker: And I think time cures all, right?
Speaker: If you spend enough time with these people and with these reps, eventually they uncover things.
Speaker: like the real issues yeah but the time has to be also invested and outside of work okay because if it's just always in the office like it's hard for them to open up right but when you go out to dinner it's just like and maybe a good like lens or frame to view it through is like if i was trying to make a friend like what would this conversation be like right and like really truly try to understand like what's going on in their life and ask the deeper questions like
Speaker: and get to understand their family situation.
Speaker: Then all of those things, there's no, I don't think there's a perfect word track or anything.
Speaker: It's just you have to genuinely go out there and build a relationship.
Speaker: And then your closest friends, if they're having issues, Taylor, they're going to tell you what they're experiencing.
Speaker: It's not like you have some perfect word track to uncover.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: Why my friends aren't doing well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They're just going to tell you because they trust you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So like you have to go and build that trust, which means like making time outside of the job.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And like caring what the guys care about.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because if it's just all about you and like what you care about.
Speaker: Nobody's going to buy it.
Speaker: Nobody's going to care.
Speaker: We have another manager that works with us.
Speaker: His name's Jack, and he's really good at this.
Speaker: And Jack's really good at caring about what the guys care about.
Speaker: And then you have influence.
Speaker: Then you have trust.
Speaker: Then you can actually make an impact.
Speaker: Yeah, that's really good.
Speaker: And yeah, I think too, just for, you know, building that trust, like having them want to be confident in giving you appointments and all that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like not them, not just feeling like a number and everything.
Speaker: I think that's huge with setters.
Speaker: So that's good.
Speaker: So yeah, it sounds like it's just really, you guys developed like a really good system with your setters and we're just in appointments pretty much all day.
Speaker: And that's, that's what.
Speaker: If you're in appointments all day, you're going to win a golden door.
Speaker: Like it's that simple.
Speaker: That's all I wanted to do.
Speaker: So the question should be like, how do you get in appointments all day?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You develop people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, no, that's good.
Speaker: And I think that's like, obviously, we just got off the recruiting panel here.
Speaker: And I think that's a good segue into that is like you can't.
Speaker: Yeah, you need guys to build the system.
Speaker: And I know we can talk about like how you need to structure it because obviously it gets tougher as you or you got to, you know, have a really good system when you bring more and more people in.
Speaker: So yeah, but let's get into that.
Speaker: So what's like your recruiting system or what were you doing?
Speaker: I guess early, early stages when you got your golden door, how is that kind of evolved?
Speaker: Now you've grown your company a lot.
Speaker: So early, it wasn't really systematized because I was, I was blessed with like the ability of like, okay, I was born and raised in Chico, knew a million people there.
Speaker: We're just, we're a year round program.
Speaker: So like, we're just knocking this area.
Speaker: over and over and over again.
Speaker: And like, just ran into a ton of people I knew.
Speaker: I just also, when you knock doors, you don't, you're not afraid to go out and have the conversation.
Speaker: Like when you walk into a restaurant.
Speaker: And so like through that as well, but what helped like, I guess really grow the team is,
Speaker: Also, when you provide an experience and like you're able, like I was talking about earlier, able to uncover those personal issues and help solve them for those guys.
Speaker: That's like something that like it's bigger than just the job.
Speaker: And they're going to go out and they're going to tell their friends, their family, like they're going to tell everybody about this job and then all their friends are going to want to like work here as well.
Speaker: And so like a lot of people will focus on recruiting.
Speaker: But I think the first step is to focus on the experience first.
Speaker: Then once you build the experience on the platform, then like the recruiting becomes easy.
Speaker: And so after that, we started to become more systematized because we really started, you know, especially after NEM3 is like NEM3, I think for a lot of us, like it either completely killed you or it helped you like grow in a million different ways.
Speaker: If you don't have good operating systems now, like it's definitely tougher, but that's not a reason not to do it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like if you don't have good operating systems now, it's going to be really hard.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so it became more systematized.
Speaker: And so we actually met through Sam and we're a member of the circle, like the inner circle with Sam Taggart's group.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We met Luke Maseko, who is, he owns a company called ABR Recruiting, or Always Be Recruiting.
Speaker: It's called ABR.
Speaker: And so he helped teach us the system.
Speaker: And essentially like what you do within the system is it's called a stump speech.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: What you do is typically, Luke uses this phrase, birds of a feather flock together.
