Selling Solar Launch Event

Foreign. Hey, hey out there, everybody. It is Jim Johnson, the host of Contractor Radio and I've got a special episode today. I could not be more excited about this. It is unbelievable to be able to finally sit down with somebody and.

What'S.

The right words for it, know that they're ethical and moral and doing things for the right reason in the solar world. I got my friend Jay Haynes on here. Jay, welcome to the show. We don't usually do these live, but this is one of those ones where we felt like, hey, we had a bunch of people register for it. We want to give access to some other folks this one time, that's all we're going to do this where we do registrations and live the people that are watching it live. If you didn't register, you're going to want to pay attention to this whole thing because at the end of it, you're going to get the ability to get something really valuable and get this recording as well. So hang out, make sure you pay attention. We're going to be here for a little while today as we talk about this. But Jay, welcome aboard, man. Thanks for being on, man.

I'm really honored. Jim, I've been a part of your network for a lot of time, a lot of years, and it's really cool to get the opportunity to work together and especially with a product that has so much controversy around it and so many contractors, I believe, just gave up on it because it was so broken. And I'm really excited to talk through it and talk about this new way to look at it.

Well, I thought maybe share my story first and then you can share yours and, and then we're going to kind of walk people through what's happened in this solar world over time and then maybe a bit of your journey and kind of some of the things that may have held you back and what you finally came to realize about it. But in my own journey, I've been looking at solar for a long time. I actually am one of those people that believe in saving my planet and doing good things. I also know that there are some things that come along with solar that are not the greatest things in the world, whether it's the, the way solar panels are made and those type of things. There's a give and take with all things. But I believe in solar as being an option to the power that we have out there. But as I investigated into it over and over and over again, my first thing that I realized it was super confusing, like, hey, what is a red line? And what does that even mean? That wasn't something that I was really aware of in. In the contracting world. Like, contracting world, we buy materials, we have crews, we do work and we get paid. Like, that's kind of how it works. And there was this like mysterious red line thing and I was always digging like, well, tell me what everything really costs so I can actually understand what I should be charging for something. And they would never, like give that up. It was like this, this secret pill that people would hold. And then what I came to realize is, and especially here as a coach, we were approached multiple times. I mean, I can't even count anymore how many times we were approached with, hey, why don't you promote our dealer model or our EPC model and tell all your roofing contractors about it and we'll help them put solar on? Which sounded like a wonderful idea to me. But me being me, I'm like, hey, I'm going to research people, I'm going to look into people, I'm going to do my due diligence on stuff. And I found out there was a lot of pitfalls to it. There was, hey, salespeople weren't well trained and they were out there selling something that really wasn't something they knew about and they were just selling it. The contractor saying, hey, this is great, we're going to make a bunch of money. And realizing that cash flow was starting to bite them because they're paying out but not getting jobs. There was just all this stuff and if you dug far enough, you'd find that they weren't fulfilling in the timeframes that they said they would. Classic over promise under deliver type of sales process. And then the consumer, the worst part of it was the consumer wasn't getting what they bought and they were being charged outrageously for something that if you dig into it, doesn't really cost as much as what we thought it did. And so all of those things led to me just going, solar sucks. Don't want to have anything to do with it. Even my clients, I was like, hey now, no APCs, no dealers, no nothing. You want to do this, do it on your own. I will coach you through that process. I've had several that I've done that work with and they've been successful in getting that done. But it wasn't real easy. There wasn't any real process for it finding the various different suppliers and crews. And that, that's a challenge and it's a pretty big challenge. Finally, the last thing that I hate about the whole thing is the finance aspect of things, the dealer fees and all that stuff. It's I. You finance companies. I know you're probably watching this right now, and if you're not, hey, I want to be, okay, that's cool. If you are and you're charging anywhere from 30 to 35, 40% I've seen for dealer fees, you're a thief. That's all I'm going to say about it. You're a thief. You're stealing the tax credit from the homeowner. And you don't usually see Jim Johnson put himself out on the line like this and draw a line in the sand. But in this particular case, that's the way I look at it. Now. I understand they have some factors at play. They have the utility companies and things like that that play into why they're charging the dealer fees that they are. Because the whole goal is to get everything net zero right? Like, hey, I have a electrical bill over here and I want to be the net zero on that electrical bill. So I get it. But it's still not upfront about what's happening, and that's something I just don't tolerate very well. So that's been my journey. And I came across a shingle, a solar shingle that looks like we're going to be able to solve some of those problems with, with the powerhouse solar shingle from dow. And I loved it so much, I actually became a part of the distribution company for it. So that was kind of my story of going, hey, I think I found something here that a roofer can do. It's more like what they're used to doing than putting on a rack and panel system that they don't know anything about. This is literally putting down shingles that have solar built into them and not a big transition for them to learn. So that's my story. That's kind of where I'm coming from on this. Then you reached out to me and said, hey, we have been building this thing over some time because of what we've gone through. And so, Jay, why don't you tell kind of like how all this started for you?

