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 solopreneur you might ask?
Speaker: A solopreneur is a new breed of solopro that is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve mastery and you are about to become one.
Speaker: All right, what's going on, everybody?
Speaker: We are here in the studio in San Clemente, but it's not my studio.
Speaker: It is Ty Williams, who we have on the podcast here for the second time.
Speaker: Thanks for coming again on the podcast with us, Ty.
Speaker: Yeah, man.
Speaker: Small world, quick cycle.
Speaker: What has been like three years, four years?
Speaker: Yeah, I think almost four years since we last did the podcast.
Speaker: That's wild.
Speaker: Time flies.
Speaker: I still feel the same.
Speaker: What about you?
Speaker: That's pretty much the same.
Speaker: Still don't know how to surf.
Speaker: Still need to come up here and learn surfing with you.
Speaker: What have you been doing for the last four years?
Speaker: If you don't know how to surf by now, seriously, what do you have to show for it?
Speaker: Yeah, I started doing some jujitsu.
Speaker: Oh, really?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: At least I got that new hobby, but surfing.
Speaker: Do you do it a lot?
Speaker: Are you like?
Speaker: Yeah, I usually go like twice a week.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: How long have you been doing that?
Speaker: It's been about a year now.
Speaker: Or actually, you know what?
Speaker: Almost two years.
Speaker: Jiu-jitsu is a good thing, man.
Speaker: I've never done that.
Speaker: I've done different styles of fight training, but, um, yeah, it's good.
Speaker: It's, it's, it's good for like, I always say it's good for men, maybe women, I've whatever, but it's good for men to have hobbies like that, that like push back on you super hard.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: I was relisting the last podcast, which if you haven't listened to it, we will link to it.
Speaker: Go listen to part one or the first podcast we did.
Speaker: But I remember last time you were talking about just that's something that's important to you, learn new skills because, you know, you can as new reps come into it, something you can say, hey, I'm constantly learning new things.
Speaker: I know what it's like to be a beginner and be a newbie and learn things.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: I think it's important for leaders to be students in something.
Speaker: It like activates, it activates a certain part of your, not just your brain, but like, it's kind of like your whole way of being, you know what I mean?
Speaker: Like you're more empathetic to people that are going through stuff.
Speaker: You also learn things differently.
Speaker: Like you find so many new like connections and associations, like learning to surf for me has made me a much better sales leader.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's just like, oh, I remember what it's like to be a novice.
Speaker: So now I'm in a better position to coach.
Speaker: My brain is making connections like, oh, this is, you know, you can't try too hard in surfing, for example.
Speaker: So, you know, I'll have certain things where it's like, okay, if you're the hardest working person in the lineup,
Speaker: it's probably, you're probably doing something wrong.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that correlates directly to selling.
Speaker: Like there is a, like you have to put in the time and the reps to appear effortless.
Speaker: Cause if you're trying super hard, people resist you.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So it's like you learn things that you already knew in different ways.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I also feel like it kind of like, it kind of like reignites the spark for whatever it is that you're doing.
Speaker: You know, it kind of adds flavor to life.
Speaker: So I think last time we were talking, I was doing, for a while, I was doing a completely new thing every year.
Speaker: Like I'd take something that I was a complete novice at once a year.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The problem with that is,
Speaker: Like seven or eight years later is I kept most of the things.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like I, I, you know, some things I've kind of dropped, but most of the things that I've learned I've stayed with.
Speaker: And so, yeah, now I have, now I have like, I have surfing goals and things like that, that I stay with, but I'm not actively bringing new things in because I think I've brought two new humans into my family since the last time.
Speaker: Holy cow.
Speaker: I can't remember.
Speaker: I mean, I have six now.
Speaker: So how many did I have?
Speaker: Yeah, I had a baby in 2019.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So I think I have two more depending on the month.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah, I think I remember that.
Speaker: That's crazy.
Speaker: Yeah, well, I'm impressed because that's partly why I haven't picked up surfing.
Speaker: Just one because we live like, I don't know, 35 minutes from the ocean.
Speaker: So where do you live?
Speaker: Escondido.
Speaker: Oh, you know where that is.
Speaker: Yeah, I do.
Speaker: A little bit more inland.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, so yeah, that's part of it.
Speaker: And then just cause like you said, when you add one thing to play, like, like, okay, I have time for jujitsu, but I can only add so many hobbies still kind of.
Speaker: Jiu-jitsu works though, because it makes you, it makes your brain figure things out in a different way.
Speaker: It's like, it's a bunch of counterintuitive things like selling and leading is so counterintuitive.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's like you have to be empathetic, but decisive and you have to be, you know, you have to have a plan, but you can't be too rigid.
Speaker: And that's like fighting in a completely, like if you go into fighting with a plan, you can get handled by other people really easily.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But if you're really well trained and skilled, then you can adapt to the situation.
Speaker: And if that's not selling and leading, it's the exact same thing.
Speaker: And so I feel like it just heightens your understanding of that kind of stuff.
Speaker: Good, good timing.
Speaker: And we're in almost December now getting ready to set goals in the new year, I guess.
Speaker: Yeah, man is good.
Speaker: Yeah, no, it's true.
Speaker: I feel like Jiu-Jitsu is kind of like human chess, you know, like one person does one move.
Speaker: You got to counter it.
Speaker: Got to be looking ahead.
Speaker: So I feel like it relates in a lot of ways.
Speaker: It's also really good for kids.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: That'll be my next thing.
Speaker: When I get time to do a new thing, it'll be that thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Let me, you still doing the fighting?
Speaker: I remember last time you're doing a little fighting too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: When I can, um, my trainer lives up in thousand Oaks.
Speaker: So when I'm up there, um, I try to, it's one of those things that kind of stays with you, but like you get rusty for sure.
Speaker: Like the, the, the basics really stay with you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I like it, man.
Speaker: That, that learning to fight was very good for me.
Speaker: It was, uh, um, I don't know, like it,
Speaker: it like satiated my brain a little bit, you know, like it, it, it kept me so engaged and I'd like never done that before.
Speaker: You know, I'd never like stood in those positions before my, my muscles had never strained like that.
Speaker: I'd never like, I had to adopt a certain mentality and a certain like physical skillset.
Speaker: And so it was a very good way to be present, um, but detached from like the everyday of work.
Speaker: And then when I came back to work, I felt like I was better at it.
Speaker: You know, that's awesome.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, no good things.
Speaker: Well, I didn't mean to make this a hobby podcast.
Speaker: It's a life podcast.
Speaker: Yeah, but no, it's good to hear about the hobbies, but we didn't really introduce you, so you can go listen to the first podcast, and I know you gave your whole background and everything in that podcast.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But since we've last recorded, you guys are now Sunrun.
Speaker: It's not Vivint Solar anymore.
Speaker: And before we recorded, you said you're over the whole door-to-door channel, right?
Speaker: SVP over all the door-to-door guys.
Speaker: So, yeah, I'm curious to hear.
Speaker: I think this is really the first time we've talked since you guys have become Sunrun now.
Speaker: What's it been like?
Speaker: And maybe talk a little bit what that transition was like going from Vivint Solar, Sunrun now,
Speaker: Maybe some of the challenges you guys went through.
Speaker: How's everything been with that?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's been it's been like the best business education I could have ever gotten.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like I don't think we could have.
Speaker: I remember when it's in Steve Jobs's book that Walter Isaacson wrote when they had the problem.
Speaker: I can't remember what iPhone it was, but do you remember?
Speaker: Was it like the four that had a problem with the antenna?
Speaker: Do you remember that?
Speaker: Like they released their new phone.
Speaker: It was a new design.
Speaker: It was like a more square design and maybe it was the five, but if you held it and you touched the side, you couldn't make phone calls.
Speaker: It was like this massive deal.
Speaker: Um, and they'd been working on releasing like the phone.
Speaker: And so by the time the phone was released, Steve jobs and his family were in Hawaii.
Speaker: And then he got the call being like, Hey, uh, this thing doesn't make phone calls if you hold it a certain way.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And so he grabbed his son and, you know, his wife was like, Hey, like maybe he should stay here.
Speaker: And he's, I remember like the quote in the book was something to the effect of he'll learn more in the next three days about how business is done than he will ever learn in any university.
Speaker: And so I think, um, the sun run merge has been, it's been awesome and it's been really hard and it's been humbling.
Speaker: And I think it's made people either, um,
Speaker: it kind of showed where you're at and then it made everybody better, everyone that like stayed with it.
Speaker: This is one of those things on paper where, you know, Sunrun didn't have a captive sales force.
Speaker: So the way that they did their business before is they had a PPA, right?
Speaker: They had a product.
Speaker: And then they would sell that product through dealers.
Speaker: So people would, they weren't interested in like running their own internal sales channel or program or whatever.
Speaker: They had more traditional channels.
Speaker: Like they had like a field and retail channel, you know, did kind of some like more traditional sales channel stuff, but no door-to-door stuff.
Speaker: And so other than through their like partners and affiliates.
Speaker: And then sometimes when the retail people were out selling, you know, they'd talk to referrals and stuff in the neighborhoods, but they didn't do like the job like we know it.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And so Bivit Solar kind of had some other channels, but it wasn't our main thing.
Speaker: Like we had an inside sales and we had some dealers that sold our product because we had a PPA as well.
Speaker: But we had about 200,000 customers at the time that we owned.
Speaker: They had about 300,000.
