Solar Company Secrets Webinar

Yo, everybody. Good to see you. We have a very special webinar for you today. This is a contractor radio episode. Those of you that are familiar with our podcast out there, we have a podcast that helps contractors become better leaders so they can grow their businesses and scale them and achieve that personal and financial freedom that they were after so they can live the lifestyle that they want. And I've got some special guests on today. I don't usually have them, like, right away, but we do today. And I want to introduce Bruce Blomberg. Bruce, good to have you on board.

Pleasure to be here, Jim. We are very excited to be on this webinar with you. Thank you for hosting us, myself and Jay. And we are ready to dive in.

Awesome. And we've got Jay Haynes, owner of Ohm Construction. Kind of a bit of the brainchild with Bruce behind the selling solar thing. Jay, tell us a little bit more about yourself.

Yeah, first off, not too much, though.

We got a whole webinar slide on that, so highlight.

I. I do have a tendency to ramble.

Thank you.

Just kidding. No, I. I'm. First off, thank you for letting us be on the show and being a part of this. This is awesome. I love anything I ever. I've ever done with you. It's also always great. But no, I'm really excited. Like I said and like Bruce said before, we have a lot of information to share with you guys about this amazing, sort of revolutionary product that I really feel like I can use that word that we have, that we've re engineered and we've rethought a lot of how you view solar, and I'm excited to share it.

Yeah, that's actually, like, why I wanted to do this. I know you very well. You're one of the most ethical people I know out there. I can actually trust you, which is something that can be a little bit hard to find in our industry. And this concept of solar has always been this difficult area for a roofer to step into because there's just some things they don't know. And we said, hey, let's do a podcast about this. We did1about2months ago or so, and it was well received. Like, we had tons of comments, lots of people talking about it. And then Bruce reached out to me and said, hey, let's do a deeper dive. Let's, like, dive deep into this. Like, give people some of that extra information that they were looking for. We noticed we were getting a lot of questions on our demo calls that were things that we could maybe answer. In this webinar. So that's the goal today. We're going to walk through this a little bit today with you guys that are our listeners. Those of you that are viewing live out there, we don't usually do that either. But we are live today and so hang out. We got some amazing stuff for you at the end. This is something that you want to watch, the whole thing if you have any inkling of being in solar, because we're going to protect you from some things and then we're going to inform you on some things that you should probably do that would help you make.

It a lot easier.

You guys ready to go?

We're ready.

Go.

All right, we're going to go ahead and share a screen here and get rolling. So today's webinar, the secrets to launching a wildly profitable and ethical solar company. And I usually just don't go for that word secrets. Like it. Like, that's a. It's one of those words that seems a little typey to me, like, hey, we know something you don't know. Right? But this is actually the case with this one. There is some things that are going on out there in the solar world that we're not real educated on. We just kind of take the word of people and we're going to go ahead and open up the veil and say, hey, here's Pandora's box. Here's everything that's going on. Make sure that you guys understand some of those situations that are out there. So without further ado, let's get rocking and rolling. Hopefully. There we go. So first things first, these guys are from Selling Solar Solutions. The fine logo, like, it's awesome looking, did a great job on it. And it is who they are. So if you're looking for them, you might take a note right now, like right now, selling solar. Selling-solar.com, that's the website. It could be even look it up, but. But not right this second. Look it up after. You're going to want to pay attention here today. And I am Jim Johnson. And it's funny, like, I do this podcast, but I don't think I've ever shared, like, historically, like, what I've done and stuff like that. So maybe this might be important to some of you guys, but I've been in the contracting world. I had 15 years of being a contractor with annual revenues of 25 million plus. Highest year being 41 million. Five years as director of sales at Acculinx. So if you're a roofer, you probably know who Acculinx is they actually bought my software from me called Silver Lining, and we integrated it into acculinx to allow for the sales or front end side of things. That's what it was. And then they said, hey, why don't you be director of sales? And I did. For five years. It was my job to make a thing a thing. And I think I did. It's out there pretty good nowadays. 10 plus years of coaching. Now almost 11 thousands of contractors with over $6.2 billion in revenue revenue in 2023 alone. So we've coached a few people and grew a few people. And I get more joy from seeing people not only get that success they're looking for, but living that lifestyle that they're trying to achieve. There was a big epiphany for me in this contracting world that there is actually an order and blueprint to building and scaling an amazing business. So I went and wrote a book about it. Crazily enough, it became a bestseller, which is really weird. I was hoping, like, man, if I sold 10 books, that'd be a big deal. But it's. It's thousands now, which is pretty wild. Founder of the Contractor Collective community. Another thing you could write down and say, hey, I want to go look that up. It's a free community for contractors where you can come in and ask questions and get things solved. If you can hear my dog in the background, I apologize. Wife walk coming back in. So speaker at over 100 industry events, so I get to speak an awful lot. It's something I really enjoy to do. Created the contractors training room, which is a learning platform on the Contractor Collective. Thousands of salespeople and leaders on there, and then the host of this top five contractor podcast, Contractor Radio. So that's kind of me and my background. Let's. Let's hear a little bit from Jay. Jay, give us a little bit of who you are so that people can understand why this might be valuable.

