Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
Speaker: My name is Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fell.
Speaker: I teach you how to avoid the mistakes I made and bring in the top solar dogs of the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro, and closing more deals.
Speaker: What is a solarpreneur, you might ask?
Speaker: A solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery, and you are about to become one.
Speaker: The one thing that prevents most solar salespeople from hitting their goals and closing deals.
Speaker: That's what we're going to be jamming on today.
Speaker: That and much more coming up on today's podcast.
Speaker: My name's Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: I'm here to help you close more deals, generate more leads and referrals, and hopefully have a much better time in this great solar industry.
Speaker: Hope you had a happy Thanksgiving, good time with your family.
Speaker: Hope you took the day off.
Speaker: That would be a good day to go knock some doors, hit up some people, but I hope that you can take Thanksgiving and Christmas off at least from knocking doors.
Speaker: But a great turkey day, great time with friends,
Speaker: Friends and family.
Speaker: Hopefully you enjoyed it today We're gonna be talking about something a little bit different and I love this topic because it's something that I have a lot to learn on so I love hearing from experts on the topic and that is the topic of finances and I'm gonna tie that into what that has to do with Closing deals and hitting your goals, but it's actually been a big piece.
Speaker: That's helped me out tremendously
Speaker: to close more deals is thinking more about the financial side of things.
Speaker: And the reason we're talking about this a little bit more right now is because if you missed the big announcement, we brought on our first ever sponsors of the show.
Speaker: And that is our friends over at Pi Syndicate.
Speaker: If you hadn't noticed, we brought Jerry Fussell on the show.
Speaker: And he started this financial mastermind basically to help people get their mind right
Speaker: When it comes to the money piece of the puzzle.
Speaker: So big thank you to them.
Speaker: And if you want to get, you know, your finances right, definitely hit them up.
Speaker: Tell them you heard about them from the podcast and they're going to hook you up.
Speaker: They're going to take care of you.
Speaker: So go over to Piesyndicate.com.
Speaker: We'll post their website in the show notes of this.
Speaker: Go check them out.
Speaker: Let them know you appreciate them sponsoring the show.
Speaker: And next episode, we're actually here from their CFO.
Speaker: His name's Austin.
Speaker: And he's going to share a little bit more about what their vision and goal is with Pi Syndicate.
Speaker: But anyways, back to the topic at hand of the show today.
Speaker: And so something that prevents people from closing deals more than you think is they have no financial plan in place.
Speaker: And I've talked about this book a lot recently, a lot of podcasts, but Closer Survival Guide by Grant Cardone.
Speaker: He lists this, matter of fact, is one of the top 10 reasons that closers fail is they don't have financial time in place.
Speaker: And we're going to get into what exactly is a financial plan, because I didn't even know what this was when I first read it.
Speaker: Like, what is he talking about?
Speaker: Financial plan.
Speaker: What does that have to do with closing deals?
Speaker: So I didn't expect it.
Speaker: Maybe you don't expect it either.
Speaker: But before we talk about what is a financial plan, first, I just want to mention that you need to get your head right around money.
Speaker: If you're like me, I don't know if anyone's like me, but I had an enormous scarcity mindset around money.
Speaker: Most of you have heard my story.
Speaker: I was in college at Southern Utah University,
Speaker: I was donating plasma to pay my rent basically.
Speaker: My summers of pest control didn't go as well as I hoped, so I didn't even have money to pay my rent at the time.
Speaker: I was donating plasma and I was that kid on campus that was going to every single club event, every single thing to try and get just some free food.
Speaker: If you've been on campuses, you know they do those events all the time where they're handing out free pizza,
Speaker: where they're inviting you to come check out the clubs.
Speaker: I wasted so many hours going to these events, listening to pointless meetings, just because I knew there was going to be a slice of pizza at the end.
Speaker: So that's how desperate I was.
Speaker: I literally did not want to spend a dime out of my pocket if I knew I could go get free food somewhere.
Speaker: And that was just the tip of the iceberg.
Speaker: I was the guy that our school had this discount card.
Speaker: It's called the Starving Student Card.
Speaker: where every single restaurant in town, they had a deal for college students.
