Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Jayson Waller: Find Your Power | E78
Episode Date: August 31, 2020The way to have power is to go out and take it! Today we're chatting with Jayson Waller, the CEO of PowerHome Solar, America’s new superpower in home energy. Jayson is also the host of True Underdog... Podcast, a top how to podcast on Apple Podcasts. Jayson has a remarkable life story. He’s true underdog, he grew up in a trailer park, suffered childhood abuse, dropped out of college, and to top it off he was a teen dad. But, he rose against all odds to become the award winning CEO of PowerHome Solar, a $300 million dollar company. In this episode we’ll: Talk about Jayson’s inspiring come up story and what led him too become an entrepreneur We’ll uncover why he risked it all - selling his house and all his assets to fund the turnaround of his business after a rocky year 1  And how he decided to pivot his home security business to solar power which led him to ultimately scale up to a $300 million dollar company in less than 5 years Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at Hala@YoungandProfiting.com Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com  Jayson's Info Website: https://www.powerhome.com/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayson-waller-/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaysonwallerbam/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/jaysonwaller?lang=en Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JaysonWallerBAM/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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You're listening to Yap, Young and Profiting Podcast.
A place where you can listen, learn, and profit.
Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Halataha, and on Young and
Profiting Podcast, we investigate a new topic each week and interview some of
the brightest minds in the world. My goal is to turn their wisdom into actionable
advice that you can use in your everyday life, no matter your age, profession, or
industry. There's no fluff on this podcast, and that's on purpose.
I'm here to uncover value for my guess by doing the proper research and asking the right questions.
If you're new to the show, we've chatted with the likes of XFBI agents,
real estate moguls, self-made billionaires, CEOs, and best-selling authors.
Our subject matter ranges from enhancing productivity,
how to gain influence, the art of entrepreneurship, and more. If you're smart and
like to continually improve yourself, hit the subscribe button because you'll
love it here at Young & Profiting Podcast. Today on the show we're chatting with
Jason Waller, the CEO of Power Home Solar, America's new superpower in home energy. Jason's also the host of True Underdog Podcast, a top-how-to podcast on Apple.
Jason has had a remarkable life story.
He's a true underdog, growing up in a trailer park, suffering childhood abuse, dropping
out of college, and to top it all off, he was also a teen dad.
But he rose against all odds to become the award-winning CEO of Power Home Solar, a $300
million dollar company.
In this episode, we'll talk about Jason's inspiring come-up story and what led him to become
an entrepreneur.
We'll uncover why he risked it all, selling his house and all his assets to fund the turnaround
of his business after a rocky year one
and how he decided to pivot his home security business to solar power which led him to ultimately scale up to a
$300 million company in less than five years
Hey, Jason welcome to young and profiting podcast
Hey, thanks for having me super excited me too. I your story. I can't wait to get into this.
You have had a remarkable life. You are the epitome of the American
dream. You're the CEO of Power Home Solar, America's new super power in
home energy. And you launched in 2014. And now you have over 1000 employees,
you operate in over 10 states, and you've also been named
one of the top 100 fastest growing private companies
in the US by Inc. Magazine.
And your company is the top number one
residential solar power provider
in the Midwest and Southeast markets.
So that is super impressive.
And I know it wasn't really a straight path
to success for you.
You grew up in a trailer park.
You suffered from child abuse.
You dropped out of college.
You were a teen dad.
And then you rose to become this like super powerful CEO
at Power Home Solar.
You are the true definition of an underdog.
And I definitely want to spend a lot of time uncovering
your story really unpacking that because I think
there's so many gems for our listeners. So let's start with your younger self. Let's start all the way back to your childhood.
What was it like for you growing up? Did you have particular dreams or ambitions?
And did you ever imagine yourself to become this super powerful CEO?
Yeah, no, thank you and thanks for all the kudos. I appreciate that. You obviously did your research.
I had a lot of information on the company
So super excited, you know growing up my parents were blue collar workers my dad married my mom when he was 18 and she was 16 and
They moved to Arizona. He was from Michigan. She was from North Carolina and she had me at 18 and my dad was 20
So there were young parents neither one of them went to college neither one of them finished high school and my dad was 20. So they were young parents, neither one of them went to college, neither one of them finished high school.
And my dad worked for AT&T, we call her America.
My mom worked it, fries, which was a bakery,
and she made bread, worked in the deli,
and then she started decorating cakes.
So that's what I grew up with.
She also babysit on the weekends to make extra money.
I wouldn't say we were poor,
but we were less than middle class.
My parents worked hard.
They worked a lot. So as I had a brother and sister My parents were tired. They worked a lot.
So as I had a brother and sister,
I had to help babysit a lot.
I almost had to be their parent pretty much
because my parents were working so much,
just to make sure that they can put food on the table
and we can have decent clothes
and have a roof over our head.
And growing up, I saw my parents struggle.
And I always had goals.
You have to be a football player or a sports agent or an attorney or something.
And I was really good at math.
But I had this knack of talking and ideas and vision early on trying to motivate the kids
what we can do.
We played a game called like Goonies.
The movie Goonies came out when I was a kid.
So we played Goonies and we'd set up how to get out of traps.
But as I grew older, I started to see my parents really struggle.
My dad filed bankruptcy multiple times.
He was bad with money when he made money.
And I saw that.
We'd moved a lot.
I mean, we moved a lot as a kid.
And I think it finally got stable in fifth grade where I was there three years.
And then we moved to North Carolina.
My dad had an opportunity to be an entrepreneur if he wanted to be.
He had a friend of his that opened up a video store and video stores were cool.
I think the last blockbusters are still open, but back in the late 80s, early 90s,
video stores were boomin' and that was the VHS tapes.
And my first job at 14 was working at that video store,
puttin' away movies and put and putting Rocky Fore on and getting
paid like six bucks or five bucks an hour, whatever it was, part time after school.
And it was cool.
But my dad got, you know, he worked corporate America with AT&T, they were shutting the
plant down.
And my brother and sister at asthma, he was worried about benefits.
His friend, the late Mike Roberts, who owned video power store, said, hey, I'll open
you a sub shop and and share a bakery right next to one of the video stores
stay here.
My dad said, no, he went with a safe route.
I'm not mad at him, he had two kids with asthma.
And I remember him talking about it in the bedroom.
And I don't want to do this.
We're going to move to North Carolina
and figure things out.
And we did.
And that was kind of a pivotal point for me.
I saw, and I lived through his
decision. And not that it was a bad decision. I don't ever believe there's a bad decision.
You make the most out of whatever decision you make as long as you make a decision.
