How Losing $400 Million Shaped Jayson Waller's Business Resilience

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And I'll tell you, things happen for a reason. As as horrible as this is and losing personally $400 million does not feel good. You know to start over and rebuild is not a good feeling. But I'm closer to my family than I've ever been and I'm more present than I've ever been.

Have you ever taken a loss in your business? Well, today's guest personally lost $400 million and during our chat he'll share the lessons he's learned so you can better navigate setbacks as well. This is the launch your business podcast because we know starting a business is is challenging, but it doesn't have to be confusing. Each week we'll give you the tactical advice and the necessary tools to scale your business without feeling burnt out. I'm Terry Rice, business development consultant and staff writer here at Entrepreneur Magazine let's dive in. Hey, before we officially start today's show, I want to let you know how I can personally help you land more high paying clients by building an irresistible offer. It's called the Revenue Accelerator, a live workshop where I'll teach you how to multiply your revenue potential and spend less time working with premium price services. And as a listener, you'll save $50 by using the promo code. Launch space is limited and you can learn more by visiting Terryrice Co Convert. That's Terryrice Co Convert. And now let's hop into the show. I have a confession to make. I have a really bad habit of getting over setbacks much faster than other people. If a problem arises, I move past the I can't believe this happened stage and quickly move on to the okay, now what can I do about it phase. Why is that a bad habit? It's because I'm often confused as to why other people can't move forward in the same way. But shaking my head in disbelief clearly won't help anyone. So I decided to do something about it. I created a keynote called the Resilience Roadmap where I help you deal with setbacks by identifying the next positive strategic actions you can take to build positive momentum. And you can learn more about that by visiting my website at terryrice Co Speaking. And as you're about to hear, our next guest needed a lot of resilience in order to make it through one of the darker chapters in his life, which included death threats against him and his family. Jason Waller is a business mentor, coach, speaker, and host of the BAM Business Attitude Money podcast. He's also a Wall Street Journal best selling author who's built four companies that are worth over $10 million each, with his latest venture reaching $1 billion. But he's also dealing with the impact of a lawsuit against his company, Pink Energy. Not only did he personally lose $400 million, but his relationship with his family was strained as well. So we're going to unpack a lot today, including the lessons Jason's learned from losing millions of dollars, how a battlefield mindset can help you even under the most challenging situations, and how to make time with your family count, even if you're a busy entrepreneur. Let's hop into it right now. Jason, how's it going today?

Going pretty good. Can't complain. The sun's shining, birds are chirping, I'm still breathing, so things are good.

I dig that. I mean, I think more people need to show that kind of gratitude. Of all things that we Just take for granted. And if you do, you'll be a happier person. So I'm glad to hear you're already aligned with that.

Glass is always half full. I try to look at. Even when it's dark and it seems bad, you're still there. It could be worse. And that's what I tell myself. You know what? I'm in where I'm supposed to be, where I'm supposed to be. That's how it works.

We're very aligned. And I agree with you, it comes at a cost, because other people will think you're being cold and callous and you're like, no, I realize this horrible thing happened, but I can't do anything about that. But I have full control over how I respond. So how can we help people move from the horrible event that happened to resolution faster?

