Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
The Secrets To Getting A Golden Door In Solar - Mikey Lucas
102 Plays2 years ago
- https://www.youtube.com/@solarpreneurs
- Help Reagan Beat Cancer!!!
- goals.solarpreneurs.com
- oneliners.solarpreneurs.com
- https://solciety.co/ - JOIN SOLCIETY NOW!
- SIRO APP - LEARN MORE!
- Thanks to our sponsor Pi Syndicate for this episode!
- DOWNLOAD THE CHEAT SHEET HERE!: TOP 10 MOST DOWNLOADED EPISODES OF ALL TIME
Recommended
Transcript
Taylor Armstrong's Journey to Success
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
00:00:08
Speaker
My name is Taylor Armstrong.
00:00:10
Speaker
I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fell.
00:00:19
Speaker
I teach you to avoid the mistakes I made and bring in the top solar dogs of the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro and closing more deals.
00:00:31
Speaker
What is a solopreneur, you might ask?
00:00:33
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.
00:00:43
Speaker
Okay, what is going
Introduction of Mikey Lucas and His Venture Capital Journey
00:00:44
Speaker
on?
00:00:44
Speaker
We are back on another podcast, and I'm stoked today because we have someone that is coming on for the second time.
00:00:51
Speaker
Not too many people that can say that.
00:00:53
Speaker
So we have the one, the only, Mikey Lucas coming back on the show.
00:00:56
Speaker
Thanks for hopping on with us again, Mikey.
00:00:58
Speaker
Yeah, man.
00:00:59
Speaker
Thanks for having me, brother.
00:01:00
Speaker
Yeah, I'm excited.
00:01:01
Speaker
And a lot has changed since we, what is that?
00:01:03
Speaker
Like, I think it's been what, year and a half, two years maybe?
00:01:07
Speaker
Yeah, two years I think now, yeah.
00:01:08
Speaker
When I was out in San Diego with you, yeah.
00:01:10
Speaker
Been almost two years.
00:01:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:12
Speaker
Been a while.
00:01:12
Speaker
And so I know a ton has changed.
00:01:15
Speaker
And me and you, we didn't talk for a long time either.
00:01:17
Speaker
Last time I saw you was at SolarCon.
00:01:20
Speaker
This guy was running around in his, what's that Middle Eastern getup?
00:01:24
Speaker
It's called a Thove.
00:01:26
Speaker
Thove, okay.
00:01:27
Speaker
So he's running around in his Thove and telling people about this energy fund.
00:01:30
Speaker
But yeah, he definitely drew some attention.
00:01:33
Speaker
I was like, who is this?
00:01:35
Speaker
We got Iraqis running around over here.
00:01:37
Speaker
Who is this guy?
00:01:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:39
Speaker
I didn't even recognize you until like the second year.
00:01:43
Speaker
A bunch of dudes were like, yo, did you, did you like convert to Islam?
00:01:45
Speaker
And I was like, nah, man, Jesus is Lord, bro.
00:01:47
Speaker
We're so good, bro.
00:01:48
Speaker
It's just a cultural thing.
00:01:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:52
Speaker
So yeah, I know you're doing some cool stuff and maybe tell everyone why you're wearing that.
00:01:57
Speaker
Everything.
00:01:57
Speaker
But yeah, do you want to tell us what you've been up to the past year and a half?
00:02:01
Speaker
So and any of kind of transitions, you're not selling solar, at least I don't think you're selling solar day to day anymore, but you're doing a lot of other things.
00:02:09
Speaker
So yeah, do you want to give us just kind of a quick update on what you've been up to the past year, year and a half?
00:02:13
Speaker
Sure, sure.
00:02:14
Speaker
So I'll kind of give like the the overview, but then I kind of I want to I would like to talk about like why it happened.
00:02:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:20
Speaker
So basically what I'm doing right now, I transitioned.
00:02:23
Speaker
My end goal was to become the bank.
00:02:27
Speaker
So eventually I wanted to own a bank, right?
00:02:30
Speaker
Be an venture capitalist, be an institutional investor and an angel investor.
00:02:35
Speaker
I was looked up to those guys.
00:02:36
Speaker
Those guys are the guys that were driving the Rolls Royces.
00:02:38
Speaker
They had all the nice, you know,
00:02:39
Speaker
the beautiful families, the nice homes and all that stuff.
00:02:41
Speaker
And that was like what I thought I wanted.
00:02:43
Speaker
But in reality, what I actually wanted was I wanted a challenge.
00:02:47
Speaker
And door-to-door absolutely challenged me for the decade I did it.
00:02:50
Speaker
I installed in my career within my offices $178 million in solar.
00:02:56
Speaker
27 of that was my own.
00:02:58
Speaker
A million was my own.
00:02:59
Speaker
And I knew that I wanted to get challenged.
00:03:00
Speaker
So the next progression, kind of like going from a real estate agent to a real estate investor to then a builder and then a
00:03:08
Speaker
The bank was for Mikey Lucas was, you know, go in, be a setter and then go in, you know, be a closer, self-generate, then go
Goals and Vision of the American Energy Fund
00:03:16
Speaker
and get leads.
00:03:16
Speaker
Then you'll start your own kind of management and kind of work your way up to regional manager or whatever, whatever, and then start your own dealer and so on and so forth.
00:03:24
Speaker
Kind of the same concept within DoorDotRore.
00:03:26
Speaker
I knew that energy was definitely my industry I wanted to stay in.
00:03:29
Speaker
It was my expertise.
00:03:30
Speaker
You know, I technically fought oil and gas for a long time, but I didn't really wasn't really fighting oil and gas.
00:03:35
Speaker
I was fighting this this systemic issue we have with our energy with an energy crisis that we all believe in.
00:03:41
Speaker
And we all know that is true.
00:03:43
Speaker
I actually get more afraid.
00:03:44
Speaker
I know you're in California, so you see more prevalent than we do here in Texas.
00:03:47
Speaker
But I'm actually more afraid of our energy grid.
00:03:50
Speaker
and energy production, when I see more Teslas and electric cars on the road, it actually scares the crap out of me because I know how much power those things pull.
00:03:57
Speaker
I mean, if you guys own a house, you've ever seen with your Tesla pulled in, or plugged in rather, that meter spins very, very, very fast.
00:04:06
Speaker
Like, let alone if you have your AC on in the summertime and your Tesla plugged in.
00:04:09
Speaker
Golly, that thing is moving quick.
00:04:11
Speaker
So I knew that there was a major problem.
00:04:13
Speaker
And, you know, Jim Rohn talks about we we get paid for the problems that we solve.
00:04:18
Speaker
And I think that this is a major problem, which is why I started the American Energy Fund with my partner, Brad Barron's.
00:04:23
Speaker
You know, we believe that we need to have a clean transition to a sustainable energy future.
00:04:28
Speaker
And, you know, we can't necessarily rely on the government to help us get there, but we can, as entrepreneurs, as business professionals, we can do that.
00:04:34
Speaker
So that's what we started, you know, the American Energy Fund for.
00:04:36
Speaker
You know, we were putting...
00:04:38
Speaker
I always tell people like, you know, hey, you know, while you're partying on a Saturday, we're going to go make sure we keep the lights on.
00:04:43
Speaker
So I know that if we don't do something about it now, there's a chance that the electric grids in the United States, not just here in Texas, but the electric grids in the States.
00:04:52
Speaker
First of all, they're extremely vulnerable.
00:04:53
Speaker
But, you know, if we don't do something about it now, we're going to have major issues in the next foreseeable future.
00:04:59
Speaker
That's why I started the grid.
00:05:00
Speaker
I started the American Energy Fund.
Coaching for Passive Income and Investment Strategies
00:05:01
Speaker
But yeah, I've got a mastermind.
00:05:03
Speaker
I coach.
00:05:03
Speaker
I don't do any sales anymore.
00:05:05
Speaker
I just do financial coaching and education.
00:05:07
Speaker
So I help solar professionals, door-to-door professionals, real estate professionals as well, create $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 a month in passive income.
00:05:15
Speaker
So it's easy to make money.
00:05:18
Speaker
It's the hard part's keeping it, right?
00:05:19
Speaker
The easy part's
00:05:20
Speaker
The hard part's not making it.
00:05:22
Speaker
The hard part's keeping it and investing it well.
00:05:24
Speaker
And the issue is that there's TikTok experts online and gurus on YouTube.
00:05:30
Speaker
And most of them don't tell you what the billionaires are telling you.
00:05:32
Speaker
So my motto or investment thesis is invest like a billionaire, not a millionaire.
00:05:36
Speaker
So that's kind of what I've been up to, Taylor.
00:05:38
Speaker
That's what I got, bro.
00:05:39
Speaker
Awesome.
00:05:40
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:05:40
Speaker
And hey, by the way, you got your Vegas Golden Knights get up on.
00:05:44
Speaker
So congrats on the win.
00:05:45
Speaker
Appreciate it.
00:05:46
Speaker
Go Golden Knights.
00:05:48
Speaker
Love us or hate us, baby.
00:05:49
Speaker
We're still the winners.
00:05:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:51
Speaker
We've got the sports themes going.
00:05:52
Speaker
If you're looking at the video, I got my little Padres shirt on.
00:05:56
Speaker
So we're in the teams.
00:05:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:58
Speaker
We're going to win the ship here this year as well.
00:06:00
Speaker
The Padres.
00:06:01
Speaker
I hope so.
00:06:02
Speaker
I hope so.
00:06:03
Speaker
I'm not really a baseball fan, but I went to a game.
00:06:05
Speaker
They gave me the shirt and
00:06:07
Speaker
I'm like, hey, that shirt is sick.
00:06:09
Speaker
That shirt is sick, bro.
00:06:11
Speaker
Hawaiian Padres.
00:06:12
Speaker
I like it.
00:06:13
Speaker
Was it on a Sunday or Saturday?
00:06:15
Speaker
It was like on a Wednesday, I think.
00:06:17
Speaker
Really?
00:06:17
Speaker
It was last week.
00:06:18
Speaker
It's funny.
00:06:18
Speaker
That's probably why.
00:06:19
Speaker
Yeah, I went with a bunch of our team and none of them really are Padres fans.
00:06:23
Speaker
So by like the fifth inning, there was only like three of us left at the game.
00:06:28
Speaker
I think the box seats just, you know, eating food and stuff.
00:06:31
Speaker
But it was fun.
00:06:31
Speaker
It's a good time.
00:06:32
Speaker
I have a restaurant.
00:06:33
Speaker
I have an Everbowl in Padres Stadium, actually.
00:06:35
Speaker
Oh, really?
00:06:36
Speaker
Okay.
00:06:37
Speaker
I have to hit it up next time.
00:06:39
Speaker
But anyways, not to turn this into a sports podcast.
00:06:42
Speaker
That's for next show, I guess.
00:06:44
Speaker
But it's cool to hear what you're doing.
00:06:46
Speaker
And what I like about that is most solar reps probably don't even care, especially starting out.
