SOLO | Make Money by Staying Open to Opportunity

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Let's go out one to co-host a show with my producer Eric as well as an interview with a successful

entrepreneur. If you want to go check those ones out, you can. On these episodes though,

this is basically a lot of notes that I've written down over the years. I've now done

while to think about over 1,500 podcast episodes, right over 200 books in the last few years,

listened to countless hours of podcast myself. Not to mention, been in the rooms with people running

billion-dollar businesses, multi-hundred-million-dollar businesses, events conferences, speaking

you name it, everything in between over the last almost decade now since I've been doing stuff

online. Just crazy to think about. So this is basically a collection of the things that I've

learned along the way and hopefully you'll find some value in these episodes as well. Today,

we're talking about being open opportunity. The first time that I remember really internalizing

this lesson actually came from my door-to-door days. For those who don't know, I don't know my producer,

Eric, is rolling his eyes right now as he edits this because I talk about it a lot, but I learned a

lot of a lot of lessons to indoor door sales. And this is probably one of the more underrated ones

that I don't really ever talk about this one that much because there's so many other obviously

lower hanging fruit things that I learned like overcoming rejection and how to communicate with

people and selling persuasion at its core. But there's a this one lesson that I took away

that I think was really helpful for me in my life and led directly to immediate impact as

soon as I embodied it, which is being open to what other people have to say, being open to

opportunity that was presented to me. And it was because when I first started knocking doors

and selling, I was selling, I was selling solar, I was working for a solar company.

For you solar reps, this was the OG days. This was back before there was a ton of door-to-door

programs for solar. It was like 2012, I want to say. And Sunrun, which is now a massive solar

company, and they were a massive solar company at the time as well. I think they were number two

behind Solar City in terms of residential solar. Obviously there's big commercial companies

that are doing bigger and better projects. But for residential, I was working for Sunrun,

but it wasn't Sunrun yet because Sunrun at the time basically just bought contracts. They were

not doing the actual, they didn't have any sales teams or distribution teams on their own.

They basically just, you could basically sign up as a contractor, be a roofing solar contractor,

and then sell Sunrun contracts. So we're selling Sunrun contracts. But when I started, I was not

even the sales guy. I was an appointment center. And so my job was literally just to go door-to-door

set appointments to have a solar consultant come in and then close the deals. And it was a great,

I mean, this is when I was in college. It was a fantastic college job because you got paid hourly,

and then you got paid bonuses on appointments that you set, and you got paid bonuses on how

many appointments you could set in a day, and you got paid bonuses on if the appointment that you

set went to a closed deal. You got bonus on that, and if you got a certain amount of closed deals,

you got bonus on that. So by the time I was like 20, I was leading a team of 15 to 20 solar reps,

and running this door-to-door crew. And I was making in college like 75,000 a year, something like

that. So it was a pretty sweet gig, to be honest. And I learned a lot during that time period.

And I remember, because when we were selling at the time, it was called a power purchase agreement.

And frankly, I've been out of solar for so long that I don't know whether or not this is like the

thing that people are still selling. I know there's a big push for purchases, but I think with

like tax credits going away, I think maybe purchases have gone down again and people are selling

PPAs again. But ultimately, what a power purchase agreement is. And this is relevant to the lesson

here. Okay, this is why I'm sharing this. It's not a deep dive into the solar industry.

Power purchase agreement was basically, you get the equipment for free. The installation is free.

You pay nothing to get everything installed on your roof. It's power purchase agreement,

because you were literally agreeing to purchase power from the solar company that is generating

electricity using your roof space. So it's basically like you're allowing the solar company to put

a mini power plant on your roof. And then you were agreeing to purchase that power back from that

company at a certain rate per kilowatt hour, just like you would pay your utility company.

And so the pitch to me, like just made sense. It was one of those things where I was like, I don't

understand why somebody would say no to this, because there's no there's no downside. Like if you

own your home, you have decent credit, like throw these up on your roof, because ultimately,

it's going to be cheaper than what your utility company is charging you, and you get the predictability,

because we're going to lock in the rate versus the solar company. I mean, the utility company

is going to send you a rate increase on annual basis for the next 30 years. So it was a good

pitch, a solid product. You know, clean energy, stainless, all this good stuff. And it blew my mind

at that time as a, you know, 19, 20 year old going door to door. How many people would not give me

the time of day to at least explain what I was doing just simply because of the fact that I had

knocked on their door. Like their response to me knocking on their door was so negative that they

were not even open to hearing the possibility of what this could potentially do for them. And I'm

remember like walking away from several doors that I was thinking like, man, this person's kind of