I mean, you're talking about, like, my situation with the company. I live it every day. I mean, it's. You know, my wife sends me stuff today in a hate group, and, you know, it still bothers her. We've had death threats. All these things, you know, we. We built that company power, home, solar, pink energy. We built it with a mission. In fact, the company's motto was bam. You know, building a movement. One panel, one customer, one employee at a time. The NFL loved us so much, we. They allowed us to put solar on five NFL stadiums. And, you know, we, you know, based on reputation, we were the best. For eight straight years, we won every award. 40,000 customers selected us because our ratings were high. You know, it was exciting to empower 40,000 people to own some of their power and to be able to be part of that renewable energy movement. It was exciting to employ 2,400 people. It was exciting to take this chance to take the company public. But, you know, we had a catastrophic event with Generac, and when we did, you know, we didn't really see it coming. We were trying to. The first few months, we were trying to figure out what the hell is going on. And then when we kind of found out, they took some responsibility to us. Right? That's why there's a huge lawsuit with our old company and them, which is where these customers are kind of lost and stuck in the middle. But that lawsuit against them, it's because it's based on factual information. It's based on them taking responsibility internally to us taking somewhat responsibility externally with a letter saying, hey, we should have done better to the consumer. Pink Energy's trying to fix it. And now there's been six other companies that went through where we were the largest by far. We were like 70 or 80% of Generac's solar business at the time. And so, you know, when we're doing 600 million in revenue a year and you know, where I failed as a CEO, I mean, of course people make mistakes, is I should have had more redundancy and not trust a company like that. You know, we had two panel companies, we had two finance companies. We did all the things we could do, but we entrusted this public company doing the right thing, following protocol, you know, offering this product. Where they bought this company, they came out later and said, we should have done more due diligence. We didn't. It's on us. You know, their owner was like, we'll make this right. We'll fix every one of these customers. We'll pay for their service being down. They didn't. They stiffed us for 90 million plus. All of those things that added up. And because I was the face of the brand, not only did it hurt our company and then hurt our customers and then hurt our employees, but it hurt personally. Where my family, like I said, was getting death threats. It hurt my brand where it was hard for me to, you know, what am I supposed to do? People that didn't know me but saw me all of a sudden thought, oh, is he a fraud? Is he ripping people off? What's the deal here? And it hurts. It hurts your feelings because you've always had good intentions. You've always stood behind your product, your brand, your customers, what that's you, what the industry's about, what you're trying to accomplish in this world. And then we're picking up the pieces because we were putting their product in. So that stinks. And what customers can do now is, you know, before we filed bankruptcy on the company, you know, we closed and then we were like, all right, we're not going to file bankruptcy so we can control this lawsuit against Generac. But then we started getting too many lawsuits, so we had to file bankruptcy on the business. When we did, I told everybody, I came out vocally and I said, look, go and file a claim against the bankruptcy. If the trustee goes and wins this as a slam dunk lawsuit, whatever they get outside side of the, of the creditors, there can be money back for these consumers, and that would be ideal. I've still called for national recall for, you know, Generac to come out and take responsibility to make every one of these customers whole because they deserve it. And a lot of customers understand that. A small few don't and they're loud. They want to see me suffer, die, do all the bad things right. I. What I've learned is I saw something on TikTok that really put my life in perspective of where it's at. And I don't know if you've seen it, but have you heard about the donkey and the tiger talking to the lion?

I haven't.

You're gonna love this. So the donkey is going to the tiger, arguing with the tiger about the grass being blue. And the tiger's like, the grass is not blue, it's green. And the donkey's like, no, it's blue. Let's go see the lion. So they go to the lion, who's the king of the jungle. And the donkey immediately speaks up to the lion, says, lion, the tiger's arguing with me about the grass being blue. Can you please tell him the grass is blue? The lion says, yeah, the grass is blue. The donkey says, see, I told you, tiger, the grass was blue. Lion, can you please punish him? Since he was arguing with me about that? The lion says, I will punish him. The donkey goes on his way. The tiger goes, okay, lion, I'll take my punishment. But I don't understand. Clearly, the grass is green. And the lion says, the grass is green. And he goes, well, then why am I punished? He said, because you are such an important animal here in the kingdom with a reputation that you have to keep. To argue with a jackass and not being able to change their mind is wasteful of your talent. Therefore, you're gonna be punished for that. So what I got from that and what I think people get from that is there are people that look to hate and want to just be me, and I can't change their minds. I wish I could. I can't. If it weren't me, they would argue at the people that sold them water. They would argue. People that sold them glasses, they just look to hate. And unfortunately, our world, we have a lot of that. But the people that get it, that are like, look, this guy gave us life. I mean, people don't know this. We went off payroll for six months and gave the company millions of dollars for the final payroll to make sure our employees got their final paycheck. We were advised by attorneys. We didn't have to. We said, it's the right thing to do. And so I can stand on that. You know, the executive team can stand on that. The employees that understand can stand on that and know that we did everything we can do. And look, it's. It's unfortunate. You know, things happen sometimes out of our control. And that's kind of where that's my advice to people is whatever your situation is, whatever is going on, your personal life or your business life, you can, can only control what you can control. And those that love you and want to support you, want to stand next to you, those are your people. Those that don't. Don't waste your energy on.