Speaker: So an A recruit is going to be friends with a bunch of other A-level recruits.
Speaker: A D-level recruit, the guy who just won't get out on the doors, has a bad attitude, is probably friends with a bunch of guys who have bad attitudes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so like we want the contact lists from the people who are the A-level recruits and are already killing it.
Speaker: So what we do is we do a stump speech is essentially like we get them all in a room, we hype it up, get the energy all crazy, just like you normally would for a correlation, get the music going.
Speaker: And essentially from there,
Speaker: What we do is we throw out these incentives.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So, you know, Taylor, if we were to get 250 contacts from you, it's so dumb, but we get an energy drink.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Taylor, if you have 500 contacts that you can share with us, we're going to get you an OM hat.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's going to look way better than that Legacy hat.
Speaker: Legacy is a great company.
Speaker: Love them.
Speaker: And if you give us 750 contacts, Taylor, we're going to take you out to Fifth Street Steakhouse tonight.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: And so they're directly incentivized to share the contacts.
Speaker: It's also like we pitch it like, you know, it's easier to do this job with friends than without friends.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so it also provides a benefit to us as a business is like if a bunch of their friends are here, they're more likely to stay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's a retention program too.
Speaker: And essentially we download this app called Essay Contacts.
Speaker: You can download all your contacts.
Speaker: So we tell them, delete all your family members, delete Pizza Hut, delete freaking whatever you have in there, right?
Speaker: All the people that you know for certain would not be a good fit for this job.
Speaker: And so essentially they go through and they delete all those contacts and then they share whatever is left over.
Speaker: But the key part is, is like if you just have them come in and write down a list of 25,
Speaker: They're not going to get to 25 because they have to make the physical choice to take them from the contact list and add them to a piece of paper.
Speaker: It's easier to delete contacts than it is to take contacts and write them somewhere else.
Speaker: And so they delete all the contacts and then they share it with us.
Speaker: And then we also take the incentive to another level is we want retention as well.
Speaker: So what we consider a recruit is somebody who sold two deals or had two installations.
Speaker: We care about installs, not just sales.
Speaker: And so...
Speaker: We throw out an incentive.
Speaker: If you have one recruit that you bring in from this list, which they don't even have to passively manage it anymore.
Speaker: If you have one recruit that you bring in who has two deals, then we're going to get you some Nike ducks.
Speaker: If you have five recruits that have two deals, we're going to send you and your significant other to Cabo.
Speaker: Because like 10 deals, like what is that worth to your business?
Speaker: A lot more than a trip to Cabo.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so you just kind of like start to scale this out.
Speaker: But that's like the brief overview of like how the system works.
Speaker: It's exponential too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because what happens when you like get their network, you get one guy, 10 recruits from his network.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And from those 10 recruits, you get, you know, maybe 30 more guys.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It just has this like compounding effect.
Speaker: Yeah, that's so good.
Speaker: And yeah, we were talking about a little bit about that in the recruiting panel, just barely too, but it's like, you know, similar principle.
Speaker: If you think of referrals you can get from homeowners, it's like how the people that you're looking for, they're already in the context of, you know, people you're surrounded by.
Speaker: So that's why I think it's so cool.
Speaker: And, um, yeah, you know, when you were talking about that, I'm like, dude, I gotta get on this system.
Speaker: I mean, there is a lot more to it.
Speaker: Like that's like the brief overview, but, um,
Speaker: Yeah, I'd love to go into more detail with you.
Speaker: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: But yeah, I mean, a couple other things that I'm sure people are wondering.
Speaker: So I know in the panel you talked about you have someone that will just call through all these people.
Speaker: So was that just someone you hired?
Speaker: Or how did you get someone to just start calling all these guys for you?
Speaker: It's funny.
Speaker: We had a... Jay Cass was a consultant with us for a good period of time.
Speaker: And he still helps us out.
Speaker: If I call him, that dude's super abundant.
Speaker: He'll always answer the phone.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so he helped bring in a guy named Jody, who is our VP of sales at home.
Speaker: And he kept opening my eyes to like systems, systems, systems.
Speaker: And I've always been the guy like, I'll just do it myself.
Speaker: Like I'll get it done, whatever.
Speaker: Or like, I don't need a system to be able to train this guy.
Speaker: I'll just tell him what I do and he'll figure it out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, but that's not replicatable.
Speaker: And so like with this recruiter, I realized like it can't just be the managers calling these guys.