But I saw what I didn't want to do. I saw an opportunity for him to take it to the next
level and not be less than or have to bust his butt all the time or get things like that
and miss out on his kids stuff because he's working so much. I saw that opportunity when I moved,
you know, we moved North Carolina
that I didn't wanna go ever go through that,
that if I could find a way in that horse-druck
by I was gonna jump on it.
Yeah, that's so interesting.
And so from my understanding, you know,
you have up to you the 10th grade education
in terms of formal education.
Why did you decide that like school
like wasn't really for you?
And how did you, I know you just mentioned your first job
at the video store, which was sort of like a sales job,
but then you ended up going to sales.
So how did you end up going into sales after that?
Well, on the school thing, so you know,
when I moved to North Carolina, I didn't fit in.
I mean, I just, I'll just say it, I really did.
I grew up in Arizona.
A lot of my friends were Hispanic, you know, from California and white, and we didn't have
a lot of African-American kids growing up in Arizona.
There was a few in my school, two of them were my best friends, or on the basketball team
and on the wrestling team with me.
When I moved to North Carolina, it was a different feeling.
There was still a lot of racism kind of going on.
So when I came to that school, you had white kids at one table, black kids at another table.
There was no Hispanics.
And I was like, where do I fit in?
Because I thought I was a gangster.
I came from Phoenix.
I joined this little gang.
I was a gang banger wannabe.
The white kids were really kind of redneck and country.
And the black kids were cool, but they really hang out with the white kids.
That's what it felt like when I moved to North Carolina.
So I was an outsider, and a lot of my friends
that I ended up gaining in school there
were also outsiders that lived in the trailer park
that came from other states.
Buddy of mine came from Louisiana,
and another buddy came from California,
and another buddy came from Kansas.
We all lived in the trailer park together,
and it was kind of like us versus the world.
You'd go to parties and they wouldn't want us there.
And I had great grades.
I won an award for math as a freshman
for the best scores on the testing in the county.
And I did very well.
It was very good at math, but I had a mouth on me.
I didn't like authority figures.
I struggled with listening to people
and I thought it was wrong.
And I got a lot of fights.
Because I never started a fight,
I never bullied anybody,
but I was always like, all right,
so I got a lot of fights
and that got me in trouble out of school.
So I kind of got kicked out
and started working.
And when I did that,
as a young man,
I got my girlfriend who's now my wife pregnant.
And we have four beautiful kids now.
We've been married 19 plus years
on and off for 23 because we played house a lot when Hannah was first born. Hannah's my oldest
is 21. And you know, we went through a hard time where I get her pregnant. She's a teenager.
I'm a teenager. Her family doesn't like me. They think I'm less than my parent. Yeah, it was just
a tough situation. And you know, we lived in a trailer park.
People made fun of me at school,
like you live in, you know, trailer.
Yeah, and I had fake Tommy Hilfiger's days.
This was an issue for people.
I wasn't used to that.
Growing up in Phoenix, it wasn't about
how many things you had or much money you had.
It was how tough you were, who your homeboys were,
what sets you claim?
It was different.
When I moved to North Carolina, I was like,
where do you live?
What do you drive?
It was more of a measuring thing and I just didn't fit in in that. And so that kind of motivated
me. And I got into sales. When I went back to Arizona 97, I went there and was going to
try to go back to school or figure things out. I had my friend Joey Kustin, he had a
his mom took custody of me for about three months. And I decided to re-enroll into high school senior year and it was a mess.
But when I did, I got a job with Kevin Klingko's my business partner now. He was selling credit card
protection on telemarketing. And he was 17 years old. He was making four or five hundred bucks a week
part time. And this is a 97. So I said, I can do that. I can hustle with the best of him. So I went
meet him with compete for first and second, make great money.
Then we start selling home security over the phone
for about a month.
And we're making $7,800, part time a week,
selling home security.
And it was like, the pitch was pretty simple.
It was like, hey, Aula, I see that you registered
at the mall to win this brand new Dodge Durango.
And you're like, yeah, yeah, great news.
You're still in the runnings for it,
but do you hear that?
You've actually been selected to receive
a free home security system, free installation,
dollar a day monitoring.
You keep the bad guys away.
We'll get you the, I fall in and can't get up medical monitor button that you hit in
case something.
The whole thing, all we got to do is schedule an install to dollar a day, 30 bucks a month,
and I would, I crushed that.
And so I knew I could sell.
I was like, wow, on the phone, I can be whoever I want to be.
I don't have to be this trailer part kid.
I don't, on the phone, I can be an act as if.
I can empower myself to be something different
and really use my voice and energy and passion
to get somebody to buy what we're selling.
And I saw that power.
So when I went back to North Carolina,
I got, you know, a job at first junior,
and I wasn't supposed to get,
I adjusted my resume, said I graduated college, I didn't got a job there or anyways.
Or, you know, and then after I had the job,
I was their top sales rep,
you know, got a job at AT&T doing sales.
I just did lots of things like that,
that, you know, that made a difference
and started to learn sales.
I was about 17 when I first started doing officially
says, well, I also mowed lawns at 15 or 16,
knocking on doors if you count that.
So, yeah.
Well, that's incredible. It just shows the value of using your grids and getting
that experience. It doesn't matter if you have a formal education. You probably learned
so much just getting thrown into the workforce, so young, a lot of people, you know, wait until
they're 22 till their first job. And they lose out on all like the social skills, which
you're so good at. So you are the definition of a true underdog, you know,
you came from.
Of course, I mean, I'm very impressed with you.
So do you think that being an underdog
gives you an advantage?
And do you think that like not having
that formal education has given you an advantage in life?
I will tell you, Hala, early on in my career
of being an entrepreneur around 24,
I had 21 plus jobs before I was 24, right?
So I had all this experience of tons of jobs.
I just had a podcast that talks about my jobs.
It was 25 plus jobs, you know, all before I was like 24 years old.
However, when I got jobs, when I first opened a business
and I had people with college education working for me,
I struggled with that. I struggled with
that. I struggled because I was insecure, right? I struggled because I felt they're smarter
than me and I'm telling them what to do. They're looking at me like I'm some kind of child
that doesn't know anything. And it was an insecurity. I had to learn and evolve to overcome, right?
I didn't take my ball to go home, but I would struggle and I would struggle and I'd have
to get better and learn to take charge and be an authority figure and be a leader.
And it didn't happen overnight.
It took some time.
It took some getting stuck in a corner where I felt like these guys would take advantage
of me because they were smarter than me or they could spell better than me or they could
speak better than me.
And eventually enough had enough and I kind of snapped one day in a sales meeting and
I said, who's going to be here for training?
And a couple guys like, I'm not going to be here And I told them to get the F out of the office.