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In order for me to get positive again, it was I have a mentor, Dan Locke, who's a great man, great human being. He's out of Canada and he's a big coach and influencer and speaker. He's made hundreds of millions of dollars doing it. He's a friend of mine and he saw what happened and he reached out to me and he's like you know, what are you doing? I'm like, well, I'm building this company, and I'm building this company. I'm kind of starting over, building some small home service companies. I'm really good at that. I do it my eyes closed. Like, I've done it four times. You know, three were worth over 10 million with great exits, and one was a billion. And then when this happened, like, I can do this. And, you know, so I'm building. I'm good at digital marketing, so I'm building these slowly. And it's like, dude, you to do coaching. I'm like, really? He's like, man, you're such a motivational speaker. Your TED Talk's great. Like, you like Grant Cardona is the real estate. You could be for business folks, especially in the home services. You could teach them how to do Legion. You could teach them how to build a bench at scale. And so he had me going like, I really want to do this. And I got excited again. I got fire in my belly again to where it was turning around. And I didn't ask him to reach out. He just reached out. And we weren't even that close. We were kind of close, right? So on my podcast, I've bought some books from him, but he understood business and he understood the kind of person I was. And so him reaching out was really, you know, changed things. And then I flirted with the coaching, but, you know, now in my mind, you know, what's turned it around is, you know, we have a successful company that we're building from the ground up that's doing really well. We just opened up a second market, and this company's gonna do 2 million a month in sales. Next month, I'm getting ready to get into another big home service business with water filtration. I'm very passionate about having a, you know, a cleaner planet, healthier planet. So I love solar. So I want to do this whole water filtration company that's kind of like Tom's, where we give a lot back to the community. And I'm not going to open it yet. I'm going to open up towards the end of Q3, let the dust settle a little bit more. But, you know, you just got to have a. And I'll tell you, things happen for a reason. As. As horrible as this is, and losing personally $400 million does not feel good, you know, to start over and rebuild, it's not a good feeling. But I'm closer to my family than I've ever been, and I'm more present than I've ever been. And I just recently hired Ed Milett as my coach, which is also something I wouldn't have done before. Because when you're on top of the world, you're like, yeah. I mean, I had coaches, but you're like, yeah, My coaches were, you know, public CEOs that were helping me go public. So it's just different, you know, And God has this plan, and you just gotta. You just gotta ride it.

You mentioned getting your story out. And I'm gonna ask you a difficult question. If your life was a book, what is this chapter called and why?

It's called chapter two? It's called the Rebuild. And the reason is because everything I've learned, good and bad, everything I've done well and bad, all my wins and my losses, I'm applying that to try to build something that's bulletproof, something that, you know, I'm not a big believer of building a giant billion dollar company. I'd rather have five $200 million companies and have. I'm empowering people that used to work for me to be owners now to be able to have skin in the game to level up them and their families because they've earned it. And, you know, one of the sad things when we were going to go public, $100 million in stock was going to the employees, and then that went away. So for those that kind of stuck with me and helped me open up to the company, I want to take care of them. So they've got equity in the business. But I would say if I had to redo it, and the chapter would be, you know, it'd be the rebuild. Right. It would be, you know, climbing back up. Right?

Yeah. I think that's the benefit of an exponential mindset where you think to yourself, okay, before, it took me 10 years to do this, how can I do it, you know, 10 times faster and then move forward? But let's, let's stick with you in your mindset because obviously, you know, you have this battlefield mindset program that I saw. And can you just explain what a battlefield mindset is and how that's helping you navigate this situation?