Absolutely. I got started in roofing at a really young age. Actually, my first job ever was the kettle loader for a hot mop crew. That shows how old I am. I do have great genetics, though, so I still look like I'm 20. I am not. The. The hot mop crew was an experience. I. I did that for two years, actually, because I was able to lie about my age and get really good money in the summer and because I. I mean, nobody questioned the white guy. All right. Everything okay?

Yeah, it is now. You continue on. I'm just gonna step off screen for a second and I'LL be right back. Okay?

Okay, sounds good.

You keep explaining. All right.

Absolutely. I, I have been in. I went to college because I never wanted to do everything again. After working on the cruise for about three to four, four years ended up right back in roofing because the opportunity is amazing. You get to help so many people created own restoration. You know, a lot of you are familiar with my company. We do quite a bit of volume. We're in quite a few states. I've been able to acquire three other roofing companies through that home journey. And it's, it's a, it's a really fun journey, fun process. I actually scaling companies is just something that I, I been able to do. I've done well. I've built and exited or currently I'm still active in 14 different companies. How about three of those are non profits? And one of the coolest things I have is I just got sick of using gutter subcontractors in one market and I built and scaled a 2 million dollar gutter company just because I stopped using gutter contractors. And it's just something that I've always loved and I'm about taking opportunities and jumping into opportunities. Mult family. Something I'm very heavily involved in as an investor and owner. And I, I love the cigar thing here. I had no clue what to put. I put that funny and then my team actually put it on here. So I am a cigar fanatic. I love a good. That's, that's, that's my vice. But I didn't expect that to actually.

That's great.

The, the one thing that I, I did view on opportunities is solar. I jumped on solar really quick. I learned all of the bumps and bruises very quickly as we'll get into and I'm really, really, really proud of selling solar solutions. This is a company that I'm probably the most excited about. Close your ears. If you work for me in any other industry or company that I have. But because I really am about making a difference. That's my nonprofit side. That's why I like grouping in the first place. And I'm also really about helping people change their lifestyle. I came from nothing. I was very blessed and I've been able to build a nice life for myself and I love seeing other people do that.

Awesome.

And all you people that work for Jay, you know he's a visionary. He's always excited about the newest shiny thing. So don't worry like it's cool. All right. Hey Bruce, tell us a little bit about you and your history like you are the solar guy. Like that's the thing here. You're going to be doing most of the talking here today and share with us a little bit of your background in the solar world.

Yeah. My name is Bruce Blomberg. I have been in the solar industry for at the end of this year will be my 10 year mark. I have worked and operated a lot of different companies, whether it's sales organizations, consulting companies, install companies. I was the director for a company called Storm Ventures Group and their solar division for two years. That's where I initially met Jay. So I've known Jay for a few years. I've trained over 400 and some odd roofing companies across the country along my way. Thousands of sales reps and I've closed myself down hundreds of solar projects along the last 10 years. So I've really understood exactly how to navigate through this industry. There's been a lot of ups and downs, there's been a lot of learning curves. And I think the really the most important thing is understanding exactly how to pitch this product to a homeowner the correct way, the ethical way, the moral way. Because no matter what, it's always going to be fruitful for you as a sales rep or as a contractor or business owner. And we knew that there was a lot of pitfalls in the industry. So when I left svg, first person that came to my head and the first person that I wanted to partner up with was Jay. And I had a bunch of contractors kind of knocking on my door, but Jay was the one that stood out to me the most just because of who he is as a leader and who he is as a mentor. And I cherish our relationship a lot. And we've come a long way. We started out as just partnering up and allowing myself to help out and boost his solar company. And here we are today, a couple years later, and we have built a really awesome platform for contractors to be able to escape this EPC solar dealer model, which is really ruining the industry, and allow them to bring solar sales and installs in house pretty seamlessly.

