Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Solarpreneur Podcast, where we teach you to take your solar business to the next level.
Speaker: My name is Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: I went from $50 in my bank account and struggling for groceries to closing 150 deals in a year and cracking the code on why sales reps fell.
Speaker: I teach you how to avoid the mistakes I made and bring in the top solar dogs of the industry to let you in on the secrets of generating more leads, falling up like a pro, and closing more deals.
Speaker: What is a solarpreneur, you might ask?
Speaker: A solarpreneur is a new breed of solar pro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery, and you are about to become one.
Speaker: What's up, solarpreneurs?
Speaker: This is Taylor Armstrong.
Speaker: Welcome back to the Solarpreneurs Podcast, here to help you close more deals, generate more leads, and become a top solar professional in today's cutthroat industry.
Speaker: but we're going to make sure it's not cutthroat for you because you know what the top solar experts are doing.
Speaker: I'm stoked to be with you today and I've got some exciting tips I'm going to share with you.
Speaker: But before that, I have a few announcements, I guess you could say.
Speaker: Number one, if you haven't already, go get on the list.
Speaker: We're doing a web class today.
Speaker: going to be three mistakes that I see over and over and over in the industry.
Speaker: I'm going to share with you some secrets that the top experts are using today.
Speaker: So that's webclass.solarpreneur.com.
Speaker: If you haven't already, go get on the wait list and that is going to be launching here very, very soon.
Speaker: So that's the first one.
Speaker: And the second one is I heard from my friend Sam Taggart.
Speaker: He's been on the podcast about a year ago.
Speaker: We had him on.
Speaker: He's actually one of our most popular episodes.
Speaker: So if you haven't already, go check out that.
Speaker: He dropped some closing tips, got a ton of feedback from it, ton of rave reviews.
Speaker: People loved it.
Speaker: So go check out that episode.
Speaker: But I got a text from him.
Speaker: about a week ago and just inviting me to his event.
Speaker: If you haven't been to it, it's door to door con.
Speaker: It's the best event in the industry for all our door to door professionals.
Speaker: So I want to invite you.
Speaker: He invited me and now I want to send our sorpreneurs special invite to door to door con as well.
Speaker: He did increase the prices this year, but that is because it's going to be a lot smaller event, obviously, with COVID going on.
Speaker: He's capping it at 500 people.
Speaker: And he is bringing in David Goggins, which I'm, yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker: I can't believe we're getting David Goggins at a DoritorCon.
Speaker: If you haven't heard his book, go listen to it.
Speaker: Guy is a...
Speaker: Yeah, got a mind of steel.
Speaker: So he's got some of the top speakers coming.
Speaker: And what he is doing for our listeners is he is giving, for our Solar Printer listeners, Sam Taggart is going to give us a buy one, get one free for tickets.
Speaker: So I'm actually going to make a page for it.
Speaker: I'll probably put that in either the notes for this episode or the next episode.
Speaker: Look for that in the show notes.
Speaker: But in the meantime, if you want to have early access and get yourself a buy one, get one free ticket, hit me up and then I can get you access to that.
Speaker: So two things.
Speaker: And also let me know.
Speaker: I'm thinking about maybe doing a meetup or some sort of mini events at Door2DoorCon.
Speaker: So let me know if you're going.
Speaker: And then I would love to plan something like that, hang out with my peeps.
Speaker: So let's, with that being said, let's jump right into the show.
Speaker: Today I want to share some tips that have helped me actually read a lot more books.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And I know we're getting geeky here.
Speaker: Taylor, what are you, what are you even talking about reading?
Speaker: Well, if you're not reading books,
Speaker: You're not improving, right?
Speaker: We should all be reading every day.
Speaker: It's what helps us learn.
Speaker: No-brainer, especially if we're in sales, we need to be focusing on constant improvement.
Speaker: So I recently listened to a podcast by Russell Brunson.
Speaker: If you don't subscribe to his podcast, it's called Marketing Secrets.
Speaker: Really good podcast, especially if you are trying to learn marketing or want to hear more about that.
Speaker: But he shared a couple book hacks that just blew my mind, honestly, were actually really good.
Speaker: And a few of them I was already doing, but he just kind of put it into words.
Speaker: And then a few of them were things that I learned.
Speaker: So part of this episode is actually going to be from stuff that he shared in that podcast.
Speaker: So you can go listen to that for a little bit more detail in on it.
Speaker: And then I'm going to share just some things besides that that have helped me read more books, that have helped me retain more, that have helped me read quicker.