$400 a month electricity bill. I know enough about this industry now. We're like, I know we could

get them closer to like 150 bucks a month for free. I am going to, I'm, I'm, I'm basically offering

to swap out your $400 a month, $400 a month bill with $150 a month bill. There's virtually no

downsides. Now I learned later like the only real downside came from like selling your home

because then you had to transfer the contract. The new, the new person had to agree to all the same

terms and it sort of like stalled some escros and things like that. And I learned that because my

now is a real estate agent. And so he started having to deal with this and actually did a couple of

trainings for real estate agents at his office because they were all curious about what was going

on the solar industry because it was brand new at the time. But that stuck with me as a big lesson.

I was like, you're not even, you're not even willing to hear me out. Like this could be something

that's actually awesome for you. But because I knocked on your door, you are totally closed off

to hearing anything that I have to say to you. And I made a vow to myself at that point that I

would never remain completely closed off to the ideas that other people had to share with me.

And then fast forward maybe a year or so, I had in that time graduated college gotten married

moved away from home for the first time ever. And so I was up in Fresno, which is central California

after having grown up in Southern California. And when I, when I got up there, I was

a long story short. I was at the time, I was just, I was a hustler. I was a young hustler.

I had no idea how to make money. But I knew that I wanted to give some form of entrepreneurship

or making money to some degree. So basically, I was always doing a full-time door-to-door thing

and then always a part-time network marketing thing. And look, I'm not even a big to be honest,

not a fan, really, of the network marketing space anymore. I think there's a lot of scammy stuff.

Not everybody's a scam artist. Obviously, I think there's a lot of really great people doing

cool stuff in that space. But it is one of those spaces that attracts a lot of people who are

like that. So I've sort of distanced myself from that. That's what we don't bring on anybody on

the show, who's an MLM or network marketer or anything like that. Just because I kind of got

insider access to a lot of things that were going on, like some sort of nefarious activity that

was going on in that industry and was just like, ah, kind of on distance myself from this.

Anyway, I was doing full-time door-to-door and part-time network marketing. And then this

nefarious marketing company pops up and they were called Direct Network. And basically, it was

you can switch to Direct TV as a television provider. And then they had a multi-level payment

program for a VIP plan that was to help, like, essentially a warranty on the satellite equipment

and additional servicing, essentially. So it was basically a VIP service package that we sold

on top of the Direct TV thing. But it was like 10 bucks a month or something like that.

Hey, it was cool because this was the first, this is like the first time in any sort of MLM

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The organization started to take off on its own because I've done a lot of legwork to get,

you know, the first 12 people, the first 20 people, the first 30 people. And I remember looking

logging into my count one day and seeing like, oh, like this team's actually taking off. They've

signed up 25 people in the last two weeks without me even talking to anybody. That's really cool.

I started seeing it take off. But what happened was the owners of that company were

underwhelmed by the growth of the company at that time. And they came from the door-to-door alarm

space. So what they decided to do was basically take the direct TV idea, the direct network experience,

and they turned it into a direct sales company on doors. And they added in an alarm package,

and they added in a phone package. So I went from selling like direct TV in like a living room

presentations to people to going door-to-door and selling a bundle of direct TV, an alarm service.

I want to say it was through monotronics at that time. And then a phone service, which dates me

to tell how long I was doing door-to-door doing door-to-door for, because even satellite TV by itself

is something that I feel like not a lot of people have anymore. But especially a phone line, nobody

even needs a phone line. That was like right at the end of that. So we saw in these packages

door-to-door. And what happened was I was out on doors one day. And then when I got home,

my wife gave me a business card, because we had just bought a house, and somebody was knocking

a new homeowner's list for a door-to-door alarm company at that time. And they came to the house,

pitched this new thing. And my wife told him like, oh, actually, my husband sells alarms for

this other company that just started this new program. And so this guy was like, tell your husband,

I, like me in the owner of this company, want to talk to him. And I remember thinking about

at that time being like, I'm going to go meet with this guy, but only so that I can recruit him

for what I'm doing. And then I caught myself in the middle of thinking that, and I said, you know

what? I promised myself that I was always going to be open to opportunity. So let me just set up

this meeting with this guy. We'll grab a meal and see if there's some good vibes. See what he has

to say, see what he has to offer. And we sat down, long story short, this guy was building a local

alarm company had been there for several years, had done really well with it. And he was actively

trying to recruit me. And then upon asking further questions about me and who I was at the time,

he basically was like, started seeing dollar signs in his eyes because he saw a young kid. I was

21, 22 at the time. I was married and I had a house like all those things were just like, I could see,

I could see the light in his eyes as he kept asking more questions and I answered them because he

was used to dealing with the typical central California door-to-door rep, which is people who

typically don't have their lives together. And this is like the only thing that they can do. And

he's having to pay for their DUIs so they can come back to work and things like that.