Yeah, I think it's one of the things that has really bothered me about the whole solar industry. You got a bunch of sales guys out there selling something really kind of based off of an interest rate more than anything else. And they don't know the product, they don't know, you know, how things work there. It's like one little faction over here of sales, go sell this thing. But they don't. There's. I feel like it would be hard to sleep at night. Like, I don't know. I feel like it's a lot of lack of character and ethics out there, which is why I can see you joined up with Jay. Like all of you listening, you listeners of Contractor Radio, if you have people that aren't coming, if you have people coming to you and saying, I want to work for you, that is probably because of two reasons. One, they have greed and you have the ability to make them financially successful, or two, they have high character. And that person that has high character, usually that relationship lasts a lot longer. So think about that from your leadership perspective out there. And well done on your part, Jay. So today's promise, and I want to make a promise to you guys today that as we go through this webinar, you're going to learn the secrets that Selling Solar has, the strategies they have, and on how to build an ethical and wildly profitable solar company by ditching the EPC dealer model. Bringing solar installs in house. It's something we can do. We do roofing installs in house. Why can't we do solar installs in house? Just learning a little bit of a different product. And I wouldn't say it's easy, but it's also not hard. It's like just some work. We got some work to do. Get the work done. And if you have a roadmap to follow, it makes it a lot easier. So let's talk a little bit about that roadmap today. Now, there's one very important part of this. Those of you that are watching online, those of you that are registered for the webinar, you'll want to stick around today. You're going to receive two extremely valuable bonuses at the end of this. They've shared with us that, hey, we want to do this. I think you're going to find a lot of value in them. We'll get to them as this goes on. And then finally, and here, sorry, we have them right here. Free Current State analysis and the profit calculator. I could have been a little bit smoother at that, but you're going to get these two assets. Whatever you get done, have a link for you to follow. You can just apply for it and we'll give you this free current State Analysis and Profit calculator. It's the current state of your business. We'll talk more about it. And then how could I calculate profit on the work that we do? Last request before we get into the meat of the webinar here. Don't multitask during This, I know that you're on your phones, probably some of you watching it. I know some of you may be at your desktops and there's a billion things going on. As a matter of fact, mine is right here. It's face down. Like I put it face down over here. And all notifications off, volume off. I want to be totally into you guys and so hopefully you're totally into this. So try to avoid any distractions during this because you're really going to want to pay attention. That's the whole point of webinars and things like that, is to get something valuable that you can use for yourself. So this industry, the solar side of it, has been dominated by the EPC dealer model for years, a very long time. And they kind of did their own thing for a long time out there. They had these sales organizations that they would recruit and slightly train, put them out there and they would go sell like crazy, door knocking all over the place. And what they found, like they found out that they had a hard time converting. There was actually data on this. It was a hard time getting people to say yes to a sit down and then hard time getting them to convert. And so they got the bright idea of going after us. We have trust. We have this trust with our clients that gets us in the door so that we can have a conversation about this. And they found out that they were three times more successful selling people through our roofing sales organizations. They went great. We're going to go after these roofers. Unfortunately, there's problems with that. We're going to talk about that today. But that's, that's what I see. How about you guys? Like, is that kind of what you've seen over the years with this EPC model?

Absolutely. And I talked about it the last time we were together. Jim, the EPC model is very attractive at its very surface. And it was to me, I jumped in it and it was a mess, as you know. But I wanted to sell solar. I have the customer base, I have the trust with my customers. I have a massive customer book. And as somebody really wisely said, every solar lead, I'm going to quote Josiah Atkins, every solar lead is a roof lead. And that is the truth. And so I was ready to jump on board. And I learned really fast that if you are a successful contractor, you pride yourself in quality of customer experience and quality of install. Those are not anything on the radar of an epc, I assure you.

Yeah, the EPC model is kind of based around one thing. We want to make as much money as we can, as fast as we can. And really the growing and trying to scale something faster than they can actually keep quality and success with. Anything you want to add, Bruce?