Absolutely. As you guys, most of you know, if you don't know, I own home restoration, and I started the company, I built it from scratch. I take a lot of pride in the product we offer and the installs that we offer. And I jumped headfirst into solar whenever solar became, you know, really talked about in our industry. I saw all the benefits of solar and I wanted to pass Those benefits to my customers. I wanted to bring those benefits internally into my own team. The commissions in solar are great for your sales reps. The. The profit margins in solar are great. Of course, I fell hook, line and sinker. I say somewhat to the dealer models, promises. I had some doubts and some skeptics, but I didn't feel like I had another choice. The only way to do solar if I wanted to operate as a company was either partner with an EPC or partner under a dealer model. And I ended up doing both. And I did a large volume of both across multiple states over the last few years. And it was train wreck after train wreck, frustration after frustration. Just explaining the dealer model or an EPC model to a customer at its very core is so cringe for myself. Myself, My sales guys hated it. We take pride and, you know, we try our best not to use even subcontractors hardly in our companies, unless we're just really in a push season and doing a lot of work. And one of the main sales points we have is, hey, you know, everybody we have is an employee. They're on our team. We have that level of accountability on the workmanship and the craftsmanship being put on your builds. Oh, but by the way, the solar system we sold you is a partnership that we're doing, and some other company's gonna come out and put it on. It's just, oh, I mean, barring any other issues, not even talking about the issues that come with that, that enough for me was a cringe. I had a lot of customers were installing that were stacking up these massive finance fees on. And we were justifying it, obviously, by saying, well, we're still saving them money because the payment amount is coming in less than their electric bill that they're already paying. And we know their utility is going to increase and that electric bill is going to keep. Keep going up over time and their payments at least lock in. But I still never felt good about it. I just knew I had to somehow figure out how to get out from that system, get away from a red line. You talked about a red line. I had no clue what a red line was until I signed my first agreement contract. And it said, here's your red line. What in the world is red line? I was like, all right, time's out. I need to go research this a little bit and correct. I never, never liked it. Just didn't feel like I had a choice. Like so many other contractors, there isn't any other options out there, really, to just say, hey, I'M a roofing company. I'm all of a sudden starting this solar division or adding solar to my arsenal that I can offer a customer. And so I signed the contract and we started installing. And I can give you story after story after story of all the issues, and we'll go into them a little bit, a little bit more in depth during this webinar. But I quickly started saying, I've got to get out of this. I've got to figure out a way to build a better system in my company where I can actually offer an ethical product. That was my number one objection, is this is not an ethical product. I am selling 60, $70,000 systems to homeowners that I know absolutely for fact should be costing 15 to $20,000, sometimes less than that. And I'm not getting that money. That money's not going in my pocket. In fact, I was getting very minimal profit at all over any of the jobs that we were completing because I was on this dealer model. So I was just getting whatever cents per kilowatt they were giving me for being their solar partner, so to speak. And so I actually brought in a good team of guys. I invested quite a bit of money and a lot of time, well over a year of building out a actual solar answers is what I call it, rather than a system that we were using in house. And when I rolled it out in house, it was amazing. And I was like, I've got to invest more money in building a training. So every contractor can do this because you take this power and put it back into your local contractor's hands. Solar immediately becomes a product that is actually a good value for the end consumer and it's a good value for the contractor as soon as you put the contractor in control of every step of it.