Speaker: Growing up, I did read a decent amount.
Speaker: You know, I would like read the Harry Potters and all that stuff.
Speaker: But then once I got to, it was probably college, I basically stopped reading.
Speaker: Hated it.
Speaker: Never wanted to read.
Speaker: Would read the textbooks, but that's about it.
Speaker: So this episode is especially for you if you don't like reading.
Speaker: or if you're a really slow reader like I feel like I was.
Speaker: So I'm going to share with you how to improve those things.
Speaker: So the first thing that I learned is you need to be listening to audiobooks.
Speaker: If you don't have an Audible account, go get an Audible account.
Speaker: And you should always be listening to some type of educational material while you're driving to appointments.
Speaker: That's actually something I learned from Brian Tracy.
Speaker: I think he talks about it in, might be psychology of sales.
Speaker: But Brian Tracy talks about how you should be making your commutes basically a library.
Speaker: Your commutes should be a classroom.
Speaker: Your car should turn into a classroom on your commutes.
Speaker: Because think about it, I'm typically driving about an hour a day right now, sometimes more.
Speaker: But a lot of people in the industry, I mean, you got appointments that are 30 minutes away.
Speaker: You're going out to turfs that are, you know, 30, 40 minutes away.
Speaker: If you've got deals in different areas or if you're helping your team close deals, you're probably driving, I don't know, maybe 10, 15 minutes to different areas to go knock with your team or to go follow up with people, go to referrals.
Speaker: So all these things adds up.
Speaker: I've had days where I've driven three plus hours in the car.
Speaker: And if you're not doing something useful in those three hours, then that's three hours wasted, basically.
Speaker: So that's the first secret from Brian Tracy.
Speaker: He says, make your car a library, make your car a classroom.
Speaker: Tune into this podcast.
Speaker: Hopefully this podcast is part of your commute.
Speaker: But also get audible, get some type of audio books.
Speaker: Listen to all the sales books.
Speaker: those are things that are going to help you.
Speaker: So that's the first tip.
Speaker: Always use that time where you're doing tasks.
Speaker: Maybe it's cleaning, driving.
Speaker: Use that to learn.
Speaker: Put in headphones.
Speaker: Put on Bluetooth.
Speaker: Use that time to learn.
Speaker: And tip number two is as you are reading, well, here's a big secret.
Speaker: If you get actual paper copies of a book, you need to be
Speaker: Well, if you want to get more out of it, you need to have the audiobook with the actual physical copy.
Speaker: And this is a really cool secret.
Speaker: For me, it's actually pretty tough to retain all the information.
Speaker: I'm definitely more of a visual learner.
Speaker: Always been that way.
Speaker: I learn more when I actually see the material.
Speaker: So I love audiobooks, but I tend to phase out, zone out.
Speaker: If I'm driving, I start to think about other things, start to think about other details.
Speaker: So if you really want to retain...
Speaker: and take that retention to another level, you need to be taking in the auditory information and then also seeing it visually.
Speaker: It's going to help you retain way more.
Speaker: And then the second secret with that, if you want to take your speed reading to another level, listen to the audiobook on double, triple, I think Audible even goes to four times, 4x speed.
Speaker: And let's be honest, you're not really going to hear any of that probably if you're just listening to it.
Speaker: But a big secret, if you actually have the physical copy, if you are looking at the words along with listening to the book, it's crazy.
Speaker: You can crank that baby up to like 4x speed and you're actually able to follow along.
Speaker: You're actually going to get stuff out of it.
Speaker: That's the only way I know of that you can actually put it to that quick and still retain something.
Speaker: But you're going to fly through books.
Speaker: So if you are someone that struggles with reading quick or that doesn't like reading,
Speaker: or just can't get through something, get a physical copy, you're gonna be seeing it, and then get the book on Audible, get the audiobook version.
Speaker: You're gonna fly through books, and trust me, you're gonna retain so much more, because you're gonna be taking it in visually and auditory.
Speaker: And the last secret is don't, look, we're solopreneurs, we're entrepreneurs.
Speaker: You've probably heard CEOs read a book a week,
Speaker: They read all the time.
Speaker: They're always speed reading.
Speaker: I've never gotten close to reading 52 books in a year, unless you count the books that I read to my kid at night, tiny books.
Speaker: But you hear these myths, these legends of CEOs reading a book a week and just getting through so much content.
Speaker: And there's been times where I've tried to read a couple books a month and
Speaker: But guess what?
Speaker: When I do that, I do not retain very much information.
Speaker: It's so much I try to take in that I implement almost zero of it too.