00:06:51
Speaker
Like, I know I didn't know about any of this stuff and I didn't know we were in an energy crisis.
00:06:56
Speaker
So that is good to know.
00:06:57
Speaker
And cool to hear that people are thinking about that for our future generations.
00:07:02
Speaker
But yeah, that reminds me, like, you know, what happened in California in EM3 where they're now requiring batteries to
00:07:07
Speaker
And I don't know, I think that's part of the reason California did that, it seems like to maybe take stress off the grid so much and have people be more self sufficient.
00:07:16
Speaker
So what's your thoughts on that?
00:07:17
Speaker
And do you think what California did?
00:07:19
Speaker
Do you think that's headed to other markets in the near future?
00:07:23
Speaker
Or what do you think about that?
00:07:24
Speaker
Yeah, dude.
00:07:24
Speaker
So yeah, I do agree to a certain extent.
00:07:27
Speaker
So let me explain myself on that.
00:07:29
Speaker
Elon has always said that, you know, and most of my, just to be clear, most of my information comes from Elon.
00:07:35
Speaker
I'd say over, you know, between 50 and 60% of my information comes from Elon.
00:07:39
Speaker
And then I obviously go source it and check it.
00:07:41
Speaker
But most of it comes from Elon.
00:07:42
Speaker
Elon's obviously a really, really big thinker and a big supporter of Elon in most of his life, right?
00:07:46
Speaker
Not all of his life, but most of his life.
00:07:47
Speaker
I agree.
00:07:48
Speaker
He's got some, you know, if, if you believe in a meritocracy where like the best idea wins, Elon's ideas are typically pretty good, right?
00:07:55
Speaker
For the most part.
00:07:56
Speaker
And he hasn't been wrong very, very much as of recently over the last at least 10, 15 years.
00:08:01
Speaker
Elon has always said like one of the reasons he started SolarCity was one of the reasons was rather one of the results or I guess one of the, not the results, but one of the plans right inside of the end goal to have a sustainable energy future, like a green future basically, transition out of fossil fuels into a renewable sustainable energy future is what his goal with SolarCity was and Tesla's now.
00:08:21
Speaker
But
00:08:22
Speaker
His idea was to have micro grids.
00:08:24
Speaker
So one of the things he was talking about with Tesla Energy, with the batteries, Tesla Powerwalls, was to be able to store the power during a crisis, be able to give the power back to the power grid, which is basically these little neighborhoods, if you will, of micro grids.
00:08:38
Speaker
Now, is the energy grid set up to do that?
00:08:40
Speaker
No, the energy grid is set up to do one thing from power company, from power generation to the homes and the businesses, not the other way around.
00:08:48
Speaker
But if we transition to that in the future, or if we can get more micro grids on the grid, on our grid, then yes, absolutely, it's gonna get to that point.
00:08:57
Speaker
And I think that's just one of the smartest things they can do.
00:08:58
Speaker
The hard part is, if we use California, an example, right?
00:09:02
Speaker
It's like, you know, California has its issues in and of itself, right?
00:09:05
Speaker
So they're buying, they're shutting down nuclear, natural gas,
00:09:10
Speaker
and coal power plants left and right, which is what's led to this massive spike in cost.
00:09:14
Speaker
And it's almost like it's a no-brainer to do solar in California.
00:09:19
Speaker
I don't care what utility you're in, sub-utility, whatever you're in, it is an absolute no-brainer.
00:09:24
Speaker
It's almost like you're an idiot if you don't do solar in California.
00:09:26
Speaker
I mean, if you can, if you can own your home.
00:09:28
Speaker
So do I see that happening in the future?
00:09:30
Speaker
Yes.
00:09:31
Speaker
The same thing they're trying.
00:09:32
Speaker
I've been wanting when I worked at SolarCity, which is Tesla now, back in the day, I would watch the Texas Public Utilities Commission's videos and they were talking about like having microgrids, the same concept.
00:09:43
Speaker
And yeah, it seems like that's going to be going where the future is at.
00:09:46
Speaker
Now, what the cool thing is, Taylor, is that that's actually already happening overseas.
00:09:50
Speaker
So in America, we just turn the lights on, expect the lights to turn on.
00:09:54
Speaker
Overseas, which you've been overseas and I've been overseas as
00:09:56
Speaker
well, they don't just have readily available access to electricity like we do here.
00:10:01
Speaker
So it is a privilege to have electricity overseas.
00:10:04
Speaker
They're actually built, instead of running in very expensive lines from power companies and generations and transmission centers, they're actually just creating battery backup and or diesel battery, a diesel powered battery.
00:10:18
Speaker
basically microgrids and little central stations for power for the villages, small cities and towns.
00:10:23
Speaker
That's happening right now.
00:10:24
Speaker
We actually, we're working on a project in Thailand right now where we're doing that.
00:10:27
Speaker
So for them to be able to send the power back in, it's going to cost an extra like 150 grand USD, American dollar to be able to get more electricity for, they've already built this.
00:10:36
Speaker
It was a small village, then it became a town.
00:10:38
Speaker
It's almost to a city now.
00:10:39
Speaker
So they don't have enough power.
00:10:40
Speaker
So they're basically living on some electricity light bulbs, but they don't have AC.
00:10:44
Speaker
They don't have any of these and it's hot.
00:10:46
Speaker
in Thailand.
00:10:46
Speaker
If you've ever been there, it's like the Philippines is sinking hot all the time all day long.
00:10:50
Speaker
It's like, you know, Florida 24-7.
00:10:51
Speaker
But yeah, so the microgrids, they will get there.
00:10:55
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:10:55
Speaker
That's going to be one of the best things that's ever happened to the electricity market.
00:10:59
Speaker
It's kind of like with shoes.
00:11:01
Speaker
I heard this the other day.
00:11:02
Speaker
I watched the movie Air last night with my wife.
00:11:04
Speaker
Shoes.
00:11:05
Speaker
They changed shoes twice before the Jordans came out, is what the guy said.
00:11:09
Speaker
They got a creator of the Jordans or the engineer of the Jordans.
00:11:12
Speaker
He's like, the first one for the last 600 years was they were just the same shoe.
00:11:17
Speaker
And the only distinction, there's been two distinctions now, is the shoes and then the left from the right shoe.
00:11:22
Speaker
So it's kind of funny.
00:11:23
Speaker
It's like the power grid is this old, outdated grid.
00:11:26
Speaker
So yes, Taylor, do I see microgrids coming in?
00:11:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:29
Speaker
The key here is not just...
00:11:31
Speaker
okay, cool, there's gonna be microgrids.
00:11:34
Speaker
For me, it's how do we capitalize on that?
00:11:36
Speaker
How do we make money on that?
00:11:37
Speaker
It's not just by just selling solar.
00:11:39
Speaker
It is for your listeners and for yourself.
00:11:41
Speaker
It is, hey, go make money by putting up little power plants on homes.
00:11:45
Speaker
And then how do you now invest in that on a utility scale as an investor?
00:11:49
Speaker
And absolutely, all of your listeners can absolutely do that.
00:11:51
Speaker
And we're doing that through the American Energy Fund.
00:11:53
Speaker
So yeah, it's a big deal.
00:11:54
Speaker
I love, love, love, love investing in the grid.
00:11:57
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome.
00:11:59
Speaker
Yeah, I've heard from people that know more about it, like overseas, a lot of countries, when people go solar, it's not like where they just add up solar panels.
00:12:07
Speaker
It's like they do the whole home.
00:12:09
Speaker
They add the batteries, they add, I don't know, generators, like a bunch of other stuff as they're doing it.
00:12:15
Speaker
So yeah, I think that's probably where it's headed.
00:12:18
Speaker
And it's cool to hear about that.
00:12:20
Speaker
Um, but no, that's cool.
00:12:21
Speaker
And so I want to switch, shift gears a little bit.
The Road to the Golden Door Podcast and Its Success
00:12:24
Speaker
And, um, I don't know if everyone knows, but probably most people at this point know that you also were on a podcast called road to the golden door, which is super dope.
00:12:32
Speaker
And I was, um, yeah, I got to be on that.
00:12:35
Speaker
And I think it just came out.
00:12:36
Speaker
You just did it just a release yesterday or something last night.
00:12:40
Speaker
Okay.
00:12:40
Speaker
Sweet.
00:12:41
Speaker
It premiered.
00:12:42
Speaker
Okay.
00:12:42
Speaker
Premiered.
00:12:42
Speaker
Sweet.
00:12:43
Speaker
So at the time of this, it's probably been out for a few weeks at this point.
00:12:47
Speaker
So you can go check that out.
00:12:48
Speaker
We'll link to it.
00:12:49
Speaker
But super cool podcast.
00:12:50
Speaker
And it's really cool because you're teaching guys how they can like the mindset they need to get their first golden door and guys that have gotten multiple golden doors.
00:13:01
Speaker
So it's really cool.
00:13:02
Speaker
I think what you're doing is for like the whole door or industry.
00:13:06
Speaker
So
00:13:06
Speaker
I want to shift gears and talk about that a little bit.
00:13:08
Speaker
Why did you decide to start this podcast and focus in on just that one thing, helping guys get a golden door award?
00:13:14
Speaker
Okay.
00:13:15
Speaker
So this is, this is not public yet, but this is a marketing thing.
00:13:18
Speaker
So this is for the listeners.
00:13:20
Speaker
Most people, they start a podcast without an intention.
00:13:24
Speaker
Okay.
00:13:24
Speaker
So my mentor, Cole Hatter always told me, Hey, don't start a podcast unless you can monetize it, unless you can make money on it in some way, fashion or form.
00:13:32
Speaker
And I was like, okay,
00:13:33
Speaker
So I actually started a like just an interviewing podcast, like, you know, whatever, get in front of more people before.
00:13:39
Speaker
I don't remember what it was called.
00:13:40
Speaker
It was something about money, right?
00:13:42
Speaker
It was like some wealth, whatever, right?
00:13:43
Speaker
Wealth, wealthy millennial or something like that, right?
00:13:47
Speaker
It didn't really go anywhere.
00:13:48
Speaker
And I was like, because I didn't have like a passion for it and I didn't know what I was doing.
00:13:52
Speaker
So the real reason why I started it was really two things.
00:13:56
Speaker
One, I needed to get in front of my client avatar.
00:13:58
Speaker
My client avatar is a Golden Door Award winner because Golden Door Award winners make half a million dollars, two million dollars a year, which means they have major problems with time to be able to go and invest and the ability to know what to invest into.
00:14:10
Speaker
And also they have a huge tax...
00:14:12
Speaker
a tax, you know, they have a huge tax liability.
00:14:15
Speaker
You know, they pay a lot of money in taxes.
00:14:17
Speaker
So my fund actually helps target those kind of people.
00:14:20
Speaker
So one, what most people don't understand about podcasts or even marketing in general is they think just starting a podcast, you just start a podcast.