Speaker: And so on paper, it was like a perfect merge where it's like,
Speaker: hey, they don't have a captive sales force, they would like one.
Speaker: They have 300,000 customers.
Speaker: You, you know, Sunrun also had some financial strategy stuff that was superior.
Speaker: At the time, we believe they had operational superiority.
Speaker: You know, we've had to just learn a lot as we came together.
Speaker: And so it's one of those things that it's like, okay, we had 200,000 customers, they had 300,000 customers, we do a different kind of sales.
Speaker: I often like equate it to like the Raiders going to Las Vegas.
Speaker: It's like on paper,
Speaker: There's not like, Hey, I'm the quarterback.
Speaker: Well, I'm the quarterback.
Speaker: Well, who's going to be, there was no team.
Speaker: And so they just moved their team there.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Got a new stadium, got like a new fan base and stuff like that.
Speaker: So on paper, it was like that.
Speaker: It was like, okay, cool.
Speaker: Like we're going to come together.
Speaker: The two biggest companies will come together and this will be, you know, a great opportunity.
Speaker: We'll take the good from both companies and we'll merge together to create a new one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Once you start down the, like once you start down the road, it's a bit like a mixed family.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Where it's like,
Speaker: okay, exciting.
Speaker: You're going to have a new brother and he's my age and he's into motorcycles.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: And then you move in and it's like, whoa, like those are my drawers.
Speaker: Like where are you going to put your stuff?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And you get, it gets real.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Get your dirty socks out of here.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: And it's like, dude, do you always chew that loud?
Speaker: There's a lot of that.
Speaker: And so our cultures were really different.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: I learned what to do and I learned what not to do.
Speaker: One of the things that I learned not to do is, well, I learned to be very curious, right?
Speaker: Because the people that were so certain in their method being the right way, most of them didn't make it through the transition.
Speaker: So I remember thinking like, you know, some people that we've had on our show that were like, this is how you do it.
Speaker: I've got experience.
Speaker: I know how to do it, but this is a new family and it's a new industry pretty much every year, right?
Speaker: Like it's so young and it's still developing.
Speaker: And so I,
Speaker: certainty was just, it was a kiss of death, right, for a lot of people.
Speaker: And so it really taught me to be like, okay, I think I know, but let me hear you out.
Speaker: And then when people, you know, Chance Allred, my former boss would always say best idea wins.
Speaker: And so I've learned to hear something and be like, okay, actually, you've changed my mind.
Speaker: I now agree with you.
Speaker: And the people that could do that,
Speaker: we've grown a lot and we've managed and now it's a whole new company, right?
Speaker: Like we have a, we had a founder that was the CEO.
Speaker: She's now like an executive chairperson or board member or whatever.
Speaker: She's not CEO anymore.
Speaker: We have a new CEO.
Speaker: We have a new CRO.
Speaker: We have a CXO that we didn't have before.
Speaker: We have a new legal team.
Speaker: I'm in a new position.
Speaker: And so it's not Sunrun as it was before.
Speaker: It's this completely new company.
Speaker: And I,
Speaker: I think after like, I mean, I think that merge happened in 2020.
Speaker: Now I've, it's the best company I've ever been a part of by far.
Speaker: Two or three years ago, there was a lot of like,
Speaker: we've got to make some serious changes in order for this to work in order for people to want to be a part of it.
Speaker: But that's what you do, right?
Speaker: Like you can't necessarily say, you know, Raiders can't do Oakland Raiders stuff in Las Vegas.
Speaker: It's a different market.
Speaker: They can still be the Raiders, but how do they work in this new environment?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so for us, it was a lot of like, what kind of company do we want to be?
Speaker: You know, and, and what are our values?
Speaker: And, you know,
Speaker: you know, what do we believe in?
Speaker: And that's one thing that I really learned is it all starts there.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so if you just come together and you start like working, there's frustration, there's misalignment, there's, there's misunderstanding, misunderstanding, there's, there's assumed intention and it gets really toxic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But when you back up and you say, and I really believe in this in every part of life, but if you back up and say, Hey, what, what kind of organization are we?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, what, what, what do we believe in?
Speaker: And then once you get that right, then you go to your people and say, this is what we believe.
Speaker: Do you believe that too?
Speaker: And if they're like, yes, then it's like, all right, we should work together.
Speaker: But if it's like, no, I believe this, then it's like, okay, you might not be happy here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I think we nailed that.
Speaker: It took us a while to get it right.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It took us a while to get it right.
Speaker: And we involved consultants and we involved, but we did the right, we did the work to figure out what do we believe?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: What's going to be our like, what's going to be our flag that we carry?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then we went to work on how to do it.
Speaker: And I think a lot of people do that backwards.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It makes a lot of sense because yeah, I think like you said, there can be a lot of differences and everything, but people don't identify, Hey, what's your goal?
Speaker: Where are we trying to go?
Speaker: What's yeah.
Speaker: What's our flag we're carrying?
Speaker: And then probably a lot tougher to resolve differences and all that.
Speaker: You can take a step back all the same clear vision.
Speaker: I imagine a lot easier.
Speaker: It's number one and people always do it backwards.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I have a whole, like we can talk about it if you want, but there's a whole philosophy that we run our sales teams on, on that very concept.
Speaker: I've just seen so many teams for so many years.
Speaker: I've seen a lot get it right.
Speaker: And I've seen more get it wrong.
Speaker: And the ones that get it right, they all kind of do it.
Speaker: They do it differently, but they follow the same steps in the same template.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So again, back to football.
Speaker: I never watched football, by the way, I've watched like seven football games in my life and I've probably been to 30.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: Um, they all Raiders.
Speaker: I have been to one Raiders.
Speaker: Actually, I've been to two.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, and it was at, it was at a mile high stadium in Denver and I was there with Denver and there were some Raider fans in the crowd and it's like, man, you guys are different, you know?
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: But it's like, you look at like, you look at a team like the Raiders and you look at a team like the Green Bay Packers or like the Patriots.
Speaker: They're all playing the exact same game, but they play it very differently.
Speaker: But they agree that, okay, a football field is a hundred yards and, you know, a touchdown is going to be six points.
Speaker: And, you know, all in a first down is going to be every time.
Speaker: So they have these like basic agreements and they have a structure, right?
Speaker: We have, you know, like these different leagues and this is how it's going to work.
Speaker: Now the teams, it's like, here's your rules, here's your structure.
Speaker: Now it's on you right now.
Speaker: Now do whatever you want to bring your team together and to accomplish the goal of scoring more points than the other team.
Speaker: That's all playing by the same rules.
Speaker: And so if they do that, you know, it's very, it's very different to be a green Bay Packer than it is to be, you know, a new England Patriot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And those teams aren't for everybody.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But I think the teams that can get right on that, a lot of times they're the ones that have the culture that's like pretty life-changing.
Speaker: versus the ones that just start with like, how are we going to win more games?
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: I don't know if I'm being very clear, but no, that's a good analogy.
Speaker: So you guys kind of run yourselves teams like that.
Speaker: You say, Hey, here's what we're trying to do.
Speaker: Here's the goals.
Speaker: And then like each team, you kind of let them run with how they want to achieve that, do their thing.
Speaker: Yeah, kind of.
Speaker: So I'm a, the one thing I've probably learned more than any other thing in my last 10 years as a leader in solar is that architecture is the great unlock.
Speaker: Early in my career, I thought you grow by really good training and really good salesmanship and really good culture and fun and activities and good feelings and high level recruits.
Speaker: Now, obviously you have to have all of those things to grow, but I've had those things and not grown and I've had those things and have grown.
Speaker: So I can't tell you that, hey, if you just recruit really hard and get really good at selling and have like a lot of fun and bring your team together, you're gonna grow.
Speaker: I can tell you that if you follow, if you architect things properly and the environment is right, you'll grow whether or not you're the best leader.
Speaker: I really believe that.
Speaker: And so especially my role now, because I oversee the whole channel.
Speaker: And so it's a lot more of what.
Speaker: So for example, think of like you're going to build a house.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And you're like, Hey, I want to have a house that is inviting and people just want to come into.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So if you don't look at the structure and you and your wife are just like, Hey, let's have people over and let's be this kind of couple.
Speaker: It may work or it may not.
Speaker: But if you back up and you say, okay,
Speaker: let's build a house that brings people in.
Speaker: You would think of everything.
Speaker: You'd be like, okay, well, what does the house have to look like?
Speaker: Well, it's gotta be very open.
Speaker: Well, it's gotta have a big space next to the kitchen because that's where people gather.
Speaker: It should have whatever you had figured out and you would architect it so that even if you're not feeling overly social that day, or even if you're not always having people over your, your, your home would be architected and set up and structured so that naturally people gather.
Speaker: And so you might have people saying, hey, can I do a 40th birthday party for my wife at your house?
Speaker: Or, hey, we're going to have the speaker come over.
Speaker: My house isn't really good for it.
Speaker: Can we use yours?
Speaker: So then even if you're not the very most skilled at those things,
Speaker: the architecture will encourage it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So if you want to feel serene in your home, you can put on good music or you can architect a serene space and it kind of naturally happens.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so the way that translates to teams is it's, we call it the electric triangle.
Speaker: That's what we call it.
Speaker: It's kind of a thing that my brother Jordan and I noticed with popular sales teams.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So there's, you know, the triangle is obviously the strongest shape and electric basically means like I've been a part of electric teams, organizations, endeavors, and I've been a part of electric people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I like electric things, dude.
Speaker: Seems like that's the theme.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But you've been a part of teams where you're like, yeah, this isn't it.