Yeah. So that's a big part of it, right? You're the face, you're out there doing the sales right to somebody, but somebody else is fulfilling for you. And they have told you some expectations like you go sell something, it's going to be this long before this step, this step, this step, this step. And so all you're doing is parroting that back to your consumer and saying, hey, Mr. Consumer, you can expect the.

Biggest issue is every delay is never your fault. Every time there's a delay, it's on your affiliate or your partner and good luck ever trying to get through to anyone and get a clear answer, an honest answer. They even they treat you terribly because you're actually their customer, not the customer you signed. If the customer you signed ever calls them. It's really, really bad situation. So we would get massive amounts of just absolutely irate customers. And we couldn't understand why they were just so heightened levels of aggression by the time they reached back out to us until we realized some of the things they were going through with these affiliates or these partners or these EPCs on the communications with the customers. And I, yeah, I'm so glad to be just out of that whole ordeal.

I'm sitting here watching the comments and everybody's like, oh man, that's the truth. So these guys are out there dealing with the same thing. You're dealing with the same thing. Like, I don't know how many clients that we have worked with that have gone through our stuff, done really, really well. They add solar to their thing through the dealer or EPC model and they call me back and they go, hey, I, I'm in trouble. We have problems. We're not being able to deliver, we're getting bad reviews, we're having cash flow struggles. I might have to consider bankruptcy. I'm like, holy cow, what did you get yourself into? And we have to reel it back in and we're able to help them get it fixed. But man, it's a nightmare to get through all of that kind of stuff. And the operating assumption, I think from most roofing contractors, because a roofing contractor has to realize who they are in this equation. And I don't want to use the term I usually use because I think that's maybe not the words that we want to use between you and I, but you're their solar sleaze out there. Like, that's what you are. You're their sales team. They're looking at you as just their sales team to go and sell their stuff. And you're operating under the assumption that they're bigger, badder and better than you and they're going to execute. That's what they've sold you on. That's what they said they're going to do. And then you find out they don't after you've sold a whole bunch of it. Now you're in a mess. You're out a bunch of money on the roofing that you've done, you're out a bunch of money on the commissions that you've paid. And you're trying to cash flow a thing that you can't cash flow because you got in over your head.

You know, I'll be vulnerable for a minute. I own a pretty respectably sized company. I pride myself in Managing my company. Well, I actually saw my national rep from ABC is in this, so he can vouch for it. But I will say this, I thank you for watching. But I, I literally had to send in my CRM reports to my ABC rep to explain to him why I was. It was over 1.4 million at one point, Jim, in jobs that I was floating, that I was waiting on panels to be installed. And I don't care how great of a relationship you have with your distributor, they don't give you six month terms on $1.4 billion of product that does not happen. And so I'm like, hey, I, I'm really thankful for them working with me. They did great and I have that relationship and we got it paid and we got it worked through. But I was in a crash of crisis as well. So many. I was promised 30 day installs. That's what I was promised. Worst case scenario, put the roof on within 30 days. Worst case scenario, we have all these crews. They brought me into their multimillion dollar office building, you know, sold me the whole bill of goods. And so I all of a sudden have 40, 50 jobs in the pipeline. At one particular location that I have 40 or 50 jobs in the pipeline that were over four months after install it. We're still waiting on panels to be installed and there's no answers. We're getting nowhere. I had a full time general solar manager is what we called them at the time. We've restructured. Obviously we don't have that position now that we're in house, but. But he literally was. His full time job, was just calling these guys for every job and he was getting nowhere for months. The cash flow thing's a real, a really big problem and I personally felt that really, really hard.