Speaker: It was mostly like buy one, get one for eat burgers or I don't know, some sort of like bonus you got with your meal.
Speaker: Every single date I went on in college, I refused to go to any place that was not listed on this card.
Speaker: I'm like, I'm not paying a dime over what I should.
Speaker: I'm going to get some type of deal.
Speaker: I'm going to get some type of discount or else I'm not going there.
Speaker: So that was me.
Speaker: Pretty sad, right?
Speaker: And I didn't have money, so I mean, I was driven by that.
Speaker: That's not like, you know, that was kind of the factors.
Speaker: When you're broke, you do pretty crazy stuff.
Speaker: And the craziest thing I probably did was we even went on a trip with some buddies freshman year of college.
Speaker: We decided, hey, we're going to go out to California.
Speaker: We're going to go to Six Flags, Knott's Berry Farm, I don't know, a few different places.
Speaker: And we went there.
Speaker: I was so broke.
Speaker: I was literally finding leftover concessions on people's tables at Six Flags.
Speaker: I was going around.
Speaker: If I saw a piece of pizza or some fries that looked like they hadn't been touched, I was snagging people's foods off tables.
Speaker: Pretty nasty, right?
Speaker: I did some extreme stuff.
Speaker: I was broke.
Speaker: And this caused me just like some crazy distress in my head.
Speaker: Caused some crazy thoughts about money that I was never going to have money.
Speaker: I was always going to be short on money.
Speaker: I was always going to be strapped for cash.
Speaker: It just caused this enormous scarcity mindset.
Speaker: And I've seen it in a few of my friends.
Speaker: I didn't grow up.
Speaker: My parents, you know, weren't broke or anything.
Speaker: My dad's a dentist, so.
Speaker: you know, upper middle class, we always had money.
Speaker: We always, you know, never went hungry, nothing crazy like that.
Speaker: But I just never really had jobs.
Speaker: I was a music major.
Speaker: So I was always practicing my drums, my percussion.
Speaker: I didn't have time to go work.
Speaker: So if you're like me, if you had these, if you've had these types of thoughts in your head, they're likely still carrying over to this day.
Speaker: And that's part of what I struggle with now is I still find myself having these thoughts where I don't have money.
Speaker: I'm not going to be able to provide for my family.
Speaker: I'm going to be short on cash.
Speaker: And it's not an issue now, but they still creep up just because it was so ingrained in my head back in my college days and back growing up that I didn't have money to buy what I wanted.
Speaker: Guys, this is the first step.
Speaker: Before you create a financial plan, you can get your mindset right around money.
Speaker: It's a work in progress for me, but think, how can you get your mindset right around cash?
Speaker: Someone that I look up to a lot that talks about this topic all the time is River Skinner.
Speaker: He was a guest on the podcast, but he has this whole abundance kind of movement, he calls it.
Speaker: He's always preaching about being more abundant.
Speaker: He's always going to gas stations and like cheering that he's paying four or five bucks a gallon for gas because he's abundant.
Speaker: So think, how can you be more abundant?
Speaker: How can you get rid of those scarcity mindset feelings around money?
Speaker: Because if you don't do it, it's going to be holding you back in your financial goals.
Speaker: It's going to make it tougher to close deals.
Speaker: It's going to make it tougher to have success in the solar industry.
Speaker: So be abundant.
Speaker: Something that helped me is just actually having physical cash, handling it.
Speaker: These days, most people don't carry around physical cash.
Speaker: Most people don't even look at their dollar bills, right?
Speaker: It's all in Venmo.
Speaker: It's all in PayPal.
Speaker: It's all in Cash App, whatever.
Speaker: But they're not seeing the physical cash.
Speaker: So if you can't see it, how are you going to know you have the money, right?
Speaker: You can go look at the bank account.
Speaker: But something that actually helped me tremendously, go...
Speaker: Go get withdrawal of actual physical cash Yeah, I kept in an envelope for months.
Speaker: I should do this again Probably help now um, but something I did for months I would get I had $100 bill $50 bill $20 bill $10 bill I would take them out and I would physically handle them every day and I would just envision myself having extra cash and
Speaker: I would envision myself never being short on that money I was handling in my hand.