Yeah, there's. There's a lot of, like, Jay said it, it's. It looks pretty on the outside. It's kind of like the Mona Lisa. It's really. It's really beautiful from afar. The closer that you get, the uglier it becomes. And the reality is, is they don't really have any bandwidth or really motivation to help you with any sales support, training, anything. They're just there to install the job. Their job is to onboard as many sales organizations to sell their product for them as possible. And they don't really have the bandwidth, so the communication is poor. There's a lot of different things that are the pitfalls of the industry. And we were stuck in that system for a long time, myself and Jay, and we said that we've got to find a way to get out of this because of all the problems that it was bringing to our company. And as a contractor, I know that Jay can attest to this. But as a roofing contractor or any contractor out there, your reputation, I know for a fact, is the most important thing. And anytime the process is taken away from your hands after you sell a project at the kitchen table with Mrs. Smith, if the installation is taken out of your hands, your reputation is at risk every single time you sell that job. And all it takes is one bad review, and that contractor says, nope, the couple thousand dollars that I'm making off of this thing is not worth this headache. And a lot of contractors are put in this system and don't know how to get out of it, right?

So that's where I come in. Like, I have to come in and help them get out of it before they go bankrupt. Like, I've had at least 20 different clients we've had to go through that with because they got into this model. It wasn't everything that was promised. It is very attractive. I agree with you guys. Like, man, just come and sell it for us. We'll put it all on. You don't even have to worry about that. You're like, yeah, that sounds wonderful because we have a great sales team. But then fulfillment lacks. And Bruce, you made a big point there. Our reputation is our brand. It truly is. And if our reputation is at risk because we're leaving it up to somebody else, we're risking our brand, which is.

Probably our valuable thing that we have for businesses.

So we See a lot of struggles out there with the solar world, and we talked about a few of them right there. But you have this control that's going on with your installations. We talked about insane dealer feedback. We haven't hit that one yet. Timeout for one second. Somebody's got a phone dinging like crazy. If we can turn the volume down on that or whatever's pinging in the background. Insane dealer fees. Like, as much as 35 to 41% of the job is a dealer fee. That's theft. Like the who me? That's stuff that's literally like, I'm going to steal your tax credit from you. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to steal the tax credit and go out and do this. And if I get in trouble for you, that I didn't call anybody specifically out, so leave me alone. It's the truth of the matter, and it is absolutely unnecessary. High redline costs and even just the fact that there is a red line, it's like this deceptive thing that's put in place so that you don't have clarity on how things work and so you don't understand material cost, labor costs, and all the other things that go along with it. You just, hey, sell at this number and you're good. Right? Long installation timelines, like, takes forever. Lack of communication from installers, which is ridiculous. And always last to get paid on the job. Like, we're the first to go and do something, but the last to get paid. That doesn't work out real well for anybody that runs a contracting business. And so, Jay, you went through all of this with your EPC company, with your roofing company, working with and through an epc. Anything else you want to add to this? That, hey, things that we really struggled with. And those of you that are listening, while Jay's kind of putting this together, those of you that are listening, is there anything you've struggled with? I know some of you that are on here are probably in this position where you might be working with an EPC company right now, or you have, and it was a bad situation. You got out. You're like scared of the whole solar world at this point. What were some of the things that you dealt with? Feel free to put them in the comments. There you have the ability to chat to us. We cannot hear you, but if you chat to us, we'll see it. And so if we're missing anything, let us know. Go ahead and put it in the comments, Jay. Anything?

Yeah. And I want to apologize. I think the cell phone chime was coming from my end, and I didn't realize it. It wasn't my phone. I just got a new MacBook that I turned on today, and my team's been trying to figure out how to get the alert thing off, but you guys get to see how many texts.

I get a day.

I think it's fixed now. I apologize. We had.

You're good.

All right. You know, EPC model lack of control is the first thing on this, and it is for a reason.

And.

And that slide to the right is exactly how I was. I wanted to rip my hair out a lot. Like, I was just dealing with. With this alert thing going on. I'm not the most technical guy. The lack of control of my installations was one of the Achilles heels in that system. I would have a level of expectation set with the customer. I. I didn't.

Based on what they had told you, though, right?

Like, not told me, Bruce. I'm talking about. I'm sorry, Jim. I'm talking about sign contractual agreements that actually itemize this stuff out of, hey, we're going to fulfill abcde.