So he was like, oh, young, professional, clean-cut kid, great communicator, acts older than he looks,

has a house, has a wife, has his life in order. I want to bring this guy on. And so what ended

up happening was he offered me a $10,000 signing bonus. And this is at a time of life like right when

I was like, this was probably the broken I ever was where I was like, I got like a couple thousand

bucks left to my name and I just bought this house. I have a mortgage to pay. This thing that I've

been working on for the last few months is now not panning out. If they would have stuck with

the network marketing model, I think it would have probably worked out pretty well for them.

At least in the short term, they could have pivoted at some other time. But then they switched it

to the door-to-door thing, didn't have good infrastructure, didn't have good training. So we're

just kind of left to figure it out on our own. So this guy comes in, gives me a $10,000

signing bonus. And then basically, I was selling what we call the triple play, which was the

direct-tv package, the alarm and the phone, all together. And my commission on that I think was

900 bucks. So he basically comes in and goes, well, how about I pay you 800 bucks, but you only

have to sell an alarm. So nothing else, you don't have to sell all these other, you know,

services at the same time to make this commission. You sell the alarm, I'll pay you 800 bucks for

the alarm. And I'll give you a $10,000 signing bonus if you bring you and the other like four

people that I add on my team at that time over to my company. So I said, deal. And that was one

of the times where it immediately played out for me where being open to an opportunity rather than

just being like, nah, screw that guy, I'll figure this out and do it on my own type of thing where

it probably would not have ended up, that company ended up going under within, probably within

five, six months of me switching to the other alarm company that company I was working with that

had teams across the country. They they went under they went on business and I ended up staying

with this company. And that was where I made my first six figures. And that was where I really

cut my teeth and sails and learned a lot under the guy that was operating that business at the time.

And it put me in a good financial position because it gave me its $10,000 signing bonus and then

and then gave me actual real training and then put me in the car with other managers who were

really good at it who could train me up and teach me and tell me exactly what to do. So it was

direct application of the lesson that I learned from being on doors selling solar where I was just

so blown away that people were completely closed off to any new opportunity that I was just like

even when I get older I just I don't want to be that person who just says no without ever hearing

somebody out. Now I think you can't always do that because the older you get and the more success

that you get, you get bombarded with opportunities and you can't say yes to all of them and you

literally just don't have the time or physical capacity to meet with everybody who wants to gain

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that it has some sort of limitations there. But what I found is that the people who end up being

at that successful inflection point where they now are the ones in control their schedule and they're

the ones who have the ability to say no and actually have to learn how to say no better. The only

way to get to that is to first start with being open to all opportunity by saying yes to everything

for a period of time until you earn the ability to start saying no to things. But most people

just say no to everything right off the bat. And that's when you start limiting your perspective.

You start limiting even the beliefs that you have, the values that you hold close. You start

getting set and stone on everything way too early and then don't ever put yourself in a position

to be able to say no to good opportunities that are not going on your door. So literally not

pun not intended. So that immediately translated for me. And there was a story that I read that a

long time ago that sort of was another one of those notches in the belt to get me to believe

this. And it was I heard the story about Mark Zuckerberg. He invited five people to his Harvard

dorm back in 2004 to discuss a business opportunity. I'll give you one guess as to what that

business opportunity was only two of the five people they invited to his room actually showed up

to learn about what Mark Zuckerberg was working on today. Those two people are billionaires.

Dustin Moskowitz is worth and that I wrote this a few years ago by the way. So Dustin Moskowitz

was worth at the time of this writing 6.5 billion. I assume it's much greater than that now.

And Eduardo Severin is was worth three and a half billion of time this writing. I'm

again, I'm sure it's worth a lot more now. And the three people who did not show up to that

meeting who knows where they are. They're honestly they probably have some success. They're

they're they're at Harvard that they probably not in poverty or homeless or something like that.

And they probably ended up doing fairly well for themselves. But did they do as well as this?

I'm guessing probably no. I'm guessing they did not create generational wealth for themselves

because they did not show up to the dorm room. So just remember that nothing is more expensive

than a closed mind. Have discernment. Be smart. Yes. But stay open because you never know

what opportunity is not going to your door. So that's it for today's episode. Thanks

much for tuning in. Catch you guys on the next one. Peace.

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