00:14:25
Speaker
Well, why do you start a podcast?
00:14:27
Speaker
I didn't just start the podcast just to make money on it, but this is not charity, right?
00:14:30
Speaker
Like I'm married.
00:14:31
Speaker
I'm going to have kids soon.
00:14:31
Speaker
Like I'm doing this.
00:14:32
Speaker
This is a long, this is there's, I have three podcasts this week.
00:14:35
Speaker
One with one with you here.
00:14:37
Speaker
And then two on, for my show, like I'm not just spending an hour and a half to five hours out of my, out of my week, six hours out of my week when I'm working a hundred hours a week, 96 hours a week, every single week for the last couple of years.
00:14:46
Speaker
You know, that's a lot of time.
00:14:47
Speaker
So the reason why I started it was because one, I wanted to, there was one way to get in front of people that I would never have gotten in front of in the first place, but it's also starving, solving a major problem.
00:14:57
Speaker
A lot of people, okay.
00:14:59
Speaker
Most people are not like you, Taylor, where you got, you have a show and you're actually helping and adding value to the industry.
00:15:04
Speaker
I wanted to lift up on a pedestal a lot of these top guys and girls that are in the industry.
00:15:10
Speaker
So the number two thing why I did it was to lift up the people that are already there.
00:15:14
Speaker
Like they get one picture, one moment on stage, and now they're getting their name, their brand, you know, them to get put out on the internet.
00:15:23
Speaker
So the reason why I targeted Golden Door Award winners solely on the top 1% of the door industry is because I want to promote them.
00:15:31
Speaker
I'm like, yo, this is my podcast, but I'm promoting you, bro.
00:15:34
Speaker
Like recruit on this show.
00:15:35
Speaker
Do whatever you want to do.
00:15:36
Speaker
Promote you, bro.
00:15:36
Speaker
Like why are you the best?
00:15:37
Speaker
Let's put you out there.
00:15:38
Speaker
And then thirdly is because obviously I wanted to add value to the industry as a whole, but I wanted to nurture and add value back to the top dogs because the top dogs, it's very lonely on top.
00:15:52
Speaker
So I built the podcast really not for the entire industry, though the industry gets value from it.
00:15:57
Speaker
I built it so that other Golden Door Award winners can go listen to the other Golden Door Award winners and see how much they're struggling.
00:16:03
Speaker
And they're Ashton Buswell after three months of hitting 100 and 200 deals in three months, thought he wanted to quit the very week after he hit that goal.
00:16:12
Speaker
Was like, I'm done.
00:16:13
Speaker
I want to quit.
00:16:14
Speaker
I don't think I can do this anymore.
00:16:15
Speaker
And luckily, his wife was like, you know, hit him back into shape and got him back on doors.
00:16:19
Speaker
But
00:16:20
Speaker
Like to be able to use road to the golden door as a, as a platform for the weaknesses of the top dogs so that other top dogs, uh, top G's in the industry know that we don't, you're not the only one struggling, right?
00:16:32
Speaker
You're not the only one struggling.
00:16:33
Speaker
You're not the only one with relationship issues.
00:16:35
Speaker
You're not the only one with company issues.
00:16:36
Speaker
You're not the only one with utility issues, bank issues, uh, you know, financial issues, whatever.
00:16:41
Speaker
You're not the one with health issues.
00:16:42
Speaker
You're not the only one.
00:16:43
Speaker
I want you to feel like you have a community and that's what I built it for.
00:16:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:46
Speaker
Boom.
00:16:47
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:16:48
Speaker
I've learned a ton from it too.
00:16:49
Speaker
My gosh, I learned every, I'm like taking three pages of notes from these guys.
00:16:52
Speaker
Yeah, I know.
00:16:53
Speaker
I'm in the same boat.
00:16:54
Speaker
And what's really cool is I think, like you said, it brings it to a level where people can kind of relate more with these guys.
00:17:00
Speaker
I know when I started, I thought like, oh, I could never hit that many deals.
00:17:04
Speaker
I can never be on stage.
00:17:05
Speaker
But as you like listen to them, you hear that, hey, they're just regular dudes.
00:17:09
Speaker
And I think people realize that as I've done a podcast too, is like, that's what I try to talk about in my podcast every week.
00:17:15
Speaker
How I didn't close this deal.
00:17:16
Speaker
I struggled in this way.
00:17:17
Speaker
Didn't spend enough time with my wife here.
00:17:20
Speaker
So like...
00:17:21
Speaker
even though we're golden door award winners, we all have a lot of struggles and, um, yeah, it's really cool what you're doing to relate with them.
00:17:28
Speaker
Um, so how many episodes have you had?
00:17:30
Speaker
How many guys have you interviewed on it up to this point?
00:17:33
Speaker
Uh, we're, we're just over 40 episodes now.
00:17:35
Speaker
Okay.
00:17:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:36
Speaker
We're just over 40 now.
00:17:38
Speaker
And, uh, it's going really well.
00:17:39
Speaker
I can't wait to have some of these guys back on because some of these guys are, you know, five time, four time platinum golden door winners, right?
00:17:45
Speaker
I just had Troy DeBenewitz on and he was like a, he's like
00:17:48
Speaker
a three-time platinum right which is like a like like you hit double golden door three years in a row twice so it just keeps hitting platinum now the guy is just insane you know eric salazar michael o'donnell i mean these guys are just like year after year michael schmelzer justin kanutzen these guys are year after year after year hitting it um you know colby free is a two-time about to be three-time golden door winner i've had him on multiple i've had him on i mean these guys are just like just killer so it's cool man about 40 episodes a little over 40 episodes and it's going well i haven't thrown any money at it really
00:18:15
Speaker
So I want to, I'm about to, I'm actually about to, I'm about to start throwing some money at it and start to grow it a little bit more.
00:18:20
Speaker
But you know, I, uh, I've got some really good feedback, which is cool, man.
00:18:24
Speaker
People are like really liking, I mean, there's like bombs being dropped on this thing.
00:18:27
Speaker
Like it's like, I'm a, I'm becoming a really good interviewer.
00:18:31
Speaker
And, uh, I think that's what the cool thing is.
00:18:32
Speaker
Cause like, I'm not there to talk.
00:18:33
Speaker
It's not a sales podcast.
00:18:34
Speaker
It's not a sales podcast.
00:18:36
Speaker
It's a life podcast.
00:18:37
Speaker
But I'm just interviewing these all-stars like yourself.
00:18:40
Speaker
You dropped bombs.
00:18:41
Speaker
I was like, I had two and a half pages of notes on your podcast alone.
00:18:45
Speaker
Thank you.
00:18:45
Speaker
Thank you.
00:18:46
Speaker
That was a good time.
00:18:47
Speaker
And no, you're doing great work with it.
00:18:48
Speaker
I need to go catch up on all episodes, but I've listened a ton.
00:18:52
Speaker
There's a ton of value there.
00:18:53
Speaker
So we appreciate what you're doing with that.
00:18:54
Speaker
And what's cool is, Mikey, you're a golden.
00:18:57
Speaker
I think 2019, didn't we both step on the stage same year?
00:19:01
Speaker
Not in 2019.
00:19:02
Speaker
I hit it before Golden Door was a golden door in Dallas, Texas in 2016.
00:19:06
Speaker
But I also technically hit it in 2020, which I didn't know.
00:19:10
Speaker
And I don't have the award from 2020, but I did hit it in 2020 as well.
00:19:14
Speaker
Okay.
00:19:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:15
Speaker
So that's what's really cool.
00:19:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:17
Speaker
Yeah, two times.
00:19:19
Speaker
So you're not only one yourself, but you're interviewing the top guys who are in.
00:19:23
Speaker
And like you said, it's cool because like I got my golden door award, but sometimes interviewing some of these guys that are like multiple platinum hitting like two, three golden doors every year.
00:19:32
Speaker
It's like, man, I got a long ways to go.
00:19:35
Speaker
I thought I was good, but these guys just on another level.
00:19:38
Speaker
So yeah, it's cool to kind of expand the vision and hear the possibilities, see what guys are doing at some of these numbers.
00:19:46
Speaker
But yeah, speaking of that, I want to dive in a little bit.
00:19:48
Speaker
Like, what do you see as you've done these interviews and only done people who've hit these golden door awards?
00:19:54
Speaker
Do you have any like common themes for people who are trying to hit their first golden door?
00:19:59
Speaker
What are some common themes you see across all the success these guys are having that you could share with our listeners?
00:20:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:06
Speaker
Sure.
00:20:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:06
Speaker
So for the listeners that are trying to hit it, there's like I can do it in sections.
00:20:10
Speaker
Right.
00:20:10
Speaker
So the guys that are trying to hit guys and girls that are trying to hit it.
00:20:12
Speaker
The main things that I see is that the Golden Door Award winner, he or she first believed that they could hit it.
00:20:21
Speaker
The only like I think it was like one I think was like Austin Stoker, like didn't even know it was a thing.
00:20:26
Speaker
There was like maybe one or two guys that were like, I didn't even know it was like a thing.
00:20:30
Speaker
And then I was told it was a thing.
00:20:32
Speaker
I think there's one other guy.
00:20:34
Speaker
So there's a couple of things.
00:20:35
Speaker
So one, they believe that they were going to hit it.
00:20:37
Speaker
They set the goal.
00:20:38
Speaker
I'm going to go hit a golden door.
00:20:39
Speaker
So it's almost like they were at door to door con the previous year.
00:20:41
Speaker
And they're like, I want to be on stage.
00:20:43
Speaker
And they went and got it right.
00:20:44
Speaker
That was that.
00:20:44
Speaker
So they had an actual end goal.
00:20:45
Speaker
So there was at least clarity on what they wanted to.
00:20:49
Speaker
I would say that they, one of the main things is that we've had, I've seen rookies hit it first year in door to door ever.
00:20:55
Speaker
And we've obviously seen veterans hit it.
00:20:56
Speaker
So if you're a rookie, you can still hit it, especially now this year, you can hit it as a setter this year.
00:21:01
Speaker
So I'm excited to see the amount of setters that hit 200 deals this year.
00:21:04
Speaker
That's I'm like really excited to see that because there's a lot of there's a lot of recognition that's not being given out.
00:21:10
Speaker
So I'm really glad Sam did that.
00:21:12
Speaker
So rookies can hit it.
00:21:13
Speaker
And I've seen rookies hit it.
00:21:15
Speaker
I mean, they just guys just just hit it.
00:21:17
Speaker
They just there's not like, oh, I'm not good at it yet.
00:21:20
Speaker
Rookies have had it and veterans also hit it.
00:21:22
Speaker
I would say a couple of the main things that if you're trying to hit it for the first year this year is these guys really had a, not a, not a bulletproof routine, but they had some sort of a structure plan routine that there are like their standards were I'm on doors at 9am.
00:21:40
Speaker
I'm,
00:21:40
Speaker
you know, at the gym at 7 a.m.