Yeah, the battlefield mindset's basically, you know, in life and in business, these battles are gonna happen, and the goal is to conquer the hour and win the day. And you're not gonna win all the hours, and you're not gonna win all the days, but you gotta have more good days than bad days, and you gotta have more good hours than bad hours, and you gotta Be able to measure your goals short term. Too many people are like, hey, I wanna get a $50 million company. It's not how it works. Why don't you try to get a hundred thousand in sales this week? Why don't you try to get 500,000 for the month? Why don't you try to break a million for the year? Let's start there. You know, the biggest problem people have is they walk up to a mountain and they go, I can't climb that thing, it's too high. But if they walk up to the mountain and they look at the rock, 10ft, I got that. And then they look 10ft above them, I got that. And that's kind of how I live my life and building my businesses. And I've done it before, but now I'm doing it a whole nother level. And I coach and teach people that, that, you know, it's frustrating because it's like watching paint dry. People like, man, like, you know, am I ever going to get there? Well, when you focus on that, you're not going to get there. But focus on the small goal. I always say 30, 60, 90, 180. What are your 30 day goals? What are your 60 day goals? Your 90 day goals? 180. Crush them and make them attainable, make them measurable where you can hit them. Not where it's easy, where it's semi hard, but you got to hit them. Because if you don't get any momentum and you don't have any success, your confidence is going to go down. You're going to start questioning things. And so that's important. And they got to trust the process. You know, ET Always talks about. It's another good friend of mine. It's the process. You've got to be able to master that process, not the results. And so that battlefield mindset is about that you're gonna run into employees that handcuff you to issues because you got the best sales rep. And he's telling you, if you get rid of me, you won't have anything. You gotta build systems around that. You've got to make sure that your whole business is a system. You gotta make sure that you're building the brand, right, Your marketing, right. Otherwise people, you know, attack you. You know, all these things out there that are just looking to matter, they'll attack things that are being successful. That's what they do. And so the moment you give it any energy, any oxygen, it turns that small flame to a big one. So part of that battlefield mindset Is, hey, you can't focus on the donkey. You can't focus on all of the negativity. You have to focus on what you can control. And you have to focus to make the big boy or the big girl decisions when you're empowered to do so. So many people I've coached or talked to, the biggest hang up they have is they can't make a decision. They're too scared of the implications and what the results of what that decision is going to do. And I try to teach them the opposite. I'm like, guys, there's no wrong decision. There's only your decision and you got to give it 100%. And if that doesn't work, you pivot. But the moment you do a decision and then you look back, I call it like the reverse method. You're looking back like, what did I, didn't I do what I miss? You already lost.

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Ego. It's all ego. I mean, we all have some kind of ego where we think we know it all right? And everybody has some kind of ego where it's at. And I think that's the biggest thing. And you know, I have a trainer and he gives me crap. It's a physical trainer and he's like, dude, if you put as much in to what you put in your body and what you do to work out as you do business, you'd be the person best in shape you've ever seen. He's right. But my priority on that isn't up there. It should be. It could be my priorities are somewhere else. And for some reason Ho Hos make me happy sometimes, right. I like, I like Twinkies. Like, I don't know what to say. And so the moment I change that, which I should, you know, it'll be different. But you have to prioritize. And the problem is people where your priorities are of what's most important. That's where you got to start to give all your effort. You can't be great at everything. You just can't. The brain, the body, the capacity can't handle it. If I tried to be great and follow everything 100%, I won't get 100% of anything. So you gotta prioritize. And like for right now, for me, it's rebuilding the business and building my relationships with my family. Yes. Could you still focus on your body? Yeah, but I'm not getting up at 5:30. I'm not, you know, there's things that I just, I want to eat pizza and I'm okay with that. But if you're not okay with it, it's the problem. If you don't like how you look, it's the problem. I'm okay with how I look for now.

One thing that stood out to me is you said something. Hey, I'm rebuilding my business and my relationship with my family. Which do you find to be more challenging right now?

They're both, it depends on the day. You know, I think the business is easier. I think, you know, I feel like I can do it my sleep. And people are like, no way. I'm like, dude, like, this will be the fourth company we order. The water company. Fifth company. I've built over 10 million. Like it's just crazy to me how easy it comes. But it's because I've seen the video over and over again. Family is hard, right? Especially if you got daughters. Like my kids are 24, 19, 16 and 13. So everyone's all over the map and a lot of personalities. But building the bond with the family is important because, you know, I worked so hard to build these companies and I've. Look, I've always been, I've never been a part time dad. People like, you know, you get home at 7 or 8. But I make moments and memories matter. I coach my kids sports, so I dedicate days to that. We go to church, I pray with them. We don't go to church a lot. We should go more. But I pray with all my kids every night in their room. You know, there's things that I do that make it matter. So if I'm not home at five, okay, well, it doesn't matter. I take them on special vacations that I make those moments and memories matter. We'll play board games or Risk or left, right, center, you know, or different things, you know, you'll remember those things with your family. You don't remember your dad getting home at five o' clock every day. And so when people come to me and they're like, how do you have the balance? There is no balance. You gotta make those moments and memories matter. You gotta take that hour you get with them and just make it the best hour possible rather than five hours and they're upstairs playing video games and you're downstairs and that's what the world does. So I usually feel like I'm a pretty good dad and always have been, but I want to be better.