Cool.

I have that in a contract with you guys. Now I'm going to go turn to my customer and say, hey, they're going to fulfill abcde. Which was always a weird thing to me, is like, oh, we have this partner we're working with. I don't think the customers ever really understood it, but they trusted us, so they went with it. And then those things wouldn't happen. It would be like a d. We'll wait on B.C. whatever happens. And it was just a nightmare. And Bruce can really dive into it. Because I partnered with Bruce very early on. I said, bruce, make my sales guys solar machines. And he poured his heart into training my guys, which meant every issue he was getting blown up. What is going on? What is going on?

Yeah, we. We're here to try to make solar great again. And, you know, the biggest hurdle like, you know, we're seeing on this slide right here is, is really. I mean, there's a lot more than just this, but these are the main ones. And the problem is, is with all these big installers out there that are kind of dominating the industry in this EPC dealer model is you're at the mercy of. To their financing, you're at the mercy of their equipment, you're at the mercy of their timelines, you're at the mercy of their crews, and everything within. You're at their mercy, and you have no control. Right. So what's going to happen is all of these big EPCs are going to promise you the world. They're going to tell you that they're going to give you the fastest install times and they've got the lowest red lines in the country. Well, what happens is they inflate you at a really high red line cost, which is essentially your cost of goods. But we know right now that solar equipment is at an all time low right now because of the overproduction that's happened over the last two years. But guess what? Doesn't go down, your red line, never will go down. Right? So they promise you the world and it never really comes to fruition because what they're trying to do is they're trying to onboard as many sales organizations as possible and they just don't have enough hands in the pot to get your project done the way that they promised you it was going to get done when you signed up with them. Not to mention these massive dealer fees. So what happens is these big box install companies, they partner up with these big box finance companies because they incentivize each other to partner up. And these big box finance companies, they know that these big installers that are dominating in 50 states, they only can use their financing. Well, what happens is these sales reps are selling these 4.9% interest rates which is right now the lowest in the country. But what they fail to let the homeowners know is that there's this 40% plus dealer fee attached to the front end sticker price.

Okay?

And these are all the problems and the pitfalls of the solar industry is that the end consumer is not getting an ethical product. Because right now there's five to six different people slash companies making money off of their investment. And that's before we even tack on this massive dealer fee from these finance companies.

Yeah, we're going to get into that one a little bit more detail here in just a minute. So let me get us moving forward here. So something has to change, right? Like there's all these problems out there. Roofers are dealing with it actually even like sales organizations that are working through those, EPC companies are dealing with it. And so something had to change and I needed a better way need to be created. And I've been looking for one for a long time. I have avoided solar like the plague. If I contractor that wants to get into solar, I'm like, there's only one way to do this, to take it on, be in full control and learn it like you do anything else. And I've helped several contractors install that type of system into their world. But it's a big thing. Like, you have a lot to learn. There's. Takes a long time. I mean, the average amount of time is probably a year to a year and a half to get everything in place to actually be able to produce what you need to produce. And so it tends to be a little less enjoyable to take that much time. And as looking through what you guys have put together, you shorten that time up dramatically. You create it like a better way. Like, hey, here's all this stuff. It's all. Now we're going to talk a little bit more about that today. But that was one of the biggest problems. The other thing is, for me, I think rack and panel systems are ugly. I'm not a big fan of them. Like, I get it, that's cool. And we should put them on. But I also came across a shingle out there. It's a solar shingle, and was proposed with that. And I went, okay, so I got this solar shingle thing that's integrated into the roof system. Looks a million times better. It's far less expensive than a Tesla roof. And we have this selling solar system, like, put these two things together and it's magic. It's going to be unbelievable.

So if I could chime in on that too. The beauty in that product, especially because we're dealing with a lot of roofing contractors, is that there is always going to be the esthetic purpose and reason as to why a homeowner might not want to go solar. And the efficiency has come a long way, as you know, Jim, because you, you host a product that is a great product for the solar shingle. And we know that the traditional, you know, roof and panel racking system is going to be a little bit more efficient, but it's really good to be able to host and offer both products to homeowners when needed.