00:21:42
Speaker
I'm in bed by midnight.
00:21:43
Speaker
Like they had some sort of like, it wasn't a routine.
00:21:46
Speaker
So that's, that's the problem.
00:21:47
Speaker
I have a routine Taylor actually is like routines have to change a lot.
00:21:50
Speaker
Cause like, if like I'm on doors at 9 a.m.
00:21:51
Speaker
Well, what if you have a 9 a.m.
00:21:52
Speaker
appointment?
00:21:53
Speaker
You're not on doors.
00:21:53
Speaker
And then you're like, ah, well now my week's screwed up.
00:21:55
Speaker
No, stop, chill.
00:21:56
Speaker
They just had a standard that they were, they treated themselves as if they were almost W2 employees.
00:22:01
Speaker
They were working from nine, like that's just what it was, or nine to seven, whatever, right?
00:22:05
Speaker
Like some guys are like, I will be home with my wife at 5 a.m.
00:22:08
Speaker
for dinner every day.
00:22:09
Speaker
I haven't seen one guy that hit golden door that's ever done that.
00:22:12
Speaker
Not one.
00:22:13
Speaker
If for the guys that were married, right, they pre overcame that issue of, hey, I, you know, I agree with my wife that I'm gonna be home at five o'clock every single day.
00:22:22
Speaker
Well, brother, you don't have 50 grand a month coming in every single month.
00:22:25
Speaker
you're not going to be able to be with home with your wife at 5.00 AM.
00:22:27
Speaker
You know what you need to do is you need to structure a quality time with your wife when you're not at work and actually get your wife on board to support you to do that so that you guys can go eventually hit your goals.
00:22:36
Speaker
So they also had a plan with their wives.
00:22:38
Speaker
They had to get their wife or their significant other.
00:22:40
Speaker
If you have, if you don't have a wife or a husband at that time, right?
00:22:43
Speaker
Like good, like go and work as hard as you possibly can.
00:22:46
Speaker
But if you do have a wife or a lot of the guys that do have wives and kids, they structured out the 16 hour workday Sunday through Sunday.
00:22:56
Speaker
There was some sort of a clarity on where you're going to spend time with your kids, where it's playing time with your wife, playing time with your kids throughout their week.
00:23:05
Speaker
And they stuck to that.
00:23:06
Speaker
So a lot of the guys, they took all of Sunday and they worked with their family all of Sunday.
00:23:11
Speaker
And that was their thing.
00:23:12
Speaker
And, you know, it's like, then the wife has to get on board with that.
00:23:14
Speaker
And you got to sell your wife on being on board during that year.
00:23:17
Speaker
How does Troy DeBennowitz, a three-time platinum golden door guy, how does he have six kids and a wife?
00:23:22
Speaker
Come on, bro.
00:23:22
Speaker
Like, we like,
00:23:23
Speaker
We act like, oh, I have a wife.
00:23:24
Speaker
I can't.
00:23:25
Speaker
It's like, no, you can.
00:23:25
Speaker
You can.
00:23:27
Speaker
Obviously, there are different situations.
00:23:29
Speaker
I would say definitely the first kid is definitely a lot harder than the sixth kid or fifth kid, right?
00:23:35
Speaker
So there's a situation there.
00:23:37
Speaker
I know that.
00:23:38
Speaker
Yeah, anyways.
00:23:39
Speaker
The other, yeah.
00:23:41
Speaker
Having a little bit of clarity.
00:23:44
Speaker
I think the hard part is what the guys that have not hit it yet, they hit 50, 60 deals a year.
00:23:48
Speaker
Um, why they're not hitting a hundred and 130 or a hundred self trends or 200 deals, you know, the point system, that's a point system now, but, um, why they're not hitting it is because they're going too fast.
00:23:58
Speaker
Taylor, they're not slowing down to think.
00:24:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:02
Speaker
Um, it just, it's a, it's just this, uh, the book, really good book.
00:24:05
Speaker
If you haven't ever read it, it's a, it's a Christian book.
00:24:08
Speaker
Um,
00:24:08
Speaker
called A Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.
00:24:10
Speaker
It is one of the best books to like, hey buddy, you gotta slow down.
00:24:15
Speaker
Slow down, prepare for war, then go into war.
00:24:18
Speaker
Then when you come back, prepare again, plan, have a strategy, then go into war.
00:24:22
Speaker
We just live in this ongoing war, which is why they call it the solar coaster, that ends up
00:24:28
Speaker
Making your brain after three to six months want to go to the easy route.
00:24:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:32
Speaker
I would say that's the main thing.
00:24:33
Speaker
I love that.
00:24:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's huge.
00:24:34
Speaker
That's cool.
00:24:35
Speaker
And I know a lot of guys have come and talked.
00:24:37
Speaker
Ashton, he's a good guy that talks about kind of like he's got lots of kids.
00:24:41
Speaker
The wife talks about that.
00:24:42
Speaker
So that's something I thought about a lot is I'm having kids and kind of in that same stage.
00:24:47
Speaker
But another thing too, I would say, and you probably agree with this, is I've seen top producers as I've interviewed them.
00:24:52
Speaker
It's like you're talking about the routine.
00:24:54
Speaker
We're all going to get off that routine.
00:24:56
Speaker
We're all going to have days where we got out late or where like the point we're in the appointment messed up our knocking.
00:25:02
Speaker
And so I've seen in top producers and I've also noticed in myself that these top guys, when they get off that routine, they don't beat themselves up and take like the whole day off or whatever.
00:25:11
Speaker
take like another couple hours off.
00:25:13
Speaker
Because I think a lot of lower producers, they get in this all or nothing mindset where it's like, oh, I didn't get on the doors by 10 a.m.
00:25:20
Speaker
So now this whole day is shot.
00:25:22
Speaker
We'll just go to the movies and start over tomorrow.
00:25:25
Speaker
It's like, no, you still got four hours right now to go out and knock.
00:25:28
Speaker
You can still go make this day, make something this day and not just scrap the whole thing.
00:25:32
Speaker
So I think that's another big thing I've seen.
00:25:34
Speaker
It's not all or nothing.
00:25:35
Speaker
It's you, you go with the punches and
00:25:38
Speaker
Sometimes things aren't going to go your way.
00:25:40
Speaker
Maybe something came up in the morning with kids, whatever, but you're going out still and you're, um, you know, making what you can of the time you do have.
00:25:48
Speaker
So I think that's the main thing.
00:25:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:50
Speaker
Like how do you deal with adversity?
00:25:52
Speaker
I don't know if I like, if there's anything, any attribute that I saw the consistent consistency throughout all of them is every single one of them had a really good way at dealing with adversity.
00:26:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:03
Speaker
They like anticipated bad weather happening.
00:26:06
Speaker
And what happens in Florida when a hurricane comes and you did not anticipate.
00:26:11
Speaker
And like, we don't think about that as entrepreneurs.
00:26:14
Speaker
I was just talking with one of my, one of my assistants second ago.
00:26:16
Speaker
I was like, I think when people like, in other words, they're just, they're just not anticipating.
00:26:20
Speaker
I don't want to get into that story as it'll take five minutes, but,
00:26:23
Speaker
Basically, people are not anticipating.
00:26:24
Speaker
It's almost like, hey, we told you that there was a war coming or there was a storm coming, financial turmoil is coming, prepare, prepare, prepare.
00:26:33
Speaker
And you're starting to see all these millionaires and saying, man, I lost 300 million of my net worth.
00:26:37
Speaker
You're like, did you not see the signs?
00:26:42
Speaker
Like even them, like even these guys are, are not, you know, they're not susceptible or whatever that they still can get hit by these financial downturns, which is happening right now.
00:26:50
Speaker
And it's going to happen in the future.
00:26:52
Speaker
Like we're just not preparing.
00:26:53
Speaker
It's like, dude, you, you, it's a good thing for us.
00:26:55
Speaker
We have, I mean, solar guys, we have a very stable, uh, people are going to be buying power.
00:26:59
Speaker
They will, they will miss their mortgage before they miss their power bill.
00:27:02
Speaker
It's really hard.
00:27:03
Speaker
I was just talking to somebody about this the other day.
00:27:05
Speaker
It's really hard to lie about you didn't pay the power bill, but it's easy to hide that you didn't pay your mortgage.
00:27:12
Speaker
You can't lie about not paying your power bill.
00:27:13
Speaker
They turned their power off.
00:27:15
Speaker
With your mortgage, you can lie about that.
00:27:17
Speaker
You can hide that.
00:27:18
Speaker
I actually missed a mortgage three times years ago.
00:27:21
Speaker
People ask me like, Mikey, what keeps you motivated?
00:27:24
Speaker
I never want to miss three mortgages ever again.
00:27:28
Speaker
Well, it's funny here in California, at least San Diego, people can miss power.
00:27:32
Speaker
Since COVID, they put like a policy in place where like they can miss power bills and they don't shut the power off.
00:27:38
Speaker
That's actually an objection.
00:27:39
Speaker
Strangely enough, that's an objection I've had to overcome in solar out here.
00:27:43
Speaker
because they're like, well, SDG&E, they let me miss my power bill.
00:27:46
Speaker
So with solar, can I just skip payments a few times if I want to?
00:27:50
Speaker
And I'm like, no, not really.
00:27:53
Speaker
So that's something I've had to kind of overcome.
00:27:55
Speaker
I'm like, man, they're just letting some people skip power bills without really a payment or a penalty.
00:28:00
Speaker
But I don't know.
00:28:01
Speaker
We'll see.
00:28:02
Speaker
Hopefully they change that.
00:28:03
Speaker
I don't get it very often.
00:28:04
Speaker
When you're the monopoly, you can do whatever you want, I guess.
00:28:07
Speaker
Yeah, pretty funny.
00:28:09
Speaker
Don't worry.
00:28:10
Speaker
We'll just put it on rears.
00:28:11
Speaker
We'll put it on the back end.
00:28:12
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:28:14
Speaker
I know, it's crazy.
00:28:15
Speaker
But that's good.
00:28:17
Speaker
Good things.
00:28:18
Speaker
And yeah, I love what you're doing again with the podcast, Mikey.
00:28:21
Speaker
And so something I wanted to get into just touch on, I know we talked about this in the podcast, me and you did together as well.
00:28:27
Speaker
But I know another common thing that we talked about in our podcast is a lot of these guys have systems in place.
00:28:33
Speaker
And I know you're big on like virtual assistants, systems in your own business.
00:28:38
Speaker
And that's something I talk about as well.
00:28:40
Speaker
So from you that's had assistants, community
00:28:42
Speaker
Can you talk about that?
00:28:43
Speaker
Like how maybe people could apply that and I don't know, possibly get like VAs, like what systems you have in your business that you'd maybe recommend for other people trying to like build a brand or maybe things that could help as they're trying to kind of offload things, offload tasks.
00:28:58
Speaker
Yeah, sure.
00:28:59
Speaker
So this podcast is brought to you by google.com.