So I think we've kind of established like what it was like, right? Like going through that and dealing with it. We have had a lot of people and guys, those of you that are watching out there live or you're here on the webinar invite that you registered for, feel free to comment, support, you know, give feedback, your own experiences. I'm watching that as we go through. It's over here on the side. That's why you see me typing and looking down a little bit here. I'm facilitating both sides of this because this conversation is really with Jay. We want Jay to share his story and really what he's gone through and maybe how he might be able to help you here. In the end, if this is something that you're actually passionate about, because that's the thing. A lot of roofing contractors I found are actually passionate about this. It seems logical. I'm putting a roof on. There's a solar option that's out there. I would like to be able to offer that, but it's just too much friction for me to be able to do it. So I shy away from it. If you could make it easy, it might be something that I might be more interested in. And that's why I have Jay on today. I think he has come up with a way to make it much more easy. Thing what you realized. So you realize, hey, this isn't working, so I need to do something else. What did you realize you needed to do?

Well, I obviously realized that I either needed to get completely out of solar, which was the easy answer, but it was a product I very much believed in and wanted to continue offering. So I had to fix the issues that was happening. And the only way I knew how to do that is to bring it completely in house, where I was no longer partnered with anyone, relying on anyone to do my builds, relying on anyone to engineer, stamp any of my builds. And so then that brought a whole nother list of like, got a lot harder. Like I'm sitting here and I, you know, I own, I own a lot of different companies. I have, I have a lot of hats and I'm like, man, I do not have the time. That was my big deal is the investment of time is. I was very tempted to stop, just completely kill the solar in my company, but I didn't want to. And I'm glad I didn't because I ended up saying, all right, I'm gonna double down in this. It is a product I firmly believe in. It's a product that does make a difference and it creates a lot of advantages if it's done correctly. So I'm gonna figure out how to do this correctly. And one of the things I did is hire a great team. And I spent a tremendous amount of money hiring a great team to figure it out with. I hired programmers, I hired solar construction expert, I hired a great solar trainer. Just guys that I was interviewing that knew this inside and out had done it at a high level. Of course, they were all on the dealer model and they all hated the dealer model. We all have that in common. They realized all the problems with this dealer model, even as far as on the team. We hired an actual contract attorney full time on the team, brought him in as a, as a partner. And we just wanted everything to be right in My company, when I rolled this out and I, I had a lot of knowledge to learn and I didn't have the time to give to learn that knowledge. So I had to hire the knowledge and do that investment.

So I want, I want to talk about that for a second because most everybody that I have had experience with going through this process, it runs into the same thing. They're already super busy doing whatever it is they do. They tend to either be too small to have the resources to go, hey, I'm going to hire a bunch of people and they're already busy enough with what they're doing, or they're big enough that they have their hands in some other businesses and they're like, hey man, I don't have time to take on this whole other learning thing that is going to be necessary to do this. And so they tend to just do what you said you thought you were going to do, which is just stop, I'm going to quit. But you went instead, I'm going to invest a significant amount of money. I mean, this isn't cheap. You're talking hundreds of thousands and maybe even into seven figures of, hey, I'm going to invest into this thing because I see its value, but I'm going to have to rely on some other people and I'm going to hire the best possible people. And I don't think most people can do that. The reason you could do that is because of who own construction is you guys aren't a small fry. You know, you're a pretty good sized company especially so you had the resources to do that. And through all of that you've built something that is a process to follow. Is that, did I understand that correctly?