Speaker: So I'm going to ask a question, and you ask yourself this.
Speaker: If you're reading, how much of what you read are you actually implementing?
Speaker: It's the purpose of any self-improvement book, the purpose of any sales book, is to go out and it's to implement what you're reading, right?
Speaker: So if you're reading these books and you're not implementing it, if your goal is to read 52 books a year, you're probably not going to implement hardly any of what you read, because who can actually read that many books and implement it?
Speaker: So what I want to invite you to do, go deep on a single book.
Speaker: Russell Brunson in his podcast, he talked about this, and his top earners in ClickFunnels, some of his top people, guys that are making the most money, he asked them the same question, like, how many books are you guys reading?
Speaker: And instead of saying, oh, we read 50 books, there are all these, their answer was that they read a single book, and they read it like 10 times.
Speaker: So they're digging deep, they're diving deep, they're taking in everything that they can take in,
Speaker: So the example he gave, Russell Brunson, he has his book, it's Expert Secrets,.com Secrets, those are two of his best-selling books.
Speaker: And Alex Urmosi, he is one of the top ClickFunnels earners.
Speaker: He goes and helps gym owners basically scale their gyms, scale their businesses.
Speaker: And that's what he did.
Speaker: Alex, he read Expert Secrets, Russell Brunson's book.
Speaker: He read it eight times when Russell asked him in the past year.
Speaker: So you're just going over and over and over this material.
Speaker: So that's what changes your life.
Speaker: If you can really take in and implement these books, if you're reading a marketing book, if you're reading a sales book, go read it eight times.
Speaker: And I've, I mean, I talk about it all the time, but probably my most quoted book or my most referred to book on the podcast is Closer Survival Guide by Grant Cardone.
Speaker: It is a good book, but honestly, the reason why it's the most referred to book is because I've listened to it seven or eight times now.
Speaker: And to be fair, that was the only audiobook I had on my phone for probably six months.
Speaker: So I listened to it over and over and over again.
Speaker: But if you do that, think of any sales book that has helped you.
Speaker: Any self-improvement book.
Speaker: I want to invite you to go read it again.
Speaker: Dig deep into it.
Speaker: Listen to it.
Speaker: And then get the physical copy.
Speaker: Especially any book that you're really trying to take in.
Speaker: If it's just something for enjoyment or something that you know you're not going to...
Speaker: have a ton of takeaways from then yeah listen to it all day but if you really want to dive deep you want to get as much as possible out of a book you're trying to take in go get the physical copy listen the audiobook and dive deep into it because that is when what's going to make the difference when I did that with the closer survival guide by Grant Cardone I had after that was probably when I was doing my best closing
Speaker: I was on, you know, the sixth time listening to that and I was actually implementing the things I learned.
Speaker: So that's the secret.
Speaker: So that's the three tips.
Speaker: Number one, make your car a listening library.
Speaker: Make it a classroom.
Speaker: Number two, get the physical book and get the audible version or the audio book.
Speaker: Number three, don't just read the book surface level.
Speaker: Read it on repeat.
Speaker: If you're trying to get as much as possible, dig deep into it.
Speaker: Whatever book you're trying to get the most takeaways from, read it two, three, four, or five times.
Speaker: That's how you're going to get the improvements.
Speaker: So I hope that helps.
Speaker: It's helped me a ton.
Speaker: And go get a book out there.
Speaker: If you want some recommendations, let me know.
Speaker: And I hope you keep crushing.
Speaker: We will see you on the next one.
Speaker: Thanks so much for tuning into today's episode.
Speaker: I know when I got into the industry, I had almost no resources like this.
Speaker: So I hope this show is helping you get the success you deserve.
Speaker: If you found value from anything in this episode today, think about someone who can benefit so you and I can help people fulfill their potential.
Speaker: Zig Ziglar said if you help enough people get what they want, you will get what you want.
Speaker: So I promise by sharing this it will help you grow and improve.
Speaker: The value bombs on today's show will take you one step closer to success, but it's always to the degree that you apply and execute the principles.
Speaker: I've spent the last few years interviewing the top solar experts and helping other reps and businesses discover their potential.
Speaker: If you want more help achieving your goals, then I put together an exclusive video training on three hacks that helped me close multiple deals a week while knocking less than 10 hours.
Speaker: And who doesn't want that?
Speaker: So go check it out at webclass.solarpreneurs.com.
Speaker: Once again, that's webclass.solarpreneurs.com to get exclusive access to the training.
Speaker: and take your skills to the next level.