00:29:03
Speaker
You should use Excel or Google Sheets.
00:29:06
Speaker
The first thing you need to do is write out what details happen in every job to move the job from sale to PTO.
00:29:15
Speaker
If you don't have that written out, like what's the first thing?
00:29:19
Speaker
Sales.
00:29:20
Speaker
Sign docs.
00:29:20
Speaker
Okay, what's the second thing?
00:29:22
Speaker
Did I turn the docs in?
00:29:23
Speaker
What's the fourth thing?
00:29:24
Speaker
Cool.
00:29:24
Speaker
Or the third thing, rather, did we schedule a site survey?
00:29:26
Speaker
The fourth thing, the site survey happened.
00:29:29
Speaker
Like people are not tracking that, the crucial things.
00:29:32
Speaker
Like I signed it.
00:29:34
Speaker
Did I turn it in?
00:29:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:36
Speaker
Site survey scheduled.
00:29:37
Speaker
Did it happen?
00:29:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:39
Speaker
You know, so it's like first thing I would say is the only way that a Golden Door Award winner goes from a single Golden Door to a double Golden Door or triple Golden Door Award winner is is having a system in place, which I will gladly talk about with virtual assistants.
00:29:55
Speaker
And it doesn't necessarily have to be virtual assistants.
00:29:57
Speaker
Michael Donald, Troy Benowitz, those guys, Val, those guys at Sun Solar, they don't have virtual assistants.
00:30:03
Speaker
They've got American highly paid people in person.
00:30:07
Speaker
I typically will use Australian, Costa Rican, Mexican, and then Filipino virtual assistants or executive assistants.
00:30:15
Speaker
I don't, I don't know.
00:30:16
Speaker
Like the whole like idea that the two, three, $4 virtual assistants is, it's as a project manager, you pay for what you get.
00:30:24
Speaker
My top, my top, my top girl right now makes almost $20 an hour.
00:30:29
Speaker
And if you look at her benefits and everything she gets, she gets almost 30 bucks an hour.
00:30:33
Speaker
And that, but that's my right hand.
00:30:35
Speaker
That is like, you know, running all the businesses.
00:30:38
Speaker
If I were to, you know,
00:30:39
Speaker
miss a meeting, she could go in there and negotiate, do the exact same things I can do.
00:30:42
Speaker
But the hard part, the easy part is everyone knows.
00:30:45
Speaker
So when they're going to listen to this, they're like, okay, I'm going to go get a virtual assistant.
00:30:48
Speaker
I'm going to go on Upwork, Fiverr, find virtual assistant, project manager.
00:30:51
Speaker
Perfect.
00:30:52
Speaker
That's the easy part.
00:30:54
Speaker
It's not, it's, I actually wrote an article on entrepreneur about this, entrepreneur.com about this.
00:30:58
Speaker
You can't,
00:30:58
Speaker
You can't just think that you're going to hire a team of virtual assistants or assistants, whatever, of people.
00:31:04
Speaker
And then without you having a standard operating procedure, they're just going to be able to do it.
00:31:09
Speaker
Like, do you understand how complicated it is to do solar?
00:31:11
Speaker
Like, I know you get it, but like taking somebody that's never even done like the sun run training, like they've never, they don't even know what PTO even means.
00:31:19
Speaker
Right.
00:31:20
Speaker
If you don't have a system in place of tracking start to finish these jobs and knowing how to solve the problems, whatever, it's going to be very hard to hire people and actually let them do it.
00:31:30
Speaker
You're going to be like, they're going to be frustrated.
00:31:32
Speaker
I'm paying this person $10 an hour, 15 bucks an hour, eight bucks an hour, whatever.
00:31:34
Speaker
You know, and they're not doing it.
00:31:36
Speaker
Well, you didn't teach them.
00:31:37
Speaker
And the hard part about hiring virtual assistants is it takes like three to six months to get them up and running, especially if you don't have standard operating procedures, especially if you don't have your own CRM built out.
00:31:46
Speaker
For sure.
00:31:46
Speaker
But you can just use Google Sheets and that works very well at the start.
00:31:53
Speaker
You can ask more direct questions about it.
00:31:55
Speaker
What do you think?
00:31:56
Speaker
Yeah, that's good.
00:31:57
Speaker
Well, I was just going to say with that, like, I wish I would have done that, whether you have assistance or not.
00:32:01
Speaker
I think this is something every solar rep, every person in solar should be tracking regardless, because I just think back, I think this was like a year and a half, two years ago, I didn't have any systems in place for this stuff.
00:32:12
Speaker
And I remember a deal, it was a pretty big system, like 10 kilowatt was going to make like 16, 17 grand on it.
00:32:17
Speaker
And, um,
00:32:20
Speaker
Three months go by, I'm like, man, this deal is taking a while.
00:32:23
Speaker
And I make a call to the installer and they're like, oh, we didn't even have a completed site survey yet for this.
00:32:29
Speaker
After three months, they didn't have that site survey done.
00:32:33
Speaker
And obviously that's like, you know, installation company issues too, but...
00:32:37
Speaker
Like, man, if I would have been tracking this and if I would have been like going through all my accounts, then I could have saved it because sure enough, I call the customer.
00:32:44
Speaker
I'm like, hey, we have to send someone out to do a site survey canceled on the spot.
00:32:49
Speaker
He's like, OK, it's ridiculous.
00:32:51
Speaker
Cancel it.
00:32:51
Speaker
And not much I can say at that point.
00:32:53
Speaker
I'm like, yeah, I agree.
00:32:54
Speaker
It is ridiculous.
00:32:56
Speaker
So I lost out on like 17 grand right there just because I didn't have a system in place.
00:33:00
Speaker
And yeah, I didn't have a CRM, didn't have a way to track this stuff.
00:33:03
Speaker
I think that's huge whether you're going to get an assistant or not.
00:33:06
Speaker
Like you track it yourself, throw it on a Google Doc at least, bare minimum.
00:33:10
Speaker
And hopefully you don't have like bad installation partners that are going to like keep track of all this stuff.
00:33:15
Speaker
But whether you do or whether you don't, I think it's important for you to be tracking it.
00:33:19
Speaker
But yeah, so like someone starting out, if someone were to hire their first like assistant in solar, do you think that'd be the most important thing you'd say is just someone to kind of like manage your projects?
Role of Virtual Assistants in Solar Sales
00:33:29
Speaker
Or is there anything else you would get an assistant for like speaking to solar directly?
00:33:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:34
Speaker
I think anybody that intends on hitting a golden door needs a virtual assistant.
00:33:39
Speaker
Anybody that intends on being in any sales position, whether you're a manager, setter, or a closer, I think should have a virtual assistant.
00:33:48
Speaker
Now, can you team up with a couple of guys and get one and split the cost?
00:33:52
Speaker
Yes.
00:33:53
Speaker
But anybody that's hitting 30 to a hundred deals a year needs a virtual assistant because here's the thing.
00:34:00
Speaker
Why?
00:34:00
Speaker
This is like the rich dad, poor dad mindset.
00:34:03
Speaker
If my time is worth $627 an hour, why am I reaching out to my homeowner to give them an update?
00:34:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:12
Speaker
Why am I, you know, why am I following up with my own, my own customers?
00:34:16
Speaker
Why am I, why am I mowing my, why am I mowing my own lawn?
00:34:19
Speaker
Now this is going to sound really, you know, haughty or whatever, but as a business professional, as an, as an owner, I have to understand that even though I love washing my own car and I actually like mowing lawns and watering my, my trees and garden, I can't do that anymore.
00:34:33
Speaker
I get paid $627 when I did solar, $627 an hour is what I made.
00:34:39
Speaker
So when I was out working eight hours a day, I was making $627 an hour.
00:34:42
Speaker
So if I'm back home and I have to go pick up my dog poop, dude, I'm just at the point where I wasn't even, it's gotta sound bad, but I wasn't even walking my own dogs.
00:34:51
Speaker
I had an assistant that would walk my dogs because it was important to me, first of all, that my dogs got walked.
00:34:56
Speaker
But second off, they need to be walked for like an hour or two hours, not just 20 minutes.
00:35:00
Speaker
So yes, should anybody?
00:35:03
Speaker
Yes.
00:35:04
Speaker
Let's just say, for instance, let me give an exact example.
00:35:06
Speaker
Let's say you're a manager, you're an assistant manager.
00:35:09
Speaker
you have maybe another system manager or a manager with you, you should absolutely have your own virtual assistant.
00:35:15
Speaker
If you're doing individually 80 to 100 deals, absolutely.
00:35:19
Speaker
Why are you turning in your own deals?
00:35:22
Speaker
Why are you doing proposal creation and pipeline management
00:35:26
Speaker
And that doesn't make any money.
00:35:28
Speaker
I know it leads to money.
00:35:30
Speaker
I get it's directly connected, but why are you doing pipeline and proposal management when your assistant can do it?
00:35:37
Speaker
Trust me, Taylor, if you can do it, you're, you can teach your assistant how to do it.
00:35:40
Speaker
There's two apps you need to use loom and tango and tango tango.
00:35:45
Speaker
And then, and then just a Google doc.
00:35:46
Speaker
Okay.
00:35:47
Speaker
Step-by-step.
00:35:48
Speaker
I call it the operation buyer time back.
00:35:49
Speaker
Okay.
00:35:51
Speaker
method.
00:35:52
Speaker
Have a Google doc that has how to create a solo proposal.
00:35:57
Speaker
And then through Tango, it's a, it's a Chrome plugin on your computer, on your iPad, you go through the steps and then you adjust the, like you clean it up.
00:36:07
Speaker
You have to clean up a little bit because it's not exactly perfect.
00:36:10
Speaker
then it'll show you step by step how to walk you through how to create the proposal.
00:36:14
Speaker
And then you loom the whole thing, meaning it's screen recording the whole thing and you're talking back to it.
00:36:19
Speaker
So now you have, hey, Mr. Assistant, Mrs. Assistant, I'm going to show you how to create a solo proposal.
00:36:23
Speaker
I'm going to show you how to change the design in Sunrun.
00:36:26
Speaker
I'm going to show you how to change the design in SunPower.
00:36:28
Speaker
I'm going to show you how to do whatever, Taylor, all of it.
00:36:33
Speaker
Why are you doing any of these things yourself?
00:36:35
Speaker
But how to do that is using Tango, which is AI, and using Loom, which in theory is AI.
00:36:41
Speaker
Yeah, I love it.
00:36:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's so true.
00:36:43
Speaker
It's like I look back on my beginning years, especially if you think about like most of these proposal softwares have gotten a lot easier and quicker to use.
00:36:52
Speaker
So that makes it nice.
00:36:53
Speaker
But especially like back in the first couple of years I was in solar, it literally took like probably 20, 30 years.
00:36:59
Speaker
Yeah, like 20, 30 minutes.
00:37:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:03
Speaker
So like all the all those hours added up just making proposals and then you get an appointment.