Speaker: It can't just be me calling these guys like to really grow and scale this thing.
Speaker: We need to bring somebody internally and provide this as a service to like our sales teams.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because we have two different customers.
Speaker: Number one, our sales teams and like number one, the homeowner.
Speaker: And so, um, we brought this guy in, his name is Steven.
Speaker: He's an absolute killer.
Speaker: I've trained him just through like, um,
Speaker: Essentially, we built out a system with like, hey, these are the top 15 qualifying questions that you want to ask.
Speaker: Because when you get on the phone, you need to qualify them.
Speaker: You need to pull back a lot.
Speaker: The biggest mistake that people make is when they get on the phone,
Speaker: is they just sell, sell, sell, sell.
Speaker: And what the end potential rep thinks is like, this is an MLM, this is too good to be true.
Speaker: So if you start to pull back and qualify, they realize that there's scarcity in the opportunity.
Speaker: So we brought Steven in and we started to teach him how to do all these things.
Speaker: And like, it's funny because like all the managers know how to recruit.
Speaker: A lot of the closers at our company know how to recruit.
Speaker: Our VP of sales knows how to recruit.
Speaker: I know how to recruit.
Speaker: And so like naturally, just by proximity, Steven has become like this amazing recruiter.
Speaker: And like everybody's like going and training him.
Speaker: And then we created like this whole recruiting handbook for him.
Speaker: So that like what he's doing right now is he's hiring the next level of people.
Speaker: And we're essentially building out a call center just for the recruiting aspect of things.
Speaker: Yeah, that's good.
Speaker: Because like recruiting is a really high leverage activity.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so like if you go and knock on one door and make one sale, typically that's a one for one transaction.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Maybe if you get a couple of referrals for it, it's like a one for three or one for four transaction.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But if I bring in a new rep, he's an absolute killer and he goes out and does 100 installs in a year.
Speaker: That was a one for 100 transaction.
Speaker: What's the leverage like on that?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So naturally, that's where you put your focus, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's so good.
Speaker: And like, yeah, that's, that was a focus of our recruiting panel too.
Speaker: It's like those that are just focusing on sales, sales, sales.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: Like, yeah, you can go out and win a golden door award yourself and you want it.
Speaker: But I think now you've been able to like multiply yourself and like, you know, that's where you see more and more growth is when you need to recruit an army and go out instead of you just personally get a golden door.
Speaker: Like how cool would it be to recruit?
Speaker: like six other people that got golden doors instead of you just getting it to me.
Speaker: That's way more exciting.
Speaker: 100%.
Speaker: That's impact right there.
Speaker: And that's what we all want at the end of the day.
Speaker: People want community and to be the person to build the community is like, it's freaking cool too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's so good.
Speaker: So yeah, for this, for people listening, yeah, I mean, hopefully that opens for the listeners, people tuning in the podcast today.
Speaker: It's like,
Speaker: You should be at the very minimum, like what Christian's talking about is just using the warm contacts, the people you bring in, get them to, you know, like make a list of the very minimum of people in contact.
Speaker: But if people want to get like a guy like
Speaker: to call?
Speaker: Did you just, was this someone you were working with?
Speaker: Jake has introduced you?
Speaker: So, you know, I told earlier about the story about the guy when I was selling cars and he was like, oh yeah, why are we driving?
Speaker: Or like, why are we selling these cars?
Speaker: We should be driving these cars.
Speaker: That was the guy.
Speaker: So like I had a relationship with him already and he was doing sales at a car dealership.
Speaker: And sales is pretty transferable.
Speaker: I just needed to like help teach them the systems.
Speaker: And like, if you have a recruiting handbook of like, these are the questions you ask on the call.
Speaker: These are how you overcome, like, again, goes back to the systems.
Speaker: These are how you overcome the top six objections of what like, um, recruits are going to say on the phone.
Speaker: It's as simple as that.
Speaker: All we need to do now is just teach you how to disposition it to like all the different managers and go from there.
Speaker: It's like all transferable.
Speaker: It really is like very similar, I think.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Wow, that's so good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, I know that's definitely something that I'm lacking in.
Speaker: Yeah, like I told you in the panel just barely, there's so many people that just like, you know, get a contact to recruit and then they just forget about them.
Speaker: So a lot of this is follow up.
Speaker: So do you guys have all this in like a CRM too?
Speaker: How do you like manage your recruits and everything?