Speaker: Like, yeah, it feels like, or relationships that have been that way or hobbies where you're like, I'm just not, something's missing.
Speaker: And so,
Speaker: When you look at what makes something electric, I always tell people like, think back to a time where you've been on a team where it was just energy and you felt like you were doing your best work.
Speaker: And if you felt like you loved all the people that you worked with and you felt like your time, you were spending your time on the right things and it was important work, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I look back at those times and I'll say, um, you know, one of my first, I mean, I've had a lot of experiences with it.
Speaker: Thankfully, like I've been blessed to be in a really cool industry and like work with really cool people.
Speaker: And I felt electric teams a lot, but the one that I'll go back to is one of my first sales teams that we really figured this out in was in, um, Pittsburgh.
Speaker: It was in 2008.
Speaker: I realized a lot of people that are listening to this are like 2008.
Speaker: I was like in fourth grade.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was, I was working last night with a group and they asked me when I started selling and I started selling in 2003.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I said to the kid next to me, I was like, where were you?
Speaker: And he's like, I was in my mother's arms.
Speaker: I was two years old.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Crazy.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Anyway, so I was part of this team in Pittsburgh in 2008.
Speaker: It broke all kinds of records for how much volume the team had done up to that point.
Speaker: But really, I'm still on a text thread with the people from that group.
Speaker: Yeah, we still like send each other things that remind us of things that we used to do.
Speaker: You know, now...
Speaker: I've been to their weddings and, uh, you know, I've been when their kids are born and I've been to their kids' birthday parties and I've followed them through different career changes.
Speaker: And every now and then we get together on like these like reunion, it was like a really special team.
Speaker: So how do you have that?
Speaker: Also, and we were doing alarms in the summer, but we did like 4,200 installs that summer, which is a lot back then for an alarm team.
Speaker: Um, and so, um,
Speaker: I look at those and I'm like, okay, why?
Speaker: It felt like everything we did worked.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We picked area.
Speaker: Well, we did car groups.
Speaker: Well, we did training.
Speaker: Everything just worked.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so what I find is most people, there's three steps to an electric triangle and most people do it backwards.
Speaker: They start with number three, which is programs.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: So programs would be stuff like, Hey, we need to improve our training or we need to switch area.
Speaker: We need to figure out a better area system or we need to run an incentive.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So that's generally, it's like you look and you say, Hey, our sales volume is down.
Speaker: So what do we need to do to bring it up?
Speaker: Especially men.
Speaker: Cause we're problem solvers like this, right?
Speaker: Like we just think to where is the problem?
Speaker: Let me fix the problem.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: But it's almost like if you looked in your home and you're like, hey, there's a wet spot on the floor.
Speaker: I need to dry up that wet spot.
Speaker: And then you dry it up.
Speaker: And then two days later, you're like, that wet spot is back again.
Speaker: And you dry it up.
Speaker: You're not actually going to get very far because what you're doing is you're dealing with the symptoms of the problem, but you're not dealing with the root of it.
Speaker: There's a reason water is coming into your house.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so if like your sales volume is down, yes, you can, you can, you can temporarily fix it with program type things.
Speaker: But if you try to just do programs, you eventually end up burning out.
Speaker: So I think about like stuff like physical fitness.
Speaker: If you say like, okay, Hey, I'm too skinny.
Speaker: I need to go to the gym and I need to put on muscle.
Speaker: The reason that eventually I will probably exhaust and stop going to the gym is because there's no like real substance behind that.
Speaker: It's just, I need to go solve this problem.
Speaker: Well, it could happen that five weeks or five months from now, I have another kid and I'm like, I don't need to be getting muscles right now.
Speaker: I need to be home with my baby.
Speaker: This is,
Speaker: this is not important.
Speaker: Or it may need to be like, this is too hard.
Speaker: Or maybe like I'm injured now, I'm not gonna do this again.
Speaker: For whatever reason, you have to willpower your way through it and willpower exhaust, like you run out, right?
Speaker: And so what I've found is if you do it in the right order, the first thing is what we were talking about before, which is vision.
Speaker: So the first thing is, okay, if I look at you and I'm like, hey, I'm gonna go to the gym every single day.
Speaker: Probably I'm a pretty determined person, so I'll probably do it for a couple of months.
Speaker: But I've done that before and I still look the same.
Speaker: I haven't had the change.
Speaker: But if you were consulting me and you were using electric triangle, you say, why?
Speaker: You just asked me why like three times.
Speaker: Why do you want to go to the gym?
Speaker: Well, I'm too skinny.
Speaker: Why do you think you're too skinny?
Speaker: Well, I don't like the way I look.
Speaker: Why don't you look like?
Speaker: Why does that matter?
Speaker: Well, if I don't like the way I look, I don't like the way I feel.
Speaker: And then I'm not very happy.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So now we're getting to some sort of a purpose where it's like, okay, I want to
Speaker: exist in an optimum state.
Speaker: I want to be happy and I feel like being physically fit will get me there.
Speaker: It's a really good vision.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So the first is vision, right?
Speaker: It's like, it's like, okay, what, what is going to drive you to do this when you don't want to do it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: The second thing is, and, and a lot of salespeople are pretty good at the vision part, like especially leaders.
Speaker: Like they're pretty good at like seeing further down the road than everybody else.
Speaker: That's why they're leaders.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, but people that are good dreamers or visionaries often have a hard time with the second piece of the triangle, which is victory, like putting a tangible goal to it.
Speaker: So I could say to you, I want to be physically fit because I like to be active and it makes me happy.
Speaker: And so if I'm not physically fit, I won't be happy.
Speaker: And I, I need, I need, I need to have that.
Speaker: Well,
Speaker: saying I'm going to get in shape is a really bad goal.
Speaker: So subjective.
Speaker: It doesn't, right.
Speaker: You have to have a hard number to it.
Speaker: And so maybe what I need to do is, okay, what equals a level of fitness that's going to help me achieve my vision of feeling like I'm in my optimal state?
Speaker: Do I have to be an Olympic bodybuilder or do I just have to be able to run a turkey trot with my family on Thanksgiving?
Speaker: And so you get clear on that.
Speaker: And maybe I say, you know what?
Speaker: I need to be like, I need to be like CrossFit,
Speaker: Upper middle class.
Speaker: That's where I feel like I should be in an order for me to enjoy all my hobbies.
Speaker: That's the level of fitness that's required.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So how much do you need to weigh?
Speaker: How much body fat should you have?
Speaker: How much, you know, how many days a week are you going to the gym?
Speaker: What kind of improvement do you want to see?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Those are, those are tangible metrics.
Speaker: So I can say, okay, I want to be fit so that I can feel happy.
Speaker: fitness and happiness to me means I need to gain 10 pounds of muscle and I need to be at X percent body fat.
Speaker: I sound like I know a lot about that.
Speaker: I actually don't have fitness goals.
Speaker: I guess I should, but I don't.
Speaker: Um, so then I can measure it right after I go do the vision and then the victory, then the programs come third.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So the programs are the easiest part when you have the vision and victory down.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Because it's like, if I know, so go back to the house.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: If, if, if I want to build a house for my family, right.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Well, because I want to have a safe place to raise them.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Because these people are the most important people on the planet and they deserve the very best.
Speaker: What is the very best?
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Now we're starting to define it.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, are we the type of family that has people over?
Speaker: Are we the type of family that has a very small house?
Speaker: And then we spend all our money on vacations and stuff like that.
Speaker: So maybe we say, Hey, this is going to be a, like a refuge from the world.
Speaker: My kids are going to know that when they come into this home, they're,
Speaker: They're safe.
Speaker: They're going to see their mom and me a lot.
Speaker: We're going to interact.
Speaker: We're going to be social.
Speaker: And it's the type of place I want their friends to come to.
Speaker: This is my vision, right?
Speaker: Like I want to have a safe haven that draws people in.
Speaker: That's what we're building.
Speaker: Not just a house.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So then you got to go to the victory metrics.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: That's a great vision.
Speaker: It's beautiful.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So then.
Speaker: How big?
Speaker: What does it have?
Speaker: Does it have a pool table?
Speaker: Does it have a swimming pool?
Speaker: Does it have... What is going to draw people in?
Speaker: And then you come in and you say, okay, you know what?
Speaker: This thing is going to be not the most expensive, most amazing house.
Speaker: I want people to be able to
Speaker: ride their skateboard on the floor in my house.
Speaker: And I want them to spill juice on the, on the concrete floor and not have it be a big deal.
Speaker: Uh, right.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So then we need a budget of maybe this house is going to cost $2 million.
Speaker: Maybe it's going to be 4,000 square feet.
Speaker: It's going to have social things like a pool table, a kid's room, like a, like a toy room, man cave type thing.
Speaker: It's going to have a swimming pool and it's going to have a study room because that kind of stuff is important to us.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So then those are the victory metrics.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Then the programs, you go to an architect and say, hey, I want to create a social dwelling.
Speaker: Here's my budget.
Speaker: Here's the size.
Speaker: He'll have all sorts of ideas on how to do that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So back to sales teams.
Speaker: If you say, OK, why does your sales team exist?
Speaker: And if it's like because, man, to crush it, that's poor vision.
Speaker: Keep working on it.
Speaker: What is crushing it?
Speaker: Why do you really want to do this?
Speaker: I want it.
Speaker: And maybe you get to the point where it's like, I want everybody that comes and joins my sales team.