I lost my cool.
I'm like, get your ass out of my office.
I'm done.
They were old, I didn't give a shit.
I was like, bounce.
I'm right in the checks here.
Go.
And when I did that, that was kind of a pivotal moment
where it was like, wow, like this is my show.
I've got to act like it's my show.
I've got to get my shit together.
I can't, I can't be manipulated anymore
because that person so much educated.
And it took time and it continued
to evolve where I would meet other business owners and they would have all this education and sometimes I would feel less than like
this guy went to Harvard, this guy went to Berkeley and he runs this company and maybe smarter than me and better than me and
really it's after more experience and more failure and then more success. I got to the point. I love meeting guys like that because I can dance circles
around them.
They went to school and spent all this money to learn
nothing that is doing what they're doing now,
unless they're a doctor or a vet or an attorney.
They've pissed their money away in my opinion.
And I've got all this experience in this edge
and this hunger and I've already failed.
So I'm not scared of rejection where they're all it.
So now I just embrace and love that because they are way more intrigued by me than I am them
over time.
And it just took time to learn and evolve that
with the experience and growing.
Yeah, I can totally relate to that.
I've had so many different jobs.
I was working all through high school.
I dropped out of college to work at a radio station
and got a lot of pushback for that.
So can totally relate how experiences is what really gives you the skills to kind of level up
and being the real world.
You know, education can only take you so far.
It's so like conceptual.
It's not really practical.
And I think that's really the new way to succeed.
You're obviously a lot more successful than I am, but I could definitely relate.
I appreciate that.
Yeah, so do you think that being an underdog helps you be more nimble?
So let's talk about you in the solar space.
So your brand new company, or you were a brand new company at one point, and you were
an underdog at that point.
It reminds me of a book I read by Malcolm Gladwell.
It's called David and the Goliath.
And one of the main points he makes
is that most people underestimate
the importance of agility and speed.
And that's why companies like yours,
like the ability to be nimble and agile
can really help you get ahead.
So how has being an underdog,
being a new player in the space,
actually giving you an advantage in the solar space?
I would say, and great question, I would say,
when I opened the home security business,
I opened it out of my master bedroom
with a shower tile wall.
That was my schedule.
So I bought like this thing at Home Depot
that goes on tubs and I marked it with marker
because I had no money.
And I'm still working at Verizon Wireless
and trying to sell home security at night.
And I built it out of my master bedroom, wife's helping me get these contracts together to sell them.
I'm learning as I go, right? And going from there to build the security company does very well.
And then joining another security and building that one that does well.
You gain experience of knowledge of what works and what doesn't, right?
How to fail, how to get up, what to look for.
Some of the things I learned was, I felt like I could sell
anything if I believed it.
And I have to believe it.
It's authentic.
I sold Kirby vacuum cleaners for a couple weeks
and I said, this is a ripoff, I can't do it.
I sold wireless cell phones and PDAs,
blackberries when they first came out.
I believed in that and I crushed it, right?
So you got to believe in something.
And with home security, I love that business. It saves lives. It keeps the bad guys away. I loved it and I did well at it,
but I had to the groom that when I did home security, we were getting into that business. I said,
I don't care for some water or ice or home security or solar, you know, with solar, I can make this work.
I just didn't understand solar. So I'd hire a GC contract to kind of educate us on the process. And then I
realized real fast how scary this is because I go out and sell it. But in solar, it's like a
construction business. It's not like it's a home security where I sign you up and I sell the paper
to ADT or Brinks and I get paid for it. And then I can pay my installer and the equipment vendor
and everything. That ain't like this. This is you sell a job. You don't get paid to let installs
and that can be two, three months later.
You got to pay your sales commission, your marketing, your interconnection, your permitting,
everything, and it becomes a cash problem.
So we opened up the solar company and we went full blown.
I had to take all the money I ever made in home security, put it in there.
I didn't go on payroll for 19 months opening up the solar company.
So for 19 months, I didn't get a paycheck.
My wife's getting upset.
This is crazy.
It got so bad we sold our house on the lake
and reinvested that into the company.
And I really got some stink eye on that.
And I'm like, trust me, I'm not gonna fail.
I see the light at the end of the tunnel.
I've just got to get over this cash flow problem.
And there was a time at the end of 15,
because we opened the name in 14,
but we didn't really open the doors
and start selling till 15,
because I wrapped up the sale of the home security company.
And then 15, we did three million in sales,
we lost a million bucks.
Million bucks had to come from somewhere, right?
Came for me with money I made in the home security business
and I didn't get a paycheck.
Then in 16, we did about 14 million in sales.
So we grew almost four times the size, however, or plus four times the size, we still lost
money.
That had to come from somewhere.
I started getting on payroll in November of that year.
But things started to turn because I almost shut down the end of 15.
I was scared.
And my business partner, Kevin, was like, we need to close this down.
And he was running some call center stuff for it. I'm like can't we argued about it. I said if you want out get out
I'm in and so in June of 16. I brought him back full time
It's that either you were in or out he came and helped me grow it because things were starting to turn
17 we did really well we did
40 million in sales we're profitable 18 we did 105 we're profitable last year we did 185
Propheaux will break 330 million in sales this year
We have a thing called, bam, building a movement.
We plan on doing almost a billion in sales next year.
We did 53 million last month, so you can do the math.
We're on the road, but it's because we're in an industry that you just have to learn.
If you can be passionate, you believe in something you sell, that's what it was.
I wasn't scared to fail and learn.
What I built is that what I want to do that was different in this company is I didn't want to depend on people when we're doing home security I depended on sales reps to knock a door or call somebody if they didn't show up we struggled.
I wanted us to have the gold. So at our company we do a lot of online marketing, digital marketing, we spend millions of dollars a month on lead, Jen, and branding. Therefore, the leads come to us and we give them out, which means we control the growth,
not the sales folks.
And that's a whole different thing
because now we don't have to hire sales folks.
We can hire educators that teach people
what solar's about because they raise their hands
and say they're interested.
It's a whole different mindset
that really allows us to be successful.
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Wow. That's really cool. You said so many things that I'm definitely going to touch on.
I want to just backtrack to you starting this power home
solar business.
So you were working a day job, you said,
and you were running this security business at night.
So how did you decide that you were gonna take it full
fledged and quit your nine to five?
Like what was that process like?
Well, with, when I opened home security in 2005,
I was working Verizon for about 11 months
and doing home security at night until I was making enough money I quit Verizon.
In 2015, January 2015, sold power home technologies.
I was an owner in that.
We built that up.
There was a second home security company I was a part of that we built up and made a little
bit of money.