Speaker: Working on that portion.
Speaker: It's just like we have so many contacts right now that's like working through them and like building out the systems for that.
Speaker: I wouldn't necessarily say that that's my expertise right now, but we do follow up and you can disposition them on things like RepCart, but hopefully create a better, not hopefully, got to be intentional with the language, right?
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We are doing a lot of better system.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, that'll be part two, podcast part two.
Speaker: Once you get that dialed in.
Speaker: That's mine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then another thing, this is something we didn't really touch on in our recruiting panel, just barely Christian, but like something that I see a lot of companies fall short on is they bring these reps in.
Speaker: Maybe they're getting quite a few recruits, but then they just like throw them out and say, all right, hit the doors.
Speaker: And you talked about like car groups, vans going out.
Speaker: But yeah, what sort of system do you have in place for new recruits to come in to where they're like hopefully going to get their first deal in the first couple of weeks?
Speaker: What do you guys do to kind of like organize that and onboard them successfully and everything?
Speaker: That's a really good question.
Speaker: And I was actually thinking about that as we were talking.
Speaker: I'm like, I don't want to miss out on that portion of this because I think it's actually the most crucial part.
Speaker: Because if you recruit them to nothing, nothing happens.
Speaker: And so what we do is we build out systems for that as well.
Speaker: Like
Speaker: To get your onboarding pack at most companies, you show up to the meeting and you got a polo, dude.
Speaker: You have a hat.
Speaker: But like, why not put that on the other end of them doing the trainings?
Speaker: And so training platforms like Lightspeed and stuff is they'll print out a certificate once you're done.
Speaker: And that shows that you've completed all the trainings and it shows that they're actually bought into the opportunity as well.
Speaker: So we get to weed out the people that aren't actually going to go and invest in themselves and their free time.
Speaker: And then at that point, that's how you earn your gear.
Speaker: So like, that's one way to like almost kind of gamify or systematize it.
Speaker: Other things is just like the accountability.
Speaker: Like a lot of the things that you're going to learn is like light speed and these one-on-one trainings and the meetings are going to help you.
Speaker: But how are you making sure that you're getting out on the doors every single day?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because the more problems that you go and then run into, the more solutions that you're then going to seek.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then the better rep you're going to become.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like, I think the worst reps are the ones that don't ask enough questions.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But like to ask questions, you first need to run into those issues.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so just like going back to the system of the car groups and like, um, like, uh,
Speaker: getting the own van going as well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So yeah, between the training and there's a lot of other things, but I think those are like maybe some of the core fundamentals.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cause, um, all of this other stuff we talked about, like it doesn't mean anything.
Speaker: Like you said, if you recruit people to bad culture, bad system, there's no onboarding process, then you're just losing recruits, right?
Speaker: The second you bring them on.
Speaker: So, yeah, it's really important.
Speaker: Whoever's listening, just figure out some way to train them, have them onboarded.
Speaker: I've got some light back here.
Speaker: And focus on the self-development, too.
Speaker: Like at home, like our claim to fame, I'm sure people have used this before, but it's like we're a self-development company that just so happens to sell solar.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: I'm sure you've heard it before, right?
Speaker: A lot of people say it.
Speaker: Every solar company.
Speaker: All of them.
Speaker: We're also a development company, but who's actually executing on it is a more important thing.
Speaker: And so that's something that we really, really focus on is the self-development.
Speaker: And it's in our core values too.
Speaker: And have you ever read the book, Traction?
Speaker: I don't think I have.
Speaker: So it talks about EOS, which is like the entrepreneurial operating system.
Speaker: And if there's one book that you can read on systems, it's traction.
Speaker: Traction, okay.
Speaker: And so it talks about like hiring and firing people based on your core values and like,
Speaker: how to build out systems and such as well.
Speaker: And I think that stuff has helped us as well.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Because then you actually get alignment in your business and like you're working with the right people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And also like when you have so many recruits as well is you get the opportunity to be picky.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So like that serves your business at a really high level too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like if out of a thousand, I get to pick like 10 or 20 of the best,
Speaker: I think you're in a lot better position and you get to pick people that align with your core values.
Speaker: And you don't have to be like every other solar company who's hiring anyone and everyone that has a heartbeat.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Do you have arms to knock the doors?
Speaker: Like, cool, we'll get you, dude.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: You're just throwing mud against the wall.
Speaker: See what sticks and everything.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah, so true.