Speaker: I want them to level up in life.
Speaker: I want them to experience a higher quality of life because they worked here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So then you go to the victory metrics and say, what is a higher quality of life?
Speaker: How much do they have to earn?
Speaker: What's the goal?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, the goal is that everybody is quote wealthy by us tax standards.
Speaker: So, okay.
Speaker: 250 grand.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So cool.
Speaker: Optimal is I want everyone that comes here to, to, to earn in the top 5% of Americans because you can, that's what this team is about.
Speaker: So first of all, that's not what, if you're about like, Hey, I'm kind of about doing one job a month and then chilling is not going to be, you're not going to be happy.
Speaker: I'm going to bug you.
Speaker: You're going to bug me.
Speaker: This is not going to work.
Speaker: We shouldn't, we shouldn't do this.
Speaker: But if you're the type of person that's like, you know what?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like I, it's time for me to change my life.
Speaker: It's time for me to level up.
Speaker: I've never made two 50 before.
Speaker: I want to make two 50.
Speaker: So I'm in excellent.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So now we go to work on the victory metrics.
Speaker: Two 50 means you have to install how many installs, right?
Speaker: So you look at it and you're like, okay, I,
Speaker: eight to 10 grand and install, just do the math.
Speaker: And okay, so you need to do what?
Speaker: 20 installs a year or something like that.
Speaker: Okay, 25 installs a year.
Speaker: So how many does that mean a week?
Speaker: Okay, so in order to do that, how many meetings do you have to come to?
Speaker: What does your conversion rate have to be?
Speaker: Then you go in and you set those hard goals, knowing that if you hit those hard goals,
Speaker: you're going to level up your life and experience to higher, like whatever higher level existence.
Speaker: So then the programs are simple.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: What do I got to do to install one account a week?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And your brain will just come up with it.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well I can prospect for four hours a day.
Speaker: Excellent.
Speaker: What else?
Speaker: I can always make sure I have five permits pending at the city at all times.
Speaker: Excellent.
Speaker: What else?
Speaker: I can read a book a month, right?
Speaker: And you, you go through and you can create programs.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So anyway, that's kind of how our teams are run.
Speaker: So every team has a vision.
Speaker: And then every team has targets.
Speaker: We have some targets for them, but some of them have, some of them say, Hey, I want to kick five leaders out of here and have them grow their own markets.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That's a victory metric.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: And then programs, how do you do it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, I'll just leave them to that.
Speaker: Cause they'll figure if you ask your brain, the right questions, right.
Speaker: It comes up with the right programs.
Speaker: So in that, that's how we plan everything, dude.
Speaker: That's how we plan everything from like motorcycles I've built to, or had built to vacations.
Speaker: We've gone on to remodel projects to a little,
Speaker: car project sitting outside to my own family.
Speaker: Like it all, it all runs off an electric trial.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I like that a lot.
Speaker: So it sounds like it's basically just thinking broad and then getting more specific.
Speaker: You're just kind of funneling ideas into this and figuring out first the why behind it and then exactly what you want with that.
Speaker: And then the specifics, how you're going to actually do it.
Speaker: It's human behavior.
Speaker: It's actually how our brains work.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So if you were to say, Hey, my goal is to make a half million dollars this year.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: it's, it's, it's okay.
Speaker: It's better than nothing.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Like, and I operated that way for a really long time, but what happens if you get 480, your life's not that different for 80 versus 500.
Speaker: So then you're bummed out cause you missed your goal, but you're still living an incredible life.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: And so I've found that if you just do the work of asking yourself why two or three more times, why do you want half a million?
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Because I value security and I don't want to ever lose my house like I lost my house when I was a kid.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so you're like, okay, so your vision is security.
Speaker: Your vision is optionality.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: The metric, the victory goal is 500,000 because you believe if you make 500,000, then you'll be safe.
Speaker: Excellent.
Speaker: How do you make 500,000?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But then if you have that target of like, no, 500 means safety, you won't let yourself, yourself stop at 480.
Speaker: It's important to you.
Speaker: So then you go through and then, then you become the type of person that earns that type of income.
Speaker: And then you end up generally surpassing your victory targets in the pursuit of the clear vision that's in your head.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think it was, I don't know, some personal development guy was like, don't become a millionaire for the money, become a millionaire for the person you have to become along the way.
Speaker: Something like that.
Speaker: It's just, I would say why a million?
Speaker: Like I was watching the, um, funny, I was watching the Paris Hilton documentary on YouTube.
Speaker: Have you seen it?
Speaker: No, I haven't.
Speaker: You can admit it.
Speaker: I just admitted it.
Speaker: It's actually super good.
Speaker: But, um, the interviewer is talking to her and Paris Hilton has, I don't know how much money she has, but enough.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And she's like, I want a billion.
Speaker: And the person interviewing her is like, why do you want a billion?
Speaker: She's like, I just don't want to like have to worry about anything.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: As if you need a billion dollars to not have to worry about anything.
Speaker: And then you're going to have to worry about stuff because your tax bill is insane.
Speaker: And the people that are wanting you to invest is a lot like, so it's like you have a good victory metric, but I don't see a vision in it.
Speaker: And so you're not going to be happy.
Speaker: You're going to hit a billion.
Speaker: And then what?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Then you're going to be like, well, I thought that this would fix my problems, but now I actually.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so it was just funny because I was watching that.
Speaker: I was like, that's a victory.
Speaker: It's not a vision.
Speaker: But what if she, if she said, you know, my goal is ultimately like, I want to create a stress free life for myself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Now you, now do it that way.
Speaker: Now do it, now do it, you know, now go to your victory and then, then go to your programs.
Speaker: But it's funny because I just see so many people that like,
Speaker: You know, I lived in South America for a couple of years and those people are really, really happy and they have nothing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then I've seen, you know, in arguably the most affluent existence that we've ever seen, like where we live and like this world that we're in now and people are super bummed out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, anyway, so it's like it's a little thing that's kind of helped me figure out how do you project manage or how do you like create things?
Speaker: Predictable outcomes.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: I did watch the documentary where the kids like robbed Paris Hilton's house.
Speaker: Did you see that one?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The bling ring.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I always joke.
Speaker: I see everything, dude.
Speaker: I see like, I watch documentaries when I fly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so I, I see everything.
Speaker: Yeah, I actually saw the movie and then I saw the documentary on the movie.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They're just robbing.
Speaker: She's just leaving like thousands of dollars in her purses and stuff.
Speaker: Didn't even notice for the first little bit.
Speaker: Like, well, what a crazy thing, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: That's funny.
Speaker: But no, that's cool, man.
Speaker: Well, so yeah, I think that's good.
Speaker: And for anyone listening, most people I don't think are thinking is, I think it's good that you're talking about this around the new year.
Speaker: Like we're recording this almost December now, but whenever you're listening to this, I think that's probably, so every goal you set for yourself sounds like you're pretty much putting it through this process, through this electric triangle.
Speaker: And that's how you're forming your goals.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the, it doesn't start with a goal.
Speaker: It starts with a vision.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So for example, if you're like, I want to learn how to do jujitsu.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If you say that, then you'll probably quit after a while.
Speaker: But if you actually say, well, why?
Speaker: Well, because I feel like it's one of my sole responsibilities to be able to protect my family.
Speaker: And in order to protect my family, I have to know how to deal with physical danger.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well then if I'm like sick and don't want to go, I'm going to go because that vision is really compelling.
Speaker: That's how our brains work.
Speaker: But if I'm like, Oh, I thought I wanted to fight, but now the fighting's lame.
Speaker: It just goes away like anything that we try.
Speaker: So what I try to do for goal setting is I sit and I look and I'm like, okay, what, what is my goal?
Speaker: what is my vision like for, for what kind of like, what do I want to experience?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so you may, you may feel like stagnant or something and you may be like, you know what?
Speaker: Like, I'm just a little bit like, I'm just a little bit like stuck.
Speaker: Like I'm just a little bit like existing.
Speaker: I'm just a little blah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So you can say, okay, I want to feel excitement and I want to feel progress and I want to feel contribution.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay, that's actually a pretty good vision.
Speaker: So then you could say, okay, well, in order to feel those things,
Speaker: Why do I wanna feel those things?
Speaker: And generally, honestly, it comes down to a feeling.
Speaker: Jesse Itzler says that.
Speaker: He's like, the one thing that everybody has in common is everybody wants to feel good.
Speaker: So if you ask yourself three times why, you'll generally end up in emotion.
Speaker: I wanna feel love.
Speaker: I wanna feel safety.
Speaker: I wanna feel valuable.
Speaker: I wanna feel alive.
Speaker: It's usually where it ends up, right?
Speaker: I wanna feel comfortable.
Speaker: But then if you go to it and say, okay,
Speaker: Maybe, uh, you know, I want to feel development.
Speaker: I want to feel fire.
Speaker: I want to learn new things.
Speaker: I want to feel like more alive.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, maybe I could learn a new physical skill.
Speaker: Well, okay.
Speaker: There's a goal.
Speaker: Learn a new physical skill.
Speaker: What physical skill?
Speaker: Well, jujitsu is a useful one because, you know, part of feeling alive for me is being able to like preserve and protect my family.
Speaker: So I'm going to learn jujitsu because that's a thing that I can learn that's in line with my values.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: How do you learn jujitsu?
Speaker: Now we're into programs.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: I'm a higher private coach.
Speaker: I'm gonna work with them twice a week.
Speaker: And as long as I do that, I'll get better.