Absolutely. Absolutely. We built, I had to do it where A, it was delivering a good product that I believed in and I wasn't having all of these breakdowns and issues, but B, it had to be replicatable because I have multiple offices. I can't just bring everybody into one office and say, hey, this is what we're doing now. We're going to have two weeks of sales training meetings and get everybody at this location all prepped up. I had to roll this out across all the locations that were doing solar, all of my market managers and all my office general managers across multiple states that are selling solar very actively. I had to roll this out. So I had to make it replicatable. And to make it replicatable, I had to build an extremely intense and thorough and easily understood training process for my sales reps first. That was my Motivation. And I spent a tremendous amount of money doing that. I brought on guys that full time, they just build out these computer programs that I don't know anything about to just create this software. And I, I don't know good training software, but I know bad training software, Jim, because I've paid for plenty of these gurus that are out there, sales training courses and training videos and hey, we're going to be your recruiter in a box, so to speak. And so I definitely know what bad looks like. So when I, when I rolled it out and my sales team and I saw the difference it was making and the quality it was, my second step was how do I go one step further and push this out to as many contractors as I can because that strengthens my markets. The more of these dealers that I can put out of business, the lower the sales price for solar drops, the higher the bar of excellence for solar rises. It's just like becoming a licensed contractor and the push for being an ethical contractor. I want every one of my competitors around me to be building roofs up to code, up to manufacturer specifications and charging those premium prices for putting on a premium product because that's making the industry better. And the guys that are doing shoddy work and undercutting and not passing it on. The honesty to the customer, taking advantage of customers lack of knowledge of products and putting on subpar roofs, putting on anything is exactly what I'm trying to fix. On the solar side, these guys are taking advantage of the customers lack of knowledge on solar. They, I guarantee you they have never told the customer that they're adding 35% onto the price of their job, including the roof. If they're rolling the roof in to put a solar system on their house, the only thing they're selling is a monthly payment. And they're justifying that gut feeling that they have every time they sell that monthly payment by saying, well, it was lower or it's only this much more than their original electric bill was anyway. So I can feel good about that. Not the case. You shouldn't be justifying it. You should have a product you don't have to justify and you should have an easy way of passing that product down to the end consumer and, and not having to worry about any breakdown in quality of installation, any breakdown of timelines and lack of explanations. And you should also have a price that you do make a good profit margin on, but you're not adding extremely high rates and extremely high interest. And I know that these dealers are making a lot of money Because I've walked in their multimillion dollar office buildings, Jim. So I don't even. All the markup that they're taking before the dealer fees even tacked on is, is just enormous. And we take all that extra money that so many other hands in the pile is taking out Wall street finance companies, dealers, EPC companies, and we put that back into making the product a better product, a lower price for the consumer. Here's. Here's another thing. I don't know how many jobs I signed and I would specify on all of my jobs the type of panels I wanted on the roof because I am a believer in quality. And then when I would go out to the install, they would not have those panels on the roof. I don't even know what it is. And they'd say, well, you didn't read paragraph whatever of our install agreement. I'm like, well, I didn't sign that install agreement. The customer did. But I told the customer when I was in their house what we were installing on their roof, what panels and what these panels are produced and why I believed in these panels. And you don't even have them.

So we're getting a million questions and I want to kind of address. There's a. There's a bunch of questions. I would love to answer them all. Some of them I will try to address. I'm going to try and parse them as much as I can. Some of them. We're going to give you an opportunity at the end of this to hop on a call with Jay and his team so that you can get a lot of these questions answered because we think that's an important thing, like we want to get the questions answered. But we also knew we're probably going to get a million questions about all this. We got one from Christopher Scoville and I want to try and maybe handle that today because I think this is. I want to take on the challenging questions if possible. So he gave us a scenario. Customer needs a roof in a timely manner, maybe a week or two. Right. And they want solar to. The roof needs to be done now, but we know the solar can't go PTO for about three to four months with permits and solving time. How does a roofer finance this and split the payments for the roof and the solar in one line?

You broke up a little bit. It said, how does the roofer finance this? Is that what you said?

Yeah. How does the. So I've got two projects, really. I've got a roof that.