With that money, I invested in Power Home
Solar to open and didn't pay myself for 19 months, but I was all in January 1st of 15,
but I was hiring people in a new industry where I'm trusting them to do everything. And
really, that was against everything I've done before in security, I did everything. So
nobody could be asked me of what the job consists of or how hard it is, or I wanted to do everything.
So now I was like, this is wrong.
So come the end of 15, going into 16,
I started running the appointments,
I started selling over the phone,
I started doing the proposals,
I fired the sales manager, I would meet with these clients.
And all of a sudden, my closing percentage
was gonna be 80% or 90% because, you know,
I'm aggressive, I'm a passionate, I explain it,
I'm not sending reps out on appointments and they're selling one in 10 and it's costing us
a boatload of money with marketing.
I was closing these so it allowed us to go, okay, well, let me train a little me and then
let me train another little me and then let them morph and I can step back and start to
scale.
And that's what really happened.
I decided in the home security business when I made enough money, I could leave Verizon
I did and went full time home security.
And in solar, I jumped all in, but I had this bubble
of money that I was like, okay,
I made a little bit of money on security.
I don't need to get paid.
I'll just reinvest the money.
Well, it was so bad that I just stick that money in, right?
And reinvest any profits for almost, you know,
19 months until I went on payroll.
Then it broke.
Then all the deals were happening, things were happening,
banks that we were financing customers through would pay us
a little earlier, things just started to evolve better
when it was like this is working.
Yeah, that's so interesting.
So when you decided to turn into solar,
for my understanding, you actually
read about another competitor who transformed his security
business into a solar business name.
What was his name? Use Utah? Todd Peterson from Utah.
Yeah. And so tell us about that. Like how did he motivate you to kind of
make the same switch? And then now how are you performing compared to his
company? So me and Todd don't personally know each other. We
have some of the same friends, but he's always been the
Godfather of Home Security back in the day, right?
He had a thing called summer programs.
He's out of Utah.
He recruits a lot of Mormon kids at a BYU
that go out and do summer programs,
and they're so good,
because they knock on doors on some of their missions
that when they go out and knock on doors,
this is back in the day for home security,
they crushed it because it's what they've always done.
Knock on on doors,
get people to be part of the Latter Day Saints church
and community, they're used to doing that. So when they went out to the security, they were
like, they were guillotine, right? Everybody else was David. It was crazy. Well, everyone
tried to duplicate that building your own van teams and do stuff, right? And nobody
can master it completely. Well, then he morphed into solar around 2012-2011-ish, and I wanted to get into it in about 13.
I read about it.
I'm like, man, this guy went from APEC security to Vivint security to Vivint solar.
That is where the future is.
Everyone's doing home security now.
So it kind of motivated me to kind of do that and be a part of something like that.
When I had the opportunity to get out of the security business of 15, it went full blown.
I was excited.
It was a tough road. I was excited.
It was a tough road.
I wouldn't use the construction part.
Todd's team now just, Vivint just partnered with and got bought by Sunrun about a month
ago.
It was a major billion dollar deal, a couple billion dollars, and Sunrun bought them up.
And I think he's a consultant for him or doing some things wrapping up.
But yeah, he was the Godfather originally of security, and really one of the pioneers
and leaders in residential solar the last four or five years.
So, you know, I'm a big believer.
When you see someone successful, you really want to follow what they're doing, and you
want to, you know, they're pathing the way.
You want to be able to go down that and help path the way for the next person, too.
And that's kind of what I did.
I saw what he was doing.
I was like, wow, we kind of got to do things.
Our markets are a little different.
We don't doorknoc.
ours is all online or TV.
Customers want, inquire about us.
We go send them up.
So it's a different model.
And then we do add a lot of energy efficiency.
It's not just solar.
We do blown insulation, LED lights, all this stuff.
But it's the same concept.
And I saw how successful heat transition
that gave me hope that I could do that as well.
And we did really good.
They're a little bigger than us.
They're publicly traded now, but we're on the path.
I have a feeling that we'll cross path sooner than later.
Yeah, that's really cool.
And I think you bring up a great point
that sometimes it's not about reinventing the wheel.
Sometimes it's about looking what's available to you,
what has worked for other people,
taking the best parts of their model and improving on other parts.
And it looks like you did that really successfully.
So congratulations.
Let's take it back to when you had to basically sell your home.
Like you said, you didn't take it, you and Kevin,
I believe didn't take a check for 19 months, like you said.
So what was that feeling like?
And I know that you're a big proponent of training your mind to be
calm in every situation.
And you've got some good advice in terms of dealing with anxiety.
What did it feel like when you were in that moment?
And what was actually going on?
Like tell us deeper in terms of like what was going on at that time?
And how you like decided you were going to kind of risk it all
and how you dealt with that anxiety.
Great question.
When I first, I learned from the home security business
that as long as I'm getting a paycheck
from Verizon Wireless, I can run this and reinvest.
And because I did that, the security business took off
and I could leave Verizon.
In solar, I didn't have another job.
I did have some money I made in the security business.
It's no secret.
I made $1.5 million selling the first, you have, if you're selling the security company. That's a lot of
money to some people. It still is a lot of money, but when you make that and then you open a business
and you've got to invest it and you're not getting a paycheck and you stick all that in there
and still don't get a paycheck, it didn't matter what you made on the first thing. So I had a
couple things I was battling. One, Everything I worked for for like 12 years.
You know with 15 to actually was 10 years 11 years. Everything I ever worked for. I had now in a brand new company that was losing money
And I wasn't getting a paycheck. So you know me and my wife started from having nothing and built up this lifestyle that we were doing pretty good
Living on the lake and Lake Norman. You know, we got a boat. You boat. It's like this life is pretty good to, we got to sell the house.
We've got a downgrade.
We're all six of us are going to be in the smaller house where our oldest graduates
are high school.
We're going to back, I'm a big believer in not using credit.
So everything I usually buy cash anyways.
Buy the small house, cash, sell that house, whatever we're going to reinvest in the
business.
I'm fighting that battle at home of getting my wife and or family to trust me
because we've never been in waters like this.
You know, Jason, you're not getting a paycheck
and you're putting all the money in there.
I have my business partner, Kevin,
not trusting the situation.
Kevin didn't have the money.
He was a smaller owner in the security company
so we only made 250 grand.
He had no money to really put in.
So here I am, we're equal partners.
When we became partners, as a look-at-the-look-at,
we're gonna be equal even though he had nothing
to really pony up, I didn't care, I'm not greedy.
I said, I just gotta call decisions, right?
I'm the decision maker, that's it, but we're right or die.
And he fits well, if I'm Batman, he's Robin.