Yeah, my kids are eight, five, three and a half and one and a half. So similar to your spacing, I'm about 15 years behind you, but I'm already picking up with some good dad tips right now, so I appreciate that. So let's. I'm going to ask you one more tough question. I'm not sure what the answer is going to be based on our conversation, but what is one lesson about entrepreneurship that you wish you learned sooner?

Getting coaching? I think if I would have got coaching, you know, I started doing coaching probably four years ago. I hired my first coach in probably 2018. I did so five years ago. And I wish I would have done it before because I've been an entrepreneur since 2004. And so I, you know, I just, I missed so many years of ways to level up, you know, and I've learned through failure and through doing things myself, which is the best education. But I think self improvement is real. I think when people think they're too good for self improvement, they don't want to invest in themselves. I think they're missing something and they're going to hit those blocks that cost them more than the investment itself to do that self improvement. And, you know, I think that. I don't know if that would have changed anything that happened, but it definitely would have made me a better CEO earlier. And now I would have had so much more wisdom than I have now, and I would have had it earlier. And you make different moves and you don't know what it looks like. And so I always tell people, you know, they're like, oh, and I'm pricey. I'm not cheap. But you get what you pay for, right? I started my coaching, like at 2,500amonth and then 5,000amonth. And like these, if people would get it four, five, six calls, they would change their entire business, make hundreds of thousands, if not millions of more dollars, and then they would be like, all right, thanks, and they'd be out. It doesn't hurt my feelings. I moved the needle for them.

So, Jason, this has been amazing, but I know listening. A lot of people are going to learn, want to learn more about you and how they can maybe join some of your programs. So do you mind sharing information on that as well?

Yeah, absolutely. So if you go to jasonwaller.com J A Y S O N W A l l e r.com you can sign up there for an intro call. You can do one hour session, you can do a month session, six months or 12 months. You can always follow me at Instagram at Jason Waller Bam. It's Bam or YouTube. It's the Bam Fam TV show. And that show actually comes out in December. Super excited to be on Amazon prime. And then we're talking to TLC and talking to Bravo to see if we're gonna extend for season two, three and four. But super excited. Basically an entrepreneur life meets family drama. It's chaos, it's real, it's raw. And then you can also go to my new show that comes out tomorrow, which is the Jason Waller Unleashed show, which is my new podcast. Taking the place of the Bam podcast that I am hanging the cleats up. I. I had the true underdog podcast, got to top three for a long time. The Bam podcast did top five. But I don't want to be limited to just talk about business. So I opened up Jason Waller Unleashed, and today we're going to be talking about pizza, politics and football. And I'm excited because I just opened up the barriers of what I can talk about and still throw some business in there. So super checked about that show.

Awesome. Thanks, Jason. This has been incredible. Thank you.

Thank you, man.

And that's our show for today. And like I said, there's a lot to unpack there, but my hope is that you'll feel better prepared to navigate the setbacks that you'll undoubtedly face. You can't change what happens, but you have full control over how you respond. And at the risk of sounding corny, I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes that illustrates this point as well. Though no one can go back and make a brand new start. Anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending. Thanks for listening and I'll catch up with you next time. Apply what you learned on today's show. You'll find the show notes and more resources at Terryrice Co. Podcast Again, that's Terryrice Co Podcast and the best way to support this podcast is by subscribing, telling a friend and leaving a review. Also, you can get more tips by following me on Instagram terryrice or follow me on LinkedIn. This episode was produced by Josh Wilcox of Brooklyn Podcasting Studio and edited by Dan Lardy. Special thanks to my wife, wife Dominique for keeping our kids relatively quiet as I recorded. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you next time.