Speaker: Great goal.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's in line with your vision, but then you can have another one.
Speaker: That's like, I want to,
Speaker: whatever I want to buy a bigger house.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Like, I don't know that that then fits in your vision.
Speaker: And so it's, there's nothing wrong with having a bigger house, but most goals that people set they don't end up doing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, and I'm not perfect at this too.
Speaker: Like I said, a lot of goals that I don't end up doing, but the ones that I do end up doing are generally tied to some sort of vision.
Speaker: So like one of them is like, I want my kids to see a great example.
Speaker: That's just,
Speaker: So, you know, it's stuff like, okay, so maybe I want to do something physically hard.
Speaker: So we've been cold plunging at my house lately.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So maybe we say, okay, I want my kids to see an example in their dad.
Speaker: And so if I say, okay, well, one way to do that is cold plunge because that also will be, I'll be an example of health because there's great health benefits from it.
Speaker: So this is a good goal.
Speaker: How, okay.
Speaker: Victory.
Speaker: How cold, how often?
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: 45 degrees, three and a half minutes, six days a week.
Speaker: Perfect.
Speaker: Now when I'm sitting there and it's raining outside and it's cold and I don't want to do it,
Speaker: but my kids need to see a good example.
Speaker: So I'll do it.
Speaker: Not, Hey, you said you were going to do it five times.
Speaker: You've only done it four.
Speaker: It's like, yeah.
Speaker: But if it's like, Hey man, your kids are watching.
Speaker: Are you setting a good example?
Speaker: It's like, I'm getting in the water.
Speaker: Like it just, I don't know.
Speaker: I feel like it connects you deeper to whatever it is you're trying to do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: And it seems like it'd be a good way to like kind of process elimination on figure out if you actually want that goal.
Speaker: it's actually like tied to your purpose or it's just something you're thinking of, you don't really care about and you're going to spend three months on it just to quit it anyways.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Probably helps you get all more.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There's a second part to the electric triangle that, that talks about that.
Speaker: Like, so that's kind of like the outline of it.
Speaker: And then there's another, there's another, like there's a visual diagram that kind of goes around it.
Speaker: But, um, the last piece of the, of part two is essentially relentlessly hack away at non-essentials.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So like,
Speaker: you shouldn't have 25 goals, right?
Speaker: You really should eliminate everything.
Speaker: That's not a hundred percent necessary.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So if you say, Hey, I want my kids to see a good example.
Speaker: And I'm like, here are the 91 things I'm going to do to be a good example.
Speaker: It's, it's pick the most impactful three, right.
Speaker: And just hack away.
Speaker: But yeah, then you come out of it with, with things that I feel like are pretty manageable and,
Speaker: Anyway, it works for me.
Speaker: I'm not saying it's like the secret to getting it done, but I have found that if my actions are connected to a vision that aligns with some sort of way that I want to feel, I'm pretty good at getting it done.
Speaker: If it's just something that I feel in the moment that's not connected to some deeper why that aligns with who I am.
Speaker: then either I don't do it or I do it and who cares?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, yeah, it seems like it's working great for you.
Speaker: So I don't think there's too many people to have.
Speaker: What do you have?
Speaker: Six kids now?
Speaker: I have six.
Speaker: Six kids, six kids, overall a whole door-to-door vision for...
Speaker: uh, what sun runs, are they the biggest solar company in the country?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The largest solar company.
Speaker: And then yeah.
Speaker: Crushing with the family.
Speaker: So if you are not crushing it in those areas, might be something worth trying from.
Speaker: You should ask my wife if I'm crushing it in those areas, but yeah, it's,
Speaker: It's a journey, right?
Speaker: It's a journey.
Speaker: And I think that's the cool thing about like our community, I think is everybody, you don't have to tell people like in this world that you and I are in this like personal development commission based leadership and sales like world.
Speaker: Mm hmm.
Speaker: there's never going to be a conversation where I'm like, Hey, I think you should work on yourself.
Speaker: You're like, well, yeah.
Speaker: Like we all just believe that already.
Speaker: Like where everybody's doing that.
Speaker: And so I've benefited a lot from that community at one, mainly like I just feel happy.
Speaker: Like when I'm, when I'm getting better, I believe that progress is happiness.
Speaker: And so when, when I feel very fortunate to have found a community like that, cause I think a lot of people go to work and they're
Speaker: they're, they're, they're working on a vision that they don't even care about or it's not theirs or they don't have one at all, but you got to work.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then you have, um, a lot of people that are like, Hey, I'm trying to earn this money, but they're killing themselves doing it.
Speaker: And they don't even really know why other than they're just like pursuing it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so,
Speaker: I think our community here has, you don't have to like encourage someone to develop.
Speaker: And so you often like you experience these wins and you experience like, you know, you can feel actually like proud that you're like getting better and things like that.
Speaker: And it's a real part of our lives.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And in a lot of people's lives, that's just not part of it.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's good.
Speaker: Well, that's, that's, uh, yeah, that's a cool formula here and definitely give it a shot in my life.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: Cause yeah, I think there's, I think I make that mistake of setting a lot of goals and chasing after things.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I haven't even done that with jujitsu.
Speaker: So maybe I should do that with jujitsu.
Speaker: Like, why am I training that?
Speaker: The probably better question.
Speaker: And it's there.
Speaker: It's not, it's not like if you're doing it, like I wanted to learn to serve cause learning to serve is awesome.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: For me.
Speaker: I just, I like it.
Speaker: That said, I have a very specific reason that we do it because I'm telling you at what four o'clock or whatever on a, on a Wednesday that it's awesome.
Speaker: But at four 30 in the morning in a lineup, like in San Clemente where you have professional surfers out there where it's freezing cold and you feel stupid.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's not enough to be like surfing is awesome.
Speaker: You have to have, you have to have some reason that you're out there.
Speaker: And so like take something like surfing, the, the vision behind that is I wanted to have something that I can do with my kids forever.
Speaker: I get surf till I'm 80.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so, and I wanted to maximize the place where I live.
Speaker: So
Speaker: if it's four 30 in the morning and I've got a coach waiting for me on the beach and I have to get through this time of like being a beginner in order to ultimately have these experiences with my family, I just do it.
Speaker: I just do it.
Speaker: And so, but I did have to get clear on that because it's expensive and it's time consuming and it's really hard and it's super uncomfortable.
Speaker: Like it's, it's so hard.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so you'd quit a long time ago if you didn't have a really clear why, but I just have this vision of like, no, I'm like,
Speaker: when my children come to visit me with their grandkids, one tradition that I have with my oldest son is we surf every Christmas Eve.
Speaker: It's like brought me so much happiness.
Speaker: Like it's one of those things where it's like, if it's Christmas Eve and we're in town, we're surfing.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: I can't put a price on those memories with him, you know?
Speaker: And I had a great, great dad, but we didn't surf together Christmas Eve.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: And so for me, it's like, I want something that I can enjoy with my son to the, that you can't buy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'll get up at whatever time.
Speaker: And I'll endure whatever I have to endure in order to get there.
Speaker: And then once you get there, it feels amazing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Well, and we talked about this, I think, last podcast too.
Speaker: But once you do it for a long time and get good at it, it becomes a lot more fun too.
Speaker: I'm sure it's probably more fun waking up 4 a.m.
Speaker: than on day one when you started.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: When you first start and there's good waves and you wake up early, you're like scared.
Speaker: You're like, oh, crap.
Speaker: The crowd's going to be rough.
Speaker: Yeah, it's going to be big.
Speaker: But now you look at it and you're like, oh, I'm going to get it.
Speaker: Like this is...
Speaker: I can actually like, I'm going at this for the right reasons, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Well, Ty, before we run out of time here, I wanted to ask you one question that I thought all that stuff wasn't planned, but I'm glad we jumped into that.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: But the question, um, I was thinking of going back to kind of the transition Vivint Solar to Sunrun.
Speaker: Um, at the time we're recording this, we had another big, I guess you could say transition this year with net metering three rolling out in California and
Speaker: And like you said, there's changes happening every year is still a new industry.
Speaker: Times change all the time.
Speaker: So what do you what's something you do to like keep your reps just bought in?
Speaker: Because like as there's changes, I see it all the time.
Speaker: We a lot of reps that we have starting with us.
Speaker: They had been in solar before any M3 came out, but they're like, oh, I didn't think solar was still even good.
Speaker: So I quit and started selling something different.
Speaker: And they're seeing that we're still getting sales.
Speaker: And then they come back.
Speaker: But for you, like, how do you when like when Vivid Solar became Sunrun, when any M2 became any M3?
Speaker: How do you kind of, I don't know, maybe spin it in a good way and like keep these reps motivated, keep them hiding when the changes that sometimes maybe at the time could seem super negative to some people.
Speaker: Like, I don't know, is there any secret that you've seen or anything that helps as people, maybe people listening are going through changes in their markets, changes in their company.
Speaker: Maybe you have to pay a little bit less, whatever it is.
Speaker: What are some things that have helped you guys just like keep reps bought in and go through some of the tough things like that?
Speaker: That's a great question.
Speaker: Um, did we talk about the prestige last time?
Speaker: Do you remember that movie?
Speaker: The prestige?
Speaker: Have you seen it?
Speaker: Yeah, I've seen that.
Speaker: So, um, there's this line in the prestige when they're talking about magic and there's basically saying like, you know, uh, how do you do it?
Speaker: Like, what's the secret?