He makes me better, I make him better,
but that's kind of the way it works.
So when things got real tough and we needed money,
he didn't have it to give that.
So I had to put this money in regardless.
So I'm doing that, no paycheck.
I'm struggling.
I mean, I was at a Disney trip at the end of 15
that I probably shouldn't have went on
because I didn't have the money,
but I already paid for it way ahead.
And I'm there with my family.
And I'm upset, I'm like tearing up.
You know, I don't like to cry and share my feelings.
I don't like to show weakness.
I like to be in control.
And I'm getting a little fired up. My wife's strong. And like, you know, Kevin thinks we
need to shut down. You know, I'm arguing with him. I'm like, no, you know, we have put all
this money in this. And this is right before I offered to put the house up to sell and put
it in. All the money we put in, we're not going to get paid to the end of 15. And I said,
I don't know what to do. I'm kind of, I'm in a tough spot. I don't know when to quit.
So like, we just need to pray about it, think about it and do what's best I trust.
You always make the right decision.
And so that kind of gave me a little bit more confidence
that you need.
You always need someone in your corner.
And so I was like, all right, so I prayed about it.
And I thought about it.
And I was like, I'm not gonna go down like this.
You know, I'm a fighter.
You know, if it's fighter flight,
I fight every single time.
I'm never scared.
So I'm like, I gotta go swig and what's the worst thing?
I lose everything I start over.
I gotta do this. So I went in, that's when I cleaned house. I fired like 70%
of the people. If they weren't making the company money or they weren't doing their job,
I was, we didn't have a lot of employees, maybe like 35, I fired like 20 of them. I was
on a mission. I was like, they're gone, they're gone, you're not doing your job. And I started,
you know, juggling a lot of balls. And that's where it started to turn about four or five,
six months in. All of a sudden, the numbers are starting to turn and we'reuggling a lot of balls. And that's where it started to turn about four, five, six months in.
All of a sudden, the numbers are starting to turn and we're doing a lot better.
Still lost money.
And that's when I brought Kevin on full time.
I said, dude, I've got this under control. I need you here.
I need you to close the call so get down here.
And so he did.
And he could take over the marketing partner.
I could still grow the sales and the operations.
And, you know, that got me through that time.
But that whole time struggle with not getting a paycheck.
I mean, Kevin, worried we were using personal amixes and
You know pay this to borrow from this and you know you got to be creative and we wouldn't go home and talk about it
Because we didn't want to stress our families out
But we would be late nights midnight one in the morning stressing strategizing. What are we gonna do?
Kevin's always been cool and calm and collective right Kevin's the type if his house is on fire
He's gonna smile ear to ear and go,
sorry man, that's how it is.
But he was broken just like I was, he was freaking.
So that was freaking me out more
because I'm always freaking and I'm always edging.
I'm like, what, like the Tasmania and I do,
he's not like that.
And that's why we're good partners.
He's freaking out.
And I'm like, holy shit, I've got to get this under control.
So I'm like, I've got to plan.
Trust me, we'll get, and it worked.
And we just, we stayed investing in back into the company,
not paying ourselves.
We stayed on the grind.
He fixed the marketing.
I started selling, I trained the sales reps.
We came up with the system.
You know, we negotiated better payments for equipment
as we grew a little bit.
I was aggressive on that, aggressive on the financing.
And it finally came to fruition.
But it was a lot of sleepless nights.
It was hard, almost broken. I it was a lot of sleepless nights.
It was hard, almost broken.
I mean, we were bent, not broken.
And we've been in tough spots at home security before.
I know he has.
He had a shutdown before and then came to work for me
and then became a partner in the second one.
I've never failed, right?
I've never experienced failure.
Like I've opened a business and grew up from the ground up
once and then joined a company that was doing okay and made it a monster and was a partner in that second time.
So as an entrepreneur, I've never failed. This was like failure. And I didn't know how
to, you know, we had failure days, but I had to look at, like, look, this is chess, not
checkers. I can't just shut the doors. I'm having a bad week or a bad day or bad month.
That doesn't mean it's the end of me. Let me continue to focus and stay on this.
We did, we had each other, Kevin and I, and we had our families support, but we tried
not to share too much with them because they would have freaked out.
We got through it.
As we did and we grew, the light at the tunnel things are going good, then it was, wow,
look at what we're doing now.
Now we're in waters, we're not used to, and I had to bring smarter educated people around
me that knew what even a demand, bring a president that's done a private equity
deal before, bring a real CFO, things that when you evolved a 30, 40, $50 million company,
you've got to do. That's not my bread and butter. My bread and butter's passion, vision,
culture, motivation, and work ethic, and streamlining becoming scalable and cost.
Yeah, there's so many cool things
that you brought up in such interesting points.
I love the fact that you fired 70.
I think you said 70% of your staff.
I just had Brian Scootamor on
and he's the CEO of 1-800-Gott junk.
It's also like a $300 million company, huge company.
And he did the same thing right before
his company got really huge.
He fired nine of his 11 employees and
cleaned house and did it all over again. So that's like obviously a really big point. If
you don't have the right people, you won't be able to scale. And so when things are going
wrong, you have to see like, what who's around you are these people as passionate as I am?
And it's not necessarily about their their their talents or their resume. It's more about
their passion and if they're willing to learn and if they're willing to
Give it all the same way that you are to make this company work. So I think that's very interesting.
Hala one of the things too on that when I'm going through this that one of the problems I had to evolve and get better on that people should probably
Take notice too is when you're small in your building a business it becomes like a personal relationship
You work for me. We got 12 employees. it's hard for me to fire you, right?
Yeah.
I have learned over time I can't have relationships with employees, only direct reports.
And I hate that because I want to be the cool boss that talks to everybody, but most people
have a shelf life, unfortunately.
And I've learned the hard way of letting people stay three months, two years, eight months,
too long, costing the company money where I had to develop a mindset that if it's not helping the brand, forget them, forget me.
If it's not helping the brand that affects everybody, I'm doing the wrong thing and you
have to train yourself to where it's white and black.
There is no, I feel bad for them.
That's not life.
That's not how this works.
It's not your job to feel bad.
Their score is their score.
If they're doing it great, if they're not, you need to move on.
And that mindset when my back's against the wall
and my house is on the line and all the money's in here,
you're like, you know what?
I can't beat your friends anymore, you're out.
And I think that's what your guy did.
And then what a motto we have at Power Home is an 80-20 rule.
And a lot of other companies follow it.
But what I do is I hold all of our executives
and directors accountable to make sure
they're replacing 20% of their staff every month.
And if they don't, I'm like, you're not doing your job because I assure you, if we were
GE or Microsoft and we wanted to stay the same, it's about retention.