00:37:07
Speaker
It's a no show.
00:37:08
Speaker
They weren't there and you spent 30 minutes making the proposal.
00:37:11
Speaker
It's like freak could have went out and got a couple couple more leads doing that.
00:37:15
Speaker
Yeah, all these things now, it's like so much time that it amounts to and that you're literally buying back, paying someone five, 10 bucks an hour to help with these things.
00:37:24
Speaker
So yeah, I think we talk all day.
00:37:26
Speaker
And I know we talked a lot about that in our podcast.
00:37:29
Speaker
We did as well, but...
00:37:30
Speaker
I 100% agree.
00:37:31
Speaker
It's something that most guys, most door-to-door people don't think about and huge opportunity guys are missing out on there.
00:37:39
Speaker
But yeah, and then like just to wrap up with that thought though, like for you and your business, what are all the things that you have?
00:37:46
Speaker
I know you mentioned this, some of them, some of them already, but...
00:37:49
Speaker
Is there anything else that you have your VA's assistants do that save you a bunch of time?
00:37:54
Speaker
Yeah, so I built out a software for, I built out a software actually for Solar People that does the, it's an automated customer experience software.
00:38:03
Speaker
So we build out workflows, we built out workflows
00:38:06
Speaker
be able to talk with your homeowner every time it moves stages from site survey, design, permitting, install, so on and so forth.
00:38:11
Speaker
And then it contacts the customer 18 times after install.
00:38:14
Speaker
So it keeps in contact with them.
00:38:15
Speaker
So it automates customer experience from sale to PTO.
00:38:18
Speaker
And then it's a referral machine after that.
00:38:20
Speaker
It automatically sends handwritten thank you cards to the homeowners, sends out flyers, things like that.
00:38:24
Speaker
Happy Veterans Day.
00:38:25
Speaker
So a bunch of them got...
00:38:26
Speaker
Happy Father's Day.
00:38:27
Speaker
All the fathers got Happy Father's Day headwritten cards from Taylor Armstrong to their home.
00:38:32
Speaker
It was really, so that's, you want to stay in front of your customers, you want to get referrals.
00:38:35
Speaker
That's how to do that.
00:38:36
Speaker
So that, so they built, my assistants build those things out as well as in my own personal business.
00:38:41
Speaker
So my two main businesses is, you know, the Mikey Lucas brand, which gets a lot of time and then the American Energy Fund.
00:38:49
Speaker
So inside of those, my assistants are continuing to make sure like, hey, we have to, we have to put out a, you know, we have to put out four
00:38:56
Speaker
four articles a week, Entrepreneur, Inc.
00:38:58
Speaker
Magazine, LinkedIn, and Medium or whatever, Reddit.
00:39:00
Speaker
So it's like, hey, we've got all these topics.
00:39:03
Speaker
They're going to go through this podcast and see something that I talked about here.
00:39:05
Speaker
They're going to transcribe it using Otter.
00:39:08
Speaker
And then Otter, they're going to throw that in the chat, and they're going to have chat, find the key points that I talked about in here.
00:39:14
Speaker
And then they're probably going to get a VA article out of this.
00:39:18
Speaker
I guarantee you, watch.
00:39:19
Speaker
Um, they go and find that to be able to put out on the internet.
00:39:22
Speaker
So whenever somebody looks up, you know, whatever, right.
00:39:24
Speaker
How do I become more efficient, effective and productive, right.
00:39:27
Speaker
Or how do I maximize my solar leads, whatever.
00:39:30
Speaker
Like Mike Lucas has an article on entrepreneur or on ink or on LinkedIn about it.
00:39:33
Speaker
So now my, my personal brand is continuing to grow.
00:39:36
Speaker
That's all my VAs, my, my, my assistants.
00:39:39
Speaker
I don't call them VA as a, sometimes a negative connotation.
00:39:41
Speaker
I don't even like saying VA, but, um, my assistants, my team members, um,
00:39:46
Speaker
I treat them like humans because they are humans.
00:39:47
Speaker
They have families, right?
00:39:49
Speaker
I buy their kids' Christmas presents on Christmas.
00:39:51
Speaker
It's cool.
00:39:52
Speaker
Nice.
00:39:52
Speaker
But yeah, they're pushing the Mikey Lucas branding and then pushing the American Indian Fund branding.
00:39:57
Speaker
So I just hired a girl last week.
00:40:01
Speaker
because now we've got all the social media stuff to you.
00:40:03
Speaker
I don't post on my social media.
00:40:05
Speaker
I am in the DMs, but I don't post on social media.
00:40:08
Speaker
There's two people that are in charge of posting on my social media and making sure that the messages and things like that.
00:40:14
Speaker
So a lot of times if it's like a lead that wants to get the mastermind or whatever, like they know how to push that through.
00:40:19
Speaker
But if it's like a normal conversation, like Mikey, what about taxes?
00:40:21
Speaker
What about investing?
00:40:22
Speaker
Whatever.
00:40:23
Speaker
I'm the one doing all of that.
00:40:24
Speaker
And they will screenshot that, send that to me or put it in a section called starred in our software.
00:40:30
Speaker
And I'll have to go through and make sure that I answer back to those, those messages.
00:40:35
Speaker
So they help me organize Taylor.
00:40:37
Speaker
You probably do too.
00:40:38
Speaker
Hundreds of messages a week.
00:40:39
Speaker
I mean, I'm talking hundreds, bro.
00:40:41
Speaker
Hundreds can't, I can't keep up to all of them, but they'll filter out the ones that are like, Hey, like this is pretty urgent.
00:40:46
Speaker
This guy wants help.
00:40:47
Speaker
Do you want me to put them on your calendar or whatever?
00:40:48
Speaker
So,
00:40:49
Speaker
They help manage my calendar.
00:40:50
Speaker
They help manage my travel.
00:40:51
Speaker
They help manage, dude, like my assistant books my haircuts.
00:40:54
Speaker
Like I get haircut.
00:40:55
Speaker
Like she's, she, they, they know like, you know, what, where is Mikey humming at the best?
00:41:00
Speaker
Like, like, like it's almost like tuning a race car.
00:41:02
Speaker
Where's Mikey humming at, you know, at 6,000, 5,000 RPM.
00:41:05
Speaker
Where's he humming at?
00:41:06
Speaker
You know,
00:41:08
Speaker
Right.
00:41:08
Speaker
Because a lot of solar guys are, you know, moving around and they're like, they don't organize.
00:41:12
Speaker
So my assistants helped me with all of my life, too.
00:41:16
Speaker
You know, Mikey, you know, looks like, you know, there's a deal at the movie theater that you guys love to go to.
00:41:20
Speaker
Why don't you take Ryan on a date?
00:41:21
Speaker
Like, dude, they just look out for things like that for me.
00:41:23
Speaker
And I've trained them to look for things like that for me, too.
00:41:26
Speaker
Nice.
00:41:26
Speaker
That's so cool.
00:41:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:27
Speaker
And I think that's every guy's dream.
00:41:29
Speaker
I also do recruiting, too.
00:41:31
Speaker
So you can have your people out.
00:41:33
Speaker
I've helped hire virtual assistants.
00:41:34
Speaker
Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off there, but I forgot about that.
00:41:37
Speaker
Let me talk about your listeners.
00:41:39
Speaker
You can have your virtual assistants, your assistants in your Instagram, posting on social media for you, going to Canva, finding a cool quote that you like from Elon Musk or from you, yourself, putting that in Canva and posting it on the internet and come up with like 30 of those a month, just posting pictures.
00:41:55
Speaker
You don't have to do videos or whatever.
00:41:57
Speaker
Everyone thinks like, I got to go find all these.
00:41:58
Speaker
I got to pay 10 grand a month for a videographer.
00:42:01
Speaker
No, you don't.
00:42:02
Speaker
Just take your camera, go outside and say, I'm knocking on doors today.
00:42:05
Speaker
Follow for more, whatever, right?
00:42:07
Speaker
And then your virtual assistant can be reaching out to people, liking, commenting, sharing their stuff.
00:42:10
Speaker
And then bottoming, bada boom, now you're building your recruiting file.
00:42:14
Speaker
Yeah, that's huge.
00:42:16
Speaker
Yeah, and I love it.
00:42:17
Speaker
That's something I'm trying to build out because I've seen you have it super dialed.
00:42:20
Speaker
And I'm like, man, Mike, he's like all over the place on social media.
00:42:24
Speaker
How is he doing this?
00:42:25
Speaker
I'm like, okay, he's probably not doing it all.
00:42:27
Speaker
He's got a team.
00:42:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:30
Speaker
I listened to Gary Vee, right?
00:42:31
Speaker
Gary Vee said, if you don't have a personal brand, which you've obviously been doing and doing great at you, so you know, you might think you're behind me, but you're only like a couple posts a month behind me.
00:42:39
Speaker
You're not very far behind me.
00:42:40
Speaker
You're right there.
00:42:42
Speaker
But Gary Vee says, dude, if you don't have a social media, a brand like the Taylor Armstrong brand, the Solarpreneur brand, if you don't have that, you're going to be irrelevant in a few years.
00:42:50
Speaker
So you've already been building yours.
00:42:51
Speaker
You're already 10 steps ahead of everybody else, which is great.
00:42:54
Speaker
But the other side of it is,
00:42:55
Speaker
you know, you gotta just, it's just posting more stuff.
00:42:58
Speaker
So finding, you know, finding people, which you've obviously are starting to post on YouTube now.
00:43:02
Speaker
So if you guys aren't listening to Solarpreneur on, on, on YouTube, make sure that you find the link below and subscribe to the YouTube channel as well, because there's a lot of really good nuggets there too.
00:43:11
Speaker
Taylor puts out that he doesn't put out on his regular podcast apps.
00:43:14
Speaker
YouTube is cool too, but you just gotta be posting slightly more.
00:43:18
Speaker
And then Alex Tramosi says, you know, if you're posting 30 times a month, you need to be posting 80 times a week.
00:43:22
Speaker
So I post 80 times a week now.
00:43:24
Speaker
I just, I'm not the smart one.
00:43:25
Speaker
I just, again, invest like a billionaire, not like a millionaire post on social media, like a billionaire, not like a millionaire.
00:43:31
Speaker
So I'm just doing a quote unquote 10 X or what everyone else is doing.
00:43:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:35
Speaker
That's money.
00:43:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:37
Speaker
If you need more virtual assistants for your social media, let me know.
00:43:40
Speaker
I just interviewed like four of them.
00:43:41
Speaker
I had one.
00:43:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:42
Speaker
Well, no, I'd love to talk more because I've got one virtual assistant right now and she's trying to do a lot.
00:43:48
Speaker
But yeah, sometimes it's like, yeah, a lot even for her.
00:43:51
Speaker
I overloaded mine.
00:43:52
Speaker
I'm like, I feel so bad.
00:43:53
Speaker
I didn't even realize.
00:43:54
Speaker
I'm like, oh my gosh, dude, I feel so bad.