Speaker: And, and the, there's this dialogue back and forth and he's like, um,
Speaker: you know, he's like, these tricks are always super disappointing or whatever, because once you see how they work, right, there's disappointing.
Speaker: And he's like, so how do you do this one?
Speaker: And he's like, well, this, this trick is the most disappointing of all.
Speaker: There's no trick.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then you realize in the movie, there's actually two people, like there's no magic to it.
Speaker: Like it's a very practical way of doing the illusion that they're doing.
Speaker: So when I think of that, uh,
Speaker: how do I get reps bought in or how do I get them to see the bright side?
Speaker: I don't, I don't, if it's not good, I can't convince them it's good.
Speaker: And if it's not,
Speaker: favorable for the customer.
Speaker: I can't convince that I don't have that power.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: The thing that we've relied on is I actually do think it's good.
Speaker: And I actually do think there's a lot of positives to the change.
Speaker: And so it has, I just tell them what I see.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I was with a group last night.
Speaker: And one of the things that I always tell people when, when we're working on bringing groups over, they say, I actually don't
Speaker: feel like I recruit people.
Speaker: I don't feel like I'm a recruiter.
Speaker: I feel like I expose you to the business and I'll just show it to you.
Speaker: And if you think it's good, you'll do it.
Speaker: And if you see what I see, you'll probably do it.
Speaker: But I don't have like slick wording and things that like, Oh, this gets them every time I have a move, right?
Speaker: It's more like,
Speaker: Let me show you why I'm here and let me show you what I see and let me show you where I think this is going.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so for those that don't know what NEM3 is, in solar, especially in the state of California, we had a net metering agreement with utility company where basically you put solar panels on a house, sun hits the roof.
Speaker: And during the day, we make a lot more power than you need, right?
Speaker: Because then the night comes and you have to be able to power the house through the night.
Speaker: So before this year, we didn't really do much storage.
Speaker: And so the way it would work is the sun would hit the panels,
Speaker: and you would get credits in a meter.
Speaker: So I'd look at that like a bank account.
Speaker: Like I can take cash and put it in a bank account.
Speaker: And then when I need to pull out the cash later, I can pull the cash out.
Speaker: So that's what you basically do is you put power into the grid.
Speaker: And then when you need it, you can pull it out.
Speaker: It was a one-to-one credit pretty much, right?
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: It was a one-to-one credit with the first NEM.
Speaker: With NEM 2, it was a little bit different.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But for the sake of simplicity, we'll say it was a one-to-one credit.
Speaker: So I could put 30 kilowatt hours of power into the day or into the grid in the day.
Speaker: And then at night, if I use 30 kilowatt hours, then I'm even, right?
Speaker: So what NEM3 did is it basically gives you 20 cents on the dollar.
Speaker: So if I put a hundred kilowatts into the grid during the day, I can only pull out 20.
Speaker: It's a terrible deal, right?
Speaker: So it's like,
Speaker: I always say like, imagine if you went to the bank and the bank's like, sure, yeah, we'll store your money.
Speaker: We'll give you 20 cents on the dollar.
Speaker: So you give me a thousand dollars and you can have 200 back.
Speaker: You'd be like, well, I'm not going to give you, that's terrible.
Speaker: So the thing is this, before this year, we should have, we, the collective solar industry should have innovated and been putting batteries on every house.
Speaker: We should have, because it's better for, we have this problem with the grid where, you know, the grid's over a hundred years old.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So you go back a hundred years ago.
Speaker: How many people were living in this place that you and I are sitting in now a hundred years ago?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like it would have been 1923.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like you see the pictures from then.
Speaker: It's like a field out here.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So the, you know, when you look at the, the, when the grid was built, the technology that it was built with the increase in population and the increase in personal demand, like not only are there more people here, but we use exponentially more power per person now.
Speaker: from the computers to the electric bikes, to electric cars, to electric appliances, to electric heaters, everybody has air conditioning, like climate control and all that, like internal climate control and all that stuff has really changed the way we use electricity.
Speaker: So we use exponentially more power.
Speaker: So we're using a grid and an infrastructure that eventually won't work.
Speaker: You know, experts give us like 80 years of burnable coal, gas and oil until we're out at our current consumption rate, yeah.
Speaker: So if we don't change like the way we fuel our lives and we just continue to burn coal, gas and oil, not only does it have profound, pretty inarguable environmental effects, but we just flat out run out.
Speaker: So every time anyone wants to talk to me about climate change, I'm like, it doesn't actually matter.
Speaker: If you don't change, you run out.
Speaker: So you got to change.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Side note, it's very compelling evidence that the carbon dioxide that's or the carbon that's in the air is changing the climate.
Speaker: But as as we look at that, so I look at, OK, we should have done batteries a long time ago.
Speaker: Why didn't we do batteries?
Speaker: Why do you think?
Speaker: Because we didn't, we wanted to save people more money.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We didn't have to like, it's the same reason that the U S post office should have gotten more efficient a long time ago, but they didn't have to until UPS and FedEx and DHL came along and then they're like, Oh crap, we got some real point.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We got some real like threat now.
Speaker: So we have to innovate.
Speaker: So we never really pushed batteries before because you know, they were expensive for the customers and the process was hard.
Speaker: And, you know, technology was pretty early and, you know, it didn't necessarily make more money for selling it.
Speaker: The supply was low.
Speaker: There's a million reasons not to do it, but it was better for the progress of the industry is better for the customer.
Speaker: But reps were making so much money and customers were saving so much money that, excuse me, we just didn't do it.
Speaker: So the good thing with NEM3 is when something comes out and they say, hey, now you got to do something that if that if that power hits the grid, you're getting 20 cents on the dollar, depending on when you put it into the grid.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So now we say, OK, well, if that happens, that actually kills solar in the state of California.
Speaker: So side note is really like it was a really.
Speaker: terrible thing that got passed.
Speaker: Like it's not good for the state.
Speaker: It's not good for solar adoption.
Speaker: We made it work.
Speaker: And I actually think we're in a much better place because we did make it work.
Speaker: But the state shouldn't have done that, right?
Speaker: Like we're one of the most solar friendly states.
Speaker: We're one of the most highly populated states and we have the highest energy costs and the most restriction around extracting coal gas and oil.
Speaker: Like it was a stupid thing.
Speaker: But we did it.
Speaker: So anyway, the now immediately kind of like from one quarter to the next, we were faced with, hey, if their power hits the grid, the exchange rate's really bad.
Speaker: It's not a good deal anymore.
Speaker: So we had to figure out batteries because if you put a battery on the side of the house and the extra kilowatt hours don't touch the grid, they go into the battery.
Speaker: Well, then you're a little bit more self-sufficient.
Speaker: You get a better deal.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And on top of that, you get power at night or in the event of an emergency.
Speaker: And in California, we have a lot of emergencies and a lot of threats of emergency, not just like from fires and things like that.
Speaker: When there's fires, they shut off the electricity.
Speaker: When there's extreme wind and high risk of a wildfire starting, they shut off the electricity.
Speaker: When the grid is overstrained, which is happening increasingly more, they shut off the electricity.
Speaker: When there's earthquakes and things like that, they shut off the gas and the electricity.
Speaker: And so the benefits of a forced storage product kind of by way of the law that they passed or the legislation that they passed is it's actually better for customers.
Speaker: we just had to figure it out immediately.
Speaker: Like we were in like a have to situation.
Speaker: So we went from adopting like in at least our channel, we were doing like 5% batteries for the most part.
Speaker: Now we're over 90%.
Speaker: That happened in six months, right?
Speaker: So we figured out how to price it.
Speaker: We figured out how to install it.
Speaker: We figured out how to maximize it.
Speaker: We figured out how to minimize main panel upgrades.
Speaker: We figured out how to move things through.
Speaker: I saw a thing just yesterday that our timelines are 7% faster now with batteries on almost 100% of our accounts.
Speaker: than they were before, which is insane.
Speaker: It's impressive.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But anything that you work really hard on, you're going to probably figure out if you have the right team and the right resources.
Speaker: And the one thing about Sunrun is we've got pretty much endless resources.
Speaker: It's a real blessing.
Speaker: So back to the original question, how did we get people...
Speaker: How did, how did we still do?
Speaker: I mean, California is still one of, it's the biggest state.
Speaker: We do more volume in the state of California than any other state.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So how do we maintain that?
Speaker: Well, we just helped people see that.
Speaker: We just basically said, and if it was bad, they would have seen that it was bad.
Speaker: I can't convince someone a good deal or a bad deal is good.
Speaker: So, um,
Speaker: What we said to him is we're like, listen, this is going to be hard for us.
Speaker: It's going to kill everybody else.
Speaker: So I look at it like chemotherapy.
Speaker: No one wants to have cancer.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But basically what chemotherapy does is it takes you pretty much.
Speaker: It gives you the maximum allowable dosage of pretty much poison into your body to kill the cancer and keep you alive.
Speaker: So it's kind of what happened in the industry, honestly, like it.
Speaker: pretty much killed everybody else that didn't have resources, that didn't have a plan, that was only in it for low interest rates, that really was just in this to take advantage of a moment in time.
Speaker: And it flushed them out.
Speaker: Because you don't have the funds and you don't have the innovation and you don't have the resources and you don't have the headcount and you don't have the connections and the technology to actually solve this problem.
Speaker: And so what it did for us,
Speaker: is now you look at what this will be in a year or two.
Speaker: We've already installed more batteries than anybody else.
Speaker: You go a year or two later, we're now starting to do stuff where we sell power back to utility companies that are stored in our batteries.