Speaker: Well, that's a good point, too, is once you do get these systems in place, what are some like, I don't know, maybe challenges you guys went through?
Speaker: Because I'm sure probably in the beginning when you just had 10, you built it to 15, 20.
Speaker: I'm sure maybe that wasn't.
Speaker: as tough, but now like I know you got 100 reps, sure you have multiple managers, all this stuff.
Speaker: So what are some challenges that maybe you ran into as you like grew it to where you're like, okay, actually I got to expand and then multiple offices, multiple managers.
Speaker: What was that like for you guys?
Speaker: all comes back and Jaudy, God bless you for opening my eyes to this, but like the systems, because like if it's just me running a team, I don't really like, for the most part, I probably don't need many systems besides the accountability to get them out on the doors.
Speaker: I can just like white knuckle it and make it happen, right?
Speaker: By just inspiring everybody, holding them accountable, teaching them like all the right principles, getting them to believe in the right things, like abundance versus scarcity and all these different things.
Speaker: I can white knuckle it through that.
Speaker: But then to go and teach multiple different people is you need frameworks to teach them through.
Speaker: And so we've developed things like we have a thing called LDP at home.
Speaker: It's a leadership development program.
Speaker: It's like a six week course that we put our leaders through and then the next level of leaders through.
Speaker: So like the closers who we think are going to be potential managers.
Speaker: So like we're systematizing it to be able to get the results that we want.
Speaker: And so then you have to take like, um, the things that you understand and know and pass those onto the reps and be able to put it into an easily digestible framework.
Speaker: So like for us, one of them is actors, which is like a leadership
Speaker: framework.
Speaker: So accountability is one of the tenets.
Speaker: And these are all the tenets, like the major tenets of leadership, accountability, culture, training, operations, recruiting, and then state.
Speaker: And so like, if you add up all of those things, like all of those are the ingredients to run a perfect team.
Speaker: And then we just get like, that's the macro.
Speaker: We get really into the micro of like, or the details or like, of like each of those things.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, that's so good.
Speaker: Well, dude, this is blowing my mind.
Speaker: And Christian, you're what, 25?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, like, man, if I would have known half this stuff when I was 25, this is a game changer.
Speaker: So no, I'm just super impressed to see how much you've been able to build, run in your own company.
Speaker: And hopefully people listening to this can go out and implement in your own offices, in your own teams, just build these systems, have accountability, and work off of warm recruits.
Speaker: all those things.
Speaker: And then, like you mentioned, you're in Sam Taggart's circle and all that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So how much does that play to factor?
Speaker: Like, obviously, you invest in yourself, you invest in training, you invest in your guys, you talked about light speed and all that.
Speaker: Like, is that been a big, would you say factor in your guys success?
Speaker: Just being huge.
Speaker: So many of the closes, like from the two conditions close to the assumptive close, like all the different closes, like I learned from door to door.
Speaker: Yeah, nice.
Speaker: And so like, I don't feel like necessarily I'm anything special.
Speaker: I feel like I just have the, like the push or the drive or the motivation to like go and seek information.
Speaker: Like if you're constantly an information seeker and not just looking to be spoon fed information, like you're going to develop and you're going to grow really fast.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so I noticed there's a correlation.
Speaker: All the reps and how we're able to decide who gets into the leadership development program, because we just look at one thing, who's asking the most questions?
Speaker: And also the input too, like who's knocking the most doors.
Speaker: But it's more about like, like I said earlier, I don't feel like I'm anything special.
Speaker: It's just like the people you surround yourself with.
Speaker: It's like being surrounded with Sam like helps you think at a higher level.
Speaker: Investing in the ABR and like the self-development.
Speaker: I've invested in the Noxstar.
Speaker: Mike O'Donnell University.
Speaker: I bought Chris Lee's course.
Speaker: I saw you had Chris Lee on here recently.
Speaker: I feel like I bought all the freaking courses and I'm just like constantly like taking in this information and it brings me to a higher level.
Speaker: And just surrounding yourself with the like the right people.
Speaker: Like luckily I had a family that was like super supportive and like really entrepreneurial.
Speaker: So I feel like I had that going for me.
Speaker: I also like when we recruit people in, like when Jody came in as a VP of sales position, which was like really hard for me at first because like
Speaker: Like, I have to give up all this like control.