When you're a growing company that's doing this and you're going up, you need to be replacing
the bottom 20% because your top 20% to 80% of the work, your next 60% to 20% and that bottom
20% they don't do shit.
They hold everybody down, they're negative, they're clowns, they're pessimists, they do
everything wrong and you've got to find those and train your leaders to find those and
replace them for new blood that want to do that.
That's how you grow.
That's how companies grow.
If you don't do that, you don't put KPIs and do that, you won't grow.
That's something I've learned with businesses that you've got to replace.
You keep the ones that are performing
and want to be there, but get rid of the ones
that it's just a job.
Yeah, totally.
I think that is exceptional advice.
OK, so you pivoted this business
and like so many other businesses today
with coronavirus and COVID, they are thinking about pivoting
their business if they haven't already.
And what would you say to a company that is getting ready pivoting their business if they haven't already.
And what would you say to a company that is getting ready to switch their business model?
What are some of the blind spots that they should look out for?
What's your guidance to them?
Well, we were scared.
We almost shut down.
We have executive meetings every day on a call, which is cool.
And so we're very connected, the five executives.
But we, when all this came out, we were scared, and there were, you know, I don't name names,
but a couple of the executives that wanted to shut the doors.
Hey, it's safe if we furlough everybody and close the doors early in March and call it
a day, like some of these other companies in that smart.
And it was the day after GE executives took a pay cut to keep their employees working.
Not GE was GM in Michigan.
I saw it on the news.
And I started to feel bad because at the time we were sitting with around 800 employees
in March. You know, we're almost 1,300 now. So I thought about Lucy who works in our call
center and makes 14 bucks an hour and she's a single mom. This is before they came out
with any of those packages for the government, which we got none because we're over 500
employees. So government gave us nothing. And this is before they came out with an unemployment,
right? None of this was out there. So I was like, look, our biggest assets are employees, right?
That's what it is. Their passion, what we've built, my fear was, is if we close down
then Lucy couldn't pay for her diapers, or she couldn't get a formula for kid, or John,
who's our installer, that's the only income at their house, they can't pay their car payment or the part of the...
These are the things that were haunting me.
And when you're a CEO or you're the leader of a company or leaders, that waits on you
and the more people, the more pressure.
Now, I have a weird sickness, I love pressure, I don't know why I golf the other day.
My partner messed up on a hit and I'm like, look, I got this, I love the pressure.
For some reason, I do, it's I'm like, look, I got this. I love the pressure for some reason. I do.
It's like riding a roller coaster.
I love it.
But it was nerve-wracking because it's like, look, what's the worst that's going to happen?
We're going to negotiate with our vendors to move cash payments to the end of the summer.
We're going to negotiate with the NFL teams to take the payments then as well.
And we are going to come out of this great because we're going to people that want to work.
We're going to allow them to work.
People want to stay home.
They're scared. We're going to allow them to stay home. Take some vacation time after that, you know, go inactive, we'll figure it out.
So we put those in place and the best part is we took our self-soft payroll for almost
three months, all the executives.
And that was a tough pill to swallow for a couple of months, guys.
This is the right thing to do.
When we did that, we announced it to our team, a lot of our team members, I mean directors,
managers, all the sales leaders,
they all started taking pay cuts to volunteer, to stay open, to pay people. And it came in good
benefit because we had a case in Chesterfield, Michigan where someone caught COVID and we had to
shut that office down for two weeks and a lot of those guys didn't have vacation. We paid them.
Like we're like, that's the right thing to do. We had to purposely close down.
We took care, and that happened twice, two or three times.
We made sure, because of the extra funds that people don't know.
The employees only had to do it, I think, for three payrolls.
We didn't want them to do it, but they did.
We're like, guys, we're good now, things have turned around.
But when we did that, and we did a deal with GenreRack,
around the same time, which was crazy,
as our battery in storage in GenreRack is a generator company.
And we came out with the message all over TV, we doubled down on TV saying,
now's the time that power matters, you can't be without power for medical supplies,
your medicine or your food source.
So we were trying to be kind but real to the consumers out there.
It took off. So our largest month ever was 22 million in sales in March. We did 33 million in April,
43 million in May, 46 million in June, and 53 million last month in July. We doubled in size
during COVID, doubled the employees. It's wild. And what it is is my advice is you got to fight
through it and be adaptive. You can't just take your ball and go home. We allowed some people to work from home
that remote that made sense.
We spent tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars
on Plexiglass to be safe.
We got masks.
We were paying attention to the CDC
and the state organizations, the health organizations
to see what was required at different counties.
We did everything we were supposed to do.
But we weren't going to shut down as long as a customer
wanted to buy and employee wanted to work. It was our job to stay open. And we weren't going to shut down as long as a customer wanted to buy and an employee
wanted to work, it was our job to stay open. And we did that. And the executive's just got
back on payroll recently, which is good. But you invest in your team, you've invest back
into the company. And that's what it's about. We're always like hashtag power home strong,
right? Like what can we do for each other? And there's nothing like knowing that you helped
families out that work for you. That goes, you can't replace that feeling that that's what it's about
during this because everyone's scared. And whether you have a small business or big business,
you got to figure out to do the right thing. I had Dr. Glenn Villan, who's one of the doctors
that it's created the antibodies. They did the same thing. They were told to shut down. He had
people volunteer their time to create that. There's just one of the three companies in the antibody
stuff. He was on the show pandemic.
He was on my podcast, great guy.
He was telling me stories all emotionally.
I had like 12 people volunteer their time during this
to come do these studies and test for free
so they can find a cure.
I mean, that's what it is.
It's about us all coming together and figuring this out.
Yeah, we're a business.
Yeah, we make money, but our employees make money.
We create jobs.
We do all these things that we need to do
to make sure lives are better. Customers save money. They want to keep their power on. We create jobs. We do all these things that we need to do to make sure lives are better.
Customers save money.
They want to keep their power on.
So we love what we do.
And we got through that, okay?
But it's really about teamwork and solutions
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Yeah, there's so many takeaways from that. One of the things that I heard in there
is that you really focused on the company culture. You led from the top. You set an example
from the top with you guys not taking a paycheck for a while and that trickled down where the employees also felt like they needed to step up.
And they felt like you guys actually cared about them that they weren't just
cogs in a wheel.
And it sounds like you were really transparent, really communicative.
And that's really important in terms of leading in a pandemic and leading in a crisis like this.
And the second thing I heard is that in your messaging to your customers,
you altered your messaging to fit the current scenario. You didn't just keep talking about
what you always talking about in terms of selling solar. You changed your messaging and your
value proposition to your customers so that you would be more relevant, more relatable
in this situation. So really, really awesome stuff. I've heard you talking in the past
that you have a passion for purpose and your people.