Speaker: So there was a, you know, there was an article that came out the other day that in, uh,
Speaker: uh, in last August and I think part of September, we were selling 30 megawatts of power a night to PG and E 30 megawatts a night because our power is cheaper than the power that they source.
Speaker: Uh, you know, when there's heat waves and things like that.
Speaker: So when you go out a couple of years and you need to partner with utility companies because you know, the, the, the grid is wildly outdated and the source of their power is becoming more and more expensive.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: it's a bit like an outliers thing, right?
Speaker: Where it's like, oh, it just so happens that when this problem reached its max tipping point, there was Sunrun with years of experience and hundreds of thousands of dollars of installed batteries.
Speaker: And of course we get the contract and we get the jobs and our business becomes more valuable.
Speaker: And so that's actually what we're doing.
Speaker: Like we sell solar and we acquire solar customers, but really we're building an alternative grid.
Speaker: That's where a lot of the value of the company is going to come from.
Speaker: So we now have 1.1 megawatts of, or gigawatts of solar.
Speaker: stored in batteries in the state of California.
Speaker: We've only been doing this really for six months.
Speaker: So in the event of a fire up north, we can send them power in the event of a heat wave in San Diego, like happened a couple of years ago, rather than buying expensive power from out of state, we can deploy it from our batteries to the utility company.
Speaker: So really it's getting to the point where I believe it's the answer.
Speaker: to the grid problem of what are you gonna do with a grid that's old and with a power source that's depleting?
Speaker: Well, you need supplement through renewable energies and that you can either build nuclear power plants, which take years and cost billions of dollars and require tons of regulation, or we can just put a bunch of batteries on sides of houses and tap it.
Speaker: So I look at like, you look at something like,
Speaker: say like a big event's coming to the Super Bowl or something like that is coming.
Speaker: You could buy a bunch of taxi cabs to service it, or you can incentivize the people with Uber and you can basically mobilize them.
Speaker: That's kind of what we've done is we've basically said, well, let's just incentivize customers, put batteries on the side of their house.
Speaker: Let's, let's sell the power to the utility company when the customers aren't using it.
Speaker: The customer is going to benefit from that.
Speaker: The customer makes money doing that.
Speaker: And so do we.
Speaker: So it's, it's probably the best bad thing that's ever happened to us.
Speaker: Like pandemic followed by an M3 followed.
Speaker: I mean, it's just been one thing after another.
Speaker: But what happens is you come out of it with like this crazy technology and really good processes because you had to figure them out.
Speaker: And so now we're getting to the point where we're innovating so much and we're investing so much in like,
Speaker: differentiated products that we don't do the same thing as other companies.
Speaker: We don't like, it's not working for Sunrun and working for like a different company or like a dealer.
Speaker: It's just, it's not the same business.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I think what's, what worked is Sunrun is really fast at acting.
Speaker: Like when they see stuff six months ahead, they start working on it.
Speaker: Then they don't, you know, a lot of our competitors are kind of like waiting to see what we do.
Speaker: but we're working on things right now that a lot of competitors don't even know that is coming by way of like regulation.
Speaker: P.S.
Speaker: What happens in California from like a, like a process and policy standpoint usually happens everywhere else.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So you can't just run to Arkansas or you can't just like go to Oklahoma.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: NEM3 will likely be a reality of everybody else.
Speaker: And actually, frankly, I think it's an equitable deal.
Speaker: The power company can't just keep giving one-to-one credits.
Speaker: They'll go out of business.
Speaker: We need the power company because we don't want to build a new distribution-like infrastructure, right?
Speaker: So what happens then is...
Speaker: we now have, since I've been in solar, we've been worried about tax credits going away.
Speaker: And we've been worried about this like oncoming war with the utility company.
Speaker: What's going to happen when there's a war and we pick who's, who's going to, is it going to be solar?
Speaker: Is it going to be conventional fossil fuels?
Speaker: Now I don't think there's going to be a war.
Speaker: I think there's going to be a partnership and we're kind of already doing it to where they're going to get to a point where it's like, Hey, it's really expensive for us to buy coal, gas, and oil.
Speaker: And it's really damaging.
Speaker: And we're like, well,
Speaker: we can build the equivalent to two nuclear power plants a year.
Speaker: That's what we're doing with our batteries.
Speaker: So why don't you just buy it from us?
Speaker: And they're like, yeah, that's a good idea.
Speaker: We're like, cool.
Speaker: We sell power now to the utility company.
Speaker: We sell power to customers.
Speaker: It's a good business, right?
Speaker: And so the NEM3 forced that.
Speaker: We probably never would have had the incentive to do it because things were so good before.
Speaker: But it's like an obstacle is the way type thing, right?
Speaker: You get forced with something like that and it's like, well,
Speaker: Any innovation that's happened in history is generally brought on by some sort of struggle.
Speaker: It's like, oh, well, yeah, we learned how to do this because this happened.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's a good point.
Speaker: So, yeah, for leaders listening to this, because I know that's something that I struggle with it.
Speaker: Smaller companies will, number one, probably good, especially when there's massive changes.
Speaker: It's definitely an advantage to be with a company that plans ahead, has resources, has
Speaker: Cause I think that's where we've seen a lot of these smaller companies in California.
Speaker: They all disappeared.
Speaker: Cause they, I don't see, I don't know where they are anymore.
Speaker: They used to be such a, they used to be such a part of our lives and now they're just not like they're just from one moment to the next.
Speaker: But it does also like back to the conversation of like electric triangle.
Speaker: Like again, my career is based off that.
Speaker: So it's like people ask me all the time.
Speaker: Why wouldn't you go start your own company?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, you gotta go back to the vision that I see, right?
Speaker: I believe Sunrun is going to be the largest power company in North America.
Speaker: I ultimately value options and security.
Speaker: So I want to have the option to live my life however kind of I choose.
Speaker: And there's more to it than that, but suffice it to say, that's what I value.
Speaker: So what path is most likely to give me the most options?
Speaker: I could take a wild, wild, unlikely risk
Speaker: on starting a company that can somehow differentiate or do something better than the monster that Sunrun is.
Speaker: Unlikely, right?
Speaker: So my path to freedom and options, now I'm actually on the risk-taking path, which I don't value, right?
Speaker: I'm a security and options person at my heart, right?
Speaker: So when I look at that, it's okay, I think they're most likely to get there, right?
Speaker: And so then when I look at what do I have to do to participate in it,
Speaker: Well, then I get in and I set some victory metrics.
Speaker: I want to create this level of growth.
Speaker: And I think if I do this, we'll be on the cutting edge.
Speaker: And I think we'll, you know, aid in the growth of the company by contributing X percent of growth every single year.
Speaker: And then we go to programs and say, OK, in order to grow X percent a year, what do we got to do?
Speaker: And we just figure it out.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, again, the gap between
Speaker: what Sunrun does.
Speaker: I always say like, if you're a real estate investor, like a mogul, like say you have like tons and tons and tons of, of real estate, um, you know, in your portfolio that you own.
Speaker: And then I just got a job as a realtor.
Speaker: I could say that we're both in real estate, but we do very different things.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so Sunrun is a power company, right?
Speaker: We, we, we finance, we,
Speaker: we design, we install, we market, and we service solar customers in 25-year increments.
Speaker: Other companies sell contracts.
Speaker: So they're realtors, real estate investors.
Speaker: One's not bad, but you have to know why you're doing it.
Speaker: So if you're going to like a small, risky company to make an impact in the solar company, you're in the wrong spot.
Speaker: They're not going to make an impact.
Speaker: If you're saying, I am in this to get the most per kilowatt for the next six months, okay, maybe.
Speaker: Maybe, right?
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: For the most part, again, you have to know why you're there.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then it then it guides your decision making.
Speaker: If you say, OK, this is really what I want.
Speaker: Then, you know, the path at Sunrun in some ways has been harder.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: We had to figure out batteries, which is really hard to do.
Speaker: Most people just tuck tail and went to a market that was easier.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But 10 years from now, I think I'm gonna be really glad we did that work.
Speaker: And the other people that just kind of tucked tail and went to a different market, I mean, you can have your hard time now or you can have your hard time later.
Speaker: I choose to have my hard time now.
Speaker: And that's the same way with everything.
Speaker: I could save my money and have a hard time now and an easy time later, or I could spend all my money now, have a great time now and a hard time later.
Speaker: I just tend to be the type that says, no, I just...
Speaker: Might as well do the hard thing now because I don't know what's going to happen in the future.
Speaker: That's that safety and security side of me again.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Well, it's funny that like with batteries here, there's more savings than I think almost any other market still.
Speaker: And it's funny because people in California are like, oh, there's like no savings.
Speaker: And everywhere else in the country is like, we don't have savings ever.
Speaker: We're doing full backup, no cost to the customer, still saving people money.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And utility prices are going to continue to increase.
Speaker: So all it is is a reset, right?
Speaker: It's just when I first started selling solar, the base rate for electricity and SCE where I was selling was 13 cents.
Speaker: That was tier one electric rates.
Speaker: We were selling a PPA for 15 cents.
Speaker: So I'm used to saving people three to $9 a month, you know?
Speaker: And then it went up to where people were saving 40%.
Speaker: It's like, it's a pretty easy sale.
Speaker: It's better.
Speaker: It's way cheaper.
Speaker: And then this kind of reset it.
Speaker: So now people are saving 10 to 15% again.
Speaker: And, but the product's much better.