Speaker: I was doing affirmations around it.
Speaker: So try that.
Speaker: Go print out some physical cash.
Speaker: You can't print it out, but go withdraw some physical cash.
Speaker: Have it in an envelope and maybe get your mind wrapped around that.
Speaker: You have an abundance of cash.
Speaker: Okay, so that's step number one.
Speaker: Make sure you get your mind right around money.
Speaker: And then step number two is get that financial plan in place.
Speaker: Okay, again, Grant Cardone talks about this as one of the reasons why closers fill.
Speaker: They don't have the plan in place.
Speaker: So if you have the book,
Speaker: It's step number seven.
Speaker: It's on page 66.
Speaker: He talks about this.
Speaker: You can go read the whole thing if you want.
Speaker: He just has a couple pages on it.
Speaker: But just to summarize it, he talks at the end, saying most people correctly estimate their financial needs or never created a financial plan at all.
Speaker: Get a financial plan today and make sure it's going to do more than pay the bills, but also create financial freedom for you and your household.
Speaker: You will start closing more deals and you'll quit underestimating the amount of effort, energy, and enthusiasm it takes to get a deal closed.
Speaker: The bottom line is this.
Speaker: If you underestimate what it takes to create real financial freedom, then it only makes sense that you will underestimate what it takes to close a deal.
Speaker: Mic drop right there, right?
Speaker: And I can personally attest to this.
Speaker: One of the recent best months of sales that I had,
Speaker: recently is we were investing in this rental property.
Speaker: Some of you that follow me over on Instagram, I talked about how we're getting a rental property.
Speaker: We're in an Airbnb over in Utah.
Speaker: And that month, I just had this excitement.
Speaker: I'm like, man, I want to go out and create this money so I can put it towards that property.
Speaker: And that month, I had, I think it was 14 deals closed, 13, 14.
Speaker: where the previous months I was closing, I don't know, six, seven, eight.
Speaker: But I had that extra level of excitement that I was putting my money towards something that I was excited about, towards an investment for my future.
Speaker: And that's part of having a financial plan in place, is you're planning for how you're going to create extra income, and you're planning the investments you're going to make with that extra income.
Speaker: You're planning your future with it.
Speaker: You're not just paying the bills.
Speaker: And you think of these companies that just cut costs, cut costs, cut costs, just strict budget.
Speaker: And you'll also follow these people like Dave Ramsey, Susie Orman.
Speaker: You follow Matt Cardone, he bashes on them all the time because what do they talk about?
Speaker: They talk about just living by a super strict budget, cutting costs, chopping up your credit cards, right?
Speaker: And just, you know, living as slim as you can.
Speaker: But I think it's super powerful, especially in sales.
Speaker: Go out and close more deals to create your financial freedom.
Speaker: I want to live like a king and have extra money for my investments.
Speaker: And obviously, there's a balance.
Speaker: You're not going to go blow insane amounts of money.
Speaker: You shouldn't be dropping thousands of dollars at the club every weekend.
Speaker: So within reason.
Speaker: But think, how can you create that extra income to live how you want to live?
Speaker: and then have that extra money for your investments.
Speaker: So I think the first step in creating that financial plan is yes, figure out how much money you need to live.
Speaker: You do want to figure out what is your budget, what exactly you're going to do, how much money do you need to live, right?
Speaker: And how much money do you need to fund future retirement plans, vacations, children's education, all that stuff like that.
Speaker: And then second,
Speaker: Grant Cardone talks about this, figure out how much money you actually need to bring in monthly in order to create solvency and get all that you want accomplished.
Speaker: Which solvency is the ability of an entity to pay its debts with available cash.
Speaker: So your financial plan should include clearly stated monetary goals, exactly how you're going to create surpluses of money, what to do with the surpluses and investments,
Speaker: So this is very important.
Speaker: Go and write down, have your financial plan written down.
Speaker: How much do you need to live?
Speaker: You should be doing that.
Speaker: If you haven't done that, go track, figure out all your exact expenses, figure out how much you need to live to put away each month, but then figure out what is your surplus.