Speaker: And like, I don't get to like have all the man.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But like, I just like took the mindset of like, you know what, I'm going to be open to learn from him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And nobody likes the people who like are the know-it-alls or like, I understand everything.
Speaker: Like, I can't learn.
Speaker: Those are like the worst people to talk to in the world.
Speaker: But the best people to talk to on the contrary are the people who are like open to learn and like take new information and like seeking new information.
Speaker: So like, I feel like I'm constantly learning from even like the people that we bring into the business.
Speaker: Steve Jobs has a quote.
Speaker: It's like, we hire smart people to tell us what not to do.
Speaker: We hire smart people to tell us what to do.
Speaker: We don't hire smart people to tell them what to do.
Speaker: And I probably absolutely botched that quote just now, but like it's, you understand the concept.
Speaker: yeah that's so good so yeah um so important invest in yourself and um yeah we got it we got some coaching training we do over here at solopreneur you need to buy my program dude i'm in aro let's go yeah but don't be like me and just get everything for free like no i have invested all on myself too i don't get just get everything for free
Speaker: No, I believe.
Speaker: But yeah, so important to invest in yourself and constantly be learning because I think that's what separated you, Christian, is like you've learned all these things, but then you've gone and actually implemented it.
Speaker: And you talk about the accountability going back to that.
Speaker: It's like you can't just buy this stuff and not do anything because a lot of people will buy all these trainings and do nothing to pay attention to what you pay for.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: People will pay, pay attention.
Speaker: So it's powerful.
Speaker: So, uh, yeah, Christian, if people want to maybe connect more with you, hear more, uh, asking more questions about like systems and stuff, what's the best way to get in touch with you?
Speaker: So, um, you guys can feel free, shoot me a text, uh, personal numbers, 530-588-1848.
Speaker: I also operate completely off abundance.
Speaker: I don't care if you're coming to work with us or not.
Speaker: Super willing to help.
Speaker: It's just like a good feeling overall.
Speaker: Like if you do enough, like good things, good things will happen to you as well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, also on Instagram, C underscore DeLuca.
Speaker: And then if you want to see what's going on over at home, you can follow our internal page at O H M center, C E N T E R.
Speaker: And yeah.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Let's go.
Speaker: So guys, go check them out.
Speaker: And these guys are exploding.
Speaker: Can't wait to see where things go next.
Speaker: And last question, Christian, for maybe like a struggling rep or maybe I'm sure you've got those, you know, people in your company that maybe they're really struggling to turn around.
Speaker: What would you tell that rep?
Speaker: Or maybe you have like a personal example of like a rep that's turned around.
Speaker: What do you tell these reps and how could you help a rep like that?
Speaker: Yeah, I think we have an example.
Speaker: There was a rep out in Sacramento recently, and I feel like his mindset was a little cloudy.
Speaker: He had first three deals canceled.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: rough.
Speaker: This next month, like 15 days into the month, he set five deals that have closed and they're all going to stick.
Speaker: And so like one of the things and the tenants that like we preach and promote is just taking ownership for everything in your life because then you can go and fix it.
Speaker: So if like he's to go out and a new rep is to go out and blame it on the doors, that's like a certain, they just created a circumstance that they can't fix.
Speaker: Oh, the doors suck.
Speaker: Like nobody's interested.
Speaker: Solar is super saturated.
Speaker: It's like, cool.
Speaker: Does that mentality give you power?
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: And so like checking your belief system to like do the things that I believe give me power.
Speaker: If they do continue to believe in them, if they don't get rid of them.
Speaker: And the best way to like empower yourself is to take ownership for everything because then you can go and fix it.
Speaker: And you'll be, you'll actually start to seek solutions.
Speaker: So we joke at home is like, I'll ask reps, like when they're complaining, I'll be like, Hey, what's the company name?
Speaker: They'll be like, Ohm Solar.
Speaker: And I'm like, yeah, it's like, it's Ohm Solar Solutions, not Ohm Solar Complaining.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: solution that's so good but yeah if you take ownership you can fix it if you try to like delegate out that ownership to someone else you're going to be living based on like their problems yeah yeah take ownership is the biggest thing yeah 100 love that so christian thank you so much again for coming on the show uh we'll have to plan a part two for sure in the future and um yeah guys go hit them up let them know you appreciate them coming on the show and uh we'll talk soon thanks christian
Speaker: Thank you, Taylor.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: What's up, solopreneurs?
Speaker: Hope you enjoyed the episode.
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