Speaker: Right now, you now you can have full home backup.
Speaker: Now you've got some independence and stuff.
Speaker: But as the prices continue to increase, I believe we'll get back to that same savings level that we saw before and we'll run up.
Speaker: Now, when we do that again, we'll be so far ahead.
Speaker: Anybody else that that's where the opportunity is like.
Speaker: So again, back to like outliers.
Speaker: Weird that when the computer revolution happened, Bill Gates already had however many hours of programming.
Speaker: He was one of like a couple people in the world.
Speaker: So he wrote that up, right?
Speaker: We have not yet seen the big shift from fossil fuel-based power to electric.
Speaker: We're working on it, and it's much better than it used to be, but it hasn't become, we haven't seen mass adoption yet.
Speaker: but we've seen it in a lot of things.
Speaker: We've seen it in computers, we've seen it in cell phones, seen it in social media.
Speaker: We'll see it in transportation and we will definitely see it in electricity.
Speaker: So if I know my long-term goal and what I'm good at and where, what I want to be a part of this choice to me seems really obvious, right?
Speaker: But if you don't know what you want, then you make all kinds of crazy decisions.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I think that's the theme of the podcast today.
Speaker: Make sure you know what you want and go through that electric triangle.
Speaker: Like Ty was talking about, figure out if your goals align with your vision and you know, you're doing things that you actually want and need in your life.
Speaker: Um, and before I forget, I, um, I'm sure you probably mentioned this last time, but you have your podcast, electric people.
Speaker: You still are coming out with episodes.
Speaker: What is that weekly?
Speaker: Um, yeah, I try to do weekly.
Speaker: It's, uh, it's actually a sun run sponsored podcast.
Speaker: So, um, it mostly features our sales leaders, but lately we've had a lot of like, uh, um, just other people that are electric, like in their, their field.
Speaker: So I just did Mikey Taylor's, Mikey Taylor's pro skateboarder that, um, has turned into a big real estate investor guy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: who I actually randomly knocked his door when I was selling full time.
Speaker: That's actually how I know Mikey Taylor is like a knocked into him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We do a lot of authors.
Speaker: We do a lot of like athletes.
Speaker: And anyway, the point of that show is that the things that make you successful in one field are exactly the same as what would make you successful in another.
Speaker: So it's been a good project.
Speaker: We've been a little less consistent on the releases.
Speaker: We have a hundred and I don't know, 40 episodes maybe now that, so it's like,
Speaker: we try to do it every week, but it ends up being probably more like two a month that we ended up putting out.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But it's a fun project.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, it's super cool.
Speaker: Still one of my favorite podcasts.
Speaker: So go check that out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, solarpreneur approved, um, electric people podcast.
Speaker: And, um, then if people want to reach out to you more, um, you want to drop you on social media, Ty, what's the best, uh, best way to reach out to you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So yeah, social media is probably the best.
Speaker: It's just at Tyler L Williams on Instagram.
Speaker: That's pretty much the only one I use.
Speaker: I don't,
Speaker: I mean, I have the other ones, but that's pretty much the only one I use.
Speaker: And actually I get a lot, like that's where a lot of, um, a lot of our growth is kind of like, I don't know how much you get it, but like through the podcast, a lot of people will reach out and say, man, this sounds really interesting.
Speaker: Or I really enjoyed this one.
Speaker: There's not many, you know, there's kind of chance.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Always says this.
Speaker: He was, he was my boss for years.
Speaker: There's kind of four things that make an opportunity, right?
Speaker: Like the four, like, like peaks of the mountain that make an opportunity good.
Speaker: So first is the opportunity to earn.
Speaker: That's why most people like start working is you got to make money.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So if you can make good money, cool.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Number two is, do you like the company?
Speaker: Like, is the cause good?
Speaker: Like, are you, some people are like, oh, I make good money, but this is like this crappy company or like, I have to like do things that I don't love, but whatever the money's good.
Speaker: If you can say, Hey, I actually earned pretty well.
Speaker: And I really like, I like this company.
Speaker: I like the mission.
Speaker: It's cool.
Speaker: I feel like it's important and that's a blessing.
Speaker: Uh, third thing is the opportunity to develop.
Speaker: Like, do you have the opportunity to do, to like grow and to get better at the things that you're doing?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Uh, and then the, the fourth and final is the people.
Speaker: And if you hit all four of those things, it's pretty rare.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so I feel like, like looking at this for me, it's like, okay, well, earnings are great, better than I deserve.
Speaker: Uh, company is cool.
Speaker: It's really important.
Speaker: I actually think the work we're doing is probably the most important work I could be doing from a professional standpoint.
Speaker: So that's pretty awesome.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Then when I look at leadership opportunity, like so much, so much opportunity to grow and do things and try my hand at things.
Speaker: And then the people that I work with are like literally the people that I'd spend my time with if I didn't have to, you know, so that's kind of how I evaluate it.
Speaker: Yeah, that's good.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: So if you were looking for a home, especially, you know, in markets where there is change, definitely good to have a company with resources.
Speaker: And what's cool is as Sunrun does something, I think everyone else follows because I know you guys are kind of pioneering a lot of
Speaker: you know, stuff with batteries and things that are going on in the solar industry.
Speaker: Um, but Ty, it's been awesome having you on today.
Speaker: I know you gotta know you're busy guy, got a lot of, a lot of people you're helping and you're an electric person yourself.
Speaker: Um, so we appreciate you, appreciate you having, uh, coming on for the second time.
Speaker: Um, and last question, if someone is struggling, maybe some advice to like a struggling rep or someone that's, uh, maybe getting back in, maybe they thought solar wasn't good anymore.
Speaker: They're coming back in.
Speaker: What would you say as a final thought here for our listeners?
Speaker: Predictably get really clear on why you're doing it.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You've got to know why you're doing it.
Speaker: But I do have a couple of questions that I'll ask people that help kind of pull them out of ruts, myself included.
Speaker: Generally, you kind of get into slumps when you stop.
Speaker: When your action is lower, right?
Speaker: When you get weird, when you, when you, when you, you can't like worry and work at the same time.
Speaker: So if worry has increased, it's likely that work has decreased, right?
Speaker: You're too busy working to worry.
Speaker: And when you're working, things are getting better.
Speaker: So you don't worry, right?
Speaker: For the most part.
Speaker: So first question I always ask people is, are you doing your best work?
Speaker: Do you feel like you are doing your, your, your life's best work right now?
Speaker: That's a hard question to always answer in the affirmative.
Speaker: But it's something where if I'm like, I don't know, like I'm kind of like I'm in a slump.
Speaker: Are you doing your best work?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: When were you doing your best work?
Speaker: Whatever year, 2019.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: What were you doing at the point where you felt like you were doing your best work?
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: I was up every morning.
Speaker: I was following up with my accounts.
Speaker: I was putting in four hours of prospecting, two hours of closing.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: What do you need to do to get back to that spot?
Speaker: But that simple question for me is, are you doing your best work right now?
Speaker: Think of a time when you were doing your best work.
Speaker: What was different?
Speaker: If you got back to doing those things, would you then be doing your best work again?
Speaker: Usually it's just that.
Speaker: It's usually like you start doing your best work out of necessity and then you start to enjoy the perks of it.
Speaker: And so the work slows and then over time,
Speaker: Your situation changes and you notice it then.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So for me, that's just that simple question.
Speaker: Are you doing the best work of your life right now?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And if you say yes, those people are usually pretty happy, even if it's hard.
Speaker: If you're saying no, then there's usually some heavy emotion attached with that.
Speaker: Yeah, love that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Great advice right there.
Speaker: So for our solopreneurs, make sure you figure out your vision.
Speaker: Make sure you go back to when you're working your hardest.
Speaker: And I think that's great advice.
Speaker: I remember many times where I was in a slump.
Speaker: Then I look at the hours I'm working, look at what I'm doing.
Speaker: It's not consistent with the results I wanted.
Speaker: So I think that's a great closing point right there.
Speaker: So Ty, thanks again for coming on the show.
Speaker: Guys, go hit him up.
Speaker: Let him know you appreciate it.
Speaker: Him coming on the podcast.
Speaker: Go subscribe to Electric People.
Speaker: It's awesome.
Speaker: And we appreciate you.
Speaker: Thanks again for coming on the show, Ty.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: What's up, solopreneurs?
Speaker: Hope you enjoyed the episode.
Speaker: Before you run out and start selling more solar yourself, wanted to let you know about an exciting new cheat sheet we created specifically for you in mind.
Speaker: One of the top questions I get asked on Instagram, on Facebook, by our listeners is, Taylor, where should I start?
Speaker: What episodes should I listen to in the podcast?
Speaker: You got too many podcasts, man, because now we have over 200 episodes.
Speaker: So what we've done, we created the top 10 most downloaded, most listened to, and I would say widely accepted, most useful podcasts that we've done here on Solopreneur.
Speaker: We put them together all in one sheet so you can go, you can hit the ground running, especially if you're new and you do not want to not have this sheet.
Speaker: So go download it right now.
Speaker: It's going to be at top10.solarpreneurs.com.
Speaker: Again, that's top10, the number 10,.solarpreneurs.com.
Speaker: Don't forget the S on solarpreneurs.
Speaker: We will have that in the show notes.
Speaker: Go download it right now.
Speaker: And especially if you have not listened to them, go listen to them and you can re-listen to them.
Speaker: That's going to show you how.
Speaker: So go download it and we'll see you on the other side.