And that's what really drives you.
It's not really the money.
It's not really the success.
It's more about the people and your purpose.
So tell us more about that.
Well, when I got into this business,
I mean, it's no secret.
I jumped in it because I thought it was cool.
When I got into the cell phone business,
it was 30% penetrated.
Nobody thought cell phones were the future.
You know, everyone had landlines,
bell and AT&T, and that was the world we lived in.
And so I would have to meet with business owners,
you know, and be like,
hey, this is the future,
and you're not gonna use your fax machine
or your landline.
And it was tough, but I believed in it.
You know, I feel the same thing about solar.
It's very similar, right?
The traditional way of power is gonna go away. Eventually, we're going to have renewable
sources everywhere that the utility companies that distribute are they're moving power along.
You can choose to own and have your own power pad at home or you can buy into one.
All of that's coming. We've seen it in Europe. We see it in California. We see all these things coming.
And I loved that. I thought it was cool that it was technology driven, and it was the American dream.
Like, you know, people can have their own power.
Nobody, and nobody likes the utility companies.
I mean, they provide a service with power, but they overcharge the grids always down.
They're very reckless with their cleanup efforts where people are getting poisoned from
colis.
There's just some problems there, right?
And, you know, we look at that as an opportunity for people to stand up and have their own
power and electric cars are the future and people are going to charge the cars at night
and they don't want to pay an arm and a leg to do that.
Having solar allows them to, all these things I was excited about in 14 and 15 we first
opened are really starting to come to fruition now and I was excited about it.
And I said, you know, when we did the culture, we were trying to find the reason why I did
it because I was excited.
After I was in, it was about changing the planet. At first, I wasn't the go-green guy. I wasn't,
I don't drive a priest. When I first opened, I drove a monster truck, like legit. So, I
had to change that. But after I was in it, I'm like, wow, this is a problem. Look at the
coal ash spill here in Lake Norman. Look at what's going on. Look at all of the issues
with the way they produce power. This is an issue with climate change. I became a
believer hardcore. And it's just our culture is, you know, bam, build a movement, one panel,
one customer, one employee at a time. They're behind that. They want to give people choice
of power. They want to be at the forefront of technology. They want people to be able
to have a backup battery with storage to where they are not
powerless and they can have the things they need or AC, their Wi-Fi, the refrigeration,
whatever it is.
We want to be a part of that.
It's technology driven and it's cutting edge and it's exciting.
Our culture, we try to stay fresh.
We try to be cutting edge right now where it's 77% battery attachment rate.
Mean 77 out of every customer gets solar gets a battery.
Well, you don't save money when you get a battery.
Cost you money.
You can save money getting solar but it costs you money.
That means people are buying our product because they know.
They know that it's important for the world.
They know it's important for the environment.
They know that long-term they're going to save money.
They're not going to be without power.
And they're a part of that.
They want to get electric cars or coming down to that part.
I mean, they of electric cars.
You got Mustang, Sold out Day 1, Camaro, Sold out Day 1.
I'm in line to get an electric comer.
You know, all these electric cars, they're just coming.
And in the next 10, 12 years, I'm a big believer.
We're going to be like 80% electric cars.
What are we going to do to charge them?
People need to have other power sources.
That's where solar and wind come in.
And so that passion kind of shares.
And I'm an open book. I mean, I share my feelings. I'm raw. I do all the sales meetings for
our company. I do all the install meetings for our company. It's once a month on each.
And then our Christmas parties and they get to hear me go out there. I'm raw. I mean,
I say some bad words. I'm not pretty. You know, I don't, I'm real. I'm like, this is how
I feel. Screw the power company. This is what we're in it for. I think our employees appreciate that.
That it's not fake corporate America,
just trying to lace our pocketbooks
that we're all in this together.
We all want to change the world together.
You know, we have a mission for our employees.
I'm not done.
They could offer me a billion dollars tomorrow
for the business, and I would say no,
because unless they would give a lot of that to our employees.
I want to either go public,
or I want to have a lucrative transaction
where all our employees have a life-changing event.
We saw Google do it, we've seen Amazon somewhat do it,
we've seen Microsoft do it back in the day,
I'm like, why not power home?
Why can't all our employees that have busted their butt
and grind every day for a bigger thing than just a job
be part of something that's life-changing?
And that's what I want to help give them.
That is when I feel like we've hit goals.
Yeah, we can do a hundred million a month in sales.
That's not the point.
When we get to that point, I'll feel like,
wow, we've really done something.
Because we're also changing the world with the customers,
but the employees for them to have that event
is life changing.
I want that for them.
Totally, totally.
I love the fact that you're saying that the environment
is really important to you.
I'm just gonna read a few stats in terms of what an average American home going to
solar for a year is like.
If somebody goes and switches to solar for one year, it's avoiding adding more than 12,500
pounds of CO2 in the atmosphere.
It's like growing 122 tree seedlings for 10 years. It's like not burning over 8,000 pounds of coal,
driving 18,000 miles less, and so on.
So it's a huge impact, and I know you guys are one of the biggest buyers for residential solar.
So that's huge.
That's amazing.
It's huge.
Look, we're big in the environment.
We're big in the military.
We've been on military makeover twice where we donate a system.
We did three water solar farms for a gift power foundation where we're creating these solar
farms that produce 35,000 glasses of water per day for people in third world countries.
We're big in all of this.
It all ties together.
Water, air, power, it all ties together. And we got to take
care of this world. And, you know, I hate that people are naive. And I won't talk politics on
here. But I will say that both sides of the fence are guilty of not understanding. And both sides
of the fence, the younger ones totally get it. And they're pro this. And that's what it's about.
Is everybody coming together? Because people don't know this. But more Republicans sides of the fence, the younger ones totally get it, and they're pro this, and that's what it's about.
Is everybody coming together?
Because people don't know this, but more Republicans buy solar from us than Democrats.
That's a fact.
We've done surveys.
People don't realize that.
They think Democrats are the only ones pro-green and Republicans aren't.
Really the issue you have is you have a lot of Republicans who are pro-cold, and they just
don't get it, and they're wrong for that.
You have a lot of Democrats that are pro-Solar, but they don't want people to,
there's a blend there that I wish in today's world.
Somebody would come out of the woodwork
that would, we already have enough problems
to disagree on, right, with everything else in politics.
They all need to line themselves with our planet
and renewable energy.
That is what I would like to see
as a group effort to really,
that's a no-brainer let's do this.
That they need to align themselves with.