Yeah, that's the key. Like, hey, you can go either way. These are the two different options. And that was one of the things that was, I thought was a problem with solar, too. I had no options. It's like, here, this is the system. That's all you got. Now there's some options, which makes it actually easier to sell. I believe whenever you're out there and going, hey, there's an option that costs a little bit more. This option costs a little bit less. If they really want it, they're gonna pick one or the other, and usually they want the better one. To be honest with you. So created a better way. This is where the idea behind selling solar solutions came from. We're sitting there like, hey, we've got this thing. We're doing it in house. That thing's running pretty smoothly. Can we help other people do this? And we're going to get into the rest of that story here in just a minute. But there's a main thing that people need to understand. And what is that? Bruce, let's let you share that, because I think it's more important coming from you.

Yeah. The bottom line is, you know, you can bring solar sales and the installations in house just like you do with roofing. It's completely doable. And a lot of people have this mindset that they can't take on this new task to be able to bring the installations in. So this is why a lot of contractors and sales organizations have been stuck in the EPC dealer model, because they don't know and they don't believe that it's possible to bring in the installations because of all these false narratives that have been coming up.

False narrative. We should talk about those.

Yeah.

So let's talk about myth number one. I need EPCs to facilitate engineering, procurement, and construction. That's what EPC stands for. Any of you out there wondering what an EPC is? They are the ones that engineer the system, procure the materials and accessories, and perform the construction. That's why they have the name epc. And a lot of us from the roofing world go, I have to do that because I don't know any of that stuff.

Yeah. And really what's been happening is there's no other option. Right. So everyone in the solar industry knows that the EPC model is a failing model. I mean, you've got some of the biggest EPCs that have been the largest EPCs. I won't mention any names that took away their proposal software for their clients, and now their clients have to purchase their own proposal software. What, are they supposed to still go back to that same install company? But there's no other way that's ever been presented to sales organizations or contractors other than rely on me to do the install. And you just do the sales and you're just going to divide this. But the reality is, and especially as someone that either understands the solar industry as a sales organization or a contractor that's currently facilitating their own roofs and the installations with the sails, you can bring this whole process fully in house without relying on someone else to take the control away.

Exactly. All right, so that's myth number one. And that's false narrative. That's distracted us from what we're supposed to do. Myth number two, I can't bring installs in house because my crews don't know how to install solar. They're too dumb to learn anything else.

You know, this one actually hits a little home for me because when we first built this company, we were building a training course and we wanted to put an install course together. But my first objection to Jay was, well, all of these guys aren't going to have in house solar crews. How are they going to do this? And Jay, do you remember what you said to me?

All right, go for it.

You told me that you didn't have to have the in house crews. A lot of roofing contractors necessarily don't also have in house crews. They can rely on sub crews to just facilitate the labor. So same process. Same process here is you can still bring installs in house even without holding your electrical license, master electric license, in house. Even without having the in house crews, you can sub out the work to the contractors that do hold those licenses. And do you understand how to perform that task of the labor?

Yeah, it's exactly what we do in roofing. I would gather that 90% of roofing company owners and even their sales managers, general managers, you wouldn't want them out there doing your roof, to be honest with you. So they have to have crews, and some of them have some in house crews that do work, but the majority are subcontracted crews that come in and do the work and are expected to know what they're supposed to know when they come in. There are thousands and thousands of solar subcontractors that are out there too, that we can find. And we can actually also teach some of our own crews how to do this type of thing. They want to grow and become maybe more well paid than they already are, which they're paid really, really well. That's awesome. All right, so that's myth number two. Myth number three, it's not worth the headache to do this. It just seems easier to sell and pass on to the epc.

Well, no one lazy has ever been successful in business.

Amen. Yes. I love that one. That one's good.

Yeah. And to be honest with, with you, anyone that's a roofing contractor out there that's listening to this, you know, just imagine selling a roof and having someone else come in and facilitate the entire process and you just walk away.

How.

How much more of a headache that's going to be than the headache of thinking that you can't install your own roofs. Right. So it's the same concept. It's the same exact concept, just a different product. And we make it really seamless to bring both sales and installs in house.

Just like when you use the word worth, like, that's a, that's a big thing to me. And worth tends to be something involved with time savings. Like, there's that aspect of things, but there's also this financial aspect. Like, hey, is it worth me going through all this hassle? Which isn't really that big of a hassle. It's just knowledge. You may not. It's something you just don't know yet. Once you know it, you're like, oh, that's not a big deal. But is it worth going through all of that from a financial standpoint and from a time saving standpoint?