00:43:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:59
Speaker
But then it's like, like you said, it's just cause you get a VA doesn't mean you're going to start doing all these things.
00:44:03
Speaker
Like you got to create the systems.
00:44:05
Speaker
So that's been my mistake too, is I was just like, Oh, I'm going to go do what Mikey's doing.
00:44:09
Speaker
But then I don't, we don't have a system for her responding to comments.
00:44:13
Speaker
We don't have a system for her posting.
00:44:14
Speaker
So of course it's not, not going to be as dialed in because you got to create all these things.
00:44:18
Speaker
So I'm helping Ashton.
00:44:22
Speaker
uh, or, or, or both of our good friend Ashton, helping him out with it.
00:44:25
Speaker
Um, I'll love, I can jump on another call and show you, I mean, under the hood, exactly what I'm doing.
00:44:30
Speaker
There's no secret here.
00:44:30
Speaker
It's just, you just need a, you just, I know what most superpreneurs like yourself need is you just don't want to make the wrong step.
00:44:38
Speaker
So it's like, you're just going to try to keep going because it's working, but to get to the next level, you're like, dude, I don't want to make the wrong step up there because I make the wrong step.
00:44:45
Speaker
Everything, everything below that crumbles.
00:44:47
Speaker
So yeah, dude, I'll jump on a call and show you under the hood exactly what I'm doing.
00:44:50
Speaker
Sweet.
00:44:51
Speaker
Thanks, man.
00:44:52
Speaker
There you go.
00:44:53
Speaker
Abundance mindset.
00:44:55
Speaker
I'll have my assistant send you the calendar right now.
00:44:57
Speaker
Okay.
00:44:57
Speaker
Thanks.
00:44:59
Speaker
Oh, cool, man.
00:44:59
Speaker
Good boy.
00:45:02
Speaker
Yeah, just to start transitioning or start wrapping up here.
00:45:06
Speaker
I know you're a busy guy, Mikey, but last thing I want to touch on before we say goodbye here is obviously you're helping guys with their finances.
00:45:14
Speaker
And you know, it's like we're all making great money in solar, but there's so many guys that are still broke.
00:45:19
Speaker
There's so many guys that don't have investments, that don't have passive income.
00:45:22
Speaker
And I'm just now starting to get more into that, which is something I would have thought about before.
00:45:28
Speaker
But and I know you've helped me with my finances before in the past.
00:45:33
Speaker
And we've talked a little bit about that, too.
00:45:34
Speaker
But yeah, can you speak to that?
00:45:36
Speaker
Just I don't know, maybe some basic things to wrap up, like what are the mistakes these solar guys are making?
00:45:40
Speaker
And how do you get people these five figure passive investments?
00:45:44
Speaker
How much money does it take?
00:45:45
Speaker
I don't know.
00:45:46
Speaker
Maybe it's just like some frequently asked questions you get around that.
Investment Opportunities in the Energy Industry
00:45:49
Speaker
Sure, sure.
00:45:49
Speaker
So I'll give you kind of my, my like 30 second elevator pitch on this.
00:45:53
Speaker
So most, most accredited investors or most investors know that there's a fortune to be made in the energy industry, right?
00:46:02
Speaker
Usually it's reserved to the elite of the elite, right?
00:46:06
Speaker
The top 1% of the 1%.
00:46:07
Speaker
And it also comes with a super high risk, right?
00:46:11
Speaker
So when you align, this is the key here, when you align with insiders that specialize in locating, filtering, structuring these specific profitable deals, investments, in other words, have a seat at the table, you can actually capitalize, create a sustainable economical future through investing in American infrastructure and technology, which is why the American Energy Fund does what we do.
00:46:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:31
Speaker
When you're a traditional trader, venture capitalist, institutional investor, you already know that it's very hard, but yet important to locate these specific deals.
00:46:39
Speaker
So the hard part is Taylor's finding the deals.
00:46:41
Speaker
When you're a Golden Door winner, you're doing Golden Door stuff all day long.
00:46:44
Speaker
So how do you locate these deals?
00:46:46
Speaker
How do you find time to do that?
00:46:48
Speaker
But also something that aligns with your risk tolerance and you can partner with funds that you need to have funds and syndications that have a clean track record and that can actually deploy your capital
00:47:01
Speaker
without really the government stepping in and saying, oh, we're shutting down the solar industry over here or we're shutting down the real estate side over here or whatever.
00:47:08
Speaker
So my fund does give access to those niche investments that create a sustainable growth without the retail level risks and high level requirements to actually get into and that actually provides a path
00:47:18
Speaker
to a diverse portfolio, cash-flowing assets, and a profitable exit.
00:47:22
Speaker
So obviously, people investing in stocks, bonds, ETFs, real estate, public companies, whatever, binary options, S&P 500, life insurance, all that, you may know that in other words, the energy... I'm sorry.
00:47:32
Speaker
So you can know that basically you don't have access to these high level of investments because...
00:47:40
Speaker
it's extremely complicated to get into, right?
00:47:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:43
Speaker
But the key here is that there's plenty of hedge fund managers, risky option traders, and these guys on the internet, and even on social media, TikTok, talking about all these foolish, optimistic investments, right?
00:47:55
Speaker
That's why you see like Bitcoin, all these Bitcoin rich guys that are, you know, they're not rich anymore.
00:47:59
Speaker
Where are they at?
00:47:59
Speaker
Where's all these NFT guys at?
00:48:01
Speaker
Not that NFTs are going to make a comeback.
00:48:02
Speaker
Okay.
00:48:02
Speaker
Cause I'm probably sure they will, but where's all those guys at anymore?
00:48:05
Speaker
Okay.
00:48:06
Speaker
And maybe you're tired at, maybe you're tired Taylor of having, not having access to insider knowledge and that provides you with consistent deal flow and, you know, having solutions through unsustainable speculations and high risk.
00:48:16
Speaker
Maybe you, maybe you are tired of that.
00:48:18
Speaker
That's where, that's where you need to have a specific company and partnerships, right?
00:48:23
Speaker
Your network, which is what ultimately it comes down to Taylor is if you don't have a network that has those good jockeys, then it's going to be, you're going to work forever, make bad decisions because you're, you don't have the time to look at those.
00:48:36
Speaker
like thoroughly and actually do great due diligence on them.
00:48:38
Speaker
Okay.
00:48:39
Speaker
That's the elevator pitch.
00:48:40
Speaker
If you don't have that time, cause you're out family, business, running an office, recruiting, social media, podcasts, everything you need to find through networking, these people that have already done it, that have a good clean track record.
00:48:53
Speaker
And I've got 30, over $30,000 a month of passive income.
00:48:56
Speaker
I have done a lot, a lot, a lot of
00:48:58
Speaker
bad things and mistakes when it comes to financial investing.
00:49:02
Speaker
And that is why I know I'm confident that I'm making much better decisions.
00:49:06
Speaker
And it's hard.
00:49:06
Speaker
It's like, you know, it's like in solar, like why working under Taylor Armstrong?
00:49:10
Speaker
Because Taylor has had a golden door, has hit the golden door, right?
00:49:13
Speaker
Taylor has a successful marriage.
00:49:15
Speaker
Taylor has good kids.
00:49:16
Speaker
Right.
00:49:16
Speaker
Why do I want to work for Taylor Armstrong is because Taylor has the track record.
00:49:20
Speaker
Why do you want to invest into guys that have good track, like good track records is because you want to work for 10 years in door sales in the summer and the heat and then go bankrupt.
00:49:28
Speaker
OK, you can't just think you can't think that you're not going to hit.
00:49:31
Speaker
You're not going to go bankrupt.
00:49:32
Speaker
You're not going to lose it all.
00:49:34
Speaker
Kurt Schilling, Money Mayweather, Mike Tyson, Michael Jackson, all these people, they had hundreds of millions of dollars.
00:49:41
Speaker
Mike Tyson was paid a half of a billion dollars and he's like negative $26 million.
00:49:47
Speaker
How is that possible?
00:49:48
Speaker
Because they didn't have a strategy.
00:49:50
Speaker
So the mistake these guys are having is one, they're doing too much emotional, Taylor, emotional investing.
00:49:56
Speaker
Anybody could make money in 2020, 2021, 2022.
00:49:59
Speaker
I don't care if you can make money in that.
00:50:01
Speaker
I'm going to show people, and this is what I do.
00:50:03
Speaker
I show people how I made money and I'm going to continue to make money when the market goes down.
00:50:08
Speaker
that's what the key is.
00:50:09
Speaker
Anybody can make money when the market's up, but the key is networking with people and saying, Hey, let me pay for your time.
00:50:16
Speaker
Show me how to make money in a down market.
00:50:18
Speaker
Anybody can make money in an up market Taylor.
00:50:20
Speaker
It's super easy.
00:50:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:21
Speaker
I love that.
00:50:22
Speaker
So just like in general, how much to start getting in these investments and all that, like how much do people need?
00:50:28
Speaker
If someone's listening is like, Oh, I can't afford this.
00:50:30
Speaker
Mikey, like how much do people really need to start kind of make doing some of these investments with you guys?
00:50:35
Speaker
So with us personally, with American Energy Fund, they need a hundred grand minimum.
00:50:38
Speaker
Here's the, here's the basics, right?
00:50:39
Speaker
You, you, you, you got to think about in a hundred grand increments.
00:50:43
Speaker
So saving, putting aside a hundred grand is, is roughly with like the S and P 500 or just an average 10% rule.
00:50:50
Speaker
The 10% rule, I call it is $833 a month in passive income.
00:50:54
Speaker
So if you, if you get a 10% return with a hundred grand, every hundred grand you invest should give you 833 a month.
00:51:01
Speaker
So if you need, you know,
00:51:03
Speaker
$2,400 a month in passive income, you need, right?
00:51:07
Speaker
$300,000, which is what you should be shooting for.
00:51:10
Speaker
So think about it in $100,000 increments and roughly a 10% return.
00:51:16
Speaker
You're not going to get 10% return investing in a single-firing properties, I'll tell you that.
00:51:19
Speaker
But why does everybody, Taylor, why does everybody, what's the first thing you want to invest into?
00:51:22
Speaker
Real estate.
00:51:23
Speaker
Well, if a billionaire says when everyone's optimistic, you should be pessimistic.
00:51:27
Speaker
And when everyone's pessimistic about it, you should be optimistic about it.
00:51:30
Speaker
That's why I stayed in energy and I didn't get into real estate.
00:51:32
Speaker
I have a big real estate portfolio, but it's not single family properties.
00:51:36
Speaker
I've got one single family property.
00:51:38
Speaker
Everything else, commercial, land, industrial.
00:51:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:42
Speaker
You should think about it in $100,000 increments.
00:51:44
Speaker
People can do $50,000 increments as well and do other syndications and things like that.
00:51:49
Speaker
But you should think about it in $100,000 increment.