Yeah.
I totally, totally agree.
So last question before we wrap this up, I know that you're a proponent of small wins.
You say that you don't need to win big all the time, small wins can equal success.
There's no elevator to life.
You've got to take a step each day.
So tell us more about that philosophy because I think it's really important for my listeners
to hear. Yeah. I think, like, look, we didn't expect to be a $300 million solar company
overnight, right? We paced ourselves. And you know, there was a day, five years ago, we thought
we were going to close down. And you have to, I think when you set your goals unrealistic to the
top of the staircase and you think it's going to happen overnight, you're setting yourself up for failure.
I don't care who you are.
Athletes, geniuses, anybody.
You can't overnight get to the top.
It just doesn't work that way.
What you learn from taking the stairs or little wins is you learn, if I set a 30-day
plan, and my ultimate goal, my dream goal is to have a $50 million company.
Well, what do I do in the first 30 days?
Let me find some good employees that make this work and then the next 90 days, well let's
get some sales and maybe get 100 sales.
And then the next, well let me get to 50,000 is that you have to set realistic checkpoints,
you know realistic steps that you take to feel good and be confident to take the next
step.
And you're going to fall down a little bit, but that's better than falling all the way from the top because that's not recoverable.
But falling down a little bit, working your way on there, you learn. Every time you fail,
you learn and then you take another step. And then when you start to get these small wins,
you go upstairs a little faster. It only takes one to take off and it really starts to move.
But people, too many times, like, I'm going to try to lose weight. And when they don't lose eight
pounds a week one, they quit. Or I'm going to open a business, I'm going try to lose weight and when they don't lose eight pounds a week one they quit or I'm gonna open a business I'm gonna be the best sales guy ever know they don't sell something the first
two weeks they quit and they can't set unrealistic goals that don't happen overnight you've got to
pace yourself and get to that point small wins small steps small steps small step because there
is no button to go in the elevator I mean I've I've lived it in three companies I can tell you I
built it from the sellers of a small bedroom that was 300 square feet
and a tile board.
And I did that in two of the three companies,
even Power on Solar, we had no money.
We had to roll carts over to Manila folders
of customer's things and give it to the other person
that computer put it on there.
We had a tile board from a shower at Lowe's.
Like we did the same thing in Solar.
I mean, you have to start somewhere and evolve
and move up slowly until
you get there. And then when you get there, you got to make sure you find another staircase to
go up because when you're there, if you just sit, you will fall. You got to keep going up.
Yeah. There's a risk in being successful. I think that's totally true. You can hear the energy
and the fire inside of you. You're so inspirational and
motivational. You've really achieved so much against all odds. You are a true underdog.
A question that I ask all my guests is what is your secret to profiting in life?
Finding a fulfilness inside my soul. Everyone says success, how much money you make,
which drive to me, it's not. I mean, I was judged at high school.
My wife likes nice cars.
I don't, right?
I'm more simple.
I mean, when you get nice stuff, of course you like nice stuff.
I'm human, but that's not what drives me.
I've never chased money.
Obviously, you've seen I go off payroll.
Money's never been my thing.
Making a difference, you know, watching my kids grow, watching them learn from me or admire
me or be proud of me or the wife
being proud of me, that fulfills me. You know, my parents being proud of me, that's fulfilling,
making the employees proud of themselves and them getting their spouses and families proud of
them, them getting to buy houses and cars. There's nothing like you get an employer, a manager,
a director, it's like, hey man, I just love being here and I got to buy my first house,
right? I got to upgrade my house or, or I got to upgrade my house,
or one of them got their kids back.
He was going through a divorce
and he got his kids back.
I mean, when you hear that stuff,
you can't pay for that success feeling.
That kind of stuff drives me,
is making a difference in helping people.
And I feel like we get to do that
not only for customers, which we love that,
but our employees, and we get to hear their story
and share them, and it just,
it makes everything worth it.
And that's the point is you can't be greedy and you got to find what fills you in here.
Everybody's as different.
Some is title, some is money.
You don't ever chase money, chase success, chase a lie.
You know, you can, their teachers out there.
Teachers are so underpaid, it's not funny.
It is ridiculous.
And that's why we don't have great, we have a lot of great teachers, but that's why we
don't have a lot of great teachers because the pays not fair. You could have been
the best teacher in the planet, but you can't afford sometimes to put food on the table.
So you go do another job, and that's the future of our kids. I'm giving an example, a teacher
is successful. They're teaching kids. They don't have to be millionaires. They don't have
to run a business. They're successful because they're impacting our world and they feel
good about teaching our future. You know, firemen, they don't make killer money, they're saving life, they love what they do,
they're fulfilled. You know, this is what it's about. You got to fulfill yourself in here,
otherwise it's nothing's worth it. Yeah, you are such a good guy, Jason. Like, you really are.
I'm really happy that somebody is like as powerful as you and still so humble and still cares so
much about his employees in the world.
So that makes me feel like a lot of confidence in our world in general to have powerful people
like you with that kind of an attitude. So where can our listeners go to learn more about you and
everything that you do? Well, you can go to powerhome.com. If you're in one of our 11 states, we can get
your free proposal and send somebody out to make sure we can get you to own your power
Not rent it save money and save the planet. We have a new podcast out where you know, it's called true underdog
You go to trueunderdog.com or you can go to iHeartRadio Spotify or Apple podcast also got a YouTube channel true underdog
Where I share a lot of my stories I bring people on like Hala here to talk about their stories share underdog stories
Overcoming adversity how we can really better the earth
and planet and people, because people sometimes
need to kick in the butt.
I know I do, I listen to stuff, I need help sometimes,
we're all humans, so I just like to share that,
anything that I can help people get a head on,
maybe they're like, oh, I'm in that situation,
I've been in that, where people we bring on the show,
where people can relate, they get it,
and they're like, I don't wanna quit, I wanna do this.
That kind of stuff inspired me my whole life,
and I just wanna give that back. Awesome, yeah, I don't want to quit. I want to do this. That kind of stuff inspired me my whole life And I just want to give that back
Awesome. Yeah, I'll put all those links in the show notes so you guys can find Jason easily and I would highly recommend his podcast again
That's true underdog. You can find it on all the regular podcast channels apple Spotify. I've been binging it
So definitely go check it out. Thank you so much Jason. It was such a pleasure
Thank you. How be good, be safe.
Thanks for listening to Young and Profiting Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode please consider
leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or comments on YouTube SoundCloud or your favorite platform.
Reviews make all the hard work worth it. They are the ultimate thank you to me and the YAP team.
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Just search for my name, Hala Ta-Ha.
Until next time, this is Hala, signing off.
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