Well, you're gonna, you're gonna get to see just how lucrative it is if you stay to the end. And we get to go through that analysis of profit calculator with you because that gives you real numbers and that actually is based on your current company and it's really custom tailored to you. It's actually really awesome. So I'll let you just get that.

Okay, cool. We'll save that for the end. Like on the, on the finance.

I have actually never talked to Bruce about this, but when Bruce and I were in the weeds with an EPC and we were doing volume with an epc, we were actually the largest sales organization for that EPC at the time, putting on most installs, which this was a massive epc. I spent so much time myself in the weeds with problems, I don't know that this didn't actually save me a bunch of time delegating it and getting in the weeds with Bruce and the team we built to actually bring it in house. Now I'm not dealing with problems. I'm just dealing with normal business things that I would deal with anyway. I'm not just trying to fix somebody else's business model and cover their mistakes.

Well, you. You hit on something really important there. Like a lot of the problems that I've seen from the solar world is because I'm not the big guy. I'm not the one selling the most. I'm selling, you know, a few solar jobs here and there. And to the EPCs were small, not a priority. If we lost them because we didn't fulfill, that's okay. So, yeah, we're gonna put them off because I have to fulfill Jay's work because Jay's Selling the most. I got to try and keep them happy. But you just said even at the biggest guy, they're not keeping you happy.

Terrible. Yeah, they try to do their best, but the reality is communication is just not where it needs to be. And when a homeowner calls up one of Jay's sales reps and says, what's the process of my roof? Where is it currently at? Jay's rep can go into his CRM and tell that homeowner exactly where that project's at and exactly what to lay down for proper expectations to the homeowner. So what happens is in solar is you're selling this product and you're saying, yep, this should be installed in probably two months to three months at the worst case. And that's a big false expectation because then what happens is it takes six months to a year to even be turned on after it's installed. And.

And it shouldn't take that long. No, no.

I mean, you're dealing with. You're dealing with a proposal. You're dealing with simple permit processes and that there are some counties that are a little bit longer for permitting than others. The utility, those are the two major hiccups as timeline is concerned. But when you're running those things in house, it's a lot quicker to be done rather than hopefully whoever is doing that process for this big epc, when it gets to. When that project gets in their hands is when they'll deal with it. Right. So not enough hands in the pot and there's not enough bandwidth for these big EPCs. So whenever your project comes to the top of the line or the top of the pile is when they're going to deal with that.

Yeah. So if you think about incentive and incentives, a big reason why any of us do anything that we do, the incentive, to me, it seems like, for the EPC company would. To put them on, at least, like get them on. So I can say I pounded the last nail so the finance company can pay me, but when that happens, they don't care about anything else. So there's a lot that actually happens afterwards. Right. Like the hookup and all that other good stuff.

So that's what a lot of EPC companies actually do. And a lot of those companies are actually also doing that project before permits are even actually approved.

Oh, okay. So imagine that nightmare.

Right. But then like you said, you hit the nail on the head is they're trying to get. So even these big ones, they're trying to get the jobs installed, but when you're the biggest EPC in the country and you've got thousands and thousands of jobs in your pipeline. Well, when Mary Smith is waiting four months, it doesn't matter because there's a lot of other projects that are getting done before that. So it's just not prioritized. The communication is horrible. And all that needs. The homeowner doesn't need their solar in two months. They need to know the proper expectations from the beginning and they need to have proper communication throughout the whole process, knowing exactly where their project's at.

And they also don't care because they didn't sell it. So when the one star review comes, it's not going to be on them.

Yeah, exactly.

Man, those are amazing points. So let's talk about myth number four. I'm at the mercy of the big box finance options. Hard product to sell with these dealer fees and interest rates. I've seen this an awful lot in this world. I don't even suggest doing solar if you're going to use one of those finance options because it's just simply greed and theft to me. Like, I can't even sleep at night.

Yeah.

There's a time and place that, you know, big box finance option. I mean, sometimes I've had people in situations that just have a credit score, they really want financing. Just like a car. You have to have a car. Some people pay 29 interest on a car right now, I don't think that's ethical or whatever, but if a consumer does it, they at least know and they're told at the very Beginning, you're paying 29 interest on this car. So whatever. They made that choice for themselves and they decided it's worth it. I'm using that specific.