00:51:51
Speaker
And it is not as complicated as you think it is to get the $100,000 because that $100,000 is $833,000 a month.
00:51:58
Speaker
And our fund, our target is actually $1,600 a month for every $100,000.
00:52:00
Speaker
It's actually not $833,000.
00:52:01
Speaker
So it's 20%.
00:52:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:01
Speaker
Okay.
00:52:02
Speaker
It's our target right now.
00:52:07
Speaker
Okay.
00:52:07
Speaker
And so if I'm a rep listening to this and want to do investments, because some people are like, oh, I'm just going to invest like a thousand here, a thousand there, throw it on Robin Hood, whatever.
00:52:17
Speaker
So like you suggest instead of like, I don't know, just throwing a thousand bucks around here and there.
00:52:22
Speaker
Is it better to just like put this money in a separate account and get to a hundred grand and then make these big investments?
00:52:27
Speaker
Is that like generally what you suggest people do?
00:52:30
Speaker
So here's what I did.
00:52:31
Speaker
And this is what got me to 30,000 over 30, just over, just over $30,000 a month of passive income.
00:52:37
Speaker
I needed to be in the game.
00:52:38
Speaker
I automated two investments, one in energy transfer, which is a pipeline, uh, stock.
00:52:44
Speaker
And the other one was realty income.
00:52:46
Speaker
So I wanted to get my foot in the door with energy and with real estate.
00:52:49
Speaker
So I started an automation inside of Robin hood, um, that was buying a hundred dollars a week into real realty income.
00:52:57
Speaker
and into energy transfer.
00:52:59
Speaker
So I was continually getting the, hey, you're an investor in energy transfer.
00:53:04
Speaker
Why don't you jump on the calls?
00:53:05
Speaker
So I would listen to the calls every once in a while and I would read the reports, portions of the reports, not all of it, but I would read it.
00:53:10
Speaker
So I started to get like knowledgeable about it.
00:53:12
Speaker
And then I started looking at myself like,
00:53:13
Speaker
Oh my gosh, I am an energy investor.
00:53:18
Speaker
I'm investing in energy.
00:53:19
Speaker
Warren Buffett owns Oxy and Chevron.
00:53:23
Speaker
He's the largest shareholder of these companies.
00:53:24
Speaker
He owns them.
00:53:25
Speaker
I wanted to get myself to think like I'm an energy investor.
00:53:28
Speaker
Then in real estate, instead of going and buying a single family property, I invested.
00:53:32
Speaker
If you guys are listening, you can't do $100 a week, do $10 a week.
00:53:35
Speaker
automate the system maybe not go spend a thousand dollars here and there automate the system where you can do ten dollars a week twenty dollars a week whatever hundred dollars a month whatever you can automate it through reoccurring purchases and robin hood and do that that's what i did and then put the rest of the money 10 20 30 percent of your paycheck into a separate account called your freedom fund or investment fund and just label it hey 100 grand this is what this is what i'm gonna this is what i'm gonna i'm gonna
00:53:59
Speaker
Wait till I have 100 grand and then start investing.
00:54:01
Speaker
But at the same time, you're getting little micro investments and you're getting monthly and quarterly paychecks from energy transfer and realty income.
00:54:08
Speaker
So you're now, and you're thinking like an investor and you're continually investing every single day, technically every day, right?
00:54:15
Speaker
Into those, into those stocks.
00:54:16
Speaker
That's what I did.
00:54:18
Speaker
That worked very, very well because it was always like really cool to like every, every few weeks or whatever you'd see like, like, oh, you just got paid $3.82 from realty income.
00:54:25
Speaker
Like, yes, passive income.
00:54:27
Speaker
Nice.
00:54:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:28
Speaker
And I think the other huge key in this is, like you said, taking a percentage of what you make and just put it in the Freedom Fund.
00:54:35
Speaker
I remember that's one of the biggest things I learned from you, Mikey, and something that like Tony Robbins talks about money, master the game.
00:54:41
Speaker
Most guys don't do this.
00:54:42
Speaker
Just like taking that set percentage and just having it automatically go away every time I think is massive.
00:54:48
Speaker
And yeah, how you just do it without thinking about it.
00:54:52
Speaker
So.
00:54:53
Speaker
I don't even, I don't notice, I don't notice a hundred dollars a week.
00:54:55
Speaker
So find out what that is as you, as a listener, find out what that is.
00:54:59
Speaker
If it's $5 a week, $10 a week, like $5 should be like, you know, a tall coffee at Starbucks, right?
00:55:04
Speaker
It's 2023.
00:55:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:06
Speaker
tall coffee at Starbucks, five bucks.
00:55:07
Speaker
That's a coffee a week that you're putting toward.
00:55:09
Speaker
And again, that might not seem like a lot, but also guess what I did because I talk about coffee a lot like that.
00:55:14
Speaker
I actually started buying $25 a week in Starbucks.
00:55:17
Speaker
That's one of my best performing stocks right now.
00:55:19
Speaker
I'm not a big stock guy, but I am a automation guy because I'm a, I wanted to, my stock portfolio of my investment portfolio, my stocks are less than 5% of the portfolio.
00:55:30
Speaker
But it's cool.
00:55:30
Speaker
It's like, it's fun.
00:55:31
Speaker
Like I'm still participating in the stock market and it might be $25 here, $25 there.
00:55:35
Speaker
It's really like about a thousand dollars a month I'll put into it.
00:55:37
Speaker
But that's such a small portion of my portfolio.
00:55:39
Speaker
But yeah, I buy, I buy my wife by Starbucks like every day.
00:55:42
Speaker
So like not every day now, but she used to for a while.
00:55:44
Speaker
So I was like, screw it.
00:55:45
Speaker
I'm going to make money on Starbucks.
00:55:47
Speaker
There you go.
00:55:49
Speaker
Make money off her purchases.
00:55:50
Speaker
Smart.
00:55:51
Speaker
I actually have.
00:55:53
Speaker
No, it's not.
00:55:53
Speaker
I haven't given my money back, obviously, but you know, her money, it's whatever.
00:55:56
Speaker
You get the point.
00:55:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:58
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:55:58
Speaker
Well, cool.
00:55:59
Speaker
Mikey.
00:55:59
Speaker
Well, I know we could spend hours more on this stuff, but yeah, people do want to like join your mastermind, potentially start learning more of this stuff from you, get way more in depth.
00:56:08
Speaker
What's the best way to do that?
00:56:09
Speaker
And how could they potentially start working with you?
00:56:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:12
Speaker
Uh, I mean, reaching out on Instagram is best way to go.
00:56:14
Speaker
I can get you some links.
00:56:15
Speaker
You can put the links in the show notes, whatnot too.
00:56:17
Speaker
Um, that way, uh, that way, you know, we could do, um, we can help, help, help Taylor back out and promote, you know, Taylor, Taylor's, Taylor's, uh, whole journey as well.
00:56:25
Speaker
Um, but yeah, Instagram at Mikey Lucas, that's the best way to go.
00:56:28
Speaker
Best way to get ahold of me.
00:56:29
Speaker
Like if you text me, it's probably not going to get answered.
00:56:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:33
Speaker
Okay, sweet.
00:56:33
Speaker
So for all the listeners, yeah, invest in yourself and yeah, go consider working with a guy like Mikey that can help you know the investments you should make.
00:56:42
Speaker
And if anything, go hit him up on Instagram.
00:56:44
Speaker
This guy is dropping fire content.
00:56:46
Speaker
Go follow his podcasts and yeah, get your golden door award if you haven't already.
00:56:51
Speaker
So just to end here, do you have any final words of wisdom or final advice that you give to like maybe a struggling solar rep or someone that's just starting out in solar cells, Mikey, that you could leave us with?
00:57:01
Speaker
Yeah, man.
00:57:02
Speaker
Let me try to do one that I haven't done in a long time or haven't done ever.
00:57:06
Speaker
Taylor, I think people are taking it too serious.
00:57:08
Speaker
I'll give you two.
00:57:09
Speaker
I think people are taking it too serious.
00:57:11
Speaker
I think you need to have more fun.
00:57:13
Speaker
I'm talking like strategic fun, like just by smiling, fun.
00:57:18
Speaker
I'm not talking like going, skipping school and going to the movies, skipping door to door and going to the movies.
00:57:23
Speaker
That's not fun.
00:57:24
Speaker
I'm not talking that fun.
00:57:24
Speaker
I'm talking like while you're on doors, freaking smile, dude, smile.
00:57:30
Speaker
First tip, freaking smile.
00:57:32
Speaker
Okay.
00:57:33
Speaker
Second tip, Taylor would be if you don't, if you work for somebody else, so I don't care if you're work for somebody else or if you're the owner, you, the owner still works for your guy.
00:57:42
Speaker
You still work for your guys.
00:57:43
Speaker
You know that.
00:57:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:44
Speaker
if you're like a setter, closer, manager, whatever, and you're not the owner, you need to become so valuable in that office, not region that they like that.
00:57:55
Speaker
They need you to continue to run their business.
00:57:58
Speaker
If you're not, if you're not like becoming more valuable to your office, like you want to know why you're not getting the attention and whatever is because you're, you're not, you want to know why you're not motivated to read more sales books or, or business books is because you don't think you need it.
00:58:12
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:58:14
Speaker
You don't think you need the information from those books.
00:58:18
Speaker
When you become so valuable that that company, that office needs you to continue to move forward, then brother, you're of extreme value.
00:58:27
Speaker
Boom.
00:58:28
Speaker
There you go.
00:58:28
Speaker
Sweet.
00:58:29
Speaker
That's fire.
00:58:29
Speaker
So Mikey, thanks again for coming on.
00:58:32
Speaker
Guys, go shoot Mikey a follow.
00:58:35
Speaker
And yeah, enjoy the process.
00:58:37
Speaker
Smile when you're out there working today.
00:58:39
Speaker
And thanks again for coming on, Mikey.
00:58:41
Speaker
Thank you, Taylor.
00:58:41
Speaker
Appreciate it, man.
00:58:42
Speaker
Yeah, we'll talk soon.
00:58:44
Speaker
Hey, solarpreneurs, are you sick and tired of spinning your wheels every month and not seeing your sales increase?
00:58:51
Speaker
Well, so was I, and the truth is I was never able to improve it until I figured out what was going wrong.
00:58:56
Speaker
So that's why I'm excited to announce for a limited time, we are doing a free sales diagnostic.
00:59:02
Speaker
We'll break down your sales process, figure out the holes in your business and see how we can help you improve.
00:59:10
Speaker
So at now we have six bucks for this month.
00:59:12
Speaker
So book a call now.
00:59:14
Speaker
Don't miss out.
00:59:15
Speaker
What you're going to do is send an email to taylor at solarpreneurs.com.
00:59:20
Speaker
That's taylor at solarpreneurs with an S dot com.
00:59:24
Speaker
I'll send you out a calendar link and we will figure out the time that works best.
00:59:29
Speaker
So shoot that email and let's increase your sales.