Speaker: So how much surplus do you want to have each month?
Speaker: What are you going to do with that?
Speaker: Write down your investments.
Speaker: And this goes into why I think joining something like Pi Syndicate is a great idea.
Speaker: Because if you don't know, if you're like me, you don't know what to invest your money in.
Speaker: I'll be honest, I am not a financial guru.
Speaker: I'm not good with investments.
Speaker: And that's why I never invested really in the past.
Speaker: That's why it's taken me until now to get my first rental properties because I just thought, oh, I don't know where to look.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I don't know how to tell if this is a good deal or if it's going to cash flow.
Speaker: But if you can be around a group of people who know what they're doing, a mastermind style, like Pi Syndicate, guys that have multi-multi-millionaires,
Speaker: that have tons of different investments that are super successful, that's going to jumpstart the process.
Speaker: So that's why I decided to have them as the sponsor for the show is because so many people in this industry, they can make money, but what are they doing with it?
Speaker: And are they paying all the Uncle Sam?
Speaker: That's the other thing that's super powerful.
Speaker: joining Python to get, you're going to learn how to actually take that money you would be giving to Uncle Sam and investing it and avoiding what you would probably pay in taxes otherwise.
Speaker: So that's the two big steps of the day.
Speaker: And this is why a lot of people fail.
Speaker: You don't have a financial plan.
Speaker: So today, wherever you are, after your workout, after your ride out to area, wherever you're listening to this,
Speaker: Sometime today, take out your notes app, take out a pad, a paper, write down what is your financial plan, how much do you need to have to live every month, and then how much surplus are you going to have every month?
Speaker: What are you going to do with that?
Speaker: Write it out, get it in front of you, slap it on the mirror, put it on a vision board if you're into that stuff.
Speaker: I think it's super cool to have.
Speaker: Maybe print out a picture to go with it.
Speaker: And then that's how you're going to create this excitement.
Speaker: I guarantee you, if you do this, it's going to motivate you to push harder in deals than you were before.
Speaker: It's something that I feel like I became a better closer when I had a kid.
Speaker: I actually just had my second kid.
Speaker: Now when I'm in deals, I know, okay, I want to feed my kids.
Speaker: I want to, you know, pond my kid's future.
Speaker: So it allows me to push harder to hang in deals longer than I would otherwise.
Speaker: So what's that motivation that you have?
Speaker: What stage are you in?
Speaker: How are you going to create that extra motivation to push hard in those deals?
Speaker: You're not going to be pulling people's teeth, but you're going to stick in that deal.
Speaker: And this is the way to do it.
Speaker: So that's the topic of today.
Speaker: Make sure you get your mind right around your money.
Speaker: And then step two.
Speaker: Have that financial plan in place.
Speaker: It's going to change your game in solar.
Speaker: I promise you.
Speaker: So let me know what you think of this topic.
Speaker: Let me know if you like these financial topics.
Speaker: Next episode, we're going to have Austin on the show.
Speaker: He's going to dive into a little more.
Speaker: He's the expert on this stuff.
Speaker: So you're going to hear from him.
Speaker: So don't miss out and get your finances right.
Speaker: Close some deals this week and we will see you on the next episode.
Speaker: Peace.
Speaker: Hey, solopreneurs, quick question.
Speaker: What if you could surround yourself with the industry's top performing sales pros, marketers, and CEOs and learn from their experience and wisdom in less than 20 minutes a day?
Speaker: For the last three years, I've been placed in the fortunate position to interview dozens of elite level solar professionals and learn exactly what they do behind closed doors to build their solar careers to an all-star level.
Speaker: That's why I want to make a truly special announcement about the new learning community exclusively for solar professionals to learn, compete, and win with top performers in the industry.
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Speaker: who want to give back to this community and help you or your team to be held accountable by the industry's brightest minds for, are you ready for it, less than $3.45 a day.
Speaker: Currently, SoulCity is open, launched, and ready to be enrolled.
Speaker: So go to SoulCity.co to learn more.
Speaker: and join the learning experience now.
Speaker: This is exclusively for solopreneur listeners, so be sure to go to solcity.co and join.
Speaker: We'll see you on the inside.