They used to not do that, by the way. They used to not do that in your finance world. And because of the finance world for cars doing what solar is doing currently, the government stepped in and required, like whenever you sit down, you go through finance. How much are you spending all out. What is your interest rate? Like, you had to be clear about all those things and they got to change because they were literally like charging egregious numbers. So I see something like that happening in our world too.

Yeah. And if I could chime in here, and I kind of touched on this a few minutes ago, is you're at the mercy as a sales organization for these installers, you're at the mercy of their finance options that they've partnered with and you have no other options. Right. Unless you tell the homeowner to go find their own financing, which is not going to make your sale any easier. Right.

That's the last thing you want to do.

Exactly. Well, the biggest problem with that is, is that. And this is. There's a lot of. I don't know if anyone saw or if you saw Jim, but a lot of these big box finance companies are currently being sued by the state of Minnesota because these sales reps are selling this product that they're failing to let the homeowners know that there's this massive dealer fee on the front end sticker price. These massive dealer fees aren't even in the contract. When you read the contract as the homeowner, they're nowhere. They're nowhere to be found. And why would the sales rep tell the homeowner about them? Because that's only going to hurt their sale. Hey, I can get you this great interest rate, but not to mention, it's going to add $25,000 on the front end sticker price. Of course they're not going to tell you that. Right?

Right. So it's just gonna be. That's the sticker price.

We're gonna get you the best interest rates, but this is what the price is, right?

Yeah. And they don't have to worry about it because there's no one coming in behind them that's doing anything different. Then that's gonna be like, wait a second, I got a quote for the system for $17,000.

What?

What are you guys talking about?

I told you, like, we're gonna pull the veil back today and probably irritate.

I'm.

I'm sure there's probably an EPC company watching this. We promoted this pretty heavily, so. Too bad. Deal with it. It's the truth. And we're gonna, we're gonna share the truth out there.

Maybe they'll learn something. I mean, reality is we want solar to be here for a long time. Solar is a product that should only be doing this. And it's plateaued like this because of all the pitfalls that we're currently today speaking about. And it doesn't need to be like that. And the problem is, is that there's never been a company that, that's doing exactly what we're doing to make the change in the industry, to actually help out the end consumer. Because everyone's making money off of this dealer model.

Yeah. All right, so let's get to myth four. We gotta. We want to get through this in a timely fashion if we can, but it's great, valuable information so far. So myth number five. It's going to take me a year and a fortune to figure all this out. Jay, you're like, yep, it will. Or more.

Well, it took me, it took me longer and a fortune to figure it out, but hopefully that's not the experience for you. Just due to the processes and, and the actual software and, and classroom experiences that we've built out our courses.

Yeah. So it took us over a year to figure out all this and we spent a lot of time and money and made a lot of mistakes along the way. And we finally found a way to perfect what it is that we're trying to do by bringing solar sales and installations in house. And myself and Jay got together, we said, we got to get this out there, we got to get this out to the world. And in a three month timeline, we can show you guys how to bring solar sales and installs completely in house.

Sweet. And start making your first sales. Like, hey, within three months you're making your first sales not years from now. And this is from me. These guys aren't here to like sell their stuff and that type of thing, but if somebody has done it before and they're doing a good job of it, why don't I just pay them to learn what it is that they have instead of beating my head against a wall and losing money for a long period of time. Lots of mistakes and all the other stuff, but I could just shorten the time frame and get there faster. So this is not true. It could take you a year if you went out there and tried to like figure it all out. But there are ways to solve that. We're going to share those with you today. So let's, let's talk about the systems. Like now we know what all the myths are, all the problems, all the other good stuff. And we had a bit of a breakthrough. And so you have actually two sides of the business that we're talking about here. So the artist solar and the installation side. So just share a little bit about that.

Yeah, we started out building out a really badass solar sales course that really can take somebody that doesn't know anything about how solar works to really understand everything from point A to point Z to become a master closer. And we built that course initially to lay out to all of Jay's sales reps and all the different markets that own restoration is currently in for just in house training. And then we said, well, we need to pivot from this dealer model that we were currently stuck in and start installing our own solar. So we brought those two things together. And then we had an epiphany saying, we can't just be this training company. We need to actually get our product out there, because we found out exactly how this needs to be done. And Jay. This was actually Jay's idea to say we need to let contractors know how to escape this dealer model. And we are not just a training company. We don't just have training videos yet.